i love britney. really. i loved her when she was earnestly cheesy, wearing wedges on the cover of her first album, a project wholly the conspiracy of swedish hitmakers, themselves flush with power after finally breaking the backstreet boys somewhere other than quebec and belgium. i loved the dance routine and staring at her “are-they-or-are-they?” breasts in the video for “sometimes”. i loved that “heartbeat” move she did in the video for “oops…”. i loved the orgy in “i’m a slave 4 u”. i love how justin timberlake, possibly the most “‘eligble bachelor” is still bitter over her, even after the twin disasters - very public - of “chaotic” and her interview with matt lauer (two things i also, you guessed it, LOVED).

(ok, i thought Xtina’s kiss with madonna was far more lesbionic than hers.)

but i fear britney’s spiralling descent is only upping the odds on various Celebrity Death Pools.

and now, it seems, loyal fans are forsaking her. they don’t want to smell like her anymore.

what a shame. i mean, i subscribe to the britney diet of cigarettes and caffiene - why, this entry is fuelled by both! - and can’t imagine why anyone would NOT want to smell like that. and cheese food.

this is bad. this is really bad. we are now living in a world where kevin federline is looking like a better parent. end times, people. i’ve been watching my evangelical television, and last night i heard that women are SUPPOSED to be different from men because they are SUPPOSED to be carrying out god’s divine plan to populate the world with little sean ps and jayden js.

plus? this guy has a myspace profile. watch or listen to him if you can; END TIMES.

i’m not sure where i was going with all of this, but there you have it.

so i think the first posting went well. i hope to have another lohan holiday soon.

i started writing the second entry, but i think friendster thought it was too wordy, and ate it.

so i’ll preface this by saying, “huh.” i’m disappointed. i used to listen to the cos’ on cassette back when i was a wee thing in australia. i remember reading the national enquirer about his slain son an awful lot (or was it “People”? “People” *loves* deaths-in-celebrity-families) and then recently heard him talk about blacks not speaking correctly or some jiminy-jizzm like that. wizzle fizzle. so this latest exploit does not surprise me too much.

here’s the lowdown dirty shame.

all i have to do is hang my head and mourn for poor philycia rashad’s lost innocence. oh, clair huxtable. i’m so sorry it came to this.

i think i’ve decided to stop using this blog as an outlet for self-indulgent creativity - i must channel this into my macaroni art - and instead, use it to spread the gospel. after all, only through spreading the gospel does one become a more productive member of society, and lord knows i need all the points i can get.

that being said, this blog will be revolutionary in that it intends to compile amusing links from…not from the web - other blogs do that - OTHER BLOGS. sometimes it will seem like they are from original sources, but no. i am a grad student. i do not know how to research. only how to read blogs. that are amusing. and fragment sentences.

so here is your first offering!

i am shocked and saddened that i let my xtreme xmas (what does “christ-treme” mean, anyway?) pass by without hearing this number. that’s right, you too could have had a lohan holiday. just what is a lohan holiday? i shudder to think, but i will defer to dlisted’s sound deduction on that one.

but here are some review questions to think about at the end of this chapter:

- how does this stuff get made? are there songwriters and producers so destitute that they’ve taken to this kind of aesthetic shit-on-me style prostitution?

- who buys this crap? anyone? little girls? i was a little girl once, and i had some sick taste in music. holiday music could be particularly dangerous (i WILL sing NKOTB’s “merry merry christmas” if you don’t believe me) but the effort of a “peer” would interest me very little. in fact, i’d be more likely to feel a somewhat psychotic jealousy, culminating in magazine photos with gouged-out eyes, at the success of someone my age or close to my age, especially when said someone fails so miserably at this opportunity for exposure and validation from the world that yes, kasha, you ARE talented, and not repulsive (we’ll work on “attractive” around 14, but only because of a growth spurt), and people just want to get to know you and everything about you. in fact, they want to know you SO MUCH that they will buy every unauthorized, big-fonted paperback unauthorized biography of your life, complete with that precious midsection of black and white “candids” and headshots, which may or may not be examined over and OVER and OVER obsessively.

