September 10th, 2008

Please advise

A few things I could use some help with, if you happen to know…

1) Can anyone recommend a fairly accessible book on the KKK? For obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to do a blind web search on this sort of things, and also obviously, I don’t know anyone with first-hand experiences.

2) Can anyone explain to me what’s going on with Toronto recycling? (I believe it’s different from city to city, so out-of-town advice I guess doesn’t count.) Can you mix paper and plastic now? What about shopping bags? I don’t understand the new labels on the bins in the subways, nor the (different) ones on the bins in my appartment building. I’m worried I’m not being as helpful to the planet as I mean to be. Standing in the alleyway trying not to get hit by a car or a pigeon, I’m not at my best trying to figure this stuff out, and so far no one else seems to know either (comforting in solidarity, but unhelpful).

3) How long can you keep olives in the fridge once the jar has been opened?

4) What should I wear to my book launch? I am *sure* it doesn’t matter to the audience (since I’ve been the audience up until now, and have no memory of what any author has ever worn at a launch/reading/anything) but this is the current thing my mind has perched on to worry about.

If you can weigh on this stuff, that’d be awesome. And, hey, feel free to give me some good advice on an unrelated matter you think I need help with–I take direction well.

I’m listening to the low moan of the dial tone again
RR

August 26th, 2008

There was a Bill Murray movie like this

My email homepage provides a horoscope, so while I’m not wildly into astrology, I’ve taken to checking it every day with mild curiosity. Even though these things are just vague enough to suit everybody, they are also filled with very vague good advice that it would do no one any harm to follow. Like this:

Gemini
You’ll be working with a lot more energy than the people around you will have today, so you need to be prepared to wait for them — a lot. This is not good news if you’re dependent on others for your own progress, but you won’t be able to speed anyone up — so don’t waste your time trying. Even though patience doesn’t always come easy for you, you’ll find that as the day goes on, you’ll get more and more comfortable cooling your heels while other people try to catch up.

Be patient–sure, why not? It’s usually something cheerful and zen like that, something that makes me feel better heading into the day. Unforutnately, the system at the website use seems to have broken down, and the above has been my horoscope for the past week now. I’m beginning to feel that this is affecting reality, thatI am in fact living the same day over and over again. I’m TIRED of being patient. I want to move ON. Is that too much to ask??

Um, there may have been other problems recently that the random zodiac machine at excite.com had nothing to do with. Either way, this is bad for morale.

Love love love
RR

August 12th, 2008

Mayumi

So, yes, I did it: I bought a digital camera. It doesn’t usually take this much Sturm und Drang to buy a camera (or a house) but I have a tough time with electronics. Thanks to all who supported me in my invented problem, and thanks especially to the subject of my first digital photo, beautiful Afshan in the unbeautiful rain:

The other major event of the weekend was a haircut that reduced my attractively uninteresting (boringly benign?) shoulder length curls into the Emo-Boy Special–a jaw-length tangle that flips over my entire face the moment I nod. Leaning forward, I could be in My Chemical Romance. *You* try to guess the difference:

See, impossible to tell who’s who!!

Look forward to more amusing guessing games of this nature with the help of Mayumi. Mayumi is the camera–I name my appliances to make them seem less threatening, and this camera is of Japanese parentage.

My heart is far away / tell me what to say
RR

August 11th, 2008

Warnings

1) If you are taking a bubble bath, do *not* put your head under if you are easily upset by loud noises. Upon re-emerging, your ears will be filled with bubbles that will pop, creating the sound of a forest fire burning a path directly to your brain. Very upsetting.
2) $13 is enough to pay a hair-dresser to obtain a tidy, competent haircut, but it is NOT enough to pay a hair-dresser to try to dissaude you from your own bad ideas. If you say anxiously, “Do you think that would work for me?” a salon-type will say, “Sweetie, maybe you need to rethink this,” but a barber-shop type will say, “Please sit back in the chair.”
3) The air tastes like fall.

I think it’s coming and it comes so fast
RR

May 24th, 2008

Good times, v. 3.0

Yesterday was my birthday and it was awesome, and now I’m thirty. I’m excited for thirty, since when you say you are twenty-nine everyone assumes you are lying. I’ve never been one of those who dislikes birthdays–I’m selfish enough to really enjoy the concept of a day that’s all about me, though with new people it’s often hard to think of a way to tell them exactly what day it *is*. Ever since I was in high school, I’ve had a clever trick–I wear glitter on my birthday, to work or school or wherever I’m going. Then, when people rightly ask why, I tell them I am celebrating and they are then forced to wish me a happy birthday. Which is all I really want out of life.

I got all kinds of other stuff, too, including a pirate eyepatch (I covered it in glitter), a sparkler that singed some of my arm hair, and many many good wishes from lovely people. Also some good stuff that wasn’t even birthday related–the Biblioasis Fall catalogue came in the mail on Thursday, and it is really classy-looking and interesting and CONTAINS MY BOOK, and I can’t pretend I didn’t flip to that page first. And that arrival inspired the Google-based ecstasy of the previous post–you can now pre-order my book via Chapters-Indigo! This is very exciting to me. Kerry pointed out that you can also find it on Amazon.ca, and then I found it on Amazon.com which is awesome in a largely theoretical way, since I don’t know many people in the states. But still…maybe I’ll meet some!

