after a year of health, i get this?

Really, life?  The last time (I looked it up in my blog database) I was sick was in APRIL OF LAST YEAR. I mean, kudos to me for that shit, but why now? My birthday is so soon, and I’ve got so many (exciting!) things starting.

• Writing for the Arb(itrage Magazine) as a staff writer
• Leading little babes (3-6 year olds) through the Carol Wainio exhibition at the Varley
• Finishing 3rd year exams
• Starting a Techniques of Persuasion course (only I could be excited about something like this)

All that hurts is my throat and I’m already extrapolating the awfulness that comes with being sick. The heavy head, the clogged nasal passages, the fatigue. The inability to study anything worthwhile.

Okay, that last one is a lie. I wasn’t studying anything worthwhile while I was healthy, but at least I had the option to. The fact that I no longer have a choice to study things (like oh, for my exam on Saturday) makes me a very very angry English student.

I just don’t see how this is proper universal retribution for eating healthy, working on my fitness, and FORGETTING TO WEAR A SCARF ONE GODDAMN TIME IN WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE “SPRING.”

Canada, youse a mean bitch.

A.

YOUTH matter

I wouldn’t call myself an activist. (Let’s be real here, I’m a Canadian, and Canadians. Are. Passive. Don’t get me wrong – I’d be overjoyed to be proven wrong here.)

An activist is Harvey Milk. Is Rosa Parks. Is Martin Luther King. Is Guy Fawkes. Is Nelson Mandela. Is Gloria Steinem. Is Julian Assange. Is Banksy. An activist is one who fights. I don’t fight, I write. Or, let me rephrase, I fight with my words. I try to educate, and I make that my goal because I think that’s what this world needs more of: knowledge, awareness, and understanding.

I’ve been drawn to youth empowerment since I became a complicated bundle of political opinion and (hopefully) logical perspective in grade 10. When I discovered history, I discovered story, and I found that not all stories are written equal. And that saddened me – why? Because everyone deserves a chance to tell their story. Atheists AND monks. Government AND civilians. Elders AND youth. Men AND Women. That’s what democracy is really about to me. It’s not one for all or all for one, it’s both. It’s,

“I’m telling my story because I think it’s also a part of your story.”

So how do you get democracy in a country like Canada, which exudes democracy’s promises while simmering under denial? We vote. We vote like motherfuckers. (See here for one of my favourite pieces of writing, ever.) We vote like the country depends on it, like accountability and responsibility and transparency depends on US. The surprisingly true aspect is that it does depend on us.

I was never a gung-ho political activist. Yes, I had my ardent need to voice the unheard stories of the oppressed (I still do); yes, I felt the passion to go out and protest. But I never did. Until this year. This year, I’m pissed.

Once I started reading the newspaper and attending modern sociology classes with incredible profs, I saw what a sham our government really is. And not just the American government, the Canadian government too. Voting is NOT representative. If I vote for the Green Party where I live (Markham), chances are the Liberals are going to win and my vote won’t matter one bit in the big picture. That seems more than a little unfair to me.

Our government raises tuition and cries about lack of education. Our government sends people to Libya and Afghanistan and wants no questions. Our government is NOT accountable to us. Our government ministers are funded by the rising tax cuts to multi-billion dollar companies, who in turn make the government’s decisions MUCH easier to make. Our government is not making the best decisions for us.

I’m pissed because of Libya, Egypt, Iran and Tunisia. I’m pissed because people don’t have choice and they fight, and when we HAVE choice, we watch the elections commence on our TVs while sitting on our arses. Who does that? Are we really so apathetic? Doesn’t anyone give a shit that our world isn’t sustainable – environmentally or economically or morally – if we keep idiots in power? Doesn’t anyone give a shit about what kind of world their kids will live in, if this is the world we’re living in now? Doesn’t anyone care that public transit sucks, that tuition is rising, that healthcare is weakening, and that baby boomers make all the choices for a world that we will live in long after they’ve died? I’m pissed because we have a chance to make it all better. Maybe we can’t FIX everything. We’re not perfect, neither are our “leaders.” But we have a chance to make it better.

