I was walking home from work on Friday [since it was such a nice day and all] and as I came up to the bus stop I passed a biggish minivan without tinted windows. This oddity aside, it seemed fairly normal, but inside it were two little kids, a boy and a girl, both of whom waved at me. I stopped to see whether I recognized them or not, but when I turned to look at them they ducked down below the windows, and after a moment I started walking again. When I looked back a moment later they were there - definitely strangers to me, but the girl pulled her brother down again.

My bus was god-awfully late as usual, but I didn't mind. I spent forty-five minutes playing hide and seek with kids who stayed in the exact same place the whole time, with their parents chatting animatedly in the front. I hid behind snowbanks, twirled around to catch them watching and crept behind the car. They giggled manically and climbed into their trunk to sit on a pair of old tires. It was a nice break from reality.

But I still don't want kids.

I liked that Sean Penn all but said that Mickey Rourke deserved the Best Actor Oscar in his acceptance speech.
But as far as un-nominated films go, In Bruges was pretty spot on. The ending was absolutely killer.
And I would have loved to see a special effects or set design nod for the family film Penelope. A seriously pretty piece of work.

Cheers

I am optimistic that the pessimist view I hold can eventually be beaten into realism.

I always liked Piglet. He was scared of everything he ran into, but got out there and dealt with it anyways. I can get behind that, full steam.

Also, he was a piglet that wore a sweater. It is difficult to argue with the awesomeness of a piglet wearing a sweater. Totally classy

Why should the Mountain Goats have a monopoly on songs about suicide? I would love to see a rap-style anthem thingy with a call-back chorus and one of those undersexed eardrum-burdening bassline. And the chorus would go:
Let's hear the boys!
- Get it over with, yeah.
And the ladies now!
- Don't do it, baby.

And then there would be unintelligible rap babble for the rest of the song. And no one who heard it would know what it was about and they'd play it in the clubs where the kids overdose on something powdery and pass out in the toilets.

That would be really funny.

Hooer.
I voted via overseas ballot a couple weeks ago. I'm pretty sure the rest of America is going to agree with what I put, but there is a small gut-wrenching fear that they won't.

Cheers

My favourite and most visited daydream (and by daydream I mean fantasy in which I indulge on buses, walking home from school, and at various other times), is that my eyes are actually tiny cameras and that each time I blink, a photo of exactly what I see at any given moment is captured and recorded somewhere in my head. It's a lot of fun, and I can spend a great deal of time lining up an appropriate shot. Sometimes I get weird looks for moving around so much on the Skytrain, but really, it doesn't matter. I have an infinite amount of film.

--

I started eating the welfare lunches provided by my elementary school because the peanut butter and jam sandwiches my Mom used to make were always vaguely dry and crumbly by the time twelve o clock came around. I stood in the short line behind Tamikah, who never drank her milk and ate alone on the steps outside the school, hunched in a purple raincoat covered in flowers when it was cloudy. If I was feeling thirsty or bored, I went out and sat beside her while we chewed thoughtfully away at our lunches – burritos on Thursday. I enthusiastically attacked her untouched milk cartons, and she told me about her aspirations to one day be a fashion designer. She showed me little pictures and scraps of fabric from curtains and couch cushions. At the time, she was designing for dolls and stuffed animals; the gown she made for her beanie hedgehog was really quite remarkable.

Cheers

Wait to stand at the end of a very long, stiff diving board ten metres above a pool the bottom of which is painted the same blue as the sky would be if you could see it. Reminded that the color of the water is only a reflection of what's above it, shine a flashlight onto the scene and light up all the invisible people in their galoshes and bikinis. Check that the mirrors to the left and right are positioned to spotlight the fall. Then make sure there is no water at the bottom, and jump.

How many times will you flip before you hit the tiles?

Cheers

This entry will consist in its entirety of an imaginary singalong to the song Pittsfield by Sufjan Stevens.

Hum hum de dum - skipper cha dan dan cachang.

Cheers
Julia

A homeless man came into the store today to buy a present for his girlfriend. He bought a jar of bubbles. He was wearing a few coats, even though it was sunny outside. I almost told him that you can make it with dish soap and a few other things, but then remembered he probably doesn't have a kitchen and the bubbles are actually cheaper.

