Kiite.: November 2005

2005-11-30

mmmmm Bacon

2005-11-29

Rage Against Something Or Other

Have you ever been angry? Have you ever wanted to just BE angry? or cranky, or frustrated or whatever? You know what I hate more than things that make me angry? People who try to talk me out of my anger. Sometimes you just want to BE pissed off. Not forever, not as a way of life, but I think you have a right to be cranky about a thing for a while... It comes in all forms, i'm not blaming one group for this. The Christians do it, all that forgive thy neighbor shit. The new-agey types have their chakras and energy and karma, landmartians do it with their "who are you being?" shit.
So instead of getting to enjoy my anger (and let's face it, i'm funny when i'm angry), people want to make me not angry. and all that does is transfer my anger to that person. I mean i go from being pissed at Telus because of my phone bill, to wanting to shove the phone up the nose of the person who is trying to convince me that their shit customer service is not a conspiracy.

2005-11-25

1003 Pieces

Thanks to everyone who made comments to the post below. I appreciate the advice and being talked down of the ledge. As i said to a couple of people since, even the act of writing that kind of thing usually gets rid of the feeling. The writing is the therapy I need.

But there were a couple of comments that I think misconstrued my little mid-life crisis. So I want to clarify.

1. The primary focus of my frustration lately has been at a combination of not beeing the most organized person, combined with being lazy. These two ingredients make for a frustrating life at times. Hamish is obsessive compulsive (and I mean that in a loving way) because he can focus on something to the exclusion of all else and power through and get it done. I've never been that. Heipel is a crusty old fuck, but when he gets it into his head that he is doing a thing, and get started doing it, he seems to stick by it (vegetarian, not eating out etc.) I'm sure he has some argument about how he wished he could do that in other areas of his life, and I get that it would be a valid one. But we're talking about me here. the only thing I've been able to do with any kind of dedication is, well watch tv. Not useful.

2. Eric made the comment that it's not that i'm doing anything wrong, it's just that the things i'm doing are not right for me anymore. BINGO. how do you know? really, how do you know that that is the case? is boredom a reason to leave a job? or a house? or a country? that's the problem right, what barometer are we using for knowing 'what's not right' anymore? So in the middle of that mental shit storm, how do you know what you know?

3. i'm not sad, depressed, angry, frustrated or in any way needing an intervention (at least not beyond the intervention of alcohol tonight and tomorrow for my b-day). i'm just a guy processing his mental stuff here.

I hate people on the subway

I really do hate people on the subway. It's a god-awful situation to be in to have to take public transit, even a system as relatively efficient as ours. But it's not a difficult thing to do. So why, in the name of all that is good an holy, do people fuck it up so completely. Herewith are my biggest - I was going to say pet peeves but that's not right, because they are not pets, if they were I would put them in a sack and drown them, and peeves suggests a lightness, a mild annoyance, whereas I'm talking about the kind of things that make me glad I don't own a gun, or at least a Taser - so let's call them my biggest hatreds. Is it possible to get subway-rage? I think so. I have it.

1. Knapsacks.
Take them off for fuckssake. Put them at your feet, you see leg's are skinnier than torsos so as a result there's more fucking room down there. And then when you stand and pivot as you stare about aimlessly you won't knock old people over.

2. I have to stand in the door.
Move the fuck in! Look we're all going to get off the subway at the same fucking junction point. So move in, do NOT stand in the door - thereby reducing the space available to the rest of us to get on/off.

3. I have to get off first.
When the train is pulling into the fucking stop, EVERYONE is likely going to get off at this stop. Certainly the 243 people in front of you are, so do NOT elbow me out of the way trying to get near the door. Just wait your fucking turn you shortarsed little prick.

4. I have to get on now.
People on the train get to leave first. That's the rule, not one handed down by the gods, or even the TTC, it's just plain logical you stupid cretinous bastards, so get the fuck out of my way so I can get off the train.

5. Escalator asshole.
Walk left. Stand right. I'll repeat it slowly for you w-a-l-k l-e-f-t. s-t-a-n-d r-i-g-h-t. That is the UNIVERSAL rule for escalators. In rush hour it's especially important for flow. And will someone please explain why people walk up the left side like good little commuters and then STOP AT THE TOP right before they get off? This causes the guy behind to ram his fucking head up your arse. KEEP MOVING.

