that's, like, so 1977
today i stuck a couple more safety pins in my ear for lack of anything better to do (i don't have class on thursdays); i know safety pins-as-piercings are very cliched but for some strange reason, i've seen maybe only 1 or 2 other people (outside of books/movies) who actually do 'wear' safety pins. the current fashion seems to be more about stretched earlobes & multiple facial piercings -- done by certified professionals, of course, & not in front of the bathroom mirror prior to brushing one's teeth.
in other news tonight, i've had my first weird-person sighting ever since i moved here: it was some guy on the bus that had not only dyed his hair pylon-orange, but also his goatee & eyebrows...the orangeness brought out the blue in his zits & acne scars so that they were a delicate shade of lavender that would have been nice if it wasn't oozing sores & cratered skin.
(meme)
-- spread the pointlessness --
1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
-- this is what passes for my sentence: "-artichoke" ...& it's from
this post.
it's hard to be honest if noone cares: being another half-assed stab at advocating consumer awareness.
dalhousie has some kind of exclusive distribution deal with pepsico (vending machines & whatnot) -- & as destroying any lingering warm-&-fuzzy feelings i have left regarding The Gradual Monopolization of Everything seems to have become my new hobby, i present to you, dear reader, links to the "brands" section of some corporations that own practically every single thing you've heard of & a whole bunch you have not -- i'll throw in some of the more inexplicable ones for your amusement. at present, nearly all the links are related to food in some way because i figure 'food' is universal & therefore ought to disturb y'all the most...i'll probably do 'music' next. (for convenience's sake, i'll just keep adding more links to this post as i find them instead of starting up separate sub-rants: this way it'll be easier to skip over for all you readers out there in search of simple lighthearted, wholesome family fun.)-- pepsico: doritos, tropicana, cheetos shots, radical fruit-- the coca-cola company: chinotto, evian, bacardi mixers, guarana jesus, water salad, bimbo break [the mascot's some kind of cartoon-bear]-- general mills: betty crocker, lucky charms, pilsbury, diablitos underwood [it's a "meat spread"]-- texas pacific group ventures has "investments" in: burger king, adobe, amazon, motorola, tivo-- nestle: smarties, lean cuisine, purina, perrier, nestle babymilk, galderma [a joint venture between nestle & l'oreal that does dermatological pharmaceuticals. ever wonder what's in your chocolate bar?]-- kellogg: froot loops, keebler cookies, kashi [a health food line that i always thought was independently owned, & of course the kellogg company is not mentioned anywhere on the kashi page -- not even in the 'privacy policy' page, because marketing says the average health nut cares about stupid things like rights & privacy (whereas the average drunkard doesn't, apparently.)]-- diageo: red stripe, dom perignon, johnnie walker, captain morgan, bertrams vo, pimm's, -- conagra: chef boyardee, jiffy pop, orville redenbacher's, hunt's, libby's, manwich, big mama sausage, culturelle [a diet supplement/aid]-- kraft: kool-aid, oscar meyer, grey poupon, grape nuts, jell-o, vegemite, tombstone pizza, mallomars, milk-bone [what the hell is it with people-food companies making pet foods?], athenos hummus-- altria: kraft's parent company which also just happens to own phillip morris: "the world's leading international cigarette business" according to their own website & the makers of marlboro, virginia slims, benson & hedges, alpine, & other portable sources of cancer. ( yeah i know i'm being a hypocrite here by denigrating tobacco & not alcohol, but you'd look better if i was drunk & who doesn't want to be pretty?)-- mcdonald's: though not a conglomerate, i'm including it here for its sheer craptacularity -- the food is bad enough, but who the fuck wants to buy a mcdonald's basketball jersey?
why can't i be you?
