Category Archives: Journalling

And then there was none.

Work looms ominously on the morrow as my holiday comes to a close. I could have achieved a lot more than I did this week.
I didn’t set goals. I didn’t want goals. This year is about achievement, but this week wasn’t. This week was about pausing and just pushing everyone far, far away from me. Sleep, some writing, a lot of “just being” and very, very little else.
Every time I started feeling guilty about the vast nothingness that was my week, I reminded myself, “Monday, it’s on.” I could stop completely all week long, but come workday, ain’t no pause to be pushed.
And tomorrow’s Monday. As much as part of me dreads it, because I’m educated enough to know what I’m in for now, the bigger part of me is looking forward to proving more to myself.
Today’s the antithesis to my week because I’m getting so much done. I’m tackling paperwork I’ve avoided for about eight or nine months, sorting it out. In so doing, I’m getting this pretty good snapshot of where I was last September and where I’m at now, and I finally feel like there’s progress in every area of my life. I’ve also come to accept that this struggle will probably continue for the better part of the next year, and I won’t really start to reach where I wanna be until late next year, even if I continue with all the progress I’m making.
But that’s all right with me. I want my goals to be met in a steady, digestible fashion. I don’t want everything to pan out overnight. It’s impossible to grow that quickly on a constant basis. Growth spurts happen, sure, but they’re called spurts for a reason.
I’m really glad I gave myself this chance to just pull away from everything. I’ve needed a big break like this for a long time. I’m glad I was broke for it, too. Money can be a distraction when we need anything but, at times. Sometimes space is the most precious commodity in the world. Time always is.
Hey, it’s a fantastic day. A fine finish for my holiday. A reckoning of “from whence we came” and an acknowledging of how far to go. Speaking of distances to go, I have some miles ahead before my night comes to a close. Back to the grind for this lowly scribe-type gal.

And Then There Was Sloth

Behold! What is that slow-moving mostly-horizontal creature on yonder horizon?
It be Steff! Yes, yes. Embracing the spirit of “r and r” to the, well, letter, yes, here on day four of the vacation. Yesterday I cycled. Today, I’ll do yoga. And a little light cleaning. I’ve done dishes. Faced the ugly bits-of-food sink-clogging drama that I so hate. I blame the chickpeas. I’ve taken out some trash. Laundry. Bleh. But at least I’m moving around and doing things.
Saturday: I blogged. The rest of the day? I was too tired to even go choose one of my DVDs to watch. I could have been entertained by a test pattern. Then I went to bed at 10. How’s that for exciting?
After months of go-go-go, I stopped. I barely even cooked. Yesterday, I finally cycled. And I remembered why all the go-go-go, as hard as it was, often felt completely, totally worth it, if only in little tiny moments.
Cycling was awesome. Beautiful breeze with salt in the air, just hot enough. Mostly empty trails. Not too dusty yet. Spring air. Great scenery. It was one of those brief but indelible “Nobody anywhere is having a nicer time than I am at exactly this minute. This is contentment” moments. They don’t come around often, so it’s nice to do like I did: Stop the bike, take a look around, and say “Yes, life is sweet”. I took a deep breath, grinned, and played “No Rain” on my iPOD and carried on. I just loved the whole experience from start to finish. The perfect ride.
I caught a snippet of a show not too long ago, Serious Andes, a BBC reality show with kids where 8 preteens from 12 to 14 are taken on an expedition up the 20,000-foot Cotopaxi volcano in the Andes, a journey that would cripple most adults, and, on top of that, they were to build a massive enclosure for endangered bears being returned to the wild, as their final stop before the wild. This 12-year-old, Josh, at the end of building the massive bear enclosure by themselves, mixing thousands of buckets of concrete by hand at high altitude, and doing fencing, in freezing ice rain, for nearly a week, at 2am in the morning, dead tired, just stops, looks around, turns to the camera, and goes, “I’m taking a moment to remember how great this moment feels, because I have to remember this for the rest of my life.”
And I found myself wondering just how many adults are wise enough to consciously stop in the middle of truly great moments to make a note of how THAT feels so you can draw upon that memory, that bliss, through all your moments left to live in your life. Do you? Do you really realize your memory of THAT moment needs to stand up for 30, 40, 50, 60 years in your mind? Do you?
I do. I’ve been this way, since, fuck, I don’t know. I was a kid, I guess. I’m totally fine today, but as a kid I had a rare kidney condition and spent some time in the Children’s Hospital, on the cancer ward, ‘cos my condition was serious at the time. I was in the room with Lisa, a 13-year-old with lung cancer. She was awesome. Funny, beautiful. She was 13.
And I woke up after a few days of bunking with her, and she was dead. Alarms had blared. Something happened. She died, and now the gurney squeaked as her body was taken out. I think I realized then how small we all are in the scheme of things, how quickly things pass and change.
I haven’t used that lesson to the best of my abilities, but at least I use it. I don’t live every day with reckless abandon, hedonistic “today’s the first day of the rest of your life” fervour, but I certainly find it in me to celebrate moments. And there, alone, under a blue sky by a rushing river, no one around but the ducks, I felt about as alive and grateful as I’ve ever felt. Didn’t cost me a cent, didn’t require anyone’s interaction, didn’t even need me going on a voyage. Just an iPOD and a bike and there you have it. Life, and the meaning thereof, served on a platter, if only for the briefest of moments.
Why are here? ‘Cause we lucked out. What are you gonna do about it? What’s the meaning of life? I don’t know, but I’ve long since decided giving it meaning is the next best thing to knowing.
And clarity may only come in the briefest of moments, but if you stop and enjoy it, the briefest of moments is all you really need.
So here I am now, enjoying my old new wave music, bopping around my apartment, doing nothing… because, right now, nothing feels like everything.

