Thursday, December 2, 2010

If Everything Goes Wrong, If It's One More Endless Night,You Know There's Always Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow....

Some nights when I crawl in to my comfy cozy bed I find that I fall asleep without any complications. Some nights I fall asleep in the mid-Buffy or Angel episode (my recent bedtime viewing of choice) without even realizing it until the credits roll & the theme song starts playing (because it is always infinitely louder than the tv show itself....wtf is that all about?? But I digress...)

Other nights? Not so much. Some nights I will crawl in my comfy cozy bed with every intention of falling asleep but often my mind has other plans. It always starts innocently enough. Musing random occurrences and exchanges that happened throughout the day. Thoughts of projects I am tackling at work, and what I would like to accomplish the next day. Things I would like to do in the future and what I can do now to help make these ideas a reality. Before I know it my mind is going a million miles an hour, I am up waaaay past my bedtime (oh my god I have to be up in 3 hours for work!), and for the life of me I . JUST . CAN'T . SLEEP. I start to panic. My heart races. I have anxiety about not being asleep, and in reality this makes sleep far more difficult to acheive.

The strangest part about these nights is that this wide-eyed frantic, anxious, sleep-deprived state seems to be my muse. It is when I am in this state that things suddenly become clear and I am compelled to write down whatever epiphany presents itself. The urge is so overwhelming that I cannot fight it. It becomes evident that if I do not write it down I will never sleep, or worse, I will forget what was so incredibly important in that moment.

Last night was one of those nights. This is what I wrote:




December 2nd 2010, 12:50am.

No.Body


Nobody has the ability to make you feel unworthy.
You alone have the ability to assert your own worth.

Nobody has the ability to make you feel inferior.
You alone have the ability to determine the standards you will live by.

I am passionate.
I am strong.
I am open.
I am honest.
I am worthy.
I am capable.

I deserve to love, and to be loved in turn.
I deserve to be held, as well as someone to hold.
I deserve to let myself feel these things.
I deserve to let myself have these things.

I deserve better than this.




Sunday, May 16, 2010

Open Love Letters To Imaginary & Not-So-Imaginary People

I'm not usually a fan girl.

OK, so maybe that's a lie.

I'm usually not the type of fan girl who publicly proclaims her love for the object of her fanaticism. This post is an exception. This post will be comprised of a series of open love letters to people & characters I currently adore.



Dear Dr. Spencer Reid,

I realize that you are a character and not a real person, but I still can't stop myself from thinking you could be my ideal man. I have a weakness for tall, lanky, socially awkward men and you definitely fit the bill. Your intelligence is staggering, and yet you still have difficulty with interpersonal relationships. I think that I could help you with that. By chance, when you aren't chasing serial killers do you find time to enjoy cartoons, art or independent music? If so, I really think it would be in your best interests to respond, so that we can begin the rest of our lives together as soon as possible.

Much Love, Me.




Dear Penelope Garcia,

Although I do realize that you are a fictional character, I would like it very much if you adopted me as your little sister. I love your funky sense of style, and since I am a bigger girl myself I think that we could have some fun raiding each other's closets. You could teach me how to cultivate a self confidence similar to yours, and how to sweet-talk a man regardless of how incredibly sexy he might be. You are absolutely adorable, and yet sultry at the same time. Please, teach me your ways!

Also, if you could find the time to help me develop an in-depth understanding of my PC it would be much appreciated. Please consider my proposition and reply as soon as you have a chance.

Much Love, Me.








Dear Scott Weiland,

I have been contemplating this for a while, and have come to the conclusion that you are by far, my favourite junkie. I admire a man who is persistent, and I can't think of anyone who has skirted the law or attended rehab as many times as you have during your life as a celebrity. Plus, your music is wicked and you look really sexy in low-rise leather pants of many assorted colours (i.e. the music video for Big Bang Baby, or Slither). Despite my admiration, I must insist that you do not reply to this letter. I fear that you would be far too much for me to handle in real life, so instead I hope that you keep doing what you're doing. Remember, rehab is for quitters...and it takes a special talent to make a mugshot look sexy.

Much Love, Me.





