I'm atwitter

On the drive back from Ottawa last Sunday I tuned in to Spark, a radio show about technology. It's probably the only reason I know about Youtube, Blogger and ebay. On this particular show Nora Young, the host, interviewed some young tweeter snapper, who spoke at length (considerably more than 140 characters) about the benefits of Twitter. One such benefit is that it can, apparently, make people more creative. It does this, he said, by exposing us to other people's views. Humans being human, we tend to hang out with people whose opinions are very similar to ours and there is, apparently, research that shows that exposure to contrary views can make us more creative beings. I'm not exactly sure how it does this, but perhaps it causes neurotransmitters to fire in an area of the brain where they would ordinarily be sluggish--that part of the brain, for example, that thinks Sarah Palin would make a good president or that thongs are attractive. The person interviewed suggested that everyone randomly select someone to follow on Twitter in order to become more creative.

This sounded kind of interesting, so today I joined Twitter. I'm not going to write anything on there but I already have a disciple. This could go to my head. My follower is someone named RighteousSword, with a bit of explanation underneath in case the name is too subtle: "HQ for Christian Soldiers".

To randomly select someone to follow I decided to type "Seamus" in the Twitter search engine and pick whoever was 7th on the list. It was Steve Johnson ("MrMoxy"), a small business growth specialist. A good sign: I have no interest in small business growth. His latest tweet is, "Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained. - Seamus Heaney." I checked some of his other tweets. A bad sign: he seems to use his space mainly to quote others. It figures that I would find, in my search to become more creative, someone so uncreative he can't even write his own 140 characters.

It may take some creativity to discover how this exercise is going to make me more creative but I have faith; maybe RighteousSword and I do have something in common.

Weekend Countdown

3 Daves. When was the last time you went to a party where 30% of the guests had the same name?

2 menus. At the Chinese restaurant before going to the three-Dave party, after scanning the menu and seeing meat in almost everything, I asked the server what she recommended for vegetarians. She pointed out the vegetable fried rice, the vegetable chop suey, and the vegetable egg foo yung. Do you have anything with tofu? I asked. Oh yes, on our other menu. Tofu and stirred fried greens, she said. There's another menu? I asked. Oh yes, she replied. Pause. Umm, is your other menu in Chinese? I inquired, wondering why a) they have two menus and b) why they weren't showing us the other menu if it wasn't in Chinese. No, she replied, and stared at me until I ordered the tofu and stirred fried greens.

1 rockin' organ piece. At the end of an Advent service I felt I had been lured to under false pretences -- it was advertised as a candlelight carol service to mark the start of Advent, so I assumed that it would be all carolling by candlelight but it was actually an Anglican service with lots of readings in between carols I didn't recognize -- the organist played a fabulously wild piece of music that made me think of this classic scene from the Simpsons. We really all should have lit our candles again. What a blast(off)!

Since I've been back

You may have been expecting a post about my trip, but for whatever reason I don't feel like writing about it at the moment. So I just wanted to say hi, and to tell you what's been going on since I got back a week ago.

I went to see Paranormal Activity 2. I went to see it with someone who kept looking at his watch and demanding to know when something was going to happen. Something finally did about 55 minutes into the 91 minute movie.

After years of complaining that I've never been selected for jury duty, I finally got an order to appear at 9:30 am on November 29. I like the “Important Notice” that accompanied the order. It tells me that even if I have been convicted of certain offences under the Criminal Code or Controlled Drugs and Substances Act I can still serve on a jury. It's an odd assortment of offences, and it makes me curious why they chose those particular ones. For example, I can serve if I've been convicted of pretending to practice witchcraft (but not, I guess, if I've been convicted of practicing witchcraft, although maybe actually practicing it isn't an offence). Trading in lumbering equipment without consent is also OK (no other type of equipment though), as is transporting a person to a bawdy house or being found in a bawdy house after transporting someone there (I didn't know “bawdy house” is actually the legal term for what I'm guessing is a house of ill-repute). Failing to keep watch while towing a person on water skis or a surfboard will not excuse me from jury duty, nor will trespassing at night. Trespassing during the day makes me unfit for jury duty however.

I had dinner with two of my coworkers, who gave me a lovely assortment of goodies. They left the price tag on everything but I didn't mind. It made me feel better that they think I'm worth that much, and can serve as a guideline for how much I should spend on them when they turn 50. We reminisced about our crazy high school days. J mentioned that her sister drove her parents' car to Florida one weekend without informing her parents about the trip (keep in mind they lived in Canada). I mentioned my one-night stand with a Mark Eden Bust Developer and my longer term but equally non-satisfying relationship with a pair of weight loss bloomers that you hooked up to a vacuum cleaner. I'm sure I've blogged about these devices before so I won't go into more detail here.

After mistaking a letter of intent to submit a research proposal for a cover letter for a letter of intent to submit a research proposal, I spent two hours writing a cover letter for our letter of intent, needlessly duplicating all the information that is in the letter of intent. After realizing this, I said to the Director of Research that the Committee is going to think we're verbiose. I hope he's hard of hearing.

I started watching the first season of The West Wing but I'm not getting hooked on the show (on the other hand, I tore through Seasons 1 to 3 of Mad Men like a bat out of hell). Maybe it's because I'm finding politics kind of scary these days. In Toronto they just elected a mayor who campaigned on the fact that one of his opponents is gay (to be fair, the gay opponent then pointed out that the newly elected mayor is corpulent), thinks the city can't take in more immigrants, and wants to get rid of bike lanes and streetcars because they slow traffic. “Holy Motherfucking Regression to the Meanie!” as Robin making a guest appearance on Dexter might exclaim.

And on the subject of politics... I've been hearing a lot of dire predictions about the US midterm elections. I detest people who always knew what was going to happen but hold back on telling anyone what was going to happen until it has happened. So I hate what I'm about to say, but I really did know that the infatuation with Obama would end. The shining armor that knights wear is too heavy to remove on a daily basis. Inevitably the crotch starts rusting out and people become disenchanted.

I've also been looking at the photos from our week at the villa and getting a bit teary. Here are the beautiful women who made Italy so special (minus my best friend from high school who took the picture).

My bags aren't packed...

... but I'm ready to go. I've just finished making the final arrangements for my trip to Italy. About a month ago I finally got serious about preparations. I've known since before Christmas that one week of the trip is going to be spent at a villa in San Remo celebrating my (and my best friend from high school's) semicentenary with seven wild women. Appropriately, San Remo is described as a city of faded elegance. (For my 60th, perhaps I'll go somewhere that is described as a shadow of its former glory.) With no intention of gloating, here's where we're staying in San Remo.

