I never cease to be amazed with the search terms that Word Press reports lead viewers to the humble, unassuming weblog of yours truly.
So it’s now time for another thrilling installment of our in depth and provocative examination of these search terms.
Top Searches, Week of November 1, 2010: honk if you’re not wearing any underwear, halloween makeup, fly bikes fort bolt turquoise, yellow ball inside mouth glands, the inside of the cunt.
Fascinating.
From Dictionary.com
tact [tækt]
–noun
From Merriam-Webster.com
tact - noun \ˈtakt\
Origin: 1150–1200; < L tāctus sense of touch, equiv. to tag-, var. s. of tangere to touch + -tus suffix of v. action
—Can be confused: tack, tact, track, tract.
—Synonyms: perception, sensitivity; diplomacy, poise.
And it so happened that one day I threw off unconsciousness as I do every morning, with eyes still crusted and heavy, rolled over and summoned the laptop to service, only to find a coupon for laser hair removal.
This is something I have looked into before. In the same way I inherited my father’s cro-magnon physic so too do I enjoy his hair growth pattern. Sparse afro. My sister’s bush was always a thing of envy. Lush. Thick. Soft. Full. Like a baby fox nestled for a nap in her crotch. Damn her. And me. Like Bob Ross’ head if he had stage four testicular cancer. Shaving only made things worse. It was like a clear cut forest of California Red Ceders built from barbed wire, you know, like they have in Mordor or something. The shame.
Needless to say I jumped at the opportunity. I saved nearly a grand.
So far I have been for one appointment. The experience itself was lovely. It took place in a spa with the usual little water fountains and whale song playing the background.
I filled out a little survey in the lobby (“How long has it been since the area has been exposed to sunlight?” Lol.) and they gave me a chocolate.
All the girls were gorgeous and manicured to perfection. I could only hope to look so good….. well, I never expect to look that good. I went into the little room, put on the ridiculous little disposable underwear and climbed on the table. Then the girl came in. She seemed so sweet and straight laced for someone who looked at vagina all day. “So, you must see just about everything, hey?” I asked her. “Oh yea. A while back I had a women come in and get hers done in a smiley face. Accept it was made of hair.” And with that she strapped on her laser goggles and away we were.
BZAP. A tiny lightning bolt shot from the end of her stick. Son of a bitch did it hurt. BZZZZZZZZZZAP!!!! BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP! “Hear that? We’re getting a good sound out of them. That means we’re getting ‘em!!” This should have been a comfort, but with the scent of my sizzled follicles afloat in the very air that transmitted these words I felt a little queasy.
All the while they had this tv up in the corner playing Planet Earth. Calming scenes of mother and baby elephant bathing each other gave way to a small gazelle being hunted and ripped to shreds by a lion.
Basically what it comes down to is that you pay money to go let someone shoot lasers at your vagina. I hold myself to have a pretty high threshold for pain, but on my scale of ten this was like a thirty. But three and a half minutes in it was over and my pants went back on.
And the results. I effing LOVE my new bush. God it’s beautiful. If the world only knew they’d see to it I never wore pants.
Check it out for yourself!
BEFORE: Oh good Lord! Put your clothes back on! Cannot be unseen!
AFTER: Should have sent a poet!
I walked through the doors of Emily Carr University, out of the bleak January weather, and into the great entrance hall. This gallery, known as the Concourse, is a corridor of polished cement and bare white walls that’s narrowness in comparison to its height sweeps the gaze up, up, up into the red ceder farters with their heavy iron hardware and the glass window ceilings. This grand space is home to a different exhibit of student work each week. The installments are ever changing. One week mannequins in electric clothes. The next, young male student traces chalk lines onto the cool polished cement around play-dead fellow artists, struck dead by government funding cuts. The plain white walls are built to be adapted to their task, and more walls are always being build up and torn down. This last stretch of my commute to school has come to be a ritual where every week I am initiated into the house of this holy work, the outside world washed off me and every week I am baptized anew.
