Sometimes I think that a spider mite is a mite that has gained all the powers of a spider by the bite of a mutated spider.
Then I remember the relative sizes of the creatures.
Then I think that such a bite would probably just give the mite all the powers of a spider's lunch.
Bonus Question!
Best bug bite? The radioactive kind.
This might be somewhat surprising, but I don't go to job interviews in feathers and shiny leggings. I did at one point, but then I realised that it was a hindrance in the majority of cases. After this epiphany, I began to wear gold jeans instead. You know. I wanted to look like a normal person.
I've been trying to hide my nature from my current employer. I take the feather cloak off on the subway and put it in a bag. I wear my leggings under my gold jeans. After work, I often go up to the Pizza Pizza on the next block to change. When I go back down that street, I walk on the other side.
Today my boss told me that he thought that it might be interesting for me to do my job in a tuxedo. For the contrast!
"Actually, I do try to dress down when I come to work."
"Oh? What do you mean?"
"When I'm on my own time, I'm generally more flamboyant."
"Oh. Yeah. I kind of assumed."
Perhaps I am not so skilled in the maintenance of such illusions.
Anyway! Then he said that he didn't care about things that have no negative effect on business. Which . . .
Thank you!
You remember what happened at that newspaper internship. Why do I have to wear pants in the mailroom? Who cares? What goes on in your business deals?
"Well. We like everything you do here, but we're not signing any contract with a company that has shiny people in the mailroom."
"What?"
"Your man. He wears leggings."
"Oh. No. We fixed that. He wears white jeans now."
"Oh. Well. That's fine then."
Man. Who wants to have to worry about belts at work? Am I right? No disrespect to belt makers. But belts aren't in my job description, man! I know what I do. I take naps instead of lunch. What's wrong with that? The other people in the office were just playing video games. I was doing something useful! I obviously don't sleep when there's work to be done. In fairness, I've fixed that anyway. I don't limit myself to two hours of sleep per night anymore. I really had no way to know that I'd need to go to bed earlier for a job that began in the morning.
Apart from that stuff, I still liked that job in some ways. I'd definitely be willing to do that kind of work again.
But my current job will allow me to wear feathers tomorrow!
Bonus Question!
Best dress code? Freedom!
Apparently the upper floor of Pizza Pizza is actually a time warp to the Nineties.
I’m quite fond of androgyny. I possess a measure of it, and it rarely causes problems. I wouldn’t notice them anyway. However, I finally experienced a minor inconvenience from it today. I walked into Pizza Pizza to use the washroom. There was a guy in a dusty grey suit with a dirty ponytail. In an apparent state of slight pique, he paced with his pizza in front of the door to the men’s room. I can be forgiven for assuming that he was waiting for his turn on the toilet. He even looked at me and said, “Sorry. Someone’s in there. Just wait a bit.” This seemed to confirm things. I stood behind him to await my turn. After a few minutes of waiting, he banged on the door to the women’s room and shouted, “Hurry up! Someone’s waiting!” Apparently it was his wife?
A suspicion occurred to me.
I tried the door to the men’s room.
It was vacant.
I wasted several minutes of my life because the guy thought that I was waiting to use the women’s washroom.
But I think that I was listening to Curtis Mayfield during those minutes. I’m willing to believe that time spent with Curtis Mayfield can never truly be wasted.
Bonus Question!
Best fly? Superfly!
I just got back from Europe. Fairly good times? Alright. I didn't really have consistent access to a stable internet connection, though. That last thing? I did that from my phone. I don't expect that to excuse anything, but it should provide some insight at least. It probably doesn't, though.
However, I believe that this allows this week's post to be less focused than the standard. No? Alright. I'm going with it anyway.
I'm not fond of airports. I know that this isn't a particularly unique position. My father always said, "Don't sweat the small stuff." That doesn't work for me. I generally allow the small stuff to get to me. Then I can face all the big things with a relatively clear head.
Unfortunately, airports fall under the category of small things.
I know why they do these things. Security. Fine. I know that people have their motivations for doing things. Fear is one of them. It's not a great one, but I understand it. I don't agree with it, but it makes sense on its own terms. Everyone has to go through security? Yeah. No one slips by. But then people complained about the privacy issues of children. I'll try to ignore the fact that children are the least private people of all time. I invented a game with my friends when I was a child. Do you know what it was called? The Naked Game. I just don't know what could convince the paranoid security heads to exempt children from some of these measures. They're motivated by fear! If they bend on one rule, the rest become essentially useless. By their logic. They're guarding against bad people, but they let children through. Wait. Do we know anyone who uses children for vile acts? Yes! They're the bad people!
