Once upon a Steve

So, the good news. I've turned 18, and it seems to be a move that the majority of the world is A-OK with. Thus far I have not assumed any untowards responsibilties or maturity. My path towards being a person who can both vote and watch cartoons all day continues unabated.
My birthday party was a lot more fun and a lot cleaner than I had first anticipated. A bunch of people left sadly early, you know who you are, you're the only ones who read this. Some highlights were that Ken and Ben showed up and played 'Get Down' in my front hallway. Ken Danced. My fortune was told by a Seer. Alex Myers cut a wonderful figure in Silver Pleather. Annie Mathen (sigh) made me a mix tape. My friends and I played Jumanji to the tunes of the spice girls. Senan was a space Racist. Katie left a ribbon behind, my ribbon. Chelsea liked me a lot. Cara is clearly the object of Ken's desires.The people I've always been weirdly intimidated by were cheerful and loving.
Yay!
The bad news. For the past more-than-a-month I've been getting excited about Stef coming to town. It's been a rampage of emails, speaking French, sonnet writing, airport trip planning. Her coming was so important, and her staying for my birthday was so wonderful, that if I allowed it to get screwed up I am an unspeakable cad.
So that's my birthday wish, I still have yet to get near any candles.
I'm gonna try and make two new friends today.

Dear Steve:
I’m a bit trepidatious about the assignment to fill the role of Polonius. I’ve read the play, too, so we both know that not too long after “neither a borrower or a lender be” comes the sword thrust through the drapery.
And the fact is, Laertes would have been little worse off if the death scene had occurred earlier and deprived him of the advice. To thine own self be true? Who is not? Osama bin Laden is nothing if not consistent. Neither a borrower nor a lender be? It doesn’t work, and I don’t suppose it did in Shakespeare’s time, either, or Hamlet’s.
But duty is duty, as Long John Silver observed. So I shall try to offer you some advice that will be useful on the voyage you’ve just begun.
Polonius had an advantage over me. Laertes’s times were likely very little different than his father’s, aside from perhaps an inch or two more point to the shoes. But each of our generations has occupied a different world.
Your great-grandfather Curry was an Old West kind of man, a free-range cattleman at home on horseback and handy with a black powder rifle. Your grandfather Currie – we changed the spelling in there somewhere – was a fenced-in farmer who had to grapple with the Great Depression. I was an am a print journalist. And you? None of the above, I’ll wager.
So the specifics of life experience have not been of much use as hand-me-downs in our family in the last 150 years or so.
My father lived longer than his father, I expect to live longer than my father did, and I expect that your life will be longer than mine. But we all have this in common, it’s shorter than we’d like.
The one piece of advice I can give you, then, is to keep in the back of your mind that you are only getting to play the game once. When you get into the last half of what I hope will be a long and good life, you’ll find comfort in good friends and good memories. Now and the near future is the time to stockpile them.
There will be many times when you have to choose between the sensible and the adventurous. Make up your own mind, but please take a moment to imagine yourself in your old age, looking back, and think what you’d rather look back on. “Foolish” and “Stupid” aren’t synonyms you know. Try to avoid the latter, but a bit of the former won’t hurt.
I know I don’t need to tell you to try to cause as little grief as you can to people who do not deserve it. That’s in your makeup.
In fact, you’ll find that your attitudes now are pretty much what they will be for life. You’ll gain experiences and you’ll get tired faster, a combination that is sometimes called wisdom. But you are what you are, now that you are a man, and you’ll sometimes find it wonderful. Everything useful I have to say to you, I can sum up in two words: Enjoy it.
A writer in the middle of the last century, Nelson Algren by name, was asked the same question I’m addressing here, and came up with three rules for a happy life. Never eat at a place called Mom’s, never play poker with a man named Doc and never love a woman whose troubles are worse than yours.
That last one is good advice; a self-sufficient partner is greatly to be desired. As for the first two, “never” is a strong word. An occasionally meal at Mom’s or a hand with Doc may do you good. Be careful by all means, but don’t let life go by untested
All the best,
Your dad

