I am proud to think that I did my part for the Facebook group "Can this onion ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?" which, as of this writing, has 33,580 fans to PM Harper's 29,943. This is some kind of win... for... something. Plus I do love onion rings, like, legitimately.

MY BOSS BOUGHT COOKIES!

Hi Teh Internets!

I hope your turkey day was satisfactory. Mine certainly was! My only regret is that, flying across international borders as I did, I was unable to bring home any leftovers. I did bring home lots of new clothes though, which is almost as good--especially since they were purchased from cheap, cheap stores. (Although the Canadian dollar is not as strong as it has been recently--bad for outlet shopping.)

I got home today, went and voted quick like a bunny, and then went for a swim. I'm cooking some food now for my election-night eat-and-grumble fest. But I also have some Muppet Show DVDs to switch back and forth between during the commercials. Should be good. Muppets + Canadian election = makes more sense than you might think. The polls close in about two more hours here. I'm practicing my old-lady-style fist-shake.

I never, ever watch broadcast TV. I don't have cable and I would much rather spend my entertainment time and money on things I can structure myself--renting movies from Zip and playing WOW come to mind. Since I moved into this apartment I have tried about three times to tune my TV. Each time, I'm surprised by how poor my reception is. The only channel I get AT ALL is CBC. The sound is great, but the picture not so much--it flickers from black and white to colour if I stand in a particular place in my living room. So weird. Anyway, it'll do for tonight, and then tomorrow I can go back to watching sweet, sweet DVDs.

Anyway, the really weird thing I always forget about in regards to broadcast TV is the commercials. When you're not used to watching them they become even more surreal and irritating. I just saw one for a medication that helps heal cold sores, and it had a weird little pseudo-scientific animation, and my brain felt like it was going to implode. I feel like someone from East Berlin who somehow got across the wall and wandered into an unanticipated, sophisticated world of products.

Better at making things than blogging

I feel like such a good citizen today. I went and voted, and then I filed my taxes! And it's not even 7:30 yet! I made delicious Conservative Hegemony Shepherd's Pie for dinner, including a mysterious sauce of my own invention. And zucchini, natch. I'm going to install my new modem, too, but first I'll update this blog in case I break the Internet. Then I'll see if I can get any reception with my TV to watch the results roll in as the polls close.

I guess Thing-A-Day ended with a whimper. I actually did make something almost every day. There were maybe 4 days I missed out of 29. I was better about making things than blogging, apparently. The artificial constraint of having to do things daily did help me to focus my energy, and try things even if I knew I didn't have time to do them as thoroughly/complicatedly as I might like.

It was also Freedom to Read week last week. I feel bad that I didn't get around to any thinking about it this year, yet alone doing anything. However, a book club that I am a pseudo-member of is meeting in a few weeks, and our book (chosen by my lovely friend and fellow librarian Becky) is The Outsiders. Yeah. It's awesome. I was totally the kind of kid who read all these books everyone told her were Important, and The Outsiders was on that list along with The Outsider (heh), Catcher In the Rye, and so on. I wish I had kept a reading journal in those days, because I read so many books, and I remember my reactions to so few of them.

I'm glad The Ousiders is at least interesting, because I've been on a Bad Books and Movies Roll lately. In the past week, To Paint or Make Love, Serendipity, The Other Boleyn Girl and Beyond the Deepwoods have all disappointed me. (I'd seen Serendipity before, but I watched it because my mom and sister rented it. And they were in my apartment. So.) It's time for some things to be GOOD.

Update: living in the past

So, I DON'T have a radio as it happens. It's OK because the venerable CBC webcasts all their radio though. I LOVE the CBC. I wish I could marry it, and have 1,000 of its babies.

So I listened to the webcast of the provincial leadershipd ebate and baked a huge quantity of zucchini bread. At, like, 8:01 pm, James called me and we ranted for about 15 minutes. Hopefully the zucchini bread isn't Like Water for Chocolate Zucchini Bread, ie., tasting like political alienation, discontent, and chocolate chips.

