dear vine multimedia

February 14, 2013 - 1:29am - by admin

this is hard for me to write.

it's hard because it's virtually impossible to explain why you like or admire something or someone in a blog without sounding like you're kissing their ass. and I don't wanna kiss yr ass.

I want to work for you.

I've spent a few scrapped blog posts figuring about how I was going to write about what I like about you in a way that my audience will still like to read. because this post, while directed at you, is still public. it's on my blog. my audience will read it.

that's a big deal to me. I don't blog about just anyone.

but then I realized that's why I would be a good fit for vine: because while I'm willing to work hard and dedicate myself to what I want, I'm not going to sell out or tell people (even you) what you want to hear if it isn't true. that's just not how I roll.

so here's what I think, vine. about you & me, and how I can help you shine.

you guys seem down to earth and confident in what you do. it's obvious after a quick look around your site. I imagine it's similar to how a discussion with one of your employees would be: chilled-out, unpretentious, and smart. nobody who had reservations about their quality of their work or of their ability to deliver would say 'don't be a jackass' to potential clients.

mostly though, I like that you're out do to good. and not in the google 'don't be evil' creepy way, but genuinely be good in so far as you're trying to give back to your community and the world at large. the concept of a social business is fascinating and forward-thinking. I like that. I want to be a part of it.

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Once I knew a boy who owned a skateboard

May 27, 2012 - 5:04pm - by admin

it was a few years ago and he was a cute guy from my high school who I'd always thought was a bit of a dumbass but he was popular and all the ladies loved him and I couldn't figure out why.

we reconnected while I was sitting outside having a beer with friends at the Toad in the Hole and he went by on his skateboard and we started chatting and didn't stop for the next month or so. most of our correspondence was veiled jabs at one another because we clearly both came from different worlds which didn't collide nicely.

I think he thought I was stuck up which I was and I think I thought he was useless, which he was.

he picked me up once in a beatup old red car wearing a fluffy plaid parka and a toque even though it was only early fall. there was no radio and he had groceries from his mom's kitchen in the backseat. he held my hand because it was colder in the car than it was outside. at his place we tried to watch Brazil but his pirated copy didn't work so we watched Bronson instead and made out on his couch, interrupted only once by his lesbian roommate who made a point of talking about how she was a lesbian which I thought was overcompensating a bit.

the apartment had walls of either wood panelling or brick, and the furniture were all scruffy antiques except the shelves that housed his record collection, which were 2x4s held up with cinder blocks and covered in paper doilies probably stolen from somewhere. at one point we listened to Bob Dylan, sipping cheap beers and listening to the freezing rain.

it was like being in a Wes Anderson movie.

but when I got up to use the bathroom I walked by his bedroom and saw the mattress on the floor with the dirty sheets and the pile of car tires that he was going to sell at some point, or so he said, I knew that it was over.

I was too much of a snob, and he was too useless for us to be anything but offensive to one another.

but sometimes when I hear Visions of Johanna I remember the time I let that boy who really wasn't good for me at all put his hand up my shirt while the record skipped and the rain came down, even though I knew I shouldn't have. I knew it was over and I knew it was useless but I think I kissed him harder and enjoyed the moment more knowing that once it ended, that was it.

so we kissed like we didn't mean anything to each other, which we didn't.

and that was alright.

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There's something to be said for how someone treats strangers

March 15, 2012 - 9:40pm - by admin

take two weeks ago for example when I applied for a job and got the rudest, most condescending woman ever on the phone who made me feel bad for having a class that interfered with when she wanted to schedule my interview.

I scheduled one, but it was over a week from then (yesterday) and she made it pretty clear that because I wasn't going to take the time from my class schedule to go down there that one of the "many other applicants" would be more than happy to take the job.

needless to say I didn't go.

this shouldn't be a big deal. lots of people skip interviews for lots of reasons and I've also been on the interviewing side and though it's a hassle you just shrug your shoulders think "too bad" and move on with your life.

not this woman.

she felt it was necessary to send me this:

You appear to have missed your scheduled 8 am interview. It would have been appreciated if you had informed of us if you had decided not to come. We could have slotted another candidate that was actually interested in coming, and not wasted our time.

so not only did she feel it was okay to be rude to me over the phone, but she also thought it was necessary to send me an email chewing me out for not showing up for an interview for a job that she basically told me I wasn't going to get.

needless to say I sent her a very polite email explaining that I didn't show up because she was a bitch (not actual language used) and BCC'd the customer service department while I was at it. which I will post here if you kids should so desire.

it blows me away that people like this exist. honestly. I don't even know what to say.

I'm just going to end this post with a picture of cute puppies.