Some Good JuJu Rising?

I’m almost giddy with expectation. I get to have a chat with one of Ze Cheeses That Be about taking a sudden, unexpected week off. I am so tired and beat and ready for some serious extended r-and-r that it couldn’t come any sooner!
See, this is where I expose myself as the casual, laid-back kind of airhead I can sometimes be, but only when I trust people. I decided on a pretty big whim last year to quit the job that had me wanting to hurl myself off a skyscraper to my death, since I figured jobs that make you feel such ways are the ones we should quit, and went running at the fastest possible pace back to my cushy, easy, lovely job where I get to watch television for a living, and where was home and family for seven years. I mean, I watch TV for a living! I don’t even talk to clients, service providers, or even have a phone on my desk. Ha!
And because I’d trust my bosses there with my life, ‘cos they’re just that nice, I didn’t get anything in writing. It was kind of a “Well, when wouldja like to be back? Okay, see you then! You can have your old salary and everything,” and that was that. I didn’t even think twice about making them put it in writing.
If the whole world ran as principled as my bosses run their company, it’d be a fucking great planet to live on, man. (And they know everything I blog on and don’t care a damn, and one reads my other blog religiously, so I don’t need to be worried about getting fired for posting an innocuous thing like this, unlike that job I quit last year.)
So, when I sallied in on Friday and said to one of Ze Cheeses that Be, “Hey, I seem to recall once having three weeks of vacation a year, so I’m wondering if maybe I’m due for another week off?”
She pulls up the accounting program, notices I’ve been accruing vac pay at 6% and goes, “Holy smokes, Steff! You’ve got another week of vacation coming!” And THAT’s how easy it is to solve perceived screw-ups at my work. Three minutes later I’m looking at the bliss of a week to myself, so long as I can work it out with scheduling.
So today I get to speak to the scheduling department and see when works. I’m thinking, next week? Five bucks says she gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up, because the busy season is nipping soon at our heels. And my body will scream in ecstatic glee at the thought of nine stinking days off to chill!
I’m still broke as hell for four more days, with a need to be cheap for four more weeks at least, but I’m back to loving my life and not questioning my choices. Because, most of the time, I love the lifestyle I have, even if it means getting creative with beans for a couple weeks in a row from time to time. (And I’m all excited to try cooking up some chickpeas for a funky rustic Italian salad for work lunches tonight. Seriously, I’m excited about it. What alien mind probe has altered my personality so drastically?)
Something about being broke all to hell this past week has been like an epiphany to me. I think I like the way it’s shifted my mindset of late, altered my values, and kicked my ass a little for feeling so sorry for myself. I like this headspace that has been developing in the last day or two. I really do, and I don’t know if I’d have gotten to this point without having my money taken away and having been forced to look for positives where I was perceiving there to be none. (And was I ever wrong.) But that’s another posting for another time.
What would Steff do with nine or 10 days off, very little money, and a wide-open expanse of time to play with? I think it’s time to play tourist at home, is what I think! I might take a tour I’d never recommend a tourist to take, for instance, The Sins of the City walking tour that’ll delve into Vancouver’s past in bootlegging, prostitution, and more, which I just heard about and could be fun to share with y’all.
I’ll do one final pass over everything I own and turf more belongings. And I’ll sleep. And I’ll write. And I’ll work out. I’ll have time to cook cheap but fantastic and healthy “foodie” food daily. I may even hook up with friends! Whee! FABULOUS!
All I know is, I’m suggesting I take next week off (since I’ve checked out the weather already) and all they can say is no, at which point I’ll suggest the next week off. So fingers crossed for the blogchick, minions. She needs a week to herself asap-ish! 🙂

