nprcy

[nprcy]

A Christmas Paragraph

There was once a person who is actually me, and actually this is happening in this moment right now. Christmas is not so far away. I’m not a huge fan of Christmas anymore, and because of that, I was visited by three different grammar ghosts while trying to write this snarky Christmas post. The first ghost said “I am the ghost of Christmas past-tense.” I said “That’s interesting, you just used present tense to introduce yourself, isn’t that sort of ironic?” She was not impressed by my joke. She said, “Oh so you still think you’re funny now? Look back to years ago-you were not funny back then.” Then she peaced out, leaving a bunch of my middle school diaries scattered about behind. The second ghost said “I am the ghost of Christmas present-tense, you are bad at writing.” Then she left too, at least she just told me how it is. Then the third ghost showed up. She said “I’m the ghost of Christmas future-tense.” She paused, and I waited there, anticipating and admiring her silent friend, the Ghost of Present Continuous (she is always with us.) The Ghost of Christmas Future -Tense said “You will write, even though it will be bad.” She left, and I became despondent. Luckily, the Ghost of Present Continuous was still kicking around, and she said “Don’t worry about what those other Ghosts said- they’re all simple.” In conclusion�� this is a poorly written, and poorly structured paragraph. I mean, look at it- it’s way too long, where’s the INDENT even?, and I have allegorically bastardised the understanding of the past, present and future tenses. 

[nprcy]

Three ways to Shop for Medium-Young-Old Adults During the Holiday Season

OH HI GUYS (Hi Mom, Hi random person I went to high school/university/Japan with who clicked on this link by accident.) WELCOME BACK TO MY CHANNEL! So, I know it’s been quite some time since my last post (2 years) (*post-publishing correction, it’s been slightly less than 1 year. Eat me, at least I fact-checked.) but yeah, you know, things get so crazy when you find other ways to waste your time on the internet! Anyway, I’m back again-  here to give you some handy last- minute shopping tips for those ambiguously-aged adults who are SOOOOO THE WORST to buy gifts for! TBH it’s almost like they’re too old to do gifts anyway, but none of them have had children yet, so it’s awkward to stop now and it’s like... Chrasmas! 

I may not have been an adult doing adult-y things for a long time (SPOILER ALERT: I’m still not an adult) but I have been all three types of people on this list, so I know with absolute certainty what their deepest desires are during this sacred, gift-shoving-down-throat season.

Medium-Young-Old Adult Type One: Atoning Sinner

This is for that person who is SO PUMPED for a NEW YEAR AND A NEW... THEM! Help them on their way to starting over in January before it’s too late for them to start off their new year RIGHT. Because it’s not like time is relative, and a “new year” could really start at any point during our predictable, celestial tumble around the sun. No, no... no. Reinvention can only TRULY begin in the instance of January 1st until the next time we collectively agree it’s January 1st. Bottom line: this person is a real go getter, albeit a procrastinator, and they’re poorly equipped for their new start- so help them out by BUYing them... 

-a fitbit

-a prescriptio- I mean...subscription to a cardboard box of vegetables that comes to their neighbour’s house by accident every month

-fitness magazines featuring people on the cover who get paid to do exercise so they can look like that, but you can too!

-that new title about a specific food item by that famous doctor/trainer/actually someone who isn’t either of those things but has authority anyway

-passes to exercise classes 

-headphones to block out the voices in your head telling you that YOU CAN’T DO ANOTHER SQUAT #youcan #youdid

-a mug that says something empowering on it like “SHE DREAMED IT SO SHE DID IT” that is made of  ceramic or some other delicate material so you can’t actually use it in the environments in which you could actually use a silly slogan to boost your self confidence, but you’ll feel really pumped up while you eat your cereal

Medium-Young-Old Adult Type Two: Ambitious Sinner

This is for that special person who always makes you feel a little shittier about life and the future, but still makes you laugh about it. That’s a special person right there, you hold onto them. Just like anyone else, they have desires around the CHRASMAS season, albeit most of those desires are just for it to either not exist (sorry, can’t because CAPITALISM) or for it to pass by quickly and painlessly. Here are some items that will help that clock tick faster (remember, time is RELATIVE, and never more so than when you’re with your relatives.) Get them:

-alcohol of choice (enough to last them approximately just past new year’s day when the ‘holidays’ are ‘over’) 

-hangover pills (yes, they actually exist, and they can be found by the pedialyte in most pharmacies. You could also just give them pedialyte. It’s just like gatorade.)

-gatorade (because there are just more flavour varieties than pedialyte can compete with.)

-doritos for when the gatorade/pedialyte gets them too hydrated and depletes the necessary levels of salt they need in their system to function (tell them straight up eating raw packets of lipton’s chicken noodle soup will do the trick too)

-a bunch of those lemon scented wet wipes you stole/extorted out of some server at a chicken wing joint of your choice. They’re really handy if your life is always a mess and your recipient will appreciate how hard it was for you to get your hands on them- talk about thoughtful!

-a gel gem to cover their entire bathroom mirror so they don’t have to see themselves doing those cliche ‘stare at myself after dramatically splashing face’ moments during reflective moments of duress and shame

-a magic self-filling popcorn bowl that can be pulled out of thin air so that it can be used as a comical prop during moments of heated discussion, debate or general drama that you want your loved one to maliciously and fashionably enjoy

-magic dust that could revive their childlike wonder during the holiday season, and NO this is not code for cocaine

-matches for burning bridges 

Good for both of the people above: Sweatpants

Medium-Young-Old Adult Type Three: Combination/Nihilist

Aside from the sweatpants, buy the matches and the health magazines. They can either use them separately as they so choose or use them on one another to neutralise both items... and after a brief pouf of flame- create that amazing, empty void representing the futility of existence. Who knew you could give someone you love THAT? You’re welcome.

Oh- this has been a helpful article? Don’t forget to give me a thumb’s up and subscribe! 

*If you feel your 25+ something loved one is not well represented by these lists, it may be that they do not qualify as medium-young-old adults. This said, you may want to reference shopping lists for “Adults who Retain Childlike Wonder and Interests” or “Adults who are actually Adults So We Just Want Socks and Perhaps a Nice Bottle of Wine” or “Adults Who Have Children so Why Don’t Shop For Me Just Get Something For Baby Emry”  or even  “Yo, I Don’t Do Xmas Remember? That Time You Came To My Bat Mitzvah?” Adults. All of which I will release in my next blog post in the year 2025.

See you in 2025!

