Election is over, put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.

Specifically, I am addressing one Mr. Donald Trump, who went on a Twitter-rage rampage last night.

Caption: You, my sweet angel face are being a fucking hater.

Special thanks to Azia and this blog for this image.  It's my favourite thing in the world right now.  If anyone knows the original source, please let me know so I can give proper attribution.

....and we're back.

So as some of you who ventured over to my little bit of the universe may have noticed yesterday, I did eventually manage to get my site blacked out.  Once I got to work, it took me all of five minutes.  Additionally, I've managed to get back to my original template without tearing a hole in the time-space continuum, so that's cool.

I'd say the blackout yesterday was fairly successful, and it was heartening as the day went on to see how many sites were, if not participating, at least drawing attention to the issue and and saying "Hey, this is bullshit."

The fight is not over yet.  There's still the vote to be had on January 24th, so I urge you, if you are in the U.S. to write your congressman.  You can follow the link I've put in the top right-hand corner, and that will stay there until the vote.  If you're outside of the U.S. then be sure to familiarize yourself with any similar legislation that may be in the works.

NOW Toronto has a link with some of the legislation in the works for Canada.  Check it out here.

Solidarity despite my lack of technical prowess.

I don't pretend to know a whole lot about SOPA and its equivalent bills but I understand enough to know that it sounds like a whole lot of bullshit. It threatens bloggers, and without revealing too much professional information, could pose a very real threat to my current place of employment.

Tomorrow a huge slice of the Internet, including reddit and Wikipedia, is Blacking out in protest of this and similar bills. I wanted to join in but I've run into numerous roadblocks so I'm just going to say that this is bullshit, and I'm with y'all in spirit but my computer is broken and there are things on the iPad I haven't figured out yet and I'm going to blame Steve jobs because dude isn't around to defend himself anyway.

So, rest of the Internet, stay strong, and I'm sorry I suck at computers.

P.s. I tried to insert a picture of a simple black box into this post to show my support and I couldn't even do THAT. I fucking fail.

Christopher Titus, I am disappoint.

Some of you may remember a short-lived but hilarious (if you share my own sick sense of humour) sit-com a few years back by the name of Titus, based on the real life upbringing of comedian Christopher Titus.

So I'm a fan of his page on Facebook and I came across this post.  When I first read it, I honestly thought it was satire but as I read on I realized that it was written in seriousness.  I think.  I'm not sure, actually, the whole thing is kind of muddled and incoherent.  I don't even know where to start with the whole 'Negro Greetings' thing... I'm pretty sure I'd find it offensive if I could figure out what the fuck his point is on that one.

Anyway, I'll let you read the post for yourself.

Transcription:

This is a repost.
I'm getting tired of atheists bitching about Christmas, first of all you're an atheist, why do you care who believes what? How can someone who believes nothing believe in nothing so much that you want everyone else to believe in nothing or make fun of the non non-believers. Sounds like a cult. I believe that Jesus Christ walked the earth and he was a good man, like I believe that Ghandi walked the earth and Martin Luther King also. That's why it's called Martin Luther king day not "Negro greetings". Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ which is why it's called Christmas and a manger scene has people dressed in robes of the time and lambs and whatever.Theres no aliens. (I'm looking at you Scientology.) Guess what there is a ton of mythology about Ghandi and MLK too so step the hell off atheists and keep your believing in nothing to yourselves. I'm tired of you forcing your non beliefs on me. I love how people bitch about their civil rights until they start infringing on others. You think I'm pissed? Listen to blah blah blah shameless self-promotions etc etc etc...

Really what?

I read some of the comments but then stopped after I found that the stupid was beginning to burn, so I went on to post this response:

I've never heard an atheist bitch about Christmas. I've never heard a Muslim bitch about Christmas. I've never heard a jew bitch about Christmas. I've never heard a Hindu bitch about Christmas. I've never heard a Pagan bitch about Christmas. I've heard a lot of Christians bitch about a war on Christmas, which could be true if you consider war to mean 'the suggestion that one might acknowledge that there are other holidays in the month of December.' But myself, I've always thought 'war' involved a lot of guns and death and stuff. That I've yet to see, outside of Weird Al Yankovic's "The Night Santa Went Crazy."

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know that I have very little patience for the "War on Christmas" crowd and that personally I find the idea that by simply acknowledging the varying beliefs of people living in North America we're contributing to the downfall of Western Civilization to be at worst, a xenophobic and dangerously bigoted idea and at best, just fucking ridiculous.  Saying Happy Holidays to someone instead of Merry Christmas isn't a big slap in the face to Jesus Christ.. in fact, from what I know of him, he would have encouraged it.  It's my understanding that J.C. was very into all that "Goodwill toward man" and "Loving thy Neighbour" stuff.

