Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

Yesterday there was a piece of mail waiting for me, courtesy of one of my credit card companies. Much to my pleasant surprise, upon the front of it were the words "Happy Birthday." Granted, it was a generic preprinted sort of thing, but the fact that a giant corporation would notice/care about some pithy little peon's birthday was almost touching.

With great anticipation, I opened the envelope...

...and beheld an application for a life insurance policy. Well, there goes that "almost touched" feeling, right down the drain and into the sewage treatment plant.


In other news, I'm rather tired of a multitude of things, the least of which is Christmas music. Why, of why must I be told how Rudolph was the most specialest reindeer of all? And no less, in a voice that sounds like a lounge lizard? At least give us classics like "Vincent the Christmas Virus" or "The Night Santa Went Crazy."

Please?

Oh, and it appears our cat has a shoe fetish. And by fetish, I mean "illicit trysts I end up walking in on, only to see Chance entwined in a disturbingly romantic sort of way with Mel's flats." It's reasons like this that I really regret turning on the lights to see why the cat is making odd sounds.

Labels: happy birthday and perchance are you going to die soon, hot cat on shoe action

posted by Phillip at 10:00 PM

 

There has been work. Lots of work. Already I find myself infused with a more than healthy dose of vile loathing for the Commercialmas season. (And for once, the weather is an irrelevant factor.) You could chalk it up to the extended mall hours that force me to linger at the store longer than is really necessary...because, and I'll be brutally honest, if you absolutely need a suitcase at 9:25pm, it had better be because the one you were otherwise going to use for that 1am flight spontaneously combusted.

You could also (wisely) suggest I may be aggravated by the deluge of Christmas music. It started in the mall last week--even earlier in some stores--and after a single 4-hour shift at the kiosk, I was ready to take the duo singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" and bury them in a snowdrift if only to make them shut up.

But...alas...it's Head Office that incurs my ire. Mostly because they felt I needed roughly 20 full sets of luggage delivered to us over the past week. As a result, despite my best efforts, the back half of the store is nigh inaccessible, and it looks like the suitcases are trying to sneak up and attack the cash area.

I'm waiting for my District Manager to show up tomorrow and not be amused. It's fun when that happens, since some idiot at Head Office gets a swift kick in their head-up-the-ass, and something is actually done about it.

But on the other hand, lest this seem entirely like a case of grumblypost, sometimes Head Office does unexpectedly amuse me at times. (Like all those n's in additional.) Consider today, when I received two boxes with a most curious label upon them:


This naturally got me to scratching my head in a curious sort of fashion; when last I'd checked, our store had not yet branched into selling undergarments. Was there in fact a memo I had missed? Had a box from La Senza accidentally made its way into our stock? (Which would have been a feat unto itself, since our shipments are delivered via a company truck.) And why were we only selling 36C's? Surely that's not the only cup size out there, and wouldn't we be descriminating against other bosom sizes by not selling those?

All this pondering turned out to be for naught. Turns out Head Office had cannibalized a box from some other company or whatnot, and used it to transport their own goods to us. All I found inside were briefcases and scarves. But hey, in the end it served as a great bit of blog fodder, so I suppose it wasn't all pointless.

In other news, if you're like me (I know, I know, heaven forbid) and have asked the age-old question, "who would win in a fight: a jellyfish or a salmon?", apparently it's the jellyfish who will be doing the ass-kicking:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071121/sc_afp/nirelandbritainanimalsfish

It does seem disturbingly appropriate, I suppose. Do jellyfish even have asses to speak of, let alone to get handed to them? But at any rate, at least that's one Versus debate settled. Now all that's left is to answer the epic "ninja vs. pirate" and "caveman vs. astronaut" debates.

Today's Lesson: happiness is a surprisingly large Appa plushie in your hands.

Labels: bras instead of brief(cases), jellyfish vs salmon

posted by Phillip at 4:15 PM

 


Our kitchen smells like meat. This is a distinct and welcomed step up from days ago, when it smelled like burnt popcorn. Yes, I burned popcorn. You can add that to the growing list of reasons I probably shouldn't be let near the kitchen or any sort of appliance/power tool. But hey, it makes for interesting conversation. Who else can regale your friends with stories of oven-baking kettles, exploding milkshakes and flashfried microwave popcorn?

In other news, for anyone who has not yet been illuminated by the brilliant Edward Gorey (who gave us The Gashlycrumb Tinies, the most morbid ABC's book you'll never read to your kids), you should start googling right away. Or better yet, seek the nearest bookstore and purchase his books.

