Heh. Yep, you read right. I’m happy I just got fired.
I hated the job, or more accurately, one of the bosses. Worse yet: It sucked the will to write right out of me.
Putting words on a screen’s pretty fucking easy most days and I can do it in my sleep, but the GOOD writing, well, that comes from places that machines can’t mine. When the mix is off, it’s really, really difficult to get things gelling again. And, honestly, something about that job just killed my creativity.
And, being such an affable and good chick as I am, the folks I worked the last six years for are taking me back without even thinking twice. Not permanently, but “for a while” at the very least, and “for a while” is what I need.
And the moral of this story, boys and girls, is that when adversity happens, don’t think about the fucking adversity. Think about overcoming it. Within 10 minutes I went from losing a job to getting another one, in essence, and that comes from acting, not fretting.
I’m a happy camper. I lost a job I hated. I’m going back to one that had me, for some weird reason, writing better than I’ve ever written before. Methinks I’ve come out ahead.
But the good news for you is, soon I’ll be back to writing well. Don’t think I don’t know this blog’s been off-kilter for some time. I know it all too well. I already have a couple fun things planned for postings.
I’d kill to hear “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” right now, ‘cos it sums up how I’m feeling pretty nicely.
Category Archives: Modern Feminism
On Freedom and Fallacies
This is take two on this topic. I’m starting fresh a couple hours later, after a glass of wine and homemade chicken pot pie.
It’s the second take because this topic is really important to me and I don’t want to fuck it up.
Thank god I have quality guidance like that of Fame. Yes, you heard me, the ‘80s arts school drama. It’s on, and I’m chilling. Defragging my mind, as I like to say. Watching fluff is exactly the right fit, and has given me some interesting perspective as I crack this nut for a second time.
Funnily, a girl in this episode of Fame scoffs at the notion of writing her private thoughts and dreams in a diary at the teacher’s urging.
“If I wrote down my dreams,” she says, “I’d get arrested.”
Yeah. Huh. Ironic.
To that end, take note of the week that was in the world of the wide web. Proper fucked, indeed. It’s like a crash course in What Not to Do in the Intertubez.
A Montreal guy writes some shit in a forum then figures rifle + college = a good afternoon’s plan.
Like the motherfucking coward he was, he went out and tried to kill a bunch of people. Realizing he couldn’t even do a massacre right, he deprived us of the fun of letting cops kill him. The coward took his life. Fucking better off dead, anyhow.
But he wrote in forums.
We shoulda seen it coming.
A dickhead in Seattle decides he’s going to act like a fucking 13-year-old and reposts another city’s craigslist ad by some dirty-minded femme, and gets a couple hundred responses or something, then figgers he’s got rights to publish that private correspondence in an attempt to expose those apparent sickos to the world.
But they answered a public ad.
They shoulda seen it coming.
A young mother in Florida writes her secret other self dark thoughts on a public blog, and then her child goes mysteriously missing, improbably snatched from their window. Young mother kills herself 16 days into the toddler’s absence.
But she wrote dark shit on blogs, then her kid vanishes.
We shoulda seen it coming.
A video diarist on the world wide web is exposed as a professional actress working off a script. The show is produced, directed, and written, yet has duped the majority of its viewers, primarily through YouTube.com, into believing the so-called lonelygirl15 was a teenaged girl locked in her bedroom and homeschooled by orthodox religious parents. Doh.
She’s a fake.
“Like ohmigod. But she, like, really talked to us, man!”
You shoulda seen it coming.
It’s happening. It’s really fucking happening.
You know what I’m talking about.
For some godforsaken reason, it’s starting to occur to people that this, like, internet thing might just be a way of seeing what’s really going on in the noggins of little people everywhere.
And, um, uh-oh, but what’s going on in those little people’s noggins everywhere is something that’s not very pretty.
Some people, it would seem, are angry.
Some of them even feel disenfranchised. And, look. They’re acting on this shit.
Yeah, well. When the odds are stacked, you ought not be surprised at the outcome. Probability and logic being what they are and all, yes?
I’m part of the generation that got schooled in Orwell’s classic 1984. We were raised to believe that someday, one day, the government would hear every word we would utter, and freedom would be a thing of the past.
