Bath

And to add insult to injury, I photographed the event. She has been bathed in "serenity", a sensuous blend of lavender and chamomile. Like she cares.

She's back

I left my computer on while I went to take a shower the other day, and this is what I found. Somehow or other, my cat wasn't the only thing that was crashed.

When I finally got my computer to work, the keyboard wouldn't work. No reason. I typed things and they just didn't show up on screen, which was extremely disconcerting to me, because I use a laptop.

I realize that what I am doing right now is in effect making up more excuses for not posting something for the past couple of days. I also realize that 'my cat crashed my computer' isn't really a very likely story at all. You've got to give me some credit for it though. I bet you'd never heard that one before.

I wish I could say my life has been interesting the past few days.

On Monday I had a not so good day.

Tuesday I had a staring contest with a Norwegian postal worker via webcam after he said that Norwegians were stupid and I disagreed. I lost.

Wednesday I wrote an English exam that was suspiciously easy.

Today another Norwegian tells me about some upcoming concerts here in Vancouver by fellow Vancouverites that I had never heard of, ie. Geoff Berner, accordionist extraordinaire.

The world is a strange place. I'm definitely not looking forward to the day when it ceases to amuse me.

Anyways, something interesting I found today: knitting as graffiti. So warm and fuzzy and rebellious at the same time.

I forsee a storm on the horizon. The other cat has taken up smelling, for lack of a better word, poopy. There is some lavender shampoo in the bathroom that no one ever uses...

Soporific

See how quickly it sneaks up on you? It's hiding in a song, an idle thought, some trivial thing that someone says to you, and all of a sudden you go from being perfectly fine thankyouverymuch to spending the rest of the week walking through air that has suddenly congealed around you. Suddenly you're wishing that you could just crawl up into a dark hole somewhere to wait out the storm.

If you were to touch me now, I would probably dent.

Distraction

In his article, "The Long Tail," Chris Anderson describes a new market model for the entertainment economy. Briefly explain what is meant by the "Long Tail" and describe how blogs, tagging systems, and social networks reinforce Anderson's idea.

Just one of the questions I'm working on right now on my other takehome. Speaking of Anderson's "long tail" and social networks, some sort of glitch at last.fm has left me with a temporary subscriber account. I'm sure that that will amuse me sufficiently to keep me away from what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

The people upstairs are arguing right now. I can hear high heels clicking across the lino floors, punctuating angry sentences. There is special sound insulation between me and them, but it never seems to be enough to drown everything out. They're talking about her mother, who passed away not long ago.

She always seemed like a nice lady to me. Every time she saw that we had done something to fix up the garden, her face would light up, and sometimes you would find her sitting out there, enjoying it. It's very sad that she's gone. Though, I find it more sad that the people upstairs are always fighting. Seems like a terrible waste of time, especially since life is so short.

Besides, they're distracting me from my exam.

Speaking of distractions though, another article that I have to look at is here, and though the article itself loads just fine, I get a popup message that looks like this:


My question is why my browser seems to think I should care if the ads on a site don't work. I'm trying to think of some sort of clever analogy, but at the moment I'm coming up blank. I should get back to work.

Missing day

My watch says December 7, and that's where my mind is too. Somehow or other I just lost a day. Time does that to me sometimes. 30 days hath November. Best not to forget that.

I'm finding it more and more difficult to capitalize the words at the beginnings of my sentences. Apparently excessive use of msn has rotted my brain and left my pinkies completely incapable of making the long stretch all the way to their respective shift keys. Luckily Microsoft Word is there to ensure my strict compliance with societal norms and conventions of the English language.

I have found myself having a lot of impassioned, one-sided debates on moral and political issues with myself lately. I will be doing something like reading for an exam or washing the dishes, and suddenly I will start talking, often about views and issues that I usually keep to myself. I have no idea why I seem to feel like I should justify myself and my beliefs to my computer screen or the kitchen window but I do. Maybe I'm studying too hard.

I decided to get out of the house for a while to prevent myself from going completely crazy from working on my takehome. I hopped onto a bus and went to school for the sole purpose of picking up one of my papers that was waiting for me in the office. I took a book with me that somehow didn't get read.

The bus driver cheerfully informed me that bus service in my neighbourhood is being expanded and some routes are being revised. I can't remember the exact details, but they can be found here. It looks like many other routes are also changing too. If you use transit around Vancouver, you may want to check it out. Changes come into effect on Monday.

Arriving at school, I learned that I had forgotten my student card and as a result, could not collect the paper I had come for. So as not to go away completely empty-handed, I spent an exorbitant amount on textbooks for next semester. I'm not sure yet if that was a wise thing to do, so close to Christmas.

Coming out of the bookstore, I ran into Colleen from my English class. We rode the bus down the hill together and then she convinced me to go with her to get some coffee. But no sooner had she gotten her drink, she decided that she suddenly had to go shopping and left. Apparently she does this to other people too. I'm not sure if I am annoyed or not.

Studying

I'm letting my political economy takehome sit on the back burner right now. I have apparently seven more days with which to write no more than five double-spaced pages about Robert McChesney. Considering the incredible amount of information force-fed to us throughout the semester, this takehome feels more like a joke than anything.

Regardless, there are always critics, like the guy in the back row who thinks the exam is much too difficult for him to accomplish. He was also the guy who complained that it was unfair that late papers and assignments were penalized 10% per day. Some people are never happy.

