I suppose you were expecting one of those hippie yippie funky chicken modern titles, eh? Well the hell with ya! This one'll do just fine.

Introspection done. Now I'm into full on obsession. Want a house. Need a house. Must have a house. What did you do today? Looked at houses! What are you doing on the internet? Researching houses! What's for lunch? Houses!

I'm looking forward to having a foundation again. To not having to leave the taps running half the winter so the pipes don't freeze. To not swaying in strong breezes.

And here's something I never thought I'd say: I'm looking forward to having the option of public transportation again. Cars are mighty emblems of freedom only as they whisk you away down highways to distant lands. In the city they're just big, awkward dependents whose needs and expenses must come before your own.

"You're going out to eat? But where will you put me? No no no! Don't you dare leave me on the street! You won't be done eating before the rush hour parking ban comes into effect - they'll take me away from you! Put me in that nice building over there. That one! The one just twenty blocks from the restaurant. Because the other ones are full. Well then take your fancy shmancy ooh-look-at-me-my-shoes-match-my-dress heels off, that's what the old emergency hiking boots in the trunk are for. You do have fourteen dollars in change handy, don't you? What's that? Oh boy! You mean it? Yay! Take-out again! I knew you'd change your mind!"

Seriously. You might as well rely on getting piggyback rides from teenagers for transportation as take a car downtown. I will still keep my car, though. For one thing my old dog's getting a little too bleary eyed for the whole fake-being-a-seeing-eye-dog-so-they-let-you-on-the-bus routine - my conviction to the method acting technique falters when I'm dragged into the path of moving vehicles - but he's still a fun travel partner when he isn't in charge of navigation. I just think it would be nice to be able to sneak off without the big metal need-machine occasionally.

Now I'm not necessarily sure I can get a house. Well, I'll amend that. I know I can get a house, I just don't know if I can get a house and still stay within my financial comfort zone. There are a few reasons I chose to live in a trailer, and while bloom has gone off many of those roses (and turned into venomous, barbed, bloodthirsty thorns) the fact that it's damned affordable living smells as sweetly as it ever did.

On the other hand, if I can work this whole getting a house thing the way I hope I can work this whole getting a house thing, there's a chance I can actually come ahead in the deal. Actually reduce my monthly expenses. I might only have a trailer, but I do have a very nice trailer, and it is in on a very, very nice lot in a very, very popular area.

And I do own it outright. That's the part that burns a bit. I couldn't own a house outright. Yeah, I'd be just as out on my fanny if I failed to pay my lot fees as if I failed to pay a mortgage of course, and of course money toward a mortgage is actually money toward owning something whereas money toward lot fees buys you nothing but limited time, but it still seems preferable to getting the bank involved. Why? Because under these boobs of mine there beats the grizzled heart of a stubborn old man who doesn't want some damn bank gettin' all messed up in my business dadgummit!

But grizzled old men don't like turning on the taps and having nothing come out when it's forty below either. They hate watching their homes relax into a nice comfortable slump every time the ground gets a bit damp too. They like good solid houses cemented into the ground the way nature intended! The kind of good quality craftsmanship you'd be proud to grow feeble and die in!

So yeah. I guess it's enough playtime in the little trailer now. Inner child satisfied. Time to let the inner old fart have a fun day.

I got this title because it was so unique, and also because the people next door have one.

One of the most striking characteristics of the human race is it's inescapability. Try it sometime. Go to the far reaches of the earth, and find a nice little isolated spot. One that takes you a few weeks or months of trail breaking on foot to get to. Somewhere tranquil that you can be by yourself and just relax. When you get there close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Then exhale. Then open your eyes again. You will discover that you are now surrounded by roughly fifty people; forty eight of which are chatting about how nice and quiet the spot is and two of which are on cell phones trying to broker a subdivision.

I grew up and lived pretty much my whole life right in the heart of the capital city here. Then I decided I needed to not be in the heart of a city for awhile. I needed wind and sky and space. I moved to a quiet little trailer park far on the outskirts of a small city on the outskirts of that capital city. It was completely surrounded by fields of sweet smelling canola in every direction for miles around. I traded convenience for solitude. I successfully got away from it all.