And Then There Were Crabs

LostFile_JPG_86160632I’m not exactly Little Miss Adventure, but if I was to tell you the tale of my life you’d probably mistake me for exactly that – a year in the Yukon, thrown from a horse, a near-fatal scooter (motorbike) accident, camping all my formative years, been to Alaska and Mexico and back again…
…Truth be told, though, I’m a bit of a pussy when it comes to facing Mother Nature at her finest. Spiders? Horrifying. Giant moths? Send me scurrying into a corner, ducking under covers. Creepy-crawlies give ME the creepy-crawlies, thanks very much.
Every now and then, however, I manage to trick myself into feeling like the calm, cool, collected adult I should rightly be now that I’m on the verge of turning 34.  I’d better be growing up.
Then stories like this come along. So, without much more ado… a tale of a Steff gone camping.
We pitched our tent bright and early. Our neighbours must’ve made the same ferry as we did, for the British couple showed up mere minutes after we begin staking our site.
We both got our sites rigged and then cracked into our local Limey’s collection of beer while playing Frisbee to pass some time. Finally the pub called Gayboy (@mr_tits_pervert on Twitter) and I away, and we set on our local adventures – pub grub, beer, shopping for campfire foodies, and then back to the site we went.
Finding our pitch and the next door one both deserted, we decided to have a game of cards, drink a beer, and plan our attack. On three sides of us were the island’s shores. One side a beach, one a lagoon, and one a harbour/marina. We decided to head to the nearby beach by way of the lagoon. Being Slow-Drinker Girl, I wisely brought my yet-unfinished beer with, and we set upon our latest adventure.
We traipsed down the hill and came out alongside the lagoon. It looked pretty dry and had the unmistakable West Coast generations of broken clam and oyster shells peppering the landscape along with the dark coastal rocks. We shrugged and made our way onto the lagoon. The footing was a bit spongey but it was otherwise indicating a crossing seemed pretty reliable.
We took off along the western side of the lagoon, keeping alongside a little stream we planned to cross midway, thanks to dottings of rocks and boulders across its path.
Suddenly, a shriek.
“Jesus CHRIST!” shouted GayBoy. “Look at the fucking crabs!”
Suddenly I noticed the ground seemed to move in bits. Some very well-disguised crabs were creeping sideways across the shell-covered landscape. They were all around one to two inches in width, but the more I scoured the ground for them, the more I began to notice them. The landscape wasn’t just dotted with clam shells, but the muddy surface of the lagoon was similarly dotted with crabholes. Every couple inches was another hole between ½ inch wide all the way up to two inches wide. The holes were fine until a crab would poke its head out and observe us.
Unlike GayBoy, I wasn’t that freaked out. Concerned, yes, avoiding them, yes, but terrified? Not just yet.
“Okay, this is really creeping me out,” GayBoy muttered. Clearly the dope we’d smoked earlier was toying with his perceptions and making things a little more intense than they maybe needed to be.
We decided to cross the stream right there, and I led the way, clumsily hopping across rocks and landing with a splash of beer spilling out my bottle on the other side. I took a couple steps and found myself beginning to sink some four or so inches down into grubby mud. And with every sink, more crabholes were vacated, the stupid critters heading AT us instead of AWAY from us.
“Oh, JESUS,” exclaimed GayBoy.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” I reacted. Then I began to mock GayBoy, muttering with sing-song disdain under my breath. “ ‘Let’s cross the lagoon. It’s a nice beach on the other side.’ ”
“All right, FINE! What way do you want to go?” he bitterly retorted.
“Let’s go to the east side… it looks drier.”
So, naturally, we crossed back. I surveyed the lay of the lagoon and the spot that looked the driest was the direction in which we decided to head.
Big fuckin’ mistake. A few steps later, we’re sinking six inches down. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck!” I started gasping.
“Fuck this! Let’s head back to the path!” shouted GayBoy.
That’s when my shoe came off. I yelped and gasped, beginning to hyperventilate. Crabs were everywhere now. It seemed like they’d all heard there was a new show in town and clamoured for front-row tickets. Not only was I staring down in fear, teetering on one sunken foot as my mud-stuck shoe was hidden from view, but I was becoming increasingly aware that the scattered crabs were now out in force, all hovering around us.
Suddenly I flashed back to my old film job, remembering painful scenes of captioning poor fuckers dying in quicksand. I had clips of nature shows, crabs picking bones clean on shorelines. Then I had a vision of a blog headline, “Something Tragic Afoot: Crabs Dine A La Steff in Lagoon – memorial Tuesday at Twin Pines.”
GayBoy clasped onto me and refocused me. “Steady! Steady. Here’s your shoe.”
LostFile_JPG_85976696I got the shoe back on, and then, clenching my toes to hold the shoe on slipper-style (the heel was pushed down under my foot, it’s all we could manage), I had to use all my strength to hike my feet back out of the now-eight inches of sludge. Every footstep was an epic effort.
Then, the worst that could happen – one shoe came off… and then the other as I stumbled forward onto my bare-sock foot.
I began hyperventilating like a prison bitch trapped in a shower, but GayBoy acted quickly and got me both shoes, while barely keeping it together himself.
With another 20 feet to go, we continued trying to get to the dry path one step at a time. Fortunately neither of us became crabs’ lunches, and we finally made it to the shore.
LostFile_JPG_85979856And me, true Canadian girl I am, succeeded in failing to spill ALL the beer. Thank god for Alexander Keith, patron saint to Canadians lost in crab-infested lagoons, it would seem.
We spent the night exploring debauchery with our new best friends from England, laughing about all our misadventures as we brazenly worked towards the next morning’s hangovers.
Camping, anyone?
Below’s the estimated route of our path:

LostFile_JPG_86130696


And here, most importantly, is the beer I managed to keep alive all through the turmoil! Truly a Canadian girl with her Canadian beer! And yes I write notes on my hands and arms, hence the weird blue bit on the left there…

LostFile_JPG_86202256

In Praise of Pink Slips

What a difference a day makes. 24 hours ago, I was sitting there sullenly at my desk, kind of loathing my existence. Today, I’ve got a paid day off, and tomorrow I return to the only job I’ve ever known that made me feel like I was part of a family.
It has been 12-13 years since I had a job with an asshole employer. This was the first time since that I’d had an employer that I felt was, well, unfair. I’m not going into specifics. It is what it is, and I have too developed a readership to go slagging anyone.
But let’s face it, not everyone knows how to manage. There are people who have such great personalities that they get overlooked for how they sometimes treat others, and they can be hell to work for.
I’m a big believer in learning from life as it happens. You can just dismiss things and say “shit happens,” or you can ask “why does shit happen?” Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Philosophy 101. Why?
For me it makes life so much better when I assign value to all the things that go down in my life. For every failure, I try to learn something. And whether I want to accept it or not, I was fired. I failed in some capacity, and while I consider myself fortunate to have been uninvited from that particular party, there’s a part of me that knows what rejection feels like again.
Do you ever sit back in your comfy arm chair, watching some talk show, on which is some woman telling of all the abuse she endured through her many years of marriage, and sit there, thinking, “Jesus, honey! Why didn’t you leave?! At what point do you finally clue the fuck in and say, ‘Gee, I think this might be a bad situation?’ Fuck!”
Yet how many of us work every day in jobs we hate? Jobs where you know it’s just a paycheque, baby? How many of us tolerate rude, belligerent employers who don’t know how to sit the fuck down and trust us to do the jobs we’re supposed to be hired to do? It’s psychological abuse, really, when you work in a situation like that. But because they sign our paycheques and keep the roofs above our heads, we somehow feel like they’ve got permission to treat us like they do.
And I don’t give a fuck what kind of job it is, what kind of pressure it is, it’s not too goddamned much to ask that employees everywhere get treated in a reasonably professional manner. I’m not so sure that’s how I was treated of late. Two people there were good, though. Pity about the unbalance.
So, uninvited from the party, I have to tell you that today’s the first time since about… February of this year that I’ve woken up without this palpable fear of whether all the bills are going to be paid and whether I’m gonna have my integrity intact at the end of the day. In the spring I was just financially insecure. Of late, I was underpaid and treated somewhat questionably. Different scenarios, but similar results.
I feel like a fucking mammoth weight has come off my shoulders, is what I’m trying to say. And I’m also trying to suggest that, if you’re one of those people working a job you hate, you really need to start asking yourself if the cost benefit ratio of going through THAT every single day is worth it. I mean, shit. I feel like I’ve just broken the water’s surface and am finally breathing again. I had no idea those many months were taking the toll they’ve now so obviously been taking.
I always said I was lucky to never have really had to work in a bad situation. Now I have. I’m one of those freaks that likes having difficult experiences because then I always grow. It’s my choice to gain from the situation, ain’t it? So I’m having a good day. Friday’s coming and so’s that 33rd birthday. Older? Wiser? Fucking right I am.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to quit without another job to go to. Getting fired was the only way that situation was gonna get resolved, unless one of the headhunter positions worked out. So my perfect record gets smeared. Whatever. I’m glad I’m moving on to potentially better times.
It’s one of those times where you, the reader, gets to sit back and ponder your own life’s satisfaction. Is it really going the way you want? Is it worth it to keep compromising? Think about it. Then remember one of my favourite sayings: Life’s too fucking short.
Hallelujah. I got fired. Uninvited. Ha. And look, it’s sunny out. Go fuckin’ figger.

