Prolific Immigrant

Over a year ago, I moved from blogger to WordPress (here), at which time none of the comments were transferred over. I have since cut + pasted the comments of almost 400 entries, with an approximate 300 posts left.

Additionally, I have sorted through all existing comments and cleaned up a lot of the email typos so that your gravatars** are yours alone. Greatly appreciated if you would please always ensure to use your correct email addy so that your identifying image is yours alone. Thank you! (Additionally, if you see that my avatar accidentally appears next to your name, this is why. Please let me know and I will fix it immediately.)

This site has been live since 2004 and I have exactly 832 published articles. Now that I have renamed this site, and cleaned up the existing comments, I am also categorizing and tagging each post individually. Ultimately, I wish to add new tabs across the top of the page which reflect the most important categories.

With the volume of articles, I have set aside one hour each evening to complete the following:

- Sort through 20 articles, tagging and categorizing accordingly.

- Transfer the comments of that article from blogger to here.

- If the article is interesting enough, I will update it and re-publish it as current, with a small reference at the bottom of said piece to the original date of publication.

All work will be completed by September 2nd, inshallah.

If you have any ideas for the site, or if you would like to see  more of one thing and less of another, please send your thoughts my way via email: is_maha@yahoo.com

**If you don’t like your gravatar (the image associated with your email address, when you comment), then pop over here to upload a photo of your choice. This photo will appear next to each of your comments.

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Dear Reader,

Oh look. I’ve gone and changed the title again.

As starting point, I would like to introduce you to the lunatic + lovely coupling which brought forth yours truly. I stood a small and already confused person between them. Yes, Arabs and Muslims often come in different shades than brown / terrorist.

This photo was taken well before these two stopped procreating forever and ever eternal and divorced, ensuring that the weight of their worlds rested squarely upon my lone and no-longer blond head. Thanks mum and dad; you’re nice.

Look at how happy and somewhat menacing these two people are; as though they’ve never had their photo taken before.** Or they were the first to procreate a small person. Upon closer inspection of the photo, I am clearly scared rather than confused. They are gorgeous, aren’t they? (**Also, I am kidding — Arabs know what a camera is.)

As those who read me on the regular already know, I have for the past while been searching for a common denominator through my writing, a place where I would comfortably park myself for time to come, a place in which this now seven year-old internets home may flourish and behave as the histrionic comedienne it was meant to be.

As I am painfully dense, this endeavor left me struggling for weeks until earlier today, when it finally sank in to just write what I know already (which is what everyone and their mother had previously advised).

A few days back, I thought I had arrived at Humour, in fact, but knew by the itch it left that something was missing still: a specificity to my writing.

Not only does the Prolific Immigrant leave no room for vague, it feeeeels 100% right.

My family came to Canada when I was aged four and still v v malleable to my parents’ will. We are Muslim, Palestinian, and I was born in Libya. Essentially, my identity is where all Axis of Evil points converge.

“Canadian” is how I have always identified. (POUTINE!! CALL ME!!) Only recently — not as begrudgingly as one might think — I accepted with open arms that though this remains the predominant character to my identity, it is by no means the only.

In reality I am all things Palestinian, Canadian, Muslim, female, liberal, and often: v v dumb.

Henceforth, predominant (not all) pieces here shall be love letters to my identity; the beauty of it, the challenges it has wrought upon my life, and the strength of character and pride which it has forced upon me even when I didn’t want it (and while I may still sometimes attempt to punch it in its hair).

Though it doesn’t take much for me to reach it, I trust that you are as excited by this new direction as I am.

Love,
Maha

So. I haven’t been home (here) in nearly a month. Beg your greatest pardons and thank you for all of the amazing email messages which you have sent asking after me. As for those of you who continue to yell about my absence…ehr…thank you for you well-intentioned ragey emails; you are v awkward.

I have been away because I am a lunatic who decided that I would spend approximately 15 – 20 hours per week — in the evenings and on the weekends — attempting a writing exercise to confirm whether:
1) I was a funny person
2) this funny person made their way through the written word.

The lovely folks upon whom I inflicted my brand of humour, I had never before met and I needed it to remain as such. This means that I initially scared them, made them wee in their pants, and then finally, (fingers crossed) won them over because I sent them money.

As of today, that comedic writing exercise is on hiatus until September.

I have been searching for a new theme and direction in which to take One Female Canuck, and it dawned on me yesterday: Humor. Humor is my strength, even when I am a sobbing snotting slobbering mess of a human being. (I aim to be v sexy.)

Apart from changing both the name and the design of this home, you may expect a few more things over the course of the summer months:
1) I will be reviewing all pieces, and republishing the ones worth rewriting with humour;
2) I will be indexing, tagging and categorizing all; and,
2) I will be adding new pages and slotting articles accordingly.

One Female Canuck has been a labour of love for the past 7 years. I am excited about what’s to come and hope that the changes will be to your liking else am not above offering you money.

