Oh yeah.  You know what’s great about being a sociology major who feels like she no longer has a family (though does have individual associations with people of whom she is biologically related)?  Well, sociological theories are a great source of enlightenment, and almost cheer me up when I am on the verge of being awash with angsty emotions.   For example,  re-framing “family” as merely a social construct makes the realization that I am less a part of what I thought was my family than I ever was, while non-biological people I have never met have replaced me, seem much less painful.  That statement may seem harsh, but I’d rather feel enlightened making sense of changes in family structures than feel bitter about those changes.

Complimenting family as a social construct is the observation of how relationships exist amongst people with independent (as opposed to interdependent) self concepts. At 4:09 am, I am a bit too tired to go into detail, and risk plagiarizing a really great paper, so you can read it here, courtesy of the good old University of British Columbia.

Raymond Carver, an author whose work I am not too fond of, does a nice job at illustrating the emotional strain between wanting to believe that love is real and eternal, while facing the reality of knowing how transactional relationships really are:

“You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, and have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love, we’re talking about, it would be just a memory.” (Carver, 1981 — “What we talk about when we talk about love”)

The above passage is referring to romantic relationships, but it can be applied to any type of relationship. I love my brothers; I love my mom; I love my late father, but we are not a family anymore.  Once we were a family, but we no longer are (unless you want to get all Slaughterhouse Five on the linearity of our lifetimes).  Yeah, it’s painful to think about sometimes, but at least I have silly abstract theories to comfort myself with, right?

Goodnight. Good morning.

I was sitting in class, staring at an elderly man who had enrolled in the course, when I became full of fear and anxiety.

All I could think about was the idea that, unless I die young, I won’t always be the person who I recognize myself as.

There was a time in my life when almost everything that mattered, or defined me positively, was lost or taken away, through no choice of my own. I was young, and it was not a happy time.

And so, I started my life over, when virtually nothing was left; I was reborn at 21. (By reborn I absolutely do not mean in a religious manner.)

Some days I feel like I’m 10 years old, but also middle aged, but I look like a teenager.

I remember how when I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine being 18 — 20. I knew I would grow up, but the future was so far away. I would lie in bed, trying to stay as still as possible, hoping that I would actually get frozen in limbo, and not have to experience the terrifying ordeal of being old and become the face of imminent death. I think of how I’m 25 now, and 40 is still 15 years away. The time it took to reach 25 will have to pass all over again — my whole life span, until I reach 50. Terrifying?

And reading historical texts, in that class, where the elderly man sat, from over a thousand years ago reinforces how insignificant and useless angst is, when one day I will turn to dust and cease to be, whether or not I was momentarily pained over the notion of one day no longer being a hip, young thing.

“And I do not see how I can get out of asking this question: Does it matter to anyone or anything that all these peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, Deadeye Dick

This morning while riding the Skytrain, I glimped over my a woman’s shoulder, and the some words on her Metro transit “newspaper” caught my eyes: “Province accepting applications for enhanced identification”. I thought “right on; it finally happened.”  Then, the sub-header caught my eyes: “SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER”.

My brain exploded a little bit on the inside.  I’m sorry.  Let’s take a step back here: “Shopping in Seattle is about to get easier”.  This is a newspaper article announcing the introducting of a new form of identification, that uses some a Radio Frequency Identity Chip to simplify the Canada – U.S. border crossing, by transmitting your information to the border guard as you approach.   Fair enough, but I don’t think I even need to explain the implications of this type of technology attached to a personal I.D.  This isn’t new technology; it’s been around for decades, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that as well as being used to simplify a transaction, there is some creepy big brother/panopticism stuff going on here.

And the best thing the newspaper can say is “SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER”??? That is the selling point for a new form of identification, replete with accesible, yet encrypted personal data?

These cards are not mandatory, but who is to say that identification with this type of technology may not become mandatory in Canada in the future?  Plenty of concern has been expressed about privacy issues: These privacy issues aren’t just about what governments may do with our information — as a “Western” citizen, who has grown up in a digital age (excuse the cliché), I have mild “Big Brother hysteria” fatigue, because the notion of personal information being aggregated with that of others’ for political/security/surveillance etc. purposes has become a moot point.  The other concern, that comes with this stuff is the issue of data mining, or the data getting into the wrong person/group’s hands.

But that’s not a big deal, because the upside to all this is that SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER!!!!

This brings me to a little aside: I watched a piece on TED a few weeks ago hosted by James Howard Kunstler that discusses suburbia, his concerns.  It’s amusing.  He was featured in “The End of Suburbia”, which I discussed a few weeks ago as well, and he definitely could be seen as a fear mongerer, but the talk had some merit.  Anyway,  sub-header about shopping in Seattle made me think of this clip on TED:  towards the end, Mr. Kunstler says something along the lines of “one of the problems [with suburbanization going out of control, sustainability being a joke, and the world becoming a global Frankenstein] is that we call ourselves ‘consumers’” .  People have to stop thinking of themselves as consumers and start thinking of themselves as people who have more value than just consumption machines: built to work to consume to work to consume.

I purchased a blender last week.  I purchased it so that I could make healthy food, from scratch, instead of paying 6$ for a styrofoam takeout container of soup for lunch during the week (I do it occasionally, but a part of me dies inside every time…).   I already made my own soup, but I didn’t have anything to blend it up super quickly.  I made this purchase because it was something useful, that I could not fashion myself out of belongings I pick up off the ground, and in the long run, it actually saves me money (not much time, because making soup takes a while) and makes me less dependent on other people to eat the food I would prefer to eat. “NOT SO!” says the cardboard box whence the blender came! The cardboard box announced to me that the blender is for “the fashion conscious consumer”.

Knock Knock?

Who the fuck buys a blender for its aesthetic value?

Who’s there?

The same people who get excited about losing another ounce of privacy if it will make their shopping trip to Seattle easier.

