Paranoid Android

I've never watched someone die before. The official time was 2:21 a.m.

For a couple hours I watched my aunt gasping last breaths, with a thought of urge on her lips that none of us in the tiny room could understand. This was the aunt who sent me $100 birthday cards every year since I was a kid, even though I hardly deserved them. This was the aunt who I liked to squeeze a hug out of when she'd come over for barbeques in the summer. This was the aunt who I'd catch smiling at me across the table, who'd say "Bianca is very beauty-full, she's got the Barcelone looks". This would always make me happy, because growing up I looked like neither my mom or sister, who look like each other with their bright round eyes and heavy eyelids. I always felt like the odd ugly duckling out.

The more I saw her, the less I saw of her.
"Auntie Belen, you're shrinking! Don't lose any more weight," I would plead as I squeezed my arms around her and back to my own body.
She'd send me this half helpless look, and search my face for the right words. Maybe she knew what was going on inside of her. Maybe she didn't.

The last words I had with her were this past Monday. She was so thin, yet tanned dark having come back from her trip to the Philippines.
The painkillers made her somewhat loopy to talk to, but it was still my favourite aunt nonetheless.
She searched my face like always, murmuring "you look beauty-full today," to which I widened my eyes and exclaimed "no! You look beautiful auntie Belen."
Her eyes looked off and out of focus at my words. The drugs must have been making the room spin.
She really was beautiful. Even my dad said she looks like their mother. I've never heard my dad call anyone pretty.

I saw it. That moment, when your life is reeling and re-reeling inside your head, behind your closed eyes, when you can't separate memory from reality. Her eyes were lulled open as she gasped and moaned urgent tones, every 5 seconds, I counted. It was like that for hours.

Eventually her gasps were no longer close and shallow but far and deep. 8 seconds would go by before her chest would rise. I remember hating that she was barely there, in pain, unable to tell us what she had to say, and wishing that her chest would stop rising. Just let go, we all thought. I sat by her bed with my face a finger away from her cheeks, watching the pulse under her thin skin. I loved her dearly, but I wanted to see the pain stop.

When the moans stopped, sighs replaced them. Soft ones, sadder ones, wounded ones. Every 5 seconds. 20 seconds went by with no sound, just gasping.
But just when I thought she would finally rest, back they'd come out, sometimes in twos or threes at a time.
Then they stopped too.
And after that her chest stopped rising. Her entire body braced itself, and with one wave, sank deeper than ever into the bed.
In that moment, I would have done anything to see her chest rise again.


She died with a rosary in her hand.

We visited her twice already. She hasn't eaten in days. She hasn't woken up in days. Sleeping Beauty syndrome, I like to call it when I look at her, with hair splayed out from her peaceful face like a black fan. Comatose, my mom says.

She didn't always have the peaceful face. The other night her face was perma-contorted. But the nurse came by around midnight to hook her up to a steady bag of painkillers, something stronger than Oxycontin.

I sat by her bed in silence for a bit. Went to the bathroom. Looked at her framed photos of past cats, Molly and Oliver, sitting on a shared chair by the kitchen table looking into the camera like a pair of her own toddlers. In her bedroom were photographs, of them are 3 different photographs taken on her wedding day. As cheesey as a prom-date shot but as nostalgic as your own parents. She married a German. He died of lung cancer a couple years ago. He is still the greeting on her answering machine. They had no children. They only had each other. They only wanted each other.

The similarities are fucking uncanny that I'm scared shitless, staring into this one-way mirror of a potential future of mine.

I think it hits me the hardest not because I see her in me, but because I see me in her.

Sunday Dump in the Afternoon

It's been half a month since I've touched this. As a result you will proceed to see a mish mash of all things non-sensical that I've encountered in the past couple weeks.

Exhibit A:
I've made it a habit to keep at the pee-yano. Been piecing the theme song from UP little by little.

Taking a stab at it after a couple days:


After a couple weeks:


The more I record the more I hear the out-of-tune in my piano, that Baldwin hasn't been tuned in over 20 years. It's starting to be more than a little irksome. Not sure if you can hear it but it's all I can think about.

Next song I plan to slay:

The Great Escape by Patrick Watson, which by the way has replaced Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky as my nighttime lullaby.

Rob insists that the guy singing sounds like Herbert that dirty old man from Family Guy.



In other news, a couple Mondays ago I was working the usual nightshift with Tania at the coffee shop. Towards 9 p.m. I looked out the wall-size windows only to find myself face-to-face with not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 police cars. At first I figured they really needed a co-off-fee and donut run, but they ended up swarming Miami Grill a couple doors down. The journalist in me itched to barge up to the cop outside with his two-way radio and interrogate the shit out of the situation. Plus my friend Reut was waitressing inside at the time and I do concern myself with her safety (most of the time). But the guy hurried inside after our 18-second staring contest (He won). I met up with Reut at the end of the night and she told me the story. Poor guy tried to off himself over a girl, or that's what I hear. Oddly enough, the same stand-off happened at my high school over the same reason years ago in the cafeteria. Hmmm.


