This is why living in the city has its ups, downs, and the WTFs?!

For the most part, I like living in the city. I can get greasy Chinese food at 3:30 in the morning if I wanted or pop into an all-night diner that will cater my ferocious craving for scrambled eggs. One of the drawbacks, however, of living here is that it’s kind of difficult meeting people, sometimes you can feel disconnected to everyone and everything. But then there are times when those random encounters with Toronto’s “colourful” inhabitants make you wish you never came out of your apartment.

I got up this morning with a determined attitude to battle any challenges foolish enough to take me on today, and if history has taught us anything (and it has a-plenty) it’s that you can’t go wrong overestimating your capabilities. I decided to stop and get a bagel on my way to work. Coming out of the Tim Hortons, I was confronted by a homeless guy who asked me for some change, and for the first time in a long time I happily supplied him with his request – living in the city has also made me weary of pan handlers. It’s not that I’m a bitch, no that’s not the reason AT ALL. So anyways, still in my positive mood I decide to tell him about how I’m starting a new job today and that I feel like I’m beginning a new phase in my life. Apparently the homeless guy, who calls himself Mr. Easy, also swears by the same positive outlook. Wow, connection! And then he proceeds to tell me that the best way to capture the essence of this feeling of re-birth is to crack an egg on top of your head and let the broken embryo trickle down your face. My reaction was: 

Let it be known that Tim Hortons between 7-10 a.m. is the peak time for the crazies, where the day patients, homeless people, and yuppies are all getting their morning fix, just in different ways. Oh Toronto! What will you throw my way next?! A streetcar driver with elaborate S&M fantasies? Quiznos "sandwich artist" who has a song ranked number one in Israel?

copy right of the purple banana, thaz moi!

Don’t pee in my Kool-Aid and call it gravy!

Did that grab your attention? Good! 

I have recently come to an admittedly half-baked, wolfing-down-too-much-cake-in-one-sitting kind of observation, and here it is: There’s a definite problem with the word normal in the 21^st century. No one seems to like being called normal anymore, and we can thank the hipsters for that. Back in 2001, the nation of Hipsters conquered what used to be a very tame existence, causing society to fall upwards into a chaotic mess of skinny jeans, envirholism, organic food binge eating, and Facebook. God help you if you don’t like craft beer. Or even worse is if you have never heard of some obscure indie band that only performs in the basement arena of what is actually a grocery store during the day time. 

What’s that I hear you say? “Stop ragging on the Hipsters and get to your point”? First of all anonymous reader, who is probably a hipster, know that it’s okay – we live in a post-racial America after all – plus I’m part Hipster part yuppie so I can get away with saying all this!

But I will get to my point. I consider normal in relation to how Gen Xers think of abnormality – i.e. the nerd in high school or homeless man. I’m talkin’ Regan era definition of normal, when the kids on Saved by the Bell were my your idols for cool. But we have, some say thankfully, come to an age where being abnormal is socially acceptable. It is cool to have a manageable psychological disorder like Sir Charlie Sheen – the man is so golden that he’s making money off of other not-normals who pay to see him having afternoon tea on stage. 

*spoiler alert*

Last night, I went to see the new film Hanna starring the creepy blonde girl form Atonement playing yet another satisfyingly creepy role of the title character. Points to the unknown writers of this film for having the guts to write about a teenage girl who can kill a 300 lb. caribou but *clincher* just doesn’t know where to belong in the world. If I had a heart, I would put a sad-face emoticon right here. 

On the walk home from the theatre, my friends and I discussed our frustrations with the movie, and while they made a valid point of Hanna’s story line feeling incomplete because of the lack of information about how she came into the world, I firmly stood my ground in saying: “yo that bitch is straight up crazy”! This girl is an actual psychopath who single-handedly killed over 100 men in the course of the movie, and had no problems doing it too. Was she the product of her upbringing, of circumstances beyond her control that forced to her to become a killing machine? If you came to this analysis, then I applaud you for finally being able to use that Psych degree for something other than serving coffee to strangers (Watch out! Haterpression!)

But was she actually abnormal? Her blood work in the spy DNA test thingy said as much. Or was she the only one normal in a world where everyone else – especially the adults – acted like abnormally with their excessive teeth cleaning and new age hippie lifestyle? What disturbs me most of all is the fact that Hanna seemed normal compared to the dirt bag assassins who were trying to beat the living shit out of this girl – and we in the audience actually liked the fact that this deranged psychopath was killing other psychopaths. Somehow Hanna’s not-normal is more tolerable than the other abnormals in the movie. Kudos, by the way, to my girl Cate Blanchet who is probably the only actress in Hollywood that can pull off Dorothy and the Wicked Witch vibe all at the same, while rocking red hair. Just fierce!

Anyways, that night my friend turned to me and said “Thepurplebanana, you are not normal. I am normal, but you are not.” It took me a while to realize that she was simply stating her observation of my weird and nerdy habits and not really meaning to offend me. So I decided not to give her a taste of the back of me hand. In her eye, I am a weird nerdy hipster who belongs in the left-wing intelligentsia but I thought that she meant that either I was Screech from Saved by the Bell or a psychopathic blonde with mommy issues. Common mistake.

copy right of the purple banana, thaz moi!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! This is my first post...that is all

I thought long and hard (*cue Michael Scott) about whether or not I should start cataloguing some of my random thoughts in a personal web log. It was a matter of ethics really, should the public be exposed to my deeply personal views and opinions, most of which are almost always sprinkled with offensive haterpressions (def: expressions expressed by a hater, look it up in the Oxford). Or should I keep frequenting the local Starbucks where you may notice me frantically scribbling in my little notebook with a look on my face that can only be described as this:

Uncle Fester - Adams Family

As you probably can tell, I have nothing but intelligent things to say despite my sub-human appearance, which makes me a perfect blogger don’t ya think? Booyaah!! Haterpression numero 1! 

So, as I was saying. I was going back and forth on the idea of starting my very own blog and after giving it a good solid weekend to really think things through, I decided to jump on the blog bandwagon, because I am nothing if not ahead of the trends. Ask the high school friends I never talk to any more about the time I went to New York with my parents in the summer of 2002 and brought back a belt with plastic diamond-encrusted buckle as a souvenir. It was perhaps the premiere presence of a belt with vanity buckles in my entire school, heck I was the first person in my entire town to rock that belt. You would not believe how many people noticed my snazzy new belt, after I pointed it out to them. It was a conversation starter for sure! Sometimes when I’m feeling blue, or when it’s raining outside, or when I’m out of toilet paper, I try to think about that belt and it makes my heart smile every time. But of course I have since moved on from wearing that belt in public.

To me, blogging is kind of like that belt: there are definite overtones of self-indulgence and narcissism present, and bloggers certainly write in the pursuit of instant gratification, but at the end of the day we are trying to express ourselves dammit! Even if we have to dangle our talent in front of people’s faces, at least we know that we look good doing it. 

So stay tuned, cuz god knows what other crap I’ll come up with in my pursuit of recreating the feeling that comes from wearing an 8 year-old belt with plastic jewel-encrusted vanity buckle.

Picture doesn't belong to me but I did find it on this guy's blog: http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/