Monday, February 27, 2012

Mr. Brightside

Life's a funny thing.  Could I be any more melodramatic?  (could I be any more like Chandler Bing right now?  Probably..)

Here's a story.  My mom works downtown at a women's clothing boutique and she's essentially second-in-command; she runs the store when the owner (her boss) isn't there, and she has traveled with her boss to New York and Miami to see various fashion shows and conventions with fashion vendors to consider what to buy for and sell at their store.  Last week, my reading week, my mom was to go to New York with her boss, and she would've left on the Wednesday in the middle of the week.  In the end she declined the offer to go a few days before the trip would've been because she said she'd feel bad missing my time home from school.  Wednesday evening, her boss calls her from the side of the highway.  She was driving to the airport to catch the flight to New York, and she was behind a pick-up truck with lumber tied down in the bed in the back.  As she was driving, a block of wood dislodged itself from the truck, fell from the truck and flew through my mom's boss's windshield.  The block of wood missed her, but she was slightly wounded from the windshield shattering.  The block of wood, instead, flew through the passenger side and collided with the passenger seat.  Had my mom decided to go to New York, her boss would've picked her up to go to the airport, and she would have been sitting in the passenger seat.  My mom was really shaken up after the phone call from her boss, and to be honest, the story shook me, too.

Just yesterday, there was a train derailment back at home (and I was still there for the Oscars, which - sidebar - were very boring but all hail Meryl).  I'm unclear on if there were any details revealed today - when I'm back at school I'm quite literally cut off from the rest of the world and the only sort of news I absorb is pop culture related - so I can't with certainty say the reason for the derailment, but I suppose now as I type I really should inform myself and promptly will once I'm finished writing this.  The extent of my knowledge from yesterday was that three Via Rail employees lost their lives; that countless other passengers were injured with varying degrees of severity; and that I believe it was five out of the six cars derailed.  My family and I kept it on the news for a large part of the day yesterday, so the image of the train on its side as well as the emergency responders in the immediate area is somewhat still clear to me.  The train derailment occurred directly behind my parents' friends' house, and I'm very familiar with the area.  They called yesterday saying that they could see the entire accident from the second floor of the house.  Of course, nobody in the surrounding residential area was injured, but I was again reminded by the capacity of accident hitting close to oneself.  This was only furthered by the influx of Facebook statuses appearing all over my news feed, all from students who could very well have been on that very Via train to travel back to school at the end of reading week but missed their train departure or were scheduled for the following train or were staying home for the night.  Again: what could have been.  My thoughts are with everyone who was somehow involved in that, whether it be a victim or the network of secondhand victims existing as families and friends.

I can't help but think of the Hollywood trash that is the Final Destination film franchise that hinges on the idea of wrong place, wrong time with respect to freak accidents.  (of course, then, the whole mystique of those movies is to watch the supposed survivors get killed in even freaker accidents, and while I liked the first few they've become horrible and this reference is rather irrelevant to the tone of what I've been writing) I guess my point of talking about instances where accidents hit a little too close to home is to mention just that: that anything could happen at any moment to anyone.  Things become real when you can physically extend a connection to something; I can't count the amount of times I've seen stories on the news about tragedies and thought, That will never happen to me!, much like I do about, say, breast cancer occurring in the family or getting the winning lottery ticket.  It's a simple thing to say "that doesn't affect me" until it really does, and with that idea, the gravity of possibility has been resonating with me for the past few days.

In reality, life is extremely fragile.  I take for granted the fact that we, as human beings, are truly physically weak to everything around us: I don't give a second thought to the dangers of the road whenever I jump in my car to even drive to the grocery store down the street; I never think of the chance that any appliance in my house, any knife in my hand, has the capacity to inflict unmeasurable or even fatal damage upon myself, but I've been cultured to assume safety in my repeated use of a properly working stove or a carefully handled serrated edge.  In fact, I go through entire days without thinking of death, and even in the times I'm exposed to it as being championed in works of fiction, I never apply it to myself.  No; I subconsciously affirm myself that I will live a very long life and die at an old age, but I honestly have no idea what the future has for me in store, and my surroundings hold infinite possibility.

