The big box of cleaning goodies I received last week was pretty timely, all hopes of excitement aside. I woke up this morning utterly disgusted with our apartment – I don’t know that it’s ever been this dirty; not even during that week I spent raising pot-bellied pigs in the living room for bacon and profit.

There’s a common theme to each of the items in my last delivery: they’re all cleaning products made by Procter & Gamble. When my Mysterious Yet Practical Benefactor told me I would be receiving some P&G stuff, I hesitated before coming clean and relayed my dark past as a P&G employee. It didn’t seem to matter, and so the box appeared on my doorstep (aka the receptionist) full of sensible, wholesome things.

I’ve had previous experience using most of the things in the box. I was especially pleased about the Swiffer Wet Jet, as our old one is about to die – we use it to clean and disinfect our floors after Sasha pukes up the universe, so it gets used with unfortunate frequency and a good deal of success. The Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are good too; they’re the only things I’ve come across that can remove some of the mysterious stains that appear on the ceiling and they saved my life once, stemming the flow of pure unadulterated evil from our fridge in the Unspeakable Horror of 2008. We usually keep several on hand to clean up any accidents from my frequent abuse of hair dye and random murders.

I’m curious to see how the Febreze smelly products will work though. Being a couple of filthy hippies, we cover most unfortunate smells with Nag Champa incense but I will endeavor give the Febreze Noticeables a try. I’m not a fan of most chemical smell removers, so we’ll see if they can pass mustard ’round these parts.

It dawned on me this morning that I completely forgot to pick a winner of the Oral-B Vitality ProWhite fancy brush from last week’s sellout. All the images  submitted were awesome, but Meera’s picture made me choke on my frosty beverage. I can’t help but be amused and grossed out at the thought of having to share a toothbrush with anyone, let alone your significant other – so I will send her a package as soon as she emails me with her info.

Ed is watching the Superbowl and asking the cats to identify their poop in the litterbox. Who is this strange man, and how did he get into my apartment?

The SYTYCDC was really cool. It was a high energy show, and we had fantastic seats. I really liked it – definitely a different experience than a normal concert or the opera, but one I am glad I got to see.

Then there was the issue of the girl sitting next to me.

She and her friend didn’t look older than 15, but judging by the many many beers they had between them they had to have been at least 19 (or in possession of some fairly potent fake ID). Already animated about the show, Girl A (sitting to my immediate right) spent the evening getting more and more excited, loud, pointy and drunk.

For starters, I honestly don’t know why she was there in the first place. She spent the entire show (and I am not exaggerating; the only time there was no scream-talking in my ear was when they were off getting more beer) having a loud, breathy conversation with her friend that had nothing to do with what was happening on stage. It actually made it difficult to hear the music, let alone what the dancers were saying in their little segues between numbers.

Then she started flailing.

She was a hand talker, and although she looked as though a strong wind would snap her skinny ass in two, her personal space bubble grew to incredible dimensions. Over the course of the three hour tour evening, I was hit with her hands, arms, elbows, hips, ass, hair, purse, knees, feet, and shins. I tried to get her attention to ask her to stop, but she was too drunk and too hyper to notice me. I grit my teeth and settled for throwing the frequent disgusted glare her way, and sat back to enjoy the show.

While I’m routinely a mild-mannered specimen of person, I do occasionally have issues with my temper. I’ve mellowed as I’ve aged, but there was a time .. well, it was bad. I was loud and angry and the chip that can still be seen on my shoulder? Well, it was sort of the size of Grouse Mountain. I’m pretty sure I’ve foamed at the mouth before, and I’ve destroyed things in anger. Issues, I has them.

As the night wore on, I was getting more and more murderous towards this little slip of nothing that was insisting on molesting my personal space. During the final number, the crowd was on its feet with the cheering – except for me, because I had a lap full of stuff and nowhere to put it. It was then that most of the girl seemed to end up in my lap, and I finally snapped. After being smacked in the head with her bag three times in the span of 30 seconds, I threw out a high-velocity elbow and made contact with a bony little ass. Okay, it wasn’t exactly a punch, but if I didn’t think the arena cops would be all over me, I would have done it. I am so bad ass.

