Random Thoughts on Oblivion; and Other Such Cheery Topics

[Anita Blake]

I have never seen him before. But I saw him today. Lean, graceful, elegant, dangerous, and beautiful. Not handsome, no, no one woudl ever call him that, for he is quite simply stunningly beautiful. He looked at me, that casual interest of a passerby, nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps he felt me looking at him from behind my sunglasses, felt compelled to return the favor.

I wanted to walk up to him, kiss him, and tell him he was beautiful. But you simply don't kiss perfect stangers and tell them they are beautiful. I didn't want to come on to him, no, though he was so heart-breakingly beautiful. It wasn't about sex, no, it was about the raw force of his inner self shining through the dirty black leather pants, grungy paint-spattered t-shirt, 2nd hand jacket. Greasy hair lankly hanging to just below his ears. And i thought, does he know how beautiful he is? I crossed the street, and looked back at him, leaning casually.

Could I love this man, this boy? Certainly not. For while beauty can be overwhelming, his beauty came not from the strength of his character, not so much as it was from the sadness of him. Prostitute, possibly, too pretty to be wasted on a decent life of cleanliness and a straight routine. The fire of his personality, so strong and hot, looks sure to burn him out too soon. What makes him so attractive is not completely himself, no it's the life he leads, the danger he is to himself. Passionate to the end, his life is surely a great tragedy, or will be. Put him in a suit and jacket and give him a nice safe office job, and watch the beauty that he is dissipate and dissolve, watch him become ordinary, watch him lose the part of himself that burns so brightly.

I wanted to hold his hand, tell him to get off whatever he is on, to go home and be safe, but looking again at him, seeing once more the cat-like grace he moves with, i know it would be futile. He is a boy who walks alone at night through the wrong part of town, and he is at home. He is a king of the street, sleek, graceful, beautiful, dangerous, and perhaps he has not a little big of love within him.

In the end, though, I walked by. His world and mine are too far apart, to try to bring them together would be disastrous, perhaps more for me. For while I can look at his self destruction and admire it, comment upon it's tragic beauty, I don't wish to have any part of it. I can imagine a life for this boy where he can be strong, where he can choose his lovers instead of having them chosen for him, where his beauty could make him a dark lord over all he touches.

[Anita Blake]

contemplation infinity music haunting lovely sweet sorrow singing morose darkness points of light infinity the universe discovery forgotten realms desire reach touch feel see hear smell internalize hate love opposites polarization terrifying thrilling life death afterlife ghosts reality illusion depth depravity sinking stones water rushing childhood camping memories different person past present future distinct separate unconnected unrelated questions family loyalty love friendship green grass sunshine blue skies idyllic summer death is winter eternity seasons mother earth pagans witches burning sadness horror hatred fear loathing refusal denial stubbornness proud and straight tall and strong.

life.

[Anita Blake]

well now. today was rather interesting. Canada Day = Cannabis Day. i'm sure you can guess how that turns out. in my case i'd say it led to a certain 'experience' that i would like to hope is unforgettable.

The main gist of the thing was this, for me, at that moment in time at least: we are living at the end of a great civilization. In the wealthy nations we can sit in idle decadence, wasting away a day of celebration in the sunshine, surrounded by a cacophony of sounds, peacefully protesting in a way that is closer to an orgy of drugs and decadence, and in the years to come we can look back on it and say " those days will never come again" but of course, they will come again, in another generation, in another nation, in another time, another place. The youht of today, the youth of yesterday, the youth of tomorrow, we all fight the smae fight, rebellion against the status quo simply because it's in human nature, once a society has a certain degree of luxury. One society may fight the government's stance on marriage, another on drugs, another on whatever the issue of the day is, but in the end, this act of coming together seemingly for a superficial cause is only a part of the human condition, these events, things like woodstock, it's been happening all throughout the course of human history, and it will continue on until the end of the the world. it's the beginning of then end, in many ways, it signals the end of a great era, a historical period. And i don't know this becuase i've read about it, but because i simply opened myself up to it and saw it through the eyes of the past and the future and knew it to be. drug-induced hallucinations and visions? surely. but all prophets have an aid to theit prophecy. this is the way of the world, and one does not need books and study to feel it, to know it. one needs only to stop, listen, and feel it in the air.

we are coming to an end, but there will be others after us. these days will not be long for us, but soon will be there for others. in the meantime, celebrate our destiny. this is what we are.

[Anita Blake]

and it brings me great curiosity to wonder about the past. sometimes i think we are truly living in atlantis, a civilization that in the millenia to come will be wondered at in awe and amazement, philosophized about, with out legends and myths, and most of what gets told will be the truth, in a way, in a form, for is that not what legends are? truth, distorted through the lens of time? i often wonder, what are the stories that will prevail? what knowledge will we leave for future generations. and did past generations wonder the same thing? I for one don't think that we are very much different from our counterparts in the past, from atlantis. Every day the people of atlantis worked, they had a purpose in their society, they purchased things from the markets, they had homes and families and filled the streets with their important and busy tasks. And all those important people, who were they? Where did they go? well, they died, and their civilization died with them. Kind of makes you reevaluate your own existence, doesn't it. Those people protested their governments, they choices that were made day to day, they had ideas for bettering the world, and in the end, their entire civilization sunk into the water. All their technnology could not help them. And it won't help us. In the end, we are just dust in the wind, and that's all we really can be. All our contributions to society are as short lived as we are. It shoudl be depressing, i guess, and it might sound that way, but in a way, i think it makes me feel mor elike i have a connection with the people of the distant past, the people of the distant future. We don't know one another, and we never will, and we have almost no effect on one another, but there it is, we are all in the same planet, the same species, the same civilization, really. our mortality and ultimate lack of consequence is what binds us together.

[Anita Blake]

sigh. today will, i fear, not be good. Because the school was unexpectedly closed for 2 days last week due to the fire across the street, a lot of classes got missed and this week we'll probably have to scramble to get up to date. *sigh* Plus there's already a lot on the plate this week. egads. well, i should probably go to work early, and i'm going to, because it's juts going to be one of those days where i have to go to work early and stay late and then pretend i did no such thing. :rolleyes: One of the great perks of being moved up to the full time TA.... yay, now i get to deal with all this crap. well, at least i had a long weekend full of fun and a haircut.... unfortunately for the haircut, the hairdresser did a great job of styling it, and now that the hairdresser os nowhere to be seen, my hair is being unruly. I left the hairdresser withpeople going "wow, you look so good like that!" and "i really like your hair straight!" (which is kind of silly, because my hair is straight).... lol but now, it's a curly mass of waves and insanity, and i have to buy a straightener for it since it's just way too curly now.... my hair just goes really wavy at certain lengths, and this is the length it goes wavy at. :rolleyes: alas.

anyhoo... my cat is howling at me for no apparent reaon again, and i really should go to work. :cry:

[Anita Blake]

that feeling is there, that sensatin of being too tired to possibly be awake, with the desire to do something, anything, but not being quite sure what, the natural instinct is to sit and stare, waiting for the information to come to you, waiting waiting, waiting. It never does, though. Things don't just 'come to you'. YOu have to seek them out. You have to get them. what are these things? i don't know. ideas, motivation, breath. whatever. it doesn't matter.

yesterday, i was confronted with the realization that i am no longer 15. Not by a long shot. And it occured to me that i would like to be 15 again. Now, my roommate, he claims that he woudl never want to be 15 again. T o painful, to horrendous. And yes, being 15 is something akin to having your flesh peeled off of you every day ahile pouring salt over your exposed muscles. Followed shortly therafter with a nice soothing lemon juice shower. But the thing about being young is this: what makes it so painful is that you are filled with so many desires and longings that you can do nothing about. And yet, that is what akes it so wonderful. The desire, the longing, the anticipation. You don't have the ability to actually achieve any of your youthful goals and desires. Once you can achieve them, you don't want it so much any more. Or to paraphrase, using Courtney Love's words " I get what i want/ and i never want it again". (Violet)

Now i am old. I have a job, i have money, and the ability to achieve many things, and yet the very ability to achive certain things makes it certain that i no longer desire them.

i miss the bittersweet longings of youth.

[Anita Blake]

well, yesterday was fun. OK, the morning part of it, where i had to get up and go to work early, only to find out (again) that some of my students are complete idiots who can't read a schedule :rolleyes: ..... yeah, that part wasn't as much fun. When i get up too early, i have a tendency to grunt a lot instead of actually speaking. Whimpery little grunts that mean "no" "leave me alone" "ugh" "what?" "go away" "because i'm tired" and of course, the best one is the quiet, soft, somehwat screechy one that means "fuck off and die please". *nods*

but where was i? oh yes, my day did get better. I made new posters for the computer lab, helpful tips for students, That was really fun. Of course, i was only doing that because i honestly had nothign to do, but i needed to be there. But whatver. Eventually, i did get to leave work, to a swelteringly hot, humid day. The kind of heat where you step outside and think to yourself, "holy crap, it's hot out here!" and then your jeans start kind of sticking to the back of your knees. And suddenly, a semi-truck goes by, radiating about 4 tiems as much heat as the sun, and you just kind of stop and let the heat soak into your bones, and it feels really relaxing, gross but good, almost orgasmic in the way it leaves you feeling nearly exhausted. OK, so maybe none of that sounds very good, except the orgasmic part, but I really enjoy the heat, so i like it. So i went home and sat outside by my pool and read some more of the eye of the world because i have decided to to a whole WOT reread (for some godforsaken reason). My friend lent me the first harry potter book, which i think i will read today. but that is neither here nor there.

I had some ahi tuna for dinner, which was good. I love tuna, but i have very little experience with cooking it. IT's pretty expensive, and hard to find fresh, but i got some on sale. It was good, though, i am inclined to think it tastes better raw than cooked... mmmm sushi. anyhoo.

then i had a couple drinks with my bf and my roommate, and then my bf was at the window and he saw the next door naighbor on his patio, since our window kind of looks out on their patio. He ended up inviting the guy over, and so we got to meet our next door neighbor. That was kind of cool. I've never really been much of one for introducing myself to my neighbors,. but it was really nice to meet my neighbor and hang out with him until the wee hours of the morning. His girlfriend had to get up early so she coulnd't come over, but we'll all meet one day. It's pretty cool. I think that was the best part of the day, just because it's so rare taht i meet new people, well, new peopel that i'm not teaching. And the weird thing is, my neighbor is friends with one of my students! It's such a small, strange world we live in. I wouldn't have been surprised if my neighbor had turned out to be a secret wotist. :)

Of course, on the sad side of yesterday, there's a guy at work who is probably going to get fired, who is realy sweet, but kind of annoying and acs like a 15 year old girl, who keeps on reminding me about his housewarming party, that i probably can't go to even if i had wanted to, which i don't, but he went up and said to me, and my coworker, "oh, i told my friends that you 2 are the only ones who will probably come", even though i told him that i think i'm busy that day, being an extra on a student film, and he was like 'oh i don't care, come to my party!". *sigh* and he will get fired, becaue he doesn't do his job very well, and takes a lot of days off, and generally annoys people. that makes me feel really bad. I mean, he's a nice guy, just a little despareate for friends, and inept at his job, which are 2 things that don't really go together very well, in my mind. ahhh..... whatever. only thought of it because i had a dream about him getting fired and how crushed he was..... but even in my dream he was annoying me by trying to get into my bathroom stall. dreams are strange beasts.

but the happy part of the story is, met my neighbor, pretty cool guy, and now i have the weekend to read harry potter. :) (finally! :rolleyes: ) *dances some sort of jig*

[Anita Blake]

early in the morning is when it's hardest. thought comes slowly, unbidden, unwanted really. And there is a dull ache, a longing for there to be someone to take care of you. Someone to smooth over all the rough pathces of your life and just make it easy for you. But it never really will be. BEcause the rising of the sun makes no guarantees. The sun does not want to make your life easier, and no matter what, your bagel is gone. even if you can't remember eating it and were sure it was there. some things just weren't meant to be.

*sigh*

[Anita Blake]

well, hello my long neglected reflections thread. how are you? me, i'm fine. Been busy lately since i'm working full time now. It's good though. We've got our office organized, not that we spend much time in the office mind, but it was a bomb shelter before we took over. So, that's good.

The big news, of course, is that after my purchase of a sewing machine a few months ago, i have finally started along my way to my manifest destiny. or something like that anyway. It's been a long slow process, what with being broke and not able to afford stuff like thread and material, but i've finally made a rough draft of my very first corset. OK, it's not even a complete rough draft, but as far as understanding the pattern pieces and sewing them together in a somewhat coherent manner, i think i've done pretty well. I still don't have the bones, and it's made out of really cheap cotton, so it's all floppy and doesn't quite fit properly, but the point it, i did it. I did it, i did it, i did it, and i understand how to fix what's wrong with it, and i think that when i am finally ready to make the real corset, it will be actually pretty nice. So, i am very proud of myself, and i can't stop fiddling with the damn thing when i sit in front of my sewing machine, which is on a table in my living room, and thusly, i fiddle with it quite often.

I've been lamenting my lack of time to write. It seems that when i am at wor, i am too busy to write much, and when i go home my bf is on the computer so i can't go online that often and i don't write since i'm pretty much out of paper. :( note to self: must buy new notebook.

well, that about wraps up this edition of Random Thoughs on Oblivion; and Other Such Cheery Topics. Thank you and have a nice day.

[Anita Blake]

No, no! There seems to have been some kind of a misunderstanding, good sir. You see, i requested the "sleep in every day" option, not get up early and o to work. I really do think a mistake has been made, i believe i was meant to be a rich debutante who would never have to work for a living.

Oh, good, now that we've got that all sorted out, i'll be going to live that life.... what? What do you mean, 'not really'?????!! No, check your book, you'll see it right there.... what? I'm in the right place? NO, that can't be possible, perhaps if i could speak to your supervisor?

[Anita Blake]

ANd of course, the deepest irony is that lonliness is what we all have in common, for alone is what we all are. We can stand together as much as we want, we can pretend to share one another, pretend that we have more than ourselves, but ultimately, in the end, the only thing we really have is ourselves. We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone, in our heads. We look out every day through the same set of eyes, the set of eyes that no one else can look through, and that is all we have.

Lonliness is what we are.

[Anita Blake]

there is a spinning, breathing, harsh reality that calls us all. We live in it, but we are not of it. Our dreams are what have created us, for only in our dreams are we ever truly real. Only our dreams contain the seeds of truth that shall set us free.

a child has more wonderment, more knowledge in that wonderment than the harshest of all men. Grown men often see life in terms of black and white, right and wrong, and in that sight they miss out the truth that lies under there noses: that life is about enjoyment and pleasure.

And in my mind i can see a world run by children, where flowers bloom wildly and streets are paved with rough dirt and people frolick freely and naked through their days, doing that work which is necessary with a smile and open heart, sure in the knowledge that the work is not the goal, but that it helps to make the goal that much sweeter.

And in this world i can see that those who are hard of heart and old in mind are not banished, but are pitied and suffer an exile of their own making.

[Anita Blake]

curious curious, i can see my coherence slipping away again in my writing, and while this perhaps shoudl be disoncerting, i am quite pleased. Coherence is highly overrated anyway. you see, i have come to a point in my life where i want to regain that which i was as a youth, yet move forward into the next stage, whatever that may be. And thusly, i amke very little sense. It's hard ot move backwads and forwards at the same time, but i manage ok. i am fortunate in that i have this opportunity to reflect. others never have the need for such trivialities, and thusly they may percieve my problems and troubels to be very small indeed, but the thing is, because i do have luxury, my problems are luxurious, but that doesn ont make them any less troubleseme. By this i mean, look at a rich man, who must worry daily about losing his money, who's biggest problem is a lingering sense of depression that makes him wish that he were dead, so he eats and he eats until he is as corpulent in his form as he is in his mind. He must see psychiatrists to rid himself of these debilitating concerns, to make his life filled once more with happiness. Then look at a child, starving in a third world nation, who's biggest concern is the next meal he may or may not eat, who may die by days end because of a wayward bullet shot by rebels or dirty water that will give him a lethal disease. Are the rich man's problems less of a problem because they are not a matter of life and death? Is he less valid in his existence? How can he be? Surely, if he was placed in the same situation as the starving child, his priorities would change, and his previous problems woudl seem irrelevant, and the child woudl surely change places to not have to worry about death looming over his shoulder eveyr moment, but does it make the man irrelevant? No, we all have the problems we have, and just because the problems might seem trivial to another, to you, your problems are all you have. Your concerns are yours, and you can't really change them or worry about whether or not they might seem trivial next to a starving child's. You can't feel guilt for not sharing that problem because you can't share that problem, not without detriment to yourself.

and i digress. i don't know what my original point was but i don't think it matters. i probably didn'teven had one. one of the luxuries of being me, i guess, not havign a point, not having coherence, not being glued together in the same fashion that most people are. It's OK, you know, being different, being strange, being uniquely similar to everyone else.

i worry sometimes at the state of my sanity, whether i am sane, or will remain sane, or if one day i will wake up to recognize that i am completely insane. And i think sometimes that i'd ratehr be insane and happy than sane and depressed. For the world is a terrifying, depressing, horrifying place. Tragedies occur everyday, and it's insane to think that they don't, but it's also so much more pleasant to believe that we are safe, that we are protected, and that all things are possible. i want to believe that all things are possible. in some ways, i do, i really do. but then the realistic self chimes in letting me know that i know this isn't so. Well, so be it. I care not for the matters of lofty men. i want only to write and to be loved and to be admired, to create, to imagine, to dream. Is that a noble goal? or is it running away from the responsibilities of life? DOn't ask me, i asked you. At any rate...

one other thought that flitters ceaselessly through my wasted excuse for a mind these days is that there are some thigns that you can never really escape. you can rebel from them, and run away, and spit in their eyes, but in the end one day you stop and find that it was there, inside you all along. Mayeb that makes me hate it more, knowing that i can't escape cetain inevitabilities, when i question, if i had children, how woudl i raise them, and though i lothe and despise the voice that chimes in, i can't help but to agree that to rase any child without at least the knowledge of religions would be folly, regardless of my personal thoughts on religion. I despise it, really, because it has taken a large part in turning me into what i am: a person who feels guilt over everything. guilt over my actions, my inactions, the actiosn of those around me, the actions of the rulers of the world, how guilty i feel that i am not changin the world, even though i know that i can't change the world, that i can do nothing about who is voted as president of the united state, or who rules far awy nations, i cannot control these things, and yet, because i see them as wrong and frightening to my beliefs, i feel guilt that i have done nothingto affect change. I feel guilt for living my life, and i lay the blame for this overactive sense of guilt at the feet of the catholic church and their leader of men, the pope. adn yet the nagging voice in my head..... that perhaps i'm not wrong to feel this guilt, that perhaps i could give my life in service of a greater good, sacrifice myself, my desires, my needs, in order that others can benefit. I felel guilt that i do not do this, and yet not quite enough to renounce my worldly possessions and toil selflessly to satisy the needs of others. Because ultimately, what it comes down to is this: i am one of those others, too. I have my own needs that must be satisfied before i can care for others. if you give all of yoursel,f you'll find that there is no you, that you cease to exist, and become a slave, worthless and small, and i refuse to be that. i refuse to give into my inner nature and suffer at the hands of others. Does this make me a bad person? According to some doctrine, yes, and that is what enrages me. that is what makes me want to scream in anguish and rage, fuels my desire for destruction. for not all gods are benevolent and merciful all the time. and if we are made in the image of god, then perhaps we too must cast aside benevolence and mercy from time to time and just be what we are, selfish, hard, cold bitches. balance is in order, one cannot be purely good, or purely evil. All good contains within it the seeds of evil, just as all evil contains the seeds of good. yin and yang. balance in the force. it's a curious thing, life is, and perhaps we'll never have it worked out entirely to our satisfaction, unles we learned to be satisfied with mystery and half-answers.

and now that my rant has moved on to other things, i feel it necessary to stop, quit while i'm (rather dubiously) ahead. for isn't that what separates us from the animals? the ability to see the line, and quit while we're ahead? perhaps not. perhaps that's just what separates smart from dumb. and i suspect that i ride that line very clumsily, shifting balance from smart to dumb without ever seeing my erratic movements. and there you are. the end.

[Anita Blake]

ahh, on wiht the random.....

yesterday was yet another grad at my school (we have one every 2 months). This one was cool, kind of because it's the first class that i've been with since they started.... they started right after i started, so i feel kind of sad to see them gho. OK, i always feel kind of sad to see classes go. Juts when i get to know some of the students and find out how cool they really are, that's when they graduate. It's a vicious cycle, since i get classes with them in the beginning of the year, and then i see those narroweed down into my department (editing) closer to the middle, and then i get to meet some people i haven't dealt with much right in the last month.... so it's sad :( the boys all seem to flirt with me more near the end of their year, which is nice, teehee, even though my bf works in the basement... i like innocent flirtation that means nothing but a bit of fun. after all, what the fun in being a teacher if you don't get boys flirting with you ;)

well, i didn't go to their after party, i maybe should have, but i was dead tired. passed out shortly after 11. that's tired. there was no way i was travelling across the city to go to a beach party. nope. then again, i never go to their parties. i never feel like i know them well enough, or at least, i feel kind of strange in that initial transition from teacher-type to fellow party-goer. it's too weird for me. i'm the type of person that needs to have clearly defined lines and boundaries.... i like to keep personal and professional separate, and i have a really hard time just flipping the switch on the day that 'professional' ceases to be an option. maybe i'm just a tightass. well, that may be the case. all i know now is: my bf did go to the party, and it's 1:30 PM and he's still passed out on the couch. i managed to get him to say "morning" and to reply to my query of the party that it was "awesome" before he rolled over again burying his face in the couch. i think i shall bang some dishes about to wake him from his drunken slumber. :D perhaps make him a coffee to encourage him to wake up. because the fact of the matter is, i am rather bored. i've read a bunch of the new harry potter, and though it is enticing, i can't quite shake the feeling that i shoudl get off my lazy ass to do something. so perhaps i shall sew something. hooray! a task. a quest. or something like that. anyhoo. ta ta!

[Anita Blake]

CAUTION! DEPRESSING, BORING TRIVIAL CRAP AHEAD!! SKIP IT!!!

I am so frustrated and depressed.... part of it is my own fault, and the other part of it is the way i am being treated. A word to any wise canadians who happen to read this: In your financial dealings, avoid the Bank of Montreal like the plague. It's not that they mess you around financially, it's that when you make a mistake and perhaps an error in judgement, they treat you like a vagrant, and when you complain to the top, they don't seem to really give a damn.

I mean, i'm not in the best financial situation right now, and that is partly of my own doing, so the bank is understandably a little miffed at me. When i went in to try to clear things up and come to a resolution, i was treated so rudely, with such an amazing level of ignorance that I left in tears. My friend referred me to his bank, so i went to talk to them.... they could't do anything for me, but i was treated with so much more respect... certain things were explained to me clearly, my options were made clear to me, but most importantly, i was given time and respect .... my bank literally told me there was "nothing" i could do.... and the situation is really not all that bad... they made it seem like i was the worst person in the world.... it's very frustrating and demoralizing to be treated that way.... even when i made a 2 page letter of complaint.... the lady that called me tried to explain why i was treated to rudely ... that their agents "have high expectations of the customers" WTF?! I mean, i'm giving them money, you'd think they'd be a little more accomodating.... stupid banks.... thankfully i have it mostly worked out now.... the letter of complaint seems to have bought me some time and a little bit of leverage .. i mean, i'm not asking for a lot, just that they talk to me and are willing to make some kidn of negotiotation. *sigh*. I am moving all my banking to the bank i talked to today.... honestly, if anyone moves to canada or lives here, i fully advise you not to deal with the bank of montreal. for any reason. it's just not worth being treated like a scum bag.

the stress is killing me. i can't eat. i am finally starting to feel hungry. but i don't want to eat anything. my coworker feels the same way so i hope it's not some bug that's goign around the office.... but she is under considerable financial stress as well.... i hate that something as stupid as money can make people feel so ill. I want to buy a farm and live on a commune where i won't need moeny because i'll grow/raise everything i need. wouldn't that be nice? not to have to deal with a stupid bank?

on a side note, i saw a seagull wandering on the road. i thought it was cute until it got hit by a car and then run over by several passing vehicles. I know seagulls are supposd to be nuissance animals and such, but still.... i think they are kind of pretty, and with all the stress i was under, and plus i think i ate some bad shrimp last night, it made me feel really sick. poor poor seagull. i wanted to scream at the people who hit it.... i mean.... it wasn't like it was invisible... it was right there.... just because people were in a rush to get to wherever they were going and the light turned green.... i hope they have nightmares tonight, because they deserve it.

*sigh* well... this is probably very depressing. i think i shall make it all spoiler text. lol. except for the parts about avoiding the bank of montreal. :D well.... i do really feel much better after the meeting i had this morning... compare: my bank.... 10 minute meeting, left in tears in utter confusion.... other bank: hour and a half meeting, left smiling and clear on what i need to do, even though the result and advice was exactly the same.... i am so switching banks. who needs to deal with assholes? not me. :D

[Anita Blake]

So, last night i went to a concert, which is a rare enough event for me. Ironically, the band i saw was the same band i saw the last time i went to a concert - The Tea Party. For those not fortunate enough to know of the Tea PArty, they are a band form Canada, known for blending eastern instruments with western music. Detractors say they sound like a cross between Led Zeppellin and the Doors, and fans don't care. They apparently have a fairly large following in Australia, but haven't really "broken out" in the US, to my knowledge, though they've released 5 albums and even a "greatest hits" compliation cd.

The last time i saw them play, they were having a really neat 'concept' kind of concert, where they played with the Vancouver SYmphony Orchestra, had some dancers, circus performers, and a tabla ensemble (a kind of middle eastern drum) play with them. It was cool. Really cool.

Last night was their last concert before they go back to the studio to record their 6th album (7th if you count their acoustic EP), and as lead singer Jeff Martin promised, they played for a really long time. So long, in fact, that they had to have a 20 minute intermission part way through. The venue was a large club setting, with probably 500-1000 or so people there, so it was much more intimate than a stadium show, but still packed enough to create a jubilant energy.

They thankfully skipped most of their newer material from the last 2 albums and stuck mainly with their older material. Now, i've loved the Tea Party for a good many years, and i faithfully bought their last 2 albums, but was rather disapointed in their formulaic, commercial dominance. If you want to hear this band, and i suggest it highly, buy their first 3 albums.... Splendor Solis, Edges of Twilight, and Transmission. Excellent stuff. But i digress.

I had seen the Tea Party live 4 times prior to last night (not counting live appearances i've seen on TV), so i had a good idea what to expect, and i'll say that i've never been disapointed in one of their shows. But last night blew me out of the water. The energy was high, the mood was good, and the band was in top form . Watching these musicians.... and i do mean musicians, i was struck by how professional they were, and they struck me as being guys who excelled in their high school concert band, guys who learned musical theory and then applied it to all sorts of instruments. These guys know what they are doing. Drummer Jeff Burrows is a force to be reckoned with, pushing the other 2 members of the band forward, while Bassist/keyboardist Stuart Chatwood proves to the world that being the bass is a lot more than just keeping rhythm and backing up everyone else. Jeff Martin's voice is golden, finishing this trio off with an almost magical stage presence. These guys have been in the business of making music for over a decade, and their experience shows... they are masters of the stage, masters of their art.

After the show, they came back for an encore of one of their more popular songs with another canadian singer, Holly McNarland, though Martin seemed to have forgotten that he brought her onstage to sing, as he did nothing but flirt with her and sing louder than her :dozey: That's ok. no one knows who HOlly Mc Narland is anyway. We were waiting for the 2nd encore, which was nearly 5 minutes (or so it seemed) in the waiting.... cheering, stomping, screaming, begging for the tea party to come back, and finally they did, to perform another 3 or 4 songs, adding in their favorite stage trick of pausing a song in the middle "breakdown" section to do a cover of another song, or 2 or 3 before going back to the song they started. It's amazing. It's breathtaking. I've seen them do it so many times, and it's always a delight. The finale of Sister Awake ( a song worth downloading if only to get you to buy the album!) was amazing as always, it's the band's crown jewel, and they milk it for what it's worth.

NObody left that concert unamazed, everyone was pumped, thrilled, and delighted. Even my roommate, who's a hard man to please, left saying "it was the best concert he had seen in his life" (this after seeing REM and Radiohead back to back a week ago). So amazingly good. I ca't emphasize enough how much everyone shoudl seek out a Tea Party cd and give it a listen.... especially the ones i named earlier.

Overall, i had a fantastic night, with an amazing band i can't avoid seeing every time they come through town.

*sigh* :love: happiness and bliss.

[Anita Blake]

and then there was more about the concert. :)

you see, the thing that really gets me is this. i don't like people. i don't like meeting new people, i don't like being around people, really, and i really enjoy doing my own thing all by myself.

You'd think that this kind of logic would dictate a person who therefore would not be inclined to jostle her way up to the front of a concert pit, surrounded by sweaty strangers who stumble, fall, and jump on her. Well, you'd think that, but you'd be wrong.

I love to be in a mosh pit. I love the way it's suddenly ok for me to be in the middle of a sweaty, excited crowd. I love the way you can scream and shout and sing along, all with a single purpose.... the crowd gets it's own mentality, a single-mindedness that is nearly impossible to comprehend... but you are all there to worship, to gather and feel the wonder of the music as it washes over you, to share this holy experience. And the smell, the heat, the crush, the deafening explosion of the crowd jumping up and down, strangers touching and not minding, not caring, thinking of only one single thing, and that thing is to hear the music, to bear witness to it.

To me, it's the closest thing to a religious experience there is in this world. It makes me wonder how people can detest the rave scene in Matrix Reloaded.... when i see that scene, it makes me feel alive, it reminds me of being alive, it reminds me that all of humanity can be united in a single goal. To me, this is what a mosh pit, or any sweaty, sardine-packed crowd can be.

And when the crowd surges, and the jumping starts, and then the sweating begins in earnest, that's the one time you can be really and truly free.

This also goes back to my theory of psychic interference, that the thoughts of one person can kind of 'leak' when you are around another person, in a crowd, at a concert this is so amplified, since most people have one thing in mind already, it simply solidifies the mindset, makes the thousands into one ginat organism. it's a beautiful thing.

[Anita Blake]

ever look into your eyes in the mirror and try to realte what you see to what a person 300 years ago might have seen? 300 years ago a person looked into eyes just as real and solid and physical and complete as your own. Colours were just as rich 300 years ago, 1000 years ago 1000000 years ago. rain was just as wet, trees were just as green if not greener, and they didn't have film grain coating them making them solid. no. life was and always has been rather real.

i look into my eyes in the mirror and i see a thousand conversations that never happend, a thousand lives that never were, a thousand people who perhaps exist only within my very own head. such lives aren't any less real for being imagined. no. because when she says "my heart you have destroyed me" she means it and his reply cuts no less deeply for not being in this reality. some people know their lives to be false and i guess you could say i know my life to be false. an old soul i am, nearing the end of my time, some things like ambition matter little to me because i have been there before, i have know their bitter, tasteless fruit, so when i say i feel old i don't mean i feel like an old person. i am older than the oceans, old as the stars, old as time iteslef, and i have known this frail human life for what it is, so many times, so many years, so many lifetimes i have lived and you have no idea. you look into my eyes, and see a darkness and a willingness to believe, mistake it for naivety, mistake it for what you will, but know that you should never underestimate me, for i know you, i can read your soul to the very core and i can say the one thing that will hurt you for life perhaps, but i don't not because i don't know, but because i know that it would be better to leave you in your ignorance, better to leave you smiling than in tears. Oh i could cause you so much pain, but i don't and it's not because i can't, but because i'd rather see you smile. and you have no idea. you think me silly, you think me stupid, you'd think me anything but what i am, a child, rather than admit that i am older than the sand that gave your oldest ancestor life. and i don't mind. part of wisdom tells me that such things are not only to be expected but to be tolerated. so step on me.

i have known succes such as you will not find in this lifetime, i have known happiness beyond human understanding and if i can't particularly remember it, nontheless i have known it, experienced it, felt it in a life long since past. and human success? what is that? comapred to the success i know as a spirit as a mind as a being? my heart smiles and that is enough for my face. i want other s to smile as well, i don't want to hoarde this so-called "experience" for the part fo me that tells me that i have known such joys as cannot be comprehended by mortal minds tells me also that such joys are nothing if they are not shared. so share with me, and smile and be one with the world beyond these mortal shells we wear.

and yet how i relish the breaking of my heart, the tearing of my soul, the way the sun sets and leaves me in darkness eternal. strong though i once may have been, in this life i am fragile and new, and i want nothing more than someone to care for me, someone to take care of me, someone to love me as i know i have loved in days gone by. Time is a funny thing it weaves it dances it swirls, and never does the same moment come again so relish it as it sweeps past you, sweeps you up in it's arms and caresses you and listen to the music, feel it in your bones, for it will carry you through.

[Anita Blake]

the most bizarre thing just happened to me. I was walkign to work, and a few blocks away from home, i saw one of the teachers from my school, waved, kept going, whatever. And i started thinking, what if i ran into the student i am lusting after on the way to work and got to have a conversation with him? So i started imagining that whole scenario, hee hee hee. I get a few blocks away from work, thinking about all this, what am i to do about lusting after this student, and i look up and there he is in front of me, walking at the same pace as me (which is fast, BTW, there are few people that i can see in front of me when walking and not catch up to in a few steps). So i am wondering 'what do i do? do i say hi? ack!" and we caught up to eachother at the red light and he noticed me so i pretended that i hadn't been following him for the last block and talked to him teh rest of the way to the school.

ok, i guess that's not weird, since i do teach him and such, but it felt weird.

ah. this whole situation makes me feel terible. i mean, it doesn't go beyind the boundaries of my mind, i haven't done anything inapropriate, or said anything, my actions and words have remained fully and wholly pure and innocent, nothign out of the ordinary at all. and yet i feel like a bad person because i keep on thinking about doing something inapropriate... i feel like in my mind i've already cheated, and i havent', but i guess i feel bad because i'm not sure if i want to or not. i think i might want to but at the same time i know this is just a crazy infatuation and it means nothing, nothing could come of it but badness, and yet it's still so tempting, and yet.... arg. it's just frustrating to not know if you are feeling something for legitimate reasons or if it's just a by-product of something else, like hormones or stress or a conversation i've had or because my relationship with y bf is going nowhere so i'm just seeking out greener pastures. it's all so stupid and it makes me angry, especially because now i'm 2nd guessing myself and my motives. And feeling guilty for things i've only thought about. :mad: it's not fair. i really wish i didn't have this incredibly overactive sense of guilt.

[Anita Blake]

i don't know if it's the full moon or 9/11 or what's going on but everybody i know is drained, tired, and just ready to call it quits for the day today. i know i am. all this stuff going through my head.... i do not like it, sam i am.

i wish i didn't have to wait 2 hours to do the one thing i need to do at work today. because i want to go home. i haven't had a day off in nearly 2 weeks, since i worked all last weekend (for free, nonetheless, by choiuce, because some stuff "needed" to get done). then on monday, the people who made a big deal about this stuff getting done got mad that it was done. "NO!" they said "why did you do what we asked you to do?! when we said 'do' that, we meant don't do that!" arg. so morale is a little low this week in our department. and we're trying to make proposals to make our department better, more functional and such. So it's been a lot of work. and on top of all that, it kind of sucks that my personal life and my professional life are so closely tied together. Because in everything i am doing, there's this little thought floating in the back of my head, telling me to go flirt with my student, which is so patently ridiculous as to negate out of hand, but that doesn't stop the thought from sliding around the surface of my brain. Which makes me feel bad. And tired. So tired of all this silliness. I mean, grow up, me. This nonsense must be stopped. i wish i knew how to stop myself from thinking certain thoughts. certain very naughty thoughts. *sigh*

on top of that, it's raining. which is good, since it hasn't rained in well over a month adn there's forest fires and all , but well, it rained yesterday, and today it's not so much raining as it is just overcast and blah. and i know i should be grateful, and think of all the people who might not lose their homes because the rain will help with all the fires, and the fact that the reservoirs really really need this rain, but really, i enjoy the sun. I can't help it. I like it when it's blisteringly hot outside. *sigh* i think it's the full moon making me crazy. it must be. i insist that that is it. i will accept no other reason than the full moon. except for my change in diet (going from mostly pasta & rice to mostly veggies in the past couple weeks). or maybe the clouds. but that's it. no other reasons. ~nods~

~falls alseep~

~remains in a tortured mental state, even throughout sleeping~

[Anita Blake]

wow, i found out over the weekend that my grandma had West Nile Virus, but she's recovering now... thank god. it made me really sad to talk to my grandparents yesterday because i havent' talked to them in so long, and i really should call them more often. And visit them. They're so old and alone, they need some cheering up. they're always so happy when i call them, so that means i really should do it more often. *sigh*

so this week looks to be crazy. tomorrow my co-worker and I are scheduled to be on 3 separate floors of our building simultaneously, hurrah! and the guy we hired to come in when we are swamped... he works at another job on tuesdays. arg. anyhoo. not much going on in my brain rightnow. don't know why i'm writing this. just felt like i didn't post much on the weekend, so when i came back this morning i felt like i'd been away for a long time. craziness. madness even. completely deliriousness. or something like that anyway.

i really need to have 2 reflections threads, one for crap like this and one for the good stuff. :) but that's why i called this "random thoughts...." because that way you never really know waht you're going to get. like a stupid fucking box of chocolates, which i might add was the dumbes phrase ever, since with a box of chocolates, there is usually a map that tells you exactly what you're going to get. "mmm.... orange truffle, delicious, it's... the round one with a bump on top... ok... oh, there it is! excellent!" If you get a box of chocolates in which one chocolate is indecipherable from the next, you should throw it away. it's bad. trust me on this. i've had that box. i threw it away. it was honestly the worst chocolate i've ever eaten. and yet strangely addicitve. i'd eat one and go "eew! that doesn't taste good" and then look at the box, and think, "well, they can't ALL be that bad" and eat another one and go "ick! that wasn't delicious at all!!" and they'd sit there for a few days until i craved chocolate again, and i'd look around, and see the the box was still there, and look around some more, and peer into the box, smelling it's chocolately aroma, and think "maybe those were just flukes? certainly there must be at least ONE good chocolate in the box" and on that logic, try again, only to discover that i was drastically, horrifically wrong. It wasn't that they were gross flavours, it was that the chocolate was cheap, had gone bad or something, and it was jsut not not not right.

So again, i issue my warning: if you think life is like a box of chocolates, you need to get a new box of chocolates. One wiht a diagram and a list telling you what's in that box. trust me. truer words have never been spoken. ~nods sagely~

[Anita Blake]

so some randomness. too tired for anything more than random. brain on freeze. i love my cat. i really do. he's beautiful. probably one of the most beautiful people i know. maybe 'cause he's a cat, and cats are inherantly more beautiful than people. who knows.

been listening to the new A Perfect Cirle album prety much nonstop for about 3 hours now. not because i love it particularly, but because i have it in winamp and haven't gotten around to putting anything else in too. it's a good cd though, don't get me wrong. if it wasn't, iw oudln't have listened to it for 3 hours. repeat. repeat. repeat. lather rinse repeat.

which reminds me. i lost my earring in the shower this morning, which was a catalyst even for a chain reaction of chaos. see, cause then i had to look for another earring, which i begin to think may be fictional and never have existed in the first place. well, that's not true. i know i used to have a spare earring. i don't know where it went. anyway, searching for another earring sent me into a spiral of crashing boxes and shattering glass picture frames. which led to fuzzy-thinking of using the vaccuum, into which a sock got stuck and the damn thing nearly caught on fire (the vaccum, not the sock, the sock is fine and says hello, thank you very much). then i went to work. well, that was fun. actually, it was exhausting. stupid people asking me questions, and no i shouldn't complain about that since my job is to answer questions, but right now my job is to do pretty much a lot of things, so answering questions occasionally annoys me, when the questions i answer are things i have gone over in class previously. :dozey: honestly, i don't know why some people can't accept that when the sheet says 22 frames between an effect and a straight cut, there's a reason for it and whining to me won't change it, i have nothing to do with the lab. sigh.

fortunately, when i came home to clean up the glass i only nicked myself just the once, and it was oh so tiny. blood is kinda neat though. i probably should have just sucked my finger instead of washing all that blood away, but well, i wasn't sure if the grain of glass was still in my finger and wasn't too keen on cutting myself more, despite how much i think blood is cool.

so i have some lyrics. they're from a perfect sircel,. and teh song is just far too delightfully creepy. i love it:


pet - a perfect circle

don't fret precious i'm here
step away from the window
go back to sleep

lay your head down child i won't let the boogey man come
count the bodies like sheep
to the rhythm of the war drums
pay no mind to the rabble pay no mind to the rabble
head down go to sleep
to the rhythm of the war drums

pay no mind whatever voices say
they don't care about you
like i do

safe from pain and truth and choice
and other poison devils
see they don't give a fuck about you
like i do

just stay with me
safe and ignorant
go back to sleep
go back to sleep

lay your head down child
i won't let the boogeyman come
count the bodies like sheep
to the rhythm of the war drums
pay no mind to the rabble pay no mind to the rabble
head down go to sleep
to the rhythm of the war drums

i'll be the one to protect you from
your enemies and all your demons
i'll be the one to protect you from
a will to survive and a voice of reason
i'll be the one to protect you from
your enemies and your choices son
one and the same i must isolate you
isolate and save you from yourself

swing to the rhythm of the new world order and
count bodies like sheep
to the rhythm of the war drums
the boogey men are comin
the boogey men are coming
keep your head down
go to sleep
to the rhythm of the war drums

stay with me
safe and ignorant
jsut stay with me
hold you and protect you from
the other ones
the evil ones
to love you son
go back to sleep

go back to sleep

go back to sleep

go back to sleep



and i think that's about all for now. i just typed that while listening to the song, so now i'm even more tired. go back to sleep, i guess. :)

[Anita Blake]

yeah, sure i'm confused, and i might never know what i want. but oh how i wish.

[Anita Blake]

does it make me bad
to feel the way i do
does it make me wrong
to want ...

if i don't say it out loud
does it go away
if i keep it inside
does it make it alright?

this pain my own
this torment
self-devised

there is nothing
i tell myself
convinced
i listen, move on
move on, move on
until ...

is it imagined,
that look?
was it real,
that nuance?
reciprocation so desired
so forbidden
not permitted

this is not allowed
bound by myself
bound by circumstance
some things must not be
some things cannot be
childish dreams must be left behind

a confidante is needed
only my words to resolve
the torment inside
but no way to know
if i am bad
for my thoughts.

[Anita Blake]

and it's funny because we can wish all we want to be different, to be less intelligent, less observant, it's so much easier to wish to be less than we are, but it's just as impossible. it's still just an idle stupid wish. we are what we are, there's no changing that, well, amybe there is but the thing is, if you could, would you? it's hard to be intelligent in this day and age, hard to be a keen observer in a world of the blind, expecting others to observe things as well as you, you might as well expect a dog to meow.

[Anita Blake]

ha ha ha. my littlest sister got mad at me yesterday because i never email her. i guess i am a bad sister. But at the same time, i am unsure of what to talk about with her. SHe's like, 9 i think (maybe 8) so i don't really want to write to her about smoking weed and getting drunk. It seems somewhat inappropriate. *sigh* So i want to write her a story, a cool story, that's just for her, but i do't know what to write. I started writing something last night, but it's not really what i intended for my sister. It's about Persphone ruling Hades. It's got 'explicit' content, so i'm guessing that my littlest sister may note appreciate that.

i want to write a fairy tale. But then i don't know where to start. YOu see, when i was young and reading fairy tales, i always tried to put them into the perspective of reality..... ie, did Cinderella really live happily ever after, or did she and Prince Charming fight about things, get mad at eachother, make up? Maybe that's why i'm so strange. but no matter, i just have to look past my tendency to make fairy tales "real" and write something nice for my sister. But that's another thing. Nice. I'm not so good at writing about nice. I have a dark streak about a mile wide, and in a way i'd kind of like to expose my sister to something my mother wouldn't enjoy (my mom hates stories about magic, for example, she's such a muggle). I kind of want to write her a story about a witch (good witch) who uses her magic to save somebody, maybe a prince. But that does seem kind of like something i've read before. I don't want to plaguarize my sister's story. Oh sigh. i shoudl just write something. But now i'm really kind of into this persephone story, adn i have to finish writing that before i forget it. I'm terrible for that. Starting a story and being totally absorbed in it, and then not being able to finih writing it in one sitting and so forgetting about it bit by bit. Until it never gets done. I've been trying to rewrite an old story of mine for like 5 years now. It's terrible. Well, the story is oK, my friend loved it, coulnd't get enough of it, but then i found that when i was rewriting it, all the things that were good about it started going away, and i was just writing more and more crap. It's terrible. I need to learn some discipline i guess. Just sit down and write. ANd if it's bad, then just keep going and fix it in the 2nd draft. I can't help that i've always hated 2nd drafts though. The idea that i finished something only to ocompletely re-do it seems strange. And that once i redo it, it still won't be polished enough.

Must...learn....to...write....2nd...drafts.....

ok, well, if i'm supposed to be that, i guess that means i shoudl be finsihing my story in the first place. I hate it when i start writing somethign and only have a vague idea of where it will end, and by the time it's close for me to start getting near the end, i've totally forgotten where the story was going. arg. anyhooo... i'm going to do that now. bye bye.

[Anita Blake]

so, some things are getting pretty ridiculous. like a lot of things really. but mostly the one thing. you know how it is. when things, get, ridiculous. indeed.

so, i come to wonder if i am "sensitive" as the PC term for it is these days, or if i just see what i want to see, feel what i want to feel. I can read people pretty well i think, but can i really? can anyone really read other people? i mean, sure it seems to me like a certain degree of attraction comes from a certain person to another certain person, but am i really reading that or is that just what i want to see? But then i have always been rather intuitive, but i can't say that following my intuition has ... well, actually yes it has done me some godo int he past, but my intuition isn't always right, and that forces me to conclude that if you can't trust your own intuition, what exactly can you trust? Your brain? logic? well, logic only works as far as towards how you experience something, and so if you can't trust that intuitive experience, how can you expect to make logical sense out of it. i guess tha two really do work together. you can't have logic without intuition, but going by intuition alone can be dangerous.

and so i come to the point where, in utter confusion, and chaos to be sure, i can no longer trust/understand/comprehend anything that i am thinking about. SOme of this is just too strange. I mean. fuck. FUUUUCCKKKK!!! frustrating too, if you hadn't noticed. thought i'd be over this by now, but apparently i'm not. the strange thing, is he seems to be everywhere but my dreams. i'm looking to my dreams for guidance, but this time, they're not coming the way i expect them to. but they have been intense. and i'm not sure what to think of that. i feel like i'm caught in a feedback loop, like i'm reliving my own past in a different way. like i can't change myself even, though i guess that's what i want to do, or else perhaps i am rejecting the changes i am feeling. see, i just really can't be sure. because i don't trust my thoughts. i control them too well to be trusted. When we control our minds too well, it's hard to let them wander and see what happens. maybe i should meditate. somethign must be done.

i feel a change growing, but i fear it will take months for this change to come to fruition.

vague much? sometimes it's better that way. indeed.

indeed.

/end confusing ramble

[Anita Blake]

again. tooo weird. ran into him walking to school. he joked that he was stalking me. then at lunhc, i called him and some of his friends stalkers, laughing, and walked away. they followed me, and i didn't figure out until i crossed the road that he was like, 2 inches behind me. so we had lunch, 3 of us, and i somehow found an excuse to hug him.

this is ridiculous.

this is something i should not do.

but i think i'm doing it anyway.

and i don't know how to stop. flirting. with. him.

[Anita Blake]

hmmm. such a weird day yesterday was. after all of the above, i was walking home, thinking about this whole "stalking me" joke, and i hear this jingling behind me, and i look at the reflection in the building i'm walkign by, and there he is, playing with me again. So i went out for drinks with him and another fellow. We had a lot of fun actually, at least i did. We dranks, and went over to one guy's house and watched some TV and went out again and drank some more. And when i got home, my bf wasn't there. he didn't come home till 4:30. i only slept for 2 hours and woke up around 3-is, and couldn't get back to sleep. Which sucks, because i have to be at work at 8 today.

*sigh* i can't figure out what i'm doing. i like this guy, but i mean, he's 5 years younger than me, not that that really matters, i guess. He is nice though. And cute. *sigh* whatever. it's nothing, i guess. i can't be anything. so it won't be. But i can hang out with people and have fun, which i haven't done for such a long time. so, despite the fact that i have had no sleep, i'm really glad i went out with them yesterday. :)

i just wish i did't feel ike saying "good night" and going to bed. because now it's jsut about time to get up and get ready for work. *sigh* *sigh* *double sigh*

[Anita Blake]

well, on friday night i ended up alone in the dark smoking weed in a gazebo with my crush. that was...weird. i don't know what to do now. i'd love to hold off on further flirtation until closer to his grad, in 3 months, but i don't know if that's even possible. also, i think i want to end my 2 year relationship with my bf, not becasue of this, but because it's just time for us to break it off amicably and be friends before we grow to hate eachother. so, wow, is my head ever a mess these days. it's kinda hard to believe it. i wish i knew what i was doing. but i think i have it worked out. now, if only i can force the world to work according to my whims, everything will be Alright. excerrent. *sigh*

trying to figure out how to bring all this up with my bf is kinda difficult. i still love him, but i know that our time together is coming to a close, or at least it should be. it's a feeling, and i know that if i want to remain friends with him, it has to be soon. i seem to be getting a lot of intuitive feelings about thisi situation these days, a lot of gut feelings that i just know i need to follow. I know if i do what my intuition is telling me to do, everything will be fine, and that i will be on the proper course for my life. like my life is hitting a Y in the road, and i need to veer off in one direction. It's just this intensely strong feeling i get whenever i think about this, so i guess i have to go with my gut on this. It won't be easy, but i think it's right. Not that i have to do it today, but soon, in the next month. One of the things i know. hmmm.

[Anita Blake]

god, battling this sick feeling that i somehow screwed it up with the guy. i couldn't read him this morning. not surprising, considering my own ambiguity on the situation, but i don't like not being able to read people. if only i knew whether or not i had any chance if i were to continue flirting, or if it is a lost cause. it's especially hard since i don't want anything to happen for 3 more months. this is too confusing. must go home and think less on this. been thinking too much on it as it is. that never helps.

*runs away, traipsing through the flowers*

[Anita Blake]

thought less about it. and by that i mean i thought some more about it. trying to look at my life from an objective standpoint. it's more difficult than you might think. try to watch yourself from out of your body one day, while still remaining normally functioning. good luck.

i could have eaten lunch with my crush today, but that was not to be. :( i don't know what it is about this guy that is drawing me to him so strongly. I mean, he's very attractive, but i have resisted much more attractive men before. He's not really the type i usually go for, all hip-hop-listening and such. i hate hip hop. and he wears tommy. i HATE people who wear tommy hilfiger. it drives me up the wall. i was actually telling him and another guy one day about how much i hate tommy, and the other guy started laughing, and of course, my crush was wearing a tommy shirt and i had failed to notice. :rolleyes: but whatever. he needs to know that i am not impressed by brand-names.

I know what i need to do, but it's difficult, and i want more time, but i think that my time may be running out. I'm not much of one for rush decisions, but this isn't really a rush decision, it's been in my head for a while now as something i need to do, but i just need to figure out a way how. i suspect this may be otherwise known as procrastination, but i'm not really sure. ;)

*sigh* i shoudl go home now. actually, going somewhere not home would be better. maybe i'll dye my hair black. that'll make me feel better. :D

[Anita Blake]

whoa. stop the presses. i've been trying to figure out where thsi obsession with my student came from, adn i was reading back in the orgy at wotism where i posted about a dream about him causing me to lust for him.

which is so weird, because i've been waiting to have a dream to warn me away from him, but instead, i was doing the opposite. my mind works in strange ways. i believe in destiny, and i think there is somethign to this. or else i am crazy. well, ok, actually, i think i know what this is all about, it's about getting me to end my relationship and move on to other things in my life, adn i doubt that the student guy has anythign really to do with my deep future, but still, it is very odd. very very odd. like, getting a sign odd.

or is it just a coicedence? but isn't much of coicedence actually a "sign" that we are waiting for that we refuse to acknowledge? it's really disturbing me how much of my brain's processing power this is taking up. i mean, really. it's ridiculous. apparently i don't have anything more important in my life.

This situations feels so surreal and unreal and soap-opera-like. I feel like my life has been taken ahold of and someone else is moving me into place for the next part of the script. exactly like i'm living in a movie, or a play, or maybe a sitcom, but definitely some kind of scripted life. of course i beleive in destiny when i've felt that way my whole life! I've led such a charmed life, it's amazing sometimes. it feels like that. i mean, i've undergone my share of heartache and badness, but really, not that bad, and it always led to something better. So i'm not afraid of the bad things that may happen in mylife, because ultimately they are for the best. I feel liek i'm being put in line for one hard thing to do before i get some benefits from it. It's kind of creepy, the way it feels like i just have to do one thing in order to completely change my life.

arraaagh. i know i sound like a total flake, but believe me. I know what i know. i can't believe that people don't beleive in destiny and fate and psychic powers. i mean, to me it's just so obvious, being "intuitive". i mean, i'm not saying i'm psychic or anything, i'm not. but i am intuitive sometimes, and i am just learning that maybe i shoudl trust that a little more often. listen to my body. trust the observations my body is making even when i'm not paying attention enough for it to send me signals. that's all being psychic is. just opening yourself up to your own senses. you experience millions of things every day, but only focus on a limited few of those things, so it only makes sense that if you were able to understand some of the finer points your senses pick up on, and take it into consideratoin, you'd be a very good observer and learn to funstion intuitively. it's not about the mind, it's about the body and the mind together.

and all these things are telling me one thing. no wonder people think i'm crazy.

[Anita Blake]

madness. total madness. my life is spinning around and i do't know what the hell i'm doing anymore. i'm flirting with this guy, i want him, i don't want him, i want different/more friends, i want to break up with my bf, i don't want to break up, arg, how the hell am i supposed to keep up with the changing whims of my mind? i figure i'll take no action until my period is over, because that has far too much effect on the way i think and act and feel. not that i think my cycle necessarily makes me want the wrong things, just that i need to know if it's a spoke in my menstrual cycle or if i am really going through all these changes. i suspect i am. but i need to know before i start changing other people's lives. *sigh*

in other news, i am supposed to go have dinner with my neighbors tonight. joy. i fucking HATE meeting people. they are older than me, like, parent age, and i feel really uncomfortable when i first meet people who are old enough to be my parent's friends. Like, what do you say? i have no idea. i'm so awkward socially as it is, i mean i get by, but i hate talking to people i don't know. i know, i know, if you don't talk to people you don't know, then how do you get to know anybody? i need to have a legitimate reason to get to know someone. proof that we have something in common other than living in the same building. ack.

it's very interesting outside. i live in a highrise by the bay, and it's rather foggy out, so i can't even see out my window. it's quite curious. usually we have quite a divine view, but today it is nothing but fog. i suspect it wil be much like this all winter. *sigh* it's kinda nifty though.

*sigh* i guess i better get changed for my stupid dinner thing. fuck. fuckfuckfuck. fuck.

[Anita Blake]

so tired. supposed to be at a going away party for a friend, but i fell asleep anc can barely summon the energy to sit up straight, let alone drink lots and smoke even more weed. it's been a weedy week for me. *shakes fist at vancouver*

ahh.

it's been foggy for the past 3 days, crazy foggy, very cool and atmospheric. last night was neat, i was wandering down the street with a couple fellows i know, and it was highly amusing. one of them thought that the lights on a hotel was the moon and some crazy stars, "teardrops from the moon" even though i said "no, it's this hotel" he wasn't listening and then on the way back, we saw the buildign again, but the fog was a little less, so he could tell it was a building and he was totally blown away by the fact that that crazy light was not in fact the moon's teardrops :rolleyes: . Oh, the funny people i know. had a good laugh at that though. teehee.

what a crazy life.

*falls over from being tired*

i think i'm fighting a cold. it's the only reason i can think of for the crazy level of tiredness i am feeling. *sigh*

*passes out*

[Anita Blake]

here' is my corset-style sirt i made. :D

[Anita Blake]

good god. my life is going insane. *sigh*

so, i have to break up with my bf. there's just no way around that. everything he does just makes me uptight these days. adn then there's my massive obsession with another even younger man. *sigh* and the fact that he keeps calling me and wanting me to hang out. And i go. Well, tonight i declined, but that's mostly because i feel like hell. so tired. i think i'll go to sleep now.

and yet i don't understand this strange obsession of mine. he's so not my type, he's nothing like the kind of guy i usually look for, he's, well, pretty, and has a very masculine build, where i generally tend to go for more feminine men, with long features. He's very compact and he's young, he's a total litle dipshit sometimes, but i think i kind of like that. then again, i don't know what i like anymore. it's like the world suddenly went kinda crazy. it's funny, because i remember my frist impression of this guy, since he's a student and all, and i thought he was an annoying arrogant jerk, and after having to got to know him better, i think i was kinda right, but he's got more to him too. crap. i don't know. but *sigh*.... the thing is, i invited him and a bunch of students to come over for thanksgiving dinner on sunday, and in a way i wish i hadn't invited him, because (and this is stupid), he knows i have a boyfriend, and he knows who my boyfriend is, but he's never really seen me with my boyfriend, and since i plan on breaking up wiht him in the near future, i don't really want him to. what a mess. i've always had this problem with men, it's the only reason i'm pretty sure i'm not a lesbian. :D i fall for men much too easily. lol. and too hard :dozey: . I wish i had any clue of what i expected. my own mind is a hazy mystery to me.

[Anita Blake]

well, thanksgiving dinner was a smash! none of the students i invited showed up, which was kinda of for the best, even though we had waaaaayyyy too much food, heh, tons of leftovers, it's great! Mostly my cowrokers showed up, so it was really good, we ended up playing asshole for lie, 3 hours, it was good, heh, i say that because i kept on winning, which i never do when i play card games. :D My crush didn't come, which was also to the best, i don't know what i would have done, it would have been total and utter chaos. so, yay thanksgiving! of course, now i don't know whether to chide him for not coming or just shut up about it and never mention it again. :rolleyes: ahhh life.


~runs away to eat turkey~

mmm.... turkey.....


side note: i'd just like to mention that we just got Simpsons Hit and Run, the new simpsons video game, and it's funny, and my roommate helped make it. :D teehee. i like the simpsons.

~turkey beckons seductively, must answer call of turkey!!~

[Anita Blake]

It's easy to sit still and concentrate hard and imagine the end of the world.

It's easy to desire it.

It's easy, and it's even a little thrilling because the end of the world is the ultimate unknown. Not just death, but the death of all we know.

We mean a lot fo things when we say "the end of the world". Sometimes we mean the literal ending of the planet we call earth. Sometimes we mean the destruction of all civilization. SOmetimes it's the death of every man woman and child.

But for the sake of argument, let's discuss the destruction of civilization, a very likely thing to happen in the next hundered years. We set ourselves up for it, call it the end of an Age, call it the end of an Era, call it the end of the world as we know it. Is there anything more alluring and exciting and breathtaking than this event? To know that a few will survive, that humanity will be greatly diminished, but not ended. To know that all we know and cherish will disappear and fade to dust. Who will survive and what stories will they tell?

Imagine for a moment all that buildings you see before you overrun with weeds, how long will it take for the earth to take back Her own? How long before humanity forgets about cities? Forgets about anything? And this time, right now, becomes a myth, a legend, when people could talk to anyone around the world instantly, the age of communication. How long until technology is lost?

What a prize then would a pregnant woman be? A symbol of hope. A symbol of rebirth. Would we worship her then, any woman able to continue the species? Forget about paternity and move along to an age of women controlling everything, using men as concubines merely to breed?

The end of the world isn't an end, really, it's a beginning. It's a rebirth. Shudder to think of it. Death, we can cope with, but change? Never. Lose all we have, to gain who knows what? The time draws near, you can hear it in every note of every song, in the way the wind sighs softly at us, warning, warning, always going unheeded. Will i be here when the end comes? Will it be cataclysmic? or years in the making? Who will i be then? What will i become? Will I have the strength to carry on and do what's needed, or will I be one of those who dies in the whirlpool of change? Will i be old and useless, or will it happen when I am still young and able-bodied?

The old will give way to the new, and everything will be changed.

[Anita Blake]

and at once, a look into his eyes and i was afraid i would lose myself, my breath catching, and my mind temporarily blanking. a later look in the mirror showed me that my eyes are nothing in comparison to the deep dark depths i saw there in his. Eyes a woman could drown herself in. The finest details of his face popped out at me, and i found myself unworthy. Can this be? I never thought myself one to fear losing myself in something as petty and small as a man. But fear i might. Even as i fight , i feel the slightest fear that i may be wrong in thinking i have the upper hand.

[Anita Blake]

Wow, i just witnessed the coolest thing.

As is my hobby of late, I sat in my living room in the dark, stretching. I leave the lights off because i live in a high rise, and have large windows that look out into another high rise. Often i can see residents in their homes, so i turn my lights out that they can not see me as i stretch and look out on the ocean.

Out, over the bay, a large block of white cloud approached, lit by the twin lights of the moon and the city lights. The cloud appeared a large square, and it was moving towards the city, like a giant blanket to cover the city in it's snowy purity.

The cloud moved quickly, and i was enthralled to watch it come slowly, inexorably ltowards the city. The cloud was white at it's nearst corner, but the far end of the cloud looked dark and menacing. As it approached, it's shape began to stretch out and elongate, growing longer to cover more of the city in it's dark web, oh so slowly, but fast enough for these human eyes to watch in fascination with a slow dread building through my limbs.

