nothing happened

1:31am: I have moved: I have opened a virtual pub. Do drop in . . .

9:43pm: because
All good things must pass.

Yoke Ono, when she was constantly accused of breaking up The Beatles, once told a reporter a myth
about a shrine. The shrine was protected by a devout monk, who one day decided to burn down the shrine because he could not stand the thought of time's natural progression causing the slow decay of the shrine . . . and the only shrine which would exist from then on would be the perfect, beautiful one in his minds. This, she said, was also the myth of the Beatles: to end with a quick thunderclap rather than disintegrate over a long period. And it is true, to an extent.

I am doing this to my livejournal.

I have been writing on here for three years, and I've been very happy and blessed to meet new people and to share my many many ups and downs!! However, it is time for this bird to fly. This is no impulse decision: it has been coming.

I will have a new home -- I've enjoyed writing here too much to give it up cold turkey. But it will be a relatively private thing and as anonymous as I can make it without being untrue to myself. I will only give out details upon request.

I won't be a complete stranger -- might pop in to say hi and catch up on people. But I'll be pretty silent from here on in.

Change is good. It's all good.

1:31am: more chords
Also: I'm also very fond of Jack Johnson, and I'm in love with his singing voice.

9:54pm: Attack of the Mad Hugger
Weird.

I was escorting a bucket of ice with a bottle of white wine to a suite in the building next door. Part of the job.

Two younger persons were walking the opposite way, and suddenly the male (?) aggressively requests a hug.

The male was about 18, reminded me of a girl, and was wearing pinky-red nail polish with bermuda shorts.
He/she was also not quite sober (it was 7pm, folks).

All I could think was that someone wanted free wine.

No . . . he just wanted to hug the fucking bucket of ice and wine. He was not content to just hug the bucket -- I had to be part of the hug. Uh . . .

I tried to walk around the idiot and evade and get loud, but the friend he was with told me to just do it and then walk away.

Okay. I decided the little miss was harmless.

So I got hugged pretty heartily, bucket firmly between me and boy. NO attempted theft.

When I went to leave, he yelled back and said "Look at me!" . . .

So I did, with an evil look, and then he goes, "Aha!! Eye-contact!!!" and continued along. A couple in the carriage ride were smirking at me.

I was happy to get away with the wine intact!!!!

Moral of story: Never walk down a street with a bucket of ice and wine!!!!

10:58am: This week's issue of A Softer World made me grin and grin . . . go, now!
Also, rub your cursor over the picture itself.

http://www.asofterworld.com/

10:38am: chords
I purchased the first new CD I have acquired in months and months: Set Yourself on Fire by Stars, based in Montreal. Lush, dynamic music which really kinda shimmers like stars, mostly unlike anything I've listened to before (go originality), and great lyrics which could stand on their own as poetry. I first heard of them through the single "Ageless Beauty", but listening to and seeing the video for "Reunion" sealed it for me -- it is all about that great bass line backgrounding the initial vocals, being joined with that airy guitar as they go. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" is also quite universal. I also love when non-trad rock instruments get blended in (eg. French horn, trombone, glock! There's definite jazz influence here, but it doesn't fit genre categories neatly.

There's a lot of interesting music which I've been immersing myself in. Another band I really like (me, and an army of new converts) is The Arcade Fire (also from Montreal . . . might consider moving someday soon!). I also kind of like The Killers, esp. that "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier" song. I continue, of course, to
be Franz Ferdinand acolyte and I am excited about the new CD coming in September. And I also love Rilo Kiley and Modest Mouse, although both are not really new bands (just new to me).

There are others, but those are the titles floating to the top of my brain right this minute. I'm hardly a cutting edge indy music chick, but I like what I like and most pop radio stuff doesn't cut it for me.

Follow-up to chattering about books (other people's books). The best way to learn about new, or interesting, music is through word of mouth. If you read this, what stuff is getting heavy play in your earshot?

The horror: one of the cooks at the canteen is a country music person. There is a war: I switch the station to the locl contemporary pop/rock station, and she turns it back to country, and then I sneak it back later.
I really like having background music when I work, but country is something which grates too much. If I hear that new Shania Twain single at work I might fling ice cream at the radio.

5:26pm: book swapping
As an experiment, I would love to start a small book swap through LJ . . . I like borrowing and lending books, and I feel like I have a lot of interesting readerly-folk on this medium. Therefore, I would like to share my books with you and vice versa.

Ideas? Suggestions?

5:37pm: super kawaii!!
I just received the cutest, prettiest, sweetest little bit of mail from Japan!!!!!!!!
Krees rocks: just wanted to proclaim that.

In other news: I am a fool. I think, between my two jobs, I work from 7am-10pm tomorrow with one half-hour break which is me driving like a helion into town. Don't ask.

11:20pm: When I was little, one of my favourite imagination games involved being the hostess of a makebelieve hotel.

Once upon a time, it was the Killoran Lodge and cottages, and the back field/woods were a campground. My grand-parents ran it for several years (well before my time), and much of it was renovated into a single-occupancy family home long ago. However, little things like the bar (possessing sink without running water), and the swinging door between the kitchen and diningroom, remain. I am sitting at the old office desk which once governed check-ins and check-outs.

So I used to pretend I was the innkeeper/waitress. I'd use old cookbooks as my menu (Weight Watcher's, in fact), and I'd make visitors fill out orders. I'd usually bring them back crackers or cookies. Most of it was the fun of using that swinging door! I wish I had witnessed some of the old days here. If I could inherit this house (or some day buy it!) before my parents randomly sell it to some rich, reno-happy people from away . . . I would be tempted to reopen the place as a B&B. I'd bring back the old name, apply for heritage building status (I think my parents should now), and have huge gardens in honour of my grandmother's spirit.

However, since pigs don't fly, I'll just have to be happy working in an inn and trying to imagine what the industry must have been like for my grandmother, who arguably did all the major work. I also get to have my first party out here since I was 18, as my very private/shy parents have flown off to Newfoundland for the week. Nothing big, and probably quite tame, but I'll have friends camping in the yard or sleeping in spare rooms.
This will be my free B&B weekend.

11:49pm: I love the Stars

4:34pm: the return of nire nagaf
I'm back online -- the computer was wracked with spyware and had to be serviced, and I have (miraculously!!) not been out of Stanhope for several days (I think Tuesday was my last time in town).

I worked like a dog all weekend. Yesterday, in particular, felt like the longest day because
it was a split shift and, during the 4-9 stint, I was alone with two roughly 18 year-old girls who told me what to do but didn't seem confident with what they were doing themselves!!! Managers conveniently not answering phones, either. Of course it was insanely busy!!!!! And bloody hot (no air-conditioning and one steamy kitchen).

I scooped many many many ice cream cones. I'll have the right arm of a cavewoman soon, and a lack of craving for ice cream. And one of the chicks I work with, in particular, has a massive attitude problem which does not go well with customer service. I call her "Princess". This is the first time I've ever seen a service person bitch back at a customer with twice the force. And guess who got to do damage-control after that incident? Me, the newest employee with zero restaurant experience. I am *not* a manager, but it started to feel like I was. I wanted to say something to Princess, but I'm not the boss and so I decided to be a rat and write a note for the manager about it. I don't like working with people who whine constantly, act like idiots with customers, and patronize co-workers -- when I was that age (oh god, here we go), I never had attitude like that. The other girl is responsible and did her best in a stressful situation, and I felt bad that she was trying to run a kitchen on a shift like that without any real guidance.

That aside, I still enjoyed biking to work, snacking on 5 cent candies, and generally dealing with laidback people who are not in any particular hurry and who are easily pleased. The thing with my work history is that I have been screamed at for little things before and I know now not to take it personally or to react emotionally.
I know how to defuse most tempers, and I know how to communicate so that a customer at least believes that they are getting special, personalized treatment. Most of that is experience and learning some things the hard way, but a bit of it is personality.

7:51pm: things come in waves for me
Another one of those weeks where I land two jobs at once. Holy frig. This is the way things work for me: I can have a drought of nothingness for eons in spite of best efforts, and then a few pieces of good circumstance will usher in multiple things at once. I call it "Erinian luck".

