So It's Your Party, And You Can Cry If You Want To...

...but do you know where your drink is?

The Vancouver Police have just issued a warning for people in the club scene to be more vigilant not only about their drinks, but their drugs, and, yes, their bodies, too.

This is important for anyone of clubbing age to read, regardless of your town, and for parents to get informed about, so as to enlighten yer kiddies. This may come off as preachy, but whatever. I know whereof I speak, so 'scuse me while I step upon my soapbox.

It turns out that the local gangs in our fair city have been getting better and better entwined in the club scenes, including all-ages parties, and are getting their drugs out there with more success than ever before.

Seems lots of folks are trying glam drugs like "Special K" (ketamine, aka horse tranquilizers used by vets to, yes, knock out horses... sure you want that in ya?), ecstacy, crystal meth (made with lovely things like sulphur, Drano, etc) that they either a) don't understand the power of, or b) aren't watching the dosages properly, or c) have no clue about the potential damage they're doing.

As a result, the number of sexual assaults seems to be skyrocketing of late. The cops say more and more club-related sexual assaults are being reported every single weekend, and with Halloween being one of the biggest party nights of the year, they're putting the word out there to make sure people clue in to how wrong it can go when you're mixing heavy boozing with designer drugs you may or may not know the strength of. (By the way, cops speculate that only about 6% of sexual assaults that occur nationally in Canada get reported, so stats on what's going on would be really inaccurate.)

It doesn't take a lot to get your drugs or drinks spiked. I've had both happen to me. Someone sent me on an acid trip from hell a decade ago when I thought I was just smoking some happy dope. Hours and hours later, I finally came down, hiding in a corner behind some speakers, freaking the fuck out. Considering I was thousands of klicks away from friends and family, at a university newspaper/writer's convention across the country, things could've gone much worse. Fortunately, all I remember is just being incredibly paranoid and scared. It popped my LSD cherry.

I can't say the same fortune came my way the time I blacked out after someone spiked my booze at a party a few years back. All I remember is it being eight in the morning and waking up on a couch with all my clothes wet. I have no idea what happened that night, but I did have a guy apparently joke around with me as soon as I awoke (my legs were over his on the couch) and tell me "You were fabulous last night", and while he said he was kidding, part of me knew the last thing I remembered before waking up was being fascinated by the eight foot-long turtles scurrying around in the bathtub across from the toilet and how much that fucked me up, and how much potential there was that something could have happened, and I'd never remember.

Apparently I was doing hot tub tricks later or something. I was, evidently, the life of the party. Pity I remember nothing. Fortunately, though, it seems most people could account for my whereabouts for most of the night... lucky I have a big, fun personality.

My point is this, and you can call me Mama Steff, if you wanna, but date rapes happen all the time. Stupid shit happens all the time. Drinking a lot is way easy to do, and mixing booze with anything else can really fuck you up. If you're in a club, never EVER sit your drink down, and do NOT give it to anyone else to hold onto, especially if you know they want to fuck you. It's so easy to dose you and take advantage, so just keep the power in YOUR hands by hanging on to your own drinks, eh?

Then there's the small matter of drugs. Me, I like drugs. They're fun. But the only drugs I do are the ones grown by someone, preferably Dead head type, who chats to his plants and 'shrooms in a hydroponic greenhouse, thanks. I've tried the chemical shit, and bad things have happened every time. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack on Scooby Snacks, seriously. I almost went to a hospital. (Ephedrine, mushrooms, and some other little helpers all mixed together, sold in a pack of six pills, and some serious bang for the buck.) But I stick to the organics now.

You never know what you're getting from a dealer. I love these people who just blindly trust dealers. They're drug dealers. By their very nature they're technically not trustworthy, you know? And you wanna assume everything's peachy they're giving you? Hell, I hear they're grinding up glass and mixing it in with dope in the UK now, in order to get the weight up and sell you less dope ergo make more cash by hanging onto more of their stash. Powdered glass looks a lot like THC crystals, I hear tell.

Then the trouble with chemicals is, it's pretty easy to fuck up the mix and get the balance off. You can't labour under the assumption that the drug you're doing this weekend's the same potency as last weekend's. And an hour later, when its full power kicks in, it's impossible to turn back the clock on your dosage quantity, y'know? Hindsight 20-20 really sucks when you're riding a high that's too much bang for your buck.

The trouble with drug users is, too fucking many of you are too ignorant for your own good. If you don't know what your drug is, what it's made of, how it's made, who made it, and how it got into your hands, then you shouldn't be taking it. Seriously. If you're doing Special K and you don't know the ramifications, then you're a fucking idiot. Learn something about it before you take that risk.

I've studied every drug I've taken, and the ones I've never touched are with very, very good reason.

And anyone who does crystal meth is a fucking idiot, whether they're ignorant or not. Out of all the drugs out there, there's no worse one to fuck with. And that's in my humble little opinion, of course, but keep in mind I live in Vancouver, where drugs have taken their serious toll on our little populace, and we have 30 square blocks of one of the worst drug problems in the world, where crystal meth and heroin dominate the scene. And I also work in the film industry and have worked on far too many documentaries on how low one can go on meth. Bad, bad shit. Learn about this shit, seriously. And if you're a parent, teach your kids.

Party up on Halloween. Just watch what you're doing, be careful about your choices, and don't get raped. If you don't think it's gonna happen to you, don't kid yourself. It happens far more than you know, and about every woman, and some of the men, I know have had it happen to them.

Oh, and Happy Halloween. BOO!

(PS: While I like dope, a disturbing study has recently come to light in which it seems there might be a link between pot usage and schizophrenia. Too soon to know much, as it's new information, but it's something to be very wary of.)

The Swirl of City Life and the Deception of It All

So, like, HI. I thought I should just pop in and say HULLO to, well, my trusty minions. It's the least you deserve, right?

I felt compelled to do some overtime today, which means I'm staring headlong into a six-day week. So uncool. But the gods of fate scoffed at me and handed me a broken hearing aid last week, which I've had to shell out $300 I had earmarked for computer upgrades. Which means I muddle through with my bogged down, overworked iBook for a few weeks longer.

Ah, well. At least the cash was around, eh? Not the ideal expenditure. I mean, how unsexy. Hearing aid repairs. Sigh. At least I can hear conversations and do my job, which is closed captioning, which means hearing conversations. Interesting circle, that.

(I've worn hearing aids most of my life, meaning 32 of 34 years, and most people need to be told I wear 'em, so they're not those clunky big ones. And it gives me an interesting insight to life, I guess.)

Last night I hung with some friends who have decided that living paycheque to paycheque here in the city just wasn't working anymore. Vancouver's one of the most expensive places to live in North America, and the most expensive in Canada. If you're making $90,000, it's a great town, but under $40K means you're saving pennies for a special occasion, if not just a box of Ramen noodles to get you by during more lean times.

(According to the 2007 EIU report on the world's most expensive cities to live in, Vancouver is second only to New York for expensive lifestyles here in North America. For anyone doubting how cosmopolitan this town is, you got another fuckin' thing coming. My perennial red line in my bank account is just proof of that pudding, thanks, but unlike all the other people who've clued in to how gorgeous and fucking awesome this town is, *I* was born and raised here. It's in my blood. Don't I get a discount or something? Ding the johnny-come-latelies, fer god's sake.)

My friends had bought a house for around $300K and then flipped it within 2 years for $560K, and have fled the city to live in rural Ontario, where they're gonna own a place 4 times the size, on 3.5 acres of land, for $250K.

Yeah, this is a great town to live in, but it really makes you question what's important. Is it the $25+ entree dinners in swank places that have sexy names for martinis that are really, truly, just vodka served with juice for the lofty price of $9 to $12, or can you find your contentment at a cheaper price?

In chatting with 'em and their realizing how nigh the change is, from living just blocks from what's considered the "counter-culture capital of Canada" (by Lonely Planet) and one of the coolest streets in the city, if not the country or continent, Commercial Drive, aka The Drive, where everything your heart desires (that isn't provided by a chain store) can be found, to living in a big-ass house that's 45 minutes from the nearest small-ish town, and a car ride from even the meagrest of necessities, I happened to mention something I'd heard once that struck home hard for them and sort of made 'em nod in agreement.

This wise dude I chatted up on a ferry back from the Sunshine Coast once said, and I'm paraphrasing and dressing it up, but along the lines of: "Cities are built for distraction. They're there, chock full of things to do, places to be, people to see, so as to keep you from realizing just how much you're feeling disconnected from everything you know's important, but that you can't name with words. It distracts you from your emptiness and your unhappiness, long enough it seems until it one day just hits you."

