I have 2 Gmail invitations. Here's a list of goods and services I'd consider
trading them for. (These aren't based on the value of the Gmail
invitations, but rather on the goods and services I need):

1. A Fido-capable cellphone, in good working order, under a year old.
Basically I want to be able to stick my smartcard in and it works, plug and
play.
2. A new computer to my specifications. (not that I expect anyone to buy a
computer in exchange for a gmail account, but you never know)
3. Use of your full-time student status for my Globe and Mail subscription.
This would mean that you tell me your name, student number, and year of
graduation, and I receive my Globe and Mail in your name. If they ask,
you're my and mi cielito's roommate (because I currently receive it in his
name, but he's just graduated). This would also mean that you can't get a
student discount should you choose to subscribe to the Globe and Mail.
Problem is that my subscription doesn't expire until July.
4. A spider-proofed screening of ROTK. This would involve going through
the DVD that has just been released, and the extended edition when it comes
out, noting the chapter numbers that contain spider scenes, and noting at
what point the viewer should press the "skip chapter" button to avoid seeing
any spiders. You would also have to preview the DVD features and
documentaries, note if any of them contain spider images, and note at what
point to press "skip chapter". After you screen, you would present me with
written (or emailed) instructions on how to avoid every spider image on that
DVD. Problem is that I'd need both the current edition (so I can see the
movie - I haven't seen it yet) and the extended edition (which I intend to
buy) screened, and the extended edition doesn't come out for several months.

I might consider trading for these things, depending on who is willing to
trade with me. I might also ebay the invitations. I might also give them
away to people I love. I haven't decided yet.

I finished two books recently:

1. Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard. I hated, loathed and detested every
minute of this book. I only finished it because I make a point of finishing
every book I start. Almost every character in this book uses hateful speech
and language almost all the time, in ways that are totally unnecessary and
utterly excessive. That just ruins the book for me. Perhaps such language
could be acceptable in what is otherwise a good book, but this book is
populated with shallow, one-dimensional characters trying to convince you
they're complex, and a plot that ranges from "meh" to "I cannot see how this
is either enjoyable to read or of any literary value other than the fact of
being words printed on a page." It claims to be a mystery, but you find out
"whodunnit" early in, and the rest of the book is "So what do all these
other secondary characters have to do with it?" And to top it all off the
cover art prevents reading this book in public. As a whole, the book is
trying way too hard to be all edgy and ghetto, like a late-blooming,
pre-pubescent suburban 14-year-old trying to emulate hiphop artists to
compensate for his insecurity in his manhood. Ugh.

2. That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx. This is not about plot, it's
about characters. The main character is taken firmly out of his element and
placed in the Texas Panhandle as a conceit to describe the life and times of
a town full of colourful characters, past and present. As such, the plot
sort of meanders, but by tacit agreement the plot is only there because a
novel needs a plot. It's all about the characters. I found the characters
rather unappealing so I did not enjoy the book that much, but I can fully
appreciate that Proulx accomplished what she set out to do, and did it very
well. Worth reading if you think you'd enjoy reading about colourful Texas
Panhandle characters. Contains brief, gratuitous, mildly disturbing,
slightly-but-not-too graphic spider scenes that induced cringing and loss of
appetite (they don't have anything to do with food, loss of appetite is just
one of my pre-panic symptoms), but did not cause panic.

on MASH they're playing checkers with shot glasses. Whenever you jump a
piece you get to drink the shot. That is possibly the greatest drinking
game I've ever seen!

Fw:

How to trees know to produce a ring every year? Like how do they know when
a year has passed? Is it because of winter? If so, do trees in tropical
regions have rings?

Once upon a time, our printer at work was out of order. When this happened,
someone put an "Out of Order" sign on the printer. When the printer was
repaired, the sign was removed and put on the table beside the printer,
where it sits to this day.

Next to the printer there is a pillar, whose job, I assume, is to hold up
the roof and provide general structural integrity. As I stood by the printer
today waiting for my document to print, I briefly pondered sticking the "Out
of Order" sign to the pillar - just a bit of surrealist humour. If I was
still working at my previous job I would have, but here we have procedures
for everything, and I'm sure if I moved the sign, someone would implement
the Emergency Pillar Out of Order Procedure.

According to the href=http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/fire/cadinfo/livecad.htm
target=_blank>Toronto Fire Department Active Incidents page, my building
is on fire right now.