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today is my mum's 30th birthday

March 5, 2012 - 4:01am - by admin

just like it was last year.

my mum is actually from a teeny town in England called Stourport-on-Severn where she lived until she was eight and my nan and granddad decided to jump across the pond and landed here in Winnipeg. last week she came by for tea and we went for a walk and she showed me the house the first lived in when she moved here, which is just up the street from where I live now which is weird to me. she told me about moving here in february and how cold it was and how she used to count the mosquito bites she and my uncles would get during the summer because they don't have mosquitoes in England, you fools.

but my mum didn't always live here, she traveled around with my grandparents through Alberta and lived in a trailer in the rockies with mountains right out her front door and eventually went back to England in her teens. but she missed all her cool Canuck friends and Canada's wide open spaces and when she was 19 she got on a plane all by herself and left her whole family to come back to Winnipeg which takes the kinds of balls I can only hope that I grow someday because, wow, that must have been hard.



one day my dad saw a gorgeous lady with big hair at a social and they danced to the rock lobster and a few years later your truly came along. next came Mike and she had prepared all these VHS tapes with all my favourite shows and made a list of which episode was which so I would have something to do while I was babysat during her delivery but I slept through the whole thing like the a-hole that I am.

after came Alex and my mum is so sweet that she didn't even get mad when, while she was pregnant, I told her that if she didn't have a baby girl I was going to hate it. she knew kids (especially ones with names that sound like Shmalyson Shmane) are stupid.

before I moved out of my parents house I used to go upstairs in the evening before bed and harass her while she was trying to watch some show about renovations or selling houses or crap like that because for some reason it was fun to watch tv with her even though I don't think she liked it.

she used to watch Star Trek: Voyager and used to get into arguments with this boyfriend I had about whether or not it was one of the shittier Star Treks, which is is (sorry mum). but she likes all the Saw movies which is both weird and awesome and makes up for her lame taste in Star Trek series.

there used to be a time when I never thought my mum and I would be close, which I guess is normal for every child especially the crazy female kinds and I think there may have been a time when she wasn't proud of me at all and wished that she'd never danced to The Rock Lobster and had this shitty kid. but she did and here I am and now that I'm trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing in this big, wide world she tells me that she's proud of me for doing it, and how I'm doing it, which means a lot. because I'm really proud of her, too.

happy birthday mum!

I love you,
Alyson xoxox

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one day my dad started a job

February 3, 2012 - 8:51pm - by admin

and he worked and he toiled and he got stressed out and upset
but he never gave up
and he always stuck to his guns
and I've always admired him for that
no mater what

today my dad called me
and told me he'd been promoted
to the job he's been trying to reach his entire career
and I'm so proud of him

now I don't talk about the fam here much
but it's not because I don't love 'em
it's because they're so important
that I only mention 'em
when it's really special

so, to celebrate
here's an oldschool picture of me high-fiving my dad
who is so, so cool
and who I love till the ends of the Earth



congratulations Dad
I love you

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crazy neighbour moved out yesterday

December 28, 2011 - 4:45pm - by admin

it's a post-Christmas miracle.

I've been dealing with this crazy woman since I moved in two years ago, back when she harassed my old roommate for smoking outside on the front step (& having the occasional stoop beer with me). one time after chewing him out she baked him cookies which was weird, so we thought maybe she just had a crush on him or something.



see that's the funny thing about this chick. she had a way of chewing you out and making you feel like you were the problem, not her, and no good tenant wants to out themselves as potentially being bad tenants. so we stayed quiet as she would stop us going in/out of our suite and the building to let us know that our friends were too loud, we were too loud, our feet were too loud, whatever.then he moved out, Tyrone moved in, and she turned her sights on us.

on Halloween she stopped us each individually to say that she "hoped we weren't planning on having people over for Halloween", and that we should "get together at other people's houses" because her schedule is different than ours.

she showed up at our place one Sunday morning accusing us of having people over the night before because there had "been people coming and going until 3am" the night before, even though we had spent the night at a friends place and weren't even home.

the final straw(s) came when she tried to evict the woman living above her because her she could hear her cat walking around, and she took showers at 6am in order to get ready for work which woke her up.

she had apparently lived in our building for nearly a decade, switched multiple apartments, and still managed to harass and bother every tenant in the building regardless of how much noise they did (or didn't) make, and where her suite was. it just goes to show how alienated you can feel living in a building full of other people, all dealing with the same, private problem if you're made to feel like you're the only one at fault.

as we were returning from our errands yesterday she was standing in front of her door with her parents talking to them and I had to laugh at the dirty look she gave me, because in the end nearly every tenant in the building wrote letters to our rental agency. I wrote two. I wonder if she knows.

whatever. good riddance.

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parents called me and said

October 28, 2011 - 2:04am - by admin

I had to go through Grandma's apartment
and see if there was anything I wanted.
anything I 'wanted'?

I struggled with this.

I think about her as the wrinkles in her face
the wave of her perm
her long nails
the way she held a tissue.

I want to remember those things.

that's what I want.

she isn't even dead
just
moved away
and I'll never see her again.

it kills me.

it destroys me.

I've trying to deal
I have to
what's done is done.

so
we went
and I saw a recipe box
and
printed in her neat writing
at the top of a recipe she'd written
'this would make a good meatloaf!'

it's funny
the sort of thing
that makes you break down

and cry.

I miss her so much
it's like a black hole in my heart
eating me from the inside out
I feel empty.

I miss her.

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