is Yuppie a dirty word?

About 7 months ago, I registered myself on the waitlist for some co-ops, Quebec Manor being my top-co-op. I've shied away from telling people because someone said to me "how yuppie of you" when I mentioned the co-op thing. Don't really know why I was embarrassed about being called a yuppie. I mean, I am young (depends on your audience) and I do live in an urban environment and if having a full time job makes me a "professional" then I guess I sorta fit that description. Apparently, as it has been pointed out to me, these other factors also make me a yupster:

• I drive a mid-size cross-over (translation: small s.u.v)
• perceived as being upwardly mobile (translation: don't understand actually, lost in translation)
• like listening to 80's music (who doesn't like Madonna and Kool and the Gang??)
• have a cell phone and laptop (which makes me a "neo-yuppie" GAWD)
• ambitious (I prefer to think of it as needing work to pay my bills)
• like my trendy clothing
  

However, by other standards or assumptions, I am also not a yuppie and aspiring or true yuppie aficionados would scoff at the thought of Vi as a yuppie because I obviously lack:

• a gigantic bank account
• a six figure income
• don't own any prada or gucci (though I do have Chanel eyeshadow!)
• artsy qualities (can't write, can't paint, don't do art shows or check out indie bands unless it's my youth who are doing the performing!)
• not business or investment saavy (RRSPs is the extent of my attempt to diversify my financial portfolio)
• don't live anywhere hip, just in the good ol' Hastings Sunrise area and with my parents to boot!
• periodically make bad fashion choices

The thing about being a yuppie though, is that you're loathed by everyone. The urban dictionary (such a reliable source y'know) summed it up best when they said that yuppies are loathed by both the far right and the far left.

The left wingers think of yuppies as self-absorbed, conceited, spoiled fucks who are obsessed with money, their wall street careers and trendy condo loving gentrifying neighborhoods. I find this funny, because most left-wingers I know fit this description to a tee and are basically themselves, a bunch of wannabe hipsters/artists/activists who claim to fight the power when in fact their parents represent the power and all things capitalist!

The right wingers, on the other hand also hate the yuppies because they often confuse yuppie with hippy, whatever, it's all one homogenous doo-hicky for them. Yuppies are perceived by the right as representing all things counter-culture, as falling off the deep end of the liberal pendulum and corrupting the status quo with their alternative health-hemp-homoerotic-promoting lifestyles.

As someone who truly believes in concepts of community development and consensus building, I obviously don't align myself with the right but what the hell do I know because I'm neither left or right. This is not to say that the definition of a yuppie is solely defined by such harsh polarized paradigms of politics and socio-economic status...

No one likes being labeled, but in this day and age, I find that you can't really distance yourself from or take such an anti-labeling approach because everyone you meet will take on a particular lens or window to understanding or rather, misunderstanding who you are. Why resist the label when you know who you are. And if you don't really know who you are, then whatever, you have the rest of life to figure that out--it's not a speed test.

Things that make you go: "WTMITS" (What The Muthatrucka Is This Shiet?"

"Poststructuralism offers the last word, not in terms of definition, but in terms of irresolution. It is the last word for last words."











February 2007: Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

I swear it all has to do with racism and being screwed over as an immigrant

Too tired to re-write it all but here's the story in a nutshell that I wrote to the BF about the woes of the day:

Allo,

sorry for being m.i.a today but it was a wee bit of a harrowing day. Today was the day my dad and his coworkers voted on whether or not to keep or decertify from their union. The union lost and so my dad is really bummed out. Like really bummed out that he is already preparing his letter of resignation. Being one of the key people who brought the union to his company 7 years ago, management have made it clear that they would love nothing more but to get rid of him and his union buddies. Prior to the union, there were no wage increases, no job security, no benefits, no break times and generally no recourse.