Dear 30 Seconds to Mars,

I must admit that despite thoroughly enjoying you music, there was still a part of me that wondered if you were no more than prog-rock ego masturbation for your frontman, Jared Leto (*swoon*). Enter: This Is War. I haven't yet had the chance to listen to the album in it's entirety, but what I've heard so far has been fantastic. I have so much respect for your creativity and your risk-taking.
First of all, to have not one or two album covers....but two thousand covers featuring images of your fans' faces? Who does that? 30:TM does. Secondly, to have jam sessions with your fans around the world, call them Summits & then use the recordings in your release? Who does that? 30:TM does. It is so refreshing to include your fanbase in your creative process. It makes music feel like it belongs to the people again, instead of being thrown down from some ivory tower. My personal fave so far? Night of the Hunter.
Way to go boys. Eff the nay-sayers.

Much Love, Me.





And last, but by no means least....


Dear Nintendo Game Developers,

I cannot thank you enough for Legend of Zelda:Twilight Princess for Wii. I thought that video games would never get any better for me than The Ocarina of Time for N64. Majora's Mask was SUCH a disappointment that I thought I would never save Hyrule again...but here we are, years later, and my love for Zelda is back and stronger than ever. This game is taking over my life. In the week & a half that I have had it, I have already spent over 24hrs in Hyrule. And seriously, Link turns into a wolf?! Brilliant. I have a new favourite video game of all time...and I never thought it would happen. Well done. Do not bother replying, because I will be stuck somwhere in Hyrule....unless of course you send it via the mailman there who calls me Mister Leah. You should also probably tell him I'm a girl.

Much Love, Me.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Smarter Than The Average Bear

This week I ate the biggest bear in Ontario history.


.... ok, well maybe not all of it. But still pretty impressive, no?

I suppose I should explain. First of all, I know that some of my veggie friends may be offended or off put by the content of this post. If you know me personally you know that I am omnivorous, but also be aware that this post will reference hunting as well as meat consumption. Consider this my disclaimer...

I have a wonderful friend from work named Erica. She is definitely an unique individual, which is probably the reason why I love her to death. That, and because she fed me bear.

Yup, real honest to goodness bear.

Erica is from Northern Ontario. Like many Northern Ontarians, her family enjoys hunting. Unlike other hunters, Erica's family has a web-based television show about it: "Just Us Hunting". Recently, Erica's mother bagged a 700 pound bear, the biggest bear caught in Ontario history. Did I mention that she did not use a gun, but instead used a bow-and-freaking-arrow?!?! (For footage, check out the episode entitled "Louise's 700lb Bear of a Lifetime".)

One day at work Erica mentions that she has massive amounts of said bear meat, and has been attempting to consume it for quite some time now. Being the caring friend I am, I offered my services & suggested that I relieve her from the burden of having to consume all of that meat by herself.

In my lifetime I have eaten game meat before, but my experiences have been somewhat limited to moose & deer meat. Being of the mindset that I will "try anything once", I found the idea of bear meat rather intriguing.

After weeks of cancelled "Bear Meat Night" plans, Erica showed up at work this week with a special lunch for me: Bear Meat Stir-fry, made with Trapper's Rice...a family specialty. I took the delicious-looking care package to the lunch room & opened the tupperware container....the meat resembled steak (of which I am a fan) so I began to get excited as I warmed it in the microwave.

I headed back to where Erica was patiently waiting, considering that it was only fair for her to watch my reaction since she took the trouble to prepare it for me. I stabbed a piece of meat with my fork, took a deep breath, and put it in my mouth.

It was deeeelicious!

Bear meat is in fact a great deal like steak...except it is a bit tougher, and tastes almost sweet. If ever given the chance I urge you to try it....although, chances are that yours will not be such a famous, or large specimen!

Thanks for lunch Erica, and for the chance to try something new!

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Good Morning Heartache, You're Like An Old Friend...

(*Note: I had almost finished this post & stupidly navigated away from the page, thereby losing it all. Crap. Please take this into account...this post actually took twice the effort of a normal post.*)

Lately I have found my mind wandering back to the same thoughts over & over again...

How many times can a heart be broken before it is no longer able to repair itself? How long can you be heartbroken over a person before you are just heartbroken, in general?

For the record I would like to state that I hate these types of posts. I hate writing them. I hate reading them afterwards thinking to myself "Man, I sound like such a whiner". I try to project a strong and unshakable exterior because I associate emotion with weakness. Truthfully, I am a very emotional person, but it's unlikely that you will ever see that. I pride myself on my strength. If you hurt me I will scream rather than cry. Crying is weak. Anger is strong. Most of the time I can't even be bothered with anger....I mask most of my feelings with witty sarcasm and humour so that it is at least entertaining to the masses. I'd much rather be perceived as callous than weak.

