A: Miles ago

Brother, I am restless. The last few days have been nuts over at the HMV (and in life in general.) Last Monday, Eric and I set about doing most of our Christmas shopping. I had sorta had the day off, but had to come in, since they claimed they needed two people with keys for the night. Which I found hy-larious two nights later when I was the only one with keys. Hurm.

No individual day or night of the week leading up to Christmas got me... it was just the whole long thing. Not generally getting days off is a bad thing and I was excessively pissed that I couldn't hash them out with my manager. The whole week I just got more sore and felt more crappy. This reached its climax on Christmas eve, but let's back it up.

The night before, December 23rd, Chantelle and I were gonna go out for drinks, something we'd been saying should be done for a long time. A few more co-workers got pulled in, and I felt like I was probably gonna end up sipping my drink quietly and resentfully, pushed to the side and not being my best self. This was true for a lot of it. Chantelle also brought along two of her high school friends, and I made it my business to chat them up out of sheer boredom. They were nice girls, easy and fun to talk to, although both had boyfriends so really I was just idly chatting and badly playing pool.

I walked home from that night, far drunker than I ought to have been and already on my last legs when I woke up the next morning with a nasty cold. I worked cash all Christmas day, probably infecting half of Oakville Place with germs, but hey, germs build character. It wasn't a bad day, considering I got to stand in one spot all day.

We have three Christmas traditions: last Sunday night, Eric and I decorated the Christmas tree badly, heckling ourselves. Christmas eve, we went to dad's for Chinese food, and then, after midnight, I wrapped the gifts. Maybe those aren't traditions so much as stuff that always happens. We got some books for Aunt Lori and Gail, wine and tea towels for Aunt Karen, a Stargate Universe DVD and Pretenders CD for dad. Mom wanted this weird deep pan thing for stir fry, we didn't know what she meant so we went to Sears and looked around until we found something that looked right. For Deb, I was uncertain and about to get chocolates when I noticed David's Tea. I texted Dad to see if she'd be up for some of that, and he indicated maybe, if it were the right kind. In the end, she was happy with our pick. I thought it was the nicest gift we got someone all year.

Christmas day, I was a bit dead, or "knackered," as dad explained the etymology to us. After getting a repeat present from both mom and dad (I had suggested dad get gift receipts, but he didn't,) we headed over to Toronto, to Aunt Karen's place, for a rather subdued Christmas, which was a nice little gathering with me phasing in and out of consciousness on the couch and sitting at the table trying to pick my way through turkey dinner, still getting over my cold. At one point, Aunt Lori looked through my iPod and found herself impressed by a lot of the selection, oddly enough particularly marking out for Hawksley Workman. Go figure.

I was luckily not starting early on Boxing day. I got in at 11 and stayed until 7:30, which was a drag, but doable. I wasn't on cash all day, just running around back and forth getting stuff. I was more capable of doing that that day, so it went by quickly.

I'm exhausted and this has been more description-of-stuff than thoughts-about-stuff than I'd have liked, although I wrote a pretty gripping account of Christmas eve-eve through Christmas day on Tumblr. I'm getting single-minded, as a combination of working too much and having Eric here. I don't know what to do with myself. I should get to work now, I guess.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto

B: Expect me

I'm getting to a point in my life where things don't change much from year to year. I was re-reading some posts from last year, when it felt like everything was chaos and I had it all on my shoulders. The highs were higher and the lows were lower, often simultaneously. Everything's the same but in a different way.

Last year, everything felt so dire. I had to be awesome at work, and if I wasn't, I fixated on it and I took it home with me and I worried whether I would be offered a permanent job and wondered what my manager thought of me and if I could be funny and impress Cait or anyone else, and it was a crowded damn place with a ton of temps. Now we've got two temps and I don't carry my work home with me and I don't let shit bother me, I feel like if there's anything bothering me it's way bigger, but not lately. It only bothers me when I'm at work, and there's just a lot of it. It isn't so chaotic anymore. I miss it a little, but I'm comfortable.

As strange as it sounds, especially considering some of my insanity from last week, I think I'm handling everything better. I guess this is maturity.