I promised a friend that I would draw a portrait for him from a picture I have on my computer. It's not going as quickly as I would have liked, because Lou likes to help. You can see her helping there. She types too, just never the things I want her to type.

What is it about this time of year that turns me into a cat magnet? It would be really nice if I wasn't trying to study for my exams.

Massacre

Today is December 6th, the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre and I feel I should say something. Maybe I'll say this:

My mother tells stories about how her father used to beat her mother regularly. One day my grandmother had had enough. She packed up her kids and left. I can't remember where they moved, but it was away from him. He arrived one day with his truck and stole their washer and dryer, drove them to his friend's house and left them in his front yard. Somehow or other, they ended up moving back in with him.

A few weeks later, the friend showed up on their doorstep with a garbage bag full of clothing. "He left the washer and dryer out on my lawn," he said, "and I didn't realize that there was still clothing in it. My wife said I should bring it back." Things like this happened more than once, from what I've heard.

I used to have this idea that he only ever touched my grandmother, that somehow or other, my mother was never affected. I used to picture her in my mind as a talented and outstanding student when she was in school. Maybe that's the way that she'd rather remember it. One day out of curiosity my father went back to their high school and made a copy of her transcript, and the sheer volume of absences marked in there told a completely different story.

She tells me sometimes about how he used to drive with her to the pub when she was little and leave her in the truck for hours on end while he drank inside. Then he would drive her home, drunk. My grandmother has a scar on her forehead from when he got into an accident once. Mom remembers little things, like how he gave away her dog to his friend without telling her, like how he stole and drank a bottle of wine she got in a Christmas gift exchange at work.

And one day she decided she had had enough. She left it all, and his entire family turned its back on her because it refused to admit that he was an alcoholic. She went out, got a master's degree, created a new family for herself and tried hard to not look back. She's always apologetic about the fact that my sister and I never really knew anyone from our extended family. I have never thought that she should be.

When he died, we recieved numerous phone calls from relatives that I knew only by name. Again and again we heard the same message that they weren't sure why she had divorced herself from the family, but that they knew he was an abusive drunk and his death wasn't exactly a tragedy. They had nothing but love and support and understanding for her. And the more times I heard this repeated, the angrier I got. Where were these people thirty-five or forty years ago, and why didn't they say anything then?

I can't help thinking that if someone had just said something, that things would have been different today, that I would have a family and that my mother wouldn't have to hold back so many tears.

I wish that I didn't have to hold back so many tears.

Not really a massacre, I suppose, but a little closer to home.

Hurra Torpedo

8:30 tutorial started with the standard five minutes of dumb silence. "So, what did you think about the readings?" Andy asked at last, just as Joanne walked in and sat down beside me, "Do you think that praxis will change the way corporate media will operate?"

Upon sitting down, Joanne immediately turned to me. "What are we talking about?" she asked.

"Praxis," I answered, "and corporate media." She smiled and hunched over the table, wrapping her fingers around her coffee mug, immediately launching into a criticism of camera phones that have mp3 players in them and bugs in new technology that she felt should be fixed. A girl across the room began to giggle.

"What does this have to do with praxis?" Andy asked.

"Well nothing, but new technology has problems that we have to sort out," she replied.

A guy was asleep in the corner. We woke him up to see if that would help stimulate some sort of meaningful discussion, only to find that he was completely stoned. The girl across the room began to giggle again.

"What do you think about the value of blogs and alternative media sources on the internet," Andy asked me, "will they change anything?"

"I don't know," I replied. Then he just had to remind me that that was what I had written my term paper on. The girl across the room giggled. I don't think she said a single word for the whole hour. I really could have used whatever she was on.

Some days are just like that. I'm glad that it's the last day of school.

I have just discovered that there will be a documentary on the strangely endearing Norwegian cult band Hurra Torpedo, and that clips of it can be found on Pip Simon's site. At the moment, I am thoroughly amused.

If you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, I suggest you watch either this video (Windows media) or this one (Quicktime).

I have a takehome exam to pick up right now. Wish me luck!

Hiatus

To make a long story short, my sister and I went to go see a couple plays that her friends were in at a local high school. The plays were written by the students and were extremely well done. I wonder why we couldn't have written our own plays when I was in high school. It makes so much more sense than doing Grease over and over.

Promptly after the play we got lost in the snow, looking for a Starbucks. We walked around for at least an hour before we finally found one about four blocks away, because evidently neither of our brains were working. If my brain had been working properly, I would have ordered a tall Cafe Estima, but instead I had a gingerbread latte, which on second thought, was probably a good idea, seeing as it was already about 9:45 and no doubt it would have kept me up much longer into the night than my latte.

The Starbucks closed at 10:00 and kicked us out. We wandered around through the streets until we were thoroughly cold, and then got a ride home from our parents who apparently accidentaly got stuck watching Harry Potter instead of whatever movie they had actually bought tickets for.

I'm afraid I'm not going to have much to say for the next week or so, because I should really be studying for exams.

Snow

I think this is the first year I've really noticed the days getting shorter. I'm not sure why that is, but I remember people mentioning it and not really fully understanding what they were talking about. Funny how that happens.

I can't remember the last time it snowed this early in the year. I think it's nice for a change, though I'm sure that in a week the novelty will have worn off. For now, it's really pretty.

So far the snow has confined itself to the mountains. Rather civilized, I think, because you can drive up to it, enjoy and then leave when you get tired or cold. When you get home, there's nothing to shovel. I took my camera with me to Burnaby Mountain yesterday and I'm fairly pleased with the results.