The Angry Cupcake

Divine Inspiration

2008-11-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, so... I am one day off of All Saint's Day, so today is about someone who was almost a Saint, but got excommunicated instead, Hildegard von Bingen.

Hildegard was a medieval abbess, writer, scientist, healer, philosopher, naturalist, composer, visionary, and counselor. She wrote theology, nature guides, poetry, scientific research documents, liturgies and the oldest surviving morality play - all this while suffering from poor health her entire life.

The tenth and most sickly child of a noble family, her parents gave her as a tithe to the church by the time she was eight, at which point she was already experiencing ecclesiastical visions. Hildegard and and her mentoring nun Jutta were enclosed at Disibodenberg in the Palatinate Forest in what is now Germany.

Jutta was also a visonary and taught Hildegard many things. The two developed a fantastically close bond and when Jutta died in in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra" of her sister community by her fellow nuns, which was kind of like what the movies call being "mother superior" or something like that.

Believing that her visions came from God, Hildegard felt that God communicated with her directly and that He wanted her to move her nuns to a location where they could have more independence in Rupertsberg. Although the abbot declined her requests, she stayed her course and fought through her paralysing illness until she finally got her way.

Rupertsberg was on the Rhine River and Hildegard studied and documented more about the natural life and environment of that space than almost anyone else has achieved in one lifetime. She did all of this because she believed that God (in one of her visions) had told her to write down everything that she saw and heard.

Historians have tried to attribute her visions to her medical ailments, variously diagnosing her with everything from migranes to epilepsy. Whatever the cause, Hildegard's visions were a guiding force in her life that led her to do remarkable things.

She was the first woman to go on a preaching tour (although she was excommunicated for it). She didn't stay excommunicated though and the contemporary Catholic Church has paid a lot of attention to her music. It's actually really beautiful - even if you're not Catholic. I especially love the dulcimer in this video.

The Many Faces of Dracula

2008-10-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

The name of that most infamous vampire can be traced back to the fifteenth century in reference to Vlad the Impaler. And since this guy's history is so long and so old, I am going to just share the visual representations of him with you today.

Living in the Balkans, it is generally believed that Dracula really didn't need to change his look very much for about 400 or so years - that is until a writer named Braham Stoker got his hands on a pile of letters and diary pages (the yellow cover on the book that Stoker published in 1897 served as a warning to its readers that the content was considered pornographic).

Apparently, Dracula travelled to Britain sometime in the late nineteenth century. Since that point in time. The movie industry has given us quite a few visual interpretations of what Dracula looks like. In the first film he was called Nosferatu (1922) and in 1922 was he ever in rough shape!

In less than ten years (which is not long for a vampire), he did clean up pretty well though. By 1931 he was a suave gentleman, who actually impressed the ladies quite a bit with his Germanic accent and foreign ways.

The 1930s weren't the end of Dracula's period of domestication. By the time he was in the House of Frankenstein (1994), he looked like a totally refined gentleman.

Ant then, by the end of the Second World War, Dracula was teaming up with other monsters to scare people, as he did with the Wolf Man and Frankenstein in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

In 1953 a Turkish film, Drakula Istanbul'da portrayed Dracula with fangs for the first time ever. Although he also had a rceding hairline. I didn't think vampires were supposed to age, but maybe the immediate postwar years were a little hard on the old Count.

It only took him five years to get his sexy back though. In 1958 he appeared in two films with two faces and two full heads of hair.

Then again, everyone was about to get their sexy on, and by the onset of the sexual revolution, Dracula even decided to try going blond for a little while in 1960. Apparently that look didn't work out so well for him, considering the fact that Christopher Lee dominated the whole Dracula scene for most of the 60s and 70s with few notable exceptions.

He found his Spanish great love in 1972.

He got together with Andy Warhol in 1974 with some weird and wonderful results, as is detectable by the bloody facepaint in the photo on the right.

In 1979, Dracula showed up a lot, but as the sexy, the comical, and the not-so-sexy.

And then we had the 80s. Even if the 80s are back in style, no one wants to remember what they actually looked like during those years.

In 1992, Draco tried out having long hair again, but for some reason also decided to start wearing John Lennon sunglasses. He also, for some reason, got this demonic look in his eyes.

Perhaps the demon eyes were a bit over the top, in 1995 Dracula's hair turned white again and he was making fun of him self, but obviously loving it.

Dracula entered the twenty-first century in style, with suave clothes and slightly shaggy hair that he stopped pushing back to hide that horrible widow's peak. In 2000 he even visited New Orleans.

The shaggy hairdo was just a stage in the process of totally growing his hair back out again though. By 2004 Dracula had hair long enough to tie back in ponytail at least six inches long and the ladies were totally digging that.

It's hard to say which was the sexiest look Dracula ever had. I know I will always have a soft spot for Bela Lugosi.

The Prince of Horror

2008-10-27T07:13:00.001-07:00

The spookiest voice in horror movie history, this man needs no introduction. His was the scary voice of movies in the twentieth century, so the best I could do here was to pay him a visual tribute through collecting together as many of his movie posters as possible and presenting them to you in chronological order, beginning with Service de Luxe (1938).

