Posts in category "Random"

Passenger Pull

I usu­al­ly try to sit as far back on the bus as I can; it lets me watch out for oth­er peo­ple reach­ing for the stop chord. Sometimes I like to beat them to the pull as soon as I see them stretch­ing up. Some peo­ple don’t pay atten­tion to the chime, and tug hard­er until they real­ize it’s been pulled already. Others just stop reach­ing and sit back down. Occasionally, there’s one who has to look back and see who else is get­ting off with them. That’s when I slink back into my seat and pre­tend to look out the win­dow.

The Begging Landmark

One of the more inter­est­ing local land­marks is a pan­han­dler who has his prac­tice set up on the Mackenzie King Bridge. I start­ed notic­ing him ever since I came to this city, every time I walked up the bridge to the Rideau Centre. I’ve seen him in stills in the uni­ver­si­ty news­pa­per, or in pass­ing while tak­ing the bus along the tran­sit­way. Ever since win­ter start­ed though, he’s been wear­ing a very blue, very “Toronto Maple Leafs” toque. I won­der if some­one gave it to him, or whether he pro­cured it him­self, using the change giv­en to him by his fel­low cit­i­zens and Sens fans.

It’s a dan­ger­ous thing to be wear­ing such a high pro­file hat in this city. Especially when one is so easy to find.

25% Just Right

Well, it’s offi­cial; Dolly is approx­i­mate­ly 25% over­weight, with a mass of 12.6 pounds. The gut-pok­ing and bel­ly-teas­ing has­n’t been based on noth­ing. Sometimes I wish she could talk so that I could know whether she would rather live a life of glut­tony and go out like Chris Farley sans the cocaine, or whether she would rather live health­ily and restrain her eat­ing. I always leave a dish of food out and it’s obvi­ous that she does­n’t know how to con­trol her eat­ing habits. My deci­sion will prob­a­bly be to make sure that she’s a healthy weight, instead of spoil­ing her and let­ting her eat as much as she wants. That way there’s less chance of dia­betes, heart dis­ease, or oth­er health com­pli­ca­tions down the road. I could start cut­ting back on the amount of food I give her, or start buy­ing diet food, but for now I’ll just mon­i­tor her weight. 25% I can live with, but any more and I’ll have to take action. After all, I like hav­ing a kit­ty that has a bit of a paunch. I’ve come to iden­ti­fy the bel­ly sway­ing walk with her now. And as Aaron says, “A fat cat is a hap­py cat.”

The Differences Of Sad Songs

I have one playlist of all the sad songs in my col­lec­tion. I named it OAC because that was the year I first made the playlist (it has since come to define that time in my life), and it’s grown from 11 songs to over 50.

I late­ly find myself skip­ping songs when I lis­ten to that par­tic­u­lar playlist, and to me, the entire point of playlists is so that one does­n’t have to skip songs. I’ve start­ed to dis­tin­guish between two types of sad emo­tions, and with this dis­tinc­tion comes the sep­a­ra­tion of two types of sad songs.

There is the “true sad”, which delves into depres­sion. Songs such as Tindersticks – Trouble Every Day, or Dir En Grey – Mushi are the per­fect com­pli­ments for such a mood. Then there’s the “hurts-so-good sad”, where there’s bare­ly any sad­ness at all, but just enough to remind one­self of what one has been through and how far one has come. The ben­e­fi­cial sad­ness, which does good and not harm. The type of lin­ger­ing, resid­ual sad­ness that almost leaves one crav­ing more of the once famil­iar feel­ing. And with this beau­ti­ful emo­tion goes songs such as Bad Astronaut – These Days, Portishead – Wondering Star, Red Hot Chili Peppers – Otherside.

I need to make anoth­er playlist.