Blogging at Life

The cheque and report that arrive in the mail two days ago was a sudden, but anticipated end to more than 5 and a half years of constant struggle.

It’s an overwhelming feeling.

I complained so much about the inconvenience of never knowing when to expect a request to participate in some sort of proceeding.  I complained about receiving asinine letters in the mail, simply informing me “we have received your release form; thank you for providing us with your signature, because we need to have 800 copies of it in order for this whole ordeal to be legit”.  I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea.  Those letters were constant reminders of several unpleasant occurances in my life.  I don’t just mean the crime; I mean the other interactions too.  I mean the interactions with the police and the lawyers.

I mean spending a sunny Saturday morning, as a frightened and lucid teenager, sitting on a very comfortable couch, in a dimly lit room, across from two police who had a large video camera sitting behind them.  I don’t remember taking a sip of water, but there was a glass of water water.  The room kind of reminded me of a 1970’s recroom/den, but without a foozeball table.

I mean calling my boss at work from the police station, apologizing for being several hours later for work, and explaining that I would not be coming in to work that day, and probably not the next.  I mean explaining, before I even had the chance to get over being in shock, to my boss why I was missing work; if I didn’t explain, I would have risked being written up.

I mean my dad pulling over the minivan by the side of the road, and me puking my guts out, because the drugs they gave me in the hospital, in the event that I may have contracted some sort of disease, made me fucking sick… and I barfed and barfed and barfed while my parents and my best friend waited… It was a sunny Saturday morning.

I mean the defense lawyer asking me if I lifted up my leg, or did something to make it all more enjoyable, when all I wanted to do was die, and staring from the witness stand at my brother, who couldn’t do anything, except sit there quietly and support me.

I mean pushing my way out of the phone booth, and running to freedom when I saw the police car parked there, and realized I was saved… and realized that I wouldn’t have to do what I originally figure would happen: eventually make my way home, sneak into my parents house, and never tell anyone that had ever happened, because there was no way that I would have been able to prove anything.

So it’s strange, as I spill out details, some of which I haven’t discussed before, to think that this is so done, and it’s so over. And I will most likely never, from an institutional point of view, deal with this again.

And I upgraded my flight to L.A. to first class.

I received my settlement cheque from the government today.  I wasn’t expecting it to arrive until at least February, so I was shocked.  The envelope contained the cheque and a report of the incidents, along with the breakdown of the money “awarded”.

Let me remind you, I am bound to a gag; I can’t write how much it was for.

I can say that I am pleased with the result, and I can say that there is information in the report that disturbs me, because I didn’t know it until today.

I can say, just as the report says, that no amount of money will ever change what has happened, and undo the pain and suffering that I went through, and that I still go through (to a lesser extent, luckily) today.

I wish I could speak more about this outcome.

Why?

Crimes of a certain nature have gags automatically applied to their cases, regardless of the wishes of the victim/applicant/witness/former carefree, teenage girl with a world of potential, and no visible barriers.

Crimes of a certain nature, the above nature, also have a huge stigma tied to them.  These are the most taboo of taboo.  These are the topics that you do not talk about, and you certainly would not want to ever imagine them happening to someone else.  This is a violation of the most intimate, private part of a person’s life, and for some fucked up reason, people seem to be just as uncomfortable with the idea of someone being the victim as being the accused.

Whose fault was it, really?

I find it unfortunate that the gag is applied.  There is something moderately empowering in having this type of thing symbolically  recognized by society as being harmful; it is not recognized as such as often as it should be.

Maybe if more people had the privelige (?!?!?!?! PRIVELIGE?!?!!) of surviving through 5 and a half years of lawyers, cops, testimonies, forms, witnesses, interviews, counselling sessions, tears, frustration, anger, happiness, loss, and more forms, this would all get easier.

Maybe if my case could be accessed by the public, just as cases that have to do with robbery or manslaughter can be accessed, victims who haven’t come forward could go “oh, holy crap, you mean I can go to court?  You mean it really IS wrong, and I’m not crazy? I’m not a dirty slut who deserved every minute of it?  ”

A huge shift in the institutional response to sexual assault is needed. HUGE.

Thank you to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board of Ontario for telling me what I had known all along: That I was raped, that it sucked, and that the consequences were severe.

