For those of you who haven’t been following along on the Food Blog, here’s what the vacation looks like so far. I’m due at a crab fest on the Island on Saturday, but unless SOMEBODY pays me before then, I’ll be trapped here. Oh, poor me.
As you can see, it’s a nonstop grind. Oh, the pressure!
Paul Rudd covers up his Rudds
Give the man what he asks for: a cure for cancer!
“I know it’s the thought that counts, but…the money counts too!”
Normally, as you know, I am so NOT all about the self-conscious hipsters (apologies: I repeat myself) particularly those of ironic eyewear, but in this case I must give it up to Mister Paul Rudd, who suggests that on your birthday, you ask your friends to donate your age in dollars to the Cancer Society. Now, this may well bankrupt my friends, but you, according to Quantcast, are younger, and you should be doing this. I mean, if they spend that money on PBR you’re just gonna have a beer belly and a hangover to show for it the next day, right? Whereas fighting cancer provides a glow which makes one irresistable to the opposite sex (as several cancer fakers of my acquaintance know and have taken advantage of, and don’t worry, I’ve taken care of them in ways they don’t even know yet).
Am I ranting? Oh, let me rant. I beat cancer: I’m entitled to rant a bit. If you’re feeling ranty right along with me, here are some infuriating, medically-themed gossip links for you to read and ensure that your blood pressure remains elevated. If you get angry enough, it even counts as aerobic!
Kittens and hearts and pink! Oh my!
Oscar Wilde, who said everything of note that neither George Bernard Shaw nor Fran Lebowitz said, once said something very, very wise. Something everyone on Facebook would do well to note. He once said:
“We all have terrible friends. We are all, each of us, someone’s terrible friend.“
Word, Brother.
My terrible friend is, as is their way, a lovely person. A lovely person who complains she never hears from me, when she herself emails me all the time. You get these emails too; for all I know, you’re on the CC list. I’m on the CC list with about 40 other people, of which not one of whom I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m just in the L to Z group.
The emails themselves are rich in kittens, hearts, prayers, questionnaires, the colour pink, animated gifs, and Comic Sans.
They primarily originate as virus-spreading viral media in Bulgarian Master’s programs. So, whenever I get an email from her with the heading “YOU MUST READ THIS!!!1!!” “THinKiNG of yOu” etc, I know not to even bother opening it.
The question then becomes, when I think of her, what’s an appropriate response? A bouquet of flowers to which she’s powerfully allergic, but doesn’t realize it? A box full of bedbugs? A free membership to 4Chan? Should I sign her up for every two-bit Social Media Guru newsletter out there (who has the TIME? maybe I should subcontract the job to India?) because it’s “ESSENTIAL READING”?
Internet, please hurry with your answers: her birthday’s coming up fast!
Don’t ask me for any.
and this is just my Twitter DMs
Right now I’m sitting at a friend’s house, cat-sitting, while under doctor’s orders to avoid cats. I have just discovered that one of them has peed on every fabric-covered surface he can reach, OTHER than the cat bed and the cat platform, of course. Well, I haven’t just discovered that: I discovered it a while ago, immediately prior to chasing the cat down, rubbing his face in it, giving him what used to be called “what for” and bouncing him off the wall when I tossed him out of the room. And after stripping off the bed and throwing the sheets into the washing machine. And after coming back upstairs to find he’d also peed on the fitted sheet and it had of course seeped through to the mattress pad as well, and stripping both of them off and taking them downstairs to wait their turn with the Heavy Duty cycle. Oh, right, AND after I had to waste 15 minutes chasing the offending varmint out of the other bedroom (broomsticks under beds work really well with cats who aren’t used to physical violence). I’m here because the owners don’t want the cats to be lonely. They’ve already got enough food to last till the Commies come, and their litter was changed this morning, but god forbid cats should be lonely.
Did I mention I’m immune-compromised and allergic to cats? Look, I know there are bigger problems in the world. I could be dying of cancer, like my friend Derek. I could be in intensive care for the second time in a month, like the fellow for whom I’m cat-sitting. I could have gone to American schools.
But I just got out of the hospital, I’m facing surgery that friends can’t help but tell me their friend died TWICE during, thanks so much, I’m on some serious meds with major side-effects, I’m not allowed a single heartening beverage until Friday of next week, thanks to the medicine I’m hallucinating, having chest pains, and sprained my foot yesterday, I have no heat or lights at home, there’s a ONE FOOT LONG HOLE IN THE WALL of my living room where the mildew ate right through, I’m poor, every time I pick a date on which to have an event there’s someone in town who immediately chooses the same fucking day (six times in ten months UPDATE: aw heck, according to his count, which I’ll accept, it’s only been exactly 33 and 1/3rd% of times, or three of nine, UPDATE UPDATED: actually, it’s four in ten or forty percent of the time, is no accident, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed, my dear), and the friend I relied on to let people know I was in the hospital only told my sister about it a few days after I was admitted, and tagged me in a Facebook note, which of course only shows up on MY page as “someone tagged you in a note” and not “hey everybody, raincoaster’s in the hospital.” So there I sat for days and days, saying hi to all the people who came into the room to visit other people. But at least the cats aren’t lonely, so, you know, that’s something. Also, why in god’s name would someone DM “hope you’re okay”? So nobody would catch them at it?
And you know, I probably like you just fine but for now, no, I am not going to take out your garbage. I am not going to help you move. I am not going to check on something for you. I am not going to pass along your messages. I am not going to wash your dishes, or sit your cats, or run to the store for you, or return emails that start with “I need some social media help” and do not end in cheques.
UPDATED: and, if you add me to your newsletter list without my permission even though you personally attended the class where I actually made people raise their right hands and swear not to do that, in all likelihood yes, I AM going to mock you on Twitter in front of thousands of people. That little internal editor that keeps me demure and polite? Has taken a little “time out” and won’t be back till I’m feeling better, so it’s not advisable to piss me off just at the moment.
This is a wicked-cool pic by my friend, the wicked-cool Gena Thompson. The backstory here, not that the image needs one, is that this was taken from a plot of land across the street from a car repair shop. Many years ago, one guy at the car repair shop though that plot of land should have some flowers on it, so he planted roses, and to this day the rose garden he planted has endured. It’s in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, where many would simply assume the flowers would be stripped, but year in and year out they endure, jammed between the repair shop and the railway yards, on a strip of grass no wider than a man can reach.
raincoaster 