Category Archives: My Human Emotions

The Vaccine

There is a Japanese documentary from the 80s called The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On. In this film, a veteran of the second world war is desperately searching for the truth about what happened to the other grunts in his platoon at the end of the war. After a long, difficult, and frustrating search for other war survivors and relatives, he finds the commanding officer for his battalion, and asks him what happened to all of his friends. The officer tells him that they ate them, because they were all starving to death on a small island. The man puts down the camera, walks over, and beats the living shit out of the officer.

Right now, I feel exactly like this man. Both of them.

Life and Death on the Streets – Third in a Series.

I remember.

…

When I was sixteen or so, and my police file listed my residence as “NFA: NO FIXED ADDRESS”, I spent a lot of time at The Square. All of us. It was where we spent our time.

There were maybe two dozen of us there when this kid grabbed my collar, his face caked in blood.

“You gotta help me, man. Some big jock just fuckin’ decked me and took my bag. I was holding for someone else, I don’t even know who this guy is. I gotta get it back.”

That was all we needed to hear. Very few of us agreed on anything at all, and most of us had been in scraps with at least half the people there. We only knew solidarity when someone from the outside fucked with us.

There were dozens of us at the square, and then just like that, there were none.

We followed buddy (who’s name I don’t remember, if I ever knew it) down the back streets, until we found the jock. He was drunk, or high, or both. Big motherfucker, too. Bigger than any of us, at least. Nice jacket, nice shoes. He mumbled something under his breath, held buddy’s denim backpack close to him, and we circled around him.

…

The details are fuzzy, and largely irrelevant. I remember one of the squeegee kids broke his squeegee handle over the guys head, and someone else kicked him into a car so hard he went through the window, and the alarm went off. At no point did he fall down, he just staggered and kept swinging at us. Probably less than half of us did anymore more than watch, but it didn’t matter who did what. We were all complicit.

Ten minutes later, we’re out of the alleys and on the main street. Traffic is heavy, and he’s bleeding bad. Someone picks up an iron garbage can from the street corner and throws it at him, in the middle of the road. I don’t remember if it hit him or not.

We all know this can’t go on much longer. It’s broad daylight, and someone’s almost certainly called the cops by now.

He jumps in the back of a moving pickup truck, and then he’s gone. The backpack is in the middle of the road, and the kid with the bloody face grabs it, and takes off. The rest of us follow his example, and find other places to be for the rest of the day.

…

Someone went down to a few hospitals the next day, pretending to be a concerned bystander. This wasn’t uncommon when situations like this happened — it was always better to know than to not know.

He had come in for stitches, and then gone into a coma. He died due to a ‘closed head injury’. That’s what they call it when you get hit in the head hard enough to kill you, but not hard enough to actually crack your skull open.

All of this is true. This really happened.

…

No one needed to speak aloud what we all knew:

We are all complicit; we are all murderers here.

Throughout the months of april and may

It’s difficult to accept that the person you love isn’t the person you’re with.

I remember the first time I noticed how much she’d changed since I met her, since we fell for each other. There had been signs, I suppose, but I hadn’t picked up on them. At least, until I noticed the extra toe on her left foot.

I didn’t say anything about it, and I don’t think she was even aware that it was there. I’d pretend to be asleep until I knew she was sleeping, and then I’d sit up and count her toes over and over again, thinking that I must be making an error somewhere along the way.

It took me a half-hour to work up the courage to touch them. I placed a fingertip on each of her toes, as this was the only way I could be sure that I wasn’t miscounting. Five fingers touched to five toes, and one left over.

I thought it would bother me a lot more than it did, to be honest. The more I thought about it the over the next few days, the more it seemed interesting instead of alien. It seemed unique. I found beauty in it, after a time, and enjoyed the dissonance of her feet next to mine.

I remember these times very vividly, very richly. These were the last times where I felt that we shared a sacred space.

