Better than hell

In the past few days, my job has become infinitely more tolerable. When I caught myself cursing the blisters on my feet and bitching about my crappy cheapo tables, I realized a valuable point. When you start the "woe is me" routine about the mundane, things must not be too bad after all.

I'm selling martinis with premium vodka at 12.50$ apiece, I'm turning glasses of water into 6$ Perriers and the Holy Owners now gaze at me with slightly less disdain.

I don't even bother talking to the Waitress Goddesses because they are too busy stressing out about being maintaining their holiness. Besides, I still have not been given any reason to consider them part of the human race. Until then, I am more than happy to ignore their prescence unless absolutely necessary.

The only nagging concern I have is the fact that I am being encouraged to wear short skirts. That would be no problem if only I didn't have to squat down to the low coffee tables to deliver drinks. I have recurring nightmares about customers complimenting on my thong du jour.

Or to ensure myself some comic relief to get me out of a crotch-flashing crisis, I could push martinis that are the same colour as my underwear.

Wish me good tips and cute customers tonight... and pray for no indecent exposure.

I am an oppressed cocktail waitress

I work in an oppressive fascist bar. I wasn't trained, I was put through a two week program that borrows its philosophy from correction institutes. This place breaks you down and does a really shitty job of building you back up. I have nicknamed each of the owners already... Hitler, Stalin, Dr. Phil and Bono. (Sorry, I'm not a fan of Bono. Rockstar turned politician tool. Hence the nickname for the prettyboy waiter turned bratty co-owner. Neither of them do a whole hell of alot in the grand scheme of things, but they are damn good at being as cool as they possibly can.)

New Girl Bootcamp Schedule

Day one:
You are nothing. You are the new girl. You don't know how to make drinks. You have no clue how to serve tables. You don't even know how to hold a tray. This is how you have to hold a tray. This is how you greet people. This is where you stand. This is where you walk. This is how you kiss the owners' asses.

And everything I am telling you, you won't remember because you are the new girl.

Day two: You are not the new girl, you are a new girl. You are the sixth girl I have trained this week. It's sink or swim in this bar and some of you will drown. Serve a table and I will follow you and watch you fuck up. Now, serve another table New Girl, and I will smoke this pack of cigarettes, flirt with my boss and collect the tips you earned for me.

Because I am a higher being and you, lowly cretin, are nothing but a New Girl.

Day three: No more sympathy New Girl. This is your last chance to watch me, the Goddess of Waitressing, and learn as much as you can. You are not permitted to touch anything, but watch and learn. Tomorrow you will be on your own and you must know everything by then. You must strive to be as perfect as me, the Goddess of Waitressing. I can see that you have potential, New Girl. If you are lucky, I will tell you some of my Waitress Goddess secrets to help you rise above the other peons.

New Girl, until you attain perfection, I will treat you like a punching bag.

Day four: You are on your own now. If you have questions, you will get in my way. If you fuck up, the owner will shoot you and carve out your heart and put it with the rest of them in the beer room. I will yell at you and degrade you in front of as many people as possible. At the end of the night, I will compliment you. But that's rare. Remember that.

You still are not worthy.

Day five: I will glare at you. I won't say anything, but I will glare at you.

Learn to fear the Goddesses and the Holy Owners, New Girl.

Day six: This is New Girl Night. I bet you all will lose money tonight. I bet you all will fuck up the credit cards. I bet you all will piss off customers and all I will do is say "I told you so". At the end of the night, a Holy Owner will give you a review of your performance.

You, New Girl, come here. You, unlike the other ones are a competent server and you made good tips. However, you must learn to not ask questions, you must figure it out for yourself. If you ask a question, ask a Waitress Goddess and then she won't tell you the answer and then tell me, Holy Owner #4, how dumb you are. I don't care if the question is about something we haven't told you yet, but have a specific protocol for how it must be done.

We, as the Holy Owners, don't want you to succeed. You are nothing and you will learn to understand that.

Day seven: You will cry. You will be told how dumb you are, how useless you are, and then you will cry. The bartender will tell you that he wants to cry after work. The bartender will tell you that you didn't fuck up too badly, that you will be fine. The bartender will defend you when a Waitress Goddess attacks you.

A Holy Owner will soften slightly and admit that he is hard to work for. Then he will tell you to come in tomorrow, absolutely perfect, and all will be right.

