Newsflash

Unhealthy people at risk of getting sick. It’s true. The studies say so.

Is it just me or is this stuff getting way out of control. I know a healthy vegetarian who got leukemia. I know people whose habits should have killed them 40 times over and they’re still staggering around. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, sure it’s a good thing to be healthy, it might even reduce your chances of getting seriously ill. But before I go hog-wild following your crazy fad food moment of the day, you better get your story straight.

Remember margarine, that great health food of days gone by which has suddenly been transformed into a trans fat suicide pill? Twenty years later, same product, different story.

It all just looks to me like some people are trying to find a cure for life. If that's what's going down I've got my own version of the game. It includes a sign on my ass that says - I brake for cake –and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my bumper sticker.

New directions

On a recent trip to the city, S and I were walking down a street downtown when this young woman walked up to us and said, “do you live here?” (okay, she asked S – S always gets approached – she’s the nice one. I’m the one who has perfected the ‘don’t come near me unless you want to give me money’ vibe)

I have to say that I hate open-ended questions like that – it’s like when someone says what are you doing tomorrow and I’m like, depends. Are you going to make some demand on my time or do you want to give me a ticket to a sold-out event I would kill to see because your kid has come down with scabies? Or when someone calls me and says, “who’s this?” True story. And I’m thinking, you called me, bozo. You don’t to get to ask that. I get to ask that, which I do on a regular basis because, nobody, nobody, tells me who they are when I pick up the phone, except S’s mom who announces her name; first and last, in case I might not quite be able to place her after answering her calls for only 15 years. Mind you after having to deal with me all those years, she may well know exactly what she's doing.

Anyway, so the young woman says, do you live here? We say we used to. Then she says something about everyone around here being liars and that nobody will tell her the truth. She wants bus directions to a specific spot that doesn’t sound familiar to us, as the transit system has changed considerably since we lived here. We’re sorry, we say, we’re not sure and she almost has a full-fledged breakdown in front of us. She stomps off to a nearby jewellery store, where I’m sure they’ll be happy to assist her, provided she buys a $2000 watch.

The next day I’m headed off to a meeting in an area of town I haven’t been to before. As I’m on my way to catch the train I realize I have a vague idea where the station is but I am not sure exactly which street it is on. So I ask someone walking by me. She says, actually I don’t live here. Interesting, I think. Now this is a place that gets a lot of tourists and S and I had figured that the woman from the day before had been a victim of the downtown core being invaded by visitors. So here was proof.

Then I see someone captive at a bus stop, a transit user who will probably know the whereabouts of the train station. I walk towards her. She is clearly discomfited by my apparent zeroing in on her. I start to ask her about the location and she promptly says, I don’t know anything. Wow, tough way to live, I think, but clearly she is far more unnerved by me than I am in need of the information, so I move on.

A guy on a bike is stopped at the light. Train station, I say and point in the direction I think it is, as if by cutting to the chase I can make it clear that I just want confirmation or correction from him, nothing more. He actually answers me and points me to the right street. At that point I am pretty darn grateful just to have someone attempt to answer my question. Thank you kind man on the bicycle. Thank you for sparing me a complete breakdown on a public street. Speaking of which, I wonder if that young woman is still wandering around cursing out the stupid liars and tourists who won't help her find her way home. Just in case, I think I'll avoid that particular stretch. After all, hell hath no fury like a woman lost.

Hijackers, time travellers and fruitcakes

When I mention that I’m going back to school with the intention of applying for Library school, I often get an incredulous, you-want-to-be-a-what, look. It would seem that a less than prestigious view of the librarian profession prevails in the general population.

Of course it doesn’t help that even its own early adherents played a significant role in keeping the librarian down. According to Matthew Battle’s Library: An Unquiet History, Melvil Dewey – yes the Dewey of the Dewey decimal system and all round ground breaking librarian – treated the profession as if it was a “girl’s” job and was therefore, rightfully subservient to the almighty academic.