Good news! I got fired!

Heh. Yep, you read right. I’m happy I just got fired.
I hated the job, or more accurately, one of the bosses. Worse yet: It sucked the will to write right out of me.
Putting words on a screen’s pretty fucking easy most days and I can do it in my sleep, but the GOOD writing, well, that comes from places that machines can’t mine. When the mix is off, it’s really, really difficult to get things gelling again. And, honestly, something about that job just killed my creativity.
And, being such an affable and good chick as I am, the folks I worked the last six years for are taking me back without even thinking twice. Not permanently, but “for a while” at the very least, and “for a while” is what I need.
And the moral of this story, boys and girls, is that when adversity happens, don’t think about the fucking adversity. Think about overcoming it. Within 10 minutes I went from losing a job to getting another one, in essence, and that comes from acting, not fretting.
I’m a happy camper. I lost a job I hated. I’m going back to one that had me, for some weird reason, writing better than I’ve ever written before. Methinks I’ve come out ahead.
But the good news for you is, soon I’ll be back to writing well. Don’t think I don’t know this blog’s been off-kilter for some time. I know it all too well. I already have a couple fun things planned for postings.
I’d kill to hear “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” right now, ‘cos it sums up how I’m feeling pretty nicely.

And Then It Was Sunny.

Y’know that old cliche, “I felt like I had a new lease on life”?
Welcome to my Friday morning. I rolled out of bed, bitter about a bad night’s sleep, got up, grabbed a glass of water, and realized: Wow, I feel almost normal. Yep, the flu / cold that sunk its teeth in deep has finally given up some of its grip.
You know, being sick isn’t all bad. Catching a three-week thing sucks, but a four- or five-day bug? Not a bad thing at all.
We’re all so stuck in our gotta-do’s that we tend to forget about choice. We get caught up in these lives of supposed obligation and occupation that we forget there’s a bigger picture out there.
I’ve slept a lot, excluding last night, since Sunday. Probably 50% of my week was spent under covers, out of commission. Had you asked me Saturday if I was planning on sleeping in Sunday, I’d have told you “I don’t have the time.” I’d have said I was planning on having late nights all week long — and that I was planning on getting into the habit of setting my alarm clock for earlier than necessary, too. I felt my days weren’t my own. Obligation engulfed me from every angle.
And then I got sick. Necessity is the mother of action, too. I turned off the alarm clock, stopped cleaning up after myself, ignored the chaos of my universe, and became still.
Last night I had a moment. I had turned off the TV early, thinking an early night necessary to make it through my day. Then it was dark. My whole place, just dark. And silent. I sat there in the blackness for a while, trying to remember the last time I felt something peaceful like that. It’s been a long time. A long, long time.
Some days a little time can feel like a lot of forever. That 10 minutes of utter silence helped me stumble upon a remembrance of another cliche. “Why do I keep hitting my head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.”
And that’s been my problem: I’ve been hitting so hard I’ve been forgetting to let up. I’ve always believed that illness was kind of life’s way of forcing us to take notice of something we’re neglecting — ourselves. Reminders are valuable. The trouble is, our memories are short.
I’m not quite sure what it is I’ve learned this week. It’s not entirely clear to me yet. But I feel as if something has changed. Some little bit of me has had an inkling of what it wants, needs, can do. I’m really not quite sure what, though. It’s strange to know I feel different, but I’m not sure how or why. I just do.
Next Friday, I turn 33. I have one week left to achieve a couple goals of mine. Then I can say I did everything I wanted to when I was 32. It might be the first time in years I’ve actually accomplished my primary goals… And I don’t mean professionally, working for the man, and shit like that. I mean things that are, deep down inside, important to who I am as a person. Things that ultimately will mean I believe in myself. Risk-type things.
And that’s a pretty good start.
Y’know, I know that my mother died at 57, and if anyone should feel like the clock is ticking, it’s probably me. But, the thing is, she might’ve died young, but she died on her terms, after finally starting to live her life her way. It wasn’t until she was 47 that her life really began. She got her realtor’s license, learned to sail, captained a yacht in the Mediterranean, climbed mountains in China, fell in love with an adventuring guy and had the love affair of her life, and really, really became the woman she always wanted to be.
I’m lucky that I learned young that life’s not over until you want it to be. You can always have new experiences, you can always become the person of your dreams. The clock’s only ticking ‘cos you’ve let it. Every now and then, you have to remind it who’s calling the shots. Prioritize. Get rid of the stupid obligations. Do what’s necessary. And always, always have time for you, because it’s in those precious moments that life really lives.
I may have to go to work today, but I suspect it’ll continue in this pleasant way. Today I feel like a contributor. A good morning to end a long week.

