So. I sometimes eat FrootLoops for breakfast... because I was never allowed to have them as a kid. The ones my mom bought right before Christmas came with "Frosty sprinkles" on them, in honour of the holidays. They're these little white speckles on the Froot Loops-- which themselves are gree, white and red. Some of the dye has sort of run together, so some of the 'loops are actually this greyish colour. It's so gross, and yet cool. It seems like the kind of food zombies would eat.

I've been having all these nightmares lately about fish (demon fish, dead fish) and also leeches-- the one thing in the physical world that i'm honestly terrified of. Honestly, my parents should've let me have a dog when I was a kid. I wouldn't have all these fucked-up fish issues now if I hadn't been forced to keep fish for all those years. I'll never recover. The trauma!

So with the nightmares, and the working (40+ hours in the past week or so), and class (I finally got some of my books!) I've been fairly on edge. Thus the lack of updates.

Wow, I have adoptd a weird tone, haven't I? This comes of reading other peoples' blogs and livejournals, I unconsciously start to take on their writing style. If you're wonderng why I suddenly sound so straightforward and matter-of-fact.

"Boy, wasn't it great when guys used to wear HATS?" -My film prof, trying to explain the nostalgia of period movies from the '20s and '30s

"Sorry if I sound like an idealist... but that's what happens when you start getting older." -My Women Writers of the Romantic Period prof (I'm going to have to find some kind of acceptable acronym for that class)

Any time I have a class with any kind of internet component, there are inevitably problems getting everything set up. But professors never lose hope int he potential of the internet to make our lives more enlightened and to connect us to each other in an academic setting. It's actually sort of inspiring. We should have them working for tech helplines because of their infallible optimism.

Two other things: yesterday morning I almost missed the bus but it STOPPED for me, past even the official bus stop, and waited for me to cross the street. It was one of those little moments that makes it worthwhile getting out of bed.

And: there was rain today, which instantly froze, and the whole world is covered with a fine layer of ice. As I left work I could slide right along the sidewalk in my Vans, and everyone around was sliding on the ice, and it felt like we were in the musical scene of a movie and everyone was about to start singing.

Meghan and Courtney came over and we played the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER BOARD GAME (!) with my sister, and Good triumphed over Evil, fortunately (but unfortunately for Court). So all is right with the world.

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lazy girl
Sunday, January 4, 2004 @ 02:33 p.m.

That's me.

I went to see Lord of the Rings again and I'm non-plussed by the fact that Denethor is clearly insane-- you can tell from the look in his eyes-- and yet people continue to follow his instructions. Plus he's a total drama queen, all proclamations and flagellation.

The big rush du textbooks begins tomorrow and I am working almost forty hours in the coming week (including the weekends on either end). On this note, strange customers dealt with gracefully by the SUBtitles staff in the past three days:

• someone talking on her walkie-talkie in Cantonese while putting her books on consignment
• a woman who spent ten minutes complaining about the highlighting in textbooks relative to the prices
• A man who bought the wrong book and then insisted he could return it because no actual staff person had told him it was a final sale (even though "FINAL SALE" was stamped on the receipt)-- until Carmen explained to him, not entirely kindly, "The fact is, it's not our responsibility to check if you're buying the right books"
• A woman who thought she could pick up a bursary cheque from the federal government at the SUBtitles counter, even though the store is clearly designated, "USED BOOKS" and not, say, "CHEQUE PICK-UP"
• People looking for the following things: bus passes; earplugs; wrestling gear
• A guy who told me about a bunch of secret satellites the U.S. government has, which are capable of seeing things all over North America at a resolution up to 1 metre. "I saw pictures from them... you could see, like, individual trees in peoples' yards." I told him, "I bet the goverment has all kinds of projects like that they just don't tell anyone about because they know we would just freak out."
• Middle-aged man: "Do you have any really ugly hats?"
  Jocelyn: "Like, baseball hats or touques?"
  Man: "Touques."
  Jocelyn: "Well, these ones are moderately ugly."
  Man: "No, that's just an ordinary touque."
  Jocelyn: "Then no, sorry. We don't get much demand for ugly clothes."
  Man: "People have no taste."

