weird_confessions raze i need to be in motion when i'm brushing my teeth. i need to pace the whole way through. i've tried standing at the sink a time or two like a normal person, and it just doesn't work for me. it feels completely wrong. some days i would probably consider killing someone for a good cup of coffee. but only if it was really, really good coffee. tim horton's isn't going to cut it. i very rarely drink coffee. i have an affection for the f-word in all of its various permutations that is probably unhealthy, and i'm not sure when that kicked in. somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21, i imagine. most people will never hear me swear at all, but when there's no one around, i sound like a pissed off factory worker on amphetamines. if there's a good tennis match on television, i probably couldn't tear myself away from it even if my house was on fire. i could exist on a diet of nothing but iced tea and various salads, and it wouldn't bother me at all. the first girl i ever thought of kissing was nicholle tom from the "beethoven" movies. somehow i doubt charles grodin would have approved of me. i used to do this thing when i was a kid where i would pick a word, whether it was something i read in a book or on a billboard, or just a word that was in my head, and then mentally spell it out in a rhythmic way, over and over, turning it into a mantra. the word had to come out to an even number of letters in order for it to be pleasing. w's would always be changed to v's, because i didn't like the way the letter w sounded in my head. there was something about this that was calming, and almost hypnotic on some subliminal level. i don't really do it anymore, but every once in a great while it'll kick in out of nowhere. my handwriting has probably gone through more changes over the years than the hair of a fashion model. i remember eating chocolate pudding out of a tin when i was a child. to this day, i've never found pudding that tastes half as good as that stuff did. i'm convinced this is more than a byproduct of childhood nostalgia. there was something in the tin that interacted with the pudding in a magical way. i am standing behind you right now, with wildflowers in one hand and a cherry danish in the other. 130215 ... PeeT this is fucking brilliant! you have to promise me you will continue this? i'm going to take these one at a time and address them. stay tuned. 130215 ... raze ha! i wasn't sure if i was going to come back to this idea, but now i'll have to try and think of some more things to add that are suitably odd / random. anyone else should feel free to contribute their own weird confessions, too. 130215 ... red blather for sure...announcement everyone! KEEP BEING WEIRD! report here! 130215 ... raze my mother made me so many bologna sandwiches for lunch when i was in grade school, just the thought of eating one of those things now almost makes me cringe. i don't think i'll ever get past that. but i have been able to get back in touch with the fondness i once had for a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich after years of thinking i'd been burnt out on those too. so maybe there's hope for me yet. half the reason i like tea at all is because of the smell. i could sit and smell a good cup of tea for an hour, and not drink it, and that would be alright. in my last year of high school, i had a fierce crush on the girlfriend of one of my best friends and bandmates. i sang about it in one of our songs while he sat two feet away from me, and he had no idea what i was on about. then again, i routinely sang about killing myself in our songs once we'd graduated from high school, and neither he nor my drummer ever showed any concern. so maybe they weren't paying that much attention to my lyrics. one of the greatest things i ever experienced was a musical hallucination one night when i was about six years old, with animated duck characters marching while superimposed on my bedroom wall, singing a bizarre song. i can still see them vividly, and i can remember the feeling of the mesmerizing music they created, but the melody is lost to time. i can remember what clothes i was wearing, what my hair looked like, and what music i was listening to on my grandmother's birthday fifteen years ago, down to the finest detail. but i couldn't tell you what i ate for dinner three days ago. 130216 ... PeeT taking_a_look_at_your_weird_confessions 130216 ... raze a lot of people are interested in dreams on at least some level, right? i think my interest extends beyond the norm just a tad. i've been a little lazy with it lately, but for a good few years i was almost obsessive in documenting my brain_movies, and i trained myself to remember almost everything that went down each night while i was asleep. i have thousands of pages i still need to go through and edit to read more smoothly. i even went to the trouble of making a character guide (non-celebrities only), in case someone discovers my dream bible after i die and wants to know who all the main and supporting players are. there are several different in-progress tables of contents, for different reasons. the all-encompassing one features a thematic key code broken down alphabetically. the letter B, for example, denotes a dream that features some black_and_white content. P involves palpable feelings, when i can touch, taste, or smell something vividly, or when i can physically feel pain. i ran out of letters eventually and had to start using symbols to pick up the slack. i have no idea why i sometimes spend my idle time doing things like this, but i find it all strangely rewarding. 130218 ... raze i have not taken a shower in more than ten years. it's all about the baths for me, these days. a shower's too brusque. it's not so easy to let the mind drift. taking a shower with another person would be a different kind of experience, i imagine, but it's one i've yet to have myself. an hour-long bath at the end of the day...that's where it's at. matter of fact, i think i'll take one now. at 4:57 in the morning. 130322 ... no reason if i add a new contact to my cell phone, i won't add their last name until i'm confident we'll be keeping in touch continuously (unless their first name is really common). sometimes i'm superstitious about jinxing things. 130322 ... raze if ever someone wanted to torture me, to extract information, or just to make me suffer, one of the most effective ways to go about it would be to force me to eat the sickly sweet sludge that's created when an especially sugary bowl of cereal has been eaten, and all that remains is the milk and the sweetness that's seeped into it. so many times i was forced to drink that stuff as a child, fighting to suppress the gag reflex. even thinking about it now stirs up a not entirely pleasant twinge of something like nostalgia, stripped of all its positive qualities and left as an ugly husk you buried in the backyard years ago and are reluctant to dig up, because maybe, against all the odds, it's survived through the years and has been waiting for you to unearth it so it can drag you down there with it. i still do like me some fruit loops, though. go figure. 130324 ... unhinged i have a nervous habit of picking off my finger and toenails if they show any white whatsoever and saving the pickings in little piles around my bedroom i like the tearing and the pain of picking them off (sometimes they bleed) but i still haven't figured out why i'm compelled to save the pieces 130324 ... epitome of incomprehensibility If I have to rub my eyes, I reserve my pinky figures for that job - I guess I think they're cleaner. I collect pennies sometimes. I found an Expo 67 penny, which I'm sure will be worth a lot of money (say, $1?) in the future. I think it's a good mental exercise to invent theories you don't believe in. My nightmares are often funny once I wake up and think about them. Except for the one about my grandfather's cottage catching fire and me being unable to rescue my brother or myself. I still remember that. I used to have periodical obsessions: age 5-7 with Antarctica, age 7-11 with an ongoing story I made up called Tiny Little World, and age 11-12 with appendicitis after I read a book called Prairie School - I thought it was a particularly exciting disease for one that wouldn't necessarily kill you. Then I hit puberty and became a hypochondriac. I thought I had lung cancer or something when I really had a sinus infection (it wasn't that bad, but it lasted a long time and I needed an X-ray to find out what it was). That's probably why I've never smoked. In theory, my favourite season is winter; in practice, wearing extra clothes is tiresome and I don't like being too cold. I still want to visit Antarctica someday, though. 130325 ... raze on the subject of bad_habits you can't make sense of... around the time i was ten, i developed a habit of working the skin off of my thumbs, but only in one specific place — the "bend", on the soft underbelly. i would suck on and chew the skin, tenderizing and tasting it. i got a weird kind of pleasure out of this. once the skin had been softened up enough, i would tear it off with my teeth. that part didn't feel so nice. i still don't know why i did this. i do know what got me to stop; my mother got wise to my thumb-chewing ways and punished me by only letting me watch the first half of "macgyver", and then sending me to bed, until i cut it out. that wasn't going to work for me. so i reluctantly put the habit to bed. now it seems bizarre to me that i ever would have thought to do such a thing, let alone enjoyed it. i'm a little surprised there aren't any scars. 130326 ... e_o_i I used to scratch the skin of my ears until it'd form scabs, and then scratch those off to "heal" it. I liked the smoothness of the skin there, especially the new vulnerable skin. I don't know what made me stop. I think someone compared it to picking my nose, which was "undignified," so I gradually stopped doing it. 130326 ... raze one morning before school, i forgot how to tie my shoes. you're probably thinking i was six years old or something. i was twelve. the signals my brain was supposed to send to my hands were just...gone. it felt like someone had crept into my bedroom the night before and sucked that specific bit of information out of my mind through my ear, using a turkey baster. because how else are you going to steal someone's muscle memories while they're sleeping? it's a turkey baster, or nothing at all. i told my stepfather's mother, whose house my mother would always drop me and my sisters off at on her way to work, where we would watch cartoons and eat breakfast and brush our teeth. she didn't believe me. she wasn't about to do anything to help. my sisters were too young yet to know how to tie their own shoes, never mind mine. so i sat there for about half an hour, in a state of mild disbelief. a few minutes before we had to leave to catch our bus, something stirred, and the motions i needed to perform returned to me like they'd never been gone. since then, they've never left me again. but one morning, when i was twelve years old, i forgot how to tie my shoes. 