Good/bad

Fred just reminded me of our every-five-years-or-so project, 1000 Things We Like (I guess since we've done it twice now, it's thus far 2000 Things We Like and Counting). If you want in on the action, meet me back here in 2012, but in the meantime, this list reflects that today is a fairly well-balanced day, but I wish it were more 1000 Thingsy:

Good: Kashi Raspberry Chocolate Granola Bars

Bad: Realizing the fridge you've been storing your lunch in does not work, and is basically a well-sealed cupboard.

Good: Catsitting, and ensuing cheerfully one-sided conversations about weather, snacks, and people who are jerks.

Bad: Looking down during yoga class and realizing your black pants are covered in white kitty fur.

Good: Nice weather.

Bad: Short attention span.

Good: Gorgeous fountain pen in the mail.

Bad: Attempting to listen to instructions on how to fill fountain pen over the phone, shortly followed by realization that one is soon to be covered in ink and/or very embarrassed at a high-end stationers.

Good: K's birthday.

Bad: K far away in England, unavailable for celebration/cake/hug. In fact, all of the most ardent supports of 1000 Things are unavailable for hugging or any close-at-hand celebrations.

Good: Literary Salon at the glammy-glam Spoke club on Tuesday night.

Bad: Being too old to go out during the week without being sad the next morning.

Good: The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

Bad: Adams still dead.

Good: When I get home, cat will be there.

Bad: Now worry constantly when I am out that cat will eat plants and get sick.

Good: Internet for random useless but friendly and entertaining yammer.

Bad: Useless URLs.

Good: Well, it'd be better with a "b", in my opinion...

RR

Insane conversation in my hallway just now

From beyond my apartment door: incessant meowing

(RR opens door, cat comes scurrying down the hall to greet her.)

RR: You're a cat!

Cat: Meow meow meow!

RR: What are you doing here? Where are your people?

Cat: Meow etc.

RR: Where do you come from? (RR begins walking down the hall; cat trots along eagerly, doglike) I don't know where you come from. Is this your door? (pointing at door) This one? Do you live here?

Cat: Meow, purr. (rubs against RR's legs)

RR (continuing down the hall; no doors are open; it is too late to be knocking on strangers doors): Is this your house? Where do you live?

Cat (appears to recognize nothing; purrs)

RR: Well, I don't know. (returns to apartment) No, you can't come in--you have to stay out here so they can find you! No, I'm sorry, you are a very nice cat, but your people will want you.

Cat (sadly rejected, goes away)

????

RR

Note 1: Yes, this conversation happened out loud, not in my head.

Note 2: I have lived in this building since 2004 and never before tonight been to the other end of the hallway.

Note 3: Having a nice little cat appear at my door and volunteer to live with me is a longstanding fantasy of mine, and it pretty much crushed me to turn it away.

Incidents and accidents

1) In class yesterday:

Me, looking over the shoulders of two grade 11 girls as I walk past their desks: Girls, c'mon! I said no phones. (keep walking)

Girl, calling after me: Sorry, miss! We were just--

(I turn to them)

Other girl: Trying to look something up.

(Me internally: Dictionaries live in phones now?)

First girl: Yeah. How do you spell "schizophrenia"?

Me: Oh, well, er-- Yeah, fine. Look in your phone.

First girl: Thanks, miss.

Me: You've won...

Other girl: Yes, miss.

Me: ...this round.

This proves that the reason I refuse to get a cell phone is that I am afraid they are smarter than I am (and I'm probably right, because what I was actually think began with "s-k-" until I realize that was nuts. People think I'm a good speller but I really just own a good [paper] dictionary and sit with it open at my left elbow, which is why I spelled "schizophrenia" correctly above).

2) On the subway, I laughed aloud at something I was reading. What I was reading was Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood, so it's not so surprising that I laughed, because it is very funny. But it's a little surprising because I almost never laugh aloud when alone. I don't know why, but somehow I think laughing is a communicative act, though semi-involuntary. I like funny movies and go to a fair number on my own (for reasons of necessity brought on by [occasionally] having extremely bad taste--I can't accept that they would bother to make a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine unless that had something important to say about the subject) and I'll laugh with the audience in happy solidarity, but not really reading and watching tv alone (from what I remember).

