This is the best Harry Potter fanfic ever. Unfortunately it is also the very first Harry Potter fanfic I ever read, so it gave me a taste for fanfic that no other fic can satisfy.

Tomorrow is my very first performance review. Eep!

Just a note to the Ontarians reading this who have two addresses: when you go to vote on Oct. 2, look at the polls in both the ridings where you might be able to vote, and vote in whichever riding seems less likely to elect the party you support. Your vote will be more effective this way. If you aren't physically in that riding on Oct. 2, there are several ways to vote in advance (I think you can do this without even going to the riding) which I'm sure can be found on the Elections Ontario website.

As we all know, kids are cruel to other kids for a wide variety of extraordinarily stupid reasons. So let's have some light-hearted nostalgia this weekend! Think back to those dark days, and in the comments box share with us all the stupidest thing you've ever been teased, mocked, or tormented for.

For me it's a tie between two things:

1. Sitting up straight at a particular moment. This wasn't a mockery of my usual habit of maintaining good posture, it wasn't a moment when it was any less appropriate to sit up straight than usual, it was just the fact that I was sitting up straight at the time the commenter chose to comment.

2. The fact that my last name resembles the word from which it is derived. For those who don't know my last name, neither it nor the word from which it was derived have any implications of any sort in any of the languages involved. It was just "Ha ha, the etymology of your surname is clear to anyone who gives it a moment's thought!"

Random memory: when I was a kid, whenever I was into something new, my mother would ask the parents of my contemporaries "So are your kids into N?" This would cause a lot of grief for me because I didn't follow the crowd, so when I was at certain delicate ages my life would become a living hell because everyone would find out that I liked Star Trek/Bjork/saving the lowland gorillas/whatever.

In retrospect it was also insulting, because it shows that my mother thought my tastes weren't my own and I must be copying someone else.

Help me out here. I'm looking for a good, analytical, nonpartisan account of what went wrong with the Rae NDP government in the early 90s and why. I wasn't fully politically aware then, and all I reliably remember is something called "Rae days" and an underlying sentiment of "NDP BAD!", and I'd really like to go into the current election with an indepth understanding of more than just the current mandate.

Also, the Ontario Liberals need to get "...or graduate" into their "Keep kids in school until they turn 18" soundbite. It is in their education plan, but it never makes it into the soundbite, with the loss of grade 13 half the kids will be graduating at 17, and the thought makes those of us born in the second half of the year bristle with indignation.

So it seems we're in election month. A few things to keep in mind:

1. Consider each party's overall record, not just their most very recent actions
2. A vote for a candidate is also a vote for their party, and the balance of power between the parties in the legislature will have more effect on the province over the next five years than the presence or absence of any particular candidate
3. In some cases voting strategically is the best option, but a vote is not necessarily wasted just because a candidate doesn't win. Conversely, there is no prize for having voted for the winning candidate.

Spike TV is good for STTNG reruns, but the commercials on that channel make me feel dirty.

I have a hair that's grey near the bottom and dark at the root. This means that this follicle lost its pigment, and then somehow got its pigment back? How the hell does that happen?

I can't believe so many people are this ignorant! And they admitted it to a newspaper reporter!

In light of this information, I propose that everyone should have to take a brief test before voting. Anyone who passes the test, regardless of age, would be allowed to vote.

The questions on this test are as follows. (This one is on the provincial level, it can be altered for other levels of government)

1. Name the current premier and the current leader of the opposition
2. Name two political parties and the leaders of those parties
3. Name two candidates in your riding and their party affiliations
4. Name one issue in this election, and briefly describe any candidate's or party's stance on that issue.

They should make public washroom doors open automatically from the inside but not from the outside

It's like the instant I graduated, my body betrayed me. It realized "Okay, she's not a student any more, she's a professional - let the aging process begin!" Grey hairs are more frequent, fine lines are starting to appear around my eyes, my ankles are (imperceptibly to anyone but me) thicker, red stretchmarks have appeared where only white stretchmarks have been before, my tummy sticks out enough to make any clothes that aren't perfectly cut look frumpy, my waist is suddenly higher than the waistband of any of my clothes...

...but in my body's sudden rush to age me, it forgot to turn off the acne.

It's weird, my diet is healthier than it has ever been, my weight on the scale is the same, I get the same amount, if not more, exercise than I did at any point during school, but suddenly I'm aging. I thought I'd have a few more years before this happens.

