P: Priorities in disarrangement

So, trying to make sense of myself.

Last night, as you might imagine, left a bitter taste in my mouth. I mean that literally as much as figuratively, as my tongue felt as though I'd been munching urinal cakes when I woke up this morning; and my stomach felt like I'd been drinking paper mache paste.

I mean hey, it wasn't such a bad night, and had circumstances been different it could have been a great deal better. But I woke up, stretched out, and tried to figure on moving on.

I thought I might've been hung over, but it turned out I was just tired. This is good as it keeps my yearlong streak alive. I may vomit like nuts (although not last night) but I don't get hung over. My only recorded one, about which I frequently boast, was my 19th birthday. I mean literally, I was hung over at my 19th birthday, the celebration held by my family. It somewhat hampered my enthusiasm at the time.

But today I turned out to be fine. I dug the prize out of my Mini-Wheats, a Shrek-themed night light (knight light) you can "wear" on your ear. It's actually kinda nifty albeit a far cry from what we used to get back in the glory days of cereal prizes. And they don't put them in the cereal anymore, but under the bag, so you don't have to wait until the cereal is done (which makes me wonder why I waited so long.) I vividly recall my dad scolding me not to dig through my Shreddies.

Shreddies, by the way, are not Chex. Chex are made with wheat and corn, or just corn, or rice, but Shreddies are whole wheat. Having had both, I can tell you they're unique.

So I went down to the mall this morning and met up with Amanda. I think we're making it a regular thing, which is good as it gives me something to do with my time. We talk about, well, life and school and work and junk. I mentioned my grandiose funeral plans (not that I anticipate having to use them anytime soon) and she scoffed. Given my paste-feeling stomach I actually did not have coffee for once in my damn life, but had tea.

The Xe-dog will be going home tomorrow evening. I can assure you I've been counting the minutes. It's sort of a running gag that I keep finding things to do in the evening to get away from her. This has been going on since the very first night she came over and I went out for a drink with Bryan (and if my current trend reverses it's good to know I could probably still grab a brew with him sometime.)

Tuesday night, I got a new pair of shoes. They aren't exactly what I would have chosen (as is often the case, mom bought them on a whim knowing I was in need,) but more or less like my old ones. They have the same flaw as my old Duffs (which these are also) being that prolonged wearing results in sore heel and calf among other muscles. I guess I'll be hanging onto my Brooks for a while longer... stretching their usefulness years longer than they were intended. But they're damn comfy.

While at the mall, Amanda bought a pair of Crocs. I mused about the first person I ever knew to have a pair (you know who you are) and how years from now, retrospective films and shows (think Dazed and Confused, That 70's Show, or even a show like Back In) will emphasize the trend by including a character who's just bought a pair, proclaiming "In 6 months, you'll all have a pair" and he won't be totally wrong but not really right either. We also went to HMV and I saw my old manager, Cooper, for the first time since my last shift. He's such a good guy, I like being able to go back and talk to the employees like I was one of them (once upon a time.) He lamented how business was slow. I would have bought something, but I have an HMV gift card that wasn't with me, and it would be ridiculous to waste it.

So I spent this evening testing the new shoes out. Last night, Chris F. had mentioned midnight madness and some vague plan, but wouldn't really elaborate (it was a generally chaotic night at the time.) So I got bored with television around 9 and decided to head out. Eric tagged along. So we walked down to Lakeshore, as I have many times before, and threw ourselves into the throng of people. Just a mass of humanity. Eric mused that we were swimming in a sea of bodies, and I advised it was probably best to just let the current go. We went, at one point, down by the lighthouse, to get away from the madness, and then did a few more laps, not buying anything but rather enjoying the free music and atmosphere of sweat and tobacco.

In case you don't know, midnight madness is an event where all of the stores on Oakville's Lakeshore road stay open 'til midnight, the road is closed, a bunch of bands play (simultaneously at stages littered throughout the crowd,) sales are offered, bounce castles are inflated, and a good time is somehow had despiute the rage inherent to following a slow-moving family of 4 pushing a stroller around despite my belief that this is not the ideal environment for a toddler.

