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.

lost in translation

i read yoshihiro tatsumi's "abandon the old in tokyo" yesterday. it's a collection of short comics collected together and edited by adrian tomine for drawn and quarterly. tatsumi created the manga sub-genre gekiga, which is a darker more realistic style of cartooning. and boy, oh boy, were they dark. one of the stories culiminated in an old, unemployed man, the former president of a company who'd written a bad cheque and consequently went bankrupt and lost his business, finding sexual fulfillment with a dog. i understand the point, but it was still pretty uncomfortable subway reading (i'm always paranoid that people are reading over my shoulder).

i also finished reading richard sala's "peculia", a collection of comics featuring the title plucky heroine, meandering her way through sala's particularly macabre world, populated by creeping monsters, masked villians, and other things with questionable intents. the characters are all very unique and quirky (peculia starts every day with a bowl of cereal, fetched by her faithful and extremely capable butler, ambrose) and i adore the drawing style, which has been compared to edward gorey. it's a slightly simplified and more stark edward gorey, with a blockier composition.

i'm also still fighting my way through "discipine and punish". it's much more readable than "the history of sexuality", but i'm confused why the prof had us read the two books in this particular order, as "discipline and punish" is a much more tidy and well enunciated examination of foucault's power-knowledge theorem. i'm also confused why the prof has us reading so much of the text, as you can really get the gist from selected sections, and cut out a lot of the historical examples, in my opinion.

dinner tonight is roasted beet pasta. i roast the beets in the oven until they're cooked through, let them cool enough to handle and then grate them on the box grater. saute some onions and garlic, and mix in the beets, toss them with some candied, spicy walnuts, goats cheese, the hot, cooked pasta and some of the pasta cooking water, finished with a shot or two of olive oil. alongside a salad of baby spinach, roasted figs, grape tomatoes, and sliced red onion with a red wine vinaigrette.

fin.

but i like it

i just finished reading this collection of comics by joe sacco. i'm kind of in love with joe sacco. reading "palestine" and his series on bosnia and serbia pretty much changed my life. he also has this comic in "notes from a defeatist" about working in a library, which is the truest depiction of library page drudgery that i've ever seen, and a perspicacious comment on the client base. this particular book is a collection of pieces loosely based around rock and roll. so it includes a previously published collection documenting a time when he sold t-shirts for his friend's band on their european tour, an homage to the rolling stones, an homage to the blues, various grunge and alt-rock posters and ephemera.

i'm also all kinds of in love with this strawberry lime jam i made this past summer. it's aces!

today is all about reading foucault's "discipline and punish". and yes, i'm taking notes again thankyouverymuch. so i grabbed a bunch of this ghostface killah album "fishscale". it's the lick. a bunch of peeps do the beats: madlib, jay d, i think premier, and it's awesome listening. i also grabbed some goldfrapp, which is very much NOT the lick. it's brutes to the extreme. i was playing some and the boy (we share a room/office space) was reaming me out for it...but i atoned with my ghostface discovery. additionally, i've upped my nerdbomberness by compiling a mix of tunes featured on veronica mars, one of which is regina spektor's fidelity. it's pretty cheesy and a little too girlishly fervent for my liking, but it's a SUPREMELY guilty pleasure (as opposed to just mildly embarrassing guilty pleasures like kelly clarkson, which are borderline completely NOT guilty).

finally, hearing dwight talk about battlestar galactica on the office makes me so happy. last night was an episode where he talks about his love for starbuck. i love when my favorite tv shows get all meta on me!

tonight for dinner we're having seared calves liver, with caramelized onions, mashed potatoes, baked maple-glazed acorn squash, and steamed cauliflower with garlic-brown butter breadcrumbs.

fin.

woe is me

geeksquad alert: according to my ever-reliable brother, the final story arc of this season's veronica mars is getting bumped off, so that the network can feature a new reality series called "the search for the next pussycat doll". sheesh. as if you need a whole reality series for that. you know where to find the next pussycat doll? go to myspace, find the chica with the most attention-whoring pile of scantily clad pictures of herself (especially if they prominently feature fake-lesbianism), and you've got yourself a winner. to add to my tale of heartbreak and despair, the network hasn't confirmed if veronica mars is coming back for a fourth season.