Vincent (1982) was directed by Tim Burton and actually
about the life of Vincent Price. He even played the narrator.

Who ever said that the dead can't dance?

2008-10-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

With less than a week left until Halloween, it's time to start getting really scary! So let's go back to the year 1983 for the release of one of the most famous, scariest, and eerily prophetic music videos ever made. I was eight years old and I loved it, little did any of us know that Michael Jackson would one day become scarier than make-up could ever make him... *sigh*

But.. in the interests of good taste and in order to resist repeating jokes that can be found all over the internet, I will refrain from poking fun at the atrocity too much plastic surgery can create and focus on the once adorable pop star I delighted seeing turn into a zombie so many years ago.

The video is always worth watching again; is a work of art in its own right; is totally Halloween; has zombies in it; AND deserves a very special place in music history because back in 1983 the music video was still this crazy new concept for most artists - a new medium yet to be shaped and defined by the capitalist industry that created and supported it.

Unfortunately, all I could get to post here was the wittily critiqued Video On Trial version of it.

All that being said, watch Thriller again!

10.

Stingy Jack

2008-10-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of years ago in an Irish village there was a man who was so wicked and selfish that he was known by all his neighbors as Stingy Jack. He was a miserable old trickster and a drunk, who came up with a way to fool the devil himself. Thinking himself just bloody brilliant for thinking up the idea, Jack tricked the devil into climbing up a tree and then placed crosses all around the bottom of it and refused to let the devil down until the devil promised not to take his soul. The devil promised and Jack let him go.

When Jack finally died, he went up to Heaven, but Saint Peter wouldn't let him because Jack had done no good. Jack went to Hell, but the devil said it was too bad: Jack had lived a rotten enough life, but even the devil was a man of his word. Scared and with nowhere to go Jack asked the devil how he was supposed to find his way back to earth without a light. The devil through him one of the embers of Hell, which Jack placed in the hollowed out shell of a turnip - his favorite food in life and the only thing he had left. With no final resting place, Stingy Jack was forced to roam the earth for the rest of time with nothing but his "Jack O'Lantern" to guide the way.

On all Hallow's eve, the Irish carved turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets like Jack O'Lanterns and lit them up to ward off evil spirits and keep Stingy Jack away. When waves of Irish immigrants came to America in the 1800s, many started using pumpkins instead because they were bigger and easier to carve out. So they used pumpkins for Jack O'Lanterns.

I think Tim Burtun captured Jack's Lament really well in this segment from The Nighmare Before Christmas: Jack the trickster and Jack the forlorn spirit of Halloween wandering the earth for all time.

The Brown Lady

2008-10-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most tragic of all the Halloween figures. A ghost, a tormented soul left haunting the earth. The Brown Lady is, perhaps, the most famous of them all.

The Brown Lady is the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townshend as identified by her portrait on the wall of the sixteenth century estate of Raynham Hall, which she haunts to this very day.

She was born in 1686 to Robert Walpole and fell in love with her father's handsome young ward, a viscount. Her father refused to allow the union for fear that people would think he was using his power as guardian to improve his daighter's social standing.

Her love was then married to another woman, during which time she became the mistress of Lord Wharton, a scoundrel who was eventually forced to leave the country for having accumulated too much debt. When her love's wife died in 1711, they were finally married.

However, when he learned of her affair with Wharton, he locked her away in secure apartments at Raynham Hall. He kept her separated from everyone, including her own children until she died at the age of 40. The official cause of her death was smallpox, but people commonly claimed that she died of a broken heart or was murdered by her jealous husband.

Her ghost wanders the halls in a brown brocade dress, looking for her children.

Poe

2008-10-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

Edgar Allen Poe "...with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page. …There is an indescribable magnetism about the poet’s life and reminiscences, as well as the poems" (Walt Whitman).

Widely considered the father of the modern detective story, Edgar was the first gothic poet. As Whitman said, he had "an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page." His poetry and his prose just oozed suffering:

"The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story" (The Tell-Tale Heart).

He was born in Boston and both of his parents died when he was a baby, at which point Frances and John Allan adopted him. So he gets his last names from both his fathers: John Allan and David Poe. The Allans raised and educated young Edgar in England. There, Edgar studied Latin and poetry and loved swimming and theatre, just like his natural parents who had both been actors during their lifetime. John Allan was a wealthy merchant and supported young Edgar financially until he accumulated so many gambling debts that the two of them had a falling out and poor Edgar was forced to drop out of school.

Unable to pay his debts and destitute, Edgar did what so many young American boys do to this day when they are poor and their manhood feels challenged, he joined the US Army and he published his first two books of poetry.

On her deathbed, it was Frances Allan's dying wish that her husband and their foster son make amends, which they did and Edgar left the army two years after enlisting.

He continued writing and moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt and the young Virginia Eliza Clemm, who would become his wife at the age of thirteen. Virginia was the ideal beauty of the American Renaissance: young, wan, and slowly dying of consumption. She beguiled and charmed everyone who knew her, always remaining happy and cheerful in spite of her frail health.

