It's just a step to the right.

Alors, mes belles.

Je ne suis pas la plus dévouée des auteurs, mais si vous venez ici à lire, à s'amuser, ne quittez pas! Au lieu, allez maintentant à http://rumcreeters.wordpress.com/ ...

... à bientôt.

-----------------------------------------------------

So.

I haven't been the most dedicated of bloggers, it's true. But if you've come this far, either to witness my lack of blogging motivation or simply by accident, don't go just yet. Move over to http://rumcreeters.wordpress.com/ instead...

...and we'll talk again soon.

Mio amore, presto sarò con voi...

1 near-death experience
+ 1 adopted family
+ 1 broken family
+ 1 move back into my family
+ 5 exams
+ 5 more days...
----------------------------
= I think I need to get away.

Overt head movements and persuasion: a self-validation analysis

Validation is defined as something decided upon, confirmed, accepted and then given to one party by another. Why is it that the one entirely affected by the validation is the only one removed from the process of distributing it?

« Self-validation » seems to be a concept reserved for the behavioural psychologists, the dissociated and multifarious on their emotional roller coaster ride, or the software analysts.

But what about the rest of us? (Well, the rest of you: I count myself among the dissociated & multifarious.) Is self-validation really as extremist as Google seems to indicate?

There is no other person who will ever know me or my life or be affected by what happens to me to the same extent as I will be. So why should anyone besides me decide when and for what I am acceptable, true or just?

In a life where the powers of independence are exalted but independence itself is only accepted behind a ring; where liberalistic opinions are firmly proclaimed from the loveseat before the husband arrives home from our career; where life is all about the journey and not the destination, as long as we’re settled and decided by the time we’re 24; where butterflies are traded for dogged determination and controversy dropped in face of conflict…

In a life like this, I can’t wait for someone else to decide when I should be satisfied. I can’t wait for someone else to decide what I deserve. Let’s stop waiting for others to treat us to happiness. Validate yourself when you feel that it is earned. And while you’re at it, treat yourself to a specialty coffee as well.

Helen Keller has assured me that life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Someone once warned me that all sparks burn out in the end.

That may be true.

But I'm willing to risk that the fireworks are sure as hell worth it while they last.

For a moment of peace, I would consider.

On peut parler d'une renaissance, on peut parler de la liberté, on peut parler des arc en ciels et des tirets et des jumeaux et tous les autres choses qu'on voulait. Mais lorsque on arrête pour deux secondes et lorsque on est à contrecœur, on réalise qu'on veut pas la liberté, on veut pas la reconnaissance de soi, on veut, apparemment, n'importe quoi d'autre que le prison ridicule de l'amour.

Mais on veut un prison de passion, un prison où la musique est pleine de quelque choses plus que les pensées contradictoires. On veut quelque choses folle et hors-contrôle et loin du ciel. On veut que ces frustrations, ces pensées aléatoires et hypercritiques, ces cerfs volants de trahison, s'échappent et partent loin d'ici.

On veut la liberté. On veut la renaissance. On veut des arc en ciels.

Mais pas comme ça. Pas ici. Loin d'ici. Pas maintenant.

Ecclesiastical flirtations for tomorrow's night

I'll admit it. The only reason I am choosing to post this uselessness at 56 minutes past when I should be asleep is because I am in love with the click of my rapid typing on this laptop keyboard. It's addictive, compelling, and vaguely sexy, in an illicit-office-romance kind of way.

Apparently I will go to great lengths to justify aforementioned uselessness.

There comes a point sometime between midnight and four when sleep seems too far gone to be of any benefit; in fact, the effort of preparing for and attempting sleep seems to far outweigh the minimal value scraped from its skin. In junior high, my oblong hardcover journal and a whispering radio pulled me through restless, heavily still spring nights. And now, on the eve of spring, I stubbornly (narcissistically? masochistically?) deny sleep again.

Or perhaps, am denied by.

Flixster.com could tell you the whole story

Apparently if you haven't seen a movie but want to, that's the equivalent of 3½ stars.
Not a bad system, really.
It just makes me seem incredibly consistant.

And maybe I am.

Un cerf-volant de pensées volées

Je me demande des fois si c’est vraiment nécessaire. Quoi? Ça, je ne sais pas. Cette première phrase m’est venue à l’esprit, puis j’ai perdu l’élan.

C’est bizarre d’être ici à la bibliothèque, en traîne de taper en français, ce qui est normalement un garanti de l’intimité dans tous les autres sphères de ma vie. Mais ici, je réalise maintenant que le gars à côté de moi peut facilement jeter un coup d’œil subtile à l’écran et absorber rapidement ce que je suis en traîne d’écrire; mais si j'écriviais en anglais, je pourrai relater à haute voix tous ce qui j’écris, et il n’aurait aucun idée de quoi je parle.

C’est une notion intéressante, bizarre et profonde – l’idée de l’intimité dépendant de la langue (un petit jeu-paroles là). Des idées, des actions, des paroles et des pensées subissent une bourse de valeurs fluctuantes liée à la langue dans laquelle nous nous exprimons, et également (ou même primordialement), la langue du récipient. Alors, nous devons nous demander : est-ce que la valeur de nos idées se trouve vraiment dans le corps de l’idée, ou est-ce que c’est la forme et la manière d’exprimer l’idée qui la rend signifiante ou non? Et si cela est le cas (comme je le soupçonne), ne devrions-nous pas mettre une emphase incroyable sur les études sociologiques, psychologiques et culturelles aux lieux des autres études comme l’administration des affaires? Si nous ne pouvons pas communiquer, comment est-ce que nous ferons du progrès?

Voyons donc, ma phrase d’intro fait peut-être du sens après tout!

Btw, you technosexuals.

February Free Month has begun.

Time to get your free on...

Housesitting charms, lies and belies

Interrrrrressante.

Mmm, it's one of those stellar 21:28 o'clock moments with nothing profound in mind and a whole blank screen at your disposal. Dangerous!

I am comfortably uncomfortable in our office chair in my new house for this semester. House-sitting offers so many lovely fulfillments of unexpected anticipations, such as blank kitchen tables sitting on shiny hardwood, linen closets stocked with Swiffer refills, multiple bottles of Spray n' Wash, GalaxieMusic on Channel 900s, the silent scrape of a mailbox key, an entryway to be mopped, and a sliding closet door across an empty floor. It's the small freedoms that culminate in expansive, explosive gratitude.

Raucous praise for the wandering bond between retired couples and 20-something university students!

Foux Da Fa Fa

It doesn't get much better than this:

I do (and I really really don't)

Where is the line between « relationships » and friendships? When does friendly become flirtatious, and when does being playful equal being a tease? Was Harry right? Is it impossible for a guy and a girl to ever truly be friends?

It sometimes seems as though the minute one begins to contemplate the apparently fine line between friendship and that «something more,» the line immediately disintegrates, and one finds themselves in that messy, grey, dangerous area fraught with the emotional entanglements of the relationally-confused. However, as humans seem to be incapable of contemplating anything but that fine line, it seems as though the line has no chance of ever really surviving before it is contemplated right out of existence.

In an era where relationships are the fall-back topic of conversation, the subject that we jump to in order to fill even the briefest of conversational pauses, the line has been given an increasingly short shelf-life. In fact, we seem to be using the line as sour cream before it ever had a chance to experience life as milk. Do we create relationship issues with friends in order to avoid the banality of comfortable friendship? Or do others create relational conflict for us and our friends so that they can enjoy the angst without having to trouble with the emotional investment themselves? And inevitably, does this growing obsession with relationship dysfunction strip me of my freedom to be friends with a guy without having unreasonably romantic expectations piled on the relationship?