Closer yet it came, and the ends began to curl out in short, stubby fingers. It began to resemble a freakishly deformed hand, greedy, grabbing for as much of the city as it could take, straining just to touch it. I began to make out fanciful shapes in the cloud, puppet faces, sensual lips, bats, cats, birds, mutant babies, oh so many visions! The fingers began to give way to more shapes, more dark images of dread and fear. The closer it came, the more fingers it grew, on each finger grew grotesque and bizarre images.

As the front of the cloud moved past me, i was forced to behold the dark, yawning mass that came before me now. The end of the cloud seemed little nearer than it had when i had first seen the cloud. Shapes were harder to make out here, larger and more abstract, as if reality had but a tenuous grasp on this part of the cloud.

A gaping hole opened, appearing like a gash that had been cut into the dark grey mass, revealing a deep dark sapphire blue sky, and one twinkling star. The layers of water vapour in the cloud became perceptible, if not visible, the shape of the electricity holding the water vapour together. No mysticism here, no vague images of awe-inspiring doom, merely a feeling of awe at the natural order of the unverse, that water vapour can be held in the sky, loosely bound together, torn apart by the winds that created them. Forces of nature in their purest scientific form.

A thought flickered in my mind... "the images are but a fancy, and only a fool would take them to have any meaning." Very nearly I agreed, only to be caught offguard by another thought.

"but could not the science of nature force such shapes out as a symptom or precursor to a greater natural phenomenon, and we have merely assigned our images to match these warnings?"

A third thought attempted to sum up for me, "Why can't both things be true? Is it impossible for two differing ideas to concurrently be true?"

The revelation that there is more than one right way was hardly new, but it seemed to hit home in a way that was very real to me. The notion that what we refer to as 'fantasy', or superstition, might not be any less true than 'reality' or 'science'. Different, yes, but no less true.

The cloud continued it slow enveloping of the city, as if it were drawn to the vibrancy and electricity of the city itself. It seems doubtful that few other than i sat and saw the cloud that ate us alive.

[Anita Blake]

well, i had a weird dream the other night, well, that's kind of redundant, because all my dreams are pretty weird. But this one rated fairly high on the weirdosity meter, so i though i'd write it down so i didn't forget.

So, i was in a castle, and someone related to me was the queen. I think it was my cousin, but i'm not sure. Anyhoo, i was second or third in line for the throne, and basically i was under house arrest. I couldn't leave the castle "for my own protesction", but i knew that my aunt was secretly plotting to get rid of me. (this makes no sense, BTW, since my aunt is a really nice lady and i love her dearly). My cousin was there, adn she juts got a bunch of new kittens. They were all living in the fridge. I went to get some milk and i opened the fridge and about a dozen cats greeted me, some were newborn, they looked more like newborn hamsters than kitties, but whatever. Some were medium kitties, and some were biiger, and some were full grown cats. I was a little concerned about them all being in the fridge, but my cousin told me that was where it was best for them to be. ~shrug~ who am i to argue, i'm under house arrest, even if that's not what it's called.

They called in a bodyguard for me, a very unenthused Keanu Reeves, whose name was Acorn, which was a little confusing, because i knew he was keanu reeves, actor, star of the matrix and other films. But there he was, being a bodyguard for little old me. Coolness. I left my room and then one of my windows exploded, which was pretty scary, luckily no one was hurt, but then Acorn decided tht he actually would have to work at protecting me. The queen shut us up in a room together and we started talking, and stuff, and i think there was some romance involved, lol, but he decided he would protect me with his life, since that was his job and all. He also agreed to help me escape the castle, since i told him that the best way to protect my life would be to get me away from my crazy family who was plotting to kill me. I had no designs on the throne, they were just paranoid, and i really kinda wanted to do some other stuff, beyond sitting in my room talking to Acorn the bodyguard.

Anyway, i think i woke up shortly after that, but the thing with the cats in the fridge was really bizarre.

~wanders off to work~

[Anita Blake]

make me real. make me feel. make me be anything but this empty hollow shell. make me love. make me hate. make me passionate and beautiful beyond all human comprehension. make me yours. make me free. make me want to love you for eternity. make me see. make me blind. make me the poorest and most humble empress in the universe. worship me. care for me. let me care for you. control me. hurt me. heal me. design me so that my life is an extension of yours. design me so that your life is an extension of mine. understand me. love me. haunt me and tell me how i haunt you. be me. let me be you. talk to me. listen to me. tell me what to say. say what i tell you to. turn me to dust. shower in my cool rain. kiss me. kill me. whatever you do, let it be because of me. be controlled by me. center your life around me. tell me my love is not the most imoprtant thing, it is the only thing. lie to me. whisper secret truths in my sleeping ear. let your heart pound for me. desire me. loathe me.

whatever you do, don't let go of me, and don't let this moment ever end.

[Anita Blake]

blah blah blah. most of the things you can say have already been said. I mean, think about it, is there any one word that you can say today that has not been said before? Not likely. All we do is string these individual words together into cohesive sentences that represent ideas that have been thoguth before. Do you honestly think that the deep, meaningful thoguhts you think have not already been thoguht by someone else at some point in history. Consider: 6 billion people alive today, how may billions have lived throughout the course of history? Lots of billions. How many billions of macdonald's hamburgers alone? the very thought is revolting. back to what i was saying.

you've never had an original thought in your life.

oh, sure, they are original to you, and it's not like you copy your thoughts from other people, but the fact of the matter is, someone else has had your thoughts and ideas already. Or even simultaneously. that's the way the world works. we are all interconnected, one being, really, and in the end, we all have the same ideas.

what does this have to do with anything? nothing at all.

[Anita Blake]

it's a funny thing sometimes how little sense anything makes. i mean, i have no idea what i'm talking about. i'm just incredibly bored and rather cranky, and thusly i write stuff in teh vague hopes of exercising my demons, waking up, and being happy. What kind of sense does that make? OK, well, mostly, i guess, i'm juts killing time, which brings me to ask the question, how does one kill time? Can time be killed? See above, re: all ideas have already been thought up.

i just finished reading Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. It's a very interesting, opinionated book. Much like the man. He is who he is, there's no doubt about it. He loves his country very much, that's why he wants it to not be run by a bunch of evil, money-grubbing freaks. It's a funny book, it really is, perhaps i should write a book review about it. i think i will. After all, i only have another hour and a half to kill before i can finish starting my work. fuck.

el fucko.

i was commenting to my friend this morning via e-mail, that due to the strange physics of "white people just aren't cool", everything is funny if you add a ", yo!" at the end of it. For example: "I sure would like to start editing this show, yo!" or "Man, i'm hungry, yo!" Don't ask. I observe strange things. bats flying in my belfry i guess. we're all a little mad sometimes. yes, i routinely steal lines from movies. or old proverbs. or sayings. i am filled with old, obscure sayings. Some people ask me "what does that mean" and i know what it means, and i even know it's an old sayig, but i am often shocked and somewhat appalled that people have no idea about these old sayings. Like "if wishes were horses then beggars woudl ride". I said that once. Someone looked at me really funny, confused, and asked me what it meant. I had to look at them funny, because, how could they not know? How could they have never heard that saying? Is this because my grandparents are prairie farmers? is this my prairie heritage coming out? or am i jsut a freak of nature?

personally, i lean towards the freak of nature idea, but don't we all? I mean, don't we all secretly wish that we were freaks of nature, completely separate and apart? I mean, certainly, i think we all feel that way. I mean, who really feels like they fit in? Is anyone actually comfortable in their own skin? I do not think so.

Well, now i have been reminded of some other stuff i wanted to write, so now i will go off to do that. write some other stuff. likely more mad, PMS-inspired raving. Lunatic that way, i am.

[Anita Blake]

i broek up with my boyfriend of two years last night. it hurts. it was my choice, and it hurts like helll. i love him. he loves me. in his way. he finally actually told me last night, for the first time, that he loves me. it kills me to hurt him, it kills me to know that i have hurt him so deeply, that i am changing his life. he will move on, and i hope he will heal, but right now, i just want to cry. so many reasons this had to be, but even so, it stings like hell. my eyes are burning from crying. i just want to be happy. i want him to be happy. i would love it if we could be happy together, but i don't think that's possible. there's a part ofme that wants to run home, hold him, and take it back, keep on going on as we were, just to get rid of this terrible pain, but the other, stronger part of me, knows that this is what must be, that this is the way it has to go. and that to run back to him would be the worst thing i could do. it would be a strange false-truth. i want it, but it's not really what i want. i want to be single. but it hurts knowing what i am giving up. and at the same time, knowing that i am giving up nothing, that i am only gaining myself back. i have been lost. and i need to find myself. it's so cliche and yet so horribly, terribly, sadly true: sometimes love isn't enough. i wish it was. i honestly do. when two people express their love in different ways, when one person's idea of love is totally different from the other's, what does that mean? incompatible? i've never known anyone so fully as i know him. I've never accepted anyone so completely in all their flaws, never been so accepted. but the truth is, he doesn't know me. he wants me, needs me maybe, but what he calls love is not what i call love.

even so, this hurts like hell. we live together, and work together, it's such a mess, such a stupid, terrible mess, and i just want to crawl under my blankets and cry. but i can't do that just yet.

this is an end. this is a beginning. this is a transition. god how it hurts.

[Anita Blake]

starting to get better. i avoided my home all day yesterday, but then i came home, and while things are a little strained, and a little tense, at least on the outside, he seems to be willing to give the appearance of being OK. We're getting along, it's juts a strained getting along. Which really, is probably about the best i could hope for, so i feel a lot better today. Also, getting a full nights sleep for the first time all week probably helped a lot.

and i do have to say i rather enjoy having the bed all to myself. none of this sleeping myself into the corner. :) ~sprawls over the bed greedily~

:) and on the plus side, a certain someone wants me to come out for drinks tonight for someone else's birthday. :D i still haven't told him about my newfound singleness. I think i want to revel in it for a while before attaching myself, however loosely, to someone else. All me, all the time. that's what i am looking forward to right now. yay.

but i am still kind of tired. :yawn: but feeling so much better.... yay!

[Anita Blake]

well, on the continual "breakup front" update, (lol) i am doing much much better. Things are going OK. I told my crush that i broke up, we went out for coffee, and he knew i was having a lousy week, he asked what was up, i told. Life at home is interesting. :rolleyes: My now-ex (that feels so weird to say still, though) and i are talking, hanging out, being really friendly. I mean, part of it is that i feel really bad, so i'm over-compensating by being super-nice. That might be a mistake, but, that's who i am. I gave him a pillow from the bed, and he seemed kinda surprised. I was like, :umm: i don't really need 3 pillows, and this will be much more comfy than the couch pillows. I think that made him smile. I really don't want to hurt him. But then i have this suspicion that things are going to happen soon with my crush, and i don't know how he will take it. that will be awkward. ~sigh~ but i also don't want to rush into anything with my crush, because i know that would be disastrous. He's really sweet. I do actually like him a lot. So strange.

anyway, i'm feelign really good right now, i'm getting less sleep, but waking up earlier and more alert. I think my new diet/lifestyle (eat more veggies, less pasta, and smaller portions, exeersise more) is really doing me a lot of good. I've noticeably lost quite a bit of weight, and i feel healthier and more energetic. It's really good. The funny thing is, i've lost all this weight, or maybe i've just toned a little, but anyway, my legs are smaller, and my tummy, but my stupid boobs won't shrink!! now, i know, i know, i shoudln't complain, but i only have one bra that fits, and i'd like to wear some of my old bras!!! Meh, i'm sure if i keep up the exercise, the shrinkage will follow. teehee. I never really thought i'd want my boobs to get smaller... lol.

anyway, that was probably in the realm of TMI for some people, so now i will run away and do some work. :D

[Anita Blake]

man, this just keeps getting harder and harder. i've realized that i still really like my now ex-bf, and i know he still really likes me, we've been getting along fine, and i realize that the reason taht i broke up with him wasn't necessarily him, it was just the relationship. It's so tempting when i look at him and see him being sad, it's so tempting to go to him and comfort him, and take him back, and tell him everything will be OK, but i just know that if i do that, it would be worse than tryign to get over it, get over him. it's terrible too this week, ebcause his friends came to visit from far away, and so all 3 of them are sleeping in the living room. i feel terrible about it, like it's all my fault. and then i was spending some time with my crush and i freaked out again, i mean, i just can not smoke weed with him and be alone, it makes me think really weird thoughts, and the tension between him and i is thick thick thick, it's almost unbearable to know that yes, i am free now, but i'm not really free, and the fact that i work with my ex-bf (god, it's so bizarre to call him that!) and people like him, and they like me, and he's probably not going to stay forever, but what would happen if i break up with him, and people find out about it (check, that's happened) but then a week later i take up with a student? I mean, i know it sounds terrible to say that it's more important what people think of me than my feelings (whatever they are) for this guy, but in a way, i think it is. I mean, if all of a sudden people i know and respect see me as this trampy vixen-whore who dumps her perfectly nice boyfriend and takes up with some cocky young guy who's about to graduate... i mean, that's not the kidn of person i am, that's not what it's all about, i mean, yeah, i've had this crush on the guy for a long time, but that's not why i broke up. honestly. but all of the other reasons why i broke up with him are deep-rooted, i mean, it took people really by surprise when they found out, so what does that mean? I mean, it doesn't mean that because people think we shoudl be together that i'm going to do that, but since nobody really understands why i broke up with him, they woudl understand even less when i start seeing someone else right away, especially a student. I mean, that's the kind of complication that would only be in a stupid stupid soap opera. my life is a soap opera. So for the past 2 days i've been more or less avoiding my crush, i've had to talk to him and stuff, but i've avoided being alone with him, because i'm really afraid of what might happen. but then i have to wonder, why am i so afraid? and then i hit my head on the desk because this is all so very very stupid. i mean, really. does it take a genius to see that quite clearly i shoudl avoid both men? no. no, i saw that months ago. i saw months ago that i should just break up, and not see the crush. but then somewhere along the line, my stupid half was like "noooO!!! cute!!! CUTE!!!!" and i was like "la la la la everything is fine", but everything is NOT fine, as a matter of fact, everything is rather fucked up. Because somewhere along the line, i know this, we've transcended the teacher-student relationship and actually become friends, the kind of friends you become when you are interested in eachother as members of the opposite sex. You know how some people say "yeah, guys and girls can be friends", well, that's kind of bullshit. I mean, you can, if one or the other of you have a significant other, but even then, it's kind of difficult. And when neither or you has a significant other, and both of you are attracted to one another, one thign is almost bound to lead to another.

my life is crazy. arg. this week, my head feels like mush. i just want to go to sleep and not think about any of this.

speaking of which, i had the wierdest dream last night about taking the skytrain (like a monorail kinda, in vancouver) and discovering that it stopped in Edmonton (which is a whole province away, probably about a 12 hour drive) in about 20 minutes, and i got to thinking about just taking the sky train to edmonton and then getting someone from calgary (3 hrs from edmonton) to pick me up for christmas. and then this guy started playing with my hair and hugging me, which was weird, but OK, he was getting off at the next stop anyway. actually, i think he was my crush. he didn't look like him, or act like him, but that's who i think it was.

ah. i have to go, my fingers are freakign freezing man!! it's so cold in my lab. not fair. good thing my students all left hours ago. 'cause now i can go home, and i even got some of my other work done. yay!

~dies from exhaustion~

[Anita Blake]

dead eyes looking out from in front of hyper-active thoughts, seeking release, seeking thorugh dead glazed eyes. and you know that you are alive becasue you breathe and you walk and you think you feel, but sometimes it's hard to really know what you feel and what you just want to feel.

it's difficult to walk down the street and wonder what people see when they see you. DO they see you soft and fresh and beautiful, are they blind to the razor wire rippling beneath your skin, scouring you from the inside out, the wire-brush that is your soul? Or do they see that too, and shrink and hide, sad and afraid of you who cannot control your beast, you who will never know the laws of humanity, not really, not truly. Do they see you and pass you by, scenting your strangeness?

So many times, i am not what people think i am. my thoughts and ations surprise those who don't know me, those who think me to be soft and weak and pretty, delicate. But i have never been delicate. Delicate like steel, delicate like razor-sharp diamond gritted sand-paper.

and sometimes i come to the realizion of self-hatred. one c an never be what one wants to be, and one can never be anything but what one is. not even change can change that fact. there is a sorrow within us all, but most of us push it aside most of the time. and then some the times that the sorrow rips through this tender flesh cage.

our emotions in so many ways are so much greater than ourselves. we can be lost in our emotions, we can be dissolved in the flood of outburst.

the scary thing is not knowing whether the things trying to escape is really you, or what your better sense has locked up for good reason.

we are all monsters on the inside. the only difference between me and you is that i know my beast.

[Anita Blake]

spiralling and sinking and twisting and turning, the dreams that haunt my soul are dark and deep. She seeks her freedom from the gilded cage i have put her in, she pecks at my fingers when i come too close, sometimes she draws blood, lapping it up like some monstrous vulture. Oh how she relishes my pain, it makes her strong, her wings can spread, strong, she can feel the bone beneath the muscle, like soft steel surrounding a titanium core. what kind of cage could withstand that torrent of hatred and desire, passion and love.

she will destroy me. she whispers so softly, singing her intentions to me, and in retaliation, in fear, i have thrown away the key. She shrinks back, titanium bones turning to hollow plastic straw, steely muscles turn to jelly, and she hides in a dark corner of her gilded cage, waiting, waiting, and as she shrinks, so too do i grow stronger, so strong i can forget her cage altogether, her voice grows weak and soft and i don't hear her whispered hatred.

she is mine, and i am hers, entwined together for eternity, one being, two halves, two sides, forever opposite, forever against one another, never to be fully joined, never to be set free from eachother.

and which of is is the monster, which of us is the cruel, heartless one? The one who declares her hatred openly, the one who revels in her darkness, who wants to destroy the other, or the one who locks the other up and starves her slowly? i make her weak, i destroy her as surely as she would destroy me, and once i could almost shed a tear for her demise, but now, she is rarely in my thoughts. My beast, my monster, my self.

Have you ever watched yourself die, watched yourself twist the knife in deeper, watch yourself slump down to the ground in shock and despair, knowing that you are weaker than you ever knew, only to rise up feeling strong again. Death is never final, for she is a pheonix, rising from her ashes whenever i suceed in finally destroying her, rising from her ashes strong and powerful and ripe for revenge.

Ours is a cycle birthed in pain and misery, inner torment and overwhelming grief for our own loss. we are what we are, animals and monsters, creatures of darkness and purest light. we seek balance, but sometimes overcompensate, and instead of perfect balance, we find ourselves jumping from one extreme to the next, hiding in the deepest shadows, basking in the purest light.

stroke my beast, soothe her, for she wants out. i want out.

[Anita Blake]

i feel like it is good for me to suffer emotionally. does that seem odd? when i suffer, i feel pain, when i feel pain, i feel alive, when i feel alive, i want to write, when i write, it makes me feel good. Kind of a vicious cycle, really, can't write unless i feel terrible, can't feel terrible unless i don't write. ahh, the irony.

tool keeps me feeling ... the feeling that i need to start thinking and writing. brings out the inner poet, i guess you could say. it's not that i need to suffer, or hurt, just that that's the easiest way to achieve mindnight, a term i coined years ago when i misspelled midnight and realized that yes, mindnight was right after all. it's that time when your mind feels explosive with thought and energy and life, and words flow into it unbidden, when all things seem possible, and at that moment, and only at that moment, are you truly alive and at one with the world. It's about the farthest thing from zen that exists, but yet it's possibly the closest thing as well.

pain, hurt, these things can make mindnight come, just as easily as they can push it away. such a delicate balance. i think mindnight is brought on by the moon. she shines so beautifully, so delicate, touching me with her soft, cold light, illuminating that which was dark. the moon and i go way back. we have a long history together.

i can remember being young, very young, in my early teens, and walking to take my bus to school in the cold winter mornings, and seeing her there, shining at me, watching the stars as they watched me back, feeling the cold wind on my neck, twinning through my hair and holding my head up, up to look at her, the moon, the light that guides through the dark. mischiveous and light, dark and mysterious, she induces so many feelings in me that i cannot begin to describe them all. I feel at one with the moon, as she moves through her cyclical life, so too do I. and we share eachother.

[Anita Blake]

feel like i'm crashing and burning. my desire to edit this piece of shit opera is fading fading gone. i ate pizza for lunch, which is always a mistake. ghetto pizza. $1 per slice. it's a curiosity, you can eat 2 pieces and feel totally full, and yet also feel so strangely hollow and empty at once. i thought i had sworn off the ghetto pizza, but not having $$$ for lunch makes us do things we normally wouldn't. so tired, just want to go home. can't, of course. for some reason i am staying here to watch a movie with my ex?bf and his friends. i put the question mark there because right now it seems like the whole "breaking up" thing didn't happen. it's kind of annoying. i just like to know where i stand with things. if it's over, it's over, there's no going back, at least that's the way i see it. but it feels like there's a certain amount of backdrift. joy. wait, by joy, i mean, man, am i ever tired. i should really stop posting all this crap in my reflections thread.

~runs away to the magical land of the monkeys wearing butler suits~

[Anita Blake]

something something, there's always something. no matter what you do, there's always something trying to prevent you from saying or doing as you please. the mind is not as all powerful as it should be, simply because we don not have proper control over the mind. difficult to know what these thoughts truly are, driven by so many layers and levels of motivation and need. but if one of those layers is true motivation, does that make the other layers less valid? less real. we can think we are purists, for one thing or another, never realizing that we are motivated as much by impurites as anyone else, just that our pure motives are the ones we associate most strongly with.

too tired to explain, really, too much to go through in that line of thought that i am just not prepared for right now. but at least i have recorded this much, in the hopes that i can remember more later, think more clearly later.

curious curious curious.

and all of this............___________....................
is my life

[Anita Blake]

ahh my ex-bf (still getting used to saying it) is gone for 4 days. his friend were here, and they all went to a mountain town for a few days. blessed peace. blessed quiet. thank goodness. i was even really lucky, they left at 5AM this morning, and cleaned up the kitchen and everything. so yay! no dishes to do!! hooray!!!

i dreamt about my crush last night. it was a very realistic dream. i kissed him, knowing that i should wait another month and a half to do it, but i did it anyway. It wasn't a good kiss. I think that was my mind telling me "WAIT!!" i kind of agree with my mind on this one. i want.... but i need to wait. too much badness could occur with not waiting. far too much badness. of course, it gets harder each day to keep flirting with him, but maintain the status quo. kind of like juggling a lot of flaming swords. scary.

i can only hope that someone else would read this and think to themselves: oooohhhh, that's why that girl who was flirting with me but never acting on her flirtations was doing that! i get it now!! it wasn't because she was frigid, it's because she was crazy!!! well, maybe not crazy, but definitely got a lot of stuff on the old noggin. trying to have my cake and eat it too, maybe. don't know. it'll probably all blow up in my face and end in tears, but i guess that's the chance i take. ~shrug~ i'm sure it'll be a fun ride though. it usually is when i start thinking like this. i mean, i know that something is wrong, but then i do it anyway just to see what will happen, even though i ahve already thought out several of the ways it could end. There is a blind spot in my reasoning, in my theoretical endings, though, and that is my ingrained pessimism about relationships and people in general. I can imagine several outcomes if i were to go up to my crush today and kiss him, let him know what's really been going on in my head, and sure, there are a couple of positive possible outcomes, but ultimately, i always believe it will end badly. It's a flaw. i know it, but i can't just so easily change my beliefs. We all believe what we all belive, and there is no escaping that. We might want to belive differently, but wanting isn't the same as believing, so that's that.

well, i hope this has been a fun and enlightening tour through my brain, thank you and good night. i'm sure i'll be back again today. there's never really any escaping that, either.

[Anita Blake]

i have felt this feeling before. i have felt like this before. it is a familiar, yet old and dusty, feeling. This lust makes me feel ... alive. there is no other word for it. keening, wailing desire rising up inside me, howling to be fed, screaming to be let out, and there is nothing to do for it but to bask in the glow of it's warmth and life.

and while my body wakes itself up from it's years-long slumber, my mind, too awakens, feeling dread and sorrow at it's long absence. At least, that is how it feels. As though my mind, my heart, my soul, is returning to me after a long vacation.

[Anita Blake]

edit: on a spree. off-loading the crap.

[Anita Blake]

perhaps we can only really love someone when they don't love us back. When they are not in a position to reveal their love for us. Same difference, really, because either way, you don't know they love you. It's much easier to love like that, from a distance, easier to give away your heart to someone who doesn't know they have it, to someone who can't knowingly crush it. easier to feel another's pain when they don't expect you to.


"will you be my,
be my beloved?
will you help,
help me to get through?
will you be my,
be my destruction?
will you help,
help me to be through?"
-AFI, Ever and A Day

[Anita Blake]

When he looks at me, it's like the world melts for just a split second, and we are the only two people there. So quick, so brief, but that flash sends heat echoing out, spiralling down throughout my body, throughout my mind, warmth that envelops and threatens to knock me senseless. And when he smiles ... it's hard to find the words to describe the light in his dark dark eyes.

To touch him, to discover anew his solidity, the realness of him, his absoulte warmth... and the warmth i cannot emphasize enough, for heat radiates off of him like a steam engine. So casually i thouch him, on the arm, on the back, but no matter how casual i try to be, my fingers betray me, lingering until the last possible moment, savouring that heat. Even now, i can still feel the heat of his cheek pressed against mine in a friendly embrace, an embrace just this side of too tight, a hair too long, a shade too familiar to be merely the hug of friendship.

This is new to me. And even I am surprised to hear myself say that. Always too fast or too slow, this seems to be just right... though i long to taste him, to possess his body with mine, i am almost content to wait for this tension to build up to the breaking point. I feel it nearing, i sense that to rush it would be disastrous, and so i walk away, wondering if he watches me walk, entranced by me as I am by him.

His embrace brings a rush of heat through all of me, comfortable and strangely unfamiliar warmth, like a sensation remembered, but too long since it has been felt.

Why him? a part of me questions, while yet another part smiles knowingly and says, You know why.

Time with him flows like water, time away spent wondering when he will be back again. But always this low, quiet fear: he could not possibly feel this way about me. He will destroy me again. But fear is no bar to my inner will, my inner desire, my inner knowledge: that no matter how many times i am destroyed, i will rise again, that all that matters is relishing this feeling while it lasts, and never, never forgetting it. Live without regrets. Live without fears. Live for this spreading warmth that moves through me like a coiled serpent.

[Anita Blake]

and fire and heat and flame. energy. the force that turns the universe. how much heat do we create?

love, emotion, is power, in a very real way, it fuels us, makes our heart rate increase, heats us up in a very real and physical way, and if heat is enegery, and energy is what makes the universe move, then you really could say that love makes the world go round. in a purely scientific way. well, of course, it would take a lot of love to actually turn the earth, but without love, we are cold, dead, without heat, without energy, and the world, the universe, cannot take that energy from us. We need it. The earth needs it. So go ahead, get angry, get furious, fall in love, feel lust, do whatever it takes to make yourself hot.

Perhaps one day we wil be able to harness the power of emotion, and where will we go then? What grand steps will our civilization make when love is power? For anger produces heat, but it's short-lived, it's quick and burns out too fast, but love.... the heat of love, the heat of lust ... it's a lasting and strong heat, strong power. Love will take us to the stars in an instant, love will allow us to travel the cosmos. Love will give us more than we could ever imagine, if only we give into it, and let it lead us where we need to go.

So now, all at once, remember the feel of someone you love, remember how warm it felt to hear their voice, you mother, your uncle, your lover, your child.... it's all love, it's all warm. If we all feel our love at the same time, the world will glow with the added radiant heat, and the scientists can research it with a smile in their heart, harness the power and make us Great.

[Anita Blake]

there is a price to be paid for everything in life. YOu cannot have hapiness without an equal amount of pain. Just when you think happiness is within your grasp, this is when you learn that while it is, it comes wrapped in a spiky, thorny, pain-box.

My life has gone in directions i wouldn't have thought possible. I have done things i would not have thought i would do. I have grown colder than I ever imagined possible, to spurn one man who loves me and turn to the arms of another. Now two men who want me equally are forced to share me.... the one who makes me happy must live with the knowledge that i share a residence and life with the other, and the one i left nehind must live with the knowledge that another now holds the keys to my heart. One has my heart, and the other shares my home. Not fair to either, not fair to me. I have never thought that I would cause so much pain in any one person, never dreamed that i could be the cause of the kind of pain i have felt before. I want to feel bad about it, I want to scoop up all that pain and make it better, but the fact is, i can't, because it was caused by me. And I am confronted by that pain, by that hurt, at the very moment that i have finally found a moment's peace and resolve, the the point where I thought myself ready to move on.

And the questions in my mind: do i deserve my share of this pain, or is it enough that i have already suffered and put that pain behind me? So i deserve my happiness, or does being the source of that hurt take away my right to happiness?

And in the midst of it all, the warm memory of his arms wrapped tightly around me, the recollection of his kisses. And fear, again, always the fear: what if i hurt this one as badly? Am i doomed to be the cause of men's suffering? My only capability to break a man's heart, make him wish for death? It's not fair, not to me. Is this all i have to offer: stabbing, searing pain? i wish i knew the answer. i fear i know that answer, and i fear that it is yes. i do not want this, i did not ask for this, all i ever wanted was happiness, for myself, for others, but now i fear that if i do not swallow someone else's misery, if i do not accept pain caused by someone else, i will be forced to inflict it on them. I just want to give joy, i want to be good, but i find myself invariably led to being the source of pain.

i want to believe that everything will be OK. i want to believe that the suffering is not inevitable. but what i want to believe and what i do believe are two separate things. i believe we have to pay the price for happiness, pay the price for joy, for bliss, and sometimes the bill comes due sooner than we'd hoped. And sometimes, the bill doesn't say what we think it would.

[Anita Blake]

deleted. hope no one minds or matters.

[Anita Blake]

click. click. click. silence.

no, scratch that. what i meant was:

click. click. click. __________.

Fill in the blank with whatever you'd like. I can think of lots of words to fit the spot quite nicely. empty. bang. sigh. But even though 'bang' is the word that repeats itself in my mind most often, i fear 'silence' was the most apt. You decide.

sweet nothing. so hard to find you these days, with life so filled of something. Hateful, spiteful something. When will it just leave me alone, to the sweet caress of my lover nothing's arms. Nothing loves me like no one else. Nothing is like Nothing.

the void that consumes me is not nearly great enough to engulf the something that filled me before. There was so much something before that there was barely any of me left. The nothing that fills me now is not nearly so encompassing. I wish it were. It would be nice to replace myself with nothing for a few hours, the way that i had replaced myself with too much something before.

the world is a strange place, and as i get older, it just gets stranger. i'd have thought it would be the other way around, but then i'd have been wrong.

everything is so much different every day. my view continually shifting, unable to sit and rest in one place for a brief period of time. It exhuasts me, fluttering about in my mind's eye, shifting, constantly moving. If only time could stand still for a few hours. Just stop. Stop and let us reflect for a nice, lengthy period of time before going back to live life again. a little bit of downtime, without the time. Anti-time. That's what we need to invent next. Anti-time. Why not? we've thought of anti-matter, so why not anti-time. not to go backwards, because that would be going through time, which would mean to go within time, but to just stop time, or to put you outside of it.

If anyone does seriously investigate this theory, could you send me some of the research grant money? it's only fair. i mean, i thought of it first. Well, i'm sure a million other stoners have thought the same thing, which leads me to the question... why don't scientists just get a bunch of pot-heads together and see what kind of stuff comes up in converstaion and then try to make it a reality. I mean, science is only limited by imagination, and i think there are some deeply underappreciated imaginations out there.

click.

change channel.

click.

no power.

click.

snapshot.

click.

boom.

Funny how things don't end out the way you planned when you started them. TYhis is true of most things in life. SOmething about our imaginations won't sync up with reality, i guess. Maybe we see far, but our hands move slow? Whatever it is, it's a tie between being not fair and really cool. i mean, collaboration between your heart and your head. kind of. ~~~~~zzzzzzttttt~~~~~ ~~~~~xxxttxzz~~~~ we interrupt this regularly scheduled program to inform you that you mind is frazzled. please take appropriate action, get some sleep. this is not a test. this is a real emergency. please stop fretting. stop everything. thank you, we now return to the program in progress ~~~~~~zzchct~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~kkckhchchzz~~~~~~~~~ Anyway, thanks for listening to me sum up the meaning of life in under 10 seconds, i hope you enjoyed it. ... wait..... we were on the air, right??? ... emerge... oh.... oh my. well..... that's....... to, uh, to ..... bad. hmm. ok then.

[Anita Blake]

it's amazing how much clarity you can recieve when you just step back and stop thinking for a while. i guess that's why it's best not to make decisions when you are too emotional. For example, yesterday, had i not been so zonked that i could no longer think, i might have made some rash decisions based on what other people thought and felt rather than what i thought and felt. but today, i feel a little bit safer from that particular fate. Maybe because i went home at 2:00 yesterday and fell firmly on my ass and stayed there until this morning. now things are mmuuuuuuuuuch better.

sleep is gold, children. gold.

[Anita Blake]

words words words. i know what shakespeare was talking about. all these words, just moving through you, and no choice but to put them all down on paper. well, at least shakespeare's muse spoke in iambic pentameter. my muse is rather... disjointed.

springs of chaose, wells of doubt, this world is meant for disappointment, joy is a beautiful thing to behold, but be wary for it has two sides, does our joy, 2 very beuatiful and strong sides, radiant light and pure lovliness on one side, but bittersweet stinging, burning tears on the other. and always do both her faces brush against you when you behold her. you can't escape one or the other... they are always there, touching, smiling at you, beckoning with wind through their long and terrible hair.

joy is a harpie. no other word. she is hungry, waiting to swallow you, consume you whole. She spins in a gay dance , spinning, spinning, twirling, hands flung out in extasy, fingernails like sharp talons that will scratch at your eyes with every spin., and you'll be happy all the while. and she? she will never care for your fate. that is for her cousins to deal with.

the fates, the fates, the fates. there is no satisfying them, not in this life, nor the next. In this life, they control you, watch you make your foolish and pitiful choices, watch you think your are superior, and then, at a time of their choosing, snip! your thread is cut and you'll never know why. No, the fates are not to be trusted. They spin and shear at their own whims. They cannot be bargained with, not for long. and their sense of humour is ... sometimes unkind.


i have seen their faces, these goddesses, they shoudl be worshipped as such, no wonder they are so unkind.

the muse has left me. she begins her tales so strangely and rarely stays to finish them. I wish i knew why. I wish she'd stay with me longer. I like the feel of her in my mind. like a gentle breeze telling me that everything will be alright, just sit back and let me drive. i feel safe with my muse. just know that, spirit that speaks to me so softly, always i have loved and adored you. always, i will welcome you to my mind. tell me what you'd ask of me, and i will give it. just give me all these beautiful words, stories. thank you.

[Anita Blake]

wishing, wishing, wishing. funny how one word can gain much more meaning when you repeat it 3 times. but that is neither here nor there. what i am wishing is that another voice would come into my head, one that says something i haven't already heard a thousand times before. the conundrum with that, being, of course, that if i hear it once, i will think about it from a thousand different angles, after which it will become part of the same old repertoire of things i have always known.

i wanted to talk about time. i did, i was thinking about time, thinking about how if you've thought about something once, you've thought about it a thousand times. That is because, little chickens, thought is infinite. Our minds are infinite. I mean, there is a phyisical boudary to where our brain ends, sure. We can see it. Our hair is the outer reach of our head, and our head is the border between our mind and reality. OK. Sure. But our minds, kidlets, our minds are infinite. Can you define the end of your mind? Of your soul? Is there a boundary between where you are and where you are not? If there is, it's because you are so afraid of the possibilities implied by "infinite" that you have severely limited yourself and placed border signs around your mind that say "THIS IS THE END!!! GO NO FURTHER!!!" and you, being an obedient little chicken, have refused to cross that road. why did this little chicken cross the road? quite simply, this little chicken didn't even see the road. this little chicken wasn't aware that there was a road, that there were suppsoed to be limitations on where nice, good, little chicken are allowed to go.

So, back to the whole thing with time. you've thought it once, you've thought it a thousand times, and that is merely because each "second" of "time" is infinite in and of itself, and in the infinity of our minds we've already stored away all the information from that second, cross-referenced it with the billion or so other seconds that we've experienced, analyzed the data, and put it aside for future reference and cross reference. it's just a shame that our bodies are so sluggish and slow. there's a lot of hard-wiring that each thought has to go through, filters of physicality. That's the limit of being human: having no limit in our minds, but being severely limited in our bodies. And sadly, our brains, the physical embodiment of our minds, are all too phyiscal. they slow down the infinitely fast responses of our minds.

we are gods. each and every one of us, but because we are so weak in our bodies, we try to forget that we are gods, it is too painful to be reminded of all that we have lost by entering this flesh. maybe that's why we enter the flesh, to experience things more slowly, to have a finitity, to feel complete. for though our minds can travel to wherever they'd please, there's a certain pleasure in feeling things against our bodies, air, earth, fire, water.

the elements. that brings me to another point.

everything can be pared down to those 5 most simple of elements: earth, fire, water, air, spirit. nothing is any more complex than that. that is all we have, all we are. look around yourself one day and see everything as it is: a combination of those elements. we are made predominantly of earth, water, and spirit. Some of us are more air, some more fire, but that's all we are. earth and water. spirit.

as a side, everyone should listen to the song lateralus, by tool. don't listen to it once. listen to it for a day. hear it. it's beautiful in lyric and music and feeling. i have nothing more to say here.

[Anita Blake]

just a note:

i find it patently absurd, obscene even, when people tell someone who is obviously in pain to "focus on the positive". This is somethign that is said a lot in our society: don't think about the negatives, ONLY think about the positives, and i find this grossly unhealthy and unrealistic.

pain is part of life, kidlets. there's no escaping that simple fact. and if you try to ignore it, or pretend it's not there, you're only going to suffer more, make yourself sick in the head. i say surrender to your pain, accept the negatives, don't dwell on them, but accept them, embrace the darkness. because only then will you truly come to appreciate the light.

[Anita Blake]

gently gently gently, but i simply don't know what. again with the triple words, again with the lack of meaning. it's what i do. not what i do best, i suppose, but what i do nonetheless. activity. something. substance. lack of emptiness. these are all things whihc call out to me. be busy, they say. be something more, they whisper, and just like the the voices disappear into some kind of gentle madness.

well then. i guess that's the end of that.

and no. there is no hidden meaning. there's barely even a visible meaning. just float in it and enjoy. or don't. it's really up to you. i can't control your reactions to these words, i can't even really control these words. they fight me, flow through me, and finally, demand that i sleep.

[Anita Blake]

i realised today that i am not afaid of dying, i'm afraid of not getting to live

- from James' reflections thread

this made me think of a line from The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right), by the Smashing PUmpkins:


"I've always been afraid to die, but i think i'm more afraid to live."

[Anita Blake]

more in the lyrics vein....

Gravity - A Perfect Circle


Lost again
Broken and weary
Unable to find my way
Tail in hand
Dizzy and clearly unable to
Just let this go

I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
Catch me
heal me
lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live

I fell again
Like a baby unable to stand on my own
Tail in hand
Dizzy and clearly unable to just this go
High and surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
Catch me
heal me
lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live, I choose to live, I choose to live

Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
Help me survive the bottom

Calm these hands before they
Snare another pill and
Drive another nail down another
Meaty hole please release me

I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
Catch me
heal me
lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live, I choose to live

[Anita Blake]

and through all the madness and chaos, i guess i can only say that i love it, i love the way every day brings me some new torment, some new cataclym, some new hardship, and though that may sound odd, i love the challenge. I enjoy it when life throws badness at me and i can wade through it all and go to sleep at the end of the day and say "ha! i beat you again life!". Sure sometimes the battle seems grim, and sometimes it seems i must surely lose, but ultimately, i win, until the day i die. And as i have not yet died, not really come close to dying because of the various and sundry hardships life tosses my way every now and then, then it would appear that I am the winner.

even when i tear off all my masks, this one thing remains true: i shall triumph. And by triumph, i mean live. ;)

I will not be shaken. I will not be swayed. Well, OK, I will, I will be shaken, probably really hard, and i will probably sway a great deal, but the point is, none of that will really ever make me lose the battle. I might fall, i might cry, i might be broken and torn like paper, crumbled like dust, but always, i will rise again, to face another day, knowing that i am stronger for all that has happened to me.

[Anita Blake]

random mini thought #63:

it's funny that it seems like men buy guns as an extension of their "manliness". I say funny becuse while guns are rather phallic in nature, what with the elongated shape, and the projectile expulsion and all, guns are designed only to kill, while penises are designed to give life. So, what's the deal with the guns? it makes no sense. You'd think that men would feel all their power being centered in giving life, not taking it, but it would appear that the reverse is true, while only women are left being all "ooh! i give life! I'm a life-giver! look at my womb! it's so wonderful and life-y". Yeah, well, penises give life too, and wombs don't mean shit without them, so women, get off your high womb-horse and stop bashing men and their penises. And men, stop playing with guns.

in summary: would everybody please get a life.

the end.

[Anita Blake]

So, OK, i'm thinking here. This is nothing new, I have the strangest tendency to think for pretty much all of my waking hours. I think most people do, and i feel sorry for those who don't.

Anyway, that's besdide the point, because while i could write for quite a while on the nature of thought and what it means to me, that's not what i was planning on doing. Stick with the plan, stick with the plan, stick with the plan and everything will be OK.

So, I know this guy. And he's a human being like the rest of us (except those freaky alien human-hybrids, they don't count). But he made me think, because he's very determined and focused. He either knows what he wants out of life, or else he puts on a damn good show of knowing what he wants from life. Either way, it's kind of irrelevant, because i wasn't going to talk about him. This whole thing was about me. I only mentioned him because it was while thinking about his focus and determination and his ability to get what he wants from life, and my knowing that he will achieve whatever he puts his mind to because that's just the way it has to be, that i started thinking: well, hmm, could not I, too, do whatever i put my mind to?

And the answer of course is yes, yes i do have the ability within me to focus on something and be determined and achive my goals and be strong and yadda yadda yadda. OK. So, why haven't I done that then, why am i floating around in the half-state of whatever it is i do in life?

Well, the answer, if i were to reach not-so-deep into my psyche, is pretty clear.


"if i knew where i was going, i would already be there"
-Smashing Pumpkins, The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)


Oh. Of course. Duh.

The thing is, i don't know what direction i'm facing, let alone where i'm trying to get to, so it's kind of hard to focus on getting there, or ask for directions, or study a road map, or whatever.

Well, OK. Uh. That's great. And this means.....


Well, here's the thing, see. I can say this, and i can act like my life is all without direction or purpose or what have you, but the thing is, if i were to think waaaaay back to being young, and then to actually try to remember the past 7 years, i've actually done quite a lot of the things i've wanted to do. I mean, as a child, i was kinda curious. I wanted to be a vet, and a writer, and an actress, and maybe a waitress, i mean, there are so many interesting things in this world, i have never been able to pick one and say "THAT! THAT is the MOST interesting thing in the world, and i want to do THAT forever!" So, i kinda picked a bunch of things. And you know, it's weird, because i just thought to list out all the things i've "been" in my life, and really, i feel kinda proud. I've done quite a lot with my life. I have:

-worked in an office building, as a lackey
-worked as a cashier in a retail store
-been an office manager
-been a paid actor
-been a newspaper columnist
-been a waitress/ restaurant manager
-wrote and edited a movie
-edited other people's movies
-been a film student
-been a teaching assistant
-next best thing to a housewife
-milked a goat
-travelled to a foreign country all alone
-bought and destroyed a car
-lived in a highrise apartment building


OK, i'm sure i could probably go one, but those are some of thie cool things that come to mind. Well, oK, maybe i just threw in the milkign a goat and wrecking a car thign for fun, but i did do them, and maybe i never exactly planned on wreckign my car, and it wasn't exactly my fault, but you know, that's one fo those things that you get to do in life.

So, in summation, i feel like i've had a very cool life, and perhaps i shoudl stop being all "oh, i don't really do anythign" because HELLO! obviously, i've done quite a bit, and maybe i should be a bit more proud of that.



Side note: lately i've been feeling rather... content. At peace. SOmething. And then today i wrote a bunch of emails to my loved ones who i am visiting soon, ending them all with an " i love you" kind of vibe, and then i go and write this..... now ... this kinda freaks me out, because if i were in a movie, or a book, this would be the time that some freak accident strikes me dead. People always seem to die right when they are happiest. so being toohappy freaks me out a lot. And people would go, "well, at least she got to tell people that she loved them." Freaky. This is the way i feel. Being at peace is freaky, because when you are at peace, it means that you're not fighting, and in life, if you're not fighting, or putting up a struggle, then you're probably dead. And i really really really don't want to be dead. I like life!! a lot!!! it's fun!! there are boys and cats, and music, and i like all of those things, and art, and books, and words.... so in summary.... i would like it very much if the powers that be could see how much i appreciate and love life and reward that by letting me be alive for a long, long time.

the end. :)

[Anita Blake]

ahhh. ready for some more? Good.

So, thinking again, and this time i was thinking about how wonderful it really is, how amazing and absolutely thrilling it is, to be able to listen to music whenever we want. It's something we take for granted, but it really is quite the amazing thing. I mean, think about the way life was even 100 years ago, but, hey, for fun, go back further, like 3 or 4 hundred years ago, and only the wealthy would have been able to hear well-composed music at their whim. maybe you could go to a pub or something and hear a simple folk musician, but orchestras and the like were probably not all that convienient and available for the average everyday shmoe. And probably you could not just go to work and listen to whatever songs you'd liek to hear, just because.

But we have that abillity now, and i think it's absolutely wonderful. It's great. It's fantastic. We shoudln not take it for granted, we shoudl really really be thankful about that. And other things too, like being able to read a book at any time of day or night, because not only are we literate, it's cheap and easy to have good reading light even in the darkest hour of the night.

In short:

Electricity: Wow. What a cool thing.

[Anita Blake]

and it occurs to me, that in this world of open rebellion and nurturing the underground artists and subcultures, that the only way to truly be a rebel is to be mainstream.

-me, right now.





All the people i know hate hollywood movies. or claim to. They watch independent, foreign movies, and laud them for their "differentness". And so i am a rebel: i like hollywood movies, and i will not apologize. I enjoy steven speilberg, i enjoy big-bang action movies, and i enjoy cheesy romantic comedies. this is my act of rebellion. i refuse to watch art-house movies. well, not refuse, but i won't enjoy them, dammit! And if i like to listen to mainstream music, that, too, is a choice i make, and who the FUCK are you to belittle that, you goddamn art-wanks.

(not directed at anyone in specific, just a general ol' rant)

[Anita Blake]

adrift on the orange, glowing sonic waves of symphonic madness, like a caress of the sunset clouds.

send me sleep send me warmth send me love, but mostly send me music to glow by.

[Anita Blake]

there's a strange power forged in the heart of nutmeg, heating, warming, numbing, all over deliciousness. Combine with the cold, soulless sound of techno-dance music, and you have the makings of a strange, imminent emotion. Longing? Regret? Wistfulness for days gone by? Perhaps it is the realization that while the nutmeg warms the soul, the music is the reflection of what was there before the nutmeg: cold, empty ... filled with delicious beats and sounds, but ultimately empty and hollow.

look in the mirror and see that there is no reflection. The ancients believed that a creature with no soul would have no relection, no shadow, that our shadows and reflections were proof positive of our souls. That we are creatures of God. Animals and critters of course, have shadows, and souls, because they too are creatures of God, while those strange creatures we dare not name by the light of the moon for fear that they will come to gobble us up.

powerful magic is wrought by spices and sounds. the veil can be peeked through with the right combinations, but never really lifted. Feel your mind expand and contract with the music, as your blood boils with the spices, and know strange things that never before have occured to you, feel that for all the foreign heat now coursing through your veins, their natural state is closer to ice than fire. Your natural state is closer to ice than to fire, no matter what astrology tells you. You crave the heat, long to borrow the heat of those near you, even pray that one day the heat of others will melt that hardest lump of ice that is your heart, and hope one day to warm others. It's futile to try to warm others when you are made of snow. First you must melt, and then be warmed, until you, too, are one of the hot ones, ready to share your heat and bring others like you to life as well.

bring on the flames.

[Anita Blake]

Oh, women. How we love to make wild claims that Womanhood (or Womynhood, if you are THAT much of a feminist, you fucking freaks) is some sort of higher state of evolution, that to menstruate is to know the very meaning of life.

Well, perhaps we're not that far off. For i am pondering today the quirks and qualms of menstruation. Allow me to put it prosaically, and then perhaps it will be deemed Important.

Once, a month, my uterus says hello. It seems to have been afraid that in the intervening 4 weeks, I have forgotten it's presence. So it says hello in the most spectaular way it can imagine, it decides to tear out it's inside lining, and expel it through various canals inside my body. In order to make sure i get the message loud and clear, it decides to do all this as painfully as possible. "HELLO!!!! I'M HERE!!! DON'T FORGET ABOUT ME!"

Don't worry, Uterus. I know you are there. There's a good reason I'm not using you. You're not forgotten, you've been set aside for that magical day when i lose my mind and decide that this planet needs another human being, and that I should be the one to bring such a new human into the world. Your continued and painful reminder of your existence does one thing: it serves to keep me abreast of the shadow of what birth pain must feel like, and to tell the truth, you are not inspiring me to want children at all. Could you please stop shouting at me? Thank you ever so much. Here, have some ibuprofen. And chocolate, you like chocolate, don't you?

We must do things to pacify and ease our uteruses. Uteri? Whatever. The point is, the uterus is a cruel and jealous body part. It demands quite a lot of attention, and it does so like a spoiled child used to getting what it wants.

How to describe menstrual pain to someone who has never put more than a passing thought towards the subject? Hmm. Well. Imagine the area between your hips. Now, concentrate hard, and feel the centre of your abdomen cramping up in horrible pain. It's dull and yet strangely sharp at the same time. The only thing you can think of is that everything in between your hips has got to go, it's just too full and needs to be emptied ... IMMEDIATELY. Intestines, reproductive organs, digestive organs, muscles, it's all on sale, clearance, all items MUST SELL! Except, well, they can't all go. There's a limit on how much the human body will allow to escape, and sadly, everything that you want to vanish, if it were to vanish, it would probably kill you.

So, meanwhile, there's this part of you, the very centre of your being, that feels like it is dying, pieces of dead flesh falling off and out of you. The only thing you can think of is that you need someone to punch you in the belly to shake it all loose and just end the death cycle. Or maybe long, raking fingers to reach up inside you and gut you like a pumpkin.

And through all this, of course, you are at work, or in public, and you are expected to behave like a normal human being, not someone who feels like they are dying from the inside out. Oh, sure, there's some comfort in the fact that the pain will go away soon enough, in a day or two or three, or in knowing that the pain comes and goes in waves, but that is little comfort. Knowing that this pain is only a shade of what is intended, that the pain of birth can only be multitudes worse than this, in some ways only makes it worse. There is no escape from it, even should you be lucky enough to administer ibuprofen before the pain makes you wish for death, the feeling still remains, the sensation of evacuation, the nauseating way your abdomen feels bloated and filled with poison, like there is simply too much water in the universe and it's all residing in your body with no way out.

In short, being a woman is about pain. Suffering through intolerable pain because there's no other choice, because it's either that or die.

[Anita Blake]

roar. dull rage. slight sadness. feeling hollow and empty and cruel and cold and heartless. is this... my fault? perhaps. perhaps. but surely the blame does not lie singly with me. surely not. no. no no.

so tired. so very tired. mentally exhausted and physically ready to sleep. such is life.

[Anita Blake]

back. been away for a while. feel like i'm being spied upong. it's curious. anyhoo. life is a mess. can't wait for christmas to come and take me away to my home home, and then i can just put all this behind me, or actually, ahead of me, since i'll have to come back to much the same. but the christmas break will be good.

note to others: do not follow in my footsteps. it's not a good path to follow. trust me on this. learn form my mistakes, little chickens. i greatly enjoy calling people littel chickens in a fond and gentle way. Not calling them "chickens" like "cowards", but "chickens" like "duckling" or "kiddie" or "little 'uns" You know. Don't know why. Just am that way. Weird, huh?

So, maybe i just need to go away and calm the fuck down. Well, ok, i'm pretty calm right now, but i need to be around other calm people. Well, ok, most of the people i am around are pretty calm, pretty cool, pretty collected, but it's one of those cases of the vocal minority giving everyone else a bad name.

sooo fucking tired. like, it's as though everything that is happening in my life is manifesting itself in myself being superbly exhausted. It's amazing. Crazily, stupidly, amazing. wow. well then. ok.

ok. back to work.

[Anita Blake]

he makes me feel so strange, you know, like, well, i don't know. but as though there's something i'm missing. Some basic human charicteristic that until now i've never really known existed. But i can't quite put my finger on what it is. I wish i knew how i made him feel, what attracts him to me. I wish i knew who i was, i guess. It's frightening to look at myself and realize, the only thing i've ever really been afraid of is myself. I've never been afraid of someone else's void consuming me, only afriad to look up and realize that the void isn't consuming me, that it is me.

Things are so confusing right now. I want so many things. I want one thing. I want clarity. indeed. i've stopped smoking so much weed, and instead of clarity, i've been given a fog, as though the haze i walked through before was the clearest reality that existed, and now, without the purple haze, all is murky and unclear. Who knows what that means. All i know is, i'm too poor to afford such herbal remedies to my life, and anyways, some of the side effects were starting to get to me, like over anaylzing people and becoming far too judgemental in my own mind. Too judgemental of myself, perhaps.

That's what it really means to be judgemental, in effect. You're never really judging other people, merely judging yourself by projecting your own misgivings and wrongdoings on those around you. Sometimes on those you care about most, because you want to belive that they are better than you, but then you only see yourself in them. Does that make sense?

The days have been going by rapidly, my sense of self has been shifting, and i've been too exhausted and saturated by other people to really calm down and evaluate. and i guess that's what this is, evaluation. Funny to think that people i know and care about have read this thread, and then looked at me in a different light,a s though they never realized that i was really real. Perhaps i projected that. Sometimes, i don't really feel real. I feel like some creature created by a lonely man to fulfil his fantasies. I'm not saying that i'm some sort of ideal dream woman, but sometimes i feel that way.... like an ideal that has no bearing on reality. I don't meet other people who are just like me. There are no other people just like me. I don't fit into any one particular stereotype or archtype, i'm like a bunch of ideals all blended into one, and maybe that's just because that's who i am, someone who sees an ideal and tries to become that. I am a mimic. I try to emulate that which i desire. And in turn, i become little more than a random mish-mash of false ideals and romantic hopes and dreams.

None of this is where i was going. But since i no longer remember where i was going, i have to just let that go. that happens a lot. tangents. part of me i guess.

so, i read these words, and i think "is this who i am?" Are these words the definition of my self? No, no they're not really. Just a part of me. one tiny little part of me.

and then i think: maybe i should just go get some sleep.

and that's what i'll do.

[Anita Blake]

ack, eek, eep and RRAAHHH.

flipping people. damn you all!!!! why don't you pay attention to what we teach!!?! why don't you learn stuff?!!!! ARG. so now, when i have about 5 billiong things to do, i need to reteach stuff that people sould have already learned, and it's annoying because i just know that either i will end up having to do the work for them, or they will just not get it and screw it all up and i will have to spend the next 4 months hearing about how messed up their movies are. :furious:

please kill me now. or better yet, give me somethign to drink. that's it, tonight i am baking special cookies. very special cookies. hehehe.

[Anita Blake]

so, every day walking to work is like descending just a little deeper into madness. the chaos of my life is unbelieaveble. OK, and sure, yeah, i guess i shoudln't complain, i made my bed and now i have to lie in it, but then it turns out that some other people went and laid razor wire in my bed while i was making it, and i am only just now rolling over and being cut up by it. And my, how does that suck?

so here i am, stuck, waiting, waiting for 3 more days until i can go home and just fucking forget all this shit, just put it aside and think about something else. I just need to be alone for a little while, and then i go home and get yelled at for the same thing i've been getting yelled at for the past month. it's so exhausting, mentally, emotionally, physically. Like, i can't have a moment of happiness, because the second i do, i go home and have it ripped away and made to look ugly and cheap. I have my words thrown back at me, the things i have written used against me, and i guess i have no defense. I have done what i have done, i have made the choices i have made, and if i can learn to live with that, why can't he? I get told i am the most important person in the world in the same breath that i am told that what i have done is evil.

Well, in my defense, all i can say is this: i am who i am, and i have done what i have done. i have made choices in my mind because of what i felt in my heart. I have done nothing lightly, and i know that it causes immeasurable pain to someone i once held dear, but i can't focus on that, because if i focus on that, i will lose myself again.

and if i could do it all again, the only thing i would change is what i have told him: if i could change things, i would have never have told him i was seeing someone else. i would have been more secretive and hidden.

i come off as the bad guy in this situation, and that is terrible, because in my heart, i feel that i have only done what i had to do. i have done nothing with spite, and i have done nothing out of malice. Mistakes, i have certainly made, but i resent having those mistakes continually thrown at me and i resent being told that i planned to make the mistakes i made, that i did them out of malice, and that i deliberately tried to hurt him.

i want so badly to move on, and yet i am being held, my wings pinned, my cage being soldered shut. let me out. let me be free. let me fly away.

let this week be over soon.

[Anita Blake]

blah blah etcetera blah. ok. so i was sitting there, reading james' last few reflections and being totally blown away with a resonance to what i have been feeling but not precisesly articulating in the same way. nifteroo. i was thinking that, yeah, people who read this probably know me more than people who know me intimately, but at the same, while some of my deepest and most innermost thoughts and the key to my deep, inner self, are here on display, when i walk around in the street and talk to people and hang out with my friends, my deepest innermost self is not who they know. i mean, sure they get glimpses, but our selves are only a part of ourselves.

and that's when i realized,

... the cookie ... has... hit ... me...

ahh, delicious eggnog-tasting cookies with magical powers to assist me in seeing the unseen.

well, so much for depth and wisdom, huh?

my ex-bf moved out. what do you know? kinda weird here without him. there's a big empty hole in the living room where the computer desk used to be. i'm pretty sure it was my desk. i mean, my old roommate left it behind, but i had always claimed it as mine, but he took it with him when he left. oh well. no big. i do have my own desk, but, uh, well... my roomate's using it right now in his room, so internet time is kind of painful as it consists of my laptop sitting on a kitchen chair andme sitting on a really low stool hunching over said laptop. stupid piece of crap. anyhoo.... well....

tomorrow i go back to work and back to the "real world". my holidays were great, i felt like i found a big piece of me that had been hiding in my mind. the prairie me. the country me, as opposed to this new, urban me. but in some crappy chick flick, this kind of revelation would have been followed by the need for me to make a choice. like, go back to my roots and realize that everything i'd done since was fake and i shoudl return to my roots because that's honest and true. But life's not like that, see, because what happens is, you go back to your roots, and go "man, i was so happy once, when this was me" nad maybe feel a little disapointed or morally uptight about your new life, but then you realize that there are things wrong with your "roots" too, and accept that while where you come from is an important part of who you are, it is just a part of who you are and will always be with you, and always has been. ad then continue with, not your "new" life, but with the liveyou've always been living.

'cause, see, we only live once. there is no 'old' life and no 'new' life, just one big long life with lots of stages of development.

anyhoo. so, that's what i got from my trip back home. a grand epiphany and the revelation that my life isn't fake and bad. it's good and fun and i enjoy it. :)

the end.

[Anita Blake]

well. there you have it. that time and space again where things seem to be. hmm. whodathunk it. well, i'm here, and i've made this tiny resolution, you see, this resolution to write something everyday. I mean, i know i write on the quill a lot, but it's not the same.... but it's a start. it's something. Now i seem to have all this time at home to myself, so i might as well use it productively. It's better, and cheaper, and less fattening, than cooking everything i have in my kitchen, which is what i'm more likely to do with my time if given free reign and unlimited ingredients. However, since i'm trying to control the limit i eat as a food-crazed north american, trying to become one of the minority in the healthy-weight division, here i sit, writing.

but damn, now i've gone and started this all wrong, becasue you see, i wanted to write a story, or somethign resembling a story, but here i have gone and written a journal entry enstead. well. dear diary: you suck. You just stole my ideas. the end.

ok, well, not really the end, though, since i'm quite obviously still here, writing. This wasn't exactly what i had in mind, so maybe i should just start all over again. Perhaps i will.l

But that brings me to a point, which is that some people i've talked to tell me how if they write something they hate they just delete it or throw it awway and move on. I don't know if that's a good thing to do or a bad thing to do. I certainly could not do it. I need to know that i can come back to it one day to be reminded of what i was thinking, what i was doing. you know. just because. i have a bad memory, and i need as many reminders of what i was thinking as possilble. so, with that in mind, i'm going to shut this off and do something else. i don't quite know what yet, because i haven't planned that far ahead, but it will be something. I'd like to think it will be somethign better than sitting on my couch wondering what to do now. i hate doing that. it's such a waste. unfortunately, i seem to do that a lot. so maybe i should just do somethign and worry about planning it all out later. i don't really believe in plans much. they never really do much for me. well. ok, off i go then. hoorah! watch me.

~runs away~

[Anita Blake]

well well well. we come again to this place, this convergence of mind and words and thoughts and time and space and something else that may or may not be spaghetti sauce. hmm. what do you know.

some things never change. some things change a great deal. some anxieties never leave you, even though you thought you grew up and out of that, all that really happened was that your circumstances changed and certain anxieties were removed from your life. Well, then circumstances change again, and you find that the same old anxieties plague you, that the same old insecurities never really went away, they just went on hiatus, and now they're back and ready to do the job. And the job they have to do? Make sure that you can't live without their nagging fears and doubts.

I swear, there is a part of my mind that I would love to tackle with a ninja sword and obliterate deftly. Because there is a part of my mind that is a terrible creeping force, it attacks in the most subtle and deadly ways, weakening me beyond belief. I want to be strong, I want to be carefree, but that ninja-mind, it tells me that what I think is carefree and strong is actually stupid and weak. It turns me against myself, you see, and that's one dragon I'd love to slay.

Anger and fear, so seductive with their song of "just being realistic, love". I don't like their reality, I really don't. Because in their reality, I am nothing to anyone, and never will be. Can that be so? Can that be true? And don't I give them power by even entertaining a question like that?

So funny, sometimes, some things, so cruelly, sadistically hilarious. Like a man dying of thirst in the middle of a freshwater lake, thinking it's the sea.

And through it all some kind of golden thread, so thin, so faint, nealy invisible, really, trying vainly to lead me through this minotaur's maze that I suspect is nothing more than my own mind.

[Anita Blake]

just relax. take a deep breath, sit back, and relax. let the wind caress your face the way it when you were a child, and just breathe.

just breathe.

you are stronger than you let yourself believe, and you are greater than anyone has ever let you know. fear nothing, and let the wind take you where it may.

this world is beyond your concerns, so let it drift free with your mind, let it float away, let it be gone from you.

just breathe.

just fucking breathe.

one breath after another, one ragged inhalation preceding the next, and then translate that oxygen into movement, step by step, and move, just move, keep walking away, just keep walking.

there is no end to this. there is no beginning. ourobouros, end and beginning the same, world without end, amen.

just breathe. exhale. inhale. this is breath. this is the beginning. this is the end. the is the everything, the eventuality, the inevitability, the clarity, the confusion, the indecision, the justice, the all.

just breathe, and don't think about anything i've said here. don't think.

just breathe.

[Anita Blake]

making resolutions and sticking to them is difficult, i've discovered, but it helps a lot when y ou don't subscribe to cable television. Having 5 seasons of Buffy on DVD does hinder the effort a little, though not as much as full cable.


so, i'm waiting. waiting waiting waiting. what am i waiting for? An acceptable time for me to leave work, that's what i'm waiting for. It's funny, if you put off lunch long enough, you stop being hungry. i haven't yet decided if that's a good thing. probably not but ~shrug~ .

So, i'm bored, and not really hungry, but hungry, and i need to get some loonies for laundry. i think i just like saying "loonies for laundry". It's fun. try it. Now, if you're not canadian, or familiar with canadian currency, you might think i am loony. But no, i insist. A loonie is a $1 coin. It's gold-ish. And it has a picture of a loon, which is a type of bird, on it. And the queen of england too, but we ignore that. Anyway, so we call the dollar the loonie, because of the loon on the coin. and we have no $1 bill anymore. Only the loonie. And my laundry machines only accept loonies and quarters, and thusly, i must get loonies for laundry. But it sounds kind of like some sort of marathon. Like i'll run around the city in a purple polka-dotted tutu getting pledges for the poor, laundry-deprived residents of Laundronia, gathering loonies for them so that they too can have clean clothes.

I like clean clothes. I find them so clean. And clothey. They cover my hideously malformed body and smell nice too. hoorah! hoorah for laundry! What kind of loser does their laundry on friday night? Me, that's what kind.

I am dying of boredom. dying i tell you. every day, i go home, and have nothing to do, no where to go. except laundry, of course. there's always sweet laundry. Laundry never lets me down. Laundry never says mean things to me and hits me (except sheets... those things can be rather nasty!). :umm: well, now i've gone and given the impression that i am beaten, and my only comfort in life is my laundry, which is only humorous because of it's complete fallacy. Actually, i guess it's not that humorous. But it is false. So don't get worried.

I think that the lack of food has made me loony. Loony for laundry, that is. ha ha. umm. ok. well, uh,

the end.

[Anita Blake]

I looked in the mirror this morning, and what i saw confirmed something i've been feeling over the past little while. It was surprising, but pleasantly so.

I've been losing weight for the last little while, and adjusting to various changes in my life, and though my life no longer resembles in any way the life i used to lead, i now look the way i did 3 years ago. Well, i look about 3 years older, but i look like me. I feel like me.

Comfort does not suit me well. I become a person i do not recognize when i am too comfortable. When i am bored, lonely, uncertain, then i feel like me. This solitude suits me. Feeling like i have to discover everything anew.

I feel like i've found myself. I feel like i know myself again, in that i still haven't the slightest clue about anything. ;) My world feels like it's falling into place, i'm falling into place, and while nothing is perfect or really the way it should be, that's exactly as it should be.

In short, i'm feeling pretty good right about now. I feel strong and confident, beautiful and free, powerful and with limitless possibilities. I hope i can hold onto this surety of self, this sensation of power and control over my life. I think that the key to that is being single. Or perhaps only loosely attached to someone.

That does sort of make me fear that I'll never again be able to be close to somene, ever able to marry or have a serious relationship, but, knowing myself the way I now do, I know that I'll manage to screw this up and fall for someone, sooner or later. :rolleyes: I crave attention and closeness like water. It's just not very good for me, that's all. It feeds another side of me, a different part of me who I haven't yet come to understand, i guess. All in good time. I'm feeling like i have the time to discover that person, but not until I'm completely finished discovering this me. the single me.

the isolated me.

:)

[Anita Blake]

Well, i have to say, i feel like about the luckiest person in the universe. I mean, not just winning a vacation, just... my whole life has been so incredibly blessed. I mean, i used to think i had a pretty rough life, but of course, that was when i was an angsty teen, and now, looking back at my life, at me, i am forced to conclude that there must be some huge karmic retribution coming my way, because, man, what a great life. I know it's going to have to be balanced out with something phenomenally bad. Well, no, there has been some pretty bad stuff in my life, but the point is, looking at the broad strokes of my life.... it's been great. I mean, i was born lucky.... got the good end of my family's genes - kinda pretty, nice teeth, missed the alcoholic gene (thank god!). And a lot of good things tend to happen to me. I'm pretty sure i don't deserve a lot of the good stuff that happens to me, so I am forced to call it luck. Like, when i was really broke, a savings bond matured at the same time, so i had money. And when i really wanted to get away from my life, i won a scholarship to go to film school. Every time life has looked really bad, something good has happened to make all the badness go away. And now i've won this vacation, which is super cool. So, in conclusion, my life is far better than i deserve, and i'm not complaining, just very, very grateful. I don't think i'll ever win the lottery, because it seems that life just sort of gets me what i need to move on to the next thing, and if i need a million dollars, chances are, i'll be given the means to make it.

So, this is the reason i trust in fate. Some would say they trust in god to give them what they need, but i say the universe, or fate. It's all the same anyway, in my mind. We all have our own definitions of god. It's funny, in some ways, i have some very Christian ideas about life, or at least ideas that i know i got from when i was a Christian, but without the dogma. I think i live like a good christian should, i just don't happen to particularly believe in jesus. Ironic, huh? I can imagine that someone will want to point out the intense fallacy of that, but i can't help it. I do think that. Except for the stuff about no sex before you're married. Hehe. Definitely not a believer in that one. :D ;)

anyhoo... that strayed afield of what i was trying to say, which is that man, do i ever love life. I can think of one person who would read that and go "great, she ruins my life and now she loves hers..." Well... i love my life, not necessarily everything i've done in it. And anyway, i think he might be better off without me.... maybe a bit less happy, but hopefully better off, more motivated to do the things that really matter, rather than just enjoying the radiance of my presence :umm: j/k . Anyhoo..... i hope this reflection makes at least one person (any of you, really!) take a look at their own lives and see the good. I can't honestly be the only person with a semi-charmed life. I'd feel really, really bad if i was, because i think everyone has reasons to be happy. Everyone should love their life.... if only because it's theirs . In summation: don't be haters! ;)

much :love: to all.

[Anita Blake]

ok, and welcome to today's episode of Random Thoughts On Oblivion & Other Such Cheery Topics. Today's topic is Soup, and Why it's Great.

Obviously, Soup is Great. What you may or may not know is that the reason soup is Great is because I, Anita Blake, like it. I like it quite a lot. I find it rather delicious and tasty, not to mention nutritious as well as easy to make. One of the Great things about soup is that it can have a little bit of everything. Say, for instance, you opened a can of chick peas, and a can of kidney beans to put in your garden salad. Well, let me tell you, 2 cans of various beans is quite a lot of beans to put in a garden salad. So you'd probably have a lot left over, unless you were some kind of kidney bean/chick pea-eating-Monster! What will you do with all those beans? I'll tell you what you could do - you could put them in a delicious, savory, nutritious soup!

Also, you could put beef in your soup. Beef is pretty tasty. But you say you're a vegetarian? Well, no problem.... you don't have to put beef in your soup! See how Great soup is already? So many possibilities! (But I like to put beef in my soup because I'm not a dirty, filthy, granola-eating, draft-dodging, drug-smoking hippie vegetarian - not that there's anything wrong with being a dirty, filthy, granola-eating, draft-dodging drug-smoking hippie vegetarian!) You can also put vegetables in your soup, because vegetables are Good For You. I like to put Onions, Carrots, and Celery in my soup. I'd put potatoes in my soup, but my dirty ex-hippie roommate is allergic to potatoes, so he has to spoil all my fun. But that's ok. I still like him and give him Delicious, Nutritious Soup!

After you have all the solid ingredients for your soup you need one more thing - Water! 75% of our bodies are made up of water, so it's obviously an essential part of our diet, and Soup is a Great way to consume water! Another good thing to put in your soup is canned broth (I use beef broth, see above paragraph concerning the omission of this vital ingredient.) Canned broth is good to use because it saves you a lot of trouble in the soup-making process, and most people will never know anyway, since most people are Rampant Idiots.

The very last thing you need to add to your Great, Nutritious, Delicious soup is herbs and spices. I like to use lots of Basil and Oregano, but some other great and unusual additions are Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Ginger, and Cloves. Also lots of salt and pepper (fresh ground pepper only ... you shouldn't buy ground pepper unless you are some kind of trashy poor person who doesn't care about the finer things in life ... and you're not one of those, are you?)

Once you let all these ingredients simmer together for an hour or so, you're ready to eat your Delicious, Great, Fantastic, Ultra-Super-Mega Soup! Careful, it's hot! Ha ha ha. Now, just because it's delicious is no reason to go all out and eat the whole pot - don't be greedy! Make sure to share it with all of your friends, even if they say they are allergic to some of the ingredients. They're just scared, because they know that once they eat this Soup, they'll never be able to go back to canned, cheap, disgsting icky soup. Some people fear change. The best thing to do is to tie them in a chair and force feed them, ignoring any pleas for help they might utter. It's for the best.

Well, that's it for today's show, Ta Ta everyone, and Good Souping!

[Anita Blake]

After a few years of careful observation, i have come to a conclusion on a matter of scientific interest. Here it is:

Many(not all) people who could be lumped into the category of "not underweight" seem to have a tendency to eat low-fat foods. Lo-Cal sweeteners. Margarine instead of butter. How often do you see "underweight" or "perfect weight" people eating artificially sweetened and/or de-fatted foods? not that terribly often. Therefore, my conclusion is that a dependancy on low-fat foods make you fat.

I honestly cannot imagine wy anyone in their right mind would think that eating some aspartame and hydrogenated vegetable oil loaded with artificial flavoring, or substituting their sour cream with Lo-Fat Sour Cream :rolleyes: will make them thin, sexy, and attractive to members of the opposite sex. Look: sugar isn't bad for you. Fat isn't bad for you. Just don't eat so damn much of it. You eat "reduced fat" foods and think "Whew! i'm safe from getting fat.... there's no fat in this food! I guess it'll be ok if i have another helping". NOOOOOOOO!!!!! Honestly, there's nothing wrong with having a little body fat, and there's nothing wrong with workign on your willpower. I know high-sugar and high-fat foods taste great, and when food tastes great, you want to eat more of it, but use your will power and tell yourself ... it will taste better if i know i can only have a little at a time. FOrbidden fruit, anyone?

Look. All i want to say is: so-called "diet" foods are destroying you, mentally and physically. You really are better off to gain a few extra ounces and eat some real food than to eat some crap that's been created not in a kitchen, but in some bizarrely sterile science lab.

So, next time you put sugar in your coffee, and reach for the sweetener think "what would i rather eat .... something that was created by some mad scientists, or something that grew in the ground and was processsed?" Yeah sure, aspartame has fewer calories, but it has a lot more carcinogens. more calories, or cancer? And for the record, butter is so far superior to margarine, in taste, texture, and i think it's way better for you. Hydrogenated vegetable oils? Artificial flavoring? COME ON!!!!!!!

Alright people, you hear me. Just eat food that tastes good, "good" meaning not like chemicals. ~nods firmly, steps off soapbox~

crap, i'm gonna be late for work.

[Anita Blake]

ahhh well. off i go to work. On saturday. and i get to go again tomorrow. The irony of this of course, is that i work all week. But i do leave early and book my time as if i had worked a full day, so i guess that doesn't really matter. It's kind of like make-up time. I don't mind that at all.

What i do kind of mind is that I've been given a fairly impossible task. Well, perhaps if i were motivated to complete said task, it would be slightly less impossible. But see.... it's fun when you're working for someone who has no clue of what your job entails, and says to you "well yes, i talked to our client and told them the project would be done by the end of the month. So all you have to do is all of the work to make that happen." Now, perhaps I should clarify a little. We're editing a video of a staged performance, and that's done. That's been done for over a month now. What's not done is a behind-the-scenes-featurette that we're putting on the dvd for god knows what reason. I mean, the performance we filmed was ... hmmm... how do i put this politely... fucking terrible. The writing was poor, the acting was sub-standard, the staging was simply frightful, the music was at times downright horrifying. There was no one redeeming feature to this whole damn thing. But whatever. I don't care. I had nothing to do with it other than editing the video of it. Now, i was promised a certain fee at the beginning of this, and at first, it seemed like a good fee. But as it's not been 3 months that i have been working on this stupid piece of crap, the fee that I was promised (which i don't get until delivery of the final product) is beginning to seem smaller and smaller and smaller. Fine, whatever. I need the money. So, we've known for a while that we were doing this additional interview thing, but no one gave me the tape for it. Well, we had a meeting a while ago, and i got 10 tapes. 10 freaking tapes. That's approximately 8-9 hours of footage. that i have to whittle down to being about 10 minutes. And i just got these tapes 3 days ago.

Some of you might not be familiar with the process of film/video editing, but basically, you have to watch all the footage, figure out what you want to use, try to put it all together into a coherent story, and then make sure that the sound is all OK. Generally, the first 2 steps are done by the director. Guess who's reviewed the footage? No one. Guess who has to pick what to use? Me. Oh, and i can't put it on the computer until i delete the actual performace, which i can't do until i've made a master copy of it all. Which I can't do until my producer gives me some important technical information. Which he sort of gave me in a half-assed kind of way. And i have to do this all in .... 12 days. Which, if I didn't have a full time job to do, wouldn't be so bad. But since i'm kind of doing this all in my off hours (at my work though) it's kinda difficult. And for what i'm getting paid.... basically... i'll have made probably much less than minimum wage for all the work that i've done. I'm kind of resentful because some of the other people on the project have made twice what I am making, and I have worked 4 times as hard as anyone else. And they've already been paid. I don't get paid until it's all done. And now this sort of ridiculous deadline has been placed on me, and i have no motivation to do this work. Arg. I know once i'm doing ti, i'll enjoy it again, because i love editing, i'm juts kind of choked at the lack of coordination and support i'm recieving from the other people, one of whom is my ex-bf, and whatever, he doesn't have much to do with it really. Actually, nobody really has much to do with it. There's a guy who's loosely the "producer/director" who sort of shows up once in a while and gushes about how great my work is and how hard i work and how he's going to try to get me more money, but he mostly leaves it all up to me. Which in a way is good, i guess, i like being in charge, but i'm going to ask him if i can get a co-director credit on the featurette because quite honestly, I feel like that's what i'm doing. I won't get any more cash for that, but whatever, at least i can put that on my resume and say "yeah, i've directed". Maybe I'm not really co-directing, but I'm definitely pushing the limits on the amount of creative control an editor should have. not that i don't want the creative control. I just want to have that control acknowledged.

Arg, anyway, that's what i have to do all for the next 2 weeks. Well, at least it will keep me busy. I just wish that it was a better project. :dozey: off i go. :cry:

[Anita Blake]

hehe, this is for those chatters who were thinking of me in a black leather military suit. :D ;)

this was my halloween costume - i went as the girl from underworld. sadly, it's a crap picture. sorry.

[Anita Blake]

know what would be neat? if all the people who spent small fortunes to go a private school decided to actually pay attention and/or show up to class, and make some sort of attempt to learn, even in the subjects they don't necessarliy enjoy as much as others. :rolleyes: :dozey:

[Anita Blake]

ahhhhhh. so hungry. dare not leave for lunch. if i leave for lunch, then that means i will have to come back. if i just work through, and get some solid stuff done, then i can leave at 3 and be justified and happy. then i can go home and eat at home (cheaper, much cheaper) and then i can clean, and reaarage my living room before my roommate somes home and leaves again, and i can enjoy a nice, fresh, clean, tidy apartment all evening to myself! this is what i want. but arg... finding my edit sooooo hard. stupid interview person. stupid footage. stupid everything. :cry: stupid hungry! ok, ok, actually, it's not that hard, and i know, actually, if i were to go out and buy lunch and come back, it would be much easier, but ~points to previous few statments~

~sigh~

ok, you convinced me. back to the slave wagon i go. :cry: someone eat a mars bar for me. ~light bulb pops up over head~ ooh!!! vending machine!!!! i can get a chocolate bar!!! brilliant! the best of all worlds... stay at work, eat enough to not pass out, AND go home early!!! i rule.

the end.

[Anita Blake]

wow, must post this for posterity: had good day. neat.

Ok, so it wasn't all good. It started off rather well with me waking up. And then proceeding onto shower, during which i decided that i wanted a coffee and must therefore do a wet-hair style (i.e. gathered up in a clip) because a dry-hair style (ie, blow-dry, brush, straighten) would take up precious coffee-making/drinking time. Well, ok, i have been known in the past to occasionally find time to both make coffee AND do my hair, today was not that day.

So, coffee was delightful, yay! I then progressed to work whereafter running into a co-worker on the way to work, i was inspired to nearly power-walk to school, just to see if i could beat her on the bus (i almost did, she was at the coffee shop near work when i walked past :D ) and then we had classes, which was less good, but ok, because i got to find out what happened when my friend went to Slamdance (film festival). And that was fun. Then we had a real class which was dull, because, i have to sit in this class every 2 months, for the past year now, and I KNOW IT ALL. which of course, is the point, since i'm there to help, but it's pretty psychotically stupid by now.

Then there was lunch, and I enjoyed that. Until i got back to the school to find out a class was lookign for me, 10 minutes before their deadline, and hadn't done anything. Idiots. That annoyed me, because that particular class is deeply DEEPLY stupid, and thusly annoying and like an automatic badge of failure, because no one can teach these people. :dozey: But after that, i went up to my lab, where none of my students really had many questions, and so i was left mainly to my own devices, which was to work on my own project (convinently located at the instructor station in my lab. :D )

And, to my great shock and surprise, i actually got quite a lot done, though most of it i guess was done yesterday, but even still, i was rather pleased with how much i got done, mainly because i sat there for 4 solid hours and worked on it. Well, OK, people came and talked to me and i stopped a lot too, but it just felt like i was working really hard, and i was really really content. In the Zone. it was great. I love it when i get to edit, and everything just falls into place, and i know what needs to be done and it's not all just trying to pull a miracle out of my ass. I mean, I felt like I knew what I was doing, knew my goals for the day and was able to accomplish many of them. It helped that I had already cut together my version of the interview making that lady say "I love her sweet sweet can"!! LMAO, i kept showing it to people and they were in hysterics. It's so fundamentally wrong that it defies you to not laugh. :D

Anyway, i felt pretty good coming home; i worked hard, and i worked well, and i deserved to come home. :)

[Anita Blake]

ok, so i've come to this conclusion. and it is this. and this is my conclusion:

i suck in the morning.

I mean, it's not that i don't feel good in the morning, 'cause usually i feel pretty alright, but i just can not think straight in the morning. Like, for example, this morning, i made myself some cappucino, mmm, and then i was cleaning off the little steam spouty thingy (which is metal, and through which boiling hot steam has just been spewed) and i grabbed it with my hand. My roommate was watching the whole thing. I was like "ow, that was hot." and he's like "uh yeah, steam was just coming out of there". So i said "Well, i didnn't really plan on putting my hand there" and then he tells me that he just watched me deliberately grab hold of it. :rolleyes: i blamed it on the fact that i hadn't yet had my coffee. need to jump-start my brain. lol.

i have a schedule in the morning, and woe to me and whoever messes it up if it gets messed up. i get very cranky if my morning is disturbed. like, if people try to talk to me. i don't like that. leave me the fuck alone. it's ok after i've had my shower and stuff, but i enjoy havign the mornign to myself. it's always been that way, 'cause when i was little my parents were always already at work when i had to get up and go to school. to try to alter that pattern now would be cataclysmic. CATACLYSMIC.

anyhoo. i feel pretty ok this morning. kinda not all here, but that's to be expected. the coffee hasn't ben entirely metabolised yet. and also, my friend is coming to visit me next week. YAY! she has a doctor's appointment, so she's coming up from seattle and staying at my place for a few days. i cna't wait. I'll finally be able to hang out with a girly girl again. though i think she's turned into a bit of a raging feminist in university. stupid university. it makes people go all crazy and stuff. arg. she was telling me about some movie she watched and how she was asking the filmmaker about his portrayal of women in the film, and then ranted a bit about how artists need to be responsible, especially when they are portraying women. It's not that i disagree, entirely, but she was rather vehement, and that kind of vehemence generally makes me want to take the opposite side, regardless of whether or not i actually agree. What can i say? i'm a born instigator. well, no, not really, but i do tend to say the opposite of what other people are saying just because i think all sides should be represented. :) i'm probably going to make her really mad at me when she comes, i'm sure i'll manage to say a bunch of stupid, non-university-feminism-educated stuff that'll royally piss her off because i 'don't know what i'm talking about'. Honestly, that's the biggest thing i hate about university. It tends to make people think that if you haven't sat through lectures and read giant text books written by wankers, then your opinion isn't valid and you don't know what you're talking about, regardless of how much independent study and/or thoguth you've put into something. one of the reasons i dropped out of university. i just hate the notion that your opinion is invalid if you havent' taken the same classes as someone in university. And of course saying "i studied in real life" is ujust about the lamest thing to say, because it's such a total cop-out, like "i am too lazy to spend thousands of dollars and sit in a lecture, so instead i got a job and now i know more." I mean, man, everybody knows stuff. we all know stuff, it's all different, and i don't think any person's life's knowledge shoudl be negated because it's not the same as someone else's. It's just different, not lesser. Unless you are stupid, in which case, yes, you're stupid. I do believe in stupidity, for many a time i have witnessed it, often coming from people who should know better.

wow, that got a little off topic. gee, why don't you tell us how you realy feel? hehe. well now, this has disturbed my morning schedule a little,and now i have to go run to do my makeup, les i look crazy in my class today. (not like i honestly care, but i do like to look nice, even if there aren't any cute boys in the calss ;) )toodles!

[Anita Blake]

Birds.

Hitchcock seemed to think we should fear them. Some people are inordinately creeped out by their beady little black eyes. They are referred to as filthy, germ-carrying disease-mongers. (Song birds are OK)

Why do we dwell so on birds sometimes?

And then one day, walking down Granville Street, the answer hit me. We can't rid ourselves of birds, not entirely.

We have come to this land, seeking water, fertile soil, a steady base for our homes and businesses. We have developed it, wiped away all vestiges of nature that are too uncontrollable and unpredictable to be permitted in civilized society. We have paved over our fertile soil, dug it out, poured cement in the holes, and raised a skyscraper in it's stead. We have killed the cougars, driven off the wolves, frightened the deer and the goats and domesticated the horses. We have tamed the lesser dogs, harnessed the small cats' wills to do our vermin hunting, and all but eliminated nature from our midsts, preferring instead the concrete and glass dreams to Mother Nature's bitter screams.

And for all we have done, for all we continue to do, no animals come willingly into the cities of Man. Dogs and cats both remain tethered in residences, free to roam only their own small domain, unless leashed to a human. Other creatures exist in the city, of course, caged and captive, none range free through the downtown city streets.

Except for birds.

Seagulls, crows, pigeons, sparrows, magpies, songbirds, occasionally even falcons can be seen in the hearts of the Great Cities. Scavenging the remains of human food, they wander freely on the sidewalks, perch comfortably on the power-wires, look down upon us from the sides of too-tall buildings. Should you leave your window open, if they desired, they could enter your very home, your sanctuary, the one place where nature can be assured it is not welcome.

But the birds pay no mind to us, they pay no mind to our deep discomfort at their appearance. they cock their heads in amusement, looking at us as if to say "What, you thought you could just have this all to yourself? Silly Humans", and then progress to peck our leavings off the sidewalk, or out of the dupsters.

Of course we are uncomfortable near birds, not specifically, but in a general, strange way. We don't understand that birds are a badge of our failure to completely control the earth. When a birds looks at us, we know in our heart of hearts, that our reign is neither total, nor is it forever. Birds come where they pleasse and go when they please. they can be frightened away, but another will always come to take it's place.

When I see a bird on the street, wandering about the concrete paths we have built, I look at it, and I smile, part hungry-cat longing for the chase, and part wild animal, pleased to see that someone at least, is defying these pesky humans, even if it is just a tiny song birds. I say, let the birds do as they please, for to anger them is to bring down the wrath of the Mother.

[Anita Blake]

and it is, of course, at this point when i must say bah! to all this self-analysis, all this looking and explaining and wondering and discovering. there absolutely has to be a point at which it all beomes a moot point, at which it all becomes meaningless and pointless and absolutely useless.

so what if i realize i've spent all my life searching for one thing that has drifted in and out of my life but has never been there to stay. so what if i realize that i am a sad, sad individual. so what? i can sit there and realize all this crap or i can try to do something about it.

i'm so tired of being tired. so weary of the weariness. and most of all, most importantly and totally, i am so very sick of menstrual cramps. what the hell are they there for? to punish me for not having a child. i swear that's what it is. the older i get, and the longer i go without getting pregnant, the worse and more instense my cramps get. this is so fundamentally wrong i can't believe it. it's like my body is saying "hello, you should be filling me up with something now" while my mind, spirit, and the rest of me is saying "uh, body, screw off. you're so out of line." i don't want kids. i don't want to be pregnant, all i want is for my stupid body to stop acting like it's trying to kill me once a month. argle bargle. it's not bad yet, but i can feel it's going to be a doozy. and i have stuff to do today! ~sigh~ all this stupidness is just wrong. wrong wrong wrong. then again, crap! crap crap crap! i cannot emphasize this enough ...

CRAP!!!

just too much going on in my head to put it all down in words. stupid menstruation. it has to go and fuck up my head as bad as it fucks up my body. It's so not fair. i mean, sorry to any guys reading this who just really don't want to know, but you have no fucking clue. it's not just the cramps that we bitch about. it's not just the bloody mess. It's the way it messes with our heads too. And you can't go around acting on all the crazy shit that goes through your head because then people will think you're off your rocker and a total bitch to boot, but i'm so mad over things that have happened weeks ago right now that it's not even funny. there's no logic to that! it's not fair! you can't get mad about things that are already over and done, because getting mad isn't going to do anything about it, and chances are you're only getting mad because you've realized that there is nothing you can do, and that just makes you madder. RAHHHHHH! arg. so frustrated. so very frustrated. and then it turns out you have to go edit! ~makes a completely infuriated, frustrated, crying, screaming, eyes-bulging face~

well. ok. that didn't help much. but thanks for coming out. arg.

[Anita Blake]

ok, as my day progresses, my rage is not fading, it is merely growing. i hate it when people are trying to avoid me. i hate it when i have to deal with someone who has made it clear they don't want to deal with me. i hate having cold conversations with people. i hate feeling like i hate someone. this sucks. i mean, it really, really sucks. i wish i had a punching bag, because i feel the need to punch someone. and i don't know if i am justified in feeling like i'm being treated like some kind of parasite, or if it's all in my head. and i especially hate knowing that all of this could change in an instant and i would let it if it could, because maybe it shouldn't and RAHHHHHH. god i hate feeling like this. it's absolutely miserable. that's it. i'm going home. fuck everyone.


*the preceeding message was brought to you by the letters P, M, and S, and the number 32.

[Anita Blake]

It's strange, how the most amazing things can be happening to you, the most wonderful revelations, and fascinating ruminations, within the confines of your mind, and yet when another person asks how you are, you can say "pretty good" and they will never, never know what kinds of visions you are having at that exact moment. This, to me, is being high.




-deep thoughts, by Anita Blake :D

[Anita Blake]

my rings are aliding all askew on my fingers. so that the top is on the side or the bottom of my finger, everything is inside out and backwards. this happens, i suppose, because my fingers are wet from rinsing them, and slimy because i put lotion on them slightly before rinsing them. so now my rings have gone mad and i have to wonder: how do rings stay normal normally? it's kinda weird.

la dee da. so tired. so gross feeling. feeling kinda like i woke up after eating waaaaaaay too much chocolate cake in the night and had weird dreams inspired by watching a crazy movie. wait a minute... oh, that explains everything. I actually did all that. hmm. what do you know. there is a logical explanation for all this.

i plan to make pizza tonight. mmmm. pizza. i am making pizza for a reason. the reason is that i bought a pizza stone the other day on sale, and the reason i bought the pizza stone was so that i could make pizza. so you see, we come full circle. i have little to no desire to go to work today, and unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff to do. crappola. i feel terribly like curling up to sleep for another 4 hours before going to work out of sheer boredom. what a great world that would be.

so la dee da. my cat, it turns out, only eats cat food. And he eats it every day. A-Maze-Ing. dontchya think? well, perhaps not, but i did just wake up an hour ago, so i can hardly be expected to make much sense. la la la. off i go to work. oh the joy. i love walking in the rain because i forgot my umbrella at work. stupid rain. ~falls asleep with a thunk~ ok, that's my cue. toodles.

[Anita Blake]

so. here we are. we are here. and the friggen map still doesn't make a lick of sense.

some people tire of my way of speaking in metaphors. some people can go to hell. we eat and drink and walk and talk like civilized humans, so why not use metaphors to their fullest extent? or perhaps i just can't wrap my mind around the reality of the moment. no one ever stops to think about the fact that the moment is such a fleeting, ephemeral thing, and that likewise, so is reality. I don't really believe in reality. it's far too abstract a concept. Real. pfft. real this.

well then. i seem to be in a fine humour this morning. possibly due to the fact that i was up late last night, and had to be at work early this morning only to find out that there's no real reason for me to be here at all.

my head spins with the addition of caffiene and the morning feels a little surreal. is it light out? i can't tell anymore. it's always dark in my head. the clouds outside assist this delusion for me. I havent' seen the sun in days, and then it was only for a few moments. the darkness is where my soul lies, but my body and heart live for the sun. Apollo is my patron. which makes me remember that I think Apollo was possibly the most idiotic of choices to name a mission to the moon. Apollo, in case NASA isn't aware, is the sun-god. Not the moon-goddess. Why in the name of all holy hell they'd name a trip to the moon after the god of the sun is beyond me. Patriarchal fascists.

well that's it for me. i'm done. time to go backto bed and dwell in some more darkness. my dreams lately have been wondrous strange. I don't necessarily remember them all, but i know they're all in my head somewhere. i wish i could get them out to get a better look. Instant replay. If dreams were to come to life, who knows what nature of a world we'd have then. Especially my dreams. Elevators would be banned in that world, primarily because they just don't work. I am plagued by dreams of elevators that don't work properly. I wonder what that means. regardless, apparently i might want to do some work today. or so they think. so they think.

[Anita Blake]

1. this is the question
2. there is no answer
3. there are no rules
4. random is better

[Anita Blake]

let me take you down, down, down, to where all my secrets lie, to the place where truth is a myth, and myth is a truth. come down with me, so far down, into the darkness, unto the very edge of reason. Come with me, and I will show you wonders you've never imagined, wonders you never knew could exist.

down, down, down, into the deep, deep, dark.

sleep.

[Anita Blake]

there is nothing like nothing. there is no one like no one. absence and void consume all matter and all matter is comprised of little more than absence and void.

insertion of thought like sex and magic. insert, remove, insert remove, till death do us part, till the end of all time.

some people are not OK. i may or may not be one of them. let the world be collapsed. let the world be consumed. let the universe come down and nestle us all gently in it's awesome hand. cradled in light, bathed in the dark, we are elemental beings.

light and dark. one creates the other, the other defines the one. symbiosis.

and within these walls is nothing, perhaps it is everything. wake up and discover that everything you thought you knew is false. walke up and discover you are alone. wake up. within the confines of this rounded set of bones is a thick, dense, void. wake up. we are doomed. and in our doom is our very own salvation. go back to sleep. salvation will wait for you there.

i have no more to say.

[Anita Blake]

i can feel it inside me, growing, gnawing, gnashing it's teeth, trying to get out, trying to be made real. it has no name, it has no voice, it has no form, merely it's insane intent, it's desire, it's abililty to do whatever it must to get what it wants. and i, helpless pawn that i am in it's quest for fulfillment of desire, can do nothing but sit back and let it wash over me like an awful tidal wave.

go in. go out. that which is real is shown to be false, and what was supposed to be false sneaks up and eats the children in the night. this i bear patiently. this i sit through trembling in fear and wanton desire. there is nothing else.

i feel. i fear. i fear my feelings. i feel my fear. all connected, all disjointed, none of it making a lick of sense, but the sense of licking in the back of my brain like some invented memory.

this is now.

[Anita Blake]

so. it turns out there's the possibility that everything i am and have thought myself to be is merely a contrived effort on the behalf of the ego part of me. i guess it turns out that's a possibility for everyone. perhaps we'll never know.

Do I contrive this darkness of my soul, my attachments to the darker aspects of nature, out of a desire to be that darkness, or is that merely the way I am built? Did i look in the mirror, and hear those around me saying i looked like a witch, and then contrive to go forth and make thos prophecies come true? Try to create a self that would fit this face and satisfy the needs of others?

No. i don't think i believe that. I think that this darkness is my own. This is merely who I am. I can't be not dark. We are all filled with darknesses and lights, and they all come in different hues and shapes and sizes and types. One truth doesn't exclude another.

And so it comes to pass that I sew and cook and am concerned with the type of shampoo i use and how my eye makeup looks and like to camp under the stars in the mountains and feel the wind in my hair from the oean blowing and dance and drink and explore the aspects of sensuality in life and cuss and be argumentative. Not all dark, not all light. Many shadows, few highlights. But then that sounds so negative, when what i really mean is this:

this darkness is my own.

[Anita Blake]

hmmm. funny. a friend of mine today was talking to me on msn. he said "you're so dark online", (as my SN is currently "this darkness is my own" and was previously "at the end of the world, everyone is equally dead") to which i responded "online?! i'm like this all the time!". He expressed doubt. Which i guess i chalk up to the fact that he doesn't know me all that well, since i mostly only qualify myself as being "dark" because so many other people have told me that's what i am. Which is kind of i guess what i was talking about in my last post, whether we create our personalities based on the opinions of others or if the opinions of others are based on what they see in us. Yeah, it's ok if that's really not what you were reading in that last post. i have no idea how coherent all that was to anyone but me. but anyway. regardless. oh crap, i've lost my train of thought. Something to do with the fact that i am who i am. anyhoo.

Another somewhat related thing i wanted to pass on was i guess how that made me feel about the internet and such. And i came to this conclusion, and here it is. I am a little darker onine than i come across in RL, but i think a part of the reason for that is because here at the quill, i've really found a place where i can express this side of myself, and thus, explore this side of myself. I'm learning things about myself all the time, and i really think the Quill and all you guys are a big part of that. I just hope that everyone else finds the quill being a place to express a part of themselves that doesn't normally get expressed. I guess it does, I can tell. We all reveal here a part of ourselves, but not all of ourselves. It's interesting, and i think it's really great. So, here's my obligatory thanks to the quill and all you kind folks who hang out here. :)

i am baking foccacia bread. it shoudl be delicious. And I cleaned my apartment, and while i was eating my lunch, some movement at the top of the building across the street caught my eye, and i turned to see an extremely large bird landing next to another extremely large bird. Now, Seagulls acn often be extremely large, so the birds themselves were what caught my eye, because instead of the grey-white of an extremely large bird landing on the building that i would normally see, i saw a very dark, large bird. i wasn't wearing my contacts, but they looked like eages. so i pulled out the telescope, which BTW is a piece of crap and i couldn't get it focused, but then i got it close enough, and saw that there actually were 2 bald eagles on top of the building across the street. i watched them for about half an hour, just sitting there before they did a somewhat spectacular take off and flew away. They were so beautiful, and reminded me of how i always loved birds of prey, since i was a very little girl and my grade school sports group was "The Hawks". I wanted to see them hunt, revel in their glory and strength as they swooped down adn caught their meal, but alas, mostly they just sat there taking a rest before flyign on. but they were talkig a lot, and i could hear them when i opened my window. they sounded like song birds almost. it was weird. well, more like songbirds than seagulls and crows do :dozey:. anyhoo, that was my story about the eagles i just saw. the end.

[Anita Blake]

i am the product of a disposable society.

everything i am has been created by the world around me, and cast off in a similar fashion. this world is too proud of it's advances to hold on to any particular one too tightly.

make me, use me, cast me off.
this is the way.

[Anita Blake]

well then. the sun is finally noticably beginning to rise earlier. and by noticeably, i mean that when i wake up the clouds are a slightly less black colour, moving more to grey. yes, i wake up before the sun. whoddathunkit? then again, i am in canada, and in the winter we do have very little sun. Near christmas we had sun from about 8:00AM-4:30PM or thereabouts. Which isn't as bad as where i used to live, when there was sun from about 9-4. seriously. i can't wait till summer when it's sunny from 5AM-10PM. yeah, that's right.

so, seasonal changes aside, not much is going on. I taught class yesterday. it was very exciting. you see, my coworker, the actual instructor, went away for a couple days, so i am left covering pretty much everything. It's OK. i was busy busy busy yesterday and imagine it will be the same today, except today i think i'll teach better. plus now i have all the handouts photocopied, which was a source of stress yesterday, not knowing where they were. I mean, i know where we keep them, the ones i needed just weren't there. :dozey: But alls well that ends well, and i managed to survive the day and even recieve a large box of Purdy's Hedgehogs (read: delicious, preservative-free, gourmet chocolates with hazelnut filling ... yummm!!!! it was a $30 box too ... tons of hedgehogs to go around!) OK, so the chocolates were for me and my 2 other co-workers, and i was going to not open it until my friend comes back (tomorrow) but then temptation got the best of me and i opened it and ate one. She woulnd't have done the same. Except she probably would have eaten more than one. :dozey:

haven't seen the eagles again, but then, i haven't been home in the daytime since sunday.

waking up is interesting. i never really know what's going on. I'm always transitioning between 2 worlds, one which seems real and one which seems ridiculous, in which my cat is nuzzling my face. Dracula is good. I think he likes to lead me back from the world of Dreams every morning. He knows i am lost and he knows that the easiest way for me to get back is for him to bonk his head on my nose and get fur in my eyes. Or, rather, cuddle with me sweetly until i am awake enough to do something else. :D i love Dracula. he is, quite possibly, the most wonderful feline companion in the world. i just have to obey the rules. Which, btw, are: don't touch me unless i touch you. let me do whatever i want. feed me and clean my litter box. don't pick me up. don't read if i'm in front of you, the book will be there tomorrow, i want attention now.

*yawn* now it's time to put on makeup. and do hair. actually, it's past time to do that. i always get so wrapped up in writing stuff that half my morning-time i sgone before i even realize it. Damn, i've been done my coffee for like, 5 minutes and i didn't even realize it. icky aftertaste. blech. must go. ta ta.

(p.s.: It feels like spring)

[Anita Blake]

i spoke too soon this morning. outside is beautiful, the sky is blue with huge chunks of cloud swimming through the sky like giant, ephemeral fish. The birds fly free on the currents of the sky, free and unfettered, and it is on a day like this that i remember who i am, what i am. i am from Big Sky country. I am wild at heart, and in my heart, I am a hawk. I long to fly free through that sky, fly free through the universe, feel the sun on my side, the cold biting of the high-atmosphere air. Swoop down and eat mice. Free and murderous, hunting always hunting.

i noticed something today on my walk to work, looking always to the sky and feeling the wind on my face, and that is that most people do not look at the sky, most people do not look at the clouds as they swim, they do not see the ultimate freedom of the birds above us. Nor even do they see the tops of the very buildings we have created and built. I don't know what they see, but i did see some people trying to avoid looking at me as i stared at the sky, smiled at the sun, followed the birds and the fly on the wall with my gaze. Perhaps they thought it was simply shameful that i would abandon the protocols of city-living and for once realize that a city is not much more orderly really than the wilderness. A city is merely our part of the wildness of nature. we try to put it together, we try to create order from the apparent chaos, but really, we are just another part of that wilderness. here we sit, in the midst of a crazy jungle we have built for ourselves, and no one even bothers to revel in the few aspects we can't control, preferring instead to hide from the sun and the wind and the rain and the birds and the ants and the flies and the dirt. pretend not to see it.

well, i see. i see and i love it.

[Anita Blake]

Run, desire, run this sexual being, run him like a blade to and through the heart no conscience one motive to cater to the hollow.

Screaming feed me here fill me up again temporarily pacify this hungering
so grow libido throw dominoes of indiscretions down falling all around in cycles, in circles constantly consuming, conquer and devour.

Beacuse it's time to bring this fire down bridle all this indiscretion long enough to edify and permanently fill this hollow.

Screaming feed me here, fill me up again temporarily pacifying.

Feed me here, fill me up again temporarily pacify this hungering


this indescribable hunger, wanton lust, whatever you want to call it. i long to posess that which is not mine. i long to posess the sky, feel the air ruffling through my hair, caressing my neck, holding me aloft, scattering me to pieces and blowing me back together again.

Elemental.

my mouth longs to clamp on to something, anything, to taste life, to breathe the air, and i know without a doubt that i am but a pale shadow of what i have been in prior lives. This humanity makes me edgy, makes me feel unreal, weak, powerless, and my inner self, my soul longs to posess the world once again. we owned it once, I owned it once, my mind no longer remembers, but the soul never forgets. Once you taste the air, your soul is forever left longing. Not just the air, water and fire as well. I'm less a creature of the soil than of fire and water and air. Make of that what you will.

Thwarted by this gravity, undone by this reality, god i long for that other, that place, that thing, that only the deepest part of my soul can recollect. there is no reality anymore, not really. It bogs me down, clinging tentacles that gently grab hold of me and politely request my presence, and i cannot refuse. How could i? to refuse reality is to be mad, but to accept it is maddening.

there is a cry, waiting, building, trying to erupt from my fragile human body, and sometimes i wonder if that scream is the only thing holding me together, the only thing keeping me alive, and one day, i will birth that scream, and when i do, i shall be set free, and when the scream is out, I will be no more.

[Anita Blake]

I will say one thing about my life. I have been blessed with the curse of having to wake up ridiculously early, and thusly, i have seen so many beautiful, incomparable sunrises.

With the coming of the spring, the run rises closer and closer to the time of my awakening. I look out the window and behold a sight of splendor. The city in the foreground sparkles with warm orangey-yellow light, windows reflecting golden at me. The water of the harbour has a deep, lovely blue that only seems to exist at sunrise for it, indecently clothed in a fine transparent mist of patchy early-morning fog. And the mountains in the west, how stunningly wonderful. The top quarter glowing a pale creamy yellow, darkened by the trees at the top, but covered with a seemingly fine mist of snow. Appearances surely are deceptive, and this snow is likely colder and deeper than I care to know, but it is of no concern, because there is a line at which the snow vanishes completely and the verdant growth of the winter pines take over, showing a magnificent dark forest green, but it is a radiant dark green now thanks to the beauty of the sun's first light.

Colours are richer in the rising of the sun, deeper and brighter, with a faerie-glow that is sure to enchant all who behold it. The sky ripples from blue to orange and pink and gold and red and white and grey, no one colour able to dominate the sky ask the few clouds manage to reflect the sun's glory in their own, individual way.

All too soon it is over and the day must begin, grey and blue and white, cold and dreary once more, as if the world cannot handle too much of this glorious beauty, for we would never get any work done if the earth were always as beuatiful as it is at sun rise.

But no matter how hard i try, no words can describe the sheer beauty and monumental feeling that I experience to behold this spectacle. There aren't words for the colours of dawn, "blue" and "pink" and "orange" being but pale reflections of the true colours.

I could wish that language was more all-encompassing, but it would be a wish in vain. Babel and all. we were never meant to be able to communicate perfectly, which is sad, because it's possibly the biggest thing we have ever desired ... to speak and be understood completely.

One last side-note before i venture off to the place of my work, thinking of this last night, after what i wrote and felt yesterday and it is this: We crave eachother's company, us humans, we feel the need to pair off and couple, share our lives completely with one other person, but i think the real reason why is that when we are alone, we are animals, feeding our animal nature, feeling our animal desires, and we know when we are alone, that we are nothing more than the birds in the sky and the predators on the land and the fish in the sea. When thoroughly engaged in another human being, we are better able to focus on the task of being Human, being Above the Lesser Animals.

And to that, i say psh. I love my animal self, my animal desires, the beast that resides in me that resists this civilization and all it's fine trappings. And we are animals. Different from the birds and the mammals and the fish that we kill and eat and trap and keep as pets, but an animal nonetheless. To deny that is to deny the deepest part of our psyche.

roar.

[Anita Blake]

this music is eating at my soul, possessing me with desires of i know not what. dark huntress, lonely goddess of love, i don't even know any more. how to define myself. let the music do it for me. let the music form my spine, let the music show my eyes where to look, let the music move my head for me, take control of my body and my mind and possess me so utterly that i have to wonder when it's over who and what i really am. Who am i? really? what am i destined for? is there anything in the universe for me that will make me feel like this music? let it be sex, let it be love, let it be food, let it be shelter and water and clothing and all that a human needs. this is what music is. it is our souls come to life, shared with all who have the ability to hear. drums for heartbeat. guitar to replace my blood flowing through my veins of bass, voice for air, i don't need anything else from life, just let this music give me sustenance and stip away everything else that is and has been and replace it with these divine sounds of tormented souls. let these words be mine, let them replace all that i am and let me become this music, let me stop being a woman and become something ephemeral and yet eternal, this demonic possession.

this is youthful passion and with god as my witness i don't want to live without it. i don't want to grow old and callous and without these flippant passions that take me and hold me and let me soar where i will. if the universe ended today would i be fulfilled? no, never. would i be content? absolutely not. but i would be young and passionate, and that's something, isn't it? fill me up and i will be emptier than i will ever know, but give me this hollowness and here i shall lie happily seeking out something... more.

sorrow fills my eyes for i know that this time is not eternal, and i know that these things will not last. sorrow fills my eyes for i am alone, so utterly alone. and anger and rage fills my eyes for that is what i am. Passion fills my eyes for it is all i have left that makes sense, this longing and desire for something that i will never understand, something that can never be made to make sense.


I looked into your eyes and saw a world that does not exist
I looked into your eyes and saw a world I wish I was in.
-Touched, Vast

i watched the birds flying today, as birds often do, and i saw again the remarkable figure of the Eagle, soaring higher than the rest, easily twice the size of any of the lesser scavenging birds that haunt the shoreline. I watched his freedom, as he flew faster than i could drive a car with surety and ease, never once flapping his wings, simply coasting on the currents of air, wheeling with them, moving somehow against them, ignoring the occasional attack from one of the lesser birds, as they followed him in his search for food. And simply coasting, he was faster and stronger and more free than i will ever be.

[Anita Blake]

so hungry. so hungry for something i can't explain. so filled with desire for something i can't have. i want it all, you see, the universe, the sun the moon, the stars the sky the birds the fish the cats the mountains the clouds the fire and everything in between. but you can't have it all, you see, and so i am doomed to live with this hunger, this constant aching thirst and pain and the sure knowledge that all that i can imagine is all that i can never have or never be.

my hands clench and my back arches as i am denied all that i could ever be, to know that some things simply cannot ever be, and even if they one day can be, that day is not today, that moment is not right now, and if anything, i am a creature of the moment.

so hollow and empty.
take me away
let me be whole.

[Anita Blake]

sonic absolution
cutting me in waves
tearing me to shreds
pull my insides out
never enough of
this delicious pain
tormenting my soul
torturing my body
drag me naked through the streets
flay me alive
and i'll be back for more.
the ocean hold no answers
and the sky is too far off
not yet the earth for me
nor the fiery flames of hades
these waves that cut
and mutilate
are all i need for now.


a strange sort of urgency
sent forth from strangers out of time
and they will never know
that they are killing me slowly
with life.

[Anita Blake]

ok, so this Vast cd has been eating me alive, and driving me completely insane. i love it. i cannot express that enough. the reason, if it can ever be said that lvoe has a reason, is that it's poetry, but the words are given their meaning by the music. And that to me is what music should be like. The lyrics should mean something, but if you read them on the page, they'd mean something totally different than with the music. It's like filmmaking. Everything needs to serve a purpose. When the beat is good, yay beat, but when the beat serves to emphasize each point that the lyrics make, that's Music. When every strain of every string causes a resonance in the soul of the listener, when it is there to give a deeper meaning to it all, then THAT is good music.

i think i've been trying to put that in words for some time, my definition of what makes music good. Don't get me wrong, i like a lot of music that doesn't fir this definition, but when the music does fulfill these requirements, no matter what, i will like it forever. Some examples, IMHO, that fulfill this are smashing pumpkins, tool, APC, Vast. the end.

[Anita Blake]

don't let me fall in love with you. my love is poison. my love is death. if i say i love you, run.

[Anita Blake]

walking. walking. i walk every day you know, for about an hour in total. half an hour to work, half an hour home. sometimes i take the bus. mostly i take myself. i ride my discman home. the music carries me away and i see the world differently. this morning, i was haunted by visions of the past. so many of the buildings downtown are very old, turn of the century, which i guess any europeans in the audience would probably roll their eyes at and call fresh and new, but here, on the west coast of north america, that's about as old as buildings get. today they spoke to me. they ... shifted. and i saw them briefly, in the confines of my eyeballs, reflected on the inside of my skull, i saw them as they once were, new, and fresh and important, the centre of the financial world of early Vancouver. it was the most curious sensation. being haunted by the street.

i felt haunted when i went home too, but more posessed by a hungry spirt. I caught of whiff of some cologne and was almost overtaken by the desire to bite into someone's neck. not in a vampire way, well, kind of, but the motivation wasn't blood or death, it was merely the salt taste of flesh, the motivation was desire. Strangely enough, these weird sensations happened in the exact same spot, within a block. I'm pretty sure it was in front of the same building both times. hmmm. curious. It was strange because... well... it was strange. i don't think that it being strange really needs explanation. strange things are strange things.

i am a strange thing. of late, getting stranger. getting more normal. i remember this. i remember being like this. i remember being up late at night, writing on the vinyl-covered wall strange and senseless rantings, unable to see further than the hand that wrote, unable to care about the fact that my friends watched on in amusement, those that actually noticed me going mad before their eyes. i remember feeling things so deeply that i could no longer move, no longer think, no longer even feel. and that time is upon me once again, i feel. i don't know how i feel about that, really. there was a time.... feeling like this started to drive me mad, but it led to good things. i think. which led to bad, which led to good, which leads us all the way up to now. life is in an ever-constant state of change, flux, and nothing is really good or bad, it merely is. It's what we choose to do with the now that makes us what we are.

and what ... will ... i ... do ... now...???

my head is spinning like a midway ride, and nothing seems to make any sense any more. the only thing i truly have, is myself. well, not, that's completely false. it sounds good on paper, though, doesn't it. It's not true, though, not by a longshot, and i would be remiss to let it go at that. nothing makes sense, true. but i have friends and a cat and the ocean and the sky and family if i chose to rach out for them, all the things that are important in life, i have. just not someone to touch my face (which, btw, i have determined to be the ultimate act of intimacy ... we simply don't touch just anyone's face, now do we? no, the face is more taboo to touch than the bottom or breast, and so all i long for is someone to touch my face)

~elongated, whispering sigh that echoes through the trees and travels out across the oceans~

[Anita Blake]

i don't mean it. not a single thing. not a word not a syllable not a letter of any of it. i don't knwo what i'm talking about. the words jsut come to me, and it's maddening, it's truly maddening because i am so inundated with my own language. i wish i knew other languages. i wish i actually knew my own language. I mean, i know my language, obviously, and i know how to use words, and i know how to properly form a sentence, more or less. But it's always been instinctual. Talk to me and i could tell you if you are using poor grammar, and i would know instinctually how to make the sentence better, but i don't know the reasons why. the math behind the language. the rules. i have only the barest grasp of nouns and verbs and pronouns and adjectives and adverbs and past participles or what have you, and lately, i kind of feel the lack. i mean, i know, but i just don't know . I think knowing the rules of english grammar would greatly help me to learn another language easily. If i intellectually understood english, then it would only be a matter of learning the rules and the words for a different language. pronunciation is not a problem. i am a mimic. tell me how to pronounce a word in another language, and i can pronounce it beautifully. ask me to make a coherent sentence in another language knowing only the words i am to use, and i haven't the slightest clue. I know english too well. and not nearly well enough.

and it is so that i am trapped by this language. my mind is trapped by it. certain thoughts escape realization because there is no rule in english grammar, no word in english for the way i fee, for the thoughts i sometimes have. it's all just words. i so deeply wish i could think in different words, or without words. sometimes i think without words, i can almost think in emotions, but it's like a foreign language. words are my language. i know no other way to communicate (body language aside, of course). that's what we need. a better form of communication. it's what we are continually seeking, which i guess is wy the internet is so popular. communication. it's all we have that ties people together, our ability to communicate our needs and desires to others. empathy. it's so imperfect in us frail and bedazzled humans. we are stuck with imperfect communication and all to often too little empathy.

damned, i guess. but so bewitchingly so. these words are all i have. i think in these words. these words think in me.

sleepy time now.

[Anita Blake]

behold my exhaustion. my nights have been more active than my days lately and it feels like it's wearing me down. by day, i am mild-mannered, happy-go-lucky, fun/serious-girl, and by night.... decapitated fingers, poofy gowns, escapes from poverty, focusing too hard on everything, being hunted, beinng killed, teeth falling out, being anything but me. by gum, it's a bit much to handle. did you see anything about sleep in all that? i swear, my dreams are more real than my life sometimes, and it's frightening because sometimes i just don't know. i mean, sometimes, i really have to think, did that really happen or was it just a dream? i have travelled around the world, i have been in airports, i have done far too many things in my sleep to ever be realized in my waking hours, thankfully. my sleep drains my energy more than being awake. my dreams call to me and i am bound by our human clock to eventually return to them, never knowing what will be next, never sure who i will become when my eyes close and my consciousness fades.

i love my dreams, but enough is enough. three weeks ago, i slept still, in generally one position all night. the past couple weeks, i wake with my blankets everywhere, i think even my cat is growing weary, as he's found a new dark hole in the closet to sleep in.

the night holds endless possibilities for me. some of them are too frightening to comprehend. some too wonderful. and where to draw the line? when every night is too intense to give rest, where do we draw the line and change something? what to change?

god i'm tired.

[Anita Blake]

ahh. finally a night of rest. not that it felt much like it when my bloody alarm clock went off this morning. woudl it be too muhc to ask for a night of rest and to feel refreshed and alert in the morning. that's it. no more weed. i've been slowly weening myself, but it's time to dramatically further the weening. i mean, good lord, there's only so much semi-comatose-eating-everything-in-sight that one woman can handle.

my legs are sore from my saturday adventure around stanley park. still. ok, not moving all day yesterday might have contributed to some of that. stupid weekends. i mean, i'd go out and do stuff if i wasn't terrified that by doing so i'd be exposing my very impressionable mind to clever sales tactics and advertisements that are designed to separate me from the little money i have. oh, i could spend some money and be ok. but i couldn't spend some money and still save up for my trip next year. stupid plans. no, not stupid plans, stupid being broke. that's better. no no, i love my plans. i just wish that i could win the lottery or something to better be able to afford my plans. ah well, hardship and saving and self-denial and all that builds character, right? well, by the time i get to Oz/NZ i'll have more character build-up than i'll know what to do with. i wonder if there's a toothpaste that to remove pesky character-build-up? maybe i'll design one. "Removes all traces of hardship and personality in just 37 days of regular use!" i bet something like that would sell in this society too. plastic surgery? nah! just get Alissa's Amazing PersonalityPaste! I can see the ads now, complete with bimbo-y blonde LA girl/woman (the deepest thing about her will be her tan) talking about how my amazing product saved her from a life of struggle, challenges, harship, and personal victory over those things.

ok. so i just got to work and am eating a big fat delicious granola bar. it's making me feel good. yippee. it's the kind from starbucks that seems to be little more than oats and sugar. i feel like a horse for eating it. but it fills me up and i don't mind being horsey. neigh! oats are your frieeeeeeends! ah crap. this day will only go forward from here.

they played kickstart my heart by motley crue on the radio this morning. i hadn't heard that song in YEARS. i told my roommate and he didn't know what song i was talking about. i expressed shock. he asked me to sing it, but i refused, knowing that not only would i sound like a fool, but i STILL woulnd't get across the actual song to him. i mean, my singing talent is precisely nil, but i wouldn't mind making an ass out of myself if it would get him to remember the song. i knew it wouldn't though, so i didn't even bother trying. he said somethign about needing to get your humiliation out in the morning, so you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day. that made me wonder... does he really worry about being humiliated every day? me, i don't care. i'll humiliate myself until the cows come home, but i prefer to be in charge of how and when i humiliate myself. like, for the entertainment and amusement of others. i have no problem in looking like an idiot if someone else will be amused by it and laugh. i mean, it just doesn't matter to me. and if they don't laugh, well, screw them, they have no sense of humour. i mean, i guess i just don't care much what other people think of me, if what they think is bad. screw them! i know who i am, and i know my faults and ... the opposite of my faults. i knwo what i think of myself. sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. I don't need to get even more confused by adding in what other people think of me. well, ok, that's not entirely true, sometimes i care, but most of the time, it's pretty irrelevant. but then, my roommate's a pretty strange guy. of the world but not in it or part of it, kinda thing. not that i'm really all that different, i'm not exactly what you call an active participant in life.

and this ~points to this whole post~ is what happens when you get to work on monday morning after a weekend of doing nothing to find out that your work week will also be filled with ... nothing. crappaliscious.

~runs away before the public self-analysis takes over~

[Anita Blake]

well allo there. just stopping in you see. kinda crazy. nothing new here, move along, move alone. hmm. that alone was a typo, you see, but i decided to go with it because i liked it. good stuff, typos, sometimes. like the time i misspelt "midnight" and ended up with "mindnight" freudian slip that way. kind of.

anyhoo, all of that is neither here nor there because i was really just stopping in to talk about some stuff. or maybe not. i dunno. see, i've gone and killed the mood already, so maybe it will have to wait. i am too mirth-full right now to tell the story i was going to tell, so maybe perhaps just maybe, i will forgoe the story of how i saw a fresh-faced young man with his father today and felt the overwhelming desire to corrupt this cheerful lad, probably between 17 and 19 years old, looked like he was probably out looking for a tux to wear to his grad, the night that he might possibly get to touch his girlfriend's naked boobies. Yeah, i saw him, and thought "man, could i ever teach that kid something. turn him to the dark side". Well, that was the story, but i really don't feel like i can tell it right now. but you get the point. the point is. the point is. the point is.... dolphins. or something like that anyway.

man, am i ever hungry. methinks i should chop up a salad for meself. yes. indeedy-do. ok bye.

[Anita Blake]

so alike, so strangely, curiously alike. yet apart and different. one soul, two branches. not to say that there's only two branches of this particular soul, but these two branches mirror eachother so closely, these branches can see eachother and know of the other's existence. curious. so very, very curious. something of love, but it's not quite love, for it couldn't quite be, no, not like that, but a certain symmetry, a sameness that can't quite be denied. there's a longing there, yes, perhaps a longing to know for certain that none of us are truly alone.


there is yet hope in this world.