I've also known, for years, that my dream destination in Italy is the Cinque Terre. But other than these two places, I didn't know where else to go. There's too much choice and only so much one can fit in three weeks, especially when one week is already accounted for. So I googled “best places to see Northern Italy.” Bolzano appeared (like Brigadoon), a midsize town in the Dolomites, which are part of the Italian Alps. Bolzano is near the Austrian border, meaning there's lots of apple strudel to be had. There are three cable cars from town that go up into the mountains, from where there are footpaths to little villages serving more apple strudel. There is also a biking trail that follows the river and passes by hordes of castles, some of which have trattoria that serve yet more apple strudel. With no intention of gloating, here's a photo of the area around Bolzano:



Oh, and did I mention that Bolzano has an archaeological museum where the oldest mummy ever found is on display? Apple strudel, Alps, and an ancient mummy; what more could one ask for?

The Mediterranean perhaps? After four nights in Bolzano I head to the Cinque Terre, a series of five villages that were former pirate havens and, judging from the price of the accommodation, now plunder tourists' pockets instead (but in such an enchanting way that no one cares). A walking trail along the coast connects the five villages, and there are more trails that head inland. It was difficult to decide which of the five villages to stay in, but so many places were booked up that I ended up choosing the middle village where one has to climb 370 steps to get from the train station to the town, which is probably why it was a bit easier to find accommodation there. With no intention of gloating, here's a view from the place that I'm staying for four nights:



and the breakfast area:



As an aside, I have the somewhat oxymoronic goal of losing ten pounds in Italy. Even though I feel this is doable owing to my refusal to take taxis, the biking or walking that is involved to get to the next apple strudel, and the need to climb 370 steps to get to places, someone I divulged my goal to snorted and said that someone she knows gained thirty pounds in three weeks there. Also, since I have so many trains to catch and hence so many times I have to lug my luggage, I wish that someone would design a line of reversible quick-dry clothing that one wouldn't feel embarrassed walking around Milan in, or better yet, freeze-dried clothing that, when you add some water, pops up into a fashionable outfit.

Back to the planning... one week left. Hoping to find a yoga retreat, I googled “Yoga retreats Italy”. I didn't find any yoga ones for the dates I wanted, but a silent meditation retreat in Assisi fit my schedule perfectly. Participants stay at a farm house in the countryside and every afternoon one can opt to go to Assisi and sightsee or talk someone's ear off. Or one can just stay at the farm house and gaze at olive groves.

With no intention of gloating,
here's some information about the retreat space.

Then I had to decide on flights. Although Nice is the closest airport to San Remo, it proved much cheaper and more direct to fly into and out of Rome (even though it means an eight-hour train ride to San Remo instead of a one-hour journey from Nice). So I had to find accommodation for the first and last nights of my trip there. That has been challenging, especially trying to find a place around the train station that isn't too expensive, isn't completely grungy, and wasn't already booked. I've spent weeks on Tripadvisor--“on” being the correct word, as I have become quite addicted to reading reviews. In addition to things like “crusty toenails in the bed”, “hair in the shower drain caused it to overflow”, “just like home... if you live in an insane asylum” and “don't stay here even if you have to”, there are entertaining anecdotes, like the one about the couple that found a person sleeping on the floor of the closet in their room. When they complained to the manager he told them that it was OK, it was just a staff person who likes to nap in there.

I finally found a place called Fawlty Towers that sounded perfect. Whoever owns it obviously has a sense of humour, and it is reasonably priced and close to the train station. I was filling out the booking form and then thought that maybe I should check Tripadvisor before pressing "Send". Apparently the place is even worse than what one might expect at Basil Fawlty's establishment. Here is a sampling of comments from past guests:

I can't believe a place like this exists. It was one of the WORST places I have ever seen for tourists. A true nightmare! To bad to be true!!!! Horrible place.....it should be shut down. The bathroom smelled like sewage and the bed was broken. Never stay there and spread the word!! The room is terrible. The bed was broken, and the cereal is so old it became one big chunky piece of rice crispy. The bathroom smelled horrible and was covered in a 1/8" layer of water over the whole floor. There wasn't a shower cubicle just a shower head on the wall and an open drain hole on the floor. Water would go everywhere and there was about enough room to stand on one leg with the other in the toilet. The room reeked of mildew and the walls and ceiling had mold on them. The toilet seat was mostly broken, the sink had no water pressure, the shower only had one sliding door which was broken and the shower head was hanging limply from the wall. Absolutely the worst hotel of our 45 day trip. The worst part was the Indian receptionist. He barged into my room without knocking at 12:30 am and told me I was too loud when I was half asleep in bed. He told me to pack up my things and leave and that he was calling the cops. When I told him to get out of my room, he told me he was a drug dealer in the day and knew people. All the other people in the nearby rooms where we were staying were disgruntled, especially people who were there with their friends, and who didn't want to have a shower in the bedroom with their friend able to see in. Even though we had a shower in our room, we didn't use it as it was so tiny and you had to be a contortionist to open the door and manage to enter the bathroom at the same time, so we used the communal bathroom
So was the cheap room rate at Fawlty Towers worth it? This is what we received:
1) Bed bug bites ALL over our bodies and faces that took over a month to heal
2) A £150 bill for the exterminators to eradicate bed bugs that had travelled in our luggage and taken residency in London with us.
In 20 years of traveling to places like India, Guatemala and Kenya, this is the worst hotel I've ever visited. It is completely infested with bed bugs -- they swarm the beds at night. I got about 50 bites in the course of a night. Completely disgusting.

I immediately hit "Close" on the booking form. After a few days of emailing places that sounded decent and were near the train station, I finally got a promising reply from The Beehive. They were full on the dates I'm going to be in Rome, but they did have a private room in one of their rental apartments. With every intention of gloating, here is where I'll be staying (click on Millefiori).

Some of you might not actually find this gloatworthy, considering that one has to share a bathroom, possibly with a very hairy man, and the building is in what the owners describe as a gritty area (which doesn't equate with dangerous; from what I've been reading, you're very unlikely to be a victim of violent crime in Italy unless you have mob connections). However, in addition to being funky, which pretty much sells me on anything, it's 70 euros a night, which is a great price for Rome (by comparison, a room at Fawlty Towers is 60 euros). And 93% of reviewers recommend staying there, compared to the 83% who strongly advise against staying at Fawlty Towers. So I'm gloating.

Three blind dates

Three blind dates
Three blind dates
See how she runs
See how she runs

Well, it was only one blind date, and it wasn't really even a date: we met for coffee. And I didn't actually run out of there, arms flailing and yelling, Jane*, what were you thinking? But I can't think why my friend thought this person would be a suitable match for me. It's true that he seemed very, very sweet and has a good sense of humour, so what I am about to say is not meant as a criticism nor do I mean to mock him. I actually think he would make a great friend. But not a romantic partner for me. For one thing, he looks nothing like George Clooney. Well, that's not really the or even a reason. I certainly don't look anything like any of the women George has dated. But early on in the conversation he mentioned that he likes his sleep to be efficient. I don't know what that means but it sounded alarming to me. Does he cut short nights out so that he can be in bed by a certain hour? Does he time his stages of sleep so he hits REM at precisely 1:34:17 a.m.? Does he have a German bed?

He then mentioned that other people think he's a tad eccentric. What is it that makes you eccentric? I inquired (efficiently I might add). It turns out he hoards things. For example, until recently he had stacks of newspapers from the year 2000 up to the present piled under his pool table. Then he realized that he was unlikely to ever get around to reading all of them, so he had his assistant (not sure what the assistant's role is in his life, other than decluttering) clean out all the papers dating to 2004 (16 garbage bags full), in the likely pipe dream that catching up on the news from 2005-2010 would be a manageable task. Maybe he has to be efficient with his sleep to ensure that he has enough hours in the day to accomplish this. He also mentioned that his basement is a tad full and difficult to navigate. I can't say no when people offer me something. Fair enough. But then he went on to describe another eccentric characteristic of his. I don't cook. I eat to live, not live to eat. I gaped at him. My oven is full of pots and pans, and the stovetop is piled with things. I never use either of them.

But, what do you eat then? I tried to ask in a nonjudgmental manner so he wouldn't suspect that I was beginning to think of him as barking mad instead of just a tad eccentric.

Well, people give me things. The other day someone dropped by and gave me four large containers of scalloped potatoes, and then an ex-girlfriend had a party on the weekend and called to ask me if I wanted the leftovers. I'm also learning how to use a crockpot. I can do pretty much anything in there. I had a piece of salmon the other night. Someone suggested I put a Bernaise sauce on it, but that seemed too complicated so I opened up a can of lobster chowder I got in Nova Scotia last year and poured that over it instead. It was really good. And sometimes I just live on KFC for a while.

At that point I said that all the talk of food was making me hungry and I had to go home to eat. I walked out of the coffee shop, mentally flailing my arms and yelling, Jane*, what were you thinking? He's sweet and funny and yes, a tad barking mad, but what I realize is that if I ever place a personal ad, the first line will be: Looking for someone who lives to eat and eschews hoarding.

*Possibly not her real name

Animal rights and wrongs (with no criticism intended of anyone)

I've wanted to write something about this for a long time but haven't because, for one thing, I'm uninformed. The reason I'm uninformed is that as soon as anything comes on the radio or TV or I see anything in print involving animal suffering (or child abuse), I immediately turn off the radio or TV or flip the page. I can't inform myself because I can't bear hearing the details. You would have to pay me scads of money to go to see The Cove, and if you were willing to do so, I would likely go there with earplugs, a lavender-scented eye cover and scads of chocolate bars. So most of my arguments on the issue of animal rights are emotion-based. Some unreasonable people would argue that reasoning and emotion are enemies and that facts always trump feelings. I once had an idea for a futuristic short story where people could choose a trial by jury or have their fate decided by a computer (the idea being, of course, that the computer would be objective in a way juries never can be). But then I read an account of a judge who suffered a stroke in his frontal lobe and lost all emotion. While in theory this should have made him a better (i.e., less biased) judge, he ended up leaving the profession because he believed that justice involves feeling as well as thinking.* So people who believe that emotion has no place in reasoning should be made to drink hemlock--after an impartial trial, of course.

The second reason I haven't written about this subject before now is that I'm worried about sounding preachy; I'm also worried about offending people. I'm sure I often sound wishy-washy because of these worries.

Mostly though, I tend to avoid this subject because I'm afraid of being accused of being a hypocrite. I'm a vegetarian, but with all the death in the dairy industry not eating meat becomes almost a technicality. It's hard to be a purist: even vegans are likely contributing indirectly to animal suffering whenever they buy something with a drug identification number. If issues become dichotomized it's almost impossible to argue a position without being accused of hypocrisy. In a world of black and white, who would be able to become an activist for environmental causes unless they stopped exhaling all that carbon dioxide? (In which case, all their lobbying would have to be from six feet under. Following a green burial of course.)

So, after that lengthy preamble, I'd like to get to the (faux) meat of the matter. First, I hate circuses with animal acts. You can have a fabulous circus without them, as anyone one who has seen the Cirque du Soleil can attest to. I don't know how well regulated circuses are with respect to the conditions they keep the animals in, but I can't imagine that they provide animals like tigers and elephants with enough space to ensure that they have a good quality of life. I don't even want to think about how they train them. Or what happens to them when they get too old to perform. An animal sanctuary? A zoo? A shot in the head? Circuses can survive without animals. (They might want to get rid of the clowns too. They're creepy.) I have the same antipathy to most events involving animals: the Calgary Stampede, horse racing, fox hunts... If we have to watch a bunch of living things racing around a track, being lassoed and wrestled to the ground, or hunted down and torn apart, let's make it clowns.

I don't feel the same way about zoos, but only some zoos. For example, at the Toronto Zoo the animals actually might live a better life than they would roaming the Serengeti, for example. The sunsets might not be as spectacular, but they have lots of room, regular feedings, space to get away from it all, good prenatal care. I hate zoos that don't give animals these things. I remember going to a zoo when I was a child and seeing a fox in a small barren cage. The fox paced back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It probably went mad in there. And sometimes, my mind goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to the image of that fox in the small barren cage.

I'm more concerned about the conditions animals live in than about the fact that they are killed. Although that's only if the killing is humane, which I know is another area of debate. I don't think the way they kill bulls in bullfights is humane, for example, and for that reason alone I was really hoping Holland would win the World Cup. Someone pointed out that perhaps if Canadians paraded seals down the street before torturing them the European Union wouldn't oppose the seal hunt. On the other hand, the European Union is phasing out all animal testing for cosmetics which makes me want to kiss them on both cheeks. I give the cold shoulder to North America on that issue. I'm more ambivalent about animal testing in the medical field, although it is difficult to come up with a solid argument as to why it's OK to experiment on animals for the benefit of humans. Saying “we're human” doesn't quite constitute a logical argument to me. What is it about our humanness that justifies this? And what happens when a human loses whatever those qualities may be? Does it then become OK to experiment on them?

But back to the issue of how animals live before they die. Factory farming sickens me. I'm amazed at how people who dote on their pets often don't seem to really give much thought to farm animals. Once a week, there should be a lottery where someone's beloved pet is randomly chosen to be shipped off to live on a factory farm. Then it should be loaded onto a truck and shipped hundreds of miles (another practice I abhor; if you must kill them, at least spare them the lengthy uncomfortable drive to their death) and stuck in a feedlot next to a slaughterhouse where it can develop a healthy dose of weight and terror. Then herd it (if it's a cat, good luck with this) in a long line to whatever the efficient killing equivalent is of the chopping block. Post a video of the process on Youtube and send a link to the family. That might get people's notice.

