I Know a Convicted Sex Offender Who Might Be Dead...a true story

The other day, I was notified that one of my thousand-or-so clients had gone missing. Which is a sad, but not infrequent occurrence - many of the people who use the drop-in centre where I work are homeless, and almost all struggle with mental health and addiction issues. Within a week or two most turn up, alive, not too much worse for wear. Some do not.

The man in question was a regular volunteer, and I felt particularly saddened to learn of his disappearance - my interactions with him had always been pleasant. A shorter, chubby-faced man, he’d always seemed sweet and eager to please; a little slow, maybe. Not the sort of person I’d associate with the seedy underbelly of society, or heroin addiction. Not the type to disappear and reappear casually without causing concern.

The more days passed, the more I worried about this guy.

Finally, today, I google searched his name, hoping that he had turned up days ago and that my colleagues and I had simply failed to be informed - the sort of thing that happens in the social services world all the time; we’re all too busy, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and bad news travels seventeen times faster than good news, according to the laws of idle gossip.

I also knew that my google search might turn up news that was far more upsetting - a body, maybe, or evidence of suicide. Tending to believe that any news is good news, and that I’d rather know than be left to wonder in the dark, I’m the type that regularly seeks out potentially awful information, even though many wise individuals have advised me that this strategy is incredibly stupid. And they may have a point.

I searched, and I found absolutely nothing to do with my client’s current whereabouts or anything related to his disappearance.

Instead, I found dozens of articles, years old, related to his release into the community after serving a lengthy sentence for committing a very violent sexual assault. Against a young woman, who was a stranger. Who he brutally assaulted, tried to kill, and then left for dead, unconscious in the woods, bones broken, eardrum pierced, her face requiring stitching from mouth to ear.

Considered a very high risk to reoffend, police released him back into the community because they had no other choice - he had served out the entirety of his fourteen year sentence. And during that time, he had stalked and had unwanted contact with several women, breached probation twice, and escaped once. He was found the next day. His parole board spoke of his release with grave concern.

Several communities had banded together to keep him out, and so he ended up here. Literally, here. As in, two blocks away. Or, right next to me, holding a knife, chopping onions, depending on the day.

Which...I’ve known some terrible, terrible people. People who have harmed those I love, who take pleasure in the pain of others, and who deserve nothing but the caustic flames  of hell and eternal castration whilst being raped by a bear. There are people I feel no sympathy for, and likely never will.

But this client isn’t one of those people. And I can’t help but try to preserve my image of him; as a 
polite, somewhat-slow, nice guy.

While this is the most graphic and well-documented case I’ve yet to encounter, I know that many, if not most, of my clients have done things in their past which are horrible, abusive, and wrong. Hell, most people I know, when boiled down to their worst actions, are the scum of the earth, so either I really do need to meet new people or the world is a complicated place.

And in that world...a convicted violent sex offended has disappeared without a trace. Which is troubling. Hmmm.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT:

(Internal dialogue related to conflicting views, written down. I am not crazy.)

P: He’s a nice guy.

CP: He’s a rapist and attempted-murderer.

P: That was, like, 20 years ago.

CP: Yeah. Robert Pickton hasn’t killed in 10 years. Charles Manson hasn’t in 40 years ago. Doesn’t make them any less serial-killer-y.

P: But he’s been free for years, and managed not to rape or try and kill anyone! That’s showing progress, right?

CP: He hasn’t tried to kill or rape anyone that we know of.

P: You could say that about anyone!

CP: But not everyone’s been convicted of aggravated sexual assault and been deemed an incredibly high risk to reoffend by the criminal justice system.

P: Okay, but he seems kind of slow. Maybe he has FAS. Which places him at an unfair disadvantage in terms of the getting caught, getting convicted, and getting sentenced for his crimes.

CP: But he still actually DID do those crimes.

P: True...but...if he had a higher IQ, maybe he wouldn’t have been caught.

CP: How is that LESS scary??

P: I just mean that we shouldn’t judge people who have been nothing but perfectly nice to us!

CP: He’s not ‘nice.’ People who rape and beat other women aren’t nice, and just saying that kind of makes you a bad person.

P: But...I’m just trying to be a good community support worker. Lots of men are rapists!

CP: Um, I like to believe that lots of men are NOT rapists, actually.

P: Everyone deserves support, though, right? Even convicted rapists.

CP: I’m not saying you should tar and feather the man. Just, you know, stop saying he’s a nice person. He’s not.

P: But that’s so judgemental...you can support the person without agreeing with their actions. Judge not lest ye be judged, and all that.

CP: I judge you NOT to be a rapist. I judge him to be a rapist and attempted murderer. Case closed.

P: Fine. Whatever. I don’t like you.

CP: Well at least I'm not a rapist.

Important Thoughts

I have something very important to share with everyone.

I, too, hate Nickelback. I hate them so, so much.

But Ivy, you cry in disbelief, why would you say such a thing? Isn’t it a little late to jump on that bandwagon? And also, aren’t you Canadian? Don’t you all have some weird allegiance which forbids this sort of naysaying?