So my friends are bravely heading off to a place far from anywhere, a place where, as Canadian poet Robert Service once said, "the silence bludgeons you dumb" -- a place where they'll finally find the time and solace to confront any demons they have, and unleash the happiness that hasn't known how to come out in a busy, chaotic world like the one we're in.

Every now and then, I'm wishing I'd be doing the same. Me, I've done that. I've lived in a small town up in the Yukon and know what community means, and harsh climates that force you to interact in new and different ways. There are days down here in the city, a city being taken apart and rebuilt for the world stage before the Olympics land on us in 2010, and there'll be no turning back for this metropolis -- 2 more years of non-stop construction everywhere the eye can see -- when I just realize how soulless it all seems, how trying just keeping up to the pace of it all really does get.

Yeah, some nights the notion of living on one of the islands here on the coast, away from the madding crowd, is more than my imagination can bear. Some part of me, though, still really digs the distraction and the balance of nature this town offers. There'll come a day, though. I'm almost certain there'll come a day.

Meanwhile, Monday morning's just hours away. Have an awesome week, peoples.

And NOW For Something Completely Different!

I don't get enough chances to rant around here. :) I love a rant! I was all excited when my all-too-often ignored email address told me there was a new comment a minute ago, and I noticed this fucking right-wing rant about "decency" and "it's not too late" to "teach your children" about "morals" in this "artificial intelligence" era and all.

And I couldn't help it. I responded after deleting the fucking propaganda. Me, I figure propaganda is a tool of war-raging and religious zealots, and has no place on my blogs. So. Here's the rant I wrote. And if you want to read what I humbly think is one of my funnier posts, on the war no less, go here.

Whups! Commercial's over, and I'm back to the hilarious Halloween edition of Grey's Anatomy.

Oh, dear! My bad! I forgot that I have some nice wine a-waitin' me as well. I decided to dote on my smuggery this fine eve. Before, that is, I haul my seriously hurtin' ass onto a bike and enter a world-- no, an expanding universe (the budding cosmologists out there will chortle at my humour) of pain in the morning. Maybe I'll need wine before it's all said and done tomorrow night, too. Hmm! Doable. ;)

(Ed. Note: Why two spammers have chosen this post as the point of entry baffles me. I have much, much more morally questionable work.)

***

To the fuckhead right-wing nutjobbies that keep spamming this post with their whorey little tirades, FUCK OFF. I will delete you. Every fucking time. Done, like dinner. Now fuck off.

If you have a real comment, something you came up with spur-of-the-moment, regardless of your politics, I'd love to hear it, because I'm open to discussion.

I am not, however, open for propaganda or bullshit spam-jobs by people trying to brainwash the rest of the world to their deluded, "won this in a box of Crackerjacks!" fucked-up mentality about how the world "really is". Join the human race, you fucking twits.

And to the rest of you, bring on your comments, and I will certainly engage with you in a respectful, open manner. Anyone trying to brainwash the populace, however, meets with my bitchin' delete key.

Thanks for playing nicely with others.

Spilling: The Low-Downon My Weight Going Down Low

So, in the comments down below, I was asked by R&R how I'm losing weight so that other people might benefit. (So, you might wanna read the posting below this if you've not already.)

Here's the deal. At the end of August, I had a physical that went much worse than I expected. I was shocked that my blood pressure was still perfect, and I haven't gotten around to the bloodtesting for the cholesterol, but in weighing me and checking my asthma, my doc gave me a stern lecture and told me I had to get my shit under control.

I spent the next month still working the job that was doing all the damage -- in just three or four months, I gained back about 20 of the 45 pounds I'd lost over the last couple years. That original weight was lost just by exercising. I've never in my life lost weight by eating better.

Until now.

On my 34th birthday on September 29th I realized I had eaten a pound of butter in 10 days. I staggered and couldn't believe I'd been getting THAT bad. Then I thought about it, and yeah, I could in fact believe it. I hadn't weighed myself since the doc's visit, but I'm pretty sure I was headed higher on the weight count. I didn't have the guts to face that, so my numbers I'm going by are from the end of August, though I suspect I might've gone up a bit from there.

When I ended the disconnect from reality and really looked at how I'd been eating, I realized I was headed for a bad, bad place, and a stupid place, and that I was (am) very, very fortunate my health wasn't worse than it was (is). My mother was a reasonably healthy woman, and she died of cancer at 57. My father is morbidly obese and nearly died of diabetic complications last year. I presently am pretty close to morbidly obese myself. That ain't no good, and it ain't gonna be the case a year from now, if even a few months from now.

So, what'd I do? I stopped buying butter and margarine. That's pretty much all I did for the first two weeks. No butter, no margarine. Without those, I didn't feel like having much bread, so consumption of bread dropped an easy 75%. And without butter, my favourite breakfast -- eggs, toast, and sometimes a breakfast meat -- became less addictive and I found myself switching to granola and soy milk.

Then I started being more practical. Instead of the huge full sammich from my fave sammich place, I switched to half a sammich and opted for the heavy dark rye bread, and it was filling enough. Now, over the last week and a half, I've begun increasing the veggies in my diet. So, in about 3.5 weeks, I've dropped at least 12 lbs (but considering that was my weighing myself after a huge meal and three cups of coffee... not too shabby at all).

What am I not doing? I'm not counting calories. I'm not clocking things or doing a food diary. I'm eating well, I'm eating moderate portions, and when I wanna be bad, I have either a rice krispie square or a low-fat cake at work. I am not, however, buying things that are considered "better alternatives" to dessert, like sorbet or frozen yogurt. If I have a "dessert", it's pineapple or other fruit, and none of the canned fruit shit. Real food 24/7.

I have also, however, seriously realized how much food was an emotional crutch, and that it was filling voids that I need to fill in more positive ways, and quite possibly insulating myself from the world at large.*

What am I still doing? Well, I ordered pizza last weekend, and I'm still drinking the red wine I love. At 80 calories a glass, it's better than most juices or pops, and it does do good things for us. Not to mention I'm just a lush and I roll like that. But if I have a bad meal each week and a bottle or so of wine, so be it. I'm not trying to live the perfect life like some intense health-nut -- I'm just trying to eat well most of the time, and I'm being cognizant of what bad choices have done to me in the past, and being responsible for the outcome of my choices... which I'm thinking about BEFORE I act, rather than after.

I'm only now starting an exercise plan, so, my goal is to lose another 20 pounds by Christmas, and I think it's gonna be a lot easier than it's ever been before. And I think 20 pounds is a conservative goal. Highly conservative, given the last three weeks.

Life's better without butter, I guess. But I'm not "on a diet". FUCK diets. Diets suck. They're bad for you. I'm trying to get on a program I can follow for the rest of my life. When I go out for breakfast, you're fucking right I'll have buttered toast. At home, though, I know it's something I get destructive with. So, yeah, I'll be cutting that out for the foreseeable future, and perhaps longterm. But I'm not depriving myself. I'm just making sure I ask myself "Why is it I want to eat that, and will it really make me feel better when I get up in the morning, or is it just a Band-aid for something I need to face in a better way?"

Guess I just woke the fuck up. Will that work for others? Shrug. Gonna depend on how honest people are with themselves about their motivations, and how bad off the diet was in the first place. My food choices WERE horrible. Not as bad as some people's, but they were bad enough, given my family history.

About that * up there: I'm gonna try to write something that really mines deeply my connection to food and why I think now I was allowing myself to be so "weighed" down, in more ways than one. I'll save that for the coming week sometime, when I'm ready to really crack that nut.

In the meantime, I'm just really damned happy and proud of myself for breaking the yoke on what was always a pretty heavy load. The future is looking good, and I can't wait for the thrill I'm gonna have when I reach all my goals. "When", no "ifs" here. Not anymore. If I could lose 45 pounds while eating the way I used to eat, I can't wait to see what happens now. :)

(And I do not feel like I'm on a diet, or that I'm depriving myself. I'm re-educating myself about food and learning how to cook seemingly decadent dishes that are deceptively healthy. 'sides, I'm an awesome cook. Making food taste good is what I do, but now I do it healthily. It's about choice and empowering yourself to know better. I was always very ignorant about health. Until now.)

My Pat-on-the-Back Posting

So, at the end of August, I had a very, very depressing physical with my doctor. I'd gained back some 15 lbs of the 45 or so I've lost in the last couple years. I was wheezing, had been sick for a few weeks and would get sick again three weeks later, too, and just generally felt like shit.

My doctor gave me a very stern "this is your reality check" kind of lecture, told me I knew how to reverse it, I'd done it before, and it was imperative I did it again now, or the slippery slope would go downhill very fast.

I haven't been weighing myself because I don't think health is about a number, it's about feeling good, having energy, and having a good attitude and a willingness to work hard to get where you want to go.

