Monday, October 25, 2010

"How does your radio know we're on a highway?"

A friend's Mom once told me I have "child-bearing hips."

Whaaaaa?

I think she meant it as a compliment but I was fourteen. Also, kids are gross.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

October 24th 2009

So this crazy thing happened today, Saturday, October 24th 2009.

A woman who I’ve done some shows before randomly—I rarely speak with her online—asked me what I was writing on Facebook chat. She said that she read my blog once and was inspired (inspired, I inspire people!) by how honest I was.

And then I gushed into a puddle of thought because that’s just so darn sweet!

She continued by saying that she is amazed at how wonderful I am (Me!) and how lucky I am to have my mom and sister supporting me.

First off, Me! Secondly, wow she has a good memory. She’s only met my sister once.

She said that she didn’t have a family that believed in her when she was younger so it’s really wonderful for her to see that I do.

This is a woman who is an actress, a singer, a producer and a mother. I’ve seen her in all four roles. She’s amazing. She’s Buffy (if Buffy could act, sing, produce or mother…). Superwoman without the spandex. This is a woman I respect.

Then said that she’s excited to be able to say she ‘knew me when.’

So that’s kind of corny but the sentiment still made me gap.

Seriously.

Seriously.

She’s like my cheerleader, my personal cheerleader. And I haven’t seen her in months!

When we were done talking, all I wanted to do was blog about it, except she reads my blog. I can’t blog about it and then have her read it, what if she doesn’t like it? What if she meant it to stay private? What if, what if, what if.

So that’s why this is being posted today, a year later. If she still reads my blog, then she’ll know how much this conversation meant to me and hopefully, enough time has passed that she won’t mind me sharing it.

It’s nice to know that someone (other than family that, you know, have to) has faith in me.

Thanks, Corisa :)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

"My theory is healing with love"

Being sick is hard work, y'all.

For example, I had to suffer through a Calc class (apparently ln is a logarithm and In is the word 'in'), then an Econ and a CrWr class. It was awful. There was significant sniffling involved.

But I am a hardcore person. I sat through all of my classes and took notes--some of them even class-related. At home, I certainly did not eat half of an entire box of Wheat Thins and the whipped cream that's only a little expired and spend several hours in a bleary daze watching Greys Anatomy season two. No, I did not.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

3 Things That Scare Me At School

1) The Army guys that buy Tim Hortons in the school cafe wearing head to toe neon camoflage (way to blend in, guys!). There aren't any military classes at my school. Where do they come from??

2) Push/Pull Doors. Fuck you, push/pull doors. You make me look really dumb. I'm walking along, feeling chic and adultish in my new black boots with my Calc textbook in my arms and my cell pressed to my ear as I check my voicemail and I push on the door and--nothing.

Nothing because you are a pull door and now I am neither chic nor adult, and you mock me with your giant rectangular PULL sign. Meanwhile, in the split second of nothing, twenty students have lined up behind me and each one is judging me and my lack of chicness and adultness when clearly, it is all your fault.

3) The Science chapter in my Calculus textbook. First off, Calc Textbook, why is there a violin on your cover? That is false advertisement. There is neither a violin nor violin music in you and I'm sick of getting my hopes up.

Secondly, your subject is Calculus. Math. So why the Science chapter? You know "sodium chlorate crystals" and "escherichia coli in a nutrient-broth medium" scare and confuse me (unless a nutrient-broth is Campbell's chicken noodle soup). Now I'm hungry. Look what you've done! Not  cool, Calculus textbook, not cool.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Tea cozy

Jumping off a bridge is a really lame way to die, that's all I'm saying.

I know men tend to go out with a bang: a corpse splattered on the sidewalk or brain matter and flecks of paint chips dripping to the cement off a squished Toyota. But c'mon. Jumping off a bridge is like the teachers pet of dying. Boring. Predictable. Obnoxiously showy.

It's possible my gut fear of anything above 5'3'' is influencing my opinion here. You know, maybe.

I just think if you're going to do something spectacularly stupid, it should be something spectacularly funny too. Something that can be written about in the papers.

The Darwin Awards are given to real-life accounts of people doing things so fatally moronic that it's essentially natural selection. For example: guy thinks of how cool it would be to drink beer on his lounge chair while going on a hot air balloon ride. Guy gets a ton of helium balloons, attaches them to his lounge chair, has a great time floating around the sky drinking a beer until he freezes to death.

Now that is a story to tell the grandkids.

Personally, I think dying by tea cozy would be worthwhile. It's a good conversation-starter. Plus, how do you die by tea cozy? I know it's possible and it has happened (there's a statistic somewhere), but how?