To these assorted remarks, I reply with this: Because I want to, yes and shut up, and indeed, I am Canadian - but as a Canadian, I feel I have suffered unfairly at the generic-chord-strumming hands of the band that is Nickelback, and such a violation of my ears and soul trumps any allegiance I would otherwise have for my Canadian brethren.

You see, Canadian content regulations stipulate that a certain percentage of music played by any given radio station must come from Canadian artists - usually, 35% - and this means that certain lazy radio stations tend to overplay certain generic sounds, over and over again until the Canadian public’s ears bleed, so this mandated quota is met.

While there are a great many Canadian artists whose music is good, great, and utterly fabulous, finding them takes effort, and since Nickelback continues to sell albums, their songs continue to be played. All the time. On a disturbingly large number of stations. Avoiding their sound - which has gone from annoying, to frustrating, to unmitigated-rage-inducing - is nearly impossible.

Sadly, this system itself - which guarantees that Canadian artists aren’t neglected in favor of American musicians - has good intentions and unfortunate results. Whenever a Canadian musician gains mass popularity (usually through backing by American producers, cough), this leads to their music being mercilessly overplayed. Until we hate them, and fantasize about stabbing them in the face, repeatedly. I’m talking about you, Avril Lavigne.* **

(*I’m also talking about Celine Dion and Shania Twain, and yes, even Feist. You known what you did.)

(**For legal purposes, let’s be clear: I have never, nor do I intend to ever, actually stab Avril Lavigne or any person in the face, no matter how untalented and incredibly annoying they may be, nor do I encourage others to do so on my behalf, or on behalf of society. But imagining such an event, in an entirely abstract form, is still lots of fun.)

Okay, a quick review of my writing has led me to realize that I’ve used the word ‘Canadian’ no less than ten times so far in this posting, or eleven times if you count when I said ‘Canadian’ earlier in this sentence...crap, twelve. So, that may be a bit much. I’m going to stop now, and try my hand at making pop-up Christmas cards, because it’s my day off and I’m incredibly cool.

Peace out.

Everyday Heroes

There are two types of people in this world: those who will willingly walk away from a plugged toilet and those who, for whatever reason, will not. This is their story.

But first, a word on that first group of people. You suck.

The people who will walk away from a toilet of festering fecal horrors aren’t terrible people, exactly. They feel overwhelmed, outmatched, and ineffectual. More than anything, they feel afraid, and they run. Who among us hasn’t joined their ranks in a moment of weakness, shutting the bathroom door behind us and pretending we were never there, shame welling up inside of our gullet, head reeling as we try and focus on something, anything, besides the person who will enter the room next and face the living nightmare that is an unflushable toilet.

Cowards? Maybe. But deep inside of each one of us is a primal fear of blocked up toilets, and an instinctual voice telling us to flee, run away, never return. We can’t blame the weakened individuals among us who give in.

We can, however, blame the assholes who leave behind notes (thus feeling like they’ve accomplished something while doing absolutely nothing to correct that actual problem). The coworker who helpfully tapes an “out of order” on the door of the washroom containing a gross toilet that only needs to be flushed, the roommate who goes to bed after taping up a sign that reads “oops! the toilet isn’t working! =(”...they are the true assholes, the human waste blocking up the arteries of society like cholesterol. I once woke up to a bathroom covered in six inches of water, and an overflowing toilet stuck on eternal flush mode, with a note helpfully taped on the door, complete with a sad face. My rage towards the responsible roommate will never die...even after humanity has collapsed, and all that is left is our unrecycled plastic and a few starving cockroaches, my rage will live on, undeterred. Grrrrrrrrr.

But this blog isn’t about those people, either. This blog is about the people who, every day, turn and face the monstrosities plugging up the toilets of the world, grab a plunger, and fight for their right to functional indoor plumbing.

For them, a blocked toilet isn’t just a blocked toilet. It’s a metaphor for everything that is wrong with the world. It is a holy war, a struggle of man against machine, a primal battle against all that is gross and smelly and blocking up our drains.

Would it be easier to walk away? Yes. Should you probably have called a building manager or maybe a plumber after three straight hours of plunging with no success? Maybe. But giving up is easy. And those who face the plugged-up toilet are not the type to walk away from a fight. They won’t ask someone else to do their dirty work. They don’t call in professionals to kill their spiders and snake their drains. Dammit, this toilet is theirs to face alone, and they will conquer. Eventually. No matter what.

Five hours later, our hero may find themselves, alone, on the tiles of their sullied bathroom, emotionally and physically exhausted. No elation is felt as you stare at your bathroom mirror and think of all that you’ve lost today. The toilet has made you cry, and scream, and stare up at the bathroom ceiling and yell out “WHY, GOD, WHY?” The toilet has made you do things you never thought you’d do, touch things you’d never thought you’d touch, smell...terrible, terrible smells. The toilet has taken away some of your innocence, some of your youth, and some of your humanity. Like in any war, there is no true victor, and everyone walks away a little more broken, a little more worn down.

