Friday, October 29, 2004

life lessons

this is a life lesson john should really learn...

today's bad bathroom experience

so, today i went for a lovely lunch with my dad. as often happens, after going out for a lovely lunch with my dad at work i have pee really badly (there actually isn't a correlation there, just that i have the world's smallest bladder) so i used the bathroom on the main floor of our office building on my way in. this is the bathroom open to the public. okay, that was just to set the scene, now the meat of the story...

i rush over to the bathroom, trying to cross my legs and walk at the same time, and throw open the stall door about to plunk down and pee. luckily i had enough time to look. the toilet seat was covered (and i mean *covered*) with urine. i know it was urine 'cause it was yellow. i mean, sometimes there is water there that has splashed up during the flushing process, i've seen it happen, but this was, as i said previously, yellow. there was no doubt in my mind, the seat was covered in pee. the impressive part of this is it was all over the seat, not just in one area. thinking back on it (i had to pee too badly to think about it then) i picture some woman squatting over the toilet to pee who has a song in her head and is swinging her hips to the tune. when telling john this story i was demonstrating the movements i was envisioning and i was singing along, he pointed out that she probably wasn't singing out loud just in her head, i conceded that he was probably right...

so, i leapt back (dramatic i know, but, well, when you have to pee that badly you have to move quickly) and scurried over to the only other free stall, someone was in the middle stall of the three. with great relief i sank down on the pee free toilet seat and began the wonderful relief that people very accurately describe as "relieving yourself". and that's when i noticed...

the woman next to me was a grunter. i have to say, i don't understand grunters. i mean, i can understand that sometimes taking a shit is hard work, but really, come on people, you're in a public bathroom with someone sitting 2 feet away, can't you do it without grunting out loud? i know grunting might be satisfying, but isn't that something that you should keep to your home bathroom? then she started... well, i have no idea really. lots of rubbing noises, and yes, it did cross my mind that she was masturbating, but i don't think she was, i suspect it was more like trying to scratch a stain off of her clothing or something, it was that kind of sound.

immediately i heard the tell tale toilet paper dispenser noises and decided i was going to stay put for a while 'cause i for some unbeknownst reason didn't want to meet face to face with the grunter. which seemed like a good idea at the time...

then the grunter went out and proceeded to hork into the sink. yep, you read that right, a grown woman was horking into the sink while i sat with my pants around my ankles waiting for her to leave. and i'm not talking delicate little horks (is there such a thing?) i'm talking 14 yr old boy trying to impress their friends with the most disgusting sound kind of horking. and she proceeded to do it no less than five times. *sigh*

she finally left, i was finally able to pull up my pants and trepidaciously wash my hands in the sink i was pretty sure she hadn't horked in.

so, there's my story about the grunting horker.


dream interpretation

do you think it's a bad sign that i dreamed that john and i had a baby but we kept forgetting it places?

you know, like i used to do with my purse...

Thursday, October 28, 2004

erosion


so this one is specifically for my friend lisa.

lisa was visiting a million years ago (okay, maybe it was only several months...) and john was chipping away at the wall with a chisel. (he's chipping away at it because he needs to do something with the pipe and blah blah blah, basically that part is not the amusing bit.)

as john stood in the basement and chipped away (providing some lovely staccato percussion to our conversation, i have no idea why we didn't break out into song) lisa walked over to me and quietly said "wouldn't it be just as effective to throw buckets of water at it and say 'erode wall, erode!'"

i laughed my ass off at that.

and now, however many million months later, this is what it looks like, so, um, yeah. erode wall, erode!

Posted by Hello


eric was the only one close by... Posted by Hello


okay, i was inspired by friday catblogging from kevin drum. this is eric.
 Posted by Hello

fun with stereotypes

ahhh, stereotypes. what are more fun than stereotypes? my stereotipical giggle for the day...

i work in a big building. a big nice building. a big nice governement building. it's won awards even. so, lots of people come and have meetings.

my favourite was the bus load of japanese businessmen. (yes, i mean business*men*. i am not being politically incorrect, they are. i'm serious, out of mabe 15 people there was 1 woman.) no doubt they are here for some kind of meeting. we often get delegations, often japanese delegations in fact.

so this is where the stereotype comes in... they ALL had digital cameras. and they were all taking pictures. in the lobby of the building. i mean, it's a nice building, but it's not *THAT* nice.

it made me giggle.

work is going better, first days always suck, right? anyway, i should go, i have to be at work by 7am tomorrow. bleh.


