Halloween Memories

As an adult, Halloween means 2 weeks of scary movies on TV, turning out the lights so the neighbourhood kids don't know I'm home and the opportunity to dress provocatively without being accused, however, righfully, of being a slut. Good times!

As a kid, I remember being indifferent about the whole candy acquisition part of the holiday...I didn't mind candy, I just wasn't as crazy about it as most kids were...my Halloween candy trove would, literally, last until spring.

I did, however, enjoy immensely the "dressing up and being someone else" part of Halloween...

Halloween was often snow-covered in the town in which I grew up. My parents, of course, wanted to keep me warm--so they dressed me up in my parka, pulled up the fur-covered hood and my mom drew red circles on my cheeks with her lipstick and--voila!--Eskimo. They repeated this costume for three years straight. Those tricky bastards!

Oh well--I didn't know any better. .. :)

My dog was just as displeased with me, year after year, trying to dress her up to come out trick or treating with me.

She quickly dispensed with the clown mask I tried to attach to her head one year.

I thought she might be more amenable to dressing up as my version of an "arab" (where I got these ideas, I have no idea)--sheet over her head with a hat on top--but that one didn't survive much longer than the clown mask. To my poor dog Chimo's chagrin, this particular look would pop up several more times over the years, as extant photographic evidence will attest.

Let's stroll down memory lane, shall we...everyone remembers:

• Those great houses that gave out WHOLE chocolate bars or cans of pop--we always tried to hit those places every year (if not more than once in a night)!
• Those horrible houses that gave out apples, raisins or, in the dental hygienist's case, mini-tootbrushes (you KNOW her house got egged, year after year...)
• Your parents going through your candy searching for razor-blade-studded apples or cyanide-laced Smarties.

Ah, Halloween.

I'm still bitter about Halloween in Grade 1--I had the chicken pox and missed the day we all got to dress up at school and have a party. The other kids got cupcakes. I got an oatmeal bath.

Wow, I just had an epiphany! I think I've pinpointed the nucleus of my pervading belief that the world owes me something....

The world owes me cupcakes.

Gimme some.

Ebony & Ivory: A Fashionable Tale of Harmony

There's a woman in my office who wears ONLY black and/or white clothes.

Seriously.

I'm sure it makes choosing an outfit a lot easier, but it's so boring I could puke.

I estimate that the percentage of what she wears breaks down as follows:

All Black: 65%
Black/White: 25%
All White: 10%

I've come up with several theories as to why this woman, who will henceforth be known as Oreo, would do this:

a) She's colour-blind and is terrified of making an unforgivable fashion faux pas.

b) She's quietly promoting racial diversity.

c) Conceptually, she's a stalwart opponent to "shades of grey" and is registering her opposition sartorially.

d) She's waging an internal Vader-esque battle between good and evil and this struggle is outwardly reflected in her wardrobe.

Maybe Oreo is simply trying to be different in her steadfast adherence to her Black/White colour scheme. Uniqueness in uniformity.

I need a cookie.

I'm surprised I don't walk through the world with a perpetually nonplussed* expression on my face. The idiocy that pervades our culture perplexes me on a daily basis.

For example, I went in to Timothy's** this morning for a cup of coffee. Feeling somewhat sluggish today, I ordered a large coffee. As I was putting my wallet back into my tote, a gentleman*** behind me ordered a latte.

Gentleman: Gimme a latte.

Coffee Server Dude: What size?

Gentleman: What sizes do you have?

Me (internal monologue): Really? Did you really just ask that question? Do the giant signs proclaiming the various sizes and prices somehow escape you? You're wearing a pretty nice suit, I guess I just assumed you could read.Damn stereotypes. Foolish me.

Are you just too lazy to tilt your head the necessary 30 degrees to read the signs?

How could you not understand the sizes? They're not even pretentious, Starbucks-style names!

Then again, Timothy's size differentiation system is fairly complex:

Small
Medium
Large

Nutty, I know. Hearkens back to a time when super-sizing wasn't part of the vernacular and tall didn't mean small.

