christ, he's going to harvard 2:26 p.m.

and here i am eating mr. noodles out of styrofoam, drinking instant coffee and pretending to know about trunk groups and clli codes in my patch-painted village apartment which, by the way, has mice. i discovered them (their droppings, to be precise) yesterday. they are not my friends.

medicate me, someone 5:28 p.m.

my mother recommends bathing with gershwin, light
some smelly thing and soak, she says. breathe. my eyes
dart about the room without permission. they like
the crown molding, the piles of dust cowering at the feet
of objects, the stain on the side of my antique refridgerator.
it's intricate. ice cream, i think. i haven't the attention span

for this.

not nearly as funny as moo-shoe pork, but funny nonetheless... 10:21 a.m.

list of my favourite movies 9:49 a.m.

• chariots of fire (1981)
• searching for bobby fischer (1993)
• show me love (1998)
• dirty rotten scoundrels (1988)
• sabrina (1954)
• the secret garden (1993)
• a little princess (1995)
• reach for the sky (1991)
• the cutting edge (1992)

sound familiar? 9:34 a.m.

Definition

Passive-aggressive personality disorder is a chronic condition in which a person seems to passively comply with the desires and needs of others, but actually passively resists them, becoming increasingly hostile and angry.

Psychiatrists no longer recognize this condition as an official diagnosis. However, the symptoms are problematic to many people and may be helped by professional attention, so we include it here.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors

The causes are unknown, but, like most personality disorders, a combination of genetic and environmental factors are probably responsible.

Signs and tests

Personality disorders are diagnosed by psychological evaluation and a careful history of the extent and time course of the symptoms. Some of the common signs of passive-aggressive personality disorder include:

• Procrastination
• Intentional inefficiency
• Avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness
• Complaining
• Blaming others
• Resentment
• Sullenness
• Fear of authority
• Resistance to suggestions from others
• Unexpressed anger or hostility

Treatment

Counseling may be of value in helping the person identify and change the behavior.

Expectations (prognosis)

The outcome can be good with treatment.

Complications

• Stunted career development despite good intelligence
• Alcohol abuse or other drug abuse or dependence

450TeL Communications Inc. 12:59 p.m.

HOT CLOUDS 2:38 p.m.

“But as long as the hot clouds do not reach us, we won't go,” said Supriatun by mobile phone from Indonesia. The hot clouds wouldn't reach you in Sudbury. Everything here is slowly cold. Residents smile the graduation of a season, only to greet the next, to burn leaves, to be cold again. Lives soothed by scheduled cups of Tim Hortons coffee, measured in pay periods, in rounds of bar-born unprotected sex. The landscape's rough: rocky, I'd say.

There is a very tall smokestack in the West part. I used to have a plan to paint it pink with flowers. Yellow ones, I think, the big symmetrical hippie kind. My parents thought it was adorable. The stack's a symbol, I'd say. It looks like a penis, a cigarette...The postcards prefer the nickel. The giant nickel.

Things are lonely here, I'd say. The pick-up truck engines, the mosquitoes, the beat-up kids, their dirty hands and pocket change make lonely noises. So do the bingo halls and the bowling alleys. The strip malls by twilight, that's where you'll find love. Those dirty hands fondling the young parts of cleaner bodies in the Silver City parking lot. Or behind the Subway restaurant. They call them restaurants here.

googler interrupted 8:55 a.m.

i've been having a serious amount of trouble with google's beta apps recently: gtalk is blinking, gmail is blinking, blogger is practically blind...the desktop app, though cool, has been unreliable and a monster drain on my poor comp's day to day. then, as though the frustration of trial software weren't enough, someone close to me introduced the possibility that google isn't the innocent novelty i would have it be. stuff about caches, metabots, world domination. as it turns out they're keeping everything on a server somewhere, so that when i search google, i'm really searching google's stash of info, not the web. i must've been living under a rock because everyone seems to know this but me. sitting on my father's 1973 corduroy ikea sofa (which miraculously still holds its shape) i experiment with the idea that google is god. it knows everything about my life, is everpresent, omnipowerful, mysterious. it will most definitely outlive me. maybe i should start praying to google. maybe i should ask it for a job.

poetry in public 12:06 a.m.

i read tonight. i stood up in front of a microphone and a room full of people and managed three or four hundred syllables. it was at the victory cafe, second floor: art bar. i was trembling and darted off stage, once it was over, to the sound of hearty applause. encouraged in large part by my admission that i'd never done it before, i'm sure. they like first timers, some kind of pretense of community or something. anyway, you're not allowed to read two weeks in a row but i think i'd like to make a repeat appearance. what do you think? are you proud? you know me enough for that.

my sister needed help (that's her) 11:28 p.m.

with some highschool creative writing course...as though six verses in iambic pentameter actually mattered to the canadian canon...she's much wittier than i was at her age, i think. lazier and more inhibited, though. a bottle of wine later, i proposed something. i think i'm a glass away from correct rhythm and real aid:

My days are long and hard and filled with heat
They stick and stink and hurt with no relief
Laughter seems to blind me through the night
So that I might maintain or feign good sight

Their trays and ways find me wanting a break
As though that were enough to stay awake
I’d like to think that work means more than this
Although right now I’d do much more for bliss

Red stains, blue stains, green stains and work tonight
I thought I’d once had soul to make a fight
But truth be told I’m too damn tired for that
And dream I’d quit right now but for that rat

He makes me think I’ve got no good to me
Makes me want to change the things I see
Makes me want to do something much more
Much more like a good thing and even more

The night is dark when I am done as though
Things were so great so bright without a row!
As though this weren’t the only thing there is
As though I had much more to bring than this

But truth be told it’s just words now are left
And words we know aren’t much but lower cleff
Versions of the thing we’d rather say
And what better to do on this bright day

something i was supposed to do earlier 10:03 p.m.

after i'd read a random blog promising that the following meme (As defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976): "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation." "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.) was propagating itself through the blogosphere: (1) find the book closest to you (2) flip to page 161 (3) find the fifth sentence and publish it, complete with these instructions. the book closest to me at the time was a thick telecommunications binder which didn't have page numbers just some weird section, sub-section way of seperating sentences. the next closest thing (several hours later) was "mots de passe" by pierre desruisseaux, a collection of poetry i picked up in grade 12 when i still wanted to like words but didn't really. i've read it since. the next book, the important one, the one that passed the 161 test was john key's "sowing the wind," given to me by my grandfather after he'd read it. the inscription reads:

Ex Libris: Ven. T. L. Leadbeater D. D.


To Kate

From Grandma & Grandpa
Spring 2004

I haven't read it. I'll sleep with guilt tonight. Here's 161, sentence 5: "But Philby rightly declared that for Iraq this was not a happy introduction to the democratic process."

if i had to ask... 9:22 p.m.

each of my boys a question, navigating the space between rhetoric and wondering, without worrying about form (punctuation demands response):

ben -- how far away are you...exactly
re -- what happened to you
marc s -- what next
marc r -- was i imagining
joel -- did you know
scott -- how did you invite me
nat -- are you happier
graeme t -- what if
andrew -- what would satisfy you
graeme j -- is it perennial

rambling -- i've run out of titles 9:09 p.m.

i am reading lynn crosbie's poetry on a patio tonight, it is light enough still. she uses oxford commas and sounds like a poet. her words are like breathing as though i'm not reading (rhyme) but tasting her last meal instead. or various meals, particularly the ones after big events. they are exactly like breathing, don't you agree? : : : try writing in a very small notebook sometime, it'll keep you honest. curbs adjective use, apparently. : : : i read the blog of a harvard girl who was torontonian and liked palestrina. found her on facebook. i think we're in the same chapter with a few pages of beer and experience between us. loads of books she would say, i think. important ones. : : : i wonder how much poets lie. the good stuff is inebriating and i don't often bother to ask because i'd rather smoke in that state. (you understand). really though, it must be thick with lies. love is never so desperate, colours so vibrant, scenes so perfect, men so angry. dogs don't curl up in corners, they collapse. everyone collapses. you, poet! writing life in cursive while the rest of us are lazy, uninspired, (oxford comma) and faster at typing. : : : i blame the public school system for my need to list, to alliterate, to tie up loose ends. i've to blame someone. what's with the chip, you ask. get over it, kate. it's gotta be the divorce, the drugs, the circumstance. anything but me. (you understand).

if i were a proper animal... 1:24 p.m.

tired but not sleeping 12:07 a.m.

jonathan doubled me on his bike. i'm used to the handlebars, but he preferred peddling standing up. we rode up church street and were waived at, i felt like a float. COMMA SPLICE. we have plans for martinis on tuesday and he's promised to lend me a russian novel starring the devil. best book ever, apparently. sounds right up my ally. i'm stressed about money. relieved to know, however, that most music is still free. say i am you by the weepies.

beer and commas: in the interest of encouraging the appropriate use of both 2:04 p.m.

the oxford comma: an optional comma used before the word "and" at the end of a list, in case you were wondering...

i like to drink white beer, blonde beer, red beer, and dark beer. all beer, really.

the comma splice: a punctuation error in which a comma with no conjuction is used to join two independent clauses. i'm a big fan.

it's nearly ten to nine, we won't reach the beer store before close.

for those of you who know me 11:10 a.m.

http://kevan.org/johari?name=kateleadbeater
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=kateleadbeater

these last few days 7:19 a.m.

have been worse than most. there is a nice song playing on the cbc, called "take it from me." i am quite tired and wish the song would've lasted longer. they're talking about a terrorist plot now. my cell phone is in the process of exploding: the screen is a mess of colours. i blame the terrorists. you should try blaming the terrorists, too. i want to throw something breakable across the room and watch it shatter. like a sideplate or a vase or something. i hope the week improves. i'm not doing well. really not.

major anxiety 7:49 p.m.

should be a cat's name. not mine. cats, cats, cats, people. cats, cats, cats, crazies. crazy cat people. crazy me. crazy, crazy, crazy.

moo-shoe pork! 11:01 a.m.