I woke up this morning at 10:00 AM (early for a Sunday) and got to work on my research for Crim.  I took a little break to buy some groceries, and to visit Kim, but otherwise, I’d say I spent a good 12 hours letting my brain munch on a bunch of shit.

Contrary to what this blog might suggest, I can actually be articulate, and keep my language devoid of profanities; after 12 hours of academic feasting, that’s another story.

So what is the bottom line here?

Oh…. I finally found the missing link to my research paper.  It somehow just fell into my lap.  It blew my mind.  Holy crap.  What I found was not what I expected to find, but the results are even better…

At 11:00 PM on a Sunday night, I was able to the achieve the awesome “OH MY FUCKING GOD. I DID IT.  I BLOODY RULE AT LIFE” thing, where you go from having a decent, A- quality topic, to something brilliant.

I have 9 days left to finish it up, which is plenty of time, even with a full-time job and another project to work on.

I had an epiphany this week.

I realized want I am going to do with myself, and it’s kind of weird.

I realized I want to be a lawyer. A criminal lawyer.   I actually want to do it.

For a long time, since I was a kid, I had this way of looking at things, and a way of looking at the world; I looked at things this way even before life decided to shit down my throat and try to fuck me up beyond the point of being able to exert myself to all my potential.

When I was growing up, I was a “smart” kid… and I resented it.  Being “smart” is alienating. Having ideas, and expressing them makes you a freak.  I was a freak.  I dumbed myself down.

I also had other loves.  I was a musician, or so I thought.  I was a writer, or so I thought.

Growing up, because I was a certain type of person, I felt like I was expected to become a lawyer or a doctor, cause that’s what kids with certain aptitudes and certain grades do; that’s what kids who come from semi-affluent communities, who have semi-affluent parents do.  Fuck.  I didn’t want to just be a rich lawyer because I could be, because my place in the socioeconomic caste system would allow me to be a stupid rich lawyer, whether I wanted to or not.

You know?

I wanted to be an artist.  I was an artist, or so I thought.

So, all these years later, I still have a great love for music and all the forms of the arts that I always loved, and I am a creative person.  On the other hand, there are certain things that I want to change, and I am naive enough, still, to believe that I can help change these things.  I’m smart enough that I know I can accomplish certain things that other people won’t accomplish, because they are going to be successful in other areas.

It’s funny that I was so adamant about not becoming the lawyer (or doctor) or role that I felt I had been prescribed, because of my profile…. And so here I am, realizing that I actually want to be a lawyer.

So… that’s it.  After my degree, I’m going to law school, and I am stoked.

A man came up to me at the corner of Gore and Powell and handed me a dinky little flower.  He said:

“Give this to someone you care about to make their day.”

Before I had a chance to respond, he took a beaded necklace off from around his neck and put it over my head.  Once again, he told me to give the necklace to someone I cared about.

I smiled awkwardly and thanked him, but this was Gore and Powell, and nobody gives you something there without the expectation of something in return.

Without hesitation, he asked me if I had any money that I could give to him.  Without hesitation, I replied that I did not.

So he grabbed the flower from my hand, and asked me to remove the necklace from around my neck.

I went to school sans necklace and sans flower, and only now realized that this was the second time in my life that a man had ever handed me a flower.

I had a dream that I ran into someone who I used to be in love with.

He had the same shirt that I did, but it was even nicer than mine.

I was pretty pissed off.

A visibly mentally unsound man got on the bus yesterday at the Kootenay loop.

I was sitting fairly close to the front, on the first 2-person bench that is facing towards the front window. The three courtesy seats were perpendicular to that row, to give you any idea of exactly where I was.

So this man got on the bus.  He stumbled a bit.  He was slow and awkward.  He had a glob of either food or some kind of baby formula-esque shit stuck in his facial hair.

He turned around to sit himself down, and his soiled jeans were hanging down, revealing some unpleasant ass.

I was repulsed.

I sat there for another 10 seconds or so, but continued to be further repulsed by him, mainly because of the glob.

I stood up, and walked further down the bus.

I looked up towards the front of the bus, and right then, I made this eye contact with him; I didn’t plan on it, but right then it happened.

