It's only been a week?

Holy Crap.

Last Sunday I went to visit my sister Bee (nickname)after a too-long absence. It's funny how three-year-olds develop fixations...first we watched Finding Nemo. Then we pretended to be characters from Finding Nemo. Then we played with her LeapPad (a phenomenal toy for kids) - using the Finding Nemo book. Then she came over to my place to see the fish and harass the cat, and left a very happy girl.

Other than that I've been obscenely busy...didn't get nearly as much done over Spring Break as I had planned to, and with Women in House coming up this coming Tuesday and the post-midterms shoot-me-now part of thes emester upon us, there hasn't been much time to breathe. Or to post, which apparently has led certain readers (who you'd never suspect!) to aimlessly playing with my site's pet hedgehog Stevie. So cute.

But yeah, Women in House has pretty much come together but it was a stressful process for me because we had to change the date - and delay the sending-out of the invitations as a result - to accommodate the Minister responsible for the Status of Women. However, it was apparently her departmental secretary who was handling her commitments for that day, and when the new Premier shuffled the cabinet she ceased to be respnsible of the SOW and there wasn't enough communication with her assistant so nobody contacted me. And the Legislature was called on Friday and she now has a bunch of ministers' meetings and can't make it on the day that we specifically chose because it was convenient for her. But because of the miscommunications, I didn't find this out until Friday afternoon when I called three numbers trying to finalize some details and her assistant informed me of it. So it's a little frustrating but it'll just magically work somehow, like it did last year.

Friday I went to lunch at The Wooden Monkey with my mentor, a really wonderful lawyer who the Mount matched me up with. We talked about things like resolving the ethical/moral conflicts that can come up in practicing law...it was really helpful because she's coming from a similar place to where I'm coming from - she went to alw school "to become a better activist" and now works for a big law firm where she's learning how to balance her beliefs with the legal code of ethics (which is different from the average person's, to be sure) and how to influence clients, as their legal counsel, to do the right thing. So it was a great conversation. And I had a seitan sandwich which was absolutely phenomenal.

The rest of the weekend was bascially work work and more work, and today I'm going for a late lunch with my family, although right now it's 11am and I'm finishing off my brunch of a fried tofu sandwich. I was looking at those picturesfromt eh Attic and in the last one my arm looks so skinny and gross. I'm not one for criticizing my own body - I generally don't see the point of anything besides body love - but it's GROSS!!! So I've decided that I need to eat even more and put on some weight before I fade away. It's touch being a skinny bitch...lots of other women get jealous (even though they lookk fabulous) and accuse us of having eating disorders. So this is me defending the skinny bitches: we have body issues, too! And how do you think it feels when your jeans size (0) implies that you don't even exist?! Thinka bout it!

Attic-y goodness

I went to the Attic for the Wide Mouth Mason concert at some point in the apst week...probably last weekend, but my sense of time is gone. We didn't relaly pay attention to the band, we just kind of sat around and relaxed which was even better. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure:

I'm there.

March 10th at the Cohn.

I'm having a bit of a *blah* day and spent much of the latter part of it feeling cranky.

I slept in, then headed out for a mildly successful group meeting for my Policy Analysis project about the African Union. Then off towards Bagtown for a haircut, stopping along the way in Bedford to use the HBC gift card I got for Christmas to buy a lint brush - which every aspiring political actor needs. Turns out that this particular gift card had actually been purchased in 2003 (GAH!) and is now useless. So I had to cough up the money myself. Then I killed about an hour in Sackville, only to show up for my hair appointment at 5:15 and find out that is was not,in fact, today but rather tomorrow. So I had to reschedule because Adam and I are making dinner for my parents tomorrow...

And then I was cranky. So Adam and I went and got groceries and made some sambar with basmati and chickpeas and watched some Smallville (I am hopelessly addicted). So that part cheered me up and so did looking at my Montreal pictures:











"Canadian Political Science Students Ass."

You Should Date A Japanese Guy!

You're an interesting blend of traditonal and modern And a Japanese guy is likely to be on your wavelength Maybe you'll show your love by dying your hair the same color Or get married in a traditional white kimono!

Which Foreign Guy Should You Date?

Speaking of things that are Japanese, my shiitake log finally has mushroom buds on it! Woohoo we've got fungus baby!