Current Mood: touched

Just now, I've been doing the dishes and thinking happy thoughts. This would continue until there was enough glee and soap to necessitate dancing around the kitchen shaking my hands to make soapy snow fall all over the place. This was repeated 5 times. We had lasagna
I've got soapy hair for the right reasons

So, I'm gonna pose for my grad pictures with a speech/thought bubble. I've been brainstorming, so tell me what rocks. Feel free to make your own suggestions.
Speech Bubble: "So the I sez: Listen Lady, if you wanna walk down the hallway with me, you gotta assume a certain amount of risk"

Thought Bubble: "One of these days... at least ONE girl will find 'shrill, piercing laughter' attractive"

Speech Bubble: "Magiculus! Scaliator! Rexious!... dang... the camera is failing to turn into my dragon slave"

Thought BUbble: "Whoa, Five Years, and not a single person realised I was a leprachaun."

Thought Bubble: "I hope nobody finds that Jumanji game I left in the Library"

Speech Bubble: "And they thought I was mad when I told them I could graduate high school thinking I was a Ninja Turtle, well look at me now!"


Thought Bubble:
"Go three weeks without stepping on a coloured floor tile. Check
Find four excuses to wear trap-door longjohns to school. Check
Install myself as Grant Park Supreme Ruler, after Marxist Revolution...
the battle continues comerades. "

Whoa, I fixed something, self-confidance, returning. Don't a single person feel bad for me. I'm not making this up. I've awed at the capacity of the Universe to manifest happiness. Everyone reading this, I'm really happy that you are. You, specifically. Bang Fom Foomf!

Current Mood: jubilant
Current Music: Such Great Heights

Oh Em Gee, The Pulford Slot. Jocelyn, Rob. Fun times on the weekend front. Whoa though, three teachers called me Mature in Parent Teacher Interviews. This is a bad sign. Harry Potter was disapointing, but I'm worried that doing improv has made me a snooty actor. And I made my sister cocoa, and she made me laugh. and I lost a debate tournament for the first time, but it didn't matter because of my pink suit.
I called Alison Forbes, it was her birthday. I'm a little worried about her, she's a Country Mouse, and a Summer Mouse.
*Steve gets up from keyboard, converses with family, sits down*
Geez, you start to write a happy livejournal and then you screw things up. I may indeed be the most useless Teen Talker ever. Shite
HIgh, in 13 days I'll do drop in IMprov with the Massey players
Low: I'm such a knob

There's a lot to be happy about. Good jorb Katie Black, usually I never come on her when I'm in the cheery sorts. So here comes the permanent record of things I'm happy about today. Also new, Ive updated my erstwhile lame profile, soon a picture may be forthcoming.
To make sure we're all on the same page here, My dreams of guartenteed happiness were crumbled when there became a possiblity that my sister had cancer. Compounding things was the fact that it also appeared as though I might have had cancer, brain cancer, scary.
But the glorious news is that neither of us did. And now my life consists of realising that Every day I wake up with my sister healthy and safe, The Times they Are A Changin'
For the better.
I've thought a lot about a lot of people I like, a few I love. My mission to live school as though it was camp is back on tracks. I expect goodness.
One of the things we learned at Teen Talk is how to make Passports to Happiness. They sound cheesy, they are actually awesome. You put the name of three people who make you feel safe and happy, and three things You like doing, and three things you like about yourself. Soon mine will be a mosaic. My favourite of alllll the types of aics.
March To the Beat of Your own Penguin

Current Mood: MOsailiscous
Current Music: Humming

Today was a bad day, as in, "She'll have good days and bad days". I hate abject worry so much. And I hate feeling depression vicariously because it's one hundred times harder to help. I hate having to see someone, who millions of years of evolution has chosen me to protect, taking a cocktail of pills every morning. And seeing them being forced to throw up and forced to eat so in some unforeseeable future they can become healthy. Her arms are like an addicts, and we have to convince her that she has to get more bloodwork done. Thursday, Next Wednesday, mid-October.
This year my sister was supposed to be
1) The oldest, sassy camper at Stephens
2) A rambunctious Gr 10 living the years that 8/10 people wish they could go back to
3) In love, I believe several of her friends to be good prospects
Whether the Universe is a manifest of Goodness, Fairness, Karma or Dumb luck it doesn't make any sense that a cheerful, blameless, purply girl should get sick twice while I'm leading a painless life.
My house terrifies me. I miss camp. This is why I was afraid to go. Today was a cowardly day, as in, "my sisters may be crying somewhere, I'll go try to henpeck some sympathy"

