Norton World

From TORONTO,
October 19th, 2015

So this was going to be my "I just turned 40" issue. Complete with hair, makeup and workout tips for the rapidly wrinkling set! (See pic above.) Stayed up all night on birthday eve writing notes and everything. And then I got real busy. Lazy. (...Bulazy?) Now it's been a whole MONTH since my birthday.  (Remember the Ides of September, remember!) What to do??!

I've decided it still works. And now I can comment from this wiser and loftier perch (Queen and Roncey), having spent thirty-three whole days basking in the glory of my fifth live decade. Seriously, those still in their thirties and younger: this shit is crazy. Like Mason-Illuminati-Skull and Bones level stuff I'm not allowed to tell you about. Can I mention that Helen Mirren figures prominently in the organization and that Don King is this quarter's treasurer? No? Oh well. Still working on my Mature Discretion Badge. And they make me sell my share of the charity apples on the shittiest corner on the coldest days.... But man, I see this really paying off by fifty-seven, fifty-eight.

Anyway...birthday or no (NO, you idiot!), late or not, I wasn't going to scrap yet another blague post. There are far too many unfinished ones getting wormy in notebooks.

And as I begin writing, I realize this can double as a wedding gift for my pal Jeff Irving, who marries the lovely Kristi Frank this Monday (TODAY, as this rolls off the interpresses!), and is not only one of the remaining steadfast Tourist fans (a decidedly strange but resilient breed), but the most persistent and annoying of them all. (Don't worry, Nathan Carroll; you're annoying too.)

I don't know whether it's the puppy dog eyes or the pathetic tone of voice, but whenever Jeff asks after the Tourist I always feel like I'm having to explain to a little kid where his beloved goldfish went, or why his crack addict older sister didn't make it to his hockey game. Which makes me feel really dorky too, come to think of it, because at least if I were a crack addict I'd have a pretty exciting excuse for not writing. Or if I were a goldfish! Nobody razzes goldfish about not posting on their blogs: they're all like, "Wow, you're a goldfish and you can write! That's so amaaaazing!" "Hey, remember that time you were a dead goldfish and you wrote a blog for ten years? Like wow."
Yeah yeah. Ooh la frickin' la.

Anyway, here I am, out of....shall we not say "retirement"? -- retirement sounds so old and weird and final -- shall we say... hibernation? Shall we agree that I was, what's the word -- pupating: going from a nasty, sarcastic, hairy wormy thing, to a beautiful, elegant butterfly with gossamer stained-glass-patterned wings, who will write generous, loving odes to the universe and the miracle that is all the living creatures in it. Or, well, not. Let's be honest: a butterfly is still a wormy hairy creepy thing. With wings.

WITH WINGS.

YEAH. THAT TOO.

SOOO....This one's for you, Jeff. Now you'll have something to read on your honeymoon. 'Cause that's what people do on honeymoons, right? Gimme a break, I'm just a goldfish, whuddoo I know? Or -- crap! -- what animal was I?

On that: I have a whole new animal kingdom role model. (Up yours, raccoons! Yeah, I said it.) One I didn't know existed 'til my friend Lyon posted this article on Facebook last week.

             http://www.wired.com/2014/03/absurd-creature-week-water-bear/

YOU THINK YOU HAVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS? WHAT THE HELL AM I???!

                     
I don't know if you read the whole thing about those things but those things are some crazy-ass things. They can survive for ten days in space vacuum conditions! Be practically dead for ages AND THEN YOU SPRINKLE SOME WATER ON THEM AND THEY COME BACK TO LIFE! And they have weirdo crazy suction faces! (Every lady's dream!) People call them Water Bears, but their scientific name is "Tardigrade": their real name is weirder than their nickname! I want to be that strange and that resilient! Like Jeff Irving! Tardigrade life starts now!
(I don't like the video on that page though. One lonely drunk Water Bear, writhing around, looking for the Tardigrade party. Bet that one's embarrassed: "Man! I finally make YouTube, and it's this clip that makes me look like a loser. Thanks a LOT, scientists. Now Courtney will never sleep with me!")

Anyway, I'm feeling relatively Water Bearish these days, relatively strong. My insomnia has shifted from the Lying in Bed Enumerating all the Things I Suck at and the Ways in Which I Suck at Them variety, to the rather more fun manic sleeplessness of Why Haven't the Workers Arrived and Started Work on my Self-Themed Amusement Park, and should I position the waterslides and the Lisa Norton Statue Garden near the east or west gates?

