breakfast

i just discovered a new favorite breakfast, sure to be regularly included in the rotation: challah, peanut butter, nutella and banana sandwich, buttered on the outside and warmed in the panini press. sooooo tasty!

yesterday i made these homemade granola bars to sell at the AD&L cafe and set some aside for us to eat...they're hella tasty. i did good!

also yesterday, one of my profs (the one whose classes i'm in lurve with) asked me and my friend if we were interested in being his r.a.'s (research assistants) for an upcoming project he's doing! that's exciting! although i feel like i was just asked because i happened to be standing close by. here's how it unrolled: my friend went up after class to ask him to further expand on an upcoming assignment, after she was done, he said, "would you *seeing me*...or would the both of you be interested in perhaps doing some r.a. work?" see! it sounds like an afterthought! although the roomie says that profs aren't bound by the same social conventions as the rest of us. eek! why am i so hard on myself?

i hope this project goes into the summer...because this plus le bibliotheque would mean that i could cobble together enough not to get a full-time job, but work close to 35 hours doing a few part-time jobs...lovely! compared to last summer, when i was working 60 hour work-weeks, it doesn't get better than that!!!

for dinner tonight we're having stuffed eggplant. i cut the eggplants in half, season them, then sear them cut-side-down in some olive oil in a hot pan. then i take them out, and carve out the innies and chop them up, leaving an eggplant boat for the stuffing to go into. i dice up some onion and garlic, saute that in a pan, add some chopped tomatoes, basil, feta and the chopped eggplant innies, and cook that out a bit. season and put them back in the shells and bake them in the oven. we're having this with what i call the "olive garden salad": chopped romaine, tomato, cucumbers, red onion, croutons, sliced mushrooms and olives in a red wine vinaigrette.

fin.

okay, in what universe

does anna nicole smith's death constitute NEWS?!? like, i never think we've actually gone that far, and then what do i see but round-the-clock cnn coverage with resident silver-haired, stone fox, anderson cooper doing his best faux-gravitas as the tacky image of a cloth-covered body on a stretcher loops for days. insanity. not to say that anyone dying isn't tragic and sad (well, maybe not pinochet) but this?!? this fervour?!? not to say that cnn has any semblance of respectability anymore (does anyone actually think for one second that larry king is a good interviewer? that block of wood on "behind the actor's studio" out-charismas king!). it always reminds me of the john waters quote on the simpsons (about kitsch, but if this isn't kitsch-macabre, i don't know what is): "the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic."

to happier news: i finished my paper! LAST NIGHT! ie. more than 5 minutes before i have to leave the house to hand it in! i did a fairly respectable job, too. i'm not ashamed of it, at any rate.

there's been a lot of talk about amy winehouse's new album "back to black". my friend hipped me to her a few weeks back, and i've been listening to it. it's actually quite good, but more than anything, i'm impressed by whoever did the mixdown and engineering. it sounds like it's straight out of the 60s, minus the crackle. the recording is warm, the arrangements are pretty spot-on, it sounds rich and her voice does a really good job of capturing the soul and feel of the genre. the song "rehab" is pure motown girl-group fantasticness...the feel is sick! i'm glad i found out about her...apparently she's coming to the t-dizzle so i might go check her out, see if her live show tears me a new a**hole the way sharon jones did. i don't love this as much as i love sharon jones and the dap kings, but that's because amy winehouse is like a slow burn, whereas sharon jones and the dap kings are a raging inferno of funk.

for dinner tonight i'm packing a sandwich of provolone, bagna cauda, roasted peppers, red onion, tomato and basil on an ace francese bun that i'm going to throw in the toaster oven at work to get right melty. alongside leftover chickpea, leek, sweet potato and parmesan soup from last week.

fin.

wii

okay, i'm totally sold on the wii. my family needs to get one stat. nintendo's attempts at de-fatting the youth of today is well thought out, totally solid, and above all: fun. we played a bunch of the sports games: bowling, tennis, and boxing. i think i'd have to say that bowling and tennis might be my favorites. we also played a bunch of these wack "wario" 3 second games which were like video games on a lethal cocktail of pcp, meth and lsd. i actually broke a sweat for a few seconds there! i think if we had wii in the house and it came with some kind of dancing game, we'd have even LESS reason to ever leave. for the record: i'm as bad at simulated bowling as i am at real bowling. the search for the elusive strike is so compelling though. i would have kept playing and playing and playing and playing trying to get it.

making the mii characters is so much fun! mine for some reason ends up looking like a sour kim jong-il with long hair. haha...perhaps that's more apt than i would like to believe. that's a screen cap of some of these awesome mii characters some dude on flickr made based on the cast of the office.

today is all about the paper, with a 3.5 hour shift at the library, and a 1 hour break for battlestar and eating/snacking/personal hygience breaks.

sunday breakkie is swedish pancakes, mennonite bacon, and a carrot-ginger-apple-beet juice. dinner tonight is probably going to be leftovers to save myself some time. there's still leftover oxtail and then there's tonnes of leftover injun food from last night.

fin.

entertaining, hef style

i've come to realize that since about november, most of my friends who've come over have only seen me in my flannel pajamas. is that weird??? sometimes i can't tell anymore. should i NOT be having people over for dinner when i'm dressed in my pjs? is it demode? uncouth? does it make a difference what time i'm having people over?

i woke up extra early today to get a jump-start on my stats paper, and consequently whiled away my time doing some online browsing on ebay. if i could switch between flannel pajamas as my winter uniform, and muumuus as my summer uniform, i would be totally and utterly happy. i LOVE vintage muumuus! it's like having the freedom to be socially acceptable running around in your bathrobe...THAT'S how comfy muumuus are. i bought one as a lark last summer...even though it looked ginormous on the rack, it was only $10, and i couldn't stay away from it...and it looks freakin' SMASHING when it's on (or at least, i've convinced myself that it does). but i do get many compliments on it.

