Rock on gold dust woman...

It's been awhile.

But in the spirit of the holidays, I present a Christmas tradition. The year in review post. Always fun to write, and then read the ones from before. My how things change........



1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Moved in with a boy.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Last year, I wrote that I wanted to take better care of myself and eat better. I think I've actually been more sickly and unhealthy this year than ever, so i guess that I failed at that one. This year, I have no idea. I never keep any resolutions anyway.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but I do know a lot of pregnant folk at the moment.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes. It was weird to go to a funeral for somebody my own age.

5. What countries did you visit?
None.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
A car! Or, on a less tangible level some stability inside this head of mine. Um.. not in the I'm crazy sense, but more in the.... I don't know how to articulate this fully sense.

7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I'm bad with specific dates, but I would say grad day it up there

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Graduating university

9. What was your biggest failure?
School. And not being true to some things in my life.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yeah. But lets not get into it.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tickets to Europe.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
My friends. All of them. I love you.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Some people who I thought were important in my life, but really weren't.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Saving for my trip and booze.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
EUROPE!

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
Drawing a blank on this one as always. I can't pin down my experiences to just one song. The Band maybe? I don't know.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier or sadder? . ii. thinner or fatter? .iii. richer or poorer?
happier, thinner, much poorer

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Hanging out and partying. Reading for fun and artistic endeavors, such as writing, painting and photography.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Working

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Who knows this year. It's going to be a different one for sure.

As always, question 21 is missing for some unknown reason.

22. Did you fall in love in 2007?
Yes

23. How many one-night stands?
None. I am a committed lady these days

24. What was your favorite TV program?
Pure shit TV. I'm actually pretty embarrassed about it.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Hating requires a lot of energy. Disappointment is a much more apt term.

26. What was the best book you read?
None! Ha! I am a lazy fucker. I can't even remember the last full book I read.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I rediscovered a lot of old classics.

28. What did you want and get?
Bagged me a man, a nice apartment and a trip to Europe.

29. What did you want and not get?
Lots of money

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Again, I can never keep track of this stuff.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Three-way joint birthday party at the Shoeshop. We had a stolen birthday cake, all our friends and a bottle of Dom.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A smoother summer

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
Confused

34. What kept you sane?
Friends, my vices, yoga (how gay is that!?)

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I actually vowed to stop perpetuating the cult of celebrity, and so I stopped reading gossip blogs, and limited my entertainment TV watching and the like.

36. What political issue stirred you the most
The justice system? I don't know..

37. Who did you miss?
Friends both near and far.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Most of the kids

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007:
I think i need to sort this out before i can learn from it.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I got nothing....

Pistols and daggers and the murdering braggers

To some I guess this may seem like an ode to dissatisfaction, it's not.. not really at least. It's not meant in an accusatory tone, or as something directed to any one person in particular. It is simply how I feel, and thus I write about it.

Ooohhh a disclaimer.....

Anyway...

Lately I am filled with this almost overwhelming urge to just pack my bags, sell my stuff, say fuck the consequences and just leave. Just go and get out of dodge. I'm talking not call anybody, not tell anybody, leave only a note of assurance that I will be ok and just leave. I just feel like I have been inherently unhappy in my surrounding for a really long time. That is not to say that I have been consistently unhappy with my life and those who are in it; but its more like a deep rooted thing I guess.
I feel kind of stuck here, I live this weird sort of dual life under the thumb of my parents whom I feel obligated to pander and please. I have to do well in school, not fuck up, keep my life together when most of the time all I want to do is go and be incredibly irresponsible, and make stupid choices and abuse my body with drugs and alcohol and worry about the consequences of my actions later.
This is a feel that has been brewing for 4 years, essentially ever since I moved out. I often say, and truly feel, that I am the oldest 22 year old around. I should be doing stupid things now while I still can, before it's time to "grow up". Yet, I can't even smoke a joint with my friends because my deep rooted anxiety takes ahold of me and erases all traces of rational thought, leaving me panic ridden and uncomfortable and inevitable even more miserable.

Today I was having a conversation about my parents favourite topic: What are you going to do with your life; explain to me right now, providing logical and well thought out plans, both financially and logistically, in 100 words or less, so we can then proceed to shoot everything down and make you feel like a child again. Ready, and go.

I have never in my life been allowed to get into trouble and get myself out of it. I live this weird independent yet so incredibly dependent existence. It's starting to feel like I am actually being suffocated.