why do all the good shows have to go? my only hope is, that knowing they might be abruptly canceled after the mid-season to come, the writers are smart enough to tie up all loose ends, and not leave me hanging like they did with my so-called life. now that was tragic. angela chase had just found out that brian krakow was the writer of THE LETTER. The Letter is kind of infamous around girls of a certain age. it's like a female touchstone of sorts. however! what gets my goat is that few girls even remember that it was krakow who wrote the letter, and they just use The Letter as evidence to bolster their adolescent yearnings for jordan catalano. the final episode of my so-called life also marked the point where angela's dad makes out with the woman financing his restaurant. a woman who is not his wife. dun dun duuuuuuuun. it was epic! and then...nothing!!! hopefully ronnie doesn't do it, and i can get maximum logan echolls and veronica mars time to sustain me for the cold, empty years to come.

for dinner tonight i packed leftover veggie lasagne from last week. the family is having split pea and ham soup, featuring leftover ham i had frozen from a few weeks ago, over the holiday. i REALLY love split pea and ham soup, so i might wait and have a late dinner of that instead. the secret to my split pea and ham soup is the unusually high proportion of mirepoix, and the addition of a sweet potato to add some body and a bit of sweetness to offset the saltiness of the ham. they're also having toasted and buttered fred's potato and onion bread alongside the soup.

recent food trend: bacon in desserts. i've seen candied bacon showing up all over the place...and on top chef a couple of weeks ago, one of the cooks sent out a dessert bite that blew my mind. half a ripe strawberry, topped with swirl of sweetened mascarpone, garnished with a lardon of bacon. GENIUS. sweet and salty is an amazing flavour combination, and i'm only surprised it's taken people this long to come up with it.

fin.

pearls of wisdom

gleaned last night:

a) i do a killer shakira impression (to add to my stable of impressions, next to my donald fagan from steely dan)
b) according to the boy, i'm addicted to: food and NOT exercising. haha
c) it wouldn't take us all that much money to go down on rita mcneil for half an hour. this conversation stemmed from the initial opener of how much it would take for us to take it in the butt from a priest. the initial offer was $500 000, but apparently again, our standards are really low and we're desperate for cash, because we eventually talked it down to $250 000. i'd probably go down on a priest for $50 000 for 10 minutes. in my defense, i understood the priest to look like captain jean luc picard, or the dad from frasier. i think dr. rei was thinking the priest was more in the baron harkonnen from dune pantheon of priestly repulsiveness.

the point was: it was funny to the 3449503984nth power.

sunday brunch is going to be garlic breakfast sausages from the mennonites, alongside either challah french toast or swedish pancakes topped with banana pecan sauce. tonight for dinner we're having stromboli. which is kind of like a calzone, but you roll out the pizza dough, layer on the filling, and then roll it up like a sausage. so it comes out looking like giant sausage-shaped torpedo of crispy pizza dough. when you cut into it, the inside is spiralled through with the filling. i'm filling it with roasted peppers, basil, provolone, and various salamis. we're having this with a spinach salad with avocado, red onion, grape tomatoes, toasted salted pumpkin seeds, and lemon vinaigrette.

fin.

jean's!

is happiness encased in non-biodegradeable styrofoam. i forgot to take pictures as i was too busy stuffing pad thai, pad see yew, basil eggplant, and "chicken" green curry into my gaping, slavering maw. i haven't had much experience with asian "mock" meat, but it rocks! they even go to the effort of imprinting little rosy stripes on the soy-based, pale fingers of "shrimp". it was absolutely delicious. i'm so glad they're back! the roomie picked it up on her way home from a hospital visit, and she said they weren't very busy...so i'm a little worried. i'm going to make it my weekly takeout destination and try to single-handedly keep them afloat. it's my civic duty!!! if only all civic duties were so enjoyably exercised.

in other civic duties news, i was supporting my local italian grocery store, masellis. they make their own proscuitto, and the man working the deli is sweetly geriatric, with bright eyes peering out at you behind glasses, and he's going a little deaf. i was getting some salami cut, and was passing the meat counter, when i saw a lovely, plush, proud roll of white that could only be fat. i stopped short in my tracks and was practically drooling in anticipation. the butcher, sensing the palpable waves of lust, told me that it was pork fat (!!!!!!!!). i have NO IDEA what i'm going to do with it, but it was calling to me, on some micro-sensory level. i tried to buy myself some time: "do you always have it in?" a regretful headshake was my unsatisfactory reply. so i bought it, with the butcher's assurances that it could be frozen.