after the abuse that my body has been suffering at the hands of my unsatiable pms, i'm back on healthiness today. a big bowl of steel cut oats with lots of fruit is the rule of the day.

tonight i'm having some dear friends over for an indian feast. it's games night. they're bringing over a ps2 and guitar hero, and their nintendo wii so we can battle it out. i'm excited! for dinner i'm making: coconut almond rice, eggplant bharta, a chickpea curry in a spiced-creamy-tomato sauce, and i think there'll be samosas and naan. i think i'll make some tamarind chutney as well. for dessert we're having chai spiced creme brulee. namaste!

fin.

job interview

well, i got another interview for one of those $43000 positions. full time again, but at least it's at a location that's a little more accessible to me, though still out of the way. the interview didn't conflict with a school day, which is the only reason i'm going through with it, i don't think i have a realistic chance, as it's quite a senior position, and it would be a big jump for me, as i'm currently working the lowest position on the hierarchical ladder. i've thought it through...if i get it, i think it's manageable to juggle full time school with full time work. as it stands now, i work approximately 25 hours a week, so this would just be 10 more hours than that. it just means that i have to buckle down some more and not waste as much time. i might also consider taking a course or two in the summer to facilitate things.

but that's all hypothetical because i'm most assuredly NOT going to get this position.

let this be known: student councils of all shapes and sizes are the most annoying organizations in the known universe. for some reason, on my long thursdays at school, my self-appointed dinnertime happens to coincide with the student council executive meetings in the student lounge. it all sounds so banal! i tried opting out of student council fees this year during registration...let's say they were taken aback to say the least. i don't know if anyone has ever tried to skeeze out of the $25 before...there was some fumbling around and then they were going to say that they would have to take my name down to make sure i NEVER attended a student-council funded event. so i hedged my bets and ended up paying the fee. with two and a half months to go before the school year is up, i can safely say that i have yet to attend a student-council event period. i can't help it! they all sound so unremittingly LAME! i mean, if it meant sitting around talking about battlestar or something interesting, then fine, yes, i can deal. but hearing a representative of the ALA (american library association)?!? on MY time??? no thank you.

in other news, i came up with what i consider to be the most hi-larious t-shirt of all time, for the boy. it's going to say: "THE VENGABUS IS COMING" every single time i think of him wearing it in my head, i burst out laughing. i'm actually laughing to myself a lot, which probably gives me the appearance of some kind of loon. i'm sorry if i'm constantly amused by my own life!

dinner tonight is something i've been planning and looking forward to allllll week. fridays are usually take-out day (as faithful observant readers would have noted). however! this week i'm going to be making a box of kraft dinner and scarfing it down with some hot dogs. i haven't eaten kd and hot dogs in forevers and it's going to be ACES. i'm going to buy some all beef franks (not the skinny little schnieder's bitties, a proper frank, usually about 1" diameter), some squishy, soft, wonder bread hot dog buns, i got ketchup and mustard, and i don't even want to talk about how much i'm going to eat, because the pms monster is IN DA HOUSE. last night i came home from school, and the family had ordered pizza, and i was comfortably full from my oxtail dinner. so what do i do? oh, i ate THREE pieces of pizza, a hunk of kolbassa the size of my fist (for some reason pms = meat cravings for me), and the scrapings of hagen daaz vanilla ice cream left in the freezer that my friend brought over. at TEN PM. so consequently i woke up at 3am with some mild heartburn. but not even heartburn can best iron-stomach lee! i'm an old pro at dealing with middle-of-the-night-heartburn. i just prop up the pillows so that i'm partially sitting up and fall back asleep semi-vertical. if i have some liquid pepto, i take a chug or two and i'm good to go. heartburn doesn't happen all that often, and it's very predictable in me. it's when i consciously over-eat very late at night. for dessert tonight i think i'm going to make some cookies...either classic chocolate chip, or gingersnaps or those mona's mother's mother's favorite recipe ones, which are lacy and oat-y and super tasty with a glass of milk.

fin.

fait accompli

makes me sound real accomplished, doesn't it? almost as if my paper isn't a steaming pile of poo (albiet a DONE steaming pile of poo). i'm disappointed in myself. caring about school sucks! i'm off this train! no more! i also did this thing for the first time where i didn't write it sequentially, so i had to go back after and insert an introduction and a conclusion. it felt weird. like getting fully dressed and then putting on your underwear. never again!

ah well, at least i'm done. all of class today is supposed to be spent talking about our papers, but i don't wanna. i have an ultra long long day, and i was thinking of maybe going to see this dj, aaron lacrate, but it's at the social, which is on the other side of town, and i don't think i like dancing to baltimore club enough to haul my ass out there, especially when i have a mondo stats paper due on monday. i think i'm going to come home and watch the office with the family and be warm and happy in my new pajamas. that's pretty much what life comes down to, i'm not going to lie.

confession: i secretly LOVE my online information retrieval course. constructing boolean search strings is SOOOOOO satisfying to me. it's like being a detective! you KNOW the information is there, and you just have to plan, conceptualize, and plot your method to tease out the info. it's enormously fun (for me). however, the rest of the class time when we're NOT doing searches is mind-numbing to the extreme. the prof is wikked boring to the max. this is the stream of consciousness i unleashed during break time a couple of weeks back (in my outside voice, no less): "i HATE this class" "it's BORING" "i NEVER WEAR A BRA". hahaha! the poor recipient of these pearls of wisdom had to tell me that the prof was still IN the class, and sitting none too far away. oops! this is what happens when you have no filter.