[Anita Blake]

if i breathe then i am alive and if the air i breathe comes from you then you are my life. the clouds looked like wisps of cotton candy, spun delicately across the pale blue of the sky, and the sun lit them all a golden yellow, warm and comforting despite the chill in the air. find this here, in the garden at night, in the dark light of the moon and the stars and find more truth laying hidden than during all the hours of the sun's dominion.

let it go, let it sail free let it move forward through the wind, let life filll me and let me be satisfied with what i have. this is the world and the world is not what we want it to be. the world is what we need, not what we desire so stay put and let is wash over you and feel that in the end, this is all we have. and if it never makes sense and if it turns out to all be wrong, maybe that's ok too. maybe the wrongness of the information is what will help us to move forward into something new and right. jsut because the source is wrong doesn't mean the result is wrong.

and this all flits through my head insubstantial, unmeaning, unconnected thought being connected by the fact that my fingers can make the letters for words which give the thoughts form. void. it's what we are, our natural state, everything is simply constructed from a void and moves forth and does it's thing and then all of a sudden the movie is over and we are left feelign hollow and strangely unfulfilled for no matter how intensely we watch, we can't ever be a part of it. it's just a movie after all. life is not just a movie. we are in it. we can't sit back and watch because if we do we will feel just as hollow and empty as ever a human can.

i feel a strange thing and i do not understand and i want it gone and yet i revel in it and love it and wish it could be made real, without ever understanding what that means even. this world is too strange for words. some things are best left unspoken. sometimes words will simply destroy a thing by being spoken aloud. we act as though words have no power in our world anymore, but that's simply not true, words have a tremendous amount of power, spoken aloud, spoken firmly with belief. anything is possible, you know. anything at all. and if you don't believe me, well, that's possible too. even impossibility is possible, though i tend to believe that the fact of impossibility itself is impossible. that however, would be erroneous, and thusly i say all things are possible. using a human hair for mass transportation? sure, it's not impossible. just because i don't know how and con't conceieve of a way for a single strand of human hair to be used for mass transportation does not mean that it is in fact, impossible. Just because no one living now or in the past has ever solved this dilemma doesn't mean that it can't one day be solved. in my lifetime? maybe not. maybe so. Who's to tell?

the point is, evrything is possible. even making sense out of this gibberish.

[Anita Blake]

oh how i would comfort you and fill you with lies about how everything will be alright. but it won't be, not really, and the lies would ring hollow and one day you'd hate me for them. But i'll tell you that anyway, because it's true too in a strange way, if i add on that we're all going to die and be miserable our whole lives also. peace and love and empathy are noble and good, but are only half of the story. sorrow and detatchment and apathy aren't bad, just part of it.

we need balance, you see, we can't smile all the time, and we can't cry all the time. the choice is this: feel only a little happiness or a little sorrow and be mostly neutral, or feel ecstatic love and devastating sorrow in alternating spins. They want us to believe that this is a problem, that this is a disorder, these swings, this type of balancing act, that we need drugs and medication to 'heal' us and 'cure' us of 'mood swings'. I don't believe it. I don't buy it. I will suffer the sorrow for the chance to feel that elation and joy.

is all advice merely inner-reflection broadcast outwardly? i wonder this sometimes. when you ask for someone's opinion, do they really know what they are talking about or are they merely looking inward for the answers they feel are best. that's how i am, i think.

i refuse to be neutral. but am neutral in all things. is this some kind of leo/libra inner conflict? i think it might be. i wish i had my head. it keeps me company at night. i've been smoking ever less weed, less and less and less, and my brain is churning, working overtime. my dreams are vivid.

i dreamt last night of a serial killer. He was psychotic, evil to the core. He kept dragons. Buffy was supposed to kill him, and he was hunting her, and I, as the second Slayer, was also trying to kill him. Instead, i went to him, tried to seduce him, convince him i was on his side in an undercover operation to get him off his guard so that we could kill him dead. It was scary, pretending to love such an evil thing, knowing that it could backfire at any moment should he realize what i was doing. But he didn't, and curiously enough, i think he kind of did love me. Which made it a little more difficult for me to plot his death, even revolted by him as i was. I went to his apartment while he was gone, to try to figure out who he was, knowing that if he came home while i was there, he'd kill me. He had my cat and a baby snake-dragon in a glass cage together. My cat was mercilessly attacking the snake-dragon, biting it's head and such, but not being very effective at killing it. It wasn't getting muhc madder, though, so that was good. But the snakey dragon thing looked kind of like my cat too. It's eyes grew sad as Dracula tried to bite them. And i thought i heard him come home, in the hallway, standing outside the door. The other detective (we were detectives then) went out the window, since there wasn't enough time for us both to evacuate. I tried to pretend i was there because i coulnd't stand to be apart from my evil lover, but he never came in the door. I waited and waited and waited, afraid, terrified, but he never came. Finally I decided to go out the window and kill him later when i regrouped with Buffy, but then i woke up.

how i can go through the entire spectrum of emotions while i am sleeping is fully beyond me. i wonder if my cat was trying to wake me up in the middle of the night? the end.

[Anita Blake]

my brain is mulch.

[Anita Blake]

oh man. ok, i posted the one link in absnot, but then i kept reading stuff and it's too funny, so i'm going ot post a bunch of links to the University of the Bleeding Obvious articles that i found particularly hilarious. :D


check the infographics on this one (http://www.obvious.fsnet.co.uk/convent/convent.htm) LMAO @ the nun factory

have you ever wanted to sell your soul? (http://www.obvious.fsnet.co.uk/soul/soulresults.htm)

child-slapping champisonship ... WTF?! (http://www.obvious.fsnet.co.uk/slap/slap.htm)
(more of a skimmer than a detailed read)


fly like a flying squirrel (http://www.obvious.fsnet.co.uk/squirrels/squir.htm)

didn't things used to be great? (http://www.obvious.fsnet.co.uk/fokker/fokker.htm)

there's tons of really really great stuff here, well-written and friggen hilarious! i suggest searching around for stuff, and click all the little graphic boxes because they have hilarious side-articles. :D

-anita "almost laughed out" blake

[Anita Blake]

an old friend wrote me an email today. it was filled with the usual filth and insane threats to do bodily harm against himself and/or our old neighbor. many of the threats involved porn and/or some type of cheese. It's good to know that even when i leave, the insanity stays. :D here is the response i wrote for him. Please feel free to send this out to anyone you feel is an Incurably Insane Motherfucker. :D



Dear Mr. N_____,

After carefully reviewing your last email, we are regretful to inform you that we have found you to be an Incurably Insane motherfucker. Your options as an IIMF are either to die slowly and painfully, or to attempt to vainly mask your symptoms through a carefully unregulated regime of drug and alcohol ingestion. We suggest trying both. There have been very rare cases where Incurably Insane Motherfuckers have, in fact, been cured, but quite frankly, we believe them to be hoaxes, and if they're not, then we're really not that interested anyway.

There are a few things you should know, however, now that you've been diagnosed with Incurable Insane Motherfuckwitria. The first is that you are entitled to run naked screaming through public parking lots late at night wearing a hat and loincloth made of cheese and/or cat hair. If anyone tries to prevent you from exercising your rights as an Incurably Insane Motherfucker, please notify our firm at once. We are here to help you, not discriminate against you because of your disability. Another of your entitlements is to punch as many men inthe groin as you feel necessary to calm your Insane rages. If someone tries to prevent you from punching them in the groin, you would do well to call the police and show the discriminating person that even police know you can punch people in the groin without penalty. (groin biting, however is a privilege, not a right, unless you are also afflicted with Penile Chomping Disorder, which is a whole other letter)

Please be aware that there are no support groups for your particular ailment. There are support groups available for toe-stubbers and cheese-abusers, but not for Incurably Insane Motherfuckers. This is mainly because IIMFs tend to try to kill one another frequently, and a support group would turn into more of a mass-murder spree.

You will not be recieving a cash settlement for having contracted this particular disease, unless you can manage to convince someone in charge that they passed it on to you willingly and with foreknowledge of the consequences. You will likely die poor and alone, but at least you won't care, due to the fact that you are an Incurably Insane Motherfucker.

In closing, we would like to offer our sympathies and this punching glove lined with spikes, so that you may better punch people in the groin. Thank you for your patronage.



-The Institution for Writing Regretful Letters On Behalf Of People Who Don't Exist in Regards to Diseases that Don't Exist.

[Anita Blake]

woo. i had Fun last night. more Fun than is perhaps reasonable for one person to have, but hey, what are you going to do? some students graduated yesterday, the best class we've ever had, so i took the opportunity to go drinking with them, since they aren't actually my students any more. well one thing led to another and now i'm sitting here at home with permanent marker on my arm, a stamp from some dance club on my hand, a slight hangover, and fuzzy memories of getting out of my house and dancing. woo. i haven't gone to a dance club for eons, so it was super fun to go and do that, having a bunch of people i knew and liked to go with, and also, getting to dance sandwiched between a guy who is into me and a girl who is into me was wicked fun. i did end up kissing a boy who i didn't really want to kiss, but meh, you can do that sort of thing when you're drunk and at a dance club. i told him he only got the one kiss and that was all, so hopefully he remembers that later. nice guy, but i'm not interested. he's not my type at all, but fun to hang out with at a bar. ~sigh~ i had so much fun.


edit: somewhat later in the day ....

so, it's crazy. what a crazy weekend. And it's only saturday! ok, well , i have a pretty good idea of how the rest of this weekend is going to go and it's probably going to fairly lo-key. but it's so weird.... in the past 2 days it seems like a lot has happened to me, but i guess it hasn't really, it's just the one thing that's got me questioning a lot, which is of course, the girl who kind of i think has a crush on me. I mean, i'm so flattered, and i like her, but it just leaves me questioning myself. Like, is that something i want to do? i mean, if it had been a guy who flattered me like that and told me he liked me, i'd probably not be interested, and i'd probably like him a little less, if not a lot less. But this girl is interesting. i don't think i'd want to date her, i'm pretty sure, but like i said, i'm questioning things. my reactions, my thoughts, all of it. it's a good kind of questioning, but it does make me want to get out of the house. so curious, last night was. i had far too many people flirting with me. and i liked it waaaaaaaaaay too much. :dozey: why can't the world just be like that, where people can flirt and touch each other innocently, and not have it mean more than just flirting? expressing a low-level of interest physically and not having to express it any more than that? in a way, that's why i really love dance clubs, places where the music is too loud for meaningful conversation. you can just dance, to please yourself, and to please others, and when the night is over, it's over, you can hug people and go home and not sleep with everyone you meet. i get so frustrated, i'm a very physical person, i think, instinctually, i like to touch people, but at the same time i'm very mindful of personal space, and in most instances in society, it's simply not ok to touch people, so i don't. I can be very very reserved, but i don't want to be. in fact i kind of hate being so reserved, publicly. But if i weren't so reserved, i think i'd get myself into a lot of trouble. and so i come off as distant and cold and remote, probably very snobby. ~sigh~ and none of this really has much to do with anything, but it's keeping my mind off the fact that i'm interested in experimenting with this girl, and that i kissed this guy last night, which i really really should not have done. i blame alcohol. i haven't been that drunk in ages, and now i remember why: because i really like being that drunk. bad stuff that. of course, it is who you are with too, and i was with really fun people, so that helped. usually i am not with really fun people, so when i drink i dont' have that much fun. i love dancing. god i love it so much. i had almost forgotten how much i love it. it would probably be better if i did forget. ~sigh~ why do you always love to do the things that a) cost money b)make you lose your self control c)are bad for you. tsk tsk tsk. well, at least they are nto my students any more. which means i can hang out with them now. :) god my life is weird.

[Anita Blake]

i feel snippy today. i probably shouldn't post and/or speak to people. but i will anyway. i think watching Passion of Christ last night made me feel snippy. well that and having actually cracked open my bible. yes. I, purveyor of all that is Dark, own a bible. i felt dirty for having bought it, but i figured, better to know your enemy, the better to do battle.

i have to say though, that this movie coming out, and all, is ausing me to question my faith. what do i believe in? i don't know that i've come to any hard and fast answers, but after having flipped thorugh the gospels last night, i have come to this: the bible is but a book. And i don't find it particularly well written. I mean, it does leave out a LOT. skimming over The man's life in a few brief pages. so you have to try to read between the lines. and what i read is that it is a book written 2000 years ago, relebant to a society that is no longer in exisitence, relevant to a culture that is dead and relevant to a way of life that no longer exists. Certainly there are things that can be drawn from it that have formed this society and world and that are worth learning. Love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you. turn the other cheek. All worthwhile, definitely. But to me it feels that there is a lot of dogma that was not intended. Sure Jesus said some things, but i think he probably spoke a lot more words in his life than those few that were recorded, and i think that some of the words recorded were done so because those at the time felt it was most relevant to their intended audience, namely, people of the time. There's a lot of obsession with lust and adultery, it was probably a bigger deal at the time. Or else jesus was gay. who knows. can you imagine, though, someone suggesting that jesus is gay? i'll probably get a billion negative rep points just for that. whatever. i'm not saying he was, just that it's a possibility.

i was raised in church, a little, going through catholic cathechim classes and lutheran confirmation classes and baptist summer camp with my cousins. and the one thing that stuck out to me in all that religious training is that "With God, all things are possible". and if you figure that god exists, then that means that all things are possible. So jesus being gay is possible. anyhoo.

i think i believe in the divine. but i don't believe in dogma. i believe that you have to take what you hear and apply it to what you know. Not everyone is the same and not everyone's life is the same. I don't think that God judges everyone based on the exact same criteria. And if he does, well, then, i don't want much part of him, since i was raised to believe he was understanding and just, then he must understand that we all have to find out own way on this earth and live the best life we can. I don't think that religious dogma really inspires doing the best. living your life to the letter of the law is not better than living your life to what you believe to be the intent of the law. It's a way, but it's not my way. I love the wiccan law: "Do what you will, so long as it harm none". it requires that you think about your actions before taking them, and to me, that is wise.

i believe in the wind on my face. i believe in the sun warming my flesh. i believe in the water as it washes over me. i believe in earth and fire and spirit. i believe all these things to be divine and holy, and i believe in celebrating life, not denying it. i believe that the forces of good and evil inside us must be brought to a balance, not that evil must be eradicated. Well, actually, i don't really believe in evil or good. I believe that things simply are, and we can either accept them or reject them. i believe in the eyes of a cat, and the breast muscles of an eagle, i believe that love shall conquer all, and that only through love can we become better. i believe in the example jesus set, and rather than following a few of his words to the letter and worshipping him and giving my money to the same church that would deny him should he come again, the church that burned witches at the stake for heresy that they once denied existed, the church that is corrupt and is a thing of man and not a thing of god, rather than that, i will try my best to love and accept the world as it comes to me. To me, that is christianity, ever more than the bible, than the church, than the doctrine and the dogma. i respect that others see it differently, but it makes me sad that people would rather make a show of worshipping christ than just living a peaceful life.

and believe it or not, i actually think that this came to me from having gone to church, the lessons i received in cathechism. i was very young, and the teacher told us a story, posing a question. She told i believe it was a parable that jesus told. About a pious man who goes to church every sunday rain or shine, sickness or health. And another man who tries to go to church when he can, but takes care of his sick mother instead of going to church, or feeds the homeless. And that the second man would be "more welcomed" by god than the first, because he lived god's words rather than merely going through the motions. and so i reject church, i renounce it, preferring instead to live the best life i can. maybe i don't feed the homeless or perform as many charitable acts as i could, but i try to practice patience with my fellow humans as often as possible, and try not to judge people, and generally try to make my interactions with other people as positive as i can. it's not much, but it's a start. it's better for me to do that than to go to church on even a semi-regular basis, because going to church always makes me angry and hateful. i'd rather be happy and peaceful and not go to church than to go and make myself angry. i don't think that's wrong. but i guess some people don't feel the same seething rage as i do when i set foot in a church. i just see all the hypocrasy and twisting of a god thing that has occured, i see all the thousands and millions dead for the sake of men consolidating their power within the church, and if i had hackles, they would be raised.

i believe in eternity. i believe that forgiveness must come from yourself. you must forgive yourself before god can forgive you. i believe that jesus was the son of god, inthe same way we are all the children of god. he was no more divine than any of us, which is to say, we are all divine. even the rats and the flies and the mosquitos and the cockroaches and snakes and goats and chickens and cows and grass and flowers and moss and dustmites and all things with life. jesus, i think, recognized that, and the fact that we worship him, one man, above all others, is kind of silly. respect his words, yes, try to live them, but worship? nah. i don't think he wanted to be worshipped. i think he just wanted the world to be a better place. but weaker people need something to adore, something to look at, and so they worshipped him. and set up churches in his name. i think it would have been better if they had just done a secret ninja mission passing out pamphlets, but then again they do that now and it's scary. anyhoo. i'm rambling. that's because i'm feeling snippy. thinking about my religious beliefs does that to me. because i'd rather have spiritual beliefs than religious beliefs, but unfortunately, i was raised with religion instead of spirituality. spirituality is something i've had to learn on my own. and it's a work in progress, as is all of life. so tomorrow it might be something totally different. so i might contradict myself. it's no big. even jesus did it. :)

[Anita Blake]

la la la. so. i'm tired. i thought for once that i'd switch from coffee to tea. i never drink black tea anymore. I usually drink herbal caffeine-free tea. but today i have earl grey. it's very nice. well. it coul dbe a little stronger. i like my flavours to kick me in the mouth, especially my drink flavors. i'm trying to learn to appreciate subtle flavours though, so meh. meh meh meh.

last night as i walked home, the clouds in the sky were that amazing colour. no, not pink. and not orange. not red, nor purple nor even fluffy white. they were ... dusty gold. that's the colour i named them. dusty gold. when they are kind of golden yellow around the edges, nearing into white, but the thicker the cloud gets the more dusty and dirty it looks, so that at the bottom it's a kind of greyish-greeny-yellow that only looks nice in context of the rest of the dusty golden clouds.

i don't know what's going on around here lately. it could be a couple things. The first one being that i have the hugest ego on the planet. That's entirely possible. my ego, being a true-born Leo, is rather large (though curiously enough, my self-esteem is not in proportion). Or else, a large number of people i know have the hots for me. No one's saying anything, except two people last week, but i think i'm pretty good at reading people, at least, i'd like to think that's one of my talents, and what i'm reading on a lot of people is a definite kind of interest. I don't know exactly if it's sexual or mental or physical or what, but it seems like people are interested in me. it's rather curious. i don't quite know what to do. Like i said, my ego may be huge, but i generally tend to believe that i wander about unnoticed. When i notice that i'm being noticed, i get kind of flustered. and a little uncomfortable. it only encourages my already ginormous ego. i don't like that. i like to at least pretend that i can keep my ego in check. it's hard to do that when i've seen that look in no less than 5 people's eyes recently. 5 people, btw, that i really like and enjoy their company but am not particularly "interested" in. Quite honestly, i'm not particularly interested in being interested in anyone. well, all's well that ends well, and i imagine that all this will end well, since most things do tend to work themselves out anyway. I guess it's easy to be relaxed about life when you have the one rock-solid faith that i have: everything happens for a reason, and it's always for the best in the long run. a little humility will do me well. and self-restraint.

i'm so tired. i don't really want to go to work. well, at least it's an easy day, for the most part. i've been commissioned to do some artwork for a friend of mine, and i'm going to start on that today. i'm so flattered that he wants to pay me for one of my pictures. :) there is a deadline on it, though, so i do have to get motoring. ~sigh~ so very tired. i think i'm startign to get sick or something. because i got lots of sleep last night. i should be boucing and filled with energy. ~looks suspiciously at earl grey tea~ is there something you're not telling me, tea?

alas. i must go to work. *yawn*

[Anita Blake]

well well well. another day goes by another day goes by. funny how that happens. nice day, altogether, i think. got asked to a movie :blush: (replied with a soft no) had a nice dinner (mmmmmm multi-grain rice), had a nice convo on msn ;) and watched some buffy, which i blame for my lack of war postage. i swear, i have a war post half-written. but i might need to re-write it. not to sure where it was going. perhaps i need some inspiration. not sure. anyhoo. so, i fully blame my roommate's addiction to watching 2 episodes a night of buffy. this is what not having cable gets me, in addition to having 5 seasons of buffy and 3 of angel on dvd. ~sigh~

so today seemed like a day of many opportunities. i'd like to think i took as many of them as i could. i don't really know. i came to the decision that it doesn't matter if you think you're interested in someone, you should still not say no, just because, why? why say no when you can say yes? it's not like going to a movie is making a life commitment. it could be fun. well, ok, i did say no, but it was the kind of no that meant "ask me again later". i think. whatever. i don't really care, it was just nice to be asked. :blush: and tomorrow i get a free haircut! woo! apparently i'm seeing a movie on thursday with my roommate, and on saturday i'm going to get a free makeover from clinique with a girl from work, after which i think we planned on going out and making men buy us drinks with our newfound clinique-y gorgeousness. all i need to do now is make plans for friday and it will officially be the most social week i've had in a very very very long time. nifty. i feel like i'm making a lot of new friends lately, and that's a really good feeling. it's especially good because for a long time it felt like i had no friends at all. :( at least, not in the city i live in. I actually do have lots of friends, they just all live far away. so it's nice to have some local friends to do stuff with. :)

doo deedle doo. ok. well then. looks like it's stretching time. ~stretch~ :) good night. :love:

[Anita Blake]

the day is long and hard and as spring approaches, the comfort of the night grows shorter and shorter. i feel the shifting of the earth each day, well, observe it more than feel it, i guess you could say. every day that it doesn't rain non-stop, i bear witness to how much earlier the sun rises, to the shifting of it's course across the sky. i see the shadows grow shorter as the days grow longer and the sunrise races faster and faster each day. I see how from day to day, week to week, the sun sets more in the west, less in the south, and rises more in the east, and less in the ... south.

it's one of the things i love about this latitude. Further north too. Sure, there's the extreme cold and the bitterly short summers, but when those summers come... i can't imagine living in a place where the course of the sun is more or less evenly paced throughout the year. Always rising in the east and setting in the west. Here, in the winter, it rises in the south-south-east, and sets in the south-south-west. in the summer, in the north-east and north-west.

the cherry blossoms are blooming. it's beautiful. soon, it will be light no matter how late i come home from work. light until late.

and under it all is a thick current of exhaustion. so very tired. so much to do, so little time to do it. and i wish i could fly.

my dreams are quiet this week. peaceful. my sleep is deep, but there is never enough. how i hunger for it. know how i need it.



sleep.

[Anita Blake]

They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. and i think it's one of those things you hear and say "yeah, that's true" and then think somehow that you are immune, that you are better than that, that you can resist the corruption that comes with power. Maybe you can. I don't know. Apparently, i can't.

it's so curious, you know, to come from one place and be a certain person and to carry that person inside you through all the years as you grow and change and blossom into a completely different type of person. like a caterpillar, kind of, metamorphising into something that resembles a caterpillar in almost no way at all. But the caterpillar is still there, in between the beautiful wings that have sprouted, inside a new shell that it barely recognizes but knows to be itself. the butterfly has power that the caterpillar only once dreamt of.

give me a mirror that travels through time, and show me to me ten years ago. i know the judgements that caterpillar me would have made against butterfly me. they would be harsh and likely justified. The power to draw men like moths to a flame is not bad in itself, though i never would have dreamt i would have that power, but to use it so thouroughly, knowing full well that some of the men involved understand your abuse of this power, and others do not, this is not a nice thing to do. to do it and blame the full moon and the alcohol is simply fooling myself. i feel very bad that i would try to seduce a man i had no intention of seducing, who i know wants me to seduce him, doubly bad since he's a very nice guy, and doesn't deserve some power-tripping wonder-woman to toy with him. i feel like i should apologize, but really, what does one say? "sorry i was dancing with you and kissing you, i didn't mean to." i think that's even more cold. well, no, of course, that's not what i would say. apology for my ludicrous behaviour would be more in line.

and yet. and yet. yet yet yet. i can't help but remember how good it felt to know that there were two men who wanted my attentions at the same time. and to know that all i had to do was go do a different bar and there would be other people, male and female, who would crave me just as much. it's hollow though, shallow, since i don't really want any of them except for that they all want me. and just knowing that makes me feel like a Very Bad Girl indeed. that, i cannot blame on the full moon. that's the darkness inside me. that's the beast i have struggled with for years, the woman i have chained up in my mind and the reason why i have kept her so well locked. letting her out leads to disaster, not for me, but for other people. she's my Monster. And i very much fear i've given her too much control of me. So many easy solutions, you know. Lock her up again. Restrain myself, bind myself, be the one who i respect but who has very little fun. Easy solution, its been applied before to great effect. But she always gets out, and the reason why is, there's a part of me that's not my Monster, that wants to let her run free. Part of me that longs to self-destruct, longs to give in to that darkness just to see what happens. Even though i know what will happen, i have seen it, i have dreamt it, i know it to my core, because i know what i will do, what i am capable of, i still want to let it all out and be free.

the struggle then is to balance my darkness and my light. lock up the darkness and eventually, it will break free and wreak havoc with my soul (as evidenced by the past few weeks). I cannot be singular in nature. I never have been, and i never will be. This must be accepted. The darkness must be accepted and join with the light, swirling together in a yin-yang. only then can i be complete. this balancing act is so difficult. so insane. so very troubling, because one misstep and the whole thing could fall down, crashing like a cartoon piano or anvil.

i frighten myself sometimes. i continually find myself capable of more and more terrible things. I hope my capacity for good things is increasing, but it's harder to judge that than the bad. how bright is bright? darkness is simply an incremental lack of light, but once the light is there, it's hard to judge how bright it is when it's shining in your eyes.

good god i'm hungover.




edit: maybe i'm being too hard on myself. i wasn't really that bad. i should apologize to the one guy for abusing his lust for me and then bailing at the end of the night without saying bye, but that's not really so Bad, is it? i don't know anymore. knee-jerk reactions. feeling very Bad, but probably not for any real cause. wish i'd had more than a couple hours of sleep though. that would probably make it all better. alas, it was not meant to be. i'm going out again tonight. with girls this time. excellent chaperones. well, kind of. in that i'm not likely to misbehave too badly when they're around. i really do need a chaperone. should not be allowed out alone. tsk tsk.

[Anita Blake]

sigh. it seems like that's about all i can really do. sigh at my own follies and iniquities. i want to be a better person, and it tears me up that i have to work so hard at it.

i know what is happening here. i do. others may not, but i see it for what it is. going back, reverting, being who i used to be. which is fine, in a way. except that i kind of forgot that who i used to be was filled with self-loathing and self-destructive desires. i do't want to self destruct. i don't want to hate myself. and yet i keep doing things that make me want to. it's quite senseless, really, and i insist that i cease and desist.

the thing is, i have a certain power, inner strength. but if i just sit by and ignore my strength, i might as well be weaker than most kittens (who, by the way, can be pretty vicious and strong-willed). it's easy to forget what you want when other people are filling your head with what they want. tooo easy by far to set aside my desires and needs for those of someone else. anyone else, really. but i think i'm learning, and this is the key. learning that someone lusting ater you isn't always flattering. that it doesn't have to be my problem to take care of. we all want to be wanted, but i guess it comes to the point where you have to realize that being wanted is all very well and fine, but just because someone wants you doesn't mean that you have to want them back, or will. i feel like a bad person, though, when i don't return affection that is shown to me, but i am trying to learn (because i know intellectually, of course) that you can't please everyone. i'm going to start by trying to please myself first, and then worry about other people. i mean, i've always known that, that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. it's one thing to know that and another altogether to know that. i still don't think i know it, but i'm figuring it out, little by little, i think. i hope.

the other thing i think i might be figuring out it honesty. i mean, i say that i want it from others, but sometimes i'm not very honest. i'm kind. if someone says something then i tend to try to see things their way rather than just seeing it my way. i don't know if i actually have a "way". i tend to agree with people a lot, maybe because i need their approval, whatever, but also because i try to understand where they are coming from. but i think there are certain times that i just have to come right out and say what i'm thinking, even if the person i am talking to won't like what they have to hear. and of course by all this i am talking mainly about men. stupid men. maybe i should start dating the lesbian who likes me. just to get away from men for a while. get out of their headspace. i am far too sensitive and intuitive to be around men. i know what they are thinking, and it infects my thoughts. psychic interference and all.

god, what a mess. this happens to me in the spring, i think. it's insane. no one should be this dual-natured. you can't be extroverted and introverted. it simply doesn't work. spend too much time analyzing the things you do. bad deal, that. don't suggest it. i wish i could just live and enjoy life and not analyze the hell out it, seeking out hidden, deep-rooted-motivations for my every move. it makes me feel guilty and bad for a lot of things that i think maybe i shouldn't feel bad about.

~sigh~ i wish i was the wind.

[Anita Blake]

you know, sometimes i just sit back and take a look at my life, pretending to be a total stranger who has no idea what's going on in my head, and i have to say, that from afar (hell, even from inside) my life is truly bizarre. things happen strangely to me. Well, not strange, typically. My life is like a typical movie. it's rather bizarre, because, well, i kind of thought that movies weren't real. but i begin to think now that they are. which i guess is good since i want to make movies and it's better for me to believe in them as something worth watching. blah blah blah.


i had the strangest dream last night. Does anyone else ever have the dream where you know it's a dream and you wake up and go "wow, what a weird dream" and then go on to tell other people about your weird dream, and then something from your dream comes true and you go "OMG! my dream is coming real!" or "OMG! this is just like that dream i had!" only to find out that in fact, you are still dreaming? That happened to me last night. It was most curious, because i dreamt that i woke up and this figure.... materialized next to my bed. It was like the Queen of Spades, but black, and my black, i mean, comprised mainly of night. She didn't "materialize" though so much as she seemed to appear stroke by stroke, like a painting in high speed. She seemed very menacing, but then i realized it was just a painting, which was still pretty weird because it just appeared next to m y bed and seemed to be somewhat alive. Then i realized that this was all too weird and therefore must be a dream, and rolled over and went back to sleep. Then i had a dream where the strange figure appeared again, i think she was vaguely menacing, but i don't think she meant any harm. it's just hard to not be menacing when you are a dark portrait woman that looks like a nasty inverted queen of spades. It kind of freaked me out that she was back again, because, hey, that's that thing from my dream! but it was just a painting, like when it appeared again, it was an actual painting. I touched it, and it was just a painting. but i suspect that she was alive. it was most curious. anyhoo. that was my dream. :)

[Anita Blake]

i dreamt again last night. strange dreams. i was vacationing with my family and we were swimming, out to an island, mostly a sand dune, really, but the tide was coming in, and the island would soon be under water and we had to swim back, against the current. But it wasn't really hard to swim back, and there were hundreds of other people, which made it harder than the actual water.

i think i was part of the government too, like, i was ruling the world, but it wasn't such a big deal. that was just the way it was. but i can't... quite... remember... now. awake only an hour and already the dream has faded to so much mist. i don't understand, really.

so it's day. and we can see the sun in our window now in the morning. perhaps that means that the sunset is also moving back into our view. the mountains are beautiful, and the cherry blossoms too.

my brother is coming to visit me in a couple days. wow. it's wednesday already. amazing how the week flies by. tomorrow will be thursday and then friday and then before i know it it will be monday once again. and i still have not even looked for a secondary, weekend job. ~smacks self silly~ well, i guess i should get ready for work. i am feeling rather self-conscious because of the flaming orange beacon on top of my head. i think i will go back to get it fixed. i mean, i know it will fade, but it's too orange of a red for my liking. i would prefer a more crimson red. and a shade darker. it's just highlights, so i guess it's not a huge big deal, but still. it will only cost a few more dollars to fix. i feel bad though that i didn't leave a tip for the hairdresser. i'm never sure if you shoudl leave a tip for students or not. probably. well, i'll go back next week when i actually have money and leave him a bigger tip. he really is sweet. i think he's gay, but he's cute as a button, so i like him. unlike the slightly overweight, somewhat balding young asian hairdresser that was there who had the WORST hair ever ... a thinning, faux-hawk-mullet. EW! it's like, short on top, and smooshed into the middle to make a pointy fake mohawk, but longish and stringy in the back. it's like, the ultra-gay hairdresser haircut. honestly, it looked horrible. and he was running... i mean... prancing around like an idiot. thank god he wasn't doing my hair. i wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face. also, i distrust hairdressers that display a blatant disregard for attractive hairstyles. Now, i don't mind gay people, but i DO mind idiots, and they come in all sexual preferences. :dozey:

anyway, what was i saying about getting ready for work? oh yeah. i should. damn. i guess i need to do some photocopying once i get to work too. pfft. i'd rather stay home and cuddle with my kitten. :love: but alas.... work beckons. blah.

[Anita Blake]

Well, as predicted in my last post, today is, in fact, thursday. I feel therefore that i must be a prohpet of some sort. No no, please, don't bow down to me. Your kind offerings of cash and worldly possessions will suffice. I'm not sure how, but somehow i will make it through.

i washed my hair today. which, in the normal course of events isn't really an event large enough to speack of. but as this is the first time i have washed it since getting my red-orange highlights, it was special. special in the way that all my shower water rinsed away orange and my towel now also has oraage highlights :dozey: . yesterday was weird. everyone at work was like "oh, new hair, wow, i really like it." which, i don't know, i mean, it was cool the first 10 times, but after that i began to suspect that everyone was saying that out of pity. i no longer trust anyone. i've seen too many people compliment a bad hairstyle to someone's face and then later reveal that they liked it better the other way that i kind of really hate getting compliments when i try something new. like when i chopped it all off and bleached it blonde. people were like "oh wow! that's really cool!" but then when i dyed it back, they told me that they thought the blonde was a little much. which i knew to begin with. i do wish people wouldn't try to be so nice all the time. of course, if they didn't, i'd probably wish they would, as i'd probably be crying all the time and having fits that everyone was critisizing me. :rolleyes: such a conundrum. well, i'm going to get the colour changed to something slightly less orange next week. i mean, it's red, it's definitely red, but it's an orangey red, as opposed to say a purpley red. ~sigh~ the fact that i've devoted this much time, energy, and thought into the shade of my highlights disturbs me.

man. my dreams are kicking into high gear again. nothing spectacularly interesting, just kind of intense. i wake up kind of confused, because i don't know at first what's real and what was dream. it's kind of neat to have the line blurred, but also kind of weird and exhausting. but, i can see that thsi is one of those days, or perhaps weeks, where i will be satisfied with nothing, so meh, so be it. yesterday i was kind of complaining about all the male attention i have been getting. but if i didn't have it. i'd be complaining about the lack of it. so it's quite obvious that there's no pleasing this little cookie. nope. mad when nice boys like me, mad when bad boys like me. mad when many boys like me, mad when no boys like me. you know that song, by garbage? actually, two songs. they both describe me perfectly in the titles. "Stupid Girl" is one, and "I'm Only Happy When It Rains" is another. i used to know a DJ and i begged and begged and begged him for months to play me Stupid Girl at the bar, and when he did, it was a glorious shining moment for me. i miss him. he was a good guy. Well, ok, he cheated on me and broke my heart, but for all that, i can forgive him and be friends. maybe because i only ever talk to him about once or twice a year now. lol. i saw our future though, even when we were together, and so far, i think i was right. i can't wait 'till we're old and he's respectable, with a wife and kids. i'll go for drinks with him and catch up and find out we have nothing in common but that i still think he's pretty alright, and we'll hug and go home back to our respective lives just a little bit more enriched by knowing that the other is in the world.

i like that from my window, the mountains seem bigger than the high-rise buildings. it's kind of comforting. you know, we see the city as this HUGE place, with HUGE buildings that seems to sprawl on FOREVER, but in context with the size of the planet, and everything outisde the planet, the city is quite tiny, it's like an anthill, and we are like ants, living in our little caves and burrows and whatever it is that ants live in. i mean, i know they look like tiny tunnels to us, but i bet to them, they're giant cavernous caves. i bet the world is both really small and inconcievably huge to an ant. we all have our spaces, i guess. small and large. what a wacky place this world is. totally beyond comprehension. anyway, i guess i should get ready for work. i've got to stop writing in here in the morning. it's always more rambly and slightly incoherent when i write at night. ;)

i love you guys. have a happy thursday. :)

[Anita Blake]

Just because something is stupid, or doesn't make sense, doesn't mean it's not true.





for example. me. the more someone does something for me, the less happy i will be. now, logically, you'd think a person would be happy if someone did their work for them. nope. wrong. i'd be more likely to try to do more of your work. just to one-up you. :rolleyes: stupid, but true. ok, that sounds really lame, but in my head it made sense. i still hold to the first point: just because it's dumb, doesn't mean it's not true. think about that.

[Anita Blake]

so, yeah, i think i'm psychic. I've said it before, and i'll say it again. I am psychic, but in the most useless ways imaginable. I mean, it's not like i know i'm being psychic. little things you know. when i talk to people, i usually either know exactly what they mean, or i will say what they are thinking. My roommate told me i do that a lot to him he says we'll be talking and it's weird because i'll say exactly what he's thinking. and so many times my co-worker and i wear the same clothes (today, red shirt, dark cardigan, blue jeans, black socks).

I wish i could control it. I wish i knew when i was doing it. just sensitive i guess. it's kinda neat. i hold fast to my theory of psychic interference. i think it's one of the reasons i like to be alone, because i really don't have any sense of self when i'm around others. i become like an amalgamation of those around me, occasionally consciously, usually subconsciously. it might be the reason i suspect i will die old and alone. I just can't handle being around other people too much. i feel too much like i'm becoming them. it's not necesaarily a bad thing, but it's just kind of curious to hit 25 and realize that you have no idea of who you really are and what you like and dislike outside of what other people have told you. i mean, it's not quite that extreme, but i do become more easily muddled when i'm around other people. and so i build up walls and people either really like me (because i am open to them) or really think i'm a cold, distanced, snobby bitch, because i am unwilling to open myself any further. freaky. there's really only so much that a person can do. maybe i'm crazy. maybe i don't know what i'm talking about. this is coming out all wrong, but i'm going to post it anyway because, well, how to learn if not from our mistakes?

what am i trying to learn? well, how to express myself through the imperfect medium of words, or course. foiled again by language. that's always the way, though. in your head it all makes so much sense but when you put it into solid words, so much of what you thought and felt comes out so wrong. it's a challenge. communication. it doesn't help either that thought moves at the speed of electricity, while tongues and fingers can only move at the speed of muscle sinew and bone. too much going on in the brain before it can even reach the slow fingers. this is something i know i've talked about before, but it is a constant source of frustration. can you imagine having a computer hooked up to you mind and writing out every thought you had in a single second? volumes could be written in mere moments. of course, then you'd need to go through and organize all those thought, because i can imagine that they'd come out somewhat scrambled. but how neat would that be? are they working on that? and if not, why not? then again, i guess we don't really need computers to read our minds. it will be the war against the machines all over again. judgement day. that was one of the most influential movies on my mind, you know. T2. That, and the stephen king miniseries of The Stand. those movies blew my mind and reshaped me entirely. of course, i think i was deeply affected the first time i heard about the end of the world, back in elementary school, when this skater kid told me that it was prophecied that the world would end on June 28, 1999. I was convinced. for years. terrified and convinced that the world would end in my lifetime. i was so sad that i'd never see the future. that there was no future. i guess it kind of made me not want to make any long term plans, which might possibly be coming back to haunt me nowadays, with my lackadaisical attitude towards life. i don't know how to make long term goals. i never really ever thought i'd have any need to.

well, that was a divergence. so be it. have a happy friday and a good weekend and all that nice stuff. maybe i'll ponder the universe some more.

[Anita Blake]

any day now, any day, someone's going to come and marley & marley me, show me the errors of my ways. Show me the seedy underbelly of this world which i enjoy so much, show me all the terrible things that go on while i live oblivious to it all and enjoy my life thouroughly. Any fucking day now. Ghosts of christmas presents come back to haunt me.

And if i've learned anything from watching television it's that if i don't repent and stop my evil, oblivious ways, then i will surely be the saddest human of all time. If i continue to live my merry existance, filled with joy i don't necessarily deserve but have been given nonetheless, then surely I am the epitome of Wrong.

But what about this: what if i already know the story, know that the world is full of crap i can't control, that people everywhere who deserve happiness don't have it, and i do because i happen to have been born that way, what if i know all that and i do choose to simply continue, choose to not regret a moment of it, choose to alter nothing of my past, choose to continue along as i have been, ignoring the dire warnings of futures yet to come? can we not change our destiny? do we have to regret the past? now, i'm mostly rambling, and i have to say that it's only now that logic catches up with me that i see all kinds of flaw in this, but whatever. i have only a passing flirtation with logic anyway. we're not really meant to be, if you know what i mean, logic and I. Ours is a wedding doomed to failure.

anyway, the point of all this ranting and railing is that i am happy. i love life. i love my life. And i feel like a jerk for having such a wonderful life, but i wouldn't change a thing, i mean, aside from the fact that change is inevitable, but you know what i mean. Yeah, things get me down, and work is a bummer sometimes, and there's all that blah stuff, but then, you know, i just stop and look at the flowers and watch the seagulls attack tourists for food :D and watch the ocean trickle it's way to the harbour, and feel the sun on my face and realize that i am living a fantastic dream. I am living the life i always dreamt i would, and i have no idea what i did to deserve this fate, and i'm sure that the Karmic bankers out there will realize that my account has a surplus and do something radical to fix things, and when that day comes, i'll know that it had to happen, that life can't be like this forever. It's bittersweet, knowing that i'm having some of the best days of my life, and they'll be gone all too fast. But i don't even think that's it. It's not the specifics really that make it great, but the broadstrokes, the where and the when etc. i feel very alive, and it makes me deleriously happy, but also somewhat afraid. afraid of what's to come. must the fear is a tiny part of it, really, so tiny compared to how ... nifty ... things are. i feel like .. an artist. or something. i can't explain. i wish i could, because then maybe i could understand it better. but alas. now i sleep.

[Anita Blake]

OK. So. Alright. I've been reading Michael Moore's Dude Where's My Country (excellent book, highly reccomended). And as you may or may not know, it's filled with interesting facts and questions and rhetoric concerning GWB, 9/11, and the Iraq War pt.2, as well as the War on a Noun (aka, terrorism). OK, so it's got me a little riled up. Seriously, americans out there, do what you can do vote this maniac out. he's doing nothing good for you. anyhoo.

There's a chapter in this book written by God, or rather, Michael Moore poorly impoersonating God. Whatever. Got me kinda thinking. As it was the alst thing i read before i fell asleep last night. There's a part where God basically tells GWB to stop using his name on everything. And yeah, i completely agree. See, 'cause here's the thing:

Big tragedy happens. Terrorists = Evil. Right. I'm on the same page so far. Flying planes into buildings and killing civilians is Wrong. Those who committed this horrible crime must be brought to justice. Still on same page. yes, justice must be served. So, Ok, the "War on terrorism" might have been a little hasty and ill-named, and generally, War is also Not Good. But i get it. I do. Get Osama. sure.

Well, GWB couldn't quite make that happen. So what's next? Well, clearly God doesn't like Weapons of Mass Dewstruction, and since Saddam Hussein is a Very Bad Man, he just might have them. God wants them struck down! Even though he's not doing anything particularly Bad or Out of the Ordinary at the moment. No matter. God Has Spoken. GWB is his Chosen One. um. excuse me?

The thing is, it bothers me that GWB makes all these loud and proud claims to Christianity, when he hasn't got the slightest clue. Didn't his very own Lord and Saviour instruct him to "turn the other cheek"? and to "love your enemy"? Sorry, i didn't hear Jesus say anything about smiting the hell out of innocent bystanders just because someone else did that to you. I believe he quite firmly said NOT to smite the hell out of innocent people.

And, OK. I have previously stated my stance on the dogma of the Christian Church. I'm not a christian. And i understand that there are millions if not billions of other people out there who are Not Christian. They might look at this "turn the other cheek" stuff as utter rubbish. Good for you. Whatever. Now, for some people, some idealogies just don't cut it. they don't make sense, and that's OK. if you'd rather fight back with might than quietly take it in the nutsack, then that's alright. Not terribly noble, but sometimes reality kicks in and you realize you have to defend yourself or they will never stop kicking you in the nuts. That's Fine. If you'd rather sell water to a starving man when you have enough to share freely, that's your pergoative. Again, not terribly noble, but i guess you have a strong case of reality. Cool.

But.

But.

But don't you DARE say that you do it in the name of something that stands for the exact opposite of your crass realism. Don't you DARE say you do it in the name of Christ, in God, in the Sanctity of Human Life. Hey, if you're Not A Christian, that's fine, just don't say you are. Own up to the fact that you worship in the Church of Cold Hard Cash. It's not the most respectable church, sure, but at least admitting that is better than being a lying hypocrite who gives Christianity a bad name around the world, better than murdering thousands of innocent civilians and putting the christian-brand God stamp all over the approval process to make yourself feel better.

GWB is a phony, a fake, a liar, a deciever, and it makes me furious that someone like him could so easily gain power in a world where we have seen his kind before and fought wars to remove them from power. in a way, i almost wish i were american so that i could more easily convince my fellow americans that his government is it's own Axis of Evil. At the same time i'm glad that (for now) his policies of terrorizing and spying on his own citizens has not shifted across the border.

/end rant (for now)

[Anita Blake]

some music, it's just. no words.

the best songs, i think, are the ones which sound like sex. now, don't take that the wrong way. By 'sound like sex', i mean, they have a rhythm, a build to them, and they have a strong climactic point, after which they trail off into the calm oblivion of afterglow. I guess movies are scripted the same way, perhaps that's why we get off on the modern film so much, with it's 5 act structure, it's intro and buildup and conflict and climax and resolution.

but back to the music. some songs, they tear into me in such a familiar way. And it rips my guts out and leaves me bleeding and crying for more. but you can't just listen to the climax, you know, it's just not the same unless you have the whole song. i don't know if that's a metaphor for something, but i'm seeing crazy parallells and metaphors all over the place.

it makes me feel lie i could step outside my window, reach onto the nearest cloud, awalk my way across the harbour, looking down all the while at the sea and the city lights and the buildings and the cars and the people, and it would all be a tiny, gigantic model of a perfect world. it would all be from such a calm, peaceful distance that nothing would ever, nothing could ever, seem amiss in the world. it would be too tiny for evil to take over it. and on my cloud-steps, i would sit down and stare for a while at the sun, contemplating it's mysteries before diving off the cloud, into the ocean, to swim with the fishes. to see the world underwater, through filtered rays of sunlight.

on second thought, the water around here isn't so great. i'll jump off a cloud over the south pacific.

anyway, the music fills me with spring flowers and a meadow breeze blwoing wisps of my hair into the tall grasses. so sharp and vivid and clear, so painful and beautiful, a sunny day gone wrong, jilted lovers, storm clouds rising, a denial, a refusal, a verbal slap to the face. and then the sure knowledge that nothing will ever be the same again, how sweet the memories will be, how bitter, how the world has grown hollow. going over the scene again, how could it have been better, but we were doomed all along, she was doomed, and casually put down, casually set aside, heart broken and torn, left with the tattered shreds of her dignity to witness her failures over and over and over again, until the final collaspse and the sweet claiming of sleep, where only the faintest dreams will be there to remind of the horror that waits for her to waken from her slumber.
and a dream of happier days.



-from listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangements of Fantasia on Greensleeves and Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis by the Vienna State Orchestra, 1959. :love:

[Anita Blake]

i just like the word insipid. i have ever since i saw Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. ahh, they ways in which modern youth has their vocabulary enhanced. I'd also like to say that music has enhanced my vocabulary as well, teaching me such words as "equilibrium" and the meaning of "halcyon days". go music! woo!

the other thing i was thinking about as i clicked on all the multiple links to get into the reply section of this thread was how much i like typing. i juts like th way my fingers kind of fly across the keyboard and i barely have to look that much but my fingers know the way. it's kind of like letting my mind go to sleep and letting my fingers do the walking. except without the yellow pages.

my throat is in a strange world of hurt. i thought it was feeling better yesterday, but that was before i attempted to sleep. it's amazing how muhc you can cough in the middle of the night and not actually wake up from your bizarre dreams, but have them only milding interrupted, and yet at the same time be somewhat aware of the fact that your body is doubling over and your throat siezing up as you prepare to cough in your sleep. those little moments of semi-consciousness, when you are dreaming, in fact, not just "dreaming" but conscioulsy dreaming, controlling the universe, as it were, semi-aware that it is a dream, and semi-aware that your body is lying in a bed and that you are asleep, semi-aware that every movement of your body is affecting the outcome of your dream, and semi-aware that your mind rejecting the dream is what's forcing your body to thrash about, and yet not totally aware of any of these things, but letting all these semi-awarenesses into your conscious and blending them all together into one truth that your conscious dream-mind is fully aware of, except that your conscious dream-mind is but a tiny part of the whole.

so you see how that can kind of mess with someone when they're sleeping. it's a wonder i havent' been admitted into a psych ward yet. is this normal, i wonder? do other people dream like that? aware but unaware that they are aware? it's mind boggling, truly. i've had a few nights like this in the past couple weeks, and it's disorienting to say the least. i think it might be the result of having too much sleep, or too much energy while i sleep. i will strive to tire myself out more today, then, i guess. yesterday was soooooooooo boring. i'd go to work today even if i felt worse. well, also, i had nothing to do at work yesterday, but at least i would have been out of the house. yowza.

i've been making some electronic music. perhaps when i get a song actually finished and sounding good, i will post it up. that might take some time. i'm currently just learning this software, but i think i'm getting how the software works, the hard part is actually making a composition. i always wanted to be a musician, but it turns out i'm muhc better at playing with computers. now i can combine those two loves! woo!

~babbling~

ok, time to get off my cute little bottom and get this ass to work. ta ta for now!

[Anita Blake]

ok. so, see, it's like this. growing up, i was the girl that guys made fun of. i was NOT the girl that they all wanted to date, or if i was, they did a damn good job of hiding that fact from me. So, yeah, some weird self-esteem issues, i guess. I mean, i know i'm attractive and all, but ultimately, i'm not the girl who goes out and does all the crazy stuff.

until now.

somehow i have gone into the world of having multiple dates. i'm like sex in the city but without the sex. :eek: i don't understand it. i mean, it's not like, bad, but it's ... weird. abnormal. not of the natural. simply absurd.

[Anita Blake]

dreaming floating flying seeing being.
feeling.

being sick. hate it. fuzzy-headed and unclear. unable to concentrate. unable to do my job properly. lack of perspective.

life is odd. very odd. mainly because of it's very normalcy is it so direly strange.

thinking lots about waste lately. how our society thrives on waste that it then tries to hide. i mean, if people don't waste things, then there's no reason to produce so many of those things, and if you can't produce all those things, then all those people will be out of work and the system will fail. So do your part. throw something disposable out. hell, take 2 and throw both them out. don't even use them once, because after all, the less use you get out of it, the more of it you will need, the more can be made. these sacrifices of waste are difficult to make, yes, i know, but it really must be done for the good of society. environmentalists are the enemy. they promote a strange thing called responsibility, when clearly, they have no idea of what responsible is. Responsible is ensuring that everyone has enough work to allow them to buy all the things that they can then throw out. Damn tree huggers make me sick. thinking about the future. ain't gonna be no future if you don't shut up and do your part for society. start wasting, we don't have all day to save the economy.

i hate our society. i mean. no. i enjoy it, but that's not the point. i feel that deep down something went fantastically wrong and i have a hard time acccepting how easily i accept the world ass it is and not as it should be. I know, people all the time they say "accept the world as it is, not as it should be," and i do, and it's supposed to be good, but i just honestly think it shoudl be so much better and the ... stupidity of some people makes me want to scream with rage and frustration that these are the people that are making things worse for themselves and others and are smiling blindly and happily as they do it, whistling a jaunty tune.

we need a revolution.

i've been thinking this for a while, that there hasn't really been a good revolution in a few hundred years. i mean, how old are most developed countries constitutions? i think it's time to scrap them altogether, write up a new constitution, have a regime change. because something is not working, and i can feel it, it will be the end of us. i feel that our time is at an end. this society is coming to a halt.

then again, i guess every society has been in a state of evolution since the dawn of time. one things ends and another begins, using the shattered pieces of that which was left behind. it's not the end of the world, merely a generation. A social generation. but all these freedoms. i hate to say it, because i love them and crave them and live them to the fullest, but i think they may be hurting us. we need to be free, but we need rules too. i just think that right now, we're transitioning between the old rules and the new rules, and that's what's causing all this insanity. no one really knows what to do. we're so lost. what we once thought was god's way has turned sour with knowledge of the corruption and ultimate humanity of the clergy. the priests sought power beyond their grasp and have had that power nearly pulled from it. the new priests of science show an early inclination toward corruption and uncertainty. they cannot lead us. so who? who shall write the new rules? what will rule their passions? what discipline will be imposed upon a willing humanity next? will it be long-lasting like the last? what will the new era bring? peace? techology? return to the earth??? all these things combined?

such things are not for me to know, only to ponder, to sigh wistfully over as no one else sees them. i say these things, and i hear responses from people who have only heard part of what i say and assume i mean it on some smaller scale than i do. i speak on a scale of hundreds of years. generations. what is one small lifetime? what is this small lifetime?

and i sigh.

and i would push the hair our of your eyes and kiss your face and look you in the eye and give you my advice. and always shall my love for you be on my breath, even unto my last lonely sigh.

[Anita Blake]

strange. usually when i get sick, i'm sick for a day and then progressively start to feel better. nope. not this time. progressively feeling worse and worse every day this week. so tonight, even though i made plans to go out and boogie my little butt off, i have decided instead to turn off my phone and hide from the world. try to get some freaking sleep. i slept for 3 hours this afternoon and i still feel like i haven't slept in ages. my throat is all tight and constricted and i just generally feel terrible. that said, i haven't exactly done much to try to make myself feel better this week. going out, having fun, a few drinks, a little smoking (oh yes, that will help, smoke some pot :rolleyes: )

however, i would like to say that my day today was kinda cool. ok, well, i felt like ass all day. but it was kinda cool. i went to work (a little late, which my co-worker/boss told me to do hehe) and we had nothing to do, so i worked on my mural pictures, and was pretty much completely out of it, i mean, i was out and drinking last night, but only a little and i wasn't home too late, but i felt like i'd had about 2 hours sleep. i still kinda feel that way. couldn't do much work or concentrate, so we decided to go for "lunch" around 1 (which actually is out lunch time) but i was planning on just going home anyway since i'm sick and way too useless today. So we went and got some lunch and sat down by the harbour on this nice little plaza.

One of the things i love the most about being in Vancouver is that it is inordinately easy to feel a sense of pride in the fact that, hey, i live in Vancouver. I can't explain it. It's just such a beautiful city. I can't even imagine many other places where two semi-professional women can go for a long lunch on a friday afternoon, sitting at a plaza on the harbour, watching an eagle soar over the harbour with a coterie of seagulls chasing/following with the mountains as a backdrop, smoke a joint in full view of anyone who cares to watch, and have that just be O.K. It's comparable i guess to having a 3-martini lunch. maybe it just blows my mind that that's my life. kinda nifty. the seagulls of this city, however, are absolutely fearless. if you put food on your feet, they will come and eat it off your show, i kid you not. i've done it. they're so big, and smart too. if you look at them for a long time, they assume that its because you are one of those folks who for some reason likes to feed seagulls. It's hard not to, actually. they kind of intimidate you into it. it will cock it's head and look at you, and come closer, as if to say "it's alright. you'll like feeding me. don't worry. i'll like your food," oh-so-encouragingly, being sure to just coincedentally show you their huge sharp beaks in the process. i know it's wrong, but if i have food it's almost impossible to resist. i try not to feed them anything too bad. But the highlight was definitely the eagle. I saw it first, far over the harbour, easily twice the size of any other bird flying around out there. And gradually it's cirles came closer and closer to us, until we could see it really quite well. So breathtaking, the way it just owned the sky. All these other birds circling it, sometimes getting the balls to feign an attack, they were like peasants, and the eagle was the king. So commanding. I saw it beat it's wings maybe three or four times in the near hour we were watching it. So ... majestic. It was really cloudy, so there were dark grey clouds ahead of us, obscuring the mountains, but behind us was a break in the clouds, and the sun was shining down, practically putting a spotlight on the eagle as it soared on the currents. it's head and tail shining a pure, blinding white, it's wings almost black. very cool. i thought about the life of a bird. getting to soar along the currents, having such utter control over the way you move. *sigh* i'm so envious of birds. but i think they know how lucky they are. i think they don't mind all the crappy things that go with being a bird so much because, man, does being able to fly ever rule. (with the exception of non-flying birds. non-flying birds probably want to be killed to be put out of their non-flying misery. That's why the chicken crossed the road, undoubtedly. Suicide attempt. sad.)

anyway, all that is to say that eagles f*cking rule. it warms my heart to see a natural predator, makes me feel that the world will be alright. can't explain it. maybe because they seem so rare, predators. hide from civilization, mostly. i have no fear of predatory animals, only an awesome respect.

so that was my day. sick, eagles, sleeping, sick. it was all highs and lows. :)

[Anita Blake]

coolness. i just went to a peace rally that was happening across the street from my apartment building, 25,000 people. it was pretty cool. DOA played, and Noam Chomsky spoke :eek: :eek: :D we were right up near the front of the stage, it was super cool. and over it all, the bald eagle flew around, which to me just makes things even cooler.

also, i bought a large package of beef jerky today. very good, delicious beef jerky. :love:

that's all for now. must nap. :)

[Anita Blake]

just thinking about how much film editing skills come not from how to use a software or splice film together, but in recognizing the natural editing that goes on in regular life, how each of us is contantly editing down thousands of thoughts and images into one cohesive thought, and how those edit choices are intrinsic. storytelling, in short. just that all of life is editing. every thought you have is edited into words from vague thoughts and shapes.

[Anita Blake]

life. and lives. coherence and binding thoughts that bring us together and define us. People like (similar to) us. like seeks like even though opposites attract. and through it all a burning undercurrent of "there are no people like me". hard to fit in when you don't know what "type" of person you are. hard to find people like you when you don't think that there is anyone like you. Oh sure, there are some who share some traits, but it's remarkably difficult to find a person who shares a lot of the same traits. People who like the music i like typically don't like a lot of the other stuff i like too. does it make me special, unique? probably not. i imagine all people have a hard time finding someone with their particular set of interests. maybe some people don't even bother trying. maybe it's not worth trying.

what does it all mean anyway, someone like me. it's a simile. could have a double meaning. someone who is similar to me or maybe a flagrant wish forsomeone who enjoys me. Why do we seem to think that one will mean the other? i've met people with several of my interests and traits, or rather, some, and found that i didn't like them much. they shared some traits, sure, but not, it seems, the ones that count. my closest friends have almost nothing in common with me other than a mutual respect and enjoyment of eachothers company. so is it all a wild goose chase? find this mythical "my type of person"? when it all comes down is it even relevant? does it matter?

or will that person be someone you can share anything with? the person who will understand more than anyone else the light in your eyes when you speak of something dull and boring to the masses, but which interests you no end? is that true friendship? a soul-mate? i speak in terms of romantic interest, but more so in terms of friendship, because that is ultimately what we crave, i think. that is what a soul-mate is. a life-long friend you can love completely who can love you back completely. your "type" of person. a person like you.

hmm. typo person and you've got prson. add a letter and you've got prison. take that as you will. do we all live in a people prison, contained and chained by those we choose to associate with? yes, i suppose we do in a way. it's a matter of whether you choose a gilded cage with open doors or a dark dank cell. what kind of prison are you?

two nights in a row of full sleep. though i had an odd dream last night. i dreamt that my little brother, well, it was my brother in my dream, but it might have supposed to have been my sister, still very young, maybe 4, was working for disney. He'd have "games to play" at "work". He liked it there, but he lived in a crib and looked out through the slats all day. I was visiting and when 'they' found out, they gave him the day off. he was kind of upset because he was a super-genius kid and actuallyl enjoyed his work and was better at it then most of the kids there. they were careful to make sure that they called what he was doing all day "playing" but he kept calling it work, saying he had to go to work. He coloured stuff and tought of games to play, and when his ideas weren't good enough they'd yell at him and call him stupid. Same with all the kids. I wrote him a sign to put over his crib/living area that said he was special and that i loved him. They took it down and replaced it with one that said he was a stupid loser. I knew that what they were doing was wrong, and i was trying to figure out a way to get him out of there, lest he grow up a twisted hateful man, but that was pretty much when i woke up. I think the meaning of the dream was fairly clear. In this corporate world, the family MUST take steps to ensure that their children know they are loved and special, we have to protect our kids from being used as guinea pigs and test-markets and becoming mindless worker-drones who colour inside the lines and get berated for not toeing the line. We have to give them love, or else they will only recieve hate. it was a strange dream, in that it pretty much made perfect sense, and had what i think was a pretty deep meaning. my dreams aren't usually like that.

so there you have it. an early-morning piece of my mind. before too much daylight and human association tears it all away, fluttering into a thousand pieces that look curiously like a screaming version of me. if i could retain the same sense of ... stillness ... that i feel when i wake up throughout the whole day, i shudder to think at what i might accomplish. Sadly, we all have to fully wake up sometime, and when that time comes, well, welcome to humanity. not much work-around on that one. too bad.