One job is just weekends at the local canteen/convenience store. I am actually having a lot of fun with it because I get to scoop massive ice cream cones for kids (yes, this is fun) and chit-chat with the locals while they buy their little odds and ends. I'm almost like a bartender: listening to stories, nodding, smiling, serving. And I get to walk to work again. I love Stanhope, really.

The other one I just got called about this morning: I'll be working in the same heritage inns as Tudor, starting Tuesday and probably for at least a few shifts a week if not more (forgot to ask about that).

I am so so so so so so HAPPY to be working again. I have been craving this. Money is important, but having a purpose or a role is the most vital. I have never put so much energy into such simple tasks. I've been trying to keep occupied with little projects on my own but this new schedule is perfect for me.

YAY I'm useful again!!!

9:21pm: Johanson's Sunday night sex show cancelled, at least in Canada
Monday, July 11, 2005 Updated at 1:33 PM EDT

Canadian Press

Toronto — Sex counsellor Sue Johanson's Sunday Night Sex Show is ceasing production, a spokesperson for the W network confirmed Monday.

However the popular therapist, grandmother and former nurse will continue to tape the U.S. equivalent of her long-running show — which began airing on the Oxygen network in 2002.

Johanson's sex counselling show started on Toronto radio in 1984, then moved to WTN in February of 1996. With WTN re-branded as W, the live show continued on Sundays with classic episodes running during the week.

Johanson has been a popular guest on such U.S. talk shows as The View, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien. Her show also airs, with Portugese subtitles, in Brazil.

Her quarter century of experience includes establishing the Don Mills Birth Control Clinic in 1970, where she remained as a clinic co-ordinator until '86. She began teaching sex and sexuality in schools in 1974 and still makes presentations to thousands of university and college students each year. And she's written three books on sexuality, not including one on her show, Nocturnal Emissions: Behind the Scenes of the Sunday Night Sex Show.

There was no immediate word on why the show was cancelled or when the last episode will air.

8:46pm: math -- the haunting
I am preparing for my federal government General Competency test tomorrow morning. I am not worried about the reading-type questions, but math scares me.

I finally achieved a part-time job this past week at a canteen/convenience store near my home. This is my first experience with cash registers and making change ALSO0 makes me nervous. Yeah, it tells you how much change to give back, but I fumble with the actual cash. If people suddenly say they have a quarter and throw it in while in the middle of my calculations, I recover a bit too slowly.

I have a small learning disability (or quirk) which involves, among other things, me being unable to read some symbols correctly (eg. I will see a plus sign instead of a multiplication symbol, missing brackets, etc.) So, no matter how well I studied or practiced or understood the operations of math, my basic arithmetic would be shoddy because I didn't know for years that I was misreading the questions. I didn't learn better until Grade Nine . . . but in spite of knowing that it is my wiring and that I am not "stupid", I am still scared of simple math because of all those bad test experiences! IF I really check over my work, I can catch it.

yuck yuck yuck.

1:15pm: ew
The lovely media have already coined a buzzphrase for the terrorist attacks yesterday: 7/7

Because even a tragedy needs a brandname.

12:45pm: because I like Auden and it feels appropriate
Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

11:42am: low-level exhibitionist
I am enjoying the attention paid to my cheap yet funky purse a little too much (looks like a small metal lunchbox, shaped like a drum and with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band logo). The best advertising for the little indie shop I found it in, because I am constantly asked where I found it.

7:43pm: I watched some of the news coverage on the bombings in London today. I got annoyed quickly, however, with certain stations which were much more focussed on the state of their own public transit than on what actually happened to people today. CBC Newsworld was the most tolerable.

I can't imagine how scary it would be to be trapped in the Underground for any amount of time amid the darkness, smoke, and panic of other people. Nobody would have known what the hell was going on or if they would make it out! And the bus was a chilling image, and it made me think how we are "accustomed" to hearing about bus bombings in Israel but that we often don't register it so close to home. London is really not far away, as far as interconnectivity goes.

Like the Twin Tower/D.C. attacks, it is the kind of event which does not quite feel real except that the evidence is screaming from the media. I just got online now, first time in days, to check on people I know in London. It reminds me a bit of what it was like being scared for relatives in NYC/Boston.

