Amusing Sacrilege for Pickle

Thank you to Devon for introducing me to this guy. The gollum/barry white thing is hilarious too.

Have you seen that new Hamlet movie yet?

Hoo boy, I did 30 up in style last night. Well, in a stylish room anyway, I actually behaved like a brazen slut most of the evening.

I like to create big birthday bashes and celebrate me, and this would not be possible without my very good friends. I would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes and those who came out to the party. Bigger thanks go out to Nat and Diane for all their help - Nat took my shift today so I could be hungover and Diane came and helped me clean up the room this morning and drove me to get fastfood. Plus I got some amazing prezzies including a specialized t-shirt that says "tiny hands do good work" which is my phrase for appreciating Wal-Mart shoes and is also funny cuz of my tiny hands and the whole sex thing. And the belly dance girls got me the coolest Strawberry Shortcake PJs, I look adorable in them.

I rented the executive suite at a swanky hotel and had a big PJ party. Many people came out and helped to make the festivities merry. I was embarrasingly drunk and stoned by the end of the night (having polished off half a bottle of Moet and most of a bottle of Lagavulin) and proceeded to make many of my non-pervy friends very uncomfortable by demonstrating my perversions often and in public. I do apologize to those friends as I am usually a better host and can curb my impulses a little better, but drinking and curbing are, like, unmixy things.

As for my pervy friends, a big thank you to everyone who made me orgasm last night. Go team!

Nothing says "happy birthday" like an orgy.

And I've been trying to have a very lovey day today as last night I got to fall asleep holding hands with a very nice big man (a gift to me courtesy of his two very generous girlfriends) and it just reminded me that despite loving being single, I do miss the soft cuddly closeness of sleeping with someone. The orgiastic cuddling left me all fuzzy and warm and so, having woken up thankfully alone (hangovers should be suffered in solitude), I've been trying to retain that fuzziness and have been watching Love Actually all day and getting all misty.

Here's to fuzzy warmness! May you all get some of it today.

I turned 30 today. More reflection on this might happen tomorrow. Oddly, though I love to celebrate my birthdays in grand style, I never really find aging to be that big a deal. All I want to say today is that I have awesome stellar amazing fantabulous friends who managed to spoil me rotten today, even though I worked an 12 hour shift.

Weird birthday happening:
my older, and until recently very embittered, bulldyke boss came up to me today saying "go tania, it's your birthday" while stirring the pot with her arms. she has finally found the love of her life, and while I'm so glad to see that she's so happy now, I really did not expect her to go all 80's hip hop culture on me. she then convinced me that I had to go out for drinks in the hour between my 8 hour shift at the bookstore and my 4 hour shift at the dance studio. in that hour, she bought me a guiness and 3 tequila shots. needless to say, i was quite creative with the costume alterations i had to do for my shift at the dance studio. i suppose you have to know my boss to really appreciate how odd this all is, but really, just trust me on this, it's very odd.

I've been reading Mean Boy by Lynn Coady and absolutely fucking loving it. It's been bringing up some questions so I'm gonna be doing the next few blogs about some of those questions.

The first one is about poetry. I don't get poetry. That doesn't mean I don't like it, it just means my mind doesn't seem to be able to comprehend something about it, its forms or how to analyze it. I like quite a bit of poetry actually, check out Inconsequential's blog for some of my favourite stuff. Reading that blog is like reading Terry Pratchett - it makes you wonder at how someone can be so prolific with their art and have so much of it be good. Quantity and quality.

Mean Boy has a bunch of students at a grad program in Creative Writing in Atlantic Canada. They are all poets and have gone to study at this university because it has a new trailblazing canadian poet as the head of that creative writing program. They are reviewing a student's poem:

west
we wind
on
the
endless trek

a
way
in hopes of

harvest

And the main character (who is a student) responds with "Okay, come on now, if you write it all out as a sentence it's completely - banal." ..."Like," I say, "if you just scatter words around on the page, is this supposed to imbue them with some kind of supplementary depth? Does just sprinkling them around like that make a sentence poetry?"

And this is pretty much the crux of my non-understanding of poetry, especially free verse. I am firmly in the camp that believes that writing

My

name
is

Tania

Does not make the sentence "my name is tania" a poem. And it pisses me off when I see statements like that written as poetry (almost as much as not being able to properly format poem spaces on blogger). But at the same time, the sprinkling around of words on a page is what makes a poem poetry. In my limited understanding, the way you sprinkle those words around indicates the breaths, the pauses, the intonation of these phrases and those things are part of what breathe life into a poem, they make a statement into poetry. Those pauses etc add meaning to a statement. And the sprinkling also creates a visual creation of the words on the page, they create a picture both with the image created in your mind and with the image of the words on the page. So in a sense, yes, scattering words on a page does imbue them with meaning. I mean, the humour in this poem from Gay Haiku just doesn't come across if you don't scatter the words in this way.

I don't understand.
You love it when I do that--
Wait, no. That's Stephen.

So in free verse, how the hell can you tell if a statement should have remained a statement or if it is, in fact, a poem? Do you have to go around turning all free verse poems into sentences to compare and see if the scattering served any purpose? It's all so vague, and I generally like vagueness, but in art it can tend to allow the freedom for genius or the freedom of total laziness, where someone can think they are a poet if they write their name on two lines instead of one. But it's not just the laziness, it's the fact that I often see long free verse poems and think they would be better as prose, and don't quite understand why the author has chosen to sprinkle the words - I guess because I either don't get it (fully possible) or because the poet has not used the spacing to good effect. To use Inconsequential as an example, I never read those poems and think "what would that sound like as just a sentence?" because the poems work so perfectly as they are.

Anyway, if someone can shed some light on poetry, I'm always interested as despite ridiculous amounts of education in literature, I still just don't get free verse poetry. And perhaps that's the whole point, let it be vague, let it be grey.

I wrote a blog on my first crush just a little while ago, so rather than posting again for Sunday Scribblings, I'll just link to the old post. I hope you Enjoy!

The reason I have dragged you all here today is that for me right now, it is not crush time, but crunch time. I have a favor to ask of you, my blogging friends. One of the troupes I dance with is putting on a belly dance Tribal Fusion workshop with Ariellah, and I really really really want this to be a success, or at least for us not to lose money. It's in terribly poor taste to use blog relationships as free advertising, but hey, this won't be the first time I've done something in poor taste and to be honest, I'm getting a little desperate here. If any of you want to help me out by mentioning this workshop on your blog, it would be much appreciated! She is an incredible workshop instructor, and is a founding member of the Indigo (Rachel Brice's group). Info on the workshop is at Raq-A-Belly Dance! as well as checking out Ariellah's site.


"Ariellah Aflalo is one of the hardest working Belly Dancers in the business and it shows in her technique, costuming, emotion and refined taste in music and movement choice. She adds her own deliciously dark touch to the dance and is a pleasure to watch." Rachel Brice (danced with Ariellah in The Indigo, San Francisco)

Workshop Details:

Saturday March 3, 2007 10AM Registration11AM to 2PM (with small break and snack)
Darker Side of Drilling: Learn to fine tune your bellydance technique while learning how to incorporate a dramatic darker side to your dance. Will include a choreography, isolations, pops, locks and snake-like gothic bellydance arm movements.

Sunday March 4, 2007 10AM Registration11AM to 2PM (with small break and snack)Strengthening The Core: Build strength in the legs, abs, chest and arms to enhance fluidity. Will include stretching exercises, execution of certain strenous movements such as backbends and then a short choreography or combination.

Cost:
$75 per day
Location:
North Glenora Community League 13535-109aAve Edmonton, AB
Register:
Registration forms can be picked up at Isis Studios and can be downloaded from Raq-A-Belly dance!
Registration forms can be dropped off at Greenwoods' Books 7925-104St.
Or mailed to: Raq-A-Belly dance! 11011 135 St. Edmonton, AB T5M 1K4

Cheques should be made out to: Raq-A-Belly dance!Your registration will be confirmed by email or phone and only on receipt of payment.
Info: For info call Stacey at (780) 434-1755 or email caasi@raqabellydance.com
Info on Ariellah: http://http://www.ariellah.com/

Eatin' and sexin'. Yummy from Sunday Scribblings as what is sensual is yummy and there ain't nothing more sensual than those two things.

