Right now I am:
*stressed. and my shoulders hurt.
*worried the Bush/Blair are starting to suffer from vietnam syndrom -- too much invested to be able to pull out without losing all of the repesct anyone still has for them
*sick of only thinking what I'm supposed to think
*not happy to be awake and not have a cozy bed full of company to crawl back into
*Convinced that Saddam Hussein is actually insane. trust me. I've been doing a lot of research.

Current mood: tense, angry and mopey (not to be confused with sulky)
Current soundtrack: bits of pulpfiction with the voices of thousands of people screaming in the background. all the people I'm reading about Saddam slaughtering like cattle. all the people whose villages he gased and raised. *shudder*

I should not be online right now. I should be writing my paper. another paper. i do nothing but write papers. I am miserable. I am angry and volitile. I will explode.

Stolen from Marilee...

Five details about you...
[x] Write lots of papers on the state of and problems with the world
[x] Want coffee a lot
[x] Bit of an emotional basket case
[x] Urgently seeking freedom and my own space
[x] Have already found the love of my life. He's asleep in my bed.

Five details about your appearance right now...
[x] Several colours of sorts of blond/brownish hair
[x] Wearing white nighty with pink rose buds on it
[x] Pink toenails
[x] Finally have abs again
[x] Big mouth. Ask anyone who knows me

Five things you did yesterday...
[x] Discussed the local imapcts of globalization in an urban setting and thought it was interesting.
[x] Baked a cake
[x] Wore a skirt
[x] Returned 9 of my 25 books to the UBC library
[x] Didn't fall asleep alone.

Five memorable things you did in the last year...
[x] Learned lots
[x] Quit my evil deli job
[x] Decided to become a teacher for now
[x] Moved
[x] Cuddled my baby cousin

Five favourite groups (at the moment)...
[x] The Doors
[x] The Rolling Stones
[x] Santana
[x] The Beastie Boys (esp. flute loop)
[x] Various other wierd cap on mix CDs made by C/J

Five favourite movies...
[x] The Usual Suspects
[x] The Following
[x] Dr. Stangelove
[x] Four Rooms. If that's what it was called, with the 4 different directors, and...
[x] Siberia. Or else I'm just saying that to be weird.

Five things that make you happy...
[x] Coffee in the morning
[x] Being in love
[x] Long bubble baths with a good book
[x] Going for walks
[x] Travelling

Five things that impress you...
[x] People who can discuss thing intelligently
[x] Kofi Anan
[x] People who are good at sports
[x] Telepathy
[x] Art

Five things that don't impress you...
[x] Exploitation
[x] Sweatshops and people who support them
[x] Ignorance and apathy. the two biggest problems of our age
[x] Perpetual rain
[x] People who try really ahrd to be cool

Five things you can't live without...
[x] My family.
[x] Cam
[x] Music
[x] Respect
[x] Conversation

xxxooo Happy Birthday Cam! oooxxx

C is 22 today. I should be celebrating with him but I am just at school numbing my mind as usual. last night mom was editing my paper on the European Union, and she was like "Oh, that's interesting. You know, I'd never thought of it that way before." and I blinked and said "oh, I don't know what I think about that, that's just what my paper thinks." So it's official folks, I am no longer thinking,, just writing.

in other news, I officially have a room mate for May 1st, and therefore next week begins... househunting!!!! this is the first time in awhile that I've actually been happy to be moving. yay me. but it's now time to go hand in my brilliant paper.

paper done, next paper almost begun. I am a lean, mean, information processing, essay outputting machine. and i just wish it was all over.

BAD ESSAY, NO DOUGHNUT

ewww... essay hell. This is gross. I hate it and am stuck again. And only just over half done. In the spirit of misery loving company, here's my companion to Coeur's list of
Ten Things I Have to Do While Writing An Essay, for Procrastination Purposes:
1. Read everyone I know's blog/website. twice.
2. Check up on my Nation State (see linky)
3. Smoke
4. Make tea and eat a cookie
5. Shower and remove hair from anywhere I can think of
6. Play a round of pocket tanks
7. Smoke more
8. Go get a coffee
9. Do several dozen situps
10. Read online war news
Can I have an 11 too?? Hey wait, it's my website, I can do anything I want.
11. Bang my head against the wall. repeatedly.

I will finish this paper today. I will compose and type the remaining nine pages on the european union and the realist assertaion of the existence and persistence of an international system of anarchy and they will be brilliant and flow smoothly and I will be the unquestionable poli sci master. or at least the finishing this damned paper master.

my WHOLE fricking family blogs now, I swear, ness, kat , even my mom. what? we can't really talk to eachother anymore so we'll just post at one another?? It's already become a serious issue for mom, who now bums a cigarette so she can go and "get ready to do her blog" - am I just easily annoyed, or is another way to waste time really the last thing she needs? what about a new pair of shoes that "doesn't go" with anything she owns but none-the-less she spends money on them. that she'll likely later try to borrow from me. Yeah, I am moving. stop the madness, I say, just stop.

