my bank do thangs that your bank wish it could

due to my current life of leisure and the fact that FZV is off ice (that lasted a whole three weeks), i was able to sleep on a luxurious deck last night, actually see insecure and not just listen to the podcast summation, and i got some steps in this morning walking my friend to work.

i meandered through side streets and when i made to king, the streetcars were all backed up, of course, so i headed to queen street to go home that way instead. there’s a cibc on queen and spadina, and i had to get cash out for therapy, and decided to do the adult thing and order my cheques at the same time.

why, pray tell, do i need cheques? because i finally used up the last of my original set (from university) and my landlord cannot figure out an e-transfer. i could get out cash every month, but then i’d have to make an appointment to see him because i’m not leaving my rent cash in the letter box with no proof that it reached. i decided last week that i would just do it, and try to get him to split the cost with me, because you have to order 50 at a time, and the cost ends up being $55 or something like that, which seems insane to me, but it is antiquated technology.

the tellers were very nice to me, even though i was in yesterday’s outfit and had no eyebrows, and the woman was telling me that it would be $20 and that seems more reasonable. i figured that that could be wrong, but she seemed confident, so i went with it. she ordered them, and then someone else swooped in and was appalled because the cost is indeed $55, and he pre-offered a full refund for them when i get charged for them, even though i wasn’t angry at all.

contrast this with scotiabank, with whom i have a TFSA because my former employer banks with them and they advertised savings accounts that would be good for us, and for the most part it hasn’t been a problem, but in the last month, when i adjusted the amount of my contribution due to my status, i have gotten spotty and shitty service, and i have to go in in person because the money is coming from my account at a different bank. i have been jerked around in person, on the phone, and over email, kept waiting for inordinate amounts of time, had to travel across time and told wrong information from a different person every time because they keep quitting, and nothing has been offered to me at all, not even some freakin’ movie tickets and you know they own that whole scenepoints racket. maybe they’re going through some growing pains because they are trying to prove that they are diverse and shit. they may have gained a stadium, but to me, they are acting the exact same way as the empire that has a monopoly on that stadium.

since i’ve been considering long-term relationships and choices to stay and leave in situations, i’m glad for this sign that yes, i’m good with my bank not just because it’s been the only one, but because it still works.

money isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing, and where you keep it matters.

jklol, i’m totally that tita that stuffs cash in socks and shit. maybe that’s why this b thinks i don’t have a credit card.

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july 2018 books

it’s been a helluva month. i’ve been all over the place, but here are the books:

1) white oleander-janet fitch. i got this one from a book swap at a friend’s mom’s place. i was a bit worried that my book (i drink for a reason-david cross) would not go over well, but it ended up being fought over. i also learned that some people engage in the appalling practice of reading the last page of a book before they decide to read the rest of it. gaaah. this one was super intense, but so well-written that i couldn’t put it down.

2) high rise stories-compiled by audrey riley (and read on the 2nd floor of the reference library, not sure why this is not in general circulation, or who told me about it, but i am certain that it was on a podcast)

3) you play the girl-carina chocano (again, i think this was in liner notes or contributor’s notes or something of that nature)

4) how to american-jimmy o. yang. desus and mero brought me here. even though they covered a lot in the interview, this was like a grass jelly milk tea-refreshing and easy to drink. i like that he wrote it himself, unlike most basketball players and coaches, and i’m looking even more forward to crazy rich asians.

5) what is not yours is not yours-helen oyeyemi everything she writes is magic.

“Consent is a downward motion, I think-a leap or a fall-and whether they’ll admit it or not, even the most decisive people can find themselves unable to tell whether or not their consent was freely given. That inability to discover whether you jumped or were pushed brings about a deadened gaze and a downfall all its own”. (290)

6) nothing ever dies-viet thanh nguyen this one took me a while to finish, it was pretty dense, literally and literally. the idea that sticks out the most is the monetizing of nostalgia, from the cu chi tunnels to the zippos (i got one when i was there processing my identity fresh out of university that had an engraving of saddam hussein and missiles that lit up with the caption “anxiety peace we” this book broke that down)

dear FZV

i met a super butch last night at shadefest, a comedy festival for and by QPOC that you would’ve loved. her name was tiffany.

the first thing i wanted to do was text you about it, and wonder if she spelled it with an “i”.

it fucking sucks that we are not friends right now because i am not over you and you never saw me in the first place so you have nothing to get over.

but i miss you.

dear summer.

hashtag, goals.

here’s an excerpt from an email that i sent to a person i was in a relationship with some time ago, about my intentions for my new life in toronto:

what do I want?