in other news, yesterday was a writeoff. by the time i got back from work and errands, it was 4:30pm, and the roomie had been to two births in two days and was coasting on about 8 hours of sleep over a 50 some hour span. so i gave up and have made today STATS DAY. tonight we're having dr. rei over for dinner and shenanigans (read: gabbing on the couch) as i doubt we'll be motivated to leave the comfy confines of our home. a friend of the boy's who lives around the corner was saying that we should all go out sometime. and i was like: "well...do you like to dance? cuz we like to go dancing, or hear music". the idea of going to a bar to drink a few rounds of beer seems pointless to me. a) because it's more expensive b) because the environment and food is always better at home c) because the idea of going out for a whole night without dancing doesn't really compute. and well, i should probably add d) because i don't drink at all. but still!

tonight for dinner we're having turkey pot pie. with leftover thanksgiving turkey chunks bound with a creamy, parsley-flecked sauce, alongside chunks of rutabaga, carrots, parsnips and peas all topped with puff pastry. with a salad of mixed greens, and roasted gorgonzola stuffed, pancetta-wrapped figs. in a light balsamic-based vinaigrette. the figs at this one veggie store on the danforth were so round, so plump, so fatly succulent that i had to get them. before deciding to put them in the salad, for dessert, i was going to make a rosemary crusted mascarpone and fig tart. slicing the figs and laying them over the tart and then bruleeing the whole. but i arbitrarily decided to make a chocolate creme brulee instead. the roomie and dr. rei both love custards and i have a pile of amazing scharfen berger chocolate that my sis buys for me. pictures will definitely follow!


fin.

top chef!

i love this show! but it definitely shows that cooks are crazy mofos, always negotiating the ultra-thin line between creative perfectionist and effed up bully sadist (i wonder if those are both interchangeable). however, allow me to draw your attention to
this ---->
that is padma lakshmi, the host of "top chef". she's quite a looker, right? i mean, i think we can pretty much generally agree that she's pretty freakin' hot. so in WHAT UNIVERSE does THAT woman, end up in the arms of...



wait for it...




that's right. SALMAN RUSHDIE. something about this couple just don't sit right with me...i can't quite put my finger on it...hmmm....

yesterday was fun. although i think i got made fun of by a classmate for my typed notes on foucault. i just prefer to do it that way so that i'm not aimlessly flipping through a book all the time, so that all the information that i need to discuss the text is laid out in front of me, and highlighted with my own thoughts and interpretations. it was kind of awkward, and brought me back to some high-school moments when i felt very self-conscious about caring about school and being interested in some subjects, and people called me out on it. it's like, i pretty much loathed my first semester at FIS, and you're going to try to take this away from me too? HELLS NO. class yesterday was fun...it's fascinating to hear other people's readings of foucault, and compare and contrast with how they differ from my own.

we also tried to do a foucauldean discursive reading of myspace. now, i've made my feelings of myspace fairly clear. i think it's stupid and silly and a time burgler. i read the "confessional" quality of myspace (and also blogging, oh dear!!!) as the need of the subject to be recognized as a subject, occupying the space that the power-knowledge matrices of production have made available, and ultimately depend on for their own continual iteration. i think there's a paper in there somewhere...and i want to write it!

i caught the boy nosing around on facebook the other day and i gave him hell. here's the thing: you haven't THOUGHT about people from high school, grade school, college etc. for years and years and years. the ones you WANTED to keep in touch with, you did. so why bother?!? it seems so pointless. i know i'm a totally different person now then when i was, oh, i don't know, five (you don't say!), and i think the probability that i would hit it off with someone who was in my life then, through the random mapping of fate, is equal to the probability that i would hit it off with someone i met today, again through the random mapping of fate. also, don't complain to ME about how there's not enough time in your life. if you didn't spend countless hours in the hinterland of myspace and facebook and youtube, then maybe you could accomplish all that shiz. but that's clearly me transposing my own desires and personality onto others. fine, i can accept that. i know i have a freakish need for constant productivity. and that i'm just privileging the way i choose to waste time over other people's, because i'm a judgemental f**k like that.

at the same time, i can't help but wonder at people who have the time and resources and luxury to go around sending people links to "funny" shiz they "found" after endless time trolling the most vapid recesses of the net. i mean, i'm sure youtube has some funny s**t, but i guess i'm just not the kind of person who does the aimless net surfing in the hopes of hitting that funny goldmine. i'm very results-driven.

and let me say it: i didn't find JT's d**k in a box all that funny. it was amusing, but i didn't do the proverbial LOL.

today is pretty low-key. i'm working a 4 hour shift at the library that i loathe and then coming home nice and early. friday is designated "stats day". so i'm going to be doing a lot of reading and researching my upcoming paper.

for dinner tonight, i think i'm going to take a break from cooking and rejoice in the return of JEAN'S to the east-side! jean's fine food catering was the BEST thai restaurant in toronto, run by a little, wizened husband and his robust wife, in a pretty grungy storefront at woodbine and queen. they do this thing where they open for a few years, burn out, take a year or two off, then reopen again. i was heartbroken when they closed down last, and pretty much haven't eaten thai food since. but huzzah! they've reopened! and get this: THEY'RE CLOSER TO MY HOUSE THEN EVER BEFORE!!! they're in the danforth and greenwood area, and they're only doing vegetarian cooking now. i got tipped off about it from the toronto chowhound board. i'll probably get takeout with the roomie and the boy. i can't wait! full review with pictures to follow.

fin.

clothes make the person???

after a filling and msg-laden lunch at kelseys on saturday, i convinced my sister to let me take her to winner's to get her some work clothes. i was really impressed with myself...in about 45 minutes, i got her two pairs of pants, 1 suit, 1 suit jacket, 3 tops, and a pair of shoes, for a total of at least 7 different outfit combinations. i think in another life, i would enjoy being a stylist. the problem is, as with most potential careers for me, i'm pretty choosy. i don't like working with people i don't like. this severely limits my potential client pool, as i only really like maybe 5% of people* (*error percentage of 5%. thank you, stats analysis!)

i really do believe that looking good makes you feel good, and that sometimes people need a fresh set of eyes to shake them out of their sartorial funk, or body issues/misconceptions. i also think it's important that my sister, who is fearsomely smart and talented, look her very best especially at work, so that the outside matches the inside. my sis has a tendency to be a bit of a martyr and put herself on the back-burner and she's so awesome that she deserves some self-spoiling. i love you, little ze's mama! here are some pictures of my favorite people on earth from this weekend, just for good measure. little ze is looking less and less like a fat chinaman, but good lord he's so cute! also included is a picture from my family's 3 guitar band. featuring 1 classical, 2 toy.

and let it be said again: I LOVE SCHOOL!!! this semester is rocking so hard! my two classes with prof. phillips are engaging, and constructed in a very proactive way that calls for a lot of student participation (my favorite!!!). i really feel more in my element. the readings are fascinating and generally approach things from an analytical perspective that resonates deeply with me. i'm interested, motivated and driven again, which compared to the lethargic torpor of last term, is a welcome and fresh perspective.

even the less theoretically driven class, online information retrieval, is proving very useful. at last i feel justified in my criticisms of google, and i know WHY. it's also a shame that people who believe that you can find ANYTHING on the internet, and who use google as their primary search engine, blindly handing over their information fate to the capricious whims of the algorhythmic gods, don't know how much they're missing, and just how much more is available if you simply took the time to produce an orderly search strategy. i've always found google woefully inadequate at producing information of a detailed or rigorous nature...it's excellent at random and general queries, but i've generally found it difficult to focus on very narrow, particular, or arcane subjects. which isn't to say that i've succumbed to the conceit implicit in my eventual professional designation of "information specialist" (har har!), but that i wish this know-how was more readily available so that the true powers of the internet could be harnessed.

there's more, but i have to go do some reading before monster day. the good news is, i took stock and realized that i can't commit to an 8 hour shift at the library on wednesdays. it's just not feasible and my work would sacrifice (note: caring about school means that your workload increases exponentially). so i've trimmed my wednesday shift down to the original 4 hours in the morning, leaving me with most of tuesday and wednesday to do school.