…

I haven’t left the house in a month, I don’t think, and this is almost certainly why I’m feeling as anxious as I am. I’m afraid for her, and for what could happen while I’m away. We’re both happier when I’m at home.

She seems fairly content, and she’s starting to eat again. I’ve found that I have the most success in getting her to eat something if I turn off most of the lights first, although I can usually leave on the one with the orange shade. She seems particular to sour milk and cake, and I have to turn my back before she’ll touch it. She won’t come out if she knows I’m looking. It’s progress, but I don’t think I can leave her to her own devices, not for a while yet.

I do miss the time we used to spend together. We still share space — I’ll sit alongside the wall and read children’s books aloud to her until I hear the sound I’ve come to associate with contentment — but I’m not small enough to fit in the space under the bed where she spends her time.

The kittens could’ve fit there, perhaps, if they were still here. They had become so agitated over the past few weeks that it was in their best interest to find them a new home. I miss them, but I didn’t have a choice. Near the end, they had spent all of their time in the basement, and wouldn’t come upstairs to eat.

They’ll be happier elsewhere.

…

I wonder what she looks like, now. I seem to recall that I caught a glimpse of her once, when I walked into the bedroom without knocking first. Or at least, I recall remembering that this happened, but the memory itself is foggy, and unreliable.

Sometimes I’ll sit and close my eyes, and pretend that the noises she makes are whispers, the ones I’d hear when we were younger and simpler. I’ll find myself singing, nonsense words in a quiet tenor I didn’t know I had.

I think that it soothes her. I think she knows it’s a love song.

5000km

I read my own biography today:

I was born to a mother who was a biker, a graduate of the streets and the right hand of my father, who was a nightclub baron and was also diverse enough in his business dealings to be crowned “The King of Coke” on the front page of the paper when they took him down.

I would tell you of my childhood, but I remember very little. I lived with my mother, and I was sixteen before I saw both of my parents in the same room together. I remember moving, always moving. I remember being kidnapped when I was eight, and a Christmas that the Hell’s Angels gave us a tree and gifts when we didn’t have money for food, much less toys. There was abuse and trauma, but this is so common as to be typical, and I suffered nothing that a million others have not.

Mostly I remember a sense of profound sadness; A feeling that above all, life is about survival, and little else.

Sometimes I wonder what Joshua remembers of those times, if he remembers the asshole addict babysitters, or the urgency in our mother’s voice as she explained that we’d be moving again, a thousand kilometres away.

Then, I wonder about our little brother Charlie, and how different his childhood memories will be. My mother’s a thousand kilometres away again, but this time she moved because of what was waiting for her. A house, and a quiet life by the sea

I remember being a teenager, and always watching for the white van with the incompetent RCMP officers who thought we didn’t know they were there, or listening for the click on the phone line that meant every word would be recorded, examined, dissected. I remember the knowing looks from officers in the courtrooms, on the street, everywhere.

And I think about what’s waiting for me, thousands of kilometres away.

A house, and a life by the sea.

Battlegrounds

It started when she took up residence in my arm. The brachialis, to be specific (although I felt a tickle in my medial border, at times). She would whisper to me of her life in lands I would never see, and of her exile from Arcadia. I promised her safety, and she promised me stories.

I would sing to her at night, when the house was asleep. I spun tales of knights who moved mountains for true love, and warned her of the greed and hatred within men. We would spend eternities together, surrounded by moonlight and sand. Our joy was perfect, crystal pure and clean.

We would have had the world together, if it weren’t for the gnomes.

They landed in my ankle, stubborn and gnarled. Green hats and ironwood canes, they were not friendly, and did not care for sovereignty. They annexed my synovial membrane, and made for the hip within weeks.

We did the only thing we could do, and soon the armies made camp at my xiphoid process. The lines were drawn, and the conflict was now inevitable.

The first shots were fired some time ago. I write this missive to you as the war machines roll into place, and both sides begin consuming the land they hold, to destroy the land they do not. My body. My battleground.

