Grapefruit (and awesome recipe)

Background: A couple months ago, back in late summer (probably in the last week of August) Marie and I went grocery shopping and decided to split a giant bag of grapefruits. These babies lasted me until about two weeks ago when I cut the last one in half. I then, however, decided that I didn't want to eat grapefruit that particular morning and stuck both halves in their own container and planned to eat them the next day.

That was two weeks ago, and today they were still in my fridge. I went to throw away the now-two-month-old grapefruit halves when I noticed that they looked and smelled perfectly fine. Could I still eat it?

I took the matter to my friend Marie, whom I often go to with food related questions ("How do you know if an avocado has gone bad?" or "Why can't I put nutmeg in the quiche?"*) She didn't pick up, so I left a message.

She called me back twenty minutes later.

Me: Word.
Her: DID YOU EAT THE GRAPEFRUIT? TELL ME YOU DIDN'T EAT THE GRAPEFRUIT!
Me: No, not yet. So--you think I shouldn't eat it?
Her: No!
Me: But it looks fine...if I put it next to a brand new grapefruit and you couldn't tell the difference, would you still refuse it?
Her: Yes.

We then took the matter to her roommates. One, Aliya, decided that she definitely would eat the grapefruit. Marie was still adamant that I should throw it out.

The other roommate, Catherine, asked, "Well why doesn't she just go out for dinner?"

Marie and I responded to this by bursting into violent, uncontrollable laughter. Marie, less afflicted than I, explained that I am incredibly cheap and that if I am considering eating a two-month-old grapefruit, I certainly won't be going out for dinner.

I kept laughing.

In the end, I threw it out, because I don't really like grapefruit anyway.

The moral of the story: I really should spend my money on fresh groceries, and not new records.

*Against Marie's wishes, I put nutmeg in the quiche and it was the hit of Thanksgiving. I did not let her, or anyone, forget this.

Delicious Thanksgiving Quiche

1 carrot
1 apple (medium sized)
1 pie crust
5 eggs
Milk
Dash of nutmeg
Dash of cinnamon

Peel the carrot and then cut it into slices. Toss in some boiling water for about 10 minutes or until tender. Meanwhile, whip the eggs and milk together, as if making scrambled eggs, and add in the nutmeg and cinnamon. Meanwhile, cut the apple into small pieces (you might want to peel it first; I didn't bother) and put the apple pieces and the cooked carrot slices, into the pie crust. Pour the egg mixture on top and toss it in the oven and cook until it's done. (I wasn't paying too much attention, so I'm not sure what temperature the oven was set at or how long it took--probably about 25 minutes, ish.)

I am only pretending to be a grown up, apparently

It appears that, at 21, for every baby step I take towards adulthood I end up being shoved two steps back.

Yesterday, while giving my apartment the old ten-second tidy in preparation for company (this would be the grown up thing) I bundled up all the old newspapers in my milk crate recycling bin and hauled them downstairs to toss them in the giant bin behind my building. In doing this, I somehow managed to bash my face with the milk crate and split my chin open.

Split my chin open. Like a child. It wasn't bad, just a little bleeding, but the bigger concern was this: what kind of person over the age of three splits her chin open? Splitting one's chin open is a toddler rite of passage. I don't know many people who don't have that same scar on their chins from some childhood accident.

In fact, the mark I got yesterday crossed the scar from my three-year-old days of jumping on the bed, so now it looks like a little red and silver plus sign on my chin.

Brofest (attempt 3)

A shitty video that I made as part of a job application. I had assumed if I didn't list any hot key words, no one would see it that wasn't supposed to. In 12 hours, 14 people have seen it. Who are these people?

I figured I may as well post it here for any lurkers that may or may not exist.



I didn't know Nicholas Hurlbut really well, just in that sort of running-in-the-same-circle kind of way. He and I were always at the same shows, and probably shared a few words. Many of my closest friends were close friends with him, so I felt like I knew him by extension. I was always in awe of how friendly and positive he was, even when I knew he'd been in the hospital earlier that week. I remember seeing him play a show with his band one summer evening in July 2006, and commenting on how good he looked. A couple weeks later he was back in the hospital, and a couple weeks after that, a week before I left for university, he passed away.

I knew his friends in Silverstein had been in the early stages of planning a benefit concert to help out his family, and when the "For friends of Nicholas Hurlbut" announcement came, I really thought it would be about the concert that would become Brofest 85. It wasn't, and later that day Marie and I quietly drove to the Burlington mall to buy clothes for the funeral. We ran into several of our friends somberly doing the same thing. We were 18 and 19 and it was August. We were used to wearing shorts and brightly coloured band t shirts. I didn't own dress shoes. I was too young to buy funeral shoes. The funeral was packed with kids awkwardly pulling at collars and ties, not used to wearing church clothes.

