Someone call a neuromicrobiophysiologist, this man is having too much fun!

After years of conducing a shadowy, ellicit affair with my inner geek for years, I've decided to get out the rings and make it official: we're getting married, and we're doing it in style! To conjugate the joyous union, I just finished up the online ticket reservations for my first ever Star Trek convention! During the course of investigating convention possibilities, I noticed an uncanny number to be in Las Vegas, a land so wicked it has been abandoned by both God and Satan; even groundwater has to mercilessly dragged from neighbouring states and forced to flow through that urine-less wasteland. There was one in Columbus Ohio, but it would have meant being in Ohio, and another in San Francisco, a city which I have obtained personal proof of tolerability, but it was the possibility of seeing the heavenly glean off of Patrick Steward's head in the real-life flesh and blood that sealed the final selection. So darling, don't you call me March 7-9, 2008, cause I'll be in Seacasus New Jersey, somewhere between the Romulan Empire and DS-9 yuking it up in an limitless galaxy of geekdom. I hope they have vegan appys. And please oh please, don't let Patrick get called away by the Royal Shakespearean Society on urgent elicutionary business before he spots me over the glare of 10'000 plasticine Kilgon brows and becomes mine forever.

There are many preparations to make for sure: reservations for my aunt's couch, a proper Dr. Crusher uniform-NOT made from recycled flannel pyjamas-and accessories. I'll certainly need a triquarter to scan for tachion emissions from sweaty overweight vulcan impersonators.

Yes, there is a large part of me that is deathly afraid of being overrun by the nerdom and spending 3 days in Sci-fi hell surrounded by the Daemon and all his minions, but even though I am going it alone at this point, I am hoping that the well- rumoured federation commununity inclusiveness will prove true and that they will embrace me as one of their own, even though I can't quote each episode by star date, nor do I know any of the root killing verbs in Klingon.

This event should get filed in the Life binder, subject heading: things you would hate to die never knowing that you would hate to die not knowing them. We shall see indeed.

In the meantime, please follow this link and see what all the fuss is about.


Platitudinarian, out.

PS. Heath Ledger died, and that sucks too. Oh and some other stuff happened in the world, but nothing of consequence, I hear.

Make it so

I love Star Trek: The next generation. It is a beautiful illustration of what a rational world would be like. All the characters, even the Kligons, no matter how frustrated they become, after a brief indulgence of fanciful anger or irrationalism, never fail to succumb to humility and mercy and find the true course in the end. What the shit? I always thought I wanted to raise a child on that show, but how on earth would they navigate the social uptuckery of real life? The likelihood of having an emotionally charged conversation that went as smoothly as the "Anbojitsu: the ultimate evolution of the martial arts" conversation between Riker and his father is only slighty greater than getting ones hands on a chia pet that actually sprouts.
If I ever yelled at my dad and told him, "it should have been you that died, not her", I think he would completely loose his shit at me.

Flashback to the real world. I recently found out about the death of an acquaintance on my friend's blog. I felt my heart in my shoes when I learned the news. In any case though, she was not as close to me as I was to my friend to whom she was very close: it's a strange thing to try to assign meaning to relationships that gain it by proxy; ergo, the friend of my friend is my friend. However, right after I felt the sadness that comes with knowing, for certain, that another beautiful life has gone out of the world, I also felt a distinct annoyance that I was not at liberty to express, because no one wants to be that asshole that turns someone elses tragedy into their personal grievance. That feeling was anger at having read about it on a blog. Having to be impersonally informed of a friends death on a blog has got to be up there with getting a text message break-up, or a giant cookie with "Fuck U" written in hot pink icing on the top. Of course, I couldn't say that when calling to give my condolences, because then it is an insult to the pain of a loved ones passing to be childed for not informing those mutually concerned through the proper channels. So, since it was an inappropriate thing to read on a blog, the only appropriate response can be to hereby express my grievance on my own blog, and thus complete the cycle of crap.

In the world of TNG, this would be a conversation that would have been had at the right time, by the right channels, but since neither war nor poverty have yet been abolished, nor has humanity mastered the fashionable male once piece suit, I suppose this most disconnected of forums will do. I would that it was not so.

