My fingers feel like barfing.

Sometimes I lament the fact that I don't live in England. Mostly just because of the TV they have. Well, that's the only reason actually.

Watch the below and weep. What do we have on TV in Canada? Air Farce? Corner fucking Gas? Just typing the titles of those shows made my fingers feel like barfing. Even having reminded myself of the existence of those awful excuses for television programming, makes me want to projectile vomit my brain out of my mouth hole so I can forget about the fact they are really on TV. People get paid to write and produce and make sets and stuff for them? Everyone involved and everyone who watches should all be rounded up and caged into holding pens with rabid monkeys. You and I are sinners, merely for having awareness of these deformed monstrosities of television. Cleanse your soul with the below links:

Jazz Trance

Miso, miso, oriental prince in the land of soup

Mirror ball suit

The moon is an alabaster retard

A tasty yellow beef

Regaling Trumpets Ahoy!

Broo broo broooo! (sounds of trumpets announcing the arrival of good news)

I applied for a reduction on my student loans from the government, a feat which required much mathematical calculatorations and a year's worth of planning and photocopying of documents of photocopies, documented by photocopied photocopies....it was a process is all I'm saying and it bloody well worked! It bloody blood worked! The government is paying 10 thousand dollars of my student loans! I still owe more than that, but 10 thousand less than I did yesterday. Huzzah! Huzzah! Let the roasting of toasts and the beast's feasting begin! Feast you beasts, feast!

It's totally my bag, man.

I made it from an Ikea seat cushion cover. Take that Ikea!

Hasty, but better than nothing.

Top freaking Notch Morrissey

Happy Birthday Morrissey!

Morrissey will always be fantastic. I did have the chance of hugging him(smelled like cedar and incense, like church), but to have a conversation before one of us dies...that would be top freaking notch.

As a youngster:
Here.
Highlight:
Child to Morrissey: "Where are we going?"
Morrissey to child: "We're all going mad."
Child: "I thought we were going to Kew Gardens."

All growned up:
Here.
Highlight:
Jonthan Ross: "Do you like having new friends?"
Morrissey: "I don't like people to be honest."
JR: "How many friends have you got?"
Morrissey: "Seven."

Now everyone go have a piece of cake in his honour.

Have I mentionned how I like where I live?

On top of the merits I've already sung praises of, in regards to where I live, there's a lovely long bike path around the river also. GO here to see the boring pictures! HERE

Jaw Knee Mar

I'm compiling a list of things that sound like Johnny Marr. So far I have 2. One of them was discovered by Joby during a "discussion" with a French "person". Ha ha, I am only kidding about the the second set of quotations.

Ok so Johnny Marr:
a) J'en ai marre (french for "I've had it, I've had enough, I'm fed up etc)
b) Zhang Yimou - Chinese movie director. It's pronounced sort of like Johnny Marr but without the r at the end. - John eemow.

So yep. Sort of a weak list so far except for number 1 but who knows what treasures lie in other languages, revealing the universal significance of former Smiths guitarist.

I plucked a bunch of Lilacs from the tree that grows outside the church beside my work building. That's right, I stole from Jesus. It was raining and the branch was hard to break so, as I struggled with it, I shook the collected drops all over my head and then my bangs got all curly and queer looking when they dried later. Queer as in odd, not gay. I miss the old usage of queer. It's a perfect word for describing what it is. Something not quite odd, bizarre or strange, something a little less than all those. Queer. It's meaning is subtle. I really like it.
So my payback for having taken church lilacs, was having queer bangs all day. Oh and I was totally allergic to them. The lilacs, not my bangs.

Fake it till you make it.

I'm a firm beleiver in fake it till you make it. I mostly apply this to completely mundane situations like using the bathroom in an establishment when you are NOT a paying customer. You walk in like you're meeting someone, no hesitation and head straight for that bathroom. Few people want to walk up and confront someone who looks like they are confident in what they are doing. It's a fun game.

I apply this style to watching youtube videos at work. I put in my headphones and just use one and play it like it's part of my job. I don't try to hide it and no one questions it. If I tried to be all "hey, I'm feeling guilty about this so I'll be discreet", someone would call it. Instead, I just put on a concentrated look, maybe hold my finger to the earphone like I'm getting a newsflash: "This just in: kittens playing with yarn sure make for cute video." I haven't really watched any kitten videos. Maybe I should. Maybe I should.

Asking asking, always multi-tasking.

You think I ain't be up to no good?? I be all up in good!
What I mean is, I seem to be having a heck of a time finding moments to draw but I made a fantastic bag out of an Ikea couch cover, readied the gardens for planting, made some super black bean burgers and began the reworking of two unwearable sweaters into one unwearable sweater. So hah! I think I'll try to bring the comics to work so I can add to them whenever I have free moments. Multi-tasking little son of a gun is my new game.

Nothing new, but new for me.

Ah dear me. As you know, one of my goals in California was to lose weight. Blah, blah blah. It didnt' work and probably ruined many days with frustration and disapointment. Out of lack of choice, I've started down a new road of acceptance. I've been struggling, like most every other woman on the planet with this stupid, stupid issue ever since I can remember. Being thin doesn't bring self-acceptance, I've been there and it didnt' help one bit.