It's not even jealousy. It might be easy to be jealous of these little people who don't have to go through all of this business to board a tin sausage, but it's not. Promise. I just feel that it weakens the motivation behind the whole thing. The people who put these measures in place base their decisions around absolutes. I don't like them, but I can understand their process. My sentiments are definitely not strong enough to resemble respect, but these people definitely seem to be worthy of their own insanity. This sort of random, ridiculous softness takes away from that. At one time, they could be strong, compelling villains to fill the thoughts of fatigued travellers while mottled, amorphous figures in short-sleeved dress shirts endeavoured to scour stray scraps of dignity from languid bodies.
Now?
Really. No one wants to see a Bond film that features a bad guy who only wants to take over half of the world.
I just got back to the city, and the most vivid victory of the day would probably be my acquisition of a small iced cappuccino with chocolate milk instead of cream from Tim Hortons. It reminded me of something, though. A missed opportunity. Don't worry. It wasn't mine. I don't really do that thing anymore. The thing of missed opportunities.
No. This one falls clearly on the padded shoulders of the one name that gives me any fragile splinter of Canadian pride. That guy with the coffee.
Recently, Tim Hortons changed their coffee sizes. I only drink their small iced cappuccinos with chocolate milk instead of cream. Thus I am entirely unaffected by this. Anyway. They added a fifth size at the right end and moved each size name to the left. The old medium size is now the small one. But the old small size is now called "extra small". Seriously? I don't see the fun. They should have kept the same names for everything. The name of the new size should have been filled with unrestrained wildness. I don't even want to give examples. This might sound surprising, but I'm not thoroughly found of crying over lost chances at greatness. This? This coffee thing? They had a chance at greatness. You know what could have been. You remember the great names. You were there for the Nineties.
Maybe I will order a coffee in the new size. Two lumps of sugar. Two spoons of tears.
Bonus Question!
Best iced cappuccino? Small iced cappuccino with chocolate milk instead of cream from Tim Hortons.
The new Hot Apollo symbol. Shirts and other merchandise will be made to order with choice of colours.
Spiders, man. Listen. This is my main problem. Actually, it’s definitely not my main problem. Its place on the list can be found somewhere, though. It’s not the clearest list. List of spider problems.
Anyway.
When one walks into a room, one can take certain precautions to find any potential arthropod presence in the room. Scan the walls. Ceilings. Cast gazes on all surfaces. If this reveals nothing, the room is probably safe.
This is not the case for spiders. Nefarious? Indeed. They are not content to exist obviously. They are not limited to solid surfaces. They are not even consistently visible. We’ve met the little guys with the translucent bodies. A spider is wont to hang imperceptibly in the middle of a room at orifice height without any warning for anyone who chooses to walk in on legs that are not excessively numerous.
Constant vigilance.
Do you understand? I’m no intermittent sentry. It’s always spider time. I even have special clocks for it. In my mind. I don’t even need to check them anymore. It’s like that feeling one gets when one looks at one’s watch and thinks, “Hey! It’s the exact time that I guessed!” I always have that feeling with spider time.
Because it’s always spider time.
And I know that. Always.
Spider time!
Bonus Question!
Best time? Good times.
This is not fashion. It is a boring grey dress. The only thing that could conceivably be more boring would be the show that could be stopped by this ruffly rag.
Do you ever feel that you were only able to get through something because you didn’t know that it was coming? I was quite happy when I started work on Tuesday, but I quickly came to realise that the entire shift would involve harsh weather. It wasn’t ridiculously cold, but the wind was maddening, and the rain just wouldn’t commit. I was shivering for the duration. “Make up your mind, rain!” “I haven’t decided . . .” So. The infuriatingly indecisive nature of that day’s clouds was a significant part of my afternoon.
I was told that the next day was going to be equally awful. My initial ignorance of Tuesday’s weather seemed to be the only thing that allowed me to survive; its inertia carried me through.
Petty dread did not seem to be a solid substitute.
But Wednesday actually happened to be relatively warm.
Good times!
Bonus Question!
Best rain? The warm summer stuff.
