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We have five computer power cords that we're going to throw out next weekend if no one takes them away before then. Does anyone want them?

Ten fictional characters I would like to have sex with, in no particular order:

1. Starbuck, from the new Battlestar Galactica.

2. Lister, from Red Dwarf (shut up, I find him funny).

3. The Doctor, from the just-ended season of Dr. Who.

4. Nero Wolfe. Okay, I'm not sure if I'd like to have sex with him (his extreme dislike of being touched might get in the way, not to mention his inherent dislike of women), but I'd certainly like to spend some time living in his house.

5. Xena. Nuff said.

6 & 7. Zoë and Mal from Firefly

8. Ares, from Xena.

9. Pandora, from Shrödinger & Pandora

10. Arthur Dent, from HHGTTG (book, not movie).

Hrm. Only two of the above ten are from books (although one is from a play that I read, rather than saw). I think I need to read more.

In theory I'm supposed to tag five people to do this meme, but I can't be bothered. I'm interested in the responses of everyone on my friends list.

Pardon me while I wiggle my butt in LAI's face!

Pixie's finished her second work unit and I'm ahead again!

It all started with Buttons and Zoid. I believe I've blogged about them before, but in case I haven't, they're the two cats who first started hanging out on my balcony this spring. Buttons and Zoid are kind of shy (Zoid especially is quite skittish). For the longest time they bolted every time I opened my back door or made a loud noise in the kitchen, but now they're more used to me and will let me pet them and rub their bellies.

I put out a bowl of water for them and figured, cool, I've made some new friends. And all was well. Occasionally, when I was out on the balcony petting one of them, they'd try to walk into my apartment, but I managed to discourage that and it seemed we had an understanding.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I was in my kitchen when this *enormous* feline walks out of the corner where Buttons and Zoid hang out, and plants itself in front of the doorway, staring at me. I swear, this animal weighed at least 20lbs, mostly muscle, and it had cheeks like I've never seen on a domestic cat before. They stuck out, like the cheeks you'd find on a lioness or something. Creepy. Anyway, this monster just sits on the balcony, staring at me through slitted eyes, and making me extremely uncomfortable. I try to go about my kitchenly business (I think I was making lunch), but it's hard with this gaze on me. Finally it gets bored, gives its butt a few licks, and heads down the fire escape. I was relieved. Now I know this isn't like me, I'm not usually the type of person who holds it against someone if they're not conventionally attractive but, well, there was just nothing cute about this cat. It was downright intimidating. It came back a couple days later and I tried to force my lookist tendancies down, and petted it a bit, but the experience was wholely unsatisfying, I think for the cat as well as me.

Now, as if that wasn't strange enough, yesterday evening I lying on the couch, reading, when I see some movement out of the corner of my eye. It looks kind of like a cat's face, but I figure my brain's playing tricks on me, it was probably just a paper or piece of clothing moving in the breeze from the fan. But then I see it again, and it's decidedly cat-like, so I take my eyes off my bike and look straight at it. Sure enough, there's a completely unfamiliar little Siamese poking its nose through my livingroom door. I get up and walk towards it, which is enough to chase it down the hall to the kitchen, and as I follow it it heads back out to the balcony and into the little corner nook the cats seem so fond of. I follow it all the way out and give it a few scritches behind the ear to indicate that it's welcome on my balcony, just not in my apartment, then I go inside.

Once inside I decide I want to take a bath. I'm in the bathroom, running water, when the Siamese comes back into the apartment to keep me company. I shoo it away, this time flicking some water off my hands at it, and it manages to fall down in its rush to turn around and run out.

Dave shows up while I'm in the bath, and once I'm out we hang out in the kitchen, tidying up a bit. The Siamese comes back and is very persistent. Dave and I have to lift it up and carry it out to the balcony (with it purring the whole time) three times before I finally give up on the idea of having air circulation and just close the back door.

I feel kind of badly now, because I haven't seen the Siamese since last night, and Buttons and Zoid (who, apparently, live in one of the apartments one floor down from me, but tend to go visiting throughout the building) haven't been around much lately. In theory I would love to let the neighbourhood cats hang out in my apartment and keep my company while I work, as long as they're reasonably clean and don't use my floor as a litterbox, but I'm just too allergic to cats to do that. It's too bad.