[nprcy]

Under-WHY-r

So I’m standing around brushing my teeth when I should be in bed because it’s 3 am and I’ve had enough to drink and I can hear little people marching in my ears

I’m flossing my teeth. I just do it, the floss tastes good ugh why would I have to justify this I always do it just shut up

I have to loop it through this metal wire I have that runs along the back of my bottom teeth - four or five of them... an underwire? Or is that the thing in a bra? 

damn I can’t believe I don’t know how many teeth this wire crosses, it’s been there forever

Anyways-- I start thinking.... WHY is this wire there-- I didn;t ASK for that

I mean I vaguely remember this larger man in a white coat telling me when I got my braces off that this was so they would ‘stay straight’ or whatever. But who asked you man. I was like, twelve. And now I’m gonna have this piece of metal glued to tha back of my teeth for the rest of my life? Does anyone appreciate how bizarre that is? To have something glued onto you forever for no apparent good reason because adults said it was a good idea? Why? My parents have nice teeth and they don’t have artificial materials glued inside to their mouthves. 

What the hell. I complied with it because I used to just do whatever so adults would shut up and I could go back to reading, and now I started thinking about it. I don’t want this in here. People judge people for getting tattoos and they’re like “that’s gonna be on there for life!” Well, here I have a piece of fucking wire glued into my teeth forever, and THATS k? HOW AND WHY IS THAT K AND PRETTY PICTURES OF THINGS DRAWN ON PEOPELS BODIES ISNT? It makes no sense. This metal on my teefs, it makes me have to thread floss through it every night and like I’m diligent enough to floss like why are you testing me further I didn’t ask you to glue metal in my mouth \

no closing remarks too tired too non no nope

[nprcy]

I Have a Holo Heart (where is my solemate, pt.1)

i lusted after the idea of these holo(graphic) boots for a long time (1 month) i looked through a lot of different kinds of holo boots to find the right pair that would be good for me according to many criteria both logical and emotional i thought about what i would wear them with i scoped out where i could get them i factored in how they could fit with my lfiestyle i even saw them a couple times before i bought them then i wear them FOR ONE NIGHT GET THIS ONE NIGHT they couldn't stay their selves together without cracking up and like i hate buying footwear, it stresses me out, you know i have very specific things in mind for footwear and what i want from it, and like the amount of time i put into these ideas for footwear means i want that LONGEVITY PAYOUT

i dont want to be having to go out and getting more footwear 

ANYTIME SOON 

like it doesnt have to last me for life, but 

YOU KNOW IT TOOK SO LONG TO FIND THE RIGHT ONES

I 

JUST DONT WANNA HAVE TO GO OUT THERE AGAIN 

ANYTIME SOON YOU KNOW i cant afford this life

always going out for footwear

i want to just FIND SOME FOOTWEAR SO I DONT HAVE TO GO OUT AND SPEND MY HARD EARNED SCRILL TRYING TO GET SOME anyways 

i bought these things

i was so stoked

i thought we were embarking on like a big fun freedom time of good times looking good together and like being all around great for each other AND THEN

AFTER

ONE

NIGHT

like i get it, i go hard.  i walk in cold temperatures. there is snow banks 

i kick the snow off with a lot of tappy taps

BUT SERIOUSLY YOU CANT KEEP YOUR SELF TOGETHER FOR ONE NIGHT

u cracked like 

if i love you i have to accept that ur weak

too weak for me

i like you a lot

but honestly, 

if i could go through life barefoot without experiencing physical pain 

i would do it

[nprcy]

Perc-spective

Everyone is Entitled to their own opinion Some people are, very much so. Some don't seem to understand why the accompanying verb for opinion is "share" not "wield" an opinion or "play" an opinion or "slam" an opinion A discussion is not a game of dominance That's my opinion though. What do you think?

[nprcy]

I’ve been afraid to write about Japan and what I felt about being there, about what I thought about being there. It’s not because being there was all that bad. It’s because I find it extremely hard (even now with the privilege of retrospect) to decide what I feel, and what I think.

I’m afraid that once I write something, I’ll be making a decision about how to present all that ambivalence I felt then and still feel now, half a year later. Right now, my attitude and reflection on my experience is this thing that I have control over. I can mess around with it continuously like Play Dough from one day to the next, in the privacy of my own head, where it can remain malleable. If I write about it, it will be like giving that Play Dough away to everyone else to make what they want with it, and what if they shape it into terrible things? 

I’m also afraid to never write anything about it. I made a decision in Japan to seriously try to be a writer. However, I continue to make jokes about how I never publish, how I often get into the epistemics of whether or not the written word is valuable or not, and about how I often doubt that anything I have to say is important. It appears that up to this point, the only thing I’ve mastered is the art of being hard on myself. (But please don’t praise me for it, I still have very far to go.) 

The thing is, my experience up until now is all I’ve got to work with. I’ve got all these photos and all these word documents, all these diaries and all these questions and some potential answers and more questions. Maybe they aren’t that good, but I like em. Japan was the first thing I really chose to do, and the first thing I chose to undo. 

I have stuff and I’m making something with it. Brb-

[nprcy]

Knowpe.

I spent pretty much all my time up until now feeding my craving to know things.

I just wanted to sound like I knew something, seem to someone else like I knew something, or seem to myself like I knew something. 

All I do is sit around and try to think about things that I know that I could share with other people- yet at the same time, I’m sitting around thinking about how much I don’t know, and wondering if by trying to share what I think I know, I am just trying to validate myself. (Probably.) Maybe if I really did know something, I would just shut up about it already. But that doesn’t seem right either- what if what I know could make someone feel better? There is a certain compulsive need to take ownership of my experiences, and the most obvious way of doing that is saying or writing what they helped me come to know.

Most of the times these days, I don’t really believe anything I think I know. (By the way, “I think I know” seems like a paradoxical sentence.)  I’m afraid of being wrong, and later looking back at something I thought I knew, and being like, oh, dude, you were soooo wrong. (Because that happens a LOT.)

I try to remind myself that I don’t know the things I don’t know, because sometimes I get confused and think that I already know something I actually don’t know anything about at all, and I can sense it. Wary of discovering that contradiction later, I build a Newton’s Cradle (see GIF below) of self-doubt and cockiness which later helps me avoid being wrong but unfortunately also keeps me stagnated in “wishy-washy-fence-sitteriness” in the courtroom of me, myself and I.

Why am I like that?

I know and I don’t know, of course.

I try so hard to know myself that I get in my own way and so I never find anything good, and in the process I get bored with myself (oh, and other people get bored with me too.)

So why be so adamant about knowing myself? (Or knowing “thineself” as some person once said, and then everybody printed it on napkins, pieces of artisanal driftwood, and notebooks.) Why be so adamant about knowing?  

I had a strange thing happen to me recently- I was stressed out thinking about all these things that I had to do, and all these people I was afraid of having to deal with, and admonishing myself for being afraid etc. etc. and then this voice in my head - you will go and do the things you need to do and then they will be done because like, logic and syntax of this sentence. I thought, ok voice, I think you’re right, and that’s good enough because I suspect you are a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if I follow you, I will end up where you say I already am. I don’t think I’m there yet, but if you think I’m there, that means I could be there, so let’s just do it and not talk about it anymore. Then I went and did the things I was kind of afraid/did not want to do, I didn’t talk about any of them, and then I went to sleep. It was good, it was straightforward, and I felt a strong sense of hope about becoming a person in possession of a soul like Jean Valjean’s.