1) to build the confidence necessary to gain my financial freedom (taxes, student loan, all the things I’ve been saying for a million years)
2) to buy a proper bed
3) to stay in Toronto for the full calendar year and then decide whether I will move to NYC then or within 5 years
4) STAY somewhere
5) or get a world ticket and travel the world
6) write and perform more
7) to be cool(er) with my family
8) to read books, all day every day
9) to publish an anthology about only children raised by single parents
10) to go on a book tour
11) to put out a four-issue magazine
12) to publish a book of poetry
13) to source my old journals for material

and, well.

1) DONE.
2) DONE.
3) DONE. 3b) BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
4) DONE. same crib, same job for almost 8/9 years in the same city.
5) not done. forgot about this for a minute.
6) half done. could be more done.
7) ibid.
8) DONE. (though never done)
9) not done. also forgot about this but hey….
10) not done. (prolly need to do 9 first, or 12)
11) not done. (did i have a theme? or just an end date, haha how like me to have an end date and no theme)
12) not done.
13) DONE.

7/13, 54 non-weighted percent is not really that bad at all. i’ve got a few more to add to the list, but this is a good jumpoff. thanks, old emails.

metrotextual-may 2015

i feel like there’s a point in all of my attempted records where things get a bit murky, and i have hit that point here. my may 2015 file is full of books dated with different months, so i think this means that i didn’t record the exact date that i read them, but i recorded the dates that i blogged them, when i was still doing that. my apologies to kathryn kiutenbrouwer for the interview i never wrote up from our talk about all of the broken things, i don’t think i was actually ready to confront my feelings about talking to you about the book you wrote about vietnamese-canadian identity.

the books:

1) All of the Broken Things-Kathryn Kiutenbrouwer
2) Exposing Myself-Geraldo Rivera
3) From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant-Alex Gilvarry
4) Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy-Darryl Pinckney
5) After Artest-The NBA and the Assault on Blackness-David J. Leonard

these were all very big books, literally and literally. one of them prompted me to contact a former canadian talk show host to ask if he’s ever interviewed geraldo (he had not). one of these i got from the philly free library podcast, my longtime fave.

here are some quotes:

“The effort to exclude under-20 ballers from the NBA, while also motivated by owners not wanting to pay first-round dollars to players who might take years to develop and college programs wanting to profit from the unpaid labor of America’s top ballers, reflects a desire to push America’s best players into attending college so they can join the league having been already ‘seasoned’ and ‘domesticated’.” (102)

“Barbara used to tell me that people like us would always carry the double-edged sword of celebrity: greater access to sources, but resentment from rivals and colleagues. Don’t let it affect your work, she counselled. On some stories, especially in remote places, we will often cause a bigger fuss than the story itself. Don’t worry about it. Just concentrate on doing better than anyone else.” (307)

“There were more rats running around the emergency room than hospital staff. The place would have been a scandal in Addis Ababa, or Bombay, but it was quietly tolerated in the urban wasteland of the South Bronx.” (72)

“What is it that they say? Home is where you hang yourself.” (5)

“Obama’s reelection stimulated concern in some quarters about the price black Americans were paying for a black president.” (39)

“We rented a boat, and I rowed us to a remote corner of the reservoir. The sun baked down hot. I took off my shirt, and we embraced. Right there, the estranged first lady of Canada leant new meaning to the term head of state.” (333)

“It was the shame Teacher conveyed, by trying to fix things. He wanted to shout that these things were just broken. He wanted her to understand about the pride of broken things.” (161)

“And you won’t hear any of us called prisoners either. That’s forbidden too. We are detainees. It is all very clever on their part. Because we are not called prisoners, they don’t have to charge us with a crime.” (206)

five words: politricks, notoriety, truth, advice, reality

metrotextual-may 2016

the books:

1) The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears-Dinaw Mengetsu-may 6
2) The Punch-John Feinstein-may 11
3) One Last Thing Before I Go-Jonathan Tropper-may 13
4) Eleven Rings-Phil Jackson with Hugh Delehanty -may 17th
5) Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Ex*-Heather Belle, Michelle Fiordaliso-may 19
6) Super Sad True Love Story-Gary Shteyngart-may 30

huh. deep in the playoffs for the first time, it doesn’t surprise me that it was mostly fiction and basketball, with a touch of trust issues.

the quotes:

“It wasn’t a kiss so much as it was a gentle press, or an extended graze of lips, full of a sudden, almost crushing tenderness.” (59)

“Players and coaches were far more accessible to the media. To begin with, there were far fewer media outlets. ESPN was still two years from its launch, and USA Today was six years away from publishing for the first time. None of the twenty-four-hour news services that now glut the airwaves existed. Writers often traveled on the same flights as the players. Their lifestyles weren’t all that different. The difference in salaries between most players and most writers wasn’t that great. Often they ate and drank together.” (36)

“He loves her as much as any man can love a woman he’s never spoken to, which is significantly more than you’d think.” (12)

“One thing I’ve learned as a coach is that you can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.” (13)

“And beneath the chaos of the moment, Denise becomes aware of a painful truth about herself: she is never as deeply in love with a man as she is in the moment he leaves her.” (211)

“To earn that kind of trust and affection from a child is to find out that you may have just been a better person than you believed all along.” (108)

“What impressed me most about Scottie, however, was his development over time as a leader-not by mimicking Michael but by teaching his teammates how to play within the system and always offering a compassionate ear when they ran into trouble. This was critical because Michael wasn’t very accessible and many of the players were intimidated by his presence. Scottie was someone they could talk to, someone who would keep an eye out for them on court. As Steve Kerr says, ‘Scottie was the nurturer, Michael was the enforcer.’” (74)

“While the desire to please caregivers is natural, it can become confusing if too much was expected from you as a child…..If responsibilities were foisted upon you too early, you may have come to believe that your greatest worth comes from denying yourself and offering up acts of service instead.” (102)

“I was only sixteen at the time. I didn’t believe in consequences yet.” (126)

“I felt both jealous of their youth and scared for their future. In short, I felt paternal and aroused, which is not a good combination.” (206)

in five words: experience, relationships, revelations, imaginary, intimidation.

metrotextual-may 2017

here are the books i read this month a year ago:

1) milk and honey-rupi kaur-may 3
2) I Have the Right to Destroy Myself-Young-Ha Kim-may 5
3) Listening to Grasshoppers-Arundhati Roy-may 10
4) Things that Can and Cannot Be Said-Arundhati Roy and John Cusack-may 11
5) Long Shot-Craig Hodges with Rory Fanning-may 14th
6) The Art of a Beautiful Game-Chris Ballard-may 16
7) Hungry Heart-Jennifer Weiner-may 22
8) Do I Have to Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?-Jordan and Margaret Paul, Ph.D.-may 25
9) The Name Therapist-Duana Taha-may 27

some pull quotes:

“We all want freedom and we all want intimacy-at the same time.” (19)

“Failure to understand a player’s psyche is a flaw Ravin sees in the disciplinarian style of some coaches. Rather than empowering a player, they strip him of his authority.” (158)

“…being a good writer and a good reporter are far from the same thing. A writer can be invisible, but a reporter has to be both present and persistent, showing up with a notebook or asking questions over the phone.” (130)

“In a lot of ways, I relied on my education to maintain my edge with Jordan. I knew he didn’t know shit about Black history. No matter how much people praised Jordan, no matter how many awards he won, no matter how much money he had, he didn’t have the thing I held most dear: an education in the struggle of our people. This gave me confidence on the court and in the locker room with him.” (99)

“The trend of skipping grades stopped once educators realized that they were creating a generation of social cripples.” (25)

“R.Kelly went on to do great and horrible things. Carlita and I were both proud to say we played a part in his musical success. The fact that he cheated with my wife , in my house, after all I did for him, still haunts me from time to time.” (83-4)

“Can you really bomb feminism into a country?” (22)

“Most people take their first date to a movie, but not me; I take my first dates to hear the minister Louis Farrakhan speak.” (63)

“History is really a study of the future, not the past.” (23)

“It’s easy to have sex when you can’t really communicate.” (66)

“People who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity.” (6)

wow. so i guess we don’t really ever change who we are. (as we shouldn’t). thanks to these writers/ballers for their work.