katesversion

Crazy Cat Dance Party (Fun!)

2010-06-05T16:01:00.005-05:00

Bernard Fanning Writes A Hymn (And A Good One, At That)

2010-04-10T13:33:00.002-05:00

Just good.

Sunday Afternoon Salmon Tartare

2010-03-28T17:53:00.012-05:00

One of the blessings of leaving near the Atwater Market is that you can choose to have a salmon tartare on Sunday afternoon for no reason in particular. This recipe is borrowed, probably mostly in spirit, from Bar & Boeuf. Bar & Boeuf is a wonderful restaurant in downtown Montreal across the street from my office, where my roommate also happens to work. Because my roommate works there (and is such a wonderful person) I was able to spend a shift in the kitchen, mostly observing but also deveining fois gras poorly. Watching orders of tartare being prepared reminded me that I loved these raw bits. I also realized that I had yet to make one at home. Anyway, this is a very basic salmon tartare that's lovely with a glass of Sauvignon blanc on a Sunday afternoon.

From Cooking & Food (Montréal)

Ingredients are as follows:

sushi-grade salmon
dash of olive oil
minced shallots
chives
finely chopped dill
coarsely ground sea salt
fresh ground pepper
lime zest
fresh lime juice

Rinse your salmon in cold water and pat try. Cut the salmon with a sharp knife into small cubes. There is a specific way to cut sushi, I'm not entirely sure if it does in the case of tartare. Well, I'm sure it does to some people but it doesn't really to me.

Add a dash of olive oil and coat the salmon until it's got a bit of a sheen. Add everything except the lime juice and mix gently together. Refrigerate for about an hour.

From Cooking & Food (Montréal)

Now that that's done, slice baguette into to fairly thin pieces, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and bake in an oven at 425 for a couple of minutes, or until they're slightly brown.

Assemble and enjoy!

From Cooking & Food (Montréal)

You Know You Work Too Much When...

2010-03-28T13:32:00.004-05:00

You propose to your partner a surprise date night tradition whereby each of you, every month, plans a surprise date for the other. You add that each surprise date should be evaluated using a set of criteria mutually agreed upon in advance and that all evaluations should be compiled so that the health of the relationship can be charted over time. Um, yeah. Vacation, anyone?

From April Holiday (France)

Found Poem

2010-03-15T20:20:00.006-05:00

So it's a found poem sort of, I found it in an old notebook from a decade ago...

C'est la grande ville
et c'est
la belle et éclatante maternelle
Ma copine mélange
de la peinture
dans son verre de jus
et elle me promet, me promet
du noir
C'est la grande ville

Smoking: Epic Love & Hatred

2010-03-05T18:46:00.004-06:00

It's expensive, useless, smelly, deadly. And we do it anyway. I do it anyway. Not regularly, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I do it sometimes and shouldn't at all.

Is it because I did it when I was young? It's like a first love: the best parts manage to pierce the thick weight of memory loss. And the bad parts? Well, what bad parts? Oh yeah, the ones yet to come.

How is it that in the midst of all this Progress that companies are still allowed to sell a product that kills people? Not maybe kills people, but definitely kills people. And a lot of them, at that. Money, power, a lot reasons I guess. But none of them good. None of them good enough.

My Cousin Karen's Most Excellent Ceasar Salad Dressing

2010-01-10T19:52:00.004-06:00

Step 1 - Take a clove of garlic, smash it, cover it with olive oil and put it in a small container. Then take this concoction and put it into the freezer for 1 hour. (This step is supposed to make the dressing thicker.)

Step 2 - In a blender mix together:

0.5 tsp. ground pepper
0.5 tsp. dry mustard
2 tsp. worchestershire
1 can anchovies
1 coddled egg
2 tbsp. grated parmesean
3-4 tbsp. lemon juice (approx 1/2 a lemon)
3/4 cup olive oil frozen garlic clove (from Step 1)

And that's all, folks! It's very good, particularly if you enjoy anchovies (which I never thought I would, but at 25, very much do).

Best Quote Ever

2009-12-17T19:18:00.004-06:00

I mentioned to Joe (we're being more conscious about our meat consumption these days) that he could get organic sausage or bacon for tonight's perogie dinner if went to Atwater Market, which is about a kilometer further than the IGA. His response was: It's too cold to be moral.

Fair enough. At minus 26 with the wind chill, I'm tempted to agree.

You're Smart, You Know That?

2009-12-16T17:33:00.005-06:00

It's happened to me, more than once, to have someone turn to me, look rather honest and say, "you're really smart, you know that?" Not in some many words. More awkwardly, or quickly or something. But more or less that. It happened to me today.

Does it happen to everybody? Not because I'm interseted in knowing whether I'm smarter than other people (I am, but I'm also stupider than a GRRREAT many others), but because I'm interested in the kind of people who make these confessions, accusations of intelligence. Is it about complicity? "We're smart, but not everbody is. We've got something in common."

I think it's about complicity. I think it's the secret handshake of my intelligence bracket (it's a spectrum, I know, but the purpose of conversation...): not smart enough to exist exclusively in subtlety (booze doesn't help), but smart enough to know when they've got company. Bonjour.

Cookies, Of The Online Persuasion

2009-11-30T15:19:00.001-06:00

I had to answer a couple of questions about cookies for a continuing studies certificate I'm taking in Web Intelligence. The whole exercise was so interesting that I thought I'd share.

Are you willing to give up your "privacy" in order to have easier-to-use websites?

The author’s use of quotation marks implies that even he/she is unsure as to whether veritable privacy, or “privacy” as it is commonly understood, is at stake. The question presumes that first-party cookies (the tool employed to make websites easier to use) require you to give up some kind of privacy.

Wikipedia (although not always the most reliable, by far my favourite website) describes privacy as the “ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively”.

Do cookies threaten a user’s ability to selectively reveal themselves? I think third-party cookies do, but I believe that “giving up privacy in order to have easier-to-use websites” is a question about first-party cookies, since third-party cookies are most often used by advertisers to track visitor behaviour across a broad portfolio of websites and not to improve a particular website’s ease-of-use.

To explore a different angle of the debate, I don’t necessarily think first-party cookies require us to give up privacy. I should mention that I understand first-party cookies to be tied to a single domain. It occurred to me that multinational conglomerates might use cookies to track user behaviour across multiple sites and brands; I would consider those to be third-party cookies. Although I don’t think the distinction will be valid for long.

The issue of health care related web interactions is an interesting one. If I visit a disease-specific information site and provide my email address in order to receive news alerts, I am privately and consciously transacting with the operator of the website for the purpose of receiving communications. If my email address, associated with that disease-specific site, is eventually the basis for an insurance provider to deny me coverage, I think it’s fair to say that my privacy has been violated and that I (sure as hell) didn’t sign up for that.

Similarly, in the case of cookies, if I visit a site and my settings are such that a cookie is downloaded to my machine, I am choosing to reveal a discrete amount of information to the website operator. Data is being created about a private interaction, between me and the operator’s site. But I don’t agree to be eventually denied insurance coverage because the site’s cookie history was sold to an insurance company.

Just like walking down the street, I’ve never thought that interacting with a website was an entirely anonymous activity. The web is a community of users, gathered behind websites, and interactions with users, people create information. If you want to wear a paper bag, you’re welcome to change your privacy settings, but people are still going to see you walking down the street (i.e. analytics solutions will recognize your location, browser settings, length of visit, pages viewed).

I may be rambling. To wrap it up, I don’t think that we have to give up privacy to have easier-to-use websites. But I think that we need to have more clearly articulated privacy standards where the onus is on websites to comply and not on users to review lengthy and complex privacy policy statements. But that’s a question for another day.

Are you willing to give up your "privacy" so that the ads you see on websites are likely to be more relevant to you?

Yes, but only because it’s useful for work: to see what kind of targeted campaigns people are running. I subscribe to the widespread marketing industry hypocrisy that loathes being on the receiving end of a sales pitch, however relevant.

My Secret Confession

2009-11-05T20:58:00.002-06:00

I can't cook rice.

Baked Fish Fillets, Love Aunt Betsy Anne

2009-10-28T19:01:00.001-05:00

1 pound fish fillets
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
Dash salt and pepper
1/2 cup milk
1 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon snipped parsley
Oven 350 degrees

Cut fillets into serving pieces. Place in greased shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice, paprika, salt and pepper. In saucepan melt butter; blend in flour, salt and pepper. Add milk; cook and stir until thick and bubbly. Pour sauce over fillets. Sprinkle with crumbs. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Trim with parsley. Makes 3 or 4 servings.

I’ve used lots of different kinds of fillets with this recipe and all seem great – although our favourite is orange roughy which unfortunately is hard to find here in Jasper. You can also add more spices if you want and it’s quite easy to double the recipe. Double if you want lots of sauce.

Enjoy!

Love Aunt Betsy Anne

Meet Our New Pet Rats (No, Really)

2009-08-08T18:16:00.008-05:00

We adopted a couple of young male rats at the Montreal SPCA today. Named them Eegrek and Doublevé, my original spelling of the French letters Y and W. We're just getting used to each other at the moment, but they're terribly cute and have great taste in food, just like their parents. They had barbecued chicken, avocado, blueberries and cheese for dinner tonight. But we're planning for a more grain and fruit-based diet as a rule.

Meet Eegrek, as Joe notices that there is a wee pit of poo on his back (probably acquired during the metro ride in the cardboard box) that needs to be cleaned up.

Meet Doublevé, who's feeling a little bit shy.

