Books

I was just reading the August 11 & 18 issue of the New Yorker and the fiction piece "The Dinner Party" by Joshua Ferris is rad. Read it here.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/08/11/080811fi_fiction_ferris?currentPage=all

Now that we're on the topic of the New Yorker, also read "The Lie" by T. Coraghessan Boyle here. It's from the April issue, and it's so good!

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/04/14/080414fi_fiction_boyle

Also, I began reading "After Dark," the latest release from Haruki Murakami, who is probably my favourite living author.

If you're one of the few who haven't read his work, do it. Begin with "The Wind up Bird Chronicle." The writing, even in translation, just gets under your skin. Sometimes authors, such as Hemingway and Nabakov, just kill me completely, and Murakami does that to me too.

Here is the New York Times review from 10 years ago:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800EED9133EF931A35752C1A961958260

Even though I studied English Literature, I don't really review stories and books unless I have some kind of specific response to them. Although, I do miss having built-in college friends around who read and talk about reading.

T




Just some views from the deck up at my cabin. Last week, I spent the week up at my cabin.
If there's any place that epitomizes nostalgia for me, my cabin at Sakinaw Lake is it. I've been going up there my entire life with my family and friends, since before the road to get up there was even paved. Our 1 acre lot and 3 bedroom cabin & additional sleeping cabin, has a big deck that overlooks the 7 km. long lake. The Sunshine Coast area is a funny mix of hippie locals and rich summering Urbanites with summer houses. The closest "big town" (there's not even a real mall) is a 45 minute drive away. I spend my childhood summers up here waterskiing, canoeing, kayaking, chasing around my big cousins, swimming, cliff diving, reading, boating, wakeboarding, playing soccer, and running. There are even 5 islands on the lake I made up all these "legends" for when I was 8 (the best being Pirate Island). The area is so cool, if I go on a 5 mile hill run, I pass the ocean and about 3 lakes.

I love being up there spending half the day being active, and half the day lounging around reading, drinking beer, and eating really good food (well the food is slightly better if you're a meat eater, then it's salmon and steak dinners, but the salads are good regardless).

I feel instantly relaxed when I go up there. It's like being a kid again. To be honest, most of BC kind of sucks. The Northern resource based towns aren't very culturally diverse and they're pretty ugly. The nature is great, of course. But, the only parts of BC I like to visit outside of Vancouver, are on Vancouver Island (Tofino for surfing and camping and Victoria can be fun, if slightly boring compared to Vancouver), the Gulf Islands, the Sunshine Coast where my cabin is, and of course, the Okanagan in summer. I miss those lakeside summers in Oliver too!

Remember biking around looking for local boys and running away when they talked to us? The Okanagan has some rad wineries and orchards, and the river dam in Penticton is pretty cool. I really want to go up again next summer. But, other than that, BC is kind of lame.

PS, I had another birthday recently (how come they get progressively less exciting? It hardly seems fair), so please lie to me next time you see me and tell me I don't look a day over 20. Hah!

Hopeful or hopeless?

So, I'm sure everyone's read about the "latte effect," that economic term that's been banded about for the last decade to explain the relatively recent tendency of middle class North Americans to fritter away money on daily non-essentials rather than save and invest.

I remember a lecture in high school where my counsellor told us how much money we would have thanks to compound interest if we could just save that 5 dollars a day we spent at Starbucks.

Well, anyone who knows me that I'm hopeless with money. I don't even have a wallet. Really. What's the point of a wallet if it just contains receipts, anyways? Everyone warned me about the dangers of credit card debt. Of course, the second thing I did when I was 19 (the first being buying a beer) was to sign up for a credit card on campus. And....another one. Just google "instant gratification" and "generation y" and hundreds of articles will pop up discussing how my generation (yes! just made the cut for Generation Y, apparently) forgoes saving and working hard to achieve the "American Dream" in favour of....yes, instant gratification. Yes, we are in the era of text messages, fast food, fast...everything.

