Potential heat score: 5-7 depending on the kind of cops in your neighbourhood
Ingredients:
Method: Walk to the nearest giant hill. Go tobogganing with friends in matching costumes, bring extra for people who might want to join.
enjoy!
you never know that you had one until it’s over. After the run of Graffiti Highway in November, I kind of hit a lull where I didn’t do much public performing. I’m working on a novel, and wanted to put the play to bed for a nap while I thought about future possibilities and focussed on yoga teacher training.
Moss grows fat on an unrolling stone.
Right now I’m looking for an outdoor space to stage The Enchanted Crackhouse in the summer. Holler if you know of any private parks/yards etc in the downtown core I could proposition. We are looking at another rewrite following the staged reading in the summer, and the addition of another song. I think energy for this project now is more production focussed, and further work will need to be to deadline to keep our collective energy invested.
A certain burlesque troupe I founded in ’04 is planning something not-so-secret this year, and I’ve been outlining a better project flow.
Those Girls, a play I wrote that had a workshop reading in ’10 is due for a rewrite to make some major structural changes. I think I need a deadline so I’m aiming for the Hamilton Fringe New Play Contest.
It’s all pretty exciting. All I have to do is make enough money to sustain my slacker lifestyle for one more year. And inspiration, I need some of that too.
I feel amazing, mostly. I’m super sick of drinking rooibos tea, stupid hay tasting flavour water. I’ve also been told that it makes me smell like I’ve been chewing Tobacco. Who wants a kiss? I went to starfuckers to shake things up with some fruit flavour and spent an hour judging all the nervous twitchers around me. All my symptoms seem to have subsided and cravings haven’t yet factored in.
I have to say, I’m a little disappointed my withdrawal wasn’t more heroin-esque. So much for my exciting blog. You get a headache and an excuse to smoke weed to take the edge off for a few days. Hardly the stuff of the hype I will no longer believe. I was hoping the physical transformation would have to go through some sort of wan dark circled eyes that could suit photographs taken in the dreary grey December. Or hallucinations that I could describe in horrifying detail of rabid monkeys plucking off my skin. But alas, I think the change is even curing my dry scalp.
I’ve had benefits, benefits in only four days. I’m described as jumpy by some, and feel a calmness has entered my life I haven’t ever felt. Mind, I’d been on the javajuice since I was a teenager, and cannot remember a day I decided to go without that delicious power boost..
The reaction I get from most people when I talk about quitting is “why would you do that?”. My answer that I don’t want to ever have to whore my body for sweet sustenance. This perspective I only gained when I had not enough money in my bank account to take out cash at a bank machine and wondered what I was going to do about the frikken coffee. But you know? It got me thinking, in an emergency (say a zombie apocalypse) do I really want to waste a bullet on a fellow addict reaching for the last can of maxwell house in the looting rampage? No, we all know that bullets are only for headshots.
delicious caffeine.
I couldn’t do much looking at the screen yesterday so I didn’t post. My withdrawal symptoms were terrible, headache, foggy head, nausea, listlessness. Painkillers helped but I pretty much stayed in bed except for a trip to the store for more pain killers. Today was better, same symptoms but milder. I could have worked today. I did not work today. I’ve been drinking Rooibos tea. It’s naturally caffeine free, what they call red tea from Africa. It tastes nice and apparently full of antioxidants which help with digestion. Hot drink seems to be a good fool for my body.
Typical Withdrawal Schedule:
10am, hint of a headache Discomfort level 3
11am headache starts, mild dizziness DL 5
12:20 Headache and dizziness worsen, nausea begins DL 7
1:00 DL 8
4:00 ate some chocolate DL 5
7:00 DL 1, I feel wonky, but it’s okay
Other things I noticed was that I woke up at 6am with no alarm this morning, and didn’t feel tired. I made myself go back to sleep because I had no good reason to be up early.
I’m three cups in, probably not the best idea before a cold turkey coffee cut off. Of all the things I’ve ever wanted to quit, coffee is the one that has never been a serious consideration. Tomorrow I try, and I’ll document the experience here. I’ll post related articles, and chronicle my withdrawal symptoms.
Currently: I drink coffee all day, if I’m doing an evening activity I drink as late as 8pm. My sleep patterns are terrible, my energy has highs and lows. I have anxiety and depression at times and wonder if my caffeine habit is part to blame. I don’t want to give up forever, I love coffee. My goal is to have coffee when I feel like it, and buy only the finest beans, rather than bulk purchase of the cheap stuff.
I’m not setting a timeline persay- I have no idea if I’ll be able to go even a few days, but that will come once the initial fear subsides.
It’s okay kids, you never knew you had me in the first place. Our flirtation almost became a thing, I mean I like the cut of your jib and I ain’t going steady with another party, but I’ve since changed my mind, and you helped me get there.
What goes into our votes? Some people carry a card to tell them which talking head is different from the others, but most of us pay attention during a campaign to do more than just root for the home team. Here’s the recipe I follow: Mix up in a blender with ice 4 parts party platform and policy, 2 parts caliber of candidates in my riding, 1 part party leaders and in recent times a dash of Anyone-But-Harper. That ingredient has made the cocktail a little bitter and with any luck I’ll leave it out in the future. Rim the glass with Jack’s mustache and garnish with Michael’s Sam Waterston eyebrows, maybe get Elizabeth to stir it up for a little flair and finish. Hey, I’m allowed a little frivolity and nonsense in my assessment- certainly anyone who would condemn a candidate for studying abroad is doing so.
I’m concerned about the social swing Canada is taking to the right. I am concerned that Conservative choices only feed the special interests of Jesus Freaks and Corporate Robots. I believe Harper when he says he wont do anything to try and stop that just-for-fun abortion I have penciled in mid-August. He’s content to serve the world his views by denying funding to groups that offer contraception options to the third world. He’s denying the availability of AIDS drugs to keep big pharm rich. Criticism of Israeli policy has become reason enough to be blacklisted, but we’re not allowed to know what is happening to the prisoners we turn over in Afghanistan. Our billion dollar summit is not passing it’s audit- and leaked document(s) suggest that our Auditor General might have suffered broken knees had she not revised the wording of her findings. I imagine the party’s approved version is all we’ll ever see. Steven Harper was voted in on issues of integrity, ethics, and transparency. His government has had five years to follow through. Shame.
Wait, this isn’t titled “How I Didn’t Almost Vote Conservative”.
I get it, holy crap it bothers me to believe he’s going to win again, and that he flirts with majority territory. I was on board and ready to play ball to do anything to get Harper out of government, and that’s why I gave the Liberals my number and waited by the phone. Liberals, you have been courting my vote by putting into your platform things right up my alley, spending I support. I like your platform, sure it’s a little bit recycled from the Red Book but it’s managing to dress left while hanging onto the mainstream priorities. It really seemed like we could get along.
The debate was energetic and smart. All of our politicians are smart. And ancient and white and male but the new format promised exciting enough fodder to get past those annoyances. I was glad to see Ignatieff in action and see if he stood up to the hype building with what appeared to be an excellent campaign despite Steve’s every effort to demonize him. He fared well on the podium. It even kind of bugged me to see Layton take him to task. I mean, I like both those boys, why can’t they unite? The penny dropped with an afterthought as Ignatieff slid in underbreath “at least we get into government”. Hm… really? It was a good zinger, I forgave at the time, even defended it as a joke in good spirit. And then I thought about it. The Liberals are courting NDP votes, or at least the votes that swung NDP that time when the Liberals lost hard. You’re betting on a long shot when you try to win my support by proclaiming the irrelevancy of the party I just voted for.
Arrogance is unbecoming. It’s not a deal breaker- I mean, you have to be a little arrogant to think you should be king but it whittles away at your integrity. The Harper Government’s arrogance deserves to be punished with a loss, a bigger loss than they will get. Just like the PC deserved their loss of 1993. Just like the Liberals needed their loss in 2004, and the Liberals most definitely did need it. I had hoped that some down time could provide a sense of humility. You had me believing that it had mellowed you some, but you were just playing the game, and negging my priorities to get me to check you out.
You see, I don’t really get why you Liberals are courting the NDP vote anyway. Y’all are pretty ideologically disparate. You should be looking to gain votes from the old Progressive Conservatives- the ones tied to the Conservative party with nothing but tradition. The ones who edge closer to the centre, the ones that aren’t religious nutjobs or extremely wealthy. Those kids are also pissed that their voices also are not being heard under Harper and I think you’re just avoiding them because it’s a tougher sell and a commitment to fiscal conservatism. Just because you guys were mean to each other growing up, doesn’t mean you can’t be facebook friends now. The Call to unite the left makes little sense- you’re not really left at all, you know that right? You’re trying to convince me that the only option is for me to change and be more centrist. That’s pretty bossy if you ask me, you going to tell me how to dress next?
Frankly should a coalition occur I can’t really think of a better pairing than a Progressive Conservative Liberal with NDP- the mainstream makes the choices after listening to the concerns of the outer edges. That’s effective democracy right there. Minority governments bring about things like healthcare, hot topics at the time we just take for granted a couple of generations on.
The penultimate leg of campaigning, the one we’re in now- the last chance to build momentum before the race to the finish line. I’m starting to hear from liberals and other strategic/tactical voting believers that a vote for NDP in this riding or that is a vote for Harper. I’m sorry. Fuck you. Strategic voting has had almost no success in Canada. It has really never been successful anywhere really save for a few examples on the wikipedia page. I think it fails because we know it goes against the spirit of the system to not vote for the person or party you want to see win. Therefore I feel really uneasy promoting an Anyone-But-Harper campaign, despite my sincerest wish for him and his Conservatives to be ousted from their tower and another group of old white men with a different colour scheme step up to change/not change things.
I guess you can relax though, my vote isn’t important to you. I live in St Pauls where it would take a teleportation to the Bizarro world for anyone but Carolyn Bennett to win. I was going to vote for her, and now I’m not. I’m open to hearing what you have to say next time, we’re just in very different places right now.
so I hear Canada’s equivalent of a first lady Lauren Harper has left the Harper home and moved in with her new honey, a former member of her security personel, and a woman. Mrs. Harper now puts in appearances at events and keeps things quiet around Ottawa as per their separation agreement.
Was my source reliable? Not really, I was volunteering and this came from someone I’d never met before in the lobby of a theatre prior to the show. It is pretty satisfying to think about our homophobic prime minister’s wife adding insult to his injury not only leaving him but finding her way to join the queers and straight-but-not-narrows in our rainbow of awesome. Even if it’s untrue, I imagine it grinding gears amongst the conservative ranks that such information is being passed and accepted as common knowledge.
Todd Davidson wanted to break my arm in grade eight because he (and the entirety of homeroom 804) had heard that I was telling everyone in 803 he had fingered me somewhere at some point in time. I spent the day in denial and in tears and the week that followed was probably the most bullied I have ever been. The truth was that I hadn’t said anything. One night my friend and I had been catching up with this girl Debbie who had moved away during elementary school. Debbie was asking us questions about the boys at our middle school and my friend had said that Todd Davidson was nice, but he uses girls like he uses his underwear. I nodded knowingly because I was pretending to be cooler than I was, though I really didn’t even know what that implied. Now Debbie was friends with Farah and Karen- other girls from our grade school who didn’t give me the time of day anymore. My best guess is that Debbie was probably on the phone with one or the other as soon as she got home from my house, facts got distorted on purpose or by accident and the destruction of my social self began before homeroom the next morning.
I suppose both of these incidents stem from a mean-spiritedness from which gossip’s bad reputation stems. Gossip as a form of information transmission has a purpose beyond its airing of dirty laundry that is oft forgotten. Preceding widespread literacy, word of mouth was how you found out what happened or what was down the road coming at you. Whether you might be preparing for the crusade to rush through town on its way to mecca or uncovering a scandal that will shake the establishment or wondering if it’s appropriate to ask an acquaintance about an ailing parent- a little prior knowledge can save face, home and hearth.
Personal Gossip
We are naturally inquisitive creatures. When someone has a secret we want to know. Sharing a secret is a big way we establish the people we consider our closest friends. Information has provided a certain currency in social standing this way. People who keep their promise to not tell will still make known that they’ve been confided in, so the world knows the person has something happening, but is only telling a select number of people. Pregnancy, abortion, illness, divorce, trouble in a relationship- these can be hard to talk about but can explain a person’s odd behaviour if the word gets out. What’s left unsaid can ease interactions. It is a weapon in the wrong hands though when spread to people who care more about the dirt than the person.
Celebrity Gossip
Celebrity Gossip is kind of a different animal. Why do we care what the stars are doing? Perhaps the closeness one feels to those known to us when told an intimate secret extends to the people we adore or abhor from afar. I remember selling Frank magazine in paper form to businessmen when I worked at Lichtman’s during university down at 144 Yonge. Frank magazine was a true gossip rag, “celebrities” were made by an in-group… they were politicians and tycoons in Canada and the people closest to them would rat out the closet skeletons to send in a feature tip. One older guy came in desperate for the previous issue. This is normally bound and sent back immediately but he’d caught us between steps. We ripped open the binding and sold him one. He was pissed because he was one of the featured victims within the pages and his staff had managed to keep his fame secret the entire two week cycle.
People always seem to blame the unemployed for the continued surge of gossip sites like perez hilton and such. I disagree. My experience is just the opposite – the only time I have been interested in what’s happening to those I do not know personally was when I had a job stuck at a desk where I had literally nothing better to do. Perhaps the tedium of our workdays is to blame and we’re just looking for something to light our eyes up. There’s only so much Facebook a person can stare at afterall.
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people” I’ve been told that’s an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, though that’s disputed and in print is cited as the unknown sage. I always felt the quote to be snotty, higher than though and rude. Mind you, Roosevelt’s life was certainly rife with whispers in the halls though, in this context it might be revenge directed toward her enemies (such as her cousin Alice who practically engineered FDR’s affair with Eleanor’s secretary Lucy Mercer). Talking about mutual friends can bridge those cavernous awkward pauses in social conversation, especially when the news is good (a baby, a new house, a great success). It also requires no assessment and evaluation of other people’s minds. That’s the sort of thing you want to keep to yourself.
I received a gift of the FML book this year. Just my style: light, funny and short little blurbs that are great to read aloud. Unfortunately it didn’t deliver and here’s why.
Sites like fuck my life, texts from last night and damn you autocorrect are a big part of the confessional nature of our new internet lives. We’ve always had a bit of an obsession with true stories, basing books and movies upon them, fictionalizing true confessions into the juiciest of pulp. Gossip plays a big part in the transference of our histories, a juicy story being all the more likely to be passed on, the grain of truth as good an indicator as any in terms of our reconstructions of historical social culture. Now, oral histories are less important because we’re documenting everything. The problem is: our tales are just as tall as before and accuracy doesn’t get you posted when the blog editor is looking for a critical mass of asses being laughed off as demonstrated by the analytics.
We’ve been lying since we were babies, so says this article that shows infants as young as six months fake cry or giggle for attention. And here I thought I learned feigned laughter just to be polite at parties guys in advertising go to. But sure, in social situations, our totally true stories are often a little gussied up for the prom- and some details the equivalent of a stuffed bra if found out. The natural extension of social fibs is the anonymous true stories posted on the internet. There’s reward in the attention paid with every re-tweet, like and vote (in the case of FML readers vote to let you know if you are in fact having a bad day or if they think you totally deserved it… if your confession is about you being fat, you always deserve it).
I guess my real question is- why does it bug me so much that people lie like that? I think it lessens the impact of the genuine, wastes my time by going against the spirit of the submission format and makes people I respect look like knobs for believing the text. There’s something touching about a real emotion expressed be it pride, frustration or that one liner you really did just whip off like some sort of crazy comedian. The rawness and innocence of that is lost when we think of something cool and then think about what would make it more popular when we put it out there. It’s less touching, less entertaining when it’s made up. If you put it out as fiction there’s a higher standard to qualify as quality so you’re cheating because you are entering your story in the wrong category in the awesome contest just like that guy did who wrote that book about being an addict and went on Oprah.
We tend to not believe the compulsive liars we know- only a fool would trust them right? But when it comes to a third party posting anonymous musings we assume the other way. Even when it’s blatant and we read things like “when I told her my dick size she laughed… I forgot that Canadians use centimeters not inches” and think “what a tool, everyone knows we use inches for dick, centimeters for woodwork” we still read the next one with an honest benefit of doubt.
Fools all a y’all, and me, who finished the whole book.
yep, December’s theme didn’t work out at all. I blame the French.
There’s a lot of talk of resolution this time of year, talk that is perpetuated by:
My friend J didn’t eat chips in 2010. Not a single chip! She’s going to be overwhelmed when she goes to the store to break the fast. There has been a revolution in the variety of chip flavours available at the local Loblaws. Of course they all taste like barbeque.
The Year End Audit
Jan 1, Birthdays, September, Burning man- There’s many an occasion available to choose to assess the state of the person. A good year or a bad year or one with ups and downs we reflect on what we’ve done good on and wish on what could be different. It’s wise to keep declarations in the realm of the possible.
I quit on Victoria Day 2007 and didn’t expect to. That’s just when I finished the brainwashing book and felt occasion to stop. CBC 2 Radio was broadcasting the entire Ring Cycle- all 14 hours. I felt a responsibility to listen to as much as I could in order to give them a thumbs up for such balls out programming so my last cigarette was very Wagnerian. That was the only fanfare though, I hadn’t announced the decision and would disappoint nobody if I failed. Jan 1st puts a lot of pressure on people to quit. Plus you tend to load up on your nicotine New Years Eve as your last hurrah which is not going to help your withdrawal any. And we are heading into the depression months, so throwing away your crutch is not going to be any fun for anyone. My unsolicited advice: Don’t do it. If you do it: resolve to quit this year and map out some steps to get you there.
Most people put on weight over the holidays. Good news is that it tends to just melt off slowly as your intake returns to normal after the eating season. Still, no better time to start feeling bad about yourself than a fresh new year. This is usually a too much too soon destined for failure. Plus you make my yoga classes too crowded for three weeks and that pisses me off. Here’s what you should do: Pick one new exercise and do it 3 times a week. Pick one unhealthy food and eat less of it. Don’t think about it beyond that because thinking about food all the time makes you hungry and thinking about how much more you need to exercise makes you lazy.
You’re not even fooling yourself with this one.
So what should the pessimist try to do differently in the new year? Give yourself a break. Compromise on a bad habit. Try something new and bail if it sucks. You’d probably already be doing it if it was really your thing. Try to do what you do a little better, however that might work out. Remember that there’s nothing special about Jan 1st. Make your resolutions, but keep them to yourself. Then eat all the chips you want once you feel you’ve proven yourself.
Expectations were high. Expectations were met. Last December, the annual rampage of the cheap red suits was the most fun I’d had all year. I put on my crinoline over my tights and belted myself into the too short dress that blends naughty and nice and I filled my flask with whiskey, packed a bowl and settled in to my penultimate Xmas Tradition (second only to the annual viewing of the Christmas classic movie Die Hard).
Santacon/Santarchy traditions of Yore go back good ol 1994 when a few dozen cheap suit santas took to the drinking establishments of San Francisco. Rampages take place all over the world and follow 4 Basic Rules (Don’t fuck with cops, Don’t fuck with store security, Don’t fuck with kids, and Don’t Fuck with Santa) Non-political and jovial cavorting only- if you’re going to be an asshole, do it when you and I aren’t dressed the same.
Find fast friends behind the nearest beery white beard, crash a mall and give out stickers and candy en masse, storm the ice skating at city hall until you get kicked off for wearin boots, then take a shot someone’s cleverly disguised in a cleaned out bottle of windex. Then head right toward the second bar without stopping.
Who’s in charge here? SANTA!
Who organized this? SANTA!
Who is paying for all these drinks? The Easter Bunny!
www.santarchy.com