I’ll be honest, the Digital Age scares me.
The ease with which people can access information about me is frightening. It should frighten you, too. Unfortunately, the time is coming nigh where voices on the web are not just an anonymous blur with little impact on the real world. Now, we’re not so anonymous, and now this world is more real than it is virtual.
There’s coming a time where what you say here is going to come home to haunt you. This is the age of insinuation, and anything you say can be manipulated and used against you. Decide now if you plan to live in fear of that, or if you have the balls to play the game my way, and own your ability to say what you think and how you feel.
In forums such as this, someone such as me might decide to write a little bloggie in which the entire contents of our deepest darkest other selves are posted up on virtual walls for the world at large to indulge in.
In essence, it’s a voice. I have a voice, you have a voice, we all have voices.
It’s idyllic. A virtual Utopia in which we’re all given voices and identities, something that ironically clashes with our seemingly democratic lives – lives spent living in societies that claim to be governed by the people, of the people, for the people.
Only they’re not like any people I’ve ever known.
And I don’t feel like I belong.
And I’m tired of feeling this small because I’m just an ordinary gal.
I thought I’d take my voice and use it. I’m not alone. You’re doing it too. And him, and her, and hey.
We all took our existences online, where we thought we’d have the right to say what we think whenever the fuck it pops into mind.
Unfortunately, when such vocal freedom is enjoyed by a world at large, some of those voices will be beyond dissent. They will be voices of rage and fury and vengeance. Or maybe they’ll be coolly quiet.
And that’s a risk we take by allowing open dialogue.
Every now and then, though, those voices will be warning signals. Intervention might occur, and it might segue to prevention.
Just because assholes and the disenfranchised like these can use the web to serve their fucted means doesn’t necessitate that the rest of us should have to watch our words.
Sadly, the voice of reason doesn’t seem to resonate these days. I fear that the talking heads of today might soon decide that there is such thing as too much free speech and they will indeed succeed in legislating the internet.
In which case now might be the time to, like the good hunter Elmer Fudd suggests, be vewwy, vewwy qwiet.
Only we’re not hunting rabbits.
Should Irwin Have Changed After Kids?
So, earlier I asked if you have the right to ask a risk-taker to tone down their lifestyle once you get hooked to them.
My opinion? No. You do not. And if they tell you you can go ahead and tell them how to change; don’t. You’d fucking with what oughtn’t be fucked.
In a nutshell.
My posting was inspired by the death of Steve Irwin. There are those who apprently think he should’ve “settled down” since he had kids. Yeah, as a kid, the first thing I wanna know is that my father gave up almost everything he loved so he could raise me — sit in a fucking armchair with a remote and tell me how he “used to be like that” once.
Terri Irwin got a precious gift that most of us might never, ever, ever receive: She fell in love with someone who kept all the qualities that made him so loveable as the person he was when they first met. Bloody sweet, that. And she had it for a while. And then it got snatched. Love happens, death happens, it all is what it is.
Life’s a truckload of hurts some days and there’s no getting around that.
The point is, it’s hard enough to be ourselves in the face of everyday life. It’s harder still to remember who we are when we get lost in the arms of someone else. To be able to hang on to your identity despite your love for someone else and your wish to be with them, why, that’s as downright admirable as it gets.
To hell with those who think otherwise.
_________________
In other Croc-Hunter news, let me go on record to say that, while Germaine Greer periodically says something intelligent, I:
a) think she can be a complete twat who has done as much to hinder feminism as she has to further it. She’s arrogant, dismissive of men, flighty, inconsistent, hypocritical, and far too militant for my tastes. (Despite my believing I’m a feminist, thank you very much. Ain’t no fucking eunuch here, baby.)
b) think she’s a far bigger bitch than I’d thought before now that I’ve read her comments on the death of Steve Irwin.
I do not believe that to be a strong woman I need to demoralize men. I believe that, as a strong, independent chick, I can exalt men in my life and cater to them as I wish, because I fucking well know who I am when I go to bed at night (most of the time; we all get a little too lost in our relationships some of the time). I take no backseat to any man. But I’ll hold the door open for ’em if they’ll let me, because I have nothing to prove. I’m empowered by the mere fact that I don’t need to seek power, all right?
I’d get into my whole beef about how feminism has been executed, but I’m too tired and it’d take too damned long. Suffice to say that while I fight for my equality, I don’t think it needs to come at the cost of emasculating men. There’s room enough for us both, and I don’t think chicks like Greer understand that concept, but then I don’t like her enough to read her work. I listen to others gripe about her and praise her, so I’m ignorant, but by choice.
For Christ's Sake, Stop the Bleeding!
As you may or may not know, I’ve been trying to change / suppress my menstrual cycle through the use of prolonged exposure to the Pill. Unfortunately, it’s not going as well as I would have hoped.
For those who haven’t been exposed to what “period suppression” entails, it’s basically the choice to use birth control pills for 12 weeks, then you take a week off. There’s a new one coming out called Seasonale, but I don’t know how that differs from just staying on any old pill, and I doubt the additional hype is really necessary, since I suspect they’re just playing on the ignorance of the public… as most marketers like to do. One can simply take their pill of choice uninterrupted for 12 weeks and achieve the same end. (Now, don’t be a moron and do this shit without medical supervision, all right? Get approval from your doctor, talk to them about what to look for, then go bravely forth, young bleeder. Now your shit before you act; don’t listen to me or some other person who has no medical training and knows fuck all about the big picture.)
I’ve been on the pill, now, for 9.5 out of my new “12-week” cycle. I’ve already had a full-blown, long period that began 2 weeks ago and lasted 8 days, and today I’ve gotten it again. In between, I was still spotting. So, maybe I’m the odd the one out. Maybe I’m the freak who can’t adjust to the hormonal change. I don’t know. All I do know is, this really blows.
I did, however, ask the Good Doctor about it and he said it’s just my endometirum rebelling. Yeah, well, I wanna get fucking medieval on its ass and quash its little rebellion.
I mean, if I was in a sexually active relationship, this would be really fucking annoying. Fortunately, it’s just me and Fingie these days, so we have an understanding and things are going smoothly, no feelings are hurt, but still. Biology blows, man. I thought so in high school and I still think so now. This fucking ranks up there with dissecting frogs, for god’s sake.
I wanted to cycle to work today, but now I feel like shit, so yet another day is passing without exercise. In retrospect, 2.5 cups of coffee was a bad plan, since coffee really fucks with cramping, but at least I’m awake.
I took my first anti-depressant pill last night, and that was weird. It’s supposed to double as a sleep-aid, so you take it before bed.I had only a half a pill as you’re supposed to start slow to minimize the onset of side effects. Still, it conked me right out. I vaguely remember getting out of bed to go to the washroom, as I’m one of those people, and I staggered there with my head bent down, and slammed into the door jamb. My first reaction was, “Not another fucking concussion,” (I’ve had three) as I stumbled backwards, my head smarting, leaving me feeling like I’d suffered a cartoon injury, with the pain lines radiating out into the darkness.
Naturally, I woke up this morning in a fog. I really hope this isn’t an indicator of what’s to come, because now that I’m on these pills, I’m supposed to remain on them for the next year. That’s just the rule of thumb. (Where in the hell did the saying “rule of thumb” come from, anyhow? Ever wonder? I mean, having opposable thumbs is one of the highlights of my life, to be sure, but I don’t expect my thumb to be the sovereign entity of my life, so I don’t really see it ruling, but perhaps my ignorance is impeding my ability to comprehend this. Hmm.)
RANT: On the Rag with The Goddesses
Okay, I’m into the whole love-yoself-sistah feminist self-worship thing and all that, to an extent.
This sort of thing blows my mind. Personally, if I was 12 or 13, and I had a granola-chomping mother who was foisting this “love your period, love your womanhood” crap down my throat, I’d spontaneously combust.
I hate when people take something that’s really inconvenient and annoying and try to exalt some greatness into it. Sure, having a period is a reminder that we’re female and a conscious realization of our ability to create and bear life. Nice, fabulous, wonderful. Will that get the stains out of my bedsheets, too, or is that just a lovely little inconcrete and essentially useless euphemistic piece of bullshit?
Oh, I say it’s the latter. These people are right up there with the fucking naive twits who think a bird shitting on you means good luck. People will tell themselves anything if it means pocketing the cash for another therapy session.
Fuck, man. All I need to remind me that I am woman, ergo I fucking rock, are my tits. That I have a twat is just bonus, okay? My whole fucking body tells me I am woman, ergo I roar. I don’t need to pull a South Park, bleed for seven days, and miraculously stump the odds by living just to know that I’ve got the DNA freebie strand, okay? My period is the bane of my existence. I fucking hate it. I wish I never had to bleed again. I’m presently in the middle of trying to suppress my period for three months at a time, but the three months has been split into six weeks thanks to an unwanted period this week.
Now, a bloody tangent. So, I’m, you know, there on my throne, unwrapping the first of a new pack of pads, and the Always “Wings” adhesive cover tab has “Have a happy period” written all across the fucking thing.
Happy? You want me to be happy about cramps, bloating, irritability, alcohol sensitivity, and the constant risk of staining undergarments, clothing, and sheets for the better part of a week? Yeah, sure, okay, and while we’re at it, you want me to be thrilled about losing my paycheck, crashing my car, and finding my husband in bed with his secretary? Fuck right off.
Goddamned marketers.
But back to the initial topic: I’d like to send a big fuck you out to all the women who try to make me feel guilty about the fact that I think having menses is the absolutely worst part about being female. It doesn’t mean I hate my femininity, it means I hate mood swings and pain and messes and feeling unclean. How is that wrong? Fucking sanctimonious crap is what that is. Get off your high horse and join the rest of us on this little plane we like to call “Reality.”
Oh, For God's Sake!
Okay, to the anonymous who left the comment that has inspired this rant:
It’s okay, I’m not taking it personally, and I understand you were coming from a nice place and being genuine. Still. It ain’t you, it’s society, and I’ve been meaning to comment on this for awhile.
_____________________
I just broke up with someone, and I’m a bit touchy about it, even now, a whopping eight days later. I know, all these hours and days have passed us by, a whopping eight days and six hours, and I ought to certainly be all good and better and fine about it.
But I’m not. I know, I’m hoping to nip this in the bud before a stunning two weeks has passed, but I’m so emotionally stunted that I’m not sure I’ll quite manage that.
Okay, obnoxious mode is off.
Here’s the deal: I fucking hate the western culture of pretending we’re stoic and tough and good and fine just a few days after any kind of adversity befalls us.
It’s like old-school hockey. “Holy smokes! Didja see that hit?! That boy had his bell rung but good. The coach is looking him over, and he’s giving some shakes of his head. Holy hell, he’s joining the team again. This kid’s a trouper — bell ringing and keeps on singing!”
Back in the day, you took your hits like a man and played through, no matter what the cost. Naturally, it turned out the costs were high.
You have to understand, strong and stoic are things I strive to be. I understand life’s hard and comes with challenges, and it ain’t all fun and games. I’ve had some really hard times in the last decade particularly, and I think I’ve handled them all pretty well. Never perfect, but who among us is?
If I just up and dropped the thing with the ex, and all the struggles I’ve hit this week, you know what? You’d stop reading me. Because I would cease to be myself. It’s this overly analytical, detail-focused, mildly obsessive, often compulsive cynical satirist you’ve come to enjoy. That’s who I am. I’m a rebel without a cause, a thinker without a clue, and a poser with no apologies. That’s me. I get lost in the chaos that is my life because I am absolutely unapologetically self-obsessed.
I’m not at all the guru some people have taken me for. (WHY have you done this?) What I am, is a really, really, really good reality surfer.
See, whatever comes at me, I find a way to ride it until it breaks. I’m very good. I’ve had to be. I don’t have a smooth-sailing life in the least. Ahh, I’m so in it for the drama, man.
Anyhow, whatever. The point is, my relationship ended just a week ago. I’m not gonna just drop the topic and be magically healed like I’ve just had a Jerry Falwell moment or something. Anyone who does is just asking to get fucked mentally, because that’s not how to deal with troubles. Own it, experience it, make love to it, and let it go. Don’t just chuck it and hope the garbage guys come.