people are always wondering what i'd be like drunk. i really don't think it would make that much of a difference. i'm not a terribly inhibited person under the best of circumstances. therefore, i don't really need alcohol to make me loosen up. i think the only difference might be a slight amplification in volume. it's weird when you see people get wasted and they turn into drunklor. it's like night and day in some people.

for dinner tonight i'm packing leftover coconut rice'n'peas, irie squash stew, and the jerk oxtail, with an apple and a banana and some of the those bargain basement almonds to snack on.

fin.

jumping the shark!!!

veronica mars season 3 is seriously, seriously, disappointing me. and if you haven't been keeping up to date, watch out: because i'm going to drop some mad spoiler alert bombs on yo' ass. first of all, the ongoing veronica and logan makeup/breakup situation is RIDICULOUS. it's worse than any other tv show i've ever seen, and what i've always liked about the writing for vm was that it was pretty smart and snappy, and not *quite* as given to those 12-year-old-girl pandering contrivances. they're breaking up for the silliest (and most inconsistent) of reasons. AS IF LOGAN WOULD HAVE SEX WITH MADISON SINCLAIR!!! she slipped ronnie the roofies that resulted in ronnie getting date-raped! she's a miserable b***h and logan has called her on that multiple times. it's so silly. furthermore the "cases" in each episode are starting to get really uncomfortable. last night a woman slipped her BEST FRIEND ru-486 to induce a miscarriage...even though her friend wanted to KEEP the baby. whatever happened to missing cars? or stolen test results? or pizza boy muggings, huh? and if wallace doesn't come back soon i'm going to lose my s**t.

phew. i really needed to get that off my chest. in other news: this paper i'm writing (not to be overly dramatic) is THE WORST THING EVER! it's so hard to condense TWO foucault texts into AN element in a FIVE page paper...i haven't even gotten to the other stuff yet because i'm not happy with my foucault framework. booooooooooooo hiss!!! i think it's a hunk of poo and i'm pissed off at it. we're not friends right now.

to procrastinate, i finished reading another YA book this week, "doing it" by melvin burgess. it's a book following a crew of british lads in late high school muddling through relationships and figuring out their raging hormones. the writing was pretty snappy and quick and funny at times, and it also got surprisingly racy, with lots of sexy bits. talk about embarrassing subway reading though! i would be engrossed in the book sometimes and look up to find some pervy dude giving me this knowing half-smile. ew! i KNOW quite well how to DO IT and don't need any help from you, thankyouverymuch. grody!

i also finished another comic, "mirror, window" a collection by jessica abel. it was pretty good, but filled with those late 90s alt-y slacker-y vaguely urban hipsters that seem to populate comics of a certain time and place. a bunch of mal-adjusted, generation x peeps trying to figure out their place in the world and dealing with a general malaise that i can't really sympathize with? it just seems so self-indulgent! i mean, fine, i understand, we all go through periods of that at one time or another, but it's such a genre cliche in comics!

in other news, in lieu of my requested valentine's present, which was (obviously) the largest conflict diamond the boy could get his grubby hands on, he brought me back a lovely gift yesterday...a double!!! i've never eaten a double before, and he knew and surprised me with one...so thoughtful! for those of you who don't know, a double is an island snack, consisting of spiced, curried chickpeas, encased in a fried, doughy exterior. they go down easy, lemme tells ya, perfect snack food: spicy, crispy, filling, tasty, hand-held. it basically fulfills all the snack food requirements.

today is a shift at le bibliotheque, and then home to wrassle with this paper some more. for dinner tonight, we're having a spicy clam udon. slurpy udon noodles in a hot-chili-sauce spiked clam broth with bok choy and enoki mushrooms and meaty clams. perfect for the cold weather we're facing.

fin.

dream a little dream

lately i've been having wack dreams. i had one on the weekend featuring scary goths hanging out at this souped-up, extra-sketchy sneaky dee's. then, last night i had this amazing dream that the boy and i were in buenos aires (we've never been there), with his dog, stella. we were in this gorgeous modern, bumpin' restaurant, that was filled with all these beautiful and unique antiques and knickknacks and sundries. the place was filled with gorgeous people and the low din of lots of clinking glasses and conversation and the most amazing food. then who should appear? none other than lou gossett jr. who tells us that we absolutely must go upstairs. so the three of us (me, the boy and the dog) go up this winding spiral staircase, to this room that is just floor to ceiling windows, and it's dusk outside, so it feels like you're standing in the sky. the woman who owns this place has suspended in the air, this gigantic wooden sailboat that spans the whole length of the room (similar to the whale at the american museum of natural history in new york city). it was really awesome.

tonight we're going out to jean's to eat with the boy's family, as it's his sister's birthday. i don't have work or school today, and woke up extra early so that i can start working on my foucault paper for surveillance and identity. hopefully we can eat jean's awesome pad thai and pad see yew, probably my two favorite dishes on the menu.

fin.

psych!

i totally posted something this morning but i guess i closed the window before i published it...weird.
last night went really really well, against my expectations (considering i was on the brink of cancelling). i think i have crazy social anxiety so i always dread socializing more than i should, so i frequently psych myself out of going out and being social. i've been told (and i suspect) that i actually have pretty good social skills, probably owing to the fact that my life is an open book, and i am what i am, in a very upfront way. there's no guessing with me! anyway, my social anxieties manifest themselves to the point where after a social gathering, i usually do a stage-whispered summation of the night's events with an: "that went well!" to the roomie and the boy. the roomie has asked if things have ever gone not well, and well, they haven't...but i'm a nervous nelly.

it was crazy convergence yesterday, as it was bob marley day, and i had prepared an irie island feast, completely unawares. this coincidence, plus the genetic bias of my keloid-scar producing body only reinforces my grand nubian-ness. the meal turned out really well, especially once i skimmed the fat off the oxtail...they were tender like you wouldn't believe!