On Freedom and Fallacies

This is take two on this topic. I’m starting fresh a couple hours later, after a glass of wine and homemade chicken pot pie.
It’s the second take because this topic is really important to me and I don’t want to fuck it up.
Thank god I have quality guidance like that of Fame. Yes, you heard me, the ‘80s arts school drama. It’s on, and I’m chilling. Defragging my mind, as I like to say. Watching fluff is exactly the right fit, and has given me some interesting perspective as I crack this nut for a second time.
Funnily, a girl in this episode of Fame scoffs at the notion of writing her private thoughts and dreams in a diary at the teacher’s urging.
“If I wrote down my dreams,” she says, “I’d get arrested.”
Yeah. Huh. Ironic.
To that end, take note of the week that was in the world of the wide web. Proper fucked, indeed. It’s like a crash course in What Not to Do in the Intertubez.
A Montreal guy writes some shit in a forum then figures rifle + college = a good afternoon’s plan.
Like the motherfucking coward he was, he went out and tried to kill a bunch of people. Realizing he couldn’t even do a massacre right, he deprived us of the fun of letting cops kill him. The coward took his life. Fucking better off dead, anyhow.
But he wrote in forums.
We shoulda seen it coming.
A dickhead in Seattle decides he’s going to act like a fucking 13-year-old and reposts another city’s craigslist ad by some dirty-minded femme, and gets a couple hundred responses or something, then figgers he’s got rights to publish that private correspondence in an attempt to expose those apparent sickos to the world.
But they answered a public ad.
They shoulda seen it coming.
A young mother in Florida writes her secret other self dark thoughts on a public blog, and then her child goes mysteriously missing, improbably snatched from their window. Young mother kills herself 16 days into the toddler’s absence.
But she wrote dark shit on blogs, then her kid vanishes.
We shoulda seen it coming.
A video diarist on the world wide web is exposed as a professional actress working off a script. The show is produced, directed, and written, yet has duped the majority of its viewers, primarily through YouTube.com, into believing the so-called lonelygirl15 was a teenaged girl locked in her bedroom and homeschooled by orthodox religious parents. Doh.
She’s a fake.
“Like ohmigod. But she, like, really talked to us, man!”
You shoulda seen it coming.
It’s happening. It’s really fucking happening.
You know what I’m talking about.
For some godforsaken reason, it’s starting to occur to people that this, like, internet thing might just be a way of seeing what’s really going on in the noggins of little people everywhere.
And, um, uh-oh, but what’s going on in those little people’s noggins everywhere is something that’s not very pretty.
Some people, it would seem, are angry.
Some of them even feel disenfranchised. And, look. They’re acting on this shit.
Yeah, well. When the odds are stacked, you ought not be surprised at the outcome. Probability and logic being what they are and all, yes?
I’m part of the generation that got schooled in Orwell’s classic 1984. We were raised to believe that someday, one day, the government would hear every word we would utter, and freedom would be a thing of the past.
I’ll be honest, the Digital Age scares me.
The ease with which people can access information about me is frightening. It should frighten you, too. Unfortunately, the time is coming nigh where voices on the web are not just an anonymous blur with little impact on the real world. Now, we’re not so anonymous, and now this world is more real than it is virtual.
There’s coming a time where what you say here is going to come home to haunt you. This is the age of insinuation, and anything you say can be manipulated and used against you. Decide now if you plan to live in fear of that, or if you have the balls to play the game my way, and own your ability to say what you think and how you feel.
In forums such as this, someone such as me might decide to write a little bloggie in which the entire contents of our deepest darkest other selves are posted up on virtual walls for the world at large to indulge in.
In essence, it’s a voice. I have a voice, you have a voice, we all have voices.
It’s idyllic. A virtual Utopia in which we’re all given voices and identities, something that ironically clashes with our seemingly democratic lives – lives spent living in societies that claim to be governed by the people, of the people, for the people.
Only they’re not like any people I’ve ever known.
And I don’t feel like I belong.
And I’m tired of feeling this small because I’m just an ordinary gal.
I thought I’d take my voice and use it. I’m not alone. You’re doing it too. And him, and her, and hey.
We all took our existences online, where we thought we’d have the right to say what we think whenever the fuck it pops into mind.
Unfortunately, when such vocal freedom is enjoyed by a world at large, some of those voices will be beyond dissent. They will be voices of rage and fury and vengeance. Or maybe they’ll be coolly quiet.
And that’s a risk we take by allowing open dialogue.
Every now and then, though, those voices will be warning signals. Intervention might occur, and it might segue to prevention.
Just because assholes and the disenfranchised like these can use the web to serve their fucted means doesn’t necessitate that the rest of us should have to watch our words.
Sadly, the voice of reason doesn’t seem to resonate these days. I fear that the talking heads of today might soon decide that there is such thing as too much free speech and they will indeed succeed in legislating the internet.
In which case now might be the time to, like the good hunter Elmer Fudd suggests, be vewwy, vewwy qwiet.
Only we’re not hunting rabbits.