You don’t have to agree with me about our current El Jefe, but you should care – about the quality of our leaders and their decisions. It will affect you.

Kittens are the only way this man could look innocent.

My point is that the youth – WE – are not DUMB. We’re not stupid, under-educated, volatile, emotional or reckless. So we need to stop acting like it. We live in a highly empowered and powerful country that is slowly slipping in international rankings for respectability.

What’s amazing to me, an immigrant, is that my home country (Russia) and Canada have so much in common. We are a nation of artists, of poets, of writers, and dreamers. And yet we both have multi-billionaires hiking our taxes, wasting our opportunities, and – as a general overview – stealing our money. We’re both represented by the lackluster and strongly conservative “majority.” But we ARE the majority. The kids are NOT alright, but we have a way to protest.

Scare the government, scare the MPs, scare the billionaires.

We are the future. We HAVE opinions, we HAVE voices, and we HAVE stories. Show our parents, our bosses, and our professors that we exist. We don’t all have to be activists, but we should all be active in the building of our future.

Go scare the fuck out of this country on May 2nd.

Elizabeth May – Green Party (Let’s also make sure she gets to debate, eh? Discourse is power.)
Gilles Duceppe – Bloc Quebecois (Get an English website, guys.)
Michael Ignatieff – Liberal
Stephen Harper – Conservative
Jack Layton – New Democrats (NDP)

A.

I would apologize but I’m too brain-dead

Haaaaaay guys! That word doesn’t mean what you think it means. IT HAS DOUBLE-MEANING.

Okay, I don’t want to be stupid. To be honest, that’s why I don’t want to write a post right now. So this is me writing a post to tell you that I’m not going to be writing a post because my brain’s going on hiatus from watching too many episodes of Sister Wives/ watching Dawson’s Creek/ playing Sims 3 writing essays and being studious.

I literally woke up at 11 am this morning and expected to get to work only, oh, 9 hours later to push through (sounds like giving birth, doesn’t it?) and finish my facking essays. Alas, kittens puking on youtube and weird polygamous sects… they both have strange aspects of them that make it hard to look away. And it’s not even that my essay is boring in any form (feminism! HOO-RA), it’s just that it is an essay and oh dear strange man up in the sky, do I – more than I ever have in the history of education or, ok, last year around April – ever just want to sit on my couch, make my Sims “Woohoo!” a million times and recreate the strange polygamy happening in Sister Wives. And maybe sometimes cheat so I can build them McMansions and pretend they’re on Cribs.

I know that sounds weird, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.

Arina wishes you all studious-minded brains luck with exams and essays and peaces out.

A

P.S. “What’s My Age Again?” just started playing and I AM TOTALLY ROCKING OUT RIGHT NOW.

P.P.S. There’s 15 cm of SNOW tomorrow? At the end of March. Typical, Canada, typical.

take a clue

You know, at some moments in this rather drawn out (yet momentary) existence of ours, I think to myself, “Wow, what a country Canada is!”

And then at others, it appears as though whenever the weather gets warm enough to sleep outside in, all the white people (and the immigrants trying to imitate their lifestyle) buy up half the liquor store, put it all in a few coolers, buy hot dogs and buns and go camping.  Now, I’m sure to some, camping is a real “wildlife” experience, with animal watching, canoeing and hiking happening.  However, most Canadians, whether they’re 20 or twice that, seem to think that mosquito season is a reason to celebrate in a new kind of way: not at the porcelain goddess, but at the glorified non-porcelain dugout filled with other people’s shit (if “camping” actually involved shitting in the woods instead of in a port-a-potty with toilet paper and a flushing mechanism).

I read this thing on Stuff White People Like about how White people use any excuse (ie. the world cup, any vacation day, any sporting event, a birthday, a death, a warm or cold day) to just get drunk out of their minds and post their pictures on facebook or just tell all their friends about that really epic time they got hammered on Canada Day (which, btw, totally shows their solidarity with Canada, its’ founding, and our Royal Mother the Queen.) And, well, I fuckin’ agree.

Don’t we all have better shit to do?