--

For the first time in my 5 years of work experience, I like the customers far more than the staff. How sad. If I last at this bar, I will never treat a new girl like shit. Ever.

i said to my friend yesterday
i wished i never met someone
not out of bitterness
but because i realized that everything i learned from him
i already knew

i said to my friend today
i didn't know what i was talking about
hind sight is always 20/20
an old ex told me that years ago
i already knew that too.

rent a flat above a shop
cut your hair and get a job
smoke some fags and play some pool
pretend you never went to school
'cuz when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all

yeah.

Meet a Reader! Volume 3.

The freshest and spankiest edition of Meet a Reader! is here, featuring a reader from the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia!

This reader was increasing his or her knowledge at an institution for higher learning by Googling "pictures of wedgies". Not thwarted by Google's helpful suggestion to use Google Image Search, this reader scrolled down and discovered the fabulous I Plead Sanity, complete with a picture of a skirt with a picture of a wedgie. We can only hope that I Plead Sanity will continue to further more students' university level educations.

Editor's note:

Scanning the university's website, I quickly learned why someone would google wedgies at a university. The Thomas Jefferson Unversity is polluted by crazy American philosophies, leaving no room for real learning. An example of real learning is what I get at the Concordia Theatre Department. Real learning at the university level can be attained by flopping around on the floor wearing sweatpants trying to "really feel" what it is like being a platapus.

The following quote is from the "Emergency Preparedness" section of the university's website.

"In reaction to our nation’s alert status, and current world events, Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital have taken steps to support you and our campus community during these times of heightened concern. When government officials raise the national alert status, they are telling us to be more aware and vigilant. Information is the key to awareness, and increased information enhances our vigilance. Therefore we encourage you to visit and read the sites we have provided on this page. Each site is designed to help us cope with our present situation, and to support us, should our community experience a hostile act. Bookmark this page now, and refer to it often as you prepare to protect yourself and loved ones."

What a load of shit.

Meet a Reader! is made possible by

Statcounter.com

More addictive than heroin.

Lions and Cats and Kittens... OH MY!

Retarded cats are mating in my living room. Rather, the male is trying to rape his sister. The gene pool is already pretty pathetic for these two beasts and their litter is going to be even worse.

Yes, Bob Barker, I will get my cats neutered and spayed but the job I just acquired is not paying me for training. So as soon as I make some tips, I will dutifully follow your famous instructions. Until then, my days will be spent peeling a horny cat off his traumatized sister who clearly has not sexually matured yet. Or maybe she just views fucking her brother as morally wrong.

Either way, I feel bad for her... if I had a brother I would have a huge problem with him constantly trying to jump me.

Seven... or Hungover and Feeling Philosophical

My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistence with which this number plagues me is far more than a random accident. There is, to quote a famous senator, a design behind it, some pattern governing its appearances. Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution.
-George A. Miller

The doctors told my mother that I was supposed to be born on September the 7th. I was born on September the 17th at 12:47 pm. I am my maternal grandmother's seventh grandchild. My middle name is Septima. Septima has 7 letters.

The seventh chakra is located at the top of the cranium and it is supposed to be *my* chakra, according to Mayan astrology and a pagan tarot card deck.

Seven intrigues me, and I see it everywhere. This makes me wonder if letters, words, numbers and other images humans have created, might have a deeper significance. We have created so many symbols to express ourselves and to describe our experiences. What if these symbols choose us, rather than us choosing them. I am in love with so many words, I am haunted by a number and I know many people who have similar experiences.

Or maybe this just a vain attempt to make sense of the world. Maybe it's just a little coincidence that the seventh song on my cds are always my favorites.

---

Today I went for a walk and I ended up under a beautiful, old tree. Standing there I did two really wonderful things. First, I apologized to myself. I apologized for accumulating piles and piles of shit for two full decades. Then I listened to the silence around me, building up the courage to break it. I needed to scream. I opened my mouth a few times and nothing came out. It was close. Then something finally switched on and I screamed. The silence that came after my little release was so gratifying. It was silence that had somehow been changed after listening to my scream.

I don't scream enough. So it's no wonder I find myself where I am today. I feel that the only thing I have done so far in my life is collect as much bullshit as possible and then keep it all bottled up inside. So, the best thing to do right now, is to start letting it all out.

Screaming today was great. I freed a bit of myself. I got a bit lighter today under that tree. I think everyone should scream a little more often. Go outside, find a magical spot and scream at the space around you. If your scream releases anything, I bet you will find that the space you just yelled at has listened to you.

When you say the right words at the right time or when your voice manages to express the right emotion, it is a really fulfilling experience. Today, I chose a scream to make myself heard.