When Will It Change?

I work a couple blocks away from one of the nastiest parts of my beloved city, Vancouver, Canada. It’s like a whole other world when you stumble into the Downtown East Side, just two blocks east of my office, a place that held, in the early ’90s, the highest urban rate of AIDS and HIV infection on the globe.
People like me who’ve lived in this city our whole lives know more about the disenfranchised in that area, and I have my own speculations on how it’s gotten so out of hand, but I’ve never looked into it all that much.
Suffice to say that at that two-block point east of here, it’s like an invisible wall has gone up. People sleep on streets, heroin is shot in alleys, fights break out over drugs, and everything’s out of control.
This area houses most of the prostitution and all of the meth and heroin junkies in the city. The mentally ill who are deinstitutionalized run rampant in this hood, and I’m faced daily with heartbreak and hopelessness when I see how much work is left to be done to help all these impoverished, seemingly forgotten members of our city.
We’re beginning to get a reputation internationally for what’s largely gone unchecked in this city, and that saddens me, considering all else this city has to offer — the natural beauty, the unforgettable cuisine, the multicultural population, the sports, and more. What the world doesn’t see and doesn’t seem to understand is how stacked against success the odds really are in dealing with this travesty.
This city is a magnet for the nation’s homeless — even for America’s homeless. They all want to be here because the climate is so tolerable year-round and because the cops tend to empathize rather than penalize these impoverished people. After all, if you’re homeless, where would you rather be in the winter, the snows of Toronto and Montreal, where it can go far below freezing every winter, or in the temperate climes of Vancouver?
Add to that the fact that so many drugs land here in Vancouver, where an average of 150 million massive cargo freights pass through annually, where we barely have the staff to search them, and where drug laws are so much more relaxed than in America, and you have a ticking time bomb that no easy solutions will patch.
The world’s about to hear more regarding this harrowing part of Vancouver, though, with the release of a controversial new “fictional” horror film by Australian filmmakers that focuses on one of the most legendary bastards ever to live in this province. Robert “Willie” Pickton is facing trial for the brutal murders of 26 Vancouver-area prostitutes, but is suspected of killing more than 125 of these women over the course of 20 years. A pig farmer by trade, Pickton covered his ass well by having his pigs devour the corpses of these women. As a result, little DNA evidence was recovered by what was the largest criminal investigation in Canadian history.
I’m saddened by the news that the families of these missing and dead women will have to endure a film that will probably sensationalize these brutal murders. And while I’m further saddened by the continuing downward spiral of this incredible city’s reputation, perhaps international attention will finally convince both the British Columbian and Canadian governments that this absolutely is NOT a problem that can be solved by Vancouver’s government alone. Our cops are stretched as thin as cellophane and there’s no money to be had.
In less than four years, the world will be on our doorsteps when the 2010 Olympics unveil. And what will have happened to the disenfranchised and forgotten by then? God only knows, but many, including myself, suspect they’ll be shifted out of the downtown core, pushed off to the side just to become some other neighbourhood’s problem. Out of sight, out of mind, and, possibly, out of hope.

