more_things_learned_from_dreams raze christmas socks are always there when you need them most. 130527 ... raze if you've given a performance that seems to have left the audience cold, you can still leave them breathless by using the curtains to glide across the stage, deftly taking your final bow while on the move. 130528 ... e_o_i (mind if I hop over here?) If you're planning to join an underground (read: living in a basement apartment) art collective, you have to bring a piece of ID and a play you wrote. If you don't you'll get kicked out into the sunlight. The problem with boiling water is that you have to put the water INTO something before you boil it. You can't get water to just float around. It's a common mistake, though. 130528 ... raze (please feel free to hop in. i just felt it was time we had one of these over here too, and elected to kick it off with christmas socks.) 130528 ... raze a high-tech shotgun is no match for a man on a plastic tricycle. 130529 ... raze in the chinese restaurant with beds in place of tables, the man with the least tattered comforter is king. 130530 ... e_o_i The ferns I helped my mother plant in her backyard two days ago are too big. Their resemblance to prehistoric tropical ferns will trigger instant global warming any day now, and then I'll be forced to escape with my family to the Laurentians. We'll stand on top of a mountain watching the valleys flood with water. I'll be looking for dinosaurs, but there won't be any. 130530 ... e_o_i Another option: leaving the family and teaching high school in "English Pakistan." I want to introduce Parvana from the Parvana books to Malala Yousafzai because I think they have a lot in common, but something always prevents me - possibly the fact that one is fictional and the other real. 130530 ... raze if i walk through an old friend's house without taking my shoes off, his mother will exact a toll of forty cents as punishment for my lack of consideration. also, there's a hotel where one room has a door that's never closed. in that room are two girls, who always seem to be standing and smiling like they're waiting for someone or something. anyone who comes in contact with them loses their memory — and then their entire personality — over a period of twenty four hours, reverting to a child-like state of helplessness. the only way to reverse the process is to be reminded of the people who set it in motion in the first place. and when you memory has been sucked dry, that necessitates having a witness who's immune to whatever it is that's carried on those smiles, who can jog your memory for you. for whatever reason, i'm capable of serving as such a witness. 130531 ... raze hey, now i'm missing r's. good stuff. 130531 ... e_o_i Animal rights petitions are becomingly increasingly frivolous. The proof? Someone was asking me to sign a petition to install giant playing cards as partitions in airplanes that transport elephants, so that the elephants can masturbate in privacy. (It isn't often that I wake up thinking, "but how would elephants masturbate?") 130531 ... raze it's all fun and games until bikini-clad extras from "saved by the bell" stab at you through the laundry room door with butcher knives. 130604 ... raze the quality of sleep i get when sharing a bed with another person increases or decreases in direct proportion to how much time they spend looking directly at me. 130605 ... raze it's surprising how deeply you can endear yourself to the object of your affection simply by objecting to the idea of kicking one another in the genitals out of love. 130611 ... raze it's not so easy to produce an authentic-sounding sneeze on command. 130612 ... raze deep down, taylor swift thinks she's always been a cat who just happened to be born in the body of a woman. internet critics do not approve. 130613 ... e_o_i See realistic_dreams: 1992 was "ages ago," or at least that's what haughty businessmen think. Moreover, Canadian copyright law dictates that a book enters the public domain six years after the date in the title. This is all well and good for Orwell's 1984, but will we still be paying royalties to Arthur C. Clarke's estate until 3007? And what happens to books that don't have a date in the title? It's like death; no one knows. 130613 ... raze when a few people are trying to break into your house, you should hide in the basement and camouflage yourself with chicken feed, until the lone female member of the group smashes a window and finds you. then you should join her and her friends outside for a friendly smoke. also, whether or not eric burdon sings on the war song "slippin' into darkness" has everything to do with how you cut the baguette while making yourself a turkey sandwich. 130614 ... e_o_i Getting a Masters in English really is useless, because both students and profs keep falling asleep. This may have something to do with a class held from 11 pm to 2 am. The best thing for me to do is take a psychology class, which takes place partly on the set of an unnamed children's TV show with a lion prowling around behind me. While I realize that lions will be the gentlest animals once peace on earth is established, it's kind of unnerving to have one pacing around behind my back. 130614 ... raze the top of a tournament size pool table is as good a place to cuddle with someone as any other. 130615 ... raze when assigned the task of walking sideways in a large group of people, in a classroom with many obstacles, ordered to move in such a way that each person's body is practically glued to the next and no one is ever not touching someone else at any given time, it's okay to break the rules and swap places with someone closer to the front of the line if they're unsure of their leadership skills. when an abused woman grows tired of her husband's arrogance and infidelity and she slits his throat to give him something to think about, if the dream takes place in canada, there won't be enough money in the budget of my subconscious to create an overly gory death scene, and very little blood will be seen, calling into question both the realism of the moment and the effectiveness of the knife. subdued, ominous orchestral music will creep in when least expected, but it will never sound out of place. 130616 ... e_o_i Nudity is only taboo when Google notices it. I went to visit my brother at the camp where he works, and I took a picture of him swimming. Only after the shots appeared on my screen (they did so three at once) did I realize the younger guys had pranked him by pulling his bathing suit down. I'd captured his naked butt on camera, and I wondered whether Google with its magic spy powers would consider the picture indecent. I was worried about what Google could do to me, even while my brother was angrily (and nakedly) ranting at the perpetrators, who hid behind a rock. After traveling to the Biodome across a wooden bridge (I ate one of the buttons holding it together, but it tasted good) I found myself in front of a giant screen that was showing a music video by a not-quite-mainstream singer. She had light blond hair, probably a wig, and a cutesy face with deep-set eyes - like a younger, possibly Japansese, Bjork. The unique thing about her appearance was that she didn't have breasts. None at all. She was female in sex and gender, but she'd been born without them. In the video, two male dancers lifted sheets of pink and white fabric off her shirt area until her bare, unmarked skin was visible. Google was okay with her toplessness and the video was a hit on YouTube, although plenty of people found it incredibly erotic (this I could tell from the way the men's fingers moved, although there was something slightly penguin-like about her.) 130616 ... raze futuristic trailer homes breed suspense. 130617 ... e_o_i Words have consequences. Sometimes these consequences are sheep. Specifically, when I'm driving down the highway (possibly flying along the median) I'm unaware that a sheep spontaneously bursts into existence a few feet behind me every time I speak, until I get to the thrift store and see a film of the chaos I've unintentionally caused. 130617 ... raze there's a correlation between football and senility, but i haven't worked out all the details yet. 130618 ... e_o_i The city's bus system has been replaced by aircraft that look like climbing bars in parks. Unlike in childhood, I'm not brave enough to sit on the top. 130618 ... raze when fighting in a wintertime war that has no explanation, scorched_earth tactics will work on snow-covered hills, to some extent, but in the end all i can do is flood my basement with a garden hose hoping reinforcements arrive in time. 130619 ... raze in the game of seven questions, the person of interest is named claire, and a dumb answer will lead to an impromptu paramore concert. 130621 ... amy adaptability texting the boy I liked in high school on my oldish school phone is just about as difficult as getting up the courage to talk to him in the early 90s 130621 ... raze there's a lot going on in taluhland (wherever taluhland is). 130622 ... raze constructing a couplet in which "kettle" rhymes with "metal" shouldn't be difficult at all, but sometimes it really is. especially when a fish is involved. 130623 ... raze the secret math of almonds is thus: higher number, darker nut. lower number, lighter nut. the equations are where things start to get tricky. 130624 ... e_o_i Leonard Cohen doesn't show up to birthday parties, even those for my poet friends. Sometimes I am a good mediator, but while "Whoever has bigger breasts gets the painting" is a reasonable compromise, the chubby man will win by squeezing his chest together and my poet friend will get so angry that she'll telepathically change the colour of the painting. 130625 ... raze joseph stalin steals every home's first piano. when a girl pays me back a hundred dollars she owes me in bread slices, i can't trust the two guys in the basement not to steal the bread from my underwear drawer, and some creative thumbtack torture carried out by helpful hidden closet ninjas won't coax a friend of the thieves into revealing where they're hiding. more importantly, one should never lean against a glass house. those load bearing walls are ill-equipped to support anything that weighs more than mel gibson. 130626 ... e_o_i Living in a giant milk crate will make me nostalgic - for what I'm not sure. 130627 ... raze if you want to become a successful standup comedian, calling a television news reporter "chub-chub" as a term of endearment isn't such a bad way to start building your audience. 130628 ... e_o_i Revisiting high school means I'll be asked to ally myself with either vapid or evil fictional characters. I'm sitting at a picnic table, and two glittery cheerleader-y girly-girls - the likes of which never existed in my actual school - are holding notebooks, giggling. They ask me, "Who do you like better, Alex from A Clockwork Orange or Edward from Twilight?" In the dream it's a serious dilemma. What are they asking me, exactly? Who's a better person, who's a more interesting character, or whether Malcolm McDowell in his 20s was better looking than Robert Pattison now? I'm about to give a qualified answer, but the girls get up and leave the picnic table because I'm too slow. 130629 ... e_o_i The second part of the dream involved going to class in what looked like a shadowy warehouse. For some reason, Montreal poet David McGimpsey was our eleventh-grade science teacher, and when he announced that I had passed (passed the grade, not died) I knew it was all because of my continue-the-story fanfiction. A fellow student, Steve, had failed, and all because he hadn't put the last dab of icing on the cake he was making for his final exam. He begged McGimpsey for the key to the kitchen so he could finish it, but the writer of Lindsey Lohan sonnets was resolute: Steve had passed the deadline, it was all over. I was beginning to get anxious - hadn't I been forgiven late deadlines many times? Wasn't this mean to poor Steve? 130629 ... e_o_i (okay, just one Lindsey Lohan sonnet, as far as I know - see his book Sitcom) 130629 ... e_o_i (and note that "passed" is used, fleetingly or not, for three markedly different meanings here: died, succeeded, and missed. Okay, I'll stop now.) 130629 ... raze a hug from selena gomez can melt even the hardest of hearts. 130629 ... e_o_i In the revolution, me and a couple of ten-to-thirteen-year-olds will transform the interactive website I use for tutoring into a gaming platform, only to get too distracted to revolutionize other things. 130630 ... e_o_i The word "chopsticks" isn't a real word, just a plastic word. Leonard and Penny from The Big Bang Theory are snapping pictures of whoever enters the conference centre where Leonard is presenting his paper, but I'm not too upset because I recognize them. Turns out, though, that this is an English literature conference, no place for Leonard's paper on theoretical physics (hey, that sounds like half an episode - I can write sitcoms in my sleep, whaddabout that?) 130701 ... raze spontaneous snow pants are no excuse for thoughtlessness. 