I'm now going to be one of those annoying people who points out mistakes in Harry Potter. In OotP, 12 Grimmauld place is so heavily disguised and hidden that you can only get in there if Dumbledore personally tells you where it is. And yet Harry managed to send Hedwig there before he knew where it was by telling her to find Sirius.

So why doesn't the ministry just send an owl to Sirius and follow the owl to find out where he is?

I was getting ready to go out with my playlist playing in the background. Smells Like Teen Booty came on, which is a really good song to get ready to, so I started dancing and singing along as I put on my makeup. Then Stairway to Heaven came on next, but since it isn't as danceable I kept singing Smells Like Teen Booty. When Stairway to Heaven hit the instrumental bridge, I realized that my singing actually went with the music. This means that both Bootylicious and Smells Like Teen Spirit could be mashed up with Stairway to Heaven. Someone with the proper software and more musical and artistic skills then me better get right on that!

This psycho lady tried to get on the bus with an invalid transfer. The driver told her she'd have to pay her proper fare because you can't transfer your way through a round trip (at least not so obviously - I've certainly done it before, but you don't try to use a subway transfer on a bus that's going INTO a subway station). So Psycho Lady freaks out and starts threatening to contact various imposing-sounding government departments or organizations. Too bad none of them exist. There is no treasury department in Canada (there's a Treasury Board Secretariat, but they certainly wouldn't concern themselves with this), Toronto doesn't have a county clerk, and while there is a Governor General, I'm sure she wouldn't care.

I found the most gorgeous blouses ever. They are ribbed diagonally, so they are extremely flattering, and they come in at least three colours that look good on me and aren't red! (I own way too much red already) And one of these colours is exactly the same as my eyes! The only problem is they're at Fairweather's, and I had sworn not to shop there because they were mean to me. But they don't have blouses this perfect anywhere else! The label said that they're hand wash only in cold water, but I'm waiting for my mommy to rule on their real washability. Hopefully she'll say they are, in fact, hand wash only, then my decision will be made for me. But if I can put them in the washing machine, then I'll either have to be a hypocrite or go without perfect blouses.

When they make the movie of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Professor Umbridge MUST be played by Patricia Routledge.

I've figured out why the use of the word marriage is so important to me. Not calling same-sex marriage marriage implies the sort of squirming, cringing homophobia that is more often found in middle school. It gives the impression of desperately trying to avoid anything that could even be remotely described as gay so as to avoid being thought of as gay oneself. It seems like the unspoken train of thought is "Oh no! If gay people can get married...I'm married! Will that make me gay? What if people think I'm gay?"

While I will heave a world-weary sigh and begrudgingly acknowledge that this squirming cringing adolescent homophobia still does exist among some elements of our society, it should not be in our legistation. Our legislation should represent the best of us.

At work, I'm supposed to be learning. I'm supposed to be learning so that I can work completely independently within two years. It's a slow process because I'm learning from experience. I tend to get impatient with this process because there's nothing I can actively do to accelerate or facilitate my learning, I just have to do my job and trust that the learning will happen by itself. It's weird, because in my 19 years of school I could always do something active and specific to learn, but here I have to detach myself and just let it happen.

We have to do something about this. The last thing we want, in Canada of all places, is ghettoized, "separate-but-equal" social institutions. So it's time to write to your MP again and let them know, particularly if your MP is a more conservative Liberal. And if you are, or are likely to be, involved in a heterosexual marriage, it would be helpful to subtly point this out. No "I'm straight, but...", but a "my husband and I" might work.

I hate friends-only LJs. I don't have an LJ account so I can't be people's friends. And some of the people whose LJs I want to read would find it weird that I'm asking, but I'm not one of the people they're avoiding.

How come when people die in movies, they always have a trickle of blood trickling out of their mouth?

You know what everyone in the world has completely forgotten about? Human shields.

It reminds me of middle school. In middle school, when kids would annoy the substitute teachers, they would punish the entire class. Their logic in doing this was that while only a few kids were annoying the subs, the rest of us weren't doing anything to stop them. I always resented this, because I certainly couldn't do anything to influence the behaviour of the rest of the class. If I could influence their behaviour, my life wouldn't have been such a living hell.

They seem to be doing the same thing by blaming the community leaders (who, incidently, aren't elected representatives or anything) for the violence in the community. Whenever you have a group of people who are forced together rather than chosing to be a member of that group, just as there are some people who can't influence the behaviour of anyone, there are some people whose behaviour can't be influenced by anyone.