You Are Basic Panties

You are a laid back chick with a real natural beauty. You can make unwashed hair and minimal make-up super sexy. Men tend to notice you show the "real you" - and they appreciate it. And while basic makes boring for some, it looks classic on you.

What Kind of Panties Are You?

I officially have a Quizilla addiction. It's quite sad.

Anyway my new Threadless t-shirt arrived today. I got the adorable "She Doesn't Even Realize" which was FINALLY reprinted. So cute.

I also find myself more and more linking to everything that I reference and it's amking me feel a little like Wikipedia and then I feel silly but I just. can't stop.

Heading into Sackville today...I've been taking time since Spring Break started to catch up with people I don't see that often so I'm spending the day with Becky and Amanda, who were my best friends in high school but who I never see anymore.

Guilty pleasure: eavesdropping on strangers' conversations in public

A dude on the bus with a guitar case and afro: "The room where we rehearse is so, like, Gestapo."

Anyway forgive me for being crude, but this week has been assraping me sideways. Jonathan couldn't work his Wednesday morning shift that I traded him for Tuesday nights, so the last three days have gone something like this:

Tuesday:
-work 7:45am - 2:00pm, work on take-home midterm for tomorrow
-class 3-4:40
-work 5-9:15, work on take-home midterm
-10-midnight, finish take-home midterm

Wednesday:
-work 7:45am - 10:30am
-class 11am - prof acts us to actually think and discuss in groups. Philosophy. Nobody's actually read the chapter because we were doing the midterm.
-12:30 - 4pm nap at Adam's. Sleep through Spanish class.
-5-7pm Tri-mentoring

Today:
-work 7:45-noon. Try to accomplish the 300-some pages of reading for today's midterm.
-noon-3 more reading.
-3-4:30 skip class for last-ditch study group
-4:30-7 midterm - it involves a bunch of case studies i didn't read. Fortunately she has a photocopy of them and I just have to read it really really fast.

Spring break is upon us at last. Which means more work and less socializing. But I get to sleep in.

As the snow piles up i'm debating whether having another snow day would be a good thing or a bad thing. I could use the extra time to work on a few assignments and maybe bake some tofu and do some laundry...but then again, I could also use the money that would be a result of my shift in the morning. Even more so with Spring Break looming and the store being closed next week.

My political philosophy midterm requires me to reflect on this whole Danish cartoon controversy. It's an interesting dilemna. I can certainly appreciate the principle of refraining from displays that will offend deeply-held beliefs such as this is for certain groups within Islam, and I know enough about Islam to realize that it's a much bigger deal than it would be for, say, the majority of Christians. I also recognize that Muslims have been the subject of unacceptable racism in the West in recent years...and the argument that the newspaper editor was originally trying to make in the article accompanying the cartoons - that censoring religious criticisms is inconsistent with freedom of speech - could easily have been made without including the drawings. It was an irresponsible bit of journalism, especially in a time of such conflict and sensitivity.

That said, I have a problem with people forcing their religious rules on others, and the issue originally stemmed from an author who couldn't get his book illustrated because the artists he approached were scared off by ACTUAL VIOLENCE AND MURDER committed against others who had depicted Mohammad in their work.

It's also interesting that the most offensive images in the dossier given to Islamic world leaders were not in fact published in the newspaper in question, and one of them was taken completely out of context - it was some French dude in a pig-squealing competition or something. So does anybody even know where these came from? Somebody intentionally trying to escalate the furor? Because I seriously doubt that the original 12 drawings, although a few of them are highly questionable, would have led to embassies being torched. Some Islamic groups strongly oppose the depiction of Mohammad, but it's been done before plenty of times - on South Park, for crying out loud - and that failed to arouse anger on this scale.

There was an interesting comment in a letter to the editor of the Globe last week: why is it that the reaction of Muslims to to those who use their religion to justify unspeakable acts, so much weaker than the reaction to a set of cartoons? I would argue that it's not so much that the reaction against extremists distorting their religion is necesarily WEAKER, it's that it's more PEACEFUL...and unfortunately peaceful doesn't sell newspapers.

Anyway sorry for the disjointed and possibly incoherent post. I'm just trying to work through a compliated issue and, well, I'm simple. I really think that this needs to be discussed openly and the media have shrunk into a very guarded discussion of it so as to avoid further controversy. Comments?

My roommate has the funniest cat alive. I think we gave him too much nip and turned him into one of those crazy permafried cats.