Via Bitch Ph.D. and Frog

1. How much money is in your wallet right now?
About 15$

2. How much money would you need in the bank to feel secure? Rich?

Secure, about 10K. Enough to live on for a year if I lost my job. Rich, geez, I dunno. If I had 50K$ or more, with an income on top of it, I'd feel great.

3. If someone gave you $100, no strings attached, what would you do with it?
I'd put it towards my upcoming vacation. Or maybe I'd buy a new bike lock.

4. If someone gave you $1 million, no strings attached, what would you do with it?
I'd invest it. With the income, I would get a nicer apartment, with a proper back yard and a closed office. Then I would cut back my hours at my job to half-time, so that I could focus more on knitting, gardening, and generally creating. I'd give monthly donations to Kids' Help Phone, Women's eNews, Amnesty International, and Planned Parenthood. Other than that my life plan wouldn't change that much. I'd still do the intensive French immersion camp that I'm planning to do, then go to school to become a paramedic, then get a farm in rural quebec and work as a paramedic. I'm not doing any of that for the money, but heaven knows the money would help.

I just came across this site and I had to share.

Awesomeness.

I. Snails

My snails have spent the last two days either mating or conducting a very slow-motion fight over who gets to wrap their entire body around what's left of the cuttlefish bone. Since I already have one clutch of eggs that I have no idea what to do with, I'm hoping it's the latter.

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II. Jews

Why does the Orthodox-Jewish owned patisserie always have to be closed on Friday evenings when I'm most likely to be craving pastries?
(Although I suppose an equally valid question would be "why do I always crave pastries on Friday evenings when the patisserie is guaranteed to be closed?") Dammit, I want my cookies!

People who buy books for kids are really just looking for an excuse to buy and read the books themselves.

I was reading Books Are Pretty by Flea of One Good Thing and found myself thinking, of the children's books "Hmm, who can I buy that for? That seems like such a good book.... For a kid! I mean for a kid! Why would *I* want to read a book aimed at 7-year-olds? Although I could read it *to* the kid.... that seems like a really good book."

Although I'm happy to admit, consciously, to myself and others, that I enjoy kids' books, apparently my subconscious is still embarrassed by this.

Pixie just completed her first work unit for Folding@Home.

I'm so proud of her!

I did. Do it. Especially if you're a woman. Show the world that female bloggers exist.

(Link via Flea)

Rick Mercer weighs in on the equal marriage debates. Rick Mercer is wonderful. I want to marry Rick Mercer.

You need either Windoze Media Player or Quicktime to see the video.

I still can't comment on CC but I thought this bit of snark was too delicious to just leave unsaid.

Someone commented, in a discussion of varying philosophies:

My point was, just as you need "explorer.exe" to be running in the background of your computer to keep windows running, you NEED the fear of the Lord always to have any degree of wisdom and knowledge.

My response:

Well, if you switch to a non-proprietary worldview you can do all sorts of interesting things that explorer (fear of god) just gets in the way of in Windows (your particular worldview)

Many thanks to Dave for pointing me to the reDiscovery Institute.
Whatever would we do without the brave people of the reDiscovery Institute helping us find flaws in the logic of so-called "science". For example, did you know that the periodic table of elements is not a fact, but a theory? And just look at all the mistakes it's contained over the years!

Also, check out how completely unamerican the IUPAC is!

So, next time you find yourself with someone who claims to be studying how the universe is ordered through chemistry, just ask them these 10 questions. Bet you they won't have an answer you can fully understand in 10 words or less! And nothing's worth understanding if it can't be explained in 10 words or less!

I've been reading Christian Conservative lately.  Amp of Alas, A Blog was interviewed on there recently, and, reading the interview, I was impressed by how reasonable CC's blogger, Michael Gallaugher seemed to be.  So I read through a bunch of the archives and started following the blog.  For the most part I'm still impressed. I guess it just never occured to me that fundamentalists were people too, you know?  But this dude definitely is.  Don't get me wrong, I disagree with pretty much everything he says, especially when it comes to queer issues and gender roles, but he's most definitely a real person.  In this respect I think reading CC has been good for me; it's opened my mind and allowed me to view the world in a way that I didn't before.  So I think I'll keep reading, unless it turns out that I have been banned from commenting* and not being able to have my say gets too frustrating.

