Song of my soda
June 02, 2009 // Link
As a student, I was a bit of a handful. I’ve always had a gnawing hunger to learn things, but an almost equally strong urge to buck authority. Well, arbitrary authority at any rate. My so-called permanent record was (note the tense, kids) stuffed full of commendations and disciplinary notes in equal measure, if not equal use of euphemistic adjectives. Yet I loved school, and excelled at it. The kids are alright! School’s out forever! ¡Viva La Vevolucion! I’m taking math this summer for extra credit!
As Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (suck it, losers.)” That’s from memory, so I may be misquoting him ever so slightly.
One couplet I can quote semi-accurately from that same poem is one of my all-time favourites:
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
That was it. Right there. Reading that in grade school was the first time poetry actually spoke to me. Those lines were the first to resonate with me, to urge me to action, although quite what action I should take I wasn’t sure. Poetry as a force, an impetus, the way I later learned that satire was supposed to be when I read Swift and Pope. But those beautiful, ugly fellows and their sad, funny words came much later. First it was just me and ol’ Walt W. in the big round library pit in the centre of Mill Valley Public School.
At the very last second of lunch break I swallowed great gulps of orange soda then carefully, carefully, ever so carefully walked back to my desk, my belly a carbon dioxide time bomb. I was a Grade 6 version of The Wages of Fear, minus the French melodrama but with all the suspense. I churned with potential energy as I lowered myself into the chair.
I waited just long enough for Mr. Richards to turn around and begin to scrape white chalk on the green blackboard. Then I raised my arms akimbo and shook my belly to build up huge hippopotamus gas ball inside me, rising and growing and rising and growing and rising and—
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWP!
I think it wasn’t actually the belch that got me in trouble. It probably wasn’t even the cacophonous laughter of my classmates. I bet it wasn’t even my triumphant look of delight, although that couldn’t have helped.
It was the fact that when Mr. Richards spun around to see whose foghorn had just gone off, young Carrington sat tall in his chair with his arms still stretched out to the sides as if to say “Ta da!”
And that’s when I did the Jazz hands.
Did I get detention? I got multitudes.
All filler, no driller
June 09, 2009 // Link
I’m at the dentist office, but he’s late. Isn’t there a rule that the first one here gets to use the drill?
Update: Found the gas WEEEEE!
Resume or may not
June 10, 2009 // Link
Dear job applicants,
Your resumes (in Word format; lovely) list your “core competencies,” but unfortunately I’m afraid this job calls for someone with “skills.”
Respectfully yours,
—The English language
Past tense
June 11, 2009 // Link
Wow, Keele and Finch. I knew this corner well. Those buildings, this gas station, that sidewalk.
My first girlfriend lived right over there in that line of brown buildings, back in high school. We didn’t go to the same school, though. I was all the way across town at A.Y. Jackson, and she was south of here at William Lyon Mackenzie. Teenage years spent inside a pair of famous Canadians. The 12 KM distance as exotic and daring as a transatlantic romance.
On our first few dates I met her right here at this Esso station because she didn’t want her parents to know she was dating. I’d assumed we were meeting here because she worked nearby or lived in a run-down house she didn’t want me seeing straight away. When she told me it was because of her dad, I put my foot down (look at me, so macho) and insisted I pick her up at her door for our next date. The dictates of chivalry, you know? Only a knight-wannabe nerd like me would be so insistent on bringing forward the Meet The Father event, and he turned out to be a burly, scowling, growling Russian man who scared the crap out of me. So did his dog. Come to think of it, so did his daughter.
I remember the night before our first date. A drive across town on a dry run. A simple straight shot along Finch Avenue, but what about construction? What if the road isn’t contiguous all the way across the city? What if there is more than one Finch Avenue?! What if EVERY street on that side of the city is called Finch Avenue and nobody speaks English?! What if I’m so nervous I forget how to speak English too?! What if my head explodes because I can’t remember my—BLAM!
There’s the building she lived in, and the elevator lobby in which I so badly fumbled my first kiss. There’s the sidewalk where a few months later I looked at my watch and asked her to be my girlfriend (I’m the sort of guy who doesn’t just want to remember an anniversary, but also the time of the anniversary). There’s the parking lot we often argued in. And there’s the plaza we argued in. And there’s the other plaza we also argued in. Oh, and we argued over there, too.
I thought I’d be awash with nostalgia, internally opining my first love while I wipe my windshield. But 12 KM doesn’t seem so far away any more. I could do that thirty times on this tank.
Dance dance resolution
June 14, 2009 // Link
I just had a group of Ballroom dance teachers over to my house to play Rock Band. My lifestyle is a whole bunch different than I’d thought it’d be back in high school. I like it.
In other music news, I’m currently listening to (streaming) radio. My overstuffed iPods made me forget how nice it is to hear new music. Time to make a shopping list. (Note to idiotic music producers: if you don’t give it away first, we’ll never buy it later; that’s how this works.)
Sunflower cake
June 18, 2009 // Link
I made a birthday cake in the shape of a sunflower today. I’m really chuffed about how it turned out.
Both the flower and the pot are spiral cakes mixing chocolate and vanilla, covered in rolled fondant. Unlike my previous attempt at a carved cake, this time I selected a sponge cake recipe so it’s holding its shape under the weight of the fondant. But just like last time, there was far, far more cake carved off and discarded than ended up in the final result. I really have to try my hand at a less wasteful design.
Wrapping the fondant around the sphere of cake that formed the flower took approximately one hundred billion years of frustration and repeated attempts. And that’s rounding down.
Whomever has their birthday next better be a fan of square cakes. Or better yet, store bought square cakes.