Taxes, a pair of pamphlet-toting Jehovah's Witnesses and a tainted, shrimp cocktail ring had me thinking about the end of the world this week. The Jehovah's came to my door last Friday and invited me to their "Survive the End of the World" shindig. I told them I didn't go out much and I had nothing to wear and it sounded a tad gloomy even for my party tastes, so maybe they put a curse on me. I saw the female half of the couple jotting something down as she walked away in her scuffed-up, crepe-soled Clark's muttering about the devil and Mark 13:37.
Anyway, I blame those drip-dry doomsayers for my subsequent marathon worshipping of the tile grout on my bathroom floor. Fifteen hours of shrimp cocktail flashbacks and I didn't lose a pound. There is no God.
And, just to wrap up this miserable week of income tax preparation and tummy troubles, I am in exam hell. Moments after the sea of bile subsided, Jack arrived home from Quebec hockey just in time to torture me with two weeks of exams.
Now, explain this: here's a bright kid who can rhyme off stats for every player and team in college basketball, the NFL, major league baseball, cricket, rugby, hockey, ping pong, lesbian ringette and darts. Ask him to cough up ten French vocabulary words or the three colours in the additive colour model and he is suddenly Forrest Gump's stupid cousin with the lazy eye.
To make things worse, Jack will do anything to avoid studying. He turns into the ADHD poster boy at exam time. He'd mow every lawn in the neighbourhood. Unload the dishwasher. He'll even play tennis with his mother. Anything to avoid cracking the books.
But here's the real bile buster. Yesterday, "we" were studying for English. Macbeth. Only, he hasn't read the play. Oh, not his fault this time. The English teacher told them Shakespeare wasn't meant to be read. So they watched the cartoon in class instead. They studied Macbeth without reading the book. In Grade Eight. In private school. I am so mad, those three Macbeth witches look like virgins by comparison. But I am too tired to fight Catholics. They're as crazy as the Jehovah's.
So that's been my week, cooped up and cranky as all get out. And there's been so much going on! There's the local election bullshit, and another freak show, the Cirque Du Soleil is in town and I was too cranked up on Pepto Bismal to talk about how I hate freaky circus acts and the mistreatment of circus bears and elephants, and how skinny little French circus people really piss me off.
I missed an entire week of frothing at the mouth because I RSVP-ed "fuck off" to a couple of door-knocking Watchtower floggers.
I even missed taking a stab at not-so-Natural blonde Resources Minister Lisa Raitt for offing her underpaid (and better looking) assistant for not picking up her dry cleaning, er, her Atomic Energy documents.
But don't let me stop you. Go have some fun. I'll be okay. I have soup. Go join the Halifax V-Day happenings and help the global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Start by going to see “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer”. It's a follow up to the Vagina Monologues at Neptune Theatre, June 8.
Guys love vagina chit chat, so be sure to take a date and watch him squirm.
I'm feeling better already.
halifaxbroad@gmail.com
For more V-Day Festival Information and Events go to www.halifaxvday.ca.
If you want to know if the end of the world is near; vote NDP; answer your door; or pick up a shrimp ring at Sobeys and thaw it in the fridge for a few days.
