I do not deserve to be a grad student.

Haven’t written much because I’ve come home for the holidays and have been too busy eating high-calorie meals with long lost pals, getting drunk with elderly relatives, and making out merry all over the city of Toronto. This is a good place. 

While looking through boxes in my mum’s LOVELY new place in Cabbagetown, I found a folder full of my undergraduate essays, including a gem called: ‘“What a rant, say you, is here”: Problematizing Edward Young’s conception of ‘Originality’ and the Author in his ‘Conjectures on Original Composition’’. First off, I’m not sure when I discovered the formula for essay-titles, but if anyone is not aware yet, this is it:

Witty pun or quote/Colon/Explanatory bit about your essay with a few academic-sounding words. 

e.g. Pic of the Litter: The politics of cats, captions and ‘laughing out loud’ in the internet’s postmodern milieu.

A+.

The essay I found is not exceptional. I did fine on it, but reading it over, it mostly just ramblingly contradicts Edward Young’s opinion that imitation is a low and ultimately useless form of creative output. (Sorry, everyone after Madonna.) My chosen approach to debunking this theory was to craft some imitative poems of my own, and being the hopeless Bard-worshipper I am, I rewrote some of the more famous sonnets. About cheese. And Maury Povich.

Hoff the hook.

I'm not going to dignify the closed airports with a post. I think we can just all agree that 10 centimetres of snow should not completely shut down one of the world's busiest airports for 48 hours, and move on. Fuck you, Heathrow airport, you are terrible, the end.

In happier news, I don't even need to go home, or even stay alive, really. I could just die right now and it would be okay, because I saw this:

Look at those gentle yet mischievous eyes. They're looking right into your sense of childlike wonder 

(and love of dirty jokes about 'rodgering').

The photo doesn't make it clear what THIS is, but I think it does make it clear that this is amazing. Basically, when we heard that David Hasselhoff was starring as Captain Hook in a children's Christmas panto, we had no choice. Tickets were purchased, the train was ridden to Wimbledon in the bitter cold (a newspaper literally described it as a "bone-chilling -2 degrees", so...) and the greatest theatrical journey of my life unfolded.

"Just look at the camera for a.... there we go."

Watching Bridget Jones on my next door neighbour's telly (just kidding that is not a real word I would use, although I'm all about "chunder" to mean "vomit") last week I realized that its eponymous heroine lives right around the corner from my house. Mainly this lead me to consider why, despite the millions of times I have embarrassed myself in the area through "charming" Bridget Jones-y mishaps (falling, clothing malfunctions, a general lack of awareness regarding British traffic directions, etc.), I have not been asked on a date by a beautiful-if-horrible Hugh Grant type and then rescued from that terrible relationship by beautiful-and-perfect Colin Firth. Not the type, just the man himself.

And then I realized that I carry the reason in my wallet.

Like a party at a banker's house in 1982. (Tons of snow?)

That is not what London looks like right now. There is some beautiful snow action happening, but it is mostly ambient and airborne, the kind that turns to regular ol' rain once it hits the ground. The rooftops are slightly whiter than normal, but otherwise it's business as usual here at the Ye Olde Britishe Water Emporium aka the whole country all the time.

But. Everyone is losing it. Seriously. For one thing, people are walking around everywhere huddled in groups under snow umbrellas, which are their regular rain-time umbrellas being used as some kind of snow-defender. Guys, snow doesn't get you wet like that. Also, you look stupid. No one can see where anyone else is going so there is a lot of tutting and hawing and hemming as people try to skirt around the other bundled up, wet feet they can see from beneath their nylon guardians.

In addition to the pedestrian chaos, a lot of trains and roads are just not happening, and people can't get into the city or out of their homes. A lot of people's workplaces have been shut down for the day. Maybe it's the Canadian in me, but I'm just sort of finding all of it hilarious. My real hope is that things will get like the picture above and everything will shut down and I'll just make hot chocolate and go skating and for walks and read in my room with my pathetic electric candle and christmas lights from Poundland.

POUNDLAND IS THE NAME OF THE DOLLAR STORE HERE.

Right, so this is probably the most embarrassing blog post ever written.

Every time a new Harry Potter movie comes out, I wonder if this will be the time I am finally a grown up and stop leaving the theatre thinking (sometimes secretly and sometimes out loud), "GOD I wish magic was real so badly." Deathly Hallows Part Two is my last chance to be a real person, you guys.*

Tonight I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One for the second time. The first time was free though, which I'm pretending makes that less lame. My friend Heather had been given free passes from her place of work, and at that screening there had been free popcorn and drinks and actors dressed up as professors from Hogwarts doing imitations of them and talking to all the patrons of the theatre as if we were students. It was both great and lame, which is one of my favourite precariously balanced states. I came for the free stuff and stayed for the RON.

Now, I did not make this Rupert Grint collage, but I would. (Not really, but I make mind-collages of him on the regular.) He is a beautiful ginger man who I love a lot. My love of gingers is well documented, and this movie franchise features a large ginger family, the lone female of which is so redheadedly seductive she snares the hero of the entire thing, so obviously I'm all about it.

The most shardiest time of the year

My favourite thing in the whole world, the Shard, became the tallest building in London today, and it is only partially built. Suck on that, 1 Canada Water, title-holder for the past 20 years. I learned about this via the twitter account @skyscrapernews. That's a thing.

There used to be this beyond amazing display of children's Shard-inspired artwork at its base by London Bridge Tube Station, in theory based on what the building would look like when completed. In a solemn reminder to take opportunities when they come to us lest we miss out on something GLORIOUS, I did not take any photos of the child's drawing that turned the Shard into a giant super hero, or the ones that gave it weird spirals, or the one of it poking the moon in the face. Tragique.

To supplement, here is some artwork of my own. Family and friends should look forward to receiving these beauties in their imaginary mailboxes shortly. Merry Shardmas everyone!

Weekend update

(See what I did there? That's already a thing!)

The main point of this post is to offer this piece of advice: if you are pushed into an already packed car on the Tube by a group of people, one of whom is being particularly rude, tutting and fussing and being generally curmudgeonly in a very British-in-a-bad-way manner, it is probably the man with the silk paisley ascot, pinky ring, and large, curled moustache. The good news is, he will provide entertainment for the rest of your journey, as he is not only disdainful and furious when getting on the Tube, but also horrified by the incorrect subway etiquette of passengers in general. Let the theatrical eye-rolling, exaggerated sighs, and somewhat terrifying sneering begin!

Ladbrokes also runs a tasteful event called 'the poker cruise'. 

Also: LADBROKES. Ladbrokes is an English business that I had presumed was a place for betting on sports games and horse races and the like. Turns out, you can bet on anything you want. Anything. People who got wind of the William and Kate engagement were rushing into Ladbrokes' all over London before the news broke in an attempt to get that bet in. You can still bet on where the Royal couple is going to get married, though, so good news. Ladbrokes is the commercial equivalent of saying to a friend "Oy, mate, bet you it's going to rain later today." "Bet it's not." "You're on." That is a real business here. Also, why would you name your gambling business Ladbrokes? That just seems like a bad plan, from a branding perspective.