I’ll be moving on from this, you can bet your ass on that. Soon, too, probably, but it’ll happen after I’ve really come to learn something from the experience. See, my life is lived because I choose to examine it — and now, immediately, not some 50 years down the road as I write my memoirs.
Keep in mind: This week holds a party, a concert, a big social night out, and maybe a couple other things. It’s busy. I’m not sitting around on my ass as much as it might sound. When I am around, I need to learn a little about podcasting.
The podcast looms in the nearer future now. A matter of weeks, for sure, probably three of them. The trouble I now have is that I need to design a new blog. I will be keeping the Cunt alive, and feeding it periodically, but there’ll be a new blog, Smut & Steff, a companion blog to my podcast. You’ll see photos and notes and such about things inspiring me any given week, some postings of mine, and that sort of thing. I intend to have it be a very symbiotic relationship, sort of like blog+podcast=steffness, I hope.
So, a new blog, a new podcast… much looms. In the meantime, deal with my self-involved life — I can’t afford therapy, and you’re a sexy listener, so I’m thinking it’s working just fine for the short-term. Don’t worry, I’ll get some rest and shit sometime this week and my writing will snap back on soonish, I suspect.
And then there was None
Well, I’m single now. We pulled the Band-aid off and decided things just weren’t working.
As far as break-ups go, this was the best I’ve probably ever had.
It’ll be hard for me to be friends, I suspect, since I’m not really the one who quit the relationship. He was trying really hard to keep his shit together after he shattered his leg in March, but losing all your mobility and being introduced into a life where you have near-constant pain and chronic exhaustion tends to take a lot out of you emotionally.
Having been injured far too often last decade, I know this. I relate all too well. That, in many ways, made the past two months even harder. I wanted to be angry at him for pulling back, I wanted to resent him. I just couldn’t. I understand. It’s why I was so broken-hearted when I learned that morning that he’d broken his leg so severely. I knew the guy I was falling for was probably going to disappear for a long time. I’m just surprised it took a couple months to happen.
The relationship started wonderfully. It was so promising, full of future. Then, literally a bad break. Why fate intervenes as it does, I’ll never know. It just does. I can’t sit around in sadness and loss about this, because it is what it is: Dumb fuckin’ luck.
I don’t typically stay friends with exes. I’m making an exception. I also don’t tend to get back involved with exes, but in this case, I’m keeping a very open mind. On paper, we were obvious. Meant to be together. Even after we decided to break up, we were on the phone for an hour, just chatting.
Bad injuries can break a bit of your soul. Life becomes struggle. Too many people have never experienced the hardness brought on by a lack of freedom, lack of mobility, and constant pain. It really robs you of something, and it can really fuck with your psyche, too. This time, it did.
But, hey. He knows I care. I know he cares. We just can’t be what we want to be, and I can’t wait any longer. He doesn’t want to hurt me any more than this already has. It’s a respect thing.
Sometimes, moving on’s the best thing you can do. But I’m glad we’re keeping an open mind. Finding a real, passionate connection’s a rare thing in this shallow fucking world, and writing something like this off because fate played a hand, well, I’m too much of a romantic to just do that. Deciding to move on has been a long time coming.
Part of why I haven’t been writing as well as I’d like to have been doing is because I’ve been biting my tongue. So much of this has troubled me so deeply for so long that I’ve just felt unable to share it, because I knew he was having such a hard time already, and I didn’t want to bring any more negativity to the plate, or make it harder for him. In so doing, I took more bruising than I maybe should’ve done.
But now it’s done. Now the future’s decided, a path of action has been declared.
I was at a thingie last night and had a couple of those “moments” where you can tell the guy’s really digging you, you know? It was strange, because I felt like I was cheating on The Guy even though I’d sort of decided to end it today already. Maybe there’ll be a re-learning curve on this. He says he won’t be looking for relationships in the hiatus, but that I’m entitled to do anything I want, given that I wasn’t the one who pulled up anchor a couple months back. It’s nice to have that understanding expressed.
