Cybellion

Not dead, but an "outrigger"

2008-10-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

Upon discovering my original smut blog was alive and hibernating, I've revived Sex and Hockey and resumed writing there. This blog is not so much dead and abandoned as a stagnant adjunct to the enduring original. This blog will remain linked to Sex and Hockey, since a year's worth of posts written while I was having a mid-blog crisis survive here.

Closing shop

2008-10-14T23:38:00.001-07:00

Sigh.

It breaks my heart to say goodbye, but the truth of it is I've moved on. I was pretty proud of what I managed to cobble together here in html, too. Oh well. My interests have changed.

All the typical thank yous for your attention and loyalty, blah blah (I mean it, it's just trite to say).

My writing will still be "out there", speaking into the world, just not connected to this. I could no more stop writing than breathing.

In parting, I urge you to get suspicious, embrace that subtle fear and anxiety at the back of your mind, and seek out education. There are many real things that threaten this life we share, and it is wise to be brave and face them. Allow what is important to you to change:

Canadians check out voteforenvironment.ca. Think about the fact that in the Canadian multi-party system, we are forced to resort to strategic voting just to keep out the guy we don't want (who "wins" while 62% of voters vote against him). True or false?: We have a democracy.

Check out Life After the Oil Crash. Are you fooling yourself as you believe that you are safe, protected by your government, that the economy is sustainable in its current dependence on unlimited growth and cheap oil?

Think about your earth. Pretty soon, it won't support any of us. Treasure the beautiful BBC Planet Earth documentary. Do what you can. Stop flying in airplanes. Save, don't spend. Google the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Study global warming and the way the Ice Shelves are melting.

Watch documentaries. Get fucking rattled. Read books from the "eco-section" of Chapters/Borders. Wake up. Scare yourself sane. This is very very serious.

The truth about the state of our earth and the humans that live on it is very very ugly and frightening right now, but the truth is your friend. We all know somewhere in our bones that we are standing on saran wrap over quicksand, but to dive into the fear and knowledge and learn about it can help you tiptoe towards solid ground and then help others off too.

If you feel like experiencing your eyes crossing and getting stuck there, look up the bills that George W has had passed. Between the waves of disgust you'll feel about the US law-making process, you can't help but notice the massive rights that have been given to the president. Notably, the criteria which give him license to declare martial law.

It is up to all of us, now, to redesign our civilization. Talk to your neighbors. Learn a trade, and how to grow food. Stop having kids. Or have kids, but be damn sure you know what world you're inducting them into. If you want your DNA to survive, then get real. Read James Howard Kunstler and Thom Hartmann (see sidebar).

Remember your reusable shopping bags. Get involved in local politics. Kick other people until they wake up, rise up, and join you.

Appreciate what you have, with mad passion. Love whom you love as hard as you can.

Good luck to you.

PS. My email is closed now too.

2008-08-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Mmmm. Jared Connaughton. Delicious, and Canadian.

2008-07-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

Latest mystery fragment of overheard conversation:

"...she almost took the shoe right out of my mouth..."

2008-07-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

How come cat's and dog's yawns aren't contagious? To us. No inter-species yawn contagion.

2008-07-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Our Nation is the Best Day!

So many world apocalypses, so little time

2008-06-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

There's so much to do!

There's so much to learn. I'm ravenous to eat the knowledge that's all around us, all the time, that we take for granted.

I want to dig up the names of the kids I went to church camp with and google them. I've always assumed that out of such a scrabble of repressed freaks, some of them would have achieved some creative or notorious fame. I'll be disappointed if none have.

Smut

2008-06-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

My coworkers were devouring "romance" novels at work, and I got curious. I borrowed one, something by the possibly pseudonymous "Angela Knight". I discovered a few things.

First, there's not much "romance", but there's a lot of good old-fashioned fucking. Next, the writing is surprisingly good. No spelling errors (!), although not a lot of big words either. It's not literature of course, but it has a fast-paced, well-formed, thorough and plausible plot. Most importantly, the sex is good. I was pleasantly surprised. Creative, raunchy, and hot fucking. Lots of it, and lots of variety.