The past few days have been long ones. Saturday -- the Saturday before Christmas after all -- was the closest it's come so far to the ongoing insanity I seem to recall from last year. We had an extra temp in from Erin Mills, a girl this time rather than the dude who came in earlier in the week, as well as Karen's daughter helping with receiving. Nice girl, we talked briefly about zombies.

The mall was open until 10 that night, which was insane and we were dead for the last hour and a half of it. I guess the Saturday wasn't close enough to Christmas for it to seem worth it. If Christmas was on Monday or Wednesday, that Saturday would've been damn necessary. I remember making dollar store runs late on Christmas Eve back in 1998 with my dad, Barenaked Ladies' "It's All Been Done" blaring on the radio.

There has been some insanity at the house lately, with Eric using some unorthodox methods to heat the basement until I finally decided to get a space heater. Mom disapproves, since she instantly distrusts any decide that generates heat. She's convinced it's likely to spontaneously combust any time now.

There was also a whole thing about whats-his-face, Peter, the guy she brought to out fake Christmas, because with Eric unwisely using the oven to warm the basement, mom thought she smelled burning (well I guess she was right) and called him over even though she's not seeing him anymore and it was "embarrassing." Well, that's only partly our fault, and really none my fault.

So I came to the conclusion that, despite my neuroses and my eccentricities, I am the only legitimately sane person in this family. And I know what you're thinking, "Yeah, everyone goes through that 'My family I soooo crazy lol' phase, but come on, they're just unique." No, really, it feels like, myself included, there is not a potential functioning adult amongst us. I'm the closest one. Eric is out there but still dealing with his issues. B. is more of a shut in than ever, and my mother believes with an urgent panic that a space heater is going to kill us all.

So, I mean, this goes a bit beyond cutesy eccentricities.

And I complain and I know I've got to get away and it's as much as my mom freaking about about heaters as it is about finding a cat knocked over the crap on my desk.

But there are good times. There's one holiday tradition that doesn't get old. Eventually, mom gets around to getting a Christmas tree -- we have a fake one, but I'm pretty sure she thinks there are mice in it so she bought a real one. So she got it, a week before Christmas, spent nearly 3x its cost on a stand, and had Eric and me decorate it. We did, per usual, a laughably half-assed job, heckling ourselves as we went along. And that's what's fun, making fun of ourselves, because nobody else is going to see it and after all there's something so funny about our Christmas spider (a felt "ornament" made many years ago, which has endured with a few other homemade ornaments.)

That and my wrapping of Christmas gifts around midnight on Christmas eve.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto

C: Everything Explodes

I have been "going through some stuff" lately.

I was a bit foolishly optimistic to think that I would have super lots of time to myself when school ended. This is after all the busy season at the store. Gus phoning in with possible kidney stones on the weekend didn't help, and Karen took it more severely than it was apparently meant since he was back this morning anyway.

In any case this all coincided with a shiftbomb where I had agreed, against my better judgment, to take a shift for Jess, despite it infringing upon my feeling of entitlement to have at least 2 days off each week. My attempts to take this up with Kare only resulted in more unpleasantness (albeit none directed immediately at me.) And then when this Gus thing happened, everything went whack and I swallowed my sense of entitlement and agreed to work whatever. It ended up being just one extra shift -- Chantelle asked me to take her Tuesday morning and Wednesday night shifts, because of an exam and a concert respectively. She ended up working both days anyway, so I guess the real burden falls on her and I need to stop making myself feel like a martyr for taking a few extra shifts.

Yesterday, I was giving a woman her change, when she objected. I was giving her change for $25, but she insisted, "This isn't right, I gave you two twenties, I don't have any fives left!" I handled the situation badly. As sure as I was that she'd given me a twenty and a five, I capitulated and gave her change for forty, which was dumb as sin, as my till was $15 under. I took it way harder than my manager did, however, which

By the end of my seventh straight day working -- today was my eighth -- Ryann asked me why I was trying to please everyone. I was on the brink of my sanity and I guess she could see the toll it was taking on me.