In another respect, however, reading this blog has helped me to more clearly understand and articulate why religious fundamentalism scares the living crap out of me.  I want to make it clear, before I get started, that I'm not putting down the idea of having faith.  Believing in a power superior to our own is not something I consider a character flaw, and I'm not out to offend people of faith.  I expect that will remain clear in a careful reading of what follows, but I wanted to state it now, before I got the chance to piss anyone off.

It all started here (The real issue doesn't start until about 100 comments into the comments thread, to which I can't seem to link directly).  I had been getting more and more irked, as I'd read through the comments in the archive, by the fact that these fundies didn't seem to believe that their god exists, they claim to know it to be true.  Now, this gets me riled on a number of levels, but my immediate, knee-jerk objection arrises from a purely aesthetic objection.  I don't like it when things aren't open to debate.  In my world everything must be open to debate.  That doesn't mean I'm willing to waste my time on debates that I don't think are interesting or useful, but I'm always open to the possibility that everything I'm assuming to be true is, in fact, false.  I'd want to see evidence, obviously, but I'm open to the possibility.  So, when things aren't open to debate it bugs me.  And it makes me contrary, and it makes me want to argue.  (I admit that I pushed the boundaries of common courtesy in the above-linked comments thread, for which I apologise.)

However, it wasn't until Michael decided to explain to me exactly why he thinks he knows his god exists that I realised why the concept scared me on a much deeper level. He says, quote**:

Here's what you need to know. This knowledge, not faith, but knowledge is what drives us to be willing to die for our faith. Count the saints through history who have been sawed in half, burned alive, tortured, fed to lions, and crucified for theirs, then ask them if there's REALLY sure they are right. What are you willing to die for Jake? Are you willing to die for a 50% believe in anything? There's a reality which we don't pretend to appear ambivalent about, and make no apologies for, God opened our eyes and we believe. You can bank on that.

This scares me.  It scares me because if you're that sure about something, you'll be willing to inflict it on others.  And I'm not talking about prosletyzing.  Proseletyzing is irritating, but otherwise harmless.  No, I'm talking about infringing on the rights of others.  Rights like whether they get married, are allowed to have children, are allowed to not have children.  Rights like what they're allowed to wear, and where they're allowed to work, and what they can learn in school.  And this is simply not acceptable.  Suicide bombers have that kind of knowledge in their god.  Because all religious faith is equal to me, I reject Michael's assertion that there's something fundamentally different between his knowledge of his god, and the knowledge that allows someone to strap dynamite to their chest and walk into a school full of kids.  I'm not accusing Michael or any of the other commenters there of being capable of such an action, I'm just saying that it's the logical conclusion of the kind of knowledge they claim to have.

It's not just that I think that claiming this kind of knowledge is indicative of the worst kind of arrogance (but don't get me wrong, I do), that gets on my nerves, but I can live in a world where there are people who get on my nerves.  No, I think that this kind of pretended "knowledge" is what causes so many different kinds of oppression.

We're at a standstill here.  Michael will of course not budge on his claim that he doesn't just believe, but knows that there is a god, and how this god wants to be worshipped.  And I won't stop thinking that that's a load of uber-arrogant, dangerous horseshit.  That's just how the world is sometimes.  This is not a fight that I'm willing to give up (although I've given up on discussing it on CC).  It's not a matter of faith.  If people want to believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the earth is less than 6000 years old, that the moon is made of green cheese, and that we all have little aliens living in our heads and making up unhappy, that's their business.  But when they claim to know it, and when they advocate social policy, and legislature based on that impossible "knowledge" then it becomes my business.  So stop it.  Stop thinking you know something you can't possibly know, go about the business of believing the things you believe, and let the rest of us do the same.

---

*I don't know if I've been banned or not, but I've been unable to post comments this evening. I emailed Michael to ask him about it and I'll update when I know. ***UPDATE: I haven't been banned, apparently. There's just something screwy going on with comments. ***FURTHER UPDATE: It's not just CC. I can't comment on any blog that uses haloscan for comments. Suxxor. In firefox I can view comments but not respond. In Safari the comments page won't even load. In Moz on my Linux box the comments page doesn't even pop up a window. If anyone has any idea how I might fix this I'd certainly appreciate the input.