Anyway I don’t know what that voice was, I just want to keep learning what it has to say, because it makes me feel comfortable with this whole “knowing that there is no knowing the unknown” thing. Thanks weird voice, for letting me be comfortable with the fact that I don’t know anything, admit that I’ve been trying too hard to convince myself and others I know things, and therefore be free to continue do all the other stuff, like learning.

[nprcy]

Horror-Scopes for June

JUNE; the only good thing about this month is the fact that little kids still have to go to school, and we feel like we are better than them because patio drinking season is starting haha kids are losers eh

AQUARIUS: Venus is usurping the throne of Jupiter, and Daenaeyyrs Targaryen is having none of it. This may cause fluctuations in the toxosphere that may throw you off balance on your skateboard, your longboard, your paddle board, or whatever other $300+ board you bought two years ago that you’re still unqualified to use in real life, and was purchased so you could use it as a point of conversation on Tinder/OkCupid. Go apologize to the last bug you squashed’s phantom, which is floating three cm to the left of where you killed it, ghost bugs can’t move all too freely in the pre-afterlife-post-life-life, because they were given too much freedom of movement in this life. Tell it your favourite ghost story, it won’t be offended because it’s a ghost. Wait… No, it’s only ok if you’re a ghost if telling a ghost story. Wait… That doesn’t seem right either. Maybe nobody should tell ghost stories if none of us know whether they’re offensive or not.

PISCES: When it comes to playing basketball, you’re always last to be picked and in some cases never picked at all. Just try to lean up on the wall, or sit in the bleachers with the resta the girls who came to watch their man ball. Sometimes after you brush your teeth you forget to rinse the toothpaste out of your mouth and then when you sit at your work desk you can feel the chemicals from the toothpaste crawling down your esophagus and wonder if they are slowly seeping into your bloodstream and gradually killing you, like you did to your grandmothers plant accidentally that one time by upcycling that bleach bottle into a watering can. You should probably Google things more often..

ARIES: You’re perpetually tapped of cash and hope, so why would this month be any different? Luckily you still have your ego, which you still can't identify as either an asset or deficit. Try starting a Vlog where you advise broke Uni students on all your “life hacks” like using knorr lipton’s chicken noodle soup mix and vegetable oil to refill your highlight pens. Hilroy is too pricy for you. Besides, your giant ego needs the affirmation that you’re passing on wisdom to people who are less than you. Lego my ego. Seriously though that could be a Freudian psychotherapy "treatment exercise thingy" - building your ego out of Lego. I thought of it first! So you just SHUT UP.

T-T-TAURUS: Your captain Taurus. ;)

GEMINI: 12 stars in the galaxy whose gravitational pull affect your aura died while you read this sentence. As a result, you may feel a little unsure of why this has anything to do with you, because, after all, stars in the sky are supposed to say something about YOU right? Who cares if they died. Anyways. This is a particularly good or bad month for you, depending on how you’re feeling about the month right now. Don’t bend over backwards to make things happen - bodily contortions often don’t result in any long-term outcomes aside from ligament injuries. It’s time for you to take charge of your pasta cupboard - you bought too much fusilli on sale and that fusilli has become futile. It’s time to have a dinner party and cater to the needs of your friends who still eat carbs- they’re really going against the stream these days, and you need to support them.

CANCER: Hasn’t the name of your astrological sign always bothered you? My, me, I’m sorry old chap, I didn’t mean to offend you I was just curious. It’s just quite visceral. That word is quite perturbing as well, as is that last adjective I just used. No, not “last” …pertur- ugh can I just go home now? My British accent hurts.

LEO: If you’re reading this, it’s because I’ve long since published this.

VIRGO: When you read this horoscope, you’ll get the super Mario bros song stuck in your head. Alternatively, if you think I’m wrong cause you don’t know the song in question, you’ll get the first crappy Coldplay song you can think of stuck in your head. If you’ve escaped both of these pitfalls, please pass Go and pay me $200.

LIBRA: Please play again.

SCORPIO: If you go into a grocery store today, you’ll be disappointed by your lack of appetite and frustrated by the fact that you know you’re gonna get home later and want something specific really badly, but be too lazy to go to the store again, even IF it’s right next to your house. Omg don’t they have Uber for food in your neighbourhood yet? Your basket only has Dijon mustard, toilet paper and sour gushers in it. We might be soul mates.

SAGITTARIUS: Grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup chips inside. You’re welcome.

CAPRICORN: A game plan isn’t something that is used only for games, it is also used to make things into games. Playing games is a good way to make boring shit feel fun, so ignore the impulse telling you not to view things as games, even if it may feel morally wrong, as your sense of morality is thrown off this month by the descent of the star named after that Harry Potter character (Sirius Black) into the Underworld, which is totally an area of the universe that has been charted and sanctioned by the “Global Authority of Ten People Who Are Actually Only Smart Enough to Fool Us Into Believing They Know More About the Universe Than We Do.” (They call themselves “Astrophysicists” for the sake of brevity and their yearly conference name tags budget.) Celebrities will not re-tweet you this month, so don’t even try to make a pun about Alec Baldwin’s insta depicting his “triumphant” wearing of a “bald cap.” Take time out of your day to appreciate that you have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and if you do not have this number of these things, know that you are loved, because we have paid a good sum of money to an old woman we found on the street who had nothing better to do than to feel love for you.

[nprcy]

CyNicole takes the wheel, I don't like the way she drive but I need a nap in the backseat

I can't do anything in the morning without having coffee first 

and that includes 

making coffee

 So where does that leave me

 In bed

 And I had a dream that I faked sick so I could stay home and do squats 

 The guilt was overpowering

 I'm tired of being patted on the head and being told "well that's normal, everyone is like that" 

When being normal like everyone is what I'm so worried about  

No offense, guys

Neurotic isn't a word I'd use to describe myself

but if you feel so strongly about it, I'll be sure to reconsider just give me two hours and a towel to mop the sweat from my guilty considering forehead 

 Let's not mince words cause they don't taste so good in spaghetti sauce

It's more fun to make jokes that no one gets 

Than say something serious that no one gets 

At least you can laugh at your own jokes

 Sorry that I like to intellectualize everything 

 But the only things I can take at face value 

Are faces 

 Although some of us spend so much time on our faces 

And I can't see the value 

 Logic prevails to the extent that I am told I'm a dyed-in the-wool logician

 And I say ‘Wool is dyed in dye, isn't it?’ 