There is simultaneously so much in my life right now that I am incredibly unhappy with and yet there are other parts that I am so overwhelmingly happy with that its such a strange feeling. I want to leave and not be noticed, yet actually doing it would be crippling.

What is there to even do about this? I feel like I am running into, backing up, and running into a wall; like my wheels are stuck in the mud... like... you get the metaphoric references. I get so angsty when I get frustrated. The only thing left to do is dye my hair black and comb it into my eyes....... I already have the angles down...

Truth is I'm having trouble just carrying ooooonnnn

So when one has nearly 3000 songs on their computer its easy to forget/ overlook new music, and apparently I was on some sort of country honk rock and roll kick, or I wasn't and didn't realize it. Anyway, the point of the story is I just found a song with Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo on vocals and Wilco as the backing band that is totally old country and I'm pretty much totally in love with it. Don't be alarmed by the topic of this entry. I am fine and having no trouble carrying on. It's a lyric from said song.

Now that we have that out of the way...

1 week of school remains, all that stand between me and a relaxing 3 week break before summer school is 3 papers. One I have the rough draft done and a bunch of comments/ ideas to finish it, another i have a detailed outline, and another is only 6 pages long. Here in lies the problem. I am one lazy motherfucker. I really want to be finished with all this shite by April 10. Then I would have bearly a month of pre summer vaca, vaca. I think that would be amazing. I have 3 months of Vogue to catch up on. Not to mention cuntless hours of sleep, movies and things around the apartment to do. Stay tuned to see if I can buckle down and get things accomplished.......

Part of this is dependent upon how confident I am in my academic abilities. Part of my weekly school routine now involves feeling intensely competent at one moment and then incredible dumb at the next. It's been a rollercoaster ride this semester in regards to my smartness. It's not a plea for ego boosting, it's more a reflection.

I've also been thinking about writing more and more as an art form. Its not much different from creating a painting or writing a song, the medium is inherently what changes. There's mediocre art, music and writing, but what takes great works to the next level? There's technique in art, theory and a grasp of rhythm, scales etc in music, and sentence structure and grammer in writing, but what else? A song can be technically solid and still suck, same with a painting, if you don't have the inherent something else to make something good great, then what do you do? Do you have to be content to strive for what amounts to mediocrity, or can you learn to be better? Often when I write things it just happens. I don't consciously think about it, the words fall onto the page. The more structured I get the worse it comes out sounding. I also have a very basic understanding of grammer and sentence structure, I know the basics, but if I were asked to articulate it to somebody I would have no diea how to explain the basic concepts of language and sentence structure. It Just Happens. I just do it, and somehow it always seems to work out.

Part of what really excites me about writing is getting to play with language and see how fluid it is. Also at the same time, whenever I write, there is a small part of me that has Orwell's Politics in the English Language in the back of my head the whole time.

Part of what worries me the most about next year (and the next year, depending on how things work out) is not being in an envoronment that constantly challenegs my mind and writing skills. Left to my own devices I will read magazines and trashy novels exclusively. I don't want to let my mind get fat and out of shape. But I also feel mentally like I am on the home stretch of a 100mile marathon and I need to rest my aching feet and recover a bit.
It's a quandry for sure....

Time for my pre-dinner cocktail hour now....
yeah mint bailey's.....

I'm going to make a lot of money then I'm going to quit this crazy scene

Essay time, which of course really means update time.

I can say with considerable authority that this has been the worst spring break in the history of spring breaks. It's been one thing after another. It's been epically bad really, there's been floods, death(ok just my fish...), destruction, injury etc etc.

So now here I sit eating chips, or rather kind of sucking on them because my teeth hurt, attempting to struggle my way through a 12 page rough draft essay on why highways are American culture and why American culture is highways.

I've been watching movies lately, and by watching movies I mean I've been falling asleep halfway through a lot of movies lately.

Of particular note, Where the Buffalo Roam which chronicles the antics of Hunter S. Thompson who died just over 2 years ago during Spring Break when I was in Toronto. Of course, I feel asleep about 30min into it, but it was good. Seeing Bill Murray as HST was weird, as I am a huge fan of Fear and Loathing and Johnny Depp does a realyl fucking good job in that movie.

I also fell asleep during American Pyscho, which for what I was awake for seemed pretty damn good. It was meant to be a social critique of the 1980s, but I think it's really apt for today as well. It made me think more than any movie has for a long time, which is pretty cool.

I also finally saw Little Miss Sunshine. Hilarious, and dark. Which is super cool.

