here are some things i've learned about this week:
the khmer rouge: i didn't know about the child soldiers or the old people/new people differentiation or tuol sleng or that the fighting continued into the 1990s.
wendy babcock
president obama's climate change strategy
my sister loves pancakes
china vs india: whose economic growth is expected to lead the future
vampires vs werewolves: we all win
my diary from 2003: not as embarrassing to reread as i expected
what is something that you know, that you think i should know? i'm nosy and would like to learn more about everything.
so, i'm writing my last essay of the semester: that enormous burma paper i've allegedly been working on ever since i submitted the proposal a month ago. OOOPS.
here's a brief summary of burma: in 1987, it was ranked by the UN as Least Developed Nation. the next year, the military took over via bloody coup and things took a turn for the worse. i have a bazillion pages to write on a country whose current main industry consists of trafficking women and children into thailand to work in brothels. it's horrifying and humbling, even more so than last month's comparison of colombia and sudan's civil wars.
related: so, hey, i went to see a movie today with my ladyfriends. boyfriends hung out together beforehand. adam spilled the beans of their conversation while we were walking home, specifically the part where one of the guys went on a monologue about loving tucker max. tucker max. i made a disgusted face while mr t told this story, and he agreed; for those not in the know, tucker max is the burma of people. OH AND THE MOVIE WAS GREAT i clung to bev's hand while giggling and bev threatened to punch the kids behind us in the throat.
yesterday, i blurted out to my director that i have lupus. this was in the context of saying that sometime i come to work sick but i'm not contagious, so don't worry.
this is good news: it was bound to come out at some point, probably. better while i'm healthy?
this is bad news: my boss spent the afternoon asking me in four different ways how this is likely to affect my performance at work. i answered in the very same way each time, that i don't really want to discuss this at the moment and i am working tooo haaaard right now to talk.
we're having a meeting this morning and i'm still trying to work out how much i want to disclose.
work was rough yesterday, and busy busy busy this morning. then, this afternoon, it's all over, everything's finished and submitted and i'm left alone to take a powerpoint course. my boss called me a rockstar and told me she's pleased with my work and i am pleased with all compliments. this is why i'm back in school, really, because i want people to evaluate me every month and tell me i'm clever enough. this is also known as lisasimpsonitis.
i've been off prednisone for long enough; tonight i can finally get my swine flu shot.
i told my mum yesterday that i don't need presents, instead please make a donation to an appropriate charity. to clarify, these are examples of appropriate charities:
doctors without borders
ospca (not the toronto humane society; they're still disaffiliated with the ospca. this means they're not allowed to investigate animal cruelty charges or provide the services of a recognised spca.)
toronto western hospital
foodshare
habitat for humanity
lesley arfin wants to interview me about my favourite scar. i wrote her an email at 3:30am yesterday bragging about my scar and she wrote me back and so this is maybe the start of nothing or something.
also! today i got to see bev. we had a good wander and she helped me buy new fancy undergarments, as well as low-brow undergarments. also, we ran into phil, harald and, briefly, other phil.
also, via bev: bea arthur, thank you for being a friend.
1. writing another essay this weekend. this one's for criminology: mandatory minimum sentences.
2. adam t + me dropped by a bar across the street where jeremy f plays dj. we thought we'd only stayed half an hour, maybe, but we're back home and it's two hours later. saw lots of the ex-glendon crowd, including some guy i don't remember, but he remembered me. he said he dated other naomi (noémie?), which is maybe why i don't remember him. noémie was high maintenance drama and i am low maintenance drama and, anyways, i don't remember this guy's name but i told him that we should be friends, and then i tried to make him fall in love with adam. both ex-boyfriend of other naomi and current boyfriend of this naomi grew up in small towns in south western ontario and both pronounce julien's name the anglicised way - that's called common ground.
also! jeremy suggested that i start playing dj with him, maybe once a month to start. also, he told me to have a party and invite him. also, he seems to remember a time when we had a radio show together at glendon? except that never happened; i had a radio show with tim. i do remember a time when we both went back to ottawa during the winter break: he introduced me to his father by waking his father up, in the middle of the night, and saying 'here's my friend naomi!', and his father seemed pleased to meet me. i was super uncomfortable; i was not brought up in a house where people enjoyed being woken up to meet other people's friends in the middle of the night.
