Monthly Archives: November 2007

kimli fights the power

Posted in everyday kimli by

Yesterday I went the entire day without speaking to or seeing a single person. Hooray! I’d try it again, except I need to go out today and deal with that traffic ticket and also I hated every second of it. You know something is wrong when you are sad that it’s only 7pm because it’s earlier than you thought and it just means more time to spend in utter isolation devoid of any human contact.

I changed my Facebook status to “Kimli is bored and lonely”, which prompted Ed’s cousin to send me a note saying “don’t worry Ed is home soon”. It’s very cute that he thinks that the entire reason I’m bored and lonely is because my husband is out of town for three days – in fact, if that WERE the reason, I would probably be a little less depressed. No, I’d still be bored and lonely if Ed were here, since he’s at work all day and not necessarily available for my various whims, and when he is home we don’t do .. stuff. My raging boredom and hollow lonely state has more to do with my joblessness. As much as I claim otherwise, I would apparently make a lousy hermit.

So, I am going to try to Dispute something. I really have no idea how to go about doing it, as I’ve never gotten anything more severe than a parking ticket before. In my head, the situation should play out like this:

Kimli: Hello, I have this violation ticket here and I do not want to pay it, okay?
Government Employee: Okay! Let me rip that up for you, and you have yourself a fantastic day!

Then I go to Starbucks and order myself up a Victory Chai and do a little dance.

This is not very likely, though. In my head, the situation should realistically play out like this:

Kimli: Hello, I have this violation ticket here and I do not want to pay it, okay?
Government Employee: Did you really think that would work? I mean, I half-heartedly applaud your effort, but this is the GOVERNMENT. We don’t work like that. So how’s about you open your wallet and hand over the $84 you owe us, and I won’t have to add a note here to your Permanent Record about your unrealistic and dare I say hostile demands?
Kimli: Oh, well, you see, isn’t not that I just don’t WANT to pay the ticket – I would seriously love to hand over 18.3% of my weekly contribution to our household with a smile and a giggle and maybe even some gratuitous cleavage, but – well, I just don’t think I should *HAVE* to.
GE: Well, I should really just tell you to go away so I can get back to work, but see above re: GOVERNMENT. Why don’t you think you should have to pay this ticket?
Kimli: First of all, look at this. The cop spelled “Vancouver” wrong – she wrote down my city as “North Vancover”. I don’t live in North Vancover. I bet you anything that the crime rate in this city would drop if you hired literate police; I know *I* would certainly be less inclined to commit crimes against humanity if The Man knew how to spell the name of the city we live in.
GE: Oh, I just love people with book smarts who think they are better than the rest of us because they use punctuation and proper spelling! Look, as much as I’d love to punch you in the crotch right now and make you go away, a spelling mistake just isn’t enough for me to throw out the ticket. Pay up, Brainiac, or I’ll take your unabridged dictionary away.
Kimli: See, I thought this would happen – so I actually have another reason why I shouldn’t have to pay this ticket prepared.
GE: What a surprise. Do, go on.
Kimli: Well, see right here where it says the make of the car? It says I drive a Mazda Alexa. There’s no such THING as a Mazda Alexa – for starters, the car is a Mazda 3. The cop misread the badge on the back, which says “Axela” – NOT Alexa – which is the Japanese name for the Mazda 3. So, I received a ticket for a car that doesn’t exist, so I shouldn’t have to pay it.
GE: Let me get this straight – not only are you a word nerd, you’re a CAR nerd too? Wow, the ladies must truly love you. Look, your car doesn’t say Mazda 3 anywhere on it, so the cop wrote the badge she DID see down. Now, we already know the cop in question was a wee smidge illiterate, so it’s possible she just spelled “Axela” wrong – after all, we now know that spelling wasn’t her strong point. If I’m not going to throw out the ticket because Vancouver was spelled wrong, why would I throw it out because there’s no such thing as a Mazda Alexa? Two spelling mistakes on one ticket doesn’t give you a free pass, it just gives you a great excuse to roll your eyes and straighten your pocket protector and mutter under your breath the things you would do differently if you were supreme overlord of the world. Pay up.
Kimli: Bitch, please – my pocket protector straightens itself; I installed a USB-charged auto-level.
GE: I’m happy for you. Give me the money.
Kimli: No.
GE: I hate you so much. Okay, why won’t you give me the money?
Kimli: See down here? Where it says “I hereby acknowledge receipt of a copy of this violation ticket” and there’s a spot for the “alleged offender’s signature”, and in red it says “Your signature indicates you have received this ticket and is not an admission of guilt”? The cop didn’t make me sign the ticket, so what proof do you have that I actually got it?
GE: You mean other than the fact that the ticket is in your hand?
Kimli: What ticket? Prove I got one.
GE: .. did I mention that I hate you? FINE. You don’t have to pay the ticket. NOW GO AWAY.
Kimli: You are so sweet. Here, have a look at my boobs!