i'm feeling kinda sicky, so i'm not going to work my night shift at the library. which means i have no excuse and i have to work super-hard on this upcoming surveillance and identity paper which is going to be a monster. it's like, "condense foucault and the articles and this campus initiative in FIVE TO SEVEN PAGES" whaaaa?!?!? [flava flav] woooooooooooooow [/flava flav] for dinner we're having a chickpea, leek and parmesan soup, with warm proscuitto sammies on ace bakery demi-baguettes, and that radicchio, parsley, fennel and romano bean salad with lemon vinaigrette.

it comes in waves

so, in addition to my other bad news earlier this week, my stepdad has to have spinal cord surgery again. boooooooooooooo. it's really weird and destabilizing to be getting to the age when people around you are experience the effects of aging and our bodily limits. like, when i was a kid, people getting really sick or experiencing mortality was a statistical anomaly, but as i get older, it becomes part of the fabric of your life.

to lighten the mood a bit, last night was so much fun! my other bfffff came over in addition to bff dr. rei and it was absolutely lovely. in other news...i think i'm insane. i invited like 6 of my cook friends over for dinner, so i'm making dinner for like 8 or 9 people tonight. when i have a paper due this week, a massive paper and an assignment next week. ah well, i've pretty much decided that tonight is a writeoff, so why bother, right? i doubt i would have been all that productive.

we're having jerked oxtail, coconut rice'n'peas, and an irie pumpkin (various squashes in lieu of pumpkin as pumpkin is unavailable at the moment) stew, and pecan cinnamon-sugar churros for dessert. yum! but...i'm an idiot!!! why do i take on all this work??? it was supposed to be a potluck. eek!

sunday breakkie this morning is a baby spinach, tomato, orange pepper, green onion, garlic and goat cheese fritatta with bacon from the mennonites and seven grain toast from st. johns bakery. alongside a carrot-apple-beet-ginger juice.

fin.

dreamgirls!!!

looks like a craptacular movie!!!! nothing about the ads or the material i've read indicate that it's anything BUT a dreary, boring, hopelessly typical depiction of exactly what it purports to depict. i don't even get the fuss. the oscars are going to be SUCH a snoozefest this year. i'm sorry, i don't mind the odd stephen frears' flick, but "the queen"?!? how good could it *possibly* be?!? and "little miss sunshine"??? are you people daft? why THAT? have people lost all sense of good taste and thoughtful consideration? this is going to be as bad as the year "chicago" won best picture. eek-fest, that's all i got to say. the only movies i want to see right now are "pan's labrynth" and "the last king of scotland" and well, OF COURSE "the pursuit of happyness" even with the gross injustice to english language meted out in the title (i jest! not about the butchering of the queen's english, but with the desire to force my eyes open for that dreck).

jean's was muy bueno last night. we ordered lots so we'd have plenty of leftovers. mock meat is the wave of the future!

this morning i'm have a cook friend over who is leaving toronto this weekend to move to new york with his girlfriend. he's going to be working for alain ducasse at ducasse's new joint at the st. regis hotel (i believe), and his girlfriend got a job at babbo. i'm semi-jealous...but i also have absolutely no desire to try to "make it" in new york city. lovely place to visit, but i don't think i'd want to live there, much as i do love brooklyn. not enough green space...too unmanageable a size. so we're having a little goodbye breakfast. i always get a little nervous cooking for other cooks (well, depending on what kind of cooks they are). but then i realize that i really cook from the hip, and that i'm not the emulsion-foam-xantham gum kind of cook. i'm like a composite-of-everyone's-grandma kind of cook. i want to out-grandma grandma. there tends to be very little pretension in the food that i make. anyway, this morning we're having corned beef hash with poached eggs. the extent to which i love corned beef hash knows no bounds. i absolutely ADORE it. one of my top 10 favorite comfort foods for sho'.

for dinner tonight, i'm having dr. rei over to dazzle me with her statistical expertise, gleaned from 6+ long years in the trenches of engineering. for dinner, i'm making a comfort food extravaganza. roasted maple-mustard-sage pork loin with crackling, caramelized onion gravy, cranberry-apple-pear relish, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, braised red cabbage, and pan sauteed brussel sprouts. for dessert, i'm making an oatmeal-crusted tarte tatin, because i'm trying to stick to a wintery theme, and nothing goes together like pork and apples. in between the caramelized apple layer and the flaky crust, i'm going to smear some homemade frangipane just to up the flavours a bit, and i'm going to serve it with whipped cream. unf unf unf unf unf! i can barely wait!

fin.

representational entropy

so yesterday there was all this buzz about this world-wide "global warming protest" where people were going to have a co-ordinated 5 minute shut off of EVERYTHING electric. can i just say that i absolutely loathe pithy, futile, mass-gestures? it's the triumph of the empty signifier. first of all, turning everything back ON after is going to result in even MORE energy wastage then if you'd just left everything on, especially if those koo-koos go and unplug the real energy monsters like the fridge and the heat and the air conditioner. furthermore, how many of these switch-off people routinely waste fossil fuels by driving their lazy asses around instead of taking more ecologically sound transportation? how about making changes to your lifestyle? how about using your dollar wisely? it's such mis-directed, mis-used, and mis-educated politics.

we had an interesting discussion the other night about the idea of the "artist" as figure, and "art" as a medium. somewhat predictably, i'm sure most of my faithful readers will know where i stand on this...i don't believe in the popular conception of the artist as an autonomous figure, or rather, i'm skeptical of the reception of art-as-thing and artist-as-figure...i basically see it as ego-centric solipsism and a self-fulfilling system of cultural-capital elitism, that generally denies the culturally and temporally specific nature of its own system of adjudication. i'm not saying that some people can't do some things better than others along predetermined and pre-agreed upon variables, but i do think it's the height of hubris to designate oneself an "artist". i want to punch those people in the 'nads. so the roomie goes, "would it make you feel better if more people could call themselves artists outside of the elite few, or if the no one called themselves an artist?" ie. would it be better if the term encapsulated more people, or just ceased to exist. i'm definitely more on the "cease to exist" side of obliteration. i'm a destroyer, a nemesis enforcer, if you will.

the same issue came up in my "surveillance and identity" class yesterday. we had just read a few articles about corporations data-mining, and keeping extensive dossiers on people and their spending habits, their car insurance, their flight information, etc. (aside: i FREAKIN LOVE THIS CLASS! it literally makes me pumped and excited and exhilarated). my point was that concerns over these corporations having information on us are:

a) grounded in a particularly capitalist-driven (and i would argue, enlightened-modernist driven) conceptualization of the "self" as an autonomous, totalized subject. are YOU the sum total of your purchases? the fact that you prefer lay's brand chips to hostess? the fact that you shop at banana republic? the fact that you go to cuba?
b) further to that, how much are we actively engaged in giving "power" to these corporations? how much are we subsumed by this "information"? to what extent is the value of the information predicated on our own false notions of "privacy"? if we remove the stigma, then the company doesn't have power over us. ie. i don't care if someone goes into my home and checks out cupboards, i don't care if people know how much money i make ($13.35/hour), i don't care if people know that i had sex last night, or that i have eczema in the winter-time. our feelings of being subsumed are in part due to our engagement with the notion of "privacy" in a limited sense that's rooted in capitalism and "liberty" (tip of the hat to sarah). this is a bit reductionist...but you can see where i'm going with it.

so i came up with a concept that i'm calling representational entropy, related to baudrillard and his simulacra. that each stage of re-presentation only furthers the implicit space between what is being represented and the meaning implied in the re-presentation, and this space builds and builds, to the point where what the canadian government has in their tax or census files about the letters "karl lagerfeld" is completely discoursively removed from me, karl lagerfeld-as-body. and it is in these spaces, that are the sites of negotiations over my own identity, and where there's a constantly shifting dynamic of potentialities.

wow. i wasn't expecting to go there today with my post. in other news, i read THE BEST ARTICLE EVER!!! it's called "a political economy of librarianship?" by william birdsall, a canadian. it's available here: http://pages.globetrotter.net/charro/HERMES6/birdsall.htm
and it's about 1202020 different kinds of butt-kicking awesome. praxis! a critique of the current articulation of library and information sciences! here's a select quote: "again, librarians have increasingly narrowed their perspective, concentrating on how librarians as 'information managers' can contribute to the electronic transmission of information to the customer rather than on the role of librarianship in promoting access to knowledge in all its forms in the educational, cultural, social, political, and economic life of the citizen." !!!!!!!!!!!!!! effin A!

in other news, yesterday i had the (what i thought at the time) to be brilliant idea of toasting my bagel, spreading it with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and then packing it with me. it turned into a disgusting semi-soggy, semi-stale tasting mess, effectively putting to rest those of you who've ever wondered: "is it better to have toasted and sogged, then never to have toasted before???" no!!! i also found out about a graduate level course called "the social ecology of food" COME TO DADDY! i have a silly-long day today. two different shifts at two different libraries, then running around town to procure stuff for all the peeps i'm having over for various meals this weekend. tonight for dinnie we're having a jean's vegetarian kitchen feast: red curry with "duck", pad thai, padd see yew, singapore noodle, and maybe a green curry too. delish!

fin.

freedom of information

so i grew up in a pretty sex positive household. in the sense that sex was neither stigmatized or overtly in our face, but was just normalized as a part of everyday life, and that it was something that everybody did (including, to my dismay, my parents). this didn't stop my mom from mildly freaking out when she caught me smuggling harlequin presents (that's right, not harlequin "romance", harlequin "presents" the ones that come with extremely cheddar-tastic euphemisms for sex like: "he claimed her and brought her to ecstasy") into my room to read at the tender age of 11. this also didn't stop her from full-on freaking out when she suspected me and my first boyfriend of doing the nasty. in her defense, i was pretty young, and my first boyfriend looked like a total skid. his nickname was "bush" (for his unkempt hair), and he was an lsd-guzzling, off-the-grid, animal-tracker, super-wilderness survival kind of guy. he used to lend me books about his hero at the time, this dude tom brown jr. who goes off and lives in the new jersey pine barrens with nothing but a loin cloth for months at a time, even in the dead of winter. the boyfriend was also the kind of guy who was semi-into native fetishistic spiritualism, vision quests, dream catchers, mandalas, etc. okay, in MY defense, i was pretty young!!!

so the other night we're watching an episode of the daily show, and bill gates is on there, talking about the new windows vista, with it's onboard parental internet screening (read: spying) technology, and i pipe up that i'm kind of against that sort of thing. and the boy is like, "what?!? as if you don't want to screen what your kids are doing on the net!" and i don't think i do. i don't really believe in censorship. my dad, deadbeat that he is, taught me from a very young age that there's no such thing as "bad" reading, and by extension, information, and so as long as we're reading something he never really much cared. i think with my kids, if i caught them peeping some porn or something on the net, i would much rather sit with them and provide a context for what they're seeing. like say, "some people find this degrading because of ___ and ____, or this is problematic because of ___" to which the boy replies, "kids will find the wackest s**t out there, as if you want to be there when your kid is staring at some depraved stuff" and i'm like, "if anything is going to make my kid not want to see that stuff, it's the reality of having me sitting right there next to him, drinking a cup of tea, lecturing about it ad nauseum."

