I'm going on practicum for the next 13 weeks starting Monday, so I thought I'd better mention that I'll probably pretty much vanish, though I will try to post the occasional rant (I mean update) about ways 13 yeear olds have found to torture me. In case I, as an entity, cease to exist at all, I officially leave everything to the field of landmines, and grave robbers or naysayers can do their worst.

at least it will hopefully be amusing to watch this razor-thin Conservative minority government try to coordinate anything in our lovely new pizza parliament. If they actually accomplish anything, it'll probably all be horrible, but the rounds of parliamentary ineptitude I see in our future look like a bit of a monkey circus. That is to say, more amusing than things have been so far.

To Mr. Harper: congratulations. May your government be short, and the damage it does, minimal.

11 new seats, and 5 from BC is a great result for the NDP, and here in BC, even the LIBs made gains. We're just ahead of the rest of the country and already so over conservatism.

Polls are open and BC has some of the closest races in Canada this time around, so your vote may well be one of the few that tip the balance. Polls will be open until 7pm tonight, and remember, your employer must schedule you such that you have a period of three concecutive hours to cast your ballot (i.e. 3 hours in a row sometime between 7am and 7pm where you don't have to work). If not, they have to let you start late or leave early enough that you get your 3 hours to vote. Failure to do so results in a $1000 fine, all you have to do is report them to elections Canada.

it's still cold, grey, wet, and dark out. I'm still behind on my planning (units, lessons, etc.) for th e end of the month, and about every second day I wake up feeling like I'm coming down with something, only then it goes away. I have a serious case of the Januaries, and all I want to do is hibernate. I swear, if it's up to me I'm coming back as a big black bear, and I won't wake up until I can smell berries and honey and springtime. Isn't it fun when all I ever post is whining about how much I hate winter? Especially when I could post about all kind of other uplifting stuff like spending the majority of my free time at the hospital, exciting meetings at the brock hall financial aid office, and being forced to teach shitty poetry because our schools can't even afford to photocopy any more.

In the Northwest Territories, they're offering $62k/year plus northern living allowance, etc. as starting wage for teachers with my subject combination (english and social studies), but I have the feeling January feels a lot longer up there.

lately I hate: the bullshit myth of the autonomous liberal individual.

Natural selection does suggest that the best adapted species and members thrive and have the best chance of surviving in the long term (OTSS, only the strong survive, is roughly the present-day oversimplification fo this idea). Humans, however, have never been especially good on their own. Individually, we're awful slow, soft, tasty, and defenseless - a perfect mid-morning snack for lions, cheetahs, and that whole class of bigger, faster, tougher, toothier creatures who sometimes do admirably well on their own. Ape creatures like us did well for themselves by grouping up and taking care of each other. In numbers, we found safety and proserity. We're social animals. No human ever really "makes it on their own" and I think the whole idea that "behind every good man is a great woman," rather than suggesting that only men who have good taste or luck with women are likely to becoem world leaders, really gets at the idea that to prosper in our lives, we all need the support of others, and the more support we have, the better chance we have of realizing our dreams.

This, of course, has political ramifications. For example, it means that electing Stephen harper would be very bad for our species' continued success.

I have to go to school now.

to the following:

• wanting to just read someone's blog and not comment because then you'd have to think of something to say, and this is brain relaxation time.
  
• people just about to start doing something they've never done before and are terrified because everyone acts like they already know what they're doing
• feeling like endless January rain has turned you into a slug - at least you can now be tracked by ooze trails!
• being scared about the possibility of a conservative government even though everything we know about the behaviour of Canadian voters says it won't happen.
  
• people who think we should work less. There have been very few eras of human history where people have had as little unstructured time as they do now.

Now that I've been all empathetic and everything, here's my gripe du jour:
For the class I'm taking right now, and for the next three week, our textbook is "Failing Our Kids," which is a lovely book that outlines all of the problems with our current Canadian public school system. It covers the problems so exhaustively that it hits on basically all of the school-related stuff I've been bitching and whinging about since the dawn of time. Problem: we're all going to start jumping out of windows. Seriously, this class is so stupidly depressing that it has us all scratching our heads and asking why the hell we got into this in the first place. I think my head is going to explode.

You are a unique snowflake - just like everyone else.
It's no fun if no one else plays...
Four jobs you’ve had in your life: pub waitress, Italian deli manager, dot com "Communications Director," Amnesty International canvasser

Four movies you could watch over and over: The Life of Brian, any of the Clerks series, The Big Lebowski, and anything Depp, especially Blow, Benny and June, and a few others.

Four places you’ve lived: Past tense means not where I live now, right? Calgary, Bella Coola, Brackendale, Victoria.

Four TV shows you love to watch(non tv watchers can substitute magazines they read): Four is a bit of a stretch, but I'll try. The Daily Show and Colbert Report count for two, then American Dad, and ah... oh yeah, good old Simpsons.

Four websites you visit daily: Get Your War On (not quite daily, but hey!), The Tyee (see previous disclaimer), Nationstates.net (come visit Idealisime), and either the UBC student service centre, or the UBC Faculty of Education site.

Four of your favorite foods: tortellini, strawberries, seafood (crab, lobster, scallops, mussels, salmon, prawns, etc. etc.), and tomatoes.

Four places you’d rather be: Mexico, Greece (Paros, if I have to be specific, Santa Maria beach if I have to narrow it down further), and Ottawa and Paris for the last two, but only short term to skate the canal (the former) and see awsome art (the latter).

Four favorite books: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams, Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge, and Stardance (the whole trilogy can be purchased in one book, so it counts as one, right?) by Spider and Jeanne Robinson.

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