Amidst all the deadlines of filming my feature and writing an essay studying for an exam and polishing off a psych assignment, I got to meet and film Alan Cross for our interview for our TV Production Techniques class. So glad I glided on a stick of deodorant that morning. Let's just say in the entertainment business, time really is money, and according to Alan Cross' intern, the most he could ever get from Alan is 15 minutes. So we hustled to film an interview in under 15 minutes, when we should've had an hour.


Amanada psyched outside in the lobby.


This one's for you Kyle, you Pearl Jam fiend.


Ongoing History of New Music used to be my bedtime stories, back when I had an alarm clock radio and not an iPhone.


Look closely and you'll see a signed David Bowie album flanking the Windex bottle. Apologies for the shaky still, I must've felt like I was doing something illegal.

In related news news, I got to cover a press conference at the Hockey Hall of Fame in early March. Pretty sweet, considering it was a conference to announce Hershey's Chocolate's partnership with the NHL. Free chocolate bars? Free crepes? Free Nick Kyprios autograph? A life-size replica of the Stanley Cup in solid milk chocolate?! Sah-weet. It's events like this that tempt me to just go into PR with my degree.


Nick Kyprios, former Stanley Cup winner and now works for Sportsnet.


The chef chocolatier, maker of the choco-cup.



So maybe I stuffed my purse and the camera bag with chocolate bars. They just kept cranking out more and more chocolate after you'd take some. It was a crime not to gorge. See Homer Simpson in the Land of Chocolate.


There was no time for the crepes. We were too busy shooting and interviewing all the tasty yuppies.

Let me just add that if you got this far, you are a trooper, I warned you with "Dump" did I not?

I gotta go in to work at the coffee shop tonight, it's the last day before Passover starts so we'll be closed until next Wednesday. I leave for LA Thursday so that means no work for a very long time, which means I might as well be a good lassie and help Ezra close tonight. It's not as easy as you think to close for Passover. You need to get rid of everything that is not Kosher for Passover, so like all our pastries, syrups, coffee, milk, etc. etc. must be shied away and hidden in our cupboards. It's an excruciating process, but eh, might as well since I won't be seeing my customers for almost 3 weeks after that.


I'm way too fixated on this design, ever since I figured out how to glob it on like that I've been jumping to top off every Caramel Corretto in said fashion.

I saw Mr. Kraus last Friday and he offered me a waitress gig at Cafe Sheli for the summer, just in case I want some extra hours. I've been mulling it over in my head. More tips, change of scenery, meet new people, good experience. Why not? Well, why is it that I would feel like a traitor if Ezra found out I was working for someone else on the side? Hmmmm. I gotta save up money for September though. If I play my cards right, I'll be interning in Montreal or Halifax with CTV for 6 weeks. I need all the moolah I can get.

Rob and I went to see King Tut last Thursday finally. We paid for the 3D Egypt movie that was more like a half-hour special on Egypt's mysteries, re-enacted by modern day actors in costumes. It was okay. We were a bit disappointed to find that King Tut was not actually there, just his treasured items. I loved it. I love gold. Rob thinks it's super cheesy but it happens to compliment my skin tone unlike white gold. Bleh. The beginning of the exhibit was a good laugh. They had Harrison Ford narrating a little intro before you could go through the doors, kind of like at Laser Quest before they open the gates. After his last line the tall wooden doors open-sesamed on their own, I couldn't help but smile.

Afterwards we strolled over to Salad King by Ryerson and shared some Pad Thai. Rob went a little picture-happy on me after I commented on my flat nose. Thus the first one being a profile shot. The other 2 are just Rob trying to get one of those hey-lookit-my-girlfriend-in-my-wallet photos.






Now I promise you I will never prolong my blogging ways this much again.

Men Wednesday falls on a Saturday this week, Folks.

I can't wait til my bangs grow out. Bangs are pretty but pretty high maintenance and pretty hard to grow out once you grow tired of them.

I should be doing my psych written assignment, given that tonight we're celebrating Kyle's birthday and tomorrow I work 8 am then film summore b-roll of Kim working at Shoppers, then off to Edit Suite 3 downtown to download all our footage and secure it in the vault. Hopefully which can all be achieved in time for me to come home and watch the Oscars. I think I'm looking forward to it so because for once I've watched almost all competing films.


I'm rooting for The Hurt Locker, maybe because it was a riveting movie with a good plot and stellar audio (I like sounds whadda you want from me), maybe because Jeremy Renner was a hot piece of machismo ass in a bombsuit (I like guys in uniform whadda you want from me).


