Hilarious, Evil Zombie Tomatoes

As Canadians recover from post-traumatic stress disorder … I mean, as Canadians rest after a raucous election campaign (raucous by Canadian standards) and as I try to figure out how to re-entice my international readership that almost completely gave up on me after I wrote bloggie after bloggie on the election (except for some very patient Americans – some of whom disagree quite strongly with my political convictions and were very understanding on some sticky points of contention, for which I am grateful and I promise to accord you the same respect when your election campaign kicks into high gear – and one very loyal reader from Romania) everyone is sick to death of it. Myself included. And who could blame anyone, especially Canadians, when the Net is full of sites dedicated tosuch important things as navel lint (There. I promised fluff in yesterday’s bloggie and I have delivered)?

After a couple of weeks of thinking of nothing more than the shape of my country (it’s funny-shaped and has an odd, vaguely gonadic-phallic shape punched out of the north-eastern part), as well as after a vodka-soaked Pride weekend, I have writer’s block. This is particularly detrimental to my happiness as the blog is not the only thing on which I concentrate my alleged writing abilities. To counteract it, I stared at the computer for a while. Shockingly, this did nothing to help. Then, I thought maybe of getting Noudnic to walk across the keyboard and telling everyone he had posted a bloggie all by himself (wouldn’t that have been hilarious?!). A post written by a cat! `^kowrohiéÉQWEFO;GUQboug; Brilliance! But I have less time than I used to to disguise the fact that I usually have absolutely nothing of note to say, disguised with pretty words and long, Proust-like sentences full of commas and subordinate clauses.

My attempts to convince occasional commenter, Rakl, and perpetual lurker, The Fabulous Miss Kate, to guest blog today failed. Apparently their work is more important than I. I can’t really say the same because, as much fun as it is to live off one’s savings, my employ these days is made up of temporary contracts and odd jobs for which I am massively overqualified . . . and I prefer it that way. You see, your stress level decreases to a minimum when you cease fretting over how much money you have and why you’re trapped doing something you hate doing with a bunch of people you wouldn’t normally associate with (Ceux parmi vous avec qui j’ai déjà travaillé et qui lisent ceci, vous savez que ce n’est pas vous que j’indique dans la phrase précédente). But we each have our own approach to adulthood and, as usual, I digress from my very important point, writer’s block.

As Hollywood has shown us, all you need to do is give people something they can laugh at and feel nauseous to at the same time and you have a bona fide hit! This explains such blockbusters as the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead, as in: “Hahahahaha! That chick totally got sliced in half with a chainsaw and like her guts went everywhere! I mean, it’s gross and all but I’m laughing ‘coz it’s so unexpected to see people die horrible deaths, especially in a zombie movie! Y’know? That’s why it’s funny n’stuff.”

Now, I can’t write gross stuff. My knowledge of human anatomy isn’t good enough and this is lucky for you or this blog would most likely be splashed with innards. The best I can do is to discuss food I find gross. It’s probably a bit of a letdown after navel lint and people being sawed in half, but you can place the blame for the mediocre quality of this bloggie squarely on the shoulders of Rakl and The Fabulous Miss Kate.

Are you ready? This is going to be fantastic. Boiled spinach. It’s like eating mushed-up brains with green food colouring. Right? So are you collapsed in gut-roiling hilarity yet? Are you? No? Ok. Eating lychee nuts reminds of Science class in Grade 8 when I had to dissect a cow’s eyeball. They’re all round and squooshy and cloudy liquid shoots out of them when you pierce their skin. Have you vomited through your nose while shaking with hysterical laughter yet? No? Wow. Tough crowd.

