finally!

Check here to see how your MP voted and then email them appropriately.

This list will only be up for like a week. There's also a copy somewhere in the A section of today's Star.

If Muggles can't get into Diagon Alley, how did Hermione and all the other Muggle-born first-years get their books and stuff before first year?

That was much too close. If you haven't contacted your MP yet, now would be a really really really good time to do so! I'm looking into how to find voting records so we'll know whom to thank and whom to scold, but for now a quick email stating your position on the issue should be sufficient.

On the front page of the Globe and Mail: "Debating Class Size"

Why is there even a debate? If you don't know that smaller classes are better, you don't remember being a kid. Yes, there are university lectures with hundreds of people in them, but a) those students still aren't learning as well as the students in senior seminar of 20, and b) by the time they hit university, they should have the skills to read and analyze the textbook, look stuff up online, find a TA, start a study group. In elementary and secondary, they are in that classroom to learn those skills, so by definition it would be less effective with a larger group.

And to those frightening people who argue that tax dollars are, on paper, more efficiently spend on larger classrooms, do you think the kids in the classroom understand that when the teacher doesn't have time to answer their questions? If they do, what does this make them think of you? And do you really think the fact that the money look more efficient on paper is going to make them learn better?

A group of nine people. Some members of this group are going off on harsh, crude, judgemental rants against women, immigrants, single mothers, poor people.

This group of nine people include 6 women, 1 immigrant, 3 single mothers, and at least 6 people who have lived in poverty at some point in their life.

No one seems to see anything at all wrong with this and when I point out that perhaps these aren't the best topics of conversation they act like I'm crazy.

I so don't get it.

Once upon a time in high school there was this boy. I had a bit of a crush on him. In retrospect he wasn't my type - a bit too much religion and not quite enough of a twisted sense of humour, among other things - but he was harmless and cute, which makes for a good crush when you're 16.

One day this boy and I were sitting together on a long bus ride. We both fell asleep. I woke up to find his head asleep on my shoulder. (How anyone can sleep on my bony little shoulders is a mystery to me, but there he was). Groggy and with an over-full bladder, I reacted instinctively, visercally, without realizing who was next to me. I knocked him off my shoulder and shrieked "Get off of me!" Everyone turned around and stared. I came to my senses and apologized right away, but we were both terribly embarrassed and it probably ruined any possibility of our becoming real friends, crush or no crush.

Sometimes I'm still sorry about that.

For my entire adult life, I've been able to circle my thumb and middle finger around my ankle. That's more commentary on how long my fingers are than on how skinny my ankles are, but it's just been something I've always been able to do.

I'd thought I might be gaining weight for a while, but I wasn't sure. I honestly couldn't tell if I had gained weight or if my jeans had shrunk because the dryers here are rather finicky. Then one day I happened to wrap my hand around my ankle, and my thumb and middle finger didn't touch. They were about 1 cm apart. I know that isn't a lot, but it was the first tangible sign that I had gained weight. Visions of thick-ankled old ladies floated in my head, and on August 1 I started working out and watching what I eat. I didn't manage to work out every day, but I did most days. I wasn't terribly cautious about what I ate, but I tried to avoid potato chips and have a salad every day. But I wasn't noticing any differences so I didn't know if it was actually working.

Then today I happened to wrap my hand around my ankle. My thumb and middle finger were only half a centimetre apart. Then I realized some other differences - I can do a full set of pushups if I do them fast enough to have momentum, I can touch my toes with straight legs, I can get into full lotus even though it feels like I'm going to sprain my feet, I can flex my tricep and you can see signs of actual muscle. They're little things, but they make me feel good.

So the Globe and Mail has printed the text of the Evil Reptilian Kitten-Eater from Another Planet memo. I do see what they are trying to do here and it makes some sense in context, but the memo was still a stupid idea because:

a) It breaks with the tone of the Tory campaign, which makes it much less effective.
b) There is a difference between using this sort of criticism of another party's leader when talking and actually producing TV commercials and press releases that do nothing but criticize another party's leader.
c) I don't know if the average voter is following things closely enough to get it.
d) It doesn't say anything about policy at all. I'm not sure if the Tories see this as a problem, but the fact remains that here we have a press release that contains absolutely nothing newsworthy except the "evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet" line.

With these thoughts in mind, I think they produced it on purpose, not as an inside joke, and either this was a draft accidently released before it was finalized, or it was released on purpose with remarkably poor judgement.

Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet? What evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet?

I don't know if the people who came up with that are painfully stupid or if they desperately threw that into the media to distract from something else?

I find it weird that certain people attempt to use "tax and spend" as a slur. That's like saying "Oh, you don't want to associate with him! He earns money and then uses it to purchase goods and services!"

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.