Why do old men always hike up their pants at the knees before sitting down?

They're talking about the Nova Scotia election on TV. Right now, the tories are in the lead, and NDP is in 2nd place. I realize that it could still go any way, but a tory government with an NDP official opposition is an interesting concept.

All I want is an mp3 of Johnny Favourite's Root Beer and Licorice. And it doesn't exist on Kazaa! WTF?

I have a zit in the most annoying place. It's on my lower eyelid, right where the eyelid skin turns into normal face skin. It looks like the kind of wart that a witch would have, and because it's on such delicate skin I can't squeeze it or apply too much zit cream. Applying my sexy light-diffusing concealer helps, but when I'm wearing full makeup I apply this concealer all over my lower eyelids to hide my disgusting permanent dark circles, so the zit is no longer de-emphasized.

I have to buy stuff to drink. I don't have much to drink. But drinks are heavy and there's a humidex of like 35 out there.

And I ruined my khakis yesterday, and I wanted to go shopping for more today but I overslept. It's just as well though, this isn't a good week for trying on light-coloured pants.

Every rant against same-sex marriage seems to be a personal affront. I want to get married one day. I do have a candidate in mind, and we've already established that we do not want to produce children, and we do not want our relationship to undergo any religious consecration. But it is very very very important to me, for reasons that I can't yet completely articulate, that our union be called a marriage. Every time I hear people ranting about how marriage should only apply to a religiously consecrated union whose purpose is to produce children, it feels almost like hate speech.

And I'm very lucky - the candidate I have in mind happens to be of the opposite sex! I can only imagine how this feels for people who are marrying someone of the same sex!

For those who say that only religiously consecrated marriages should be called marriages and other marriages should be called "civil unions": Since you seem to want the two to be called differently, how about we call anything that involves a marriage certificate a marriage, and if it has a religious element it gets the further designation of "religious union"?

For those who are fretting over churches suddenly being required to perform same-sex marriages: are religious institutions currently required to perform marriages that they find are incompatible with their creed?

An issue that I'd like to see addressed: if, on the off-chance, the current draft bill is overturned, what do the opponents of said draft bill suggest we do about all the existing, perfectly legal, same-sex marriages? The government can't just unilaterally declare two people unmarried!

On Friday I did a bunch of ab work. I did a total of about 100 situps focusing on each muscle in the six-pack, and then some yoga postures that crunch your abs. I'm still feeling it today. It's a good sore, but it's so sore I can't do situps. I'm sucking my stomach in because that's more comfortable for my aching muscles.

GAH! I've become one of those annoying people who talks about her exercise!

So apparently divorce agreements are starting to include clauses on very specific elements of parenting. The problem with this is that kids change, circumstances change, kids gain the ability to make decisions for themselves long before they reach age of majority. Then what happens? So one parent is in charge of medical decisions. But then the kid grows up, becomes sexually active, and feels she can confide better in the other parent about her birth control needs. So one parent has the legal right to take charge of the child's religious education and the other has to comply with those decisions. So when the kid decides he doesn't want to go to church any more, would the non-decision making parent be in trouble for not forcing him to go? So the children aren't allowed to sit in car seats with airbags until they reach a certain height. Suppose one of them is an inch below that height, but she gets carsick if she can't sit in the front. And I have no idea what this height might be. Suppose it's 5'2", and the kid stops growing at 5'1" and want to learn how to drive. What if the non-custodial parent is in charge of educational decisions, and then the kid wants or needs to change schools?

Supposedly this is helping to focus on parental responsibilities, but it sounds to me like it's just taking more rights away from the kid. Ideally they should have a clause that the kid can overrule or amend any aspect of the agreement for any moderately good reason.

I've just been hit by a sudden wave of contentment. I have three days off. I have immediate access to the entire internet, more TV channels than I've ever had before, a fridge full of food, and all five Harry Potter books. Every morning I will get one or two fresh newspapers at my doorstep. Anything I might possibly need to purchase is a block away. At this exact moment, I lack nothing.

And now for another Brilliant Idea The Would Be Impossible to Implement:

Imagine a system where every firearm will only work for one person. Some kind of high-tech fingerprint/DNA/retina scanning device. Then imagine that every firearm leaves a distinct fingerprint on the bullets. So any fired bullet can be traced back to the person who fired it.