With that in mind, I suppose my "epiphany" if anything is to stop taking my safety and, on a larger and more melodramatic scale, my life for granted from day to day: it is certainly an easier thing to say than do, but I'm hopefully looking forward to at least stop complaining about how horrible my living situation is or how bad my feet hurt after seven hours of class or how much work I have to do before the end of the semester and just stop, take a deep breath, and be thankful to be alive.

Friday, February 24, 2012

My Drunk Blog: Elephants

Well, this is a shame.  I don't know why I've even consciously instituted something like My Drunk Blog in my sober mind because whenever I get home after drinking and get onto my laptop it's the first thing that comes to mind, and thus we end up with things like this.  Regardless: this has happened.  Last night I returned to karaoke with the regular gang (give or take a few missing bodies) and, admittedly, I didn't drink much, yet - and I got to this last night as I wrote - I discovered that I was a lot more intoxicated than what I thought I was.  That happens a lot; I guess it resonates a lot more when I'm home and it's dead silent and the only thing I can hear is the loud buzzing in my head, and in a similar sense, my stupid stumblings seem worse than they are in the silence of my house and in my solitude.  Again, I just don't know why I get on my computer after I drink: it either ends in horrific Facebook or Twitter postings, or it ends here.  I suppose this is much funnier.  Sit back and laugh, this is a good one.



It's been a whiel since I've posted and it's been a whiler since I've posted drunk so woo.  I just got home from karaoke with some of my favourite people in the whole world, and I'm astounded and rather excited that this bar now offers nearly all of Born This Way including Judas and Americano and Electric Chapel and You & I and even shit like The Queen and Fashion of his Love so it was a goddamn struggle to not rush the stage and sing every oneof those songs, but I'm kidding, because I can't sing and it takes a really shit ton of alcohol to get me up there.  Truth: I once sang Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picutre Show with a friend, but that was the night I threw up everywhere in the garden in my front yard because I drank too much.  That's a trend.  Not tonight though, I neither sang nor threw up because I'm dilligent and I just drank enough water to fill a pond and ate enough bread to feed a small village in order to take precautiong of tomorrow morning which is technically right now and today morning because now is February whatever the date is which is not February yesterday which was an two hours ago so today when I wake up huh.

Every time I get home after being out I discover many things.  First, I discover how drunk I really am.  Tonight, for instance, I really didn't drink much of my whiskey because tonight whiskey didn't agree with my stmach at all, and then I chugged two pints of Keith's at the bar in addition to a random beer that was sitting at our table before we claimed it and I now realize it was probably disease ridden or perhaps date raped, but at least when I succumb to this disease or rate rape I will be at home and will die a comfortable, happy Matt.  Either way, I didn't think I was superbly drunk, but then I got home somehow and then walking into my house and realized muthafucka, I'm moderately hammered, and the buzzing in my head is like sup, I'm disturbing you, so let's be friends.  Wheneevr I come home drunk I always take precautions to be quiet to respect my sleepy family, but every action I make is the sound of ten thousand elephants driving ten thousand bulldozers through a burning hospital.  Digest that image.  I take off my jacket, ten thousand bulldozer driving elephants.  I kick of my shoes, elephants.  I chug water and eat this grainy ass bread that tastes delisicous now but is grainy and tree like in the morning, elephants.  Even now, my elephant fingers slam on the elepehant keys of my laptop and now I'm googling elephants, particularly elephant families.

MAJESTIC
Lana Del Rey can't sing live for shit but shes got a beautiful recorded voice and I love her songs and fake lips so I'd probably just propose to her on th spot.  Usually when I'm drunk I eat, and this is the case tonight because I've etain the grainy ass bread but back in residence I always come home and make myself eggs and toast and dammit I want some eggs and toast right now.  I usually make drunken loud eggs at 2am when my drunk ass stumbles its way home but I actually possess something now (respect) which prevents me from disturbing the inhabitants of my house (ie my family) with my obnoxious and messy loud cooking.  It would be elephants, I swear.  But I really really want eggs and toast.  Even grainy toast, s'all good, just toast yoself and butter yoself and get in my stomach.