Anyway, but then I did, last night, and it caused the drunk guy behind me to say something obscene to or about me. Which is not exactly positive reinforcement to keep doing it.

3) I was walking down the sidewalk this morning and a truck travelling the opposite way made that "ffffffftttttt" sound that I always associate with air brakes although I actually have no idea what it is. But the truck was still moving along at a good clip, and then I noticed that a little jet of steam/smoke shot out under the *front* bumper in time with the noise. I was staring at this in perplexity when I realized the driver was waving at me in a hey-there-old-friend jaunty manner. I definitely don't know him. There aren't a lot of pedestrians in that part of town, perhaps he was just offering solace to an endangered species. Or maybe he was just glad I liked his truck?

Does anyone know what the noise and/or steam mean?

RR

Lookalike

Remember a few weeks ago this meme went around Facebook about how you were supposed to post a picture of the celebrity you look most like? Well, you probably can't remember, because you have better things to do, but I don't, and was really amazed at how many of my friends bear a shocking resemblance to people I haven't heard of (but are famous, and attractive [natch, because I have attractive friends]).

Anyway, I wanted to play, too, but couldn't, because I don't look like anybody. Well, I look like my mother, who is a delightful person to look like (it makes me very happy when I introduce her as my mom and people say, "Well, obviously!") but she is sadly not (yet) famous for anything. So I didn't to do the meme.

Then, this afternoon, I was at the gym in my ponytail and sweaty t-shirt, trying really hard to do a good clean and jerk (I can do it, too, but I just can't admit what's on the barbell) and it came to me! It's not the comparison I've always dreamed of (which is: perhaps someday someone will tell me I look like Winona Ryder in *Heathers*, pretty much my standard of female beauty).

I had to take this picture myself, so I'm not sure it really captures the striking similarities, but I still find it spooky:





Do you see it? Not, like, twins, but some definite correspondences!

RR

Good things happen

There are some things it is dumb to wish for, because they may not happen, because there's nothing you can do to make them happen, and it doesn't really matter in the scheme of things anyway. So when such things *do* happen, like, say, being given an elaborate bouquet of roses or being asked for your autograph on the bus, you don't even have a response prepared, and have to just hope you somehow make your delight apparent.

When I return to complaining about how hard my life is, someone really needs to remind me that the above both happened to me this weekend

To read about some other good things that happened to me, you might take a look at my thoughts on publishing with Biblioasis, posted this morning on That Shakespearian Rag.

RR

The Baby Zoo

I keep forgetting to tell you guys about the Baby Zoo! This has nothing to do with anything, but it's something that makes me happy and maybe you'll like it too.

Even back in the days when I thought babies were sticky, noisy emergency-room-visits-waiting-to-happen, and wouldn't hold one unless I was sitting on the floor (less falling distance, should I happen to lose my grip) (uh, that would be my whole life up until about three years ago, when the first of my good friends had one), I still liked looking at babies from a distance. It's pretty much the future of the species in adults finding babies cute-looking, and someone really got all the design elements right on that project.

Even now, when I know some babies quite well and enjoy hanging out with them, my most regular baby glimpses happen at the Baby Zoo. This is an indoor playground that has an entire wall of windows. The architecture probably has more to do with allowing the babies to see out rather than passersby to see in, but it definitely works both ways.

The room is full of soft furniture of indeterminate function in bright pastels (er, brighter than a normal pastel, but not white free of dilution...er, you know what I mean?) There are little climbing ramps and big weighted beachballs for the older kids and musical instruments that can be shaken or whacked for the littler, immobile ones. And there's parachute silk everywhere!

