"Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules??" ~ the Big Lebowski

Blogger.com has served me well, but it is time for a move. Update your bookmarks, sexy and devoted readers: The New Shots for Breakfast. Ta ta.
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  "Sorry, I'm just common." ~ Ben

To take up where I left off ...

We stayed at Barry's house so long that the family started opening presents. It was very bizarre - the old roommate's old boyfriend opened a package that was COMPLETELY EMPTY. It was never explained and he looked disappointed. And a 16-year-old girl opened a kitchen tile. Everyone was confused.

Right before we left we were all on the patio smoking various things, and Matt's ex-girlfriend was there. I had shocked and amazed both Matt and myself by being very nice to her - normally I get senselessly jealous in situations like that, feel threatened etc., but the gin had put me in a good mood and I was feeling slim - and she asked me for a cigarette. "Of course, of course!" I shouted, my arm around her shoulder, but then I realized I had only one left, and it was Christmas Eve. Nothing would be open the next day (Comox, for those of you who don't know, has a population of about 10,000 and there are no 24-hour corner store type things). But I gave it to her.

Then there was a blur of activity, and I found myself in a taxi zooming down darkened streets. I kept insisting we stop for cigarettes, and the cabbie kept insisting that it was impossible. Finally I sobbed, "I gave my last cigarette to my boyfriend's ex-lover!" and the cabbie said, "Awww," and reached for his pack and gave me 5! I was so touched. "Now you won't freak out on Christmas morning," he said kindly, but then started ranting that there had now been a total of 3 drunk girls in his cab that night and he'd had to give all of us smokes. It felt cheery, though.

Suddenly I was deep in a forest near Matt's parents house, and Matt was smoking weed and getting me to do breathing exercises to keep from puking.

Christmas morning: a little tragic. I could hardly move my head, and felt stupid. Who is hungover on Christmas morning? Not someone with my kind of lineage. A deep, deep sense of shame. But, I got some very wonderful, thoughtful gifts from Matt's family, and felt good and included.

A long nap, and then a Christmas dinner that consisted of homemade tempura (prawns, sweet potato, mushrooms, and banana!) and clams smeared in garlic butter. Only one glass of wine (white), and good talks and conversation with Matt's fam. It was a pretty special Christmas - the nicest in a long time. :)
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  "Let's break out the booze and have a ball!" ~ Peggy Lee

So, Christmas Eve in Comox. It started with a crazy and amazing West Coast breakfast of avacado and crab dip, smoked salmon, rolls, many different kinds of cheese. Then a tense and intense game of Hearts with Matt, Ryan, and Jon.

I spent the afternoon writing at the local coffee house. Revised my poem ("Fidel and Me," with a new caption by Sylvia Plath - "Every woman adores a fascist"), and almost finished the Relationship Story That is Trying Very Hard Not to be About Relationships Because I am Sick of Writing About Those. It's going pretty well.

Matt swung by the coffeehouse around 3, and we hung out for a little while with the dad of one of his Comox friends. The dad was cool and very intelligent, but we talked about writing for around 20 minutes and he never once mentioned a female writer. Finally I made one of my standard "Margaret Atwood is a goddess and we all worship her" comments, and the dad looked grave and said something like, "Well, I wouldn't say she's a BAD writer, no, I mean she's good, but nothing spectacular." I was stunned. But we are all allowed our opinions.

Matt and I hit the Lorne at about 4 - my favourite pub in Comox ever! Potato skins and plenty of beer. Barry stopped by and I got moderately drunk. So I was all pleasantly buzzed back at the house, and Jon refused to deliver a Christmas goody package to the neighbours, so I had to go. I enjoyed myself, but worry about having made a sloppy impression ... I wanted to say, "This isn't my fault! I've never been allowed to drink on Christmas Eve before!" But they wouldn't have understood.

Then a grand dinner at the home of some relatives, most of whom I knew a little. I kept very quiet during dinner, prompting Aya to point at me from across the table and whisper questions to Ryan in Japanese. In response I downed a rye and Coke, 3 or 4 glasses of red wine, and some port. Then things got very bright and loud, and I was shouting about how I had met Josee Choiunard (mostly true) and how sensitive she is about her weight even though she is devestatingly cute, it's just that she's a figure skater and female figure skaters are expected to be aenorexic but still have enough strength to land triple jumps, and everyone seemed quite fascinated. And we sort of got into my own tragic skating days, the foot problems that ended my promising career, etc.