I just read an online article titled “Why it’s okay for newspapers to die”. It reassures that, “[t]he loss of print newspapers is akin to the loss of the horse and buggy.” In other words, the only thing about the news that is going to change is that it will be online, instead of printed on paper.  This argument is rather technologically determinist; the author of the column makes no effort to hide this when she refers to “creative destruction”, which is basically what happens when you pair technological determinism with a laissez-faire economy (read: globalization).  I have to disagree with the comparison to the “horse and buggy” for a few reasons.

First of all, there is a big difference between people switching from horse and buggies to cars, and the Internet going online.  For one thing, when people switched from the horse and buggy to the automobile, they were merely switching forms of transportation.

I could really go out on a limb and argue that the shift from horse and buggy to automobile was helped plant the seeds for the demise of a print industry, but that would be getting a little out there.  Still, consider this little summary of suburbanization etc. 101 :  the invention of the automobile initially allowed for wealthy citizens to live in suburbs and commute to work.  This reduced urban density, somewhat.  After World War 2, when there was a great deal of wealth in Canada and the United States, a great deal of people could afford to live out in the suburbs.  There was a huge boom; lots of people could buy cars.  Communication was increasingly shifting away from being “face-to-face” and turning into something that required other forms of technology, such as the telephone.  Luckily, thanks to transportation and young boys with paper routes, newspapers could still be distributed across these large urban areas, and people could still get their news, even if they lived quite far from the centre of the city.  Exciting! Oh yes, and population density decreased further.

I’m not going to get into economics and infrastructure development, cause that’s boring….  Anyway…  If you couldn’t already figure it out, the spatial diffusion of people certainly influenced the way communications technology was developed and used.  There were new needs, so there were new solutions.  Complimenting this change was the new phenomena of media mergers, buyouts and vertical/horizontal integration.  I’m not going to get into this either, because this is my blog, and not a scholarly research paper.  This publication by the Parliament of Canada is helpful if you would like to know who owns what in Canadian media, however.

[If you don't find irony in me blogging about the death of print media, just wait till I touch on the "blogger" problem.  If you can't wait: THIS IS JUST A BLOG; DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, AND DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING I WRITE UNTIL YOU FIND YOUR PRIMARY SOURCES OF INFORMATION.  If you are interested in the topics of infrastructure development, technological determinism, the evolution of the mass media, or anything else I am referring to and don't have access to a good pool of information, I will be happy to provide you with some good sources of information.  Otherwise, I'm not getting into it.  Additionally, if you would do not agree with some of the facts that I claim.]

Fast forward to now, and you will find a combination of a few problems: a very large amount of the media controlled by a few companies, consolidation of resources [i.e. less reporters, but just as many/more newspapers and magazines], a less diverse group of stakeholders, and the competition of the internet.

The awesome David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne) wrote a nice entry in his online journal, expressing his concern about the decline of the newspaper institution.  David Byrne echoes what I have to say about blogs, which is that:

“Blogs and Internet news sites can’t fill the gap, as they don’t have the resources to sustain a team of reporters working and digging into a story — sometimes for months before anything sees the light of day.”

These blogs are at least secondary sources of information, for the most part, and often link to other news sites, which link to news feeds, and so on.  Just look at what I’m writing.

Another problem with moving a newspaper from print to online the format in which the different stories are presented.   Go most online news sites and you will see the “most popular” list of stories (Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc.).  My completely scientific and untested opinion is going to suggest that these articles are more likely to be read than the others.  I am also going to suggest that being online is distracting; unlike sitting down and reading a newspaper, where you don’t have many other prominent sources of stimulation, reading an online newspaper puts the reader in a position to stray away from what he or she was initially planning to read.  The reader also may skip out on the shorter pieces, which can often be found tucked in with the larger stories, because there is the opportunity is not there in the same way for the eye to pass over the “smaller” headline.

Back to this horse and buggy issue: with the exception of the clown car, I do not recall reading of any sort of widespread consolidation of passengers as they left behind their horses and buggies: if there had been four buggies, all which could seat four people, the 16 of these people did not all pool together and hop into one sedan.  Yes — there were buses, but mass transportation had long existed, in the form of the boat and the train; I’m only talking about private, individual transportation.  What is happening to the media, is in some sense, an information clown car — dozens of newspapers being piled into one source of information.

CanWest is a media clown car that would make a real troupe of clowns jump for their money.  CanWest owns a frightening amount of Canadian media, and you can also find a lot of interesting research articles from over the years discussing what this means in the world of communications and democracy.

CanWest is also experiencing some MAJOR financial problems.  There have been reports that CanWest may sell some of their newspapers, magazines or television stations to other buyers; but, realistically, who would those buyers be?

The biggest question of all, however, is: what would it mean for the Canadian public if all of the newspapers printed by CanWest ceased to print, and went online?  What would happen if CanWest, as unreliable as it is, ceased to exist and we were left with only skeletons of an industry?

I was talking to some people about a short story I wrote back when I was teenager.  The story was about how I will die.  It stemmed from me telling them that “every time something great happens in my life, I thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I died today?’”  Wow.  That is so Vonnegut.  Anyway.  This is a little piece called “Social Anxiety hey hey hey” that I wrote when I was in highschool. Ha  ha ha.  Grammar etc. has not been edited, so that this can be enjoyed in its natural form.  Hilarious.

