Cocktail Party Effect November 30, 2007

I’m not really in the mood to post something effortful, so excuse the frivolities.

After my first class today (the last day of school, go figure, I start talking about school…), I had an hour break before my second class. Riveting, I know, but this hour break is central to the story. I hurried through the frigid cold (by frigid, I mean walking from one building to another makes my face burn) to the SSC and sat in the cafeteria, fully intending to read parts of my history textbook in preparation for the exam in one week’s time. Excitingly, I caught entrails of a neighbouring conversation and relocated my attention. The line that caught me was: “you know the nice thing about Digimon?” I looked up and found the speaker to be scarily close to the most typical nerd I have EVER seen. Weirdly, he had friends. Less weirdly, I noticed moments later, they were all gamers. Anyways, I turned from my history section in my notebook to an unused one, and have recorded a total of two pages worth of eavesdroppings. It was a fabulous waste of time, and one of my finest yet!

To facilitate, I have made a list of characters: GIC = Guy in Cafeteria. Remarkable resemblance to Napoleon Dynamite. Playing a game on his laptop. JG = Jacket Guy. Sporting a Roots Team Canada Jacket and a Nintendo DS. PH = Girl in Pink Hoodie, glued to her Gameboy. K = Kyle. Joined in later, had no game, but definitely contributed to the hilarity. I ate dinner with him and a couple other people a while ago, which is why I know his name though I’ve converted to perpetual hat and glasses now, so I’m completely elusive. Anyways…

… sorry I keep stalling. I just feel I need to explain the situation. They’re all sitting at this table, games in hand and talking to each other whilst playing. Sometimes they’re talking about games, but other times it wasn’t so obvious… which is why the sequence of conversation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (what is below is the order I heard it in) but that may be because I do not understand this game cult phenomenon… anyways, the reason most of these quotes are from GIC, is because I was sitting across from him at the next table. JG said some things in response to GIC, but he was facing away from me so I missed a lot of it. Now for the jelly:

GIC: There was this one level, yeah… with mass teleporting. The one in Paslo Castle and Saffron City. Level nine had the huge elevator. It was an awesome level.
-

GIC: This is an amazingly powerful sword! Yeah, there are these super hardcore challenging levels, but this sword is unbelievably powerful. I just wish it had more intelligent interfacing.
K: He plays the guitar so bad that people die.
_

GIC: OH! THE WORST FOR THAT WAS RESIDENT EVIL 4!!!
_

GIC: Well, she’s dating this, like, thirty-year old.
K: At least it’s not her brother.
GIC: Yeah but apparently he’s a serial killer, though. That’s what I heard.
K: OH, much better…
GIC: Dude, that’s what I said.

_

K: I meant to get that faggy magician but I was just scoping out my options and accidentally accepted.
PH: I got an archer. Then I got a nomadic archer, and nothing could hit him! He had, like, infinity health!
_

K: A rubber? Like a british eraser or a british condom?
*unintelligable*
K: I just want to understand what you’re saying.
JG: The thing is the game gives you this nice warm feeling inside, even if she is the destroyer.
K: I couldn’t bear to say no to her, so I just reset the game and closed my eyes.
_

GIC: Does anyone have a powercord?
K: That’s my gun! What are you doing with my gun?
GIC: I’m shooting you with it.
K: That is so unethical.
GIC: I just need to get to the dragon. OH! Nine thousand!
_

GIC: Everyone is either a child or married.
K: Or having sex with her brother.
GIC: Priscilla is innocent!
K: Was.
_

GIC: When the horse stops twitching you can stop beaming it.
_

And then I had to leave for class. Which if the professor wasn’t giving us the essay questions for the final, I would have gladly missed. But alas, but alas…

Research ONLY! November 27, 2007

hello.

I have decided to post because of the combined brilliance/hilarity of Stef and Dana and Mike’s posts. You guys are inspiringly inspirational and have led me to test the waters of the Koerner Library’s “Research ONLY!” computer bilge. Well, it is truly research of the brilliance of my fellow tea sippers and is therefore worthwhile.