…

I can hear the bones grinding, dead trees singing beneath my skin.

gang stories part one

Sometimes I think that I must be miserable in order to be happy — or that this once was true, and the remaining vestigial parts of who I once was seek to sabotage the now, if not by action then by emotion.

How do you war against your shadow?

…

I’ve never known if insomnia is the condition, or the symptom.

…

Noted for future reference: There have been helicopters and fighter jets in my area, these past weeks. Driving back from Toronto a month ago, I saw an unmarked bomber refueled in midair, both planes grey. Two weeks later, I saw them there again.

I can hear them now, circling overhead.

you were always fiction

Dearest ghosts:

I’m starting again, now. From this point on, I have one focus, one goal, and I will not hesitate to ensure my own success. I expect conflict, but discord has only ever had impact when I had something to lose, and there is nothing here that I will hold on to.

Once you make the decision to look forward, it becomes very easy to leave everyone behind. Once you start moving, you know who’s keeping pace with you.

There is so much of importance in the world, and you are not part of it.

…

(removed)

…

Higher, she said. Just a little more, I can almost reach.

Just a little more, now.

Inventory: Living Room

Computer 1: (Phucky)

AMD Athlon XP 1900+ w/512MB DRAM
A7V266-E Motherboard w/integrated audio, 250W PS
Asus V8170 MX GeForce4 DDR w/TV-out
80GB Western Digital w/8mb cache (system/mp3s)
20GB Maxtor in removable tray (movies)
HP CD-Writer 9500
10Mbit NIC (3Mbit DSL)
10/100Mbit NIC (Network)
SB Audigy Platinum (inactive, need bigger PS)
ZIP Drive (inactive, need bigger PS)
Floppy Drive (inactive, need bigger PS)
Wacom Tablet (mostly inactive, need bigger PS)

This is my PC, and acts as a firewall/NAT, and serves www/ftp/pop3/smtp/imap/etc to the rest of the network and the outside world. I blew my last PS, and I need a new one in order to connect the rest of my peripherals. Lack of peripherals makes me sad.

Computer 2: (GlipGlop)

Intel Pentium III/800 w/512MB SDRAM
GeForce2 MX
10Mbit NIC (Rogers@Home)
10/100Mbit NIC (Network)
Quantum Fireball 10GB (system)
Fujitsu 6GB (misc)
SB Live! Value

This is dirtybunnyLeslie’s PC, and acts as a firewall/NAT, handling backup services for if/when Phucky goes offline.


Computer 3: (Oogah)

AMD Duron 1Ghz
K7S5A Motherboard w/integrated audio, 250W PS
512MB SDRAM / 256MB DRAM
GeForce2 MX / ATI Rage AGP

This is my mother’s PC, and will not boot due to a stubborn 0x0000008e STOP error during XP/ME/2K/NT/98/95 setup. I have just about given up on this machine, I’ve swapped out every part (except the MB/CPU), and it simply fails to work. This is pretty interesting, because the MB/CPU works fine in another system.


Computer 4: (Iszotrash)

AMD Athlon 1800+
GA-7VRX Motherboard
256MB DRAM
This is error853Yann’s old dead PC. It seems to have some hardware damage, I’m hoping to salvage something from it.

Computers 5 through 8: (???)

5:
Unknown Slot A CPU (K6?)
MVW-VM(?) Motherboard
No RAM

6:
Unknown PII CPU
P2B(?) Motherboard
3 sticks of SDRAM

7:
Unknown CPU
Unknown Motherboard with Daughterboard (!!)
3 sticks of (72 pin?) RAM

8:
Unknown CPU
Unknown Motherboard
Unknown RAM

These are the infamous mystery floor computers. They are on my floor. I don’t know how they got there.

Random Parts
3 IDE Hard Drives
1 ISA Sound Card
4 NICs
1 Modem
1 BJC-4300 Printer (no parallel cable)
1 Flatbed Scanner (no parallel cable)
1 Glass half-full of PC screws

These parts are the wreckage that inevitably follows when you have mystery floor computers.

but the earth did not tremble

He said: Do you remember how the stars used to sing for me? How the sky would open itself at night?