jesus christ, i thought i said i wasn’t going to do anything but post links.

look what you’ve made me do, ali lohan. you and your goddamn lohan holiday can just…be WEIRD somewhere else. you and mel gibson’s undoubted “gibson holiday”.

god, celebrities. such freaks.

what a wonderful way for the heat wave to break…

i spent last night outside, dining on fresh, local, organic dishes while the sun went down and the clouds rolled in.  the sky behind and above us flashing every so often, ten or so people sat around a table in a kensington backyard, under a well-placed tarp, and got to know one another while refilling glasses with wine and trading cbc-appreciation stories.  this was my second guerilla gourmet dinner and i can’t recommend the experience more.  how could i, when after a few first courses, the rain started to fall heavily and lightning crashed and the heavy heat that has been melting my brain and making my cat pant incessantly like a dog was whipped away by the wind? 

while half of the dinner guests retired inside for dessert, a few stalwarts huddled in a little closer and enjoyed staying dry in such ferocious weather.  d.’s boss, the illustrious leslie beck (anyone knowing my penchance for canadian nutritionists would know how giddy i was to discover that i would have the chance to meet this woman, much less have her plant one on my lips, sloppily and drunkenly, at the office christmas party) felt as invigorated as the rest of us, her new wedding/engagement rings glinting in the candlelight.  i loved the mingling of worlds; someone more suited to yorkville enjoying a night in a boho backyard, while our hostess spoke of expeditions to collect wild herbs for teas, and a CAMH employee lovingly described his rock garden.  i stopped feeling like an adolescent for a good few hours.  i felt socially adept, at ease, my company enjoyed.  cliques and tired, run-through communities don’t provide such satisfaction.

sometimes i catch a glimpse of a life of contentment.  i see it being green, dirt under my nails, sweet air in my lungs.  i see myself off the grid.  i see a home that’s unique, with rounded edges and glass-bottle skylights.  i see myself being free.

how much will i have to want it to get it?

i keep my back up more on friday the 13ths than i was doing so yesterday (the infamous 06/06/06) but damn.

i didn’t think i was going to see the direct result of what happens when a streetcar smashes into a man’s face, right outside my front door. or hear the smack as it happened not 10 metres from me.

holy fucking shit…

i think feb 2006 goes down as one of the worst in history.

forget september 1939. forget july 1944. forget it all, i say! february is not only tricky to spell, but mean. a mean, mean month.

thanks to friendster, i realized just how many friends were born in february. egads. i’m not allowed to wipe it from the calendar, then? screw that, you were already on the verge of being born in march - just take another week to relax, and THEN have your birthdays. if we’re going to forget about february, we need to all be in this together.

some terrible things happened in february, to me, to those around me, but mostly to me. i mean, i couldn’t wage such a passionate campaign if i were not heavily and personally invested in the outcome. i’ve decided there just may be some things i can’t explore within the pre-fab template of my friendster blog (even though i’ve run the gamut from kicks of puppies to deaths of grandfathers), so i will just say that the month was capped off nicely with a break-in.

while i was at home. in bed. in my longjohns. which becomes important only when i tell you that he was standing in my bedroom doorway and i jumped out of my loft bed (which i believe may have confused him for a few seconds - loft beds, the original intruder deterrent!) smashing my wrist som’in awful, and “walked briskly” after him saying “who the fuck are you??” i say i walked because i can’t say i ran - he was rather leisurely exiting my apartment through the backdoor, probably with the full knowledge that the cops would show up several hours later (after two calls to 911) and say, without prompting, that “it’s not like csi, you know.” two different cops at different times said this exact phrase to me. i did not ask about blue lights or well-lit labs or where the hell marg helgenberger was, because i needed me some soothing, dammit - no, i think i said something like “he turned on this light, and opened this drawer.”

i wonder if “it’s not like csi, you know” can be translated into latin and added to the design of police badges and the official seal.

i spent the following week, reading week, poised with a bamboo cane ready to strike, while a nasty cold incubated to help me send out february in fine mucous-laden style.

