SO NEAT

From National Geographic: a mummified dinosaur was found in North Dakota. The body was naturally mummified, and includes intact skin and other tissue. The skin has lost its colour, but its texture is still visible.

Full of energy, but not necessarily full of meaning

Apparently, I posted the 500th post on these 'ere blog and didn't even notice. Sigh. Well, this is post #501, and we can just pretend that whichever post I've written over the past 11 months that was the worst doesn't exist. Ok? Good. I'm glad you agree.

I'm sorry I've been such a bad blogger. I'm working again, full-time plus a little bit, so I really don't feel like doing much in my off-hours. I know it will take months for me to build up the stamina to be able to work AND also run the rest of my life in anything resembling an effective way. And this weekend I was busy! I went to look after my friend Caleb, and we watched Harry Potter, and because he was in a grouchy mood I even consented to read him a Scooby-Doo book (even though Scooby-Do books, for those of you not in the know, are probably the lowest quality children's literature commercially available! The only thing worse would be a piece of paper you found on the ground with someone's grocery list on it!*) I went out for diner breakfast, and to a craft sale, and I bought a brooch made out of the shift key of an old keyboard as well as various secret Christmas items! And James won a giant painting of storm troopers shooting that car from The Dukes of Hazzard in a silent auction! I went to work at the children's library (thus the "full-time plus a little bit") and it was fun! I helped children find various books and also, sometimes, items of winter clothing they had jettisoned in the stacks! I went to Superstore and they didn't have any carts left because ALL THE CARTS WERE IN LINE FULL OF GIANT BAGS OF EVERYTHING and James and I had to shop with baskets and it was very inconvenient! Oh, Internet, if only you could have been there.

And I'm still sick, which is why everything takes on this epic quality. I keep blowing my nose and finding blood. Everything is dramatic when you have TB. (I'm not kidding about the blood!)

This morning, not only was it still dark when I left my house, it was still dark when I GOT TO WORK. In fact it is still kind of dark. Edmonton in wintertime is an experiment in deprivation.

*PS. This reminds me: for a long time, I had a post-it grocery list on my fridge with the following items on it:
Cold tylenol
Vodka
I thought that expressed something poignant about the human condition, so I left it there for a long time, but eventually I had to add "bread crumbs" and some other stuff I don't remember.

Gift idea PS.

Someone please buy me this clock. It's orange, it's vaguely reminiscent of the nuclear age, and I want it. In fact, I want EVERYTHING that is orange and also vaguely reminiscent of the nuclear age.

A gift idea

What do you get the person who has everything? How about a sample of Uranium Ore, available from amazon.com for only $23? And the user comments are hilarious. (And free!)

she doesn't make it easy

My World of Warcraft paladin is level 61 tonight, Internet. I can't remember exactly when I started playing again, but it must have been a month ago, so let's just say it took a month. At this rate I will reach 70 by August, 2008, by which time the next expansion will surely be out. Still, at this moment I feel like I could DO ANYTHING!

[James and I recently wrote a song about my paladin (sung to the tune of the Plain White Ts' Delilah of course) that goes like this: Hey there Dehlilah, what's it like in Stormwind city?/I know that you are tough as nails but I still find you pretty, don't you see?/No one can Holy Wrath like you... Actually, we did write that song, but I don't remember the words. I made those new ones up. Holy Wrath is my paladin's second-favourite spell, after Hammer of Justice. And you can bet there is an MC-Hammer-esque song that goes with that one too.]

I've been sick all day, as I believe I mentioned, and I am holding this giant glass mug of juice, and that is awesome. It's the beer of juice. I am getting beer-sized vitamins from this juice. And if it doesn't make me feel better, I may have to mix in some peach schnapps, and then I will be getting cocktail-sized alcohol from it, as well. And then I will take some NyQuil, and we'll see if I can get up in the morning. SCIENCE!

That is all.

Deletia: the condom friend ever useful to you.TM

This public-service-type announcement from India makes the very good point that you will live a happier live without AIDS. The catchy song, Bollywood-style dancing, and guys dressed up as giant condoms are awesome. I also like how all the bystanders in every scene just look mildly puzzled--they probably couldn't afford to cast real extras.

Actually I watched Deepa Mehta's Water this morning so this is kind of a nice reminder that Indian culture is not all pain, suffering, and prejudice. They should probably include a version of this video on the Water DVD, in fact. Because that movie made me cry big time. (It doesn't help that I'm sick either. I am far more predisposed to burst into tears when I'm sick, because I basically lose my will to live.)

scams that are not scams

OMG, so this is from the archives of Pamie.com and it's so funny I couldn't stop laughing: Mama Crazy.

I wrote my first book review for publication yesterday, and now I can't find the book I had to write it on. My first thought was that it vaporized the minute I submitted my review, like DRM-ware or something. The logical part of my brain knows this is not the case, that a physical book does not disappear from a physical apartment, but I still am having trouble mustering the energy to look for it when its disappearance could be so aptly and poetically explained.

