welcome to downtown coolsville

So last night Amy and I went out to have a few drinks at a local bar and ended up crashing a lesbianish bachelorette party that involved Belinda Carlisle karaoke and a screening of The Room (BEST. MOVIE. EVER) and we thought we made a friend except he turned out to be a fucking racist dick so he wasn't a friend after all and there was a very patient bartender and endless glasses of red wine and someone put a jamjam down my shirt. And I'm still drunk.

It was a good night.

Remember that noise the blender makes right before you go to sleep tonight. It will be a fun and groovy time.

Today I was thinking about the stories I told myself when I was a kid.

I used to get bored all the time. This is a constant hazard when you are a child with an overactive imagination, I think- the world as it is inside your head is so full of ADVENTURES and WHAT-IFS and EXCITING THINGS that the world outside your head can never quite measure up. My brain was populated with dragons, orphaned princesses, space aliens, sentient rocks, telekinetic harpies, and murderous duchesses with multicoloured tentacles instead of hair, and frankly, venturing outside of it to live in real time was boring. So I used to have these storylines running in my head whenever I did boring stuff, like a movie you put on in the background while you clean your room. One particularly dull day spent with my least favourite aunt and cousins saw me staging an elaborate dungeon breakout, negotiating with a mob of angry ghosts, and crowning myself leader of an itinerant wolf pack, all without leaving my seat in the back of my aunt's minivan. I think maybe they wondered why my eyes periodically unfocused, but they never asked any questions.

The first character I ever remember making up was a girl named Aurora, who I started telling stories to myself about in second grade. She was a princess who lived above the clouds in a ~magical sky kingdom and had a pet unicorn and was betrothed to a super handsome dude who looked kind of like Tuxedo Mask in breeches. Seriously. It was pretty much the girliest thing ever, except for the part where she and her parents were locked in an eternal war with a bunch of giant sky-rats who occasionally kidnapped Super Handsome Dude and tortured him hideously until Aurora rode in on her magical unicorn and kicked their asses. I remember being really interested in the torture parts, because seven-year-old Ish loved ponies and ruffles and sparkles and GORE. I never wrote any of these stories down- pity, I bet they were awesome- and they have mostly disappeared from my head, but I remember the basic outlines of the world. Rainbows! Sunshine! EVERYBODY DIES.

Oh, and also I gave this Aurora chick blue hair because I read a book which featured a girl with blue hair and I thought that was just about the neatest thing in the world, further proving that I haven't really changed much since elementary school.

I was thinking about this before, and began to wonder if the book actually existed or if I'd just imagined it. So I Googled "books about blue-haired princesses" and got... surprisingly few relevant hits. Clearly this is a niche market just begging to be exploited. Eventually I found the book in question, which was written by Carol Beach York and called Good Charlotte. I took a look at some of the reviews.

Okay,I never ever read the book but I am OBSESSED with the band Good Charlotte.I only love this book because Good Charlotte named themselves after it.I will buy the book in the near future and read it.Well anyways if your a true fan of GOOD CHARLOTTE(the band) you have to buy this book.I know it has nothing to do with Good Charlotte but still buy it!!

I now know how to boost my eventual book sales with little to no effort. The next novel I write will be called Simple Plan. Y'all better buy it if your true fans!!!

Weezer is coming to St. John's on July 22nd. Hot Hot Heat are opening for them. This is pretty exciting for me, since I like HHH okay and Weezer was the soundtrack to my life in eighth grade. However, there are no floor seats left at all. And, well, I don't go to concerts to sit down in a chair and clap politely, I go to jump up and down and sing and dance badly and (if all goes well) fall down at least twice.

Oh, Rivers Cuomo. I love you a lot. But I don't know if I love you enough to sit still.

In conclusion, here is a video in which Aldous Snow teaches us all very valuable things about the letter U.

