A Black Swan Reality Check.

See how good I am at designing packaging?

So I saw Black Swan last night on my fancy valentines time date. Spoiler alert, you guys. Spoiler. Alert.

I've decided not to become a prima donna ballerina after all. Besides, apparently my homemade ballerina moves are frowned on by local choreographers when I go to all the open auditions. It's not like I've never watched a ballerina on tv or anything. Give me some credit, National Ballet Academy. Apparently crocs are not the same as ballet slippers. Do you know how expensive toe shoes are, Readers? It's a damn fool crime. And APPARENTLY they were unimpressed that I can practically tap dance as shown to Neil while I was frying hamburger and he was peeling potatoes for our hobo dinner. He didn't argue. He knows what I'm capable of. Besides, I don't think ballerinas like hobo dinners. Or baked beans. Or maybe eating much at all, given how far the physio therapist in that movie was able to shove her hand under Natalie Portman's ribs in order to massage her diaphragm. That was the worst part. So I guess it's not the new career I'd hoped it would be.

That's not the main reason why I've decided to forgo my plans of moving to Winnipeg one day to open a ballet school in my old age after astonishing everyone with my portrayal of (just a second, I have to look up a ballet part) Gisele on... Ballerina Broadway. My main reason is that sometimes I get stressed out. I worry about things. Well I don't want to go sprouting feathers every time I'm cranky like Natalie Portman did, Readers. It's already a bad scene. Adding feathers would just be embarrassing. What if Starbucks messed up my coffee and I accidentally grew a beak? After watching black swan, I know that this could happen to me and I gotta tell you, it's worrisome.

I mean, everyone wants a superpower- but I don't want to just get any super power that rolls along . Not a beak. Not backwards bird legs, tyvm. I need to control my stress because obviously, nobody can control what super power they get, and I am sure that some of the super powers that people get are a little bit mediocre and less ..er..feature length movie worthy... I just don't want to take that kind of risk.

Not everyone can shoot storms out of their eyes or turn into sand or a psychotic suicidal ballerina swan or fly in their wheelchairs . What if my super power was that every time I sneezed, flowers grew out of my shoulders? What if I mutated and my super power made me attract penguins whenever I was in a hurry? What if my knuckles actually turned to brass but I had nobody to punch out? That would just be frustrating. Before you know it, you're a villain.

Yeah. To Hades with being a famous Ballerina. Practically tap dancing is where it's probably at.

Also... did she stab Winona Ryder with a nail file in the hospital or what?? I feel like I didn't get closure. I need to write a letter to Natalie Portman.

Let's call censorship "a nice throw blanket" instead.

So we have all heard by now that the book, Huckleberry Finn has been stripped of its truth by a publishing company who is playing God with our history as of late. The very people whose role it is to protect words and ensure that they are distributed by demand are now taking up their own agenda and removing the offensive words from the pages of a book written by an author long since dead. They do this to protect who? Me? I don't remember asking for this. Apparently this will make it more friendly to people in the 21st century. Wha-wha...huh?

People have been fighting to keep censors from our history for ages and now they're losing? What??? Just like that? What right does a publisher have to decide if I am too fragile to read certain phrases. Even if they are disgusting and provoke horror, terrible connotations and worst of all: offense. They have their work cut out if this is their new itinerary

Most of us find the word removed from Huck Finn to be a completely repugnant and cringe-worthy one. The n-word (among others) is a terrible word. It's vile. However, these terrible words are critically important words. They are words that we have only just begun to move away from in our culture. They are words that society in general has just started to understand and be ashamed of- but we must remember why we are moving away from them. We must remember why we are ashamed of them. We have got to feel the shame when we read them, particularly in the context presented in Huck Finn. We have to talk about them.

We must remember them the same way we have to remember the horrors committed by human beings in our wars and struggles. What else will we pretend did not happen if we allow ourselves this? These are not nice memories, but there they are. These are the ghosts of things that humans have done and said to one another. Should we forget, we are in peril of allowing history to repeat, which might sound affected, but avalanches begin with pebbles. We owe it to humanity to preserve even our ugliness, not erase it and be afraid to look it in the face.

