Thursday, March 31, 2005

Aw Heeeeeell No!

Well, it could have been worse. Much worse.

Marianne -- The Romantic
You're Mariane Dashwood from Sense &
Sensibility! You are the romantic
youngster, also found in Jane Austen's work as
Catherine of Northanger Abbey and
possibly Georgiana Darcy of Pride and
Prejudice. You wander through life like Red
Riding Hood in the forest, picking wildflowers
and humming a happy song... and you can't see
the wolf right in front of you! Ruled by heart
and not by head, you are best advised to to
learn a little caution, before you are forced
into a better acquaintance with the ways of the
world.

Which Jane Austen Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

posted by Em @ 1:40 PM  0 comments

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Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Hint: It's NOT a S&M Orgy

What's lit by a swivelling lamp, involves sharp metal tools, and tastes like blood and latex?

Em just got home from the dentist. Joy. My face was sprayed with cleaning grit, and even now my mouth tastes like bloody mint and my teeth go *grit* when I bite down. It's like I've been eating sand. Minty sand.

Also had my first lesson with a standard transmission. Double-joy. While shifting into 2nd gear I somehow managed to let my zeal lead me to rip the ball off the top of the stick-shift, exposing bare wires.

Needless to say, Mom drove the rest of the way home.

I'm getting something to drink. Ice, maybe. Or alcohol.

Agent Em Out.