This is stupid.  It's 2am and I have the chills and the motherfucking Woman in Black is totally plotting a way to get me in my sleep tonight so mostly I'm going to admit defeat and die at the hands of this angry ass spirit bitch who I believe haunts my house.  Also Freddy Kreuger.  I love the movie Freddy vs. Jason even though it sucsk really bad and Kelly Rowland aka Subordinate Beyonce isn't a very good actress but it's okay because she's slammed against a tree.  Ha.  And I know this because I watched it three or fifty nights ago but it was in this week I swear.  Good movie.  Actually no it sucks a lot.  But I liked it.  And I liked it when I was a wee lad in grade eight with frosted tips and a love for rap music.  Goodbye.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Operation Tweet Me Back: Part Deux

I'll begin with a semi-relevant but mostly-irrelevant preface: the past few days I've developed a sort of sadness, if you will.  I don't know why I've been feeling so gloomy lately, and yet I know why entirely: I think my life at the very moment is a bit of a toxic cocktail of stress with school and frustration with individuals and a general homesickness - boohoo - but I write this now in the comfort of my home sitting across the couch from my mom and my mood is already two thousand times better.  All that proves is that my residence has become a hotbed for absolute frustration with my situation, but that's neither here nor there; too personal of a topic to explain and too lowbrow of me to even speak further.  Point is, I've found that the general misfortunes of my life have been building upon one another as if like evil bricks constructing an ugly and mean wall of depressed! in my life, and on top of being away from home, I've just become miserable.  I'm glad that I have a weekend at home until Monday morning (save for a trip back to campus for my residence don interview - ahh!) to clear my head before returning to another week of school to soldier through the few academic obstacles I have ahead of me until next week's reading week.  Like I said, I felt an instant happiness even the moment I opened my front door to see my mom standing there ready to bring me back to the bubble, and I have a night out to see The Woman in Black with a friend in a few hours (lord help me) as well as a family function tomorrow so I'm just happy.

Yet, in my stewing of unhappiness this week - a week that included a twenty-four hour stomach flu which exhausted me of all energy I had on Wednesday (I also decided to watch Melancholia that day.  Really beautiful film, but messed up - I've digressed on a digression) - I cooked up another pick-me-up plan I'm going to put in motion for myself.  Round two of my official Twitter mission for a shout-out from a celebrity!  Who?  Hold on for another paragraph or two.

Recall: I've done this before.  And, yes, I was successful - twice.  I've exhausted my feelings on this so I'll gloss over it in just a few sentences, but I was somewhat disappointed with the arrogance I received in response.  Yes, I know, I'm just a nobody who's hounding someone on television for something as trivial as a "hello!" but it's a little disheartening still to be answered with snark, so I'm not overly happy with she-who-must-not-be-named who, I'm sure, will have a highly successful career now that she won't be returning for the second season of AHS and will forever just be the pair of tits on legs.  Good luck, honey.

Otherwise, I've received not one but four whole tweets from comedienne Retta who has a starring role on my favourite TV comedy (and show overall) Parks & Recreation as Donna, the Parks & Rec employee who loves her Mercedes so much and laments about her brother Lavondrias or about the endless line of men she has entertaining "just waiting in the car outside."  She's hilarious, and she's gracious with responding to her fans, so on two occasions I've been responded to for offering (what I thought to be) funny tweets in her direction which have been well received.  Doesn't hurt that she's as funny as Donna in real life.

And so, my Operation Tweet Me Back target is... well, take a guess.

No, I'm not attempting to be the one person out of nineteen million who Lady Gaga will answer one sunny afternoon - hell no.  That's foolish, and honestly, my body is unprepared for what would happen if she ever answered me.  I feel like all of my organs would collapse in unison and my parents will have to hold a funeral for me as soon as possible.  No, instead, I'd love an "X" - and that's what [she] tweets to her fans (often), just "X" for kisses - from Lana Del Rey.