Exactly.
skyscraper soul
the school whose dorm i'm staying in (dalhousie u) is shutting its doors for the winter holidays, for maintainence or some crap like that. every tenant is supposed to leave "24 hours after the end of their last exam" or stay for an extra twenty-something dollars a day -- not including the cost of food. but i won't be here suffering in halifax because i've just bought plane tickets to new york, where i'll be spending a bit more than 3 weeks. (december 13 to january 3.)
screw toronto: i don't really want to see most of my family anyways.
hopefully i'll get enough of a skyscraper fix to last me 'til the summer.
this is funny only because i'm not a guy:
vodka sucks anyway.
error
something is very, very wrong. previously i posted about how the school-provided internet is censored & how i couldn't get to certain pages...well, this time, because i couldn't view this page, i googled the seniors-and-bestiality thing again. & guess what, i got treated to a picture of a woman fisting a horse... there goes another bit of my innocence.
-- at least the woman was young, i suppose.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
sept. 25th:
-- apparently the page is down for legitimate reasons & therefore doesn't have anything to do with the school's censorship/thought-control of student activity.
what's the matter? don't you want to run the freak over?
drivers in halifax take all the fun out of jaywalking: even trucks & buses will stop for you. you could probably cross the road repeatedly while wearing a blindfold & still not get killed.
i've gone from Denial to Resignation: i've changed my blogger settings to display halifax-time automatically rather than doing it manually every time i post something.
smart tip no. 864398:
is it wise to drink on an empty stomach (something called "konig ludwig"...it's some kind of beer.) just before going out to see a horror movie? 'cause that's what i'm doing right now.
look ma, i'm plagiarizing voltaire!
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
...there's always room for one more
Democrats, PETA Members, Militant Vegans
Circle I Limbo
Hipsters, Scientologists
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind
Rednecks, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow
Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle IV Rolling Weights
Bill Gates
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled
River Styx
Creationists
Circle VI Buried for Eternity
River Phlegyas
Osama bin Laden, Mel Gibson, George Bush
Circle VII Burning Sands
General asshats, Republicans
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement
Bono, People with Bono-hair, The Pope
Circle IX Frozen in Ice
Design your own hell
dick on a stick
today marks my first (& almost definitely only) encounter with the abomination known as the fried & battered hotdog-on-a-stick. because i make a point of trying everything they serve in the caf to make sure i hate living here as much as possible, i grabbed one of the more burnt ones, smeared mayonnaise on it to reinforce the penis-similarity, & choked it down with a glass of soda; i normally never drink soda .
there's a loud, rhythmic banging coming from the wall dividing my room from the one next door (there's elevators on the other side). i don't know if she's got a 'friend' over or if she's complaining about my music. everybody else seems to have a stereo anyways, while all i have are the built-in speakers in my puny laptop. i know next to nothing about music but i can identify every single song my floormates blast out of their state of the art sound systems (lots of beastie boys, u2, green day & similar mainstream radio-fodder)...sad, ennit?
apres floor dinner at 'east side mario's'
i fucking HATE theme restaurants.
5 to 10 servings of elixir vegetal a day'll do that to ya
this is the good ship theodore too. it does edutaining harbour tours for 20 bucks a pop. the first time i saw it i thought i was seeing things because 'theodore' is from some kid's show i vaguely remember watching; now it just kinda disturbs me that there's a reason for having a perpetually smiling ship with blinking eyes (hydraulic-powered eyelids...) in the first place.
alexander keith's is to nova scotians what guinness is to the irish. it's also owned by mega-brewer labatt. this insignificant detail is not mentioned anywhere on the official keith's page except for the small-print legal stuff that you get to by clicking on the "privacy policy" link -- & we all know it's only nader-worshipping 'consumer advocates' who read that stuff.
ever since the merger of oh-so-canadian brewer molson to neo-nazi owned coors [i'm not saying this only because the founder's name is adolph -- check out their pro-diversity propaganda pamphlet for something that's too freaky to be happening in the 21st century] earlier this year, i've been noticing more & more that regardless of all the 'choices' we have, the money still goes to the same few bloated suits in the end.
incidentally, guinness is owned by diageo, which also owns tanqueray, smirnoff, cuervo, & a whole bunch of other famous brands. but at least guinness owns up to its selling out: you can easily navigate to diageo's site straight from their main page.