I have no plan of loading up on jogging pants and a motorized-cart so I can fill up on cheesies and bread sandwiches (bread between bread of course. I have never eaten this by the way, and never will.) I actually already eat very healthily. I can't explain why I'm fatter than not but there you go. I'm accepting it. Buying some new clothes that fit, continuing to eat well and trying to just be generally more active in a pleasant way, in ways that make me feel good. If I was unsure about this strategy, it's really being cemented by my co-workers. Women in their late 30's and early 40's. One never eats. Period. One has a tendancy toward plumpness like me and is trying diet pills and a 700 calorie per day limit ( a child couldn't live of off that.). She has also convinced herself that oranges make her fat and only one specific type of apple doesn't. Another has lost lots of weight by doing 40 minutes of aerobics, weight training and then another 20 minutes of aerobics, five days a week and eating nothing but spinach salad for lunch. We are grown women. It's perfectly acceptable, it would seem, to treat ourselves like some sort of powerless lab rat, employing all sorts of bizarre experiments, just to lose 10 or 20 pounds. And that's all we're talking about here, 10 or 20 pounds. I've not resorted to such odd methods as these, but it's consumed(pardon the pun) me enough that I'm no different, psychologically, if I go on obsessing this way.

The mirror is the enemy. It's always upon looking in the mirror that my resolve shatters and the evil, crazy, weight obsessed moron in my head chips in her "opinion"(and it's a her of course, because we all now that only certain gay men really want us to be as skinny as we are trying to be and for some crazy reason, women enforce it worse than anyone else). If anyone ever talked to me like that voice does, I would punch them in the teeth. I know it's nothing new. I know entire cities could be filled with essays and self-help books and manifestoes etc. on the topic. What can I say.

I can say that I bought some new clothes that fit, so I don't feel like a stuffed sausage and I will put them on and avoid the mirror and try to take good care of myself and see how it goes. I have a feeling that I may prove to myself that I can feel good. I must work hard to punch that voice in the teeth and the throat until she can no longer tell me I don't look good. I just want to feel good. Since I know being thin does not feel good if you are killing yourself mentally or physically to get there, I'll try a new route. I can already feel the rising panic and indignation of the witch woman in my head, but she is on my shit list now and I dare say, I will be the death of her.

Squawking Vs.

It's been sunny. Cool in the mornings and warm in the afternoon. Sort of like California, only without the rotting oranges and pesticide scents. I rather enjoy taking a deep breath outside around our home. Even if the river is about as polluted as the Ganges, it's still water and somehow it doesn't smell. It almost seems to filter out the air somehow. I like the early morning damp freshness and the late evening cool. I went for a walk last night. I spied in all the homes as I walked by. They all look so cozy at night, with little lights flickering and people in repose. It was so quiet.

The past few mornings, I've walked to the train while geese flew overhead in their big sqwuaking V formations. I had a desire to be able to hang out at their level for a bit, just to see what it's like. It looks so communal and purposeful, but I'm sure all of us commuters look like that from above. Filing on and off the train in droves. It seems as though it's even busier than usual. I had a nostalgia for it while I was gone. Central station and the 9am rush. Feeling in the center of things. Feeling like you're part of a greater whole, knowing you're not the only one off to toil in an office for the day.

With all the jobs I've had in the past, the trek to them always had me feeling so isolated. As if everyone else around possessed a special freedom excluding me. Sentenced to go alone, to work in the bookstore, or the pottery store or wherever it was I was being paid minimally for my time. I miss walking though. I've always walked or biked a substantial distance to previous jobs. Especially in Toronto. Living in the east end, I had a lovely route along the back streets and through the park. The commuter train takes that from me. I trade my daily work walks for living in peace outside of the city. I can still skulk around in the evening but it's a different sort of walk. A promenade if you will. Will you?

Trying is the thing.

Oh ma gawd. I'm back at work. Or rather I was earlier today and yesterday. Everything is exactly the same. Eerily so. It's making me feel as if I hadn't been away at all.

Back on the daily train ride again. I've been reading. This is the first time I've read Katherine Mansfield. She is hilarious! Some of the funniest, writing I've read in a very long time. Gorgeous and funny writing. I see now why Virginia Woolf said she was the only writer to incite her jealousy. As I was saying though, back on the old train everyday. I dislike people so much when I have to interact with them but observing them, well gosh, it's one of my favourite things. I especially love to observe friends. Lovers and couples are boring. They are together through a biological imperative to procreate. Chemicals and hormones cause them to abide one another but what about friends? Fascinating. Two random strangers connecting and forming a bond for no observable purpose. Then again, what do I know about anthropology. Perhaps there is some sort of biological benefit to the universe from friend-bonds, but if so, I choose to remain entirely ignorant of it. I like the nonsensical magic of friends. I want to be able to stare and stare. Beside me this morning, two heavily made-up women in their forties, across from each other with high heels and manicures, leaning in toward each other conspiratorially, lowering their voices to tell a scandalous detail or an embarrassing truth. Couldn't I just stare at them? Couldn't I listen closely to their talk? They are relating even though they don't have to. I wouldn't want to talk to either of them individually or befriend them myself in any capacity, but to watch...

Did I mention that I'm back at work? I am. I can't even figure out myself how I feel about it. I know that I don't want to make all the same mistakes. I want to enjoy my free-time more inspite of the fact that I must work most of the days. I want to guard an inner calm and happiness that can't be cracked by the doldrums and dramas of work. I want to stay removed from work life as much as I can to reserve energy for my real life. I want to walk and run and skip and laugh, tee-hee, like that. I want to keep drawing comics. I want to come home after work and feel as though I still have something to give. Ha! I know, I know. Good freaking luck. It's been two days and I already sort of feel that one wrong turn in my head and I'll be weary like an immortal donkey. All these hopes I pronounce, so often failing or falling low of the bar, but still, trying is the thing right? Of course it is.