One day I’m gonna go outta my house and people will be all ‘Oh my god. I recognize you’. And I’ll say ‘what? what are you talking about? When did this happen?’ and it will seem like a horrible joke. [It's like that story I read in grade 9 English about the man who woke up and discovered he was the mayor of his town and didn't know how.]
‘I’d hate to become the people I hate’ I’ll complain. So then I’ll hop in the minivan with my dad and go to Wyoming. And go to Albuquerque and head west. Yeah, ba by. On Route 66. cause we never finished the trip. We only made it to Albuquerque last time. And then we’ll reach the coast. And I’ll be happy cause I made it. Then something disasterous will happen. I’ll be in West Hollywood eating a snocone on Santa Mon ica Boulevarde at a crosswalk. The cross walk will say ‘walk’ and i’ll walk. Then out of nowhere will come a speeding Chrysler that runs a red light and collides with me. Blood, Leora and Snocone all over the ground; All over the windshield. I’ll curse my self as I’m dying ‘I always said I’d die the one time I didn’t jay-walk …’

1. There are a few forms of violence that society has a particularly difficult time dealing with — in court, in the media, in social discussion, etc.  Domestic violence and sex crimes (with the exception of most types of pedophilia, if one excludes the double standards about women who have sexual ‘relationships’ with 13 year old boys vs. men who ‘rape’ their teenage students) are taboo, and that isn’t going to change for a long time.

2. I do not normally follow celebrity gossip; I am so uninterested in it, and don’t care to elaborate.

3. About two weeks ago, pop star Rihanna was allegedly assaulted by her boyfriend, and since then, the media has been having a field day.  I have actually been following the story in a sense; not because I am interested in the specifics of the case, or the dirty details, but because I am both fascinated and disgusted at the way an isolated incident of an alleged act of this type of criminal act has been covered ad nauseum.  I am fascinated about WHY this type of criminal act has been covered ad nauseum.

The story: a man is arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend.  An arrest is made, and an investigation begins.  Normally, this is all that you would read about in the news, unless the incident was considered extraordinary enough that the story would attract enough readers for advertisers to buy space. Make sure to keep the details gruesome.

Because Rihanna is a celebrity, and her boyfriend is a celebrity, there is no end in coverage of this story.  Go to Google News and you will find THOUSANDS of stories about this.  It is front-page news.

On one hand, it is a positive thing for a topic related to domestic assault being covered, as there is an opportunity for dialogue; on the other hand, because the media is so fascinated with celebrity, and “dishing the dirt” and belittling people with more money or status than us, the whole thing has turned into a sick fetish for reveling in a famous person’s suffering.

You can find plenty of stories that attempt to be objective; showing that there is a problem when society thinks the victim ‘deserved it’, with links to resources for those who need help, or are victims themselves.  These links offset the potential ethical guilt that a publisher would feel for acknowledging that it is helping to perpetuate a stereotype that needs to be fixed. There are stories discussing whether she will “take him back“, AND EVEN A STORY IN THE L.A. TIMES TALKING ABOUT HOW BEING THE VICTIM OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MAKES THE VICTIM LOOK BAND, AND HOW THE VICTIM SHOULD BE AWARE THAT SHE PUT THEIR CAREER AT RISK BY BEING ASSAULTED.  Remember to always blame the victim.

[As an aside, Google "Rihanna deserved it" and you will see a pretty fucked up list of results, mostly of message board threads, filled with teens talking in brutal grammar about whose fault it was]

The media frenzy didn’t seem like it could get anymore gratuitous until somebody remembered that it is the 21ST CENTURY!!1 and that means that everyone’s world is everyone’s oyster!!!! So, a gossip website managed to get a hold of what is purportedly a picture of Rihanna’s face, that was taken at the police station.  Of course, it is now all over the Internet.

I don’t even know where to start with this:

1) This is an almost farcical (think that South Park episode about Britney Spears) example of media sources fighting eachother for “scoops”; fighting to be the first to have the latest SHOCKER.

2) a) Some media outlets have argued that by publishing this picture, it may give courage to other victims to come forward.  In other words, it’s okay to obsessively recirculate and re-publish this picture, if you say it’s for the good of society.  THAT IS FUCKING BULLSHIT.  I would say that 99% of the people who worked for commercial media corporations, who made the decision about whether to publish the picture or not, did it with one thing in mind: to attract as many viewers/readers as possible.  Grow some balls and be honest about your intentions, you sick perverted swine.

b) Some outlets, instead of writing about the content of the picture itself, are writing about how TMZ published the picture, using that as an excuse to also publish the picture.  GOOD WORK GUYS.  That makes you only 66% as perverted and twisted.

3) For all the media companies who asked the question, “is this appropriate?” and talked about how TMZ was kind of fucked to publish the picture; for all the media companies who said “perhaps this picture may disturb people, or is not the best thing to publish” —- DON’T PUT THAT PICTURE UP ON YOUR WEBSITE OR ON THE NEWS IF YOU’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT HOW IT’S MAYBE NOT THE BEST PIECE OF NEWS TO DISSEMINATE (re: the ABC story)

4) This gossip website discusses why they published the picture, and mentions how it will be EMBARRASSING to Rihanna for years to come.   This same article says that it was important to share the ugliness of misogyny.  Should a victim be embarrassed?  Seriously?  I was raped when I was 18, and beaten up pretty badly when I was 19.  Both incidents were at the hands of strangers, and both incidents required a lot of therapy, support and time to even partially recover from.  Of all the emotions that I felt, embarrassment was never one; humiliation certainly was, though.

There are quite a few issues to weigh about what is responsible and what is irresponsible to publish, and under what context.  I have so many other thoughts on this, but I don’t want to go overkill.  Still, when the bottom line is making a profit, ethics can jump out the window, so why should anyone really expect anything but this shit in the first place?

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?

Enter stage left, a young DEBUTANTE.  She is moderately under the influence of alcohol, and shoveling a mixture of saladesque materials into her mouth, rabidly, on the transit platform.  DEBUTANTE is not actually a real debutante, however her widow of a mother is a witty and articulate playwright, while her late father was a failed politician and a prominent master of the post-production industry.

DEBUTANTE sits on a broken bench and sinks into the inhospitable plastic contour, and munches away sloppily.