"Divine Bull" by Nicole Lowden. It would look even better if you could see a version that wasn't taken from a phone.
I went to my friend’s art show on Friday. I didn’t stay for a very long time because I had an urgent subway Twister appointment. The other reason was the fact that it was an art show. I’m terrible at those things. It was some thesis project? Maybe. I don’t really know. There was some amazing stuff, and I am thankful for the fact that things I hate are not made by my artist friends. The fact that one of my friend’s pieces happened to be my absolute favourite is essentially just a bonus at this point.
That would be "Divine Bull".
Anyway. I did say that there was some amazing stuff, but it constituted a minuscule portion of an art show that wasn’t actually big. This is probably something that everyone already knows about art shows. I’ve been to enough. This is one of the reasons for which I’m not going to dwell on that part. I’ll just say that the most egregious offence was committed by the individual who decided to paint a noose. A noose on a black background would be pretty boring, but it’s the kind of thing I expect. Honestly, one could almost excuse the theoretical first monochrome painting by emphasising the nebulous originality of the artist, but it can’t really go anywhere after that. I still don’t know why I saw a series of three in the Museum of Modern Art. I’m vaguely disturbed by the fact that it’s an entire genre.
I’m really distracting myself with my opinions on art. I know that I shouldn’t do this because art’s subjective, but I currently feel that this is leading toward something. Perhaps it seems disingenuous to delete what delivers me to my point? I’m going to go with that for the moment.
So.
This guy painted a white noose on a black background. But then he successfully duplicated the same noose on three other black backgrounds. He actually put in the effort to paint each one individually. I am impressed by the technical skill with which he reproduced his chosen image. I readily admit that. He even managed to paint that same white noose on a blank white canvas. A total of five nooses. Five identical nooses.
Now. Here is the most interesting thing about the piece. In fairness, I suppose that it shouldn’t be hard for something to be the most interesting thing about this particular piece, but that’s not the point. One of my friends happened to know this guy, and his primary criticism was based around the fact that the artist had entered the class with this idea. Though he didn’t care for the finished product, he was most displeased by the fact that the artist had not allowed anything from the entire semester in this art class to influence his project. By my friend’s reckoning, this defeats the purpose of an art school project. If that’s true, I believe that art school defeats the purpose of art.
There is precisely one matter in which I support the noose painter. If an artist has an idea, he should endeavour to bring it to fruition at any cost. He has no obligation to dilute his vision for anyone else. If he’s a bad artist, the product won’t be appreciably improved by external influence. If he’s a good artist, it will probably be awesome. I took creative writing courses in high school because I had a choice between those and math. I can’t sit through math class, but those courses were still awful. There seem to be two main schools of thought that are espoused by the majority of art teachers. Well. The majority of art teachers who actually care enough to espouse any thought. One of these points to the work of the masters and asks you to imitate it. The other says, “Don’t even think about trying to be like these guys because you’ll never be as good as they are.” I’m fairly sure that the majority of the old masters would not have been improved by art school. Their diversity is only one thing that points to the truth of this. Artists are fully capable of choosing their own styles without need for imitation or modesty. Some of my best friends are in art school. They have my full love and respect, but I still don’t get the concept. Generally, bad artists can’t be stopped, and good artists can’t be created.
Bonus Question!
"Where and when do your knees buckle?" I am fortunate to have wonderful knees that support me unconditionally.
I think that my main problem with excessive political correctness is its rapid obsolescence. Obviously, I have others. But the dominant one has to be its clear futility. People go to all of this trouble to make new and neutral designations for anyone who is slightly different to avoid the dubiously offensive nature of older terms, but the new ones invariably come to be used in the same old ways. “Idiot” and “moron” are fully acceptable insults against people who exhibit unpleasant behaviour, but everyone protests when the term “retard” is used in that fashion. Why? Because it is considered to be a purely clinical term that cannot be lightly brought into the vernacular. But modern psychology generally eschews it in favour of less negatively charged language. No one seems to object to the common use of “idiot” and “moron”, though both were once used in psychology to describe certain levels of mental disability. “Retard” seems to be taking a similar path. I seem to recall some popular British radio station that actually defended its host’s use of the word “gay” in reference to an unpopular heterosexual by stating that the host’s informal usage only referred to idiotic behaviour without any judgement of sexuality. I don’t even know what kind of person would prefer to be called a “little person” instead of a “midget”.