130702 ... e_o_i The woman who ran away to the country to be queen of the ducks isn't crazy, just disappointed with people. 130702 ... raze before his success in the music industry with the police and as a solo artist, sting was secretly training to become a priest, but he grew disillusioned and left it all behind after learning a friend and mentor was a charlatan wearing the clothes of a holy man. all who know this sad tale wring out wet white rags in tribute to father sting, the priest who never was. 130703 ... raze whatever you do, don't ever try to flush two adjacent toilets in a public bathroom at the same time when they each contain a healthy dose of lingering digestive debris. what happens will not be pretty. 130704 ... e_o_i Don't start chasing a squirrel during a scavenger hunt, or it will turn into a man and run up the stairs faster than you can, then win the answer to the multiple-choice question that appears on the wall. Still, you can both share the milk and cookies that a kindly old lady serves you from behind the teleport threshold. 130704 ... raze i'm not a skilled pitcher, and i can't aim my love, but i can kick you in the shins to make my presence felt. 130706 ... no reason we will end and you will get involved with a girl i haven't talked to in 15 years or so, and i will literally follow you until you disappear. 130706 ... e_o_i Picking up small change that litters the ground around a bus shelter is a surprisingly good distraction from the pain of a broken arm. 130707 ... raze a cheque is any old piece of paper with a dollar amount on it and lines on which to write who it's from and who it's to. you can make as many as you want at home with a word document and a printer, and as long as you've got the money in your bank account, they're valid cheques. i'm not sure if every bar accepts them, though. 130708 ... raze hell is a high school hallway. 130710 ... raze when you're a middle-class high school drug dealer, you hide a razor blade beneath one of your fingernails (painful but less bloody than you'd think), and you steel yourself against the threat of discovery by holding onto the words of your mentor, who tells you there are no outside forces to fear, for you are the police, and you are your own judge and jury, and you are everyone, and there is no one else. 130711 ... e_o_i When my friend and I are required to act out our childhood selves on a stage in front of a large audience, she'll build a working computer out of Lego and I'll just whine and talk to dolls. I'll want to give a better impression of myself, but that will be impossible since I've forgotten my script. 130711 ... raze there's a way to use a child's keyboard as a console for sega master system games if you can figure out the circuitry, and while the details of the games remain the same, the graphics improve exponentially. 130712 ... raze skinny men should not fall backwards onto one of my bookshelves. i don't deal well with that kind of thing, or so it would seem. 130713 ... raze when a story you're telling isn't achieving the desired response, conjure a child for instant pathos. 130714 ... raze some people have horizontal scrolling slot machines for faces. when things don't quite line up, it's a little unnerving. you can almost make out who they're supposed to be. almost, but not quite. 130715 ... raze jesus is a jovial asian man with a moustache. he'll lead you in song and keep you company on an elevator going down. he might not be able to turn water into wine, but he can at least offer some much-needed levity in the face of despair. unfortunately, until the sister from "the wonder years" changes her racist ways, jesus won't be welcome at the dinner table unless he gets rid of the moustache (or, as she would have it, "that scar tissue he calls an upper lip"). 130716 ... e_o_i A publisher will hire me as long as I agree to write "50% of all text" for their books. Agreeing, even though it seems risky, will lead to him giving me a high five. And then I'll want to say something confident and polite without being hesitant. "Thank you," I'll say, "for the high five." 130716 ... raze when something appreciates over time, it's an example of the "reverse carly rae jepsen rule" in action. 130717 ... raze an adjustable aspect ratio is a wonderful thing. 130718 ... e_o_i By singing "Cantate Domino canticus novus" in an ominous voice in the shower, I can make the soap suds running down the sides of the tub solidify into edible carrots. 130719 ... raze "bill clinton" is an option on a drop-down list of canadian cities. and it isn't as tricky as you'd think to record a violinist on a moving bus. 130720 ... raze there's a list waiting to be written with the title "eight cruel things to do before i die". 130721 ... e_o_i When J hangs out with me, we watch strange movies. One has a gruesome scene where a man tries to bite an explosive device out of another man's shoulder. It ends with a strangely subdued explosion, and J rolls her eyes at me as if to say, "What did you expect?" This is immediately followed by an animated song sequence where the narrator counts his years backwards by Christmases. It's a bit eerie when he ends the song by saying, "In 1976, I will cease to exist," but otherwise it's a very happy little piece. (In real life, we watched Waking Life together. Years ago.) 130721 ... raze beware the hungry bear in your stepfather's mother's backyard, for he is not as friendly as they say, and if you get too close to him he'll urinate on your lap, transforming you into catherine keener. 130722 ... raze a hospital tarp-walker's unwillingness to deal with past emotional trauma leads to a surplus of food in the bathtub drain. 130723 ... e_o_i Malls are places where I try to avoid interacting with famous people. I'm in the back room of a furniture store, lying on a mattress next to Nicki Minaj and trying to describe a play to her. The part that trips me up is a dance in the play which was supposed to represent sex, and I can't remember the word "represent" so I stammer "Well, it wasn't really a sex scene..." and then she flutters her highlighter-yellow eyelids and strokes my arm. I don't like to be seduced while I'm trying to explain things, so I get up. She tells me I'm a prude and I shrug. In the main room I have to clean the floor, but I notice berries growing in lowered segments of the floor - they may be cherries, but they also look like peaches - and I try to pick some, but the manager comes by and says he's firing me for wasting time. So I lean my broom against the wall, not unduly disappointed, and stroll down the hall to see what I've been missing. I see a crowd of teenage girls at the pet store, and lo and behold, there's Justin Bieber taking photos with them. I saw him before passing by the furniture store, but I wasn't sure it was him. Now I make a beeline for the electronics store opposite, since I'm determined not to be in a picture with Justin Bieber, only to hear the speakers there blaring Bieber's latest metal song with him screeching "Evil death!" (or "Evil! Death!") It strikes me that I should be amused, but I would rather feel amused in a quieter place. 130723 ... e_o_i When I move to a giant apartment complex in the Laurentians, the memory of a debt will weigh heavily on me: I owe a boy a hamburger. When I find out he's living in the same apartment complex, I'll buy him a full meal and then fall in love with his older brother, who's too busy with his job as a climbing instructor to notice. 130724 ... e_o_i Glossy paper has self-laminating properties, if you understand the magic. I'm tempted to pass off a photograph of a lake as a painting I made, but I get distracted a man asking me where "the 106" is; I assume it's a street so I direct him towards my brother who knows where all the streets are. All of them. 130725 ... e_o_i the preposition placer "get distracted by" 130725 ... raze some terminally ill cats say poignant things when they're dressed like a sandwich. 130725 ... raze if ever i'm crossing the street while four or five people are engaged in a mexican standoff at the intersection, it isn't wise to break into a run so i can get out of the line of fire. even if the conflict has nothing to do with me, i'll end up taking a bullet for "cutting to the basket". armed strangers don't take too kindly to what they perceive to be displays of athletic skill, however unintentional. better to walk casually and act oblivious. 130727 ... raze i'm not comfortable with the idea of hallway time travel, even after being shown that my grandfather on my mother's side will age gracefully. walking through a public restroom barefoot, meanwhile, doesn't concern me at all. and when i find a way to screw up my lines in a school play with the script right in front of my face, i will sing my character's dialogue as opera. 130728 ... raze the most effective way to smuggle liquor into prison is inside of three hollowed-out wooden hairbrushes. but you didn't hear it from me... 130729 ... raze for some reason, washing someone else's dishes while they're not at home always seems like a bad idea. 130730 ... e_o_i When I teach grade two the kids' names keep changing on the attendance sheet, leading to thought processes like, "Khalil's brother can't be Halal - that would be like naming a Jewish boy 'Kosher.' And why is everyone turning into Andrew?" 130730 ... e_o_i More names: a woman named Marcella and her husband Alvin. Her husband is overweight, which gives her lung problems. I need to help her relearn to play the flute; since I don't know how to play the flute, I figure I can help by standing there and watching. 130730 ... raze in a world without hope, i will rename myself "jimmy rantro". 130731 ... raze the missing girl laments her lower lip in the bathroom mirror and some things that don't make sense to me will never come clear 130801 ... e_o_i Combining a movie theatre with the Montreal metro system sounds like a good idea at first... until you lose the friends you meant to have dinner with, because the different movies you watched took you to different parts of the city. 130801 ... raze running into a friendly bartender you haven't seen in quite some time when he's working behind the counter of a frozen yogurt place at the mall is not as awkward as you might think. getting into an argument with a woman about the merits of a jonas brothers-like teenybopper group padding out their fan base by making out with teenage girls, on the other hand... 130802 ... raze i was responsible for the first-ever example of simulated mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a television show — a groundbreaking moment in TV history. who knew? 130803 ... past time freezes while the cat prepares to wake me up in the morning. 130804 ... raze one way to buy yourself some time when engaged in a never-ending battle with the bizarro world version of yourself and the seemingly limitless army of minions he commands: invite him over for dinner and suggest a double date. he won't be able to say no. 130804 ... raze "two dollar tuesdays" at ethnic restaurants inspire me to walk on my knees. 130805 ... raze rihanna is not such a bad companion to have when you're stuck in some sort of purgatory after drinking poisoned milk. 130806 ... raze in the place behind a small house where orson welles used to keep a horse, there is food buried under the ground for anyone bold enough to dig it out. and when my unexpected wife gives me a pink bathrobe for an anniversary gift, i'd better have something good to give her in return. 130807 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Sometimes I have to sit in a swamp in the middle of nowhere and test the allergic properties of a plant by rolling it around in my hands and then rubbing my eyes vigorously. This leads me to look for a better job, but I am in direct competition with a middle-aged man who is using the picture of a beautiful young woman in his LinkedIn profile. I can't compete with her for good looks, and somehow I can't call him out for fraud, so I take a picture of myself wearing a shirt with a collar. You don't have to rely on sex appeal when you have magical professionalization shirts! 130807 ... e_o_i I meant to be just e_o_i. Anyway, I also learned that if I break the screen of a digital camera, the whole thing turns into an expensive film camera with a telephoto lens. 130807 ... raze some authority figures are not above using testicular pain as a makeshift truth serum. 130808 ... raze i wear pink and black high heel boots in the wintertime, because they're infinitely more comfortable than normal winter boots...which doesn't make much sense, but there you go. 130809 ... raze not everyone buys comics from the comic book store. 