waking up to the sound of someone making you breakfast. the slow, drawn out mmmm as the woman at the table across from you tastes her dessert. popping the case of a newly ripe peapod. balancing a slightly too warm slice of pizza on your fingertips in ancipation of eating it. the dazzle of colour in a salad of fresh greens, raspberries and goat cheese. flame eruption over an alcohol soaked banana. eyes rolling blissfully upwards as heaven is put into your mouth. the first sip of sinfully good red wine. the slow burn of 16-year-old Lagavulin. the actual taste of love when something is prepared for you by someone who truly loves the art of cooking. the aroma from lifting the lid off a pot of stewing tomatoes with garlic, oregano, and basil. walking into a room where you just know chocolate is being melted for you.

waking up to the sound of someone scooching slowly downwards under the covers. hearing the quick, surprised intake of breath as she lets you know you've done something right. the rising sensation of touch as fingers lightly circle soft breasts to slowly arrive to find an already hard nipple. that first flicker of tongue across clit after what seems like years of waiting. his head buried into the curve of your neck, you watch the working play of muscles in his back. finding that spot, the spot on someone else's body that you believe might just be the most beautiful thing on this earth. the taste of ice-cooled lips and tongue on yours. trying out a new flavour of lipbalm you've never sampled before. the sight/smell/taste of his cock as it enters your mouth. picking up his t-shirt and inhaling. being in a store and smelling her scent somewhere, you suddenly remember something and smile that naughtysmug smile because you know what you did last night.

What's this? Kanga has posted a meme to distract me from my thesis? Well I shan't fall for her temptress ways...oh wait a minute, yes I shall.

Here's me using "new" blogger now as the bastards won't let me stick with what wasn't broke.

6 weird things about me (probably harder if I were to try and describe 6 non-weird things about me). If anyone thinks this is TMI, blame Kanga :)

1. I don't just have a fear of moths, I actually think they are spawns of Satan. The Devil's Minions. Beelzebub's Evildoers. Their only purpose here on earth is to quietly invade with their harmless ways and then take over. I don't know why everyone else can't hear the shady deals they cover with that incredibly scary wingflapping noise they make as they hit the lights.

2. I have a secret, never before revealed, belief that all public washrooms (toilets, WCs, bathrooms, restrooms) are bugged with cameras. It's not necessarily that I think the establishments bug them, but that some fetishist(s) is filming us all for his own pleasure. Part of me thinks this is gross, the other part of me thinks there is no real harm in it. It does create a certain performance anxiety when I have to go #2 though, so I try to avoid that particular activity in public toilets. I really have no clue why my brain has created this neurosis.

3. I love change and all the joy it brings, and yet when it is forced upon me, such as this whole old and new blogger thing, I rebel against it to the point of ridiculousness. But really I have no issues with people telling me what to do. None at all. Absolutely none. Nope.

4. I like doing stuff that I'm not very good at. It's why I still like belly dancing. I've never been very good at physical stuff, grace and the like, and so I know I will constantly find belly dancing a challenge. The fact that I know I will never be the best at it is why I love it so much.

5. I am a recyling, fresh food loving, organic toothpaste using, natural fibers wearing, cosmetics-free gal who loves eating at MacDonald's more than life itself. Oh, I should clarify that I do wear cosmetics to perform, just not on a daily basis, just in case someone wanted to call me on that.

6. A big roman nose on a man is my biggest turn on. See here. Can't you just picture that lovely nose softly nuzzling your neck as a prelude to lips reaching your skin and leaving a trail of kisses?
Okay then, I'm off to...why be coy? I'm off to masturbate.

3 of many eulogies I could've written last year. Sunday Scribblings

My maternal grandmother Renee
It's kinda awesome when the strongest woman you know is your Ita. She was also stubborn as hell and just a wee bit racist but you gotta take the bad with the good. She was born in Costa Rica as one of the many middle children in a family of 22 siblings. That's right I said 22. She married the love of her life, who turned out to be a philandering jerk with commitment issues. They had the first divorce in the small town, in a small very catholic country, in which they lived and my grandmother was forced to bear ridicule from the women and offensive overtures from the men for a long time. She also had to raise five children on her own.