Getting free books in exchange for writing 250-word reviews of them is the BEST SCAM EVER. And it's NOT EVEN A SCAM.

I'm home sick from work today, and I got two new X-Files discs in the mail as if Zip and Canada Post KNEW I would need them. I can hardly leave my couch, and I've been taking a steady stream of tylenol, vitamins, and zinc.

And not just sick with lazy-itis

I'm obsessed with the end of the world, so both the idea of Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us and his cool interactive website feature fascinate me.

I'm sick today, and I have very little work to do. Thus all the blog updates. I wish I had my lozenges with anesthetic and my Dristan. Or, better yet, my couch and my remote.

O Hai

A hilarious and bittersweet essay from nerve called "Personal Inventory: The Erotic Appeal of the Land's End Catalogue." "These are images more invasive than any Victoria's Secret spread, because they don't inspire lust. This is a pornography of regret, and the longer you stare, the more seductive it becomes. These sixty pages are a self-pity trap; any sane lonely man would do well to avoid them."

Wednesdays are the worst

In his blog, Canadian copyright activist and scholar and all-around cool guy Michael Geist says that the new, soon-to-be-announced Canadian copyright legislation will beat even the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the extent of its draconian, uh, bullshit. (Sorry, normally I can come up with better words but not when I'm angry.) The first thing all users'-rights-loving Canadian citizens should do is write to their Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Industry and Culture. You can find out right here, from Online Rights Canada, who your MP is and how to contact them. (That site will even write a letter for you, but said letter has the wrong Ministers listed for some reason.) (My MP is conservative jerk Laurie Hawn, but since I've read enough of his dumb communiques about "family values," he owes me at least one reading of a letter about copyright reform.) Michael Geist also has a list of 30 things you can do to help steer copyright reform back into the realm of the reasonable and sustainable.

Here is how to contact our Prime Minister, his address is:
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2

The Minister of Industry:
Hon. Jim Prentice
C.D. Howe Building
235 Queen Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5

The Minister of Culture:
Hon. Josée Verner
Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

The Canadian Copyright Policy Branch is also a good place to send your letters:
275 Slater Street
7th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0M5

Letters mailed in Canada to a federal politician do not require a stamp, and are that much sweeter if composed while at work.

In which I congratulate myself on my own adorableness

Jocelyn: The things I want on cute socks are, in order of priority: 1: robots; 2: monkeys; 3: pirates; and 4: all other animals.
[pause]
James: That is the cutest thing you've said in quite awhile.

3 Things I like about my job

1. I have a tiny space heater under my desk. It has been there since I started working here, but today I decided to check if it works and it DOES and now I will never be cold at the office again.

2. My boss is obsessed with Office Space, and at a meeting yesterday she mentioned that we should all wear "flair" to an upcoming event. She also laughed when I did my "Hey, Peter, what's happening" routine. No office where the person in charge understands why Office Space is funny can ever be really evil.

3. I constantly push the boundaries of work-appropriate clothing and no one seems to care. I regularly wear ironic Internet t-shirts to work (usually with nice pants or a skirt), I wear armwarmers, I wear my airwalks or my vans, I wear my pirate hat (well, not at work so much as to work) and no one says anything or looks as me pointedly. I think this is because I am a member of Generation Y and everyone knows we have no regard for society's values anyway, so the bar has been lowered.

1 Thing I don't like about my job

I have to go there every weekday and it makes me tired and I don't want to be here and I want to go home and glue things with Liquid Nails and go see Love in the Time of Cholera. And have a club soda with lime juice. And go on Facebook without having to feverishly tab out of my browser window everytime someone walks by.

Links I stole from BoingBoing

From the Wacky News desk: Homeless man found living in elaborate underground home. This guy dug a 200-square-foot underground residence beneath Fresno. I can't even begin to explain to you how awesome that is. There is a slideshow of pictures.

According to Metafilter, the woman who does the announcements on the London Undergound has been fired for her blog in which she made up snarky fake Tube announcements. (Thanks to the news furor around this, the website is temporarily unavailable--bandwidth issues no doubt.) I like "Passengers are reminded that a smile is actually a friendship signal and not a sign of weakness," personally.

Morning work schedule.

Every morning, I have to read the education-related news and send some of it out to my colleagues (if it's related to the work our branch does, which is technology stuff). This is called "environmental scanning" since "morning news checking and reading and sending" sounds silly. This means that approximately 3.5 times a week on average, I read an editorial about how ALBERTA TEACHERS ARE AN EXPLOITATIVE, WHINY BURDEN ON TAXPAYERS and THEY ONLY WORK 50 HOURS A YEAR and THEY ALREADY GET PAID MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD and TEACHING CHILDREN IS EASY DON'T YOU KNOW THAT and YOU KNOW WHAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN UNIONS? TEACHERS' UNIONS! and so on in the EDMONTON SUN. And then I spend the next ten minutes fuming at my desk and WRITING THINGS IN ALL-CAPS.

