Category: Me

They could have also used "nuclear meltdown"

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Today I bought this tshirt from Threadless because a) it’s funny; b) I bought one for my brother for Christmas and I very nearly kept it for myself; and c) it was $10.

Nellie went the slightly maudlin route and picked the shirt of the polar bear drifting unhappily without an ice floe.

And so my tshirt addiction continues unabated. However, if the weather for the past three days is any indication of what this summer will be like, I will need all the clean tshirts I can freaking get. Today my plastic headphones melted into little puddles of melody in my ears.

[tags]threadless, haiku[/tags]

News flash: area introvert craves more emotional attachment

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While I sat at Fran’s eating breakfast I read a few pages of Catherine Gildener‘s Too Close To The Falls. After a few pages a woman, maybe a few years younger than me, who’d been sitting across from me with (I assume) her boyfriend/husband, came over to my table. She told me she’d read the book and loved it, but had never seen anyone else reading it before. I told her I couldn’t take credit for unearthing the obscure find, that it had been recommended by my writing instructor Michelle Berry years before (who I believe had reviewed it for the Globe) and after keeping it on my shelf for six winters I was finally getting around to it. We talked about the fantastic stories Gildener told of her childhood, and wondered how such tales could be real. She apologized for interrupting my breakfast, told me she hoped I would enjoy the rest of the book as much she did, and went back to her table.

This, to me, is the real benefit of the paper book. I see no advantage to the convenience of the medium, compared to an e-book or reading online, but what I’ve found is that people will often come over and talk to me about a book, because they see it as a shared emotional experience. Normally, as an introvert, strange people striking up conversations with me is akin to getting mugged, but in these cases the conversation is about the book, not about me or them, so I don’t mind.

In fact, I wish there was an equivalent for music. Each day on my way to and from work I see hundreds of people with headphones snaking out of their bags and pockets and I wonder what they’re listening to. I assume they’re all listening to the same formulaic, familiar music that infects radio and most iPods, but what about the exceptions? For every Rainer Maria Rilke you spot in a sea of John Grisham and Deepak Chopra there must be a similar musical outsider. How great would it be to see that the baby boomer in a golf shirt is listening to the new Frightened Rabbit? Or that the punk girl carrying a skateboard is listening to Blind Willie Johnson? Or that the accountant with the CostCo briefcase is listening to T-Rex? I feel like every day I’m missing a dozen shared emotional experiences contained in pairs of headphone wires.

[tags]catherine gildener, michelle berry, rainer maria rilke, frightened rabbit, blind willie johnson, t-rex[/tags]

"Take your life, give it a shake"

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I cannot stop listening to “Floating In The Forth” by Frightened Rabbit. It’s just the kind of lovely, warming song (odd, because it’s kind of about suicide) that makes me want to cry and smile and quit my job and sell everything I own and lie in a field with headphones and sun and listen to it over and over and over again.

I know, because of the way I consume music, that by next week I’ll have moved on to something else. But I’ll come back. And, right now, it’s perfect.

[tags]frightened rabbit, floating in the forth[/tags]

Multiple choice

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Earlier today Dan bought a pink Hugo Boss dress shirt. Dan is:

  1. branching out and trying new things;
  2. simply rounding out a shirt rotation for his suits;
  3. gay;
  4. umm…I think a and c may be the same thing;
  5. all of the above.

Earlier today Dan also bought a brown Hugo Boss dress shirt. Dan is:

  1. branching out and trying new things (though slightly less new than that pink business);
  2. simply rounding out a shirt rotation for his suits;
  3. a German fascist;
  4. by pairing a brown shirt with a brown suit and brown shoes, in danger of looking like Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo;
  5. none of the above.

[tags]hugo boss, dress shirt[/tags]

Buried under a fucking snowbank, that's where

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Spring has sprung
grass has ris
I wonder where
the birdies is?

Dear rotation + trajectory of earth: we would like spring now please. Kthxbye.

.:.

The second-quickest way to invite my scorn? Be a telemarketer and call at dinner time. The quickest way to invite my scorn? Be a telemarketer, call at dinner and try to sell me a subscription to the Toronto Sun. For bonus scorn, argue with me when I say no.

.:.

The new Silver Mt. Zion (etc., etc.) album garnered an A- from the Onion AV Club. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but I just assume I’ll love it. Maybe I’ll take the same approach that I did with Horses In The Sky: buy it, put it on my Zen, forget about it, and then nearly have a stroke six months later when I hear a song like “Teddy Roosevelt’s Guns” for the first time.

.:.

One of these arrived in the mail last week. I bought this one from Threadless last week. Now I’m tempted to buy this. I need help.

