Fandom Surprise.

Thanks to Nick, I am now aware of the fact that Bruce Campbell is in Burn Notice. Why I didn't know already is beyond me. Now I have a lot of catching up to do.

What a silver fox, ladies and gentlemen. Also, Evil Dead remake? Still not excited. More like... cautiously optimistic.

Adultlescence: Dare to be Stupid

The other night, I went to a Zumba class with about a dozen of my employees. The whole shebang is being paid for by OUR boss, who is a wonderfully generous man, as a kick-off to the new 'Plan for Wellness' program that he has developed to keep his employees happy and healthy. Let me say again, this is out of his own pocket. This is money he could use for whatever he wanted, but he's chosen to invest in his crew. I've been so excited for this event, but it has been almost a trial to get the rest of the store on board. The thing about taking a group of inexperienced kids to a dance aerobics class for the first time is simple. No one knows what they're doing and everyone is afraid to look like an asshole.

Does that sound ridiculous to anyone but me? We aren't invited to go to this event to present a choreographed masterpiece, we're there to have a good time and get some exercise. But I guess I can understand why they feel the way they do. Doing anything for the first time will always be at least a little scary.

Does anyone else remember Weird Al Yankovic? He did a bunch of ridiculous music parodies in the 80's and 90's including Dare to be Stupid. Can you guess what the song is about by its title? We take ourselves way too seriously, my friends. Why do we walk around with our heads held high like we don't fall down sometimes too? Like our you-know-whats don't stink. It isn't how many times we fall down to pick ourselves up, it is all about how hard we get to laugh at ourselves for falling down to begin with. There are few talents that I admire more in others than their ability to laugh at their mistakes.

Every one of my employees who came out (except for one certain Mauly girl who was amped before she got into the building. ) had that same initial look of uncertainty in their eyes while we waited for the class to start. No one really knew what was going to happen, no one knew what they were expected to do.To be honest, I didn't care for it too much either, but we all know how much I like to be in control.

The only way to keep them to worry about how much of an idiot they probably looked like, my boss, my champions and I took it upon ourselves to out-stupid anyone who was having those feelings. We ran around and cheered and tried to keep everyone focused on us and away from worrying about themselves.

Needless to say, it worked. By the time the class was into its second song, no one cared if they didn't know the moves and certainly didn't care that anyone else around them didn't. It was a wonderful time and I'm excited to see this program flourish.

But why does it even matter? I've always been a bit of a screw up, but I like to think I can laugh at myself. Have you seen my smile? That would be the best example I can give you. As much as I would like to have a perfect, pretty smile, I like to think of my gap tooth as being a badge of honour. I did something stupid one night and I will (hopefully not for much longer) sport my crooked teeth with a smile.

It isn't even about being afraid to be foolish, or be thought of as odd, or anything else that has your mind tied up and holds you back from doing something ridiculous for a change. Dare to be yourself, dare to be different. Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

One Follows, One Leads.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty fantastic. Apparently.

Today, an employee and friend posted a link to his brand new blog on Facebook. First post, first blog! Good for him! I left a reply to the link, welcoming him to the blogosphere, and got a response I wasn't expecting. Can you believe that I, me, moi, inspired him to start a blog of his own? this is exactly what I wanted this space to accomplish. I made one person decide to create something of their own. One more Adultlescent is speaking up and making us heard.

The other day, I was linked to this video. I don't know if Ze, the creator, really counts as an Adultlescent anymore, but I think he really captures the message quite well. not only in this video, but in all of them. Check them out! At one point in the vlog (video blog, Dad.) he talks about becoming culturally irrelevant. As he gets older, he is growing further and further from the world 'optimized for the young'. This must be a scary concept for him. It scares me too. I have a short time span where my ideas are "young" and "fresh" before I just become another hack would-be writer in her late thirties who has done nothing worthwhile. The thing that really grabbed me, though, wasn't Ze explaining the fear of growing old, but this one comment I saw floating below the video. It was a single sentence and it summed up this entire project beautifully.

