Whee! for not enough sleep.
I haven't been talking to my stepdad yet, but Mom liked Adam. Except she said the weirdest thing: he reminds her of Moroney. I mean, that's not a bad thing, my parents liked Moroney, but Adam is NOTHING like him. I have this thing, every single guy I date is completely and utterly different from the others. If I meet a dude who's too much like one of my exes, I'm like "didn't I break upwith you already?" and then I run away. Far away. Not because I have any real animosity towards them, but just because I fear falling into a pattern. Patterns are icky and I refuse to have a "type."
So we went to see Madagascar, and what can I say...it really wasn't good. There were some funny parts, like the monkeys talking about flinging poo, but most of the jokes were replayed ad nauseum and when the credits started rolling I was still waiting for some kind of plot to come into play. Blah.
It was, however, interesting to watch the movie from a vegan perspective. There are quite a few movies (Ice Age being, in my opinion, the best) that address the carnivore conundrum, i.e. making friends with the person who's supposed to be your food. I know that Keith, for one, objects to my referring to non-human animals as "people" even though he's a tofu head too. But, preferred terminology aside, I couldn't help but think that this movie has probaby been used by McDonald's or BK to sell cheeseburgers. Which is kind of disturbing because it's about someone finding out that their food has a face and a personality.
But anyway, I always watch this kind of film with curiosity to see how they treat the subject and how they resolve it. Ice Age didn't really ever resolve it, but they left the topic hanging in kind of a melancholy way, quietly acknowledging the impenetrability of certain moral issues. But Madagascar completely copped out, becoming in the end an advertisement for pesco-vegetarianism (a misnomer, in my opinion: if you eat fish you can qualify for the "tofu head" title but you're not a vegetarian) by giving every animal in the film a personality EXCEPT the fish. Kind of like Dreamworks' badly-written response to Pixar's absolutely wonderful yet predictably over-merchandised Finding Nemo. It reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago called "The Sexual Politics of Meat" and I wish I could remember the author's name, but she talks about something called the "Absent referrant," and how ignoring the individuality of a living thing is a psychological mechanism that allows human beings to justify both meat eating and rape. Really interesting book, I highly recommend it although it's not exactly light reading.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Monday, June 27, 2005
Long rambling post
Most excellent weekend. Not only was it finally SUNNY and BRUTALLY HOT, which is exactly the way I like it, but for Allan and Lisa's birthday a bunch of us went to the the Thirsty Duck and drank beer for something like 3 hours, before going to the Pogue and where the hot frontman for the band loved us because we shared his taste in cover songs. Then at Pacifico JennJenn was supposed to meet her loverboy but she ran into this Hottie McHotness from grad night and pawned him off on Lisa (who was more than happy to take him off her hands). Crazy antics all around.
Sunday night was an even wilder party, with the family throwing a surprise party for my grandmother (she was NOT surprised) where everybody ate KFC and I gagged and my grandmother ate lobster and I looked straight at my pasta salad so that I wouldn't hurl. Even when I wasn't a tofu head I thought lobster was icky.
Ok now I'm shuddering. Happy thoughts anyone? Still trying to figure out how to get to Rollo Bay for the festival.
And Adam's meeting my parents tonight. My parents have been nagging about it and I know that they'll feel much better about me shacking up with him while his roomates are away, if they actually know who he is. So Mom's first question was, "Does he eat meat?" I swear she actually grinned when I said yes. Silly Mom. So she's making him steak and I cut a deal with him...I won't make faces at him while he eats cow, and I get to pick the movie we watch tonight. This is very important because we have very different taste in movies. We can agree on stuff like Rain Man and Spirited Away...but then he'll make me watch crap like Titus which was HORRIBLE. Ok, let's watch people do awful things to other people and then people do bad things back and then everybody is dead. The end. So, I get to choose today. I pick Madagascar. Funny animals that talk. Aaaand, end of tangent.
My brother is also moving in for the summer because he has a job in the city. My baby brother is now 18 and is getting a tatoo. It's sick and wrong. He's too young to be a legal adult, and he will always be too young.
