Carin and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Afternoon.

I hate afternoons like the one I had yesterday, the ones where all kinds of annoying little things happen that, on their own are pretty minor. But when you add them together and put a real doozer on the top, the masterpiece is not pleasant.

I wouldn’t have cared too much that I had to take a cab somewhere that was a bit expensive. It wouldn’t have been too bad that the cab was insanely late and on the wrong side of the street. It also wouldn’t have been horrible that the bus driver screwed up and didn’t let me off at the bus stop I asked for and I had to take a bus around. It was kind of annoying that I was going to spend the afternoon working with someone who makes me feel like six different kinds of crap. It was also a bitch that I almost lost my purse because the strap came undone. But there was one thing, one solitary thing, that was the kicker. The funny thing is it could have been a good thing. But oh no. It was all a trick.

As I was catching the bus that was going to screw up, a guy I knew came up to me and was talking to me and said he’d run and get me a brownie. I thought, “mmm. A brownie! Sounds good!” He gave me one, and just as I bit into it, I heard him say, “Yeah, a Vegan brownie!”

I cannot even begin to describe the unpleasantness that waits to greet anyone who tries a vegan brownie. On top of the fact that you have no earthly idea what you’re eating, I think the killer is it’s not uniform. I don’t know what it is about vegan goop, whatever goes in it, *gag*, but it doesn’t seem to mix well. One bite tastes like peanut buttery goodness. The next tastes like a wad of paper towel. What’s up with that? So every bite is a gamble. It doesn’t take long before I’m dreading the next bite. And I love, and can finish, most little dessert squares. But half of this went in the bus garbage can. I thought if I didn’t do that, more would be in there because I’d lose my lunch…and the rest of the brownie. Not a good scene at all.

So that was my afternoon. Probably people have had far worse than that. But as I said, there’s not much worse to eat than a vegan brownie.

Ya just never know.

It’s funny how things go. Remember back when I got tagged to do that list of 7’s? Remember how I mentioned wanting to meet the guy I tried to help come and study here? Well, today I didn’t exactly meet him, but I actually got to here his voice. I know that sounds weird, but I’ll try and explain. I did warn you back then, this is a long story.

Back in 2001, I had a weird thing happen. A guy who usually helped me out with stuff like dealing with difficult professors and all that wanted my help with an unusual project. He’d been contacted by a young man in Pakistan who wanted to come to Canada and study. The reason he was contacting this guy was he was blind and didn’t know if he would be accepted in Canada because of his disability. So for some odd reason, the person who helps me thoughtI would be able to help him.

I had no idea where to begin with this one, and couldn’t figure out what to do. I started phoning everywhere, trying to find some way for him to come over.

You see, if someone has any kind of disability, it’s hard as hell to come to Canada, or any country, I’d imagine, unless you have family there. On top of that, organizations like the CNIB or anything like that are dedicated to helping people who already live here, understandably. So they won’t help him.

The poor guy was so confused by me. He thought I was the admissions officer. It broke my heart to have to explain to him that I was just a student. I was happy his English was as good as it was.

So after about a year of chasing down leads, going through a rollercoaster of hopes and disappointments, I told him it looked like it was not possible. So he went to France. But he was on my MSN Messenger list still and I would write messages to him from time to time. I have to admit that the number of exchanges went way down because I found it hard to talk to him. I don’t know how to explain it. He saw me as being in a position of power to change quote the western world unquote because I live in it. I don’t blame him. If I were in his shoes, I would probably expect the same. But it made me feel helpless and wonder if I should find a way to use what little power I had. It was also hard to digest the sheer amount of despair he saw in Pakistan. I tried to listen, but I noticed that sometimes I would dread seeing him online. Isn’t that selfish?

Today, out of the blue, he asked for my phone number. Finally, I’ve heard his voice! It wasn’t a long call, but it was sure weird to actually hear the voice of someone you’ve only known in emails and messages for five years.

Silly Jabberings on an Awesome Day

I don’t know what it is about awesomely sunny days, but they make me want to gabble about random things that usually I wouldn’t think are worth being posted. But since it is so awesome out, here goes, off into the land of my silly mind.

I’m so glad to have that annoying census thing done. I went to do it this morning, and something really surprised me. This is the first year we’ve been able to do the census online, and already, they had a special help section on how to do it with screen-readers. That’s pretty damn cool. Usually, they produce something that’s completely blinky unfriendly, someone complains, actually several people complain, they do some research, and after several tries, they make something half decent. I’m not blaming or bitching, just saying that’s the way it usually goes. But they produced something that didn’t require an elaborate help file! I can’t say it works well, because the good folks at stats can are not happy with my browser and I don’t know why, I can’t even find the settings they speak of. But to make a long story short, I couldn’t fill it out online. But maybe it’s a good thing I couldn’t, because the help said with a screen-reader, it might take an hour, and I managed to do it with a helpful operator over the phone in five minutes! There’s some speed and efficiency right there.