I walk past this place at least once or twice a day, depending on what I'm up to, and have for years, so I can tell you on good authority that the babies go bananas in this place! They can't be unattended even for a moment, so you see a baby laboriously scooting backwards up a slide on his butt while a mom or dad stands at the top, cooing and encouraging and/or (quite often) filming. Sometimes babies just run or crawl on the squishy floor and the parents chase them. Sometimes, in a sea of babies, two will encounter each other face to face and suddenly realize that they are not alone in the universe--you see the occasional ET-style finger-touching moments.

Sometimes babies ignore all the cool expensive equipment in the Baby Zoo and just try to escape, ducking into the cloakroom and trying to clammer back into their strollers and be taken away. Yes, the cloakroom's windowed, too--as is the eating area where you can watching some of the older babies (I guess these are toddlers) smear themselves with pizza sauce and/or frosting, while the parents eat ravenously and listen for choking. Once, I saw a small small boy in a brown corderoy suit desperately suckered to the window (mouth and nose, too), trying to osmose through to reach the goth teenager who was sitting on the ground just beyond the class, eating grocery-store chicken.

Sometimes, I walk past the Baby Zoo at night and then, of course, there are no babies. Occasionally, instead, I catch sight of the old man who cleans the place, carefully vacuuming the everything-resistant rubberized surfaces of the floor and all the equipment. He's chubby fellow with a grey-white beard, a kind of dissolute-looking Santa, and his clothes are the sort I wore too when I cleaned for a living--nothing you'd be too upset about getting puke or pizza sauce on. He probably cleans a lot of office buildings and the like, at night, but you can tell the Baby Zoo is his favourite. He takes off his enormous filthy sneakers and pads barefoot on the squishy pastel floor--and once I saw him toss one of the bright enormous beachballs across the room.

RR

Print Psychiatry

On the weekend, I dreamed that I was a verso page, madly in love with a recto. Is that weird? I mean, of course that's weird, you're weird for even understanding that, but...really weird?

There's 1001 what-sort-of-bramble-bush quizzes on the Web, but this one Rosalynn at the Literary Type is pretty special (she has such good taste). It's like a five-minute psychological/typographical analysis, and it's very soothing. Except I turned out to be Courier, when I feel very strongly that my personality is Times New Roman.

Yours in lunacy,
RR

Week-ender

Thanks so much to all who chimed in (or even thought chimeful thoughts) on my vocab-rant last post. I don't think anything on Rose-coloured has ever garnered 11 comments. Thanks for letting me know/reminding me that word definitions are whatever most people understand it to be, my last subhead was defeated by its own cleverness, and the rules of grammar do not apply to David Mamet--I'm feeling considerably more chilled out about things now.

Except rhetoric--comments from smart people indicating that they don't understand that word have undermined my own confidence that I understand it! So, coming soon: a post about rhetoric.

But today promises to be the busiest day ever, so not today. Today I'm just enjoying about simple things like: a) it's sufficiently warm in my apartment (example of the simple joys in my life: I got out of the shower and didn't want to die), b) my headache from yesterday went away, c) the video below, and c+) the fact that I may have learned to embed it correctly (we'll see), d) that if I can just make it through the busiest day ever, I get to Skype with far-off friends, and tomorrow, someone is going to make me sweet-potato soup (Rose-coloured philosophy: hooray for sweet potatoes! I recognize as a philosophy that needs work).

I have noted that not everything in the world is good. Accidentally watching the news from Haiti last night on the gym left me near tears on the elliptical trainer, I am so sad about the loss of P.K. Page, and I think certain friends are having some tough times these days.

I'm not saying that this video ameliorates any of that, but I do think it's very funny and it's only 47 seconds long. 47 seconds of distraction is worthwhile, I think. (Thanks, Ben, for the link!)



RR

Randolinquent

Written on the back of a bus seat in Wite-Out pen:

"F*ck the free world!"

But not the dictatorships?

RR

How tired are you?

I just washed my face, and when I went to wash the facial-cleanser bubbles off my hands, I picked up a(nother) bar of soap to wash them off.

I am very tired. Also, very clean.

