You're About to get THE BIRD.

Much like my issues with smells...I have issues with noise.

I have super cat-like hearing, which forces me to clutch my ears like a crazy person every time a firetruck/streetcar/police car squeals by, and to shush conversations sporadically when I think I've heard...something.

This leaves me, in some way, permanently on edge. Repetitive noises are especially maddening. Resulting in much rage.

Mmmm, passive aggressive rage.

No. More. Squeaking.

 

My office is conveniently nestled between an audio mixing suite that specializes in children's cartoons, and the office of a composer for television & commercials. Neither of these fine gentlemen have soundproofing. Neither of these fine fellows like to close their doors. Neither of these wonderful, upstanding, exquisite examples of humankind seem to have a speaker that goes below MIND SHATTERINGLY LOUD.

On any given day I can enjoy the 1sec repeating sound byte of a fake cat meow, or the 10sec clip of looped musical score (once he did a circus show so it was a week of repeating slide whistle! Boy-o-boy!) at wall-shaking volume.



...But I know something they don't knowwww...!

While I was hostel-ing my way across Europe and sharing small spaces with annoying, inconsiderate, LOUD LOUD LOUD people, I encountered an interesting phenomenon... When the noise input reaches the point of insanity, my brain flips a switch. Suddenly the overwhelming noise creates a nodal point of silence.

I like to think of it like my primary auditory cortex is having a tiny little stroke...I also like to picture it as Charlie Day:

 My Primary Auditory Cortex.

So how can I turn this into a giant weapon of auditory prowess?



Witness, THE BIRD.


It's so loud, and grimy sounding that it shatters my brain...and so, I shamelessly turn my speakers, and press them up against the wall...then set the dial to eleven.


Gentlemen? Check and mate.





...

As soon as they have built up a tolerance I will be switching to this:

The Friday Series!

Hola Amigos!



I've decided to change things up a bit here, and starting today, I will be posting a serialized (comic?) book I wrote in installments every Friday.

This is a book I wrote as kind of a bastard child of a graphic novel and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.

It is the hand-written diary of a 16 year old girl through one year of high school. She loves the Arcade Fire, and writes poetry...Get excited.



...Ladies and Gentlemen it is my great pleasure to introduce to you in serialization: Marrissa Radley-Bean.

Every Friday, I will bring you more from this lovely alter-ego lady. Be excited!

Things NOT to do on a Rainy Day in March.

If you are feeling depressed or uninspired, these are things I can recommend against doing...Especially on a rainy day in March:

• Listening to Leonard Cohen...srsly, wtf are you doing? Hang on, I'll grab the razorblades and your journal...we can make a day of it.
• Remembering that time in middle school when you hid in a closet and cried. This helps no one. In fact, this is exactly what most people repress memories to avoid.
• Browsing your Facebook pictures and harshly criticising yourself...don't you have work to do?
• Looking out the window. It's gross out there, stop.
• Thinking about how nice it would be to have a cup of tea on your sofa RIGHT NOW. Shut up.
• Remind yourself how much you rather be playing Skyrim. This is a direct route to serious depression.

Seriously...look how freakin' awesome that is...NOW STOP THINKING ABOUT IT.

• No listening to Pink Floyd. Just stop. Your 16 year old self used up your lifetime amount of plays.
• Get off Reddit. You are now browsing the NSFW links in r/wtf. Pretty soon you'll be in r/spacedicks and NOBODY wants that.
• Look away from the clock. It's not even lunchtime and you are not a Hobbit. You don't get elevensies. 
• Don't think about your upcoming TTC journey home. Why the fuck would you do that? This is why you don't do that. Any way you look at it, it isn't going to be good:

Lousy Smarch weather!

Subway food!

 

You may even get accosted by Mayor McCheese!

Spadina sex!

• Stop googling yourself. Chances are the only thing you're going to find is shameful.
• Move away from the job search sites. They haven't posted anything in weeks, and you're to wound-up too write a cover letter without sounding like a psychopath.
• DO NOT GOOGLE YOUR EXES. Chances are they are doing better than you, and on the off chance that they got fat, you're just going to feel depressed about entropy's increasing.
•  Avoid going into the bathroom, and if you have to, avoid the mirror. The rain has turned you into a dripping frizzball and combined with staring at the computer for hours you look like a deranged hobo. No one needs to see that, least of all you.
• Stop sending Facebook app invites. Nobody wants to play with you, and dredging up the buried emotions of the friendless 7 year old you once were is just NOT going to be good. 
• Do not look at your old Livejournal account and re-read your shitty high school poetry. You are not Keats. Shit son, you're not even Dennis Lee.

where's my alligator pie, bitch?