Sometimes change occurs where you least expect it. I think it was Wendys that made the decision to only buy pork that was produced from free-range pigs. I don't know how well that industry is regulated either, but at least someone is thinking about the pigs not just the pork. Or maybe they're just thinking about the taste of the pork but at least that helps the pigs. (Although really, “pork production” really bothers me. Rumour has it that pigs are intelligent creatures, and the thought of anything with intelligence, whatever that means, being raised and slaughtered for food is repulsive to me. Remember Soylent Green? Although admittedly, the movie has become more humourous than creepy, but still...) And I just read the other day that Arnold Schwarzenegger has passed a bill where all eggs sold in California have to come from hens that aren't “crammed into cages”. This still doesn't sound great to me, but better than being crammed into a cage. It was also a Republican who lobbied to stop the slaughter of horses for meat. Sometimes they get my vote.

Are you wondering where I stand re hunting? I tend to think it's more humane than factory farming (assuming you don't have people like the characters in Deliverance doing the hunting). Once I read an article about some hunters who would put down food for deer and then shoot them as they (the deer) were eating. I remember thinking, how awful, but I'm reconsidering my opinion on that. Deer live life (maybe not a long one, but at least one where they're free to roam with whatever buffalo they can find), eat last supper, die let's hope fairly quickly. I don't like the idea of an animal being stalked and chased down. Maybe my imagination is too good: I can too easily put myself into the mindset of the hunted. (Did any of you ever read that short story in school about someone who had an island and would bring guests there to hunt them?)

My favourite Australian is Peter Singer. He's very well informed, non-wishy-washy and a champion of animal rights, unlike some of his colleagues. One of them, an ethicist whose name I can't recall, would be the kind of person who would likely approve research that involves nailing a dog to a board to see whether it experiences pain, like someone famous whose name I can't recall did to his wife's dog in the 1600s. I don't know if they stayed married after that.

We know now that if something has a central nervous system, as dogs do, it can feel pain (unless the nerves have been severed, similar to what a former coworker of mine said they did to the vocal cords of dogs they used in her medical training in Mexico). I think (wishfully perhaps) that in much of the Western world, Spain aside, we've done a lot to minimize the pain we cause animals (although I'm sure many would argue we could do much more). But what does it mean that whales and elephants have family structures that include grandmothers? Or that male elephants travel hundreds of miles to congregate and have a boy's weekend away? Or that a leopard seal tried to feed penguins to a National Geographic photographer who was filming underwater around Antarctica? Last night I came home later than expected and discovered a raccoon in my basement, eating the cat food. I opened the back door wide and waited until it had its fill and wandered back upstairs. When it saw me it dashed out the door. Once it was on the deck I went outside and made lots of noise to scare it away. I started locking the cat door and getting ready to raccoon-proof the house when it occurred to me that maybe there was another one inside. I went back outside and peered through a window into the basement. Sure enough, there was a raccoon at the base of the stairs, hesitating. I watched it cautiously make its way up. I went around to the back to make sure it left the house. Then I realized that the first raccoon was back up on the deck, as though it was waiting. As soon as the second raccoon joined it they ambled off together.

People often accuse other people of anthropomorphizing animal behaviour, but we actually don't know what a lot of animal behaviour means. I'm sure there are plenty of theories but that's not the same as knowing. (We don't know what a lot of human behaviour means either. If you read what sociobiologists have to say on this it sounds like we're anthropomorphizing a lot of human behaviour as well. This probably makes no sense but I'm hoping you know what I mean.) So, while we know that animals experience pain, it is more difficult to know whether they suffer since we know so little about their emotional world. It doesn't help that they don't have facial expressions like we do. Those dolphins being butchered in The Cove probably continued to sport those little dolphin smiles throughout the process. On the off chance that animals are more similar to us than we care to admit and that they feel more than pain, should we be doing more to alleviate animal suffering?

*Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars, p.287.

A question:

If you were going to a murder mystery dinner party and playing the part of the corpse who was killed in 1959, what would you wear? What were dead people wearing back then?

The weather

Oh, I wish everyone would stop whining about the weather. You don't hear me complaining about the fact that on our second to last day in Boston it was 93°F (33.9°C) and my deranged and/or demonic mother and younger nephew made me walk around in hellish conditions for five or six hours, do you? And you don't hear me moaning about the temperature in my bedroom, which was 28.6°C (83.5°F) when I got up this morning and 34.6°C (94.3°F) when I got home tonight at 7:30 pm and 31.1°C (88.0°F) as I'm writing this at 10:22 pm, do you? And you don't hear me grumbling about the need to pour myself into a human-shaped mold every morning and crawl into the freezer for several hours so that I solidify enough to be able to ride my bike to work rather than oozing my way there like a scene from The Blob, do you? Well, do you?

Vive la difference

What a difference a nay makes. The first two weeks at my new half-time job have been discombobulating and alienating. The job itself seems so amorphous and it's lonely there. I work at the hospital and most of the offices surrounding me are filled with doctors; this means that, unlike the situation I have with my coworkers at what used to be my full-time job and is now a half-time job, I can't very well drop in and chat about Banana Guards (even though they were invented by a trio of doctors) or bemoan the fact that I don't work at a place where you can say “motherfucker” to anyone and everyone like they do where Dexter works. On the days I would go to what used to be my full-time job and is now a half-time job, it felt like home. Someone suggested I quit my new half-time job and go back to what used to be my full-time job. I was tempted. But a week ago Thursday, while at my new half-time job, I got an email from my employer at what used to be my full-time job. I learned that a proposal that for over two years we've been trying to get funded, didn't. My psychological well-being had a blow-out. Not only did that mean that I couldn't quit my amorphous and lonely new half-time job and go back and make what used to be my full-time job full-time again, but that job probably will be no job in a year. My new half-time job has limited funding as well, and will also become no job in two years. Helen's theorem states that no job=no money=poverty. I really don't want my golden years to become iron years through the alchemy of unemployment. I went home, deflated.

Last Wednesday at my amorphous and lonely new half-time job, I went to yet another meeting. There are lots of meetings at this new half-time job and they add to the general amorphousness, if that's a word (even if it's not, the concept will do). I'm used to meetings that have an agenda, and none of these do. They wander, mostly aimlessly, which does nothing to help me settle in. This meeting was preceded by a brief tour of the person's lab, and then we went to his office. I saw something in a jar on the shelf. What is that? I asked (oblivious to the fact that asking a gastroenterologist about the contents of their specimen jars might open something worse than a can of tapeworms). That was removed from a girl who was swallowing her hair. It filled her entire stomach. It was crawling with bacteria and prevented her from eating. I leaned forward to take a closer look at the stomach-shaped hairball. That was when I realized that, even if it's relatively short-lived, my new half-time job might be very interesting. I could feel myself slowly inflating with excitement, and now I actually look forward to going to my new half-time job. What a difference a hairball makes.

Terminal eczema

In February I developed a rash on three fingers of my right hand. I didn't know what it was, but my fingers were so itchy that sometimes I would wake at night and wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. I thought I would give it a month; if it didn't clear up by then, I would go to the doctor. In the meantime, I did some googling and self-diagnosed ringworm. One site advised soaking the affected area in cider vinegar. I did that. Another suggested applying salt 30 minutes a day and in a week all would be well. I did that too. It wasn't. At that point I decided to call the doctor, but was told that I couldn't get in to see her until after my trip to Calgary and Winnipeg. I wondered how I was going to manage. I googled some more and read that one of the symptoms of scabies is itching that gets much worse at night. Neem oil was recommended (it has anti-inflammatory properties and is used as an insecticide in agriculture). I bought a bottle at the natural food store (1 oz, $17). It did control the itchiness, which was fabulous, but my fingers remained red and puffy and scaly. The friend I visited in Calgary discreetly turned her mattress over before I left. I guess that was a natural precaution, since I told her I didn't know what I had but did mention ringworm and scabies as possibilities. I hope it's not eczema, she said. My mom's friend had that and it's really hard to control.

It's eczema, the doctor said immediately.

She gave me a prescription for a strong cortisone cream* (15 grams, $25). After reading the possible side effects, which include thinning skin, glaucoma, kidney damage, and a gold medal in wrestling, I got scared and decided to try a more natural approach. Trusty Google informed me that creams containing calendula were good for inflammatory skin conditions, so I bought a cream from the local health food store made from wildcrafted calendula and other herbs (60 ml, $24). (Sorry, I know I'm mixing metric and US measurements, or maybe weight and volume(?), but I'm reporting what's on the label.) When I read the product insert I realized I should have bought their Red Clover Plus cream, which is recommended specifically for eczema. So I went back and bought a tube of that as well, at a slightly cheaper price (60 ml, $20). The doctor told me it was important to use a good-quality moisturizer on my hands, so I picked up a jar of organic cream that contains shea butter, olive oil, and other oils, with no fragrance or preservatives (weight unknown, but it cost about $25). I also picked up some German hand cream containing chamomile, glycerine and silicone, since the doctor had mentioned that barrier creams containing silicone might help (5 oz, $7). Then I did a massage exchange with someone and she told me that she used to have terrible eczema on her hands and washing with Cetaphil instead of soap really helped. So I bought a bottle of that (295 ml, $14) and carry it around with me everywhere. I also bought some jojoba oil (60 ml, $12) and some lotion containing colloidal oatmeal (532 ml, $13). The other day I was in the health food store yet again and had to make a concerted effort not to buy yet another cream that promised to help skin conditions like eczema. It was $28.

The eczema spread from three fingers to the back of my right hand, and now it's appearing on my left hand and starting to make its way up my right arm. I'm afraid that eventually it will spread over my whole body and I'll become Reptile Woman--(this is either an en dash or an em dash or a hyphen: take your pick) which might be OK if I also developed some superpowers to go along with my scaliness, but I bet that won't happen. I'm also afraid that this is never going to go away. Can I live another 30 or 40 years with this almost constant itchiness? I know that on the great hike through life this is rather trivial. Getting a diagnosis of a life-threatening disease would be like meeting a mother of a bear on the trail and then turning around and seeing a baby bear behind you. Developing eczema is more like encountering a deer fly. But if you have ever had a deer fly circling your head constantly for hours and hours, you will know that even if it never drinks your blood it can drive you insane. You might want to run into those bears after six hours of a deer fly.

*As an aside, when the doctor was giving me the prescription for the cortisone she told me that I should apply it a maximum of twice a day. If you wash your hands more than twice a day... she started saying. I didn't hear the rest. I was too busy wondering whether my doctor is part of that scary proportion of health care professionals who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Either that or she has a wonder bladder.

A turd of people

A murder of crows sounds like overkill: as a collective noun, “murder” seems more suited to a biker gang or a group of mafioso than to a bunch of birds who hang around and make a lot of noise (as a non-bird person I may be unaware of the more violent side of their character however). And an unkindness of ravens makes me think of snooty black birds that snub the B birds at tea parties, not gorgeously sleek creatures that have inspired numerous mythologies. I'm not too happy with a skulk of foxes either – “skulk” is a seedy descriptor that's better applied to flashers or shoplifters. A parliament of owls at first sounds like it's paying homage to that species' wisdom, but in Canada it's likely to cast owls in a derogatory light. And a charm of bees seems wrong too; based on the traumatic experience I had with stinging insects when I was young and my subsequent reactions around them, I would call it an apocalypse of bees. (I know I know, most bees are not confrontational and they're fabulous pollinators. They're still evil and out to get me.)

Someone once suggested “turd” as a collective noun for humans (I hope I wasn't the source of his inspiration). I wouldn't use such an unflattering term for humanity, but it's certainly applicable to certain subsets: that turd of students that lives across the street and parties from 4 p.m. on Friday until 2 p.m. on Sunday, for example. Or a turd of telemarketers. I've been trying to come up with a good collective noun for the rest of us (excluding the skulk of flashers and shoplifters) but it's too difficult to find a characteristic that unites us all. (Even something that I would think would apply to everyone, like a love of chocolate, turns out not to be true. That disrepute of chocolate deniers.)

Several days have passed since I wrote that last paragraph. After listening to too much news about coyote culls and The Congo I am reconsidering my previous stance regarding “a turd of people”. But I'm not including we bloggers in that group. We are... hmmm... a bedazzlement of bloggers? A pollyanna of bloggers? (I think it was Mrs. Slocombe who once used that word to describe us.) A wickedness of bloggers (in the best possible sense)?

One last note: I was at a Starbucks on the weekend. The staff were (or "was"? What sayest the freak of grammarians amongst us) preternaturally cheerful and when I gave them my name so they could inform me when my latté was ready, three of them gaily sang out "He-len". They can't be real. I dub them a Stepford Wifery of Starbuckers.

Is your name Campbell? Cause you're mm-mm good...

Mali recently said that she might be looking for guest bloggers at Mali's Travelalphablog. She's making her way through the alphabet a second time and is anticipating trouble with certain letters. I volunteered to be a guest blogger for the letter X, and offered to write about my X-rated stay at a love hotel in Japan. This pricked both Mali's and Indigo's interest, and Mali suggested I write about it now, here, since it might be a while before she gets to X.

So here I am, writing about it here. Which is too bad, because Mali always posts pictures on her blog. If I had written about my X-rated stay at a love hotel there I would have felt impelled to post some visuals. Whereas I never post pictures here, so the description will be limited to text only. I am also sorry to have to tell you that the text will be most un-X-rated. Although we did use the hotel for its intended purpose, we were there primarily as anthropologists. As such, this post will be devoid of any salacious prose describing sexual positions that even the Kama Sutra did not dare to dream of that would bring you to such a degree of ecstasy that you would first think you had gone to heaven but then you would realize that you had actually gone way, way beyond that to some infinite bliss that cannot be contained in any concept as circumscribed as heaven.

