The Good, The Not So Good & The Aggressively Mediocre.

Now Playing: Yoko Kanno - Cradle Song

The Parentals are back! And they brought me new clothes! *huggle* Seriously, I latched on to my Mum's arm like one of those weird Koala Bear clips. It's nice to have them back again! :-D

Also of the good, the hitherto blogless Stephen is now one of us! Now that both Ali and he are blogging, a force of randomness - the likes of which the world has never seen - will be unleashed upon the internet. poor darling internet, it won't know what hit it.

Not of the good - the TTC going on strike starting Monday. TTC Union guys -holding an entire city hostage to your demands is not the way to win sympathy for your cause. And frankly, the service where I live is bad enough that y'all ought to be taking a pay cut, rather than asking for a pay increase.

[RANT] Anyway, I was reading one of my brother's fantasy novels on the way home from school the other day, and seriously, it was the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern fantasy. The writing was amateurish, with constant repetition of certain phrases. Seriously, the sentence "the infamous left eyebrow arched" was repeated atleast 5 times in 7 or so pages. There was no characterization to speak of since all the characters were just cardboard cut-outs - the irresponsible prince, the wise wizard, the power-mad antagonists. I was getting annoyed just reading it. I mean, sure, you don't get writers of the stature of Tolkien every day, but this book was so rankly amateur, I'm surprised it got published. [END RANT]

Anyway, off now. Head cold demands attention. Stoopid pathogens.

Resisting the urge to twirl...

Now Playing: Beethoven's Cello Sonata in F

The angst is gone! Y'all can come back in now, it's safe! :D

Anyway, in a futile attempt to absorb some culture, yours truly has decided to start listening to more classical music. The only problem is that a lot of western classical music makes me want to twirl around as though I'm in some sort of imaginary ballroom. (Think of that scene in Sound of Music where Maria finds an large, empty room?) Unfortunately, twirling is both non-conducive to work and causes nearby fraternal units to snigger. Throwing heavy pointed objects takes care of the sniggering, but does nothing to help me work, so what am i to do? Can it be that I am doomed to musical illiteracy???

Anyway, this past week there was much moping in the abacus household because Samurai Champloo came to an end. What, you ask?

DISCLAIMER: Total fangirling is about to ensue. Those who are protective of their sanity would do well to flee this corner of cyberspace.

Okay, for those of you who chose to stay (all ONE of you!) - Samurai Champloo is an anime about these two swordsmen (Jin & Mugen) who accompany this girl named Fuu on a quest to find a samurai who smells like sunflowers. Sounds crazy? It very frequently is, actually. It's directed by the same AWESOME guy who gave us Cowboy Bebop, Shinichiro Watanabe, which is what actually got me into it in the first place. Like Bebop, it ran for 26 episodes, and had few plot episodes (episodes that push the main story arc along) interspersed among filler episodes (no overall plot arc). The plot episodes were just frickin' awesome (and Ali, no matter what you say, they were better than Kenshin!) with brilliant animation and plotlines and omg who knew i was this much of a fangirl? Anyway, the last three episodes were SOOOOOO cool (and if writing "so" with six o's doesn't convince you, i don't know what will! :P) The filler episodes are always fun - though not as brilliant. Why are they called "filler"? Because whatever happens in those episodes doesn't really count. For example, episode 22 has zombies and treasure hunting and in the end everyone dies when a giant meteor hits - and yet, episode 23 start with the characters safe and strangely untraumatized. :D

AND NOW IT'S OVER!!! *wails* What am I to watch now? Champloo's done, Full Metal Alchemist is done, and Naruto is starting the uber-boring Naruto-Sasuke fight. I suppose there's always Bleach... (mmm, Ishida!) :D

New obsession = Dalziel & Pascoe. Read the books (by Reginald Hill) or watch the show (on TVO at 8 pm on Sunday) - proof positive that the Brits do mystery like no one else can.

Oh, and school is trying to kill me. "For 80% of your final grade, how much sleep can this girl go without before she (A) snaps and starts quacking like a duck (B) snaps and makes other people start quacking like ducks (C) falls asleep in the middle of class (D) quits school and moves to a hippie commune? Please show your work for all sections of the question."