Enter stage right, a WOMAN in her early thirties, marching in a stumbled gait.  Following this woman is a YOUNG MAN, dressed in a pleasant attempt at business-casual-casual.

WOMAN (mid conversation): You know, the cheapest condo is a one-bedroom and it costs $273,000.  It costs more than that to insure my car!

YOUNG MAN (sweating, slightly): My brother has a 4 bedroom duplex in Montréal! It cost him about $273,000! In Sainte-Geneviève, where all those mansions are.

WOMAN: That’s unheard of here!

YOUNG MAN: He bought it five years ago, though… when housing was cheap.

DEBUTANTE continues to munch sloppily, not noticing a blob of salad land on her jacket.  DEBUTANTE snorts and rolls her eyes (very subtly), as she listens to these blatant suburban house-renters discuss the virtues of a buyer’s market.

YOUNG MAN: And with the employee pay plan at work, I save thirteen dollars per month on transit!

WOMAN: Oh, but I TOTALLY park my car at King George Station.  Hey! I can give you a ride!

(After drinking two double mojitos, WOMAN is seriously considering planting a kiss on YOUNG MAN’s lips.)

YOUNG MAN (distantly): Oh, yeah. (awkward “heh heh”) That’s not bad.

WOMAN (alcohol starting to kick in stronger than when she first entered the station): I could give you a ride home! Royal okay isn’t too far out of the way.

WOMAN debates whether giving YOUNG MAN a ride home, by way of a major detour, is really cheating while her husband is looking after the children and the salamander

YOUNG MAN: Oh, but that’s like 8 stops past mine; I’ll take a cab. Those “sex on the beaches” are really kicking in.

(YOUNG MAN wants to smack himself in the face for referring to the amusingly-named beverage that he was introduced to early in the evening)

WOMAN: Oh, it’s not problem.  I have to pick up milk on the way home anyway.

YOUNG MAN (thinking to himself): WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?

YOUNG MAN: I love milk!

DEBUTANTE finishes her food and looks around for a place to dispose of the plastic container.  While shifting her head around, a piece of dried cranberry becomes lodged in her throat; debutante turns cranberry red, then blue.

WOMAN:  Fucking crackhead. FUCK.

The very first entry on this website was a story I wrote called “Musings of a Pharmaceutical Company Janitor”; it is a run-on sentence.  I was re-reading it and realized that it was not actually a true run-on sentence, because I had failed to edit it.  I edited it, and believe it is truly a run-on sentence now, but I still could be mistaken.  There are some grey areas in the world of semi-colons and what not.

Here is the reprise:

Carson and me decided to each write a story that only contained one sentence, a long run-on sentence.  If anyone else wants to write one so that we can have an antholoy of run-on sentence stories.  I am quite pleased with mine.  I wrote it in 5 minutes so it isn’t GREAT and the grammar is not great either considering the whole point of the story is that it is made out of a terrible grammar error, but please… READ MY CRAPPY STORY:

Musings of a Pharmaceutical Company Janitor

..You know, I was cleaning the stock room the other night when I came across a bottle of pills I had never seen before that I think was called “Extract of Rhododendron Nectar”, or it could have been extract of rhododendron pollen but I can’t remember if for the life of me because I took it, and maybe you could tell me if you are familiar with this type of pill; I had never seen it before as I said, but you know, it was the craziest trip ever, so crazy that I almost blew my load all over the stock room, and that would have been horribly embarrassing, even more embarrassing than the time I took a bunch of Quaaludes and passed out in the janitor’s lunch room with my mop bucket on my head, with foam coming out of my mouth (which had a very bizarre scent permeating from it), almost as though something had died inside of me, except nothing died inside of me at all when I took those Quaaludes; they were unlike anything I had ever taken, not even huffing gas, and I would go so far as to say that Quaaludes were the best shit ever until I discovered this crazy rhododendron witchcraft hootenanny when I was cleaning the stock room the other night and came across that bottle of pills which I had never seen before as I was mopping the room with the same mop and bucket that had been on my head when I took all those ‘luudes , and ‘luudes are pretty intense shit, I must say, but not as intense as the rhododendron stuff, only because the rhododendron stuff makes your pupils dilate to the point that you would think your eyes were the circle pollen thingy, or whatever you call that flower circle stuff in a rhododendron; (I can never remember because I didn’t graduate junior high and that is what resulted in me being a goddamn motherfucking pill popping janitor for a pharmaceutical company), causing me to just pop these pills, which are the company’s property, while I mop the goddamn floor and all these goddamn fucking pills aren’t making it any easier for me, because I think they are making me delusional, because every time I look at my hands they look like flowers; they look like rhododendrons and I can’t for the life of me explain it, but I think maybe the rhododendron extract is turning me into a flower and FLOWERS CANNOT BE JANITORS, BECAUSE ONLY HUMANS CAN BE JANITORS, OR MAYBE A WELL TRAINED CHIMPANZEE,  BUT I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE OF ALL THESE PILLS, so I may need to even excuse myself to pop some more, but not before I tell you just how beautiful the trip was when I took the rhododendrons that night, when I was mopping the floor and found that bottle of pills, which has clearly turned me insane like a madman when the full moon peaks out from behind a cloud, or Dr. Jekyll when he drank that potion in that movie I saw back in ‘62, long before I ever became a janitor at a pharmaceutical company, but the point of this is for me to tell you all about those pills I took the other night, because it was such a crazy trip and I don’t know, I don’t think I can actually tell you about the trip, because to truly understand the trip, you need to take those pills and then you will understand what it’s all about, but you will also be as crazy as me, except I won’t be a lonely janitor anymore and you will not be a human anymore and we will both be beautiful, stocky red-blooded flowers stalking the halls of this pharmaceutical company at night, popping pills to keep us alive… because being a janitor is nothing worth living for anymore with these demons in my veins…

Who is Clint Feetwood?