Wednesday, October 27, 2004

too tired to post

so, i've been exhausted lately. very very little time at home. very little sleep. very inarticulate mainja.

so, here's a quick tidbit i learned to tide you over.

news used to be a thing that was required in media outlets in order to get a license. it was called "the news hole". stations would put the least resources into it possible.

good god! is leo going to commit suicide? sorry, this is an interlude, i'm watching west wing while i type. *phew* no, it doesn't seem he is. shit, he might be having a heart attack though. oh my god, this is an intense episode. anyway, on i go...

so television is split into three things, news, sports and entertainment.

now news is the most profitable out of sports, entertainment and news, something new within the last 10 years.

i don't know, i found it interesting...

Monday, October 25, 2004

yippee!

now this seems like a fun book!

procrastinating

okay, so i'm still at work. my first day at my new month long job.

i have to say, it wasn't the best of days. my manager was having a bad day, and when she has a bad day, apparently it's not so good to talk to her at all. which, you can imagine, is difficult if it's your first day on the job.

anyway, i ended up crying. yep. you read that right. i cried at my first day of work. luckily my friend b is the only one who saw. he took me outside for a walk. it was good.

i have to say, i'm a tad bit worried that i'm getting depressed again. but lets be fair here, things are relatively stressful. a first day is generally a bad day no matter what. add onto that the fact that it's only one month, then i still don't know how i'm going to pay my mortgage (yay for being the sole income), and i didn't sleep at all last night, and... oh hell, i don't know. basically what i'm saying is that it is potentially jumping the perverbial gun for me to start getting scared that i'm depressed. but i do know that i'm no fun to be around lately. which you can probably tell from my blog. which is a shame, 'cause usually i'm really fun to be around, i promise! i can see myself being no fun. it's kind of like an out of body experience. i can see me, the way i'm acting, the whiney bint i've become, but i can't seem to stop it. it's kind of like the sober voice from when you're drunk. you know, the one that says "really mainja, you're making an ass of yourself, you really should stop trying to sing at the top of your lungs" but your body doesn't listen you just keep singing... it's like that.

anyway, right now i should be applying for jobs but i would appear to be procrastinating...

i have a new blog to add to my blogroll, but i can't do it from work. for now just check it out through here. it's my friend paddy...

wish me luck

sorry about the really long heavy entry on the weekend. it just seemed appropriate somehow.

anyway, i'm off to my first day at my one month contract. and nevous. it sucks. wish me luck.

i'll writing something interesting soon, i promise...

Saturday, October 23, 2004

something i wrote a long long time ago

some background for those who don't know me... i'm clinically depressed. i'm medicated right now so i'm okay, but it was pretty rough until i was finally diagnosed. anyway, been thinking about depression a lot lately, and read too since someone on one of my regular blog reading list has just been diagnosed. i thought maybe it was time i revisited for a bit. i wrote this little thing about what depression was for me many years ago. i wrote it because i had a friend who was pretty sure her sister was depressed and didn't know how to approach the subject and she was wondering what it was like for me. so, here you go, read on fair friends...

**************************************************

I want to explore and explain what depression is for me. I feel like now I can speak from a bit of a distance. I might be totally fooling myself by saying that, but that’s how it feels right now. It has been several years since I have had a true depressive episode, and that is what gives me the distance.

I grew up with an undiagnosed chronic depressive mother and alcoholic father. It sounds horrible, but the truth is, she hid it from me well. She felt very strongly about not burdening me with her problems. She protected me from my father too. She took the brunt of his assholian behaviour, so I didn’t see it.

Everything changed when I was about 10 or so. My parents split up. My mum knew she had to leave, or she was going to literally die. For her, those were her choices.

It was a very hard decision for her. Her family didn’t support her at all. From the outside my father is a wonderful friendly, caring, funny, brilliant man. What more could you want? The problem was that was just from the outside. He makes a great friend, but a miserable family member. So no one could understand why she would leave. Everyone was convinced she must have been having an affair and that she was some evil horrible witch (these are her parents, not my father’s).

As her so-called support network crumbled so did she. She sunk further and further into depression. It swallowed her whole. She didn’t know what to do. For some god forsaken reason she moved to Sudbury. Far away from everyone and everything she knew. I suppose she thought getting away would make it better, but it didn’t. As I’m sure you can imagine Sudbury is not the most uplifting part of the world to be in. And being isolated and alone, well, that’s not the most uplifting feeling either. When I talk to my mother about these times now she says the only way she survived was day by day, telling herself “just don’t kill myself today”. Each day she worked desperately to not kill herself, and see what the next day would bring.