We have been in the unfortunate habit of pretending that we are without fault. Now we've come so far as to begin to destroy the evidence. What is the purpose of this? To fool future generations into believing their history is unflawed? Censoring and 'nicing up' literature and changing the way our past is perceived is highly dangerous and borderline propaganda. To what end?

I find it repellent, particularly since this book was written during a time in which sadly, the word was used an an every day part of speech.... and yet recent titles by authors such as Chuck Palahniuk can use the very same word in his books for pure shock value. Should this be allowed?

Yes.

It has to be allowed. It does not, however, have to be acceptable. It is up to the person reading to decide right from wrong, to learn from the context, to allow themselves to feel the political climate of the book. To know what ideas people are putting out and compare them to the world around us now. If we allow others to think for us and paint history with a prettier paintbrush, will we be surprised when reality hits us square in the face with its ugliness?

Removing the uncomfortable words from books is robbing the people who have worked so hard to put an end to bigotry of their victory- because in 300 years, when all the books have been made nicer, our children's children will not know why it was so wrong to use the n-word, after all- there are no records of it being wrong. I fear that this is the easing in of future censorship to come. This sets a precedent and our complacency about it is what will dictate the outcome of this. I thought we knew better.

People of Walmart- Living the Dream.

Neil and I were invited to a very ostentatious dinner party tonight. It was wonderful that there was a 'scary' dress code, because it gave us an opportunity to fulfill our dream of being real. live. Walmart people. Nothing is scarier. Nothing.

I know. It is such a convincing belly; and pretty flattering.

Just like in High School.

Isn't he HANDSOME? He even cut his own hair for the occasion. *swoon* THAT is dedication.

Yep. Alert Readers, you've probably noticed that those ARE the mudflap girl pants I bought for him for Christmas three years ago. I'm just so glad they can be put to such rigorous, good use.

We were thrilled that the dessert platter of Joe Louis cakes & twinkies were so well received at the party. For real. Everyone secretly loves twinkies. The pork rinds, though... I couldn't bear to let anyone actually eat them... ewww.

Also, I want everyone to note how artfully Minnie Mouse's fingers are caressing my fake belly button. Gross eh? It's perfect.

Swanky, huh?

How is Fluffy Sparkles adapting to the kitten, you ask?

This morning's mouse arrangement.

Maybe she needs counseling, she seems to be taking her anger out inappropriately. I dunno. I'm going to slip some leftover brandy in her catfood later.

My brain is a dried up little craisin. Not even zombies would want it in their cinnamon buns.

Alright, Nerdsquad. It's 12:33 am and I have been pretty much transferring files (long overdue) from my old crapattack, dell, missing-the-letter-k laptop to my glorious, new-ish (November=new, right? it totes does. That's right I said totes because I am delirious) macbook FOREVER. If you're on my twitter or FB, you've been skipping over my complain-y updates for hours. and. hours.

I've found that the most effective way to avoid the bajillion glitches in my dell is to use bluetooth to move files. OMG slow. So here is some rambly crap for you to read and enjoy while I watch the progress bar until I am hypnotized and strangle something inanimate. Like that cat over there.

1. Teenagers speak aloud to each other in text. IN TEXT. They SAY "smiley face" and they SAY, "Awww Frowny". Just when I thought emo pants were the most obnoxious things ever, this surfaces. The fact that I say, "Oh Em Gee" occasionally, weighs very lightly on this, though Geeks. For rlz. I stole it from another adult who happens to be totally awesome. Totes. This is what is happening to our youth. We're pretty much screwed when we get really old, eh?

2. The farmer in my Dell

The farmer in my Dell

High Ho Ontario

The farmer in my Dell has been sucking the life out of me all day and I need to step away, but if I do, I might never take the files off of it and I hate the people at the Net Nanny place because they make my life that much more difficult and they lie to me and say it will be easy to format the computer so that it is safe for a pre teen to use it without accidentally exposing his eyes to the unsavory internets- but it's not easy at allllllll, it's a pain in the arse and I need to sleeeeeeeeeep but I'm stupid and promised I'd do thiiiiIIIIiiiiiissssssssss killlll meeeeeeeeee.... (but don't really kill me, internet weirdos, spare me because look how dedicated to stuff I am. You don't find that every day.)