Bacon Wars

Bacon is a funny thing. It always starts off seeming like a good, nay, great idea. The sizzle sounds, the smell, the partly-crunchy-partly-soft deliciousness that goes so well with maple syrup...yea. It always starts off so well...

But...the aftermath, the "baconmath" is so foul...I hate it. In fact, I hate it so much I won't ever cook it...Oh I'll eat it. But only if someone else has offered to do the cleaning up.

Why?

First there is the pool of grease, a horrible reminder of how I am destroying my health, and looking at it I can just feel little chucks of partially congealed bacon fat clumping around in my arteries... Looking at it is bad enough, but then you need to dispose of it... Can't put that stuff down the sink, oh no! (this was all new to my husband...I nearly had a heart attack when I saw him pouring the grease down the sink...NO. NO NO NO...here's why)

There are many solutions for grease disposal alternatives, like candles, soap, bird feed, cookies, or even vodka flavouring. But no. Because, well... BECAUSE IT'S GROSS.

But why my hatred of cooking bacon? It can't just be the grease, right? There must be another reason, right? YES. There is.

THE SMELL.

You may have noticed I have issues with smells. I'm like a hipster-chic Francine Fishpaw... But back to the point... Bacon leaves this smell in the air. This greasy, pork-y, oppressive smell that permeates the whole house. It gets in your hair, your clothes, your furniture... You can cook bacon in the morning, go out all day, and come home to a house that smells like a pig just threw itself into the oven in a fit of sadistic suicide. Some people may love this...but I do not.

Imagine this...in your lungs. *shudder*

So where does the bacon war come in? WELL... we live in a 2nd floor apartment. In the past, our downstairs neighbours were happy little vegans, whose most offensive cooking odour was organic onions frying in soy butter. Now normal people meat eaters have moved in downstairs, and every weekend, without fail, bacon-smell comes pouring up through the air vents. It is a gastronomic assault that doesn't let up for hours. 

I do take a small amount of satisfaction in knowing that sometimes we beat them to the punch, and that it is them who must inhale our dead pig scent.

Things could be worse. I gather that. This ranks right up near the top of the "first world problems" list...but shut up.

This is a problem I can deal with. It's annoying, but livable...and at least I don't get guilt-tripped by downstairs vegans who grow organic vegetables indoors all winter for the homeless. Yea. That actually happened.

Oh well, all things considered I'll deal with pig stink because:

Smells I Have Smelt Exclusively in my (current) Place of Work

The dirty office on our floor has been making forays into the rest of the shared space. They have been employing their newest (and some would say) greatest weapon: smell.

It's like nerve gas, silent, deadly, and well...gaseous. Most of our battles now occur in the lobby and elevator, as I avoid using the washroom at work...

Here are some smells I have encountered in the last month, exclusively in the lobby:

1. Sickly sweet blueberry muffins - while this seems nice, it isn't. Think of the most horrible fake fruit chemical smell, now heat it up and sprinkle liberally throughout the lobby...THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE A MICROWAVE. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS HAPPENED.
2. Fart (naturally)
3. Sweat - keep in mind, this is in February.
4. "Floral" perfume - think of silk flowers and lace climbing into your mouth and choking you from the inside...yea.
5. BO - subtle, but different from sweat. You really learn to appreciate the subtleties of this kind of odour-ific warfare...

In the elevator:

1.  Cat pee - today in the elevator, one of their hipster "researchers" came in stinking of cat pee...It was a long ride.
2. Rotten Chinese food - but no food to be seen...Oooo! Mysterious!
3. Dog poop - The poop itself was actually found in the elevator. So it was more of a planted weapon than a nerve gas...
4. Dog pee - on separate days from the poop! Gotta keep things spicy!
5.  Cigarette - this one holds a special place in my temple of shitty things...I hate, HATE, cigarette smoke... The way it clings to everything leaving a tar-y, nicotine-y, ass piquant...*shudder*

...