I don’t know if it was a coincidence that we made eye contact, or what it meant…

But my interpretation was “he knows”.

You know.  This guy knows.  He’s sick, but he’s a human.  Every day this man encounters people like me who look at him and are instantly repulsed; people like me who for a moment forget that this guy is a real person, who deep inside, does have some sort of understanding of people and the world.  At some time, there were people who loved him, and I’m sure he loved people.

I felt like a hypocrite. Me, of all people, I should know; I shouldn’t be looking at someone like this guy as a lower class citizen.  I’ve seen people change from “animals” to “real people”.  I’ve seen that all they need is a roof, some food, some medications and someone to talk to, they come back to earth.

You know, I’ve seen this first hand. But the thing that I forgot, as well, was that most sick people still do have some understanding of what is going on around them.

This guy is so sick, and just needs a little bit of help, and every day he is rejected by society.  Every day he walks the streets, presented to us as a disgusting monster that you and I should pride ourselves over not being as lowly as him.  I CLEAN THE FOOD OFF MY FACE AND DON’T SHIT MY PANTS; therefore, I AM A GOOD PERSON.

We need these sad creatures to juxtapose ourselves against, but how can we be so cruel to let people suffer at our own hands?  And how can we be so close-minded to consider certain members of society secondary to ourselves?

Why is this man just one of thousands of other people in this city who we would rather die, and be out of sight, than to be integrated into our stupid social contract?

And I think my bus driver was drunk as shit.

Yesterday, the United States elected Barack Obama to be their president.

Very exciting.

I think, maybe, one of the reasons that so many people (like myself) from other countries are excited about Obama, is that there is a hope that he will help tame the belief American exceptionalism that is so intense in that country.

Nevermind all the other sociopolitical problems; a stubborn, self-absorbed entity will never moved past any of the issues at hand when it thinks it is supremely superior.  Admitting faults = defeat and weakness, which would suggest that the United States is not as “exceptional” as it (unconvincingly) still attempts to promote itself as being.

On to the media coverage.

Now, this election was somewhat contentious because OMG a [half] black person was running! A black person whose father was once Muslim, before becoming an athiest! Well, gosh darnit.  You can’t have none of those running that there country, can you? CREATIONISM > INTELLECTUALISM, Y’ALL.

So, of course, lots of pundits were writing and speaking about how “such and such” group will vote or won’t vote for whichever candidate, because they are black or hispanic or whatever.  Apparently in the United States, when you register to vote, there is a lot information about you that gets attached to your vote.

I am ignorant enough to not be 100% sure; I would assume, considering that before the polls had even closed, I was seeing statistics like “98% of black women in Iowa voted for Obama” or whatever, that there is some hella-Big Brother shit associated with voting records in the United States. CREEPY.

So, as I digress, I am going to get back to the point:

APPARENTLY THE JEWISH VOTE IS REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT.  Particularly in Florida! You know, Jews don’t make up a huge percentage of the U.S. population, and even Florida-wise, but as a whole, we like to vote, apparently.

Jews were not expected to vote for Obama, because Obama was seen as a sympathizer to the Palestineans, and because he’d raise taxes, meaning all those rich Jews would get Jewed the fuck out of the money that they Jewed so hard to Jew.  Nevermind the fact that the other major candidate is a total whackjob who elected a circus freak of a politician to be his running mate. No! Jews, apparently, are so close minded that they wouldn’t possibly vote for someone based on the majority of their ideals, would they?

So here are a few articles that I came across but some East Coast USA Jewpapers:

http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/110608/njDefyingFallForecasts.html - “Defying fall forecasts, Jews back the winner”

http://jta.org/news/article/2008/11/05/1000800/op-ed-why-jews-voted-for-obama Why Jews voted for Obama

In the early months of the election campaign, the polls projected Obama would receive about 60 percent of the Jewish community’s support. Sensing an opportunity to capture a sizable number of Jewish voters, McCain supporters engaged in an unprecedented campaign in the Jewish community. This campaign not only included efforts to paint Obama as an anti-American Muslim, but it also implied that an Obama presidency could bring a second Holocaust. The campaign was widely criticized and outraged many in the Jewish communities they targeted.

Honestly! Targeting potential voters with hate? That’s no way to win an election.

