From the impulsive buy: Froot Loops Cereal Straws. I can't believe someone invented that. I can believe that someone bought it though--because that seems like something I would do. In fact, that sounds EXACTLY like something I would do. This blogger also reviews such food products as Libby's zesty barbeque Vienna sausage and Jalapeno Spam. Yeah, I know. AWESOME!

May I also suggest you check out this LEGO aircraft carrier. I wish I had a job building giant things out of LEGO. Although it does seem like the people who do this, do it in their spare time. Much like I watch TV in my spare time.

This weekend I am going to watch more Lost, drive to St. Albert, and possibly make homemade chicken stock with a grocery store rotisserie chicken. I am also having people over to watch the exciting Noah Wyle Librarian movies (both of them!) So I have those things to look forward to. In the meantime, though, I'm at work, and I feel sick to my stomach, and I really, really, REALLY want to go home.

adventures in public romance (not the sexy kind--this site is always SFW!)

I just dextrously avoided being asked out by someone at the library help desk--I say dextrously because I employed the classic, "Well, this is a helpdesk, so... if you have an actual question, i will answer it" line (implication: but I do not want to be part of any "confidential conversations," thanks). I don't mind being flirted with, if it's classy flirting--especially since I am feeling rather pretty today--but this wasn't flirting, it was something else far more open and depressing... scouting. Frank evaluation. Predation.

The weird people who try to date me--and there aren't that many, but enough to establish a pattern--are always asking me my name, and I experience this momentary hesitation. Why don't I want them to know my name? If normal crazy people want to know my name, I usually don't mind (it's not like it's a secret), but for some reason if I can tell they're angling to try to ask me out (or whatever we would do, in their crazy version of what relationships are like--make out in the bathroom?) it makes me uncomfortable. It seems like I'm giving them a power they don't deserve. Fairy tales know this: names are powerful. Yet I always stumble over the truth instead of providing a spontaneous, ill-constructed lie. Why can't I be Monique or Sasha or Jamie, just for today? Maybe I should practice.

Another weird guy asked me out earlier in the week, as I was walking from the LRT station to my building, and this guy was OLD. Sometimes I describe people as "old," and I really mean, "over 30," but this guy was 65 if he was a day. I transcribe our conversation for posterity:

OLD guy, with no preamble: Are you single?
Jocelyn, quizzical and amused expression on her face: No.
Old guy: Because you are [indistinct; a combination of an appreciative groan and what may have actually been a real english word, although maybe not].
I walked away, laughing, and when I had gone another ten feet:
Woman sitting on a bench with a bemused look on her face: You're not single either, huh?
Jocelyn: No, not today.

Am I a weird guy magnet? Or is it just logical--only weird guys would try to pick up random women on the street, and therefore, the only men who will try to pick you up on the street are weird by definition? I hope it's the second. Anyway, I wanted to ask this weird guy what, in his weird old guy version of reality, gave him the impression that he had a chance--however remote--of picking me up. I wanted to say, "do I look homeless or mentally ill to you? Do I look like I am in your age or income or attractiveness bracket?" [not that i'm a supermodel, but keep in mind, this guy was getting the senior's discount AND the weird guy discount, and probably a shoplifting-from-value-village discount as well. At least I wear clean clothes and my hair smells like satsuma.] "Do you know that I have a real boyfriend, who is gainfully employed and cute and smart and funny and who accompanies me to foreign films and never describes me using grunting noises? Do you know that I have 15/16ths of a Masters degree, a laundry card, a savings account, multiple pairs of shoes, 471 books, tiny frozen casseroles, handmade jewelry, a sense of dignity, and a myriad of other things that put me way out of your league?"

But I said none of those things. At least I didn't tell him my name.

Well, good morning, internets. I trust you slept well.

The computer helpdesk where I work in the afternoons is so over-air-conditioned that I must bring my armwarmers to work. Or at least, that's my excuse. They are somber, black work-appropriate armwarmers though, so fear not. I would never commit the faux pas of wearing garish armwarmers to work.

Meghan and I wanted Babel yesterday and I liked it, although I didn't love it. Jon didn't really like it though, and I was at a loss to defend it. Sometimes it scares me that I might like movies simply because I'm pretentious, and they fit into my pretentious identity. Although, as Meg pointed out, "You also like lots of things that are dumb!" And that is very true.

I am frightened by how quickly time seems to go by, now that I am working. Every time I have a weekend (which I get very excited about), the weekend seems to be over immediately, and then I have to work again--but only for five days. And then it's the weekend! And then, even in this relatively constrained example, two weeks have already gone by-- out of the 4500 or so I have on this planet, total. I should be accomplishing more, or at least doing what I am doing but in less time, or something. Although not playing Warcraft is a good start.

I need: more money, more coffee, more sleep, more email, more regular mail, and a shower. I could also use some pizza, and a trip to the fabric store. But I believe these are all achievable goals. I have bright hope for the future, internets.

Depictions of grad students on The Simpsons

The source material might be a little sparse for an actual thesis, but I haven't given up hope...