posted by Em @ 3:57 PM  0 comments

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Moulin Ruse

This is going to be a general rant. Don't expect anything extremely witty and or funny. I'm just horrified at the moment as to my mother's viewing choice on TV.
Today began all right. Got up around 11. (Ah Spring Break.) Considering my body clock usually sees fit to wake me up around 8 am (weekends included,) it's nice to know that I am able to sleep in SOMETIMES. Then again I was also up past midnight finishing TWO chapters of a fanfic because I was hit by a gargantuan guilt-trip along with creational fervour. I barely managed to brush my teeth and drag a nightshirt on over my head (because sleeping in blue jeans rarely turns out well the next morning. That is, unless you have a penchant for buckle and seam marks all up and down your legs and stomach. I don't, so I had to rouse myself enough to actually button this shirt. (Which, at 12:30 pm, I am still wearing, along with striped purple flannel drawstring pants. It's purple plaid, soft, fuzzy, warm, and comfortable. I went through a lot of trouble matching up the buttons and holes in a sleep-deprived, pain-racked state, and damnit I am going to wear it as long as humanly possible, in order to wring out the last drops of its usefulness as a garment.) I had a couple of storebought blueberry scones (they were okay. A little dry, but okay.) My mother also saw fit to hook up the juicer attachment to the food processor and make fresh squeezed orange juice. Always before in my life, orange juice was squeezed by hand more for the novelty of having "hand squeezed juice" rather than the need for liquid sustenance. These attempts usually resulted in two desecrated halves on an orange, which no one wanted to eat, and half a tablespoon of sour, pulpy-yet-watery, thin yellow liquid that was drunk for the sake of saying we didn't waste it. Anyhow, this orange juice was somehow better. It was the sweetest orange juice I've ever tasted (including stuff from concentrate) and the oranges were well and truly gutted by the machine juicer, not leaving me to feel guilty that my whim for fresh-squeezed orange juice was depriving a starving child of his vitamin C. The machine yielded more orange juice than Iwould have expected.
Anyhow. My mother woke me up this morning with a glass of the said orange juice. This leads me to remember my cocky-assed Foods teacher, who is a nice enough guy but a little bit odd in the head. Half of the girlsi n last year's graduating class were in my Foods class and those same females repeatedly expressed a wish to jump this guy. In my opinion, this was becauseh e was the only male teacher under 30 who wasn't A) Married B) An intern or C) Weirdly disfigured in the face. This guy looks normal. Which is a rarity at my school. The general male population was dropped on its face at birth. Considering that the girls in my Foods class hooked up on a regular basis with male from the general population base at my school, it's understandable that their tastes in men had been lower to fit the standards of their circle of acquaintance. Thus the lusting after the teacher. *shudders* Anyhow, this teacher, besides being a cocky little bitch most of the time, loved to hear us complain about how crappy it is to wake up on Monday mornings and have to go to school. He would regale us with tales of how, throughout his life, he never had an alarm clock, as his mother would always wake him up by shaking him gently and bringing him a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I'm pretty sure this wasn't the 50's, but still, I can picture his mother in a frilly apron and crinolines, with a freakishly bouffant blonde hair-do. She would get up, dress, do her hair and nails and make up, then set about fixing a full breakfast for her family, including toast, waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, cold cereal, sliced fruit, ten kinds of fruit juice, milk, tea and coffee. EVERY DAY. I kinda liked (read: felt pity for) this teacher, and though most of the time I felt like patting him on the head, I also felt the insistant urge to take an electric mixer to his face. Usually I just sat there and made caustic comments on his lack of female companionship, along with calling his sexuality into question. (Note that I never outright insulted the dude, I just made casual, smooth little observations about his life, or what we saw of it.) The other girls thought I had no sex drive because I wasn't eager to throw myself at this man and hump his leg. The legality of the case wasn't an issue to any of them, one of whom I know for a fact plans to become a lawyer. God help us all.
Incidentally, I've recently come to the realization that I have no sex drive. None. Nada. Libido es nunca. (Not sure if that is even proper Spanish, or any existing language for that matter.) This doesn't bother me beyond the vague irritating idea that as a teenager I really ought to be feeling some kind of tingly-ness over the opposite sex. (This doesn't mean I prefer girls. I don't. I happen to have a crush on a MALE celebrity, but I don't fixate on this as a possibility, so it's not like I'm eschewing all men of my own acquaintance to save myself for a certain heartthrob. I just...can't...feel anything romantic towards the men and boys I know.) Besides, the perfect men in history are all fictional, (Jesus aside. And I'm not about to go crushing on Jesus.)
But back to my main grievance at the moment. My mother, innocently channel surfing...has come across Moulin Rouge, which has been playing almost incessantly on MuchMusic or MuchMoreMusic for the past week or so. Now personally, I can't stand Moulin Rouge. The colours and lights are all very pretty, and the songs are good. But I'd rather listen to the songs without being forcefed the story as well. If MR were an indie film, or had done substantially less well at the box office, I might find it vaguely palatable. The fact that it is so overrated and every teenybopper from here to Boston just drools over this movie is enough to put me off even the best movie. (And this is NOT the best movie.) The story is predictable, and the only characters I ever liked was the midget and Jim Broadbent (whom I wuv as a cuddly wil' Bwitish actor. He's just so cherubic.) After hearing many many girls gushing over this, I got so fed up that I watched it once in its entirity (for far be it from me to judge a movie I haven't seen,) and vowed never to do so again, unless upon the pain of death. I have nothing against the cast, or director or anything. The set and costume design was lovely, the choerography watchable, the lighting magical. I loved Baz's "Sunscreen" monologue (never got around to watching Romeo + Juliet. The idea of Claire Danes wearing wings and making out with Leo is not enough to induce me to rent it.) Nicole Kidman divorced Tom Cruise and has a cute accent, so she must have SOMETHING going for her. Ewan was good in Big Fish (which was a good movie, I found, in spite of the HBC-ness. She was in so much makeup it was hard to tell who she really was half the time.)
Just the never-ending slew of "OMG I luved this movei it was so GR8!" and "OMG i totaly cryed at teh end, u guyz!!!11!1!1!!!!" was enough to render me ill. This story is classic. It ends tragically, and yet love perserveres beyond death. Try reading some romantic novels from the late 1700's, early 1800's. Many heroines met the same fate. There many Bollywood movies which have the star-crossed duo's dying. This ending is not rare, and simply because this is the first movie YOU have seen where it happens does not make this "teh best movei of teh centurie!" Just because Hollywood finally cashed in on the "tragic end to the bittersweet romantic tale" jackpot doesn't mean it's a breakthrough in film-making. MR made this ending mainstream, and somehow, the movie has managed to sell out its perfectly good story by revamping it so 15 year olds the world over are wishing they could fall into true love and then die. I'm not saying death is the end to love, but why mess with a good thing? If you're alive and in love, let's hope it lasts longer than that.
MR has made a classic story go big-time Hollywood, and what kills me is the fact that there are many great books and movies out there with similar stories which have been glossed over by the big-named-big-budget mask of the Moulin Rouge phenomena.
Don't tell me that the Bohemian lifestyle of 1899 Paris can be shown in a movie that cost $52.5 million to make, and raked in $58 million at the box office. In Hollywood terms, this might be paltry, but that is still more money than I plan to make in my lifetime. Bohemian Paris wouldn't have been full of fresh-faced young actors and gorgeous starlets wearing silks and satins and jewels (albeit costume jewelry) who live in decadent, well-lit apartments. It might have been more historically accurate (of not as visually appealing to the drooling masses,) if it had been a lower-budget production with realistic settings. I know, I know, the movie isn't supposed ot be 'real.' It's a movie about the once-in-a-thousand-liftimes kind of love that trancends death. Big whoop. The point is, my darling little pre-teens, that that's exactly it. Don't go looking for that kind of love any time before you're twenty, at least. You may not find it until you're 60. You may never find it. That's what the reality of it is. It's great that we've taught a generation to dream again, but at what cost? I, for one, do not want to sell my soul to Hollywood in order to achieve and maintain a sense of the miraculous in everyday life.
We shouldn't look to a fantasy movie for the basis of our reality. The fandom for MR is a mask to cover our society's desperate need for love, magic, freedom--whatever those Bohemian ideals are--and a desire to create the same. We need to look inside ourselves for this kind of happiness, freedom, and magic. Because you sure as hell won't find it by sitting inside a giant elephant's head while Ewan croons to you and Elton John has to be physically restrained to prevent him from beating someone to a bloody pulp.
If I had my life to live over again, I'd go to see Moulin Rouge in the theatres, and when I came out at the end, I'd find the producer, the director, the creative consultant, the popcorn-slinger--anyone would suffice--and throw a handful of toonies into their face, screaming: "I've paid my whore!"

