The "M" Word

Oh! The root of all evil, bits of coloured paper that we spend all of our lives labouring over, and something that people claim to hate but we secretly all love it to death: money. I think the older you get, the more the importance of money hits you.
I was five or so when I wanted pizza for lunch instead of leftovers from the night before, I asked for it and my mom said no. "I'll buy it with my own money then!" I exclaimed and dug out my savings from the odd five dollar bill that my dad sometimes gave me. Of course, my mom retorted by yelling loudly, raving about how I haven't even started making money and I was already spending it lavishly and how I'll grow up to be an idiot that only knows how to spend money and not how to make it. The little five year old me tucked the five dollar bill back in my pocket and sat down spooning the leftovers in my mouth, angry tears threatening to fall. Money did not feel too important back then.
I was seven or so and it was my birthday. My dad asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted Pokemon figurines. We went to Zellers and I picked out a box of two 11cm stuffed animal looking figurines in plastic for $11.99. We came home and my mom yelled at me for not picking out something more practical and wasting money on toys like these. She yelled at my dad for buying it for me. Money did not feel too powerful back then.
I was eleven when our class went on a fieldtrip to the province capital. To go there, we each got a box of chocolates and had to sell them to raise money. If you didn't sell them all, then you had to pay for what you didn't sell. My mom and I went to the Skytrain station near where we lived. I stood by the staircase where people left the station and shouted "Chocolates for sale! $3 a box!" Some people bought them from me out of pity, since they had to do the same when they were kids, I got kicked out of there by bus drivers and Skytrain attendants numerous times for selling the chocolates there without a permit. None of my friends had to do this, their parents worked in nice offices and their parents took the huge box to their offices and got them all sold in a day. My mom worked in a factory (still does) and my dad worked as a lowly paid cook in a small restaurant (still lowly paid, not the same restaurant). Their co-workers would never fork out $3 for a small pack of chocolates. My friends lived in nice houses and their parents own two cars. I live in a small apartment and have ridden in public transportation my entire life. Money began to become something important.
Now, my computer is constantly lagging with a RAM of 128MB, I've had it for six years and I want to get a laptop, my parents have said no. I took my Learners driving test today and passed (written test). My mom complained from the moment we left the house (and she's still complaining now) about what a waste of money and time it was. She told me that she didn't think I should drive until I'm 22 and driving lessons would be a waste of money since she didn't think I would be able to get my Novice License with only 20 hours of driving instruction. "Also, I hear of new drivers crashing their fancy sports cars all the time," she said. I don't have a sports car, in fact, we don't have a car, period. I have no college fund and since I went to Asia in July, I can't find a job and I've been looking since I returned. Money feels indeed both powerful and important now.
I think I've become a bit obsessed with making money. I've started writing on Helium, a site that pays you when people read your articles. I'm making pretty much no money right now, please click on the link below and read my articles. If you want to join, please give me your email so I can refer you and earn some extra.

My Helium Account

I'm about three clicks away from adding Google AdSense to this blog and I really don't want to because it would defeat my purpose of having this blog. Plus, I think I'd make about three cents each month with the amount of traffic I get. *Sigh* Money, money, money...

Behind the Chocolate Bar

I'm sure everyone has shopped at a department store at least once in their lives. I'm assuming that since you're reading this blog, you have access to a computer and the internet, you're probably not living in a third world country. What runs through your mind every time you buy a chocolate bar from Wal-Mart or a t-shirt from American Eagle? Slaves harvesting cocoa beans? Somebody working for ten hours a day sewing shirts in an unhygenic enviornment for ten hours a day with pennies as wages? I certainly never thought about that until I read an article about sweatshops in an old issue of Times or Macleans or something like that the other day.
A sweatshop, for those of you who don't know, is basically a factory that offers no benefits for its workers, pays them in pennies, makes them work ten hours or more a day, offers little and badly organized bathroom/lunch breaks, and is usually located in a developing/third world country (i.e. Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, etc). Many of these countries have very poor labour laws to protect workers, which is why major brands such as Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic establish factories there to lower the cost of producing their products. While they pay their workers pennies for working ten hours a day, they charge you $60 for a t-shirt...
A very depressing bit of information for me was that 80% of all cocoa beans (main ingredient of chocolate) is harvested by slaves. I'm a chocoholic, I eat alot of chocolate, especially the cheaper candy bar variety such as Kit Kat, Coffee Crisp, Aero, etc. The candy bar types usually aren't Fair Trade chocolates.
Besides slavery and sweatshops, child labour is also another nasty side of producing goods. Children are paid even less to work longer hours since owners believe that smaller bodies = smaller pay. Children are often hired to make things like soccer balls and baseballs because they have smaller fingers and its easier for them to do detailed sewing. Here is the extremely famous picture that proved Nike used child labour to manufacter their products:

Now, I'm not saying that we should abolish child labour in these countries. Before your eyes widen and you re-read the sentence or think that I made a typo, let me explain why. In developing countries, people often have large families and everybody in the family needs to work in order for the family to meet their basic needs. If the government decides to not allow children to be hired for jobs, what will the families do? What we need is labour laws to protect those working children, make sure that they can go to school, they are paid fairly, and they work reasonable hours.
The opposite of slavery, sweatshops, and child labour is products produced under fair trade policies. These policies protect workers' rights and the products to be labeled as "fair trade" so consumers can recognize these products. Fair trade products are usually a bit more expensive than the regular products, but come on. I'd pay fifty cents extra for a chocolate bar knowing that I'm not supporting sweat shops. But I'm not innocent from all of this, let me look at what I'm wearing right now and see where everything is made.

• t-shirt: Mexico
• shorts: China
• bra: Bangladesh
• underwear: Honduras
• socks (technically I'm not wearing them right now, but I was wearing them earlier today): China
• Shoes (same situation as socks): India (Nike brand! I'm ashamed...)

None of these countries have very strict labour laws to protect workers' rights as far as I know. But, the good news is that I found a few sites with info:

Definition and more on Wikipedia
Sweatshop Watch
IFAT

I just searched "sweatshops" on Google, you could probably find alot more info looking up sites yourself. I only found sites on sweatshops but haven't looked up some about child labour and slavery in the chocolate industry. Perhaps somebody could do that and send me a list?

The Unbalanced Scales of Love

Why is it that in a relationship, one person always loves or cares about the other person more? I've been on the side of the relationship where I care more, many, many times. It sucks and I know it. Now I'm on the side where the other person cares more, should I be happy? Maybe I should, but I'm not. Every time I am told something that should theoretically go weak in the knees or blush or be flattered or just something, I just don't feel anything. I feel so guilty every time this happens and I don't feel anything, instead of standing there in awkward silence, I just say something back or I kiss him or something like that just so I feel less guilty. I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm incapable of loving anyone but myself or maybe I'm just a cold and hard-hearted girl.

Little Miss Scary (or rather, INSANE)

Weeeeeeeee!!!!! After all these months of bottled up anger and stress, I think I've finally gone insane. Everything seems strangely emotional to me nowadays, even "Spongebob Squarepants" seems strangely touching. All the people that want to "look at my work" in socials class tempt me to throw a loud temper tantrum on the spot. All of a sudden, when I think about Theatre Company, I want to laugh. A friend pointed out to me a few days ago that we're all in Theatre Company because we need to mask our insecurities with being in the spotlight but once one of us actually gets the spotlight and the attention, we have to go about bringing that person down because we can't stand the idea of anyone but ourselves in the spotlight. Doesn't this seem funny? Deep inside, we're all a bunch of school yard bullies with attention-whore complexes. I spent most of today watching alternating episodes of "Prison Break" and "Sex and the City", two things that do not mix at all. While watching and even right now, I kept playing with my tape measure keychain, trying to see how long I can stretch the tape measure and then pulling the button back without getting lashed by the tape measure. Meanwhile I am also ignoring the fact that I have alot of homework to do and instead, am slacking off. I feel extremely blocked in terms of fanfiction right now and I feel almost like giving up. Today I spent hours in the mall testing various brands of foundation on my hand and trying out perfumes by spraying it on those little cardboard. The result: my hand smelled like alot of perfumes (primarily the Calvin Klein ones) mixed together. I felt like I was having a girly day out with myself.

If by now you're still reading this post, I think you realize that none of this makes any sense at all.

LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA

A Good Christian Girl

Despite the picture, this is not a post mocking religion or anything like that.

During one of the heiniously long Theatre Company rehearsals the other day, I was talking to one of my friends (he's a guy) about various things and both of us were the type of people that don't find it very awkward to discuss sex and stuff like that. So we were talking about reading smut and watching porn and he said with a half-surprised tone, "I thought you were a good church-going Christian girl." Even though he didn't say it seriously, that line stuck in my head and I couldn't stop thinking about it and I suddenly felt like a very, very bad person. I felt like I was slandering the religion by being such a bad representation of Christianity. It striked me all of a sudden that my confused emotions towards religion was not because of certain beliefs of the church that I go to, the problems come from me. All along, I was just looking for the excuse to allow myself to break all the commandments in the Bible. I realize that just because I disagree with one belief from my church doesn't mean I should stop following the basic beliefs of Christianity. It doesn't making okay for me to be selfish or to lie. I never stopped believing that God existed in the first place, I was too lazy and weak to follow His rules.
This also lead to another thought: how did I get from the "cooties" stage of childhood to enjoying being...sexual. I remember the nurse coming in to talk to us about sex and condoms in grade five. I couldn't imagine anybody wanting to have sex. Having somebody stick the place where they pee into my "private part" didn't sound very enjoyable at all. I couldn't imagine my parents having sex. Surely there must be some other way of making babies besides having sex, right? Masterbating... why would anyone do that? Mom always says that its dirty "down there" and you should only touch it with your hands when you clean it. Having sex before marriage?! Out of the question! Everyone knows only bad people do that! Now that I look back on how I used to see these things, I feel that I've both grown up and have lost my touch of innocence. I feel a little sad when I look back. The boundaries of good and evil seemed so much clearer back then.
Now this lead on to a thought about morals. (yes, I obviously have no life, therefore I have alot of time to ponder about things) Where does our sense of conscience and morals come from anyhow? Christians get it from the Bible, from the ten commandments. Stealing, lying, and cheating on your lover is bad becuase God tells us so. Then where do the atheists get their conciences from? If concience is something that is instilled in us since the moment we are born, I think that is a sign that God is truly with every one of us.

Am I a good Christian girl? I think I know the answer to that one. Do I want to be a good Christian girl? Maybe that is truly the question I need to ask myself.

Why I Hate To Cry

Despite all the reports about how crying is healthy and it does actually feel good afterwards, I don't like crying. I guess its from when I was little and my parents would yell and me and hit me more if I started crying so I just learned to suck it up and hold it in. I hate how weak I feel when I get all choked up by sobs and the mountain of kleenex keeps piling up as I get all slobbery and I feel like sinking into a puddle. Like today, I know I shouldn't care about what other people think. But it hurts to think of these people holding their grudges because I disagreed with them and talking behind my back saying stuff like "I want to slap her [me] across the face" when every time they forget a line or stumble in a play, I was the one encouraging them. It makes me question why the hell I stayed in theatre company despite all the times I said I was quitting. Its so hard to stand on stage for hours during rehearsal and wonder whether I'm amongst friends or enemies. I felt like crying all day after I knew what these people were saying. Of course, the other part of me wanted to snap her fucking neck into two pieces but thats a whole other feeling. Finally, at home, talking to the only friend I could trust, I cried. I felt like a loser for crying, but I know that after the kleenex is cleared up and the tears are dried, I, once again, stand strong.

Unbelievably Lost and Confused

I have no idea what I'm doing with my life right now, I feel so confused and lost. It seems like lately, I've been changing my life in a decisive and dramatic fashion. I've had my eyes set on such impossible and bizzare goals. At the same time, I question whether or not I'm making the right decision. Am I screwing things up rather than changing my life for better?
I quit the Ultimate Frisbee team because it took me two years to realize that I never liked the sport in the first place. What I liked about it was the feeling of togetherness when I played side by side with my team members and the feeling that I belonged. I only joined in the first place because my friends joined and I didn't want to feel left out. I remembered in grade eight when they all joined the Library Club and it seemed too boring for me so I didn't join. I ended up sitting alone by my locker whenever they had meetings; I didn't want a repeat of the same events with Ultimate. So for two years, I spent every practice staring at my watch, hoping for practice to end soon. My skills improved, but not enough for anyone to pass to me during a game. I would run around for two hours, get exercise, but never get the disc. My friends were (and still are) crazy about the sport, I played along, but always felt like such a fake afterwards. I guess I'm finally tired of pretending. My friends don't quite grasp the concept that I don't like Ultimate and just think that I'm being irresponsible and lazy. I would explain again but its not worth my time to do so and I'm not obliged to explain anything to anyone in the first place.
With my friends, lately, I've been confiding in my guy friends more than my close girl friends. Around my female friends, I feel the pressure to act like a goody-goody. They are the type of people who would feel awkward and embarassed if the subject of sex ever came up and have probably never said the f-word once in their lives. With my guy friends, it seems so much easier to confide in them because there isn't the pressure to censor everything before it comes out of my mouth when I feel the need to rant. But at the same time, I miss the closeness that I share with them, but then I don't really want to seek them out and talk. I guess the arrogant side of me thinks that if they don't come to me, why should I waste my time going to them? I don't know whether I want to stand out amongst my firends or fit in. When I stand out, I feel lonely and left out, but whe I fit in, I feel as though I'm just a part of the crowd and not a distinct person.
With religion, I am especially confused. In a sense, its too deeply imbedded in me for me to ever practice Wicca or become a Buddhist or anything like that, but I always feel so fake whenever I sit in a church. Most of the things that the pastor tells me not to do, I don't want to stop. As much as it sounds so great to many people to be all moral and everything, its just not me. There's so many don'ts in Christianity. Don't think lustful thoughts, don't masterbate, don't date non-Christians, don't have sex before marriage, don't swear or take the name of the Lord in vain. Most of all, the thing that disturbs me the most is how intolerant Christianity can be. I remember that one sermon that probably planted the seed of doubt in my mind. Apparently, according to my pastor, being homosexual is a sin and isn't something that you are born with but something that you choose. Despite being straight, this is exactly the opposite of what I believe in. I believe that people should love whomever they wish without being prosecuted.
With my future career, I want to be something that involves writing. I want to be a journalist and make a difference in the world with my opinons. My goal is to some day, be as influential the way Oriana Fallaci was. But at the same time, I know that being a journalist is not a very stable career and not very many journalists manage to make it big. Also, being a successful journalist would mean sacrificing the opportunnity to get married and start a family. Even though I highly doubt I'll ever be a wife and mother, the idea of living alone for the rest of my life does not sound very appealing. Plus, I could be sacrificing this and still turn out to be unsuccessful. I've also thought about being an English teacher. I had the chance to teach a Drama 8 class the other day and it felt really good. The teacher thought I was great and I had a great time. On the toher hand, being a teacher isn't exactly feeding my ambitious dreams. But educating the society of tommorow is a very rewarding thing. I don't even know where I'm going for college yet. I want to go somewhere far away, experience life, see the world, and get away from my parents. But I know I can't afford it because my parents never started a college fund for me. Despite my Honour-Roll grades, my parents never felt that they should save up for my education. In fact, they were about to start a college fund for me a couple of years ago when tehy learned that the Canadian government gives $500 to your fund or something, but they gave up on the notion when they realized that the child had to be under 12 or else the government wouldn't pay you anything.
Argh, I hope I'll pull my act together in the end.

Theatre Company Woes

I've never really quite understood why the world of celebrities always seemed to be filled with assorted scandals until recently. I was a drama student ever since I entered high school. Even before that, I always enjoyed giving oral presentations and being on stage for a few moments in an assembly or a small scale play. I love acting, it gives me a chance to be someone else for a period of time on stage. The first time I was in a large scale school play, I felt like I was the one tht held the audience's attention, in the spotlight, they only had eyes for me. It was a feeling of triumph, ecstasy, and power like no other. Afterwards, people came up to me and told me I did a good job and that it felt cool to see someone they knew on stage. I auditioned for the Theatre Company at my school, the drama class that produces the large production plays and is made up of the best actors in the entire school. I got in and for most of the year, it was a good experience. I had the chance to meet people from different grades and had the opportunnity to not only act in many quality productions but also opportunnities to work with industry professionals. However, in the past couple of days, I discovered the uglier side of being in a room full of actors.
Now I'm going to admit to you right now that actors for the most part are egotistical people and I'm including myself in this comparison, even though I'm speaking in a third-person perspective. In a sense, I suppose its understandable. Actors are the ones with the ability to remain composed despite of nerves, they're the ones with the loudest voices, and the ones with the best lying and deceiving skills. However, its getting to the point where its getting absolutely out of hand and I can't stand it anymore. This is the situation: every year, we put on at least one huge production. This year however, we are in a bit of trouble. There were problems with budgeting for the original script chosen, so we couldn't do that. Our drama teacher, and right now I'm going to say this for anybody out there who has not been to a single drama class/workshop: I have never met a normal drama teacher before; they all seem to be eccentric in some way. Anyhow, the drama teacher brings in this woman with ideas that are....rather more appropriate for the sixties. Lets just say, we're not into the whole hippie stuff anymore. So the entire group confronted the teacher, we didn't like where this was going. After much argument, it was decided that we would come up with something on our own. We decided to do a Shakespeare production, I have no disagreements with that. After all, Shakespeare is considered to be one of the greatest playwrights of all time, it'll be pretty interesting to work on that. But, there's a select group of people that I have not had a problem with until this point in time. All they want to do is to be "funny". Now I put that in quotations because humour can be divided into two categories. There's the good kind and the crap kind. The good kind would be like the movie "Forrest Gump", where humour is written in a way that makes you laugh from the heart; with clever dialogue and an intelligent but comedic story. The crap humour would be like "Date Movie". Its humour that gives you a quick laugh, but you leave the movie theatre/playhouse with nothing. For some reason, a particular group of people feel the need to make the play "funny". Well, that's alright, different strokes for different folks, right? You like the play funny, I want something with more substance. Its the way they're acting that pisses me off. They wanted to completely change Shakespeare. This isn't the part that's annoying yet. I didn't like the idea much though. Having all the characters in the tragedies fake their death and then pair Hamlet up with Juliet, Ophelia with Nick Bottom in donkey form(wtf?!), etc. Okay, in a way its sort of like fanfiction, I can deal with that. I did however strongly disagree with quite a few of the changes they made and sort of became the voice of half of the Theatre Company that agreed with me. The leader of the other side seemed hell-bent on having me as the co-script writer for some reason despite my open opposition against his ideas. But he was probably hoping that if I would be bribed with the opportunnity to write the script for the school play and stop telling him that his ideas are crap. Then we had this huge discussion with half of the class that cared, me, him, and the teacher. The disagreement was more between me and him and the teacher was more on my side. So finally, she decides that we should just find a new script thats already written up that we can all agree on using instead of wasting our time arguing about a script that hasn't even been written yet. So we look for scripts and hey automatically trash every script we come up with without even looking at the script. In fact, they trash talked everyone that didn't agree with their ideas. They automatically assumed that if it wasn't a comedy written by them, it was crap. In fact, this is what one of them said: "The play can be sad, but it has to be funny." Is it just me or does that make no sense at all?
This is where the uglier side of actors comes in. We can all lie and conceal our hatred and emotions so well that you seem to not know who is truly your friend. The person who says they support you in front of you will turn and tell somebody else that they think you're not worthy enough for Theatre Company. I'm sick of constantly having to choose between expressing my opinion and not being hated by the actors, at least the select few that seem to have a problem with people who disagree with them. In fact, as surprising as it may sound, alot of the actors are followers, not leaders, as you can see with the quote earlier. I'm embarassed to be associated with people like that.

I'm quitting.

Siege

I've been hacked, both my computer and msn account was hacked yesterday. I feel like I'm in one of those historical fiction novels where the city is sieged and the enemy has finally broken though. A year and a half ago, I wouldn't have cared too much if anybody hacked into my msn account or computer, but now I've got fanfic. As much as I would like to just walk into school tommorow and tell everyone what I do in my spare time, to be honest, I don't have the guts to do it. There are people like my friends who I know will support me, and by friends, I mean the actual friends that I've known for years who've stuck by me, not the casual accquaintance "friends". I know there will be people who will whisper and hate me just simply for being who I am. I admit that I'm a coward and I will never have the strength to speak my mind in front of a crowd. I used to have a blog on Xanga but I stopped going on. I had to censor everything I put on it because I knew that people would read it and I was afraid of what they thought. I mean, I know there are people that read this blog, albeit not very many, but I don't know you guys personally and would most likely never meet you in person. I mean, there's so many scenes in "Last Summer" alone that would have them whispering. Is the goody-goody A-Student a ho? There's a whole load of posts in here that I would be uncomfortable sharing with some people. Fanfiction, internet, blogging, this is my personal space, a little (maybe not so little) place where I can speak my mind and not have to constantly censor myself. Its a place where I can be myself without worrying about what others think. Why must you take this away from me?

I know who the hacker is. Yes, if you're reading this, I know it was you. Since you've hacked into my files and probably read through them, I might as well tell you this. I can't believe I actually liked you. You decide to flirt with me as if we were dating one day and the next, I see you with anohter girl. All week, you decide to walk me to my locker, flirt with me, talk to me. Next, you tell your friend that you're hacking in revenge for me "annoying" you when you know perfectly well that I was never the one that initiated anything that could constitute as "annoying". You have been the one seeking me out. Thats what hurts the most. To know that I've wasted my time with someone like you when there were other guys more worthy of my time surrounding me and I was blind to all of that because I only had eyes for you.

The thing I don't understand is why do you have to do this to me? Are my judging skills so bad that I couldn't see that part in you? The irrational selfish part that likes to torment other people for your own pleasure? I'm disappointed in you, but I'm more disappointed in myself for succumbing to my weakness: you.

The Woes Of Love And IM

You would think that all the new gadgets would make it easier to connect with people (ahem the male species), but after years of using said gadgets, I have concluded that this is a big fat lie that corporate companies have been feeding us. Think about this: way back when, the only way to communicate someone without actually talking face to face with them was to to send a letter. When they don't reply, you have millions of excuses. The guy delivering your message could have ran off with the post thinking that you sent money. His horse might have broken its leg and in a strange and long winding turn of events, the letter was never delivered. The messenger might have met bandits on the road and was robbed of everything, including your letter. Even when we fast forward a couple of centuries into a more modern mail system, lots of things could still go wrong. Cars broke down, boats sank, if you sent the letter "postage collect", maybe the person you're sending the letter to didn't want to pay for the letter and decided to return it to the sender instead. Now fast forward through a few decades, maybe you would send a telegram instead. Of course, a million other things could go wrong. The telegraph operator could have misinterpreted the message you wanted to send, for some strange reason, some weird technical difficulty might have prevented your message from getting through. Or when the person delivering the telegram might have lost it for some strange reason. Now lets fast forward to telephones. When telephones were first invented, every time someone called in one house in the neighbourhood, all the phones rang. Every household had a special ring so you had to learn to recognize your ring. That person might not call you because they're shy and they don't want the whole neighbourhood knowing that there's something between you two and its way too easy for other people to eavesdrop on your conversation. Now lets fast forward to emails. You might not get a reply to your email because for some reason, it got lost in cyberspace, or that person doesn't check their email inbox. The point is, in all the above ways of communication, there's always some excuse you can make to yourself as to why that person isn't replying to you, but with instant messaging technology such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, etc, there are no excuses you can make. You can see their status as clearly online and every time you message them and they don't message you back, you feel stupid and like you're obsessing over him or something.

As you can see, we were better off with the letters and the horses.

Vertigo and Lethargy

For some strange reason, for the last week or so, I've been feeling strangely drained. Sometimes, I would feel sort of dizzy for about five minutes, then feel somewhat normal and most of the time, I feel like falling asleep. When I'm at school, I'm just bored. I just can't seem to feel the fire and passion I've had in the previous years for learning and studying. When I'm at home, I want to get out because I can't stand listening to the sound of my parents yelling. When I'm out, window shopping is just pure torture because the thing with Christmas money is, its easy come, easy go. Also, once I'm out, my parents constantly call me on my cellphone once its past six o'clock to demand when I'm coming home. I've grown to hate my cellphone ringtone, the reason why I'm not changing it since I don't want to end up hating the Mozart ones on there. I can't even stand to hang around my friends since they just have to bring their boyfriends along and remind me of my messed up love life and since this year, this certain person has been barging into the group. I admit that I'm brutally straightforward. When I'm not talking to people in my group of intimate friends, I can sugarcoat everything and be fake, its not hard. When I'm with my close friends, I prefer to be real. To be honest, in the begining, I didn't think too much about her tagging along and I was just myself. Of course, she "isn't used to the way I am" and started obviously antagonising me and all my friends seem to be taking her side. I know there's all that stuff about real friends will stick by you and the only thing I know is the loner has no power and is therefore the scapegoat. Me, having read way too many historical fiction novels for a teenger definitely understands throwing a tantrum or acting out won't give me the upper hand in this situation. So now I have to act all civil and nice towards her even though I will never trust her based on both gut feeling and because I know of the female tendency to hold strong grudges. I can barely stand to go on my computer because I know I should work on "Last Summer" but I just can't seem to get the words out the way I want them to and when I can, only depressing angsty stuff comes out because I just can't seem to get fluffy light cute ideas.

Deep breath, inhale, exhale. Must not forget to breathe.

A Touch of Nostalgia

The weather is really weird on the West Coast of Canada this year. Its snowing like crazy while on the East Coast, where they usually get the snow while we get the mild weather, are enjoying conditions of which its warm enough for guys to go out jogging in shorts without their shirts on. Meanwhile, we're bundling up in big puffy jackets, toques, scarves, and boots like some sort of fluffy present before leaving our electrically heated havens. It reminds of me of when I was little, back when I was four years old and under in Saskatchewan where it didn't just snow, it blizzared. (is that a word?) The weather was so cold that ice froze on the windowsills and I used to poke at the ice while I looked outside at the white blanketed landscape. I used to live in the capital, but even then it wasn't a big city. The same bus driver worked on the same bus route for years and people actually became friends by sitting next to each other on the bus. People seemed to be in just a little be less of a hurry than they are here and drove just a bit slower. We went to small privately owned stores most of the time instead of the huge corporate mega markets and chatted with the owners while we shopped.

At the same time, I remember alot of horrible things about being little. I remember the helplessness as I didn't know how to defy orders of obedience without being punished. Being short and tiny, the only power I had were the power of tears. I know I got my "resistance from tears" genes from my parents because of course, crying never bought me sympathy. At least, not the type of sympathy I needed. Now that I'm older, I realize that my parents yell at me and hit me/threaten to hit me when I cried when I was little was because they couldn't stand the sight of me doing that and they knew that if I continued crying, they would give in to me in the end and they didn't want to do that. But I've had enough experience when I was younger to know that tears must not be lightly shed. Each drop is shed with a plan, a strategy, at the right moment in the right circumstances to get what you want.

I guess I was never really innocent, eh? Always schemingly evil with no good intentions except to advance my own interests. Coldheartedness does start at an incredibly young age...

New Years Day

This has got to be one of my weirdest posts yet in terms of when and where I'm posting. I'm at a friend's house where I slept over for New Years Eve and I actually didn't ask for her permission to use the computer but I can't find her and I'm the only one awake and my ass is going to get bored off soon. The sleepover was crap, well for me anyways. The boyfriends came over and of course, those of us that haven't fucked up our love lives like me got their New Years kisses while I just sort of stood aside and tried not to stare. Meanwhile afterwards, some shit happened and it turned into a sob fest and me being a cold hearted bitch felt rather apathetic but tried to have some sympathy and by the end of it, everyone just decided to go to sleep.