Perhaps its early association with primarily female-type employees at a time when the only women who worked were oh so sadly, the non-marrying kind (as in poor ugly girl – no man - so must take dreary job to pretend to have meaning in life) has contributed to its antiquated image of being an infinitely boring position filled with old-before-their-time women. Aside from the complete inaccuracy of that perception, a far greater injustice is being perpetrated, for as far as I’m concerned, librarians are gods.

They have been strong advocates of privacy, intellectual freedom and civil liberty rights and they provide access to information for everyone – what role could possibly be more important to a civilized society? And yet the poster girl for the profession remains the stern faced shusher – the only apparent alternative being the, whip off her glasses and let down her bun, unleashed librarian touted by cheap wine commercials and cheesy aftershave ads. Given the choice, I think I’ll stick with the lacklustre persona, thanks very much.

But I suspect that public perception is about to undergo a change. An alleged former Black Panther turned reference librarian was just arrested in Toronto. The time travelling protagonist in Audrey Niffenegger’s hugely popular Time Traveller’s Wife is a librarian. Then there’s the new movie called The Librarian starring Noah Wyle. Granted he is described as a “meek librarian” – way to break out of those stereotypes Hollywood – who is apparently forced to rely on the real skills of a martial arts expert. Still it is an action-adventure flick named after a librarian, which should count for something. And how many other professions have their very own action figure?

But for me the real turning point was the case of the librarian hijacker, not a phrase one stumbles across often. Now librarianship, like every profession, is not immune to the bad apple syndrome. What intrigued me about this story was not that he was a librarian hijacker with mental health issues but that he was an EMPLOYED librarian hijacker with mental health issues, at a university no less. Which combined with the story of the Chrono Displacement Disorder sufferer in Niffenegger’s book who managed to retain his position over several years despite his periodic disappearances and naked stumbling through the stacks (don’t ask), has me thinking, wow, this is one accepting bunch. No wonder I figure there might be a spot for me in this illustrious field. If they can accommodate hijackers and time-travellers, not to mention the odd hidden panther – talk about your diversity in the workplace - they should have no problem assimilating a plain old fruitcake like myself.

The reluctant blogger

In a world already rife with opportunities for self-indulgence I was initially less than enamoured with the idea of the blog. What we do not need are more words, we need more intelligent use of the ones already floating about. While the current system of natural selection for that which is “publishable” is certainly flawed – ask any novelist attempting to sell a book – hell, ask me – the prospect of unfettered, unjuried, unintelligible ramblings from anyone who can wrap their digits around a mouse is a far more frightening prospect than the possibility that some works which perhaps warrant publication, might fail to achieve that end.

And yet, new media create new creative opportunities and fabulous things can and will emerge. Yes, there will be dross – there always is and always will be until we find a way to outlaw stupidity and bad taste. But within the cloistered world of blogging, I’ve already come across some great stuff that I never would have seen without the surfeit of monomaniacal offerings in this reality based, memoir crazed time.

I'm not a huge fan of rants. I've been known to rant against rants. And yet as with anything, there are always those who take the form to a new place. Eurotrash comes to mind. Angry, funny stuff. And Mimi Smartypants – five years of badass craziness – you’ve got to love that. Then there's the thoughtful articulations of someone like Library Dust – a pleasure to read. Or Jessamyn West – librarian blogger extraordinaire. How many blogs does she have - and how does she get it all done? The blog that started it all for me (I saw it referred to in a writer's discussion group) was Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind – laid out cleanly and clearly, chock full of info and links to one small part of the world – specifically crime fiction – yet another much maligned form. Coincidence? I wonder. And as the neophyte of neophytes I am aware of only the tiniest sliver of all the fab stuff that is out there.

I may be late to the party but I can assure you I'm not headed home anytime soon. Besides my tardy appearance is pretty much business as usual for me. In fact my record for recognizing significant new developments is truly stellar. I hated the idea of the internet at first (I was in my back to the land - I hate that I compromised and got electricity to my cabin in the woods - stage). Again, my concern with the internet was that there would be too much opportunity for the proliferation of garbage.