A couple months later I came back to Burlington to help out with Brofest. I donned my "Fuck Cancer" t-shirt and sang along with my best friends, and a year later, I did the same thing. It was a way to embrace the tragedy and turn it into something good, instead of letting it own us. For me, Brofest represented the strength and support that could come out of a music scene. The kind of community that often gets a bad rap for producing selfish, self-important, cookie-cutter musicians had produced something great, and I was grateful to be a part of it.

This year, I had planned on covering Brofest for my project. I'd arranged to come down and speak to the organizers and musicians before the show. I spoke with Ryan Henderson (one organizer, and guitarist for I Am Committing A Sin) at 2:00 and by the time I got there at 2:30, the City of Burlington was threatening to shut down the show due to ambiguous fire code regulations at the venue (24/7, a church that, in it's prior lifetime, was nightclub NRG that was notorious for producing problems for the police).

Assured that it would be resolved within the hour, I left and came back around 4:00. It still wasn't resolved then, but my friend Paul told me that Ryan was in talking to the mayor, and "the mayor likes Ryan, so it should be okay." It never occurred to me that the show might not go off, so I left to run some errands and spoke to Paul again at 5:45 (doors were to be at 6:00) when he told me that everything was fine, everything had been resolved and they were just running a little behind.

The City put the kibosh on Brofest 87 five minutes before they were about to open doors. That was that.

When I got there, not having heard the news, I flashed back to Nick's funeral more than two years earlier. It was the same crowd, the same disappointment, the same solemn faces just trying to accept what was and move forward. There was no room for feeling angry or bitter at the result, no time to think about the money that could have been raised for charity, the room was just filled with an unquantifiable sadness masked by Nick's endless optimism.

It was unfair. Life is unfair. We didn't rail against it, because we already knew.

From the first Brofest:

Are you between the ages of 18 and 25? Are you lazy?

From a blog entry I wrote for This Magazine:

I'm still recovering from keeping up with the antics of last night's leadership debate ("Where are you hiding your platform?" Layton prodded Harper. "Under the sweater?" Just one of the many, many highlights from last night's festivities, which can be viewed at CBC online.) so for today I'm going to take a break from policy and propaganda and focus on something else.

It's no secret that less than two-thirds of Canadians of voting age will be hitting the polls on October 14th, and as shameful as that is, the Toronto Star reported today that less than a quarter of youth under 25 vote. When it comes to those who just reached the age of majority, the numbers drop even lower.

That is over two million people that could be voting that are not. That could make or break the election. That could push Dion or Layton into the PMO or push Harper into a majority government. Whether you're lazy, uninformed or just planning on falling into a turkey coma, get out there and vote.

If you don't want to pull on your turkey pants and venture out the day after Thanksgiving (which also happens to be a Jewish holiday), then don't. Vote today. Or tomorrow. Or Monday.

The Young Greens of Canada are calling today, the first day of advance polls (October 4 and 6, also), Youth Voter Day 2008. Check out the website for solid instructions on how to vote quickly and easily. If you're a student living away from home, you don't have to worry about trekking it back, you can simply vote where you're living now (residence, student ghetto, whatever.)

But before you do that, go and educate yourself on what each party is promising (or, in Harper's case, not promising) and then just do it.

Then again, I'm just one little person hiding behind an online handle. Don't want to listen to me? I wouldn't want to listen to me either, so here are some celebrities advocating the vote:

Granted, these are all regarding the American election, but they still serve a pretty good purpose.

Check out Michael Moore's new movie, Slacker Uprising, which follows the filmmaker as he tries to inspire university and college students to vote in the 2004 election. You can download it for free, too.

Here's Leonardo DiCaprio urging you to vote by using some reverse psychology. Ohhh...tricky.



For those of you that don't care about washed up actors, here's Florida punk band Against Me! telling you to vote:



And finally, Christina Aguilera's spot for Rock the Vote. She's pretty hot, right? Do what she says.

Coming home.

You know that old cliche of parents turning their child's room into a gym the second they move out? Well, my parents have apparently decided that when I moved out in May I moved out for good and wasted no time turning my bedroom into a storage locker.

When I came home for a week (cut to two and a half days) at the end of August, I could only open my bedroom door and peer inside at the cornicopia of stuff that was piled floor-to-ceiling in my formerly completely clean room (cleaned in May, at my mother's request, no less.)