having done that, last night i was home to partake of veggie lasagne, which was delicious. i made that radicchio, fennel, parsley and romano bean salad again and we ate that with pumpkin pie, sans the boy's friend, who just decided to flake out without calling, which i consider the hallmark of a ne'er-do-well. oh well, his loss. he can eat his michelina's frozen 1.99 entree in the miserable confines of his lonely hovel to his own spiritual and bodily detriment (i have no idea if this is the case, but i'm taking literary liberties). tonight i'm packing either leftover lasagne, or stir fried udon for dinner at the lovely claude t. bissel building, home of the faculty of information studies.

fin.

children of men

i saw this over the weekend with my siblings. i thought it was fantastic, evidenced by the fact that i wanted to talk about it afterwards and pick it apart, and tell other people to see it so that i could then talk about it with them. first of all, i love clive owen. which is weird, because he's a very man man, whereas i usually go for boys or dudes. i was shocked that it was based on a p.d. james novel, probably in a way that is revealing of my own biases, i had always assumed that p.d. james wrote schlocky suspense novels and churned them out by the dozen. i thought the concept and the execution were really clever, and what i liked most about the film, is that it wasn't so self-reflexively caught up in its own conceit. i find a lot of films nowadays come up with an idea, and then want to hammer you over the head with just how look-at-me! clever the idea is, to the point where it interrupts the viewing of the film. case(s) in point: crash, little miss sunshine, most wes anderson flicks, etc. this film also features a hippie'd out michael caine, which is amusing in and of itself. i'm already a fan of dystopian speculative fiction, so maybe i'm already predisposed to give myself over to the world and world-view of the narrative, but i really thought it was a visually and theoretically interesting film. apparently the soundtrack was compiled by one of the dubstep dudes. the music chosen worked well with the movie, but i'm kind of hoping that film scoring doesn't go out the window. where would we be without the overwrought melodrama of john williams? or hans zimmer? we'd have to completely reconstruct how we watch movies if film scoring became obsolete. which would be an interesting exercise, come to think of it.

so i've listened to almost all of the clipse album "hell hath no fury". it's hit and miss for me. i really like "wamp wamp" "dirty money" and "we got it for cheap" and "ain't cha" is aight. i'm fairly certain the hand of the neptunes is all over this...a lot of the tunes are really one dimensional for me. but it could be because i'm all about the backtrack, and i don't listen to lyrics, which is probably pretty sucky for/of me. i also checked out lily allen. she blows. i don't really get the point. so she's some british chica who does pikey-ish reggae-electro-pop? snoozefest! i've also listened to most of the wolfmother album. i kinda like it. it has that arena rock feel that i like. but most of the tunes are completely forgettable and disposable. so far the only standout tune is "woman".

dinner last night was aces! instead of the baked acorn squash, i made a salad i copied from torito. chopped radicchio, shaved fennel, parsley leaves, and some romano beans, tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. the balance of the flavours and textures was outstanding. i'm pretty uncreative at coming up with new/original salads. tonight i'm supposed to work a long shift at the library, so i'm packing stir fried udon with tofu, long beans and eggplant leftover from last week. the family is having a "white" veggie lasagne, with a layer of mashed butternut squash with mascarpone, another layer of sauteed spinach, and topped with a parmesan bechamel. no-cook lasagne noodles are one of the greatest inventions of all time. we're having the boy's friend over, so i made a pumpkin pie for dessert.

<-- i also love this man

fin.

people with foot issues...SKIP THIS POST!

today marks the one year anniversary of The Day I Burned My Foot, setting in motion the chain of events that would reveal to me The Fact That I Am Actually Black, and also marked the turning point where i decided to walk away from the restaurant industry. i was working the day pasta station at canoe, featuring my nemesis, the "spag" machine (basically, a self contained unit that boils water, and features little baskets so that you can cook or reheat individual portions of pasta). this picture isn't the exact model we had, but you get the idea. twice a day, before and after service, i had to empty the just-boiled water into a bucket, and drag the bucket around the corner to empty it into the slop drain (the machine did not drain automatically into the sewage system, due to an incredible shortsightedness in design and implementation). i'd been doing this for months and months, and well, on january 16th 2006, with me freshly arrived back from a vacation with my family, the bucket caught on something on the floor as i was dragging it, and it tipped over onto my foot.

