Tendency to Wander

Hand-work.

Creating.

The violent yanking of something out of the world of 2-D and into the world of 3-D.

The weird mix of panic and adrenaline you get when you realize that you’ve only got one day to make an extremely ridiculous Ferocious Beast costume.

University vibes.

Energy drinks.

BRING IT.

More cram-your-face-all-up-in-nature shots! This time from the C&C retreat. :9 View ‘em full size, that’s the point.

Why do they grow all long and stick-uppy like that? Save me, Magic School Bus!

TEXTURRRRRRRRRRRRE… Guh. I loves it.

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^

In other news: Where The Wild Things Are. Never read the book as a kid, saw the movie on Monday.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that warmed my insides so much. Artistically, it was brilliant, and the writing was…just…they captured the nuances of a child perfectly. The way that the main character acts, talks, tells stories, the way his imagination works…this Max Records kid is literally all that and a bag of Doritos. He nailed it. The music was pretty sweet too. I cried, I’m not gonna lie. I also busted out laughing a few times. Writing, man. I think if I had to describe this movie in one word, that word would be pure.

Is it wrong that watching this movie made me want to have a son? Is that weird? I fell irrevocably in love with this child (the character, not the actor), even with his few yelling fits here and there, and the first little bit of the movie where he’s chasing the dog around with a fork, and the fact that he’s a wee bit of a biter. I’m pretty sure if I ever do have a son he’ll turn out eerily similar to this kid anyway, and let’s face it, if my kid was a biter I’d probably just bite him back. We’d have bite-fights. Holy crap, I’m going to have to marry someone very stable to balance this kid out, or he’s gonna be totally feral. Slightly feral. A touch. Hello, Children’s Aid.

LOOK AT THIS CHILD. He has my eyes. =^__^=

On top of being the most adorable little boy ever to exist, he’s made a flippin’ plasticine dinosaur. <3 <3 <3

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^

I totally just blew $130 on Internet t-shirts. Hooray for employment! In my defense, I am going through a bit of a t-shirt deficiency, and one of them is for my sister. Instead of posting which shirts I did get, I shall post a picture of the one I could not get, seeing as it was all sold out:

I love you, War Bear. *sniffle* ;__;

• I have acquired the furry pointy black hat what was mentioned in the previous entry. It is every bit as awesome as I imagined it.
• I am quite sick. This does not happen very often. I must learn to allow myself days off work sans guilt.
• It’s looking to be around that time of year again when I bust out my special winter-depression-fighting light.
• There are no job opportunities in my field. Either that, or they’re impossible to find. Balllllllllllls.
• Balls.
• I need a haircut again, and a new haircutter-person.
• I need to start my sister’s Halloween costume. I have trained her well in the art of ridiculousness.
• I don’t know what I’m being for Halloween, or what I’m doing for Halloween. I’ll likely just re-wear my ninja, or maybe my Catan dress. I dunno.
• I am a Junior High leader.
• I joined the church choir. I’m not entirely sure why, besides the fact that Kristy asked me to and I was/am bored. Why the heck not?
• There were gunshots outside my house two nights ago. I heard them, but I thought that they came from the park. Apparently my neighbours across the street found bullet casings on the road, though, so it wasn’t in the park. There were seven shots.
• Need a place of my own like whoa.
• Cirque du Soleil on Sunday, C&C retreat the weekend after that, Medieval Times the weekend after that, Halloween the weekend after that. Chyeah.
• …
• Am going to make an effort to combat my reclusive tendencies…namely, re-learning to use the telephone. It’s only my own fault if I’m lonely and do nothing about it.
• That totally made me sound like a huge loser.
• Wonder if anyone is planning on seeing Whip It, Surrogates, or Zombieland…
• Watched Ponyo online…good lord, Miyazaki, you are most definitely on the crack, but I still love you.
• Sick day: part II tomorrow? Guess we shall see…

Between:

But I know for sure that I want this hat:

EDIT: Actually I think that Stuff is Awesome wins out. I unwittingly posted them in order of preference. 3 and 4 are a tie. Alright then.

So, the last post I made ended with me mentioning a mystery event involving Cirque du Soleil’s new show OVO, which had been advertised in the newspaper from the day before, saying little more than “Dundas Square, September 2nd, noon”. I went to check it out, figuring that since it was obviously going to be some sort of promo stunt, that perhaps there would be a bit of a mini-performance, or things might be given away. Perhaps there would even be some little challenges where one could win a ticket to the show. I’ve seen such occurrences regularly at Yonge-Dundas Square involving other companies, so it didn’t seem too unrealistic at all.