I'm not going to wirte about the war again today, except to say that I can feel it sitting by the back of my brain helping me to be uber-irritable and snarky. but fuck it, maybe people just deserve it until they learn to give me some space. because they really don't yet. they assume that if I'm at home it's because I'm dying from lack of listening to them constantly yammer. Case in point, my mom yesterday, knowing full well (trust me) just exactly how irritable I am and how stressed and under essay-crunch, invited the loudest person she knows over yesterday to sit in the living room and yammer at high volume at anyone and everyone, just to guarentee that I don't have a fucking hope in hell of getting ANY work done. FUcking hell people, just leave me alone.

That said I did have an awsome visit with N and M last night which resulted in much needed giggling and relaxation. DOn't see nearly enough of my favorite island boy lately, that's for sure, and even M and i do an awful job of rememering to hangout every now and then, so it was just nice to spend some time with them. Silver linings.

well folks, welcome to war. I find it completely impossible to focus on anything when I am convinced that if the whole world would just shut up for a minute we'd hear people dying. When I think about it, and picture in my mind just what it would be like to be an iraqi right now, I can smell burning flesh. The Iraqis are not just them, they are a part of us. We are hurting us, and we are killing us, and there is nothing we can do to stop us. Will we see the first nuclear war of my lifetime? This is why I can't sleep at night.

The best website I've found to follow all of this is www.guardian.co.uk it's the website for the big lefty paper out of England, and they seem to cover just about everything. They even have an interactive map of various Iraqi cities onto which you can superimpose the locations that the US and UK have said would be likely first targets and also the locations of civilian facilities in those same areas. Pretty scary. Plus they have some actual reporting, you know, mulitple views, etc. I wish I spoke french better so I could watch all this on the french news.

I'm still working on that damned first paper. It must be done this weekend so I can start another next week, but I have to admit my focus is entirely elsewhere. Can you hear the screams?

time for an official Fuck you Sylvia Plath!

I mean really, you sell out bitch. Write a poem about a sexually abusive, opressive "Daddy" but then refuse to own it, call it a poem about a half-german half-jew with an electra (like Oedipus, but the other way around) complex so as to distance yourself from having to admit to any of it and instead make your poor speaker culpable for her mixed feelings about the abuse she suffered instead of landing the blame right where it belongs, all over "Daddy". Couldn't you have SOME courage? Suck it up and let the poor girl want her abuser dead, let her regret that he died before she could kill him, don't make her pity him and blame herself. That road has already been taken too many times. She needs you to help her regain her voice, as you initially tried to do, not bury it again as you have. Bitch. Cowardly bitch.

okay, am I the only one who can't get to Keri's website, or is this some kind of more widespread problem? Because I know that my internet connection has been absolutely FUCKED lately (hear that shaw?? FUCKED!!!) but I do seem, at least everynow or then, when the light on my modem blessedly stops flashing red, to go everywhere but Keri's page... any ideas??

I too have been bored and lonely lately, but the only way that's going to change is by finishing all my papers so I can see friends again, which, since all my papers combine to equal about 15,000 words, will be awhile (excepting ONE evening for Nat while he's in town). Of course, I you all each wrote a paper for me, I could be free by the weekend... well, at least think about it, okay?

those assholes just ate my whole post. and it was a nice angsty post too, all about how I had three papers I had to be writing, and loaned all of my money (less $13) to my mom when she was all of the sudden short for rent and how my skin has turned into the worst shit it has veer been in my life, and my right shoulder muscles are all fucked up and make my arm numb every now and then, and how I wasn't even sure I was going to have enough money for contact lens solution or parking and busfare for school this week, but how at this point I'd give all that up before I'd stop smoking, because that at least temporarily bonds together the bits of my threatening to run away and implode. but it's all gone, cuz god hates me. we already knew that though, didn't we?

I'd also mentioned that Nat is coming to town next weekend, and I for one am planning on ignoring all of my papers for an evening to see him, and everyone else should see him to, and wouldn't it be fun if we could all get together? but that bit got eaten too. I am the eaten one.

An encounter at Broadway and Commercial

I was walking C up to the skytrain station to head on his way to school, and crossing Commercial we see an old homeless guy walking across the street barefoot, and I have to admit, it pulls my heartstrings. I drop C off and head up a couple of blocks to pick up a few groceries, and on my way home I notice that he's still standing in front of the bank, so I stop and give him a twoonie from my change and two oranges from my grocery bag. He looks up at me and smiles a big jack-o-lantern smile and says "Oh, dear, you've just made an old man's day. Now I have a meal, and after that I can take this two bucks up the street and there's a place I can buy a coffee and they'll let me sit inside for an hour or two and warm up my feet." At this point he lifts one of his bare feet of the ground and wiggles his toes in the air, laughing. I have to admit, I could feel tears just behind my eyes. Then he looks at me very seriously and says "you have good karma coming to you. Happy international women's week" before walking away. And it made me feel really good, but it also got me thinking, I'd just had a genuinely positive impact on someone's day, I could tell that by the way he grinned as he walked away, and it was easier than deciding what to wear this morning. Maybe we get a bit too caught up in the little shit sometimes, eh? It's really good to be jarred back into perspective like that.

posty-wosty?