And Stef, I know exactly the feeling of being the one who walks around campus alone. I think the tricky thing is that every single student out at UBC has those moments, but forgets them once their assorted posses arrives.

SO art. Today our lifesize self portraits were due and we had a group “crit” as our TA puts it, hoping to trendify herself. We munched on green grapes (apparently a much missed food among rez-goers, along with dogs…to spend time with that is) and looked at the appalling array of work we had churned out all in the last 24 hours probably. The result really brought out the cynic in me, which was dissapointing to say the least. My friend Christine (gay, lives on Commercial drive, artist, drove around the states in a bio-fuel van; Awesome girl) is simply so positive constantly towards all these artworks that ranged from hideous to great and I sit and inwardly wonder. And try to squish the negative beneath my fat bottom, but it usually eeks out any how. It was the tone my class mates would use to try and interpret the positioning of the scarf in the photo, or the media of the border, that annoyed me. And the quite ridiculous at times connections they would draw between this and that dooodle to the person’s inner psyche. Yeesh!

On a seperate note, I am in the process of being interviewed at the Blenz on number 3 road. Dana, I quickly accelerate towards my destiny as your fellow barista. But at the same time it seems as though I finally like/cooperate with the people at my Safeway. All though their overiding fascination with seeing the boss drunk at the Christmas party is somewhat unnerving.

I rest with all the windows of my house being removed (cold!) and a night ahead with Bo (she’s from Ann Arbour Michigan (!)) and Kate and the watching of a certain Gregory House.

I love you all to infetesimal particles of scratchy mica.

M

Irony. Eating. Me. Whole. November 27, 2007

Being the pathetic, stewing globule of nothing that I am at the moment, I was lying in my bed—since 5:30, no less—doing homework, which is to say, watching How I Met Your Mother. The episodes conveniently distracting me from the desolation of the innumerable hours of studying that make up the wasteland of my future weeks contained a lot of slapping. This made me laugh very hard.
So after hours of replaying the moment of the slap over and over I was laughing so hard that, I kid you not, my elbows started to hurt. I don’t know how that is related to laughing, but you have to laugh PRETTY FUCKIN’ HARD for it to happen. So, naturally, to keep the good times rollin’ I slid on over to my e-crutch, YouTube, and searched up ‘funny slap’.
Thank God for stupid people, or my elbows would never have gotten such a work out.

It’s not even the slapping that made me laugh. It was the website.
Oh, sweet blossom deary. I think I laughed so deeply I grew a tumor. Perhaps they can show me the way too a hospital.
So I went to this website. There is nothing funny there. EXCEPT the advertisements. Here are some examples:
Grab Your Dabber Daily Bonanzas And Go-Go Series , Huge Bonus Features!
Got Wealthy Lifestyle? What could you do with 10K a month? Retire? Fire your Boss? Live Free?
New Childrens Hanger! As seen in Novembers 2007 Issue on Parents Magazine. They realy work! ( just hang your children and walk away, no strings attached! Well, one string attached.)
Christmas Gift Ideas for the home and garden (I’m sure the home and garden will love them!)
This one has got to be the best:
No collage, no problem Want to earn more than your bosses boss, I’ll teach you how in 90 days (Oh, my achin’ elbows.)

S.E.X. (scholarly educational xerox) trade worker November 27, 2007

I feel like the really smart person who does the popular kids homework so that they can be liked.

This guy is in a couple of my classes and he came up to me last week and asked if i could take some notes for him for our Bio class while he was away. He said he would pay me 5 bucks. It seemed a little low but I wasn’t going to be a mean snob and say no. I took the notes which I would have done anyways and photocopied them for him, I even grabbed the handouts he missed.

