*8 Things ~ Not to Miss in Your Twenties

1. Spend time with your girlfriends ~ Don't let your boyfriend or love interest monopolize all your time. Now's the time to enjoy your youth, your freedom [from heavy-duty commitment and responsibility] and your friends. As time passes, and you grow older, and grow into family life, you'll find less and less time for yourself and for time spent with your friends.

2. Start saving your money now ~ Its never too early to begin saving. Saving = good. Spend-thrifting = bad. Think of saving as paying yourself first.

3. Live by yourself [i.e. on your own] ~ It may seem lonely and solitary, at first, but it will prove a invaluable experience that will pay dividends later in your life. Make sure that you can meet the challenge of self-sufficiency, before entangling your life with someone else's.

4. Use birth control ~ Its definitely not as glamourous and easy as it seems to go through pregnancy and raise a child. If you want to get pregnant so you can have someone to love you unconditionally, then get a pet.

5.  Travel,  work abroad,  spend time living abroad ~  Now - when you have none of the heavy-duty family responsibilities - you can afford the time, energy and cost of such an trip. Do it ~ you won't regret it.

6. Pay cash for everything, and if you can't, don't buy it ~ You will have hundreds of companies [department stores, banks, etc] convincing you that you need to get a credit card, a loan, or a line of credit from them. Ignore them. Refuse them. Bankruptcy and/or a poor credit rating will follow you around for longer than you can imagine. Don't mortgage your future opportunities for the present's tempting frivolities.


7. Forgive your parents for whatever you think they did wrong ~ They did the best they could. Parenting looks easy, until you get there. And, really, you'd end up wasting so much time and effort being angry. Get over it.


8. Take the career path that YOU want ~ Its likely going to make some waves when you tell your parents that you don't want to study X, but you want to study Z. Or when you tell them you have no interest in learning the family business. But, in the end, its your life. In the future you must live with the consequences of the choices you make now. Choose wisely and for the right reasons.

8 Things ~ I Highly Recommend You Do in Your Teens

1. Say NO to him ~ if he really loves you like he says he does, then he will wait. Don't settle for second best. You're worth more than that. Besides, you don't want to get pregnant. Its not as glamourous as Angelina Jolie makes it look.

2. Wear that mini-skirt, that short dress, that bikini, even ~ just pullleeeese, girls, don't make the mistake of thinking showing your undies or parts of your bare ass off in public is a good look. Less uncovered often equals more.

3. Wear sunscreen ~ skin cancer sucks ~ its painful and unattractive. Also, the sun exposure weathers your skin.

4. Get your driver's license ~ even if you don't intend on buying a car. And learn how to drive a standard. Take driving lessons ~ your mum or dad ain't the one to teach you driving, trust me.

5. Look in the mirror and tell yourself you're beautiful ~ in 20 or 30 years you'll look back and see the beauty of your youth. Look closely, the beauty's right there. You're NOT fat. Stop reading that sh!t they put on the magazine stands, like Cosmopolitan. Honey, no one really looks like those girls do. Those girls look like they do in Cosmo because of Photoshop!

6. Stay away from drugs ~ an addiction's the only thing you'll get, if you do dabble in the drug world. Addiction sucks ~ its like having a greedy monkey sitting on your shoulder, obsessing over when she'll get the next banana. Trust me, its never worth the high or the buzz you get.

7. Volunteer ~ its good for you to allocate some of your time to helping others.

8. Read ... and learn how to write ~ reading opens your mind ... it also might even open some doors for you. Research shows that reading promotes the neural connections in your brain and even helps you build new ones.  And writing ~ many people can't write a paragraph or a paper to save their skin. Learn now.