Today I was walking down the street and got a good chuckle out of something. There was a guy standing at the corner of a street playing music. My first thought was, “Hmmm I wonder if I’ll step in his guitar case.” I’ve done it before. My second was, “Hmmm I wonder what he’ll do as I get closer.” They all do pretty entertaining things. One guy stopped playing just in time to keep me from stepping right in his guitar case. Another sang and did a jolly dodge the blink dance. This one stopped in the middle of his tune and yelled, “Go left!” I hope no one was engrossed in his song, cause they’d be wondering where go left fit in. Then he told me he was trying to guide me *with* the music. It was a good thought, but my first instinct whenI hear music is not to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It’s to try to avoid his setup since I don’t really feel like joining him at centre stage. But at least he wasn’t too mad at me and nobody else seemed to be, so that was good.

I got even more amusement today on the bus. I was coming back from this thing the CNIB put on at this nursing home. So, while standing at the stop waiting for the bus, I was joined by this grunting man. I didn’t give it much thought, I thought maybe he had a stroke and lost the ability to speak. We got on the bus and he seemed to be able to see it coming and find a seat, so I thought, ok he must be cool to leave the nursing home. Then I started to question that assumption as we drove off. He would grunt louder and laugh. Sometimes he would copy noises around him. Once a baby screamed something like, “Dadadada!” The old man responded with a long, loud, “Daa-aa-aa-aa-aaa-aaa-aa!” Sometimes, he’d say, 10-4 along with the radio, or repeat other things. And sometimes when the baby would shriek, he’d say, “ooo! Screams!” It was really weird. Now I was really wondering if I should let the driver know where he came from. But he surprised me again when I got off the bus. He simply said to me, “Can you get down ok?” and sounded completely normal. So I really didn’t know what to think.

While we’re on the subject of getting a laugh out of things you wouldn’t expect to get a laugh out of, I never thought a radio that could pick up police frequencies would be so entertaining, more like captivating. Oh god I sound geeky. Brad got a crank-up radio for his birthday. On it, there was a setting to pick up weather stations, I guess if you lived in the states. But we found out that instead of boring old weather, we get exciting and weird police transmissions. That is the coolest when you’re in a small town where you might know the arrestee, and they’re less likely to use codes that you have to look up. Who’d think we’d turn off the TV and gather around the radio to see what we could hear? And then there’s the fun of saying to the other guy, “Do you recognize this name?” Scarily enough, we did recognize a few. Oh the silly little things that end up being fun.

And I think that’s about all the random things I had in my head. Maybe I’ll have more later. Get out in the sun, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow!

Apartment Hunting Sucks!

Steve and I are looking for a place together. Our little places can get a bit cramped when the two of us are in them, not to mention if we unloaded all of our stuff into one of them. That just wouldn’t happen. This has brought me to the conclusion that god I hate apartment hunting. On top of the strange deadlines, the applications you have to fill out and the frustration of finding out that some places just aren’t within where your vision of an area of town is, you meet some real dopes. Let’s begin.

Dope 1 thinks he can call an area not much bigger than your bachelor pad a two-bedroom apartment. Just because you have 2 closets in that small space doesn’t mean it’s a two bedroom!

Dope 2 doesn’t bother to let his current tenant know we’re coming. This is blatently obvious by the underwear she is folding when we go in. What does that forecast for us? Probably not good things. See ya later.

Dope 3 doesn’t seem too alarmed that her building has no laundry and there’s no laundry near by. Why? Because “She takes it home to her mommy.” Will mommy do ours?

Dope 4 refuses to even rent the space he has available to us because we can’t mow the lawn. seriously, would you really want two blinks trying to cut your grass? This position doesn’t change even when we tell him we’re willing to find and pay someone to do it out of our own pocket. Oh no, the guy on the main floor must do it. I will laugh and laugh and laugh if I read in the paper that his nice lawn-cutting tenants wreck his house and bounce rent. That actually happened to one guy in town, wanna go for 2?

Dope 5 works for an agency to help people find housing. Their specialty is supposed to be to match your requirements with places. Some of these requirements might be safety, affordability, location, you get the idea. This guy tried to recommend I go live at a place affectionately known around town as “the crack building.” When I said I wouldn’t feel safe there, do you want to know what his response was? It was, “Oh, you know about that.” Thanks, goodbye, and I’ll never recommend you to any of my friends, you slimy prick. Oo! That was a little unexpected venom.

