Recent events in my life have lead me to start thinking about certain things in a more definite light -- as something factual and upcoming, not something that has a "one day" classification. It has a "soonish" one instead. Nothing makes you stop short and question your dreams faster than the rapid approachment of them. (…approachment?...)

Take, for instance, children's names. Now, while I have no plans on having kids any time in the next little while (think the farther side of ten years…) I have been thinking more about names. Some of you may remember this: Gwynhwyfhar Christabel. Now, while such a name would be awesome to shout angrilly up the stairs I don't know that I could really saddle my child with a name that has twenty-six letters. Yes, twenty-six. Poor little Gwyn would get her ass kicked, and not just by the students, but by the teachers (unless, of course, she was the most charming child on the planet. Then I would wonder whether or not she was really mine: or perhaps the anti-christ…(see, that was funny, because I typed the "anti-christa") but only then could she get away with such a dorky name.)

One dream I've surrendered to the great god of pragmatism is a winter wedding (read: ontario, not BC. BC is nothing but depression in the winter…). Wouldn't this be a great scenario: Sarah arrives at wedding, only to realize that the groom has not arrived because his car spun out on some black ice and got stuck in a snowdrift. Half the guests were homebound because of a large blizzard, and even the minister couldn't make it. Everyone who IS there is complaining about the cold, because the heating conked out due to…whatever makes heating conk out. Yes, I love the colours. But I figure that winter already has Christmas, and two celebrations of that magnitude in one season might be a little much. Um. That's of course, assuming that New Years never existed in the first place.

.
Of course, all these things are done with only the slightest twinge of regret. I always get the feeling that what I'm getting in exchange is ten times better than anything I might have had to give up. At least my daughter won't end up going through life telling people how to spell her first name (the last will be hard enough), and I won't have to share my wedding anniversary with a big jolly fat man in a red suit with a beard. That last one, however, is assuming that we spend christmas with MY family.

The dream I refuse to surrender, however, is that one day, not too far away I will be transported to a magical world where I have to free my family from the clutches of the evil witch eubaba…and no, I will not take any of your drugs.

The Harvest

I just read a rather disturbing article about Canadian medical companies that harvest baby parts from abortion clinics for research. Now, the sale of said body parts (for example, four pair of eyes, intact. Or four legs from the hipbone down) is illegal in Canada (I imagine the states). And yet it happens.

Half of my brain goes 'that is absolutely heinous. Why on earth don't these children get a decent burial?' And the other half goes 'well, the parts won't do any good in a garbage bin somewhere…'. So it's a horrible way to be, but I can't seem to get past this indecisive little fork in my mind. I'm torn between ethics and pragmatism. And I know this is a bad kind of entry to write, because I don't make much of a point, and I'm not really exploring anything except for the fact that I'm unsure.

Of course, the women who provide the body parts don't know that their babies will be going to medical research, which is definitely a negative point. Because shouldn't she know? Granted, most of the women don't know that their aborted "fetuses" just end up somewhere in a dumpster (another point that strikes me as fundamentally wrong) anyways. Or they prefer not to think about it. Hm.

What is ethical? What isn't? Is tearing apart the body of an aborted baby any more wrong than a family who gives their stillborn infant over to medical research? Is it the fact that many of these companies aren't experimenting in the name of medicine, but of something else? What is it?

Sometimes life is too gray.

Life on my end here (for those of you who care) is fairly boring. I go to work during the day, come home at night…watch TV, eat, sleep…and do it alllllll again. I've been really tired lately, and I just don't know why. Poor nutrition? Possibly.

In three weeks (three more thursdays!) I am leaving to visit Jake in ontario for six (six!) days. Sure, it's not long, but it's all we've got. So I am happy with that. Lisa is in cuba until the 17th, and mom and dad are home on Saturday. It'll be nice to have the family all in one place: we've been on the go (more or less) since I got home from Africa.

And on a final note
I got all the subjects I wanted for school, and am successfully pre-registered for them for Fall. I start at 9AM on Monday, Wednesday and fridays and am out at 2. I start at 9:50AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays and end at 1:15. For the caring, I'll be talking more on that later.

Woo school...

Love. Sort of.
Part one

Okay, so even though I said I wouldn't, I did. Yes, I did it. Unable to resist, I bought the People Magazine with Britney Spears and her flame of the moment. Oh stop looking at me like that. You so know that the next time you're over you'll read it. Or in Safeway. Or the bookstore.

