giving in

Hey all,

I’m sick.  Nose as clogged as a kiwi’s sink, throat singing soreness behind all the mucus, wonderful shit.

I was supposed to go to class today but SINCE I got a training session at The Artisan (pub) tomorrow, I figured I needed to use today to recuperate.  Class isn’t that important anyway, and my friend sent me the assignment that’s due on the 14th, so I’m free to drink herbal tea, eat Vitamin C like it’s sugar, and blow my nose repeatedly.

I got the callback from Artisan’s manager half an hour after I left, and it’s very exciting, I’m not going to lie.  The Duchess is also a place I’m interested in working, but they’re calling within the next two weeks, so I’m banking on seeing what The Artisan is like first.  It’s nice to feel like you have some sort of control over where you work.  As in, I’m good at what I do and if I don’t like it here, I can find another job, sort of control.

Another exciting thing is I finally caved and got Twitter, after talking to Roger Gillespie from the Toronto Star last night.  My friend Sheida and I went to this Networking Gala held by the Communications Students Society… Association at York, and it was for Communications students and Professional Writing students to meet professionals in Broadcasting, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, and Writing and Publishing.  While I wasn’t incredibly impressed with the overall flow of the evening (I wish I had more time/more rotational movement happening so I could talk to more people), I loved the people I did end up talking to.  Two things were encouraging and surprising: blogs are helpful, portfolio wise (not to everyone of course, but if the Star is doing it…), and you can do a lot more writing on the side if you’re not bogged down by stereotypical dreams of novelist or poet.  I write. I am a writer, and I can write my way into and out of anything you want me to.

So, technical/institutional writing doesn’t sound so bad anymore, even though I doubt that’s the stream I’ll be going into.

Maybe social networking isn’t the worst way to get myself out there!

I’ve decided to take full opportunity of DigitalJournal, in terms of publishing news stories…I think that’ll be fantastic once I get a hold of it.

That’s all I got for now, except that I’ve been watching How to Make it in America lately (since, clearly, I’ve been in love with Bryan Greenberg since One Tree Hill days) and it’s nice, raw, good kind of show.  We’ll see how it pans out.  My friend has an awesome review of it up on MuchMusic… check it ouutttttt.  But really, Bryan Greenberg.  I had a full on meltdown in highschool about being worried that I would become a cat lady if this man wouldn’t marry me.

I eat you.

Mmm….

Bryan Greenberggggg…….

Okay, I guess it’s time to go drink some of that tea I keep on thinking about.  I have a +12hour day ahead of me, time to make myself aaaaalllll better.

-Arina

i read too much and write too little

It’s Sunday, and for once my family is doing nothing.  I am writing my Media Critique essay.  It’s coming out pretty easy – I’ve already got two pages written, which is astonishing and incredible and making me ridiculously.. content.  It’s due on the 29th and getting a draft of it done this early is simply a miracle (I tend to do my heaviest work the week prior).  However, this course, and its assignments are pretty incredible in that our professor isn’t insistent on sources and referencing – we focus clearly on the writing and any interesting things we have to say about our topic.  Our writing is what is judged, not our last-minute-cobbled-together-evidence-for-absolute-bullocks-and-has-no-relation-to-the-topic-thesis-or-point-of-the-essay.  That is what I love.  It helps our writing.

And I’ve been doing well in it, so I’m all giggly.

I’m writing the media critique about the show Skins, a british drama comedy about a bunch of pill-popping, smoking, alcoholic brats in grade 11 and 12 (or 6th form as they like to say in England).  It’s incredibly explicit and the filming techniques are realistic about the portrayal of the various situations portrayed in the show, which is a nice contradiction to everything O.C., although I do love me some Peter Gallagher.  Yuuuum-y!

Old school Gallagher.

I’m also going to the semi-finals of Toronto Poetry Slam today – so excited! Just made me remember Brendan McCleod and Barbara Adler from The Fugitives – an amazing Canadian poetry/music/spoken word troupe.  I am basically in an eternal state of jealousy-induced awe for these guys, and when I listen to their songs (and the fact that they can memorize them a-stounds me) I just feel awfully guilty about not writing more and not being better and not caring enough about my writing to make it get THAT great.  I know it can be.  Eventually.  But I also feel like writing grows with you, and I am most definitely not done growing yet, so I have some time left, unless I die tomorrow or whatever.

All of a sudden, after listening to Gallagher’s take on “Don’t Give Up on Me” (you can listen too if you click on his name earlier in the post), I listened to Solomon Burke’s original, which is of course, better by inches.  But I mean, it’s Solomon Burke.  This guy is becoming fused to Toni Morrisson for me right now, simply because of the book that I finished reading for english class, called Song of Solomon.  Not only do they have the same NAME (coincidence? or FATE?), but because of his style of music, his voice, his content – especially the song, None of Us Are Free, which I remember listening to as a little kid on my dad’s CDs.  Goddamn I miss this man and his voice.  I just… I want to make sweet sweet love to this man’s voice.

As Ms. Jillian Christmas says, “like all the right kinds of wrong.”  :) (A fantastic spoken word poet from my very own living-place of Markham.)

Anyway, I should go bugger off and do something interesting.  As you can see I’m bursting full of useless references and facts.  I’m sure this is something I’ll carry into a ripe old age and frustrate the hell out of my grandkids about, much like my own grandparents.