Dopes 6 and 7 took the cake though. Where do I begin? Over the course of 3 visits, they helped talk us out of a place we weren’t really sure we wanted anyway by doing the following:

  • I asked dope 6 why the rent was so cheap. She said she honestly didn’t know, she just thought “the landlord was so nice!” so he was saving them on rent. When we arrived, it was made clear that maintenance wasn’t this guy’s priority and the building wasn’t “so nice! after all.” I mean, I wasn’t expecting a gorgeous place, but I was expecting more than this.

  • Dope 6 also didn’t even know where her phone jacks were or if they even had any. She said she couldn’t see them because all the furniture was in the way. Hello. You’ve lived here for a year, and the furniture didn’t arrange itself.

  • She also didn’t know who she was paying her hydro to because “my room-mate set that up and I just send her money.” After being very nice, I finally got mad and got the company name out of her by asking, “What are the words on the envelope that comes in the mail?” Even that took a couple of tries.

  • The room-mate, dope 7, because I’m so predictable, wasn’t much better. She also didn’t know where the phone jacks were, and didn’t understand the question “Do you lose heat in the winter time?” or “Does the place get cold.” I’ve never had someone pause so long and then say very slowly, “Um… … … I…don’t…knooooooooooooow!” Chief, It’s May! Winter wasn’t that long ago. Sure it was a mild one. But it still covered the ground with white garbage, that’s cold enough to make you, um … … … knooooooow! And, it was their first and only winter, so it’s not like she couldn’t remember which winter was the worst.

  • This was the best. After showing us around, Dope 6 looked at us, giggled and said, “Soon I’m going to go to New York City to meet this guy for the first time! I met him on the internet. He’s from Iowa, and he’s so nice!” Anybody remember what else was so nice that we just saw? I hope she makes it back alive and unscathed.

And so, the search continues. But I know, like the truth in the X files, an apartment…is out there.

Brain Drain!

Wow! Would you believe that, instead of making a date-rape drug, this bunch of imbeciles made industrial strength drain cleaner, some of them even managing to down four glasses of it, but they still didn’t figure out that something was amiss with their chemical creation until they had to call an ambulance because our star of the show wasn’t breathing? How the hell is that possible? If I *smell* even household drain cleaner, I’m going, ick! I know why that stuff clears clogs. Imagine drinking industrial-strength clog-clearer. It’s no wonder it almost killed our guy who’s going to jail, put his friend in a coma, made another one unable to walk, and made another friend pretty sick. Not only did one guy drink this stuff, four people did. Do they have no central nervous system? What the fuck?

Stupidhead the Sequel!

I guess I spoke too soon. I have now discovered that my new neighbour is a stupidhead of a different kind. What will I call her? Ditz-o-matic?

Let’s run down 15 minutes with her. I’m in my house talking on the phone. I hear, slam. Jingle. slam slam jingle! “What the hell!” I open my door and hear “Really, Ma’am, it’s no big deal.” I ask her what’s going on. She cries that her lock is broken and seems to have fallen off and she can’t get in she can’t get in she can’t get in! I then found out that the people telling her that it was no big deal, ma’am, were random strangers that she pulled in off the street to try her door. They were not friends. they were not even acquaintances. They were people she chased down. Now, I’ve chased down a few people in my time, but it’s usually for directions or to ask them which street I’m chasing them down. I’ve never felt the need to pull random strangers into my apartment building lobby and then have them try my lock. Doesn’t that just scream trouble to you? What if stranger e. is an accomplished burglar whose reason for being good with locks is his skill at breaking them to get in. I personally don’t want people knowing precisely where I live if I don’t know precisely who they are.

Deciding this drama should move out of public view, I told her to get in my place. I then dialed the landlord and handed her the phone. The string of chaos that was her message to him was something like, “Hello. I’m the girl living at xxx. I can’t get in. My lock’s off, I’m in a crisis, I need to have you come over now now now!” Next, I phoned his cell phone for her, she didn’t know either of these numbers at all. She left a similar message, only with a higher pitched voice.

After she started to panic, I said I thought he had another emergency number. Since I didn’t remember that one, I did the only logical thing I thought there was to do. I didn’t drag more strangers into the building. I didn’t do a rain dance outside hoping that instead of rain, we’d get the landlord’s arrival. I didn’t scream for my mommy. We went over to the main building and looked for the buzzer number of the guy I sort of knew to ask him if he had the emergency number. No luck. So we went inside and asked people who lived there if they had it. They said no. So we went to the restaurant next door to see if they had it because the restaurant is attached to the building, so they might rent the space from the same guy. . They said no. So we headed back to my place to think. But by this time, he had arrived and saved the day for her.

