The Cheeseblog

I have been prescribed an antibiotic so powerful it has its own website. For triple the cost of my former best friend, the sulfa antibiotic, which finishes today and at which my infection is currently laughing heartily, it had better kick some bacterial ass and it had better do it soon.

Got any good names for a family of tenacious bacteria (because, like mice, you never have just one)? If I name them, it will be easier to curse their existence and scare them out of my face, yes-yes?

According to the gentleman scholar who fell head-over-heels in love with Sarah this afternoon on Davie St., some women are stupid but others are attractive and if you don’t see – and enjoy – Meet the Fockers, you are being naive. I wanted to ask his name, to name my bacteria after him, but he was gone too quickly in his Buick sedan, waving his football out the window at the passers-by.

I suppose considering his speedy retreat, he would not qualify, tenacity-wise, to share a name with my bacteria. Perhaps I should name them “The Fockers” and be done with it. But I’m trying not to swear as much. I made a new year’s resolution when I was 6 not to swear as much.

Hey astronomy students. Want your homework assignment? Want to know what’s on the final exam? Check the website. Brilliant…or lazy? Maybe a little of both.

May I mention how much I love the “next blog” feature in blogger blogs? (Bloggity bloggorama blogtastic bloggo! Bloggah!) These days when my time at work is not so full, cruising from blogger blog to blogger blog can be a fantastic and enlightening journey. Look, when I pressed “next blog” on the astronomy teacher’s site, I got a fun l’il blog AND a recipe for cookies. Holla!

By the way, here is a link to a New Year’s Resolution generator. My resolution for 2005 was to bring back disco. You have been warned.

This website for a restaurant chain in Michigan is like choose your own adventure but weirder. You can “meet” the bartender, the dishwasher, the guy who makes the fettuccine and the woman named Sparkey. Road trip!

Greetings!

The weather is great here; clear and sunny and warm. All day we frolic with tame tigers and eat brie baked with garlic and grape tomatoes on those peppery water crackers. We sip 1999 red wine and laugh – oh! how we laugh. Mostly we laugh at the people still trapped in the box (oh except you, of course), but sometimes we also laugh at good comedy, like people driving in the snow in Vancouver. Sometimes we practise our logical thought and sometimes we just nap. You can do that outside the box. You’re allowed.

We so wish you were here, but I know those cardboard edges are high and jagged. Wait! I have an idea! When you’ve retrieved the post from your bum (and I’m sure you are right now hard at work trying to ease it out), use it to vault over the edge!

Sincerely,
Cheesefairy et al.

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.

Recovery Pants: Yesterday, walking home from a half day’s work, all I could think was: “I feel like a million goddamn dollars!” So what if I looked like the guy from The Darkness? My week-long hangover has finally lifted and I want to eat bacon and eggs.

Mass Exodus Pants: Eerily quiet at Winners today. Odd, as all the cashmere was on sale, including the many colours of cashmere track pants. Cashmere track pants cost $120, even in baby-blanket yellow. I wonder if they wick away the sweat when you run marathons in them.

Deep Dark Truthful Pants: I found plaid pants, many pairs, but all the ones that fit were $50. Why must I have such expensive taste in pants? At Sears, the red and brown plaid pants were marked down to $54, while the more tasteful blue and green plaid pants (trust me, they were more tasteful) were marked down to $81. Stupid stupid pants.

No more smoking that wacky-tabaccy Pants: There is a television show called Dog the Bounty Hunter. The hunter in question has the best mullet I have ever seen. And he was convicted of murder in the first degree IN TEXAS and got out of jail after 18 months. He must have murdered a Democrat.

Spice Girls Redux Pants: Caught the Pussycat Dolls on some random NYE NYC ball-dropping (heh) extravaganza. They wore short, spangly pants and fringey dresses and shook their bon bons a lot and one of them sang about undoing some buttons. They were kind of terrifying in that “if I took turpentine to your face and waited 48 hours, then would I see skin?” kind of way but having now visited their website, I know that they are sophisticated burlesque with intricate choreography, not extras from Showgirls. It is a fine line.

Predictive Pants: Georgia Nicols has something nice to say to every astrological sign; a needed kindness on the first of the year.