Monkeys of the sea

Last night I fulfilled a lifelong dream. I helped a friend start their sea monkey hatchery. The instructions promise that the Really Alive animals will provide Hours of Entertainment. For a small fee, you can order executive models for your office, or special horny-dust to get them really going at it. All very exciting.

When I was very young I used to obsess over the sea monkey ads in the back of comic books. I dreamed of founding sister colonies, maybe transferring individuals between aquariums as ambassadors, that sort of thing. My begging and pleading came to naught, however. I distinctly remember having a conversation sort of like this with a family member at the age of five or six:

KN – Why? Whhhhhy can’t I have one?

Fam – Because.

KN – Why?

Fam – You don’t want to know.

KN – Why?

Fam – Well, here’s the thing. They only have a certain amount of food.

KN – Yeah?

Fam – And when they run out of food, they starve to death. Then you would be responsible for the destruction of that entire world. Do you really want that responsibility? To watch your pets starve to death? Do you? Isn’t that selfish?

KN – Oh.

Now, this came from the same family member who saw fit to lecture me on the Perils of Plagiarism at the age of four and What Communism Is by the age of eight, and was meant in a helpful way. I think it helped me understand mortality and Catholic guilt.

I just really hope my friend remembers to feed the sea monkeys.

***

Oh, and to the jerk who is too much of a snivelling weasel to put a name to their hate mail: go f*ck yourself. You're a sad, demented loser with really bad karma coming.

Phew, I feel better already.

Barstool Love Song

In wandering around the house this afternoon, guitar slung over my shoulder, I located the sweetest acoustics in the building. It's the far corner, back door, looking out at the bay, and I threw my little laptop there to record this new song.

It's called "Barstool Love Song," 'cause a few weeks ago I was at the S'Legion, saw a fight on the dance floor, and imagined some girl sitting at a bar top watching the chaos, waiting for someone who may or may not show up. It's a little silly, but super fun to sing.

Now I need to figure out how to embed audio without the video.

Dance me away, dance me away my love, my dear
Dance me away
That's what I would say if you were here

People fighting on the dance floor
Line up building on the front door
I'm only here hoping that you are
And no one comes to here the band anymore

Dance me away, dance me away my love, my dear
Dance me away
That's what I would say if you were here

Girls are lined up on the back wall, talking tall
Swilling drinks they made the boys buy
You walk on, try to catch your eye
And no one comes to hear the band anymore

Dance me away, dance me away my love, my dear
Dance me away
That's what I would say if you were here
That's what I would say if you were here

Ookpik wrote this song about the Nunies

Thank you voters and fellow contestants in the Nunies!

Ookpik and I argued a bit while writing this song for you, but as it was part of the greater creative process we opted to leave it in the recording.

Dance for a good cause!

poster courtesy of Alianait

Hotel query

I feel I don't take advantage of the pan-northern information highway on the blogsophere often enough. Here is my question for northern readers:

If you were travelling to Yellowknife for a weekend in February, at which hotel would you stay?

Any input appreciated, please.

First Aid for ninjas

Holy crow. Or raven. A tie for first in the Nunies. And now a runoff. It’s like Akulliq 2.0, without the lawyers. How Nunavut of us. If we were a hamlet election, we’d just flip a coin. Personally, I think we should stage a ninja match in front of the Legislative Assembly, but I don’t know how Townie feels about ninjas.

In other exciting news, I spent the past two days learning how to handle emergencies. I successfully completed a First Aid course, complete with CPR and defibrillator training.

I was actually quite quick with most things, leading me to believe that I was a nurse in a former life, possibly one in WWI. What freaked me out most was the intense music in the instructional videos. I’m not squeamish when it comes to blood and gore, but all those scary chords got to me.

Anyway, when my roommate brings home the circular saw in a few short days for us to begin working on the yoga room floor, I will feel prepared to deal with any situations that arise. (Knock on wood they won't, and believe me when I say I won't attempt to operate said power tool.) Also, ninja injuries.

If there's another tie, we really want to wear cardboard crowns for a photoshoot.

Voting

I'm really happy a bunch of people voted for me yesterday (thanks family readers!) in the Nunies, but I hope there were no cheater votes. That would make me sad.

Folks have until tonight at midnight to vote in the second annual Nunavut Blogging Awards here. There are five contestants in the Best Blog category:

Jen of Nunavut
Townie Bastard
The North is My Snowcone
Tales from the Arctic
...and me.

There are also blogs vying for best new blog and best post.

Go vote for someone!

Breakwater

Conversation with the hairdresser

Ring

Hi! Is this *?

Good, good. Yeah, I need to make an appointment for someone. Someone else. We made a mullet.

Yeah, a haircut. We need you to make it go away. Like, soon.

Uh-huh. Okay, thanks.

Click

Tagged

I was tagged by Way, Way Up for this. As per the instructions, this was the sixth photo in the sixth file of my documents folder.

What it is is a picture of a fireman's butt outside of Humber College.

Random.

I tag KOTN and inflatable.

Lactose

Went to N-Mart to buy milk yesterday, and the shelf held only three cartons of soy and a dozen of whipped cream (on sale for $2.99 because they'd expired three days ago).

That actually doesn't happen that often in the big capital. There were even some crazy exotic things on the produce shelves over the holidays - papaya, starfruit, passion fruit.

Like, wha'?

Holy carbon footprint.

Kitchen window

First (past the) post 2009

Greetings to my dwindling yet much appreciated readership.

This morning I awoke to my radio tuned to the 6:30 a.m. regional news, and the announcer welcomed me to Feb. 14. I wondered deeply how Valentine’s Day had snuck up on me so fast before realizing that, no, I’m not insane, it’s only January. Psych.

For all I knew it could be March, I’m so confused lately. You know that anxiety dream when you show up to Math class, discover there’s a test, but then remember you skipped every single other class that semester? That was totally my life this week, in a conference with people who own more degrees than I own socks. No, that's not true - my mother sent me socks for Christmas. And I will remind myself at this juncture that humbling experiences are good, even if they feel bad at first.

Also, everyone keeps telling me I talk like a Valley Girl. I swear, I don't do drugs and I only shop (online) sporadically.

This is my first post in 2009, prompted by the fact that someone nominated me for Best Blog in the Nunies and two people even voted for me. Inflatable Elvis was quick to tell me he is not one of them, so no thanks to him, but thanks to whoever did. I'm so mad at him I capitalized his name.

By the way, I’m sad I didn’t get my picture in the newspaper, in an arts section story which is CLEARLY biased towards the bloggers of Arctic Bay. But they all look like hotties, so really, who can fault?