130409 ... e_o_i That's a great story. It also sounds like a frightening experience. No wonder you remembered it. I was about that age when I forgot the word "milk." I only remembered it in French, so I asked my mother to pass the "lait" (pronounced like "lay" - the context didn't give it a sexual connotation, but it sounded oddly grandiose, like I meant the old word for a song or story). Something in my brain sets French as the default second-language mode. When I was fourteen or so my father tried to teach me to say some Hebrew sentences. Apparently it is highly amusing to hear a protestant-raised anglophone speak Hebrew with a French accent. (He can speak five languages - he studies that sort of thing, though his full-time job is in a library.) 130410 ... raze i've always found rainy days oddly comforting. i don't know why. 130416 ... raze i have a really difficult time writing nice songs about people who actually exist. meanwhile, if i'm angry at someone, i can write entire albums inspired by and directed at them. and i can write love songs for imaginary people without any trouble. funny how that works. 130424 ... raze sometimes i like reading the letters on license plates as if they're words when they aren't really. i mean the normal, non-novelty license plates, where there's just gibberish. this leads to made-up words that sound like half-remembered snippets of a borrowed language that never existed. words like "hayuhnahuh" (HYNH) and "buhpuhksiduh" (BPXD). shouting "HAYUHNAHUH!" at random amuses me more than it probably should. 130511 ... raze the movie that's come closest to making me cry is not some hard-hitting drama, nor is it a depressing art house film. it's "babe". with the pig, and the singing mice, and the duck who thinks he's a rooster. the scene that does it is the one in which james cromwell sings to babe to get him to eat something. the last time i saw the movie, a few years ago, i almost couldn't get through that part. people can meet tragic ends, and suffer, and do terrible things to each other, but a man singing to a pig — that's what chokes me up. 130527 ... e_o_i One movie that scared me as a kid was The Wizard of Oz, but I also I liked it a lot - go figure. When I watched it years later in a film studies class in CEGEP, I was shocked to see that many of the Oz backgrounds were just painted backdrops. It was like lifting the veil on the wizard myself and seeing the little guy behind the curtain. 130528 ... raze the wicked witch in "the wizard of oz" scared me so much when i first saw that movie as a kid, i had a waking nightmare; a pile of clothes on top of my hamper became the witch, and she flew around my bedroom on her broom, grinning at me. i screamed my little head off. i still see things in the dark that aren't there every once in a while...but not the wicked witch. she never paid me another visit after that. 130528 ... nr i totally have a crush on one of the trailer park boys. he's the nicest. 130528 ... raze sometimes i get these strange urges to provide an unofficial public service. for example, whenever a vehicle drives by with an absurdly bass-heavy stereo system and the music turned up so loud it seems to cause the entire universe to tremble, i wish with every atom of my being that i had some kind of weapon with which to blow out their tires, as a friendly way of saying, "shut the hell up." 130607 ... raze for years, it's been a secret goal of mine to record a smooth melodic ska version of the "inspector gadget" theme song, taken at a tempo of about 150 bpm, complete with sultry lady voices singing "go, gadget, go". 130714 ... raze you remember those chevy commercials from the early 90s with bob seger's "like a rock" on the soundtrack? when i was a kid, i didn't know that was the name of the song. i was sure he was singing about sweaters. it never made sense to me that they were trying to get you to buy a truck while bob was howling, "angora! oh, angora!" these days, i can't figure out how i ever heard that. but i have to admit, i was a little sad when i got older and learned the song wasn't actually called "angora". i think i'd have a little more respect for bob seger if he'd somehow managed to have a hit single in the 80s with a song dedicated to wool. 130729 ... raze when i was 13, 14 years old, i was addicted to "general hospital". the soap opera. i could say a lot to expand on that, but i think it's funnier if i just leave it as the ultimate admitted past tense guilty pleasure. bring back sarah joy brown as carly! 130822 ... raze until the day i die, whenever i'm seeing a movie in the theater my snack will always be the same thing. it's been the same thing as far back as i can remember. no popcorn, though i do love me some caramel corn. it's glosette raisins and sprite. no movie theater experience is complete without those two things, and nothing else will do. 130908 ... raze (and i can't decide if "theater" or "theatre" looks better. i'm always sitting on the fence of that interchangeability, in spite of protestations from the groin.) 130908 ... raze speaking of movies... i saw a lot of r-rated films in the theatre when i was nowhere near 18. i saw "braveheart" and "highlander 3" (shudder) when i wasn't yet 12 years old. i saw "terminator 2: judgment day" at the mall when i was 8. i was always mature-looking for my age, but i have no idea how i ever got away with that, even with adult supervision. stranger still, the nudity and graphic violence never disturbed me. i was more unnerved by kissing, whenever it would happen. the faces looked like they were made of wax and melting together. i couldn't fathom how anyone would want to do such a thing. good thing arnold didn't kiss linda hamilton in that "terminator" movie. i'm not sure my fragile mind could have handled it. 130918 ... raze sometimes i don't hear quite as well when sleep-deprived. i notice subtle changes, mostly to the sounds my own voice makes inside and outside my head. soft consonants have less of an edge. hard consonants don't slice through brain paper so easily. then i get some sleep, and everything sounds the way it's supposed to again. 131011 ... e_o_i My sight's slightly blurrier when I'm tired. I start worrying my eyes are getting worse, but like your hearing, it goes back to normal (well, normal with glasses). 131011 ... raze tired brains can be real sensory pranksters, eh? 131011 ... jane i don't like eating in front of or around other people. my life is filled with take-out containers and leftovers. sometimes i just decline to eat entirely, and at some point i will trick my body into eating some kind of powerbar or clif bar. 131011 ... unhinged i get ocd over other people not liking me. i get this weird compulsion to dissect and analyze everything i ever said or did that could possibly contribute to them not liking me. it might stem from that time in the fifth grade when my supposed best friend slipped a note in with my homework that got sent home when i was sick stating how she didnt think we should be friends anymore. i dont handle rejection very well. six months after i told you the casual sex we were having was making me feel like shit and that i didnt want to maintain a friendship with you cause i had stronger feelings, im sitting eating dinner alone on my birthday wondering what i did wrong to chase you away. 131011 ... e_o_i I don't think that's OCD or compulsion. I think that's normal. I don't like it when people treat me badly or disdainfully, especially when I can't think of any reason they should do so, and I wonder what is wrong with me or them. On a happier note, happy birthday! I wish you peace, good music, and a dash of incongruity. 131011 ... unhinged maybe it is a compulsion that i always blame myself for others not liking me instead of chalking it up to aesthetic differences...? but, i don't compromise myself for people to like me. either you do or you don't and if you want to ignore me or criticize me when i was just trying to be myself, i'll go somewhere else. thanks :-) i had a pretty damn good birthday until i got home to my empty cold bed. but the museum and the sound_installation were beautiful. 131012 ... raze over the past few years i have taken to sometimes absentmindedly chewing on things that aren't there. not teeth grinding, but a_tightening_of_the_jaw that only reveals itself after the fact. i have no idea what that's about. maybe i'm hungrier than i used to be. 131016 ... raze i learned to sew before i learned to swear. i don't remember how to sew. 131230 ... raze sometimes i eat mildly esoteric cereal after midnight. 140113 ... no reason i find myself wishing i was younger, because it seems most people who aren't sure of their paths (real people and fictional) are in their 20s. i relate a lot more to people in their 20s than people my own age, and i feel like i need more time. to try new things. to possibly/inevitably fail at new things. to recover and get my life together when i figure out what it is that means. 140119 ... e_o_i Similar feeling here. Or maybe something like the opposite. I've looked younger than my age for most of my life, so I feel I'm used to getting away with acting younger. I can see my reflection right now and I'd give my face twenty years of being a face, not twenty-five. (Not an admission of stunning beauty, merely of a youthful roundness of countenance, especially around the nose and cheeks.) Not to mention I'm short. Speaking of. I think I put "169 cm" on a form yesterday. It's not that at all. It's 159. Nice try. Anyway, the feeling is that I should be more mature. But also that I shouldn't have to be conventional just because I'm getting older. I guess I can be maturely unconventional? An old lady who dyes her hair purple, like in that poem I forget most of. 140119 ... e_o_i ...See? "PETA" on top of "tennis" in the yesterday column makes me think of "penis." I have the dirty mind of a ten-year-old. 140119 ... raze i hate the sound of new guitar strings. HATE. with a big h and a capital ate. what most people hear as pleasing brightness or richness or sheen (not the michael variety), i hear as garish, unpleasant, harsh. collective wisdom says you should change your strings every few months, and that's pushing it. some guitarists change strings before every recording session and live gig. i have one guitar that's had the same set of strings on it for more than twelve years. it still sounds as good as it ever did. i will only change strings when they break or rust or start to buzz, and when something does necessitate new strings being strung i feel nothing but contempt for the guitar they're tied to until the sound of them has been dulled down to something not so new. 140204 ... raze suddenly i'm hearing michelle branch songs everywhere and it's not nearly as grating as i thought it would be. i'm a little bit afraid. 