This and that and IT'S MY LAST DAY AT WORK!!!!!

I was going on about reincarnation the other day, and thinking about Archy and Mehitabel a little later, and wondering - do you suppose there'd be some sort of indication to someone getting reincarnated a lot as a carnivore? Scarier, maybe? I don't know.

My brain hurts from doing stuff and I have a backlog of hours and hours on my review material. At least it's all read - more or less. Miss T still has my Story of French. I'll review that after I leave. The rest before. Just got The Reluctant Fundamentalist and that looks good. The best thing about this reviewing, besides the free books, is that it's brought me back into reading new novels, even if the novels I've looked at have thus far been shitty to a man. Maybe shitty is a bit strong.

Well, maybe it's not. I can feel myself getting crotchedy about new fiction - I can't remember the last time a new fiction novel has blown my socks off, Ishiguro excepted, and Suskind too if you imagine his fiction is still new, and waiting for those in paperback was always fine with me. I guess hardcover new release books have the sort of marketing behind them that should definitely not be paid attention to. Like that Martin Amis crap, for example. I should not have listened to the hype and wasted some hours of my life on it. Oh well. It was a pretty quick read.

Speaking of new . . . or something . . . yesterday at work I was a bad girl who watched the series premiere of The Riches. It was fine. Pilot/premiere episodes are usually pretty crappy as they try to get all that character exposition out there and this one was less crappy than most of them are. It will have to get a little more involved because right now I don't feel like anything is offering me layers to poke through. Very fond of Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard, though, who were fine.

I'm always saying goodbye to some Korean.

It's official now. The plane tickets, cancellation of my Internet and electricity, packing, goodbye dinner, last visit from parents, giving notice, signing new contract, and finding someone to take care of my cat* were somehow not enough to make it official. But last night I said goodbye to my Korean student, and now I know I'm leaving. He's a wonderful boy, dead jealous that I'm moving to Europe, AND he invited me out for a slap-up Korean meal tonight - nothing more awesome - but I simply have no bloody time because I'm LEAVING. Anyways, it's strange, because when I left Paris it was such a blur of exams and insane busy-ness that, then too, it was only saying goodbye to all the Korean expats I was teaching that gave me the sense I was actually leaving. Koreans have basically kept me out of the poorhouse. I love them.

*But I'm still looking, people, as it stands she has to go to Montreal and I'll have to buy her drugs to make the journey bearable, and frankly I've got an emotional problem with encouraging the ketamine industry - bunch of club kids thinking they're not quite stupid enough yet so they'll eat cat drugs - Jeebus Fuck! When the stupid fucking baby boomers were young, the social establishment tried to stop them from stupefying themselves, and I think ours encourages it. The stupider the rabble, the more shit you can sell them and the less they vote. Television is even worse. Grrrrrr!

On that note, I've got a serious problem with the new Daylight Savings time too - take away one hour of contemplative (or just sleeping) sunny time in the morning to add one in the evening we can spend shopping, doing business, or staring at flickering screens?!?!? You know what, fuck you. I shop plenty, do lots of business, and am subjected to far too much intrusive product placement even though I don't watch conventional television, and I refuse to adjust my fucking schedule to do more. Fuck this shit. I'm moving to Europe. Hah.

Frazzle dazzle'em

Last night I had a dream about an erupting volcano. It was neat. Volcanoes are awesome. Volcanoes, dinosaurs and sabre-toothed tigers are three things that I have always thought were extremely fucking cool. Why those things? Was I, in past lives, burnt, squished or sabred by each thing, and consequently have a healthy respect for them now? On which note, if there are any proselytizing religions that plug reincarnation, they should put some emphasis on the fact that we may have been a dinosaur in a former life, which is the coolest. Thing. Ever. Can you imagine the view that the brontosauruses must have enjoyed every time they woke up in the mornings and lifted their head? Can you imagine having been one of those platy bastards with the two walnut-sizes brains on each end of its body? Although according to Mr. H, we actually have more neurons in our tummies than our heads so we sort of have two brains too. But we don't have plates, that's for damn sure.

Not much else to say. I'm frazzled. Tried to pack last night and got stymied when I couldn't decide where to pack my vibrator. Do I ship it for later or put it in the hold luggage and hope that the security staff see so many vibrators go through they don't bother taking it out, making jokes, and filthifying it somehow? Put it in my hand luggage and tolerate the funny looks of the screeners and the laughter of the masses if I have to take it out and turn it on to demonstrate it's not a bomb in the security line? I like the last option, actually. That way I can keep an eye on it, and it might lighten the mood for my fellow passengers, who will be as annoyed as I am with all the carrying and lining up.

Incidentally, the stupidest thing I have ever read in my life is that this incident was considered, by a judge, serious enough to go to trial (although it didn't, in the end). What the fuck is the matter with Americans? It's not just Arabic speakers who fuck up their p's and b's; those are both plosive consonants made with exactly the same lip movements. If anybody should be on trial it's the prosecutor's office, for being such massive fucking stupid tax dollar squandering knobs that they will never, ever need to even think about getting a penis pump.

I'd also like to point out, after that vicious slam last week, that season six of The Sopranos improved immensely after those revoltingly bad first three episodes that had Tony in a coma. But now I don't have time to watch the rest before I leave. Fuck.

Seperation anxiety

I leave on Friday, and while that seems so far away (in terms of having to show up to work and organize my possessions) that I can't even get excited about the prospect of the West Coast, let alone the prospect of Europe, it's close enough for me to start wondering what the fuck I'm doing. This doesn't manifest so much with people, though obviously I'll miss everybody, because people can participate in visiting, emailing, blogging, Facebook, letter writing, et cetera. More in terms of my apartment.

Despite it being overheated during the winter, despite the crack parkette, despite everything, this is the most comfortable place I've ever lived. I was allergic to my parents' house, and all my apartments have been shittier and less conveniently laid-out than this one, or else I was sharing a kitchen or going through some sort of tempestuous period. When I came back to Toronto I was an utter mess, and I didn't stop being a mess until I got my own space here and had a superb little kitchen with the lovely big fridge and the gas range, and the eggplant floors, and the claw-foot bathtub. There were obviously lots of other factors that cleaned up the mess that was me, but having this apartment for my space helped. Perhaps now I'll go on to bigger and better things - I hope so since objectively speaking this would actually be quite a shit apartment if it wasn't in downtown Toronto or some other second world city with an inhospitable climate - but I've loved this place so much. I'm glad Crybaby is taking it. I wouldn't want it to go to some stranger.

Not much other news. Had a nice weekend with my family, Sugar and her man, and a couple of goodbye type meals, one of them at El Bodegon, which is yummy, though it didn't seem as yummy as last time somehow. One more goodbye meal Thursday night, besides the one next Wednesday with my family, and then I'm off. I shall miss cooking in my darling kitchen.