I'm working on a book now. It's just an unusually complete serial fantasy. Nothing could be easier.

2008-06-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

My otherwise full day of lying in the sun and masturbating was interrupted by an alarming moment when I glimpsed from my window two men embracing, inside the open door of a pickup parked in a nondescript backyard. Redneck, AB. I froze, and hovered, spying.

The smaller, younger man looked so reluctant, scowling, as the other larger man, sitting inside the truck still, hugged him from behind, and lifted his shirt, running his hands over the standing man's back and chest.

I spied for long enough to realize my mistake. It was not, in fact, two men, but one irritated young man and a large, extremely masculine woman. I breathed out, then wondered why my initial reaction was shock.

Was it that it's been so long since I've witnessed any open gayness?Was it the context? This is the last place in the world I'd anticipate encountering random public acts of male to male affection. I'd expect that to be dangerous.

Or, was it the alarming mannishness of the woman? If I were that guy, I'd be scowling too.

2008-06-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

I am absolutely certain that our world going to change dramatically and drastically in this year. It's already beginning.

This is the last summer we'll have that things will continue to seem relatively the same, as the cost of our life mysteriously goes up, hmmm (?).

Interestingly, I don't feel an urge to talk to everyone about it. It seems almost sly, that I don't want to wake everyone up. Am I hoarding knowledge like food during drought? Don't want to spark the run on the bank, the landslide of awareness that will likely cascade us into a grabbing frenzy. The sky is falling! Everyone to Walmart to buy all the water bottles!

Maybe I don't want to be the freak in the bunch now, just the one who turns up alive later.

It's an interesting time to be alive.

"I am glad that you are here with me, Sam. Here at the end of all things…” ~Frodo Baggins, The Return of the King, by J.R.R.Tolkien

Eight things to do in a stand-up tanning booth

2008-06-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

8 Isometrics.

7 Practice ridiculous dance moves, both seriously and not. You have achieved success if you manage to make yourself laugh.

6 Squinch your eyes tight and observe the phosphene show.

5 Stretch your back. Hang from the straps and feel your spine uncoil. Ahhhh. You can also adopt extreme hunching and arching postures that your back will also enjoy.

4 Invent and practice scatching comebacks that didn't come to mind at the necessary crucial moment. This form of redoing can calm your damaged ego.

3 Practise sexy poses, especially: hip thrusts to either side, sexy lookbacks, hair grabs, and lower back curvature. Pretend to be a thong model or automobile accessory. That should do the trick.

2 Masturbate

1 Kegels

Three things not to do in a stand-up tanning booths:

3 Inspect your skin. Unusual places look startlingly blue, like a bruise, in booth light. This is disconcerting.

2 Think about getting locked in, like in a bad teen movie. But, if you were... I assume most stand up booths cage their bulbs in like rebel teenagers. If you have the foresight to get locked into one of these, first, unplug the big plugs that connect each section of bulbs to each other, or else, untwist the bulbs so they go out - as fast as you can - there are an awful lot of them. Then, the walls of the booth are clipped together like toolbox lids, so you can unclip until the walls fall out, or you can push the ceiling out. See, I didn't follow my own advice. I thought about it.

1 Sing.

Icons and Adversaries

2008-06-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

If so many people don't read Margaret Atwood's books, and shiver at the idea of the imagined content, then who's making them bestsellers? Do people buy them for their Canadian prestige, for the reflected aura of edge and intelligence? Do they place them on their shelves for appearances? Do they then feel the eyeless spines of the unwelcome houseguests watching their backs when they turn; hear the unread malice of their contents murmuring at night?

Wake up and read. The Handmaid's Tale may be the most alarming and necessary book of our century. Or maybe it's Oryx and Crake.

