Cracktastic chocolate covered toffee

What a good way out of a baaaad mood. Whip up a batch of toffee, coat it with chocolate, fleur du sel, cacao nibs and pralines.
Melt one cup of butter, add one cup of sugar and bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir constantly, and allow mixture to come to 280 degrees STIRRING CONSTANTLY. When it reaches 280, turn off the heat and continue stirring until it reaches about 290.
Pour into a baking tray greased with butter and allow to set for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, sprinkle liberally with chocolate chips and allow them to melt for 2 minutes, then spread them until they cover the surface. Sprinkle on whatever you like, gently pressing in any large bits like nuts. Refrigerate until set, then remove with a spatula, crack into pieces and keep in an airtight container. Fuck yes.

Little Rat, Little Rat

I'm sorry your eye is fucked.
I hope you don't feel too bad,
and want you to stay alive.

Little Rat, Little Rat,
As long as you're not in pain,
I'll tickle your ears again
and we'll wait and see.

O Amor Natural

Happy Valentine's day. I remember watching this documentary about the posthumously published book of Erotic poetry by a famous Brazilian poet when I was a teen. It blew my mind for several reasons. Firstly, I had never heard of someone writing about sex or lust in an artistic or beautiful way before. "Dirty" words or ideas made acceptable by being framed by an artist in a tender way.
Another thing that shocked me about this doc. is how it uses the elderly. Old people read the author's poems, give their opinions, and sometimes their personal sexual or romantic experiences. It forced me to view old people in a new way: as people who used to be young, and who fornicated, yearned and explored in their youth. I tend to think of the past as a more sexually repressed time, a sanitized, powdered age, forgetting that no matter what type of repression exists, human needs always find an outlet.
For awhile, I thought that the documentary also reflected a different attitude towards sex among people in Brazil. Watching it as an adult I'm not so sure, but I still think it's worth a watch. Happy Humping.
Watch below in parts.
xo

Annoyance

This* is just to say: I am very bored with the contemporary obsession with fonts and witty/emo phrases oh-so-skillfully arranged, pretending to be art. Inspiration, maybe. Art? Meh.

*O hai! I made this in mspaint to express my feelings. Isn't it beautiful?

Crazy things I believe

Crazy things I believe number one:
eating apples without washing them strengthens your constitution, making you less susceptible to illness. I don't know if this conviction came from being too lazy to wash apples, or a period of apple-eating good health. I know it's silly, but this I believe.

Audio Candy

Dear, sweet Pete gave me a wonderful gift the other night.

He stood outside my old apartment and recorded 45 minutes of ambient noise to help me sleep, and generally prove that he's awesome. Did I mention that it was -19 outside?

I used to fall asleep to the sound of streetcars entering the station, drunks heading to/from the bar, cars and trucks and dogs. All of the noise of living just off a busy street. Now I can do it whenever I want.
I'm a damned lucky fool.

Sugar Friends

Call them Sugar Friends. Call them your Cinnamon Fantasies. Call them when you're having a party and you run out of ice or cutlery. They are friends who you can count on to help you do things like drag home scavenged furniture, explore new recipes, eat your leftovers/offer you their leftovers. We all have friends like these, but when they move into your neighbourhood or you move into theirs, something special happens.
Calling all my close friends near and far. Move to Seaton Village and share my sugar.

Master Khan

Do you know this mouse? We believed we had caught the elusive Master Khan, however this morning, well after the release of the fugitive into the wild, another critter who looked suspiciously like him scurried under the dresser. If you see this mouse, call 542-6666 (KHA-NNNN) immediately.

Working on your Resume

Working on your resume, while at work, on a computer whose screen everyone entering the premises can see: Tacky.
Tackier than baseball JC. Tackier than blogging while at work.
End Transmission

Unemployed in St. Thomas

Working on a project for school. It involves choosing 75 books to buy for a library in St. Thomas Ontario (whose notable characteristic recently is that it has lost thousands of jobs in the auto and manufacturing sectors).
Unfortunately, we chose the Dewey area of 'Recreation and Sports', which means I'm sifting through a lot of books like 'How to win at Internet Poker' and 'Solitaire and other solo games' and 'Drinking Games neither you nor your friends will remember' and 'How to become an awesome online gamer'.
Every book hurts a little. Except Amy Sedaris' book on entertaining, which I think might be a perfectly justified addition to any library.

Moondog

I went to Wikipedia to discover the name of the type of Jazz played occasionally on my favourite playlist. Was it free jazz? Experimental? Whatever it's called, it gives me a goddamned headache, and makes me milli-anxious.
Instead I discover Moondog. I'm still not sure if I like his music, and it seems he's become a bit of a cult figure to some, but he's an interesting chap. Blind, he lived on the streets for many years by choice, and earned the nickname 'The Viking of 6th Avenue. Apparently, though, he was a talented composer who even invented a couple of instruments.
Here's a sample if you're interested.

Go Moondog!

Today I thought I came up with the perfect job for myself. I wondered if it already existed, and it seemed to me that it might be an untapped market, and that I could land or create the position.
Unfortunately I've forgotten what it was. Goodbye, calling.

What to do

When you're walking down the street, with a load of confusing feelings. When things seem out of control and you want to laugh like a mad person. When you're too old for most of the classic self-destructive behaviours, and too prissy to go out on a bender.
Solution: SUPERCUTS. 10 minutes and 14 dollars later and I'm a new(ish) woman.

Ask Manny for the short-long. It'll do you good.

Wall Decals

They really tie a room together

Love Bites

How many people do you love?