3. So on my old computer were all the old lame-o youtube vidlogs I used to do. That was a stroll down memory lane/back into cabin fever. Wild. Maybe I'll post a montage of them set to some peppy and then very sad early 90s pop music. Maybe I won't.

4. Maybe instead I'll have an oreo straw. I thought plain old oreos and beer were glorious but now you can drink your beer THROUGH an oreo. A straw made of oreos for beer. Think about that awesomeness. I mean really sit down and think about it.

5. I have to stop. This blog is whacktarded.

6. I wish I was at the waterslides right this second.

The Bureau of Termination (B.O.T.) and awesome photoshops.

Last night I watched The Terminator for the first time. Yes that's right. The first time. Yes I know you're disappointed in me. I know. I should have watched it YEARS AGO. It haunted me for years like a little collection agency, sending me letters through my alphabit cereal.

"Dear Michelle, we can see no reason why you have not watched the Terminator, we have had it playing on the Space channel at very least, monthly since our maiden broadcast on Canadian cable. You have had every opportunity. You have one week to watch it before we begin to take evasive action. Every attempt to contact you has been fruitless. Stop avoiding us. We have even put Arnold in office in California in an effort to have him give you accusing looks through your television. Yes we realize that we should have made him the Prime Minister of Canada or at LEAST given him the order of Canada or put him in the house of commons, because mainly it would be funny to watch the Terminator arguing with Mike Duffy (AKA the Penguin) on the "What's going down on Parliament Hell channel" or made him lead the New Democrat Party into victorious coalition or something...

Anyhow, if you could at least watch 1/8th of it, we'd be willing to forego having you watch the opening credits. This is a great opportunity. We already know that your television is sitting on Ed Broadbent's old teak armoire, which plays into the whole New Democrat thing. What we don't know is why.... But our sources indicate that you have been intending to watch Terminator Salvation and the problem we have with this is that you will not fully grasp why robotanks are driving over perfectly dried skulls if you have not previously viewed the first three."

Kind Regards,
Dale at The Bureau of Terminations I, II , III and IV, Credit Dept." (which was signed in swirly alphabets with little heart marshmallows dotting the I's. I eat a lot of cereal, okay?)

So I submitted the following response via my son's alphagetti:

"ATTN: B.O.T.: I have in fact now watched the first terminator and my fears have been realized. I kind of want a fuzzy, sandy blonde fem-mullet, an aqua jacket with shoulder pads and a vespa that looks like a golden toaster now. I hope you're happy. You have ruined my fashion soul.

Sincerely, Michelle"

See? I can totally pull off the fuzzmullet & shoulder pads. It looks good.

So that's done. Now I have to track down Terminator II or a similar movie featuring Edward Furlong as a greasy Founding-Father-of-Emo teenager.

And this one because, well because who wouldn't want their face to be photomorphed with Arnold's roboskeleton? Also because it will give my ex husband nightmares when he's stalking my blog later... *snicker*

Cyborg Tiger-Unicorns.

So I've been a little MIA and all distracted lately. Distracted from the internet. By things like chores. What gives? Boring eh? In any case, I've just finished a triple espresso latte of secret knowledge & power and I have some important things to share with you in point form now.

• I bought steak today. $40 worth of it. That's 4 steaks at $10 each. I didn't actually mean to do this. I got through the checkout with my squirming, mangled hoard of children and failed to notice how much the steaks were going to be. So we're having steak. I like steak, but the kids don't. Tonight they will see the light, though, because dammit- THAT steak was expensive and there are starving kids in Disneyland to consider. Well, it wasn't THAT expensive as far as steak goes, but when considering that they would much rather eat hot dogs or hamburger prepared in ANY way imaginable (I'm pretty sure they'd eat it boiled in yak milk as long as it is HAMBURGER), it's kind of nerve wracking to buy them $20 worth of steak by accident. Freeze half of it for later, you say? Meh.

• Last night, Neil learned a lesson in giving a litre of orange pop to an 8 year old juuuUUuuust before taking her into a movie theatre. I opted not to go to the movies last night thank GAWD. Eleanore has stopped being fun there, so I got to stay home and watch reruns of True Blood. Anyway, I am trying to stop laughing at the predicament he put himself into, bless his pea pickin' little heart. Orange Pop is to Libby as cocaine speedballs are to a colony of paranoid, manic, manipulative spider monkeys.

