Daffnee

I don't make public service announcement very often, but I just finished revamping a "How Men Can Help Prevent Eating Disorders' handout and thought I'd share, in light of some of the comments on this site:

Nope, I don't look anorexic -- but then again, who does? Eating disorders don't have much to do with physical symptoms, and everything to do with a mindset. It's about obsessing over how you look, how other people look, how much you can control your food and how powerful you feel when you can deny your body. You can be overweight and have an eating disorder; maybe you binge, or maybe you eat but feel like a superunintelligent shade of purple. If eating disorders were just about being bony, every popular actress, singer, and supermodel would be "anorexic". (I see saying skinny as job hazard for them, really.)

Think about the women that you know. What comes to mind -- personality traits or a physical description? What would they say if you asked them to describe themselves? Who comes to mind when I say "successful woman" -- is she thin, well-dressed, intelligent, young, and well-mannered? It's a packaged ideal, and a dangerous one.

I decided two summers ago that my physical health was a reasonable trade-off in order to be what I thought society valued. That's how badly I wanted to succeed. I could get some pretty disturbing photos off That Boy showing my toothpick arms circa 2002. The scary thing is that even at my rock-bottom, I didn't even come close to looking like your stereotypical anorexic/celebrity (honestly, aren't they the same?), even though I probably would have started growing fuzz or something. Ew.

Well, I got over it. Lucky me, really -- getting my weight back up was actually kind of fun after a year of denial. Still got a few issues with body image, hence the cathartic thesis-writing and interest in feminist theory, but it's a whole lot better. Life's looking up.

So, what's next?

I am a mastermind.

If anyone's interested, I'm apparently of the same disposition as JFK, Jane Austen, the original Hannibal, and Clarice Starling. I like this bit about being a "does it work?" person. A Chaucer term paper in less than 2 hours? Yes, it works!

If anyone's around, I'm Storming the Wall with the Debate House people on Wednesday @ 1315h. I'll be in my slick, black, Speedo glory, and probably dripping and bruised by the time I get over the wall. I promise good times and embarassing photos.

Money makes things real -- it makes Prada handbags fashionable, iPods cute, and the world's most powerful man out of a Harvard dropout. The point of this is that after shelling out $1000 US in money orders, the stacks of legal forms on my kitchen table tell me that I'm not going to be living in Canada for much longer. I'm moving to New York.



It somehow sounds so much cooler when you're moving from New York to Paris -- curse Carrie Bradshaw for upstaging me with her well-timed season finale.

Reasons for said move:

1. Superior transit. Seriously.
2. I don't feel like I got enough time in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
3. Let's face it, Americans have a messed up legal system. Messy is fun. Messy makes for good times if you have a strong affninity for household cleansers.
4. Current Globe and Mail headline: "Liberal support remains stagnant, poll finds." Current New York Times headline: "Democrats in the Senate Threat to Block Court Nominees." It's admittedly a slow news day in North America, but even so...
5. The chance to live out the rest of my life in Hawaii.
6. Delivery from zappos.com.

My grandparents are already getting excited about having an excuse to travel. What I'm doing is purely ancilliary.

Thesis update:

5,221 words, 18 pages, not quite out of stuff to write about, and a deadline more than 24 hours away.

I think I just might make it!

[1 rum & coke] + [1 sex on the beach (the drink, silly people)] + [1 long island iced tea] = [$15] + [no buzz] + [no hangover] + [no inebriation]

Alcohol is such a frickin' waste of time.

I broke my 2003-2004 No-Kazaa rule (conceived in a backlash of guilt over copyright laws) last night to download the Sex and the City finale. So, Carrie gets back together with Chris Noth, and Mikhail Baryshnakov turns out to be a bad old Russian after all. I love the fact that Sarah Jessica Parker gets to spend half the episode in white stilettoes and eating pastries in Paris alone, though. Those are two things screaming disaster waiting to happen -- to the girls, at least.

As to why I like this show: haven't a clue. I deal with sex with the apathy of someone who sells condoms (I do), don't have a penchant for Manolo Blahniks, and am whatever the opposite of a compulsive dater would be. Why is there no female equivalent for eunuch? There should be, for equity's sake. This isn't real life. They don't even dress like they'd exist in real life. I've been to New York. That's not life there, either.

It's the urban fantasy for the masses, I guess. I heard something written by Tolkien today, that (thankfully) wasn't part of a hobbit story: the purpose of the entire fantasy genre is to explore the human capacity to be happy. Like a Glade plug-in, I say; when was the last time a serious writer, artist, theorist, or philosopher even made a stab at the flip side of tragedy?

Here's something ironic from a girl that doesn't smile: when did happiness become offensive? I mean, I apologise for having a good day. Inconceivable.

Ancient high school friend now has blog linked to left.

Columbia Law School rejected me yesterday, so I'm 7 for 9. Bloody Ivy League.

I wasn't ready to go to New York before this, but I am now. You see, I have something to prove again.

My thesis supervisor shot down my proposal on Friday, saying it wasn't focused enough, so now I have until next Friday to come up with a 40 page draft. Here's what I have by ways of a thesis so far:

The queens, or Wonderland's powerful women, gain and maintain authority over their societies through a 'feminized' system of bodily self-control. In Wonderland, all creatures -- not only women -- become subject to food rituals and physical ideals, and it is in such a setting that women can reign. Wonderland becomes a woman's land, or an Other-land as imagined by a Victorian gentleman, in which nonsense and 'feminine' concerns are played to their 'logical' conclusions and from which Alice eventually escapes to take up a secure place in Victorian paternalistic society.