Look, all I'm saying is, if there can be a Norton Anthology of World Literature....why not a Norton World®? Saves three whole words and everything.

THIS, OR A ROLLERCOASTER? BE HONEST.

The bulldozers have yet to start digging; in the meantime, I can just be all I that can be and stuff.
My career, for one, is making great strides:

GIRLFIGHTING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE SINCE 1975

It's actually in all my contracts:
"Ms. Norton will only participate in stage fights:
1. As choreographed by a certified fight director
2. Featuring a lotta hot chicks
3. Wherein she ends downstage right having her hair pulled
4. In which she has her mouth open to its fullest extent for a minimum of eight seconds"

More evidence of creative progress:

"FUCK YOU, ASHLEY WRIGHT, I'MMA BASH YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH SOMETHING
AND THEN YOU'RE GONNA DIE IN THIS HERE FIRE I MAYBE STARTED" 

"FUCK YOU, LISA NORTON, NOW I GET TO BREAK YOUR STUPID NECK." 

See? I worked out some of that youthful aggression and matured into a victim, like all girls need to learn to do!
And yet more...

SQUARE-HAIRED MULLET MISERY, CIRCA 2012

Totally different from:

SQUARE-HAIRED MULLET MISERY, 1984

"LOOK HERE, NORTON, YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTRUN THE MULLET,
BUT I WILL FOLLOW YOU, EVEN ONTO THE TELEVISION."

"I'M CALLING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE."

Was I that (admittedly bad-assedly) miserable about the hair; about picture day in general, which was so sucky (i.e. for sucky babies); at Mrs Thielking, who held me for detention every day that year....or about the previous night's birthday Black Forest cake? Or was I still steaming because, during my weekend birthday party, at which my big sister had painstakingly put together a very cool backyard scavenger hunt for me and my friends, Kimberly Moonlight fell in the mud wearing my brand new argyle leg warmers, a gift I HAD JUST OPENED AND HADN'T EVEN WORN YET BUT LET HER PUT ON BEFORE ME??! Fell in the mud REACHING FOR A PRIZE THAT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE HER NAME ON IT! IT WAS ANITA YOON'S GOODY BAG, FOR CHRISSAKE!

I'll never trust again.

As for Black Forest cake. That weird kind from the Dominion cake counter -- with the radioactive goopy red stuff and the mounds of fake whipped cream and the plasticky cheap chocolate shavings and the maraschino cherries and some kind of rummy boozy flavour that we children didn't understand at all -- a huge one of which my mom never failed to present at my sis's and my birthdays with an enthusiastic, "Black Forest cake! Your favourite!" And we would kind of gag and politely eat a bite or two and she would have the rest.
"Whaaat? I thought it was your favourite! Whose favourite is it again?"
"Yours, mom! Yours!"
I found out years later that my Aunt Pat spent decades pulling this scam on her daughters too. Whole generations of Vieiras have spent their childhood birthdays bitterly weeping through mouthfuls of maraschino cherry, only to grow up and become their mothers, inexplicably beginning to love the stuff and forcing it on their offspring. But no more. We refuse to be made monsters. You wonder why you don't have grandchildren, ladies? The cycle of abuse ends here.

Back to aging, because it's late and I'm falling asleep but Jeff needs his stupid blague post goddammit! A few thoughts:

Is it only natural that I've developed a new phobia of slipping and falling in the shower? Is that just a proper self-preservation instinct as my hipbones begin their inevitable transformation into sand? Should I stop tempting fate by using coconut oil, thus making my tub into a Slip'N Slide?

Is it a fact that, were Bob Marley and John Lennon alive today, they would be collaborating on soundtracks for animated Disney princess movies? Would I snap along?

If I modify the resolution "don't eat brownies with every meal" to "stick a baby carrot in every brownie you eat", that constitutes a "healthy lifestyle choice", am I right?

Will I vote Conservative some day?

I finally threw away my last crop top and it felt great.

Does anyone my age remember how to do long division? Or know the combos to all these Dudley locks I seem to have all over the place? Why have I lost the ability to write in cursive? Why did I just use the word "cursive"?

I'm old and tired. Can I go to bed now?

....Ask the Water Bear. The Water Bear knows.