The two moved to New York City, where Edgar produced some of his best works, including the Raven. When Virginia died in 1947, Edgar was devastated, turned to alcohol and many of their friends began to believe he was losing his mind. A year later he became engaged to his high school sweetheart, Elmira Royster.

The last days of Edgar's and the cause of his death remain a mystery to this day. Some believe he died from alcohol poisoning because his love of the drink had progressed to that point. Others say he was murdered or fell victim to one or another of various diseases. Apparently, they found him unconscious in the street and admitted him to the hospital in Baltimore. He died soon after and was buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave in the Old Westminster Burying Ground of Baltimore.

Mistress of the Dark

2008-10-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

Now that October is here it's time to look at our Halloween icons and who better to start with than Cassandra Peterson's Elvira: Mistress of the Dark?

There was so much I didn't know about Elvira, the first of which being she is a redhead. But more interestingly, she got her start through Elvis Presley.

At age seventeen she graduated high school and drove to Vegas to become the youngest show girl the city has ever seen (according to the Guinness Book of World Records). There she performed at a hotel called The Dunes, where she met Elvis and he encouraged her to become a singer. The two actually dated.

But even after dating the King, Cassandra struggled in he career before hitting on the Elvira character in Movie Macabre (1981). She tried all kinds of creative things before coming up with that idea, including singing for the unknown rock band Latins Ochanats; touring with a musical comedy act called Mamma's Boys; and playing a valley-girl in The Groundlings.

Cassandra was thirty years old when she first appeared as Elvira. Her original idea was to appear as Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers, but the producers of Movie Macabre found that idea laughable. So she and her best friend came up with a punk version and Elvira was born.

Now Halloween is the busiest month in her schedule, winding up with an appearance at the Eastern State Penitentiary Halloween Party. I can't imagine a better way to spend Halloween really. I bet she gets some pretty interesting mail!

Victorian Superstar

2008-09-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

I started thinking of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning as I reflected on the past year of my life this morning - not to be so vain as to think I have even a tenth of her talent, but because she became most famous after spending five years bed writing and fell in love.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to rest when we are ill and just do what it is we are actually able to do?

Elizabeth's writing made her famous and inspired Robert Browning to write to her:

January 10th, 1845
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey

I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, -- and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write, --whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me -- for in the first flush of delight I though I would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration -- perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of herafter! -- but nothing comes of it

all -- so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew ... oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat and prized highly and put in a book with a proper account at bottom, and shut up and put away ... and the book called a 'Flora', besides! After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time; because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give reason for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought -- but in this addressing myself to you, your

own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogher. I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart -- and I love you too: do you know I was once seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to me one morning "would you like to see Miss Barrett?" -- then he went to announce me, -- then he returned ... you were too unwell -- and now it is years ago -- and I feel as at some untorward passage in my travels -- as if I had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel

on crypt, ... only a screen to push and I might have entered -- but there was some slight ... so it now seems ... slight and just-sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be!
Well, these Poems were to be -- and this true thankful joy and pride with which I feel myself.
Yours ever faithfully
Robert Browning

And they were to be. Robert became the Browning in her name - her husband. Elizabeth grew stronger through the course of her marriage to Robert and their love is one of the most famous love stories in the history of English writing.

The two became like pop stars and even went on tour through the United States. Their fans were cult like and would dress in brown for the Brownings. Their writings continued to influence popular culture write up through the twentieth century - even inspiring one of John Lennon's last songs: "Grow Old With Me."

Lennon wrote this song basing it on two sources: Yoko Ono's poem called "Let Me Count The Ways, which she used Elizabeth's poetry to help her write; and Robert Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra," which begins:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be...

Even if hard things happen in our lives, good people come to us when we need them most.

Zappa da Moon

2008-09-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

I went to one of those web sites where you can find people who have the same birthday as you and this is one of the most interesting people I found: Moon Unit Zappa. Click that link because she has a beautiful (if out-of-date) website.

Moon got famous for being Frank Zappa's daughter, which also (according to her website) seems like it was a tough thing to live down.

If it weren't hard enough having such an outrageously famous dad as Frank Zappa, he recorded her on one of his albums in 1982 - the song "Valley Girl." So, her first name is Moon. Her middle name is Unit. Her siblings names are Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva. And then she gets famous for like popularizing like val-speak - for sure!

What's cool about her is that she has to have a sense of humour and has had a career in stand-up comedy, acting, and the arts.

In honour of her birthday tomorrow:

Ten Years is Long Enough to Wait for Any Man

2008-09-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

Roabelle, Rosabelle,
I love thee more than I can tell...

In 1894 (or thereabouts), Bess Rahner was performing Rosabelle Believe at Coney Island with her sisters, when a magician spilled acid on her new dress. The young magician promised to replace it. She liked him. He got his mother to make her a new dress and brought her back to Coney Island. On their way, they were married and Bess became Mrs. Harry Houdini.

She joined his act and became his biggest supporting player. She believed in magic, witchcraft, all things spiritual - Houdini scared the hell out of her on a regular basis and once made the name of her dead father appear on his arm.