Take a look around you... the only people waging a war on Christmas and it's true meaning are the advertisers, the corporations and the grinding gears in the machine of greed.  If anyone forgets the 'true' meaning of Christmas, it won't be because a few people say Happy Holidays.

As for the original rant, I think Titus needs to do some research on Atheism and what it entails.  It's not a belief in nothing.  It's a movement toward rational thought and critical thinking instead of blind faith.  A lot of Atheists still celebrate Christmas, but may center it around celebrating family.  Hell, I consider myself an Atheist but I still think that it's possible that Jesus Christ existed, and I celebrate Christmas because I have respect for the ideas that Jesus espoused (that stuff that I mentioned above.  Love, and such).  No, I don't believe in the Resurrection.  I don't believe he was the Son of God.  But I respect his ideas.

I wish more people would.

Avatar Generators, Body and Gender Normativity

So, having too much time on my hands and possibly some bizarre form of narcissism, one of the things I like to do is make cartoon avatars of myself.  If I stumble across a cartoon generator, I have to make a version of myself.  I just have to.

And since I am somewhat of a chameleon, changing looks fairly often, I sometimes have to update them.  But some examples:

Myself, as a Pickle. 

Sadly, there's more where that came from.  I'm not sure why the need to cartoonize myself.  Maybe it's because I see myself as vaguely cartoonish to begin with. Maybe, like I said previously, it's some bizarre manifestation of a narcissistic personality disorder.  More than likely, I'm just bored and spend too much time on the intertubes.

What I've found that irks me somewhat is that, with the exception of the Simpsons generator and the South Park generator, it's very difficult to find my body type represented in these generators, so a certain suspension of disbelief is required.  I'm sure it just comes across that I totally see myself as some skinny broad but no, truth is, the cartoon generators don't give me much choice but to be some skinny broad.  The Simpsons generator, if I recall, did allow for a choice of two female body types.. a slim build, and a slightly thicker build (as shown in my own av above).  The South Park generator is the only one (that does a full-body av) that I found that doesn't default to a slim female body, mainly because it defaults to the short, dumpy form that everyone in South Park Colorado is blessed with.

Being recently shorn, I found it less difficult to find my hairstyle represented as well.. Most generators have a wide assortment of long hairstyles for female-presented characters, but not so much for the short styles.

I'm also perturbed that one generator, called Rebel Girl, didn't have an option for glasses.

Anyway, that's a few observations I found.  In all honesty, I'm sure a book could be written on the ways some of these sites, like girlsgogames.com and dressup247.com enforce a whole whack of gender and heteronormative crap onto the young, web-savvy preteen girls which seems to be their market.  Likewise, generators like the Marvel Make-Your-Own Superhero enforce their own ideals on boys and girls (when you choose your initial character shape, you have three choices.. a huge muscly dude, a grotesquely huge and muscly dude or a slim, large-breasted woman).

It'd be kind of awesome to see avatar generators that are capable of incorporating a wide array of body types, shapes, colours, hair types and less gender-normative options as well.  Does anyone have any examples of good sites like that?

The Internet is Effing INSANE part 2

Sometimes, as a blogger, we have no way of knowing what post is going to explode on us.  To my surprise, my most popular post to date in terms of views is a post where my friend Dan and I speculate on Yosemite Sam's junk.  Now, I know that 588 views do not quite equate to an internet explosion, but it just goes to show, you never know what's going to be wildly popular, or unpopular.

Two days ago, feminist blogger, lawyer and activist Jill Filipovic wrote a one-off post at Feministe about a note that was left in her bag by a TSA agent after they found an item of a... *koff* personal nature in her luggage.  Jill's initial reaction to it was lighthearted, while still acknowledging that hey, this is not cool.

Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room.

Then kaboom.  I guess a few other sites including Jezebel got a hold of the story and the whole thing has kind of gone kablooey.  Kind of?  Actually, to be more accurate, it seems that the whole damned internet has gone apeshit over this story. You'd almost think that Jill had dared to insult the Bloggess or something.

Can I just say, first, that it is totally possible to find something incredibly inappropriate and incredibly hilarious at the same time.  I would have giggled too.  But I laugh at dead baby jokes and make smart ass remarks about heroin addiction.  Doesn't mean either of these things aren't horrifying.  Sometimes you gotta laugh, to keep from crying.

So far this story has hit Fox News, Gawker, Forbes and a number of other media outlets.  The original post itself has 20 trackbacks at this time.  A lot of the articles focus on the issue of privacy which has been an ongoing concern with the TSA and for some, this is just another example.  There's a weird faction of articles that want to focus on the 'hot-chick-practices-self-love' angle, which is kind of creepy as fuck if you ask me.