Whatever it is, it doesn't seem too urgent. The alarm isn't going off, and
the firefighters aren't so much rushing in and out of the building as
ambling.

GIVEN that there is a doctor shortage in many areas, and
GIVEN that, for whatever reason, they are hesitant to let foreign-trained
physicians practise without further training/certification/something...

They should have a system whereby foreign-trained physicians work in
walk-in-type clinics in underserviced communities in exchange for
queue-jumping on the certification process. The public could know the
foreign-trained physicians' credentials so they could decide for themselves
whether to go to that clinic or do whatever they were doing before the
clinic arrived (waiting a long time, going to another town, whatever). I
can see why you perhaps might not want a doctor whose qualifications may not
be up to Canadian standards to, say, manage your regimen of psychiatric
medication or perform delicate surgery to repair your nervous system, but
that's no reason why they can't prescribe penicillin and give flu shots.

Today all the women in my office except for two were wearing red shirts and
black pants. Weird.

Totally Impractical April Fools Jokes:

1. Switch the directions of the subway, so southbound subways travel on
what are normally northbound tracks, and vice versa.
2. Get a Magical HTML Editing Search & Replace Bot to replace all
occurrences of "about" in Canadian websites with "aboot".
3. Everyone in the world writes their April rent cheque for one cent less
than the amount of their rent. See how that affects the economy.

You have to give John Lennon and Yoko Ono credit: a bed-in is a damn good
protest! You don't get blisters on your feet, you don't have to worry about
the weather, the police have no reason to assault you because you're just
lying there in bed, and you can catch a nap whenever you want.

Things They Should Invent: make DVD players so they can recognize a disc,
and you can program them to do certain things with certain discs. For
example, go straight to this chapter, or automatically Play All, or skip a
certain chapter. (Yes, my ulterior motive is to avoid phobia-inducing
scenes).

Or, even better, the individual chapters on the disc are rated based on the
traditional movie rating system, and are also rated for other things:
violent, sex, language, innuendo, fart jokes, boring non-funny exposition,
and all manner of phobia-inducing creatures. So then you can set your DVD
player to automatically skip all chapters that you deem unsuitable. Comes
with an access code so parents can restrict their children's viewing.

I was thinking, as I often do early mornings, about the simple pleasures of
being home sick. Being sick is not fun, of course, but there is a certain
satisfaction to lying in bed, zoning in and out of sleep, listening to the
rest of the world go to work and school, and knowing that this is the single
best thing you can be doing for yourself and for society.

It then occurred to me that being sick is also somewhat pleasant because
Maslow's hierarchy of needs kicks in, so you stop caring about anything
except the fact that you're sick. Your concerns about your purpose in the
universe and the current political situation and that project at work and
the poor quality of cable television programming and various dysfunctional
interpersonal relationships are all put on hold, and all you care about is
Getting Better. Not that I'd want to be sick all the time, but it is
somewhat refreshing not to care about anything more than staying warm,
hydrating, sleeping, and taking my medication on time.

Perhaps this is why some people use alcohol and drugs to excess, well beyond
what they can comfortably handle. While they are drunk/high, and while they
are recovering, their body is essentially sick. It has been invaded by an
uncomfortable quantity of foreign substance and now it must survive this
invasion. So for as long as the substance is affecting them, they don't
need to worry about anything else.

I wonder if there have been any scientific or academic studies about the
optimal size and composition of a sitcome ensemble cast?

How to vote in a Canadian federal election:

1. Find out what parties are running in your riding. You can find this from the Elections Canada website. Type in your postal code and click OK, then click on "Who are the candidates running in my riding?" The list will be finalized by June 9, so don't panic if there are no candidates there today.

2. Of the parties running in your riding (not the candidates, the parties they represent), decide which party you would like most to win (hereafter "the best party"), and which party you would like least to win (hereafter "the worst party"). If you do not already have the best party and worst party in mind, you can find out about their platforms by Googling the party names, and by following analysis in news media. (Just keep in mind the editorial stance of the media you follow). Please note, this is very important, your determination of the best party and the worst party has NOTHING to do with their likelihood of winning at this stage of the process. At this point you are simply choosing the party with the best and worst platforms. Don't worry, strategy will be addressed later.

3. Look at the best party's platform and record, and look at the worst party's platform and record. Decide if it is more important to you that the best party wins, or that the worst party does not win. Again, at this point it has nothing to do with their likelihood of being elected. Just decide whether it is more important for you to use your vote to help elect the best party, or to help defeat the worst party.

