Ew I fell in to a Soviet train toilet

Location: somewhere in between St. Petersburg and Moscow where the women haven't any teeth and the Kazakhs beside me don't dig footwear.

Behold: the Soviet Train. Everything is yellowed to the point where you are unsure if anything was every really white at all. The windows are like the lenses of pedophile glasses so everything is shit-tinted (as opposed to rose-tinted). The bench seats are made of burgundy vinyl and allergy-triggering roll-out mats are provided for a comfortable slumber in which you are to dream of hammers, sickles and food stamps.

I sit in this train, gazing out the window at dacha after dacha, careful not to direct my gaze in front of me where, on the left is a very fat man whose gut rests on his thighs. To his right, a small Asian boy sits quietly. They both sit silently and tinker away on their Blackberries for about four hours. The Kazakhs play cards and stare at my tits. I watch the fat man roll out his bed-mat on the lower bunk as the Asian man climbs spryly above the snoring oaf. I daydream, wishing it was Mister Gutface who had to climb up there to give his thighs a rest and transfer the pressure onto his chest. But alas, we are in Russia and not America.

I sketch some Sudokus and keep my Quebecois counterpart, Simon, awake for as long as possible. We eat Halva (THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD) and talk loudly and in English. We figure that our CCCP shirts make us fit in a little more, so our indecipherable and mysetrious Canadian accents won't give us away as tourists worth robbing.

Somewhere in between all of this, I stumble to the bathroom. First I must inform you that, in all toilets in Russia, there aren't any toilet seats. You hover or squat and at the same time pray to Stalin that you don't get hepatitis from this one. I have developed a method of holding on to the door handle of the stall and leaning back; it takes a lot of the pressure off of the quads. This time, however, I was pulling a little too hard, perhaps. So, in my golden shower of delight that I was granting to this steel bowl, I was holding on to the handle of the door and suddenly the door gave way and the bowl welcomed me with its hepatitis-infested gorge.

I am supposed to get the test results back from the pharmacy tomorrow, where I will subsequently try to ask for a moderately-sezed perscription of legal amphetamines for the final days of my love affair with Vladimir Putin.

Uncool

THIS IS SHIT.

I hate this magazine. I loved Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, but for her to call Cosmopolitan 'the Bible' is the most regressive statement this woman could make to millions of people.

Do you turn men on?
Are you a good flirt?
Do guys think you're sexy?
How mysterious are you?

I want to throw up all over these glossy pages and bubble-gumely templated website.
I know, I read Vogue. I am not hypocritical; I am Third Wave.

Post-feminism and Cosmo can go and fuck each other on a weighing scale and then cry about it.

New career path...

I'm considering pursuing my flock of corporate suits so that I may levitate from my hell hole of student debt. The fruits of this particular thought process have me questioning why I shouldn't get a few pairs of Prada pumps and a Stam bag while I'm at it?
I feel like I'm letting this opportunity pass me by while I saunter down the sidewalk in shoes that are too cheap for my cultured soles and pedicured toes.
Sigh, I'm at a crossroad.

Sometimes, I just can't help myself

Sometimes I forget that I am not at work.
Sometimes, flirting with older men is deemed 'unacceptable.'

Yesterday, I exchanged words with a friendly, red-scarved and starry-eyed man at the campus snack bar. The climactic portion of the spectacle went something like this:

NEW YORK TIMES READER: So are you a visiting student or a visiting charmer?
JACQ: Both.

New York Times Reader, who reveals himself to be a professor of economics at the university, starts for the nearest exit and goes for a long cigarette.

Mid-day carafes of wine are of what college dreams are made.

Daily Thoughts from the YMCA Steam Room

Training Bra: Underwire Bra
is as
Hamster: Puppy

This analogy came to me as I bathed this evening in a sweet warm cloud of eucalyptus at the YMCA. As the sweat and vapour glistened on my feminine curves, I pondered the hamster wheel. I came to the conclusion that the hamster wheel is the most depressing invention known to suburban pet-domesticity and beyond. I do not care to elaborate on this today, but would rather encourage a discussion about this contraption.

I wanted a puppy or a kitten when I was five. My parents bought my sister and I each hamsters. Mine was brown, named Sarah. After her first grade boyfriend, my sister named her white hamster Neil, even though it was a girl (we were raised in a gender neutral household- NOT). My Dad is really cheap so he decided to economize on the caging issue. Consequently, Neil ended up eating Sarah. Sarah and Niel were my training bras to what I now have, which are kibble-eating, good-tempered dogs and underwire bras.

Today, I love my Java-puppy and my fashionably-engineered perky tits.

I continue to be saddened by the hamster wheel, and the more recent invention known as "the clear plastic ball with breathing holes." I wish hamsters were smart enough to be freedom fighters. Instead, they eat each other.

Links!
My Life Sucks
I'm too quick for these social constructions

Corporate Suits Love Me

So I am the best barmaid in the world.
Lonely white-haired men sporting Black American Express cards are drawn to me like moths to a flame.
I'm not sure what it is, but I get such a kick out of them telling me over the bar of their secret Panamanian financial hideaways and high-budget, yet low-caliber movie productions that I just beg them to go on about their loveless and relentlessly quantified lives. It's sad and I, the fair barmaid, fawn over them, topping their Greygoose-on-ices, making them feel young again.
I really do love my job.