I left to have a cigarette and fell down the stairs. A worried uncle's face above the bannister: "Are you okay?" Me: "Yes, yes ..." Then back inside, I decided to take it easy, and poured a mug of coffee. I hunted about for cream, and an uncle hefts this massive bottle of Irish Creme liquer into the air. "Cream!" he shouted merrily, and my downhill state continued.

We left at about 10:30. I was certainly ready to pass out, but instead we went to Barry's house and drank heavily until Barry's mom kicked us out at 3 in the morning. It was a glorious, wonderful time - a bunch of people were there that I hadn't seen in a while, including my old roommate's old boyfriend, who I had always liked - and Barry's parents partied along with us, telling fascinating stories about Yoko Ono happenings back in the day, and playing us Miles Davis on vinyl. Beer was circulating, and Matt and I killed an entire .26 of gin. ("The GIN!" as Ben would say, respectful.)

The stories go on ... But there are 2 children in my house right now, yelling and screaming and giving Sambuca a heart attack. They belong to my landlord and they're up to visit, so I think I should go tell them stories or something.
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  "What will become of Larry? What will become of his hairbrush?" ~ Vegi Tales

I have ruined my hair. Ruined, ruined, ruined. Oh well. I haven't ruined anything in my life in a while. I suppose it was time.
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  "WAKE UP!" ~Rage Against the Machine

Today's quote is my response to an article I read in this month's Reader's Digest. It's called "Foods That Fight Fat," and one of these foods is a grapefruit. Here is a direct quote (exclamation point mine): "And without added sugar, a grapefruit, by weight, has fewer calories than an orange!"

!!!

Suddenly we should avoid oranges because they have too many calories?! I am shocked and saddened. Oranges! Here is my recommendation for everyone reading this blog today: Go stuff yourself with fries and mayo and then dress up in baggy pyjamas and read gloriously in bed all day. Embrace cellulite!
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  "I've never heard of lovers that could be best friends." ~ the Lovin Spoonful

In what my father calls (sarcastically) my "infinite wisdom" (as in, "Joy with her infinite wisdom thinks that ..."), I have compiled a list of books that would be required reading for 1st Year university students if I had a say in things.

Non-Fiction:
1) The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer
2) Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
3) The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf
4) No Logo, by Naomi Klein
5) Survival, by Margaret Atwood

Fiction:
1) Self Help, by Lorrie Moore
2) Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood
3) The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
4) The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac
5) Sex is Red, by Bill Gaston

And that, as they say, is that.

Last night was fun. Matt's gig at Steamers, and much galivanting with him, Pete, Jay, Morgan, CM, and others. A free beverage (beverage is my new favourite word! But then it's always been), and an unpleasant incident with the bag check girl that turned out okay because I WON, in an intellectual sense, anyway. And that is the only sense that matters. Take my bag will you? Call it "humungous"? Fine, but I'm going to make you feel stupid before I go.
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  "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through." ~ Tom Waits

A short scene between Matt and Joy:

Matt brings Joy her second cup of coffee, all fixed up with a clean mug and milk. Joy is surprised and delighted.

JOY: Thank you babe! You're being so awesomely sweet this morning.
MATT: Well, I've been getting a lot of sex lately.
[pause]
JOY: That makes me feel very insecure, Matt.
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  "Why would she repeat something like that I wonder?" ~ the Royal Tanenbaums

A fabulous and fun evening last night!

It started at 5:30, when I got off work. I was sitting on a bench outside the SUB waiting to be picked up by Morgan, and she was about 2 minutes late so naturally I started freaking out and thinking I had been forgotten, and then a large mini-van swerved into the parking lot and the sliding door was flung open. A man was walking by just then, and Morgan shrieked, "Whoever catches this ball gets a free ride!" and hurled a plastic ball out into the night. The man looked at it in shock, and it hit him in the knees. He made a half-hearted, confused effort to pick it up, but I was too fast. I grabbed it and jumped in the van, where I was handed a water bottle filled with rye and diet Coke.