She had a nasty temper too. If the Houdinis fought, Harry would go for a walk, come back quietly into the house and throw his hat into the room where Bess was. If it stayed in the room, he came back. If she threw the hat back out of the room, he went for another walk.

Bess is best remembered for wanting her husband to come back. Harry promised that if there were a way to communicate from beyond the grave that he would do it. Every Halloween for ten years after his death, Bess held a séance. At the tenth séance, when her husband failed to return, she put out the candle and declared that "Ten years is long enough to wait for any man."

So goes the Ballad of Bess Houdini.

How to Sleep

2008-09-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream. It wasn't a nightmare, but it was very startling and realistic. I woke up all surprised and had to focus to get back to sleep and return to the same dream. I do that often. Sometimes it results in my not sleeping as well as I should, but I get to have the most exciting dreams and I know they are dreams while I am in them. This, apparently, is called lucid dreaming.

A philosopher named Celia Green wrote the book on lucid dreaming. Green is really interested in the mind and body connection. The same year she wrote her book about lucid dreaming, she also wrote about out-of-body experiences.

While I obviously believe in lucid dreaming, I have never been totally convinced about out-of-body experiences. There just seems to be too much hocus pocus around that sort of thing, which is good for stories and all, but really?

What I find interesting about lucid dreaming is the ability to control your dreams. My twin-cousin and I learned to control our dreams as children because she was rather tormented by nightmares. My aunt showed us how to acknowledge we were dreaming when the dreams got to scary or started moving in a direction we didn't like.

In her dreams, my cousin invented a place called the Bureau of Dreams and Wishful Thinking, where she could go and file a complaint any time her dreams got out of control. I am really surprised my cousin grew up to be an artist and not a bureaucrat, but I guess that thinking up something like that has to be creative.

In my dreams, I just had a cloaked shaman, who looked like the mystical personification of death. He telepathically knew how I wanted my dreams to go and would point me in the right direction when my dreams got out of control.

A Melancholy Fool

2008-09-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

I love the word melancholy. "I am feeling melancholic." Melon-colic sounds like a fussy baby who wants fruit. Sometimes that's me, but the guy on the left is Robert Burton.

Robby was a gay boy about thirteen years younger than Will Shakespeare. He might have dated Shakespeare's little sister, but he was gay and he wrote a lot about being sad - most famously The Anatomy of Melancholy.

He studied math, which is probably a good enough reason for anyone to be depressed. He liked looking at the stars and laughing at angry barge-men.

Ironically, he wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy for the same reason that I'm writing about him right now - to stop being sad.

"I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no better cure than business."

Writing and being creative are the best things to do when you're sad because you can come up with such great things.

The only thing better, perhaps, is laughter.

The Rock Iguana

2008-09-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

I find it a little funny to think that the guy sitting on the far right in the above picture thought of Jim Morrison as an inspiration for his stage performances. But that's just based on one picture. The guy sitting there is actually known as the "Rock Iguana," Iggy Pop. I think everyone knows that Iggy's career went a long way after The Iguanas.

I realized recently that I don't know anywhere near as much about the old Iguana star as I ought to. I knew more songs that were influenced by Iggy Pop than I did songs that were created by Iggy Pop. He influenced R.E.M., the Pixies, Henry Rollins, Sid Vicious, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Peaches, and many others. I know those bands and being someone who loves doing internet research, I decided to find out more about Iggy.

But the internet is such a funny funny place. One minute I find out that the footage of Iggy's historic appearance on an Australian television show was possibly lost forever. The next minute I am watching that footage on Youtube.

But since the above song explains the kind of mood that I'm in. I am going to list the top ten weirdest things that I just found out about the Rock Iguana.

10. He's done voices on the cartoon
American Dad.
9. He was in The Rugrats Movie.
8. He's been interviewed by the fictional
character Emily Strange.
7. He mixes it up with German when he tries
to speak French (I do this too, look!).
6. He had a stalker for 12 years who liked to
go to his concerts and chant: "Iggy.
Lobotomy. Iggy. Lobotomy. Iggy."
5. He supports internet piracy and wants you
to steal his music in MP3 format for free.
4. He thinks Marilyn Manson is strange!!!!!!!
3. People who have never met him constantly
tell other people that Iggy Pop is only 5'1",
which is a lie - he's 5'8" or sumthin'.
2. There's no evidence that he ever had sex with
David Bowie.
1. He hated the punk scene.

Dressed Like a Superhero

2008-09-10T13:29:00.000-07:00

According to Style.com, dressing like a superhero is one of the latest trends. I noticed this the other day when my daughter left for school dressed like Wonder Woman the punk.

At first I thought it was just this big belt trend that was reminiscent of super-style. Superheroes do like to wear a lot of belts, but then again so do champion weight lifters and wrestlers. What is this link between the belt and super human strength? But it's not just the belts. It's also the boots and the tights and the capes and the big jewelry.

I love Wonder Woman as much as the next girl, but I'm not ready to sport a tiara. Wonder Woman Understands.

Random Acts of Kindness

2008-09-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you are feeling down, doing kind things for others gives you just the lift you need. Here are a few things that I recommend you try out at home.

