I fucking hate the Toronto Interfuckingnational Film Festival.
September 8th, and a surplus shows up in Toronto of:
- people wearing badges on lariats around their necks (fucking seriously, if you’re not standing in a line-up *right now*, take it the fuck off)
- men wearing blazers and jeans
- men wearing blazers and jeans and loafers
- men wearing blazers and jeans and loafers and sunglasses that cost as much as a small car, carrying weird attache cases and talking on their cellphones
- women wearing there’s-no-such-thing-as-too-much quantities of makeup and jewelery
- women wearing skinny belts worn over their shirts, very high up their torso, approximately 3 inches south of their boobs
- people staring at other people trying to decide if the other people are important people
- overheard conversations that revolve around when Vince Vaughn is arriving in town
- random lineups in places that aren’t big enough to accommodate them
- white tents
- black velvet rope
- red carpets
And speaking of the last item – I got ”hey!”’d today for walking over a red carpet (I’m fairly certain). I got off the streetcar, and was walking down the sidewalk. Sidewalk which was covered in a length of red carpet from a front door down to the curb. I am *NOT* walking on the street to avoid stepping on your swatch of red carpet, so you can fuck right off for thinking it. I actually saw one of the little red carpet setting up weenies hop onto the streetcar while the doors were still open to talk to the driver. I can only presume what it was about – but I have a sneaking terrible suspicion that it was to ask him to drop passengers off on the other side of the red carpet.
*Oh yes, and the fuckhead who lives downstairs has extra chairs on his balcony, and has cleared the shoes off the top level of his shoe rack in the hallway. The little wanker is expecting visitors. This cannot end well for our hero…
Update: Looking for solidarity in my hate of the TIFF, I googled ”I hate the Toronto International Film Festival”.
Which yielded two articles, one of which contained the following quote. All I can say is ‘amen’.
“As I see it, it’s 33 per cent about the movies, 33 per cent about the stars, and 33 per cent about making Toronto feel like Hollywood for a week – complete with stretch hummers, red carpets, and plenty of superficial movie types.
So, while I do really love 33 per cent of it, I still hate well over half of it.”
Trial by fire.
So, as some of you know, I decided to join my Muay Thai class for their group run tonight.
I’ve been avoiding this, as they’re fit fuckers and I am not a runner, and I could do my best but it might be wicked hard. Plus, it’s winter, however mild, and it’s hard to run in the city in the cold.
Right. So I went because I thought I had to – because the timing of the beginner class overlapped with the 1/2 hour of running. 1 hour class, 1/2 hour run.
It turns out not so much. It turns out that only 5 people went on the run – 4 senior guys (including two instructors), plus me.
w00t.
So I did good, did good, did good. For the first .75 K? Then I started feeling a little tired, but I took a short walk break, then caught up to them. They were encouraging (without being sappy), and we kept going. I made it down the hill a few more streets. Then I started feeling not so good. Like, gagging a couple of times. It’s cool I thought, I just need to ease up a bit. And then my new favourite person in the whole world (”Dad”) slowed down to keep pace with me. Interestingly, ’Dad’ was one of the guys who, on first impression, I thought was wicked tough and probably sort of mean.
Usually someone keeping pace would drive me crazy, I don’t like holding people back, and I keep my own pace – I push myself. But ’Dad’ was really good to run with. Encouraging without being motivational speakery (”Those fuckers up there have all been through this, and Kru says leave no one behind.”). Very cool. But I was definitely struggling. Walk. Run. Walk.
Then he pointed out that we were doing the long run. Apparently the route one of the guys chose (remind me to beat on him with a stick) for that night was about twice as far as usual (5K vs. 2K). Awesome. Did I mention how I’m not a runner? He said I was doing good, and that he had been struggling way before now on his first run.
Did I mention how he’s my new favourite person?
So then I started gagging again. We were past the halfway mark (4ishK), but still had a long way to go to get back. And I thought, okay, take’er easy. Then we got to the hill. Let’s just get to the top of this hill we both said. And I was soo on board. I’m a determined little bastard and I wanted to get up that hill. So I did what a friend of mine called ”Soldiers in Siberia-ing” up it. Got to the top. Gagged. Gagged. Started to throw up in my hand. Realized I was going to seriously toss some cookies. But where was I? At the corner of cement and concrete that’s where. Having never thrown up outside before, I was new at this. What to do. What to do. I hightailed it over to one of those straggly looking Toronto trees where the base is covered by cement – but with a tiny piece of dirt showing.
Or it was, before I hurled all over it.
Lovely.
’Dad’ was fantastic about it. Very cool, like this was totally normal. I said ”Excuse me” when I got back, and he was all ”hey I’ve got a 3 1/2 year old, you should see the things that come out of her”.
And then there’s a whole thing where my stomach was just *churning*, but I’ll spare those details. Suffice it to say that I was looking for emergency pitstop places all the way back.
So – some kind of initiation? Maybe. From maybe that one guy who knew there was a n00b in the group and decided to ’push’ me. Whatever. ’Dad’ and all the rest of the guys who had run were very cool and much warmer than usual when I got back (that’s a fun sentence). Patting me on the back saying ’good run’, bowing. It was like a family. Cool. What a crazy place.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and lie very still now. 🙂
The loudest vegetable ever.
I brought celery to work with me today. Work. Where I sit in a cube in a field of other cubes. A quiet field, where every person’s phone call is broadcast to all neighbouring ears.
I have never felt so self-conscious about eating my veggies. Every bite I take seems to reverberate across the whole floor. Which is of course making me laugh almost out loud, which makes it that much harder to chew, which means the whole thing just takes even longer.
