Q: Here when you need it.

I had a feeling yesterday was going to be a good day. I had absolutely no rationale for this. The previous couple days had been a real drag. Well, every day is a real drag. Hardly a day of school goes by that I don't mope all around Toronto, angsting quietly to myself about how shitty everything is and will always be, and getting worse.

This reached its nadir on Tuesday, a day of 8 hours of consecutive classes. I make it sound worse than it is, mind you, by neglecting to mention that three of those hours is a screening, and that at least in this case, it didn't go the full period.

Still, it is damn hard to get started on Tuesdays. The first three hours are the often-impenetrable American Studies. The last two hours are the pretty weighty Anthropology. It was shitting rain pretty much all day. I realized how badly in need of replacement my backpack is when I had to contend with damp notes for the rest of the day and the next day. I mean shit. I got this backpack when I started at U of T and part of me was very eager that it should be there when I finish. It isn't so bad, so long as it never ever rains.

So to someone as prone to self-immolating internalized drama as I am, Tuesdays are anathema and if I don't find some kind of coping mechanism soon (alcohol, eg. Or skipping,) I might die on a Tuesday.

But Wednesday, ah, oh Wednesday, for whatever reason, I had a good feeling. Maybe because the clouds had dispersed. Maybe because of a good night's sleep. Maybe because of my new friend.

I didn't tell this story, and for that, I apologize. Last Wednesday, during my second Anthropology tutorial, I took a seat innocently in the midst of the third row, second from the back. As the seats all filled up, one of the last spaces was next to me on my left. So on that side, an empty seat, on the other, my backpack, and next to that, a girl. Suddenly, a figure appears on the left and mutters, "Can I sit here bro?" Sure, bro. Whatever.

It wasn't long into the tutorial that I learned that I was sitting next to a Goddamn scientific genius. I call him a scientific genius because even though he's in a second-year Anthropology class, he saw fit to bicker and debate with the TA (whilst calling her "professor" the way a second-grader might refer to "Teacher") over the particularities of the theory of Evolution, specifically that it was "a fact" (bit of a misunderstanding over the meaning of "theory") and that we were genetically wired to believe in God, and Richard Dawkins told him so.

See, this is why I hate people. You can have the right idea but still be an idiot about it. You can get the facts straight and still fuck it all up. You can prepare your arguments but still have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. This young gentleman was belligerently using every fallacy to fight his instructor on points she not only understood better than him, but the broad strokes of which they pretty much agreed. He was just so obnoxious about it that he wasn't going to take "Yes" for an answer. I'm going to have to start recording this shit. The religion discussion in particular deserves mention because of how absurdly far off topic it spiraled. You get the point.

So this whole thing go out of hand, and this guy who is just spouting all this aggravating nonsense to the class is sitting next to me, and I'm a little embarrassed, so I have to turn my head to the girl to my right and wince, and she responds in kind. After class, we introduce ourselves to each other, share a comment or two, and basically decide that we're going to be suffering together for the rest of the year while this guy shoots from the hip, the real deal with evolution.

So yeah, when I meet a girl, I guess the implication is "I met a girl." After all, lord knows I approach many a meeting that way. She came and sat next to me in the lecture this week (actually a video about Darwin.) She worked the phrase "my boyfriend" into the conversation, which was nice of her. The way I see it, the girl has about halfway-through the second meeting to get that tidbit out there, or it's just not fair.

I remember when I met Vasa, for instance, it took a lot of effort to get her to come out with it. I had already added her on Facebook (on the basis that if I hadn't, we probably wouldn't have seen each other ever again, which was not that unlikely) and saw her status. I have what could charitably be described as a mental block against pursuing attached females... which is generally considered a good thing, so I'm gonna keep with it.

I felt refreshed when I woke up Wednesday, the hard part of my week over with. A couple tutorials and a relatively relaxing English lecture (not that it's light material, sure, but it's mostly just sitting there and being talked-at about books, with occasional discussion.) This was borne out through the Anthro tutorial, with predictable results, and I had resolved mainly to sit back and passively enjoy. I then had a three hour break between classes. I was actually contacted by Vasa, with a text letting me know she had seen my doppelganger. This is an inordinately frequent occurrence, not just with Vasa, but other people too. It's a problem for me, not just because it damages my identity, but because I tend to think of anyone who looks like me as a face-stealing asshole.