And I DID get to 68 last night, although I can't update my chart because I'm at work. Ding! The nice thing about being the last in my guild to hit 70 (and I am, oh yes I am) is that I am the warcraft-equivalent of the youngest child. Everyone else is always sending me gear they think I could use, giving me advice about quests, and they don't care if I smoke up in my room. I may actually get to 70 this weekend, depending on how much time and effort I decide to commit to it. That is weeks ahead of my Easter long weekend goal! I am such a PROBLEM-SOLVER. I will probably mention this in future job interviews. It translates as something like, "Proven success planning and managing large projects in accordance with deadlines."

Maybe it's the lack of rhetorical flair

Question: do I have the attention span to both listen to the provincial leadership debate tonight on the radio AND get to level 68 in WOW? I think so! (I'm just happy it's ON the radio, because my TV doesn't even really get CBC with any dependability. Basically, I would be much happier if I could live in the 1920s.)

Wait, follow up question: Do I HAVE a radio?

I'm enjoying the edmonton journal election blog. This election has been such a non-starter, it's nice to know that SOMEONE is paying attention to it, even if that someone is a reporter paid to do so.

four things I am excited about at this moment

i. These hearts made from scrap industrial felt, from etcetera media. i just ordered some and i keep thinking of exciting things i could do with them. they'll probably just end up nailed to a wall though, like EVERYTHING does in my apartment. Online shopping at work is one of my favourie things, even though it often results in negative money (-$).

ii. My So-Called Life. I'm watching it for the first time right now (well, not RIGHT NOW because i'm at work) and it's better TV than almost any other TV--sophisticated, smart, funny, touching, sentimental without being crass. I find myself getting really attached to the characters, especially Angela's mom. It's not very often you see a real woman on TV, let alone someone's mom. I love how she's so smart and independent, and yet she can also be bitchy and needy. Sometimes she's wickedly funny and sometimes she's painfully uptight. In other words, she's like a real person-- not just a combination of stereotypical traits. I also love me some Brian Krakow, Ricky, and even Jordan Catalano. I mean, he's such a dummy, but then every once in awhile he'll do something so sweet and smart. He's exactly the kind of boy every heterosexual 15-year-old girl thinks she can love and fix and understand. He's the boy who breaks every heterosexual 15-year-old girl's heart too. Every time I see him some little part of me is like "OMG JORDAN CATALANO!!!!" (I also love how they always refer to him by his whole name, just like Veronica Mars.) Anyway, Jocelyn ♥s My So-Called Life. That is all.

iii. a provincial election! Since I started this job and have to read all this news every day, I have become much more of a political dork. I was already basically every other kind of dork, so this is a natural fit. Anyway, the election was called yesterday (the writ was DROPPED, yo), so that means 28 days of talking about how much we love families, communities, democracy, freedom, the environment, prosperity, and every other good thing. Actually, it's confusing, because ALL THE PARTIES LOVE THOSE THINGS. This election will be an interesting one too. A new political party formed to the right of the provincial conservatives! The conservatives have their lowest approval ratings in years! Former leader Ralph Klein lost his riding to a Liberal in a bi-election! Ed Stelmach has been spending money like it's going out of style! I doubt we will ever get a liberal majority in this province, but if we were ever close to a minority government, this is it. I'll be casting my vote with a feeling of gravity, although I'll also be voting the same way I always do. (Side note: actually, becoming more of a political dork is interesting because it hasn't changed my beliefs at all. It just means that I have more ammunition for them. It's nice to learn more about something and realize you were right about it even when you didn't really understand it. Heh.)

iv. work chili cook-off. The Emerging Technologies team has been pitted against the Technology Standards and Solutions team to see who will become the chili masters. Jobs may be on the line. I have no role in this event, other than the eating. And the judging. For the entire day, i will be saying to myself in my best Homer Simpson voice: "but the chilliiiiiiiii!"

I'm listening to the Throne Speech RIGHT NOW, live. What did people do in the days before live audio-casting of political events?

WORK?

weak heart

You're so cute when you're slurring your speech
But they're closing the bar and they want us to leave...
-death cab for cutie, crooked teeth

Today I went and waited in line for a passport. It only took 2 1/2 hours, which is not that bad considering that there was a fire drill that involved evacuating all the staff from the building.

Passport office guy: "And what have you been doing since August 31st?"
Jocelyn: "I'm unemployed."
Passport office guy: "So write, 'Sept. 1 - present: unemployed.'"
Jocelyn [in head]: "But that's only 11 days! And three of them were a long weekend so really it's only 8 days! It's not like I am habitually unemployed, I just finished grad school and I'm looking for a job! I pay taxes, too! It's not like I'm going to try to sneak into the United States!"
Jocelyn [in real life]: "OK."

