You know, I don’t usually repost that forwarded spam email that your family and all those people who think they’re such witty judges of humour send to you. Why? Because they usually suck.

But when you take into consideration that my 71-year-old aunt sent me this and I yam who I yam and all, and then this one’s pretty darned cute. So, humour me and read it anyways.

***

This is the fairy tale that should have been read to us when we were little:

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle.

The frog hopped into the princess’ lap and said: ” Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me.

One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so.

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sautéed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself: I don’t fuckin think so.

I’ve decided it’s that time again, time to post a reasonably articulate ad on Craigslist seeking some reasonably articulate man. So, yesterday I posted one. 16 hours pass and not a single response, despite my publishing it. Went back to check, and lookie! No ad!

So it seems even the ever-popular Craigslist fucks up sometimes. I’ve deleted it and will have to repost tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s one of the many keepers found there this morning:

The headline: Need a Slut, 22
Hey im a 22 year old guy. I enjoy getting drunk and having fun.
If you want to get drunk with me and maybe give me some ass let me know

Ooh. Sexy.

I just started the new Harry Potter about 100 minutes ago. I’m 134 pages in and the second act has just started with a bang.

It is safe to say I will be buried in my book for the remainder of my Saturday. I took my nephew and brother to the midnight release party with some 4,000 or so Pottermaniacs at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens last night. It was nice to mark the beginning of the end with a ceremony of likeminded freaks.

The kid and kin only took their leave shortly afore 1 this afternoon, so I’m a little late delving into the deeds of Potter and his “lot”. I’m on it like Oprah on a ham, though.

In 1998 I was a bookseller who read an advance reader’s copy of the little book called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone about two weeks before the book arrived to our shelves. Without being able to explain it, I fell in love with the little wizard boy. I was sad that it’d be a half decade before my nephew would appreciate the story, as I knew we’d enjoy living the adventures of the boy wizard, and I tried to convince my friends it was a book they’d all be smitten with. To no avail, of course.

Finally, after two more books were released, I’d convinced all my friends that my taste, as always, was superb. Even my nephew required convincing, though. At 10 years old, just over a year ago, he dismissed the books by saying the movies had to be better. I used the “but there’s more in the books” argument, which didn’t hold water.

As stubborn as I am, though, I didn’t relent. I sat by the obnoxious kid’s side and read the first Potter book aloud to him while he played World of Warcraft on the computer. I am, I assure you, a highly dramatic reader when it comes to just such a book.

A couple hours later and I hit page 110, and as the pages and moments passed, I noticed the game volume had gradually been lowered and lowered until it was turned completely off. His gameplaying slowed to a crawl, with “pause” repeatedly being put into use. It seems I had finally convinced him that the books could hold their own. He was rapt.

Three weeks later, a message on my answering machine. “Wow, auntie. Book four is so cool! I’m going to finish it tomorrow! When can I borrow book five?”

My nephew, faced with rain and a dreary night after a long day, tried to beg off the book release party last night at about 8:30. “We can get it tomorrow,” he said.

I argued the only argument I really believe applied — that Harry Potter hype, while apparently over some seemingly insignificant little wizard boy in a cutesy make-belief world existing within our own, wasn’t just about that. He, or rather the franchise, is something that, for this short month filled with a movie release and now the last book — the single most anticipated novel of all time — inexplicably bonds a majority of people together. For once in a very long while, a good many of us have this in common. It’s a moment of commonality, community, and shared excitement in a world that is becoming increasingly less communal, thanks to the invention of personal stereos, cellphones, laptops, and millions of other gadgets that are designed to distract us from ourselves and ultimately from communing with others. With the arrival of things like Facebook we have the illusion of being connected to others, but therein lies the illusion. We’re still seated on our ownsome in front of a screen.

But, today, a good many of us are one thing — Potter fans. Readers hoping for the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

It’s too bad it’s the end of an era. It was great while it lasted. And, ironically, we all finally enjoy the Potter series finale’s phenomena all on our ownsome. Funny how it all works.

It’s 3:00. I can justify a glass of wine in my bath with my book!

I want to write right now. I want to, but I can’t. I have to shower and depart with a friend.