lesson learned #1: salt raises the boiling point of water. ergo, the water was actually hotter than regular boiled water. starch probably also raises the boiling point of water (i'd just cooked 40 orders of rigatoni in that water) or at least, maybe makes it stick to the skin a bit more? at any rate, i screamed: "S**T, F**KING, S**T, S**T!" kicked off my shoe and ripped off my sock, and plunged it into a bucket of cold water that my friend andrew got for me when he heard the commotion and saw what happened.

i think i went into shock or something, because while they were figuring out what to do with me, i was joking around and laughing. they decided to send me to the hospital. i was assuring my sous chef that i'd be back in THREE DAYS (!!!!!) at the latest (classic cook martyr supermachoman randy savage syndrome), and i was apologizing to them about being such a numbskull. then they sent me to the emergency room with the most awkward guy in the world, my nemesis sous chef, brent maxwell (not his real name). at this point, my foot was no longer in the cold water, and i was beginning to feel the pain. i took the elevator down to the ground floor (we're on the 54th), on one leg. then i had to HOP from the building, to king street, where the cabs are, crossing the distance equivalent to the distance between king and wellington. with socially awkward brent maxwell by my side.

when we get to the hospital (st. michael's), i had to wait for an hour or so, and at this point, the pain was so intense that i had trouble breathing through it; my breath was coming in quick gasps. this is also when i realized that health care in ontario, and in our hospitals, blows. the skin was kind of peeling off my foot in big swaths, and the doctors put some flamazine (the white cream in the really grody picture) on the foot, wrapped it up, told me to get the bandages changed every day, and sent me on my way with a prescription for percacets. oh, wait...did i mention that brent maxwell was completely fidgety the whole time? while i was waiting to be seen by the doctor, he says: "umm..well...i guess i better be going back to the restaurant for service". to which i replied, through GRITTED TEETH: "yeah. go." thanks for making sure i got home okay, chump!

the next day, not knowing any better, i went to a walk-in clinic to get the bandages changed, where they were VERY reluctant to do so, because "it costs them money". they did it anyway, and told me to go to my family doctor. that night, being the supreme idiot that i am, do you think i kicked back, took some percs and relaxed? hells no! i went drug-free, and hobbled around my house making a meatloaf dinner. i'm stupid.

then my mummy stepped in, calling me and freaking out on the phone. she insisted on taking me to another hospital, where the emergency room doctor pulled off the bandages to reveal the monstrosity that is picture 3 and 4. he immediately referred me to a plastic surgeon (plastic surgeons handle all burns and things to do with skin), who i found out, was at st. mike's when i was there, and for some reason, the emergency room doctor didn't page him, even though he was the on-call plastic surgeon. the plastic surgeon popped all the blisters in one quick motion (tricksily catching me by surprise by distracting me with inconsequential banter), revealing the open wound that is picture number 5. the plastic surgeon also told me that the doctors coating me with flamazine were doing nothing, because they were basically applying it to what was already dead skin. great! your tax dollars at work, people!

i had a very very deep second degree burn. i know it was second degree because my nerves weren't burned off, consequently, the next month or so was a blur of pain, daily trips to the hospital to get my bandage changed (yes, that's right...DAILY), and sponge baths. it was awful.

it took a long time to heal, and it was about 6 weeks before i walked on it. i moved back home to markham for about 5 or 6 weeks so that my mom could "rally the forces" (her words) to make sure i got to my appointments on time, and make sure that i was fed and didn't have to do anything. the boy came up and lived in markham too, and was very sweet, supportive, understanding and caring. during this time, i had to deal with the lovely cook management at canoe. my chef, tom, made snide comments every time i called in with a progress report, insinuating that i was faking it, and milking my condition so that i wouldn't have to work winterlicious. the sous chef, whom i had worked with at two other restaurants and had known for 6 years, also made some comments to other cooks behind my back, basically to the effect that i was milking it.

i think the way they treated me when i was dealing with my foot was the strongest factor for my decision to apply for my MISt, and to leave the restaurant industry. the final nail in the coffin was the day that my sister had her second baby. there was an emergency c-section, and my nephew was born under extraordinary circumstances, and we're very lucky to have him around. it was during summerlicious, and i couldn't call her all day, because cooks aren't allowed to use the phone to make personal calls. i couldn't make plans to go see her that weekend, because i was tied to this horrible job, feeding people i didn't like, working in a demeaning, belittling environment, and for what?