But so what? These people are stink ninjas...You hardly ever see them, and even when you do (the cat pee elevator ride), they move in packs so you can never single them out! But if any of you are reading this blog...I want you to know...

 ...scowling in the corner, or peeking around a potted plant. I'm watching you...and when I find you I will internet-shame the stink off you.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5:15pm NEWSFLASH!!!!

I went down the back hallway...Touché.

Please tell me that's turpentine in the bottle...

 

I May Not Be a Failure! :D

This weekend I found myself eating a lot of mac & cheese and playing Skyrim. Oh god... But in between all that exciting adventuring and cheese, I found myself talked into showing a friend of mine a bunch of films I'd made in high school with friends.

I haven't watched these in years. Mainly because of shame. The type of shame that only a teenage brain can perfect and hone into a weapon that defies logic, time & space. Somehow, I knew that when people watched our Spiderman film (yes, it happened), they would know that I had broken-up mid-film with the guy playing Harry Osborne. This clairvoyance would turn me a million shades of red, and cause me to run away from the TV because I "Needed a glass of water really bad...".

I also (somehow, magically) knew that the audience could see the film playing in my head and would compare it to the actual film with at least as much harsh criticism as I did.

Eight years passes, and I get talked into playing my high school films: Ultimate Spiderman, The Magical Adventures of Lars Olafson, and The Night Shift.

I tense up, sweating... I cringe as the first film begins.

...

But then something happens, something wonderful... Time.


Things are not like I remember them at all. I actually laugh and enjoy myself. Hell, I'm impressed with 16 year old me (and Josh, and Matt, and all our long-suffering friends who acted for us)...not too shabby guys. Hell, there's more hard work in some of these films than I've seen from professionals (I name no names, but you know who you are lung-girl).

So where the hell did that all go? All that energy and drive? It's still there I think...but man, if you want to have someone ring out almost every last drop of motivation and pride in you... There's nothing like 6,000 word essays in film theory to kill your love of film making...


And there's nothing like your 16 year old friend dancing in a Spidey suit to re-inspire you to make films!

My Mother vs Neutrogena

I'm not made of stone.


Once or twice a year the stars align, and my hormones have decided that it's a free-for-all on my face at the same time a commercial for "new & fantastic facial cleansing tool" comes on TV. I can't resist. I am full of shame, but at varying times there have been abtronics, exercise balls, and proactiv products in my possession...

In one of these moments of insanity desperation weakness I bought a face scrubber made by Neutrogena, called "The Wave". It's a hand-sized gizmo that vibrates in combination with an abrasive pad and exfoliates your face as you wash it...to be fair, it actually works pretty damn well.

Thingamabob and abrasive pads.

But where am I going with this? I swear it's not an infomercial, I actually have a funny story...



At some point this fall I forgot my face scrubber at the cottage, and left it in the shower there. I thought nothing of it. Due to gettin' married (le gasp) in September I didn't get a chance to grab it before my folks closed the cottage for the winter.

Months pass.

We invite my folks over for dinner just after Christmas this year, and my mother (as per usual) announces on the phone that she is bringing over a bag of my stuff. I expect the usual mix of old clothes, school notebooks, and crap that she is trying to throw away "but thought you might like"...no mum, I do not want used plastic plant pots, or magazines, or VHS tapes... I haven't had a VCR since 2001. But I digress...

When they arrive, she takes me aside and hands me a few bags of crap stuff I might like, then lowers her voice and pulls me closer...

Mum: "Claire...I found...something of yours at the cottage..."
Me: "Ok, cool!"

Me, happy to receive crap stuff

Mum: "Claire...*lowers voice even more*...can you tell me what this IS? (presents face cleaner)

Object in question.

Smirking Mother.

Me: "It's my facial exfoliator."
Mum: *dirty smirk* "Uh huh."
Me: "What? Oh god...oh god no."

Me.

My dirty, judging mother.

Despite my protestations that it was, in fact, the Neutrogena Wave, meant to eliminate blackheads and contribute to an overall glow of beauty and health, my mother is convinced that I use a sex toy that incorporates an abrasive, replaceable pad.


Now I try and hide my facial exfoliator when guests come over, lest they think I am into exfoliating...other areas. Just what I need...another baseless neurosis.


Thanks mom.