I’m not saying I’m exempt from these practices of utter stupidity on the odd occasion, but I mean, there’s just…. better shit to do.

For example, yesterday, my grandparents flew in from Russia, and I’ve been busy as some laxative induced craps. (Shit shit shit!)

The next couple of weeks are going to be stupid with my stress level – to the point where it’ll become so overwhelming that I’ll need to go “camping”… I’m sure.

‘Cept I don’t do bugs. Seriously. Even when I was a wee Russian child running along in the woods with flowers in my hair and collecting mushrooms and berries – when this little kid saw a mosquito, she was all “FUCK THIS SHIT” and went to play pool inside.

Yeah. Gangsta.  I was a shitty little indoor kid that liked to read. Still am.

I like the piesage (that’s a Russian word, and I’m pretty sure [aka not at all] that it translates to something like scenery), and all that, and the critters are cute if they’re not mangy and rabid, but that’s it. I don’t generally enjoy anyone being near my blood stream -especially because those little fuckers think I taste sweet.  If I smoked (mental note: next summer, start smoking, THEN go camping) I wouldn’t be bothered by them because they like start coughing on it and get emphysema.

Which makes them distracted and then they leave me alone.

Stupid emphysema-laden bitches.

With long snout-noses.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know I’m here, and trying to select courses (STILL) in order to get good shifts at work, non-shitty professors, and interesting classes. That’s like trying to balance a whale, a blob of snot, and a nodule of shitty smelling herbs lubed up in like, melted butter or something, on your pinky finger while lying on your stomach.  While doing backflips. In a sea of piranhas that are really sexually active.

So, well, I’m going to be focusing on that for a little while then, if you don’t mind.

-Arina

canadian music is AWESOME. yes, that is the title.

Out of all of my opinions on things that sway back and forth and take hits to the gut after long conversations, the one thing that will not waver is my love for very specifically crafted Canadian music.  If anything, this is a nation of lyricists with much too time and too few listeners.  And I’m not talking about Shania Twain (although that WAS the first album I ever bought in Canada at the tender age of 7…), I’m talking about real people, prairie people, van city people, halifax people that come from small families and large families and fucked up families and make life so much more worth living.  I’m going to profile 3 specific bands here, because I’ve seen 2 in real living colour and the last I just discovered and am now possibly frustrated at my inability to have discovered him before.  (Of course I could go on about Broken Social Scene and the Stars [whose new song Fixed is totally amazing - get it here], but they are more known than these guys, and I’m all about the break-through bands. Plus, what they have is a lot more music than the storytelling that I fell in love with in these bands.)

The first, and the one band I’m going to see tonight (at the Garrison! In Toronto! Come! Your life will take on new meaning, I swear.  It’s way better than writing papers or doing assignments. Really.) is, of course, The Fugitives.  If you live in Canada and are not opposed to Canadian-like things (some people are, I don’t know…) well, they are it.  They are not maple syrup, they are not beavers or Iqaluit, but they are certainly an explosion of fucking AWESOME. That’s it.  Barbara Adler, Brendan Mcleod (I have his CD and he has a recording on it of a story in which he tells of an awkward first date that SHARTED in his car on his leather seats.  Clearly this is a token to his legitimacy,) Adrian Glynn and Steve Charles.  I haven’t met the last two, but hopefully will see them tonight at least.  Anyway, I’m not going to give you their bio – you can read, can’t ya?, and if you’re curious feel free to go to their website that I linked on their name.  They also have a myspace, a twitter and various facebook accounts that you can damn well go find on your own.

Anyway, these guys are so …… stunna stunna.

They’re kind of spoken word poet songwriter storytellers.  They are incredulously funny live and incredibly emotional in song.  Sometimes you wonder why nobody has thought of the word combinations that they use before, because they seem to fit to things so well.  Listening to them is like being in a whole other universe where life is strung together in one fantastically orgasmic and dance-enducing song.  Plus look how cute they are.  They’ve dropped several people from their lineup over the years, one of whom I will go on to profile next: Mark Berube.  (I should say that having had CR Avery in the band isn’t a bad accolade to their name, either.)