I really like this picture.  I don't really like the words I can't read.
There's no need for me to go over how trivial this is again as I did last time, nor do I have to reiterate how this may be considered creepy on my end, but what can you do.  Yes, I'll fully say that I'm a petty lowly regular Joe that a tweet from Lana Del Rey would give me an infinite amount of smiles to come - like I've said, it's trivial, but I don't care.  That's what I like most about Twitter, I think: the possibility that celebrities have the capacity to type a matter of just one hundred and forty characters to make someone who adores their artistry on top of the world, so as a child of the Internet and as an active Twitter user (and follower of celebrities, ranging from the cast of Parks and Cougar Town and SNL to Mother Monster and Lana Del Rey herself) I might as well capitalize on the possibility that maybe, if I tweet sparingly and as clever as I always do, I might just get that snippet of well wishes to make me gloat about it for who knows how long.  Why Lana?  Flavour of the month.  That makes my fandom for her sound fleeting, but I mean it in the sense that in a time where a lot of the mainstream music is less than thrilling to me - and that Gaga is inbetween albums currently and Born This Way is really stale to me now - she's all I've been listening to for, literally, the past month.  In watching videos of her interacting with fans, I've seen a truly genuine side that makes me melt, so at least I know this time when if I get that response, it wouldn't be riddled with sarcasm.

Anyways, again, this is just lighthearted.  The creepiness of this - I could see it, a bit - only comes out of the fact that I've written this for the purpose of my blog, but I'm good with being a parody of myself for the sake of a good read.  After all, I don't publicize the times I've tweeted Courteney Cox and Busy Phillips or Gaga for the hell of it.  So, again, have a laugh, I don't mind!  That is, after all, the purpose of my blog.  And the moment it's unfunny is the moment I should be removed from existence on this earth.

We'll see!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Madonna's arms, wine, and the Blair Witch

I hate this time of year.  I hate that when I look up at my whiteboard calender all I see is a solid wall of academic bombardment before I reach the glorious 17th of February which, aside from being one of my best friends' birthdays (we're all turning 21 already - ahh!), marks the last day of class before my Reading Week.  I hate that I look a week later on my calender and see two sizable assignments due immediately after my week-long vacation, a week which, I'm sure, the ratio of staying in and doing homework and going out with friends and probably drinking is rather lopsided.  I hate February 29th because immediately following it on my calender is a drop-off of whiteness, meaning that so will begin March, and I hate March even more than I hate February and I shudder to imagine the business that will be my schedule of assignments for that month.  Despite my mounting stress - and I hate my mounting stress - I hate the fact that I have an abundance of free time; I used to like my sporadically spaced schedule but now I find myself wasting away doing nothing, pushing off the inevitable assignments in favour of staring at the same websites with their unchanging updates.  I hate, most of all, that despite all of my free time, I haven't written anything for my blog.

I find that my enthusiasm for writing comes and goes in waves as unpredictable as the quality of Lana Del Rey's live performances.  (put away your pitchforks, we all know I'm a huge fan and the joke is in good fun) That goes for things even beyond my blog: I'm sure I've used the image of the "writing itch" before, and if I haven't, then I just seem strange.  I obviously mean that at times when I wallow in my boredom I'm overcome with an urge to write something, but I think the perfectionist in me prevents me from writing on a whim without a concrete plan.  That's how I feel about my creative writing: I regretfully report that I haven't returned to that NaNoWriMo project I had spoken of, and I've made myself quite the paradox considering I don't like leaving things unfinished but I've fallen out of love with that plot and characters and I'm unable to have one side outweigh the other.  With that in mind I haven't brought myself to write something new - I'm planning it, though, but I don't know what it is, exactly - and aside from my lack of serious motivation I've tricked myself into thinking that I can't write something new with something old left hanging unfinished and then again I return to that infinite pendulum back and forth.  With respect to my blog I often don't write unless I'm struck by this divine idea and I find myself waiting around for that idea to strike me.  I guess that's my best excuse for not writing for so long - even when I'm not posting I constantly think about it because, really, blogger.com is unavoidable because it's one of the most visited sites on my browser in the address box - and I've become too fed up with not posting that I've let myself write one of those segmented incohesive posts about the random aspects of my life worth mentioning: this.