Now I am home for the first weekend since then, a visit that my mom assured me would come with a relatively junk free bedroom, I was greeted by a clean bed and a narrow path to it. The piles of boxes and tupperware containers are still immensely high.

Whatever happened to empty nest syndrome? Whatever happened to the loving parents to erect a shrine to their once beloved daughter in hopes that she will return home once? Is this my parents' subtle way of telling me that once I graduate, job or not, I will not be moving back home? Perhaps they're just trying to make my visits home less and less comfortable. (Last time I was here I slept in my sister's room. It wasn't bad though; she's got a really nice TV.)

Maybe this is a sign that I need to make my own home in Toronto more permanent. Maybe now I'll get a cat. I relented before because they scare my mom.

Well you know what scares me, mom? The idea of mammoth crates crushing me while I sleep.

Now, the next order of business: what will I name the cat?

I hope you get hit by a car. Or a bike. Or a giant toddler.

So, I know I've been neglecting this blog for a while (and who am I kidding--no one reads this anyway) but I witnessed something yesterday that so enraged me that I felt compelled to put it out into cyberspace.

Since I moved to Toronto, I have really begun to like it. Normally, people aren't too horrible, are usually pleasant and whenever I see tourists, I always try to give them a helping hand because, let's face it, the world at large hates Toronto.

Apparently, there's sometimes a good reason for this.

I'll just preface this story by saying this all happened in the span of about three seconds, so I suppose it's possible that things didn't go down exactly like this, but this is what I saw:

Yesterday I was walking along a busy downtown street, and saw a woman with a little boy (probably about two, and a very small two) loading stuff into a cab. The woman was on the street side of the cab and had the boy waiting on the sidewalk, but would look up every few seconds.

Suddenly, this little boy jets out onto the street and runs full on towards traffic. A girl coming towards them on her bike sees him and veers her bike towards them to get the mom's attention and to try to block traffic from hitting this kid (who probably didn't come up past the license plate on a car).

A driver behind the bike girl has to, of course, slam on his brakes to keep from hitting her and the kid. This douchebag driver then proceeded to honk his horn and yell at the biker to get out of his way. I also don't meet a knee-jerk reaction to having to brake suddenly; this guy totally laid on the horn and was motioning and gesturing like a lunatic.

The girl carried on her way and the woman shoved the kid into the back of the cab, and I left seriously disappointed in the actions of this fellow Torontonian.

No wonder the whole world hates us.

10,000

It seems like a lot of writers have been using the word "myriad" a lot lately.

Hmmm.

Do words go in and out of style?

I read Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live recently, and he used the word in almost every page.

That's a lot. A lot a lot.

The Curious Incident of the Gum in the Open-Concept Office

When I left for my lunch break, I'm sure there were five pieces of Ice Breakers in the box on my desk. When I returned, there were four.

Intrigue.

More shocking is how interesting I find this. Who took the gum? Were there really five pieces there to begin with? Are my eyes deceiving me, or my coworkers? Is my life really this dull?

More shocking news: the piece of gum that I'm chewing right now tastes like salt.

Weird.

Sunshine, lollypops, rainbows...

It has finally stopped raining! Life is good again!

More importantly, I can finally go grocery shopping. As my foraging usually takes place either in various markets in Chinatown, or at whichever ten-minutes-from-my-apartment grocery store I feel like browsing through, rain prohibits me from restocking my shelves.

For a normal person, going a week without buying any groceries isn't a big deal. However, I am a weakling so I tend to buy groceries in very small quantities, several times a week, and in general, my fridge is pretty empty anyway.

Also, my summertime diet (aka. I make no money so feel the need to feed myself on less than four dollars a day (usually three)) involves not buying anything that is not on sale, with the exception of produce. So, in a given week, if the Chinatown produce doesn't look too great and nothing of interest is on sale at No Frills, my fridge might look like this:

- Milk
- Cheese
- Watered down juice
- One pita
- Cold perogies
- Hummus
- Expired salad fixings
- Blueberries
- Leftover macaroni and cheese
- Various condiments, sauces and salad dressings

Not exactly a feast fit for a king, now is it? Maybe for one meal, but imagine these contents slowly dwindling over several days worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If it starts raining before I get home tonight, I may actually starve.

Stuff White People Like

Unless you have been living under a rock, you are already familiar with Stuff White People Like, so I will spare the introduction. Sometimes the entries by former Torontonian Christian Lander are a little beyond my scope as a young, white person, but more often than not they are LOL funny. However, sometimes, his topics and descriptions of white person personality traits fit me to a T. Sometimes, it's actually chilling.