I was becoming tremendously frustrated as my brother muttered something along the lines of a “Clint Feetwood” not being at all pleased about something or the other.

It was the third time in as many minutes I had heard of this Clint Feetwood.

“Who the FUCK is Clint Feetwood?!?”

Casey slipped one arm into his navy blue trench coat, then the other arm. Then he shook both arms out so as to even the coat out and barked “Clint Feetwood…”, shaking his head.

Who is Clint Feetwood? Does he come down from his bedroom at night when his car alarm blares on my street? You see, I really hate it when somebody invests in a car alarm, only to allow the goddamn thing to wail for seven minutes after it has gone off. Seven minutes is plenty of time to make a getaway, rob a store, and ditch the car, only for it to sit abandoned and screaming in the ubiquitously crisp December moonlight.

That’s moonlight some pipe-dream wannabe filmmaker will get a good three hours of, thinking it will make a beautiful statement in his non-sellout-big-name-big-producer-cutting-edge movie. Cause nobody starts a scene off with a shot of the moonlight shining down on a crisp December night, do they?

I have no interest in beating around the bush only to find that Clint Feetwood was an inside joke that I felt outside of. You should know by now, dear friend(s?) that I am not amused by impatient ideas, nor by being messed with. If there is a Clint Feetwood, and holy fuck, if there is EVER a Clint Feetwood, it would be an understatement for me to stress how important it is that you own up and tell me what his deal with.

Who is Clint Feetwood? Why did his name sound like a joke coming from the lips of others? Why, when his name came from my lips, did ears and eyes react to make me think that he is no joke? Blind faith, Mr. Feetwood. Blind faith.

Nobody tells you what those public washrooms are really for when you’re a kid.
Sitting on the curb, counting little white pop rocks.  Why are there grown men sitting on the street counting candies in their hands? There are grown men in the street asking grown ladies on the street if they would like to buy a hard candy.  I asked Mom if I could buy some candy, but she said it’s not for kids.

18 years later, I’m following a path of dirty candy men.  My baby’s got his head stuck in a black cloud, and it’s not coming out anytime soon.

I grew up; he grew up.  He bought candy, I stayed home.  Nobody tells you, when you’re growing up, that candy’s not for grownups either.

They said “you’ll turn into a hooker if you buy it.”  ‘Cause hookers buy candy from grown men in the street.  And I don’t wanna be a hooker, so I’m not going to buy candy from grown men in the street.  But my baby’s not a hooker, and he’s disappeared into Candyland.  I saw him three days ago with an umbrella and a pack of smokes.

“Don’t go.  PLEASE don’t go.  I’ve cooked you dinner and paid the phone bill. Please….. Okay, I’ll give you my bus pass, but you’ve got to bring it back tonight, cause I have to work in the morning.”

So now I’m following a trail of crushed up, white candies; searching everywhere to find him.  I don’t care about the bus pass, I don’t care that I ate dinner all by myself.  I don’t even care that you never pay the phone bill.  Please.  Just please don’t end up like all those soulless zombies who float up and down the street.

I asked the men in the street, “have you seen Andy?”  They know who Andy is.  You know, Andy with the umbrella and “the hair like that”.

“No, I ain’t seen him in a while.”

But I know he’s seen Andy.

5$.  Now has he seen Andy?  He’s “seen Andy alright.  Yea, just around there, a little while ago.  Had a bag full of pens he was tryin’ to sell to the tourists who accidentally wound up down here.. heh heh..”

If I’m gonna find him, I’ve gotta be him.  So 10 more dollars to this man on the street.  I need some candy.  I’m going to stick my head into the black cloud and see if I can find Andy in there.  I told myself I’d never buy it.  I’d never buy the candy from the candy men.

It was then that I found Andy.  I had become Andy, and I’d like to think that I understood why Andy would disappear for days on end, and lose my bus pass, and  forget to pay the phone bill, and forget to turn the lights off at night… if he went to bed at night.  But no sooner did I turn into Andy did I turn back into myself, and I lost him again.

10 more dollars.  I have to find Andy.  I have to find Andy.  I became him again.  I saw the world the way Andy saw the world, but once again he disappeared so quickly, and my money disappeared so quickly. Suddenly was 3:00 AM and I was standing in the middle of the street with my boots soaking wet, pulling at my hair and shaking, while a million Andies all shuffled by me in the street.

I hailed a cab home, but realized I had spent all my money, so I shuffled, shaking, in no particular direction, hoping that I would reach home before the sun did; not even thinking that Andy might actually be waiting for me when I got back.

“You FUCKING BITCH.  How the FUCK could you do this to me? Who were you with? Who were you talking to?”

He could see it in my eyes, in my demeanor; he could see where I had been and what I’d seen.  Most importantly of all, he could see that I had spent the money, my money, that he had come home to get.

“Please, Andy.  I’m so sorry.  I swear! I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

I love Andy, and would do anything for him.  I’ll search for him when he’s been missing for days.  I’ll pay his bills.  I’ll tell his mother he’s sick in bed when I’m terrified he’s dead in an alleyway. I’ll do it all for him, because one day, maybe one day, I’ll save him, and he’ll love me, and he’ll thank me for everything I did for him.  Then I’ll be happy.

“I have more money.  We’ll go together.”

This is the first piece I have written for Creative Writing.  It still needs some tinkering:

The Milk Crate

Written by Leora C-W

The happiest day of the milk crate’s life was the day he was thrown into the back of a garbage truck and crushed into oblivion…

He came out of the factory: shiny bright and blue.  A feeling of contentment, contentment that one, perhaps, would not expect of an inanimate object, washed over the plastic crate as he was loaded into the back of a delivery truck.

The milk crate:  He would bring health and happiness; hope and fulfillment.  Every morning he would greet a different family, bearing the rations they so greatly needed.  He embodied the symbol of a prosperous future, and couldn’t help but feel a little proud, if not honoured.