But despite all this, I don't wish for a younger body. Maybe my 19 year old body, before the first grey hair turned up, but I certainly don't covet the adolescent body. It was awkward, ever-evolving, betraying me at every turn, always older than I felt. Perhaps this just means that my body is always destined to be older than I feel.

Is your ISP Shawcable? Do you have my old school email address in your addressbook? Do you have an email address @eaglefaith.com.hk in your address book? If you answered yes to all these questions, your computer has a virus.

Now, because I know you all want insight into my twisted little life, a list of some of my Guilty Pleasures (the first ten I can think of):

- Lemon butter cookies
- M*A*S*H
- The rampant plot and character analysis found in the forums of Harry Potter fanfic sites
- Dogs With Jobs
- cutebabyanimals.com
- Insaniquarium
- On days when I don't have to get up early, setting my alarm to play the radio at some time in the morning, ignoring it, and dozing back off
- Loudly cracking some random joint in the middle of a conversation, making it look like an accident ,and innocently continuing talking as though I have no idea that I just produced this disgusting noise
- Reading the comics before the rest of the newspaper
- Putting mustard on my fries

I'm surprised to see Ernie Eves make such a stupid strategic error. If he does, in fact, mean that he doesn't intend to impose his personal values on the province, it would have been a better move to keep his mouth shut.

In making this statement, he might have been attempting to pander to those who are vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage. However, he isn't actually attempting to make any policy to eliminate same-sex marriage, and lip service isn't likely to earn him any extra votes. Also, he is the leader of the most right-wing provincial party in Ontario (with the possible exception of fringe parties that I've never heard of and never win seats), so people who are opposed to same-sex marriage are most likely to vote for his party anyway. So he has won few, if any, votes, but likely lost the votes of every queer conservative in the province and the few other conservatives who support same-sex marriage. If it's a question of a politician whose fiscal policy you like versus a politician who respects your human rights, I think human rights are going to win out every time.

Attention world: you need to evaluate politicians based on their party's policy, not on their speeches in times of crisis. Speeches aren't leadership - they're being a talking head delivering the message that was agreed upon in the war room and designed by speechwriters and damage control specialists. You can only evaluate leadership based on policy and execution thereof, which is best determined by looking at the party's past record and the speeches they make to each other within the party itself.

I'm watching Monty Python, and despite the fact that it's one of those horribly-edited A&E episodes, it's full of lovely moments that I had completely forgotten about: The Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things, Eric Idle standing innocently in a drawing room while furniture collapses and people die all around him, Welsh coal-miners arguing about the Treaty of Utrecht - I can't believe I'd forgotten about all of this!

A few days ago I was watching a documentary on LaughLab. One of the things they did in their experiments was ask people to rate how funny each joke was, and then they ranked this by country. Germany ranked the most jokes as funnier, while Canada was a distant tenth. The people at LaughLab said this means Germans have the best sense of humour, but I'm not sure if thinking everything is funny constitutes a sense of humour.

Then today I read about an experiment where they asked people of various ages to pick the punchlines for some jokes from a multiple choice list. Younger people got all the punchlines correct, while older people missed a few. They concluded that this means older people lose their sense of humour.

I think they're missing a factor that can explain the findings of both these experiments: the internet. There are a lot of jokes on the internet, possibly every joke in the world. Jokes get posted onlines as quickly as they get thought up. I know that since I got online, hearing a joke I have never heard before has become an extremely rare occurence. And the vast majority of these rare occurences happen online.

Canada is one of the most wired nations in the world. While everyone in the laughlab experiment must be online, it is more likely that Canadians have been online longer than some other nationalities, and therefore have heard more jokes. Canadians rate the jokes lower simply because they've heard them before. I love the joke about the two hunters that won the title of funniest joke in the world, but I know it already so I might not laugh when you tell me it. Meanwhile, I might laugh at a not-as-good joke that I've heard before.

Similarly, young people are much likelier to be online than old people. Since being online increases the likelihood that they've heard the jokes used in the experiment, they are able to complete the punchline not because of a better sense of humour, but because they already know the joke.

I expected better from the Toronto Star. Phys ed classes are not going to get kids to embrace a healthier lifestyle. It may get them moving for a couple of years, but it is not likely to have good long-term effects.

Two questions to ask yourself:

1. How many people do you know who developed a great love of athletics and fitness because of gym class? ("because", NOT "despite")


2. How many people do you know who developed a great dislike of athletics and fitness because of gym class?

People who think gym class is panacea may have forgotten that it's nothing but torture for everyone, with the possible exception of the kids who are already athletic.