Wearing jeans to bed, freshly squeezed orange juice, my former Foods teacher and his Stepford Mom (ick,) my sex drive, and most of all, Moulin Rouge-------------------->GUNNED DOWN!

P.S. If you're into bittersweet romantic musicals, I highly suggest seeing Elton John's Aida. (Verdi I think did the opera, which is great, but I like watching things in English.) Aida follows similar lines, (think R&J in ancient Egypt, sorta, but with twists,) and it has more of an uplifting ending, in my view. I like tragic endings too (DPS) but uplifting ones are good too, to show that people can recover. Aida puts an more interesting spin on things in my mind than does MR. Or R&J for that matter (if I have to read "I did this for my higschool english project..." one more time before I read a half-assed R&J fanfic poem, I will kill someone.)

posted by Em @ 12:31 PM  0 comments

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Eastern Europe and California---I Love You!

Day Two:

Projected Food Intake:
Soup and Vegetables

Actual Food Intake:
Cheerios, Leftover burrito, fruit, and perogies.


I've always wondered where we got our sterotypical Eastern European folk men and folk women. The tubby lil' cherubs with the ruddy faces, paisly headscarves and accents that sound as though they're speaking with a moutful of marbles. And fudge. But now I have the answer.
Perogies.
The buck stops here, diet-wise. Frankly, the whole idea of dieting and all that has always sounded vaguely stupid in my head. During Spring Break, with a lot of time on my hands, I figured I might as well try it before I knock it.
I have tried.
I will now knock.

This was one of the most singularily stupidest ventures I have ever set out upon. All I succeeded in doing was adding more roughage (sp?) and liquids to my diet while eating smaller portions at dinner. This is good. What is not good is that I have a huge stainless steel pot half full of soup sitting in my downstairs fridge.
Now in this case, it would be optimistic to say that the pot of soup is indeed, half EMPTY, rather than half full.
This soup is good, and I will eat it. But no amount of weight I could ever lose would make up for the self-imposed guilt I felt over eating the foods I liked. I did not stuff my face with greasy mounds of pizza and hamburgers and deep fried ice cream (which btw actually exists and is okay in moderation from this Mexican restuarant in town.) The point is, there's nothing horrendously wrong with the way I was eating before. If this 'diet' has made me do anything differently, it's been that instead of having pretzels or copping out for nachos with cheese, I am now reaching for fruit. I like fruit. And drinking lots of water. This is good. This is a good thing. Now comparitively, it's horrible; because I SHOULD be eating soup and nothing but soup and feeling miserable.
I find that I don't give a shit how I SHOULD be feeling about all of this. The fact is, I feel good. Great, in fact. I have made minor changes in my life that will affect me far better in the long term than crash dieting will in the next seven days. I am forming good habits rather than getting into the cycle of yo-yo dieting (which I have never experienced, as this was my first true attempt at any kind of established dieting scheme,) which I hear is really, really awful, and less healthy than consistant work.
Is it better that I should sit, feeling miserable because I'm eating soup, guilty because I ate a burrito and a handful of perogies over the last 48 hours; or, should I sit and feel happy because I like fruits, veggies, water, cranberry juice and skim milk and could very easily fit these things into my life on a regular basis to eke out the other good stuff I consume as opposed to existing solely on them for the next week?
Personally, I'd rather feel happy, eat what I like in moderation, and enjoy the diverse yet healthy fare that the planet has to offer. Don't even start with the chemicals and pestecides covering the juicy plum I'm about to bite into. If I can't see it or taste it, it might as well not be there. If I get cancer when I'm 50 or 60, so what? Hpefully they'll have cracker cancer treatments by the time I've consumed enough DDT-laden California strawberries to induce a tumor. If not, at least I'll have eaten a helluva lot of good strawberries.
Except, well, no offense California, but your strawberries suck. They have no taste. They are, however, very, very pretty, and look very well in pasteries and stuff with their size and colour. There are other things about you that I love, California. Your amusement parks are the cleanest I've seen anywhere; redwoods are kick ass trees (BC wins the Awesome Tree Race hands down, though;) Hollywood has put out some good stuff over the years, (also some shitty stuff but that's all a matter of opinion and we won't open that can of worms until we hit the GG and SB Awards;) and getting lost with my family while on vacation and circling through Inglewood in a rental car full of white Canadians was a scary thrill ride I'll never forget. To this day, I lock my doors when I drive, and I live in a town that can rival Florida for retirees per capita.
So thank you, California. And thank you, Eastern Europe, for making perogies and borscht accessible to the world.


Note: The Golden Gun and Silver Bullet Awards are coming soon! The Emmys were taken and the Jackies sound like something weird covered in body paint from a drink-sodden frat house Down Under, so here we are with the GGs and SBs! The lists are being tweaked up until the last minute before posting, so send us your comments and thoughts on who or what you think should be given either award. (GGs are on Santa's Nice List; conversely, SBs are on the Naughty.) And unless Andy stops bugging us about it, he will be stricken from the list of remote possibilities of receiving either award.