STRANGE DAYS

or else I'm easily confused. But I swear, yesterday was fucked up. I did get a substantial amount of school reading done, but also

#1- got a Sears card with $1000 of credit and my name on it in the mail (bah?? but 2.4% is a pretty good monthly rate when combined with no annual fees...) so the debate: to activate or not to activate, otherwise put, to establish credit rating or to play it safe? but then again, maybe I'm already safe, since what the hell am I going to spend a grand on at sears??

#2- Elliott brought over mail including my T4 from Santa Barbara and so I actually did my taxes - I had no idea I'd payed over $900 in taxes this year, I thought it'd be way lower since I only worked from the end of April to the beginning of September, but hey, I guess I was making better scratch than I thought. My point? Six to eight weeks from now, the governemnt is sending me a grand. That's two grand so far, and I'm feeling very rich but then I realize, IT'S ALL FAKE!!! one grand is money I have to pay back, and the other is money I already paid... makes me think that wealth is this society is pretty fucked up, if I can feel rich off the ability to owe money and getting money owed to me returned. hmmm.

#3- recieved e-mail from old, old Loud Productions-days friend who has in his posession my Callahan's autographed collection (if you don't know what that is, ask me soon and I will bless you) and wants to get together to give it to me. So far so good, he's nice and I guess it'd be nice to catch up, but at the same time, this is the old friend who got me hated by a Santa B. coworker for telling her that I was his ideal perfect girl, and so on. hhhmmm again. Well, I want the book, and maybe he wants his annual, "No, I'm not single yet, nor will I be any time soon, or possibly ever, and even if I was I wouldn't neccessarily date you." Ahhh fun.

And then #4- I went on line to the TA Union's website and discovered that they're picketing the Buchanan complex today and I, therefore, have no classes. YES!!!

See, good but strange. Today should be less eventful. School reading unless I get a call to go and pick up my Callahan's and then a return visit to see Chloe, and then a visit from C. See, I'm not hard to please.

eugh. homework day. i'd much rather curl up in bed with a good book. godd smelling split pea soup is bubbling on the stove. it's a comfort food kind of day. especially because i have to read utilitarian theory -- ewww!!!

my hair's a new colour now, thanks to the talented hands of chloe, and more frivolous items were posted to the victoria branch-office today -- both locations, and I have even heared word that the long-absent agent N is coming for a visit later this month to go to the Ceili (fun irish dance) on the 20somethingth. Which would be awsome, since he's certainly not around often enough and much missed.

friends are the ultimate comfort food. i'm feeling very hesitant lately, don't quite know where to start, what to do, how to make stuff work. feeling pulled several directions at once. anxious, hence I need comfort food and hugs. lots of hugs. and *sigh* a job, I suppose, next month... mmmmpppfffff.

uh yeah, I did say publish...

I love the wind. It blows through your hair and all of the sudden you could be Gretta Garbo, Thelma AND Louise, Sharon Stone, anyone more glamorous than a second year arts student queasy from too many cokkies while studying, and it transports you so that you could be flying (or driving a vintage convertable) to any number of locales far more exciting and mysterious than the library and an evening poli sci class in the dank bowels of buchanan. But sadly for me the wind stops once I step inside, and I am left feeling worse for the wear of a twelve hour school day. sigh.

and what a day it's been. I wrote the english midterm that I missed while sick last week and has a spontanious ten minute nosebleed in the sub conversation pit that culminated in me running across the foyer to the bathroom clutching bloody napkins to my nose and feeling like an ass. At least my tea was still there when I got back. Ah nothing's fun like public embarassment, people looking and whispering "is that girl okay??" but note that no one offered to help or anything. gee I LOVE people.

and the strike goes on, with another union - administrative staff, including all the library staff, joining the TAs and threatening to ensure that the university grinds to a halt and the libraries are shut down by early next week, just in time to fuck me up for my research term papers. YES!!!

monday, sunny monday. happy me. you know though, with comments like tat, you make me very inclined to gloat (I know, I'm evil, aren't I) and say things like, yeah, and frequently, and it's really good too, cause I've had years of practice and and... but I won't. (Oh wait! too late! bad me!)

also, thanks F, this gave me a good chuckle last night.

As dictators go, you're kind of pathetic! Instead of military coup or systematic persecution to get power, you just happen to be the head of the only party in the UK that isn't totally worthless! While not very impressive it is none the less effective! You can do whatever the hell you like without any chance of getting voted out of office! People know that the only alternative would have them eating their children if they ever got back into power! However, you still think that you are as loved as you were when you were first elected into power… News flash for you: You're not! What tin-pot dictator are you? Take the "What Dictator am I?" test at PoisonedMinds.com

well, I dunno. Paper's done, health improving, all is good. but I do feel a bit on the drained side. I think that must be because of the paper though. If there were just one more day in the week, then I'd actually get a day every week to see my freinds. as is, well, ye takes what ye can gets, so right now, I'll settle for a shower. mmmclean.