Anyway, I'd set out with the notion that several of my friends would be around, but it would have been ridiculously naive of me to think I could actually count on meeting up with them. Now, if they were there, anything could've happened, but I didn't see them. I did see a few people from the high school years, Kenwood, Spencer, Nicki and even Doug's sister (whom I ran into a few weeks ago at the comic store) being among them. Lauren had advised me not to go to Starbucks; she'd be working and it was guaranteed to be busy. That alone made me want to go, the idea that I was being told not to. When I got there, I saw that it was more helpful advice than an outright command, as the line was indeed cartoonishly long. I wonder how she survived.

I'm working on a rudimentary stand-up comedy act. For years people have told me I should get into it, and I always brushed it off as, well, a bad idea. It's hard work making people laugh, especially when you stand up in front of them and basically say "This is going to make you laugh." The subconscious reaction is to resist, to only be won over by force. and I'm not a very forceful person.

I use expressions like, "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard" and "That was the worst thing ever" a whole lot. And maybe I don't mean, most ever, of all time, or what have you. Maybe I just have trouble expressing myself, qualifying my opinions, so I rely on exaggeration. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I love hyperbole more than life itself, and I think I would wither, suffocate and die if I couldn't overstate everything. It's the most important thing in the world to me.

I wrote a song recently, in the surf-rock genre. It's called "I'm Stalking the Weather Girl." It's 8 minutes 10 seconds long and consists solely of that expression sung repeatedly. It was inspired by the pretty ethnic weekend weathergirl on City TV. I'm not really stalking her, but I could imagine somebody (myself?) doing so, hypothetically.

She whispered gently and would not repeat herself, "Cross-continental relationships don't work," much to my perplexity as I had said no such thing and that was not the conversation we'd been having. It was not much later that, drunk on beer and wine and beer respectively, she took me close by the hand and expressed her worry that I'd be leaving. And it was not long after that she shoved me out the door. Those fragments, I remember from last night. I can't cobble them together into any sort of sense, but that's drunk behavior for you. I'm not sure how much of it actually involves me and how much of it I was merely around for.

Back to tonight and Eric and I wander aimlessly, with my having to cover his ass for bus fare home. In fact, we caught a charter to the GO station, and some poor girl had lost her purse and tried to get off, not perceiving that, it being a charter bus, they were not keen on making stops. I told Eric, reason #434 I'm glad I'm not a girl is the whole purse thing. The way they must clutch those things for dear life; it's sort of a "sucks to be you" thing.

We left just as all the places were closing up and got home around 12:45, not having missed much although given that we hadn't told Brando where we'd be going he was somewhat confused. As I mentioned, my legs are sore (I feel like I just worked a shift at Classic Bowl or something,) and it'd be therapeutic but unlikely to take a soak.

I was on my way home from Joe's the other night, sitting around at South Common Mall (great place to be after 11, yeah yeah,) humming the Coral's Liezah while I waited for the 24 bus. That's when they came by: a quartet, two guys and two girls, presumably a pair of couples on their way back to Oakville. They smoked like chimneys and swore like Lenny Bruce without punchlines. Leading the pack were two weird huge dogs sniffing around and being curious and kind of unruly but obedient. I told the story with the dogs as Rotweilers but I don't think they were. They might've been black labs or mutts or something. The points is, they had come on a Mississauga bus and mused, "I hope the driver lets us on" (with the dogs.) They rationalized, "Why wouldn't he? It'll just be us and this gentleman," (in reference to me. I dig it when strangers use weird hipster ironic proper-speak.) They openly discussed their plans for the night (said one girl to her man, "We're not having sex more than once.") Well the bus arrived and after I got on, it was made clear they they would not be joining. "Mississauga's different," said the driver. they didn't put up too much of a fight but were quite disappointed. Hey, I would be too, I hate when shit goes awry. I wonder how they got home or what they did. Too many for a taxi. Maybe they had a friend with a car who owed a favour. Maybe they were just fucked.

This was a good post I think. I emptied out my cache of unrelated-to-anything anecdotes and had a good time writing it.

I hope you're doing well. We're all good here.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto