Season's greetings to all of my friends! :-)
It's a special Christmas for me. It is the first time I will spend a Christmas with my special guy. Last year missed him very much when we were apart. I went travelling with my family while he stayed home. This year, we are together. I wish I could put into words how much he means to me. I can tell my friends online about stuff that he does, but I can't explain who he *is*. My friends and family know how handsome and gentle and noble he is, but they couldn't possibly understand what he's meant to me. I don't even know where to start. He has helped me discover myself in every possible way. Before I met him I was lonely, troubled, unfulfilled, and angry. I fought with my parents constantly. He has made me see my own worth and value. He has shown me what strength really means- it isn't about always being right, it's about always being accountable. Being accountable was something I didn't really understand until recently. Now it is something I strive for and something that I hope people will respect me for. I think that this is what has turned my relationship with my parents around. I have learned so much from my guy. I am a very different person than I was 2 years ago. I hope that I have given him just as much. We are complimentary. Our strengths and weaknesses balance each other. His calmness counteracts my excitability. My energy stimulates his placid nature. His patience balances my enthusiasm. We are better together than we are on our own.
I feel so happy right now.
Hi again. It's me :-)
As my regular readers (both of 'em!) have noticed, I have not updated for a very, very long time! :-(
I guess I just haven't really had a whole lot to say. I have been pretty happy. And when I'm happy, I haven't got much to write about. As you might have noticed, this whole website is basically a result of my need to bitch about my life. Not having much to bitch about means the site suffers.
Anyway. Things are going very well for me. My thrilling career in retail continues apace. My mom has given up alcohol. I don't know if I should say that on the Internet, but hell, everybody who reads my site knows that my mom is a hardcore alcoholic so what the hell. She is doing ok, and she is sticking to it. My friends are out of university and we have more time to hang out, but most of them are working.
My relationship with my special guy is still wonderful. It used to feel like magic or something, like something that would vanish if I closed my eyes for a moment. Right now it feels like a normal part of my life. I can't imagine things being different. It is a good feeling.
Right now being alive feels good. The sun and the warm weather make the world of grown-up concerns feel far-away. The pleasure of just being fit and healthy is all that matters. I think that these are the times that people miss when they are old. I doubt people spend much time regretting that they didn't spend more time at work. I will enjoy days like this while I've still got them.
If you were wondering, our cross-country trip was great! We went all the way to Vancouver! We had a great time and some wild experiences.
As well, I spent a couple of weeks out in the woods with my friend Julia's mom. A whole bunch of us went out to Julia's family's lakeside cottage for a big Canada Day party! And although most had to go back to the city to work, me and my friend Leah stayed out there with Julia's mom. Although I missed my guy, it was nice to relax away from the chaos and confusion of city life. I think I would like to live in the country someday, away from all the violence and crowding and pollution. That would make me happy.
I guess I usually do movie reviews in this space as well. Since my last update I have seen Spiderman and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, plus some other movies that I can't remember right now. I'll post reviews soon.
That's about it for right now. Sorry for not updating for so long!
March 28
I am going on a trip with my special guy! We are driving across the country! He has job interviews and is visiting friends on the west coast. It should be very exciting. Although we might get really sick of each other after spending so much time in his car together.
The Academy Awards. hmm. Well first off it was a long, boring show even by their own standards.
Halle Berry wins Best Actress? I guess she's improved some since "B.A.P.S." ... during the broadcast, I told some of my friends the real reason no black woman had ever won Best Actress is that nobody wanted to sit through a 27 minute acceptance speech. I felt bad afterwards, because that was kind of racist. But sometimes there's a reason behind the stereotype. Like, I bet that for millions, the few seconds when Halle stood there gasping for breath was the first time they'd ever seen a black woman left speechless. (oops, that was probably racist too. Oh well. That wasn't really what bugged me. What bugged me was for her to be acting like she was Rosa Parks or someth
During his classy Lifetime Achievement acceptance speech, Sidney Poitier talked about the discrimination he faced when he went to Hollywood in the 1940s. There were not many roles for black actors, and none of them were roles with much dignity. Poitier acknowledged that the colour barrier had been broken not by himself so much as by movie producers who had the courage to defy convention to cast him in prominent roles. Seeing black characters in prominent roles is what (slowly...) opened doors. Sidney Poitier was the man who got to portray many of those characters, but he was the medium, not the message. F
Halle Berry, somehow, missed the point. Going on and on as if she were a human rights hero completely missed the point. Halle's win was historic, but only notable for the fact that the clueless old fuck-ups that vote on these things finally took notice. Did Halle's win open any doors? No. Those doors were already opened. The fact that Halle Berry can get a wide variety of movie roles, earn millions of dollars, show off her titties in a John Travolta action-flop, go on an impaired driving rampage, and get off scot-free kind of proves that she already had every opportunity open to white actresses.
