I Keep Burning My Toast

I fully understand that communication is important but I will only communicate with you if you cease calling me "Big Turk".

I didn't vote because it is my civic duty or because it's my responsibility or because I particularly like or dislike any of the candidates - I voted because...oh, I just don't know any more and I feel so alone and scared.

I want to wear clothes that cover all of my skin from head-to-toe all of the time except on Thursdays when I plan to expose my toes to the world one toe per week until I am either out of toes or get bored of this exercise.

Either mermaids are real or I'm even more confused by the women I pass on my drive to work every morning.

Chalk dust makes me sneeze, but I just can't stop breathing in all of that rich, chalky goodness.

I don't know why, but once I am in the fetal position I am whisked back to those wonderful and carefree days in the womb that would have been perfect if the WiFi reception wasn't so sketchy.

And to think you thought the bubbles were going to stop soon?!?!? You obviously don't know me, "The Bubble Guy", as well as you thought.

My body is a factory and I just happen to be looking for a new factory manager as I had to fire the last guy for attempting a mutiny and convincing the others to help him convert the factory to a parkade.

During the daytime I am but a lowly pawn moving slowly forward on the chessboard that is life, but after the sun goes down and nighttime begins, I transition into the coolest, best-dressed pawn that owns the dance floor and is admired by all.

I use and misuse dairy products to the extent that although I am not allergic to dairy or lactose intolerant I am told that all of the cows wish that I was.

Now that I've seen what I've seen and I can't unsee it no matter how hard I try, I want to see more.

I see red all of the time, just not solely in isolation. I see lots of other colours too in and around the red, but they just prefer to remain anonymous. Seeing all of the colours in juxtaposition is a much more accurate way of viewing my surroundings aside form when I retreat to my basement which is only red.

Max sounds infinitely more exciting then min, as far as settings go, but I keep burning my toast.

I long for the day when it is more socially acceptable to run my fingers through my hair in public or, failing that, to run my hair through random members of the public.

The highlight of my day is when I hear the sound of my own voice on one of the series of audio recordings I created when I installed mics throughout my house with interacting with other humans being a close second.

My doctor is a weirdo who always asks me about "if I want to get a pizza" and "have I made a decision about the pizza yet?" In related news, I'm fairly certain that he is not actually my doctor and that goes a long way towards explaining why the results of my latest blood work were both nonsensical and baring a close resemblance to a receipt from the pizza place down the block.

I was told not to duplicate my work keys. I've been told lots of things. Only some of them were about keys. The others I forgot. I have lots of keys. They make nice noises in my pockets and occasionally in my hands. I go to work where I am not meant to utilize any duplicate keys. I'm fairly certain they told me about that. I like keys. I like when they tell me things.

I am not an animal and, as way of proof, I am giving my sworn enemies scrumptious homemade chocolate chip cookies and the joke will be on them as I only used 2/3 of a teaspoon of baking soda making the cookies slightly less airy and saving me lots of money that I can put towards plotting my eventual revenge.

The pot on the stove is boiling over and I just sit at the table watching the bubbling, gooey, steamy mess as it gurgles out of the pot and all over the stove thus both ruining my breakfast and giving me a huge spill to clean up, and yet my eyes, which have not wavered from the pot as it boils away, slowly reveal my glee.

I have this dream where I am very confused and perplexed and I wander around lost, looking for someone to help me or to at least tell me what is going on. The dream goes on and on and on this way and my frustration rises and rises and rises until I come to a huge realization - I am frustrated and it's not like usual where I feel frustrated. I mean that I am actually frustrated - the human embodiment of the word. I relax a bit when I realize that no matter what I do, where I go or who I try to talk to, I am just frustrated and the more I realize that I am powerless, the more I relax and start to enjoy myself until I no longer feel frustrated and then I proceed to turn into a set of playground swings that are enjoyed by a group of little children. Suffice it to say, when I wake up, I feel slightly frustrated.

Valerie

In many ways Valerie was just like every other first-year university student. She stayed up too late, she eagerly attended class, she studied at the library, she joined some clubs and she occasionally thought about practicing witchcraft or learning to string her own guitar.

When she wasn't in class or studying, she could be found at the student lounge talking philosophy and religion with her friends or at the campus pub enjoying a drink and some dancing to ease the stress and sometimes she chased imaginary pigeons with her very real umbrella. Often she was between places as that just happens in life when you don't want to remain in one building all the time and you just have to be in transit. She never quite understood why she had to apologize for that.