So today in class I’m leaving and he magically appears by the door.   He tells me he was in Seattle with his family, I give him the notes; he was very impressed* and thankful. He then offered to buy me a donut** from the Timmy Ho’s. Sure donuts are good they are also only a dollar something. I feel like we are even though because I got to talk to SOMEONE for 10 minutes and I was one of those people who walks with people they know around campus, which I do rarely. This whole notes-donut exchange felt very…sleazy I guess… Like a prostitute getting paid after work. We spent 10 minutes in line talking, then bam once my payment/the donut is in my hands- ‘Good bye’. I also feel like I bought those 10 minutes of accquatancehip.

On a side note: We had no lights in that Bio lecture, stupid forestry building out in the boonies. Of course the overhead projectors still worked. I had to use my ipod to see what I was writing. It reminded me of the theatre, being dark and all- somewhat comforting.

*impressed-is that like pressed like a flower in a book, and what does the prefix ‘im” mean? this leads me to wonder about the meaning of maculate, becile and portant.

**american spelling?- my excuse is that it is shorter

If you give me a green tea latte, I will kill you. November 26, 2007

Sh____z?

I don’t know how to spell her name. It is possibly a combination of the following letters: SZERCAZHZ. Anyways, I hate her.

Sh___z thinks it is her duty to make people feel as bad as possible about making a mistake, as a fifty-year-old working amongst twentysomethings. YES, THAT coworker. I thought of/have experienced/have always known Starbucks as someplace void of acts of hatred towards customers and employees, so how she gained and maintains employment is to me, a mystery.

On this fine Sunday, a customer was trying to remember something she had ordered in the past. As a somewhat nice person, I gave the woman a list of possibilities based on what she told me and described them. Sh____z was waiting to mark the cup and got fed up .084 seconds into my aid and bitchingly interrupted, saying that we had a menu “right THERE”. I condensed her with my condescendingest glare and imagined my eyes full of fire, hoping it would come through and with sur-politesse, told Sh____z that we were working it out (there was nobody waiting in queue or anything) and we would have a decision in a moment. Also today, before my break, I went around and filled up the condiment stands. My supervisor (not Sh_____z) told me halfway through to instead fill up the display case, which was no problem at all since everything seemed stocked otherwise, so I did it. Instead. On orders.

Thirty-five billiseconds into my break Sh___z barges into the break room and demands to know who did the last cafe bus. Me, I volunteered, with a feigned excitement. Well, she says, hand-on-hip, I did not fill up the milk containers. (The only way she could possibly know this was if she herself was doing a cafe bus in which case, filling up the milk containers was her responsibility… OR she had hawkeyed me doing mine, caught me doing something I was asked to and interpreted it as a wrong on my part.) The horrors! How dare I leave one thing for her to do before her break! Surely the four people we’ve served in the past ten minutes were horrified to find that one of the six pitchers available was void of contents! I know before I decide which whole milk to use I find the empty one and curse the skies before flatlining. Surely I must have left it for her to do out of spite and was not acting on something more important! I apologized, which seemed to disappoint her. Did she expect me to lick her shoes and offer to do it after recovering from a fit of anguish? Sh____z sighed theatrically and turned on her heel to rid the world of my evil as if I was a surgeon who had left a microwave in my last patient.

Sh___z is usually put as a floater, which means she is enslaved to the cashiers. How does this make sense? It might be an effort to keep her conversing with customers to a minimum but she is !useless! Anyways her job is simple, she must: fetch muffins or bars, mark cups, fill fridges, brew coffee… whatever we need. Floaters make things run smoothly and quickly. My first day on cash was… overwhelming… especially with supersonic demands of decaf grande-in-a-venti-cup half sweet one-pump-this one-half-pump-that, two thirds nonfat one thirty-sixth eggnog 180 degree lattes topped up with water. She was sweeping. During one order brimming with at least six super-customized drinks, I asked her, dyingly, to come help me mark cups. She marches up, grabs a cup, and grabs me, hands me a sharpie and squaks that the cashiers must mark their own cups, which doesn’t make sense at all when there is a floater and cashiers handle money that’s been sneezed on and passed through children’s digestive tracts. After making change and fussing with credit transactions, it’s the least of our responsibilities. The customer I was serving looked so appalled and when Sh____z was apprehended to the back room, he leaned towards me and whispered “what a COW.” Holy agreeance.