Last Sunday my mom and I taught Sunday School. It was the week after Christmas and teachers from two other classes were gone, so we had 11 kids in our class between the ages of 3 and 5. That was like fun, only more tiring and frustrating. But it may have been easier than usual, because all the wild and crazy little boys in my class were counter-balanced with pleasant four-year-old girls who like to colour and listen attentively when you talk.

On the way home from James' on the bus a couple days ago I saw two little snow-plows pushing snow out of the University Hospital parking lot, and in the near-dark they looked like they were talking to each other; moving around like they were dancing, possibly in love.

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3 lists
Monday, December 29, 2003 @ 09:58 a.m.

Dreams I had last night:

• Buying brown flip-flops from American Eagle for $1.50 (they were onsale because it was winter)
• I owned a fishtank and one of the fish kept jumping out. I had three separate dreams (I woke up in between) of this fish jumping out of the water and into my hair, or onto the floor. That freaks me out almost more than anything else. Because I had a fish that did that once. (It died)
• Meghan didn't want to be friends with me anymore. This was an actual dream. I woke up and I was kind of depressed until I realized that it (hopefully) isn't true.
• Someone had broken into my locker again and I went to the Arts Students Association to demand half of the money I paid for my locker rental back. They were non-plussed, and I was like, "This is the second time this has happened!"

Movies I've seen in the past little while:

• Masked and Anonymous
• The Muppets Christmas Carol
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• Pieces of April
• Losing Liza
• Catch Me If You Can

I try to balance out the weirdest movies (Masked and Anonymous) with at least one Spielberg film. Pieces of April is quite a delightful movie. I like movies that warm your heart stealthily, without letting you know that's what they're doing. And I wish Oliver Platt was my father (although I like my real father pretty well)

Cool stuff I got for Christmas: Lots of books from everyone (including two Buffy books, one about the language of the show and the other about Buffy and philosophy), Edward Gorey stuff from Meghan, an ancient Gameboy from James (it has an authentically cracked case and everything), an oak CD chest from my parents along with an Edward Hopper poster that doesn't fit in my room, a new copy of The Cider House Rules (this makes me happy because the old one had Tobey Maguire on the cover. Apparently people actually listen to me when I rant about editions of my favourite books that come out after movie adaptations) from my sister. CDs. Buffy DVDs (which were actually from me to myself because I neeeeeeeded them). A rather fabulous orange and white bag with a 'j' on it that holds everything. I have fun andering around my house, playing Tetris and listening to Justin Timberlake. Thanks everyone.

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chocolate on a stick
Sunday, December 28, 2003 @ 06:34 p.m.

James is questioning my ability to know stuff about stuff. He got polyester shirts that come with ties for Christmas. "They came from Liquidation World... I don't know if you know what that is." Phht. I have orange plastic candleholders from Liquidation World!

I had a nice Christmas. As promised, I've been sitting in my basement watching various DVDs from the Buffy and Lord of the Rings family of video franchise products. Also, we gave my father this game called "Settlers of Catan" for Christmas, and it's one of those board games that totally rewires your brain. If you've ever played it you know what I mean. My dad and I were in the car earlier today when he suddenly remarked, "You know, it would be smart to cluster your settlements so you collect one type of resource every time a common number is rolled, and then build a settlement on the port to exchange that resource..." Just out of nowhere. It's that kind of game. We play it for two hours every day, and eat caramel popcorn.

I'm sorry I'm such a slacker. I feel guilty about never updating this page. But part of relaxing is not feeling obligated to post, along with sleeping for 13 hours every day, reading "THE NO.1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY," and having involved conversations with my dog. Soon I'll go back to school and work, and then I'll be busy again., and have time. If that makes any sense.

Making any New Year's Resolutions?

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And you thought porn wasn't classy
Monday, December 22, 2003 @ 01:36 p.m.

Yesterday I got some SPAM with this subject line: "visual posh material which stimulates men's organs." It sounds so sophisticated. Although I have to admit I'm a little unclear as to what "visual posh" means. Even "visually posh" would make somewhat more sense, although I don't know if something can be visually posh. Also the email itself was addressed "Dear Sir/madam" (although the visual posh doesn't stimulate females' organs, apparently; so...)