6. Polite escalator twerps.
"After you" "No, no, I insist, after you" JUST GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT!!! We (should) know what we're doing here, and we don't have time for you to fuckwits to do your best Chip 'n' Dale impression.

2005-11-23

1002 Pieces

Sometimes I feel like I'm making a really large complicated jigsaw puzzle, and I’ve got a couple of pieces extra. I am busy with life. Doing things and whatnot. But I never seem to have enough time, or enough coordination to really do all the things I want (or say I want).

I was thinking of this when realising that once again I’m paying for a gym membership I’m not using. I'm standing in the cold stark light of the early morning bathroom, realising that I’m a soft lumpy bastard who's getting old fast. I'm also smoking a lot. All of these things add up to the epiphany "whoah, why don't you go to the gym?" Ah well were it so easy.

I know that the main problem with the gym specifically is that I’m a lazy prick. I realise that. I always have been. And fuck off if you are about to make some asinine comment about how its fun. Even at the best of times, when I’ve loved the results of exercise (working out last year with a trainer) i have utterly hated the experience of doing it. The only time that I've enjoyed it, I’ve never gotten a single result. The bike rally gave me nice legs and i didn't lose a pound or get a nice belly. And badminton, while fun, does nothing for me except fuck up my knees.

But as well as going to the gym, the other things I want to do just don't fit well into my life. Nothing ever does. It's a bit frustrating really. I just don't know how people who are super busy do it. How the gym, the shopping, the banking, the work, the gardening, the visiting, the socializing and all that shit get done. I can barely do two things, and I feel like I’m busy. Like right now I’m using the excuse of the house being for sale for the fact that I haven't actually eaten at home in weeks. Literally - weeks!

This is not a new frustration for me. I always, even as a child, wondered why every single thing worthwhile in life is difficult. And nothing easy is worth anything. That alone was enough to make me believe that god was a prick (anyone who could invent such a perverse world had to be a bitter old fuck).

So I’m here with a big jigsaw puzzle, and I’ve got too many pieces that I’m trying to jam together. And let's not even start with the fact that inevitably I’m peering over the next guy's shoulder to see if I’m doing it right, or if he's got a better puzzle than I am.

I'm not in a fun head-space lately. I'm screeching in on my mid-late-thirties and not feeling great about it. I don't mind old. I mind not getting/doing the things you want. It sucks and I'm not sure what I’m doing wrong.

2005-11-21

yay poverty

I’m a bit like a kid in a candy store in a lot of ways about things and experiences in life. I kind of want to do a lot. Right now I'm learning japanese (slowly), and I’m playing badminton. I’m also preparing to write a book with a friend of mine. He’s a guy who’s been to grad school twice (yah crazy, but the winner is PJ who’s got more degrees than Gabriel Fahrenheit.) He wants to write a guide book for getting into grad school. We’ve done some research and while there are many books on law school and med school, there are none on grad school specifically. The only things we can find are American and are more ‘study guides’ for the GMAT, LSAT and that kind of thing. What my friend wants to write is more an instruction guide. I won’t say more, until the book is farther along as we don’t want to put the ideas out until they (and we) are ready. So he asked me if I wanted to work with him on that. We discussed ghostwriting, or co-authorship and settled on that option. It works better for a number of reasons. Once he gets back from his holidays we’ll get started in earnest. I don’t think it will be that hard. The difficulty of course will be finding the time to write it and of course selling the damn thing. But we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Of course the topic of the book is interesting to me because ever since I was ‘back’ in school I’ve thought about returning again and doing more. I really enjoyed it the last time I was there and it would be a major victory in terms of my personal history to end up with an advanced degree. Hey who am I kidding, it’s a major victory over my personal history to even get the first degree. So with a combination of my thinking about this, sort of in the background, and then Willy showing up and talking about writing this book, I’ve been doing some thinking about it all. Hey I’m not one to ignore hints - when the same kind of thing shows up in a few different places you have to pay attention. And besides let not kid ourselves, I’m about to turn 36, if I want to go and get a masters or more, I have to go soon. So I’m thinking about that. And doing a bit of research besides.