Us ladies, we like to get off sometimes.  T'ain't no big thing.  Why you gotta make it a big thing?

The most eye-crossingly bizarre commenters and articles are the ones that are claiming that Jill must have done this all for attention and hits to her blog.  One commenter on the original thread ripped into Jill (comment 79: trigger warning) and made some not-so-veiled threats, which I loved the hell out of Jill's response (comment 80):

But thanks for the weird rape threat? You seem totally cool and normal.

While I understand and practice the whole caveat emptor where stories on the interwebs are concerned, it really shocks me the vitriol that is being spit at Jill over this whole thing.  She has been accused of purposely planting said item in her luggage with the knowledge that it would be searched; of writing the note herself to make the TSA look bad and I ask.. why are people so convinced it's not true?  It's not like the TSA hasn't come under fire for way worse things.

And if it isn't true and she made it up?  Who the fuck cares?  On one hand, some of us may have gotten a much needed giggle for the day.  On the other hand, it has reopened discussion about civil liberties and privacy and how much of our freedom we should be willing to give up in the name of security.  It has opened up discussion in regards to what kind of respect should be shown by people who are given clearance to rifle through our most personal belongings.

Oh, and the people I really love - and by "Love" I mean "would like to hit with a brick" - are the people who are all 'Well if she was so embarrassed, why did she post about it?'  You can point out that something is a huge invasion of privacy without being embarrassed.  The fact that it was posted tells me she couldn't have been too embarrassed.  If anything would be embarassing it's probably the way this whole affair has blown out of proportion.

I personally hope that this doesn't end up affecting Jill on a personal and professional level, as someone who blogs under her real name and has covered a number of serious topics.  It'd be a shame that a severe over-reaction to what seemed to be a quick post made in jest ended up undermining a promising career or turning her away from blogging.

The Internet is Effing INSANE.

So, first of all, if you're not reading The Bloggess, you are missing out on some top-notch funny.  Seriously, you three, you need to get on it.

But not only is she funny, she's apparently crazy-powerful as well.

This week, a gentleman *koff* by the name of Jose of Brandlink Communications found this out the hard way.

Here's the full backstory, but I'll sum it up real quick-like for ya:

 - The divine Ms. Lawson receives poorly-researched PR pitch for something having to do with Kim Kardashian and pantyhose.
 - Jenny responds how she usually does to unsolicited PR pitches... with a short letter and a picture of Wil Wheaton Collating Paper
 - Jenny receives short, snippy but on-the-whole still fairly professional email response from Erica at Brandlink Communications.
 - VP Jose replies by calling Jenny "a fucking bitch" but has mistakenly hit Reply All.

In the immortal words of Eddie Izzard: "*sigh*  Stupid man..."

 - Jenny calls Jose on his remark, explaining this her usual response to unsolicited pitches, and most people either find it funny, or at the very least, take the hint.

 - Jose basically tells Jenny she should be flattered that said PR firm should even find her relevant enough to send pitches to.

Let me just add here, that @thebloggess currently has 170K+ Twitter followers to @brandlinkcomm's 900-someodd.  The woman created a Facebook page for a giant metal chicken that has over 26K likes.  This is not what I would call irrelevant.  Irreverent, maybe, but definitely not irrelevant.

Again:

- With a single tweet and a blog post, said Bloggess unleashes an unholy, sulphur-raining maelstrom of internet smackdown on Brandlink Communications.

It was awe-inspiring.

I'm convinced that "Please Stand By For Demonstration of Relevance" is officially the most bad-assed line since "Yippie Kay-ay, Motherfuckers."

I can't read that line without imagining Jenny standing on top of a mountain, arms raised, with lightning flashing and thunder crashing while angry hordes of bloggers and tweeters come swarming from over the surrounding hills, right up into BrandLink's "grill" - so to speak.

I don't think I have to remind Ms. Lawson of Uncle Ben's old adage of great power and great responsibility.  Jenny has also used her blog as a platform to help others by promoting philanthropic causes and in one case, simply publishing one Christchurch, NZ woman's utterly hilarious plea for help.

Wow, those are five words that don't seem like they should go together.

Anyway, if my blogging efforts resulted in me becoming even 1/457 as 'relevant' as this one, I'd consider myself one very excited blogger.

Oh Blogger, you silly, silly platform, you.

Of course, I'm a glutton for punishment.

Wait, I'll get to that. Some backstory first.

I started blogging back in 2005, on the old MSN spaces platform.  I don't remember too many of the bloggers I read on there, with the exception of my dear friend Justin.  I have no idea if Justin still blogs, but I highly recommend to anyone with a taste for the macabre, to go and check out his photomanipulation art.. the guy is a master.  

When MSN Spaces switched to Windows Live Spaces and all of a sudden you had to be friends with people to read their blogs, or view pictures I said 'eff that shite', archived my blog by way of copy and pasting the whole mess into a word file, deleted my 'space' and moved to a new platform that still required you to friend people, but still allowed (at first) for you to read blogs and look at pictures without actually being friends with people.

That platform was MySpace. 

Actually, there's a funny story about how I ended up on MySpace and the huge but hilarious misunderstanding that ensued.

There I blogged for about three more years, and got heavily involved in some groups and forums where I befriended some amazing people.  But time went on, and the MS universe became a little more unbearable each day, a combination of boredom, the mass e-xodus to Facebook and an increasing number of 'Sorry! An Unexpected Error has Occurred'.

So late 2009 I moved my shit over here to Blogger.

Tonight I decided that I was going to try and import my entire MySpace blog into this on here, but it turns out that the import function is pretty, well, craptacular.  Being the masochist with entirely too much time on her hands that I am, I have embarked on copy and pasting and re-dating each post.  I've now worked my way back to the beginning of 2008, which is where I'll be leaving off this evening.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

In the name of full disclosure I will admit there are some posts that will not be making their way here for protection of the innocent and not so innocent.  One thing I do miss about the MySuck blogs is the ability to set different posts on different privacy levels (ie.. Open, Friends Only, Preferred Readers, Private).  It's not as detailed as Facebook's notes which pretty much let you pick and choose exactly who you do and don't want to see, but it was better than the All-or-Nothing thing that Blogger has going on here.

Looking back, I was a lot more candid on there, and I think the settings have to do with it.  I usually pride myself on being a pretty open book, but there's a few posts that I'm still not comfortable with having available upon a single keystroke.

At any rate, for shits and giggles, feel free to check out the archive sections to see some of the posts I've brought over.

If I find myself feel REALLY ambitious, then I may one day decide to try and work my old Spaces posts (which are still lurking somewhere in the deep dark reaches of my external hard drive) all up in here.

For D'artagnan...

...Since you asked.

Emily Haines and Aaron Lewis make a disconcertingly happy baby.

Or is she snarling?

Metric's sound appropriated for right-wing asswad - music fan is confused.

So I stumbled across an interesting bit of story today, via The Twitter.  Seems a fan by the name of Thomas Horn sent a letter to Metric (awesome band fronted by the gorgeous and talented yet perpetually sad/dull-eyed Emily Haines) to let them know that a riff from one of their songs was being co-opted by a radio station in Pittsburgh for use in the intro to right-wing extremist looney-tune Glenn Beck's radio program.

Turns out Emily and the boys didn't have a clue their tune was being used.  Aghast and all full of 'Why-I-a-Outrage' they contacted their publisher "with a mortified WTF?" who informed them that the station was covered under a blanket license which let's them use the music how they want, albeit in small doses.

Even so, the publisher contacted the radio station and asked them to pretty pretty please not to use Metric's music because they love all things fair and just and Beck is a douche.  This is how I imagined the conversation might go*:

Sad Emily Is Sad.  Source

"Hello,  Philadelphia 104.7, this is the legal department.  How may I help you?"
"Hi, I represent the band Metric.  We heard that you're using one of their songs to open for the Glenn Beck Insanity Hour, and we'd like you pretty pretty please to stop, thanks."
"Well, legally we're allowed to do what we want with it, in small doses.  It's blanket license."
"Yeah, I know, but I thought you could, you know, just stop anyway.  See.. we don't much care for Beck, being Beck and all.  The situation is making Emily all sad and dull-eyed, more so than usual."
"Ahh, I see.  Hmm. Since we're good guys, and secretly we all think Glenn's a douche as well, we'll take it off for you."
"Sweet thanks."

Clearly, I have no idea how entertainment law works.

So happily ever after.  Here's what bugs me:

Is it that, as pondered in Em's letter back to Thomas, that it seems that the teabag-assbag is trying to co-opt the lefties for his show.  Canadian Lefties, even?  (as my dear friend UncleJubb likes to refer to us... communists to the north).

No.

Throughout the correspondence, they refer to the use of Metric's song Rock Me Now, from the 2007 release, Grow Up and Blow Away.  But listen to the sample** of Beck's show provided with Thomas' letter. (I'll just mention here that I hate when people refer to Glenn Beck as Beck, because I always think people are referring to Beck Hansen and I want to fight them.  Because I LOVE Beck.  Hansen.)

Beck.  ❤  Source

Uhm.  Not so much.  Source

Creepin' crap, where was I?  Yeah.  Listen to the clip.

That's not "Rock Me Now", it's "Too Little, Too Late" off of 2007's other release Live It Out.  I should know, I played that riff non-stop when I first learned it.  How has nobody noticed this.. NOT EVEN THE BAND THEMSELVES?

