Philoillogica

"Do you mind if I lick your forehead?"

Yesterday, I was so starved for physical human contact, I pushed Adam into the bakery counter at the supermarket. It was the first time I'd touched someone in over a week.

Think about that. A week without touching another person, without interacting with someone that confirms their warm-blooded physicality of self in proximity to you - that confirms your warm-blooded physicality of self in proximity to them. It's amazing when you notice just how much you depend on that one sense, and how much you miss it when its no longer available to you.

We don't talk about our physical needs except in terms of food, air and sex; "human contact" as a phrase seems to refer only to a type of intellectual, emotional and practical interaction that staves off loneliness, but it doesn't necessarily mean "contact" in the literal sense of the word. I can get that kind of practical and intellectual human contact from Abby and my classmates, and my emotional contact through email and telephone with people back home - but those things don't protect me from the kind of isolation I'm feeling. What I'm talking about is something that seems more primal: simply wanting to engage one's physical being in communication with another through the medium of skin, bone, muscle and nerves - through touch.

Being skin-starved like this is a weird feeling, and there's not really any way to rectify it. You can admit that you'd like to hang out with someone because you're spending too much time alone, but you can't just walk up to an aquaintance and say, "can I rest my hand on your forearm for a moment? I need to feel your pulse" without getting a reputation. And if like me, you don't like to touch people you don't know very well anyway, it's not a solution at all.

So if, when I return to Toronto for a visit, I push you into the bakery counter at the supermarket, know that I do it not because I want to - I do it because I need to.

Delighing....(and cursing...)

...because when I woke up this morning and went to get my newspaper, the grass was tipped with silky white icicles and the world looked as if it had been imagined by children. Then I realized that it was -3 degrees.

Sigh...

This is the most I've seen of my husband in 8 days:

I miss you, green feet.

Autumnal

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning.

~

Turning and returning home
one sunbeam breaks its confines

a single swath of forest lightening
rubricates flickers dies

and just for an instant
the steeples beckon like so many spindles
waiting to send me
into the long hibernation of the winter to come.

Yesterday at the market
overlooking the gourds' stolid heft betraying
their bright exteriors

we heard a vow to survive this autumnal instant
with an evocation of capacity
trapping such orange
such red such yellow
until winter's inescapable longing
sends us running for the can opener and escape
to this very now.

Defeated,
I sink to my knees
gorging on the sweet fragrance
of earthly living fire
knowing this is why
they call it fall.

You smile wryly, offer me an apple.

"Remember, Canada, it's the loose joints that fall apart, leaving unsightly toke burns on your chairs or on your bow tie."

Easily the best news reported by the National Post, like, ever.


Admit it: you'd toke up with this guy.

October 15, 2004

TORONTO (CP) - Is he a joker or a celebrity toker?

One of the highlights of Rick Mercer's Monday Report last season was the Celebrity Tip, in which a famous Canadian demonstrates how to perform a helpful household function, from Shirley Douglas showing the best way to jump-start a car in wintertime to Geddy Lee's toboggan lesson. When the weekly satire show returns to CBC on Monday night, it'll be author and television personality Pierre Berton's turn. The subject matter: how to roll a joint.

"First of all, you need a good rolling surface," Berton deadpans, suggesting a big textbook like, say, The National Dream.

"Avoiding novelty or coloured papers, I prefer white," he says, adding that it's also preferable to opt for hydroponic marijuana, especially in Ontario.

"Start in the middle, roll outwards and let your thumbs do most of the work," he says, guiding a young assistant. "Wrap the excess paper around the joint, wet the paper and seal the joint."

He pronounces the results excellent, just the way he likes them.

"Firm but not too firm," he says because after all, loose joints tend to fall apart, leaving unsightly toke burns on one's chair or bow tie.

Mercer, meanwhile, is seen visiting Antigonish, N.S., where he attends a toga party and a hockey game.

© The Canadian Press 2004; Photo Credit: Martin Tosoian, Hamilton; Embedding done by dragonwhiskers inc.

Delighting...

...in Jon Stewart on Crossfire yesterday, giving Tucker Carlson his due.

"How old are you? And you're wearing a bow tie? ... Now I'm not saying that you're not smart - those things are hard to tie..."

Update: Stewart's account of his time at Crossfire, the following Daily Show.

Got weltschmertz?

Thanks to www.despair.com

Cursing...

...the sadists at Canada Student Loans, who refuse to create a website with links that are actually active, forcing poor bastards who just want to do the right thing and play by their rules and fill out all the nice forms they want you to fill out in TRIPLICATE on absolutely the right kind of paper with the right kind of mental state (honoured and thankful that the peons in Ottawa making $155,000/ year condescended to grant you, a worthless slave to pop culture, a child of generation "whine", an interest-free loan during your studies - the fact that they raised tuition over 200% in the past 12 years notwithstanding - you are sucking at the government tit, and how dare you complain about it, there are starving children in Iraq, don't ya know, so get perspective already, besides, aren't you in (snicker)English?) to do twenty minutes of searching on their goddamned site to find a phone number or email address that'll actually connect you to a real person who'll tell you what you should actually do in ENGLISH, and not in some kind of nondescript, circular legalese which makes whatever language Chrétien spoke seem positively coherent, AND then, hire the most unpleasant people in the country to answer the phone, people for whom "hello" appears to be too much effort, and who believe that speaking slower than 1700 words per minute an absolute deviancy from standard operating procedure and who take it personally when you can't understand and ask them to repeat themselves and even (gasp!) explain one or eleven of the seemingly identical acronyms that spew forth from their racing maws (once, of course, you explain what exactly an acronym is) , which they do with a contempt so thick that it could be bottled and sold by Calvin Klein, fronted by a scornful looking male model wearing little more than a scowl and a CUPE membership card.

Delighting...

...because when I told Sandor to stop biting his nails, he replied: "Aawwwwwwww, but Gary Sinise does it..."

Innuendo? No, in-your-end-OH!

Choice quotes from British children's TV show "Rainbow":

Geoffrey (to camera) " Hello everyone, today we are talking about playing"

Bungle: "Playing with each other, Geoffrey?"

Geoffrey: "Yes Bungle, do you have a special friend that you like to play with?"

George: "Yesterday we played with our balls.

Are we going to play with our friend's balls today?"

Bungle: "Yes, and we can play with our twangers as well."

And it gets worse.

This was a real show, apparently, though this particular episode was made exclusively for the amusement of the adult creators and never aired.