Random Crap 2009!

From OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO
Just kidding.

From TORONTO,
January 7th, 2010


Friends, I am about to go downstairs and murder the dog that won't stop barking, as well as any neighbours that try getting in my way. This could result in jail time, and while I imagine I am legally permitted to blog from jail, I fear that my noisy laptop would disturb the other inmates and put my life in danger. There's also the possibility that, due to its size and heft and strange appearance, the guards would consider it a dangerous weapon and take it away fom me along with my belt and many knives.

I may manage to escape the authorities and flee to High Park on my new snowshoes (!) and wearing the corpse of the offending dog as a hat. There I'll live among the raccoons and Japanese tourists all winter, emerging in the spring unrecognizable with my long beard and therefore safe. But clearly, as my Vaio's battery won't even last me to the streetcar stop and back, I won't be blogging from the woods either.

Either way, it may be a while, so I've a few things to get off my chest first.

#1: I have snowshoes! Here they are!

OOOH. AHH. OHHH.

I hate that stupid little laugh that Joni Mitchell does at the end of Big Yellow Taxi. It's enough to make me hate the entire song. And I just don't understand it. What's so funny about paving paradise to put up a parking lot? Nothing! And that's why the laugh is so fake.

I read an audition posting the other day in which the theatre stated it was looking for performers who are "able to move". This is not the first time I've seen this. They don't say that you need to be able to dance, or even be particularly graceful, though that's what they mean. Just able to move. I'd love to go into the audition, introduce myself, and for my audition piece, just sit in a chair, completely still, and occasionally shoot an arm or leg in the air. Or painstakingly raise an eyebrow or a single pinky with a pained groan. Better yet, I could pose as a quadraplegic and have someone wheel me to the audition, where we loudly protest the discrimination being demonstrated against me, an actor who isn't able to move.

Do animals get insomnia?

Has anyone died because they couldn't find their phone in their apartment to call 911?

I'm surprised that apples don't have a PR problem. Isn't it the fault of them and that snakey little devil that we all don't live in Eden? Don't they represent our fall from grace with GOD? And yet Boy Scouts sell them, and they have this squeaky-clean image, "American as apple pie" and all that. You'd think evangelical Christians would be condemning apples as Satan's fruit and stoning those who grow or eat them. Who represents apples? I want their agent.

Speaking of apples and Boy Scouts...

I can no longer bear to hear my boyfriend speak of his scouting years as a kid. It makes me angry. It makes me jealous. It makes me want to jab him with sharp, pointy objects. And not in a sexy way.

I was a Brownie. It sucked. I may have told you this before, but I was the worst Brownie in history. I earned precisely two badges; one for knowing how to read, and one for learning the alphabet in sign language, which was the only other choice that interested me. It seemed they were always trying to get us to sew and bake and darn socks and make useless crafts. I tried for a sewing badge once, but it was just too complicated. My two sad badges were stuck on me with safety pins. Meetings took place, usually, in the horrible ugly gymnasium of some Scarborough school nearby.

Kimberly Moonlight and I only joined because we followed some older, cooler girls there one day and wanted to be like them. We lied about our age. (You had to be seven and we were six.) There were weird rituals involving dancing around a fire and chanting. As we were in a gym, the "fire" was an effect created by some creepy girls crinkling orange cellophane and waving it around. There was something called a toadstool. We were Pixies first, and then danced around chanting until one day we were "flown up" to the Brownie level. I think there may have been a stuffed owl involved. I know we had to call the adults things like Brown Owl and Tawny Owl, and that one of them would read us boring stories and things from the bible.

One day I got in deep trouble because, restless during storytime, I started showing all the other Brownies the gross cut on my tongue. My sister and I had been trying to breakdance on the kitchen floor one day (obviously), and I had bit down on my own tongue while attempting a headspin. It now looked kind of lumpy and scary and what could be better than that? All the sucky girls around me reacted appropriately, looking grossed out and shocked and mouthing "Ewww", until one Brownie whose nose was particularly brown, raised her hand and told on me.

They stripped me of my badges and clothes and made me sit on the plaster toadstool shivering and naked for the rest of the meeting, while they chanted insults in Cree and pelted me with pine cones and macaroni. At least that's how it felt.

When we got to be old enough, our mothers let Kim and me quit Brownies and join Guides, which was for older kids, where you got to wear blue uniforms, and where my mom said the girls "might be less sucky". They weren't! They were MORE SUCKY! Some of them were thirteen and still doing this shit by choice, when they should be out experimenting with crack cocaine and boys! Some of them were horrible tyrants. And the whole thing was infinitely boring, and still took place in a school, this time one further away.

Also, wearing your uniform to school on National Scouting Day was even more humiliating now that you weren't so young and cute and had an awkward haircut and might get boobs soon.

I hated selling Girl Guide cookies. I resented it. It was awful. It set the tone for any humiliating joe job I've had to do since. (It was, however, infinitely better than the time our grade school announced that our fundraising product that year would be family-sized jars of spices. They even had an infomercial-type salesman lead a pep talk in the gym, telling us how great an idea this was. I remember standing in a neighbours' doorway, offering up the one fact I, the ten year old not-yet Tourist knew about any spice in an effort to help the school effort: "Seasoning Salt is REEEEEAALY good on popcorn. I use it myself all the time.")

