from this dark cold hotel room

i turn over, look at the clock and really want to cry.

on saturday night, kate and les and laura and i went down to the mayfair. it's a fantastic establishment that shows double bills for nine bucks. the venue is majestic, mainly because it's a theatre from the thirties that still feels like it's from the thirties. it's got the balconies, and the super high ceiling, and the crazy weird seating. and there's not even a door to the theatre, just a curtain to block out the light.

anyways, we went, and sat through six hours of movie. yeah. i know.

when kate and i returned home, it was close to one o'clock. we stayed up for a wee bit, and then crawled into our beds, thankful for the respite from the land of the living.

or so we thought. so i thought.

at two, people started rolling in from the bar. this is a norm for every night of the week here. usually it take them twenty minutes to fall into their beds and pass out. so i waited for the doors to quit slamming and the girls to quit screaming and the word fuck to quit echoing down the halls.

and i waited.

and i waited.

they would disappear for awhile, and then, just as i would start to finally drift off the sleep, they would come back. the slamming doors, the screaming girls, and yes, even the word fuck would return to echo down the hall, to penetrate the hazy layer of sleep i was attempting to fall into.

i start composing hate mail in my head.

"dear saturday night revellers,
first- happy belated birthday to whomever's birthday it was. i hope you had a fantastic time. owait, i know you did. you all met up at minglewood's, unplanned! imagine that! and then you came home. thank you for getting here safe. and for slamming the doors repeatedly. and for runnign down the hall screaming like a thirteen year old. oh, and let's not forget the word fuck. you know, after tonight, i don't think it will mean anything to me you've said it so much. thanks for repeatedly coming back and making a lot of noise. i really appreciate all the repsect you're showing to everyone else here on the floor.
yours in angsty hatred,
meg."

finally, i get up, walk to the door and throw it open. there's a group of maybe five, maybe seven, maybe ten people standing there. i can't tell because i don't have my glasses on, but i don't really care.

"guys," i start, my voice wavering, because really i'm almost crying. "i'm really sorry. but could you pick a room and go there? it's just really late. and i just really want to sleep."

like magic they all pile into one room, and i am given respite.

i feel like an all powerful sleep-endowing goddess. go me.

this is love that i'm feeling.

she leads them up the steps, higher, higher higher. she's at the end of our row. she pushes them before her, right up against us. they're small. and they're colourful. and they're going to be loud and afraid.

after the IKEA adventure, heather and i went back to her place and watched various sean bean movies and ate a lot of tostitos. the next day, after a breakfast of boxed pancakes, we headed over to indulge in viggo goodness. tickets, licorice and one mother of a drink later, we're sitting in the theatre. we climbed to the top, the very back row.

and then she came along.

now, what is it that makes a person walk into a nearly empty theatre, and then pick out the seats right next to, infront of or beside those seats already occupied? time and time again it happens.

this was no exception. a frazzled mother and her two bratty kids, who had these damned lazer flashing things.

an idea enters my head. but......no. i shouldn't sink that low.

"c'mooooon. buck buck buuuuckaaaaah! CHICKEN! do eeeet....do eeeeet now!" do you see the taunting i have to live with on a regular basis?

i finally turn to heather, and say just loud enough: "i'm still going to make comments on his tight tight pants and his...derriere."

i am rewarded with an evil glare by the mother, but she moves a few seats away. "good." it says, with a hint of bitterness. aren't i just full of sugar and spice and everything nice today?

just for the record- they were really tight pants.

not that i'm complaining or anything. heh.

this mess we're in.

where to begin?

"last stop!" calls the bus driver from the front of the bus. heather and i look at each other in confusion.

you see, viggo mortensen's new movie, hidalgo, has been out for a number of weeks and we had not yet seen it. so, we planned an evening of viggo goodness, replete with kraft dinner for dinner and sprite for the after party. hell, heather even bought V8's new juice, V-GO for us.

and now here we were, getting kicked off the bus in the middle of nepean, which is kinda like scarbourogh, but less scary. big areas of nothingness, and then weird rows of townhouses and then tall apartment buildings. and the traffic of the 417 roaring in the background.