She said: I don’t know how I got so far away. I don’t know.

…

When I was young, I watched the moon fall from the sky. It crashed into earth, imbedding itself into the horizon, an impossibly huge half-circle dominating the landscape. We all stopped and watched, old men leaving their cars by the roadside to step onto the grass, to maybe reach higher ground. We were whole then, brought together by something greater than ourselves.

…

Leslie, when I need magic, I think of you.

149

Summer nights:

– Dark Carnival 4 (a resounding success) has left me with a feeling that perhaps there is something more to do here.

– A quiet moment on the porch, the moon half-full and as bright as day.

– A stolen night with Leslie, secret kisses and midnight whispers

– Insomnia(?) leaves me to watch the sun come up, filtered light and the cry of crows. They still live, here.

The answer lies in seeking

I used to spend my time on people who I know aren’t going to listen, on the off-chance that maybe, maybe some of what I say will make some sense to them, that I’ll make a difference, somehow.

In my heart, I know it doesn’t work that way.

I remember years of frenzied activities, stressful conversations, flamewars, debates, all of it. I remember throwing myself at countless brick walls, trying to knock them down through sheer force of will.

But still, stone remains stronger than flesh.

…

At my worst, at my most vulnerable and drained, I found someone to teach me, to help me cope with the world. Three lessons above all else: We are all responsible for our own happiness, whatever I put my efforts into will increase, and to choose my battles.

I try to keep these close to me in all things. I try to make sure that any cause I devote myself to is positive, just, and not outside of my reach. We can spend forever fighting on the ground to see who will be first to reach the stars.

I still feel these things are true.

…

There is a solution here. There is an answer, somewhere within these words and these walls.

There is truth, if I can find it.

Words, again.

This death is a slow one, this death is friction.

Listen:

There is a wall, made of language and logic and reasoning that I cannot penetrate. I cannot tell what the rules are beyond this wall, I cannot tell how it is that what I do is always so improper, so problematic.

I stumble and fall time and time again, thinking that what I am doing is correct. Appropriate. Just. In this, I cannot help thinking that I live alone.

I bloody myself via action and inaction, trying to make it to the other side through sheer will — but stone is stronger than flesh, and every scar is forever.

I hear them, speaking to me through the skin. They whisper secrets and truth in another tongue, and I cannot make myself understand.

..

All things are a process; on a long enough timescale, the probability of any action will approach certainty.

The process of life will always resolve itself; the process of learning has no guaranteed resolution.

There is no comfort here.

…

The only things that seem real are half a lifetime away.

Toronto.

…and we crossed the street as fast as we could, the familiar words of hatred in the air.

Bitch. Cocksucker.

They had already knocked the girl down in front of traffic, and she was screaming, sobbing, screaming. The man who almost ran her over had tried to help, and he was on the concrete, three times my size. That left two of us, and six of them.

We got her out somehow, fighting to protect a young lady the size of a twelve-year-old. She didn’t even know we were there, I don’t think. Only that she wasn’t being thrown around anymore, and she was getting away.

By the time security and the cops arrived and dealt with the others, we had made it to the underground parking and out of sight. Leslie kept the police looking elsewhere long enough to share a few cigarettes, and eventually she could talk again. She was from Ottawa, her name was Diane, and between the drugs and the crack of skull on asphalt, she was in pretty bad shape.

The squad car found us eventually, of course. Her boyfriend had already been arrested, and she managed to tell the police that he had her money, her ticket home, her everything.

The security guard asked me if I was alright, and I said that I was. Then she waved to us as the police car pulled away, and by that time it was daylight.

hmm….

An Open Letter to My Insurance Company:

Dear Company,

This is Jairus. You may remember me from a claim I filed over two months ago. As you may recall, I injured my leg while I was at work, and although I am not seeking workman’s comp related damages for this claim, I had asked for coverage under the ‘Short Term Disability’ coverage that I have with your organization.

