tough times

depression follows poverty. luckily, i aim to cure my poverty by quitting smoking using zyban, thereby alleviating both afflictions. october 3rd, the day of my gal's birthday is the day.

am applying to teacher's college these days, and am just dumbstruck by the questions they want you to fill out. they're very confusing because they seem so simple, and you wonder, 'they're basing their acceptance on how i write this, soooo, what am i missing?'. they only give you a few lines, and you've got to come up with something about how you're going to change the future of education based on this one time you looked at a kid with a ruler in your hand. i'm perplexed. fortunately, i'm an infamous bullshitter.

almost all of my friends are libra's. it's so strange.

hinto, joel, stacey, and i'm missing someone. sorry someone i'm missing, i'm sure i'll come to the party (no not you JT, i think you're on the cusp of libra and some other sign, hence your permanently mottled state)

busy month for the parties.

am going to casino niagara for joel's party. unemployed and in a casino. sadly enough, i probably fit right in.

stacey has opted out of karaoke (i do not CARE how to spell it), and wants instead peace and quiet.

hinto is having a bbq luncheon or something like that.

and i'm having humble pie every freaking day.

i'm not posting again until i have something positive to report. (no, fantasy sports does not count, fortunately)

This is how they get you

that little face kills me. My Aunt Evelyn's dogs that were kicking around when me and my gal were back home in the summer.

Funny how cute things are when they are tiny. Why does this dog get a free pass with me, just because it could be one of the cutest things i've ever seen? He could be a vicious killer. Maybe that look into the camera is saying "if i were a foot taller, you'd be coming out of my ass in 2 two days, buddy". We have these predispositions to people based on how they look. "he looks like a nice guy", "he looks trustworthy", "she looks stuck up".

Considering that we all understand how we wear masks in our day to day life, and knowing that looks are deceiving, it's incredible that we can assume someone is X by the way they look. I think, perhaps, that the way someone's face/shape/movements are does in fact shape the person they become.

The kid that looks a bit like a geek, gets treated like a geek, becomes a geek.
The pretty girl who is given everything along the way becomes accustomed to being a princess, and is a princess.

Of course we have deviations, but perhaps there is something to physiogyny (i'm too lazy to look it up, but it was big in the 17th and early 18th centuries as a way of knowing someone's personality by the shape of their face). It's been around a long time, and we would still take one look at a door to door salesman and decide right then and their if we should listen to them. We would do the same thing in a bar, at a job interview (no, none to speak of, thanks for asking), on the street - there are types of people that come up to you in toronto and ask for change - sometimes you give, sometimes you don't - why? Because of their 'looks'.

If you look like a dumb bully as a child, you may be treated as a dumb bully. As you grow up, reacting to that treatment, you become shaped by it. Are you YOU? Or are you a product of what others think YOU are?

Why do taller people earn more money? Because 'taller' is a relative term (in china i'm tall, in canada, not so much), and shorter people 'look up' to (literally and figuratively) taller people, assigning them traits they may/may not have - but by the time they have developed, they have assumed a superiority over shorter people that shorter people have given them? I don't have the answers, i'm merely a vessel of infinitely pointless questions.

I believe my size and my look lend people to believe i'm intelligent. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it's the case. I will constantly prove people wrong, but they insist i'm making a joke, or think i'm saying something deeper than they understand. so i live a lie that other people forge for me, which, in my case, i'm happy to oblige them. wouldn't want to ruffle their worldview.
that said, i did make the dean's honour list for english. I've started putting it on my resume, because i can't think of what else to do with the 'honour'.


BRIEF PERSONAL WORK UPDATE

the boy who changed everything, my telefilm pitch, got canned and an older project called "the saint john's" was resurrected, and rightfully so. i've finished it and will be sending it off shortly. the next couple of weeks will be spent prepping the application, contacting producers about my second draft of 'screech', the newfie musical that is HILARIOUS, if i do say so myself, and applying to teacher's college. i still haven't found a job.

plugged in, a pervert of the airwaves

http://stfunoob.com/nola/scanner.pls

put that link in your browser, and you're listening, live, to a scanner picking up the Emergency Communication Frequencies in New Orleans/ Baton Rouge. It's so bizarre. Beyond bizarre. I am disconnected from something terrible that I'm fascinated by. I think I enjoy listening because it is so disconnected, it's so calm that it makes the horror of Katrina fade away. At night, it's quiet, but in the daytime there is so much activity, and they're still not coordinated.