But I’m throwing down a mental note, a public one, with a query to involve you and tease myself so as to induce the mood to complete this tangent at a later time, like perhaps this evening.

I’m experiencing a flurry of competitive thoughts right now, all on the loves lost and the madcap emotions that go with. I’m comparing and contrasting reality to fiction, and wondering if it’s just me or if love really is this much more complicated than the storybooks seem to portray it to be.

I’ve never had a lot of lovers. It’s not my style. I’m too intense for that. I fall easily and I fall hard, and getting hurt isn’t exactly something I’m wild about. When I let my guard down, I tend to lower it in a hurry. Sometimes it’s the wrong choice and sometimes it’s the right one. I guess this is true for us all.

But it seems to me that my stories have always been so dramatic. When things have gone south in relationships there’s always been some weird and almost-fictitious oddball twist that has served as a catalyst. It’s baffling at times just how much my past has read like a book…

…or is it me who’s so well read and projecting my epicly bent mentalities on my realities? Who fucking knows. There are days I lament being the person I am, ‘cos everything in my life is so much bigger than I’d have expected it to be, and the ripples left by all those causalities seem more like waves.

Yes, I’m watching my romantic epics on DVD again. Sigh. It’s troubling to watch some grand romantic epic and be able to sit back and relate to that loss and the grief of failed love of that magnitude. And it’s too early to pour wine, so I thought I’d say hi.

As I said, however, my time is demanded elsewhere, so girl’s gotta jet. Shower, then jet. Happy Sunday, my good people.

Tell me, though. Does your love life feel like it’s got a cinematic bent to it? Do you ever wonder how it is that a little old you could have a relationship that seems so big? Naturally, from the outsider’s point of view, it’s just another fling, but… to you, it’s the story of a lifetime, right? Share with us.

There are hot days when the city’s awash in humidity and moods flare as hot as the temperatures. Then there are hot days when there’s a salty ocean breeze wafting through, just enough to take the edge off the day, and silence seems to resonate as the world yields to the lazy comforts that makes things like lemonade into one of the revered blessings of just such a day.

This is the latter kind of day.

Last night might’ve been an unbearably hot night had it not been for the soft cool breeze that cut through the humidity of the earlier day.

As those who’ve read me for a while know, I confessed to my bad-ass depression that felled me last year and I chronicled it for some time. I have always done battle with depression over the years. It’s just part of who I am. I’m too hip to the world and too constant a thinker to be able to just blissly glide through life. I let things mean more than I should, plague me more than they ought to. I’ve always been that way. The trouble is, being that way has also yielded to me some incredible life experiences. By allowing yourself to believe that every day can be significant you can bring an importance to experiences that you might otherwise have failed to realize the import of.

I’d like to believe that happiness is this easily attainable thing, but the truth of the matter is, making everything look as easy as happiness does happens to take a whole lot of work, and some of us can spend a lifetime figuring out how it all plays together. I don’t think I’m that kind of person, but every now and then I feel like I’ll never figure it out.

I’m just now coming out the other side of an incredibly stressful, demanding couple of months of work. I know I’ve handled it well and it has not soured my taste for my job in the least, but I know I’m feeling like I’ve got some battle scars.

It’s only recently, too, that money has come together for me. I’m suddenly out of the woods and able to do a little better than just getting by. The reason why I bring this up is, because money was tight, I began rationing my anti-depressants. I took less than I should have, and I took it less frequently. My medical plan kicked in June 1st, and I had simply fallen out of the habit of taking the pills.

Next thing you know, I lost my ability to cope with stress as well as I’d like. It got to me and shook up my equilibrium. I’m terrible about taking pills on a regular basis, and I’d been in an awesome habit of taking them nightly when I started fucking with my routine.

The long and the short of it is, I’m only now starting to feel an edge start to dissipate. I’m really amazed at how quickly it turned the tables on me. I’d already decided some three months or so ago that I think I would like to continue the prescription past the one-year regimen the doctor had in mind. Why? Because I didn’t have to struggle with that side of me that always put a damper on things. It is a mild prescription and I’ve had no side effects from it, otherwise I might be thinking twice about the regimen’s end date.

It’s a strange thing, the human psyche. It’s hard to know how its comes upon its weaknesses and flaws, and in what ways we can overcome each, but it’s brilliant.