I guess I've just been feeling a lot of pressure lately. Pressure to be the hero at work (although there have been others taking on as much if not more and handling it substantially better). Pressure to be the sane, practical son in the family, given my brothers' problems and issues. I can't show weakness anymore, I'm not sure I ever could. That shit, that ain't healthy. And all this time I'm going insane and I feel like the entire fate of the human race rests on me.

Here's where it gets weird. Yesterday, as a coping mechanism of sorts, I began to "see" my late friend and former co-worker Cait. See, it was just over a year ago that we met, and things were different at the store then and I guess mentally, I began to feel like she was back at the store, chirping me for how wrapped up in all that shit I was getting and trying to ease my mind. And I guess it's not fair to idealize her or anything, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I missed her and was sad she's gone. So I imagined her back, even though I know HMV is the last place she'd want to be even as a ghost.

I went to bed early last night, well early for me anyway, at midnight. I didn't get out of bed until 11 (as I was to begin work at 4,) and that next morning, when I was in that place between dreaming and awake, when you're not sure what's a dream and what's just your own thoughts, I heard someone say, "Don't worry so much about the future. There's a long road ahead." And whatever that means -- the two statements seem to be contradictory -- it was rather comforting, whether it was my subconscious, or my waking conscious, or a ghost whispering in my ear. Either way it helped alleviate the weight of the world from my shoulders. I felt better-equipped to deal with shit today.

If you told me, in my waking life, that I didn't need to worry so much, I'd have a hard time believing you or following your advice. Even now I'm finding it difficult, but I'm trying and it seems to be holding. For now, anyway.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

D: Turn off the sound

Oh, if only I could.

I've gotten into the habit of making CD's. Last week, sick of trying to find music I enjoyed, and thought others wanted to hear, I bought some blank CDs and burned a mix. It went over well, with much asking of "who is this?" at various times. Some of the artists represented were Richard Thompson, The Sounds, Pixies, Pavement, Thrush Hermit, and Richard Hell.

I showed it off to Andrea, a co-worker whose taste in music I respect. She approved and asked I burn her a copy. I considered this validation for the whole activity because I was tired of living under the oppressive regime of HMV Radio and allowing myself to forget that good music exists out there and that I have access to it.

I was in the process of composing a second one when I found a new band. In examining the origins of a song performed on Glee (a rare proposition especially nowadays when they pick material that is barely three months old) I came across a band called The Zutons. And holy crapnuts, guys. I couldn't believe I'd missed them. What a sound! That's the funny thing about my life. I have a thick filter so it sometimes takes a while for stuff I like to actually get to me. I'm resourceful, though, so I've heard a lot of stuff most other people miss. Hearing that made me already start composing the second disc, which I finalized today. There's stuff I wanted to get on there but couldn't fit since my unofficial track cap is 17, based arbitrarily on the size of the first CD. Stuff left over makes grist for the third disc, which I expect to end up making this time next week.

Today actually represents the first time in a long while I'll go 24 hours between shifts, having finished my shift today at 5:30 and starting tomorrow at approximately that. It's been a hectic week since my day of tests. I had to put off my trip to Toronto (to pick up my English paper) because Ryann desperately needed me to cover her shift. The whole schedule is like a dastardly game of kerplunk, and when you pull one stick out the whole damn thing tumbles down. This is what happens when you fire someone heading into the Christmas season and don't hire anyone to replace him. It puts too much pressure on too few people, and especially now when all the kids have exams and finals. I'm lucky to be done.

Jess needed me to take a shift, and I reluctantly accepted, which set off a firestorm of shift-re-arrangements based on my desire not to work 6 days in a week twice in a row. Schist.

It all worked out in the end, but not without the ugly side of workplace politics being exposed.

It's hard being the guy. I have a need to be the guy people can count on, to put others first, it's kinda sick. Doormat type behaviour.

Then we found out today that Gus, the assistant manager, is gonna be out for an undetermined length of time with kidney stones. Kidney stones! Sheesh. If that isn't a decent argument for hiring one more person, I don't know what is. Things are tough. Lord knows there's no shortage of people who'd like to work there even for a few weeks. We've got a drawer full of resumes. And I personally introduced her to Joe.