Noramlly KC will meow at you until you pay atention to him, then promptly ignore you once you have; even more so if you pick him up and talk to him in a high-pitched come-here-and-give-grandma-a-kiss kind of voice. This evening, however, he was not to be ignored for a second. I picked him up, expecting him to put up with it for 30 seconds before struggling to get away...but instead he looked at me. Purred. batted at my had. Purred louder. So I had to do that thing that you do with babies, where you wlk around with them and bounce them a little and show them furniture and decorations and pictures and tell them all about whatever you're showing them and they looka t you with total awe even though they have no idea what you're saying and you're just telling them about how a lamp works.

Then I went to do laundry and as I was emptying out my hamper he boldly crawled inside while I was still pulling stuff out. I tipped it over on its side and partially closed the lid and he sat inside and purred so louldy I could hear him halfway across the room. Funny cat.


Not KC. But it made me giggle.

I'm on a Natalie Dee kick lately...I have arbitrarily decided that C.I.L.F. stands for "corn is le fabulous."

Just a note on state support for the arts: the hazards of doing an essay on things that sort of interest you is that by the end of it you generally no longer care to think or speak of them ever again.

Hahahahahaha

My life is at once obscenely busy and boring, thus my recent sntries are silly and insubstantial.

Adam is mad as hell over this, so just for him, I'm putting the issue up here for everybody to see:

Save the Hoodie

Now go make a hoodie-wearer happy.

You're a rabbit fur flogger! You're so soft and

fluffy and cute - but if wielded with

sufficient force, you can still make an

impact that will be remembered.


What Type of Flogger Are You?
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And in other news:
People in Russia are dying because of our amazing spell of warm weather. What a way to steal somebody's sunshine.



I blame the giant hot sauce bottle.

Rules
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

"Because it was usually paid via the wage packet, employer groups opposed the WFTC as an administrative burden that, in the words of a leading Conservative, turned private sector firms into 'unpaid benefit offices.'"
-Welfare Hot Buttons by Sylvia Bashevkin, University of Toronto Press 2002.

The magickal freezer of awesomeness

Everyone should have one like this...it's always full of soy ice cream without even the necessity of going to the grocery store or paying for it.

That happy reality is numbing the AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the back of my head: a week's worth of school to catch up on, a high GPA to maintain, a mentoring program to prepare for, a media-fodder job-shadowing event to coordinate, a family with which to communicate, a job to attend to, ocular health to take care of, grad photos to get done, bills to pay, a life to lead and two other people to feed.

And I can't find my green hi-liter. I really am so obsessive-compulsive sometimes that I can't concentrate if I'm using any other colour of hi-liter aside from green. Purple least of all. This is one of those times, and purple is the only one I can find. Must. Buy. Green. Hi-liter.

Sleep? I did that once.

"The Holy(er than thou) Bible of Vegetarianism"

16 hours to Montreal. 16 hours back. 4 days in between, with a small group in a big city. It's nice to be home and back in my own space - not to say that I didn't have fun, of course. Among the memorable moments from the conference (besides this post's title, which I got from Ryan):

Ryan (again): The glass is half-empty for you, isn't it, Justine?

McGill Bloc hack: I'm from Nova Scotia, I'm an anglophone.

McGill NDP hack (quoting somebody else): Canada is like a cow: fed by the West, milked by the Centre, and just imagine what it's doing in the Maritimes.

Bailey (Lethbridge): You see, my fish has a black belt and it beat up the Yeti. But it has never beaten up a unicorn. Thus, unicorns do not exist."

Jonathan (MSVU) and cab driver: Haha! Kak!

Doug (UVic): So what you're saying is, I should get you in on this game of Beirut...

Bruno (MSVU Greenpeace hack): I don't careabout the rainforest. That's not here, it's in South America!

Notwithstanding the 11th commandment, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's blogosphere," as well as the 12th, "Thou shalt not use the word 'blogosphere' for it is cheesy," I'm totally jealous of the sheer number of comments made on Mark's site. I need a bunch of geeky (meant in the best way possible) friends to post lots of geeky comments on here!

Off to Montreal tonight for nerdarific poli-sci madness - I'll be back on Sunday night if all goes well with the drivingness.

Cutest picture ever

Looks like somebody's moving in on my man...

Having fulfilled my civic duty for another election, I am now indulging in some neapolitan frozen soy ("Soy Delicious frozen soy dessert" to be exact). I'm too busy to go to the gym and yet somehow have plenty of time for sitting on mny ass, eating junk food and blogging.