130810 ... raze some people do unspeakable things in in-door swimming pools. but they'll get theirs. also, i remember more of the lyrics to "would?" by alice in chains than i thought i did, which comes in handy while driving around with someone who is supposed to be dave grohl but doesn't look anything like him. 130811 ... raze that chihuahua named franky sure does like his hamburgers. russell oliver (he of the hilariously horrible commercials advertising his jewelry store) moonlights as a doctor, but never speaks to his patients, because he doesn't actually know anything about the human anatomy and has no confidence in his ability as a general practitioner. i once dated a bank teller named danielle, though i have no recollection of it, and i used to have her number (as part of an application in outlook express that attached phone numbers to email addresses), but i lost it when the downstairs computer crashed. and when a priest who's officiating a wedding pauses to ask the congregation what they want out of life, one man will dare to speak. he will shout, "recurrent changes!" the priest will throw his arms in the air as if to say, "you speak the truth, my child," and everyone will laugh in approval and agreement. 130812 ... no reason buying shoes for cheap, in the produce aisle of a grocery store, is illegal. it will get you arrested, and you'll await your trial in the grocery store. since it's a workday, you will also walk across the store to your "work," where you will try to explain to your boss why you haven't done any work, without giving so many details to make him an accomplice to your "crime." 130812 ... raze when my fake sister shoots herself in the chest with a nail gun, there's nothing to lighten the mood like a spontaneous cell phone vocal duet with my father in the key of c major. 130813 ... e_o_i In the city, tunnels that go under highways lead to bus stops. In the country, these tunnels teleport you to other wilderness areas. The Laurentian hills/Arctic tundra passageway teaches you that what you think of as "up north" isn't really. Brrr. 130813 ... raze sometimes an anthropomorphic duck needs to shave his head and spend some voluntary time in prison, to get away from it all. 130814 ... e_o_i i_am_catwoman - a quirky but ordinary and easily irritated Catwoman - and Batman is a spoiled brat. 130814 ... raze the surest way to combat racism is through a combination of math and death. 130815 ... raze some wine tastes like a spicy jam when you spread it on toast. 130816 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Leonard Cohen wanted to call his book Beautiful Losers "Dreams of Racial Hate" [note: influenced by what I read here last?] but the publisher didn't think that title was "sexy." Also, when I hear him sing live, he grows younger and starts to sound like Johnny Cash. 130816 ... e_o_i My movie theater train is a great hit with summer camps. The children see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is scarily interactive and involves dissolving coins. Next, the staff see A Clockwork Orange. This again is not how I remember it: it seems to involve footage of a symphony orchestra, intercut with Christian Bale in American Psycho discussing crossword puzzles and not killing anybody at all. Nevertheless, the one staff member resembling someone I know in real life insists it was "quite shocking for the 70s". The walk back to camp is muddy, however, and I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm picking plastic bottles out of the mud, but I want to redeem them for the coins I lost in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then it hits me that I'm craving orange-flavoured chocolate, and I'm sad about the whole apparent chocolate-intolerance thing. Sometime before or after that I invite a bunch of the staff to a party, and they're disappointed because it involves sorting different-sized hula hoops for "French singer Charles Aznavour." [I was surprised to discover, upon waking and consulting Google, that he really is a French singer. Sometimes my dreams remember things I don't.] 130817 ... raze spraying fire in the face of a demon is never a good plan. especially when the demon looks a little like robin williams. you get one of those things riled up, and anything goes. 130818 ... raze when you're in the united kingdom, there are 436 christmas songs for you to sing. there may be more that exist elsewhere in the world, but in the UK you'll have to choose from the available 436. 130819 ... e_o_i Taiwan is as big as China, and China and Taiwan are at war. Consequently, I must move to Australia. I'll join a nonprofit group and sleep in a gym that has a floor decorated with a giant map of the world. Since the leader of our group is married (to a Chinese woman, a former government employee) I'll have to get married too. The way to get married is to sit at someone's feet while they're asleep, so I'll look around until I see a country I recognize. The man sleeping on top of Ghana looks around my age, he isn't much taller than me, and nobody will object to him being black and me being white. I'll sit down and marry him, even though he kicks in his sleep. Then the leader of the group will go out into the Australian wilderness, despite the fact there isn't anything to eat except pumpkin paste. Someone will explain to me that he wants to die because he's an atheist. I'm not sure that's what atheist means. Of course, he'll take the train to come back to life, because that's what trains do. 130820 ... raze i can't mend a broken relationship. i'm better off trying to fix a broken toilet. not that i know how to do that either. 130821 ... e_o_i Reassuring yourself “this is a manga, and in a manga, nobody gets hurt,” isn't going to work, or is it? Your parents, a comet and asteroid, will abandon you, but there's a lot to eat in space if you're a two-year-old planet. Also, the difficult kids are always geniuses, but it's kind of annoying when the boy I'm teaching decides to live in my parents' basement and do science experiments with the washer and dryer. Especially when I'm trying to wash clothes. When the kid leaves, I'll find out that my brother is secretly working for Google. One of his polo shirts has a schedule from a Google meeting printed on the inside. 130822 ... raze it's possible to appear as your ideal version of yourself while wearing a t-shirt displaying someone else's idea of what you look like, all of them advertisements for selves that aren't truly you. it's against the rules, but it's possible. the long, limp spring jutting out of a child's toy car is a strangely effective tool of intimidation. and one must always take care to differentiate between six-hour days, and six-day weeks. 130822 ... raze after washing the taste of urine from my mouth with some surprisingly delicious soap, all i really want is to find someone to french kiss. but i'll settle for singing a taylor swift song in the presence of oprah winfrey. and if i don't put enough money in a card i give to a pompous ex-friend at his wedding, he'll take it as an insult and sue me for forty thousand. 130823 ... e_o_i There are always already bagels. To elaborate, when I'm cooking for an audience to an opera, I'll have people come with food requests: "Cronuts!" "I don't know how to make them!" "Eggplant tofu!" "I don't know how!" "Bagels!" And the day will be saved, because there are already lots of bagels. 130823 ... raze of all the questions i have running around in my brain, this is the one no one has an answer for: "if i have six to nine bags of groceries, and three boxes full of books, and no car, can i get them all home in a reasonable period of time without killing myself?" 130824 ... amy adaptability that molar made of spinach that just fell out? It's gonna break b4 u have a chance to put it back in. ( also you might want to try extra hard not to destroy your other teeth too even though it is like so tempting. you know damn well they are so needed.) 130824 ... e_o_i Hell is orange-yellow in colour, not because of perpetual fire, but because that's where mustard, ketchup, and relish are made. 130826 ... raze for some, purgatory is a one-hundred-and-eleven-word advertisement for a rolls-royce, and within those words exists an entire universe populated with people and places and unattended soup. 130828 ... e_o_i The darkness of Edmonton Mall after a sudden power outage is strangely compelling, but where will I do my tutoring? The world is scary. Bathtubs tell me I am peeing blood, even though I'm not peeing in them, and it is continually four-thirty and dark, which makes me worry about global warming. 130828 ... e_o_i There also might be a dragon in the mall, which is the one thing I'm not scared of/worried about. 130828 ... raze i should not attempt a u-turn while wearing pajamas and driving backwards in a black van. 130829 ... raze (or pyjamas...whichever spelling you prefer) 130829 ... raze eating lunch with a blind man in a restaurant that doesn't offer table service is a surefire way to end up with a sandwich that has some kind of meat on it no one has ever heard of. 130830 ... e_o_i Hanging upside down helps me meditate about having better posture, but I still can't figure out why the knees of my pants are baggy. Ghosts are overrated, and now I can prove it: the ancient druid priestess who haunts my home has taken to wearing modern clothes and telling me things I don't agree with, such as "Your hair is too dry - you need to use conditioner." 130830 ... raze all other things are other things. everything is something else. 130831 ... raze all other things are other things. everything is something else. 130831 ... raze (so sang the trash heap daughter, who looked to be about eight) 130831 ... raze that's strange...i didn't double-click the "blather" button to create the double post there. after i blathed "all things are other things", there was a weird error at the bottom of the screen on this blathe (which otherwise loaded just fine). i added the bit in parentheses, and the error disappeared. but then the initial bit i blathed doubled. another one of those funny little blather_quirks. 130831 ... epitome of incomprehensibility When I'm Spiderman's girlfriend, my name will be Marie (not Mary Jane) and his name will be James (not Peter Parker). My confidence will be bolstered when I gain aquatic superpowers and swim after him across the English Channel. And when I'm Guinevere, I'll fall in love with Merlin, not Arthur or Lancelot, because they're boring. 130831 ... e_o_i It's okay to decline to recite poetry in front of your former enemies. 130901 ... raze somewhere there's a redheaded celebration where i can be who i want to be with you, and you can be who you want to be with me. 130902 ... raze missing shoes have a way of turning up in those moments right when convenience and surprise dovetail. 130903 ... e_o_i Changing my first name to Nova will make me more sociable. Also, flowers are unreliable credit cards. 130904 ... raze if you're concerned that you may be walking too fast while leading a dog by its leash, not to worry: a dog being led too quickly will take on lawnmower characteristics. 130905 ... raze it's hard to believe in yourself when no one else believes in you, but none of that matters much when a church becomes a classroom. 130906 ... raze partnered cops, if they share a bond that is deep and true, will remember everything they've ever experienced together, right down to every word of the very first argument they had. 130907 ... e_o_i Catfish are fierce amphibious creatures that have the head and front paws of a cat and the tail of a fish. Some of the zoo workers call them crawdads, or occasionally ocelots, but they are clearly catfish. And you don't want to get too close to their cage because they bite and scratch. 130907 ... raze somewhere out there, everyone has a troubled twin in need of assistance. 130908 ... raze you can't fool children when it comes to santa claus; they know an impostor when they see one. 130909 ... e_o_i Swimming-pool parties are followed by tough questions, such as, "If you like simple sentences better than complicated ones, why do you like William Faulkner better than Hemingway?" 130909 ... past the best part of biking through a thunderstorm is the super speed granted when one is struck by lightning. 130910 ... raze somewhere on the internet, some crazy person thinks "moesha" was nearly as groundbreaking as "the wire". 130911 ... raze strange things happen in hidden closet hideouts. 130912 ... past the hardest part of trying to dream-scream yourself actually awake is getting the tone right. too low or too high fall off the register at either end, yet that's where the demons kept pushing me. 130913 ... e_o_i Just because I put on sparkly sky-blue leggings and other bright blue and purple clothes, it doesn't mean I can fight crime. Instead I'll be on window-screen duty, making sure the alleyway outside can handle the serious thoughts I'm sending its way. 130914 ... raze some people will sooner amputate an animal's wounded limb than invest a few minutes of their time in an effort to stabilize it and help it to heal, but mel gibson's missing arm won't hinder his ability to gesticulate. 130915 ... raze a lifetime's worth of hallmark cards given in one sitting doesn't make up for years of neglect...unless the giver of cards has taken the time to write heartfelt messages in every single one of them. that level of commitment just might tip the scales in his or her favour. 130916 ... raze there are times when my voice is so loud i can't hear myself speak. 