jaime james

Stone Walls do not a prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soule am free;
Angels alone that sore above,
Injoy such Liberty

(Lovelace)

Chère Teresa

Suite à notre entrevue, je vous écris pour confirmer que j'ai obtenu une
deuxième évaluation de votre composition, d'un autre professeur de
littérature, qui ne vous connaît pas; ce professeur a évalué votre devoir
en se limitant à ses mérites en tant que devoir écrit sur un thème
littéraire dans ce cours de 3e année et pour cela y attribuerait un A.
Puisque Dr. Steele est le responsable du cours et ainsi des consignes
(instructions) pour le devoir, la note que vous recevrez pour ce devoir
sera la moyenne des deux notes, par conséquent un B+.

Je vous remercie de vos explications et je vous encourage à en discuter
davantage avec M. Steele pour bien vous réintégrer dans ce cours.

Cordialement,



Hi Theresa,
I would like to speak with you at your convenience this week or next. You
can let me know if that is o.k.
Thanks,
Stephen



Teresa, thank you for your reply, and if you should change your mind my
office door is always open.
Stephen

At 09:32 PM 11/18/04 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Hello Dr. Steele,
> I prefer to decline your request. I apologize if this causes any
>inconvenience.
> Sincerely,
> Teresa

I should remember to explain all this sometime, but not now.


>

And so I finally find out what all those ads flashing in every tv screen at school was all about. Fascinating. Watching specimens of a widespread subculture, I mean. I saw about four, no five Kenshins, a couple of Links, and a helluva lot of Sailormoons, one Hitomi, and a shitload of others that I can't place (but look so familiar that it drives me nuts). Many of the girls' costumes I assume to be Sakura Cardcaptors. I liked some guy's Ranma getup the best--simple yet noticeable. Some of them wer so complicated that it just looked too ridiculous to be whoever it was they meant to dress up as.
Funny how this took place at the same time some BC Teachers' Federation conference was going on. All these middle-aged women dressed in like, clothes from The Bay walking around amidst a much larger crowd of people in Sequined Sailor Suits and bright purple hair. Many of them didn't dress up as any character but went as goths--what they would probably claim as "dressing up as themselves." I was really surprised to at how many white people are into animé. I only know two white people whom I "have heard" are quasi-into animé. I have never seen this for myself, as they have always dressed so..white. I.e. looking like they just stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch or Nautica ad. Into animé my ass.
And so I digress. Well, I see now how being nuts about animé can constitute a sub-culture. I always took it for granted.
Maybe more on this later, when someone's not nagging me to do something.

Les tapageurs. Je dirais que j'en ai assez mais quand j'ai ouvert le courriel mon esprit a guindé. Et selon le message j'aurai du pain à planche(r). Après avoir m'enfoncée dans ma cachot, ehh.

Je suis à peine reveillée. Et il est midi.
J'aurai vingt ans dans quatre jours. Et enfin il est atteint. Peut-être qu'elle cesse de me déranger. On peut voir qu'elle, sans but, sans rêve même, meurs d'ennuie, alors elle...
Assez. Comme j'ai dit, je suis à peine levée et je bavarde déjà.
Hier j'ai eu un peu du gueule de bois, et donc je ne pouvais pas étudier. Alors maintenant il vaut mieux regler la compte.

I'm barely awake. And it is noon.
I'll be 20 in 4 days. And finally I've done it. MAybe it'll stop driving me nuts. ...
Enough. Like I said, I'm barely awake and I'm already blabbering.
Yesterday I was kinda hung over, so I couldn't do any studying. I'd better make up for that today.

"I simply forgot to call..."
This is the second time such a thing has happened. What does it all mean? That I could've lost my marbles and blurted out shit that I oughtn't to, solipsist that I am. See, here it the pattern: whenever something really shitt ee is happening to me and I feel like telling someone...and since I don't have too many friends, you'll automatically know who I'm talking about...anyway, it doesn't work out and I am left at home, wondering why I bother trying.