For some strange reason, even though I got less than four hours of sleep last night, I feel oddly awake.

In 2007, I will not fuck up my love life and will find a guy who is actually worth my time for once.

By the way,

HAPPY 2007!!!!

A Not Very Exciting Existance

Do you ever get that feeling that you really have no life? At times when this person's on a date, the others have their one million and one extra curriculars and you're sitting at home with a Math textbook in front of you trying to study your ass off and convince yourself that you do in fact have a life: a math nerd existance. Except of course, you're actually borderlining failing because you just don't understand math and you don't even like the stupid subject except its one of those basic subjects that everyone has to take to get into a somewhat decent college. To top that, your love life sucks. All the guys that you have a non-platonic relationship with turn out to be jerks. And of course, your friend decides to babble on about her boyfriend 24/7 and whatever comes out of her mouth is about said boyfriend and how wonderful and sweet he is and you feel that if she says his goddamned name one more time, you'll let out an inhuman scream and bash someone's head against the wall. Apparently, she doesn't care how miserable you feel about your recent...heartbreak or she lacks the sensitivity to care. And finally, your latest fanfiction chapter gets 6 reviews. The chapter is 6700+ words long and you spent about three long weeks on it since you're so overloaded with homework.

Blah.

A Whole Bunch Of Things That Make No Sense

When everything seems to swirl and you're absolutely sure you haven't taken drugs or consumed any alcohol, you know that something's wrong. Just what is the foothold that you stand on when you climb the big mountain of life? No matter which way you step, no niche in the rocks will ever feel comfortable for your feet. No matter how strong the rocks look, its always crumbled by what people seem to see as the weakest elements; water, wind, sand. I suppose over the years I've learned that pleasing people isn't going to make me happy. As humans, its impossible to become satisfied and you'll always demand more. I guess I always hold back just a little so there's always space to back out of relationships, don't get too attatched. But sometimes, it seems like there are some threads that are impossible to sever. What I've wanted all along still hasn't changed no matter what I tell myself.

I love to hate desire.

No, that doesn't make sense, does it?

No, I don't give a damn.

Yes, that's a double negative statement, grammatically in correct.

I will stop rambling now.

He's Just Not That Into You

Intuition, female or male is something that guides us. An inner instinct that we use in everything from whether to cross the street when some creepy guy approaches to how we move our lips when we kiss. But sometimes, it just seems like intuition gets clouded. When you want something badly enough, it seems like your mind creates illusions to humour you. When he sits next to you, you feel like he's sitting just a bit closer than he needs to. When he dances with you, you think he might be holding you just a little closer. When he talks to you, it seems like you're the only person in the world. When he sees you passing by the hallway, he always does something to show that he sees you, and you're special. But as time goes by, you notice that he treats other girls the same way, he never calls or msgs, yet you still cling on. In an almost pathetic sort of way, you replay all the good memories of him you have, all the times he's done something sweet. You find yourself remembering all the conversations you've had with him. Finally, in desperation, you find yourself going after him, but he brushes you off like a piece of lint. You're not important to him, you never were. You were just another girl out of the sea of a million faces. Finally, you take a step back and look at the big picture. Its as if you've been released from chains, shackles. Because now, you've woken up, you've realized that he's just not that into you.

The Blame Game

Sunday September seventeenth. Its drizzling outside, the sky a depressing shade of grey, weather of winter, me sitting in front of my computer. The weather of course, isn't the only depressing thing that seems to linger in the air. Just last week, a twenty five year old takes three machine guns into Dawson College in Montreal and starts randomly shooting students. One girl was killed and I think nineteen injured in the hospital with three still in critical condition. As usual, when something major like this happens, every newspaper, television station, and radio station drags every specialist they can think of out to talk about why someone might be compelled to do this, have some psychologist talk about emotions, the dangers of violent video games and the goth culture, etc. I suppose I have no right to talk about these things since I'm not a psychologist and I'm not directly affected by this incident, but I'm going to be a big mouth and talk about them anyways. I'm not a goth, I don't have any goth friends, I don't know much about the culture except for the fact that Marilyn Manson wears too much makeup and they sort of have this facisnation with death. On the other hand, I suppose all of us do. After all, every religion answers the question of what happens after you die and most horror movies use death, violent spirits, or haunted places as their central theme. I saw on the newspaper that the guy said that 'Life is like a video game, everyone has to die sometime.' If he were some nobel prize winner and he said that I think people would marvel at his philsophy and wisdom, of course because we know a murderer said this, it brings this chill in your heart. When someone goes out there and shoots twenty odd people for no reason and kills one, can we really blame Grand Theft Auto and Marilyn Manson? Do we ever think about what would really drive someone to do something like that in the first place? As a human, besides our basic needs of food and water, we also have other needs of survival. Things like love, friendship, and companionship. It sounds corny and Hallmark-y but its true. Could you imagine your life without anybody to call when you're bored or have no shoulder to cry on when you really need it? Memories are very complex things and can pop up when we least realize it. It leaves a deeper scar than any physical injury and will never heal completely. We can blame others all we want, but we are the ones to blame. If you've ever put down someone even without words, maybe with your head or with your body language. Maybe you stand further away from someone waiting for the bus with you because he has ragged clothes as opposed to the guy wearing a suit and tie. Maybe you don't want to talk to someone because they're 'uncool'. Maybe you don't want to go out with someone because they're 'not good enough'. Everything builds up over time. I've done most of these things before, I'm not a nice person, I admit that I automatically judge people when I see them, conciously and subconciously. All I'm saying is that we should at least make an effort to prevent creating another person angry at the world, determined to kill themselves in the most violent way possible and taking down as many people as they can along with them.