Then I giggle and flounce away to Starbucks for the above-mentioned chai and dance.

Oh, if only. Here’s how it’s probably going to happen:

Kimli: I have a violation ticket here that I do not feel I should have to pay.
Government Employee: You can dispute the ticket in court; be there next week sometime and sit and wait until your case is called and maybe they’ll hear your story but more than likely it’ll just cost you time and you’ll have to pay the fine anyway.
Kimli: The joke’s on you; my time is worthless!
GE: Whatever. NEXT!

Stupid imaginary bureaucracy. Why does this have to be so complicated?

solitary confinement

Posted in everyday kimli by

Today I realized why I was unable to understand the hollering yesterday morning – they’re speaking FRENCH. It was really quite disconcerting to try that hard to listen in but still be unable to make out a single word. This morning I was awake enough to figure out why!

More chain letter spam from my brother this morning, this time containing the warning “THIS E-MAIL ORIGINATED FROM THE INTERNET”. Really? The internet? The electronic mail I just received on my computer came from the INTERNET? Well shit, if I don’t forward it to 10 people right away, the internet will surely think less of me! The junk emails bug me, since he never actually writes anything personal (to me at least; I’m the lesser family member in our dysfunctional little clan) and it just seems a waste to spend even the two seconds pressing Forward without adding anything to it. He’s also not up on his netiquette in any way – the first faux pas is forwarding the damn thing at all, but a close second is the non-removal of the email headers from a never-ending chain of forwards. I do not like having to scroll down 17 pages to see a picture of cartoon kitten Jesus surrounded by baby bluebirds with the warning that unless I send cartoon kitten Jesus surrounded by baby bluebirds to 10 of my closest friends it will mean the sender knows I have no love in my heart. It’s OBVIOUS I have no love in my heart, people. I don’t need a silly email (that originated from the internet) to prove that.

So, it is generally known that I Do Not Watch TV. It’s not one of those “TV rots the brain, I’m much better off than any of you slaves to the unblinking eye” sort of thing; it’s really because I am too lazy. I loathe having to keep a schedule, but I also hate sitting down and actively watching something recorded or downloaded or purchased. Yes, I know it’s weird. No, I didn’t get enough love as a child.

Normally this would be an issue when having conversations with people about the latest greatest thing on the tube, except this is me – I don’t have a job and therefore don’t talk to anyone, and even when I WAS employed it was all I could do not to audibly scoff and roll my eyes at the earnest water cooler conversations about last night’s Reality TV Shocker. I just don’t like watching TV, is all. I don’t watch any of the hip shows the kids are watching these days – Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, any sort of dancing/singing/outsmarting/sweating show – at all. I used to watch CSI pretty religiously, but decided I’d rather have my Thursday nights to do nothing at all than tune in at 9pm (10pm central). I manage to get around the pop culture aspect by doing a lot of reading on anything that happens to catch my interest – I’ll read recaps until I’m caught up and can hold detailed conversations without letting it slip that I have no idea if the blonde one on the posters is good or bad.

So, Holier-Than-Thou soapbox aside, last night I grew bored of video games and flicked back to the TV to see what was on. What caught my attention was a beautifully narrated tale of this guy who makes pies, and I watched the entire thing just enthralled. It was so cute! It has that one guy from that thing, and that other guy from that other thing! It’s NARRATED! By that entirely different guy who reads those things! It makes perfect sense that it’s a Bryan Fuller show; I love his storytelling and I loved Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me. I may have to actually WATCH Pushing Daisies, because it was just a happy time. Anything billed as a “forensic fairy tale” is something I would totally be into.

I wonder how long I can go without human contact today?

nothing to see here

Posted in everyday kimli, relationship drama by

There’s nothing like waking up at the crack of dawn because someone’s having a tantrum in the alley behind your building. There was yelling and a lot of crash banging and even though I tried REALLY HARD I couldn’t make out a single thing that was being said. Now that I think about it though, it could have just been the tar people setting up their tar factory. It smells fantastic in the bedroom – like prehistoric dinosaur times! Love those toxic fumes!

We had a very low-key long weekend, the highlight of which was spending $1000 on new tires. Woo? I hate buying necessities – that money could have been used for FUN, not safety. Being a grown-up sucks ass, although now I suppose I can try out my Tokyo drifting skills around the city. This’ll come in handy when I take Ed to the airport tonight. It can’t be much harder than doing it in video games, right?

