Complete text.

Study questions:

• Which key crises does Obama target in his initial words, and which does he omit?
• Does Obama quote scripture as a believer, or is his quote a concession?
• What does Obama consider science's "rightful place?"
• In which direction will Obama balance the choice between "safety and ideals"?
• Does Obama widen the space for non-belief in the moral majority of American thought by including it among the names of major religions?
• Do the speech's patriarchal overtones and omissions suggest direction for women's rights under his administration?
• Does, and could, the speech live up to the expectation?

Posted by tederick at 3:40 PM in goddamn politics & the apocalypse
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Take your ease, people of the earth. George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States. At least not in any significant way. (Which differs from the past 8 years... how?) Obamabia (I spelled that wrong but I kinda like it like this) reaches its zenitharack tomorrow, and then who knows what happens. At what point in the week do you reckon they take Barack in the back and tell him about the proof of the existence of extraterrestrials? Do they wait till Thursday, then take him on a tour of all the downed spacecraft and alien corpses? Or do they just show him Crystal Skull on the weekend, and when he looks over at them quizically, they nod and say "yeah"?

Weird that at some point in the last year, and in spite of its suckitude, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull became the definitive treatise in my mind on the American relationship with extraterrestrials. Huh.

EDGAR WRIGHT IS MAKING SCOTT PILGRIM IN TORONTO STARTING REALLY SOON! I know we knew that already, but with day-and-date pix of the director standing in our current blizzardscape, it became scarily present in my mind. I pretty much don't agree with any of the casting, at all. (Mary Elizabeth Winstead? What? The?) Though i can certainly see a Culkin as gay, slat-eyelidded roommate Wallace. The last few weeks, though, have made me realize that if they ever get off their ass and make a Runaways movie, I'll probably have to just leave the country.

So after 2 weeks of near-nonstop computer troubles, I arrived at work today (sick, sad, tired) and found that THE GODDAMN THING WOULDN'T EVEN TURN ON. I'm on a loaner right now while they re-install Windows. The loaner has all the functional capacity of a brick of soft cheese. I can read and reply to emails, maybe. If I try real hard.

I think the next time I am sick, sad and tired, I am gonna read the damn tea leaves and stay on my damn couch. Damn it.

Posted by tederick at 12:27 PM in comix & dr. jones & goddamn politics & j-o-b & movies
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Alien-free Alien 5 under Ridley/Ripley stewardship, one imagines to be inevitably titled simply Ripley? Colour me intrigued.

(No honestly: not only am I one of only six people who finds something of merit in each and every Alien movie, even Resurrection, but I do certainly feel there is much, much more landscape to that universe, featuring Ripley at any age, than we have seen so far. If anything, what cuts down 3 and 4 is their unwillingness to do what 2 did, and abandon 1's structure to really chart new territory in the existing mythos. They have their veins of that, the third film far more than the fourth, but the dogmatic necessity of sticking to the original paradigm keeps them pretty tethered.)

Christmas shopping always puts me in such a spectacularly foul mood. The way retail stores are laid out is the finest standing argument for why everything must eventually go online. But I digress.

Saw Jack Layton pronounce the word "parliament," live and in person! So I'm stroking that off the bucket list.

Plus, wrote a thing I actually really like.

Posted by tederick at 3:12 PM in goddamn politics & movies & the process
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I'm making a list and checking it twice, and on the list is terror. The constraints of good teamship prevent me from waxing too philosophical about the last two days, but I will say that if the responsible leaders of my organization were in the market to create a substantial quantity of pre-holiday fear, they achieved mightily. Bravo! Beyond that, their other achievements remain murky to me.

In the meantime, Nonreligiousholidaymas shopping. The list is surprisingly short this year, partially because I got some of the key items out of the way in November, and partially because I no longer spend time with any of my friends. Plus, I don't know if you heard, but the economy is in a downturn. And the Space Robot prorogued the shit out of Parliament - couldn't have prorogued it more in a hundred years of trying. I'm going to Nathan Phillips Square this afternoon to hear Jack Layton pronounce the word "parliament" in person. (I suggest you join me.)