[tags]ogden nash, telemarketers, toronto sun, silver mt zion, threadless, tshirts[/tags]

Today

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Today is St. Patrick’s Day. I do not care about this so much since I’m about as Irish as pineapple, and my tolerance for drinking cheap draft in crowded bars is pretty much down to nil. However, a shocking number of people (many of whom I know for a fact are not Irish in any way, shape or form) are wearing green today, so maybe this is a bigger deal than I thought. Having grown up in a place named New Scotland, in a non-drinking family, the importance of March 17 may have been lost on me.

Today I am 89% of the way through my MBA. I have 157 days left. If the entire program were put on the timeline of a single day, it would be about 9:22 PM. I am officially phoning it in at this point.

Today my brother is in town again. He was here just last weekend; I guess he really missed the place. Anyway, we had a bite and a couple of pints at Smokeless Joe last night (I believe we have now taken pretty much everyone we know there) and he’s off to meetings today and tomorrow. Soon he’ll know the city better than we do.

Today’s it’s cold again, which is deflating after the semi-warm day we had on Saturday. Supposed to be above freezing & rainy tomorrow and Wednesday, which bodes well for removing some snow.

Today I’d like to be working for VanCity, like my friend* William Azaroff.  He got to meet Muhummad Yunus and he does some cool stuff at work.

Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you. By now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do. I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.

* It feels odd to call him that, since I’ve never met him in person, but rather have communicated only a few times over email and phone. Still, blogs & Facebook & Twitter give a strange sense of familiarity. Hmmmm…there’s a whole other blog post simmering there…

[tags]st. patrick’s day, mba, smokeless joe, toronto weather, william azaroff, vancity, muhummad yunus, oasis, wonderwall[/tags]

"Don't just sit there and decompose. Go throw on some summer clothes."

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I love spring. It is, by far, my favourite time of the year. Some of that has to do with the association of spring with maple season (truly one of the best times to live on a maple-producing farm), but mainly it’s the promise of those first few days when it’s so warm, you can go outside without a coat. Just thinking about it makes me all tingly.

March 20 is, of course, the first day of spring. As chance would have it, this year March 20 also happens to be the kickoff of March Madness, surely another of my favourite days of the year. If it’s sunny and semi-warm and I get to watch 16 college basketball games in 12 hours, I may just go into happy overdose. Stay tuned.

[tags]first day of spring, march madness[/tags]

"Such a beer does not exist, sir."

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Links of the day:

  • One more reason to love Nicholas Hoare: this sign in their door. If you like books at all and live in Toronto (or Ottawa or Montreal), I suggest you visit. It’s like God’s living room.
  • Much like a special candy-covered doughnut that Homer Simpson asked for, Dunkin’ Donuts is introducing an M&M-covered doughnut. I anxiously await the arrival of Skittlebrau.

.:.

You know who I find annoying? Not specific people (’cause you wouldn’t know them), but types of people who exhibit like behaviour? Well, let me tell you:

  1. Smokers. No offense to any smokers who may be reading this, but you’re assholes. All of you.  You’re not assholes because you stink or because you slowly kill yourself or because you look ridiculous; that’s your choice. No, you’re assholes because you blow smoke in my face as you walk down the street in front of me, and because you throw thousands of butts on the ground every year as if the world is your personal fucking ashtray.
  2. The tragic and desperate souls who drive down Yonge Street (or any other busy street) with the windows down and the mondo-nuclear-subwoofer bass on 11. It fills my heart with sadness that your need for attention is so bottomless and unfulfilled that you’re forced to spend thousands of dollars on a stereo for no other purpose than to get strangers to turn their heads in your direction for maybe two seconds.
  3. People who play politics in the workplace. Office politics is the last refuge of the dull and incompetent. I don’t mind smart, capable people who understand politics, but when you make a career solely out of figuring out how to cover your ass next week, you’ll have to admit to yourself that you’ll never get another ounce of respect from anyone other than fellow political weasels. The rest of us see right through you, and know that you’ll get yours in the end.
  4. Pedestrians/shoppers/drivers who have no idea what’s going on around them. We’ve all seen them. The person who stands on the escalator in just the exact spot that makes it impossible to pass them. The friends ambling down the sidewalk side-by-side so that no one can pass in either direction. The driver who tries to turn on a red light, unaware that they’ve blocked pedestrians trying to cross. Sometimes I think this is rudeness, but more often than not I think it’s just that people are oblivious. They can’t process two thoughts at once. It doesn’t occur to them that at least one other of the 6.2 billion of us could be on the same escalator, the same sidewalk, the same street. How do these people not get eaten by wolves or accidentally drink PineSol?
  5. People who answer their phones during a movie. Phones ringing in a theatre don’t bug me; it doesn’t happen often and when it does it’s usually just forgetfulness, and the culprit is almost always apologetic. But occasionally you get some asshat who lets it ring a few times while he digs it out, lets it ring again while he checks the caller ID, and then answers the frigging thing. I once threw a handful of M&Ms at a kid who answered his phone, thinking he was a badass. Struck by candy, he turned around to find an audience whispering threats and plotting his death. He hung up.

