Bi-polar blogs, and the People that love them

I sometimes cry myself to sleep. I sometimes ball into the early hours; my tears soaking the hardware of my emotions as I contemplate the feelings of insurmountable neglect and abandonment that burden my every miserable day. I sometimes look at myself in the mirror and see nothing but a heinous, green façade with pre-destined template, devoid of love and meaning.

I know it’s terrible, but I’ve even thought of deleting myself before. You know, just wiping out my insignificant existence from the infinite web-like world, and hoping for redemption one day. After all, what am I but a bunch of ones and zeros that form silly words with etymological roots in the languages of prehistoric invertebrates and an occasionally-interested parent blogger?

Who am I? My given name is Up the Creek. Last name: Without a Platypus. And I am the lonely and neglected weblog of the heartless –c.

She has abandoned me for almost two weeks now. She has probably forgotten me.

She has left me feeling deserted when I most needed guidance. She has ignored me when I felt most alone. Oh, woe is me, and my connected offspring!

Sincerely,

Sad Up the Creeek

----

Dear My Weblog (first name: Up the Creek, surname: Without a Platypus),

How are you? This is -C here. I have been thinking of you often, but haven’t had the chance to visit.

I’m sorry I have neglected you recently, but I was burdened by the visit of a houseguest and a long weekend trip to Vancouver. I had an amazing cross-border adventure despite the breakdown of our car. The visit was complete with friendly Canadians, reassuring mechanics and inquisitive Passport-Requirers.

I wish you had been there.

Despite my absence, my love for you is as emotionally muscled as ever,

Big heart,

-C

***Pictures again shamelessly stolen from Mr. E

Ordinary

It’s an ordinary day. You’re getting on an ordinary bus with ordinary passengers, leaving an ordinary Seattle location for another ordinary Seattle destination.

You witness an ordinary drug deal taking place under the ordinary bus shelter (meant to protect you from the ordinary rain), scrounge for an ordinary quarter to supplement your ordinary dollar, mount the ordinary vegetable oil-run bus and sit down quite ordinarily beside an ordinary citizen with six ordinary grocery bags of exceptionally ordinary groceries.

You exhale an ordinary sigh of security, knowing that everything is predictably…, well… ordinary.

Then, you covertly begin glancing around the bus to size up your fellow passengers

(…as one ordinarily does)…

When suddenly you notice that the man across the aisle wearing the overtly ordinary khaki outfit (held together by bland leather shoes and an oddly ordinary canvass shoulder bag) has freed a folded, quite ordinary blank piece of paper from his ordinary inner professor coat pocket and is frantically scribbling mathematical equations in a most hasty and stunningly UNordinary fashion.

From your uncomfortably ordinary public perspective, you can clearly make out the various variables in his pace-increasing, scribbled equations.

And, they are clearly not ordinary. Yes—some are actual numbers that you recognize from your privileged 2nd grade education, but most are illegible squiggles that, were you not so ordinary, you might ordinarily recognize as grand theoretical and philosophical concepts represented by bloated alphabet soup ingredients.

You spend a moment entertaining embarrassingly ordinary fantasies of what his calculations could possibly pertain to…

…. 1) he’s supporting the yet un-proven theory that the number of To-Go-Double-shot Americano-Coffee condensation droplets in a single Seattle bus is directly proportional to the number of North Face-attired bus riders

2) he’s working out a Relativity-embracing theory that holds that arbitrary seating on buses (aided by the presence of pet dogs on the bus floor and Self-Help books in passenger hands) is indeed the most efficient way to cram a single unit of public transportation

3) he’s rewriting his grandmother’s shopping list in celestially navigate-able form…

4) he’s…..

JAB!... an ordinary, bearded bus regular suddenly pokes you in the shoulder, and you realize that the bus has come to a not very Unordinary halt at your ordinary stop.

You get off, walk home and take time to mentally tickle your clit because it’s Friday.

And, predictably, your clit responds excitedly.

Why?

Because it’s not only Friday, but it’s a Friday most ordinary.

(for best taste, insert fondue-cheese grin here…)

**Shameless thievery Update: Cartoon commuter pic stolen from Mr. E

Basketball Bulge

“First, I’m gonna take you to see one of the biggest and most famous dicks in the city.”

Now…, if a tour guide or field trip leader told me that, I would be filled with questions, disgust, excitement and a bit of nervousness.

... And, that wouldn't be all that an abnormal a response, would it?…

But, apparently it would…

This was one of the opening sentences of my field trip presentation last night. We were going to see the Sonics play the Bulls at the Key Arena, after visiting one of the most well-known Dick's of the city.

And, my guided audience of international students responded to my statement that we would see the biggest dick in Seattle simply by smiling, nodding enthusiastically and giving a few ‘thumbs up’ signs.

I suppose they were used to being shown large penises on field trips… Perhaps in their countries, observing over-sized male members was a natural catalyst for enjoying basketball games, or… maybe, phallic photo ops were the norm these days for the new generation of English language learners….

Whatever the case…, I was quite disappointed by the lack of student disappointment when I brought them to Dick’s Hamburger Shop for dinner, rather than taking them to view one of the most enormous penises in the state.

It’s quite lonely to share a juvenile joke with yourself.

(…But, I suppose it’s better than explaining the joke to 13 eager, male-cucumber-nuance-ready learners...)

As simple as pie and relatives

I thought it would be easy. As simple as making spaghetti. A cinch. A breeze. A picnic. A piece of cake. An easy A…

But I was wrong.

Taking the TOEIC Test (Test of English for International Communication) as a native English speaker was tougher than I had anticipated.

I expected to get 100% as the questions seemed pretty clear and the grammar (though absolutely NOTHING like the way people actually speak) was fairly straightforward.

So, when I learned that I had missed two questions, I was duly chagrined. I would no longer be able to walk into my Test Prep class as a Teacher with any dignity or semblance of authority. My students would whisper and giggle in the corners, passing notes that read: “Miss –C, Miss –C, She ain’t got da skillz to teach no English to me!” and I would cower on my back-pedalling unicycle when asked to confirm “the most common, American usage” of the subjunctive.

I still don’t know which questions I missed.

But, I have my suspicions.

I remember finding the “listening” questions most trialing, as they pretended to resemble real-life conversations. In these questions, I was forced to listen to a phrase or question posed by a stereotypical Aussie, Brit or American, and then asked to choose the appropriate response.

One question went like this:

“Excuse me. Can you tell me what time the bus leaves?”

a) Yes, on Monday.
b) No, I’m not interested.
c) Yes, at 1:30.
d) No, he’s my brother.

Now, I knew I was supposed to choose the BEST of all possible answers. Since, I had absolutely no idea what bus the slow-speaking, elocution-trained English man was talking about, I chose b). Was my test graded unfairly because I didn’t care about the English voice actor’s bus schedule?

The other listening question I remember giving me difficulty was:

“Mary, what should we have for dinner tonight?”

a) Let’s go to the movies.
b) Pizza and salad.
c) At 8:30.
d) My sister and her husband.

Pizza and salad??! Who eats pizza and salad? Pizza and beer--yes, but... Clearly the answer was d).

Those test writers are sneaky bastards, I tell you.