Adoooo-wable right?

Anyway, so – Mark Berube.  I totally just discovered this guy today, and well… it was obvious to me that he was in The Fugitives.  Obvious.  Compare the two, I dare you.  But really, when I listened to his song Flowers on the Stones (you can download it here) I just fell in love.  How could you not? It makes you want to dance.  And write.  And write and dance at the same time.  It’s folk and it’s country and his VOICE rawrrrrrrr oh my. It’s just something so… uplifting.  ”Stand up! Now put your hands up”… the simplest lines of the freaking universe, but with that harmony?  And those voices just kill you in the best way.  I get really hyperventilate-y when I start talking about music I love and stop making sense, did you guys notice that yet?  I’m not using any fancy words at all – just “awesome”.    What else needs to be said though, really? I like the downloaded version because it’s more clear than the live version here, except, you know, if I heard it live I think I would faint.  Or dance.  Probably dance.  A LOT.

Now, maybe this sort of music isn’t your cuppa tea, but give it a chance.  No, their voices are most certainly not that of Beyonce and/or Lady Gaga or Lil’ Wayne and Ludacris, but COME ON the lyrics?  The lyrics, the melodies, the stories.  They’re worth it.  And even their voices give it a certain something – it’s real voices, not digitally remastered for your auditory pleasure, but reallfully mastered for your enjoyment.  That’s totally a sentence I’m going to use in an essay one of these days…..

Photoboooth!

Anyway, Berube’s cronies – Patrick Dugas, Amelie Mandeville and Kristina Koropecki – are called The Patriotic Few for a reason, are they not? Canada rocks.  It rocks because of these guys! How can you not be patriotic when such wonderful people live here.  Such wonderful stories are written here.

Listen, I know I’m not making too much sense here, but once you do a little youtube skip-a-song-play-a-song with these guys you will fall AS madly and AS quickly in love with them as I have.  My suggestion? Start here.  This is what my English/Creative Writing teacher showed me in grade 12, and from then it began.  It’s also just AWESOME.

How many times have I said AWESOME in this post? Probably not enough.

Also, this post is tip-toeing the line of 1000 words, wheres I need to write an essay 1.5 times as long by next Wednesday and I haven’t even read the book.  I wonder where my priorities lie….

Now, the last artists that I wanted to spread the word about is Mad Violet [ Madison Violet ].  And clearly, as I’m now trying to find all the right sites to link you guys to, I find out that they’re playing in Toronto TONIGHT, the SAME night as the Fugitives.  But it would be wrong to not see the Fugitives, right guys? I haven’t seen them yet!  I’ve seen MadViolet already, once last year by accident at I forget what number poetry event…. Okay anyway.  These wonderful femmes are from East Coast Canada, and they’re all cocky and female and taunting and sweet and saucy and guitar-like wonderful.  They’re a little bit more strictly music than the other two but equally wonderful.  Listening to these wonderful souls is like taking a drive in the countryside for some fresh air.  I was going to suggest a song for you guys to listen to but I simply can’t pick just ONE.  So, fine, listen here.

Okay. That’s it.  that’s all I’m going to say.

Except, well, just give these guys a listen, readers.  I promise you won’t regret it.  Even if you don’t listen to them every day (I can’t, otherwise I would just become depressed about the fact that I don’t write nearly enough to get as good as they are, yet), when you pick these songs up from their dusty cases on the right day, it’s like…. it’s right.  Your day becomes brighter.

Your day just… your day improves and you’re like, man! There’s people doing wonderful things out here in the world.

And you just get happy about that, like I am right now. And you stop thinking (for a second, or a song) about things like the leaked video of the pilots in the shooting of the 2 Reuters reporters (and other Iraqi casualties) in Iraq by US planes… makes your blood run cold. And it’s not as though you’re forgetting about that by listening to music like this, it’s that it just takes music like this to convince you that not everyone’s playing video games with peoples’ lives.  That some people care and they make love for a living.  That war is not necessary. That we would all be better to just forget about guns and war and conquering and status.

But those are those opinions that do the swaying in the wind.  The music stays the same.

-Arina