Author Archives: Candice

Shotgun Weekend

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Ah, the weekend. Two weeks ago, I didn’t have these. If you don’t have a job, go to school, or belong to a religion that observes a holy day of some sort, the week has no beginning, and no end. It’s an endless loop of doing whatever the fuck you want. You don’t know what day of the week it is, and it doesn’t matter. You don’t know what time it is, and it doesn’t matter. If you feel like getting drunk at 10am on a Tuesday, that’s alright. You can go to bed at 4pm, and wake up hungover at midnight. If you feel like using an entire day to alphabetize everything in your house, that’s fine, too. You won’t feel like you’ve wasted time you could have used to do something that was somehow better. You don’t need to feel like you’re having the most fun, the best possible fun, the most fun per ounce, every second of your free time, every single day — because time is one thing you’re definitely not short on.

But this weekend shit is stressful. I don’t need all this pressure to have a good time. I kind of feel like sitting here, doing absolutely nothing, which is pretty much what I am actually doing. But I feel like I could be enjoying myself so much more effectively doing something else. I’m going to regret this later on, I know it. Tonight, just as soon as I realize that there were so many other things I could have done instead, and I missed the opportunity. Definitely tomorrow, when it’s Sunday, and it’s my last chance to get things done (before 5pm when everything closes, at that — talk about pressure). And on Sunday night, when it’s the last minute, it’ll really already be too late. I’ll have to go to bed early to wake up on Monday. Ah, Monday. When I’ll want to shoot myself in the face for having wasted the weekend.

I really kind of like sitting around doing nothing. So why does it feel like such a waste of time? Or, why should I feel like wasting time is not something I should be okay with?

Sick of being lied to by juice

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If you’re going to call the flavour of your juice “orange tangerine”, the main ingredient shouldn’t be apple juice. It’s a good thing I happen to like apple juice, and that I knew what I was in for (reading labels is good for you), because otherwise this entry wouldn’t be so short, and I’d be missing reality television in a few minutes. But I’m just sayin’. It’s not even technically a lie, I guess. There are oranges and tangerines (which were also oranges, last time I checked) in there somewhere. It’s worse. They’re trying to be sneaky. Goddamn disingenuous beverages!

This is why we [couldn’t] have nice things.

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pigs 1, originally uploaded by mariacaridad.

Sean and I are so over filthy, deadbeat roommates. We’re doing the post-filthy, deadbeat roommate cleanup this weekend. Pro-tip: do not live with filthy deadbeats! Even if they are (ostensibly) your friend, and they’re suddenly desperate for a place to stay. You will hate your life. Definitely don’t do it three or four times in a row, either. Fuck, don’t live with friends, period. You let them slip once, because they’re a little short on rent and they’re your friend, after all… you’ll never see a single cent on time again.

Actually, don’t live with anyone. Hell is other people. So true. Sartre knew what he was talking about.

We’ve rented a steam cleaner to prevent weeds being able to grow in our carpet due to the layer of topsoil that has accumulated. (I still don’t understand the whole American shoes on in the house thing. Is this attitude somehow perpetuated by Stanley Steemer?)

Last night I washed, dried, and then bleached the walls in the empty room — and they’re still grimy as hell. Looking forward to paying to have this place repainted when we move out.

Just a while ago, I started (but could not finish without a sand-blaster) washing the sink full of dirty dishes that was lovingly left for us, all with food baked on and burnt on. Hadn’t even been soaked. Awesome!

(Side-note: I grew up with three siblings, and these days I don’t have many possessions. Both of those factors make me very aware of the things I do own. In doing the count putting those dishes away today, the missing items are as follows: two plates, a bunch of spoons, the lid to a sugar bowl, four shot glasses, quite a bit of Tupperware, and exactly eight forks — including every single dessert fork I had).

I’m about to go clean out the fridge, because it’s full of crumb-filled, squished-up margarine wrappers (ew, can’t believe I even let that filth in my apartment in the first place), “mystery” items, and coffee grounds. I hate everything about coffee. Especially the smell. Especially the taste. Especially cleaning up the coffee grounds from every inch of the kitchen, and the coffee ring and splatter stains on the counter (with bleach — the counter is white). But I won’t have to do it every single day anymore. So one last time only makes me mildly livid.