Objectivity is one of the most basic concepts in my consciousness, I want to believe that there is something around that is the same for me as it is for everyone else I share with everyone else on this orb. It seems extremely likely. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world that the stool I can see beside me is the same stool everyone else in my house sees. But everything I can acknowledge the stool, seeing it, feeling it, lifting it, would be a function of my senses. My eyes, nerves and brain create an image of that stool which could just as easily be unique to me as it could be shared with everyone. There’s no reason to suggest that what we see and hear has anything in common with what’s actually around us. Descartes abandoned everything, including his own thoughts, as subjective. Instead he only conceded that HE must exist as an objective reality because of the fact that he was thinking. Cogito Ergo Sum, I Think Therefore I Am. Gotama (The Buddha), went even farther. He listed every part of the imagined self, body, memory, senses, emotions, reasoning; and dismissed the lot as transitive, denying the Eternal, and therefore objective, Self.
So where else do I look? The forces of Nature? Gravity has been denied by focused minds for thousands of years. Now you can see it be done on TV. Light, and by extension, all of electromagnetism, from radios to atoms, is one of the most fantastically subjective things in the Universe, changing from particle to wave merely by how you look at it. What we see as Objectivity in Nature is actually just Subjectivity that is so firmly established in human consciousness, that it’s become impossible to lead a normal life if you see them differently.
So I’m left with Intangibles. Truth. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the whole crowd, all believed that Truth was objective, the ineffable backbone of the universe in fact. This was the founding of rationality, and the beginnings of it’s domination over ever other mode of thought in western civilization. Einstein, Pirzig, the Pragmatist Movement of philosophy, they saw how 2000 later the assumption that Absolute Truth existed had led to social and scientific dead ends, and they abandoned it. Einstein said that Truth was a function of time, which he then proved was subjective as well.
The Mundane, the Cosmic, the Self and the Intangible are all gone. All that’s left for me is to believe in Reality. A single connecting factor exempt from the logical determinations of everything I’ve seen, discovered or known. Surprisingly, this is what I believe exists. There’s a feeling I get with a few people. A feeling of belonging and connection that belies my location, my hormones, or any other Mundane explanation. With nothing more for proof than that feeling, an anti-Aristotelian trust in my instincts, and Occams Razer, I assert that there is an objective Reality. Some underlying connection between the otherwise disconnected entities we see as the human race. Something that makes us harmonious souls instead of parcels of sensual data on a transitory timeline. Not Love, but something close to it; Not Goodness but something near it. Not God, but something like Her.

Current Mood: Homework-appreciatingly cheery
Current Music: Bright Eyes/JCS Soundtrack

1. Favorite scent: Patchouli Oil, but don't wear it if you don't want me attracted to you
2. Favorite way to relax: Playing piano, badly, but funly
3. Favorite movie(s) you own: Anchorman
4. Favorite movie(s) you don't already own: I Heart Huckabees
5. Favorite male movie star(s): Johnny Depp, but thats too obvious, Samuel L Jackson...
6. Favorite female movie star(s): Nicole Kidman, but thats too obvious, Katherine Hepburn
7. Favorite book genre: Philosophy
8. Favorite clothing store: Value Village
9.Favorite non-clothing store: The canteen Mat ran at the boat show: Drinks $1.00, Chips, $0.50, Drinks and Chips, $1.50
10. Favorite cartoon character: Ihkbad, Bromwell High
11. Favorite CD you own: Fond OF, Cone Five
12. Favorite CD you don't already own: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
13. Pass the torch to five LJ friends...
Everybody do it, screw torches

Current Mood: Over-rugbied
Current Music: I'm Somebody Too

1) What's the first word that comes to mind when you think of me?
2) Go to http://images.google.com/ and search for that word.
3) Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results (don't tell me the word).
4) Put this in your own blog so that I can do the same.