What else is there to bitch about? hmm.The shut-out of Lord of the Rings from any of the major categories? I suppose, but I think only naive people were surprised. The second and third installments won't win either. The Academy hates science fiction and fantasy. Not even 2001: A Space Odyssey won best picture, not even Star Wars, not even E.T. (but who remembers what films DID win the awards those years?) The Academy likes historical dramas, "cause" movies, and mentally handicapped characters. I expect that somewhere, a producer is already planning to make a movie based on the life of Alan Turing, a gay British mathematician who helped break codes during World War 2. It has all the elements the Academy just can't say no to. Film it and you will win. I don't even know if Turing's life was even very interesting, but if it wasn't they can dramatize it, as they did with John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.
Dumb movies, with dumb characters and dumb jokes, are contrived to get money out of the pockets of dumb people. Guess what, there are movies contrived to get money out of the pockets of smart people too. Many people said that A Beautiful Mind was a calculated attempt to win Academy Awards. Every year, there is a movie that makes a ton of money strictly because of Oscar hype- because people who fancy themselves movie connoisseurs have to be able to fling around phrases like "well-crafted" and "solid performances" when they talk to their snooty friends. This year, A Beautiful Mind was that movie.
March 23
I haven't updated for a while. Mostly, I've just been either busy or bored. I also spent a while being quite sick. It was not very good. Oh well.
Here is what I have been up to:
I have been enjoying the springlike weather. Unfortunately, the spring-like weather came to a crashing halt a few days ago. We got buried in snow! Come on, winter is suppose to be over!
I have been reading The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. It is a wonderful book set in the same fantasy world as The Lord of the Rings. Or, more accurately, The Lord of the Rings is set in the world that is established in The Silmarillion. It is a "prequel" that establishes the mythology and early history of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, and sets the stage for Lord of the Rings. It is is epic in scope, yet elegant and simple. I'm just in awe of this wonderful book. I am planning to do some Tolkien-related writing for this site, and I am writing a fiction that I plan to submit to another site.
My special guy is still special :-) and everything is going well. Thanks for asking ;-)
My friend is still with the jerk, but she assures me that this time she is not putting up with any garbage. However, she's taking a lot of abuse from her own friends who are furious at her for going back to this bonehead. Oh well.
I am sick. It's a flu of some kind. My chest hurts and I'm coughing and tired. My throat hurts and my head hurts. I bet this is what being old feels like.
Oh well. One of my close friends has made a choice in her personal life that I think is terrible and wrong. She has gone back to a guy she used to go out with, and who treats her like crap. He yells at her, he bosses her around in front of her friends, he insults her, he makes her feel worthless. She says he is different now, but I don't believe it. I wish that I could make her see that she deserves better, but she doesn't seem to think she deserves better. She might even feel that she deserves worse. I know that she must have pain in her heart to have gone back to this, especially after she had been so confident that she was going to find new and better things for herself. I want to help her but I don't want her to feel I am criticizing her.
February 28
Brand new series of Survivor starts today! Very exciting! :-) Well, maybe not... but I still like Survivor.
Aside from that, not much for me to write about. So I will present my list of...
The Five Worst Cat Names of All Time!
1. Catnos, Cat of Destiny
2. Osama-bin-Kitten, Feline Extremist.
3. www.ecat.com
4. Catferatu- Cat of the Damned
5. Mr. Whiskers
You should not name your cat any of these things.
February 24
YAY!
Canada's men's hockey team has done like the women's team and won Olympic gold! Unlike the women of Team USA, the American men's team is all class, and there is nothing to say about them except that they had a great tournament and came up just a little short.
If you are Canadian, you already understand how much this meant to us. If you're American, imagine this... suppose a team from Cuba came and won the World Series of baseball, and it took 6 years for an American team to win it back from them! That is how big a deal this was for Canada.
Olympic hockey never used to mean anything to Canadians. That is because we always just knew that the best players were all Canadian. Canada's Olympic hockey team had not won since 1952, but that didn't matter to us because the Olympic hockey team was made up of players who weren't good enough to make pro teams. When Canada sent its best players, the result was always the same- gold, at the Canada Cup, World Cup, and Summit Series. But all that changed in 1996. Canada sent it's best team to the World Cup tournament... and LOST? to the United States? It was a complete shock to Canadians to lose at our own game. Canadians were determined to reclaim "our" title at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano- the first Olympics where professional hockey players were allowed to compete. Canada sent a powerful team, but again lost- this time at the hands of Dominik Hasek, the Czech goaltender who seemed almost unbeatable. That was Canada's last international competition where we sent our best team, and Canadians have been waiting a long time for their team to reclaim the title they lost in 1996- the right to call themselves the world's best.