support the underdog: drink chartreuse.
now that's more like it!
i just got a last minute call to play assistant bartender for the film festival hospitality suite!
i'd give up drinking for a year if halifax got a subway system
rode around on random buses again, trying to find Something Interesting but not much luck; there were a couple of places selling 'vintage' clothes but i have no money & my bank account has been locked down for some reason until next week.
what going around-and-around in halifax/dartmouth reminds me of most is getting lost in new jersey... there's even the occasional 'boston pizza.' what's with businesses naming themselves after places where they aren't? i understand a convenience store or whatever naming itself after the street/intersection it's on, but this?
are there "chinese food" restaurants in china?
alien landscape
the sunrise looks weird here. i can sort of see the lights from dartmouth's oil refinery towers through the fog but not much else. there's a wasp thwacking itself against the window an inch away from the actual open part. i can't close the window because i'm not able to fall asleep without hearing the sound of construction going on. there's a building being demolished next to the dorm: it's gonna become a parking lot even though downtown toronto at 4 in the morning has more cars than halifax at what passes for rush hour here. there's also some sort of apartment being built half a block away. it's only 6 or 7 storeys tall but, hey, it's a start...
i'm the only person on my floor who hasn't complained about the noise.
this is your brain on stilts
[must think happy thoughts...]
alright... 1.) i missed my first class of the school year today because last night at around 3 in the morning i decided to lie down for a little while before continuing with my assignment for 'intro to studio practice' & only woke up an hour ago still holding the ruler i thought i'd put down. 2.) i had candy for breakfast (gummi brains & jawbreakers). 3.) i bought a lint-remover brush-thingie yesterday at the dollar store so now i can wear my black t-shirts again without looking like i spend my spare time hiding under people's seldom-swept beds.
that's about it, i'm afraid.
i seem to have descended into self-parody. how novel.
wake me up when september ends
after some deliberation aided by liberal amounts of locally-brewed ale, this drunk & sullen canadian girl has decided to refrain from boring y'all with any more minute cataloguings of the suckedelic craptacularity of my day-to-day adjusting to Life Without Skyscrapers -- at least until the end of the month. if i can't find anything/reason for me to like this place by then, i'll start up the bitching again & this blog will become nothing but a virtual puke-bucket for my "thoughts" for the next 4 years... the atlantic film festival & nsmw (nova scotia music week) both start up in the next few days so i'll see if i can go volunteer for them to keep boredom at bay.
-Artistic as fuck & twice as ugly.
a tinfoil hat'll be the next phase
i am now in that paranoic mindstate where if someone looks at me funny or does something that offends/annoy me i start thinking that it's because they're racist fucks & not because they are stupid fucks, & that they are out to get me, that maybe a lynching or a gang raping is gonna be my last encounter with the people of this fair county...a bottle of chartreuse has never lasted so few days. even the numerous quasi-conversations i've had with people who tell me that i remind them of their "malaysian friend" or their "philippino friend" or their "japanese friend" or some other shit-ass stereotype makes me want to gut them with my umbrella.
september 11, seems like i ought to say something, but i can't.
but paper-based pleasure-stimulators aren't good enough in this age of technology
this free internet i'm getting from school is censored. i kept getting messages about the server not responding but only for certain pages...so i googled "hardcore bestiality old people" -- pretty much the worst thing i can think of -- & of course i got results but when i clicked the links all i got was another error message. how will the student body react when it comes to their attention that dalhousie u doesn't support wanking?
i was kinda hoping for errol flynn, but sure.
John Wayne
You scored 50% Tough, 19% Roguish, 28% Friendly, and 4% Charming! |
You, my friend, are a man's man, the original true grit, one tough talking, swaggering son of a bitch. You're not a bad guy, on the contrary, you're the ultimate good guy, but you're one tough character, rough and tumble, ready for anything. You call the shots and go your own way, and if some screwy dame is willing to accept your terms, that's just fine by you. Otherwise, you'll just hit the open trail and stay true to yourself. You stand up for what you believe and can handle any situation, usually by rushing into the thick of the action. You're not polished and you're not overly warm, but you're a straight shooter and a real stand up guy. Co-stars include Lauren Bacall and Maureen O'Hara, tough broads who can take care of themselves.
Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the
Classic Dames Test. |
 |
My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 90% on Tough | | You scored higher than 68% on Roguish | | You scored higher than 38% on Friendly | | You scored higher than 2% on Charming |
|
Katharine Hepburn
You scored 23% grit, 23% wit, 61% flair, and 9% class! |
You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet. You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who like strong women.
Find out what kind of classic leading man you'd make by taking the
Classic Leading Man Test. |
 |
My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 40% on grit | | You scored higher than 29% on wit | | You scored higher than 99% on flair | | You scored higher than 3% on class |
|
give it to me baby
first piece of spam...it figures that i attract the insane ones, but if i created my own nutjob religion, i wouldn't name my god "norm." 'norm' would be the name of the patron saint of accountants & murderers in my personal pantheon. strange that i'd get spammed so soon after bitching about not getting any (ha.)... what if the powers that be (is that you, norm?) grants everybody a single wish & i wasted mine on this?
dartmouth
like a convict doing life who's happy to get an extra half hour in the yard, halifax is starting to look better after my impromptu self-directed bus tour of dartmouth. dartmouth is the town right next to halifax, which you get to by ferry.. the place is one "picturesque" house after another, complete with lobster traps & mailboxes on posts -- no skyscrapers whatsoever. on the entire bus route (50 or so minutes), i only saw 2 cool things: a school bus that was painted over with hotrod designs (flames, Things with veiny eyes, the whole deal) & the sunset over the ocean on the part of the road where the only thing (asides from the bus itself) separating me from the water was just a bunch of rocks. the teeth-achy, this-is-so-fucking-awesome feeling i got then is probably what makes people romanticize pirates & the Sea in general. but i digress, even after staying on that bus until the batteries in my cd player died & i'd gone past the same a&w billboard-on-wheels advertising something called a "teen burger" thrice, i'm not completely reprogrammed yet. there's more emo-type anguish where that came from.
wtf?
-- fauna: today a really huge black moth flew out of my closet when i opened it. the number of flies is also growing; i think they like it here for some reason. at school there's all these dead mosquitos the size of small dragonflies lying around the edges & corners of the walls. i almost stepped on one. so far, i've seen more ravens than pigeons around: do things/people die a lot out here? there's far too many homeless people here for a town ( i'm absolutely refusing to think of this place as a city) this size...
--food: these days i'm living almost exclusively on french fries & salads (randomly chopped up raw veggies, more like) -- the only palatable food the caf serves. nothing & no-one has been able to turn me vegetarian so far but i just might convert if the "meat" they overcook continues to be so fucking bad: last night i tried to order a medium-rare burger but the so-called cook told me that they buy their burgers pre-cooked & that they just warm them back up on the grill...which dries the damn things out even more. i've taken to ordering a bagged lunch every day -- basically the same food but with even fewer choices -- so that i can at least eat outside or wherever else i want.
--environs: i'm now mixing chartreuse into my drinking water at a 1:5 ratio of liquor-to-tap water. being perpetually slightly numb senses-wise is helping me cope: prior to being here, i've never, ever even thought about my being asian: i was just a Canadian & that was enough to satisfy my sense of self & everybody who mattered...here in halifax, where at least 80% of the populace is some kind of pale, i keep catching myself thinking "if i'm canadian, are those people more 'canadian' than me 'cause they look alike?" real fucked up, no?
--to top it all off i just paid a hundred bucks for a single textbook. it shouldn't be that expensive even if the pages were made from the wood of endangered trees. i don't even have enough money to buy paper towels & resort to taking wads of it from the bathrooms (which are much better appointed than the dorm rooms, by the way).
a public service announcement:
[while i don't do the whole 'praise the lord' thing, the unironic invocation of god in this instance is not gonna be something i'll make fun of. rest assured, the mocking of blind faith will resume eventually. ]
--something i got from richard bacchus...