The Club Sandwich Made Well

2009-08-07T10:09:00.010-05:00

There are many things I appreciate about North American greasy spoons. The club sandwich isn't one of them. You know how there are some dishes that even the sketchiest of restaurants would be hard pressed to screw up? You guessed it, the club sandwich isn't among them. You can screw up a club sandwhich alright - and how. I was reminded of this when I ordered the "flagship" turkey club at a greasy spoon somewhere in Orillia on my birthday. Limp iceberg lettuce, mayo in little packets on the side. I dare not recall the horror in further detail. As for the matter of my being in a greasy spoon in Orillia on my birthday, that's a story for another time.

Clubs are the boyfriend's favourite sandwiches, so I made a couple for us last night. Follow these rules and you'll be just fine.

Don't use cold cuts. Like EVER. Use yesterday's leftover chicken or turkey, or cook a breast especially for the occasion.
Layer, you haven't got a choice. I hate sandwiches that fall apart and that's what you're bound to end up with unless you work with three pieces of bread. When building a club sandwich, you're an engineer. Test the viability of your structures on a sample sandwich before applying your blueprint to the whole batch.
Speaking of working with bread, skip the standard loaves and splurge for something gourmet. I tried a lovely olive loaf yesterday and it was worth the slightly outrageous price.
Spreads! Each piece of bread should be spread generously with something. A lovely Dijon, or something spicier if you prefer. If you're die-hard for mayo, you could opt for Dijonnaise. Marmalades and jellies can be interesting as well, just remember not to complicate the taste of your sandwich too much. You've already got tons of ingredients coming together in your masterpiece and need to be wary of a clusterfuck (pardon my French).
Make sure your vegetables are fresh - a rule that applies to all recipes. Limp lettuce is the worst. My preference is romaine, tomato (thinly sliced) and avocado. Simple but classic.
To toast or not to toast, that is the question. In my opinion, it's really up to you. Depends on the bread, depends what you like.

We had ours last night (untoasted) with curry cream of asparagus soup and tabouleh. As per usual, there was too much food.

Envy

2009-08-06T18:21:00.005-05:00

Eats me like a thick steak
Masticating at a masterful pace
Grinding, licking, tearing
At every raw and salty bit
Of flesh on the plate.

New Thyme

2009-08-04T22:34:00.001-05:00

My Mother's Chicken Amman

2009-08-04T18:23:00.010-05:00

I have had this recipe scrawled with a dying pen on a crumpled piece of paper stained with red wine for far too long. This was one of the dishes my mother would make when we had company coming over, before my father became a vegetarian, as I recall.

600 ml plain yogurt
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tsp cardamom
2 1/4 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp chili powder
3 cloves garlic
6 chicken legs

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Press the garlic into the yogurt and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two, if you've got time. Remove from the skin from the chicken, place thighs snugly in a lightly greased pan. Mix the spices and flour together then blend into the yogurt. Pour spiced yogurt on to chicken and bake for just under an hour.

Enjoy!

Bud Light Lime: You Can Run But You Can't Hide

2009-08-04T09:58:00.002-05:00

It's everywhere. Like absolutely everywhere. I can't even conceive of the scope of the marketing plan. Saw this driving home from the train station the other day. Joey is determined not to try it; I think I'll cave eventually. Love Stephen Colbert on the product: "It's like drinking Bud Light downwind from an artificial flavor factory."

Friends + Chipmunk + Peanuts + Video Camera =

2009-07-30T10:34:00.001-05:00

Touch Yourself, Thank Me Later

2009-07-08T11:28:00.024-05:00

I'm obsessed with medical blogs. This is mostly because I've started fantasizing about becoming a doctor, unlikely as that may sound to those who know me. I know, I know. I don't get it either. Relax, they don't let people like me into med school.

Anyway, while reading my favourite medical blog, Vitum Medicinus, I stumbled across a new one, coincidentally (or ironically? I give up) named Incidental findings. So I poked around a little and ended up reading a post called Why I didn't do oncology.

It was a very interesting post (I had no idea there were such dirtbag oncologists out there), but the bit that really got me was about the 46-year-old woman with two young daughters and a really bad kind of breast cancer. The kind that doesn't respond to treatment. The kind that metastasizes to parts of your body you didn't even know you had while the people who love you are helpless to do anything except wear pink ribbons and cry a lot. Which got me thinking about the last time I conducted a breast self-exam.

I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had given myself a breast exam.

The Canadian Cancer Society states plainly that 1 in 9 women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime and that 1 in 28 women will die of it. Bloody hell.

So this is me, telling you (and me), that we need to conduct monthly breast self-exams. STARTING NOW. Like tonight. Go home and touch yourself, thank me later.

Aw, A Heart-Shaped Potato! Or, How I Still Don't Get Irony

2009-07-04T11:02:00.009-05:00

So we were barbecuing the other day and my boyfriend Joe came across a heart-shaped potato. Then he surprised me with it. Then I took pictures because I thought it was so damn cute. Then I got excited about framing the picture. Then I realized that his t-shirt had a big swear word on it. Then I sighed because ALL of his t-shirts have swear words on them. Then I thought that the swear word might make the photo ironic instead of cheesy. Then I realized that I still don't get irony.

This Is What I Have To Deal With When I'm Trying To Work...

2009-06-20T10:47:00.001-05:00

Life Is Too Short To Have A Job You Don't Like

2009-06-17T09:44:00.013-05:00

Simple as that. I had a lunch meeting with a person who recounted a simple, but very insightful anecdote about happiness at work. For the purpose of the post, I'll refer to him as Marc.

Marc was once having beers with an old friend who worked for a big telecom company. They started talking about the lottery and Marc recalled that he had once met a woman who would keep her job if she won the lottery. He asked his old friend, "Would you keep yours if you won 10 million tomorrow?" The friend replied that he sure as heck wouldn't. Then he asked Marc the same question. After a brief pause, Marc replied that he probably would keep his job. Why not? He liked it: the people were nice, lots of autonomy, not too much stress. We should all be so lucky.

I've had a couple of jobs that I would quit in a heartbeat given the chance. But I've also had one or two that I would totally keep if I won the lottery. As Marc recounted to me, smiling, "No big deal. Win the lottery? Call the boss, take a couple of weeks. Blow off steam on a cruise or something and get back to it."

What kind of job do you have: lottery-win-quit or lottery-win-keep?

Perth Potato Salad

2009-06-09T19:32:00.003-05:00

Who doesn't like potato salad? Well, some people, I guess. But some people also buy Viagra online, drive without insurance, think privatizing medicare is a step forward, etc. Basically,
there's no trusting people who don't like potato salad, especially THIS potato salad, which is really friggin' good. My friend Sarah's parents made it for me once while I was at their cottage near Perth. There's been no looking back.

I don't use measurements when making this recipe, or most recipes, for that matter. Use your judgment, adjust for taste.

1) Start by boiling potatoes. Try red-skinned or new and don't worry about peeling them as long as you give 'em a good scrub. I don't keep track of time, but usually poke regularly with a fork until they're easily pierced. Remember that they'll cook a little even after they've been strained because they're still so damn hot. So yeah, boil 'em, strain 'em and then refrigerate for a couple of hours, or overnight, if you can manage it.

2) Now for the eggs. You're going to want (despite what your doctor may say) to use quite a few eggs. I go with about half the volume of the potatoes; remember, your celery, radish and other veg are going to increase volume further. Egg hard-boiling best practice: rather than boiling them for the duration, let the water come to a boil, cover, turn off the element and leave for at least 15 minutes. The heat from the water is sufficient to cook the eggs beautifully and this technique minimizes that grey yolk effect that is kind of gross.

3) Veggie time. Chop celery, green onion, radishes, lots of dill and a bit of parsley.

4) Dressing! There are various schools of thought on potato salad dressing: mayo versus Miracle Whip, mustard powder versus 'tard from the jar, multiple spices versus plain. Generally my advice is to go with what you like. But when it comes to Miracle Whip, I have a bit of a different opinion. As far as I'm concerned, Miracle Whip is one of the things truly wrong with this world. A super-artifical, sugary "dressing" marketed to poor people as a more economical and tasty alternative to mayo. These days, it won't save you much: mayonnaise and Miracle Whip cost pretty much the same thing. And if you're really die-hard for sugar or spice, throw in your own. But for the love of cooking, don't buy Miracle Whip. Stick with mayo; it has a cleaner, more neutral taste and a more useful texture.

My potato salad dressing usually looks something like this: 5 parts mayo, 1 part mustard, onion powder, paprika and last, but not least, lots of black pepper.

5) Get it together: mix potatoes, veggies, eggs and dressing in a big bowl and refridgerate for an hour or two before serving.

Goes well with nearly everything. This weekend we had it with barbecued ribs and tandoori chicken. Yums!

New Management Implements Style Guidelines

2009-06-07T15:38:00.007-05:00

Oh yeah, and *new* management has just implemented style guidelines. As of now, katesversion employs a home-grown mix of Chicago, Canadian Press, titles-in-start-case-cuz-I-can and some-rules-are-made-to-be-broken.

Under New Management

2009-06-07T14:40:00.003-05:00

So not exactly *new* management, but more mature management. I've decided to pick up blogging again at the ripe old age of twenty-four. I am more thoughtful and interesting than I was the first time around. Okay fine, I may not be more thoughtful and interesting, but I've improved in some ways. At least a few. I'm not sure which. I'm still self-indulgent. And kind of crazy. Oh yeah, and I live in Montreal now. But the good news is, I'm bloggin again. That's good news, right? Right. That's what I thought.