She had thought about getting a job, but didn't want to take time away from her studies, so she decided to intern instead. Her lack of understanding of interning endeared her to all that knew her, although most weren't aware that that was the reason they found her endearing and there was quite the list. The list was presently at Dave's house. Her friends were, on the whole, quite unaware relative to the average group of academic-minded friends and they prided themselves upon that. Most university students have hyper-aware friends who analyze and over think every little thing so much so that they would drive her crazy. She remained sane aside from her occasional desire to either emulate or imitate an occupational therapist, whichever was easier.

She spent her time interning at the local accounting firm that she always dreamed of interning at; her parents had been worried about the total absence of creativity and fantasy in her dreams as a child. She was worried too, but only about the impact of consuming too much soy, especially during a cleanse or cleaning her bathroom using soy sauce. As a child growing up, she would walk past the accounting firm and try to see through the frosted windows just imagining the the glee and enthusiasm on the faces of the accountants and their interns. How she longed to be on the other side of that frosted glass and be the envy of the younger generation of accounting-firm-intern-dreamers. She wanted to be the object of someone's envy very badly even if it was misplaced.

When she wasn't interning, she enjoying throwing caution to the wind and when she tired of that, she returned to the glory of her childhood by dressing up as various Disney princesses and characters, especially Mickey Mouse. For years others made fun of her love of dressing up as a male, cartoon mouse, but as time passed, people moved on as they either found other, newer, things to make fun of or they just grew tired of it as it did get exhausting after a while as they were often relentless. It involved the hiring of several personal trainers if it was to be done well. She never quite understood her fascination with Mickey or her desire to "wear" him, and she decided that some fascinations were best left "unsolved" especially considering her credit situation and the fact that she had a term paper due on Friday.

At school, she would sit in class and take notes and then she would go to the library and take more notes, before returning home to take more notes. It was getting to the point where taking notes had become her life and as she the amount of notes grew and grew she realized that they had lost all meaning to her, what little they had started with, which was actually quite a bit. If she didn't have a pressing assignment or test on the horizon, she would return to her apartment, close the drapes and put the Mickey Mouse costume on while she went about her cleaning. She often wished she would be more dynamic and interesting while costumed, but the laundry needed folding and the dust wasn't going to sweep itself up and then there was the question of dinner. And always there was Mickey.

It had been months since she had last seen her dad without a thick pane of glass separating them. She missed her dad - he had robbed a bank and gone to jail. Or more accurately, he had been hanging out with some friends and thought they were going out for lunch only to realize, when it was too late, that they were robbing a bank instead. This sort of thing happened to him far too often, probably because he loved going out for lunch and allowed others to always choose the place. The fact that he just happened to be dressed appropriately for the heist and was carrying what appeared to be a gun with him - it was actually a lighter that just looked like a gun that he had with him as he was playing a recreational pyromaniac in a new community theatre play - didn't help his cause when the police grabbed them.

She loved him and wanted to be supportive of his hobbies, which she was, right up until he decided to progress from ceramics and stamp collecting to armed robbery, because of her absolute hatred of all forms of robbery and because he essentially turned his back on his amazing works of clay right before they were to be baked and glazed. Did he think kilns grew on trees? She really hoped he didn't. She was so angry at him for resorting to a life of crime as so many other lives were available to him at such an affordable rate.

She felt slightly better when she heard his story. He was quite confused when they passed by their usual lunch spot, even more confused when they donned black ski masks and his confusion hit it's highest level when they all stormed in through the front doors of the bank with guns demanding the combination to the safe only to realize that the bank was actually next door and that this store was just full of wigs and wig stands and the most pleasant sales lady they had ever met. His confusion subsided briefly after the bank was properly located as they waited for the combination and then rapidly rose again when they made their getaway. As an actor, he did his best to play the part as you never know who is in the audience, although he was quite disappointed when the lines demanding the combination to the safe were repeated at the actual bank as the first run through was far more realistic and gripping.

Often when she thought of her dad, she thought back to how supportive he was when she decided to pursue interning. Others, specifically her mother and grandmother, scoffed at her attempts to be a full time student as well as a part time intern mostly because they never quite got how to add fractions. Her dad always believed in her ability to balance and juggle and often to do both at the same time as long as she was not anywhere near the docks at low tide. "Docks at Low Tide" was coincidentally the name she had chosen for her autobiography as she believed the title would work on many levels once she dedicated some time to it.

Her dad helped her progress from just pretending to be an intern to actually doing it, all-the-while secretly drawing floor plans and making accurate lists of security details for local financial institutions. Some would say she turned a blind eye to his strange hobbies, while others said that we shouldn't make her feel any more self-conscious than she already does about her eye, which isn't blind, it is just a bit cloudy. Yes, he always helped her, and she hadn't returned the favour.