No job should make you read the Edmonton Sun. It's inhumane. It is an affront to my liberal democratic values and a painful reminder that the province where I live is not the place I imagine it to be.

In fact, since Metro came to Edmonton (one of those free daily papers that is funded by advertising and contains news items such as "PARIS HILTON LIKES KITTENS, SAYS INSIDE SOURCE"), the Edmonton Sun has been giving out free papers downtown as an effort to compete, I think, and gain new readers. Except these attempts always backfire with me. Not only will I not read the Edmonton Sun for free, I would not read it if THEY PAID ME $5. I would read it for $10 though, I'm not crazy. But then I would make fun of it on my blog.

Things My Dad Is not Very Interested In, In Spite of The Fact That Every Christmas Gift Guide Aimed At Dads Seems To Think He Should Be

1. Cars
2. Baseball
3. Beer
4. Aviation
5. Barbequing
6. Hunting
7. Ties/Cosby sweaters

I can't make a list of the things he IS interested in, because he reads my blog, and he will then know what direction my gift-buying is going. [I'll give you a hint, though: he likes 19th-century philosophers, club soda with lime, small desktop cannons that shoot elastics, chocolate-covered peanuts, looking up word origins, and appropriate reference books for looking up word origins. And actually, I think he probably is at least mildly interested in aviation. Hi, dad! I love you!]

Howdy!

I have developed a (bad) habit of not sleeping well on Sunday nights as the spectre of work looms over me. I wake up on Monday mornings with a kind of insomnia hangover. Last night, I woke up so many times during the night, but somehow in between I kept having the same epic dream in which I went to Las Vegas to participate in some kind of World of Warcraft event. Yeah. I'm tired today.

I feel pretty strongly that the solution is Tim Horton's.

Holy animal conflict, batman!

It starts kinda slow, but don't give up on it. There are buffalo throwing lions in the air, and I am not even kidding.

4:04 pm on Friday afternoon? Are you frakkin kidding me, Internet? NO ONE is working. As far as I can tell, 1/3 of my office is currently talking about Dr. Who. I wish there was a "let's all just go home instead of pretending to work for 25 more minutes" alarm that would suddenly go off, and we could all file out instead of ashamedly watching YouTube videos and instant-messaging our friends.

Earlier: For best results, hum "The Circle of Life" from The Lion King while you watch

A man built a floating personal island with a frame of bamboo and recycled plastic bottles. This is an absolutely amazing project in and of itself (and the fact that it is reminiscent of the Disney Swiss Family Robinson treehouse doesn't hurt), but it also seems like it could be a precursor of the future. The more people there are on the planet, and the less land there is, the more likely it will become that we will be living in Waterworld. Only, hopefully, without Kevin Costner. Everyone living on little floating islands = sounds OK. Having to live in an overwrought, badly written movie = nightmare. (Also, having an adorable family dog on the island = Cool. Brawling with pirates = cooler.)

I am totally ziplisting Swiss Family Robinson.

I had Swiss Chalet for lunch, which I deeply, deeply regret. Doesn't Swiss Chalet seem like one of those franchises that should have gone out of business a long time ago? Now I feel both still hungry and vaguely ill.

A typical assortment of non-sequiturs

James [quoting Flight of the Conchords]: "You're kind of weedy and shy... but some girls must be needy for a weedy shy guy." I love some of their lyrics.
Jocelyn: I'm needy for a weedy shy guy.
James: Good, because I'm a weedy shy guy!
Jocelyn: You're not particularly weedy. Or shy.
James: I don't know what weedy means.
Jocelyn: It means, like... I don't know what it means.
James: I'm more barley.
Jocelyn: You're burly. Barley is a grain.
James: So is wheat!

Oh, yeah:

I'm convocating today, thus symbolizing The End Of my Illustrious Library School Adventure. I had to style my hair in such a way that it would look work-appropriate, but not interfere with my silly cardboard hat later in the day. I am going out for one last SugarBowl lunch with three friends who are also convocating today. Also, it seems that a few people close to me have gotten me presents for the occasion. Presents! Oh boy! I kind of forgot that graduation was a presents-thing, as Anya would say.

I'm confused about whether I should be excited. I didn't go to my undergrad convocation, so this will be my first graduation since high school (CLASS OF 2000! WOOOO! AND SO ON!). I don't feel excited, but I also don't feel completely not-excited; that could be the presents-thing thing, though, or the notion of Indian buffet for dinner. And I don't feel particularly proud--not going-out-and-framing-my-degree-tomorrow proud--but I also don't feel completely not-proud. I'm a little adrift. And later I will be wearing a silly cardboard hat with a tassel.