But, god dammit, the toilet can now flush.

And you, good sir, are a hero.

A Novel, Yet Unwritten

Please enjoy the opening pages to something that I wrote ages ago, which are obviously an introduction of some sort, but to what I have no idea. At all. I obviously never finished, which is generally how things work when I only manage to write during creative bursts of energy. But...enjoy!

She knew him. Not particularly well, mind you, or with exceeding fondness or affection of any sort. He simply was a character in the cast of her life - a sort of glorified extra, milling in the background, exchanging empty pleasantries from time to time. His name was Bob, she thought. Maybe Phillip.

It was an odd thing, knowing someone who had died - who had, days ago, presumably been living and somewhat happy, and who now was nothing but a drowned, empty corpse. She did not feel sad, but there was some sort of pain or indigestion deep in her gut. She surmised that it might be shock, or loss, or perhaps just the lingering memory of a hefty sandwich.

The man in question had drowned, it seemed, less than fifty feet from the docks of the cottage where he was staying. His canoe drifted ashore, empty, strewn with half a dozen beer cans. A missing persons report had been filed, and an executive decision to drag the lake was made, allowing for a timely recovering of the body. But what exactly had happened? She supposed Bob and/or Philip might have passed out from drinking, though that didn’t seem overly likely. She wasn’t certain Bob had been a heavy drinker. He didn’t seem the type, although really, it’s not like alcoholics have a certain look about them...and that’s neither here nor there. He could have smacked his head on something, although the coroner’s report didn’t mention any signs of a struggle. Speaking of which, perhaps some ruffian had drowned Bob, and then absconded, staging the canoe and the beer cans...but that seemed far fetched, especially for a man without any obvious wealth, gang allegiances, or personal characteristics worth pinning down besides ‘adult caucasian male.’

Who had found the body? A cottage-town neighbour - not a doting, dumpy wife, or attractive, bare-chested homosexual lover, or weepy, traumatized four year old daughter - nothing to colour in the edges of the man Bob might have been. Or Philip. She flipped to the third page of the report to fill in the missing details - Robert Jeffrey Enid, age forty-two and two months. Single. Caucasian. Male. A Gemini, if that means anything.

No children listed. His body had been identified and collected by his mother, who flew into town for the purpose. The death was ruled accidental with no foul play suspected. Case closed. Goodbye to Bob, whoever you are. Or, were. Whoever Bob was, and isn’t now, goodbye.

She turned away from the open file and began to type.

Riots and Rainbows

The dust has settled and life has returned to semi-normalcy in Vancouver following Wednesday night’s Stanley Cup defeat and subsequent drunken rampage of doom.

A lot has been said about the post-game riot and the aftermath...about how ashamed we feel of the rioters, about how stupid their behaviours were and how we’d love to see them punished, about how we’d like to all think that we’d never torch a police car and drunkenly loot a London Drugs, but in the right place at the right time with enough alcohol and riotous company we may have done the very same.

I’ve got nothing to say pertaining to the above points that hasn’t been said already and with fewer run-on sentences, so let’s move on to happier thoughts.

The upside of Vancouver’s Stanley Cup Riot!

Yes, there was carnage, and flames, and a few people were stabbed and that one kid is still in critical condition. But, on the other hand, that kissing couple is freaking adorable...

This cuteness would never have happened if it wasn't for car-torching hooligans!

And, in a plus that’s been sadly and inexplicably overlooked by all media coverage to date, these riots were a perfect example of racial inclusion and harmony.

Damn straight.

Look at the photographic evidence: while the rioters were mostly young and male, the crowd could not be more racially diverse. Citizens of every colour joined together to smash and loot...except for black people, because we, um, don’t have many of those.

But we DO have fire.

When was the last time you saw members of such diverse communities, all in one place, all working together towards a common goal? When was the last time you took the time to say to a person of another ethnic background: “would you like to join in with me and throw a burning trash can through the window of this store?”

It's like a diversity rainbow. But with smashing stuff.

We have seen the face of racial inclusion and togetherness. And it’s not a bunch of kids from different countries, holding hands while standing on a crudely drawn globe. It’s these kids, drunk and looting their neighbourhood department store. Which is pretty much the same thing, right?

I Am Not a Dancing Ninja

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art which intricately combines break dancing with kicking your opponent’s ass. Naturally, I was both intrigued and terrified, and desperately wanted to try.

I should probably specify here that I have absolutely no martial art or dance ability, whatsoever. As in, I seriously lack strength, speed, mental discipline, or the ability to move rhythmically to a beat.

Compounding this is the fact that I’m a tiny little woman who’s very appearance seems to exude frailty and weakness. Whenever my friends or colleagues discuss sexual assault or random battery, I always end up being their hypothetical helpless victim. I like to think I’m pretty kickass, and I probably am...in my own weight class. Maybe. In the greater world, the best thing you could call me is “scrappy,” and even that might be a stretch.