Maybe a tea cozy oozing with chloroform that knocks you out and you whack your head against the porcelain tea pot which shatters and burns your skin with scalding orange pekoe. You could die that way, right?

Or a really malicious tea cozy with a fancy-schmancy contraption of a drawstring at the bottom that could leap on your head and choke you so you'd be stumbling around the kitchen, screams muffled, as the drawstring gets tighter and tighter and you asphyxiate on the white linoleum floor with a blue tea cozy with little kittens and mittens all over it tied around your neck.

Heh.

...this is a little morbid, hey?

Don't be a bridge-jumper, that's my point. My very positive-thinking, not-morbid-just-practical point.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Top 25 Reasons Why I Have Faith In You

(Plus Three More Because I Couldn’t Choose Which Ones to Cut)


1) You’re pursuing your dream.

2) You’re still nice to Stephanie even after all the drama she put you through.

3) You listened to me sniffle and sob on the phone and didn’t tell me to quit being such an diva.

4) You pretend to not think blogging is uber-lame (and I appreciate that).

5) You tell me all the writing I send you is fantastic which tells me you know when lying is for the best (and I appreciate that too).

6) You know what you believe in and that doesn’t change because of other people’s opinions.

7) You’ve never yelled at me. Well you’ve yelled, but never angrily, and happy yelling is totally cool by me.

8) You talked me through a really awful time, even though I was vague and random and you didn’t really know what was going on it and possibly still don’t. In other words, your ability to wing it is unparalleled.

9) You work so friggin’ hard (no seriously, you should stop, you’re making me look bad).

10) You make friends with authority figures rather than resenting them on principle and that’s why you’re going to be famously successful and I’m going to scribble rants in pencil in a corner somewhere with all the blinds closed when I’m not Facebook stalking you.

11) You tell me to go study because that’s in my best interest, even when I don’t want to hear it (I appreciate that too).

12) You don’t take advantage of your influence over me, like if you convinced me that, seriously, rainbow hair is totally in right now. ‘Cause I’d probably do it if you said so.

13) You laugh at yourself therefore your awesomeness, if it was on y-axis, would have a vertical asymptote with a positive slope.

14) You laugh at my stupid math references (and I appreciate that).

15) You never belittled my attempts at composing even though yours were way cooler.

16) You are the most intelligent person I know. You also coo and use babytalk while playing with cats. This affects your awesomeness. See #13.

17) You have cringe-inducing spelling. This proves you are not a robot. Also, characters without flaws are booooring—I learned that in the class you told me to study for, see #11—so this makes you intriguing.

18) You welcomed me and Sarah into your hotel room on our first band trip, even though we were puny grade eights and you were grade nine.

19) You think you’re fat. This proves you are not a robot. See #17. Not being a robot affects your awesomeness. See #13.

20) You didn’t ditch me when I was dorky and still thought purses were a waste of space.

21) You and I won every single district debate we ever entered (except that one, but that’s because the judge was not aware of how limitless parliamentary style is, pfft).

22) You ordered whip cream at Starbucks with me and it was awesome. See #13.

23) You’re beautiful; society and America’s Next Top Model have convinced me that beautiful people will go far.

24) You support my Post-It addiction.

25) Your courage astounds me.

26) You still think “that’s what she said” jokes are funny.

27) You make me miss you. I don’t tell people that, which shows how awesome you must be to be the exception. See #13.

28) You’re the Meredith to my Cristina. Unless you think you’re Cristina, but Meredith gets the guy so my way’s more logical.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Awwwwwkward...

When I was in high school, I went to a district-wide writing workshop and got driven home by Kelly and her mom.

I was fidgeting in the back of their little grey car. Kelly, always annoyingly chatty, was blabbering to her Mom. I stopped staring out the window long enough to zone back in.

"-- Firefly for Maggie?" Kelly said.

"Oh! I forgot." Her mom said. She squinted her eyes at me in the mirror, "Our friend loves Firefly, the TV show, and she's dying--"

--to see it, I thought. I laughed.

Two seconds later I realized, oh shit, she didn't finish the sentence. 'She's dying.' Period. End of sentence. Maggie's heading to the grave and I'd laughed.

I gaped. What could I do? I couldn't take it back--apologizing would be useless--and ohmigod I'm an awful, awful person!

The seconds stretched by; neither Kelly nor her Mom spoke.

It was a long twenty minute ride.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

I watched Carrie last night. Oh, Stephen King, you're so cool.

While having dessert tonight, we began discussing pumpkins. Our house is well-known for having super mega foxy awesome pumpkins every year. Last year, I did a shoe theme. Pictures are posted here. Tonight, my mom said, "When she told me, I thought it was so tacky but the kids all loved it."