This is taking some time. In the interests of resolving this situation quickly, allow me explain my situation to you.

As you may know, I earn twelve dollars an hour. After deductions for EI, CPP, taxes, insurance premiums, and various other costs, I receive an average of twelve hundred dollars take-home pay. I don’t know if you are familiar with the costs of living in Ottawa, but this income rate puts me beneath the poverty line, meaning I live month to month, or am ‘poor’. Having been without pay for over two months, therefore, is a problem to me. Not having any money would be my first problem, most of my other problems follow directly from that.

I cannot afford to take a cab to my doctor’s for continued monitoring of my injury. I cannot afford to purchase a leg brace which I have been prescribed by said doctor for treatment of my injury. Food supplies are reaching critical levels, and most of the food I own I cannot eat due to a pressing dental surgery need, for which I have no money. I am receiving threatening notices from my utility companies in a variety of colours which state in no uncertain terms that I must remit hundreds of dollars. This, although quite threatening indeed, is overshadowed by the fact that I owe my landlord a sum that is orders of magnitude larger, which if left unresolved will eliminate any need for paying future utilities, as I will not have a house to live in.

In short, this knee injury is ruining my life. If this pattern continues, it is not unreasonable to expect that I will eventually end up homeless, without the ability to receive the medical attention I require to recover fully.

The fear of a chain of events of this nature is what led me to purchase insurance coverage, some many months ago. In the event that I was unable to work, I thought to myself, an insurance policy will take care of my immediate financial needs, while allowing me to take care of my injury, so that I am able to return to work.

Listen.

This cannot be allowed to continue. Every day that you stall for more information, hoping that my claim is frivolous or without grounds, hoping that I’ll tire of endless calls, faxes, forms, and touch-tone telephone prompts, my chances of permanent damage rise to approach certainty. Perhaps worse, every day that passes is another day where I lose access to critical resources, and accrue unreasonable and unnecessary debt.

This has to end. Soon.

…

I hear my bones grinding, the sound of dead wood escaping my skin. My reflection isn’t who I think I am, eyeballs looking out from grey, boney sockets, and a week’s worth of growth when I swear I shaved yesterday.

Seven in the morning, and another night without sleep.

Not pretty at all

5000 people marched in Ottawa on Saturday, while more than a quarter of that
number were arrested in San Francisco during a peace rally.

In Baghdad, “Salam Pax” (a pseudonym composed of the Arabic and Latin
words for peace) writes:

23/3
8:30pm (day4)
we start counting the hours from the moment one of the news channels report
that the B52s have left their airfield. It takes them around 6 hours to get
to Iraq. On the first day of the bombing it worked precisely. Yesterday we were
a bit surprised that after 6 hours bombs didn’t start falling. The attacks
on Baghdad were much less than two days ago. We found out today in the news
that the city of Tikrit got the hell bombed out of it. To day the B52s took
off at 3pm, on half an hour we will know whether it is Baghdad tonight or another
city. Karbala was also hit last night.
Today’s (and last night’s) shock attacks didn’t come from
airplanes but rather from the airwaves. The images Al-jazeera is broadcasting
are beyond any description.

[Presidential Documents]
[Page 12565-12568]
[DOCID:fr14mr03-106]

Executive Order 13289–Establishing the Global War on Terrorism Medals

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the
laws of the United States of America, including my authority as Commander in
Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. There is hereby
established the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal with suitable appurtenances.
Except as limited in section 3 of this order, and under uniform regulations
to be prescribed by the Secretaries of the military departments and approved
by the Secretary of Defense, or under regulations to be prescribed by the Secretary
of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating
as a service in the Navy, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal shall
be awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States who serve or
have served in military expeditions to combat terrorism, as defined by such
regulations, on or after September 11, 2001, and before a terminal date to be
prescribed by the Secretary of Defense.