130917 ... e_o_i It's fun dodging harmless rolling robots in movie theatres. To wit: When the complicated ticket-reading apparatus rejects my movie ticket because I didn't press down hard enough, I can pick two stray hairs off the top of the machine and feed them into its mouth. It'll let me pass, but then start rolling after me, beeping like R2D2, because I don't "look like" I match the hairs' DNA. 130917 ... raze when david bowie sings, a clogged toilet unclogs itself. 130918 ... raze for never having piloted a speedboat before, i'm pretty good at racing one on the detroit river. 130919 ... raze also, dianne keaton is not so friendly at new year's eve parties. 130919 ... raze when my friend's girlfriend kisses me in front of him without provocation, it won't matter that i don't kiss her back. he'll make it his mission to get into a physical fight with me. even after she breaks up with him and cries while insisting i'm telling the truth and i never did anything and he deserves better than her, it won't do any good, because she'll talk in such rapid, shaky gasps while she's crying, he won't understand a word she says. so i'll knock him unconscious in his own bathroom, tell his mother he's running a shower, and make a run for it without putting my shoes on. the lesson is clear: i should never wear a winter toque again. 130920 ... e_o_i No matter how hard I try, I can't figure out how to apply the Pythagorean Theorem to Internet comments. But there's no need to be worried about alligators lounging on the highway when my mother's driving. She'll dodge them like a pro. 130920 ... raze there's nothing like slow swing dancing to a fast led zeppelin song. 130921 ... raze q: what do you get when you add a fourth person to a love triangle? a: a love quadrant. 130922 ... e_o_i Blather_green exists and I'm not pregnant! See blatherskite_dreams for details. 130922 ... e_o_i Oh, and shabbily-dressed men holding glass bottles while evangelizing at bus stops will look at you in disgust if you say, "Jesus is like a bus pass." Even if you mean it in a serious and insightful way. 130922 ... raze there's no delicate way to say this, so i'll just say it. when things are getting intense during sex and he fears he'll have an orgasm sooner than he'd like to, superman devises a distraction for himself; he thinks of raymond_carver, trying to determine from memory how many short stories there are in "what we talk about when we talk about love" and how many of those are included in the "where i'm calling from" omnibus. he also ruminates on what a great title for a work of short fiction "so much water so close to home" is, and wonders what the third thing that kills the narrator's father off is in the story "the third thing that killed my father off", which he hasn't read yet. 130923 ... raze oh, and a good way to train for an upcoming fistfight in a grocery store is by power-walking through the mall with a dumbbell in each hand. no one will even look at you funny. it's the mall, after all. 130923 ... e_o_i Dolls grow, and it's scary. Before girl dolls grow breasts, they have massive stomachs, and the stomach fat eventually migrates to the chest. Tropical fish live in the pond in La_Fontaine_Park, but I'm strange for seeing a bright green fish in deep water, because most of them cluster in shallow water. 130924 ... raze george w. bush is not the best choice of narrator for a new "twilight zone"-esque television show. you should never ingest a blue liquid that solidifies into strange shapes seconds after being exposed to the air. and some people are so desperate, they'll lop the top off of a hunk of chocolate filled with rum and drink from it like it's a chocolate canteen before they've even paid for the thing. 130925 ... raze "you must be fans with friends to fend off fumes." 130927 ... e_o_i A disgraced spider will have to do a "handstand" on her two front legs, for as long as she can hold it, in front of a crowd of interested spectators. 130927 ... raze convincing people you suddenly have agoraphobia (to get out of going to a house party without being rude about it) is easy, as long as you can cry on command. it's the tears that really sell the lie. 130928 ... raze when someone doesn't believe you've actually read the book you're telling them about, all you have to do is fix it so the dust jacket sloughs off like dead skin when you hold it up to show them, revealing a spine that's all lumpy and uneven with pages ready to fall out. then you say, with righteous indignation: "what does this look like?! does this look like a book that hasn't been read?!" works every time. 130929 ... raze sometimes a tornado will carry you along in its precarious embrace for a while, arousing what fear it can find in you, and then set you down gently on stairs of ice to watch others struggle with what wind remains. 130930 ... e_o_i The ability to fly is an asset in the musical theatre world. Now I just have to learn to follow choreography. 130930 ... raze feelings of uncertainty sometimes manifest themselves in the form of a few hundred emails, mostly spam, with only the occasional meaningful message buried within. 131001 ... raze in the third grade, i didn't know what "symbiotic" meant, though my best guess wasn't far off. my grade school french teacher wrote my report card on the bottom of a glass soup pot. i think i remember getting a B+, but i can't check to make sure; after all the years the soup pot has spent soaking in the sink, all the ink has been washed away. at least i can make soup in my report card, or use it to boil water for tea, so it's still good for something. 131002 ... macquaria in my room in the place i live now, i awake to hear some rustling in the main flat. i sneak out into the main section of the upstairs of my parents' house, where i see a figure sat on the bottom, curved stair which is new to me. i jump in slow motion (as i've done many, many times before when younger) over the side of the stairs to land in the hallway in front of said figure, with the intention of challenging them. i land in front of the figure, and he looks up at me with pale blue eyes that are cold and disinterested, under the peak of a bowler hat with long feathers streaming from the side. it must be his hair. he is dressed all in black and looks like a cross between Boy George and Alex from A Clockwork Orange. he stares at me as i say to him: 'what the fuck are you doing in my house?' at which point i am pleased, because i know i don't look afraid and the words have come out as i practised. he says nothing but pulls out a metal crab with several different Swiss Army knife attachments protruding from it. i see a small knife, a bottle opener and a nail file. at this point i am afraid and jump backwards with a 'whoa!' and i am embarrassed because his friends, who are stealing my things, have seen and know that i have been startled by this intruder. 131003 ... raze when things aren't going your way, old friends will become little squirrel people who watch over you from the treetops. 131003 ... raze upset about the death of a friend? break things. break lots of things. the destruction won't make you feel any better in the short term, but in time it'll help you deal with a substance abuse problem you don't actually have. 131004 ... raze friends give you art, con artists want your food, and there's never anyone around to listen to a mid-day spastic drum solo. 131005 ... e_o_i The world is God's Internet. I mean, I shouldn't just assume the universe is going to end because I see a Catholic Jesus icon (in a round silver frame like a coin) in the sky. It's only going to be "reset" or "refreshed," because forever has ended and it needs to begin again. In the meantime there will be two commercials playing in the sky: one for vacuum cleaners and the other for a new Internet browser. 131005 ... e_o_i (washing machines, not vacuum cleaners. same difference.) 131005 ... raze a constantly squeaking bed frame is just something one needs to accept as a part of getting older. 131006 ... e_o_i Halloween stores do not sell practical things like flashlights or cameras. Instead they sell glittery clothes and plastic coins, with assurances that these items are essential to young women's survival: the fancy clothes will convince others that said young women are princesses - thus leading to respectful treatment - and the plastic coins are usable currency in a fantasy world that is accessible to Earth mortals once a year on All Hallow's Eve. Fair enough, but I want a flashlight. 131007 ... raze thinking of the month of april makes it difficult for me to lend my jacket to a friend, and importing deodorant from australia won't go over well with everyone. also, offering to donate the entire life's work of a famous author to a museum in order to gain entry is only advisable when you actually possess something close to the entire life's work of said author, including their personal correspondence with family and colleagues. a few paperbacks ain't gonna cut it. 131008 ... e_o_i Don't buy wild animals from the Disney corporation. You'll discover that the lioness and her cub are about to escape from their cage, which for some reason is in your brother's room, and you'll have to rush in and save his life by slamming the lid closed on the mother lion's claws. Then your own mother will fall asleep in a field in the middle of the park, only you'll find it's not really her but a costume made to look like her, so you'll stuff white flower blossoms into her eyes, nose, and the corners of her mouth. 131009 ... raze you can crouch down lower when you lean to the right, and you can crouch down lower when you lean to the left, but it's difficult to remember to lean in any direction when you're wielding a sword with a blade of brilliant fire. 131009 ... raze when you've given your last fifty dollars to someone in exchange for a biblical survival kit, only to discover they've intentionally botched the whole thing and failed to draw you a map when that was the one specific item you asked for, you respond by beating them to death. naturally. 131010 ... raze some hugs lead to unexpected gyrating. and that can be strange. 131011 ... jane a train can turn into a roller coaster if you're not careful. 131011 ... e_o_i I have to tutor at strange hours. Online I have a class with a boy named Habdil from 1-2 A.M. and I have to shout into the microphone. Next class, in person, is at Thanksgiving dinner with a fifth-grade girl named Cora. The white tablecloth is flaunting fate; one knows it will have gravy spilled on it. I am supposed to carry on a conversation with two other adults while helping the girl translate a paragraph from French to English. She says her background is Italian but she speaks more English and French. Somehow this is an exciting thing to discover, and I say with childish enthusiasm, "Me too! My first language is English, my second language is French, and my third language is Italian!" (It is, too. I can say lots of things: gelato, gelateria, ciocolatto, vaniglia, lima, limone, lampone, fragole, anana...) 131011 ... raze hot water and pizza are not ideal dinner companions. and when someone you thought you killed in a car accident leans back against you with their hair in your face, it means they forgive you. 131012 ... raze time moves with blinding speed when there's somewhere you're supposed to be but you'd rather not go out and you've waited too long to start getting ready. if you're going to be embarrassingly late and you'd rather avoid the awkwardness of it all, you can always fake having the flu. talking in a quiet, weak-sounding voice during the phone call of explanation is the key to pulling it off. 131013 ... raze some bus drivers are snobs, and if you're wearing sandals and/or ripped jeans, they'll decide you're homeless and not entitled to a ride. even waving money in the air wildly to prove you have some will do no good. bastards. a doorman asks: "to stand thither and see nothing, or to stand hither and see all and wish not to see?" i don't have an answer to that question. i don't know where i want to stand. 131014 ... raze when your test of the bouncing capabilities of a rubber ball goes awry and the ball bounces away from you in a grocery store, making its way into the produce section, observe a decent interval before retrieving it and no one will be the wiser. 131015 ... raze there are three kinds of stories, and the third is: "are we even related?" actually, there are a few hundred kinds of stories, and the last is: "this story is a load of shit." 131016 ... epitome of incomprehensibility When my intestines grow branches I'll have vines on my belly, which can be cured with a good sunburn. Also, Bill and Melinda Gates can solve the U.S. debt crisis by establishing a joint dictatorship. At least, that's what they think. 131016 ... raze exposure to water below fifty degrees fahrenheit causes immediate damage to the liver and legs. luckily the makers of kerosene produce a waterproof combustible hydrocarbon alternative that can be used to set floating books on fire while balancing on top of them like tiny stepping stones in a swimming pool. 131017 ... raze it's not so easy for a mob boss to help his five wives out of a fancy restaurant when the food disagrees with them. but when those five wives are all versions of the same person, it makes serving as their makeshift human crutches easier somehow. 