I don't know where I'm at lately. Things keep wandering in and out of my life it's hard to focus. I want to write but am supremely unmotivated. I hope things will become clear in the new year but I've got my doubts. Eric will be back tomorrowish. Not expecting to enjoy that, but it might spur me on a bit.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

E: Tired of myself, not tired of you

Joel Plaskett lyric.

Me in relation to every woman in the world.

I want to tell you amusing stories about my co-worker Ryann. She's a really cool girl: she was heading over to Shopper's for water or whatever and asked if I needed anything. I said soap, jokingly (but not really, I needed soap) and I'll be damned if she didn't come back with a three-pack of Irish Spring.

I'm trying to get out of the habit of sharing other people's business on this blog, but she's popular with the gentlemen (and lesbians) that frequent our store. Sometimes this attention is wanted (well, not from the lesbians) and sometimes not so much. One night last week I overheard her awkwardly flirting with some dude, and just as she was scrawling her number down, in walks the guy's girlfriend. As for the lesbian, that hits closer to home, because I was kinda-sorta into her before I realized she was, according to my sources, "hardcore lesbian." I don't take it that personally, though, because I'm kinda-sorta into a lot of girls.

It's getting to the point where people who barely know me can see my problems. In my anthro class, I've formed a little study group comprised of girls, and I met up with one for studying Monday prior to the test. Between flipping through notes and generally discussing the class, we were talking about the other people we know in the class and she asked me if I liked a certain other member of our little group.

"She's fine," I says, not having been asked that question in way too long.

"There's something there," she says with the smile of someone who gets a kick out of watching someone else's story unfold. As I tell her my life is not that simple, she assesses "You seem like the kind of guy who has a lot of female friends." Yeah. "That's because you get stuck in the friend zone."

I do get stuck in the friend zone, although that isn't the source of all or even most of my female friends. I'm not sure if it counts as being friend-zoned if the person is in a relationship when you meet them, for example, and either way it only counts if you were seriously attracted to the person. I just tend to meet girls because I'm not interested in meeting dudes, and yes, with every female I meet I see a potential partner, until I know better. My problem is at this point I haven't got the wherewithal to determine what that perfect, ideal, nonexistent woman would look and act like. There are imperfections with every woman and every person and especially with me, and these I don't bother looking past because I'm no longer the kind of guy who pines, I just keep looking. And all of this assumes any of these girls were into me, and gets into my sense of myself as totally undesirable and worth nothing to anybody.

So yes, it's a bit more complicated.

It's like this pretty much all the time in my head. I'm not even upset right now, I just can never shake this negative perception of myself, I just live with it.

I was feeling this pretty severely a year ago when it felt like every female who was willing to tell me somebody should want me was in no position to speak for herself on the matter. But if I go on about that, I'll jsut depress myself. Things aren't like they were a year ago. I'm not caught in a flurry of adjustment to my job, I've been there over a year now. The new people are mostly all experienced and we have 2 temps rather than a dozen (there were fewer full-time employees then, if I recall correctly.) I'm a go-to guy, I do new releases.

It's hard balancing school and work. I did it a lot better last semester but I did it okay this year. I had all my term tests today, a problem I repeatedly said I should have corrected, but realized it too late and just wanted it over with. The build up to today was characterized by attempts at studying and occasional realizations that I'm not cut out for studying. I'm John Locke banging on the hatch door, weak, vulnerable, looking for answers and reassurance when nothing more can be done.

The first test was in American studies. I thought that was going to be the hard one, but my moderate understanding of all the sources and some of the theories helped me through. I'll probably end up with a solid B in that class, assuming my paper is as good as I think and no better. The essay question on the test was tricky since it wanted you to cite specific sources off the top of your head, and most of the people I spoke to afterward didn't feel capable of doing that. My advantage was in doing the question about cinema of attractions; I just wrote a paper on that in Film Theory, so I know Gunning back and forth. The Identifications I was sketchier on.