So I’m just realizing in the last couple of days that my inconsistency and avoidance with these meds is probably largely why I felt so overwhelmed by work. I am a highly capable girl in all areas of life, work included. Being overwhelmed isn’t something that should befell me.

I had a frank chat with my boss and told her that I felt I’d performed a little beneath my abilities during The End of It All, just due to anxiety, et al, and explained that I hadn’t been taking my pills regularly.

“Well, of course that’ll affect you!” she exclaimed. “If you’re on heart pills and you don’t take them, your risk of heart attack elevates. If you are on the birth control pill and you don’t take it, you get pregnant. Same deal!”

Strangely, this all sprang to mind as a result of watching Forrest Gump. I was thinking how it was odd that even such a self-admitted unsmart man like Gump could fall victim to matters of the heart.

I guess intellect has nothing to do with hurt. It’s hard to write about depression when I know I’m such a smart and capable person. I despise admitting I’ve been weak and that sadness and stress can pull my life apart six ways to Sunday. It’s frustrating as hell to know a little pink pill runs in to rescue my mental welfare and emotional stability. After all, I’m a Darwinist.

But people need to talk about this shit more, so here you go. My record goes into the mix. Done my part.

We’re hatching a theory. GayBoy and I, a theory. Wait’ll you hear this.

Now, if you’ve been doing your homework and checking in regularly, you know that I’ve written of late about my new neighbours. I’ve seen them in various states of undress, in all their glorious full frontalness (albeit briefly), as well as even fucking and giving each other head. Yes, they’re gay. Probably somewhere around 20, maybe as late as 25 years old.

So, GayBoy, as soon as he arrives yesterday, beelines to the large sliding glass door that leads to my patio and the yields a direct view of their apartment, about 100 feet across the alley and one floor down. The view’s good, but not that good. It’s too distant to make out the faces very well, and it’s hard to get the lighting right with the angles, et al.

One of the guys was seated at the computer in the living room, reclining, naked. The other was wandering around with ridiculously low-slung jeans and his washboard abs. (It occurs to me that this must sound too good to be true, but I shit you not.)

It’s weird, because they keep the windows open all the time and they’re always having sex or just hanging around nekkid, usually at least one is on the computer, often naked. I haven’t been home much, and when I have, my place has been a shithole and I’ve been keeping my blinds drawn so I haven’t been watching the Guy Cam much of late. But now I’m curious because of what GayBoy suggested yesterday…

“Maybe they’re webcamming. Maybe they’re doing porn on the net.”

Me, I just had ’em chalked up as exhibitionists. You know, kids in their early 20s rebelling against the anti-gay society by fucking like fiends with the blinds wide open. Rebels with a cause, you know? But that’s the romantic in me.

GayBoy, however, is a business-oriented cynic with a penchant for the opportunistic, so it’s natural the webcamming pornmaster roomie scenario would conjure in his dirty little mind.

It’s all so new and strange, this open-living style of life… a couple kids proud of who they are and no shame. It’s very, very sexy and cool. It’s refreshing in this protectionist society we live in, where everyone’s getting freaked out about getting Googled and there’s so much more consequence attached to our every little move… it’s refreshing to see people living out loud without apologies. It’s a little brazen and weird, and if I had kids, I’d be pissed. But I don’t have kids. So this is good.

What do you think? Are they webcam pornmasters? Are they just defiant young men? Are they digusting bastards who should respect others’ rights to an open view? Where does personal right get trumped by the collective right? What else do you wanna comment on?

By the way, happy belated Canada Day, Canada.

More than half of all people polled now believe that being gay is NOT a choice. Biological? Really?! Wow! Look, ma — you gave me the gay gene!

All kidding aside, it’s about goddamned time the tide changed and people began realizing that “gay” isn’t something you line up before God, thinking, “Wow, gee, I’d love to have a penchant for musicals, enjoy taking it from behind, and look FABULOUS in the colours pink and chartreuse! Gimme that gay gene, Godguy!”