RR

Sorry

That toothbrushing thing? The allegory doesn't hold up in the cold light of day. It *was* fascinating to read everyone's oral hygience routines though, so please accept my thanks for playing along, and apologies for not doing more with the material y'all so generously contributed.

RR

I may or may not be going somewhere with this

Here's what I do:

1) Wet the toothbrush under the tap.
2) Put toothpaste on the brush.
3) Brush teeth.
4) Spit.
5) Brush tongue.
6) Spit
7) Fill a glass with water.
8) Take a sip of water; swish it around mouth; spit (3x).
9) Take final sip of water; swallow.
10) Rinse toothbrush.

What do you do?
RR

Games to Play on the TTC: Snark Projection

Regular readers of this blog will know that I spend a lot of time on the TTC and that I love it. It's not a perfect system (I'm looking at you, big open U up north) but it functions admirably, and for $1200 a year, gets me everywhere I need to go, plus most places I want to go. I also love the openness to strangers and their lives that public transit gives me. When I stopped working in the service industry, I found I really missed the constant stream of new faces (although little else). Some days, the bus is my only chance to see any strangers at all.

The TTC is a fashion show, an easedropper's paradise, a microcosm of etiquette puzzles (exactly how crowded does the bus have to be to make standing in front of the doors acceptable?), and chance for random acts of kindness. Of course, that last one is especially fun to watch: how many bookmarks, metropasses, gloves, and pieces of fruit have people rescued for me in transit? I see people lifting up the fronts of strollers, grabbing the arms of blind people, offering their streets to pregnant ladies, mentioning that someone's tag is out almost every day.

But I also see a fair bit of bad behaviour. So, though you know it comes with (largely) love, this particular game is snarky. I have noticed a bad TTC tendancy has lately picked up force, and I don't like it, and to comfort myself, I have been writing little storylets based on the bad behaviour.

On most of the newer TTC buses (since about 2006), the seats in the raised rear portion of the bus are in pairs beside the windows. I always sit at the back and have firmly internalized the bus-logic rule that if you are alone in a two-seat, you scootch over to the window if you want to zone out. It is permissable to remain in the aisle seat only if you are able to remain alert and immediately swing your knees out into the aisle if someone wants to set next to you (because there is zero leg room for someone to get by; the aisle person essentially blocks access to the internal seat).

BUT! Some people I've encountered lately have not only not been scooting over or putting their knees in the aisle as I angle for the seat, they have been meeting my gaze balefully, almost angrily, even when I ask if I might please sit there. They do actually let me--no one's said no yet--but a lot of people have looked furious about the proceedings.

I don't think the rules have changed since I moved to TO--but in order to not simply start hating everyone, I have been imagining the interior monologues of these people, trying to empathize with how they must somehow feel wronged by my desire to sit beside them.

Here's what I've got, for only some of the encounters I have had.

1) I am in love! I am in love and texting my beloved! Texting is our bond! If I do not text him immediately, he might not know I love him! Textless, he might break up with me! Then I would be loveless, heartbroken, life would not be worth living. I might die. I see a shadow. There is someone standing over me, but I cannot stop texting "OMG, I <3<3<3 u!!!!!!" to see what this shadow wants. Clearly, it is less important than love. Even if the shadow is in love with me, I am spoken for. Probably. Unless the shadow is super-hot...maybe I should look up?

2) That young woman is clearly young and slender, while I am feeling fat and old today. My friends tell me that I am neither fat nor old but they are lying so that they won't have to deal with my problems. I'm not going to squinch up in this narrow little molded plastic seat, I'm not going to let her make me feel fat. Alone, my thigh can perhaps inch a bit over the seat divider and no one cares, but if that little gym rat were sitting next to me, she'd shift awkwardly away and make me feel like a big fat cow. No way am I letting her insult me like that. She can stand on her gym-toned legs.