It was pure elation here. My special guy cried. My dad almost cried too. Mom was too drunk to show much emotion at all, however. There were celebrations in the streets, which we joined in.
These past Olympics were Canada's most successful winter Olypmics ever. Led by our speed-skaters, we finished 4th, behind only the US, Germany, and Norway. However, none of that would have mattered without the men's hockey gold.
February 21
The Canadian Womens' Olympic hockey team has won the Gold medal! This was a very important win for themFirst of all, they had to overcome their arch-enemy, Team USA. The American women beat them in the 1998 Olympics, so this was payback for that. They overcame the odds, as the Americans had been heavy favorites, having beaten Canada 8 straight times earlier this year. To make things even tougher, the referee (an American!) gave Canada penalty after penalty. It became so ridiculously one-sided that even the American fans were starting to wonder what was going on!
The victory is extra sweet for the Canadian women, as there are hard feelings between the 2 teams (to say the least). Right after the game, Hayley Wickenheiser, Canada's star player, said "They have our flag on the floor of their locker-room over there, and now I want to know if they'd like us to sign it!" The American women denied that they had a Canadian flag in their locker-room, especially on the floor. However, the American women also signed their names on pictures of the Canadian women that were hanging in the athletes' village. And they are known for trash-talk. During the 1998 gold medal game, the American women taunted Canada's Danielle Goyette about her father- who had died just a few days earlier- causing her to smash her stick on the ice and run to the locker-room in tears during the game. I don't think the Team USA women really had a Canadian flag on their floor, but considering some of the other low-class stuff they have done, it wouldn't be such a surprise if they did.
February 15
It's Valentine's Day was wonderful and naughty :-)
As if in response to my figure-skating rant, the International Olympic Committee and International Skating Union agreed to give Sale and Pelletier gold medals too. It seems like the fair way to settle it.
However, I don't think it was handled right. By just caving in, the ISU makes it look like they are just doing this to stop the controversy.
The right thing to do would have been to conduct their investigation, make the results PUBLIC, and then- if it was the right thing to do- award gold medals to Sale and Pelletier.
It just looked like they were doing the popular thing. It doesn't help their credibility at all, and it doesn't make Sale and Pelletier look like true champions, either.
February 14
It's Valentine's Day! In just a short while my special guy will come to take me out for a lovely evening. YAY!
Many people in Canada are up in arms over the pairs figure-skating controversy at the Olympics. Siince I'm Canadian, I might as well vent on this too. :-)
Many people have said that sports with subjective judging should not be in the Olympics. There might be some truth to that point of view. However, throwing figure-skating out of the Olympics would be most punishing to the skaters, not the International Skating Union. Secondly, of all the events in the Winter Olympics, figure-skating is by far the most popular, with hockey a distant second and everything else tied for last. Alpine events might interest many European viewers, and some of the "extreme" sports might get some Gen-X viewers, but the figure-skating events are what puts mainstream American butts in front of televisions.
You would have to be nuts to think that NBC or CBS will pay hundreds of millions of dollars to televise a Winter Olympics that doesn't have figure-skating. And you would have to be nuts to think that the International Olympic Committee would do anything to jeopardize those hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, sorry guys, you are stuck with figure-skating. If you think otherwise, you're terribly naive about the REAL "golden rule".
Why the controversy? Isn't it possible that the judges really did think the Russian pair skated a superior program? Well, sure it is. But you didn't have to be a trained observer to spot the errors in the Russian skate, and many professional observers have weighed in as well, all saying that the Canadian skaters performed a superior skate. And it is not just Canadian observers saying it. Former Olympic champion Scotty Hamilton of the US felt the Canadians won. US coach Frank Carroll said "This is the worst thing that's happened in a long time in figure skating." Carroll has been in figure-skating for decades, and has nothing to gain from speaking out on behalf of Sale and Pelletier. Just the opposite, as Carroll still has skaters competing in the Games, and it's not likely that the ISU judges will appreciate his comments.
We know from the past that the judges have rigged competitions, and been caught red-handed at it. At the Nagano Olympics, a judge was caught on audiotape as he phone another judge to arrange results in the ice-dance competition. More recently a videotape caught a Ukrainian judge and Russian judge exchanging hand and foot signals during the competition. Given their track record, why take them seriously this time? And just tonight as I write this, two news items have come out: the judging supervisor, Ronald Pfenning of the US, has made a complaint to the ISU alleging inappropriate behavior. And the French figure-skating federation has said that pressure was applied to their judge during the competition.
The truth of the matter is that the International Skating Union has brought this upon itself. This type of allegation has been around for a long time, particularly after the Nagano Olympics. By failing to take any credible steps to address the issue, the ISU has created a situation where the verdicts of its judges will be subject to suspicion at every event. By failing to address this issue, they have allowed their credibility to evaporate. It is unfair to the skaters and the fans.