So, naturally, in my pursuit of becoming Xena: Warrior Princess, or at least someone that isn’t everyone’s first choice for the role of Rape Victim, I decided to take a class in Capoeira. And in doing so, I learned some valuable life lessons.

Lesson the First: I am very, very bad at Capoeira.

This may have seemed obvious to everyone who isn’t me, but I always harbor this deep-seeded delusion that maybe, if I find the right sport or activity, I’ll inexplicably kick ass at it, causing others to envy my raw talent and my instructor to praise me as a gifted natural.

This never, ever happens.

Lesson the Second: I am bad at understanding Brazilian accents and Portuguese.

I’m also taking a Spanish course, and you might think that studying Spanish would be helpful in understanding Portuguese, since the two languages are very similar. But...no. I kept thinking I was hearing Spanish, and then all the minor differences between Spanish and Portuguese caused the language centres of my brain to short-circuit - it made everything my instructor said extra confusing, and it sent my Spanish ability hurtling backward into the fetal position.

Lesson the Third: Bleeding feet aren’t just for obsessive ballerinas.

Considering we were forced to do giant kicks followed by cartwheels, it’s a miracle that no one got more badly hurt. But my toes are all blistery, and another student limped away from class with raw, bloody feet. Think of your feet, and how much you use your feet, and how important it is to you that your feet are not giant festering flesh wounds, and then decide if you want to take up pointework or Brazilian martial arts. Because...ow.

Lesson the Fourth: I hurt. Everywhere.

That is all.

This Vacation Has Given Me Time to Reflect, Decompose

Readers!

I've had an entire week off of work, most of which I have squandered in terrible, terrible ways. Like sleep. And watching various remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, followed by The Happening, which is both terrible and epically amazing. But mostly, sleep.

Which means my brain now resembles a large bowl of mashed potatoes, rather than a functioning, sophisticated organ that is supposed to produce sentient sentences...so, um, apologies for that. My brain may turn back on later. For now, more sleep. Maybe coffee. Probably just sleep.

And in the meantime...I drew a pretty picture! And by "drew," I mean "copied and pasted off of the internet, and then edited, because that's how I roll."

Behold!

click to make big if your eyes are not powered by laser beams

Dedicated to my brother, without whom most of you wouldn't be here. Also, without whom my childhood would have been a lot less exciting. It definitely would have involved fewer incidences of being chased around the house with a sharp knife. But that's a story for another day.

Celebrate...not celibate. It's an important distinction.

I never wanted to be a celebrity.

Which isn’t to say I don’t want to be celebrated...who doesn’t want to be celebrated?

Obviously, I don’t mind love and admiration from others. I appreciate praise, even, theoretically, unending praise from scores of anonymous admirers. And, yes, I want lines of people, some of whom I know and some of whom I’d never met, to spend their time thinking about me, how fabulous I am, and how they could better emanate the awesomeness that is my very essence. And this admiration could, naturally, escalate, leading to expensive lines of highly-sought personalized perfumes with scents inspired by my person with names like “fabulous,” “awesometastic,” and “Donegalrific.”

And if every once in a while someone wanted to take my picture or ask for my autograph, I guess I wouldn’t mind that, too.

Does this make me a shallow, self-centred person, not unlike every wide-eyed, empty-souled teenager who has sought the fame and infamy in every venue imaginable, by every means imaginable, at the cost of anything and everything society holds dear?

...Yes, yes it does. Because I am not perfect.

Luckily for me, and for the world, my fantasies of celebrity are kept in check by the fact that there can only be one David Sedaris or Angelina Jolie.

(And if you don’t know who the amazingtastic memoir-writer David Sedaris is, you must correct this blasphemous crime against your person this very second. He is amazing.)

Like most other people will mild fantasies of mass-adoration, I’m simply not cut out for the job. I’m not horribly deformed or otherwise fun to stare at, and I don’t have any amazing talents worthy of exploiting. I’m mostly just normalish; sure, I'm unique and special, but in a way that’s not entirely unlike everybody else.

Which is why, instead of throngs of adoring fans, I have one. Maybe three. But I know about one. His is named Jesse. And I’ve never met him. And he goes to school in Waterloo, where he studies math, or physics, or something equally sciencey. This is all I know.

And to my fan, I wish you nothing but happy things, and I hope you may continue to bask in the radiance of my self-absorption for many months to come.

=)

Little Sister

When I was five years old, my mother sat me down for a very important conversation.

“Ivy, sweetie, you know that you and your brother and I have always been a little family, kind of like the three musketeers. But, actually, there were really four musketeers - the entire plot of the Alexander Dumas novel The Three Musketeers was about how the fourth musketeer, D’Artagnen, joins the ranks of the other three. And in the 1973 Michael York movie versions of the three musketeers, the plot was broken up into two shorter feature length films - The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, reflecting this very idea.

“The point of which is, I’m pregnant, and you’re going to have a little brother or sister.”

I paused, blinking repeatedly.