That said, I weighed myself this morning after scarfing down a monster bowl of oatmeal and three cups of delivious coffee, and I'm officially down 12 lbs, and that's without really getting fired up on a workout program... the first time I've ever succeeded in losing weight via changing my eating plan.

Ooh. This is gonna get good. :) I officially began My Nemesis today... a 15-floor highrise down the street that I'm climbing stairs at. My calves will hate me by the end of today, but right now I'm embracing the smug.

Have an excellent day. I'll write about something less me-centric in the next day or so.

Then Again... A Fine End to a Very Long Day

It's amazing how far a turn-around your mindset can have in the space of a day, eh? (This is a hefty post-script re: the posting below this... Maybe start there and finish here.)

So far today I've managed to generate four large bags of garbage, and four bags for donating... I'm not yet done, but I've tackled about 60% of the clearing-out-of-old that I'd planned to get around to in the coming weeks. Instead of depressed and sad, like I was earlier when I posted, I'm now feeling smug and very can-do about getting through the rest of this.

I'm leaving the worst of it for some night down the line when the rain's seeping into everything in the Wet Coast world and I've a bottle of not cheap, but good red wine, and I can cook a fantastic meal for myself... then I'll put on the memorial CD we made for my mom's funeral, and read all the things I've been scared to face. But I'll do it in the spirit of celebrating her life, not mourning her death, because if anyone appreciated great food, great wine, and good music, it was surely Mom.

Difference is, by then I'll have sorted through everything else and I'll know that's the last I need to face... ever. Ever. That's powerful. That's awesome. That's a night not too far off, then. But I think I'm ready. And I know I'll be ready once I finish off the rest of this stuff (which I aim to do this week, not "in coming weeks", because I know there's not a lot left to sort). Nothing like finally purging the past to own your future.

But I know where the box is, and I've put it within reach. It's nice to finally be achieving something I've run from for the better part of a decade. Yay. :)

A Heady Start to a Day

I began my morning with watching a movie called Shooting Dogs, the antithesis of Hotel Rwanda. Instead of surving, 2,500 Rwandans who sought safety at a school/UN base met their death in slaughter when the UN troops stationed there were pulled back.

The film ended with stills of people working on the project, from third director to wardrobe assistant, and notations listing how many family members each of them lost in the genocide that was never really called a genocide until the slaughters ended and corpses were counted.

In keeping with stills loaded with history, my living room was coincidentally littered with the dozen or so photo albums I have that were my mother's and my family's, things I'm to put away today after having to remove them all from my entertainment armoire when I switched TVs with my brother on Friday night (long story there). Against my better judgment, I flipped through one or two of the books and suddenly was awash with that muddied sense of loss coupled with "where are they now" wonder that comes from years gone by without contact with people of old.

It's so hard to process sometimes all the memories and people we pass by in life, and it's harder still to realize in the present just how distant the faces around us might become in the years ahead of us... how little we hang on to those around us as time slips past us all. Sometimes the memories are dominated with betrayals and lies, and that, too, is a hard thing to process when you're staring into a smiling face clouded with ignorance of the things to come.

Beyond the photo albums, though, lie even more haunting connections to my past I need to delve into and purge. My recently set goals include finally going through my storage unit so that I may get rid of those things holding me down and reckon with the things I've been trying to avoid. Paperwork, mementoes, oddities, these things all clutter my life right now, and they're things I need to finally get past and get over.

Coming to terms with the life that's left you behind is a hard thing to do, and doing it at the wrong time can hurt you more than it'll heal. The last time I began sifting through things, the first thing I came upon was the eulogy I wrote for and delivered at my mother's funeral. I came upon a few more things immediately thereafter, including my mother's journal, and the first page I flipped to happened to be one that spoke of her great unhappiness and her lack of desire to continue "the good fight" that encompasses most of our lives. Needless to say, I entered a period of fuctedness that consumed me for the next couple of weeks and ebbed into the months that followed. I wasn't ready to go there, and I certainly didn't need to know how unhappy my mother was in the years before her death.

But I'd like to think I'm strong enough to go there now. I'd like to think I need to know, I need to move past it. I'd like to think I'm ready for a future and strong enough to endure my own past. But am I? I won't know until really dive into all that clutter. The reality is, every little thing holds a memory, a tenable tie to my past. Every little thing poses a challenge, a psychotherapy exercise in and of itself.

The thing is, though, that the future is here. It has been here for every day I've been waking and breathing, yet I haven't really able to accept that because I've not really allowed my past to fall away from me yet.

Perhaps now it's finally time to do just that.

It ain't, however, gonna be good times. This is going to be a hard few weeks as I tackle piece after piece after piece of the life that was in realization of the life that never is gonna be. When I get to the other side, though, I know I'll have a better understanding of myself and how I've come to be who I am. Shrug. And maybe who I still want to be.

I hate housecleaning, man, but this shit really takes the cake. Sigh.

(Ellen Burstyn, the incredible actress, wrote an autobiography called "Lessons in Becoming Myself", and it's times like these I'm consciously aware I'm becoming more of the myself I want to be, as hard as some periods of change may be and all. We never really stop becoming ourselves, and this journey never really gets easier. It is, however, always interesting.)

Vancouver's Infamous Pedophile, Caught on the Lam

What a couple of days it's been for the newsfolk here in Vancouver. This afternoon, a small twin-engine plane crashed into an apartment building about five minutes from my home. This evening, a 6-person homicide was found in a home in Surrey. And just in the last couple of days, a very controversial arrest was made in Thailand of a pedophile from the Vancouver area who's managed to gain international notoriety as the swirl-faced man in digitally altered images depicting him abusing young boys in Asia.

When the shit gets weird, man, it gets weird.

The pedophile-- oh, sorry, "accused" pedophile-- is an ESL teacher named Christopher Neil who'd travel to Asia both to teach kids English, and I guess when that wasn't fulfilling enough, to sodomize and rape them.

One of the things I'm huge on is personal freedoms. I'm all about doing what you wanna do behind closed doors, but pedophilia makes me wish public floggings were back in vogue. I say string the fucker up and let us at 'em. A little uncouth, perhaps, but if there's anything we ought to hold sacred as long as we damned well want in this cynical, strange world we live in, it's innocence.

Once innocence is lost, it never comes back. Cliche, yes, but true. That's just the sad reality of what "growing up" means. Sooner or later, illusions are shattered. It happens soon enough for all of us, but when some asshole like Christopher Neil saunters in and ceremoniously strips others of that innocence -- whether it's by force or because some starving kid needs a couple nickels to rub together for his dinner, or, as reports say, $15 to rape 'em underaged -- then I say the law needs to answer to it as fast and hard as it can.

Christopher Neil isn't just your garden-variety pedophile. He's one that raped at least 12 boys that we know of (but the speculation is that's just a starting figure... the guy tried to enter the priesthood here in BC, but even the Catholic Church wouldn't take him. Wowzas! Worked with cadets here in Canada, and did a little teaching, too... Investigations are ongoing). He then digitally altered his face in images he proceed to posted on the internet. Interpol finally was able to extrapolate an image from his mangled files, and pasted them worldwide in an attempt to find out who the hell he was. Vive le Photoshop!

Thing is, we don't know the extent to which he violated these kids. One would have to hazard the guess that it had to be pretty severe in order for Interpol to take such a vested interest in this one guy.

Well... Imagine Vancouver's pride to find out this internationally hunted fugitive is one of our own. My, aren't we lucky.

Like I say, I think it'd be a banner day out if we'd string him up on the Art Gallery steps and allow the masses to flog him, but I hear tell that's considered cruel and inhumane. Hmm. Well, like the people say, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander, right?

No worries, though. There's always prison showers. I imagine the Thai ones have a certain exotic flavour but I bet when you get past all that international variety, a prison shower's a prison shower, right? Tsk.

Welcome to crime fighting in the digital age, people. It's nice to know some of the bad guys actually do get caught.

A Brief Look at My Time as The Other Woman

I'm waiting on a storm. A storm named LingLing, to be exact. You gotta love typhoons... they're always given such nifty Asian names. We here in Vancouver don't call this just a "storm", no, this is the much dreaded Pineapple Express. A lovely parting gift sent our way by the fabulous Hawaiian Islands. Days and days of rain, lots of flooding, oodles of soaked-through shoes and out-turned umbrellas. The nasty part's going to be the sustained nasty south-easterly winds... winds from the same unusual direction and with potentially the same impact (hurricane strength) as the ones that devastated this city's world-famous jewel, Stanley Park, last year... razing areas of that park with the same impact as clear-cut logging would've brought. Gonna be decades before that park's all better.*

But that's not what's on my mind tonight. I was watching Grey's Anatomy just now, with the long-awaited confrontation between Torres and Izzie after George finally came clean on cheating on his wife Torres with the hot Izzie. Ah, the drama of it all. Torres called her a "traitorous bitch" for breaking the bond of womanhood and betraying one of her own.

