Monthly Archives: October 2004

Halloween '04

Thumbnail: Halloween Super Troopers

Last year, I went to a Halloween par­ty dressed as a Super Trooper with Aaron and Wheaties (I have only recent­ly acquired the image), and wound up being drunk out of my skull. I tried not to make the same mis­take this year, and see­ing as how I don’t real­ly drink any­more, it was­n’t much of a prob­lem.

Thumbnail: Place settings at Aaron's and Karen's

Instead, Aaron and Karen host­ed a small gath­er­ing, which I attend­ed, where home­made chick­en pot pie was served, and no one dressed in cos­tume.

Thumbnail: Halloween doughnuts with bat sprinkles

Tim Hortons is doing its sea­son­al dough­nut, which is a funky look­ing dough­nut with bat and pump­kin sprin­kles.

Thumbnail: Cheat pumpkin carving

Unfortunately, I had to miss out on a pump­kin carv­ing par­ty, due to a fair­ly stress­ful week caus­ing a lack of desire to social­ize. Trolley did the Cheat from Homestar Runner, and it turned out pret­ty well.

Deal

I’ve nev­er been against any form of (non-per­ma­nent) self-muti­la­tion, as long as it’s not con­sid­ered a solu­tion to a prob­lem. After all, some peo­ple watch TV to get their minds off things, oth­ers pull out carv­ing knives and make designs on their arms. Neither activ­i­ty actu­al­ly helps a sit­u­a­tion, but are just ways to deal with things that can’t be helped.

I always make sure that I don’t have any razor blades handy. I fig­ure that if it ever gets to the very rare point that I want to cut, I’ll be calm again by the time I go out and buy some, sort of like a cool-down peri­od for firearms.

I’m proud of the fact that I’m strong enough now to resist, that if I did have a pack handy, I would­n’t reach for it as a release.

Crier

I’ve gained a cer­tain noto­ri­ety amongst some as being a crier, but today was the first time that I actu­al­ly had a break­down. The first time there was­n’t just a sin­gle thing that brought me to tears, but sev­er­al, which, by them­selves, would have been tol­er­a­ble. And even though I’ve long known and been an advo­cate of the prac­ti­cal aspects of lachry­mol­o­gy, today was the first time that I still felt like shit when I could­n’t cry any more.

This song in my head is telling me about how the stars keep shin­ing down, the world keeps turn­ing ’round, not to let these hard­ships bring me down because times like these will come around. I believe him, because I’ve been there. I’ve been to the point where I wished my inter­est in sui­cide was just a cry for atten­tion, and I’ve been to the point where it felt like noth­ing could bring me down.

All I know right now is that I’m going to get through this week, but it’s not going to be easy.

The Silly Walker

Sometimes, if I hap­pen to be walk­ing some­where, I’ll walk next to some­one just to see how they han­dle the awk­ward­ness. I find that most peo­ple are so uncom­fort­able with it that they will actu­al­ly slow down. Sometimes I’ll also match their pace, and they end up slow­ing down so much that it becomes very obvi­ous, and I can tell that they start to won­der if I’m doing it on pur­pose.

This morn­ing, I was walk­ing next to a woman seemed so dis­tressed by it, that after a while, she feigned run­ning for a bus that she had absolute­ly no chance of catch­ing.

The Autumn Leaves

Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle,
Les sou­venirs et les regrets aus­si
Mais mon amour silen­cieux et fidèle
Sourit tou­jours et remer­cie la vie

—Jacques Prévert, Les feuilles mortes

Thumbnail: Autumn leaves

The leaves shuf­fle past on the side­walk, and all I can think about is how, every sin­gle day, the weath­er can be so dif­fer­ent, so unique­ly beau­ti­ful.

An accou­trement, she calls her­self. An intel­li­gent, ener­getic, pas­sion­ate acces­so­ry, what bet­ter bijou? So I wear her on my arm, along with my ribbed sweater and depend­able jeans, while walk­ing along the streets on a com­fort­ably cool after­noon.

The autumn days are ours.