February 26, 2006

among the curtains

Listening to: Broken Social Scene
Drinkin: coffee

Yes, so I was upset that Matt lifted me up and spun me around (I hate being lifted) and I ran to window and hid myself among the curtains and he tore them open and shouted We'll put on a puppet show / Put your hands behind your back, which I did, and waved my head around shrieking at passing motorists while Matt, arms under my armpits waving and too long, gasping at what we had done.

Posted by joy at 1:17 PM | Comments (3)

disaster!

All the stuff on the right-hand side is gone! Why! I wasn't even touching the templates or stylesheets! I was just editing an entry!

Posted by joy at 12:24 PM | Comments (3)

This is the Best Quiz I Have Ever Taken

Starving Artist
You are 0% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 0% Brutal, and 100% Arrogant.

You are the Starving Artist! Like some sort of emaciated Frenchman, you sit in your fancy little chair and contemplate beauty, meaning, flowers, and all kinds of other ridiculous crap. You are more intuitive than logical, and are primarily guided by your heart and emotions. You are also very introverted and gentle. Of course, this does not mean that you do not have an ego. In fact, you are surprisingly arrogant for someone so emotional and gentle. This is why you are best described as a starving artist. You are very introspective and quite sure of yourself, as any accomplished artist is, yet your views are impractical, guided by feelings, and overly gentle. You probably find math, logic, and similar intellectual pursuits offensive to your artistic sensibilities, and you prefer the open-endedness of artistry because it's infinitely easier to ponder the beauty of a sock than to build rocketships. So really you have no reason to be arrogant, you big doofus, because the skills you value (emotion, spirit, art, etc.) in yourself are valuable only on a subjective level, meaning your arrogance is purely masturbatory, like the insipid self-pleasuring of some twat who spouts artistic nonsense only for the pleasant tinkling sound it makes upon his indiscriminating ears. In short, your personality is defective because you are arrogant, introverted, introspective, gentle, and thoroughly irrational...posessing most of the traits needed to be a starving--and useless--artist. So get out there, write a few short stories that are allegories for the indestructible spirit of socks, and starve!


To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.


Compatibility:


Your exact opposite is the Capitalist Pig.


Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Haughty Intellectual, the Televangelist, and the Emo Kid.


*


*


If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you
could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42%
Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is
close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well.
Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can
determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored
near fifty percent for certain traits.


The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The following image was made by Stephan Brusche at http://www.sb77.nl, a real-life "starving artist". Check out his website if interested.




This test tracked 4 variables. How the score compared to the other people's:
Higher than 0% on Rationality
Higher than 0% on Extroversion
Higher than 0% on Brutality
Higher than 98% on Arrogance
Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on Ok Cupid
Posted by joy at 12:08 AM | Comments (7)

February 25, 2006

"Aw, ya big soft-serve." - Spongebob

Well, I have to be at work in 7 1/2 hours, but I felt like, you know, I'd say hi.

Had some angst today and decided to walk it off: wound up in Oak Bay, buying tacky tablecloths and prowling the biography section of the library. Also flowers: but no edible petals. Apparently they are seasonal. Lots of CBC and boring housecleaning but Gawd; you should see my house. Steph came over and we had a bit of wine and made this cool pasta-salad-broccoli-garlictoast-spinachpie thing, excellent excellent, Matt and his World's Fattest Racehorse crew showed up and it was very homestyle/festive. S and I watched the Spongebob movie and I'm still reeling; the movie would have been kind of awful had DAVID HASSELHOFF not appeared at the end, as a HERO, no less. Made me love it. Matt says our friend David has pectoral implants. Is this true?

Posted by joy at 12:39 AM | Comments (2)

February 24, 2006

still life in kitchen

I'm absolutely stunned by aesthetics right now. I bought a gloriously tacky vinyl tablecloth today, a loud pattern of blue and green daisies, which I flung overtop the huge scratches and water stains of my antique and once-worth-something wooden kitchen table. On top of this, a tiny, perfect blue glass vase, with mid-bloom daffodils. Sarah Harmer happened to come onto CBC radio just as I got it all set up, and I had a sacred moment, looking at it.

