Category Archives: Uncategorized

Everything is Stupid: A Rant from the Edge of Pathos

I’m currently stuck in that place between hating everyone and thinking I’m too brilliant to be in gen-pop.
There are no sharp objects on my desk today. This is good.
middle-fingerI’d be all Hulk-smashing the shit out of everything if only I could give enough of a fuck to do so. It’s that double-edged sword of anger and apathy that comes only from a really righteous chemical imbalance. Oh, PMS. A monthly license to hug all that is dark and vengeful within me.
Fortunately, I use my PMS evils for good — I blog. Sometimes. Rage is a lot more fun if you pepper it with humour, then share it with the world so others can commiserate and rail against the stupidness.
I’m trying to stay off social media, like Twitter, because I keep reading normal people saying normal things and then I want to punch the desk and shout YOU ARE A STUPIDHEAD. WHY ARE YOU ALLOWED TO BREATHE?
Then I start wondering things like if there was some little ethical justification or litmus test where we could employ eugenics without incurring the wrath of the United Nations. Like, say, sterilize only people who are completely asshattedly-moronic but who have every opportunity to educate themselves and learn sciencey, facty thingies.
Then I remember that it’s hard to be immune to stupid people and even stupid people could wind up in charge of a eugenics program and start sterilizing people willy-nilly, and so I give up on this little Utopian stupid-free fantasy of mine.
Still, one could argue that the skyrocketing population of  7 billion humans on Earth might suggest that maybe, just maybe, a little indiscriminate stupidity-suppression could improve the planetary futures. Less stupid people, more oxygen, better climate control? Sounds good to me. I know I don’t need them adding more carbon dioxide to the mix with their ignorant antics.
1154794_origTake stupid people who don’t believe in Climate Change, who insist on things like “coal rolling” to make this ignorant fucking point scream loudly, they make my head explode. Everything I think is wrong with the planet, people like them are causing it. They’re a carte blanche raison d’etre when it comes to unpopular ideas like eugenics and sterilization.
Or maybe we could just sterilize all the annoying entitled people. You know, the kinds who snap “Don’t you know who I am?” — especially when they’re just another asshat with a healthy following on social media. Or other entitled folk who feel there’s nothing wrong with embezzling, theft, and all those other groovy crimes.
Then there’s racist assholes. We don’t need them, either.
I’m just tired of all the jerks in the world. And the stupid people. And the stupidity with which jerks are explained away by stupid people who don’t have the guts to end it.
photo 1
For instance, Ray Rice, who plays football for the Baltimore Ravens. In a supposedly “mutual” attack in May, the big, hulking football star was found on tape dragging his unconscious wife out of an elevator. The NFL thought this horrible thing was so horrible they decided to make him miss a whole horrible two games as punishment.
But what galled me today was hearing that his arrival on the gridiron at training camp resulted in fans cheering loudly. And I’m also annoyed the team has yet to delete a tweet from May 23rd in which they state the wife “regrets” her role in the “incident.” Because, yeah, getting hit is so inconsiderate. Being dragged across a hall, that’s just rude. How dare she?
At least some of the fans called out the organization for their ridiculous victim-blaming. Way to rock the public relations game, Ravens.photo 2
Or, hey, maybe it’s just all my feministing raging hormones that are stupid, and this kind of assoholic behaviour is the norm. Maybe I need to suck it up and accept that we live in a world of narcissistic asshatted entitlement, and that’s just the way it rolls.
But no.
Lucky for us all, I’m Irish-Canadian and too stubborn to think those stupidheaded assholes are in the right or deserving of tolerance. In my world, it’s not okay to be entitled, violent, ignorant, stupid, rude, bullying, or mean.
Those behaviours will never be okay.
And if it’s only once a month that it unleashes a Hulk-Smashy-Ragey thing in me so I scream and rail at the gods about the Stupidheads Wrecking Everything, then so be it. Once a month I will rail and curse the cosmos and demand better.
Anger — it’s a good thing. If it causes just one person to recognize their ignorant, stupid ways, and it helps them be a little less of a dick, then it’s all worth it. I’m more than willing to Hulk-Smash my way to a better, kinder world, one stupidhead at a time. Are you?

Notes On A Good Week

I’m supposed to be working this weekend, finishing off the cookbook I’ve long promised everyone, but life interfered and I got tired of saying no to life. So I said yes for a bit.
Family arrived in town, my cousin I haven’t see in 25 years. He brought his daughter, who I’d never met before, and I’m so glad I blew off work. He’s turned into a great guy, a really loving and positive father, and a generous man. I smiled a lot. It was nice to reconnect.
And so continued what has been a week of epiphanies, small victories, change-making, and forgiveness.

While sailing on BC Ferries this week, I caught some beautiful light.

While sailing on BC Ferries this week, I caught some beautiful light.


Did you know I turned 40 last September? I did. I had very high expectations of this decade. I promised myself this would be the Decade of Steff. Me and my bucket list.
My 20s and 30s got hijacked and I lost my way. I never gave up, but I never saw things very clearly, either. I felt like the guy that gets lost in a jungle full of vines and brush, constantly walking and trying to clear things away, but never really making progress. Well, walk long enough and there’s always an exit.
I’m slowly exiting my back injury. I’m better more often than I’m not. When I do get hurt, even seriously, I rebound in 2-3 days or a week. There’s some kind of Zen lesson to take from serious, long-term injury. There’s a wisdom that comes from overcoming something that had been so debilitating for so long.
(But not all chronic injuries can be overcome, of course. I am lucky.)
When I moved to Victoria, my first chiropractor was trying to sell me on an expensive procedure because he claimed I had a loose hip ligament or something that couldn’t be fixed through exercise. I was already broke and I was devastated that I couldn’t “afford” to fix myself.
Flying on BC's Helijet.com, I got a good view of the slowpoke ferry below.

Flying on BC’s Helijet.com, I got a good view of the slowpoke ferry below.


Then I changed caregivers. Through very good research, I found a team of rehab folks who believed it was something I could overcome both through treatment and old-school work ethic. They didn’t see a fat girl, they saw a girl who once lost 85 pounds in a year, via near-Olympian effort in both sports and nutrition. They saw someone who needed encouragement, support, and challenge. Then they gave that to me.
In some ways, moving to Victoria was about me going somewhere to lick my wounds, keep to myself, and re-discover who I am. I have done all these things in that order. It’s been wonderful.
The Zen of Recovery, I’ve found, is in learning just how tough you are, how much you can overcome. It also puts a lot of life’s struggles into perspective. You learn that trite sayings like “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” really aren’t trite when you’re the one who’s been getting forged like steel in fire.
Cloudy? Or Sunny? Depends on your perspective. I love the unexpected cloudy sunsets.

Cloudy? Or Sunny? Depends on your perspective. I love the unexpected cloudy sunsets.


As I’ve matured, I’ve really allowed myself to own my emotions. If I’m depressed, I’ll let myself wallow in that for a bit. I permit myself to be angry, joyous, neglectful, and all kinds of other things. I’m human. These emotions are a part that journey. It doesn’t mean I’m broken. It means I’m really, really present on the ride. I’m there, I’m doing it, I’m experiencing every bump and bruise along the way.
I’ve enjoyed these two years that I’ve made myself the priority and let the rest of life pass me by. It’s what I needed and I wouldn’t change a thing.
But this week has been something of a light turning on. I’ve had some really great project ideas you’ll find out about in coming months. I’ve stopped to enjoy life on the occasions I could. I’ve overcome a couple of struggles. I went away for a weekend, had fun with friends, splurged, and didn’t come home broke. It was a good, good week.
I think it’s important to just press pause sometimes and enjoy the smug glee of getting shit right and living well across all sectors of life. From money to fitness to diet to self-care, I’ve gotten everything right this week. It really doesn’t happen often to us adults living in the topsy-turvy real world, so it’s great to celebrate. Sometimes celebrating it makes it last a little longer, keeps me in the groove. That’s the good of gratitude, man.
Because grateful is what I am. And excited. I feel that my 40th year has been setting a pretty wicked tone for the decade to come.
Just over a decade ago I kicked off my 30s by nearly dying twice in a year. Not an auspicious start! This decade kicked off by finding a wonderful home, fixing my back, sorting out my finances, rediscovering my creative self, and setting ambitious goals for the 10 years ahead.
As a comparison, it’s like I’ve become my own doppelganger in an alternative universe. There’s so many miles between these two lives of mine that it might as well be measured in light years.
A walk at dusk on Wednesday brought peekaboo sun-flares.

A walk at dusk on Wednesday brought peekaboo sun-flares.


When I think of 10 years from now, shit, I can’t even fathom it. How many books will I have written? How many photographs will I have sold? How many countries will I have seen? How strong will I be? What kind of amazing people will I have met and brought into my fold? How many dreams will I have lived through and ticked off my list?
Great questions. I have no fucking idea, man, but I can’t wait to see how that script plays out. Luckily I’m a writer.
Yep. It’s been a good week.
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Unmerciful World: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Us, & The Scourge of Addiction

Stunning photo of the master in a moment of reflection. By Mark Abrams.


I was rocked to my core with news of one of my favourite actors’ death this morning. Gutted.
And I have been meaning to begin writing on Medium, where it’s easier to attract a new audience.
For the first time in a long time, I was really inspired to write. 2.5 hours later, I had written this one, at some whopping 2,500 words-plus.
Please visit Medium and read my post called Unmerciful World: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Us, & The Scourge of Addiction. Note: If you have a Medium account, you can click on the passages that touch you most and leave a comment there. Kinda neat.

Depressions, Anxiety, and Their Link to Head Trauma

This is getting to be an annual thing for me. It’s #BellLetsTalk day today, so once again I’ll roll out the mat for my battle with depression.
I’ve learned a lot more about head injuries in the last couple of years and I just wanted to drop in and make sure I tell you a little about it too.
Turns out that nearly 65% of people who suffer traumatic brain injury (TBI) are likely to suffer anxiety and depression in the SEVEN YEARS following their injury.
Think about that.
It takes the better part of a decade to get past just one major symptom of brain injury, like depression and possibly debilitating anxiety. Never mind all that cognitive function and language and stuff. That’s a whole other deal.
This is from MSKTC’s website:

Depression is a common problem after TBI. About half of all people with TBI are affected by depression within the first year after injury. Even more (nearly two-thirds) are affected within seven years after injury. In the general population, the rate of depression is much lower, affecting fewer than one person in 10 over a one-year period. More than half of the people with TBI who are depressed also have significant anxiety.

I’m not the only person to hit suicidal feelings a year or two after a head injury. I know personally at least five people who’ve had seriously suicidal tendencies within two to five years of their TBI.
It’s hard for someone who’s not had a head injury to understand the recovery experience. For me, I took a big spill off my scooter when I was still going 40km an hour, landed on my head with such force (even helmeted) that both my in-the-ear hearing aids exploded and blood spilled from my ears. I had a bruised swollen face for six weeks or more. I don’t remember more than about five events in the first six months after my injury, and my job performance continued to decline dramatically for two years.
I knew I was supposed to be tired, depressed, and that sort of thing, but I couldn’t realize what it was I was doing differently, or how weirdly changed I was in some ways. I couldn’t process how much harder some tasks were for me because I couldn’t remember how I used to do them.
My actual ability to understand myself was impaired. My objectivity was shot. My processing skills were badly diminished. Who was I? I was somebody far different than the girl I had become post-accident, but I couldn’t remember exactly how.
Life felt foggy, disjointed, and everyone kept saying “Oh, that’s understandable.”
No! Not inside my head! It’s not okay for it to feel so goddamned WEIRD and WRONG. I was crystal clear before. I didn’t lose focus. I didn’t get confused. And then the accident happened and I didn’t know how NOT to be all the things I once wasn’t — confused, unfocused, emotional.
And that’s what a head injury is.
Our brains aren’t just under dermis, they’re under thick skulls, buried deep in our head. When they’re bruised and rattled around, it can take YEARS to heal. Oxygen isn’t getting there. Sunlight isn’t getting there. It’s gonna heal by the grace of luck or not at all.
Me,  it took about four years to start feeling like myself.
But some things are different and likely always will be. Anxiety finds me more often. I get super-intimidated in learning new things when once I was cautious but confident. I’m more affected by the darkness and short days in the winter. I have many symptoms and challenges similar to ADHD. I get overwhelmed easily. I’m more introverted than I used to be.
Yeah. Without a doubt, I’m a changed person.
I’m still smart. I still write not only well but quickly. I process math and remember things a little better than I did five years ago (the accident was nine years ago). I’m quick-witted, funny, determined, able to conjure a quick plan of attack when I need one.
Today, I find I’m socially challenged at times because I get overwhelmed when details change. So now I know I need to give myself a few minutes to process the information, and even better, now I know to read the face of people I’m with and go “Hey, it’s not you, I just need a bit longer to mentally process this and then we can proceed” and I explain why. I don’t always remember to do that, but I usually do, and that’s good enough today. That’s the process. I remember to explain it and I’m guessing in a couple years I’ll instead be able to bypass the overwhelmed part and get straight to the “Let me think for a second–” pausing that won’t require me swallowing pride and saying “I’m different, wait for me.”
So there’s hope areas I see progress in will continue to improve. It’s head trauma — a lot of studies show it can improving indefinitely. But there are no guarantees, either. Science doesn’t know enough.

