November 30, 2001 — It takes so long to fall asleep

It’s almost midnight and I’m sitting in front of the computer listening to In Utero and eating Rice Krispies. The sort of Rice Krispies that comes in a box with a window on the front so that you can see that they’re red and green inside, reminding the person eating them of the coming of Christmas until the cereal’s expiry in the spring of 2002.

I’m still kind of irked whenever food doesn’t taste its colour. Purple ketchup and see-thru colas just never seemed quite right. I’m sure it has more to do with my perception of normal than it does with the food’s natural colour — I’ve been told several times that ketchup is naturally a greenish colour, for instance, but red ketchup still seems far less odd.

There are ketchup-flavoured potato rings at the grocery store near our house that have the Grinch on their bag and are coloured red and green for Christmas. It just seems to be taking things a bit far. I don’t think that processed food should change colour from season to season.

Digressions and complaints about food colouring aside, it’s been a decent Friday. I woke up mid-afternoon, wrote a journal, fixed up antigreg, and added pins to the sellout section.

By the time I’d finished all of that, it was already 6:30 pm and I’d only had a bowl of cereal to eat all day. I decided to go downtown to see Waking Life and to get something to eat on the way.

I stopped to check my post office box on the way to the subway station. I was excited to find a card saying that a package had arrived for me. I was less excited to find that the single card actually represented three packages, all for Andrew. Nearly twenty minutes from home, I decided it would be easiest to just drop them off at Nathan’s house. I’d planned to visit before going to the movie, and I knew Andrew would be dropping by that night, too. I’m sure Andrew will be less than keen on my decision to take his packages further away from home to deliver them to him, but it made a lot of sense at the time.

Nathan and I watched episodes of “Jackass” on his computer until it was time for me to leave for the movie. I ended up being a few minutes late. I don’t think I missed much, though.

The movie’s not really one that you can watch just once and make much of a judgment on, I don’t think. This might be a bit of a copout on my part, but it’s not as though this is a movie review, so I’ll get over it. There was too much hype for it to live up to, though, and sometimes it felt like it was trying too hard. There were definitely some brilliant moments, mind you. And maybe I just wasn’t getting it the rest of the time.

It’s worth seeing, in any case.

After the movie, I started walking. One of the last scenes in the movie involved pinball, and I was within a few blocks of the arcade that I used to go to last year, when I lived closer to downtown. I started walking in that direction.

I gave my obligatory shudder as I walked by the Scientology building, and I rolled my eyes a bit at the massive sign for Puppetry of the Penis that had replaced the equally massive sign for The Vagina Monologues. I can’t help but remember more innocent times when said theatre housed Peanuts: The Musical and other live shows unrelated to genitalia...

When I got to the arcade, I didn’t go in. Partially because I didn’t want to deal with the guilt that comes from entering an arcade that has people begging for change outside of it, and partially because it was loud and bright and surprisingly busy for 11:00 pm on a Friday night.

I decided to walk to the Museum subway station because it would make for a shorter trip home than any of the subway stations on Yonge Street. This meant walking by my residence from last year. Very loud music was being played in the quad. I’m sure that if I were still living there this year, I’d be awake right now writing a vitriolic journal entry about the evils of residence and of Victoria College and of university in general. Instead, I kept walking, and I realized how much better things are this year than they were last year.

I called my sister when I got home. She’s still visiting tomorrow. I recommended that she have someone call me to wake me up and to remind me that I have to meet her at the bus station. I’d probably still be sleeping when she arrived at the bus station otherwise. My sleeping habits remain unimproved.

I never did clean my room last night. I think I’ll try to do that now. Can’t have her reporting back to my parents that I’m living in my own filth.

It’s my mother’s birthday tomorrow, too. She’ll probably be the one to call tomorrow, and I’ll probably forget to wish her a happy birthday since her call will almost certainly wake me up in a state of vague delirium. I guess I’ll just put a note on my phone and hope for the best...