Later on tonight, I’ll be seeing a dance show (may be you want to, too

Danceworks Co-Works and Kemi Collective Present
“Between Here and Now”
choreography by Jennifer Dallas and Marc Boivin
May 22-24, 8pm
The Winchester Street Theatre (80 Winchester Street,
Toronto)
Tickets 416 204 1082)

And tomorrow, birthday luncheon.

And it’s freaking finally spring. Look how gorgeous is outside. It’s all for me, clearly.

A change of heart / don’t call me back

RR

April 18th, 2008

Reasons While I’ll Never Get Anywhere in Life

–I frequently smell like bubblegum, and occasionally blow an unconscious bubble while someone is talking to me.
–I wear glitter on my birthday so that people will ask me, “Why are you wearing glitter?” so I can tell them “Because it’s my birthday!” and then they will wish me a happy birthday.
–I can’t clap on the beat.
— I don’t absorb news in any way, so I didn’t know anything about the economy being in decline or the looming TTC strike until today.
–Sometimes, I feel like wearing a fedora, and then I wear a fedora.
–I am addicted to aspertame, which is apparently embalming me from the inside while I still live.
–I can’t pronounce the word “origin”.
–I make lists of my flaws instead of dwelling on the positive.
–It doesn’t really bother me to wait.
–When someone walking past me asks how I’m doing, I stop and answer.
–I can’t climb a rope, whistle, shuffle cards, ice-skate, name all 50 states, intimidate anyone, bench-press more than 40 pounds, or find my flashlight, but I can fit my entire hand in my mouth.

Also, due to the newly looming (newly discovered to be looming?) TTC strike, I am now literally not going anywhere, starting Monday. Maybe I’ll be in a better mood by then!

You might be messin round
RR

April 14th, 2008

Compassion

I have extremely weak eyes. Aside from being some godawful prescription that renders me unable to go to the beach with people whose hands I feel uncomfortable asking to hold, my eyes also water at almost anything. Pepper, bright reflections, laughter: all render me teary. Wind is the worst–it totally reproduces the effects of tragedy on me. In addition to streaming tears, wind actually turns my eyes red; even the edges of my nose. If I have to walk very far on a windy day, I look like my heart is broken.

Which never used to matter, until I became a pedestrian in chill and populous cities. Now long walks are one of my principal means of locomotion, and I can’t stay home because it’s gusty. Thus, I find myself the recipient of many compassionate stares as I stroll through Toronto, bouncing to my iPod, carrying my groceries, looking like I’m about to throw myself on the casket. People offer tight-lipped smiles, encouraging nods, nervous stares. Bus drivers look horrified, possibly worried I will look to them as authority figures to solve whatever problem I am having (many, it seems, do).

I can’t explain, because no one ever asks. Not once in all my watery years in Toronto has anyone asked the question I see itching behind their own eyes: “Are you ok?” Compassionate people, Torontonians, but even compassion has its limits.

A little boy under a table with cake is his hair
RR

March 25th, 2008

You might wanna

…come see a bunch of writers, including me, read tomorrow night at the Exile Quarterly/Exile Editions Launch: 7:15, the Dora Keogh Pub, more info at the link. High hopes for fun and literature abound.

Other fun upcoming is the Idle Tigers show at The Embassy on Saturday, 29th of March as part of the Pitter
Patter Festival. I hear the Tigers are going to be up quite late in the evening, so if you can’t make that, you can always just pre-order the record, The Spirit Salon ahead of the May 1 release date and feel giddy with anticipation. I did, and now I do.

Also, it was both sunny *and* warm this morning, a rare combination. Hooray!

So pay my way into Graceland
RR

March 15th, 2008

One way you might know you’re a grown-up

You think you look most attractive when you also feel you look most like yourself.

This, I believe, will be the author photo on the back of *Once*:

At the top of my lungs
RR

January 29th, 2008

Free Associative

So I have a cold, which is making me insane! It’s a pretty minor cold, as these things go, I’m sure, but since I’m rarely ill, I have poor coping skills. My eyes have been itchy, even in my sleep. The other night, I dreamed I went to the bathroom mirror to see if I had an eyelash or something in there. In the dream, the pink bit of the corner of my eye had tiny plastic snowflakes in it, and I couldn’t get them out. It was weird, and icky, and then I woke up.

Yesterday, in real-life (I think), I was leaving work when a very sleepy fat raccoon lumbered out of the bushes. Its tail had been mainly lopped off somehow, and it was very very puffy and fat–it looked like an animate dust-bunny. It was headed drunkenly for the road (aren’t raccoons supposed to be hibernating in winter?) I am scared of raccoons, ever since one tried to crawl up my skirt while I was eating on the rooftop patio at Hemingway’s, but I didn’t want to see this one squished by a car. I yelled, “Bad raccoon!” to no avail. Even though it was like 5:04 right outside my office, I was mysteriously alone outside.

“Bad raccoon! No road!” I yelled, and then I found a stick on the ground and tried to chase the raccoon away. Only, the raccoon would not be chased and *ran towards me*. I panicked, and threw the stick at the raccoon, who very wearily, like a teenaged babysitter consenting to a game of Boggle, turned and went back into the bushes. “Yeah! And stay there!” I told it, and the greyish snowy dark beside the road.

I think I have a low-grade fever.

The eventual downfall / is just the bill from the restaurant
RR