When this information eventually settled into the depths of my developing brain, my thoughts turned to one inevitable declaration: I wanted a little sister, NOT a little brother.

As the only girl in my entire extended family, I was desperate for an ally and for companionship. I needed another girl to swing the group dynamics my way: instead of killing things, we could play with dolls. Instead of ‘pretend we’re under military siege in the cemetery,’ we could try, ‘quiet craft time with Mr. Dressup in the living room.’ And most importantly, instead of ‘making fun of Ivy because she’s a girl and we’re not,’ we could play ‘Shut the hell up, boys! There are TWO girls now!’

When informed that this was not something my mother could control, I turned my attention to the person in charge of such things: God.

In those formative years of my early childhood, my concept of God was this: God was a magical, benevolent figure who looked similar to Santa Clause, except that he wore white, not red, and was Real. He spent his days living invisibly inside the clouds and casting magical spells to grant wishes to those who were good and believed in Him. He could also read your thoughts.

God liked nothing more than to help good little girls like me, so long as we remained faithful, made our beds, and didn’t talk back too much to our mothers. So I started wishing very hard for God to give me a little sister, confident in his ability to come through, so long as I never doubted.

This was not easy - my mother, concerned over my newfound fanaticism, tried to inform me that, even if I prayed every day, God might not come through with a baby girl. I scoffed at her apostate ways and prayed harder, determined to be heard.

When my mother went in for an ultrasound, the technician asked if she wanted to know the sex or be surprised. My mother, tellingly aware of God’s true nature, winced in reply: “It’s a boy, right?”

The fateful day arrived when my soon-to-be sibling burst forth from my mother’s vaginal cavity with a whole bunch of blood and mucus and amniotic fluid in what has to be the grossest sentence ever in the history of the world.

And my new sibling was not, in fact, a boy.

And so began the inevitable decline of my childhood years from my station as “sadness-prone youngest child and only girl,” to my new role as “resentful, bitter middle child who is no longer special in any way.”

All thanks to my little sister, and the broken condom that brought her into this world. Amen.

Aviator Goggles, or how The Simpsons made me the woman I am today

I want aviator goggles. I want them so freakin’ bad.

Also, I was tiny, matching aviator goggles for my two dogs.

This all started with an obscure fantasy of buying myself a Vespa scooter and perusing the French and/or Italian countryside. There would be bread, and cheese, and wine, and my puppies, because where most women will insert a scantily clad gentleman into their far-fetched European fantasies, I often choose puppies instead.

And then, as the fantasy evolved, I decided that I would be wearing a flowy yellow skirt, and a classy white blouse, sensible brown tie-up boots with only an inch or two (or three) of heel, and on my face would sit an oversized pair of aviator goggles. And possibly an aviator cap, too. (On my hair, not my face. You understand.)

The Vespa scooter dream has all but died away, and trekking across Europe with puppies in tow is a bureaucratic nightmare, what with the various quarantine and vaccination requirements. I have all the skirts, blouses, and sensibly-healed boots I need (using the most modest interpretation of the word), but one part of my longing remains: the desire for adorable, steam-punky, oversized aviator goggles. And maybe an aviator cap, too. And then matching adorable aviator caps and goggles for my two adorable puppies.

Why?

Maybe because Steve McQueen and Memphis Bell were integral part of my formative childhood years. Maybe because a small part of me never stopped idolizing vintage fighter pilots, and Amelia Earhart, and all the airplane scenes of Indiana Jones. Maybe because all glasses are a little bit comically oversized on my tiny, hobbit-like face. I just don’t know.

Or maybe it was that episode of the Simpsons where Lisa, for a science project, starts putting Bart and a pet hamster through a series of intelligence tests (with the hamster continually coming out on top). In the end Bart bests her by dressing up the hamster in aviator goggles and placing him in a toy plane - the judges are awed by the hamster’s cuteness and award Bart the top prize (angering Lisa).

And really, can you blame them?

Why are lesbians bipolar?

As I was sitting up at 8am on a workday, munching on some Haagan Daaz rocky road ice cream and reading a biography of Angelina Jolie from the Billy Bob Thorton years (...as one does), one of life’s Important Questions occurred to me: Why are so many lesbians bipolar?

The answer is, of course, that I have absolutely no idea.

I don’t even know if more lesbian and bisexual women are bipolar than the general public, only that I know of a great many women who are both bisexual or lesbian and bipolar. But I also know several Jewish people with schizophrenia, and at least two Jewish lesbians with post-traumatic stress disorder, so really, I shouldn’t be drawing any demographic conclusions from my personal experience.

...Please don’t hate me.

Beginning with what I DO know, I have brainstormed the following list of true facts.

True Fact #1: Only about 1% of the general population has diagnosable Bipolar Disorder.

True Fact #2: Bipolar Disorder is a psychiatric illness characterized by wavering periods of intense mania and/or hyperactivity and periods of low mood and/or depression.