"i'm so confused." heather tells me.

"yeah, you and me both" i think to myself. i have no idea which way is north at this point. this always bothers me for some reason.

we turn, slowly. behind us to our right is a sign advertsing Le Biftheque, a french steak house where you can get an 18oz steak for nine ninety nine if you arrive before five pm, and then, beyond that, a beacon. it's blue. it's yellow. and it spells out IKEA.

"DELIVER ME FROM SWEDISH FURNITURE!" screams the inner voice, but i shush it quickly. i've been told of the vertible majesty of the swedish wonderland. it sucked me in, it drew at me. IKEA was calling to me.

apparently it called to heather as well because we ended up going there instead of the movies, wandering around the maze of rooms they had set up. i flopped down on leather couches that were more expensive that my tuition for this year. i sat in chairs that could cover an expensive food bill for the week. i admired the yuppie aspect of it all.

yet was compelled to buy nothing.

"i told you so." pipes up the inner voice. such smugness! "you've been delivered from the swedish furniture."

yeah. i watched fight club the other day. how could you tell?

bring back my happiness

when i woke up, i was more than a little confused.

first, the light was all wrong. there was no sun. secondly, my clock said that it was ten thirty-ish, but kate was still here. her class starts at ten thirty and in general she doesn't skip it. finally, i could hear someone mumbling.

"maybe if you just go back to sleep?" as tempting as the inner voice makes it sound, i have class at eleven thirty, and i had to shower and consume coffee and eat something. so instead, i ask kate.

"what time is it?"

it was nine thirty. once again, i've hit my clock in the night moving the hour hand forward. the light was all wrong because it was earlier than my brain thought *and* it is rainy today. and kate wasn't gone to class simply because class hadn't started yet.

yes. sometimes i wonder about the simplicity of it all as well.

let's go to places no one else has seen

"i don't know what's going on..." i state into the empty room, staring at my computer screen and the chunk of bad british television i am watching. "...but this is fantastic!"

after slaving away on the essay, i had been looking forward to some high quality internet time wasting. however, friday afternoon marked the beginning of a three day internet blackout here at carleton. the entire network was down, so that meant that no one had any access to their precious email, or websites, or downloads....you could see it in people's eyes as they walked past. they had that look, the one where they're being deprived of something.

"you're all a bunch of internet junkies!" well, for once it has a point. but then, there's not a whole lot else for us to do if we want to procrastinate and yet still feel as if we're getting something done.

time and time again, all weekend, i would click on the internet explorer icon.

"internet? i would queriey. but it was never there. until monday night.

to be honest, i got a lot of stuff done this weekend. a lot more than i usually do.

maybe i should get kate to hide my internet-cord-thingy on a regular basis in order to inspire me.

i used to live alone before i knew you

telling myself it was only a quick study break, i turned on msn.

of course i ended up talking to people, namely candice and my ophelia. two conversations that were so different, and yet so damned important. i am left a message, embedded in text to peruse at my leisure, to look upon whenever i want. it's been saved in cybersapce for me.

that doesn't make it any less special.

comforted by words glowing from a computer screen, i wander off to bed for the sweetest of dreams.

born slippy

liz is in our room when i get back, talking to kate. when she goes to leave, after watching me inhale some macaroni and cheese made in the coffee maker, there's another knock on the door. it's pete.

"umm..hello. i was umm..wondering if i could..." a pause. "if i could borrow some books."

pete and i are doing topics that overlap for our massive anthropology piece of crap..um, i mean paper. he;s looking at norse mythology, and i'm looking at tolkien's incorporation of classical fictional elements and how his reinterpretation of them influenced modern fantasy literature.

i hand him over what i consider to be my bible at this point in time, assuring him that i don't need them tonight, but that tomorrow around noon, it's imperative that i have them back.

"sure umm, no problem. just come by my room and i will uhh...have them, the books, for you."

