The Purpose of Teddy Bears

Jennifer? Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

…

Jennifer? Wake up. It’s just a dream. Wake up.

…

Jennifer? Open your eyes. Open your eyes. Open your eyes.

…

NOW.

There is a flash. Eyes open. Darkened room. I begin to take inventory. Where am I? I’m in my room. I’m at home. It’s still night time. And the dog? Is the dog okay? Ned the dog is sleeping in his cage at the foot of my bed. It’s just slightly after one in the morning. The air conditioner, Chilltron, is still whirring away in the window. The room is cool. But I am sweating. I go to close my eyes and something prevents me. They will come back if I go back to sleep too soon. Eyes wide open now, I start to piece it all together.

Where was I just then?

The dream is lit with a murky blue filter. It was a long dream, but I can only hold onto the end of it. My companion is tall and lanky, with dark eyes and dark hair. I have a feeling I know him, but not very well. We have decided to find privacy from the old school halls in a secret room that he knows. We run, almost floating along the halls. There is mahogany trim around all the doors. The halls are enormous and oppressive all at once. In the classrooms, ballerinas stretch at the bar in front of long mirrors. They have blank faces. One lifts her leg onto the bar and opens her right arm overhead as she stretches back and tilts her head. Her fingers are long and thin. We move past her and through the halls, faster and faster now. I can’t feel my feet touch the ground. My companion holds my hand.

And then we are climbing a wide, steep staircase. Up, up, up. Steeper and steeper. Higher and higher. I almost get vertigo. At the top of the staircase, everything is darkness. We slow our pace as we approach. “It’s in here,” he whispers to me. As his head peeks just over the top stair, he tentatively reaches up to grab the knob to the small attic door. Beyond the closed door, I know, is a small room. It’s supposed to be empty.

As he turns the knob, we hear the murmur. There is a rustling from within the room. Something scurries and whispers. My companion looks at me with wide eyes. This was not supposed to happen. I want to tell him to stop, but I can’t. He looks at me as if he wants to stop, but is compelled to keep going. He continues to turn the doorknob. It clicks open and the door swings inwards with a creak. Crreeeeak.

I am still on the stairs, looking up at the open doorway. The room beyond is in darkness too. But it is eerie. I’m worried. From out of the darkness, two sets of glowing eyes float towards us. At first glance, they are children. They speak to us.

What did they say? What did they say?

It’s some sort of warning. I can’t remember it. They aren’t there to hurt us. But they are there to warn us of danger. They slowly move closer and closer to us. As they approach, their form becomes clearer to me. It is a boy and a girl, and each looks about ten years old. I can see right through them, as if they are ghosts. Or a hologram. They are enveloped in an aura. My companion reaches out to them, and they shift shape. Like a hologram. All of a sudden the children become adults—ghoulish adults. They are both blood-stained. I can tell how they died. Blood loss. Stab wounds.

My companion recoils. He pulls his hand back quickly. The hologram shifts again, and we see the children with the glowing eyes. They whisper and warn us again.

What did they say? Why can’t I remember it?

My companion looks at me and without speaking explains to me what these two forms in the doorway are. They are young souls. They are imprinted images of childhood after death. But they are impermanent. The adult form of the holograms shows us how and when these two died. We can see both forms, young and old, switch back and forth and back and forth as they move toward us in the dim light. I try to hide in the stairwell. My companion tells me to run. I turn and flee.

The stairs are steep and I fly down them, until I feel like I’m heading straight into a never-ending hole. My companion is far behind me. I can’t look back to see if he is safe. I have to keep going. I have to keep going. I have to get away.

Are they chasing him? Are they after him? What did they want? Did he survive? Should I go back and help him?

And as I fly down the stairs, my subconscious meets my conscious and I force myself to wake up from the nightmare. And I am freaked out.

I often have nightmares, but they are rarely supernatural in nature. I reach for my teddy bear and hold it tight. [Shut up.] Sleep comes again after about an hour of going over the nightmare in my head with a fine-tooth comb. I cannot remember what the young souls were trying to tell me. But if anyone can analyze that dream or recognize some archetypes coming out of it or anything, however Jungian it may be, I’d love to know where that came from.

Because, damn, that was some scary shit.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

And hey, who’s not interested in a little sexual intrigue between what could quite possibly be the two most beautiful people ON PLANET EARTH?

Read more here...

The Longest Yard

And I didn’t buy Sandler as the straight man… or, for that matter, as an underwear spokesmodel.