 Sometimes I think I'm just striving to be good looking 

 So I can be certain in my conviction 

That you're a shallow motherfucker 

 And then maybe I can stop being so angry at myself 

And be angry at you instead 

 I just want to feel certain about something 

Isn't satisfying that need more important 

Than seeing what you're trying to tell me about yourself

[nprcy]

E-Go

How’d you like to buy A necklace that is a map of the world Sixty dollars plus shipping

Don’t you want to travel and see things Be Oh so Adventurous Oh so Spontaneous Oh so Alive Once in a lifetime Come again next year!

Wouldn’t it be nice Having all the people you know see You seeing all the things

Wouldn’t it be great great If you could just put a camera lens Right into your pupil To get the framing just right

Strange the verb "to shoot" Is used To describe acts Done using not only guns But also cameras

Am I like a bumblebee When the time comes to sting Will I die smugly full of venomous intent Lashing out at those who provoke me There is always hypocrisy in violence

Do I not Feel some kind of joy when I look at the postcards I bought Or is that different because the cards to me are not so much punctuated declarations of destinations As they are weird pictures That remind me Of moments spent alone In a strange place? Self serving bias strikes again

So why continue to have contempt for people who lust for the “exotic” ? don’t actually want to be a part rather remain apart A customer to The merchants of experience Who smile obligingly When asked for directions in a language their government impressed upon them But we learned how to order drinks and snacks in the native tongue It’s our new party trick

Something to enjoy on one’s own terms and consume Is preferable over that which is unyielding Which requires not only struggle But patience and humility

We are searching for ourselves after all So Don’t blame us if we spend more time looking in the mirror than out the window

Get a travel mug from every destination That’s a lot of cups to fill Drink up You deserve this

[nprcy]

What I Write About when I Write About Writing

I often think to myself that I am a writer - however, this causes me no end of energy spent on ignoring/self-medicating (with various types of sugars) my cognitive dissonance (aka mental discomfort caused by the bloating of the brain due to two conflicting beliefs.) The fact that my action of not writing is at odds with my self-schema is greatly troubling. How can I consider myself a writer if I have no actual written things? Well, for one thing, I AM writing almost all the time. In my brain. I am endlessly generating dialogue, situations, and other ways to convey ideas that I have. It’s because I don’t do well at being bored, or apparently being by myself. So I create lots of little selves in my brain to bounce ideas off of, and when that fails to entertain me, I tequila. When I’m out on the tequila, people often go “Ha ha ha, my mouth is making laughing noises so why don’t you write anything?” Well, I do have things written, but they are not available for public viewing currently, as I have the trouble of not being able to get my writing down in an actual visible format, let alone be able to ensure it isn’t a heap of garbled nonsense.

Every thought I have starts by being an instance of amazing clarity with regards to what I want to say. A message that is fully formed and virtually flawless - and then, my thought, like a beautiful peach/orchard fruit of your choice sitting on top of a tree, becomes ripe and falls- and on it’s way down to my fingers on the keyboard, it hits every branch of logical and emotional dispute it can possibly meet and thus is bruised to complete and irrevocable unfamiliarity when it finally reaches its destination. Then I go “wtf is that? A dead toad? That’s not what I ordered! Then I walk away and tequila to forget the thing that I have just seen/entertain myself in a non-productive way since my productivity just died.

Why is this? Maybe it’s my tendency towards epistemological crisis, maybe it’s my undiagnosed adult-ADD that people who were formerly undiagnosed adults with ADD like to diagnose me with (seriously, there are a lot of them- what are they stock holders in Ritalin or something? I’m not A

I also get ideas at the most inconvenient time possible. They never come when they’re called - like when I sit down at a desk with a computer or pen and paper and go “ok, now is the time for writing,” and sing my “writing time, make a circle” song to rouse the troops of kindergarteners that run the show up there. They ALWAYS come when I’m already doing something else that is making use of the rest of my body in a way that does not enable me to have a computer or a pen and paper. For a while I tried taking voice recordings, and then realized that even my mouth cant keep up with my brain, and also my voice sounds like female Seth Rogen- ie. not cute and NOT buddies with James Franco either. (See my biography- “Being Seth Rogen Without the Fun Aspects.”)

Most of my ideas come to me these days when I’m out running. This makes the voice recording thing hard as your mouth is kind of busy facilitating the exchange of carbon dioxide for more oxygen. I am aware that you’re supposed to run at a pace that allows you to carry on a conversation comfortably (according to health magazines I have ambivalent associations with.) However, I cannot do this, I prefer to dog it until I pant like one (a dog) because

I’m impatient and in the words of Ricky Bobby “IwannagofastIwannagofastIwannagofast!” and

who in the hell is going to have time for a running conversation (literally, a running conversation) not to mention a sufficient lung capacity when the volcano goes off and we have to sprint for the hills?

I tried to voice record while running anyways, which didn’t work because stopping to repeat what I thought interrupted/impeded the progression of the thought so then I tried to think about the same thought, piece-by-piece, over and over in my head in the same words until it became entrenched in my mind before moving onto the next part of the thought - but my mind is like that memory foam stuff - it springs back into place no matter how long you might put your butt on it.

“I write, therefore I am right” said every douchebag writer ever. I don’t think so Annie! Hi there, epistemological crisis, how’ve you been? Oh, you aren’t sure? What a surprise. I can’t progress with a piece of writing often because I have too much doubt over the truth/validity of views that I have- for example, while writing this I started to doubt my understanding of the concept of epistemological crises, so I looked it up and found several different (and perhaps conflicting) explanations, and thus was thrust further into this particular epistemological crisis, and I’m still down here, can you get a rope or at least some oreos and peanut butter to keep me company until the rope arrives?

This epistemological crap is a usual occurrence for me. It’s troubling because I start out with so much confidence and security in my idea- then all of a sudden, part of my brain, like a newly empowered, formerly passive-aggressive lover who feels they’ve been wronged in some way, will clear their throat and be like-

“Uhm, you know that thing you said earlier that I was totally on board with? Well, actually, I’ve been thinking while I was cooking this spaghetti and meatballs dinner for us, and I totally DON’T agree with it at all…”

Then the other part of my brain that had the idea, slightly baffled and disheveled from the satisfying nap they just took while the other part of the brain was doing the leg-work goes:

“Whoa, whoa whoa, what are you saying? Before you were totally on board with this-”

“Yeah, I know what I said before, but what I’m saying NOW is how I ACTUALLY feel. I didn’t say so at the time, but that’s just because I felt I couldn’t express my feelings to you because you were so excited and going on and on and didn’t let me talk and I couldn’t find the right words to tell you anyway because you always make me feel stupid when I disagree with you. Anyway  I’ve changed my mind and I revoke my support on this.”

Confident but disheveled brain takes a minute to absorb the fact that they are being challenged. Then they comprehend the situation and arm up-

“So if you’ve changed your mind about this, how can I trust anything that you’re saying? How can I know what you really support me about?”

“Am I not allowed to change my mind? I thought that one of the things that you LIKE about me is how flexible and adaptable I am?!”

