Step One: Open your MP3's
Step Two: Put 'em all on random-like.
Step Three: Try not to feel ashamed, list 'em as they come.

1: Howie Day - Sorry So Sorry
2: Manuel "La Puntillita" Licea - La Bayamesa
3. Jason Mraz - I'll Do Anything ("chillin' like icecream fillin'" yeesh, I'm disappointed)
4. Adam Nussbaum, Ron Carter etc - Like Sonny (jazz jam)
5. Ani DiFranco - Sick of Me
6. Led Zepplin - The Ocean
7. Buck 65 - Roses and Bluejays
8. Jeff Buckley - If You Knew
9. See Spot Rhyme (some guys I know from Vancouver) - Ignorance
10. Steelers Wheel - Stuck in the Middle
(I'm amazed at how eclectic this has been so far)
11. Coldplay - Don't Panic (BT Remix)
12. Perfect Circle - 3 Libras
13. Jamiroquai - Where Do We Go From Here
14. Kent - If You Where Here (i think that's what its called...Swedish band)
15. Morcheeba - Get Along
16. R.E.M. - The Great Beyond
17. A comedy bit by the Crumbs about a guy who's belly button is from Australia...but if that doesn't count
17b. Frank Sinatra - Fly me to the Moon
18. Black Eyed Peas - Let's Get Retarded (Ha!)
19. Our Lady Peace - Dirty Walls
20. Jim Guthrie - 3 AM

HOLY CRAP. I'm shocked by a lot of different aspects to this. It is impossible to derive a type of person from this list of music. Ned's list gives a glimpse as to who he is...mine? Who the hell listens to ALL THIS DIFFERENT STUFF? I'm so weird. And almost none of it is in the past two years. Man.

I had the best drama teacher ever.

I know a lot of we, artistic folk got awfully attached to our art teachers, but really, mine was the best.
Firstly, he was shorter than me. He had a shock of white hair and the clearest biggest blue eyes in the world. The combined effect gave him the aura of the wisest, most genuine 13 year old boy. And he had the energy to match it.
He'd biked back and forth across the country three times while I was under his tutelage. And his dog Magee was awesome. He named his cat Barney the Wondercat (secretly called him Fatty) and almost cried when Barney disappeared for four days.

He found the only woman shorter than him and married her. Her name is Christine and is Scottish. She didn't mind the year end pool parties he'd throw so we could have the annual Fuhrer Awards. She actually made dips for them.

He let us call him Rick during after school improv rehearsals, though I could never bring myself to do it. One day, when he had to do lunchtime supervision in our cafetorium I sat up with him on the stage, supervising the grade 9s and 10s playing cards and throwing empty juiceboxes around. I was in my last year of highschool, and had just finished doing a unit of monologues for his OA drama class. I wrote one about a woman who'd been with the same man since she was 14, and the moment he proposes she realizes she doesn't love him, so she gets out.

We were talking about where I was headed in the next few years. I'd already been accepted into the Humanities program and was pretty amped about the whole thing. Every now and then Rick'd bring up how he thought that I should talk to a former student of his who'd 'made it' in the ridiculous entertainment industry in Toronto. I'd made plans to meet her, but it fell through...who knows what would have happened had Jeanie and I shared gelato, but that's another story.

Rick had seen through the monologue and had found me hiding behind the words. While we sat there on the stage tapping out rhythms with our heels against it, he turned to look at me and smiled. 'I'm going to be that teacher'. He said.
I looked at him long and hard, trying to figure out what that meant. It dawned on me soon enough and I could feel a smile slide across my face like a sigh. 'You already are' I said back.

I still have his picture on my wall, here in Leuven. It's a shot of the two of us on my graduation day, hugging and smiling.
He's the first and probably only man to truly believe that I could do something great in the arts.
And I disagreed. So here I am.

He's that teacher. He's the man who taught me how telling jokes isn't a masculine profession. He's the man that challenged me to get the highest mark EVER in his class. He's the man that always let me know that I could do it, even if I didn't want to. He's the man who taught a room full of exhausted improvisors what it's like to be married and in love. He's the man who would call the time of death on horrible games we'd developped for improv because 'you're like this really brilliant child-so smart-who one day comes home dragging a dead horse. And your parents, they're so perplexed because, it's a dead horse...but you insist you can make it live by loving it. And its so sweet and touching, and maybe your parents believe you a little bit. But then, a few days later, the smell is leaking into the kitchen through the window over the sink. And there you are, outside, riding the dead horse.'