"Hiya kids, to thine own self be true, neither a borrower nor a lender be, and remember, drinkin' and drivin' don't mix!" (Actual quote from a hilarious radio play known as the 6 Minute Hamlet.)

Anyhow, catch you all on the flip side (where ever that is, I'll probably be there after last call at your local bar,) and remember to think of Em and Jackie for your everyday bitchy satire and pms-ing needs!
(Seriously, with this website, all you need is a blow-up doll with a caustic expression on her face and a mouth full of razor blades and you've got yourself a bonafide girlfriend.)

posted by Em @ 10:27 PM  0 comments

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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Pretend Like Nothing Happened

The Death-Wish Diet: Day One

Projected Food Intake:
Specially-made Diet Soup
Fruit
Sugarless juices, skim milk, and water

Actual Food Intake:
1 large bowl of Diet Soup (eaten somewhere between breakfast and lunch.)
An apple, an orange, 1/4 of a canteloupe, 1/8 of a watermelon
2 huge glasses of cranberry juice, 1 huge glass of skim milk, and water, water everywhere... (there was a can of ginger ale I tried to smuggle upstairs, but that got intercepted by Mrs. Em's Mom.)

Around 4 pm my mother began planning dinner. Not just dinner. Nothing gross like seafood anything or crap a la cardboard. She began to concoct the most mouthwateringly glorious burritos on the face of the earth. I have had these burritos before, and they are one of my favourite dishes in the history of EVER.

Now, here at GDATIG, we have a fondness for burritos. At least I do. I'm not too sure how Jackie's feelings tend when it comes to the sweet, succulent tortilla package of Mexican meat, given her recent foray into the Heartland of the Burrito itself, and the myriad references to Peter Jackson's 'burrito,' which have arisen in the past.
Me, however, I love burritos.
I am on the Nazi-Diet-From-Hell, and my benevolent mother sets about making the best burritos I have ever tasted. Burritos from a shack at the side of the road would have been temptation enough, even if I were stuffed to the brim and on my way home from a burrito-eating contest. But burritos, from a glorious recipe, decades old, handed down to my mother from a nice old lady at my church...(a nice old lady who is unofficially the Past Mistress in the Art of Cookery,) what mortal could resist?
For these, friends, are the burritos of the gods.

For when Odin sits in Valhalla, for what does he need mugs of foaming mead? To wash down that burrito!
When Zeus, Hades, and Posiedon have their poker nights on Mount Olympus, what does Zeus beg and plead with Hera to make for him and the boys? Burritos!
When that Vishnu is busy multi-tasking, and he gets a rumbly in his tumbly, he needs a meal that can fit easily into 1 of his 4 palms. Where does he turn? Burritos!
How did Buddha get to be so cuddly and corpulent? Burritos!
When people go to God for spiritual fullfillment, so sayeth the Lord:
"The answer? I am the Lord your God...and burritos!"
When Jesus and his disciples had the Last Supper, did they break bread together? No, they had burritos!

I think I've made my point. Until now, I've never understood why people made such a big deal about how diets are so hard. Until now, I've been like: "Yeah whatever, quit your whining, bitches." Until I was still hungry after eating all the fruit and soup I could hold and my mother began to make burritos.
I had a long talk with my mother, who told me that she did this diet for seven days, lost 6 of the predicted '10-17' pounds then gained back five. Given this, I did what I felt I had to do. What I felt I owed to myself.
I owed myself that burrito. I ate that burrito. It was the best burrito I've ever tasted, touched, held, gazed at, in my life.
I make no attempt to hide what I did. I have justified my eating that burrito. I will eat fruit, veggies, soup, whatever the diet specifies, for lunch and breakfast. At dinner, I am allowed a responsible portion of whatever my mom has made. In this case, one burrito. And a half. (Note that these burritos were not made to be eaten one at a time. In a perfect world, I could have eaten upwards of three on a good day.) Did I abuse the power of the diet? Probably. Did I bribe my mother to let me have half another burrito and two Tostitos? Hell yes I did. You can't have burritos without a nacho chip or two to keep it company. Was any of this fair? To me? To the dieting principles? Of course not.
A Covert Burrito-Eating. Lies, Deceit, and Stuffing Oneself with a Burrito. Burrito-gate.
Call it what you will. All I know is that I had a burrito. I'm not proud of it, and I know I have failed, as all humans must, for what are we but the flawed, tattered remnants of our former selves? Man has fallen, and humanity sunk to an all-time low. All that can raise us to a higher state of being is God. God and the Burrito. I may have sold my soul to own that burrito for one glorious, shining moment, but when the dust has settled, you have to ask yourself, did I make the right choice? Was it worth this agonizing guilt, this everlasting shame in the eyes of my fellowmen, simply to feel the sweet, spicy, beefy juices mingling with my saliva and running over my tongue and down my throat, to fill my stomach as it hadn't been filled all day? Have I sacrificed my morals, my ideals, simply for the fading illusion of something better than this bereft, woebegone state of despair? I have sold out to The Man for a burrito.
And DAMN if it wasn't delicious.

My report will continue on Day Two of the Death-Wish Diet in what could very well become a week-long reporting special.
This is Agent Em, signing off to continue re-con in the Death-Wish Diet Combat Zone. The area is littered with ice cream and munchies. It's a mine-field out there, girls. You'll have to watch your six. We ain't in South Beach anymore, ladies. Anyone who doesn't think they can take the heat can go home right now and spend the night with a pint of Rocky Road and a Meg Ryan movie marathon.

P.S.
It doesn't help that tomorrow is National Chip and Dip Day, followed by National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day, then, the 25th is both Pecan Day AND Waffle Day. The 28th is Something on a Stick Day, and I'm guessing it's going to be either cool, creamy, and sinfully rich; or hot, salty, deep fried and smothered in condiments and a sweet honey/beer batter. It's going to take all the horror they can muster on the 31st, 'Clam on the Half Shell Day,' to turn me off of my lust for the forbidden.

P.P.S.
We speak of this to NO ONE.

posted by Em @ 6:36 PM  0 comments

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Monday, March 21, 2005

The Death-Wish Diet

In lieu of Jackie, we now have Nicki, who had become a mutual guest blogger in Jackie's absence. This convo began this morning on msn as Em announced the adoption of a new diet which her mother tried years ago with limited success. This diet involves copious amounts of soup. Em is attempting to slim down for Grad or she must face the frieghtening prospect of Scary Metal Panties. (No shit, I saw them at Sears. The corset is not lost, only forgotten; not dead, only sleeping.)

I give you: The Death-Wish Diet! Atkins, Eat Your Heart Out! (A number of really bad jokes and puns could be made with that one sentance, but we shall refrain.)


Em Says:
Hiya kidlet.
Nicki Says:
Heya hunny.
Em Says:
Mmm endorphins.
Nicki Says:
Lol, oh yeah.
Nicki Says:
Coffee Crisp
Em Says:
Nice.
Em Says:
I got this recipe for soup online, and I'm gonna do this 7 day diet thinger. Here’s hoping.
Nicki Says:
Yeah I may do that too.
Em Says:
Cool.
Em Says:
I'm gonna go buy the soup ingredients, make the soup, and start tomorrow.
Nicki Says:
Koolies.
Em Says:
So I can return to school all svelte and smug.
Nicki Says:
I'm gonna wait till after my birthday.
Nicki Says:
Then I'll do it.
Em Says:
Yeah, that makes sense. Dammit I just remembered we have a freezer full of three kinds of ice cream. Dammit, dammit, dammit! And nacho chips in the cupboard! DOUBLE DAMMIT!
Nicki Says:
Lololololololololol.
Em Says:
Oh hush you. This is what I get when my mother shops when she's hungry, a house full of ice cream, chips, butter tarts and stuff.
Nicki Says:
Nacho chips are ok in dieting.
Em Says:
Yeah but chips aren't on the list of crap I can eat.
Nicki Says:
Yummy yummy.
Nicki Says:
Yeah I know that.
Em Says:
*sniffle*
Nicki Says:
It sucks.
Em Says:
I'm gonna do this at home though when I can distract myself with the TV and computer and won't be mindlessly stuffing my face like I do sometimes when faced with a vending machine at school.
Nicki Says:
Lol, and I'm the one who has to be away from the house, like at school where I never eat.
Em Says:
Good point...it may actually be rougher watching my family eat chips and ice cream while I have...soup.
Em Says:
Kind of like self-induced PMS.
Nicki Says:
Hella.
Em Says:
Man I am going to be one crabby bitch.
Nicki Says:
I know I was.
Em Says:
Maybe it's a good thing I’m going to remove myself from polite society for seven days and then emerge like a butterfly from the cocoon.
Nicki Says:
Lol. Yeah, maybe safer.
Em Says:
Yeah. Anyone who knocks on my door or calls my house within the week following tomorrow will suffer pain unheard of since the Holocaust.
Nicki Says:
So go with a 20 foot pole, got it!
Nicki Says:
Then run like shit!
Em Says:
I'm on this energy-giving elixer soup shit, trust me, I will catch you.
Nicki Says:
Lol, even when I start 20 feet away, I’m fucked.
Em Says:
Exactly.
Let sleeping bitches lie.
Nicki Says:
Hella.
Em Says:
So I'll be like the guinea pig and test run the diet.
Nicki Says:
Haha! Yay test-subject!
Em Says:
Hush. :P I get the feeling the next week’s gonna be hellish. Goodbye bread, I’ll miss you!

{Convo ends when Nicki leaves to go get a turkey sandwich and Em goes to buy her ingredients for The Soup.}

posted by Em @ 12:19 PM  0 comments

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Sunday, March 20, 2005

No One Is Envying Em

Bon Voyage! Jackie is in Mexico and Em is jealous of her bathroom decor.
Em is feeding her neighbour's rabbit for the next few days while they're on vacation and no one is jealous of her.