My mother and her siblings (all born within 6 years) ate cabbage and coffee and some rice everyday and most developed worms in their tummies. Ironic given that her husband was a high ranking diplomat off fucking a different tart every few months, no? She went through some rough times, but persevered and started the community's first kindergarten, for which she was honoured at her 90th birthday town-wide celebration last year just before she died. All her children made it through and survived, even though she had to make some pretty questionable decisions in order to get cash (like pretty much selling my mom off to her aunt and uncle as they were childless). But poverty such as she lived in makes the survival instinct kick in in ways I simply cannot imagine.

As she got older, she became respected as a fabulous teacher and a very generous woman and the whole town mourned when she died. She did manage to live out her older days in comfort though, which gives me joy. My grandfather came down with Alzeimer's when he was in his late sixties and because of all the partying, quite soon ended up in an old folks' home. All his many tarts deserted him (surprise surprise) but it was okay because the only woman he could remember was my grandmother. And after all the years of cruelty between them, she took care of him. She went everyday to see him and spend time with him and he asked her to re-marry him. He told the priest that though he had treated her terribly, she has still been his only love (a bunch of latin-american male lies I'm sure, but sweet nonetheless). She accepted his offer and they got re-married. He died a number of years later, and left her all his cash. Whether she re-married him because he was still the love of her life or because she knew she'd receive a diplomat's pension I'm not sure, but I suspect it was a bit of both :)

A practical lady with a strong will and nerves of steel until the very end, I will always remember her 87 year old self walking about town in heels because dammit, ladies just don't wear orthopedic shoes. She made fuckin' lemonade at every opportunity, I'm damn proud to be of her stock.

My paternal grandmother Maria
I don't know if my Nonna was ever allowed a moment of pure joy in her life. She was born in a village in Southern Italy, the depression hit, she was never educated but was sent to work at a very early age. She married one man, her love, and he died in the war. She then married my grandfather and he took her away from her family to Canada where her proceeded to beat the shit out of her and her sons for the rest of her life. One of her sons had to run away quick lest he get devoured in the abuse (my dad) and her other son was epileptic and then became schizophrenic when he had the split-brain operation to get rid of the epilepsy (it is a risk of that particular procedure). I was very proud that my dad didn't try to make her life out to be some glorious thing in his eulogy, he acknowledged her suffering.

By the time I came along, she was pretty much destroyed, the essence of "victim." I never knew her very well, my father had needed to get out of an abusive situation and save himself and so we didn't visit all that often. But I still got to see the certain things that made her eyes light up and crinkle at the edges, her sons were her pride and joy, they made her smile a lot. But the biggest thing was that, in classic italian form, she was never happier than when she was in her garden or watching people enjoy her amazing food. She had this really big heart that had been beaten up, but was still there trying to get out. She tried to take care of people and love them, and the Italian community in her city was devastated when she died. Over 250 people came to her funeral. That she formed lasting and beautiful bonds with people shows me that something of herself had survived all the years of abuse. My one grandmother taught me that living without a partner is hard, the other grandmother taught me that living with the wrong man is a lot harder.

My paternal grandfather Pascuale.
God I wish I had been able to get up at my Nonno's funeral and just say it. "We're saying goodbye to an asshole." Everyone was thinking it, and it just made the whole thing awkward not to admit it. He sexually molested young girls, he was an alcoholic, and he beat his wife and children on a regular basis. I'd say that qualifies him as an asshole, wouldn't you? My father's voice quivered with unexpressed rage toward his father as he delivered this eulogy. This man beat my uncle with 2x4 planks of wood when was having epileptic seizures because he was sure the kid was faking it.

The thing is, as I have said before, he was a charming asshole (as was my maternal grandfather, though he was nowhere near as evil). And as I struggle to reconcile the fact that he was the worst of my grandparents, and yet I felt closest to him, I feel I have to describe the things he gave me. He made the best wine this side of Italy, he was generous with the Italian community and gave the get of his hunting and fishing to the old folks in the community all the time. He spent time as a prisoner of war in England and said they were the best years of his life, and he learned his trade there. He was a barber in Canada, and such a renouned one that at his funeral, businesses and old customers in his first Canadian city sent condolensce cards. He played a mean harmonica and accordion.