It all found me again. Eight years down the road they started pouring concrete in the last field left this side of the highway. The solitude is completely gone. Only the inconvenience remains. Well, I guess being force fed a steady diet of franchises and box stores is a form of convenience. Kind of like fighting off a pack of rabid badgers is a form of exercise.

I had two hours to kill downtown in the capital city today. I wandered the familiar streets and realized that I'm still part of their landscape. I realized that I prefer a landscape peppered with obscene graffiti and garbage to one saturated in fast food chains and billboards. I prefer braking constantly for pedestrians and hunting for rare parking spots to blankly barreling across an unchanging landscape. I prefer old buildings that need some work done on them to brand new buildings that won't be worth repairing when they get old. I prefer strangers arguing in the street to everybody averting their eyes when they pass one another.

There is no alone in this world, so I might as well be home.

If you're looking for the title please allow me to refer you to item number seven.

Ten Reasons I'm Not Posting Today

1. I've decided not to have a Monday this week and to have an extra Sunday instead.
2. I haven't posted for two days now, and I hate to lose momentum like that.
   
3. I haven't had any sugar today at all. My brain is mean and scary without sugar. Don't want to go in there.
   
4. Because I can't blog from the bathtub. Well okay, can't is kind of a strong word. Don't have a high enough mortality threshold to blog from the bathtub, then.
5. Because I'm only half way through this list and I'm already getting distracted. Yes you are a silly kitty. Yes you are!
   
6. This all goes on the internet, you know. People can, like, see everything I write here. Ooh! Gives me the oogie woogies!
   
7. Because if I write a post I'll have to write a title.
8. Time is money, I'm not getting any younger you know, and he who laughs last is lost... wait... okay I don't actually know that one but I think you see where I'm going with this.
9. Because lists are trendier than posts. Can I be popular now please? I can wear tight jeans if it'd help! Well okay, can is kind of a strong word.
10. Because when I started this list I don't even remember how long ago I thought it would be easier than a full post, didn't I? When actually if I'd just written about the creepy old man in the waiting area at my mechanic's like I'd originally planned I'd be long finished and eating fudge while my toes pucker in a bubble bath by now, wouldn't I? But I'm just too stubborn to admit when I'm wrong and have to keep paddling the damned sinking ship anyway, don't I?
    

With the budget I had it's a miracle this title even got made.

Okay, I have now finally been to see James "I'm just going to keep killing stuff until you cry" Cameron's monster tree pull and cat shoot. It was very shiny. It was also almost three hours long. Still didn't even manage to make a dent in my concession stand fountain drink, though. I think Cameron would have to pick off every single card carrying member of the screen actor's guild one by one to buy me enough time to hit the bottom of one of those wax paper buckets.

I always buy one, though. Not so much because I want one as because I would feel deprived if I didn't. Same goes for candy. Yesterday the early show we'd arrived for had been sold out, and we spent the bulk of the two hours waiting for the next showing at a mall food court. By the time we arrived at the theatre there was barely enough room in my pants for both me and all of the mall pizza I'd just consumed, and the top layer of my tongue had been stripped raw by the sugar in the pop I'd washed it down with. It took a truly admirable force of will to get me to that concession stand, I tell ya, but I made it. Only the weak skip dessert, and as far as I'm concerned if I don't have a bag of chocolate between my knees I don't have any business even being in a theater seat.

Yeah, not really a popcorn fan. Wasn't before last night, definitely not one now after spending three hours sitting behind someone who liberally sprinkled hers with a seasoning that smelled uncannily like the least adorable part of my dog. Fortunately the people behind me weren't eating anything too obnoxious, or perhaps I just couldn't smell it over the sound of their kicking the back of my seat. I appreciate that sentence didn't actually make sense, but I really wanted to work the fact that they kicked the back of my seat for three hours into this post and that's the best I could come up with. Yes I will get over it, I just need to work through it in my own time, that's all.

No, of course I didn't complain. I sat there and took it like a Canadian, dammit.