Watch this YouTube video, made by Baz Lurhmann ~ Wear Sunscreen. He says it alot better than I ever could.

je pense, donc je suis

or, for those who prefer latin: "... cogito; ergo sum ..."


things i'm thinkin' about this week ~
expand the post to see what

1. ok. so the dollar's reached parity. big FAT deal. i mean, it's spent decades as an undervalued currency ... now its going to spend some time as an overvalued one. c'mon, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that the strength of the dollar has as much to do with the soundness of canada's economy, as it does with the weakness of america's economy.
2. why does the usa call itself america? i never understood that. aren't canada and mexico part of north america, too? does calling itself america intend to assert some conceited notion as being the most important ingredient of NA?
3. amadinejed is visiting nyc this week. and there are lame asses all over the place with placards saying stupid sh1t like 'we don't support terrorism' ... ! lies! y'all do ~ them's some terrorist-like behaviour in israel, ain't it? and the usa is funding those terrorist that i will call zionists. heck, i guess that makes the usa zionist, doesn't it? so ~ how is it that a country that supports the most blatant example of terrorism this era has seen ... likes to tell itself we don't support terrorists ... of course you do! silly americans ~ tricks are for kids. and ~ if you disagree ... please tell me how that's different. maybe canadians should hold similar protests when dubya comes to visit ...?
4. if we legalized heroine, we would steal some serious thunder from the taliban, who apparent have funded their resurgence/come-back with poppy money. doesn't it just make sense? legalize all the illicits ~ and you will instantly remove all the crime from that trade ... look to history if you think i'm full it sh1t on that one. how well has prohibition really worked for humanity in the past?
5. i've thought about truth ~ whether its absolute or relative ... or ... what. i reject the notion of absolute truth. the universe expands, time passes, knowledge evolves. we seek truth via knowledge, which we acquire through our senses. perception ~ that's the source of living truth for each of us. however, something must bind the matter and energy of the universe to itself. yes ~ universal truth. a realm to which, i suppose God belongs. and the immutable laws of the universe. and we, humanity, reside at the intersection of universal truth and that relative, personal truth which our perceptual senses have conjured.
6. how many times has the creator unfolded and folded up the world? there's a theory out there that says the expansion of the universe has begun slowing ... that one day in the future it will stop and that will mean time will stop ... the universe will end ~ collapse into itself and become another black hole, from which ... eventually, another big bang will emerge. i imagine, then ... that we aren't the first of our kind ... that there have been other universes and humanities ...
7. i got a beautiful, handmade scarf from cora last evening. i love it so much, i fell asleep with it on! i will post a picture in the coming days.
8. aside from the scarf, i allow myself one luxurious indulgence ~ estee lauder's pleasures exotic perfume. yes, i got a guy that brings me perfume ... just because he loves me.
   
9. i find myself struggling with tolerance of the intolerant ... tolerance of the rude. oh dear! its so very challenging ... like playing tug of war with a giant bull mastiff (my ego being the giant mastiff) and sometimes not winning. awareness ~ the most efficacious weapon against intolerance.
   

canada's 7 wonders?

ok. so they did it. three non-descript people ~ a musician from the 70s, a WASPy columnist from the globe and mail, and the token aboriginal~a woman (they killed 2 birds with one stone here, lol) who doesn't at all look like she's native. they decided on a fucking prairie sky as a wonder of canada at the expense of haida gwaii!

hey, JUDGES? F@CK YOU!

i have lived in the prairies, under those prairie skies for most of my life. there ain't nuthin' wondrous about open sky that stretches out as far as the eye can see ... that makes you feel like you're in the middle of fucking, ugly and insignificant nowhere! WTF's so canadian about a fucking sky, anyhow? there's expansive prairie/planes skies in the usa and africa that would dwarf ours.

so ...what gives? you're honestly telling me you think a fucking prairie sky has more canadian identity than haida gwaii? you're lying if ya say 'yes.' coz the impassioned plea for prairie sky as a choice, not the actual quality or meaning of said prairie sky, led you to make the choice you did. fuck that patronizing bullshit.

that's the thing - i believe - that makes canadians so wishy-washy in the eyes of our american friends ~ that whole patronizing-passive-compromise routine. its so fucking lame. we water down the guts of an issue just so we can get everyone to agree. agree on what? if all the contention's got removed ... then what's to agree on? grrrrrrrr. removing the heart and soul of and issue makes the issue a dead one. and it makes agreement meaningless. agreement on nuthin = no agreement.