Posted by joy at 2:54 PM | Comments (2)

February 23, 2006

Battle Cry

I must. I MUST DO THE DISHES! I must, and I will. I will listen to the Streets full-blast and I will do the dishes!

Posted by joy at 4:53 PM | Comments (1)

plan zed

Eggs are hard-boiling, coffee has been drunk. Off to the library in a little while to do some edits to the story (it's called "Cat Fight") and send it off, to Grain I guess (cuz it's a rural story). That will make four works in circulation: three stories, one packet of poems. I have absolutely no hope for the poems. "Cat Fight" and "Do You Want to be an Old Maid, Emma?" have a good shot. "Deconstructing Dinner," which was sent out six months ago yesterday, is the best thing I've ever written and if it gets rejected there might be trouble.

I'm buying a formatted diskette today on which I'm going to save all the work I'm amassing for my short story collection. It's taking too long to wait on publication from the lit-mags. Get the collection together, find an agent. I have enough material for perhaps half a book. I want to do something avante-garde: fuck six short stories and a novella; how about five short stories, eight postcards, an incomplete novella that crashes and burns into a meta-nightmare ("I can't write I can't write") combined with a few non-fiction short-shorts and adapted blog entries with some photographs of handwriting thrown in? I think yes. Need a title. So: Rewrite "Cat Fight," send it off, buy a diskette, save the collection onto it which will make me feel as though I've done something concrete, write another usable postcard, three pages on something new. And clean the house.

Posted by joy at 11:11 AM | Comments (5)

The Name Game

1. Are you named after anyone? If so, explain.
Yes, a Women's Aglow speaker named Joy Something-or-other who impressed my mother. I'm not entirely clear what Women's Aglow is/was, but it seemed to be a kind of Christian women-only spiritual group. Cool.

2. Do you have your children's names picked out already? If so, is there any significance?
I don't really plan on kids but should some be adopted in the (far) future, I would like to call them Wind and Rain. I recognize this is cheezy and cruel. Maybe I would let them choose their own names, a la Picabo Street.

3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been?
Probably Jeordyn. I was expected to be a boy.

4. If you could re-name yourself what name would you pick and why?
I love my name so I wouldn't change it ever, but apparently I was nearly named Zoe, which would have been fine. I'm also partial to hippie names like Sunshine and Mango.

5. Are there any mispronunciations/typos that people do w/ your name constantly?
What follows are variations of the simple "Joy Waller" I have come across in connection to me, in print only:
- Joy Walker
- Joy Wallace
- Joy Wallen
- Joey
- Jodi
- Jay

[Edit: Aglow International]

Posted by joy at 9:46 AM

February 22, 2006

"You ain't speakin my language." (Morphine)

Would like:

- to write my autobiography after I'm dead. Imagine the hindsight!

- to construct a salad for this Weekend's private dinner extraveganza that includes fresh flower petals. Where to find such things? Surely not a field? Things fracture.

- to throw paint on people throwing paint on people wearing fur. This has been discussed.

- to have a brilliant show on CBC radio. I'm thinking of ambling in to the offices just down the block tomorrow, to volunteer, you know, "get my foot in the door" ("But you were recommended by the Welfare Program. There was no need for you to 'get your foot in the door' as you put it" - name that quote!). Their website says they have no volunteer program in place. Not today! ("tomorrow, the birds will sing," et al).

Posted by joy at 9:43 PM | Comments (5)

cats + vacuum cleaners = [fill in the blank]

I'm on this weird Toller Cranston phase. Devouring his books.