Sleeping is suddenly consuming an alarming amount of my time. Maybe its time to start taking some pills again.

I sometimes wonder whether my lack of desire to raise a child of my own means that at the bottom of things I am a sad, cold and empty person. Off to look up classified ads in the Sun now. I need a map of Vancouver to tell me where to go to avoid the prostitutes. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I wonder if they still show Seinfeld reruns on television at night? It seems like the sort of thing that you'd find in an old motel where they write the name of the place on the pillows so you can't steal them.

I went to Hourglass a few days ago and bought some Y: The Last Man. It's good!

Cheers
Julia

Molly explains logic trains:

Well sometimes you have to draw on experience to make a decision. Say someone has a sign taped to their back in Arabic and you can’t read it. Unless you speak Arabic. I don’t know about you, but I mean, who speaks Arabic? Arabs, I grant you, but there are probably what, twenty of those in the county? Fifty on the outside, and most of them don’t speak English so the joke doesn’t work. Anyways…

You can just go ahead and assume the sign says Kick Me and you’re free to kick away, because what the hell else is someone going to write on a sign taped to this guy’s back? He’s probably asking for it in Swahili or something.

Today I finally discovered how to LimeWire that band !!!. This clearly illustrates the validity of my existence. Apparently they use the phonetic pronounciation Chk Chk Chk. And they thought they could escape internet piracy by having a band name composed only of punctuation.

The fools. Now to see if it's any good.

Cheers

In the morning, they came to a town with a river running through it. On the left side of the river lived a band of pirates, and on the right, a peasant collective. They entered on the side of the pirates.

“Are you coming back?” asked a woman sitting in front of a shack that looked like nothing so much as a boat pulled onto land and doused in red paint. At once, they looked away. The woman had no teeth, but acorn caps sewed to her gums. Blood stuck to her lips, tacky and dark. The caps rattled back and forth as she spoke.

The street leading to the river was quiet, save for a Tall and a Short who stood at the edge, gazing into an eddy against the bank. The water was muddied and dark, but where the pair looked, reflections of things distant appeared as clear as in a pond. The Tall reached a long arm around and tapped the Short on the head. His hair was the colour of a hazel nut. He grunted and looked up. The water shivered and collapsed into a tiny whirlwind.

The Tall looked out at the water hurrying by and whistled without direction or tune, but with some spirit. The river stopped to listen, and tangled itself in the wind, which in turn bumped into the bank. The Short leaned over and stepped into the mess, holding out a hand through a curtain of dark hair. They followed her nervously, but the confusion held, and with the Short’s hands for paddles they reached the midpoint of the river.

Cheers

And now for something completely different.

---

My friend was introducing me to a boy.

"This is Colin," she said seriously. "He can smoke a cigarette in under forty seconds." Colin blinked uncertainly. I blinked uncertainly. We blinked uncertainly in perfect synchronized patterns.

"Is that true?" I asked. He looked confused. It wasn't a good look. "Is what true?" Apparently the blinking had distracted him. I clarified. "The cigarette thing." "Oh," he said, sounding relieved, "yeah. It's true. Fiery fire, and all." I nodded sagely. Fiery fire indeed. I knew all about fire. Clara seemed ready to walk away, but he caught her sleeve. "Um, who is she?" He sounded terrified. I wondered if my reputation had preceded me. "Oh, this is Gillian. With a G. She -"

I could not smoke a cigarette in under forty seconds.

"She can clip her toenails with her teeth."

Once we got home, Clara and I were going to have a serious talk about smoking and personal hygiene.

"And she can read your mind."

Better.

Cheers

"What's with the fish?"
"...Excuse me?"
"The fish, the fish on the backs of the cars. They're Christian, right?"
"Oh, Darwin Fish?"
"No, the ones the Darwin fish are cruelly mocking. Jesus fish. Fish for Jesus. Anti-abortion fish."
"Um - can you draw one for me?"
"If you don't know what it looks like, you won't know what it means. There's just no point."
"No, I have a photographic memory. Really. Take the coaster."
"I need a pen."
"Do you have any lipstick? Use that."