Returning home from Christmas after so much time away it was a curious sight. The Vancouver atmosphere outside is a white grey overcast, bright and dark simultaneously, freeking, drizzly, with the taste of the sea on the air. I emerged from damp scarves and mits into warmth and ambience of this cathedral of whiteness. So strange to see the place that way, not skeletal, not sad, just clean. Ready for the new term. I imagine to myself with a sarcastic smile that at least someone in this conceptualist orgy of an establishment must be smoking a cigarette and pontificating upon this pregnancy of meaning and symbology. We aren’t all annoying beret wearing flakes, but is not shortage of them. I can hear my footsteps echo as I walk deeper into the school, gaze soaring up into the space where people on ladders are preparing for new installations.
The halls of Emily Carr are same, only busier. They are smaller, darker, more eccentric. Walking them has been my new life’s great entertainment. Their every nook and cranny has some little surprise. Art works, finished and in progress, are packed onto of the lockers. They house rallies and protests alike. Even as you walk them they are reconfigured around you, someone is always busy drilling into the huge old cedar beams to install something new. They swarm. They live. They are an ants’ nest, except with crazier ants.
It is my great regret that I didn’t have the time to document in this blog the adventures of my first term at this school, because they were bar none some of the wackiest, most ridiculous shit shows of my life. I regret you, dear reader, most likely brought to this humble blog while searching for prolific anime porn artist Pandora’s Box on google will never know these tales in their full intensity; I could tell them now, but I think I’d spend most of the time just shaking my head in shock over it all. There were malicious gay 82 year old instructors. There was lost projects. There was moonlight dumpster diving in the in the back alleys of Kits. There were pliers and hot glue and band saws and staple guns and all sorts of tools that make my uncomfortable to be around. There was tonsillitis. There was septic arthritis. There was swine flu. There were bed bugs. There was so much fucking rain I’m surprised the sea bed of the Pacific isn’t dry and flopping with slowly asphyxiating fish. A rant in the heat of the moment would have been the only thing to do them justice. Perhaps though I can convey their tone to you through something our principal said to us our first day while giving us a tour of the facilities. Tiny little Gaye Fowler, goddess principal extraordinaire, whose dress seems to be a flirtation with boredom -librarian skirts, square shoes, every hair in place- that ultimately only makes her unmaskable fabulousness more sensational. A joke, and it’s those black cat eye glasses give it away. “Here at Emily Carr we’re extremely nurturing of your gifts,” she told us, “we’re very accommodating of what you need to grow. We let you do pretty much anything short of punching holes in the walls. But the form for punching holes in the walls are in the student services office.”
I guess the old axiom rings true, “Blogging, is for the bored, the single, and the depressed.” None the less, I will try and keep better records of this term…..
So far January has been just as big a shit show as the term before it…. but somehow it all seems more dire. My boyfriend has been incredibly stressed. Through all the rain in the fall he was still smiling, and while I was running like shit just to stand still, I never felt sad. Nowadays, well, it just feels like the sunshine has been sucked out of everything. He came here to work for the Olympic Games, and with them fast approaching, he’s been working around the clock. Then the other day he accepted a better position in Whistler, and just like that…. he was gone.
He’s been getting farther and farther away since Christmas. He knows I can’t travel with him, I’m in the middle of a degree, so has had no choice but to accept moving on. He’s letting go of me. He had planned to stay here till May…. but now what’s the point? He’s trying to find a job opportunity doing something exciting overseas while amongst all the travelers in Whistler, and while he tells me he’ll come home to me again, I don’t quite trust that he will……
I just feel like those sunny days with him are gone and there’s no way to get him back.
These days since he left have been hard. My stomach feels like it’s full of broken lightbulbs.
It was so tense when he left. I’d cried and cried with worry for losing him, and I know I just made him feel worse. He doesn’t want to hurt me but that’s just life. He hasn’t talked to me since he left. I don’t know if I have a love or not, and that limbo is brutal.