No, I'm going to stick to the facts, ma'am. Which are: On a rainy day in September, 1992, my once-upon-a-time own Timbit and I were walking around Shinjuku looking for a love hotel. There are love hotels all over Japan that rent rooms by the hour. They're not as seedy as they sound: many couples use them because they share very small houses with their relatives and don't have much privacy. The hotels, as least the ones we saw in Shinjuku, post pictures of their rooms outside so that, similar to restaurants that post their menus, you can decide if they have anything to your taste. We were looking for a cheesy room: red velvet, round bed, that kind of thing. As soon as we found what we were looking for we walked into the lobby. Love hotels don't have the same type of check-in arrangement you would find at a typical hotel. Everything is very discreet: there's a place to slide your money through similar to what you would find at a bank, but the glass above it is covered so that the clerk can't see who's checking in and vice versa (thereby preventing potentially embarrassing moments if, for example, your grandmother happens to secretly run a love hotel). I guess the person on the other side heard Tim and I talking and realized we were gaijin. Out into the lobby popped an older man and woman who gawked at us. We were in the Mom and Pop love hotel. This was comforting, because it made me feel like the sheets were more likely to be washed between customers. After handing us the room key (which they were supposed to slide under the glass, but the whole anonymity thing had been blown by that time so it didn't really matter) Tim and I went to the room. I honestly can't remember much except that there was no false advertising in terms of the red velvet: the walls and bed were covered in it. There was a VCR and television and a stack of porn videos so, like the dedicated anthropologists we were, we watched them for several minutes. The censors had gone at them with lots of fuzzy spots to cover up the actors' genitalia. After watching for a bit we were both unsure as to how the porn industry actually survived in Japan.

(As an aside, the only real porn I saw in Japan was when I accompanied a friend late one morning to her coworker's apartment, where she was going to housesit. The coworker's wife invited us to sit in the living room, asked if we wanted something to drink, and then as she left the room to get the drinks she told us to sit back and watch the television. What the hell are we watching? I remember thinking. As the camera zoomed out it became very clear what the hell we were watching and Tami and I glanced at each other, mystified and somewhat horrified. Who watches porn movies before noon? And who shows porn movies to people they are meeting for the first time in a non-sexual context? The wife came back and proceeded to tell Tami about the apartment, when the garbage was supposed to go out, etc. The porn movie continued to play. She then offered us some lunch, and served us lasagna that had carrots in it. Tami and I glanced at each other, mystified and somewhat horrified. Carrots in lasagna?* That clinched it--she was definitely a whackjob. Watch as many movies as you want, she remarked to Tami as we were leaving. I hope that wasn't a home movie, I remarked to Tami after we had left.)

That's really all I can remember about the love hotel experience. Well, except for the elaborate sexual positions that even the Kama Sutra did not dare to dream of that would bring you to such a degree of ecstasy that you would first think you had gone to heaven but then you would realize that you had actually gone way, way beyond that to some infinite bliss that cannot be contained in any concept as circumscribed as heaven... but I vowed I wouldn't write about them.

So that you don't feel it was a complete waste of time to read this post, I offer some cheesy pick up lines to try if you ever find yourself on your own in Japan and want to experience a love hotel. (Of course, some of these may get Lost in Translation, which is a very good movie about a gaijin in Japan that doesn't, as far as I remember, contain any scenes involving love hotels or people showing the housesitter porn movies).

Can I follow you home? .......I was always told to follow my dreams.

Damn you turn my software into hardware.

You're so McGorgeous you could work at McDonalds.

There is a party at your ankles, maybe your pants should come down.

What has 213 teeth and holds back a monster? ......My zipper.

How do you brush your hair so your Halo doesn't show?

Do you like magic? Wanna see me pull something outta my pants?

Are you a General? Because my privates are at attention.

*I have since grown to like all sorts of whackjob vegetables in lasagna.

One, two, three, testiness... one, two, three, testiness...

Deloney made a comment recently about my testiness. While he may have been joking, he actually hit the nail on the head. (If anyone tells me that my writing is ripe with idioms I'm going to bop them... and I'm going to bop them twice if they tell me that I should have written “rife” instead of “ripe”.) Even I have noticed how incredibly cranky I am these days. It's not only the things that might irritate anybody that are getting to me--like today, I'm sure someone in the grocery store called me “sir” and yesterday, when I was buying tickets for a concert with a friend who is 12 years older than me and he paid the senior's price and I paid the adult's, they tried to hand me his change as if I was the senior. No, my irritability is all-encompassing; it's sort of like my own personal pandemic.

This irritating state of affairs has arisen only in the past six months. Prior to that I was fairly easygoing. Because I'm turning 50 this year and at the risk of sounding like someone who uses hormones to excuse any sort of behaviour, I can't help but wonder whether my irritability is a symptom of menopause (I don't have any physical symptoms yet like hot flashes or changing periods). Someone described the hot flashes she experiences as feeling like an alien has taken over her body. They make her want to scratch her skin off and run away from herself. That's similar to how I feel about my irritability: it's like something alien has invaded and I want to get away from my mind because it's not mine anymore and it's driving me crazy.

The only potentially beneficial thing about my current situation is that it is forcing me to think about my self and what that means. Can the me I think I am change so dramatically because of some change in my body's chemistry? And if so, is “me” just a bunch of chemical substances? When I look at disorders like schizophrenia or dementia and how bio-physiology can cause such changes in perceptions and personality, I can't help but think that who I am is determined by whatever my body is or isn't producing. Even though I'm not religious, the thought of such soullessness is rather frightening. Or perhaps what frightens me is that it may not be mind over matter but the other way around, which means that, essentially, I'm at the mercy of a meaninglessness of molecules.

I also wonder whether this is the new me or whether it's only a temporary state. And if it's the latter, how long is temporary? I have a group of women friends who are about 10 years older than me. One of them reassured me that women feel great and regain their energy once they are postmenopausal, although she's been waiting and waiting and growing increasingly irritated by how long it's taking her to reach that stage. On the other hand, a coworker reported that her grandmother went through menopause in five minutes. She had a hot flash during the Lord's prayer at church one morning and that was it, done.

Deliver us from protracted menopause...

