Monday, August 18th, 2008
Hey! Long time, no see! I mean, no read! Or write! I don’t even know. I had exams. That’s no excuse, I know, but they were terrible! I did no work all term and then wrote a billion essays in four days. It was all sorts of ridiculous. So, technically, I did write. Just not here.
Since I last posted, I had made a nice little pile of issues of the Toronto Star, all of which had certain topics that I wanted to discuss/think about/write about/read again. A couple of days ago, in a frenzied fit of cleanliness, I threw them all out. I do remember one of the articles I read, though, possibly because I was so averse to the topic that I really could not bring myself to read the entire article, and had to stop in the middle of a certain sentence. But, hey, it’s not the article itself I wanted to talk about, so it doesn’t really matter.
I make it a rule not to reveal everything about myself to everyone. That way, I seem more mysterious. No, I’m just kidding. I have a better reason than that which may or may not be revealed at an unidentified later date. One of the things that very few people tend to know - either my closest friends or someone that I may have to eat with at any given time - is that I am a vegetarian. I know. Don’t cringe. I’m not going to lecture you.
Vegans and vegetarians have an excessively bad reputation. Reputations usually exist for a reason, so I acknowledge the fact that some herbivores tend to go above and beyond in terms of promoting their lifestyle. I, personally, do not feel any dire need to throw red paint on people wearing fur. I have picketed, but not for vegetarianism, and certainly not against meat-eaters. I never talk about being a vegetarian, not because I am ashamed, but because people expect me to rant about how I hate the fact that other people eat meat. Like, seriously? Do I look like I care what you do?
To me, it seems more often that I may generally happen to mention the fact that I am eating a lot of vegetables every single day because I happen to be a vegetarian, and then have other people put up their defenses really, really fast, and start saying things like, THE ANIMALS WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND THEN WE WILL DIE AND IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT, YOU STUPID VEGETARIAN! US MEAT-EATERS PWN! Seriously. This has happened. I accidentally told one writer for the school newspaper that I was a vegetarian and I don’t mind the cafeteria food and I had five different people approach me after it was published and say that exact thing, capitalized and everything. Not even kidding.
Anyway, so that is why I don’t talk about being a vegetarian. But today, I will take a huge risk and talk about both my vegetarianism and my emotions attached to it. (Dear lord, I don’t know what I’m thinking.)
About three weeks ago, the Toronto Star published an article with no official title of its own, but it was a segment for the column Incredible Edibles, in which they talk about eating wild animals. Fun. That week, food editor Kim Honey wrote about her adventures in learning to kill and cook a rabbit. I started reading this article, and a little voice in my head instantly told me that I would be okay. Very confusing, since I had barely read the first sentence, but that’s the magic of the brain’s connections to your peripheral vision, and a sense of dread began to fill me. I continued to read until Honey said the following:
I calmed the rabbit by putting it on my chest. Ferri, who has a PhD in psychology, has seen soldiers who served in Bosnia almost break into tears at this point – even battle-hardened men are unnerved by the death of a defenceless animal.
It was at this point that I very neatly closed the newspaper, folded it carefully, and threw it across the room. I could not bear to read about Honey killing the rabbit, and I think it was made worse because of the giant picture of her holding it to her chest. So, I didn’t really get the chance to read that she chickened out.
My own reaction to this was interesting to me. I don’t care if other people eat meat. I subscribe very highly to the philosophy of live and let live. My reason for being a vegetarian is personal, so I can imagine that other people’s reasons for not being a vegetarian would also be personal, and personal things shouldn’t be influenced by other people. So why was this article so horrifying to me? And, apparently, I’m not alone: this article received hundreds of letters (and online comments), which were published in the newspaper a week later. People were disgusted and freaked out, and these are people who eat meat on a regular basis!
I understand my own reaction now. Other people who eat meat all the time were horrified by this article because it was about killing a rabbit. Soft, furry, cute little defenceless rabbits do not deserve to be killed (in the eyes of the average reader), which, technically, is weird, because a bunch of those average readers have actually eaten rabbit. So, maybe I don’t completely understand their reactions. My reaction wasn’t based on the fact that it was a rabbit. I react that way when reading (or hearing) about other animals, too, and I am such a baby about seeing anything like that on television. I walk out or squeeze my eyes shut or do something in order to keep myself from freaking out.