Also: trying to figure out where and how Allen Ginsberg found the resonance necessary to overuse the word 'holy' in poems -- marvelously -- how that one word can describe nightmare and beauty and dismal arcane bbbbbbbbbbbb in such an eloquent way. ("Holy the groaning saxaphone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace & junk & drums!" etc.) It occurs to me that I need a holy, a religious-to-scandalous noun-idea that articulates old men busking with trumpets, the colours of punk-hair in the Mall, the rude spitting smiling insane capitalist lost found selfish angel-tourists who clog the sidewalks of Government St, and this only February. Haven't got one. Have never been a Catholic (three syllables not two). Don't know misery except the self-induced kind; have never been persecuted, you know, in a massive, sweeping, political-social movement kind of way. Oh, my God! I'm victimizing my lack of victimhood! This is all too independent arthouse film, except, glow, I broke the rule that says you hate what you wrote six months ago, for the first time; a story I wrote in secondsemestersecondyear, rejected by two lit-mags and then forgotten, only I read it again yesterday and it's as near perfection as the best of my recent work; how could this have happened?? -- needs only a change to the last line and more sensory description and I swear to all that's sunlight tomorrow it's in the Mail.

Posted by joy at 7:36 PM | Comments (4)

February 17, 2006

"What is the price of one piano compared to the terrible crime that's been committed here?" (P. Sellers, The Pink Panther Strikes Again)

Drinkin: orange juice
Listening to: the CBC
Temperature: 3°C (!)

Ben arrived to listen to the National Playlist this morning, and was (I think) shocked and flabbergasted to hear me go off about the various attributes and weaknesses of specific Canadian figure skaters, at length. ("A side of you that doesn't get seen often," he muttered.) Then off for coffee (read: lemonade and raspberry/lemon fruit spritzer) and the crossword puzzle (for smart people we were woeful: filled the answers in with brilliant emerald ink and were dismayed and at a loss when the answers were wrong and there was no way of fixing things; "Let's go move a table"), then a walk through the frigid winds, and Ben took off while I went to the library to look for books about Gwendolyn MacKewan (nothing), followed by a series of bizarre banking experiences. Note to self: when one works at the snarls in a timely manner, and with intelligence and a certain short-term-coupled-with-long-term view, the snarls remain, but become less pits-of-despair-ish (uncombed hair after swimming) and more like "happy snarls," or "obedient, manageable snarls," in the manner of damp hair after both shampoo and conditioner and you have brushed it before you stepped in the shower. And, a grilled panini sandwhich at Matt's deli. A new book of viscious figure skating gossip by Toller Cranston (yes). Lots of orange juice, soup materials, and actual breakfast planning -- the goal is health, kids, and it turns out breakfast is important (?).

Posted by joy at 6:40 PM | Comments (5)

February 16, 2006

Johari

I don't know. 1950s self-referential psychobable? Or, how well do we know each other? Give it a whirl:

Joy's Johari Window

Posted by joy at 11:37 AM | Comments (10)

"They put me in Special Ed because of my hair!" (R. Lake, Hairspray)

Drinkin: certified organic shade grown espresso
Listening to: the CBC -- it's all about the Olympics -- the bunny ear purchase seems to be a bust; no Olympics, no Canadian programming except appallingly amateur news delivery from Vancouver; a barrage of bad movies from five years ago, Friends reruns (Friends!), shows like The Bachelor, Cheers, etc, none of which I feel strong enough to watch

Something about being a muse as functioning as your own muse. Don't know: it was all crystal clear yesterday.

Anyway, time to get the hell out of dodge: off to UVic today to ask my old manager and an old professor for letters of reference; some careful budgetting to ensure financing for my passport within four weeks at the most; a list of three Japanese language centres to whom Matt and I will send job applications. If I'm not out of here by early-August there will be some kind of emotional explosion.

Every morning on the CBC there's some idiot trying to convince everyone that Emerson's defection to the Tories less than two weeks after the election is a "good thing" for Western Canada: each and every one of them bullshits about how a cabinet minister from BC will ensure coastal representation and therefore no one should complain. Never mind that nobody in Vancouver-Kingsway voted for a Tory. They placed third in the polls for that region. Third! So what I'd like to know is:

1. If people elect a Liberal and wind up with a Tory and half the country is shocked that voters find that "unethical," then why vote?

2. Why not have an arbitrarily selected group of fat, old, white, men visit each riding, tear up the ballot boxes, and simply announce which party will be best for the region and then assign that MP?