I don't why this bothers me.  Maybe because I'm just anal-retentive in my desire for accurate music trivia.  Maybe it's because when I pointed the mistake out in a reply to the tweet on Metric's Twitter feed I was hoping for some kind of response like "Hey! Good ear!" or "Way to pay attention to detail!" or "Actually Buffy St. Marie smells like vanilla and cookies, if you're wondering."

But nothing.  *sigh*

At least I know I'm right.

*you may want to read the letters in the article for the actual legaleeze.
**Note:  Weird.  They've taken the sound clip out, for reasons unknown.  Well, take my word for it, it was not Rock Me Now.

Because F*** Random Generators.

I feel ripped off.

Two other bloggers, The Bloggess and Today Is My Birthday have recently posted about the 'That can be my next Tweet' generator and it looked like fun so I decided to try it.  The generator is under the impression that I am some kind of disorganized schizophrenic*  unable to form a complete, cohesive sentence.

I know these things just basically take words I've already used and make them into new things, but seriously?  This?

For Zombie Jesus references? didn't actually go to feed an honor! Safety tip: before I like lazy man.

My Motivation is to do both and Nickelback. I said the insurance money and hope people lauding Harper for!

*snicker* I'm cosplaying as all you the little sick of those, right? car I'll just tell you know, I just.

Bring me on outside our number so I hate award shows. Jim Cuddy could probably wear a car I'll just get!

Seriously though.. this way. Jordanian fellow on me. Nothing like my younger self had lousy taste if?

... and should write something anyway blog) I kind of coffee. want to hear mommy blogger and this Fight.

 In other news though, Feministe posted a link to an article called "Five Things You Should Know About New York," and asked everyone to contribute five things about their geographical location.  Here's my contribution:

Five things to know about living in the Midland/Pentanguishene, (aka lower cottage country aka Huronia) area, Ontario.

1) Every year at least one jackass will go through the ice on a snowmobile. Usually in October, or March.

2) Locals swim in Georgian Bay. Tourists swim in Little Lake Park, then go back to Toronto and die of dysentery. Don’t swim in Little Lake Park.

3) Balm Beach is always freezing cold. 365 days a year. But it’s still more advisable than Little Lake Park.

4) In the winter, the town plows the snow into the middle of the road. No one knows why they do this, and no one ever will.

5) For nightlife, you pretty much have Bleachers or the Legion. It’s a toss-up between Barely-Legals and Barely-Breathing**.. if you’re between the age of 25 and 40, we suggest heading to Barrie for nightlife.

 What about where you are from?

*For those confused, "Disorganized Schizophrenia" is actually a diagnosis characterized by incohesive thoughts, sentences that don't make sense etc... I'm not just referring to a schizophrenic who has misplaced her day planner.

**Fellow Legion goers, I kid because I love. 

My inner elitist is laughing and pointing..

I am very defensive when it comes to the reputation of the Canadian music industry.  I admit it.  In my online journey's I have encountered numerous (mostly American) folks who seem to regard Canadian music as all Anne Murray, Celine Dion and Nickelback, and allow the success of these particular 'artists' to paint a pretty grim picture of our industry.

I've always maintained that their success is more a reflection of the listening tastes of the U.S. listeners, because time and time again some of our most talented musicians are consistently overlooked.

So I'm indulging in a good giggle from the uproar over the Grammy upset last night with the Arcade Fire and their win for Album of the Year.  In my opinion, they are an innovative, talented group of musicians and a pretty well-kept-secret.  When you put them up next to their co-nominees, well, let's just say Lady Antebellum is destined for the One-Hit-Wonder bin, Eminem is played out, the Gag is overhyped (although admittedly talented, I'm sick of hearing about her.. an EGG?  seriously?) and Katy Perry.. yeesh.  So it warms me in the cockles of my heart to see an album win on merit rather than hype, for a change.  Way to go, Grammys.

Who are these guys?

On their Twitter feed, CBCRadio2 linked to a site dedicated to this upset called Who Is the Arcade Fire and it's chalk-full of the confused reactions of the Grammy-watching public.  The confusion is delicious and seems to prove my point that a whole lot of good music is being overlooked in a country that somehow made Justin Beiber famous.  We just birthed him, we didn't give him a recording contract (okay, we probably did, but Beiber-fever isn't isolated to Canada).

Congratulations on your win, Arcade Fire.

I don't know if you think you're being cute or condenscending..

... but whatever it is, just stop.

Backstory:  my online dating profile includes the same picture I use here, the one with me and my guitar.  My Photobooth program flips pictures so they're mirror-images.  Things appear backwards.

I get this email this morning from some 'dude' (guitarplaya - age 38).

