The Glass is Half Full. Of Rain.

Posted on 1/9/2006 by cheesefairy

This morning dawned with our 22nd straight day of rain. And not wispy, curly hair enhancing rain but sideways, driving rain. Dark, gloomy rain. The insides of my jacket pockets are still wet from Saturday’s quick walk to the grocery store rain.

Itemized grumbling commenced as follows: I slept in. My neck hurts. Yesterday a piece of one of my fillings fell out. It’s raining so damn much that I am resigned to carrying an umbrella and I hate umbrellas. The snippet I heard of CBC radio was a non-productive conversation between the federal candidates for Vancouver Centre: Hedy Fry, Svend Robinson and some Conservative who doesn’t have a chance.

But as I walked to work, muttering under my breath about the stupid idiot asshatedess of it all plus how can there be girls who are 4 feet tall carrying golf umbrellas taller than them and there ought to be a law against ALL OF YOU and especially mukluks and I would really like another hour of sleep, I realized:

1. My boots really are waterproof. They are leather so I keep expecting them to come to that point where they’ve had enough and start absorbing rather than repelling the water. It hasn’t happened yet! My feet are dry!

2. At least I am not a “24 Hours” paper thruster. At least when I am done being out in the weather I get to spend the part of the day when I’m actually working under a roof with lights and heat and a radio. (At a reasonable volume.)

3. For that matter, I have a home to go back to, unlike the people that Hedy, Svend and Nochance were talking about in their debate. (Hedy: Well, Rick, as you know, we implemented a Homeless Persons’ Initiative in 1997. Me: Is that why there are so many more homeless people? Because you took the initiative?)

4. My newly inherited maternity pinstriped trousers are water repellant. I don’t know what space-age polymers they made these pants out of but my thighs were dry when I got to the office. Also, these trousers hold several advantages over my other pinstriped trousers, namely: they fit and the hems are not held up by staples.

Thank you, mysterious woman who gave magical clothes to a friend of mine who then passed them on to me. Thank you, women everywhere!

5. Just possibly, the hormone balance in my body has shifted.

Here are some songs to have in your head that are better than the ones I talked about yesterday:

Raspberry Beret: Prince.
The Littlest Birds: The Be Good Tanyas.
Superstition: Stevie Wonder.
Born to Run: Bruce Springsteen.
Radio, Radio: Elvis Costello.
Undun: The Guess Who.

Posted in outside | 6 Comments

Grade 12 is Licking My Neck. Make it Stop!

Posted on 1/8/2006 by cheesefairy

So I’m making lasagna, which involves many pots & pans and me being in the kitchen for a long time. As I often do, I turn on the radio to the top 40 station for some mindless noise while I cook. All the other CD-type music in the kitchen is fraught with emotion and will make me listen and then cry or howl and that’s just not what I’m after.

Anyway, anyway, anyway. It just happens to be 2 pm, which is when the American Top 40 Countdown starts! Sweet! (aside: it is one hour and one half later and I still have not heard anything I like. this is not because I am 31. It is because, as Saint Aardvark put it, “the top 40 countdown is ASS!” Nor is this new.) Number 37 on the countdown: “More than Words.”

Yes, THAT “More than Words.” By Extreme. Ugliest band ever, next to Mr. Big. Oh actually, that’s not a claim I’m prepared to stand by. Now that I’ve typed the words Extreme and Mr Big I am brought to mind of Poison and Great White and this is what is commonly called a slippery slope upon whose peak I refuse to tread.

Yes, I owned That Extreme album but only because ONLY BECAUSE there was a boy in my class who had long hair and I loved him and the boys in Extreme had long hair and I thought if I listened to more long haired music I would develop some method of communicating with long haired boys. He also liked Queensryche. I didn’t buy a Queensryche album. I came very close to buying a Queensryche album and then I heard “Silent Lucidity” and I snapped out of it and realized that there are many ways to sound like Pink Floyd and Queensryche had mastered all of them. I was throwing myself at a wanker and a stoned one at that.

Our boy, number 37, has re-recorded “More than Words,” with extra R&B and he’s doing scales with his voice and he’s got a machine that goes “whiz!’ and “brrrrrummm” like he is trying to travel back in time & really feel what Nuno and the boys were feeling back in 1990. I’m just wondering – why? Is it because when your main competition on the charts is “My Humps” you don’t feel motivated to even try to write something good? Or did someone have fond memories from his prom of singing softly into his girlfriend’s ear: “Saying I love you/is not the words/I want to hear from you” and think: “Classic! Let’s expose the kids of the ’00s to the greatest poetry of the ’90s!”?