[Anita Blake]

ch. my love if ever we can meet i would say the words ~chhshshs~ you've never heard the things in my mind, the things i need to ~chcshshshshss~ some things are too strange by far to hold in the palm of your hand, too odd to wish for, to poignant to dream about ~chchshshshshhh~ sever the ties, sever the heart that binds the soul to the mind ~chcshshshshshhh~ eyes that light up in the night at the thought of dark mysteries, a smile that shows too much tooth to be entirely healthy ~chhshshshshh~ i long for this, i long for that, i long for above all things you, if only i knew who you were ~chcchshshhhhh~ leave me in my solitude for surely this peace must mean soemthing, surely this aching will bear some fruit ~chchshshsh~ you never understood me, you never will understand me, and i am so alone ~chsshshshshhh~ tied tighter than the bonds of marriage, i am bound to these my closest friends, and we will never be alone, for we will always have eachother, even in our absense will our memories stnad strong ~chssshshs~ hindsight is never 20/20, that's the biggest lie they ever tried to pass off as the truth, let me tell you that ~chchshshs~ time passes and the numbers change and nothing else does. it all just stays horribly the same ~chshshshsshh~ i love you ~chshshshsh~ do your worst, tell me the worst things about you, tell me you'll never love me, tell me it's all just a game because i'd rather accept the worst than have hope and faith in something that's not real ~chsshshshshh~ if i could lie there in your arms, and watch the sky and feel the wind and the earth beneath us, if i could be still and gaze at you and not have to talk at all then maybe i could ~chchshshshhhh~ some things best left unsaid, some things left best un ~chchshshsh~ as though i'm being spied on ... this very minute! ~chsshshshssh~ step away from the window, i'm here, go back to sleep ~chshshshs~ and the strangest things that i find comforting ~chshshshshsh~

~chshshshshshshsssssshhhhh~


~chchshshshhhhhhh
hhhhhhshchchchhchhh
shshshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh~

[Anita Blake]

Filmmakers, camera tricks, illusionists. look over here and while you're doing that, i'll be over here making you believe the lies i tell you. the question therefore must be, is it a noble aim to become a master accomplished teller of Lies? well, fuck nobility. some things are just meant to be.

and for one shining moment, i slipped up and thought that was me. turns out it wasn't. so maybe i'm not evil after all.

i'm supposed to Be Somewhere. I Made Plans. but there you have it. here i am, not there, not doing that drinking thing, but more doing that sitting at home alone thing. which may be more me than i had hoped. whatever. the point is, i do feel bad. people leaving the country, might never see them again, and i can't even muster up the energy to put on clean clothes that i just washed, leave the apartment, walk 25 minutes to go to a bar to drink drinks i can't afford and hang out with people i genuinely like for a few measly hours. this may or may not make me a bad person. it's not so bad except that i told 2 people explicitly in the last 24 hours that "i will totally be there". :dozey: i hate lying to people. i did plan on going, but it turns out that i am absolutely wiped tonight. long day, and tomorrow will only be a repeat performance. bad night for partying wednesdays are.

nonetheless. all that aside. i am pulling the wool over your eyes. look at my right hand and don't see my left robbing you blind. can't get past the feeling that i am being watched. i can't possibly imagine why. and after months, perhaps years, of requesting not to be taken literally, i find that i am still being taken literally. my words taken at their face value.

words are cheap. dime a dozen? more like penny per million. it's the negative space left between the letters that means something. this alphabet... cheap. very cheap. these words ... like the lowest swill. you want to know stuff? i can't help you. my words can't help you. the concepts behind them can, but you need to be willing and ready to see the negative space. you have to step past the words, that cheap mortal mask, and go beyond to the dark and frightening place that is not my mind, but your very own. you can't read my mind, see, only your own. so few exist whose thoughts are riding the same wave as mine. lot of people on waves nearby, coasting along on the same tide, in the same harbour, with the same fish swiming through, but it's not the same. don't know how many of us there are on the particular wave that carries my thoughts out to the ocean. maybe only one ;) . Nice as that would be, i think there's a few of us on this wave, drifting free. and then there's those caught in the undertow. so close ... but moving the opposite direction. swept up and carried away by a different current entirely. no answers have i for that. i have, as a matter of fact, as i have previously stated, so few answers that the number of answers i have for you verges on the negative numbers. Answers for myself, i have aplenty. i hesitate, however, to apply my answers to anyone else's life. is that a lack of self-confidence? or wisdom? such a fine line really, between brilliance and stupidity. i tread that line every day my friends. every single day.

what a bunch of worthless crap. so self-serving. i know what i mean by every word in this, but i know that different meanings will be drawn out of it by different people. i even know what meanings will be drawn by some people. some will be correct and some incorrect, and some will have nothing to do with my intent whatsoever. Well, i can hope. can't i?

as a side note, i have an interesting recipe for a most bizarre (possibly pleasant, the jury's still out on it) househould scent. it is as follows: in a pot with a sturdy lid make 1/2 cup brown/wild rice mix in 1 cup water with some salt, garlic powder, dried basil, dried oregano, and a dash of fresh ground pepper (simmer on low heat for 45 minutes). Now, burn one stick of Nag Champa insense. the insense smells good. the rice smells good. together, they smell instensely bizarre and very confusing. possibly induces madness if this post is anything to go by. the end.

[Anita Blake]

so i'm walking home from this concert. and i have this ... vision. something that would make me happy. something that i want. almost feel that i need, though of course i don't, but i think everyone shoudl have one. the world would be a better place if everyone did.

a Garden. not just for vegetables. no. A sort of wild, tended personal forest/park. With many varieties of trees, shrubs, flowers, plants, vegetables, fruits, herbs, what have you. all of it. in the back of your palatial mansion. :umm: well, OK, my palatial mansion. Oh, did i also mention that this was a vision of how i'd like to spend all that lottery money that i'll win on the day i fatefully decide to buy a lottery tickets against all my usual inclinations, and on that random day, fate will be with me and i will finally be reuinted with the millions of dollars that are my birthright. (it was a dual-purpose vision, you know, showing me what i want AND how to get it) :dozey:

anyway. back to the garden idea. i can imagine the sensation of walking through a beautiful english garden daily, under cherry blossoms and lilac trees, magnolia and lavender, with moss and heather and soft green grass. maybe have it cut into a mazeas well, but i imagine something a little more landscaped and yet somehow natural. anyway, it'll be beautiful, and when i win the lottery and plant it all and have it properly tended for a couple of years, then i will invite you all to share in it's comforting warmth and loving nature. i think i'd also have a dark, overgrown, stinky plant section in my garden. i think that it would be wrong to only feel at home in a perfectly landscaped and pruned wonderland of majestic plants. there would have to be the flip side of nature too, with stinging nettles and poison ivy and night-blooming somethign or other. i may or may not also cultivate some sort of hideous man-beast to keep in the dark overgrown part of the garden to keep out intruders. :umm: maybe i should quit while i'm ahead.

~backs away from self slowly~

[Anita Blake]

ok. so i am making my "dinner". i use quotes on the term because, well, it's only 4PM, and what i am making is dinner only in the strictest sense of i'll be eating it late in the day.

anyhoo.

so. i am broke. damn. no cash. and look! not much in the way of making a healthy, balanced meal. hmmmmmm. well, there's always pasta. that's why i like about it. it's always there, in case you are starving and there's absolutely nothing left in the house, there's always several large packs of some kind of pasta. but, this day is not the day to be dipping that far into the reserves. there's got to be some kind of non-perishable food that i can eat before it rots. right?

well, it was a nice try, but no. so. hmm. What shall i make?

i came to the decision this morning that the answer was beans. Beans? beans. For in my cupboard i have a large quantity of mixed soup beans. dried beans. for soup. i make soup. stop interrupting.

But i just made soup the otehr day, so i fear that soup is not a real option here. My pots of soup are legendary and delicious, it is true, but having just finished one, after being somewhat frightened of the prospect of eating nothing but the bleeding soup, i had determined that soup is not the answer for today. But the soup beans are the answer. OK. ~deep breath~ I don't know how to cook beans except for in soup. Well, i say to myself, i guess today is the day i'm going to learn!

right.

Ok. So. Soak the beans. ( i know that much) I have no bean recipes. nor the actual interest or motivation to look one up on google, because i had the strangest feeling that this would lead me to a bean recipe that would require more ingredients than i have. this would be disastrous. i would have to leave the apartment and purchase ingredients. Nno nonono. Ok. so.

beans.
water.

Yes. I have those two things. (that was the recipe in my head, btw, i put a lot of careful thought into it.) I know from prior experience that beans tend to cook when boiled. Seems logical. So i try that.

~wanders off for a lengthy period of time~

ahh! boiled already! good good. hmm. the waters all boiled away, huh? Hmm. The beans are not quite cooked, huh? hmmm. Well, add more water and boil that water away too! And maybe add some garlic powder and salt. Sure. try that.

And also wait for the flaming rice to cook. Stupid wild-brown rice blend. OK. i love it, actually, because you don't need to make very much of it and it is very filling and delicious). Listen to some tool, as that's my theme today. la dee da.

OK. the rice is done. and the beans have congealed into a thick pasty bean-much. excellent. Yes, there were peas in the bean mix, but now they are bean-mush. Yes, it does look disgusting, doesn't it? Don't worry. i'm sure it will taste like.... salty bean mush. mmmm. good. de-lic-ious.

OK, so it's not that bad. it's kinda good i think. sort of. it just lookes like darkn greeny-brown lumpy mashed potatoes. and has the same texture.

~bonks head on desk~ i can't wait till payday. ~sigh~








note: the preceeding was a true story. not inspired by or loosely based off of, but an actual true story. the end.

[Anita Blake]

been thinking lots lately. nothing new i guess. identity crisis of a sort, but less crisis-y. which makes it an identity challenge, i guess. whatever.

came to the conclusion that i hide a lot. I'm a Hider. i know a lot of stuff, and generally, i know more than i let on. I've been that way for as longg as can remember, having some sort of secret shame as a child that i knew things i wasn't supposed to. That's carried over to the now, when i just hide myself from other people out of force of habit. I'm not exactly sure why i feel it necessary to prevent my true self from being revealed. But i figure it's only natural. I mean, ok, so i see people every day, and they're never thinking things they don't say, revelling in some secret knowledge that they don't reveal to peons like myself? riiiiiight.

i think we all hide a little. And, ok, yes, i did come to this conclusion merely because i hide a lot, but it seems logical. I mean, i'm entirely sure that i'm not the only person who has thoughts in their head on this planet. And since so far, i haven't met anyone who talks nonstop spouting every tiny random thought that enters their brain (actually, i come pretty close to that, i don't know how that meshes with me being a Hider, but both things are true). Therefore, since we all think, we all hide.

thoughts are so intangible. I mean, they just float around in your head, all ephemeral-like, zipping from one thing to the next. every really try to hold a thought? i find it incredibly difficult. Just make it pause. Nope, can't do it, you can keep thinking about the same thing, but you're (or maybe just me) going to just keep attacking the thought from a different angle. it's alwasy in a constant state of evolution, is thought.

i realized this while going through some old journals of mine. I thought to myself "is this who i am? Really???!!" it was kind of upsetting to look at my self thorugh the distanced lens of time, to realize that i am less than i ever thought i was. but at the same time, i had to stop thinking that way, seeing as how it endangered my well being. i had to step back inside myself to see that yeah, i am who i am. we all have our things that make us stupid and lame and such. Am i any lamer than the next person? well, i guess i really have no way of knowing.

And anyway, the kinds of lame that i am are sort of the things that i enjoy in life. And then i had to think about lameness. what. ever. ok. So, it's lame to be interested in something, and it's lame to like a certain thing, but what, it's not lame to sit on your ass and point your finger at all the lame things that other people do? so, that made me feel a little better.

i've lost my train of thought entirely. My head feels slightly disconnected over the past few days. Not sure why. maybe i'm going through some big astrological shift. who knows. but my head is all wonky, and i mostly want to be left alone. for the most part i am being left alone, but then i have to go to work and stuff. actually, work stuff i don't mind because it allows me to attempt to reconnect my head to my brain to my shoulders and whatnot.

back to some more stuff. i often wonder what people see when they see me walking down the street. I always imagine that they hate me. i sometimes think i shouldn't walk so fast, so tall, so proud, because who am i trying to fool? These other people on the street hate me for walking like i am better than them. (i imagine) But it's not that i think i'm better, it's that i know i'm good enough. and anyway, why should i care what total strangers on the street think of me. i've come to the conclusion (again) that i'd rather appear cold and distant and, yeah, snobby, than downtrodden and worn out by life. i mean, i know those aren't the only options, but sometimes it seems like it. I'm a person of extremes.

anyhoo. i've lost my train of thought again. on last thing though, i can't remember if i've said it before, but i've found that writing things down, forcing chaotic thoughts into binding, ordered letters and words tends to make the thoughts themselves more solid, as if all the thought-fluff gets carried away by the harsh reality of the words that the thoughts have formed. sometimes i think that a certain thought of mine will become more true or real by converting it from thought to word. i guess that's why the ancients said that words have power. it's really true. words do have power and some thoughts just should not be forced into the mold of words. some thoughts are degraded by giving them voice, while others can be cemented and built upon firmly by speaking them aloud or writing them down. i guess then it's just a matter of recognizing which is which.

[Anita Blake]

.... to be able to sleep when you are tired
... to not think of all the fucked up issues you have with your mom
... to not even have all those issues with your mom
... to just be able to sleep
... to stop thinking about this
... i said stop thinking about this
... why aren't you listening brain?
... to go to sleep
... just go back to sleep
... ..... ..... ok, brain, here's the deal. i say "wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking about this crap and go back to sleep" and YOU say "yes, what a lovely idea, i am rather tired, and especially sick of thinking about these mom issues, especially since they only cropped up because your friend's family is visiting and it's not nice to be envious of other people's familial stability and proper bonds. so yes, i rather like your idea of going to sleep now, as it's late and all. good night!" and then you turn off, ignoring the meowing cat who is clawing at the shelf in an attempt to knock over your stereo. You see, brain, it's really quite an alright plan, and i wish you'd stick to it. ok?


So...

Wouldn't it be nice...

.... to go the fuck to sleep?

................... yes, yes it would.

good night.

[Anita Blake]

hmm. just reading QT's reflections, and i have to say, dude, i think we differ in dogma only. it's funny, i think we believe in the same basic things, but use different words for them. you say things about having god in your life, and how important it is to you, and how you never felt alive until you accepted god in your life, and i think i feel kind of the same way, but use different words and concepts to communicate that feeling. I guess you could say that i learned early on that God is in us all, and i remember being taught that in order for God to forgive you, you have to forgive yourself, which i think is actually a lot harder than it sounds, because it's not just consciously, it's subconscious as well. you have to accept yourself subconsciously before you can accept yourself consciously. And i think that what i call the subconscious, you call God, and that it's not really a different thing at all, since God is in us all anyway, God is the subconscious. I may not have the same religious beliefs, but i think we share a common spiritual belief, merely speak a different spiritual language.

anyhoo, i guess that's not just directed at QT, but at anyone of a differing religion who has similar spirituality with a different language. :) ~hugs to the content and peaceful-with-their-god~ :)

however, i do think it's kinda sad that people who fundamentally believe the same thing get all divided because of what is essentially a language barrier. Funny, because i think that's what the whole tower of babel thing was all about. everyone got scattered and spoke different languages and called god by a different name and began to worship god in a slightly different way, and boom, religious wars. :dozey: can't we all just get along?

~tries to just get along with all~

i'm constantly trying to stop hating christianity/organized on the basis of it's corrupt leaders and past history. constantly trying to ignore the fallacy of dogma and look through it to the basic beliefs underlying it. i slide sometimes, but i try, and i think that's important. Better than getting upset and worked up about things i cannot change.

wow. i've gotten a lot mellower in the past few years. ~grooves on~

[Anita Blake]

my head hurts. i'm assured that ah-nohld would assure me that it snot a tuma, but i'm beginning to wonder. too many headaches lately. blah.

started working on the paintings that are to grace the walls of my school yesterday. they look really snappy. once they're hung up i'm going to take pics and post them. i'm so pleased. the lady who asked me to design them is ecstatic about them. she thinks i shoudl quite my job and just make paintings of my photoshop designs. she's already up to my imaginary future clients paying me $2300 a piece. :rolleyes: not that i wouldn't do that, in fact i totally would, if only someone gave me a list of clients. i'd need a business manager, that's all, and then maybe i can get james and lexi to steal my paintings for me in order to artificially inflate their value (hey, everyone knows that international art thief syndicate crime rings only go for the good stuff, and if your stuff is tolen by such an international art theft syndicate, then your stuff must be worth something. right? right?) i have to say, there is something cool about graphic art made into something totally organic and --- painty. ~is pleased~
except... well, the only thing is is that it's been painted onto plexiglass, and plexiglasa and paint are not known for sticking together for the long haul. a little scratch, and ~poof~ it's all over. sigh. ah well, hopefully we'll find some sort of permanent bonding solution.



discovering that i am so not the person i used to be. kinda interesting. i mean, i still am, but not really. quieter now. i talk a lot less. well, most of the time. and i'm not such a drama queen as i used to be. more of a slink to the shadows and wait to be revealed. :) or soemthing like that. anyhoo.


please ignore this

in between a whisper and a sigh
there is something there between you and i
and in night's deepest, darkest hour
we will feel eachother's power

[Anita Blake]

Well, ok, Dregs and Apocalypse beat me to it, but i had planned on sharing some thoughts about Mr. Cobain, and then i promptly forgot what day it was. So here are my thoughts, with a hearty fist shaking and thanks to dregs and apoc for reminding me. :)


So, it's been 10 years. 10 years and i remember it like it wasn't that long ago. God, i feel so old. To remember the news of Kurt Cobain's death. Wow. I have some friends today who were too young to like Nirvana back in the day, so that puts things into perspective. I remember the first time i heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. I hated it. It was mumbled and garbled and altogether too popular. It took a few months for me to catch on. Maybe even a year. I don't know. I do remember that i didn't start to like Nirvana until a few short months before The End Of Life As We Knew It.

I remember making a dub of my cousin's nirvana tapes, ten years and two, maybe three weeks ago. Thinking, yeah, there's something too all this. Being hypnotized by this cool music, this attitude of "fuck everything". The idea that it was ok to be abstract, that you could be abstract and out of it and still be real and human. I didn't do drugs when i was a teenager, i didn't drink even, but in retrospect, i've always had the mind of a stoner. That is to say, i've always been a little high, even when i'm not.

And then Kurt Cobain killed himself. He had been in the newspapers almost non-stop in the weeks previous, i think. Him and Courtney in rehab, him in rehab, courtney in rehab. It was like a decadent rock star life gone terribly white-trash-awry. Oddly appealing in it's very revoltingness. I remember hearing the news, thinking "Oh no, i've done it again, gone and jinxed another good band". (i previously had jinxed Motley Crue, and Vince Neil had left the band, and Poison & Slaughter had also gone the way of the hair band) (yes, i liked motley crue, poison, and slaughter. so sue me.)

I was in grade 10 at the time. My grade 10 english teacher, Mr. Hornby, was a hip young teacher, barely 23, in his first or second year of teaching, the english teacher that all the girls had a crush on who played in the jazz band. You know, that teacher. For our english class, he did the coolest thing, to this day i would like to thank him for it. He changed the lesson plan for a few days and brought in the lyrics for 3 songs off of In Utero and had us listen to them in class and then analyze the lyrics as a project. Now, i don't know what Cobain would have said about 10 grade english classes studying his poetry post-mortem in an effort to stem off copy-cat suicides and to try to see if he had projected any of his suicidal tendencies into his music, but that's what we did anyway. And it was really good. Probably one of the things i remember most from high school. It was relevant.

I think what we learned from that was that Kurt Cobain had been a sad, sick man for a while. I think what I personally learned was that sometimes, even tragedy is for the best. There was an interview once, where he talked about how he was sick of the music "industry" and how he was going to just quit and move to idaho and be a gas jockey or something. I always think of that. Because it seems that he had no way out of becoming a tragic rock-star figure. One way or another. Either by becoming fat and old and used by the system until he no longer knew who he was, and just mass-producing albums because 'they' told him he had to in order to fulfill his contract, or else to take the rock star way out and end it quickly.

Another thing i remember: old magaizine articles. I must have read dozens of them in my youth. It was What I Did. I read Metal Edge and Spin and the like. And i remember, though i've never really in the last 10 years hear anyone speak of it, how there was a rivallry between Kurt Cobain and Axl Rose. In one interview, Cobain said that you couldn't be a guns n' roses fan AND a nirvana fan, because they stood for completely opposite things. (at the time, however, i violently defied cobain, and enjoyed the music of both bands, being a huge g'n'r fan. in retrospect, however, i see what he was talking about and kind of don't disagree). I bring it up because, in a way, it seems like Kurt was so right. While he stands (or lies) at one end of the 'tragic rock star' spectrum, Axl Rose is lounging at the other end.... rich, eccentric, been trying to put out an album for 10 years, fat and balding, never seen. I think that's very much like what Kurt was trying to avoid. you can make the argument that he could have fought that system to the end, that he could have been the one who didn't end up that way, but Cobain, for all his talent, for the beauty of his mind, was weak. He always had been, he probably always would have been.

It's sad though, that so many people were changed by the actions of the one man. his family especially. I often wonder about his daughter, how she must feel about him, her family, her life. I don't envy her. People are always hard on courtney love, but i think that the lyrics on celebrity skin speak for themselves. I believe she loved him, and i believe she was messed up after he died. Who wouldn't be? who are we to judge the actions of these people who live and breathe in the public eye?

All this has gone astray, however. Because 10 years ago a man who changed the world tried to change it back. Gone, but not forgotten. He changed a lot, and he may or may not have realized the scope of what he was, who he was. No one really knows for sure, but all i can say is what others already have. We miss you, and you're not forgotten.

Kurt Cobain - 1967-1994
Rest In Peace.

[Anita Blake]

ok. So, my sleep last night was.... interesting, since i couldn't roll over on my one side due to the burning pain that would happen if i did. I tell ya, pain is painful. ok, well, to tell the truth, i kind of like it, because then i get to act all tough inside and pretend i don't feel it and stuff. But that's not the point. The point is, i woke up this morning all tired and blah, and then decided to go about my morning as per usual, with only a bit more wincing than normal. And then i left to go to work, completely forgetting to bring my keycard with me to get into the building. :dozey: luckily, there are several people around who will let me in. so that wasn't a big problem. The biggest problem was walking here and pretending that my pants weren't rubbing against my ouchie spot.

i got to work and realized i have nothing to do today, so thought i would work a bit on a little project i decided to do, but that in order to do that, i would require tea. And thusly i made tea. Yay tea.

but i'm massively freaking out here, and the reason is one i haven't gotten to yet in my meanderings about the mundane daily trivialities i endure. Well, my kind-of-boss (i don't think i actually have a boss, btw) who has been on the side trying to get me another job, which i thought fell through the cracks and had kind of let go of, he comes up this morning and asks if i could make an interview at 5. OK, so, technically, i'm supposed to be working then, but i can leave, no big, so yes, i can make the interview. But now i 'm scared. i hate interviews. my hands are freezing and i am kinda shakey. i mean, i want another job, and this job sounds actually almost tailor made for me, but i also really like the job i have, and there's the matter of a travel voucher that i need to cash in. I'm totally afraid of getting a "real" job, because then i probably will actually have to work, whereas now, i get paid for quite a lot of slackery and fun-having. But i have been doing this job for nearly 2 years now, and i'm about at the limit of stuff i am going to learn from it, i've learned so much, but there's still a lot more for me to learn, and i know i won't learn it here. I've been thinking about moving on now for a few months, i even had hoped to get a new job in april, and if i do get this job, it will be perfect because it ends at about the same time i am going to australia. I'll also get a chance to make some good connections and utilize some of my skills, so that's really neat, but ~huddles in corner, afraid of change~

i don't know. maybe i had too much tea this morning. but i'm feeling pretty skittery. very nervous. nervous that i'll get the job, nervous that i won't. ~runs off to prepare self~

[Anita Blake]

Permit me please, a departure. Today, we shall enjoy a culinary study.

Allow me to begin first, as usual, with a story.

It was not long ago, a few short days, that a friend drove me home from work. She was planning on buying a cake, for her mother's birthday, which got me to thinking, yes, cake does sound rather lovely, i'll take it! After realizing that i would not be enjoying a share of her mother's birthday cake, i decided that the wisest course of action would therefore be to make a cake.

The late time of day and general lack of motivation had removed a homemade ake from scratch, and well as ingredient supply certainty. I had been narrowed down to buying a cake mix to bake.

The convience store across the street from my apartment is small, but surprisingly well stocked. They have at least four varieties of Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker cakes. Deciding upon an angel food cake that could be baked in loaf pans rather than an angel cake mold, i had made my decision! But surely there is some whipped topping in the store?! I search for some, but alas, to my dismay, there is only canned whipped cream at a ridiculously inflated price which i refuse to buy.

No whipped topping, but there, in the corner.... what is this?! McCain's Deep n' Delicious?! Dare my heart dare to hope? In a convienient (and cheap!) half-sized portion.

Tearing my eyes away from the tin-shelled frozen wonder-cake, i look back at the box of angel food cake. Bake 40 minutes? Stir ingredients together? Open box?!

No, my friends, the angel food cake was not to be. Picking up the McCain's cake, i returned the somewhat dusty Duncan Hines Angel Food Cake Mix.

In my increasingly colder hands was the frozen answer to my cake dilemma!

All i need do is take it home, open the lid, and cut out a piece and eat it! Brilliant!

Now, a word on the thawing of a McCain's Deep n' Delicious cake. You don't really have to. But if you want to, it will thaw completely in under 5 minutes. Something about the crazy mechanics of the cake (which i will get into in a minute) will simply not allow it to freeze solid! You can eat it completely frozen, folks, and it just tastes a little chilly and hard. The things they can do with advanced cake physics, it never ceases to amaze me.

However, should you choose to actually wait the 5 minutes to thaw your cake, you will be confronted with something that resembles delicious chocolate cake with a chocolatey whipped frosting. They both appear light and soft. And it's no deception folks, it really is light and soft. Tempting to the taste buds, indeed.

But let's wait a moment to get to the taste buds, shall we? First let's understand the texture of the cake. Taste aside, the first impression you will have of th cake is that it is not unlike a soft sponge. Further oral examination will confirm that first impression. It does in fact, feel quite a bit like a soft, soft, soft, sponge-matter that you are absorbing rather than tasting. And the frosting! Like the stickiest foam you will ever experience! The overal texture is as though you are eating shaving cream on top of a soft sponge.

The taste is indeed chocolate-y. And smooth! So delicious, to counterpoint the bizarre sponginess of the texture. The texture that will keep you coming back for more as you try to answer the question: How do they do that?

So How do they do that? Posisbly mad science gone horribly awry, perhaps darkest magicks, perhaps sent from the heavens. Perhaps we'll never know.

And that is your random food review of the day. Thanks, and tune in again next time!

[Anita Blake]

What a strange and bizarre week. Well, i say that about pretty much every week, so i guess it could be said that strange and bizarre is actually pretty normal, but that wouldn't sound interesting at all. And so, strange and bizarre.

Sunday, i fell down. ouch.

monday, i had a surprise job interview, and discovered that one of the people i really want to come to my turkey dinner on saturday probably won't because he can't stand a different person i have invited. Not so muhc that he won't come because he hates this other guy, but more because he knows it will cause tension and he doesn't want to be the guy who causes all the tension at the party. Fair enough. I wish they liked eachother, because i really like both of them, but i'm not about to try to force them to get along.

Yesterday, i was working all day on a psychedelic video that i decided to make last week out of boredom. It's very cool. Well, very psychedelic at least. Kaleidoscope-y. :) Then i found out that my tv was in and i could pick it up, yay! I had to walk to meet my roommate so we could go drive to the store to pick it up, and i saw the coolest thing.

Ok, i might be one of the few people who find it cool and/or refreshing, and maybe that makes me disturbed, but hear me out! There was a crow on the little entry way to one of the concrete downtown buildings i was walking past, and it was pecking away at a dead pigeon. I stopped to watch it, and it thought i was going to come after it or something, because it took a few steps away and watched me very carefully. But i stood still and only watched, so it finally got back to it's meal. It was kinda neat. The pigeon's head was mostly severed, and there were little neck feathers skewn about haphazardly. The spine connected the head to the body, but there was not much else really. The crow would walk up to it, and put one little crow foot on the pigeons body, while pecking at the neck hole to get at the meat. It was neat to see how the crow dealt so efficiently with it. The really neat part though, was when the crow appeared to be trying to completely sever the head, by using itself as a nail and hammer. It would slam it's beak down into the spinal cord of the pigeon, like a woodpecker in a tree. Maybe there's some nutritious yummies inside pigeon-spines. I don't know. But i thought it was really neat to be in the middle of a city (literally) and see an animal eating another animal. Until i moved here, i never knew crows were such vicious little bastards, but i saw one dive from the sky to kill a baby duckling once. i don't know if the crow killed this pigeon or just found it convienently fallen after hitting a building or car or something, but it was still pretty fascinating to watch. I probably would have felt differently had i actually seen the pigeon die, but luckily, i didn't, so it wasn't a big deal. Birds are neat.

Anyway, then i got my tv and home theatre (yay!) and wonder of wonders my roommate actually let me hook it up all by myself (i like doing that sort of thing) and then we watched some 24 on dvd, and i love my new stuff. so bloody cool.


i busted one of my students the other day, several times while i was talking to him, look at me while i was talking, look at the computer where i was showing him stuff, and then, while i was still talking, look at my boobs. Um. Hello! the boobs don't speak! they are pretty, but dumb! they will not help you with your questions! And anyway, i'm TALKING to you! I'm looking right at you! Don't look at my boobs when i'm talking to you! I didn't say anything, because i found it funnier than anything else, because he was one of the last people i would expect to do that, but it was so tactless and it was like he was being obviously distracted, so what was i going to do??

whoa. i just wrote a whole bunch of other stuff that in better judgement i have decided not to post. but the boob story was funny, so it stayed. :D

ok, i'm so going to be late for work. crap.

[Anita Blake]

Summer I laid down by you and shared my frail light.
You gave the dark to me.
I looked inside to find the one I sent away.

I wanted this excoriation.
I nearly froze when I stepped inside

I thrive on this self mutilation.
to find the flowers turned to gray.
I closed my eyes and kissed them one last time.


ok, so those are lyrics. yeah yeah. i know there's a lyrics thread. but i'm not feeling the whole song, only the background parts of the chorus. (pssst, that's the bold red part).

feeling lately like, i don't even know. strong, hard, but weak, too weak to be as strong as i feel. if that makes any sense. masochism gone horribly, horribly awry in it's ultimate perfection. Yes, i suppose i am the ultimate masochist, in that i have masochistic tendencies, i want to hurt myself, but deny myself whatever it is i think i might get from hurting myself. So it hurts me more not to hurt myself, maybe. probably not. i mean, i can imagine myself being a cutter or something silly like that, but i couldn't actually go through with it. in the back of my mind it seems like a good idea, but the front of my mind firmly grasps the rest of my mind (possibly some decisive middle ground) and shakes it like a madwoman screaming "hello!! hurting hurts! That's why they call it hurt!" and then the decisive middle ground goes "oh yeah. i kinda figured as much. ow. stop shaking me so hard. i'm not going to hurt myself!". Meanwhile, i'm walking down the street in my somewhat ratty but (i think) cool jean jacket. heart of steel wool and eyes of burning coals. the smile of a snake, the walk of the armies of hell unleashed. looking just like any other ambitious 20-something young urban woman.

there's just this huge part of me that wants to be bad. really, really, bad. fortunately, the more sensical part of me clamps a firm foot down on that sort of insanity. that and the fact that whenever i am as bad as i want to be it never ends well and i never feel the way i wanted to. i feel so... messed up lately. wacky in the head. wanting things that i know i don't really want. i mean, like, i was looking at this student today, and he's so tragically my "type". i kinda feel sorry for guys who are "my type" because i end up thinking that i really like them when in fact i don't really want to be around them for a long time and it always just ends badly. i mean, there are people that i like and it's very unfortunate when they happen to exist in the kind of body i am attracted to, because then i just confused about exactly what "like" means and it's not a good thing. then they fall for me just as i am realizing that i am not as attracted to them as i thought, and that's always awkward and not good. then there's the other type, the guys who i just like physically and don't enjoy their personalities as much. that's usually not as bad because they tend to end up feeling the same way about me and it's ok.

my ex-bf from a few years ago was i think a rare combination of the two. he wrote me an email today. it made me smile to hear from him because we broke up, but i still genuinely like him and even though i almost never talk to him, i still cherish our friendship and such. he was someone that i think i fell in love with at first sight. our relationship was terrible, but i still love him. i'll never be with him again, and i'm not sad about that at all, but ... he was the one who could have taken me over to the dark side. or maybe he took me over as far as i could go. just knowing him changed my outlook on life a great deal. He's going to be a politician now (running for MP!), and i'm not surprised, i'm so happy for him. (understand of course that he was a DJ, possibly still is, and was also a bisexual raver-kid when i knew him, as well as being a very young and talented newspaper journalist) i'd like to think that he has the same kind of love for me that i have for him, which is maybe more accurately described as a fond respect.


anyway. stuff. turkey on saturday. on account of easter. or so i claim. because i don't actually celebrate easter, in a religious way, any more. it's funny because if she was in town, i'd have my vegetarian jewish friend over for easter turkey dinner. but she's not in town, so that's too bad. a few people i'd like to have over this weekend are out of town this weekend. in toronto of all godforsaken places. (sorry mes)

ahhh life. motherfucking life. i'm so... antsy. want to do soemthing. but not change. no. anything but that. unless that change is moving to australia or new zealand. then it would be alright. ~sigh~

[Anita Blake]

ever have the feeling that you just don't have enough space? Followed closely about at a distance of no more than 3 feet in your own home, you begin to crave the good old days of living at your parents where if you went into your room and slammed the door they didn't take it personally, just figured it was a teenage angst thing. But you know, i don't think it really was. I'm starting to realize stuff. Like that i am "sensitive". When people are around me i am too caught up in their psychic interference. The closer you are, the bigger the interference. Can't concentrate on what i want to concentrate when there are too many people around, when people are too physically near to me, or even, i think, mentally near to me. If you are close to me and thinking about me, it create this kind of feedback loop that mostly feels like claustrophobia and inner discomfort.

i think this is why i really like guys who have girlfriends. because they can be close to me and not thinking about me. i can hug a guy with a girlfriend and know that it's not going to be misinterpreted and it's not going to mean anything other than a gesture of friendship. I found out my ex-bf is seeing someone and i am immediately more comfortable having a conversation with him.

i'm craving my me-time lately. I just want to be left alone. I don't want to do things with people, i just want to be alone, left to my own devices, free to think my own thoughts and not have the thoughts of others imposed upon me. I guess that's the down side of being kinda-psychic, which i think i am. Kinda psychic, very observant, "senstive", whatever you want to call it. I mean, i can't read the future or silly nonsense like that, but i definitely read people's vibes. i often have a good idea of what people are thinking about and what they are probably going to say next. sure, call it observancy. i call it psychic, but it all means the same thing anyway. it seems like i'm either getting more sensitive to this kind of thing lately or else i am just totally imagining things, but the desire to be alone is almost overwhelming. Maybe i'm just near the wrong types of people, which is entirely possible. it could just be the people i am with that make me wish to god that i was alone, but i can't do anything about that right now. even when i am alone, i feel the almost oppressive weight of other people bearing down on me.

And i know that if i were a responsible, good person, i would take the knowledge of other people that i have and try to make things better for them, but the fact is, i don't think i am responsible for other people. I don't know what to do to make them feel differently, and so it's just an easier solution for me to remove myself and withdraw into the confines of my mind.

maybe i'm rambling. i don't know. i know that it's easier in a crowd of people, because then there's so much interference from so many sources that it's just kind of noise, and i can tune it all out and have my own thoughts. but looking at this, reading these words, i can see how what i'm saying could be totally misinterpreted and read as insanity or just plain wacky ol' me. The words are right... they describe what i feel, but they are not what i feel exactly. "noise" "tune out the thoughts of others" it makes it sound like i can hear the thoughts of other people, which i really can't, but i don't know how to describe it. My own thoughts change in response to what is around me. I don't think this is abnormal, and i don't think i'm unique in it. I think this happens to most people, but being the eternal self-analyst that i am, i am aware of it. I think everybody has this level of "psychic" ability, they just don't analyze it to death like me. Anyhoo. i'm talking like a fucking nutjob, so maybe i should get back to cooking my stuffed tomatoes and such. mmmm. cooking is physically demanding, but so mentally relaxing to me. all the chopping and blending is rather soothing in a way i can't begin to describe. but now that i've thought of it, i'm sure i'll analyze it until i can give a half-assed description of how it feels to prepare and cook food. :)

happy easter, folks. much love.

[Anita Blake]

Well, today is turkey day. Yeah, yeah, i know, traditional easter dinner is ham, but my family always had turkey AND ham, and i don't really care that much for ham. I mean, i like it, but not enough to learn how to cook it. I've made it a personal tradition to invite my friends over for holiday turkey meals. My family is a 1.5 hour flight away (or about $300 away) and i think i've always loved family turkey dinners. But at the same time, i've always thought of the friends i have as my family, since i always fought with my family and thought they were insane anyway. I figure that since they aren't here to fight with, i should bring as many people as possible to my home to enjoy some food with. The response to this turkey dinner has been almost overwhelming, lots more people than came to my thanksgiving dinner last fall. Maybe i know more people now. It's funny, i invited some former students over, because i consider them friends now, but many of them are the same people i invited for thanksgiving when they were students. (who were all too busy with school stuff to make it). I'm beginning to wonder if i have enough food. Last count i had 15 people coming over, and about 4-5 of them are total strangers to me, and a few more i only know because a) they used to be students and b) now they work with me. But it's all good. I'm really quite happy.

I think what i love about holiday meals is that feeling of knowing that a bunch of people are coming over and you have to try to make your living space as presentable as possible, and i even love the worrying over whether or not there will be enough food and/or seats for people, and whether or not people will have a good time. I think i like being a hostess. This will be, i think, my 3rd easter dinner since coming to vancouver. When we were all students, it seemed like someone had to do it, and i was in a strange and bizarre way, Class Mom (even though i wasn't the oldest in the class by far). I kind of like it. I like knowing that people will come over in a couple hours and be kind of envious of my view (which i will blush furiously at), and will have a turkey dinner that they wouldn't otherwise have had. It's the kind of turkey dinner i think that i am used to.... family, booze, partying, and much happiness. I hope. ~crosses fingers~ I have spent the past 2 days cookign and prepping my apartment for the onslaught of people (15 people is a LOT in a 800sq. ft, 2 bedroom apartment). I don't expect it to be perfect, and i don't want it to be. I just want people to have a good time.

So, today, while cleaning, i decided that i should really, really do somethign about my blankets on my bed. They need a washing. I mean, seriously, how often do you wash your quilts? And dracula seems to think that my pillows are the perfect place for him to deposit all his loose hair. :dozey: I put a separate blanket on my bed, just for him, which he generally uses, but ~shudder~ what a furrball that thing is. So i decided to wash all my bedding. Even my pillows, which i don't think have ever been washed before, and really needed it. blech. Anyhoo, that's not really the story.

They story is that i ran into this lady who lives in my building while doing laundry, and first she complemented my sandals :blush:, and then i ran into her again when i went to get my stuff out of the dryer. She talked to me for nearly 15 minutes, but she was telling me how she just talked to someone "i haven't talked to since 1972. He was my lover in 62" lol. She was so happy to have gotten in touch with this man that she had to constantly stop herself from crying. It was quite amazing. I found out a lot about her, and she said some really great and profound things, but i also found out that it was her 68th birthday yesterday.

Now, i've seen this lady a lot, she's got more energy than i do at almost 3 times my age, she's always smiling and talkative, very cheerful and possibly one of the only people in my building who's name i know (aside from a couple neighbors on my floor, that is). I cannot believe that she is 68. I had her pegged for maybe her early-mid fifties. What an inspiring lady, i gotta tell ya. I mean, ok, yeah, she does talk an awful lot, but i think that's ok, because she's pretty interesting and she's not whining and whimpering at the state of the world like some other older people i've met before. Just a wonderful, bright shining soul. She really made me think about what kind of person i want to be. I hope that at her age i have half the energy and life she has. :)

and just for the record, some of the great things she said to me (while quoting various other people):


"women look at men and see a diamond in the rough and try to polish and hope to change him into that, but the man will never change. Men see a beautiful perfect crystal of a woman and hope she will never change, but women always do." soooooo true, that, i think. at least in my experience.

damn. i forgot the other great thing she said already. when i remember i will edit this post to add it, because it seemed really wonderful, and i want to remember it and where i heard it. :)

well, happy easter quillers. :love:

edit: i remembered!


An old man who refuses to laugh is a fool, but a young man who refuses to cry is a savage

[Anita Blake]

Well. I managed to find seats and cutlery! :eek: for something like 14 people who came over for turkey. It was really good. I was so pleased, people seemed to have had a really good time, and to me, that's what holidays are all about. Some people want to reflect upon the historical and religious reasons for holidays such as easter, and certainly the holidays we know would not exist were it not for religious reasons (actually, i think the holidays would probably stil be there, we'd just have different reasons to celebrate). But i don't think that religion or history really has anything to do with why we come together a few times a year to celebrate and enjoy food and company with those we love. Sure, religion and history are a good enough excuse for all that, but i think the real reason we do it is because it's simply good for family and/or friends to come together and enjoy eachother's company and food. I think it's kind of what the whole idea of "society" is about.

Anyway, so yeah, lots of people came, and i just barely had enough food for everyone, it was wonderful that a couple of my co-workers and closer friends brought some salad and dinner buns and brownies for dessert. My step-mother's recipe for peas and mushrooms won much acclaim, for which i must let her know and thank her. :) Lately i've felt really close to my step-mom, much closer than i do to my mother. Strange, but true.

What else happened? Well, there was a lot of drinking and jubilation, my roommate got trashed and when i say trashed, i qill quote my friend. She said, of my roommate, "i have never seen someone's head bobble that much!" He didn't really know any of the people there, so i guess it was strange for him. ~sigh~ I did drink, and i was tipsy, but i most assiduously was not trashed. I did, however, end up spending the tail end of the night making out with the girl who's had a crush on me for the last year. That was interesting. I think i learned a lot from that. Mainly that despite the way i've kind of wondered in the past, i am most certainly not gay. I mean, i see the appeal now that women have, and ... i totally get why guys like breasts now! :eek: but for all that, i'd say i'd prefer a man any day. Now, it was fun making out with a girl, to be sure, and i can now check that off of my list of "Things I Want To Try One Day". The coolest part though was that i know i can see this girl another day and not have it be weird. :) A lot of people saw me kissing her though, so i'm sure there'll be some interesting looks over the next few days. I doubt anyone will say anything about it though, i mean, it's not a big deal. I don't think. :halo:

i have no leftovers. Well, there's turkey, but nothing else. It's quite amazing really. I had really hoped i'd have some leftovers, since i spent most of the money i have until payday on this magnificent feast, but that's ok. I can live for another week on wild rice and turkey. And i can make some turkey soup. There is quite a lot of turkey left over. Possibly because i bought onw of the biggest turkeys i could find, i think it was about 18lbs (8kgs). that's a lot of bird. mmmm. even the vegetarians were happy, so that makes me happy. I had such a good time, pretty much up until i found out my toilet was clogged with toilet paper and vomit (eeeewwwww) and one guy slept in my bathtub for the night after saying some rather insensitive things to my friend who he has been casually dating for the past couple months. :grumbles: but he helped my roommate clean out the toilet so he can't be all bad, i guess. mixed feelings on that one. Actually, scratch that, i had a really good time even with those things happening, even though my roommate kept trying to get me to drink goldschlager shots (which i can probably thank for my reduced hangover state, as the goldschlager made me empty the contents of my stomach almost instantly, blech.)

In summation, holidays are fun, i'm glad this is a 4 day weekend, and that's about all. :)

[Anita Blake]

Day off work. Apartment to myself. It's grand. I have already made some half-assed turkey pies whose crust is questionable in it's structural integrity but whose filling is delightful and delicious.

I love being alone so much. I don't know what that means, but i do feel quite a bit at peace when the company of other humans is left entirely to my choice. I mean, i absolutely could call up a friend and go do something, it's overcast and chilly but not too chilly or too overcast, and if i did that then i wouldn't be alone, but i say meh to that. I like my solitude. I can listen to music quietly and sit at my computer without distraction and whenever i want to i can go downstairs and sit out by the swiming pool.

One of the things i do greatly injoy about the apartment building i live in is our luscious yard. It's a very nicely landscaped garden witha nifty swimming pool in the middle, and a little wooden bridge goes over the pool separating the shallow from the deep end, and there's a nice little water fountain structure at one end. You can go and lie down on the grass, or more practically, take a lawn chair down and sit in the middle of all the trees and shrubs and just relax.

i did that today, (and yesterday, to be honest) and took with me Stephen King's Eye of The Dragon. Such a pleasant tale to read, so easy to just sit outside and read it. Anyway, i was sitting out there and i hear this little splash in the pool, but as it's overcast and chilly, there's no one else in the garden but me, and certainly no one stupid enough to hop into the (unheated) pool on a day like today. So i look over and see this little bobbing head, and decide to walk over to see what kind of animal is splashing about. It was a mallard duck. so cute! just paddling his little legs around the pool without a care in the world, swimming in circles around the little bridge-island in the middle of the pool. I sat down next to the pool gently, hoping he'd come closer, and he looked at me, fairly skeptical at my humanness, and he decided to play it safe adn swim on the far side of the pool, and was going to circle around but maybe he was creeped out by me watching, so he instead went to the steps of the pool and ~hop~ hopped out without so much as fluttering his wings (it was about a foot-high hop, i think). Then he waddled around on the grass for a bit, so i decided to go sit back in my chair, but then he decided to walk past my chair after all, and as he did, he cocked his head to get a better look at me, and then slowly meandered off. And hopped back in the pool. It was as if he saw me at the pool, led me back to my chair, and looked at me to say "hey, you, stop following me. stay right there!" being a fairly obedient and generally decent human, i followed his advice and simply watched him in the pool from a distance this time.

I also watched some smaller little birds pecking at the ground trying to get ants (i presume) and that was pretty cute. i only saw one person out there, and he was this old man who insisted he couldn't find any place to lie down his head, despite the fact that i was the only person in the garden, and i was tucked back into a corner. unless he wanted my peaceful tranquil corner. i wasn't too sure, so i kept on reading after pointing out another nice spot to lay down.

So nice to not be around people. I mean, ok, whatever, i'm in a garden that is shared by probably about 1000 residents of a high rise building, in the downtown of one of the biggest cities in my country, in full view of dozens of apartments and not all that terribly far from a busy street, but meh, there were no people in my immediate view, and that's what i treasure. If i could spend all my days just sitting in the garden reading and not dealing with people, i would be content. I would like to one day be hugely rich so that i could just have a farm or ranch or maybe just an acreage where i could tend to the plants and animals, taming all the wild birds so that they would come and be near me and not fear me at all, but not be trapped or caged by me, i'd just want them to want to be around me, or at the very least for all the animals to just know that they have nothign to fear from me. that, to me, would be paradise. Well, kind of. If only i could concoct a fabulous ranch-house with wonderful gardens (and a pond with fish ;) ) that had no spiders. or mosquitos. or poisonus insects that i would inadvertantly disturb their lair and get bitten by them and die. or just be in pain. nosirree. no bad bugs for me. Or maybe just enough for the birds to eat. that only the birds can find. yes. that.

anway, that's my thought for the day. of the moment. whatever. soon life will go back to normal speed and i will not be alone in my apartment and will have to speak outloud (which is something i'm becoming les and less fond of). Speech is such an imperfect means of communication. bah. anyway, all this sitting i've done all day has made my back feel weary adn slightly numb, so perhaps i'll go lie in the sauna. i love my life. (usually) i honestly never would have thought i'd be living in a place with a pretty garden AND a sauna AND a pool. AND a wicked beach view. have i ever mentioned that my life is charmed? quite.

[Anita Blake]

Well. There you have it. Completely unexpected and out of the blue, I had a Good Day. I certainly wasn't expecting it when i woke up this morning, which is perhaps why it did end up feeling so good, but it did, and i'm glad.

You see, i woke up this morning remembering that all weekend i had forgotten that i had agreed to TA a class from 6-10 tonight and tomorrow night, a new class that's never been taught before, whose teacher i've never met, which i had no idea what i was supposed to do for. Well, i was given some vague instructions two weeks ago, but as if i remember any of that.

Well, it turned out that there was no teacher, that I was the special guest teacher for the night, and that basically i was to spend 4 hours with 4 people teaching about the aesthetics of editing, rather than what i usually do which is teach about the technicalities of how to edit using specific software. software which none of these people own or were able to use for their project. It started off kind of shaky, but then as we all figured out what to do (the students were also unsure as to the meaning of the class) everything really fell into place and i found myself in the wonderful position of actually being able to teach something to people who hadn't heard my lectures all a million times before. OK, true, a lot of what i told people is what i was taught myself, but i found it to be invaluable advice, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, given ample reason, i was able to critique and give fairly sound advice on what these students should be thinking about while working on their projects. It was really wonderful to have students paying rapt attention to the wisdom i had to give, and i really enjoyed the class a great deal more than i expected to. :) the nature of what i was doing also made it possible to almost completely negate tomorrows class, (yay!) except for one guy who wants to come and learn the stuff i usually teach.

i also had an odd moment of psychic-timing this morning, whereby after coming to the conclusion (rather abruptly) that i sincerely hoped i did not get the job i was interviewed for last week, and verbally expressed this to my co-worker (who seemed doubtful, she was torn between wanting me to get the other job and really not wanting me to leave). Seconds after expressing the reasons i didn't want the job, which had nothing to do with the work involved, but more the attitude of the employers, my phone rang, and it was the very people i had just been talking about. :eek: My heart nearly dropped and i was almost terrified that they were going to tell me i got the job. Then she rambled for a few minutes and i started to calm down, recognizing the pleasant tone of voice and slight meandering that preceded "we actually ended up interviewing some other people for the position and there was one person who really had quite a bit of experience doing exactly what we need blah blah blah so sorry we hired that person." I was exceedingly cheerful in my acceptance of her rejection. My co-worker was looking at me, practically biting nails (because we often joke about getting a surgery to be joined at the hips, in the course of working together, we've become close friends and we really like the chemistry we have together at work ... we have a LOT of fun) because she knows that i am perfect for that job, but then i kind of repeated what the woman was saying to me, making it clear that i understood her reasons for hiring someone else and was glad that they had found an ideal candidate. After i hung up, there was much rejoicing in our office along with some "whoa, that was freaky that they called right then". And some more half-jokes about starting our own company with the goal of making money to pay for our hip-joining surgery. :D

So somehow, not getting a job i kind of wanted and having to work late ended up making a pretty good day. Also i got paid the whopping sum of $50 for the artwork i designed for the school's walls, which is nothing really for the caliber of work i did, but i don't care, because WOO! $50! :dozey: man being poor sucks. but it's kind of good too, because i feel good about doing what i love and just being glad to get paid for it at all. i wish i was rich so i could do what i love for free, but what can you do?

i also felt pretty good about the writing i did yesterday for the war and selena's story, and then this morning remembered that i have an entry for the fiction competition half-complete. So, overall, i feel that even though it's only tuesday and i didn't work yesterday that i've had a pretty productive week. i am pleased. and also i think i made a date on saturday with the girl i kissed on the weekend. she came by. she's so cute. :blush: well, she asked if i wanted to do "something" on saturday, so i think that's a date, but i don't really know. whatever. these kinds of plans with her have flaked out before.

anyway, what a long day. off to sleep. :)

[Anita Blake]

exhausted. two 12 hour days in a row. meh. ok, i shan't complain. these 2 12 hour days come after a 4 day week, a 4 day weekend, and another 4 day week. i mean, i guess i shouldn't complain.

dracula seems to think that i should be awake at 5:50AM every day. he seems to think that this is the most appropriate time for him to play with my vertical blinds and or hop on my nightstand in search of things to knock onto the floor (the nailclippers are a favorite target, i think he really hates them, especially after i've clipped his nails, but he always puts up with the clipping without much fuss.) I suspect he's got a deep and intricate plot to hide my nailclippers from me permanently, but every time he tries, they clatter onto the ground loudly and he gets busted. :dozey: One day, i'm sure he'll succeed, unaware of the fact that there are places outside his domain where I am free to roam and purchase brand new nail clippers with which to dull the claws he spends weeks sharpening in a plot to slash my throat while i'm sleeping that he may further his plans for escape. his logic is fuzzy though, in that without me, the door to the outside world will remain closed and his food supply will be cut off. Or maybe he's thought of that and is revising his plot to kill me. I'm not too sure. He may be trying to mentally unbalance me enough that i'll leave the door open one day that he may further explore the reaches of the universe. Good luck, little man, good luck. with just a little less sleep each night, you may succeed yet.

in other news, i'm going to sleep. good night.

[Anita Blake]

restless sleep. beginning to recognize this is as an early symptom of pms. Actually, i think i have about 2 weeks of pm-symptoms. i suppose it should be relieving since it means i know i'm not pregnant, but since i haven't had sex in 7 months, i was already pretty sure of the non-pregnancy factor. :dozey:

sometimes my mind decides to kick into overdrive. nothing particular making it spin like so many dreidels, but that's never seemed to matter. dreams. dreams taking my mind to strange places. actually, not even places all that strange. just the ... intensity of the dream residue upon waking sometimes makes it difficult for me to make it through the day. it feels like i'm not quite awake and not quite asleep and not quite dreaming and not quite not dreaming. Emotions that don't exist coursing through my veins until i just want to put the world on pause and scream until something shatters, or maybe put my fist through something so that the pain will cause me to feel normal. And yet at the same time, i know that to scream or yell or hit something will make me feel so utterly ridiculous, and that even the overwhelmed feeling would be better than the public humliation of going insane. i wonder if this happens to other people, if under tha calm serene mask of going about the daily routine there dwells monsters and flights of fancy that would dizzy the most thrill-seeking of minds.

And meanwhile, we all just ride the bus, don't look at the person across from you, don't talk, don't do anything other than try to normalize before getting to work. it's good that i don't have a car to drive to work because i'd probably get in an accident on days like this. just not... all... there...

i had a dream last night. something was tugging my leg, and it hurt. it tugged so hard that it pulled my mind into another gear altogether and i half-awoke to discover my sweet adorable kitty pouncing on my calf and ankle and chewing it up. i think i might have kicked him off of me and put my foot back under the blankets. But it was hard to wake up because in the dream, whatever was pulling my leg, i think i wanted it to. i'm not sure. He did, however (dracula, that is) respect my wish not to wake me up at 6AM. I half woke around then and could feel him standing on the corner of my bed staring at me, willing me to wake up, but he wasn't in a destructive, noisy hell-cat mood, so i went back to sleep.

in less dreamy news, my friend today decided to buy makeup for the first time in her life and had me show her how to apply it. :) so it was fun, i got to do a mini-makeover on her at work and i think she's pretty happy. I like to make people prettier. Note: i say prettier because people don't really need makeup, and i think that most people, and my friend in particular, are quite pretty as it is, but i think makeup is fun and good and wonderful. We just started with eye makeup. She's not a big make-up kinda gal, so i figured we should start small and subtle and see how she likes that before deciding to go whole hog with the foundation and blush and lipstick and other million products that "they" say we need to be beautiful. "I" say meh to "them" and got my friend to buy as little makeup as possible. :)

i am supposed to go out tonight but instead i am staying home to make soup. otherwise this turkey leftover soup will never be made, and that cannot be allowed to happen. ~goes off to make soup~

[Anita Blake]

so last night i watched TV. Actually sat down and watched tv. Now, perhaps i should mention that i have been without television service even on the free level since last june. previously we could kind of watch one channel, if desparate for some form of visual entertainment, which i never was, but since buying my new shiny TV, my roommate decided to buy an antenna for it so that he can watch tv as he's a tv junkie. Now, i get something like 5 or 6 channels.

Please, understand that i didn't intend tp sit down and watch tv. Ok, i turned the tv on with the intent of watching a movie, and since the tv is usually on "line in" i wouldn't even have realized that all these channels are there waiting to be watched (ok, 2 of the 6 channels are in other languages). But the TV happened to not be set to line in, and broadcasting programs were being briadcast to my eyes. And i realized Survivor was on so i decided to watch it.

CAme to some interesting ideas. I used to be dead set against Survivor, but my ex-bf somehow got me interested in it. And i realized something about it last night, that what makes it so appealing is not that it's "reality" or the survival aspects of it, watching people do better than one another, but it's just a cultural phenomenon. The contestants will be able to, when they are old forty years from now, tell their grandchildren about the time they were part of a competition, an almost olympian competition that required physical and mental skills, a game of skill and chance, like chess and russian roulette and a triathalon all built into one. You might be the most adept player, but there's always that element of random luck ... do people like you, are they afraid of you, it's quite the crazy concept really. There's the fact that your every move is watched and analyzed by millions of people. I was thinking if i were on survivor, my strategy would be to not win many challenges, but to be the person who doesn't want to win, the person who wants to come in second, to stay for the long haul but not be a threat to anyone, who just wants to be a part of the phenomenon. It'd be easier to make alliances with people when you could tell them right out that you don't want to win, you just want to come along for the ride. then again, it could all backfire and you'd be gone the first day. it's such a dicey thing. kinda interesting.

reality tv is interesting that way. it bears no relation to reality, but it is a huge symbol of these times.

then i got suckered into watching the final Apprentice, mostly because it came on and everyone i know watches it and i've never seen it before. Truly bizarre. Loathesome really. Donald Trump is quite possibly what i've feared my whole life. People who will do anything to anyone for money. Businessmen in the fully legitimate sense of the word. But there's nothing legitimate about the kind of business that gets done in New York, on Wall Street. I fear it. i fear the Corporation. ~shudder~ my whole life has practically been dedicated to avoiding getting the kind of career that would have me in power suits driving jaguars and riding limos and getting other people to do all my work for me and taking all the credit and all the money and giving up my soul for the almighty dollar. don't get me wrong, i want money, but i'd rather have integrity and my own style rather than a suit and a soul-sucking Career. Some people want to marry a stockbroker or CEO because it's the sound, reasonable thing to do, but i would probably kill myself if i was with a Company Man (or woman, for that matter ;) ). eeeeaiigh.

the other thing that freaked me out in a large way watching TV is commercials. So flashy and bright and designed for nothing but mind control. "Buy This" "Your Life Is Incomplete Without Our Fine Product". Even though the best quality of products rarely advertise :rolleyes:. Commercials are cheap, and i remember that getting rid of commercials was the reason that i wanted to cancel my cable in the first place. i felt so dirty watching TV last night, but also familiar and comfortable. The saddest thing was that i always knew this day would come, the day when television was back in my life and i would sit down and watch two hours of tv that i didn't really want to watch. Sad that i knew it, and sad that it was true. Shouldn't television be a luxury, an entertaining diversion? I feel like i fell off the wagon (or is it on the wagon, i can never figure that stupid analogy out) it felt like television isn't just a thing, but an intertwined part of life that cannot be denied. i am going to have to try harder to avoid my 4 english-language channels of tv. i felt so good not watching tv!

egads. what a crazy crazy world we live in. that was the final conclusion i came to after my couple hours of dirty, sinful television-watching. This world is bizarre beyond all belief. We live inside all those old science fiction novels. We live in 1984 and no one seems to notice or care, reading the book and finding it frightening and yet unable to realize that that's the world we do live in, in fact, that that's the world we've been living in for quite some time now. maybe not quite in the details, but the themes of 1984 run through our society in a terrifyingly acceptable way. Orson Welles wasn't a prophet, he was merely very observant. Sad. Very, very sad. :(

[Anita Blake]

the interesting thing about days is that every single one starts out in the morning. well, that might be a bit presumptuous of me, excluding those days that start at midnight, or days for those people who work graveyard shifts, but no matter what time you wake up and your own personal day begins, it's pretty obvious that the morning is where it all began.

unfortunately, i don't cope with mornings so well. well, maybe i say that and don't mean it. what i mean is, i don't cope well with mornings when i have to be awake against my will and better judgement, and i definitley need a lot of time in the morning to adjust to this foul state of awakeness, before i can talk to people out loud. Now, i could very easily sleep in much later than i do, in fact, i elect voluntarily to wake up nearly an hour before i really have to, but the fact of the matter is, i do need to be up that early. Because of the adjustment time, you see. i need a buffer of at least 2 hours before waking up and having to be at work. i need to laze about, have my shower, do my hair, and my makeup, write a little, sit down and stare at my toes, whatever, i jsut need a lot of time to do it.

woe to those who try to disturb my adjustment time.

i had a pretty busy weekend. did stuff i've never done before. i debate on whether i should try to be cryptic with that, or just come out and say what i did, but i think for now i'm going to be cryptic. think what you will.

i even *shock* went to a friend's house to watch the hockey game. probably no one here watched that game, as it was between vancouver and calgary, but it went into third overtime before vancouver finally won. i cannot believe i just wrote those words. i can actually feel myself becoming more canadian as the words left my brain. insane. now, usually i don't care muhc about hockey, but it was a big game, calgary being my hometown, and vancouver being where i actually live. if vancouver had lost, they'd be out of the playoffs and people would be casting me dirty "you traitor from calgary" looks for probably the rest of the playoffs. so tonight is game 7, all i can say is that vancouver better win or i might be in a heap of trouble. :eek:

i just had a whole paragraph about sports. *states the blatantly obvious* it's just... damn, it must be some kind of playoff fever. i must have caught it from everyone else in this city. it's going around i hear. luckily, i only have a mild case of slightly caring when i generally wouldn't, whereas some people wear Canucks jerseys pretty much nonstop. *sigh*

in other news, i've said it in a couple other threads, but i'm going to say it again, just because i feel like it, but i'm gonna miss james for the next couple months. he is a bit of a muse for me, i sometimes think. i wish him happiness and fun. :) hopefully all the sock pixies only live in oz, and don't follow him to NZ.


and that about wraps up the morning ritual of tying my thoughts together somewhat coherently. :) now i can go on with the rest of my day with my mind properly set out and prepared for the day. awww, what's the fun in that!? :p

[Anita Blake]

today was a long day. just one of those long stupid, pointlessly silly days. nowhere near enough fun and too much incompetence.

