At my work I've had two instances in the past couple days with older men. One was awesome, the other... not so much. I'll start with the guy I thought was awesome cause I get the feeling that some of you will think the other guy was pretty super great. The first guy is this 70 year old man who volunteers at the charity org I'm working for this summer. He's this British man who tells me stories about "evacuating London during the war". He seemed quite excellent when I got there, but yesterday was his day to shine. I was eating lunch in the boardroom, reading as per usual, when Tom asked me what I was reading. "Gloria Steinem," I replied expecting some comment or other about feminism. "Oh, Mark, I better watch my mouth," Tom quipped, but I was quite surprised, when two seconds later I arise from the depths of my reading to hear a neutral comment about feminism, to which Tom says, "I'm a feminist." I could have hugged him. In my secluded life, I've heard two men refer to themselves as feminists, Josh Greenpeace and Johnny Rockstar, a couple of guys from my school. To hear a 70 year old man refer to himself as a feminist brightened my day.

The other "lady" was this man who came into work to give a donation. Myself and my female co-worker are the only ones around. In the space of 5 minutes, he called the two of us women "fellas" about 30 times, no hyperbole. He kept saying things like "So, do you fellas get many donations like this?" "You fellas seem to have a system down pat, whooooo dog." (Not kidding on the "whoooooo dog" either.) The fella's just kept a coming. Then, he felt the need to leave us with a little joke: So, with it being spring and everything, the bees are out. Now regular bees make honey, but do you fellas know what kinda bees make milk? BOOBIES!!! *kills himself laughing and exits*. I thought it was wildly inappropriate to say to two strange women, but had it come from my friend, I'd be killing myself right now. Plus, Fella was the creeps.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, my friends. I got this amazing new job that I'm just lovin' but it has me pretty tired. Also, I'm emcee at my friend Cat's wedding, so I've been spending a lot of time with her lately trying to get ideas for the dang toast I have to write. I couldn't be a bride's buddy. Of course not. Why let Alysia just stand there when you can torture her with speech writing? If I didn't know how important this day was to Cat, then I'd write it like I write everything else, on the spur of the moment. Unfortunately, I know how much she wants everything to be as perfect as possible (even though she'd never say it. I love her for trying to relieve some pressure.) Plus, the woman will be 7 months prego by the time the wedding comes. You try wrecking a prego's special day and see where it gets you. I certainly wouldn't wreck this pregos day for the world. Another time constraint is my new hobby: knitting. My goal for this summer was to learn how to knit, and so far I have a scarf to show for it. I promised Cat I'd knit Maxx some baby booties, so I have to become skilled enough to do that by August. Plus, I want to knit myself a black sweater with a big burgandy gothic A in the middle. Or a big regular hot pink A. (Awwwwww, eighties.) So, I've been putting in long hours practicing, which is cool, because you can knit virtually anywhere. Mainly, I've been in front of the tele or in my room listening to music. Good knitting song: Raspberry Beret by Prince. It's timed juuuuuust right.

I got nothing.


(Some days I feel that more than others.)

Yay, I get to do fun dances. :)



Which Peanuts Character Are You Quiz

Where we stand

Two sides of righteousness
Forever turning,
Trying to see
the other's point of view,
knowing the connection
is always there,
but the attempt,
and the failure,
is dizzying.

The Point Edward Casino is 2 bucks poorer thanks to the masterful gambling style of one Ms. Alysia "Throw-Caution-to-the-Wind" Wyville. Those nickel machines are still quivering from fear.

asking too much
-Ani d

i want somebody who sees the pointlessness
and still keeps their purpose in mind
i want somebody who has a tortured soul
some of the time
i want somebody who will either put out for me
or put me out of misery
or maybe just put it all to words
and make me go, you know
i never heard it put that way
make me say, what did you just say?

i want somebody who can hold my interest
hold it and never let it go
someone who can flatten me with a kiss
that hits like a fist
or a sentence, that stops me like a brick wall
if you hear me talking
listen to what i'm not saying
if you hear me playing guitar
listen to what i'm not playing
and don't ask me to put words
to all the silences i wrote
don't ask me to put words
to all the spaces between notes
in fact if you have to ask, forget it
do and you'll regret it
i'm tired of being the interesting one
i'm tired of having fun for two
just lay yourself on the line
and i might lay myself down by you
but don't sit behind your eyes
and wait for me to surprise you
i want somebody who can make me
scream until it's funny

give me a run for my money
i want someone who can
twist me up in knots
tell me, for the woman who has everything
what have you got?
i want someone who's not afraid of me
or anyone else
in other words i want someone
who's not afraid of themself

do you think i'm asking too much?

Do you ever have to hide things from yourself, or suddenly sit on your hands because your afraid of what they might do? I was playing with this ladybug pushpin yesterday and I started thinking about Oedipus. I was imagining what it would be like to poke the pin into my eye, seriously toying with the idea. The pin was coming nearer and I wasn't pulling it away. At the last moment, I threw it and sat on my hands. Perhaps my hands are idle. Perhaps I am unhappy. Perhaps I am just bored. This isn't the first time I've toyed with a self-destructive notion. I think I just liked imagining my one green eye paired with a green ladybug pin stuck into the other eye. Wouldn't that be sight?

