2011

2010 shall end in a few days. And so, it is time for the standard "New Years Resolution" post. I figured it would be slightly more interesting than the standard "Best of 2010" lists (although I will throw this out there: the best film of 2010 was Scott Pilgrim vs The World, hands down).

Although, I don't know how much of this will be resolution. Rather, it is more like a list of things I would like to happen, or goals I would like to work towards. This is going to be a year of change, as I will be finished university as of April, and once again thrust into the working world.

The first goal can be best summed up with the words "grow up". If you know me in "the real world" I have had various conversations with people about how I do not feel like a "grown up". This is something that continually comes up in my list of insecurities. I often have minor freak outs regarding this.

I am 26 years old. I live in the same house, same room even, that I have lived in since I was 2. I am effectively unemployed, and I still go to school.

I have struggled with this. At times, I feel a distinct lack of progress in my life. I look at peoples' Facebook pages, and they are married, have houses, have fantastic jobs, have children, at my age or younger. It's not so much that I want those particular things right this second, but their lives have changed since last we saw each other. I feel stuck.

On the other hand, I try and remind myself how blessed I am. I have a wonderful family, including a mother who allows me to live at home, rent free, while I figure my life out. She's awesome. I can stay here as long as I want, and save money for when I can actually leave the nest.

I have an awesome boyfriend, with whom I can make a future with. He's also pretty awesome. I have fantastic, lifelong friendships with an amazing group of people.

But back to the resolution - grow up. I guess that goal is to make any sort of progress. This will most likely involve getting a job (which would be FANTASTIC), save any amount of money, or even just gathering materials for when I move out (I've talked with Mom about how I'm hoping to focus on buying things I can use, like vacuums or plates, rather than more books and DVDs and stuff). Any sort of progress will be super.

That's the big goal, I suppose. I have a few others, some of which are better than others. For instance, I want to be more charitable from now on (in thinking about this, it might contradict my saving money goal - hmm) as I feel that I don't really contribute anything terribly beneficial to society, other than the extremely lazy "follow this person on twitter and they'll donate money to charity" type things (speaking of which, follow @abolishcancer and they'll donate $1 to a variety of cancer charities).

This would be the "better" goal, as my other goal is to finish a lot of the video games I have half-played in my library. And upgrade to Windows 7. Some goals are sillier than others.

These are my plans for 2011. How about you?

Merry Christmas!

Understandably, life has gotten a tad bit busy, around the holidays. But I haven't forgotten you, my darling blog readers! I'm working on a Dungeons and Dragons related post, which is turning out to be a lot of work. So in the mean time, here is some Christmas-related awesomeness:

Via ViralVideosNR1

Hello Fashion Lovers!

I have a rocky relationship with fashion magazines.

I'm a tad embarrassed to admit to buying them, even. I tend to pass myself off as "one of the guys", so that should, in theory, wipe those off of the slate. I also like to pretend I'm some sort of intellectual, so the vapid "look at the pretty colours" text should also, in theory, make me want to burn the damn things.

Yet I have purchased every single issue of Lou Lou since it came out. I'm also partial to Lucky. I'm not terribly loyal to anything else, but I always manage to have piles of them taking up space in my room.

Why do I do this? I mostly don't even read them! I'm paying $5 to have a book of advertisements to flip through. And even then, I skip through the last half of the magazine, which is usually devoted to makeup. (I don't get the appeal of reading about cream or eyeshadow or any of that crap. It's a coloured powder. It is slightly different from this other coloured powder! Yay?)

There's also the whole feminist/ body issues thing. I most certainly do not look like the women in these magazines. In fact, most of the stores and clothing depicted wouldn't even fit me (apparently I am "plus-sized", according to most retail sizing, I disagree and am of the opinion that I am average). These women are genetically "blessed", heavily Photoshopped, and caked in makeup. But they are what society considers beautiful, and while I know logically how ridiculous that is, I have been conditioned to agree. Only recently, and I mean VERY recently, have these magazines been devoting A SINGLE (yes, one) page to "plus sized" women. These magazines in no way represent me, physically.

And in no way do they represent me intellectually, either. The articles tend to be extremely brief, filled with bad puns and exclamations (!!!), telling me that I absolutely have to own a cheetah print this month or be completely and totally shunned by my peers. Or how I need to where 6-inch heels so that I can appear slightly thinner (I'm not fooling anybody). Don't even get me started on the "How To Please Your Man" articles (which give terrible "generic" advice, by the way).

And yet here I sit, staring at a pile of magazines that take up space on my bedroom floor. If I have so many reasons to deplore them, why the hell do I keep buying these things?

The reason is art.

I appreciate the "art" of fashion. I love that each individual piece of clothing can be a work of art on its own (and no, it does NOT need to be expensive). I love that combining it with another item creates a completely different work of art. I love the endless combinations can create endless different works of art, that you get to inhabit each and every day. My closet can attest to this.

I buy fashion magazines to see what combinations others come up with. I get ideas for my own "art". I might decide that I need a motorcycle jacket, because I don't have one yet and I can really do a lot with that, all because of what I saw in a magazine. They inspire my own art.

Now, I don't really look at the "high-end" fashion magazines (any appreciation I have for these beautiful pieces is immediately stymied by the $4000 price tag next to them). I look for things that are attainable. I'd rather see an example of a great $30 dress which I could actually buy than a $300 one. It's all beautiful, but only one is practical enough to get me inspired.

This also, by no means, implies that I am fashionable. I am far too practical for that and will choose comfort over style 95% of the time. I endeavor to make that comfort as funky looking as I can, however. The "fashion is art" attitude is why most people can very easily peg me as an arts student.

What I'm saying is, I really shouldn't be so embarrassed by this habit I've developed. In their way, they help me create tiny works of art every day. That can't be so bad, can it?

My 2010 summed up in 90 words.

It's surprising how accurate this is.

http://tweetcloud.icodeforlove.com/

The Code is in the Kidneys

There is so much information in our bodies.

It's true that our brains hold a gazillion bits of information (and even more of the useless variety). It's true that every part of our anatomy sends information back and forth to the brain, telling us things like "that's too hot" or "that's broken" or "time to reproduce more cells".

That's not what I'm talking about.

There is a fair amount of talk about the effects our cell phone signals have on us. It may cause cancer. It may not. That has yet to be proven.

The point is, think about how much information is passing through you. WiFi signals, cell phone signals, even the remote control to your television send out invisible beams of data.

There is someone's banking information being passed through your kidney as we speak. Two long lost friends are connecting again via Facebook through your gall bladder. Someone is downloading Lady GaGa mp3s to their iPod via your appendix. Someone is calling a cab through your liver. Someone is playing Halo 3 with a guy in Japan through your intestines. Someone is "sexting" through your spleen.

Peoples lives are being lived through you, and you've never even met them.

We talk about the global village and how the world is more connected than ever, but it goes further than that. We are connected via the hundreds and thousands of people that our information passes through to get to someone else.

It's a wondrous thing, in a sense, because it is yet another thing that connects us to other people. Their information is inside of you, and your information is inside of them. It's also a dangerous thing, as it could very well be killing us. It could cause cancer, or another ill-effect we won't become aware of until twenty or thirty years from now.

It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. We are all connected. What you put out into the world passes through so many different people to get to someone else. The air you breathe in is full of data.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

A brief interlude...

Well, since I made my mom cry with the last post, I thought I'd write something that is not SO dramatic and serious. That will come this week. In the meantime, I shall sit and squee about the Mass Effect 3 trailer.

It's SO PRETTY!!!

Blackbird

Hi folks. I thought I'd begin with something a bit older. I wrote this in 2006.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

- The Beatles, Blackbird[i]

I can safely say that on almost every day of my life, I have heard at least one song by The Beatles. My dad was a huge fan of theirs, and he passed that on to my brother and I. I never get tired of them, and I’ve been hearing their songs for twenty-two years. More often than not, my dad would be strumming one of their songs on his guitar; most of the time it was the song Blackbird. That’s always how it was in my house.

The most significant, life-changing experience that has occurred in my life was losing my father to cancer last year.

He had cancer for the first time when I was 8 years old, though I didn’t know it at the time. I knew that he had to see a special doctor once a week, and I knew when he had surgery that they had taken most of the skin off of his right arm. Later on, my mom finally told us that it had been melanoma, and he had a large mole removed from his arm. I found out a lot of our play-dates with my friend Ashleigh had been merely babysitting so that my mom could take dad to treatment. The surgery was considered a success, but he never really had any feeling in most of his arm after that.

Last year in March, my dad found blood on the inside of one of his shirt sleeves. He discovered a large lump on the backside of his arm, almost exactly were his mole had been removed thirteen years earlier. He was tested, and a month later he was diagnosed with melanoma once more. We then entered the lengthy process of determining what treatment he should take.While this was going on, his back was starting to bother him. It was getting increasingly uncomfortable for him to get around. His doctors assured us that this was unrelated to his melanoma, and sent him off to physiotherapists who said that it was probably arthritis.

By July, he was bed-ridden. He couldn’t walk, he could barely get up to go to the bathroom. He certainly couldn’t make it down the stairs. One night, he just couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom, and we decided that this had to be more than just a bit of arthritis, and we called an ambulance.He was admitted to the hospital in mid-July, and then finally it was determined that the cancer had spread into his back, and a tumor had, in fact, crushed part of his spine.

He began radiation treatment soon afterwards. He didn’t lose much hair (although, he didn’t have much to lose anyways), but he got increasingly weaker and lost his appetite. He was in the hospital for over a month, but then in August the doctors determined that he was healthy enough to be treated at home.

The house took quite a transformation. We rented a hospital bed and had it in the family room on the first level of our house. We bought a commode so he didn’t have to travel far to go, and a walker so that if he did have to get up, he had more help than we could give by holding him up.Three weeks later, he had taken a turn for the worse. He was in diapers, and my mom was getting increasingly frustrated because she just couldn’t move him to change him. The tumor was hideous. It was black and mutated and it smelled horrific.

At that point, college had started again and I was supposed to be in Toronto doing the first of two major assignments for my final year of film school. I was in class on Monday of that week, and I went home immediately afterwards instead of staying in residence.

I cried the entire way home, much to the chagrin of those in the train around me. I had realized that day what was going to happen.When I got home, my mom had told me that the doctor had been in to see him. We had a decision to make: whether we wanted him at home or in the hospital for “this”.

He was dehydrated and barely breathing. We called an ambulance.He perked up a bit with the help of a drip, and became more coherent. That week we made sure he was never alone. We took shifts of staying at the hospital with him overnight, helping him have a drink He even talked a bit, mostly to thank us and tell us he loved us. He even said he liked my hair (I tend to dye it “unusual” colours like blue, purple, etc. – my dad would roll his eyes every time).

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly

Into the light of a dark black night.

- The Beatles, Blackbird[ii]

He passed away on September 16, 2005, at about two in the morning. I was outside in the hall, I couldn’t watch.

The next few days (with the funeral and the preparations for it) were largely a blur. My boyfriend and friends were there for me, and I will always be grateful for that. We played two songs during the funeral: Here, There and Everywhere (it had been my mom and dad’s first dance at their wedding) and Blackbird, both by The Beatles. I was back at school a few days later – I had already missed one of the major assignments.

I guess I’m supposed to talk about how this has been a significant change in my life, besides the obvious.

My house has changed significantly – we have a lot of new furniture, we had new windows installed, new curtains, new paint – it doesn’t look like it did back then. My mom’s changed her linens to reflect only her taste. We changed all the paintings in the living and family rooms. We got 2 new cars in the past year. This is merely a cosmetic change; an outward reflection of what’s changed inside.

My mom chose to retire early from teaching, she just wasn’t into it anymore. It’s incredibly odd to have her just be at home all day.

I think I have grown up a lot in the past year, which is not something I think would have happened if he was still here. I do way more chores than I did before (we were a bit spoiled in that way), because I don’t want my mom to have to do everything. We’ve both had to learn about taxes and the paying of bills and all of the financial stuff that my dad did. It’s a bit more of a forced growing up, but it has happened.

What hasn’t changed is the music. I still hear The Beatles almost every day, being strummed on the guitar. However, now it isn’t my dad, it’s just my younger brother. However, I’m sure one of the first things dad did, after saying hello to the rest of my family, was go introduce himself to John Lennon and George Harrison.

Each one believing that love never dies

Watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there

To be there and everywhere

Here, there and everywhere

- The Beatles, Here, There and Everywhere[iii]

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[i] Beatles, The. “Blackbird”. The White Album. CD. Apple, 1968

[ii] Beatles, The. “Blackbird”. The White Album. CD. Apple, 1968

[iii] Beatles, The. “Here, There and Everywhere”. Revolver. CD. Apple, 1966.

Boldly going where many men have gone before...

This is my very first post on my very new blog. Huzzah!

I figured that since I've guest blogged here and there, and write for various websites, I may as well have somewhere to link back to, that isn't just my twitter. Which, of course, you can follow as well.

You may be wondering what the point of this blog is. I've done personal "this was my day" blogs in the past (for several years in fact - looking back on it, it was an excellent chronicle of my time in college). This is not what this blog is to be.

This blog is for me to write in. I know that sounds like stating the bloody obvious, but it's true. This will not be an account of my day-to-day life, but rather a place for me to write reflections, short stories, poems, or whatever else I choose to post. While it won't be a completely impersonal blog, it won't be quite so personal either. You might also get some amusing links now and again, or plugs for the various writings of friends and colleagues.

There, that is my fancy introduction to my fancy new blog, which is severely in need of a redesign. When I make up my mind as to how I want the damn thing to look, I'll let you know.