I saw this stencil on the side of an electrical box. The effect was actually chilling when I realized that (a) this is true and (b) my lifestyle is in danger.
James and I saw this trailer made, ingeniously, from an old mini van! I made him catch up to them so I could take this picture. It was hard to see but I think there was some kind of door access in the front.
That is all.
Wordle is a little java-based tool that creates these beautiful tag clouds. It's also customizable with font, colours, number of tags, etc. You can give it a set of tag data or it will generate a cloud based on your delicious tags. Like mine:
So awesome: Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield's resignation letter [via 50books]. Any letter of resignation that begins "As you know, tin is in my blood" will get a link from this blog--guaranTEED.
Jim Prentice defends the Canadian Copyright reform act in Parliament, consents to an interview with CBC--I haven't even had a chance to watch/listen to these yet, so consider this link as much for my benefit as yours. (I have trouble finding The Internet later, do you ever have that problem?)
Everybody in my office is freaking out about something, and I'm hoping that if I just don't ask anyone what it is, I won't be asked to make a contribution of any kind. I'm a contractor. It's not my business. I am in the money business.
The USPS Charles and Ray Eames stamps came out this week, and my mom called me yesterday to let me know my dad had already bought me a page of them. Thanks guys!
Tonight I am going to see The Incredible Hulk. I realized in the season 1 finale of Heroes that watching superheroes fight is one of my favourite things. Regular people fighting just doesn't do it for me anymore. Hopefully this movie will fulfil my superhero-fighting-quota for the whole weekend.
Alberta to require ignition interlock for drunk drivers
As of July 1, Albertans who are convicted of having twice the legal alcohol limit, refuse to give a breath sample or have been repeat offenders in the last 10 years will be ordered to attach a mandatory ignition interlock device to their vehicle ignition.They have to give a breath sample in their car before they can drive. That's so cooooool. Science!
I ride the bus to my Grown-Up Job, right out of the city and to a new city. It's a weird way to get to and from work, because it feels like an epic journey, and yet it only takes an hour, which is how long plenty of people spend getting to work--only they spend it in their cars, instead of relaxing in a "highway coach." Plus my bus passes are tax-deductible. I'm going to get rich this way.*
Last week I saw a truck going the other way, one of those big transport trucks, but the kind with a tank on the back (for chemicals) instead of a box (for boxes of frozen Big Macs). And on the tank, in small subtle writing, it said Delivering Responsible Solutions. Ever since, in the back of my mind, I've been working on a mental list of the responsible solutions sloshing around in the back of a truck on the freeway:
A coworker just sent me this: Garfield minus Garfield. Garfield has been painfully unfunny since I was a child, but if you remove the cat from the comics, they become a kind of nihilistic statement about the meaninglessness of life.
True story.
Holy media hangover, Batman. I spent most of yesterday playing Warcraft and watching 30 Rock, and by 10:30 PM I felt like I had already died--probably several hours before--and had somehow been reanimated as a screen-watching zombie. It was a bad scene. So I went to bed, woke up this morning at the usual time for work, had a shower, realized I was going to purposefully allow myself to be hit by a car on the way to work because I felt that horrible, and went back to sleep. Then I got up again and stopped for coffee and came here and I feel like I am slowly waking up as I type this. So. That brings is up to now.
And the sad part is, I have 2 episodes of 30 Rock left to watch, so I didn't even reach my goal. When am I going to get to watch them, Internet? Probably not tonight, as I have work to do! Maybe NEVER!
I was at the dentist last week and he confirmed what I already knew, which is that I grind my teeth while I am asleep. In fact he had a novel way of demonstrating this to me, which was to hold my hands on the sides of my jaw and have me clench my teeth. I could feel the giant muscles bulging. And yet my stupid body can't be trained to do real exercise while I'm asleep. So anyway, I wake up with these headaches that seem to radiate from my jaw deep into my skull, and I have to get one of those expensive mouthguards. I'm going to look like such a nerd while I sleep, Internet. It's so embarrassing, I'll have to turn off my webcam at night. So anyway, in addition to the media hangover I also have a jaw-clenching headache.
Gurgle gurgle gurgle. I think that most aptly conveys how I am feeling at this moment.
This is fabulous: Jane Austen comics. Don't navigate away until you have read "OOh Mister Darcy: A Fan Fiction." *Smoulder*
The Conservatives have finally tabled their Copyright Reform legislation. I believe my Man Friend James put it most succinctly: "We're boned."