Deep Thoughts About The Internet Space-Time Continuum

2008-01-01T15:09:00.002-06:00

So it's actually June 9th, 2009 at 3:09 p.m. I'm writing a fake blog post and hacking the date so that there is not a whole year missing in my blog archives. It's an aesthetic thing, might have something to do with my mild (self-diagnosed) OCD. Does that make me a bad person? *wrings hands compulsively* There is no such thing as time on an Internet where time-stamps can be hacked. You heard it here first.

I was going to stop there, but I'm beginning to get excited about the prospect of going back in time (or the Post Options menu, as the case may be) and writing 2008. Maybe I will.

peaches in november

2007-11-04T19:38:00.003-06:00

The wind was brisk and cold, the way it always
Is after Hallowe’en, when the costumes have been
Tucked away between the shoe box containing

Receipts from 2004 and a relative’s wedding dress,
Air-sealed in a plastic zip-up container in the front hall.
I walked through the parking lot behind his building,

It’s worn down painted white lines introducing themselves
To me as I approached the electric sliding glass doors
Of the high-end grocery on his corner. It’s smallish

Feeling aisles, packed tightly with lovely containers
Of brightly-coloured jam and four dollar croissants
Were so inviting on a November morning north.

What a travesty, I thought, when the grocery manager
Told me that there were no peaches. That peaches
Didn’t come in with the shipments from September to May.

That you couldn’t get peaches in November anywhere
In Toronto. But I had such faith that this was a city that
Could produce anything I might desire, why on earth

Would I otherwise pay so much in rent. Why crowd
Into dirty subway cars and trudge through mucky, sad-filled
Streets unless to be able to part one’s hair behind and

Dare to each a peach. In November, even.

when my friend asked how i was feeling, after having taken a few days off of drinking beer, i solemnly answered

2007-09-24T21:50:00.002-05:00

stoned

because i'm in the mood...

2007-09-14T17:44:00.002-05:00

i do not purport to stand unaccompanied, my finger on the pulse of an otherwise un- or ill-defined generation. i do not pretend that my language is my own. i have no knowledge but experience and that tenuously borrowed from twenty-one years, only seventeen of which were spent sober. i have a proposition. i propose that the great fears of centuries past (death, war, poverty, disease) have failed to properly impress themselves upon those i would call my countrymen, were it not for breasts, progress and urban sprawl. i settle for peers. drowning in comfort, marching to the impossible beat of technology, we resign ourselves to fears much more pedestrian: mediocrity, addiction, divorce, retirement. and how to blame us? having been born into the unmitigated generosity of a previous generation...and video games, unapologetic spawns of the devil, relieving children everywhere (albeit predominantly north-american) of any latent life-defining phobia they might still possess. the unlucky few who've avoided twenty-first century bliss have, in the past, been dealt with with by many consumables, most recently celebrex. and my thesis, you ask? i have none. this is but another self-concerned rant by another spoiled brat in a generation of would-be poets without proper pain or focus.

wednesday night jazz

2007-09-12T21:34:00.003-05:00

The sounds of jazz are loud here,
Like the clanging of pots and pans
While father is playing the piano
And mother is a younger, darker haired
Version of herself, singing smoothly
About I can’t give you anything but love.
The living room walls are red and the
Trumpets sound now with a familiar tune
Sleeping children could recognize.

Smoking is the requisite for all of these
Things, contemplating the changing
Of seasons, how the ivy near the window
Has been complaining lately, of snow.
How my skin seems more creased when
I look in the mirror, my teeth bearing their
Age like a crest. The changing of seasons
Is such a wretched time, beautiful and full
Of agony all at once. Smooth voices soothe.

stallers

2007-09-11T17:36:00.002-05:00

i would like to begin by stating that my general opinion on women is that they are by far the more intelligent, interesting and well-adjusted half (51%) of the species. i would like to continue by saying that, that being said, sometimes i just have ask myself "what the fuck?"

i work in an office at yonge and wellington and drink a lot of coffee. this finds me making frequent trips to the WC. and every single time i bust open the swinging washroom door i hope to find the place empty. i think it's fair to say, that save for the occaisional fetishist, no one likes company in the b-room. but because there are 40 women in my office and three stalls, there is invetiably another human being going about their business while i attempt to go (at mine).

i call them stallers. these women who sit in stalls, silent, waiting for me to make my exit so that they can go (about their business) alone. the thing i find exceptionally curious, is how long they'll wait in silence and how many of them there are! i figure that the point of the exercise (stalling) is to avoid having to share with any other member of the office the fact that you're taking a shit. and the details of that shit which, i presume, if you're bothering to stall, aren't particularly savoury.

word to the stallers: shoes are your identifying feature. based on your shoes, i can deduce your height, age and fashion inclinations. and because there are only 40 of you, you'repretty easy to peg once back in the corporate space, where i can connect your shoes to your face. what's worse, being identified as a staller, or admitting that you have to take shits?

advice to the stallers: courtesy flush! while you're still sitting (and i know this is getting detailed, but i feel it's important) about to embark on the dark mission, flush the toilet and go with it. we won't hear you (this works best in business bathrooms with industrial flushing mechanisms), it'll smell significantly less and even if we sort of hear and it sort of smells, you're allowed to take shits! it's okay. we all do it. we all need to do it. and for those of you who aren't having regular post-meal bowel movements, you've got bigger things to worry about than judging those who do.

stallers disband! shit freely my women friends!

monday night riot

2007-09-10T18:18:00.001-05:00

The hungry hands of my heart
Have tightened their grip and
Are rattling my ribs like prison
Bars, their voices echoing through
Veins and dark cavities like an alarm
That reminds on this clear day
you are only human.

Oh these human parts! This army
Of human parts which I govern like a tyrant
Rely on me, trusting that I will sleep,
To dream, to wake, to feed, to love again.

Oh these human parts! These eyes
Which have seen years fly by in a flurry
Of colour and space, these hands
Which have felt the sticky backs of lovers
And the smooth, sharp edges of razor
Blades. This heart which has thumped
Softly in the depths of an urban evening,
And pounded with anger in the torrid heat
Of adolescence. Oh these human parts!

alanis morissette on love

2007-09-07T20:27:00.001-05:00

it's tortured, ugly, pretty and involves much whining. i don't like the way that my itunes seeks out every audio file on my computer and compiles them into some giant playlist that, when shuffled, finds me drinking wine to the sound of my own voice recording voicemail messages in mp3 format for various support lines in the office. i don't like the way that beer caps inevitably end up in my purse and pant pockets. i don't like way my beer is hot before i finish it in every month except november, december, january and february. i don't like the way i can't tan and do burn, in the months where my beer is hot before i finish it. i don't like the sound that the keyboard makes on my new hp. i don't like that my life is regulated by business hours.

i especially hate the fact that if i knew anything about the kind of love this canadian girl is whining about, i wouldn't give a shit about any of things i don't like. i figure that's the way it works, anyway. don't correct me if i'm wrong, it's the light at the end of the tunnel i don't like.

the new digs are hot

2007-09-05T19:01:00.001-05:00

that's all.

new house

2007-09-01T01:46:00.001-05:00

moving's a bitch. that's all.

a day on hold with rogers: capitlism and efficiency

2007-08-29T19:15:00.001-05:00

i spent the day on hold with rogers. and by day, i mean two and half hours. and by rogers, i mean the assholes to whom i pay $200 a month in useless charges which are consistently itemized in a language other than english and subtotaled using formulas my mind has not the means to comprehend. i don't like phone companies.

i work for a phone company. and it's entirely possible that the policies i assist in implementing are as frustrating to my customers as rogers' policies are to me. which brings me to my next point: does capitalism really breed efficiency?

viki: all capitalism does is breed efficiency. but the question we need to ask ourselves is: do we want our world to prioritize efficiency over the quality of human experience? an obsession with the bottom line leads to a society which serves the interests of imaginary flows of capital above those of the people.

sashimi (the dog): arf. wag tail. lick toes of master. the question we need to ask ourselves is: where is the food?

kate: the problem with macro efficiency is that is breeds micro inefficiencies. where are we seeking efficiency? in financial models of broad scope. it is decidely efficient for ted rogers to hire morons to staff his call centre, because it keeps his labour costs low. and it's likely that somewhere in the heart of the great red beast there is a spreadsheet which measures levels of customer resentment, the likelyhood of lost revenue because of policies that are designed to a person the run around until they don't want to run around anymore and just charge the damn thing to their visa and have a beer instead. i'm having a beer. the cost of efficient customer/customer service interactions (i.e. giving reps the training and power to deal with situations as they see fit) is definitely greater than the cost of crediting the customers who are willing to wait to speak to supervisors, and more dangerous as well. i waited nearly two and a half hours on hold today, which, from my individual perspective, is as far from efficiency as you could possibly get. this efficiency that our economic system is allegedly breeding minimizes not human hardships, not human irriations, not human frustrations, but is rather designed to maximize the amount of money that makes it to the top. there is also a distinct lack of competition in the canadian telecommunications sector, but that's a matter for another rant.

the pizza is here.

post-modern bohemian cake

2007-08-28T19:43:00.001-05:00

the roommate (god bless her soon to be vietnam-loving-english-teaching soul) has made a cake. she added a touch of rat poo and extra-thick chocolate icing for taste. actually, the rats added the poo and she just took care of the icing, but it's a group effort, so credit is shared equally amongst all family members.