One out of three suicidal kids tries to off themselves ‘cos they have fears of being gay. As much as it might seem like a ticket to cool when shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy sets the style standard (arguably) or when it seems like all the cool kids have diddled someone of their same sex as a party favour at a kegger, being gay’s still not exactly the easiest thing to be in most parts of North America, let alone beyond our continent’s doors.

But, hey, let’s turn that frown upside down, boys and girls! After all, back when I was a wee lass in the ’70s, only about 10% of the population thought gays were born that way. Since then, people who’ve been able to clue in have been growing by more than 10% per decade. They’ve grabbed a brain when it comes to the fact that being gay’s not really a choice– I mean, not like chosing to stay in with a movie and a vibrator on a slow weekend night, all right?

Yer either born into the Streisand appreciation club or you’re not. Just ‘cos you fucked someone you could’ve shared a locker room with in school doesn’t mean you’re gay. Slutty, curious, open to adventure, maybe. Not necessarily gay.

While we’re talking all things gay, I noticed that there’s a group on Facebook getting popular in my circles — “Against Gay Marriage? Then Don’t Get One and Shut the Fuck Up!” or something — the other day. The title made me grin, but in reality, it’s just not that simple.

Those arguing against gay marriage the loudest are those shouting the “sanctity of marriage!” mantra. Some of the hipsters want to solve the problem by saying we’ll give ’em marriage, but we’ll call it “civil unions”. Every time I hear that, I see the impassioned angst expressed by my dear friend GayBoy in his arguments against this Band-aid fix’er of calling it a “civil union”.

“If you call it something else, then it’s not marriage, is it?” GayBoy would comment. No. Then it’s some piddly little fucking crumb you’re throwing the freaks outside in order to placate them. Marriage, however, will still be the secret-secret thingie-thing held sacred by breeders and straight people everywhere, held tauntingly just outside the grasp of gays.

I’m for gay marriage. I’m also for realizing that the sanctity of marriage went up in smoke centuries ago. I’m for acknowledging that love and decency and sacrifice and death-till-we-part are not trademarked by straight breeders. Passion knows no chromosome. Love knows no genetic markers. Faith and optimism aren’t wholly owned by religious types.

I’m for living in a world where we all have the chance to be what we want, love who we love, and dream the same dreams, no matter who we are inside.

Clearly my glasses are thick and rose-coloured, but I insist on trying to hold on to this worldview. I mean, what, we’re only four decades away from acceptance at this point, and that’s something. Isn’t it?

(Facts? Who needs facts? But if you wanna read where I read the original story that prompted my pugnacious little posting, here it is.)

I’m going to Buddhist hell. That or I’m coming back as a bug.

I killed a moth tonight. Not just any moth. One of those ones that you hear when it flaps its wings. And it flaps, not flutters. Not only that, they can’t fly straight. They keep bumping into the fucking ceiling.

“Yeah, dude, if you hit the ceiling at that altitude THERE, chances are yer gonna fuckin’ do it nine inches to the RIGHT, too.”

Fucking stupid bugs!

This moth, I shit you not, was ginormous. 2.5″ wingspan. I kept trying to guide it out the fucking FIVE FOOT WIDE OPEN SLIDING GLASS DOOR THINGIE, but is it intelligent enough to know that cool breeze was indicative of outdoors, ergo freedom?

Fuck no!

So, there I am, in all my brilliant Steffness, trying to talk the moth out of the place. Hell, it works for bees, for some strange reason (well, they’re colonizers. Smarties, really, them bees.) but clearly moths are not of the therapy-liking varieties of insects.

“Okay, now, six inches below you — no, dude, come on! Fly down. There, there you go. Six more inches. FUCKING MOTH. Why are you– FucketyFUCKfuck.”

Finally I thought I’d trying mindfucking it out of the apartment. The plan? Near-miss swatting with a rolled newspaper. What’s it do? Start batting itself against the ceiling, then ramming into walls before sitting down again.

All the while, I’m still doing the talk-it-out-the-door thing. “I honestly don’t want to kill you. But I will.”

Finally, after jumping onto my fourth piece of furniture, I swatted the moth against the wall–

Keep in mind I spent the previous five hours babysitting THIRTY-FIVE pre-teen and teen hip hop dancers backstage at the year-end show. I was MAJOR fucking stressed and tired upon arriving home. Then this MOTH shit happens? GAH.