One of the gifts of wisdom and age is that we begin to know our weaknesses but also the reasons behind them. Ideally, we learn to work with our failings and help others do so too. We learn acceptance.

These are all true of traumatic head injuries. It’s hard not to be changed. The degree to which it will occur can depend on how hard the impact is, or how often the impact has happened before, and whether previous impacts had healed first. Coping ability depends on the injury itself. A strange and vicious cycle when often recovery’s greatest asset in getting well is the brain, but it’s the brain here that needs to get well. Catch-22.
We don’t know a lot about head injuries. This is true. But we’re learning. Just nine years ago when I had mine, the literature was dramatically reduced.
And now we know you’re likely to deal with depression and anxiety. It’s a part of the process. Knowing this is connected should help a lot of TBI victims deal with it. It’s a small but critical victory to be able to say “Hey, this is happening because of that. It’s not okay, and I have a lot of work to do, but it really does have a reason for happening.”
When you’re the guy with the biological depression, any little lifeline that explains why it’s happening can be a huge mental tool in doing the hanging on and hoping that a true battle with depression requires.
If that’s you I’m talking about? Hang in there. Talk to a pro. It’s survivable. I’m proof.

Faces From the Beyond

It’s taken me three days to take a package out of my mailbox from my brother.
He spent a whole weekend transferring videos he had found in the deep, dark boxes of his life. They were footage of my mother from the three years before her death.
We weren’t a video family. She died in ’99, so it was before smartphones, before everyone had a camera. We had pictures, was about it.
Then my brother called one night, a tone different in his voice, and told me he’d found these videos and had been watching them for a whole weekend, then decided to invest in conversion equipment.
Voila, DVDs.
So, now they’re here. Today. On the day she would’ve been 71.
So how do you go from having nothing but vague memories of a face, a person, who was one of the most pivotal people in your life, to suddenly knowing there’s a stack of DVDs waiting to be seen?
Well, I guess now they’ll sit there on my desk for a while. I’ll become used to them existing in the world. And some day, one day, I’ll have the courage to go there.
But this is not that day.

Memories of the Peripheral Dead

A friend who keeps her Facebook locked down pretty tight shared about how a 31-year-old man was found dead of methadone overdose in his cell not too long ago, and how the man was once a boy whose file came across her desk when she worked in a law office. “He didn’t stand a chance,” she said.
I suddenly thought of a face I hadn’t pictured in a few years. For a few weeks, I taught ESL to an student staying with an Asian family in the mid-late ’90s on a cul-de-sac in Surrey. Some years later, I saw a photo of that family on the front page of the paper. The father killed himself and his four family members in a murder-suicide.
I’d never liked being in that home. There wasn’t anything evil going on, but sometimes unhappiness is so thick it’s like trying to walk into a windstorm. It slows you down and defeats your balance. The gloom in that home was omnipresent, but I never imagined it could have that kind of outcome.
I don’t know why I felt like writing, and the words aren’t coming now. I’m lost thinking about how some people seem to both live and die in vain, and their legacies ripple further in death than they might have in life, but those legacies are more of how wrong things can go, and how many of us on the outskirts sense the trainwreck to come, but are defeated before we can even get involved.
I know I pushed my student, who seemed as depressed as the family she lived with, to step outside the language bounds, get creative, and try to find some kind of passion to write about, but the futility of it was crushing, and I was, in the end, dismissed of my tutoring duties because I was focusing more on ideas and communication than I was on nitpicking grammar and teaching an endless list of rules.
In those fleeting moments when worlds collide, one person on an upward trajectory while the other’s on the down, there’s no telling how long which of those influence plays out. Maybe years later, like the dozen years I have lived past that family, a shadow of our connection will linger.
Somewhere inside, I guess, the idea of that family dying in vain, for a stupid moment of complete despair and rage in the father’s mind, has long struck a sad chord inside, and the fact that I’ve even thought of them, though I can’t remember their name or locate a news story about them, is something I feel obligated to record.
Even that sense of obligation makes me a little sad right now. How many people forget about this family altogether? Like they were just vapours floating through a limited life?
But there you have it. Some people live in vain, die in vain, and are a struggle to remember after the fact. I suppose there’s a part of me feeling like I’d like to be anything but a struggle to remember.
I like to think I’m succeeding.
I’m sorry I can’t remember more of her, the family, or that sense of omnipresent gloom in their home, the memory of which gives me chills as I type.
Do not doubt the range of pathos and trial that some people live with. Don’t delude yourself into thinking the awful stories are uncommon.
And don’t think that you’re likely to change their stories either. We can’t make people change. All we can do is jump out of the way when the existential shrapnel starts to spray.