(It's Okay to Watch a Show Called) Cougar Town

(this title is in reference to the opening credits of Cougar Town where the writers mock the show's title) In my recent bout of boredom I decided one day to start watching the show Cougar Town, mostly because I grew tired of waiting for episodes of Six Feet Under - another show I've started and god is it bugging me that I started it and left it unfinished and started something else - to load.  Cougar Town is funny!  I would recommend it, but I would only recommend it if you've watched Parks & Recreation, and if you haven't, then please complete the first three seasons and catch up to the fourth of Parks & Recreation before you are permitted to begin Cougar Town.  Why?  Because Parks & Recreation is the funniest show on television, no questions, and while I enjoy Cougar Town a great deal I obviously know I'd rank it below Parks & Recreation.  I've grown weary of typing out Parks & Recreation.  Cougar Town has a selection of genuinely funny characters - I'm a big fan of Ellie, the self-proclaimed bitch, and Laurie, the stupid one - and I can say that I've laughed out loud a great deal while watching.  (not as much as I have with Parks & Recreation) Something central to Cougar Town is the fact that every episode the characters drink a great deal of wine, and in my prolonged exposure to the show - I've caught up, there's only two seasons - I've had this craving to drink red wine, a feat I accomplished a bit too well last Friday when I discovered that a full bottle of red wine gets me drunk off of my ass.  Watch Parks & Recreation Cougar Town!

Alcoholics Named

(this title is clever) As I mentioned, watching the full two seasons of Cougar Town has unlocked some need within me to drink red wine, but I'm by no means a wine connoisseur even though I proclaim myself to be one when I'm, well, drunk off of my ass on red wine.  (after all, I bought the bottle I had based on price entirely; who the hell knows if it was good wine?  That's a silly question, of course it wasn't good) On a grander scale, I quite enjoy drinking.  I even bought myself a fancy UofT beer glass which I have yet to christen with beer and have already tarnished with red wine.  I really don't have a point to this blurb aside from that bit about red wine; actually, that's not the entire truth, considering that for a while I've been thinking about devoting an entire post to alcohol, but in the end I'd end up looking like an alcoholic and I've already been told I am one by someone and that comment has ranked in probably the top two most awful things I've ever been told so I give a slight toast to that comment with every drink I take.  Meaning, then, to write this little pointless thing serves as a means to get the want to write about alcohol out of my system.  So boom.  Catharsis.

Crypt Woman

(this title is the pseudonym I use for Madonna) I'm not a Madonna fan at all.  You might assume I was given my love for Lady Gaga, but no: I'd say my sudden love for Gaga is somewhat out of character for me in the sense that no, I don't normally enjoy strange pop women - ie, Madonna.  Madonna actually scares me, slightly; she's like a skeletor thing, and looking directly at her arms is like looking into an eclipse for me - for the love of god, don't do it unless you want to be blind for the rest of your life.  (as an addendum, never get me started on the Madonna-Gaga argument that will unfortunately stick to Gaga's entire career: influence is different than plagiarism!  Stop me) And yet, considering I don't like Madonna, her damn new song has been stuck in my head since the moment it was released.  If you haven't heard it, it's called Give Me All Your Luvin', and she sang it at the Super Bowl - a halftime show which, and I will give her serious props, was very, very good.  It features unnecessary ten second rap verses from Nicki Minaj and M.I.A (both who were lip synching at halftime; shame, ladies, even LMFAO "sang" live) as well as the stupidest hook I have ever heard: L-U-V Madonna, Y-O-U you wanna!  I wanna what?  Never look at your arms again?  Anyways, the song is pure bubblegum, and goddamnit, I can't stop playing it.  Someone sign me up for Intervention.

Good nights no more

(this title is not clever) I recently watched The Blair Witch Project for the first time, and I don't know why.  Thinking about it gives me chills.  Judge me, but I will say that I'm afraid of the dark.  Big time.  Being in the dark seriously unsettles me, and since I'm a writer and have a vivid imagination, I fill every dark recess of my room as I try to fall asleep with the scariest images I can conjure up - it's usually the Exorcist girl and I just got chills all over my body again because I'm picturing her face and I know she's going to fill my nightmares tonight.  And so, the thing about The Blair Witch Project was that is shows absolutely nothing.  Instead, we have the doomed characters running around and screaming "what the fuck is that!?" at nothing, and we hear noises - made from nothing - coming from the dark.  Chills, again.  And so, given the mind's capacity for imagination, the movie disturbed me far more than I ever thought it would because it preys upon what could be.  The final shot of the one guy standing with his face to the wall in the basement - serious chills right now - is scorched into my mind, and every dark shadow in my room as I've attempted to fall asleep since just recalls that final image.  I will not fall asleep easily tonight.

Fingers crossed for that divine inspiration lightning strike - I'd hate to abandon my blog for that kind of time again!