The fact of the matter is that most of us in the Western World want to know why Britney Spears is getting married to some random guy who is half her weight. Because all of a sudden she's engaged? I think the reason that it shocked me was that here is a woman --or, not quite a woman -- who is not mature enough to admit that she is a role model for tens of thousands of little girls all over the world but thinks that she is somehow mature enough to get married. Isn't there a contradiction in there somewhere?

But. I held out some sort of hope for them; on some level I wanted britney to have a long and happy life with the man she was destined to be with. I wanted Britney to be deeply, passionately and completely in love with Kevin Federline. I wanted her to be a beacon of hope for girls everywhere. So people would look at them and say 'well, they made it. I guess we can too.'

And then I read the article. Oh. My. Goodness. There is nothing here but a "wow". Unbelieveable. Now, I obviously don't have the article with me (at work), but to quote something as closely as I can…

"…I wake up in the morning, look at the ring and think 'very cool'." Thanks for that profound moment, Britney. Anybody who refers to their impending marriage as "very cool" should probably wait a little while to see if maybe the infatuation wears off, eh?

I think everyone who wants to get married should have to write an exam. Because what on earth happens when all those 'feelings' go away, and all you have is this guy who isn't looking so hot anymore (oh, well, he can cook "anything". "Anything" being "macaroni and cheese and fried chicken".)? Marriage is WORK. WORK WORK WORK. And I wish somebody would sit all engaged couples down and tell them to wake up and smell the roses.

Oooh, but the real shocker was something I heard on the radio this morning. Now, prepare yourself while I give you the 4-1-1 on No-Fault divorce.

Essentially what it is: that no matter what the reasons for the divorce (he cheated on her, she killed his cat) everything gets divided up equally. So each half of the ex-couple gets, well. Half. Unless, of course, a good pre-nup is drafted to protect the wealthier party's assets. Now, I don't know which states DON'T have it (I'm assuming Texas…), but California does. And Britney Spears lives in California (yes, you see where I'm going…). And Britney Spears is foregoing the the whole 'pre-nuptual agreement' thing. So. Once Britney is married (sans pre-nup), if it doesn't work out…her husband will get half of everything.

Wow.
I know. Your mind went completely blank, didn't it? Followed swiftly by a why aren't I marrying britney spears?

Anyhow. I'm ashamed for having written a post almost entirely about a pop-princess who is too spoiled for her own good.

Part Two
Barbie and ken broke up. And no, I'm not joking. Because you know, I have a bad record of really stupid entries spawned by boredom. This is serious. Barbie and Ken broke up, and now Barbie is dating Blaise, some dude from Australia.

Don't worry, I'll look into this. But that's what I heard on the radio.
[sighs]
This is really sad. Britney getting married (I bet she's gonna be the only person under the sun whose teeth are whiter than her gown), Barbie and Ken breaking up…what is this world coming to? I'm moving to Jamaica. So I can listen to people talk with cool accents, and drink some sort of hard alcohol and…yes. No, I'm actually moving to Ontario. There won't be cool accents OR much drinking…but….

I have no way to end this post…

Moments of randomosity

So, Barbie has the pink corvette that assumedly Ken bought for her (Ken didn't really: I mean, what has he done other than be a big brother and shave? Barbie having by far the more lucrative career), and one of her friends got knocked up by one of Ken's friends (who, despite many promises still hasn't produced a ring) but nobody talks about those sort of things. Her friends all want to rally together, but Barbie can't spearhead a campaign to fix this disaster, as she's too busy balancing work and raising all the young siblings her absentee parents have dumped on her. Despite being given all the best things that our world has to offer, Barbie is finding that contemporary reality is a little more difficult than the plastic world she was created in. All this and more is to be aired on Fox's controversial new reality show: Life Outside the Box, premiering this fall.

~

Due to lower back pain that Barbie was having she regretfully informed her adoring public (mostly the creepy old man sector) that her boobs were going to have to go; a descision that is rumoured to have caused a lot of tension between her and live-in boyfriend, Ken. "I just don't think that it's a legitimate reason" he is quoted as saying "I mean, she never complained about back pains before -- she always was a little rigid, but I figured that was, you know, natural. It was only once people started commenting on how she should be conscious of the fact that she was a 'role model' for young children that she thought about her figure." Ken went on to say that replacing all of Barbie's clothes would be an expensive undertaking, but one that would be worth it, if it would make just one child feel better about his or herself. When questioned as to whether or not there would be wedding bells for the fairy tale couple any time in the future, Ken refused comment, saying only that he "liked his options open." The couple has been dating for over ten years now, and despite many 'fake-out' weddings, we have yet to see a ring appear on either of their fingers.