(Presidential Sig.)B

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Pre 9/11, the Taliban were officially invited to Houston, stayed in a five-star
hotel and were chauffeured in corporate minibuses. The Taliban representatives
“were amazed” by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons, and invited
to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal.

America gives aid to the Taliban, praising its draconic anti-drug laws. This
is, until the Taliban refuse to build an oil pipeline that best serves the needs
of America.

Unocal exec John Maresca
to the House: “… we have made it clear that construction of our proposed
pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the
confidence of governments, lenders and our company.”

(2,792 WTC Workers, 3400 Afghani civilians and one regime change later)

Bush:
“Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government.
Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan train and develop its own national
army. And peace will be achieved through an education system for boys and girls
that works.”

BBC: “Afghanistan
hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a $2bn pipeline through the
country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India.
Afghan interim ruler Hamid Karzai is to hold talks with his Pakistani and Turkmenistan
counterparts later this month on Afghanistan’s biggest foreign investment project,
said Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for Mines and Industries told Reuters […]
Mr Razim said US energy company Unocal was the “lead company” among
those that would build the pipeline, which would bring 30bn cubic meters of
Turkmen gas to market annually.”

The news is silent as to how quality of life for the average Afghani has improved.
But we know it’ll work in Iraq this time. We only have the interests of the
Iraqi public in mind.

American Propaganda Leaflet: “Do not destroy oil wells.”

The Washington Times: Halliburton awarded contract for proposed ‘rehabilitation’ of Iraqi oil resources. Former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney unavailable for comment.

Something softer

Hair between my fingers, I screamed to make the noise stop to just make it quiet in my head, if only for an instant.

She couldn’t hear me this time; she was crying, she had to be crying, the way I am, with how I deal with these things. I don’t know how she could know me and not cry.

I can’t tell how long I’ve been like this. Months? Years? Everything turns blue when I try to remember. Nothing makes any sense, nothing tells me what I need to know, what I need to do to just turn it off.

Two hundred miles away, I was the one being wronged.

…

I’ve never been able to express how strongly I feel about her, and so I shy away from the attempt for fear of misrepresenting myself. By doing so, I misrepresent her.

How I feel can only be expressed in the space between words.

…

I walked with five thousand angry people to protest the war on Iraq, but it was an impotent anger. As a Canadian, there’s no real target for me to direct my rage, no culpable authority to subvert.

I watched Iraqi mothers and Israeli citizens alike scream at the American embassy, but the five RCMP officers that were there to keep the peace and take photographs made it difficult to maintain any sense of imminent threat; just five tired men working crowd control, and an empty grey monolith with the American eagle on the door.

Decompression

The last two days have been madness.

Leslie and I just finished the third two-day Dark Carnival festival, and while it was a resounding success, it has left us feeling quite drained. There were a lot of technical problems that we had to overcome, in addition to the more mundane stresses of putting on fourteen hours of event time in two days. There were seven different musical acts (not including Leslie and myself), and at least a dozen artists involved this time around, and co-ordination took a lot of time and effort.

Plus, we have another event in a week or so that we need to start polishing up, and perhaps another two in the month following that… and another half-dozen in the works, with plans stretching as far as October.

We’ve been doing pretty well with the finances for the events, which means that we haven’t lost more than a thousand dollars on any given show in the past half-year. Being able to support ourselves full-time with promotion work would be nice, but I think at this point we’d kill to break even two shows in a row.

…

Leslie’s birthday was yesterday, but with everything going on, there wasn’t much celebration time. I feel pretty bad about this, she made sure that on my last birthday, I had my every desire fulfilled, and not being able to do the same for her doesn’t sit well with me.

I think we’ll take a day off sometime soon-ish and do a belated birthday celebration, but it would have been nice to be able to give her the birthday proper that she deserves.