The two most recent entries really could have been titled, Stuff Melissa Wilson Likes.

See:

#104 Girls With Bangs

Many people associate this type of haircut with children and people looking for the most efficient way to get hair out of their eyes. But for white people, this simple haircut makes a bold declaration by saying that the wearer is artistic, deep, and has probably dated a guy in a band you like...For white people, the haircut-with-bangs is an important symbol that a female has completed her transformation from a nerdy girl to a cool woman.

Read full entry.

That is my exact haircut (albeit, my bangs have gotten kind of shabby because of the next SWPL entry) and I got it for the first time when I started university.

#105 Unpaid Internships

White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum. Any white person who takes an internship outside of these industries is either the wrong type of white person or a law student. There are no exceptions.

If all goes according to plan, an internship will end with an offer of a job that pays $24,000 per year and will consist entirely of the same tasks they were recently doing for free. In fact, the transition to full time status results in the addition of only one new responsibility: feeling superior to the new interns.

Read full entry.

I am currently putting in 40 hours a week for zero dollars an hour at This Magazine. However, I do not fetch coffee or dry cleaning and I rarely photocopy, so I can feel superior to the Devil Wears Prada-esque interns out there. Though, I think this feeling makes me even whiter.

There are others, but I think I will stop at these two, because I am beginning to feel less unique by the second.

Barack Obama made me a mixtape

Today as I was walking to work, I passed by a couple twenty-somethings sitting on the sidewalk holding a cardboard sign that said (something like), "Smile, and have a nice day!"

It was a nice thing to see in the morning. I smiled and told them the same.

More things that make me smile:

Barack Obama

Cute Animals

Baby nephews that I haven't met yet, but are probably very cute

Cactuses that I have yet to kill.















And Bo Burnham

Cocaine and NYC? Seriously?

Dear Steven Page,

What the hell are you doing, man?

I've got to find the right hook

Bloggers left and right are being offered book deals.

Where's my fucking six-figure book deal?

Food network host sets Guinness record for flapjack flipping

599 pancakes in an hour!

See, now this is the kind of news that I want to read on a Friday morning. Nice, happy, "oh, well look at that!" cheerful kind of news. I don't want to read about global warming or famine or AIDS or about the myriad soldiers killed overseas. I do read about these things because I care about what's going on, and want to stay informed, but I would much prefer if the most scandalous thing that was happening in the world was some obese small town in Washington trying to usurp Winnipeg from it's Slurpee throne.

A couple weeks ago, I read a story in the Globe about a baby beluga who was sick, but has made an excellent recovery. It was lovely.

I should probably just switch to tea, anyway.

I have my Moneen University travel mug with most of the time. Usually it's just filled with water, or sometimes iced tea/weak fruit juice/whatever non-water substance I have in my fridge. However, sometimes, I'll decide to treat myself to some coffee and I always ask that they simply fill my mug and charge me what's fair. Clearly, I'm doing this to reduce the amount of waste produced and not so I can con some poor barista into charging me for a small for twice the coffee. (note: the mug probably holds the same as a large Tim Horton's cup.)

It really bothers me when 1) Clerks argue with me over the size of the cup and the price of the coffee and 2) when the clerk spends precious time trying to discern the caffeine-capacity of my mug.

Once at McDonalds (this was my punishment, I'm sure, for even setting foot inside a McDonalds) I asked if, in my combo meal, I could substitute a small iced coffee ($1.39) for my medium soft drink ($1.69). I was told yes, but I would have to pay extra. When I questioned why I would have to pay extra to substitute something that actually costs less than what I was paying for, two employees and a manager had to get involved. In the end, I got my small iced coffee, but they actually measured out the amount in another cup, and then threw the plastic away. (note: the coffee filled my not-that-large mug to the brim.)

Then yesterday, I was at Starbucks and asked for my coffee politely and said that they could charge whatever they thought the correct fancy-named equivalent was, though I told them that previously I'd been charged for a "tall" to fill my cup. This clerk spent two full minutes trying to decide the volume of my cup, and measured it out with a paper one (though, this was not thrown out) before deciding that, in fact, I was correct with my "tall" guess.

This bothers me on several levels. First, I know the insane markup placed on drinks, and I am positive that the extra few millilitres of coffee that may find their way into my cup will not break Starbucks' bank. In fact, I might go as far as to wager my beloved mug that the paper/plastic cup itself costs more than the beverage inside it.