I don’t know many details of her big breakdown, but it somehow involved her being in the middle of nowhere and crying uncontrollably, and trying to kill herself. She phoned a friend who told her to stay where she was, don’t drive anywhere, he’d leave right away, he’d be there in a couple hours. He told her she was depressed and it was going to be okay, they’d get her help; she didn’t have to live like this.

She got treatment, moved to Toronto, and started living her life like a normal person. She wasn’t diluted anymore. I was of course 15, angry at the world, and pissed off that she had left me to go to Sudbury (I didn’t know the details at the time) so I was horrible to her. Not a time I look back on with pride, however, not a time I beat myself up over either, I was after all, just a kid. And 15, I mean, please, who wasn’t a jerk when they were 15…

After the standard run of treatment my mum went off her anti-depressants. It was the thing to do. The thought they had solved the imbalance, brought things back into whack, and all was right in the brain of my mum.

This worked for a bit. All was well for a while. But again my mum began to slump. Depression was descending once again. Again, something drastic (though not as drastic as before) had to happen before she would seek treatment. This is a very common problem. People refuse to believe that a natural chemical imbalance can cause depression, they must be doing something wrong, so they must be able to fix it, and if they can’t, well, then they are bad and don’t deserve to feel any different. And again, after a course of treatment, under doctor supervision she stopped her anti-depressants. The cycle repeated itself again and again. Throughout this whole time she saw therapists and dealt with a lot of personal issues, but none of them could solve her problem of chemical imbalance.

Finally she found out from her mother that when she was a child she was on anti-depressants. They would not tell her what they were, and didn’t until she was 45 years old. It was a dirty little family secret. Armed with this information she faced a difficult revelation. Her doctor told her she was chronically depressed. She would have to take anti-depressants for the rest of her life. It was a hard thing for her to accept, and her family, well, as has already been demonstrated; they are not the most supportive people in the world.

Wow, no wonder I have distance, I’m not talking about myself at all…

So what was happening with me this whole time?

Well, a great number of things were happening. I was coming to the realisation that my father was an alcoholic. I was running the household. I was fending off advances from my father’s friend, with no help from my father. I was starting high school. I was going through my parents divorce. I was suddenly living with my brother. I was going through puberty.

In short, I was going through one hell of a transition.

I didn’t know I was depressed. I didn’t know anything was wrong. It’s hard to describe, but it doesn’t occur to you that the way you feel is different, because it’s how you’ve always felt. You coast along, moving from day to day in almost a fog. You do things because you have to, or you feel you have to. I escaped as much as I could and however I could. For me my escape came from my friends. I couldn’t stand to be in the same house as my father, so I went out all the time. When I wasn’t out with friends, I was on the phone with them. When I wasn’t in contact with them (very very rare) I sat in front of the television and glared at my father whenever he came in the room so that he would not stay. I lived a life of avoidance. I never wanted to be alone. Being alone was a scary place.

I spent all of high school in that fog. I got sick a lot. I stayed home from school a lot. I stopped playing sports. I stopped doing much extra-curricular stuff. I pulled inside of myself. I hid in a shell of extroversion. I was exuberant, outgoing, happy-go-lucky, and miserable. Well, I didn’t know I was miserable, I just thought I was normal, and when people were describing how they felt, they must be exaggerating, or strange themselves.

When I was 18 I started dating John. I felt safe for the first time in my life. And then I broke. I broke down. It was a slow process. It built to a climax. It started with crying myself to sleep. Then it moved to wanting to be alone, but being terrified of being alone, and so John would sit quietly with me. Allowing me to be alone, but safe in his arms. Then it got to the point where I would come home from work and immediately go up to my room and wait for john to arrive (he worked in Mississauga, but essentially lived with me at my father’s place). When John arrived, he’d eat something, try to get me to eat something (I’d stopped eating too, I still do that when I get stressed, it’s a destructive little habit I’m trying to get rid of.), and then I would bring him up to my room, where I would turn off all the lights and curl up in his arms and cry. My mum told me time and time again to go to the doctor. She knew. She knew what it was to be depressed, and she knew I was depressed. I kept saying I’d go, but I knew I wouldn’t. When you’re depressed the last thing you want to do is help yourself.