Unfortunately, the little idiot was too far gone in whatever fuels her existence to notice. The mini-attacks continued and I got angrier – so I kicked her.

She didn’t notice that, either.

The show was over at this point, and the lights came up. Shan and I shuffled out of our row, and luckily for me the obnoxious twat went in the opposite direction. I was livid though, and I actually uttered the phrase “I AM GOING TO CUT A BITCH IF I DON’T GET OUT OF HERE SOON” very loudly. I followed that up with a furious diatribe full of swearing and unflattering descriptions of the girl, all the while trying to maneuver my way out of the aisle. It wasn’t until we were on the stairs and waiting to head up that I realized that I had done most of my swearing as I passed by some still-seated old people who were waiting for the crowds to disperse before leaving the stands. They looked a little shocked at either my anger or choice of language, but this did little to keep me from expressing my theory that the girl was a disease-riddled crack child who came into this world on a filthy gas station bathroom floor and was perhaps continuing the family business by giving hand jobs to pimply frat boys for nickels and the occasional Coors Light. It probably didn’t help that I excitedly remembered I actually WAS carrying a knife – albeit one with a 3/4″ blade about as sharp as a tuba – and if I wanted, I probably COULD cut a bitch (although it would take a great deal of sawing). While I usually enjoy freaking out the squares, I felt it was probably best that I take myself away from the frightened old people, and made my way upstairs to get lost in the crowd of 11,000.

Safely away from the flailing oblivious drunk girl, I rued that I did not punch her more directly. This is why I do not go out often; I am apparently violent when repeatedly mishandled.

Other then my murderous rage, the evening was very fun. We met up with the gang in Gastown for a late dinner after the show, solidified our plans for today, and called it an evening. The dancers were pretty awesome, Shan loved it, and I got to play with my new iPhone camera lenses to get some pictures:

I’m feeling much better now, though.

I received a huge package at work today. It was unexpected, according to my iPhone (I keep an ongoing list of things I am expecting in the mail on my phone because I am just that anal retentive), so that automatically made it exciting. Given my previous post whining about needing some fun and stimulation, I fervently hoped that this box would contain just the thing I needed to shake myself from this perpetual, confusing fog.

Unfortunately, things rarely work out the way I envision them:

not exciting.

It would seem that I have been fated to clean all weekend, instead of experiencing life at its fullest.

How disappointing.

Still, the giant box of cleaning goods will come in handy. Sasha insists upon depositing horrible fluids all over our floor, and there are some questionable stains that I will attempt to remove with the help of those magic erasers.

I suppose this is pure karmic hilarity, though: I had a tantrum last week demanding, among other things, more magic in my life.

Very funny, universe.

And now for something completely different:

For Friendmas, Ed and I gave Shan a pair of tickets to see the So You Think You Can Dance Canada tour. Shan likes dancing; we like Shan; it seemed like an excellent idea. She was thrilled, so I’m guessing the gift was a good one.

The show is tonight, and Shan is taking me. That wasn’t my intent when we bought the tickets, but Josh wasn’t interested in going so I get to instead. Hooray! It should prove to be an interesting evening. I haven’t willingly surrounded myself with screaming girls in quite some time – maybe I should pick up some earplugs on the way to GM Place.

The sky appears to be clearing a little, and it’s giving me hope that we might get a little sunshine and warmth around these parts. I’ve got some pretty serious cabin fever – I want the freedom of two wheels and to escape feeling like cattle whenever I take transit. I want to have some fun. There’s a strange tenseness in my chest that I can’t seem to shake, and I’m hoping a good jolt of pure silly joy will clear it right up. I don’t like longing for things, especially when I honestly don’t know what it is I’m longing for. It’s annoying. I’m fairly certain it’s making ME annoying to be around. None of this is very good at all.