OK. The Fabulous Miss Kate cannot eat tomatoes and there is a gross reason for it. Once when she was a wee lass she ate an entire truckload of tomatoes. Her teensy, half-formed belly was understandably displeased with this invasion and she retired to her bed with an upset tummy. Now, The Fabulous Miss Kate claims to be a very heavy sleeper and I cannot comment on this; the only one I know who can confirm this is her long-time companion Subversive Banker Dude and he doesn’t even read this so we may never know the truth. In any case, she is such a heavy sleeper that she apparently did not awake as she vomited the truckload. When she woke up, everything, the bed, her pyjamas, the pillows, her face, her hair, were covered with a red, sticky, tomato-y-smelling film. Plus, she could have choked on her vomit and died. Isn’t that a riot?

Well, I have a better ending. One of the surviving zombie tomatoes, driven to madness by excessive political commentary and covered somehow with belly lint, took a chainsaw and chopped her in half. Now it’s funny!

This bloggie is terrible. I should stick to half-baked political critiques. Vote Quimby!

Again With the Election

I may have the Canadian election on the brain, but there is something superficial and silly at the end. I cannot burn certain images from this campaign out of my head: Stephen Harper’s Fischer-Price hair, Belinda Stronach’s shiny pink Coco Chanel jumpsuit (it would be a very different country today had she won the Conservative leadership), Jack Layton’s action figure jaw, and a map of Canada divided once again by regional parties; blue in the West, red in Ontario, bleu et blanc au Québec, and a whole bunch of colours in the Maritimes.

The Conservatives failed to make the gains to which they felt they were entitled. The majority of their wins in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba were in rural ridings. They could not capitalize on voters’ anger towards the Liberals in any urban ridings in Ontario. In fact, they were short by almost 50% of the number of seats they expected as a minimum in Ontario. With 29% of the popular vote, the majority of it coming from Alberta and the rural regions of the three other Western provinces, it is clear that Canadians by and large view them as a Western or rural party and are uncomfortable with their vision of the country. But they’re a new party, so this may change.

The Bloc Québécois won as many seats this election as they did in 1993 immediately following Meech Lake and Charlottetown. The Bloc is using this as ammunition for another sovereignty debate, although it seems fairly clear that much of the vote was really anger against the Liberals for laying blame of the sponsorship scandal directly on the entire province. The Quebecois wanted someone de chez nous to represent them and who better than a party so zealous about in its love for Quebec that it wants to lop itself off from the rest of the country? After these results, I’m glad I don’t live there anymore.

People from outside Quebec can only imagine the tension in the streets immediately proceeding and following 1995’s sovereignty referendum. I have to admit that, even though I ended up voting “non” (ended up is the correct term in my case), the Non side annoyed me as much as the Oui side and the So-called Unity Rally . . . well, I’ll just get myself in trouble with all of my English Canadian friends if I admit what I thought of that. However, any doubts I had as to my decision evaporated instantly the moment I heard Jacques Parizeau’s rant of concession in which he promised revenge against the ethnic vote for the loss. In any case, the honeymoon is over and we’re back to those same old issues.

Ontarians again voted overwhelmingly Liberal although the Grits did lose a significant number of seats. Not as many as had been predicted. And that was really the only surprise. Everyone, not just the Conservatives, expected much greater Tory gains, especially in Toronto’s suburban 905-Belt. It just didn’t translate as Ontarians, uncomfortable with the new party and with the prospect of the Bloc Québécois being the king-making party voted to maintain the status quo . . . to a certain extent.

The North and the Atlantic provinces showed interesting mixtures of all three major parties. It was here that the NDP first began making its presence felt as the polls began to close yesterday evening.

It is significant that although the Tories gained seat from over the former PCs and Alliance combined, they were down in the popular vote. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare last night’s popular vote results to the last election, as it is officially a different party, but they plugged themselves as The Right-Wing Party of Canada and their numbers failed to play that out.