But that wasn’t all of her silly ditzy antics. In a building that was a no pets building, she had a puppy in her apartment. This puppy had something encrusted around its mouth which she said was just its lack of a summer haircut, and I’ll swear, even if she claims it’s an angel, snapped at me. It growled, and then jumped, twice, both in the direction of my face! It didn’t do that little hello jump up thing some dogs do. Oh no, it leapt straight for my face. It wouldn’t bark or howl, it would just make this horrible snorting noise that she said was it’s way of talking. Wouldn’t that make alarm bells go off a bit? Most dogs at least bark a little. What’s wrong with this one?

Her final act of goofiness was to say to me, “You shouldn’t have had to do this, I didn’t want to involve the neighbour.” But she had no problem involving strangers. Uh-huh. Even today, she keeps trying to give me giant hugs for what I did. Wow. I appreciate this, but I didn’t think I did all that much.

Other small things keep happening, like the scent of weed in the lobby…again, the people pounding on the door and yelling for her…again, and the loud door slamming…again. you follow me? Not…again!

Count Me as one of the Lucky Ones.

The other day, I got a bit of an eye-opener. I heard about this weird small mailing list called blind tards. IT described itself as a list for the blind to talk about blind people we have met who are exceedingly stupid. I thought, oo what fun! Here’s the place for me to talk about the blink I met on the bus who wanted to suck coffee through a straw because “I’m blind, andI might spill it!” and wanted me to identify all of her food items through the bags they were in. I thought, woo! I can talk about the first week I was at the school for the blind and how I thought I was in an asylum, not a school. Here’s the place where I can hear similar stories and have a giggle. Maybe I can get some cool blog material. Boy was I wrong. Well, at least it gave me one blog post.

Would you believe that a list of 45 can generate more mail than a list of 1000? These people were the most vocal, most bitter, most unhappy and most dejected blind people I’ve ever met. But at the same time, they seemed to take pride in their bitterness and anger and loved to verbally beat up on anyone who did not 100 percent agree with them. I even saw a new member who stated she was born blind and was pretty bitter and lonely. I have one question for her. Why? I partly understand people who go blind being bitter and lonely. They miss their sight, and they miss their friends who have a way of leaving as soon as they go blind because they’re afraid to face them. But if you’re born that way, what the fuck is your problem? If you’re 20-something and are still coming to terms with your disability, how the hell will anyone else deal with it? Maybe I just answered my own question about the loneliness part.

So, all I can say is, I’m happy to unsubscribe! I can’t take that much bitterness, and I’m happy to not feel that way. I wonder if any of them will read this…I hope so.

What Say You, Freud?

Actually I don’t want to know what Freud would have to say since he’d probably be high as a kite when he said it. But since he was the first one to analyze dreams, and I’m about to talk about a really weird dream I had last night, that’s why I picked him for the title.

Ok, where do I begin? I was sitting in MacKinnon, a building on campus, in class again. This girl came in and sat down beside me, with seven chickens attached to her arm in a ring-like thing. They weren’t in a bag, pouch, cage, or any kind of container. They were just somehow attached together in a circular pattern. What the fuck? Chickens? Attached to her arm? So we’re sitting there andI’m asking her about these chickens. She said they’re part of another class project and she has to take them everywhere. She said the worst part was they always want to peck her arm if she doesn’t have bread around. She said they frustrate her so much that sometimes she just wants to kill and eat them. Finally I offered to get some bread for her. She said sure, but I had to take the chickens with me. So off I went, with the chicken ring. I got on the elevator, and nobody asked me, hey weirdo, what’s with the chickens? They just pushed the buttons. Then the elevator began to swing violently and came to a stop. Then the dream did something dreams like to do. It made the space in the elevator huge, so huge that I had to yell for someone’s attention and ask what happened. They said the elevator was stuck. I asked them to use the emergency phone since I thought the alarm was useless for some reason I don’t know. They found the phone, which was a speaker phone and only went to MacKinnon mainttenance. They said they’d come and rescue us, but it would take a lot of time. Then I got desperate for some reason, and suddenly I was the one who had to dive down onto the next flor. Yes, me with the chickens attached to my arm, had to become a stunt man.