Posted by joy at 11:09 AM | Comments (6)

February 14, 2006

Two Questions

1. Where is Mike Little when you need him?

2. Is it safe to eat canned lobster straight from the tin, or do you have to cook it first?

Posted by joy at 6:35 PM | Comments (3)

February 10, 2006

"How to spend a perfect day in Victoria for $5.49." (Steph)

Well, okay, it cost a bit more than that, but here's how it went:

8:30: Wake up. Have sex.
9am: See the man off to work.
9:01: Brew coffee, stick a load of laundry in.
9:15: Drink coffee, have a cigarette, fool around on the Internet.
10:30: Toast on eggs, more coffee.
11am: Ben arrives; we switch the laundry over and bus it to the photo developing place.
11:30: Drop off photos, buy socks: one pair argyle, one pair thick warm fuzzy goodness.
11:45: Meet Steph and look for elusive cowboy boots; go to a cafe and buy juice. Wile. Gossip. (Actual quotes: "She weighs like ten pounds more than I do!" "He's always been an uber-snob. You know. Trying too hard.")
12:30: Pick up photos. Yearn for a scanner so I can post them all here. Actually, I have a scanner. Yearn for software and practical know-how. There are several Bolshevikish ones of me in which I look, endearingly, 18.
1pm: Having bussed to town, indulge in cheap sushi and green tea in Japanese mugs that are out of this world. Collectively, dream up a photo shoot: Steph, with her newly inherited tea service, having a tea party with a bevy of stuffed animals and dolls. Steph is dressed in skimpy bedtime wear.
1:30: Mill about the Mall for a while, growing scandalized at tacky women. Steph spends close to $300 window shopping.
2pm: Meet up with Michael. Buy sangria for $5.49 a bottle. Bum some free cups at the food court. Transfer sangria to the cups in the washroom.
2:30: Wind up at the Inner Harbour -- intense and soothing golden sunlight -- smoking and drinking and listening to a busker. Tip the busker a handful of change to play House of the Rising Sun.
4:15: Wander to the Legislature and pose for pictures for Michael.
4:30: Meet Matt at his deli and make Evening Plans.
4:45: Perhaps unwisely, buy a .26 and head on home. Drink some. Contemplate: Shower, finishing the laundry, writing, calling Matt to apologize for pouting at the Deli. Also: must stick cool photos in album. Perhaps make fool of self and universe by trying to figure out scanner?

Posted by joy at 5:24 PM | Comments (8)

"Sometimes when I'm sad, I sit and watch the power station." (Election)

Drinkin: coffee
Listening to: John Lennon

I just read the children's book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, for the first time. What a fantastic book! A fantasy with a liberal Christian edge that combines travel to the fifth dimension, witches who might be angels, and Dark vs Light. I wish I'd read it as a kid.

Off to the one-hour photo place (which is usally more like an hour and a half) to get 36 black and white photos developed. I'm going to drink coffee and write and buy socks during the wait. Will work on the Pulp Sex Kitchen thing, and maybe tinker with the version of Rumpelstiltskin (I'm focusing on the father who basically sells his daughter to the King, presumably to her death, and how he's not fundamentally a bad person and when the fairy tale closes with its happy ending he's still racked with guilt and his life, in essence, is ruined. Yes.).

Posted by joy at 9:43 AM | Comments (1)

February 9, 2006

A Conversation With Michael Joyce

How old were you when you first knew that Design was for you?
I don't know that design is really for me. Photography is, but more for the purely creative aspect, as opposed to the "design" side of things. The capture of a moment, or an image, or a particular point of view excites me. I guess I've slowly been learning design as a by-product of learning how to improve photos with some editing.

Which design, or photograph, brings you the most personal satisfaction, and why?
"'Shots For Breakfast' on bottles" is probably my favourite of the ones that I sent to you. From a purely technical perspective, it was difficult to remove the labels on the bottles in Photoshop and then add the text and try to get it aligned and "in" the image. I'm still not sure that it all fits together correctly yet, the text still looks artificial. And I also like that the overall image is a little dark, even though the title mentions breakfast. [I really loved that one, but I love the one picked more.]