Why I am the way I am in terms of animals is really a story for another day, probably one associated with why I can’t deal with things going wrong with children. But there you have it, my vegetarial confession, something I’ve told maybe two people in my entire life: I am not a vegetarian because of family obligation, religion, or conformity. I am a vegetarian because it makes me sad to think about the animals. Whatever.
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
I have a problem.
(Well, I had a problem. If I’m in the midst of fixing it, it’s not a problem anymore, right? Or is it? I don’t even know.)
I have a problem, and I’ve pretty much lived with it my entire life. I knew it was a problem in 8th grade when I had a crush on this guy who was so beyond messed up in every aspect of his life. He drank so much, he was practically an alcoholic. He did drugs, and not just weed. He got average grades, but pretended to be a worse student than he was. He was talented in many areas, but had no actual goals. His parents each had affairs with other people, and he knew about them.
I just had an innocent crush on him. He was hot for a 13-year-old. Then, I started talking to him outside of school. He talked to me about his parents and his drugs and how he’d never actually gotten a real birthday present, and how he had never felt close enough to anyone to call him or her his best friend. He told me about his ex-girlfriend, and his current girlfriend, and who he wanted to date in the future (his ex-girlfriend). He told me how far he’d gone with a girl, and when, and where. He showed me scars on his arms from after his ex-girlfriend left him.
You would think that these things would freak out little 13-year-old Sanya, but no. I liked him more. I talked to him every single day for hours upon hours after school, and watched the way he behaved during class. He would smile and laugh and flirt with everyone, and get into trouble constantly, but charm himself out of punishment. The way he behaved in front of other people and the things he talked about privately were so opposite, and would give anyone else extreme discomfort in the form of cognitive dissonance, but my head was spinning. I was infatuated. He was complex and troubled and I loved it.
I liked to think that I helped him. I tried. I gave him someone to talk to. He showed some subtle changes in his actions throughout the year. His group of gangsta friends were standing by the lockers one afternoon, relentlessly mocking this one kid for wearing his headgear to school. But he walked away. I watched him bark at his friends, defend the kid, and walk away. I was proud. I felt like I had made a difference. I craved the high that came from feeling like I had successfully changed someone’s life. It became an addiction.
Graduation night, I couldn’t face him or the fact that I wouldn’t see him again, and I left early, skipping out on my friends. I probably will never forget what it felt like to cry in the car on the drive back home. I look back at that time and, yeah, I probably liked him that much, but it was more than that. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had lost more than the guy I liked, or even my friend. I had lost my puzzle.
I still didn’t get it, though. At the time, I thought I just overly cared about people and was absolutely insane, because that summer, I very quickly got over this guy and moved on to my next damaged case. He was gay but not gay but gay and wanted to kill himself. Or something. Whatever. My point is, I have purposely sought out people like this all my life, and made them my friends. I have tried to fix these people, and then complained when things went wrong for me and I had no one to talk to, because people that need fixing don’t really know how to be a friend.
This year, I had a breakthrough. This year, I realized that it wasn’t because I overly cared about people. Yes, I empathize and sympathize very quickly, but the real problem lies in the fact that even if I don’t know the person directly and therefore cannot empathize or sympathize to the same degree, I still obsess over everything that might be wrong with them and how to fix it. I am in love with the puzzle. I am like a House wannabe. I thought I had Reverse Nightingale Syndrome, in that I fall in love with my patient. But when I stripped the friendship/crush/whatever out of the equation, I am just as obsessive about people that I am not friends with and cannot fall in love with.
But, yes, as I was saying, I had a breakthrough. I let go of the last “puzzle” I picked up. I didn’t solve him, and I’m okay with that. (No, not really, and every single day I feel guilty for kicking the poor dog to the curb, but I’m trying.)
Starting two months ago, the only times I will try to solve people-puzzles are a) if I’m not emotionally involved, or b) if I’m getting paid for it. Both of which are basically the same thing.