Then the inevitable came. I had a breakdown. I was at work. I was in a meeting with my boss. I just started crying. I couldn’t stop. I was totally out of control. I said I needed to go for a walk. I walked out, walked to a nearby plaza, crying the whole time. I found a payphone and called my mother. I told her I was scared, that I didn’t know why I couldn’t stop crying and I felt so out of control.

My mum said enough was enough, she was going to call my doctor, make and appointment, and drive to Guelph, pick me up at work, and drive me there herself. So I went back to work, and that’s what she did. I worked for the afternoon, and at 4:00 my mum picked me up at the office and drove me to my doctor.

I started a course of anti-depressants. I started therapy a couple months into it. I was feeling a lot better. When the 6 month mark came, the time to go off anti-depressants, I was trepidations, but confident. I stopped taking my medication and I was fine… for a while.

As with my mother, the cycle repeated itself. This time I was able to seek treatment for myself, and earlier on in the process. I knew what was happening to me. Still it took far too long. It took friends and my mother telling me they thought I was depressed again, and it took time. My depression needed to get to a point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

This time I talked to my doctor about chronic depression. I expressed my concern that I might be chronic depressive. She in a most unreassuringly way (simply because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear) informed me that I likely was chronic depressive. Due to the fact that I had relapsed (only some fraction of people do) and my mother was chronic, and in light of a recently discovering that I too was depressed as a young child, just not diagnosed or treated, chances were pretty strong that I was/am chronic depressive.

I don’t know yet. That was 3 years ago, and I have been on anti-depressants ever since. They say that in the second round of anti-depressants you should stay on for at least 5 years. I guess I’ll find out in a couple years. A big part of me hopes I’m not chronic depressive, but I’m not sure why. I guess just because it’s such a big deal, and it would sure be nice to not have to take a pill every day.

So I guess that is a history of my depression, but doesn’t say at all what depression is for me. Depression is a time full of dread, self-doubt and self-deprecation. I know a friend who couldn’t decide which socks to wear one day, started crying and went back to bed and didn’t go to work. That’s what it’s like. The smallest things become huge. Everything feels insurmountable. I stop eating decent food. I stop sleeping at night. I start sleeping during the day. I don’t answer the phone. I don’t go out. I don’t talk to people. I cry all the time. I cry and have no idea what it is I’m crying about. I can’t think. That’s the worst part. I can’t think. Not just I can’t think straight, I just can’t think. It’s like my brain goes on hold. Everything is amplified. Someone has to cancel a date; I assume it must be because of me. Something bad happens and it must be my fault. I question why people love me, why John is with me, why anyone would ever want to be with me. I want to hurt myself. I do things to hurt myself that won’t leave marks or scars, I hit the wall, I close my eyes and imagine spikes being driven through my body, anything that people won’t notice or question when they see me the next time. I want to cut my hand, but I know that it will disappoint people even more than they must be, so instead I draw on it with a ballpoint pen. I press as hard as I can and cover my whole palm with black ink.

That is what it is like to be depressed for me. You’ll find that it varies from person to person, for instance I never had serious thoughts of suicide (such as how I would do it etc) but I did think the world would be a better place without me here, that I wished I had never been born, or maybe I could just die. They equal the same as thoughts of suicide, it’s still an ending of existence, it’s just not by your own hand. Not everyone is so fatalistic in their depression. But you will also notice remarkable similarities.

Thankfully I have not had a depressive episode in 3 years. I have my moments. I still get sad. But it’s different. I haven’t thought the world would be a better place without me in years. I know why people love me. I know why John loves me. I know I am a valuable person.




Friday, October 22, 2004

amen

okay, so this made me giggle...

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

big and rude

so, today at rehearsal (i'm in a musical based on the story the emperor's new clothes, yes, you read that right, i have to sing, in front of an audience, i'm, um, well, terrified. i mean, acting is old hat, but i've never done the musical thing before, anyway, i digress...) i was talking to this guy who has a delightful voice and i always love listening to him sing.

we were talking music. he asked who my favourite band was and i said "Big Rude Jake". don't know why BRJ came up first. i mean, absolutely on the top 10, but interesting that it came out as number one today. anyway, i was telling him about the first time i heard BRJ (who he hadn't heard of, which is not particularly a surprise, but did make me sad) and it made me chuckle again so i thought i'd share it here.