The big winner in the popular vote was the NDP. Just about doubling their popular vote, they may just make themselves into a ruling party in a few decades, if there is still a country called Canada in a few decades. What is also interesting is that, despite Stephen Harper’s claims that Canadians wanted a change and they wanted his kind of change, the only parties that made gains were the lefties, the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens (who will not be in the House of Commons but are up in the vote nonetheless). If you combine this with the vote for the Liberals, another left-of-centre party (especially in comparison with what counts as left-of-centre in our southern neighbour), you see that almost 70% of Canadians want Canada to stay the socially and fiscally responsible, progressive country that Canada is. With no clear coalition possible in the House of Commons with the new break down, it should be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe out leaders will actually work together to govern as we return to the days of Quebec sovereignty and Western Alientation.

As promised, the fluff: I have another new future husband. I am the luckiest guy in the world. Meet Justin Theroux, of “Mulholland Drive”, “Sex and the City”, and most recently, “Six Feet Under”. He adds the much needed rebel element to my pantheon of husbands. Plus this one actually lives on the same continent as me and so I will have to put my money where my mouth is and cease using geography as my claimed impediment. Who wants to fly me to Hollywood?

Tomorrow: No more election. I will grace the blog with fluff!

Out, Damn Spot!

Through the haze of election fatigue, this is what I have to say: now that the Liberals have won by a statistic not nearly as slim as we were led to believe, I want to change my vote. I unvote Liberal and now I vote to NDP. What can it change by this point?

Go Vote!

“The streets might not rule, but they vote!”

If you’re Canadian, stop reading this and go vote now!

Same Old, Same Old

Canada’s election is in three very long days and I am surprised to find that I have decided to do what I always do: vote against a party that I do not want to govern the country rather than for the one I do want to govern. I apologize to the 75% percent of you who read this regularly who live outside of Canada, but you should know that, despite its moderate reputation, Canada is just like any country and deeply divided along political, ideological, ethnic, regional, and religious lines.

The cracks are certainly beginning to show. They had been patched over since the Mulroney years when the regions went on verbal warpaths against each other, culminating with the Quebec Referendum. With talk of firewalls around certain provinces, threats that votes for another party will hasten another vote for Quebec independence (let’s start calling a spade a spade; enough of “sovereignty”, the Canadian public has a confusing choice between four acrimonious political parties with conflicting views they claim to espouse wholeheartedly. One party apparently wants to bring about the end of the world as we know it with it’s alleged views on child pornography, abortion and *gasp* homosexual marriage. Another frolics in the meadows of make-believe with their lovely, utopian view that people truly believe they have a responsibility to society as a whole and not just to themselves. And there are the Conservatives.

Conservative Party supporters forget three very pertinent facts. First, Stephen Harper very publicly stated that Canadian troops should have accompanied our neighbour’s to Iraq despite the fact that the majority of Canadians wanted no such involvement. Had he had his way, Canada would have become involved in one of the biggest military lies ever concocted, not to mention the devastating effect it has had on the stability of the Middle East. It would have moved Canada up the list of potential targets and the bombs in Madrid in February could have just as well been on Toronto’s GO trains; all because of misused intelligence.

Second, the Conservative Party is quite simply the old Alliance Party with its regional concerns and right wing views in disguise. It is very pertinent to recall that immediately prior to old Progressive Conservative Party vote mandating it’s merger with the Alliance to create the new Conservative Party, 20 000 Alliance members bought PC memberships so as to take part. The old PCs may still have voted for the merger, but not with such a stunning majority. This also gives good insight into the types of tactics this party will use to get its way. I feel confident they would not be above the type of scandal that has plagued the Liberals these past months.

This brings me to my third point. The Conservatives are a party that has been in its present incarnation a matter of months. They have had no general policy-making meeting and therefore have no coherent policy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the more extreme views of some if its candidates who actually advocate taking rights away for the first time in Canadian history. Supporters of this party may be quite shocked at some the policy decisions made by a Conservative government with no concrete policies except campaign promises. And we all know what those are worth.