3) That young woman has a big ass. If she sat down next to me, I would have to squinch awkwardly into the aisle to accomodate her ass. After a hard day, I deserve to have full access to my complete molded plastic TTC seat. I am not responsible for her lack of willpower regarding molasses taffy. She should stand--it tones the glutteal muscles.

4) I am in a gang. Gang members get full control of the back seats on busses. How can you not know this, lady in the tights with flowers on them? Clearly, you are not in a gang, but you should still respect the entitlements of gang members. See this enormous cubic zirconium in my left ear? See this silver flip-phone with rhinstone bedazzling? This is bling, flower-lady. Where is your bling? Ok, you have bling, but it is in the form a butterfly broach. Are you in the butterfly gang? No, no you are not, because there is no such thing, and therefore you have no right to any seat in the back row. They are all mine. Go away, and come back when you've joined a gang.

What do you think--am I close? I know this is sort of game is a poor substitute for accepting that people are a little rude sometimes, but I like my way better. Please, feel free to play along!

RR

Random Sad

On my answering machine today:

Hi, Angus, it's Cheryl. I just wanted to let you know that Peter passed away this morning. Ok. Thanks. Bye.

RR

From the department of WTF

This morning, shortly after sunrise, Rebecca is walking home from the gym. She is passed by an extremely tiny jogger in shiny red spandex shorts. Rebecca is listening to Green Day on her iPod. She is relatively content. Suddenly, she feels a tug around her neck. Slowing her stride, Rebecca examines her iPod wires and hoodie drawstring (both of which she routinely mismanages) to find the source of the problem. The tugging increases. Rebecca stops moving, the tug stops increasing but doesn't go away. She claws at her neck and finds: a noose!

Ok, ok, technically, it wasn't a noose because it didn't pull tight, but it was a loop of cord hanging from the tree above my head!!! More like a garrotte, I suppose.

!!!
!!!
!!!

The jogger missed it because she was too short, but it was exactly the right height for yours truly.

I was so alarmed and dismayed to learn that my neighbours were attempting to assassinate me with Robin-Hood-style tactics that I could not disentangle myself from the cord. Suddenly, a woman got out of a car that had been idling in the driveway I was standing in front of--I'm not sure if she was eager to help, annoyed that her dastardly plan had been foiled, or just wanted to pull out of her driveway! Anyway, she got me out of the cord and then, when I gestured that it could not be left this way (yes, that's exactly what the gesture indicated) she pulled the whole thing down from the tree (it wasn't bound all that tight) and promised to throw it away.

With no one to arrest and no actual damage done, I went home, in a state of severe discombobulation. Why would anyone want to kill me?

My only theory is that my state of attractiveness is not very high when I am wandering around post-gym, semi-dawn. Perhaps the neighbours think I am bringing down property values? The aforementioned hoodie in fact predates the term, as it was purchased by my father in the early 1990s at BiWay and given to my brother, who did not want it, which is how I ended up with it. So yeah, not a fashion plate, but hardly a cue for murder?

To recapitulate: WTF?

RR

Things you don't need to know

1) I took a mini-version of the Myers Briggs test and found out that I am an extremely boring person. I forget what the technical name of the personality type was, and they don't make precise career recommendations, but the impression that I got was that I should definitely not to do anything creative as a profession, although I would likely be excellent at stacking papers into extremely neat piles.

2) In a similar vein, yesterday I was describing an activity someone had suggested. I said to my auditor, "I guess some people would want to do that, but I really don't get why." The response? "Human beings, Rebecca: make a study of them."

3) Small recompense for being a boring non-human, but at least I continue to mouse lefthanded, and am getting better at it everyday. Still can't use the drawing palette properly with the left, though.

4) Finally, I came to the astounding realization that, since there is no one among my good friends I would refuse to French kiss for hygienic reasons, being worried about drinking out of someone else's glass is pretty silly.

Gone gone gone
RR

A good friend

Me: It's just down one floor, if you want to take a look.

(we descend on escalator, look around)

Me: Oh, no, sorry. I was wrong, it's actually *up* one floor. Sorry.

P: No worries. At least we got an escalator ride out of it.

