When I moved out of my parent's house (many many years ago) I shared a very bare apartment with a friend. The minimal furniture was accompanied by walls covered in posters. But it was ours. We liked it.

The apartment had hardwood floors and no carpets. Every week, Margaret would call:

"Hello, this is Margaret from Dominion carpet cleaners. We have a great deal right now and..."

"Hi, Margaret. I'm sorry to interrupt but we have no carpets."

A pause. Silence.

"We also do upholstery."

Thinking about our single threadbare couch getting professional cleaned was amusing.

"I'm sorry. We have a bath mat and door mat and that's it."

"Oh."

"Should we call you if we ever buy a carpet?"

"Then it will be new. It won't need cleaning."

"But if we had a party, and someone spilled beer all over it. It might need cleaning."

"OK. Let me know."

"I will. I'm Ingrid by the way."

"OK. Bye Ingrid."

I think that I maybe engaged her in a little too much conversation, because after that call she called back almost every week.

"Hi. This is Margaret from Dominion Carpet Cleaning."

"Hi Margaret. How's your week going?"

"Ah. Well, you know."

"Unfortunately we still don't have a carpet, but I had an idea."

"What's that?"

"You could buy us one and then I'd spill some beer on it, and you could clean our carpet for us. Everyone wins!"

Silence.

"OK. Well. I'll think about it. Call me if you get any carpets."

"Will do. Have a nice night Margaret."

"Thanks. You too."

Now that I have carpets, Margaret would be the first person I'd call.

Labels: truth is stranger than fiction

Bookseller.com released their short-list of the Oddest Titles of the Year. This year's fabulous selection:

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
• How to Write a How to Write Book
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
• Cheese Problems Solved
• If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
• People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood

I really want my cheese problems solved, and now I have somewhere to go. Here are the entries that just missed the short-list this year:

• Drawing and Painting the Undead
• Stafford Pageant: The Exciting Innovative Years 1901–1952;
• Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns the London Underground
• Squid Recruitment Dynamics
• Glory Remembered: Wooden Headgear of Alaska Sea Hunters

***
(I mistakenly posted this as this years list. Alas, it is from 2007, but still entertaining.)
Last year's short list comprised:

• How Green Were the Nazis?
• D. Di Mascio’s Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans
• The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
• Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan
• Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium
• Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence

Titles that were sadly ruled out:

• The Essential Underwater Guide to North Wales Vol 1
  
• Let’s Discover F Words
• Celebrating Boxes
• A General Analysis of the Counting Methods of Chopped Yarrow Stalks in the Book of Changes

Last year's winner: People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It

(I actually did a quick search on Amazon and found every title I looked for. So, yes, you too can pick up your very own copy.)

Labels: i am easily amused, truth is stranger than fiction

OK> In the real world, I am decidedly not a fashionista. I don't even know if I am using that term correctly. I think that, at best, I am occasionally fashionable. But, I may have broken new ground.

Today I came across a picture from a recent Dior fashion show and the headgear *so resembles my lampshade costume.* I even made an appropriately strange kissy face when I wore mine (although not all evening, because then my cheeks would be sore). And yes... Dior's looks more like the model has a spectacularly shiny bucket or thimble on her head, but the effect... really. We're twins. But I upped Dior, yessirree, I had light inside of mine. Dior Schmior.

I'm ridiculously pleased with myself right now, but painfully aware that I need an oversized dress with sequins (or whatever those large button-like decorations are) to be complete in life.

If you have no idea what I am talking about see this and that. I wink in your general direction.

Labels: beauty in unexpected places, lamp costume, nonsense, truth is stranger than fiction

Here is an image from the party.
Credit for the photo goes to: Onno

The evening was filled with leprechauns, wonder woman, WD40 wee willy winky, ladies, a "whore", Lenny Kravitz, Love (an unwieldy-looking heart-shaped costume) etc etc. It felt like being in some sort of twisted Disney movie. But was great fun. Thanks birthday girl!! :)

The best line was definitely: "You are delightful." :P People were using me (as a lamp) to read menus etc Very very funny.

Labels: delightful, lamp costume, lights, photo, silly, truth is stranger than fiction

“Reach for the stars, dear heart,” my grandmother would say. I had no idea what she meant. I thought that maybe she was referring to a thai chi move that she did where her hands were outstretched above her, her face open and gazing at the sky. And this was long before Buzz Lightyear changed the associations with the phrase.

I had no idea that she could mean anything else but the literal. She was generally so absent-minded in every other way, that it never occurred to me that she was attempting to be symbolic. I used to watch the sky. For signs. Not astrology or anything like that, but I used to make deals with myself.