131018 ... epitome of incomprehensibility It's good to tell the pillow that having its period is nothing to be ashamed of. Thus I comfort it as I guide it to the washing machine. But I wish it had told me it was female before this, to spare me the worry that my head is randomly bleeding. And poor Habs! The hockey team isn't allowed to eat lunch until it wins a game. When it does, the players run straight to the concession tables that are methodically set by white-clad nurses. 131018 ... e_o_i (gah... why do I always forget to use my short_name...) 131018 ... raze the best time to rank christopher nolan's batman movies is when climbing down from the roof of a tiered truck, with the layers treated as stairs. when a catheter breaks free in public mid-urination and behaves like a renegade irrigation sprinkler, you'd best keep your mouth closed. and an accidental feminist hairnet is an actual thing, though visual evidence is hard to come by. 131019 ... raze i always forget my shoes at the worst possible time. 131020 ... raze unwittingly walking in on your parents having sex is one thing. witnessing their subsequent argument over how manly and hairy your father is...that's just weird. 131021 ... e_o_i I can't break glass by shouting, but I can make it pliable by whispering to it. 131022 ... e_o_i When a friend is upset by the city's zoning bylaws, the logical thing for her to do is create a petition "to abolish marriage." 131023 ... raze big toes will start to imitate each other over time, like siblings who only gradually come to understand that they're twins. cormac mccarthy will write a sequel to "the_road" in which all human life has ceased and monkeys wander what's left of the world. and just because someone is sitting on your lap in the passenger seat of a car, it doesn't mean you don't have to wear your seat belt. 131024 ... e_o_i If I suddenly have a two-year-old brother, I'll catch him before he falls down the stairs but I'm not obligated to teach him piano. 131024 ... e_o_i If college students are acting drunk and obnoxious at a beach (notably, sand-wrestling and inexplicably vomiting sweet-smelling gelatin) the harsh but effective thing to do is to approach one of them and say, "All three of your sons will be conscripted into World War One and one of them will never return." Why? Because history is recursive, like the "Anne of Green Gables series written by Madeleine L'Engle." This can be demonstrated by gutting a beach ball into the shape of a Mobius strip. Afterwards the whole scene will turn into a badly-spelled poem and you can crawl off the edge of one of the sheets into a comfortable VIA train. 131025 ... raze i'm not ticklish in the places i used to be, but if someone tries to tickle me, i'll still smile, as if some distant muscle memory is being slowly jogged. 131026 ... raze when you're engaged in a shootout with someone and neither one of you seems capable of harming the other with bullets (no matter how many times you remind them that you've shot them at point blank range repeatedly and they should be dead), sometimes the only option is to pick them up and swing them like a toy and slam their feet into a wall. for some reason, the soles of the feet of hitmen are very sensitive and easily harmed. 131027 ... raze "i like watching global things fight for supremacy." 131028 ... raze an inability to read sheet music won't become a problem in high school music class until i get a new teacher who decides playing by ear isn't acceptable. "this class is about READING," she'll tell me, and no amount of arguing will get her to change her mind. so when she gets condescending about it, i'll call her a dirty name and run away. 131029 ... e_o_i dreams have sporadic_drug_accuracy_and_anne_hathaway 131029 ... raze my code name is jimmy the donkey, and facebook says i'm doing things i've never done. facebook lies. so do other people, but as jimmy the donkey, i can see right through them. 131030 ... e_o_i I can hike in the mountains for 17 hours without water, but I can't believe that it's already September 3. 131030 ... raze apparently i really, really want a motorcycle, and i get a thrill from the lack of protection. i had no idea i felt that way. the noise is a bit much, but it's nothing a pair of earplugs won't fix. 131031 ... raze the most effective tool you can use to combat attempted blackmail is a metal pipe. also, don't let the people who are trying to blackmail you hang out in your bedroom unattended for any length of time. that's generally not such a good idea. but as long as you've got the metal pipe, it'll all work out in the end. 131101 ... e_o_i Letters to Santa aren't real, but "Santa money" is legit. If you go to a random warehouse and start sharpening pencils, somebody will eventually pay you, even if it's your friend's mother who suddenly owns an unrelated publishing company. But it's hard to find your way around the neighbourhood when the streets keep changing names. 131101 ... raze after a life-changing experience in a dangerous, awe-inspiring fantasy world, you turn your experience into a stop-motion animated film for others to be confused by. naturally. 131102 ... raze when a beautiful woman becomes a man, my main concern is not the loss of a potential romantic partner, but whether or not she can grow a beard more impressive than mine. 131103 ... e_o_i Pan-American political corruption tastes good: the NDP offers me and others $700 to attend "Congress" for a day to "show people the Conservatives are boring" and there's a lunch break in a wood-paneled room, only there's no food, only lots of sangria. But it's really good sangria. 131103 ... e_o_i Tying knots in bathing suits before you wear them may cause tattoos to appear in "inappropriate places." 131104 ... raze i could eat half a loaf of bread in one sitting if i wanted to, toasted, with raspberry jam. but man, would i pay for it later... 131105 ... e_o_i Bad_puns_in_fake_Kenya, that's all. 131105 ... raze when all else fails, i can always check tennis scores on the internet. 131106 ... e_o_i You don't have to be best friends with your computer to fix its problems. Just talk to it now and then, while gently embedding absorbable breadcrumbs in its side (this will prevent said crumbs from getting into the keyboard). 131107 ... e_o_i I don't have to be best friends with my computer, but I should talk to it while gently embedding breadcrumbs in its side. 131107 ... e_o_i (Okay, I thought the first one hadn't gone through. Lesson: slow Internet improves conciseness?) 131107 ... raze missed_connections will rewrite themselves in the sand of my memory as potential high school friendships that were never realized. people want to read books that take them places they've never been and tell them things they didn't already know. they don't want to read 133 pages of nothing ending in pavement and glue and thanks given to a parent unmentioned on any of the preceding pages. and when i'm sued for "three hundred million dollars and five hundred million modified work hours", i will blow the raspberry to end them all. 131107 ... e_o_i The Great Lakes are full of mallard ducks and alligators - not crocodiles, though. To avoid getting bitten, stay on the surface of the water; even though I can breathe underwater, I shouldn't make a habit of it. 131108 ... e_o_i Ah yes. And I can also swim alongside the ducks in an adjacent "observing aquarium." 131108 ... e_o_i I can steer a canoe, but real experts paddle upside-down canoes. When a friend hands me a sheet of paper the writing on it will keep changing, diminishing in emotional charge, until it becomes the nutritional information for 5 teaspoons of Tabasco sauce. 131110 ... raze some libraries enable visitors to levitate. and when someone makes their hand a gun and threatens to shoot you, tell them you'll break the trigger if they try. that'll put some doubt in them. 131110 ... no reason shady characters wouldn't logically be found in the apartments with the most christmas lights. 131111 ... raze when a woman makes a point of plugging her nose before swimming, it means she's an old man at heart. 131113 ... raze there is one song i need to perform to convince someone to give me a job as the upright-piano-playing, vocal-cord-vibrating entertainment at a house party, and that song is "i don't want to wait" by paula cole, also known as the theme song from "dawson's creek". 131114 ... raze when my father calls the mother of the girl who isn't here anymore, already knowing her_name_rhymes_with_euphoria, she will only repeat "we found her bones" in a haunted whisper, leaving the two of us with the sick sensation of hair follicles detaching themselves from our skin. and when a friend is let down by the bartender he reaches out to in his moment of need, he'll tape a custom-made firecracker to the handlebars of his bicycle and take one last solemn ride on the beach, pushing past the shoreline, where if he doesn't explode he'll sink to the bottom of the ocean and sleep that deepest sleep. 131115 ... e_o_i Air mail is a dangerous thing. Especially when it's my brother who flies the miniature airplane that delivers letters. He always crashes into the front window. Luckily he can recover quickly from concussions, since he's read so many Tintin comics in his younger youth. 131115 ... raze when will smith gets bored with life, he stabs himself in the stomach. with a knife. as you do. 131116 ... raze if you're going to use a wire hanger to try and break into your own car after locking the keys inside, it's a good rule of thumb to aim for a part of the vehicle that might stand a chance of opening, instead of scratching the paint off the trunk, hoping for some divine intervention. 131117 ... raze when fox mulder is encouraged to cry in the arms of his best friend (who looks like someone...who does she look like?), he'll let out the beginning of a sob, then stop himself and shout the guessed coordinates of a video camera he's sure is filming his moment of vulnerability, cheapening it. and since he and his friend are partners in some unexplained reality tv competition, he's probably right. 131118 ... e_o_i Planning for a five-day canoe trip in November can be interrupted by a minute of wakefulness, hearing the rain dash against the window, then resume with me telling my traveling companions (dream-invented people) "No, I think the weather is too bad for this." The rest of the dream will be spent idly searching a retail store for collectible things that fold, such as tents, maps, puzzles, thin rain jackets, and paper clips. 131118 ... e_o_i ...and you can tell it's a Canadian dream because the place looks a lot like Canadian Tire. 131118 ... raze when men who are engaged in a self-made war that has nothing to do with politics find their most treasured horse has been killed by having its jaws forced apart, leaving its face a broken mess, they retaliate by smoking out the traitor who led the enemy to their lair, closing over his forehead a medieval torture device, tightening to the progress of an internal timer, swelling his head out of shape until it explodes like a gore-filled balloon. i don't know what's stranger — that this happens in a house i used to live in, or that the exploding man looks like timothy spall. 131119 ... raze some people want to observe other people for a time and take pictures and pretend they lack the ability to speak, to get back in touch with some part of themselves they think they've lost sight of. sometimes those people are dogs. sometimes they're just people who choose not to bark for a while. 131120 ... e_o_i When I become assistant to a rich famous CEO, I'll knock on his door on a Friday morning and be somewhat embarrassed to find him in his pyjamas. "It is in between 6 and 10 A.M. and I am asleep right now," he says, "but I'll tell you my schedule for the rest of the day. From 10 to 12 I'm working, then it's my lunch break until 2:55, then, what the hell, I'll take the rest of the day off because it's Friday." 131120 ... raze one of the mantras taught in a spiritual self-help class for soldiers goes like this: "i shall more properly and incorrectly modify my defiance." 131121 ... raze switching sides and allying yourself with the criminals isn't so simple when you're part cop, part batman, part billy joel. it helps when you have stone tablet money and a judge on your side. 131122 ... raze some people, you lend them money and they'll pay you back with canadian tire money. that ain't right. 131123 ... e_o_i When the fabric of our universe rends, opening up a portal to the infinite, it's like a pregnant woman's cervix opening in preparation for giving birth. In both cases there's someone new to meet, and it's important that no one in the room is muddy. Or at least that's the discussion I have with friends in the children's section of the library. Also, when the Narnia series goes out of copyright, I'll be commissioned to write a novel about Susan's illicit love for her brother Edmund, but I'll sabotage the project by writing as badly as possible. 