True Fact #3: Men and women are equally prone to bipolar disorder, but experience it differently. Women are diagnosed later in life than men, and often have ‘rapid cycling’ bipolar disorder, which means they switch between high moods and low moods faster than men.

True Fact #4. Some psychiatrists have noted similarities between rapid cycling Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder (a disorder also characterized by big, rapid mood swings, and almost exclusively diagnosed in women). Many psychiatrists have theorized that Borderline Personality Disorder may be a subform a Bipolar Disorder.

True Fact #5: My roommate, who is a lesbian, has been asked out exclusively by women with bipolar disorder, as in, every woman who’s ever asked her out or shown any sexual interest in her whatsoever has had bipolar disorder. Strange.

True Fact #6: Bipolar and Bisexual both start with the letters ‘bi.’

True Fact #7: According to my tabloid-informed research, Angelina Jolie has shown signs of being both bipolar and bisexual.

All of which caused me to draw the following helpful and colour-coded chart, with accompanying legend of emotional lability. I drew it on a napkin for added clarity.

Behold! A mood chart!

(Note: this chart has been adapted from one which was drawn by an actual psychiatrist, with actual medical credentials. I’ve adapted it, using my keen understanding of the human condition, coupled with my unadulterated sense of whimsy. Enjoy.)

Legend... (starting at the bottom)

0 (Dark blue)

Psychopath. No emotion. (No response to painful stimuli. May, however, kill you, and your pets, and then eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.)

1 (Light blue)

Manly man. No discernible emotional reactions, however, this man will shed a single symbolic tear when talking about the Vietnam war, or some such crap. (Response to painful stimuli: “I feel no pain, for I am Manly Man!” Later, quietly to self, “ow.”)

2 (Aqua-marinish)

Womanly man / Manly woman. Prone to occasional emotional outbursts, for which they feel great shame. The sort of person who gets choked up and retreats from the room, muttering things in a high-pitched, nasal voice. (Response to painful stimuli: “Ow! I’m not crying, though, that’s just my allergies. My eyes are very sweaty today. Shut up.”)

3 (Light green)

Woman. Cries sometimes. Offers socially appropriate comfort to others who seem upset. (Response to painful stimuli: “Oww!”)

4 (Light blue, again. Except maybe more of a turquoise. Colour-code fail.)

Woman with PMS / Man with Issues (Donald Trump, Chef Ramsay) Liable to fly off the handle with little notice. May cry. May yell. Often makes others cry. Colloquially known as “moody.” Approach with caution. (Response to painful stimuli: “Fucking oww!” or “Why does everyone hate me?”)

5 (Orange)

Borderline Personality Disorder. Characterized by dramatic emotional instability, as well as self destructive tendencies and marked shifts in relationships, seemingly at a whim.(Response to painful stimuli: “I hate you! Life is a hopeless chasm of despair! Also, I love you. Hold me?") Sometimes will inflict painful stimuli on self, just to distract from the great emotion pain he or she feels inside. Sad.)

6 (Red)

Bipolar Disorder. Highs that are so high that you may or may not believe that you are Jesus and heir to the jellybean conspiracy of the lost ark of the covenant. Lows that are so low that you cannot get out of bed for days or years at a time. It’s all about maintaining balance, and that balance that can be thrown off by: too much or too little sunlight, citrus fruits, exercise or lack of exercise, caffeine consumption, or no discernible reason at all. (Response to painful stimuli: Depression or mania, or both at once, which you’d think would be good, but is actually very, very bad [psychiatrically known as a “mixed episode.”])

So, my questions become...

Are the strength of people’s mood swings relative to the shitiness of those people’s experiences? And if this is true, can we redefine stoic manly-men as sheltered nancy-wimps?

Are lesbians more likely than other women to have been abused as children? Or do some of the genetic and environmental factors that go into making a woman a lesbian also up her chances of being bipolar? Or, are lesbians more likely to be diagnosed at an early age as bipolar, as opposed to borderline, by virtue of their manishness? No?

Or is my roommate just some sort of strange beacon for bipolar lesbians, no matter how rare they may be? Do they sense her by smell, or pheromones? Do they travel thousands of miles, years at a time, compelled by a strange force of the universe which causes them to inevitably make her acquaintance?

...The answers remain elusive.

In summary

Monday
I estudio’ed some serious español.

Tuesday
An epic case of the grumpy-pants was cured through liberal application of Justin Bieber songs on Glee. It was freaking adorable. And now I have Justin Bieber songs stuck in my head, which makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable and kind of creepy. I am not a pedophile.

Wednesday
A client at work pays me the best compliment ever: “You know who you look like? Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” It may have been a backhanded comment about my hairstyle being a decade out of date but, sir, you have made my day.

Above: Me, apparently! Killing things!

Thursday
I begin the day by grabbing the wrong keys on my way out the door, and then spending the next half hour locked outside my apartment building, with the dogs, wearing my pajamas, waiting to be let back inside by a neighbour with pity in their heart. It was cold, and I was tired, and it was sad.

I then rushed off across the city to the super important conference I needed to attend, only to find that the location had changed, and that I, along with five other confused and incompetent adults, had failed to get the memo. We eventually arrived (an hour late) at the correct location which, of course, was less than five blocks from my home. Also, it was raining heavily throughout all of the above events. I hate everything.

Friday
I spent my Friday evening alone, watching Merlin (of the BBC), eating Haagan Daaz, and doing laundry. This may be the very definition of wasting my youth. That being said, not a bad night.

Saturday
A five year old daughter of my colleague gave me a belated Valentine’s day card and accompanying Hershey’s Kiss as a thank-you for a random knitted dragon I gave her a month ago. Her cuteness makes me squee with joy.

Also, all of the small children I know are locked in a fierce competition, in my head, for the title of Most Adorable Child Ever. Move over, three year old who introduces himself as Spiderman, we have a new competitor, and she gives out Thank You Valentine’s.

Polite children are adorable. So are yawning hedgehogs.

why I'm a people person

My day began when my dog decided he had to vomit, and then did. The vomit was copious and brown in colour. It spread across my couch (which is also my bed), and then dripped down onto the bag that I had packed for work.

I then realized, with growing horror and nausea, that the vomit did not smell like vomit at all. It smelled like poo. Gross, ingested, regurgitated poo. It seems my dog had at some point ingested some of his own feces, and then vomited those feces up, all over my couch/bed.

I looked at my dog with disgust. He looked at me with love, and wagged his tail a little.

I went to work.

I should have known that a day that began with dog diarrhea-vomit was not going to go well, but I tried to be optimistic. I sang off-Broadway show-tunes to myself and greeted the world (which was rainy) with a hopeful, cheery smile.

And then the diarrhea-vomit continued (metaphorically this time). We were short staffed, short on management and support, and our clients were short on understanding. Various crises arose, to be quashed down and then arise again like mythical movie monsters. By three p.m., I had threatened to kill two people.

And if the words, “I want to stab you in the aorta with a butter knife,” don’t convey unconditional compassion and understanding, I don’t know what does.

Oscar Roundup: Black Swan

“Black Swan” is a chilling psychological thriller, and the rare movie that made me question if ballet should even exist while simultaneously making me want to dance.

Dancers too often hate and torture their bodies, which are kept under tight control and often unhealthily thin. They are prone to eating disorders, self mutilation, and a host of psychological problems. Their strenuous careers are often ended by the time they hit thirty, leaving little space for a childhood, or anything resembling a balanced life, and therein lies the problem. I knew this going in.

The movie does its best to illustrate one damaged girl who has spent her entire life being exactly who her mother and dance instructors asked her to be - and now faces criticism that she is too perfect, too controlled, too practiced.

Natalie Portman’s Nina sadly watches the other dancers, flirty and laughing. She cannot laugh; she cannot breath. And when her inner turmoil rips its way to the surface, shattering Nina’s tense reality, we are taken along for the ride. It is often unclear what is real and what is paranoid fantasy, and the audience is forced to question the identity of Nina’s true enemy - those who have made her weak, her mother, her instructors, her competitors, or Nina herself.

The mother’s relationship with Nina is an eery portrayal of deeply damaging psychological abuse, and Nina’s story is a beautiful metaphor (if not a necessarily a true-to-life interpretation) of the struggles many young women with anorexia nervosa and related mental disorders face.

Props to Mila Kunis, Ksenia Solo (kickass sidekick of TV’s Lost Girl), and the often loathsome Winona Ryder - all of whom held their own in difficult roles. Of course, Natalie Portman is the real star, and her acting ability stands up to the toughest scrutiny.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again...did any other Best Actress Nominee lose half their body weight, play a character having an intense nervous breakdown, and learn to dance hardcore ballet for their role? Hells no. Natalie Portman, I’ve had my mixed feelings - you were in The Phantom Menace, and you may, in some ways, be a colder, less relatable version of Anne Hathaway, but if you don’t take home that Oscar, you’ve been robbed.

Grade: A-

Oscar Roundup: Winter's Bone

If you’ve ever had a hankering for post apocalyptic anthropology, then “Winter’s Bone” is the film you ought to see. Taking place in modern rural Arkansas, amidst squirrel hunting and cooking up crank (methanphetamine), is a rich and varied cultural study of gender, politics, and the nuanced social graces of families and individuals on the cusp of ruin.

The lead performance by actress Jennifer Lawrence is Oscar nominated for good reason (although Natalie Portman is the likely Best Actress winner...nobody else lost half her body weight, went insane, and learned ballet). Her character, teenage Ree, is reminiscent of Jody Foster’s Clarice, as she goes about her business stoically and without question: tracking down her outlaw father so that her sick mother and young siblings will not lose their house.

From the highschool that she no longer attends (where the only classes we see being taught are parenting and marching practice - complete with rifles), to the chopping of wood, to the ever growing assortment of animals huddled around the shanty-like houses for warmth, it’s a world I can relate to (did I mention my family’s collection of expired vehicles, empty chicken coop, and eight cats?).