Number 37’s name is Frankie J (Caution: appalling use of Flash) and he is just so darn happy to be here.

In other Top 40 news, the Backstreet Boys sound kind of like Bryan Adams. And that “Listen to your Heart” remix has been re-remixed into an acoustic piano version.

Don’t you people have anything else to do?

Also if someone could please wake me up when Billie Joe Armstrong is done whining, that would be great.

The lasagna is poisoned with my bitter tears. But popsicles are great!

Posted in music | 3 Comments

I’ve Got Nothing for You People

Posted on 1/4/2006 by cheesefairy

Home!
The catt is playing with a dusty peanut. Every once in a while he looks up from batting it across the floor and gives me a pitiful glance, like, “you won’t even play dusty peanut hockey with me? you bitch?” It can’t be helped. I promised myself I would get back on the cheesebloghorse and also right now I am trying to keep myself from eating a lot of food and going to sleep. We are going to the pool tonight to partake in water aerobics. I fully expect said aerobics to kick my ass. I have not had one lick of exercise since the last time we went to water aerobics, which was in September.

Work!
Now, I know everyone is a little bit incompetent at something. I am aware of my own faults and incompetencies. (They are many! And various!) Today was a remarkable day because I encountered nothing BUT incompetent people. A steady stream of them. And I’m sure some of them were having that day when all you encounter is bitchy people and I was one of that continuum. Whatev.er.

I will say only this: I was convinced that if I just had the time to do EVERYONE ELSE’S JOB, aside from me being more tired, everything would run a lot more smoothly.

The stupidest thing said to me today: “Are you really that big? Already?” (no. I am wearing a fake belly. for practice. would you like to pat it for luck?)

The second stupidest: “Wow, congratulations. You should give up caffeine. And carbs.”

Hahahahaha! Funny man! Breathe deeply and close your eyes while I prepare to punch you in the genitals.

Word!
Did you know that “mold” and “mould” are the same word? They both mean “to shape” and they both mean “icky fuzzy stuff that grows on tea cups and pineapple if you’re a filthy 20-something living with roommates for the first time.” I had NO idea until recently. I assumed one spelling went with one meaning but it’s really just another U.S/Britain thing.

Itch!
Happy New Year! Merry Christmas! I got a red Swingline stapler for Christmas and the Office Space Extra Special Boxed Set. Plus a new towel. And, for 2006, my itching came back. Let’s see, the last post about itching was….. back in July. The itching went away! I didn’t write about it because you don’t miss things like itching when they go away and so you don’t think about them anymore once they’re gone. Until they come back and you are tearing your own chin apart with your ungroomed fingernails and you think, “Hmm, this feels vaguely familiar, this scene, but when was it last played? And who was my leading man?” So it’s back but the rest of me also itches a great deal so I am focusing on lubing up well with Citrus Body Butter from the Body Shop.

News!
I had not noticed until this morning that the nefarious paper-thrusters took several weeks off during December. I noticed this morning because they, like the itching, had not been missed but today had returned to all the corners I encounter on my way to work. A tick in column “A for Awareness,” though; one of my co-workers who reads the 24 Hours paper on her daily commute (and actually has read it out loud to me on occasion and saved “articles” for my perusal,) said today, “You know? That 24 Hours paper is getting worse. There’s NOTHING in there at all.” Well praise be and pass the chips.

OK. Time to bounce around in the pool to dance music while the pro swimmers in their Speedos look on disparagingly.

Posted in babby, idiots, my itchiness | 7 Comments

Never Travel In First *

Posted on 12/29/2005 by cheesefairy

This morning, after a discussion about what year it was when Cher sat on the cannon in her knickers and wailed to the US Marines about time, its fleeting nature and her itchy crotch, I used the internet to find the answer and I learned three things.

1. It was 1988, thus Pre-Gulf War I. Put that in your trivia memory bank, co-worker K.

2. There is a term for that end-of-the-song-key-change. It is The Truck Driver’s Gear Change. The concept and its title is actually funnier than the website, but what the hell – there are mp3s of all the key changes and after you listen to quite a few it becomes quite hilarious indeed.

3. The question “How am I Supposed to Live Without You?” as posed in song by Mr. Michael Bolton (and containing said Truck Driver’s Gear Change) was originally written for Laura Branigan. That one’s going in my trivia bank.

* Referring to driving a standard transmission, this title reflects the only useful advice my driving instructor gave me at age 16.

Posted in funny, music | Comments Off on Never Travel In First *

Perhaps I Should Look For Financing

Posted on 12/23/2005 by cheesefairy

And so: Cheese Financier Cake.

Posted in cheese, funny | 2 Comments