Everyone quotes that line from Hamlet about "Neither a borrower nor a lender be," but no one ever addresses the fact that the man who speaks that line is a moron.
Um! I upgraded to a Flickr pro account today, and I got 10 free MOO cards. They are little and cute! and of course, the process of giving me 10 free ones is working, because it made me want to order 100 more. But what should go on the backs of these little cards? Is it Professional Jocelyn, or Real Jocelyn? Yeah. Dilemma. I don't really have any reason to have Real Jocelyn cards, so maybe that's my answer. (When I make new friends, we just become friends on Facebook. That is how it's done.)
And, um! I accidentally might have accepted more contract work, even though I really already have more than I feel like doing. What is my deal? But it's web design and I really wanted to do it. I can feel the CSS in my fingertips. Plus, money. I will put it straight into my savings account for sweet, sweet compound interest.
I hate it when my 30 boxes to-do list is longer than my screen. It makes me feel overwhelmed.
i. i got an issue of McSweeney's in the mail yesterday, and it was so beautiful, an artifact of the present.
ii. i tried to leave the house without shoes on today, and i didn't realize it until i was out in the hall.
iib. and the shoes i ended up wearing are airwalks flip-flops covered with little fluorescent stars. i debated whether these were work-appropriate, and then decided i didn't care.
there are things that are making me feel stabby, too, but they can mainly be summarized by saying: "work work work worky mcwork." and that doesn't benefit us, much.
It's been awhile since we had a linky Monday, so:
Six degrees of Wikipedia. Just what its name would suggest.
Sad/wacky news: Wayward Alzheimer's patients foiled by fake bus stop. I'm not sure if this seems funny, mean, compassionate, or all 3. Plus it reminds me of Ghost World.
A friend sent me this link to an extremely cool card catalogue quilt.
A couple recent ones from McSweeney's: The Opening Act from the Original, Unused Teleplay of LOST's Pilot Episode and Borges teaches self-defence.
I got my iPod, sweet Josephine, back from James. I also have to take the bus for quite a long time (almost an hour) to get to and from my new job. Serendipitous circumstances for podcasts! I know that podcasts have been around for a long time, it's not like I just discovered them, but it suddenly makes sense for me to listen to them when it didn't before. So I've just subscribed to the New Yorker fiction podcast which I am really liking so far. Contemporary fiction writers choose a story from the New Yorker archives, read it, and then there's a short discussion with the magazine's fiction editor. The one I listened to on the way to work this morning was Mary Gaitskill on Nabokov. It's not released that often (monthly I think) so I'll have to make my way through the archives.
I have been fighting with my toilet again, but tonight I think I fixed it for good, after hours of struggle and tears and multiple phone calls to my dad. (As well as detailed diagrams sent by email.) I feel like I should have toilet blood dripping from my fangs.
I was also gone for the weekend, a bit, but I'm back now, and I'll never leave you again, Internet.
Le Sigh. Gamers threaten to quit Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures over too-small boobs. Apparently a patch meant to fix other issues in the MMO also reduced the size of some of the female toons' breasts.
The company also told gamers it was “working on a fix for this, and your breasts should be back to normal soon."To see "normal," click on the link. As usual, gamers use the term "normal" loosely--in fact they use it to mean "Post-augmentation, porn-star sized."
Haha, teenagers who broke into and trashed Robert Frost's house have to take poetry classes as part of their punishment. That's poetic justice, technically. I'm sad that the title of that article stole my joke. Get it, poetic justice?
I got busy again.
That's what happened.
The problem with having a job you actually like, and where you have real things to do, is that it leaves less time for blogging. The advantage of having a job like this is being happier.
This is hilarious: You've been left behind, a website that will store subscribers' messages and then send them after the Rapture. Helpful! Perhaps I'll discuss it in an upcoming tech training session I'll be delivering. (Unfortunately, the Rapture will be considered to have occurred when 3 of the 5 developers fail to log in over a 3-day period. This kind of reminds of Homer Simpson's "Everything's OK alarm.")
I can't remember if I linked to this before, but sensible units is a fun conversion tool that converts normal units into killer whales, or football fields, or "average domestic cats."
Also, things that could easily be Facebook status updates:
I am recommitting myself to podcasts. If James ever gives me back my iPod.
I am volunteering for the Shakespeare Festival.
I am not buying anything from Etsy.
I am not completing my dailies, and thus will never get my epic flying mount.
I am being offered more contract work than I can do, or choose from.
I am up in arms about new Canadian intellectual property and copyright law and trade agreements, but what difference does that make? None.