you have to admit, i got a point. i'm all about the hilarious disciplining. so if i was going to censor, i'd probably do it by rigging up an ultra loud alarm to the computer, so when the kid visits a questionable site, the computer screams: aooooooouuuugah! aoooooouuuugah! or "PERVERT! PERVERT! PERVERT!" that'd learn 'em good.

last night's dinner was totally delicious. i made a stir fry sauce with soy, cornstarch, chili garlic paste, sesame oil, water and oyster sauce. it was so tasty on top of the crispy noodle cake; i LOVE chow mein noodles. tonight for dinner, it's my long day at school so i'm packing leftover lentil and kale soup and a smoked salmon on cream cheese sandwich on a whole wheat bagel. i also got this sweet deal on almonds from this lady at my work who lives in mississauga and shops at this indian-targeted super-supermarket, so she got me two pounds of almonds for wikked cheap. score!

going postal...

so this is a story all about how, my life got flip-turned upside down...wait. that's someone else's story. my story happened yesterday. i was sending off two care packages to friends, containing a cd and some jars of jam. i go to the canada post outlet at danforth and chester, and purchase two of the smallest "shipping" boxes to pack my stuff into. the tagline on the box goes something like this: "sturdy, secure, blah blah blah". oh i beg to differ, mrs. canada post. the boxes are flat, and you have to put them together, and they're held in place with a piece of cardboard slipped into a slot on the opposite side (anyone who has ever done a grade 3 geometry project knows what's a gwanning here). they are in fact, so NON-STURDY that after they've been formed, they try to bounce back to their flat incarnation, resulting in a vaguely trapezoidal formation. then i had to go buy a newspaper to wrap my jam jars in. not trusting the security of that little piece of cardboard holding the whole package together, and espying two rolls of packing tape directly to the right of the employee, i asked to use the packing tape.

dude stares at me and goes, "ummm, there's packing tape for sale right behind you."

waves of outrage start to wash over me. i say (quite politely, i might add), "but it's right there *points to packing tape* you're going to make me buy a whole roll for the five cents of packing tape i'm going to use? when the post office outlet located in the td tower at bay and wellington provides packing tape AND bubble wrap for FREE?"

dude begrudgingly hands it over (not the good, clear roll either, the murky dun-coloured one that you have to be more careful with, lest you obscure the address and return address information). i tape up the edges of the box, and then do the packing tape roll-wrap around the exterior of the box (only twice). dude starts to protest: "if you're going to use that much, then you should pay"

i say: "excuse me, i don't mean to be impolite, but i know how much packing tape costs, i can also guess how much i'm using. you can add five cents to my bill, and i ASSURE you, that will MORE THAN COVER the amount of your precious tape that i'm using" (i would say at most, i used 2 metres. AT MOST)

then some lady who's been browsing for supplies butts in: "in this poor man's defense, every canada post outlet that i've been to, they don't even provide scissors, they make you buy them"

now THIS gets me right steamed up. i absolutely LOATHE it when people INSIST on comparing things to the VERY WORST REPRESENTATION IN SOCIETY. why compare yourself to the worst????? it's like saying: "well, in nazi germany, we'd all be gassed and dead by now" or: "we could be in darfur" WHAT'S YOUR POINT??? shouldn't we strive to be BETTER than the absolute worst? in my mind, it's a telling indictment of our society's slide into full-on pandering to mediocrity. we should compare ourselves to the best and see where we fall short, now to the worst, to see how far we haven't gone. so i turn to her and i say: "oh really? well, you should go to the canada post outlet located at bay and wellington then, as they offer bubble tape AND packing tape for free on a table in the middle"

i was totally steamed up. i guess now is the right time to mention that the canada post employee was a bit of an old guy. and trust me, if anyone was raised with a healthy respect for elderly people it's me. my mom's the biggest old-person softie there is, and well, chinese people and their confucian filial piety thing, we're all over that shiz. i get it: old people are valued, trusted resources whom you should look to for their experience in the world. but! that doesn't mean old people can't be dick-butts too! and this dude, while i wouldn't go so far as to say he was a dick-butt, definitely had civil servant-slavish bureaucratic drone syndrome. which i hate more than anything.

one time we were at canada's wonderland, and we watched a girl working the funnel cake stand hold up the line for 15 minutes because she ran out of pennies to give some dude back 17 cents change for his funnel cake. i was standing there, incredulous. so i'm like, "listen. just give the dude his funnel cake! either keep the change, or give him a quarter...IT'S NO BIG DEAL!" (note: i'm always there to egg people on; passive bystander: i most certainly am NOT). and she was seriously freaking out about not being able to make the change and that her supervisor was "watching" her through the dead fly and cobweb covered, cold-war era camera installed in the further recesses of the funnel cake shanty. ridiculous!!!

last night's dinner was fan-freaking tastic. i got some smoked gouda and threw that in, and it gave it a depth of flavour, as if i had put pancetta or some kind of cured meat in there, even though i didn't. and to say that devon cream makes it rich would be an understatement to the nth power, but i still ate two unctuous, artery-clogging bowls. i couldn't help it! i'm soooooooo happy that winter is finally here, so that i can fill my belly with warming, rich foods. tonight for dinner we're having a stirfry of: bok choy, broccoli, red peppers, chinese eggplant, and tofu in a black bean-soy-cornstarch-sesame oil sauce over a crispy chow mein noodle cake (boil the noodles, drain, then fry in a little oil in a pan and compress on both sides until it forms a compact cake).

fin.

mike leigh...foucault scholar?!?