I’m left alone in this city for the remainder of the Olympics. With Granville Island being a major tourist attraction school has been let out for the Games. Most of my school mates have taken the chance to fly home to their families. Jens is gone. Vancouver is swarming with upwards of 500,000 visitors in addition to our 2.5 million. In a city of 3 million and I feel very alone. All around me are celebrations. I walk home under a sky filled with dancing 100,000 watt searchlights and nightly fireworks, and when I take those last few steps up the front porch stairs, I turn around and can see the whole city glowing, and beyond them Cypress Mountain, where Jens used to work, all lit up for night skiing. I wish I had someone, anyone, to share all this with.
January was Olympic hell. I felt like the city was at the ever shrinking aperture of a hurricane of evil. Everywhere there are hundred foot billboards of snowboarders back flipping for a sparkling delicious bottle of coke. Half my friends send me facebook invites for anti-Olympic demonstrations, the other half forward me links to become a fan of the Games. All the hippy friends in Victoria abhor the corporate adulteration of stolen first nation land. All the artist friends at Emily Carr are making their careers over them, either by protesting them through art or by selling art to the tourists that come to them. Jens got the feeling that I hated the Olympics, which I’m sure alienated him a little. This isn’t true. But after seven years of hearing the word Olympics more and more and more until it’s every second one, I’m sick of it.
I remember my very first experience with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. It was 2003 and I was living in Osaka Japan with a bunch of Kiwi girls. One of them walks in and in a culturally appropriate fashion breaks the news to me. “Oi, fuck you.” “What?” I ask. “Congratulations. Vancouver won the 2010 Olympic Games.” We’d beat out New Zealand’s bid. I told her I didn’t give a shit.
And here it is. Seven years later. I made myself some dinner and sat down in front of my computer to watch the Opening Ceremonies. I spent the time wondering…… where was my Jens right then? Was he watching them too, in Whistler, in the snow, with a bunch of rowdy Australian skiers? Was he having fun? Was he happy? Did he remember me?
I’ve cried and cried and cried. I don’t know if he’ll be back, but if he doesn’t I wish he’d just hurry up and kill me so I can start rebuilding myself a spring.
I once heard a song lyric personifying ‘Old Man Circumstance,’ and ever since he has loomed large in my perception of life. Right now I feel like he’s shaking his cane at me and laughing. Laughing.
I came together with the most beautiful human being the first day I came to this city. But we can’t be together.
I’m aching.
Aching.
was it washington square
or the way you wore your hair
was it central park
or kissing after dark
guess i’ll never know
not sure i even care
but my heart will always live
with you and me there
but i can’t afford to live in new york city
ah ah ah
and she can’t afford to leave
ah ah
i can’t afford to live in new york city
ah ah ah
and she can’t afford to leave
but god i miss her
was it the sea port in june
or your face by the moon
was it soho’s charm
or you and i arm in arm
was it the six train uptown
or true love that i found
it all blends into one
when i think of you now
and i can’t afford to live in new york city
ah ah ah
and she can’t afford to leave
ah ah
i can’t afford to live in new york city
ah ah ah
and she can’t afford to leave
well i know that a promise is to keep
but money’s tight and i’ve been losing sleep
old man circumstance will have his way it’s true
but what i wouldn’t give to stay here with you
but i can’t afford to live in new york city
ah ah ah
and she can’t afford to leave
ah ah
i can’t afford to live in new york city
ah ah ah
and she can’t afford to leave
and i’ve never been good at goodbyes
but goodbyes are all i have
and i can’t afford to live in new york city
and i’m pulling outta here
is there anything i can say
to make you change your mind
Is there anything I can say, to make you change your mind?
It’s been nearly a month since my last post and too report of my new life have backed right up, but I felt driven to archive the perfection of this morning while it was fresh.
I woke up this morning to the sound of the pouring rain and the bustle of the already alive Vancouver streets. With my bed right under a big old window, I was all a ball of white sheets and white light, and felt like I was in the place where good Charmin kittens go after they die. Stumbling out of this I ran to my kitchen, put on the kettle, and while the water slowly came to a whistle delighted in going through the teas in my sampler pack and selecting the flavor for the morning. This is when memories of the night before flooded back to me. My beautiful, sexy, intelligent, playful, kick ass new boyfriend and I sometimes indulge in a cinnamon bun after dinner. Earlier that day while he waited outside I’d ran into a coffee shop to get one and when they were fresh out bought a big luscious black piece of chocolate cake instead, and didn’t tell him. We were feeling fat and sassy after eating and Jens was in that usual spot in the middle of the carpet vegging out, and instead of a cinnamon roll I immerged from the kitchen with this gorgeous fucking piece of chocolate cake and a mountain of chocolate ice cream (which he keeps my freezer stocked in, god I love this man). I spooned it to Jens and myself, and got a little cheecky and smeared ice cream all over him and a little up his nose. Remembering all this I promptly send him a dirty text message.