Seriously, though, I made way more than $600 last year. $900, at least.

"Le sigh"

A common catch phrase used in the popular classic cartoon "Pepe Le Pew" of Looney Tunes. The cartoon would feature a skunk inevitably falling for a cat who always seemed to get a strip of white pants on her otherwise completely black body...giving said feline the appearance of a female skunk... Many little blogging junkies have taken this saying and put it to their own usage to describe the feeling of dejection, apathy, dreaminess, etc. Sadly, most do not know the origin of the phrase. Even so, it is still a quite useful and popular term.
-The Urban Dictionary

That pretty much sums it up.

and we are all very, very old. Yes, even you. Especially you.

the baby from the Nirvana album Nevermind is now 17.

burninating all the peoples

Oh, rock. From thinkgeek: The Im in UR blank, blanking UR blank tshirt. With erasable marker so you can change it to fit any occasion! [I also love how the example thinkgeek has on their site is "I'm in UR medieval village, burninating ur peasants." Nerdy to the core.] I'm in UR internets, maxing out ur credit card.

Earlier post: I'm in ur...

May I suggest you buy this? #3

Ramen Noodle change pouch$7.50 from MoJo

I broke up with World of Warcraft yesterday

I can't believe that I wrote a blog entry about the bottle-throwing and I forgot the single most important development of my life over the weekend: I canceled my Warcraft account. I finally grew some stones and broke up with that game. We did an instance run yesterday that took almost 5 hours, and at the end of that five hours we had accomplished nothing, and I was actually sobbing from frustration. The other people in my party didn't want me to leave because, even though we were all dying every ten minutes, without a healer we would have all been dying every three minutes. And my home computer has recently, suddenly, inexplicably, begun to suck--refusing to load things quickly, or sometimes, at all. Damned compy! And so the animation in the game was so choppy I was getting all headachy and nauseated, at four frames per second (if that means anything to you). And I had this revelation: it was Sunday evening, and I had done nothing all day, and I felt sick and sad and tired, and I felt like that because of something that I supposedly enjoy and, for that matter, actually pay money to do. And that, internets friends, does not make sense.

It's not like I'll never, ever play again. Sometimes relationships end, and a few months go by, and then you realize you've found enough peace that going back to spending one night a week together won't ruin your life... and might even be kind of satisfying. (Heh.) And if that happens, great. But otherwise, I am now awaiting my next weird, dorky obsession, so if anyone has any suggestions...

Oh, so, as an end to the story, after I broke up with Warcraft (and canceled my account), and in the few Sunday evening hours remaining to me, I did all my dishes, two loads of laundry, made some food, went for a walk with James to the Legislature and stuck my feet in the fountain, and read a book. I was EXTREMELY productive. We full-time-job having people have to be judicious with our spare time.

Here is a picture I took on our walk. I like how super-real (or, as we say in the photography business, "vivid") it looks. I said to James, "it's so beautiful... it looks almost American. Like we were a society that really cared about democracy." (Which is patently ridiculous. How could a society care about democracy, if they don't constantly use it as rhetoric to support every political action they make? Exactly. They can't. And don't.)

At work, working,
Jocelyn

Earlier entry, on the subject of breaking up with things that are not people: Dear Edmonton...

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.

notes from under the rabbit-ears

I am currently watching the first season of Lost, and a few episodes in, I would say I am voting Sawyer off the island.

from here to birmingham...

Currently reading...

Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things... That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out

I am really enjoying this book. Like most short story collections, it’s a bit hit and miss, but the introduction by Lemony Snicket is very funny, and the stories by Neil Gaiman and Clement Freud are real stand-outs. Like most McSweeney’s books it is also physically very beautiful, nicely bound, with great illustrations. I haven't finished it yet (two stories to go) but I will today, because tonight I am going to pick up my amazon package from the post office, and then my all-consuming book will become Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You. Summer is for short stories, everyone knows that.

Amazon has Noisy Outlaws... classified as a children’s book (as does McSweeney's), and it had literally never occurred to me that it was-—but now that I think about it, I guess that makes sense. (I bought it from the Space Store in Seattle, so I didn't know what kind of book it was. Or, more accurately, my dad bought it for me.) It says a lot about the book that I didn’t identify it as a children’s book until now. But it doesn't have any swearing, and the dominant tone is kind of silly, so it must be. Highly recommended.

Noisy Outlaws... is currently on sale for $5 at the McSweeney's store. While you're over there, sign me up for their $95 book-a-month-for-a-year club. It sounds heavenly AND economical. I'll pay you back.

I don't know why anyone would care, but in case you do (or if, based on my blog, you are in love with me and want to know everything I do and read and think about), what i have read, am reading, and want to read is always on my list over at listsofbests.