We ended up hanging out for a good chunk of afternoon, catching up on life in a way we hadn't been able to since she got back from Serbia. Yes, we did hang out at FanExpo, but that was hardly a "So, tell me all about your summer" situation.

She caught me up on some of the utterly fascinating (and I'm not being sarcastic here) sometimes downright shocking and rather lewd details of her life. Not to gossip, it's really none of my business. But that doesn't stop me from being riveted.

I went to visit the Dorval location today. And by "visit," I mean "work an 8 hour shift." It was nice, since Andrea was the other one there, and I haven't worked with her in a while now. It's very quiet there, and not hard to see why that store is closing up. The day mainly consisted of various CDs being played, while the two of us scurried around doing price changes, trading acerbic barbs about the lack of business, and occasionally selling things.

I'll probably be doing that again in the next month, while the store's still open. It'll definitely give me an appreciation for the pace at Oakville Place, where there's always shit going on and no time to get bored. Not that I'm gonna go around bitching about it. Both ways have their advantages and drawbacks. The contrast is just so strong. Seeing Alan arrive at the end of the day, it's clear how much more he enjoys that environment.

I don't know how I'm going to find time for my own shit in the near future. I shouldn't live like I do. This is the main thesis of my self-loathing freakout thoughts that occur from Monday through Tuesday. The rest of the time I think I'll be okay.

I think. Well, we'll see. It was good to do a post that was about something other than me freaking out about life. Good change of pace. There's hope where you least expect it.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

R: Mass migration of elephants

I don't think I have seasonal affected disorder; if it's a real thing then the people who experience it probably suffer much more drastic moodswings than I do. There's a certain charm to fall, to the breeze winds and falling leaves, but I always get real sentimental.

Something about this weather keeps dragging me back to the falls of my past, most notably fall 2004, the one where I started this blog, and probably the last fall that didn't rush past in a blur.

As I'm getting older and thinking harder and harder about what I'm supposed to do with myself once I stop being a student (and coming to no valid conclusion) that life gets farther away from me, but it still feels current in the air. The past will never be again. I'll never drive out to Stratford for Earnest costumes, never be harangued into joining improv or do Maim in Vain. Conversely, I'll never be as melodramatic a person as I was then, constantly analyzing every little interaction I had with anyone, because goddamn were they hard to come by.

I do live in isolation and it does suck. I had a family gathering earlier today and some of my aunts noticed I seemed different. My go-to answer was that I wasn't sleeping, which isn't untrue exactly. And it's probably part of it. I went to bed at about 3 the night before, woke up at 10 and by the time I was showered and ready to go for my morning coffee (which is, many days, my afternoon coffee) we were a half hour from going to the gathering. Since my "coffee" trips tend to take 45 minutes to a half-hour, during which I listen to music, overthink shit and drink coffee, I had no time for this vital part of my routine. The lack of it, I was feeling by the time we hit the road.

I got there and asked Aunt Karen if she had any, like a junkie looking for a fix. Apparently she doesn't keep any at the ready (fair enough, neither do I) but she was glad to fix a cup with a French Press, which I'd never had before. It was pretty awesome.

It was the usual family gather. wrestling with Cameron and generally being made to do whatever he wanted. It was different in that it was a lunchtime thing rather than a dinner, since the kids had plans to go to the finale of the Next Big Star on YTV. I remained low-key, as I often do, when I wasn't brawling with Cameron. I also managed to unload some of the books I had bought long ago from the book store's "burning our inventory" secret sale.

Earlier in the week, I went to Cary's place for drinks. We talked the usual -- people we know, people Cary knows, people I know... stuff I'm writing, Half-Past. The future. It was reaffirming in some sense because the way Cary and I relate keeps me grounded and puts my shit in perspective. At the same time, I retold some of my freak-out stories from the week before. I also ran into Justine from Sheridan earlier in the night, getting out of class (different classes, mind.) She seems to have mellowed some, although that's just one meeting. We all have.

Still trying to find my solid ground. Earlier this week, I was struck by a recurrence of an idea from long ago that refuses to leave my mind. It's an idea for a TV show, and technically I have no idea how I would go about pursuing it, but I feel I must work towards getting this on TV as a major goal in my life.