Rock the Vote was...well, it was kind of a bust. To my knowledge no media showed up, there was a decent number of people there but half of them talked through the candidates' speeches, and the two Conservative candidates didn't even get up to give speeches. And most of the candidates left pretty early. Blarg.

However, I did talk to Elizabeth Perry, a wonderfully energetic Green Party candidate from Dartmouth, whose speech was along the lines of "Our platform is about everything your parents told you about the world when you were a kid, before you found out that the world isn't really like that." I thought it was a really neat spin on things that you don't usually hear coming out of the mouths of political candidates.

I'm an NDP supporter, and of course there is a widepread perception that the Green Party is taking votes away from the NDP - which i imagine has some truth to it, although in my experience those who vote for the Greens are already pretty sure that the conclusion in their riding is forgone and they can support the Greens without jeopardizing the results. Under a proportional electoral system they would have won about 12 seats or more in the last election (I think - they got something like 4% of the vote, didn't they?) but their support is currently too diffuse to win a seat under the system we have.

Anyway, I think that running a full slate of candidates and making a fuss about being shut out of the debates and most of the election brouhaha is a way of making a powerful statement about the issues that SHOULD have a prominent place in politics but are consistently sidelined. I mean, what have we heard about the environment this campaign? Canada just hosted the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol and the federal election campaign, at least on the part of the major parties, completely ignored the issue of our failure to make progress on our Kyoto commitments - we've got what, 6 years left to achieve them and our emissions are still going up, up, up.

I also really appreciated how NDP candidate for Halifax West (the Mount's riding!) Alan Hill reminded everybody that they could vote either in their home ridings or in Halifax. I think that for students, voting is extra complicated because not only do they have to fit learning about the parties, candidates and issues into their busy schedules, their transitive lifestyles make it difficult to know where they belong in electoral terms. And this contributes to the monstrous proportion of young people who don't vote. And this mass abstention doesn't go unnoticed by those who write the party platforms - they focus on the concerns of the people wo do vote and we're left with dysfunctional post-secondary funding schemes and student loan repayment conditions, not to mention ballooning tuition rates. So to all those in the 18-30 age group who don't vote: thanks a lot. I hope you all get splinters in your hands and then they get infected and then it's painful to wash your hair so you get all greasy and nobody invites you out anywhere so you have to stay home every night watching annoying movies like Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

Bad poli-sci nerd that I am, I missed yet another leaders' debate last night, but I'm not lamenting that loss as apparently it was just another occasion for the leaders to attack each other - although this time the victim was Stephen Harper, whose party is now leading in the polls.

And to my credit, I did spend the evening teaching Jenn about the parties and candidates so that she can make a more informed choice. So in that sense I am a good little poli-sci nerd. ANYWAY, a friend sent her a link to this blog which, although I'm sure the real Rick Mercer would have enough star power to convince the CBC to give him his own domain or at least part of theirs rather than making him settle for a silly little Blogger account, contains the kind of quirky, cynical, Canadianesque kind of humour that we all know and love. And a description of Stephen Harper's dream Cabinet.

So Adam took me out for dinner at Opa last Thursday and then to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Chronicles of Narnia were such a memorable part of my childhood that it was wonderful to see that the creators did the book justice. No humans in beaver suits here, as in the old BBC version of yore.

There was, however, a small problem with watching that movie with my lovah rather than my girlfriends. Let me put it this way...had I been sitting in my living room, watching the movie with Jenn, one of my first comments would have been, "wow, put 5 more years on Edmund, eh?" and then I probably would have howled. Though currently only 14, Skandar Keynes is a definite hottie-in-the-making. Other feature hotties: James McAvoy as Mr Tumnus and the baby-faced William Moseley as Peter Pevensie. But of course the Boy doesn't want to hear about that so I had to wait until I got home to talk about it with Jenn.

I really hope they make more of the books into movies...I'm dying to see Prince CCaspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as movies.

In other Things That Make Me Smile, Julie was apparently so inspired by our Mupet-watching night last Friday that she went and found a video of Manamana for your viewing pleasure (see sidebar). hey-are those subtitles in Russion?

Rock the Vote NS (that last bit so that they don't get sued fro copyright infringement or something) is tomorrow and I've been asked to greet the candidates or other such fanciness.