this is what my foot looks like now. the scarring is called keloid scarring, which is a particular kind of scar that occurs when there's a particularly severe wound, and happens mostly in people of african descent. it's weird thinking that i used to have two feet that looked the same. and sometimes in the summer, i caught people looking at it on the subway and stuff. i kind of wish that people would just ask, instead of the whole sidelong look thing. i'm definitely more offended by the looking than if someone came right out and asked me what happened.

there's not a lot cosmetically i can do to make the scar less visible...with keloid scars, the likely probability is that they grow back, and not even that, grow back LARGER than they were before. i kind of like having the reminder there, of what i went through, and i'm just grateful that it was my foot, and not my hand, or arm, or torso or something.

there's a lot of concern from members of my family, that i'm entering a profession that i'm not passionate about, in order to make some money, and that i'm sacrificing something by not being a cook anymore. yes, i do love cooking, and a part of me does miss working in a restaurant. but i chose a quality of life. i chose being able to see my niece and nephew, arrange my schedule around what i want to do, and while my life as a librarian won't be *quite* as professionally fulfilling or intellectually engaging or creative as being a cook, i'm more than happy with my decision to choose a life. i believe the idea that a job is going to fulfill you is a sick fallacy perpetrated by capitalism. i work to live, not live to work, because i know that my time with my family and friends is the substance of my life, not what i did to make money. being able to be home to make dinner 5 nights out of the week is gratifying in and of itself: i'm cooking for people i love, and **i** get to call the shots, not belinda stronach and her weird dietary restrictions.

with that in mind, dinner tonight is ribeye steaks, probably pan seared in my cast iron skillet then finished in the oven, with brown sugar glazed, oven baked acorn squash wedges, sauteed mushrooms, and panisse. panisse are chickpea flour fries. so i make basically a polenta with chickpea flour and water, season it, stir in some chopped thyme and pour it into a square baking dish. when it's cold and firm, i unmold it, cut it into fry shapes, then deep fry them and sprinkle with some salt. they puff up and get crispy on the outside, souffled on the inside.

fin.

mondays are le poopoo

and how! having 6.5 hours of class and then 3.5 hours of work consecutively are NOT doing it for me at all.

i don't have much time to ruminate on my weekend, so i'll just share my dream with you. i dreamt i was hanging out with christina aguilera, in her current 40-50s vargas-girl, bombshell siren incarnation. i was digging through her wardrobe and gabbing and she was very warm and welcoming. the sucky part is, i was consciously telling myself in the dream, to remember to ask her what it was like working with dj premier, and then my alarm went off and woke me up before i got the (sure to be) scintillating answer. bogus!

tonight i packed myself a dinner of roasted tomato soup, with a smoked paprika, parsley, and caramelized onion chickpea spread. the spread is an idea that i got from eating similar things in spain...a dish that i saw frequently consisted of sliced chorizo and chickpeas sizzled together with a squeeze of lemon. delicious!

fin.

the weekend! featuring: most righteous relaxation

family time this weekend. my sis is coming to visit with the two wee bobbins. it's actually kind of disturbing how much i love those kids. and they're not even the fruit of my own loins. when (if) i have kids, it's going to be redonkulous. and yet, random kids really gross me out. like in jesus camp, seeing all those 8 and 9 year old kids sobbing and snivelling was pretty repulsive to me. random kids bawling their eyes out just inspires feelings of disgust. i'm definitely NOT one of those girls who has this burning desire for chillun'. just like i'm definitely NOT one of those girls who has a burning desire to get married and make a big production out of the whole thing. so not me. i'm also NOT one of those people who likes raisins.

so this weekend is going to consist of: seeing "children of men", playing guitar hero (wolfmother, kansas, here i come!!!), eating (asian legend, all you can eat japanese, and hopefully, all you can eat chinese hot pot), and loafing. and maybe sneaking a peek or two at my foucault readings.

i made my brother in law an early birthday cake. it's a s'mores cake (yes, there's a recurring theme in my cooking...i like s'mores, or the concept of s'mores...actual s'mores are pretty lacklustre). there's a layer of graham crust, topped with a chocolate chip studded chocolate cake, topped with a marshmallow layer that i'm going to brule with a torch.

fin.