So that's something to work toward. I guess what I want least is to wake up in 7 years, be 30, and think to myself, "I haven't even budged."

So keep on rockin'
-Scotto

S: World of Dogs

I'm more than a little disengaged today. When I wrote more - both fiction and in here - I had more of a framework in which to build my life, but as SWP and other things have fallen by the wayside, my mind has gotten disorganized.

With the end of summer, particularly with Eric leaving and also me going back to school, my mind is aggressively getting back to writing mode, which of course means I feel a bit more open to rambling on and on about myself even when I have nothing to say. Last night, I had a dream about Cait. The night before I found out she died, I had a dream about someone that could've been partly her. People enter our subconscious in the weirdest ways.

Part of me wants to get on with my life (after all, as close as we were when we worked together, we had drifted far, far apart) and part of me wants to hold onto this melancholy, borderline obsessive feeling about it, since it's the realest thing that's happened to me in as long as I can remember.

I once heard that when we dream about a dead person, that person is trying to contact us. Although that's probably not the case for the recently-deceased, since they tend to linger on that level of your mind where dreams are made. By the same note, I've been having a lot of weird dreams about work in general, often weirdly distressing.

They're the kinds of dreams that feel extremely real when you're in them (don't they all?) but seem absolutely absurd when you wake up.

I could stand to deal with shit better.

I got to work this morning and, as she always does, Karen asked me "How are you this morning?" What a question! Hey, no offense, but even if I could conceive of an answer (beyond "I got up and walked here") would you really care? "I didn't sleep well because my dog was barking and I was having dreams about our dead ex-coworker." Shit.

So I just shrug and smile "same old."

Something's got to keep me grounded, though. That's probably where my very serious-seeming school timetable comes in. Well that's the upside of it, I guess.

After work today I went over to fix my Grandma's TV. All she had done was turn off the cable box, but I couldn't diagnose this over the phone. Apparently she had been without TV all week, with mom neglecting to mention to me I was needed until midday Friday.

I used to go over there all the time, throughout high school, when I was walking Xena. I stopped doing that years ago. It was clear to me, when I was doing it, that Grandma liked keeping me as company, and I often enjoyed sitting with her and talking, despite my general dislike of small talk. I always gathered she appreciated it, and I liked that. But when I had to move on, I moved on.

So on an occasion like this, where I'm called down to Grandma's for a simple thing, I probably ought to have stayed longer than I did. That's not to say I showed up, turned her cable box back on, and ran out. I did catch her up on what was new with me (very little) talk a bit about work and school, ask about her dogs. That kind of thing. I even took my shoes off. But I didn't stick around for a little can of 7up, although in hindsight, I would've like to.

Dogs. Everyone seems to be having dog problems. We with our little barking one. Grandma with her nibbling Yorkie, Manda with her pup. Every one of us is living in a world of dogs, it seems.

I'll be working on figuring out how to get my shit together this week. Stay tuned!

And keep on rockin'
-Scotto

T: I'll be here a while

Nothing makes me want to reach for the comfort of the bottle like a new school year.

I was not excited about my schedule for this year before the week started. I'm still not.

Due largely to my own flawed decision-making, and bad planning, coupled with the school's general propensity for boning, I've got four classes I pretty much have to take but don't really want to. I haven't got anything I can really sink my teeth into. I had too much fun last year and got spoiled. Now what's left is shit. If I'd known I had signed up for a Film Theory Course, I'd have gone and done Documentary instead. The reason I didn't was I thought it would be too specific. Fack.

Regrets. I have more than a few over the way my scheduling has shaken out. The necessity of each class I can deal with, but taken together, it's bleak. I guess I've just gotten used to University as a luxury... something I was choosing to do and doing my best to have fun with. All the bottom-line requirement stuff has come later. Later being now. The horrible, horrible now.

It'll be okay. Time passes. Shit works itself out. If I do badly, I do badly. If I end up skipping a bunch, it happens. I have to try not to stress over it. It seems weird to submit to my slacker instincts, but that's what happens when I end up taking classes I'm not thrilled about. There is not a single goddamn class this semester I would've chosen for myself. If I get interested, I'll act it. But now I just feel like it's beyond me.

Besides, I never do well in the first semester.

