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.

Thanks, Danny!

For the first time in what feels like years, I am wearing my retainer. My pearly whites are in great danger of returning to their pre-orthodontic state and I, along with my toothpaste commercial smile will have none of this.

So, in my mouth is my retainer, in its wiry, purple and Canadian-flagged glory. (In Grade 8, when I got my braces off, I had the choice of what colour retainer I wanted, and with which image imprinted on the plastic part, selected from Windows '98 Clipart. Appropriately, my selection was a nice shade of eggplant with a Canadian flag.)

I wish to take this opportunity to thank my dear friend Danny for reminding me that wearing your retainer is important and one must not give up on the lisp-inducing little thang.

DANNY: "You have such a great overbite for making silly faces, Jacq."

My you-hate-me-because-my-teeth-are-nicer-than-yours confidence has since been deflated.

In Russia there ain't no love, baby

Today, with my adorable babushka kerchief, pearly white and innocent smile, I went to the Consulate of the Russian Federation and thought I could con them into accelerating my visa papers. My California girl Kat came along because she's wonderful and really into interior decorating and I thought she might like to see the consulate.

Usually, I can talk my way out of anything.

But, in this country, this is not the case.

I walk in to the wood-paneled room adorned with Soviet propaganda, and all 15 people in there are speaking Russian ochen bistra (that means 'very fast'). I take a number, and we sit down, trying to take the situation very seriously.

In the office, there are two small windows, about 2'x3.5'. One is called "1" and the other is appropriately called "2." Everyone in the room had the same 3-4 papers in their hand, a passport and a solemn [Russian] expression. I realize this is not the place I should try to sweet talk my way into getting my passport back sooner (I am supposed to travel to AMERICA in a few days), so I go to the security desk to see what's going on.

JACQ: "Excuse me"

A man (let's call him ANGRY RUSSIAN) motions to press the white intercom button. I see it, I press it.

JACQ: "Excuse me, can I ask you something?"

ANGRY RUSSIAN: "GARBLAHSK OHMBER"

I think I missed what he said.

JACQ: "May I ask you a question?"

In the most Russian and incomprehensible accent I have ever heard, he points and says "Go to nahmber wan." (Go to number 1.)

JACQ: "No, I have anoth-"

ANGRY RUSSIAN continues to point to "Number 1"

I sit back down. I realize this is not going to work. Sometimes, my Crest commercial smile and doe eyes can't get me everything I want. Kat and I return to the car, I change the oil for the first time in my life (I mean, at least I accomplished something), and we go home.

I don't even think Kat liked the decorating inside.

Today was a hard day.

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.

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.

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.