131123 ... raze fooling around with the girl of my best friend when we're all involved in shady underworld activities will probably not end well, though learning to play the trumpet properly through some serendipitous accident and using my hand as a makeshift plunger will sweeten the deal. and something else that isn't a good idea: eating silk flowers. 131124 ... e_o_i Investing money means putting it somewhere I can't see it so that the forces of "quantum uncertainty" can work their magic. 131124 ... raze if you pause to check your mail while a door to door salesman is trying to perform their door to door spiel, they might be so offended they'll stop speaking and walk away. maybe i should check the mail more often when someone is trying to sell me something i don't want or need. 131125 ... raze when vendors set up all over the city, all the food i need is free...except for bread sticks. 131126 ... e_o_i (NOW I remember the strange part of my dream) When I suddenly shrink (pun?) to be a teenager again, my parents will take me to a psychologist. He'll be a former creative writing teacher who isn't really cut out for psychology. I'll cry about some fight I had with my parents, and he'll nod without speaking. The next session he'll sit at a desk with me and have me write various paragraphs. "Is this to help me feel better?" "No, it's to help you edit better." 131127 ... e_o_i ...and I can climb up to the moon and sit on it as long as A) I have a ladder B) I know that I'm dreaming 131127 ... raze psychic beggars make great undercover villains when dreams become graphic_novels. 131128 ... raze some kidnappers are so inept, when they need to grab something from the corner store they'll leave you sitting alone in their car, the doors unlocked, your hands unbound, the key still in the ignition. what do you do in a situation like that? if you're me, you don't slide over into the driver's seat. you don't steal the car or run the bad guys down. what you do is, you step out of the car, you think about making a run for it, you spend too long thinking without doing, and then when the kidnappers walk out of the store and catch you with your proverbial pants down, you try to convince them you were just getting some air. i think i need to work on my getaway skills. 131129 ... raze also, i have shoes i don't even know about. 131129 ... raze if you pass around a list of rules and guidelines that are meant to be universal, most people will pass them on down to the next in line, not bothering to read them. the artists and thinkers, meanwhile, will rewrite the rules and add some new ones of their own, and then more likely than not they'll neglect to follow even their own rules. 131130 ... ever dumbening a tall man on a pogo stick, pogoing 25 feet or so into the air and busting through the acoustic tiles on the high ceiling with his head, makes for an uproariously funny moment. 131130 ... e_o_i Changing gender is one thing. Changing hair colour is another. But when I look in the mirror and see that I have a red beard, I can make it disappear by running my finger over it. This leads me to conclude that, with a bit of eyeshadow, I'd make a good drag queen. J and I argue whether winter is better than summer. J misses three things about summer. I can guess two of them - sex and watermelons. "Exactly," she says. She won't tell me the third. The pop song that keeps playing at the drugstore annoys me. The chorus goes something like, "Hot girl... money, money... I shot a chicken in the head." 131201 ... raze some books deteriorate in a matter of seconds once you've decided to buy them, progressing from intact paperbacks to hatchet jobs with missing pages and a plastic sandwich bag in place of the back cover. eleven dollars for a book that alters itself in your hands as if it's fast-forwarding to an inferior future version of itself? i guess accelerated used paperback time travel doesn't come cheap. 131201 ... e_o_i When people fly, it makes cats jealous and birds confused. 131202 ... raze before going to the trouble of crawling through the air ducts of a building to steal some jewelry, it might be wise to get a rough idea of the bounty's worth. 'cause if it turns out the expensive-looking stuff was bought in one shot at a yard sale for five dollars by a woman who won't miss it when it's gone, the resale value might not be worth the hassle. some capers are better in theory than they are in execution. 131203 ... raze when you've got a talk show host in the back seat of your car, that's the perfect time to let them know what you think of them. 131204 ... e_o_i It turns out I never got my "Quebec grade 2 certificate" and I have to retake the grade. At the end of the first day the teacher says I'm "clever" and posts a picture of my face on Hermione-from-Harry-Potter's body as a reward. But the children, with their sharp cut-and-paste skills, replace Hermione with Queen Elizabeth II - not because I'm regal, but because I'm old. 131205 ... raze stepfathers are full of surprises, like blue credit cards and unexpected book recommendations. in my case, the stepfather's pick is something called "ooh koo le le", a massive hardcover tome published in 1605 that has nothing to do with a creatively-spelled ukulele, and everything to do with a gang of 17th century thugs hatching a plan to kill napoleon...even though napoleon wouldn't be born for another 164 years. 131205 ... raze you don't mess with sylvester stallone. especially when he's transporting salt and early in the drive, after eating zucchini with ketchup, he becomes two people who are not sylvester stallone. 131206 ... e_o_i Banana peels make good surfboards, but mediocre cameras - they always zoom out unexpectedly. 131206 ... raze one way for a controversial athlete to explain themselves: "i'm not the people i said i was." but then, who are they? 131207 ... raze you_never_know who you might run into in a fast food restaurant, or what great ideas may be formed when you're standing in line waiting to order. 131209 ... raze the joker doesn't discriminate; if batman isn't around, he'll gladly antagonize superman. and the best way to reach a slumber party compromise is to lift a man up by his nostrils in the frozen food section of a grocery store. 131210 ... raze sometimes someone who looks like a vampire is only a serial adulterer with a widow's peak. 131211 ... e_o_i A talking water fountain can be my friend, but it lacks the internal categorization to distinguish other humans, such as my father, from chickens. "I'm a water fountain," it says, "so how can I relate to being or not being a chicken?" 131211 ... raze if i'm going to kiss a man in a parked car, i should probably tell him i don't swing that way before the kissing starts. otherwise, well...things can get awkward in an ominous loft space. 131212 ... raze birds of romance sing pretty little songs, but they're too easily forgotten. 131213 ... e_o_i If I want to watch a Youtube video at night, all I have to do is go to my bedroom mirror and press play. Except it will transport me to a hyperspace shopping mall. 131213 ... raze if you make a copy of your house key for someone, at some point you will wake up with that person next to you in bed, uninvited, licking the side of your face like a friendly dog as you try to fall back asleep. be careful who you make a copy of your house key for. 131214 ... raze when distributing pillows both proper and provisional before climbing into a secret attic hideout, the person in the group who calls dibs on the black_and_white pom-pom is always the last one you'd expect. 131215 ... e_o_i Meeting an old friend named Sabrina in an attic leads you to drink eight cups of beer in red plastic Christmas cups. This causes no hangovers, just narrowed vision the next day: every thrift store will be Value Village and every subway station Atwater. 131215 ... raze hermeticles (pronounced HER-MEH-TIH-KLEES) is not some obscure greek god, but rather a word for waking up in someone's arms. reminiscing about "when we were all hermeticles" may or may not lead to a tender moment. what it definitely *will* lead to is the panoramic white beach of no return. 131216 ... raze it's hard work biting a man's face off. 131217 ... e_o_i "Sleeks" are the opposite of "geeks." 131217 ... e_o_i "Sleeks" are the opposite of geeks. 131217 ... raze when my father is my substitute teacher for a day, i won't get any preferential treatment...unless being allowed to swear at a broken pencil counts as preferential treatment. 131218 ... e_o_i The Oscar Wilde lookalike has an "80HD TV" and he thinks it's funny. Some lyrics to Eminem's latest hit, about divorce: "I'm going to retreat to the forest where people live... in a lawsuit." That is also supposed to be a pun, because a suit is a kind of house. 131218 ... raze "plus equals sign". it's a documentary filmmaker thing. not that the filmmaker gets it either... 131219 ... raze when david lynch makes coffee, he looks a lot like kevin kline. and "sweet jesus" is not only something a party of people will utter upon eating creamed corn made by rainer maria rilke; it's also the spanish dialogue on a trading card held by an oblivious bart simpson. 131220 ... raze watching someone you love jump out of a window is horrifying. and some dogs, for some reason, will always want to take a bath with you. 131221 ... e_o_i Solving an 8x8 Rubik's Cube is easy if all the cubes are transparent except for a few that have colours on them - if "solving" means unfolding it into a paper map that is actually a picture of Che Guevara. 131221 ... raze a pig without a viking helmet cannot fly to cuba, but i can beat the crap out of a huge group of people without breaking a sweat when one of them won't let me watch "fast times at ridgemont high" with them. 131222 ... raze now they're teaching graphic_novels in high school english class, and so i must write in purple pen. it's a gut feeling thing. 131223 ... raze the ultimate insult to a songwriter who takes himself way too seriously is having one of his songs covered live by the singer from incubus, slightly altered for increased pop appeal. 131224 ... raze there's no such thing as a bad hotel breakfast when you've disguised yourself (through the magic of makeup and baby powder) as a man more than twice your age. just try to stay away from outdoor patios. the makeup is a little less convincing in natural light. 131226 ... jane throw all the weapons over the fence - you will not need them for the leopard. 131227 ... raze a barely-there kitchen counter inside a trailer that doesn't really have a kitchen is no place to sleep, unless there's a bed right beneath it to catch you when tossing and turning turns into falling. and standing up to someone feels a little strange when they stand to face you, to meet your standing, and you find they're taller than you are. 131227 ... raze memory does strange things to beds. 131228 ... raze hamburger surgery should be left to those skilled enough to perform a proper mustard transfusion. i am not one such person. but with enough practice, maybe... 131229 ... e_o_i It's harder than I think to occupy_the_kitchen_sink. I can't convince people that I'm Justin Bieber. 131229 ... raze when vanilla cake becomes a person, it doesn't have much to say. 131231 ... raze (i forgot to mention the vanilla cake was rollerblading) 131231 ... raze 50 cent doesn't react well to criticism, but if you can get past the glower and the biceps, he's not so scary up close and personal. 140101 ... e_o_i "Herodotus" is an ancient Greek play about a statue of a man that comes to life, and discovers that he has children somehow. I can't afford the ticket, so I see a parody of it instead, and then I try to convince my friends that I've seen the real thing and read it too. 140101 ... raze when you make the jump from the hill down to the street, everyone wants to know your name. 140102 ... raze if your child disappears, follow the trail of red winter toques. and if a group of people in a strange hotel expect you to pay their bar tab when you don't even know them, scream at the man with the dangling chin skin that touches the floor. 140103 ... e_o_i The funniest thing about getting knocked out by a stray basketball at a public gym is reading the report afterwards, because sports doctors are notoriously bad at spelling. 140103 ... raze not all detached, self-sustaining brains speak the same language, but a young paramedic in training can always talk to the largest of them, because those brains are multilingual. it needs to be said, though: naked brains look pretty weird with the eyes and mouths they develop to compensate for the missing faces they once hid behind. 140104 ... e_o_i The Buddhist monk on the other end of the telephone keeps giving me evasive answers, until I realize I'm talking too much and I need to be quiet for a few seconds. "I'm going to be quiet for a few seconds," I announce, and then I am. The Buddhist monk wants the stairs to his monastery fixed, so I hand the phone over to my father. Because librarians are better at fixing stairs than are conjurers of cheap philosophical stereotypes. 