Which was why it was funny that when i left work, it was raining, and i, for once, had brought my umbrella and was glad. I was also happy to discover i had bus fare. And why it was equally funny that i decided after a minute of waiting for the bus that i'd rather walk, and put my umbrella down and walked free in the rain, all the way home. Near the end i decided i didn't care how silly i looked and walked with my face up, smiling at the sky, and my hands open and in front of me to catch the rain in my palms. I know i looked silly because no one carries an umbrella when it's raining and doesn't use it, only to cheerfully get more wet. :) it was delightful.

i also saw one of the greenest, leafiest trees ever. it had the hugest canopy. relly pretty. i enjoyed looking at it and peering into it's depths as i walked under it.

it's a stupid world, alright, stupid, and pointless and dumb, and beautiful and wonderful. i think i kinda love it sometimes. i wish more people would walk through the rain with their palms up and a smile on their face (when it's warm, gentle rain, of course, i don't expect crazy people to grin and bear torrential freezing downpours.) I wish more people would smile at the pigeons and the crows and the seagulls. I think it would be a slightly nicer world if they did. Until then, however, i guess i'll just have to do my own share of smiling appreciation of the world's beauty. :)

[Anita Blake]

ok. ok. i apologize, but what a crazy hockey game! :) i never watch hockey games, but this is huge, because it's my hometown vs. the city i love to live in, and i'm cheering for my new city (so i feel like a bit of a traitor, but at least this way my friends here won't give me dirty looks :p ). We just tied the game in the last 3 seconds of the third period, when calgary had a power play, and holy crap, it's insane. The jubilation and cheering in the city in infectious. I don't think i could sit here tonight and not watch the game.

But i was looking out my window (god i love my view) and i look out over most of the downtown living parts of the city, and i was looking at all those twinkling lights and realizing the sheer enormity of all the people out there, when all of a sudden a realized a really really neat thing. I can see literally thousands of apartment windows from varying distances, and i can see dozens of people all sitting at home watching the hockey game. I know they are watching the game because i can see the lights of their tvs all changing in perfect unison as the commercials change. It's soooooo neat! i can see little twinkly lights turning red all at the same time, and turning blue, and white, and going out, while behind me, my tv is flickering on the same channel, at the same frequency. what a cool sensation and view. :)

just thought i'd share it.

lol, i must have pms, because i'm tired and somewhat euphoric. tomorrow i'll probably be crabby as all hell.

uh oh. ambulances. if we lose tonight.... i fear the riots that will ensue. hell, if we win tonight, i fear the riots that will ensue. vancouver, if it isn't, should be famous for it's playoff hockey riots. Rioting, protesting, it's like the summer hobby of most vancouverites.
"oh, bob, what are you doing tonight?"
"i dunno george, was thinking of going to that protest down on the beach and smoking a bunch of pot"
"oh, yeah! i forgot about that. i was going to go to the riot that we'll have after we win or lose the game tonight."
"oh, yeah, tough choice!"


edit: uh-oh. we lost. :( as a native calgarian, i may have to fear for my life tonight. :eek:

:cry:

ah, well, that means i don't have to think about hockey again for another year. :)

[Anita Blake]

i apologize. i feel the need to because i tend to fill this reflection thread up with a lot of pointless nonsense. i apologize for all the rambling. i guess i don't really need to because if you don't like it you can always just not read it, and i'm sure a lot of people do just that, but for those who do bother to read all the silliness herein, i apologize. i just can't seem to get up in the morning without ordering my scattered morning thoughts, and this is a good place for me to do so. :) so it's either an apology or a thank you, i don't know which.

so as soon as calgary snuck the puck into our goal last night, it seemed like the hush was palpable over the city. i heard the city collectively stop breathing in shock and disapointment and disbelief. I looked out the window, and saw that the unity i had only briefly witnessed minutes earlier was gone. tvs no longer flickered in unison across the city. it was kind of sad to see that this city can be brought together by the simplest of things, and also torn apart by them as well. Difficult to describe or even really define the sense of familial love i had, witnessing all those tvs flickering, knowing that so many people were joined together at the same time, knowing that i was a part of that thing, and then to see it dissipate and wither away, all sense of kinship lost.

is that what sports are about? finding something to care about with your community? i look around, i observe things, and one of the things i observe is that people are people. I read books, fantasy, sometimes a little historical fiction, i've learned about ancient cultures a bit, and if i've observed anything, it's that in all time, nothing has really changed. We look at "backwards" tribes in africa, in the rainforest, and there's always some kind of ritual, women dancing to entice the men, we look a few hundred years back, a hundred years even, and there's women dancing around the maypole, and now, we have cheerleaders. it's all exactly the same, the details change, but the underlying event is precisely the same. the civilization changes, but humanity remains the same. i am convinced of this. old religions are dying. in their place rises a new reason to converge and come together and know that we all belong, to know that all men are family. old traditions die, to be replaced by new, but always the underlying tradition is the same.

of course i know that now that i've said this people will misinterpret me and think that i think all things are one, and in a way they are, but i recognize that there are very intense differences between cheerleading and tribal dancing, but i also think that looking at those differences is what leads to a sense of superiority, to a sense of difference, and quite honestly, i'm much more interested in looking at the things that bring us together, the things that show our commonality. The positive rather than the negative. Yes, you could point out differences between now and ancient greece till the cows come home, i won't debate that, but the point i am making is that, after you look at all those surface differences, looking down to the souls of the humans involved, taken down to the simplest aspects, there really is no difference. Once you start trying to see all the differences, it's only natural to try to compare, to look at those differences and say "well, yes, but which is better? what we have obviously, because we are what it all comes down to, ancient greece died, and we took it's place." I don't care what's "better". To me, that's just nit-picking, self-aggrandizing boasting. baf! look deeper and you'll see that we are all the same. all cultures, all types of people.

there is also, i believe, an innate nobility class of people. Some people are born to be higher than others, some lower. Not that all who are born well are 'nobility' and all who are not are peasants, but i think there are definitely some 'types' of people. Class is an inborn structure, and before you go all crazy on me, just look around in nature. Ants have a defined class structure. Workers, soldiers, queen. Bees. Dogs know that they are either stronger or weaker/ better or worse than another dog. Almost always there are leaders and followers, alphas and omegas, and they need to work together for anything to work, and that's a valuable lesson too. but it's something to think about. i was reading The Poetics, and Aristotle speaks a lot of the Slave mind, and how some men are born to be slaves, and some are born noble, and when i read it, i balked, i felt revolted. This was the greatest wisdom passed down through history? It made me feel sick to read such backwards thoughts.

But further thought on the matter has led me to believe in it's accuracy. Just because it seems wrong to my modern sensibilities doesn't mean that it is false. Replace the word "slave" with "peasant" or "labourer" or "welfare recipient" and it doesn't seem so loathesome. It seems sad, but true. Funny how some words cause a certain reaction that may lead a person to rebel against the message.

Anyway, i wasn't thinking any of that when i sat down to write this, which is one of the reasons i like to sit down here and write in the morning. It's kind of neat to see where my thoughts go. :) farewell, and happy tuesday.

[Anita Blake]

i don't know if Someone said this, or if i thought it up (most likely the former), but it came into my mind unbidden a few days ago.

"I would rather derive joy from the simplest of things than misery from the most complicated"

which, when i look at it now, seems fairly obvious. :dozey: all of which is to say, i think it's more important to stop and smell the flowers and gaze lovingly upon the sparrows and seagulls than it is to ponder and frown over complicated life stuff. i like the simple things, even if that makes me a simple person. i somehow don't think i am, though, no matter how hard i might try.

too much thinking. fah! too much logic begins to eat away at all reason, until there are no reasons left. for anything.

computers were supposed to be the dawn of this great, "paperless" era, where nothing would be done on paper anymore. And, sure, a lot of paper usage is down, like for scribbling notes on when you need to remember something important, just use your PDA, right? stuff like that. but, well, i don't know for sure, but i suspect that paper usage on the whole is at an all time high. I mean, how many times do you print something off only to find out the printer screwed it up and you have to do it again, and again, and again, because you made a typo on "mom" or something silly like that, and then you print a ocuple extra copies for the record, and by the time you're done, the forests are gone and there's nothing left to print stuff out on. i guess that's when we'll need computer chips in our brains. transmit immediately. something like that.

anyway, all that is to say that i miss paper. i miss real paper, just sitting down and writing on it. I still do, in my journal and such, but only a few short years into the lifespan of the wide-spead home computer craze, and here i am, my handwriting atrocious and my hands not nearly as accustomed to writing as they should be.

i think computers make us use more paper, and they make us lazy too. it's so easy to print multiple copies of anything we want that it doesn't matter if it's not right the first time, or the second time, as long as we eventually get it good enough. It's also ironic how much effort a person will put into getting a computer to do something that could be done by hand easier. (i'm not talking about math, here, btw, because in my mind, math is what computers were invented for doing for us). I get this a lot, people complaining that they have to click so many different things to make something work in a computer. I mean, how forgetful are we? Do we not remember that only a few short years ago, it took a hell of a lot more than a few clicks to get something accomplished? Navigating through a menu is hard work? man, i feel kinda old. i don't know. nostaligic. longing for a simpler time when a job well done meant something and there was honour in craftsmanship.

~calls people whippersnappers and wistfully thinks back to the golden years when tv was entertainment and computers were a fancy dream and calculators were what cheating rebels brought to class~



/end thought train-smission

[Anita Blake]

i am tired. nay, exhausted. not that my week has been anything spectacular, or that i've had to work particularly hard to do much thinking. no no. just PMS.

i don't know why i feel the monthly urge to explain the mysteries of PMS to people, but maybe because every month, i get really really really tired and listless, and my roommate always asks why i'm so tired all the time. I tell him PMS, and he goes "oh, why do i ask?" yes. why do you ask?

anyway, i know he probably gets all embarrassed because he thinks that i'm telling him i'm on the rag, but please, allow me to explain something: PMS stands for PRE-mentrual syndrome. PRE, meaning "preceeding" "before" and other like-minded words.

menstruation is one thing. i'm not going to go into that. that's a whole other ball of wax. entirely different kind of grumpy.

PMS is what happens BEFORE your period starts. some people get bitchy cranky, some people get crampy. Me, i get un-holily exhausted. Progressively, for about a week before the menstruation actually begins. kinda depressed, total lack of energy or motivation, bloated and fat-feeling, and just generally not all that great. Not particularly cranky, unless someone does something to set me off, and then i want to fight, shout, pout, whatever. If you are foolish enough to exist in some kind of way that is contrary to my mindset at the moment, then i will probably start to get very tense and cranky (but i don't usually actually get mad at people).

i think i read somewhere that PMS has something like a hundred bajillion million different syptoms. bah. the only one i care about is this stupid feeling exhausted. it makes me mad (hehe). i mean, i want to have energy and be my usually peppy self, but for about a week every month (before the actual period, remember) i am just way too tired. it sucks, because i believe there is a DMS as well (D standing for "during", of course) so overall, i end up feeling "normal" for about 50% of my life. :cry: well, maybe 60-70%.

gah. i just really really really want to curl up in a ball and go back to sleep. i slept so well last night!

~demands more sleep from the sleep gods~

[Anita Blake]

So. yesterday i spent my day baking bread. partly because i was bored, partly because i didn't want to leave my apartment and have to spend money, partly because i like to bake bread every now and then.

eating cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches today. delicious! my bread is quite possibly the best bread i've ever baked, following my mother's recipe, simple enough recipe really, but i've never quite gotten it to work this well before. anyway. It got me thinking (as so many things do).

We live in modern times. How many people do you know, under 30, who take the time to bake a loaf of bread on a saturday afternoon. I know one. Me. I do live an extremely urban life, so perhaps my stats on this are a little skewed. But i am firm in my belief that bread baking is way down from what it was even 15 years ago. Again, maybe it's just my lifestyle that makes it seem so.

We are faced with a challenge, we modern people, men and women, though i fear it is women especially, or at least, it's the plight of the modern woman that i identify more with. Our grandmothers had a very specific life set ahead of them. They knew what they were supposed to do with their lives, and if that was unglamorous and domestic, well, at least they knew what they were supposed to do. Our mothers were given a good deal more choice in the matter, and unsurprisingly, so many of our mothers chose to be more than a mother, more than a wife, more than a subservient homemaker. So many of them chose a different lifestyle that today, we are left wondering what the hell is right and what is wrong. We saw the advantages of women working in the workplace, we saw how fulfilling and great it can be, and yet we also saw how the home was not all that the olden stories madde it out to be. Where was the fresh smell of bread baking in the oven, the glorious scent of pine sol and a clean, spotless house? Where were the pies waiting on the windowsill, the sheets hanging on the line?

My own mother was raised on a farm. She ran away when she was young looking for the glorious urban life promised to her if she only left the country. She fell in love, married, had a child, and realized that this was exactly what she had run away from in the first place. She divorced, raised me alone for a time, worked, slaved away to have that glorious urban life, and finally decided to re-marry and be the domestic woman she had always been raised to be. She still works, owns a small comapny. She bakes like a demon, and i can remember when it was just the two of us, when i was very young, 4, 5, 6, that even then, she would bake like a goddess in the kitchen. I worshipped her then, you see, I wanted to learn to bake like she did. i watched her, licked the spoons and bowls clean, and always ate probably more than my fair share of her sweets.

How I wanted to be her! Smooth and confident in the kitchen, capable and sure, never more than a glance at the multitude of cookbooks and recipes she had, barely ever using measuring cups, she baked with an innate skill and steady knowledge of what she was doing.

In retrospect, from the eyes of a 25 year old woman, i see now that at that time, she was younger than i am now. She was barely 23 in my earliest memories of her, a single girl with a small daughter. She always seemed old and wise beyond belief to me then. And with the exception of having a child of my own, i'd like to think that I've followed in her footsteps somewhat, that i am living the life she thought she wanted then.

And I bake. My cookies are renowned among my circle of friends, i roast turkey for holidays and make divine mashed potatoes. I am, to those who know me well, a Domestic Goddess.

And yet... and this is the point I've been dancing around for this whole article (if I may call it that), I live an extremely urban life. I live in a high rise on the beach in one of the busiest cities of the continent, one of the Great Cities of the world if i may be so bold. I am not married, nor dowdy. I work in an exciting industry, go to crazy parties, drink far more than necessary at times, i work with computers and film all day, smoke pot on the street with my friends (often in view of cops no less!). My life seems fairly modern. Far too modern at times.

The modern life is exciting, yes, fun, wild, interesting, so many things it could be described as. Hollow is another word you could use for it. Empty.

What is life when all your food comes pre-packed from a factory thousands of miles away? What is life when you can't provide for yourself the things that cost too much in the store? What is life without food, lovingly made and freshly prepared to your exact specifications? What is life if you cannot decide one day to sew yourself a shirt? Or mend a broken button?

The old ways and the new do not have to be mutually exclusive.

You can choose to be both. There are a lot of wonderful and fulfilling things about the New ways. Technology is wonderful, i'm the first to admit it. But it's also wonderful to spend a day with your hands in a yeasty ball of dough, kneading and kneading until you have just the right consistency, waiting for the dough to rise so you can punch it down and shape it into loaves, only to wait for it to rise again before baking it in the oven.

This is what i think the women of today need to learn. Balance between our grandmothers and ourselves. We are at the cusp of our civilization. What we choose to do today will effect society for generations to come. Which is why it's important to learn from our grandmothers, or else their lives will have had no effect on us. It's important to learn the ways which have shaped our world today so that we can continue to shape the world respecting those that came before us. So why not learn to bake? if nothing else can be salvaged from a past that is perpetually being re-written and altered to fit the views we now hold, then at least we can learn all learn to be Domestic Gods and Goddesses, to keep some measure of control over our own lives.

[Anita Blake]

Well, ok, maybe not peace and quiet. my roommate is watching bad boys 2 at what sounds (even lodged between my stereo speakers on the other side of a concrete wall) like full volume. Which would have been a problem had i wanted to write something a few hours ago. Now, however.... ~hugs in-bedroom-computer~.

Wow. i spent about 3-4 hours re-organizing my bedroom. It was like playing tetris on a full-scale. New table, 30"x30", pretty small, right? yeah. So's my bedroom. :rolleyes: I had originally thought i'd just plunk it down in front of my window, hoorah, over and done with. Nope. didn't like it there. Moved my bed. Once. Twice. Three, no, four times before coming up with a workable floorplan that allows all my furniture bits to be integrated and useful in my bedroom.

A word on architechiture, if any who reads this happens to want to go into that profession: Right angles. 45 degree angles. for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE!

Now, the apartment i am currently residing in, there is not a 90 degree angle to be found in the apartment. not one. Well, there might be one in the bathroom, and perhaps another hidden behind a door somewhere wher you can't put anything. ~sigh~ i am stuck with 95 degree angles, 140 degree angles, and pretty much anything that nothing will fit in. it's a problem. I haven't exactly solved this problem with my new floorplan layout, but i'm working on it. it basically involves having a lot of wasted space. grrr. i hate wasted space. i like efficiency. it's so... well, efficitent. But, that's ok. I can live with the space that si currently being wasted. all i have to do is find a way to prevent my delightful feline companion from being able to get at the power cords for things. he takes a perverse joy in chewing through cables. i can't explain it. it drives me nuts.

a brief list of things dracula has chewed through:
PS2 controller
cell phone charger cord (x2)
stero speaker wires (x2)
audio video cables (x??)
scanner power cord

another list of cables dracula has gnawed unhealthily upon:
audio video cables (x all of them)
computer power cord
speaker wire
lamp cord
extension cords
cable wire
xbox controller
.... wait i can make this shorter by saying ALL expose wires in my apartment have teeth marks in them somewhere. So much that i am often surprised when i go to work and find cables that aren't half chewed through. ~sigh~ such a bad kitty.

anyway, all that is to say that the internet looks different in my bedroom. :) ok, no it doesn't, but it sure feels different to be writing in my bedroom. I look forward to being able to wake up in the middle of the night and just start writing stuff. :) hoorah! (ok, so i could do that before, but it's a lot different to have to walk all the way to the living room as opposed to just moving off the end of the bed.) :D

[Anita Blake]

i forgot to mention yesterday: i also got a new tea kettle from my friend who sold me the table, and yeehaw! it doesn't drip when it pours boiling water and it turns itself off after if boils.

i am amused by the simplest of things.

anyway, it's morning. oh goody. mostly i'm only filling up this space because i need to do something while i'm drinking my morning tea, and this is as good a thing as any. sure, sure, i could find something better to do, but that would involve a lot of thinking and planning. i'm not so good at that in the morning.

well. it's a whole new bedroom. there's a few kinks that i need to work out yet, but i'm confident that i'll get it all sorted out soon enough. for one thing, i'm not sure i like having my bed right next to the door, since i have to leave my bedroom door open at night or suffer the wrath of the dracula. but i don't want people to be able to see me sleeping. gah.

ok, this is dull. farewell for now then. :D

[Anita Blake]

hehe. what a day. long and long and long. OK, so maybe it wasn't that long, but by the end it felt like it.

Lots of good things happened today, i might be able to get a better computer for super cheap, which is a good thing, because i need a new computer. My mom gave me the idea to start doing some of my photo artwork for dancers and selling the art to dance parents. which is such a phenomenally good idea. but i need a computer at home to do that on, since i obviously can't spend all day at work doing that. Even though that's what i did today.

man my little sister is adorable. when i get the pic i'm working on done, i'll post it. cute as pie!

so i spent all day working on this picture, which was fun, but what a long time doing little tiny detail work. my eyes feel like they're going to fall out of my head. But then i went to get a free haircut! yay free! from my adorable gay student hairdresser, who today confirmed that he is gay by telling me he broke up with his boyfriend. I mean, i figured. I think he is just the most adorable guy. :love: he gave me a scalp massage before he cut my hair, and i nearly melted. Seriously, if he would have massaged my head for any longer, i probably would have gotten little cartoon hearts spinning around in my eyes and proposed to him, gay or not! there is nothing, i repeat NOTHING like a good scalp massage. ~sigh~ :love:

so my haircut turned out well, and i was walking home at my usual breakneck speed (i can't help it, i have long legs and anyway, i like the feel of wind on my face) and this guy in a very loud shirt but tasteful jacket came out of a swanky gay bar (have i mentioned that i live in the gay area of town? it's very nice) and he stared at me, and i kept walking, and he was like "SLOW DOWN!" and then he proceeded to tell me that "you have it going on, girl!" and that i should slow down because the guys can't hit on me if i walk fast. he then flattered me some more until i was probably blushing like a maniac (lucky it was night and therefore dark) and then let me leave after a hug and a caution to walk more slowly. :blush: lol! i was smiling the rest of the 4 blocks home! he totally made my night! what a sweetie!

[Anita Blake]

hehe. what a day. long and long and long. OK, so maybe it wasn't that long, but by the end it felt like it.

Lots of good things happened today, i might be able to get a better computer for super cheap, which is a good thing, because i need a new computer. My mom gave me the idea to start doing some of my photo artwork for dancers and selling the art to dance parents. which is such a phenomenally good idea. but i need a computer at home to do that on, since i obviously can't spend all day at work doing that. Even though that's what i did today.

man my little sister is adorable. when i get the pic i'm working on done, i'll post it. cute as pie!

so i spent all day working on this picture, which was fun, but what a long time doing little tiny detail work. my eyes feel like they're going to fall out of my head. But then i went to get a free haircut! yay free! from my adorable gay student hairdresser, who today confirmed that he is gay by telling me he broke up with his boyfriend. I mean, i figured. I think he is just the most adorable guy. :love: he gave me a scalp massage before he cut my hair, and i nearly melted. Seriously, if he would have massaged my head for any longer, i probably would have gotten little cartoon hearts spinning around in my eyes and proposed to him, gay or not! there is nothing, i repeat NOTHING like a good scalp massage. ~sigh~ :love:

so my haircut turned out well, and i was walking home at my usual breakneck speed (i can't help it, i have long legs and anyway, i like the feel of wind on my face) and this guy in a very loud shirt but tasteful jacket came out of a swanky gay bar (have i mentioned that i live in the gay area of town? it's very nice) and he stared at me, and i kept walking, and he was like "SLOW DOWN!" and then he proceeded to tell me that "you have it going on, girl!" and that i should slow down because the guys can't hit on me if i walk fast. he then flattered me some more until i was probably blushing like a maniac (lucky it was night and therefore dark) and then let me leave after a hug and a caution to walk more slowly. :blush: lol! i was smiling the rest of the 4 blocks home! he totally made my night! what a sweetie!

that was funny, because he was the 2nd complete stranger to ask me for a hug today, this first being a somewhat creepy guy who first asked me directions to some hotel he didn't look like he could afford, and then asked if i had a hug. i kept walking. it's funny how sometimes you can hug a complete stranger on the street if they make you laugh. :) if he would have asked for my number, then it would have been a different story, but it was just a random act of flattery.

overall, i'd say i had a pretty successful day, i even went out and had a real lunch with my friend and her bf, instead of our usual $1 pizza (gag). hooray for today! (tomorrow will probably suck, but i'll cross that bridge when i get to it) :D

cheers!

[Anita Blake]

spinning through darkness and dancing through the flame, welcoming the chaos with open arms and the toothiest of smiles.

well. something needs to be done here. something needs to be said. something needs to be somethingized. begin the somethingification immediately.

rare the dread. rare the fear. rare the racing heart and keening wail of the soul. and for what? what causes it? desire of the unknown.

hard to be fulfilled when the meaning of fulfillment is an enigma tied up in a mystery wrapped in a burrito. desire burns for a thing that has no name.

feeling is difficult. feeling is not quite all there. feeling is hampered by thinking which is duct-taped by logic which is punched in the face by emotion.

so kick me. so hit me. so tell me all the bad things you always wanted to say but could never quite spit out in the name of politeness.

do it for you. do it for me. do it for that guy who picked on you in the third grade. i dare you. i double dare you motherfucker, just punch me once in the gut and i will make it worth your while.

but you can't say these things to the strangers on the street. no indeed. you can't ask for the violence you crave. because craving is different from wanting is different from needing is different from what you are actually equipped to deal with.

words. worthless stupid words. never enough of them to say what you need, and yet too many by far for what is necessary. the experiment called communiccation is a cosmic failure.

everything you say could be interpreted in at least half a dozen ways. think about that. you think you know yourself, but look at yourself through the eyes of all those different interpretations and you'll find that you are not who you thought you were. you think you're misunderstood? of course you are. and dont think for a minute that anyone else understands you the way you understand yourself.

cleanse.

[Anita Blake]

with me, it's always about words. i am growing quieter. and older. i look in the mirror and i am starting to see a woman's reflection staring back at me, not a girl. not a young woman. it's frightening. scary to think of how a child would look at me and think i am old and wise. at least, i think that's probably how child-me would see now-me. I pretty much thought everyone over 18 was old and wise. hell, take me back far enough and i probably owuld have thought anyone over 12 was old and wise. :rolleyes:

but there it is. i am getting older every day. so is everyone else, i guess, but most especially me. ;) i kind of wish i wasn't getting older. i would have no problems whatsoever with being granted eternal youth and immortality. well, maybe a few problems, but not for a few years at least.

time. i wish i could slow it down. let the next few years wash over me gently instead of pulling me into their tide the way i know they will. The older you get, the faster time moves. The older you get, the quicker you get older.

getting a sunburn on your arms is not the way to stay young forever. i know this, and yet.... there it is, my arms are very dark. kinda red too. But mostly brown. I have a tendency to tan very darkly. i like to be dark, but i hate the way my skin feels when i tan. i hate the way i can see my skin aging when i tan. it's not cool at all, and yet i hate being pasty white. choices choices. it's a matter of balance, i guess. ~sigh~

i want to sew a shirt. a shirt made of patchy leather. i bought the leather today. it cost me $7. 70 small pieces of scrap leather at $0.10 a piece. Now, if only i knew what i was doing.

i can't wait to get my new computer. it's used, and gutted, and i have to get ram for it, and possibly a sound card, and my friend will give me a very decent video card for $20. i'm so excited. i have no idea how to shop for ram and such, so i've been trying to research online. ~sigh~ i'll have to ask the guy i'm getting the computer from for some more details on what's inside. ideally i'd like to only get the bare necessities right now, and wait till i start to get some return on my investment before i get all the goodies that i really want, like a dvd burner and a 250 gig harddrive. and a second monitor. wait. i don't have room for a second monitor. well... it's a nice dream. maybe i can convince my parents to get me a dvd burner for my birthday. ~schemes about that for a bit~

that's it for now, i guess.

[Anita Blake]

la dee da. what do you know. it's saturday, and for a change, i'm not hung over. my roommate is, so i get to feel all superior because i don't have a life and stayed home last night. :D yay for me.

so today, in the spirit of not being hungover on a saturday (something which hasn't happened for a while, sadly) i declared it to be a project day. Well, ok, mostly i just decided that i wanted to make a patchwork leather halter top. I have no idea why. I mean, i thought this through: who the hell would wear a leather halter top? it's heavy and hot, which is generally the opposite of what a halter top is supposed to be, but somehow it got stuck in my head that i wanted to do this. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that i can't sew very well, and a halter top sound easy in theory, and i the patchwork leather was only $0.10 a piece, so i bought a ton of it, and i'm not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

i'm about half way done. I spent about 5 hours working on it solidly, which was a lot. Especially considering that i don't have a pattern and am making it all out of my head. So far, so good. I designed the halter top part first, with the notion that i would sew the leather onto it afterwords to avoid it getting all misshapen, (i've played with this leather before, it's tricksy!) And then i got all spiffy and put the leather on it in a nifty design, and i haev to say, i'm actually impressed. I mean, i expected it to be a massive waste of my time (aka "a learning experience" ) which would produce a frightening bit of clothing that neither fit nor looked attractive. It fits, it looks Ok, and actually, the leather is kinda neat. The only this is, and i knew that this would happen when i started designing it and decided to go ahead anyway, is that it's hard to get on and off. I have to do the little hopping dance to get it off. Because i am a woman of simple sewing skills. i know not the ways of zippers and fastening devices. No no no. Over the head, that's the way to go! Ok, atually, i do know how to sew zippers on, and now that i think about it, i might. There's still time. i can still do it without destroying too much of my work.

anyway, i also went grocery shopping. mmmm groceries. i sure do like eating them. i bought a delicious steak (from new zealand! tell me how new zealand cows are cheaper than canadian cows? and tastier too! mmmmmmmmm) and some ceasar salad dressing that rules! i finally found the kind that burns my tongue with all the garlic! :love: anyhoo. that's my day. i can't believe it's almost 7:30 already. crazy. ~goes back to work on leather halter top~

[Anita Blake]

I'd have to say, that on a scale of 1-10, of my favorite things, waking up with a pounding headache does not rate at all. That's right. Waking up with a headache is not on my list of favorite things. Shocking, i know, but true.

Now, i'd be ok with waking up with a headache, if say, i deserved it for some reason, the most obvious one being that i had overindulged in an alcoholic beverage of some sort the night before. But when indulgence, over- not withstanding, has not been enjoyed, or partaken of in any way, waking up with a headache is just a cruel taunt.

Waking up with a headache on Sunday morning to the sound of cowbells and cheering that sounds as if it is in your bedroom by some cruel trick of echo and sound reverbration, well, that's just not right.

Ok, so maybe it's not that bad. And i'm not really in a bad mood, despite all of those things conspiring against me this fine morning, but my head does hurt quite a lot, and contrary to my beliefs, pumping myself full of caffiene has not aided. Also, when i woke up i felt hungry-naseous, whereby my tummy burns with hunger for food, and with revulsion at the thought of food. Ack. not a good start to the day. But i have, however, plotted a delicious meal to make for when my headache takes a leave of absence and my tummy growls. mmmmm. thai sweet black rice fried up with garlic, green beans, and possibly carrots and celery, since i have that. and maybe some other stuff. the food i have in my head sure looks, smells, and tastes good, that's for sure.

A word on Vancouver: Spring begins in February, but it really gets into full swing at the end of April. Summer starts shortly thereafter, so it's no wonder. Anyhoo, the reason that the seasons are being mentioned is that late spring/early summer in vancouver is also what i like to call ... Protest Season.

Now, no matter what people's political beliefs are, and how strong they are, there are very few protests in a month like, say December, when it is balmy and warm by canadian standards, at a gentle 5 degrees celcius, and the rain is ever-present. no no. that is not the weather for letting the government know your stance on war/marijuana/health care reform/homeless people. The proper weather for telling the world how angry you are is when it is a sunny, warm (even hot) spring day when the flowers are blooming, the beach is inviting, and everyone needs to improve their tan.

Spring/summer in vancouver is that magical time of year when the government listens to the people, apparently, or else it's the only time that people actually give a crap about what's going on in the world. Well, no that's not fair. There are a few season-starting protests every now and then in the middle of winter, but they're usually poorly organized and attended.

It doesn't matter what the day is, or what you care about. if it's spring/summer, and it's a saturday, chances are very high that you can go on the streets, wave a flag, smoke some pot, and call it a protest.

if it's not a protest, then it's a celebration. If not a celebration, then a marathon/triathlon/make-money-for-cancer-research-a-thon whatever. And no matter what it is, you'll be either starting, ending, or otherwise walking past my apartment and i will chuckle at you and ponder the fact that so many people in this city seem to love to protest.

Right now, the hospital workers union is on strike. The government told them that they had to go back to work, and they got a 15% pay cut. So now the hospital workers are filled with anger that's a good deal more righteous than it was to begin with. STRIKE!! the teachers got mad at the "deal" the government "offered", so they're on a sympathy strike, along with the city workers, the transit workers, pretty much eveyr union in the province is on a sympathy strike. The government's all like "go back to work! we demand it!" and the union workers are all like "screw you! and your little dog too!" and waving flags and wearing signs on their necks and sitting on lawn chairs and making people honk their horns. I suspect that the recent good weather is a strong motivating factor in this sympathy strike.

I wish i had a newspaper column. I would write about this stuff in a humourous and witty fashion, making all the citizens of the city laugh and go "yes! she is so right! Let's make her our declared leader and shun the rest of society that defies her logic!" . Ok, mostly i'd just want people to laugh. Because laughter is the best medicine. After anti-biotics. anyhoo. i figure that's enough blah blah blahing for now. i think my advil is starting to kick in. the head pain is noticeably less. perhaps i shall go buy batteries for my discman.

until next time.
-anita "My name is Alissa but i'm stuck with being Anita now" blake

[Anita Blake]

so what is it we are all looking for? Why is it that we all just want to connect with another human being, or non-human, why do we all desparately need to know that we are understood?

i think about this a lot, what do we all want, and i think it all comes down to that we all want to be understood. I haven't figured out why yet, well, there is a part of me, a deep-down non-secret-telling, instinctual place that knows the answer, of course, but my slow, plodding conscious brain-part just hasn't clued in yet. Give it time.

we all have our thing. you know, the thing that we geek out over. The most supremely cool people in the universe are geeks inside, over one thing. Maybe that's themselves. Who knows. What i'm getting at is that what is socially acceptable to one person is anathema to another. Or, in layman's terms, one man's cool is another man's geek.

We make a lot of judgements, in our society. Someone has a full dvd collection of, well, star trek is the obvious choice here, and you see that and judge that person accordingly. Geek. Loser. Can't focus on reality. Unless of course, you also happen to have the same dvd collection, in which case you'll think "cool! this person has the same kinds of interests as me!" Another example. You walk into a person's home and it's very clean and precise and sterile and filled with strange and obviously expensive abstract art. Judge as you will. Because you will, you know. That's what we do. That's what all animals do.

We're constantly in a state of judgement. It's part of nature, i think. Animals always checking out other animals, trying to compare themselves, "am i stronger or weaker than this individual?"

But humans are kind of stupid. Or smart. I haven't decided. I think it's a little of each, actually, colossal idiocy and unimaginable intelligence. Dangerous combination. And we are all possessed of it. Great thought, huh?

Anyway, the guy with the abstract art. Nice place, beautiful home, amazing artwork to some viewers. Tired cliche sellout art fag to others. Punk kids who spend too much time on their looks to be entirely convincing in their claim to not care how they look: ultra cool or super lame. It's all about perspective, i guess.

Which brings me to this: what is your perspective? Or rather, my perspective, as the case may be. That's the problem with spending a lifetime trying to see things through other people's eyes. You lose perspective. Sure, it makes understanding the wacked out actions of others a lot easier, but then one day when you try to figure out where you stand on something, you find yourself disconcertingly on the middle line, even though everyone hates a fence sitter.

Religion. Makes things simple. Clarifies where you should stand. tells you what is right and wrong, and that everything is simple. I understand the need for that now. It's too late for me, i think, to simply wipe the slate clean and forget everything i think i know and see the world in terms of black and white, red and blue, north and south, whatever polar opposites you want to use. Once you see past the simple lies set up to create an ordered, civilized society, it's hard to go back. You can't just go back into the matrix. it's not going to work.

so, religion is out. drugs? well, that just complicates the matter further by helping you see even more. That's just answering a question with a dozen more questions. Interesting, but it's no answer. Career? bah. art? maybe. maybe art is the only answer we've ever had. but we fear the answers that art can give us, as we probably should, since art will always come from the perspective of someone. And chances are, it's coming from the perspective of someone more messed up than you are.

but what is messed up? Hmm? Not knowing up from down? I don't know, i have this disconcerting feeling that everyone is messed up and that no one has the answers and that we all just try the best we can to get through each day without asking too many maddening questions. questions with no answers. because, the simple answer is: life is not a question, so it can't have an answer.

so what then? live life and move on and do the things that need to be done? love? enjoy yourself? try to enrich the world with your presence before you die far too soon? that seems as close as i have ever gotten to a true answer. Sadly. i want so much... more. i want to fly. i want to experience life through as many eyes as i can, through a bird's eye, through a cat's eye, through an ant's eye, everything. but in the end, imagine as hard as i can, my eyes are the only ones i've got. mine is the only perspective i can ever truly understand and be one with. i can only imagine other perspectives, have them explained to me and try to wrap my mind around the concept that someone else thinks about things in a completely different manner than i.

and that is what i ponder this night.

[Anita Blake]

i find that on days when i wake up and it's overcast and cloudy and wet, i am much more inclined to want to crawl back into bed, or rather, never bother to crawl out in the first place, and just close my eyes and sleep more.

I love sleep. I absolutely love sleeping. Alone, with another body next to mine, with my cat, whatever. Actually, i think i mostly prefer to sleep alone or with my cat, i sleep muhc better that way, but yeah, sleep is so key.

I only mention this because i went to bed relatively early last night, at about 11, and this morning i am just wiped. i don't want to go to work. I want to curl up under the blankets and feel myself surrounded by warmth and rest my head and close my eyes and let the dreams take me. is it bad to love sleeping so much?

sometimes people give me flak because i go to bed early, or because i'm often tired. But i don't think i'm always really as tired as i say i am, i just want tp sleep. I suppose as far as drugs go, sleep is probably the best addition i could aspire to. i mean, it's very healing and therepeutic.

my mind is filled with projects. I find this happens to me in the summertime. I want to make things. Leather halter top, i want to sew some skirts, i want to start painting some of my digital artwork. I bought a canvas yesterday, and some carbon paper, so i traced a picture i made from a photo, and now i am going to paint it onto the canvas with acrylics. should be fun and interesting. there's an art supply store next to my work, and they have a cat that was recued from the streets living there, so i went there yesterday to play with the cat and buy canvas. There's also a kind of cute guy that works there, so i'm considering going back to ask him about oil paints, since i've never used oils, and i'd like to one day. But i don't know anything about them. I'm sure the cute art store guy can help me out :) . Well, actually, he's not that cute, but he was really nice.

so hoorah for making stuff! ~snore~ i'd like to go back to bed right now, and it feels like it should be saturday, but unforunately, it's wednesday, and that means work. blah.

[Anita Blake]

OK, actually, i'm not the world's biggest fan of babies. But i am pleased that my best friend finally gave birth to a 8 lb. 6 ounce baby boy named Derrick Hunter. Ok, actually, i don't know if there's one 'r' or two. But that's a detail. I'll get all that sorted out when i actually get a chance to talk to her. Her sister called me and left me a message while i was taking a break from painting a picture of her to watch angel. I guess it's not totally weird that i was painting a picture of her when on the day i found out about her baby because she actually gave birth 2 days ago, but since i haven't spoken to her in a few months, i think it's still a pretty remarkable coincidence. Especially since i've never painted a picture of anyone before. :)


So, blah blah blah. i just wrote a thoruoughly depressing short paragraph and deleted it because it's morning and it seemed like the kind of thing i could right better at night. It's really hard to write about the decay of civilization when the sun is shining in your window. Strange, huh?

At any rate, i'm pretty happy about my friend's baby. It's too bad that she's so far away, and i won't be able to see the baby for a really long time. But i'm sure she'll send me pictures.

oh, they're talking about the friends finale on the radio. that's kind of sad. I mean, i don't actually watch friends, but i kind of like it. And it's one of those things we made fun of in high school, like, we all watched it, but there was this one group of popular girls that we called "the friends" behind their back because they were so vapid and acted like they were on friends half the time. (which was patently ridiculous because we went to a country school, literally in a field in the middle of nowhere, half an hour outside the city)

which makes me think that some people have a funny idea of what the "country" is. I know someone, i was driving him to the airport one day, and we were driving through the city, lots of trees, i guess it was a kind of suburban area about 5 minutes away from downtown, but still totally city area, and he was like "oh, we're in the country now". i looked at him and made a :dozey: face. Because if you are within city limits, you are not in the country. Country is where there are miles (or at least several hundred feet) between each house and no street lights. Or maybe one street light misplaced somewhere out on a farm. Country is where the speed limit is fast and there are fewer cars on the road. Country is where the nearest convienence store is over half an hour away (preferably more like an hour, and then it's a farm supply gas station that occasionally has some chocolate bars in stock, and maybe a few magazines).

this has been your daily lesson on Urban/Rural Classsification. thank you and tune in next week for more Useless Facts You Could Have Figured Out For Yourself If Only You Wanted To. :)

[Anita Blake]

i miss james.

[Anita Blake]

and this is us
and we are sick
and we are dying
but we are holding on
don't listen to a word they say,
we're still alive and kicking
just feel our rage
do you feel it?
have you ever wondered just what
my boot feels like on your face?
don't question
don't stop
just take me and hold me and we're in for the ride of a lifetime, baby
but don't you ever underestimate me
don't even think it

and for all you ask
this question remains unanswered
just a steady gaze
and a darkish glare
and then you are over and out

don't you dare lie to me
because i'll kill you in a flash
synchronous heartbeats meant to go out of time
and one of us is out of time
out of tune
so sad to see you go
but i'll keep you here in my
hardened
______ darkened
______________ heart

[Anita Blake]

So. here we are. Monday again. Again with the day of Mon. whatever that's supposed to mean.

anyway. I was told yesterday that Survivor is Evil, and that it might quite possibly be the worst television show in the history of mankind. Oh reeeeeeeaally, i replied, well, i guess it's all a matter of how you look at it. "I look at it as wrong," i was retorted to.

Now, don't get me wrong. I used to be all about privately boycotting reality television because it's about as "real" as pamela anderson's breasts. Which is to say, there are elements of reality wrapped around a plastic, sellable, entertaining core. Reality? hardly.

i look at it as a cultural phenomenon. "that's what makes it wrong," i was told. "it shows the state of our culture."

Yes. yes it does, doesn't it. that's what makes it rather interesting, i would say. How can you know the state of our culture without trying to absorb some of it?

"Pop culture is the death or real culture." Now, that statement was just silly. Just downright silly. That which is popular helps to define who we are as a society, the things we enjoy en masse. "Well, britney spears is pop culture." yes, yes she is. And i don't particularly enjoy her music, and thusly i don't listen to it.

Pop culture is our culture. We are a society which thrives on popularity, we desire the sure knowledge that we fit in, and if we can't emulate that which is popular, at least we can watch it, enjoy it, and share our enjoyment of these things with eachother.

"i'm not watching it because there are people out there who believe that it is reality, and i can't endorse that." Well, first off, no one really gives a crap what you watch or don't watch. Your lack of endorseement will not make idiots out there stop thinking that reality tv is reality. Nor will your observancy of reality tv make anyone out there lose IQ points and start thinking that it represents reality accurately.

Now, if you simply don't enjoy watching Survivor, that's fine. Then don't watch it. And say "i'm not watching it because i don't find it that particularly interesting". But don't spout off a bunch of high-moralled, i'm-too-good-for-popular-entertainment bullshit. Especially don't spout off all this crap and then follow it up by being unable to entertain yourself in some more meaningful manner and proceed to simply give up and watch the damn show with me anyway. I never said anyone should or shouldn't watch a show like survivor. I merely said i have my own reasons for wanting to watch it, i find it interesting (and i don't particularly find it "good" or "bad", or "right" or "wrong", merely "interesting") on several levels, and i'd like to see the outcome.

I used to not watch it on general principle. Then someone introduced me to some different aspects of the show, such as the politics of it all, the human interaction, and that's some of what i find interesting. I also find the editing and direction of the show interesting, very clever often, in it's manipulation of events that transpired. Seeing how low people will sink for a petty million dollars is also interesting. I also think that Survivor is like the roman gladiators for our times: a game of chess where you must be strong, clever, and often decietful in order to win. i think it's also interesting to see people like Rupert, to see how someone honest and open can get far in the game, but in the end will be backstabbed. but it's also somewhat inspiring to see how well-loved rupert is, and how positive and cheerful he is. If more people playing the game were like rupert, it would be a different game altogether. But it says something for our culture to see how few Ruperts are out there playing a conniving game like this.

anyway, now my tea is done and i should go finish getting ready for work, so that's my morning ramble for the day. :)

[Anita Blake]

So. I'm watching the second season of 24 on dvd currently. A little more than halfway through. The weird part of that is when i'm done watching an episode, and i flip onto normal, current broadcasting television news and i have to wonder just a little if i'm still watching 24.

The world is a scary, scary, sad place. I'm lucky, undeserving, spoiled, whatever, to be here in Canada, where we don't have to worry about landmines and people cutting off your head in retaliation for the humiliation suffered by your countrymen at the hands of an invading force that invaded for not much reason except apparently to replace the old bad guys with new bad guys.

It's scary to see how desensitized we can be. How easy it is to say "i'm more outraged at the outrage at the treatment of terrorists and insurgents". How easy it is to pretend that the people on the other side of the planet are one-sided, Bad People. if they fight back, they must be bad. They couldn't possibly have perfectly good and honest reasons for wanting to fight back. No. No. If the situation were changed around, we wouldn't fight back the invaders. We'd see that they clearly had our best interest in mind, even though they appear to be attempting to destroy whatever way of life we have left and turn it into their own way of life. No no, we'd never try to preserve our culture, we'd never fight the soldiers, we'd just sit back and let them take us up the metaphorical (and perhaps even literal) ass.

Not that we're the only Bad Guys out there. No, the world is filled with Bad Guys: Us, Them, and Those Other Guys Too. But clearly, we the western world has everyone's best interest at heart, and we know exactly what needs to be done to further our agenda. Because i'm pretty sure that everyone's agenda is the same as ours, and if it's not, it really should be, because We've Seen The Light. Praise jesus.

yeah, whatever.

I'm not saying i have an answer, and i know there is a type of person out there who cannot accept a person like myself who sees the things that are wrong in the world and has no idea of how to fix it, but that's just the way it is. If people like me didn't sit around and take a look and go "holy *&^@!!!! WTF is going on here?!" and see that there is no single answer to fix everything, well, i don't know what would happen. MMaybe nothing. maybe it's a moot point. Whatever. The point is, it's pretty fucking depressing to watch the news these days. See the mess that the world is in. No one wants to talk to anyone, there is no trust, there is no political friendship. It's every man for himself. I guess what needs to be done is that politicians need to sacrifice a little. Give and take. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need. Now, i never really liked the Rolling Stones much, but there's a lot of truth in that line. Lose a bit of money. Give up a bit of land. Whatever. I'm sure that working together constructively towards making all places a better place is a pretty stupid idea, and would never fly at the higher levels, since it would mean that one or two places would cease to be a super-duper-wonderland of toys and greed, and everyone would be on a more or less level playing field, and who wants that? commies, that's who!

and again, i sigh a great huge "whatever".

the world makes me so sick sometimes. I want it to be better for everyone, but i want everyone to be able to define what is better for themselves. Some people would really cherish the idea of public schools teaching religion. I don't. Some people think it would be better if people overseas suffered so that we can live in this luxury. I think it would probably be ok if we had a little less luxury so others could have a little more. Well, sure, it's easy for me to say that, but who knows if it's really true. would i take a pay cut if it meant that the poor in my country could live a little better? probably not. i mean, hey, i've got my own life to look out for, right?

so there it is. we're raised to be hypocrites, in many ways. Be compassionate, but greedy. Right. 'Cause that's gonna work. there's so much more i want in life, so many little material things that i want, and do i ever feel guilty for it. But i don't stop wanting things (a new computer, for one, so i can do artwork, and a purchased, legit copy of the Adobe Create Suite, and a trip to New Zealand, and a one bedroom apartment with a great view where i can live by myself, and a lot of money so i can take classes and learn crafts and trades to do in my spare time, eventually just doing those things as a source of income)

so i guess i give myself a whatever. what does it all mean? i don't know. i want to influence people and show them my way of thinking, but at the same time, i think people have to come to these realizations by themselves.


also, i think i'm coming to hate living in the city. a few more years, and i'm outta here. moving somewhere nice and artistic where i can make enough money to live and do my art and not feel so crushed by the opinions of the masses. well, ok, i love the city, but it's a love-hate thing. kind of like the world. i love it, i hate it. i fear it, loathe it, and am part of it.

[Anita Blake]

thinking about past lives. thinking that in none of my past lives have i ever known true hardship. Thinking about people who do. thinking about the class system.

'because we're all part of a class, and i think it has something to do with certain types of people who throughout all their many lives exist. Some people are just born to be poor. You know, there are people who are born poor who manage to escape poverty and rise through the ranks, because they were never really poor people to begin with, that's just how they were born. And rich people who rapidly descend into poverty because they ARE poor, in all their lives, that's just a part of who they are. Not meant to have great wealth. And people who are born middle class and who stay middle class their whole lives because while they have never been meant to have great wealth, nor were they really meant to experience dire poverty. I think throughout all time, people have shifted between different classes, individuals i mean, because that's a part of who they are.

ok. babbling.

anyway, the gist of what i was trying to get across is that maybe social class is a part of our very souls that we take with us between lives. Or not so much class as the type of person we are. Inner social class. if that makes any sense at all. probably not.

thinking also about life. getting what you need. reaching out to the universe and finding what you were looking for. it happens all the time. call it good luck, call it prayer, call it karma, whatever. thinking about the natural order of things. thinking that answered prayers/wishes/karmic retribution/ good luck/whathaveyou requires a sacrifice. you can't ask for something unless it's you want it, and you can't want it if you don't have it, and if you don't have it, you're probably suffering at some level, so in a way your very asking is a sacrifice of it's own. a ritual sacrifice that is. you giving the universe something in exchange for something else. and if that's true, then the only thing that the universe/god accepts from us, desires from us even, is pain. In exchange for our pain, we are given the gift of life, love, wealth, milk & honey. we couldn't have it without pain, and every little pain we bear, willingly or otherwise, gives us an equal measure of return. When we rein in our anger, that is a sacrifice. when we rise above natural inclinations to do harm to others, that is a sacrifice. when we take a few extra steps to recycle rather than tossing everything in the most convienent pile, that is a sacrifice too, because we are acting in a manner which is not immediately beneficial to us (but does hold vast potential for future benefit :) ) that's a sacrifice. an offering to the universe. a way of saying "hey, i'll play by your rules if you help me out now and then."

which is i guess to say that it's worth it to try to understand other people's point of view and not be angry when they critisize. and other things like that.

off to dinner now. peace.

[Anita Blake]

(if you live on the other side of the international date line, please replace all references to sunday with monday, but remember that it's sunday where i am, and monday where you are, but my comments refer to sundays in general so maybe don't do anything at all.)

Sunday morning and i'm awake at 6:30AM. there is something inherently wrong with that. Because that means that now it's 8AM, i've been awake for an hour and a half, made my tea, drank half of it, and already wondered what on earth i am going to do today.

Now, i would work on my painting, but damn my motivated self, i finished it yesterday. Well, the edge still needs another coat of black, but it also needs some glaze or something, so i'll just take care of that when i can go to the art store and buy some glaze, which won't be until tomorrow because the art store guys are notorious for not showing up on the weekend. probably something to do with having a life. i don't know. actually, i think the store is actually closed on sunday.

which brings me to this point: I hate things being closed on weekends, particularly sundays. Or when you go to a small town and all the stores are closed on monday. WTF?! monday?! you can't be closed on monday! i have important purchases to make! or i would, if your store was open. Living downtown, a ridiculous number of things are closed on sundays. pizza shops by my work, sushi places, art stores, music store, probably almost everything. Ok, so most of the time i don't have to work on sunday, but sometimes i do, and when i do, i want sushi!

anyway. that is neither here nor there.

had a funny conversation the other day. it went like this:

her: when's your birthday?
me: august
her: you're a leo?
me: yup!
her: really? you don't seem like a leo at all.
me: i used to.

changes. i definitely no longer fit the profile of a leo, when in the past i was a textbook example of a leo. I guess i've changed a lot. grown a lot more inward, which is kinda scary because i was never really that outward to begin with. I am a girl who lives inside her own head. I guess i can't say i was a textbook leo and then follow that statement by saying i was never that outward. but i did. i've always been that way. contrary. self-contradictory. maybe i learned it from the bible, but i don't think so. maybe it's the libra influence in my birthchart. It's my ascendant, which means it plays a lot in my personality. I can feel it. I'm the type that tries to look at all the sides before making a decision. Example, yesterday:

I went to the convienence store to get something to satisfy my sweet tooth. I didn't know exactly what i wanted, but it needed to be crispy and light and chocolately and perhaps be fruit. So no wonder when i got to the store i was completely dumbfounded. Store clerks probably hate people like me. Walk in with only a vague idea of what i want and carefully inspect half of the inventory before settling on (ten minutes later) some vanilla wafers, a can of smokehouse almonds and then some turtles as an afterthought. See, all those things looked good, and i wasn't sure exactly which of them was what i wanted. I also looked at cake mixes for a few minutes before determining that while i would like to eat cake, i wasn't so keen on making cake. All these little decisions. i agonize over them all. it's worse if someone else indecisive is with me because i want them to be happy and then they tell me to decide and i have to try to read their mind to figure out what they want and also figure out what i want, see if there is a happy medium, or in failing that, just go with whatever is cheapest.

wow. 8:20. good god what am i going to do with my day?! i have another painting i want to start working on, but i need to go to my work to print off a paper copy of it to trace, and i know that if i set foot in the building, people will swamp me with problems i really don't want to deal with right now. they'll think i'm there to help them, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. ~sigh~ i could sew a skirt, but that would involve a lot of unsetting of my carboard easel and putting my painting stuff away, since there's only so muhc space on my table, and getting all my sewing stuff out and ready, and i'm not sure i'm that committed to making a skirt today.

on the plus side, i am quite happy to be having such a creative burst lately. I've made 2 skirts, one which cost 2 dollars for the material, and one which i made from an old pair of jeans that was falling apart and can now be worn! I've also done 2 paintings, the first of which is very simple but nice, and i am giving to my friend, and the second which is really really really cool and i'm giving to another friends. damn. the next painting i'm doing i'm giving to my mom (well, she said she'd pay me for it, but i'll believe that when i see it). :( i feel so proud of my paintings, and i don't get to keep any of them! i'll have to do one just for me soon. But then i guess i feel like a jerk for making a painting and then hanging it on my own wall and being all like "ooooh.... i made a painting, look at it! it's of me, and i did it and now it's on my wall!" i mean, half of my artwork is already of myself, so i feel kind of like an egomaniacal jerk as it is, but i don't know if it would be ok to hang a painting of myself on the wall. especially if i did it myself. Sadly, i already have 2 portraits of myself, one in chalk that i got done in disneyland, and one that my parents gave me as a grad present that some woman did in watercolour (and it's horribly ugly, i've actually never had it on my wall). ok, i don't have either of those portraits on my wall, or even in this city. but still. i mean, i'm vain enough, i don't know if i want to go around proclaiming that all to the world.

Wow. 8:30.

this is getting really long, so i guess i shoudl end it now. the end. :)

p.s. happy sunday people. ~hugs~

[Anita Blake]

good day. welcome to my Daily Ritual Of Drinking Tea and Typing.

So, yesterday was a genuine Good Day. Well, ok, most of it was pretty boring, but i felt good, so that's what matters. I got the stuff i needed to finish my painting, and then i found out i might be getting put on salary and getting beneifits... which was what really made my day. Apparently the head of my department had no idea i wasn't getting benefits, even though my co-worker/supervisor has told her half a dozen times, but this time it's the time that she's reworking the budget stuff, so it mostly just means i won't have to fill out time sheets anymore, which is good, and getting benefits would be great as i really need to get some new contacts, a new pair of glasses and i haven't been to the dentist in 6 years. my teeth look good, but i'd like a thorough cleaning.

blah. my morning is odd. i'm sure that because yesterday was nice, today will be utter crap. damn. Dracula seemed to think that 4Am was a good time to ru around meowing like he's being abused, which did not amuse me one little bit, i'll tell you that. Possibly because it was a little odd to wake up at 4AM and see the sky turning all purple and pink and gold and getting ready for the sun. I mean, i guess it's not odd, but it's just been several months since i've had to wake up to that. I kind of like that about the summer though, the early mornings and the late nights. And by that i mean the long long days. sun up around 4:30, sun down around 9. full dark from about 10-3:30. For now. Another month of it getting longer. :) I think it only gets down to about 4 hours of full dark here, which is kinda sad, because i've said before how much i like the never-dark of further up north. i remember the night i left that craphole northern town, My friend and i went to the bar at around 11, and it was light in the sky, and we left around 1 or 2 and it was still light in the sky. It's fun for partying, because you feel like you've been out all night, and it's only 2AM. :D Watching the sunrise at 3AMish is cool. :cool: :D

anyway, i should go get ready for work. apparently i have to go there. weird.

[Anita Blake]

so here it is, night at last. dark at last. quiet and alone at last.

cycles. the world runs on them, it runs in them. our lives are a series of cycles, all life is. up and down, around and around, in and out. And it's not a bad thing. it's not a good thing. it just is. What goes up must come down, but go far enough down and find that your sense of up and down is reoriented and that in fact you are on top again.

alive.

i feel it in the summer. closing on the time of year i was born. closing on the time of year when as a child, i had the most enjoyment, felt the most loved. The sun chases us round until we chase it back and it's winter once more. tag, you're it.

i like to sit in the sun. I used to think i liked suntanning, but the fact is, i just like the feeling of the hot sun on my skin, the breeze on my face, the smell of the grass baking in the heat of the summer days. Strange to feel that it is summer already, when it is only May. Back home, there was a blizzard only the week before last. or was is last week? no matter. the point is, it's summer here, or might as well be for all i'm concerned. i'm already sun-brown in the face and arms and chest. i try to wear sunblock, but i usually forget, just take my jacket off for lunch outside, walk home in a tank top, whatever, just to feel the heat.

a few months from now, i will be pale and white again. cycles.

i am up. creative and filled with the breath of the universe. next week i might be down, but for now i am up. I can bear the down cycles because i know that i'll reorient myself again in due time.

lonely. again, i can deal with this because i know that my time to cease being lonely will come again. cherish what we have while we have it. that's what i believe. i loved high school, even as i hated it, because i knew that time would never come again. i knew that one day i would look back on it, and i could either remember hating it, or remember loving it, and that i would rather remember the love i felt for my close friends, regardless of what may happen to us in the future. and that's what i focused on. so most of my memories are not bad at all. i remember that bad things happened, i remember that there were unhappy times, but those are not where my focus lies. the same must hold true for all things. Certainly it doesn't, there are times i can not remember appreciating at all, but i try not to let those times dominate.

we can choose, you know, how to remember things. how to respond to things. we can swallow our pride, choke down our anger, strive to smile and attempt to understand things from other perspectives. One of the great things about being human, i guess. Imagination. We can imagine another perspective than our own. The root of sympathy, empathy, compassion. Maybe i'm mixing them all up.

the point is. the point is. i'd like to say the point is dolphins but that would be blatant plaguarism. No, the point is that life is enhanced when we do things for other people. i'm going to try harder to do things for other people. even when i don't want to. maybe especially when i don't want to. i guess that's responsibility. i guess that's growing up. i'm still #1, still looking out for me, but if i can do something nice for someone, like give them something and ask for nothing in return, then i think i can do that. Sometimes. I can try, at least.

ask for internal gratitdue. thanks. happiness. aren't those things more important than money? the sure knowledge that you've done something that made another person happy? i'm not too good at making many other people happy, in fact, i've brought possibly more than my fair share of misery on people, so perhaps it's repentance. perhaps it's karmic back pay that i am looking for. i don't know. all i know is that it's important to try.

[Anita Blake]

so, this is the 201st post in this thread. that's kind of obscene. that's 5 full pages (40 posts per thread). the fact that i'm starting a 6th page of random crap is almost frightening.

other things that are obscene:

how much i slept last night. OK. OK. I'll be honest. I did eat a special cookie. Maybe it was a little too special. But i think i was feeling a little bit under the weather before that, i've been feeling kinda blah for most of the week, so i don't know if i'm fighting off some dread illness or what, but the point is i came home early from work yesterday, around 2:00 ish, and had nothing to do, so i ate a special cookie, and found myself asleep before 7PM. i woke up around 11, read for a couple hours, and promptly fell back asleep again, thinking "oh great, now i'm going to be up at 5AM. but no. my alarm clock went off at 7AM as usual, i turned it off and slept for another 2.5 hours. so i guess that's only 12 hours of sleep because of the 2 hour break, but still, that's a lot of sleep. i still feel like i could climb back into bed. i think i'll resist for a while. Then again, it is the long weekend, i can totally waste saturday and i'll still have 2 days in which i am too afraid to leave the apartment because i know my willpower is weak and i will spend money on something i don't need. Hmm. put that way, sleeping all day doesn't sound too bad.

nono, i'm just kidding. i'm not going to sleep all weekend, though the thought is sorely tempting. No, i have important painting to do. painting to send to my mommy. :rolleyes:

i made a delicious recipe last night. it was based on "Ingredients I Have". I guess it was a casserole, and it was vegetarian, but it curiously tasted like it had meat in it. :) I liked it. it went like this:


Wild/Brown Rice (1/2 cup uncooked, and then cook it as usual, though more would be oK too)
some very thinly sliced zuchinni
chopped fresh mushrooms.
1 well-beaten egg
about a cup of milk
dash each: mustard powder, ground thyme, oregano
salt and pepper (2 dashes each, we'll say)
1 cup grated cheese (i used gouda, smoked gouda and mozzarella :thup: )


anyway, while the rice is cooking mix the egg and seasonings and milk together and grate the cheese.

in a casserole dish, blend the veggies and the cheese.

when rice is cooked (i'd reccomend getting it only "mostly" cooked) mix it together with the egg and milk mixture, add to the veggie mix, and stir all together until it's quite thoroughly mixed.

bake in 350F oven for about 45-50 minutes.

yeah i could have put that in the recipes thread, but i'm really really too lazy. :rolleyes: did i mention the 14 hours of comatose unconsciousness?

anyway, off to start my day of painting. hoorah!

[Anita Blake]

OK. Alright then. I guess i've hit the part of my life where i begin to understand that cynicism is Evil. I can't stand it anymore. I hate it when people are cynical and they think they're being clever. Why can't you just have trust in something? a little faith in anything? it drives me mad that some people are so full of themselves (and i may be including myself in this category) that they just can't let go and give an honest compliment. or listen without seeking a loophole, listen without thinking of a clever comeback that will negate anything they heard.

it just bugs me, i guess, having most of what i say go through a filter of "how can i dispute that?". i don't want to dispute anything. i just want to be heard.

