100 posts

What a nice rainy hermity day. I've listened to every PJ Harvey Album, cleaned my appartment, organized my closet, resequenced my party dresses...

In honour of PJ and 100 posts, I changed my title back to what it was originally. My first post mocked the emo/emotional exhibitionism/ lame ass-ness of the 'blog'...jesus christ. Sorry to put you all thru that. Gross. Happliy, my emo phase has come and gone; it is now summer and everything rules.

I had an afternoon of nothing to do at work, earlier in the week. Eventually I'd gone thru all the Vogue slideshows of the summer runway collections (ps-Lanvin, great work), so I crafted a response to Beardo’s letter to the editor i.e. me:

Criticality and Me
An Essay for Beardo

Let’s keep in mind that nobody likes a phony. And by nobody I mean me. Let’s consider Gandhi’s maxim- ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. To most, this is just another version of the golden rule. But maybe I want a world without phonies. Maybe I want a world full of people with backbones. Yes, I do. Even if people’s feelings get hurt or offense is taken. We all have opinions, we might as well be open about it; some are just better than others at being polite about it.

I can’t tell you exactly when I became an impolite loudmouth. Maybe it was when I told my mom I didn’t want any fucking casserole, after my first week of kindergarten, when I was five. Or, maybe it was when I got in trouble for mouthing off to the yard duty teacher for being a bigot because he was segregating the boys and girls soccer games at recess:

Dougie was more effeminate than the other boys who would tease him or not let him play at all. I told Dougie to play with us anyway because the rule was stupid. The teacher came over and sent me stand against the wall for the whole lunch hour, at which point I called him ignorant and sexist and threatened that I would get him fired.

I went home that afternoon infuriated and sat down at the computer and drafted a formal complaint against this teacher. I was nine. You see why everyone expected me to be a lawyer? So, let’s just say, if my mom, with various graduate degrees in child psychology and education couldn’t talk some sense into me then about how there are better ways to express myself than namecalling/threats/beligerent indignance, I don’t think I’m ever going to learn how to zip it when appropriate. And yes, I do realize that I often believe that my opinion is pretty much paramount to everything and everyone. So what. It’s fun.

A lot of my friends have critical taste that can be pretty harsh. While some would deem this as a ‘negative attitude’ (or in my case, ‘fuckin bitch’), I disagree. I view it as discerning- even when I don’t agree with them. But there seems to be an undercurrent of fear for not liking something that several other people do in a small city. After all, so and so likes them; or so and so works there, and you wouldn’t want to offend that; so and so is friends with so and so in that band that’s really cool with the so and so. Especially in the past, my opinions have alienated a lot of people and I sort of (yeah, just sort of) regret being so over the top and judging things prematurely, before I’d given them a chance. And, as a result, I have enemies, apparently, whom I’ve never talked to. But being known as opinionated loudmouth has often put me into an interesting position where I act as a soundboard for moments of confession, “psst, I don’t really like ‘bandx’” To which I reply, it’s really ok, neither do I, and neither do the 5 other people who told me in secret this same week. Or, alternatively, in some cases, ‘Oh really? I can get behind this aspect of what they’re doing, for sure/ I used to feel the same way but…’. But I never, never, ever give fake compliments (well, maybe there’s been a few exceptions, when cute boys were involved).

Let’s not be stupid. Some things are bad. Actually, everything pretty much sucks. But I never said Tom Fun were bad, just not my thing. Taste is relative to the person, you know:

Examples/overgeneralizations:
If you took a crust punk to Bright Eyes: This guy is a fucking pussy, this sucks.Likewise, you wouldn’t take a folk singer to a grindcore concert: ow my ears, this sucks.
And, some would say, you just wouldn’t take Jen anywhere.


But, if my honesty still seems like a shortcoming, I choose to pass on the blame to:

a)My mom, for not beating me into being better mannered
b)Hardcore punk
c)The government for inventing Cape Breton (OMG! LOL!)

Love you!xoxoxox Jen