I was supposed to start a new job today, but I turned it down. I have no desire whatever, to be on this side of the border selling health insurance to people on that side of the border. It's far too afield for me. There's no way in hell I could manage this without sounding dishonest. I have an inherrant dislike of lies, of telling lies, and have never been a good liar. Every once in a while I can dissemble when I need to, but I'd really rather not. The more you lie, the more you have to remember.

I always wondered why it was that check and checkmate in a game of chess are centered on the king, when it is the queen that is the most powerful piece on the board. I suppose she is the woman behind the man, like some struggling Victorian housewife who gets the shaft while her husband gets the glory. I haven't played a game of chess in years, and probably won't again. I entered a tournament once when I was ten or so, but have no desire to revive the habit. I don't care for the sort of thinking chess requires.

Nine o'clock on Saturday morning I got a junk phone call. Half an hour later I got another one. I realise that you telemarketing and call centre types have a job to do, but you can fucking well skip doing it at any point between 6 p.m. Friday night, and 10 a.m. Monday morning. I don't give a flying fuck about the product or service you're trying to push on me, I care about the fact that you're violating my space; and, for some folks, violating the only space they have free from the hurly-burly of the stressful outside world.

Never tried this before, but why not some haiku?

crisp chill in the air
leaves fall tumbling here and there
I'm dancing in them

frosty days give way
I'm touched by delicious chill
dark trunks rise leafless

nights of clarity
I read by this shining moon
etched stone nature's words

winter cometh soon
boughs of trees are glazed by freeze
like gemstones priceless

smokey fires scent here
pristine are the darkened woods
with snow cuddling close

melt away like dreams
snows slip off comes the green'ry
time renews anew

unbending I breath
sleeping with the window wide
Finally feel free

If there's one thing that drives me absolutely batshit (this particular phrase "if there's one thing" always struck me as a bit odd, but that's a story for another day), it's people telling me how I feel. Like, when the phone rings, you answer it, and the first thing out of the mouth of the person on the other end is some estimation of how pissed off you are, or how tired you are. I am neither pissed off nor tired; but I am tired of people doing this, and it will piss me off if they keep it up.

Gas powered leaf blower? Have you never considered the much more environmentally friendly, and less visually lazy, wonders of the common, everyday broom? They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, a variety of bristle materials and lengths, and using one to sweep leaves off your lawn doesn't make you look like a lazy shit. Also, their other beauties include not stinking of chemicals, and making tolerable and ignorable noise. This cannot be said of the motorised, gas-powered blower, which both stinks ferociously, and makes noise enough to wake the dead. Single-handedly rotting the remaining ozone layer, are you?

Sometimes I've got the grace and tact of a born diplomat, and other times I've got all the subtlety of a brick through a plate glass window at a china shop. I think I'm too much interested in the truth to be a really slick person, and I'm a lousy liar. I mean lousy. Diplomacy isn't, of course, the work of lies; it is the work of tact, of delivering uncomfortable truths, of making things inoffensive but effective. In some life other than this, I think I must have kissed the rock and got a little silver-tongued gift of gab.

Isn't it amazing how some people, when they say they don't care for something or don't comprehend its use, manage to do so in such a tone that demands the rest of us should also find it equally incomprehensible, and relegates those who don't to the lower rungs of the human social ladder? I'd love to know how it is people managed to learn this brand of hauteur. If something's really that low on your worth consideration scale, why not just shut up and sod off, rather than making people feel like fools for being interested in something you aren't?

Silence in the boughs of trees
No wind to ruffle feathers, leaves
These arms that ache to hold the spring
To love the summer's warming skin
That naked now stand in the fall
Like skeletal fingers piercing holes
In folds of sky and skin of clouds
They seem that they're forever dead
No life remains, no hope is fed
They only sleep, these timbered knaves
That bookend our lives from cradles to graves
So soon they'll raise their leaf'ed heads
And grace us with raw colour instead
Pollenated by the ease they bring
From winter's chill, once more it's spring

I swear I must be losing my mind. Over the past year I've found myself making the oddest typing and spelling mistakes. I don't know which of these functions is more to blame, though. Sometimes I think it's my hands typing faster than my brain is working; they have a mind of their own. Sometimes it's my brain working faster than my hands can keep up with. Sometimes it's just plain tiredness that gives me a case of temporary dyxlexia. Transposition of word chunks is the worst. Like typing 'persual' instead of 'perusal'. Is persual even a word? It's not.