Oh, and non-Jew stuff:

THE ORIGINAL MAVERICKS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRImWNXzSHk

Today my roommate and me made the most epic pizza ever for our Josh’s birthday. Unfortunately I have no pictures.  I must say, its a good thing that I’m not a vegan anymore, cause that would have made this pizza considerably less epic.  I still do not eat meat, however, so I suppose that the pizza was somewhat restrained.

Anyway.  Here is a rundown:

We made the crust ourselves.  Our friend Darby was kind enough to provide an excellent, simple recipe for pizza dough.  This shit is easy! HOLY SHIT.  We have so much flour left, so we are going to be making lots more pizza.

As I said, we made the crust. It was stuffed with sundried tomatoes.

On this crust we put basil pesto, cherry tomatoes, pepperoncinis, havarti and mozzarella.

OKAY. Now, if that does not sound crazy enough, it gets crazier:

We flattened this down a little bit, then put a thin crust on top of this pizza.  Do you see where i am getting?  This is a double-decker pizza.  On top of this crust, there was tomato sauce.  On top of the tomato sauce there were PEROGIES.  Yes. MOTHERFUCKING PEROGIES.  We covered the perogies in mozzarella cheese, so that they were hidden.  Do you know what is in that pizza? Well, fuck! You have to guess!

On top of the mozzarella cheese there was spinach, broccoli, artichoke hearts, garlic, feta, and more mozzarella. Throughout the pizza there was some other seasoning.

It was baked at 175 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes, and then baked at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for, I guess, about 15-20 minutes longer.

When the pizza came out, it looked quite unsuspecting and simple, if not slightly large.

The verdict? An absolutely delicious pizza.  And we still have plenty of food left over.

How long did this take to make?  Well over 4 hours, and it was worth it!

THE END.

Reduce it to a footnote.

I get really big brain farts in my head that lead to staying up all night, staving off procrastination.  That, there, is an oxymoron.

I’m waking up in the same clothes as I wore the day before, with greasy hair and a fried brain, not from living a fast and crazy life, but from doing a poor job at setting my priorities straight, and not getting anything done.

Ritalin isn’t working, and bureaucracy is partly to blame, and biological conditioning is the other guilty party.

Oh, by the way, please just tell me that you love me, before you do everything within your means to make sure that I know how insignificant I am.

Did I just say that? I thought I was talking about not having my priorities set straight.

So, anyway, I need a vacation.

Vote

don’t drink and drive

Watch CNN

Don’t watch CNN for the same reason that you should watch CNN (once you have watched CNN enough to determine why you should AND should not watch CNN)

Put your head in a vortex

Question why you should question everything, obviously.

Go to the aquarium at least once

Visit several aquaria to determine that you have been to at least one acceptable aquarium

If you are questioning everything, then you will have already realised that you cannot only visit one aquarium

Learn a second language, obviously.

Imagine an alternative universe where dinosaurs actually did live amongst humans. Use this inspiration to devise a “dinosaur bordello”, where the aristocrats of East Vancouver can rub elbows with ……… [ this is unfinished, which implies that i received a phonecall mid-suggestion, and returned 5 hours later after drinking several Kokanees]

Don’t go to war based on faulty intelligence

Avoid hippies at all cost

Avoid getting interrupted when writing a list about how to be a productive member of society.

A YOUNG WOMAN in her mid-twenties saunters into your run of the mill greasy spoon at 3AM , and takes a seat across from a YOUNG MAN or WOMAN.

Postmodern cliche diner girl:

I want to leave behind this intellectualism.

Cliche dirty coffee cigarettes. Greasy spoon diner.

Honky tonk background radio.  3 AM. ((“Another, ma’am?”))

Wipe the mascara under  fluorescent lights

Greasy spoon diner.

I find myself sitting at this greasy spoon diner.

Telling myself again, about the revolution and how we(?) plotted it.

Telling myself I’m not a product of Drug Store Cowboy and too many Tarantino movies.

Drag again.  Sit across, under the fluorescent lights, and honestly tell me that I’m genuine when I tell you that I want to leave this world behind to plot the revolution, while throwing back 125 mL mugs of watered-down coffee, and picking at the laminate table, like so many other characters did before.