"J'ai tout à fait oublié..."
Ici c'est la deuxième fois que ça m'est arrivée. Et ça veut dire quoi? Que j'ai pu perdre mes nerfs et tout décelé, tout ce merde que je dois ne jamais laisser sortir. Regarde, voici le patron: chaque fois que le monde me fais chier et j'ai vraiment envie de le dire à qqn...et puisque j'ai peu d'amis tu saura d'emblée de quoi il s'agit...en tout cas, tout tournerait mal et je suis ici, plaquée chez moi. Je me demande pourquoi j'y même tente. Non c'est pas la peine.

Haha. I remember the ither day when my brother saw the puto on a plate in the kitchen and couldn't remember what it was. Aside from stuffing his gullet with the food without even knowing exactly what it was, it was funny too that I remarked how "assimilated into the dominant Canadian culture" he was when it is really I who am more "assimilated" since I speak French. The world is full of ironies.

Hier soir, dès que je suis rentrée, je suis tombée dans les pommes. Après avoir passé dans le seuil de chez moi, j'ai mis ma tête sur l'oreiller et puis...éteinte.
Je regarde le débat à la télé. Oui, j'ai déjà dit que ce pays ne me plaît plus. Je tiens à déménager en Allemagne après mon dégré. Tout le monde parle français là-bas, d'ailleurs. L'autre jour j'ai même entendu une touriste allemande dans la rue le parler à la personne à côté de lui quand elle a découverte que cette femme était Québecoise. En outre quand je regardais un de ces espèces de émissions tabloid-iques, l'actrice de film Troy, qui est allemande, parlait aussi français. Peut-être que je puisse trouver un boulot là-bas, mais surtout je n'ai pas encore perdu l'espoir de gagner mon pain comme une sorte d'artiste. Il paraît que quand on dit qu'on est écrivain ou peintre ou musicien dans ce pays-là, on ne vous méprise pas. Par contre, ils vous respecteraient. Désolée de l'admettre mais j'en ai marre de cette terre vaste, encore inconnue (même après sept ans!) qui ne m'a jamais accueillie.

Je ne sais même pas pourquoi je m'assois ici, faisant pas vraiment grande chose quand le fait que j'ai du pain à plancher ne veut pas me lâcher.
Donc à la prochaine.

Il y a environ quatre jours j'ai lu d'un interview de cette femme-là, l'écrivain Amélie Nothomb. Et maintenant je tiens à acheter un de ses romans, mais surtout "Stupeur et Tremblements." Il s'agit d'une jeune Française qui parle le japonais couramment et donc elle a trouvé un boulot au Japon, dans une grande corporation, comme traductrice. Au début elle s'attend à une bonne expérience, mais plus tard elle se rend compte que la vie au Japon n'est pas du tout comme dans ses rêves. Tout d'abord il y a la grande hierarchie, impossible à entamer. Tout le monde n'est qu'une foule dévisagée mais pathétique dans ses efforts de monter l'échelle. La jeune fille qui travaille comme traductrice a vraiment peur de tout le monde ici, mais elle éprouve au même temps une admiration insolite et une crainte pour sa supérieure, je crois qu'elle s'appelle Mme Saito. Tout le monde monte cette "corporate ladder" japonaise, sauf la fille française. Enfin elle finit par perdre son travaille comme traductrice, devenant nettoyeur des toilettes, si je me rappelle bien.
Je n'ai pas encore lu ce roman, mais lorsque j'ai découvert qu'il a gagné le prix de l'Académie je l'ai mis dans le liste.
Nothomb est née au Japon des parents Belgiques. Elle y a vécu pendant ses cinq premières années. Donc elle aussi parle le japonais couramment. Ce roman est, de toute évidence, une sorte d'autobiographie de sa vie. Sauf que c'est quand elle est venue au Belgique qu'elle a senti le "culture choc."

Je m'affaiblis encore sur l'idée de suivre un cours dramatique. D'un côté ce serait important pour mon projet...
De l'autre côté, eh bien, encore des ennuis avec la famille. Mon père est un trou de cul.

