An open letter to all Canadian newspapers and to a certain Government of Canada department or agency:

Fear of insects is one of the most common phobias. Some people, like myself, suffer from a rather severe version of this phobia, where even a picture or graphic description of insects can trigger a panic attack.

Lately I've noticed several newspaper articles, as well as an advertisement from a Government of Canada department or agency, that were illustrated with very large pictures of a very grotesque insect. These pictures were enough to bring me near a panic attack. My heart rate increased, I started hyperventilating, fight-or-flight instincts started kicking in, and I had to slam the paper shut and throw it away to keep from completely freaking out. Sometimes I get nightmares the night following one of these incidents, every time I have needed to have a drink to calm down, and it always has a severe negative effect on the rest of my day.

Obviously it is somehow important that the general public be able to identify this insect. At first I had thought that the newspapers were only printing sensational pictures to attract the reader's attention, but I know that a large illustration would not appear in a government ad unless it were important. However, these extremely large illustrations are not helping. I am unable to read the information in question, learn what action I need to take, and take said action because I am too busy having a panic attack. I don't even know what this bug is called or which government department or agency is responsible for these ads because I have to slam the newspaper closed as soon as I see the picture.

If it is really important that I be able to identify this bug, please print only a life-size illustration. That might freak me out less so I will be able to read the necessary information, plus it will assist the general public in identifying the bug because then we'll know how big it's supposed to be. If it is not important that I be able to identify the bug, please stop putting pictures of it in the newspaper. I'm sure that even some non-phobics don't enjoy big icky bugs with their morning coffee.

The great luxury of living alone is that you can be fixing the bathroom caulking with no pants on while singing along to Aerosmith at the top of your lungs, and no one can do a damn thing about it. Or even know about it, unless you're stupid enough to blog about it.

I had a busy week this week. Half our team was away, so work was coming fast and furious. At one point I had 6 different projects on my desk, which is quite a lot considering I usually have no more than 2. But I just stacked them all on my desk in order of due date and worked through steadily, and I finished them all before they were due. For some reason it gives me a lot of satisfaction to come up with a system, work steadily, and keep all the due dates at bay. I've been doing this ever since high school, when I'd take all my due dates for the year, write them in my planner, and spend a designated amount of time every day on whatever assignment was next. This system worked in uni too. Sometimes I'd be a month ahead in my projects, sometimes I'd be working on what was due the next day, but it always worked as long as I stuck with the system. What a geek I am.

I know I talk about Harry Potter too much, but it's my blog dammit, so here are some things that irk me when I find them in Harry Potter fanfic:

- Witches and wizards invoking a xian god and showing overt xianity.
- Love -> marriage -> baby in rapid succession, no matter how inconvenient and unrealistic. A nice love story is enough, we'll believe they're in love even if they don't get married and breed within the fic.
- Attitudes towards traditional gender roles that are significantly more old-fashioned than anythig that appears in canon.

That was a boring hurricane. If I hadn't known it was a hurricane, I wouldn't have noticed anything strange about it. It was a slightly windier than usual rainy day.

This is supposed to be my mindset

2. I remember being aware of the fact that Reagan was president.
3. Not true, but I was an early bloomer
4. Had never heard of Black Monday 1987 until much later, still not entirely sure I can explain what it is.
5. I remember Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush.
6. I remember being aware of the Cold War.
7. I briefly feared a nuclear war for a few weeks in grade 5.
8. I don't remember, but my best friend from grade 6 did because she knew the teacher who was on it.
10. I've never had a polio shot, but my mother has a scar from hers so I know what it is.
12, 13, 14. We had an Atari, and I listened to Sharon, Lois & Bram and Raffi on vinyl.
15. I played Pacman, and I have heard of and played Pong, although not as a child.
17. I remember beige M&Ms, and I might remember the blue ones being new, or that might be Smarties.
18. Heard of, never seen, never knowingly heard
19. I vaguely remember our first CD
21. I was in middle school when we got our first answering machine
22, 23. I was like 8 when we got our first colour TV and cable.
24. We had Betas at school.
25. We didn't have a remote until our first colour TV.
27. I remember rollerblades being new, and I have skated on old-style roller skates.
28. I was too young to watch the Tonight Show, but I remember a Cosby Show reference to Johnny Carson hosting the Tonight Show.
29. I once had a t-shirt that said Jordache
30. We used to cook popcorn on the stove, then we got an air-popper.
31. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a football player???
34. I knew that, but I learned it from Doonesbury and SNL.
35. I've heard of hard contacts, but I don't know enough about contacts in general.
36. I have watched Mork & Mindy, but in reruns
38. I had heard of who shot JR, but I don't know who did it.
42. I remember I once had this environmentalist book that told you how to protest if your local McDonalds had styrofoam containers.

This is the mindset of this year's froshies

#12: I remember when they got rid of leaded gas
#19: Our first comp had a "return" key
#28: I vaguely remember checkout scanners being special
#32: I remember debit cards being new
#41: I have never been able to make photocopies at home and it didn't really occur to me that that was a standard thing to do
#46: I just learned there was a Strawberry Fields in NY a couple of years ago

There's the most gorgeous sunset ever right now. bluepurplepinkorange glowing morphing. You wouldn't guess by watching it that a hurricane is coming, but you can feel it when you're outside. I've never been in a hurricane before so I'm very excited, even though this is just the tail end. Happy hurricane everyone!

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.