140219 ... raze one of my greatest fears is that i will one day have a stroke and wake up with "locked-in syndrome", my mind still all there but my body completely useless, unable to speak or move or do anything, my thoughts trapped in a prison of indifferent flesh and guts. 140318 ... raze i spend more time doing nothing than i probably should. but i've always been at or near my best when a deadline is closing in. seems to be a family thing. 140428 ... raze every time i see the front tractor unit of a semi-trailor on the road without anything attached, it makes me think of a head moving around without a body. for some odd reason, it's always a little bit startling. 140515 ... raze (how i managed to misspell "trailer" i'll never know. maybe it's that whole trailer / traitor brain confusion.) 140515 ... e_o_i Hot weather tends to depress me. I feel sluggish and useless, and I'm inclined to wish I could spend summer closer to the Arctic Circle, just like some Canaduckians fly to Florida for winter. I like spring because I can watch things starting to grow, yes, but also because the temperature's moderate. At least there was a spring this year, and things didn't swing from very cold to very hot. (Maybe it's just because of today, which was a ridiculous 27C for May. And I want to stick around this piece of land for June, when the strawberries are ripe, and July-August, for the blackberries. But I'm going to turn 26 in June. I don't want to be 26 when I haven't done anything of substance... I blame the weather.) 140515 ... raze i dream a fair bit about boxing and tennis matches and basketball games when i'm emotionally invested in the outcome. sometimes i can actually predict what the tennis score is going to be. with basketball ... not so much. 140617 ... unhinged hearing people speak mandarin makes me angry which makes me feel guilty 140618 ... past i used to clean hostel rooms and worked with a mix of foreign students and filipinos. i was fine with mandarin, but everytime i overheard a conversation in tagalog it made me anxious. i thought they were always fighting, even when they had huge smiles on their faces. 140619 ... flowerock I noticed myself "racial profiling" people today. I wanted to ask for directions, I felt lost, all I saw were "asian" looking people and I think that I assume I won't be able to understand them or they will give me wrong directions. As I noticed I was thinking this way I looked up, I was in China Town. 140620 ... flowerock likewise, I noticed that all the cars that almost hit me or people in front of me were driven by white, gray haired men with big watches, collard shirts, on cell phones, OR young women with straight highlighted hair and big sunglasses and lip gloss with mouths hanging open in surprise, I imagine they were thinking "OMG thr ws a prsn ryte infrnt of me and I almst, lyke, killed them! OMGEEEEEEEE!" 140620 ... flowerock also (this is addicting) I punched a car that almost hit me. I walked around the back as I stumbled not to fall and punched their back windshield while yelling and flailing my arms at them... unfortunately since I didn't break the window or dent the car, they may have just thought I was a "crazy homeless person" because they were laughing at me. 140620 ... flowerock lately it seems like I always want to have sex with my lover when he's not around and I am missing him, then when we're finally together and have time and space, I'm always over it and tired. turns out it's still fun and awesome and I just have to wake up my body so it remembers that this is what it wanted. It doesn't help that we live in a studio apartment with another couple so there's rarely "alone time". maybe the apartment turns me off because it seems like it's always crowded. today though we had nice "alone time" even though I was tired, I feelike I met my heartmate in a new way, saw him differently, more completely, more real. I think sometimes I have a hard time connecting the face of my partner who I hangout with, live with, love, share life with to the body of the same partner that I make love to/with and enjoy physically. I still enjoy the one body/heart/soul package, but today I accepted that they are the same person, this was my thought process while love making. It was hard not to laugh at myself thinking about this while making love. 140620 ... raze you know that sitcom from the late 90s "just shoot me"? the one starring laura san giacomo, who norm (i think) once said (here or on blue) he thought would make for a really tender sex partner? it took until TODAY for it to click for me that the name of the show is a pun. because the characters work at a fashion magazine. and you shoot people with a camera. and ... yeah. you go, brain. you show 'em how it's done. 140624 ... flowerock just shoot me, I had not made that connection either, though it did come up in a show or movie where they made that same joke/connection, I figured it out then : P good catch! 140624 ... raze i thought i left my glasses on top of a roll of toilet paper just now. i did not. 140630 ... raze one time i took a picture of a giant salad i made at about 3:00 in the morning and posted it on facebook. it got more likes and stimulated more discussion than anything else i could remember posting. 140711 ... raze i have a mirrored pair of prescription aviator ray bans i bought something like thirteen years ago when i first got glasses that weren't cheap convenience store sunglasses. i haven't worn them in years, because i'm not sure they suit me anymore. i use them as a small mirror instead. they seem more honest than most larger mirrors without being overly critical. 140815 ... e_o_i Getting wet, not just from swimming but also from getting soaked in the rain, makes me feel like I have to pee. I don't know if more people are like this, or if it's an individual mental-physical quirk. 140815 ... flowerock getting wet doesn't necesarily make me need to pee, but everything else does. I pee so frequently I got tests done at the doctor thinking there much be something wrong with me. Nothing showed up, I was fine "some people just pee alot, my wide does" said the doctor. every hour AT LEAST, every fifteen minutes sometimes, but I've been practicing holding it hoping my bladder and mind will adjust because now that I have a regular job... every fifteen minutes or even hour is just too often to radio in for a break. It doesn't matter if I'm hydrated ir dehydrated... even just a little trickle will feel like a full bladder. even when I don't drink coffee. then psychologically Probably more than physically, i have to pee BEFORE anything... eating, reading, driving, running, sex, walking, shopping, sleeping, everything. I always find the bathrooms first at a new place. I hate the feeling of having to pee. yesterday I didn't pee before going to the store... when I got there the bathrooms were closed formcleanin and I almost cried and ran around askin where other restrooms might be... finally I just went in and asked the janitor if I could use it anyway... he reluctantly let me in an told me if I fall om the wet floor not to hold him responsible. I thanked him profusely. 140816 ... raze when i was just going into high school, i had this dream of learning to play the saxophone. i would sit on a bench in the park i lived close to and play soulful, jazzy things, and beautiful girls would walk past and swoon, and maybe some would be taken enough with the sounds i was making to stop and sit a while. that was the theory, anyway. i rented a tenor sax, and the second i pressed my mouth against it i broke the reed. no musical sound came out of it while it was in my possession, and i didn't think to take lessons. i thought i would magically be able to suss it out on my own. when i couldn't do that, the dream died. every so often, though, it's tempting to give it another try… 140907 ... raze even if i never got into her music, i'm glad jewel has never fixed her crooked teeth. 140909 ... raze i don't think i've ever known what my blood type is. i should find out one of these days, since my family doctor is in prison for the foreseeable future and the family doctor i had before that destroyed all my medical records after i hadn't been in to see him for a few years. 141020 ... e_o_i O+, compatible with all the positives, but the only time I gave blood it made me feel faint. Not squeamish or grossed out (the finger-pricking hurt more than the needle in the arm), but like energy was being drained out of me. They stopped drawing blood when I complained. The blood I did give was useless, since they have to fill the container to a certain amount. So I sat there, feeling weak and useless, and the nurse shrugged and said I probably wasn't heavy enough, but not to worry and to go and have some juice at the other table. I felt like an impostor. An 18-year-old, 103-pound, juice-drinking impostor. It happened again when I had a blood test for some vitamin thing. They took several vials of blood, not just one. I was fine getting up, but in the hallway I suddenly felt dizzy and my vision clouded up as if I'd just rubbed my eyes. So I panicked and ran up to the nearest official-looking person, a nurse or orderly in a blue uniform. He didn't laugh at me. He made sure I wasn't diabetic and then he went and got me a lemonade with the five dollars I handed him, bringing back all the change - this, while he probably had better and more job-like things to do. If I'd just sat down and waited for a couple of minutes I'd have felt fine. Why am I like that - not wanting to admit any weakness sometimes, but then being a baby other times? Meh (meh is the sound a calf makes, not a full-grown cow, according to Leopold Bloom.) I guess many people are like that. raze, your doctors sound like they'd have some weird confessions of their own. 141020 ... raze would they ever! ha! 141020 ... raze one time i set my beard on fire trying to light a joint with a match outside in the winter wind. luckily a light trimming was all it took to get rid of the singed bits. 141120 ... raze when someone does something really kind for someone, and the recipient of the kindness responds by thanking god, i want to shout at them, "IT'S NICE THAT YOU BELIEVE IN GOD, BUT HOW ABOUT YOU THANK THE FUCKING PERSON WHO DID THE NICE THING FOR YOU TOO?" i have no issues with anyone believing whatever they want to believe as far as religion or spirituality goes, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs down my throat. but that whole thanking-god-when-you-should-be-thanking-someone-else thing really, really boils my blood, for whatever reason. 