had a dream about classes ending last night
and I always have weird dreams about school or vacations or my job or whatever I have looming right away in life.
in this dream I walked into my visual rhetoric class and my prof
-who of course isn't the actual prof that teaches the class because then it wouldn't be a dream-
was all
"okay we're going to have a term exam as well as the final exam so open yr books and two of the questions listed"
which honestly freaked me out (in my dream) because we hadn't been told about any term exam so I was freaking out a bit and my friend @JohnNorman was there and his wife also who is super smart and they both told me it wouldn't be an issue because I was smart, too.
except I didn't remember reading the books mentioned in the term exam questions
one of the questions asked about how the changing hairstyles of one of the secondary characters represented their internal conflicts (struggles?) and I was all
I have no idea how changing personal styles represent developing and resolving internal conflicts
wtf am I doing in university
and I was freaking out because johnny khemlab had already written two pages and I hadn't written anything yet and for some reason I was carrying around all these papers in my bag. like weird looseleaf pages from old homework and hand-outs and crap that I didn't need but had for some reason.
so I'm going through this huge pile of paper because I'm trying to find my lecture notes so I can answer these questions and not get an F on my term exam
stressing hard because it's almost the end of the term how could I be so disorganized and not be able to remember what the changing hairstyles mean at a critical moment?!
then the cats decided to walk on my face and yell at me which woke me up
so that solved that problem.
I also had another dream about a strange man who followed me around a scrapyard as I made art from sand but that's another story.
turns out drawing "bookends" is harder than you'd think
especially with a tummy full of crazy good food n turkey n drinks
I know easter is a time for family but we decided to share it with the family we get to pick
namely, some of the finest individuals you could ever hope to make mildly offensively-titled alcoholic beverages and play mildly offensive games with.
also we played pictionary which I am not good at when drunk or at all.
it was also #cenquistday which if you're unfamiliar is a day that is dedicated to our favourite
ninja turtle loving
hat wearing
#crecomm studying
craft beer drinking
friend from the Internet
@cenquist
it was also the day we went out and bought a car.
wtf did YOU do?
Hip Hop Sunday #67 Cypress Hill - Spark Another Owl
it's easter so everything is closed
most of us are hungover
and in meat comas from the night before
(including yr girl)
totally worth it.
enjoy your hip hop sunday.
wrote this at the bus stop
Attractive Asian Man
black jacket
black pants
sharp brown boots
stylin'
smiling to yourself
what's so funny?
tell me.
I like your moustache.
sitting in public spaces: a checklist
- don't sit right next to/acros from someone when there are other open seats/tables
- if the above isn't possible, don't eat right next to/across from a stranger
- don't talk on yr phone
- don't pick yr nose
- don't hum
- don't wear so much cologne that I can smell you 10+ feet away
- don't stare at other people
- keep music volume at a reasonable level (also: avril lavigne? really?)
- don't look at other people's computer/phone screens
(you're not as subtle as you think you are)
this checklist has been brought to you everyone in the library today.
adam's apples
is this weird Danish black comedy that we watched saturday after a friday night of bowling and beers and a random trip to to shawarma time for breakfast/lunch (brunch?) for food before heading home.
it stars Ulrich Thomsen who is one of my favourite actors and a big deal in Denmark from what I understand. he's in other Danish movies such as Fear Me Not as well as In A Better World, both of which are super creepy kinda disturbing flicks that I liked a lot. watch 'em if you have time.
anyway this movie was pretty different from the two I just mentioned in that, as I said, it's a black comedy.
it also has Mads Mikkelsen who you'll probably recognize as having played Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. except in this movie he plays a weird priest who wears shorts and sandals (birkenstocks?) and has knobbly knees and is thinner than I remember him in james bond.
the movie is about a neo-nazi who goes to live at a church as part of his community service and meets the weird priest and two other dudes living at the church: an Arab who holds up gas stations and an obese, alcoholic, kleptomaniac rapist which is just about as weird and hilarious and crazy as it seems.
the weirdest and also saddest part is that the priest himself is pretty messed up in the head and sort of blindly lives his life in this dream world where nothing is ever wrong, so he makes excuses for all the bad things people do and sort of exists in this other world, almost.
he tells Adam the neo-nazi that before he can go he must set a goal for himself and complete it.
so the neo nazi's goal is to bake a pie with the apples from the apple tree growing near the church. which of course doesn't go so well.
what makes it good is it has all these strange jokes and nuances that you don't get in western films. I don't know how to explain it, but it's funny and good and sad in a different way that an American or even a Canadian movie would be. if you watch a lot of foreign films you know what I mean.
sometimes you need to watch a kinda-sad movie to feel good and this is one of those. I won't ruin the ending for you (it's good) but I'll say that I wasn't ever actually sure how it was going to end until it did, and then the ending that it had seemed the most obvious all along.
it was good like that.