I actually am the opposite of fast. Anyone who would spend a morning happily reading the New Yorker at a coffee shop or perusing a farmers' market for the perfect heirloom tomatoes is obviously not in too much of a hurry. However, I epitomize my generation in the financial department. In a Women Studies and Media class in college, I made a zine which explored the fatalistic and self-destructive tendencies of the generation that came of age in the 1990s.

I used my 10 year old crush, the character of Troy Dyer from Reality Bites (hey! I was ten) as an example of the fatalistic tendencies that characterized the 1990s generation with quotes such as: "There's no point to any of this. It's all just a... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know... a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle... and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt."

In the post-post grunge era, ideas like this have become seriously cliched. But, when I was a preteen/young teen, movies like Trainspotting and books by Douglas Coupland were a part of my cultural upbringing. It was all about the experience, not the future, baby. Let's not even delve into the self-destructive tendencies of the grunge era, since I'd rather not beat any dead horses today (I am a vegetarian, after all).

I had a relatively idyllic childhood. I love my Mom, Dad, and sisters (especially now that we don't fight over clothes), and I grew up in a nice suburb, in a nice house, on a nice street, with an awesome pool. My Mom and Dad have always worked hard to provide for us and, I suppose, our family, albeit Canadian, epitomized the upper middle-class American dream. So, why am I not pursuing this dream for myself?

I have never had any aspirations of a life beyond 25. When I was a teenager, my goals in life consisted of moving out of the suburbs, travelling, going to shows, getting an apartment downtown, and reading lots of books. Basically, all I've ever wanted was to have fun experiences and a good time. I've never been able to picture myself with a house and family. Maybe this comes from living in a time of relative economic abundance and political freedom.

My fear of commitment extends to future goals.

After watching lots of ads on TV telling me that I can start a Registered Retirement Savings Plan for just 25 dollars a month, I made one monthly payment of 75 dollars.

Of course, 3 weeks later, it was Friday and I had seven dollars in my bank account, so of course I went to the bank to attempt to withdraw from my savings plan in order to fund weekend plans. That was my last sorry attempt at saving for the future.

The only time I can motivate myself to save is if I have big plans within the next 6 months- travel, school, or moving. For me, those little daily indulgences that fritter away my retirement are what make life worth living. I personally wouldn't want a house in suburbia if I couldn't afford to buy brie, wine, and records on a Sunday or pay for beers and a show on a Thursday.

Maybe this is partially due how house prices have skyrocketed in Vancouver over the last decade. With the median house price in Vancouver approaching 1 million, owning a home seems like a pipe dream. Of course, salaries have not kept up with the inflation. Due to various economic factors (deindustrialization, two income households, etc.) that I'm really not qualified to discuss, owning a home in the Pacific Northwest seems to be restricted to the wealthy.

When I told my Grandma how much I spend on groceries and dinners out, she was absolutely shocked. I admit it, I waste money. I have expensive tastes. Somehow, meatloaf and potatoes just doesn't appeal to me as much as a salad of arugula, pine nuts, blue cheese, and avocado.

For whatever reason, it's hard for me to envision my future. My dreams have always been a bit left-of-center; I could see myself banging away on a typewriter in Paris in 20 years or living in a house with an orchard in the middle of nowhere, but I just can't picture myself driving a minivan.

Perhaps this fatalism comes out of growing up in an era when the world seems to be on the brink of environmental disaster. When you look at the projected effects of global warming in 10 years, it's difficult to imagine having children.

For whatever reason, perhaps these little indulgences that deliver instant gratification are really just a coping mechanism to distract us from the apparently imminent combustion of the earth.

When I look at documentaries on the 1960s social revolutionary era, I find myself on the verge of tears (yes, even cynical unromantics cry) at the heartbreaking idealism apparent.

I would love to feel that kind of optimism that the world is going to change. Hell, I'd love to feel the kind of optimism about love that the two Columbia students who wed in the midst of the overnight sit-in at Columbia in the 1960s must have felt. It makes me feel nostalgic for an era I never even experienced.

Instead, what characterizes my generation is a kind of tired cynicism. Maybe we all just have unrealistic expectations. If I had been born fifty years ago, I probably would've been married 4 boyfriends ago (although the thought is horrific). I wouldn't have had any illusions about spending my twenties searching for a "soul mate," I would've just looked for a good provider and stuck it out without any searching for something "exciting".