These government people are sneaky, internets. Why do they need to know what I've been doing since September 1st, anyway? I'll tell you: TO EMBARRASS ME.

Unemployment aside, I find Canadian beaurocracy comforting. As I walked to the government building this morning, coffee in hand, book in bag, ready for some line-waitin', I was thinking about how great it is to live in a country where you know no bribe money will have to change hands in order to get travel documents. Although the woman at the desk was very stern with me when I told her I wanted to leave the country on Friday (and she called me by my first name, like an elementary school teacher: "Why did you leave this so long, Jocelyn?"), I didn't have to worry that my passport was going to cost anything different than the price posted on Passport Canada's website. (Although it actually worked out to be less, for some reason.) This heightened awareness of the lack of corruption in the Canadian government may have been due to the fact that my line-waitin' book was Sebastian Junger's Fire, a series of journalistic essays he wrote, and the essay I'd just finished was about Kosovo, and the one I was immersed in was about Cyprus. I bet getting a passport in Cyprus is a serious undertaking, and they don't have Tim Horton's there, so what coffee would they drink in line? (Seriously, the last bench closest to the door of the passport office was absolutely littered with Tim Horton's cups, which people had jettisoned as they were called into the office. T-Ho's should consider working this into one of their patriotic marketing campaigns: "Tim Horton's coffee: Official drink of the Passport Canada line." Because it's true.)

How the bottles get broken

A nostalgaic version of Oregon Trail that uses a firefox plug-in to play in your browser. Pretty hot. YOUR WHOLE PARTY HAS DIED OF DYSENTRY, dumbass!
The Great Canadian Wishlist is a CBC initiative (on Facebook! Weird), asking Canadians to vote for their most important wishes for the country. The pro-life and pro-choice wishes are neck and neck, since that's apparently the only political issue we can get out of our desk chairs for.

My neighbourhood is full of broken glass, and I always wonder where it comes from (as I cautiously cut a wide swath around it in my flipflops). Last night I solved the mystery. At around three in the morning, aimless youth have bottle fights in front of the convenience store, and throw bottles at each other. They insult each other in inordinately loud voices, and wake me up. The bottles shatter, and little bits of glass enter their skulls, impeding their brain activity and thus making it even more likely that in the future they will throw bottles at each other.

Ugh!!!

Ghah. US conservatives block cancer vaccine for girls. A vaccine against HPV is blocked in four US states because it could encourage promiscuity. This is definitely how the brains of 17-year-olds work: "Hmmm... before I was waiting to have sex until I was married, because I was afraid of getting human papillomavirus. But now that I've been vaccinated, I'm going to go sleep with the first motorcycle enthusiast I can find. And disrespect my parents!" Just to clarify: these law-makers would rather let women die of cancer than risk sending any remotely pro-sex (or, more accurately, anti-cancer) message.

Sigh. The term "wacky news" is far too flippant to apply to this story. I should make a new tag: "crazy, depressing news."

A rhinoceros and a political party can fall in love... well, you know.

I love this wikipedia article on The Rhinoceros Party of Canada. My parents have nostalgaic stories of voting for this party in their heydey. The list of campaign promises of the RPC is particularly gratifying. Campaign promises included...

• building sloping roads and bicycle paths across the country so that Canadians could "coast from coast to coast"
• Demolishing the Rockies and using the resulting gravel to make a national nature trail
• adopting the British system of driving on the left; this was to be gradually phased in over five years with large trucks and tractors first, then buses, eventually including small cars and bicycles last (this is my mom's favourite)
• as an energy-saving idea, putting larger wheels on the back of all cars so that they will always be going downhill
• selling the Canadian Senate at an antique auction in California

This article also notes that, "A British Columbia splinter group proposed running a professional dominatrix for the position of party whip... and merging with the Progressive Conservative Party so as 'not to split the silly vote.'"

Fun bonus multimedia link: Vancouver musician Geoff Berner ("The Maginot Line! The Maginot Line!") once ran in an election on the RPC ticket. He has a new song available for free download entitled "Don't Play Cards for Money With Corby Lund." Warning: this song contains elements of the ludicrously tragic.