Interesting article in the Chronicle Herald today about tidal power. This used to be a really questionable form of energy production because it required putting dams in place that messed with marine ecology and all that jazz. Now apparently there has been success with a model that is basically like an upside-down wind turbine in the water. Water is more effective at pushing the blades so they can be smaller than air turbines but still produce the same amount of energy, and they're slow-moving enough to have a minimal impact on mobile marine wildlife. It's finally beginning to be recognized that the answer to the energy problem is probably NOT huge plants, but rather a diversity of smaller local, green options. Which is interesting, because I read last week or whenever that Candu reactors are being largely rejected by the international community in favour of higher-output reactors, even though Candus are meltdown-proof and apparently a really high-quality power plant. Nuclear power is sketchy, with the nuclear waste issue and all, but they're now being largely paraded as the only answer to the global warming issue...and global warming is pretty sketchy, too. I know there are questions being raised about it, and it's all very confusing. Selene says she has an edition of Mother Jones about how most of the climate-change dissentors in the scientific community are being subversively paid by Exxon Mobil or something? I don't like to blindly believe everything put out by the leftist/environmental movement, but Exxon Mobil is sketchy, too. So who the hell knows what to believe? Anyway, I'm a huge believer in energy conservation and green (non-nuclear) energy, but it seems very likely that those can only take us so far... and when weighing the evils between a dependence on fossil fuels and the nuclear sketchiness, then hey, small nuclear power plants as part of a diversified clean energy program just might come out on top. Comments?
Sunday night was an even wilder party, with the family throwing a surprise party for my grandmother (she was NOT surprised) where everybody ate KFC and I gagged and my grandmother ate lobster and I looked straight at my pasta salad so that I wouldn't hurl. Even when I wasn't a tofu head I thought lobster was icky.
Ok now I'm shuddering. Happy thoughts anyone? Still trying to figure out how to get to Rollo Bay for the festival.
And Adam's meeting my parents tonight. My parents have been nagging about it and I know that they'll feel much better about me shacking up with him while his roomates are away, if they actually know who he is. So Mom's first question was, "Does he eat meat?" I swear she actually grinned when I said yes. Silly Mom. So she's making him steak and I cut a deal with him...I won't make faces at him while he eats cow, and I get to pick the movie we watch tonight. This is very important because we have very different taste in movies. We can agree on stuff like Rain Man and Spirited Away...but then he'll make me watch crap like Titus which was HORRIBLE. Ok, let's watch people do awful things to other people and then people do bad things back and then everybody is dead. The end. So, I get to choose today. I pick Madagascar. Funny animals that talk. Aaaand, end of tangent.
My brother is also moving in for the summer because he has a job in the city. My baby brother is now 18 and is getting a tatoo. It's sick and wrong. He's too young to be a legal adult, and he will always be too young.
Interesting article in the Chronicle Herald today about tidal power. This used to be a really questionable form of energy production because it required putting dams in place that messed with marine ecology and all that jazz. Now apparently there has been success with a model that is basically like an upside-down wind turbine in the water. Water is more effective at pushing the blades so they can be smaller than air turbines but still produce the same amount of energy, and they're slow-moving enough to have a minimal impact on mobile marine wildlife. It's finally beginning to be recognized that the answer to the energy problem is probably NOT huge plants, but rather a diversity of smaller local, green options. Which is interesting, because I read last week or whenever that Candu reactors are being largely rejected by the international community in favour of higher-output reactors, even though Candus are meltdown-proof and apparently a really high-quality power plant. Nuclear power is sketchy, with the nuclear waste issue and all, but they're now being largely paraded as the only answer to the global warming issue...and global warming is pretty sketchy, too. I know there are questions being raised about it, and it's all very confusing. Selene says she has an edition of Mother Jones about how most of the climate-change dissentors in the scientific community are being subversively paid by Exxon Mobil or something? I don't like to blindly believe everything put out by the leftist/environmental movement, but Exxon Mobil is sketchy, too. So who the hell knows what to believe? Anyway, I'm a huge believer in energy conservation and green (non-nuclear) energy, but it seems very likely that those can only take us so far... and when weighing the evils between a dependence on fossil fuels and the nuclear sketchiness, then hey, small nuclear power plants as part of a diversified clean energy program just might come out on top. Comments?
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Doggies!