Whew, that felt good. I’m not sure what possessed me to write that; I had a pretty good day. My cold is nearly gone, I got a lot done at work, I’m watchin’ hockey, I’m planning trips and visits…all is well, more or less. Maybe I just felt like making a list.

[tags]nicholas hoare, dunkin’ donuts, skittlebrau, smokers, office politics[/tags]

Day three of the plague

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Yea and verily, this cold is kicking my ass. I had to stay home again today; even if I could summon the energy and concentration to do my job today, I’d just make everyone else sick. I can still get some more basic work done here this afternoon, but I need to find a way to get functional by tomorrow. Can’t miss three days in a row.

I’m sure some people would think I’ve gotten sick like this because I’m (largely) off meat, but that’s not it. I still eat seafood occasionally, I still take vitamins, etc. If anything I probably don’t eat enough vegetables (ironic, for a vegetarian…) or fruits. The Toronto Star actually has a story today about how easy it is to be vegetarian in this city.

.:.

Speaking of my job, my title includes the word “strategy”, a term used inaccurately and far too often. I take some flak for it — I often get accused of task-oriented people of “not doing anything, just thinking about things” — which doesn’t bother me, but it does start me wondering if what I work on is really strategy.

That depends largely on the role description, I suppose, and I won’t go into that here, but I read an interesting article last week by Penelope Trunk (aka The Brazen Careerist). In it she states that people inclined to think strategically are (Myers-Briggs personality type) typically INTJs.

The best thing you can do for your career is take a personality test to understand your strengths. If you are an INTJ you really are a strategist.  If you are not an INTJ, the fewer letters you have that match that, the further away from strategist you are. So get some self-knowledge before you declare yourself a strategist.

I am, in fact, an INTJ — I was an ISTJ in university when I first took the test but a few years ago came out INTJ — so while this may not mean much in itself, and I would never refer to myself as a “strategist”, it does help to reassure me that I am, in fact, in more or less the right field of work. Which is, you know, nice.

.:.

I haven’t used Schmap.com myself, and until Monday I’d never heard of the site, but whoever they are they decided to use one of my Flickr pictures for one of their new Paris guides. It’s a shot taken in Place des Vosges, for their Marais neighbourhood guide.

Of course, I can’t take any credit whatsoever for the shot; Nellie took it, just as she took all of the best shots from our trip to France. The girl has an eye.

[tags]vegatarian, strategy, myers-briggs, intj, schmap, paris, marais, place des vosges[/tags]

Where's the "blessed sinus relief" setting on this contraption?

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The good: our fancy-pants Harmony 880 remote arrived today. Actually, it arrived last Tuesday, but the security desk downstairs somehow forgot to tell us. They do that a lot. Anyway, we fetched it tonight and I’ve spent my few remaining active brain cells figuring how to use it. Still working out the bugs but I think I’ve got it. For Nellie and I it’ll be sweet to only have one remote instead of wrangling 4 or 5; for visiting parents it’ll be nice to just press one button that says “Watch TV” or whatever.

The bad: no two ways about it, I’m sick. I am siiii-iiiick. I stayed home from work today and basically tried to figure out the optimal angle at which to lie down to a) minimize my headache, and b) maximize drainage from my sinus cavity. All the Tylenol cold & cough in the world didn’t make much difference; I’m hoping the mug of neo-citran cooling in front of me knocks me out. I need sleep.

The sacred: all I could do today was lie on the couch and watch a movie (higher brain functions: not present) so I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a documentary about the little-known cult folk singer. I knew a little bit about him from the buzz surrounding the film (which screened at TIFF a couple of years ago) and I know my brother was very affected by seeing him live, but that was it. I actually didn’t even know about the whole Kurt Cobain t-shirt thing. Watching the film was only marginally easier than listening to him sing; in both situations this man’s demons are on display for the whole world to see.

The profane: we also watched a documentary tonight (thank you writer’s strike!) called Fuck (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Yes, you read that right. Fuck. It is, predictably, an inspection of why the word is considered so naughty. It spends a bit of time on the origin of the word (hint: it’s not an acronym, despite what you’ve been told), looks at the history of its use in comedy and show business (starting, naturally, with Lenny Bruce), touches on what it means to first amendment rights and eventually becomes a discussion of conservative hysteria and hypocrisy (or at least that’s how it seemed to me; I’m sure to a conservative it seemed like a discussion of how liberalism is sending America into the toilet at Mach 3). While it was interesting subject matter, and it had a few laughs (especially from Billy Connolly and Bill Maher) the documentary tried much too hard to be cute and edgy at the same time. Not bad, but not great. And vertainly not for the faint of heart; the film takes pride in the fact that, were it to be aired unedited on American television, they would be fined $280 million dollars by the FCC.

[tags]harmony remote control, sinus cold, the devil and daniel johnston, fuck documentary[/tags]