Thursday, July 17th, 2008
I have been having more headaches over the past few weeks than I had over the past three years, and because I am trying to be psychologically healthy, I’m going to assume it’s because I am stressed out and not because I have a life-threatening brain tumor. I think the headaches are a result of me either completely ignoring the symptoms of impending panic attacks, or daring it to happen (”Bring it, heart palpitations! Do your worst!”). Maybe my body has finally realized that I am not going to slow down, even when I have a panic attack and think that I’m going die, and thus has switched over to headaches. I’m not really sure which of the two is worse.
You know how when you’re in high school, all your teachers tell you that university is sooo much harder, and then you laugh at them, like, haw haw haw, because you got 90’s in high school and therefore you must be a genius? THEY ARE SERIOUS. It’s not even like university is harder, per se. It’s just that certain people, like me, are not used to actually working for things. High school was a joke and a half. This shows some serious flaws in our education system. Why are we expected to go from something like high school to something crazy ridiculous like university?
Which, by the way, I’m almost done. I’m kind of almost done university. Well, I’m not almost done, but I have every term planned out until I’m done, and there are only four of those left, so it kind of feels like I’m done. And then, I supposedly want to go to graduate school. The headache that I’ve now had for three days in a row tells me that I’M DOING TOO MUCH.
(Yet I am still convinced that I can fix other people.)
Friday, July 4th, 2008
This morning, I woke up to three sprightly men who were attempting to create a giant hole in my living room wall. I was confused and, knowing me, frightened at first. I was still consumed by the sleep monster, and in my dazed state, I leaned up against the door and heard The Roommate yell something to the effect of “Bye, boys!” and click, click out of the apartment, jingling her keys the entire way. My eyes popped open, wondering if I had imagined all of that or if she had actually left me alone with the three men that were trying to demolish the place while I was still in it. I opened my door a crack. No, she was really gone. (Seriously, though, I doubt she said anything like “Bye, boys!”, or that she wore stilettos to school that day. I hear things that don’t happen.)
I walked slowly, carefully, on my tippy toes, in pyjamas and braless, and stared out into the living room, and finally - finally - breathed a sigh of relief. MY AIR CONDITIONING IS BEING FIXED TODAY! I ran back into my room and jumped back into bed and squeezed my eyes shut really tight, hoping to fall back asleep. I didn’t. Damn.
Anyway, that was this morning, and I can honestly say that I have not felt this cold (and happy!) since last June. The best part about summer is the air conditioning (and the popsicles and not having to wear a jacket and the smiles and happiness and joy all around!). I enjoy it so much more than I enjoy heat in the winter.
In other news, my psychologist told me that I’m neurotic. Alert the media! And this was only after I told her that I liked reading books in order. Man, wait till I tell her that I save all my prescriptions, important receipts and invoices, and sticky notes, because I’m afraid that I will lose my memory someday and I want these things to remind me of the life I used to have. (Also the reason why I keep 39242347 journals. What if I lose one of them?)
But it’s going well. I’ve only gone to two sessions so far - one last Friday, and one today, and although between last Friday and today, I’ve had about five bazillion panic attacks, I’m learning to deal. I just have to convince myself that the doctors are not wrong, the tests are not wrong, the world is not out to get me, I’m NOT dying, and it’s all about my fight-or-flight response going haywire, but I can teach it to do better. Plus, my panic attacks prepare my body for really fighting or fleeing, and they do such a good job that if I were actually in any sort of danger and needed that response, it’s good to know that my body is so powerful.
I am awesome. (But I totally failed that midterm two days ago. Shit.)
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
One year ago today, I slammed down my credit card on my desk, determined to make a change. And then I carefully typed in the numbers. One year ago, I purchased roughtext.com and thought to myself, hey, I’m not getting any. I might as well vent it out. One year ago, I also bought two years of hosting, so my renewals of my domain and hosting will always be one year apart. Just to confuse me in my old age. Happy first birthday, baby.
(PS. In case you didn’t get it, I renewed the domain for another year, and I still have a year of hosting left, so you are stuck with me for at least another year. And probably many more.)
(PPS. October 10th, 1998, was the day I first opened up Notepad and typed my first <HTML> tag. This year marks ten years. I expect presents.)
(PPPS. The picture doesn’t have anything to do with anything. It’s just proof that I actually have been studying. I will update with something real soon. I promise!)