Ed’s leaving tonight for a series of business things in Alberta. We were supposed to have both gone this past Friday with my returning today, but it didn’t quite work out like that thanks to his co-worker dropping the ball on doing anything whatsoever. We were going to visit his parents for an early holiday weekend, but as it stands now he’ll just get to see his mom for a couple hours tonight while I sit here and ferment.

I would like to be employed now please. Dear companies I’ve thrown myself at: please hire me. I am awesome, and people will vouch for that so long as my bribery cheques don’t bounce.

Maybe I shouldn’t get so worked up over my unemployed status. After all, my rightful place is inside the home and I would be cheating Ed out of the thrill of supporting me as a hunter if I were to go into the workforce. After all, I am thrilled to be the privileged one to get up and cook my man’s breakfast; I delight in sharing it with him and in waving him off to work. I am also happy to wander around dusting my new possession, planning out tasty meals to prepare for him each evening, washing up and making the bed, and getting to know my neighbours. Yep, I don’t want to work at all. This married life stuff is just awesome.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have possessions to dust and tasty meals to plan!

man should do the hunting

Posted in relationship drama by

 “The laws of marriage  are based on the age-old  idea that the man should do the hunting. The woman must give herself up to him, acknowledge him as master and fulfill the other half of marriage – bearing the children and caring for the home.”

“Little bride, you must learn to be your husband’s nurse when he is ill, his companion when he’s well, his cook, his housekeeper, his valet, his comforter when he’s down and his sweetheart when he’s in good spirits.”

I am doing this marriage thing all wrong.

where have all the snails gone

Posted in everyday kimli by

Winter is making me sad. My snails have gone into hibernation, and I won’t see them again until spring. I miss you, snails! Come out again soon!

There are now Christmas lights up downstairs to go with the wreath and the carols. No tree yet, but I can’t imagine it’s very far behind.

I think I’m going to go cut my hair and see what happens.

(this entry is a perfect example of why I usually don’t post on Sundays)

taste the stink

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They’re tarring the crack house down the street and it’s making the entire block smell bad. I can’t decide if this is worse than the time they dumped two truckloads of manure on the crack lawn in the middle of summer, where it sat roasting in the heat for more than two weeks before they did anything about it.

I do not like the crack house down the street.

here’s some mild outrage

Posted in nerd by

Spike has released the list of nominees of the 2007 Video Game Awards, and while I rarely pay attention to this because it’s always utter crap, this morning I have nothing else to talk about.

The list is available here, and as expected, it makes my teeth hurt. A lot – not just a few, but many – of the games nominated for awards either aren’t out yet, or came out within the last week. How on earth can something that no one’s played beyond QA be nominated for “best action game” ?! While I have no doubt that Assassin’s Creed is going to kick a lot of ass and be a great deal of fun, it isn’t OUT YET. Rock Band is another highly anticipated title nominated as a “best rhythm game” – its release date is 11/20. Call of Duty 4 is nominated for 4 awards in various categories – it came out 11/05. Super Mario Galaxy is also on the “best action game” list, but it doesn’t come out until next Tuesday. Spike’s Video Game Awards is not and has never been about giving awards out to the developers of the best games of the year; it’s a contest to see which publisher can throw the most money around to get included on the list. It’s bullshit. And yes, I’m still holding a grudge because of this. Shut up.

It would be so easy to give some real, non-fixed awards out for video games. I’m not so naïve to think that other award shows aren’t fixed, but when was the last time you saw a movie nominated for a “best picture” Oscar that hadn’t been released yet? They don’t give Emmys or Tonys out to shows that’ll debut next year; how can you nominate a game that, while highly anticipated, hasn’t hit the shelves for the masses? I can’t wrap my head around it, and for that reason, this is the last I’ll think about the Spike VGAs with even a sliver of mild interest as opposed to nothing but dripping, scalding, toxic scorn.

After my confession last night that I hadn’t left the house since Monday, it was decided that I am “sad” and am therefore going outside today. I have a hot date with Shan and Miranda. We were supposed to have a girlie weekend as our respective penises are out of town, but mine didn’t play along and is fact still here, which puts a damper in our plans mostly because he is permanently affixed to one end of the couch and we want to watch the TV.

Hey, weird sharp cramps in my tubals – go away now.

once upon a time, i fell down

Posted in broken kimli by

I have a sneaking suspicion I may have partially dislocated my left shoulder.

For the last little while, my left shoulder has been acting all funny – aching when I sleep funny, twinging most painfully when I stretch, clicking when I swing my arms in a jaunty way, doing this terrifying thing where it feels like it’s going to pop out of the socket and say howdy do – basically, doing all the things I would expect from a previously dislocated shoulder. However, it was my right shoulder that met the ground in such a tragic way last April – while I know I’m sometimes flighty and can’t tell the difference between a cupboard and a closet, it seems pretty unlikely that my body would forget what side is the injured one and make things go hurty in the wrong place. My right shoulder has been doing the same thing, albeit less severely. In fact, it feels almost like I have TWO dislocated shoulders; one more recently displaced than the other – but that doesn’t make any sense, I haven’t fallen off anythin –

Oh, shit.