I found myself remembering back to when I was once the "other woman". It was a long, long time ago now. More than a decade. I was young, probably 19, maybe 20.

The thing was, it was a guy I knew had a crush on me for a long while. A couple years, actually. We were friends, more or less. I was always seeing this poet writer guy off and on, occasionally dated during the "off" times, but nothing ever came about with this guy in question 'cos I was always pretty abrupt towards him. He was never really my type, I thought. As time wore on, I started realizing he was pretty cute, but I still wasn't interested. Now, though, he's the type I secretly crave.

Back then, though, all us friends had a day at a beach. I was his ride (which turned out to be true in more ways than one) so we wound up chatting a lot. Next thing you know, there's sunscreen, bare backs, and massages figuring into the picture. Now, I might be putty in a good masseuse's hands, but I can give a hella-good massage myself, which is what pretty much caused the trouble in the first place. Then he had to one-up me, and that's always a good/bad scenario. Then the thought of potentials a la him outweighed the benefits of sitting around for the probables that came with a day at the beach with ze usual suspects.

We high-tailed it back to his place, and that began the next couple of weeks of some pretty wild sexcapades, some of which have been "fictionalized" on here, but that I think I might've deep-sixed after realizing I felt uncomfortable sharing it, either way, you get no link. And I'm leaving it at that. What I will say, though, is that there was that great friendly banter peppered with excellent sex, and a lot of trust that comes from befriending someone for a couple years before you bone'em in the sack. So to speak.

Suffice to say the sex was hot. Better than I'd had at that point, and possibly still among some the best I've had.

And then... and then I found out he wasn't single after all. Worse yet, he was seeing someone I was friends-ish with.

And then... and then I did something I'm wondering now if I'd do again today. I admitted it. I went to her and I told her he'd cheated on her, and that it was with me, and that I had ended it as soon as I found out. I don't know whether they ever went out again. I know the friendship I had with her was over, and I can only suspect I busted his heart up a little at the time.

And, yeah, as honest as I am, as much integrity as I know I have, I have to wonder if I'd do the same today. Prrrrrobably not. The thing is, I'm older, I'm wiser, and I know really intense, hot, great sexuality doesn't happen often, not like that. Not with someone really deserving of your trust. Except for the cheating-on-his-gal thing, of course, I found him highly trustworthy.

Now, I'm at the other end of things. I finally realize he liked me long before... long before he even met his girlfriend. I know what we had was intense and hot and fun and more than just sex. Yes, it was wrong. Yeah, there are things I'd take back in a heartbeat. But I don't regret a minute of it.

I wonder now if something happened along those lines if I'd chalk it up unfortunate timing but a long time in the making. I do know one thing... I really, really regret going to her. I really regret not having spoken to him first and allowing him to at least say his piece. Now I'll always have that wonderment.

But yeah. All I'm doing now tonight is wondering. Wondering. And waiting on a feisty bitch named LingLing.

The moral of the story? Make sure your regrets are about things you did, rather than didn't do. I should've had that conversation with him, too, but I didn't. Regretting things one could've easily avoided is even more regrettable than the lack of action.

Fortunately I don't make a habit of wading through my regrets all that often, and, luckily, the list isn't as long as one might suppose.

Well, time to batten down the hatches before I get a night-time visitor very much not of my choosing. Come out, come out, whereever you are, LingLing. Such a tease.

*Yes, I've secretly always thought it would be fun to be a meteorologist. What? I have a geek side.

The Time is Nigh-er

Wow, don't I feel all grown-up now? After living with the same alarm clock by my bedside for 21 years, I've just bought a new one. When I was 13, I saved up for three weeks to buy the way-cool "Nite Jams" radio that came with ear-bud headphones... something that, believe it or not, was a pretty darned new invention back then. Woo, ear-buds!

Well, I've shelled out a whopping $40 for a mid-range clock that has two alarm presets and even brightness control for the display. It even has a sophisticated, sleek look to it. Me likey. I never realized how I sort of had this juvenile attachment to that clock, and having it bedside, well, it felt juvenile. Hmm. I wonder if having a swank new clock bedside is gonna make me a more grown-up lover? Ha, I very much doubt that. Or, rather, let's hope not. I like the mixed bag I present.

Anyhow, I don't got much for ya tonight. I'm off to bed at the end of the hour, in the hopes I'll get a decent night's sleep before I head in to do early-morning volunteering with the Writer's Fest, then off to work for a pretty full day of work. Should be another 12-hour "work" day once the volunteering's factored in. But I get a 3-day weekend and the satisfaction of knowing I'm righteously Citizen Steff.

'sides, here's hoping there's cute book type guys hangin' round the events tomorrow. Note to self: Look cute.

Have an awesome Thursday.

A Few Words and an Image

I'm a busy little beaver, as the Canadian saying goes. Winter's pretty much staked its claim on these parts with the first of the Northern winds blowing through this town this eve, and my bedroom's far too cold for a girl who's about to crawl under the covers, so I've been creating some diversions.

I've had a good few days. Got out for a great hike on the North Shore on the weekend for the first time in a year or more. (For the North Shore, that is.) If you don't know Vancouver, then you're probably not aware that, to the north of town, all of 15 minutes away, is a world-class range of mountains, home to arguably some of the best and most famous mountain biking in the world and terrain that kills more than a few outdoor enthusiasts each year, regardless of the season.

This photo is one of the bunch I took this past weekend, from Lynn Valley in North Van. The park is scattered with signs, memorials, and markings all making it plain that people die in that pretty park river every year or two. (My favourite heart-breaking spot has an adult-sized bench overlooking a cliff above the river, and just a few feet behind it, a small half-bench, each dedicated to fallen victims -- the large one to an uncle who died trying to rescue his niece, and the small one to the niece, who perished regardless. Breaks my heart every time, and I'm compelled to take a moment to reflect on the unpredictable nature of existence... and be grateful for the time I'm alive.)

Here, though, it seems deceptively calm. Apt, then, I thought for this popular Lao Tzu quote I chose to embed in the photo.

My brain's quickly shutting down, so I'll take my leave and leave you instead with this image. Have a great day. Time for a hot soak before a cold bed.

All Tied Up in the Courts:S&M Rights Hang in the Balance

There's a lawsuit before the courts that bondage enthusiasts in the S&M community are watching with intense interest. The question they're all wanting answered is just how this decision is liable to affect them legally when it comes to getting someone to consent to whatever it is that gets them off.

I wrote a posting on bondage long, long ago, a "beginner's guide", if you will, but I'm really not an expert, and don't know if I'll ever do much more than the very vanilla kind of bondage I've indulged in up until now. I like being tied up and doing the tying up, but I've not wanted to try out more elaborate knotting or anything involving much pain, as I'm a reward-not-punishment type of gal.

As time passed, I learned my beginner's guide was lacking some relatively important information, even if I think one or two of the comment-leavers were somewhat dickheaded in their approach of pointing that out. (The comments are intact both here and on my original blog, The Cunting Linguist. I'll put the links at the bottom, and I've never deleted the ones criticizing my posts.) The main thing someone pointed out was that you should never, ever abandon someone who is bound. You should always, always be aware of what's going on with your bound playment, 'cos things can go bad in a hurry.

That being said, even the amateur in me thinks these guys fucked it up pretty royally by binding this guy in the manner described in this story and then "leaving him alone" for a number of hours. It would seem obvious that the fellow who killed himself in remorse must have also felt they'd fucked it up, or else why did he kill himself and leave a detailed letter about it?

Still, I don't like this American habit of suing people for things, even wrongful death. I realize how hard it is to lose someone, especially wrongfully. My mother died, I believe, as a result of malpractice, but suing over it goes against everything I believe. I've had bad work days, and like the man says, shit happens.

But ruling in favour of this claim would mean a massive loss in freedoms for an already-ostracized and greatly misunderstoon community in the sex world. S&M practitioners constantly face judgment, ridicule, and misunderstanding. The ridiculous Craigslist episode last year (where a dickhead posted a fake slave/submissive personal ad and then "outed" all the respondants on his blog) is just another example of where society seems to think they have a right to judge what consenting adults do behind closed doors.