After that class, I said goodbye to Daron. Daron is a girl I met late in second year when we were doing presentations in Shakespeare. I don't remember how or why I struck up a conversation with her, although I pretty much just explained it several paragraphs ago, so start there. She's a bit daffy, like Elaine Benes meets Annie Hall, but we always had a lot to say to each other about school stuff and life in general: she's a talker. Anyway, I thought she'd drift out of my life like so many people after that class, but I had two classes with her in semester 1 of year 3, then one the next semester too, and then at the beginning of this year she walked into this class. I told her this was the end of her walking into classes and seeing me there, since barring extreme circumstances, I'm already taking my last U of T courses.

An hour later was cinema studies. This was the exam that was harder than I thought, because it was a lot denser than I figured, considering it mainly engaged with the second half of the class. Honestly, it was repetitive as hell and frustrated me, since we kept running over the same few theorists. Bazin, Kracauer, Brecht, Kracauer, Adorno/Horkheimer, Bazin, Benjamin, Adorno/Horkheimer, Bazin, Brecht, Kracauer. Sheesh. Dulac got in there too somewhere.

I got irritated while writing my essay question because I had to attempt to reconcile Brecht's ideas with those of Bazin, and Brecht doesn't play well with others. Including cinema as a medium in general.

An hour after that was the Anthro exam. It was the one I studied most extensively, and probably for the best (although US Studies was most deserving of my attention given my inability to get readings done there). The exam basically amounted to a 100-question trivia quiz, and I knew what I knew and missed what I didn't, and thankfully one was much larger than the other.

I'm feeling writery. I really wanted to write during the last two weeks but I couldn't justify spending much time on anything that didn't explicitly apply to school. Life is like that sometimes, albeit less so in the near future with only three classes remaining on my schedule for next semester. I'm still technically enrolled in The Graphic novel, but I've heard it's overrated and the schedule time doesn't really work for me so I might as well let someone more eager take it.

So tomorrow, after I go pick up my paper from Brit Lit, that'll be it until January, and the work overload may commence. I'll find time, however, to get some writing in, especially as I have ideas to fix up my play and a novel I'd love to bite into (dumb, too much commitment, yet a possible avenue to success? Can't know if I don't write it.) I swore I'd get back to my webcomic in December but it's looking unlikely; not impossible, just unlikely, since I still like my ideas I just feel way too, way too, way too exhausted.

Time to get my first restful night seemingly all month.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

F: Fictional Photograph

I've had it all on my shoulders lately.

It's early December. Work is getting more and more hefty. School is coming down all around me. Everything is exploding all the time. I don't think this blog's couple of readers will mind that I haven't had enough time to pull my head up and let it all out. And there's been a lot of it.

You can see me with my head in my hands running my fingers through my hair as I write this. The last couple of weeks feels like just a long chain of calamities, putting out fires and watching them start.

During the second semester of my third year, I realized working while being in school was like having two and a half jobs. Most classes want a little more attention than they feel deserving of. The store seems to need me all the time without consideration that I've got other shit going on in my life. And then there's all the commuting. Funny though. In year 3 semester 2, I felt more alive, more engaged, more energized than I ever had before: everything seemed to fall into place all the time. Now, well, I keep wanting to use that word calamity.

Truth be told, one paper a week in the month of November doesn't seem awful. I've had to skip a couple classes to get it done, but this is not a crime. I don't know how good any of the papers are. Well, I don't when I'm writing them, and I always doubt them until I get them back. I usually get 70's, and for a really strong effort I can get an 80, but who has the time? So I'm often worried the hammer's going to fall, some TA or Prof will see through my bullshit and give me the 65 I feel I deserve.

The film theory paper I handed in a couple weeks ago came back as a B, so it hasn't happened yet. Alex the TA made several accurate remarks about how the paper wasn't very ambitious. Time was, a note like that might've fired me up for this time but my brain is so cluttered and exhausted that we should all be happy I even got anything done. Back in August, I was wishing for this, but be careful and etc etc.

Next up was a British Literature paper that unintentionally and clumsily retreaded a lot of material from my first in-class assignment, so that's the next candidate. I wouldn't say that was a bad paper, just that I didn't use my space wisely. I had a whole motif I wanted to set up for my argument and by the time I had it laid out the paper was half-over.