i'm pretty sure the first time i saw big rude jake live was at hillside. it's certainly my first clear memory of a concert with them anyway. they were playing the mainstage some afternoon (it was still light out anyway). i was enthralled from the beginning. i *loved* them. seriously, i nearly wet myself with joy (luckily i didn't, i mean, really, wetting myself would be bad enough, but at hillside? ewwwwwww.) and i turned to whoever was sitting next to me (kate? john? dave? shane? seriously, does anyone remember? man, that was a long time ago...) and said "wow, it's like a cross between tom waits and joe jackson jumpin' jive". i was pretty pleased with myself at that one. it seemed so perfectly accurate and i'm generally not that astute when it comes to music.

that week i read a review of big rude jake. i don't know if it was in the guelph mockery or in the ontarion or what, but i remember reading it in the words "big rude jake is like a cross between tom waits and joe jackson". i felt robbed. i was actually angry. someone had stolen my words. it didn't occur to me to be flattered. it also didn't occur to me that perhaps the reviewer just thought the same thing as me. i was convinced that it was someone who had been sitting within earshot and stole it without giving me credit for the words i was so proud of myself for coming up with.

i wonder if it was that year or the next year that big rude jake did the workshop with some band (i want to say tip splinter, but that could be a lie) and jake said "we need the saw lady, where's the saw lady?" in that frenetic kind of way he does.

okay, i need to see see jake again. who's up for going to see him in TO on some friday? apparently he plays at the reservoir every friday night under some other name but very much the same style.

funny, i have a number of stories around BRJ. i was about to keep telling them here, but i guess maybe they're not actually *that* interesting.

okay, i'm gonna go put on butane fumes and bad cologne now...

have a good night all!

Monday, October 18, 2004

oh, wait, there's more...

this just made me feel weird, and not in that good warm fuzzy way...

my sister-in-law is a photographer and was working on an art project a while ago and asked if i would be her model for sensuality. i heartily agreed, i mean, how often does someone say to you "i want to take pictures of you and i want it to epitomise desire and sexual energy".

so, she takes nude pictures of me. not porn type or anything. very calm. not very sexual at all. just an energy thing. i'm lying on my side on a bed gazing out a window, there are lots of fowers around. it's a gorgeous picture actually.

anyway, it's on display in her studio right now, which is fine. but i had lunch with my dad today and he said "i went to the show at the studio on the weekend." he made some crack about not seeing me like that in decades. then he said it was a very beautiful photograph and he was impressed, he figured it must have taken a lot of guts.

i have to say, it never occured to me when she did it that my dad would see it. i don't know why it didn't occur to me. but it didn't. and now, well, ewwwwwwww! i don't know why, but yeah, ewwwwwww.

i'm so naughty...

this is my naughty post.

the content isn't so much naughty, it's just about naughty things i'm doing...

first, i'm typing this from work. *gasp* okay, well, it's 6:30 and i should have gone home hours ago so i guess it's not that naughty, but still...

anyway, the thing that makes me giggle is that i just took my bra off in my cubicle. so now i'm sitting here braless ('cause it was driving me batty) in my office, posting on a blog. i'm sure this doesn't fall under any of the appropriate conduct things that one sees around the office from time to time.

so, yeah, just wanted to write to say 'tee hee hee'

;)

Saturday, October 16, 2004

jon stewart follow up

so, this is an interesting blog entry on the whole jon stewart crossfire thingy.

from One Good Thing

brilliant television

so, this is jon stewart kicking some CNN ass...

i wanted to post it yesterday, but for some reason i couldn't get on to my blog to post.

well worth watching.

tip of the hat to john for showing me this one. of course then i saw it all over the place, but john showed it to me first, so he gets the credit. *grin*

my favourite line, from jon stewart "...i'd always thought in a democracy, and again, i don't know, i've only lived in this country..."


Thursday, October 14, 2004

strange addiction

i would appear to be addicted to CBC Radio 1.

and for some reason, it isn't working in my car these days. here i am, minding my own business, merrily driving myself to work, when *boom* out of no where my 'metro morning' is pre-empted by some music station. i don't know what the station is, but it is 99.1 something or other, which is where my CBC is on the dial too. i was outraged. and, well, thrown off. i don't know, maybe it's the routine, maybe it's because it's one of the few ways that i keep current with what is going on in the world around me, maybe it's just because it makes the time pass quicker, who knows. but the truth is, i am addicted to cbc radio 1.

yep. addicted.

i went through withdrawl. i was playing with the radio, changing the setting, listening through static, praying that it would come back to my beloved CBC. i needed my fix.

it keep happening. i'm thinking of writing to CBC and complaining that they need to get a stronger transmitter to help feed the habit of poor addicted CBC listeners in guelph. dammit, i need my fix!

thank god it still works in my house, if it didn't i'd be on the floor in tears, wailing, kicking my legs and pounding my fists on the floor right now.

okay, well, for now i'm going to just keep listening to the rabbi who is talking on ideas tonight. *phew* withdrawl subsiding... peace rising...