---

Those two stories seem entirely unrelated but I think I can link them in a really profound yet simple way: We can choose a language to express ourselves and a language can choose us in return. I'm really fascinated with words and letters and numbers and how and why we choose the ones we do. But I also think that some of them choose us. That makes communication and expression all the more significant.

Meet a Reader! Volume 2.

The first volume was never called as such. Besides, I think it creates that special shroud of mystery if you just start at a number other than 1. Maybe there will be some clammering over who knows about the elusive first edition of Meet a Reader!. This could be the stuff of a legacy. Or just the kind of stuff that drowns in the world wide web.

Our featured reader is somebody from Concordia's Department of Fine Arts. I had a nightmare last night that my TA read my blog and added me to his MSN and tried to be friends with me in a really creepy way. "If you won't be my friend, I will lower your grade." It might be my TA, it might not. Either way, I find it odd that someone sitting at a Concordia fine arts computer was reading my blog at 11pm on a Monday night.

Meet a Reader! is made possible by

Statcounter.com
More addictive than heroin.

(to the folks at statcounter: if you wish to use the slogan "more addictive than heroin" just send me an email at queenprocrastinate at hotmail dot com and we can work out a deal.)

Waiter Rant

I posted a link a while back to Edwin Decker's Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat. In the midst of my unemployed frenzy, I came across another equally, if not more, exciting website that educates the common folk of what it really means to work in a restaurant. Waiter Rant is hilarious. And awe inspiring. God, I sound like a bartender groupie. How sad.

Montreal permitting, I will soon have my own bar stories to tell. Actually, who am I kidding... I just need to get off my ass and hand out the stack of resumes I have sitting in my bedroom.

Astral Projection

I was supposed to go out last night but I forgot. I went home after rehearsal, ate some dinner and then went to bed. I woke up at five in the morning with a killer hangover. I have had more than my share of hangovers and I can safely say that I felt very hungover. Disoriented state, swelled head, heavy body, pounding skull, slight nausea... you know.

My only explanation is that while sleeping, I astral projected myself to a bar and got hammered.

Then I got out of bed and stole my neighbour's newspaper.

My horoscope says "Things look darkest before the dawn".

I think my life is really cool.

Super Cool Radical Something

I want. I want. I want.



Screw the kittens. I want a drumming rockstar ferret.

Summer '05 Chronicles Issue 1: Franco-Dragon Ruled Mutant Land

I went all the way to the eastern end of the island... Bout de L'ile or some such unoriginal name for the end of the island. It is the land of the mutants. Fire spouts into the sky. Whole towns teeter on edges of quarries. Noone stepped past 1999 fashion. The mutants just said NON! to the new millenium.

I will elaborate. I went to the end of the island because my friend made me. Apparently if you go as far as you can to the edge of the island (so close you can smell Trois-Rivieres) you will be enlightened. So we played on the traintracks for a bit and I made him really nervous by lying down smack in the middle. Then we almost hopped a freight train to god-only-knows-where-land. But I was wearing Birkenstocks, so we didn't. I had a feeling that my hippie-tofu shoes are not the type of shoes for a train adventure. Then we got back on a bus and I was home about 2 hours later.

About the fire spouting into the sky. That is true. There is a massive amount of land marked off by barbed wire fences and within that area lies a scary mass of metal and towers and light. And smell. It smells really really bad. Every so often there is a super skinny tower that reaches higher than all the others and it spews fire into the sky above. To enhance your reading experience, imagine a "bulemic over-acheiver". I went to high school with one of those. I am sure you did too.

The eve I was there, I saw about 5 different fire-breathing towers. Before I saw those mythical towers, I believed in the legend about the francophone dragon who dwells in that region. A dragon that breathes flame upon anything with an English influence. A dragon that would eat an Anglo but would let a tiny, plastic mini-golf "course" live beside the highway remain. Stupid Franco-Dragon.

Now I accept that it is not a Franco-Dragon, but something straight out of Lord of the Rings. I even saw a hobbit on the bus dressed in a teal blue tracksuit. No velour, just splashy-pants material. It was horrifying.

I am never ever going there again unless I have a gas-mask, some Mutant-Spray and a pair of running shoes. And I will only go there to hop a train that is going really really fast out of that hellish Franco-Dragon Ruled Mutant Land.