Give a lottery ticket to a stranger.

Send handmade cards or a letter to someone you care for.

When you go somewhere to get or do something, ask someone around you if you can pick up, drop off or do something for them while you do.

Put a comment on someone's webpage that you really like...... let them know you enjoy it.

Put something you no longer need on Craig's list free spot for your area.

Buy a phone card and give to a homeless shelter for them to give to someone or just give it to someone asking for change on the street. Lord knows there are enough people doing that here.

Invite someone who is alone over for dinner.

Put a quarter in a parking meter that has expired.

Write a note to the boss of someone who has helped you, praising the employee.

Make a point of introducing yourself to someone you see all of the time but never say hello to.

Offer to baby sit.

Write anonymous, loving post-its for strangers to find.

Greens Can't Participate in Leaders' Debates

2008-09-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

It's possible that the network's decision to not allow the Green Party's Elizabeth May to participate in the Leader's Debates could be the best thing that has happened to the Green Party since... well... the carbon tax.

Seriously, look at the comments that follow the CBC article.

"So the broadcasters were stupid enough to believe that other parties would actually boycott the debates because the Green Party leader was in it? You must be terrible poker players, don't recognise an obvious bluff when you see it!

Guess who I'm voting for now!"

This will be better for the Green Party's popularity than former party leader Adrienne Carr's participation in the leader's debate. If no one had heard Carr speak, no one would have known what a twit she was.

May is effectively becoming a martyr through the decision to leave her out of the debate, in what a lot of people seem to b calling the death of Canadian democracy. I don't know if I would go so far as to call it that. The armchair voters in this country are really just being made a little more aware of the censorship that they face in making intelligent decisions.

It wouldn't be easy for me to sleep at night I worked for one of those networks.

Dances to the Beat of a Different Drum

2008-09-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

A new study from Scotland has proved what I am sure most people felt they already knew - that musical tastes are in tune with who you are. According to the CBC, the study's most surprising finding was that heavy metal fans have more in common with classical music fans than anyone else.

Well, that's not all that surprising. Most metal heads have been saying for years that their music is as intricately complex as history's most revered concertos. Anyone who can make that kind of argument successfully has got to have something in common with classical music snobs.

The study's analysis of other types of music fans is more amusing though. And I quote:

"Jazz fans tend to be creative and outgoing, with high self-esteem, in keeping with the innovative and sociable nature of the music.

Country western fans were found to be hard-working, but introverted, fitting with the blue-collar image of country music.

The research concluded soul music lovers are a well-rounded bunch — creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease with themselves and with high self-esteem.

Rap fans are outgoing and far from gentle, while indie music lovers lack both self-esteem and the work ethic."

The problem that I see with all this is that not everyone likes just one type of music best. As Gordon Gano will tell you, some people like American music best. When people ask me what kind of music I like, I always say I like good music and not all the music of one particular genre is good.

But, as Gordon Gano says, "I like American music because it reminds me of me," and I don't always feel like listening to Indie or Rap. The music I put on reflects the mood I'm in and, right now, I feel like listening to the Violent Femmes.

U.S. Politics

2008-09-04T09:32:00.001-07:00

Maybe I am just being a patriotic Canadian again, thinking about how much I prefer Canadian politics to U.S. practices, but I do. It just makes me sick to endlessly read about the families and religious views of American political candidates. What the hell does that have to do with how well they can do their job?

I don't care if Obama had a falling out with his preacher.

I actually don't care if Palin's teenage daughter is pregnant!

As vice-President will she be the mother of the nation or something and suddenly all of America's teenage daughter's will be just like Jamie Lynn Spears? If that's the case, the same logic would follow that Bristol Palin is pregnant because George W. Bush is a bad president.

If the American political machine could only stop smear campaigning and start making logical decisions, perhaps, they wouldn't have put certain people in office in the first place.

Fear of Commitment

2008-09-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

Last night the guy-I-am-seeing called me his girlfriend and said we have a relationship. I asked him if he meant "relationship" in the broader sense of the word. He said, "No." I felt awkward.

This morning I felt good about it. I even changed my Facebook status to "in a relationship."

During lunch at work my roommate IMed me and told me what my Facebook status said and, internally, I freaked. I went straight to Facebook and switched it back.

I am not afraid of commitment. I took the quiz and was reassured that I am fine - not that it's a very extensive quiz, but I get right into personality profiling. I like how we all try to think of each other as "types." Apparently there are at least four types of people with fear of commitment issues.

The train wreck: someone who subconsciously always chooses people who will let them down, disappoint them, cheat, eat cookies in bed, and generally break their hearts.
The yo-yo: someone with an on and off again relationship, who basically just wants to have their cake and a little bit of everyone else's cake too.
Mr. or Miss Right: people who are just so bloody perfect themselves that they don't have time for those who sneeze in the same Kleenex twice.
The asshole: someone who finds a perfectly good mate and then crushes their self-esteem by finding fault in them and picking them apart.

Gawd, I am glad my last name is not Right.