I am taking a class about Adapting Canadian Literature to Film. Currently we are studying Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" (Fantastic novel, I strongly recommend it) and I came across a passage that really spoke to me and I would like to share that with you now:


"Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time..."

"...With that man you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for the man. If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawl, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.

If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves."


Any thoughts?

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Not another apologetic post from an absentee blogger

I'm a flake.
You should be used to it.
I'm over it.

On to bigger & better things...which today consists of movies that scarred me as a child.

In my youth my parents closely monitored everything I consumed....food, tv shows, music & movies. Due to this, I find now that I am the one monitoring what I consume I tend to indulge in everything that my parents told me not to. I'm a badass like that.

As an adult I have developed an appreciation of horror movies...especially the really terrible ones (see: Zombie Strippers, Teeth). Despite the best attempts of my parental units, there were a couple of movies that I somehow managed to slip past their watchful eyes. I have re-watched these movies as a grown-up (I use that term loosely) and have come to realize that they are really & truly, quite terrible....but as a child they scared the pants off me. So badly in fact, that I believe they have left me scarred for life.

And now for your reading pleasure I give you exhibit A: Tremors

What the shit was this movie about....seriously? Giant worm things that lived underground & could pop out anywhere and gobble you up. For a little girl who spent a majority of her time with her feet on the ground, this was terrifying. And I didn't even have Kevin Bacon to save me. I mean, look at these things:


Not pretty.

And even though I was never a small child, I am quite certain that a "graboid" could swallow me whole. Shit, they probably still could. And because of this I am fairly certain I will never visit the desert. It may also explain my love of swingsets & climbing things.


Now on to Exhibit B: Arachnophobia

Before I watched this movie, I was not afraid of spiders. Afterwards, the same could not be said. To be honest, up until recently I was unable to deal with spiders invading my personal space without screaming (now, I am pleased to announce that I can in fact squish my own spiders very calmly....and then freak out about it afterwards like the little girl I am).

Yeah. Pretty much.

And the strangest part about it is that I wasn't really afraid of being bitten & dying (as is the plot of the film), but more of being spun up in a giant web & having my insides sucked out (as real spiders do to their prey)....at least I was a well-informed & scientifically factual paranoid child. Or maybe I just watched too many nature shows.

So in conclusion, the moral of the story is that perhaps my parents were right in sheltering me from things that were "too scary" for me as a child. Turns out that the ramifications of such things can be long standing. Just don't tell them I said so, ok?

Saturday, May 16, 2009

....And without any futher adieu

Oh hi.
Apparently I have a blog. No shit.

It appears I haven't posted in about 3, 4 months? So what's happened you ask? Not a whole heck of alot.

I finished this semester...let's not talk about it. I'm still working at the University...that's pretty cool. I turned 26......25 is so last year (My friends really went above & beyond this year...I will post pics soon). I cut off half of my hair and pierced my neck (no kiddin). Went to go see The Hip with my Papabear this week which was pretty awesome & plan on seeing NIN/Jane's Addicition and Bif Naked in June, Rancid/Rise Against/St. Alvia Cartel & Warped Tour in July. Summer concerts make me happy in mine pantaloons.

Other than that it's been more of the same....work, hangin with my homies, floating from one day to the next. I am the epitome of underachiever.

How sad is it when your own life bores you? It' not that anything particularly bad has happened....but nothing good has either. I do get the distinct feeling that something is on the horizon....something big & exciting. Maybe it's just wishful thinking....but here's hoping.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Look At Me, Silly Me, I'm As Happy As Can Be

No, really. I'm just as surprised as you are.

I'm not going to apologize for not being on top of my blog anymore. I am sooooo super crazy busy funtimes that this is the first thing I will let slip if something's gotta slip. I love blogging but this shit don't pay the bills, or get me A's in school.

So far this semester has been fabulous. I'm working all the time, I'm doing well in my classes and I even joined the gym (no shit!). Add in a light sprinkling of activities social in nature and overall, this chick is quite pleased with herself. For the first time in a looong time I feel productive & content.

I feel like myself again....and I remember why I like me. Mostly because I'm friggin awesome. I love my friends, my family.....my life in general right now. Sometimes it's stressful, but I've got a pretty good grip on things....and that counts for so much.