that's what pisses me off about the whole 7 wonders of canada affair. the compromise ~ the great canadian compromise. they - the organizers @ CBC - call it another wonder of canada. they say compromise; i read, giving up what's in your guts to make things smell nicer. and who cares of the end result does not really accurately reflect reality? its peace we're after, not accuracy of truth. really? me dunno if me likes that. me does know that me won't apologize for my refusal to sanction here the choices made through that flawed process.

haida gwaii belongs on that list. for that matter, the gulf islands do too. canada's all about juxtaposing the untamed, untapped wild and natural resources with urban existence. forests, meadows, green spaces, waterways. there's a fucking expanse of rain forest in canada - even a patch of one that resides right inside one of canada's largest, and certainly canada's loveliest city - and none of it even make the final cut. and that speaks volumes. the list and how we settled upon said list ... they speak volumes about the culture of this country. about how we differ from our american friends. about how we, as canadians, feel so strongly about keeping the peace, that we would gladly dilute reality to get and keep said peace. does that mean we would gladly sacrifice our principles just to keep the peace? i suppose ... this seems to imply that many of us would.

i'm not sure how i feel about that.

ok. here's the thing. sometimes ... we need compromise ... sometimes ... compromise works. as in, perhaps, the recent G8 summit. managing climate change and the environment cannot occur without china and the usa at the world table. i grant that. those compromises - of which angela merkel cannot be too pleased - seemed necessary to get to two, messiest and most aggregiously spoiled children to even sit at the table to discuss the issue of carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and the like. to hear dubya finally even admit there's a environmental problem ... i suppose that's a sort of victory.

sorry, but~i love this picture~

~even tho its got nuthin to do with this post~

but ... how much compromise = too much compromise. how much can we dilute the crux of any issue before we've just hashed it into some twisted notion? when does getting everyone to agree on an issue render that issue meaningless? i really wonder. perhaps i shouldn't, though. or should i?

for the record, here's the official, wishy-washy canada's 7 wonders list: (1) niagara falls, (2) the rocky mts, (3) the igloo, (4) the canoe, (5) prairie skies, (6) old quebec city, (7) pier 21. personally, i would lose the prairie skies from the list in exchange for haida gwaii. and while i appreciate the symbolism of placing canoe on the list ... once again, its not exclusively canadian. a brief [online] historical reseaching of canoe tells me that indigenous people in other parts of the globe used this mode of transport - i.e. the amazon. i would lose the canoe from this list, since the contents of the list must reflect the title 7 wonders of CANADA. and so, pacific rim national park seems more quintessentially canadian than does a fucking boat. IMHO. not that anyone's askin' ... lol.

so. in the final analysis, i guess this all boils down to the fact that sometimes, some issues we need to 'fight' for ... and other times, we can dilute other issues to achieve a compromised resolution. no one can have everything all of the time ~ life's all about give and take. exchange ... equilibrium ... balance ... life's multidimensional and dynamic. just like the human entity. however, i REFUSE to put reality and truth up for grabs in exchange for some contrived and poorly carved out mythical peace. it's false. simply false.

more for my 'meme' list

coz i'm restless and can't think of anything else remotely intelligent to write. so here's some useless dribble ya don't really need to know about me.

1. i don't brush/comb my hair daily. i only brush it right before washing it. its impossible, really ~ my hair. as a tot i would scream when mama tried to pass a comb thru my hair. and my hair usually ends up breaking those hair clips ... and hats just slide off my head (except for straw hats, for some reason) because my hair just makes them. i am so pathetic with my hair ~ could not style it excitingly enough to save my life, i'm afraid ~ and so i usually end up covering it with a bandana, or tying it in a boring pony tail.

2. leggy. they tell me i'm quite leggy. yes ~ they're long, impossibly long. and restless. as a little girl my parents had trouble finding pants long enough for my spindly long legs. shopping for clothes sucked, having to travel across town to Sears Roebucks, the only store with clothing to fit strange, spindly children like me.

3. i don't like when people walk behind me. it makes me ... uncomfortable. yes, it makes me irritable walking from the subway platform and out of the station on my way to school each morning. i especially wanna wack in the face anyone who walks right up behind me.