BTW: Looks like Em will be remaining local for the summer, and I'm going to apply at a local grocery store tomorrow because my friend Amanda works there and said that they might need soemone over the summer due to someone going on maternity leave. Plus I have experience as a grocery bitch. (Thank you, Last Summer!) I hope I get in here, cos apparently it's a really nice place to work, and it's much closer to home and I know people there.

Now look! We did a guest entry for Nicki's blog! Hoorayyyyy!

Check this out:

http://turtledance.blogspot.com/2005/03/guest-entry-from-gunners-at-gunning.html

posted by Em @ 4:31 PM  0 comments

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Tuesday, March 15, 2005

St. Patrick Can Kiss My Shamrock

Warning: The entry below contains copious amounts of mild hatred towards a certain person. If you read this and realize it is YOU, think hard over what I've said, because you KNOW I'm right and you're one screwed up person.

Random Notes Before We Start in on the Hate:

GG and SB Awards: they’re on their way to publication. We’ve been compiling this shit for months. Trust me, it’ll be the event of the season. Watch your TV guide for showing times in your area.**
**For those of you who are somewhat dense, we will not actually be appearing on TV.

Jackie on Holiday! Jackie’s gunna be on haitus for the next two weeks, getting sunshine and all that good vitamin D crap. When she returns, we’ll be expecting a full Gun-Down of Mexico and its people. We will be saving the GG & SB broadcasts until she has returned, and probably delay them until spring break is over, because Em’s plans as of yet are not very firmly in place and she could wind up on the other side of the continent for all she knows. (Em: I am really, really beginning to get weirded out by referring to myself in the 3rd person here.) Anyhow, she will be missed and her return shall be heralded by Em standing in the airport with a gigantic bunch of balloons, a clown with a ‘Welcome Home!’ sign, a brass marching band, and an obscenely huge bouquet. (Em: *snerk* Yeah, no. I am SO broke…)

On a similar note…Em has a job interview tomorrow! *Fingers crossed!* If I get the job it means all my internet access will be restricted to weekends, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I’d rather have limited internet than no job. And it’s a sweet job in my opinion.
And on to the Main Attraction:

St. Patrick’s Day. The Day of St. Patrick. Saint Patrick’s Feast Day.

If by ‘feasting’ you mean ‘drinking and lots and lots of green,’ then I can agree whole-heartedly. Now, I don’t have a particular hatred for the Irish. In fact, I kinda have a soft spot in my heart for them. They try so hard at everything, and you have to give them props for being so consistent in their good-natured (sometimes not so good-natured) hatred of the British. But I’ll get to the general populous in a minute. Now, my beef with the Irish goes back. Waaaaay back. Say, about what is it now…*counts* It’d be about 6 years, I suppose. I met this girl. This Irish girl. This scary, dangerous, Irish girl. She and I were friends for a while, (and sort of still are on a speaking-acquaintance.) We were too much alike I suppose, to get along well. I can be fairly stubborn, but she's plain pigheaded. She is deceitful and mean. I'm being honest here. And I'm not hiding. I'm even being nice by not publishing her real name anywhere. Although she might somehow find this and realize it's her. But I don't believe that she could honestly deny any of the accusations which are to follow here. She was a stubborn, hard-headed, cocky, arrogant little bastard. (Sounds like I am describing a guy, yes, and this chick is fairly butch and has been known to make out with girls when drunk, but that is not the point and she has a boyfriend with really long hair now.) It’s been a love-hate relationship. Mostly mild, annoyed hate on my part for the past few years. She used to be a really good student, a ‘good girl,’ if you will, but not to the point where she’s goody-goody. She was just ‘good’ enough that it made it really awkward when she started chronically lying to her parents and trying to cover up her weekend (sometimes week-day) drinking binges in which the aforementioned girl-on-girl action would occur, insisting that she didn’t know what she was doing. I’m not aware of the status of her grades exactly, but it’s painfully obvious that she has gone form being a preppy poser (oh God don’t get me started on her being a poser.) Except before she began the smoochiness she’d call around the room with a rousing "Hey everyone! Look at me! Look at what I and ______ are doing! Tee Hee! We’re so avante garde it hurts!" Her poser-ness began when she began drinking designer coffee.

Now there’s nothing wrong with coffee, designer or otherwise. Unless you’re drinking it for the express purpose of being noticed to be drinking designer coffee, projecting the image of a cool urban socialite with money burning holes in her cute preppy pockets. I seriously doubt that she even likes coffee beyond her newly formed habit now as a result of forcing herself to give in to peer pressure and buying the percolated Hell-swill for 5 bucks a pop. Take up tabs of acid. Please.