For the rest of you, I give you a Gorey fan's brilliant fanart. It was all brought on by an actual article from the Boston Globe:


And so alas, there were no Tribbles for Gorey. So this LJer helps us take a look at what "The Trouble With Tribbles" would look like if Gorey had written it. (You can find her LJ entry here: http://shaenon.livejournal.com/48834.html?style=mine#cutid1)

Labels: Edward Gorey, the popcorn it burns, tribbles

posted by Phillip at 9:34 PM

 
It's not been a good week all around; I'd rather this particular bit of nowhere could just be me griping about the usual ills & ilk that seems to come with Head Office. Things like that are here today to annoy us, but then easily forgotten by tomorrow. I cannot say that is the case right now.

Last Monday saw the passing of one of my best and oldest friends, Hugh Hill. And it's knocked the wind out of my proverbial sails. It's pretty much the reason I've been more reclusive than usual this week.

Hugh was the librarian at EBC, and because of him I met his brother, John, who later on became one of my closest friends and best man at my wedding. I owe the both of them more than I can say--in experiences and humour, in academics and friendship.

Hugh was the kind of guy you wanted to introduce your friends to, because once they met him, you'd go up in their estimates: "Wow, if a guy like Hugh thinks you're decent, I guess you're not as much of a schmuck after all!" He was the kind of person I wanted to become, not in a single white female sort of way, but in the manner he lived his life.

He always had time to listen, to talk and to debate whatever if was you wanted to debate. He held multiple degrees from both Laurier and the U of W, and was more intelligent than I could ever hope to be, and amazingly he never flaunted it. I honestly don't think he ever felt the desire to. He was gentle, kind and always seemed to watch the world with a smile, like he simply understood something we just happened to miss in the moment.

And for anyone who'd think he was a stuffy, antequated librarian, Hugh's sense of humour was dry, witty and razor-sharp. I remember one day where he, John and I were lounging in the library one day, and he & John spontaneously broke out into the opening "migrating swallow" scene from Monty Python & The Holy Grail. And he balanced out his love of rare books, birdwatching and astronomy with playing Resident Evil games. (He'd worked through about three-quarters of RE4.)

A few months ago, John let me know that Hugh had been diagnosed with Amyloidosis. It's rare, it attacks the vital organs and it has no cure. With Hugh, the disease was primarily attacking his heart. Hugh's prognosis was that he'd have anywhere between 2 - 10 years to live, and that was with treatment. Everyone, especially the doctors, were very hopeful and optimistic. Monday was supposed to be his first day of treatment.

Early Monday morning, October 29, 2007, Hugh suffered massive kidney failure and was admitted into the hospital. Two hours later, his heart failed and the world lost one of the coolest librarians it will ever know. I think the suddenness is what still rubs me so raw. By all accounts, Hugh was in decent health and high spirits the day before he died: he was out with friends, attending church and spending it like any other Sunday. A number of his close friends spent the evening in his company...and not twelve hours later, he was gone.

This sort of thing shouldn't happen to someone like Hugh, pure and simple. Hugh's the kind of guy who deserved to see his kids grow up, to see any future grandkids grow up. He wasn't even 50. This is something I don't think I'll ever truly understand, and even if I did, I rather doubt I'd still agree with it in the slightest.

And now...now I'm not sure where that leaves me. I attended the wake and the funeral, and somewhere in between John & I spent the night half-drunk and toasting to good memories amidst blasting the crap out of scary-looking mutants in Bioshock.

The world hasn't crashed to a stop for me. There are still a lot of reasons, a lot of good reasons, to keep moving. But one of its better travellers is no longer there, and I feel lonelier for it, and I think my own walk is going to be a little slower than usual for a while longer.

This isn't a soapbox I'm dragging out to stand atop of and clamour for attention. It's not a rallying cry for an outpouring of condolences. Today's nowhere is as much a marker as I can manage at this moment in time. One day I hope to look back at the date of this entry, and recall more than just the hollow feeling that currently gnaws at my gut.

It's worthwhile to remember the reasons I had to smile around Hugh in the first place, and why I wanted to enjoy his company whenever possible. I'll treasure the sound of his voice, the laughter that would always come about when he & John conspired together, and the way he could imitate John Cleese as the (invincible!) Black Knight. In death, I can at least remember how he lived, and how much my own life was enriched because he was there.

There's an Irish funeral poem that goes:





Good-bye, Hugh.

Labels: Hugh Hill

posted by Phillip at 8:38 PM