• I just realized that I forgot about my bread dough raising and now it's deflated all over the place like a brand new mother's deflated pile of skin for a belly (Show a picture of THAT mess to teenage girls and see if they ever want to have sex). It's going to gross me out now. I should go deal with it. Aaaaaanytime, I'll go check on it. Here I go... Off to clean up the deflated bread dough on my cupboard.... Riiiight now. Hey! Lookie! Sparkles! I'd better keep nice and still here in my chair until they go away. Pretty!

• The new G.I. Joe movie coming out has the following elements featured in it from what I can tell by the preview: Ninjas, submarines, aliens, giant robots, bombs, suspenseful music and a poor plotline just bursting with half-baked conspiracies. If I find out that it has Disco Criminal Samurai Vampire Nuns in it too, I might have to camp outside the theatre until it arrives.

• At bootcamp today, they were painting with epoxy based paint while we worked out. Nothing like huffing paint while over-exerting yourself. It was kind of like high school. I felt extra hilarious and entertaining today. I told Sue to go stick her finger in Instructor-Dale's smoothie. It was solid gold material. Solid. Gold. Oh how we laughed.
  

The End.

This is still bugging me.

So the other day we went to the beach. It was a very nice day. Very nice weather. The same day that I ran up the hill, actually. Anyhow, we'd decided to all stumble around in the sand. The kids were finding shells and dismembered crab claws and garbage etc to stick in their pockets for me to find later and throw up.

Not too far from us, was a nice little family building a sand castle. Oh how delightful it was- until we wandered closer to them and found that the Father was like, the angry, jaded foreman of sandcastle building and his 3ish and 5ish year old crew members were just not making the cut. I'd say borderline ass on the line, almost fired if they didn't watch it.

Never in my life have I seen someone more frustrated at sandcastles being built unevenly by preschoolers:

"No no no, it's NOT STRAIGHT. We have to remake it", and he mashes down the new tower.

"No, it's not symmetrically lining up" Mash Mash

"That will never work!, COME ON! Line it up!"

"I SAID don't put the tower there!"

Among other confidence building statements.

Like, take a step back and a big breath of fresh air, guy. Mebbe count to 12 or something or picture baby chickens and rainbow unicorns for a minute or two. Was he worried that clients were watching? Was he worried that the Mike Holmes of sandcastle critique would pop out of a bush and criticize their shoddy workmanship and he'd never work in this town again? "Gee whiz there Buddy, if that's any indication of how you would build a real castle, you and your crew here are just not going to be able to work for our massive, global sand-home building enterprise. Better luck next time. It's a shame because you stood to make gajillions of dollars. We're also going to be filming a shameful exposé about the substandard work we see here today".


I dunno, Maybe that WAS the case. There were quite a few strangers there after all. Mike Holmes is pretty much everywhere. Him and Christopher Lloyd. Anyhow, the point is that I've finished publicly judging him and it was very cathartic for me.

Carry on.

I covet Dale's ricotta, okay?

I was going to take my camera to boot camp today, but at 5:30 am, I am satisfied that I even remembered to wear pants (this time). Not that anyone else there would notice. Most people arrive blinking with their hair still mashed to one side of their heads and really, the only thing anyone can focus on is Instructor Dale's breakfast smoothie. "What's in the smoothie, Dale?" 8 or 11 women ask, eyeballing it the way a bunch of out of shape Eves in the Garden of Eden would eyeball the forbidden fruit of knowledge- and Dale is the snake/devil tempting everyone. "Field berries and ricotta." Says Dale/Satan. "Ricotta, huh?" The women ask. "Yeah *smirk*. It's a long story."

I'll bet it is. I bet it's a very long, intriguing story about berries & lasagna cheese all blended together that we would all laugh heartily at and feel enlightened about thereafter. "Ohhhh..... I seeeee." We'd all say while nodding thoughtfully after Dale related the long, complicated story to us. Then we'd make mental notes to purchase ricotta and field berries (I also think that a couple/few ounces of Jamaican rum would be nice in it) for the next boot camp class.