All this BS (plus cleaning the bathroom, floors, and well… everything else, all the time, because nobody else was ever going to do it), and we still haven’t gotten October’s rent. Definitely worth the hassle… I’m so happy we won’t have to deal with this anymore! And I’m so happy that now that I’ve got a job, I’ll be able to spend some money on buying nice things to put in our apartment without having to worry about them being ruined. Hells yes to no longer living in an apartment that looks like a dorm room!

Remeber me, Internet?

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Yeah, so I’ve had a working internet connection for a while now. I’ve just been neglecting my site on account of eleventy-billion things have happened recently. I gots me a new job, doing web design junk for some company or other. We gots us a new roommate around here, and he even pays rent (on time and in full, like WTF)! We gots us rid of and old roommate, which is alright by me, because I was getting kind of sick of being treated like a maid / provider of complimentary toiletries. Perhaps he thought that this was a hotel. But, perhaps not. Hotels generally expect you to pay. Meh! Hm, also Sean got back from tour, so we had to reacquaint, by which I mean that we had to drink beer and get caught up on all the episodes of South Park / It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia / The Simpsons and whatever other dumb shit we watch (47 braincell-destroying reality shows, mostly) (you know, this irritates me every time I want to italicize a title — I know that the italics tag is supposed to be deprecated, but that’s retarded, because sometimes I really do want to explicitly indicate that something should be in italics, not just that I want to emphasize it, and I shouldn’t have to make a CSS class called “title” just for that, because FUCK).

I’m pretty well back in equilibrium now, though. So maybe I’ll get back to the posting. And maybe I won’t. That’s just the way things work around here. Some of those months that are missing from the archives were due to catastrophic data loss, but plenty of them are missing because blogging is for losers. Or also because I didn’t have internet and was sleeping on other peoples’ floors, etc. etc. You could always just read my Twitter updates, anyway. They say the same thing, but they’re much more concise. And the thing is, if I complain about something on Twitter first, it seems pointless to me to bring it up again here, thus saving the internet from lengthy rants about nothing of consequence.

I’m sleepy. Bye now.

I am slowly going crazy, 1-2-3-4-5-6 switch!

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So, it turns out that AT&T can’t get me reconnected until the 16th. Full-length rant is forthcoming, but I’m going to give myself a little time to get angrier, first. I might call Covad/Speakeasy and see if there’s anything they can do for me, because I’d love to get rid of AT&T altogether, but it looks like my cheapest option without having to bother with a useless dialtone is more than $50. At least I’ve got tons and tons of stuff to watch until then. And at least I’ve got some form of internet. Don’t know what I’d do without RSS. Die, probably.

Jynnan tonnyx and Jeeves & Wooster time.

Wondering where I’ve been?

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I had a life on the weekend, and my internet was out for the last two and a half days. On top of that, Sean is leaving for his tour tomorrow, so there have been all sorts of people running around over here getting ready, and I’ve got a ton of things to help him with before he heads out. I’ll be back to my usual internet addiction over the weekend, but on Monday my internet will be disconnected in preparation for having AT&T switch me over to dry loop DSL (if you didn’t know you could do this, it’s new, and you can read about it over at The Consumerist — pay attention to the comments, because the phone number given doesn’t apply to all areas). I’m not sure why I have to be disconnected for two days, but that’s just how it works, apparently. It’s worth it to me to save $30 or so a month on a phone line I never wanted nor used in the first place. My internet will be back up and running again (in theory) on the 10th. Whee. See ya.

Fellow broke-asses: learn some damned math.

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Most of the people I associate with online and off are college students, college dropouts, freelancers, or artists of various sorts. I fall into several of those categories, myself. None of us have a lot of much any money, so it is absolutely necessary to economize. Sometimes this means buying the cheapest available products. Buying the cheapest products requires determining exactly which products those are.