I don't mean to alarm you but you are holding your guitar upside down (in your pic). Its nothing to be terribly concerned about and easily rectified if you follow these simple steps.
1. grab the guitar neck with your left hand.
2. place the body of the guitar an your right thigh.
Now your ready to play properly.

My response:

Orrrrr.... I could take the Auto-flip function off my Photobooth program. (or I could be playing left-handed with strings reversed.. aha!)

But thanks for the tip.

Is it me or does this smack of 'Aww wook at the widdle gurl.  Her thinks her knows guitarz'.  Maybe it's early and I haven't had enough coffee, but I've been playing for seventeen years. Fuck off.

Photo Credit

One way for a band to tell if they've made it...

If I've incorporated one of their song titles or lyrics into the title of one of my Facebook photo albums.  That being said, based on this criteria, the list of artists that have achieved true superstardom is pretty darn eclectic.

They include:

• The Schomberg Fair
• AC/DC
• Hawksley Workman
• Billie Halliday
• Simon and Garfunkel
• The Tragically Hip
• The Joel Plaskett Emergency
• Flight of the Conchords
• Crosby Stills and Nash
• The Mountain Goats
• Counting Crows
• Green Day
• The Decemberists
• Metric
• Blue Rodeo
• PJ Harvey

Yesterday's post was pretty heavy...

...and right now I'm tossing around thoughts for a post on mainstream porn and feminism in response to Kissie Catastrophe's post at Ethecofem - basically expanding on some thoughts I posted in the comments section.

So to break up the uber-serious monotony, here's a few random awesome things I've found kicking around the internet.  Some are new, some are things I've known of for some time.

1. Brandon Bird.  I love this guy's artwork.  It's what I wish mine could be, a twisted parfait of surrealism and pop culture.  Since I don't personally celebrate the soul-sucking mindfuck that is Valentines day, part of me really wants to buy the complete set of Law and Order SVU Valentines Cards (sorry, you're going to need to scroll a bit) and have my kids distribute them amongst the other little hooligans in their class.  I'm pretty sure that might warrant a call from their teacher though.
   
2. This Post from Aunt Becky at Mommy Wants Vodka.  I was in tears reading it, especially when I am reminded of how my now-10-year-old nephew, upon entering Junior Kindergarten and discovering the world of literacy, decided to label everything in his room.  In black Sharpie.  His bed.  His Sheets.  His pillow. Everything.  It also reminded me of how up until recently everything I owned seemed to be covered in a layer of stickers, courtesy of my little one (who also seems to have a tearing/ripping/otherwise destroying paper goods fetish.)
   
3. Nirvana-Themed Ballet Flats.  I rarely drool over shoes (okay I sometimes do..  but I rarely trying to mentally justify 80+ bucks for shoes) but these are too freaking cute for words.  This woman's store also has some wicked cool Wonder Woman wedges. Sweet Jesus.
   
4. This friggin van that was in the parking lot at work today:
   
   
   Is that not one freaking sweet flame job?  Do you think they paid for that?  Or do you think the guy got a stencil and did it himself (or herself, let's be fair).
   

In other news, the mirror I was given to recondition is coming along nicely, but I have to lament the lack of a decent craft and/or art supply store in the vicinity.   Michael's is a good 35 minutes away, and that pretty much leaves the Quest Art Gallery, which has limited selection, or Wal-Mart, which is.. well.. you all know my opinion on Wal-Mart.  Plus there's still a lot of stuff they don't have either.  So yeah, travelling for art supplies is crap.  But my mirror is going to look awesome.  Will post pics when done.  I wish I had thought to get a picture before i started this project.

Has it come to this?

I hate this time of year. 

Way too many bad memories associated with it, and I find it one of the loneliest times of year.. the Christmas letdown, New Years Eve, which is a big fuck-off ball of wrist-slitting fun, hell right up until Valentines day.  In the past, I've been subject to fits of depression around this time of year, and rightly so, when you consider what some of my past New Years' have been like.   The last two years haven't been too bad, last year because around that time period I had met the most recent ex, and the year before that I was embroiled in a bit of drama which although mildly stressful, kept things interesting.  My dark moods tend to come with boredom and loneliness.

In an act of desperation/morbid curiosity/boredom/blind optimism I reopened my Plenty of Fish profile.  Jesus H. Christ.  What a sad place that is.  Honestly, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to leave it up.  First, it took all of a half an hour to discover-most-recent ex on there, and that was fairly traumatizing, and second, I also discovered a dude that I had been talking about a year and a bit ago who turned out to be a bit of a whackjob is lurking around too.. and POF's security settings don't allow you to block someone until they've messaged you.  LOVELY.