I need to get out of my head.

.. and then I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Last weekend while wandering around Target, I found myself in the book section. My tastes in literature run far, far away from most fiction (I have a raging nerd-on for reference books, history books, things that debunk other things, useless self-help books [how to be batman; how to survive a zombie apocalypse], gay porn and random trivia), but remembering my self-flagellatory promise to read Twilight to confirm my loathing, I stopped in front of the large display they had. I disinterestedly picked up the first book in the series, and started to listlessly flip through it.

Have I established how completely apathetic towards it all I was? I have? Okay, good.

I probably wouldn’t have bought the book if not for what I found between the pages: someone was trying to save my soul by means of trickery. Tucked into the middle of the book was a crumpled, folded piece of paper that looked like money. I knew it wasn’t, but I pulled out the “50” and took a closer look. It was a small  piece of fake money made up to look like a US $50 bill, but on the reverse it said “Disappointed? JESUS NEVER DISAPPOINTS!” then went on about saving yourself before it was too late. The prospect of the irony laid out before me was far more interesting than the book I held – seriously, someone is trying to save my soul because I’m reading a book about vampires (clearly unholy) even though the book is about as “evil” as The Roly Poly Puppy in terms of stuff the church disapproves of (oh no! 400+ pages of ABSTINENCE! Save me, o lord!)? Delicious. Stuff like this never happens in Canada.

Bolstered by the thought of my book coming with a free helping of Jesus, I threw it into my shopping cart full of American underwear and Domo-kun dolls and went on my merry way.

The book lay untouched for several days, but eventually I found myself in bed and not wanting to play video games. I remembered that I had a book to read, and I settled in for a night of teen angst.

It wasn’t until I looked at the clock and realized that it was almost 4am that I remembered why I don’t open new books after midnight – they don’t get put down until they’re done, no matter the topic. This is another reason why I lean towards non-fiction books that address a wide variety of topics – with no plot to see through to the end, I am able to break the spell and set the book aside for later. With a story, there’s no hope. I will read until the book is finished and then I will go read some more online about it. I’m slightly obsessive that way; I have to know everything whether I like it or not.

You can probably see where all this is going, but:

Good god, that book was a steaming pile of crap.

That being said, I absolutely understand why people get sucked into it.

I read Twilight on Saturday night, and it completely broke my brain. Ask Ed – I won’t get into the gory details, but I engaged him in a spectacularly embarrassing conversation the following afternoon, the gist of which will never ever leave my fingers. My brain was broken. It wasn’t so much that I was into the story – my inner logic poked a thousand holes into it; the characters were wooden and pathetic; the inner monologues and clumsiness of the main character I identified with a little too closely; holy fucking shit lady why don’t you project more of your issues and bizarre idea of what constitutes “true love” onto an entire generation of girls who can’t yet discern between concern and emotional abuse – but at the same time, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It didn’t help that I have a raging girl boner for the guy who played the sparkly vampire either – dang, he’s pretty. The stupid book stayed in my head for days, and I was starting to think I was going crazy; that’s how bad it was.

There are a thousand things wrong with the story, most of which have been said before. Look up almost any review of the Twilight series and you’ll see the same arguments again and again: Edward is a creepy, borderline abusive stalker and Bella is a lame wet noodle of a protagonist. The recaps of the remaining three books make the entire thing sound even less appealing that the one I read, and I think I’ve finally realized what’s making me so angry about the whole thing: it’s the whole “I love you” “I love you too but I will leave you if you love me too hard” “that isn’t fair” “it’s for your own good” “oh look something happened and now I will leave you” “wah wah he left me now I am catatonic” “oh good here is a sexy werewolf to fill in the gaping hole my abstinent vampire left” “what she found someone else how dare she now I will come back and make her feel bad for getting over me” thing.