I went head first, screaming all the way, and the chickens started clucking, more than they had in the whole dream, and pecking! They were now pecking my arm like mad! Then I started walking down the street, but it was taking longer than I’d expect because I had to stop and keep the chickens from chewing on me! Then it just…ended.

What is with that? Has anyone ever had a dream like that? Probably everyone’s had weirder, but whatever. What’s the weirdest dream you’ve ever had?

I Feel Like Writing, So I Will

How’s everybody doing? Me, I’m doing pretty well. I’m really enjoying the awesome weather we’ve been having the last little while, and I hope you all are too, unless you’re one of those people who for whatever reason is stuck somewhere with not so great weather, in which case allow me to say, hahahahaha! Ok, that wasn’t very nice, but still, hahahahaha! Seriously though, I really shouldn’t laugh considering that I bitch about bad weather more than just about anyone I know. Snow and cold and even rain are things that tend to fuck up my day, sometimes to a frightening degree. If you’ve ever wanted to see a happy fun person change on a dime and become an angry ranting loon, come hang out with me on a crappy day sometime. I have no idea why this happens, but it does, and I’ve noticed that it gets worse the older I get.

Speaking of getting older, I want to send out an early happy birthday to my little brother. Ok, he’s not that little, but he’s younger than I am and I can’t come up with a better term than the one everybody else uses, so little brother it is. He turns 20 on the weekend. That scares me. It scares me because I can’t figure out where the time went. It seems like just yesterday I was telling him stories and bouncing him around the living room when we wrestled, and now he’s old enough to drink and vote, and if he tried, I’m sure there’s a pretty good chance he could beat my ass.

Many times I sit around and wonder when exactly it was that they decided to speed up time, and how exactly it was that I managed to miss the memo, even though I know that that’s just the way things work. Time passes before you know it. Things change, people grow up and move on, nothing ever stays the same permanently. Some days it’s hard to get my head around that. I’m only 26, but I already find myself looking back on how much things have changed in my lifetime, and sometimes, even though I hate to admit it, longing for the good old days. Ahh yes, the good old days. The days when there were only 10 channels on TV, and that was just if you had one of those big towers outside of your house and lived someplace that didn’t have a bunch of tall buildings blocking the signal. If you didn’t have that, you got 3, and 1 of them was in a language you couldn’t understand. The days when you could say to somebody that they sounded like a broken record and not get a look in return that said something along the lines of “a broken what now? God, old people suck, and they smell funny. Mom, this old motherfucker is scaring me, let’s go home.” The days when saying something like motherfucker within earshot of your parents would get you grounded for a year. The days when your blog was written down on bits of paper in a book, and you’d flip out if somebody found it and read it, rather than typed out and stored on a server somewhere for everybody to see, even though some people still flip out if somebody manages to find it and read it, but that’s another post for another day. The days before anybody knew what a blog, or even an internet was. The days when nobody wanted to, or was able to be in touch and connected to the office 24/7. I could go on, but none of us have forever to sit here and read it. Time is passing every day, and we all need to realize that, not take for granted what we have and where we are, and spend what time we do have here in the best way we possibly can.

That was much heavier than I was expecting.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever told any of you this story before, but I almost got to see Elvis Presley once. It’s true. I was super close to seeing him, but then my shovel broke.

Ok, I guess some things never do change. I’m still a prick. Sometimes I can be a sentimental prick, but still, a prick is a prick is a prick, or something like that.

Before I go, I want to thank Carin for all of the work she’s done here. It’s easier than it’s ever been to get in touch with us now and you now have the ability to search the whole web and hopefully once Google gets their act together this entire site from here, and that’s pretty much all because of her. Thanks for taking all of the time to figure this stuff out. I’m far too stupid for most of these things, so thanks for everything.

That’s all for now, but I’m sure there’ll be more to come, including, hopefully, my take on what sounds like a pretty interesting Backlash show. And by interesting, I don’t mean good, at least not if the highlights I saw on Raw mean anything.

Ok, I’m gone now.

I’m Sure They Taste Great, And They’re Definitely Less Filling

PM slammed by GO hackers

OTTAWA — Ever wonder what a prime minister eats?

GO Transit riders in and around Toronto may wish they didn’t know after pranksters recently hacked into the commuter trains’ digital sign system and offered their thoughts on the subject. “Stephen Harper Eats Babies,” five different signs stated between Thursday and Monday, at which point the sign system was finally shut down and password protected.

According to GO spokesman Edmund Shea, the regional transit body in no way endorses the messages that interrupted paid LED ads. “It’s electronic graffiti, electronic vandalism,” he said. “We’re sorry if anyone’s offended by this, including the prime minister.”