My parents sent me these photos from home
And then I looked around at my view
I’m not sure I’ve made good life choices.
Reincarnation.
Sometimes I think about what bad people will be reincarnated as and it makes me feel better about the world. Like Donald Trump will be reincarnated as the athlete’s foot I once had. Everyone hates it but for some reason it is always there and won’t go away until you destroy it with chemicals*. I hope to be reincarnated as a common sparrow, or at least as one of those old railroad trolleys. When people think about those old trolleys, they are all “meh, I see why you’re here but probably something better and more efficient is out there but also you are very strong and have boyish good looks”. Stuart McLean will be reincarnated as the next generation of Barack Obamas because they are perfect in every way.
* There is a non-zero chance I will get arrested for writing this.
The bird.
Several weeks ago, I was walking home at night and almost stepped on a small bird that was hanging out on the sidewalk. I was both confused and intrigued. Why didn’t the bird run away from me as other people do? There is clearly something wrong with it.
The bird was sitting upright and was alive and chirpy but I don’t think that all the lights were on upstairs. Maybe it flew into a window? Maybe it is also doing a PhD and goes home every night, completely delirious and takes shots of vodka until the world seems better? I mean… I don’t do that…
Anyway, I left the bird on the sidewalk and ran home to get a shoebox. Returning to the bird, I picked it up and put it inside the shoebox with the intention of returning home and nursing it back to health. While I’d like to say that this was for purely unselfish reasons, I really just wanted to train it to bring my sweater to me in the morning, Sleeping Beauty style.
Let me tell you two things. One, the bird did not bring my sweater to me. Two, I need to wrap up this story because the grocery store near my house is closing soon. So I bring the bird home in the shoebox and put it in the corner of my room. I go to sleep thinking that I will take it to some park ranger or sell it to a wolf in the morning.
Alas. At 2 a.m. I am awoken by a bat from hell, speeding around my room and knocking over all of my economics textbooks I mean cool things that interesting people have. I grab my baseball bat, The Educator, and begin swinging wildly and knock over more… cool things that interesting people have… But when I realize that it is the bird, I try to guide it out of the apartment. You might be wondering why the bird was unable to fly 5 hours earlier but now was cruising like the Air Force One (is this a shoe? I’ve never understood American culture), but I don’t have a good answer. Eventually I was able to get the bird out of our apartment and into the apartment building hallway. The bird flew up the apartment building stairs and I tried to follow it for a while but got tired after climbing three steps.
And that’s the story of why there is a bird living (or.. maybe not living..) somewhere in my apartment building. Good night!
Some Thoughts on Lives Mattering.
All the time, I’m hearing people say: “Sure, Black Lives Matter, but really All Lives Matter! Let’s not discriminate!” (I also hear people say that only All Lives Matter which I suspect is really just code for “I’m very racist and should live on an island alone”).
Fellow white people: nobody is saying or has ever said that your life is unimportant. This is demonstrated by the fact that we are in all the history books, we are not in danger when we come into contact with authorities, and the judicial system is probably going to be fair to us. You don’t need to shout that our lives matter because we have been absurdly aggressive about making them matter and making them matter more than other people’s.
There are groups of individuals for whom this is not true. Black people, for example. This is why we say that Black Lives Matter. It is not a threat. It is not divisive. It is simply saying “Hey, here are some people who matter and we are acting like they don’t. Maybe we should change that”. White person, we already know that your life matters so stop trying to be part of the tag line.
It’s like this. Say we go back to the time when women couldn’t vote. Then we have a rally that says women should be able to vote. Would you then be like “hmm.. I think these women are really saying that men shouldn’t have the right to vote, despite the fact that they are clearly just asking for their right to vote, so we should have a rally saying that men should still have the right to vote”. No because that’s stupid. If you would think that then may you be stung by a thousand bees.
For those of us white folk who say sure Black Lives Matter, but All Lives Matter, let’s be honest about what this is really saying: We feel very uncomfortable with (1) having to recognize that we are implicated in hundreds of years of racism, and (2) having to recognize that it is still happening today. The good news is that you can support the Black Lives Matter movement and rest assured that your life, and mine, will continue to matter. Our lives are irrelevant to this conversation except that we can use them to be allies.