Heck, I’m terrified to even hug a guy now for fear it’ll be read as a come-hither gesture. What would they do if I pulled out some bisous?

This is just another reason why I love les Français!

A short walk from the bus stop

I stole
from a tree today

The ruby breath that was singing
around and through her slender throat
beckoned to me
and I to it

and so I stole
from a tree

and I smiled
as I did so.

9:15

The universe was designed to break your heart.

An unreasonable (& bloody understandable) chimera

I feel flat.

I should know better by now, in all my vast blogging experience, that post-midnight blogging is dangerous and leads to the spilling of secrets better kept tucked safely away. But as I can't even formulate an interesting thought, let alone a scandalous one, I think my secrets will stay safe for tonight.

The mind is an amazing thing. When I most depend on it, it abandons me completely. Instead, at the most inappropriate times, it manages to turn a seemingly innocuous road of thought barren of any overhanging branches of intrigue or romance into a brambly path of doubt, a breathless well of anticipation, or even a misty field of unfairly expropriated glamour.

Am I talking of my mind...
or my heart?

lurk /lɜrk/ Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used without object)
1. to lie or wait in concealment, as a person in ambush; remain in or around a place secretly or furtively.
2. to go furtively; slink; steal.
3. to exist unperceived or unsuspected.
4. Chiefly Computers. to read or observe an ongoing discussion without participating in it, as in an Internet newsgroup. –noun Australian Informal.
5. an underhand scheme; dodge.
6. an easy, somewhat lazy or unethical way of earning a living, performing a task, etc.
7. a hideout.


A hiatus is said to be healthy, even essential, as it permits a time of reflection and a gain of new perspective. In my hiatus from my blog, I gained one very startling new perspective: apparently, I have lurkers.

The notion that people actually read this blog was disquieting enough. But that people read it and don’t leave comments… It’s like being hounded by a stalker who doesn't want to invest enough effort to leave you sinister notes or potentially poisoned chocolates. It’s just a little embarrassing.

Then again, I know some of the comments I’m tempted to make to myself after posting an entry. Maybe a little anonymity, even more so than new perspective, is healthier for everyone in the long run.

Train the monkeys on my back to fight

How can the slam of a car door,
the click of a window shutting,
the dry snap of a turned calendar page
be equivalent to the change of an entire season?

Fall 2007 – I saw that written today for the first time on the cover page of the Travaux dirigés pour Chapitre I in my Chimie des elements réprésentatifs class. « Fall 2007 » is so much more than just a season and a date, it’s the beginning of something significant in the lives of students circling the globe. For me, it’s the beginning of Year 3 of degree, Year 3 of choice, Year 3 of stepping hesitantly and courageously and ridiculously forward into the world I hope… know… ache for… to one day be my own.

It’s a season of change. Fall always has been, and will continue to be. God knows us too well and sculpts us so intimately in each veined, embarrassed blush on each protective tree that hugs us in its shadow on our walk to wherever it is we’re devoting our next eight months.

I am devoted to here, and I feel that my choice to be here is an act of devotion to the One I believe has placed me here. And yet I rebel against being here because it means forcing my mind to stretch eight months in advance… and then what? I’m terrified that my choices now are slowly smudging away at the choices I thought I didn’t have to make. And though I revelled in the thought of not yet making them, now I’m aching at the thought that I may never have to. I’m hurting with incertitude. And tearing apart with frustration at the same time.

Happy September.

Happy May Day? April Fools! February Free Month!

February 28 2007:


After my Chimie organique miterme, I had two hours to study for my Physics test. It was not pretty. The test was not pretty . My fingernails after the test were not pretty. When I went to hand my paper in, Mr. Schraeder eagerly asked, "So, was it hard? easy?"

I just looked at him. Then I simply said, "I felt really dumb doing that test."

His face fell. Poor guy. He kept assuring me not to worry. I think he just felt guilty.