peter says i'm published dammit

2007-08-27T18:46:00.001-05:00

i'm toying with the idea of applying for the cbc literary awards. like a responsible contest participant i went online and read the contest terms & conditions. they're accepting only unpublished work. in my case, it's a 1000-2000 words of poetry for a potential first prize of $6000, a second prize of $4000. yeeeeaaaaah. there are a couple of road blocks: (1) you basically have to be michael ondaatje to walk away it. he's a former winner. and although the contest requires that you submit unpublished work, it doesn't require that you be unpublished. which basically means that every canadian author with six hours on their hands and a few pages of unpublished poetry is vying for the cash. (2) your work has to be unpublished. i know this is beginning to sound repetitive, but this is a key point for me: the cbc considers blogs a form of publication! all of the good stuff i've posted over the past year and change is therefore ineligible for competition. it's not as though i don't have little diamonds in the rough kicking around my desktop, but having to be concerned that they've been published on some random website and are therefore ineligible is a pain in my ass. i love google, but not in this case. having random house pay you eight grand to put out a chapbook is one thing, but creating and posting a blog entry is considered equivalent? (3) the winning entries are published in air canada's En Route in-flight magazine. you've read it, don't lie, we all have. the En Route magazine, in case you haven't guessed, is an issue for a number of reasons: first and foremost, no air canada exec in their right and sober mind is going to publish a kate leadbeater poem, primarily because kate leadbeater poems inevitably contain sex (and all the components thereof: pussy, cock, tits, ass, etc.), swearing, drinking, smoking, drugs, small children being assautled in...okay i'm exaggerating. but STILL. the cbc literary awards were clearly designed to fuck me. and you peter mansbridge, alleged guardian angel of mine, have seriously disappointed.

august, winter & alpacas

2007-08-18T10:24:00.001-05:00

i wore a sweatshirt last night, it was cold, slept with the windows closed, too. woke up this morning to discover it was still cold, which simply isn't right. august is too early for hints of winter, and maybe it's because i'm getting older, but i simply don't understand how the summer has evaporated the way it has.

commercials on tv about alpaca farming - it is my calling. forget the corporate gig, i'm gonna make me an alpaca farm. send all sweater/sock/toque orders to myalpaca@bestjobever.com.

baby blogs

2007-08-16T20:01:00.001-05:00

what is the deal with baby blogs...i don't get it. have a child, can't let go of the inter-web, must post pictures...must announce to the world that the 2 year old has finally had an independant bowel movement. holy christ, someone bust out the pyrotechnics. it's so far from party worthy that i'm tempted to reference the bowel movement again. diaper.

your child is your own and the blogosphere is not that village.

organized sports and fucking mobility

2007-08-16T19:40:00.001-05:00

organized sports are good things to bring mothers to, they like seeing you run and be sweaty, be part of something friendly. i'm on hold with sony ericsson customer service because it's my last ditch hope of getting a k790a. i loved that phone so goddamn much that i cried when i filed the police report: it was stolen. along with my bank card, driver's license, the prada purse my russian boyfriend's mother gave me for no occaision in particular. all of it gone. the prada purse can't be replaced (by me, at this time, anyway) and was really of little use, unless you consider the pedigree.

fuck pedigree, i'm not a fido commercial (i'm a sony ericsson commercial). i drink beer out of bottles, smoke cigarettes that were half-smoked yesterday and sleep in nightgowns. i ain't got pedigree. but god-willing i'll be a pedigree-less-middle-class-white-girl(woman-on-a-good-day)-university-drop-out with a sony ericsson k790a, which i swear, will be in a museum someday. it's that nice. i'm still on hold.

back to organized sports.

dating is an organized sport, i think. it's pretty organized and sportful...wait...not on hold anymore!

sony ericsson customer service says "buy it off our website or from you provider, those are your options." it's like the parent that offers "stand in the corner or clean your room. we're giving you options...lots of them, the choice is yours."

it's $400 on the website and much more from my loathesome provider. i don't want to stand in the corner.

i'm not a sony ericsson commercial, i'm a samsung 420shit commercial.

fucking mobility.

haiku for BR

2007-08-14T20:30:00.001-05:00

paint and wet snowflakes
pink smiles, unrequited stuff
summer sweatiness

plastic fingernails
keep others skin cells so close
that you can smell them

inboxes fill quick
outboxes fill quicker still
then you stop, say no

new undergarments
make you dream of sex and rings
still you sleep single

cigarettes and beer
are reminiscent of him
what do you do now?

monday august sixth otseven

2007-08-06T10:32:00.001-05:00

the man at the brulerie st-denis explained to me this morning that an americano is an americano in french and in english. americanos are bilingual.

had my first canadian hostel experience last night and the coffee was required. some poor soul who'd taken a bus all the way from vancouver (life is too short) stumbled into the women's "dormitory" at 815 this morning and woke me from my restless sleep. there had been thunder and lightning and i dreamt about all the terrible things that happen to women in hostels, until the poor soul stumbled through the door and brought light and noise with her. i didn't dream or sleep after that.

montreal is depressing on mondays when it rains. the streets are mostly empty and those left on them aren't smiling.

the berri-uqam metro smelled like pizza when i dragged my ass through it at 11, looking for a locker to stash my bags.

i bought a brass padlock in a dollar store from a man who spoke neither english nor french, but whose skin was the colour of coffee.

the security guards at the bibliotheque et archives nationales were very gentle with me and directed me to lockers.

there are no flights out of this city today

et

tu me manques.

sarah lee cherry cheesecake

2007-07-25T23:42:00.002-05:00

is clearly god's gift to hormonal women, fabulous with all of its colourful little frozen bits of ruby fruit and graham crumbs and cheese that doesn't really taste like cheese but is really fucking awesome anyway. i fee like it understands me.

i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight. i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight. i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight.

i have eaten an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight.

shit.

it's back on

2007-07-24T20:52:00.001-05:00

head viced between the hard noise of the nine to five, the cigarettes and the dog (which is not mine but eats my underwear anyway) i've made a decision. i've decided that my precious insanities may be more precious and less insane if shared. so the blog's back on. word.

i have a video camera

2007-07-24T20:19:00.001-05:00

I have a video camera. When I am filming a person with my video camera I can zoom in on whichever parts of them I like best and nobody need be the wiser. It is the camera’s single most important feature.

My girl, had a number of single most important features. It was loud in the room: voices, laughter, the rhythmic thumping of some stupid kind of music I couldn’t name and didn’t care because she was wearing a skirt and had goose bumps on her skin from the open window. People were smoking, you see, it was of those parties. Vodka on the kitchen counter, cocaine on the coffee table, footprints on the floor and she was wearing a skirt and I had a video camera.

An oversized birthday card found its way to the kitchen table and lay open, pages spread like legs as people touched it, marked it. There were four thick black sharpie pens, three men, two women and the birthday card was having a fine time of it.

So was my girl, though she had better things to do than sign cards – she was busy with the business being beautiful, humming along to some stupid kind of music I couldn’t peg and didn’t care because she was wearing a skirt.

Cameras have a number of defects, the greatest of which is that they don’t capture smell and I stood over her under some drunk and dubious premise, filming the side of her neck, the bits of shadows sprinkled about the secret parts of her body, she had a smell.

Throw the camera across the room, smash the window, seek the floor, Michelle I want your smell inside me.

She might as well have been naked. She might as well have been standing at the foot of my bed, naked, arms swinging shyly by her sides with that skin like the sweeter tasting milk. She might as well have been, devastating as she was.

Minutes and the birthday card was spent, used, page-legs closed and the birthday crowd progressed to the drinking of the birthday booze and as the sound of ice-cubes hitting cut glass tumblers distracted the liquid hearts of the habit-warmed few, I stole a few more moments from my girl.

I spent them in the dream curve between her ribcage and her hip mouth full of lust words. The kind that soap wouldn’t wash out: my hand, nails bitten to the quick, will slide beneath your breast and live in that fold. Will scrape across your skin as the room echoes and moans, will find your other folds soft, wet and warm and will inhabit them. Inhabit them until you are full and I am blind, until you are hurt and I am deaf.

Make of me some Helen Keller oblivion beautiful, with those legs. Throw the camera across the room. Smash the window. Seek the floor.

She squirmed in her leather seat to the sound of some stupid music I couldn’t name but was beginning to like, because it made her tits move like she was fucking me and my camera were watching her tits move like she was fucking me and my camera watched until the vodka was spent, used, empty, until the record stopped spinning, taxis were called and boys began to make b-lines for last call.

I watched her ass as it approached the door, stocking feet on hardwood floor, redefining fiction with every step.

My girl, you can’t ever see this tape.

finger nailed

2007-07-24T20:15:00.002-05:00

My mother tells me over cheap wine that I need to be more conscious of my corporate work environment. Look around the office, she says. I’ll bet you won’t find a single VP…I cut her off, or bite her off, if you will. I think you’d be surprised by what goes in and comes out of those people’s mouths and furthermore, it is without doubt that if I followed the general moral example of the management team, I would be condemned to burn in hellfire for all of eternity. Is that really what you want for your first born, I ask? That’s not the point, she says. Of course not, I think.

I am an adult and as such I heed the advice of fellow adults. Especially when they’re related to me and Christmas is coming up. Therefore, I am trying to quit biting my fingernails. Having recalled the existence of some toxic sludge my parents used to paint on my thumb in an attempt to have me stop sucking it, I haul ass to the Pharmasave and find a clerk. I’m trying to quit biting my fingernails, I tell her. She looks at me as though I’ve got the clap, fiddles with her hair which has been died some soft shade of radioactive and tells me she’s got just the thing. Parents come in all the time, she says, trailing off with her hands comfortably by her sides, that haughty bitch.