“I came into this world through no choice of my own, with responsibilities and expectations thrust upon me from some industrial god.  But this is what I was created for, and so I will gladly carry out my responsibilities until the day I cease to exist.

And so, for many years — many, many years, the shiny blue crate would dutifully provide milk to gracious families all over the city.  He would listen intently to the brief exchanges between the milkmen and the housewives, wondering what it must be like to be human; wondering what went on beyond the doors and the walls of all the houses he visited.

But tragically, as should occur with all naive, pure beings, the milk crate’s feverous approach to life only lasted as long as his abilities were needed.

A day came where no longer the milk crate was shiny, and his coat was a mere grayish-blue.  A Velveteen Rabbit in a sea of low-cost, high-bulk goods, the milk crate was left for dead in an alley behind a local crêperie.

Sad and confused, the milk crate sat in the alley for months, as other unwanted crates were piled atop or beside him.  Empty — every single one of them empty.  He did not understand why or how he could exist, no longer having a purpose in life.

One day, a boy of about nineteen came into the alley from the back door exit of the crêperie.  He eyed the grayish-blue object intently, and the milk crate was briefly filled with an ounce of hope.

What the boy did next would go down as the most painful experience of the milk crate’s life:  The boy pulled the crate out from under its fellow abandoned compatriots, and if you can believe, sat on it!

A painful epiphany came over the milk crate:  He had spent so much of his life fulfilling the needs of others, so humbly and proudly.  Never once had he been thanked, and never once had he been acknowledged for his fine service to society. And now. Now? Now the crate had been reduced to nothing more than a makeshift seat for a disrespectful teenager to sit on while he smoked cigarettes behind a crêperie.

Several unfortunate events were to follow the run-in with the boy in the alley:  One day, he came outside on his break to find a dead seagull in plain sight.  Disgusted, he picked up the milk crate, turned it upside down and placed it over the bird, so as to obstruct his view from something so unpleasant.  The following day, a destitute man in rags asked the boy, “May I use this crate to defecate in? You see, I have no home and I have no toilet.”  The boy, somewhat repulsed, but equally compassionate, shrugged “yeah whatever.”

The milk crate watched the pain that other humans experienced, as they would use him as a seat in otherwise furniture-less apartments, while watching loved ones shoot heroin from dirty mattresses with dirty needles.

And so, the milk crate was given a new purpose.  But this purpose did not fill him with pride; it filled him with anger.  Anger towards those who had taken his accomplishments for granted; anger at the world for creating people who lived in such desolate conditions that they never could have enjoyed his gifts during the time he was still valued.  Most of all, the milk crate was angry toward himself for having been so wide-eyed and unaware that there was a world beyond happy families drinking milk and leading fruitful lives.

Used! So used, yet neglected, the milk crate had lost his faith in humanity, and had no desire, nor expectation to bring good fortune to anyone who should cross his path.  And his sentiments were echoed by hundreds of thousands of milk crates, soured by the harsh truth of humanity.  They no longer could deal with the humiliation of being misappropriated into the whores of the manufacturing world.  Collectively, in a karmic fashion, they would reap revenge on those who had created, enjoyed, overlooked and abused.

It started out one mild May evening at a house party the milk crate had found its way into. A drunken young woman danced with the drunken young man she had so foolishly thought was the love of her life.  They danced briefly, until the man picked her up to swing her around in the air.  Consequently, due to his impairment, the man dropped her head first on the milk crate’s unforgiving edges.

Fifteen stitches. “Let him feel the guilt of causing the pain to one of many who have caused so much pain to me.”

From that night on, isolated incidents began to spring up across the country.  The teenager at the cr êperie fell off a pile of milk crates that had been unsteadily stacked.  The man who defecated on the crate was hit by a car while he crouched in an alley, searching for a place to relieve himself.  Plastic companies went out of business, not only because they had over-produced milk crates, but because of environmental concerns revolving around plastic “goods”.  And so life went on, and milk crates found their new place in society as a most reviled, feared object, all because of the mistakes by those who had created them.

The milk crate was not happy; he was not pleased.  He was mildly satisfied that he, too, could inflict pain, though disturbed that he had evolved into such a monster.  He was miserable, but at peace; resentful, but accepting of his place in the world.  And, most importantly of all, the milk crate felt as though he understood what it must be like to be human.

When I was in Toronto, I was rummaging through the boxes of stuff I have in storage and came across two pieces of paper.  One was “Journal #10″ and the other was “Journal #11″ for Grade 9 English.  In this class, we would be given a question/topic to write one page about.  I thought I would post them here, because they are kind of funny and obnoxious.

Note that both journal entries begin with the same statement:

Journal #10 – The Telephone and its role in a teenager’s life 

I find this question quite offensive.  It discludes [is that even a real word?] life of Amish people who do not use telephones for communicating.  They are less inept at talking face to face.  If they were more shy, they’d use telephones too.

Some people who phone you talk for too long and don’t know when to shut their chatterbox [I was trying to restrain myself from swearing].  I don’t like talking on the phone, I prefer to talk in person with someone.

It’s good to have a phone with a little red light so you can tell if someone’s listening to you.

Sometimes you can’t tell if you’re really talking to the person you wanted to.  For example, my friend Chris has a brother who sounds exactly like him.  If he answers the phone, he pretends to be Chris until I say something  that makes him go “Ha ha! This is Matthew!” He’s a loser.

Telephones are not a big importance unless your friends live in Hawaii.  In that case, the telephone is important because otherwise you couldn’t talk to them.

Mark: 5/5. Teacher’s comment: “This would be a good idea for a story!”

#11 Thanksgiving: What I am thankful for

I find this question quite  offensive, because I am not thankful for Thanksgiving.

Actually, I am thankful only a handful of relatives showed up at my house for Thanksgiving.  I’m thankful I don’t eat turkey, our turkey was not featherless when my mom bought it.  It’s good to be vegetarian.