the politicization behind this is obscene. why can't anyone admit they were wrong? not just about this, but about WMD, about getting Bin Laden, about abuse at Abu Gharab... it's always 'deflect and defame', and it works. Karl Rove is spinning the inactivity to blaming the local governments. I've been doing a lot of research into all this political deception (mostly using the huffington post).

here's an interesting little article, but i can't find a great one i read today. It's not as though I have anything to add to all this. It's just digusting that politicians can't be adult/mature/responsible/intelligent enough to say "we screwed up, we want to fix it, it's my fault, let's go save some people".

the US administration are, unbelievably, making me lose faith in humanity. because they 'represent' the american people, i feel that the most powerful nation in the world is full of absolute maniacs that speak out of both sides of their mouths - religious and 'christ-like' on the one hand, and selfish pigs on the other.

other news:

not much. opted to stay in toronto for the long weekend instead of going to the cottage. the cottage is great, but sometimes it's nice to take the city back. I went and saw "annie get your gun" on its last day in town. It was okay. billy ray cyrus as the lead? not because he's cheesy or anything, but he was probably the flattest actor i have seen in my life, and that is not an exaggeration. poor bastard.



what an odd blog - bush to billy ray, hate to achy breaky. all in a day's work, folks.

not pleased

so i finish my degree and enter the 'real' workworld for the first time. I've never worked in an office or at a 9 - 5 job. this is very new. and very frustrating. i went to a headhunting agency that my friend, hinto, went to. He has just gotten a government job as a junior policy analyst. not bad. what do i get offered today? if i might insert 10,000 pieces of paper into a Molson mail out for three days. i didn't even ask how much it paid. that's depressing.

yesterday i was offered a job for 6 weeks that paid 11 dollars an hour doing data entry (because on my test it showed that i was a fast typer - yeah, i guess, i've been a fucking writer most of my life). now, 11 an hour works out to $440 a week, minus taxes, puts you somewhere around 375 per week. WHAT?!? maybe outside toronto one can live on that, but not in this city.

i'm trying to pay down some bills and save for teacher's college next year. so for all that education i have, i'm a mail stuffer and a typer... this 'real world' thing is a scam. i'm scrambling to find something else, but the money is about to run out and i'm about to sink.

i forgot to check last night's lotto numbers. perhaps things are about to change. hope floats eternal.

fashion as relative eco-socio-politico index marker

Funny this. A great friend of mine who runs a skatepark in ohio (wow, people do crazy cool things) sent me this pic. We all went to highschool together, and we were the local skatepunks.

Although I feel very much an individual today, i remember that feeling back then too. I noticed that in the picture above, we are all wearing converse (different colours to differentiate the difference, of course), we all have basically white jeans on, and we're all wearing baggy-ish untucked shirts. individualism is hard to see here. but i guess that's the point. it's relative. and at that age, we weren't trying to be individuals as much as were were trying to differentiate ourselves as a group from other groups. (that's me in the middle, at 14, with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth - always a class act this one)

when i went to vancouver to work on my first television show, i had a unique fashion sense that made me feel most like me based on what was around me in Toronto at the time. I dyed my hair orange, spiked it up like Johnny Rotten, wore ties, untucked shirts, and suit jackets. i wasn't a mod, i didn't fit with them, i just felt unique.

Vancouver, however, was more conservative in all things, including fashion. my toronto style felt very very crazy in vancouver, and so i had to tone it down to match my environment. If the fashion style is a scale of 1 - 10, with 1 being rebel and 10 being a member of the communist party, i likened myself to about a 4. In toronto, that meant i could have red hair and wear strange clothes. in vancouver, a toronto four was like a 2. i was a freak, a homosexual, a mod, etc. etc all these things i didn't identify with. So i had to find the 4 where i'm comfortable. I still had my flair, it was just different, toned down.

fashion as identify is specific to place. what counts is where you are on the scale. and that is all that counts, of course, because fashion doesn't really count. but WHY are you a 1 or a 7 or whatever?