Am I still allowed to say that? Judging from the ad I saw before the movie, the licensing rights to Canadian patriotism have been purchased by the Coca-Cola company. Evidently their market research department has concluded that the most effective way to inspire patriotism in Canadians is to scream "He shoots he scores!" in our faces repeatedly until, one would apparently logically conclude, it makes us thirsty. Then for a finale they finished things off with a veiled dig at America. Oh yes they did! They told Canadians to remind the world where hockey came from. Okay, giant American corporation, I will! Right after I finish my Pepsi. Ideally I'd bundle up my spite scented brand loyalty and dedicate it to a Canadian brand of pop instead, but that's just not a practical option. Canadian pop is called "beer", and drinking it requires the taking of public transportation. In this part of Canada taking the bus requires five layers of clothing and the social calendar of a comatose ninety year old to be a workable proposition. Also they don't let you fiddle with the temperature controls and get really snarky when you sing along to the radio at the top of your lungs. I can't behave that well in a moving vehicle when I'm sober. They're simply asking too much of me.

Then when they got up to leave they leaned on my hair. The people behind me, I mean. At the movie. Yeah I was kind of hoping a smoother opportunity to work that in would present itself before I finished writing this thing, but I'm out of ideas and still have healing to do.

In my day titles were more than just cheap gimmicks.

I'm in training to be an old person. Making good progress, too. I've mastered the chair nap, gotten the damn kids off my lawn, and spent all day Sunday at the RV Show. It was too a very romantic Valentine's Day! Sure, my boyfriend wanted to take me to the botanical gardens, and yeah that would have been a more traditional way to celebrate. I for one can't think of a grander romantic gesture than spending an entire day allowing your girlfriend to cram you into an endless succession of little rooms that you can't stand fully upright inside of just because you know it will make her ridiculously happy, though. Poor thing's probably still a bit stooped. It's a noble stoop, though. A manly stoop. A stoop of chivalrous sacrifice!

Also he's as dedicated to finding opportunities to eat mini donuts as I am, and I know sugar's romantic. After all, giant multi-conglomerate corporations say so, and giant multi-conglomerate corporations are never wrong. About anything. Ever! You don't believe me just ask their legal departments. Bring a lawyer to translate. And whatever you do don't sign anything.

No, I can't afford an RV. Yet. I can afford the RV accessibility atlas of North America, though, so that's a start. It has a special plastic cover you can safely spill soft foods on and everything. What I can do in the meantime, too, is help above mentioned boyfriend refurbish his Boler Trailer. Boler trailers are definitely romantic. One could even go so far as to say they're forcibly romantic. They're so small that two people sharing one have two options. One is killing each other. The other option requires just as much energy, can be just as messy (if done correctly), and is generally speaking a bit harder on the suspension, but it at least leaves a second person around to share driving duty for the trip home and offer important navigation assistance, like notifying you immediately after you've just passed the turn you needed to take and wiping lunch off the atlas.

Apparently all we need to do to get the Boler back in business is scrape off the lichen, sand down and paint the exterior, remove and replace all the trim, rewire all of the electrical, completely reupholster everything, sew up some curtains, get some tires and new windows on the thing, and do some fixing stuff with the scary explodey can that runs the stove and fridge (pretty sure that bit won't be my job). So far we've managed to pick a color. We're in agreement that bright yellow would best minimize the risk of it getting lost in particularly dense foliage, which for a Boler trailer would mean a particularly precocious second season shrub. We'll just need to be careful of black trim to avoid any embarrassing and potentially painful mating attempts by stinging insects. But really, once those little odds and ends are dealt with hey presto - we'll be rugged and outdoorsy Grizzly Adams types ("Grizzly Adams types" being defined as "people who live in a can without a toilet").

Wow. I already feel so nature-ey and stuff I can't stand it. I'm practically a moose.

How hard can it be to write a proper title anyway?

I've often heard it suggested that people should have to pass an IQ test before being allowed to have kids. Interestingly enough, though, I've never heard of anybody voluntarily testing themselves or their co-procreators before proceeding with their own seeding. Of course there's a good reason for this. We take our ability to diagnose stupidity in others to be conclusive evidence that we are not suffering from it ourselves. Presumably people who actually are stupid never question anybody else's intelligence. That being the case, it sure makes people calling for IQ tests look stupid. Why go to all that trouble?

"Hey Bob, who do you know that's stupid?"

"Who do I know that's stupid? Geez. Can't think of anybody."

"Bob?"

"Yeah?"

"You're an idiot."

Settled.