I knocked a very large selection of my beads all over the carpet. It doesn't matter how much time one spends picking through carpet fibres to find various types of beads, you will invariably miss a whole host of them. However, if you want to easily find them, do what anyone who wants to find a needle in a haystack does: Walk the carpet barefoot. Without a doubt you will find each and every delight of bead pain previously missed. They'll wedge between your toes, and tuck in in a way that puts one in mind of toe-picking zoo monkeys.

I very much dislike people who overexplain, particularly after the disciplinary talk has been delivered and everyone's agreed to it. You do not, at this point, need to continue to babble about it, because it makes you look like a complete bitch with an insatiable need to make everyone else feel completely small. Spare me the verbal domineering, madam. We do not need more reminders of how far ahead of the rest of us you are. We got the message. You can shut up now. Thankfully, I will have to put up with this inflated hauteur for very little longer.

It is the middle of November and I'm not certain anything approaching autumn is ever going to happen here. A few leaves fall, a little dip in temperature is felt, but I remember when I was younger that at this time of year it was thick sweaters and hot cocoa for weeks before winter's embrace took us. The first snowfall would always come on Hallowe'en. It would never last, of course, but that's when it would come. Now, I bet I won't see any real snow til January or later. It'll be yet another brown Christmas in Southern Ontario, methinks.

I've been told that I come across as arrogant, and I used to worry about that. I used to worry about opening my mouth and seeming that way to people. I don't want to appear as arrogant. I know a lot, and am capable of a lot, but for me, sharing of knowledge isn't about lording it over people, it's about sharing the fun, it's about sharing something with others, not one-upping then. Then I looked at the person who told me this, who said I was arrogant. It's not me, it's him. He's a jerk. I'm fine, and jovial.

The people upstairs seem every weekend to have small children as guests. These small children are not quiet. They run around like elephantine bulls wearing iron shoes from dawn til well past dusk. It is one of those situations that, societally, one is not allowed to complain about because it involves children; as if there is some great horrific sin in being disturbed by the familial choices of others when they unwelcomingly thrust upon you; as if I am suddenly evil incarnate because I'm making a complaint about the noise that's disturbing my sleep, my work, and my home-based peace.

Everything seems to be going okay until one morning you wake up and you realise that a friendship you've invested so much time and effort into, is basically a sham. You realise that you mean nothing to this person, they don't mean as much to you as you'd hoped. You realise that this person is not what they've been painted as being. You realise that what most people see as passing for calm disinterest, is really a barely disguised arrogance that delights in putting people on the defensive and demeaning anything it fears or feels intimidated by. I feel bereft.

I've been to most of the major staffing agencies in the city, finding most of them quite useless to me but one. These are a very nice group of people that left me with a far more encouraged outlook than anything else has in quite some time. One of the things that's required, is the typing test. I can get up to 71 WPM if I'm really clacking away and make no mistakes. For these people I tested at 58 WPM. It's not at all shameful, but I was somewhat embarassed. Apparently, though, it's the highest speed they've got from any client.

I was at Ikea over the weekend with a friend, and remarked at the great variety of items they have that might be considered a little out of the ordinary; from toys to furniture, and all points in between. The oddest thing about anything Ikea sells, though, is that no matter what it is, no matter how unusual it is, no matter how large or small; the minute you take it out of an Ikea shop, it's still instantly recognisable as having come from Ikea. It will still have that Ikea air about it. Ikea's a little too squeaky clean.

I'm fevered and sickly. When I open my mouth out comes that breath that the human body seems only to emanate when its temperature is far higher than is normal or expected. Blankets, tea, television and soup become your best friends; anyone who'll facilitate any of the above, is your bosom pal. There is not much worse than being ill and having no one to be there. I don't mean to take care of you, so much as someone there so you don't have to take care of yourself. Someone there so you don't have to feel quite so alone.

Dear people who create job ads:

I am by no means taken in by your use of jargon in the job placement ads you post online. In fact, jargon is a very good way of immediately making me pass by your ad without any sort of serious perusal. I am also not interested in being "part of a team". I don't give a fuck. I want a job. Being part of a team, or an associate, makes me feel like an accomplice, not a worker. I'm not a drone. I do not need the hive mind.

Chuck you very much.