in other news

i'm done school. i'm a graduate. i got my marks today. 83's in both classes. yes, i'm boasting, i'm very proud of myself. i got straight A's in all my english classes. teacher's college should be a lock. at least i'll never have to PA again. man, why do people do that job?? do they think it's the big IN they need to the industry? what a ruse!! most people at the top positions have NEVER been a PA in their life. the guy i worked with as co-PA was a bitter but good guy who thought he was a writer director, but, at 29, had never written or directed anything in his life. i'm tired of these people some days, and proud of them for having hope in the face of such awful odds. the human spirit is indominatable, earth's real cockroach adapts and moves forward, proud and blind and hurting and wonderful. the glass IS half full today: because i love my mom. found out good news today. or, no news, which is the good news.

too long, too little

forgive the time between posts. I finished my exams for my undergrad degree and have hopped straight into the job hunting fire. i met with a headhunter, i hunted online, and i took a 7 day job being a PA on a film. i've never been a PA. it's funny that my first job in film was on a writing team, and my most recent one is as a PA. it's supposed to be the other way around. i wonder what other things i'm doing backwards.

all i know is that after two 11 hour shifts i'm exhausted. the reason isn't that 11 hours is too long, or that i stayed up all night. the reason is that i'm bored out of my fucking mind. without my brain having anything to do, i'm as good as dead. when i'm in the office, i am simply there to answer the phone. the only time i'm feeling okay is when i'm out driving, which isn't enough. on the plus side, they did rent me a dodge magnum just like this, which is a pretty gangsta car. at least there are only 5 more days.

the boy who changed everything, my next film project, is coming along. i've managed to scribble down a light outline at work to try to retain my sanity, and maybe i have something, maybe i don't. too early to tell. but instead of the kid finding oil, it may be treasure. not sure. i can work in the newfoundlanders who coaxed ships towards hidden rocky shoals so they could plunder them. my people. robin hoods of the east. fortunately, they were the poor, so robbing from the rich to give to the poor still rings of nobility, even though they just kept it for themselves which, i guess, is technically in line with robin hood.

i wish i had something interesting to say, but unfortunately, i'm all out for the moment. i could regale you with stories of producers being wankers, or stacey getting a free ipod from the bay for showing up at one of their functions for people in the magazine business, but these aren't that interesting. when you work such long deadening hours, life is reduced to the minutiae of the mundane.

i will post soon. my mood will soar as i approach the end of my PA career and with it, the quality of my posts.

wherever he lay his hat

My mom is currently standing in that same yard that this picture was taken in. That's our place in Newfoundland, what I consider 'home', although i have been there once (see previous posts) in seven years. Home is a concept that is not rooted in reason or sense, it is, cornily enough, something found in the pit of your stomach (or heart).

I love Toronto. When I was living in Vancouver, I had a sno-globe of toronto featured prominently in my crib so I could always remember it, that Stacey had sent me. I loved it. When I returned back to Toronto after a 2.5 year quest, I consumated my love by frolicking like never before. In dirty alleys, pubs, bars, resto's, on my bike in the summer air, on patios... i drank it up.

Lately, though, I feel that my wonderful city isn't meeting my needs. I'm not sure what that means, it's just a feeling in my gut. I would happily buy a home here, which I will in two years (when I'm done Teacher's College), but I'm not sure I'll ever get that same feeling of 'home' that I get when I'm in Newfoundland. I'm not alone either, as the summer months in Newfoundland are found jammed with buses, boats, and planes bringing genetically similar looking people back to the place they were born. It's like a big giant island of family members.

Yes, I'm romanticizing a bit, but when my gal and I flew in to St. John's on the solstice last month, the guy I was sitting beside on the plane ended up living right next door to my Nan, who lives in one of the most remote places on earth . (look for fogo, you'll see it). RIGHT NEXT DOOR! He's related somehow, i think he's my mom's cousin.

In a city like toronto, so few actually grew up here. Perhaps those who grew up in the burbs and move into the city also consider the city itself home. For the rest of us, I'm guessing it's not. We try to make it home. For those who love it, we don't litter, we enjoy what it offers, we laugh on the streets, and bike home at night and swoosh around cars and dogs, we enjoy the 'wildlife' (skunks and racoons - you know who you are!) , and we generally try to recreate, somehow unconsciously, our previous homes, the comfort of being surrounded by comfort.

it's not easy. Toronto is my second home, and I'll have to be content with that. I've lived in so many places, travelled, and moved, and on purpose and by accident, from England to Conneticut to BC, to Newfoundland, to Stratford and London, from Avenue Road to Madison Avenue. The one thing that change gives you is perspective. As Tom Waits sings in San Diego Serenade:

I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

I never saw the east coast 'til I move to the west
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart 'til someone tried to steal, tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face.

