If "Eraserhead" Were an Emotion, This Would Be It

I have developed a bad relationship with Alphaghettis. I probably should never have developed a good relationship with them in the first place, but now it has soured, and I'm a little sad about it.



I have relationships with objects, you see. I do what I can on my end to keep us all copacetic, but the damn things keep getting weird on me.

For instance, I had a toaster that I really liked, and I had had this toaster for over five years, so we were pretty close. I made toast in it. I used it to light my morning cigarette. It was a real giver. And then, one day, it seemed to stay a little too hot for a little too long.

It could have just been me, because I had never carefully timed its heat retention before, but it just seemed kind of off. When it did it the next day, too, or at least seemed to do whatever it seemed to be doing, I felt a sick little twist in my stomach. My toaster was bad, and not good bad like bad boys in high school but bad bad like lumpy milk accidentally dumped on your last bowl of your favourite cereal.

I went without toast for some time after that, unsure if I was ready to handle having a different toaster in my kitchen. I really love toast, so this was a serious break-up, and I have been leary of strange toasters ever since.

You probably think I'm kidding about this. I'm not. This is serious business here.

I once lived in an apartment that I loved. It was the only place I've ever lived in that I cleaned with any regularity, so our bond went deep. The bedroom was at the back of the apartment. It was dark and small, and I slept better there than I had in years. One afternoon, though, I walked into it, and, like with the toaster, something seemed off. I tidied it up, I rearranged the furniture, and I burned incense, but whatever was off was staying that way. My gut gave up that sick little twist, and that was it. I moved my bed out into the living room and slept there for the next six months. I only entered that bedroom once more when I moved out to make sure that it was clean.

See? I'm not kidding. I can break up with a room.

I've also developed bad relationships with, among other things, pairs of shoes, a perfectly sweet pet hamster, a closet, a particular brand of chocolate syrup, a stuffed animal, a copy of Alice In Wonderland, a set of shelves, and, once, a fern, whose malevolent presence put me off my food until I put it outside for some kind stranger to salvage. I don't know what it is specifically about these items, but they just feel malevolent, spiritually toxic even. They spread no joy in Schmutzville.

Today, it's my Alphaghettis. The can refused to cut open properly, I could see oil separated from the red sauce, and I did not appreciate the sucking sound it made as it slid out of the can. They did not behave and feel like my beloved Alphaghettis of the past few decades. They feel malicious in some way sitting in that bowl. It's as though they are imbued with some kind of conscious ill intent.

I feel exactly like I did that one morning when I woke up next to a boyfriend who smelled like bong water. I was disturbed by his physical presence, like I was cuddling a giant cockroach, and I wondered if I would need any special medical testing after I walked out of his apartment for the last time. If the movie Eraserhead were an emotion, this mash-up of disgust and paranoia would be it.

So, goodbye Alphaghettis. It was nice knowing you before you turned on me, jerk.

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PS. Immediately after I hit publish on this post, the Palinode called and asked "How are the peppers in the fridge doing?", to which I replied, "They're feeling pretty good about themselves right now."

Vegetable empathy. I have it.

T-Shirts, Canned Food, And Typewriters

On my bus to work yesterday, there was this young university student who was wearing a red t-shirt with those blue, fuzzy, iron-on letters across his chest. The letters started out large and descended over four lines to very small letters like an optometrist’s eye chart. The t-shirt read: “I see dumb people reading my t-shirt.” He saw me reading it, and then he saw me smirking about it, and then he gave me the sullen look of someone who cannot share his humour with outsiders. Poor, sullen university student. It made me want to muss up his carefully crafted, product-laden curls.

I like these photographs.

I do not collect anything myself yet, but I am fascinated by the stuff other people that I have never met collect, such as typewriter ribbon tins. Personally, I am excited by canned food labels whenever I go grocery shopping. My favourite can label has got to be the one for a certain brand of corned beef. The can’s shape is unique, because it is trapezoidal, and the label has this style that could have come out of the 1950s. It’s other great feature is that it has a front-and-centre picture of a cow chewing grass, which is weird, because any tins containing meat do not usually have pictures of the animal of origin on the front. For instance, spam does not have a pig adorning its label, and tins of tuna do not have pictures of ugly, live tuna fish on them. I did start a canned food collection with this particular brand of canned corned beef, but the Fiery One ate the contents, and once the tin was opened, my love for it was gone. I will have to go grocery shopping soon to replace my missing collection of one.

Typewriter Facts and Links:
* If you’ve ever wondered about metaphase typewriters, read this.
* Mark Twain, the American novelist, was the first known author to submit a typed manuscript. He was supposed to have typed his most famous story, Tom Sawyer, but it is more likely to have been Life on the Mississippi. Twain’s typewriter was a Remington No.1.
* The original layout of letters on the typewriter was in an ABC format, but Christopher Sholes, an inventor of the first commercially successful machine, found this continually jammed his typewriters. To solve the problem, he asked his brother-in-law, a mathematician, to work out an arrangement that would prevent the bars from clashing. Sholes later claimed that this was a highly 'scientific arrangement'. It is from this that the QWERTY layout idea was evolved in 1873, and it persists to this day.
* The Classic Typewriter Page.
* This is for the font nerds out there.
* Mrs. Barbara Blackburn of Salem, Oregon is the world’s fastest typist. She can maintain a speed of 150 words per minute (wpm) for 50 minutes (37,500 key strokes) and can attain a speed of 170 wpm using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) system. Compare that to the average workplace typist who reaches about 50 to 60 words per minute. At an even lower rater, is your average web surfer - around 30 words per minute, at a peak.
* The longest word that may be typed on the top row of letters on a typewriter is 'typewriter' (or so my source tells me, but I am too lazy to work on that one today).