He gave me one of the best laughs of my life when I was seated with him and Nonna, I was around 25 at the time, and they were both questioning why I wasn't married yet (some older southern italian immigrants have a lot of trouble understanding the merit of being an educated/independent woman). My Nonna was saying "but once you are done this studying, you marry nice rich man and stop all this right?" and I was saying how I didn't really want to get married. Nonno perks up and says with a knowing smile "you know, I know women who never got married. They live together and there are no men. These are nice women, they are okay." And I'm pretty sure he was telling me that he'd figured out that I was a lesbian and that he was worldly enough to be okay with it. The fact that he thought a woman who wanted an education and not to get married at 20 must be a lesbian was hilarious and disturbing, but he was trying to be accepting and that just... well it impressed me.

And unlike my other grandparents, he taught me not one, but many lessons.
1. enjoy life dammit, life is for living.
2. you can't enjoy life without music.
3. a life of gardening/hunting/fishing and using/eating every scrap of food you eat, as well as always eating fresh food, is good for the body, soul, and the world.
4. that almost no human being is entirely evil, they all have redeeming qualities, there is no black and white line seperating the righteous from the monstrous.

My world feels their loss and I'm glad I finally have the time and peace of mind to write and feel this.

A fresh start. The phrase has been given such a self-help book connotation that I am loathe to use it, but it's what I feel is happening for me right now.

After some ludicrous dealings with my landlords yesterday, I am done with the old apartment. The apartment that saw me go through the worst years of my life. And I never realized how much it affected me to keep going back to the same place that housed my depression until I moved out into the warm, sunny place I live in now. Just going back to the old place to clean it left me depressed. Breaking patterns is a very difficult thing to do, and it's so much easier when you can physically break yourself away from places in which those patterns occur. It's why I have generally moved around so much, and because I've been given the opportunity to move around a lot, I haven't given much thought to how destructive it is for me to stay in one place for too long.

All the unnecessary crap I accumulated, both materially and emotionally, because I knew I didn't have to move it around - it was disgusting. I'm not saying all bad patterns are now broken, it ain't as easy as just changing locations, but at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel because I'm moving forward and not entrenched in some ditch. But I know it's not as easy as that, I fucked up a lot in the last two years, and I have to deal with the consequences. Some people make it easier, they see my desire to atone and give me more chances which I try my best to take. Other people, like the phone company for example, are not so receptive to my attempts at atonement. It all just makes me want to crawl back into the hole sometimes because actually atoning for all the things I've done wrong seems impossible, which is why I keep watching season 5 of Angel, hoping it will encourage me to do the right thing and keep trying and not recede:

You know, the thing about atonement is, you never run out of chances... but you gotta take 'em. You can't hide in some hospital room and pretend it's all gonna go away... 'cause it never will. Angel to Gunn in Underneath.

It's hard for me to distinguish what is running away and what is creating a new start. I like running away. It's convenient and there's no need to tie up those pesky loose ends. Loose ends suck. You just run away and leave no forwarding address. It's why I refuse to have a cell phone - all that "getting ahold of me" is just terrible for me. And I generally don't run away from emotional stuff, it's the bureacratic stuff, the jobs, the paper work, the bills. But in the past bad years, I was running away emotionally as well, which worried me. But I've discovered that my need to move around is perhaps not the same as my running away, because you can run away from life just as fast if you stay in the same place.

Part of the reason I stayed was because I was too depressed and apathetic to move, but part of it was that the depression I felt...it's strange I'm not sure how to express it but part of the depression came from the deaths of numerous loved ones and to move on from that depression felt like I was moving on from them. It felt ...is disrespectul the right word? I think so. Eventually I'm starting to realize what all the books say, that there is never enough time to convey the sadness at the loss of a loved one, but eventually you have to move on because not living your life to its fullest is the most disrectful thing you can do. Not appreciating the life you have when others have lost theirs, it's just not right.

Plus, after awhile, all that sitting in your own filth just gets smelly and you don't get laid and it's all bad.

Anyway, it feels good right now, even though I still have a lot of stuff to organize. But the pile doesn't feel quite so heavy now. Though the mountains of laundry do still seem to pile up quite quickly.

Adventures abound again. Feeling lighter is good. Thank you for listening.
And for the geeks - christ you can find anything on youtube.