Coffee

2008-09-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

A good cup of coffee is as important as good sex. Seriously, it makes your day so much happier, you feel more energetic, you carry a sense of decadence and satisfaction around with you for hours afterwards, and the whole world just seems a little bit nicer.

Bad coffee is just crappy. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth and often gives you the runs, but there's more to it than that. As with sex, we all have our little preferences.

For me, the darkly roasted freshly ground beans matter - certainly, they do. BUT you take a perfectly brewed cup of Joe and add milk and I'll be thoroughly disappointed. Call me a coffee snob, but I won't be able to take more than three sips of the stuff. Coffee needs cream. Half & half cream works best and when you add it, it's all about the colour. I know my coffee has the right mixture of coffee and cream by the colour.

Sometimes, poorly brewed coffee needs more or less cream - that's how the colour test works. Sugar doesn't matter so much to me. I wanna see the cream, baby!

Summer is Over

2008-09-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

I said it.

There's no denying it.

Summer is over. School starts tomorrow.

If the measure of a good summer is how ready you are to face the new season, my summer sucked. I can't deny it. I didn't get anything done this summer. I spent the whole season learning to walk again, but I think that the ability to walk on ones own two feet again is not something to shrug at.

And, in spite of the bitter pain, I managed to fall in love again. There! I said that too! I am crazy about someone and he's pretty crazy about me too.

I don't think that the two things are coincidental either. I injured myself pretty badly - slipped the 4th and 5th lumbars, broke the joint that connects my tail bone to my spine, and did some nerve damage to my right leg. Broken Cupcake did a lot of lying on the beach. Now, the summer is over and it's time to get down to some serious business - ideas for how to write that essay on what I did last summer (that's right, we're calling it last summer today because it's Labour Day - summer is gone and you're not allowed to wear white pants any more).

So what makes a good summer?

The weather? The weather is a false friend. It makes you believe whatever you want to believe. If you're happy and it's raining, the rain is cleansing. If you're sad, the rain is just fucking depressing.

Love is a good one, but if I go on about that at this point I will just be bragging.

Food and wine? I had some nice wines, but I can't say I ate a lot of good food that I enjoyed. BC wines are ridiculously scrumptious, but after spending a year in Montreal the food on the Left Coast just doesn't taste as sweet (and I don't like fish). However, now that Quebec cheese is poisonous, I shouldn't bitch about being in a place full of Blasted Church and Painted Turtle.

But it wasn't wine, it was love that made my summer good (ya, I snuck the elected in there. They're playing now on my iTunes).

Why I Love You

2008-08-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

I did a Google search on the phrase "why I love you" this morning and am compiling a list of good reasons to love people because I am having such a gosh-darn good day and am really grateful to have all my people in my life. Here are the best reasons I found:

I can be myself when I am with you.

Thinking of you, fills me with a wonderful feeling.

Your love gives me the feeling, that the best is still ahead.

Your terrific sense of humor.

You are my theme for a dream.

Your love for me is a natural anti-depressant.

I love to hear your voice.

You always make me feel that you are by my side no matter what.

I love the way you keep your cool when I do something stupid.

You are so beautiful to me.

I don't have to vacuum before you come over.

Even when I'm grumpy, you still like me.

We both know that together we can work out anything.

You never say, "Are you going to tell that story AGAIN?"

You always seem to know when things aren't going great.

You never intimidate me.

You know how to bring a smile to my face.

When you listen, I know you're really listening and not just waiting for your turn to talk.

Sometimes you call just because you're thinking about me.

I love your smile...I really do. =)

You understand if I forget something worth remembering.

You always say what I need to hear.

You're so cuddlesome.

You're someone I can be goofy with.

I can ask you a dumb question without feeling dumb.

How you tell me long stories that have no meaning, but you know I'll listen anyway.

How you forgive me when I do wrong.

I can fight against the world because I know you will be by my side always.

You understand that I need not just a coffee, but a good coffee.

And those reasons are for all of my friends. To finish, I'll give you the best love song ever written (isn't Meg so adorable in that movie?).

Broke Again - What a Crying Shame!

2008-08-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the month again. All the bills and rent are due. Money feels in very short supply and poverty is a really dirty feeling.

Our society makes being poor a crime. Most of our public spaces of gathering are consumer spaces. Laws against loitering enable businesses and police to discriminate against the poor. Businesses in Victoria generally only allow "customers" to use their washrooms, but if you look like a customer, they will generally allow you to use their facilities - even if you don't buy a thing. Likewise, laws that claim to be for the purposes of keeping our streets safe simply enable police to harass the poor and homeless.

If that's not enough, people who need help feel dirty about it - like there is something wrong with them for being in a position of need. It's as if being poor means that you have somehow been irresponsible. I mean, you must have had money at some time. Look at that iPod. Look at that computer. Where did all your money go? Why weren't you saving for a rainy day?

If you are poor, that doesn't mean you are irresponsible. Just like the old saying: you don't need to be smart to be rich, you just need to have a lot of money. You don't need to be irresponsible to be broke, it just means you don't have any money. In honour of poverty, here's some good old Fountains of Wayne (the video quality sucks, but that too seems appropriate somehow).