141212 ... raze i never used to think about eye contact, but now i notice it all the time and i feel like i instinctively avoid it more than i used to. i have no idea what that's about. 141217 ... raze i didn't watch one christmas movie this holiday season. saw pieces of a few bad lifetime movies, but that was it. i almost feel like i let myself down a little there. after all, what christmas is complete without "home alone", or "a christmas story", or "a charlie brown christmas"? 150103 ... e_o_i Due to my brother, it's sort of a Christmas tradition to watch Atarnajuat: The Fast Runner. 150103 ... raze "the ants go marching one by one" used to haunt the hell out of me when i was a kid, from the first time my grandmother sang it to me. i liked the way it haunted me, but there was something almost menacing about it that i couldn't put into words. it was that melody. little did i know it was just recycled from "when johnny comes marching home" (which makes sense of everything. EVERYTHING.) 150224 ... leif Sometimes I believe I'm an empathic soociopath. And the constant battle between the two has resulted in someone who feels everything or nothing at all. 150225 ... leif Sometimes I believe I'm an empathic soociopath. And the constant battle between the two has resulted in someone who feels everything or nothing at all. 150225 ... e_o_i (If I gave up a seat to someone on the bus and they said, "Thank God!" or the like, I'd be tempted to say, "But I'm not God!") Lately I've been feeling the need to write in all caps for emphasis. Perhaps it has something to do with blather not having italics, though haven't written terribly much here lately. Ah, I finally sent a letter to someone who's rapped about pepperoni pizza pockets! You know who you are. 150225 ... e_o_i It seems that when I'm in emotional turmoil I write annoyingly cheerful emails. 150225 ... raze (yay mail!) 150225 ... raze i've found myself using stars most of the time for emphasis, to hug a word that would otherwise be italicized. but lately i think all-caps have felt more appropriate for me too, for whatever reason. 150225 ... raze every time i hear something on the news where a reporter says someone is "in hospital", i want to reach through the television screen, grab them, and say, "would it kill you to throw a 'the' in there?" even if it's grammatically correct to throw out the connecting word, it sounds goofy to me. 150317 ... e_o_i "In hospital" - I think it's a Britishism. On the other hand - in school, at work, at home, etc. My problem with cold weather is that I invariably end up sweating due to wearing a lot of layers and running for the bus. Too cold is too hot, and I'm not an extremist (some of my best friends are spring and fall). 150318 ... e_o_i I don't know whether pink military camouflage amuses or annoys me. I have slippers in this pattern - a Christmas gift. I guess someone decided to create a product for people who want to be prepared to fight a war, in their slippers, in the Barbie aisle of Toys 'R Us (which sounds horrific if I think about it too long; enough children get killed in normal war.) 150318 ... raze i have never forgotten the girl squirrel who has her heart broken in disney's "the sword in the stone". 150401 ... other such a heartbreaking moment. excecuted perfectly. 150403 ... raze i wish i had more post-apocalyptic dreams. 150417 ... jane you can have all of mine. 150502 ... e_o_i As far as weather goes, I find spring and fall (with the possible exception of rainy days) much more comfortable to live in than either winter or summer. Besides, summer usually goes with less clothing. Leg hair removal yesterday = too much time wasted. Maybe an electric razor like the one my brother has would be faster. Different blade sizes would be good, though I wouldn't use it as an eyebrow symmetricalizer. It's amazing the cosmetic things some women do on a daily basis. A beauty "regime." When do they have time to eat? Are they just not slow at everything like I am? 150504 ... raze for i don't know how many years now, i have this inexplicable odd low-level paranoia that shows up every once in a while in the middle of a bath, where i look up at the ceiling and imagine it collapsing in on me. it's never strong enough to become an actual fear. just a funny tickle in the back of the mind. hasn't happened yet. the bathroom ceiling caving in on me, i mean. 150506 ... raze cold water has always tasted best to me right after i brush my teeth. 150720 ... raze i sent a message to a retired male adult film star. there's one you don't hear every day. 150728 ... raze the only thing i ever flat-out stole was the march 2000 issue of mademoiselle magazine. someone left it behind in a public bathroom. it smelled of perfume, courtney cox was looking pretty on the cover, and my teenage brain said, "why not?" so i hid it under my shirt until i got the chance to dump it in my duffel bag. i was at some fitness center with the ex-family. i can't for the life of me remember why we were there. it wasn't something we'd ever done before or would ever do again. i remember swimming, and i remember stealing the magazine, convinced someone would catch me, but no one did. i don't remember there being many interesting articles in there. 150808 ... raze nate ruess irritates me. the music i'm indifferent about. don't like it, don't pay attention to it, doesn't matter. but the face ... it's the face that gets me. the way he looks when he sings, like he's trying to open his mouth wide enough so the whole world can get in, or trying to stave off a seizure, or something. makes me want to get in there with some scotch tape and say, "down boy. at ease." 150911 ... e_o_i For some reason this silly thing made me laugh uproariously this morning when I was supposed to be working: http://www.clickhole.com/article/taking-stand-andrew-garfield-has-announced-he-neve-3003 It's about an actor I've barely heard of "announc(ing) that he never wants to throw up" - a brave, controversial stand! I think I was laughing so hard because it resonated personally: I didn't throw up at all between the age of about 10 and 23. It was a virus that sadly broke the spell. Hmm. That means, during my teenage years, I never vomited. Not once. I was a terrible hypochondriac and when I had a sinus infection I thought I was dying of lung cancer, but I never barfed once during that time. An accomplishment! 150912 ... raze once, quite a few years back, i had a dream i was a very skilled assassin. so was a woman i used to be in a relationship with. she didn't exist in the waking world, but the dream made her seem very real and stitched in a backstory, as dreams will do. there was this sadness mixed with tension between us. we still cared for each other, but we couldn't be together. so we killed people instead, and shared a bittersweet goodbye on a train. when i woke up, i was depressed for the rest of the day. it wasn't because of the way the dream ended. it was because i couldn't tap back into it. i wanted to fall back asleep and be that lovelorn assassin again. 160128 ... raze when i picture someone crying it makes me sneeze. 160311 ... raze i work up more of a sweat vacuuming than i ever have from doing anything genuinely strenuous. it mystifies me. 161102 ... raze when given the opportunity to have a lucid dream, i will actively push away lucidity so i can instead stick with the dream that's in-progress. i want to see how the story plays out. i don't want to feel like i'm the one steering the ship. 170702 ... e_o_i Tangentially related to the last two: 1) My heart tends to beat fast when I have to sit down and stand up again a few times in succession (e.g. choir practice). I'm young enough that standing up shouldn't be taxing, but I guess it's just the change of position. 2) When I realize that I'm dreaming, my first impulse is often to jump from a high point. The thought process is something like "What's a fun thing I can do in a dream that would kill me in real life? JUMP OFF A CLIFF (and/or building)! Seize the opportunity!" (Some people consider lucid dreams the ones they can actively control - I can only sort of control mine. I just consider them the ones where I'm aware I'm dreaming, and I can drift in or out of that awareness.) 170702 ... raze for years i couldn't take a bath or shower without listening to music. it became a ritual. (bathing soundtracks ran the gamut from the_beatles, to tom_waits, to roxy music, to .38 special, to múm.) 170829 ... raze i came here to say something about how i used to be unable to take a bath or shower without music playing, only to learn i already said it four years ago. so here's something else: that thing i said at the very top of this blathe about needing to be in motion when i'm brushing my teeth? i've learned it also applies to eating an apple. i need to move. or at least i need to lean against a wall and create the possibility of movement at any moment. it wasn't always like this, but it is now. i don't know why. i just enjoy eating an apple more when i'm walking around, i guess. 210531 ... raze also, i need to reverse one of my earlier confessions: i haven't taken a bath in more than three years. i didn't think i would ever take another shower, but one day my right ear decided it was going to start being a bastard whenever i got water in it, so i switched back. now i enjoy how much more efficient i can be in there when i don't have an excuse to soak for two hours while daring myself to fall asleep in the bathtub. i also don't look like a prune when i'm finished in the shower, so there's that too. 210531 ... raze fourteen or fifteen years ago, at the house i lived in before this one, there was a spider that spent a lot of time in my bedroom and the upstairs bathroom. i started to think of him as something of a wayward pet. one night he came out of nowhere and bit me on the back of the leg while i was sitting on the toilet. and to be honest with you, there's a part of me that's always been disappointed i didn't go on to develop an early-warning system or the ability to climb walls and shoot webbing from my wrists. 210815 ... kerry i am incredibly superstitious. spider-related: i don't kill them because supposedly that is bad luck? don't walk under ladders, salt over the left shoulder, hang a horseshoe above the door (open side up to collect good luck, or open side down to spill good luck on those who enter) and i am wary of people who regularly wear polka dots 210815 ... raze i'm pretty sure i've played the 1985 nintendo game "tennis" (that's really what it's called) more than any other person who has ever lived or owned an NES. i've mastered it to the point that i now play the game online, using the wasd keys on my laptop and the left and right arrows in place of a direction pad. you_know, just to keep it interesting. 210829 ... tender square i’ve been on america’s got talent. 210829 ... raze (seriously?! i feel like there's a great story behind that tidbit.) 