Crying crying all of the time
RR

TTC Hand Stories

1) A middle-aged gentleman in a windbreaker in a corporate-branded windbreaker and earbuds sits down in the single seat ahead of me on the streetcar. I am facing forward, the way the seat goes, but he faces sideways, into the aisle. I am always startled by older people with earbuds, because my parents are my reference point for all older people, and they would no more stick appliances in their ears than in their noses. But I am reading, looking out the window, reading, not paying attention to this man...until he begins to take things out of a plastic bag. Then I have to look, in case he's got a book and I need to read the spine, or a snack and I need to see if it looks appetizing, or...or...*anything interesting at all* (I don't get out much; I am your streetcar worst nightmare). Whatever it is, there are several, each in an individual cellophane packet. I peer through the cello but can't really understand what the items are--some sort of crumpled while loops of fabric. I look harder and harder until the man turns to meet my gaze and I turn back to the window, feeling like the giantest weirdo on the TTC for staring with such intensity at the poor man's craft materials or whatever. I don't look at him again until we get off the car, when I realize the man is gripping the pole with a hand cloaked in a thin tight white glove. His other hand is bare--yes, I looked--I don't know what he did with the other gloves. He gets off without looking at me again, earbuds and windbreaker and Michael-Jackson glove. Another thing my parents would never do.

2) A beautiful young woman in a sleek black business suit sits on the Yonge line southbound, eating a bag of Cheetos. Look closer: it's not *quite* a business suit. The blazer's got a zipper that goes up to the throat, and her high spike heels are on bare feet rubbed popped-blister raw. Look closer: her hair is a tumble of beer-blond curls that have clearly required a heat-styling implement, but now they've started to unscrew, some rounder than others, some nearly perfectly vertical. And closer: not quite a young woman; behind her expensive narrow red glasses frames this is a university student with a posh summer job--maybe even a high-schooler. Her knees are knobby and crossed wide. She is eating the Cheetos at a great rate, as if someone will get on at a predetermined stop and take them from her. It is not a single-serving bag. Despite all of the above, as close as you can look, she is still beautiful. She eats the last cheese-twist and, with even more urgency, inserts her frost-pink manicured nails into her mouth, on at a time, and sucks the electric orange dust from the creases before she dares brush them against her cheap black suit. She finishes the tenth nail just as we arrive at Union and, crumpling the bag in her fist, she darts off.

Mutiny, I promise you
RR

Relit Awards Long List

I am a bit behind, as usual, but someone nice just pointed out to me that the Relit Awards Long List were announced last week, and *Once* was included (in the short fiction category, natch). It's a big list, full of amazing books, and I'm delighted to be included. This news makes up for the rain for sure, and maybe even the ongoing lowlevel rage that left-handed mousing is producing. That one may not have been the best idea I ever had. But on we struggle!

Talking to all my little pets / smoking the same old cigarettes
RR

I'll always wonder

[RR is at the cashier at 7-11, paying for soda. A young girl enters, carrying pizza slice in paper bag, looking frazzled but cheerful.]

Girl, to cashier: Do you know where the Dairy Queen is around here?

Cashier: [Mute look of dismay common to non-native speakers of English in exhausting jobs upon being asked an unfamiliar question]

RR: Oh, it used to be next door but it shut down.

Girl [now dismayed, too]: Oh, do you know where there is one around here?

Cashier [only moderately cheered]: Do you want a bag?

RR: No, thanks. There's one in Union Station, but I don't know any others. There's not many.

Girl: Oh, dear.

RR: I know. I love DQ, too.

Girl: It's just that my something something is broken and really needs Dairy Queen. [girl wanders back out while RR struggles to find exact change in poorly designed wallet]

***

I didn't catch the words in the something something position, and now I'm driven mad by them. Can you guess what would fit there? The only thing that would made grammatical and logical sense that I've come up with so far is "My friend's heart is broken and [s/he] really needs Dairy Queen." You got anything better for me?

Through up your arms

RR