In here life is beautiful… The girls are beautiful…

These used to be my sister’s tins, but I adopted them when she moved to London to go to university when I was 15. I adore them. I love the art, I love that they once upon a time held children’s cookies, I love everything about them. And they are the perfect size to hold tiny little things that might other wise get lost. Here they are in their closed glory:

Tin #1, with the little girl playing with her doll house contains:

That’s right, World’s Littlest Snoopy! I still have him after all these years (and I mean at least 28 years).  There’s also a small china duckling, Bad Badtz, a nurse doll, a baby clothes duckling patch and a Lego man ready for a margarita.

Tin #2, little boy playing with his castle contains:

This one’s great. It has a bunch of Polly Pocket dolls and their stuff that I got when they were brand new and cool. Now they don’t even fit in your pocket. There is also a pig eraser that would have been a prize for behaving myself at the dentist when I was young. Another china pig, a glass rooster and the metal car from Monopoly.

Tin #3, with the little girl swimming contains:

These were my mother’s toys when she was a little kid. They are in pristine condition because I have always treasured them. They are so cute and perfect. I just LOVE these two. I wish I knew where they came from, who made them. These might be in my top 10 most adored things I own.

It was suggested to me by the man I love the most that I take pictures of all the crap I own. While it’s true that I own an incredible archive of useless junk, I don’t know that this suggestion was because of the sheer awesomeness of it or as a way to embarrass me into getting rid of at least half of it. That won’t happen, but I did think it would be pretty fun to document all my stuff.

First, let me explain. I don’t throw my stuff out. Ever. I have pretty much every birthday card since day one, all personal mail, pay stubs, drawings, recipes and pictures cut out of magazines and newspapers, photographs, toys, knick knacks, toys, clothes, fabric, yarn, patches, stickers,  makeup, buttons, belts, books, tea towels, deodorant and toothpaste, shoes, and then some. And what’s strange is that my mother is the least sentimental person in the world. I will give her a gift for her birthday in June and she will re-gift it back to me by Christmas*. Some people say it’s because I am a Taurus and we lean towards hording, and if that’s true then I am a true Taurus. Although, strangely, I am not headstrong. No. I am NOT. I think I picked this habit up from my grandmas who both had lots of cute little things in their houses. Plus when I was a kid I had very few toys, and the ones I did have, I treasured deeply.

Also embarrassing, when I see other people’s collections of stuff I get nervous and jealous. I worry that they have better stuff or more stuff. Terrible!

Ok, first in the new series: Ticket stubs. This is by no means every ticket stub ever, but it’s a great cross section of shows I have seen. When I was younger I went to a lot of rock shows, but I never paid for any of them, so I never really had any ticket stubs to show. These I keep in my professional opera makeup kit (!) for no real reason, but if I do want to find them, I always know where they are.

They date from 1996, when I saw Electra at the COC. There’s my Mudhoney ticket when I met Flea for the first time, Cabaret, Blood for Blood and Otello. It’s certainly a great cross section. If you wonder where my 2 ticket stubs from the times I saw Prince, don’t worry, they are kept in special spots. And the Neil Young stub is somewhere.

*Not entirely true. But sort of.

I got involved with a community project. I was sent a cheapo dollar store doll and I have to give her a makeover and send in a picture. I just got mine yesterday and I have been studying her to try to come up with ideas on how to make her prettier, like that’s even possible.

Her head pops off if you breathe too huffily near her, but she has really great makeup and I love her hair colour.

And I will be working around her sexy shoes.

Mostly this is for Emily, with whom I share a deep love of the stickers that come in the crotch of new swim suits. Hot.

Billabong and Roxy respectively.

That looks like a big old disgusting hair stuck to it, doesn’t it? Haha, it IS. But it got stuck there in transit, going from crotch of swim suit to top of duvet cover for it’s moment in the sun. Yes, I am going to wash it before I wear it. Like, duh.

According to these guys. The ones highlighted in bold are the ones I have seen.