210829 ... tender square it’s kind of a longish-story but i’ll try to keep it short. back in 2012 or 2013 i joined an area percussion ensemble. the existing musicians all went to u of m together and liked playing in the campus’ drum group so much that they formed their own post-graduation. their sound was like blue man group meets stomp. they made a lot of their own instruments (pipe ladder xylophones, a propane tank hang, flower pot snares) and booked a fair bit of shows in the community for festivals and elementary schools around the state. before i joined, they had auditioned for agt the year before in st. louis, and the producers asked them back and paid for us all to come out. we performed some hybrid song where we sampled lmfao’s “sexy and i know it” with our own beats. it was…weird. not typically our wheelhouse, but the group thought they needed to do something different, that this was their big break. i never thought that the audition would go anywhere, i just wanted to go to st. louis and play in front of 3,000 people. the judges that year were howie mandell, howard stern, and heidi klum. the crowd was pretty responsive to what were doing, but then we got three strikes after about a minute or so. howard stern said something pretty veracious like drummers were the most boring musicians to watch on stage, and we were a whole band made up of them. nick cannon, the host of agt who starred in “drumline,” came out on stage to defend us at one point, and that was pretty much it. backstage, the producers interviewed us, asking, “how do you feel about not moving to the next round?” and i blurted “i don’t care,” not in that haughty how-dare-you-reject-us way, but more apathetic. i don’t think i gave them the drama they were looking for. but being on a reality show is pretty crazy though; they make you sign all these release forms that essentially say that they can make fun of you if they want to and there’s nothing you can do about it. our audition never aired, but there was a quick scene of us in the green room for a few seconds. the group broke up a few months later. honestly, i think they were a bit deluded about the whole thing, to put it kindly. before agt had called, they were talking about lining up investors so that we could pursue a vegas residency. i’m not kidding. they send out group emails every once in a while, most of which i ignore, to reminisce about how cool it was that they were “rock stars.”(did i mention we played grade schools?) 210829 ... tender square here's an old promo video of ours i managed to track down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUOB3ifMS0 i'm also remembering that we were once booked for a show in west virgina, in some small college town, as part of their back-to-school orientation. they forgot to promote the event and we had like 3 people in the audience. good times. 210829 ... raze do i ever feel your pain about playing horribly-promoted shows. i've been there (at the shores of erie winefest, no less), and i wanted to crawl under the stage and disappear. i hope you had some fun along the way, at least. you did get a great story out of it! and howard stern is a dolt. drummers are boring to watch onstage? how about keith moon? how about john bonham? how about buddy rich, karen carpenter, cindy blackman, stewart copeland, sheila e., ginger baker... 210829 ... e_o_i But that video was so cool! The choreography! The sound effects "fight"! The keytar coordinating with so many different sounds! The upturned bins! (I am nearing the end of my exclamation mark allowance for today.) Speaking of energetic drumming, there's Ra Tache from Ankor, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQeSXA1D2mg 210829 ... tender square came back to respond. sorry to hear about shores of erie j; if i'd known about it i would've gone! also, good points made. brb going to listen to "badge" now. 210831 ... tender square i have a condition known as perpetual popsicle feets; my wool socks get four-season wear. 210910 ... nr you're a drummer and percussionist too, tender_square? neat! that video is crazy; i've never seen an ensemble like that. dancing plus upside-down bins plus keytar... wow. i was in a percussion ensemble in university for a couple of years. it was fun. that's where i first played a vibraphone, and thus began the love affair. 210910 ... tender square aw, thanks for the kind words nr. not drumming anymore, i gave it up six years ago to pursue writing instead but i do miss it sometimes. you wrote on anhedonia that you drum, right? would love to hear more about that. 210910 ... raze whenever i've been prescribed any kind of medication, my name appears as "west, john jr." on the label. i always sing those three words in my head to the theme song for "the jetsons" (specifically the first line: "meet george jetson"). it's been a lifelong ritual. 210925 ... tender square whenever i see a dog, i point to out to michael and say, "look at that woofer!" *puppies are also known as sub-woofers under this terminology. 211010 ... nr is this what they're known as when they're underwater? :) 211010 ... e_o_i Grandfathers and others: I was just reading some genealogy lists in Chronicles this morning. Best parts of the Bible. Best names, at least. And I completely failed to spell "genealogy" both times I tried. Had to rely on spellcheck. 211011 ... tender_square i call the ends of a bread loaf "the bread butts." e.g., "are you going to eat those bread butts or should i toss them to the birds?" 211012 ... raze sometimes, when someone does something i think is really moronic, i sing "ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay" but change the words to "el_fucking_stupido". it's got a ring to it. 211014 ... tender_square anytime michael and i walk past our old house on oakwood and i see the new tenants in the front yard, it takes everything in me not to holler "i've been in your house before!" 211016 ... tender_square for much of my childhood, i was totally obsessed with national geographic’s “secrets of the titanic” video from 1987. i watched it repeatedly when it was released (i was three) and for years after. i was captivated by the tragedy and the discovery of the ship. i loved all the historical photos and the video footage from the depths of the atlantic, as well as martin sheen’s steady narration. i was crushed when “titanic” with leonardo dicaprio and kate winslet came out ten years later, because it felt like a fascination that had been uniquely mine suddenly belonged to EVERYONE. the first time i told michael about my titanic fixation, he asked me why i was drawn to it. “i don’t know,” i said. “i guess i’m a sick fuck.” once, a friend wondered if, in a past life, i may have died aboard it. (still dream of going to halifax to see the port where my grandma kay entered canada aboard the queen mary and to visit fairview lawn cemetery, where over 100 victims of the titanic rest.) 211022 ... raze here are two that are blather-related. there are two blathes my brain keeps trying to convince me i wrote when i was a teenager, though i know i had nothing to do with them: naked_nosebleed and radioactive_penis_cult. it doesn't matter how much time passes. i always do a bit of a mental double-take when i bump into either one of those blathes and think, "did i? ... no." also, almost fourteen years ago, for about five seconds someone thought a 'skite named mangrove was me. some itchy part of my brain still wants to pop up on the mangrove blathe and say, "t'was not i," even though it's obvious we are and always were two very different people. 211023 ... tender_square since moving to the states over a decade ago, anytime i spot canadian geese i yell “my brethren” at them. 211030 ... raze twenty years ago i was nervous about a phone call i knew was coming. i was listening to "back of a car" by big star in my bedroom. the phone rang in the middle of the instrumental break. to this day, whenever i hear that song, i always have to stop it during that part because i'm convinced i can hear the phone ringing. 211104 ... tender_square i don’t mean to brag, but i’ve known all of lisa “left eye” lopes’s rap breaks on the entirety of “crazy sexy cool” by heart since i was nine. try me. 211107 ... raze i've been paying for a crunchyroll subscription since june of last year. i have sixty-three shows sitting in my queue, and i still haven't watched a single episode of any of them. i can't find the time. still, i refuse to relinquish my premium member status. 211109 ... tender_square the most ticklish part of my body is the undersides of my feet. i always forget this until a pedicurist rubs a pumice stone against my arches, unawares, and then i’m squirming and yell-laughing, and pulling my foot away lest i boot them in the face. 211111 ... raze at this point, i only use facebook to play words with friends with my dad. it makes me laugh whenever i'm able to spell the word "penis". i've also been able to spell "raze" two or three times, which has been kind of surreal. haven't had the right letters to spell "blather" yet, though. 211113 ... nr in the past five years or so, i've got the people i've been romantically involved with to take the Harry Potter sorting hat quiz. they were either Hufflepuff or Gryffindor. i am a Ravenclaw. 211114 ... nr i also sigh every time i think of Harry Potter now, even though i loved the books. if only creators of great things could all be great people. 211114 ... raze it's always given me a perverse feeling of satisfaction to hear "who are you?" on classic rock radio, with roger daltrey growling, "oh, who the fuck are you?" uncensored. 211117 ... raze twenty years ago, when the internet was a much quieter place, there used to be a big star message board. since none of the albums came with lyric sheets, fans set out to transcribe the words by ear. one song mystified everyone. it was chris bell's "speed of sound", from his solo album "i am the cosmos". there was one specific line everyone heard as "you could count his same kiss". it was pretty clear that wasn't what chris was singing, but no one could come up with anything better. i sat down one night and listened to that five-second snippet of the song on a loop until i figured it out. it wasn't "you could count his same kiss". it was "we could go to saint kitts". i posted a comment sharing that bit of intel, and everyone said, "holy crap! that's it!" the message board doesn't exist anymore, unless there's an archived version on the wayback machine. i don't remember the web address, so i can't check. every lyric site on the planet preserves the "count his same kiss" mondegreen. every time i see it, i say, "that's not what chris is singing." there's no one around to hear me. but i say it anyway. 