I am thankful that this Wednesday, coffee is only 16 cents a cup at Coffee Time meaning I could get 13 coffees for $2.08.  I think I’ll spend 5$ instead, because I’m thankful for finding a 5 dollar bill in my pocket this morning.

I’m thankful not to be sitting at Linda’s table, as she is annoying and creates quite an offensive sound.

Last of all, I’m thankful I’m not because.  If I were, I wouldn’t be able to write in my journal all the things I’m thankful for at this moment.

I am thankful my cat is getting spayed on Wednesday.

Mark: 5/5. Peer editing comment: “Amen – Chas”

At work I sometimes get bored and read stuff on Craigslist.  I am also going to need to get a new job, as my contract expires in Mid-October; I will only be attending class on Mondays, so will get bored.  I will also need money, as it turns out the government has once again penetrated my sweet ass and told me “you will need to wait a long bloody time before you receive the money you so dearly need.”

 I digress.

I was on Craigslist looking at prospective jobs and saw a posting looking for a blogger.  Now, I would never submit myself to such a “profession”, as I find the idea of being a “professional blogger” tacky.  It also is no way to earn a living, unless you are like Oprah, I guess.

There was an ad which made me chuckle — a lot.  The ad is as follows:

“Looking for a blogging person to write blog posts about birds, birding and backyard birding. Must have some interest in birds and be able to write and talk about it.

Each blog post will be between 200-400 words and talk on birding. Also must have some interest in binoculars as some of the posts will be referencing binoculars.

You will need to write 3-4x’s blog posts per week and upload the information. If you have never uploaded anything don’t worry apply anyway. It is simple and we will show you how.

Each post will be $8 CAD but will have the opportunity to write more and increase the amount of pay as time goes on. Payment will be paid thru PayPal. ”

 I guess when you are very bored at work, this is much funnier than in real life.  I think if you have an interest in writing, this peculiar ad is also quite funny.  I think the use of alliteration in the ad must have been purely accidental, because only a used car salesperson would otherwise use such language.

This is what happens when you don’t sleep at night: then you float to the 7-11 and you think to yourself about how you wish the slurpee machine hadn’t broken down, and you wonder if it’s back up and running, and then you wonder if it is even appropriate to consume a slurpee at 3:51 AM.  If nobody sees you with that slurpee at 3:51 AM, did it still make a sound and did the associate at the counter even care?

It’s 3:51: it’s just you and the giant moth.  Maybe the bearded lady is working, and just maybe she will enlighten you with stories of smack addicts stealing ice cream and pissing on the floor.  But even the bearded lady has somewhere to sleep, or at least somewhere to go to after the dust has settled, even when the slurpee machine is still broken and the new guy hasn’t a clue how to fix it.

This is what happens when you start having nightmares about something that happened over four years ago, even though you had never previously had dreams about the incident.  Never ever.  If you think it means you’re afraid of sleeping, you’re wrong.  It’s clearly a fear of being awake, and the dreams are  nagging reminders that you can’t turn your back on life until your heart stops beating.

And no, since you asked, mother never told me there would be days like these.  But mother did not need to tell me when she could show me.  I watched her wilt and I watched her die, and still never believed there would be days like these.

The new guy hands me smokes, cause you never really quit smoking.  You never really quit vices.  You go to the next lily pad and try something new, and if you sink, you can just go back to where you came from.  I never looked back, but I kept landing in places from which I couldn’t escape.

Maybe he will make an idle comment about how he saw me earlier in the evening buying a bottle of juice, or how it “sure is awfully late”, but he doesn’t  And hands me the smokes, and makes incorrect change, because giving a quarter back is so much easier than giving back 24 cents.  He’s new, but he already has taken the hopeless approach to his dead-end job.

But this is what happens when you work on a rotating schedule and no longer have a regular sleeping pattern.  You wouldn’t have this job if you hadn’t gone back to school; you wouldn’t have gone back to school if you hadn’t moved to Vancouver; you wouldn’t have moved to Vancouver if you hadn’t cleaned up your life; and you wouldn’t have cleaned up your life if you had known there would be days like these.

This is my latest story in my series of “childrens stories for people who never had childhoods”. The previous story being “Pets in the Freezer”. I need to edit this, of course.

Little Matthew always chewed with his mouth closed and washed his hands before supper.

He would skip to school, whistling away as the birds fluttered above him.

Matthew loved to play with toy dinosaurs and throw a tennis ball with his pet St. Bernard.

He knew his alphabet and he knew his multiplication tables.

But Matthew was not a good boy. Matthew always put the spoon next to the fork.

Every evening, Matthew’s mother would call to him upstairs. “Matthew, it’s time to set the table!”

And every evening, Matthew would come down stairs to set the table.

At first, Mrs. Huntington thought that Matthew had a poor memory, so she drew him a diagram which she placed in the silverware drawer.

Matthew continued to put the spoon next to the fork, so Mrs. Huntington began to worry that perhaps her son was dyslexic.

“Eyes are as sharp as an eagle’s!” Exclaimed Dr. Fenton one cold November morning. He then took Mrs. Huntington aside and whispered discreetly, “however, I suspect that he may be wicked.”

Upon learning that her son may be wicked, Mrs. Huntington drove herself and Matthew home, and promptly poured herself a glass of brandy.

Matthew, relieved to not be dyslexic, went upstairs to play with his dinosaurs. His tyrannosaurus and triceratops roared with glee at the news, all the while unaware
of what Dr. Fenton had told Matthew’s mother.

On Christmas Eve, as Matthew was setting the dinner table, he told his mother ” I really hope that Santa Claus brought me a pterodactyl to play with my other dinos, Mommy!”

Mrs. Huntington simply stared out the window. Her son was wicked. He still was putting the spoon next to the fork. He was wicked, and Santa Claus does not like wicked children.