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Raging Bull (1980)
5. Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
6. Gone With The Wind (1939)
7. Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
8. Schindler’s List (1993)
9. Vertigo (1958)
10. The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
11. City Lights (1931)
12. The Searchers (1956)
13. Star Wars (1977)
14. Psycho (1960)
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
16. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The General (1927)
19. On The Waterfront (1954)
20. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
21. Chinatown (1974)
22. Some Like It Hot (1959)
23. The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)
24. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
25. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
26. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
34. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35. Annie Hall (1977)
36. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
37. The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
38. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
40. The Sound Of Music (1965)
41. King Kong (1933)
42. Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Shane (1953)
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48. Rear Window (1954)
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
51. West Side Story (1961)
52. Taxi Driver (1976)
53. The Deer Hunter (1978)
54. M*A*S*H (1970)
55. North By Northwest (1959)
56. Jaws (1975)
57. Rocky (1976)
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933)
61. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973)
63. Cabaret (1972)
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen (1951)
66. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
67. Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68. Unforgiven (1992)
69. Tootsie (1982)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
74. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
75. In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994)
77. All The President’s Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969)
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997)
84. Easy Rider (1969)
85. A Night At The Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
92. Goodfellas (1990)
93. The French Connection (1971)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do The Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben-Hur (1959)

I guess that no good movies have been made since 2001. And I thought that LOTR stunk. Bo-ring.

NSFW?

Yes, I stole it from Digg.

I went out for girls night on Saturday with Emily, Libs and Jen. We went to Dee’s for King’s Crown and wings. It’s very strange, after so many nights spent there to leave without a) reaking of cigarette smoke and b) falling into a gutter. It’s also very weird to see children there. La plus ca change, n’est-ce pas?

On my way there, on the TTC, I waited for a while at Bathurst station where I was entertained by the pigeons milling about inside the station. They are like miniature humans, they are so comfortable being indoors. And the best part when one wandered up to the window and looked outside at the pigeons there. I really wonder what they are thinking. Probably very little.

As it were, I couldn’t resist taking a picture:

And these:

Sorry for the graininess. I was using a different setting on my camera, which works well for outdoor skating pictures, but not so well for indoor pigeon pictures.

Mostly I love everyone in my life. There are a few people who seem hellbent on making me miserable, which is pretty funny because they don’t, it just makes my eyes hurt a little from the extensive rolling. Extensive.

I have had to say goodbye (or perhaps, hopefully, see you later) to an old friend recently. It sucks, but he has such dreadful taste in women that I can’t support it any longer. It makes me sad to think of the way he’s abusing himself, but I can’t stop it from happening. And maybe he really IS as stupid as I am beginning to think. And as she thinks.

Yesterday at work I laughed so hard I think I broke something in my ear. The woman I work for farted loudly as she sat down in a chair near me. I turned to look at her with an expectant I’m-waiting-for-you-to-excuse-yourself look on my face and she smiles and says “ow”. “Ow??” I said, “ow???!?!”

“Did you hear my knee pop when I sat down?” Deadpanned. Seriously, I had to make a trip to the washroom when we were done laughing to make sure I hadn’t had an accident.  Did I mention lately how much I love my job? Maybe that ought to be the title of this blog entry.

Anyway, we do fun stuff around here too. We went ice skating on the weekend, well, they skated, I took pictures and read my book in a cozy armchair with sunlight blazing all over me…Then a trip to Mountain Equipment Co-op and a fun climb up the practice wall.

I have spent the last few weeks pouring over Amazon.com and adding insane amounts of nonsense to my wishlist. Today I came across what may become my favourite vendor ever. They do printed t shirts and while a lot of them are rather typical “funny” shirts, such as Nintendo logos or Dwight from The Office, a lot of them can be broken down into 2 categories:

“I <3 _____”

A few of these make sense, but only a small few. Most don’t make ANY sense whatsoever, not even to an alien. Some samples:

See what I mean? Provel? Who’s Steph? Or Vito Fossella?

Or these:

Yes, I did look up stuff on Wikipedia too. Vlissingen is Dutch for Flushing, a city, I guess. We know what wookies are and what Velveeta is. Robert Gould Shaw? Hmm. Yeah, I guess I love him.

The other category is “funny phrases”. Funny is a loose term.

I know, the third one over belongs in the first categories, but I thought it was funny that it got spelled out rather than a red heart. Isis Isis ra ra ra? WTF?? I do admit that I would wear the last one happily.

They also have weird rando picture shirts and these two represent my favourites:

Yes, the first one is a man truffle hunting with his pig on a leash. The second is a beekeeper. No, it’s not every day you see a truffling shirt, is it? I almost put it on my wish list. ALMOST.

Feel free to post your favourites in my comments. There are so many to choose from and I only got to the 12th page of pictures before I had to rest. And also feel free to buy me any thing on my wish list. Really.