Second, I don't feel as though I should be inconvenienced or argued with for being ecologically responsible. It's not like I'm walking in there with a Big Gulp, and it's not like I'm asking for a discount for bringing my own cup (though I know a few shops that offer one), but I'd like for them to at least measure by eye and estimation so that I don't have to waste my time waiting for them to debate the correct mode of action, especially when it only makes their job harder.

At a certain point, isn't it easier just to go with the flow?

I realize I've been complaining in this blog a lot, so here's something that I have no reason to complain about:

Seven ways to get off the bottle by Melissa Wilson

so long!

Two dreams about Boston Pizza is two too many.

I have my notice today.

It was a good job, and there are a lot of things that I'll miss, but screaming matches with the kitchen and making sure the cutlery is perfectly parallel to the napkins will not make that list.

Sidewalks are for pedestrians

Dear Toronto cyclists,

I really admire you. I love that you are choosing to take an eco-friendly trip to work every morning, that you're getting more exercise than the average Canadian. I am also a little jealous that you have the courage that I lack to brave the mostly-bike-lane-less streets of Toronto admist the non-bike-friendly BMWs and Civics. I am too afraid, which is why I walk, and stare longingly at cyclists each time they pass. One day I hope to overcome the fear of being hit by a car, and join your ranks.

However, to all the cyclists who insist on biking on busy Queen West sidewalks: you should count yourselves lucky each time you pass me and I don't kick something into your spokes. I walk so I don't have to worry about getting flattened by a vehicle, not so I can play Frogger with ignorant cyclists.

I'll make you a deal, I'll keep lobbying for more bike lanes in the city if you, the biker, stick to them.

Sound good?

Yours,
Melissa Wilson

hot pink with lightning bolts

Though I try to keep up with the hip-person vernacular, but once in a while I come across a new phrase.

I have heard the term "big girl panties" twice in as many days. Once in the comments section of a TLC reality show message board, and a second time in one of those not-funny, tries-to-be-psuedo-empowering forwards that I get once in a while from old acquaintances (of whom my opinion drops with every such forward) and both times in the context of, when life gets tough, put on your big girl panties and suck it up.

Is this a new thing? It's not exactly a biting comment, and it's not very clever, yet for some reason I felt the need to blog about this anomaly of speech. It seems like a legitimate thing to say and yet I'm left with the feeling that this particular expression is part of the sort of lower socio-economic class culture that frequents message boards to bemoan one's lack of a reality TV show and still thinks it's acceptable for a grown up to circulate emails with pictures of kittens and urban legends.

Maybe I've fallen a couple of rungs on the social ladder, one too many reality shows and not enough obsessive studying of Stuff White People Like.

Maybe I should really just stop finding new ways to procrastinate and get back to work.

---

However, in the interest of putting off work just a little bit longer, here is a lovely story about the train wreck that is Melissa Wilson.

Last week I was on my way home to Burlington, wearing a flowy blue dress and my signature red, Old Navy flip-flops. Since it was raining, I decided to take the TTC instead of walking down to Union from my apartment. It was slippery out, and as I'm going down the steps into the College subway station, I was clutching the railing and making deals with God to let me get down the stairwell in one piece.

I'm sure you know where this story is going. The wind tunnel that is the College subway station, shot a gale force up at me and Marilyn Monroe-ed my dress right over my head. At the same time, I lost my footing, slipped, and slid halfway down the stairs on my butt, giving all the people behind me a nice shot of my pink underwear.

Moral of the story: Always wear clean underwear. You never know when you will fall on your ass and expose it to a dozen strangers.

The End.

Words of wisdom.

A friend of mine once made a comment about how the College streetcar only goes east when you want to go west, and vice-versa. At the time, I didn't take the TTC regularly and I just brushed it off as hyperbolic frustration.

Now that I take the TTC more, and live off Carlton, I see my friend's point.

Today, while waiting for the College streetcar to go West from Sherbourne St., I watched four eastbound cars, two Sherbourne buses and one woman get so frustrated that she hailed a cab instead of waiting.

I want my token back.

There is only one way to spell it

During the 1980s, over 10,000 babies were named "Melissa" and only 97 were named "Mellissa."

There is NO excuse for spelling my name wrong.

I am never late. Ever. Ever ever ever ever ever!

Somehow, I managed to forget (FORGET) to submit my final exam for my politics class. It was a take-home test, and the soft copy was due by email last Tuesday, but she gave us until yesterday to submit a hard copy. Even though I was downtown yesterday, it took me until 8:00 p.m. last night to realize my error. I raced downtown this morning to hand it in (even though the syllabus states that she won't mark the exam if the hard copy is received past the 21st) and sent my professor two emails begging her to take pity on me.