Hockey Night in Canada song

2008-06-10T02:35:00.000-07:00

I'm unbelievably outraged by the heist of the HNIC theme song by CTV. Not to mention the interests of Dolores Clayman, whom I must assume is a catty, shriveled, vindicative, money-grubbing beast. What was CTV thinking? Coup of the decade? More like, nice one, you just paid 3 million for a ditty that no CBCphile is ever going to want to hear again, and is gonna make many shut off TSN in disgust. Wow.

Smoking

2008-06-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

There is nothing to describe the agony of being an unsmoking person in a smoking house.

When you're helplessly forced to inhale carcinogenic air, it seems debatable whether breathing, or not, is the more lethal choice. I feel the cancer. I know when I'm being poisoned.

Why would anyone choose to put something so toxic, with full knowledge, into their one, vulnerable, delicately functioning body?

The others are under the impression that they are considerate, for not smoking when I'm in the room, making concessions to smoke only in adjacent rooms. This of course makes no difference at all, but a smoker can't smell their own smoke any more, so they really don't get it at all. I can not only smell it, but feel it crawling on my skin and hair. It creeps up my sinuses to pinch my brain with its sticky, oily fingers.

Headache and nausea arrive for me on the tail of recognizing the scent. The craving for clean air is desperate (I have to move out! In the next 10 seconds!). I'm not angry or resentful. I panic. I instantly want to cry, am asea in self-pity. I have to flee the house entirely when smoke seeping around the cracks of my door wake me at night.

My lungs are getting smaller from taking mincing, minimal inhales, trying to preserve SOME of my precious alveoli.

My loathing of cigarettes produces mild disdain through hostility towards smokers, those mysterious people who choose their slow death.

2008-06-05T18:31:00.000-07:00

Daniel Craig is the only celebrity, to my recollection, that I have masturbated to orgasm "with". He was great.

On second thought, Tommy Lee Jones as well

Orphans

2008-06-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Maybe each letter received by the governemt counts as the opinion of 10 people in their statistifying is because anyone who has the energy or inclination to write a letter to their MP is probably also talking 10 others into seeing it their way.

Helen Mirren's sympathetic Queen is possibly a true version of the real Queen. Probably not at all, but it would be nice to think so.

The first mousquito sighting of the year is always remarkable, like snow. I always catch them, and then when I look in my hand to see if I got it, it flies away, to divide exponentially into millions of bloodthirsty more.

I remember learning to pronounce certain words, at times. I learned to read so well that I was figuring out my own pronunciations based on the knowledge at hand, principally, that certain structures sounded predictable. This turned out to not be a universal constant. I remember learning how to say (or more accurately, being corrected when I said) "catastrophic", "slough", and "Siobhan", among others. I notice them now when I read, because my own childhood decision was strong.

What is up with George Clooney and swooning, masturbating females? I just don't get it. Don't. He's like, a 6, maybe. 5 or 5.5. I have no idea why he's the sex god everyone thinks he is. I mean, why everyone thinks he's a sex god, when he isn't. Even my boyfriend insisted "he's an above average goodlooking guy...comeonnn". Nope. Don't see it.

Things I hate:

2008-05-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

Spelling errors in books. Finding an egregious error near the beginning of a book can turn me off of the rest of the book, making me a hardened, suspicious and critical reader for the rest of it. A spelling error near the end of a book that I really like is alarming, a fly in the ointment. If it's an exceptionally good book, I can almost forgive an error, with a great effort of wilful magnanimity.

As long as the error is not "disorientated", with is never, ever forgivable, and in my opinion should earn the ersatz author a life sentence without parole in a room of people scratching blackboards.

Recent errors I found in books include someone "taking the reigns" (EEeeeeee!), and "swop", rather than the correct "swap"
(Aieeee!). All it takes is a decent editor. For mistakes to appear in print means at least 3 people have read it and not twigged on it. Ouch.

I freely admit that I make spelling errors, especially since I write at speed, don't reread, and don't have an editor, but I usually pick them out later if I ever reread my entries, and then I wince and flush with shame, as I should.