"and...what's your room number? i don't think i've ever been there."

"oh, it's four seven seven. just look for the phallus chicken and the welcome from dionysus."

have i mentioned before how much i love university?

you don't have to say what you did

i sip my third cup of coffee of the day, staring out the window and admiring the wind in the trees. i'm supposed to be working on my essay, that twenty page anthropolgy beast that's due on friday. or maybe studying for that latin test on wednesday. or maybe reading the symposium or that classics reading i need to catch up on....

instead, i sip my coffee, look out the window and day dream for a bit.

"you forgot to mention that you were listening to justin timberlake." damn it! foiled again by the inner voice. i guess i cannot even keep my sad little obsession with bad pop music a secret.

ah ha ha....umm.....yeah. so sometimes i feel the need for bad pop music.

we all have our weak moments.

the only way of loving me is to pay a lovely fee

i pull on the sixth shirt in as many minutes. looking in the mirror, i grimace and pull it off, making angry noises and wish that i had some new clothes.

i think i'm having an 'ugly' day. pshaw!

children of the revolution

i always clean on thursday nights. it was just something that i established last semseter, a way to begin the weekend. it also used to be laundry night, but that went out the hatch some time soon after christmas. anyways, tonight i was cleanig as usual, and went to empty my recycling bin in the lounge.

tomi and tuesday were in there, talking and gesticulating with animation. i was greeted with the phrase:

"that's a room mighty full of negroes."

i have to clairify here that tomi is an african canadian, and that it was her who was saying this. she likes to make fun of stereotypes and labels people place on racial groups, namely her own racial group. she got us laughing quite a bit, but i felt like it was an 'on the edge' kind of laugh.

luckily, tomi is a sweet and kind person, and she meant no offence, either to us or to anyone of any race.

we were then all scandalized by beyonce's ass, something we all agreed was quite impressive.

show me how to live

in a moment of boredom, i searched the words 'the scottish thirty' on google.

there's only two pages of results, and most of them have to do with the restoration of a train engine numbered three seven zero two five. it was purchased by a group, calling themselves the scottish thirty-seven group.

i'm half way down the first page.

go me!

she broke your throne she cut your hair

stratton comes briskly into the discussion room, and a look of shock passes quickly over her face. there's only five of us sitting there, five out of eighteen who are signed up for wednesday afternoon group four core seminar tutorial.

"if more people don't come, we'll call it an early day and all just leave....ok?" i have no problems with this suggestion. in fact i don't think anybody does. the weather demands attention and perhaps an escapade to bank street to spend unfounded dollars on cds i don't really need.

but we stay and talk, and more people trickle in, and it ends up being a fairly good discussion group.

i think i may miss this plce when it comes time to leave it.

you're already the voice inside my head

i woke up confused, like always, with the phone ringing. of course i stumbled for it, and even maganged to answer it.

"hellumppfg?" yeah that made a lot of sense i'm sure.

luckily it was my marmee, so she knew exactly what my grunt noise meant. we chatted up a storm, mainly due to the fact that we haven't really talked in over a month. it was like we were two kettles vying for steam relase...or something.

"two kettles??...." i shut it up before it even gets going.

we talk until it was past time for my morning class to start.

meh. we were doing something. i'm sure i can read about it. i had a shower and ate some cheese, listening to moby at volumes that were sure to induce anger on the parts of both my neighbours and my eardrums.

time for second class.

except the phone rings again. this time, it's my sister kelly.

before i can even ask, she blurts out "guess who's going to new zealand?!?"

my sister is one of those insanely bright people who, once setting her mind to something, accomplishes it or else. she has applied to spend a year abroad in the land of hobbits, as i teasingly tell her, and now she's going.

i'm both estatic and frantic.

new zealand is such a long way away from here. she won't even be in the same day as me.

i like the way you move

i wander into our resfellow's room, attracted mainly by the fact that the door is open. tuesday is inside, talking to tomi, and they both seem to have no problem with my entrance.

carmen wanders in.