On a scale of one to ten, how fucked am I?

#*&@*&T!

My stepdad is remodeling the downstairs bathroom, which coincidentally is the only bathroom with a shower, and my hair is too long to wash in the tub, so as a result I haven't showered in three days. 

As you can imagine, I smell really good. 

We're in Canada, bro

Today, at work, as I was walking towards one of my tables to check on them, the guy felt the need to hold up his empty pop glass and shake it, just in case I was too stupid to notice that he needed a refill (or in case he, for some reason, thought that even though I was walking directly towards him and making eye contact, I was going to ignore his needs). 

I figure, maybe this guy is really thirsty, and can justify being incredibly rude. 

Then he did it again and I almost punched him. 

I've decided this: If ever I get a customer that snaps his fingers at me to get my attention, I will quit my job, only so I can dump a pitcher of Pepsi (or hot oil, depending) on the dude without getting fired. I wholeheartedly believe that putting the dude in his place will be worth losing my job. 

I'm sure every server ever will agree. 

Will you marry me?

I am in love with John Cusack. I'll just say it. I fell in love with Lloyd Dobbler, and then with Martin Blank and Rob Gordon just sealed the deal. As far as I'm concered, John Cusack doesn't get older, he just gets more bad ass. His most recent film, War, Inc. just proves it.

When I was sleepily driving to school yesterday, I heard John's voice on the Edge and I got tingles just at the mere thought that he might be in Toronto. Though logic told me that 1) this was probably a phone interview and 2) if it was live, John would probably be on his way back to somewhere cool by the time I got to the city.

An hour later, I was walking through the RCC and nearly had a heart attack when I saw a sign advertising that John Cusack would be visiting Ryerson - my school - today and screening his new film. John Cusack was in Toronto, and he was coming to see me. I fearlessly told my teacher that I would be leaving class early because I had to see John speak. I am quite certain I would have died if I missed the opportunity. The Gods would strike lightning bolts around me as punishment for being so stupid as to miss an opportunity to be in the same room as the real-life Rob Gordon.

Throughout the day, I has visions of waiting for the theatre to open, reading some Chuck Klosterman on a bench outside the door when John nonchalantly sits next to me. There were many different conversation variants in the fantasy, but the end result was always the same. Love.

Back to reality. War, Inc. is one of the most brilliantly written films I have seen in a while (I decided this, for the record, before I learned that Cusack co-wrote it) The film, a political satire that encompasses all the best aspects of Cusack's best movies (the hit man, the fiery female lead, the sexually-promiscuous pop star, the lack of morals that, in turn, present a shockingly moral argument) shows an absurd view of what the Middle East might turn into in a few years: military outsources to private companies and literal and metaphorical devastation and destruction.

After the film, we wait patiently for John to reach the school and tell us about his brilliant film. We discuss what extravagant entrance he might make, and the possibility that he might be in the room in disguise. Brand Hausen, his War, Inc. character, can kill a group of armed thugs with his bare hands, so there's no limit to how ridiculously bad ass John Cusack can be in our eyes. He also sells his parts so well that it's altogether impossible to separate the actor from the character. In fact, I'm quite certain that Brand Hausen is just a grown up Martin Blank, (and Rob Gordon is a grown up Lloyd Dobbler.)

When he finally arrives (he just walks in, wearing blue jeans and a black jacket, like it's no big deal) and settles in next to writer, Mark Leyner. John tries to calmly rail against the Iraq war, but amidst the pleasantries, he lets slip a, "Fox News can go fuck themselves," and the whole crowd erupts in applause and cat-calls. He apologizes to the host for his brashness, but it's clear that he doesn't mean it.

It doesn't get hotter than that.

They are plentiful and organized.

Ants have taken over our bathroom. We keep attacking with sprays and traps and they keep fighting back. I swear, earlier, I saw one play dead. Another time, I saw one carrying its wounded back to the nest.

CIA? Yeah, it's Melissa. I've got a suggestion for you.

I have come up with a new way to torture people. Sit them down at a desk in front of a glaring computer screen and force them to transcribe hours and hours of audio interviews. For those who have committed truly heinous crimes, make them do the interviews with the really boring speakers who say "like" and "um" a lot, and throw out a lot of jargon and speak incredibly fast. Oh yeah, you're not allowed to slow down the audio, either.

Why hasn't the government figured this one out yet? If you really want to wear someone down, don't just poke them a lot, make them do something that will make them want to tear their own eyes out.