My greatest condolances to the family of the girl that was killed and I hope all the injured get well soon. Any school, no matter how boring, how difficult, should be safe. Nothing should ever change that.

9/11

Today's the five year anniversary of the terrorist attack. I remember on that day, I was starting level six swimming lessons. I heard that something big happened somewhere in the U.S., but I wasn't really sure what. So after school, I went as usual to the pool and I took a short cut through the shopping mall. Now, there were a whole bunch of stores that were closed because the owner lost friends or relatives in the attack. I didn't even know what happened until I saw on the news that night when every single television station devoted the entire news hour or had some sort of special broadcast that replayed the footage of the planes crashing into the twin towers. You see the big cloud of dust swallowing up people as they run frantically away away from the falling towers on the street. The chaos, screaming, and death. I mean, planes crashing into towers are the thing of movies. On the big screen, we admire the team of special effects people that made the fire, the explosion, the noise so real. When things like this happen, you just think that its not real. But an even worse fate for being killed in the attatck are the people that are left behind. The wives, husbands, childrens, friends of the victims. When the planes crashed into the towers, it left a hole in their hearts and lives that will never be filled. Also, the people living in Afganastan and Iraq. I'm not a specialist on Middle East affairs, but I don't know whether their lives have changed for better or worse after the US invasion. You always hear about suicide bombers, roadside bombing, how many civilians were caught in a crossfire and were killed. I wonder if there will ever be a day where all the events of 9/11 are settled and the dead can truly rest in peace.

Running in Circles

There's something about hobbies that I've noticed. It seems that all our hobbies involve filling up some inner void that we have. For example, I like to read, because my life isn't terribly exciting and reading allows me to have adventures. I like to go on the internet, because I won't be able to feel degraded or left out with people that I've never met and alot of those people have never met each other as well. I'm fond of pretty things, because I don't feel beautiful very often. But sometimes I feel that by running from my emotions in life and putting them into hobbies, I seem to be running in a circle and in the end, feelings of despair are still lingering behind and it actually feels worse than when I face these feelings in real life. Its like after all this time spent 'enjoying' myself, feeling good that I'm just as good as anyone else, it all seems to fade as time goes by. Every problem as a flaw that becomes its solution and every solution has a flaw that could possibly prevent the problem from being solved. There seems to be no ultimate solution to problems and all I can do is use these temporary escape solutions and the negative feelings seem to get bigger like a snowball rolling down a hill covered with snow. In the end I still feel stupid, unworthy, and ugly. Sometimes I ask myself why I bother still trying to run away and deal with people who are obviously not nice no matter how much they try to appear to be or why I try to still do things to make myself feel good when in the end, I just end up feeling like a failure. I end up feeling really mad at these people I deal with from a combination of hatred and jealousy. Then, I seek out some other solution to these problems and in the end I still feel the same way. I think that maybe its time I leave this world of internet and go out in the real world, try some more new things instead of being who I know I will never be satisfied being and try to enter circles of friendships I know I will never fit into.

The Gamble of Hope and Disappointment

You know how people go around talking about the evils of gambling and how its a sin, etc. I agree that gambling is bad, but we're always gambling in day to day life anyways. Whenever we dare to hope for something, we're gambling our happiness. If we win, well we get happier, if we lose, we get disappointment. If we decide to love someone, we're also gambling happiness, how much we fall is how much we're betting. People say that hope is what keeps us alive, if there was no hope, we would all eventually die, but if we hope and get disappointed, isn't that what stops us from hoping? Fear of disappointment? So is hope driving itself away?