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Vancouver's Waldorf Hotel Is Closing

UPDATE: Apparently the new owners (condo developers by trade) don’t take the building over until September. The current owners have hiked leases. The folks managing the place are the ones taking off on the 20th. The present owners claim business as usual will continue after the 20th. Any changes to the building would likely entail rezoning requirements being met and approved by City Council. A grassroots save-the-Waldorf campaign has begun, and a lot of loud rallying cries are getting out there. So, in short, nothing is resolved, and no end is in sight, but the Waldorf may not be going anywhere yet.
 

***

 On January 20th, the Waldorf Hotel on Vancouver’s East Side will be closing.
Another one bites the dust.
When I left Vancouver, I fell in love with the fact that Victoria protects its heritage, maybe to a fault, because the 1960s saw the city changing too fast, and its Council moved to begin protecting heritage.
Because that’s what Councils do.
Not in Vancouver, though.
“A condo, you say? Oh, we LOVES the condos. Yes, please. Raze it all. Down it goes. Shiny. That’s what we want. Shiny new condos. EVERYWHERE!”
You know what’ll happen?
The Waldorf will get torn down. A condo development will go up. Something very art-deco-y. There’ll be a pineapples-and-palm trees motif throughout, I guaran-fucking-tee you. And then they will market the living shit out of the development as “Formerly The Waldorf.” You can live here, bust out your skinny jeans, and tell people you live in “Formerly the Waldorf.”
Vancouver’s now a city of places that were Formerly Something More Cool Than What You See Now.
It all blends away to some redundant post-modern city-of-glass design you’ve seen somewhere else down the same road, except they high-jacked this aspect of that era and try to sell it to you as something inspired by the past, when, in fact, the whole thing came tumbling the fuck down because, hey, who needs the past, anyhow? We’re just a vapid yoga-pants wearing town now, baby! Or, well, if we keep trying, we sure can be.
And now our good buddy Mr. Mayor’s out on The Twitter pretending he’s sad that the Waldorf is meeting its demise so some asshole designer can bust out his pineapple stencil on stamped concrete and sell it for $799,000  to yet another asshole hipster with too much dough and desperately needing post-modern-condo-owning street cred with his hipster-asshole friends.
The last time I was in The Waldorf, I saw one of the greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of saying was a friend play his goddamned heart out on a drum kit while dudes from The Odds jammed with him, because he (and they) knew he would be dead, literally dead, in a matter of weeks. And he was.
When I see the Waldorf, I see my friend Derek K. Miller banging the living hell out of his drums. I see everything he stood for. I see the reason I re-evaluated my life, said “I’m outta here,” and left town. I see one of the most impactful nights of my life.
The Waldorf isn’t a BAR. It’s not a HOTEL. It’s a cultural meeting point. A place where worlds collided, ideas were born, and generations got bridged.
The Waldorf MEANS something. It means A LOT.
That land, that didn’t have to become just another condo. It didn’t. It doesn’t. So many properties in that area mean nothing but have all the geographical cachet of The Waldorf, and are ripe for redevelopment. But are they slated?
No. Just a place that changed lives, created friendships, and rocked all fucking night long.
Vancouver City Council, you disgust me for allowing this cultural collapse of all the neat places just for the sake of condo sales. Don’t make it so easy. Hell, let’s go one further. Stop encouraging it.
Today is a sad, sad day for Vancouver’s cultural community.