Tea steaping, I stepped back into the living room and noticed the heater cord between my feet. I’d lived in a tp floor room in an old character house for years and always been refused a heater because old the electric bill. So while my brother played one of the eleven video game platforms plugged into the cube tap I slept in the frigid cold of winter. The first thing I did when I moved out was go down to the Sally Anne and buy this heinous old retro heater for a toonie, and I love love love it. I plug it in and the room fills with glorious heat.
So here I sit, in the morning light, sipping tea in front of my heater, blogging to the sound of the cars in the rain, and sending the occasional filthy text message to my boyfriend. I have a day off but I’m heading up to the school to have a project put into the student gallery and then go to the Thursday free yoga!
But right now I’m thinking of taking a nice hot bath with a Corona.
I realize I’m failing as a blog writer through this post; who the hell wants to hear about how happy and fulfilled I am? People want to read about people’s disasters and public mortifications and who they boinked and what they do in secret in the bathroom.
None the less,I really just have to ask…
Does life get any sweeter than this??
Have you ever just found yourself walking down the road smiling like a jackass?
That’s been me these last few days.
I moved to Kits on Wednesday with the help of my mom and sisters. We rolled out the carpet and hung up some photos, and now the little apartment looks like a home.
After all these years of yearning for my own place, I now have 225 glorious square feet of my own personal space!! This is not to say, however, that it was quite mine to enjoy, just yet.
Mom and the girls decided to stay the night with me in Vancouver.
Now my mother has never been one for physical displays of affection. There was strictly no hugging in my childhood. This always left me feeling somewhat starved, but it terms of childhoods my mother had her own plane of crazy which we won’t even touch with a stick. This isn’t to say she’s frigid, just ever so much less like a huggable panda than a refrigerator.
As you can imagine, sleeping myself, my full grown sister, AND my thixophobic mother in the one bed was an adventure (Aja wisely slept in the papasan chair and enjoyed the best sleep of all of us.) Mom kept wacking us in the night barking, “DON’T TOUCH ME!” or “MOVE YOUR LEG!” Burg and I egged her on by spooning each other and beckoning her to join us.
…..
The next day I got up and was off to my first assembly at Emily Carr. I entered the auditorium of four hundred odd foundations students and sat down among them. First was the business end of things, school history and manifesto, etc, but then came a fascinating guest speaker on the virtualization of media, things like the way music used to be a first hand experience, but could then be recorded and reproduces and now is nothing more than 1′s and 0′s, I’d been having exactly this conversation with Jens, whose an extreme sports addict, just earlier. He bitched that while he went out and mountain biked and surfed and rock climbed, his jerk off friends would rather stay home, immobile and slowly atrophying, playing video games of the same things.
Having found the lecture stimulating and walked out of it with my mind exploding like it hadn’t for a year, I was disgusted to overhear a couple of little 18 year old girls in the halls giggling that “That guy talking about mp3′s was so stupid, god!” “I know, that was so retarded, why did they make us watch that?” This was my first warning bell; I’m four years older than most of these people, but those four years feel more like ten.
After the assembly we all reconvened in the student building for what was described in the email as a “light lunch.” The doors sung opened upon tables and tables of sushi. For a split second I think I went a little blind, I just stood there with my mouth wide open. I’d won the cosmic lottery.
After the lunch came a dessert course. Gorgeous little confections of berries dripping with glazes and big fat mousse cupcakes kissed with shredded gold leaf. It was all incredibly impressive, and quickly gorged upon by the naive young student body. I, in my age and wisedom, was a little more suspicious about the whole thing. “How cruel,” I thought, “to give these fledgeling young artists the impression that this is how they’re going to eat in art school.”