Anyhow, boyfriend Jason wasn't a BROWNIE, he was a Cub. Way cooler. He wasn't a Guide, he was a Scout. They didn't sell sugary fattening cookies, they sold delicious fresh healthy apples. He didn't go to meetings in an enormous, fluorescent-lit gym, he went on expeditions. They went hunting! They went winter camping, for fuck's sake! When I went to Brownie camp one summer, and later to Guide camp, we stayed in these pre-built wooden platform tents, so we weren't even sleeping on the ground, and didn't get to pitch anything. Our main duties seemed to be waddling back and forth filling buckets with water in case our tents caught on fire, and scrubbing the toilets. I shared quarters with a girl named Barbie, who was my fast friend, but later my mortal enemy (ending with us rolling on the ground, at blows, while on a nature walk), and with two whiney, fat, identical twins who cried all night and whimpered, "I miss mom." "Me too. I miss Mom." "I miss Dad." "Yeah, I miss Dad."

At this camp, Windy Owl and Farty Owl would give us time each day to write letters home, despite the fact that we were gone for less than a week and we'd get home before our letters did. I kept pointing out this fact to the twins, who nonetheless huddled together every afternoon, sniffling out, "Dear Mom, Dear Dad, come get us." They were twelve.

The only redemptive moment came each evening at dinner time, when I got to sit near Penny, an older, slutty girl who would share confusing and interesting facts about sex and periods. But she started to sicken me after a while.

Meanwhile, the fucking Boy Scouts were off killing wolves with bows and arrows or sometimes just skinning them alive, and building bridges across rapids while their handsome, rugged leaders shouted handsome, rugged words of encouragement and tossed them each a beer as a way of saying, "Job well done, son".

This is why one cannot speak to me of Boy Scouts.

I really love leaving my contact lens case on the window sill overnight in winter. In the morning when I put my lenses on my eyes, they are deliciously cool and kind of shocking. This is fun.

I need to get out more.

I just busted one of the straps on my new snowshoes. Here it is:

BOOOO. HOOOO.

Half of me thinks it ridiculous that "installation wizards" are called what they are. The other half thinks it's kind of wonderful. I don't encounter many wizards in everyday life.

No, Scotiabank. I am not "richer than I think." Unless you're planning to give me some cash, I know exactly how poor I am, you profit-posting sons of whores.

Jason is designing some shows in the Next Stage Festival. So far, I have been invited via facefuck and group email a dozen times by three or four people and some "groups", none of them the man himself. I was fully intending to go, but now I think I won't, to protest all the harrassment.

When Daniel Karasik was promoting his play The Crossing Guard (not to be confused with the 1995 film of the same name though, oddly enough, they did both star Jack Nicholson) he sent out facefuck invites three times a day for six years. I started waking up in the middle of the night with a start, drenched in sweat and yelling "Crossing Guard! Crossing Guard!" In the end I actually went. And I really enjoyed it. But I didn't like enjoying it.

Also I think Hugh Grant is underrated.

Unintentional Four Weddings and a Funeral segue in 5...4....3...2....

Have you seen this L'Oreal hair dye ad in which Andie MacDowell, spokesmodel, claims the product will even work on "those stubborn little wiry ones"? What the fuck? Why is Andie MacDowell taking an interest in my pubes? And why does she want me to colour them?? I just don't understand the televisor.

This is from an ad on ebay from a seller peddling the Dora the Explorer Talking Cash Register, a popular item for little capitalist golddigging sluts in training....er I mean, girls:

Dora the Explorer she is such a popular character. This is Dora's talking Cash Register. This is new in the box, never opened. Dora the Explorer is off on another adventure. This time, she is teaching children the value of money with her very own talking cash register. It comes to life with pretend shopping trips and bilingual phrases to send kids on their own shopping trip. They can use Dora dollars or even swipe their own Dora credit card. As a real working cash register, it has a credit card tablet for kids to sign their name, just like adults! And to help Dora with her shopping, they can scan bar codes on the price tags or in the adventure book. This toy provides hours of amusement and the children can even act like different customers using the dress-up accessories provided. Kids ages three through eight will have lots of fun as they shop with Dora.

Just look at this kid, proudly displaying her first credit card.

I guess that's not so bad. I probably had some kind of Fisher Price cash register when I was a kid. But check out.....Polly Pocket's Race To the Mall!

In case you think I made that one up, here's the terrifying TV ad:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m3T8CFI8XBRD3B

Guess when I first saw these products advertised? Last Christmas, just before the financial crisis! Training our little girlchildren to rack up debt! I know, I know, spend five years acting at The Shaw Festival and you come out the other side a big fat socialist. Good thing I didn't work at The Stalin Festival (located in picturesque Espanola, Ontario, pop. 5 314).

The other night I had a dream in which I came up with the ultimate business plan. It goes like this: get hold of a bunch of crocodiles, tranquilize them and then wire their jaws shut so they can't bite. Toss them in a pool with a bunch of rich businessfolk and extreme sportsters who've paid a lot of money for the danger and excitement of swimming with predators. I'd just moved on to the idea of adding great white sharks to the mix when I woke up. I now realize that the sharks and crocodiles would likely be strong enough and determined enough to break anything holding their jaws shut, so I think I may not have come up with a brilliant unethical business plan but a brilliant horror movie plot. Could they use this in Saw IX? I hear they're running out of writers who will work on those things.

You know those junkmail items you get intermailed by lovely young ladies like Mandy! and Wendy! with subjects such as "bigtitttttssixtynein" or "wild girl ayyynal" (weird spelling in hopes of passing through the spam filters)? I got sent one titled "Brutal 3some fckuking at the gloomy bedroom".

Ladies and gentlemen....Mister Burt Reynolds!

And some bandages that look like bacon!




And that My Friends, for now, is all.

So much the lighter for sharing this all with you, ready for 2010, for murder, mayhem and life on the run,
The always Skeptical,

Tourist