Tell me that I’m not a character; I’m truly a smart person, and my words are my words, and my ideas are my ideas.  I was a smart person before I opened a book, and the notion of angst was romantic before I ever saw the Simpsons parody Thelma and Lousie, letalone BEFORE I KNEW who Thelma and Louse were.

I came to this dirty, greasy spoon diner, at 3 AM, to sit across from you, while you watch me wave my arms around wildly, sketching diagrams from cigarette smoke with my left hand, while punching some invisible monster with my right hand.  I came to this greasy diner, like so many people before, because I couldn’t tolerate the knowledge acquired form a formal education via an incessant dictation of theory, of number crunching, of Marxism, of the drilling in that I will never be the first person to sit across from you in a greasy diner and tell you that the world is not the world it was meant to be.

I came to the place where I thought nobody would recognize me, while I bared my desperation.

I don’t want to be symbolism; education has reduced me to a theory.

I wanted to come here and sit across from you, to state how frustrated I am with my place in the world, only to present you with the perfect diagram of postmodern, cliche, 24 year old angst.

YOUNG MAN or WOMAN lights a cigarette as empathetically as a person can light a cigarette

Post modern cliche diner girl: Was I just being ironic?

Falling further…..

blink.

I had a weird dream about my mom dying, and my dad coming back from the dead.

My mom was run over by a truck that backed up in the front yard and squashed her.  She was wearing my black and pink shirt, and I don’t know why.

Then my dad came back, and people were angry about me for lying about my dad being dead…

One of the courses I am taking right now is a Linguistics course, focusing on phonetics.

Between the postmodern studies of language I did in creative writing, combined with the study of phonetics, I seem to be slowly disassociating myself from “real” English; unlearning, if you will.

An interesting idea that was presented in Creative Writing was the idea of language being written in a different manner than traditionally, or “correctly”, and the way an audience, or reader, becomes conditioned to make sense of what they are digesting.  Here is an excerpt from something I wrote a few posts down:

I am not going to entertain myself further by recounting today’s experience, so instead I will leave you with this picture I drew on the whiteboard in class.  We were asked to draw what the “ideal manager” would look like.  I was surprised to see that I was the only person who incorporated a “female” image into their  drawing.

I could break it up:

I am

not going to e

ntertain myself further                          by recounting today’s experience, so

instead I will leav               e you with this picture                         I drew on the

whiteboard

in class.  We were asked to

draw what the “ideal manager”

would look like.

I was surprised to see that I was the

only person who incorporated a

“female” image into their        drawing.

Maybe not the best example, but how do you read the first, and how do you read the second?  How do you make sense of it?  This idea of using a different format in writing to illustrate the way you would like something to sound, or how you want it to be read alienates the audience from the comfort of a learned method of cohesion.

The bottom line, or punch line was along the lines of “imagine one day you read the newspaper, but you can’t understand it, because it is so straightforward.”

Disassociation.

Which brings me to phonetics.

My instructor frequently states how “impractical” orthographic English is.  One example was when we were discussing the “ch” in “Chanukkah”. When we were discussing velar sounds, which are not typically made in most English dialects (Scottish, for “loch”, yes..), I asked if the “ch” was velar.  Another girl in class said “but “ch” sounds like “tsschhhhh.” That’s my best way of orthographically describing the sound.  To quote my instructor:

SEE HOW IMPRACTICAL THAT IS?

Why am I writing about this?  I just read an article about pupils in England who are doing subpar on their spelling examinations:

Some words were so badly spelt that researchers had problems working out what they meant. In one script, gorgeous was spelt “gourges“, anxious came out as “angshuse” and familiar became “formiler“. In other examples, nervous was spelt “nufse“, thought became “faunt” and talk “torck”

……..

Researchers said many errors came down to pupils’ speech patterns, with some substituting -ing for -ink, producing words such as “somethink” and “nothink“.

This made me think of class, of course.  I used to be such a spelling/grammar fanatic… but the more I study the English language, the more absurd some of the rules seem.