I only love a handful. I only feel capable of loving a handful. Another few I like, sometimes quite a lot.
The rest of you, I'd like to push away with the glowing torch of my misanthropy, like you're beasts closing in on me in a low cave. That is all.

The Hobbled Woman

The following has been bothering me for the past few days. I recently read that the 'Stiletto Sprint' will be coming to Toronto. I'm not usually one to get up in arms about things like this--sure, I think about them, but rarely does it seem so clear to me that I am unhappy with something. I feel that this event is an excuse to sell interest in the company's consumer goods, encourage an unhealthy attitude towards appearance to the participants, and to make a spectacle of women, all under the guise of 'a good cause'.
The charity (Look Good Feel Better) benefits minimally from the event (there is a minimum 15$ entrance fee, all of which goes to the charity...the participants do not get sponsors or donations of their own). The women all receive a 'Stylesense Prize Pack' (which I assume will be full of Winner's coupons) and are competing for the $10,000 prize money, as well as the chance to "show what they can do in heels". The race will be shown on Breakfast Television, where the whole city can watch the participants look like idiots. Don't get me wrong, I'd have less of a problem with this if the charitable connection were more obvious. I have no problem with charity events that use exceptional tactics to get attention for their cause and raise money. I don't feel that this is the case here. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

I am not Bananas

I tidy up my room, open some unread mail from my optometrist, and a bewitching scent floats out of the envelope. My optometrist has scented business cards. Apparently he is not the only one.
"Scent Your Business Card- (an ebay guide)
Not only will your business card reflect your business visually, you can have an added dimension that is guaranteed to make an impact on someone’s nose. This method works well for those of you who sell gift baskets, baked goods, flowers, or perfume. Perhaps your name, or company’s name, is Rose, Rosemary, Jasmine, etc. or that is your logo—so a matching aroma would be beneficial to helping people remember your company.
Scented cards won’t be appropriate for many people or businesses (for example, if you run a mortuary? Or a brothel?)
The card actually smells very nice--like woody citrus fruit, but without the alcohol taint that gives you a migraine.
Dr. Andrew Leung, you've outdone yourself once again.

Skirts Can Be Treacherous

I wore a flowy skirt to work yesterday. I just didn't feel like wearing pants and that is my right. I've actually come to appreciate the freedom and comfort of skirts in the last couple of years instead of looking down on them as impractical and crippling. When I left work at midnight yesterday, though, my imagination started to go a little crazy. What might jump up and bite my legs as I knelt down in an empty lot to pet two sleepy cats? What strange sewer snake might jump out of the grating on the sidewalk, paralysing me forever and rendering me highly unloveable? What crack-addled man at the sketchy boarding house would see the flash of colour and determine that I was his next victim?
I got home safe (as I totally knew I would) and thought more about whether pants or skirts are truly freeing, and thinking about how we try hard to keep the snakes and rats and badgers away from our cities. Thinking that only a city girl has the privilege to walk around in a state so theoretically exposed to danger.

Another drunk post

Went to a barbecue tonight. All was well, I was being social and funny, and felt pretty confident. Until I said something sexist. And someone called me on it.
I don't even really believe what I said. I just said it. I guess some part of me believes it. It was something that implied that men can't be blamed for cheating as much as women (in the case that the man is your partner and the woman is your friend) because your friend should know better, and a man can be more easily tempted when put into fucked up circumstances (like being wasted or heavily hit on). Someone took this to mean that I was implying that men are stupid, which I was not.
Someone else made the point that when the pants come off, everyone knows what they're doing. I agreed with that. I don't know what caused me to say what I said. It feels like a dark mark on an otherwise very lovely evening with some great new people. I'm taking it fairly lightly right now, for some reason, but I think I will actually think about it more seriously tomorrow. For now, the sleep of the well-boozed and well-snacked.

On Being Hateful

For the last couple of weeks I've been impossible. I've had trouble being around anyone, and everything has made me unhappy or unsatisfied.
When I'm somewhere, I want desperately to escape. When I'm alone, I'm lonely and introspective.
I went to an event alone the other night after work, an event full of people schmoozing, with some lectures and musical entertainment scheduled. I stood around for 40 minutes, drank a beer, and then went home. I had absolutely nothing to do to keep myself entertained. There was nowhere to sit, no one to talk to or even make eye contact with, and nothing to look at after I finished endlessly surveying the audience from the stairs. The bartender served 5 other people and ignored me while I stood at the bar. I saw people secretly smoking and I wanted to rat them out to the bouncer. I overheard a boy telling his girl he'd never cheated in his life and I believed him. I saw seemingly underage girls in ugg boots and backpacks pooling their money to buy a drink. I felt tired and angry.
Why did I buy a ticket to this stupid thing? If this was my idea of the kind of cultural event I would enjoy, why was I miserable? Why was what I thought I'd enjoy so boring and unpleasant? What do I really want to do with my time?
Which leads me to the problem. Everything seems to be unpleasant these days.
There's too much stuff on the desk in the living room and my blood starts to boil. Someone asks me for help at work and I instantly go from zero to fifty on the aggro scale. Someone makes a comment about my home or appearance and I want to keep them from ever seeing, or hearing anything to do with me again. I work really hard to be alone so that I avoid having these intense feelings, but they're still here even when everyone else is gone. I get into fights when I'm trying to express my opinion. I'm afraid I might crack, and I've gone from one of the most helpful people around to someone who shuns social contact. All I do is complain. And now I have to do write a paper.
Something has to change. Fucked if I know what.