Silence.

"I'm pretty sure drawing a Jesus fish with lipstick on a bar mat is blasphemy of some kind."
"Whatever. Anyways, looks kind of like a five year old drew it, but there you are."
"Uh huh. Jesus fish. It's coming back to me now. Jesus went up to the apostles and said, 'So you're fishermen, are you? I will make you fishers of men.' Slick, right?"
"Seriously, why?"
"I'm telling you the truth!"

"A pun, it's a pun."
"...Jesus makes puns."
"Made puns, made puns. Please try to show a little sensitivity."

"So, fishers of men, right? We, the Unified Fishermen For Jesus, will yank men from their natural environments,beat them with clubs until they die a slow painful death, skin and cook them, sprinkle them with parsley and consume their very marrows. The bones can go in the trash for the cats."

"...I don't think our trash can would fit a thigh bone inside. What do you think?"

Cheers

I love the Jesus fish.

She's rocking it on out from a basement in Kentucky -
He's leaving his girlfriend to make it in the big city -
They started a hair band in the year 2006 -
His mom knocks on doors and delivers pamphlets to the Christians -
She dropped out of cooking school to become a chef -
The cheerleader has a crush on the captain of the chess team -
We can't have New Years' without any party hats -
Last summer they had a barbeque indoors with sunscreen and a kiddie pool.

Now they're tired.

Cheers

The Internet reminds me of a beach. Cause you can go swimming if you don't mind the static shock!
But honestly, things wash up into my line of view, and I've no idea where they come from or what their history is. If I were reading books instead, they'd have a bibliography - but then, they might not contain the same kind of glass in the first place.

The best job I had was moving a stone from one side of the road to the other. This required a permit which require a bribe. The bribe took all my salary. Yet because I hadn't finished the job
I had no salary, and to pay the bribe I took a job moving the stone the other way. Because the official wanted his bribe, he gave me a permit for the second job. When I pointed out that the work would be best completed if I did nothing, he complimented my brain and wrote a letter to my employer suggesting promotion on stationery bearing the wings of a raptor spread in flight over a mountain smaller than the bird. My boss, fearing my intelligence, paid me to sleep on the sofa and take lunch with the official who required a bribe to keep anything from being done. When I told my parents, they wrote my brother to come home from university to be slapped on the back of the head. Dutifully, he arrived and owed to receive his instruction, at which point sense entered his body and he asked what I could do by way of a job. I pointed out there were stones everywhere trying not to move, all it took was a little gumption to be the man who didn't move them. It was harder to explain the intricacies of not obtaining a permit to not do this. Just yesterday he got up at dawn and shaved, as if the lack of hair on his face has anything to do with the appearance of food on an empty table.

Cheers

15 (Huan): If you continue in this vein, you inevitably end up with a totalarist government.
14.5 (Kim): Totalitarianism?
15 (Huan): Yes, totalariasm.
14.5 (Kim): Could you define 'continue in the vein' please?
15 (Huan): Continuing to stunt the freedom of speech of which our nation is fundamentally based.
14.5 (Kim): Thank you. Could you define 'totalitarianism?'
15 (Huan): What, you want the definition of totalitarianism?
14.5 (Kim): Yeah. I mean yes.
15: (Huan)You don't know what it means?
14.5 (Kim): I want your definition.
15 (Huan): It's when people suppress others.
14.5 (Kim): Oh, you mean socialists.

...

Cheers
Julia

Also: Are you saying that coal is radioactive?
No, I just -
Could you define radioactive?
Um, I just meant that coal is fifty times more prone to radioactivity than nuclear material.
Define radioactivity.
When radioactive isotopes fission. The fission of isotopes.
And you just said coal has radioactive isotopes. Doesn't that make it radioactive?
...do I have to answer that question?