As usual, I'm idle at work and killing time...I just came across this and it's so sweet...the stories of street dogs in Bangkok. It reminded me of Costa Rica, where there are stray dogs everywhere and it just breaks your heart. They wander in and out of sodas (small open-air restaurants) and nobody pays any attention to them. They're generally really sweet animals but they're just covered in fleas and ticks and mange. I imagined my dogs living that way and I just wanted to bring them all home and make them healthy again.
It also took me a while to figure out what was so unusual about the dogs in Costa Rica. Then one morning I was sitting in Soda Frank in Playa Jaco (incidentally, if you're ever in the area, Soda Frank makes THE BEST gallo pinto I tasted during the 6 weeks I was in the country, and I ate pinto every chance I got so I consider myself somnewhat of an authority on the subject, at least for a born-and-raised Canadian girl). A dog wandered in and then it hit me: stray dogs have testicles. It just looks really silly, especially having grown up surrounded by neutered animals. But that's my Costa Rica story for the day. I'm feeling so desperate to go back that I need to appease the urge by talking about it constantly. But without further ado, I give you the street dogs of Bangkok.
http://bkkstreetdogs.blogspot.com/2005/01/welcome-from-casanova.html
It also took me a while to figure out what was so unusual about the dogs in Costa Rica. Then one morning I was sitting in Soda Frank in Playa Jaco (incidentally, if you're ever in the area, Soda Frank makes THE BEST gallo pinto I tasted during the 6 weeks I was in the country, and I ate pinto every chance I got so I consider myself somnewhat of an authority on the subject, at least for a born-and-raised Canadian girl). A dog wandered in and then it hit me: stray dogs have testicles. It just looks really silly, especially having grown up surrounded by neutered animals. But that's my Costa Rica story for the day. I'm feeling so desperate to go back that I need to appease the urge by talking about it constantly. But without further ado, I give you the street dogs of Bangkok.
http://bkkstreetdogs.blogspot.com/2005/01/welcome-from-casanova.html
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Corner$tore: the ultimate tourist destination
There's an annual conference that is held on campus every summer. The participants do lots of leadership-y things, madiatiation, and, allegedly, have kinky group sex...although I don't buy that one for a second. Adam blames it on my inherent trust of hippies. I say boo-erns to him. I did housekeeping for them a couple years ago...no signs of group sex. But whatever. They're nice people and I've been giving directions on what's worth seeing in the city, which makes me feel quasi-important. Plus we're getting rid of a bunch of Metro Transit maps that would otherwise just sit in the store until they became obselete and we threw them away. So yay for that.
In other news, it's been remarked that my postings are always indicated as having been posted abnormally early in the morning. Let me state for the record that I am not in the habit of getting out of bed before 6:30 unless travel (preferably international) is involved, and under no circumstances am I fully functioning before 8am.
Anybody know of any good movies to watch? I'm waiting for War of the Worlds to come out on the 29th, not because I'm a huge fan of Tom Cruise or anything but because I used to watch the fantastically cheap, tacky tv show when i was a kid, and although the movie's unlikely to have any similarities to the show I'm still dying to see it. Same with Bewitched. I'm willing to sit through a Will Ferrell movie just because of the way that the name hearkens back to my childhood.
I watched Spirited Away last night which was fab because I've wanted to see it ever since it came out at Empire and I was working day shifts with Josh and we wanted to go sit in the theatre and watch it but the manager was constantly lurking around and we were 2 of the only 3 ushers on the floor so we couldn't. Ahh, good times.
In other news, it's been remarked that my postings are always indicated as having been posted abnormally early in the morning. Let me state for the record that I am not in the habit of getting out of bed before 6:30 unless travel (preferably international) is involved, and under no circumstances am I fully functioning before 8am.
Anybody know of any good movies to watch? I'm waiting for War of the Worlds to come out on the 29th, not because I'm a huge fan of Tom Cruise or anything but because I used to watch the fantastically cheap, tacky tv show when i was a kid, and although the movie's unlikely to have any similarities to the show I'm still dying to see it. Same with Bewitched. I'm willing to sit through a Will Ferrell movie just because of the way that the name hearkens back to my childhood.