i saw "vera drake" on the weekend...it's an older mike leigh film. it was fantastic, mostly because it illustrated the domination of the foucauldean medicalized, governmentalized knowledge-power nexus over the prior paradigm of health. it was actually borderline crazy how well it dovetailed with the two foucault readings i had just done. some of the parallels were so lucid. when vera drake is apprehended by the authorities, they try to make her "confess" and use medical terminology; while she insists that she is merely "helping girls out" the policeman keeps correcting her, by saying, "you mean you give women abortions." i really love when you can read movies as theoretical texts. the last time i felt this was done as eloquently and closely was when i read "being john malkovich" as an examination of lacanian psychoanalytics.

i also finished reading a fantastic young adult novel called "the beckoners". young adult fiction is, in my opinion, some of the best stuff around. i find that the writing is really adventurous, and the subject matters tackled are done with a depth and nuance that's missing from a lot of "adult" fiction. this book deals with girl on girl bullying and clique-mentality in a small, northern b.c. town. it was completely engrossing and scary to read. while i am definitely aware that girls can be quite vicious, i don't think i'm exposed to depictions of girl violence in the same manner that male violence is normalized, so it always carries more of an element of shock and a frisson of danger and instability.

i switched around my work schedule, so that i know have tuesdays off, and picked up a regular saturday afternoon shift. i think i'm going to withdraw my application from that position at tpl. the interview times are all during school days, and it seems silly to miss school for an interview for a job that i probably won't be taking. it's for the best, although i am a little saddened by the lack of monies in my pocket.

last night's dinner was so good! i made my cheddar and onion sammy in the toaster oven at work, and it turned out fantastically. the cheese melted and got really gooey, while the onions maintained just enough of their astringent bite. the lentil soup also went down easy. i felt very virtuous eating it, as i bumped up the antioxidant power by throwing in some kale. on sunday night as an appetizer before our pasta, we came up with a lovely little snack. the roomie bought some fig and olive crackers made by a friend of her sister's in b.c. we topped them with some brie, and a dollop of my strawberry fig jam and then heated them in the oven. the combo of salty-sweet, crispy-melty was aces. tonight for dinner i'm making a spinach, mushroom, and kale pasta with sauteed onions and garlic, with rigatoni, bound together in a gorgonzola cream sauce. friday night my doppelganger made a fantastic gussied up mac'n'cheese and she used devonshire cream in the sauce, so i think i'm going to jack her steeze. it's going to be fatty, but so so good! i'm also going to offset the fattiness by making that radicchio, parsley, fennel and romano bean salad with the lemon vinaigrette.

fin.

healthy train de-railed

everything was going well yesterday, and then we somehow got it into our heads to make rice krispie treats, which was the beginning of the end. we made a batch of regular rice krispie treats, and peanut butter rice krispie treats, and we each ate about 4 big squares each. they go down so easy! like shooters! like marshmallow and cereal shooters!

i'm cutting class like a mofo today. i don't feel like sitting through one of those aimless stats lectures. the prof is probably one of the worst lecturers i've ever had the misfortune of experiencing. he basically belabours the most BASIC points OVER AND OVER again, while speedily glossing over the more complicated terminology and statistical constructs. the fact that we're not actually required to DO any of the equations makes things much, much worse. it's like we're learning a bunch of terms without any framework or relationship to each other, they're a bunch of floating signifiers. it's like someone trying to teach someone french by handing them a french-english dictionary, and that's it. brutal! it's such a colossal waste of time. and if there's one thing i detest, it's a time-waster...i got too much other s**t to do. although i just found out that the t.a. marking the first assignment is offering a help session today...which means i should probably get my ass to school anyway. crikey!

also, i got called back for a full time job at tpl that i applied for. it's 35 hours a week and the pay is $43,000 - $46,000, which would probably double the most amount of money that i've ever made in my LIFE, ever. the thing is, i just applied so that i could go through the interview process, i didn't think i'd get called back...that's a lot of money to walk away from when you're a student...we'll see how it goes...if i get it, my choice is to a) say no and keep working myself into debt or b) do it, drop down to part-time school, and post-pone the point where i graduate and then start making librarian money (assuming there's even full time librarian jobs in tpl). ah well...we'll see how i do on the interview bit, first.

for dinner tonight we're having lentil soup, with grilled cheddar and white onion sandwiches on focaccia. and a rice krispie treat (A rice krispie treat. singular) for dessert.

fin.

failure of representation

we got some bad news last night, so we spent the evening bunkered down in our apartment, just the family, it wasn't the right time to be socializing.

it's hard to know what to say, everything seems so frivolous. the human ability to mentally and physically cope is astounding though.

woke up after a 11 hour sleep, and we're all feeling renewed and re-born and refreshed. we're back on the healthy train: started our morning off with a bowl of oatmeal, and an apple-beet-carrot-lime-ginger juice. going to do some serious yoga and tonight for dinner we're having a spinach salad with baby spinach, red onion, grape tomatoes, and lemon vinaigrette, with a pasta of chickpeas, spinach, and chorizo.

fin.

octopus dj did it again!

dude LOVES to make me mad. absolutely loves it. there's no other possible explanation. he'll go from bringing the crowd up with 6 or 7 ace reggae tunes, and then, completely ignoring the crowd's reaction, play 5 disco tunes. it's so annoying. or he'll go from dropping biggie, to cheese-ball michael jackson's "don't stop til you get enough". now, don't get me wrong, i LOVE michael jackson as much as the next person (circa 1987, not now), BUT "don't stop til you get enough" is PLAYED OUT AT THE CLUB, SON. it's like the "brown eyed girl" of this particular club scene. just don't do it. please.

my mind is kind of curdled right now, so i don't have much to say. what i DO know is that tonight i'm going to be maxing and relaxing on the couch, stuffing my face in a big, big way. for dinner, i think we're going to order mama's pizza and eat dill pickle chips and drink rootbeer (me), wine and beerski (the family and our friend). for dessert, i'm going to make a pecan bread pudding with challah, and serve it with the bourbon caramel sauce.

fin.