Well, I'm still in love with all the CITs. Despite the onslaught of awkward questions which I'm mostly gonna fault Jamie for. As if Cara still has a crush on Jimbo. We need to credit card some sense into that girl. But then she goes and says like !!!Three Nice Things In A Row!!! to me, and I'm the Jello Bowl O' Happiness.
In other good timey news I've become a Professional, Osbournce Village Style Actor. Playing amongst the hottest improvisors in Winnipeg, take that Academy Bar & Eatery. I'm sensing some problems amongst my co-captains though. Good thing I need them both to succeed. This calls for some tranq darts.
In other good news, Stefs coming into town in a scant 6 days, and we've already gotten through the 'Boy, did we EVER kiss last year' awkwardness, we must both be like, ninja-enlightened.
Also on the list of good things, Allisons hair is really soft and pretty, and in my locker; I got a postcard from Annie; People are laughing again; We won our last rugby game; I finished a months worth of homework in one night; I had a rough and tumble tustle Mr Timmerman; Someone sewed my pyjama pants back together; Guilt is driven out of Grace; No ones finding me out of place; and I freestyle rapped in my shower, just in case someone asked me to do it on stage
Take that you demonic Succubi, this has been a grood week.
Y'alls be coming out to support Scriptless In Seattle next year. And if someone could draw us a cool logo, like someone who;s seen the movie, that'd be awesome.
I really am so happy, and their relief when i said I was just made it better. There's a lot to be said about being cared about, it's almost as good as caring. Singing Colours of the Wind in a murble made me realise the choice between happiness and eternity is no choice at all.
I can still feel the hugs on my chest.

Good things happen when you're lit mostly by Christmas Lights, bad things happen when you're lit by light reflecting off a needle.

Did you know that the word katastrophe in Greek used to mean the sound of a lyre string gently twanging back to rest after being plucked.
My weekend was a katastrophe, it's only half over, Long Live Sunday Nights.

Philosophically it was a big weekend. It's the first time any poem of mine has been met with real praise, Paul's jealous. It's also the first time any philosophy of mine has been put to the test. I think it passed. I'm waiting for that string to get plucked again. To make any real music you gotta go back and forth.

I wish I'd said to and fro just then, Imagine I did. How John Lennon

38 Days, then I'll be at the one place where it all makes sense.
Johnny had a Rat trap bigger than a Cat trap,
Johnny had a Cat trap bigger than a Rat Trap,
Cannonbal Cannonball Sis Boom Bah
Lyre Strings Lyre Strings Rah Rah Rah

Hot Diggidy this is the best quiz result ever.
Read 'em and weap ladies, and fellas

Patrick


Which 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Sorry all my posts have been quizes lately, that's what you all get for the lack of improv names.
Runner Up: Sore Stomachs For the Right Reasons
Also: Cara, can you score me a playlist for the Perks CD, I gotta make a cut
This has been such a themed post.
LALalalalala

Good Name for A Professional Improv Team
PAst Examples: Crumbs, (204), Outside Joke, Comedy All-Stars, Second City, Compass, General Fools
Get your Comment Grooves On Sistah Thangs

You like the prince charming type.


What kind of guy are you most attracted to? (CUTE anime pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

You are a Samurai.
You are full of honour and value respect. You
are not really the stereotypical hero, but you
do fight for good. Just in your own way. For
you, it is most certainly okay to kill an evil
person, if it is for justice and peace. You
also don't belive in mourning all the time and
think that once you've hit a bad stage in life
you just have to get up again. It's pointless
to concentrate on emotional pain and better to
just get on with everything. You also are a
down to earth type of person and think before
you act. Impulsive people may annoy you
somewhat.