If English was written phonetically, instead of how it currently is, it would be much simpler from a pronunciation point of view.  On the other hand, different forms of spelling allow for us to distinguish words from eachother (to and too).  Still, some people pronounce “where” and “wear” the same, while others do not…

The article shows a mild ambivilance towards the importance of spelling in the grand scheme of comprehension:

I am not saying that we make spelling a huge priority over understanding, analysis and interpretation,” he told the Times Educational Supplement. “But students should be able to spell securely. It’s an ongoing battle that isn’t helped by wider society.”

Anyway, I lost track of my thoughts.

Friendship on the chopping block

Chop…..

choppp

chopppp

chop chop chop chop chop

CHOP CHOP

CHOP?

OH, chop.

Shop….

Shop for a new friend?

Chop chop chop!

Don’t want to hear me say you hurt me [again] (two weeks later)?

Chop chop chop!

Don’t want to hear me say that you’ll never understand just how much you hurt me?

chop chop chop chop chop

Chop.

Two years.

A man on a bicyclette asked me “es-ce que vous voulez la roche ou de la poudre?” a few nights ago, which took me aback.  “J’ai de la bonne héroïne!” From some femme vietnamienne.

I had already been called a junkie earlier in the week by a bus driver, because I tried to bring a slice of pizza on board the bus, of course.

I threw it onto the sidewalk.

It was okay; it had been marked 50% off the shelf price at Nester’s.

Nester’s isn’t cheap, even at 50% off, however.

This culmination of smack mongering and smack allusion mongering only means one thing:

I have been living in Vancouver for two years.

4:30 on a Saturday morning, and the city’s a ghost.

I forgot about wandering in a half-conscious daze to the 7-11 for bright lights and weak coffee; for poor conversation and depressing, suspended reality.

I crouched on the curb to rip open my smokes and take inn a dead city.

I knew I should have brought my cell phone…

That white sedan is looking at me.

No woman who is of any value could possibly be out at this time on a Friday night/Saturday morning, stading on a corner and smoking a cigarette.

Honk-honk-wave-grin-grin

And he creeps along.

Do you look and acknowledge, or pretend you don’t see him? Do you confirm that you are clearly for hire by politely smiling back, or do you not look, and pray that he won’t creep up behind you?

When it’s dark, and nobody knows where you are, everyone man has his face.

Do you keep walking the 3 blocks home, or do you run back to 7-11 to take asylum under the protection of the cleark who just scream “shit! fuckin shit!” when he processed your debit card wrong?

That sedan will come back.  So here’s me; here’s home; here’s Sev; here’s the little alley I have to cross.

The white sedan, it sped off, but it will be back. I know.

But the white sedan pulled a fast one, and drove down Rupert, U-turned and crept back up beside me.

Just to make sure you know, you will always be at the mercy of everything I stand for.

And do I smile politely, or keep walking?

“There can only be one reason why I’m out right now, and that’s for whatever reason you want me to.”

The first one was deaf, but really, they all are.

Then every car was that white sedan.

Many “blog” entries start off with “gee, it sure has been a long time since I wrote something on this blog” — “gee”, generally not being included, unless as a tool of irony.

But I had not updated this in a while, because I’m a totally boring person with little of value to share with the internet superhighway.

Oh, but someone commented, so that reminded me that I log into this… It also reminded me that I have rulingatlife.com, because only I can have rulingatlife.com

Well, what is new in my life?

In a non-chronological order:

I got roofied last night, but so did my friend, so at least I’m not alone in the universe of goth bar roofie victims (yes, goth bar… err.. goth night. )

I went to Pemberton Fest, and flew back to Vancouver in a float plane

Last week Garry got out of the car with a bag of fried chicken in one hand, and a magnum of shiraz in the other.  I thought that was of note.

I will be turning 24 years old on August 26th; my 23rd birthday was the worst one ever, so this year I will try to hide the fact that it is my birthday

(note to self: edit facebook profile so that your birthday doesn’t show..)

Criminal Injuries went swimmingly, but I am bound to a gag, so I cannot blog about it.  Too bad, because it was the only good experience that I have ever had with Crim.

Uh…. let’s see..  a few more relatives have died since I last updated this… One of them I didn’t know, but she had no will, children or living spouse, so I am to receive some money.

The perpetual death parade that is my family keeps my VISA card paid off.  Honestly.  What would happen if I died? I’d leave behind a maxed-out credit card, a messy bedroom, and tons of great potential, gone to waste.