Lots of love your way,
M
P.S. I am leaving for Turkey + Greece next week and will be on complete radio silence for a little over two weeks. (Please don’t yell at me.) All work will start rolling upon my return xx

I can’t even begin to describe how completely stoked I am to be invited to my first QUEER wedding.  On top of which, it is interracial.

I mean, do you know how many birds with one stone I am going to be killing at this wedding?  So.  Excited.

One of my girls is getting married to her girlfriend, and when she told me, my immediate email response was: Oh my God, you will have beautiful caramel coloured babies.  You’re black and she’s not and so your children…O wait!  No you won’t.  Because you’re lesbians.  Congratulations!  I love you!  So happy for you, Lesbo!

I’ll tell all y’all about how The Gays get down at this Lesbo wedding.  I expect it will be the party of the Century, and I hope someone wears a boa and platform shoes and that this someone is a man.

By the way, I was hoping to find an interracial lesbian wedding cake topper, but apparently progressive only goes so far.  I could feel the cake topper stores cutting me with their eyes as I Googled and failed.  Praise be.

NO H8!

Also, I have decided to keep writing here as a means to enjoying myself, because I love all 12 of you readers and your amazing feedback.  More importantly, I need to keep writing here because quite honestly?  Writing is like — as L would say — punching myself in the face repeatedly.  What’s more amazing is that I haven’t even actually started the writing process, but rather been thinking very hard about said writing process, and I already want to punch myself.  I am, however, still completing my other comedic writing exercise, and which I will eventually share here.

Once the comedic writing exercise takes a break for the duration of the summer, I will start the short story writing stint and also, I have decided, I will revamp this place.  I will be reshaping it and giving it a completely new feel (and even title, though it shall remain “something something….a blog by one female canuck“).

I promise to post something soon which is ridiculously stupid, as this seems the way of my writing of late.

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Image courtesy of tv tree blog.

During the spring of 2007, I was visiting my American cousins in Denver. In no particular order, their names are Dumb.Ass, Raging Maniac, and Really Just So Fkn Stupid Sometimes.

Earlier in the week, we had talked about the 8+ km hike which my girlfriends and I regularly ran at Wolf Trail in Gatineau Park. In their excitement to learn of a female cousin who moved her ass for reasons beyond landing a proper mate, they asked if I wanted to join their next hike through the Boulder region.

As I am ever curious about the male world of bonding in forests, by creeks and at the side of mountains, I eagerly accepted their invitation.

Excited in my usual way, I spent the next four nights in bed anxiously staring at the ceiling smiling at the imaginings in my head.  Surely, I would impress my cousins with feats of admirable athleticism; ahead of them, I would run through the mountain range while neither sweating nor with fuzzing hair while they lagged behind sweaty, smelly, unsmiling and begging for me to slow down.  All while I smiled and was softly lit.

On that fated day I awoke, packed and was ready to go by 6 a.m. Strapped to my back was a bean salad, much granola, a small pond in drinking jar, a notebook, the latest Britney Spears cd, and my camera. I sat by the door with my coffee and waited for my cousins to join me.

Which they did, at approximately 11 a.m., none with backpack.  None with water.  None with any semblance of sanity.  In fact, Really Fkn Stupid wore only a pair of shorts and nothing more.  (I observed that my family is some sort of white trash, though no one ever told us.)

Giggling to myself as I pulled my hair into a ponytail, I bounced out ahead of them to the SUV thinking how inside of an hour, they would be begging me for the energy of bean salad, The Ass Whisperer.

Having driven for an extended period when Dumber pulled over, we were all headed for a communal pee.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that we had in fact reached our hiking spot.

This hiking spot which was beneath the ground.  Just like Hell.

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So, Dear 12 Readers. 

That was the beginning of one of my short stories.  Short stories which I hope to complete, compile and aim for paper  publication over the course of the next while.

I have finally decided to pursue this course rather than channel all writing energies into this web-space which, though I love to an unimaginable end, does hinder my pursuit of paper publication.

Having recently begun an exercise in comedic writing intended to push me forward in this endeavor, I am both excited and exhausted at what lies ahead.  Namely…discipline and development of my Funny, the expression of which is a much more difficult task than imagined.

As such, my writing here will be slowing to a great extent, and I ask for your understanding, your support and your money for when I do eventually publish.

From time to time, I will surely come here to blubber about something personal which will not have yet made its way into a story, but otherwise…my writing and creative energies I am already channeling elsewhere.

With love,
m

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When in February of this year gorgeous Tamara helped me move my blog from Blogger to WordPress, there were near 3000 comments that never made the cut as there appears a bug in the transfer of older comments. They have since remained within my blogger domain, but there appeared no way for me to transfer them over here seamlessly unless manually, comment by comment.

And though I love all y’all’s comments, there is surely no way in hell I am going to do that. So…all comments pre Sept 2009 I am cutting and pasting as one comment per blog entry. If you look at the entry Libra Girl / Scorpio Boy Compatibility, you will note two things:
- All comments after Sept 2009 appear, as normal.
- All comments pre Sept 2009 are, once you scroll down, grouped together as one comment.