Puzzles.
Why do florists sell venus fly traps if they expect me not to put pocket lint in their little plant mouths? It’s like if a pet store had puppies and expected me not to roll them in maple syrup so that they smell like Canada. Or expected me not to open all the bird cages so that we’d know which ones are loyal.
Some world.
Apologizing.
People say Canadians apologize too much. At first I thought U.S. Americans don’t apologize enough. Then I remembered the time a man tried to mug me at a bus stop and I apologized for having old gum wrappers in the bag he was trying to take. Then I apologized because I didn’t have any cash and my debit card didn’t work because I thought the strip on the back was one of those “scratch-n-save” things. Eventually I asked him for his phone number but he turned me down and left with my shoes.
They might be right.
Nurr.
I’m not sure why, but this picture perfectly captures how I’ve felt all day.
I think I’ve made my point.
Ghosts and people with chainsaws.
For various unknown reasons, I have been spending a lot of time collecting data on movies. I am struck by the number of horror films that are produced in a year. It really is too much. I think we can shut down Saw XXXIIV5 and use the money to bail out Greece.
In any case, I have a weird thing where I am terrified of watching horror films but still want to know what happens in them. After looking through all of this movie data today, I started reading short plot summaries of the horror movies in the dataset on wikipedia [also why it will take me 18 years to finish the PhD. So productive!]. This turned out not to be a good strategy as my overly-active imagination conjured up images of creepy ghosts and I will probably never sleep again.
I was struck, though, at how unimaginative all of the movies are. There are two basic plot lines:
(1) Something happens to child at young age. Child becomes nutty and starts creeping people out, haunting them, falling down wells and haunting people, etc. You can’t get away from the child because they can hide in cupboards or something [it is actually unclear to me why you can’t just put the child on one of those child leashes and tie it to a tree. I’ll assume there is good reason]. Also of note is that the child is usually a girl (hmm…)
(2) White man is upset for unsaid reasons and goes Jack the Ripper on everything [sometimes this hits a little too close to reality].
Gruesome as the films may be, these plots really make no sense at all. First of all, if you are an angry child ghost and want people to suffer, you do not need to do creepy things. As someone who has no children, I believe I am authorized to say that children are bad enough as is. They cost so much money, hide in the grocery store which causes parents everywhere to have panic attacks, and spit up cheerios. No need to act like a ghost. Just hide on your parents while they are shopping in target. You will cause damage.
If you must act like a ghost, why do you need an elaborate plot to kill others? Crawling through a TV screen if and only if people watch a movie is inefficient. You obviously have the power to destroy us all. Just do it. Don’t hide in a videotape.
For the white men wielding chainsaws: YOU ARE THE MOST PRIVILEGED PERSON ON THE PLANET. New plan for you: calm down, put down your axe, and go get a job and/or promotion. It will happen for you. No need to be a weirdo.
So really I have nothing to worry about with these movies. If a ghost or childcreep ever comes at me, I will tell him/her to read this blog post. If that doesn’t work, I will jump into a sharky ocean. These nutjobs are always covered with blood or carrying a corpse or slaughtering a chicken or some such, so the sharks will for sure go after them while I make a getaway on a dolphin’s back. Flipper — now that’s an underrated movie.
Quick thoughts on things I saw in London today
1. Small children with British accents
Adorable.
2. Old people with British accents
Love them.
3. Other people with British accents
Could do without.
4. Stern looking man in sweater
German.
5. Fifty thousand statues of men on horses
Every other one should be knocked down and replaced with a statue of a woman riding a horse and/or lion and/or dragon.
6. Door knockers in the shape of a lion’s head
Excessive unless resident is Scrooge McDuck.
7. Two weddings in parks
Unfortunate that one will probably end in divorce.
8. Many pigeons
3 of them reminded me of people I know. The rest were meh.
9. Street called Bread Street
Not enough actual bread on street. Should be similar to opening scene from Beauty and the Beast where a baker is wheeling around a cart of bread. Might be misremembering opening scene.
10. Person wearing Canada t-shirt
Heart explosion.
Kids.
“Look at the friendship pebble I found!”
– A four-year-old girl, holding a brick.
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