Last night Daniel and I went to see Ballast, which made me think there's a very obvious and interesting idea for Demetre's villains/twins movie which I might try to put to paper. Ballast was also a rare moviegoing experience where I went in with literally no awareness of the content of the film, at all. And it also felt like the first movie I've seen in about four months, although I know that's not true. I have got to get out more. At some point in the next 4 weeks I should really see:

• Australia!
• Frost/Nixon
• Milk
• Rachel Getting Married
• Slum Dog Millionaire

to say nothing of all the movies coming out soon that I should also see. And I will confess a naughty craving to double-feature Twilight and Punisher: War Zone.

(Show me.... Matty Price!)

Posted by tederick at 10:34 AM in goddamn politics & j-o-b & movies
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THE WORLD DOES NOT NEED A REMAKE OF ROMANCING THE STONE, YOU HOLLYWOOD FAT CATS! I DON'T CARE HOW LARGE AND LUMPY MICHAEL DOUGLAS AND KATHLEEN TURNER HAVE BECOME, IF YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE ANYTHING STONE-RELATED YOU ARE DAMN WELL MAKING A THIRD SEQUEL AND INTRODUCING THEIR WILY ADVENTURING SON-AND-DAUGHTER COMBO CHET AND LOUISA, AND LETTING THE WHOLE FAMILY GET INTO SOME SORT OF GEM-RELATED DIFFICULTY IN THE COUNTRY WHERE JACK AND JOAN MET AND FELL IN LOVE: COLOMBIA! do i have to do everything around here

Words/phrases I did not know existed until recently:

• prorogue
• stimulus package
• Michaëlle Jean

Posted by tederick at 9:12 AM in goddamn politics & movies
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Honestly, the entire gall-darned topple-the-Canadian-government dealio right now makes me shriek laughter right down to the toes of my pink pirate socks!

Super special extend-o-cut of The Dark Knight score available next week in time for the blu-ray which is, I just learned, actually being sold at midnight at HMV next Monday night. Because... why? So folk can run home and watch Batman until 3:30 in the morning on a school night? But extend-o-cut soundtracks are always fine by me, and that DK score grew on me like a heroin rush.

I guess, with the Hot Toys Joker also cruising into town day-and-date with the DVD, I needed yet another Batthing to spend money on. And on the same news cycle, it seems that three million shy of a billion is actually enough for the judicious souls at Warner Brothers. Good for them, resisting the temptation.

Today I took Zam to the vet, where she was very good. The most traumatic experience of the entire event for her was the ride in the elevator. My cat! Strange.

Now I'm at home watching The X-Files on blu-ray. Unsurprisingly, the new X Files movie plays better on DVD. (Somewhat surprisingly), it's actually substantially better. The thing's shit-hot-n'-pretty, and it's hard to feel underwhelmed when you're watching blu-ray snowflakes drift down around Mulder's face. Chris Carter's shots make sense. The venue seems creepier. Even Billy Connolly seems creepier / makes sense. Why did they release this flick in July? It's a winter movie.

Posted by tederick at 6:32 PM in batman! & goddamn politics & movies & shinydisks & zam!
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Billy Dee Williams is a national resource, a national treasure, and Nicholas Cage.

So today's the day. 10 p.m.: Barack Obama wins the presidency. 11 p.m.: Matt is forced to retire his "African American president = imminent asteroid attack" joke. While things like this still make me feel that we'll see a black gay Muslim woman in the White House before we see an atheist get past the first primary (in a nation which was, no matter what they want you to believe, founded not by bible-thumpers but by a nice cadre of rationalist land-owners), it could end up being a pretty cool day.

Posted by tederick at 11:33 AM in galaxy far & goddamn politics
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Weak, Canada. Just weak.

Every time I go to vote, I become sharply aware of the fact that our entire democratic system is perched on the edge of the abyss over which we find only chaos. I have never voted in a riding in which I've been registered, except the very first time - I'm an unsettled 30something, I change postal codes like iPhone buyers change email addresses, i.e. frequently and to great concern among the populace. So every time I have to go and vote I need to register at the polling station I'm in, and every single time, I am simply stunned that any dimwit with half an ounce of ambition wouldn't be able to throw this entire electoral system over with a couple pieces of construction paper and some scotch tape.

Yesterday, when I went to register, my voter card was taken by a blind guy. I mean, he was probably a volunteer and god bless him for coming out to help with the process, but he was fucking blind, and his job was to read voter cards. He asked me to read my voter card to him. My card could have said that I was Batman, here to arrest the Penguin, and he still would have assigned me to booth 63.