Having this resolved comes at a good time. There’s a potential that I’m going to spend some money I shouldn’t spend, and get the fuck out of dodge for a weekend. I’ve found out that there’s a scooter rally in Wine Country this coming weekend, and for a hundred or so bucks, I can have a great three days of fun with people who are positive, zany, intelligent, daring, and adventurous. Exactly the qualities I’m looking for in new people.
Am I going to sit around and be celibate as I hope that maybe I’ll get back together with this guy I really like? Absolutely not. I’m not going to sleep around, but I’ll see if some connection can be found somewhere. I have to presume things may never re-ignite, tragically, but I’m also hoping that being back on the market will remind me of what I might’ve had, and keep that desire awake a little.
Man, got to tell you, some days I really miss being six years old. It was all so simple, wasn’t it? Is it any wonder everyone gets felled with an early-20s depression as they realize everything’s just gotten infinitely more challenging?
Pity I have nothing to drink, but that’s probably a good thing. I do, however, have a roach I can smoke. I feel a little toying with dope coming on in my new future. A little bender can’t really hurt.
Putting My Foot Down On You, Dr. Scholl
I’m interviewing at an ad agency or two tomorrow. No, I won’t be doing any of the ad copy work or anything, more of a save-the-sanity support office worker, since I excel at that. But advertising is something I’ve always been very, very interested in.
Remember the movie Crazy People, from years back? Daryll Hannah and Dudley Moore? “Jaguar: For men who like handjobs from beautiful women.” Or, “Volvo: They’re boxy, but they’re safe.”
It was a comedy about truth in advertising that emerges when an ad-copy writer has a breakdown and is sent to an insane asylum. He decides to stop lying to the public and tells the truth. He enlists the help of his fellow nuthausers and they reinvent advertising. (My favourite was the Sony one, where the shortness of Japanese assembly-line folks meant better quality control as they were hovered closer to the microchip boards than the tall, gangly American counterparts who were so tall they couldn’t see the fine melds and such. Heh.)
Every year, I go and I see the film of The World’s Best Commercials for that year. I love good advertising.
But I fucking hate bad ads.
Case in point: Dr. Scholl’s for Her.
There’s this new open-toe gel shoe pad made for stilettos and the like, by Dr. Scholl’s. For some fucking reason, there’s this chick in a skin-tight micro tube dress, wearing strapless stilettos (that magically stay on) as her legs dangle off one side of a bareback horse, and she lies back over the hump of this horse, prostrated.
Because I do that in my stilettos every fucking day. And other things I do in my stiletto, apparently, include walking my dog on a reinforcing dike in the ocean, playing tennis, and more.
Who the fuck is this ad for? Who’s the guy smoking crack who seems to think THIS is what’s gonna sell these shoe pads to a woman?
How about having a real situation? Oh, I don’t know… maybe an intelligent woman with spring in her step as she delivers a brilliant closing statement in a law court case? Maybe you have a group of men, all sweating and nervous, desperately awaiting a job interview in a crowded, awkward office, as this sexy chick who holds all their fates in her hands strides towards them, with a I-Own-Your-Ass, And-You-Know-You-Want-Mine look on her face?
I’m surprised they didn’t just get to the point and have some chick in clear pumps spinning her way down a pole, since apparently we’re all just whores who use our bodies for advancement in life.
How about we move the fuck away from more of this objectifying, lame-ass look at chicks today, and into the realm where women really are becoming powerbrokers? Remember, sexy and smart don’t have to be oil and water.
They’re only oil and water because the media doesn’t want us to forget that it’s our asses that count, not the grey matter in our heads.
I, for one, will never, ever buy another Dr. Scholl’s product. This ad pisses me off THAT much. I’m sick and tired of seeing women whose bodies you can bounce quarters of, with brains the size of the quarter, as being the ideal that I’m supposed to somehow strive for.
My ass is copious. As is my intellect. How about selling to me, you assholes?
(If you’re looking for an update on my employment woes, I’ve been keeping that shit over on the other blog. It’s been one hell of a week for me, emotionally, and keeping it together’s one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever faced. I’m scared as hell, but I’m proud as hell of how I’ve been dealing. I’ll be glad when it’s over. I hope that’s soon. I’ve earned the reprieve. If I know anything, I know that.)
