Touch You Last

We’re about three quarters through Sabrina right now. Early on, Sarah noted: “Audrey Hepburn has the body of an eleven year old boy.” I believe I concur. I’ve decided I’m not overly fond of her or her movies. She just doesn’t do it for me. I think she’s a beauty of her time, not ours. She’s not on anyone’s Top Five Freebies list, if you know what I’m saying. That is all.

Okay, so I’ve been away. Well, really I haven’t. I’ve been right here, and with an almost unprecedented amount of free time on my hands. Work is slow right now, as evidenced by the stories I tell Sarah at the end of the day. “And then, Shatton was like this, and Jorge was like that , and then Reay was like oh no you di’int! And then, AND THEN .” It looks like blogging is more of an outlet then I’ve realized. When I’m crazy-go-nuts busy, I’m dying to blog, but those days where I have about sixteen absolutely free hours, I’m like blogging? I say unto you: meh. I know I’m cursing myself by saying this, but to make up for the lack of posts I pledge to post something every day between now and our next trip (we leave the 13 th ). Might be a substantial post, might just be something to the effect of: “How about that Internet, eh? There’s some crazy things on that Internet, I tells ya!” For now, let me use this post to congratulate Cathy and Isha on running last weekend’s marath...

Yes, I’m still around, but I don’t have much to say. Feeling lazy. Feeling particularly union these days. I think we bloggers get sluggish in the warmer months. I’ve got a big-ass vacation coming up, and also Armada ’s launch (June 10), but for the moment there’s not a lot going on. Instead, I’ll draw your attention to funny and amusing things that I can claim no responsibility for. Reasons Not to Fear the Reaper - from McSweeney’s A letter from Britney - from the girls at Go Fug Yourself Kris’s vacation recap (You're missing out if you're not clicking the links) - at Not a Girl, Not Yet a Wino Ceiling cat (marginally NSFW) - link courtesy of Omar Pamie addresses her foot stalker - by Pamie

I can’t remember the last time I’ve paid this close attention to something. By the end I was exhausted for it; for trying to catch every detail, trying to draw significance out of every scene. I was convinced I wouldn’t get it otherwise. But in the end all that work wasn’t necessary; despite the reputation this movie has, it’s not all that hard to understand. I’m nowhere near capable of explaining it in its entirety—scene to scene—but I know what it’s about, and so do you if you’ve seen in. The movie begins with a series of strange, unrelated scenes: a dance competition, a woman surviving a spectacular car crash, a man discussing his reoccurring nightmare. The only common thread between these scenes is the dreamlike quality they all have; the camera floats softly, the dialogue is not quite illogical but it’s vague to the viewer while filled with meaning for the characters. Past this sequence, the movie settles into two (mostly) coherent storylines. 1. Betty (Naomi Watts) comes to Hol...

Courtney (not to be confused with Courtney-O (yeah, we’re gonna need nicknames if this continues)) recently asked me about Windsor . I have no idea where this comment is (I got the comment in my hotmail but can't find here to save my life), so I’ll just address the question in a new post. Any folks familiar with the place, feel free to help out. I haven’t lived there since 2000, so my knowledge is a bit dated. I’m just going to go ahead and pretend that time has stood still since my departure. Where to live – East of the bridge: good. West of the bridge: bad. We lived west of the bridge in fourth year and highlights included a triple homicide down the road and the dude who came up to us during a midnight walk home and asked if we had any crack cocaine. School Spirit – There is none. I’m not a school spirit kind of guy, so I could not have cared less. But if that’s something important to you, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Bars – The campus pub is terrible. Just off ca...

