Royford's Xanga

Laundry as it was Before Electricity

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:39:49 GMT

I've been dabbling in the art of hand-washing clothing and I gotta hand to any of those pioneering old souls who used to do this. Is it any wonder people smelled awful through the middle ages? If you ask me I think they made a pact to put up with the smell for the sake of mutually saving themselves from an early onset of arthritis. Life was bad enough knowing you would die by 30, why spend the last few years coping with carpal tunnel or drawing baths?
Also, I was not aware that colour runs from denim like crime runs from the batman. My hands (and bathtub) are now somewhere between a cyan and a periwinkle. As well, my hands feel like a coal miner's, I can imagine that the laundry maids of old were very self conscious about their calloused grips (there's an innuendo in there if you're willing to look for it).

Sex in the City, Indeed.

Sun, 10 May 2009 18:05:36 GMT

About six years ago I said that “Sex in the City” was going to ruin the planet. And it was a joke, I too was laughing at my preposterous prediction. At that time I thought it was adorable every time I witnessed a girl exclaim bashedly unashamed “Oh my god that show is just like MY life!”

I’ve always appreciated the level of disconnect that those girls had to achieve in order to recite the phrase verbatim without the slightest hint of irony. It’s nothing short of tenacious to draw a line directly from Carrie Bradshaw, confidently single, successful, oft read columnist of the New York fashion world, TO any given 19 year old female who finds herself in the twilight of her career as her fourth semester of general studies draws to a close, placing all of her eggs in the boyfriend basket because he, presumably an engineering or business student, has completed his second year of study without having so much as one breakdown and is taking a considerably milder dose of antidepressant.

THEN we have to take into account the distance between Carrie and her sought after cohorts, whose sexual escapades would make Bill Clinton break a sweat AND the sex starved entourages of mismatched dresses, purses and over priced shoes, huddled over cell phones in booths towards the back of the bar while their “sure thing” - Mr. Future Graduate - is out on the dance floor scouting for potential reprieve to help him through the days when his aspiring fashionista bride is surrounded by little ones and too tired to “rock his world”. At which point she’ll begin cursing the fact that the only thing that kept her from a degree in communications and a future in fahion were the nights spent at his apartment the week before exams, when she convinced yourself that all she needed to succeed were designer shoes and a sassy go-get-em attitude.

The average person moves at least 13 times in a lifetime....how many times have you moved?

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:26:06 GMT

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

conflicting resolvancy

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:18:13 GMT

today i walked down a mostly deserted hallway and noticed birthday cake sitting on the front desk of a classroom. i yelled "cake!", out loud, to no one in particular as none of the 2 maybe 3 people in the hallway had ever seen me before. this morning when i entered the library i found a coffee card on the floor, already filled with stamps, i gave a nod to the big guy upstairs and enjoyed free coffee. this is the third time this has happenened to me in two months. i'm starting to wonder what motives the cosmos would have for trying to keep me caffeinated. i'm not complaining. coffee helps me read and this semester has been one giant english course. everything i've studied is attempting to cross reference itself in my mind. i have no ability to compartmentalize. this is what i work on with my shrink. that, and my social anxiety. the social anxiety that clearly isn't present when i spot cake from a doorway. the anxiety that is physically intensified by coffee.

Chapter I : Look alive kid

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:30:51 GMT

I always imagined as a child that god would spend his time watching us much like we would watch a television. That it was the drama and intracacy of human life, our behaviours and our interaction, that endeared him to us. These biblical instances of gods 'anger' - razing cities, flooding an entire civilization; It always seemed that god destroyed things that were redundant. "Sin", it seemed, was the sum of our easiest to resort to behaviours and perhaps the 'anger' of god was simply his boredom.

chapter ii; verse ii

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:07:16 GMT

i wanted a sandwich. a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - jam not jelly. raspberry. but that wouldn't make me happy. in fact i needed a sandwich - or well, food. the cessation of my needs seemed to only make me quiet. i guess silence is a large part of being content. but content isn't happy. and i wasn't exactly screaming.

verse i; chapter ii

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:33:23 GMT

sometimes i can't believe that anything around me is actually happening.
existance seems absurd, yet reassured by the fact that no one bothers to question it.
no ones bother is to question anything, certainly not their motives. only the motives of others. lost in their varying degrees of selfishness. if happy people are only people who have what it is they wanted, then i was aware now that in order to be happy, i would have to want something for myself.

Put on the spot: My Christmas epiphany

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:00:05 GMT

I thought I'd start thing's off with a Haiku. Which is a form of poetry that, I recently found out, can be rather humorous. I call it:
A Christmas Blog of Little Consequence

My Holiday post
But I have nothing to share
Wax sentimental?

With Christmas ever encroaching, and just about to pounce, one holiday tradition already seems to be failing me: I've usually got something smarmy, warming, and reaffirming worked out by now, to dispatch into the blogoshpere.
Friends, I got nothin'. It's unlike me to blog without having already achieving that serene peace and understanding I desperately seek. My sporatic reprieves from ADD. But tonight, I'm in the thick of it, moreso than I care to admit.
That being said, sometimes it only takes the idea of having an epiphany to actualize an epiphany - so bare with me!

A few thoughts:
It's funny how your past can come back into your life, and yet be so very unfamilial.
It's depressing how some things you deem 'new' in your life were present all along, and you simply failed to take notice.
It's amazing that, the moment you stop forgiving, others start.
It's beautiful to witness the circle of life perpetuating itself before your very eyes.

Earlier today I sat in on a Christmas play. Just your average Christmas play but I got a glimpse of something far greater. I got a glimpse of my childhood and my adulthood, my past and my future, from the dead centre.
As I sat in the church where I'd spent my youth, next to a dear friend I don't deserve to have, watching a play I once had a part in, on a stage I once lived on, now inhabited by tiny children acting as mirrors of my past, I came to the jarring conclusion that I have at long last, said good bye to my childhood. I've let go of my relatability to youth.
Today, I was a spectator, watching a bizarre, yet somehow beautiful display, that was this Christmas play. The product of talent and mistalent, of showmanship, of parental guilt and obligation. I wasn't the child in play, insensed with wonder and with butterflys in my stomach - I was the adult, well aware of the stress and trials of coordinating dozens of kids to perform choreographed .. anything!
And also aware of why it's worth it. To see our youth, in their varying stages of awkwardity, put smiles on the faces of those for whom youth is an ever fading memory.
For me, youth is an ever fading reality. To cliche it up some - I am at a crossroads. While I am not 5, I am not 65. And even at the age of 26, I can say with confidence 'I feel younger than I am'. But adulthood comes inevitably. You can either fake it, or you can learn it. And quite some time ago I chose to learn it. Remarkably, I actually have things to report on the matter - I've grown to see the intracacies and subtleties that make for happy lives. I've started to see that for all the unjustice in the world, there is also much justice. That for all the war, there is also peace. I've grown to appreciate what I do have, and to live without what I don't. I've begun to connect the dots between an apathetic, disenfranchised youth, and a happy, caring (and involved) adulthood.

And there's my blogsworth of holiday, homecoming, year end introspection.
Merry Christmas,
Royford

The pie chart to end all pie charts

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:15:37 GMT

Dangit! I wish I could take credit for this!

Wooden Gym or Designer Cuisine for Termites?

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:30:31 GMT

Making the Most of Your Retirement (and scrap wood)