Now for the whipped cream: today as I was cashing out, Sh____z was sitting behind me talking to my supervisor about “teamwork” and “how we must all work together to ensure prompt service and a pleasant atmosphere by helping out and filling things up and stepping in to lend a hand”. Oh! If I only knew to be a great person like her by not asking for help, refusing to give help, making sure the eighteen thousand milk pitchers on the condiment stand were full, not stocking the display case so that customers would be denied certain products, and generally refusing to do my job I’d be on my way to being a team player! I can just taste the customer satisfaction… if only I could be a part of it!

For some reason she also thinks that Green Tea Lemonades are Green Tea Lattes. Green Tea Lattes taste like matcha cardboard whereas the lemonades taste like happiness. There is also an ice difference, but perhaps she can’t identify temperature through the firey lakes of hell where she must want everyone to join her.

Sigh.
/workrant.

I love you all. Find me a happy Vancouver Starbucks.

Why Do These Things Always Happen All at Once? November 25, 2007

My only explanation is that it is astrological.

The reason why tragedies always seem to come at the same time. Like the time last summer the trucker drove into the Indian wedding party the same weekend as the hot air blloon exploded.

Today in church there were many more holy intention prayers than usual. And some very tragic ones. A couple married two weeks, then the wife finds out she only has days left to live. A mother dying while her children watch helplessly.

It was the same for me this weekend. My Aunt Cecelia was diagnosed with breast cancer (luckily she was able to book her surgery for this Tuesday) and my Great Uncle/God Father Jürgen passed away after many years battling a variety of cancers.

“

Mydears,

 

Ihave to tell you that my beloved husband

 

JuergenBalzer

 

hasdeceased on 24^thNovember 2007, 11.30p.m.

 

I’msad and miss him already.

 

 

Muchlove

Edith”

 

Did the moon get a little too full this month?

scribbles (it’s about time) November 25, 2007

to all, i’m sorry i haven’t posted on this thing for so long. i’ve been reading the entries nightly but whenever i opened up the window to post or comment, i couldn’t find the right things to write about nor the right ways to word it. in the end, i’d always just tire out and press “logout”.

for the past few weeks before thanksgiving break, it has been hell. yet i loved every minute of it. i’ve been struggling miserably in everything i do lately but… there’s also this strange lack of boredom that makes it all feel worth the effort. i have no idea what it is… i don’t want to call it masochism because it just… isn’t. is it?

i can’t think of a smooth transition so i’ll just jump ahead. the other day, i found a friend from when i was in san francisco for grade 3. i unexpectedly got in touch with some friends from back then (i don’t even know how i did so without a facebook) who told me about her so we met up. we weren’t that great of friends but it still felt amazing rediscovering a friend from 10 years ago like that. i wonder if that’ll be the way for mcroberts people 10 years later? could i run into someone from the foyer group or smoke pit and be just as glad to see them again? it’s a scary thought at the moment… but this event just made me think that i’ll just never know until it happens.

yesterday i bused to NYC with a friend. (again, no transition, sorry.) we took the 4am bus and got there at 10am. after brunch, we spent 6 hours at MoMA. it was breathtaking. it was more modern art than i could digest and the entire time i was looking around, i kept saying “my friends from back home would love this place” over and over again. seurat, picasso, calder, van gogh, warhol,… it just felt so wrong because i was the one kid in lunch group who WASN’T in art. i felt incomplete being without all of you seeing all of the stuff i learned and gained interest in through you guys. then after lunch at 4pm we tackled NYC black friday shopping. it surely lived up to its hectic reputation. had dinner. took the 11pm bus back. got home at 4am. and today all i did was sleep, order chinese (damn… i miss richmond chinese food), and post.