Here in Canada we're more liberal sexually, and even here you'll find some of the judgment, but not as much as there was before the great Showcase (what Canada calls our Showtime network) series "Kink", which aired for 4 or 5 years and followed the lives of a few different S&M Canadians of different levels as it spent a season in each of the biggest cities in Canada. (13 episodes each year, following several different real-life people as they explored the S&M world, from newbies to hardcore, old-school, long-time S&M types.)

I was certainly one of the people who thought S&M folk were freaks when I was younger. I mean, really freaky, I thought. I've come a long way from my narrow-minded, good-girl youth. When I first began watching Kink, I was somewhat repelled by what I saw, but then I became attached to the people in the stories and I realized that, for whatever their reason, they were as compelled to be that way as I was to eat, write, photograph, or whatever else it is that I feel makes me whole.

Had I heard about this story some years ago, I might have erred in believing the plaintiffs should win their case. I'm older, wiser, now and think anything but the kind. Trouble is, in a litigious society where lawsuits are the norm, it's pretty fucking hard to feel free to do as you please without worrying whose toes you'll be stepping on and how much they're gonna want for new shoes.

And the thing is, yeah, it's a wrongful death. Things got fucked up. Someone died. It happens. Should the rest of society be forced to pay the price with their freedom to act when something really just went horribly wrong? I mean, professional atheletes drop dead of heart attacks during games. Stockbrokers make bad predictions. Priests sin. Shit happens. Humanity is a bitch. As crass at it might sound, it really just does go that way.

Maybe these people could learn a little from the S&M lifestyle: Pain is something one needs to endure. The more you endure, the stronger you get. The more you endure, the more you can take. You don't cry out for a saviour just because it gets a little tough, you suck it up and say "thank you, mistress". Life is hard. Bad things happen. Blaming others isn't going to change the fact that something went wrong, and winning their day in court isn't gonna make that hurt be any less consuming. Their life will still be lacking a person they love, even if they'll never understand how he wanted to be treated so "badly".

'Course, this all might have gone a little easier if the fuckwits hadn't gotten all freaked out, tossed the evidence, and buried the guy. It's like the man Hunter S. Thompson said, "In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."

This is one case where people need to err on the side of protecting others' freedoms by telling this family that they really do just need to suck it up, deal with the loss, and move on with life. The price the rest of us will pay will be far too high if this thing goes the way I fear it's going, and even if I'll probably never join the S&M community in that way, they too should have every right to practice what they like when they have consent between parties.

What are your thoughts?

My Bondage for Beginners is both here and at this blog's original site, The Cunting Linguist, but the comments are different on both blogs. Click on where ya wanna go: part one here, part two here, part one on TCL, part two on TCL.

The hot photo was found on Jaeda DeWalt's photography site, which you can go to here.

The Masterplan: A primer

As part of my bigger, bolder, betterer movement in my own life, I've signed up as a volunteer at our local Writer's Festival, and tonight went to check out the volunteer orientation. Had a blast. It's part of my meet-new-people plan that really is just about meeting new people, and not about getting laid... but getting laid would be bonus. Heh.

I've written now and again of late about how much I feel my life's been off-track in the last year, but there are a lot of ways I've been off-track for a long time. Back when I lived in the Yukon, in the span of a year I pretty much met and knew everyone and anyone worth knowing, largely because I volunteered with the local playhouses, music fests, special events, and more. Volunteering with the arts are a great way to meet people, and beats the shit out of shelling out membership fees for clubs or paying for classes... especially when you're naught but a wee writer wanting to eek out a life for yourself. Plus, you get free shit. I like free shit. Bet you like free shit, too.

I'm getting on-track, though, and quicker than I might've thought. I sort of told myself -- even as far back as in August, when I first decided to quit that wrong job -- that this would be the week things would finally start coming together. My thinking was merely that I'd be properly acclimatized to the new-old job again, but I'm proving myself to be right in more ways than one, which is delightfully refreshing.

This weekend's just freed up for me a little, and the resulting gameplan now is to take this handy laptop out in the world, find a great place to write for me for a change, and do a list of probably 100 or more goals. Everything from the wacky to the insignificant and easy is going to be on that list because it's going to be a list of things that are achievable in the near future, long-term goals, and things I may even die trying to get to in the (hopefully) decades that lie before me.

One goal I've had for a long, long time, and I've never achieved until last week, was that of omitting butter from my diet, for instance. And I know that sounds like such a silly little thing, but until you've been on the other side of the scale, fighting weight issues your entire life, you can't know what kind of a crutch something as stupid and detrimental as butter can become. Especially when you can knock back a pound of it every couple of weeks, as I'd be able to do. As I wrote in a posting on the other blog 'o mine, "my ass has become an ode de butter". Cutting it out of my diet is just hugely symbolic of things I've feared and always felt I could never manage. Restraint isn't exactly my watchword, except when it comes to the bondage and play kind.

I know I have a lot of work before me, and it'll be a while before I accomplish a lot of those goals of mine, but I'm already on that road. I'm volunteering. I'm cleaning up my place, picking out paint chips for doing some redecorating*, and I'm really getting enthusiastic -- not just optimistic, but enthusiastic -- about the weeks and months ahead.

It's amazing what simply choosing to use the power you have over your life can do for you. Just amazing. My outlook's getting better and better every day and this new attitude I've begun to adopt is kind of setting my life on fire. It certainly doesn't hurt that I'm being more honest with myself, yet far less judgmental, than I've probably been in years. (The attitude? I'll write about it in the coming weeks, I'm sure.)

What can I tell ya? It's been a great week.

*Saffron yellow for my presently lime-green kitchen, a warm mauve for the currently sky-blue living room, cranberry for my terra cotta hallway, then some teal blue in my boring beige bathroom, and warm sage green to off-set the chocolate accent wall in my bedroom (it's sand and chocolate now, but I want some punch...). Something to keep me busy over the winter... vibrant colours so I always feel alive. I can opt for neutral when I'm over 40, but fuck it for now. I'm going out on a ledge this time. Yes, I will post pictures.

Hey, Now! Eugenics for Everybody!

This is a way-long posting, but I think it opens a weird can of worms, and I've tackled it from a few different points of view. Tangents are fun. So, bear with me.

There's a disturbing question before the law courts of Britain. A mother is petitioning for the right to surgically remove the womb of her 15-year-old daughter, who is severely disabled with cerebral palsy.

The arguments are along the lines of "well, she'll never understand the blood and the discomfort" of her period and more or less "we're doing her a favour". (I'm paraphrasing, so don't take me literally.)

This is a particularly freaky law case because I can understand both sides of it. I only agree with one. Guess which?

Now, you wouldn't think, that as a Canadian, I'd have much scope on the ethical questions entailed when facing the barbaric practice of eugenics, but y'know what? As a Canadian, yeah, I do.

Here in Canada, in the province of Alberta, eugenics were in practice for 43 years. What are eugenics, Steffi? Oh, I'm glad you asked. In big, fat words, "eugenics" means the study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding, according to the smarty-pants over there at Answers.com.

But in little people layspeak, "eugenics" is when you use science to fuck around with DNA and manipulate unborn babies into what you wanna see... or, in Alberta's case, "eugenics" means you spend more than 4 decades in the 20th century sterilizing people you don't think are fit to breed.

What the fuck did she say, Gilbert? You heard me. From 1928 to 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta was a mandate that employed a four-person "Board of Eugenics" (way to cover up your motives, guys) that decided whether or not people were fit to have kids.

In 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the 43 years of the Eugenics Board, it approved nearly 5,000 individual sterilizations, and 2,832 procedures were actually performed.

Now, don't worry. Not everyone had to go before the board to get approved to get knocked up or do the knocking, no sir. Only the really obvious ones -- you know, like native indians or handicapped people or midgets and stuff. You know. The obvious ones. There was an IQ cut-off point, too. And we all know how valid the IQ test has been deemed to be, all these decades later. They never worked out too well for anyone not, you know, white.

Eugenics sound great when you're arguing Darwinism and "for the good of all" and "raising the bar" and shit like that, but when little things about personal freedoms and the complicated process of being a parent, and who has the right to become one, come into play, that's when you can't leave this shit up to four people on a stupid right-wing board, or some judge in a courtroom to decide.

Rights and freedoms aren't meant to apply SOME of the time. It's not a "well, after 6pm you get half-off our personal freedoms -happy hour banquet" type thing. Come on! Freedoms oughta be all you can eat, all day, every day! You're free 24/7, not because you scored well on your IQ test or yer so white you sunburn in February. C'mon!