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

long time no type

so, i've been kind of in hell lately and i don't know if i'm going to write more tonight (or this week for that matter) but in the meantime here are a few things in one post to tide you over...

first... just found this online, so if you do any online shopping this would be a way to consider doing it. http://www.gooddeedshopping.com/ both amazon and chapters are part of it, which would basically encompass 95% of the online shopping i do.

second... found out about this cool thing called 'freecycle' which you probably all already know about, being far hipper than i, however, i thought it was worth posting about. http://www.freecycle.org/ basically it's a place to post stuff that you have for free that you're looking for a home for (like a couch for instance...) or that you need and are hoping someone is getting rid of (like a couch for instance...). i'm signed up for the guelph one, but they have them all over, internationally too, not just in north america.

third... if you need a good cry i reccomend going to see 'the notebook'. it's a lovely movie. made me cry buckets though.

okay, that's it for me for right this second, but you know, i have to say that even just writing these few words has made me feel an itsy bitsy bit better.

Saturday, October 09, 2004

gobble gobble

so, i decided to host thanksgiving this year.

tomorrow john's brother and sister-in-law and mum are coming over. as is my much beloved friend cameron.

i'm very excited. much good fun to be had, much good food for me to make.

but today, kate and i went to pick up the turkey i'd ordered and encountered a bit of a surprise. i ordered a fresh turkey (i've never cooked a turkey before, but i'm told fresh is way better than frozen). i ordered a 6lb turkey, since there were only four of us eating meat. we walked in and jack (the butcher) said "do you mind if it's a bit bigger? they didn't send us small ones." i said sure, assuming that he had some sane definition of 'a bit'.

yeah. i now have a 17lb turkey sitting in a cooler in my kitchen. apparently almost 3 times the size i ordered is "a bit bigger"...

man, i wish i liked turkey as much as that would warrent. especially since john's a vegetarian, so it's not like he'll be eating any of the leftovers... oh well, lots of turkey to freeze and make quick food with for me i guess.

Friday, October 08, 2004

keep your fork...

so, it's turkey weekend and i thought maybe i should write something that was thanksgiving weekendesque..

in our family we always say "keep your fork duke, we're havin' pie", even if we're not having pie. often it's between the salad and main course 'cause we're not so much with the desserts in my family (well, except the pumpkin pie at thanksgiving dinner, in which case the pie reference is generally bang on). anyway, there's a good chance you know this saying already, but it's a fun one and it's origins have always made me giggle.

years ago, on a royal tour of canada, the queen and her hubby were in some rural place. i don't know which one, i've heard somewhere in saskatchewan, i've also heard somewhere in the yukon, i'm sure i could research it and find out for sure, but really, i don't care that much. anyway, they were somewhere for a royal visit and state dinner (i've heard stuff like the local lion's club, but as we've already established with the previous statement, details are not my strong suite in this particular story). anyway, as they were clearing the table the prince had put his fork on his plate and a waitress reached down, put it on the table and said: "Keep your fork, Duke, there's pie."

and the image of that has amused me for years. and years. and years. i think my mum first told me when i was 5 or 6. the reasons it's funny have changed as i have gotten older. the symbolism changes as i get older. but it is still one of my favourites.

so this sunday when serving thanksgiving dinner to john's family, you can bet your ass i'm gonna say "keep your fork duke, we're havin' pie".



