Ride it out

Dear Person Who Refuses to Sit Next to the Window on Transit:

Good thinking chum. It’s widely known that those who sit next to the window are never given the opportunity to exit the train.  I once found myself stuck in the window seat and ended up riding the line for five weeks straight!  By the end I was fashioning outfits out of day old Metro newspapers, subsisting off of Starbucks dregs and those four or five french fries that always end up in the bottom of fast food bags.  Lucky for me, I managed to drug one of the travellers sitting next to me (I slipped a crushed up packet of fisherman friends into his latte) and before the guardians of all things translink could catch me, I was out of there.

However, I cannot slag off the non-window sitters too much as this (has to be pathological) need is nowhere as bad as the people who smell as though they’ve spent the last month and a half living in the confines of Pete Doherty’s armpit.

Personally, my big transit rule is I never sit in any of the reserved seating, because if I do I always feel like a giant, fraud of an arsehole and am hyper aware of everyone getting on whom is actually deserving of the space.  (Random aside: the first two suggestions for what I’m actually trying to write instead of arsehole are: areole and hawsehole.  Wondering about the definition of hawsehole?  I was too.  It’s a nautical term for a small hole in the hull of a ship through which hawsers may be passed.  TRUTH.)

Also, whoever is behind the remake of The Thing should be sent to Baffin Island for twenty years hard labour.  SACRILEDGE!

Welcome to Rant and Roll!

Why hello there!  Welcome to Rant and Roll, a new blog project by Ethel the Dean.

I am a twenty-something Canuck, who divides her time between the two Canadian coastlines.  My passions are many and all encompassing.  And it is my passion – for politics, literature, sports, fashion, media, humour, history, pop culture, and of course, the written word – that ensures there are times in my life where I feel overwrought, indeed almost paralyzed with the need to express these thoughts, to subdue the panic, or at least ride out the wave.

HOWEVER, as I am continuously weary of coming across as a shrill harpy, I take extra care to punctuate my discourse with as much humour as possible.

And of course sometimes the thoughts spilling forth from my brain are anything but eloquent, sophisticated or educational.  Sometimes I’m just plain weird.  And I may or may not jump to conclusions – say, about how much you, dear reader, may have in common with me, the giant weirdo.  For instance:

Do you remember that time you spent an entire weekend watching episodes of MI-5 and then spent the next week pretending that Matthew MacFayden was watching you have sex with your husband, because even though the idea of having actual sex with Matthew MacFayden is hot as hell, your internalized concept of fidelity wrecks terrific havoc with your stupid and fairly lame fantasy life?  Or the time you decided you could no longer go running with your ipod because a serial killer was going to run you over coming out of his drive way and there would be nothing you could do because the music blocked the sound of his murderous, murderous tires?  Or that day that octogenarian hip-checked you into that garbage can as he made his way to the bus stop, in an effort to ensure his passage on transit while simultaneously blocking yours?  Or the time you were so enraged by what you heard on your local sports radio station you could hardly sleep for two days, an experience that culminated in you and one of your best friends discussing the endemic sexism in hockey culture, nay, athleticism in general, on another local station (bringing the whole situation full circle in some strange, but oddly poetic way?)

Exactly.

No?  Damn.

Okay, to be specific, I have much too much unchecked, frenetic energy circulating throughout my body, and at any given time I feel as though I am about to jump to my feet and begin waxing eloquent on how important it is for CBC to finally bring back Double Exposure, like, NOW.  However, I’m like to believe that no one actually likes a spontaneous pontificator, much less one whose references are at least fifteen years old.

Hence, the blog.

Here at Rant and Roll I’ll do my best to entertain.  Looking at issues close to my heart, whether serious or silly, important or impetuous,  I’ll prod, poke – perhaps even provoke – and please, always feel free to join the discussion.  Make yourself at home and feel free to check up on ol’ Deaner here in the coming weeks and months to come.  Supervision around these parts is never discouraged.