…

Work continues to progress on our not-so-secret Cafe project, and while things are slowly coming together for it, my inability to attend work over the last month has really hit us financially. Almost all of that lost income was earmarked for use by the Cafe, and my insurance company has yet to rule on my application for short-term disability.

While the disability would be retroactive to the day of the injury, the possibility of my application being rejected is very real, and very upsetting. The temptation to try to attend work regularly, even at the cost of permanent damage to my knee, is overwhelming.

I’m really not sure what to do about this, except for work full-steam on our business plan and funding applications, and hope for the best.

…

I need to spend more time doing nothing, sometime soon.

-28c and sucking.

I’ve been inside my house for three weeks straight now, having made it outside only three times. My knee shows no signs of spontaneous recovery, although I hold out hope.

…

I’ve began working on a remix of an Iszoloscope track for an album to be released in the near future, but I’m not very happy with my work. I took a heavy noise/gabber track, sped it up, and tried to turn it into what is essentially hard techno. Instead, I think all I’ve done is make 7 minutes of dull, uninspired trance.

To be fair, I’ve only been working on the track for two days, I’ve only been working with these music-creation tools for two days, and this is the first time I’ve tried to make music in any serious capacity since I was sixteen (when I was quite prolific within the tracker scene), but I find it incredibly discouraging nonetheless.

I have three weeks until the remixes need to be submitted to Ant-Zen, and I may or may not continue work to try to have something by that time.

…

Most of my hair is in a garbage bag in the washroom. I’ve shaved a good portion of it, leaving a wide strip of blue hair along the top of my head.

Rarely have I been so immediately happy with a change in hair style/cut/colour, but I’m really pleased with the way it looks. With that said, I have not discounted the possibility that being indoors for a month has caused me to lose all sense of style.

I hope to have added a piercing or two before I go outside again, and perspective returns.

…

In other news, I’m very happy with Restraint‘s recent facelift, even if most of the non-journal material isn’t currently available. Having a new look does wonders to motivate me to keep writing.

79

Sometimes I really, truly, almost give up on this rock.

It’s not the girl suing because she was given detention, or the ‘scandal’ that The Washington Times’ Sayed Anwar of Bethlehem is really Paul Martin of London, or the FDA’s decision to allow food makers to list ‘health claims’ on packaging before they’ve proven.

It’s not the fact that a new appointee to the US Women’s Health policy panel recommends “specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome”, or that a new appointee to the US Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs condones only the rhythm method because “medicine is permeated with attitudes toward sexuality and fertility that are incompatible with Christian values”.

It’s none of these things. It’s the fact that none of these things are shocking, or will be challenged with any success, because this is just one day’s worth of depressing news. Every day, I could make a post like this, and have just as many (if not more) fucked-up America stories.

With a tide like that, what the fuck is the point, right?

Living in Canada, things are much better here, but it has come to the point where I question how much longer I can ethically spend twenty to fourty thousand dollars a year in a country that is America’s largest trading partner. Some of my money makes it there out of every dollar I spent, and it is not an insignificant sum.

I fully support Canada’s movement towards drug decriminalization (and heroin safehouses), I support healthcare, our tight-as-a-nun’s-ass food and drug standards, and what looks to be an national desire to distance ourselves from the USA… With that said, we’re going to have a new Prime Minister soon, and most of the candidates with any chance of winning have been very pro-american, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see a Clinton-to-Bush style reversal of policy and procedure.

I love my country, and I will continue to work towards its betterment, but I’m thinking it might be time to plan, seriously plan for the future, and decide if a North American climate is where I want to spend the next 23 years.

I don’t think that it is.

now where did i put my flux capacitor…

Have you ever had the feeling that somewhere out there, there is an another you? That there’s another life for you, one perhaps not dissimilar to your own, being lived at this very moment?

Have you ever felt that right now, that other you is experiencing something very real, very profound? That you are, in some way, within sacred space?

…

Canal and Broadway, New York City.

Street lights reflected on wet pavement, and a murmur of cars and conversation that is somehow more solemn than silence.