My ladies spent the day at the Vancouver aquarium and pulling the ritualistic Vancouver IKEA pilgrimage, and when we all arrived back at home it was time for them to leave.
We all hugged goodbye, Aja sobbing that she really would miss me and I wasn’t all bad, I asked her to take good care of our twenty five pound cat Tip and make sure to rotate him at least once daily, and then they were gone.
I went back inside and tried to nurse my melancholy with a little red wine and some music. I reported this on facebook and not even five minutes later I got a call from Jens eagerly asking if he could join me in said activities.
The buzzer rang a half hour later. I ran down to get it, and opened to door to only evening darkness. A second later there was a huge bouquet of sunflowers in my face, and Jens swung around the door frame and gave me a kiss.
…
The next day I set off exploring the many back alleys of Kits. The sun was shining and I could feel my back begin to tan. Kits is so pretty. Like New York and my favorite neighbourhood back in Victoria, Fernwood, mixed together; downtowny, with ugly old buildings from the 60′s, but with flowers spilling from all the balconies. Kits is the area of town were all the artists, hippies, and other degenerates use to call home. It was this ambience that drew the neighborhood’s modern inhabitants; trendy, affluent hipsters. They swarmed the place, drove the real estate prices sky high and opened a coffee shop on every corner. The scent of used yoga mat always clings to the air. What does this smell like, you might ask? Yuppy meets men’s locker room.
This populace is so rich it leads to some incredible finds in the back alleys behind all the buildings. Some people will throw away an entire IKEA dinette set after a year. I’m in diver’s paradise.
I found a great free pile where I came by a little dish for my soap and my new little life was thus closer to completion. I found a little village on Oak Street with a cute laundromat with a couple cute guys in it (note to self: roll in more mud) and a market called Sunshine Grocery. I picked up a couple necessities, dish soap, shampoo, light bulbs, bacon…. and because I spent over thirty dollars I got a free Sunshine Grocery tote bag!
Which brings us to smiling like a jackass.
Groceries in tow I nearly skipped home, grinning at all the passersby, humming loudly, resisting the urge to swing around the lamp posts and otherwise feeling as cute as That Girl.
I love it here. I love kits. I love the jingle jangle of my very own keys. I love the color of these walls. I love my tiny kitchen with all the trees out the window.
I talked to Renee the other day who asked me if I was miserable yet. No? Give it a month. I hope the euphoria of finally having my old place will remain long enough to combat the impending bouts of home sickness and winter blues I’ve got coming in the mail. I’ve already had one or two “WTF AM I DOING!?!?!?!!!” moments.
I already miss my sisters and the Inner Harbor and Derek. But so far so good. Classes start next week, and if I could find a job that would be, you know, pretty ok. As for now I have a beautiful apartment in Kits and a bouquet of sunflowers on the kitchen window filled with afternoon light.
Moving in T – One Week.
Here I am, moving in a week. It’s all happening so fast. This has been hard summer. I spent a very dark and record cold winter longing for the sun to come out again, but now that it’s here I find myself wishing it would quickly give way to a quiet autumn of watching the rain with a cup of soup and a book from my new place in Vancouver.
Last summer I felt like I was coming back to life; this summer feels like a funeral that won’t end.
Everything has been an ending. My beloved Whimsey splintered, all my friends drifted apart. My family is selling my childhood home just as soon as I move out.
Lasts prevail. Last night in Colin and Chelsea’s old apartment. Last day at the beach. Last shift at my job. Last family dinner. Long, long last hugs. Last time I see you.
The only thing that made this summer bearable was my best friend Derek, who, after that long bout of tonsillitis trapped indoors all alone, swept me up and started taking me outside again. We’d hit the beach every day with a crossword and a six pack of Mexican beers. Bored of cable we’d down some tequila and head to the rec center for the mid night swim and sit there in the hot tub scoping out the boys. Endless hours spent at Value Village. Times I miss already. Derek, you kept me sane.