Flight of Fancy

I used to want to be what used to be known as an airline stewardess. Last week I had a 2-day conference in Winnipeg (I guess the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy couldn't justify holding a conference in Venice or somewhere like that) so I decided to tack on a 4-day visit with a friend in Calgary. My 6-day trip involved 5 flights, 1 flight delay of 2 hours, 0 apologies from the airline for the flight delay, 11.5 hours of flying time (of which I spent 11.25 hours contemplating the possibility of a bomb exploding, someone inadvertently opening the emergency exit and me being sucked out, and/or snakes and/or zombies on a plane), 10 hours of waiting at airports (not including the 40 minutes we had to wait to get our luggage at the end of the 2nd flight because of a mechanical problem, which completely cancelled out the goodwill that was generated by the flight arriving 30 minutes ahead of schedule), 1 scary landing (there was heavy fog in Winnipeg; so, while we hurtled through the proverbial pea soup and I remembered a story about a plane that had to turn back from fogged-in Paris and land in Cardiff because the pilot wasn't qualified to land in fog and wondered whether Air Canada required all their pilots to be licensed to land in fog or whether it allowed them to wing it, the runway suddenly appeared and we thudded down, were briefly airborne again then hit the runway again and swerved, causing several people to scream and me to cry oh shit and grab the young girl sitting beside me), 1 apology from the pilots for the “firm landing”, 3 nights of staying up until 1 or 2 a.m. (mainly because of late flights) and 7 bags of potato chips that were consumed for all the wrong reasons at various airports.

I'm so glad I didn't follow my dream. What a nightmare that would have been.

Overly furry felines

Does anyone really believe that the Sphynx cat came into being through a natural genetic mutation? I think not. Here's my theory on what happened: a mad scientist (mad as in angry, not crazed) whose favourite movie as a child was ET came downstairs the morning after the day he or she had a loveseat covered in chocolate microfabric delivered and discovered that his or her cat named Charlotte had fallen in love at first sight with said loveseat and had spent the night rubbing shamelessly up against it and now it was covered in white fur and then and there he or she decided to insert the gene causing alopecia areata universalis into Charlotte. He or she is probably surprised the denuded cat look never really caught on, particularly among people with furniture. I guess most humans find bald cats creepy or are afraid the cat is suddenly going to ask to phone home. My advice to the mad scientist would have been to insert the chameleon gene into Charlotte's DNA instead. If furniture must suffer the unwanted attention of shameless hussy cats, at least let it be smothered in fur of the same colour.

Beware of falling uteri

In search of some diversion at work on Friday afternoon, I went to talk to, oh, let's call her Dee, and Maureen, who, contrary to her photo, is not a frumpy pretentious busybody. Did you know your uterus can fall out? Dee threw out as a conversation starter. Maureen and I got a bit hysterical, an appropriate reaction when discussing uteri (particularly falling ones). It's true, Dee insisted, my sister told me. (Dee is the person whose aunt and uncle told her that their daughter graduated from the Disney University with a law degree. I think Dee should carry around a salt shaker so that she can ingest a teaspoon at every utterance her relatives make.) Oh, you mean a prolapsed uterus, said Maureen, when she had finally recovered enough to speak coherently. Usually I find medical terminology rather offputting, but in this case a prolapsed uterus sounded much less worrisome than the thought of having to check at the Lost and Found for a wayward uterus. Or needing to put an ad in the local newspaper: Lost sometime on Sunday Feb. 1 on Princess Street, one ageing uterus. Sentimental value, reward offered. We started discussing options like a uterus sling or an internal alarm that would sense uterine movement and start beeping when a fall was impending, giving the wearer time to flip into a handstand to avoid embarrassment. Maureen was laughing so much I think it caused her uterus to slip a bit, and she left the room to discreetly check that it hadn't fallen out. Meanwhile I, having found my sought-after diversion, tottered back to my office, thighs squeezed tightly together.

The Banana Guard

I was going to write about last weekend's trip to Ottawa to celebrate a friend's birthday at the Nordic Spa. The sleeping arrangements were a bit tricky because there were four of us in a room with two queen-size beds and I don't like spooning with other women (not that there's anything wrong with that). So I brought a blow-up bed but by the time midnight rolled around we had consumed the mini-bar that K brought and I decided I didn't want to ask the valet to drive the car around to the front of the hotel so that I could pull the garbage bag containing my blow-up bed out of the back of the car and lug it up to the room. That meant we had to figure out who was going to sleep with who. T had told me on the way to pick up K that last week her husband woke up perched precariously on the edge of the bed because T has moved to the centre of the mattress and, with the cat, was occupying most of the space. He had to become a human bulldozer (or T-dozer in this case, which perches precariously on the edge of a pun so I can't resist) to get her back to her side of the bed, something she managed to sleep through. I decided that eliminated T as a potential bed partner. Then N said that she sleeps perched precariously on the edge of the bed and doesn't move at all, which sounded like the perfect match for T's bed-hogging shenanigans. So K and I ended up sleeping together. K asked me, just before turning off the light, if I move around a lot, because she's a light sleeper. I do. I also told her I talk in my sleep. Then I asked her what kind of sleeper she is. She replied that she flails her arms. I found that I was making such an effort not to move around and that I was so worried about getting my nose broken by a flailing arm that I couldn't sleep. Around 4 a.m. I whispered to K, not sure if she was awake or not, “Do you feel like you're back in the sauna?” because I was so hot, and she whispered back that she did, and I stumbled over to the thermostat to turn it down and tripped over someone's luggage and started giggling and then K started laughing and we couldn't stop for a while and T and N slept through it all.

I was going to write about that, but we had such a fruitful series of conversations at work today I want to write about them instead. They were all about the Banana Guard. There's a show in Canada called Dragons Den, where people pitch their ideas for a business and try to get one or more dragons (who are multi-millionaires) to invest in them. Three emergency room doctors were on last night's show. They had been on Dragons Den a few years ago trying to get the dragons to invest in the Banana Guard. The dragons didn't buy into the idea and now, a couple of years and 1.5 million dollars in sales later, the three doctors were back on the show pitching their new line of guards for different types of fruit. MM and D refuse to take the Banana Guard seriously and MM asked if they make a Banana Guard with the top cut off for Jewish banana lovers. H, on the other hand, became a Banana Guard convert after a friend gave her one for her birthday, and now she has a Pear Guard as well. She tried to convince MM and D that eating bruised and battered bananas is a really awful ordeal that no one need go through if one has the Banana Guard. I concur. Then G arrived and declared himself on MM's and D's side of the Banana Guard debate. How damaged can a banana get on the way to work? he scoffed. H replied that before she got the Banana Guard she used to transport her banana in her hand, that's how worried she was about it. I replied that having the Banana Guard had probably saved H's life, as someone could easily have mistaken the banana in her hand for a gun and shot her in self-defense. I proposed that we conduct a randomized controlled trial, where we would bring in 12 bananas and randomly assign 6 of them to be carried to work the next day in a Banana Guard and the other 6 to be carried au naturel, and then we would get two raters, both blind to the objectives of the experiment and the exposure status of the bananas, to determine which ones looked healthier. H, being a student, asked if we could use a smaller sample size as bananas are expensive. Then W arrived and, while refusing to take sides, demanded to know how exactly the Banana Guard can handle bananas of different shapes. What if they're straight? she asked. What if they're really curvy? What if they have an odd kink in them? H tried to explain that the Banana Guard can handle bananas of all shapes and sizes but W remained unconvinced. H then went into Google Calendar and scheduled a Banana Guard demo for next Thursday. MM spitefully declared that she is going to bring a plantain.