From Poutine to Self-Love, Baby!
I should not be writing.
Another probably painfully tiring day awaits me tomorrow, before what is liable to be a mockery of a weekend, on which I believe I need to work Sunday, but the verdict is not yet in. (No, not real work. Taking a bunch of kids to a space museum. Yeah, who’s your sex goddess NOW, huh?)
I should not be writing, but I am.
You see, I took a terribly sinful break earlier today on what has been a gruelling couple headtrip days, and I acquiesced to the evil that lurks within: I submitted to my craving for poutine. If you’ve never had poutine, then you’re probably not Canadian. A pity for you, you poor fuckers. You’ll hear about it, and you’ll think, “Ew, ick!” but really, that’s just your ignorance talking, or perhaps it’s the silly little granola-loving freak you nurture deep within. Either way, it’s all about the fat. Mm, fat!
Poutine’s french fries smothered in cheese curd and gravy. In other words, it’s potatoes that died tremendously worthwhile deaths. And I salute them! So do my lovehandles. But I do digress.
There, there was a paper lying about. I shouldn’t be so brash as to call the Province a newspaper, because it’s hardly a good newspaper at all. It’s a tabloid. It’s the McDonald’s of news for people who are news-tritiously challenged. Or chronologically challenged, and I was the latter. Oh, and apparently the former. How convenient.
Dammit, again with the digressions!
Lemme get to my fucking point, shall I? They had a story today about seven Vancouver chicks (you go, girls) who’ve opted to get married to themselves.
Yep.
They’ve all got the gowns and they’re doing a public ceremony down on Vancouver’s Jericho Beach, and when it comes to the “Do you take this…” part of the ceremony, I think it’s going to be changed to, “Do you take yourself, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, until your dying days?” or something like that.
I wanted to fucking stand and cheer then and there.
It ain’t some feminazi gig or anything, boys, so don’t get your panties in a bunch. It’s about saying, “Hey, I don’t need no man for happiness. I can provide that to myself.” None of us really needs anyone… it’s just nice to have them.
Like Margaret Atwood once said, “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” I happen to believe that goes both ways, but too many women are too fucking obsessed with getting a ring on the finger and being validated by having some studmuffin by her side. It’s a sad state of things, and I would have thought we’d be farther along by now, but here we are: same shit, different story.
I made a brief comment about the “How to Get the Guy” show the other night, a show that still pisses me off on premise, even though the things it’s saying are sort of on the money. Yes, good ways to get a guy. Just bad ways to keep them.
If you’re not yourself when you snag a guy, it’s gonna be pretty fucking hard to keep yourself in that hyper-perfect state. And when you’re not that woman anymore, is he still going to be interested? Or are you just the dating equivalent of spam – building up an average product into something extraordinary, only to have it fall flat? Only you can know.
These chicks, they have the right idea. They might be being weird about it and taking it a bit far, but hey. Whatever gets you through the night, baby. You want to embrace yourself, love yourself, and make a commitment to yourself, then I say more power to you.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week, wondering what all my stress and frustration about this job search is coming off as for the masses. I mean, you all look to me for whatever the hell it is you want to find here on these pages – mantras about your body type, tips on hand-jobs, profundity on being single, scathing commentary on whatever the hell the flavour of my day is… Honestly, I have NO idea what you’re here for, but I’m thrilled you tumble onto my doorstep, and I thank you for it.
But here I am, in all my flawed glory: Stuck in a financial conundrum that I know will end, but I’m terrified won’t end on schedule, my fears and my horrors hanging out for all to see, and the fact that I’m brutally, completely human. I’m as fucked up as anyone, man. I don’t have it all together, and I probably never will. Do any of us? No, probably not. We just play the roles well.
It’s that old, “I’m not a doctor; I just play one on TV” schtick. I ain’t no guru, baby, I just play one on the ‘net. I hurt, I get vulnerable, and, baby, I get scaredy-scared some days.