Next the mall: a bizarre experience no matter what the occasion, but stranger this time because we were with 3 soccer girls (all of them very nice and funky), and we went into all the stores I never go into - Guess and the Bay and some kind of sporting goods place. Morgan and I were sharing nips from the water bottle and asking various clerks questions that they could not answer. I was feeling spacey yet wonderful (gorgeous cashmere jackets and good company will do that to you), and when it was announced that Wal-Mart was next on the hit-list, I bailed, and fortunately Morgan bailed with me. We hung out on a bench by the fountain, smoking (du Maurier light for me, a clove cigarette for M) and talking about sad but important things.

At around 7 we hit Big Bad Johns, and within minutes a man named "Wade" came to our table and mumbled something about having a bet with his friends that he could get us to tell him our names. We complied immediately (Penelope and Esmerelda), but he would not go away and finally I had to tell him our first initials and say that he had one guess each and if he got them wrong he had to leave. He failed, despite taking his sweet time about it, and despite me telling a story (accidentily) in which the punchline is someone Morgan hadn't seen in forever shouting, "MORGAN?" Good times. He guessed Judith and Mary. Every time we passed his table that night his friends would say, "Ouch!" I was so confused to be hit on by someone at Big Bad John's who wasn't elderly that I couldn't figure out if the "Ouch!" was good or bad. Probably both.

Matt came soon - beautiful Matt! - and the soccer girls. We drank and shouted and made friends with some blonde girls and had deep discussions in the washroom. I got woefully drunk by the end, and had to keep very, very quiet and still to keep anything bad from happening.

Morgan rocks. Conversation with her is like the finest sushi - you can never eat enough of it - you must eat it constantly - and it makes you feel wonderful and alive and exciting.
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  "I don't wanna work. I just wanna bang on the drum all day."

Last day of ESL ... I don't wanna do it. :(

Today's entry shall be mostly dedicated to a woman who works at the sad, depressing grocery store that I frequent. She is a friendly woman, always has a smile, seems intelligent, and yet she has no real grasp of the fundamental elements of cashiering. In a word: speed. Now, I'm not a line-up Nazi. I have no problem waiting five minutes, or even, if it's busy and the line is long, ten minutes. But such trifling periods of time do not exist in this cashier's world. She scoffs at the idea of someone waiting in her line-up for just ten minutes. Scoffs! Today I waited over fifteen, and that is only when I did something about it. I am not kidding. She chattered with other people, randomly TOOK OFF to talk to someone at another till, re-arranged bags, took a little break to talk to one of the bakers who came over with this tray of tarts, took off to another till again, talked on the phone ... The woman in front of me had been there even longer than I, and her eyes were glazed and sad. You can't get pissed off in a long line-up; it's just not polite, and so pointless. So we stood there, glazed. But after just over fifteen minutes I abruptly grabbed my items from the conveyor belt and put them back in my basket. It looked rash, I'm sure, to all the people both ahead and behind me. There were gasps, although I didn't hear them. Then I walked over to another till, and was finished in under five minutes. When I left the store I saw all the same people still waiting in line, staring at me and my bags with longing.

But enough of that. Morgan's party rocked. It was one of those parties where a different party is taking place in every room, and I mainly gravitated through the party in Colin's room (weed galore, theatre folk, and old-school punk), the living room (faces old and new, racous stories, intense discussions about relationships and UFO's), and the patio (endless cigarettes with Morgan and Jay, and Morgan and I deciding that we would make a lovely couple if only certain circumstances weren't currently in the way. This, to the delight of several men on the patio with us, who kept saying excited things like, "C'mon! Kiss!" but I am faithful to my Matt). I passed out at 2, on a floor, and got up at 7:30 to go to work. The walk to work was nuts! All grey fog, and my eyes bulging out of my head from too much drink and little sleep. I stumbled my way through the day, slowly and with mistakes, prompting a co-worker to leave a note for me the next day which read, "If these forms get out of order again, I will kill you." At 1pm I met Matt for lunch at the grad lounge and had a huge plate of fries and a falafel burger. Felt so good to just stuff myself with starch.

Then that evening Ben and I had a tragic poetry editors meeting during which the other two editors did not arrive. Both had good excuses so I'm not pissed off at them, but I had been looking forward to making all the final decisions as a group. So Ben and I had final say, and I'm pleased with what we came up with, but I fear being perceived as some sort of Stalin-Hitler team, fucking the rules and crushing all opposition. Which, come to think of it, would rock! So it's all cool.
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