**If anyone who's quoted in this entry wants me to remove their words, please just let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

So Floosh wasn't around this time and I need a bit of help. Can anyone translate

chupa pinga quien mierda seras.

for me? Dave thinks it means "You're a cocksucker who will be shit" (based on the uncertain assumption that pinga means cock) and I'm completely at a loss.

So.. Anyone?

UPDATE: I've decided that Dave is wrong, because his english sentence has two verbs, and the spanish sentence only has one. So, yeah. No idea.

FURTHER UPDATE: My mother's theory si that this means "cocksucker, who the hell are you?" with mierda serving the same function in Spanish as "the hell" does in the English. I do wish a native Spanish speaker would weigh in here though, hint hint.

I don't like talking to people I don't know in the best of circumstances. I hate it when inarticulate bobos try to enforce their presence on me online. Especially on MSN. Where do these people get my ID anyway?

Here follows a transcript of a conversation I had today with one such bobo. (And muchas gracias to Floosh for helping me out with the Spanish):

bobo (17:32:41): hola
bobo (17:32:45): como te llamas
bobo (17:33:06): hola
me (17:33:28): me llamo fuck off. quien eres?
bobo (17:34:04): wath?
bobo (17:34:15): como te llamas
bobo (17:34:26): y de donde res a?
me (17:34:43): quien eres?
bobo (17:36:24): jhon y tu
bobo (17:37:26): habla pe
me (17:37:57): me llamo fuck off. Que quieres? No quiero saber tu nombre. Quiero saber quien eres.
bobo (17:43:44): soy un alumno
bobo (17:43:46): ejjeje
me (17:48:10): y?
me (17:48:30): porque me importa?
bobo (17:55:20): habla pe mongol
me (17:56:25): gracias.
bobo (17:58:25): o loco
MSN (18:45:29): jhon_tigre5@hotmail.com has logged off
MSN (19:23:30): jhon_tigre5@hotmail.com has logged on
me (19:24:43): No, really. Who the hell are you and why are you messaging me? Do I know you?
bobo (19:25:08): wath?

See what I mean?

Ah well. At least it provided me with some minor entertainment.

An open letter to the man who held up traffic while trying to talk me into his van yesterday as I was crossing St. Urbain at Laurier.

---

Dear Jackass,

Women are human beings, not receptacles for your sexual and social fantasies.  Did it occur to you, as you gave me the once-over and rolled down your window, that my life has nothing to do with yours?  That I might have errands to run, things to do, or a job to get back to, and therefore might not be free to drop everything and hop into your van to service your sick (although likely quite mundane) desires?
Or did my low-cut shirt preclude those possibilities in your mind?  Did my triggering your erection negate any humanity you thought I might have had left?
Women do not exist for your pleasure only.  Do you imagine that the lives of the women who do get in have anything to do with you?  Do you imagine that they want nothing more than to take your twenty in exchange for a quick suck?  I have news for you.  Women, be they the ones who bat their lashes and take your cash, the ones who look resolutely ahead and try not to tremble, the ones who look you in the eye and tell you to bug off, or the ones who simply fail to notice you, were not put on this earth to please and service you.

I wonder:  what would have happened if I had gotten in that van?  Would I have had your cock down my throat and a twenty pressed into my palm?  Or would I have found myself in a much more sinister predicament?  Because I couldn't help but notice that that van of yours is the perfect vehicle for the kind of trick a girl might never come home from.  Are you insulted that I might think this of you?  You're just a regular john, looking for a regular fuck.  You would never do those sorts of things, you say.  But I bet they turn you on.

Well, as I mentioned before, I've got a garden I'm allowed to play in. When I last gardenblogged, the weeds had been dug up and the soil had been tilled. There's been quite a bit of progress since, although most of it was done over just two days.

First of all, I've got *tons* of seedlings. I planted them in peat pellets the day after we dug up the garden and now they're all leafy and purty. The greenbeans are really tall already, but the tomato plants are still small and only have their two baby leaves.