And so despite the fact that I want to vote Green or possibly NDP, I will vote Liberal. Until Canadians have proportional representation voting, we will forever be forced to vote the party that who will do the least damage rather than for the one we want to win. I believe that a rural regional party will do vast damage to a country already fracturing along these lines and I do not want them to win. I do not want to take votes away from the Liberals and so I will hold my nose and vote for them, waiting for the day when my vote will actually be worth the opinions I hold.

On a different note, I hope you like my old look that I decided to bring back. The green one was nice, but a little too pretty. Surly may be fun and kinda cute, but he ain’t pretty!

And speaking of pretty, I would like to introduce you to my new future husband. Please meet Thai action movie actor and model Kamron Boonteesud. Don’t worry about Ajay. He’s still my future husband; since he has no idea who I am, I feel perfectly justified in not consulting him on this matter. Please, I think the three of us will look great together.

I have two husbands now. This is exactly the sort of thing the Conservatives are worried about.

The Fountain of Youth

I have the secret to eternal youth. Unhappy people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying desperately to look young. Ponce de Leon got himself killed look for the Fountain of Youth. All the money, all the energy expended on the quest for youth; it is such a collossal waste. I have discovered exactly what these people need. All they need do is spend of couple of days with their parents who are visiting from a distant city and they will be instantly shunted back to their adolescence.

I have an excellent relationship with my parents and this excellent relationship is certainly exemplified by the mirthful, hearty conversations on the first couple of days of the visit. But somewhere on Day 2 or Day 3 the mood changes all at once for no reason that I can discern and I am instantly transformed into a petulant teenager less than half my age, with arms crossed and pouting crossed in a corner. Youth has been achieved!

Paraphrased Regular Conversation:

Parental Unit: Whatcha doing? [translation: I'm curious about your life, especially since we only see each other once a year and I'm hoping you can tell me a little more about yourself now that you're an adult. Plus, I'm a little nosey.]

Snarling Surly: Going out. [translation: I am embarrassed to admit that I need a short break from hanging out with you and so I am about to give a reason to want to take a break from hanging out with me so I don't have to admit this.]

Parental Unit: Where are you going? [translation: I know nothing about this city where you live and I'm curious.]

Snarling Surly: Out! (eyes roll) [translation: If you knew how boring my life really is you wouldn't be so curious.]

Parental Unit: Who’re you going out with? [translation: I like all your friends I've ever met and I'd like to know more about them. Is it anyone I know? How're they doing?]

Snarling Surly: * sigh * I’m going out with friends . . . [translation: I'm really glad you like all my friends, especially since most of them are gay and some parents wouldn't like that so much, but I don't want you to hang out with them too much because they always seem to like you more than they like me...and since I am a snarling, surly, insecure teenager . . . ]

Ô the wondrous joy and guilt of spending time with parents.

Luckily for me my parents are quite used to this sort of behaviour from me (they did, after all, live in the same enclosed space as me all through my wonder years) and seem to mostly ignore me when I un-age. What’s more, they are great to hang out with, for the most part and I miss always them when they leave.

Youth is overrated.

Happy belated Father’s Day!

Contractually Bound

The new look is not really a political statement, but if you wish to view it as one…

I was bored. Also, I enjoyed with raptures conversation in the style of last week’s federal leaders debate with four decidedly unfriendly staff members of my cell phone provider that left me feeling impotent and weak. The point of contention was my old (foreshadowing, the sign of a quality blog!) defective cell phone, which they claimed was no longer in service because of “water damage” before they’d even looked at it. Apparently, all of the phones they sell are of such high quality that the only possible reason for defectiveness is water damage. There is no possibility that they be of poor quality.

When asked the following question, “Well if it’s not water damage [Surly's first name] – [I loathe it when complete strangers presume to call me by my first name simply because they can see it on a computer screen; I am 33, not 13] – what do you do with it? Play baseball?”, Surly’s careened out of “diplomatic”, speeding right past “surly”, and plunged straight into “ferociously wrathful”. It took three shop keeps and the manager to subdue me by that point. I admit my bad temper, but I rarely erupt fully in front of others. It does, however, occur from time to time and those of you have witnessed (or experienced it) can probably picture clearly how events transpired.