I've never fallen asleep in class (yet) & I can't imagine having the guts to do so - and so my (imaginary) hat goes off to those brave souls who slumber under the noses of our ever-vigilant profs. Special mention goes to Ishraq, who fell asleep so obviously, he nearly made me crack up out loud. :D

And now back to the grindstone. ta!

Savagely Seeking Solitude

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. "

So spake John Donne, and everytime I hear that first line, I am tempted to fatuously retort, "Well, what about women?"

I disagree, anyway. Why can't people be islands - solitary and separate? God knows, there are times when I would dearly love to be apart. Some days, I wish wish wish, that I could just burn all the bridges that connect me to people, and be left alone. I even play out the scenarios in my head - exactly how much acid would it take to dissolve the ties that bind? How much bile would I have to produce to get people to leave me be?

But even as I mentally push people away, I know I'll never do it. My spells of solitude-seeking are accompanied by phases where I wish I was less alone - and if that's not the definition of bipolar and disfunctional, then I don't know what is.

I mean, consciously, I know these are people I like, whose company I enjoy, etc - so why would I want to rid myself of them? I think there's something wrong with me, if I see any kind of ties as dependencies that I must rid myself of. I've never been in love, but from where I stand, it seems like the worst kind of dependency - and that seems like a rather unhealthy viewpoint to have, right?

Still, I can't help but wonder how liberating it might be to say, "Fuck off!" to everyone and walk away alone.

*acquires protective clothing & waits for people to throw bricks and stuff*

On a lighter note, people - Apple iPod vs Dell Digital Jukebox? C'mon guys, it's the great question of our time! :D

The Persistence of Memory

I've had this... thing percolating in my brain for ages now - I have to put it into words before it drives me mad. The timing of this post is actually really fortuitous, cause it totally ties into Hem's piece on the evocativeness of smell.

Memory, to me, is a strange beast - a cat, i think - by turns aloof and adoring. I remember the generalities - the way my Grandmother would feed me, shaping rice and curry into bite-sized balls - the cake my other Grandmother always bought for my brother & I cause she knew we liked it - but the specifics are beyond my reach. Details - what was I doing in the summer of 1993 - what my best friend in grade four looked like - are beyond me.

Daily life, however, tends to jog loose fragments of my lost memories. I reach for the stainless steel holding rail on the subway, and i remember grasping the rings on an iron gymnastics bar as I twist into a 360 degree flip. The memory holds me, and I remember the calluses I developed that year from constantly swinging on those rings - the quip flip my stomach would do as i swung upsidedown & back again - the sudden clarity of vision my new glasses gave me - and suddenly, I am back on the subway, and the TTC conductor is telling me we will soon be at Kennedy Station.

These gifts of recollection only serve to underscore how much I cannot remember - but I am glad of them nonetheless, cause they remind me of how much simpler my world used to be. The sound of a subway car pulling into the station always reminds me of the trains in Bombay, when my Mother wouldn't let go of our hands cause she didn't want us to get lost in the crowd. The rain, when it is heavy and persistent, still calls me to hold my hand out a window and revel in it. I always did that when I was younger - as being brought up in a desert country, I thought rain was the most wonderful thing since bread-and-butter. Or the other day, I passed a Tim Hortons, and the smell of the sugar reminded me of tea time at Modern High, when donuts were served, and we'd all go have some - even though I wasn't supposed to, since I brought my lunch from home. I swear, I could taste that donut from more than five years ago - but that was in a different country, and besides, that me is dead.

And what I really want to know is - is it only me who's been abandoned by her memories?

Clear Away The Cobwebs

... swept away by the tide of work, work & more work, i struggle back to find that three months have passed since the last time I updated. wow!

Existential Dilemma #3451: Apple iPod vs Dell Digital Jukebox? The Dell is cheaper, and holds 30 GB to Apple's 20, but it's an iPod, and they're just so... pretty.

I dunno, there is something enormously appealing about the idea of *never* having to delete any songs ever again, don't you think?