4. i saw a skunk the other night. crossing the street, running away from our house. and then i saw a couple of slugs. trying to get into the house. EEK. and then, the other day, we saw a tiny snail crossing the back lane. we saved it by putting it in a backyard, under a magnolia tree.

5. i have heard of some parents keeping the placenta from their child's birth and planting it, with some sort of rose bush or magnolia tree or something. apparently the placenta provides nourishment to help the new young tree root. what a different way to commemorate the birth of one's child. interesting ...

6. i have a weakness for Old Navy. and, also, second hand stores.

7. i HATE the taste of white milk and also tap water.

another meme

*sigh* ... tagged by susan

1. i watched a man vomit blood to death once; it was the middle of the night in a small rural hospital~we had 20 patients, including 3 on heart monitors and anyone who came thru emergency and were the only 2 nurses for the entire building~the patient's bowel obstructed (he had metastatic cancer); and he died because the hospital's main supply room was locked and we could not get into it to retrieve the nasogastric tube we needed to decompress his vomitting gut.
2. i saw a dynamic hip screw (used to fix a fractured hip) pierce thru a lady's skin after she fell. she had fallen @ home and was waiting to have surgery to put the screw back where it belonged~she had to wait... @ least overnight with that screw dislodged and poking thru the skin ... before getting into surgery.
3. i have a tattoo - a green faery-goblim from brian froud's pressed faery book - its on my lumbar spine and we named him ~splat~
   
4. i see dead people/pets~spirits lurk about everywhere; just because U don't see 'em, doesn't mean they don't exist!
   
5. i dream things that come true and know things that i don't know how i know them.
   
6. i wear estee lauder pleasures intense perfume ... also pleasures exotic.
7. i hate asshole bosses that think they fucking own their employees, their lives and schedules. fuck that shit~as far as i'm concerned, you're fucking lucky i showed up at all! and if got a date ... or when the clock strikes 'end-of-shift' .... watch me walk out the fucking door. i don't work forced overtime, i'm no one's fucking borg and besides, they abolished slavery long ago. that attitude will not get me rich. however it will keep me sane and balance.
   
8. i am mixed; that means my mother is white and my father is brown. as a kid, i got called brown crayon and hated the colour of my skin. once a lady in the laundromat wouldn't let her kid play with me ... because it was obvious that i was mixed (i.e. more brown-skinned than white-skinned).
   
9. i despise loud noises and crowds of people ... also people that walk around or drive around talking on their cell phones - i recently saw a transit bus driver talking on his cell phone while driving the bus (i was on it - a trolley bus, standing room only, @ rush hour) - like - HELLO??? safety???
   
10. i hate call waiting and being put on hold; if you have call waiting and use it on me, i will hang up on you. that's my policy. oh, i hate the phone and typically won't answer it unless i recognize the number calling.
    

Rules Are:

* each blogger starts with eight - ten random facts/habits about themselves…* people who are tagged need to write posts in their own blog about the tag and post these rules…* at the end of your post, you need to choose people to get tagged and list their names… *

tagging: infinitesimal~c'mon girl! u r good @ this stuff ... chickory/k9~i know u hate these things, but indulge me, ok? ... not sure who else to tag ... so just DO IT, already!

irrelevant, rhetorical, cynical questions

things i just wonder today ...

1. re: queen of the north sinking

finally ... after alot of sitting on their thumbs and rotating ... bc ferries has done what's long overdue - fired the asses of the three crew members in charge of the deck when said ferry slammed into gill island @ full speed and sunk, killing 2 people. what took so long ... ? bureaucrats justifying their pathetic existence, no doubt.

still ... despite the fact that 2 peopled died when this ferry sank a little over a year ago ... the public has yet to find out the full truth of what exactly happened. 3 crew members - one wonders WTF could've distracted them so much that they let a fucking ferry slam into an island. hmmmm - i'm just hypothesizing here ... but two male and one female crew member(s) ... geeee I WONDER what they could've possibly been doing!?? (hint - rhymes with duck, perhaps? just guessing ... since no one who knows wants to talk ... guess 'josephine public' just gotta make up her own theory, right?)