I'm finished work until Jan. 2. Tomorrow is my 21st birthday. I wish I had some wisdom to share with you, but I don't, really. Except: EVERYTHING is political.

off to finish my Christmas shopping,
Jocelyn

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American girls!
Friday, December 19, 2003 @ 09:48 a.m.

The Bloath- Shel Silverstein

In the undergrowth
There dwells a Bloath
who feeds on poets and tea.
Luckily, I know this about him
While he knows almost nothing of me!

"The SCREAM meme suggests that we're so ironic that we can't even take our own apocalypse-- our lurking sense, on the eve of the future, of social disintegration and simmering discontent-- seriously. This is the moment Walter Benjamin warned us of, when humankind's 'self-alienation' reaches 'such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.'" -Fighting the Forces

"The dead rose! We should've at least had an assembly!" -Xander, Buffy

I went to see L'Auberge Espangnole last night and it's quite a delightful movie. Europe is an interesting concept at this point. Really abstract concepts like disintegration of nationalism and increasing economic integration are embodied in pretty European people making out in Barcelona. Also: I'd love to go to Spain and practice my nearly-nonexistent Spanish.

I love this time of year. I do nothing but go to parties and movies, and wrap presents. Unfotunately this lifestyle is prohibitively expensive. I'm going to have to go back to the school/work cycle soon enough. My classes for next semester seem promising, and I'm actually getting good marks in the classes from last semester. What will I do next? No one knows!

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I came back.
Monday, December 15, 2003 @ 10:30 p.m.

Hi.

[when I went to pick up a perscription from the U of a pharmacy]:
Jocelyn: "Wow, that is a nice stapler." [Not realizing I had said this out loud]
Woman at the U of A pharmacy: "Yeah, isn't it great? We just got it. It's so much quiter than the old one." [She demonstrates the quietness and speed of the stapler]
Jocelyn: "Stealthy."

Exams are over and Christmas holidays are here and I feel lost and kind of empty, the way the comic strip Luann would ever feel if it ran out of pitifully un-funny jokes. Tonight I laid on my couch for several minutes, staring at the TV, which was turned off because I was too lazy to get up and turn it on (this cannot be accomplished remotely). I need the lurking anxiety of term papers and readings I'm behind in. Without them, I fall apart. Like how convicts (according to the movie Shawshank Redemption) can't get used to the world outside.

I went to see Buffalo Soldiers. It's a pretty incredible movie. It's intensely violent and hilarious and difficult to watch. Also, it has Anna Paquin, once the star of the "My Girl" movie franchise, who has (apparently) successfully re-invented herself as an indie it girl and X-Man.
[Note: Meghan has drawn it to my attention that Anna Paquin was not the girl from the "my girl" movies. Apparently, I invented that. I apologize for my delusions.]

I spent the weekend in Saskatoon, visiting my grandparents. At lunch yesterday in the cafeteria ("cafeteria" is the wrong word, it's more like a pseudo-restaurant, with waiters and everything but they only serve old-people food like jellied salads) the people at the next table were discussing Martin Luther and the Reformation and the Magna Carta and I hope to God I'm like that when I'm old: interested in stuff other than my own rapidly shrinking personal world. And I think it's best that we leave things there.

While I was gone, Toby (my dog) ran away from Meghan, and both parties were traumatized. Today Toby is like a different dog. He has no hair, for one thing; and he lies on the ground looking at us dolefully. I imagine he had some kind of scary run-in with the city, like in a Frank Capra movie, and now he's, like, a little existentialist. Or something. He's very subdued. It reminds me of the scene in The Royal Tenenbaums when Malachi returns, and his feathers have turned white.

My dad is downstairs crashing around and swearing and, I think, knocking things off the foosball table; and it worries me. He has a cold. Sometimes I don't know why people don't just go to sleep.

I'm going to see Lord of the Rings tomorrow night at 12.01 AM, because I am the biggest dork EVER.

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Alone in Kyoto
Thursday, December 11, 2003 @ 02:04 p.m.