I have been transcribing interviews for over six hours and I already want to change professions. Why doesn't some sort of software exist that can do this for me? My computer can play games with me and tell me what time it is, why can't it transcribe my interviews for me?

If you can organize music autobiographically, can you organize life musically?

I listen to music autobiographically.

I think that's one of those things that sets true music lovers apart from the "let's just put something on in the background" crew. It's not that the content of certain songs reminds me of things that have happened in my life. It's that, when hearing certain songs, I am reminded of sometime in my life.

I still remember the first time I heard Elliott Smith's Say Yes. I was in love. And I remember the feeling of utter joy when I was randomly browsing the vinyl section at a Virgin Megastore (before I even owned a turntable) and came across a copy of either/or. Love. Whenever I hear Everclear's Songs From An American Movie (Part 1: Learning How to Smile), I am reminded of all the long drives I took in the summer of 2005. Piebald reminds me of when I moved out for the first time. I was listening to All Ears, All Eyes, All The Time when I made the trek to my new home, I listened to it when I was homesick and crying, and I listened to it when I moved back home five weeks later. Party Like It's Hot still reminds me of dancing and lip syncing with my friends in a basement, bickering over whose turn it was to play the lead. Counting Crows' This Desert Life reminds me of being fifteen and needing something to listen to at work, an all the weeks I listened to this, the only good CD on the shelf. All the weeks I spent hiding it so it wouldn't make its way back upstairs.

I have songs that remind me of boyfriends, of breaking up with boyfriends, of fighting with my parents, of being angsty and sixteen. I have songs that, a thousand plays later, still make me laugh because they remind me of what I was doing when I first heard them. Just now I was listening to Stickshifts and Safetybelts by Cake and was reminded of how I felt reading the final Harry Potter book, because that's what I was listening to at the same time. In general, I can listen to a song and remember exactly where I was when I heard it first. I can picture it, hear the sounds, smell the air.

Sometimes my musical memory surprises even me.

Blogging sucks

Yeah.

Commuter Blues part one million

Turnstiles (like the ones in the PATH or the Eaton Centre) are for one person only. I don't care how awesome your new diet is, I don't want to be confined in a space the size of a coffin with any other person, unless that person just happens to be Zach Braff.

I'm behind in my stories

Last week, Anna took me out for dinner for my birthday and we went to this little deli on Bay Street, which was basically deserted except for me, her, three staff members and a couple octogenarians reading the National Post.

At some point, Anna, who isn't usually gung-ho about going up to random people and asking them things, decided to see if she could get the place to do anything special for me for my birthday. She conned them into a free piece of strawberry cheesecake, at which point (after thanking her profusely) I admitted that I'm actually allergic to cheesecake.

Five minutes later, the three middle-aged staffers came by with the cake, complete with a pink, flowery candle and sang me the most awkward verse of Happy Birthday (also insisting that Anna sing along) I have ever experienced in my life.

It was awesome.

my mother

My parents and I were watching some forensics-type show where this woman was going to be a surrogate for her daughter who couldn't get pregnant.

Conversation:

Mom: I would do that for you. I'd be your surrogate.
Me: ...You don't have a uterus.
Mom: *long pause*
Me: You had a hysterectomy two years ago.
Mom: Oh...right. *uncontrollable laughter* Well, I would!
Me: Thanks, Mom.

lobsters

Yesterday at work, I was serving a party of ten very attractive 20-somethings, and managed to spill an entire schooner (a really big mug) of beer all over the one guy's lap. He was really nice about it, which made the whole thing even more embarrassing. He actually just seemed to feel bad for me because I was so embarrassed.

I was serving another table at the time, an older British couple, and then commented on what I had done and said, "Well, he's quite good looking, we thought you might have done it on purpose!"

21

Yesterday was my birthday, and while birthdays haven't been too big a deal for me in the past few years, I was really surprised about how much more special my birthday was made by the invention of the Internet. At least sixty people wished me a happy birthday either on msn, facebook and the 905 board. It's nice how simple things like a thread on the board to wish me a happy birthday, or my sister leaving a "Happy Birthday Melissa!" post-it on my mirror in the morning can make me feel so happy.

I feel sad for people who don't enjoy those things.

Also, strangely, I don't feel any older.

hug machine.

As I was sleepily driving to work this morning, the license plate on the car in front of me read "HUGS 4U."

I wonder if the owner of the car picked it just so he could make sleepy university students smile at seven in the morning.