Coffee Server Dude (pointing to my cup): Well...that's a large...

Gentleman: Oh! I think I'll have...um....hmmmm...MEDIUM. Yes, medium should do it.

I resisted the urge to follow him around to determine if he was similarly confounded by other things the rest of us take for granted....like traffic signals...or gravity....

Happy freakin' Friday!

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*Nonplussed is defined as "utterly perplexed" or "confused". This is a public service announcement for the multitudes who use it as a synonym for "unimpressed". Thank you for your time.

** Timothy's: One of Canada's answers to Starbucks. Though Starbucks is as ubiquitous here as it is in the rest of the world, Timothy's is almost as prevelant. For example, I pass 2 Timothy's on my way from the subway to my office and only 1 Starbucks (FYI, it's 2 blocks from the subway to my office).

***Gentleman = Benefit of the Doubt

The Third Nipple

Raise your hand if you work with a third nipple*!

Mother-of-god, this kid pisses me off.

He was entirely flummoxed at the prospect of changing the toner in the printer. He still appeared stymied after a 12-step explanation of how to open the printer and remove the toner. (Baby steps, baby steps...)

Anyway.....

The toner cartridge was empty--so I told him where he needed to take the used cartridge to have it exchanged. I told him that all he had to do was hand it to the people in the mailroom, provide his department number and they'll give him a new one. Simple? Apparently not.

"I'll just keep shaking it."

Um...

"That's great, but what about when someone else wants to print something? All you have to do is go exchange the cartridge..."

I was so exasperated.

He said, "Did something else happen today or are you actually pissed off about this?"

Listen, jackass, if changing the toner in a printer is beyond your realm of capability, I don't have very high hopes for your job here (or your life as a whole) being even a moderate success. Good luck, moron.

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*Useless tit

Happy Thanksgiving, Dwight Yoakam

So I went downstairs to the cafeteria a little while ago in hopes of getting some lunch.

It's not always possible for me to get lunch in our stupid-ass cafeteria, as they don't seem to believe vegetarians exist--or, perhaps they do believe in vegetarians, yet they also believe that if you don't eat meat, you are evil. And must be destroyed. And they hope that we non-meat-eaters will simply starve to death if they don't provide any vegetarian options for us.

But I digress..

So I got my salad and sidled up to the cashier's line with the fewest people in it, just behind a gargantuan women with inexplicable clown-hair.

The cashier, a thin, foreign woman (of unknown origin), who always wears her hair tightly plaited, Heidi-style, rang up Clowny's food.

Clowny, who was holding her wallet, didn't make any sort of move to remove cash from said to wallet to pay for her lunch.

Clowny looked at the cashier and said, in a low, reverent tone, "Guess who I saw last night."

Now, I'm pretty damn hungry. And getting hungrier by the minute. And I'm not the most patient person under the best of circumstances, particularly in cases of social idiocy and/or rudeness. For example:

• Jackasses who come to a dead stop while walking down the sidewalk causing the people following to body-check them from behind (Hello boobs? Are you there? No? You've been permanetly deflated? Bummer);
• The dolts who wait in line at the bank or ATM for several minutes and don't bother to get their bank card out until they actually get to the teller/bank machine;
• The dickheads who go to the movies without any forethought as to what movie they're going to see and change their mind 3 or 4 times while they're purchasing their tickets (This means you Kirstie Alley! I hope someone kicks your Jenny Craigersized ass!).

Anyway, so Clowny said, "Guess who I saw last night?" and the cashier responded, "Who?"

Clowny replied, her voice cracking and a small tear forming in the corner of her eye, "Dwight. Yoakam."

The cashier responded, "Who?"

Clowny: Dwight Yoakam!

Cashier: I'm not familiar.

(Meanwhile, I'm torn between being irritated--that these two nitwits are standing between me and my lunch--and laughing hysterically at the situation which is quickly becoming CLASSIC!)