The natural extension of this particular philosophy is that if I ran the world, nothing at all would be allowed in case it could possibly result in some form of trash. Sorry, no food for you – it’ll only result in crap. Nix on the whole clothing thing – everyone will want some and next thing you know, polyester will be invented. Shelter? I don’t think so. It can only lead to sad puppy figurines and skylights (of course it’s going to leak people – you’ve cut a HOLE in your roof).

My first impulse is to distrust change (oh, oh, this can’t be good), then like a too typical convert, I gleefully adopt it as my own personal saviour and will attempt to recruit all in my path. So, if you’ll indulge this self-indulgent reluctant blogger, I better rest up before my next blog-rant (ooh, that looks way too much like igno-rant – do you think it’s trying to tell me something?)

Activate me baby

I recently signed up as a volunteer researcher/writer on a disaster response team for a humanitarian organization. We underwent a half-day’s training at the end of which we were asked to keep an eye on the news for any developing or possible disasters in our region, because that would mean we would be activated.

All of a sudden I felt like I was in The Manchurian Candidate meets Night of the Living Dead. It’s as if I’ll be walking along minding my own business one day and then suddenly some high pitched sound that only me and the crazy wire-haired terrier next door can hear will cause us both to tilt our heads and look to the south. The wire-haired terrier will go back to sleep while I turn and walk slowly with that zombie focus which all mind controlled beings exhibit as they strike out to do whatever it is they have been trained to do.

Instead of assassinating a president or chasing down nubile young beings who conveniently trip over small stones or dangerously long blades of grass so I can eat their flesh, however, I will be driving to an office in a big city and working on a computer. Doesn’t quite have the drama of the undead rising from their graves or the glamour of Denzel in a uniform, but it may well be this century’s version of the zombie crushing battle for the fate of the world.

Instead of spouting catchy platitudes like “kill the brain, kill the ghoul,” I’ll be saying things like “let me go online and track that down for you ma’am”. So beware evil info-hiding fiends. Armed with only a keyboard and dialup line, risking carpal tunnel syndrome and preternaturally pale skin, our brave hero will stop at nothing to chase down her data. For she is super-researcher and she always gets her facts.

The name game

I have learned that it is not wise to do anything on the net without first googling the possible results. My first attempt at this blog referred to a middle aged schoolgirl (me) and suddenly I found myself in the rather unsavoury company of a bunch of twisted squirrels and their porno sites – apparently schoolgirl, once an innocuous word has become a pornography laden concept thanks to the nasty underside of the ubiquitous keyword search.

After a quick dip in a blue-tinged disinfectant to cleanse myself from the near association, I resorted to the delightful Bubbles LaRue, a name I liked strictly on aesthetic grounds. But alas, a tassel-artist beat me to the punch and uncanny physical similarity aside (oh to look that perky yet dangerous clutching a six shooter), well I just had to concede first stake rights to the velvet hammer doyenne.

I do, however, claim flag planting privileges on the good old Bubbles Mandalay moniker. For googling that particular combination takes you to an odd amalgamation of sites that involves, yes it’s true, the see-through spheres that arise from suds, an assortment of resorts in the country that can’t decide its own name, an ode to handmade papermaking and the Vera Lynn tune, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, that was featured in a Rogers and Astaire movie in which they apparently appeared as dancing chickens.

Feels like home to me. In fact I think I could get to really like it here in this wonderfully off-kilter company. Though of course nothing in this world stays static. Who knows what will turn up at the next search in this ever changing googlified existence. In the meantime...

I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams
They fade and die.
Fortune's always hiding,
I've looked everywhere,
I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air

(Jaan Kenbrovin - John William Kellette 1919)

Fear factor

The subject heading - at risk for drop from PSYC 666 - struck terror in my heart. I had scrambled like crazy to come up with enough courses for the extra year of credits I need to apply for library school and now I was being threatened with having a course dropped because I may not have the prerequisites needed. Well fuck me with a spoon but doesn’t my DEGREE count for anything.