I sailed out of that room propelled by stress, exhuastion, some extreme frustration and also some brimming humour. I made rapidly for my car with one thought on my mind:

I'm getting home, getting Mom, and going to DQ.

While during the test I had been fighting tears of frustration, now I was merely fighting oncoming drivers in my hurry to get home. I pulled up, parked haphazardly and ran inside.

"Mom," I cried with an edge to my voice (impatience for a Blizzard, but apparently that wasn't as obvious to everyone else as it was to me.)

"She smashed the car," my brother ascertained.

"What is it?" Mom whispered anxiously as she bustled into the corner where I was unceremoniously dumping my Physics binder, obviously anticipating my need for emotional support.

"Can we go somewhere?" I asked.

"DQ?" she said immediately, her eyes brightening.

And that is why I love my mom.


We drove not to one, but to two locations, and both were closed. at 21h30!! Do they not realize that beyond-stressed students feel the pangs of ice-cream even at 21h30? Especially at 21h30!

I was getting desperate. Note: very desperate. So we pulled into a McDonald's. I oredered an Oreo McFlurry, Mom a chocolate sundae. Sean refused on behalf of his higher ethical standards in regards to the service at McDo's... or something. Whatever: ethical principles do not apply to ice-cream, my friend.

My salvation arrived and I took a bite...

Only to grimace.

Smarties. They had dared to give me a Smarties McFlurry. The one chocolate (besides macaroons and icy squares) that I actually hate.

So we circled back to the drive-in window.

"Hey!" I bellowed through the miniscule window. "You gave me Smarties!!"

"Excuse me?" the girl questioned timidly, looking a little confused.

I could not blame her. We sleep-deprived, study-drugged students are a perplexing bunch.

"SMARTIES!" I ennunciated, leaning across my complacent mother in the driver's seat. "I ordered Oreo and you gave me Smarties!"

Still bewildered, she instructed us to continue to the next window, where they would "take care of the problem."

We obediently pulled up and confronted yet another anxious employee.

"What is she doing?" I hissed. "It looks like she's making..."

"Here you go," she mumbled and quickly slid the window shut.

And on the last day of February Free Month, we scored not only a free McFlurry, but a free chocolate sundae as well. I suppose if part of our order was wrong, they didn't want to risk infuriating us with the other half!

Throat clears.

Please take note that the documentation of the inspiring finale to February Free Month will be arriving shortly.

I would like to thank the incompetance of the McDonald's employees.
Without them, this wouldn't have been possible.

Steps down to applause.

If you find yourself caught in love

February Free Month is rapidly coming to a close, and my bragging rights are growing fainter. My family would be ashamed of me. Free count for this month: a Corona from the bartender at Academy Lanes. Pretty pathetic.

But it was really good.

St. V's Day, one of my favourite, should-be-statutory holidays, was such a lovely day:
We leave the somnolent hamlet of Benito around noon (anticipated departure: 10:00am, not too bad) and arrive at my cousin's home around 18:30. I make the responsible decision to skip my class that night and stay the night at my cousin's instead. We make our way to the bowling alley, where we celebrate Hearts Day with some of the most inadvertently ridiculous bowling I have ever experienced. A bartender begins to poke fun at my bowling in a drawling, quasi-flirtatious tone. I am both amused and annoyed and ready to sharply reprimand him. Realize that bartender knows me from class. Ask bartender for free bowling, and when that is deemed unattainable, he offers free drinks instead. Good enough for me!

There is something about Valentine's Day that is so completely lovable. It may be the colours, the candy, the impractical tiny cards, or just the encircling sweetness of the day. All I know is that the Lilliputian envelopes emblazoned with curlicued names and bearing my signature will not be ceasing any year too soon.


If you find yourself caught in love
Say a prayer to the man above
Thank him for everything you know
You should thank him for every breath you blow
If you find yourself caught in love
Say a prayer to the man above
You should thank him for every day you pass
Thank him for saving your sorry ass...