So, I'm a little reticent to talk about this but I am nothing if not honest, so here you go. I started dieting last week after my doctor put the fear of God in me, and I've kind of internalized it and become crazy, like someone from a sitcom or a Cathy cartoon. Yesterday I was going to get some Mike & Ike's from a vending machine, but I accidentally pushed the button for a KitKat. I felt paralyzing guilt, the way a normal person would feel if they ran over their own cat with their car not-entirely-by-accident or betrayed a sibling. I've become crazy in precisely the same way everyone else is crazy.

But I've lost fourteen pounds in a week. 14! That doesn't seem healthy! So evidently being crazy is the ticket. As a character from a John Irving novel once said, "You have to get obsessed and stay obsessed."

I'm having a lot of fun running around buying presents for people. I'm trying to embrace the consumerism and commodification of Christmas. I feel like our generation gets the idea of shopping-as-identity-behaviour shoved down our throats, but then people try to make us feel guilty for making everything about consumption. Well, fuck it. I'm going to buy presents and, yes, stocking stuffers for under $10 (!). I am going to send chocolates to my boyfriend's parents. I'm going to find The Perfect Gift. I am going to watch The Muppets Christmas Carol. I am going to spend my grandparents' Christmas money on CDs (I already bought the Lost In Translation soundtrack, today, on a whim. On a whim!) I am going to be obsessed with "WHAT TO BUY PERSON X?!?" And dammit, I am going to feel happy and warm inside, the way money makes you feel.

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it never fails
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 @ 09:08 a.m.

It's a wonderful day, Internet. I feel like rocking out.

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say it ain't so
Tuesday, December 9, 2003 @ 12:53 p.m.

Companies that recruit University students for temporary work use the most annoying possible methods: tiny cards and bookmarks that they scatter more or less at random over campus. It's like advertising is falling from the sky instead of snow. And some particularly insidious people advertising "WORK FOR STUDENTS!" actually started shoving these little business cards through the cracks in my locker door. So, when I open my locker my stuff is covered with a layer of little ADS.

I cracked due to this invasion of my private space and posted a rather firmly worded sign on my locker door:

"Stop leaving these little business cards in my locker you FUCKING BASTARDS! I HATE YOU!"

Today when I got to school they had left more cards on the door, stuck there with the magnet that was holding the sign up. Oh well. At least they didn't put them inside.

You know, I'm going to be a very successful old person. I have the bitter rants and irritable temperament down already. All I need are some scarves, so my hair doesn't get blown out by the wind. Oh, and about fifty years.

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Quote
Monday, December 8, 2003 @ 05:36 p.m.

My mom: "Did you notice that I put out the special Christmas towels?"
me: "That's great, Mom. Nothing says 'Christmas' like towels.... You freak."

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there's no more coming back this way
Monday, December 8, 2003 @ 11:07 a.m.

Well, it's finals week. I don't stress out about finals really. What's the point?

I went to see Bad Santa over the weekend. I kind of thought it would suck, but it wasn't bad. It had a quirky violence that is appealing. But Billy Bob Thorton gives me the shivers.

I'm going to visit my grandparents next weekend in Saskatoon, because nothing says "Christmas" like family dysfunction.

I'm getting a DVD player FINALLY. You know what this means: my sister and I will be camped out in front of our TV for two weeks watching seasons 1-4 of Buffy and the first two seasons of ALIAS. That's what religious holidays are for after all.

Yesterday I explained to my parents what the four weeks of Advent ought to represent: first Jesus' birthday, then my birthday, then Santa and presents, and lastly the release of the fourth LOTR movie.

Christmas presents!

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Lost in the mall
Thursday, December 4, 2003 @ 04:19 p.m.

