Have you ever noticed that homeless people's dogs are surprisingly well-trained? They never run away or chase people or even bark. I wonder if they train them themselves or if they get them pre-trained.

Bad signage of the day: in Sheppard subway station, pointing to "Yonge trains and Sheppard subway". Yonge and Sheppard are both subway lines on which trains run, so they should either both be called trains or subway. STANDARDIZE STANDARDIZE STANDARDIZE!!!

Best headline of the day

Most people won't agree with me, but I'm very happy with the precedent this sets. The world would be a lot better if parents had to be responsible for doing everything possible to prevent their kids from being bullied

A week or two ago I got these kick-ass socks from Winners. They were plain black cotton, Alfred Sung, comfortable and tall enough to wear with boots, and only $2 per pair! I bought two pairs to try them out and they were perfect. So today I went back with the plan of buying about 10 more pairs. They had NONE! They didn't even have any plain black cotten socks at all, of any brand, of any price! WTF???

And to add insult to injury, or perhaps vice versa, I lost one of those socks in the dryer!

Someone once told me that there's a thing in Islam that says that once a certain area of land belongs to Muslims, it must always belong to Muslims. I don't know if this is true because I don't know where to look to confirm it. But if it is true, I wonder if they knew about this when they decided to put Israel where it is.

I had a dream that I was checking my mailbox in res. In this dream, I still had my apartment, but I had a mailbox in res that I checked regularly. In my mailbox there were three copies of Newsweek. It seems I had once gotten a copy of Newsweek, so I called to cancel my subscription, and then the next week they sent me two copies, so I called again, etc. One of these copies had handwritten notes from my mother instructing me on how to fill out the form so I could get more copies. So I asked everyone else in the mail room if they wanted a copy of Newsweek, but they all looked at me like I was stupid. So I asked them in French, but they didn't understand. So I just put them down on the ledge for anyone to take, wondering why I didn't think of this before. (IRL, there's a ledge in my apartment mailroom, but not in the res mailroom) There was also a note in my mailbox saying that I'd have to give up my mailbox at the end of fall term, and when I gave up my mailbox I'd have to move out of my IRL apartment. So I pondered other buildings in the neighbourhood where I could move to, and then I woke up. When I woke up I was quite happy to realize that I won't have to move until I choose to.

I have a conspiracy theory: right-wing governments tend to leave behind huge deficits to prevent their more liberal successors from making all the policy changes they want to.

I haven't read the newspaper yet today so I can't give you hard numbers yet, but I noticed there's remarkably low voter turnout in many riding. In my own riding, I'm ashamed to say, voter turnout was only about 45%!

Voting is not the only way to participate in the democratic process, but not voting if often interpreted as a sign of apathy. We can't have our new Liberal government thinking that we're apathetic, and, I admit, I have a vested interest in ensuring that my own demographic does not appear apathetic.

Therefore, if you did not vote, your homework is to either send a letter or email to your new MPP sharing with them your opinion on any issue within provincial jurisdiction, or to send a letter to the editor of any daily newspaper regarding any issue within provincial jurisdiction. I particularly encourage you to take this action if you and I share any demographic characteristics.

ARF!

Polls closed at 8:00. At 8:25 the CBC called it as a Liberal majority victory. Fastest election I've ever seen.

I was having audio problems with my TV and it was getting really annoying. I messed with settings and tightened all my connections, and it didn't help. So I emailed tech support, and they said to call and schedule an appointment for someone to come look at my receiver. I didn't really want a tech to come to my house, so I just ignored it and turned on the closed captions. But today the channel I wanted to watch didn't have closed captions. I stared at the TV pondering how to fix it, when it occured to me to reset the receiver. That seemed odd - how would that fix audio problems? - but I really didn't want to call a tech. So I unplugged and replugged the receiver and turned everything back on. Reception was up from 65% to 72%, and there were no noticeable sound problems! I'm very happy that I fixed it myself, but I can't believe that, after working in tech support for almost three years, it took me DAYS to think of doing what is essentially a hard reboot!

I want a hand-knitted scarf and I want my grandmother to make it for me, but I can't ask her because that would be rather an imposition. Especially since I want a scarf that's six feet long and in a very particular pattern and colour scheme. Maybe I should ask her to teach me how to knit, but it would take me all winter to make the scarf I want, and if I mess up there's no one around to help me, and tech supporting knitting over a long distance phone call and a language barrier isn't exactly feasible.

There was one of those obnoxious middle-aged ladies in front of me in the grocery store today. She was aggressive and demanding and terrorizing the poor cashier. She bought a terrifying quantity of food, and then when it's all in bags she says "So how am I supposed to get this out to my car?" and freaks out on the cashier because she can't carry all this food she bought, so the cashier calls a carry-out guy, and this obnoxious lady starts demanding the cashier tell her where to move her car to, and the cashier says that the carry-out guy will tell her, and the lady says "No, I want YOU to tell me!" and keeps insisting this cashier tell her where to move her car to even though the cashier has no idea where the carry-out guy wants the car and the carry-out guy is RIGHT THERE! How do people get this way????