But even he’s been through some rough times. Heartbreak. And I’m not the type of girl who can’t cry when watching someone else do it. So first you’re crying, then I’m crying, then we’re both crying and there’s mascara everywhere, and it’s a disaster! Emotionally I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.
It’s been torture. I wish it would just end.
And so here it is, the end.
All this complaining isn’t to say I don’t love this town. Not at all. I’m in love with Victoria. I love the people. I love my friends. I love the old town and all the buildings. I love the parks. I love the Inner Harbour. I love the abundance of sushi restaurants. I love that little secret cove in Oak Bay where you can go and drink beers and skip pebbles on the water, the bioluminescent plankton shimmering with each step. I love beach fires and the smell of salt on the air on really cold mornings. I love that at any time I can walk down to Fernwood Square and find fifty of my friends dozing in the grass or building a giant slip’n'slide out of on old tarp and a sprinkler, both components most likely stolen.
And as desperate as I am to get all the lasts over with and finally enjoy some firsts, I will miss this last year, this life here, with all my heart.
A few years ago when I was working at Starbucks I had a friend named Ash. She and I celebrated our week’s Fridays on Monday nights with a bottle of spiced rum and a movie, and drag our sorry asses into the little Blue Fox Cafe on Fort Street Tuesday morning for haggered breakfast. Blue Fox is this funky little restaurant with big plants and bright colors and groovy art and salt and pepper shakers on every table each more wacky than the last. The waitress there was a doll, and would have tall cool glasses of hang over ameliorating iced tea in front of us before we could even work up the spit to ask for it.
This tradition went on for a year. Finally someone hailed to the other, “See you next Tuesday!” and our eyes lit up. Like lightening. CUNT was born.
I was contemplating this morning as I looked forward unto my last week in Victoria that I actually have this Tuesday off, and how I’d love to have one last CUNT with all my friends.
But then realized that, I wouldn’t, in fact, see any of them next Tuesday.
I’m putting things in boxes. I’m so excited. I’m so scared.
I guess all I can say is, alright new life, let’s dance.
Noticing the date of my previous post I realized it’s been over a month since I’ve written anything. Therein lies the fundamental flaw with diary keeping and its modern manifestation, the blog. When your life sucks and you never have any fun you have all the time in the world to blog, but when you’re actually out accruing material days might go by without access to a terminal, and the danger is that yet more adventure, be it in liquid or powder form, might come along and obliterate all preceedings. A very wise friend, apparently blogging from the prior of aforementioned states of damnation, lamented that “Blogging, is for the bored, the single, and the depressed.“
That being said, where do I even start? Where was it that I set off? Oh yes! I’d just been afflicted with tonsillitis! Dr. Montemera, whose name I always thought sounded like a manly sort of cigarette, stood in front of me with her little flashlight and popsicle stick, repeating the words “Oh my god” (stress fluttering from syllable to syllable, “Oh my god.” “Oh my god.” “Oh my god.”). Which was comforting. She told me she’d never seen a worse case in 25 years of practicing. Not to honk my own horn, but we took a picture, and I’d dare you find anything more grotesque in the google image search results. Behold.
If you've ever wanted to see the inside of the face, here it is.
After five weeks of illness, I strapped on the construction boots and called my boss for some work. …..This was when I was informed that the company had shut down for the summer. There’s no unemployment quite like surprise unemployment.
I have to admit, even with all the drama, heavy lifting, and dizzyingly filthy language, I guess I enjoyed my brief stint in construction. I forgot a few things along the way (how to wear makeup; who I was), but in the end, I learned a few things alwell. Without further ado, my findings on the construction industry:
I worked on a site called Dockside Green for four months. It was a gigantic undertaking of twelve high rises all in a row, one being built after another. Each time one would go up, the blasting for the next one would begin. When work on tower four was being done, they put the port a potties in the bottom of the gaping hole for number five. You’d exit through the underground parking lot of four into this vasteness of blasted rock and industrial equipment the length of a city block, little green port a potties way in middle of it. One day I was hoisting up my tool belt and work pants after doing my business and happened to look down between my steel toed boots…. at a massive loogie. I was disbelieving. This had to be a guy thing. This had to be because the male salivary gland, different from the female salivary gland, could prove lethal if not emptied immediately upon salivation. Why? Why spit in the nine square feet enfortressed by those four green walls? Why not just swing open the door, step out side, and gush like Yellow Stone National fucking Park in the seeming atomic wasteland surrounding you for hundred of feet in all directions?