Instead, I find myself wondering if this is it? I frequently say that I'm a total unromantic, but maybe the problem is that I am too much of a romantic. Don't tell me you haven't gone looking for your own "Before Sunrise" moment in Europe. Something about a night spent chatting over wine on a Greek ferry or up by the Sacre Coeur just makes it so much more romantic than a date at a coffee shop in the Pacific Northwest. And sure, I've had amazing nights on travels where I've stayed up all night talking and dreaming about moving to a new city to be with this amazing new person....but, maybe, just maybe, everyone gets a little boring after a while?

I always thought that one day I'd meet a cute boy who was funny, well-read, unpretentious, intelligent, and laid back. That we'd both like to play scratchy records, go for beers, go on hikes, go out dancing, watch foreign movies, and support our local Community Supported Agriculture. And that he would be the type of person who liked his own freedom and his own personal and physical space to explore his own interests- and allow me mine. Someone with who you could spend an entire rainy afternoon inside playing music and reading and writing and not even need to talk. And sometimes we'd go out together, and sometimes we'd go out by ourselves. And we would like to travel and go on adventures and be spontaneous enough to move to Europe, just because we felt like it. And of course, we would be crazy in love with each other. I told my Mom all of this, and she told me those were a lot of unrealistic requirements. True, true.

Real Girls Eat Meat

For some reason, people always ask me why I am a vegetarian.

If anything, at this point, it's partially habit. I became one originally for moral and idealistic reasons, but it's been so many years, I don't even know what a hamburger or steak tastes like.

The most convincing reason to stay one seems to be the environmental effects of the production of meat. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, if every American gave up meat for one dinner a week (what? they don't? do people like this exist?), then it would be equivalent to taking 5 millions cars off the road. Of course, those figures are based on the traditional factory style method of meat production, not based on meat from environmentally conscious local farms.

However, figuring out where meat comes from and how it's regulated is a whole problem on its own. Spending last summer in France made me appreciate the methods of farm production and its emphasis on eating locally. But, that's more part of European culture than North American, anyways. It's so complicated navigating the most morally conscious way to consume meat and produce. For example, the demand for grazing land for cattle in order to feed the North American appetite has absolutely ravaged previously usable farmland and rainforest in South America and Africa; but their economies have now become dependent on the continued exportation of meat. Unless their economies are diversified, the financial consequences of not purchasing meat from South America and Africa are comparable to the environmental consequences of purchasing from them. Anyways, ya'll have heard this song before, I'm sure.

I've struggled with veganism. I've read absolutely horrible things about the dairy industry and cringe when I think of the hormones present in dairy products. I've been a vegan for months on end before, but I always cave in Europe, and since the 2 week New York pizza binge in July, I'm completely off the wagon. Unfortunately, I really love artisan cheeses. When I think about a frittata with goat cheese, fresh basil, and sundried tomatoes, I start mentally making a grocery list.

That being said, I probably eat 90-95% vegan. I do believe it's the healthiest and most ethical way to live, and I hate to be the high maintenance person that looks for vegan wines and asks if the bun on the veggie burger in the dive bar is vegan. But, if someone invited me over for a brie fest tomorrow, I couldn't say no.

Now that I'm on this roll, I have, admittedly, been craving seafood lately. Although I've cut out red meat for the better part of two (!) decades, seafood has been my weakness (save for the one time on my first date with a boy when I was 18, when he thought vegetarianism meant you could eat lamb. I should've taken it as a sign things weren't going to work out). I can't cook it to save my life, but lately, I don't know if it's the late summer sun or what, but I've been having lobster, halibut, and crab fantasies. Ugh.

I just want to bang on a drum....

So I'm almost at the end of my summer work.

Now comes a period of unemployment, which I will hopefully use to finish that writing I've been meaning to, and then, after that, a job hunt.

I hate job hunting.
I have had many fun & frustrating jobs.

I have worked at coffee shops, a spa, a film production company, restaurants, the government, as a nanny, an English teacher for Japanese teenagers, for the Kidsafe project (a summer daycamp for underprivileged children), and....as a professional road line painter.