“That and you make really great meatballs… I DO like that you can be flexible and adaptable, but like, at some point, you’ve got to draw the line - I mean, we can’t get anything done because we’re unsure of our direction!”

“But if we don’t question the validity of what we think how do we know if we’re being insensitive? If we can’t adapt to new situations how can we avoid getting stuck in a rut and left behind? Isn’t it good to be able to change if you want to?”

“Yeah, but if we’re always changing, how do we know who we are and who we want to become?  We can’t be everything! How can we have an identity or any conviction at all? There will be too many conflicting values! How can we make good decisions about how to act if we don’t know who we’re going to be in the future when those decisions we made based on our values at the time must be acted upon? How can we prove something we think of ourself to be true if we can’t act upon those values? We can’t be wishy-washy…”

Eventually they both discover that their conversation isn’t going to be solved as it requires some kind of cosmic enlightenment power granted by Wizards and I dunno, Buddha, or whoever you believe in (clearly I can’t decide for myself at this point) to know the answer, and the conversation is going nowhere, so they just sit and silently take turns eating and staring at the plates of spaghetti and meatballs in their shared studio apartment. Outside that studio apartment, I bar the escape of a scream of anguished confusion by barricading the scream portal with food. 

It never ceases to amaze me how all the somethings in my brain equate to nothing in the end - it’s the exact opposite of that cute and deep-sounding children’s book “Something from Nothing” which is by the way, an inaccurate title, because it is not about spontaneous generation, but about how something just turns into something else. I guess “Something from Something Else” just didn’t sound as deep.

 Despite all the nothing that my somethings produce, I have avoided succumbing to utter Nihilism by creating my own brand called “Nicole-ism,” which follows the belief that just because something fails to have objective meaning doesn’t justify a lack of effort to give that something a subjective meaning. Also, Nihilism is boring.

Now that I’ve (kind of) transcended the burn I feel from my own gaze on my words, there is the problem of transcending the burning gaze of others. Even when I write my own private diary, I feel as though it may be read someday by someone who isn’t me. Sometimes I even address those people as I write my diary directly - they include:

Future romantic partners who mysteriously feel the need to delve further into the terribly uninteresting but elaborately-worded thoughts I have (featuring ideas for ice cream flavours!)

My future daughter who wants to invite the father she never knew to her wedding that I will host at our Grecian island abode though I disapprove of her plans to marry young (spoiler alert honey, you’re the product of an astronaut sperm donor.) or

 Aliens from outer space who are analyzing documents found in the wasted expanse of future earth to understand its past inhabitants, which they destroyed by accident. Sorry aliens, maybe you should try Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger instead- he’s probably the last human left on Earth, and if not, he’ll be back.

Being aware there are such rare creatures as readers of my writing awakens that dormant conviction I have, which is that whatever I say will be permanently ascribed to me as a person for the rest of my life- this conviction stems from my father’s talk with us child-extensions of his person which occurred shortly after we acquired access to the internet, wherein he told us that whatever we say will be permanently ascribed to us as people for the rest of our lives. He’s right in a way, but I’ve semi-consciously taken his virtue a little too far in practice - I can’t be a writer if I have the paralyzing fear of having my intention received wrongly. Obviously, I need to exercise caution in order to not fucking offend anybody too deeply, but I’m fairly confident that I can develop a style and discuss things that most of you mofos will be ok with. Still, I do worry about what is ok to say and what isn’t - because I feel a massive amount of ambivalence over almost everything else, as is pretty evident from my afore-written waltzes with self-doubt and deprecation, so why not this too? (Life tip: this why-not-this-too logic can be successfully applied to pizza until you’ve eaten a whole pizza.)

From here how do I continue to exist as a writer even though I feel I’m being pulled in opposite directions with regards to truth of expression? Well, I created a mental loophole for myself by investing in the belief that when you, as a writer, write something, it kind of doesn’t matter if you’ve conveyed your thought perfectly or if it’s completely correct- because it will be changed and shaped by those who read it anyways and mutated into many different meanings depending on the perceiver. The idea, will evolve and evolve, over and over, a million gajillion times- so why bother with this worry over whether it truly reflects exactly what I think and feel? Ideas have a free will of their own in this way - they are not deterministic. There’s a reason the expression “a well conceived idea” exists- it entails that ideas have lives of their own, and although they may receive the best thought-gametes we have to offer, they, like every offspring before them, will be cute and covered in vomit that you constantly have to clear away in infancy, cuddly and deferent to you in childhood, problematic and challenging as a teen, and simultaneously pride-invoking and worrisome as a young adult. From there your ideas either move on to be adults who are well-adjusted but uninspiring, rabidly successful and exciting, or terrible failures. I don’t know what geriatric ideas are like. Maybe they attend aqua ballet classes?

Another way I get over this particular fear is by storing up all the thoughts I have for as long as possible until I absolutely can’t do anything with my brain anymore because my disk space is all used up. I can’t keep all these thoughts in my head, so some of them need to go to the cloud. Also, I get stuck with my thoughts all day long, all week long, as long as I’m awake, and all these thoughts need to go bother someone else for a while- YA HEAH THAT THOUGHTS?  GO PLAY OUTSIDE AND GET OFF THAT X BOX! I’ve had enough- leave this place! Get outta my life and shut up!

[nprcy]

The Day I Ceased to Be Afraid of My Basement

I have before stated that I am afraid of my basement. I think most people are (afraid of their basements, and, probably, MY basement in particular.) My basement is the unfinished product of a young married couple with young children, whose dream was to spend their hard earned wages on a swimming pool and lifeguarding lessons for the young children so that the young children could survive the existence of the swimming pool.  Thus, with regards to the basement,

-the floor is cement

-the pipes are exposed

-the walls are made of the carcass of the cotton candy glob from “Scooby Doo 2, Monsters Unleashed” starring NOT Freddie Prince Jr. but Freddie Prinze Jr.)

There is also an amalgamation of horrifying detritus down there such as my father’s tools, a large cardboard tube that held the pool lining which was a fun thing to spend time rolling around in as children who had no access to video game consoles, and various things that we are too nostalgic about to part with yet couldn’t care less that they are in danger of being invaded by a colony of garter snakes/ becoming the population of our own personal Atlantis in the Toronto spring floods that will surely happen in the near, globally warmed future.

Basically the basement is prime real estate for embodiments of our fear of dying- ghosts, monsters, snake colonies, and that creepy dude that you thought was following you one time but actually wasn’t- or he WAS following you home and now LIVES IN YOUR BASEMENT. The place is just rank with nightmarish potential. However, this Christmas when I went home, the basement was no longer such a place.