I’m not so far removed from my emotions that I can’t remember exactly how it felt to be so very, very head over heels stupidly obsessedly dangerously (to the point of – gasp! – skipping classes! O the danger!) in love with someone only for them to decide that it isn’t right and they have to go away now. Sure, it was much more benign than this fairy tale, but I still remember the helpless feeling of broken hearted rage and it’s a stupid, bad feeling. I hated that this book was making me remember how it felt to feel that bad, remembering how stupid I was and the little deals I made with myself to try to lure him back. The entire thing was .. stupid. There’s no more fancy word I need to use than that. I also remember feeling squishy inside and terribly happy that this boy I liked was visibly angry that I was talking to other boys, because at that stage in the crush it means everything that they’re angry because of you. It’s such a terribly unhealthy and horrible thing – I’m glad it doesn’t last long, but what if you think that’s how things should be? That love means nothing unless you’re ALL THEIRS all the time and unless he’s angry, he doesn’t mean it?

I hate that this book makes girls want to be helpless and bland in the hopes that someone will find them distressed enough to protect them from the real world. I hate that this book made grand leaps in logic – he watches me sleep; that means he loves me! he threatens other boys who talk to me! he took it upon himself to arrange my life so that we are never, ever apart! – and wraps up all the creepy, stalkerish, rude, downright ridiculous behavior and slaps a shiny red bow on it, calling it love. I hate the non-stop descriptions of Edward’s beauty and Bella’s quickness to accept that she is nothing more than a snack who is eternally destined to sacrifice herself and her potential to be available should the flaky, sparkly son of a bitch ever come to terms with her. I hate that the entire book is one long, wordy pamphlet for abstinence – putting myself in Bella’s boring shoes, I would have jumped his beautiful, godlike, Adonis bones long before chapter 4 started – real life relationships rarely work like that and there is really nothing noble or upstanding about denying mutual attraction.

I could go on, but I’m on page three and I haven’t yet gotten to the biggest thing that pissed me off about the book:

It’s a watered down sex-free kiddie version of Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books.

I fucking *hate* those books.

When I learned that a secondary character was a werewolf, I started mentally counting down the pages until Bella *needed* to have sex with Jacob, then Edward, then Emmett, then Alice, then Billy, then Charlie, then Jacob again, then all together now, to save her own soul. Not that there’s anything wrong with random group sex – quite the contrary; what’re you guys up to this weekend? – but the Anita Blake books will take a seemingly innocent situation (“my shoelace is untied”) and turn it into a compulsory sex scene that lasts for three quarters of the book. Introduce a new character, and three pages later your heroine is fucking that guy too under the guise of *needing* to do it or the world will end. She doesn’t want to, of course – she just *has* to. Or else. I hate you. Please fuck me until I can’t breathe.

Of course, the Twilight series has no sex in it until the 4th book and even then it’s wrought with Edward’s anger (GRAHHHH I AM SPARKLY EVEN DOWN THERE) and Bella’s self-effacing acceptance (why is he mad? am I bad at the sex? Am I GOOD at the sex which means I am unclean? does he hate me again? did I do something wrong? Why doesn’t he love me anymore?) and terrible messages about self-image (ohhh I get it, it’s not me it’s HIM and he is so conflicted about having sex with me because I am a delicate flower who cannot possibly handle his sparkly magnificence that’s so awesome he totally loves me and yet he must not for I am but a simple granola bar) and desire (swoon swoon I get sparkly kisses yet if I move AT ALL he will pull away in anger so I must not ever show my own desires, just sit here and accept his).

So the book, which is touted as a sexy romantic romp through every woman’s fantasy, is really not at all passionate or exciting or a good read. I’ve read STD pamphlets that were more arousing than this book that is admittedly meant for teenage girls which somehow makes it worse because there is nothing whatsoever healthy about Edward and Bella’s relationship.

Bad, bad book. It makes me upset, and I haven’t even gone into everything that is wrong with Stephenie Meyer’s version of what a vampire should be.

I don’t think any teenage girls read my website, but if they do, I beg you to know that real relationships don’t go like this.

And real vampires DON’T FUCKING SPARKLE.