A small bottle (14 oz.) of mustard costs $1.89. A bigger bottle (20 oz.) of mustard costs $2.19. Which bottle of mustard is cheaper? Duh. The small one. Which mustard is cheaper? Duh. The mustard that comes in the bigger bottle. Which one do you buy? Well… a bottle of mustard doesn’t go bad for upwards of a year. Duh. Buy the bigger one. Hell, buy the biggest one (I took the prices from Peapod, and they don’t have many options to choose from). You’ll probably want to make sure you buy the least expensive brand, too. Because it’s freakin’ mustard. Seriously. The ingredients consist mainly of water, vinegar, and mustard. You’re not going to notice much of a difference.

Unless you’re buying something that goes bad quickly (bread, for instance, and even then, you could potentially freeze it — not that you can usually buy bread in bulk anyway), you should almost always buy the biggest size possible. Or whichever option has the lowest price per unit (the local Jewel has smallest sizes of antihistamines and aluminum foil priced lower per unit than the largest — I presume they must have some sort of logic behind that). This doesn’t even require math skills anymore. Most stores have unit cost on their labels these days.

But what do I see people doing time and time again? Buying the smallest, cheapest possible unit of things (and often the smallest option is a brand name, bumping the ppu up even more). What suckers! You could have been saving those extra pennies, or at least buying beer with them (maybe economizing = more beer* will motivate you). Way to stay broke for the rest of your life! The usual excuse is “but I don’t have enough money to get everything I need, if I don’t buy the smallest one.” Okay. Fine. That works. For the tail end of one paycheque. Next time, think ahead. If you always go with the most cost effective option instead of the (momentarily) cheapest option, you won’t have to rebuy everything 12 times a month. You’ll just have to refill them as they run out, which will be much less frequently.

Now, times when you might want to consider buying things that are smaller or more expensive do pop up. Maybe you don’t have much storage space. Maybe the brand name of something is watered down. Maybe you don’t have a car and you can’t carry the largest fricken’ sack of potatoes home. Maybe when it comes to things other than groceries, it’s better to spend $150 on a pair of shoes that will last you 5 years than to buy a pair of $25 shoes every six months (plus, guys, better shoes will get you chicks). I’d tell you to work out the math, but if you can’t even figure out which bottle of mustard to buy, you’re a lost cause, anyway.

P.S. If you’re broke, stop buying bottled water. Seriously. You’re a moron.

P.P.S. 1-ply toilet paper won’t save you money. It’ll tear up your ass, and you’ll just use three times as much of it. 3 x 1-ply = 3-ply. It’s Cottonelle in bulk for my posterior.

* Not that you should be drinking beer, when it’s so much more cost and time effective if you buy the hard stuff.

I have new books. Screw you, Internet.

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I don’t have much to say right now, Internet.

So. #1. I don’t know whether anyone ever looks at all the junk in my sidebars, but if my blog is temporarily boring, you can always get everything in that Google Reader Shared box over there formatted as its own fancy little blog. If I’m not posting shit, it’s probably because I’m having a life, doing something productive (riiiiight — but it actually happened the last few days), or spending time with my other favourite glowing box. But I usually check my RSS feeds, and I hit the share button pretty frequently. Most of the posts I share are about hating Jesus, being frustrated by creduloids, Chicago, Toronto, or good ol’ Random Crap. If any of those interest you (who the hell doesn’t love Random Crap), you win. If you’re extra super fond of Stupid or Random Crap, you could also pay closer attention to my YouTube Favorites, also available as an RSS feed. Kind of makes me wonder how many other bread crumb trails there are of mine that I’m leaving all over the internet, that I haven’t cared about / used / discovered yet. Let’s find out! Okay, let’s not.

#2. I forgot what number 2 was supposed to be while I was writing number 1.

#3. There never was any number 3.

Fuck Ron Paul

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That’s all I have to say about that.

And fuck all you pseudo-Libertarian (hell, big L or little l) douchebags, too.

…

Not really having anything to do with Ron Paul, though, but…

Why is it that so many intelligent people that I respect for so many reasons happen to be dipshit libertarian asshats? Why?

Penn & Teller. Trey Parker & Matt Stone. Why? Seriously. What the fuck. They’re so smart, otherwise.

Is it just because as Americans, they’ve seen the government fuck up so badly that they can’t see any solution other than getting rid of the whole damned thing? Or what.

I dunno. I’m drunk. But I’m also Canadian, and a semihemidemi-socialist.

More taxes for everyone!

Yayyyyyy taxes!