I haven't seen Rick since Brianne's wedding. The whole team was there, minus Ryan who was working on a cruise, and we shared in all the memories we'd spent four years carving out of the usual asinine highschool bullshit. The nine of us closed the place down, dancing our collective hearts out and laughing at each other. At one point in the night he pulled Kathy, Al and myself aside and we sat down to speak. Kathy and I had been the youngest, only graduating the year before, and it appeared as though Rick wanted to say something to us. He began by telling us how we were the best group of performers he'd ever 'had the pleasure' to teach. As he spoke the rest of the team gathered. Some of us sitting on the floor, in full-on wedding regalia, just like the old times. Finally Brianne broke away from the well meaning handshakes and came to join us.

"This is the first time I've ever been with all of you as people, not as students or improvisors. And you're all wonderful in all three respects. There's so much you taught me that I can't begin to express it. There's so much we can say to each other now that we couldn't before because of the teacher student relationship. And there's one thing in particular that I've always wanted to say to a group of students, but never could because of fear of the repercussions. But you guys are that rare group of students who I know will understand what I mean when I say it. Every teacher hopes to connect with students like this, and I'm so fortunate to have this chance."

We all looked at him, expecting these immense words of wisdom to solve all of the uncertainties we had of the future.

"So what is it Rick?" Babin asked "You're killing us here."

"That one thing, that I've always wanted to say to students but never have....is...Lesbians."

Brianne was the first to laugh, but it was close to a 9 way tie.

It was an open-bar wedding.

The Constantines, live in Brussels.
Cure-all for the mentally uncertain, but not insane.

Sometimes the only thing I need people around for is to rub my back while I weep and to agree when I repeatedly say:
I'm not crazy.
I'm not crazy.

That, and to leave tea outside my locked door.

Listen to Woman Lose Weight by Morcheeba. RIGHT NOW.
NOW!
GO!
FASTER!

I don't care what you say.
Busta Rhymes is a modern day Bard.


And LL Cool J- Kit Marlowe.

Case of the giggles number 993721.

Sitting in Theory of Knowledge, next to one Morna Boyle.
Prof. Burms mentions how the average skeptic will doubt everything. Mortality included. "Are these people human, or are they-zombies or some such thing"
Looks are exchanged between Morna and I.
When Burmseys back is turned she does a small in-chair version of the Thriller dance.
I proceed to dig my pen into the palm of my hand to keep from hyuk-hyuking outloud.
Is there such thing as gel-ink poisoning?

You can rent Liechtenstien. For serious. And, well...20,000 pounds. Sandra presented this information to us yesterday over lunch. The fun of the fantasy stops once you realize that you can't order the citizens to do what you want.
'You there-DANCE! Your Queen commands you! What? You have to go to work? I'll write you a note'.

The thing is, I think about myself a lot. I'd say perpetually, but yesterday while watching El Mariachi and Desperado I'm pretty sure I spent a lot of time thinking about how much heavier a guitar case full of guns would be then my lap-top bag.
But other than that I think about myself every...20 minutes. More. Sometimes these thoughts are small 'soooo stupid.', 'where did I put that?', 'Man-you're so funny, yet no one laughs..' thoughts, and less often they're the complete personality overhaul type thoughts. Between these two types of thoughts I figure I've covered every Desiree-related subject there is in the universe. In several universes. So when someone presents their opinion or observation on a facet of my personality that I haven't come up with before I'm floooooooored.

"So, you're like this because you've hung around boys most of your life?"
"Well, I'd always figured it was cause this one episode of Perfect Strangers where Larry.....no-wait! You're RIGHT! Holy Crap!"

So there you have it. Boys, yet again, are to blame. Thanks alot. I'm an obnoxious, flat-shoe wearing, fence climbing smart ass. If you don't find me ravishingly attractive and charming its your own damn fault.