Not that i mind a good discussion/debate. No no, i quite enjoy them, when what i'm talking about is debatable material. but when i say something flippantly off the top of my head, or when i express faith in something, like that the Flames will win the Cup (oh yes, they will), i don't want to hear all the reasons i'm wrong.

call me crazy. it's not that i mind constructive criticism. but when i am constrantly being "constructively" criticized, it starts to feel not so constructive, and that the point you are really making is that you are better than me. There's just a few people i know, i guess, who are like this. But it really really bugs me. Can't you just once smile and say "good job" or "i never thought of it that way"?

ahhh. i'm just feeling really depressed these days. i don't know why. just.... i guess i need to not feel like a freakish loser. i mean, i know i do things differently from a lot of people, and i like to stick to myself for the most part, but i don't know. maybe i make myself feel that way. maybe i make myself feel like an outcast. but i almost never feel like i belong. lifelong problem. must try to tackle.

~sigh~

anyway, the point of all this is: if you're a very cynical person who questions everything and everyone, just hit pause for a moment. go and smell a flower. feel a blade of grass. look at the clouds and let yourself wonder about the shapes. try to imagine something fantastical and crazy as being a possible truth. just let go of the attitude and the posturing for a moment and stop caring what other people think of you. maybe you'll like it.

[Anita Blake]

well. i went for a walk. i feel much more like my real self. it was a nice, long walk. I walked around Stanley Park, allllll along the seawall, which took me a lot longer than i had originally thought. luckily there's a concession stand every half an hour or so, so i was able to get water. Took a lot of pictures. I hope they turn out.

the thing about the seawall is this: it's very pretty. Well, the south west side is at least. Once you round the point of Stanley Park, the view becomes North Vancouver, which isn't the worst view, nay, it's quite pretty, if not for all the industrial thingamabobs in the way. big piles of yellow powdery stuff. cranes and the like. I think it's called the Burrard Inlet, anyway, it's a big shipping centre, so the water is all gross and tanker-friendly (eww), and suddenly all the sheer cliffs and rainforest that was beside you is now hidden behind some well-sculpted lawns.

Needless to say, i like the south/west sides of the seawall around Stanley Park much better. So pretty. Sure the path itself is concrete, and it's even divided up nicely for rollerbladers/bikers and one path for pedestrians, so you don't get run over all the time by the psycho bike people. And there are thousands of people, just walking along the path, same as you. I thought of it today as a kind of modern pillgramage. We come from the city, and we walk along this tamed seawall, the edge of the tamed yet primordial forest in the middle of deepest civilization, we go there to worship the land we have stripped. We walk through it, admire it's beauty, and hope to hold on to that little piece which we haven't fully destroyed. Then we go home, feeling that our natural urges have been satisfied and that all is well in the world. i do think it's a pillgramage. Like going to the Taj Mahal or something, i guess.

I saw the silliest seagull today. I took a picture of him, but i'm certain it won't turn out. He was sitting on a rock, looking quite plump and slightly concerned, possibly due to the three legs of a starfish that were hanging out of his mouth. He obviously had the other two legs firmly down his throat, with the rest of the starfish resting on his fat little seagull belly. I sat there watching him for a few minutes, he was looking at me, i was looking at him, telling him he was incredibly greedy and very silly (telepathically, of course, only crazy people talk outloud to seagulls), and along came another seagull. Now, i had been wondering if the seaull was slowly choking on his ill-gotten prize, but no, when another gull approached, he squawked indignantly, and ... this was the funny part.... wolfed down the rest of the starfish before seagull #2 could fight him for it. :rolleyes: Then Seagul #1 had a HUGE bulge in his neck, i kind of wondered if he could even fly, like, he really looked bad. I could practically see the shape of the starfish in his belly and his neck. Silly bird. I chided him (telepathically) and watched him for a few more minutes as he slowly laboured to clean his beak, i really wanted to see him try to fly away, but i think he knew that he had perhaps bitten off a bit more than he could fly away with, so he sat there looking like he had a bad case of heartburn, and i continued my walk.

I also saw herons and such, but there weren't nearly as interesting as the starfish-eating seagull. I've seen them fight over starfish before, and puzzle over how best to eat them, but never saw a seagull actually swallow a whole starfish (i mean, they're like 5 times the size of a seagull's head, with 5 legs besides, and rock hard!) . So that kind of made my day. i hope my pictures turn out. they shoudl be very pretty. :D

[Anita Blake]

so. sitting here. wallowing in a bit of crampish pain, wondering, thinking, feeling. been very solitary lately. Self-imposed. Just feel like ... being alone. Starting to wonder if it's a good idea. I mean, a moderately attractive woman in her mid twenties... should such a creature spend so much time alone? Shouldn't i be out breaking hearts, living it up, being with friends, doing other such inconsequential and fun things?

part of me thinks that i should. part of me thinks, yeah, it's not right for a tolerable gal such as myself to be totally alone all the time. part of me thinks that all that other stuff is just minutiae. inconsequential. boring.

but i don't know what i should be doing. that's just the thing. i mean, sure, yeah, i should find a nice man and do all that blah blah blah, but at the same time, it feels like there's stuff i should do. important stuff. i just don't know what. i guess i don't know the right people. i need to. i need to meet these right people who will help point me in the direction i've been headed in all along blindly. i need to meet the right people to open my eyes and show me my path. not to turn me around onto their path, no, i definitely don't want or need that, but i do need to have my eyes opened.

people are odd that way. we really need eachother. rely on the opposing points of view. we gain new understanding of the world through each person we know, did you realize that? One of my friends makes me realize the value of hard work, devotion to a goal, maintaining a calm, stable life, while another friend shows me the benefit of throwing caution to the wind and living it up. I guess it's good to know lots of people, to better understand the world around you, but i don't know, i feel very handicapped in that area. When i talk to people i know that everything i say comes out horribly mangled and leaves people with the impression that i am a dim-headed dolt. I know this for a fact. At least, in the past i have left people with the impression that i am grossly moronic. When i used to write reviews for the newspaper, the editor thought i was a bubble-head. One lady actually went to far as to ask if i actually wrote my reviews, because she thought they were really good. I guess when i had something to show for myself, i didn't mind people underestimating me so much. I found it more amusing than anything else. After all, i'd much rather prove someone wrong if they think i'm an idiot than prove them wrong if they think i'm a genius.

Lately that's something i've been thinking about. Perceptions. I can come off as a complete blonde chick, despite my dark hair, and i have to wonder if i just come off that way or if i really am that dumb sometimes. I think sometimes, i really am. Let's be honest. Sure, when i'm by myself and have time to think things up, sure i can be kinda smart. clever. on the fly, with people judging and reacting to me, less smart. less inside myself and more inside them. reading them and trying to gauge their thoughts and opinions. I can't make casual friends. I find it very difficult. the friends i have i love and value, but lately, it seems like most of those people are in other cities, far away, and i rarely get the chance to talk to them. I have friends here, but i work with most of them, so our relationship is almost totally defined by our work. even then, though, i wonder how i am percieved. and i wonder who's perception of me is more accurate: other people's, or my own.

thinking of a movie. A series, really, of photographs. 2 people. doing things. fighting maybe, in a battle. Doesn't really matter, i guess, what they are doing. As long as they aren't together. 2 people, 2 places. Connected, but not in the same frame. So watch the movie twice. Make it twice. Same pictures, same shots, different sound. Narration. One character narrates from inside him mind, explaining his actions and the actions of the other character. 2nd version, same thing, different character explaining the situation. Watch as one person explains the actions of another, and then as tha 2nd person explains his own actions. Hell, let's even add in a 3rd, impartial person to the narration exercise.

the point is, who is right? The first person to explain it? the person who is committing the actions? impartial judge? Who is best judging the person's actions? motivations?

i don't know that i believe in a right or wrong. i don't know that if someone else was to say i am an idiot, that they would be incorrect. self doubt or realistic way of looking at it? these are the questions that plague me and why i guess i should get a life. it's hard though, to reach out and meet someone and ... what.. trust? not fear? not judge? enjoy them for themselves? i don't know. i want to live on a farm. away from people. away from the frightening reality that as wonderful and ingenious as humans can be, we can also be our own undoing.

i want to be brave.

i want to have something to be brave for.

[Anita Blake]

sweet. just realized it's wednesday. sweet long weekends = sweet short weeks. la dee da.

my hair is a tragedisaster. i mean. not quite disaster, not quite tragedy, yet somewhere in between. i'm sure to the untrained eye, my hair is quite fine. Maybe someone would even say it looks good. i sincerely doubt it, but there you have it. i blow dryed it today, so it's mostly straight, but it's still curled under at the bottom, which i could fix but then it would look fried. But if i left it to it's own devices, it wouldn't exactly be curly. parts of it would. and then parts would be annoyingly not curly. actually, it's still kinda that way, just more straight.

the annoying thing is: until a couple years ago, my hair wasn't curly at all. it was a struggle of epic proportions to make it be wavy or curly or anything other than bone straight. well, i guess it had a bit of body, it wasn't straight like asian girl straight hair is straight, but it definitely wasn't curly. and now when i go to the hairdresser he talks about my curly hair :( . my mom's the one with curly hair, and i guess i always found it slightly suspicious that her hair was so spirally and mine was so straight, but now my hair looks to be following in her follicles. which i guess is ok, i mean, wavy-curly hair is nice, but i miss it being straight. kind of. oh i don't know.

it's cloudy today. blah. yesterday it randomly rained all over me. which i guess was ok. today, however, i will foil the rain by bringing my umbrella. HA! take that, rain! well, the umbrella won't save the bottom of my pants from getting soaked, but i can't do anything about that, really.

damn. i think i remember wanting to write something nice about the wonders of walking under big leafy trees when it's pouring rain and how nice and dry they are underneath, and very pretty too, but then i came home and felt very blah and spent the night reading and curled up in my blankets. :) i like nights like that. all isolated and warm and immersed in a good story. my roommate seems to think that's unnatural, but what does he know. that's one of my favorite things to do. OK, i did feel kinda crappy, but at least the blankets and reading made me forget how blah i felt (stupid cramps!) and made me feel warm and safe and happy. :D

well. time to go to work. ooh! at least today i'll have something to do. yesterday we sat in our office all day mutilating gummy bears. as fun as that was for 5 minutes, after 8 hours, it got pretty stale. la dee da. off to work.

[Anita Blake]

Today, I saw a unicorn. He was racing against the wind to make it to the sunset in time, mane flowing and rippling as he ran. The wind won, and he became a hyena, laughing at the fate of the world. Well, the world didn't like that much so it tried to bring back the unicorn. Meanwhile, the world was ending in a variety of nature-related ways. Soon enough though, the anger and desparation (the rebellion of the sky against the coming night) ended, and as the two Great Ladies of the Evening rode up in their ghostly chariots, whispered dreams fluttered to pay them obeisance. Drawing near, the Ladies shed their expensive garments to reveal gruesome skeletons, and their chariots a rotting grave. Evil spirits and ghost rose from the looming headstone and swallowed the tattered dreams alive.

Thusly came the night.

[Anita Blake]

the thing about seagulls is this: we mock them a lot. they pick garbage and eat anything they can fit down their greedy gullets, and squawk like it's going out of fashion. They're loud and big and foolish, and i think they're amazing.

Seagulls are just so perfectly adapted to doing what they do. They are built to glide on the air currents. Swooping and balancing, their curved wings holding them aloft as though the air were water. they are just so damn graceful when they fly. And they're clever. We like to think they're dull because they can be so annoying with their constant (very loud) chatter, but the fact remains, they are very very smart birds. (except that one i saw get hit by a car ... that was sad).

I don't know why, but i love to watch the seagulls fly. There's so many of them, they're so commonplace, but i love them anyway. I know they're dirty and filled with gross disease and french fries, but i still love them. I see adaptability in their eyes, the ability to source out whatever they need and get it. I see them working together, helping eachother sometimes, talking, fighting, arguing over who gets the starfish. They're not civilized, but they are intelligent, and beautiful in flight. They were built to fly, and they own the sky.

Eagles have nobility, and certainly the eagle takes precedence over seagulls any day, you can see it's disdain for the lesser creatures in the way an eagle refuses to flap it's wings constantly. but for all the eagle is the king of the sky, surely the seagull is some kind of tribal nobility.

Such mastery over the wind! such speed and grace and sure knowledge of it's body, the ability to climb the sky, defying gravity with but a twist of a feather.

beautiful.

[Anita Blake]

ohhhh dracula.

i think my cat is insane. i know i shouldn't call him my cat, as i am well aware that i as am much his person, but it's one of those habits that's hard to get out of. sometimes i feel guilty for imprisoning him with my love. no outdoors for Dracula. No slinky little she-cats for my sweet shadow. Nope. Just me. And my roommate. And any guests we may have.

i mean, i know it's safer that way, no diseases or speeding cars or slobbering dogs or vicious land-disputes either for my little baby. Nope. but he doesn't know that, and every now and then he gives me this look that says that if i really loved him, I'd leave these big decisions to him.

he's been talking to me all morning. I tried to pacify him yesterday by buying him a new box of dried fishes (mmmm). He seemed torn between being relieved to see i was home (sans Steve) and being mad at me for letting Steve stay the previous night. I will say that he did seem to appreciate the fishes, and it might have helped that i came home with the fishes in my hand and ready for Dracula's consumption.

they have this nifty contraption at the pet store. i really want to buy it. It's a kitty water fountain. recycles the water and has an attractive design. Filters out the ickies and makes the water clean! but it's $50, which isn't so bad, but i might have to wait a month to get that. See, dracula always disdains the water in his dish, and to be honest, i don't really blame him. he's always shedding in it and dropping his food in it, and i try to keep it clean, but i think it's just the nature of cat water dishes to collect hair. So i'd like to get him this nifty water fountain. He's had his current food dish since he came home with me five years ago, so i think it's time for a change. I also want to get him a new litter box and a nicer scratching post. Curse these things for being so expensive! ~sigh~ i do really wish i could win the lottery here. not the full jackpot (though that would be nice) just a few thousand dollars. that's all i ask! i guess i better buy a lottery ticket then, huh? :dozey:

anyway, that's my morning ramble for to-day. the tea is finished and i am getting to thinking that perhaps i should put some socks on and some makeup and go to work. blah. ooh, i think i'm going to help a friend tonight, that should be fun! :) cheers all! and have a happy tuesday (or wednesday, depending on where you are, or thursday, friday, saturday, sunday and/or monday depending on when you are reading this) :D

[Anita Blake]

Things I Wish I Had:

Midnight
Necklace Made Of Stars
Dominion over The Moon
Unconditional Joy Through Unendurable Sorrow
Wings
Powerful Enemies and Loyal Friends
Eyes Like The Ocean After A Storm
Flying Dust
A Time Machine (just for visiting, of course, not for profiteering or altering)
The Ability To Speak to Animals Not Human
A Taste of Immortality
Once Upon A Time
Happily Ever After
A Dark and Stormy Night
Faerie Relatives
A Curse That Can Only Be Broken With The Kiss of True Love
The Power To Enchant The World, and No Desire To Abuse It
A Warm, Dark Place To Sleep Safely





So, the question could be asked, but hasn't been, Where is the Line? Is this thread fiction or fact, journal or story. And as with most things involving me, the answer is Yes. For life is a story, and fiction is part of fact, it's a fact that fiction exists. My mind travels best in circutious routes, darting between established fact and the fact of the fiction. I don't truly believe that anything is really untrue, but not all things are Truth.

Then again, i've been pondering the nature of Truth for much of my conscious life and have yet to come to any firm answers.

It just occured to me, just this very moment, as I looked at the small can of Smokehouse Almonds on my table, which have in the corner of the label in small white italicised print the words from California, as i looked at this, it occured to me that I don't believe i have ever seen an Almond Tree. I know they exist. Haven't the foggiest idea of what they look like. I imagine they are slender and graceful, with smooth oval leaves from which some kind of cluster of nuts hangs from precariously, falling off in the autumn into the hands of barefoot and joyous tan-skinned almond gatherers who sing the praises and breathe in the sweet heady scent of almond as they gather their treasure, protecting them from evil squirrels who would try to take the almonds for their own. Maybe there are some dogs in the almond groves whose only duty is to hunt down and eat squirrels so that the harvest isn't threatened. And maybe cats to scare away greedy birds. And a grandmotherly figure who sits on the porch of the Almond Ranch, smiling encouragingly at her grandchildren and knitting until it's time to prepare the almond ovens for the roasting. A lot of knowing smiles are passed around as the patriarch of the Almond Family ceremoniously takes the first almond of the baking tray and cracks it open, catching it's aroma expertly and delicately putting it on his tongue and chewing thoughtfully for a moment until he swallows every last bit, and then breaks into a huge grin and declares this harvest The Best Ever. Then the family chers one and all as they rush back into the orchard and shakes the trees until all the almonds fall into their waiting baskets. I'm not sure. Actually, i'm quite sure it's absolutely nothing like that, but it was a nice thought while it lasted.

Anyhoo, back to the subject of truth. I am of the opinion that this thread is comprised entirely of truth, in that it's a reflection of the thoughts that are in my head at the moment that i am writing them. The thoughts themselves might not be true, but their writing is. If that makes sense. I don't know why i was thinking about this earlier, but i was, and so i am writing it. See? truth. You know, you can't really write something unless you are thinking it, so in a way, everything is true. You can learn quite a bit of truth from reading absolute fiction, you know. It's not just the words. Its not even just the story. You can see into the mind of the writer. Even really bad writers let you in. They can't help it. The fact that they are writing at all, even badly, tells you quite a bit. What they choose to write about tells you more. The words they choose are yet another revelation. I think that after a while, you can start to know a person by their words, even if their words don't represent their thoughts all that accurately, or if their words are false.

Me, i think i am an open book. Others have told me i'm very secretive, but i think even that says quite a lot. it's never what a person says that reveals their nature, but what they don't say. Which, in my case, is a fair bit, i think. I am silly and flighty and say the obvious thing quite often, and sometimes say nothing at all. usually because i just don't know what to say. and usually because i can't get it out right, and also usually because i know i will be misunderstood. See, i used to speak very quickly in order to get all my thoughts out before i could forget them or mess them up, but i'd like to think i've learned. That really doesn't help. Sometimes, it's just best to say nothing and write things down. Much better at writing than at speaking. Speaking is so.... awkward. Other people around to confuse your thoughts and divide them.

anyway, none of that has anything to do with anything. just randomly on my mind. as things often are.

i miss james. ~sends happy thoughts to james about getting his internet working and getting a job and all that stuff~ :)

[Anita Blake]

morning again. you know, i listen to the radio in the morning (www.cfox.com , but on the actual radio!) and i have to say that my ability to discriminate in the morning is severely impaired. About a month ago the Dalai Lama was in town, and the radio guys claimed to have been talking to him and joking around, but i mean, they could have been making it all up. i have no idea. it's probably not a good idea for me to listen to a morning show that jokes around a lot. because i can barely tell awake from asleep, light from dark at 7AM. i only function on the simplest of levels, and i have to tell you, if i didn't have a routine in the morning, i'd probably fall over and die. or else just go back to sleep. Actually, i know i'd do that.

was thinking about that this morning. If i didn't have a job, i'd probably sleep till 10AM every day. maybe later. Point being, i'd never wake up in the morning if i didn't have to. Which is kinda too bad because i can be productive in the morning, and when i don't get up i do kinda feel like i've wasted my day. But i can only be productive provided i follow The Routine.

The Routine goes like this:

6:55 (7:05 on alarm clock): alarm clock goes off. radio banter ensues. snooze hit
7:04 (7:09 on alarm clock): alarm clock goes off again. snooze contemplated but discovered to be too difficult. usually a good song on which prevents me from hitting snooze. listen to music for 5-10 minutes.
~ - 7:30: shower, including rinse, shampoo, condition, scrub, shave legs, clean face, rinse, dry, dress
7:35-7:40: make tea, simultaneous with comb and occasionally style hair
7:40 - 8:15: write random crap here while drinking tea
8:15 - 8:30: finish tea and realize i'm running behind and need to do my makeup and put on socks and try to leave before 8:30
8:45: realize i'm really going to be late and finally get out the door, wondering if maybe i should take the bus and letting the weather and my work schedule that day decide whether to be late or to spend the extra $2 for the bus.
9:15: get to work a few minutes late and realize that no one even knows that i'm late because my co-worker is even later and when she gets there we go get coffee.

anyway, that's The Routine. i actually follow it amazingly well each day. with minor variations in timing, of course. I tell you though, mess with my Routine, and the whole day is blown. no ability to make stuff up in the morning. at least, not real stuff. i mean, i could make up pretend stuff till the cows comehome, and i have to tell you, i'm pretty sure that the cows don't come home early in the morning. actually, i have no idea when the cows come home. probably around sunset. possibly just before. who knows?

anyway, according to The Routine, i have a few more minutes, and my tea's not quite empty. have i ever apologized to you guys for writing all the crap? i think i have. anyway, sorry. please feel entirely free to ignore this stuff. i really do need to make a second reflections thread. this one's a giant mess.

ooh, quick other note: yesterday wehn i was walking home, i walked past the art store, as it is right next door to my work and i kind of have to, but the cute art store guy waved and smiled at me. :D made me feel good. considering going there to buy stuff from him and flirt. :D mmmmm .... flirtaliscious. ~goes to do makeup, as she's running behind, again.~ ;)

[Anita Blake]

ahhh.


hear that?


...




..


me neither!


ah, the sweet sound of silence. the sweet sound of having tha apartment to myself for 2 whole days while my roommate goes camping, and possibly to calgary for game 6. jerk. hehe. no, i think it's cool. i want him to go. maybe then he'll stop dissing calgary like it's some kind of plague. Only if they win, i guess. maybe not even then. I mean... it's a great place. my not living there notwithstanding.

anyway. so i have the place to myself. hoorah! know what i'm going to do? well, for starters, i'm having a drink. By myself. Now, i know that might sound untoward, or like i have a problem, but please bear in mind, the last time i consumed alcohol was over 2 weeks ago on my friend's birthday. also, i've had these 2 smirnoff ice in my fridge for an ungodly length of time and i think it's about time they be consumed.

also on my agenda for tonight: walking around naked. sweet jesus, i can be free of these clothing encumberments! hoorah! i enjoy being naked. Or at least, wearing my silk robe and undies. I can't do that when my roommate is around because, well, it would just be wrong. he'd probably get the wrong idea and then where would i be? no no no. I must save the acts of private nudity for when i am, well, private! it always feels so decadent... wandering about the house in undies. :) in my nice undies. heehee :blush:

so i found this amazing water fountain for dracula. i'm going to buy it on my next paycheck. buffy season 6 might have to wait. it might not, but it might too. not sure yet. but i think dracula deserves a treat. i've also been pondering today getting him a harness and trying to take him for walks. i don't know though. last time i tried to put a harness on him and take him outside he spent more time trying to kill the harness. :rolleyes: maybe i'll stick with the water fountain. it's super cool. i know he'll love it. maybe he'll stop pestering me to turn on the bathtub faucet for him every time i walk in the bathroom too. oh the possibilities!

going to calgary next week. it's cool, because i'm going hiking with my friends and seeing people i havent' seen in ages, but it sucks because the flames are probably going to win the cup tomorrow night or monday ~keeps fingers crossed, hopes she didn't jinx them~ and there's going to be huge parties, and i'm going to miss them all by just a few days. :dozey: well, it's for the best. not like i'd have been able to go anyway. i mean, when i go home, i'm stuck at my dad's house in the country with no car and most of my friends live almost an hour away. ~sigh~ But anway, missed parties aside, i'm more worried about the party i am going to.

See it's like this: One of my closest friends from HS is getting married to her HS sweetheart. Back in the day, we all hung around in a very tight crowd. At the time, i was dating a friend of the groom. We were together for 3 years, and everyone (and i mean EVERYONE) assumed we would get married and all that. Well, then i moved away for a job and to live with my mother, and broke up with my bf. We were eachother's first loves, in many ways. I couldn't bear talking to him much after that, i felt like i had hurt him a lot (that's a theme with me, btw) and though we vowed to remain friends, i stopped calling and got scared to call him after a couple weeks because i knew he'd get mad and ask why i hadn't called, which i thought rather defeated the purpose of breaking up. Anyway, i haven't spoke to him in about 5 years, and i have a pretty strong suspicion that he'll be at the wedding and i'm going to have to face him. Which wouldn't be so bad IF he had ever moved on and gotten another girlfriend or something. But through various contacts of mine who are still friends with him, i know that he never has dated anyone else. Now, for the first 3 years after we broke up, i felt this was allllll my fault, and i felt really bad that he hadn't moved on and gotten over me. Then i started hearing some more stuff about what was going on with him, mainly that he still depends on his mother to do his laundry and cook for him, and that he's had the opportunity to date other girls but always rejects them because they're not good enough (and i know that for him, no woman will ever be as good as his mom ... one of the reasons i think i broke up with him). So i stopped feeling bad and really let it go, because it really has nothing to do with me anymore, and if he can't get past it, then that's his problem, and most assiduously not mine.

Anyway, even still, over the past 5 years, the most consistent nightmare i have had that has made me wake up and go "oh thank god that was just a dream!" is where i dream that for some reason i am back together with this guy and we are getting married, or i have to meet him. Since i let the whole thing go, i havent' had the dream, which is good, i know that i am really well and truly pver and past this very significant relationship in my life, but knowing that i have to go and actually see him in a week is kinda freaking me out. I mean, it not so much that i think it will be horrible and he'll yell at me or even do something dramatic, because we're all adults now and that's simply not realistic. But i do think it will be very awkward, and i honestly don't know how it will make me feel to actually see him again. I feel like i'm a totally different person now, like all those memories of beign with him belong to someone else, liek a story i read. Quite simply, he's an abstract concept to me now. I've had much more meaningful relationships since then, ones that have shaped me and changed me from the girl i used to be into the woman i am.

None of that matters though, because he was the first. My first real boyfriend. My first lover. My first breakup. I had had a couple of 2-3 week boyfriends before that, but this was real. And it's going to be incredibly awkward for me to have to face that reality. Especially since i so recently (oh shit, that was 8 months ago!) broke up with another very important man in my life. Actually, my second Real boyfriend. So anyway, i am rather nervous.

I also have a suspicion that if anyone at this wedding is going to be the one who sluts it up and makes out with the random single guys in attendance, it will be me. :umm: i mostly think that because my girl friends are all married or else very responsible, and me, well..... se above, re: recent breakup. 8 months isn't recent is it? ah well, it takes time to move past these things. In my case, it seems to take at least a year before i can really start dating someone. I mean, ok, i rebound dated someone this time, but i dont' think rebounds count. do they? oh crap. i don't know.

but since i'm just babbling now, probably anyone who was reading this has abandoned all hope and just moved on to the next page. my apoplogies if you did read this far. i can only hope it amused you in some way or at least you were able to say "yeah! i know what that's like!" :) i love you guys, i really do. i look forward to meeting as many of you as i can. i can say that because i'm quite certain that only a few people would have read this far into this long and twisty post. hehe.

anyway, have a good friday night, whereever you may be, even if it's not friday. :D

[Anita Blake]

so the flames lost game 6. there's still game 7 but that's in stupid tampa bay. most of you will have no idea what it would have meant to my hometown to have won The Cup at home, on canadian soil, and not only that, in western canada. we're a fiercely proud lot, calgarians are, with not a lot to show for that pride other than a lot of cows. :dozey: they brought in extra reinforcements from edmonton for the police to help in case we won ... it's just that intense. i remember the only other time we won, even though i was 10 years old and didn't care much. it was the year my sister was born, she was just a couple months old and i had just moved back home to live with my dad. i remember how happy everyone was for so long. it was a serious high point in my life. to have been able to take home the cup at home.... i probably would have cried. honestly. and i don't even live there anymore. ah well.

been thinking lots lately, about the nature of society. reading lots of books. Admittedly, much of what i've been reading has been fantasy, but i believe it's been well-researched fantasy. Lots of stuff about time travel. Anyway, i've also this week been reading a bit about military history. And thinking about the way things work.

And the mad conclusion i've come to is that in the history of civilization, i don't think much has really changed. We have emperors, we have kings & queens, we have nobility, we have the common folk who grind the wheels that keep society turning. We don't call kings and queens that anymore. we call them CEOs. Our emperors are called Presidents and Prime Ministers. Our nobility consists of chairmen of the board, prime stockholders, dukes = upper management, and minor lords are middle management. Our common folk are the working class. The nobility of our land is accountable to a degree, as they have always been, and though their positions are not directly hereditary, nepotism does exist. Commoners can rise in the ranks, occasionally, but it's infrequent. There are corrupt nobles who do nothing if it does nto profit them directly, and there are good nobles who understand that they must work for those under them, lest they find themselves stripped of rank and title. Spoiled heiresses still act like spoiled heiresses, and find themselves in marriages arranged for the good of their parent's investments.

what does it all mean? i don't know. just that things only change on the surface. sure, the peasants are richer than ever, but they're still just peasants. the nobles of this day and age are, i believe, even further away from our commoners than ever before, lacking accountability in complete. We are systematically abused by our kings and queens, as they mass-produce poison and feed it to us, profiting off of it even as our arteries choke and sputter. Not only do we accept their domineering rule, we don't even realize that we are so ruled.

Nations have flexible borders, barely contained by politics. One commoner can be ruled by many rulers. All our kings and queens (mostly kings) bow to the emperors, giving them lip service and whispering promises and threats into their ears.

The emperor is weak, ruled as he is by so many high-ranking nobles without whom his country would collapse. Our people are weak, accepting whatever rule is given them, buying Coke in vast quantities and letting McDonald's destroy their bodies and minds, enjoying the long ride down.

Our empire, i feel, is sputtering. Politics no longer decided by elected officials but by corporate lobby groups.

We, the common people, the peasants, we have to do something about this soon. We've been systematically made ignorant, history re-written before our eyes to make it more palatable, easier to dismiss. We're not told that we are peasants, indeed, we're told that we live in a democracy, so it's so much better. It's just failed to mention that our current version of democracy is not so different from the monarchies of the past, not at the core of how things really work. It's been practically drilled into us that we shoulnd't rebel against our system, that in fact, we have no reason at all to.

yes we do! corporations are taking over our lives, offering little improvements that we must pay for through the teeth. the convenience of fast food. quick, easy, cheap. kills you slowly. you can look better. anything you bought yesterday is no good tomorrow. throw it out, pollute your home, waste yuour water, any resource you have that is precious is YOURS TO ABUSE! ABUSE IT! we are told, and we obey. It doesn't matter. nothing matters except buying what we are selling. you want it. you need it.

so what are we going to do? when will we do it?

i feel that a change should be coming. Maybe in my lifetime. Hopefully in my lifetime.

the system we are ruled under is worth fighting against. it would be nice if our so called "freedom" was more than just lip service. We are still bound, bonded servants of pitiless rulers. Don't kid yourself. just because you get to vote for the emperor, that means nothing. The emperor is a puppet used by our high nobility.

i wish i had the strength to organize and the knowledge to know who to fight, and how to best fight them.


i'll tell you what i see. i see private security firms becoming wildly popular. turning into small private armies, in fact, if they are not already. i see lowly employees becoming enraged when their companies, their nations so to speak, their way of life, is attacked, and fighting back the rebels. I see a civil war brewing, and i don't know that my side will win. being right has never really assured much. ~wistful sigh~

[Anita Blake]

ahh. sweet weekend. how sad it is that you come to an end. but what a good weekend you were! by good i mean lazy and i didn't spend much money, but that's good in my books! also, i feel pretty good, so i like that. :)

yesterday i saw harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban :thup: and i really enjoyed that, and then i came home and relaxed and read my book and started reading a new book, and did dishes and such, and then today i finished reading the new book, which kind of surpised even me, but it was good. OK, here's the part where i admit what it was. the lost slayer by christopher golden.

OK. i don't normally read tv show tie-in books, but i'm weak when it comes to buffy! i only ever read one of the other buffy books, but i really kind of liked it, and then i was at the library, and this book was there and i thought, well, i need a new book to read, since i'm mostly just re-reading my own library right now, desparately seeking entertainment. And so, buffy book. I really liked it. it was just what i needed to read. The kind of book where you're not really reading, you're just absorbing the story and you look up and realize you've read 300 pages and it's 2 o'clock (and you started that morning at noon-ish on page 75), and you get up to pee and sit back down to read some more, and suddenly it's 7 o'clock and you're done the book (page 590-something). Anyway, i really liked the book, it reminded e of how much i like buffy, so i sat down and watched some classic season 2 on dvd. Well, 3 episodes later (surprise, innocence, and bewildered, bothered and betwitched - i had to skip phases because i've seen it soooo many times!) ~is a buffy geek~ i'm feeling all happy and la la la. I spent a deep, meaningful day with buffy. there just aren't enough of those. :) the best part of the book was that it takes place during season 4, before oz goes away. ~sigh~ oh how i love oz. he was really the reason i fell in love with the show. his character is so... nifty! :love: i never really got over willow becoming a lesbian because deep down, i always felt like oz was her one true love. :rolleyes:

anyway. enough with my buffy geekdom. i'm not usually that bad. though my fingers are itching to go buy season 6 on dvd. must...wait...till...next...paycheck.... or maybe get my parents to give me some money when i'm visiting and get it then! hehe. oh the possibilities. :rolleyes:

it's always funny when i read something or get really into somethign and then write a war post because i can always really see the influences of whatever i was reading right before come shining through. in some cases coming blatantly and rather obviously through, overpowering anything i was tryign to accomplish. :rolleyes:

anyway, i feel really good today, hugs to NF for being so cheerful! ~passes warm fuzzy feeling to everyone ... but not on the tongue, because warm fuzzy tongues are gross~ :D

[Anita Blake]

ahhh truth and lies in the mass archives of googlism.


alissa is discovered"
alissa is zombie"
alissa is a descendant of the rare angel bears
alissa is stunningly beautiful
alissa is motivated by life long learning
alissa is showing that she has talents above and beyond what she was initially hired for
alissa is very picky when it comes to guys
alissa is the oldest
alissa is a bum so i'm gonna write something for her

alissa is a white female
alissa is no wimp
alissa isn'ta slave
alissa is so unhappy
alissa is furious
alissa is a bitch
alissa is also not a christian

alissa is flailing around too much

alissa is desperate for more than a ride to london
alissa is newly established and running for her life
alissa is a product of the 'starshots make up academy' with specialisation in glamour and photographic make
alissa is 12 inches tall
alissa is working on a novel
alissa is a sweet and enterprising young lady
alissa is hyper
alissa is an asset
alissa is an excellent assistant and can keep students learning while having fun
alissa is a backscattering altimetry lidar

[Anita Blake]

insanely tired. no reason. think i might be getting sick. my throat felt suspicious when i attempted to wake up this morning. but that could have just been me trying to become conscious. there's always some pain in that. the pain of dreams left behind and reality to face. ugh. who'd want that?

so i'm leaving tomorrow night for 5 days. hoorah. going home. going to witness the event known as "my becoming an old maid" ;) . Seriously, it's odd. my closest friends from days of yore, all married. me, not. happily so. i mean, hell, i'm not even dating anyone right now! though i'm starting to feel like i could date someone again. except for those impossibly high standards of mine. i figured it. it's quite funny, actually. i want to find a man who is equal to me. except my impossibly huge ego makes it hard for me to accept any man i've met so far as being equal to me. i just don't want a lesser man, that's all. or a man who will make me feel lesser. what does that mean, exactly? i think it means i'm destined to be lonely for a long time. ah well. i'm used to it by now, so it's not really a big deal.

it's very hard for me to get close to people. snobbish? maybe. i'd be inclined to say no, but maybe at the heart of it, no one is really snobbish, and they just come off that way. so maybe it doesn't matter what you are on the inside, just how you are percieved by people.

crap. work looks to be amazingly dull today. dull and/or annoying. i know there's a student who is going to ask me questions that make no sense and single me out among all the help he could recieve to annoy. gah! i want to help... i do... but man, seriously, you've got to at least try to learn. ~bangs head on table~ i so cannot wait till tomorrow! then i can go away and not think about work for a few days! how sweet will that be!

ahh... better go get ready for work.

[Anita Blake]

going back to the land of the prairie sky. :love:

5 days is both too much and not enough. it would be really nice if i had more money for this trip, but what can ya do? maybe the parent-folk will be able to help out that way. :D maybe they'll give me money to take my brother and sister to see shrek 2. hehehe. that's my favorite "visiting home" ploy ... 'oh, i'll get the kids out of the house, we'll just need some money for the movie! i can't afford to take them, but if you give us money for the tickets....' :halo: hehe. except then i get to the theatre with my pre-pubescent siblings to discover that they want nachos and chicken fingers and chocolate bars and ice cream and pop and fries. :eek: maybe i should take them to see supersize me. those kids eat waaaaay too much junk food. and for a dancer and a hockey player, it's just not right. my parents just don't have the energy to force the kids to eat properly. i have to try to spread my influence whenever i get a chance. i scowl furiously at fries and try to encourage veggies. i know it's futile, because when i was their age, there was no way any stupid adult could convince me that junk food was a lousy option.

fortunately for me, the forecast here at home is looking spectacule this week. it's supopsed to be sunny and hotthrough the rest of the week. Calgary weather forecasts rain for the entire duration of my trip. :dozey: which is lousy because i really really really want to make a trip up to the mountains and go hiking, which i guess i can do in the rain, but i'd really rather do it in nice weather. ~sigh~

i'm quite excited about this trip. i've seen the bride intermittently in the past few years, since she still lives in calgary, but my other friends, like myself, have dispersed to te four coners of the world, or rather, 2 of those corners. halifax and taiwan. i haven't seen them since 2000 at my other friend's wedding. insane. 4 years. too long. we're no longer even half as close as we once were, but i know we're still friends. i'm certain we always will be. it's a nice feeling, knowing that you have friends for your whole life, people who may disappear and reappear but who will always have a small love for you, and you for them. :)

back to the prairies. i went at christmas, but that's different. christmas makes everything different. you can't really go hang out with friends at christmas time because you have to do the family thing. but in june... this is all about friends. so i'm quite excited.

but i should go and finish my last minute packing of shower products. have a cheerful weekend! ~hugs to all~

[Anita Blake]

ahhh... sun from 5AM-10PM. does life get any sunnier? well, it would, if there hadn't been all those clouds.

even the clouds are different in alberta though, even when it's rainy. There's thunder, for one thing, and the clouds aren't a solid mass, they flutter and float, each doing it's own thing. Some clouds want to rain, some want to merely threaten, and yet others still just want to float along with their brethren.

It was nice to hear frogs. And see gophers and listen to them chirp. Hawks and sparrows and sandpipers and ducks and i don't even know how many other kinds of birds. horses and cows. sheep. walking under the deep night sky under cover of darkness and letting the sounds of the earth just sink in.

rejuvenating.

also, i went to the rarest and most beautiful weddings. A marriage of two people I have long loved and respected, admired for their intelligence, kindness, sense of responsibility, work ethic, and a host of other amazing traits that are all too hard to find in this world, never mind all in the same people. My friends, dating these last 9 years, finally married. We always knew it would happen, but true to thier nature they waited until they had had enough time to grow a little as people, waited until they were financially secure enough to not only pay for their (fairly expensive) wedding themselves, but to pay for their home and vehicles as well. They are both engineers, if the groom hadn't been the valedictorian of our high school graduating class, then the bride would have been. It's rare in this world for high school sweethearts to get married after having gone through college and a few years working in the world as well. High school sweethearts get married all the time, i think, but people at the weddings i don't believe have the same sense of absolute surety that the marriage is destined for success. This wedding, everyone knew that the couple will be together forever. They've had rough times, and conquered, and they have always been good to one another.

They are the most respectable and responsible people i know, and it frustrates and angers me that i cannot find the words to express my simple joy at knowing that they will spend their lives together. I have never been to a wedding where i have had that sense. I doubt I ever will again. Those two are special, and i know that the world will be a better place for them being together, because when they have children, they will be raised in a house of love, respect, and responisble discipline. Their children will make the world a better place, this i know. (i don't say this lightly... i think most people should not ever have children... this couple i will celebrate the day thei concieve, knowing that it will be a planned event that they are both ready and willing for)

one of the reasons i have nothing but the highest regard for the bride is this: i have known her since we were 14, and in all that time, she has been true to herself. She worked at her parents tree nursery through high school in the summer, and unlike most teens who work summer jobs, she didn't spend the money frivolously. She saved it, and when the time came, her parents didn't pay a cent for her university education. She got a hand-me-down car that had been her elder sisters' from her parents, but that was pretty much the extent of their financial help. She was never bitter about this, in fact, i think it was mostly her idea to pay her own way through life. When she got a high-paying engineering intern job, she bought her own car, and paid for her last year of university. She saved up and bought her sister's condo when her sister moved out. She's never asked for help, worked for every good thing she has, and been a wonderful example of a human being the whole time. Creative and positive, strong and loving, independant and yet yielding, she is a role model for anyone. She doesn't drink to excess, trash-talk anyone (that much ;) ) nor is she blind to the facts of life. I love her honestly and deeply, and i know that her husband does as well. they are both fun people, with hearts of gold and so much more.... i make them sound like saints, which they really aren't, many is the time when i have been called upon to listen to a raging vent, i know that they have had their difficulties and are prone to human faults like all of us, but i also know that she at least (and i'm pretty sure about him) are able to rise above those faults and try to make them better.

anyway, i could gush on like this for pages, so i'll suffice it to say that i was deeply pleased to be a part of their wedding, even only as a guest, it was a joy to witness what i truly believe will be one of the happiest days of their lives.

every aspect of my trip home was wonderful. i was given a wonderful opportunity to see friends i havent' seen in years, to catch up on lives that have been lived apart from my own, to see how once-awkward people have grown confident and strong, and to see how the friendships we once had influenced many of us positively to this day. :)

much bliss.

[Anita Blake]

what a busy week!

first off, i got paid. that was good. then i proceeded to waste all the expendable portion of my paycheck immediately on a cat water fountain that my cat is afraid of and Buffy Season 6. Did i say waste? i meant invest! :rolleyes:

anyhoo, also, i had a meeting with the HR person at work, yippee, they're finally putting me on salary and giving me benefits, which is supremely for the good. i got a "raise" technically, but i think after the deductions for the benefits package, i'll probaly get the exact same amount of money, which is better than i expected, because i was figuring i'd probably get a pay decrease.

also, today i got a whopping sum of cash wish which to purchase my art supplies for the masterpieces i am suppposed to create. Um, $40 does not go very far. Not at all. luckily, i don't need much in the way of supplies. BUT, i did get to go and talk to the cute art store boy who has been smiling at me every time i walk by the store and waved one day, and he invited me to a gallery opening on the weekend (he runs the gallery kind of, i think), which is kind of exciting. he's cute!! :blush: but of course, i spent the past few weeks joking about how i had to go and flirt with him, so my friend is now having a great time bugging me about "having a boyfriend", :blush: it's funny because it's so not true. anyway, pretty exciting because it's the first non-school male contact i've had in ... well, 3 years, more or less.

then tonight i got wrestled into going to a wrap party for some students' projects, only because my friend starred in one of their projects and this really nice, shy girl practically begged her to come, so i said i'd go with her, and then the girl who insisted upon my friend's presence never even came! though i did get some deliciious tomato and baby bocconcini pizza. mmmm. fresh basil and balsamic vinegar. mmmmmm. anyhoo. now i am incredibly tired and must fall asleep. :D

[Anita Blake]

dammit. well, ok, not dammit. but dammit! we finally get a smokingly hot weekend in which it would be perfect for me to indulge in my favorite activity, which happens to be also the most affordable activity, which is "doing absolutely nothing", sitting outside in the sun reading a good book and whatnot, and what did i do? i made too many plans and have a bunch of stuff i want to do that is most decidedly not sitting around doing nothing. this weekend i will:

go to work, work on paintings
beach picnic barbeque with friends
sew shirts
go to art gallery opening thing to flirt with cute boy
attempt to learn writing HTML (don't ask ... if my little sister can do it, then so can i dammit!)
and other stuff probably too.

hehe. ok, i'm not really complaining. i'm glad to have a bunch of stuff to do. i think i might try to do lots tonight and tomorrow, and then let sunday be my "day of rest" wherein i do nothing but worship the life-(and apparently cancer-)giving sun and lose myself in a book and possibly come inside later to watch an obscene amount of buffy. :D

oh plans. :rolleyes:

cheers!

[Anita Blake]

well, ok, so my liittle list of things to do has been somewhat foiled. Well, OK. not totally. I did sew a shirt, it's very fancy, much fancier looking than i expcted, probably owing to the fact that the material is a pretty fancy pale blue/lilac textur-y satin. very pretty. looks like something my mom would wear to a wedding, actually. :dozey: well, i have other fabric that i think will be much more "me". maybe i'll start working on that version this week.

yesterday i completely skipped out on any "obligations" i had. Well, kind of. See the art gallery thing was really sort of a loose invite, the guy was like "you should come" and i said i'd try, but in the end of the day, i was too heat-stroked and content to even think about leaving my apartment. I didn't exactly do the beach barbeque with my friends thing either, mainly because i sat outside for about 10 minutes before realizing that yesterday was most certainly not a day for sitting on the beach with burning charcoal and hot dogs. It was much more a "sit on the beach and eat popsicles" kind of day. swelteringly hot. delicious! the kind of day i more or less live for. i managed to avoid getting a sunburn by only going outside in one hour shifts. Well, the truth of that was that even for heat-seeking-little-ol-me, it was too hot for more than that. i am, however, increasingly dark.

I like being tanned. It feels like the colour i should be. It's also incredibly fun. Not just sitting in the sun and being tanned, but the way people look at me after. Because i tan pretty dark without really trying. And my eyes are pretty blue without even trying. And also, my hair is very dark, also without trying. People often ask me where i'm from. I get smart and say "canada". hehe. then they have to get more delicate and ask about my ethnic background, if i don't mind them asking. (we canucks are so polite!) Inevitably, my answer surprises them. Fact: my families (maternal and paternal) have been in canada for well over a hundred years, almost 300 in the case of my father's paternal ancestors. Not surprisingly, then, my ethnic background is quite varied. Mainly, i've been told, scottish, irish, dutch, austrian. Some german tossed in the mix too. i.e. Canadian. Most people tell me i look: lebanese, italian, greek, spanish, egyptian?!, mediterranean, "exotic". :umm: yeah. so not. but it's fun to have people tell me that! it's fun. i think i could probably pass myself off as being a great many nationalities. Well, i guess i am. but you know, pass myself off as being from a lot of nationalities which i'm not. Although my grandpa claims that there are spanish gypsies in our blood, but everyone else says he just makes that up. hehe. my whole family though, is dark-haired and blue-eyed. Though my dad's 2 other kids have lighter hair (but still not blonde by any stretch), owing to my step-mom, who is irish/norwegian.

so anyway, i always feel this kind of awe for people who have a firmly set cultural heritage. that must be really neat. to have an ethnicity other than boring caucasian. to not have to explain your ethnic background as if reciting the ingredients for a very complicated recipe. then again, i guess a lot of children of immigrants might wish they could say they were "canadian". but i tell you right now: no one knows what the hell "canadian" is. i guess Americans can get away with saying they are american and not having anyone question their pedigree, but it's a lot different here. people really hold on to the country they left to get here. even if only by claiming decendancy from that nation. i don't really get it, but i know very few people who describe themselves as "canadian" when asked for an ethnicity. nope. we go back to our grandparent's nation for that, and in failing that, our great-grandparents. or great-great-great-great grandparents if need be.

but i think i kind of like that. it's nice to be able to say "decsended from a dozen different races, born and raised in canada". :)

anyhoo... that was my tangent for the morning. seeing as how i also skipped out yesterday on "going to work and working on paintings" i must do that today. :D ta ta for now!

[Anita Blake]

well. survived another day. And you know, i think i did stick to my weekend plan after all since i started learning HTML today. hoorah for me! see, the thing was this: i looked at the library for books, and they had none. I looked at Chapters for books, and decided there must be some free tutorial online that wouldn't cost me $40. i like it when i'm right.

i picniced at the beach again. that's been my thang this week, eat meals down on the grass. Mainly my picnics consist of a sandwich and a somewhat battered water-bottle with grapefruit juice in it. And an obscenely large blanket for one person, and a book. i like it. nobody talking to me, just me, the book, the ocean and a million other people doing the same thing in the immediate vicinity leaving me more or less alone, and some food.

I don't know if the amount of time i've been wanting to spend alone lately is normal, but i don't care. i am finding more and more that i really enjoy not having to succumb to people's expectations. I hope to one day get incredibly wealthy so that i can just have a cabin on a lake in some remote area where i can go, be alone, and think. I sometimes wonder, is it selfish of me to want to spend so much time alone? but then i think, if a person would rather be alone, are they truly enchancing the lives of others by sticking around out of misplaced obligation? Out of the desire to not be seen as "anti-social"? See, it's problems like these that plague me at night.

i had a dream last night about earrings. It was critically important in my dream that i change my earrings. it made me wonder if maybe i shoudl go get some new earrings. except the earrings in my dream were highly unlikely choices for me, as they were delicate and buttery-fly shaped, likely to snag on my hair and fingers and everything else. I tend to be fairly rough on my jewellry. hency my current earrings: sleeper hoops and a couple of simple studs. all silver/ surgical steel. Even in my dreams my earrings were silver. i can't explain my aversion to gold. It just doesn't seem right on me. i sometimes wonder if that makes me peasant-y, but then i realize that i don't care, because regardless, silver jyst lookes better on me. my skin is too olive for gold to be noticeable. it just blends right into my skin. ugh. i mean, isn't the point of jewellry to stand out and be in shiny contrast with it's wearer? well, it is for me. silver is much more contrasting with my skin, thusly i wear only silver jewellry. vain? certainly. but i also think that silver has a number of interesting qualities that gold is curiously lacking, in the supernatural department.

la la la. anyhoo, my roomate went out for ice cream and i declined to go because i was a) full, and b) filled with the learning spirit. i'm waiting for him to come back so i can watch buffy, as i told him i'd wait, but i'm growing impatient! me want buffy! ~sigh~

ahhh well, i can see i'm just rambling now, so i'll spare you another read through the hellish landscape that is the questions that plague me. huzzah! tomorrow another week begins. oh dear. the busiest of my busy weeks. ~sigh~ ah well, at least it all culminates in a few days of partying! :D

[Anita Blake]

people don't live like this. do they? it's sometimes hard to imagine that this lifestyle exists at all, let alone that i'm living it.

My life is a dream. Truly, a strange, surreal dream. I sometimes am afraid that i will wake up from this dream to discover it's all mist and subconscious desires.

Even if i do, wow, what a great dream.

i don't know whether to feel joyous or guilty over it. Guilt creeps in a lot, i guess, because i know so many people don't get to live in dreams. But then again, i figure, every life is dream-like, if that's how you want to view it.

Regardless. I don't know how it came to pass that a little girl from the middle of a big city in the middle of nowhere happened to grow up to eat sardines and crackers on the beach after work, in a place where the sun glittered off the grass in and the harbour, where ships sit serenely (in mockery of their dark, industrial, oil-spewing, animal-killing, rusted-hull origins, from a distance, they are quite serene). Where the mountains are shrouded in the mist of the afternoon's heat baking off the water. Where thousands of people gather quietly and politely on the grassy parks next to the beaches, not crowding or being raucous, just sitting quietly and picnicing with their families, walking their dogs, pausing to absorb the beauty on their way home from their daily jobs.

it's absurd how picturesque it is, marvelously absurd. As though a scene from wholesome, family-values-type sitcom had come oddly true, minus the annoying main characters. A scene of a painting, or a still moment of a photograph, captured and made real in this time and this place. Sit down the beach, nibbling on dinner and reading a casual book in the sun, and it's easy to forget the horrors this world has to offer. Easy to be amazed by it's beauty and astounded by life's sheer simplicity.

I never believed that such a place, such a time could have ever existed in the world, in this reality. How could it?! It's so ideal, so brilliantly perfect, that these things exist, that a person can live in a high rise apartment overlooking the beach, working at a job she enjoys that allows her a great deal of freedom to learn and discover her true passions. These things aren't supposed ot be real. They're too perfect! Life is supposed to be miserable and hard and filled with trials and tribulations? So what, am i dead?! is this heaven? if so, i can't really say i'm all that surprised. I always sort of figured that while i'd have a good time in heaven, i wouldn't exactly be a part of high society, just living my afterlife the best i can, that's me.

scary thought, that. ever wonder if perhaps you're really dead and you just don't even know it? well, i guess it wouldn't matter much then, would it? nothing would have changed. because, of course, in that scenario, everyone around you is also dead and doesn't know it. like heaven is just going back to a happy time in your life, or getting to live a happy dream. that'd actually be kinda nice. because it's like you get to keep in living forever, but you're finished, so you just get to live the life you want, without knowing that's what you're doing. If you don't know you can do anything you want, you'd probably juts be pretty normal. maybe that's all life is.

whoa.

also, i just noticed the monocle smiley. :quirk: it appears to be mocking me. twirling it's monocle and shouting "MUUAAAHHHHH!!!!" at me. it's the only animated one of the smilies here. i wonder if he's lonley?

anyway. my great amazing plans at learning HTML are going well. soon i will take over the world and rule as Supreme Benevolent Dictator For Life, as has been my plan these past 10 years or more. (just in case you wanted to know exactly who you're dealing with here). So be excellent to eachother (hey! just because i'm the dictator doesn't mean i can't rip inspirational speeches off of pop-culture movies of the 80's, does it?!) until i return to keep you all safe and happy and living in your own dreams. :)

[Anita Blake]

something in the air. breathe it in, exhale. part of you. now not.

life is far to inexplicably strange.

no words to describe things that don't exist. fleeting thoughts across the mind and then gone.

so tired. so very very tired.

and my tummy hurts. i blame chocolate, though it's not very chivalrous of me.

i had this theory. it went like this: learn to write HTML. then learn to use some sort of HTML editor to cut out the hard work. make web page. take over the world. I seem to be stuck on step 2. see, i have front page express, apparently, i just discovered it sitting there on my computer, and i thought to myself, self, why not see if that's easier than writing out all that code nonsense? brilliant! i thought.

:umm:

not so brilliant. i understand it much less than i understand actually writing stuff out the long way. it makes .. no... fricking... sense.

ah well. i am yet a grasshopper. i have yet much to learn. perhaps it is too soon to try to take shortcuts. perhaps? uh, no shit, sherlock.

anyhoo. my brain is absolutely numb. i think i'll go to sleep early tonight. or maybe just read a lot. or something. there is little energy here, box of chocolates or no. stupid pms. stupid everything. :cry:

right then. off i go.

[Anita Blake]

this is jeb.

he doesn't get out much.

he looks like this:



people don't pay jeb much attention, even when he's screaming for it because jeb sounds like this:



Jeb thinks he's real. i beg to differ. we argue lots about stuff like that. Jeb usually loses. It's his job. It's what he was made for.

You could call Jeb a loser, i suppose. It wouldn't make him too happy, but there's not much he can do about it. not much he will do about it either. it's not his nature to act upon the insults of others. Nope. A regular pacifist is Jeb.


Jeb thinks it's time to go. Jeb doesn't know what he's talking about.

But it is time to go. not because Jeb said so, and Jeb's not right, because it's also not in his nature to be right, and i must refrain from letting him ever think he could be right, but i should do my hair. (jeb didn't say anything about the hair, which is why he was wrong, not that i need an excuse to tell him he's wrong. he just is.)

[Anita Blake]

election day. crap.

i want to vote NDP, because their platform is much more to my taste than either the Liberals or the conservatives. No matter what, i cannot vote for Conservative. But the liberals and conservatives are neck and neck. do i vote with my heart and idealogy or do i vote liberal to do what i can to prevent the conservatives from narrowly winning this election? tough.

i think i will vote NDP, even though i know they have no chance in hell of winning. Then at least my neighborhood will be represented in a manner i agree with in the House. It's going to be a minority government no matter what, and i would be foolish to think that my single vote will make a huge difference, but i don't think i can bring myself to cast a vote for Paul Martin. The NDP, at least stands up for what i believe in.

~bites fingernails.~

well, i guess i better go vote. i've been thinking about it lots, and the only conclusion i've come up with is that the conservatives are the devil and i can't vote for them. the liberals aren't much better. ~sigh~ well, at least i'm going to vote. all you other canucks had better get out there and vote today! (please not conservative! - look at stephen harper! what the hell is that thing on his head! he clearly cannot be trusted, not with a rug like that!)

edit:

some time later.....


voted. so easy! i don't understand the whole american election ballot scandal thingy. our ballots make perfect sense. several candidate names, their party affiliation, and a circle in which to mark your choice. one small 5x7 piece of paper. one pencil provided behind the screen.

learned some stuff i didn't know. like that we have communist party. i never even heard a single word about the communist party. i knew there was the BC marijuana party, but i didn't vote for them (though i will be attending their "rally" on canada day... i mean... cannabis day :D). wait. were they even on the ballot? i remember my roommate saying somethign about how there was no one running in our district. anyhoo.

so whatever you do today, if you're canadian, you better go vote! :D

[Anita Blake]

you know, an interesting thing about hair. if you put enough mousse in it when it wet and then proceed to put it into 2 cute dutch braids (inside out french braids) not only will the braids actually stay they way they're supposed to, but you can probably even sleep on your hair and then just keep the braids for the next day, and they'll only look a little scritchy.

but the problem with this logic is that it leads you to believe you can sleep in and forego the shower out of extreme laziness, except that you forgot that one vital detail which is that the shower helps wake you up, even if you do get up half an hour earlier. So, therefore: laziness with french braids = being extra tired all day.

so, you see, this is why you shouldn't plan stuff like this (ie, sleeping in) while you are actually asleep, or only semi-conscious. Actually, you probably shouldn't plan anything while un/semi-conscious. I just really don't think it's for the best.

anyway. i had a weird dream last night. it was about sleeping beauty. she was cursed by some french fairies, i think, while she was in spain. but then her boyfriend came to rescue her just moments after she was cursed to sleep, thus foiling the fey plan. They fled to some other country, where eventually, she was forced to confront this little temple thingy, which looked an awful lot like the place she was cursed, and she ahd to pray ro destroy it or something, and that was about the point where i happened into the dream, whereby i was sulking along in the hallways, afraid that the fairy-types who cursed her were after her to make sure the curse stuck, and all of a sudden Lucy lawless came in dressed like Xena, and i had to hide of course, but then she went into a room and came out all changed and i realized she must have just come from set, and she was babysitting my ex-bf's nephews, so i started talking to her and playing with these little tiny little dogs that were there. i don't know what happened to sleeping beauty. i think by that point i had taken over her body, so i was sleeping beauty, but i kind of forgot what was happening in all the celebrity babysitting. :umm:

i honestly have no idea where that dream came from. i haven't watched or seen or even heard about xena for ... i don't even know how long. so weird.

honestly, i wonder if i'm the only one who has these bizarre non-sequitur dreams, or if i'm just the only one who remembers and/or admits to them. I think the latter. I'm positive that everyone has weird stupid dreams that make no sense and are little but a jumble of unrelated events and/or people. Most people just don't talk about them. I don't know why. i mean, they're interesting, that's for sure. one day i'll make a movie of my weird dreams. i'd actually love the challenge to try to recreate the feeling of a dream on film. It's rarely been done to my satisfaction. The most that can be said is that an approximation of the dream state has been recreated. though there was a good dream sequence in season 2 of buffy. where buffy was walking through her house and then she was in the bronze and willow had a monkey and was talking jibberish and then her mom asked if she was ready and dropped a plate, followed by angel showing up and drusilla killing him. See now, that's what dreams are like. all nonsense-like.

anyhoo. i should go to work. well, i don't actually have to be there until 2:00 for classes, but there.. oh crap. that's right. we have an emergency computer situation and i need to help with that. ~sigh~ well, that should take about an hour and a half to fix, i guess i do actually have work to do today. man. i'm so tired. and babbling! whoa. ok, away i go, off to perform miracles and such!