I don't like to shut the door on people, but there are times I get pushed to that point, to the point where I feel I must consider it. I can just as easily forget a grudge, though, so, for me, closing the door isn't even all that permanent. I have this friend who, I've just realised, isn't much of a friend to me at all. He takes up my time, but gives me nothing in return; neither support, nor encouragement, nor comfort, nor even entertainment. He's dismissive of what I say, and when not, he can be downright demeaning.

In this world of electronic ease, surely there must still be work for people like me, for those of us who still enjoy doing things the hard way? By hard, I mean hard copy. I like organising things, sorting them, filing them, and arranging them; but these days people do that sort of business with a scanner, a database, and a clicky thumb. I have zero skills in the land of databases, and that's holding me back from getting a lot of jobs I'm suited for. No database, and no spreadsheet. I write lists, not spreadsheets. Spreading is for margarine.

What the hell is it that causes me to thirst so much for a cup of tea that I get up and make one, yet then proceed to forget I'd done so, to find nothing but a full cup of cold tea with a bag stewing away hours later? I used to forget them all over my apartment; never lost for more than a day, but still, ewww. One wonders how the hell I could manage to lose anything here, much less a cup of tea. I used to buy multiple deodorants for the same reasons of having forgot them.

I think I've watched the 1997 version of "Ivanhoe" at least three times this week alone. I am an admitted sucker for period and costume dramas of all sorts, but there is something more captivating about this story than there exists in many. This version's Bois-Guilbert displays a picture of desire and passion that is sadly missing from other versions; though I guess 1952 was not the year to expected open desire and sexualised passion. He displays longing, passion, truth, admits his damnation and imperfections, but displays sensitivity to the thoughts of others. He has a presence, isn't just a two-dimensional face.

I'm finding it difficult these past two weeks or so, to come up with things to say, and not just here. Every once in a while I go through these incredibly silent slumps where nothing seems to get me going. I'm not in any way fond of this. It always feels interminable. Maybe I should take to visual representations of things; photos, maybe scans of melted crayon blobs (I seem to be getting a kick out of doing that these days), perhaps miniature collages. That thought really intrigues me, actually. I haven't been doing as much creating as I should.

Sometimes when watching a film or television programme, I am amazed when I realise that the person I'm watching actually isn't what they portray on the screen. Some actors carry the mantle of their characters so well, that you could imagine them being exactly that; like William Christopher from M*A*S*H. You can see him as a real priest. I don't think it's acting ability alone, but also manner, carriage. Of course, there's the flipside; as much as I can see him as a priest, I can't see Tom Baker being one, but he trained for the priesthood.

I used to live on documentaries when I was younger. I couldn't get enough of them. It almost didn't matter what it was about. I'd watch everything from shows on deep sea fish, to presentations on engineering in the ancient world, to medical procedures. I remember best, though, this animated series that documented the history of England (maybe even all of Europe) from the days of cavemen to modern times. I wish I could remember more about it, the name especially, because I'd love to lay my hands on DVD copies of it. I remember being completely captivated by it.

I live in a world of thin plaster walls and loud pipes. This means that every time the people upstairs decide to use their kitchen sink, I hear it. I don't mean I hear it by trickles and tickles; oh no, I hear it by thunderous echo. Sometimes I think these people are using the tap as some sort of amusement device. They turn it on, and off, on, off, on, off, on, off. They can't possibly be washing anything, given the tiny seconds of time the water actually flows. Maybe they just like hearing their pipes burp, ad nauseum.

Well now that's a nice little surprise to end the day with! I got a call from one of the staffing agencies I'm registered with, and they have a temporary job for me transcribing conferences speeches to written format. It's not very exciting work content-wise, but it pays nicely, and it isn't boring or rote. Mind you, I think some of these people need to consider hiring speech writers, or proofreaders at least, before they next stand on a podium as corporate representatives. None of them are professional speakers. They are wageslaves seeking a paycheque like the rest of us.

It makes absolutely no sense to me whatever, that solicitation and prostitution are illegal. If you're fine and dandy with selling your sexual abilities, why the hell should anyone else give a shit? I wouldn't do it myself, but I don't see why people kick up such a stink about others doing it. It's been said that marrying for money, or arranged marriages for status, were little more than superficially, and institutionally, sanctioned forms of prostitution. People certainly whore themselves out in far less honourable ways daily; for trinkets, for their own personal gain, for revenge. So why not cash?