It' s not like these conclusions are reached without a reasoning process, though. It's not a conscious one, but it's there. Obviously you can't be stupid if you're capable of the same level of reasoning as smart people are. Your friends are obviously smart people because they agree with all of the same conclusions you arrive at, and you only arrive at the conclusions that make the most sense. To you. Who think them up. Look, let's not lose focus here - the point is that if you were stupid you'd be driving, voting, and rearing children like those people your friends make fun of, and you're not, are you? No, you're doing the opposite. So there you go! No further testing required.

When I was a kid it really used to bother me how water would run off of peoples' chins when they came out of the swimming pool. I was always so embarrassed for them, and so grateful that water didn't run off my chin like that.

Of course it did! It's a good thing I didn't find that out that back then, though. I'd have probably drowned in the shower trying to make my chin the highest point on my head the very next day. Yeah, it bothered me that much. I guess we just assume that we're innocent of the things that bother us so much in other people because it seems logical that we'd be more accepting of traits we have in common. Or perhaps just that we'd be more self aware than that. Doesn't really matter which, seeing as how both assumptions can generally be completely disproven just by standing naked in front of a mirror for about ten seconds anyway.

Tell you what, I'm just going to concede right now. Everyone else is way smarter than I am. They can make the next generation. I'll just find some other way to spend my time and money. I'm sure there's a beach in the tropics somewhere that the cost of living for one independent adult would run roughly the same amount that it would take to raise a few children.

Yes. That would be an excellent place for us stupid people. I can be packed and ready to go in an hour. Great idea, smart people!

Send my love to the kids!

The cheese grater in this title made a lot more sense when I was asleep.

I wonder if they'll ever invent remote controls for brains. Volume, brightness, rewind, pause, that kind of thing. It'd be so cool to be able to just change the channel on those arguments that we can't stop replaying in our heads. No, you still wouldn't be able to go back in time to the academic debate where your reasoning was challenged and use that decisive "Stupid stupid dumb head face!" counter argument you formulated after the fact. How much sweeter, though, to be able to simply delete the stupid stupid dumb head faces of the world forever right when they're in mid snide remark, and switch over instead to your twelfth birthday party when you freakin' owned that pinata, man? Zoom in on that and crank the surround sound. Pity party is over! It's a hooray for you party now!

The best part, though? The off switch. Click! Sound asleep. No muss, no fuss, no sharp blows to the skull. Just sweet, complete unconsciousness at the flick of a switch.

I know all the parents are with me on that one.

It goes without saying, though, that once we're adults the only person we'd want to be able to access our remote controls would be our own selves. It also goes without saying that the government would put an end to that idea pretty quick.

They'll say:

"Our nation can never truly be free as long as terrorists are allowed to turn their minds to the purpose of destroying democracy at will!"

And then we'll say:

"As far as I'm concerned as soon as you decide to be a terrorist you give up your right to control your own mind. After all, if you're going to try and prevent my freedom, why should you have any?"

And then before you know it:

"Well if you wait until after someone's blown up a building to take control of their minds it's a little late for it to do much good then, isn't it? Besides, if you have nothing to hide you have no reason to care if the government controls your brain."

Leads to:

"If you don't support the government controlling your brain you don't really love your country, and if you don't love your country you're too dangerous to control a brain."

Not that we'd ever notice the government tinkering away in the back of our sub-consciousnesses anyway. Not with all the spam we'd be sifting through.

Well you didn't think it would be free, did you? Sure there'll probably be a basic install package available for a low, one time fee. One that lets you taste the possibilities but not truly indulge in them. Once you're dependent on the thing, though, nothing will slow the march of profit. You want to finish reliving that first kiss? Sure - right after this message from Gum, now with icyhotsonicspicyfreshwinterweinerdoodleblastcoolness crystals!

Of course they'll be targeted ads. Google's algorithms are going to be snapping all over your synapses.

And of course parents would undoubtedly have to shell out for specific installs for school and different ones for after school activities and set up all kinds of different security codes and permissions. "Pause Kimmy for third period - she's not allowed any sex ed." The company you work for would likely be shoving something in there as well - at least a scrambler to block certain channels while you're on company time. Hey, you're not getting paid to miss your mommy, alright? People would definitely be frying their gray matter with cheap back alley bootlegs, too. Overall it'd be expensive and overstimulating, it'd be abused and become intrusive, basic human rights and freedoms would almost certainly become compromised and there would undoubtedly be a risk of severe and permanent brain damage.

But still - you could record your dreams like TiVo! Totally worth it!