Posts From the Edge

Have spent yet another Saturday in my campus office bent over school books. Only the difference this time is I actually did something. You are now reading the words of a woman who is not only making headway with her dissertation proposal (see yesterday’s post), but is finally starting to make sense of her ritual studies proposal. V.G.

However, the drunks at the bar downstairs depress me whenever I go down for pop from the machine. Up here in the academic part of the building life is peaceful and serene, but, as I am reading a long series of articles off the library article data base (and this makes me sea-sick), I am consuming my weight in Ginger Ale every hour to keep from losing the contents of my stomach on the monitor. This forces me to wade through a swarm of beer-soaked undergrads hourly. Not V.G.

Not much going on otherwise, but many things have been irking me, or at least grabbing my attention. I take this as a sign that my apathy may be releasing its grip on me (finally). Maybe it is the snow we are getting today, but this would fly in the face of all the science of seasonal mood trends.

Ha! I knew that sunless crap was bull.

I am currently thinking of starting up a Ladies’ Kissables Temperance League (the ladies part is fairly tacked on, but it sounds more turn-of-the-century, and therefore more amusing to me right now). If you have never seen a Kissable, I can try to fill you in. These things are the Devil’s play toys. They are tiny Hershey’s Kisses (or crack cocaine mixed with and shaped into tiny Hershey’s Kisses, I haven’t decided which), enrobed in a hard and oh-so-tasty candy shell, and they come in Devilicious colours. I, for one, have never been able to resist blue candy. Who can?

In any case, I bought a bag on Thursday and they are already gone. Now my baser, more self-destructive impulses are devising ways to tunnel back to Zeller’s, the only place I have found this little treat. I remain, however, resolved not to crawl back to the dealer and beg for one more fix. I am strong, and I will purge this evil confection from my soul.

We had take-out nachos from the campus pub tonight, so my gut is severely rejecting them. (Onion greens and woozy monitor-reading do not a happy tummy make, I guess.) The place, Wilf’s, is much better than most campus pubs, and it is large, bright and attractive (like me, really). However, it does have one massive thing in common with the Phoenix from McMaster.

You have never been fully ignored as a customer until you have been willfully and expertly ignored by a waiter at a campus pub. Little hipsters with mohawks and tight jeans that show their underwear (both male and female employees for both of these characteristics, by the way) who are more interested in changing the CDs and flirting with each other than just bringing you your damn bill. These kids are pros at crappy customer service- you can stare at their faces for five minutes, and they still manage to look right through you. French waiters must come all the way from Paris just to study under these kids. It’s not just that they ignore you, it’s like, to them, you don’t exist at all. It’s fascinating, really.

It’s like their stylists have convinced them that they are so bloody fantastic that we should just feel blessed to be in the same room with them, let alone have them pop up and say “Everything cool, guys? SUPER!” and dash away (without waiting for an answer) every hour. What are they expecting? Sam Phillips, or his millennial equivalent, to just come in and sweep them off to LA based purely on their ability to wear paper-thin “printed tees” like they were anemic club kids from Omaha. (Let’s face it- we’re in Canada, folks, so whatever they wear must be at least three seasons behind New York, so I figure it’s just right for Omaha.)

I wonder what they would do if the dumpy and entirely unfashionable PhD student at the bar just smashed everything in reach, hauled her tired old arse up on the bar, and screamed:

“Hey! Mod-Squad turds! I want my %#@*! cup of coffee NOW, or the little himbo bartender’s bed-head is gonna be impaled on that waiter’s spiked wrist band! Then you shall bring me my bill, take the money right there, and then go wash all the freaking vampira mascara off every male creature on the staff! Got it?”

Trendy hipster bar tenders would tell that story from generation to generation, until the waiters are wearing DEVO-esque moon suits with cropped hair and oxygen masks… Which will probably be in about three months, I guess.

Man, life would be great if it weren’t for people, huh?

And if you lived in a mineshaft filled with Hershey’s Kissables… That would be nice.