3. also, dara told me last night to pull that move where i ask 'oh, what time is it?', which i follow up with 'oh, really? oh, i have to go' and then i get up and go. i don't think that i do this! except, we sort of did do that last night. not because we were having a bad time, but there are only so many pictures of the back of my head that people really want to see.
spent all of yesterday writing my intra-state conflict essay. this is a boring story; the better story involves my tea break.
so! i walked over to the communal mule for tea and cookies while taking a panicky break. turns out they only take cash. turns out that i look like a trustworthy person, and the owner offered to start a tab for me. a tab, for me and my cookie habit. i don't want to die with a cookie-based debt on my head, so i walked over to the bank and took out cash monies, but dudes. COOKIES ON CREDIT: best dangerous idea or greatest dangerous idea?
happy birthday, nathan! you've been a most excellent brother for the past twenty years.
i'm sorry that i'm missing your birthday again.
I FINISHED WRITING JIBBERJABBER FOR MY HORRIBLE IMF CONDITIONALITY CLAUSES ESSAY. IT TOOK ALL WEEKEND. THIS WAS A BAD TOPIC CHOICE, BAD MEANING BORING.
( essay writing playlist: )
also from this weekend:
i made chocolate pudding, my mum phoned me back with my childhood favourite recipe; took essay breaks to watch epsiodes of it's always sunny in philadelphia, season 5; wrote two pages for the other essay, on intra-state conflict.
1. i have three essays due next week. OOOPS.
2. accomplishing things at work! me! submitting ideas and getting good feedback! me! feeling less stupid!
3. crashed dara's supper with her cousin, then went to see where the wild things are with myke. both of these things were very good.
walked and talked with myke on the way to the theatre: how glen beck is maybe a psychopath and what's the deal with the liberal party and why are canadian politicians less good at lying. also, i went on a monologue about not really having much of a beef with scientology in and of itself - all religions are varying degrees of weird - but the anti-psychiatry and anti-gay messages are so hateful and icky and that's why it's our responsibility to give the stinkeye to the tom cruises of the world.
i enjoyed the movie.
4. who was the least reprehensible leader: castro, jfk or khrushchev?
the head of my division at work is concerned that i'm going to accidentally succumb to commie ideology, and has lent me richard neustadt's presidential power: the politcs of leadership to keep my options open. i'll probably read it while avoiding the essays this weekend.
5. okay, adam is rushing me back out the door with some sort of hot chocolate bribe/scheme.
okay, so adam and i are people who have the means to try not to buy ethically icky products and, while that cuts out everything from cheap chocolate to overpriced shoddy-made shoes, we're trying to do what we can. this is a roundabout way of saying that we've agreed not to buy any more chiquita banana, dole fruit, or del monte produce. this is because i am easily influenced and i became sad for two whole days after watching a documentary on jamaica's economic decline,which was partly due to unfortunate trade agreements - these agreements include dole fruit's unfairly advantaged fruit (due to its subsidies and exploited workers) elbowing out the domestic and international market for jamaican-grown produce. i wouldn't shut up about Evil Big Fruit, until adam gave me stinkeyes for thinking that ontario's hothouse farms treat their migrant workers any better. so, fair trade bananas only and no more ontario hothouse tomatoes*.
*(i'm still unclear about adam's hothouse tomatoes claims, but this was part of the agreement to get him to stop buying dole bananas. i'm not at all able to answer any questions about hothouse farms.)
no, this isn't at all like the time five years ago when i watched a cbc doc on sugar plantations in haiti and stopped eating sugar for a whole day. i'm pretty sure this is more like the time when i watched a doc on chicken farming in grade nine and stopped eating eggs forever after.