I apologize for my binge-purge style of updating, but you know how it goes.
For those who come looking and are often unsatisfied, every single time I ever read anything Josh Allen writes I feel inspired. And hungry...

Dear little-tiny dogs.

You're not really animals. I hope you realize that.

Dear Sourfaced girl in Fataal:

You're standing cross-armed and smoking furiously is not making your time any more enjoyable.
The thing about dance clubs is that they're...for...dancing. I don't want to explain this to you but someone obviously should...
I like your sweater though.

Dear Eighties.

STOP! PLEASE! I'll listen to Flock of Seagulls in a bar.
I'll watch little girls wear day-glo fishnets under contrasting day-glo legwarmers.
I'll drink Yoo-Hoo.
But don't make me actually want to own an off-the-shoulder shirt.
I don't know how you did it...but I want it to go away.

Friedrichshafen, Dusseldorf, Knock, Biarritz, Haugesund, Aarhus

Dear Europe.

That's some kick-ass city-naming you've been doing. Keep up the good work!

So this time last yearish I was in Nova Scotia.
Though I was promised nice warm weather, there was tons of snow, much like there is currently, as three out of 6 of the featured links on our left will boast.
When I was down, we went walking around one day, talking to people, hanging out, and every single person we ran in to mentioned the same thing. Not the weather they were currently experiencing, but the weather in Maine.

This blew my mind. They didn't care about how much it was snowing in Halifax, but every bloody person we met told us how much it snowed the day before in Maine. A foot. A FOOT OF SNOW! It snowed a FOOT in Maine. Isn't that crazy? Whoa. Poor Maine. A whole foot. Meanwhile in Halifax the drifts were taller than me and Adam's car spun out a bit after the movie. But in Maine, one whole foot.

No one else noticed this but me. I don't think anyone else found it as hilarious either. People in Halifax are like this though. Their sympathies run deep. Mine, on the otherhand, do not.

It's warm here.

Pictures!


The thing is, our kitchen is really nice and big, but every picture of it has this stupid wall in it. This wall makes our kitchen look like its in the Fight Club house. Which it is. But still.


This picture captures the pre-party mood really well. Usually the ritual starts with returning from class, hitting the grocery store, then grabbing cheap food somewhere and taking a nap. I always show up late to these things. But I'm always showered. In this picture Jaya, (who just called me to tell me she still has my eggs) and Morna are watching me fight with the cd burner. Turns out you gotta FINALIZE those things.

Someone threw up on my floor!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


turns out it was me.


Never again vodka, never again.

....Bending time like Salvidor Dali...

I can always tell what season it is on my walks. Not because of the weather, since Leuven weather is always ALWAYS grey and coldesque and threatening to rain. But because of the window display of 'Exstase' the sex shop by the train station.
Hallowe'en: Black and orange full latex suit.
Christmas: Red stringy get-up with white fluffy fringe.
Valentine's day: Red vinyl deal with heart shaped cut-outs
Easter: I'm hoping for something with a fluffy tail.

Leigh and I are supposed to fight on Thursday night. The plan is to break into the park around 1 in the morning and thenn brawl

Anyone interested in living in Chicago in the fall of 2005?
I'm looking for future roommates.
In your application, please include a picture (not necessarily of you), your four favorite foods, and your personal favorite year in music.
Mine's 1966.

I like watching the muscles and tendons in my shoulders and chest move when I put on and take off shirts.

I really really need to find someone who'll give me a good massage before I lose all the range of motion in my neck.

I started writing a play in Paris, and now that I'm no longer there my will to write is completely gone. I need to get back on this otherwise I'll never finish it, and as put by the Hip 'no one's interested in something you didn't do'.

I hate how in the only picture I have of us, I look squinty and ridiculous and you look wonderful.

New Zealanders call them courgettes and aubergines. Infinitely more culinary then zuchini and eggplant.

When I brought it up one last time, its because I really needed to give the subject a fuller treatment then I had before. I think now I totally understand. And now I can move on.

When I said the word 'zuchini' I had to deal with the laughing eyes of three Kiwis. Then I had to write it down for them.

