Life on Queen Street

All the best on this festival of the sainted Patrick and immigrants everywhere!

Slainte mhor agus a h-uile beannachd duibh

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Today, my Sarah Connor Chronicles icon doubles as my 'don't fuck with an Irish girl' icon. BTW, if you get the chance, drive up the Connor Pass, Dingle, County Kerry, it's heartstopping. So is the view. On a related note, it's wrong that the idea of this movie turns me on, right? I mean there's no way it's not going to be exploitive, gynophobic violence porn, right?

Twitter - y/n?

(Canadian opinions and critiques of Twiter in particular)

Who knew?

So, it's cold and snowy in both Washington and Toronto. This makes amberlynne cranky. It makes Queenie cranky.

The cold and the snow makes Amberlynne want a cheeseburger.

Her flist agrees.

There - empirical proof: snow causes cheeseburger to happen.

Some days beat you down, some days restore your faith.

More joy day was the brain child of sdwolfpup who had the idea that once (or twice) a year people should try to give joy to the people in their lives. This is a brilliant idea that I support with a whole heart - I've have some fannish goodies (goody, actually) lately but for now let me tell you about the two people I saw this morning dropping off food and hot coffee to the two homeless guys camped out on the exhaust grates on either end of Bay and Queen streets this moring. I don't know if they were part of an organized charity or just two Samaritans who wanted to make sure that these guys were okay. But it made me feel better as I rushed from streetcar to coffee shop (dropping a toonie in one guy's cup as I passed) to bus to office to see that there were people who cared, who could take the time to check on the least fortunate of our city. And it reminded me that we can always do more, be better, be more compassionate.

Happy More Joy Day to you all.

When I woke up (late) this morning, it was snowing. Somehow this meant that my streetcar decided it should leave early rather than at 9 am like the sign says.

But on the off chance that it had not screwed me, I waited dutifully at the stop for 10 minutes, until I finally caught a cab. So, here I am at work - poor, uncaffienated and annoyed.

Lo, it shall be one of those days.

This may require tiny powdered doughnuts and a trip to 7/11 for a vat of coffee.

I'm just sayin'...

Once upon a time, I had an eljay, which was a GenY-ish way of saying "cool enough to blog, nerdy enough to remember when Message Board X was fun and not full of asshats".

From time to time, it even got written upon within - fuck it - I posted shit.

Good times that. Whatever did become of them?

Other mothers come home from vacation and shower you with pictures (eeeek).

Mine offers me a drink.

Now I can't feel my toes.

I don't think they've gone away. I don't think.

Come back, toes. I miss you.

Miss. Yoooooooooooooooooooou.

Miss.

Toes.

Hi, mommy. :)

(Elizabeth never missed a drink. Be. Lieve.)

It's been one of those days: too many late nights, combined with a lingering cold, combined with a dodgy ankle and my refusal to use my crutches for, lo, they are annoying as fuck, which results in combining OTC cold pills with extra-strength Ibuprofen, combined with a particularly boring stretch of manipulating drop-down menus to run reports on the database, leaving me drooling on my keyboard this afternoon.

No baseball tonight, so no excuse not to get an early night (except I'm an inveterate night owl with trouble getting to bed).

Speakng of baseball, I'm utterly engrossed by the World Series - five man infields! Baseball diamonds awash in rain! Batters finding their stroke just in time to keep the game going! A game halted mid-inning to be continued on Wednesday! The drah-mah! My God - and I only started watching to hate on the Red Sox. I feel my investment has been repaid many times over.

I have also booked tickets to a reading on Wednesday night at the International Festival of Authors, so I will be DVRing the game (and possibly walking around with my fingers in my ears - 'nyahnyahnyahnyah, I can't hear you!' - all Wednesday night).

Speaking of authors, as I surfed through LJ, cofax7's journal led me to this post by Sharon Lee about academic analysis and teaching of "genre fiction". Apparently, sf/fantasy needs to be saved from the big self-aggrandizing meanies in academia who don't appreciate that it's just meant to be entertaining. And... sure, fine, whatever dude.

As someone who's done lit crit at the post-grad level and written a horror novel (well, six chapter plus outline) for my MA thesis, I'm calling shennanigans on this one. Cofax linked to a far better and snarkier rebuttal but I do have one word for Sharon Lee - Shakespeare.

Let's see - popular? Check. Escapist? Check. Genre? Titania, Oberon, Puck, Ariel, Banquo... check. Capable of withstanding (hundreds of years) of critical analysis? Check. An example of finely crafted writing? Oh, hella check.

So my suggestion to Lee and anyone else burdened with a similar sense of being martyred on the cross of your populist tastes (and it doesn't get more populist than Elizabethan theatre) by those meanie academics who dare to peer at the underlying structure of your diegesis is to take your hurt feelings and go away. Writing & publishing is like getting naked in public - if you don't want people to point and laugh, don't do it. And the excuse that science fiction shouldn't be studied or taught because it's just "escapist genre novels" is certainly risible - however you feel about the genre.

And before someone says they don't want to be Shakespeare - why don't you want to be Shakespeare? Why aren't you working to be the absolutely finest craftsman you can be? This is the argument you want your work to hang on: that it shouldn't be critiqued because it's meant to be fun, that you're satisfied to rise to the low end of mediocrity?

If you don't take your work seriously, why on earth should I? Even as "escapist genre novels"...?

I fell over and twisted my ankle on the way into work today.

Anyone who knows me, knows this doesn't happen infrequently. Anyone who knows me is probably saying "what? Again?" right now. Well, I work across the street from a hospital and my boss and my coworkers were suggesting I get checked out, so at lunch, I decided, argh, why don't I go to the walk-in clinic and get the doctor there to wrap it and maybe I can get a prescription for anti-inflammatories so that I can get back to my jogging program maybe Sunday...

Right, then. I limp to the urgent care clinic (some urgent cases are, needless to say, less urgent than others), fill out my form (think "oh, God, never check your symptoms online" at the woman telling the triage nurse she'd Internet-diagnosed herself with Toxic Shock Syndrome) wait, limp back to the treament area, wait, see the medical student, see the resident, ride in the wheelchair (uncomfortable!), get X-Rayed (good Lord, I've sprained my ankle at least a dozen times, so unnecessary), wait, wait, then the resident and the med student tell me they've found a chipped bone in my ankle (not good) but they think it's old (better) but the radiologist won't read my x-rays until tomorrow (draw) so they're putting me in a temporary cast (bad) and giving me crutches (worse) and I'm not to put any weight on my ankle for at least a week (worst)!

Actually worst was when I overbalanced coming out of the urgent care ward and wound up flat on my back on the floor in front of an audience for the second time today (fucking Christ). So... no idea how I'm getting home, my ankle's throbbing somewhere in the splint I'm stuck in for at least the next 24 hours, I have to use these fucking crutches and all I can think is "this is karma for making such an unGodly fuss about the 'Providing Customer Service to the Disabled' training they made you take the other week."

Le. Sigh.

And my arms are like spaghetti from crossing the street and walking back to my office.

This is going to be a fun week.

That said, total direct cost to me = $30 for crutches.

Try that in a US hospital.

Oh, boys.

Oh, my boys.

Every year, I watch and I hope and inevitably you disappoint. But then you do this - the reigning Stanley Cup Champions. At home. In the opening game. - and I fall in love all over again.