2. re: shane doan

why do federal bloc quebecois politicians - ie the bloc is that political party that only runs candidates in quebec and established itself on a separatist platform - give a shit who the fuck represents canada @ the world hockey championships? like - did i miss the memo that came out, saying nationalism's a fucking grand standing tool we can use to gain political points? since when do the separatists give a shit about canada? ha ... i scoff.

3. re: the vancouver canucks finish the season

duh! did anyone out there think that luongo - truly a stellar goalie - could win the fucking series all by himself? like - 56 saves later ... c'mon guys - as don cherry said once - 'don't forget to give those skates back to your sister, kid.'

4. re: 7,000 cruise ship tourists disembark from 4 cruise ships in downtown vancouver @ THE SAME TIME and they're pissed off they can't get cabs.

WTF?? could any city meet such a demand? gimme a break. and while we're on the topic - who the fuck planned this? 4 cruise ships all docking @ the same time? get real. and yeah ... locals can't even get cabs (many cabbies ILLEGALLY refuse to take locals from downtown to the suburbs late @ night, leaving them stranded), so why should we feel for those 7,000 tourists who are pissed they waited 2 hours for a fucking cab?

oh ... so does this make vancouver a world class city now? does this mean we're ready for the 2010 olympics? hahahahahaha! i laugh. as a lowly, buspass-holding, walking, i-don't-own-a-car and i-don't-take-cabs vancouverite ... i laugh.

i cynically am waiting for 'cash-strapped' translink to magically come up with $ to make the skytrain (i.e. subway) a 24 hour service - just in time for the olympics. FUCK THE OLYMPICS!

now ... if only we could find a bus or some large freight hauler to move all those unsightly homeless people and street junkies to mission or some other quiet, outtatheway place so's the VERY IMPORTANT olympic crowd won't hafta see the third world that's rapidly developing in vancouver ... hmmmm.

5. so ... does giving up pot make me healthier?

i have traded in my rolling papers and pot grinder for a package of cyanide sticks (i.e. cigarettes). does this make me a 'better' person? apparently. does it make me healthier. well, who knows ... considering the science says that pot is less harmful than both ETOH and nicotine. and more addictive. hmmmph.

[don't get me wrong ... i'm glad to be off the stuff ... just - appreciating the irony of the whole situation].

6. do i give a shit that paris hilton's going to jail? am i supposed to? why is that newsworthy?

7. re: kim basinger and pamela bach

why, oh why, are ex wives such BITCHES? get a clue girls ... and get the fuck over yourselves! and stop using your kids like some fucking pawns in a chess game. that just makes you pathetic and sad.

8. why does anyone think 12 degrees and sunny = shorts and flip flips weather? i mean, really?

9. why is there $ for the provincial politicians to get a 29% pay raise ... and there's no money for things like, oh, say - affordable housing, addictions programs, health care ...? just wondering how that accounting works. did i miss the math lesson?

ok. i think that's it. that' s what i wonder.

6 wierd things about myself

1. i currently sleep a mere 10 or 12 feet away from the exposed blessed sacrament. i'm convinced its the reason i sleep like a baby in this bed i have here. before getting here i felt afraid to fall asleep. not here, though. i know its the blessed sacrament. i know it.
2. i feel intimidated by other people alot of the time - their energies overwhelm me. the same way having my head dunked in water overwhelms me. i can feel what people are thinking ... what they feel ... their emotions.
3. unlike the rest of the human race i have no requirement for sexual intimacy. i just don't. i'm convinced that sex is designed to take things from women. not make them feel connected.
4. weed is a necessity for me. i'm not being flip or silly. i'm dead serious. weed, to me, is just as necessary as food. anyone who thinks this is a bad thing is fucking ignorant. i wish people would stop patronizing addicts and just get it, already.
5. i'm confused about religion and the JC thing. the exposure of the blessed sacrament ... the peace it gives me when i sleep ... the peace it fills me with ... it makes me wonder. about g-d. about JC. about the trinity. if you asked me ... i'd honestly say i'm not sure if i believe. but ... somehow ... strangely ... i know. i feel like i just know.
   
6. trees and nature speak to me. in fact, they possess a lot more wisdom than humans. the wisdom of being for ages. the knowing that comes with waiting. that's what i get from nature.