Musically, I watched Almost Famous (for the 98273th time) and realized how much I love the soundtrack for that movie and commend Cameron Crowe for spending an ass load of money on the music budget. As a result, I decided to download a lot of the songs from it. One of them of course is Joni Mitchell's River. Now, I realize as a Canadian I have a certain obligation or something to listen to Joni Mitchell. I kind of equate her with Margaret Atwood for some reason. And like Margaret Atwood, I have not paid a lot of attention to Joni Mitchell's music. But also like Margaret Atwood, what little bits of her work I have looked into, I really enjoy.

But especially River. I am really digging River right now.

I also got a lot of Rod Stewart..... but lets not talk about that. And Elton John... Because I also realized my immense appreciation for his stuff. Well, some of it atleast.


I feel really uninspired lately. I don't want to do my readings, I don't want to write my essays, even though the major essays I have to do are like super incredibly cool and inspiring topics to write about. I just feel like I can't be bothered. My idea of a rocking good night is being in bed before 1am...
Here's the most shocking revelation, I haven't been to a bar in over 2 weeks, nor have I been drunk in probably longer than that. Even more shocking is the fact that I haven't been to the Alehouse in over a month.

I need a reading week from reading week.

Geezers Need Excitement

So, the other day, this article caught my attention on the CBC homepage. I suggest checking it out, but for those of you too lazy to, I understand. I will summerize because its a key piece of information for my intended rant. It's essentially about this new age of hipster parents who still dress, behave and consume as though they were still in their 20s, they're just doing it with bigger paycheques. They're getting married and having kids and are just totally wallowing in how ironic it is that they have kids. This article in particular goes on about alternative parenting websites that are pretty much dedicated to have stupid kids are and stuff.

I mean, before you're all like "but Mel, I thought YOU didn't like kids either?" allow me to clarify. Kids are fine, I wish them no harm. I've never been around many kids except for in the instances that I'm going to outline below, and that folks, is why I am skeptical of kids... but after reading the CBC article as well as this article I think I am finally realizing some things.

I guess what this sort of stems from is the presence of kids in places where they just shouldn't be. The second article I linked mentions a "mommy and me" happy hour at some New York bar. Seriously? Fuck off. I mean really.

My big beef though, and the thing that I've had the most experience with is kids at coffee shops like starbucks and the like. One of my all time favourite ways to spend a Saturday morning is to get a copy of the Saturday Globe and Mail and a grande non-fat vanilla late and sit in Starbucks and read the paper. It's an excellent way to start the day. The Saturday G and M has the style and travel sections as well as cartoons and coffee is delicious at any time of the day. But what stops me from doing this every Saturday morning is knowing that while enjoying my coffee and newspaper there will be a proliferation of snot nosed children screaming and running around while their yuppy parents talk about yuppy parent things.

There is nothing more obnoxious in this world than parents who take their children somewhere and then because they are confined within a set space think that there is no need to pay attention to them and discipline them. It's the same thing as working in a restaurant in the summer time. Inevitably there are those parents who just let their kids run wild in the restaurant for people to trip over and get annoyed with.

And so I always wondered who these people were... and now I know thanks to these two articles.

The NY Magazing article talks about this recent trend in "grups" as a statement of cultural reclaiming. Gen Xers are refusing to grow up in a statement of rebellion against their parents. Who wouldn't want to never "grow up"? Or who wouldn't want to grow up just enough to have lots of money and be able to buy expensive things will still being able to dress and act like a 21 ear old? Fucking sign me up. But wait...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most 20 year olds don't still play with lego or barbies everyday and colour and play outside. Who wouldn't want to escape the responsibilities of paying bills, going to work and going to school for a slice of childhood carefree living? I know that I would trade all the daily troubles and responsibilities of my life for a step back into to carefree living if I could. But the fact is, we grew up. It's what happens. As you get older you're supposed to leave behind certain things and find joy and fulfullment in others.

It's just a very interesting subset of people emerging. Who hasn't thought that they would like to be the "cool" mom or dad. I know I sure have. Nobody wants to be the strict, obnoxious, over-protective parent. These people are just taking it a step further. What are their kids going to be like?

The future is not in good hands.

we scratch our eternal itch, a twentieth centruy bitch

So....

My calm feeling and happiness with this semester at school lasted for a shorter time than I had predicted. I am officially no longer graduating in May.

I'm only taking 3 classes this semester and then I will hopefully pick up the other 2 credits I need in the early summer session.

Also, I'm no longer going to have a double major in English. I hate English. And if I didn't speak it, I would never want to have anything to do with it whatsoever anymore.