There are indeed people completely unfit for breeding, let's not kid ourselves. Most of 'em a drug addicts, alcoholics, sociopaths, or racists. Most of us, though, have parents who consistently fucked up the mix. Hell, most of our parents would have their asses as grass in this day and age if their parenting methods got leaked to the press. My ever-lovin' rest-her-soul mother took a log -- not a stick, not a branch, not even a 2x4 -- a knobby, bark-covered, de-branched (but stumpy) big fucker of a log -- to my ass. Half-a-dozen times. Why? I cut across the neighbour's prize-winning rose garden again. I ain't ever crossed anyone's lawn in 2 decades since, not without an invitation, man. I learned my shit. But today my mother would be defending herself against a world that thinks they know better. And that's the thing -- we all think we know better than we usedta did, but the reality is, we're always gonna know better. Twenty years from now, new light'll be shed on many of our present-day standards and we'll think "what the fuck were we thinking?" 'Cos, you know, what the fuck are we thinking?

But today we're just talking about a womb, right? Just ONE womb? Preventing this poor, unfortunate, palsied girl from having to sit there bleeding, confused, as her womb cramps up, just further compounding her already-troubled existence?

Why, yes, let's fix her whole troubled world! Sunshine and rainbows for everyone! And, after lunch, COOKIES! Why, yes, let's snatch out that womb and make her life so much more the better! Whoo! Face it. The argument of "she won't understand" what's happening can apply both ways -- maybe she won't remember what it was like when she didn't bleed. Maybe "she won't understand" means asking this question is pointless in the first place. Who are we to decide what life experiences she is better to do without?

Methinks it's sad she needs to discover the unpleasantries of the monthly female bloodletting, but it'd be far sadder still if this little case wound up being the gateway case to allowing a return of eugenics anywhere in our "civilized" world. After all... if it can happen here, in Canada*, for more than four decades, three of those being AFTER the Nazis, well, it can happen any-bloody-where.

Hell, there are watered-down, spoon-fed varieties of eugenics creeping into our system already. People want having a baby to be like ordering a sweater from Nordstrom. Eyes? Blue. Check. Hair? Sandy-- no, strawberry blonde. Check. You may think "Well, it's my baby. I should be able to choose what it's like..." but there are a lot of freaky destinations in the road ahead if we go opening that door even a crack.

God knows that me, with my health problems as a kid and my hearing troubles, etc, I never would've made the cut. Cute as a button, but definitely packing genetic weaknesses to the nth. I could've completely fucked that four-person board up. "Well, hell, she's as smart as can be! But... there are the other issues. Oh, some days this job is just not as fun as I thought it would be. To mate or not to mate, that is her question."

You can argue the benefit of eugenics any way you like, and I'll still say Darwin has it right -- let nature sort out shit. We're bears of far too little brains when it comes to deciding such behemoth issues. And still, there's that silly Charter of Rights and Freedoms mucking up the mix, too.

Think about it, man. One small womb might be one large backstep for mankind, in more ways than one.

*And, oh, we're not alone. Sweden, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, and a schwack of other nations have had some dalliances with eugenics of one kind or another. Canada had one of the longest state-sponsored programs, though, a real black mark on us.

The original story is here. A medical ethicist shares his two cents here.

News Flash: Bad Marriages are Bad for Hearts!

I know scientific studies are funded so we can have "evidence" of things, but, really, how obvious does something have to be for that study's evidence to be a waste of everyone's time and money?

Case in point: A study in Great Britain has now deduced that unhappy marriages (or relationships) are bad for your heart.

Oh, okay. Good to know. So, when the sound of my lover's voice makes my cringe, when I dislike being in their presence, when the sex isn't hitting any of the right spots, when I'm looking for stupid chores to do to keep me out of the house for longer, these are all indications that maybe, just maybe, I'm under so much stress from the unhappiness that my heart might finally decide to disagree with my choices in an overwhelming kind of way? This is a bad thing?

Doh! Who knew!

Of COURSE doing things you dislike, being with people you dislike, living a life that feels like a lie are all things that'll send your heart around the arrhythmia bend. Like who needs a fucking memo?

All the unhappy people living lives that make them unhappy, I guess. Here's your wakeup call: Wake the fuck up. DING-ding-DING. Life is short! Live it the right way as soon as you're fuckin' able, 'cos it's all too damned short! Anything you're doing that makes you unhappy is something that maybe needs undoing, all right? Common sense, isn't it.

Look at me -- six months in a job I hated and I've managed to gain back 15 lbs, let my house go in a complete disarray, fell out of touch with everyone, developed an overwhelmingly negative mindset, and lost focus on everything that used to be important to me. SIX MONTHS! That's all it took! Granted, there were a couple years of instability before that, but the six months of doing something I just couldn't handle doing really took their toll on me, and FAST.

It's one thing to be unhappy while you're chasing your dreams, but it's another thing to have given up on everything and force yourself to live a life because you "chose" your path when you said yeah at the altar. Hello? What's the statute of limitations on stupid decisions? Oh, right! There is none!

If you're staying in a relationship or a marriage because the alternative strikes you as being "too hard", well, maybe you should consider the ramifications of living with a daily sense of dread that you're trapped and life holds no options for you. Yeah, change is hard. For a little bit. Then it improves. But staying in a shitty situation because you feel obligated? Well, that continues to suck ass for every fucking day you allow it to continue longer than needs be.

Me, I've used my failed job as an example of how far from a number of things I once loved that I've now strayed, and I'm using it as a reason to recalibrate everything in my life... but it's only when we realize how far we've fallen that we can see the distance we need to travel. I'm not the first person to observe that, and I won't be the last. Hell, Sufi mystics have been saying same for centuries now.

I just don't get how some hundreds of thousands of dollars (or pounds) need to have been tossed frivolously into the "scientific study" pit to realize that unhappiness is bad for our health. There's something for the "no shit, Sherlock" files, eh? Unhappiness hurts. Goddamned right it does.

Living in bad times because we're too afraid to change our course is as sad a decision as it sounds. It's pathetic, but god knows many of us are guilty. I was. You're not doing anyone in your life any favours by sticking around for them when you're no longer who you were back when you made those promises. I mean, if you're bitter inside and resentful of the life you lead, how can you possibly delude yourself into thinking no one else is picking up on it -- or, worse, that no one else is affected by it? What you claim you're doing for everyone else's benefit is likely hurting them as much as it's hurting you, but y'all are too close to the picture to see any of the detail clearly, ironically.

Relationships are a crap shoot. We hope like hell that the person we've fallen for will be able to change and grow in ways that we can mirror. But when they don't, and we can't, then how is it doing anyone any good to stick it out?

I'm the product of a marriage that stayed together long after its expiration date. I've learned from the best (thanks, Mom! thanks, Dad!) how to avoid the truth, how to lie about feelings, how to suppress what's inside in order to just get through a day. I learned from them that there were obligations and there were wants, and wants always took a backseat to obligation. Those are the legacies passed on to me by my parents, and at 34, I've spent my life trying to unlearn all those debilitating things they taught me.

Think of the consequences of your lack of ability to act for better change. Think of what you'd say if your best friend, or better yet, your child, one day came up and laid out a tale for you of similar particulars as the ones holding you back. Would you tell them they deserve better? Would you explain you know they can handle anything that comes their way? Now why don't you deserve the same?

If you want to read the rocket-science brilliance behind this scientific study, then have at 'er. Click here. Meanwhile, do what you wanna do today and enjoy yourself.

(Oh, and before it sounds like I'm advising everyone to drop everything that makes 'em unhappy and run for the hills, then screw on some common sense, bub. Obviously cutting-and-running is a last choice. Face your unhappiness, do what can be done to improve it, and if improvements don't do it, then maybe it's time to just cut your losses and leave town. There are steps you take. There are books that can guide ya. Look for 'em. Consider your options. But know this: You are far from trapped. You only choose to be trapped. Time to make new choices.)

To all my fellow Canuck readers:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rainy-Day Dimestore Philosophy or Something

These are the kinds of weekends one has to grow accustomed to when one lives in a rainforest. Ah, Vancouver. The world outside my windows is being soaked to the core by an omnipresent drizzle. There's no definition in the skies overhead -- it's just a world of soft grey from the clouds on down.

It's the first weekend where I've really noticed the odd red maple leaf soaked to the sidewalk. The autumn is upon us.

I'm keeping to myself after getting to sleep around 4am last night. Caught a gig, was good, got in late and did some me-time. Woke up at 10, looked around, figured I was still tired and nothing was pressing, so I went back to sleep and slept till 1 for the first time in a year or so. Sweet. :)

Going out last night kind of came at an awkward time. When my friend arrived, I'd just had one of those moments where I realized how hard I've been running, and for so long, and now here I am, literally back where I started... same job, same home, same income, same everything... and I've gone through so much emotionally, physically, and financially in the last three years, and it's all because I lacked a little patience and had too little faith in "letting go, letting god".