The point is that I don't really care WHY there is ricotta in it (even though it's the cheese intended for lasagna). I would personally like to just steal Dale/The Devil's smoothie, sneak out to the hall and give it a try, but I just know there are stool-pigeons in that class. (They're the perky ones who already know why someone would put ricotta in their smoothie and also feel smug about this knowledge) I'd get busted and then what? Everyone would be watching me like vultures and I'd be looking behind my back for the rest of the boot camp sessions- possibly forever. They might even give me a nickname like- 'The Bootcamp Breakfast Bandito' or 'That crazy freak at bootcamp' or 'Shirley' (because why not?). Well I don't want to get caught up in that kind of criminal lifestyle anyway. My family is just too important to me.

All I know is that it sits on the counter and everyone's head does a wide eyed, owl-esque 180 as they run past it. Who's gonna be the first to steal the forbidden fruit? Huh? WHO?

Who? Who? WHO?

Fur is out.

Now it's all the rage to wear babies, Fashionistas. Thank God, because I have an impressive selection. Take this babywearing vest, for example. Doesn't it look so practical? I can't really see a thing going wrong with this- a screaming, kicking child?... No.... A Child who is pooping inside of your clothes?... Nothing could go wrong there.... The fact that from a distance, your baby's head would look like one of your breasts had somehow poked it's way out of your fleecy garment (and heaven forbid the baby is prone to spitting up)?.. Nooo.... In fact, I am dying to order a retrofitted version for my 10 year old.

Maybe my entire family could each get one in order from largest to smallest. Neil could wear me, I could wear Sull... so on and so on until Fluffy Sparkles the cat is happily tucked away in Eleanore's very own cat-wearing snuggy vest, with just her little kitty head poking out of a little fleecy hole as we frolic along in the park.

But what really gets to me here is that I'm having some kind of dejavu from this baby-wearing photo... It's just that I TOTALLY can't RECALL where I've seen something like this before. If I could RECALL where I've seen this before, I TOTALLY would, but I'm drawing a TOTAL blank of the RECALLING of where I've seen a baby-wearing outfit like this in the past.......


Hold on a second...

*cough*

LaserTiger. That's a cool title for this post.

I finally won a damned coffee at Tim Hortons. Now I don't even want it. I DON'T EVEN WANT IT, READER. The winning cup is now sitting on my microwave collecting change and screws, just like the Tim Horton's whore it is. (Tim WHOREtons. Hahahaha. Clever me.) And guess what? In one week, the cup has collected enough change to buy several coffees. And guess what else? I'm going to buy a frosty with that money because I have a sore throat. TAKE. THAT. Plus I have never had a frosty, I don't think... in fact I'm not sure where to buy one or what it is, exactly. But I'm going to find out what it is and get it because it sounds pretty soothing. Whatever it is, rum will be good in it. I'm getting pretty excited about it.

In other news, The Kids in the Hall are getting back together to do a series for the CBC. Oh-Em-Gee. I nearly peed myself when I heard this (But not quite). I already have every episode of kids in the hall taped on vhs somewhere in my basement in a box. I syphoned it off a good friend waaaay back in high school. All I know is that it's now in some precious translucent fluorescent green cases next to my taped copy of Space Balls and I no longer own a VCR... hm... Remember when we used to tape stuff and keep it? I had alllllll kinds of awesome taped shows. I bagged the crap out of my mom's VCR. Once, when I lived on my own and I was poor, I would have a friend of mine tape whatever he was watching on TV and give me the tapes the following day. It was like having time retarded cable. I just reused and reused the same three tapes for about a year. *high five*

Those were the days. Now I have digital cable on demand. *high five*

So my kid found an old mixed cassette tape in the bottom of a drawer once and asked me what it was. I was shocked. I told him it was a tape and he screwed up his face.

Kid: THIS is tape?? How do you open it? What do you tape with it? It's not even sticky.
Me: You're grounded. *high five*

How are angsty teenagers supposed to express themselves without complicated themed mixed tapes made up of different arrangements of the same 6 albums they own/scavanged from their siblings for their bffs? I think the death of the mixed tape is solely responsible for the advent of the emo kid. Too much access to crappy internet music. You KNOW I'm right. When I was a teenager, I had no choice but to include some of my Mom's records into my mixed tapes. Y'know, just for filler. A little Jimmy Swaggart built character, anyway. Clearly. Is not crappy. IS NOT. It's not the same! *lalalalala*

Off to see a man about a frosty.