I get down there in good time, I’m chilling out, doing some writing, whatever, and eventually I see a bunch of people waltz out of the Tim Hortons in extremely elaborate face paint, and I’m like “ah, there you are”. So, I go and sit in their more immediate vicinity, at least close enough to see what’s going on.

…and I’m like “sweet”.

Eventually they get their junk together, all of them have bags with stuff, and they filter into the crowd, dispensing their bounty of:

Clown noses.

…and I get up and make my way up Yonge St., chewing over the fact that I’d just spent $2.75 to get downtown to receive a foam clown nose.

I mean, I really don’t have anyone to blame but myself. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that there would be anything more than a mass clown nose handout, never mind a chance to win a ticket. Granted, they put up a web page countdown and ads in two consecutive newspapers advertising this, which in retrospect seems a bit superfluous. I’m starting to realize that perhaps my overactive imagination has the potential to cause me annoyance in the reality department. I have a tendency to picture things far more extravagantly than they turn out to be. This has happened to me on more than one Halloween, for example, where someone has mentioned a party, and my imagination comes up with this:

but my body ends up at this:

Halloween I’m getting better at though, since I am coming to accept the fact that I don’t operate in social circles that have access to Venetian palaces or opera houses.

Yet.

I do not approve of reality’s constant shortcomings. Life seems to find it amusing, handing me clown noses, and sticking wood boards in the back of my wardrobe where I know the forest should be. To this I say screw you, reality; one of us has to yield eventually, and it’s not going to be me.

On the plus side, I did get a lovely dew shot this morning:

(much better viewed full size)

I saw a crack in a bit of the bus that looked like a wing:

(It reminds me of Navi from Legend of Zelda, or the golden snitch from Harry Potter)

I am quite excited about this movie, which comes out in a week:

…and I had delicious cake with friends tonight, so I suppose the day’s not a total bust.

I lost hours today on this blog: OffBeatBride.com. (Not that I’m planning to get married any time soon.) It just brings me so much joy to see the amount of independence, creativity, and ingenuity involved in these weddings. I love seeing the different cultures, traditions and personalities presented by each couple, and a lot of the articles have very sound advice on various topics. Some of the weddings were a little over the top for my personal tastes (“Corinne & Jesse’s Homemade Alice In Wonderland Zombie Wedding“, “Aidra & Ernest’s Katamari Damacy Wedding“, though I thought the pictures from the Katamari one were adorable and made me smile so much), but the site helped me to generate a lot of my own ideas. I particularly appreciate the embrace of DIY culture.

I’m kind of getting hooked on the idea of getting married in a forest. It just fits. I went for a walk tonight in the park, and my mind started sketching tons of things out of nowhere. I also confirmed that, just like in grade school, playground swings still give me motion sickness.

I need to start a new sketchbook…I’ve been particularly designy lately, and keep having random ideas for clothing, furniture and interior design, and weddings. I want a new pack of Prismacolor pencil crayons…that’s probably a bit of the back-to-school-ness in the air, though. I need a job. I need the motivation to actively hunt for a job. I also need a haircut.

I’m going to this tomorrow. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I know it involves the new Cirque du Soliel show Ovo, so it should be good, and it will get me out of the house. I do hope I can scrounge up enough money so I can see the show before it leaves in November.

This show is awesome and I love it.

I finally got around to trimming my collection of costumes and costume-related junk. I threw a bunch of stuff in the Goodwill bag: old shoes, belts, stuff that could pass as normal clothing. I kept a bunch of stuff: my first costume, of course (even though it’s a gross orange polar fleece/faux fur abomination), and some of my more recent and better made costumes; I could possibly sell some of them in the future, and others I just wanted to hang on to because I like them. A lot of things I had were far too damaged to either sell or give away, though, so I had to throw them out. It was pretty difficult. Some of the outfits covered in intricate hand-painted designs which had taken me days…some where drafting the pattern had been particularly tricky…some where I had combed practically the entire GTA for just the right materials…and I tried not to think of just how much money I’d sunk into these things.

I think the thing that pained me the most to get rid of (though I’m not entirely sure why) was the guitar I’d made for my Lammy costume back in 2004.

Original PlayStation. OLD SCHOOL.

Just cardboard, papier machee, rogue electrical bits…I’d put a lot of work into that guitar, though. I’m really persnickety when it comes to details.

And as everyone knows, there is only one way to properly dispose of a guitar.

Good night, Springton; there will be no encore.

I’m only smiling in the first picture because Emily said something that made me laugh. This truly hurt me inside. I was proud of my guitar, as it sustained little damage even after multiple patio smashes. I made that thing solid; you could’ve taken someone out with it.