Because I saw Get Him To The Greek last week and even though it wasn't that good, and even though it suffered from all the same problems that all Apatow Etc. films suffer from, and even though it featured an unexpected rape scene that was played for laughs because the victim was a dude*, I can't get the fucking songs out of my head.

(P.S.: Happy Canada Day! I don't really celebrate Canada Day at all because while I think this country is an okay place and I'm mostly glad I live here, patriotism in general makes me uncomfortable. I hope anyone who does celebrate tonight does so in an appropriately Canadian fashion- that is, drunkenly.)


* Think Wedding Crashers, but with strippers and an enormous dildo. Yep.

Day 01 → Your favorite song
Day 02 → Your favorite movie
Day 03 → Your favorite television programme
Day 04 → Your favorite book
Day 05 → Your favorite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobby of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

When I was in eighth grade I went through an embarrassing Wiccan phase. This was at least partially because I'd seen The Craft and thought that Fairuza Balk was really cool. It was also because I wanted to piss off my dad. I spent a lot of time haunting Halifax's single New Age store (where everything smells like patchouli and a single crystal costs twenty million dollars), reading Tarot cards (badly), and attempting to cast spells in my bedroom using a stick and some garlic powder.* For about a year I basically embodied every teenage Wiccan cliche in the book (Wicca is the world's OLDEST RELIGION! Christians are all oppressing me by being Christian! My devotion to the Goddess is best expressed by reading epic fantasy novels and drawing pentagrams at the top of all of my homework assignments! Etc, etc) and whined and pretended to hex people and was basically a blight on the face of the earth.**

Then, the summer after eighth grade, I read this book.



Whether or not The Great Cosmic Mother can actually be classed as nonfiction is maybe a little iffy- you have to take a helluva lot of leaps of faith when you read it- but at the time at which I discovered it it was the most crazy mind-bending thing I'd ever read that wasn't a novel. At that point I was just starting to identify, pretty tentatively, as a feminist; this book tipped me over the edge and into full-on radical territory. It also helped me develop a much deeper, richer understanding of the Divine than the one I'd had before, not just because it was so adamant about God being a woman*** but because it addressed the ways in which "woman" as a thing didn't have to be limited to what I'd been taught to see as "feminine." (Ex: this book was the first I'd ever read that said anything about the Sacred Androgyne or the third gender, which, since I was also starting to question my own gender and gender as a social construct, was a Big Fucking Deal.) The type of "woman-centric" religions I'd been exposed to up to that point were all about duality- the God is the sky, the Goddess is the earth, the God is active, the Goddess is passive, the God is masculine, the Goddess is feminine, blah blah blah sacred polarities balancing energies blabitty blabitty blah****- and this book helped me get beyond that without having to give up on the whole thing altogether. And it was just fucking cool.

My Wiccan phase pretty much ended that year, a little while after reading this book, and I've forgotten most of the other things that ~blew my mind at that time. But this one is still important to me.


* I figured if you can substitute powdered herbs for fresh ones in cooking you can do it during rituals as well. Turns out it doesn't actually work like that!

** Not all Wiccans are like this, obviously. Not even all teenage Wiccans are like this. But I was a dumbass teenage Wiccan.

*** Which, for whatever reason(s), is still an important part of my own piecemeal wishy-washy spirituality today. Probably it has to do with my relationship with my mother, or something.

**** Please note: if the idea of two very separate, distinctly gendered deities is a big part of your personal faith, that is fine. But man, it is so very, very Not My Thing. Also, my understanding of Wicca was a religion at that point was formed mostly by the websites I found on the subject (all terrible!) and the few books I could hunt down in the public library (even worse!), plus the Sweep series by Cate Tiernan (oh my God what WAS that bullshit!). So there was probably a lot about it that just did not properly register with me. Hear you me, kids: if you want to convert to a new religion, READ THE RIGHT BOOKS.