I whip out my VISA card, which I hope the lovely Melinda will notice is a step up from the student kind and bow in complete deference to the great corporate mogul that is me. She does not. I pay, grab my toxic sludge and leave.

Seated in the comfort of my Victorian low-rise apartment, away from the judgmental eyes of the properly finger-nailed world, I apply the sludge gently, at first. Then, mesmerized by the activity, begin to apply more aggressively. Minutes later, my fingernails, hands and select areas of my thighs and calves have been doused. I sit, turn on the tube and wait for my invitation to the world of non-compulsive, have-their-shit-together, people. Several commercial breaks later, distracted by the pretty lights and intelligent dialogue of primetime, I try and sneak in a quick chew. To my dismay, I begin to gag, dry-heave, attempting in an apoplectic frenzy to get the evil taste of childhood out of my mouth. Noooo!!!! I scream. Glaring at the bottle, I wish hard that looks could bring inanimate objects to life and kill them, not in a nice way. The grey, orange and white label innocently proclaims “Nail Biter.” I decide that it would more suitably be labelled “We’re secretly trying to poison you because anyone who bites their fingernails is CLEARLY a terrorist.” But admitting to myself the importance of the covert in the great fight against minorities and their inherent evil, I digress.

I was promised a safe, effective method of healing from a dirty habit. Instead I’m chugging a beer in the shower, trying desperately to rid myself of the evil stuff. Fuckers, I think again.

Newly washed, moisturized and thoroughly upset, I scan the package for customer service numbers and begin to imagine the string of expletives I will unleash on the unfortunate Sally Hansen rep who will answer my call. Sadly, there is no customer service number to speak of. And even if there were, it’s half past nine on a Friday night and they’d surely be closed. I begin to imagine the string of expletives I would’ve offloaded had there been voicemail. Fuckers, I think.

In an effort to maintain some semblance of sanity, I call my best friend and invite him over for a joint. By this I mean, in an effort to maintain some semblance of sanity, I call my best friend and coyly hint that he come immediately over with weed and sandwiches. He is of a good breed, being related to the Guttenberg character who invented the printing press and as such, appears promptly, bearing gifts.

After a few good drags and a quick bite I am decidedly less insane, though still pissed about the obvious conspiracy between Sally Hansen, my parents and the rest of the properly finger-nailed world. Don’t think I don’t know. Best-friend Jonathan, sensing my anger still brewing, leans over, passes the joint and exhales, lesbians all have fingernails like yours, he says gently. They’re considered practical, cool even. I, in turn, exhale and with a deep sigh of relief think to myself: what a civilized bunch, these lesbians you speak of. After a brief moment’s thought, I forgive Jonathan his fingernails, make peace with my own and with Melinda and settle into the sofa with a fair-sized roach for what will now undoubtedly be, an okay night in the world of the compulsive.

an experiment in colour and god

2007-07-24T20:10:00.001-05:00

He was accustomed to walking
grey city streets, dirty silver
lampposts conspiring, black
Mise van der Rohe shadows
impending. He was accustomed
to pasty white bodies pounding
pavement, their peach-coloured lips
humming off-key tax returns tunes
under pregnant clouds. He was
accustomed to Toronto.

Convertible top down, prairie
wind, gofer children scurrying
golden wheat paths to underground
schools of sunset, he was

unaccustomed

to the country’s midsection,
its slender waist sweating orange
ceilings, he was unaccustomed
to the country’s expansive belly.

Scream the cranberry words
of ruby-red cross-country conclusions,
he wanted to scream the lavender lyrics
of freedom from the black-fabric seats
of his champagne rental.

Conservative dog-brown shoe pedal
to the metal, fast forward to purple ends
of possibility falling from the sweet
grass heaven. He was unaccustomed
to the road’s speed and linearity.

Dirty blond stubbled release from
frames, doors, the ninety-degree
angle pressure to pay bills on platinum
geometrics of plastic. Dirty blond
stubbled permission for faster.

He was unaccustomed to the flushing
hushing undulating currents of loud
navy dark wind, stars picking
birthplaces in ebony sky, to this.

Scream the blind midnight words
of irresponsible time sand syllables,
he wanted to scream the white blank
page erasures of urban burgundy
madness and did.

And God listened.

storm at the family cottage in thunder bay

2007-07-24T20:07:00.003-05:00

Tree branches slap angrily against aging siding
Like the master’s whip against the bare skin of the
Boy who stole bread from the kitchen and was caught.

Rain hesitates in the parts of the sky nearest to Heaven,
Parts which I have seen only from airplanes, sipping tomato
Juice, reading newsprint and fearing death obediently.

Wrinkled palms smack laminate counters with familiar rhythm
And a fat yellow Labrador retriever barks at the screen of the
Door which confines it to its allowed space like a stupid beast.

Dirty towels and cedar panels, the latest publication on wealth,
music, how to keep the weight off, and this season’s best in pet gear
and top-of-the-line ice cream makers confine me to mine quietly.

Life is the thing which keeps the women in the kitchen reddened
Like fight-filled children, squealing hatred from all available orifices.
What fiction, rattle the blackened skies, that blood is thicker than water.

Thunder ten pins through the heavens like a chorus to the hotly felt verses
Of angry speech that the mistresses of the house pitch to the walls intently
As though words could meet and conquer wallpaper to reveal some antique

Truth preserved in flour-water.

Truth like fabric woven through years of antagonism and strife, bloody
Miscarriages of justice and faith and sisterhood and the dog
Now barks past the screen to the world and it is undeniably a prayer

Or proposition for a cease fire, a laying down of arms and words as the rain
Changes it fickle mind and leaves are silent with the smell of crushed
Revolution and the sky is painted a fresh shade asphalt with all its promises of

Destruction/Freedom

Still in tact.

on what it is to be an urban woman

2007-07-24T20:02:00.002-05:00

I’ve lost my cell phone and the walls
are ringing like they want to talk like they’ve
got something to say. The man knocking his rock-filled shoe
against the lamppost says I have a text message,
something about sanity…

Disregard emphatically.

I am in a forest, cell phoneless, making friends
with mute rabbits, stepping on toasted leaves
and looking up to find canopy, to find ceiling,

to find sky.

Mumbling verses into the naked wind on how not
to be alone, on how to occupied, married to my mind
and its winding paths and crevices, its little
habits, like the way it tries not to let me slip
because it knows I won’t endure the fall…

…of the leaves to the ground as the seasons
change as eyes widen and shut, pubic hair grows
and spreads like ivy and then turns grey, as the
rabbits start talking in tongues and the leaves start
charging for the symphony in guilt.

Clearcut.

Shave everything like hair: grease it up, rub it down.

Let’s fuck cuz I don’t want to be alone and your dick is better than nothing.
Give me a rash from that stubbled face, smell my panties with a sly smile.
Lick me clean, lick me dirty to the sound of street music:
140 languages weaving families, pounding sidewalks, rustling change in pockets,

civic hatchbacks on their way to the forest.

Where I will stand and spin to lush green hum of solitude,
Where my family will extend in ants and moss, where I will
Forget your cock and what it means to be reachable, where I will
Embrace sun up and sun down as the bookends of my days
and fall harder than I ever have for nature,
mumbling verses under my naked breath on how not
To be attached. Until a clockwork moon strikes wolves to life and
I fall to my knees and howl with all my red might: a speech, on what

It is to be an urban woman.

wedding poem for my uncle

2006-11-14T21:12:00.001-06:00

the architecture of them

In November the prairie winds howl with memories
of winter and the voices of a thousand wheat creatures
make speeches about loneliness on Wild Rose Ridge.

In November he admires the design of her smile, traces
the slope of her spine with a gentle hand and finds her eyes
fighting bright in the darkest parts of night on Wild Rose Ridge.

In November he recalls the marquetry of her spirit by the glacier
lake, the youthful embrace, amidst dancing leaves, of his
now wife and he is rich with the promise of life on Wild Rose Ridge.

In November great structures of timber and glass cradle the child
soul of spring and the smothered whispers of two score ten bear
witness to the perfect architecture of them on Wild Rose Ridge.

it seemed as though i would give up

2006-09-06T00:48:00.001-05:00

and somehow, through some measure of fate, i'm here. sitting at an open window, typing.

the store was a mess of things: cloth,
shelves and earrings, brightly
coloured relics of a decade made more
than broken and the man behind what would
have been a counter asked if we were
sisters. we weren't and admitted so.
the virgin soap, he said, makes you sweet
and young again. mah girls, he said. you'll
have to come back.

best hamster picture ever

2006-09-05T16:59:00.002-05:00

not quite right.