Christmas morning, Matthew woke up bright and early. He raced down the stairs, towards the lovely Christmas tree that was situated in the den.

“I WILL NAME HIM RODDY!” he squelched out of glee, anticipating to find a rubber pterodactyl hidden inside of his plush stocking.

Matthew looked, then looked again. What he saw in his stocking was 8 nuggets of coal; a spoon; a fork; and a knife.

There were no gifts for Matthew that year, and so Matthew’s little sister got a pterodactyl instead.

THE END.

You will need:

•  2 pounds of okra
• a ball of twine
• an air conditioner
•  a good book

Step 1) Fill a box with okra.

Step 2) Add “cardboard box” to the list.

Step 3) Turn on the air conditioner and read your good book.

Step 4) Start a revolution as a result of the subversive propaganda you read in your “good” book.

Step 5)  Take some twine and create an artistic creation out of it.

Step 6) Put a pretty smile on a burlap sack.

Step 7) If your revolution was successful, continue to recruit the desenfranchised by offering them okra and twine

Step 8)  Wash hands of blood, okra and twine.

Step 9) Fill the burlap  sack with any leftover okra and twine

Step 10) Also add “burlap sack” to your list

Step 11) Repeat as necessary

Step 12)  Turn off air conditioner.

So, it is the perfect opportunity for me to post my children’s story “Pets in the Freezer” on this website.  I wrote pets in the freezer last year.  It is based on truth.  That aside, I am sad.  Dee Dee was a fantastic pet.  I came up to my room yesterday and saw him lying on the floor, eyes wide open.  I picked him up and his head snapped back.

A dog broke his neck.

Our friends have a dog, and the dog had managed to get into my room and get Dee Dee.  I’m not angry though.  Just sad.  Stuff like this happens. Predators and prey.  We thought Dee Dee was still alive at first, so we laid him down in the kitty be, trying to find something to put him in so we could take him to Petcetera to have him put out of his misery.  Then we confirmed he was dead.  So I pet Dee Dee one last time, put him in a plastic bag, put the plastic bag in a cardboard box, and put him in the deep freeze next door.  Harsh.  We will bury Dee Dee today.

I will post my story a different time.

11 years ago today, I broke my arm.

4 years ago, I played the Joey Ramone Lymphona benefit /tribute concert at the Horseshoe.

4 years ago, minus 1 day was the last time I ever saw my dad.

4 years ago minus 2 days, my daddy died.

I just ate some pasta.

Put a pretty smile on a burlap sack.

It’s sure a pretty smile, but it’s still a burlap sack.

Put the burlap sack with some other burlap sacks; put a pretty smile on the burlap sack.

It’s still a burlap sack, but it’s better than the other ones.

Put a smiling burlap sack in a room full of nothing.

Nothing is better than a smiling burlap sack.

I understand that this is just a “fun”, shot-in-the-dark game, requiring little mental intelligence or dedication in order to win, but there is another side to it. (Also, I don’t want to get stupid Facebook messages every day telling me to get more of my completely uninterested friends to join your damn group.)

First off, what this type of “contest” results in is people trying to recruit their acquaintances to Facebook in order to help them win: You’re so preoccupied with your hoop dream chance of winning 7000$ that you forgot that what you are actually doing is PROMOTIONS FOR TWO ALREADY WELL-ESTABLISHED AND PROFITABLE BUSINESSES. You are doing this for free. By having a contest of this nature, Edge 102.1 and Facebook save a lot of money that they could be spending to market themselves in other ways. Is consumer marketing ethical anyway? That is not the issue which I am addressing, so I don’t care to discuss it right now. Regardless, you are performing tasks at no charge which companies would normally spend money on. It’s like paying to buy a Nike shirt. You are paying to advertise for Nike; you are donating your time to promote the Edge and Facebook via your plea to others in helping you win 7000$

From the contest info at edge.ca:

“Invite as many people as possible to join your group. Close friends, friends of friends, family, old school buddies, neighbors you don’t even speak to, ANYONE!!! You won’t qualify to win $7,000 unless you are near the top of the leaderboard when it comes to how large your group is, so friends are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!”

As a result of you promoting The Edge or Facebook for free, there is a chance that a few, several, or a great many people who would normally not use Facebook, or the Facebook groups feature, will be logging in and checking the page regularly due to their enthusiasm towards helping you win. How does the commercial media, whether it be the traditional mass media, or the new media, earn profits? Pat yourself on the back if you guessed “from selling space to advertisers.” Just as commercial TV shows are developed in order to attract the highest paying advertisers, quasi-commercial websites are developed in order to attract the highest paying advertisers. How do you get a client to pay more to advertise on your space? By guaranteeing a high amount of viewers or users, of course.

As outlined in the following passage from Facebook’s privacy policy, Facebook has the right to collect information about its members in order to help achieve the maximum effectiveness of its advertisements. What this means is that if I have 3000 people in my group, and 80% list themselves as enjoying Jack Johnson or some shit, and 75% love to watch Survivor, this is information obtained which would normally require the less cost-efficient method of market research in order to develop such a profile of Edge 102 listeners and Facebook users. This means average ages, educational statuses, locations, political affiliations and many other demographics are so easily obtained. Then the Edge and Facebook can go laughing to the bank upon learning which companies are surefire choices to attract as future clients:

Advertisements that appear on Facebook are sometimes delivered (or “served”) directly to users by third party advertisers. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. These third party advertisers may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies such as JavaScript and “web beacons” (also known as “1×1 gifs”) to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. Doing this allows the advertising network to recognize your computer each time they send you an advertisement in order to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. In this way, they may compile information about where individuals using your computer or browser saw their advertisements and determine which advertisements are clicked.

I hope I am not the only person who realizes how painfully obvious this is. 7000$ is no skin off of either company’s back. I will not join your stupid group.