H and I have decided to give those three emergency room doctors some competition. We're going to go on Dragons Den and pitch the banana sling (similar to this, except it would contain a banana, not a baby or an alien impersonating a gigantic rodent), the banana belt holster and the banana ankle holster. Let us know if you have any other marketable ideas for a banana holder/protector.

What I did on the weekend

I met friends for brunch, twice. The second time was at the vegetarian restaurant, which is run by a cult. But they don't try to recruit you, although maybe they're using their food instead of more conventional tactics like persuasive pamphlets and weekend retreats where you don't get to sleep in. If I were ever to join a cult it would probably be this one. It used to be the Hare Krishnas because of the music, but I don't think they serve Celtic honey cake.

I went to a fundraising yoga class for Haiti, twice. The room was packed and I was a bit claustrophobic. That was my “hardship” for the weekend. It's at times like these that I wish I had gone to medical school. It was on the list, once.

I watched the last episode of Season 4 of Lost (I'm making my way through Seasons 1-5 before the final season starts in February). WD-40 missed a great chance for product placement when Ben was trying to turn the wheel to move the island: it looked like it could have used some oil.

I bought a calendar for $5 that I'm going to give to my younger nephew for his birthday in early March. The calendar has a tear-off postcard for every week in 2010, each of which features a photo of a baby bunny or other such adorable animal and a caption like “Grandma died” or “We'll have to amputate.” If you're also wondering who buys those rubber chickens that squawk and lay an egg when you squeeze them, that would be me. I found a box of them in a shop before Christmas and tested each one to find the loudest squawker. I'm not sure where to put it... in the fig tree in the living room, where it can share space with a snake, an apple, a pomegranate, a naked barbie doll and two anatomically correct guardians of heaven that I bought in Indonesia? Or should I decapitate it and have its head poke out from the hole in the baseboard in my funky bathroom?

I bought a refill for my pen, which a friend got for me in Germany. I love it because it's small and highly engineered and spotted like a leopard, except that over the years the spots have been wearing off. (Who says a leopard can't change its spots? I like to think it's becoming a cougar.) I'm sure my pen is the sort of item Indigo could wax eloquent about, but since you're stuck with me I'm clumsily switching to an anecdote about winter boots. I was in a store and asked to try some boots on in sizes 7.5 and 8. The 7.5 was too small on one foot and the 8 was too big on the other, so I tried one size on each foot to try to figure out which would be better. “Are you trying on a different size on each foot?” the salesperson demanded incredulously. When I responded in the affirmative she informed me that I shouldn't do that. “It's not like you can buy a different size for each foot” she sniffed, looking at me as if I was a moron. I did actually know that footwear is sold in pairs, although maybe it should be sold as individual units since people's feet are often different sizes. Plus that way people with two left feet could buy two left shoes, which might make their feet happier and improve their dancing ability. Obviously shoe people don't think outside the shoebox. Morons.

I read an article about whether Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare. The one fact I remember from that article is that falcons are trained through starvation and sleep deprivation. For some time I've wanted to write a post about animal rights and wrongs, but I find it too hard to inform myself about the subject. I suspect that animals that are confined to small spaces and never see natural light and are prodded to an abattoir reeking and shrieking of terror or that are subjected to experimental protocols until dissection day comes around are not very happy, but I could be entirely wrong about that. I just don't know. Because I can't bear to read up on it.

On that somewhat unhappy note I'll end. Appropriately enough, someone has come up with a mathematical formula to predict the unhappiest day of the year, and it's today. But tomorrow's another day.

Mom hit pop

Mom hit pop. I love this opening line. It conveys, in triumphantly tripartite fashion, such singularity of purpose on the mother's part. How much less compelling it would have been if Pop was hit by mom--thus demonstrating the superiority of the active over the passive voice. We kept trying, after reading that line, to come up with a snappier opening. Mom wept. Too predictable. Mom farted. Too crude. Mom offgassed. Too coy. Mom vacuumed. Too stereotyped. Mom recovered. Too anticlimactic. Mom screamed. That had possibilities. Then we changed screamed to screeched and liked it even better. How about Mom bellowed? Or better yet, Saul bellowed?

There really needs to be a category of nanoflash fiction for stories of two words or less. Freed from niggling worries about sightlines, character development and plot, writers could master the art of the unsaid. Readers wouldn't have time to lose interest, and much lively discussion about subtext would ensue. Compared to these condensed gems, those six-word stories that once were the rage would be like bloated baubles from the dollar store.

2010

I'm a little depressed about 2010. October 22 will mark the end of my forties, which is a big deal for me in so many ways. For one thing, it means that I only have ten months to become a cougar. Is there even a category for women in their fifties who have sex with younger men (the rare snow leopard perhaps)? For another thing, 50 means I will definitely be on the downward and no doubt very slippery slope of my life. I probably passed my chronological pinnacle some years ago (unless I live to age 100 or more, which I really really hope I don't do; my plan is to start engaging in risky behaviours at age 70 – smoking, foregoing seat belts, having unprotected sex – to minimize my chances of becoming a centenarian), but psychologically and physically 50 seems to mark the end of so many things. I would list them, but I don't have the energy (which would be on the list if I did have the energy to produce one).

Work is a bit of a worry too. Funding for the research project I've been working on since 2001 ends at the end of 2010, and unless we can find more $$$... the idea of my job ending is not just depressing because of the loss of income. Work, I realize, is a bit of a social event for me (which is probably leading you to question the quality of my social life). Although I really don't have that much in common with my co-workers – for example, one of them doesn't appear to believe in recycling and I am constantly inspecting the contents of her garbage for stuff that can be put in the blue box instead, another one cut short a stay in New York City so that she could shop at an outlet mall in Pennsylvania, and yet another spends substantial amounts of time on the internet cooking fake food and decorating her fake café with moose antlers – they are very dear to me. And entertaining. The non-believer in recycling believed for years that her cousin had graduated from the Disney University with a law degree. “The Disney University? Who would trust a lawyer who has that degree hanging on their wall?” But she was adamant. We finally did a Google search and found out that while there really is a Disney University, its mission is to teach Disney employees customer service skills and how to talk in a Mickey falsetto. I remain unsure as to whether her cousin actually has a law degree, or whether her aunt and uncle lied about that to my coworker as well. I fear that if my job ends, all my blogging material will too.

This year is also the year that Lost ends. It's like I've been reading an un-put-downable novel rivalling A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight in length (information supplied courtesy of Deloney) and I'm finally coming to the last page, at which point the characters will desert me. I will be bereft.* I will wear black.* Which thankfully is slimming. Fat cougars are an abomination, and unlikely to catch any prey.

To the hunt...

*Statements supplied courtesy of comments on Indigo's blog.