4. If it is more important to you to help elect the best party, vote for the best party. If this applies to you, you can stop reading here. If it is more important to you to help defeat the worst party, read on.

5. Assess the worst party's chances of winning in your riding. This has nothing to do with their chances of winning across the country, because your vote is only counted against other votes in your riding. You can work out their chances of winning by keeping an eye on riding polls in your local news media (try typing your riding name into Google News every few days) and by looking at previous results in your riding. This is not a straight mathematical assessment - what you need to do here is look at the risk of the worst party winning, and decide whether the risk is small enough for you to be comfortable with it (acceptable risk), or large enough for you to be uncomfortable with it (unacceptable risk). It might be that all signs point to the worst party coming in second in your riding, but it's enough of a risk that you're uncomfortable with it. This is entirely about your personal comfort level.

6. If the risk of the worst party winning in your riding is low enough to be acceptable to you, then vote for the best party. If this is the case, you can stop reading here. If this risk is unacceptable, read on.

7. If you think there's an unacceptable chance of the worst party winning in your riding, determine (the same way you determined the worst party's chances) which party is most likely to be able to beat the worst party in your riding. Examine the platform and record of the party most likely to defeat the worst party. If you can in good conscience vote for them, do so.

8. If you are in a situation where there is unacceptable risk of the worst party winning, and you cannot in good conscience vote for the party most likely to defeat the worst party, vote for the best party. In this case, your riding thinks that there are very few people with your politics in the riding. By voting for the best party, you are standing up and being counted. If enough people do this, it may change the riding's (and the incumbent's) perception of the politics of its voters, and it's better ethically than not voting at all, or voting for someone you cannot vote for in good conscience.

If, at any point, you are lacking the information you need to make any of these decisions, your local reference librarian will be able to help you. (Torontonians can contact a reference librarian for free here.) All the necessary information is available from non-partisan sources, it just isn't always easy to find. Elections Canada is non-partisan despite being a government organization.

From the Things I Don't Understand file: shot-by-shot remakes of movies.
Isn't that like paying tribute to your favourite author by rewriting your
favourite book work-for-work?

Since I moved here, just blocks away from both a fire station and a police
station, I've noticed that a thunderclap is almost always followed
immediately by the sound of siren.

I'm planning to write my MA thesis on the translation of proper names in Harry Potter, using French, Spanish, and German translations (in that order of priority - I'll only use as many translations as my thesis advisor feels necessary). I will be doing this retrospectively, after book 7 comes out, from the point of view of "Do the elements of the names that were and were not translated accurately represent the importance of those names?"

I'm just blogging this for the benefit of anyone Googling for research on the subject.

When I was in high school and we studied Shakespeare, the teachers would
always note that all the references to mythology and religion etc. in his
plays were common knowledge in those days, so it would have been much easier
for Shakespearian audiences to "get it" than it was for us. They'd always
tell us this with a sort of eye-rolling sigh, as if they were saying "kids
these days, they don't know their mythology, they're so culturally inept."

It occurs to me that we don't know our mythology because that function of
mythology has been thoroughly replaced by the Simpsons. I'm sure a
moderately talented 21st century playwright could infuse a play with
Simpsons references in the same way that Shakespeare used mythology.

Some people say that blogs are ruining Google, but personally I think that
commerce is ruining Google more. For example, I recently read somewhere
that they can do drug tests with strands of people's hair. I was curious
about how that worked, so I Googled it. The first few pages of results were
all trying to sell me some method to beat hair-based drug tests, when I
wasn't looking to buy anything, I was just curious about the science behind
it!

Then today in the G&M (Roy MacGregor's column if you're looking for it, I'm
updating by email so I can't link) there was an anecdote about Queen
Victoria and green tea. I was curious about how urban legend this was so I
Googled it, but all the results were sites trying to sell me tea.
Apparently there's a Queen Victoria brand tea or Queen Victoria's favourite
tea or something.

Sometimes when I am Googling something I do get all blogs, but most bloggers
(not me because I suck that way, but most bloggers) do link to things they
are referencing, so I can get there. Blogs are more useful than 25
identical sites all trying to sell me something I'm curious about but have
no intention of buying!

In French, the Sorting Hat is "le choixpeau". That just made my day :)