140104 ... e_o_i And when Madeleine L'Engle and Anthony Burgess quarrel over which one of them wrote Flowers for Algernon, the enterprising dreamer will find out that Burgess wrote the definitive text in 1943. It's about an immigrant teenager named Alex who evades police by jumping Mario-like across telephone-pole platforms in a fascist future New York, until he gets arrested for speaking with a British accent. Possibly he says "bollocks." The small doctor's office becomes the scene for an ominous experiment, but I'm kept in suspense. 140104 ... raze outdoor shower enclosures of the past were not enclosed at all, and the water only came in spurts. but people still got clean. that's the main thing, right? 140106 ... e_o_i Getting into an a capella singing group depends on whether I'm right about Sesame Street being on PBS. Tigers can climb trees, but they get dizzy running in circles. 140106 ... raze even the encroachment of death will not stop me from singing. 140107 ... e_o_i I've upgraded to "casual professional email." Not casual, but not quite professional. 140107 ... raze if you can't see the numbers, you can't do the math. luckily, ex-romantic partners all someday become an amorphous, viscous blue substance that's marketed as department store french fries, without a single deep-fried potato baton to be found within the goo, and only a first name to connect it to the person it used to be. 140108 ... raze when i get together with an old bandmate in the interest of making new music, all he wants to do is eat steak and watch baseball. 140109 ... e_o_i When I'm exceptionally tired, I can make my eyes focus perfectly without wearing glasses. And if I'm looking out a window at a clear night sky, I can also make stars explode by staring at them intently. This scares me, though, so I only do it three times. 140109 ... no reason according to an item on a list of pieces of advice, you shouldn't say pancake. you should say PANCAKE. 140109 ... raze just because there's liquor coming out of the wall, it doesn't mean you're allowed to drink it. tennis players lie about their adopted children all the time. and drama teachers have strange ideas about what constitutes appropriate bread. 140110 ... e_o_i Adolf Hitler poops like a bird. He does this when the ending to World War Two is being re-filmed and he's being hanged on a giant gallows inside a dank grey cave surrounded by other Nazi leaders. The person he poops on, part of a pile of "dead" bodies, lifts up his head and and says, "Hey! I'm supposed to be a victim!" even though it's only really water and paint. Then I open the gate to the cave, and people come streaming in to look at the "concentration camp museum." Upon which I feel this is in rather bad taste, do I head to Dollard Des Ormeaux, only to find a giant map confirming that Dorval has swallowed it up, just like I used to gobble up shrimp before being locked into a Sunday school room by crazed anti-food fanatics. That wasn't a problem, because I had teleporting powers. But what to do when Dorval is everywhere? 140110 ... e_o_i word check do = so 140110 ... raze a cigarette is not a solution, but it can be a decent distraction until the heater is lost after ashing in a soup bowl. 140111 ... raze a modern day writer of 19th century gothic literature brushes her teeth like no one else, and when i'm threatening someone over the phone, satan is my secret weapon. 140112 ... e_o_i An extra-long hot-dog is called a python, and I'm not afraid of Handel's ghost who invisibly plays pianos in my friend's apartment. In fact, when I see the keys playing by themselves and hear her frightened explanation, I shout "Cool!" and start running after Handel's ghost, but he runs away from me out the door, making injured hooting sounds all the way. 140112 ... raze when i'm a robot, the scientist who designed me is frustrated by my willingness to help strangers in need of a train. 140113 ... raze when i revisit a bar i used to hang out at every friday night but haven't seen the inside of in years, the most important thing is finding a place to stand where i will look sufficiently moody and mysterious. failing that, the most important thing is finding a spot on the dance floor where i can dance by myself in a way that is sufficiently moody and mysterious. 140114 ... e_o_i Apples that are blue just need more sunlight. I found one on my bedsheets, along with a single pale cherry. (This one's so simple it could be symbolic. Though I haven't bedded any sad laptops, nor deflowered any pale-skinned virgins. Of course, now I'm taking symbolism too literally. Trust me to do something like that!) 140114 ... raze old friends keep strange blogs. 140115 ... e_o_i The "park keepers" think me strange for not wanting to pet a dead squirrel, after I've patted the wet, live birds held out to me. All I have to do is move forward in line. But then I'll lose sight of the airport on the horizon, and I won't know where I am because the streets will change names. 140115 ... raze when roger hodgson is on jimmy kimmel's show and someone in the audience asks him to sing a christmas song in his best approximation of a gruff-voiced munchkin from "the wizard of oz", he will oblige, regardless of the season. 140116 ... raze if you find yourself in hell after you die, before you can get inside you have to add up in your head how many books you have. that number is your combination for the spinning black seashell lock. but before you can do that, you need to sit at an informal, sparsely attended auction that has always been going on and will never not be going on, and you need to buy as many books as you can before the judge tells you he won't speak to you anymore. that's how you get the number. the books you had when you were alive don't count in hell. heaven, on the other hand, is just dark space filled with whatever light and matter your mind can make. anyone you want to see only needs to be thought of and they'll appear. it's the ultimate dream that way. in_heaven you're alone, but you're never really alone. 140117 ... e_o_i When Lady Gaga conjures up stereotypical_scares in black_and_white, I can reclaim my courage by dressing like her and jumping onto the neighbours' roof. 140118 ... raze if you're not careful, a teddy bear might steal your date. and it won't be any kind of anthropomorphic teddy bear — just a regular old stuffed animal. 140119 ... e_o_i When I win an all-night bicycle race down the highway, the first thing a reporter will ask me is, "Did you mean to win?" My response? "I don't know." Then she'll ask me if I'm going to her daughter's piano recital of Chopin's Nocturnes. Again, "I don't know." 140119 ... raze when your uncle glues a fake beard to your face, it will be with you for the rest of your life. be wary of which relatives you let near your face with an adhesive substance. 140120 ... raze asking someone who's already hacked into your computer once not to do it again is probably not going to accomplish much. but when the hacker is also a spy and they want to get you involved in one of their missions, it's hard to resist, no matter how much you despise them. 140121 ... raze vaseline is magic healing lotion for wounded athletes. 140122 ... raze an imported doctor always falls for the first person they share a slow dance with. 140123 ... e_o_i 2001 is where it starts, 2010 is The Year We Make Contact, and 2025 is something too. I'm upset because I can't remember anything that happened in 2010 while I'm in the kitchen. And if I suggest that The Fiddler on the Roof has morbid jokes about talking computers, I'll be laughed out of the room. 140124 ... raze it makes me sad when sleeping cats stop singing opera. 140124 ... raze the wallpaper salesman has all the knives. 140125 ... raze "start me up" by the rolling stones isn't about sex; it's a love song to a paramedic. 140126 ... e_o_i A giant pencil sharpener will turn into a one-room schoolhouse with me as the teacher, provided the metal turns to wood first. 140126 ... e_o_i Iced_curry_peaches, and maybe Jesus is the one with the weed, on a scale of one to five? 140127 ... raze you try to be accommodating, you let someone stab you in the side of the face with scissors for six months, and then one day they tell you they want to slit your throat instead. people have no appreciation for the allowance of controlled, non-fatal revenge. 140127 ... e_o_i Microfinance organizations can always benefit from dance shows performed in floating, paint-spattered cabins. 140128 ... no reason on an episode of family feud, richard dawson may kiss all female contestants except for one. if this happens, the one woman will march up to him and ask why he didn't kiss her. he will answer, "you're too young." and she'll say she's not too young; she'd 70 (though she won't look it). he still won't kiss her, though. 140128 ... nr *she's 140128 ... raze wildcards are made possible by the athletes who set themselves on fire. 140129 ... raze a biography of elliott_smith written by david_foster_wallace contains more insight and wtf-ness in its first few pages than most books manage in their entireties. 140130 ... e_o_i (yes, I'd imagine...) If I hang a mirror in the wrong place my reflection will have three breasts. This is not scary, only slightly perplexing. 140130 ... raze when one gets a job milking pigs on an assembly line, pig-related classic rock songs play all day. never mind the fact that the pigs look more like car wash spaghetti than animals. they milk just the same. 140131 ... raze every problem child sent to a boarding school for silent bird callers needs a baseball cap with an appropriate brim, only at the boarding school for silent bird callers they call the brim a beak, because all hats secretly resemble ducks. 140201 ... raze when you take your somewhat sudden date to the alley you share like an apartment with a french friend who speaks english without a french accent though his hair gives him away, who's into classical music, who smiles and knows what's up and does his best to give you privacy — when you take her there for a little romantic slow dancing detour before she has to get back to work, whatever work is for her, you slow dance to the fast sound of madonna's thunder, circa "true blue", the 1986 album featuring "live to tell" and "open your heart". 140202 ... raze being the lone male specimen in a room filled with brilliant, incredibly lifelike robotic women is as intimidating as it is fascinating. 140203 ... e_o_i A modernist bullet train is actually a giant eel, and it will flail and reverse directions without warning. This is fun to watch from a safe distance on a blocked-off highway, while you're teaching two siblings ages 43 and 37 who've temporarily reverted to childhood for their building-blocks lesson. 140203 ... raze i give good pep talks to amateur hockey players. 140204 ... e_o_i The things I find out at casual outdoor concerts, the kind with folding chairs and beer or soda in plastic cups: Lorde the singer is the granddaughter of American poet Audre Lorde. And Ron Sexsmith is their father/son, respectively. 140204 ... raze cats who imitate fax machines while sitting on your chest like patient, pensive anthropomorphic pencil sharpeners are cute, until they become feral mice and bite you. they're a little less cute when they do that. and slippers are not the best form of foot protection when you're running away. 140205 ... raze i want to record the acoustic folk-pop stylings of victoria beckham, of all people, who isn't so posh when she's sitting at a picnic table wearing jeans and a t-shirt. 140206 ... e_o_i I shouldn't talk to metro drivers while they're driving, because my arguments distract them, but I will warn them to stop short just before the track suddenly reveals that a large chunk of itself is missing. "It seemed the right way, but you took a wrong turn," I say. We back up and then I find the right turn, a sharp right that's much smaller than the main tunnel. I don't know how to apply this to real life. All I know is that once I go down that track I'm by myself, and I can slide down stair railings with abandon. I can also keep up with an outdoor train if the sidewalks are slick with snow and the track is downhill; I slide along beside it. 140206 ... raze gravy-related flashbacks are the stuff of childhood nostalgia, especially when beets are involved. 140207 ... raze always think twice before stapling something. and where a machine-gun is involved, the best intentions will almost always go awry. 140208 ... e_o_i The tastiest blueberries are forbidden blueberries. They can be found in my friend's unexpected mansion, in the secret indoor garden in the basement behind the curtain. Maybe they're not THAT forbidden. Maybe I just shouldn't take other people's food without asking. 140208 ... raze when drummers become boxers mid-rhythm, weight classes don't matter anymore. 140209 ... raze a time machine isn't bout timetravel so much, but more about who's around to absorb the power of the glow. 140210 ... raze (no idea where that missing a went. probably florida.) 