"I'm 23 and I'm scared of never ever being culturally relevant at all." - aloneinkyoto000

This over anything is my biggest worry. I may never make it big, I'm totally fine with that. I'm scared that none of my ideas are actually worth squat in the real world. That I am just a peon for the real 'grown-ups' and some day I'll do the same thing to the up and coming kids of the next generation. This is why I don't want to create in this space. I NEED to. If all we do is consume and never create, we've stopped growing. Each and every one of us has the ability to create, but we're so busy with our big girl lives that we don't.

That's why it makes me so happy that Nick has chosen to blog as well. His blog only has the one post as of yet, but in it you can see him so perfectly. It makes me so happy. You can read his blog here. (Keep writing, Nick! Have fun with it!)

Another interesting little notion in my blogger life: I have a follower now. I'm pretty sure I know who she is, a friend of a friend of a friend of mine that I've only met a handful of times. That made my heart (and ego) swell so much that someone is so interested in my thoughts. That just means that there is at least one other person out there who agrees with me and wants to hear what I have to say. That's so fantastic! It is an honour.

But for the next few days, I'm sorry to anyone who has to listen to me rave about my internet fame. My over-inflated ego needs to be taken down a notch.

Isn't She Lovely

It really astounds me how much hate there is in the world today when each and every one of us was created out of love. Two people loved each other, for years, or for hours (or possibly just minutes), and here we are to celebrate that.

Excerpt: Oh the Places You will Go

His eyes gazed upwards as they always did on nights as clear as this. It looked like any other star on the canvas of night sky, but he knew it was Earth. He'd always loved that comparison. The night sky was a large blue-black blanket that tucked the planets into sleep and the stars were like tiny picks and pinholes in the fabric that let the night light shine through and keep away the monsters. As he looked up at it, he tried to feel the distance. it was impossible. It was beyond his reach, beyond the distance his feet could cover or would ever in his lifetime. Even the shuttle that brought him here from there could not give the span any definition. From the transparent aluminum windows for hours and hours, the only indication of movement was the growing and shrinking of worlds. It just didn't feel real. The iridescent blue speck was, for all intents and purposes, accessible but not in the least attainable.

There was just something about light travel that was still too unfathomable for Henry to entirely believe. It was all just some clever trick of the government. Smoke and mirrors. Even if it were true (and he had all of the evidence to prove it was) it would never be enough. There was always something beyond and beyond and beyond. He wanted to see it all. He wanted to go and do and touch and taste. It would never be enough.

From the imagination of Ray Bradbury and into his textbooks, space travel had become real and was steadily becoming more real every year. Some day, he smiled wistfully to himself, I will dip m feet in the warm waters of Venus. I will scream into the yawning eye of the great raging storm on Jupiter and i will conquer all fears. I will dance on Pluto while it waltzes on the brink with its moon. I will seduce Andromida and make her my wife. It is only a matter of time.

He stubbed out his cigarette and flipped the still-smouldering butt into the gutter. The only way to make any of these things a reality would be to ace his final exams and it was already crunch time. He clicked the lock behind him as he returned inside to his dorm. At his desk he shuffled through mountains of loose pages with no discernible organization. Peeking out near the bottom of the stack was the colourful corner of a children's book Henry had received as a gift from his family's nanny the day he left for Mars. He chuckled to himself when the bright colours caught his attention and wiggled the thin hardcover out from the mess.

It had seemed like such a cliche at the time. it was an ancient story written long ago, and would have likely gone out of print centuries ago if it weren't for nannies and grannies and distant relatives shucking the nonsense onto graduates.

"Oh the places I'll go" He said aloud, if only to himself. maybe that old cow wasn't so bad after all.

Remember Remember the 5th of November. I Mean the 11th.

As long as we have the right to stand proud as free people, there will never be peace. That is the greatest misfortune of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Our individuality will constantly set up barriers between you and I. But this is our duty, now. We puff out our chests and we stand for what we as individuals believe is right. No, not what we believe. What we know to be right and true, even if it is only true for some, or even for one. Reality is largely subjective and I am the optimistic little girl who still believes reality can be gentle and forgiving and merciful.