karl lagerfeld, esquire...world's biggest sucker?

the other day i hopped on the bus to make my way home from a library shift. somewhere before the subway, an old man stepped on, and he was visibly shaken. he turned to the woman seated one away from him, and said (through a very thick accent) something like: "my wife died". tears came to his eyes. the woman, who had been in the process of putting her earphones in, paused and said: "i'm sorry, i don't understand you", and the man, probably not understanding her, just shook his head and wiped at his eyes.

i watched the whole proceeding and then started feeling really guilty so i walked over, sat next to him, and said, "i'm really sorry about that". he mumbled something about, "my wife died. sri lanka, no money to go home for the funeral". his accent was rather thick so it was difficult to understand him, i repeated "i'm sorry". then i smelled the booze. or rather, since my ace training working for public libraries has honed my alcohol-related olfactory skills, i smelled what was more like rubbing alcohol or listerine. then he asked me for $20. i (politely) said no. the bus had pulled up to the subway at this point, and i told him that i hoped things get better and to take care, he followed me for a bit and reduced the price to $10, then $1.

so i'm kind of torn. my sappy side feels for the poor dude, but at the same time, i can't help thinking that it was a right proper scam, and that i'm a foolio. should i have given him some money? i don't know. i feel that working at my branch has inured me to my (possibly romanticized) notions of the poor and poverty. i kind of think that there's laziness at every stratum of society. so it's kind of a matter of luck whether you happen to be born lazy poor or lazy rich. at the same time, my experience working in restaurants, where we had dishwashers who had just come from sri lanka, working three jobs to support their families (both here and abroad), and getting paid cash under the table, makes me feel slightly less sympathetic to some of the poor and disenfranchised who come and hang out at my branch. does that make me an a**hole? i don't know. i just see some of the regular welfare recipients at my branch and i'm like, dude, you're not even trying. and you're what gives our social support system a bad name, meanwhile, suthan at canoe works 15 hours at two jobs with some crazy work ethic, to send money back to his home. i have way more sympathy for suthan, and generally very little sympathy for able-bodied people bilking the government for work-free cash (situational contingencies obviously apply here).

topic change alert: today should be semi-fun. i'm meeting my friend for our semi-regular lunch date at st. lawrence for some of those awesome eggplant sammies (fun!). then coming home and devoting a big chunk of time to stats (not fun!). then we're probably going out for dinner with some of the roomie's friends (fun!) and going dancing at octopus (very fun!!!). or, i might meet some of my friends here, and rendezvous with roomie et al at the octopus. so i'm not sure at all what i'm having for dinner, it's in someone else's hands! how exciting/terrifying. if i do stay home, it'll be leftovers.

fin.

pide for me-day

last night's dinner plans got shuffled around due to the very exciting prospect of us having a car for a fleeting amount of time (the boy had to do label-related errands). so, we seized the day and pounced on the opportunity to try this turkish pizza place at gerrard and pape (normally easily within walking distance from our house, but due to inclement weather and sluggish ambitions, dependent on the comfort of a vehicle). the place is called pizza pide (pronounced pee-day), and the pies are fantastic! that's what they look like, they're really thin-crusted and shaped like extremely elongated footballs,
some are sharply tapered at the end, and some are just long ovals. the one on the far left is ground lamb and veggies. the one in the middle was my favorite, it was turkish sausage and mozzarella. right before baking they crack two eggs into it, so they come out with the yolks just barely cooked...it's like the ultimate breakfast pizza. the one on the right is ground beef and veggies. we could barely get them home fast enough. and there was more than enough for 3 people, at only $30! the meal also comes with a paper plate of "salad". the salad was a little conceptually lacking for me, it's basically a plate consisting of a bunch of parsley, 1 hungarian chili pepper chopped into 3 pieces, thick pieces of white onion, and hunks of extremely anemic looking winter tomatoes. no dressing. i think it's just meant to be eaten in between bites of pizza to cut the "cookedness" of the pizza flavour. not my style, really.

in other news: i got my marks back! i'm a solidly a- student. which is good enough for me, considering i wrote all my major assignments the night before or morning of their due date, and put in maybe 15% of my effort.

in other other news: i might be throwing a party in may, but i'm feeling reluctant. i'm so hooked on throwing jams, i love organizing and putting it all together, but i'm sceptical as to whether i really want to take on another event (this one is going to be super-expensive) for the spoiled and ungrateful toronto drum'n'bass community. i DID just get a bursary though, so who knows, maybe i'll blow it on obscure, left-field, drum-heavy artists from the united kingdom. sounds like fun, doesn't it?

i have my first assignment for stats due in three weeks, and i haven't even started. eek-city. i'm strangely not TOO worried at the moment, and i'm also stacking my calendar with mad social engagements, so i think i'm sublimating my latent anxiety by being reckless and bold. i can deal with that level of freudian analysis.

i'm really digging the four tet remix of sia's "breathe me". it's the exact kind of breathy, girly vocal atmo digibeats that i love. and yes, fine, maybe it WAS featured on veronica mars.

today is long day. after school there's a slim slim chance that i'm going to go to the victory cafe to see the boy's friend's band play...but i'm not sure. the singer-songwriter scene isn't really my bag. i have a problem with earnestness as a performance aesthetic. i either like jokes, swaggering posturing, dance-friendliness, or to be blinded by the sheer maelstrom of talent (ie. when i go to see say, brad mehldau or something). middle of the road songs about love and heartbreak based on the one relationship you had when you were 15 don't really cut it. in other news...i think i like that akon tune, with the charming name, "smack that".

i'm packing a dinner of split pea and ham soup, and a nicoise sandwich: canned tuna, olives, roasted peppers, basil leaves and tomato, drenched in olive oil and bagna cauda on an ace bakery ciabatta bun.

fin.