Blog Wars

Equation A: Drunk + MSN = bad jokes
Equation B: Bloggers + MSN = even cornier jokes
A + B = blog wars.
I think I win because not only do I know what |337 means, but I know how to type on MSN in a russian accent. And I just started off this post with a mathematical equation. And I am the Queen of Pancakes. I win.

mayor mc cheese says:
hey

septima says:
hi!

mayor mc cheese says:
hows the work comin?

septima says:
good

mayor mc cheese says:
i hope it hasnt been mind bending

septima says:
haha

septima says:
i just did the performance of my year tonight

septima says:
it was a character who relives her gangraper

septima says:
no r there...

septima says:
im drunk

septima says:
she goes to a dance, gets gangraped and then tells the audience about it

septima says:
it was the most emotionally draining piece i have ever done. rehearsing yesterday nearly killed me. between the runs, i would demand a really funny story.

mayor mc cheese says:
jesus...

mayor mc cheese says:
did you get a funny story???

septima says:
oh i got many

septima says:
now i only have one monologue tomorrow (its me onstage tlaking about my life in a theatrical way) and then 2 scenes (really challenging... a crazy psychic and a russian chick) and one monologue (an 81 year old woman) on thursday

septima says:
i cannot belive my brain holds this much

septima says:
i underestimated the poor thing

mayor mc cheese says:
im always pretending to be russian but i dont have to do it for grades...

septima says:
haha i need help on my accent. it really really sucks

mayor mc cheese says:
your brain deserves a rest

mayor mc cheese says:
yeah its hard to do

mayor mc cheese says:
sometimes i sound romanian or slavic which is close but cigars are nill

septima says:
hahah

septima says:
yah im just going for "eastern european" and consistency

septima says:
at this point, i cannot be picky

mayor mc cheese says:
dah.. iss goud plhan dahrlink

mayor mc cheese says:
eastern bloc is still full of fire and vodka

mayor mc cheese says:
well i wish u luck

septima says:
hhahah that actually heps

septima says:
*helps

septima says:
jesus im drunk

septima says:
ok

septima says:
i have to go to bed

septima says:
must act tomrrow at 10am

septima says:
will talk to you later dahlin

septima says:
i mean dahlink

mayor mc cheese says:
dah im surre you vill

septima says:
zank yuu

mayor mc cheese says:
sleep well and haf ghoud dreams darhlink

septima says:
or is it tank yuu

mayor mc cheese says:
dosvidanya butaska krupskaya

septima says:
haha seriously you can totally help me on this accent thign

septima says:
what are you doing wedesdany eveing?

mayor mc cheese says:
i haf no plahns

septima says:
do you haf plahns wit me?

septima says:
to halp me wit my rrussian ahcent?

septima says:
and drrink some vudka and beerrr?

mayor mc cheese says:
yah. i ken help you darhlink

mayor mc cheese says:
with anythink yu vant

septima says:
ooo how nice of yuu

septima says:
well i must get to ze bed

mayor mc cheese says:
well as gentleman of soviet russia it would be pleasure

septima says:
pearhapss we can do ze coknbuul?

mayor mc cheese says:
or de bar fly?

septima says:
pearhaps

septima says:
cahl me dahlink

mayor mc cheese says:
oh yess

mayor mc cheese says:
ill will give yu ring on eve of tomorrow

septima says:
i cahnnot belif that i cahn type in rrussian but i cahn not speak iht

mayor mc cheese says:
hehe

mayor mc cheese says:
ok

mayor mc cheese says:
you get some rest darhlink and dream sweet dreams of moscow by moonlight dah?

septima says:
dah

septima says:
gut night

mayor mc cheese says:
yu too

Coinkidink? I think not!

Yesterday little ol' ADHD me sat down at my computer to write an essay and instead started blogging about who to fuck in the afterlife. Today I checked Statcounter and my lord, the sites that led people to my blog were terrifyingly appropriate.
I invite you all to take a gander...

ADHD writers die a horribly kinky death.

Word of the Day

I learned a new word the other day and I think that it is cooler than argyle socks. Let me enlighten you all....

DEFROCK: verb. dee-fr-o-k. To rob a nun of her holiness.

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.

One question for you all: Does that bring the "defrocker" closer to God? If nuns are supposed to be married to Jesus wouldn't that give the defrocker some holy-Jesus-God properties?

While I'm on the topic of holy sex, who is the Pope banging in heaven? I know my personal heaven would include the best sex that those sexy little angels have to offer. What about the Pope? What fabulous people would he be fucking? No little boys, that has been done on earth a bit too much. I'm thinking beautiful women of epic proportions. But who??