the office (u.s. version)

has completely and utterly won me over. stolen a precious piece of my heart. in the grand tradition of mercy being about five years behind the times (so sue me! i have a lot of interests!) i've discovered the office after just about everyone else in the world and want to sing it from the rooftops, only to find that my "revelation" is seriously dated and demode.

it's one of the funniest shows i've seen in forever. we're slowly doling out episodes to make them last longer...and each one has us HOWLING and belly-laughing. all the characters are so endearing. i love shows where the writing is so good you have a hard time picking a favorite.

other than that, my classes yesterday looked pretty good on paper. online information retrieval is going to be fun...it's like detective work...they teach you how to be a super-searcher. surveillance and identity has the potential to be good, but the class size is freakin' huge! and it's more of a tutorial-based thing. FIS is so effed up. how are you supposed to generate discussion with 40 kids around a table?!? way to NOT limit class sizes, you nards. but some of my classmates in the class have some cool interests...one of them wrote an m.a. thesis on reality television (paging tash!!!), and another one listed a side-interest in food and food production.

so, i was in the library the other day, and i just randomly grabbed this book off the shelf, it's written by some professor in maryland or something, a dude with a phd. the book is about a vampire, who gets the hots for jesus (who he calls "joshu" like a pet name or something), propositions jesus, gets turned down. goes on a murderous rape and pillage of ancient whereverthecrap they are. jesus gets crucified, dude propositions him one last time while jesus is hanging on the cross. jesus says no. then it follows vampire dude up to modern day, when the secrets of his past come to haunt him. okay. can you imagine if your PROFESSOR showed you THAT book?!? and said that HE wrote it?!? weirded out!!!

tonight for dinner i'm meeting a friend here for movies and dinner, and she's stopping by ghandi's to pick up rotis. so my dinner will be half sag paneer roit, half malak kofta roti, a ginger beer, and i've been craving ice cream like mad lately, so maybe we'll grab some ice cream for dessert, or eat the rest of the stick toffee pudding with bourbon caramel.

fin.

stats nightmares

secondary gist of stats analysis seems to be: don't trust any statistic you read. which is all fine and dandy, but then what's the point of inferential statistical analysis? why even bother? my research methods course seems to be preparing me to question and analyze and account for any inconsistency, bias, sample contamination, etc., to the point where i wonder why we even put any emphasis on statistics gathering in the first place.

jesus camp was quite creepy. although it pandered to my tendency to paint all religious people as bordering on zealotry. ultimately, i just feel sorry for those kids. it can go a few ways. hopefully, they'll rebel like crazy during their teenage years and listen to marilyn manson (or their generational counterpart) and have crazy monkey sex and do loads of drugs, OR they'll still have crazy monkey sex and do loads of drugs but flagellate themselves over it. the parents were the creepiest of the creepies. lots of homeschooling and boredom, anti-creationism, and anti-global warming propaganda. the documentary was interspersed with radio-show clips from another evangelist, who believes that the conservative right have co-opted christianity in a bid to collapse the divide between church and state.

speaking of global warming, i heard a statistic (!!!!!) on the radio this morning that 2006 was the second warmest year in 60 years of record keeping, with 1998 being the warmest. then the radio announcer said: "chicken littles attribute this to global warming". HOLY CRAP!!!! this bulls**t makes me so freakin' mad! i thought of a good business. i think more people would be inclined to carpool if there was someone who would do the organizing and screening for them. i think that most people aren't opposed to car-pooling, it's just a lot of trouble when you don't know anyone in your neighbourhood, and it's difficult sorting out the cars and stuff. i think the business should be government-subsidized, and you just do all the organizing for people so that they only have to show up, and it's done. i think i'm going to bring this to the mayor.

seriously though, worrying about global warming is kind of doing my head in.

in other news, senor el baptismo found me at the library again. and he ratcheted things up by asking me out for coffee. i told him i like to maintain a separation between work and personal life. he seemed fairly persistent though. if he tries again i'm going to ask him if he wants carnal knowledge from me. he wants secular love! he's also kind of stupid. in the sense that he seems to have a hard time following what i'm saying. he has a tendency to rephrase what i said in his response, but he never really nails it. maybe it's part of his pastor-training, but as the recipient of that conversational technique, it kind of makes the user look a little slow.

today is another monster day...i have class from 1-4, and then from 6:30-9:30. which means dinner for me tonight is the last of the indian food leftovers.

fin.