So many damaged, jaded people.  So many 'nice guys' (find out more about my issue with 'nice guys' here).  So many people with laundry lists of what specifically they are looking for in a woman.  One guy even referred to 'Attributes'.  Fellow co-workers will understand why this terminology makes me laugh.  Compare these brands and models.  Oi.  So many cheesy topless pics.  Seriously guys?  So much about what they want, and what they desire, and what they REQUIRE, but so little about who they are.

SO many people desperate to reach out and be a half of a whole.  There but for the grace of God go I and other such blather.  Oh, wait...

I give it a week.

In the meantime, a well-suited musical interlude (have I sunk to a brand new low?):

This is me and here's my song...

So just some updates in general:

Wrangled me up a guest for my staff xmas party.  So that's fun, looking forward to it.

I'm quite excited about some changes in my workplace duties that have been taking place.  Normally to protect the innocent I try not to blog too much about work, and when I do, I like to keep it as vague and anonymous as possible,  but from past posts it can usually be assumed that I A) work for an internet company and B) I was in the Customer Service end of it.  Recent changes have my duties focusing less on customer service and more on web content and marketing via social networking, plus some SEOing which i find funny, because in some of my other duties, I've grown to have a vague contempt for SEO guys, mainly due to their tendency to play around with web-sites.  If I had the time and motivation to explain the one area of my job, my contempt would be easier to understand.  However in the name of again, keeping things rather anonymous, and reducing confusion I'll just say SEO guys make my life difficult so it's funny that in other aspects, I'm kind of becoming one, and leave it at that.


At any rate, the changes in my job description have been interesting in a good way, since I'm finding I'm actually excited about work, this past week, and feeling my potential to be a greater contributor overall.  Although for the most part I generally like my workplace and get along with my co-workers, customer service can be a soul-sucking exercise in frustration and futility that leaves me at the end of the day weeping for the state of humanity and the average's person's complete unwillingness and/or inability to click, scroll, read or otherwise do ANYTHING that would help them figure out things for themselves.  So some days I'm less than enthusiastic about making the 10 minute commute.  So to be excited and looking forward to new tasks and projects is a good thing, indeed.


Not started my Christmas shopping yet.  No big surprises there.

Spent some quality time with the guitar tonight, as there's a coffee house I plan on attending tomorrow night with the girls.  My parents have asked me to take some pictures for their magazine, [pimp]The Tay Township Report [/pimp], as my dad will be working and mom is entertaining.

This particular song has been eluding me for months, despite a relatively simple chord structure.  It's the odd syncopated rhythm that threw me off, and the face that as a relatively unknown performer, except perhaps among the alt-country crowds, NQ Arbuckle is kind of difficult to find tabs for online.

Yeah.. took me three tries to record this, and I still screwed up near the end.  Such is life. Just glad I have it down now.

A picture of Matt Good showed up in my Facebook feed, and I was struck again by the whole 'ugly-hot' phenomenon that guys, especially in the field of rock stars, are able to pull off.  There's a distinct subset of men that while nowhere near what could be called conventionally handsome, are able to make suck in my breathe and momentarily forget what I am doing.   Some less enlightened folks may chalk it up to money+power=sexy, but I think it's more attitude that plays into it, along with the whole creative mystique.  I don't see it as often in sports figures or politicians, but then again, I'm less inclined to pay attention to these types as I am musicians, artists, writers, etc.

Oh, Hai, Matt Good.  You want me come away with you?  mmkay.

I'm thinking I may start a theme day, something like 'Reverse Objectification Friday's' so I can just arbitrarily post pictures of dudes that provoke thoughts in my head of the type that would at best, make old lady's blush and at worse, make baby Jesus cry.

Because hell, who doesn't love a good theme day?

Twitter how I heart thee.

Man, I tell ya, putting aside giving life not once but twice, setting up a Twitter account may just have been the greatest thing I have done in this lifetime.  In the few short months I've had my account, I've won the following:

• Tickets to see the Schomberg Fair and The Great Bloomers (read more about that adventure here)
• Copy of the Jackass 3D soundtrack.  Not a huge fan of the movies, but it's a pretty interesting mix, soundtrack-wise.  Love Karen O's "If You're Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough"
• Signed Grapes of Wrath vinyl along with a free T-Shirt (to add to my collection)

I'm excited about this last one, because I forgot even entering that contest, which was originally to see the Grapes of Wrath in Toronto.  The promo guy at Exclaim! magazine was sick apparently and never ended up giving away the tix, so this was my consolation prize.  I'm pretty darn consoled.

For interests sake, the Grapes of Wrath are a Canadian band that were quite popular in the late 80's/early 90's and are apparently touring again.  Anyone into Canadian Indie music at that time will probably remember this:

(on a side note, having rediscovered this tune, it's going into my open mic night repertoire)

But yeah... Free Stuff is Awesome.  That is all.