Main weapon: Sword
Quote: "Always do the right thing.
This will gratify some people and astonish the
rest" -Mark Twain
Facial expression: Small smile

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!, breaking my depressing post streak.
Today I am jubilunt, today I feel like doing a portfolios worth of poetry. And it's not cause good things happened, it's cause I've figured everything out. Aaaand because I get to hang out with Chels and Sofia and Maggie this weekend. And because I broke some poor mans ribs.
Still, Zen is the spirit of the valley, which means that I can't stay to long at the mountaintop. I want to be plunged into craziness again because now I'm ready for it. My nightlight needing days is over, I havent felt this good in months.
PS: Uncertainty number 1... how do you pronounce the name "Caetano"
PPS: Someone teach me to sew
PPPS: No reader of this should ever be so afraid as to delete a comment where they say they hate me. Especially since such comments are still emailed to me
PPPPS: Yah, broke a guys ribs, how should I feel?
PPPPPS: This whole post has been leading up to the song I'm listening to, so I hope you're still following

Current Mood: YES! They have Jubilant!
Current Music: Bright Eyes, Bowl Of Oranges

For the second time in a week I was afraid of my own thoughts. I'm beginning it's not from feeling bad or feeling good, but from feeling to much. I felt too much last night, I'm clearly a sucker for musical theatre. My hands were shaking when I was giving felicitations to the cast, well one of them at least. But that might've been for something else.
Anyway, my thoughts are all about Goodbyes right now. Three of them. One I saw on stage, one I did under snow, one never happened. One of them touched me, one of them embraced me, and one of them is leaving me feeling cut, or unwound. Or possibly like a ball of string that someone cut causing it to be unwound. Yah, good one Steve. Do goodbyes make sense in a Universe with no time? If they don't why do they mean so much to me? Is it a problem with me, or a problem with sense?
This feels like a clingy week, no friggin hugless goodbyes this week.
If y'all don't like it, get stunt doubles

Current Mood: Like someone's gonna be angry
Current Music: Suzanne, Future nobel Laureate

I feel like I have my back to a strong wind. I did not feel this way during rugby practice when i actually had my back to a strong wind. I feel like I'm being pushed into something. I'm not sure of whether it's my destiny, or just my past subconscious having made only one path for me to go. I'm not worried that it will be bad. I'm think that 'it', whether its good or bad, this weekend or this decade, probably won;t be the cause of this feeling. I think the cause is this part of my mind that makes my head hurt whenever I try to open it. I think the cause is also the cause of my waking up gravely depressed, and the cause of my waking up while hurling myself into my bedroom wall.
Random sentences make me think about them for hours, faces dominate my entire inner eye, and all of this seemingly unrelated thought is spiraling towards this one part of my mind that is making me wince right now to think about it. The feeling I get when I meditate on these thoughts is the same feeling I get on my back when I think about tomorrow and the next day, I'm being pushed.
I think everyone has had some thought repressed, repressed even to themselves. If anyone could tell me how they were able to free that thought I would be very grateful. NO Buddha though, I recently learned I could never be a Buddhist.
Snap.

Current Music: Incense and Peppermints- Strawberry Alarm Clock

Yesterday I had a good day. Everyone and everything was in balance. I felt like a Taoist monk observing the perfect bittersweet balance of human life. Kara,Cara, Chelsea, Jamez, Annie, Ken, Maggie, everyone was real to me. The good canceled the bad without the bad canceling the good. It was a kind of happiness I couldn't remember having in a long time.
The reason I rambled is because I'm trying to remeber, because in the space of an hour it's fucking gone.
My cat's dying. And I love her. She's one of the only real confidants I've ever had. For days my family's been saying she's sick and I've been denying it. But I got home from the Y today and my mom said "You know Tiger's not going to make it". So I went downstairs and I held my cat and I knew my mom was right. And I held her and I held her and she fell asleep without playing with me and I went into the bathroom and threw up. And everything bad secret I've entrusted to tiger, and everyone bad feeling I've had recently came up, and I vomited and vomited.
And when I was finished I was worse than sad. I felt like a rock, or a hollow shell. I feel like a robot built to type. I feel so empty and numb to everything. And when I look back on how connected and mosaic and emotional I was yesterday, I feel sick again.