Last week I bought 100 litres of mixed soil and 30 litres of composted sheep manure and I tilled it into the ground. Then, just this past monday, Jenn came over and we planned out the garden, deciding exactly what we wanted to plant and where to put it. We dug out some trenches for walkways and made beds (all the while digging up ever more of these ash-leaf maples. I swear to god these trees wll be the death of me. I've even been pulling them out of the potted plants on my balcony!). Then we went to Marché Jean-Talon and bought a whole bunch of seedlings and brought them home. I was so excited I couldn't wait. I let Jenn finish digging and making beds while I started planting in the beds we'd already made. In the row just behind the irises that were already there by the fence I planted a lemon thyme, six strawberry plants, and one raspberry bush. The bed directly behind the strawberries is for tomatoes and hot peppers, neither of which will be ready to plant for at least another week. Next to the tomato bed is where we're going to put our composter. Behind the composter we have two squares, one for peas and one for greenbeans, and next to those (behind the tomato patch) is the brassica patch. It's already been planted with 8 broccolis, 8 kales, and one rhubarb, just for variety. This is so unbelievably exciting!!

I'll post pictures once I'm back in Montreal and have access to them.

Oh, we also put down more fertilizer and red cedar mulch, so the garden looks and smells fantastic. I am so excited I might burst! My own vegetable garden in my own front yard! It's a dream come true!

UPDATE:Daphers asked for more detail, and whatever Daphers wants, Daphers gets.

Okay, here we go:

Total number of books owned?
Um... lots.

Last book I bought?
I dunno. I tend to beg and borrow more than buy when it comes to books. Nora recently gave me Brave New World. Does that count?

Last book I read?
Well, I'm in the middle of the Illuminatus triolgy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and I'm also in the middle of Brave New World, though I'm not sure where I put it down last. I think the last book I finished (that I was reading for the first time) was The Great Unravelling by Paul Krugman.

5 books that mean a lot to me?
Hmmm. Some of these will be from my childhood, but I think that's okay. So, here goes:
1. Heidi by Johanna Spyri. I liked this book because of its strong, inquisitive, independent-minded female character. Heidi was my idol when I was little.
2. Rinosceros by Eugene Ionesco. This is a play about conformity. I don't really know what else to say. I remember being very impressed by the final soliloquy by the main character, but I don't remember what it said.
3. Sunshine and Moonlight by Jan Ormerod (these don't actually have words, and they're a pair, so I'm counting them as one). These are picture books of a little girl's morning and evening routine. Partly it spoke to me so much because she and the parents looked almost exactly like me and my parents did when I was little, but also the pictures are these incredibly beautiful watercolours. The artist managed to perfectly capture the look and feeling of morning sun coming through a window. Unfortunately, they've been out of print for years.
4. Boys Like Her by Taste This (Anna Camilleri, Lyndell Montgomery, Zoe Eckle, Ivan E. Coyote). This is a road story by four queer women who were a performance group.
5. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark. There isn't a whole lot I can say about this book without giving too much away. I just really liked it. It's sci-fi.

Tag five other people who I want to do this:
1. Q. Pheevr
2. Echidne
3. Jasper
4. Tishie
5. Lucidite

I've had a very physical day. I got home at 10:30 this morning (after having gone to bed after two and woken up around 8:30) and called T. He came over by 11 and we spent the next four hours or so digging up the grass, weeds, mint and literally *hundreds* of maple saplings that had sprouted in my front yard. Sinead showed up at some point and chatted with us while we worked until Jenn showed up (around 3) and, after a quick trip to Canadian Tire for supplies and after saying good bye to Torsten and Sinead, Jenn and I spent the next two hours tilling the soil and discussing plans for the garden. The soil is decidedly beige and generally free of nutrients, so we're going to have to buy some black earth or compost or something to spread out, but I'm really excited about gardening.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to Rona to buy some Jiffy pellets to start tomato seeds and peas and beans and next weekend I think I'll get started on planting in the garden. We're thinking peppers, tomatos, zucchini, carrots, and beans. Plus Jenn wants to try a knot garden with some herbs, which I think will be really cool, and I really want some berry bushes. Definitely strawberry and raspberry (I already have a strawberry bush started in a planter on my balconey (picture)) and I'd like to have blueberry and lingonberry bushes as well. Lingonberry plants can be hard to find here, but I've definitely seen the berries for sale at Jean-Talon market, and they grow wild in Sweden, so they *must* grow here. I just need to find some seedlings.

I spent the whole day out in the sun working with my body, though, and I feel exhausted, but wonderful! I took a shower and now I'm all warm in my jammies and going to bed soon. Mmmmmmmmmmm.