~flies away with cape flapping in the wind, blowing over head and generally being a nuissance~

[Anita Blake]

what a nice day! so happy!

for some bizarre reason i decided to wear only skirts/dresses to work this week, which i have never really done before. i'm a jeans kinda gal. but i wore skirts. and yesterday i decided to fish out this ancient dress that my mom bought me years ago that i've never worn except for whatever the occasion was that my mom bought it for. It's this shapless blue dress that just sort of hangs and if i was fatter, it would maybe hide that, but being thinner, it makes me look somewhat like a whale. So last night i decided that in the interest of getting new clothes for free, i would at least dar the bust to make it somewhat less shapeless. I was fairly pleased with the results, and wore the dress to work with some misgivings. Got a lot of compliments, so that was nice. Also got to some compliments on my finished painting, even though i know it looks horrible up close, you can tell what the image is from far away. Worked on another painting, which was nice, but halfway through my friend and i relized that the giant paint brushes we had were not up to the task at all, so we went to the art store to buy some brushes, which was good since it was all part of my master plan to go to the art store today and see if the cute art store boy was going to the art gallery tomorrow for Cannabis Day (i mean... canada day, yeah... that's it). Anyway, i managed to draw out buying $8 worth of paintbrushes into over 15 minutes of chatting, whereby i discovered some interesting stuff and resolved to spend more time at the art store.

then i got back to work to discover that after my employee status changed, i was paid for the entire month instead of just the first 2 weeks, it's not an error and i will still get paid next pay day, so hoorah! it's like bigger than a double paycheck, i'm sooooo happy, this means i can finally take the computer my friend wants to give to me and buy ram for it and a harddrive and all that good stuff. YEAH!

then i was supposed to help the same friend who is giving me a computer by taking some pictures for the movie he's shooting, but that wasn't until 6 which meant a lot of time killing, so i stopped at the art store and chatted with the cute boy again and he asked me for coffee!!!! yay! i reiterated that he should come meet my friends and i at the cannabis day celebration tomorrow and he might, but it was super sweet to chat with him and stuff. he's very interesting. :D :love:

so i decided, being newly rich, that i'd go shopping on my way home, and i stopped at shoe stores to look for some new sandals, and i stopped at winners to look for some sandals and jeans and i couldn't find ANYTHING that i wanted, which is probably for the best, but it took me over 2 hours to get home because i shopped so much and only bought groceries.

anyway, now i am thoroughly exhausted and blissfully happy, soo hoorah for today! and tomorrow is canada day, so i don't have to work AND i get to go to cannabis day (which is actually a political rally for the BC Marijuana Party, man does canada rule or what?!) , which is always very interesting and fun, i just hope no one i know hits on me because that will be awkward (unless it's the art store boy, who can definitely come and hit on me!) oh yeah! and i met another cute boy yesterday who works in another campus of my school. :) oh how i like being single in the summer! so many cute boys about! (fortunately, the 2 cute boys i've met seem to be closer to my age, so that's good. no more younguns for me ... for now!) :D :D

[Anita Blake]

it's 4:10AM.

you know what i hate? when you're sleeping soundly, having bizarre dreams, and then this little beep wakes you up, and you know, you just know, that it's a text message being sent to your phone. and since it's 3:15Am, you also know that it can only be your ex-bf sending you a drunken text message. but since you just woke up, and since it's 3AM, you're not at your best thinking ability and you read it anyway. and it makes you mad. because goddammit, why are you being subjected to this? why, every single time you start to feel like maybe it's ok to move on, do you get some message about how he still loves you and can't forget you and can't move on. i begin to feel like it's an enforced guilt trip. like, ha ha, you broke up with me, and i'm going to punish you for that for the rest of your life or until you take me back. wtf?! seriously, i've done nothing more than flirt since i broke up with him, i'm still trying to absorb everything that happened with that relationship, trying to see where i went wrong and where i need to make changes in my life. i'm happy being single. i am finally beginning to enjoy being flirty me again, and he just keeps coming back at me as if trying to make sure i won't forget him.

of course i won't! that was the best relationship i ever had. it just didn't work out, and i knew it wasn't going anywhere and i didn't feel wholly dedicated to forcing it to go where i wanted it to go. i still like him, i don't love him, but i still enjoy his presence and don't think too bitterly of our time together. sometimes i do, but other times it's a nice, happy memory. i mean, there was a lot wrong with the relationship, and i think at least half of what was wrong was me don't being strong enough to reassert my own personality. but no matter how good it seemed at times, the fact remains that it fell apart. and i don't think that relationships are one of those things that you can just glue back together once it's broken. and it's broken. it's completely over from my viewpoint, and i'm not interested at all in trying to recreate the happy times we once had, because the two people who had all those great times were younger then, and they are different people now. i've been changed by that relationship, and i still don't know how i feel about that, or anything. but it's very difficult for me to just pick up and meet someone new. Sure i've had flirtations, but that's all in good fun, i don't know about actually starting a new relationship, but it's so unfair that every time i start to think about it, he drags me back into the fact that i hurt him, which, hello, i know! it makes me feel terrible that he thinks he wants me so badly, makes it almost impossible for me to even attempt to meet anybody new because i'm terrified that i'm going to hurt somebody else. boys/men seem so fragile to me. i don't understand them at all.

i mean, i just want to meet someone and not have it end in crushing, debilitating pain. is that so much to ask? maybe. but i do know that it's completely unfair of my ex to keep trying to drag me into the past. yeah, the past was a good place. but it's the past. it's over. i'm trying to look to the future now, trying to learn from the mistakes of my past, which is very hard when you just keep continually being reminded of them. hard not to just wallow in the fact that you screwed up. like, i know i screwed up. i don't debate that and i don't try to argue otherwise. i don't particularly like it, and it's something i have to try to deal with and move past, and it drives me insane that i'm being treated like a naughty puppy with a bad owner shoving it's nose in a pile of crap 9 months old. i was punished already. i served my time in absolute misery. i thought i had served my sentence, but it turns out i was only on parole, and flirting with others is a violation of my parole. which is great since my ex has had numerous girlfriend/flings since we broke up. i've been celibate, practically hiding in my apartment and decidedly not meeting new people. but i'm still being punished for it. it's so unfair.

and all i want to do is deal with this stuff mentally so that i don't have all this emotional baggage to carry with me into a new relationship should such a beast ever arise. i mean, i'm finally learning to stop talking perpetually about my ex, which is tough, since we still work in the same place and have a lot of the same friends. but to outsiders, when you talk about your ex-bf, it tends to "mean something". arg. what really sucks is that i'm thinking about this at 4:30AM. :furious:

ok, i'm going back to bed. sorry for the vent, i just had to get it out so i ccould go back to sleep. sigh.

[Anita Blake]

~sigh~ what a great day. ok, i spent a large portion of it sleeping peacefully, but still, great canada day. i got to go shopping for the first time in ages, bought some stuff i really needed, like new sandals. I love my old sandals, i got them in mexico 3 years ago for 100 pesos and they've always been comfy and fit like a dream. except that now they are falling apart: i had to get a friend to glue one back together after the sole started lifting, and the leather is starting to deteriorate in places, and the foamy soles are getting indents in them under my heel, so that it acts like a suction cup sometimes and kind of sticks to the ground when i'm walking and feels like i have gum on my shoes. it is almost impossible to find the style of sandal i want, which is: relatively flat, feminine, with a toe divider, a top-of-foot-strap, and a strap that goes around the back of my heel. simple, strappy, non-confining sandals. impossible. but i managed to find some that at least have a strap around the back of my heel. all shoes this year are flip flops. i hate flip flops. they fell off my feet because i walk insanely fast, and i can't have that. i like my shoes to be firmly attached to my feet.

anyway, i actually managed to find 2 pairs of sandals i liked, and maybe because i just said "fuck it, i don't care, i'm buying both pairs even if it costs me $100" that they were all on sale and it only cost me $40 for both pairs! :D that made me smiley, since i like both pairs fairly well. hoorah! and la senza was having a sale with bras for $10, and 3 panties for $10, so that made me extremely happy. stocked up on new undies. Though i would like to say that la senza has bizarre sizing strategies. Some undies, i had to buy "extra large" just to get the elastic to fit around my hips, and i assure you, there is nothing "extra large" about these undies. i mean, they're a friggen g-string! i don't have massive hips. some styles i could buy a medium, some i might have done ok with a small, and others, extra large is the only way. Also, sometimes with their thongs i notice a tendency to being very long and narrow, like, the elastic doesn't go around my hips too wel, but i could hike it up to my eyebrows because i don't know why. silly underwear makers. anyhoo. i also bought some simple tank tops, my favorite sunscreen, and a new pair of sunglasses. this is a HUGE shopping spree for me, so it made me very happy. i almost bought a pair of pants, but i didn't like the fit too much. 3/4 was a little too snug, and 5/6 was far too big. that makes me suspect foul play. i've never worn a 3/4 in my life, i think they're just sizing things stupidly nowadays.

anyway, after the shopping i went to the art gallery for the annual Cannabis Day celebration. it was a good time. i think i had more fun last year, but this year was pretty good too. way hot. i'm glad i bought sunscreen because i needed it today! it's neat going to Cannabis Day because while i think it's technically a protest rally, it's mostly just an excuse to sit down on canada day outside, smoke a few joints with your friends, and have a good time. people put bubbles in the water fountain again, which looked very interesting from where i was sitting, but not so interesting that i was tempted to actually get up to investigate. There was a cute little old mad going through the crowd selling his wares: "pot cookies! extra strong pot cookies! 2 for $5!" and he had a squirrel climbing around on his shoulder which ran into his shirt to hide. so cute. there were also a few people there who are burn victims who go to support legalizing medicinal marijuana and such, one guy was ... my heart went out to him. at first i seriously thought he was wearing something like a fredddy kruger mask, but then i saw how the back of his head was caved in and his jaw didn't meet his neck very well. man, that is a guy who should be allowed to take whatever kind of drugs he wants to ease his pain. it looked miraculous that he was even alive, his injuries were so intense and severe. his hands were crumpled up and pretty useless-looking, it looked like he was covered pretty much head-foot in burns.

we saw exactly 2 cops there, on bikes, standing at the corner watching. probably wishing they were off duty, :) . the ambulance came for one guy who i assume dropped of heat exaustion or dehydration. it's such a great place, nobody wants to fight, everyone just wants to have a good time and support the cause of being able to smoke pot and not being a criminal for it. oh man, the smoke in the air at 4:20 made me laugh. very, very cool. I've been to this thing now 3 years running, and it just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. there seemed to be more people sellign cookies this year, last year was more joint oriented, whereas the year before there was a lot more mushrooms as well. I didn't see anyone selling mushrooms this year. yes, people selling pot, outside, in public, and no one bats an eye.

it's funny, i try to explain this place to my friends back home, and it always sounds weird. Some of my old friends look at me funny when i talk about pot, but the fact is that here, you can light up a joint in any club/bar/concert, and no one will bat an eye. Light up a cigarrette, and prepare for doom. People will giev you dirty looks, bouncers will get bouncy, and general disapproval is in the air for tobacco. no one minds if you smoke a joint though. same if you're at most people's houses: tobacco must be smoked outside, no one wants to stink up their house, but it's A-OK to pass a pipe in the house. :)

anyway, all my peaceful protesting has made me sleepy. that and all the sleeping i did. man. so tired. :) cheers all, and happy canada day!

[Anita Blake]

So I had this idea. It was prompted by a friend to whom i was describing what i made for supper that night, and he said ":eek: you've gotta cook me dinner!" I said "ok".

Now, i usually cook turkey dinners on thanksgiving and easter, invite many people over, but then i had the idea that i could do the same kind of think every week (though i'm starting to think every 2 weeks might be more practical), and just charge people $10 to cover the cost of the food. So this week i tossed the idea around a bit and recieved some lukewarm interest so i let it drop. But a couple people were like "hello! are you doing that?! because i want you to cook for me!" So i was kind of obligated to follow through on my plan. Even though originally, the plan was to get all comers to give me money by friday so i could buy the groceries. I decided that since this would be the first week, i would let people bring money on sunday to reimburse me. Which is totally fine, i mean, i had enough to cover the cost of the meal, except that i'm not 100% sure how many people are coming. I'm hoping at least 4, because then there would be 6 people here (including my roommate and myself) and that will mostly cover the cost of what i had to buy, but if only 2 people show up i'm going to be so mad! Well, i know that one person is coming for sure, with a guest, and another guy said he would bring wine, so he damn well better show up, but 2 others are kind of "iffy". sigh.

i'm not really stressing about it, but i would like to know. I'm always afraid when i do stuff like this that i'll cook too much or not enough food, which is part of why i want people to give me money in advance. I know they'll be there, and i'll buy enough food for everyone, and probably not too much.

i have kind of grand ideas for this thing though. I really want it to become something fun to do, like a perpetual sunday night plan. "what are you doing sunday night?" "oh, going to the Sunday Night Dinner". We need some form of entertainment, so i don't know, probably movies, given the crowd, but i'd like to get games and stuff, so that it's like an old-fashioned night with the friends. I find that i don't have enough fun-with-friends, so i'm hoping that this can be a good excuse for good people to get together and have fun. maybe it will only happen the once, but i'm optimistic. I even added a page to my website where you can get the full menu of what i've served and the recipes for each item as well. After writing out all these recipes for things that i mostly just make from the top of my head, i realize that it looks pretty fancy and i don't think people will be too upset to pay $10 to come over for dinner. That was my biggest fear, that people would look at me like i'm crazy to ask them to pay me to give them supper. But many people have had my cooking before and thankfully think it's worth it. I don't know that i'm the world's greatest cook, but most people i know can't be bothered to cook anything at all, so they worship people like me who love to experiment in the kitchen and make good dishes. i wish i could afford to do this for free, just invite people over for a full, home-cooked gourmet-wanna-be meal, but sadly, food ain't cheap.

anyway, i'm pretty excited about it, i got some of the food prepared last night. you can check my website to get the full menu and the recipes if you want, along with some of my personal notes on cooking. :) i think that's the final touch to my planned evenings, letting people go home with the recipes so they can try them themselves. i don't know. maybe i suck. the important thing is that i tried, i think. :D

cheers, and happy sunday quillers!

[Anita Blake]

well, just a quick note before i drop:

the dinner went swimmingly, i had to call to beg a couple friends to show up, but they came and it was lovely, the fellow who insisted i have the whole thing saved me by bringing 3 friends, so i got to meet some new people, which was cool, and impress people with my cooking skills! :D (well, they said they were impressed anyway).

Anyone who is planning on roasting a chicken anytime soon, listen to me, listen to me well. Brine, brine, brine! marinate your entire chicken in salt water overnight, and i guarantee you will never go back. the plumpest, most juciest chicken ever! (ok, i also put some butter under the skin, which definitely helped, but mostly it's the brine!)

also, if you're looking for an excellent cook book that will teach you how to cook and give you good basic recipes, you must buy Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here For The Food" He's the host of Good Eats, which is the best cooking show in the universe because he doesn't teach you how to make a recipe, he teaches you how to deal with a specific ingredient. For example, there's a show on tomatoes, one on eggs, one on ice cream, one on eggplant, one on chocolate, etc. he goes into the history of the food, how it's grown/manufactured, how to tell good from bad, and how to cook it to best effect. never have i learned so much that has made people think i'm a genius from one television show. it's amazing. if you have the food network (or food TV i think it is in the US) you should tape this show, make time to watch it, whatever, because it's awesome. i love alton brown. i kind of want to marry him. :blush: even though he is blonde ;).

anyway, all that is to say that thanks to alton brown, people think i'm a great cook and clamor for more of my food. I've gotta learn to cook for larger crowds. ha, my friend was like "i should have had you cater for my movie!", and from the sounds of it, he might have me cater for his next movie. :) so i am sated and pleased beyond belief, and there's not even that big a mess to clean! (god bless paper plates, i know it's wrong, i know, i know! but how i love them!) :D

[Anita Blake]

oh sweet jesus. it's tuesday. which would be good but that means that yesterday was only monday, and for a monday, i spent an exorbitant amount of money. gah. stupid glasses. which i don't even really need. I could have just gotten a years worth of contacts for less money. ah well. i need a change. i wanted cute sexy glasses. my old glasses are decidedly neither cute, nor sexy, though my roommate thinks he likes them. He doesn't know. when he sees my new ones, he'll likely agree with me that my old ones are utter crap.

i bought 2 ferns last night. they're little. little baby ferns in 4" pots. they'll need to be transplanted. maybe next week sometime. i've been steadily getting more and more plants since i broke up with my ex. Previously, i had 2 bamboo shoots that were given to me and an aloe vera plant. Now, i have 2 bamboo shoots, a christmas cactus (which is growing like mad!) another little unknown succulent/cactus-type plant that's kinda cute but almost died and is now recovering, and another cactus that from above looks like of like a rose, with big green rose petals with pointy black tips, a baby white spruce tree (7" and growing!) and now 2 ferns. I kept buying cacti because they selll them sometimes at my grocery store for $3, and now they have ferns in so i bought some of them. I couldn't decide which one i liked better so i got one which looks like a kind of typical fern, where each frond has tons of little little leaves, and the other one looks like a fractal. teeny little hair-like leaves. it's really soft and delicate looking. i like it. i hope i don't kill it. oh yeah! i also have 2 basil plants and a mini-sunflower! :D it makes me feel good to grow things. though my roommate almost killed it all when i went away for a few days, so i might want to be careful.... :rolleyes:

the first time i went out to stanley park, i was shocked, because these ferns were growing all over the place outside, and i honestly never knew that ferns could grow in canada outside of greenhouses and such. oh how i love this part of the country! :)

gah. work is being a bitch lately, well, ok, just yesterday, dealing with problems that have little to do with me and much to do with interpersonal relationships among students. It's so hard not to take sides when you watch one group of people be completely demoralized by having to work with another person who drives them all insane and doesn't do much work, and to tell them they just have to let that person try (even when you and they all know that the person in question will in all probability fail, bringing the group down with them). Trying to keep people's spirits up when they are down for a good reason feels so fake and false. I just want to sympathize with them, but i really can't because i'm supposed to be there for everyone, not just the people who are nice. ~sigh~ i hate it when we get people like that. it makes everyone feel terrible. including the person in question. nobody wins, and that's what i hate, lose-lose situations. so unfair. ah well. the only thing i can really do is try to support those who ask for it, and otherwise stay out of the way and hide. :)

I talked to the art store boy again last night. he had very dorky hair. usually when i see him he's wearing a hat, or else his hair is all messy, but it was all combed over nice and neat and seemed odd. hehe. we're going to grab some coffee tomorrow. very odd. for me. i mean, i don't usually approach people and chat them up when they are working and agree to go for coffee with them. makes me kind of nervous. i mean, what will we talk about?! i just don't know. i guess we'll figure it out. if we have nothing to talk about i guess that's that. :) i met another cute boy last week as well and ran into him yesterday. so yeehaw! go boys! teehee. and the good thing is, both of these guys are at least approaching my age if i can piece their stories together straight. One graduated from film school 7 years ago, and one has been working for at least 6 years after HS, so at least neither of these cuties is tragically younger than me. :) perhaps only just a little younger than me. maybe even older than me. not likely, but i can hope. :) i really have to make an attempt to date someone older than me. I only ever have once, and he was nice, but kinda crazy (he played baseball and hockey... drank heavily and was separated from his wife ... oy :rolleyes: )

anyway, i better get ready for work now that i've set my mind in order. :) cheers!

[Anita Blake]

I like your culture. I'd like to help you preserve it. But the cost of doing that will be great. so here's what i need you to do. buy a bunch of stuff from us, whatever you want, just agree to spend or send$XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX worth of products to us per year, and we will protect and preserve your culture.

We are your protectors.

You don't want to lose our protection, because to do so would incur our wrath.

Get us the money or goods, and we'll get you preservation.

You'll get the money or goods, of course, by any means necessary. And if it means destroying your culture, then so be it. If destruction is necessary for ultimate preservation, then so be it.

But always remember: we are here to protect you because we love you, because we like your unique specialness. this does us little good, it is merely our good deed.

[Anita Blake]

so i did it. i went for coffee with a person i just met. which was nice. a new experience. meeting people outside my regular circle. I don't know that i'd want to be in a long-term relationship with this guy, but i'd like to get to know him better. he's adorable, and interesting, and did i mention adorable? smart, motivated, workaholic. don't know what i think about people who work more hours a week than i spend being awake, but it's honorable. chain smoker, though. no social life, which actually for me is a bit of a plus, because i also have no social life. i don't know. whatever. it was coffee, it was casual, that's all. it's nothing really. i'm making this big deal out of it because my friends are all making a big deal out of it because a) he's so cute b) i've been talking about how cute he is for a couple months now and c) i never meet new people and everyone kind of knows that.

It's hard to meet new people. I mean, ok, i meet 20+ new people eveyr 8 weeks. but they don't really count because they are students and they are my job. Certainly, they are valuable business contacts for the future, but they're out of the dating pool, out of the hanging-out with pool, which often sucks because i'm attracted to many of them and would love to be able to party with even more of them. But i can't, so there's not even any point thinking about it. That leaves my coworkers, of whom half are my parent's age or just really not in the same kind of mindset as me, and so are discounted, the other half are the only people i ever really hang out with. And i'm not complaining, because they are all great people and i like them all, but i often wish i could meet some *other* people too. And i'm not the only one who feels that way. So i think everyone, myself included, was busily joking about me going for coffee with this guy because i never do stuff like that. But it kind of annoys me, the deal that gets made of it (by myself as well as by others) because it's really not a big deal. It's coffee. Sitting on a busy street chatting with someone who is basically a stranger until after that coffee. So, i don't know. I mean, *sigh*. Obviously, i'm kind of interested in him, and he seems kind of interested in me, but ... gah! i don't know what. anyhoo

it was nice. very nice. awkward at moments, because when two somewhat anti-social people get together no one really knows what to talk about, especially when there's some interest, but it wasn't terribly uncomfortable. We hugged and agreed to do it again sometime, and he invited me to his gallery this weekend, and i think i'll go this time, now that i've had time to develop an actual speaking relationship with him. I know stuff about him, he knows slightly less about me, so i think we're friendly, that's good. I can do the gallery thing. it will involve alcohol, so that's a good conversation-booster. :p and i'll meet more new people. i think i really need to do that right now. expand my social circle, since right now it's very small. but then i have to think, i'm not really the kind of person to make casual acquaintances. i make *friends*, few and far between, but people i can count on. Yet i guess you never know who you will meet in a new place until you go forth and do that.

i was thinking about that this morning, as i was pondering things to talk about with him, and i came upon this notion. I don't make a lot of friends because i am kind of a chameleon. I can be whoever, whatever, someone expects of me. Classy, trashy, modest and sweet, dark and seductive, whatever is appropriate for the occasion and the people involved, and so i don't really know who I really am. I don't know myself very well, which i guess is why i try to spend time alone, but my actions can differ wildly depending on who i am with. Psychic interference. i pick up on other people's vibes and respond accordingly. i can't help it and don't always do it consciously, which i think it why it's hard for me to be in a long-term relationship with anyone, because i just become an extension of who they want me to be, and i don't get the chance to explore the other sides of me. I think that's my basic nature, to mimic. it always has been, since i was very little. i know what's expected of me in most situations and try to blend in. which i suspect is why i always wanted to be an actor, so i could do that and people could know that none of it was me, that it all was me, so that maybe i could know who i really am. i wonder if i ever will know. maybe if i spend a year in isolation on top of a mountain. i don't know if i have the strength to do that. and anyway, should a chameleon try to change it's changeable nature? maybe i should just accept that i am who people want me to be and move on to do that. I don't know. Anyway, i think that's why i've always been very choosy of my friends, because i know that with the wrong people, i am capable of doing a great deal of things that i think in my core i would not respect. there is a core there, and i do know it, partly, but i'm not sure i fully understand or accept the core of myself yet. i might one day, i suppose. perhaps after i explore all these different aspects of myself.

this is me. writing. solitary and alone. contemplative. philosophical and even somewhat deeply religious, though my religion is as of yet unknown. i feel sometimes very deeply spiritual, but i don't always know what that means, and it sometimes frightens me, if i were to be completely honest. i feel very connected to the universe, and yet in complete confusion about matters of specific life. materialistic spiritualist. spiritual materialist. something like that. and i'm rambling. listening to Vast. music for people. i didn't like it so much at first, but now i like it almost as much if not more than Visual Audio Sensory Theatre. the last 2 songs are very pretty. moving, even. :)

off i go.

[Anita Blake]

la la la i got my new glasses today! :) it made me happy, for a minute, and then i put them on, felt nauseous from not being used to wearing glasses, and remembered that i hate wearing glasses :dozey:

anyway, they are very spiffy and i'll try to put up a new pic of me in them soon, even though i'm not likely to wear them often, since i don't enjoy having to tilt my head in order to see things that are up. but i got a spiffy polo ralph lauren case and they have nice anti-reflective nikon lenses, so i feel all special and name-brand-y. actually, the glasses are really nice, and the ralph lauren logo only appears on the inside of the arms, so i like that. i hate wearing stuff taht shows off brand names. it disturbs me on a deep inner level.

anyway, work has been a bitch lately. all the office politics. i hate that stuff. i just want to do my job. i don't want people to fuck with what my job is. i want people to just sit back and let me do my job rather than legislating and tying me up in red tape. gah. 90% of the time, i love my job. i like what i do, i like most of the people i am involved with, i like the atmosphere, but sometimes the atmosphere gets a little thick and i don't enjoy that.

i get to pick up my new (used) computer today. which means i finally get to find out what exactly all it needs. hopefully not too much. i think just ram. i can get most of the other stuff it needs super cheap, so that's good. i might need to wait now though, because i was hoping my glasses would be cheaper than they were, so i'll probably have to wait until i get reimbursed for them. ~sigh~ that's ok. i guess.

anyway, i better go call about said computer. make sure my friend is not otherwise occupied. :) cheers all!

[Anita Blake]

so life. things happen. action and reaction. cause and effect. and through it all there's supposed to be this sense of "self" that carries you through it all.

but then you go and expand your consciousness a little. And you remember things, like "i don't like this type of person". but you start thinking. and you come to understand a certain type of person. and then after a while, people you meet get categorized into these types that you have previously observed, all while you are stuck with this longing, this wondering "where do i fit in?" and you begin to realize that it's not a type of person that you don't like, it's not knowing which type you are that bugs you. so you take it out on others, bums, junkies, yuppies, punkies, street-wise hipsters, middle class suburbanites, blue collar working joes, artists, horror-film buffs, whatever, pick a type and analyze them to death and come out thinking less of people for being that type. Any type.

so then you hate people.

well, that's mighty productive.

and you have to wonder, what type am i? You'd like to think that you are a unique and beautiful snowflake, but be realistic for just a second here. You've managed to put everyone into their type, even accounting for people who overlap into many different types, but you yourself defy this kind of classification that you have created?

Oh puh-lease.

So you try something new, and maybe you find out that you're definitely not that type of person. And look at yourself through the eyes of others, and see that maybe you're a good-for-nothing yuppy who thinks too well of herself, or maybe a shy bookworm who can't relate to people, or maybe an wannabe artist-type who lacks any real talent and even worse, confidence. Whatever.

Having previously thought less of others for their type, you are now forced to think just a little less of yourself because you have found your type and found it lacking. Stereotype yourself, go ahead. Feel for yourself what you feel for all those other people out there.

But you like a lot of those other people. You have loved them, you would bend over backwards to gain their respect. Just because they can be classified does not make them less, but you feel cheated for the classifiable nature of humanity. Because you know that you too can be classified. And maybe you don't like your classification.

Except that the classification is completely at random. You're the only one who calssifies yourself that way, others will classify/typeify you with their own scale. So ulitimately, it all comes down to you doing what you said you didn't: caring far too much about what other people think about you while projecting your own feelings for yourself onto them.

Way to go, cheif. Good job. You're certifiably mental now. Get a job. Get a haircut. Get some new clothes and wake up in the morning to find out who you are.

Clothes. maybe that's what it comes down to. your costume. the uniform of you. the clothes do make the man. you can try to escape that, but how you present yourself physically does impact not only how others see you, but how you see yourself.

Now, the problem occurs when you have a very good presentation of self to others, you dress well and take care of your hair and makeup daily, only to feel like you are some kind of worthless yuppy scum. You are the thing you hate, because you are too vain to be otherwise.

Or maybe that's just me.

[Anita Blake]

ok. less fact. more speculation. it's much more my style anyway.

no, i wasn't high when i wrote that last post. i kinda wish i was, because then i could just laugh about it and say how i should really quit smoking pot. which i should anyway, but i'll settle for cutting way, way down, which i already have. :)

if you are driving a car with no plates, and the cops chase you and you end up crashing on a bridge and running the rest of the way on foot, here's a thought: stop running. jumping off the bridge will not save you. you will die. or if you do decide that you have a better shot if you jump, maybe look to see if there's actually water under the bridge. cement is not your friend from 15m high. (i just heard that this happened yesterday.... idiot)

spiderman 2 is a good movie. i saw it yesterday. so those of you who haven't seen it yet can all rest easy now. my verdict is good. you may sleep soundly at night from now on, peacefully knowing that it's a good movie. unlike me, who couldn't sleep last night. well, actually, i did sleep. i was just plagued by more intensely bizarre dreams. but spiderman 2 is good, so all is well with the world.

tea in the morning is also good. i thought briefly about switching out to coffee this morning, but didn't for 2 reasons. one, it takes longer than boiling water and dropping tea bag in cup. two, i think i like having my tea first in the morning, and then getting coffee when i get to work (only sometimes). I think i might get an extra coffee today. i am feeling low-key.

if someone you know seems down, or quiet, don't ask them if they feel depressed. that just makes them feel guilty for being a quiet, introverted, introspective-type person. don't tell them you wish they were happy. chances are, they thought they were happy until you opened your big mouth and forced them to reconsider the definition of happy and wonder if they are weird because they find happiness in the simple pleasures of life, like sitting and looking out the window while contemplating the best way to sew that shirt that exists only in their head. now, since you asked if they were happy, they can't focus on the shirt idea, AND they feel guilty. sometimes, it's best to let sleeping dogs lie.

if you like a girl, when you are talking to her, don't look the opposite direction and pretend she's not there. she won't have a clue. she'll think you hate her. and if you do, then look the other way when talking to her. because then she'll get the message. but don't follow that up with flirty eyes and happy smiles. because that's just downright confusing.

am i the only person in the world that accepts body language as a formal method of speech? if so, crap. that sucks. i'm very aware of my body language. it kind of bugs me when other people aren't, because i make a lot of judgements on what they mean or are thinking based on it, but if they are unaware of the signals they are sending, then i'm just an overanalytical bitch.

morning is an odd time. i'm considering trying to sleep in shifts. a few hours here, a few hours there, working through the night, because, i kind of like the night. i just hate 6:30AM. can't explain it. it's the only time of day that i definitely want to be asleep. 4AM has this cool air, and so does 3,5,1 & 2AM, but 6AM just always feels kind of hollow.

am i the only one who gets confused when watching tv shows and movies and it's dark, and people are going places, but then i find out it's only supposed to be 6:00, but it's been dark for a long time. and it's summer. i don't get it. does it really get dark at 5:30 in many parts of the US (for example, NY & LA?) in the summer? if so, i'm sorry. ~hugs darkness-dwelling americans~ no wonder you have so much problem with depression. ( i assume there's a huge depression problem in the US based on the number of ads i see for anti-depressant drugs). anyway. i hate that in movies. if it's 6, it should still be daylight. at least, i think. at least, in the summer. in the winter, 6 is an appropriate time for darkness. oh how my northern bias shows.

last but not least, i have to go to work now. ~sigh~

[Anita Blake]

so yesterday was weird. i was grouchy for one, which actually isn't that weird. went to work, puttered about, etc. etc. saw a male student crying on the street, his girlfriend wiping tears away from his eyes. kept walking. didn't want to intrude. found out that my work schedule has been more or less exploded and moved into crazy-ville. my friend had an outburst wherein i thought she almost cried, but didn't. came home, my roommate told me he got fired, my parents called to tell me they're not going to australia due to financial and work complications, but that they'll assist me in going on my trip to NZ, and the same friend who had been having work-related issues (2 full time jobs, etc) imed me to tell me that this random creepy guy who we know who lives in new york who she's never dated and only ever had about 3 conversations with basically told her she should move to new york, be engaged to him within 2 years and married within 3. so we went to a movie. ended up feeling coughy and stuffy and kinda sick.

which prompts me to wonder what the hell was with yesterday?! it just seemed like things went crazy. i kind of can't believe it was only monday. because i really need a weekend right about now. it was an oddly intense day. so i don't know if there was something astrological going on, or like, solar flares, or i don't know, the core of the earth stopped moving and only an elite team of US scientists in an unobtanium ship can save us now, but it was kinda fucked.

that's interesting. they're playing Closer (NIN) on the radio, and i swear i've heard them playing it unedited before, but now the "fuck" is replaced with a whipping sound. hmm.

on that note, i'd like to say how much i really really really hate censorship of words like "shit, fuck, ass," Seriously. Those words have become part of the everyday lexicon. They are hardly shocking. I'm sorry censorship dudes, but i was exposed to foul language at a very early age. I believe it's called "having a father". so the only kidlets you oare "protecting" are the children of repressed, uptight single moms. And most single moms, not that repressed. (yes, i know this isn't true, but fuck it, i just woke up, i'm grumpy, haven't finished my tea, and i think i'm getting sick, that means i can say whatever i want and it will be gospel) Anyway. language is flexible. censoring "low" language is kind of classist. i should file a class-action lawsuit.

anyway. i am deeply tired. i cannot believe it's only tuesday. that's kind of unfair. fucking life. gah. i have to remember to drink lots of water today. i know that seems simple, but i often forget that i should drink something, and as a result, i think i am often dehydrated without realizing it, making me irritable and tired. i think that's part of what made yesterday hard. no water. must...drink...water. sigh. i should go get ready for work. bah.

[Anita Blake]

i saw this coming. last night, inthe movie theatre, when i couldn't feel the inside of my nose. or rather, i could feel it, and it felt stuffy. and then there was that suspicious cough. now, all day, there is this less-than-delightful queasy/nauseous feeling in my belly. I have felt all day, one step away from hurling. (with minor fluctuations). And yet, when i thought to myself a few minutes ago, "maybe this is one of those situations in which inducing vomiting is a good idea", no vomit could be induced. and i tried. ugh. i don't know what's worse, that i tried to vomit, or that i failed. i did, however, discover that my toilet is in severe need of an internal scrubbing :sick:. even that didn't make me toss my cookies.

i've tried eating. it feels like i didn't eat. i tried not eating. which feels pretty much the same. i've tried looking for food that might appease the tummy grumbles and discovered that absolutely nothing looks appealing. i tried relaxing and sleeping, and that almost made it worse. i had to let down my roommate because he wanted me to go to some family function-type thing tonight, but i really don't want to be in public. i already left work really early due to this nauseous-not-nauseous feeling. i'm light-headed and grouchy, and my head, contrary to it's relative lightness, feels as though much of it's solid matter has been replaceed by phlegm. ditto with the tummy. i am living high in phlegm city. the only place there's no phlegmmy-feeling: my throat. ~sigh~ at least 2 other people i know had the exact same symptoms today. fucking superbug. i blame the US government. mostly because in a movie, they'd be the ones behind inadvertently releasing a super bug that makes people die in some fantastically gory manner. hopefully i don't die. hell, i'd settle for throwing up. i never thought i'd say that.

anyway, aside from the utter sick-feeling of today ... uh, wait. that was all there was today. i got the stuff that needed to be done at work as quick as i could so i could leave without feeling too guilty. i don't know what to do about art-store boy. so i'm pretending he doesn't exist. kind of. not really. but hey, i can pretend to pretend. i'm sick, leave me alone.

ok. this is turning into an incoherent sick-ramble. i could probably go on for days, until my body is turned to an empty husk and my fingers just keep on typing stuff until i finally collapse and die, but seeing as how that scenario is somewhat less attractive than signing off, i'll take what's behind door number 2. sianora.

[Anita Blake]

so, if ever there was a theme, a log line to my life, it would be this: "we're all going to die". it's not that i'm panicked about the end of the world. it's more that i keep on seeing it. earthquakes. floods, droughts, random illnesses. omens of doom. or possibly just the natural order of the world, but i don't know, i think there's something suspicious going on. i peg the end of the world for at least the next five hundred years. hopefully, i won't still be alive in five hundred years. actually, scratch that. i hope i am alive in five undred years, even if i'm just a dismbodied head in a floating jar. that, actually, would be kinda neat. i could be a super brain. float around in my little jar and observe things and spread my prohpecies of doom, largely being ignored as a relic of the olden days and not worth listening to. but i'll know.

anyway, i used to write about the apocalypse a lot. think about it. i wonder if i ever really stopped. one of the coolest things i ever saw was in the movie 12 Monkeys. When Burce Willis is walking through the dead city, and all the stores are still store-y, but with broken glass and covered in dust, and animals living in them. I have this bizarre tendency every now and then to look at things and imagine what they will look like in 20 years, if everything just stopped right now. 100 years. i also often wonder what a city will look like in 100 years if it doesn't all end. which is even scarier.

you see, either way, it all ends. Our society changes, that's an end. And of course it will change. Look how much it's changed in the last 100 years. You think we'll all have cell phones in the future? cell phones are for dinosaurs. at least, they will be in a 100 years. what of technology will change? what will it become? and what will we become in accordance to those changes? i firmly believe that we will be changed by our own technology. It's already happening. We use our bodies less as we rely on technology more. We're physically weaker (generally speaking ... we must be ... think 200 years ago, 500, 1000, people had to work a lot more for simple things .... all that work would have to confer some physical strength, as physical activity would be much greater than it is today in the age of cars and bulldozers, combines and elevators). So what's next for humanity? I often wonder. it kinda scares me, to be honest. it's not that i hate technology, obviously, i use quite a bit of it, but i wonder what exactly it's all doing to me.

i mean, have we every done any serious studies on the effects of electricty, radio, cellular waves on the human brain? we probably can't, not really, since everyone in the world would be affected. and i guess radio waves have technically always been present. all these little things we do, invisible, intangible things, we don't really know how it affects us all. oh sure, someone will say "but we'e done studies, and it's all perfectly safe." sure. safe. i'll buy that. i mean, we're not all dead. but safe doesn't necessarily mean that it's not affecting subtle long-term changes that will alter the course of humanity. maybe it's not. i'm not saying it is. i'm just saying that i wonder.

and the kicker is that no one really knows. We have best guesses, educated guesses even, educated theories, reassurances that since we're all still alive with 10 fingers and 2 eyes and a mouth and such that everything will continue to be ok.

one of the things i wonder about is how do radio waves and cellular waves and micrwaves and all that nonsense ;), how does it all affect our minds? is it literally bringing us "closer together", shrinking the world as we so often metaphorically say. over the course of the next 100 years, will we develop phsycic powers? or are we getting rid of them? removing innate talents that we weren't even aware of? enhancing them? creating entirely new senses? jump-starting evolution, or rather, altering it's course?

and is that really bad? see, that's just it, i don't know, i just sit around and ponder this stuff. i don't suggest that it's possible, that it's happening, that it's not, but i simply wonder. And i wonder why it never seems like anyone else wonders about this stuff. i mean, i guess ultimately, since most of these potential changes aren't likely to suddenly happen with a snap overnight, that it seems kind of irrelevant to daily life. but then again, i think about a lot of stuff that's irrelevant to daily life. daily life is irrelevant to me.

anyway, speaking of daily life, apparently, i need to go to work. :)

hope i've inspired some wonderment. ;)

[Anita Blake]

watch the past fold up and slip away, as you turn away to look at the new, the fresh, the ultra-modern. you did this. you watched and said nothing, you thought that any change is a good change. and what will you think when they can't even tie their shoelaces anymore because they have never seen shoelaces? and what will you think when you wake up and there's no more electricity, all power lost, for now and forever? what will you do? "the old ways are gone" you thought, "and good riddance to them! that which replaces is clearly superior. there is no other way but to move to the future, let go of the past altogether."

so with all this superior new-ness, you neglected your life. let the new things do it for me! you say, vigor and patriotic cheers in your eye. When will i ever need to know how to thatch a roof? to build a fire? to create what i need from that which i have immediate access to? when will i ever need to use any of those archaic skills?

maybe never. but the point is, you don't have those skills anymore, do you?

buy what you need. use the new toys to make what you can't buy. depend on the cleverness of those far away, of those who think hard so you don't have to. Yes, depend on the state, depend of the scientists, depend on the corporations to keep you safe and warm and happy. they will never fail you. they will always be there with a reassuring hand and a pat on the back that tells you everything is OK. And if they can't be there themselves, they'll create something that can approximate their warming glow. if you can't have it, fake it.

that's the new american way, after all.

so forget everything. forget churning butter, forget milking cows, forget building tables, forget chopping wood, forget anything that is difficult and makes hard labour, because when the Power will never, ever go out. All things come to an end but power.

right?

[Anita Blake]

last night. oh last night.

i won't begin at the beginning, but i will end at the end, because the end was interesting and all that came before was ... interesting, but i cannot speak of it just right now.

funny when you say that you're not going to do something, and then you go and get drunk and do exactly what it was you said you weren't going to do. makes a compelling argument against alcohol. or for it. i'm not sure yet.

anyway, at the end of the night, which was actually about 6 hours ago, when i was walking home, i saw some cats over by a store. they looked pretty big, so i wanted to investigate. i crossed the street, and the cats walked out from behind the sign, and they weren't cats at all, but racoons! a mommy (possibly a daddy, i don't know much about raccoons) and 2 little baby raccons. OK. so maybe the little babies were about the size of my cat (about 12-14 pounds) so they weren't so little, but they were really cute.

they regarded me carefully and crossed the street, which was amusing, since i had to cross back to the other side of the street to get home, which was a scant block away. So i crossed back with them, keeping my distance, but watching them carefully, and they were attacked by another raccoon, who i think also had a baby that was cowering in a nearby tree. they fought and growled and chirruped and finally the second adult racoon backed off, after giving me a really dirty look, i might add. obviously fighting over food.

And just a few hours prior, a few blocks away, i had seen a cute little skunk.

Now, this is funny, because i live in the height of the modern world. High rise apartment building and condominiums, street lights ever present. but there, on the street under the bridge, it was s different world. not one ruled by humans. one ruled by fierce scavengers, ready to do battle over some scrap of misplaced human waste. it was rather lovely. they didn't seem to mind the fact that i was barely fifteen feet away from them, though afterwards, as i watched, the mother grew very protective of her babies, wrapping her arms around them and sitting on top of them, staring at me, daring me to even just try to fuck with her, her shadowy bandit eyes glowing, challenging, fearful for her offspring and confident that i would do nothing.

quite beautiful.

funny how the beasties of the night can make you feel an intruder in your own home. they know what we've forgotten: this land was theirs before we came and paved it over, and no matter how difficult we make it for them, they will not relent and simply give it to us. it's theirs, and they will die to keep it that way. they've adapted to what we've done to their home, they fight for the scraps we leave now, and hate us for forcing them to live on our leavings. but they'll take it, because that's the only way they can keep what has always been theirs: this place.

i think i love them for that. i'd happily give them more if i could. tear down some apartments, give them more wilderness to roam. we should have thought of them when we settled. we should have tried to live in harmony with them rather than settling for our convenience and luxury. we should have been as noble as we claim to be.

[Anita Blake]

ohhhh kaaaaay.

i don't even know where to begin. the thing is, i don't want to say certain things, so it might make everything make no sense. keeping that in mind, i will now attempt to relay the events of the past few days in as cryptic a manner as possible. wish me luck.


the thing with alcohol is it makes you stupid. you know it, and you prepare youself for the worst, steady yourself, and then all of a sudden things get very strange very quickly and you've lost your ability to cope with it all and you just go along for the ride. and then the next day you remember that that's not a good thing to do and are suddenly left trying to put your life back in order, hoping you didn't screw up someone else's life too badly, and wondering if you should even care, and feeling bad at the suggestion that you shouldn't.

drinking is bad.

then you sit around, not sure if you should beat yourself up for one reason, or for a different, more opposite reason, and you wait. wait and wait. maybe even sit in the sun for a bit while waiting. it's a fun thing to do. and when the call comes, it's too late anyway, and it's just more confusing than if it had never come at all. at least that would be a definitive answer. the too-late call, we'll do it another time call, who knows what the hell that means. and what you want it to mean?

so the confusion is also an enemy of the you. and all the while, this nagging thought in the back of the head saying "um, didn't you want this? or did you want tot opposite?" and you're forced to conclude that indeed, you have no clue of what you want and that makes it alll just that much worse. being a leo with a libra ascendant is strange. but then again being an any sun sign with an any sun sign ascendant is weird. Life is weird, that's my conclusion, and there is no "normal" by which to scale the degree of your weirdness off of. it's all just really really fucking weird.

then you watch a movie and you think "man, i know how this movie affected me as a child" and you start thinking of all the things you watched when you were little and all the subconscious lessons you learned from them, not just the things that were literally portrayed in the film, but all the metaphors that the films stood for. on an instinctual level, you knew you've always understood far more from films and stories than you ever let on. The way of the world. Truth in fiction. but it's curious that we're just a collection of realizations, that our world view is so shaped by the world-views of filmmakers. maybe that's why i want to work in film. i understand it on an instintual level far more than i could ever understand physics or medicine. i understand stories. I don't know if it's much, but it's what i've got. it's what i do. some people are geniuses at math, some born artists, but me, i'm a born story analyst. don't know so much about story telling yet, but it's something i'm working on.

anyway, so that's the weirdness of this weekend all summed up, hopefully somewhat cryptic. unless you know me in which case it's likely not cryptic enough and i'm probably going to never hear the end of it.

my friend at work said it best: she'd never want to come to any of the placces i go online because "it would be like listening to a phone conversation with someone else". not that i say anything here that i wouldn't to someone else, but it's like a private line, and people i see on a daily basis have no place here. i thought that was a really cool thing to say. She knows i write online, but has no interest in ever reading what i write because it's not for her. if that's not what friends should do, i don't know what is. :)

cheers, and may this week be better than last week (oh dear god please!)

[Anita Blake]

the city. oh the city. it makes you hard.

maybe it's the exhaust, thinkly coating you and making you harder with each passing day. Maybe it's the sights, seeing the worst of humanity and so little of the best. Maybe it's just the sheer crushing numbers of humans in a concentrated area.

whatever it is, it makes you hard. Turns your dreams to easily shattered glass, coats them in dust and grime, until you just shut them away. Turns your heart into a tiny blackened, pulsating lump that may just be three sizes too small. Takes your soul and twists it, making it sharp and jaggy, the better to tear through your spirit with.

take this darkness and wrap it around you, like a cloak, it will protect you like nothing ever has. It will absorb the light and convert it to strength, it will take all that is thrown at you and deflect it. You will be here for a long time, here in this hollow shell that once was yourself. Take this darkness and get comfortable with it. It might be all you have left.

the city. it will change you. you will notice. and maybe you'll like the changes. some people do. maybe you won't. but you can't resist it forever. you just can't be small town when you live in the big city. not for long. you will be eaten if you try. there is no escape from this brutal punishment, only some temporarily warming rewards while you live in the hellish nightmare that was never meant to be. Human beings were never meant to be so many in so small a space. Come together. Sure. Specialize tasks for the benefit of the whole? Of course. but this? this is a ludicrous monstrosity that was never meant. a hideous reflection of all that is good.

and stay long enough, and you will learn to love it. you will embrace the brittle candy-coated shell that clings to you, crushes you, molds you and makes you what you are. When it's all you have left to cling to, you'll die for it. You'll love it and know with certainty it's wondrous beauty. Look long enough at the most wretched deformity and you will see the beauties hidden within. Deep enough into the most wondrous of beauties and you will see the depravity. circle, loop, repeat.

there is no such thing as...

[Anita Blake]

my friend moved back to town yesterday from seattle. her and her boyfriend and their two cats. cute. he's going to be going to school, right across the street from my place. and she's going back to school to, but to university, so that doesn't count.

i have such a bias against university. i can't explain it. i mean, i know it's useful. i know people enjoy going there and from doi so, they can acquire fancy jobs and such. but i feel such in inner ... loathing for the whole university system, the way it works, the majority of people who go there, the kinds of education they recieve (please regurgitate my opinions, do a little supportive research on my behalf, and i'll pass you, sicncerely, the Professor). Maybe it's just because my own university experience was such shit. i mean, ok, admittedly, i was majoring in drama, but i would have thought that would entail some actual acting/theatre experience. Though the theatre design class i took was most useful and insightful. And i enjoyed theatre history a great deal as well. the fact that those two courses comprised pretty much half of my entire university classes should count for something. but it doesn't. because the other two (maybe three) were such utter nonsense bullshit that they far outweighed the positive experiences. that and i found university students to be pompous cocks.

bitter? nah. anyway, my friend chose the university route after a year of more hands-on education, and she seems to love it. good for her. i'm happy for her, mostly. i just don't get it. and it's not that i'm an idiot, no, far from it. just too independant to suckle at the university teat. i despise institutions. i mean, i know they serve their purpose, for other people, but i am not one of those other people. and thusly i despise. and loathe. and perhaps fear a little. maybe one day i'll be a university professor. maybe one day i'll change my mind, reverse my anti-university stance, get a doctorate in BullShit, and start teaching it to other young impressionable minds. You never know. It could happen. I could turn to the dark side. I never said never to that.

anyway, the point of this is that i am happy my friend is back in town. i missed her. it's funny, i only have a few female friends, but they're all my closest friends. And they are all completely different from one another. Some of them would get along with another, some wouldn't. But i love them all. they give me different perspectives on life. Sometimes its hard though, because the things i do with one person, another would find offensive and low. Or maybe uppity and snobbish. who knows. so i think that from all these different people i've learned that maybe there is no such thing. everyone has the things they enjoy. and you can't judge that. well, you can, but i don't advise it.

tuesday. it's only tuesday. ~sigh~

trying to get my trip to new zealand worked out. don't know yet what i want to do... take a fun tour so as to travel with a group of people and make new friends, or get a residence and a silly job and "live" there for a couple months, doing some travelling on weekends and such. Both sound really interesting and fun. I'm thinking some sort of compromise between the two. maybe a couple weeks of adventure tour, followed by a month or so of settled living. i'd like to see the land, and i'd also like to get to know the culture and people, and you don't really get to know the culture and people when you're doing a quick tour thing. You get to know other tourists. which is also valid. but not really what i'm interested in. i don't know. i need to visit a travel agent to figure out flights and such. i'd like to go near christmas, take 2 months off work, but the flights then are ridiculous. we start a new term every 2 months, which is why i want to go for two months, to just skip one whole term, but that line of thinking also narrows my options to leaving in: end of october, end of december, or end of february. october seems too soon. maybe not, but it feels like it. december is too expensive. february is so far away! ~sigh~ mine is a life of crazed choices. the main advantages of february being that i can hopefully save up more money by then, but then again, maybe not. who knows.

anyway, i have to get ready for work. bah.

[Anita Blake]

whew. what a day. i stink. and i mean STINK!

i power-walked to work this morning. I've figured out which muscles of my legs to use most optimally for the highest amount of speed with least amount of looking like a dorky power-walker. Then work was terrible.... nothing went according to plan ... our schedule was being hooped by others, and ours is the one that can't be messed with since it relies the most on outside forces. bah. silly work. then i walked home. it was hot out, so all this walking (not to mention the running up and down 3 flights of stairs all day at work) made me kinda sweaty. not dripping with sweat sweaty, but kinda sweaty. i'm happy to say that walking at "walk3" (that's the walking equivalent of mach3, btw :D ) i can go (in 20C+ weather) for about half an hour without breaking too much of a sweat. i have camel-like water-retention abilities.

Anyway, then i walked home. yahoo for me. bought some lunch-making groceries that i may not starve over the course of the next week, and then i decided to go visit my friend who just moved back to town. Which was another 25 minute power walk. and then wandered about with her and got sushi. i didn't like the sushi. i probably would have, if the silly sushi chefs hadn't decided to incorporate the wasabi into my salmon and tuna rolls. I don't like wasabi. i am odd in that i like my sushi plain. Soy sauce (i discovered today) is acceptable, but not desirable. I enjoy the taste of the pure fish, rice and seaweed. generally, they do not put wasabi right into the rolls. but they did today. rubbed it right into the rice so it was difficult for me to remove. wasabi, i have discovered, tastes like some caustic cleaning solution. ugh. incredibly disgusting. I thought maybe i'd try to tolerate it, live with the heat, and discovered i can probably live with the burning-ness of it, but the flavor is intolerable.

helped my friend move some stuff around and organize her tiny new home, mainly by sitting down and playing her boyfriend's bongo drum. i want a bongo drum. i could just sit around and tap it gently while pondering the meanings of things. so relaxing and soothing. i miss playing drums.

then i decided to go home. another 25 minute power walk. all told, i think i did about 2 hours of extremely fast walking today. today was a day of exercise. much of it necessary for moving about from place to place. i might have to visit my friend more often. she lives in a really nice neighborhood, all filled with trees and flowers and people with pets and such. we played with her neighbor's friend's pug puppy. soooo cute. so that was nice. it's far to walk, but i could take the bus, but to be honest, it's only as far to walk as my work is, just in the complete opposite direction and over a bridge.

the burrard bridge is most perplexing. it's nice to walk across, because it has a wide pedestrian sidewalk which has lanes for walkers and one for cyclists. and it has this nifty struccture over the middle. all carved with ships and painted bright colours. it's really quite pretty. but, if you look up, you'll see windows. there's 2 segments with windows all across. pretty frosted windows. sometimes there are lights behind them, usually at night. that's not the perplexing part though. behind the windows, there is clearly space. it appears to be empty rooms. which is all fine and well and understandable, in a weird sort of way, but the thing is.... there is absolutely no entry point to these empty, windowed rooms above the bridge. I've walked over the bridge a lot the past few days, and looked and looked for an entry way. there isn't one. not only is there a spectacular lack of entrance way, even if there was a concealed, hidden doorway out of sight of prying eyes, there's definitely not enough space for stairs to get up to the rooms. There might be some kind of ladder inside the concret support beams, but you'd have to be incredibly tiny to fit inside the beams AND be clibling up at the same time. I think there might be a trap door underneath the rooms, directly above the road. it's hard to tell. but every time i walk over the bridge, i am compelled to seek out a way to get to the mysterious window-rooms.

so, yeah, that's my story about that. and i stink. after all this walking, i stink. it's terrible. ~sigh~ good night. :)

[Anita Blake]

so i didn't win the lottery again today. not only did i not win, i didn't even win $5. that's so incredibly sad. i mean, i kind of figured as much... but winning a large quantity of money right now would be the best thing ever. I just really want to get my own apartment. my own place. a place with enough space for all the projects i want to do. a sewing table, and a painting area, and a craft place, and a tidy computer area. i suppose that is a bit much to ask for. i must start doing something nice to deserve all this stuff. stuff i don't have.

i wish i could just do the things i want to do and be independently wealthy. i'd share my wealth with my friends as much as i could. like, if i won several million dollars, i'd take everyone i knew on a vacation. anywhere they wanted to go. some people would probably have to go at different times because of work schedules, and i'd respect that. i'd even give them vacation pay so they wouldn't have to worry about when they got home. i'd buy my grandparent's farm and make sure they were able to live comfortably. and my parent's house, get it all renovated and such, and if they wanted to buy another home, then i'd probably help with that too, but i wouldn't let them sell the one they've got.

but then i have to wonder, if i kept on spending all this money on those i loved, wouldn't they eventually get kind of bitter that i had all this money and kept shoving it in their faces? So i'd have to think very carefully about what to do. all the time. because i wouldn't want people to hate me for having a ton of money i clearly don't deserve.

it'd be nice if i could just get a job that would pay me lots, because then i would deserve the money i had, and i woulnd't be able to do cool things like take all my friends on nifty vacations, but whatever i could do, at least i'd deserve it. i don't think i'd respect myself very much if i won the lottery. so maybe i won't. i don't regularly buy lottery tickets or anything. it's mostly just a fanciful dream. a most fanciful dream.

~sigh~ i am so tired. apparently all the walking i did yesterday made me sleep like the dead, but now i feel like the dead, so i don't know what that means. probably that i'm a zombie. which is funny, because i don't crave brains. well, not the eating of brains, anyway.

anyway, i think i made a decision last night. which is interesting, because i don't think it would be the decision i would have thought i'd make a few days ago. ~sigh~ don't know if it's a good decision though. still weighing that.

all this walking i've been doing lately has also been making me think. i think it would be neat to backpack around new zealand. i'm not the backpacking type, usually, but i think it would be interesting. enlightening. a real challenge. like, it would be neat if i walked from the north tip of the north island to the south tip of the south island and back again. i mean, i have no idea if that's even possible. i'd probably die or something tragic. i actually imagine i'll do nothing of the kind, but it's a distracting thought. actually, i'm thinking of doing something like a farmstay. helping out on a farm. maybe with sheep or something. or pick grapes. some kind of hard labour. (btw, if i win the lottery, i'll still do something like that ;) )

anyway, apparently i have some "get ready for work" thing to do. dracula is meowing at me. most likely to change his litter box. which i'd much rather do when i come home tonight. ~more sighing~ good day all.

[Anita Blake]

i think i just fell in love. on the internet no less. a few clicks, and my heart was thumping in my chest. A few more, and my breath grew light and dizzy. Click click click, and my heart was broken even as it was renewed.

I've met my perfect man.

Except that he's been dead for a few thousand years.

http://www.bartleby.com/66/15/54715.html
(keep clicking the "next" button, about a hundred and fifty times or so, stupid only one quote per page)

When you think about the ancient philosophers, they all seem so musty and dry. Reading these little tidbits of a man's literature, history came alive for me. Sophocles, not some dried up old man in a white robe loftily writing plays, but an impassioned young man who's observations on human civilization brought him to despair and elation all the same time, so much so that he had no choice but to frame what he saw into plays. Passionate and filled with life, that's what i just fell in love with. A little bi-polar, filled with lust and anger and joy. Observational.

i bet sophocles was amazing in bed.

he's the one who immortalized the tale of a man who kills his father and marries his mother, according to prophecy, whose children carry his legacy. COME ON!!

Anyway, so i love sophocles. no doubt about it. when they figure out time travel, i'll head back to ancient greece to be one of his lovers, maybe even bear his children who will one day give birth to me ( :eek: ) I'm my own ancestor! (if time travel becomes possible in my fertile lifetime, that is...)

[Anita Blake]

I went camping. One day only. We drove an entire hour and a half away from dowtown. Which happens to be in the mountains, a very pretty lake.

I haven't been camping for half a dozen years. I'm not sure i was prepared for this.

There are certain facts to the universe, facts that should be taken into account when planning a camping trip.

When a beautiful, pristine mountain lake is an hour and a half away from a major city center, in a well-mapped Provincial Park, it will of course be well developed for all those camper-pulling trucks and tenting car-campers.

Naturally, there was a bit of a struggle with actually getting a camp spot in this well-organized machine of provincial park camping. Eventually the fates prevailed, and we aqcuired a much coveted spot (we were #17 on the waiting list).

The spot proved to be an ungodly distance from the lake, but that was ok. We could deal with that. the camp spot was covered in gravel, but that's ok, because that's camping. After some deliberation and setting up, we set off for the lake (which we had previously been waiting at, but in a different spot entirely).

There are no words to describe the beauty of this lovely place. really, quite breathtaking. a long sliver of a lake, resting between tree-covered mountains., which part open to reveal snow-capped mountains further away. (apparently, the lake was man-made, the by-product of a dam... :dozey: )

And then the campers. thousands of them. everywhere. with their neon shorts and giants foamy-strings to float on, and air mattresses and coolers and wives and kids and dogs and bikes and camp stoves and bug zappers and campers and jet-skis and food enough to feed an army intended for 4 obese children and a shrewish wife who'd rather be anywhere but in all these bugs but is braving it out anyway for her own reasons.

humanity as a whole struck me, then, as fairly obscene. i was an hour and a half from the city and the only thing people could think to do in the forest was to bring the city with them. the most noticeable difference, of course, between a real city and this strange camping city, was that people left stuff unattended all the time. That, and no one is every working. So a city of shiftless (yet honest) layabouts. in the middle of the forest.

I realize that that's the same kind of "camping" i've done much of my life, with my family, and had very fond memories of. but right now, right then, it seemed the most obscene and disgusting display of trying to hold onto something that was lost, and knowing you're doing it all wrong, but doing it anyway because it's all there is. It's pathetic. Humans are pathetic.

I get people who want to get back to nature. I get that. I want to get back to nature. I get that people work really hard and they only have the weekend to do something like that, and so they can't go too far from home, and there are only a certain number of places where you can go camping within so many hours of driving, and so of course, there will be lakes that are more popular and closer to home and easier to get to and manage with the kids. Oh, i so totally get that. That's my family. my family has a trailer parked at the most godawfully cold lake in the province. it's been there for years. it's 2 hours away from home. it's like a cheap home away from home. and i used to go camping all the time at provincial parks, paying the honor system ticket for my night's stay, a trunk full of booze.

It's the insanity of it though. The 12 coolers and space-age chairs that don't stick to your skin, and the mini-propane barbeque, and the nintendo and the fact that nobody is learning anything, or doing anything differently than if they were at home. Nobody is trying to actually go and live rough. I don't know. Maybe i'm being a camping snob. It just seems that if you're going to do something, you shoudl do it right, and you shouldn't need to spend more money to go camping than you would at a first class hotel. They way some people "camp" they could have gone for a stay at a world class hotel for the same amount of money.

Even if you can afford that, there's no reason for it. camping is about facing the elements face to face! not with an electric bug zapper! learn to cook on a smoky wood fire! it's fun, and delicious, and you use that barbeque at home anyway. i don't know, i guess it's like people who travel to developing nations that happen to be tourist friendly, and just stay at a resort and pretend they're not in a foreign country at all. Why would you do that? it's so ... uppity, is the only word i can think of, which is so funny because so many of the people who do this kind of thing would smack you across the face for calling them snobbish. "I'm a real person!" they'd tell you, "I work hard every day and there's never enough, and i struggle daily, and i've saved up hard and i want to do something nice so i'm going to a resort!".

And you can't argue with that kind of logic. Because, it's true. A person works hard, makes their mortgage payments, raises the kids, tries to give them the best, and tries to do well for themselves, and when you finally save up enough to go somewhere exotic, you just want to be able to get away, that's all you want, just a chance to get as far away from the work as possible. leave this world behind and go to paradise for a few days. you don't care about culture, about the people involved in making this paradise accessible to you. you just want to relax and take it easy and take advantage of that all-inclusive bar.

And that's our society, in a nutshell. People who are too overworked and too well pampered to care about anything much larger than their own lives and getting by in the world. And you can't blame people for wanting to get along in the world.

It's all so understandably depressing. people won't change. they, like much of nature, takes the path of least resistance. we make it increasingly easy for ourselves to accomplish anything. freeing ourselves up for the more complex tasks we must perform, while eliminating our ability to perform the simple ones at all.

i am so revolted by my species, myself as a part of this species. we just take what we need with no regard for anything else. no regard for the trees, the land, the sky, the water, the animals that live there, their relationship with eachother and the entire ecosystem. nope. camping grounds. mass-produced campsites, that's what mother nature is to us. fabulous.


wow, i'm sounding a little cynical. :dozey:

[Anita Blake]

ok, maybe i should clarify that last post.

all that was to say, i think i'm ready to become a real outdoors person. i want to move out of the city and have a hermit hut in the forest and not be near humans at all, and be at one with the land that supports me. :)

(or failing that, properly camp my way -with a backpack- across new zealand) :)