Intro to Myspace

I found this story in my MySpace inbox from a while ago, explaining to my friend Michael, the story of how I got mixed up in this crazy universe, and I thought "This shit is pretty damn funny!" so here it is..... a little flashback....

Picture it... december 2005....

Okay, so here's my story...

As you already know, I set myself up a bullshit profile called Joe Blow -- I'm a mecca of originality -- so I could check out my friends music site. At the time I had the hots for this guy john (number 1 on top 8) and a couple weeks after I had made the fake profile, I recieved an email saying that John wanted to add me as a friend.

Was it the same guy? I was pleasantly surprised to find it was, but a little confused as to whether he knew it was me, and if he did, how he knew. So I added him and sent him a little message that said the following...

"Hi, I'm not really Joe Blow. He's hiding somewhere in border region of Afghanistan. Delta Force may have already killed him"

Charming and cute right? That's what I thought.

So anyway, since I was bored as fuck that night, I decided what the hell, I would set my profile up proper, adding pictures and my actual name (at the time I went by Andie on here). So as I am setting up, I see this handy little option allowing you to import your address book. So I figured, 'ahh that must be how he knew I was on here.'

So import my address book, and since it automatically sent it to everyone who had an account, I came to the horrifying realization that He may NOT EVEN KNOW I WAS ON HERE!! So now i am panicking, thinking back to the message that sounded so cute at the time, but is now sounding completely random and frankly, a little psychotic, especially considering that by this time I had erased all evidence of the existence of my alter ego, Joe blow.

Dear God, I thought to myself. So I did what any woman in a crisis does, I phoned my best friend and told her of my stupidity. Tears of both laughter and humiliation were streaming down my face as I contemplated how completely psycho I was going to come across.

Her advice to me, god love her, was to just come clean and explain what happened and hope for the best. So the next day I wrote him a long email saying pretty much what is written here, adding that I really like talking and hanging out with him, but if he was uncomfortable with that now, that I would understand, but that it was really just a harmless misunderstanding. I ended by asking him to get in touch with me, and that if he didn't I would take the hint.

A day and a half later I was greeted by an IM saying that I was indeed crazy but also really funny. I'd like to say that we ended up hooking up after that and lived happily ever after, but we have forged a great friendship since.

Yeah, so that's my Myspace iniation story.

Internet=Serious business, indeed (R.I.P. Erika with a K)

Authors Note:  This was posted after hearing of the passing of a good online friend of mine.  The intended audience at  the time of writing were the other people in the group of friend through which I had met Erika.  She had touched many before her untimely death, and is still missed - Andrea 05/15/11

I'm not going to go to a great length eulogizing, because most has been said before, by those (Erik, Paul) who are much more qualified to do so than I.

I will say, however, and I'm not proud of this, but in the beginning, I was prepared to dislike Erika. Why? Because she was young, fucking GORGEOUS, and got all the attention, and I can be a jealous, petty woman.

Guess what? Didn't work. Why? Because along with being young, gorgeous, and charismatic, she was also Smart as hell and ridiculously funny. Despite myself, I liked the hell out of Erika. That was cemented with a mutual love of Chuck Klosterman.

I was surprised by the force with which the news of her death hit me. I've had relatives pass away who garnered no more of a reaction than 'oh, I'm sorry, that's so sad'.

It's made me think about my relationships with my online friends. The honest truth is, I don't get out much, and I communicate with many of you more than my local friends (a much nicer term I think than 'IRL' friends). It's a bizarre dynamic though, because of distance and the ability for people to come and go, and disappear into the maze that is the internet.

In high school I was assigned to read "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham. In this book there are a group of characters who are able to communicate telepathically using 'thought-shapes'. They talk to each other, and know each others thought intimately, despite having never met (with the exception of two of them). At one point, one of the group suddenly stops communication, and it's not until a few weeks later they find the boy has died in an accident.

This part of this particular book has been floating around my head for the past week or two, oddly enough, and had me wondering, what if something happened to one of us? In this situation that wasn't the case, but it's obvious by the way everyone has reacted, the shock and the sorrow, that it's not JUST the internet, we make friends, we lose friends, sadly. The relationships we form here can be just as binding, just as meaningful as any friendship with physical proximity.

I think in the wake of this tragedy, and it is a tragedy when anyone is taken so young (although I often forgot she was only 19, she was wise beyond her years), it becomes plainly clear that we need to respect each other here as we would anyone IRL, because behind each profile there is a living breathing person with thoughts, feelings, hopes, aspirations, insecurities, fears, hearts and minds.

P.S. I don't want to be one of those people who disappears into the interweb, so I'm leaving you all my number... anyone I trust enough to be on my preferred list, I trust enough to have my number. Use it any time.