What I want for Christmas & my birthday: a number of people have asked me to do this, honestly. I'm not just a jerk (well, i am but not for this reason)

anything from my amazon wishlist (link in the top navigation bar)
tacky resin jewelry like Meghan's Catwoman ring
DVD player and Buffy DVDs
a warm hat and mittens for walking my dog
a hoodie from neighborhoodies (although I don't know what I want it to say, maybe "Let's just be friends")
a "world's best grandma" shirt from glarkware
sticky vinyl letters
a subscription to readymade magazine (www.readymademag.com)
One of those plastic signs with white letters so I can make my room more like a diner
socks and underwear with animals on them (especially monkeys; please don't buy me underwear unless you know me well enough to have seen my underwear at some point, otherwise it's weird)
tickets to corb lund who's playing here Dec. 17
the movie lost in translation if it's out by then which i don't think it is (also the soundtrack)
an ancient grey gameboy with original TETRIS (not a gameboy advance, an old one)
light blue Vans
a pony
an airstream trailer
maybe makeup, because i don't wear makeup, but maybe i would if i had some (but probably not)
heated socks, if they exist (I don't think they do, but that would be nice, because i am ALWAYS cold)
pay off my library fines

What do YOU want?

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congratulate me!
Tuesday, December 2, 2003 @ 03:21 p.m.

I just downloaded a different version of the barenaked ladies' song "If I had $1,000,000" (so I live in the early 90s... so shoot me!) and I FINALLY understand the line that goes, "I would buy you some art-- a Picasso or a Garfunkel." Because Garfunkel's first name was Art. Did anyone else miss this? Oh, no one did? OK, fine. You are surprising unsympathetic, Internet.

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how was I supposed to know?
Tuesday, December 2, 2003 @ 11:35 a.m.

well, I'm at school and I've already played Jeopardy (on msn.com) for awhile (my best game I won $7247) and now I'm BORED.

There was a fire alarm in the humanities centre and I wonder if I can go back and get my lunch out of my locker yet. When the alarm went off me and all the people from my in-class small group discussion went and got coffee.

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Things it is a good idea to disguise yourself as, if you are going to steal something
Sunday, November 30, 2003 @ 11:43 a.m.

1. hooker/stripper
2. singing telegram girl
3. masseuse
4. repair person for electronics/phone lines/security systems
5. a homeless person
6. security guard
7. hotel room maid
8. helicopter pilot
9. nuclear scientist
10. door-to-door salesperson
11. Jennifer Garner (no one will know who she is, because she always disguises herself as one of these things whenever she steals anything)

For my popular lit class, we have to do a little essay that accompanies every paper we write, "informal reflections on the writing process." I forgot to hand in mine for my Louise Brooks paper, so I am handing it in tomorrow. And I was trying to think about the writing of this paper, what was on my mind and what inspired what I wrote, and I realized that I had to tell the truth.

Like a lot of people, I think first of Fitzgerald when I think of the 1920s. To me, the glamour and senselessness of Gatsby's parties, the lost, "careless" people drinking gin and dancing-- they ARE the '20s.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. (The Great Gatsby, 39)

Fitzgerald writes about New York:

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world. (69)

That was Louise Brooks' New York, of course, and she recounts meeting Scott and Zelda in 1929:

I met them... at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. They were sitting close together on a sofa, like a comedy team, and the first thing that struck me was how small they were. I had come to see the genius writer, but what dominated the room was the blazing intelligence of Zelda's profile. It shocked me. It was the profile of a witch. (Tynan, xxxix)

In my mind, the exuberance of Gatsby's parties and the New York of the Fitzgeralds and Louise Brooks are the same thing.

I love the idea of the city being built "with a wish." There are few writers whose phrases strike me like Fitzgerald's. Re-reading The Great Gatsby for this piece, there were so many times when I had to catch my breath, go back and read a sentence again because it was too beautiful to take in the first time.

Sometimes all of the world is like that. On good days, the world feels like something Fitzgerald would have written.

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People make mistakes, so I am asking you again...
Friday, November 28, 2003 @ 06:51 p.m.

At the moment, I'm really wishing this pita was anonymous so I could tell the truth. Isn't that ironic? You can tell strangers the truth but not the people who love you the most? It's this Internet, you have to be careful. It's so confusing.

Does anyone know the name of that song Ferris Bueller sings in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? The one in the parade? Which he dedicates to "Cameron, who says he hasn't seen anything cool today"? (Not Twist and Shout, the other one) I was humming it today at work, until I ran into a bunch of old friends and teachers and they took my mind off everything.

Everything is fine, honestly. Wheee!

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