1. at midnight-thirty last night:
adam said, farmville will not help you go to sleep. he had a good point. he suggested that i watch the space channel with him, instead. space problems are not my problems. we watched an old star trek episode, while adam ate his midnight toast and fell asleep in a cuddle. i stayed awake and tried to hypnotise myself.
2.
Turning the Place Over - Richard Wilson, 2007 from Liverpool Biennial on Vimeo.
via metafilter:
the governator vetoes bill 1176 in poetic style. the state press secretary says it was merely a "a weird coincidence".
also, i got the highest mark in my class on my IR midterm brag brag brag brag brag.
1. adam showed me my new favourite reason to adore the internet.
2. had a pretty great time in ottawa. fact: managed to condense a solid amount of fun into 19 hours, plus 11ish hours in the car. joel sent me reassuring emails last week regarding my understanding of history, and gave a very brief lecture while we were walking over to the show. he offered to lend me his old textbooks on the cold war era, in case i want to read the version of history that most historians in north america agree upon. fact: dave also has opinions on the cold war, which he shared during the walk to the avant-garde; while they're mostly similar to my prof's point of view, dave also has a baffling amount of affection (for a government employee) for anarchy as the best possible form of social structure.
3. fact: it was nice to see my brother again.
4. fact: it's easier to daydream while looking out at eastern ontario's lakes, deciduous trees, and odd patches of dead pine forests. i'm not sure what's with the dead pine forests? we had competing theories in the car, but none of us have the internets on our phones, or any sort of background in environmental science, so. bev and i sat in the backseat and gave each other hand massages with cocoa butter and took naps and otherwise entertained ourselves.
5. fact: my high school reunion is this may. carolyn tried talk me out of attending while simultaneously trying to teach me how to properly remove eye makeup (instead of following my usual plan of keeping it on until it removes itself, eventually, somehow). she suggested, instead, that we just throw ourselves a party in may. she's making a strong case.
hey! POP QUIZ! name that band: they are the most attractive young ruffians, with a minimalist myspace and your favourite song ever about mantracker?
youth crime, obviously! AND! they're going on tour! look for them, soon to be playing at a bar near you!!*
*please note: near is a relative term, dependent on how close you live to either toronto or ottawa.
so, i have my third world politics midterm tonight. as we all know, i have a very simple understanding of the world: i can explain dependency vs modernization theories; i have a vague appreciation of wallenstein's modern world-system; and, i agree with the idea that inequalities cause inter- and intra-state conflict. that's it, that's all i've got. i have about 40 pages of notes from class and, upon review, they only seem to cover definitions and examples of nationalism.
two of my coworkers offered to help me study over lunch; people are kind AND everyone has an opinion to share regarding why some people are poor.
i just want to sleep well tonight!
( the october revolution was actually in november. )
went to dara's for supper with ms rosalie last night, in north york. we had a lot of fun, in north york.
today has started well:
1. leftover pie for breakfast!
2. my new soft warm cardigan with plastic rabbits as buttons.
3. my first conversation at work this morning was all about the potential robot uprising that may take place in the near future.
here's why i'm friends with jeremy f: because he's loud and snobby. he does both of these things very well, and so i don't have to. i aspire to be less loud some days, and the only subject in which i can admit to snobbery involves good quality montreal-style bagels.
jeremy f: Loverboy on your iPod? Hahahaha!
me: that's one of my favourite songs!
jeremy f: Well I’m listening to Schubert piano sonatas as I write a recommendation note, but then some Municipal Waste at the gym.
me: schubert was a syphilitic slut.
who else will write me ridic emails using incomprehensible descriptions such as 'metro chic' AND tell me that his ministry is better than mine because they celebrate Metal Tshirt Fridays AND not talk to me for months at a time but then bring up the track listings to a mixtape i made for him back in the year 2000??
also, his new apartment, just up the street from our place, has a bidet. so now we have to stay friends until i can see this place for myself.
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