–and it was a slimer! IT SLID EIGHT INCHES DOWN MY WALL AND LEFT A TRAIL.

I was fucking horrified! I did the icky-icky-pee-pee dance and squirmed my way around my apartment, feeling all dirty and never-gonna-be-Buddhist-now inside.

But I will further justify my exceedingly cruel ending of that moth’s life by saying this: It was that kind of big ugly fucking moth that leaves that dirty splat stain every where it hits on the wall. I have mottled walls now. It’s not a look I think I’ll keep. And so then the moth deserves to die for adding more labour to a 70-hour work week for me.

Yeah. I’m full of shit. But my apartment has no moths. And I’m about to drink wine and watch Letterman.

Turns out my new neighbours are two gay males. These are the ones I caught the rather blessedly nice full-frontal nude vistas of last week.

There’s something to be said for people hanging out naked in their living rooms with the blinds wide open.

But then the dilemma arises — is it permissable for me to sit around like the gawky whore I feel like being, or is that gauche?

Well, it’s definitely the latter, but I’m going to give it a go anyhow.

Especially since one’s on the knees giving the other head in the middle of the living room on a sunny Thursday evening.

It’s about time I start getting a little extra thrown in with my rent, even if it is gay porn happening just 80 feet away. They’re hot 20-somethings, too, so fuck it.

My evening’s looking up. Time to retire to my patio with a glass of wine, perhaps.

Oh, and so my week? I’m about 37 hours into my work week and have about another 25 to go before I’m done. One more office day (a 14-hr day — six hours spent working backstage in a theatre) and two full days in the theatre. Don’t expect to see a lot out of me this weekend, but I might surprise us all. Could be a fabulous rant ahead, knowing some parents. Who knows. Stay tuned, just keep your expectations low. Love ya.

I had that epiphany yesterday that the end of my insanity is around the corner. Two weeks from now I will have passed the hardest, biggest test my job has to offer in its academic year. And then I will feel like a god. Until then, I’m hanging on, keeping to myself, and fighting the good fight.

Yesterday I finally took my bike to work. I threw it on the bus and only cycled a couple klicks in the morning, but did the whole ordeal on the way home. The sky was heavy with clouds and that five-minutes-from-raining scent lingered on the air. Just as I was getting to the dykes, I thought about the fact that I had my camera and wasn’t taking many pictures in the last two weeks. I stopped, pulled it out, and set a challenge to take 20 pictures in the next 20 minutes.

That’s when I noticed this wharf that had previously been obscured by big low-lying trees along the river’s bank. Just as I stepped foot on the planks, juicy raindrops began splattering the boardwalk before me.

My iPOD hit upon a fresh song, the Detroit Cobras’ “You Don’t Knock”* and found myself doing a little twist as I walked down the wharf, completely alone out there. And then I remembered a quote I found recently at work:

And the rain was falling, so I began to sing and dance out there at the end of the wharf, overlooking the river, the airport, and all the planes coming and going. It might have only been a 2.5 minute song, but I shit you not… it did more for me than any swath of personal time I’ve had in the last few weeks.

It’s hard sometimes getting past the “I’ll look stupid” paranoia that finds us all, but in the end, I’m the one with the shit-eating grin. And that reminds me of a quote on my refrigerator: “I find that smiling keeps people guessing what I’m up to.”

Anyhow, it’s back to the grind. I just wanted to share. Personally, that was the thing I loved about myself between 18 – 22… I used to do things like that for the hell of saying I’d done them. And I loved it. Somewhere along the line, I stopped that voyeuristic, indulgent approach to life, and in that I lost my ability to feel truly individual. In the last year, I’ve begun remembering how much one has to live out loud to live at all. Can’t just think about the things you wish you do, but you gotta actually do them.

Sounds so stupidly simple that only a human could possibly fuck it up, eh? Thinking: The human’s curse. Doing: Not just for Nike anymore.

*The Cobras are a post-punk low-fi pop band with a great mix of ’50s and garage sounds. Infectious, great groove. The lead singer was a butcher turned exotic dancer, with killer pipes. Been around for years and never went far, but I’ll stand by the recommendation. An old coworker got me hooked.