So it's not so much about ego and pride that my dad's leaving, but more about the principle of equity and respect that he believes in, like most of us believe in. Blah. My dad's 60. He's not going to find work anywhere else, and last I checked, the market is over-saturated with bakers and Canada's not in a rush to hire any new helicopter pilots either. Like your dad, like most of our dads who have good work ethics and don't fear a hard day's work, it's more about having something to do on a daily basis that you know you're good at, even if it's tedious, but at least you feel like you have a function in life, like you're needed. With the decertification, I guess my dad would rather bow out first than have management tell him he's not needed anymore, that they can hire someone else at $8 hour to replace him because obviously they're overpaying him right now at $12.89/hr. It all makes me wanna hurl.

'Tis life.

Which self is the "kewl" one?

I'm not an awesome writer and writing does not come naturally for me. It is actually really painful and hurting and scares the beegeezees out of me. The feedback I get from most of my profs, in terms of writing strength, is the researcher reflexivity that I bring to my writing and my papers. My thesis supervisor keeps reminding me how important epistemological location is, especially so in the field of CYC and he's trying to encourage me to focus on the reflexivity when I'm stuck. So as I'm moving along trying to write stuff that makes sense and trying to be all smart and shiet, I wonder which one of my "selves" plays out the most: the research-based self (grad student, witness, interpreter, writer, observer), the brought self (the elements of self-identity that place me at a particular social, cultural and political location) or the situationally created self (shaped by the research process itself).

I don't know. And I don't know which one is the kewler of the three. The last one intrigues me the most because it's the only one I can't predict or control so it MUST be kewl. 'Tis life and as Mr. Walsh of biology 11 once said to me: "choose your own destiny". Yeah, ok. Whatever.

the struggle back to normalcy, whatever that looks like...

It's not like I expect people to want to talk about the shooting rampage that took place at Virginia Tech, but for the love of Christ, at least acknowledge the state of the world that we're all living in. How is it possible to NOT know what took place yesterday? How do you miss the headline "33 people shot dead"? Contrastingly, there are those who have been all too keen to take up the discussion pertaining to the shooter's status as "a resident alien." I think we all know where that conversation is going to wind up: lots of racialized kafuffle in relation to immigration, temporary and permanent residency in the States.

Then there is that other conversation that is inevitable, the one pertaining to America's second amendment. Virginia Govenor Tim Kaine stated in a press conference that this is not the time to discuss gun control issues and anyone who attempts to do so at this moment would merely be engaging in political hoopla, so to speak. If the deaths of 33 people don't warrant a discussion or at least an attempt to put gun control issues back on the map, then by golly george I don't know what it will take. In social services, especially in the cases of child protection concerns, you don't wait til the house goes on fire to intervene. The shootings that took place at Virginia Tech was a mutha-fucking inferno.

Maybe I'm just finding a reason to be pissed off and a reason to hate on something because to tell you the truth, I'm just a selfish paranoid android who fears for my own life in addition to feeling like the world sucks and would prefer not to have my friends, family or future kids wind up with bullets through their bodies.

I feel this way and I'm not even American.

Celine Dion's "new day" has come

It was a lovely sun-shiny day in Vancouver today, which prompted me to wake up early and "do something about my life." That whole carpe diem stuff, y'know? So the first thing I did was pick all the lint out of ma bellybutton. There was a lot of lint. It was a good and productive start to the rest of my day!

new diseases

Janey left me a voice message about something she heard on the radio. That something pertaining to birds and their shit. Bird shit that has some form of chlamydia in it.

I walked out to my car after work tonight only to find a big blop of bird shit on the driver's side window. Or, should I say a big blop of sexually transmitted bird disease.

It's almost as if they (the birds) knew. Knew how much horror I was in upon hearing the new news of their diseased shit from Janey. Like the BF always tells me "they (the birds) can smell your fear."

Then for a brief minute, I ventured into uncharted territory. Yes I did. I wondered what sex with a bird would be like. Then I barfed. Literally. My mouth went sour and I choked on my own spit. My spit started to taste like feathers--not that I actually know what feathers taste like.

Now, I go and take shower. I take shower with bleach.

on an un-related bird note: Casino Royale starring my boo DAniel Craig came out on DVD today. Went to future shop: sold out, went to best buy: sold out, went to london drugs: sold out. muthafuka i was in a bad mood. my brother comes home with the dvd, which he bought for me from blockbuster. i hearts my little brother.