Day 01 → Your favorite song
Day 02 → Your favorite movie
Day 03 → Your favorite television programme
Day 04 → Your favorite book
Day 05 → Your favorite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobby of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

( Day 3. )

( Day 4. )

( Day 5. )

Tonight I made Little Brother watch E.T., because somehow he managed to make it to age thirteen (nearly fourteen!) without seeing it even once. I don't know how that happened. Clearly I fail as a mentor.

E.T. is something I'm slightly embarrassed to admit to getting emotional about, because it's about a white suburban kid who befriends a cuddly alien and that is pretty uncool! But I tear up every time I watch it anyway, because I am a sucker for stories in which Lonely, Alienated Children Befriend Strange Creatures.* Elliott is the first movie character I ever remember really relating to, and I really wanted an E.T. when I was little. Except one that looked a little less weird and ugly and didn't make so many fucked up noises. I also wanted a bike with a basket on the front like Elliott's with which to transport said E.T., and a really huge closet to store it in so my mother wouldn't find out about it. I didn't get any of those, not even the bike with the basket, but it was nice to dream.

Anyway, I think the movie would have gone better for LB if he hadn't just watched the video for "Telephone" fifty bajillion times in a row. He ended up giggling and singing to himself every time E.T. said he was going to phone home and, during the climactic scene in which E.T. goes back onto the spaceship, wondered aloud if Lady Gaga was going to be in there.

Kids these days.

Oh, speaking of Lady Gaga, would you like to hear about how she and Beyonce totally saved my life on Friday? ( You probably don't, which is why I put it under a cut! )

The night after Lady Gaga and Beyonce saved my life, I went to a costume party. I was waffling over what I wanted to be for a while- I've already been a riot grrrl, a zombie Catholic schoolboy, Daria Morgendorfer, and Donnie Darko, so I was starting to run out of ideas. And then I watched Velvet Goldmine twice in one week and started listening to Without You I'm Nothing again and, well, ( this happened. )

Things currently making my life:

The Iggy Pop/Gerard Way interview, still. Even though it is mostly a back-and-forth consisting of "You're GREAT, Iggy!" "No, YOU'RE great, Gerard!" "Oh, know what else is great? Green Day!" "And golf!" "And babies!" "Gosh, everything is so great." "Just like us." "Yeah."

This nostalgic post about the early days of the Internets. I find it difficult to picture a world without lolcats. I mean, obviously I know it existed, I was ALIVE, but still. Weird.

Health care! Granted, I'm Canadian so I already had it, but still, hurrah. (The Stupak Amendment is still getting me down, though.)

This. Yes. A thousand times yes.

Baby otters.

... my mother just poked her head into my bedroom to inform me that she stole a turkey. I think the poor woman may finally be cracking under the stress.


* The Iron Giant is also something I get absurdly teary over. Actually, E.T. and The Iron Giant are pretty much the same story, except one has kids riding bicycles into the moon and the other one has, um, atomic bombs. I think The Iron Giant is a better story overall, but I don't remember watching it in a pair of footie pajamas so E.T. has the upper hand when it comes to turnin' on the waterworks.

** His parents are Ukrainian-Canadian (hence the single-vowel name), he was raised partly in London, and he spent a good lot of his college years in Prague. Try to imagine what that sounds like. Then add a drawl, expressive hand gestures, a look of vague disdain, and a little black cap. Yep. TERRIFYING.

*** No, really, that's how I said it.

I was avoiding working on my final American Lit paper when I found a story I started to write last year, ripped off of based on a popular children's book.

( I call it 'The Extremely Voracious College Student.' )

Also, found in a file called "youwinuniverse":

Every now and again I sigh wistfully to myself and think of how nice it would be to take some time- a week, a month, ten years, no biggie- to just sit down and write something I could really be proud of. No excuses, no interruptions, no problem.

Then I realize that in the middle of just thinking that, I took a twenty-minute break to play Solitaire.

Not that this is indicative of the progress I'm making on this essay. Or anything. Besides, I'm playing Minesweeper.

ETA: Overheard in the living room a few minutes ago.

"I saw him today, and all I could think about was his sperm."

... UM.