Encore un des moments où tout semble inutile. Semble? C'est à dire qu'enfin la vie, d'habitude nuageuse a laissé sortir la seule vérité qu'elle porte: à quoi bon tout cela quand on ne peut pas éviter la mort?
Hier soir j'ai raconté un grand mensonge: moi qui a horreur des enfants, j'ai prétendu le contraire. C'était dans un interview pour une position bénévole que je l'ai dit. Mais il n'y aurait pas de quoi s'ils (ou plutôt elles car ce monde-là est certainement dominé par les femmes!) ne m'accepteront pas. Je chercherais une autre chose pour passer tout mon temps libre.

Je me dis s'il y a une raison pour laquelle je bavarde en français. Tantôt je le vois inutile puisque je se prends pas de cours français en ce moment, mais vite comme la foudre je me souviens de toutes mes camarades qui sont là--à Tours, loin d'ici, s'amusant dans le beau soleil méridional. Par contre, moi, eh bien vous voyez comment je vais.
De nos jours, je regarde la télé--toutes les chaines françaises, n'importe quand, dont n'importe quoi s'agit-il. Hier j'ai supporté presque deux heures d'une émission sur les effets de drogue sur les athlètes qui deviennent toxicomane. C'est bete, je le sais.
Mais c'est ça-le but de tout ce que je fais récemment--avaler. engloutir tout ce que peux trouver de francophone. J'écoute meme la Radio-Canada, ce que je me promettais d'éviter. Et c'est pour rattraper, pour m'assurer que je ne le laisse tomber. En automne, j'espère que je ne l'aurai pas perdu.
Il y a meme d'autres qui iront à Motréal--(Jess, Greta,) et je m'en doute que c'est pour améliorer leur français--l'essor de la compétition, peut-etre. Je ne vuex certainement pas tomber en derrière de tout.
Je les imagine--dès qu'elles seront de retour, comme tout sera changé. Mais changera-t-on vraiment après un trajet? ça peut dépendre de quelle sorte de voyage on fait. Ici, elles ineragissent (ou interagiront quant à G. et J.) avec les gens là-bas. Qu'elles ne me passent pas!
Alors, j'en ai marre--je suis si triste qu'il n'est pas bon de continuer. La prochaine fois, je ferai un liste des oeuvres que je veux lire (mais les finir c'est une autre histoire--une histoire à dormir debout).

Eh bien ça faisait longtemps. Et puis je vois un gouffre entre le dernier entré que j'ai tapé et celui que je fais en ce moment. Mais aucune événement à décrire, franchement et malheureusement. Tandis que tout le monde est à l'école de l'été ou ailleurs où on a un boulot qui paye bien, je suis ici, coincée encore une fois avec les gamins (mais cette fois-ci n'est pas si épouvantable puisqu'ils ont aggrandi un peu). Je crains que les trois cours que j'ai pris ne seront pas assez pour m'occuper cet été. Que c'est injuste.
Le semestre passé est passé trop vite. Bien sûr j'ai eu des moments malheureux mais quand même...
JE crois que je l'ai vu l'autre jour--assis quelque part. C'est toujours ça de pris.

Not too complicated a question. So what do you do when you wonder why people want to get on TV for fifteen minutes, since you already know the answer(s).
1)to see for themselves if the camera really DOES add an extra 20 pounds to you
2)to be able to get it down on their resumé that they've had some broadcasting experience
3)To have something to be humiliated about five years down the road

So P's bf has a new puppy (I think it's a puppysitting weekend--not really his). Half Rottweiler, quarter German Shepherd. The word for that is mutt. It's an adorable thing, not even a month old yet. Cris pointed out to us how she'd look like in a year or two. Quite unsightly.

My mom says that if ever she gets a dog that's hopelessly ugly (especially a Rottweiler) she'll name it CAMILLA.

Almost everyone at home is quitting their jobs. We'll be homeless in about a month. I don't mind. Maybe it'll be a chance for me to move out anyway.