This week it was US Studies, which had been a huge headache right up until I submitted it this afternoon at 3:15, and beyond. I'll explain. Despite the urgency of a half-credit course, US Studies has frankly been the class in which I have felt compelled to dog it. The readings are excessive, which leads to me not wanting to read them at all. The lectures, though informative, seldom feel relevant except as side notes. The tutorial is messy, although the TA has a decent enough sense of what he's supposed to do. I like it for a lot of reasons, but it happens to be the class in which nobody will notice if I'm not doing anything.

So for this research paper, we had a shitload of requirements, it's a 10-page paper, requiring a ton of outside sources. As a subplot, I misplaced my T-Card sometime this month and until I get it back, am not eligible to take books out from the library. Luckily, we have online resources, some of which are extremely useful.

The problem with the paper was in deciding what I wanted to say and how to say it. So this was one of the rare occasions where I actively went to my TA and consulted him. I'm not sure how much of his advice actually made it to my paper but I managed to get a lot of direction and a little motivation when I walked away. Unlike most papers I do, where work is done the night before and I spend a lot of time working out how much time I have to do it before class, I started on this son of a bitch Monday night. I kind of owed it to myself, having gotten Chantelle (who surely can't have an easier time than I do,) to cover my shift Monday night so I could work on it. I did spend a lot of that time dicking around, but by the end of the night I had worked with at least one important aspect of the paper, the close-reading of the artifact I had chosen.

The artifact in question was something I'd had a lot of experience with, the scene of Al Jolson performing My Mammy in The Jazz Singer (and by extension, the film itself.) I first saw it in Modern Drama before WWII last year, and then worked a lot with it in American Pop Music, so it was one of those things you randomly happen upon repeatedly in a single year. Having banked up a shitload of information about "notions of authenticity" from Pilzer's music class, (and not even really thinking about it until the TA used the word authenticity) I knew I had a lot to work with. I mean, it would've been nice if I'd managed to save any and all of those PDFs for that class, but luckily, there's no shortage of scholarship on this film, it being an important moment both in cinema history and race/immigrant relations.

The paper weighed on me heavily all week after that, knowing I'd have to work Thursday and therefore have limited time on Friday to finish it up. I wrote about half of it Wednesday night. This was motivated writing: coming out of British Literature, I probably could've tagged along to the bar with the girls I know in that class (no concrete offer was made but I hope I'm not kidding myself that they wouldn't have minded) but instead headed for home, to catch my train and get a good go of writing in before going to bed and going to work the next morning. I was so frustrated with myself at not biting the bullet and going to the bar that I pretty much forced myself to get that writing done, and while it wasn't as much as I'd hope, it was plenty, and after a short spurt on Thursday night, I finished it up this morning, with much satisfaction.

It's been tough, though, getting through these past couple of days. Been getting major stress headaches, been pissy, whiny, frustrated and having a hard time expressing myself. I don't want to complain... this is going to sound stupid because complaining is basically all I ever do, but I try not to complain too much about what's really bothering me unless I'm absolutely certain the person I'm complaining to wants to hear it. This is due largely to some adverse moments in high school, but it's my call to keep going with it. There's just so many quiet moments during the day when I just wanna break down, y'know? Just let it the fuck out. But I'm never really alone, never really safe, so it never happens. It also doesn't help that I haven't hung out with Manda much lately, between work and her dog.

I need someone in my life. No, I'm not starting this crap again, but everyone in my life seems so transient and compartmentalized, it would do much better if there was anyone who could make herself a permanent fixture.

The worst, most frustrating side-effect of my stress is that I've been getting all these ideas, all this stuff I want to write but have absolutely no time or wherewithal to do. I replotted an entire novel, something I've had in my head since like late 2006 but that only existed as fragments and broad strokes. Now it seems tangible, and fuck if it doesn't need to be written.

More on everything later. I've got a lot matter on the to-do list. I'm not even out of the woods yet, I have three tests on Tuesday (!!) to study for (?!). But I'm not obligated to write any more papers, so... yay. Trust me when I say this semester cannot end soon enough for me. Next semster -- my last as a fuckup undergrad -- will be a glide to the finish line. Well, it won't be easy, but it will be easier than this.

I hope.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto