Things I Cannot Stand (Thank you pop culture..)

1) The saying, "That's hot" courtesy of Paris Hilton. VOMIT. And even more vomitous, how it's caught on. SICK!

2) 50 Cent. I know he got shot a few times... but his singing sounds like he's fallen asleep.

3) Which brings me to my next point, rappers or singers who sing about how great they are. Come on! Have some humility! Case in point:

• "Go ahead, envy me, I'm rap's MVPAnd I ain't goin' no where so you can get to know me" -50 Cent/The Game
• "I am number one"- Nelly

4) Louis Vuitton...

5) Murses

6) Mallrats (not the movie... actual mallrats, especially the ones who are teen/preteen...get something better to do!)

7) Mini-dogs, also courtesy of Paris Hilton... I love animals, but when you see someone walking around with a rat in their arms...

8) Shoe techies

9) Baller bands/Live strong bands, etc... Hey, I support cancer research too, but the bands are getting overdone!

10) Pink. Baby pink, powder pink, soft pink, you get the idea.

11) Reality TV shows... Enough Amber and Rob! Please!

12) Stars who think they're larger than life. Since when did they become superhuman? Or think they're better than other people?

13) Pop-up ads. Argh!

14) Spiked heels. It occurs to me that it is very odd that women in our culture take pride in making themselve up/dressing so that they basically become useless... I.e.) I can't go swimming/out in the rain, it will ruin my hair/makeup. I can't walk/go there.. I'm wearing heels. etc.

15) Cell phones.. Don't even get me started! Isn't it nice sometimes to be unreachable? Maybe that's just me, I don't know...

16) Letting children have free reign.. Whatever happened to a good old fashioned threat (no going out for a week, no ice cream, etc.)? Seeing kids run around like little heathens terrorizing other people and the parents do absolutely nothing?

17) ETC!

(p.s. no I don't want to go back to the dark ages.. but working in a mall, some things just get on my nerves)

I am a Cartoon.

1) In the store that I work at, we have a raised area in the back that you have to walk up a ramp to get at. Today I choreographed a little dance, three of us girls doo-wopping down the ramp to some oldie. The customers were weirded out and the other employees thought it was genius. This is while we were bored and kept going into the back and putting on old, ugly shoes that no one in their right mind would buy so they sit in the stockroom gathering dust.

2) Two nights ago, my friend and I, drunk, decided to hand deliver a note to a friend who had bailed on coming out with us. Problem was, it was pissing rain, 3:3o am, and we didn't know where he lived exactly. So we took her dog and got on our bikes and started riding. Over the bridge out of Vancouver into Kits, her dog pulled her into oncoming traffic, where my friend lay motionless as I frantically tried to lift her up.. Thankfully at 4 am. there is not much bridge traffic... After wandering around in Kits for an hour, it became apparent that we really didn't know where he lived, and sobering up, hand delivering a picture of someone being lynched didn't seem so smart... so on our way home, my friend's dog got sprayed by a skunk, and then we had to go back to her little apartment and share it with a freshly skunked wet dog.

So these are just two little incedences in my oddity-filled life. I have long maintained that my life is like a cartoon show, and I am the lead character. I mean, I am a university educated person. I have done lots of good responsible things, yet I am always embroiled in some weird sort of activity. Ah well.. it all serves to make life more interesting, which brings me to the subject of the tattoo that I am getting...when I manage to rein in my finances and have enough money....four chinese characters. "Ju Jue Ping Yong," or "Refuse to be ordinary."

Ode To Retail

Ode to you, oh retail beast
Filled with your impatient customers, pregnant wives, middle aged men
Shifty young thugs jimmying security pucks off stacks of folded t-shirts,
While Vietnamese families stroll through chattering quickly,
Ode to you, line-ups at the till,
Moving restlessly from one foot then back to the other
As the young clerk sweats and makes eye contact only with the screen,
Customers tangle in line, vying for a closer spot to the door.
Ode to you, screaming children
Running up and down the aisles, in and out of racks
Splitting the workers headachey heads with your shrill cries,
Parents too busy shopping around to stop you.
Ode to you, workers on commission,
Cattily stealing each other's sales,
Blindly lying to customers, "Oh that looks great on you!"
Selling your souls for 8 dollars an hour.
Didn't your mother tell you not to lie?
Ode to you, retail lifers
The only life you will know is between the racks,
Flitting from one customer to the next,
Overly cheery, overly excited about the newest shipment of shoes,
The latest style to come out.
You're too old for this.
Ode to you, retail beast
Bulging, growing, distending retail beast
Your hunger is never satisfied
And I don't think.... will ever end.

Beautiful

What is beautiful? I try to find beauty in every day that I am on this planet, this wonderful earth. Today, the clouds were beautiful. Emerging from work in the evening, it had been raining all day but the huge, dark billowy clouds were stacked on the horizon, hanging over the misty mountains. Over the city, thin whispy clouds floated in and out of the rays of the falling sun, shimmery golds, light lilacs and pale pinks.

I find beauty in my friends, and knowing that they support me in whatever I do, whatever I decide. I find beauty in having a spare moment to sit down and write, or to email someone I haven't talked to in a while, knowing that they care about me and I care about them.

I find beauty in my family, as often as I say I hate them, I come home from a day at work and have dinner waiting for me courtesy of my mom, or I find my brother listening to a song that I didn't know he liked, or I do a crazy dance in the living room to "Black Betty" just so I can make my sister laugh... or my dad wakes up from a nap and makes some funny comment like he always does...

I find beauty in music, the way musicians weave poetry into lyrics, evoking emotions inside me that I have never felt. Carrying me away to a place I have never been.

I find beauty in possibility. Knowing I have the opportunity to change my situation, or that I can just pick myself up and start a new life without too much trouble. Or that there are fascinating, wonderful people all over the world just waiting out there for me to enlighten my life, and I hopefully to enlighten theirs.

I find beauty in food, rich, luxurious food- chinese, mexican, italian, polish, vietnamese.. etc.

I find beauty in life, in living, in breathing.

Blank

Blank is my mind, my head
Staring out the rear of the train
Watching the clouds pile and lurch
Over the clustered buildings, washed over by rain
Blank as the train regurgitates track
Over and over,
Green oaks, green cottonwoods brustle
Train sides as it flies by
Away from the stacking clouds, the blacking clouds
Into the shimmery gold sunset
Blank away from the day
Already past
Past like the track that enlarges
Drawing in breath as we stop at each station
Blank is the past
Blank is now
Blank is later.

Ready to leave

In approximately 2 weeks, I will be leaving for a two month backpacking trip through Central America. As a result of my poor saving habits... my wallet seems to be some sort of black hole for money... I haven't nearly enough money for my trip. I am also graduating from university next year and my time should, more logically, be spent working and saving up money. BUT I am ecstatic that I am leaving. Money problems, poor organization aside, I can't wait. I haven't been away in over a year now. I am ready to roam.

In the past weeks, I have been rushing around trying to get all my stuff in order. Malaria pills, vaccinations, mosquito netting, toiletries, supplies, etc. I am planning to go all out-budget traveller style. $3-a-night hostels, chicken buses, and good ole walking. I can't wait! I have been using some guidebooks to get a rough idea of where to go, what to see, and have found some pretty neat places-including Copan, Isla de Omepte, the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Los Chiles, Masaya, Rocking J's, etc. But I am anticipating changing my plans while I'm there...

For me there is something SO appealing about disappearing off the map. As Paul Theroux writes in his novel, Dark Star Safari, about being unreachable by phone, email or fax, and in the answer to inquiring parties as to his whereabouts, estimated return home, etc: "Don't know!"

These past few weeks I have been trying to squeeze in seeing all the people that I haven't seen in a while, and while I do love my friends, frankly I am fed up with it and ready to get out of here. I am ready to start doing new things, seeing life from the new perspective that always comes hand in hand with budget travel.

I know that I was not meant to be sedentary. For whatever reason, I was born with an eternal wanderlust. Why? Don't know? Sometimes I think it would be easier to not have it... but oh well, that's who I am!

Voter Apathy...

Oh and I forgot... voter apathy. How many people did I talk to pre-election that said "Yeah, I would totally vote for the NDP, but I'm not voting."

Me: "Why not?"

Them: "Don't feel like it. Too lazy. I don't vote... etc."

Don't get me started on the issue of voter apathy.... but wait! I'm already started!

I had a history teacher in high school who made a speech about democracy that I will never forget. Something to the effect of "All those people who died fighting in wars, WWI, WWII, etc. all those people who fought and died the world over for democracy, for the vote, if you live in a democratic country and don't vote- all those people died in vain."

So true... I have no problem with someone who is well-informed, who has weighed all the possibilities and is making a conscious decision to not cast a vote, but those who are just simply apathetic or lazy... And the all too common excuse "I just don't know anything about any of the candidates. I can't make an informed vote."

WHAT?

Where do we live? The Antarctic? Are you telling me that you can't pick up a local paper before the election and read the blurbs put out almost daily by the local candidates? Are you telling me that you can't log on to the internet, type in the party and take 5 minutes to browse each platform? Or 30 minutes to watched the televised debates? How lazy and complacent can one person be?

Do people think it is just some wonderful coincident that we are provided with cheap healthcare, infrastructure, tax returns, police protection, or education subsidies? Do these things just magically appear out of no where? OF COURSE NOT! You must VOTE to get them.

Okay... sorry this was supposed to be a short add-on to my last post. Can you tell where my interests lie?

Elections and Such

Let's consider the recent BC election. The long-awaited contest between Liberals and New Democrats. For all intents and purposes, it seemed to me that the NDP would win (despite those all-too-common opinion polls that claimed the reverse). For 4 years, Gordon Campbell increased taxes, cut healthcare and education spending, managed to offend large groups of people with his policies, and even had an arrest for drunk driving just to ice the cake. All of a sudden, he's voted back into office.

WHAT?!

Although I can't say that I am surprised. For several reasons. People are afraid of the NDP. They think that voting for them is a vote towards communism (seriously!). Secondly, all those money watchers... Recently I had a conversation with my manager at work regarding who we were voting for (I currently work in retail). He started to get down right agitated when I told him I vote NDP-not that I totally agree with them either, but I find them the lesser of the two evils. My manager started fuming and spouting the classic "But our economy is number one in Canada, and that is the way it should be....etc. etc." Two things in response to this: of course the budget is balanced in BC- that's what happens when you increase your intake by upping taxes, cutting education and healthcare spending and partially privatizing some crown corporations. Then right before the election, drop the extra tax, proclaim "Our budget is balanced. What a good job the Liberals have done!" and wait for the votes to roll in. Secondly, what short sight we have... Sure, BC's economy is doing well. For now. What happens after a period of economic boom??

BUST!

Maybe it's a blessing that the Liberals were voted in again. Maybe the bust will happen while they're in power, and scare the public into voting NDP next time... Although, what am I saying? It's not like the NDP's last term in office was all that successful either.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not a raging socialist or anything. However I do believe that the economy is not the be all and end all of mankind. In fact, in my opinion, it may be our downfall... but that's another issue altogether ;) I feel that we in the "Western World" are making a grave mistake, and voting parties like the Liberals under Gordon Campbell into power is only locking us into a irreversible (or difficult to reverse) downward spiral towards the ultimate demise of society.

Did I just lose you (if anyone is reading this...hehehe)? Probably... It has taken me 4 years of formal education plus 2 years of travel and self-exploration to reach conclusions about the world, and even those conclusions I have reached are tenuous at best.... I don't feel like I really have any answers...

Anyways, I will be watching the next 4 years of BC politics with a close eye. Maybe the most important 4 years in recent history? Only time will tell....

Hipp-if-y

I want to be a hippie... I want to stroll around Commercial Drive, Vancouver, or Nelson, BC and wear a long flowy hemp skirt. I want crunchy dreads and a thick string of musky beads around my neck- rattan bag slung low over my shoulder. I want a hand-dyed hair wrap, and to have leg hair that grows free. I want to stroll around in the sun smoking pot with my hippie friends, one who is playing an African drum, and another who strums on his acoustic guitar while we drink fair trade coffee and hang out on a park bench, mid-afternoon. I need to hipp-if-y.

I want to go home at night, light my stick of sandalwood incence, and throw my bag on the second-hand desk covered in a woven fabric from Thailand, rattling the mother-of-pearl wind chime as I head into my small apartment.

I want to be a hippie!

Vancouver meeting....

So recently, on a night on the town I happened to meet a man who worked for the BBC, who I ended up talking to all night. We talked about a lot of things, and didn't end up parting ways until around 5 am, when I ran into my friend, and came to the realization that I had been carrying her apartment keys, and she had been locked out for hours.

For me, it is rare to meet someone that I have that much in common with, who I find that fascinating. We seemed to have many of the same interests, travelling, politics, etc. Best of all, he seemed laid back and funny... not in a weird way. He was leaving with some friends on a road trip into the USA the next morning, and we made plans to meet, but being so hungover and terrible feeling, I ended up being too sick to go.

So, that was the end. We had this great connection, and I honestly would have liked to have spent a lot more time together. Instead, as a result of my own thick-headedness, drunkenness, and fate's idea of a cruel joke, I am left to wonder, what might have been. Was that my chance? Or was that fate's way of telling me that there is hope out there to find someone compatible?

Part of me is rather upset, and part of me is nonchalant. There is no reason to dwell on the past, right? But conversely, there is no reason not to wonder......