That is all (she says, 1781 words later).

Aquaman is a fucking jerk.

Our car alarm went off this morning at 5am. Ed scrambled around for his car keys to shut it off, but didn’t bother to go investigate because it was early and that would have required pants. We forgot about the interrupted sleep and awoke at our usual time to get ready for the day.

Ed stopped to inspect the car on his way to the bus, and discovered that someone – quite possibly the SAME someone – boot-hatted a dent into the rear driver’s side door. There’s a very clear footprint visible on the now-wrinkled metal, but the hat that did the kicking was smaller than our previous boot-hat attack. If I wasn’t already late for work I would have attempted to canvas our neighbourhood looking for similar shoe prints, but duty called and I had to leave for the lab.

Ed is understandably upset by it all, because there was no reason for the attack – just someone being an asshole. I don’t understand the mentality behind wrecking someone else’s property for shits and giggles, but this latest turn of event has Ed thinking about moving. I don’t really want that – I love our apartment – but it really fucking sucks that there’s basically no way to protect your crap from random people who feel the need to do stupid things for “fun”.

Poor Mazdabator, all covered in bird poop and now with a nasty dent in the door. Come spring we’ll be able to move all the scooters from the back and park the car back there, but that’s no real consolation prize – our scooters have been attacked back there so it’s really no safer than being on the street. I need some sort of force field, or perhaps a bunch of bears. Hungry attack bears that would eat anyone who got too close to my stuff. That would be cool.

Anyone know where I can get some bears?

Heather is donating blood for the very first time next Saturday, and has asked for volunteers. I’m going to go with her, because she is very cute and I am always down for having fluids withdrawn from me. In her plea for an audience, she mentions various reasons why you might want to come with her and perhaps also donate your very own blood. It’s for a good cause – people who need blood, like vampires and .. sick people, I guess – but the blood takers apparently also tell you what your blood type is.

Hot damn! I have NO IDEA what my blood type is; I’m one of those hilarious people who write “RED” on forms when asked for a blood type. So not only will this entire thing be an exercise in Doing Good, it will also give me some important information about myself and can therefore be classified as an adventure and also lots of fun.

Yes, I have have a strange idea of fun.

And in a wild tangent that will only make sense if you happen to have memorized a number of lines from horror movies you used to watch religiously instead of making out with boys or girls as a teenager, I am sort of horrified that they remade Friday the 13th. Are we really so out of ideas that we have to mess with the classics? Come on, people. I know you’ve done J-Horror and K-Horror – isn’t there some sort of Bollywood horror you can ruin?

Come to think of it, a Bollywood horror movie would be fantastically hilarious.

I’m going to go over here now.

I think I want to change my name to Kimlicita. Everything sounds more exotic when you add a Spanish suffix to it, and I would then have an excellent excuse to (continue to) wear flowers in my hair and corsets.

I promise I’ll stop gushing about Carmen soon, but last night’s costumes were just incredible. It was also funny to note that as Carmen’s costumes changed throughout the acts to denote changes in her fortune or standing, they got more and more elaborate – but my absolute favourite of the night was her opening outfit, of the red corset and long billowing white skirt. I could absolutely rock that look. I’m fairly certain I would be a vision in enormous boobs and loveliness (that no one would see because of the aforementioned enormous boobs).

If all else fails, I’m going to change my name to Squinty McSmiles. I’m looking at the various pictures taken throughout the night, and I HAVE NO EYES. No wonder I walk into things so often.

Also, so I don’t forget: I read Twilight on Saturday and it completely broke my brain. I’ll tell you why as soon as I recover some of my mental abilities.

please break this rule; i didn't eat dinner

I was the first to arrive, just after 6pm. There were already fancy people lined up outside – I’m sure they were excited to see the show, but it’s also very cold outside. Truth be told, I was far warmer in my fancy dress and heels than I was all day at work in my grubby tech clothes – it’s most likely excitement, but perhaps I should also invest in a space heater.