Tacky??

The neighbourhood kids did love it, we got lots of compliments and by golly they were beautiful.

This year, my theme is non-lame Broadway musical logos. Rent, Hairspray, Phantom of the Opera. Super popular musicals that have been made into movies so that normal people will recognize them.


...Tacky! Pfft.

The Kings nearly brought me down.

Today I made Thanksgiving dinner.

Actually, I stirred gravy, but that's the most important part, right?

While stirring, I was fingering my pearls and, when I got really bored, started swishing my skirt back and forth. I felt very stereotypical so I drank Coke from a can. Stereotypes don't drink from a can, right? Unless there's product placement. I'll drink a no-name next time.

We played cards after dessert and I won an epic game of Chase the Ace. It came down to my sister and I. We were very not stereotypical as we beat all the guys and rubbed it in their faces like the demure, respectable young women we are.

My nine of spades trumped her seven of hearts. Bazinga!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Nagini attacks Mr. W

These are JK Rowlings notes for part of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:




(Aren't they crazy cool! Each chapter was planned out, every plotline was tied up. The woman is a genius!)

These are my notes:


You'll notice my notes are actually the start of a story. It didn't go anywhere. Possibly due to a lack of notes. You may also notice the Hannah Montana lunch box underneath. Don't be a hater.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Tonight, Tonight

I figured I'd write a (fourth!!) blog entry before all energy has left me completely.

Today I had one cup of Earl Grey tea and two grande Starbucks coffees. Therefore, I came home and cleaned up my entire closet, threw out half my wardrobe of old should-have-gotten-rid-of-it-last-year-but-its-still-kinda-pretty blouses and pants with holes the size of netbooks in the crotchs, then sorted all of my dirty laundry and folded all my clean laundry into cute little piles that make my closet shelves look very avant-garde (every other square shelf has a purse or a pair of shoes in it. It's my dream closet).

For some reason, every time I clean my closet, my room gets a lot messier.

I'm currently listening to what's supposed to be West Side Story's Somewhere, but instead what sounds to be Celine Dion whispering amidst a bunch of hollow synthetic harmony and someone playing a triangle over and over again. I don't think Leonard Bernstein used the triangle. I think he was a real-instruments-only kind of guy.

Back to the closet. It's clean. But tomorrow, right before our guests come for Thanksgiving, I know everything in the house that doesn't have a proper place or that belongs in a specific place that doesn't look very pretty will all be piled in it. The door will then be shut. No one will ever know we own seven robes, none of which anyone wears because they're super old and we prefer real clothes. Except I will know. Because after our guests leave, the crap in my closet won't be put back to its proper unpretty place and I'll be stuck with it until I drink another cup of tea and two grande white chocolate mochas and clean it all up.

Also, I now have eight piles of laundry in my room. They do not look pretty. My head hurts. I tried to donate blood this morning but they rejected me because they're discriminatory like that. Also because if you give blood with low iron, you'll pass out and die. Or sue them.

It is six o'eight. I should probably eat something other than the whip cream that came on top of my coffees. I should probably turn the bathroom light and the closet light off. I should probably take at least one pile of laundry downstairs where it might actually become clean. I should probably not be listening to West Side Story's Rumble because there's lots of jumps and bangs and tension and it is not helping my sugar crash. I should probably stop starting sentences with 'I should probably.'

I should probably stop now.

Fictional and Mystical

Here are three unrelated totally related posts:

1) Fog

Fog is cloud that couldn't be bothered to float 'cause it's that goddamn lazy. But last week I was on the skytrain going over the bridge and all of a sudden, we went from foggy to omigod milk! The windows were completely white. It was like someone had suddenly put up curtains between two stations. I was straining to try to see water, or at least the other bridge, when I saw towers. On top of clouds. Like a kingdom. In the sky. In the real world.

So it was actually two skyscrapers that happened to rise slightly above the fog. But I don't care. I saw Narnia.

2) My Geography Professor (the one who taught me that fog is caused by a large amount of QE but I don't care because it has mystical powers anyway)

Her name is Wendy. She's super cool. She makes rocks and latent energy seem less mindblowing dull. And she has this sweater with big black sleeves that looks like a cape and reminds me of the professors at Hogwarts. They flap when she moves but instead of looking ominous and way too early for Halloween, she looks like Professor McGonagall twenty years younger.

By association, that makes me Ginny Weasley.