Well anyways, you get what you pay for. A couple more years of this and we'll get some whackshit Tory splinter parties to split the vote on the right the way it's been split on the left. Until then, the cat-eating space robot rules us like a king. Admit it: you had a look at the markets this morning and were the tiniest bit guilty-glad, weren't you?

Posted by tederick at 7:26 AM in goddamn politics
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Gods but Stephen Harper's web site fascinates the shit out of me.

I just stare at it.

For hours. (Well, minutes.)

Time to admit to my nature and charley up to the fact that I am, indeed, so excited about the Matrix blu-ray release this week that I can barely speak when thinking about it. I tried looking at the films again earlier this year and it was the first time my brain clicked over and said "nah, wait for the BD." Those early-in-format standard DVDs (Matrix 1 particularly) are sort of wonderful, laughable relics of the pre-LOTR early days of "what can we do with DVD?" They're chunky, and awkward, and they don't know how to present special features except to know that they want to present a lot of 'em. The Matrix is now the only film I've owned in three formats, which doesn't just beeline nicely into the overall vogue around the film's technology/reality mishmash, but also serves me as a standing, unconscious tribute to those days early in 1999 when me and Steve woudl hijack screening rooms at York while slaving through the Absence cut and just watch the Matrix trailer a few times really loud, back when the majority of our peers were still giving the "Johnny Mnemonic? Fuck that!" line about the flick. Man. Good old days.

I've also got Kingdom of the Crystal Skull coming, which I kinda regret before it's even arrived, and I'm still crimping and saving to be able to get When We Left Earth, which basically looks like Planet Earth for NASA.

Anyways, it's too nice a day to sit around blogging about shit. Go enjoy the October! (season, not revolution)

Posted by tederick at 12:34 PM in goddamn politics & shinydisks
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My friend and comic book guru, Sean, is not someone whose advice I should easily dismiss: every time he turns me onto a book, I end up loving it. He recently fished me back onto the Boys bandwagon after my suicidal plunge into pull-list decimation, and a few months ago he also put the second or third issue of Kick-Ass in my hands. In the case of the latter, I took one look at the Romita nastiness and said "no thank you," but I was foolish. All that shit you've been hearing about Kick-Ass? 'Tis true. The book kicks ass. I finally got into it this week and downed issues 1-4 in rapid succession; I'm even starting to like the art in spite of myself. Jury's still out on Matthew Vaughn's career, but it doesn't take a genius to see that this will make one hell of a fucking movie, if they can keep the violence and gangster-skewering superchildren intact. I was about three pages into issue 3 when I mumbled "This is gonna be the next Fight Club."

Speaking of Fight Club, here's Whack the PM, where you get to hit our country's leaders until they stop being so annoying, thereby consolidating your voting choice. Unsurprisdingly, I only ended up hitting Harper.

This photo mural, purloined from blogTO, actually pretty much says everything you need to know about the candidates:

Stéphane Dion: Rolling up his sleeves to look like he wants to work hard.
Stephen Harper: OH MY GOD HE'S GOING TO EAT THE CAT
Jack Layton: A man's man; a ladies man; in every way: a man.
Elizabeth May: I AM SO FUCKING HAPPY TO BE HERE
Gilles Duceppe: Not pictured.

I'm in kind of a dead riding anyway, because I have no Tory candidate at all. No matter who I vote for, the Tories don't win; Bob Rae wins, which doesn't make me feel stupendously better, but I guess it's better than nothing. I have a Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada candidate, though. Who knew? BEARS RULE!

Meanwhile: turkey!

Posted by tederick at 10:10 AM in blogTO & comix & goddamn politics & movies
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I am not particularly concerned for the safety of my job, although one must of course be continuously aware in today's economic climate that if one works for a large corporation (I do), it is at least within the realm of possibility that your indefatigable, we-make-toilet-paper-and-everybody-needs-toilet-paper job might become irrelevant with little or no warning. Like I said, I'm not too concerned about my current state of employ, but darkening financial times do bring out the paranoiac in people. Unrelatedly, I was reading Joey's blog (you know him as The Accordion Guy) - he worked with Jason and I on a project or two back in the Bearshark days, and of course he's enough of a Toronto fixture now for me to keep an eye on him on a semi-regular. He got laid off recently - not fired, laid off, the sort of thing that is probably going to infiltrate the web development industry rather spectacularly over the next 18 months or so, because as Sarafina pointed out the other day, if the end of the world came, what are we actually able to contribute? - and he's been writing about the job-loss, and I just wanted to say that if you're feeling at all precarious about your career right now, this entry will make you feel better. It's lovely. I mean, it might also make you feel worse, what with the step-by-step description of the laying-off process. But I promise, at the end, it will also make you feel better.