If that cloud turns into something that resembles a bunny, I will clean my room, I’d tell myself. Or, if it doesn’t rain tomorrow, I will call mom and dad. If the sky was red in the morning I would watch for what it was warning the sailors about. (An STD? Or storms? You know what they say about sailors. I'm Kiiiddding.)

I remember my grandmother’s face. There was a childlike innocence about her. About her hopefulness with the world and with people. She would smile so openly at people. And she would get them to do what she needed doing and she would do anything for them.

She would make deals, “Well dear, I know that you are very busy, but if you would be so kind as to take my garbage out, I’ll make enough supper for you to take home with you.” A lovely thought isn’t it? But those who didn’t know that my grandmother was a terrible cook, would often fall for the offer. She combined interesting things and seem to have little sense of what food “matched.” So you would end up with hot dogs cut into fruit salad and dressed with porridge. All food, but not such a good idea.

She used to wrangle with storekeepers in major department stores. I remember going with her to Sears at Christmas and her wearing out a salesman to get a good deal on a tape cassette player. I think he almost gave it to her for free just to have to not explain again that they don't make these kind of deals in Canada. After all, he was most definitely mistaken.

I spent Christmas with my grandparents only one year. I think that I was about 12 years old or something. I remember comparing my grandparents' cold house to the houses that I used to see in movies, where chubby cheeked grandparents greeted you with open arms. The grandmother wearing a pretty woolen knitted sweater and the grandfather a bow tie, suspenders. Both of the eyes twinkling, and their cheeks rosy. Grandma would pull a roast out of the oven and would have a huge platter with all the trimmings. No. It wasn't like that at all. It was tense and pretense. The only vaguely normal thing was my grandparents insisting that I play the old piano with the missing E flat, liking the classical pieces but hating any of that modern stuff.

I should have known better. Yes I was only twelve years old, but I knew some of the history. That my grandfather had been a wife-beater until one day, after he had aged and weakened, when my grandmother had had enough and had beaten the shit out of him until he promised that he would never touch her again. I knew that my grandfather was a monster, but had not quite managed to accept or fully understand the depth of his depravity which extended far beyond anything I can talk about reasonably or without fury. She carried the burden of a culture from which a woman who would never leave her husband; it was adultery. (I know, I don't get it either).

My grandparents' house was filled with locked doors. Neither of them trusted each other. My grandmother had sufficient cause given that he took razor blades to her favorite dresses and poured boiling water on her plants. My grandfather could trust my grandmother, but undoubtedly didn’t want her to find evidence of his most recent crimes. Whether that be the billiard ball that he used to drop onto the floor one floor above her bed to wake and startle her in the night, or the ancient pornography that we found when he died, which would now be considered funny or camp, but that at the time was scandalous, or the precious things of hers that he stole and hid in his locked room which included most gifts from grandchildren.

But my grandmother could still stretch to the sky. Take in moments as wondrous and joyous without a hint of bitterness. Astounding. She was able to love, be loved, enjoy sunsets, her garden, life, despite the fact that her husband was a horrible monster is still baffling and strange to me. How did she manage? How can I not love every good thing around me?

After he died, she was in her 80s and she, for the first time, took up camping. She would go on her own because she liked it that way. And by the fire, she would look at the stars. Wonder in them. She thought camping was the best thing they ever invented. If she was still here, I would eat pickled beets and ice cream for her.

Labels: interpreting and reinterpreting, truth is stranger than fiction

She was riding her bike to work, when she noticed the donkeys.

The two donkeys were tethered to the ground with a rope beside the bike path on a small patch of grass between industrial buildings. The donkeys must have been there before, since the other commuters did not slow or even notice the them.

She stopped on the side of the path, letting the other bikers ride by. The donkeys raised their heads and looked with large sad eyes as they chewed slowly. She got off her bike and leaned it against a scraggly tree that was planted beside the path.

Pulling a bag of carrots out of her backpack, she walked towards them tentatively, not wanting to startle them. They started braying madly and came towards her pulling on their ropes. She let them eat out of her hand, their hot breath on her palm, bits of carrot spraying on her fingers and the sleeve of her coat. With her other hand, she stroked their soft but rough manes until the carrots were gone and the donkeys were attempting to eat the empty bag.

She wondered what would happen if she left her bike and rode the donkeys to work instead. She would explain, "They looked bored. I think that they wanted an adventure." But she wouldn't divulge how they reminded her of herself.