So there's the issue of not caring, the issue of being burdened with all the readings I don't care about, and the issue of spending long, ungodly hours at school for classes I don't care about (why am I doing this again?) I have a feeling my attendance is going to suffer. to wit: I have eight consecutive hours of class on Tuesdays (three of which are for a screening, but still.)

I had a tutorial for Anthropology today. I was by far the least scientific person in there. I'm going to try not to be an asshole about it. The weird thing is, I don't even hate the idea of being in that class, I just feel intimidated. But sometimes I think, y'know, I don't give myself enough credit: my mind's a bit more scientific than I used to think. If I had really thought about it, I might've gone into the sciences out of high school and kept the writing thing as a hobby. Way more practical this way.

Then again, it's hard to argue with the route my Journalism/English life has taken me so far. And I'm not nearly as scientific as I just said I realized I might be.

I just need to not suck this year. Somehow. I'll find time. Even when there isn't any time.

I rant formlessly and without any connecting thoughts.

More of this, later, forever, all year.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

U: Life During Wartime

since I do so few posts in a month, I'm going around my usual convention of "New Naming Convention every month," which has been the case more or less since the inception of this blog.

Last weekend brought with it a Septembery chill that reminds one that we're coming to a place in the Earth's revolution around the sun that tilts our hemisphere away. It's getting chilly.

This is, if all goes according to plan, the last time I'll ever associate the chilliness of late summer/early fall with the return to school. This time next year I'll be finding my way in the world without the caveat of studenthood. The excuse. It's freaky. I don't want to think about it. Don't make it.

Unfortunately, this time of year has a habit of provoking thoughts I'd rather ignore. Aside from thinking about the far-flung future of 2011, there's the very near future of two days from now. I find myself constantly bemoaning the debacle into which I'm getting myself, working and going to school and having crazy-ass hours. Part of me believes this is all the work of a self-destructive mind. WTF am I doing. What the fuck.

But all that takes a backseat now. Nothing can really be done. Things are the way they are, all I can do is weather the storm. I've been working all week. I've got my head down, where it'll be for the next semester. Whatever happens will happen. Whatever angst is strangling me is slightly secondary to this:

Yesterday at work, I learned that a girl I worked with died. Cait, a girl who had made such an impact on me in a short time that I related the story of meeting her just a few weeks ago to talk about change in my life. She was such a force during the brief time that I knew her that I thought of her often and wished I could have seen more of her after we stopped working together.

Here was a girl I liked instantly, whose energy was pretty easy to catch for yourself. She made some of the dreary days of last year's holiday season a lot more interesting, and I looked forward to days I worked with her. I was actively bitter for weeks after she was not hired, even though she constantly assured me she was better off, not suited to the corporate store environment. still, she laughed at just about everything I said, and I wasn't afraid to say anything around her.

Shortly before Christmas, she got a black eye from falling off a barstool. It was pretty absurd to keep going about her business after that, but she did. On New Year's, a friend of hers committed suicide. I had made her a mix CD and was suddenly self-conscious about the fact that one of the songs on the mix (Bill McCai by the Coral) was a lighthearted ditty about suicide. She jovially told me to never mind, she was used to it (as she'd lost so many of her acquaintances) and was not overly sensitive. A long time later when she finally listened to it, she told me she liked the CD, although she never got around to making me mine.

One of the couple times we went to the bar after work, she lost her work shirt and I lent her my old one from 2006. For am long time afterward, it smelled like her, but since it's been 9 months, it doesn't anymore.

The last time I saw her, I had tracked her to the Booster Juice where she was working, just for the sake of seeing her. That was early in this summer. I was hoping to arrange a meet-up for drinks, but she got busy with her other job, tattooing and I figured there'd be more time.

When Gus had said he'd heard from Taylor that she was dead, Karen, Chantelle and I were all within earshot. After confirming this by calling Dorval, Karen and Chantelle went to the back to have a cry. I just stood there, contemplating it. I was sad, shocked, and all those other expected things. But it hadn't seemed impossible. Not that I'd thought about it beforehand "Yeah, she'll probably die young," that'd be insanely callous. But the way darkness seemed to cling to her, even despite her lightness. Sad, but somehow when I heard it, it didn't disbelieve.

Anyway, it's... it's very sad. Understandably, it's got me in a bit of a funk this weekend. It's heavy.

But do what you can to keep on rockin'
-Scott