I hate kids, and they hate me back. I've been staying here at home for weeks being bossed around by five year olds who, ten years down the road will despise me just as I despised my much older cousins (thank Goddess they live in Sweden). Churned out some projects, but not a lot and not all of them turned out nicely. Been doing some studying and research, meanwhile waiting for my so-called partners to get their goddam acts together. I'm not doing the bullshitting, you are bitch. I know that deep down you will never get around to doing much because you are innately indolent and lack any trace of self discipline, nonetheless passion to direct all the shit that you store in your brain to the path of production and materialization. It can all exist outside of your head if you drag it out of your head, but knowing you, your arms might as well be chopped off. If you want me you have to earn me. Note: to earn = to work for something in order to enjoy its benefits.
This is not a new lesson, no matter how many times you keep telling me it is.

Tell me glam rock is not dead. Tell me alternative is dead too, slaughtered by is corrupt progeny, the evil alt-country.

Another day another thought unheard another idea unpenned and forgotten another bunch of hours spent at the feet of thoughtless brats another deadline passed another opportunity grabbed by some do-gooder who is not you another ten pounds gained due to a sedentary and unhealthy lifestyle another handful of calluses softened another layer of dust gathering on objects over which much money was spent on another eyeful of tears shed in sorrow and boredom another person to hate or be hated by another reason to leave home forever another hunch that all your friends aren't really your friends another umpteen kilowatts wasted on tv sets another 5 kg of expensive chicken digested by a human who doesn't even deserve to eat anything and won't even have to digest the food for a week another trip to the bath to wash your filthy feet another bagful of weeds pulled not because you enjoy gardening anymore (What happened? I swear that I used to love gardening) another reminder that your herbs look stunted never buy herbs from IKEA must buy Miracle Grow another cataract grown because of watching too much TV another pair of hammers, anvils and stirrups damaged from listening to too much Metallica another cavity settling in your teeth fostered by too much cheapassed candy another string of reminders such as get a job, file in your student loan, fax in this and that, get this info or that, etc. another piece of dog crap that you gotta step over another bathroom stinkup session to help you finish that paperback that's been sitting rotting on the shelf another two litres of sweat and blood shed to scrub the floors without the aid of a swiffer wetjet only to get the damn thing filthy two minutes later another suppressed urge to gobble up a retarded three year old boy another semi-lie that you ain't got any money another piece of gossip that you aren't supposed to give a damn about (and you don't but it's good to know that the assholiness of some people get them into shit too).

Another reason why life is fucking pointless. Another reason why ants are more valuable to this world than we are.

no it really doesn't matter at all life's a GAAASSS

I keep saying to myself, but I never listen.
I've kept way more promises to everyone than I do to myself. When the fuck will I ever realise that it's gotta be about me, me, me? That's how Justin Timberlake got to where he is. If he thought otherwise then stupid eight-year old chicks who probably weigh thrice his size wouldn't go crayzee about him. If he thought otherwise he'd just be another fucking hillbilly shooting cans off the low sandbag wall that encloses the trailer park he lives in.
Same for Moby. If he was even a third of the pathetic doormat you are he'd still be living shit-assed broke and chickless in the most affluent of the 50 States uf 'merca.
So kick yourself reaallly hard in the ass (I know it's gotten a little tubbier in the last few weeks, but it'll still hurt...just a bit less), take note of how painful and degrading it feels (I hope that you still aren't completely immune to humiliation and suffering, what with all the shit you've been through) and condition yourself (I actually made use of Pavlovian logic!!! tri poynts por me!) to fear decadence. Then kick your Christ fuckin mama in the face, not to mention your extremely fucked up mob of Ben Compsons, and beat it. Be a perfectionist. Suck up to people you can use. Lie your frickin head off at the right moments (it'll take quite a bit of practicing, but not to worry, it will all come to your advantage). Become a fashion designer. Love your work (but then it won't be work anymore, it'll be more like play, like being four years old...though I admit that I had one really fucking unpleasant childhood--I would not wish a Teacher Rita on anyone!) Be bossy. Practice saying "I DONT GIVE A FLYING FUCK!!!!!" in front of the mirror. Wear power suits, but act like a ditz with a pitch range to beat the Chipmunks'. Buy property and rent it out to hapless, poverty-stricken families who you can issue court orders to. Rent your houses out to stupid grow-op farmers so you can get on the good side of both the RCMP AND the Hell's Angels :). Then save your money. Most of all, erect a shrine up to bossy icons who never gave a shit about anyone else except themselves. Of course the Mother of all icons should be Madonna Ciccone. THen Anna Nicole Smith.