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P Diddy Really wrote this, I got it from one of his assistants, it's
awesome.
feel free to pass it on to your fellow Canadiens
Subject: OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS!!!!!!!!
Those are OUR FAMILY members DYING out there!!!!!
Would u let a member of your family DIE and not do anything about
it??????
We can't wait any longer!
Let's stop lookin at the news and shakin our heads in disbelief!!!! YES
this goverment is letting our people die and they DON'T GIVE A
FUCK!!!!!.
If BUSHES daughters were out there there would be thousands of planes
and helicopters and search teams lookin for them girls cause that's his
family.
Let's get out of shock and take care of ourselves and our people. If we
don't help them they will DIE!!!! Let's do somethin now!!! We are
already late.
Pls don't wait another second!!!!
Later today there sendin the military in there to SHOOT TO KILL. Not to
give aid or water or food or medicine. But to treat our people like wild
animals just because they are tryin to survive and have givin up hope
and feel abandoned and are fustrated!!!!
What would u do if u didn't eat in 4 days? U and me would steal take and do what ever we could to take care of our families!!! We all would.
White or black!!!
If this was happenin in
Oregon and white kids was flippin out of fustration the president
wouldn't give the greenlight to shoot to kill. As a matter of fact the
relief would have been there 3 days ago!!!
The reality is that its new orleans. and its BLACK people so we
shouldn't be suprised. Sorry for the long email. But to sum up what I'm
tryin to say so we are CLEAR........
FUCK BUSH
FUCK THE GOVERMENT!!!!!!
Let's get off our asses and act now anyway u can.
They don't care about our people!!!!
Do we care about our people?
Rt now. WERE just as GUILTY as
The GOVERMENT and BUSH because were not actin.
If it was our family we would be doin more!!!!!
NOW NOW NOW NOW
Rt this second. If u don't know what to do. Act like it was your
grandmother or mother father son daughter. Out there dyin.
Do whatever u can do to save there lives!!!!!!
God bless our people please!!!!!!!
Pls feel free to pass this message on to whomever will CARE!!!!!!!!!
WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
---------------------
God Bless.
Diddy,
Curtis Cates/Terri Marlowe,
www.bbqproductions.com
RIchard Bacchus AKA The Atomic Elf
www.richardbacchus.com
JUST SAY NO! TO POVERTY!
Thank heavens for Kanye West, a Real American Hero, Right or wrong He
spoke His Mind, as should we all.
FREE YOUR MIND AND YOUR HEART WILL FOLLOW!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
i wish i was helping out down in new orleans right now: Danger, Adventure, & Excitment... & it's a good cause...absolutely fuck all is going on here in halifax.
i bet the more loutish of the dumbfuck tourists here are here only because they can't go south to their party town no more & that's why they're throwing beer bottles out of speeding cars down on barrington street instead of on bourbon street.
pourquoi?
how come i don't get any spam? everybody else gets spammed except me! maybe i'm jealous but is ths blog REALLY so offensive that i scare away even spammers?
i don't wanna be your china doll
another thing about halifax i'm trying to adjust to is the large percentage of 'white' people: the population is a whole lot less diverse here than toronto or nyc -- when i'm the only person from a "visible minority" in an entire classroom, it's hard not to feel freaked out; not that i fit in in the first place but to have an added air of exoticism purely for something you're born with is...i don't know...not right somehow. there's a woman in the same class who looks to be at least a good decade older than the teacher. i'd ask her if she feels peculiar, being so different from the rest of the class, but she said explicitly that she was in it only for the degree (so that she could teach art) & rushed off immediately to wash the charcoal off of her hands the first oppertunity she got with an oh-my-gawd-i've-been-fingerpainting-with-diarrhea kind of expression on her face...
the good news is, you're not pregnant. the bad news is, you've got cancer.