But please forgive me for not providing a colourful description. I have no desire to relive too much of the entire event. Suffice it to say that as my phone was no longer under warranty I would have to have it sent for repairs that would take “2 to 8 weeks” (the woman beside me was complaining because hers had been gone for three months and was not yet ready) and the cost would be almost as much as buying a new phone. I was intrigued by the fact that all this occurred not two short months after my old (foreshadowing, the sign of a quality blog!) phone’s warranty had expired and after I had signed a contract with them, locking me into their service. I informed them of this intrigue in various expressive ways.

One long, heated debate, complete with lava flows and calls to “Corporate”, and five hundred million thousand dollars later, I left the store with a cloud in my head, an earthquake in my step, a new (admittedly pretty) cell phone that I can’t afford, and a print-out of my address book they salvaged from my old phone, waiving the $10 print-out fee “as a gesture” (such benevolence! Why do you waste your time in this store when you could be negociating peace in the Middle East?). The moral of the story: only sign contracts of any type if you absolutely have to. Signing contracts with service providers eradicates any say you may possibly have as to the service you receive and the quality thereof. It is carte blanch for the provider to treat you as simply the client number as which they so obviously view you. This was also communicated to them as lividly as possible immediately following the financial transaction.

And so feeling used and powerless against the demons of big business (tax their asses off if you win, Jack!), I took my feelings of impotence out on this blog. Do you like the new look? I’ll keep it around for a bit to see if I get used to it. The tiny font against the dark yet busy background of the old look was making me bug-eyed. Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

And on a brighter note, my summer has been improved by the discovery of this band thanks to Andy (on whom I would most likely have an enormous crush if we didn’t live appoximately one million zillion kilometres from each other; but we do, so I don’t). Like most of you, I have often wondered what it would sound like if Elton John, the Bee-Gees, the Human League, the New York Dolls, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and a drag queen decided to collaborate. Now I need no longer imagine this wondrous event for the answer is nigh. Plus, the lead singer and drummer are like so totally hot! Buy the album and Torontonians can catch them at Lee’s Palace for only $13 on July 20.

My inanely purchased phone is ringing.

Rainy Day

Surly Snobby, Noudnic, and Ajay on a good day in a faraway land.

Illustrator pillaged simultaneously from Radmila and Ice Queen.

Leadership

The federal election looms closer and I find myself growing increasingly cynical. I could only stomach a few minutes of both the French and the English televised leader’s debates. It was like watching my sister and me try to out-yell the other when we were children. A political leader should lead through intellect and innovation, not through bluster and lung capacity. I’m not sure I want any of these buffoons near any aspect of my life.

This is what other Canadians had to say on the debates, all pillaged from today’s Globe and Mail:

These are our “leaders”? Their comportment in these debates is a frightening spectacle. Talking over each other, answering questions that only they can hear (certainly not the ones I heard posed to them), behaving like children arguing in a park over who is next at bat.
Link

I would like to thank The Globe and Mail for its prescience in running the front-page photo of the historic match between Stephen Harper and Paul Martin in Tuesday night’s debate.

Even a cursory glance should reveal that Mr. Harper’s overly aggressive play of Rock is beaten by Mr. Martin’s bureaucratic Paper.

It warms my heart to see that politicians are finally embracing a higher form of dispute-resolution than the archaic “who talks louder” form of debate to which we have become accustomed.

It would appear that Mr. Martin is going to win hand over fist.
Link

After seeing the debate in English I am left wondering how, out of a population of 30 million, did we Canadians end up with these four?Link

How refreshing it was to be able to watch a leaders’ debate undistracted [sic] by even the slightest hint of charisma.
Link

Voter apathy is at an all-time high. I encourage people to vote. I encourage people to consider the issues they deem important before they vote. A confident-sounding leader, like Stephen Harper, does not necessarily make a good leader, as Ontarians have learned with Dalton McGuinty. I am discouraged at the thought of living in a country run by the Conservatives and mini-Dubya, even if it’s just a minority government.