Go shopping for the best one, don't just choose any old thing. Look closely at the ones that impress you the most. Think about the design and quality, or quantity it took to plan, develop and produce this product. Which "scientists or businessmen" came up with the concept and gave birth to the thing. From what factory? Where else has it been used? More importantly, WHO used it? Try out the more interesting ones, and check whether the labels are lying. Ask other people's opinion, particularly the people who've tried it before; their opinions are very valuable. You don't want to be paying a lot of money for something that'll let you down.

I wonder, out of all the "consumer goods" out there what percentage of them are scammer products?

What about the fact that at first, the "toy" works quite well the first few times you use it, then it starts malfunctioning after a certain point? I know the feeling.

Then what happened? Maybe it changed when I moved to Canada

If I were in NEw YOrk, the first thing I'd do is watch a Broadway play.
"You've never really made it until you hit broadway"

Hey where's the signpost? I guess I'm just lost
Just flick your head Till you're seeing red
Can you open it tonight And make it alright
For the last time maybe HAve a look and say holy

Two Weeks' Notice is probably the last American movie I'll ever watch. Ok so I'm exaggerating. I probably won't waste my time watching crap like that for the next six months or so.



What do you do if you're a retarded/mentally challenged/"Special" person trapped in a life so inane, so pathetic, so mindless that your disabilities are not as obvious because people are too busy getting worked up about the fact that life is stupid? Sometimes I feel like this.

Novocaiiine for the soul
before I sputter up.

I tried to I tried to, but you weren't there. I know you're reacting this way to me today because I tried to be selfish.

fuck all the other online journal sites.

It seemed like such a loooong day today. My ankles feel like they're going to explode.
S'weird how when I'm out somewhere time seems to drag on for ages, but when I'm home it seems to zip by.
I'm stuck.
Obsessing about how stupid little sluts are trying to do me in is very fatiguing.
So is trying to get unstuck. Not in time, just in life in general. I don't wanna end up like Billy Pilgrim.
So is trying to keep up with little kids. I hate them. I don't think I've ever felt much about them since they were born. Sure they're cute, but I just force myself to look beyond that and really love them.
So is having a love-hate relationship with everyone and everything that exists. Take money. I love money when I have it because I have it. I feel secure. But I hate it when I have it, too, since it drives me nuts imagining what I can spend it on or what I should spend it on or what I should have spent it on. I'm starting to love not having money because it gives me an excuse to not give it away. Because it reminds me that I'm not like other people and that I have not yet been consumed by the greedy consumerist bug (Aw c'mon, everyone knows how ultra-damot you are. Stop making things up about yourself). But of course I hate not having money because I have obligations to fulfill (though I don't really know that well what they are). I hate not having it because it really discourages me. I feel like such a bum.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME HOW NEUROTIC I AM, I ALREADY KNOW.

more than this you know there's nothing more than this

grew up in an island as yet undocumented and as yet unmapped. I don't ever remember rowing my little makeshift raft made of logs and dreams across the vast ocean to explore new worlds, yet I do have a few very vague recollections of momentarily being set free from the cage I was born into.

I didn't like it as much as I thought it would. That's the main thing I remember.

Maybe it was because I didn't like being free that I didn't dare try to sail across the seas surrounding my little island.

I S L A N D
I C A G E I
S C C C S
L A A A L
A G m G e G A
N E E E N
D C A G E D
I S L A N D


The awful sting that comes from living in a world that's so damn mean.

So I spent half the night on the phone with T. badmouthing a LOT of people. Well, some people make it their life's work to find fault in everyone they meet, and even more so in people they don't meet. They're called sociologists. T. is a budding sociologist. If she knew that such a field existed, she'd be well on her way to a ph.D in no time. Heheh.

I am a fucking wreck.
Oh well, I'll fix it up as soon as exams are over