Cheerio, and have a good end to the weekend!

-Arina

i’ve always wanted a singing voice

Sometimes all I do when I wake up is have breakfast and play on my computer.  Okay, that’s a lie. I always do that.  My life isn’t very pressing right now, in the mornings. I like having lazy mornings.  They make the rest of my day so much more slow, so that I can appreciate it.

The point is that today was youtube day because for some godforsaken reason there’s no new episodes up of The Office or Grey’s Anatomy OR Kitchen Nightmares…. but I love listening to new singers and songwriters being all discovered and loved by the world from youtube.  So, through some other singers (namely, Alyssa Bernal and AJ Rafael) I found Kina Grannis, who, firstly, has the coolest, made-for-music name ever!  Along with the ridiculous intensity and the feeling that you’re interrupting a personal concert every time you listen and my overflowing love for Kings of Leon (despite their ginormous popularity explosion this year, which I generally don’t enjoy about cute in-between stardom and complete desolation bands, but forgive because they’re just so good) I bring you this video:

Okay?

I think it’s pretty fantastic.  If you click through videos on her channel, you’ll find some amazing stuff too. The 2 others I mentioned are also great, as vague as that word is.  But I really can’t stop listening to Vanessa Hudg- I mean, Alyssa Bernal (who bears a really discomforting resemblance to said teen star?), what a clear, strong voice.  The fluctuations kill me.  And the fact that she’s signed with Pharell is well, like the extra chocolate sauce on my Sunday Saturday Morning Sundae.  WHATUP, I just thought of that. (It’s less cool now that I realized it’s Saturday, but still – SMS!)

I have work in like, 3 hours so I should probably shower and make myself look like a sober/awake/breathing human being and all that, and maybe throw some reading in before I leave. AND some chicken soup, because my family is fasting but since my mother knows that she has birthed two very avid (and rabid, which sounds like avid but intensifies the point I’m trying to make here) carnivores, she has made us meaty food to show us her love.  And we wouldn’t have it any other way.  (Seriously, if my sister and I don’t have some form of meat for like, a day, we start freaking out about not getting enough energy to survive and then dying and then blaming it on our family and making them feel guilty before we’ve even survived 24 hours without meat of some form.)

Clearly she learns everything she knows from me.  What a good, healthy, properly motivated role-model of a sister am I!

I know, I know.

-Arina.

I don’t want to do any more porn.

I don’t know about you guys but I like to waste a lot of my time procrastinating doing things that I actually don’t mind doing, but often require harder work than what I do while procrastinating – which is watch tv online.

My newest addiction is Californication.  Oh David Duchovny, I hear you are actually a sex addict, which is fun.  Either way, Cokey Smurf is possibly my favourite character of all time and Uncle Runkle is a creepier, bald, unattractive version of Duchovny but attempts to be highly dysfunctional and succeeds.

Oh man this show is good, and not just because there’s actual nudity in it.

Back to your regular scheduled programming!

Ciao. Ak.

I guess I’ll try in the decline

Sometimes watching tv shows makes me happier and sometimes it just makes me low.  I mean, I really love this tv show called Californication though, there’s a lot more rawness in it than say, Gossip Girl.  In fact, after being away from my computer for so long and being forced to not watch this shit, I feel like I don’t even want to anymore.  Maybe I will do catch up sessions during the winter break whilst studying for exams?  I believe so.  Currently, I am only relying upon: Grey’s Anatomy, Californication, The Office, and How I Met Your Mother (3 of which are just half hour episodes, so that like, barely counts).  Also maybe 90210, maybe.

I wonder why writing this  is so much easier than writing essays.  I’m writing one about an inter-chapter in Hemingway’s In Our Time.  The writing itself is fantastic, it’s just finding the meaning behind it that can be a little bit tricky.

I’m going to type it out here for your reading pleasure, because I think it’s gorgeous and unconventional and so so strong.

Chapter V:

“They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital.  There were pools of water in the courtyard.  There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard.  It rained hard.  All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut.  One of the ministers was sick with typhoid.  Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain.  They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water.  The other five stood very quietly against the wall.  Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up.  When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.”


Isn’t that stunning?  I just wish I knew what it meant.  Maybe there’s something there about the water, about typhoid.  The biggest thing I got was the duality of things: ministers vs. hostages, hospitals vs. execution grounds, soldiers vs. supporters.  Then there’s an obvious softening in tone.  And also the repetition of the courtyard – the fenced in-ness of it all.  The rain?  Sitting in it?  All of the things we can’t escape from in war.  Some of us can handle it, and some of us revert to our other personas.  It’s all very hard to trace into a single point.

Anyway, I also read about Olenka & the Autumn Lovers on blogTO and myspaced them – just up my alley! Very Beirut-y with Eastern European influences + folkness.  I enjoy. (Also the guitar here is great!)  [Which reminds me, my guitar teacher quit the school I was at and I am at a loss of what to do since I don't like any other people there.  Do I leave the school? I would love to take private lessons with him.  I feel bad for my parents but it's really the school the pulled the rug out from under me.  Kind of gay if you ask me, but more on this next time.]

And now, off to trace all of this to a single point.

Ciao. Ak.