If you've ever wondered whatever became of me ...

I'm still not sure why I joined Facebook this morning. It was early, I had underslept, and three different people had recommended it to me within the last week. To tell you the truth, I'm still not entirely sure what the point of the site is. This evening one of the aforementioned three folks posted on my "wall". What is this wall? Why are people posting on it? Why won't those kids stay off my lawn?

If you're looking for me on the Facebook (that's what I'm calling it now: "the Facebook"), I'll be using this portrait:

Fig. 1: Christ for the Nations Institute (CFNI), 1984 yearbook

In other photo news, this evening Laura gave me this picture of her:

Fig. 2: ...

It's chowtime forever

I've wanted to post for the last four days, but all I can think to post about is food. It's a little ridiculous to consider how much I'm thinking about food lately.

On Sunday I went to Costco with Colleen and Dave (not Colleen's-Ex-Boyfriend-ie-Me-Dave, but Colleen's Current-Boyfriend-ie-Not-Me-Dave) and I bought some Italian sausages and mini-baguettes -- y'know, for sausage sandwiches. Later that day I bought a slow-cooker because I hate hate hate cooking sausages. The next day I bought a roast and then made the roast in the slow-cooker overnight. It was some sort of heaven to wake up to the smell of pot roast. Even though I still have enough sausages and pot roast to feed me for a week, I'm already looking at slow-cooker recipes. I'm thinking something in the barbecue pork family ...

Last week I weighed myself at the gym and came in at 172 lbs (that's 12.3 stone for you old skool British readers). That's 10 lbs more than I'd like to be, but I really only notice when I'm greasing myself up for Saturday Night Skinny White Guy Oil Wrestling ("a Saskatoon tradition!" according to the old-timers in the audience).

I'd love to post about something other than the deliciousness of slowly cooked meat, the inadvisability of heading for the 7-Eleven ice cream case when you're drunk, or the fear that I'll not get to my tenth/free meal at the employee cafeteria before the school year is up ... but what else is there? It's all vague stress and powerlessness for the next month or so.

Actually, that gives me an idea. I'll see if I can push myself away from the table long enough to make it happen.

I'm sorry I'm breaking your heart tonight

For the past few days I've been laden with a sense of guilt. If I've ever told you that I love you, you fall into one of these categories:

1. You're a family member, or
   
2. You've shown me your boobs, or
   
3. Both #1 and #2

It's just ... ever since I've started eating these tacos that I made over the weekend, I've had to re-evaluate all those old I-love-you's; I'm starting to think that I may not have meant any of them. These tacos are the most delicious tacos I've ever had. I really think I can start a new life with these tacos. It's like nothing I've ever felt before.

Maybe I didn't know what love was before I had these tacos, or maybe I did know what love was, in which case this taco emotion is like Love Times Two.

But this isn't about the tacos. It's about you, and how I don't love you, assuming I ever loved you in the first place.

I'm really sorry. If you could see me now, you'd see that I'm starting to cry. Oh, I wish you could see me now. These tears are just pouring out of my eyes. It's such a shame you can't see me. You'll have to take my word for it, I guess.

Ah, but what good is my word? I told you I loved you, and here I am, taking it back. That's true, but you really believed me when I told you I loved you, and I'm sure falling for my lie was as good as the real thing. Here I go again with the crying.

Oh the crying!

I can barely type because my vision is blocked by tears and I'm not a touch-typist. (Note to potential employers: Disregard that last line.) It's almost comical how much I'm crying.

I know you want to hate me. I know you want to hate the tacos. Please, the tacos are blameless. If anyone should be blamed, it's you. You just weren't as good as the tacos.

In theory you could try blaming me, but OH THE TEARS! YOU CAN'T HATE SOMEONE WHO IS THIS DISTRAUGHT, CAN YOU?

No, you can't.

I know this hurts now, but you're strong. You'll get over it. You'll get over me.

Let's keep in touch, 'k?

Aaaaaand now I have Hep C

If you're in a club and there's a pristine plate of nachos on a table and there's no one in the vicinity to claim it, clearly it's your duty as a club-goer to eat as many of those nachos as will fit in your mouth. And then to do it again a few minutes later. [Repeat until all nachos are gone.]

The difference is clear

Yep, from here on in I'm only dating homeless women.

To the Devil, a stomach ache

I really like the new windows in my apartment. What I don't like is the news that workers will come by to paint the new frames once the entire building's windows are replaced.

I don't quite remember why, but four years ago, when I was installing new curtains, I screwed the curtain-rod-holders into the window frames and not into the wall. When I had to clear the window area for the window-installers, I had to remove the curtain-rod-holders. The news that the job isn't done means that I can't put my curtain-rod-holders back up. The absence of curtain-rod-holders means an absence of curtain-rods, which means -- are you with me? -- an absence of curtains.

My building has two wings on opposite sides of a courtyard. I face the courtyard, and the other side of the building faces me (and also faces the courtyard, but mostly it faces me). With no curtains to keep me hidden, I feel like I'm in a Panopticon:

The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."

Of course, I've seen every episode of Oz, so I know that any time spent in a prison is harmful to one's physical and mental health, regardless of the perceived flexibility of the prison's routine. In other words, I think my bed's length has shrunk by one foot, but I can't prove it because the fitted sheet has also shrunk by one foot.

It is also possible that the bed has not shrunk. Perhaps it only seems that it has shrunk because in reality I have grown a foot taller, and I haven't noticed because all my clothes have grown with me.