211126 ... tender_square when i drive, i turn into a frat boy: if another driver annoys me, i call them “bro.” as in, “broooooo! what you even doing?!” i also like to give my horn a workout because i can’t stand when people aren’t paying attention (using cell phones while driving is legal in michigan, its awful). believe it or not, this is a step up from my behavior when i was younger; i used to have major road rage and would flip people off and swear up a storm in reaction to the slightest aggravation. 211127 ... raze i will never be able to hear the name yogi_berra without thinking of picnic baskets and park ranger smith. 211202 ... nr running water makes my nose itchy. it itches when i wash dishes, and to a lesser extent when i shower. 211203 ... raze every time i hear the james blake song "the wilhelm scream", i *know* he's singing, "i don't know about my dreams," but i choose to believe what he's really singing is, "i don't know about palm trees." 211210 ... tender_square every time i leave the house for a walk, i sing “let’s dooooo this” as i head out the door, just like michael scott does in the office episode when he’s departing on an international business trip to winnipeg in the middle of november. i’ve found it’s the only way i can adequately psych myself up to meet the cold. 211210 ... tender_square i have a soft spot in my heart for anteaters. 211212 ... Soma I enjoy eating spaghettios straight out of the can. I also enjoy eating canned mushrooms right out of the can. I tell my mom my girlfriend is my bestie, and my boyfriend is my roommate. I like to lay naked on the back porch on the moss because it makes me feel like a “real human” I take photos of every public bathroom I use like it’s some achievement to collect them all. 211213 ... nr when people misspell "definitely" like "defiantly," i like to read what they've said with that meaning. "i defiantly want to go to the park" = them fighting to want to go. 211213 ... raze i like cutting a small triangle off a block of cheddar cheese and pretending i'm sampling a strange new toblerone chocolate bar. 211219 ... raze in the third grade, when i was in need of some bathroom reading material and nothing else was at hand, i snuck a pocket-size bible into one of the school's bathroom stalls. it didn't glue me to the seat, but it helped pass the time. 211229 ... kerry raze, i have to confess that your confession made me laugh (and then choke on my coffee) 211229 ... raze i'm happy i could give you a laugh! (but so sorry it was a dangerous laugh; i'm glad you're okay.) 211229 ... nr i enjoy long layovers in big-city airports (ideally with a good wifi connection). it’s like being in a little mall with lots of store and restaurant pop-ups, but with areas where you can also just relax and read. 211231 ... raze i never met clarence clemons, but i have his autograph. 220101 ... unhinged inappropriate the fact that he was married and that he didn't know about it made my fantasies even hotter 220101 ... raze every time i look at a jar of mild salsa, i see this: MILD DOUCE the strength of the stuff, in english and french. i always read it as "MILD DOUCHE". i know what it really says on the label. i just like it better my way. wouldn't you take a mild douchebag over a spicy one, if given the choice? 220103 ... kerry when no one’s around i drink straight from the carton. 220105 ... tender_square (i do this too, kerry!) 220105 ... tender_square (talking with unhinged this afternoon reminded me of this one...) in my early twenties, i had this habit where every time i walked past a bath and body works location in a mall, i yelled into the store that they tested on animals. i would say it so quickly as i ran past the store it sounded like gibberish “BTHBDYWKSTSTSNNMLS!!!” 220106 ... raze when i was a kid, the doctor was fond of prescribing this one specific cough syrup, and i kind of loved it. i thought it tasted like black liquorice. i think it was the only time in my life i actually wanted to take my medicine. 220113 ... tender_square in my twenties, i had a thing for making my own t-shirts with iron-on transfers and there was one i used to wear with the statement “romance is dead.” i told anyone who asked about it that i had created it as a nod to karen o when she lamented “there is no modern romance” but secretly, i wore it in the hopes that someone would prove me wrong by sweeping me off my feet. 220115 ... unhinged you have the same name as the last man i was stupid over. am i transferring those feelings to you? or are you revealing more of your self, pulling me in the more we talk and get to know each other. since all three of us worked together, the world may never know. 220115 ... raze i spent way too much time as a kid trying to work out how santa claus got into apartments without easy chimney access. 220202 ... tender_square in my first car, passengers lived by the spoken rule “handclaps over safety.” anytime an indie song played with handclaps on my stereo (such as postal service’s “such great heights”) my hands would come off the steering wheel to clap along with it before resuming their rightful positions at 10 and 2. 220203 ... tender_square for the longest time i thought the gypsy kings were singing “jambalaya” whenever i heard their song “bomboleo.” 220216 ... raze i've always thought tim roth would be the obvious choice to play bryan ferry if they ever made a biopic about roxy music. 220218 ... e_o_i One might be slightly bemused when the supposedly scandalous erotic romance one wrote - as a complete virgin - in tiny print turns out to have: a) an earnest description of strawberries (not to be sexy, just because the narrator is selling them at a country fair in the vaguely post-apocalyptic Laurentian village where everybody's returned to nature) a) decent sex but terrible descriptions of kissing 220218 ... epitome of incomprehensibility ...And that was meant to be a) and b), of course. I can't put anything in sequence lately and I have to memorize all these reconstructed Proto-Indo-European noun endings. 220218 ... raze sometimes, at random moments, i find myself moved to sing the chorus of kelly rowland's "like this" for no apparent reason. 220219 ... raze i_am_convinced "street player" by chicago is one of the great lost disco songs. 220222 ... tender_square there’s this bronzed statue of three gleeful children where i work, and one of the girls on the end has her arms outstretched. her hand hovers near a doorway and lately i’ve taken to mid-fiving her whenever i pass by. 220303 ... past given enough time and uptake by coworkers, you could have a shiny handed good luck charm going on. 220303 ... raze i used to have a habit of saying, "jesus fucking christ," when i was frustrated, and then following it with a terse, "sorry, jesus." just in case someone was listening. 220309 ... raze when i was a child, i had a he-man electric toothbrush. i also had he-man underwear. and once, i wore two pairs of that underwear to school and didn't know it until the day was done. you could say i had the power. 220310 ... tender_square i have a tendency of clapping out “car wash” by rose royce in the mornings while disco dancing in my pj’s. 220311 ... tender_square it was yesterday when i found out that for my entire life i've been singing the lyrics to michael jackson's "don't stop 'til you get enough" wrong. in the breakdown part, my mother, my younger sister and i always sang "mamma say, mamma saw, mamma coo saw." i just thought michael was making cool mouth noises. turns out he's saying "imma say it one more time and i won't stop." 220320 ... kerry my irrational loathing of crocs and crop tops makes me feel old and out of touch. 220320 ... tender_square whenever i spot a car with a spoiler i say, i stereotype the drivers by saying, "spoiler alert: i'm a douche." 220321 ... tender square as foghorn leghorn (i say, i say, i stereotype you.) 220321 ... past when i encounter a speed board driving, i slow to ensure the numbers remain green. when i encounter a speed board on a bike, particularly with a kid in tow, i do my level best to make those numbers red and blinking. (it helps that the local residential speed limit is 30 km/h, so a smooth 33 gets them a-blinking, and my ability to hit depends on how many of the kids are in the trailer.) 220321 ... past geneviève genevieve i'm usually pretty agnostic on the french and english form of names, but the accent, and its shift in prononciation, seems to make a big difference on this one for me. 220322 ... past (apparently blather doesn't do greater than signs. french over english on this one.) 220322 ... tender_square_with_a_cowbell back when i played music, i had a habit of annoying my bandmates by randomly inserting the lyrics to “rock lobster” in conversation when they weren’t expecting it: “we were at the beach, everybody had matching towels. it wasn’t a rock, it was a ROCK LOBSTER!” (ahhhhhh ahhhhhhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhhhh ROCK LOBSTER!) 220325 ... raze when i finish a container of cherry tomatoes on the vine and all that's left is green creeper, it reminds me of getting to the bottom of a bag of pot and seeing nothing but stems. 220326 ... tender_square yesterday i accidentally folded the nail on my right thumb...opening a bag of cereal. now it's bruised and tender. all for some grape nuts. (who does this?!) 220328 ... tender_square yesterday i accidentally folded the nail on my right thumb...opening a bag of cereal. now it's bruised and tender. all for some grape nuts. (who does this?!) 220328 ... raze i did a bunch of crunches tonight while listening to "sister ray" by the velvet underground. lou was singing to me, "oh, you shouldn't do that. don't you know you'll stain the carpet? now don't you know you'll stain the carpet? and by the way, have you got a dollar? oh no, man. i haven't got the time-time." 220329 ... e_o_i Those speed-reader things! A few years ago I was able to briefly blip some numbers into luminescence just by running at one. I tried again last week when I was on the way to Dorval_Library - but loaded down with my laptop bag, there was no way I was going to exceed 10 km/h or whatever the tipoff point was. 220329 ... raze whenever i have icelandic haddock or cod for dinner, i like to refer to it as "bjork fish". 220403 ... tender_square there’s this toilet at work and each time i flush i swear it sounds exactly like the pitch and duration of cymbal crash that kicks off prince’s “1999.” 220412 ... tender_square_as_the_purple_one "i was peeing when i blathed this, forgive me if it gets too gross." 220412 ... past i've been hesitant to pick up the phone for unrecognized numbers and check my voicemail since leaving my number under the wipers of a car i backed into at a crosscountry skiing trail parking lot...like 7 or 8 years ago. 220414 ... raze back when i couldn't hold a plank for much longer than twenty seconds, i used to sing a song in my head and see how far i could get before i collapsed. it was always the same song: "without her" by harry nilsson. 