The lawyers and police confiscated his collection of antique pens and intricate drawings of banks claimed they were evidence, while he said that he had always had a love of floor plans and architecture and how the building that houses the most money were often the least aesthetically pleasing even when you consider how attractive some of the guards looked in their shiny boots and tailored coats. They said that he would rot behind bars and he said that he believed that was highly unlikely regardless of whether bars were involved or not as he bathed on a regular basis and was going to rot anytime soon.

He told them that he'd been used by his friends for his knowledge, while his friends thought they had made it expressly clear what they were doing; even going as far as writing out a detailed, yet simple list of what their plan was and what each person's job was. They claimed he was the mastermind and that he coerced them into it and that they really only wanted to sing beautiful harmonies and the occasional melody. Her father looked like either the biggest fool in town or at least in the top ten, which he found frustrating as he believed the methods for vote collection were totally faulty.

She often got so mad she wanted to scream, but she was usually sitting in class at the university and her professor had a class rule prohibiting screaming unless for the purposes of qualitative research. She also wanted to cry, but the accounting firm required signed written consent for all shedding of tears to be filled in triplicate a minimum of three days prior. She gritted her teeth, behind the huge comical head of the beloved cartoon mouse so that no one could see, but she sensed that Mickey did not approve of being used for such purposes.

She missed her dad so much and wished she could have been there to spend one more day with him. She often sits in the library, trying to study or write an essay, and she sees him outside the bank with his mask on and his lighter/gun in hand. She sees herself run to him to either talk him out of it or to drive the car as she is really quite fast and after making a clean getaway and taking her cut of the money, she would feel better that she saved him; just as he had saved her countless times.

If she could have been there she would have told him that she loved him and they would have gone out for ice cream just like they did when she was a child and he was more child-like. They both grew up so quickly; her because of growth spurts and he because of some discounted lifts he ordered away for. He adorably ordered random, discounted items all the time and she remembered her mother, before she left, off-loading a lot of stuff on him at low low prices that could not be beat.

She loved school, loved her work as an intern, loved her time each afternoon as Mickey Mouse and loved her father. If only she could have one more day with him, or failing that, part of a day, as that was usually all she could handle. She knew he would be free one day and they would be together again. She knew lots of things and others had to often tell her that now was not a good time for sharing. She dreamed of the day when he was released from prison and he would hold her in his arms the best he could as the Mickey Mouse costume was quite large making a normal hug between two averagely-sized humans quite difficult to say the least.

A Love in Colours: Grey

The gray silk tablecloths were being placed with care on the large rounds in the banquet hall as the guests began to arrive. They stood outside the room, peering through the windows, mesmerized by the gray cloths being unfurled seemingly in slow motion. The cloths were being waved in the air as if to signal surrender if only they had been red. The past few weeks euphemisms and expressions about the end were repeatedly spoken as if to convince him everything was over, but both of them believed that the real excitement was yet to come.

She was sitting at a large table, surrounded by his colleagues, watching him up there on the stage. She couldn't believe that he was actually retiring, but she knew that she would have to believe it at some point as it was actually happening and it was meaningless to hold onto such obvious disbeliefs when the truth is so readily apparent. Could it be that time already she thought? Wasn't it just yesterday when he had just started this job in the first year after they fell in love? The answer, quite clearly, she reminded herself, was no and why did she insist on continuing to ask herself this question? She remembered the endearing self-assuredness he had as he left for work each morning when he was first starting and how that had barely changed over the years. He had been one of the fortunate ones - he loved his job and was excited to go to work. She loved his positive nature and outlook on life and felt that it was infectious as he had helped her see things more positively as well and that was quite almost definitely the best possible kind of infection or infectious disease there could be as almost all others ended with someone getting very sick. As she sat there listening to story after story about his incredible contributions to the company, she remembered a more youthful version of him in her head and it made smile. Her head was often full of different images and pictures of him and she wished she could construct a mental way of organizing them - sort of like an album with plastic pockets to store the mental photos, but she laughed at her naivete about constructing albums in her mind, especially when it came to making the plastic pockets. She couldn't believe how much time had passed, but attributed that to her inability to keep track of time very well and to how much fun they have had over the years. She watched him on stage with a pride that was unlike that of a parent or a teacher or a plastic surgeon and more like one that a wife would feel for her husband and that just made sense, she thought, as that was the nature of their relationship. Finally, it was his turn to speak and he stood and walked slowly to the lectern and made eye contact with her. He grinned, took out his notes and addressed the audience of friends and colleagues in a way that only he could - as a freestyle rap.