almost done

I have just put the finishing touches on what i hope is the last school-based essay i ever write. because i took 5 english courses, i've had all essays all the time. no multiple choice goodness.

now i'm staring down the barrel of a job.

i finished my latest script for telefilm and although it pays well, i seem to spend well, contrary to popular opinion. that's not true, actually, i did buy a car, pay for tuition, and buy a diamond ring, AND live in toronto, so i guess i'm doing okay.

so not having written anything because i have been in school, i have nothing to sell. so i'm kind of at square one. mcdonalds should offer a lottery where you get to win one of their restaurants, and all you have to do is buy a filot-o-fish once a week to enter. yes, I AM one of those people who helps keep that item on the menu.

i went to canada's wonderland with my cousins and uncle and aunt and sister on monday and i have 3 words to say about it: awesome. last year when i went i guess school must have been in because it wasn't quite so busy. i figured that it would be kinda empty, considering it was a monday but that wasn't the case. it was SOOOOO FREAKING HOT. it must have gone up to 40 with the humidity, and there was no escape - no escape, that is, except the splash park. so we headed over to the wave pool and leapt in - ahhhh, nothing is as refreshing as warm urinated water on a hot day. you just put it out of your mind and enjoy the cool down, which is what we did.

disclaimer: for people who respect me, don't read the rest of this post.

ummm... yeah, so this guy... he went to this theme park, and umm... this guy went to the water area, let's call it the splashy parka... and uh, the highschools were all out and it was a hot day... and ahh... this guy's cousin put on his sunglasses so he wouldn't get caught staring at all the young girls in bikinis... and uh, this guy told me that it was insane and he felt like a dirty old bastard but he couldn't help it and if you were him you'd do the same thing.

i don't know, sounds like an old pervert to me.

anyway...

that's it that's all. feels great to be done school (well, august 6th i write two exams, but no more essays feels like i'm done). i will hold this accomplishment above everything else i've done in my life to date, other than tricking my fiance into saying yes.

in response to the response

Wow, what a response to my earlier post. thanks to everyone who sent emails and posted and such. much obliged.

i have some news - i'm going to be a university graduate in 3 weeks. it's only taken me 12 years. i was a bit dismayed to find that the school doesn't recognize the incredible effort i must have put in over those twelve glorious years because all it says on the degree is 3 Year BA. Three year BA? that's an insult! ah well, it will still feel great to get it. perhaps i'll enjoy it even more because i had to go back to get it. the feeling that one gets, if one is prone to thinking of oneself as being WELL over average intelligence, when one walks into a room full of 17 and 18 year olds at 30 years of age to study first year english after having been a professional writer for 5 years was somewhat humbling. but i like to think that i have the maturity level of a 12 year old, and if i had thought it wouldnt' have hurt my grades to fart out loud, i would have done so to get a laugh (as i've said before, farting is always funny - it's the one thing that a 70 year old and a 7 year old still laugh at). but it worked out, and my intelligence (or claim to it) took much solace in my marks.

i had started out in university, like most people, unsure of where i wanted to go. I got an A in economics so they invited me to join their faculty in a really nice official letter. Despite my father being a professor, i didn't understand that if I joined the faculty i would then be on track to complete an Economics degree, and so i happily joined what i thought was a beer drinking club of adults who found all the cheap pubs and imported drinks on sale. Alas, that was not the case. So i eventually dropped out and ran to BC with my current fiancee to write the next great canadian novel, but when i got there i picked up a copy of Douglas Coupland's latest novel and found out that it had already been written.

when i returned to school, i enrolled in film, and proceeded on THAT course, but then, all of my friends were leaving school, and without having completed the degree, I left too. All i needed was 1.5 classes for the economics degree, and 2.5 (half a year) for the film. So what do i do when i want to complete the degree? go for english, which i need 5 (a full year) to complete.