I watched Spirited Away last night which was fab because I've wanted to see it ever since it came out at Empire and I was working day shifts with Josh and we wanted to go sit in the theatre and watch it but the manager was constantly lurking around and we were 2 of the only 3 ushers on the floor so we couldn't. Ahh, good times.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Shoreline Festival
If anybody's free July 8 (after 4pm-ish), 9 and 10 you should come to the PEI Shoreline Festival! Bruno and I are trying to get a group together to hopefully rent a car. There will be acts like Joel Plakett, Buck 65, Kid Koala, Jimmy Swift Band, etc., camping and just general awesomeness. Do it do it do it! www.shorelinefestival.com
Don't eat chocolate frosting with a spoon
Somebody needs a change of scenery...the occupational hazards of working in a convenience store (especially a campus one during the summer) are mindblowing.
I gardened in the rain yesterday, as part of the Ecology Action Centre's Urban Garden Mentors program, which I think is amazing because it gives senior citizens the chance to share their gardening skills with the younger genreations, and they've set up all these urban gardens around the city (www.ecologyaction.ca). Besides, there is nothing in the world as fun as getting dirty. Afterwards I sat in the tub with a book for hours until my toes got all wrinkly. whee!
Now let's see some fgbhqing sunshine!
I gardened in the rain yesterday, as part of the Ecology Action Centre's Urban Garden Mentors program, which I think is amazing because it gives senior citizens the chance to share their gardening skills with the younger genreations, and they've set up all these urban gardens around the city (www.ecologyaction.ca). Besides, there is nothing in the world as fun as getting dirty. Afterwards I sat in the tub with a book for hours until my toes got all wrinkly. whee!
Now let's see some fgbhqing sunshine!
Monday, June 13, 2005
It's a mad, mad world folks
If I'm not mistaken, a few months ago Tommy Douglas was voted The Greatest Canadian by an oh-so-scientific phone-in poll of CBC viewers. What a bizarre bit of irony, then, that the Supreme Court should rule aginst one of the principles of Tommy's baby, Medicare, Canada's #2 sacred cow (#1 being Tim Horton's cofee, of course...never mind that it's not Canadian it's Central American or whatever and absolute crap besides). private clinics are now allowed to operate in Quebec, and the Supreme Court has set a precedent that will basically force them to bring down the same ruling when similar cases inevitably crop up from other provinces.
Pessimists see this as the beginning of US-style two-tier health care, while optimists point to mixed systems like in the UK that have both private and public health care provisions. I'm not a big expert on the UK's system but I have heard it touted as a model that our own should follow. However, a commentator in Saturday's Globe and Mail pointed out that this is not the UK, this is Canada, and Canada has a little thing called NAFTA biting us in the ass. Apparently health care is only exempt from NAFTA regulations as long as Canada maintains its publicly-funded system, and once we allow private providers then we have absolutely no power to stop American private providers from coming in and taking advantage of our government's subsidies etc. Again, I'm no expert, but the possibility of our health-care system turning into the American model scares the shit out of me. Yes, the waiting lines and funding shortages are bad. Very bad. In-desperate-need-of-a-better-strategy-and-more-money bad. But skyrocketing costs and inefficiency, an insurance system that often leaves people in the dust just when they need it the most, and slews of people (and not just the poorest members of society, either) being forced to declare bankruptcy due to sudden serious illness...that's worse.
It all left me feeling very confused and sad so I went out and got a clothes-drying rack (we still don't have a clothesline, grrrrrrrrrrr) and a low-flow showerhead. Reducing fuel consumption and having nice-smelling clothes make sense to me.
Pessimists see this as the beginning of US-style two-tier health care, while optimists point to mixed systems like in the UK that have both private and public health care provisions. I'm not a big expert on the UK's system but I have heard it touted as a model that our own should follow. However, a commentator in Saturday's Globe and Mail pointed out that this is not the UK, this is Canada, and Canada has a little thing called NAFTA biting us in the ass. Apparently health care is only exempt from NAFTA regulations as long as Canada maintains its publicly-funded system, and once we allow private providers then we have absolutely no power to stop American private providers from coming in and taking advantage of our government's subsidies etc. Again, I'm no expert, but the possibility of our health-care system turning into the American model scares the shit out of me. Yes, the waiting lines and funding shortages are bad. Very bad. In-desperate-need-of-a-better-strategy-and-more-money bad. But skyrocketing costs and inefficiency, an insurance system that often leaves people in the dust just when they need it the most, and slews of people (and not just the poorest members of society, either) being forced to declare bankruptcy due to sudden serious illness...that's worse.