140210 ... raze some record label bigwigs will write down on a piece of paper, in front of a band on their roster, on the coffee table of one of the band members, that they're withdrawing their support and dropping the band, as if they're writing a grocery list, daring someone to see the words and react to them. 140211 ... raze there are people who will show up at yard_sales and grab piles of seemingly useless things only to try and abscond with them on a bus without paying. what you do when you catch one such person in the act is you grab onto one of their legs until a shoe comes loose. yard sale thieves will do a lot of things, but they won't leave the scene of a crime with only one shoe on. they will concoct a ridiculous story about you taking them to a baseball game where they suffered a fly bite on their left arm, though, in a stab at blackmailing you into letting them go. 140212 ... raze eating hamburgers for breakfast is not as frightening as you might think. 140213 ... e_o_i Having a librarian for a father while lacking a cell phone is a sure sign of immaturity, and worry at becoming substitute_e_o_i manifests itself in morbid_high_school_projects. 140213 ... raze there's a book called "are your headaches really allergies?", but it's far too expensive to be of much use to most of the people who stand to benefit from whatever insights it might offer. the book is more appealing after it's become an uncomfortable red pillow anyway. 140214 ... e_o_i After digging through snow on my bedroom floor with my bare fingers to find black plastic rings, it turns out they're only for men. Purcell Street is on top of Mount Royal, looking down on Concordia University. Evidently it was named after Henry Purcell, whose King Arthur opera included a chorus about "trembling with cold," which is why the wind is frigid and snowy. 140214 ... raze when someone eats most of the snickers bar you've brought with you to a school dance that's turned into a deserted dinner banquet, you throw what's left of it in their soup. that'll teach them to eat things that aren't meant for them. 140215 ... flowerock If you build your home with rubik's_cubes then you'll never be bored. 140215 ... e_o_i Spring comes early to the garden. There I discover I've accidentally crossbred roses and green pepper plants, resulting in rosebuds tucked inside green peppers. 140215 ... raze when i read about a friend of mine in a magazine and learn she's a transgender woman who was born a man, my reaction will not be surprise, but rather a desire to dance with the person sitting next to me on the bus. 140216 ... raze wading through a flood begins as an attempt at self-justification and ends in a flashback of your younger self playing a game called "six boots", which is really just an excuse to flail around in the water with friends while you're all wearing intense faces. 140217 ... raze angry tirades are somewhat less effective than they might have otherwise been when you're chewing a piece of gum the size of a hockey puck while tirade-ing and your enunciation suffers accordingly. 140218 ... raze if you're concerned someone in the music industry who's "discovered" you and has expressed an interest in "developing" you might just want to steal your material, first make sure they can't sing a note. then rearrange all your songs as group a cappella pieces. and whatever you do, don't let the rest of the band come up with titles without your input, otherwise you'll end up with a debut album called "out of the pig foo-foo". 140219 ... raze pool parties are serious business. don't show up one time and you're not getting invited to the next one. 140220 ... e_o_i When my brother becomes a father at age 23, he'll start listening to music he previously deemed "weird," most notably Amon Tobin. My Little Pony characters appear on the covers of scratched 18th-century books. It's a bit of a shock to see a glaringly orange Applejack in a gilded frontispiece. The word "hypothetical" has two branches - or twigs - according to a French philosopher whose name sounds like Deleuze. 140220 ... raze it's a strange thing to experience when you go to hold back the hair of a drunk friend while they vomit only to realize they're better equipped to do it on their own, having so much experience with saving their golden locks from the gastric onslaught that it's practically become muscle memory. 140221 ... raze wishing not to have to go home right away may lead to an outright inability to return there when the wish is granted. careful what you wish for. 140222 ... raze sometimes a double-cross is so unexpected, all you can do is turn into robocop. 140223 ... raze staying in a matchbox twenty-themed hotel is not conducive to a good sleep, particularly when you've locked yourself out of your room and are forced to try and get comfortable in the ghost town of a lobby. the main obstacle to sleep isn't the lack of a pillow or blankets, but rather the creepy cardboard cutouts of rob thomas staring back at you everywhere you look. 140224 ... e_o_i When I meet Stephen Harper at a picnic and say, "Politically, I'm your enemy, but you make good cake," he'll just ignore me. 140224 ... raze you should never beat up a stunt double in a bar. some of the people drinking might mistake the stunt double for the person they're standing in for, and they'll want payback for something you haven't even really done…at least not to the person they think you've done it to. 140225 ... raze when you've got a long drive ahead of you, and the car you're taking on that drive only has a cassette deck in it, and the only cassette tapes you have to listen to are religious recordings, and no one who's along for the ride is the least bit religious, it can be a little strange. 140226 ... raze speed doesn't matter when your intention is to disrupt. 140227 ... raze whatever you do, don't steal someone's "hope floats" dvd. nothing good can come of it. who knew people could be so passionate about sandra bullock? 140228 ... raze the best way to get out of making a phone call is to move a bunch of chairs into a hall for a wedding reception. bonus perk: (s)he who moves the chairs gets to choose where (s)he sits, and who with. 140301 ... raze when all else fails, sing "you were meant for me" by jewel. 140302 ... raze babies can be EVIL. no one's going to believe you when you try to convince them a baby intends to ruin your life, though. when the evil baby spits up in your face, they'll be thinking, "aw…how cute!" when you know deep down the baby waited until he had a clear shot and then unloaded, just to mess with you. 140303 ... e_o_i When I'm temporarily a man in a story who yells "Is anyone here?" into an empty office room and then gets spooked when he hears "here" echoed back, it won't stick; I'll turn back into myself, since it's not solitude but other people I fear. On the top of the desk I'll see two SF novels, subgenre "erotic geometry." One of them has a woman in an outfit with a heart-shape cut out above her breasts. I can't read them because I have to hide under the desk. The guy who finds me questions me gently, and I burst out sobbing. Without meaning to lie, I end up saying that my estranged friend is actually dead. He asks me whether I'd like to call someone at her workplace, and I say, "No, no, I can't talk to her. I'm not going to." He doesn't think this suspicious at all, and he connects me to "Brett" who works in the department. What department, I don't know. And Brett advises me to go through the underground city of Toronto. 140303 ... raze when everyone at your high school is a ghost oblivious to the fact that they're dead, and they fire the one teacher who cares about his work and tries to educate his students about their deadness, make sure the next school you transfer to isn't even more oppressive (like, say, a school where all they care about is basketball, and the players who make the most pivotal, game-winning plays never get the credit they deserve, because the self-appointed star players are too busy praising themselves and their buddies). 140304 ... e_o_i When I'm Jo March from Little Women, I can cross the boundaries of fictional worlds to get my sister Meg married to Mr. Bingley from Pride and Prejudice. And when my hair's messy, tiny doves the size of my thumb will build nests in it. The intersection of traditional femininity and parasitic growth is a fluttery one. 140305 ... raze when a careless king charges you with high treason for insulting him, you pull out a gun and shoot him dead. naturally. 140306 ... e_o_i When I retake my master's degree, I'll suddenly appear in a classroom that I thought was eight hours away. Everyone, or at least the women, will have complicated names that I can't spell. 140306 ... brother cu when i was passing through a town in what seem like a "Mexican" town, old west kind of feel. the time was in the 1800's or something like that. i was looking for a place to stay but everywhere was booked or people didn't want to give me a room, i felt unwelcome here. finally, i ended up in someone's office and this guy was supposed help me get a room for the night. inside his office there was a donkey that seemed restrained, the donkey was blue coloured and he looked sad. i pet him in the snout. next to the man's chair, there was a nasty pile of puke. he was not helpful about finding me a room and told me to leave. i decided to break into a room for the night but i was caught and a chase broke out, i saw myself on the street when i met a friend who'd help me get out of town, not sure who he was maybe edgar. the donkey was also there to help us get out of town. since it was two of us, we couldn't both use the donkey so we started building a jet propulsion device made out of a bucket (plastic) and nitroglycerin. 140306 ... raze you can blast yourself out of any room with some self-made dynamite, but sometimes it's easier just to open the door. 140307 ... raze when the trunk of a car floods, the whole thing becomes a dampness factory, and shielding your hair from the rain is the least of your worries. 140308 ... e_o_i When I'm impressed at a squirrel's high jumping skills and start clapping, the squirrel will understand what I mean and start doing complicated jumps with flips. It's all about the applause. 140308 ... raze every so often, everyone's teeth need a good vacuuming from bela lugosi. 140309 ... raze it's hard out there for an arrogant country star when your life and career are on the slide, until you meet a strong-willed female singer in your grandmother's basement and she sings harmonies on a song you're making up on the spot with her face pressed up against yours while her bassist boyfriend looks on, singing like she was born knowing the words you're only thinking of now, like her voice was designed as a perfect counterpart to yours by some higher power kinder than you deserve. that'll give you some hope. but it won't lessen the absurdity of the "sand pull" — a machine you've paid someone to operate that sucks nonexistent beach debris from your swimming pool. 140310 ... raze some people have a moral objection to sex in public swimming pools. luckily this won't stop paul mccartney from finding his acoustic guitar in the wreckage of an abandoned airplane. 140311 ... e_o_i In the city, I need to ride a long-legged and long-necked donkey-giraffe in order to be higher than the Montreal horses who want to bite me every time they look at me. And they look vicious. 140311 ... raze sometimes when one friend doesn't show up for pizza someone different will arrive in their stead, and no pizza will be eaten. the important thing is that, whoever you're with, you end the night dancing naked to michael jackson's "billie jean". 140312 ... raze when i'm a girl of ten or eleven, i listen to miles_davis on the school bus and have enough confidence to ask robert de niro what french poet he's reading when i notice him sitting across from me. sadly, there's not much to choose from in my school library's poorly-organized poetry section. 140313 ... no reason there is a little girl who knows things. she says, "he is supposed to die." 140313 ... raze it's difficult to keep all the important things dry when it's raining inside your house. 140314 ... e_o_i The neighbour's dog can fly, and I can't, which leads to a convoluted storyline and a lesson on envy. When I'm Anne of Green Gables, I won't actually be a psychopath. On my first day of sixth grade, I'll rescue two little girls from drowning - one more than the previous year. I'll also have a crush on Diana Barry. And I'll assert that there are fearsome Orcs in willow trees everywhere. 140314 ... e_o_i The neighbour's dog can fly, and I can't, which leads to a convoluted storyline and a lesson on envy. When I'm Anne of Green Gables, I won't actually be a psychopath. On my first day of sixth grade, I'll rescue two little girls from drowning - one more than the previous year. I'll also have a crush on Diana Barry. And I'll assert that there are fearsome Orcs in willow trees everywhere. 140314 ... raze even_more_things_learned_from_dreams 140314 what's it to you? who go blather from