Labels: being alive, donkey, truth is stranger than fiction

A colleague of mine recently went to check out an apartment for rent. The advertisement used the terms cosy, snug and quaint a little over frequently, but he assumed that this was related to the fact that the apartment was small. Fine by him. He just needed a place to lay his head: room for his bed and a basic kitchen. Not demanding.

He arrived at the rental and met a smoke-wrinkled old woman who looked at him and grumbled under her breath, “I said not over 150 centimetres.” She then glared up at him and said, “You’re awfully tall. How tall are you?”

“Two meters,” he replied.

She sighed heavily and then walked down an alley next to the door that he met her at. At the end of the alley was a small, graffiti-covered door with a single lock. As she swung it open into the alley she muttered, “Watch your head now.”

They went down a set of rickety narrow stairs into a dark basement, where she stood swaying and breathing heavily and she said, “The one thing about this apartment, the one thing, is it doesn’t get much light. Just from the alley.”

She opened the door which brushed immediately against the incredibly low ceiling. My colleague had to hunch completely over to get in. The two rooms were womb sized, but not in a nice way, and the bathroom had a mini-tub about the size of half of his body.

He sweetly smiled at her while nodding (hitting his head on the ceiling) and said, “Yeah, your right. I’m afraid that it doesn’t get enough light.”

Labels: story, truth is stranger than fiction

When I lived in Canada, some friends and I would celebrate Thanksgiving every year. We would all prepare something and then eat copious amounts of turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes etc. and then lie around groaning in overfed bliss for hours...

Canadian Thanksgiving is about one month earlier than American Thanksgiving. This is due to the fact that it was actually originally a different celebration that was about celebrating the harvest and was not related to the pilgrims.

However, part of my Canadian Thanksgiving Ritual included the purchase of Pilgrim Candles (so darling AND vintage). We would then joyfully and guiltlessly set their heads alight and bask in the warm glow of their melting faces. (It always reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Lost Art where the German guys melt after opening the arc.)

And just in case you are wondering, this is not an anti-pilgrim thing, we bought bunny candles last year for Easter.

Labels: truth is stranger than fiction

If you want to settle in the Netherlands, there are some important things that you need to know about dutch birthdays. Birthdays are VERY important. To sucessfully manage your first Dutch birthday, keep the following in mind —

If it is your birthday, you must invite friends and family out for drinks and you must pay. The advantage of this, is that you get invited to other peoples birthdays as well. ;P

If you go to someone else's house for a birthday, the following rules apply. You must kiss everyone even remotely related to the birthday person on the cheek (three times>> right-left-right) and greet them with the following word "Gefeliciteerd" (Congratulations... Sounds something like ghufellicytierd where the G is a guttural pre-spitting sound). You will be offered a small portion of cake and a tiny portion of coffee. You must eat this while sitting on a couch while awkwardly nodding at the people speaking rapidly in Dutch. You must not ask for more. Do not say Gefeliciteerd while eating cake, as this may result in a nasty spray of custard.

If you go to a bar for someone's birthday, you may order beer which the birthday person will pay for. At some point in the evening (when everyone is suitably tanked) everyone will break into the song "Lang zal je leven". This is the national birthday song and means something like "Long will you live in glory" ... It's a bit "For he's a jolly good fellowish" and doesn't have many lyrics, and is therefore possible to sing while a bit drunk.

You may also be required to drink Jenever, which is essentially the dutch national drink. It is breath-suckingly strong. So approach with caution. For more information about Jenever

You (or birthday people) are also required to bring "cake" to work and to invite fellow collegues to eat this "cake" with you. Generally "cake" is served in the morning with the objective of interfering with as many meetings as possible (more on Dutch meetings later). This cake is often in the form of something called Vlaai (pronounced something like "fly"). This cake usually consists of a very thin bottom cakey bit, with some custardy stuff on top, and optionally, some fruit. An important resource for cake purchases in Multi Vlaai, from which you can purchase, you guessed it, many types of vlaai.

I'm probably missing something important about birthday etiquette in the Netherlands. But once I am "inburgered" I will know. :)

PS>> I just read the MultiVlaai site under the heading Onze Missie (our mission) and saw the following (translation is mine):
In an increasingly impersonal and busy world, vlaai is a product that you can enjoy together gladly. Vlaai will bring you a lively morning, afternoon or evening party! Multi-Vlaai allows as many people as possible enjoy honest, handmade, fresh, festive products. Wow. I've never seen a cake that can do all that before.

Labels: truth is stranger than fiction