I gave the necklace I wore in the picture to Morna, and when she wears it I can almost see her there in my place with you. It's a strange feeling. But she'd fit better anyway.

No matter where I walk here I can't find the words as easily as I did walking past the Louvre. Paris was a placebo town I think, where I could tell myself art hung thick in the air and I just needed to inhale it to write. I've told myself Leuven's air contains Stella fumes, not as creatively stirring.

Yesterday when I was laughing and then looked quickly over at a noisy moped the pain was so searing I swore so loud I think I offended a bunch of nuns across the street. My neck shouldn't make God angry with me.

My favorite thing to do is bend my arms at ninety degree angles and then move then around from my shoulder. The different grooves and bulges amuse me so much.

Stray thoughts trapped on paper:

"How do you know it wasn't love?" She asked "It sure sounds like it."
"It couldn't have been, can't have been" I said, looking at the jasmine leaves in the bottom of my cup.
"Because if it was, and I let it go, I'm not who I think I am."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember the video for Step by Step by NKOTB (for brevity's sake) when they make it look like Jordan's arranging the strings? That's hilarious.
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Just now, listening to the Christina Aguilera 'Lady Marmalade' harmonies, I got shivers.
I blame lack of sleep.
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Crap, I keep finding tonnes of my hair everywhere. I hope that's not a bad sign.
............I hope it's a sign of genius.
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Things learned in Paris: How to check above where you intend on sitting. Pigeons lurk everywhere and evacuate their systems without warning.
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The straightest line on my body is the flat part of my nose. You could draw a graph using it as a ruler. A very small graph.
Nose sized, to be specific.
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Something about a punked-out white-boy thug carrying a baguette makes me smile.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I squeezed myself in between the two of them, a kind of social parallel parking that was sloppy and awkward. It took too long, and observed from far away you could see it didn't quite fit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm a quitter and a sore loser. It's a wonder anyone plays with me at all.
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I always assume there's a hierarchy of coolness in every social setting, and I always insert myself at the bottom.
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I'd mention the names of other men; the things we'd done, times we'd laughed. I told these stories in a way that was not completely benign, like when you'd force your hand into the mouth of your dog at a young age. A kind of violence where if he reacts according to his instincts, bites down, you get to reprimand him, but you know that he won't. And that's why you do it. You've domesticated him. But each time, there's that slight hope that he'll bite.
I just wanted him to bite. To prove to me he was a dog, or in this case, a man. I set him up like this often. I'm not sure why.

The only hip-hop mix cd I have, which I made for myself when all the songs were cutting edge, has a song that mentions 'the new millenium baby!'. It's time to update.

With an hour and a half left to kill before training back to Paris, I decided my time was best spent lying against my stuff in front of the station, letting the mediterranean sun warm my forehead and test my sunglasses. I read Faust until, well, until I realized I was reading Faust on vacation, and then I put my discman on and lay back, eyes closed.

I don't know what it was, the apparent act of submission or how great the sun makes everything and one look, but three separate me asked me to join them for coffee, and one asked me to go to Monaco with him. I politely declined each offer and was left to my Jordan Knight and sunshine when one gentleman came up and simply stated 'c'est dommage que vous etes seul'. I smiled at that and said 'ce n'est pas dommage, j'aime etre seul.'

And at that very moment, I realized I wasn't lying. J'aime bien etre seul, mais pas pour toujours.

Give a girl a road journal and she's likely to write down every thought she has over four days.

The results:

Jesus Christ! I'm 21. Even on paper that looks weird. There used to be this show called Young Gladiators or something. It was American Gladiators Jr. I only saw one episode, with the oldest boy from Home Improvement on it. One of the ultimately fatal flaws of this show was that since they couldn't use violence as they did in its adult predecessor, they made it educational. Yeah, cause THAT's gonna sell; a show featuring preteens in spandex running climbing giant foam pyramids to collect rubber replicas of the different food groups.

The big competition at the end, the Calibrator or Oxyginator or whatever, involved some athletics like running or climbing, but also some questions based on sound bites covered throughout the show, about body fat and dandruff. The Home Improvement boy had to pick a door based on the yes or no answer of a hair care question. He got it wrong, and chose the wrong door, which lets say, for the sake of interest, led to a pit of firebreathing snake-dogs.

