Dear my building,
Why is the pool so cold? Why is the laundry room locked? Where's my mail?
It's my day off. Work with me.

Love
Jocelyn

Potential topics for James's thesis, as proposed by me in an email at 3:05 PM today

"Why Jocelyn is the best"
"Jocelyn: Great girlfriend or greatest girlfriend?"
"Jocelyn... and the cute things she does"

makes sense to me

From Toothpaste for Dinner: Basic Electronics Symbols

Pretending the desk is a boat

I've built a little fortress of book-carts and office furniture around myself, and I am not coming out until someone brings me some Starbucks.

Spotted, on the way home from work:

Parked outside the Italian restaurant one block from my house, a Lexus, a Porsche, and a Jaguar, parked all in a row. That is some high-stakes parallel parking.

This is really incredible: serial no. 3817131. A photographic essay about women in the Israeli armed forces. They look kind of like university students, except they have machine guns.

When James Bond's Gadgets Backfire

1. Exploding pen (GoldenEye) blows up the cheque being written. And the bank it's being written in.

2. Oddjob's razor-edged bowler hat (Goldfinger) slices into shoulder of expensive suit, which cannot be repaired.

3. Miniature flare gun (Thunderball) goes off in pocket, causes chafing.

4. Mini-Sub (Diamonds are Forever) has too-limited range, does not allow infiltration of enemy lair. Also a real gas-hog.

5. Rolex Submariner containing powerful electromagnet (Live and Let Die) accidentally erases hard disc data and portable USB drive in pocket. However, it is very handy for shoplifting.

6. Plastic explosive toothpaste (License to Kill) fails to prevent tartar buildup.

Q: Hey Jocelyn, is it true that you are a manga character now?

A: Yes, that is true, although there was not a single nose stud to be had among the many animated piercings available.

FaceYourManga

EVERYONE on Twitter has one of these now. And I am nothing if not trendy.

So.... around 3 or 3:30 I hit the "brick wall" commercials are always mentioning. I've accomplished almost nothing since then, and I'm not likely to, so I'm just going to stay here until it's time to go home.

Linky Mondays, Tuesday Edition

Yeah, I had the day off yesterday so Tuesday is the new Monday. I think Wednesday is still the old Wednesday though. There's no getting around that middle-of-the-week crap.

holy moley, do i ever have a tag management problem on delicious. That's not a tag cloud, that's tag smog.

tonight i'm going to get orientated at the women's prison in edmonton--i'm on a committee that's working on the library there. i can't wear expensive jewelry (editor's note: like i would, anyway) and i'm carrying around a photocopy of my driver's license (editor's note: i don't have a driver's license. i'm carrying around a photocopy of my government-issued id.) anyway it's pretty trippy--i was thinking about it last night while doing dishes and i realized the one thing i COULD NOT HANDLE about being in prison is that they get no internet. NONE. no negotiation. even dial-up feels kind of like prison, to me.

so i guess i have to keep on the straight and narrow.

links:

Engrish funny--so I guess it's not hard to find this stuff online, but that doesn't mean it cracks me up any less.

Room with a Screw--an amateur scambaiter with a poetic soul tries to con a would-be conner--into writing a poem. It's long, but worth a skim.

That was epic--an art project turning de-contextualized youtube comments into poetry. i'm obsessed with comments, and commenters, lately. this kind of mainlined into my brain. (I should say: this kind of mainlined into my brain, noob.)

And a couple more links that have made me smile in the past week:

graphjam--the song chart meme finally gets its own website.

LEGO tableaus re-create famous photographs [from Wired]

Where is Bob? Tales of an absentee manager. Kind of reminds me of David from The Office. Hard to believe it's real, it's so ludicrous.

Entry in my Crazy Person Journal

"Aug 18/08: I just realized that my bottom and top teeth do not line up when I close my mouth."

If you think the acoustics are great in your shower, you should try an indoor pool.

From GraphJam: Multivariate Increase of M.C.Escher’s Popularity.

Entry in my Crazy Person Journal

"Aug15/08: Added new entry to my Talking Mice list."

File under irony, computer game

I have been playing The Sims 2 again, like a maniac. I am really, really good at The Sims 2. I can get the Sims promoted like crazy. I can make them fall in love inside of 10 minutes. I can queue up 6 activities for each of the 5 people in a household, put it on super-fast speed, and go brush my teeth and I'll come back and one of them will be mayor. (Well, basically.)

BUT.

Would I let my Sims play computer games for 5 hours on their day off? I would certainly not! I would make them write their novels, and clean their kitchen, and water their hydroponic garden, and go for a swim.

So.

I'm going for a swim. Because I can't let the Sims' lives be better-managed than my own.

Deg deg.

Why do 3 other people besides me have my books i'd like to read list bookmarked?

I am lurving xkcd lately. Today: Freemanic Paracusia.

Amongst my batch of morning links was this wonderful speech from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He delivered it at Harvard in 1978.

"Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings."

Your a noob

This morning I discovered the WOW Insider license plate gallery. This one is my favourite:

BLORG!

Q: Hey Jocelyn, how big of a nerd are you?

A: This big:

Yep, I'm going to the Folk Fest today, so I logically decided to make a little cooler bag for my water bottles and ice pack. It's actually cuter and less misshapen than this photo would suggest, but I'm a seamstress, not a photographer. Anyway, I'm thinking it could double as a lunch bag. Cute cotton prints FTW!

The other project I'm working on is a tablecloth for my night stand. I decided to hand quilt it. Apparently this was foolish! I'm about half-done and I have spent about 7 hours on it already. While watching X-Files of course.

Also, I swam 2.3 km this week so far. That's a lot of turning around in my tiny pool!

Yesterday I had to get fitted for a mouthguard at the dentist. The stuff I had to bite down on reminded me of the stuff they use to take casts of footprints on CSI. To avoid vomiting on the dental hygienist, I pretended there was a crime in my mouth that was being solved. And that crime is NIGHT GRINDING.

I call "blogs" "blorgs" now, just FYI.

My special Man Friend, James, and I have a new collaborative blog: Absolutely True Facts. I strongly suggest you check it out; it's very educational.

In a reverential movie-theatre whisper

Me, about fifteen minutes into watching WALL-E: "This is my favourite movie."

I could say more, but that pretty much sums it up.

Long time, no blog

This is what my balcony garden looks like these days. The sugar snap peas are my favourite; I love their little windy fingers. My one ambition these days is to be more like a sugar snap pea. I'll grow on whatever I can grab.


My amazing technicolour pepper! I grew this FROM NOTHING.


This is what the world looks like from up here. The strange sky, which looks like it was drawn with microsoft paint, and the apartments across the street hold equal interest for me.

the things you can't see

Today I made my first loan through kiva. This is a microlending website. I lent my $25 to this group in Bolivia. This is actually very efficient, because, in case you didn't know, you get more for your money in Bolivia. I checked on it.

Yeah, I crack myself up. But I am seriously excited about this opportunity. I'll report back. I understand that I don't really make profit on this undertaking though. Typical Jocelyn--invest in something that will just pay you your own money back! I stick my tongue out at myself, emoticon-style: :P

I also went to the doctor this morning, and she suggested I start taking Vitamin D. Then I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of healthy food, because the doctor made me feel guilty.