"The rise of feminism" ha ha, now no one will read it

Once upon a time I had a lovely friend named Sparrow. She and I held the world in our hands, and jived it up to the haunting vocals of Whitney Houston's Bodyguard soundtrack. I felt terribly important when I went to her house because her father was a real artist who constructed a brass mermaid that they named a cove after in my town. I told her all about how I wanted to take the cutest boy in class down to St Mary's lake and watch the sunset from the low bluffs...maybe even hold hands. We played on the trampoline and slept in the middle of the golden field behind my house: she even liked my rabbit Bun Buns, who was oddly unpopular with the other children, all on account of being too lean and having screaming hot pink eyes that bulged. We were the bestest of friends for 6 whole months. Until she betrayed me.

Grade 6 was year 1 of my human experiment; you see, up until that point, I had been a snowy owl, cougar, Howard the Duck (Hellooooooooo Lea Thompson), and a wolf, and decided abruptly, i.e. got interested in boys, that I wanted to be popular so people would be better able to relate to me. Sparrow was one of the my first human friends, SCORE! By this time I was wearing second hand Guess t's and jeans with belt, had a micro perm, and had ventured bravely into the accessory world of lip gloss and dolphin-embelished harmony balls; in short, I was hot shit. I somewhat forsook my wolf friends and started hanging with the gang the library, playing ouija board and laughing at the pictures of ho ho's and ding dongs glossing the pages of "Our bodies, Ourselves". This alternated with recesses spent in the girls washroom spreading malicious gossip and peaking at our friends with their pants down from the next stall over. Glorious times.

It was right after the winter holidays that I noticed Sparrows behaivour towards me had changed. At first, she simply declined to hang out, no problem. After all, 11 is a busy year. Then she started to be outright belligerent. She would start by mocking my clothes, which were the style at the time. Mostly saying, well, that they were't new. Hey bizatch, you try living on potato soup for a year and see how important brand-spanking new shirts are to you. She even told the boy that I wanted to take him out to 'some rock by the lake' and rape the shit out him. She would tell the other girls not to choose me for the volleyball team during gym class, and I'm good at volleyball. See, apparently I wasn't popular enough. Even though I was human and now had fully more than 2 other friends, it just wasn't good enough for this one.

I cried and cried, I wrote her notes and called her and asked her why she didn't want to be my friend anymore, and she never said we weren't friends. I would call after school to ask her why she had treated me so poorly, and she said that she hadn't and that we were still friends. I just couldn't get my head around it.

Eventually, I gave up on her, and so did many of the people she seemed to be trying to impress. Most of the others, by some strange coincidence, did like me more than her, and her abuse of me solidified her reputation as something of a cold hearted bitch to be avoided. That did make losing my friend a bit easier, but not any less bitter

That was my first vivid experience with the lies and betrayals that are included in the scope of the human experience in relationships. Anyone else care to share?

Today is the first day of the end of your life

I'm sorry to have to get obscure and partially serious, but thanks to the internet and the kind folks at blogspot, I have a place to unload these periodic feelings of darkness, and this one is upon me: no amount of regret, atonement, or apology can stop the end.

It is one of those truths that jerks us from childhood into adulthood, and delivers a shock from which many never recover. Simply, we are all capable, and guilty of, committing some act that has starts the final countdown to the bitter end of something. With climate change, it's the the end of the world as most of us know it, with that off-colour comment about Sai Baba being a pedo, a potentially beautiful friendship. It's probably the realization of this inevitability that strips the elderly of their hope for the future and turns them so bitter, longing for the pennywhistles and moonpie of the bright times that were. There are occasions in life when one is made to eat that truth full. Mostly, it's the news, the wars, storms, weirdness, extreme apathy and vapidity, but sometimes it's is also closer to home.

Several months ago my roommate and I were caring for a man who was dying of stage 4 melanoma. He was attempting the Gerson therapy, but was not following it properly, and hadn't bothered about his condition for over year after the appearance of the malignancy. He past away, trying to modify his therapy to the very end, always saying, "what about this?' or "Do you think I should...?". You can't really step back weeks before your impending death and go, "oh shit, this is kinda serious, I guess I better get with the program". It has it's claws in, and probably won't let go, unless you can pry them off with the jaws of life. Hey, it has been known to happen. However, the majority of us only realize what a pigs-ass mistake we've made well past the point of remedy.