My only actual career skill would probably be the line painting. Before I got sick of working with misogynistic men and destroying the environment along the Sea-to-Sky highway for the 2010 Olympics, I had a lot of fun that summer driving a two ton truck, figuring out blueprints, and programming a line painting machine. Everytime I see lines on the road now, I notice mistakes and inconsistencies.

I'm in the middle of a mid-twenties existential crisis, if you haven't noticed. I'm not interested in any jobs I'm qualified to obtain, and I don't really like doing boring work 5 days a week from 9-5.

I told my parents, who do want me to return to Vancouver, that I will cave and return if they find me interesting work, such as at a film production company. I always felt that one day I would wake up and some career would just fall into my lap. I used to have aspirations of effecting positive change in the world or making films or writing stories....and now, a part of me just wants to take off, live in a beach hut somewhere, and forget about ever being career ambitious.

I'm giving myself one year, and if I don't make it......dum dum dum....then comes graduate school. But if anyone wants to make a break from North America with me, I can be swayed.

I was reading today about the the Columbian peasants place in the Cocaine industry in Duncan Green's "Faces of Latin America."

It discusses how, if it wasn't condemned by the American government, the coca plant would be an ideal export for an impoverished area. It is reliable, grows abundantly, and requires little maintenance. The chapter continued on to discuss the ineffective American war on drugs and it made an interesting comment about how if Cocaine was legalized, the Columbian peasants would suffer from Big Business intervention, and tariffs and taxes.

I am showing my Canadian bias here, but I just don't get the extent of the whole "war on drugs" thing going on in this country. Half of the job postings I see here state that they will check the criminal backgrounds of and drug test applicants/employees. It just seems Orwellian and invasive.

When I was working for the government, we would occasionally get phone calls from
US companies with Canadian branches who wanted to drug test their employees. I think it's invasive and characteristic of the police state America seems to be. Thankfully "Mandatory employee drug testing is illegal in Canada because it discriminates against drug-dependent candidates under human-rights laws because addiction is defined as a disability" (Find the article the quote is from here ). The focus in Canada seems to be treatment, rather than imprisonment. The article I quoted from discusses the new deal between construction employers and unions to drug test employees when there is a problem on-site. It is a dangerous precedent, although it may be overturned. However, the deal states that an employee will not be terminated, they just must get medical clearance and, if necessary, treatment.

Although I want to say, good luck with keeping construction workers! When I worked on the road crew, sometimes half my job was to keep the blowtorch away from the guys on heroin.

I remember once friends of mine were smoking up in an alleyway outside of a bar in Vancouver and they heard someone clear their throat behind them. They didn't turn around, so this guy cleared his throat, "A-hem!" a little more insistently. So, they turned around, and a police officer stood a few feet away. And he said, "guys, could you at least move down the block? This is a little embarrassing."

In contrast, if that had been in the US, especially since a couple of them were visible minorities, their lives could've been basically ruined. Due to recent changes in priorities in Washington State enforcement laws, that's not really the case anymore, but elsewhere it could be, especially due to mandatory sentencing laws. One of my favourite US laws is the one that says that students with criminal records can receive federal funding for school, save for any students with drug convictions.

It's not like I'm a huge drug advocate. I'm not, I don't think they're that great, and I think they can do more damage than good, I just don't see the point of ruining peoples' lives over something minor as drug use.

USA USA USA

Burrito Belly. Everything's more entertaining with an unflattering photo, non?

So. Everyone always asks how I like Seattle compared to Vancouver. And, of course, since, like most other nationalistic bastards out there, we Canadians are egocentric motherfuckers...so I get quite a few queries such as "Why would you want to live in that crazy country?"

Good question.

George Bush, Southern bible thumpers, and Neo-Nazis may have given this country a bad reputation, but, trust me, there are some redeeming qualities.

I think, if anything, social mores are more regional than national. I remember one time I was telling one of my (gay) friends how happy I was to live in an open-minded and liberal country, and he responded with "well, obviously you've never been to Fort McMurray, Alberta."

