my tragic right hip

The warms sunshine makes the pavement hot, and cars seem out of place in the city spewing their exhaust and bad tempers. I’ve stopped crying today, but I don’t really feel much better.

We’ve started summer hours at work, so I left at one yesterday, came home, watched two movies (Breakin’ All the Rules [very bad] and Baadasss! [very good]) and stayed on the couch for hours). Those are films #5 and #6, I think. This morning the Rock and Roll Boyfriend and I went out for brunch (blueberry pancakes, yum!), and then to visit some friends in The Beaches.

Tonight we’re supposed to go away for his birthday for a couple of days. Fingers crossed I have enough energy to sit in the car and watch the side of the 401.

This morning I cried all the way to work, knowing that it’s not at all rational to bawl on the middle of the QEW for no good reason, I’m chaulking it up to the disease. Again. Like everything else these days, I’m feeling so sick and tired all the time that I’m surprised I can still even go to work.

The Rock and Roll Boyfriend got his hot little hands on an advance copy of Cuff the Duke’s new album. I think it’s scheduled to be released in August. Anyway, the first song is one of the best songs I’d heard in a long while—there’s a great harmonica part that reminds me of The Low’s Rosy and Grey, one of my all-time favourite tunes in university.

There’s a lot going on in the evenings this week. I had school last night, where I read a poem called “Born in the Sign of July.” The girls in my writer’s group really liked it, so I wanted to try it out on a larger group—turns out half the people in the class thought it was about my dad, which is strange considering it’s love poem, but it went over well anyway. The teacher used some of the lines from my poem to explain one of his favourite things about poetry; its ability to convey an entire range of emotions in just a few short lines, and how effective it can be by just using spare words vs. long, drawn out explanations that you find in prose. Ahem, or like you find on this blog…

Tonight I’m off to the Premier Dance Theatre to see some modern dance. Watching dance is always so bittersweet, soft reminders of all the things I’ve had to give up in my life and where I’ve ended up now as a result of my health. It’s a neverending cycle these days, and I’m not coping particularly well.

Then tomorrow night I’m going to review Lords of Dogtown for Chart magazine. I have a thing for skateboarders, but I don’t have high hopes for this film—go ahead, call me Betty and get over it already.

Then on Friday it’s time to say goodbye to Suzy Q as she goes off to teach English in an extremely foreign country for a year. See, there’s a lot going on for someone who can barely make it out of bed in the morning without barfing and feeling like my stomach is trying to digest knives.

1. I heart Zach Braff’s blog. He seems like such a geniune fellow, and especially considering Garden State has sort of catapulted him into another world in terms of the whole being famous-thing. If he’s ZBizzle, can I be DFizzle?

2. Scarbie Doll‘s Martinis For Milk. A dear, sweet friend who never ceases to amaze me in terms of her mad writing skills.

3. Hissyfit. The name says it all. Wing Chun is one of the smartest, funniest, and savviest writers I know. Not to mention Glark’s also most kick-assiest sense of humour. Check out his Star Wars / Pride 2005 desktops. Heh.

4. Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. I’m not a big reader of crime / mystery fiction, but as far as litblogs go, it’s one of the best. Even better than Bookslut at times because of Weinman’s pure, unadalterated love of literature.

5. Kim’s Fresh Hell. It has my favourite tagline of any website I’ve ever come across, “All pop. No culture.” One of those things that makes you think, “Damn, I wish I wrote that…”

There are so many others that I love too, too many to list, but honourable mentions go to pamie, Blondie, and to Chicklit, where I wish-I-wish deborah would start up a blog because I’d read it everyday.

Anyway, some things to keep my mind off my rotting stomach and ill-feeling, stupid diseased body.

The disease is scaring me this time around. My achy joints and over-tired exhaustion coupled with heightened kidney function levels and the sinus headaches make me think that this time the disease is more like the first time, and I actually feel sick.

On a sweeter note, I bought a cute pair of flip-flops for summer. Let’s hope the sheer power of cute, new shoes makes me better.

Well, it’s a huge ham-bone of a movie, from start to finish, but I honestly rather enjoyed it in all its bloated goodness. Orlando Bloom, criticized for being stiff in many of the reviews I’ve read, really wasn’t terrible at all, and I think Liam Neeson might just be developing an entire career out of being the “oh-wise-sage Daddy that dies.”

It was exactly what I needed tonight. And I laughed with Zesty afterwards because I don’t know anything about the Crusades from a historical perspective, so even though I’m sure there are historical imperfections in the film, that didn’t bother me. She joked with me and said, “Ignorance really is bliss, isn’t it?” In this case, maybe she’s absolutely right.

