How often do you actually have the balls to say exactly what's on your mind? How often do you censor your own words because you don't want to offend someone? I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing: There is a time and a place for everything, as they say... For example, I try not to say "fuck" and "shit" in the classroom, and I encourage the students to do the same. I want to encourage a positive learning environment for everyone, and there are some students who find foul language offensive. It's the same reason why I ask the students to turn off the gunfire sounds on their laptops when they play whatever shoot-em-up game they're playing. But sometimes I think we take it too far. I think sometimes there is a time and a place when you can feel free to say what's on your mind.

It's my weblog, dammit. I will say what's on my mind, and if that happens to be the truth and you don't like it, well, sometimes the truth fucking sucks, baby.

*Wendi steps off the soapbox*

I never finished the Blackout Journal so here it is:

After I finished writing, I got bored again, so I ate the rest of the salad and dug up my old star wheel. The star wheel is one of the remnants my ex husband left behind. It's these two round pieces of thin carboard joined in the centre, so that they are concentric circles and the smaller one on top can rotate over the other. On the uncovered edges of the bottom wheel are labelled marks for the months and dates, and the edges of the top wheel have the time of day in a 24-hour clock, and the four compass directions. First you turn the wheels so that the current date/month is matched up with the current time. Then you look for the arrow marked "North" and stand so that it's pointing North. The bottom wheel, the part covered by the top wheel, has a big star map of the sky. The Top wheel has a section of it cut out and replaced with clear plastic, so that when you line the wheels up correctly and face the right direction, the window reveals how the stars should appear in the sky. With the darkness so complete it is easy to pick out the starts, but I am still totally delighted when I actually found some. [Afterthought: I heard later that it was a wonderful time to spot Mars in the sky, but unfortunately I my apartment is facing the wrong way, and the spot where Mars was, was hidden by my own building.]

As I'm watching stars, the courtyard is still alive. People have been calling and whooping pretty steadily, and waving flashlights at each other. Disembodied voices are having conversations across the chasm of darkness. No one knows who anyone is, and no one cares; everyone is having too much fun. A game is being played with no apparent rules: People with flashlights are trying to find each other. They see a source of light and try to beam their own directly at it, and the source tries to find the source of the light searching for them. It's as if two beings who don't know each other's language have found a silent way of communicating, and even though neither knows what the other is saying, it doesn't matter -- it's the act of communicating that matters. As I'm looking at one source of light to my right, I see my own shadow on the wall of the building about 75 feet away. Someone is illuminating me, but I don't turn around to stare into the light -- I am fascinated at the shadow of myself, how I am leaning on my balcony railing, and how I can even see my hair falling around my head. Whoever is shining the light on me gets bored when I don't turn around, and the light goes away. Someone in the darkness below calls out, "Anyone got a light?!!" and another voice in the building across and to the left replies, "Yo, I got a light if you got some weed!!" Voices all around me cheer.

After 30 minutes of watching stars I'm getting a pain in my neck from craning it up towards the sky. The guy with the weed must have found the guy with the light, because down below in the Burger King drive through are a group of people sitting in a circle by the dim glow of a car's hazzard lights. They appear to be enjoying themselves.

At 12pm, I am still awake. I tried to go to bed, but the generator powering the emergency lights in the building's stairwells must be right beside my bedroom. It rumbles irregularly and very loudly. I take my pillows and blankets into the living room and camp on the futon, but when I put my head to the pillow and I can still hear and feel the generator shaking my skull. I go out onto the balcony again and notice lights around western Burlington. A bit of hope flares, but also frustration -- why am I still sitting in the dark if they have light?

I am still bored and wide awake. I feel adventurous. I decide to do my nails. As I'm taking off the old polish I realize that I have an open bottle of nail polish remover near the open flame from my candles. I feel bold: next thing you know, I'll be running with scissors... and it will probably still be dark, too...

I pass the time doing my nails, trying to read, and writing in my journal. I finally fall into a half-doze. At 2:30am the power to the streetlights and traffic lights came on. I know this because suddenly my dark living room has a pinkish glow, and I instinctively know this is from the light outside. I jump up and look out the windows. The plaza downstairs has power too, so I know the pub will be okay for the party tomorrow.

At 4:35, I'm awoken from another half-doze by a flash of light and a whooshing rumble. I sit up and try to shake off the haze in my brain. Just as I realize that my kitchen light and refrigerator has come on, they're off again. I jump up again and look outside. I don't see any more lights than were on before, but I have more hope that they will be on soon. I go back to the futon and fall asleep waiting.

At 6am I am awoken by my bladder. I really need to use a bathroom!!! I need coffee!! The 24-hour coffee shop downstairs has a bathroom, and I hope they've been making coffee. I venture downstairs to the coffee shop. Relieved in more ways than one, I buy a coffee with the rest of my change. I head back up the stairs and wash my hair in a bucket of water in the sink, change my clothes, and head back downstairs a while later. I use the bank machine (which I luckily caught when during it's 30-minute operability!), buy another coffee, and phone Dave's house. I chat with Dave's mom, and she gives me another update on the power outage. She is also going with the lightening strike theory. She offers to let me and the cat stay with them until I have water and power, since they got theirs back at 2:30am. I said I might if nothing happened by noon. I bought four more litres of water and brought them upstairs, then decided to go to work and see if there was power there, or anyone like me who would bother going in just to see what was happening. I figured if they had power, then my students with exams in other classes would be around to chat with. I met up with a couple on the way there and they said that the college was shut down. On the way back I meet up with Dave, so we have a coffee and chat. I give him my cell phone and battery to charge for me.

After he leaves I go up to my apartment and sit on my balcony with another coffee and the grade 9 geography book. For a couple of hours I am lost in reading about the layers of the Earth's crust, and I realize that something is pulling at my consciousness. Some guys are out on their balcony yelling, so I put down the book and listen to what they're saying: the power is back on! I turn around and look through my screen door. Sure enough, my kitchen light is on.

I leap inside and the first thing I do is flush the toilet in the bathroom, but there is no water yet. Then I turn on the TV to see what the news has to say about the power. I watch for a bit, then pack my journal and a book into my backpack and head down to the pub.

[Afterthoughts: Our water came back on at 4pm!!! It was definitely an enlightening experience. I learned many things -- that I need to learn to live a little more without technology, that I am not prepared for a blackout, and that, like most people, I take a lot for granted. I heard some awful stories from others.. I think the worst was from a friend of Dave's who was in his car with his small daughter, and they were running out of gas, but when he pulled into the station to fill up the power went out. He was stuck there for five hours in a hot car with a little girl, because he didn't have enough gas to get home. Ugh! Well, I've gotten myself a nice little emergency kit going, stocked with things to eat and do, and some batteries. I still have to get a battery-operated radio for it, and I wouldn't mind having something I can cook a can of soup over. Dare I think of it, but then it might be fun to camp out on the balcony with the radio, eating hot soup from the can...

I am an ugly boy with no penis, and this makes me really self-conscious. I wish I had a bigger dick!!! Please, I have no friends and am really depressed.. I need some new friends! Drop me an email at 919s@vista.com if you'd like to be my friend!!

Posted by online poker @ 01/21/2005 10:20 AM EST

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