When I lived in res, we had your typical school sand-toilet paper in the bathrooms. For a bit I lived in res and worked in the building where I work now, and I quickly noticed that the toilet paper in the office building was much nicer than in res - so much so that I adjusted my bathroom schedule so that more toilet paper-intensive activities would take place while I was at work. Time passed and I moved into my own apartment where I can buy whatever kind of toilet paper I want. I found that Charmin is really nice, so now I always have soft quilted toilet paper at home. But I've become spoiled by my taste for luxury toilet paper (SENTENCE!) and now I find the toilet paper at work rough and irritating.

Someone called me during the day today and left a hang-up on my voicemail. That's weird. Everyone IRL knows my work hours and my office phone number, and telemarketer machines always hang up before voicemail kicks in, or leave one of those stupid recorded messages

FYI: If you're looking for short-term employment into November Toronto Election Services is also hiring. I assume the same thing might be true for other cities and municipalities that are having elections in November, but you'll have to search for those yourself.

I don't usually comment on this sort of thing but here it seems that all parties involved are missing the point. First of all, calling someone a disgrace, is not libel, and it isn't slander either which, unless I'm missing some subtle legal distinction, is what this case should be. Secondly, the issue SHOULD be that Mr. Derringer invoked the judge's child. He did so in a roundabout way "As much as I would like to see it, I could not bring myself to..." but he did invoke the judge's child. This is totally inappropriate, not only because the child is a child, but also because the child is an autonomous individual who has nothing to do with their father. The kid had nothing to do with the judge's ruling, but Mr. Derringer is basically saying to the kid (while remaining just barely hypothetical) "Someone should do unspeakable things to you because your father made a bad decision." This offends me simply because I am someone's kid and I don't want to be viewed as an extension of my parents, and no one is acting like there's anything wrong with the assumption that a kid is not an autonomous human being but merely an extension or even a chattel of their parents who could, even if in the hypothetical, rightfully be harmed to punish their parents. The lawsuit even seems to assume that since it's for damages to the judge and not to the kid. Mr. Derringer seemed to be trying to ask "How would you feel if this were your kid?" but the question he should have been asking is "How would you feel if this were you?" Kids have feelings too.

I dress girly out of rebellion. I wear a skirt and prissy blouse to work because when I was a kid my parents would rarely let me wear skirts because they were impractical, putting me in sweatpants instead. I wear heels because my parents would only buy me running shoes. My attention to hair removal comes from being a ten-year-old with hairy armpits and no idea that this was a natural part of puberty, and no idea how to go about rectifiying the situation. I maintain a fastidious manicure because I was always told it was a waste of time to do so. I've developed an intricate system of concealer and foundation to alter my skintone, because when I was younger I hated the dark skin around my eyes and when I complained about it I was told "You don't have dark skin around your eyes" (and then heard the grownups saying to each other in the background "Yep, she has that darkness around her eyes like insert relative here]"). I wear black eyeliner, curl my eyelashes, and wear heavy black mascara because I was forbidden from wearing mascara "because it will get in your eyes. Besides, you don't need it, you have long eyelashes already." I wear intricate-looking hairstyles because for the longest time I had to keep my hair in a braid if I wanted it long "so it doesn't get in the way".

They don't seem to mind that I dress this way. In fact, my mother helps me comparison shop for makeup and actually bought me my tall high-heeled boots. But dressing like a girl was prevented for so long, and then frowned upon when they couldn't actually stop me, that I strongly feel the need to do so now.

Makes me wonder if they did that on purpose so I'd turn out this way.

Why is being dull and boring considered a liability for a politician? Don't things get unpleasant whenever a politico gets TOO interesting?

Of course I might be biased because I'm boring and I LOVE it! Being boring is much better than having to be cool all the time.

My political policy wishlist:

1. Expand the scope of universal health care to include everything - dental, drugs, corrective lenses, wigs for chemo patients...
2. End the culture of student debt by making a year's full time tuition less than the earning's of a summer's full-time work at minimum wage, and provide a subsidy for students who do not live within a reasonable commute of any post-secondary institution.
3. Take economic measures to encourage businesses to create full-time permanent positions in favour of contract and on-call positions.

Mmmmm...rain! I love rainy weekends! There's nothing quite as cozy as watching and listening to the cold wet weather while being safe and dry inside. I've got two big newspapers and all the food in the world, and I think I'm going to stay indoors all weekend.

Suddenly I feel like I don't have enough clothes. I just bought a bunch of clothes, but they aren't enough. You see, for the last three years I lived in an overheated res room and worked in an overheated office. I wore t-shirts to work in the dead of winter and long sleeve tops (not sweaters) for just hanging around. Now I work in a very cold office. I've been wearing long-sleeved blouses, but I'm still cold even with that. I own one wear-alone sweater and a series of very light throw-on sweaters. I have a couple of turtlenecks but I'd been hoping to retire them because they aren't flattering. So it seems I'll have to buy some sweaters. I vaguely remember feeling like I had all the sweaters in the world at one point in high school, so maybe they're still lurking in some closet somewhere in my parents' house. If not, I'll have to go shopping, which is a pity because after that last credit card bill I felt like I had all the clothes in the world.