I love this guy.

Guy's name is Michael Hainey, Deputy Editor of GQ.

First saw him on the Sart, and I just love how mischievous he seems, even when he's not grinning. Pure cartoon character. Looks like he'd have good stories. Oh and he reminds me of Alan Ruck circa Spin City. +a billion points for the hair

photos c/o Sart and GQ.

Vienna

The bridge between Handelskai and Neue Donau stations. Cold and dusky. Just a touch of fog.

A long barge cuts a swath perfectly across the middle of the Danube.

That's why.

uhhh...Mr. The Plague?*

All I want to do is dick around, read and make notes on poetry. Play with my notebooks and get some, you know, semi original thought down, move forward somehow creatively for myself. But I'm stuck with this 16 page behemoth of an essay that was due a week ago. I'm getting docked some serious fucking marks. Which is why it's 4:30 in the morning.

This prof is really getting to me. He knows my name, he knows my name and he won't call on me by it, despite the fact that he calls on everyone else by their names. Mabye I'm imagining it but I can sort of feel contempt? So part of me really wants to impress the shit out of him, and the other part thinks it's a lost cause, and I really just want to...piss him off. I want to get in his face and be like "I know you think I'm a fucking idiot, and I just want to PISS YOU OFF." But I don't say anything, and I go to class, and I let him think that I'm dumb. Or something.

And it's stalling the rest of my life right now. I mean...other than this bronchiolitic plague. (bronchiolitic is a perfectly cromulent word). So I have this other essay due Friday that I haven't even started yet, but I will, and then I have this other 4 page thing due on Monday, and I work all weekend, in a building that makes me sick (or so I hypothesize). On the 18th I get to fly away, so I hope I get better before then. But guess what? I have class until 2 that day, and in class I get this take home test, that I have to hand in on the 20th. I think I'm in Bratislava that day. Oh and I haven't read like....half the books for that course (Nabokov). But I have been taking ridiculous amounts of notes and I love the prof, and the books are short, and amazing. So I'm sure I can catch up between Monday and Friday.

If this plague relents.

*it's a Hackers reference

questions

So I'm reading this article on Boing Boing where Richard Dawkins is talking about universities employing people who believe in Young Earth Creationism as scientists and geologists, etc. And at first I was feeling sort of as if he were being a bit harsh (as he is wont to do), but then I suddenly thought:

If you don't believe in a universe that is fourteen billion years old, why are you an astronomer?

Granted, it might be to find evidence of God, or to disprove that the universe is that old, etc.

But then why are you publishing research studies that conform to the concept a 14 billion year old universe? Pretending to everyone that you believe it? How can you live a lie?

I'm sincerely curious.

a day like any other

The girl opened the door to the charming house unassumingly. She had been trying to decide what she wanted to make for dinner when she spied the boxes in her peripheral vision. The realization that the light was on in the kitchen and that someone was moving about in the house caused a feeling of loathing and anxiety to settle in her chest. Her energy was being conserved for cooking and learning purposes, not semi-awkward small talk in the transitory spaces of the abode. It wasn't that she disliked the people. The people were nice as long as they didn't invade her personal bubble of thought. She liked to think of herself that way; walking around the city surrounded in an invisible cloud of words.

Ignoring the urge to set her bags down and flee, the girl took her jacket off and greeted the figure standing on the stepping stool.

Conversing was proving to be easier than she assumed it would be.

The figure in the kitchen, a woman, and for our purposes the owner of the house, began telling the girl that she was cleaning out the cupboards and had just finished with the fridge. As her story progressed her tone seemed more and more agitated.

The girl amiably agreed that it had needed to be done. She had wanted to help but found herself distracted by school and life. Her apology was sincere. They moved on to the weather. It had been extremely cold the past few days and her realization of exactly how much the heating bill came to (as per the owner) made her wince as she handed over the agreed upon share of money.

They chatted about the girl's looming deadlines at school and impending move away from the charming house. She said that she felt it was under control, even if it meant that sleep and seeing her friends for the next week or so would be minimal. How foolish.

Because in the next instant she was informed that she would have to move her belongings tout suite. As in before the first of the month. That was perplexing and presented a plethora of new, seemingly insurmountable challenges. The girl, again, had to fight the urge to run away. The half unpacked groceries and thoughts of dinner were what kept here firmly rooted to the ugly vinyl floor. Grin and bear it, she thought. Her eyes glazed over as the owner continued her diatribe about how the girl needed to pack up her belongings almost immediately, etc., and concentrated on chopping red peppers.

When she was finally left to her own devices dinner progressed at a steady pace. Once it was done, she washed the dishes and took her plate upstairs to eat. When she was done eating, she poured herself some Scotch. Perhaps 'some' was an understatement.