But no, I’m now having to prove that a course I took twenty-five years ago, which has since transmogrified into a new and improved version of itself, bears a passing similarity to the course being touted as a necessary prerequisite for this course, that, let me state this clearly, I don’t even bloody want to take. I only signed up for it because it was one of the few that didn’t have a waiting list of 437. And now you want me to BEG to be let in? What fresh new hell is this?

And even if I had taken the required prerequisite a quarter of a century ago(!) the brain cells that have expired, faded away or killed themselves out of boredom, pretty much ensures that I wouldn’t have the slightest recollection of it anyway, so what’s the point? I curse you academic mandarins and your petty ways. But I take comfort from the fact that while I may not be able to take your stupid course, at least I don’t have to spend my adult life teaching it to a bunch of students who are only there because the good classes are full.

Earth moves. I miss it.

In the middle of the night a while back, S said, did you feel that? I, in a sleepy stupor, but apparently never in so much of a stupor as to not have a ready answer, replied, I was moving my leg.

I have been known to have restless legs and in my dreamy mind state I incorporated the apparent movement of the bed with a logical explanation, which I promptly provided before falling back asleep. Either that or I have a strange compulsion to take responsibility for anything and everything. It turns out though that we’d had an earthquake.

Then a couple of nights ago, S woke me up. She said we’ve had another earthquake. I said I felt something move. She said that was me shaking you awake. Oh, I said and went back to sleep.

Did I mention I am an incredibly light sleeper? The dog has recently been banished from the bedroom because she breathes too loudly and yet in the past week and a half I have managed to sleep through two earthquakes.

I’m not quite sure what all this says about me. It sure doesn’t fit my, ever alert and ready to leap into action, perception of myself. It does, however, coincide nicely with my ‘oh, yeah, I knew that’ bent. No, siree you can’t be telling me anything I won’t be able to make fit, albeit with a little prodding, into my firmly established worldview. Or at least that’s me in my sleep. Me awake, now that’s a different kettle of fish. I think.

The world according to Colin Farrell

It turns out we’ve all been wrong about Colin.  He is not, in fact, a bad boy.  It turns out that according to Mr. Farrell, Hitler was a bad boy, not him.  And I thought Hitler was a genocidal maniac.  But no, apparently he’s a bad boy.  I’m so glad we’ve cleared that up.  I hope the historians in the crowd are listening.

I don’t know about you but I’m willing to buy Colin’s version of ‘bad’ because he is clearly a man who knows his way around morality.  After all, he’s threatened to punch out anyone who smokes near his infant son. Now that is one touching display of paternal affection.  Apparently dad’s addictions to cigarettes, a right good piss-up and shagging anyone with a pulse, are of no concern.  But a little second hand smoke, now that’s some pretty bad business, like maybe up there with the antics of that Nazi bad boy I should think.

That whole thumping out scenario has me wondering what the Colin would do if he’d been around sixty years ago.  What would he have threatened naughty Adolph with when he learned about his mass killing hijinks?  Perhaps a drinking contest mano a mano or a good arm wrestle to settle that whole holocaust nonsense once and for all. 

Thank you oh might celebrity world for continuing to bestow upon us the self-servingly trite and pathetic ramblings of those whose sole claim to fame is being pretty and/or amply endowed.

While that whole thinking thing seems a tad out of their reach, at least we can still gaze at them and sigh. 

Myopic devotion

It’s quite cute that S is so worried about me being away from her, about how I will be scooped up by a young filly on the make.  Like I’m going to walk into a classroom and they’re all going to look up and think, “Wow, hot babe, how do I get me some of that?” instead of the more likely, “omigod I’m going to school with my mother.”  But she is nothing if not devoted and she is convinced that the budding dykettes will be flocking about me, trying desperately to win my hand.  Though I suggest to her that this in fact is not likely to happen– as in, not a chance in hell, she is not convinced.  So I fall back on my tried and true,  “Remember hon, I don’t actually like anybody.”  And she smiles, reassured once again.