Little things are funny. 🙂
The emergency exits are locked.
Back to work tomorrow, after a delightful amount of sitting on my couch (and some undelightful really-bad-flu). Back to pinstripes and matching outfits as my salt-stained cargos head downstairs to the wash… Meep. Not toooo resentful so far – there is some promise for goodness around my working day, and positive things within it, even if my worklife may be shortly taking a turn for the worse (don’t anticipate don’t anticipate). Plus I basically like all the people I work with, and that’s good times. AND I have a new mug for getting coffee in thanks to Christmas (so I don’t feel so dirty about going to Starbucks).
But I still think something broke in me back in elementary school. I *hated* school
I don’t feel sick on Sunday nights now, but I do still feel that unhappiness creep towards me – lying under the couch and pulling at my ankles. I don’t love what I do. I don’t look forward to it in the morning. I would rather be somewhere else for those 8 hours. Because I’m still taking 1/3 of my day, 1/2 of my waking time, and spending it *not where I want to be*. For now, it is a necessity – I can’t live completely off the land just now, and I have to find some way to keep food in my kitty’s dish – and I have found a job that I like enough that I don’t feel like my life and self slip away while I’m there. But I am resolved to find a better way of being, to keep moving towards work that is my passion, since it must exist out there somewhere. This job is a step in the right direction. No overtime, good pay, great coworkers. And the new year reminds me of the terrible job I was at one year ago… Making. progress.
Perhaps I shall start buying lottery tickets. I would be astonishingly good at being independently wealthy…
In the meantime – best wishes for the new year and hati-hati kepalamu.
1% more than the average bear.
This is getting ridiculous. Every “personality” test I ever take gives me some variation on “you are almost equally divided into multiple parts”. Except for that one time I came out as a “Visual Mathematician” – my favourite label ever…
Leprakan
Toronto had a white christmas this year. Nummy. 🙂
Sidewalk etiquette gets funny (to me) when there’s snow and ice on the ground. Take, for instance, the parable of the narrow sidewalk:
Sidewalks in Toronto get cleared after the roads. Like, a distant 17th on the priority list. Which means that at best there is a footpath carved out by the pedestrians before you. This footpath is irregular, narrow, and very likely covered in ice. And yet – it’s better than the snowdrift (well, not to me, I look for snowdrifts like I look for piles of leaves in the fall, but I digress….).
So there are some interesting games of chicken that happen on Toronto’s sidewalk after a heavy snowfall. It can be unpleasant – some tool who makes you stand in a bank of snow as they barrel past – but 9 times out of 10, something much nicer happens. That something nicer is the overchivalry of cold Canadians. Two people, coming from opposite directions, leave the footpath free for the other person by moving to the side and trudging through the snowbank instead. So the footpath goes unused, and both of you wind up with aching quads and wet pant cuffs. I am *shocked* by how often this happens. Especially since I usually leave the footpath first. So they *see* that the path is open. And they leave it to walk in the snowbank *as well*. As a strange form of courtesy, they show their appreciation to you for offering up the path, by not taking it. It’s sort of like offering your seat to an elderly person, them thanking you, and then standing beside the now-empty seat. Overkill? Perhaps. But I think it’s cute, and it makes me laugh on my way home…
A fast snow.
Was dreading getting back on my bike when I felt the cold at lunchtime. But thought – hey, it’ll be more downhill than this morning, and maybe my derailer will thaw out in the sun.
Nope.
Add to that a hard and fast snowfall that started 10 minutes before I got on my bike, and it was quite the ride home. I only saw one other cyclist on the road, and I got honked twice, I gather just because I was on a bike (jackasses). The light I clip to the front of my bike ran out of juice only a few blocks from work as well… so basically what I’m saying is – WHEW!
Oddly the layer of snow on the ground made it an easier ride than this morning, because my tires were basically sliding over the ground, requiring less energy from me (still stuck in my super-high gear). I only slid twice, and not badly – once as I stopped, my front tire kicked out to the side, and once as I turned onto the residential street, my rear tire catching a manhole cover under the snow and skidding out a bit as I made the turn.
PHEW PHEW PHEW.
I may pass out now, yay CPwr just got home – SNUGGLES and deep breaths…
The end of bike season.
Or is it?
Well, it is certainly the end of leaving your bike outside. I adventurously thought I would ride in today (-21C, -34 w windchill). Wasn’t so bad on *me*, but poor bikey was frozen.
And when bikey is frozen, she can’t change gears (all the way to work in a super high gear), and she can’t feel her rear brakes (squeeze the handle and nothin’). I actually had to get off and push her up a hill today.
I may call a van-cab to drive ‘er home this evening, I don’t think she’ll “warm up” where she is right now “outside”.
Jack Frost freezing the ____ in your nose…
Cold day today. What’s that? Cold? YES. IT IS VERY VERY COLD.
Cold enough that you walk outside, open your mouth to say “Damn it’s cold!” and your mouth freezes open, because the muscles in your face are in spasm. About -22C. Which is not as bad as it gets, but we’re in the transitional phase, where some of us aren’t yet wearing our balaclavas, and are wishing to god we were as our eyebrows crystallize.
Got to see an interesting phenomenon on the late streetcar ride home (mulled wine at a friend’s place)… frozen windows. Every clear window on the stretch we streetcared past was now an opaque white sheet of ice crystals. Mannequin heads peering out through 1/2 foot of clear glass, ice sheeting hiding their shame…
Except for at Miss Behavin’ – which was completely defrosted and was featuring their Christmas gear – including a red jockstrap with a little white bow on it. *chuckle*