Big Fat Hairy Living

This morning on the way to the subway, I stopped for a few minutes to watch a butterfly land in the flowerbeds in that park in front of Paul Kane House. I seemed to be the only one who paid any attention to it at all.

Nobody else seems to notice any of the plants or animals around them. I think I’m the only one.

The company I work for is introducing a new line of products, and the samples have started coming in to be tested. This means that I’m going to be stuck in the lab testing these horrible products, with no comfy desk and no instant messenger to keep me from being bored.

I hate oscilloscopes.

I went shopping with Eric and Christian yesterday and ran into someone from my work. He’s really ugly, with a neanderthal-style sloped forehead and prominent brow. He also wears his glasses with a cord around them, just like Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls. He didn’t acknowledge me and I didn’t acknowledge him.

He’s the most sexist one in the office. I bet there will be lots of tittering about how he saw me with my fat gay friends, just like two years ago when an intern from work saw me at the CNE and made snide remarks to someone about how I was there with my faggot friends.

Browsing through the signatures for the petition that I mentioned a few hours ago, I came across signature number 84, from the Toronto Women’s Public Space Committee. They ask us to

Please check out our petitionoline [sic] coming soon for FREE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION 365 days per year for low-income citizens, women and children. We can’t wait for a smog day. Preventative [sic] action is important along with providing more access and improvements to public transportation systems.

That idea is so absurd just on the face of it that I won’t even bother to critique it. But head to their web page, scroll past the overblown rhetoric and check out their request for someone to create a logo for their group:

If you would like to design a symbol and letterhead for our committee please bring your ideas to the next meeting. We would like to stay away from anything which represents a square which isn’t very inclusive and tends to be very harsh and male-oriented. Squares are also a type of box that could be confining. We wish to symbolise a more fluid type of space. (Emphasis mine)

According to these women, squares are not inclusive. They are also harsh, male-oriented, and confining. I think these women need to stop skipping doses of their antipsychotics.

I’d hate to see what these women think of other shapes, like triangles. I’m sure triangles represent male oppression and the rape of indigenous populations in South America, or something equally stupid.

The sad thing is that I’m pretty sure that site is not a joke.

In his journal, Ray points out an online petition to make the TTC free on smog days.

This group’s heart is in the right place, but in reality, this is yet another example of an ill-thought out petition.

• The TTC simply does not have the extra vehicles to be able to carry the large number of people who would use the TTC were it free on smog days. In fact, the TTC doesn’t have any spare vehicles at all; due to chronic underfunding, it has barely enough vehicles to run the services it currently runs. As a result, service will be poor, vehicles will be crowded, and riders will be frustrated and angry at the TTC. The kind of people that the TTC needs, people who have the choice of using the TTC or not but usually choose not to, will likely be soured on the TTC and less likely to use it in the future.
• The petition suggests that the City of Toronto pay the costs of the free TTC and bill the province and the federal government. They haven’t been willing to pay for the TTC so far, and this won’t change their minds. The City won’t get its money back.
• The fundamental, but unstated assumption behind this proposal is that fares are what is keeping people from riding the TTC, and not service. This is not the case, as TTC market surveys show. That ties into the TTC’s Ridership Growth Strategy…
• This will do nothing to reduce smog in the long run, because the only thing that will do that is to increase overall transit use, not just transit use on smog days. The only way that transit ridership can be increased is by making transit a viable alternative to the car, and that means better service. The TTC already has such a plan, but the group behind this “Free TTC” petition doesn’t seem to have one in favour of the Ridership Growth Strategy, a much more sensible way to go about reducing smog.

Don’t sign. Instead, write your provincial, federal, and municipal politicians and ask them to support the TTC’s Ridership Growth Strategy.

Every once in a while, I pick up one of the many free condo rags one can find in boxes at street corners.

I don’t expect much, because most condos in Toronto are architectural disasters with tacky exteriors and horrible floor plans. Some of the paid advertisements that masquerade as articles are accompanied by computer-generated images of various features of these horrible condos. The lobby is always one of these.

These lobby renderings are awful, usually featuring poorly pasted-in photos of people smiling and clinking glasses with each other while the caucasian concierge looks on and smiles. But I found one that’s just so artistically awful that I felt the need to share it.

(Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture.)

Not the worst I’ve ever seen, although there’s an inlaid compass rose in the middle of the carpet for no apparent reason, and the designer seemed to think that halogen spotlights are appropriate for providing ambient lighting in a large area.

Instead of focusing on the all-too-easy-to-critique design of the lobby, let’s bitch about the people enjoying it:

What the fuck is this bitch doing playing the cello in the lobby? Maybe her $300,000, 400-square foot apartment doesn’t have enough room to fit her cello. Or maybe she’s serenading the chick in the flowing dress. See, it’s an inclusive condo — we welcome money from fags too!

An exhibitionist woman being subjected to the cello serenade. What exactly is causing her dress to stay suspended in mid-air, half open like that? Where is she going in that evening gown anyway, seeing as it’s clearly still afternoon outside? What’s more, with all the lighting overhead, why is she casting a shadow away from the camera? Maybe there’s a supernova behind the camera that’s outshining all the other lights in the lobby.

This retard is telling his spawn to look down at the floor and not to make eye contact with the cello-playing lesbian or the exhibitionist woman with the open dress. Because you know, those fags will try to recruit! He also casts a shadow, but it falls at a different angle from the shadow of the exhibitionist woman. Two supernovae, perhaps?

And what in shit’s name is up with the shitty perspective in this picture? The exhibitionist woman can’t possibly be more than four or five metres closer to the horizon of this picture than the retard and his spawn, yet she’s half his height. Poor nutrition or something?

Why is there always a middle-aged white guy with a briefcase in these pictures? These people don’t live in condos, they live in bungalows in Thornhill with the wife and children they secretly hate. I have never seen one of these men hanging out in a lobby. They’re too busy oppressing the rest of us to spend time in condominium lobbies.

I think I’ll keep renting for a while.

How can one know when one is about to make a big mistake? I’m worried that I’m about to make one.

The last time I felt like this, I broke up with my boyfriend. It felt horrible at the time, but it turned out to be a good thing for the both of us in the long run. I didn’t know that’s how it would work out, though; I was afraid I was going to ruin both my life and his.

Sometimes one has to ignore those gnawing doubts and just go ahead and do it. But when are those sometimes?

I just got back from a memorial service my boyfriend helped organize to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of one of his close friends.

The memorial was quite moving, but the dinner we went to afterwards was an ordeal. The family is full of annoying, indecisive, and disorganized people who make the most boring conversation. The mother treated me with condescension and the sister was insincere. To make matters worse, the sister lifted money from the tip I left for the waitress. She did it right in front of me.

I can’t stand going these outings with people I don’t know who talk about events I was not present for. I have to talk to my boyfriend about this; I’m all wound up and there’s no way that I’ll be able to sleep.

At some point between my shower this morning and five minutes ago when I unzipped my fly at the urinal, my pubes became matted with dried sperm. I have no idea whose it is or what it’s doing there.