Flour. Flour is the devil's head lice. I intend to never eat anything made with flour again, unless forced to accept some bread offered at a dinner party with good will. I am exceedingly grateful to whoever has contributed to loaves of bread made without flour being available at all major grocery stores.

Too small glasses and cups. I'd rather resort to a yogourt bucket than waste my time with a dainty teacup or sippy water glass that holds maybe a paltry 200ml. What is a beverage that size good for, unless it's alcoholic? Might get your esophagus damp. My ideal size is about 3/4 of a litre. Enough to quench thirst, enough for a vat of tea that you can coddle for a decent interval without cooling too fast, and worth the time it takes to mix a drink in. You don't have to go back for refills.

Phantom bras. It's bad enough wearing underwire against your skin all day, but when you take them off and still feel the constricting pressure, that's not good.

Non-consensual sex in porn. Or more specifically, porn where the woman is not experiencing pleasure, although she may have in fact agreed to whatever is being done to her. Unfortunately, that's most of porn, as far as I've seen.

This is the biggest crime perpetrated on our culture after circumcision, I think. After sustaining that disgusting infant sexual mutilation, our men grow up haphazardly learning about sex acts from porn that consistently misrepresents the female experience and usually doesn't show any genuine female pleasure at all.

It's no fucking wonder rape happens, let alone the way many/most well-meaning guys have no idea what a woman's pleasure looks like, let alone how to participate in it, and have set their neurons for their own pleasure out of images of lies and cruelty.

2008-05-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have a crush! Almost a year together and I've never had the least interest in anyone else, I was starting to think I was ill.

This is one of those little crushes that makes me a little breathless while he's around, but has no substance and I know I'll forget him completely after our lives no longer intersect. Just because of his dark hair and eyes and sweet shyness and the veins leaping out of his hardworking arms. Yum.

And because I know he's one of those guys who genuinely likes me. He's never seen anything like me, and he's sold. Not scared, not intimidated, just knows, now, that he wants a chick like me. It's intoxicating to be that girl, the first girl a guy meets who's tough, hardworking, solid, strong, and still all girl. He watches me, impressed, thrilled, and unafraid to show his admiration. I love guys like that. I'm with one.

I'm simultaneously super in love with C and enamoured of his arms too. It's like crushes don't detract, but amplify.

If I were single we'd be all over each other like rocks and waves.

Very fun to be female in a male-dominated field. Just bathing in the general atmosphere of curiousity and desire, like a lightning rod for everyone's focus and projections. Super fun. Unbelievable how comfortable I am being the only person out of 30 with double-X chromosomes, for 12 hours a day.

I'm dreaming of him, dreaming of saving his life. He leaps to grab my hands as I lean over some rail, and with time, great strain and difficulty, I haul him over the rail to safety. We wordlessly hug, then flee together. C is there the whole time, running with us, complicit. Accepting; silent.

What does this mean?

We've talked. He wants kids; he's working very deliberately towards a future that I don’t believe is available any longer. It wont be there when we reach it. I wonder how he would react to what I expect. If he accepted that the world will be quite different in 5 years, what would he do?

2008-05-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Supposedly, there's a porn movie called Two to Love, featuring a (un?/)fortunate Japanese woman who was born with two vaginas.

I read this in a book.

This arouses questions. Are they situated adjacent to each other, in the usual place? Or are they separately located, one residing in, say, an armpit? If the former, then, are they one above the other, or side by side? Are they the same size? Equally accomodating? Do her vaginas also include the usual related features? A cervix? A womb?

These are questions that wail for answers.

Interestingly, Googling "'two to love' movie vaginas" returns a first result concerning Winnie the Pooh, and nothing about the topic I seek.

2008-05-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

I lost my mp3 player. The Christmas mp3 player my ex presented to me in a deluge of gifts, like a puppy, delighted to please me.

My favorite shoes have worn out. The shoes that I fought with the salesgirl over and refused to buy, so he went back and bought them for me, and I knew he was really my boyfriend.