Now, as I’ve said before, this is a small town. My mother was stopped at a red light one day in the ‘downtown’ area. (Note that downtown is about a five minute walk from uptown.) She glanced over casually to see our wee lassie sitting in front of a posh bakery with a foreign-style name and European architecture. Wrought iron and all that rustic chic shit. For fare to offer they had posh European baked goods and designer coffee. Our girl was seated in a street-side table, with a grande cup of designer coffee in front of her. My mother watched in amusement as she began to arrange herself. I swear. She settled herself for a good long while, (the red lights take forever in my town so my mom wasn’t holding up traffic or anything to observe this,) put on her expensive sunglasses, leaned back in her chair ever-so-coolly and just-so, and balanced some post-post-modern book on her knee. (Which, by the way, probably bored her to tears. This girl thinks herself a genius and can’t even bring herself to acknowledge other’s brilliancy. Am I bitter? Probably.) This girl once said to me, about one of the most brilliant young writers I know, "Y’know, she’s a really sweet girl, but I’ve never heard her say anything worth listening to."

Em: *recoils* Oh no she did NOT just say that. If *that* girl is not worth listening to, I need to take a vow of silence, like, right now.

She also remarked, quite bitchily, something about Jackie along the lines of "That girl has an answer for everything." Yeah. Because Jackie is GENIUS and knows EVERYTHING you WISH you DID, you Guinness-swilling eejit. This Irish girl also believes herself to be mucho artistic, the be-all-and-end-all of artistic photography. She went to Quebec for 2 months (or was it 4, I can’t remember, all I know is she was GONE,) and came back full of airs as ever. She likes to think she’s French and speaks French around predominantly English-speakers to prove some point that no one else is aware of. She took pictures of empty coffee cups, some acne-boy’s face close up, someone’s grandma, half a dog, French street signs and brick walls, arranging all of them in black and white in an artistic portfolio, which she made a .pps (PowerPoint presentation) out of them all and showed it along with some angsty alternative music. I nearly peed myself trying not to laugh and/or cry.

Anyhow, my mother nearly pissed herself laughing at this because it was so blatantly obvious this girl is on Poser-Crack. I’ve known this for years. Actually, after reviewing all that, not to mention the myriad bitchy comments and crap she’s put myself and others through over the years, I realized I don’t really like her at all. She’s two-faced, dishonest hop-head, and I wouldn’t be sorry to never see her again. She’s horrendously Liberal/Green/Hippie (not that individually they’re bad things, but all together she’s beginning to sully whatever good there was left in being a hippie by making being a hippie chic and poser-ing it all over again, but this time with a different sub culture. I just got over her punk rock phase, please, make it STOP! She’s into memorizing songs and names of bands no one knows about (reads: no one CARES about,) who are playing a gig downtown somewhere in a skeezy bar. And this ‘up and coming obscure band who’s coolness is inversely proportional to how well they are known’? It’s really her acne-prone boyfriend’s garage alternative rock band, singing something he wrote the lyrics to with minor homosexual undertones and blatant heterosexual ovetones.

Boyfriend on Lead Guitar (only knows 3 chords) and Vocals: "You left, I said, that’s fine! I’m in love with my angst and this heart of mine…is unbreakable…unless my band breaks up. Because the boys mean more to me than you ever cooooould, because doncha know it’s all about the music, it’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s not about uuuuuuuus, it’s about the Baaaaaaand! Go ahead and leave, I never loved you except when we fucked at that party…*and so on*"

This is a Good Alternative Song because: it speaks to teens on a deeply personal level and addresses their issues while bantering about the metaphysical aspects of the community of The Band rather than the individual (did I mention this girl is a Communist?) as well as a liberal use of heartbreak/teen-romances-ending-badly imagery, along with the word ‘fuck.’

This girl has handed me enough flyers for various causes for me to provide a homeless person with shoes for the year. Her goal in life (besides somehow getting into active politics,) is to come back to my high school on a few years, take the two certain teachers, and just get stoned with them. (Names withheld to protect the teachers.) "Think of how much we could learn," were her basic words. Well yeah. And think: how much of that ‘learning’ would you be able to retain?

Yeah. I thought so. NONE.

My experience in the realm of drug use is limited, but after frequently observing close friends taking tests and doing other cognitively challenging things while under the influence of the so-called ‘wisdom weed,’ I’d have to say that my confidence in your confidence is lower than the municipal reservoir during a drought.

So back to the Irishness and the base of all my hatred. As you can tell, this girl has already got a lot counting against her at this point. Then she compounds the problem by pretending she’s Irish. I mean, hereditarily, she is Irish, by both parents, I believe. However, she is not an Irish citizen. She has never been anywhere near Ireland, from what I know. And yet she is Irish to the core. She took the dancing lessons, (the ones where they cane the little girl’s arms if they dare try and move them while they dance like Michael Flatley’s bitches.) She did a project on it, poster board and all. She begins to swell, ever so slightly, around St. Patrick’s Day, and you can almost see the nationalistic pride bulging out slightly from her otherwise lanky frame. (I won’t get in to gunning down her physical attributes because she can’t help it. None of us can.) And if anyone dares malign the Irish in any way, she shall fly to the rescue and defend the honour of her people. It’s exhausting. She’s like the one-woman IR fuckin’ A.