I suspected initially that perhaps I felt emotionally blunted by the 13-14 hour time difference-induced jet lag, as emotions were not running very high in general upon my immediate homecoming. I had been away for 1.5 years (not just from my physical house and home, but from my country and almost every single person I’d ever known in my entire life.) Yet, upon touchdown, all I felt in my hollow tin chest was a slight pang when I hugged my parents, (I’d seen them 5-6 months before in Hawaii-) followed by a feeling of instant familiarity and none of the relief or tears which had been persistently clawing their way up my throat for the previous month and a half every time I thought about Canada or watched a Rick Mercer clip. It’s like those emotions had reached the summit, and were clutching at it with the tips of their fingers, but instead of pushing themselves up to stand on top of it and gaze down at the glorious vista of the valley of homecoming emotions they just shrugged and said “ah fuck it, let’s go back down and have a rum and coke.” Then, without even looking over their shoulder to at least see how far up they’d come, my emotions slid down Mt. Soul on their well-sculpted butts, yawning on the way down and high-fiveing their buddies/rivals, the logical thoughts, as they planted their feet on the plains of indifference.

I have two Myers-Brigg’s personality types, which may shed a little light on this phenomenon. As an ENTP/ENFP whose T/F (thinking/feeling) scores are split exactly down the middle, it’s difficult for me to tell whether I am either feeling or thinking more in some situations. Basically when something happens that I have to react to, it’s a one-on-one rumble between two famous street gangs, the “Thinkers” and the “Feelers.” (Which one do you think/feel is the “Greasers”, and which one do you think/feel is the “Soc’s"?)

 Man, are the fighters well-matched! I have no idea who is winning most of the time, which is also true when I watch boxing in real life (“they’re both hitting each other and no one fell over? Well, they both win then- no? That’s not how it works? Well, you don’t have to say it in THAT tone! Let’s order some more mozza sticks and be friends again.”)  The Thinkers go, “I think this happened because of this and this and this and this, and it’s pretty much not worth feeling anything about. Besides, logic is what sets us apart from the impulse-driven beings we once were, and allows us to deal with those ugly feelings that undermine what we define as ‘civilized society.’” Then the Feelers go “No, no, no, no. We feel this happened because this and this and this and this, and these feelings are totally worth feeling, because thinking isn’t enough to anchor us in the port of humanity, and avoid evolving into logic-bots. Emotion not only reflects the ugliness of our nature, but the beauty of it too.” Basically the thinkers are dressed like little Sherlocks, and the feelers are dressed in little Steve Jobs turtlenecks and glasses, and the rumbles go down in an 18th century Salon, but there is no tea or coffee to assist formulating high-quality repartee, because no one can agree on the best way to stay caffeinated.

Hm. I see I have failed again to get to the part of the writing where I discuss the thing that I set out to discuss. Which was “my basement.” Let’s tuck in then, shall we? This Christmas, I couldn’t have given less of a fuck if a colony of snakes decided to emerge from behind the box of VHSes (wtf is the correct plural form of VHS?) and tried to convince me to join their cult before sacrificing me to their leader, the creepy guy who I thought followed me home, in order to attain enlightenment. I was down there to put away the groceries, and like hell I was gonna waste time on turning on the light to do it- ain’t nobody got time for dat! We just wannada (past tense of wanna) get our Nog in the fridge and go upstairs and eat the tempeh bacon and key lime greek yogurt we’ve been dreaming about for a year and a half! A year and a half before, I would have run around my basement with my arm in the air like an Olympic torch bearer, grabbing the strings of all the lights and tugging them on as I ran past, my other arm strategically placed in blocking position in front of my chest to protect against potential oncoming attacks. I would then reverse this process when I had finished my business, ensuring that the last light I tugged off was the one closest to the door by the stairs, which I would run up (this was the cumulation of all the exercise I did as a youth - I would go downstairs to the freezer to get the mini pizzettas we bought from Costco and then sprint up the stairs as fast as my pudgy pizzetta-composed body would carry me.) On this day, when my body is in much better physical condition, and I could do a single squat jump to get up the stairs (ok maybe not) I proceeded to calmly put away groceries in the dark, walked past the band saw, and walked up the stairs. I even did the thing you’re ABSOLUTELY NOT SUPPOSED TO DO and STOPPED on the stairs to LOOK OVER MY SHOULDER. It wasn’t even like I was doing this because I was trying to prove something to myself and overcome my fear, this just happened. It wasn’t until later when I was sitting on my couch halfway through eating my tempeh bacon and key-lime greek yogurt (the modern equivalent of pizzettas) that I realized the significance of this event.

Why? I thought. Why now? It’s not like I’m any smarter, or more bad-assier (<-see? Definitely not smarter…) It’s not even like I’d witnessed some horrifying thing that would render me insensitive to not-as-horrifying things; I was still living in my privileged-AF little 20-something-middle-class world. To be honest, I still don’t really understand where this particular fear went, especially since I still have some childish fear tendencies such as routinely checking under my bed for assassins (oh shit, I just told the assassins that I’m onto them.) The closest I can get to an explanation of all this is that for the latter part of the year and a half that I was away, the scariest thing for me was this feeling I would get sometimes- the feeling that I wouldn’t see my home again or my family again, and all that stuff was something I had imagined. I would at times become so far removed from my past and future and get completely absorbed in the present, that I would forget how it felt to be somewhere familiar and comforting, and that was a super scary feeling. Going back home and having logical evidence that my past was NOT a figment of my imagination kind of nullified that all encompassing parasitic fear that had been germinating inside me- and along with the nullification of that fear, some other ones got cleared away too. I was home, it was really a place, and I was really there, and it was nice. Logic and emotion had done battle, and both had won, so both had also lost- thus, they must have disappeared, like in that story I liked as a kid called “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat”- at the end of which said animals “ate each other up,” which is something that is in itself logically puzzling, and furthermore, is emotionally troubling. 

I think/feel now that “confusion” is a place where logic and emotion meet, or are both absent from, and that’s where I’ll be for now, if anyone needs me.

[nprcy]

Love from a HopeFUL Romantic

As Valentine’s Day rolls around, moaning and clutching at its sorrowfully romantic breast, I have a few thoughts. Sorry in advance - when I write or talk about things I find interesting I get the distinct mental image of that scene from Spirited Away when they pull all that trash out of the river god and at first it takes them a while to get it going, but soon it all just gushes out at once… yeah, that’s pretty much how I envision my thoughts coming out of my brain and onto a readable medium - a bunch of trash gushing forth to the bemusement of the people who were trying to coax it out in the first place. So yeah… sorry in advance for getting all this trash in your bath house. 

(Oh- by the way, at the end of the scene they find that there are small nerd-candy shaped nuggets of gold in all the gross trash they just pulled out of the dude, and they’re stoked about it, so I hope that amongst the trash pollution that comes out of my noggin there may be a few nuggets of  metaphorical “gold” for those who are kind enough to read, and I also hope that I will jump out of this metaphorical bathtub of thought raging with the maniacal laughter of a freshly cleansed river god and burst forth into the world of Monday foaming at the mouth with a passion for life, love, learning and listerine (because let’s keep our mouth foam smelling fresh if we must have it frothing about.)