At which subjects did you excell in high school?
Math, sciences, and music. I was a band/choir nerd. Yeah baby, this one time... at band camp... nothing happened. [I don't buy it.]

At which did you suck?
I didn't do well in humanities courses. I took one "fine arts" class, and the teacher had a hissy fit at me for something or other. [They tend to do that ...] So I did sciences. And English classes were always a struggle for me.

What is your ideal career?
Ideals come and go. At one point, I was going to be a physics professor. Then I took a class with lab work and realized that it just wasn't for me. There was a time in my life when I really wanted to open a small, local business (even had some great ideas) but neither the time or money were available. Lately I've been considering a few different careers, including politics (GAH! what the hell?) and something technical. What ever I end up with as a career, I don't think it will be ideal, but it will fund my extra-careericular activities like photography.

What is your realistic career?
I'm good with computers, mathematics, and have the best people skills around. Also, I'm the most humble person EVAR! At this point the realistic career is the enjoyable one that pays the bills. I'm beginning to take a great deal of pleasure in the details of things, the minutiae of a piece of code, so anything that involves attention to detail is probably something I'll want to do.

Any advice for budding designers?
The best, most visually appealing, result is usually the least interesting from a purely technical point of view. Learn to use the tools that you have available. Don't bother complaining about the tools you don't have, or can't afford. Find new ways to use the tools in front of you.

What were some unique challenges presented by the Shots for Breakfast Banner Contest?
The initial image was probably the most difficult. Finding an image that would fit with a facet of your personality wasn't easy. [Thank you.] I wanted to include something "liquor-y" in the image, [Thank you.] but I don't have too many photos like that which were shot well. I did a pretty purple flower one, but it didn't seem like a good fit. [Yeah. That one was pretty but didn't really suit me.]

How does it feel to win?
Kinda gooey on the inside, but there's a great crunchy outer shell that tastes like goodness. Actually it feels pretty good. Outside of work, I don't get to do much that's visually stimulating right now, and the visual aspect of my work projects are usually determined before I get involved. Thanks for the opportunity, I had fun. Lets do a blogger thing at Swans some night? [Yes. Next Wednesday perhaps?]

Posted by joy at 3:56 PM | Comments (10)

And the Winner Is ...

Michael Joyce wins the Shots for Breakfast Banner Contest.

His victory interview is forthcoming -- as soon as I get in touch with him and beg his help in making it so the banner doesn't obliterate the first few lines of every entry .... Help!

Posted by joy at 10:07 AM | Comments (4)

February 8, 2006

"You can't comapre a martini to a scotch ... That's like comparing Duke Ellington to Frank Sinatra. It just can't be done. Of course, a martini would win. And so would Duke Ellington. But you still shouldn't compare them." (T. Harris)

You Are a Martini
There's no other way to say it: you're a total lush.
You hold your liquor well, and you hold a lot of it!
What Mixed Drink Are You?
Posted by joy at 8:24 PM | Comments (4)

Two conversations

1.
MATT: Too gay to function.
JOY: I love it. Hey, Ben! That could be the title of your autobiography! Too Gay To Function: A Memoir of Madness!
BEN: [deeply insulted] Why madness?

2.
LIQUOR STORE GUY: Donate a dollar to dry grad and get a free chocolate?
JOY: No. I'd rather they drank.
LIQUOR STORE GUY: Here. Have a chocolate.

Posted by joy at 6:45 PM | Comments (8)

February 7, 2006

The Giraffes Are Coming!

1.
You can use my giraffes, but don't be too heartbroken if you wake at dawn to see your home -- your life -- ransacked and gutted and completely destroyed. Your 30-year-old scotch will be splattered over the polar-bear skins in the living room -- the Van Gogh and Georgia O'Keefe ripped to shreds in their frames; hoof-marks, muddy ones, on the ottoman and matching chesterfield. Gypsies of the Animal Kingdom, giraffes: they'll make love to you with one hand in your back pocket; they'll fix you a feast of wild boar and sweet apple, almond cakes and avocado ices, but will only pretend to drink the wine while you get drunker and drunker and when you wake up your life will be ruined. All I ask is a deposit -- cross my palm with fifty pieces of silver, no slipping a copper in, you understand -- and the giraffes are yours till tomorrow afternoon.