Now when people make fun of the Dutch, I usually let it slide, because I’m good-humoured about everything and I know that my ancestral people do have various humourous follies and foibles. The only time I get pissed is when people don’t even make the effort to check their sources and say something completely off-base or when they quote Goldmember for the 80, 000th time and wonder why I’m not amused. Even then, I don’t get pissed or violent. I quietly correct them, or, if the situation merits it, I get a little lippy and give ‘em a set down. When Jackie does it, I just dish it out about the Russians, and it’s fun aggression all around. If anyone has MORE reason to defend her people, I do. Because I am a citizen of the Dutch Realm. Legally. I’ve never been to Holland, but I’d like to go at some point, but I don’t let my citizenship, or even my ancestry give me a reason to get in people’s faces for expressing a valid opinion on the nature of a certain culture. Here’s a sample conversation with our Girl of Focus (we’ll call her Carlie.)

Em: Hey, you know what I’ve noticed? The Irish drink a lot of Guinness and tend to wear green on the 17th.
Carlie: *twitches* THAT’S BECAUSE THE BRITISH AND EVERYONE ELSE REPRESSED US AND DENIED US OUR RIGHTS AS A PEOPLE! THE GREEN SYMBOLISES OUR STRUGGLE AS A PEOPLE AND WE HAVE PREVAILED AND THAT’S WHY WE’RE THE GREATEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD BITCH! DON’T EVER INSULT ME THAT HARSHLY AGAIN! I WILL NOW GO SULK IN A CORNER UNTIL SOMEONE APOLOGIZES AND ADMITS THAT I AM RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!

Now let’s try that, but with a little thing called Role Reversal.

Carlie: The Dutch have a morally deficient society, with liberal drug and prostitution policies.
Em: It’s true about the policies, but mind you, they’re in place for the protection of the people. Crime in Holland is a smaller problem because the law works with the prostitutes and drug users to keep it safe and clean. And anyhow, I thought YOU were pro-Liberal.
Carlie: ONLY BECAUSE THE BRITISH REPRESSED US! "I’M FROM HOLLAND, IZN’T DAT VEERD?" *inane laugh*
Em: Yeah whatever. *shrugs and goes to find something more interesting to do*
Carlie: What? Can’t you take a joke? ARE YOU A REPRESSED BRIT OR SOMETHING?

GAH!

This is why I am wary of the Irish. I like the jolly, ruddy-cheeked Irishmen who offer you a pint and tell you dirty jokes while you watch a cricket match. I don’t prefer having the bloody history of the Irish rebels shoved down my throat in the manner of scary TV evangelists, except with nationalistic idealism rather than Jesus. I like Jesus more than I like the Irish. It’s a no-brainer.
Now back to St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not averse to it, in general. Sure, the parade is pointless and obnoxious…(you don’t see any other minority getting an international holiday and parade to celebrate their minor saints/deity figures.) but I actually kind of like Guinness (one of the only alcoholic drinks I can consume in comparatively large amounts without feeling ill.) My father has a rather humourous Guinness t-shirt which reads "1 St. Patrick’s Day, 364 Practice Days—GUINNESS" and I giggle every time I see it. In fact, I believe I’ll dig it out and wear it on Thursday. It’s even funnier as I don’t tend to drink much. Anyhow, and I have a green hat I can wear. Green is actually my favourite colour. But if I chose NOT to wear green (say I’m allergic to the green dye in food, beer, and clothing,) why the hell should anyone get to pinch me? If people pinch me without justification, I PUNCH them with justification.

Some Old Irish Bat: Ah! Lookit who’s not wearin’ the shamrock green o’ the St. Patty’s Day! Watch out, or you’ll get a wee pinch! *goes to pinch Em*
Em: NOT A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN HELL, BITCH! *sends old bat flying into oncoming traffic* Look who’s not wearing her MANNERS-HAT today!

Keep that in mind. Pinch = Punch. The only difference between a pinch and a punch is the I and the U and how they interact. YOU pinch, I punch! Remember that.

Annoying, Hateful Poser Irish Girls Who Give Their People a Bad Rep, Over-Zealous Pinchers, and Bad Alternative Bands Who Write Their Own Lyrics and Can’t Be Bothered to Learn How to Play an Instrument----------------------------------> GUNNED DOWN!

posted by Em @ 9:05 PM  0 comments

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Monday, March 07, 2005

Rent-A-Phantom

If you, like (*cough*Beyonce*cough*) many others, wish to rent a Phantom (*cough*random Techie*cough*) to serve your personal murder/obsession/vocal training/unmasking needs, it is advisable that you visit the below link before entering into any contract.

http://dailydigest.net/rentaphantom_disclaimer.gif

Enjoy your rented Phantom and please remember that you will be responsible to clean up after them as well as return them in the condition in which you first recieved them.

*snerk*

Okay now that I've done that, I'll be off to augment and tweak the lists for the GG and SB Awards...(Coming Soon to a Pay-Per-View channel near you!)

~E

posted by Em @ 1:49 PM  0 comments