Extra-special

Pen on paper; inverted

A list of things I've witnessed recently

I don't write enough lists. They make a lot of things simpler - things like recipes, invoices, and yes, even blog posts. Too many of them is probably not that great a thing though. Can you imagine your life being filled with a series of checklists? A list of checklists, turning into a list of lists of checklists ad nauseam. It's actually pretty scary to think about, because if you fill out the lists you eventually turn into a robot. But there's something to be said about having just the right amount of lists in your life, so here's one I want to share.

A list of things I've seen in the past couple weeks or so:

• A car followed by a small truck zooming past me on the segregated streetcar-only tracks on St. Clair. The truck driver quickly realized his mistake and practically jumped off the tracks back onto the road. The car just kept going, at least till the next intersection
• 2 dead rats in the backyard. Suspected killer: Winnie the fat orange cat
• White petals blowing off from the cherry tree and coating the ground
• A badminton birdie twisting on the top of a net and barely making it over to the other side of the court
• Hundreds of little purple flowers dispersed on a hill in High Park
• Two wood ducks, one male and one female, surrounded by four male mallard ducks who were quacking at the lone female in Grenadier Pond
• The Weeknd catch fire on Youtube
• A sketch painting in the subway of a middle-aged Asian woman looking at her phone with headphones on
• A woman in her late twenties nonchalantly twirling her black hair while speaking about her sister-in-law to a male friend on the bus
• A plastic box containing a couple dozen homemade ginger snap cookies
• A full moon partially obscured by clouds in the late night sky

Paraphase over

I think my Paramore phase is finally over. Actually, it's probably been over for a while now, as I haven't been listening to them much. Not at all during the winter (or not much other music for that matter).

The official realization came today while cooking myself breakfast. I had decided to plop in their self-titled CD in the music player and I found myself skipping to the next track halfway through a song. And during some favourites like "Ain't it Fun" and "Part 2" - songs that I was sure I would love forever -, I realized that although the guitar riffs and drum solos were pretty great, the lyrics were making me feel isolated, sad, and even angry at times.

I don't like feeling depressed. Nor do I like feeling angry. And I've written enough about loneliness to know that anything that contributes to that loneliness is not something that I want in my life. So it's time to move on to music that makes me feel happy, and there's plenty of that out there.

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Oh, looks like I'll be going to a Blink-182 concert this summer! Maybe not the happiest music in the world, but I'll be going with good people so that's pretty great.

Kaleidoughscope #1