220417 ... raze i might be one of the only people alive who actually kind of enjoyed m. night shyamalan's "the happening". 220421 ... Soma I cry if I do yoga, relax into music, or sit in nature too long. My therapist says it's a result of long term trauma. I'm just used to being told it's because I'm a woman. Either way, I get tired of crying. 220421 ... raze whenever i listen to "octopus's garden", every time ringo sings about the coral that lies beneath the ocean waves i hear my own middle name. it's been that way since i was twelve. it always makes me smile. 220422 ... tender_square after consuming a miniature moon of babybel cheese, i always squish the red wax between my fingers and roll it into a perfectly smooth sphere before throwing the casing in the garbage. 220505 ... e_o_i You're not alone! When my parents used to get Babybel cheese, I'd do that a lot. Or try to make shapes out of it. 220505 ... raze whenever i read about someone barking their shin, i always mentally insert the word "at" into the sentence, because the image of someone shouting at their own body in the language of dogs makes me laugh. 220507 ... tender_square nothing makes me angrier than losing to an opponent in chess, especially if the game was a particularly rough one. i’m the worst sore loser you’ll ever meet, it borders on abusive; i have stomped and stormed off screaming, “i am so fucking pissed right now AND I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT” and “DON’T FUCKING TALK TO ME; i need 10 minutes alone!” 220511 ... past maybe more petty anxiety than weird...but with a third of the city (at least) out of power, i'm annoyed that both my place and the place i'm expected to be going both have electricity. let me keep hiding, i'm not ready yet. 220521 ... nr when i was little, i saw those mr. clean commercials where his face would appear on your surfaces after you cleaned them, and i used to think this actually happened in real life. so i asked my mom if she'd buy mr. clean, so i could see him appear in the floor, but she never did. 220527 ... tender_square yesterday i sneezed while brushing my teeth. 220531 ... raze i am pathologically incapable of hearing someone utter the phrase "i saw the sign" without singing ace of base in my head. 220605 ... tender_square for someone who uses the word "diarrhea" more than the average bear, i sure as shit don't know how to spell it. (i always think the h comes sooner than it does, and what's with the double r's?!) 220605 ... raze whenever i look at the lens on my dslr and see "af" (for "autofocus") followed by "mf" (for "manual focus"), my brain unpacks those acronyms as, "autofocus, motherfucker." 220609 ... raze i still sometimes find myself frantically searching for my glasses, only to realize they're already resting on the bridge of my nose. it happened again this morning. 220610 ... past i'm partial to recipes with hyperbole in the title. why would i want mediocre fluffy pancakes when i could have THE BEST EVER fluffy pancakes? 220618 ... raze i enjoy the backstreet boys song "just want you to know" in a completely unironic way. 220620 ... raze in keeping with the backstreet boys theme: i wrote a fresh take on "i want it that way" when i was fifteen. the central idea behind it was finding oneself with a strange infatuation for vince vaughn. not that i ever really had a thing for vince. that was just the sort of warped idea my teenage brain was prone to spitting out at random moments. i'm still a little sad i never got around to recording it. 220623 ... tender_square this one isn't about me, but about my father. he doesn't dance, it's not in his wheelhouse. but, apparently, the one song he can't help moving to, according to my mom, is rick james' "superfreak." (i want to test this out and see what happens.) 220628 ... nr often when i read about bands going on tour, especially decades ago, part of me wants to have experienced at least a taste of their lifestyle. the partying, the people, the drugs, the nomad life, the stories to tell for days. i know literature romanticizes it, and i'd want to cut myself off before anything dangerous or life-threatening happened, plus i'd never do it now, but i have some wild-oats FOMO. 220704 ... past there's something comforting about the smell of an outhouse in the middle of the forest. probably has something to do with a couple formative summers i spent making minimum wage cleaning them when i was young(er), not even an adult by any measure living away from my parents and family for two summers. 220708 ... past there's something comforting about the smell of an outhouse in the middle of the forest. probably has something to do with a couple formative summers i spent making minimum wage cleaning them when i was young(er), not even an adult by any measure living away from my parents and family for two summers. 220708 ... raze i'll never be able to make myself write or type "centre" or "theatre", even though i know those are the proper canadian spellings of those words. i'm good with everything else ("colour", "favourite", and the like), but my brain always wants to see an e before an r, for whatever reason. 220709 ... tender_square i think i like taylor swift now. i heard two songs blasting at the public pool today and totally shazamed that shit. goddamn her songs are poppy. 220722 ... raze every time i see the "what_is_craft?" blathe return to the recent page, i sing a bit of modified haddaway in my head: "what is craft? baby, don't hurt me don't hurt me no more" 220723 ... raze i'm one of the few people to have ever walked out of a bruce springsteen concert — and i've loved the boss since i was twelve years old. 220728 ... kerry at first i thought i couldn't eat bananas on an empty stomach. then i tried it sliced on my cereal and thought maybe not in the morning. but even with yogurt and granola at night, banana = terrible stomachache. the internet says banana intolerance is a thing. 220802 ... tender_square i used to read craigslist "missed_connections" at various times in my life hoping that a stranger was talking about me. 220803 ... kerry i’ve never ridden in a convertible. 220805 ... past there are few domestic chores i loathe, as in deeply and passionately hate, more than house painting. yet somehow once a year i find myself in this special corner of hell. 220815 ... past when i used to work with/for lawyers years ago, i initially thought "affidavit" was "act of david" until i finally saw it in writing. the legal system is full of enough anachronistic language, it seemed like maybe the biblical david somehow had a role. 220909 ... kerry sometimes i daydream about becoming a nun and moving into a convent in some bucolic countryside and cutting myself free from all ties, and just gardening and sitting in the sun and being quiet and peaceful, and then i feel a little sad because i don't have any religious or even spiritual inclinations or beliefs and i could never pull it off. 220909 ... Soma When I was in middle school, I begged my mom to let me shave. I had what felt like such long and dark leg and arm hair. It felt so unnatural and terrible at the time. I was the only brown skinned kid in a sea of white, and you couldn't notice any of hairs on the blonde girls. Finally, she caved, and gave me a razor. I went into the shower, and I shaved every single surface of my body, excluding my eyebrows and head. My legs, my arms. Even my chin and lip! I saw people shave their chins in the movies, and it never occurred to me that women weren't expected to shave their face. They were just people to me. I kept shaving that way for about two months until another kid mentioned how weirdly smooth my arm was. I think I would have melted into the ground if anyone had called me out on it. 221009 ... raze i will always use the instant teller on the left. always. 221026 ... tender_square i have an uncanny knack for falling *up* the stairs. 221028 ... tender_square i hate the toilet paper dispenser in my bathroom, it’s this open hook that’s far from the seat and on the left, which isn’t my dominant side for unspooling. every time i use the facilities, i take the tissue off the holder and leave it on the ledge of the tub. last night, i accidentally knocked an eighth of a roll into water and watched it bloat. at least it wasn’t a full one? 221102 ... nr i was never really one to fantasize about my wedding day, but to this day i still fantasize about the reception, mostly because i'd get to pick the music and everyone would dance. 221102 ... raze i just did a set of squats with a hand warmer pulsing between each closed fist. 221113 ... past a sign of my return to good health is whether i can stomach coffee in the morning. today i finished the first, but couldn't handle a second. so mostly better? 221122 ... raze i do a pretty good keith richards impression when i'm tired as shit. 221126 ... Soma I bit down on a slice of wrapped kraft cheese to see what my teeth looked like when i was 6, and then i placed the slice of cheese neatly back in the fridge, my curiosity satisfied. 221204 ... raze i never learned how to whistle. 221205 ... past my most all time uncontested favourite spice is cumin. 221220 ... e_o_i Soma - that made me laugh. It's not a competition, I swear, but my child self did something grosser, more than once: I would put a squeeze of toothpaste on the tiled wall above the sink, let it harden overnight, and then eat it the next day. I liked the taste of minty toothpaste, but I wanted it to be the texture of candy. 221220 ... e_o_i Related: there's a Jelly Belly jellybean collection that's called "BeanBoozled." You get an assortment of normal-flavour jellybeans that also have a "gross"-flavoured counterpart. Juicy Pear vs. Booger, for instance. That's for the green ones. For light blue, the options are Berry Blue and Toothpaste. Well, I got a package last year for Christmas, and my confession is...THE TOOTHPASTE ONES ARE THE BEST EVER. Period. WAY better than whatever fake berry flavour their counterpart is. And I find the other gross flavours actually gross (unlike David, who claims not to tell the difference). Combining sugar with something that smells like barf, for instance, even if it's all trickster chemicals...no thank you. But I'd get the whole thing again just for those toothpaste blues. 221220 ... raze it took me longer than i'd like to admit to figure out that TBT is an acronym for "throwback thursday" and not "turn back time". 230112 ... tender_square when fluid pops between my joints (my back and neck especially) it's so loud people in my vicinity remark upon it. there are times that the volume and intensity even surprise me, to which i generally pause in whatever position caused the crack and yell out "i'm broken!" 230116 ... past super mario? more like super stressful. 