Hey Canada: you're voting in 7 days. What I would like, at this point, is a complete game change in Canadian politics, because the obvious reality is that this election has become The People Who Don't Want Stephen Harper Any More vs. The People Who Do, and if it were actually taken on those terms we would win by a fucking landslide, but instead we will be forced to endure a CRAP minority and directionless government in the midst of perhaps the greatest economic shitstorm my generation will ever see. That is fucking bad, man. Now would be a superb time for a would-be despot to do his thing.

Posted by tederick at 8:33 PM in blogsphere & goddamn politics & j-o-b
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Well, it's the first of October, and I have a Dark Materials hurt on like you would not believe. If I'm not careful, I'm going to end up one of those Christopher Lee types who read the book every single year, like clockwork. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that it would get in the way of all the other stuff I want to read. Fortunately, I bought that Scoresby/Iorek book over the summer and felt it was far too warm out to read it, so perhaps I will read it now. I hope it tastes right. In the meantime I am reading Who Killed Retro Girl? and enjoying it quite a lot.

Hey look, the Right Honourable Evil Space Robot Stephen Harper's Evil Space Speechwriter is apologizing for plagiarizing someone else's work like a third-grader with an essay on peregrine falcons due the next day, when what he should really be apologizing for is peeling back the lie that is marketing-driven politics in the 21st century and thereby freaking out the stiffs. I am so phenomenally uninterested in Harper and his jive that the news on this story didn't even really factor for me, but I must admit to feeling somewhat generally more ornery this time round than I was last time. I blame atheism. I feel underrepresented in the House. Just think - there's at least a game possibility that an African-American is about to become POTUS (which suggests that by early February, asteroids are going to come hurtling towards the Earth!), but I'd put as good as fifty years between us and the first time a major candidate in either the U.S. or Canada is going to have the stones (or the backing) to stand a chance at election on an admission of "I do not believe in the Christian god." Thanks to that rat Bill Maher, I am suddenly rather anxious about arsenals of nuclear destruction resting in the hands of religious fundamentalists, or the environmental catastrophe of the global industrial complex being governed by people who literally believe that 4,000 years ago, God gave us a whuppin' when we tried to think for ourselves. Sigh. Is there a way out of this one with a modicum of grace? Not that I mind spending the weeknights talking freedom and responsibility with Mark on the streets of downtown Toronto when we were supposed to be talking about girls, but I could do with a few days of no news about murder and sexual violence and the end of the world. There's all those pretty ideas to think about.

Posted by tederick at 10:21 AM in books & goddamn politics & the apocalypse
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Man, I stop watching Letterman and something this awesome happens!

By the way, I don't know if you've noticed, but Jack Layton sure can pronounce the hell out of the word "parliament."

Posted by tederick at 9:04 AM in goddamn politics & tv
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Wasn't a bad week, all told. Started good; stayed that way. Today I spent the afternoon working at Starbucks, which makes it sound like I got fired, but actually it just means that my job is occasionally portable (available open WiFi ports pending). And I've got a good "constant," to use the new Lost term. That time travel shit was crazy - and Desmond is just awesome. And being in love is fun, the vagueries of having to hang on to a phone number in London for 8 years just cuz an ex-boyfriend told you to notwithstanding. Sure, I'm a big shmaltz, but was that not the most emotionally satisfying love moment ever in the history of "sustain sustain sustain" TV ever? Finally: no bullshit.

Here's some bullshit: censoring what movies get funding in Canada, before they get funding. Not that any of those fucktards ever give me funding, but they might give some to someone I like sometime. And when that happens, there had damn well better be plenty of bareback gay sex in the flick. Or I'll be pissed.

Right, it's getting dark out there. I'm gonna sort out yet more of my departing toys.

Posted by tederick at 5:10 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & galaxy far & goddamn politics & j-o-b
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Completely exhausted and mopey last night I drained the last of the 15-year-old single malt, and sat on my floor organizing comic books. (As with my mother, Rule #1: when stressed, organize.) It turns out I am one short box short of a box. Otherwise the experience was like a Matt Brown, This Is Your Comic Reading Life! episode. I think probably the most embarrassing thing I found was the complete run of Star Wars: Republic, which I didn't even like when I was reading it, yet collected every issue; the entire canon of the Emma Frost series (designed for, pitched at, and seemingly written by 12-year-old girls) came a close second.