First of all, I have to say that Shrove Tuesday aka “Mardi Gras” Aka “Fat Tuesday” aka “I’m Fat from Pancakes Today because of Tuesday” is a much more lonely day to be alone (redundancies are redundant!) when compared with Valentines day. Why? Um because pancakes are a group activity for several reasons, one being that it is very difficult to both cook and enjoy pancakes by yourself, because you have to be incredibly proficient at juggling the stages of battering, flipping and buttering the pancakes, and by the time you have a fair stack, they have cooled significantly and feel the way your cold clammy hands do because currently no one will hold them for you and be a good hand-holding, pancake-responsibility-sharing friend. Another reason is that I grew up only eating pancakes in group settings such as busy mornings at the cottage with my family. In conclusion, I think the only time it is acceptable to eat pancakes alone is at a diner because someone else will prepare them for you, ensure that they are hot and adequately buttered, and there is the chance that the waitstaff may accidentally make physical contact with you, so you can benefit from the serotonin release that accompanies being touched by another living being.

Now that I’ve admitted to being the creepiest creep sad sack on the planet (who is like, pretty reasonably hot, charming and, when required, well-behaved- so I’m actually quite confused about whether or not to be so self-deprecating) let’s move on to the main track of this playlist- I never really knew the exact meaning of the term “hopeless” romantic until I looked it up on the internet just now. I had always assumed that being a hopeless romantic was basically the dude from 500 days of Summer who is a pretty sad-sacked sort of dude even though he seems to be capable of also being pretty reasonably hot, charming and well-behaved. My suspicions were confirmed. The internet defines a hopeless romantic as a person who “idealizes a romantic relationship instead of placing value on a realistic one.” My thoughts from that point forward were as follows;

Well, this is some BS. Who wants be hopeless? Hope LESS? This just doesn’t seem constructive at all.

At the same time, on a  separate track, my mind was also saying - whats the harm of idealizing a romantic relationship? Idealizing is like, what those dreamer type people do, and they’re not all so bad, sometimes they get called visionaries and then it gets to their head and they throw tantrums but also create companies like Apple. 

Idealizing is where all the STUFF starts happening - you don’t leave the comfort of your own home to go to McDonald’s because you HAVEN’T been DREAMING of that freakin delicious McMuffin- no, you go and get that thing because you can’t stop thinking about it and it’s making you crazy and stuff. But that’s just a McMuffin- a McMuffin can’t really stop you from getting it, unless you happen to be too late for breakfast because you didn’t heed the wisdom of Adam Sandler’s character in Big Daddy and just pee on the ground. People are not the same thing as McMuffins, so that analogy sucks. Switch tracks again brain-

Ok new track. Ok so people are not McMuffins, they are people, and they can say hey, no, I don’t wanna go with you to McDonald’s and get McMuffins, you crazy- I’m sleeping and it’s 4 am dude, I have a life and hopes and dreams and your spurt of energy at this ungodly hour is ruining my ability to like you. Sure, they could say that, I would totally understand that. BUT- IF I WANTED TO BE WITH SOMEONE REALLY BADLY WHO WANTED TO GO AT 4 AM AND GET MCMUFFINS I COULD TOTALLY TAKE THAT IDEAL AND ACTIVELY INCLUDE IT IN THE PROCESS OF SEARCHING FOR A MCMUFFIN EATING BUDDY AT 4 AM RIGHT?!!? (Probably. Also, why would any boy be asleep at my house at 4 AM? That’s a good question Grandma- by the way, thanks for reading my awful writing, I’m really not sure why that would be a situation that crossed my mind.) SWITCH TRACKS BRAIN

I just realized, wouldn’t it be funny if I named my Brain Brian? Because Brian is pretty much an anagram of Brain, and then I could say “SWITCH TRACKS BRIAN!” and it would feel like I was the captain of a ship or something, a ship navigating the tides of playlists… I don’t know- Brian I’m getting confused! Brian, look alive! Switch tracks, Brian would you please-

Ok back on track… wait, if we’re “back on track” are we on playlist tracks or train tracks? - Agh no, Nicole don’t de-rail us! You’re right, Brian- back on track, good chap- my point is, being a hopeless romantic might not be such a bad thing if you turned it upside down and glazed over some parts with mod-podge. What if you could be a hopeFUL romantic instead of a hopeLESS one? A person who wasn’t like, wah wah I want someone to come get McMuffins with me at 4 AM- and instead was all like “I hope someday I can find someone who shares the interest of obtaining mcmuffins in the wee hours of the morning.” (Why does the better, more sound-of-mind voice in my head always talk all old school British-like?) I hope that I will be lucky enough one day to find such a person, except honestly I just eat Mcmuffins these days because I live in a country that does not have Tim Hortons, BUT ANYWAYS hell, maybe if I go to McDonalds at 4 am and look at the people who are around and not just look at the food I will meet other slobs like me who like eating mcmuffins at 4 am?

See? This strategic manipulation of attitude facilitates actions upon which your ideals may be realized. In non-pretentious speak: take the way you’re looking at stuff and trick yourself into thinking it’s different even though nothing has changed but at the same time everything has changed because you’re not looking at it in the same way. That’s not confusing, is it? Instead of just wanting something, you have to go do something to get it. Pretty obvious, and it not only passes all the time that you were going to spend moaning in sorrow and clutching at your breast faster, (give yo breast a rest) but also gets you a little closer to finding that mcmuffin eating buddy, and if not, at least you’ll have eaten a lot of mcmuffins and you can shrug at your relatives and their respective partners at family functions and say you tried, but nobody shared your interests, and well, who cares, you’re satisFRIED with yourself. Ha Ha, and you make yourself laugh too. Go you.

All this hopeless romantic-type behaviour seems like it would take up a lot of attention and energy. I think maybe it might even cause you to miss the boat when you do meet someone that you actually like, because you’ve spent too much time idealizing them so you miss your opportunity to just go up and be like hey wanna date/collabo-mate (a phrase I’ve coined which denotes strategically creating exceptionally awesome children when you sense some especially strong awesome-genetics in a person that you believe would drive the human race’s capacity for awesomeness forward if the two of you combined procreational forces- but do not desire to engage in marital bonds.)