Like intrigue, only boring

Jocelyn: Hi, I have a package waiting there for me to pick up... can you tell me who it's from?
Woman at the post office: I'm sorry, we actually can't give that information out over the phone.
Jocelyn: OK, well, can you just tell me whether it is from Amazon?
WATPO: Just a moment... [comes back] your suspicions are correct.

waiting for a sign

I seriously have no idea how the language of my archives (to the right) became none of the languages I speak or even recognize, but I think it's awesome. deletia: diversity!^TM

Edited to add: Damn, it switched back. I swear it was really, temporarily, not English. Now this is going to make me seem crazy. But I am not deleting this post, because if I can't seem crazy on my own blog, then where can I? WHERE CAN I?

Edited again at 3:48 to add: It happened again, and I have proof.

in a foreign country

Yesterday I totally felt like a Ben Lee song, but today, I feel like a Tom Waits song. And not in a good way.

There is new corporate art on the lawn between the train station and the library... and it's TERRIBLE. I don't know how the university is ever going to be world-class if all our corporate art is made out of rusty repurposed steel. It doesn't even look like art, it looks like a plane crashed and they haven't finished cleaning it up. Couldn't we have something made of marble, or concrete, or even new steel instead of rusty steel?

It makes me depressed, but then, it helps that I was already depressed to start with.

In the garden the snake was a charmer
And Eve said let's give it a try
Now lead us not into temptation
But no matter how hard I try...
-Bell XI

Today I learned about the tiny island nation of Mauritius, which is East of Madagascar. (For those of us who enjoy comparing the sizes of other things to the sizes of US states, it's "about the size of Rhode Island.") Apparently, Mauritius has the second-largest GDP in Africa, but more importantly, the whole island is a wireless broadband internets hotspot--or at least, that was the plan in 2005. I can't find any news about whether this ambitious goal has been met. I love that the Department of State entry linked above contains this sentence: "In recent years, information and communication technology (ICT) and seafood have emerged as important sectors of the economy, growing by an average of 40% last year." Information and communication technology and seafood are the future.

You don't see Rhode Island installing no universal wireless.

I am enjoying using bad grammar today--I'm not sure why. It will pass, though. It always does. Saying "internets" instead of "internet" is probably here to stay, though.

I'm in ur library, answering ur chat reference questions.

Notes from the Underground

i. What is up with the scowly people? There are so many people around who scowl at complete strangers (ie., me) for no apparent reason. A lot of them are old, but that's no excuse. I am often tempted to sit down and have a talk with these people. As in, "WHAT? What did I ever do to you? Do I look like the ninja that killed your family?" And they would have no legitimate response. Because you KNOW I don't look like no ninja.

I'm not the world's friendliest person, but at least I don't appear to wish the deaths of complete strangers just because I had a bad day. I've even been known to smile, from time to time.

ii. When the LRT pulls into the University station now, the cool, collected voice on the LRT radio says, "University station. University. Please exit to the right(/left) of the driver." I had this whole rant ready about the dumbing down of our society, and how if someone can't tell when a train pulls into a station which side the platform is on, then that announcement may solve that particular problem for them, but they'll still be a moron. And how signs and announcements and instructions in our society seem to be catering, more and more, to the dumb and litigious-- a tyranny of the moronity. (That phrase is now copyrighted, so don't even think about it.) But then it occurred to me that it is probably for blind people, and that I am a jerk. And THEN it occurred to me that I may not be able to copyright just that one phrase, even if I did invent it, because this whole page is published under a Creative Commons license.

Heh heh. The title of this post is the name of a book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, but it's also literal because the subway goes underground... sigh. Nothing is ever enough for you people, huh?

Work is making me very tired and depressed today. As much as I complain about school (and I DO complain about school) I much prefer it to waking up every morning and putting on stupid clothes and coming here and staring at my computer screen. Work brings up existential questions, which I dislike, such as "What am I really doing here?" (That's 'doing' in italics, not the normal kind of 'doing') and "Is the point of life just to make enough money to keep on buying food so you can keep going to work?" and so on. I don't like to be left in a windowless hallway with an empty desk and questions about the nature of my own existence. Even if I DO have my own stapler. I much prefer to be distracted.

Plus it seems like more things used to happen to me, before, which I could blog about. Now nothing happens to me, and it takes forever.

Like the RIAA, only older and slightly less annoying

Via BoingBoing: No license is granted.... The restrictions placed on records released in the early 1900s. "This record is leased solely for the purpose of producing sound directly from the record and for no other purpose..." Selling records for less than $1 is killing the music industry!

looking for another girl

1. From Foreign Policy: a list of the world's worst currencies. Poor Somali shilling--no one takes it seriously.
2. Two funny sites: passiveaggressivenotes.com, which collects notes and signs that are passive-aggressive (or sometimes just aggressive-aggressive), many of them written by roommates. And the office sign project.com, which collects funny signs from workplaces for the world's amusement.
3. reCAPTCHA is a cool project that harnesses the power of users (and their superior intelligence) to aid with digitization projects. These are the little anti-spambot captcha thingies (you know...), but instead of nonsense character strings, you are identifying a word that OCR software can't identify in digitized books. Plus, their website is pretty.