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
In my cognitive science class, we have weekly assignments in which we have to write a paper-type thing about whatever we learned in class that week. Last week, we learned about analogies, and I decided that I wanted to be a slacker and not put a lot of effort into it, so I decided to write the entire thing in analogies. To be funny, or something. I expected to get no marks on it, but, instead, I got full marks! (The professor has a sense of humour, I think.) I thought I would share one paragraph from my artistic piece on analogies:
Being the colourful, animated character that I am, I often use analogies to explain my disorganized trains of thought. I was walking to school and I tripped over a manhole cover, as graceful as a cross-eyed hippo on rollerskates. I met a boy seven months ago, and I found him very annoying at first, but he grew on me like he was a colony of E. Coli, and I was room temperature beef. Talking to Professor von Schnauder is like willingly choosing to forcefully remove your ears from your head and eat them. Or worse. And me? I was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:/flw.quid55328.com\aakkk/ch@ng but gets T:\flw.quidddaak/ch@nng by mistake. Shaking hands with him was like grabbing a sock full of pudding.
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
I haven’t been sleeping much (read: at all) lately. I just lay in bed at night, in the pitch black darkness, covered in a heavy comforter even though it’s 26° C in my room because my air conditioning is still broken, and the fan in front of my bed is just pushing hot air around, and I toss and turn and throw pillows around, and philosophically wonder, hour after hour, about why I haven’t had a hypnagogic jerk yet. I then proceed to wonder how many times I will get to grind my teeth before they disintegrate into dust.
Five days ago, I got an email informing me that my petition had been granted, and that my academic standing would return to “good”, and I was readmitted to Honours Psychology. I was so happy that I called everyone important and cried for 20 minutes straight, and then emailed all my professors and advisor to thank them for helping me out with the petition. A couple of hours later, I was enrolled in the advanced statistics and research methods courses.
Almost immediately, things began to go wrong. I mean, come on. Of course. The clinical psychology research methods course is full. Both sections. 25 people in each. Full. Full. Me, I’m on the waiting list, and enrolled in the social psychology research methods course. In that class, I have to talk to people and do weekly presentations, and I didn’t even get into the section with the hot professor. Goodie. Now, every five minutes, I check to see if anyone has dropped clinical psychology, even though - who, in their right mind, would do that? - and no one is allowed to drop courses yet, and I will get an email the instant I get in the class, so I really don’t need to keep tabs on it. But I am neurotic.
The other thing that harps on my thoughts is the fact that I was admitted back into the honours program by 0.67%. Yes! Not even a full percent. I am hanging on for dear life by the skin of my teeth. Which means, basically, that I am on the verge of getting kicked out again. This fact, by the way, still doesn’t make me study any harder.
Also, you’d think I would be super pleased with my admittance back into my program and all, but it’s pretty much freaking me out. Back when I was a general student, there were no expectations whatsoever. I could slack off to the nth degree and never get kicked out. I need some divine intervention!
I should have gone into journalism.
Monday, May 26th, 2008
I started getting the Toronto Star delivered to my doorstep (or the building’s doorstep… pretty irritating, trust me) sometime near the beginning of May, suddenly desperate for a little taste of home. How I missed my Linwood Barclay and Ellie and Phil Booth, and the Ideas section on Sunday that told me such great facts as the fact that yesterday was World Geek Day. I realize the Toronto Star is written for 7th graders, but it makes the journalist inside me happy, so I pay with money I don’t have to have it delivered here, also known as the City That Is Not In The GTA Therefore I Look Slightly Stupid.
Anyway, I was reading my prized Saturday issue of the Toronto Star on (you guessed it!) Saturday morning when I came across the comic section. Now, I understand that I am almost two decades old and a university student and I should be reading the New York Times’ debates about whether Bush shows any signs of neural activity, but who doesn’t love the comics? I quickly read through Zits with my comic husband Jeremy, and For Better or For Worse, and Between Friends - old favourites - and skipped over the ones I don’t usually read. This time, however, one of those that I don’t read caught my eye.
It was a Dilbert cartoon, and I have to say that it was the most perfect comic strip I have ever seen in my entire life. First I laughed a little. Then I cracked up completely and brought out the scissors. Yeah, I know. Me? Put up a comic strip on my wall!? THIS ONE WARRANTS WALL SPACE. It describes my relationships with 99.9995% of engineers perfectly. Perfectly! I looked desperately for it on the internets so that I could share it, but to no avail. I then proceeded to call almost every engineering student I know and one real engineer (my father) and, in between DYING LAUGHING, I attempted to re-enact the comic. Over the phone. In different voices. But no one understood what I was saying because I was laughing so hard, and they all eventually ended up hanging up on me. Understandable.
Now, two days later, it occurred to me that I could possibly take a picture. Because I am neurotic, I very carefully took the comic off my corkboard and placed the thumbpins in exactly the same spot had the comic been there, and reached for my camera. Which stopped working again.
Sooo… I took some horrible pictures with iSight, which I tend to forget exists except in emergencies like these. So, here’s to you, Internet. Cheers.
(My favourite is panel 3.)
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
A few days ago, my body decided that it was going to develop some sort of weird lactose sensitivity, and I couldn’t figure it out for a really long time. Like, I kept thinking, wow, I feel really nauseous and disgusting and like I’m going to die in the bathroom and yes, I did just drink milk, but that can’t have anything to do with it, I must be sick, I must have the stomach flu because seven different people coughed on me yesterday. That is all.
Not so.
So, while I couldn’t figure it out, I would stop drinking milk while I was “sick” because milk tends to bother me when I’m already sick, and then I would get better after an entire day of bananas and applesauce, and ginger ale and crackers, and then the next day, I would drink milk again and get “sick” again. But somehow, this pattern completely escaped me and I kept going through this cycle of getting sick, getting better, and getting sick again, and I couldn’t predict when it would stop because I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine that it was milk doing this to me.
You know, I have never liked milk. Maybe this is its payback.
Anyway, so on one of the days that I thought I was feeling better, I woke up, poured milk over my Cap’n Crunch, and got dressed, and went to school. As I’m walking to the bus stop, I feel a little weird. On the bus, I feel a little weird. Walking to class, I feel weird. Sitting outside class and waiting for the engineers in the classroom to finish writing their first exam, I couldn’t even focus on how hot some of them looked, all sweaty and tough. And then my stomach went topsy turvy and the rest is history. I almost left before class even started, but decided that I would stick it out and then take a cab home so that I could lie in my bed in the fetal position and cry about my body rejecting me.
Class finishes, and the entire time I am rubbing my abdomen like some kind of sick freak, and I basically run out of the building and call a cab. It is freezing and pouring, and luckily the cab arrives a few minutes later. But, of course, I’m already soaked all the way through. It’s like the Weather Gods are all, you like rain, eh? TAKE IT!
I step into the cab and pretty much fall into the backseat, and manage to whimper out my address. The cabbie starts driving, and suddenly, he turns around, which I think is weird because aren’t you supposed to keep your eyes on the road when you’re driving?, and says, “Oh, you’re the spoiled girl!”
I just look at his face, and I realize that he is this cabbie that drove me back and forth from Health Services around 7 times in one day because I was going through my “I am SO mothereffin’ crazy” phase and also my “I am so mothereffin’ crazy that I think I am going to have multiple panic attacks on the bus so I cannot take it” phase and also the phase in which I was physically afraid to leave my room. So he had a pretty important role in transporting me safely from my doorstep to a place where they could give me drugs (which I refused).
“Yeah, the spoiled one.”
He just laughed and said he was kidding, which he completely wasn’t. But that’s okay. “How are you doing today?” he asked, still trying to get over his own laughter.
I sighed. My stomach was bugging me and I felt gross and I just wanted to go home. “I’m okay,” I said.
“You sound depressed!”
“I’m not depressed,” I answered quickly. “I’m not the kind of person that gets depressed. I’m just not feeling well.”
“Oh, well, you expect a lot out of life.”
I stared out of the window, contemplating what he had said. “I usually get it.”
“See!?” He laughed, utterly pleased with himself. “Spoiled.”
“I don’t mind being spoiled because I plan to be rich.” I almost growled. I just wanted to go home.
I finally got there after a good ten minutes of him going on and on about how spoiled I am and how he tells all his other cabbie friends about me and they laugh, and then I stumbled into my apartment and into my room and into my bed, and spent three hours drinking ginger ale and watching Gilmore Girls. Spoiled, indeed.
At some point after that, I called my mother and asked her if it was possible to develop a lactose intolerance. She said no.
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Jason Mraz’s new album was released on Tuesday, and I had spent excessive amounts of money (not really) to preorder it so that it would arrive at my doorstep the MOMENT it released. So, I anxiously checked the mail on Tuesday at 6:00 AM, even though I knew that the mail guy comes at around 12:30 PM, and then I checked again at 8:00 AM, then at 9:00 AM, then at 11:00 AM, and then I gave up and was sad for the rest of the day. Well, that’s a lie. I wasn’t sad so much as I was PISSED, because, honestly, what is the point of preordering if it doesn’t arrive when it’s supposed to? I could have gone down to HMV or wherever and bought it myself on the day that it was released and wouldn’t have to go through the torturous process of checking the mail like a crazy person. (Man, it was even more intense when I was waiting for university acceptance letters, which is ironic because I found out that I got accepted at UW at 12:30 AM on the dot by checking the application website randomly, and I got the letter, like, an entire week later.)
Anyway, I was so angry, and I was bitching nonstop to anyone that would listen about how much I officially hate Amazon.com for being so completely unreliable, and, grrr, etc. So then, because I’m not one for holding grudges against big companies, I forgot all about the expecting the album and went to school the next day in the pouring rain, and then also walked back in the pouring rain and got splashed by a truck, and I had to go pick up ginger ale because I am dying, so I was walking home with this bigass bottle of ginger ale, and I walked into the door of my building, which was being painted, so I had a nice white stripe down my jeans, and then, I was like, OH MY GOD, I should totally check the mail, but Sanya, remember not to expect anything or else you will be disappointed!
I was not disappointed.
“We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.” is brilliant. I have no words, but then I never have words when describing him, because they just would not be sufficient. His writing is incredible, and I found it kind of interesting that he wrote a song about his parents’ divorce. He also works amazingly with other people. He has this amazing duet with James Morrison and another amazing duet with Colbie Caillat, who is kind of annoying, but the song is good. This song is so lovey dovey and it’s odd because he was on this radio show on BBC, and he was performing it, and he said, “It’s a song about two best friends who realize that they’re in love”, and the chick goes, “Oh, are you in love?”, and of course, my heart completely jumps and I pray that he somehow says, “Yes, I am in love with Sanya”, but instead, he says something like, “Well, I have a best friend, and we have a lot of fun together, but I don’t really know if it’s love yet. We have a lot of fun, so maybe that is love. Who knows.” And then, of course, he has this song in which I completely die because he says, “Let me feel you upside down, slide in, slide out”, etc., and I’m just like GOOD LORD TAKE ME NOW.
It’s weird to see how far he has come, and even weirder to think that “The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)” came out 9 years ago. Man, I am old.
Besides the actual music on the CD (which, like always, is completely different from how he is live because there is so much studio stupidity on there, but he sounds like he’s having fun, so whatever), I was, first of all, annoyed about the fact that the songs from the last EP (”We Steal Things”) are basically unavailable everywhere unless you preordered the huge gigantic package with all the EP’s plus the album on CD and EP, which cost like a bazillion dollars and is pointless for anyone who is not planning on playing the EP’s or framing them to stare at all day. So, I obviously did not purchase that package, and bought “We Sing” and “We Dance”, which have acoustic and demo versions of the songs on the album, from iTunes. And, of course, they are just not going to release “We Steal Things”, because apparently Jason Mraz is trying to be clever, and released the EP in this cardboard sleeve with “We Steal Things” written on it in sharpie, so that it looks like he actually stole it. And apparently his plan was to make the songs on it super rare so that the only option we, the fans, have, is to steal them. Ha ha, Jason. Ha ha.
Anyway, I went off topic, as per usual. What I really wanted to share is the artwork on this album, because it is so random and strange that I think it really would be a crime to not share it. I cannot figure much of it out. Or any. But whatever. I still love him.
