my tragic right hip

Whoever thought getting something for free would be such a freaking hassle. So, RRHB got a free phone from his video shoot last weekend. That’s all good; it’s a totally cool phone with lots of gadgets and an MP3 player.

But because it’s with a particular carrier, we had to cancel his current phone and order a new one. Only it doesn’t exist. No one has a record of the phone I have sitting in front of me on the desk.

I was on the phone with customer service for almost ninety minutes trying to figure something out when he said, “Just tell them we’ll go into the store.”

Sigh. Life is never easy, is it?

I have a soft spot in my cold, black heart for British chicklit. As you know, I’m a fan of chicklit anyway and think that it’s the perfect kind of book to read when you wake up at 4.45 AM, throw up from your meds, have the runs, and can’t get back to sleep.

Ahem. Was that TMI?

Annnnywaaay. I finished Sarah Mason’s Society Girls. Nowhere near the level of sophistication of Gemma Townley, Mason’s book is okay (judging on the chicklit curve, of course). The plot is totally predictable, and there are characters that are mentioned but never discussed so what’s the point of them even being there (two extra brothers who never come home and don’t even seem to have names, so wha?). But the main character, Clemmie, was delightfully free of a job in publishing and/or marketing—hooray!

The title refers to a girl who goes missing just before her wedding, and Clemmie and her sister Holly, a journalist, end up getting in over their heads in terms of the whole situation surrounding this girl Emma. As with most chicklit, the plot is preposterous and all just a rouse to get the wayward lovers together, but this book did a lot to keep my mind off my rotten stomach at 5.30 this morning.

Now how’s that for a book review!

At school on Monday night, someone had written something and I immediately had assumed it was based on a pop tart (like Britney but much younger). Now why would I immediately make the assumption that some smart woman in my class was writing about an American teenager whose famous for having one name, an attitude and not much else?

Hummm. Perhaps because I’ve been watching way, way, way too much television these past few weeks. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had a television hangover on Sunday night, after spending three days at home, feeling super-sick by myself watching movie after movie after movie.

My brain hurts.

I’ve even been too tired to read. So not only is the stupid disease ruining my life, or rather, ensuring that I have no life, it’s limiting the things that I really love to do too.

Say it with me: stupid Wegener’s.

In the grand TRH tradition of creating lists when I’m too tired to write a proper blog post. Here are some things that I’ve learned today:

1. I’m right to oppose my RRHB’s pleas to get rid of our land line and only use cell phones. Not only is that bad for the environment, but it’s annoying too. Oh, and he’s always mocking me for turning the phone off when I’m not using it (it’s a work cell phone so I’ve pretty much only got it on during business hours). This way I only charge it about once a week, thus saving that energy for other good things, like running this damn computer.

2. The world is seriously pissed at James Frey. Now he’s been dumped by his agent and idiotic people in the States are suing him—over ‘misrepresented reading experiences’. Yes, I’m being serious.

3. My RRHB is more famous today for having an article up on the homepage of Sympatico/MSN. It’s here if you want to read it.

4. The world (well, the Oscars) seriously loves the Annie Proulx-inspired Brokeback Mountain. But you’ve got to holla when “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” is nominated for Best Song. And go Terrence Howard.

On Tuesday night, the RRHB and I went to a benefit for a film that our friends are producing independently. It was the first and only time this week I actually left the house for something other than work or school. The whole night was fun until about 10 PM when my stomach started acting up again and the whole am-I-or-aren’t-I going to barf thing started up. Stupid meds.

Bob Wiseman played. The first show I ever crept into when I was underage was a Bob Wiseman show at the Rivoli. I went with my crazy ex-boyfriend from high school who ended up becoming a heroin addict. The RRHB was there too. We were in a car with windshield wipers that didn’t work and it was raining. I wore a Mexican poncho my father had brought back for me from some vacation he was on.

Six months later I was with a different boy and half the school wasn’t talking to me because of said “drama.” Six months after that I was diagnosed with Wegener’s for the first time. I listened a lot to Bob Wiseman that year.

Then, I spent a few years at university going to Bob’s shows, watching him in different bars, learning all of his songs, each time probably with a different boyfriend-of-the-week. Once, after one of his shows, he was packing up and we were introduced, albeit briefly. He said, “You have a very interesting voice.” And then just looked at me strangely.

Ah, the joys of being so young.

“We got, we got, we got, we got, time.”

It’s funny how when you’re young, you think that you actually do have a lot of time. These days, I think I’m already one foot in the ground with all the crap from the disease. But it’s nice to remember how much fun I used to have, even if I can’t have so much of it these days.

A Letter to James Frey (after the style of McSweeneys).

Dear James Frey,

O ye truth slayer! O man who exaggerates! O man who battles with drug and alcohol addiction! How dare you challenge the world’s belief in truth! How dare you, gasp, “lie” for the sake of narrative indulgence! How dare you, gulp, use the benefits of writing a memoir to write a great book! Shame on you.

Yawn.

I’ll bet you’re thinking twice about the good fortune of finding yourself in a position to reap the benefits of the Oprah Book Club right about now. And I’m guessing Oprah’s pretty unhappy she stopped sticking to dead authors.

But after seeing your humiliating visit on Oprah, James, I’d have to say that it must really suck to be you right about now. However, the bajillions of dollars you’ve made in royalties and will continue to make off of your hotly contested memoir A Million Little Pieces should go a long way to keeping you warm at night. But honestly dude, the whole thing is just so ridiculous. It’s a great book. You should be proud of writing it. You should be proud of your voice. That’s what matters.