Read more here...

Madagascar

More penguins, less lemurs!

Read more here...

Just a bit of fun...

Lifted from Gwen World, who got it from someone else.

1) My uncle once: showed pictures of his windsurfing adventure at his sister’s wedding. It was awesome.
2) Never in my life: would I throw myself out of an airplane with a working engine. Daddy didn’t raise no fool.
3) When I was five: I could still whistle though missing my two front teeth. Take that urban myth!
4) High school was: just as tough for me as it was for everybody else.
5) Fire is: too damn hot for this stupid weather!
6) I once saw: over three hundred shooting stars from the balcony of my Japanese apartment.
7) There’s this woman I know who: sneezes like a little princess. I think she’s going to have an aneurysm if she doesn’t just let it out already!
8) Once, at a bar: I inadvertently stole a Yakuza’s seat. I have never gotten up so quickly in my life!
9) By noon I’m usually: thinking about what I want for lunch – soup, salad or sandwich?
10) Last night: I walked home and gave myself yet another blister. And then I skipped out on yoga because my shoulders hurt so that I could stay home and watch Canadian Idol. Dude, those kids are not that good.
11) If I only had: an iPod mini! The iPod envy continues unabated.
12) Next time I go to church: will probably be for a wedding. Not mine!
13) The best thing about my last relationship was: um, yeah, there was really only one good thing about my last relationship. And it was phenomenal.
14) What worries me most: is the thought that I might never make be as “successful” as I used to be when I graduated.
15) When I turn my head left: I see the picture that Sunny said looked like a boob. But it totally doesn’t.
16) When I turn my head right: I see the people who laugh at me when I get mad at the person on the other end of the phone.
17) You know I'm lying when: I can’t tell you that!
18) What I miss most about the eighties: The Police. Man, they kicked!
19) If I were a character written by Shakespeare, I’d be: as difficult as a certain shrew, but loveable nonetheless.
20) By this time next year: I’ll be twenty-nine. Think about THAT for a second.
21) I have a hard time understanding: the mechanics of heat transfer, the point at which calculus started using all those crazy summation symbols, what the point of inorganic chemistry was, the appeal of Ben Mulroney, how jurors can’t see that Michael Jackson is crazy-dangerous, and also why I can’t seem to stay away from a hangnail.
22) You know I like you if: I giggle a lot. Or blush. Or hang the phone up on you – that’s a definite sign.
23) If I won an award, the first person I’d thank would be: the Academy! Hee! I’d probably thank my mom last, in a super-embarrassing way, too.
24) Darwin, Mozart, Slim Pickens & Geraldine Ferraro: all walk into a bar … ??
25) Take my advice, never: leave the toilet seat up at my house.
26) My ideal breakfast is: Eggspectations, downtown Montreal.
27) If you visit my hometown, I suggest you go to: the Belleville Waterfront Festival – where all the drunkards come out of the woodwork to celebrate Kim Mitchell and the Prairie Oysters. Good times.
28) Why doesn't everyone: drive on the right, pass on the left?
29) If you spend the night at my house: you don’t need to bring a sleeping bag. I have a spare set of sheets, pillows and even a comforter!
30) I’d stop my wedding: if it was all just a horrible mistake.
31) The world could do without: fermented bean curd, giant Ferris wheels, tsunamis, and cancer.
32) My favourite blonde is: the one I’m currently sporting.
33) If I do anything well, it’s: Trivial Pursuit, 90s Edition.
34) And by the way: I’m getting a puppy tomorrow!
35) The last time I was drunk, I: didn’t do the drink and dial. Quite remarkable, really!

An Ode to Chilltron

Ejdl: So for the air conditioner, we’re going with Chill-tron?

Nerdifer: Amen. Long live CHILLTRON!

Ejdl: Eeeeexcellent. If it were in a horror movie, it would be Chilltron of the Corn.

Nerdifer: If it were a romance, it would be Chilltron of my Heart.

Ejdl: If it were a soap opera, it would be All my Chilltron.

Nerdifer: Hee

Ejdl: If it were in a nostalgic reunion flick, it would be The Big Chilltron.

Nerdifer: If it were Oscar worthy it would be Chilltron of a Lesser God.

Ejdl: If it were a comic-book-inspired children's movie it would be Teenaged Mutant Chilltron Turtles!

Nerdifer: If it were a raunchy comedy it would be Married... with Chilltron

Ejdl: Nice one!

Nerdifer: Thanks!