Good Housekeeping

The strangest thing has happened to all of my shorts. I first noticed it last week when I finally dragged them out of their winter seclusion in my storage room that’s so big it could be a bedroom for a very short roommate. Yes, I have a large storage room in my apartment. This is one of the many reasons why a bout with unemployment won’t scare me away from it despite its hefty rent.

But to get to my point, I had to drag my shorts out of storage. Now, I have a very elaborate filing system. To the untrained layperson it may appear as if I have simply thrown those objects I am too silly to throw away into boxes (or never bothered to unpack them) and then piled the boxes in precarious, quivering piles in the very large storage room. When nosey visitors open the door to the very large storage room they invariably look at me with a quizzical mixture of horror and condescension.

In truth, the only entity aside from me who isn’t displeased with my arrangement of the very large storage room is Noudnic the Cat. He gets very excited every time I open the door, which isn’t that often, and he immediately bounds in, transmogrifying into the vicious untamed beast his ancestors were when they ran wild over the Elburz Mountains in the days of yore. This is when he’s not sleeping on his back in the bathtub (I wish I had a digital camera). In any case, he leaps over mountains, lurks in caves, and dodges avalanches (caused by him, might I add). Once while hunting he attacked and eviscerated an entire colony of old hair elastics I had kept from the days just after the days of yore when I wore plaid and ripped jeans and had hair that grew past my titties. I’d saved them because I thought they might be useful one day. Brave, regal Noudnic.

This acknowledgement of the inherent usefulness of all used objects permeates my entire outlook towards happy housekeeping. It is my philosophy that if an object has been useful, one should simply leave it precisely where one used it last because it will undoubtedly be useful once again. This applies to all objects. CDs should remain outside of their cases in tall unsteady stacks on my desk because I play them on my computer. Plates should stay on the coffee table in front of the TV because that is where they are utilized. Envelopes from hateful bills need not be discarded: they, or the bills themselves, can easily be transformed into wacky cat toys in one smooth crumple-and-toss movement. C’est simple comme ‹‹bonjour››.

This is a philosophy, you realize, not laziness as some have deemed it. One of these naysayers is my future husband, Ajay. He objects to my practical house-keeping style, believing for some reason that special places should be found for every object in a household and that things should be placed in these places when not in use. It’s a theory. And it’s also very easy for him to accomplish such a meaningless task since he is a model/Bollywood star who has servants to do these things. So whenever he scolds me I simply say, “Well then, fantasy fiancé, send over some of your fantasy servants!” We are then both so stimulated by the charged atmosphere that we make sensual, passionate love in the piles of clean laundry on my bedroom floor. All of this probably goes a long way towards explaining why housecleaning remains a fantasy in my household, along with other fantastical things, like future husbands for example.

In any case, last week my goal was to extract my shorts and my expired passport from the very large storage room. I also thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to put some order in the room, much to Noudnic’s distress. Fortunately I was saved from this task because the shorts were on top of the whole domestic topography. The passport was in the first box I opened, along with some term papers from my undergrad when I wore ripped jeans and plaid and I had hair that grew past my titties. I’d saved them because I thought they might be useful one day.

And so as I walked to the passport office in my brand new fashion sandals and my brand new fashion blisters, I noticed something odd about my shorts (Ha! You thought I forgot what I’d written in my first sentence). Their waist appeared to have shrunk over the winter. It’s very strange. The shorts are no shorter than they had been last summer. I cannot explain this odd phenomenon. Perhaps there’s something about the atmosphere of an overheated, closed storage room that causes cloth waists to shrink. I am completely flabbergasted. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?