And the ironic thing is a) I'm not really a man-hater, and b) I've been reading about postcolonialism all day and came up with this feminist gobbledegook in 5 minutes a la pounding headache instead.

But then again, it's been that kind of week.

Thursday: With a handshake over a banana-strawberry margarita, sangria, and a Mexican-sampler-platter-for-two at La Pepitas, The Boy and I ended our rather un-romantic romantic relationship of two years and a couple of days. No screaming, tears, or fistfights, unfortunately. We even had the common decency to hike to Death by Chocolate afterwards and gorge on sugar.

Friday: Shot down by professor that I worship. Heartbreaking, really. Gave up on work, took parents up on offer of free food, and decided to make it a weekend of free food and went home.

Saturday: Free food. Mmm.

Sunday:



Made me feel awful for not buying all my clothes at either the Salvation Army, Saltspring Island, or directly from llama farmers in South America. Burned off left-wing, small-l liberal guilt with the help of Hon's and a True Confections milkshake, though guilt about increasing chance of clogged arteries at age 40 was increasing at an inversely proportional rate...

Beneath the clothes borrowed from my sister's closet, the fairly decent Asian skin, the cantankerous feminist exterior and the quirkily unstable interior, I'm still cookie dough.

I go jogging most days, usually without any purpose beyond burning of stress and procrastinating. I've been making shorter and shorter loops, hashing out the excuses while the weather gets warmer; I will never compete in a marathon, or be an athlete. But on Saturday night, after debating all day, eating questionable Greek food all night, and enduring an overpriced Irish coffee at a pub while those around me work through pitchers of beer, I got stuck in the rain. Not the usual Vancouver drizzle, the heavy, fat, plopping rain that makes me look like a drowned rat and does nasty things to a duffel coat.

So I ran. I was in dress shoes, had a clutch under one arm, and kept going till I hit my front door. I couldn't see through my glasses, and my footwear bled red streaks over my socks. But I never stopped. It's such a small victory, but knowing I can come through for me when I need me to -- even while slightly tipsy -- makes up for all the undignified panting.

They look decently comfortable, don't they? Less than two inches. It's not a spike heel, a stilletto, or even a strappy sandal; it's black, low, and a Mary Jane. A boring shoe. A shoe feminists and librarians might even love.

So why the heck do I have a blister on TOP of my toe?!

I swear, if the guy who invented high heels wasn't already dead, I'd kill him. And kudos to those who recognise the Star Trek reference.

Behold, my new "Classic Digital Food Steamer", at once a contradiction in terms and my latest small appliance acquisition. Just like the George Foreman Grill (which I don't own) and the residence hot pot (which I did), this is another gadget for those with lots of counter space and not enough pots, gizmo addiction and a blind eye to functionality. As if I'm really going to drag this thing out of its box, stick it on the counter, and go through the scrubbing afterwards to steam eight eggs to hard-boiled perfection all at once. That's a lot of cholesterol, not to mention a couple of gassy days at least.

It would help if I had the mad skills and kitchen space of my Aunt Dora:



Check out the table on the left -- my Uncle Phillip made that in his spare time. And that's my Mum, in all her home-sewn fleece glory.

I went home for three hours today and finally got the digital photos from the Eastern crash tour my mum and I took last week. One hundred and seventy-five photos, taken in Vancouver, Denver, NYC, and Toronto, and most of the photographic evidence points to my mum being a lone traveller with a penchant for looking off into the distance and holding up small stuffed bears.

I thought the trip had settled things -- I just didn't get a vibe from New York City. Maybe it was a bad time of year, maybe it had to do with the rather flippant Asian law student I had as a guide, or maybe I had just spent too much time on the NYC subway over the course of 72 hours, but what I saw in Manhattan was the Everycity. Critics said that about the city in the Matrix too; rather than being the city to end all cities, NYC is every North American city. The bustle, the people, the stores -- Robson on steroids. How else can you explain a Bebe store as big as the one on Fifth Avenue?

Don't get any wrong ideas, New York and I got along just fine. The water was better than in Los Angeles, and Manhattanites achingly nice. I felt like I was perpetually in a Law and Order episode, which is a nice and homey place for me to be. The Met really did its job as a museum and reduced my feet to aching extensions of legs while keeping our stuff in a free coatcheck and entertaining me with a gift shop I was actually inclined to buy things from. No hot dogs, but their sandwiches weren't half bad. Columbia University literally took my breath away.

But NYC wasn't fun for me. It was nifty and novel, sometimes engaging, but a place where you (being me) wait for the subway and spend life with glazed eyes if you're not into conventional entertainment. Quite a few people asked if I "caught a show" or whatnot once I got back, but here's the raw deal with me: my evenings are spent drinking hot chocolate, watching Law and Order, reading and sleeping. I joke that I want to work at the U.N., but I really just want to live quietly and help a few people with my loudmouth skills. My most ambitious dream at this point is the private library, which I won't back down from -- for now.

Reflections on Toronto tomorrow, perhaps, and some photos too. My chosen method of procrastination happens to be calling up relatives and going out to lunch or dinner with them, so I think now might be an apt time to catch some Zs and let the tummy settle.