I DID fall off Oscar a little while ago, and I landed rather spectacularly on my left side. I remember it hurting all over and my knee being a disgusting mess (again), but also that I was more worried that a) I hadn’t ripped my jeans while falling because they were new, and b) I hadn’t damaged my camera, as it was hanging around my neck and hit the ground when I fell. It’s entirely possible that I managed to injure my shoulder during this trip down – I was awfully stiff and sore afterwards, but I just attributed this to having been on a scooter all day and also falling off and landing hard. Could this be why I’m having left shoulder trouble? Does it explain away the extremely alarming incident of a few minutes ago wherein my shoulder started cramping for no reason and it felt like someone jammed a soldering gun into it? So wacky!

I’m really glad there were witnesses to that fall, because it’s really starting to trip me out. For starters, I fell on my LEFT side. I never, ever fall on my left! Perhaps even more alarming than that is this next eerie spine-tingling fact: I didn’t write about the incident at all.

I went through the last 5 months of posts, and I can’t find any reference to the fall. I know it happened – Ed, Josh and Shan were all there – but why on earth didn’t I update about it? I update about EVERYTHING! It’s unfathomable to me that I wouldn’t write about falling down yet again – unless that’s the very reason why I didn’t. Was I embarrassed to have fallen again? I probably should be by now, but it seems highly out of character for me not to have verbally chastised myself for the whole internet to see. Did other epic things happen that weekend that would have made the fall not newsworthy? It’s possible, except I don’t recall what else we did that weekend and if I can’t find it in my archives, then it obviously didn’t happen. I am so confused. Also, true to my nature, I am more worried about the fact that I can’t find any sort of record of my fall rather than be worried about these weird electric-shock type of shoulder jolts I’m experiencing.

Weeeeird.

Edit: AHA! I FOUND IT! I remembered that we scooted *everywhere* that day, including to Iona Beach and did some plane-watching. I looked up the dates on the pictures I posted to Flickr, then went to the corresponding entries for that time period and I found this:

We went for a marathon scoot yesterday; out for about ten hours so today is a good day to clean and recover (yes, I fell down yesterday – shut up).

So I DID write about it, in passing. I feel so much better now – you wouldn’t believe how much this was bothering me.

As you were, then.

we got to pray just to make it today

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While my family stopped going to church when I was 8 or so, I used to say a nightly prayer in my head as I was falling asleep. It was a little refrain that used to run through my head almost automatically – it’d start with the usual “dear god”, ask for blessings for my peeps; then get into whatever I was asking for that particular week, such as passing a test or waking up skinny or that my mom would shut up and leave me alone. All good stuff, very normal, look what a pious child I was.

For some reason, the whole string of prayer came back to me as I was drifting off to sleep last night, complete with the appropriate cadence and lilts. It was exactly the same each and every night, so there was a definite flow to it and each person getting a bless request had their own place in the chorus. The whole thing was a nightly habit; it wasn’t until I was 18 or so that I was able to actually fall asleep without the whole thing looping faster and faster in my head like some kind of hyperactive incantation.

So, last night as I remembered this chant that would haunt my sleepiest thoughts, it dawned on me that most normal people ask for blessings for their parents, their pets, their friends and themselves. I did that too. Normal people, however, usually DON’T ask for blessings for cartoon characters as though they were real people. After blessing my parents (because I thought you HAD to, regardless of how crappy they were) and my entire line of pets, I would ask for blessings for Optimus Prime, and Batman & Robin. Nightly. It was the middle of the refrain, and skipping them would be bad luck. It had to be done! They need blessings too!

Part of me thinks it’s cute. The rest of me, however, wonders just how I managed to grow up, forge relationships, not be addicted to any sort of mind-altering substances, and hold down a real job that doesn’t involve pixie dust or carrying a wand.

.. then I remember who I really am, and it all kind of makes sense after all.

PS: I painted daisies on my face in sparkle glitter last night, and it was awesome.

TOO EARLY

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Our downstairs neighbours have a Christmas wreath on their door. We saw it when we came home from Seattle, and the four of us collectively shirked away from it.

That was bad.

The Christmas carols coming from their apartment that I can feel with my feet – so far we’ve had “Silent Night”, and right now it’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” – are SO MUCH WORSE.

IT’S NOVEMBER 7TH! WHAT THE HELL, DUDE!

So not cool.