Clowny: Two. And. A. Half. Hours.

Cashier: Huh?

Clowny: He played for TWO AND A HALF HOURS-straight!

Cashier (unimpressed): Huh.

Clowny: Oh, I just love him...I don't actually own any of his albums, but when he plays that one song..oh, what's it called?...anyway, he's always so great on Jay Leno.....

Cashier: My son, he gets me into the punkrock, the underground music. I don't know this "Yoakam".

Clowny trundles off, wishing the cashier a, "Happy Thanksgiving", with visions of Yoakam dancing in her head.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, Clowny. And Mr. Yoakam, wherever you are....

The Quest for a Hairless Leg (or Two)

Women: Do you ever scratch your leg and realize, "Holy shit! I'm hairy as a sasquatch!"

How gross is that?

I used to be fanatical about shaving my legs. I'd shave at the first sign of dasterdly sprouting hair--even if it was the middle of the day and I had to strip down and prop my leg up in a sink to achieve my goal.

Since living in an apartment with no bathtub--just a shower stall--I've become less stringent on my leg-hair standards.

In fact, my legs right now could accurately be described as hirsute. It's like someone drugged me in the night and transplanted David Hasselhoff's chest hair on to my legs. It ain't pretty.

It's not that I want to resemble an orangutan, it's that shaving my legs in my shower is an elaborate undertaking that requires a great deal of skill!

Unfortunately, I do not possess the balancing acumen required to complete this task with any degree of grace or speed. Speed is of the essence in my world, particularly when that damned snooze bar is so appealing.

My shaving ritual goes a little something like this:

1. Locate the place in the stall that is being assaulted by the least amount of water from the shower head.

2. Place leg in the aforementioned area in preparation for the (often fruitless) "Attempt to Apply Shaving Cream".

3. Attempt to Apply Shaving Cream: This process is hampered by a few obstacles. For one thing, in order to achieve adequate shaving cream coverage, I must bend down. When I bend down, the water I had previously been blocking spews forth, rendering my cream-covered parts bare and usually filling my eyes/mouth with water.

Note: You may be thinking, "Why not turn the water off for application of shaving cream?"

My response to that is as follows:

a) It's fucking cold in my apartment. It's a basement. And a particularly cold basement, at that.

b) It's all well and good to turn off the shower for shaving-cream-application, but what happens when I need to rinse the blade? You do the shaving cream math.

4. Usually by this point I've abandoned any kooky notions of of creating smooth, supple, hairless, shaving-cream-protected skin and decided to simply hack away at the offending areas with my razor, hoping to at least trim some of the larger patches. This is also not easy. You try reaching your ankles with a sharp object, in what amounts to an upright coffin, without doing any of the following:

a) Banging your head

b) Knocking over large objects (usually in conjunction with (a)), such as shampoo bottles, that fall crashing to the shower floor, usually cushioned by one's foot. Luckily, one's footal area is replete with extra fat, so this hardly ever hurts.

c) "Nicking" oneself with the razor so that the resultant drain-swirl is a Hitchcock-esque mixture of water and blood.

My legs are hairy. Sue me.

Blog This

Dear Cyberfreaks,

According to my good friend Phoenix, the shit that comes out of my head (via my fingers) might be of interest to people...

There's no accounting for taste.

Anyhoooooo, I have created this blog and will henceforth be posting every little damn thing that comes into my head. Everything that pisses me off....Everything I conjur that I deem to be clever.....What I had for dinner. .....How many spider-babies I had to assassinate with OxyClean....When I'll be getting the pretzel monies...and so on.....

You asked for it...

My goal with this blog is three-fold:

1. To increase the number of people who buy me presents.

2. To keep in touch with friends from afar who insist on sending me cryptic text messages as their only form of communication (Propositional driver spoonsauce!)

3. To recruit members to my online Val Kilmer fan club.

Don't come crying to me if you don't like what's written here--you've been warned!

Love,
Julia

P.S. (((Val Kilmer)))