Putting the employee lockers at the back of the store is just asking for trouble. I can see Ellen and Chelsea Ann and Mark taking off their coats and fiddling around in the pockets for their lock combinations - Chelsea has two hair ties and a bobby pin in her velour track jacket. She immediately puts her hair up in pigtails and clips a piece of her bangs back with the bobby pin so she doesn't have to deal with them. It's cute, but I'm sort of disgusted by the fact that it took her so little time to do it. Girls should do their hair because they want to, not because they have ties in their jacket pockets.

Damn. While I was watching Chelsea, Mark managed to get his locker open. He's so awkward; it always seems like whatever he's about to pick up is going to send him over the edge and he'll topple dramatically onto the linoleum along with his cargo. The apron looks weird on him too - it hits right where a micro-mini would on a girl, and he's always pulling it down over his thighs like he isn't already wearing a pair of jeans underneath. I don't have to wear the apron, because I told Laurie at the beginning of the week that it makes me feel self-conscious and emasculated. Afterwards, Mark asked me how I did it and I told him I threatened to rip out her nose ring if she tried to make me put it on. Today he's a lost cause anyways. He always dials the lock back to zero after he moves it, and bends down to check that he hasn't dropped anything.

"Ryan!"

Someone is talking to me - Ellen's locker door is open and she's standing in front of it with a scrap of paper in her hand. Perfect. I affect disinterest. "What's up?" Her hand goes up to the back of her neck, where the faded green colour is still going out of her hair - she does it every time she talks to me. It's incredibly annoying. "I had to take my uniform home to wash it. Do you still have yours?" I'm a little surprised Ellen takes such progressive steps as washing her apron, but this is a golden opportunity. "Sure," I say, moving towards my own locker and twirling the dial at random. My lock doesn't work, but nobody else seems to notice or care, so why should I? The door swings open and I pull out the red lump of cloth - my fingers scratch against the polyester. She grabs it with both hands and the paper she was holding falls to the floor. "Thanks-so-much-Ryan," she fires and disappears past the shoe racks.

Laurie comes past, so I can't do Ellen's locker right now, but I'll get around to it. "Hey, Ry," she pipes. I hate it when people call me Ry, but she's been trying to be especially nice to me since my little confession in the break room, which is sweet I guess. I didn't even have to cry. "You're just colourizing today, so head over to Skirts." She hurries off to talk to Mark in the back room. I like the piercing she has in the base of her neck. It reminds me of Frankenstein.

I am a colorizing rebel. The clothes are meant to be racked in a specific pattern - colour first, then tones within different shades. Today, I organize them in alphabetical order according to their realtor-names. The only situation in which the use of these words to describe colours is socially accepted is when an agent is trying to sell a cruddy little split-level in the middle of Surrey with a blurb about the Butter Yellow wallpaper. They probably actually look like someone wiped cat vomit over them, but whatever.

Aquamarine. Bluebell. Blanched Almond. Chrysanthemum. Cinnamon. Dun. Ecru. Fuschia. The fuschia skirt is about three inches long and fringed with tulle. Goldenrod. Honeydew. Realtor names tend to make me hungry. Ivory. Khaki.

Khaki has made a breakthrough into mainstream phrasing - if someone asks a man what colour his pants are, it is an acceptable response. 100% fag-stigma proof. Laurie comes by and catches me holding a long khaki skirt covered in cargo pockets and iron-on patches to my chest like it's my long-lost baby blanket, but she doesn't say anything. Last time she gave me Skirts I organized them by lengths in the piano-key way:

- Long short Long short Long Long short Long short Long short Long -

Repeat. I put the khaki skirt down and continue. By the time I get to Steel Cloud Grey, my mind is entirely focused on what could possibly be in Ellen's locker.

Cheers
Julia

More people should dye their hair white and pretend that they are their own grandparents. I think this would be a societal improvement. We could put talcum powder on our faces and wander up and down the streets like ghosts or memories. You wouldn't have to talk if you didn't want to, and then only in a quiet breaking of your larynx.

Do you think that there's some sort of vocal hymen nobody knows about because the cry of birth breaks it in every child? Some mark or membrane or hole that closes when that first ugly wail wrenches out of the underdeveloped throat of a new ball of chemicals?
Even dream machines break down sometimes.

Cheers
Julia