This isn't true for all of us. It can't be true. Not even for Canadians as a whole, who are celebrated as being the peacekeepers. Looking around at the hundreds of faces in the crowd today at the ceremony, I could see countless men and women in their fancy pressed uniforms, military, RCMP, police officers, all who must every day push aside the nagging question "Is this the day I will die in service of my country?" It isn't the land and sea and trees that they are fighting to protect, it is you and I and our decisions as free Canadian citizens that they are fighting for.

I will continue to be a pacifist. I will fight every battle I can with my words than my fists. I will forever disagree with brute force to accomplish political agendas, but because of those same military forces, I am free to express it. My life as I know it will be eternally in debt to those men and women who laid down their lives so that we all can live in a brighter world. I can forgive our old enemies from decades ago, but that will never be able to take away from my gratitude to those of us who apposed them. Lest we forget.

Adultlescence: Let Me Explain

In Canada, it always feels like it's cold. Even in the summer, there is a cold breeze as the sun goes down that reminds you that winter is always just around the corner. It is with that same kind of chilled autumn feeling that I see adulthood with. I don't know how or why, but my thoughts and feelings for the future have faded from an effervescent bauble of science fiction joy into this dirty, grey-brown mud of responsibility and safe choices. Some days I need to remind myself that my life isn't ending, that it's just beginning.

That is why I need to write this, my think. Some days, after a long day of being a grown up making grown up decisions, I come home and my apartment is so cold. Its cold in the way that adulthood is cold. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but on days when my finger tips are tingling and two sweaters doesn't seem like enough, I have such a hard time trying to be a reckless, naive child. The summer is over and now I must prepare for the long winter ahead.

But that's not true at all! I still get to dance around my house with the radio blaring. I still get to play my video games for hours at a a time. I still get to have fun. That is the hardest thing I need to understand about growing up. I don't have to be serious and responsible all the time. I don't really have to be anything at any time. Being an adult is whatever I want it to be! (Check out this webcomic to see what I mean). My parents laid down a solid foundation in my formative years, but I don't have to answer to anyone anymore. Well, that's not true. There's still the government, the police, my bosses... okay, there's a lot of people who I need to answer to, but I am nobody's charge. My piles of responsibilities that I oh so often complain about are all my own. I don't have to do anything I don't want to.




I named my blog "May Again" because of the phonetic pronunciation of my name. I am not MEE-gan, I'm not MAH-gan. I explain it like this: Another year goes by, and it is MAY again. Maygan. Megan. Get it? I just really hate it when people call me MEEgan, I think it's ugly. I started writing it as an exercise to keep me writing. before I started keeping this blog, I was working on a novel that outgrew me. I couldn't write about anything else except this one story, so when I was at a wall in the plot, all productivity shut down. Keeping a blog meant I had a place to shunt auxiliary ideas without taking away from my novel. (Which I've given up on. It needs a total re-write.)

I've started a project here on my blog that I call "Adultlescence". Basically, it is a look at my life, and the lives of the people close to me, and how growing up hasn't been at all what we were expecting. We don't have the awesome jobs we thought we'd have, we don't have the super cool apartments with a ball pit and an arcade like we were expecting when we were kids. There aren't any Disney romances, and the nobody cares about your problems as much as you do. (Except maybe your mom)

'Tweens' get their own demographic, and for some reason that bothers me. I can only assume its because I am jealous that we 20-somethings don't. We aren't teenagers anymore, and hardly anyone considers us 'adult'. So what are we? I've heard 'Students' a fair bit (as in: apartment for rent, no students) but that hasn't fit for me for as long as the word 'teenager' has been inaccurate. I've also been called a 'young professional' but what the fuck does that mean? I mean beyond the fact that I have a job, how can that be a title? I wouldn't call my employer an 'elderly professional' and it would be offensive to do so. "Adultlesence" is an attempt to qualify this feeling of homelessness. Or really, it is to attempt to give a voice to a demographic that goes largely unheard.

I'm glad I picked "May Again" for my blog title, even if it was a little at random at the time. I like it because some days, when it is cold, it reminds me to be optimistic. The nights are longer, the sky is pearly grey instead of blue, but all it takes is patience and perspective. Nothing is dark forever. The snow will melt eventually, and soon we can all pull out our shorts and sleeveless tops again, even if the air still has a bite to it and our skin turns into goosebumps. I just need to keep reminding myself it'll be May again.