So what if you changed a couple of things here and a couple of things there. In the end, it’s embarrassing to me that so much of the world has started to slay you like you’re personally responsible for the death of truth in popular culture.

Now let me state that these are people who hold up Paris Hilton as an icon and who honestly believe that Nicole Richie doesn’t have an eating disorder.

The whole thing was ridiculous, Oprah was ridiculous. It’s a memoir. In truth, it’s more creative nonfiction than it is anything else. Of course you wrote what you thought would be a better story, but in the end that’s never going to matter because not a single person on that stage defended you.

Not a single person stood up and said, “What’s wrong with all of you. He didn’t set out to lie to you. He wrote a book that had a powerful and lasting affect on people.”

Not a single person stood up and said, “How can a person possibly remember every string of dialogue they’ve spoken in their entire lives. Memory is by definition a difficult thing. Memory by its nature calls for recreations and adaptation.”

Oh Oprah, so glad that you can be so high and mighty, talking down from your mountain about the death of truth in the world. Who did you vote for? What fictions have you created in your own life just to get through it? Here’s one: you call your dogs, your children. The last time I looked there was a slight biological difference between dogs and kids. Aren’t you lying to yourself just a little bit or adapting the truth because that’s how you feel or how you want something to be perceived?

But heh, ho, it’s okay, it’s okay for everyone to hang the mantle of truth upon you, poor James Frey, because you wrote the book, and some web site decided to debunk the fundamental facts. It’s not journalism. It’s not an autobiography. It’s a memoir. An account of what happened. The form by its nature reeks of incorrect facts, misinterpreted events and opinions that are more point of view than by the book. I am honestly surprised that Oprah, refusing to see both sides of the story, didn’t bring a single person to that taping who might have seen it your way.

And if anyone in this world believes that truth isn’t something that’s mutable, well then I’d suggest you acquaint yourself with a little known philosophy called post-modernism. Look it up in a dictionary, if you must.

You know James, my friend Kate made an extremely smart point in an email she sent to me today. She said that what’s the big deal when there’s an entire war being fought, billions of dollars being spent, and lives being lost in the war in Iraq, which is for all intents and purposes, based on a pack of lies. Anyone see George W. up there in the audience calling out for the truth?

Honestly, I think you should have told everyone to shut the hell up. Especially the blow-hard journalists who claim to search for truth when the black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, nature of our society stood up, had a martini and left about a hundred years ago laughing because it’s never been true in the first place.

I’m furious with Oprah. I’m furious with a lot of people and stand by the fact that your voice is authentic, which means a hell of a lot more to me than whether or not you spent three hours or three months in jail.

Hold your head up James. And hold on.

So the new and improved, slightly ‘evolved’ Stephen Harper is the new prime minister. Huh. I was more stupified to learn that a measly 64% of the population actually voted and judging from the results, I’d say there were many opportunities to make a difference that were wasted.

Some of the things I heard on the radio:

1. A woman who said she was too wrapped up in her own “bubble” to vote. Is she kidding? What could be more important to her than the right she has to decide what happens to her own body? On what kind of a country she’s living in? On whether or not health care will continue? No offense honey, but nothing in your life should have been more important than voting. It takes five minutes. You even get time off from work to vote if you need it.

2. One woman wanted the Conservatives to win but voted Liberal in her riding because she thought the Tory (and I loathe to call them that) candidate wouldn’t win. So a lot of thought went into that vote, that’s for sure.

3. People were voting for the Conservatives because they are ‘sick’ of the Liberals. This makes absolutely no sense to me. The same thing happened in Ontario after Bob Rae and the NDP frustrated people; they voted for Mike Harris, who then proceeded to be the worst premier the province had seen in decades, maybe ever. It’s a knee jerk approach with no understanding for the larger issues, the greater good. And now when the crazy sh*t starts happening and things start to change, people will start complaining and wondering what went so very wrong. When unemployment creeps up and our troops are getting killed in Iraq and we carry a deficit for the first time in over a decade, then they’ll all be wondering why they voted for the knucklehead in the first place.

Please vote. It’s the most important election of our adulthood, this one. The ramifications of today’s election will resonate for years to come. I’m not one to tell you who to vote for, please just vote.

So a couple friends of my RRHB came over on Friday night and we played cards. They were all drinking our neighbour’s homemade wine ($20.00 for 25 bottles—oh what a steal!). After the exasperating few days I spent being very ill after the non-wedding, and because of the meds, I abstained.

For the very first time in a long while, I sat and watched the three of them get absolutely hammered. It was pretty enjoyable, especially when they gave me a new name to go along with my new last name, and I shall forever be known to the three of them as Sparkle Poirier. Heh.

I lost every single game we played at Euchre, which is fine because I really just like to play cards, I don’t care if I win or lose. And drunken euchre players are always funny. And then the evening digressed into talking about politics because it’s on everyone’s mind.

Then today we got up and had breakfast with a dear old friend of ours, who we regaled with tales of the drunken debauchery from the night before. He laughed. A good time was had by all.

But here’s the coup de grace of my day—we saw Underworld: Evolution. I’m still processing it. But damn, I love that series. It’s an okay sequel, not as good as the first movie, but certainly a good set-up for the third, which I’m already hoping to see in the next few years.

Now, I’d like to take a survey. Put your hands up if you think small children should really be allowed to see a film where people are shot, decapitated, mortally wounded, viciously killed, de-blooded, and a whole host of other cool vampire and werewolf-like stuff happens? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Shame on you parents who brought their five and six-year-olds to see a film meant for an adult audience. Oh, and Scott Speedman is totally hot. It’s almost a crime.

It’s a very full weekend for a girl with Wegener’s Granulomatosis. And it’s not even over yet!