so i’d rather forget about the entire month, if that’s alright with everyone else. i mean, the break-in was just the cherry on top, so let your imagination run wild as to the other fine events that hit the fan like proverbial shit during the rest of the month. it’ll be fun.

i can’t believe i’m posting an entry on my friendster blog for this. but i guess i just need to make an announcement that’s unofficial and has room for my thoughts right now, to the majority of the people in and around my life.

my grandpa, who would have been 96 in april, died last night. or this morning. in his sleep. luckily, he was at home.

he had lived with my family for my entire life+, moving with us wherever we went, going on our ’round the world vacations, and being a visutskie fixture. one that alternately divided us and bound us, but everpresent and (we assumed) everlasting.

i just realized that it’s friday the 13th; nice.

last week he had emergency surgery to remove a strangulated testicle (uhhhh, basically a hernia of sorts) and i like to think he just didn’t think life was worth it with only one left. he went through the procedure fine, and was recuperating in grandpa fashion (flirting with the nurses and eating jello happily) but had to get a catheter inserted later, a very painful and stressful procedure for a man who has had quite a few invasive, painful medical procedures. not to mention removal of some of his stomach and esophagus due to cancer - some 35 years ago.

my brother reckons that the stress of this procedure might have weakened his heart. i can’t believe that i’m hearing that this was potentially preventable and it may not have had to happen.

my dad is flying home from singapore.
the thai maid will, i guess, be flying home.

funeral is monday or tuesday.

i don’t know what’s next.

**edited to add**

it was not at home, but in a hospital in pembroke, but in his sleep. my mother was the last person to see him, and felt quite guilty for not being there, but assumed that he was alright. my mother often inherits people’s last breaths…she was there for the death of my aunt (g-pa’s daughter) who had been in a coma for a few weeks dying of cancer. the sun of a new day was streaming through the windows, so my mother sang a hymn she remembered from school (later popularized by cats stevens, with no god-talk), “morning has broken”.

my father did break down, after we placed the casket in the hearse and had to watch as it drove away. my brother made a final grandpa-related joke and the choked tears were freed in gulps of guilty but necessary laughter. one last shake of the fist, respect for the ol’ bastard, and the knowledge that we’d get a chance to say goodbye once more in the spring.

i hope everyone had a good christmas/hanukkah with their friends and families, chosen and given, and that strangers smiled and that you smiled back.  better yet, that you smiled first.

i think i’m getting soft in my old age.

i have been known to pride myself on being a cynic, perhaps with a heart of gold, but cynical and scowly all the same.

this christmas, i realized the power of something as simple as missing your mommy.  i decided to do something different for christmas eve (ie, not at home) and found myself weeping instead.

i joked about the polish christmas eve wigilia being important to me as it means “vigil” and i’m an invigilator, so i’m all about the watching.  but really, there is beauty in tradition.  it’s not a tradition that i have held since childhood, but it captures the reverance of christmas eve, one that was important in my family’s traditions.

i can admit that i listened to christmas music this year.  i wasn’t trying to put myself into some sort of artificially-sweetened mood, spending nights dreaming of something grand under the tree for me (a few years of “sorry, but i’m broke” christmases have taken out any such remaining greedy thoughts); perhaps not having a tv, and not braving the crowds of queen street or the eaton centre made the aesthetics more palatable.  more true.

i thought about and talked about most of the people that i know - old friends and new friends, and gave them all a mental hug.

for those of you who have much music, this video is probably in high rotation right now, but i have no clue since i have no such grand access to current media. hehheh..”media”. anyhoo, this features my fave of the moment, mr. tobias funke (david cross) - and i would gladly dress as him for halloween this year except getting my baldcap out and gluing a copious moustache to my face would just take far too much effort. also features win & regine from arcade fire (video obviously done by one of their people), and the lovely feist. i went to the feist show last week, and it was absolutely amazing, if not too late for a schoolnight. any chance to see her live go GO GO!

the video
expect me with a less-than-copious moustache.