my computer's finally got it's internet connection & i'm typing this in my room that's full of fruit flies doing some sort of mating dance (or at least that's what i think it is; i tried to smoke them out of my room with incense but that only made them hyper)prior to going out for lunch -- the cafeteria food is utter crap, & because the admin-people are scared that you'll take/steal more than you need, you can neither take your bag into the dining room nor take food outside. i feel weird eating indoors, so maybe i'll end up with a newer, slimmer me by year's end...
the first booze i had over here was a bottle of something called 'desperados', a beer "flavoured with tequila" that was brewed/bottled in france of all places. chartreuse, at $21 a bottle, is 10 bucks cheaper in halifax than it is in toronto.
but as much as i'd like to, i can't live on chartreuse alone, & even though halifax may not be as bad as my initial impression of it, cheap & ample booze doesn't make up for the barely-there transit system (infrequent buses & NO SUBWAY -- can you believe it?) & stuntedness of the architecture (it just feels strange, looking up & actually seeing mostly sky).
the first class of the day was 'introduction to visual culture' & i slept through most of it. the textbooks for the one course has already cost me almost 80 bucks; is a university education really that necessary?
at least the tap water tastes like dirt here, too.
how am i gonna amuse myself for the next 4 years?
-- my computer isn't up-and-running, so i'm reduced to typing this in a mall at some kiosk.
--i'm currently out searching for a place that sells hangers & other life essentials; all that seems to be around are 'handicrafts' shops, skate shops, & other establishments that seem to cater to the people with the most money to spend: middle aged tourists & university students.
-- i'm having trouble finding a place that sells chartreuse here, too.
--i don't think i can stay sane if forced to live in the countryside/suburbs. just living in a small 'city' like halifax is driving me crazy. at least i get a view of the ocean from my grotty dorm room.
--turns out that the edition of photoshop i spent $700 on is the pc edition & therefore does not run on mac; if anyone wants to trade, pleeese contact me.
--i didn't figure out i was in a different time-zone until this afternoon & consequently was running a whole hour behind the rest of halifax without knowing it.
--classes start tomorrow. woohoo.
-canada's ocean playground & i can't swim.
rabbit with a pocketwatch
i'm leaving for halifax very early tomorrow morning -- because plane tickets are cheaper in the more inhuman hours -- i'm about partway packed & am going to be schleping my stuff over there in a used, german army-issue sack that's slightly more than half my height. it's strange to see my life reduced to several armloads of obsessively plastic-bagged-&-taped packages. i'm not bringing my guitar because i can't carry it. a whole lot of stuff will be left behind. chartreuse, when sipped sparingly, can actually help you stay awake. i'm trying to finish all of it before i leave so as to leave no incriminating evidence; the only booze i'm bringing with me is a mostly untouched bottle of elixir vegetal because even though it tastes like antique shops &/or long-dead people, it is 142 proof & i can't just empty it down the drain...this really is too much happening all at once -- i'm still adjusting to bagels here tasting barely-adequate, for fuck's sake! i even have a new computer: a mac laptop that costs a couple hundred dollars more than all my other possessions put together, which is seriously disorienting; i've been a lifelong 'windows' user for one thing & the supposedly 'intuitive' layout of the mac os feels completely Unnatural to me. but i'm always up for new challenges, especially sorta pointless ones ( i got a mac instead of a pc because the university residence i'm gonna be staying at has free internet -- but you can use it only if you download the school-sanctioned antivirus program: windows users have log onto the site weekly to do 'checkups' but mac users don't & i'm a lazy bugger). the way apple brands everything is sickening: iThis & iThat... it's as bad as McDookie's McShit burgers... you're not just buying a piece of machinery, yer gettin' a whole new lifestyle. [to play the devil's advocate, the only reason why microsoft isn't doing the exact same thing is because it's already got like 90% of computer users buying its stuff. although that hasn't stopped coke from spending shitloads of money to advertise to the 2 people on earth that doesn't know what coke is. idiots].
-mardi gras lows