3) The Dangers of Carpetting

I wore heels to school yesterday and for the first time all semester (it only happened once last year), the elevator in the parkade was out of order. Which meant I had to walk up three flights of stairs. Three! In heels! I was wearing little black booties and since the heels have worn right down to the metal, they sound like tap shoes. I don't click, I tap. It's not the sound I was going for but now I really want to own a pair of tap shoes so I can tap legitimately. Also so I can look at a dance floor and say, "I'd tap that."

As I was heading to Calculus, humming AVPM's To Dance Again, I turned down the North corridor and suddenly, no tap! Carpetting everywhere! All the pain of squished toes and popped blisters and people couldn't even hear me coming!

How is this related to fictional, mystical places thereby making this not just a misplaced rant?

Uhh... If I were to create a fictional, mystical place, part of the mysticism would be in the non-carpetted flooring.

See what I did there? Three totally related posts :D

Pretty and Witty

Apparently posting one status with a link to my writing blog last January is not enough advertisement. People need to know that unpublished writers do more than whine and sip coffee and complain about how their muse broke up with them and now they will never be able to write anything worth reading ever ever again because their soul--and therefore, their career--have been abandoned for a blonde science major who doesn't "act like a fucking child when I have to go to work."

I should clarify that that is not a personal story.

Anywho, after whining and sipping and complaining, unpublished writers do consider writing things. And when this consideration aligns with the deadline of an assignment for a Creative Writing class, sometimes things actually get written.

And when they do, I post them HERE at my writing blog, Pretty and Witty.

I thought Pretty and Witty was a great title until I started posting some fairly ugly pieces so please pay attention to the subtitle. It makes me seem considerably less arrogant.

Here!  and TOTALLY HERE TOO!

And in case you haven't gotten the point yet because you only skim blogs, GO HERE!

Starbucks

I am in Starbucks, typing at my laptop, attempting to look chic.

People typing on their little laptops, drinking venti low fat caramel whatevers with extra whip at Starbucks are always very chic. They write intellectual yet quirky pieces that are very smart and use French phrases like je ne sais quoi, le chateau, or l'amore est une enfant boheme.

Actually that last one is a quote from Carmen. And the other one's a store. They were the only other French phrases I could think of, which is a little pathetic considering I speak French.

But as they type these remarkable pieces with their quick fingers and their venti caramel whatevers, they look very chic. And they don't do things like read this blog or Facebook stalk people in their Calc class or talk with the CleverBot.

I figure so long as I hide my screen no one needs to know, right?

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Cowabunga! (...that's a funny word, right? Right?)

You know when a stand-up comic pauses after a joke to hear the sound of his success? I'm scared shitless of that pause. I don't write pure humour because, duh, what if it's not funny?

My professor pointed out that despite the tons and tons of tension building up in my short story, there's so much humour that it balances it out and doesn't overwhelm the reader.

Humour?

The piece, which is here if you're curious, has some funny lines. I always knew that. I just didn't realize that all together, there are a lot of funny sections. And a reference to Waldo.

One time we were at a restaurant making up silly lyrics to one of our GnS songs, and we had one that was pretty funny. My other friend was not impressed. "No, dude, I know funny."

He was right. It wouldn't have been funny, but in the three second gap between hearing the line and hearing his response, I thought it was, so suddenly, my entire scale of not funny to must make this my new facebook status! was thrown and I haven't gotten it back yet.

The monologue I wrote for my playwriting class last year? I thought it was seriously dramatic. Possibly too dramatic. I was hesitant to hand it in for fear of the seeing 'Sensationalized!' scrawled at the top and underlined in red felt pen.

Instead, they laughed!

I feel like I should make this post funny in some way. Ooh! Check this out!

Monday, October 4, 2010

The derivative is the slope of the tangent line, the limit of the difference quotient, and the instantaneous rate of change.

I'm trying to decide what will help my Calculus midterm mark more: extra studying or blogging (which will make me more confident and help me come to terms with my potential failure/success emotionally. See? There's logic.)

So far I'm choosing blogging.

I have no idea how I'll do. It starts at eight thirty a.m. Usually I'm half asleep for the first hour or so and then wake up when the prof gives the first example and I realize I have no idea how to do it but doesn't my pen look  pretty.

I think I understand the concepts and how they're applied. I think.
Today, we had a fire drill in my Fiction class. I grabbed my coffee (and my jacket and my purse because I'd rather be dead than unfashionable) and we all hunkered outside. The prof didn't know about it in advance, so we figure someone really wasn't ready for their midterm and wanted out.

I know the feeling.

After tomorrow's Calc test, I have my lab exam on Wednesday, my Econ midterm on Thursday and my Geog midterm next week.

Then I melt into a puddle of goo and stay that way until I can gather the strength to re-emerge.

Here's aiming for goo.