A Mandate for Change

2008-08-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

I have been dealing with non-profit organizations for a while (and not just because most of the organizations I work with are broke) because I like to feel like I am doing good work. And I found the best organizational mandate that I have ever read this morning through the Zuckerman Family Foundation.

Most mandates are really specific and based on how difficult the world is or how difficult it has been or what we've had to overcome. The Zuckerman Family Foundation mandate is so simple that it seems brilliant. It reads:

Mandate
CHANGE (V)
accommodate, adapt, alter, convert, diverge, diversify, evolve, make innovations, make over, merge, metamorphose, modify, reform, regenerate, remake, remodel, renovate, reorganize, replace, resolve, restyle, revolutionize, shape, shift, transfigure, transform, translate, transpose, vary, veer.

How perfect is that? It's like the mandate each person should have to live their life by. If I could go to sleep every night saying I did anywhere near half of those things, I'd be a Happy Cupcake.

Jerks

2008-08-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Are you a jerk?

A jerk is pretty easy to spot once they get going, so it stands to reason that if you are a jerk - it shouldn't be too hard to tell.

Quite simply, if you enjoy the feeling of intimidating your inferiors - the kid working at the coffee shop, the new guy at work, your neighbors dog, then you might be a jerk.

If you refuse to tell someone when they are doing a good job, but jump on the opportunity to tell them their fly is down or they have a booger hanging from their nose or they forgot to wish a mutual friend happy birthday, then you might be a jerk.

If you are unnecessarily loud - slam the door every time you go into your house, wear heavy footwear on hardwood floors, honk the horn in your car when you see a friend walking up the street, or talk louder on your cell phone in crowded spaces because it is harder for the person who is calling to hear you, then you might be a jerk!

If there is nothing negative that you could say about so-and-so that you couldn't say in front of everybody, then you might be a jerk!

If you will bend the truth to make your life easier and justify it by criticizing those you are lying to, then you are probably a jerk!

If you are a jerk, stop it!!!

You are pissing every one else off!

Instant Pleasure

2008-08-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

The only video (online mode of listening to music for free without filling up your hard drive) of this song that I could find features the Little Mermaid. Click to listen and then keep reading or just check out the lyrics.

Rufus Wainwright - Instant Pleasure

I don't want somebody to love me
Just give me sex whenever I want it
'Cause all I ask for is instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure

You in the traffic for all eternity
How could that speed be where you want to be?
Said don't you really want instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure

Think that all these folks get laid?
Do it cause their pain is great?
What you thinkin' anyways?

If drinkin' coffee's your idea of really cool
You can't expect no crazy chick to notice you
Just sittin there dreamin' instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure

If you want someone a friend to be
Guess you'll have to win the lottery
But till then repeat after me

I don't want somebody to love me
Just give me sex whenever I want it
'Cause all I ask for is instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure
Instant pleasure, instant pleasure

I don't want somebody to love me
I don't want somebody to love me...

It's a pessimistic song, but at the same time there's something reassuring about it. I like to call it the anti-Buddhist anthem - not because I'm anti-Buddhist, but because it's about seeking the direct opposite of happiness in Buddhist ideology. At the same time, it's not a hedonistic song. A true hedonist wants it all: sex, love, fast cars, friendship... That's what's so pessimistic about it - like you can't have both pleasure and happiness at the same time.

I don't want to believe that. Happiness is surely harder to achieve than pleasure. Maybe that's why it's the focus of the Buddhist quest for enlightenment, but maybe enlightenment happens when you attain perfect happiness and realize you can have pleasure as well.

What's wrong with that thinking? Pleasure is wrapped up in desire: "All I want is instant pleasure..." Unfulfilled desire is supposed to operate counter to happiness, but it doesn't have to. Oscar Wilde was the one who said:

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!"

And the Dalai Lama himself is a notorious internet addict. I'm not questioning his state of enlightment, just saying... Well, the internet is really good for immediate self-gratification.

Grumpy Cupcake

2008-08-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

You might have never guessed this, but sometimes I get really grumpy. Sometimes, I have so much to do that I don't know where to start. This causes a panicky sensation somewhere around the solar plexus, undetectable to most other people - and I get grumpy fast at unsuspecting friends and relatives.

I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but if it does... a heartfelt apology is in order. Oddly enough, saying sorry rarely gives me the desired feeling of relief from guilt. It usually just makes me feel more guilty - even when my loved ones are very forgiving. In cases like these, I think presents and or a bigger apology are required.

As you may be suspecting, a situation like this may have happened to me very recently and your Cupcake started combing the internet for good apologies.

I found some quotes I like:

In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry. ~Margaret Laurence

Never ruin an apology with an excuse. ~Kimberly Johnson

Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them. ~Author Unknown

Then I read about apology notes and discovered that some people have been far worse than this Cupcake!

EDMONTON - An Edmonton couple whose home was firebombed two weeks ago say they found a surprise apology note in their mailbox three days later.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," someone wrote on a piece of looseleaf paper. "The wrong house was targeted ... we believed that someone else lived there. There is no need to worry for any future attacks." ~ A Real Newstory

And some have even been far weirder than Cupcake!