Where are the manners?

Every now and then an email comes in that’s the exact right email for what’s going on in my life. That happened Friday. I’d had an incident earlier in the day that had me seething with rage, and his email hit right home. So, first, the email, then I’ll tell you what happened, and then you’ll get my two cents. Sounds like a plan, no?

I was wondering if there was a certain age where teenagers or adults realise that manners are important and can learn to appreciate them? Because I’ve been trying my whole life (I’m still a teenager, but still) to be a gentleman (opening doors for others, asking if the elderly need help, speaking politely, etc.) and to be helpful as much as possible, but it seems that it is not appreciated at all. So far throughout a few years of high school, I’ve tried to help others boost their marks with assistance on their homework, but they can’t seem to understand that others have morals and won’t cheat for them. (again, turning into a rant i suppose..)
I guess I’m really just sending this email to ask another’s opinion about manners and whether or not it is truly appreciated in today’s society. I’ve asked a few teenage girl friends and they say that it is good to have manners and it’s something important they look for, yet I see them going out with lowlife guys who are despicable and need to learn manners. Is this just a teenage thing to do that you overcome later on and realise it’s importance and learn to be grateful for it? Or is it completely dependant on the people’s standards they’ve set.

Now, what happened to me the other day was when I was riding over to my brother’s place. He and I live in absolute opposite ends of the city — he in the most northeastern section, I in the most northwestern section. I work smack dab in the middle, downtown, and between there and my brother’s is 30-square blocks of what’s essentially some of the poorest and most underprivileged in Canada. If you know where to avoid, you can go without ever seeing any of these people.
I don’t try to avoid it, I just go through. I always see really tragic things when I do and it keeps me appreciating the little I have. This time, though, I was stopped at a light and this old guy, about 70, was in a wheelchair, completely unable to use his hands, and could only pull himself forward using the toes on his right foot. He was literally moving about 2 feet a minute. Naturally, the light turned red with him in the middle of the street, and I got a solid green light to go. Meanwhile, he’s stopped, looks like he’s about to cry from exhaustion, just can’t go any further, and all these fucking people are walking past, ignoring him.
I was in a RAGE. I pulled my scooter over, got off, cursed, “You people ought to fucking help! Where the hell are manners gone?” Then I leaned over to the man and said, “May I push you across the street, sir?” And he went soft with relief. He just sighed, “Please?”
I had a bit of an argument with a couple punks on the corner after that, who seemed to think I was flaming them, and yeah, you know, I was. Just fucking standing there, doing nothing.
When I got over to my brother’s place, I saw my nephew standing there, and I sat him down. I said, “If you ever see a little old lady or a little old man who can’t get across the street or they’re taking too long, you HELP them. You hear me?”
I made sure he knew the distinction between “stranger danger” and helping a senior citizen who really does need the help. After all, that’s how I was taught.
In MY world, I was raised to help people. I was raised to give a hand and do the right thing. I was taught to say please and thank you, and I was told to hold doors open for others.
And I KNOW life moves fast, and I KNOW people are more rushed than they used to be. You know what? I don’t give a fuck. *I* find the time to still be polite. I find the time to thank people and make pleasant small talk. Why the hell don’t they?
So, kid, I say keep going. The thing about being a polite person and not behaving politely just because you’re not getting it in return is that you start to get bitter about it. It changes you. Cynicism finds you and apathy makes a home in you. Stay true to the person you are. Help others, be polite. You’ll one day be surrounded by a better class of people, by people who appreciate that in who you are. It will be a deciding factor on the kinds of engagements you’re invited to and the kinds of experiences you have. You’re still a kid, you’re in high school, and you’re stuck in a social world you have little say in. In a few years, that all changes.
I know I will not date a man who has no manners. I will watch how he behaves and treats others, and I’ll note whether he expresses gratitude for the little things I say and do for him, and if I don’t like what I see, I will walk.
Life’s too short to be with people who just don’t understand basic human decency. I figure that eliminates about 60% of the world from eligibility for my bed, but whatever. I’m fine with having high standards. Are you?