2006-08-29T09:22:00.001-05:00

the divide between my dream life and my waking life is beginning to collapse in on itself. things have happened but other people haven't lived them. my speech is slurred and my eyes are tired. i know that i'm not right. not quite right. crooked, you might say. or crazy.

perfect

2006-08-22T22:45:00.001-05:00

is the silence. and nothing is as complicated as it could be. it isn't hot or cold, late or early...it is, simply. i am sitting on a fire escape, the bars are making lines on my white legs. my blog entries are getting progressively worse. i have nothing to say and everything to confess.

so sayeth the west wing

2006-08-12T22:36:00.002-05:00

president bartlet and mrs. lanningham reveal, during an interaction in the fourth season, that if you're the president of the united states you can choose any number of paintings from the national art gallery and have them hung in your office. how cool is that? i'm salivating. what kind of president would choose a pollock, i wonder. i'm not sure that they even have warhols in the national art gallery, but if they did, would any president elect borrow one to hang? my guess is no.

there is the kind of art, as far as i'm concerned, that makes movements: creates them. art that does something unusual and is worshipped by those who toil, wreckless privately, smothered by themselves. can you believe internationl klein blue?

art: what an empty handful.

unearthed

2006-08-11T23:00:00.001-05:00

i was moving and sorting through old journals, as i do when they're unearthed. i came across a particular entry and it struck me. hard.

Sept 6, 2003

I am at camp and I need to vent because he doesn't love me. My back is beginning to sweat. The wasps are flying aroudn the orange juice that I stole from the dining room. I feel like a wasp. I linger around him , hoping to smell his smell. Laundry detergent. But I know if I get too close he'll swat at me with a few looks and words and then I'll have to sting him and then I'll die. I don't want to be in love with him. I miss him desperately. I know he is a beautiful person.

The CD I'm listening to makes me think of walking to work in Ottawa. It reminds me of Josh and of parliament and of the heart and crown and of Graeme. I don't know if it was a summer that I would like to be reminded of.

Somebody hid diamonds under the waves and they're glistening now. I want to go swimming but it's not hot enough yet. My skin isn't melting yet.

I guess writing is sort of like playing the piano. I'm out of practice. Who has time for this kind of thing anyway? Maybe I'm senile. Maybe that's not the right word. Maybe I'm fat and unattractive. Maybe I imagined that I was thin and beautiful and desirable and all of sudden, thanks to that asshole, I hate myself.

that was the last entry in the diary (the only one I recall using for any lenght of time) i bought the day after we first slept together, the so-called asshole and me. he's not an asshole at all, actually. his only sin was honesty. sin enough, i guess, at our age. for symmetry, here an excerpt from the first:

18 December 2002

Today I bought a journal. I have so much to write, I do not know what to say. I saw a book in Coles of Kurt Cobain's diaries and maybe one day someone will publish this because I will be famous and they will care. Claire says that she wouldn't write most of what she does in her journal if she knew someone would read it. I am not sure I care. I slept with ... last night. No, I've slept with him before. I had sex with him last night...

karen kain dances like a war fairy

2006-08-08T21:06:00.002-05:00

if you have ever taken an art class you will remember what it is to be asked to draw a person without lifting your pen from the paper. remember that and imagine a dancer, a woman with breasts and spirit, moving her limbs, muscles strained.

i have a book of her. a coffee table book stolen from a dusty pile in my mother's house. the photos are black and white, all of them. karen's hair is tucked neatly into a bun. her legs are longer than measurement. and the pictures are simple, plain. a woman dancing. why then, is it so erotic, so moving, so interesting to see her on a glossy page?

yarrrr

2006-08-04T16:53:00.001-05:00

before -- pirate themed streetcar party. need i say more? yes. i've showered, blow-dried, moisturized and feel that i'm ready to conquer the red beast. after - it was crazy. we showed up expecting to be the only ones sporting earings, mustaches: pirate costumes. but we were wrong, they were everywhere. we worried, for a brief moment, that there wouldn't be any music on the streetcar. we were promptly corrected: a few men in black pants and t-shirts spun happy hardcore followed by breaks. nick was especially happy about the breaks, as he generally is.

i'm listening to a cd that i used to play when i was in highschool. remembering is so good...

the ugliest part of town

2006-08-01T10:41:00.001-05:00

finch and dufferin: i dare you to find worse. i come up here every now and again for work -- my company has access to a boardroom on alness street. the landscape's unreal this far north. hideous high-rise apartment buidlings, noisy four lane streets framed by stripmalls containing businesses that all look as though they're having a closing out sale. shitty restaurants, bridal shops, a strip bar or two. second floor nail salons and dental offices, bus benches that remind you to call this real estate agent or that personal injury lawyer. it's thoroughly depressing. and accessible only by bus.

it's five hours to august

2006-07-31T17:53:00.001-05:00

and the apartment is hot, really hot. i'm listening to schubert's ave maria because someone made reference to it on the west wing, but i really do prefer palestrina. my heart's racing as per usual and anyone who knows me is sick of hearing about it.

the heat doesn't come from the sun, it seems
to come from the sky, the sidewalk, the open
mouths of men and women on telephones talking
about last night, how their employers fucked them

on that last paycheque which won't cover, it
seems, the goddamn hydro bill and it must be
the airconditioner which hums clumsily in the next
room and was purchased to ease sleep but doesn't

care much. and why should it? our sleep is the no
thing, not the nothing, but the no thing, useless
and funny. do you mumble words in your sleep?
toss and turn and hug cotton the way i do, unknowingly.

wanting to be beautiful but instead drooling. do you
wake to find yourself staring at the other one in your
bed? and if only it were the least bit like the movies,
if only i smelled sweet and looked peaceful. i am

a hurricane in my sleep. twisting, kicking in a violent
dreamland of water, which is my favourite, but dirty
always in this hot city. sleep is a heavy hand on my greasy
head and i can't help but crumble and be ugly. i sleep.

in explanation

2006-07-21T18:48:00.001-05:00

the blog's going dark for a while. if you read, check back in august. it's too hot and i'm uninspired.

i'm definitely infringing on copyright

2006-07-19T21:07:00.001-05:00

posting this poem, evie christie's. it's too good, i want the world to read it:

That We Could Let the Season Fall

Not so long ago your parents loaded
you into the yellow Dodge -- a meteor
shower made you forget
just how much you hated your sister. The rusted flatbed,

the smell of gasoline and blackness
were a universe. These days you are never
far from pills that keep you three feet
from anywhere, half a mile between thought and speech,

and your mother calls too often for even
you to believe it's okay -- believe
there is a universe, stars ablaze and falling,
burning, settling into darkness. That we could let the seasons fall

around us without recalling the times
we smiled artlessly at the buckled skies
would be mad. Let the scar
beneath your chin remember a hostile winter, a BMX

and flying, books studded with bus tickets,
ash smudged verses, your fervent youth.
Let a voice remind, across cities tonight,
how you hitched Highway 7, out of your village, .357 replica

tucked in your waistband, to meet the world half
way. Now there are cigarettes and weak syndicated
TV, now there is instant coffee, blinds drawn
and a phone that sings from that world you cannot bear to answer.

the national tonight: a translation

2006-07-17T20:56:00.001-05:00

mansbridge: are you guys fucking up the evacuation effort?
mackay: absolutely not. we're completely on top of it.
mansbridge: so there's a reason that other rich nations have already gotten significant numbers of their nationals safely home and we haven't moved a soul?
mackay: yeah, there's a reason. well, you see, peter, there are logistical issues...we haven't got a fleet in the mediterranean, we're halfway across the world. we're dealing with big numbers. there are fifty thousand canadians in lebanon.
mansbridge: right, and none of them have been moved?
mackay: well, it's not so much that. the french are on the same continent, dammit.
mansbridge: the french rented ferries from the greeks.
mackay: i don't like the greeks.
mansbridge: is canada backing a cease-fire?
mackay: people should be reasonable. we made a statement. it was at the g-8 conference. we're a g-8 nation, didn't you know. we made a statement.
mansbridge: right, so about the cease fire?
mackay: ever notice that we have the same initials? it's great interviewing with you peter. i love that name.

pinecones versus my new red shoes

2006-07-17T16:33:00.001-05:00

pinecones are small, brown crunchy things, not summer
creatures either. some were huddled together today on the
sidewalk and i stepped (shuddered) as they crunched
beneath my new red shoes. they were hiding from
the heat, i think, beneath the shade of some urban tree.

kensington market

2006-07-15T19:12:00.001-05:00

this neighbourhood screams dirty beauty on saturday afternoons. it is a sweaty oasis which defies sunday, which denies sunday, always. it's part of the appeal. and the drippy, hungry tongues of scruffy dogs are a staple here, pink. as are the women.

you can always tell when a woman is on the heels of sex. she smiles wide, has a satisfied glow about her. she is a bit slower than usual, a little more luxurious. she scrapes the sweaty strands of hair from her neck with confidence.

morning at 592

2006-07-11T07:46:00.001-05:00

the street is loud when i sit at my desk. it's seventeen minutes to eight and traffic is at its peak, pigeons coo on the roof near my window and trees everywhere are wilting from the heat. i see my favourite books lined up, in the spaces near to me. a collection of twice-read grisham paperpacks are heaped on the window sill. slivery poetry chapbooks are jammed between hardcover copies of barney's version, sowing the wind, a russian textbook: troika. donations from my mother: rankin, thayer and tanenbaum have been chucked lazily about the place -- i haven't read them.

janejanejane

2006-07-07T19:56:00.001-05:00

my sister is a very warm person. forgiving as all hell. she glows and it's not sweat either. i feel myself around her. unjudged and happy. the two of us soak in laziness, leave the apartment only to eat or to rent. we've seen years of television series since she moved in a week ago. i feel as though if we didn't have to earn money or be real people we could luxuriate here together until the end of time. it would be lovely, too. who needs to be thin and successful when you've got take-out and a bosom buddy? a sister and years of ER still to go. hand me the remote. STAT.