I would like to do Che, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and then Jimi Hendrix. In that order. Kurt Cobain can come too. I toyed with the idea of Shakespeare, but I heard Brits are awful in bed. Maybe in heaven that would change. But I don't know if I would risk it, even if just to say "I just did Bill Shakie".

i really suck at this university thing
not just suck, i mean suck like ol' toothless jane suck
i had months to prepare for this research paper
i started it last night at 11pm sort of
i really didnt write anything until 6 am
you see my friend and i think we are team all-night-essay
we should get some fuckin tshirts
what we are really good at is making a million long distance phone calls
searching for the name of a song
it is the most goddam frustratin thing
when you only know the melody and only three words out of the song
and the chorus is just dadadada and google doesnt help you
and everyone you call only knows the melody too
and says things like "wow i love that song! what is the name of it?"
fuckin eh i wouldnt call you if i knew now would i
jeeperscreepers
thankfully mtlanglo came to my rescue... suzanne vega... tom's diner...
thank you thank you thank you
now i am in my 36th hour and im going crazy
no sorry
i went crazy
what sane person thinks they can write an essay with a friend??

Damn Docs

My whole life I have had awful experiences with doctors. My pediatrician killed himself when he got diagnosed with HIV. My eye doctor died of cancer. My first family doctor escaped the declining Ontario health system and fled to the Grand Cayman Islands. My second family doctor just got diagnosed with breast cancer. I am cursed.

It does not end there.

Before my knee surgery, my doctor made a bad joke about making sure he was about to operate on the right leg. Then he started chattering about Vancouver winning the Olympic bid as I was succumbing to the powers of anesthesia. I knew at that point that things were not going to go well.

Six weeks after that fun time, I broke my leg at my own house party (in case you are wondering, that sucked) and the overnight E.R. doctor told me that the crack in my tibia was supposed to be there. Riiight. Then he went on to lecture me about how the alcohol level in my blood was far above the legal driving limit. If my memory serves me correctly, I think it was 4 or 5 times above the limit. I blame it on the multiple flaming sambuca shots. I tried to explain that one does not drive drunk with a broken leg to the hospital, but he wouldn't listen to me because I was too drunk.

The last PAP smear I had done was conducted by a man. I have no problem with men hanging out in that area, but if I am not going to get off, he can just pass me my pants and I will be on my way. The fact that he was joking around with the nurse that was also peering into me, did not make me feel any less squeamish. "Now, we need you to relax a bit more." Sorry folks, my vagina is shy. And just staring at her is not making her feel any better.

Now my ear hurts. Alot. I am afraid my left ear is going to fall off my body. They are may just be decorational pieces on the sides of our heads but I still like them. I have not had an ear infection since I was six years old. I am deathly afraid of what will happen when I go to the doctors this afternoon. Either I will be told that the doctors have all caught some fatal disease and my ear will just have to fall off on its own, or the doctor will look at my ear and blame the infection on my weak ankle or some other unrelated ailment that dwells within my body.

Either I have abnormally bad luck or my doctors need more training. A dose of immortality can't hurt.

s...o...s

if there is a god
please please let him give me the strength i need to delete snood
failing that
can someone come over and delete snood for me?
it is sucking my soul
i cannot do anything any more
but play this game
and listen to dj shadow
and think about all the other things i could be doing instead
that i am fairly sure would be more productive than playing this cursed game
i close my eyes
i see their little faces
lined up in rows
purple ones talk to me
red ones scare me
please please
i need an exorcism
of snood
it has posessed me
does the catholic church still do exorcisms?
shit
the pope died
will the church go on???
does it really matter??
someone please
please help me

if anyone out there
has my ailment
please help
if you are one of the lucky ones
do not
i repeat do not
download this game

Fashion scares me

The Japs have comitted fashion crime once again.

What is even scarier is that these imitation see through skirts only have pictures of wedgies or bad panites. Jeeesus H. At least put some cute underwear on those things. Or if you must display the boring whities, can't they at least fit properly? This is not fashion. This is a wedgie nightmare.

Why oh why cruel world WHY?
Mitch Hedberg is dead, Hunter S. Thompson has passed... and the Pope is on his merry way to the ground as well.
THREE icons of humour... gone. Sigh... who will make me laugh now?

I don't trust anything on April Fool's Day. But I learned two things this morning that I hope so desperately are true:

1) Pat O'Brien is in rehab and some poor poor sod is stuck in the same rehab centre as the Master of Smarm. Please please let this be true.

2) I am being offered 200$ to get out of this apartment a week before my lease is up. The trolls that dwell in the apartment below me are moving to my apartment when I leave. They anticipate a mess so large that Mr. Clean would run away from it. Smart little trolls they are. The reason why I love this so much is because it gives me one last chance to piss them off... maybe I won't leave early. Suckers.