Halloween poem

Inspiration has been sparse lately. I wrote this walking to my Doog's house one day last month and I wasn't planning on posting it. As you can tell, I'm not a poet.

You poor October tree.
Withered and dry, your vitality
Stolen, once so tall and strong,
Brittle.
Tightened.
Once reaching up now recoiling.
Shivering against the cold.
Shrinking back,
Crying and creaking its tired bones.

Short Story - Haunting and Celebration

Ladies and Gentlemen! Nanowrimo is here and I haven't done a thing for it. I was looking forward to it for so long, but here it is, November 4th, and I haven't even begun. I haven't built a plot line, I haven't designed a main character, I haven't done anything. Maybe this year just isn't going to happen. Or maybe I've just become so preoccupied with blogging about women's rights that I haven't had much time to think of much else. Most likely, I am making excuses for myself and I'm just incredibly lazy.

In any case, in honour of all of the true writers out there, I'm posting my rejected short story for Asimov's Science Fiction for you all to enjoy. But let me warn you, it is a piece of work that is entirely self-gratifying and has very little literal value. But if you were a Bradbury fan, you may like it.

Adultlescence: Let This be a Lesson to You.

Every weekday, at precisely 12:20pm, the kids from a nearby junior high school flood my restaurant like a plague. They aren't bad kids at heart. Not really. Their hour out of class for lunch is their first taste of unsupervised freedom and they don't know how to handle it yet. They yell and throw things and make a mess because no one is there to tell them not to. Sure, we have our own management hierarchy in the store, but what 12 year old is impressed by a polyester tie?

I must seem absolutely ridiculous to them. Which is fair. But little boy, when I am telling you off for grabbing a girl your age and holding her against her will, I am not scolding you as an authority figure. I am yelling at you as one pissed off person to another who has done something wrong. I don't care who you are, how old you are, who your parents are, or what colour your skin is. I am not going to stand idly by and watch a girl be physically harrassed.

"It was just a joke. We're just playing." he says to me. Oh? And what part of this is funny? No, dear child, this is no joke. What this little boy is doing is teaching this girl why it is right to be afraid. She is obviously unable to get free of him, but he is a friend, right? He wouldn't really hurt her, right? All of her friends are looking at them and laughing. Yeah, maybe it is scary, but maybe she's just being sensitive. She shouldn't cause a scene. She shouldn't speak up or tell him no. Everyone is just having a good time. She should just play along. Ha ha ha.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings on two completely innocent children. What what if I'm right, though? What if that little girl was afraid and needed someone to speak up for her because she felt like she couldn't?

Does that seem like a big deal to you? Two kids 'playing' in the lobby. Would you have said anything? Or would you have let kids be kids? This aggressive behavior toward women isn't something that boys are born with, it is something they learn from watching adults. (Hey, that's us!)

Men, sure, I can't hold it against you that you are the way you are. Girls are no better. In some ways we're worse, but that is a long-winded discussion for another day. You are who you are, and I don't expect you to change because a girl on the internet told you to. Just for a second, put yourself in that girl's father's shoes. Is that how you would want your daughter to be treated? Your sister? Your mother, bless that saint? And what if you are partially to blame for it happening? Monkey see, monkey do, and these little monkeys need a proper example set for them.

In my last post, I tried to call out my fellow ladies to stand up for themselves and each other, but men, this is for you. We can't do it alone. It is one thing for me to stand up to some school bully, and I can only hope it is a start in many steps that boy needs to take to understand gender equality, but I wasn't alone in that building. What about you, gentlemen? If you don't start standing up for what is right, us girls are going to have a much harder uphill battle. I'm not asking you to put yourself at risk, like jumping between a rapist and his victim or something. That's just damned crazy, don't get yourself killed. Just call the cops. But just think about it. Every time you laugh at a joke about women, you're laughing at your mother, your aunt, your sister, your niece. These are the situations where you gentlemen could save us a lot of grief. Show those jerks giving your gender a bad name what's what. Tell them it isn't funny. Or Hell, just don't laugh. Don't encourage them.

Set the example, be the gentleman. Help us to succeed.