Either way, it's up against the likes of Avatar, which was all fine and dandy with the Na'vis, but lacked emotional attachment. The only thing I remotely felt was a hard-on for Sam Worthington's Aussie accent. And the Na'vi sex scene? A 5-second clip of her spread-eagling his lap. That is all. No compassion.

It's almost a month until I fly down to LA for my cousin Larry's wedding. Robert just might be coming with, keeping my fingers crossed. We applied for his passport yesterday morning, then headed downtown to grab the Edit Suite key for myself later this weekend.

We grabbed a matinee movie, Shutter Island, good twist. Leonardo is just too fine in a fedora, sigh. Hear that? That's the sound of me, along with thousands of other chicks out there, throwing myself at the feet of Leonardo DiCaprio screaming "take me!"





Embarassing. I've been nursing this crush since Titanic (I was 7 years old. 7!).

The Great Gig in the Sky

Bianca:

is too down to enjoy her Saturday morning masturbation.

It wasn't even sexy. It was just, sad.

She is also too down to self-reflect, thus the third-person objective.

Cuz it's easy when the whole world fits inside of your arms. Do we really need to pay attention to the alarm? Wake up slow

I can never seem to get my ass out of bed Tuesday mornings. Which would explain the reason why I'm still in bed at 2 p.m.

It probably has something to do with me closing the coffee shop on Monday nights, but on top of that, I met up with Adam after work for a little unwind sesh. It was nice. He picked me up after work, we closed an hour early because there were all of 6 cars in the parking lot, 0 of them belonging to our only customer, a chick chilling on our couch with her laptop. I trained a new girl named Abby Rumm, gotta love her name. So smooth and yet sharp, to the point and memorable. She's 27 and from Vancouver, but spent the last few years circling the globe by working on a princess cruiseline. I know, cool eh? She moved to Thornhill about 5 months ago to live with her sister. She said all her friends in Vancouver are in hideout to escape the claws of the hideous media mongers ("They're like 'there's people everywhere!'"). Ohlympics, shame on you, making me proud of my country only now, making me buy those ruddy red mitts and making me regret not buying the matching scarf. Blegh. When I asked how she liked Thornhill so far she looked out at the snow (which she never sees in rainy Vancouver) and replied "I don't mean to sound cocky... but I've been all over the world, Indonesia, Singapore, Venice, Macedonia, Hungary... but I've never been somewhere like this." Yup. You will never encounter another Thornhill in the world. It should replace that place, um, Luxembourg I think, as the smallest country or whatever. And I've worked that little hamlet's coffee shop for 3 years now, I know the ins and outs, the ropes, the dirt. I'll stop talking about it now though because it always gets me ranty.

You like that tangent I went on? Betcha didn't even notice where I was going with that at first. I do that a lot. Wander off topic and then get pissed because I couldn't remember what my original point to the story was.

But this original story was Adam-based, at least I remembered. So yes, we hung out last night, drove around the tri-county-area while smoking a joint. Just talked about our lives, how his girlfriend is, he wanted to talk about my situation. I never do like venting about it. I don't know why everyone is so damn interested and keen on hearing about my love problems. Skipped my Philosophy of Love and Sex class, which always makes me sad, because I love listening to Glen talking love, according to Krista we finally got to the Sex portion of the course, damn. That class has just made me so aware of love, and the universal form that we all experience. But truth is, love is messy. I like to dream about the nice clean kind of love, where it was at first sight and then you're stuck head-over-heels forever. But I don't know if I think that exists. It's such a rarity. Maybe clean love is out there, just people are too lazy to look outside their greater area and then they settle with the most compatible mate within an x-km radius. Real sad. Also skipped TV Production Techniques. Shouldn't have but it's done. I will at least dedicate the rest of the day to catching up on laundry and yoga so as to not have skipped the day in vain.

Still in bed, with Jack Johnson on repeat. Toast has taken my temporary immobility as an opportunity to fall asleep in the bent crevice of my front ankles. That's it, snore away little one. I'll be moving you any second now...


Awh look-itcha here, all svelte in the summer. That box is totally slimming on you.



The ink in my tattoos has been randomly reacting inside, and it'll become raised and slightly itchy. Before it was the ink in my neck tattoo. Now it's the blue ink in my swallows. Could it be a mild allergic reaction to the ink? Even though it's fully healed and been more than a year since I got them. I looked it up on the Internet and it can happen to some people. Just add that to my allergies list of peanuts, raw eggs, raw carrots and celery, eggplant, and raw fruits with skin. Plus seasonal allergies and dust. Horrible.

I'm also sometimes allergic to socializing. Sometimes.