Hip Hop Sunday # 66 - Hustleblood - Hustleblood (Abstract Artform x Blac
back in 2012 Tyrone and I went out for drinks with @cenquist and wound up being introduced to @abstractartform
one of the sweetest, coolest, most unique people I've had the pleasure of hanging out with
plus he's talented as shit.
he tweeted the link to this vid to a few of us earlier this week
and the track made my day.
hope it makes yours.
enjoy your hiphop sunday. xox
the story of your red right ankle
is a line of a song by the decemberists that I like a lot, even though it makes me sad.
the first time I heard the decemberists was when I was living in hamilton and I had no idea who I was.
which sounds silly but it's true. I didn't know then and I knew it but I wasn't ready to admit it.
such is life, and youth.
it was the day after my birthday and it was cold and grey and shitty outside
I was waiting for my boyfriend who I was living in hamilton with and
I think
didn't really know who he was, either.
how could we, after all.
he had gone to a restaurant attached to a mall to go get his sweater which he had left there the night before
when we had gone out for dinner and drinks with friends for my birthday.
I don't remember what I ate but I know it was mediocre
it was one of those types of restaurants. not a montana's or a moxie's or an earl's.
but one of those places that feigns being a decent restaurant but isn't. the same kind.
I did shots of sambuca which were awful and I hate cinnamon but I hated my life more
at least, I realize in retrospect
and ate my mediocre dinner and smiled and was uncomfortably aware of the hole in my heart
I was trying to fill with booze and shitty food
and missed my home, even though I'd spent years trying to leave.
so the next day after my boyfriend forgot his sweater in the restaurant
when I found myself sitting alone in his car
hungover and miserable
listening to the radio do one of those countdown shows when red right ankle came on
I cried in hamilton
not for the first time.
today is gary oldman's birthday
what's embarrassing is that up until a few years ago I never actually knew who gary oldman was
I knew he was in a lot of movies that I liked
and he played a lot of the best characters
but if you asked me to point to a dude on a page in a magazine and say
'look that's gary oldman'
I wouldn't be able to.
which in hindsight is a testament to his versatile face and also acting.
and since I haven't really written anything on this here old blog for a while
let me tell you about my first real encounter with gary oldman in a movie.
so when I was a younger I dated this guy who was a huge film buff. massive.
as in, had a huge dvd collection for no reason other than he liked to have every movie he liked in this massive perfectly alphabetized library in his living room
buddy wouldn't have money to pay his own way to see a movie on a friday night but could afford to blow all his cash on dvds
(kinda sour grapes there still, I guess)
anyway one day we were hanging out at his place (remember, no money to go out) and eating pizza and basically just vegging out and I said
"you know I'm not really sure what gary oldman looks like"
which apparently was sacrilege because everyone needs to fully grasp and worship gary oldman
(now as an adult I understand why, but I digress)
so we started watching the fifth element because it's an amazing movie and also gary oldman is in it
and even though I knew who he played in the movie it was bf's favourite so it was the one we watched.
(disclaimer: I've seen the fifth element a million times. I love it, but I've seen it a lot)
so since I've seen it a lot and he had seen it a lot we started making out
because that's what happens when a boy and a girl watch movies alone together someplace
(and sometimes other stuff but that's not in this story as you will find out)
so we're making out and I'm having a good time because I like this guy and he's a phenomenal kisser and suddenly he grabs my head and whips it around and goes
"look there's gary oldman's character!"
which, while true, hurt the shit out of my neck and completely ruined the mood
which wouldn't even have been so bad if he hadn't basically ignored me
and spent the next few minutes talking about the scene in detail
while I sat there making a grumpycat face on the couch
luckily I've moved up in the world since then
and am now dating a guy who loves me more than gary oldman (I hope)
we just won't be watching the fifth element together anytime soon.
had a dream about mcdonalds last night
way back when I was a tween I used to work at a mcdix in this underground walkway downtown called winnipeg square and I haven't thought about that job in ages
so it was extra-weird to dream about mcchickens and chocolate milk and mini fridges under the counter
for the first time in close to a decade.
people I knew kept showing up and asking
alyson wtf are you working at mcdix for
and I had no idea.
I was too busy stressing that the mcmuffins were burnt and the grease in the fryer hadn't been changed
and I hadn't gotten my lunch break yet and it was almost time for the dinnertime rush
which was especially weird because I only worked till 4pm
so I had already made like a tree and gtfo'd before that ish started.
though one thing I did like working there was the zen state you got into
when everything was past-paced and crazy and it felt like if you slowed down you would lose yr head
kinda like how things are right now.
good but cray.
suddenly my dream makes sense.
