Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Reasons not to date me

  • My self-worth is directly connected to the number of comments I receive on my blog.
  • I am not nearly as funny in real life as my writing would lead you to believe.
  • I get my best ideas for writing from reading Craigslist or daydreaming in the shower.
  • Combine my daydreaming and my shoddy short-term memory, and it means I often forget which parts of me I've soaped up, prompting me to soap-up multiple times when I bathe.*
  • I use bathe (v) and shower (v) interchangeably.
  • This is the first time in four years, and only the second time in my life, that I have had to work a five-day work week. Even including all those times when I had two jobs.
  • I am exhausted.

~g. man. . . zzzzzz

--

*The good thing about multiple soaps is that I'm extra clean. The bad thing is that I use enough water to power a small city in my twenty-minute shower every morning. Representatives from Greenpeace have threatened to come to my apartment and chain themselves to my shower-head. But even that won't dissuade me from my long showers. They'll have to pry the soap shrapnel from my cold, wet hands!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

In a pickle

In case you were wondering what a young, happening mango in her early late-twenties does in the long pauses between posts, here's a sample of my latest work.

Sweet pickles are one of my favourite fall treats. Saving money is one of my favourite year-round activities. So I combined the two and made my own sweet pickles. Come over and we can crack open a jar!

That is all.


~g. mango is a silly little pickle (0:32)

Monday, September 08, 2008

Tradesies!

I have never really been a fan of the North American Free Trade Agreement until very recently. It seems a bit suspicious when a giant, knuckle-headed bully wants to strike a deal on the playground with the scrawny math geek. Imagine that conversation.

--
Outside a school, near a playground.

GKB: Hey twerp. How 'bout a knuckle sandwich?*
SMG: Uh. . .

GKB grabs SMG by the collar

SMG: PLEASE DON'T HURT ME! I'll do anything!
GKB: Anything? I know how 'bout we make a deal?
SMG: Yes, absolutely.
GKB: I won't punch you in the face if you'll do my math homework for the rest of the year. Everybody wins.
SMG: Wait, you won't punch me in the face right now, or today, or ever?
GKB: Yes.
SMG: Which one is it?

GKB pulls SMG closer, and gives a menacing look.

SMG: (Exasperated) Okay, fine, it's a deal.
GKB: It's been a pleasure doing business with you.

GKB winds up and plants one on SMG's face.
SMG lands on the ground in a daze.
Exit GKB
End scene.

Next Scene

SMG sits at a desk in his poorly lit room, with a black eye, working diligently on two sets of math assignments. . .

--

And that's pretty much how it's been with Canada and the US (and Mexico, remember them?). NAFTA was supposed to be a mutually-beneficial thinger dinger. But, not surprisingly, the US always comes out on top. And when the US decides something isn't right, it turns into a petulant child -- or possibly a sumo wrestler. Either way, there is a lot of weight being thrown around and lots of political tantrums and sooner or later somebody loses a softwood lumber industry.

And what does poor, little Canada do? Not much. We get our sweater vests in a knot, cry foul, and keep trading our resources away. Not the bravest math geeks in the bunch, the Canucks. Which is probably why the US picked us to partner up with in the first place.

But this fall all that is going to change. For once there is the possibility for a trade that would be truly mutually-beneficial. As both countries are in the midst of preparing to go to the polls, there is something we can do to make Americans happy and Canadians ecstatic.

I'm proposing trading Stephen Harper for Barack Obama.

It's no secret that Stephen Harper has been playing by the Republican rule book since before he was elected Canadian Prime Minister. In fact, he's better at it than the real Republicans are. McCain is an all right presidential candidate, but he's a little on the moderate side for the staunch right-wingers. And he's kind of homely. Stephen Harper is a Conservative's Conservative. And he's easy on the eyes. Sort of. Plus, even the most generous predictions for the Canadian elections have Harper scrounging up just enough votes for another minority government. But you can bet that he'll boost Republican votes with his pro-war, anti-gay, fiscally conservative despotism.

As for Obama, he's beginning to lose popularity south of the border. But I've seen more Obama '08 bumper stickers 'round these parts than I've seen for any Canadian politician in recent memory. Obama currently has more Canadian supporters than the Liberals and the NDP combined.** The people have spoken. Give us Barack. We don't want Harper back.


~g. mango is bam! right in the kisser.


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* Knuckle sandwich? When was this confrontation going down, anyway? 1954?
**According to an informal poll conducted be the G. Mango Research Group of the people currently in my apartment at press time.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Reasons not to date me

  • I will unfriend you immediately and without question if you are over the age of 18 and use OMG or LOL in any form of written communication with me.
  • I will excommunicate you for life (no matter what your age) if you use OMG or LOL in oral communication. Unless you do it ironically; in which case I will just look at you with contempt and call you a hipster.
  • I harbour no ill-will against those who use FYI or btw.
  • I am a hypocrite.*
  • I only have a vague idea of what bandwidth is, but I know I will be angry if you steal mine.


~g. mango looks just like buddy holly and you are mary tyler moore trying to t'ief my internet signal

--
*I mean with the OMG and the FYI thing, not in general. Although if you do a thorough investigation, who knows what you'll dig up?

Job Postings

Conservative Christian School seeks Left-wing Green Mango to challenge dress code and subvert fundamentalist curriculum. Must love kids.

About you: You are willing to quietly question my theology and tend to my kids (I have 1400 of them between the ages of 12-18). You are genuinely interested in both education and teenagers. You are also cool and calm in the face of adversity and are not one to make a spectacle of yourself or my kids. You can do high school French in your sleep, and can remember how to calculate the volume of a cylinder. You look dashing in sweater vests and are thinking about starting to sport a faux-hawk. However, you can be gender normative when the board members visit. Because you know how to keep your skeletons in the closet where they belong.

About me: Probably not nearly as bad as this ad makes me out to be. I'm just a regular independent school, full of rich kids who need cool adults who value them just as much as the poor kids you are used to working with do. So get over yourself, put on a sweater vest and meet me in the suburbs tomorrow morning at 8!


~g. mango is the best newest TA this side of the Canadian Bible Belt