Men.
This is stretching so far back now, I can’t believe it’s been so long. More catching up later. As for the moment, I have to be off to my new job, and, dear readers, it’s pretty damn bad. You’re gonna love it. I’ll give you a clue, I’m back in tourism.
It’s as the title says. Moving to Vancouver soon has had me spending a lot of time scoping out the apartment scene on craigslist; outlook not so good. Basement suites so ugly you’d be sure they were being rented out by Mephistopheles. Upon viewing an ad the other night for an L shaped bachelor with a twin sized bed, a fold down wall mounted table surface the size of a dinner plate, a single folding metal chair, microwave eleven feet up on an ikea shelving unit and one bunsen burner -no fridge, television, windows or bathroom- for $765, I underwent a mild panic attic.
Quickly one learns that euphemisms like quirky, funky, artsy, cozy, and snug translate to damp, cavernous, subterranean, and practically Dickensian. Cabin means garage. Garden suite means basement. Basement suite means bomb shelter. Budget priced means bat cave.
Get this. I’d be paying four hundred bananas just to SHARE a living room with another human being. How much money does a person have to fork out to secure a sex life in this world?
It’s craigslist Vancouver that has opened my mind to the concept of the exposed bathroom. “Come on in guys. So this is my place, and this is….. uh….. my toilet……” I suppose I was too I shock by what I’d just seen to think of saving the pictures from that add, or rest assured I’d be backing this up. Another ad bragged about the in suite Jacuzzi, imagine, it urged, that that could be YOUR lifestyle! The luxury! But, wait, you guess it, the Jacuzzi is in the living room, which is also the bedroom and kitchen! Only once in my life have I seen an exposed Jacuzzi before now, and I was staying in a motel in New Jersey in a swamp under a bridge because of a lightening storm. And in case you don’t believe me, this time I got evidence.
High roller!
Another new found pet peeve; turquoise carpeting. Turquoise. Bright fucking aquamarine. Nothing quite brings out the lowness of a ceiling like a vast expanse of pure chromatic nightmare. There must have been some sort of boom in the 1980’s in Vancouver when an enormous amount of affluence was spent on an enormous amount of carpet. This must be how the Germans feel looking back on Hitler. All I can imagine is some evil carpet factory somewhere in Surrey or Delta, smoke stacks spewing toxic black clouds, pumping out a single, unending sheet of turquoise carpeting out to the horizon, evil foreman overseeing it all, fingers curling in malevolent delight as he laughs diabolically.
As you can see in the carpet sample below, at some point someone thought it appropriate to finish an entire suite in lego grass.
And another example. Check out this rug!! Red, someone passionate must have picked this out. Funny, it kind of reminds me of the colour and pattern they used in Super Mario to represent deadly LAVA.
Now say you’re sitting on your ass after a long day smoking pot and working at Ikea as I imagine most Vancouverites do. All of a sudden the craving strikes you for a slice of delicious plastic wrapped Kraft cheese. Now most assholes would have to get up, walk to the kitchen, get the cheese, and come all the way back. Suckers.
Your life is complete!
Ok, so I might seem outspokenly superficial here. I can respect that not everybody has the money to re-renovate their heinous 80′s renovations. So what Surrey and Burnaby and Richmond are so ugly the ambience drains one of their will to live? I know that at the end of the day everyone’s just trying to pay their mortgage… That’s not the point. The point is that even the apartments I’ve listed here are out of my price range.
I’m seriously freaking out. I’m going insane. I’m so nervous I’m falling back into my old habits; I find empty chip bags and have no idea where they came from! I’m fighting my old nemesis, the carb-devil, and losing!
How the hell is this going to happen?? How am I going to make the next year of my life work? Even working, even with student loans, even with what little help my mom can give, I won’t have enough. Not by a long shot.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m gonna either have to start hooking or killing people.