I do hope they get the assholes responsible asap.

3:05pm: ** The computer at home seems to be ill with some kind of viral infection, and so i find myself paying to use internet at the seasonal canteen about five minutes away. If it is a virus, I blame my brother. I love my sibling, but he can be such an idiot when it comes to downloading very bad things.

** This weekend, any locals attempting contact should just call me, because I can't afford the rate on this thing everyday. Besides, it is too nice to be on a computer for very long unless you have to.

** For the first time this week, I don't have to go into town today if I don't want to. Therefore, I am enjoying a nice Stanhope Day. Summer makes leaving this peaceful, naturally-beautiful area very difficult -- when things like this canteen open up (with banana pancakes in the morning!), and with the beach, it feels like there aren't too many reasons to make a trek beyond the townline. And then I remember I lived in the city all last summer, so this is a reacquaintance with my childhood summer days.

** I have been wanting to post pictures and details about a certain adventure I had on Monday with my best friend. But that will have to wait. In essence, we discovered a whole "commune" of abandoned farm buildings (five barns and a house) near the road (in the woods) somewhere well west of Summerside, and we documented our explorations with my camera. It will all be excellent material for my art project. The house was pretty damn neat -- there was still old clothing, newspapers, cutlery, boots, and even an oil bill from 1939 on the inside. The atmosphere was spooky. I'm glad that J and I are still not *too* grown-up!

** There is this local community newspaper called "The Northern Star" (covering the North Shore of Queen's County, Hunter River and up), and I actually shell out the toonie every month because I find it hilarious. There aren't really hard-hitting news stories out this way. The headline on the inside cover for July has this older fellow in North Rustico who wants to hire "CSI" to investigate the empty coffee cups which keep piling up in his front ditch. The editor sounds like this curmudgeon, ranting regularly about Parks Canada. And every little community and Women's Institute has a column with the latest birthdays, deaths, hospitalizations, graduations AND, of course, the weather from the past month. One lady inserts her love for Elvis into every paragraph when she can get away with it. The writers also tend to write as they talk, allowing for some interesting transcriptions of Island-ese. The thing is growing on me. BTW, Krees, I think your mom's name is Kay and that she got surprised for her birthday this past month. I also know that "she visited her daughter in Japan and has been sharing lots of stories since her return". ;)

** I hate time limits on my computer use. Time to walk home.

11:01pm: mystere du jour
Why is my dad keeping his beer in the crisper, with the carrots?

2:53pm: Did anyone catch this headline yet? It makes me happy:

Pakistan court overturns notorious rape acquittals

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 Updated at 6:08 AM EDT

Associated Press

Islamabad, Pakistan — Pakistan's Supreme Court overturned the acquittals of 13 suspects in the gang rape of a village woman whose plight drew international attention, and ordered them re-arrested Tuesday, court officials and a lawyer in the case said . . .

The ruling came a day after the victim, Mukhtar Mai, appealed the lower court ruling in a dramatic appearance at the Supreme Court. The case has drawn headlines worldwide, highlighting the appalling treatment of women in some parts of this deeply conservative country.

Ms. Mai has defied tradition in a country where rape victims often suffer in silence for fear that they will be shunned by their families if they come forward.

"I am happy and I hope those who humiliated me will be punished," Ms. Mai told reporters after hearing the verdict Tuesday.

Ms. Mai was raped in June, 2002, on the order of a council of village elders in Meerwala, allegedly in retaliation for her 13-year-old brother's illicit affair with a woman from a higher-caste family. Ms. Mai and her family deny any affair ever took place, and say the brother was in fact assaulted by members of the other family.

A trial court in 2002 sentenced six men to death and acquitted eight others in Ms. Mai's rape. But in March of this year, the High Court in Punjab province, where Meerwala is located, acquitted five of the men and reduced the death sentence of the sixth to life in prison.

11:18pm: It feels awesome to watch a project come together.

3:06pm: A photo of the classic 70s text, Needlepoint for Men, written by Rosie Grier (a 6'3", 300 lb. NFL football player). Tres cute.

4:14pm: because it is all about the greater good

3:48pm: when parents discover e-mail -- the horror!!
My father has GOT to stop sending me crap forwards.