::Shebytches::

snadzmatazz The Worst Job Ever Up until this year, the worst job I ever had was working at a dinky women's clothing store back in '92. I was 18, it was the height of grunge and I had to wear dorky clothes and make-up and work in the mall. It was like being stuck in Kevin Smith's Mallrats everyday.

snadzmatazz Is My ass Really that Fat? Part IV: Shut Up You Psycho Harpies. Have you ever felt that your nice, compartmentalised world of friends has collapsed into one, giant mega-world of weird? Like, when you have office buddies and school buddies and hockey buddies and then one day they all end up at the same Xmas party and you have no idea what to do?

snadzmatazz Attack of the Admin Eyebrows Has anyone else noticed that as soon as women become admin assistants, their eyebrows start to disappear? Like, all of a sudden, their eyebrows get really skinny and ultra-arched, to the point where they look perpetually surprised?

snadzmatazz Leave the Kids Alone! I now know why people hate teaching. While students can be a pain and administration's a bitch, they don't compare to an uninformed parent. Uninformed parents are like little biting chihuahuas. They yap a lot, are really annoying, make crappy guardians and all you want to do is kick them halfway across the lawn.

snadzmatazz Wedding Madness Part II: What Is Wrong With You? Everybody loves a good love story. Even alterna-girls in steel-toed army boots and shaven heads love love. In the early 1990s, Sassy Magazine was the poster child for alterna-girl (or should I say "alterna-grrrl") culture.

snadzmatazz Marriage Crazy! Ooohhh! Martha Stewart Living Wedding Special is on! Woooo! I have waited all year for this show. Martha's going to show us how to make fondant icing for our wedding cakes. Yeee! I love June: it's all about the weddings. Too bad I'm doomed to live my life alone forever and ever.

snadzmatazz The Windmills of My Mind I have just watched a one hour show on Fleetwood Mac's 1976 album, Rumours. I now feel like I've eaten a whole chocolate cake laced with downers. In other words, I'm in this nasty, depressed, contemplative mood and my mind has wandered and split into two quasi-seperate, but unequal parts: Me and MySelf. It's very weird. While in this state, I received an email about possible volunteer opportunities where I may or may not meet folk who may or may not be able to get me a permanent, full-time job. What follows is the conversation I (Me, Snad) had with MySelf about this volunteer position.

snadzmatazz You Ever Have One of Those Weeks? Man, I am having a bad week. My fitness buddy, Dana, has been ragging on me to go on a diet again. My incompetent co-volunteer, Jill, has decided to reduce her contribution to our project, leaving me in the lurch. I started a new job in a building next to a construction site where there are rats. And Thursday night's Power Yoga class has given me the worst backache of my life. It hasn't been a stellar week.

snadzmatazz I Never Thought "Chasing Amy" Was So Controversial Do you ever wish that your friends were made out of indestructible, elastic plastic so that you could give them a righteous beating without hurting them?

snadzmatazz Oh, Shut Up! I am so glad that a Pope has been chosen because if I'd had to listen to one theologian, priest or mock conclave go on about the teachings of the Roman Cathlic Church, my radio and TV would have been destroyed with a baseball bat. This would have been all the more impressive since I don't own a baseball bat and would have had to go out and buy one for the specific purpose of beating up my appliances

snadzmatazz I'm OK; You're OK Remember Jill, my inept co-volunteer at the not-for-profit organization? Well, she and I finally came to an uneasy truce: we come in on alternate weeks and never see each other

snadzmatazz Is My Ass Really Fat?

Just Because I'm Sweating Like a Pig Doesn't Mean I'm Out of Shape!

As I looked into the giant wall of mirrors in my aerobics class, I couldn't help but notice that I was a bit doughy. I usually only concentrate on checking my form, but I was standing (hopping? skipping?) between two very thin, tall older ladies and I couldn't help notice that I was much shorter, much chunkier and much sweatier than they were.

snadzmatazz Is My Ass Really Fat?

Part II: The Diet That Just Won't Work For Me For So Many Reasons

One evening after the gym, my fitness buddy, Dana*, came over to my place for tea. While she sipped her pepermint tea, I downed a banana, a lotusnut "dim sum" bun, a bowl of pistachios and some tortilla chips with guacamole (homemade guacamole, natch), washed down with several glasses of mineral water. As I went to the fridge and got myself a tasty lemon yogurt, Dana freaked out and practically yelled, "Wow! You eat a lot! You eat even more than I do. Are you still going to have dinner after this?"

snadzmatazz Is My Ass Really Fat?

Part I: The Workout That Doesn't Make Me Shed The Pounds

I remember the first time I bought a pair of size 3 pants. They were a pair of really cool black Calvin Klein flared corduroy pants. The smallest size the store carried was size 3 and that was slightly too big for me. But that was O

snadzmatazz Random Thoughts While Watching MuchMoreMusic When you've been sending resumes out for a few hours straight, you need to take a moment to let your brain disengage. I like to sit down with a cup of coffee and watch MuchMoreMusic's MuchMoreRetro show. I have a good laugh and then I'm good for the rest of the afternoon

snadzmatazz The Kiss of Death I hate being unemployed. I feel totally useless and really bummed out. It doesn't help that as soon as I hear, "You're obviously very smart" during an interview, I know that I'm not getting the job. I usually get a call a week or so later where they tell me that while they were "really impressed" by me, they're going with someone else.

snadzmatazz My Life of Criminal Intent Sometimes life triggers anti-social tendencies in me and I just feel like not playing by the rules. Unfortunately, because I'm a nice person, I never actually do anything illegal. But I still keep getting these urges.

snadzmatazz Not A Girl; Not Yet A Woman I need to stop watching daytime TV. It's giving me gender identity issues. I was watching TV the other day when I stumbled upon a show about weddings.