I am not a religious person. I guarantee you that I will never be a religious person. (Don't get me started. I'm not about to follow some guy's interpretation of what god is, nor follow some baffling systematic method of worship. I've been there, I've done that, and I passed on the t-shirt, all right? So, don't try to save me or convert me. You're wasting your time.)

I am, however, spiritual. At one point, I was enormously spiritual. I always found the time to find myself in a forest, at a beach, hell, by a roadside. I would just stop and take in the whole world, whether it meant pulling off the side of the highway back from Whistler, in the mountains and by the water, to sit on the hood of my car in the middle of nowhere, my stereo blasting Stevie Ray Vaughn's Little Wing on repeat in a world just silent as death on a mid-August night, or sitting above a valley in the Yukon as I watched the light changing on the land as the midnight sun swept deep and low over the land.

God's never been about four walls and a church defined by man, not for me. Not since I was a kid in high school history thinking how wrong it was that the Catholic church once sold salvation, and the church of England was formed so that King Henry could have his divorce. Faith shouldn't need parameters, you know? It is what it is. I don't need to understand this 'god' or really have a clear idea of what exactly it is in order for me to feel just awe-inspired when I look at the world around me and be the kind of person who celebrates that daily.

But that's the problem. Somewhere along the way, I've lost that. I'm basically coming out the other side from a long, dark tunnel I've been trapped in for a number of years. For the first time in a long, long time, I'm losing my sense of dread that the other shoe's going to drop. When my mother died -- as a result of so many mistakes by professionals and in the midst of a few years of hell for her personally -- I lost my faith in everything and everyone, and sure as hell lost my faith in me. (If you've never read it, the best thing I've ever written was this posting about my mother's death.)

When I started blogging, I did so because I had blown out my knee for the first of three times between '03 and '04, and living on the fourth floor of a walkup, I was more or less sent into recluse mode. Something snapped and I was able to write. It wasn't until the next year that I really began digging deeper and writing hard-to-write stuff, exploring parts of me I didn't often let out into the light.

Lately, I've been avoiding blogging for many of those same reasons, ironically. I'm coming to terms of late with the fact that much of the grief and trouble I've endured for the last three years are as a result of my probably making the wrong choices. Instead of realizing I could handle six or eight unstable weeks a year at work, and not trusting my own strength and the way of the world, I chose instead to try and find my way into the corporate culture. Years ago I told my friends I'd never be the career-type person. Work was work, a job and a necessity because the world had the nerve to demand we pay for shit, not something I'd do to find the value in who I am. I always said I wanted the trappings of success, but not the trap. The value in who I am comes from the home I've created, the writing I do, the photography I do, and the experiences I have. Work's just a necessary evil... and I forgot that. I lost so much sense of self that I felt I needed to find it elsewhere, and that didn't exactly work out for me either.

Now, funny enough, I've found out that it's not uncommon for people with head injuries, who are rehabbing and getting well, to start questioning everything. It was six months after my serious head injury (almost died in a bike accident, yada, yada) that I ran into a lay-off at work. Suddenly I thought I was in the wrong career, etc. Instead, I could've opened up an EI claim, taken some time to myself, and gone back when things got busy again. (Read about that accident here, another one of my better works, imho.)

What happened to me, though, was that I spent the next 2 years chasing down jobs that would never be any more fulfilling to me than what I'd already been doing, and would all require more from me, meaning forfeiting more of who I really was for a job I deep-down knew would never mean anything more than a paycheque every second Friday. I can't believe how hard I've been running in my hamster wheel, only to find myself back exactly where I started from.

In short, I feel like an ass.

But it's been interesting, because, in all that time, nothing I did ever made me any happier. Everything I did, I did so without really listening to my inner voice. I was lucky and fortunate that I was able to keep it all together, never miss a rent payment, and not go deeper into debt, but nothing ever made me happier... and that's been weighing heavily on me this week. Nothing made me happier.

I guess many of us have times when we just realize we're pretty distant from where we wanted to be when we thought about our lives as youths. My recent birthday has made me realize, yeah, I'm getting older, but I'm still pretty damned young, and I've wasted enough of my time running in a hamster wheel that was getting me nowhere. And however much of my life has passed, I'm hoping it's still a fraction of my future, and it's on me to make sure it's the best future it can be.

I'm also realizing that the world's full of enough cynicism, and I'm tired of being a part of that. I'm the original Libra -- I'm constantly in and out of balance, and I offer both cynicism and optimism, but I've been offering too much of the former of late. I want to rediscover my awe for the world. I want to rediscover that pause button. My priorities are completely changing, and all because I'm tired of not being the person I used to be. Now I can both be that person and be the new, more comfortable, more sure of self version. I want that youthful awe and this wise, appreciative "been there" mentality I know will help me value that worldview when I pull it back into focus.

This is the project I've set before me this winter: Rediscover the person I was before life came along and threw me wildly off-track. I'm done with the detour, man. I'm coming back to myself. What a fun journey this is gonna be. Right?

Status de la Steff

Slog, slog, slog. Squish, squish, squish. There goes the work week.

I've got a day left and it'll be a chore, but I know I'll be done at 5. I know I'll have the energy to conjure a quick snack (soup'n'sammich, both homemade and upscale, but a real treat when I'm in a rush!), the smarts to have a primer drink, and the enthusiasm to go back downtown via transit, drink the night away, and enjoy a live show, and get my ass home around 3ish, if it all works out right.

Why? Because it's that kind of a job. Gr-r-r-r-reat! So, even though the day itself will be frustrating and tense, I get to leave when I wanna leave. This is good. Beats the shit out of working until 7:30 on a Friday night and being too drained to take my ass off the couch... much the story of the last few months.

This past week, I've still been sick. Today I woke up feeling a million bucks, and had an all right day even though it's been hard, but I'm still less sick than I was. This is good. Change is good.

My scooter, however, is sick. Poor scootie. It's putt-putting up hills and making me feel like a victim waiting to happen as it chokes up at certain angles and loses 35% of its power with traffic hot on my ass like I'm showering in prison. Methinks it's the carburator needing to be cleaned. If you're a motorbike geek and know that answer, lemme in on it. It's taking 10 minutes to warm up. This is new. This is bad. I feel all pathetic. The one thing that always rocked about my scooter is that it stormed the hills. Never lost power.VrrrOOOOm. But now, pUtt-pUtt. Ugh. So uncool. And unsafe. And ungood. So un.

So, is it the carburator? Gotta be, right?* Could probably change out the spark plug, too, eh? All of $2 to eliminate that possibility. Better than the $100 cleaning dealie for the carb. Cursed putt-putt.

Anyhow. Hey, look: It's a weekend! Wow! I've always wanted one just like it! Gosh, thanks! And you have one too? Swell! Let's both enjoy them, then!

(*The Fine Print: The Tech Shit. It's a Yamaha Vino, 2003, classic edition, 2-strokes, 49cc, never been modified save for removal of the restriction washer in the muffler. Top speed was 65 km for the longest time, but I'm at 23,000km and around 17,000km it started going a little slower. in the last 1,500km, it's really began to bog down on hills and such. Sounds like it's groaning a bit. Top speed now is about 55km, and I can bog down for up to about 40 blocks from home after warming up 3 minutes before leaving, and bog down so I'm choking at 30km/hr up hills I ascended at 50 last month. After about 50 blocks, it gets more comfortable and performs a bit better, but it's still compromised. There, is that more informative? Is it the carburator? Never cleaned it since I owned it, and I've had it since Sept. '04, so 21,000km of the 23,500 it has now.)

World Protest Day to Support Burmese People

I try not to do the whole rah-rah look-at-me I'm-an-activist blogging thing. There are those far better cut out to such work than me, so why crash their party, right?

But on the subject of Burma, no one should remain quiet.

It is despicable, heinous, and a crime against all of humanity what the government of Myanmar is doing to its people as it struggles to suppress their largest-ever movement for democracy and basic human rights lodged by not only the good citizens, but the incredibly revered monks of that land.

If you're not pissed off about it, I dunno if you belong on Planet Earth. If you think I'm painting that a little thick, think again.

I've seen photos of brains on sidewalks since all this began. No military needs to do THAT to its people. Now there's news of them rounding up some several thousand monks (who started the whole thing... and they're peace-loving Buddhists who relocate flies rather than swatting 'em, so how much trouble could it really have been, eh?), disrobing them, shackling them, and moving them in convoys to imprison them in the north of the country. Fuckin' oppression.

This weekend there is a global movement happening at noon around the world. You can show up, shout angry things at a government that might never hear you, but there's a good chance your own might, and perhaps they'll throw some pressure in the direction of the bastards in charge over there.

Maybe you're not the protest type. Maybe you think that's for dreamers and people who don't have cars to park, since those little protester types always block the streets and all. Maybe you have something cooler to do. I don't know.

I do know, though, that if ever there was a time for the planet to really gel and say "THAT is too much" to a power that be, then this is probably that time. We're 20 years too late for Tiananmen Square, but here's our chance.

It's only by way of bloggers, really, that the world is seeing what's going on in Burma. God knows they've shut down all the television stations' news coverage, but it's the guy on the street literally risking his life to send a cellphone image of a guard bashing a citizen who's getting this message out there to all of us. It's just some dude or chick who would've been otherwise going about their daily lives who are instead being violently suppressed, and they're putting lives on the line just to email a photo to someone somewhere to post.

It boggles the mind. We all owe it to them to get out there and stand in some rainy square on an October Saturday, if for no other reason than to say "Yeah, we see what's going on, and we think it's wrong too".

We all owe it to them.

The Facebook page for the event is here, so you can see where your city's event is, and if you don't see one, well, now you have the means to organize your own. Here in Vancouver, it's at the usual civic protest gathering point, the Vancouver Art Gallery, like I said, at noon.

Vive le resistance.

The Dredges of Coffee begets the Dredgling Post

There's still coffee in my mug and my new world order dictates that I am not free to leave home while coffee lingers for me to enjoy. Hey, it's out of my hands, people. So, I thought I'd stop by.

I had about the most antisocial weekend I've had in a long, long time. Over the last seven months, though, I became so focused on the negatives in life and forgot all the important things -- you know, trivial stuff like health, diet, exercise, peace of mind... And now it's the hard part of bringing all those crucial elements back into play. This weekend, though, the seven months of non-stop hard work and just coping all came home to roost and rest needed to be had.

It's official: I'm trying to make radical but necessary changes across the board. There's nothing scarier, really, than waking up one day and realizing that you profoundly dislike who you're becoming. That's where I was at. I became a hybrid of certain people in my life who baffle me for their uncanny grasp of how to be unhappy. Negatives swirl around me right now, and have been for months, and I'm having to constantly check my attitude at the door: No negatives need apply here.

I'm not one of these people that believes happiness is only a choice. I believe body chemistry can fuck up the mix and we can become pretty unbalanced -- but once you have that under control, then, yeah, happiness is pretty much a choice.

I'm at that point where I know my chemistry is pretty much under control. The only tweaking it needs is what I can provide dietarily by eating better (such as going cold turkey in cutting out butter, like I've done this weekend) and by adding some exercise into the mix. The attitude, though, needs further adjustment.

The last several months have been spent working just a few feet away from someone who was clouded in negativity. A "how are you" always received "oh, I'm alive", as if living was some archaic form of punishment. Somewhere along the lines, it became permission for me to bitch and moan. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan. I swear, at one point I had Elton John's "The Bitch is Back" on perma-repeat in my bouncy little noggin. "I can bitch, I can bitch, because I'm better than you -- it's the way that I move, the things that I do."

At least I'm out of the environment that became so permissive towards negativity. Where I'm at now is a can-do, will-do, roger-wilco kinda place where everyone's empowered and entitled. It should be easy to flip the switch now that I'm getting over this persistent bug of mine and will daily be in a more charged place. That I have four-day weeks the next two weeks is just icing on the cake. By the end of all this, I will be rested up again, and well on my way to the New Steff World Order.

I guess it's easy enough to make change. I don't like this, ergo I'm changing. Poof. Done. When I quit my job, I did so by imposing caveats upon myself. I'm quitting so that I may focus more on myself. I'm quitting so that I have more time to cook again. I'm quitting so I can return to exercising and get myself in better health. I'm quitting so I have more time at my disposal. I'm quitting so I will write more. I wasn't just quitting because I was unhappy; I was quitting because it was the cause of all the reasons creating my unhappiness. Happiness, for me, is about control over my life, about being healthy, about having freedom and the time to do more important things with my days. But happiness doesn't come at the result of a decision; it's the net result of all that we do with our lives. Wanting to be happy doesn't make it so.

Lately, though, I'm still realizing how far away from that goal I am. Last week, one night, I was riding home on my scooter and got pissed off at some driver. What'd I do? Yelled "fuck you" at the guy, and what happens? I'm sitting there feeling like the biggest ass in the world because everyone, of course, knows it's the chick on the scooter with the attitude -- and I was stuck at a red light. Oh, the shame. The shame! Real grown-up, Steff.

Road rage, methinks, is the emotional canary in the coal mine -- if you're road-raging, you probably have issues. Me, though, I've been road-raging for a while. The other day was when I finally had the light flick on and realized that I don't like being that person. So, I'm done with that, but it goes to show you that it's the little moments when we're clearly not being ourselves that we realize just how far from who we actually are that we've wound up being.

Nothing quite like feeling like a chastised 5-year-old in public to make you realize just how much growing up maybe still needs to happen. I so don't wear rage well. It's so unattractive. How I got like that kind of baffles me, but then again, the drivers in this city can be pretty baffling. Yet, still, no excuse. I'm better than that.

My lowly goals this week? Avoid butter, eat fish once or twice, not freak out because things aren't going my way, and to be thankful, even just a bit, that life's back on my terms again -- a little gratitude each and every day might be a great start in this new life o' mine. Baby steps.

Meanwhile, I'll get off this self-involved topic soonish and see what else gets me thinking. I wanted to write about this 24-year-old kid who's just married an 82-year-old woman in Brazil, and they've been together for 9 years, but I kept getting the geriatric heeby-geebies, so no posting for you. I mean, ugh. Old-people sex with young people is just a little too Harold and Maude in a bad way for me. In a really, really bad way.

(And if you've never seen Harold and Maude and you dig other movies I love like Donnie Darko, Amelie, etc, then maybe your video store needs some visiting. '70s cult classic you NEED to see. No, really.)

Oh, Hello There

After a week of being pretty badly hit by the cold making its way around Vancouver, I kept much more to myself on my birthday weekend than I'd planned to. The weather has been lousy, and I realized I wasn't as flush with cash as I was hoping, so I figured I'd keep it simple.

Case in point, among the other exciting happenings of my life, in a few minutes I plan to empty out my refrigerator. I've been buying way too much way too infrequently of late, and it's an ass-backward way to live a culinary life. Food has been on my mind this weekend because, well, I've been avoiding shopping. As a result, I've started thinking of how this can be a good thing.

So, deep in thought all weekend, I've decided to simplify my life in a number of ways, in keeping with returning to the old job and all. The biggest of simplifications will be in regards to food. I'm going to return to the Slow Food movement and start taking the time to pop in to the local markets a couple times a week and be inspired to create fresh foods, rather than trying to take the easiest way out. I want to really cook again. It's such a great way to add meaning and dimension to your life. There's food, then there's soul food, then there's food for the soul. Slow Food refers to the latter two.

The Slow lifestyle's something that really appeals to me. (Read "In Praise of Slow" by Carl Honore.) I wanna be totally present in the here and now. You hear people talking about living their "best" lives, and it all sounds like so much new age bullshit sometimes. But they're onto something.

Me, I've taken the most important step. I've quit the big fancy job with the nifty title and no down time in order to take the pressure-free, life-balanced job. Now I've spent my slacker weekend setting the groundwork for something I hope to bring me even greater work-life balance, my self-employment scheme. I've come up with a company name and spent my weekend working on personal branding and designed all the graphics that go with such things -- business card, letterhead, invoices. It and looks pretty polished. Now I need to spend a week or two getting the rest of my life feeling a little bit more polished to go with. My home needs to be more Zen so I can make better use of my time and work smarter, not harder, as I try to get my life back under my own two thumbs.

The next several months will still be transitional. There are a few ways I see my life going, and I'm hopefully setting the stage for good things, but the only way we'll know is when it all comes down the pipes. Life's more fun when it's unexpected, so I'm just trying to keep an open mind, 'cos the whole controlling-everything thing wasn't really working out for me, so...

Anyhow. Here's how I've spent my birthday weekend, I guess... pondering what is and what might come to be, and trying to set a little something in motion towards that end.

Y'know, I'd have thought I'd have had it much more together than this back when I thought of what "34" would one day mean, possibly in my late teens. And, it's weird, but as much as it'd be nice to have a nice, firm, predictable and together life... it's kind of cool to know I'm just as open to adventures as I was a decade and a half ago, if not a little more so. Getting older's mostly all about me not taking myself as seriously as I once did. I still have work to do on that, but it's all good. What I do know is, being single, kidless, and mortgage-free, I sure as hell have nothing to lose. I'm just trying to think of what kinda license that gives me and what I oughta do with it. What fun.