Life was so much easier when I thought a dead body was living across from me. It's still possible that a dead body is in there: I saw a man in that apartment a few nights ago. I saw him only grom the chest up. He seemed to perform the repetitive movements of a man who was leisurely dry-humping a corpse. (I guess that's one nice thing about dry-humping a corpse as opposed to dry-humping a living person: you can really take your time.) I have not seen him since, and I also hope that's not him knocking on my door right now.

Sleep is for normals

I don't like the way the internet shuts down after 6pm. All the news sites and bloggers pull down the shades and close up shop, like some sort of ... shopkeepers. That doesn't rock.

Fig. 1: Guitar heroism

"Say hello to Bono and Sandra Day O'Connor!"

I found the panda-sneeze clip they watched on last night's 30 Rock. Indeed, it is exceptionally cute.



Now you have to fire 10% of your staff.

3 a.m., I will kill you if it's the last thing I do

I'm always a little creeped out when something mundane has gone on too long. This afternoon, it was the way the men's room was occupied for hours. I was convinced someone had had a heart attack in there, so I finally said, "Hello!" through the door. There was no answer so I said it again, and finally the dude inside responded. It didn't get him out any faster, but I only wanted to wash my hands anyway (yes, I was harboring a desire to wash my hands all afternoon), so ... yeah, it was kind of a zero-sum annoyance.

This evening, I had to take my curtains down because my building owner is replacing all the windows in the building and tomorrow is my apartment's turn. There's a really bright light coming in from the sconces on front of the building, but what's more disturbing are the lights in the apartment across the courtyard: it's 3am and all the lights are still on. I'm not about to pull a Rear Window, but come on ... if the apartment's vacant, then keeping the light on all night won't get a new tenant in there any faster, and if there is a tenant, then clearly he died this evening.

[I'm not concerned by the invasion of privacy caused by having no curtains up. If someone hasn't seen me in my undahpants before today, then clearly they haven't been trying hard enough.]

I was anticipating pulling an all-nighter this evening, so I had a nap and a Diet Coke earlier, but after realizing that my ftp program is being uncooperative and that I don't really know what I'm doing anyway, I'd like to sleep and deal with it tomorrow morning. I can't, though, because of the aforementioned nap and Diet Coke, and because these lights coming in from outside are so bright, and because there might be a dead guy across the way, and because all I can think of as I lie in bed is how to deal with hypothetical confrontations. It's a bit anxiety-inducing (the confrontations part, anyway; dead bodies are more a red-tape kind of hassle than anything else), but it's preferable to the realization that my behaviour since December has been loathesome and yet unavoidable. I think it's because I don't believe in fate that the realization is disturbing; if my loathesome behaviour was unavoidable -- as I believe it was -- then doesn't that point to some sort of belief in fate? I cherish the randomness of the universe and would hate to see that come to an end after a bit too much self-reflection.

When life gives you balls, make meatballs

Dear Mom,

Thank you for making meatballs more than once.

Cordially,
Me

I made meatballs today, and holy crap was that ever a lousy idea. It's tedious, time-consuming, icky, sticky, and burny. Well, I didn't actually burn myself, but I could have! THE DANGER IS REAL.

The recipe I found on the internet called for two pounds of ground beef. Yes, I consulted the internet on how to make balls of meat because like so many things, I imagined there would be a secret ingredient. In this case, there were two: bread crumbs (really?) and eggs (who knew?). Two pounds of ground beef didn't seem like a lot when I was at the supermarket, but apparently two pounds of ground beef makes A MILLION MEATBALLS. Which would be great, except I had to create them individually; my manservant Alexander had the afternoon off. After an hour of making balls of raw meat -- I probably could have saved time by not taking breaks for despair -- came the fun part: frying!

I love cooking, but one thing that continues to annoy me about the whole thing is the uncertainty of meat, specifically the possibility that "tasty looking on the outside" might mean "uncoooked on the inside." What I need is a small camera, like the kind they use in surgery, to stick into meat so I can see if it's cooked on the inside. Also, if there were a microscopic zoom on it so I could tell if there's salmonella or E.coli or ... y'know ... fecal matter ... well, I'd pay up to $15 more for such a feature. Get on it, Ronco!

If you judge success by how little you throw up from undercooked meat, then the frying was successful. Which is a shame, really, because the triumph of making meatballs was overshadowed by the anticlimax of an uninspired tomato sauce. How can anticlimax overshadow anything? Isn't it the very nature of anticlimax to be underwhelming? And why haven't I learned to make good tomato sauce yet? These and other questions will be answered in our exciting conclusion: "Alone Against the Butchers' Brigade!"

"Dancing Lemonade" does not lend itself to successful searches

I attended a wrestling match today. It was my first. It was really quite cool and, as with all spectator sports, I found myself wondering how I would fare as a Greco-Roman wrestler. I didn't find myself wondering that for very long because there is a lot of touching in wrestling. Skin-on-skin, disease-spreading touching. Also, there's the constant risk that you might end kissing your opponent. Of course, that might be fun because then there are no losers, just more people with herpes.

It was nice seeing you

Evenings like this make me happy that "Poet" is not a viable career option. For anyone.

The fact that I ended up at a poetry jam/slam should not be a surprise; I've ended up at weirder places, to be sure. I recited one chapter from my work-in-progress, "Text Messages My Chiropractor Has Sent Me":

April 23, 7:52 p.m.

When you dozed off on my table this afternoon
I put my thumb in your butt