Ejdl: If it was an extra on the set of Moulin Rouge, it would be one of the Chilltron of the Revolution.

Nerdifer: Oh, now I hurt from laughing!

Ejdl: If you were to ask CSNY for advice, they would stress how important it is to Teach your Chilltron Well.

Nerdifer: Stop! Oh dear - if we enter the music zone, I AM DOOMED!

Ejdl: Awww… If it were a futuristic social-comment novel it would be Nineteen Eighty-Chilltron.

Nerdifer: Ha! Wait-- how does that work??

Ejdl: It doesn't! I wanted to make you feel better so you'd keep playing.

Nerdifer: You gave me a pity play? Must mean it’s time to step it up. All right: Won't somebody please think of the CHILLTRON!!

Ejdl: Hee. Nice!

Nerdifer: And if it were a bootylicious singing trio, it would be Destiny's Chilltron! Uh, -- sort of.

Ejdl: You know, Whitney Houston believes that Chilltron is our future.

Nerdifer: I heard that.

Ejdl: Squeee!

Nerdifer: It's 11:00 - do you know where your CHILLTRON is?

Ejdl: You do!

Nerdifer: Oh boy, do I ever!

Ejdl: When NKOTB wanted to don their 'social responsibility' persona, they sang 'This One's for the Chilltron'.
The Chilltron of the World...
May God keep them....
nice and cold.....

Nerdifer: We are the world
We are the CHILLTRON!
We are the ones who bring a cooler day so let's not give in!

Nerdifer: Hee hee hee

Ejdl: Live long and prosper Chilltron.

Nerdifer: May you usher in the Summer of Cool.

Ejdl: I’m coming over.

Nerdifer: Sweet. I’ll have the creamsicles ready.

The Heat, She Will Not Stop

It’s a bazillion degrees outside again today. It’s hot. It’s hawwwtt. It’s officially BA-ZOILING. It’s the kind of heat where toweling off after a cold shower immediately covers you in that thin layer of sweat you were looking to rid yourself of. It’s the kind of heat where popsicles melt and drip all over your hands and fall off the popsicle stick and into your lap, making you whine loudly. It’s the kind of heat where you press your back up against the wall of the subway station, in denial of the layers of grime you are leaning on, just because it feels so cool on your back and your neck. It’s the kind of heat where you lie naked in bed at night, sweating through the sheets, comforter tossed aside, pillows thrown on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, shaking your fists at your bad luck for living in a heat-seeking attic apartment! I. CAN’T. TAKE IT ANYMORE!

My garden is dying. The dahlias have burnt. The hostas are limp and wilting. Those things whose name I don’t know, they’re parched. The crab grass has more than just crept in. It has taken over. I would love to stop this all from happening. I would love nothing more than to get in there and weed out the bad stuff and tend to the good stuff. I’d like to take popsicle sticks and twine and set it up so that the morning glories actually climb up to the verandah all dainty and pretty. But you know what? It’s too goddamn hot to be mucking about in the sun. I’ll get sunstroke! Every morning I run out of the house and hope my garden doesn’t see me trying to sneak by. I’m sure the bleeding hearts are shooting me dirty looks. I’m sure the tiger lilies have put a hit out on my life. I’m sure the morning glories are fantasizing about choking me. There’s something quite “Little Shop of Horrors” about a neglected garden. Seriously, I promise you plants, as soon as the heat wave breaks! Just hang in until then!

But it’s never ending. My old window-unit air conditioner works overtime. This morning at 6am I hear skreeeeegh! Kung kung kung kung! Sputtter… Fuzzzzzzzzzz. Whhhhhrrrrrrrr. I leap from my bed, wrenched from sleep. ‘It’s falling out of the window!’ I think, ‘It’s going to go through the porch roof! It’s going to land on my GARDEN! Save the GARDEN!’ I grab the power dial and turn the A/C off. It has been running for almost sixteen hours without interruption. It shudders a bit, exhausted, but doesn’t move in the window frame. I quickly open the neighbouring window to let a supposed existing ‘breeze’ into the room, and then I fall back into bed, hoping for another hour of sleep. And then it occurs to me. I don’t think the air conditioner was actually ever falling out the window. I think it was just dying. That sound? Was the sound of coils breaking, fans giving up hope. It was the sound of entropy winning the battle. This thought distresses me so much that I can’t even test out the theory after my morning shower. I’m just going to leave the air conditioner to rest a bit before I attempt to turn it on again.