snadzmatazz My Style! There's this independent weekly in Toronto that has a column called "My Style." In it, they interview urban hipsters about what they're wearing and what their personal style is. I read that column every week.

snadzmatazz Bounded A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away, I dated this guy named Johnny. Johnny was a physicist, but he prided himself on the fact that he could "blend in" with many different types of people.

snadzmatazzThen Again, Maybe Not. I would be a hypocrite if I said I didn't want to be filthy rich. I really want to be filthy rich. So rich that I can walk into the Cole Haan boutique on Bloor street (the part of Bloor referred to as "Canada's Rodeo Drive" by the Office of Making Toronto Look Good) and buy those 800$ boots that Liz Phair was advertising. That's how rich I want to be.

snadzmatazz Flex it! I've been lifting weights for a few years now and recently a friend of mine asked me if I'm not a bit intimidated by the men. She said that she only attends "women's only" hours because it's a less "oppressive" environment. I told her that I wouldn't touch a women's only gym experience with a ten-foot pole.

snadzmatazz Knit One, Pearl Two, Snad Zero. Somehow I missed the memo that said that knitting was the new hip thing to do. I was always under the impression that knitting was something that old ladies with billions of cats did. Or that it was an important skill for pre-90s sitcom housewives to have (knitting is important for that plot where our housewife starts knitting baby booties for her pregnant sister in Minnesota, but her husband finds them and hijinks ensues).

snadzmatazz A Random Story A few days ago, I was sitting in a bar with some friends and I told them a story about my three flakiest friends in the world and how they managed to ruin my last birthday in Montreal. My new friends thought this was a great story and that I should write about it. So if you hate this story, blame them.

snadzmatazz Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Words Will Always Hurt Your Self-Esteem December 6th is Women's Remembrance Day. It's the day when we all sit around and think about violence against women. Women's shelters organize bake sales and fund raisers, not to mention candlelight vigils.

snadzmatazz And That's When Prof. Wurtzheimerstein Noticed Me Has it ever happened to you that you read the bio of some scientist in a magazine or in the newspaper and you say, "Wow! This guy was thinking about calculus when he was three!

snadzmatazz Thoughts on Unemployment During a Writer's Block The problem with being unemployed is that everyday starts looking prettymuch the same as the next. Like that Bon Jovi song, "Dead or Alive," where Jon Bon Jovi moans that he can only tell the day by the bottle that he drinks, I only tell the day by the shows on TV.

snadzmatazz Taking the Argument to its Illogical Conclusion Since it seems that curbing greenhouse gas emissions will hurt the economy more than it will help the planet, I've come to the conclusion that people can argue prettymuch anything and somebody will buy it. Therefore, I am starting three (count 'em) organizations.

snadzmatazz "You really need to relax!" Nothing is more infuriating than having an incompetent individual tell me to relax. Some people may say that I'm an uptight perfectionist who thinks that anything short of obsessive-compulsive perfection is incompetent, but these people are obviously using a less-than-perfect definition of competence.

snadzmatazz More Thoughts on Pantyhose Last week I was having issues with writer's block and couldn't articulate why it bothered me so much that my friends wore sandalfoot pantyhose with sandals to a wedding.

snadzmatazz Way Too Few Musings on The Topic of Weddings Last weekend I attended a wedding. It was the third wedding I attended this year and the fifth I had been invited to. And at this last wedding, I started thinking about -- surprise! -- weddings.

snadzmatazz Girls Are Evil, mmmkay. All week I've been waking up to CBC Radio One's Metro Morning. Every morning this week, I've heard them plug their movie and open forum on "femal social bullying." Every morning this week, I've yelled at my radio.

snadzmatazz Centipedes! On Tuesday night I woke up during the wee hours of the morning to get a glass of water. I gingerly walked into my kitchen and braced myself to see a roach scurry across the floor just as one had done a few days before.

snadzmatazz Ride The Rocket I admit, I haven't ridden on many transit systems in my lifetime. I've taken New York's subway and rode on Montreal's metro, but I haven't navigated Amsterdam's network, or taken a trip on London's Tube.

snadzmatazz I Am Woman It all started when I went to a special meeting on women in Computer Science. If you've never been to one of these things, let me explain to you how it works.

snadzmatazz How Old Do You Expect Me To Look? I turned 30 this year. I wasn't happy about it. I felt old and I felt used up. I felt like my life had just passed me by and I was now on the slow slope to decline.

snadzmatazz The Roaches It has been four years since I moved into my apartment. For these four years, I have been engaged in a Battle Royale with my roommates, The Roaches.

snadzmatazz So You're Going to University... As I prepare to drop into the oblivion reserved for fallen grad students and telephone cleaners (shout-out to the late Douglas Adams, who, I'm sure, is just staying dead for tax purposes) and new students prepare to start University, I want to impart my vast stockpile of knowledge bred from experience to the younger generation.

snadzmatazz Music Occasionally I meet a piece of music that I wish I had written. It's never anything deep or meaningful. It's never music that will make a "Top 100 Pieces of Music Since the Beginning of Time" list or anything. It's usually a pop song. Because I'm simple that way.

snadzmatazz Eighties Heavy Metal Videos Are Good for the Feminist Soul With respect to pop music videos, the feminist movement needs to be pushed back approximately 15 or 20 years to the eighties. We need to get back to a time in music video history when the male protagonist did not necessarily expect the female protagonists to go home with them by the end of the night.

snadzmatazz Cutting You Off at the Knees I have this volunteer job with CHRY radio in Toronto where I read books and interview the authors on air. Lately, I’ve been getting every science and science-fiction book that comes in to read.

snadzmatazz Introductions I guess I should introduce myself and tell you why I'm in any way important to any plot.