this is my friday night

2006-07-07T18:29:00.001-05:00

an hour and a half spent feeling sorry for myself, listening to sarah harmer and devendra banhart on repeat, drinking heineken and smoking belmont cigarettes (which can be challenging with a fan blowing at you on high, for the record). a cold shower because the hot water tank simply isn't big enough, followed by a few minutes in front of the mirror with a pair of dull tweezers. squeeze my fat ass into a pair of jeans, fish through my collection of equally unflattering shirts and select one. inevitably get deodorant all over it and pick another. go meet gay friend who has eleven o'clock date but is willing to entertain until then. find some patio, drink a few pints, check cell phone three or four times for missed calls. smoke more cigarettes. stumble home flushed by 1045. check tv guide for anything promising. find nothing. crack open another tall can of heineken, light a cigarette, mix things up with a little ariane moffat and wait for sleep.

of course, that's it

2006-07-07T17:51:00.001-05:00

the sky is sticky, my yellow room busier than
ever with the electric fan blowing at things...
there is a salt shaker on the table and it has
nothing to shake at. waiting is unhappy activity.

time would be better in different directions, many
of them. i am sick of navigating flat space, walking
on two feet towards things or away from them.
i am tired of sleeping and waking and eating simply.

doing or not doing, drunk or sober, quitting or staying,
shitting. and that it should be chemical is offensive. right,
i should run, have sex, eat strawberries, feel better? flat
little strawberries with price tags and pesticide jackets.

make of my little life a party, dream travel, look bashful,
wear pretty dresses. it's the heat, of course. my ovaries
complaining to the estrogen parts of my brain. it's the light,
of course, not enough of it. it's my blood sugar, of course.

of course, of course, of course that's it.

k is for me

2006-07-07T17:34:00.000-05:00

a proper nest

2006-07-07T09:47:00.001-05:00

my sister and i have managed to create a proper nest of our run-down rental. very little floor is visible, bits of food and glasses of water are everywhere. neither of us have worn clothes in days. we are happy here, nested here, but it's going to have to end sometime soon...there's beginning to be a bit of smell.

when you google "picture" this is the first hit

2006-07-01T18:11:00.004-05:00

i saw a prostitute

2006-07-01T02:24:00.000-05:00

as i was riding in a taxi cab, on my way home. she was wearing very short pink shorts and i didn't see much else, save for a mane of permed blonde hair. i went to a party tonight, on queen west west, as it's called. that's where i took the taxi from. i don't remember what the venue was called but it was special. three floors: the main one had performances and djs and things, the second was mostly empty, except for a black poodle, and the third was a rooftop patio. there were funny wooden tile things on the patio, pretending to make a dance floor, but they were crooked and dangerous. kind of like me. laugh. dave called me with the inviatation. it'd been a while since i'd seen him. last time was at the art gallery of ontario. milne and gehry. he'd had a long night. i'd had a long day. and he sold a painting tonight! i was so proud, so happy for him. what a feeling to have someone offer you money for your talents and time. sleep is creeping up my spine with soft steps. i shall retire, i think. i worry, but needn't. things are as they are. i am as i am. not much more i can do, but sleep.

aquanaute

2006-06-30T15:30:00.001-05:00

an album by ariane moffatt. i like it very much. they were interviewing her this morning on tv5, that's how i discovered it. she was plainly attractive and had a very soothing voice. i would imagine that it's very good crying music, this. but let's not indulge that, shall we?

luxuriating

2006-06-30T14:46:00.001-05:00

my sister is coming tomorrow and staying with me for six weeks. my mother warns me that she doesn't wash dishes and watches television endlessly. i am of the opinion that the satellite to basic cable transition will find her being a little more active.

that's us in the picture, at my father's house. luxuriating in our sweats, as i imagine we'll do quite often in the next while. in the background: a painting of a bench with a sign that reads "nacionalizado de fresco" (freshly nationalised) - a daddy favourite. the sofa we're sitting on is an eighties brown curduroy ikea number that he just can't let go of. and on the table, my faithful laptop, source of unendning distraction and portal to the blogging world. oh! and let's not forget the laura secord cream egg, waiting nervously to meet its end.

a good one

2006-06-29T23:17:00.001-05:00

patrice desbiens was born in timmins, ontario and first published in the mid-seventies. if you want to read the english translation, go for it, but it's not nearly as good.

Je me souviens d'une station wagon qui coupe la nuit
qui ouvre la nuit du nord comme un couteau de chasse
ouvre sa proie
Nous sommes tous là
ma mère ma sœur son mari et ses enfants tous
dans cette voiture c'est
Johnny B. Good Leblanc qui conduit son visage vaguement
éclairé par la lueur du tableau de bord
Je suis le seul des passagers qui ne dort pas tandis
qu'on continue avec un océan de vert meurtri de
chaque côté
Ma sœur dort sur le banc d'en avant
la noirceur qui rentre et sort de sa bouche ouverte
La nuit est longue et sans plis
La nuit est longue et sans plis
La nuit est longue et sans plis
La nuit est longue et sans Soudainement
quelque chose déchire le tissu quelque chose bouge
là et
le pare-brise devient un écran cinémascope les phares
de Twentieth Century Fox et Gulf Western éclairant
l'animal l'animal l'orignal en plein milieu du chemin
qui fige et
fixe son destin qui roule vers lui à 60 milles à l'heure
Ses yeux ses yeux ses yeux ô dieu son regard jusqu'à
la dernière minute et le choc sourd-muet de fer contre
chair
Et ma sœur qui se réveille en criant un grand cri
fou et
final comme si l'âme de l'orignal avait passé dans
elle en
mourant et enfin
le silence
le silence de notre silence dans
le silence entre
Timmins et Toronto.

a fountain of sugary fun

2006-06-29T22:49:00.001-05:00

david letterman in putting mentos candies in big bottles of diet coke. i'm entertained, and nearly distracted. now if only i could stop listening to wonderall and get on with it.

the world's biggest ball of twine

2006-06-29T19:52:00.001-05:00

he is a good man and a gentle man

2006-06-28T18:44:00.001-05:00

and i am crying now, to the sound of an old song, because we won't speak anymore. i'm quite sure he meant it when he said it. what i remember: his toothy smile, his clammy hands, his blue eyes, his manner. the way he said, "ooohhh, girl..." i swear that he knew the name of every foreign dignitary ever born to this earth. he spoke as though he'd been born in the slums of kingston but was whiter than sudbury snow. and he knew it, too. and didn't care.

he watched me while i was slept, he said, more than once. i watched him sleeping many times, too. he was a cute sleeper. made me a picnic once at runnymede station. drank vodka with me in high park. sat next to me at matriculation and made me melt. he hurt me tonight, though, walking away without parting words. fair enough he didn't give them to me. i probably didn't deserve them.

he is a good man and a gentle man. i will not be angry because it is not best. i will be sad, instead.

in some grand procession of ignorance

2006-06-28T10:35:00.001-05:00

to tease out the truth in something takes a long time. it is difficult for everyone, but particularly hard for me, i think. imagine that ideas were paintings. if you were me, you would feel as though you were an inch from the thing, your body pressed close and casting a shadow, your proximity preventing you from making sense of the small pocket of colour on which your eyes were fixed. there would a wobbly memory of something similar you had once observed, under the same conditions. you would recall, without intention, the sound and tone of the other voices you'd heard. the voices that sounded most like those of your parents, of your first love or of a favourite teacher would be remembered best: their patterns speech, their choices of words, their taste. amidst the commotion you would do your best to piece together an understanding. you would appeal to the voice you respected most for guidance: you would swallow foreign impressions, unfamiliar sentiments. you would strain with your own eyes to see more or more clearly and you would fail. but amidst the commotion, the conviction of your borrowed words would be enough to find you passing the test, moving on to the next piece in some grand procession of ignorance, burdened with the definite guilt that some young thing might hear your voice trustworthy.

sweaty apartment sunday

2006-06-28T09:44:00.000-05:00

relegated to the IT room

2006-06-27T10:02:00.001-05:00

there is a cpu humming very loudly next to my head. two green apples next to my laptop are the only organic things in sight. i hate being relegated to the IT room. clement, the small chinese computer man, doesn't speak to me or smile. he likes keeping the window open so we can hear the lovely sound of traffic from finch avenue but he insists on drawing the blinds so that the only light in the room is fluorescent. i'm staring at my green apples and thank god they're such pleasing colour. the walls are grey, in here. so's the carpet. so are the cubicles. grey, all of it. grey, for heaven's sake! the man in the office next door keeps birds, because it's a marketing company, and people in marketing are quirky like that. the birds chirp and chirp and at first it was endearing but i'm just about ready to kill them now. the quirky marketing man also has an axe and several knives sticking out of his door, as though someone had tried to break in. it's a quirk thing. i have fantasies about using those knives. don't turn your back on me, clement.

afternoon anxiety

2006-06-26T15:13:00.001-05:00

my mustard stained legs and body a wrapped sweaty
pretzel typing away in frantic heat and hearbeat
commercials and cigarettes swirling mad colour
storms unpredicted and mean in their acute
emptiness torture porcelain responsbilities, woes
cracked and left to steep in soft ash powder

shit and shit and shit and failure tempts
knocking at the animal door loud pounding
echoes tremble my hands and quake my life
aspiring to nothing but tomorrow and the next
happy breath

pat methany group - first circle

2006-06-24T01:12:00.001-05:00

there is clapping at first, a few scarce notes and then, after long moments, a voice. no words, only sounds and promise. believe, reader, that we can truly make promises. he will smile in confirmation as you shrug in resignation, my father. rich proletarian methods drop into seemingly inadvertent, but altogether natural, chords of terribly deliberate genius.