So I’ve still got this cold and it’s relentless. It keeps mutating and turning into other colds as yet unclassified by science. I knew I never should have played with that damn Outbreak monkey! I don’t get sick too often, and when I do I tend to kick it pretty quickly, but once in a blue moon I get these unbeatable colds and it gets to feeling like I’ll never be well again. I thought of that earlier today, and it reminded me of another time I had a condition that I thought I’d never shake. I’ve tried pot… well, I couldn’t say for certain how many times, but surely no more than I could count on my fingers. I’m terrible on pot; I’m the quintessential paranoid stoned guy. And once in I while I think I’m not, so then I smoke, and every time it’s Jesus everyone is looking at me and my mouth and SO DRY. I haven’t said a word in about an hour and a half and people are gonna think I’m nuts if I don’t say something, anything, right now. Okay—now! NOW! Shit, I can’t! I’ll ...

What do you love most about your hometown? While we're there, what do you hate most about it?

I’m sorry; I haven’t been to your site all week. I’ve been in Cubicleland since Monday. Whereas in Ottawa, I have the safety of my office from which to blow good company time catching up on people’s blogs, I don’t have the same luxury here. As far as my own posts go, I’ve been writing them each morning on the train and then finding three minutes in my day with which to upload (while watching nervously over my shoulder). I’ll catch up on everyone when I’m back. Yes, I still love you. Except Kris —I’ve been skipping your site on purpose. Just because. After work Wednesday, I met Jorge on the subway and we went to Axis in Bloor West. He has a gallery of his photos hanging there for his show that opens Saturday Night . (Go, check it out, buy his work. Yes, I’m talking to you.) Despite the fact that we went there with the expressed purpose of seeing his photos, somehow that slipped my mind when we first walked in. We selected our table, and I looked at the photo hanging above i...

Another thing I forgot about working in Toronto and commuting back to Georgetown: from time to time I thought I was suffering from depression. Which turned out not to be true; what I thought was depression was actually starvation. Let me explain. My schedule went something like this: get up, have a bowl of cereal and a coffee, catch the train, eat nothing until lunch (which was usually a sandwich, some yogurt, and a granola bar), finish the day, catch the train; then either: go home and have dinner around seven, or go to the gym, then come home and have dinner around 8:30. Mood-wise, I was okay for most of the day, until the commute home where I’d feet—more often than not—profoundly unhappy. I worried a little that I might be depressed, but the feeling came to me so infrequently that I’d forget about it before long. It was Sarah who made me realize what the problem was (which became more apparent after we got married and started living together): I’m a miserable bastard when I’m hu...

One of the things about coming back that I like and loathe equally is the GO Train . In Ottawa, my commute is fifteen minutes. On foot. I typically roll out of bed around five after eight, and I make it to work by nine. In Georgetown, I have to be up a six thirty to pull off the same start time. The train ride is an hour, but if you tack on the drive to and from the train, the walk between the train and work, and the five to ten minute buffer time I typically have by getting to the train early, my daily commute totaled three hours. And I don’t think I ever realized how nuts that was until Sarah started taking the train with me. The upside is that I read. It was two hours a day I dedicated to reading, and back in the day I burned through small libraries on the train (whereas now, Animal Farm is a two month slog). I miss reading, and there’s no reason I can’t read these days; I guess it’s just that my attention span is shrinking. If I have an out from reading, I’ll take it, but if my on...

It’s almost five months since the last time I was here, which is officially the longest I’ve been away from Georgetown ever. Even in University, at the height of my self-absorption, I still came back once every two months. My first observation is that everything is different . Okay, not everything—it’s not a dystopian nightmare where Emperor Mike Chong eats our young and deals out arbitrary, pseudo-sexual punishments at the end of a whip—but structurally at least, things are noticeably different. It’s a hundred little things: the renovated Tim Hortons, the new boxy-looking, ugly-ass Loblaws superstore off Highway 7, my parents’ new furniture set, the new layout of the Georgetown Independent —all of it collectively freaks me out a bit and makes me feel like I’ve been away for years. I’m not going to have a chance to see everybody. Usually in a case like this, I’ll sneak into town like a thief, see only the few people I can squeeze in, and flee before anyone else gets wise. I’ve got a li...