All I remember thinking to my 12 year old self, other than 'I can't BELIEVE I watched this whole show' was 'stupid boy. Representing our age group so poorly'.

Back then, every time I saw someone in my age bracket represented in the media , they were dropping the ball. Letting all of us down. The kids on Teen Jeopardy were dumb. Kids on the news even worse, drugs and violence and whatnot only being interesting to the masses when it was at the hands of the youth. I was above that. Now, my age group is kicking my ass! I'm not saying that there weren't some exceptional 13 year olds back then, but come on -HANSON- they were easily discredited as freaks.

These uber 21 year olds aren't freaks. They're EVERYWHERE. In the music industry, writing novels, travelling the world on missions of peace. I'm in university. That's it.

I went from being the only sharp crayon in the box to a slightly sharp crayon in an entirely new box! A box of 64!!! Maybe that analogy would work better if I'd said used. Yeah, okay.

So I used to the the only used crayon. All the others were still that conical waxy-perfect shape that couldn't be reproduced, even through sharpening. But now, we're all used. Even white! And who uses the white crayon? We've all been rounded with use, paper peeled back so you can't tell which is navy and which is blue-purple until it's too late and you've ruined your sky. I've gotten lost in this.

Anyway, I'm not special. but none of us are. And I guess my days of being above average are done. Time was the definitive equalize. ELIMINATOR! That's what the end-of-show challenge was called! Man, I would have kick that boys ass all the way back to Tim Allen's fictitious house!

For the first time in my life I feel like I need to be coaxed out of my shell. Well, no, that's not correct. For the first time in THIS life, I feel like I need to be coaxed. When I was a little girl I was horribly shy, but that was years ago, I'm an entirely different person now, with an entirely new life. And this new life has taken an unfair turn.

I love being confident, and for the most part I can be. I've designed a life around being intrepid and spontaneous and saying and feeling and acting as I want. I deal with consequences. I fess up to mistakes. I live. But now...someone else seems to be capping that for me. I ask other people to walk me home so he doesn't. I rush home, close and lock my door and turn out the lights so he doesn't knock. I sit with my arms and legs crossed, completely closed to him. I used to sit, according to Dan 'spread-legged as if you had the biggest schlong in the world'. I miss that position.

I love people and fully intend on continuing to do so, but this one person is setting up a structure where I can't. He's making me nervous when I'd usually feel fine. He's making me uncomfortable in places where I should never be. My own home, my or Morna's room. He makes me look at the floor. He makes me zip up my cardigan. He does all these things without words, so in reality its all my perception, my interpretation which is closing me up. His taken away my ability to randomly hug people when I or they need it. He's sapping my energy; I don't bounce, I force smiles.

All I want to tell him is to stop. But there's a much larger thing at stake here. He needs to help himself and I started out as a facilitator. Someone who could work with him on things, help him along and be there for him to talk, but now, those talks frighten me and make me tense. I never wanted to become their subject. But what do you do when the obstacle is yourself? I'm afraid that if I shut him out the way I really want to right now, he'll never get the help he needs.

I met a potential new friend a little while ago. He's 6'4 and all I was thinking the first time we talked was 'good, he's big and strong and safe and won't let anything happen to me'. That's BULLSHIT. I would never have thought that before. I would never gauge someone's size in relation to whether or not I'd be safe with them. I'd never think of recruiting a friend purely based on the fact that they could protect me. I could and can protect myself. The humor is that I'm not at risk of any physical attacks, just mental ones, and the biggest man in the world couldn't protect me from that. But yet, walking home with Aaron felt so much better than walking home alone, and having him around made me feel more like myself.

I've just recruited a bodyguard. This is how ridiculous things have become.
I want to feel safe again.

I also wish my comment problem would go away.

I wish I could do what I want.
I wish I didn't feel threatened because he's a guy.
I wish I could be completely honest and not risk hurting him terribly.
I wish I didn't want to hide behind someone else.
I wish I could get rid of this headache.
I wish I didn't miss home so much right now.
I wish I could just get back to living it up in Europe.


I don't like feeling this way.
I want to be left alone, but only by him.