What am I going to do without the air conditioner?? The humidex puts the temperature into the forties at mid-day! There is no tangible cooling off overnight! No breeze comes in through the window! Folks, I’m serious: I live in a sauna. In a steamhouse! In Dante’s Raging Inferno! We have had more 30C+ days in this month of June than we had all summer long last year. This isn’t the dog days of summer down on the Louisiana bayou, okay? I live in CANADA. The extreme temperatures are supposed to (and often do,) skew the other way!

My sunburn is peeling too. Which makes my back both sweaty and itchy. It’s a lovely combination. You should try it sometime. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you. “Ever heard of a little thing called sunscreen?” Oh, shut up! The weekend before last I was thrilled that the hot weather had arrived. I was frolicking in the sun with reckless abandon. I overdid it. I admit it. I am a foolish little imp. But I’ve reached my limit now. When I can no longer find a cool corner in my home to escape the heat, I’ve officially learned my be-careful-what-you-wish-for lesson. Rain! Please! Now!

Okay, but not like this. Surely Mother Nature can find me a happy medium.

And I Still Know All the Words

Before Alanis took stage last night, ejdl leans over from her seat and ponders aloud “Do you think she’ll sing the hidden track?” Wow, I think, I don’t even remember that track… It was a capella, right?

Then a single lamp is lit on stage and there she is, singing a capella, bringing us into the evening with the hidden track from 1995’s “Jagged Little Pill”. Ballsy.

Would you forgive me, love
If I dance in your shower?
Would you forgive me, love
If I lay in your bed?
Would you forgive me, love
If I stayed all afternoon?

She is calm, smiling, glowing, and deserving of every wizened look she gives the audience that evening. And she is so happy! She has taken that whining edge off of her voice and softened it to suit both her years and the acoustic setting. And it has so much power behind it. So even though I had organized this girl’s night out for the express purpose of seeing my husband*, Jason Mraz, as the opening act, Alanis stole her own show back with only a few notes.

And I still knew all the words. Mind-blowing.

I’m sitting there at the Hummingbird Centre, twenty-eight years old, a whole ten years packed with experience I would not have had if I had seen her on the original “Jagged Little Pill” tour. But I also feel like that eighteen year old girl again, with every note. I’m both at the same time: me now and me then.

The memories come back fast and furious.

I’m angry with the ex-boyfriend who went to Japan and married his host-sister. I can’t even shake his hand.

I’m driving my Buick Century station wagon (yellow with wood paneling, yeah!) as fast as I can over Oak Hill – dropping it into neutral at the crest of the hill and flying down the backside at dangerous speeds. [We called it the Alanis-mobile, thanks to the video from “Ironic”.]

I’m bored at the bowling alley. I’m hiding red painted finger nails from my mother. [It looks so trashy!]

I’m trying that first cigarette. [“Have you ever had to use an asthma inhaler?” he says. “It’s kind of like that.”]

I am in hysterics after losing a ring of sentimental value at a house party – the one where the empty bottle of peach schnapps got tossed over the fence along with my sanity.

I am screaming “You Oughta Know” at the top of my lungs from the top of the slide at the park behind the hospital. The Dub joins in, also at the top of her lungs. The boys are terrified and get back in their cars.

Alanis IS the soundtrack of my high school senior year. She is sexy and bad-ass and the best goddamn catharsis I have ever heard. And she fucking rocks my eighteen year old world. She shocks the hell out of me and I love every moment of it as she sings:

You took me out to wine, dine, 69 me
You didn’t hear a damn word I said
- “Right Through You”

It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced
Are you thinking of me when you fuck her
- “You Oughta Know”

My brothers they never went blind for what they did
But I may as well have
- “Forgiven”

I don’t want to be your glass of single malt whiskey
Hidden in the bottom drawer
- “Not the Doctor”

But it’s more than just the shock value that reels me in and makes eighteen year old me hold on tight. There’s a depth beneath the shaking anger. She hits all my insecurities with “Perfect”. She bonds with me when she rolls her eyes over her Catholic upbringing in “Forgiven”. (Though not raised Catholic myself, I did have a short phase as an evangelical in the earlier years of high school. I stopped when someone had a seizure during the service and the pastors specifically told people not to help, as she had simply been consumed by the spirit.) She sympathizes with my worry for a friend with a tendency to withdraw and shrink in “Mary Jane”. Alanis Morissette is my best friend, the rebellious older sister I never had, and my own personal GOD at age eighteen.