I was in bed by 9. I vaguely recall waking up at midnight with serious pain in my lower back, but that might have been a dream; I've yet to find proof. I was certainly not on this earth but mingling in the dream-borne paradise the rest of the time; I was Jack Sparrow, becalmed on the Pearl, with not a lot to do besides sit and talk. I think you were there. Then a window opened into the other world, the world after, when we had already survived the apocalypse at great loss of life. Equilibrium, at long last, between us and it. Then I was Faith, soaking wet on the deck behind Gigi's mansion. Dawn was coming (the morning kind, not the giant kind).

Now I'm at the Starbucks for some good honest reading, though I should really be doing some good honest writing. But it's all part of the same back-and-forth, I guess. The headline of the Star this morning is "PM to Cities: Drop Dead." Oh I wish Space Robot had actually said it that way!

Strikewatch: day 5!: Joss Whedon likes Matewan! WTF. That is the movie equivalent of The Stone Angel, which itself is the CanLit equivalent of spinach.

Anyone notice that even the air is shivering? Whatever we're on the edge of, it's gonna be a sight.

Is there any way I can go to Burrito Boyz for lunch?

Posted by tederick at 8:01 AM in comix & dreams & goddamn politics & joss & the apocalypse
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It seems to me that Lando Calrissian was in a hell of a position. Professional gambler, and not a small one - he lost the Falcon playing cards against Han Solo, a whole frickin' space ship. Have you ever lost a space ship? No. Calrissian's got the desperation in him, he knows that when he gambles he can go too far and lose big, but it's the only thing he knows how to do. He's barely staying ahead of the curve at Bespin, and then the Dark Lord shows up on Cloud City and offers Lando a deal - Lando figures he can run with it, bide his time till the river turns over and make what he can make based on what's on the table. But Vader switches the game on him, the river never comes, and suddenly Lando's caught out dealing from the bottom of the deck by not just a Sith Lord, but by one of the best gamblers Lando ever knew: Hanwise J. Solo. Sure, it's a bad situation that he got himself into by thinking he could play one step ahead of a dirty game, but still, one sympathizes. How could he have known that for a few brief, terrifying hours, is little Tibana gas mine would be the hub around which the entire Galactic Civil War revolved?

It's election day in Ontario; I admit I haven't been as diligent as I might have been in selecting my candidate. I tend to vacillate between the Liberals and the NDP at both the Federal and Provincial levels of government, but I live in a strongly NDP riding right now. While I can support the NDP candidate at the Federal level (hey, it's Jack Layton, the man entrances me), something about the Provincial candidate makes me queasy. So I'm really not sure which way I'll go tonight, though I'll give it more thought today. We have a referendum this time around, too, but I don't think it's a very exciiting one. Still, decisions must be made.

Having mired up halfway through issue 4 of Snapdragon, I am reviewing and revising the earlier issues. This morning I finished issue 2 (again). I've also come up with at least two (maybe three?) new characters that I'd like to drop in there, but there isn't a lot of space. Page count is my nemesis. Advantage of writing comics: the dialogue can be a bit more "on the nose," which suits me; disadvantage: way, way shorter lines, which runs counter to my obvious tendencies towards verbotic overrun. It's a juggling act. And I'm trying not to get too ratholed on this single item that will, quite obviously, never see publication, but it's a logical puzzle to try to solve this thing, and I am engrossed.

Posted by tederick at 8:34 AM in galaxy far & goddamn politics & the process
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Brandy: The dollar is over a dollar.
Me: We rule!

Facebook is far too annoying and I already wish I'd never joined, but the upside is that the "Wall" thingie really does boil down all my friends into their most defining attributes: Mer's on there saying FB's not as cool as they say it is, Bex is trying to shoot me down (and FAILING!), Matty Price is being loving and supportive, and Jessi just wants her wallet back. The Wall is the crucible of the soul.

Remember that thing where I said I wasn't going to get sick? Apparently no one told my nose. I am leaky and gross. How am I supposed to kill zombies now? Sneeze on 'em?