Alberta, which my Dad calls "the Texas of Canada," is where our shithead Prime Minister is from. Of course, the minority Conservative government didn't win any seats in Vancouver, Montreal, or Toronto. We have all the rural areas to thank for that. Here is an interesting article about the new Canadian Christian right from a couple of years ago, which discusses how it's a good thing that the Conservatives are a minority government: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/hedges.

Working for the government made me realize how many programs have been affected over the past 5-10 years due to funding issues. Due to the changes in leadership at the provincial and federal levels, many important social programs have been shelved. I used to scan through the directory of obsolete social programs just to see how many had been cut by our increasingly right wing government. Thankfully, universal healthcare isn't threatened. There were countless heartbreaking instances at my job where the Premier of BC would announce some new and innovative new program that would help under 100 people. For instance, one Wednesday Gordon Campbell announced a new program which would provide free visual aids to persons with disabilities. By Thursday, the program was at capacity; however, the government inspired false hope for months by distributing information to non-profits about the overwhelmed program.

I find it amusing when Americans discuss the problems with Canadian healthcare. There must be some right wing think-tanks disseminating a ton of information to Americans about the various problems and limitations with Universal Healthcare. True, there are occasionally long waiting times and people without the communication skills to advocate for themselves are occasionally overlooked. But I've read numerous studies which have proven that the same factions of society (minorities, the elderly, the poor, persons with mental illness, drug abusers, etc) that are not always given the best care in Canada due to communication and comprehension difficulties are generally the same groups that, in the US, have no health coverage whatsoever. Imperfect treatment is better than no treatment at all.


The close-minded Republican element is probably more dominant in American culture than in Canadian; I read an article the other day that discussed how when the Canadian show Degrassi Junior High aired an episode about abortion, U.S. Networks wouldn't allow it on the air. I do feel somewhat uncomfortable living in a country that doesn't allow gay men and lesbians to marry; the few gay weddings I've been to in Vancouver have almost made a romantic out of me.

I currently reside in a thankfully left-wing enclave, Seattle. As long as I avoid the people with "God Bless America" bumper stickers, I'm usually in good company. Although oppressive American foreign and domestic policy deservedly gives the country a bad rap internationally, I don't think anyone can totally dismiss the country which gave birth to so many subversive cultural and social movements. You know, oppression inspires activism, blah blah. Maybe our relatively permissive culture is partially to blame for the lack of Canadian national identity, but hey, I wouldn't trade it. I personally think nationalism is a little weird, anyways. What normal person champions their own government unconditionally? I have to admit, I cringed a little and put on dark glasses and a hoodie when the two year old I look after insisted on wearing a "I Love America" t-shirt her grandparents had sent her, because then I look like the idiot who picked it out for her to wear to the park. I feel nearly the same when she picks out a pink velour hoodie with "Little Princess" lettered in fake crystals across the back.

I moved here on an impulse to 1) be closer to my Yankee boyfriend and 2) for a change. I wasn't really doing anything particularly productive in Vancouver- I've always had the itchy feet and love an excuse for a new adventure.

I made the decision and found an apartment and job within the next week. I, personally, would've preferred to move to London or South America, but...I've always liked hanging out in Seattle, so here I am.

There are some things I really like about America. For one, drink prices- Happy hour is illegal in Canada. Prices in general are cheaper down here, but it does raise some concerns about the dangers of over-consumption, especially in relation to exploitative production practices. Trader Joes is simply amazing. My bias as a newly "old" person is evident here, but I love the 21+ drinking age since it changes the bar dynamic entirely. In Vancouver, especially at dance nights, the bars are overrun with teenagers. I'm not threatened by cute American Apparel-adorned teens, but I do lament that they have driven a lot of the people a bit older than me away from Vancouver nightlife. I've been sneaking into bars since before there were hipster dance nights, and when I was an underager I used to idolize all of the cool people who were ten years older than me. Now, it seems like anyone over 27 is considered passe. In contrast, in Seattle the median age is a lot older- at shows you frequently see people in their thirties and forties. Since I don't plan to be living the surburban dream in a decade, I like to see people who give me hope for my future.