There's so little left that he gave me. The t-shirt he thrust at me as he strode through my door the second summer, while he wouldn't meet my eyes, and I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. It will get threadbare and expire. Greeting cards and notes, grown dusty; faded and wilting somewhere. Notes he left when he left my bed, saying thank you and goodbye, glowing love. The cheesy birthday card with a handwritten long rhyming poem, rich with humour and wit.

Soon all the physical things he left me with that remind me of him will be gone, like snowbanks melting.

I've been spying on him on Facebook, through someone else's profile. I excised him from Facebook the day I dumped him, although I considered leaving our relationship status up, to see how long until he'd grow the gumption to change it. I've been reading every word on his wall, his old statuses, date-matching them to what I know, the overlap between me and she. Studying his photos, his sunlit grin beaming, his legs as athletic as ever, his arm around his new brunette, in Cuba. I try to divine whether he's happier now. I try to be happy for him, and fall far short.

Question:

2008-05-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

Peak Oil vs. Environmental crisis. Which kicks us in the bag first?

Earthquake in China...

Environmental crisis, up one-nothing.

The world is coming to an end, and I'm looking forward to it.

2008-05-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

For about 2-3 years now, I've had this anxiety pinching the back of my mind. Like white noise or a mousquito in the room, it's behind everything - a constant apprehension, especially loud when I think about the future or start planning.

Reading Thom Hartmann's book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: the Fate of the World and what we can do about it before it's too late, was a huge relief. To sum it up, there's too many people living on the earth, the resources are going to run out, and the first world is irredeemably dependent on oil, which is certain to run out in our lifetime. More pertinently, peak oil is going to happen, imminently. It may already be happening.

Google peak oil if you don't know what I'm talking about. It's when the cost/difficulty of getting oil out of the ground becomes greater than the demand for oil, and there's all kinds of consequences. The cost of oil will rise, nations will protect their oil supplies with force, all the "protected" resources of the world will get tapped, and the lives of people around the planet will change in ways we can't really predict.

It's anyone's guess whether this socio-economic event will happen before the natural catalclysms resulting from global warming begin, since it's generally acknowledged now that the earth's balance systems are perched on a sharp fulcrum.

What knowing this (reading the book) meant was that I felt like I wasn’t crazy, or depressed, just that I was feeling stress and distress about what was happening in the world. The sense of humans and animals in despair and under threat, natural areas being raped, and impending disaster affects all of us, to whatever degree an individual can block it out, or let it in.

We know on some level, conscious or not, what's happening out there, however insulated by our first world comforts we are. Wake up. It's a bit of relief for it to be conscious.

And so, I know my life is going to change, dramatically, sometime in the next 10 years. I expect it; I'm going to prepare for it to the best of my knowledge, and I won't be surprised the day the US randomly invades Iran (again), and the price of gas starts to spike.

We all know this world we've built together isn't going to last. Capitalism and endless growth wasn't a model made to last. No planet with finite boundaries can ever last forever, and we are coming to that point where this planet runs out of space. How about that.

It's going to be a new world, and that's kind of exciting.

Movies to watch on the topic are Crude Impact, Crude Awakening, and the End of Suburbia. Check out www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net for what to do about peak oil.

Living in "We"land

2008-05-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

So I end up in a married life, with married problems, curious about the married benefits. I have always been curious about those. There must be some rare beauty in being with one person for a long time, through thick and thin. I don't know what it is, and I don't see anyone else modeling it, but the idealist in me believes it must be there.

What I've learned so far:
When you enter a relationship believing it's going to last a long time, you're more inclined to examine problems as they show up, and to build habits and guidelines from the beginning. It's like "Ok, this might seem small now, but if it happens another 200 times, I'll kill us both, so how 'bout we talk about it".

I read more about relationship and in greater depth. I've learned that there's a hormonal phenomena that happens for 18 months, at which point the relationship expires or turns into "something else". So I have that to look forward to. No one is very clear on what the "something else" is. Perhaps it's when usually things get boring, or when you can't think of anything else to say, so someone blurts out "Let's get married," to keep it interesting.