So now I have a bit more room in which to store new things…but I have no space at all in which to work/make new things. I have to start drawing again as well, which might help me to figure out what exactly to make next. I really need to start designing projects with their whole…existence in mind, I guess. I think they referred to it as “cradle to grave” designing at school, though they were encouraging us to design in more of a “cradle to cradle” way (minimizing amount of material that goes into landfill once product has outlived its usefulness, etc).

Of course, during the whole costume closet purge I had a couple of those depressing “my chosen career path/hobby/craft is so idiotically useless/wasteful” moments again, which was expected. I’m pretty sure they’ll be happening throughout my life once in a while. I found myself feeling quite crippled last night in particular, as I was having an end of the world moment. I don’t know if other people get these little hiccups in their lives once in a while; I don’t know if they’re supposed to be once-in-a-while hiccups or if they’re supposed to be more of a faint, ever-present pressure, like a barely-there headache. Those moments where your mind is just occupied with the monotonously droning bees of everyday life: discussing TV shows with a friend, wondering when you’ll ever be motivated enough to go look for a job, trying to remember if you put the wet towels in the dryer, being lonely, laughing at YouTube videos…and then this fist punches right through your head and you remember all of that stuff about Jesus coming back, and the world ending, and about how breathtakingly crappy the world is right now, and that preview for 2012 ever-so-briefly flashes through your mind (even though that’s just friggin’ stupid; I don’t think He’d come back then considering Matthew 24. It’s gonna be another New Year’s Eve 1999), and all the bees are gone and you’re just left with this…FIST in your head. Then starts in all of the “well, what’s the point in anything” crap, which is the wrong way to go, I know, but there it goes anyway, at least for a little bit. Will it be in my lifetime? Hasn’t every generation since the Ascension wondered that? That’s followed by “is my mother a Christian? Is my brother a Christian? They might have been once…how is it that I don’t even know? How is it that I haven’t even asked them? Am I more afraid of how my own mother and brother will react to me asking them this than I am of them potentially going to Hell? If this is what I truly believe, then how is it that I remain so…indifferent? What about my grandfather and my friends? I am the Grand Dutchess of Cowards and Assholes. It is a miracle of science that one can fit so much cowardice and assholitude into a single pair of jeans”, and that’s about the time when you break out the banana gelato and marinate in your own misery.

My own mother, and my brother. I don’t know where my sister stands either.

I don’t know which bothers me more: the fist, or how easily the bees effortlessly swarm back in, force the fist out, and drown everything out with their monotonous droning.

…

[On the bus. Around 11:30-12:00pm. Torrential downpour]

[adorable, vivacious little black girl, probably 6 years old] Can I sit beside you?
[Me] Sure, of course you can.
[Mom] No no, come on, come, come sit over here.
No, she said I could! I can see better from here! Do you like my sunglasses?
Yeah, they’re really nice.
They’re new, I just got them. They’re purple, and…
Silver?
Grey…*pauses* …do you like my umbrella?
I do.
It’s new. It’s got white polka dots. Do you like my coat?
I do like your coat.
Do you like my shoes?
Yep.
I like your……OHHH. You’re going to get really wet.
No, I’ve got an umbrella too. See?
No, but your feet are going to get wet.
It’s okay. Hey, you’ve got white polka dots on your hood, too, and on your shoes. See?
No, I…*looks at shoes*
See, I’ve got polka dots on my shoes, too. *puts one foot up on the seat*
Let me see the other one.
*pulls other foot up on the seat* See? There.
*laughs* You had your knees up to your mouth…up to your chin. Do you smoke?
Nope.
*turns to guy sitting in front of us* Do you smoke?
*guy says nothing*
*slides down in bus seat, playing* Ahhh, I’m falling, I’m falling! Help me up! Ahh!
*helps her up* There.
Ahh. Okay, now push me back down!
Uh…*pauses* …you’ve got a little fuzz on your face, right there.
*wipes at face* Oh, that was from my ice cream, from Dairy Queen. It was a messy one.
*sings in gibberish until the bus stops at the daycare*
Bye!
Bye! *continues singing in gibberish, passes guy sitting in front of us* Do you smoke?
*no answer*
*exits bus with mother into pouring rain*

*  *  *  *  *

I could not stop laughing.

Sometimes (verging on often) while I’m walking home at night, I will pass near or under a streetlight and it will turn off. Only one, and it won’t turn back on. There was one at the top of my street that would turn off quite dependably at my presence, so much so that I gave it a name. Another one near the Shops at Don Mills did tonight.

It makes me feel watched. Not creepy-watched, though; more like protected-watched.