Non-student faces death and dying

Because I already have my degree and I applied to school on the absolute last possible day and I’m a non-student, I mean non-degree student, by the time I was allowed to register for courses, the pickings were pretty slim.  I already have all the developmental, abnormal, perception and personality psych courses a person could possibly want, which left me with a lot of health, aging, death and dying psych courses to choose from.  Hard to believe there wasn’t a mad rush of twenty years olds signing up for those puppies.  But then as S put it, the good news about taking those courses is that everyone would want me in their study groups.  “Is that really what it’s like to grow old?”  “Does it bother you that you’re so close to dying now?”  and other fun stuff like that.  I’ve always wanted to be able to say, “in my day….” Looks like I may get my chance yet.

Feeling a little queasy

I just received my orientation materials for school. Aside from the glossy brochure depicting the many “connection exercises”, in which I may participate, including the beloved bus-based scavenger hunt, orientation seems to consist primarily of telling me all the ways in which I can get sick.  You got your SARS, your West Nile, your Pertussis (whooping cough to the Pertussis-ignorant) your bacterial meningitis and your influenza, which sounds far more serious than the no-big-deal flu that I’m used to. 
 
The good news is there are several vaccines available to help me avoid the serious and life-threatening diseases not to mention the mere “scholastic under performance” that could result from my contracting their lesser cousins.  For only $140 I can be immunized for some though not all of these potential scourges.  A deal at twice the price. 
 
Unfortunately the vaccinations do nothing to protect me from what turns out to be the greatest risk of all, which, despite the several paragraphs devoted to rare bordering on non-existent or usually benign infections for non immune-compromised young adults, turns out to be motor vehicle accidents.  Fortunately there’s a cure for that too.  Apparently it’s called a bus pass. 
 
And after the doom and gloom of all the possible ways in which I can get ill, lose a limb or possibly my life, I am then encouraged to have a healthy and fruitful experience at university.  Oh, yeah, you bet.  So if you see someone riding the bus with a bunch of needle jabs in her arm, wearing a mask and eau de mosquito repellent while clutching an empty wallet, it’s just me being safe, healthy and scared out of my wits.  Welcome to school in the 21st century, where learning and paranoia collide and I’ve got the vaccine scars to prove it.

Is that it?

Hey guess what - turns out librarians are the hot new job.  It’s true.  I should know.  I’m on my way back to school to become one.  First stop.  Fix up that faulty undergrad degree I was too stupid and sloppy to get right the first time.   
 
Sure I have a B.A. but it’s a baby B.A.  the kind that you get when you fuck up a stats course for no good reason – does anyone ever fuck something up for a good reason?  The kind of B.A. that does not allow you to go to grad school, even if you wanted to which you like so totally don't!   
 
Fucked up stats course = do not pass into 4th year.  Retire early claiming you didn’t want your stinking honours B.A. anyway. Nothing wrong with a perfectly good solid 3 year, no pretensions, no big plans, degree.  One that perfectly prepares you for your first job after graduation at an A&W in a mall in Alberta, on the outskirts of Edmonton.  Note – not even in Edmonton proper - no, no, that's too hoity toity.  This is just outside large city, suburban cred, which I grant you is not quite street cred, but the closest I'll ever get to it.   
 
Now being a real live university graduate, I went straight into management naturellement.  Supervisor at a fast food kiosk in a crummy mall in the middle of nowhere.  Now there’s something to enter into the old alumni, what fabulous job did you get after graduating, bragfest.  It's been pretty bunch downhill from there.  
 
But things are about to change now.   For sure.  What better way to turn your life around than to abandon it to go back to Uni in a non-degree program.  Some universities call us "special students" which sounds a little more positive somehow than, non-degree students.  That makes me think of us all as a little pathetic.  I mean if you're not a degree student, then what the hell are you and what's the bloody point of going back to school to become a non something?  Though come to think of it, that probably is the better description for me.  I can assure you that it's best for all concerned if I don't start considering myself "special". 
 
And hence this blog, a detailed account of just why I'm not special and why my going back to school is not worth documenting.  All so you can have the joyful experience of reading about my life and thinking, is that it?