Quarter end. Stress like I have never felt before. Is there something that I can do tell these people at the University of Toledo that I need them to bend to my wishes- today. Right now, in fact. Please get up from your desk and do as I ask. I have been reasonable. I have been flexibile. You have been inflexible, intractible and unyielding. I do not want to go through this again.

Of course, the blame lies on myself. i am like the university student late submitting a paper because the car broke down on the way dropping it off at the prof's house 10 minutes before the deadline. Well, you should not have left it to the last day. However, sometimes it works out that way.

Recently I have been watching a lot of movies, mostly because we don't have cable tv. So this week I watched All About Eve and Pusher. I had seen Pusher before, but I loved watching it for the second time. Perhaps I still feel the twinges of my youthful obsession with European track suits, drug dealing life gone wrong, and bad Serbian gangsters. What exactly is a draftpak schemie?

I have ignored this for far too long. What has happened in my life, let me repeat MY life since I last posted? Well, Scott and Eva came to visit our lovely city, and were treated to the most bizarre three days of weather in Vancouver. Torrential rain, clear blue skies and then snow. Finally it seems that some sense of spring has arrived in Vancouver, and with it my new spring wardrobe, which really consists of my 3 pairs of chinos rotated every other day. Only, now I talk about it. Oh, yeat there was that one spring-y looking shirt I got at the Banana Republic, which led to numerous comments at the place where I get my hair cut. I don't want to say "salon", but then I can't honestly describe this place as a barbershop either. It is staffed with homosexuals, blares either house or disco on the stereo, and I have to endure an assortment of innuendos from the male owner.

My style really hasn't changed since I was 16. I have tried many different styles, but I have returned to the only one that ever worked for me: pseudo -outdoorsy-prep-West-coast-malcontent. Nothing else has ever worked for me but chinos and a button down. Sounds really boring, but that is all I can muster up. Let me list the styles I have tried:
Surfer (only surfed on one trip to Costa Rica; cannot rightly claim to be one)
Snowboarder ( I have been snowborading for 7 years, so this is one style I could claim as my own. However, the rebel attitude does not match my Richie Cunningham face)
Mountain man ( having lived in Whistler for 4 years, I could also make a legitimate claim to be a mountain man. Don't like the Sorels or the fleece. I once owned these purple fleece pants that were floods- oh the horror)
Raver (didn't give this one too much of a chance. I was already 27 when I came along this scene. the clothes were so expensive for such poor quality)
Hippie - never actually owned any guatemalan print clothing or birkenstocks, but I did have long hair and a bandana. the waspy face and freckles assured that I would never pull this one off without people thinking I was a trustafarian.
Redneck- Kodiaks and jeans, ball cap and mack jacket. What the hell was I thinking.

Which brings me back to the age of 16 and chinos and button downs. Please note however, that I have never owned Topsiders.

It's true. I have always wanted to know the lyrics to this song.

How sad that Leah McLaren is on vacation. I was looking forward to reading her column to work myself into an frenzy so I would be awake by the time I got to the office.
Yes, the office. Sadly, I am at work on a Saturday, again.

Do you worry about the youth of today? What generation has not worried about the generation behind it? On a visit to my 97 year old grandmother earlier this year, I was lectured on how the young people today feel they can walk away from any commitment that has become inconvenient. She was specfically referring to my cousin, who had recently left her husband and young child. For what, I don't know. Because my family is old-school Catholic, there were immediate assumptions that she had become a lesbian. I asked my mother if it was true, that my cousin was a lesbian. "Well, I'm not sure", she replied, citing how she had moved in with old friend who was a lesbian.

Anyway, back to bad kids. The Atlantic has an article about young men turned killers in the normally staid state of Vermont. Having lived in Vermont, I can say that boredom must have been the reason.

Since one depressing story of teen violence and moral depravity deserves another, I watched Bully, Larry Clark's follow up to Kids. Simliar to Kids, only it takes place in south Florida. a stranger place I have not visited.