Coming home yesterday, I walked half a block behind a woman in bright pink sweatpants. Her left cheek? “Fabu.” Her right? “lous.”
“Excuse me, miss? Would you like to meet my butt cheeks? They are named Milli and Vanilli. Girl, you KNOW it’s true.”
My body, knowing that the worst possible thing I could ingest right now, other than a snoutful of strep, is sugar (antibiotic + sugar = yeast rave, complete with glow sticks), wants chocolate in the worst way. To be fair, I didn’t eat nearly as much chocolate over the Christmas hols as I usually do and what I did eat I couldn’t taste. But NO! CHOCOLATE! NO!
Back at work yesterday, I thought up a dumb, stand-up humour joke:
“In the government, things move so slowly, it takes 24 hours to get someone’s “out of office” reply by email.”
‘Tis true. I had auto replies in my inbox yesterday for emails I sent in good faith on Thursday and Friday. What is the point of this? If someone is out of the office until February and I need to contact someone else in that first person’s stead, it would be helpful to know the same day. No, I will not pick up the phone and call. I just won’t.
I am reading “Fall on Your Knees” for the second time. When I read it the first time, 5? years ago, I was in the middle of a dysfunctional culture jag that included The Hanging Garden, Margaret’s Museum, and She’s Come Undone. Oh, did we wallow. But holy shamoly, I had forgotten how FOYK gets more terrible with each page turned. I had totally forgotten it all, too, which is how I knew it was time to read it again, but there is still this deep sense of Oh-No, this Here-We-Go, this Something-Awful is about to occur. Again and again. S’good though. I recommend it.
Saturday’s Globe and Mail had a photo on the front page that blew my mind. In the background: a destroyed village on the beach in Thailand, debris everywhere and people standing about, scratching their heads, trying to figure out which piece of jagged wood to move next and where to put it.
In the foreground: a woman in sunglasses and a bikini lying on a sun cot and a bald, shirtless man next to her, sitting up and facing the people behind him, as though waiting for his drink order to arrive. The caption read something like: Unidentified tourists soak up sun on beach in Phuket while locals clear debris.
Whenever I think I would like to work in radio and take over Rick Cluff’s job, all I need to do is listen to the Early Edition for 20 minutes and I get over it. Being the host of a show like that must be like pretending to have Alzheimer’s writ very large. Spring or fall? Interview people about how to stay dry. Winter? Interview a guy who knows how to drive in the snow and on ice. Summer? Take calls from the public on how to Beat the Heat. Goodness, people, I’ve been on this earth for 30 years and have managed to survive the changing seasons without advice and coddling. To add insult to injury, we’re talking about West Coast seasons. We’re the most temperate place in the country. To make a dramatic comparison; when seasons change here, it’s like Joe changed his mind about the tuna fish sandwich and would rather have ham and cheese. When the seasons change anywhere else in Canada, it’s like Joe has realized he has always been Josephine and starts with the estrogen supplements. Let’s move on! Don’t forget your tuque.
