Also:

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I have a pretty profound faith in humanity. But this. This'll give me a run for my money. :'(

uh, I'm in love.

I AM A SNAIL, AND ALL YOU GUYS ARE MY BELOVED TAPE DISPENSERS.

I want to need to have to go to bed. Physically I'm exhausted. But my brain is all a-buzz with a whole lot of nothing in particular.

Brain, you need an on-off switch. Let me sleep.

"I am only as strong as the coffee I drink, the hairspray I use and the friends that I have."

On a happy note, work today taught me that regardless of how poor a day I'm having, someone is having an ever shittier start to the week.

See the following sign:






Yeah. Um. Anyway, I really love when people make my job super easy.

Also, someones had an even more interesting day. In which they lost a small container of urine. Yes, it is a weird orangey-colour. Yes, all their personal information was written on it. That's not awkward at all, now is it.

Some more love notes from my beautiful parking attendees. Or something.



( happy thanksgiving to you too! )There was a really good one too, the other day. Someone had written me a fucking LIFE STORY on three pages, all spread across the dashboards about why they hadn't paid their parking. And as I was pulling out my camera to photograph it in all it's glory, the owner came running up going "DON'T TICKET ME!!! DON'T TICKET THAT CAAARR!". Aww. ♥ With the novel she'd written me, there is no money I could be paid that would make me want to ticket her. But it's awkward photographing people cars so I never managed to get a picture of it. :'(

But what I did get a picture of is:


Someone ganked a firealarm. Annoying. But at the same time. Damn. I &heart; those firemen.

Have to rush off to work at sbux, but just a quick post to say that, sometimes, I really DO love my day job.

Or at least, it's a great source of entertainment.



( DEAR TICKET NAZI/PARKING MONKEY/RETARD FUCKHEADED BITCH: )

I let everyone else off the hook, except the last guy because that was too funny.

I'll keep taking pictures, and my lj will be a beautiful collection of notes people write to meter maids like myself.

Canadian Prime Minster performing at the NAC last night.

WAIT WAIT winkingstar SENT ME THIS, AND I AM IN LOVE ♥

Medicalization of the body (including the tendency of biomedicine to focus narrowly on individual organs), commercialization of body parts (including buying and selling of organs for transplant), and commodification by the beauty industry have left people experiencing their bodies not as an inherent component of their immutable selves, but as fragmented collections of reworkable organs and improved appearances imprinted with a public exchange value. We have reached the end of the body as we once knew it. In its place, from the standpoint of the capitalist market, is the profitable body, one that can and should be constantly improved through the purchasing of body products, procedures and activities.

The shaping of bodies is driven not only by cultural notions of ideal appearance but also by class, gender and other hierarchical social relationships. Social inequalities find direct expression in the shape and appearance of the human body in various ways. One pattern, found in many societies, is that people frm upper classes tend to be taller than those from lower classes in their society, often several inches taller on average. These differences, which are linked to diet, access to health care and other factors, are first evident prior to birth and are well established by the age of six years.

Bear, H., M. Singer, & I. Susser (2003). Medical Anthropology & the World System.

Also learned a new term: "Environmental Racism". Essentially that poorer people will be exposed to harmful toxins, live with untreated water, have garbage dumps built next to their communities etc. rather than wealthier people and communities. Why? Because rich people are somehow better? Because we feel welcome to take advantage of people who can't fight the system? Because as long as it's not in OUR neighourhood or OUR country, we can turn a blind eye and sleep better and feel like our reusable bags and recycled newspapers are doing wonders for the environment. Whatever.

Also, happiest thing:

This was a gift from my friend who's just back from Russia.



The last one is so freaking tiny. The whole thing makes me so excited that I forgot to put something to help you all figure out the scale of them. They're actually so so so tiny. Like, Momma Matryoshka is only 2 inches tall (exactly 2 inches actually)

ahdlfkj. The picture sucks because my desk is poorly lit and it's almost 1am. But I'm going to bed full of happy thoughts!!

I went out to buy my two textbooks today.

Neither were at the bookstore, but maybe I didn't look hard enough because I got distracted by uh, BOOKS.

Instead I came home with:

The Romance of Tristan & Iseult
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

and, because my sister has not read it and this is a great travesty, I bought The Time Travelers Wife (which I bought and left behind in New Zealand, fml I bought it again, but as a gift? Sort of? I'll probably take it back and put it on my bookshelf when she's done with it)

These will be added to the ever growing pile of books I mean to read but never quite have the time to do.

A few awesome words compiled today:

Spelunking
Fajita
Spatula
Kerfuffle
Percolate
Comandeer
Platypus
Crevasse

Feel free to say them out loud repeatedly with varying volume/stress patterns/enthusiasm.

> A quick reminder that I'll be teaching field methods (Enquête sur le
> terrain) this coming semester. The language we'll work on is Karen
> Sgaw, a Tibeto-Burman language of Burma. We have a great language
> consultant who is eager to share about his language and culture,
> speaks English well and is very active in his community, so it
> should be a fun course. In short, we'll have to figure out the
> basic structures of the language by eliciting data from the
> consultant, without the help of grammars or pre-existing materials
> (no lectures).
>
> I just want to emphasize that although the course is offered in
> French, the course will be "English-friendly". The consultant
> doesn't speak French, so a large part of classroom interactions will
> take place in English (duly translated into French) and I will give
> detailed instructions on evaluations and classroom procedures in
> both languages. As fieldwork is typically a highly multilingual
> activity anyway, I think this will just make the experience more
> realistic.
>
> If you have any queries or wonder if you shold take the class, don't
> hesitate to drop me a few lines.

AUGH DOES THAT NOT SOUND LIKE THE MOST FABULOUS COURSE EVER.

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