There’s a group of women here manning a booth called the Vancouver Opera Guild – I believe they were involved in the opera from way back ago. I overheard them discussing things amongst themselves – it was pretty much the cutest thing ever to hear a crisp English accent announcing “THOSE are BLOGGERS!”. It’s true – we are bloggers. It says so on the sign posted above.

The five of us just returned from a tour of the stage. I took many pictures (the quality of which remains to be seen; my SD card did NOT appreciate being yanked from the warm confines of my Mac and coughed up some memory errors) that I’ll try to post tonight. It was really neat back there – seeing the stage up close and personal, the wig and makeup room, the opera urchins making faces at each other, and the shotgun battle rehearsal before the curtain rises. We’re just over thirty minutes away from the start of the show, and so far this has been a great night. We’re set up at a table in the lobby, and the bloggers are quite the spectacle – I’d forgotten how much I enjoy being peered at curiously. This is fun!

There’s a fairly wide range of age groups here. It’s also good to see a wide variety of outfits – the opera doesn’t *have* to be about tiaras and cleavage if that isn’t your style; the people in jeans are not so out of place. Comfort is king, after all – you’re here to take in the performance, not worry about keeping the crease in your evening trousers placed just so. At least, that’s not what *I’M* worried about. As I write this, we’re experiencing Opera Technical Difficulties – the wireless internet went down, and we’re bloggers without a connection to the outside world. It’ s a scary thing, but luckily we are prepared – iPhones come out, laptops are pushed aside. Ling is attempting to get the connection back up for us, but I’m doing quite well personally. After all, live blogging is new to me – remember the analog days when you scribbled thoughts on random paper and tried to write something coherent 12 hours later from the random keywords misspelled on a napkin? Or was that just me? At any rate, it looks like our internet connection is back with just enough time for me to post this before we take our seats, We’ll be back during the intermission to post first thoughts – sit tight, there’s more to come!

20:30: The first act is over, and we’re in intermission. It’s been incredible so far – the performers are astounding! I’ve never really given opera a good listen before – I’d say there isn’t enough angst in opera for me, but dude opera is all angst all the time – but this is really something else. I can’t decide if I get nerd cred or am just a total embarrassment that I definitely recognized one of Carmen’s arias from Family Guy – but on the other hand, Miss604 mentioned Looney Tunes on our way out so I think I’m good.

Ling just brought us food! She’s totally disobeying the “don’t feed the bloggers” sign, but I am so grateful. My pitiful e-pleas seem to have worked, and she snagged us some tasty things. I had a mushroom pouch that was delicious and also for some reason reminded me of the Legend of Zelda.

As far as operas go, I think I’m really lucky to be experiencing Carmen as my very first opera. The costumes are gorgeous – I’m giving some serious thought to wearing corsets in my everyday life – and the subtitles above the stage make it very easy for those of us not fluent in sung French to follow along. That being said, I think I’m going to try to follow Act 2 without the sub (sur) titles. The emotion comes through in the singing so thoroughly that I don’t necessarily think I need to know *exactly* what the words mean – I know I’ve only been here for one act, but I am totally going to do this right.

Can’t wait for Act 2!

21:30: I really hope no one saw me drip an entire pineapple’s worth of juice down my dress.

Act 2 is complete, and there is treachery afoot! This break is a short one, and there are two more acts to go with a brief pause between them. Everyone looks to be having a really good time and just coming out to the lobby to liquor up (or stretch, whatever floats your boat) before we head back in for the last two acts. I don’t think we’ll have time to come out in between the two as the intermission is actually labeled as a pause, but that’s okay – I am taking notes. I don’t guarantee that I’ll be able to read my scribbles at the end of the night, but I am making an effort to remember things to share later. Don’t say I never do anything for you.

23:37: The evening is over and I’m at home. I really want to say more, but I’m exhausted – the drive home was harrowing and probably a little weave-y. I had an incredible time, and I will post a recap tomorrow along with links to the others!