Montreal!

My bus to Montreal leaves in about two hours - I'm swamped at work atm so no FRT this weekend, but at least I'm posting!

I'm going to a conference as a delegate for a charity that I do work for. I'm pretty excited - I've never been to Montreal. Hopefully I can bring back some pictures if I don't get stuck in meetings all day.

The snowboarding adventure went remarkably badly, I've been laid up all week with deep muscle bruising in my left thigh & shoulder, and I pulled my neck muscles so badly I could hardly move my head. I really, really need to hit the gym so I'm less prone to injury.

Hawt.

You are Catherine the Great. You are very intelligent and a socialist. It is very important to you that all people be treated equally in a society. You are able to fully comprehend social problems and you are outspoken when it comes to dealing with them. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Relief

I don't think I'd mentioned it here, but before I started this blog, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Yesterday she had her last regular appointment with the Cancer Institute here in Ottawa - she's cancer free. Maybe I can get serious about writing now.

Today I'm off to Camp Fortune to go snowboarding with my dad and his fiancée. Hopefully I won't break anything, I haven't been boarding in years, though I used to both ski and board competitively.

I also managed to clean up my house, which to me is symbolic of being able to have my life resume its course that has been a little off kilter since the loss of my previous job, my brother's transverse myelitis and my mom's cancer.

Time to hit the slopes, hopefully pictures will follow.

FRT - No Comment Edition

Flicks - Frou Frou
Hello Chanel - Piney Gir
Early Winter - Gwen Stefani
Megahurts - Telegenetic
Stability - Death Cab for Cutie
Strange and Beautiful - Aqua Lung
Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World - Grandaddy
Thousand Words - Lizanne Knott
Beautiful - Joy Drop
Fear of Bliss - Alanis Morisette

FRT - It's My Blog and I'll Cry if I Want to Edition

Courtesy of Pandora yet again, since I don't have my mp3 collection at work.

1. Incubus - Megalomaniac
2. Kashmir - Jewel Drop
3. Dishawala - Above the Wreckage
4. Thornley - Come Again
5. Mory Kante - Yeke (Hardfloor Mix)
6. Felix da Housecat - Happy Hour
7. Lifehouse - Spin
8. Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
9. Allison Crowe - Midnight
10. Sarah McLachlan - Angel

Seems I'm turning out to be a bit of a weekend blogger - my posts seem to happen almost entirely Friday - Monday, and I lose steam midweek, despite having a whole whack of things I'd like to write about, which I can hopefully catch up with this weekend.

This week absolutely killed me - I had two tests, work's getting somewhat stressful as I'm now doing two people's jobs as both executive assistant and accounts receivable/accounts payable clerk, and I have a paper due Monday. I'm skipping a party for Jer's Vision that I'd really wanted to go to in favour of staying home and writing my paper, and if that weren't enough, I've been invited into the full beta of LotR online, which, even though it sucks, I'll be sorely tempted to play around with some more to get a more rounded out feel for the game.

And the costs just keep rising, tuition is going up again this year despite any number of protests (the one here in Ottawa was fab - too bad I had to work. This whole double life thing really cramps the student lifestyle) and bus fares are supposed to go up again this year - good thing I got an annual pass back in September so I won't have to worry about it til next September.

Unfortunately work beckons, and I expect my boss back from lunch soon.

Another Potentially Good Move Down the Tubes

Joss Wheedon will not longer be directing Wonder Woman.

I get it now.

So when John Baird says that "The planet's future is at stake" and that "Global Warming is a fact and requires real action", he likely actually means this.

Phew. I was worried I'd stumbled into bizzaro-world where the Conservatives had grown a lick of sense.

Wow.

According to the CBC, An Inconvenient Truth is to be shown in every secondary school in the UK.

Denial

I couldn`t write about it until now, because I couldn`t believe it, but seeing all the tributes, it`s finally sunk in. Molly Ivins is gone. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.

She will be sorely, sorely missed over these last few years of Bush`s rule. It is a shame she didn`t live to see the war end and Bush turfed out.

Friday Random Ten - Negligent Blogger Edition

Though I may fail at blogging seriously, there will at least always be a Friday Random Ten, so this blog will not die in neglect like so many previous ones.

Today`s Random Ten courtesy of Pandora for extra randomness.

1. Turned Out Lies - Spirit of the West
2. I See A Man - Tudor Lodge
3. Mouse Song - Faun Fables
4. This Love - Maroon 5
5. Control - Poe
6. Beautiful - Joydrop
7. When She Says - Brother Sean
8. Walking Back Hope - Deacon Blue
9. Anodyne - Speechwriters LLC
10. The Night Pat Murphy Died - Great Big Sea

I love Pandora and the other services like it because I end up listening to all sorts of things I`d never expect to. Out of this list, maybe four of the songs I would normally have listened to, but with the exception of This Love, which I truely loathe, I enjoyed them all.

Of course, thanks to this excellent post by Sheelzebub over at Pandagon, I feel kind of guilty for talking about Pandora on my blog, despite the fact that I have pretty much zero in the way of readers, because I feel that I`m contributing to the culture of guerilla marketing. I really really recommend reading the post, btw, not that Pandagon needs more traffic and not that I have any to send that way. I remember reading No Logo back in High School (I had very progressive English teachers - we studied Deadly Persuasion and No Logo as components of our English classes), and I really ought to read it again. It had a huge effect on my relation to branding, consumer culture and advertising. Deadly Persuasion, which we studied in more depth, had a lesser impact because Jean Kilbourne has a tendancy to go a little over the top, as far as I remember, even for my feminist socialist viewpoint.

Speaking of a society completely overrun by advertising to the point where it`s impossible to escape it, even in schools which should be a haven from our commercial culture, check out this vid on YouTube. Seems like the Food Network was doing some subliminal advertising for McDonald`s. A quick google search doesn`t turn up anything in the way of mainstream media about this, though there are a fair few sites referencing it.

Cutting this short since I`m at work, which is the number one reason my blogging has been slack lately.