But white trash, left on its own for centuries, becomes something more...something with distinct and incomparable ballads sung in belted Southern accents, with a soft lilt of banjo music throughout. The characters lurk at doorways like vampires, waiting to be invited in, and the cussing is interspersed with ‘sirs’ and ‘ma’ams,’ because, despite the overwhelming poverty, there is no lack of culture here.

“Kneel down like you’re praying,” the main character tells her brother and sister as she teaches them survival skills, which in this case is learning to shoot. As she asks about after her father, we’re made painfully aware that this is a man’s world, where women mill around the periphery like watchdogs, and that the only reason Ree is doing the asking is that she has no men to do it for her.

The most painful part of the movie, for me, is when Ree sees her only glimmer of hope, joining the American Army (and getting a $40,000 bonus for 5 years of her life), dissolve before her; she has two kids to raise and no parent able to sign her up (as she’s still a minor). The money, while promised, would be months away, and there’s no way to take the kids with her to training. The recruiter tells her she’d best stay home, and Ree doesn’t bat an eye, but I cried.

And when a movie can make me cry over the fact that an intelligent child can’t sign away her life to the American military in order to become a soldier...you know it’s a heartbreaker.

Grade: A+

Don't Be a Pirate

So, apparently it is not in the best interest of anyone to keep birds indoors.

This seems logical - birds are, after all, winged propagators of terror and chaos. Nothing gives me nightmares quite like the thought of an owl or eagle attacking my dogs... that’s mostly because I live in an area full of aggressive owls and eagles who like to attack small dogs and rip them apart with their mighty talons before regurgitating them in the open mouths of their hairless spawn. Or something like that. It’s all very upsetting.

Winged death-beasts aside, there are lots of reasons not to keep birds indoors. Reasons like the fact that, besides species of fowl (like chickens and maybe ducks), birds are wild animals who have not been bred to be kept in captivity. Their ideal environment is outdoors and, removed from that environment, they are generally stressed and unhappy.

Take feather-picking - a disfiguring, self-destructive behaviour which is incredibly common among birds in captivity, especially parrot species, and is unheard of in the wild. The causes are various - sexual frustration (as most captive birds don’t get to mate), lack of exercise, being kept in a small wire cage instead of the open jungle, having your wings clipped (which often triggers feather-picking)...these are a few of the struggles faced by birds kept inside our homes.

I learned this the hard way - after a particularly stress-prone lovebird stayed at my house for a grand total of forty-eight hours, which were the stressiest forty-eight hours I’ve endured so far in my present home. My life became a tormented hell-dimension full of squawking and bird poo. The bird felt similarly distressed, which caused more poo, and more squawks, and more death of my soul. And it wasn’t the lovebird's fault.

It was society’s fault. For allowing people to own and keep lovebirds at all. And, I suppose, it was my fault, for offering to take said lovebird home with me. And the bird’s owner, who was in the hospital. But mostly, I blame society.

Yes, parrots are pretty; so are pictures. Parrots can sometimes repeat things you've said in garbled, sing-song tones; so can a crappy tape recorder. And parrots can be affectionate...but they’re happier and healthier when they devote their affection to the other parrots of their flock - in the wild.

Animals do not exist solely for our amusement, people. And having a parrot that sits on your shoulder will only make you look like a sad, urban pirate.

Adieu.

A tribe of goats, a drift of sheep, and an ambush of llamas...I mean, herd.

We all know that it’s a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, and a disturbing murder of crows. But did you know, for example, that a group of rhinoceroses is called a crash? Or that a group of mice or rats is called a mischief? Or that toads and frogs live in knots, although frogs also live in...armies?

Indeed.

Birds may have the most obscure and ridiculous groupings, be it a charm of hummingbirds and a parliament of owls, a flock of ostriches but a mob of emus, a convocation of eagles, a kettle of hawks, a siege of herons, a party of jays, a colony of gulls, a covey of grouse, a congress of ravens (otherwise known as an unkindness)...or a piteousness of doves.

Why, you ask? To enable the existence of crossword puzzles and obscure scrabble words? To thicken our dictionaries and cloud our minds with bizarre words that seem entirely made up but which spell-check insists are just fine? Also, did you know that a group of bears is a ‘sleuth,’ or ‘sloth’?

And why do multiple parrots form a company, while mongooses (alas, not mongeese) and ferrets form a business?

My favorite? Jellyfish. Which come in a smack.

Sadly, some adorable animals, including koalas, platypuses, and pandas, are all without group names (likely because koalas and pandas were previously classified as bears, and thus sloths, plus pandas never come in multiples...and who knows anything about platypuses, really. Oh, except that their babies are called puggles!).

In alignment with the spirit of existing classification, I therefore propose the following...

A group of koalas shall henceforth be known as a ‘barmitzvah.’

A group of platypuses shall be called an ‘ointment.’

A group of pandas shall be known as an ‘apocalypse.’

My work is done.

An ointment of puggles.