"does anyone know where the fuck...uh..chapelwhite is?"

everyone is planning their living placements for next year, finding houses and apartments and figuring out how they will pay the rent and the bills and everything else. then there's me. i'm all about getting a house with people, but not yet. i intend to stay in residence for atleast one more year. i want to get to know ottawa better. i want to have the safety of the familiar. i want to avoid this last step of detachment from ome for a while longer.

the problem is, carleton is thinking about turning residence into a first year only place. this means that even though i have kept up my marks, been good, adhered to the rules and only yelled "sanctuary!" once, i still might be out in the cold with my treasured things come next september.

"but how will you do it? where will you find a house? what will happen if you have no one to live with?" i calm the inner voice by telling it to hope for the best.

c'mon leeds house. you know you want me living in you next year.

even if you don't know it yet.

i know you're wondering when

i try to focus on what liz is saying.

not that it isn't important, don't think that at all. her roomate is making a foray into the land of relationship and liz is the unwitting witness to some of these forays. she had come over to tell us about the latest one.

"i want to stab my eyeballs out." she quietly but vehmently whispers. they had been sitting on the bed with...romaing...hands.

i'm still trying to focus. but the problem is the inner voice.

"aaaaack...nngaaahh...are you going to do anything about this raging pain? please, i need some help here."

i forgot to have coffee this morning. and because i have an addiction to caffeine, the headache that accompanies withdrawl arrived right on schedule at four pm.

i am chugging coffee now. it's like ambrosia to the inner voice. but somehwere along the way i lost liz.

damn.

and they were dancing and groovin and moving to the music...

people on our floor always congregate right outside our door.

i guess i could take this as a compliment. i mean, maybe our door is fun to look at, or something. but usually, it's just people bitching at each other or spraying shaving cream at things. either way, them screeching outside isn't always fun.

they had congregated. and they were yelling about sushi.

"i have an urge to watch evolution....still." kate informs me over the sushi drone.

sadly, neither one of us owns this movie. or maybe it's a good thing?

i do however have the song that has forever been etched into my head from that movie as a song to listen to while driving on my hard drive. play that funky music by the wild cherries. so i put that on.

within three minutes kate and i are grasping our heads in pain, making high pitched wheezing noises, unable to breathe properly from laughing.

i thought they were good dance moves.

ok, so maybe not the homicidal chicken. but riding the pony was.

realize what you gotta do

i walk past the mirror and snicker.

i'm wearing my walmart jeans, rolled up so that they look like clam-diggers. my hair is a mess, and i have on this ratty tank top that in all actuality should be called a skank-top. more of my bra hangs out of it than is covered by it.

shemeh.

there's not anyone here but me. huzzah almost-naked time!

she thinks that i was with my friends yesterday

i wander around the room pointlessly, aimlessly eating grape from the bowl that liz gave me.

"you know, you have that english paper to write." i pretend i didn't hear. hey, it worked as a child. or atleast it was supposed to. my mom always saw through that defense.

"english paper english paper ENGLISH PAPER ENGLISH PAPER!"

it too has resorted to childish tactics, screaming for me to work.

yeah, right.

how was i supposed to know that something wasn't right?

it penetrated my sleep.

"REEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN....REEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN"

i am confused, bewildered and have no idea what is going on. i think about pineapples and my sister and eating a mangoe and bad latin music. and still, it continues.

"REEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN....REEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN"

i finally roll out of bed and start looking for my socks, because such a noise means only one thing: the fire alarm. it was three thirty in the morning, and my entire building was awakend from their cozy beds and forced to vacate the premesis. needless to say, there were a lot of very angry looking people. i was one of them.