and he sits, listening to it all, caught up in his heart. blue eyes wide with pink skin around, smiling stubble and remembering us as children. when we pulled at his worn shirt, tugged at his hands, begged to show him the fruits of days.

working hard to work hard, he is. breathing deeply as though in exercise, meters from a gentle , spotless, vegetarian kitchen.

he knows, but he's had years to know. i am a muddled person. grow me up? i don't know, couldn't possibly know...but i want, i try, i am upset.

he is not near and he seems never to be so. the inequality keeps him busy. the lost years.
the workers and his work.

how i would like him to be happy! truly happy...

that, believe it or not, is me

2006-06-22T08:56:00.001-05:00

in the backyard of my grandparents' old house, since sold, in edmonton. that's their garden and the sandbox of my youth. it was a great sandbox. i learned to bake there. donated by my grandmother's kitchen: several bowls, a few good mixing spoons, a cake mold and two muffin tins. my grandfather, the venerable thomas loudon leadbeater, always puttered about the garden while i was cooking. do you see the cement circles leading to the back? i used to leap from each to each. as i got older and my legs got longer i could skip every other stone and later i only needed every third to make it back to the house. the bush on the left grew raspberries and behind the white gate was the alley. it gave out on to 148th street. i think.

my words are cheap

2006-06-22T00:35:00.001-05:00

his are not

six reasons i won't leave the house

2006-06-20T17:26:00.001-05:00

(1) my clear pastic mouse flashes in red, epileptic fury and it is alive, requires attention (2) the futon remembers the shape of my laziness and the smell of my anxiety (3) i cannot bite my nails in public they way i'd like to: i would be embarassed (4) there is no soundtrack to my life outside these walls (5) the doorframes know my height and respect it (6) i am comfortable here

culprit 'coons

2006-06-20T17:08:00.001-05:00

i left my kitchen window open last night, when i went out. it gives on to a fire escape and i came home to find little dirty animal prints on the floor, the garbage can open and my unfinished breakfast lying victim on the floor. those furry bastards. i thought i could hear them all day, ruffling in the closets, although i'm almost certain they must've come and gone late last night. they've done this before, those criminal creatures, last time it was to rob our cat (now departed, see i miss this cat) of his few worldly possessions: half a bowl of whiskies and a plate of dry kibble dinner. i will remember to close the kitchen window. i will remember to close the kitchen window.

microsoft paint says, "pride is coming!"

2006-06-19T15:22:00.002-05:00

come hither, super

2006-06-19T14:53:00.001-05:00

living alone and working from home is getting to me. the toilet's been leaking for months and all of a sudden i decided to call bill, my super, to come and fix it. he showed up and i offered him a beer, a glass of water. "tell me about your day, bill. how're things in the building?" he was anxious to get home and didn't take me up on any of my offers. the toilet got fixed, though. and he talked to me briefly, enough to get me through the day.

it's too hot to walk to the mail box

2006-06-19T13:19:00.001-05:00

and so here, with sincere apologies, is my letter:

monsieur benjamin,

ça va? je suis contente de savoir que tes tableaux vont bien. je suis certaine que tu réussiras tes examens. est-ce qu'il fait chaud dans ton coin du monde? 31 degrés ici aujourd'hui. je crois avoir déja (je n'arrive pas a trouver l'accent grave) mentionné que mon apart n'est pas climatisé. je n'ai pas dormi hier soir, même qu'il y avait un peu de pluie. en plus, il commence a être difficile a respirer. l'air est très épaisse a toronto durant l'été. la job va bien, par contre.

c'est drôle, j'avais sincèrement l'intention de t'écrire une vraie lettre en blogue, mais je n'y arrive pas. il me faut une plume et un papier.

a bientôt. bises.

kate.

i really hope it's pms

2006-06-19T13:12:00.001-05:00

because i'm crying a lot these days, not sure why. not even a combination of bobby darin and pasta salad is fixing me. apples with peanut butter either. i guess there's always wine and cigarettes but that doesn't really fix, it just blinds. maybe blind is better.

a list of my favourite candy

2006-06-18T20:15:00.004-05:00

i know i've said that i don't like sweet things, but that's not entirely true. i mean, i don't like them now, but i used to. despite my parents' best efforts, i lived almost exclusively on a diet of sugar and citric acid for the better part of my pre-teen years.

nerds (the tiny coloured ones in complicated boxes)
hershey's cookies and cream bars
the haribo candies that looked kind of like jube-jubes but had poppy-seedish thingys on them
red skittles
sour watermellons and grapefruits
worms of all kinds
some french sucking candy
wunderbars

i miss this cat

2006-06-18T19:31:00.001-05:00

as though he were my child. professor puffy pants. mister flashlight eyes. major hijinx. mister love store. are you open for business? he's in new west minster now, with his grandma. my former roommate's mother. and by the way, he is eating tulips. he loves flowers. almost as much as i love him.

can't let go of ani difranco

2006-06-18T19:17:00.001-05:00

it's terrible, i know. so nineteen ninety-five. but there's something about her music that makes me comfortable, keeps me coming back. i'm listening to fire door. here's a poem that i wrote when i was nineteen. not so long ago, i know. but long enough that you're not allowed to judge me on it. the punctuation's all wrong. thanks in advance for looking the other way.

we were standing in a bathroom doorway
when you asked, smiling cagily if
i’d ever been gay and if
it had been (here, you winced)
in that ani difranco way i heard
footsteps creaking closer and i think
you did, too because you smiled
and closed your eyes the way

you do sometimes and i was deseperate to say
that no pop culture reference could ever

convey my sincerity, sarah
but i faltered, tripped over my own words
and somebody else’s footsteps
fell to the pavement with a thud
and barely managed to mutter
that i didn’t think so
not in that way, i mean

the country game

2006-06-18T17:25:00.001-05:00

it doesn't necessarily have to be about countries -- it could be capital cities, or animal names or, well, a lot of things. if you're ultracool you could use indie band names. point is, whatever you choose to use, it's a handy distraction when waiting in line somewhere with friends. each person has to offer a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word. as in:

A: canada
B: argentina
C: armenia
D: does every damn country name end in A?
A: no, dumbass
D: um...hint anyone?
A: think sand. the war against terror.
D: iraq?
C: it has to start with A, moron
D: oh, right. um...
A: afghanistan. let's get on with it. nigeria
B: not fair. is this line getting any shorter?

seriously, it's fun. especially if you prepare ahead of time.

tuna pasta salad = yummy in my tummy

2006-06-18T16:21:00.002-05:00

take (a) half a big bag of pasta -- the shell kind, you know, the ones that get stuck inside eachother, spooning (b) a couple of green onions, a.k.a. scallions (c) a few stalks of celery (d) more mayo than i'd care to think about (e) two cans of tuna --> don't get the skipjack, come on kids, splurge! (f) half a yellow pepper, chopped because the red ones were sold out (g) s & p (h) a table spoon of dijon (i) tender loving care and two hours in the fridge...best served with beer, and lots of it!

the world's biggest spreadsheet

2006-06-18T16:14:00.001-05:00

for those of you (like me) who spend hour upon hour agonizing over excel, i thought you might enjoy this, even though it's a tad ancient:

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021217S0006

katesversion

Crazy Cat Dance Party (Fun!)

Bernard Fanning Writes A Hymn (And A Good One, At That)

Sunday Afternoon Salmon Tartare

You Know You Work Too Much When...

Found Poem

Smoking: Epic Love & Hatred

My Cousin Karen's Most Excellent Ceasar Salad Dressing

Best Quote Ever

You're Smart, You Know That?

Cookies, Of The Online Persuasion

My Secret Confession

Baked Fish Fillets, Love Aunt Betsy Anne

Meet Our New Pet Rats (No, Really)

The Club Sandwich Made Well

Envy

New Thyme

My Mother's Chicken Amman

Bud Light Lime: You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Friends + Chipmunk + Peanuts + Video Camera =

Touch Yourself, Thank Me Later

Aw, A Heart-Shaped Potato! Or, How I Still Don't Get Irony

This Is What I Have To Deal With When I'm Trying To Work...

Life Is Too Short To Have A Job You Don't Like

Perth Potato Salad

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Deep Thoughts About The Internet Space-Time Continuum

peaches in november

when my friend asked how i was feeling, after having taken a few days off of drinking beer, i solemnly answered

because i'm in the mood...

wednesday night jazz

stallers

monday night riot

alanis morissette on love

the new digs are hot

new house

a day on hold with rogers: capitlism and efficiency

post-modern bohemian cake

peter says i'm published dammit

august, winter & alpacas

baby blogs

organized sports and fucking mobility

haiku for BR

monday august sixth otseven

sarah lee cherry cheesecake

it's back on

i have a video camera

finger nailed

an experiment in colour and god

storm at the family cottage in thunder bay

on what it is to be an urban woman

wedding poem for my uncle

it seemed as though i would give up

best hamster picture ever

not quite right.

perfect

so sayeth the west wing

unearthed

karen kain dances like a war fairy

yarrrr

the ugliest part of town

it's five hours to august

in explanation

i'm definitely infringing on copyright

the national tonight: a translation

pinecones versus my new red shoes

kensington market

morning at 592

janejanejane

this is my friday night

of course, that's it

k is for me

a proper nest

when you google "picture" this is the first hit

i saw a prostitute

aquanaute

luxuriating

a good one

a fountain of sugary fun

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