Random Thoughts

1) During a commuter rush, escalators are not for people who are too lazy to walk up the stairs, they are simply for getting up a level faster. Standing on an escalator at 8 a.m. and waiting for it to deliver you to the top is not acceptable. You will inevitably receive a few elbows to your ribcage. These will not be accidents.

2) This morning, the PATH smelled like raw chicken, the entire way through (a couple of kilometers.) Either there's some sort of underground butcher shop going on down there, or I am having a stroke.

3) 9 a.m. classes are the worst.

4) The next person who blares their iPod on my morning train is getting the stink eye until they understand their error. I don't want to listen to the muffled sounds of K-fed while you continue to rupture your eardrums.

5) There are certain foods that shouldn't be eaten before noon and, apparently, a smooshed ham sandwich is one of them. I feel nauseous, and I don't think it's due to my 19h Century English class.

6) My English TA already gives the impression of a pretentious bore. He uses the word "shall." No one interesting, save 15th century poets, ever uses the word shall. He's either a smartipants or he wants us to think he's a smartipants. Either way, I remain unimpressed.

seven vodka, one gin.

Last night was my staff Christmas party. A couple thoughts:

1) Drinking vodka all night and then, at last call, switching to gin because the bar is out of vodka is not a good idea. Not ever.

2) It's a very strange experience to drink vodka out of a child's sippy cup (the bar was also out of regular cups) and then the next morning recover from two hours of vomitting by drinking watered-down apple juice out of a very similar BP sippy cup, one of which I just happen to have at my house.

3) My coworkers think watering down my juice is weird. I still disagree, though drinking a watered-down screwdriver out of a sippy cup does seem a little ironic and/or infantile.

General Population

To: Guy Sitting in Front of Me in my Politics Class

Stop putting up your hand and asking stupid questions. If you can't do that, drop this class immediately and pick up Common Sense 101.

Yours,
Melissa Wilson

9 a.m. classes are the absolute worst

I feel genuinely bad for travellers and day trippers who inadvertantly find themselves in the middle of the concourse level of Union Station at 8:00 a.m. It must be terrifying. In general, commuters are polite and courteous, but that doesn't change the fact that the station closely resembles the wildebeast scene from the Lion King.

stay positive

I like to think I'm fairly in the know as to how the world works. I've seen enough to pass over naive and green and go right to optimistic and trusting of peoples' good nature. Maybe too trusting, because sometimes I am shocked at the behaviour of some.

Yesterday, I was serving this table - two families, each with two little kids - and one of the other servers had warned me that the Dad from one was a jerk. I figured, I'd just make a point of being extra friendly and on top of my game, and that would be that. And don't get me wrong - I am a good waitress. I don't make a lot of mistakes, and most of the time, I let things roll off my back. I don't let rude people get to me. This guy, however, was so incredibly rude and ignorant and just plain mean, that it blew my mind. He spent an hour mocking me, berating me and making jokes at my expense and at the end of it, took my pen and flung it on the ground. For what reason, I have no idea. After that, I pretty much lost it and went to the bar to cool off for a couple minutes, and when one of the servers asked if I was okay, I just started crying. And I couldn't stop.

My manager went to confront the guy and he claimed he was just joking around. She was livid. The whole staff, really, was livid. Apparently these guys are regulars and several other servers have complained about their behaviour.

What really threw me was just how unwarranted it was. What kind of person goes into a restaurant with his family and has a good time by making fun of someone who, not only has been nothing but pleasant to them, but is actually doing them a service? His kids couldn't have been older than eight. What kind of example is he setting for his children when he spends his night out making girls cry?

The reason why I can't operate heavy machinery

I burned my thumb at work today.

Twice.

On the same spot.

And then accidentally poked the same spot with a knife.

How I spent my day off...

The baby panda has finally been allowed outside with the others! No more indor cages for this little guy.



Say it with me now. Awwwwww!

1987

Today I was at the Dollarama buying notebooks when I found, amongst waves of red and pink, Popple Valentines cards. Do you remember Popples? They were hugely popular when I was a little kid and they didn't really stay popular like Care Bears, or become items of nostalgia, like Atari systems and the original Power Rangers. How odd that they would choose Popple to band their cards with. Is Dollarama just way ahead of the game as to what is going to be the next big vintage "it" thing? Perhaps they're psychic. Or evil. How else can they afford to sell such quality stuff for only a dollar.

All of my friends can expect Popple valentines this year.

Ikea

Lately I've been watching the first season of Criminal Minds, complete with Swedish subtitles.

I've definitely picked up the basics of the language from Hotch and the gang. I think I'm ready to vacation in Stockholm now.