She slowly and methodically looked around her amusingly messy room, thinking about all the books she had amassed at her age. The notebooks, photographs, and concert tickets; all mementoes of experiences and days now long gone. She waited until the Scotch took its desired effect, sat down in her chair, and firmly placed the muzzle of the Glock behind her ear.

And as she pulled the trigger, her last thought was "Have fun cleaning this shit up".

It's one of those days.

shower thoughts

I know I said I was going to sleep but the shower always makes me think random thoughts. And since this is my blog I can say whatever the hell I want. So....

you know how sometimes you're performing a task or action and it jogs your memory? Say you're putting your hands together just so and you think of Mr. Burns, so you say "excellent". Well I was in the shower minding my own business, washin' my hair, when out of nowhere I thought: "Shampoooooo meeeeeee"-- in my own defence it was lathering really pleasantly. Back to the quote though, raise your hand if you've ever watched Captain Star. (oh em gee, it's all on the youtubes now!) So Jones (the 9 headed guy) gets this carpet and it spreads all over the planet and every now and again it says: "Shampoo me" in a mellifluous voice. It's brilliant. Or insane. This is what I had to come online to tell you about. Clearly I have no life. I'm not going to write about the show and its satirical bent and how Scarlette is totally Spock because then I'd be here forever. I just wanted to direct you to the awesome.

In other news, I went to the Prague Deli today. It's really home away from home since my mom doesn't cook anymore and I haven't lived with her in seven years anyway. I was listening to people speak Czech and Slovak as much as possible. There are many interesting words that don't properly translate into English. I'll write about those another time though. I started thinking about this in the shower. It's a curse, this inability to make my brain STFU. The trouble is: Czech and Slovak are similar languages. Many of the words are the same, except for the words for the months and some other ones that I don't really remember. So I was looking for a towel and thinking "zatraceny uterak" which roughly means "damn towel" when I realized "zatraceny" is a Czech word and "uterak" is a Slovak one (I'm too tired to accent these properly). Oy. So then I started thinking about which word would be proper in Czech, and it definitely wouldn't be "rucnik", more like..."osuska". Rucnik is more of a handkerchief, and it must come from the word "ruka" which means hand. When I think about it, the literal translation of it would be something like "a handy" (amusing) so it wouldn't work. Osuska works because it means "something to dry with", satisfying.

Don't get me started on the transition between feminine/masculine tenses depending on conjugation, preposition, conjugation of adverbs, conversion to plural, blah blah blah.

When you're born into it, language is easy. You never really try to pick it apart, until you learn another one...and start thinking about useless things in the shower.

anger and cars

Another strange day has passed by. Resetting your circadian rhythms is not easy, but I think I may be close to succeeding. Whatever that means. I woke up so that I would make it to class on time (for maybe the first time all year, shaddup) and the TTC completely bungled my attempt. I now understand why, but this morning I was livid. Decided to cut my losses and do some reading at the one place I maybe do love in the city: Crema. The macchiato tasted extra good. Got some reading and writing done and realized that I've been writing in my notebooks more, probably because I've made this blog public, which is okay. It might just mean that some people get less of an insight into my life. (I have no pretensions, I know only like....3 people read it) But just in case...

The incident this morning made me angry enough that I didn't want to be around irritants. I spent the day, post coffee, vacillating somewhere between moods. Actively trying to pursue the good. Seeing a friendly face helped. It diffused the rage and clicked me into a completely different movie which is necessary. Some sort of distraction or positive misdirection. (Does that even make sense?) The rest of the day was ...surprisingly productive. Didn't revisit the room cleaning though. My rationale is that a) a mess is indicative of genius and I'm a genius, 2) because I'm a genius I know where everything is. See what I did there? With the genius and the number/letter.....oh never mind.

Bumming around on flickr for the past 15 minutes has brought some other stuff to my attention. Specifically re: my skills at organizing my crap. This goes with that whole messy room thing. Like the fact that I take photos of all these awesome cars on Toronto (and other) streets and I don't know what half of them are. Fast forward a bit and I'm on Hemmings blog. If you've ever read the Gernsback Continuum and liked it, you'll love this site. Mostly sexy vintage cars. It popped into google reader a while ago, probably via fffffound and it's been captivating me since. There's one specific car that I have on flickr that I just can't place, so I'm playing matchy-matchy now. It looks like a vintage Corvette convertible and then it doesn't, it's kind of frustrating. I'm sure if I don't find anything in about an hour I'll just give up and email them.

No there is no point to me telling you this, I just think that vintage car blogs are cool. I'm also rueing the day that I lost the framed vintage Le Mans postcards in a breakup. Grr.

Take a peek at some of these:

So pretty, all from Hemmings, oh they do motorcycles too.

Upon further research it looks like the car I'm having trouble pinpointing is a ....Buick? Maybe?

Oh also...hood ornaments are boss. Let's talk about those soon.