Essentially, my emphasis on history over english for the past 3 and a half years ended up putting me in an extreme disadvantage when it came down to fourth year seminars. It's not often that I feel stupid for extended periods of time when reading things or discussing things in class. Obviously, this is not a feeling that I enjoy as I know that I'm not stupid. Annnyway to make a big long sob story short, I just don't have the background reading and interprative skills to deal with being in an intense english setting.

Also, my intense urge to scream things like, "are you fucking kidding me?" and "fuck off, it doesn't have a hidden meaning" and the likes alerted me to the fact that I would much rather just read books for the sake of enjoying reading rather than have to deconstruct everything to the point of absurdity.

I'm pretty sure queer theory didn't exist in the 18th century, and I'm pretty sure neither did feminst discourse. Fuck off. It's a story. Not an allegory for the modern condition of life etc etc.

Phew.

Anyway... the support of this decision has been pretty clutch and I no longer feel like I have a bag of rocks on my shoulders at all times. I actually felt 100lbs lighter when I web dropped my classes.

In short, this is a good thing. A minor setback, but a good thing.

My university time has been anything but a smooth ride, so why should my final year be any different?

And so, in celebration (i guess?) of my new found freedom from the chains of a thousand stupid words in 20 stupid books I went on a bender this weekend and had a really great time.

I started Wednesday and finished on Saturday and I had a really fucking good time.

Me and Kate bought tickets for the Canadian figure skating championships this weekend, so from Thursday-Saturday I spent aprox. 7 hours a day in an arena watching skating and drinking beer.

Thursday night we discovered that it was possible to watch skating, and drink reasonably priced draft all at the same time and so by the time we left the Metre Centre to go for a late dinner we were pretty intoxicated, although that lack of ability for clear judgement caused us much agony, I believe everything will be all right in the end.

Friday was more skating, and then getting all fancied up and attending a James Bond themed party where we got kicked out in the most intense fashion I have ever experienced. I'm talking more intense then in high school when the cops would crash a party and come into the house looking for underage drinkers. Annnyway... long story short, it turned into a really good night, of which I only have a vague and somewhat disjointed recollection of.

Saturday sucked. I don't remember the last time I was that hung over, and I actually had the shakes until I managed to consume a Caeser.. then I felt better....

Anyway wicked weekend... I am super looking forward to school now. 3 history classes, class 2 days a week... Rock on.

Then magnificenty we will float into the mystic

When I graduate univeristy I am going to write a letter to the fine folks who make Fruit Loops and tell them how their cereal has fed me for 4 years and no doubt contributed to my successes.

The end is in sight, and despite my near temper tantrum actions I don't think this semester is going to be as bad as I had built it up to be.

Of coure, ask me again in a month when all my first assignments are due and I am over worked and over tired.

I'm taking an entire class on Victorian exhibitions in Canada, and I'm going to write a long winded and creepy essay on Victorian era freakshows.
I also am making my first step towards becoming a real academic by presenting a paper at an academic conference that I was invited to partake in. I really hope I like it, because if not my already shakey life plans will once again be ruined; or altered at the very least.

Life is good I think. I'm feeling pretty content, but also teetering on the edge of minor freakouts at pretty much the drop of a hat. I'm pretty anxious about what April will bring, but more so than that I am terrified about August. I mostly just don't want to move my life across a great distance again. All of my stuff fits perfectly inside this apartment that I miss more than I can describe when I am not here. This place is home more than any other place I've been in recent memory. I did a small dance when I got back here after Christmas vaca. True story.

I also like this city, despite the fact that it rains pretty much every day. It occured to me yesterday during the monsoon that was going on that it should have been a massive grind-the-city-to-a-halt snow storm, but instead I just got kind of soaked and cranky.

I also realize that come september, most of the people who make my life so amazing will be leaving to see what else is out there and that staying around might invole the same feeling as being at a party well after its reached its peak. You know, that awkward ahh shit I should have left an hour ago feeling but now I feel obligated to stay kind of feeling.

I guess I have a lot of decisions to make, but I also keep telling myself to stop thinking about it and stop keeping myself up at night because these aren't the kind of things that I can solve in the immediate future. This is most definately a wait it out and see type of situation, which drives me nuts because as much as I like the chaos and spontanity that usually defines my life, I also like to have the answers. I like to know whats going on in the big picture even though I like, and thrive on, the confusion of the moment.

Despite my previous ode to Fruit Loops, I've actually been doing a fairly good job of sticking to my New Years resolution of eating better thus far. Which is cool, because some of my previous resolutions have lasted all of a day (if that even).

And that about sums that up.