In the face of all that, I found myself there on Commercial Drive, strolling around in the mid-afternoon sun, a few minutes to kill, when my cellphone rang. Yes, yet another job interview call. (I’ve sent resumes around for just under two weeks, and by Monday’s end I’ll have had eight interviews, all for “real” jobs, so let that tell you what it will.) The funny thing was, this was an agency, and I responded to an ad of theirs earlier this week. I got The Big Rejection Letter. And there she was, calling me now, about an ad I responded to earlier today, knowing full well they’d already rejected me once this week.
She goes, “Your name sounds familiar!”
“It should, I applied earlier this week and got The Big Rejection Letter. But I’m stubborn, and it sounds like a great job for me.”
“Well, it’s a new posting, and I’m glad you’re persistent! I’d like to have a chat with you and see if you’re a good fit for our client!”
I got off the phone (the appointment’s at 9:00am, for an advertising co., one of two interviews tomorrow) and felt SO FUCKING SMUG.
The thing is, keeping your head together and being strong and loving yourself in the face of adversity’s the hardest thing in the world to do. When you’re single, it’s even harder. And that’s why I love hearing about women like this, the ones who say, “You know what? Fuck convention. This is about me.”
Oscar Wilde said my all-time fave quote that I keep citing here and should finally just put in my fucking sidebar, that loving yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. It’s times like these when I need to consciously try to love myself. It doesn’t come with ease. It’s work. Every damned day right now, it’s work. Every employer I talk to, every resume I send, my first thing I tell myself is, “I fucking ROCK. I can DO this.”
I don’t really believe it… but I play a guru on the ‘net, you know, so it’s convincing.
Where's Steff?
Hey, kids. I’m still looking for work. Honestly, it’s just beating the creativity right out of me. Like a fucking dog in an alley, my friends. I don’t feel like writing. Today was a two-interview day, which is great, ‘cos it’s interviews, but I didn’t receive any other responses, so I feel like there’s an insta-wall in front of me. I don’t really have the time to “wait it out.” Either I get a job and keep a place to live, or the fit hits the shan and I run like the wind.
I should be getting greater responses, but there’s a pretty crazy job market and who knows what’s going on. Either way, I’m frustrated, I have nothing of value to say, and there’s not a lot of point in updating unless something good happens. It comes and goes, the goodness. This morning’s interview was good, but the second wasn’t that great. It went well, but they kept me waiting thirty minutes for the interview to begin, and I’m not sure I want to work for a company with so little respect for my time already. Unfortunately, I have no choice. I’ll take the first job that comes.
I didn’t get the job from the other day. They decided to look elsewhere. I decided that was fine by me after I saw them repost the ad before they decided to tell me I wasn’t up for it any longer. Again, it’s a question of basic etiquette and doing the right thing. It’s a pity I seem to be more an anomaly than a common standard when it comes to perception of what the right thing is.
I should tell you about a strange thing that occurred, though. Were one to Google my full name, it wouldn’t take long for this weblog to appear in connection with it. I am a Scribe Called Steff. Shit, it’s on my resume, the “Scribe” moniker. Whatever. I’m not ashamed of what I write here. I toe the line between smut and sexy with aplomb, I believe, so, y’know, “whatever.”
However.
I do NOT publicize a certain email address in conjunction with this blog. There’s an address that is explicitly tied to my resumes, and nothing else. A few friends have it, and some publishers, and that’d be that.
The other day, I got a pretty overtly sexual email (and I have ideas about who sent it) and the person emailed me at my “job” address. This leads me to surmise only one thing, that a potential “employer” has specific designs on what writing about sex means about me as a person. Whoever he is, he has another thing coming.
I have to say, it pisses me off, the judgments that are made on the basis of who we are behind closed doors. I’ve written about it before, and I’ll write about it again, but this recent occurrence has really irked me a bit. The fact that this person sent the email to the board’s email, and THEN my “employer” email as if to say, “Hey, look, I know who you are,” is what creeps me out.
Whatever. Suffice to say that looking for work isn’t as fun as I wish it could be. It’s essentially a prolonged exercise in vulnerability and submissiveness — both qualities I try to endure in very sparing quantities. I want a job. I want this over.
And when it is, I’ll be a better writer. For now: Hi, I’m Stressed-out Steff and I’ll be your tourguide through the jungles of the jobless, where the prey pray for fortune and speedy resolution. Sigh.