230129 ... raze last_night i watched the twenty-minute section of "the count of monte cristo" in which edmond dantes befriends and is mentored by abbe faria, without any of the film's surrounding tissue, just because i wanted to spend some time with richard harris. 230130 ... tender_square whenever i hear the chorus callback in led zeppelin’s “livin’ lovin’ maid” i always mishear it as “living, loving, she’s just a wombat.” 230203 ... raze one of my great regrets in life is not buying a t-shirt made by a now-defunct local diner when i had the chance. the words on the front of the fabric: "you can't fix stupid." 230206 ... past i like writing in futur simple and conditionnel in part because they have really solid "r" sounds that i have always struggled with, even as a child. does it make my writing in french more formal than necessary? sure, but imagine how it sounds. 230208 ... past until today, i thought the word "consigliere" existed in english because it rode the historical coattails of "macchiavellian" through the centuries, a rare glimmer of humanistic education traditions in this falling world. and then i discovered the mafia movie connection. 230211 ... tender_square when i'm waiting for something to heat in the microwave, i kill time by engaging in excessive hand claps until the machine chimes. 230218 ... raze cabbage_patch_kids dolls and garbage pail kids sticker trading cards have always blurred into the same thing in my mind, though i know they're separate entities. 230219 ... raze i still keep a metal pipe beside my bed. just in case someone breaks in again. i don't think about it, but knowing it's there offers some small amount of comfort on nights when sleep is slow to arrive. 230312 ... tender_square i don't know what to say whenever a mechanic shows me my vehicle's dipstick, presenting it through the driver's side window, tip against dirty rag, as the viscosity of amber oil pools. i'm always just like, "looks great." 230316 ... past i've come to realize that i am not a very good editor. i am too accommodating to provide really critical feedback. so, i've started looking at things i'm asked to review after at least one person (usually waiting for a specific person who is a very good editor) has made changes, to try to learn from the added comments. 230418 ... e_o_i As I said in an email, "P.S. I have a Master's degree in English literature and I've never read all of Hamlet. Don't tell anyone :)" ..."all" of Hamlet, as if it's super long... 230418 ... raze i've worn basically the same clothes almost every day for the last five months. 230419 ... past my ears cannot parse "155" when spoken in french by a radio-canada newsreader. too many s sounds crammed together, with that french tendancy to drop even consonant sounds when convenient. as a language teacher told me years ago "it's a language, past, it's not supposed to make sense." anyways there swish swish swish thousand people on strike. 230420 ... raze i miss the days when facebook used to let you title your messages and they weren't just an endless stream of unbroken text. if i remember right, you used to *have* to send a message with a friend request. i miss that too. 230427 ... raze when i heard elton john's "crocodile rock" on the radio growing up, i always thought the rock he was referring to was a person. 230524 ... past i feel like i have written about this before, but i get almost petty when the hat gets passed for female coworkers (for weddings, for babies, for new jobs), but never the male ones. 230531 ... raze i just finished exercising to the "footloose" soundtrack. on cassette. 230608 ... tender_square i've gotten stung by bees and wasps in some fairly unusual places: the tongue, behind the knee, on the bottom of my foot, my jugular. 230616 ... past i have not eaten a green pepper in months, ever since realizing a local grocery store always has at least one of the coloured varieties (red, yellow, orange) on sale for no more than the going rate of a green pepper and often quite a bit cheaper. 230621 ... raze sometimes i write emails to people i'll never talk to again, knowing they won't be sent. 230627 ... Soma I just ate two sandwiches that were nothing except buttered bread with a pile of shredded lettuce inverted each half. For some reason it’s always appealing at midnight when the insomnia is hitting hard. 230629 ... raze i still have my headgear, my retainer, and every awful braces-related thing i was given, though i haven't worn any of them in more than a quarter of a century. 230630 ... raze lately i seem to have a habit of talking_to_myself. in the voice of arnold schwarzenegger. 230725 ... past i always thought, for what almost 20 years now, that it was birdmaN but it has always been birdmaD. 230822 ... raze (don't feel bad, past. when i first stumbled into blather, i somehow got it in my head that mikey was a beautiful blonde *woman* despite the fairly masculine name.) 230822 ... raze i never could figure out how to blow bubblegum. 230901 ... tender_square i talk to a spider that lives in my bathroom and have named her roberta. my new favourite swear word is something i invented and can't stop saying: "fuckernutters." 230923 ... Soma Whenever i get my period, i get a very strong panicked compulsion to throw everything i own away. Even in my 30s, i have the bizarre furnishings more like those of some 18 year old as a result. 230924 ... raze i seem to be pathologically incapable of making a salad without at least one piece of something green ending up on the floor. it doesn't matter how careful i am. 231004 ... raze i refuse to recycle the last two kleenex boxes i emptied before the brand was discontinued in this country. i like the designs too much to let them go. 231015 ... raze there's a unicorn next to me in_bed. 231029 ... raze all_hallows_eve is never complete for me without listening to the cassette of gritty organ music and spooky sound effects that haunted me as a kid. 231031 ... raze i've never been a big fan of fragrant belts. 231107 ... raze any reueben sandwich i've ever ordered or made has always had mustard in place of the thousand island or russian dressing. i don't really know what the real thing tastes like. 231128 ... Soma I like to drink sparkling water, but I frequently misplace the can. Leftover, no-longer-fizzy water is how I sometimes water my plants. The most I ever found at once was 8 half-full cans. 231130 ... raze i like it when i get a captcha that rhymes. just now, for example, i got "nxew3d". i know that configuration isn't at all remarkable, but spelling it out in my head is pleasing to me for reasons i can't explain. 231208 ... raze in my head, shane_macgowan and shaun ryder sometimes become the same person, but only visually. i've never actually confused them. it makes no sense to me, because neither man ever looked anything like the other. 231211 ... raze i made a graph that breaks down the history of activity throughout the life of red_blather, from 2001 to date. 231219 ... Soma Penetrative sex has always been incredibly painful for me. Sometimes I wonder if I hate sex because of something innate in me biologically, something nurtured in me by my deeply religious upbringing, or from the trauma of years of trying and trying and trying and trying to fit into a way of existing that was never meant for me. There’s never a clear answer. They hold me as I cry. They wipe away my tears. “You’ve always been like this and it’s fine.” They say. I love them beyond words. Beyond bodies. Beyond decades of tears. None of this is something people normally understand. It’s not something they even want to hear. But I carry it deep in my heart wherever I hear people talk about their relationships. That desire to feel my perception of normalcy. 231219 ... raze well-designed fonts have always inspired me, the same way a new instrument or an unfamiliar sound used to trigger new song ideas. 231222 ... raze whenever i listen to the who song "the real me", my brain interprets the lyrics phonetically, with roger daltrey ultimately singing to the republic of kenya. 231229 ... raze i once recorded a song with the word "rustic" in it before i knew how to pronounce it, so i changed the lyrics to "root stick" after the fact to cover it up, though that wasn't really what i was singing at all. 231231 ... e_o_i Did a similar thing, minus the recording, with "Danube" (put the accent on the wrong syllable). 231231 ... raze i've taken to brushing my teeth in a squatting position so my space heater can blast me in the face with its morning_breath. 240115 ... raze i can't seem to stop singing weezer's "buddy holly" in my head lately, but the lyrics keep coming out like this: "ooh-wee-ooh you look just like buddy holly oh-oh or maybe edgar allan poe" and those two guys ... do not look alike. at all. though i do think poe could have rocked a pair of thick-ass glasses. 240225 ... warmthofrelease Get Poe some carbs for a month to take some of the gaunt out of his face, give him a haircut, and yes give him some glasses, and he could mostly pull off a Buddy_Holly. Can't really do anything about that nose though. Or the fact that he's a quasi racist alcoholic piece of shit who couldn't write a female character with a shred of personality. But he's a gothic trendsetter and he paved the way for the typecast mystery and the typecast horror, so, up on the pedestal he goes. Poor Holly on the other hand was just vibin. No saint but, definitely didn't deserve to go. I guess I must confess I'd rather live in a world where Poe's life and potential was cut tragically short and Holly got to live long enough to be an insufferable tool and make music well past his inspiration expiration date. But is that really so weird? Or does it just make me a positive polly who thinks the Tim_Burton creepy kid culture is grossly overrated? Meh, who cares. You say tuh-may-toe, I say the word color has no business being spelled with a u. It's all the same in the end. No matter what we glorify it's a zero sum game except for love and fear. Both equally valid, as Holly and Poe. 240225 ... raze wasn't trying to glorify poe, if that was how it came off. it was just a random brain blip, as are most of the things i've put on this blathe over the years. and alas, i'm pretty set in my canadian ways when it comes to the spelling of (most) things, "er" words notwithstanding. but that's a simple accident of geography. 240225 ... releaseofwarmth (not trying to call you out at all, didn't think you were glorifying the man. although it's fair to say he has been overly glorified I'm ultimately just fighting the straw man. sometimes I feel like I need confrontation or at least competition in order to feel motivated in any way. but it's not remotely personal.) (also the Brits are equally guilty of the unnecessary U as the Canadians, yaknow. at least you fellas don't drive on the wrong side of the road.) 240225 what's it to you? who go blather from