It all left me feeling very confused and sad so I went out and got a clothes-drying rack (we still don't have a clothesline, grrrrrrrrrrr) and a low-flow showerhead. Reducing fuel consumption and having nice-smelling clothes make sense to me.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Welcome to eternity, Baby
Another slow day at Yea Olde Cornerstore...the kind of day that makes you look around and wonder what you're going to snack on next, until suddenly you have a stomachache and you're 8 feet wide. Or at least I would be if I ate normal food like mormal people do.
At any rate, it's better than what I did yesterday...I took care of my neighbour's elderly mother while he went to court to try and win some respect for the disabled. So I was glad to help him out, and his mother's a nice lady with a great sense of humour, but the poor thing can't remember what you told her 5 minutes earlier so she asked me 387 times where her son was...I soon resorted to "I don't know, he'll be back at suppertime" and left it at that. So 10 hours of this. Then during the last hour she convinced herself that her son was gone for good and that everybody was going to leave her alone in the house so she kept repeating "I'm scared. Are you scared? I'm scared."
You know what scares me? The idea of getting old and not being in control of, or even aware of, what's going on in my own life. And the fact that I'm likely to get like that, because the women in my family tend to live for a long time and get senile. Which means I'm fucked.
Know what else scares me? Creepy stalker guys. And apparently I have one. A few weeks ago I was on the bus home from the farmer's market and I ran into somebody that I know so I talked to hime for a while. Anyway, the next week some random dude started talking to me...apparently he had listened to my previous conversation and remembered everything that I had said. He seemed starved for friendship so I had some polite (but guarded) conversation with him...and now he seems to be on the same bus as me every Saturday, no matter what time I head home. And then last night he was at the bus terminal when I was on my way into the city. So he decided to ask me out for coffee (Dude! you're like 35 and not in a good way!) but fortunately he kind of left me alone when I declined. But then when I got off the bus he yelled "Oh, tell your mother theat she's lovely!" *Shudder* how the fuck foes he know my mother? He must be a patient at her office or something...Mom has my picture posted up by her desk at work so that she can brag about me when people comment on it. But now I might beg her to take it down...dude that's just CREEPY.
At any rate, it's better than what I did yesterday...I took care of my neighbour's elderly mother while he went to court to try and win some respect for the disabled. So I was glad to help him out, and his mother's a nice lady with a great sense of humour, but the poor thing can't remember what you told her 5 minutes earlier so she asked me 387 times where her son was...I soon resorted to "I don't know, he'll be back at suppertime" and left it at that. So 10 hours of this. Then during the last hour she convinced herself that her son was gone for good and that everybody was going to leave her alone in the house so she kept repeating "I'm scared. Are you scared? I'm scared."
You know what scares me? The idea of getting old and not being in control of, or even aware of, what's going on in my own life. And the fact that I'm likely to get like that, because the women in my family tend to live for a long time and get senile. Which means I'm fucked.
Know what else scares me? Creepy stalker guys. And apparently I have one. A few weeks ago I was on the bus home from the farmer's market and I ran into somebody that I know so I talked to hime for a while. Anyway, the next week some random dude started talking to me...apparently he had listened to my previous conversation and remembered everything that I had said. He seemed starved for friendship so I had some polite (but guarded) conversation with him...and now he seems to be on the same bus as me every Saturday, no matter what time I head home. And then last night he was at the bus terminal when I was on my way into the city. So he decided to ask me out for coffee (Dude! you're like 35 and not in a good way!) but fortunately he kind of left me alone when I declined. But then when I got off the bus he yelled "Oh, tell your mother theat she's lovely!" *Shudder* how the fuck foes he know my mother? He must be a patient at her office or something...Mom has my picture posted up by her desk at work so that she can brag about me when people comment on it. But now I might beg her to take it down...dude that's just CREEPY.
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