Yes. Alright. Fine. Technically, use of the term “Orient” could imply that the lands of powerful old white men are the natural centre of the world by placing Asia in the east. Unfortunately, powerful old white men need to have some system of navigation too, and any coherent geographical system must account for the relations between spaces. Any navigator would naturally see everything in relation to his own position. The world is round. Nothing is objectively east. Nothing is objectively west. People just use “Orient” because it describes a place that is east of their home. It doesn’t imply superiority. Some of its historical users might have believed in their own superiority, but the term doesn’t inherently carry any of that. On a vaguely related note, I occasionally use the term “Dark Ages” because it sounds nice. I know that some people did fantastic things in those times, but I’m not going to let the imaginary feelings of ancient corpses come before euphony. They know that I love them.
Bonus Question!
Best fictional slur? "Filthy xeno scum!"
I’ve been seeing these pictures on the trains. Obviously, I think that people’s eating habits are their own business. What they do in the privacy of their own kitchens should be their decision. Beyond that, I just take issue with their argument. “Why love one but eat the other?” People eat cats, guy! You’re basically saying, “Hey! Why not eat the other?” That’s only one result of this disgustingly fallacious advertising campaign. Do you know what happens when you go and start equating random animals with each other? Cats and chickens. Really? Soon people are going to be making violins from baby chickens. Nice job, my man. There’s another one with dogs and cows. I can only assume that the vegans want more people to be like Cruella de Vil.
I’m also unable to avoid noticing the lack of diversity in these campaigns. Have these people even been to lobster restaurants? They complain about the cruel conditions of cows in distant bunkers. Cows are cramped? These lobsters climb and crawl over each other until the customers who eat beside their tanks pick their favourite for dinner. I don’t care about the favourites. I don’t eat lobster. It’s a lot of work for a very small amount of satisfaction. You get a few morsels of tiny meat over 40 minutes of dissection. Bad value in my opinion. I ignore most citrus fruits for the same reason. Blood oranges are the exception. They are good. Good. But I can only find them for a couple of months in a year. Anyway. My point. I don’t care for the customers’ favourites, but I like the little guys that get to the top of the pile. I salute them when I can. It’s not even particularly vicious. The guys below them don’t really seem to mind. It’s just the accepted organisation. There’s a mutual respect.
Bonus Question!
Best lobster? Sebastian.
Apparently the easiest thing to do in politics is an accusation of insanity. Whenever one guy wants to make progress in one direction, they just spin the idea and make him seem crazy. Obama wants to reform health care? He’s actually going to shove your grandparents in a gas chamber. That whole thing. Whatever. I get it. People want to discredit their opponents. Fair enough. But sometimes progress is crazy because it’s awesome. I just want to say this. I’m not really a conservative. I have no desire to get into politics or pay attention to that scene at all. I just want to say this. Don’t pretend that you don’t thoroughly want a moon base. Maybe the time frame is slightly optimistic. Maybe it’s not an idea that would provide value for its cost. But the one thing that makes me cautious about hugging Jules Verne is that rant in which he asks to see metal that flies. You know? Progress is crazy. We can build submarines. That’s pretty awesome. Someone will obviously design a moon base. It’s the sort of thing that’s going to be feasible at some point in the future. I don’t know whether it’ll ever happen, but someone will consider it. When you think about it, it’s actually a step below space stations. People already build those. Building a big mess in the middle of space? No problem. Building the same thing on ground? Why is that automatically more insane? No. Step off. Moon bases are fantastic.
Now. I’m not a Republican, and that probably means that I’m obligated to criticise Newt Gingrich for something. I’ll readily admit that I don’t really have a solid understanding of the political system. In the entertainment business, people often change their birth names to make themselves seem more attractive. Maybe it’s the opposite in politics. I don’t know why someone would change his name to Newt. Newt Gingrich. What’s wrong with Leroy McPherson? It sounds like a cowboy! Republicans love cowboys, don’t they? No. You had to name yourself after a slimy amphibian. For someone who wants to be the president, you don’t seem to want people to like you. What did you say when your kindergarten teacher asked the kids about their dream jobs? “I don’t care. I just want to be slimy. You know. Like a newt.” “Well, Leroy. I don’t know whether the newt business is entirely lucrative in these times, but you should consider politics.”
Bonus Question!
Best space station name? Astro Station Syncopation.