Thursday, October 07, 2004

my cheating heart

okay, this post is kind of cheating a bit, it's actually a response i wrote on QUESTIONABLETAKTIX, but i thought it might be an interesting piece of information on me and my life, so perhaps worthy to get up on here.

it was a response to a posting of this picture of (to quote Sanketh Shetty from the post i saw it on...)
"This is a famous picture of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong Officer during the Vietnam War. This VC had just killed 8 South Vietnamese(including the family of the General's Friend)."

the post wasn't about the picture per se, but my response was. my response was a story that the picture made me think of. so, now i'm going to copy and paste it here...

when i was a teenager i had no problem with violence in movies, i could comfort myself with the fact that it was fake, special effects and so on.

well, then in grade 11 history class i saw the video of this incident. (for those of you who know me, this was when I was in quebec on my exchange from hell)

in that class they also showed us bits of the movie JFK (remember, the kevin cosner movie?) where they showed the clip of jfk being shot, over and over and over again.

i remember sitting in that class and crying. not mellow dramatic sobbing, just run of the mill weeping.

the emotionless clinical way one man executed another, the anguish in jackie kennedy's face when she watched her husband get shot. there was something about the comparison of those events to the stuff i'd seen in the movies, something that was far to eerily similar to the stuff i'd seen in movies.

since then i basically can't deal with violence in movies. i'm just your average big violence wimp. no threshold. wimp wimp wimp.
damn reality.
gets in the way of everything.

****************************************
i had a bunch of editorial comments after this bit that i hadn’t included in my response to the blog. unfortunately i added them after i put this from my word document and into the blog as an after thought. And then of course, i promptly lost the post. Wheeeeee.
perhaps tomorrow i’ll write a continuation of this post. or, perhaps not. perhaps you’ll all just have to wonder what the comments were. *grin*

if wishes were rainbows...

i really wish i could write right now. i'm feeling like i have lots to say, but i don't know what it is. i want to be witty and clever and thought provoking. but i'm just exhausted. the energy that it takes to be all those things just doesn't seem to be with me.

so, i have an idea. how about you just pretend that i've written something absolutely brillant. bask in the enjoyment of it. let it warm the cockles of your heart...

i promise to be back soon. my goal is to post something, anything, at least once a day. if i don't keep writing i seem to lose the the ability to do it with any kind of zest.

although i could write reems (of the ever famous digital paper, no, really, digital paper comes in reems) of stuff about not my fear of job ending and stress and blah blah blah, but that hardly seems interesting, and i really like being interesting, so that's my goal...


a tidbit from CBC

i found this little tidbit in the cbc archives site. just kind of an interesting timeline and stuff.

Gay and Lesbian Emergence: Out in Canada

Monday, October 04, 2004

a question...

why is it when you're a teenager drinking seems like way more of a big deal than smoking, but when you're an adult smoking seems like way more of a big deal than drinking?

Sunday, October 03, 2004

sex-selection

okay, so i just wrote this, but apparently i've become a bit complacent in my making sure i write in word and then copy it in to this, so i tried to publish it and lost it. this may be a more abbreviated form.

basically it's about a story i saw about people who go through a big expensive process that (my understanding) is still legal in the states, but not in most other western countries. it's a process to choose the sex of their children. essentially it's sperm selection and then artificial insemination.

i saw a thing on it last night on sex tv.

there was this woman who was the core of the story. she creeped me out. i have never seen someone want a child of a particular sex so desperately. some back story on her... she had a child, was disappointed to see it was a boy. had a second child. was so disappointed she cried. then went and did this procedure to be able to have her long awaited girl. she said that since it's not 100% she wouldn't know until the baby was born, but if it was another boy she would be heartbroken. she rapidly assured the audience that she would learn to love this child too, but really she wants a girl. anyway, turns out she had her girl so she was very happy.

she also kept talking about gender selection. i realise i might be getting carried away in the politically correct arena here, falling back into university days and so on. but since gender is a construct and sex is a biological thing, i can't help thinking she'll be very disappointed if her little girl doesn't end up being a girly girl. Really, it feels like this woman is looking for a big doll to play with.

all i can say is i'm so glad i'm not one of her kids. the pressure on her daughter to be girly will be huge, and her sons, well, her sons are going to be a disappointment no matter what they do because they're girls. it's a shitty shitty way to live.

i don't know, i'm a pretty open minded person, but the whole sex-selection thing kind of makes my skin crawl.
okay, that’s my little societal insight that creeped me out this weekend. how about you? anything creep you out lately?

Saturday, October 02, 2004

childhood memories

tee hee.

for some reason this reminds me of my milky the cow toy. i'll have to tell you that story sometime (okay, it's not as juicy, but it's funny)


new commenting function

okay, so, i have added haloscan commenting on so that you don't have to have a blog with blogger to make a comment ('cause that was just dumb and annoying).

so, now anyone can leave a comment. yay!




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