He sat there listening but barely hearing the speeches. It was a technique that he had honed at work over the years and could easily give a series of workshops that people would listen but not hear making the means of delivery quite challenging. His mind was drifting and he gave into the sensation as he was quite enjoying being caught up in a cloud of déjà vu because he had remembered to have a snack first. His mouth broke out into a small grin as he remembered how eager and excited and full of beans he had been as a young man when he first landed the position. He used to eat bowl after bowl of cooked beans that he had lovingly soaked overnight himself right before a shift primarily for the protein and the digestive fibre and secondarily for whatever may have coincidentally aided his performance at work. Yes, he had been annoyingly eager, and he saw that same ridiculously annoying eagerness on the young aiming-to-please-even-if-that-meant-wearing-face-paint employees he hired himself ever since he became management. Somedays he wanted to mentor these new employees and other days he lamented our modern negative view of tar-and-feathering, mostly due to his investing heavily in tar a few years ago. His eyes caught his elegant wife's in the audience. He was struck by how well she had aged and his mind quickly started listing all the ways they could benefit from that financially without completely compromising her elegance. He came up with two. He was so lucky to have her as she could have had any guy but chose him based on his humour, his unflinching love and, at least partially, due to his glass-blowing skills as she was a sucker for objects of glass, especially those that had been blown by men with senses of humour that also loved her. Even as this date on the calendar rapidly approached, it hadn't totally hit him until now - he was old and he was retiring and it had helped that he had recently started hitting himself with the calendar causing a fair amount of ripping as the calender was quite cheaply made. Finally, it was his turn to speak and he was ready to leave his mark - he wasn't sure how or where, but it would be a permanent mark, it would involve mixed media, and it would be intense, partially edible and subject to interpretation.

Lay Off The Pork Already!

When I was younger I really wanted to go out with someone - it could have been almost anyone - mostly because I spent an unhealthy amount of time as an involuntary recluse and needed the exposure to fresh air as well as having the company to share my vague and hysterical theories with.

I once decided to flex all of my muscles at the same time and froze in that position for a few days until thankfully a really strong wind carried me away.

There are many ways to skin a cat and all of them are excruciatingly horrible especially for the cat and for those of us who are forced to watch as some sort of consequence that in no way is appropriate when all I did was take one cookie from the jar.

Sometimes when people yell at me so loudly, I feel like my brain is actually being penetrated but doctors tell me not to be too concerned and I'm actually starting to enjoy it a bit more now.

For all those around me I am a focal point and am growing tired of all of the attention which is making me both self-conscious and wishing I had just read the fine print more carefully.

My mind is unlike a sieve in almost every way aside from one.

I just bought a new raincoat and I have taken to wearing it for solely preventative measures which seems to work until it rains and then I am not so sure it is working as I intended.

I took a shower the other day to get clean, but only the physical dirt washed off and no matter how much I scrubbed and scrubbed I just couldn't feel psychologically clean which I'm pretty sure the soap ad claimed it would do.

I am gradually overtime increasing the number of activities I participate in ironically and, at the same time, I am noticing a gradual decrease in the number of people who will participate with me.

I have come to grips with the fact that I am just more comfortable in the comforts of my own home which is oddly not that comfortable at all as far as homes go.

Contrary to what I have grown to believe long grass does not give me a heightened feeling of security even after I have made myself a new hat.

Meters have been installed, as have valves, tubes and levers - it all works exactly according to plan aside from the fact that I have nowhere to sleep and I am worried that the constant beeping will have long-term negative side effects.

I often feel sad when I should feel happy and that makes me quite happy although I am starting to wonder if it should make me feel sad instead.

Soothing ointments sooth my painful open sores and yet, even I can only handle so much soothing in my day-to-day life before I grow a bit numb to it.

I often feel great pressure to cook my pasta perfectly al dente even though I happen to be one of the 2% of people who happen to love totally over-cooked pasta that I can eat with a straw.

My wife loves and appreciates the clean rugs and carpets at our home, but even she is starting to grow quite concerned about how often I am vacuuming and the fact that I can't stop beaming while doing so.

Instead of calling or texting or emailing you I've decided to write you page after page of emotional and gripping text in large red letters giving the illusion that I used blood even though it is just an old marker and I have decided to plaster these pages all over your bedroom to see if you want to have lunch tomorrow.

I will continue to use the semi-colon how ever I please and am more than willing to return the favour to ensure things remain fair.

Pigs are so cute and if they could talk I'm pretty sure they would say something snorty and adorable with a strong yet subtle message to "lay off the pork already".

Umbrellas just do not keep me dry enough and it makes me so frustrated and the only thing that helps me feel better is a peaceful walk in a heavy rainfall.