Once A Year

I tend to have Kentucky Fried Chicken about once a year. I found out that Heather does too so we decided to join together and have a little Mid-Reading-Week celebration. One Variety Bucket Family Meal later and we remember why we only have it once a year. Feeling a little down? It doesn't make you feel any better emotionally, or if it does it is very short lived. Afterwards? It physically hits you like a ton of bricks and all you can do is lie in bed wallowing in post-KFC nausea. I thought that maybe Heather and I would make this an annual Reading Week tradition but she doesn't know where she will be next year and I don't know if I will be ready for The Colonel again so soon. Maybe once a year is too often.

Tuesday Already

Reading week is slipping by. I have not done any school work yet. There isn't an insane amount due when I get back next week but there is some. Time flies by so fast.

Headshot And Bio

This is my bio and headshot for next weekends production for The Vagina Monologues. I don't think that they are going in the program but they are on the website and going up on a big board in the lobby at the show. I'm happy with the bio, I wrote it, but not as keen on the photograph. I couldn't figure out why I didn't like it, except that maybe my face seems a little more round than usual. Heather was able to figure it out for me though, my eyes are not looking at the same location, one is focused on the camera and the other past it, making me look a little dopey.

CHRISTINE SWEETON

A passion for theatre and a strong desire to help end violence against women has led Christine to The Vagina Monologues for the second time. Christine acted in the 2006 production and is happy to be back on stage working with such a talented cast and crew. She is currently working for the Department of Justice as a Communications Assistant and finishing her degree in English at Carleton University. She is the sole writer for her blog – Always Standing. Christine lives to travel and loves to dance. She procrastinates too much and hates cooking. Christine would like to thank all of her friends in Ottawa for their support and encouragement.

V-Day

V-Day Ottawa 2009 presents: The Vagina Monologues
A play by Eve Ensler, part of the 2009 V-Day Campaign

YES I AM IN IT THIS YEAR (SATURDAY SHOW)

Friday, February 20 and Saturday, February 21, 2009
7:30pm (doors open at 6:30pm)
The Bronson Centre (211 Bronson Ave)

Tickets are available in advance for $20 at:
Venus Envy - 320 Lisgar Street (Bank)
Ottawa Women's Credit Union - 271 Bank Street (Somerset)

Collected Works - 1242 Wellington Street West (Holland)

Mother Tongue Books - 1067 Bank Street (Sunnyside)

Sophia Esthetic - 190 Maclaren St., 2nd floor
Get your tickets soon - the show sells out every year

***

V-Day Ottawa is part of the global V-Day Campaign to raise awareness to end violence against women. Money raised from the benefit production will go to the Ottawa Sexual Assault Support Centre (SASC) and charities that aid women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery. The 2009 V-Day spotlight campaign calls attention to the wide-scale atrocities committed against women and girls in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and demands that women and girls in the DRC are safe.

Oh Audrey

I saw the recent Sabrina a long time ago, Harrison Ford was in it and I love him. (It was also Greg Kinnear's first film.) I just got to see the original one tonight and it is classic! Just before she returns from Paris, Sabrina writes to her father about how the trip has changed her. At one point in the letter she says; "To do everything and see everything, sense everything; to know that life is an enormous experience and must be used. I have learnt how to live. How to be in the world and of the world, and not just to stand aside and watch. And I will never, never again run away from life. Or from love, either."
- From Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn

My Mommy Loves Me

And my Daddy does too! I just got a care package from my parents in the mail. They are in France right now so not only am I jealous but I'm also missing talking on the phone with them. It was a Valentine's Day package with chocolates and rose stickers. They usually give me little things most Valentine's, it started on a road trip to Florida when I was 7. The trip included Valentine's Day, not that I was even paying attention to that fact, and I guess they felt bad that we would be missing out on the festivities at school so they gave my brother and I a present. We obviously hadn't even noticed the day or felt like we missed out at all, but the gift was still very nice. I think I got pencil crayons or sketching stuff or something. I'm glad that they still remember the little tradition.

What Does That Comma Mean?

It is strange that with so many different types of communication technologies we still have issues understanding each other. When writing on someone’s wall on Facebook or sending a text, communication is broken down to short, and often cryptic, messages. In the days of the telegraph it was the same thing, short and cryptic messages. With cell phones and the ability to actually talk to someone anywhere in the world it is sad that communication is not clearer. In the book I'm reading for my third year British Literature course, The Portrait of a Lady, there is a passage about understanding a telegraph from a female character. The men discuss the different meanings the messages may have. At one point they actually go over the options as to what “quite independent” means as, it could be financially or morally independent and it is hard to figure out who the phrase is referring to. Telegraphs were paid for by the word so in an effort to make them affordable they were always shortened and strange. However, one male character claims that the sender is purposely confusing and that it is not just a symptom of the expensive or faulted technology. Today our tools for communication are far more advanced but these annoying debates rage on. I cannot even count the number of times that I have sat with friends pouring over some two sentence text or online message trying to decipher the meaning. We are able to create infinite options and rationalize all kinds of meaning. There have been times when the very punctuation is called into question. “Now here he used an explanation mark but over here there is just a period and he put a period there but that actually appears to be a question, not a statement.” While grammar rules exist the question of how well the sender knows or follows them is also usually pondered. Over one hundred years ago Henry James, author of The Portrait of a Lady, wrote about something that I would like to pass off as a dated phenomenon connected to a technology no longer widely used. But, I look at the conversation described and realise that this lack of clarity has nothing to do with the medium through which the message is sent but human nature itself. I don't know if I believe that the character is purposefully sending unclear telegraphs. I'd like to think that then, and still today, most people try to communicate with good and pure intentions. We don't want to confuse or send others into hours of analyses. I think that that James is commenting more on the human need to over think and obsess over communication received. We need to all be clearer in our messages and more importantly receive them at face value without worrying over the multitude of options in meaning.

Sexy Hands

Photo By Stephanie Beach