Posted by tederick at 7:25 AM in goddamn politics & zombies
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1. Three out of ten men would abstain from sex for life for a million pounds. Perhaps they're misunderstanding the meaning of the word "pounds?" (Additionally, one must admit that such a claim is fairly easy to make on this end, and fairly easy to break once the cheque clears. A million pounds [how the fuck do you make the pound symbol on a Mac?] pretty much buys you Shanghai's entire red-light district.)

2. Womens' sex drive drops 40% once they feel that they have "secured" their partner. I've been referring to this article a lot in the past few months so I thought it only fair that I actually post the thing. I've also been doing a lot of thinking lately about what I think is becoming a post-marital society, i.e. the way social and economic structures shift once marriage is no longer really "necessary" in the traditional sense. Now that we (in the West, anyway) can all hold down jobs and raise children in pretty much any combination of family structure we want, what place does marriage hold - besides being representative of a kind of unattainable ideal of romantic love? And given that procreative strength has always sat with the women and has only been occasionally dressed up as somehow belonging to hererosexual marriage, I would think the coming century is going to completely flip the norm on what makes a couple a couple.

While we're on the subject of large, large things, Al Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on the exact same day that the scientific community announced climate change to be unstoppable and that we're just going to have to live with the fact that the nature of weather on earth is going to change radically for centuries to come (provided we live at all). I feel an enormous amount of affection for Al Gore, probably solely to keep my brain from having to deal with the other thing, which is... well. I'm glad beyond words that this is finally something that makes the papers on a daily basis rather than a dirty little secret being kept out of the public eye by the worst kind of governmental vagrants. But it doesn't make it any easier to wrap the head or the heart around.

Posted by tederick at 7:23 PM in goddamn politics & sex (theoretical)
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GOOG9EMBARGOGOOG9

This post in no way refers to the real Cs*ba V*gh. Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Posted by tederick at 4:19 PM in goddamn politics
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Ah, comforting minority. Our very pretty space robot with his very pretty makeup (zwuh?) just pulled one of the more predictable elections of my lifetime. Conservative minority - check. Liberal smackdown but not such a hard one - check. Martin steps down - check. Layton steps up - check. Come on. Some drama, please?

The one thing (surprisingly) that really freaks me out this morning is Harper's backwater-dumbass idea of reducing the GST - and not just in the rather obvious "he's going to destroy the economy" sort of way, but just in terms of... well... I like seven percent. It's a nice round number and it adds up with our province's 8% PST to make a comfortable 15%, which is ever so much easier to calculate on invoices (or in your head when you're buying tacos) than, say, 14% or 13%. And now I know I'm Canadian: I want to pay more taxes because the numbers are pretty. Our home and grateful land, or whateverthefuck it is.

Last night while all the election shit was going on, I gave the proceedings a clean miss and Matty Price and I went to do our Mamo and then ate quality meat products at Allen's. Then we tried for the Friendly Stranger to get my pipe (no go; store was closed), then we tried for Bay Video to get Kontroll on DVD (no go; movie was sold out), then we went to the Varsity to see Woody Allen’s “comeback” film Match Point (no go; film sucked). I had a good time throughout, but man... unsatisfying!

Posted by tederick at 7:45 AM in goddamn politics
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Today at work I was sent two CSR (that's Customer Service Request) tickets within ten minutes of each other, both proclaiming the same error which (with our resident Java expert out of town) I was not entirely certain how to solve - I had two possible solutions, but had tested neither. So I sent one solution to one guy and the other solution to the other guy and it was only after I finished doing this that I realized I'd pulled a Dr. House, and merrily sat back waiting for the next hour or so to see which patient recovered, and which died of a splenic rupture. After that I limped around the office chewing codeine like it was Tic Tacs and told each and every female employee what I thought of her blouse. But I was going to do that anyway.

I voted on the way home. I think I exist in an omnipresent panic state about the democratic process. I've moved a few times since the last election and my driver's license doesn't match up with my current mailing address, and I was so convinced that this was going to eat a gigantic portion of my evening to get it sorted out. And, well, nuh-uh. In and out in five minutes. I realized as my form was being processed that this paranoia has existed since the day I started voting. For some reason, I seem to have some deep-seated psychological belief that voting is going to be hard for me, which must have somehow grown out of a deep-seated psychological fear that I'm going to be bureaucratically prevented from exercising my voice, which itself must spring from a deep-seated psychological understanding that I am in strong jeopardy of having my opinion ignored like the passive little nerdy loser I am. Which I blame entirely on being given glasses when I was in the third grade. So there.