Suicide's Note


The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

-Langston Hughes

I'm the Alishtopia Idol

I was thinking as I watched American Idol tonight, that if I ever did a show like that (which I won't. Period.) I'd do songs that were only sung by males, simply because then I could put my own spin on them. I'd love to get up an sing a Barry White tune with a girl's voice. I can see some girls pulling that off, and I'd love to see it. I've heard some pretty unsexy songs sexified by some women, (Tori's cover of Sweet Home Alabama and Ani's cover of When You Were Mine) and I'd love to see some ballsy gal get up there and sing a male sex song. If a song is gender neutral than any one can do it. Hell, half the songs I sang at Fringe, I sang as a lesbian or modified the lyrics.

Warning: Rant of an Idealist. I keep getting the "Alysia, you should try out for Canadian Idol!" No, I won't do that to myself. Do people not understand that I had to do a lot of fighting to get to a place where I am comfortable in my skin? I see the way they treat women on those shows: like meat. The number of times I've heard "You need to shed a couple pounds" is higher than I can count. It's about image and I don't fit what they want, which is fine with me. I like what I see in the mirror 90% of the time. I might even call myself pretty if you catch me on the right day, but I wouldn't dare jeopardize my years of work for something like that. There is no price on my self-esteem, no record contract big enough. Hear that: I like how I look. I see girls who don't like themselves, hell, I live with a girl who hates, yes, hates her body. It's like those extreme makeover shows. I said to my sister that I didn't agree with those shows. We should be telling people that what they are is beautiful (and they are) not that they need to cut themselves up. (I can't fuckin' stand that ugly people website. That is such shit.) My sister retaliatied with "well, some of those people have been ridiculed and beat up because of the way they look." I just shook my head, while my sister's eyes bulged out of her head. For a moment, while she said that sentence, she forgot that she'd seen the bruises and the red eyes first hand. She forgot that "those people" were sitting across from her. I guess surgery is part of their struggle for self-acceptance and I shouldn't cheapen it because it involves silicon or a vacuum. Maybe I'm young so I don't understand, but is it worth it? Not for me, just as a shot at being the Canadian Idol isn't worth it. (But imagine their Canadian Idol wearing a "This is what a Feminist looks" like shirt. Oooo, they'd be shittin' it.) Good luck to those braver than me, willing to put it all on the line for a dream. May the comments fall on deaf ears.

So, I'm reading Michael Moore's Stupid White Men and I got to a chapter called "The End of Men". I figured, when reading through the table of contents, that this would be the most feminist of all the chapters. It goes beyond feminism, yo. If I didn't know who Michael Moore was, I would think it was a pseudonym for some man-hating woman. (Notice I didn't say feminist. A man-hating woman is not a feminist. Period.) He says some pretty harsh things about men, some of which are not true. It is a hilarious chapter, simply because it talks about Mother Nature attempting to wipe out men. Here's a little excerpt:

If we men had any sense, we'd try to get Nature to forgive us by cleaning up our act. You know, do the obvious stuff: quite desecrating the Arctic wilderness, pick up after ourselves, stop throuwing Whopper remains out the car window.

Nature would probably put up witha lot of our guff if we still served some important purpose. For eons we had two things women didn't have that made us a necessity: (1) we provided the sperm to keep the species going, and (2) we were able to reach anmd get whatever they needed off the top shelf.

I howled at that shit, simply because I see it in the men I love. It goes on to talk about how that shit is now messed up because of invitero fertilization and stepladders. He missed the most important thing men are good for: opening pickle jars. The pickle jar pass was when the girls and myself all took turns trying to open the jar, to no avail. Living with 3 women for 8 months, there was a definite lack of open pickle jars. :)

What have I done?

If anyone could explain the specifics of "the human condition" to me I would appreciate it. It seems like an all-pupose excuse for not talking, for saying that distance between two minds is a completely natural thing regardless of the fact that every one of us has met someone with which there was an immediate understanding. To me that feels like when God was giving me my soul he decided he'd only give me three quarters to start with and would give me the other quarter later, but the problem was that God misplaced that quarter for awhile so when the time came to give me that quarter, he took a quarter from another soul in hopes that he could make the switch before the other soul was sent unto the world. Unfortunately, he had some trouble locating that elusive quarter and he only found it just before the soul was going so instead of switching, that body got my quarter. Now, I'm left searching for my quarter, but "the human condition" keeps halting my process. Please, what is it? Is it the loneliness when life walks away for awhile and all I've got is books and blank screens? Is it the inadequacy of language and motion to tell everything? Is it the inability to know everything even when I think I've got it all figured out? Is it the way I laugh when I want to stand with shreaded clothes, screaming "I can't! I miss him to the point of numbness, but I can't!"? Is it that moment when I do? Is it the numbness? Is that "the human condition"? How can I push away all the piss and shit and lies when that is all I leave for myself? When does that nagging feeling that I'll never be fixed disolve into "the human condition"? Could I fix myself? Define for me the condition, so I can diagnose the affliction. Then, maybe, I can be a little less fucked up, and a little more me.

If you know me, you'll understand the relevance of this comic. The character Jenn is a kindred spirit, fo' sho'. (If you wish to see the comic, go to http://thedevilspanties.keenspace.com. Just a warning: the comic is rife with spelling mistakes.)