The impediments are many. I only have a three year degree and the first and most prominent qualification for a masters is a 4 year degree. That’s not insurmountable but it’s a hard one. I also have a rather checkered past with regards to university. When I got kicked out the first two times I left with a GPA in the region of 1.5 (out of 4). When i returned and did the last 5 courses i needed to get the degree, I managed to get a 3.8 or something and thereby raise my average to the 2.6 or 2.7 necessary to graduate. So on paper I’ve got a crap GPA (most schools ask for 3.2 but in reality competition means it’s more like 3.6++ to get in). So my story is great, the return, the improvement, the maturity, but I'm not sure how to make that come across on an application. The last impediment is that you need letters of recommendation from profs. That’s easy to do when you’re in one college, doing one course of study for 4 years and you know the profs. it’s a bit harder at UofT, when you’re in 4 colleges over 10 years. The slow, expensive option of course is to go back to undergrad and do the final year (4th) part-time, if I continued to do well I would raise my average to the necessary point. As well, I would make contacts with profs. and hopefully be able to get recommendations etc. That means at least 2 years of part-time undergrad work before getting into a masters program.

Of course the big question in all this that I haven’t talked about is that this is all going to cost buckets of money. The post grad stuff is not that bad, you usually get scholarships and whatnot and if you can live on $17,000 a year then you’re fine (yay, poverty!!). But of course the undergrad stuff is the expensive part. So this week I'm going to try to get a hold of a couple of the profs. that I did have as well as one who heads the program that I would likely do if i did go back and do the undergrad. See if they can help figure out this stuff. So we'll see. I'm sorry that this post hasn't come to more of a point, but it's more about um, what's in my head. there yah go.

2005-11-17

See Spot Run (In Japanese)

My japanese class ends next week. This is "Beginner II" level. The subsequent level begins in March or something. So I have a couple of months off (in which I can of course lose all that I've learned. But i'm committed to this not being the case this time. I'm not far enough along to have it stick and I don't want to spend the first half of the next class trying to remember.

I realised that I have made progess, despite feeling like an idiot. And surprisingly the area that I feel strongest is grammar and verb conjugation. That stuff just makes sense to me (which is both frightening - and logical since I am a writer after all). So I'm good with grammar, i'm wicked at figuring out the -masu form of the verb from the dictionary form and all that but I'm crippled by my inability to read hirigana and katakana with any fluency or ease. And I know that I have to manage that or else all is lost. So I went on Amazon this week and bought the Kana version of my text book. Basically its the same lessons i'm working on now, only with out any romanized writing in it (no romaji). So there's no way in fact to fall back on the crutch of just reading phonetical versions of the japanese words. I hear it also helps your accent as you learn to pronounce the kana the way they do, not they way the letters look in Enlish. And let's not get into a conversation about Diphthongs. I also bought the CDs that go with the books so that I can continue without a teacher for a couple months. My goal is to have the kana down before the next class.

I was saying to Hame the other day that I'm working towards that moment (and anyone with a second or third lanaguage knows what i'm talking about) when you can actually stop thinking in one language, running a translation in your head and forming a response, but rather just think in the language. I want that 'click' to happen.

As to why, well why not? I like language, my own, others' whatever, and it's kinda cool to do. Someday of course I hope to travel to Japan, that'd be nice. I guess it's weird and people don't understand why i want to learn this language and not, say, Cantonese or Mandarin. But as i've said before there are 'tones' in those languages that just simply mystify me. And French is just a dog's breakfast of conjugation, verb agreement, gender/number agreement that hurt my brain when we were studying it in school and i don't want to revisit it.

2005-11-16

My house is a slut

So far we've had a lot of viewings. Two today, one yesterday, 7 last week etc. but nobody is buying the thing. I just feel used. everyone's using her, not paying. Poor little slutty house.

2005-11-15

Weather

"Rainy days and Mondays always get me down."

--Karen Carpenter

"I like the rain, it makes the annoying people stay inside."

--Mark Cosgrove'

2005-11-07

Timing is Everything

We rushed to get the house back on the market so that a person who'd already seen the house could come back to see it again. The fact that she wanted to was a good sign - it show's that she's serious and might buy it. Turns out she was serious. Because while we were plastering the ceiling, she bought another house two blocks north of us.

Kiite.