"dear three thirty am fire alarm," my inner voice pipes up. "you freakin' suck. love meaghan."

i couldn't agree more.

you're going to be the one that saves me

"holy shit!" i exclaim to the room in general. "i can't fucking believe she just did that!"

when i was at home for reading week i went to walmart. what uni student doesn't go to walmart? anyways, in the middle of the aisle in front of the electronics section, there were enormous bins full of dvds, all of them for the low low price of six dollars. since i get pure and unadulterated joy from crappy movies, i bought a few. one of them was the nineteen ninety eight sideshow entitled eye of the beholder starring miss ashley judd and mr hotass ewan mcgregor.

i clasp my hands to my forehead again.

"oh holy christ. i cannot believe that just happened!"

ashley had just shot mr. hotass. it was detrimental to the plot until he was magically ok.

i think i missed something in there.

jo-jo was a man who thought he was a loner

i wandered through the giant loblaws leisurly, slowly going down each aisle to make sure that there was nothing i missed, no major sale that i could benefit from.

and then, i saw it.

have you ever been in a grocery store that has a cart filled with items reduced to clear that are possibly the weirdest things you've ever seen?

today we had a can of beans, a pair of over shoes, some potted plants that were beyond savng, baby clothes, diapers, vitamins and one lone lord of the rings action figure.

eomer makes a nice addition to my collection.

i can feel it coming back again

i prostrated myself across my bed last night, staring at nothing, and letting oasis blast all thoughts from my unusually active mind.

"cos maybeeeeeeeee...you're gonna be the one that saves meeeeee, and after alllllll...you're my wonderwaaaalll"

i was trying to have a deep contemplative moment, a moment of clarity, a moment of sense. a moment of anything. instead, my inner voce had to kick in.

"hey man, remember that narsty picture of bono and liam gallagher tongue kissing for shits and giggles?"

i remember it now. ugh..... so very drool-y...

the fire in your heart is out

"how long are you staying up for?" kate's question comes out of a silence that has been unbroken, save for the munching of popcorn, the turning of pages and the clicking of keys for some while. no music, no words, no nothing has penetrated the well of stuuuuuudy-ness we seem to be drawing upon this evening.

"well, except for that whole 'A NEW POWER IS RISING' shebang." i have to concede.

"and the random action figure moment you had with leggy and saruman." again, concension. but then i thought kate needed a mascot.

"and let's not forget about your oh so vocal rendering of the original star trek theme." again with the geek. will i ever learn?

maybe we weren't a deep well of stuuuuuudy-ness after all.

but it sure is damn quiet in here.

forget your virtual reality

i cackle and mash the keys excitedly, even though what is bringing me joy is so blatently materialistic and uncomprehendable realistically that it in essence has no meaning.

shmeh.

it still brings me unfounded joy. might as well get it while i can.

i know it's not the right thing but kinda i want to

i walk briskly home after classics class. we've been having what i think is called a strawberry spring here in ottawa. i might have made up that term, but i think not. i believe that there's a stephen king short story with that title.

"yeah." it muses, pausing. i can hear the internal wheels cranking. "the narrator tells the story, about his college and how people start dying during a sudden week of warm weather. mosty girls. mostly decapitations."

the wind hits me, pushing me simultaneously to the left and then back to the right. i grasp my skirt to keep from indecently flashing all those people around me. it suddenly feels damper, more sinister. like the end as opposed to the beginning.

"the narrator was the one who was killing them." it comes out of nowhere, and makes me jump.

when you finally figure out what it is you need you better think of me

i send an email to melissa claiming to be in spiritual distress.

well, not just claiming. and not really spiritual. more like a plea to hear the same things she always tells me, the things i'm always told and yet cannot seem to absorb enough times.

i guess i'm just into that feeling that screams home and acceptance.

"no, i expect you to DIE."

i listen to heather breathing, making noise in that iota of silence that fills the gap between the phrase and the oscar goes to... and the announcement.

whoever is presenting gives it away before he announces it.

"it's a clean sweep! the lord of the rings, the return of the king!"

heather and i both start squeeing. she's louder than me, because kate is sleeping here and i am trying not to wake her up. "YESSSSSSSS!" i whisper as loud as i can, throwing my arms in the air.

yeah, i know. i'm showing my geek again aren't i?