Oh, and I heard Orlando Bloom on Virgin UK radio last weekend talking about the film and he said, “It’s nice to go from being a boy to a man.” Ahem, I heard that and I still enjoyed the picture—now that’s saying something.

To know me means to know that I love television. No, let me re-phrase that, I love watching television, sometimes to the extent that it borders on complete and utter obsession.

But lately, I haven’t been watching much television at all. I’ve been reading, I’ve been writing, I’ve been blogging, I’ve been sleeping, but I haven’t been watching television, which is completely and utterly unlike me. In fact, I’ve missed so many episodes of television shows that I used to watch faithfully that I don’t even know who I am anymore. What’s happening to me?

But there are still a few things I’m faitfully watching this year, but instead of, like twenty shows, it’s only three or four: Gilmore Girls, which is the best it’s been in two or three years; ER, because I’m sickingly addicted to the show; and Deadwood, which has replaced The Wire in my heart for now, but not for always.

Having been trolling around the internet the past few days, weeks, months, well, years now, I’m always interested in reading writing advice. Something about the inspiring words of other writers spurs me on and makes me think at some point I’ll actually finish something that might get published, but on the whole, it’s just nice to read other people who think writing is important enough to want to advise other people about how to do it.

One of the best “Advice to Writers” columns I’ve read is Jennifer Weiner’s. I’ve read all of her books, In Her Shoes being my absolute favourite, and I frequent her blog on a regular basis. Her last book was a bit disappointing, but I have hopes that it was a blip on an otherwise stellar career in chicklit.

A couple of other inspiring things I’ve seen over the last little while is this article about common mistakes many writers make and how to fix them. I love grammar. I love books about grammar, love to read articles about grammar. Now, I don’t necessarily understand grammar, but I do love to learn about it and think that it’s important, and am still stunned that Eats, Shoots and Leaves made me howl out loud. Honestly, it’s a book about grammar that’s intelligent, funny, and easily digestable. Anyway, I like this Holt Uncensored article quite a bit.

The other day I read Diana Gabaldon’s advice to writers. Now, I’ve never read a single one of her books, but she gives sound advice, much like Stephen King’s On Writing. I’ve never read a single Stephen King book of fiction, hate his EW column, and generally can’t stand many of the movies that are made from his books (Stand By Me the obvious exception to the rule), but I’ve recommended On Writing to every single one of my friends who are writers, even bought a few copies for people as gifts—the ultimate recommendation from a girl who tends to be cheap in terms of buying presents for friends. Annnyyywaay, Diana Gabaldon’s web site kind of sucks, but her advice section is sort of interesting, even if she writes tripe (ooops, did I say that out loud?).

The meds are so hard on my system. I’m exhausted. I find it hard just getting out of bed even though I’m sleeping well at night. And so many of my symptoms are disease symptoms, the sore joints, the losing weight, the cough, the sinus headaches, that I’m actually scared for the first time in many years. Maybe the disease is getting the best of me this time? Who knows. All I can do is go for my tests and wait to see what the doctor says.

The assigment was to write in pentameter. Of course, I thought it was to write in iambic pentameter, so that’s what I did. Here’s what I came up with, and it’s quite honestly the worst poem I’ve ever written in my life:

Imitating Travel

The cab came in along the FDR,
I rolled the window down to feel the air,
The East River, a finger’s breadth away,
And everything I see wants me to stay,
Beyond the pale of this quick two-day trip.

Honestly, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever come up with…

…Where you feel like having cereal for dinner, and you do. I just sent in a short review to Chart for Blade: Trinity. What a piece of poo that movie was — not like I was expecting anything different.

I also watched Alfie this weekend and thought it tried just a bit too hard to acheive that balance between loveable cad and tragic ladies man, but whoa, is Nia Long good. I read somewhere that Jude Law’s such a good character actor that he should only be cast in supporting / character-type rolls, but he’s so good looking that people keep trying to make him a leading man, and it just doesn’t work. I’m almost on side with this, maybe it was in Vanity Fair? Anyway, he’s good in the film, but again, it just doesn’t feel right…

Maybe I’ll start keeping track of the films I’ve watched this year too, like the 50 book challenge, only it’ll end up being about 500-to-one in terms of the movie-to-book ratio and can I really live with that?

Oh, and add another one to the list. Let’s count it #3, Open Water. Terrible film with lame dialogue and moments of scariness, but as the Rock and Roll Boyfriend pointed out, it could have just as easily been a short film and been just as effective.