Posted by tederick at 6:03 PM in dr. house & goddamn politics & j-o-b
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Yesterday when I went to the Box I made sure to put a couple of really big chocolate bars in my pocket. They're all on this crazy no-sugar no-wheat no-nothin' diet and while Bex was interviewing me I just started taking them out of my pocket and eating them like I was going down on Jesus' very own cock. Which was hilarious. I left the wrappers on her floor and hopefully, the result will be similar to my having left a bag of treats open in my bedroom a few days ago for Zam - i.e. a complete schizophrenic freak-out. We'll see.

Today's election day - so get out there and elect, ye Canucks. I'll be voting NDP, though I don't say that with the thought of swaying anyone. Boy, it's rare that I've seen anything more despicable than the Toronto Sun's front page yesterday - "100 reasons not to vote Liberal." I slag on the Post a whole lot, but in their wildest dreams they never could have come up with something as fascisistic as that. I mean (and Good Night, and Good Luck reminded me) we all know that the news isn't actually impartial, but is a little veneer so much to ask?

Posted by tederick at 7:37 AM in goddamn politics & miscellaneous crap
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1. Tea can taste like bacon and still be good!

2. Evil space robots give speeches.

3. No matter how old you are, sex is complex.

4. Ripping through your socks never gets old - it's like your foot becomes The Hulk. RRAAAARHHAH!!

5. I need to better plan what I'm going to wear each morning, because I am such a woman when it comes to picking clothes.

Posted by tederick at 7:58 AM in goddamn politics & miscellaneous crap & sex (theoretical)
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A note to Canadians regarding the upcoming election:

1. We want to live in a free country where the same personal liberties are enjoyed by all citizens.

2. No matter what the Tories tell you, the sponsorship "scandal" does not affect you personally.

3. Stephen Harper is an evil space robot.

That is all.

Posted by tederick at 8:53 AM in goddamn politics
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The other day I was watching Commander in Chief (which I am unabashedly, embarassingly hooked on to the point of fever sweats about what I'm going to do when House comes back on and takes back the timeslot) and when it was done, I flipped around and found Air Force One airing on another channel. So I went from watching Geena Davis avert a terrorist disaster that would have claimed the lives of hundreds of school children on Hallowe'en, to watching Harrison Ford kick the shit out of Eastern European terrorists bent on taking down his wife, daughter, and very big plane. (And as much as the visual effects are pretty much the worst put on film in the past twenty years, I never get tired of watching AF1 cartwheel across the Atlantic when it finally crashes.) And rather than become intensely annoyed with all the patriotic do-gooding, I found myself succumbing to a rather significant happy. I do a lot of bitching about the ol' U.S. of A. on this particular web site, but there's one things about those fellas that I find unendingly endearing: they really, really want to believe that their president is some kind of hero. And even if their president is certifiably not a hero, not anything more than (in this case anyway) a largely inept sales manager, they still want to believe the best of the person who sits in that big chair in that strange, round room (like Captain Kirk... who was Canadian... hrm). It's not quite a redemption for the whole darned nation, but it's enough to give a world-weary observer a modicum of hope.

I'm in a good family way around here. I got back from 108 strangely unnerved by the fact that the 'rents had got through a whole dinner without mentioning my imperturbable unemployability and its ongoing imperturbableness. There's been talk of me moving back there, but I en't gonna do it. Past a certain point (and lordy, am I past that point), it's just time to be a grown-up and accept the fact that life doesn't always turn out the way you like it, but you're still responsible for your own shit. I like it here. I like the incest/pedo phraseology in our Simpsons fridge quotes. I like the 850 DVDs in the living room. I like the smell of the three (and only three) meals that Chris knows how to cook. Everyone's all excited about the Hallowe'en party, Brandy's been baking with the Robbie Williams music cranked way up, and my costume is all done... though my penis may yet get in the way. But I suppose the main point of all this is: even if my life is an absolute waking nightmare right now, it's sure nice to live at 3QF meanwhilst.

I had an extremely detailed dream about the Mal/Inara love story in Serenity 2 the other day, and let me tell you, it's damn good. If I had won the 54 million bucks, I'd buy me the sequel to Serenity and make Joss put me in it as some loser that Inara humps at the beginning of the picture. No wait... maybe I'd just buy Morena. We need someone to serve tea around here.

Posted by tederick at 8:56 PM in 3QF & dreams & goddamn politics & joss
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