I almost hate parents and school teachers for teaching us so judiciously that all you really have to do to make things right is admit your wrong and take responsibility for your shit. It seems like most of the time, even my own shit is completely beyond my power to flush, to say nothing of the steamy piles in the neighbouring stalls.

This whole thread of consciousness is reminding me of an episode of Homicide: life on the streets, in which a detective has to stay with a man who had fallen between the train and platform, his lower half practically torn off, but numb to his senses. It was understood that he was going to die the moment he was extracted from his predictament, and the whole epsiode was spent having him confess all his fears and hopes, blah blah blah, to the stone cold lieutenant, who was reduced to tears by the end. The event that had cause the mans death had already happened, by the consequences were a little late in catching up to him. I guess you could save that event is birth for all of us, but people are very interested in the petty details of the thing, cause we are at heart, well, kinda petty. I mean, a single person is exposed to a gazillion (metric) carcinogens in a day, but which burnt muffin crumble or whiff of cigarette smoke is the straw that finally broke the DNA's back? Which Mars bar finally makes our insulin receptors go, "no more Joe, it's diabetes mellitus time for you, bitch"? How do we catch ourselves before we vomit in our shoes and slip right off the pooky proddy of lifes stony path?

A spirtualist group in town presents various indy film screenings, amoung which is the film, "The power to forget", or something like that. The gist is that all our problems disappear if we can simply leave the past out of our present thinking, and focus on only what confronts us at the moment, in the moment. However, the past is forever following like an angry, bloodthirsty shadow, and it seems that if you cut the threads of fate you've tied to yourself, you'll lose your way and die all the same...maybe just a shade more confused. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and people cannot be blamed for not forseeing the consequences of swimming in that shiny black pool surrounded by the yellow tape when they were 7, but we are giving ourselves too much credit by believing in our supreme ignorance of the potential disasters that accompany many of our daily habits.

Is there are remedy for this? We are cursed with memory as close as dreams to sleep. So we give it up to the you-know-what that be. Fatelism, as cop-outish as it is, has survived as long as it has because eventually we must come to grips with our relative powerlessness in relation to the events that shape our lives. But we do have some power, and we must realize where it ends and the realm of No-control begins. So, when you can't do it, your higher power can. Remember, it goes in the recycle bin.

From Pediatric to Geriatric in 12.5 seconds

Happy New Years everyone, New York dropped the ball again, that's why they lost the twin towers, ha ha ha. But seriously, the year 2008, a year that should have seen Skynet running planet earth, is finally upon us. And I even like the colour.

Last New Year, I got stinking drunk on the generousity of others booze and french kissed another woman while sitting across the lap of a man I had a serious affection for. Despite that, which must seem like a wet dream come true for many, the night was an embarassing and abject failure, though I did gain from it a lesson in stark reality and brutal humility. That, and there are people you can't sleep with no matter how many drugs they've had, and isn't that reason enough.

This year was much improved, and happily less remincint of Girls Gone Wild '06

The early eve threatened much of the same, only with jail-time. The local place to be admitted a staggering number of underaged drinkers and smokers in a misplaced effort to funnel some cover money into a composing toilet, or some other hippy shit. Since I desperately hate seeing teenagers make a pisshole of the glorious gift of life and springtime youth, I lasted less than 15 minutes on the dance floor, squeezing by couples savouring their first ever public gropings and trying not to step on anyones converse. The next place on the list was being liberally supplied with polka music and had a wheelchair ramp jimmyridged especially for the festive occasion; smelled fishy too, and all hope of fun to be had there was abandoned, medical teams ordered not to resuscitate.

Just when all hope seemed lost, our neighbours came outside for a light sabre duel, and invited us in for champagne and word based boardgames, which we happily whiddled away at until 4:30 in the morning. A scrumptious success sans sycophants (10 points!)

The lesson: playing the game scattergories is much more fun on New Years Eve than playing the game drunken lesbo-pretender wants to hide the salami.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.