I never bought another album by her. I thought we just drifted apart. Actually, I thought I outgrew her. And last night she showed me how wrong I was.

Twenty-eight year old me still knew all the words to every song she sang. But this time, I responded to different parts, different keys, different lilts of her voice. To say I was a precautious teenager is putting it mildly. I was Good with a Capital G. I didn’t vandalize, or drink and drive, or experiment with drugs and there was absolutely no sex to my teenage years. I only ever skipped class once and straight-As were a mandatory expectation I placed on myself. Two words describe me:

1) Late
2) Bloomer.

So a lot of that inevitable experimentation with good and bad, right and wrong, and the expansion of my universe happened when I finally felt old enough to be able to keep myself “safe” and mature enough to deal with any of the consequences, should they arise. Alanis afforded herself no such luxury – by the time she released “Jagged Little Pill” she had seen and done it all. But I had not.

It wasn’t until ten years had passed that I could begin to relate to that sharp edge of badness she presented in JLP.

You must wonder why I’m relentless and all strung out
- “All I Really Want”

And every time you speak her name
Does she know how you told me you’d hold me
Until you died, ‘til you died
But you’re still alive
- “You Oughta Know”

The individual lines from “Hand In My Pocket” are like a tuning fork inside me:

I’m high but I’m grounded

I’m young and I’m underpaid

I care but I’m restless

I’m free but I’m focused

I’m hard but I’m friendly, baby

JESUS.

And she giggles when she changes the line in “Ironic” to

It’s like meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful… husband

I still sing the original words. And they send a chill down my spine. I get it now. I didn't then.

I get it all now. Everything that she sang to me then was true then. And it’s still all true now. It just hits me different. It hits me with profound piano keys, instead of wailing guitars and huffing harmonicas. It hits me with the soft purity of her voice and the knowing look in her eyes, instead of that twitching, keening, high-strung wail she used to adopt. Alanis smiles and loves her audience because she’s pretty sure they all get the point of this “Where Is She Now” Tour.

Alanis Morissette, you are still my best friend, my rebellious older sister and my own personal GOD. Thank you for the show.

*In no way is he really my husband.

I’m Telling You, He’s My Husband

Yesterday was spent on pins and needles. I changed my screen name on MSN at least a dozen times in homage to my husband*, Jason Mraz. First came “Fighting tides of an ocean’s undertow”, then came “Unable to inhale all the riches”, and then there was my personal favourite “Which one of us will state the obvious.” They’re all snippets of lyrics from his songs. I was preparing, you see, to see him in concert for the third time – this time only a short forty minute opening set for Alanis Morrisette’s “Jagged Little Pill” acoustic tour.

A gang of six of us – mostly new recruits in my pursuit of Mraz – arrived at the Hummingbird Centre with no time to spare and fumbled our way to balcony seats in the dark while Jason and Toca hummed and beat away to his new single “Wordplay”. I like it. It’s a fun song, radio friendly, but it doesn’t blow my socks off. But I feel that way about the two singles off of “Waiting For My Rocket to Come” – they’re good for radio, but they’re not holy fuck I just lost my mind—great like “Unfold” can be, with Mraz’s voice soaring and peeling like bells, filling up all empty space in the auditorium, tangibly pulling the breath from the audience’s lungs, while he sings of the pull of tides and forces greater than ourselves moving through each other’s lives. I have worn through his live disc on that track because it opens my eyes wider each time I hear it. That voice is why I love my husband*.

Though the set was short, he did not disappoint. He pulled out a bit of new material off the disc due out at the end of next month and the two played back-to-back really struck me. One, a song of lamenting not being the pillar of strength or even of regret for a woman of boundless reserves. (Nice.) The second, and this one really hit strong, was a romping play on words about those first evenings of flirtation. It captures all those certain notes of confidence that set my bell a-ringing. It’s smart and funny and alludes to lots of different, ahem, talents. (Double nice.) And in it, Mraz refers to himself as “The Geek in the Pink”. So, if you know me, you know why this is funny. If you know me and you think I should be better than that, you’re probably disappointed that I was fanning myself by the end of the song. And if you don’t know me, well, just take my word for it: geek+pink=swoon!

No encores for Jason last night, but if it would have had any effect, I would have stood there all night begging for him to come back. Instead, I plunked my swooning self back down in my chair and sent out some text nonsense into nothingness from my phone. What can I say, Mraz has the same effect on me as champagne: itchy fingers on the dial pad.

Then it was onto the main event.

*In no way is he really my husband.