I have over 760 entries.
Remove from them the earlier days when I had comments closed.
Subtract also the regular entries where I closed the comments field.
And further subtract all written pieces since Sept 2009.
That leaves 477 posts through which I must sort.

I expect to be done within the month, if all goes well.

Thank you to each and every single one of you for this exhausting task; it’s nice to know you’re reading, thinking, reflecting and offering your own lovely thoughts so publicly.

Love you. Owe you. xo

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As many of you have already noted, I have not been doing much writing since December of 2009.  This is not because of anything specific, but rather because I have been overwhelmed by life, work and travel.  I was in Costa Rica, and then in Vancouver, and now I am preparing to travel to both Rome and London.

In the past, I used to carry my laptop with me on every single trip, something which I have foolishly stopped doing.  To Rome and London my little writing friend will join me and so force me to write write write and not feel so sad that I have not been writing.  So much more of the same amazing sentences as this later; no doubt you are all over the moon.

Additionally, I feel as though I must offer a shout-out to life, because this bastard has kept me from writing as often as I would like.  My God, I am a supreme asshole for ‘Boo Hoo’ing because my social circle, family circle and travel circle are generally filled with amazing things that remove me from the front of a computer screen.  Pardon me as I take a moment to reflect on my assholeishness.

Right.  Now that that’s done, I will add that tonight is the very first night in nearly a month that I have taken to myself.  I had some invites to see and visit with good people I adore and I instead said Screw you and your invitation to socialize, I’d rather make out with WordPress…only, it sounded more like I would really love to but need to go home, do a load of laundry and just chill out while doing a little writing.  It’s been ages since I forced myself to do that and it’s making me sad and edgy. So thank you for the invite, but I’m going to have to take a rain check. I am rambly that way.

So here I am.  And I am excited to be here and rambling away.

I have also promised myself that I would write no matter what; that even if I were tired and exhausted, I would still force myself to exercise my writing muscle.  Quite possibly, this means that there will be a consortium of shorter and shittier entries.  Hurrah!

This is the first of many such short and shitty entries.  More to come!  Enjoy.

(Note that: I am tonight organizing both my Vancouver pics, as well as my Costa Rica pics.  Stories about both very soon.)

Blogger vs. WordPress?

WordPress wins.

Right.  So, as with any fantastical theater production, much has to happen behind the scenes before any successfull measure of anything.  My God, succesfull / sucessfull / successful is a difficult word to spell.  (FYI, it is composite of a double ‘c’, double ‘s’ and lone ‘l’.)

Recently, Blogger sent a really lovely ‘fuck you’ to those who use FTP something or other to publish to their own site.  I don’t know much of anything about anything, let alone the sociopath  to which we politely refer as ‘technology’, but I do know that what Blogger did was really rather mean and bullying.

FTP publishing, in Mahanese is simple: I used to use the software provided by Blogger – there, I would write up my little entries, press a virtual button, and Blogger would then take this entry and ‘push / publish’ it on to my onefemalecanuck.com immediately.  Easy.  Until they decided to delete this ‘push / publish’ heaven sent, because only .5% of their users utilize it.  ‘No Blogger Left Behind’ is not Blogger’s motto, it would seem.

Over the years, I have heard from every single one of my eight friends that WordPress is the way to go; that it is much more user friendly and intuitive.  Also, they don’t tend to ‘fuck you’ any writer, no matter how teeny tiny their world may be.

And so, I have moved here, and am typing this within the interface that is provided by WordPress.  Already, I like it more because it’s prettier.

I owe this transition to T, who very patiently answered all of my panicked (one ‘c’ and an additional ‘k’) rambly questions and concerns.  I am certain it helps our friendship a great deal that she has two very young daughters, and so the communications tricks she uses with them, she also uses with me.  For those of you unfamiliar with T, or would like to contact her re her exceptional website creations, please note that you may find her here.  (Thank you.  Love you.  Owe you.)

Good morning everyone – It feels as though I have to do this more and more often as of late…

I was away again the past few days and got back in only last night. I am about to head off to the lovely new england parts of the US and then a week post my return, to Tunisia. For this reason, I have been really quite lax in my focus on writing for this blog (& not so sure I will get anything in to rabble for July) – thank you for your wonderful and kind and generous emails. The ones necessitating a response, I will respond to soon enough (though not right now). New entries here will be sparse for the next little while because of my travel schedule; I promised some stories, and those you will have (though not right now).

Speak soon and enjoy the summer warmth…xxoo

Hi all. About to observe a little radio silence for next few days, as day job is topsy turvy fun *and* I’ve just completed my June contribution to rabble.ca, which was an exhausting piece to write (will post here upon my return to the interWeb). It is extremely dense and I have a terrible tension headache, most certainly my brain is trying to break up with me. In short, it is a word of caution about the possible misunderstanding and blowback of spin re iran ‘reformists’. If you wish to read it before next week, then just keep an eye on rabble over coming days.

Also, will start responding to all delinquent emails after this short absence from interWeb/mobile/email noise (Clay, your email is no.1).

Have a good rest and see you next week…xxoo

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