Finally, hopeless romantics don’t strike me as the type that are able to see that there’s a lot of good love type stuff hanging around them all the time already. The focus is always on “what’s missing” and all that sort of thing rather than the stuff you’ve got. My Mom did this thing when I was younger where she would chant the lyrics of songs that she thought were good life lessons for me in the hopes it would build a good character (jury’s still out on that one.) One of her favourites was “Soak up the Sun” by Sheryl Crow (we liked to listen to that CD a lot because it made us feel like we were in California and not in Southern Ontario in the grey slush of February.) Anyways, the line from that song she liked to chant at me was “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.” Which I usually use as a guideline when I’m shopping in a Sephora store usually, but I think it applies here a bit. I mean, it’s like if you order a pizza and some dipping sauce for the crust, and the pizza place is like oh, sorry we don’t have any more cheddar Jalapeño, and you’d spent 40 minutes really really looking especially forward to the cheese sauce, but hey, the pizza still showed up and now you get a discount “we’re sorry” ticket. In this analogy, the cheddar jalapeño dipping sauce signifies romantic love, and the pizza is just love in general- so yeah, maybe you don’t get the dipping sauce this time and you will just have to endure dry and flavourless crust, but you still have the pizza part of the pizza to enjoy. Hm, I use a lot of food analogies. I feel like these experiences can be generalized to the masses. If I used Sephora shopping metaphors it would be harder for the laymen readers, you see.

So yeah, for now, maybe it is more than enough for me that listening to Bobcageyon by the Tragically Hip makes me feel calm and safe because that’s a song my Dad likes to play when he does whatever it is he’s doing that I’m supposed to be helping him with, only his internal monologue is not externalizing in a way that allows me to actually help him, but instead forces me to witness the unfurling of various construction projects that I will someday be said to “have helped with” even though I just stood there listening to Bobcageyon by the Tragically Hip while my Dad did stuff.

It’s more than enough for me that my Mom’s handwriting on a card envelope makes me smile every time I see it because it looks so happy like my Mom’s voice when she talks to me in that way that makes me feel like a happy chihuahua and says “Nicadee, come sitwitcha Mamma!!!!!” Then I think about how when I have kids they will probably not be able to smile the same way because my printing is awful, but I’ll at least talk to them in a happy chihuahua voice and probably get them cards and stuff because it IS nice to have a card and something chocolate waiting at your place at the breakfast table on a day like Valentines day when you’re 16 years old and nothing else exciting involving candy-gifts will happen to you because you’re a shut-in nerd.

It’s more than enough when I put on my shoes to go running early in the morning to know that they’re shoes my brobro ordered especially for me for Christmas, because I’m so amateur I don’t even know which shoes to wear to go run. Now wherever I run, I’m running thanks to Stuie. There’s a special feeling I get when I know that I’m wearing the same pair of shoes that I wore somewhere else, and Stuie’s bought me two pairs of shoes that I wore in all my favourite places - Hawaii, Japan, New York City, and my chosen home town. It’s a nice feeling of personal continuity for an idiot who has relatively little personal continuity, and I wouldn’t have that feeling if my brother didn’t make sure I was wearing the right shoes- you know what I would have? I would have plantar fasciitis.

(PS there’s something special about running in the early morning, it feels like a secret, like a seemingly insignificant moment with a loved one that you want to remember forever but never tell anyone else about it because it’s more special that way and there’s too much talking in life already anyways.)

It’s more than enough to use the kitty cat oven mitt that my oldest friend bought me before I left the country when baking brownies that have far too much protein for a girl who does not do squats using proper form, and feel comforted that there is someone in my life who remembers and still loves a version of me that was a huge cat person and didn’t really like dogs because they were too unpredictable and slobbery and I was kinda a germaphobe, even though now it’s all I can do to keep myself from hoarding puppies and I take naps in the park on the grass which is probably soaked in dog slobber and other things and I just see that as an opportunity for my immune system to get exercise.

It’s more than enough to trip on a newspaper article I left on my tatami mat because it fell out of one of the many letters that my Grandmother sends me which take 3 weeks to get to Japan, that I need to read with a magnifying glass while I binge eat the two Terry’s Chocolate Oranges she mailed to me for Christmas, because she didn’t know I was going to come home and jump out of a hockey bag in the foyer of her condominium and test the limits of her health and then be grateful to find that her cardiac system is quite robust enough to withstand the shock of a grown adult emerging out of sports equipment luggage.

It’s more than enough that I have a million imaginary silly conversations in my head per day with my University friends that I’ve constantly been learning things from, and I know exactly how their voices sound when they speak, and sometimes, in the cases when I speak intelligently (there are a couple) I hear their voices coming out of my mouth. When I talk these days in this new place, I realize that all their little idiosyncrasies have become MY little idiosyncrasies, and that they are now irrevocably a part of my person.

I appreciate all these things so much, even though I usually feel scared as hell for no particularly legitimate reason, which is pretty dumb eh? It’s kind of a bummer, and I don’t like it. So, I realize all I can do really is turn my fear that I will never be able to give these people the same love they’ve given to me into hope that whatever love I can give to them will be good enough for now, and be grateful for all the chances I still have to try. Oh, and also, whoever I might end up with romantically, I am gonna appreciate the heck outta them, because I’m a hopeful romantic. Slash I just want to collabo-mate with an astrophysicist, hit me up, I’m hot.

[nprcy]

I think that they (whoever is in charge of it all) should take all the vowels out of the word “scones,” and just leave the consonant letters, creating a new word, “scns” - which I think is a lot more an accurate of a depiction of what it feels like to actually eat one. Don’t get me wrong, I love scones, but when you eat them, (especially in the unfortunate cases where you're eating them whilst hungover) they make your mouth stick together because they’re so dry. I think that’s why they always have a beverage presented alongside them - or actually, I know that’s why, I just think it’s a more brilliant revelation than it actually is because I’m hungover and I’m impressed by the smallest facets of reality when in this state.

Anyways scns. Scns should also have the vowel letters taken out of the flavour agent of the scn, like, if it has blueberries baked into it, those aren’t blueberries anymore, they’re blbrrys now (I realize that ys are sometimes considered to be vowels, but I think you need to leave it there because it is all pointy, which is also reminiscent of a scone - they get all pointy-like, with corners, and if they’re stale they can be comparable to letter ys - a little awkward to get your mouth around on their own, without the accompaniment of some t or cff.) Scns sometimes come with chclt chps, or maybe some other kind of frt or brry, and in some cases they’re just pln, in which case you should put on some bttr, or if youre over age 70/just don’t read health magazines, some mrgrn, or if you DO read health magazines, some ccnt l. Was it the Brtsh who invented scns? Mayhaps. They are reminiscent of Italian Bsctt, so maybe sns are actually the progenitors of bsctt or bsctt is the progenitor of a scn, I don’t know, doesn't matter, they’re both like good looking shy guys. They're all good looking but they hold back the exciting stuff and you think to yourself it must be in there somewhere, that good stuff, I KNOW it must be in there somewhere goddamn there’s crystallized sgr on it, and toasted almond bits and something beige and chclt-texture looking... how can it NOT be good and also how does this beige chclt have no flavour whatsoever, it’s CHCLT GDDMN!? Scns and bsctt are flavour vacuums. In any case, I don’t really have a preference about what’s in my scn, if it was made by a Brtsh, or even if they don’t have t of cff presented alongside them (which is tctlssnss bcs hw cn chw wtht prpr plt clns…) Even if they dry out my mth…I highly enjoy eating scns n mttr wht th ccsn.