2.
He felt sorry for the President. Dissent on the home front preceded problems in the battlefield more often than not, and with the Giraffe Strike reaching a kind of bloodthirsty zenith, Robert feared the President's celebrity status as President of War would soon wane. "POW, indeed," giraffes had been overheard sniffing. Great knots of them could be observed in front of strategic public works buildings, sipping takeout coffee and nodding gravely at passing motorists. The passive resistance thing was a sham: Robert and everyone else in Washington with half a brain knew that while the giraffes had technically ceased their munitions factory work in protest of the war, certain of them operated behind the scenes amassing a stockpile of weaponry and biological germfare large enough to wipe out every human heartbeat in the Capitol. And that, thought Robert, reaching for his pager, included the President.

3.
I did not return Mr. Parker's call. He stopped being worth my time when at Louise and Henrietta's Victory-Over-Pro-Sports luncheon last week he made sundry comments comparing deviously and I must say not-very-wittily giraffes to Gypsies. There was an awful, collapsed-lung sort of wheezed silence, a dozen forks in the air, the lemon torte forgotten and devalued -- I had made the lemon torte -- and then like the birth of a young god through the skull and forehead of its father the realization scrabbled through him and he sucked on his pipe with what he thought was debonaire carriage but I found merely common, and simpered, "Present company excepted, Stella Darling." Let the damn phone ring. I've bigger fish to fry.

(copyright Joy Waller 2006)

(Ben's version)

Posted by joy at 8:48 PM | Comments (1)

February 5, 2006

On the Burner

Gypsy Stew

Ingredients:
- splat of sunflower oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 stalks celery, chopped
- 1 peeled yam, chopped
- 1 potato, chopped
- 1 green pepper, chopped
- 1/2 cup frozen peas
- 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 can stewed tomatoes
- 4 cups vegetable stock
- 2 tsp oregano
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon

How-to:
1) In a large soup pot, heat oil over medium heat and add onions and garlic. Saute until onions are transluscent.
2) Add potato and yam. Cook until yams start sticking to the bottom of pot, stirring occasionally.
3) Add stock, celery, green pepper, peas, chickpeas, tomatoes, and spices, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, partially cover, and simmer until potatoes are tender (20 minutes or so).

Posted by joy at 7:01 PM

Previously at Wellburn's

Oh my God! I have in my hands a biography of Margaret Atwood. I was unaware such a tome existed. It's wonderful, written by Rosemary Sullivan. From the Introduction: "When I explained to Margaret what I wanted to do, she initially misunderstood my intention. 'I'm not dead,' she said."

Our Christmas tree, on the front lawn since New Year's, blew away in the windstorm. Penny saw it up near Oak Bay Junction.

More books: Sylvia Browne's Prophecy, a book about gypsies (gypsies!), a book about castrated males in India, Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors.

Previously at Wellburn's:

JOY: Well that's it! I'm going to do it! I'm going to bake a spinach pie!
MATT: Excellent.
JOY: Of course, I would need to buy a pie pan.
MATT: Could you also bake a raspberry and rhubarb pie?
JOY: Blast! And a rolling pin! I haven't got a rolling pin.
MATT: Or maybe a blueberry pie?
JOY: Of course, I suppose I could use a beer bottle. Nature's rolling pin.
MATT: Yes.

Posted by joy at 4:15 PM | Comments (1)

And for today's fourth update:

Matt just measured me and I am 5.2!! So surprising. I've gone these last 11 years thinking I was 5.1. I must have grown.

Matt is 6.1.

Posted by joy at 11:49 AM | Comments (1)

This Just In:

1. Name one thing you've quit:
Smoking, when I was 20. For a year and a half.

2. Name something you've won:
A gold medal in a regional figure skating competition, when I was 14. I skated to music from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and wore a black dress with a golden sash. The golden sash had black dragon silhouettes on it. My mum made it for me.