"I want to apologize for the past incedent with the umbrella, I was preparing a character for a possible movie role where the husband doesn't play his part so they swap places. Unfortunatly I didn't get the part. I'm sorry I got all carried away with my role! [sic]" ~ Britney Spears

I didn't throw a bomb through a window or beat anyone with an umbrella, but a simple present might still be in order.

Teenage Sex

2008-08-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

There is no feeling more patriotic for a Canadian than feeling like we did something better than the Americans. That's what I felt this morning when I read the CBC news headline: Fewer Teenage Girls Report Having Sex: StatsCan. However, this glowing moment of patriotism was only because I know Americans have been talking about how their abstinence-only sex education program has been failing miserably.

Patriotism has to be one of the stupidest things to feel happy about - especially the Canadian egotistical kind. It is not good that the American sex education program is failing. It is not good that their kids know less about how to protect themselves from S.T.Ds or S.T.Is (as some people like to call them now). Not just because as human being we should be filled with a benevolent love for all other human beings (that will only happen when we achieve world peace and all the children of the world join hands to sing together in unison), we should be concerned because Americans have always been the largest source of immigration to Canada!

But for the grace of God, here they come - unwashed and uncertain how to put a condom on!

Also, the States is the number one travel destination for Canadians! And everyone knows Canadians are kinky.

So... here's the low-down on where Americans are going with sex ed now. And what makes me happy about our news headline is that it stands in positive contrast with the stupid abstinence-only program and can deter the geniuses who supported it from saying that there was no level of sex education that could have worked better than the nit-witted one they were using.

In the Event of a Zombie Holocaust

2008-08-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

Would you be ready? Here's a quiz you take to find out if you're a survivor or Zombie food.

I can see why the Zombies are headed for the mall. People in malls and subway stations often look like zombies - it would be easier to blend in because none of the people around them are making any sort of decisions or having any sort of enthusiasm at all about life. They are the walking dead.

So why do they appeal to the living so much?

Unlike vampires, they're not especially sexy. They are not articulate and (considering I got a high score of Z+ on that zombie quiz) they can't be that difficult to beat. Actually, zombies operate a lot like vampires - except that their mindless and rotting.

Zombie popularity mirrored the rise in the popularity of voodoo and with the first Zombie movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), based on the Richard Matheson novel I am Legend. Both make different types of social commentary - much like vampire movies do.

The monsters in movies are supposed to be the characters that are not you, especially the mindless monsters, like zombies. Loads of people want to be vampires, but who wants to be a zombie? Hence everyone wants to share their score when they take their zombie quiz.

Zombies represent the people we see as a waste of life (most of the time) - wasted because they don't think for themselves, don't enjoy their opportunities, moan a lot and move slowly in large groups. A lot like my friends and I in ninth grade.

It was a dark and stormy night...

2008-08-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

The woman in the dark trench coat and thick red lipstick realized that Jack Layton didn't have enough money to buy the document from her. All that planning - an entire ten minutes - was gone to waste. "Let it go, baby. Let it go," Rich consoled her.

She threw the brown paper envelope to the ground and held her breath in for a moment as she watched Rich wipe the raindrops from his forehead before kissing her. "Let's blow this joint."

The real way that the NEMESIS Risk Assessment Report actually wound up on a rainy street in Ottawa couldn't be much stupider than that.

If you don't know what I am talking about, here's the story. Someone found a report detailing just how hackable an Environment Canada environmental enforcement database is just lying on the street and handed it over to the CBC.

Now, I am thinking that if I were really a spy the best cover wouldn't be trench coats and sexy evening dresses, but as a bum on the streets of Ottawa because this isn't the first time this nonsense has happened. Remember the anti-terror unit blueprints "someone" found in a dumpster?

A Poopy Week

2008-08-14T09:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe I shouldn't be talking about how poopy the week has been when it is only Thursday. One should never say things could never get worse... but I am detecting a theme.

First, UPS lost Mr. Floatie Number Two - they are still trying to find him but in the mean time one has to wonder how it is possible to lose a seven foot turd costume.

If you don't know, Mr. Floatie is the mascot of sewage treatment in Victoria BC. Check him out! His prodigy: Number Two was on his way to New York State and expected to arrive in early August, but disappeared en route. We suspect he might have never left the province or has been abducted by U.S. National Security. At any rate, that's shitty!

Next (and I am not making this up), a house-sized dog poopy was carried on a massive path of destruction in Berne! Ok, maybe the path of destruction wasn't massive, but it was indeed unfortunate - it knocked out a window at an orphanage! I imagine there were three unfortunate looking kids in there because it sounds like the climax to a Lemony Snicket novel.

Poop gone missing and poop gone wild.

I wonder if the two are connected? Maybe National Security started chasing Number Two and he escaped!!! Then fled to Switzerland and disguised himself - but when Americans started crowding around the inflatable poop he was hiding in, he had to run - suspecting one of them could be a spy. Maybe UPS should just hurry up and find this friggen costume already! - Cupcake