Anyway, a long stage that is soon a part of history, and i can look forward to teachers college next year. that's the idea anyway. I'll be spending the next year writing and looking for work - any work - not necessarily writing (although i'll still be writing for chatelaine.com as a relationship columnist in the wise guys section (i'm patrick decker, the brother, no that's not my photo, yes, it looks like a used car salesman), so if anyone knows of anyone looking for people to work for them, drop a line.

my essay that i've been writing is about to crash, so i'm going to knock this off. i was going to include some pics of some things (calm down ladies!) but will have to wait until i'm trying my best not to work - which will probably be tomorrow.

a treatise or justification of marriage

The anti-marriage stalwart has died and a new anti-anti-marriage one has replaced him. that would be me, and that would mean i'm engaged. I had many reasons, not the least of which is love, beauty, and a sense of wonder at partaking in such a custom. It had been 10 years since we had become a couple, so no one can accuse me of rushing into things.

my main reason was prompted by another wedding:

i had attended a friend's wedding, and during the dinner, when speeches were being given, the bride's father stood up and began to tell stories about his daughter, stories that made me weep, not just because they were beautiful stories, but because my father will never be able to stand up and tell stories at my wedding, no matter how much i wish he would have lived to see the day. So that began my lamenting the absence of ones we love.

compounding this was the following christmas, where my lady's father had his heart stop during dinner and the whole family had their hearts stop too while waiting to find out what happened. sitting around the hospital room waiting, fearing, all that was not said, not often enough, all that should be done, the true feelings of child to parent bubbling to the surface, regret, sadness, fear, and a future pondered without the bright light of their father. it was terrible. i decided then and there to not let my gal's wedding be full of speeches about those who they wished was there to attend, but couldn't.

the final reason was that i love my family. all of them, i think they're all wonderful people, and i wanted to stop being greedy about the whole thing and share them, give them, to my gal. i can't imagine a better gift. marriage may not be thought of as sacred, but if it can bridge any familial bonds and bring people closer together, then it's a powerful putty.

I was also able to propose on our recent trip to newfoundland, on the beach by my childhood home on a sunny day, forever investing that wonderful place with new memories, reinvigorating what was becoming a museum of my childhood into something new, a retrofitting of the mind, and also a bonding of her to something that i hold so dear.

the beauty is that we're not in any rush to get married: if it's taken us 10 years to get engaged, dont' expect any hasty rushes to the altar, there is no 'with child' on the bumper sticker.

i'll be done my two summer courses in 3 weeks, and will return to writing. it's funny, when you hear artists talk about what it's like not to be practising their art, it sounds cliche and false. they say 'it feels like a part of you dies' or 'it feels like you're partly dead', but it's true. i haven't spent so much time being non-creative in my entire life and, on the whole, it's depressing.

having finished my newfie musical 'screech', i turn my attentions to "home blown" or "blown home" or something (i just thought of them last night before falling to sleep), a film about a newfoundlander who returns home to find that the land he has been bequeathed (yes, and i love that it's cliche) has oil under it, and everyone wants in on the action, and the mayhem that ensues. i'm trying to figure out a way to make the main character a 12 year old kid who always walks with his head down so he can find things, but it's difficult. the alternate title was 'the boy who changed everything', and we'll see if we can bring him to life yet.

reading those titles above, i'm not sure i like them (although i'll keep 'the boy who changed everything' if i can).

out

So i was having some teeth problems. my gal's dental plan coverage ends now that she's leaving her job, so i had to get work done before it ended. I really just wanted to fix up my bite, because it was annoying the hell out of me to close my mouth. When i went in he determined that i had a cracked tooth, opened up my tooth, found i had an exposed nerve, and performed a root canal in 20 minutes. digusting stuff. now i need to put a cap on that tooth because i have a hollowed out canal for a tooth for now. bugs the hell out of me. 1700 dollars. lucky i went in before the coverage ran out. i get some coverage from the writers guild, but not like her plan.

nice to know that the writers of the world can continue to look like debauched british peasants because of their rotted teeth, thereby fulfilling the romantic images the rest of the world considers us to be. thanks writers guild!

still not finished pamela.

have an essay due for one of my two summer classes. of course, everything i'm doing here writing a blog has nothing to do with procrastination.

day one

Really a test run. It's sweltering hot and I'm supposed to be reading a book for my summer course, but the book is dreadfully boring (Pamela, not to be confused with its mocking follow up, Shamela), and it's 6:30, so i should call it a day anyway. My friend Comrade Chicken is the best blogger on here, so i've seen so far, so i'm following her lead.

When I found out that my cousins have blogs, and i realized i was also reading a lot of blogs (www.huffingtonpost.com/ is one i've taken to) so I figured i'd best enter the fray to keep people up to date on where I'm at, and to give friends and family a chance to talk about things we might not normally talk about.

Perhaps I'll post when I return from my trip to Newfoundland, as I'll have much to discuss.


Blog one is complete, unlike Pamela.