3. Describe a subject in school you do poorly in:
Art. I got my lowest grade in high school from it (B-).

4. Have you ever purposely not done your best?
Well, I never really tried to do Math well. Or rather: I tried for three seconds and got so frustrated I cried and dropped out and took Accounting 11 for graduation purposes.

5. Do you lead, follow, or get out of the way?
I lead if I care, get out of the way if I don't.

Posted by joy at 11:35 AM

"I am a Pamphlet."

Went to 3 watering holes last night: Spinnakers (excellent atmosphere, terrific view of the harbour, though a bit pricy for so-so beer), The Sticky Wicket (will I never learn -- actually we had been aiming for Big Bad John's but were deterred by the snivelling scrap of a bouncer barely out of his training pants), and The Brickyard (wonderful wonderful -- we got to sit at the hockey table and drink Race Rocks out of plastic cups and there are two arcade games, Ms. Pacman and Super Mario Brothers, plus pizza, a varied clientelle, convenient location).

Posted by joy at 11:12 AM | Comments (3)

paradise

A mango for breakfast, peeled and sliced and dripping ----

Posted by joy at 10:40 AM

February 4, 2006

"Grow up Heather, bulimia is so '87." (Heathers)

Will there be a tidal wave? A tsunami? Is that what these ridiculous winds and states of emergency will add up to? On the radio, talk of 200 homes flooded in Delta, 13-foot tide, mass evacuation, and a sound bite: "We're just going to wait and see what happens." I kid you not.

Quick! There's only a few short hours before the Shots for Breakfast Banner Contest closes! Four entries thus far and the race is close; quite close.

I think we're going to Esquimalt tonight, for Michael's birthday. Will have to get on the horn and figure all that out. First I must have crackers and cream cheese. And decide what to wear. All my warm jackets have broken.

Posted by joy at 5:27 PM | Comments (2)

February 3, 2006

"They took my food, my drug, and my heart away." (J. Kerouac)

Today on CBC1 I heard a parrot sing "I Dream of San Francisco." I am forever changed: I want to be a singing parrot.

There are wind warnings in effect tonight!

Posted by joy at 8:16 PM | Comments (2)

February 2, 2006

"When I was in high school ... I was bulimic." "You could READ MINDS??" (Zoolander)

Matt bought me a package of Belmont Milds; I can scarcely believe my good fortune!

In other news: I think my father and I shared a past life in China at one point. Maybe as brothers.

It's official: Tomorrow I will have survived for one month on just one two-week paycheque. Dinner tonight cost me $2.04 and it was wonderful: a potato and a yam cut into strips and tossed with sunflower oil and oregano, then baked; a Yves vegi burger fried and then placed between the glorious halves of a whole wheat kasier, plus pickles and lettuce. Hobo cuisine. ("DERELIQUE!!!")

Been reading Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. I like it. Too much, you know, "good earth" (protagonist is a farmer, natch) but excellent.

Posted by joy at 7:41 PM | Comments (6)

February 1, 2006

"If I know Mary like I think I do, she'll invite us right in for tea and scrumpets!" (Dumb and Dumber)

(Tagged by Brianna)

THE RULES: List five songs that you are currently loving. It doesn’t matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the songs in your blog, then ‘tag’ five other bloggers/friends to see what they’re listening to.

1. "Fit But You Know It," the Streets
2. "Your Ex-Lover is Dead," the Stars
3. "Live It Out," Metric
4. "Dyke March 2001," Le Tigre
5. "Escarpment Blues," Sarah Harmer

I tag: Matt, Ben, Elisa, Steph, and Ryan.

And also:

You Are a Soy Latte
At your best, you are: free spirited, down to earth, and relaxed

At your worst, you are: dogmatic and picky

You drink coffee when: you need a pick me up, and green tea isn't cutting it

Your caffeine addiction level: medium
What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Which just happens to be the same result Brianna got ...

Posted by joy at 6:26 PM | Comments (2)