I'm not sure I believe this solid timeline, anyways, although the scientists agree. 18 months. C and I have been battered through the rocks already, and we feel our time together has been much accelerated. It seems like a few years already (time flies when you're having fun, after all).

I didn't know I could get so mad.

Regardless, I'm thrilled to be with him, a majority of the time at any rate. And whenever I'm thinking of leaving him, I'm totally miserable.

He asked me to marry him.

2008-04-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

It was shocking.
I was horrified.

When he ripped his shirt off, threw it on the ground, I knew something was up. He was acting unusual.

When he knelt down and grabbed my hands, I was paralysed with dread.

"Whatryou doin' baby? Whatryou doing?" I whined.

Time slowed down as my brain caught up with what was happening. His words warped like we were speeding through a tunnel as he asked "Will...you...marry...me?"

I tried to pull my hands back. He was joking? He must be joking. No. My smile faded. It was too sudden. It was absurd. It had only been days we'd been been together. The sun faded everywhere but where we stood. It was suddenly hot, and the volume was muted, except for my heart pumping in my temples. A long time passed.

I was angry. He shouldn't be doing this. Not here, not in front of people. I was embarrassed. I wasn't prepared.

I went still. The heartbeats in my head were spreading farther apart. I was looking down into his eyes and his soul seemed to be coming out to meet me.

I revisit this moment in my memory a lot.

It seems there were a lot of things I learned in the moments before I answered, or that I realized I already knew. There was an expression on his face that I've never seen since, and his eyes...

His eyes seemed to offer up all of himself, unfolding. I saw terror. The terror was huge, an ocean of it. His eyes were wet. After the fear there was an incredible longing, a searching that was ancient but faithful. A deep well of love, offering, and willingness. And certainty. He really fucking meant it. And he was waiting for to answer him.

I saw so much in him those few moments. I reference the vision sometimes, for answers. I knew that I knew all I needed to, and I knew that I had to say yes. Had to. It was very unlike choice, and much more an inevitability.

Time started rushing back at me then, the lights came up, and the droning cynical voice that had been shut out filled my head with a scream. What the fuck? No No No! You said you'd never marry! You can get out, you can change your mind and tell him no tomorrow. This is wrong!

"Yes."

The next 15 minutes were pretty blurry. I was in a storm of conflict. It felt like someone was sitting on my heart, and I was sort of floating through conversations, bewildered, wrestling with a choice still, with my mind. Very discontent.

Two hours later when I could breathe again, I was glad I'd said yes. Two weeks later, I couldn't believe it had been a battle. Now, I know it was an inevitability, an absolute consequence of us meeting again this year, like water running downhill from our meeting in the first place.

2008-01-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

I read Why Men Love Bitches recently, by Sherri Argov. I could have saved some time and just read a couple chapters of a 100pg book written in 1945 called How to Get Along with Boys.

Not to dis Sherri Argov. That book's very very good, in fact. Nice for waking one up to the ways you might be prone to losing yourself in relationship (girls, that is), and for retaining your autonomy, soul, and spine.

But the absolutely blunt and bang-on advice of Ms. Zoraida Maria de Sagarra Ramirez (she must have been a glorious woman) penned in the 40s, a time when "[Woman]has taken her place in the world alongside the man, establishing beyond any doubt her intelligence and capability", covers the same material in the space of a pamphlet.

Chapters include "How to keep him guessing", "How to have personality", "How to look your loveliest", and if all goes well - "How to get him to propose".

Although the language can be dated and therefore hilarious, the message is basically the same - be yourself, be true to yourself, be honest with yourself; attract, retain, close the deal. No room for wallowing, analyzing, or excuses, for the formidable Ms. Ramirez. This is a no-nonsense pull-up-your-socks guide to getting the job done.

Probably my favorite unintentional humor: regarding theatre manners "It is discourteous to talk, make love, or otherwise attract attention to yourself during the performance. Nor should you get up and start dressing before the final curtain."