i’m getting exponentially homesick and i’m counting days until dec 15th. i’m doing fine here but I just i can’t help but to yearn for home, my parents and all of you. i’ve had a couple occasions when i’d just start crying silently for no reason with nothing specific to trigger it. the loneliness and longing for home just comes at random times at random places (in my room, in the shower, on the bus) and i just wish i had a way of controlling them. oftentimes i won’t even be that sad. it just comes. luckily it doesn’t happen too much in public. one of the things that keep me smiling is this site though. the posts and videos you guys put up have made me laugh out loud in my room (possibly worrying my suitemates) and remember that it’s all good. i love you all to bits. i think daniella put it best in one of her emails by saying that her organs want to self donate whenever she thinks of us… or something along those lines. my memory fails me.

Skeptical Hypocrit? November 24, 2007

A girl shot herself naked for film class. It would have been good but I couldn’t take her seriously. She was too nervous (justifiable I guess). I also hated the way she “set up” her film for the class:

(Valley girl accent) “It’s about how we should, like, all love the earth SO much.”

Ugh. The skeptic inside of me was screaming. Which also made me feel guilty. No one is a perfect environmentalist. We all have our down falls. I am quick to judge her based on her speech patterns and fashion sense and hair style and demeanor. Sigh.

Would I be comfortable enough to be on film naked? Maybe. But then what about that time that we had to draw the human figure for a drawing assignment and I was even too afraid to have nude images of myself floating around on my own personal computer and digital camera?

I think I would be more comfortable being nude on tangible film. Photographs or motion picture.

The digital realm frightens me.

split second November 23, 2007

so today at about 1:35 everything in the world all of a sudden made sense to me. I was walking down one of those learning themed named boulevards at UBC, a normal kind of activity, having an hour to waste needlessly between classes when it all just struck me at once. I felt all the university emotions all rolled up in one purple jacketed package. The eerie sense of complete aloneness in those massive school cafeterias. The suspicion that no one would really notice if all of a sudden a giant hole swallowed me up as I sauntered down Main Mall. The utter and somewhat foreign hungering for home. Intensely. For my filthy pajama pants and my mom yelling at my brothers downstairs. I was insecure, and dang it all, I LIVE AT HOME! How do the rest of you far-away people deal with this 24/7? It was just the loneliest, soul adjusting feeling ever and it made me want to hibernate the rest of life away. I know this is normal, I’m normal, just one of 50,000 wandering this campus, but still.

Tonight I will engage in the watching of jazz and ballet with a new friend. Perhaps this will calm the qualms.

I love you lovelies all the more.

M

Kick Them While They’re Down. November 22, 2007

Why are hospitals so inhospitable?
“Oh, we’re going to create an institution for the ailed? People who are in dire need of care, or at least in an uncomfortable situation are going to go there to get comfort and treatment? Hey, here’s a thought: When they first enter the building, let’s bombard them with lights so white, they eat right through your optic nerves and make your brain itchy, and hey, why don’t we throw in some of those super-ergonomic chairs that are all separated by armrests, but that are also all attached to the floor and to each other, in rows of, what, 100, 200 chairs? Better make sure that there’s only one armrest for every two chairs.”
“White walls. White’s in right now.  Better go with white floors, too.  That’ll help keep the temperature to a maximum of tepid.”

“About those floors, I’m with you on the white part, but lets make it linoleum.  You know what kind I like? Just a thought, those tiles that have the filthy smudge marks built right into them.  That will eliminate the necessity to make it look clean.”
“Hey! Here’s a dandy idea: when they go into the examination room, we can have all sorts of posters about your ear and vagina and stuff.  OH.  Better yet, models.  Like odd, disfigured plastic ones; we can go all avant-garde art project with them.”

“What about the chairs in the examination room?”

“Better eliminate all forms of seating in there; we’re already paying a hefty sum to have all of the padding in the hospital beds replaced with bark-mulch.”