Hey, did you know that different dried beans cook at different speeds?  I guess that should have been fucking obvious.

Also, Babyshambles lead singer and press-darling Pete Doherty has been arrested again, this time in connection with those photos of him injecting heroin into the arm of a passed out woman at a party.  I can’t remember what the charge was called (it’s in the Britian) but it was something along the lines of “administering noxious substances to another willy-nilly”.  Well, “will-nilly” isn;t actually in the charge, but whatever it was  it clearly makes the point that it was fine to inject someone with heroin, but that you should do it properly goddamnit.  I hope he dies soon.  Though not before Kate Moss buys him his new teeth before their wedding. 

And in yet other news, a GIANT but kind of invisible (I know, I know, crazy crazy crazy — but I was only able to see it when it was close to a very bright light: otherwise you can only see it’s web) spider dropped down near my bed a while ago, and I wasn’t able to find it.  So I’ve been shitting myself not knowing what to do.  I srayed out a whole bottle of air freshener into the area where the spider ought to be, and most of a bottle of fabreeze.  I think I thought it would make it more visible like Predator is more visible when he’s wet (I think that’s seriously what I was thinking: I haven’t slept since whatever, the day before yesterday or something.)  Now my place doesn’t smell like burnt coffee anymore….  Anyway, I’m not sleeping until that fucker is rooted out.  How could I?  There might be a giant spider in my bed.  It was so GIANT!

If anyone ever evre plays aspider joke on me, I will kill them.  Unless I find out that someone put them up to it in order for me to kill them.  Then I’m going after the putter-upper.  Be warned.  I’m only stunned by spider-fear for a second.  Then I’m full of spider-rage, or something like that. 

The Star on the TPA replacement
It sounds better than the TPA of course, but it’s going to go a long way toward denying any further improvement for a long time.  Which leaves us not as well off as during the NDP times, which really sucks.  I guess that’s just the way when you’re asking/demanding changes rather than forcing them.  Democracy is so goddamn conservative. 

Anyway, lets not hold our breath on that whole promise to restore vacancy controls once the vacancy rate falls below 3% thing.
I’m going to look around later next week or so for something closer to the actual text of the bill, and if I remember, I’ll post it on del.icio.us. 

Possibly at some point you’ve complained about not being able to sleep and I’ve given/offered sleeping pills that I said were really weak, but tended to work.  Some of you have even taken them and then made various complaints to me.
When I was on my other meds, I’d take two or three of those pills and could pull off 4-6 hours of sleep from them and wake up not at all groggy.  So I figured they were weak.

Now I’m off those meds, and still finding it impossible to sleep (I’ve always been an intense insomniac.)  So I’ve been taking those sleeping pills in small doses.  At half a pill, the shortest I’ve been able to sleep with them is 14 hours.  There are other factors at work probably rather than just the pills, but if that’s an indication of how strong they are, sorry, I had no idea.

I figure a blog post is the appropriate way to apologize about that sort of shit.  (I know nothing about sincerity or apologies.)

And now, the story of Rene’s Doppleganger:
As you remember, I grabbed this screenshot of Rene from the PBS “Communism: The Promise and the Reality” series.

They interviewed this man’s ex-wife on the show.  He was a Soviet electrician, I think with some political standing.  I didn’t pay much attention.  He may have been Politburo.  Anyway, one day he rushed in for dinner crying and said to his wife “Stalin is shooting everyone in the Politburo”.  This angered his Stalin loving and disbelieving wife, who immediately threw a knife at his head (aren’t communists such fucking fun).  Shortly after that he dissappeaed and was executed.  (She doesn’t say anything about any role she might have had in this.)  Anyway, she remarried, the second husband suffered the same fate, and then she ended up in a camp (marrying one fascist running dog is bad enough, but doing it again!?!?)  Later, she was interviewed by PBS.
That’s the story.  What’s left out is the part where Rene obviously evaded execution and used a time machine to escape back to the future, a fact the Soviets of course took great pains to cover up.
I was planning to test Rene by trying to get him to fix some electrical equipment, but then I remembered the quality of 1930’s Russian technical skill and became afraid.  Then I remembered the current quality of Russian technical skill and became afraid because they operate all kinds of shit over there dangerous enough to kill us all ME.  But then I calmed down a bit because I remembered that I just almost shit myself in fear whenever Russians are mentioned becasue of re-occuring dreams I have, and they’re probably quite capable electricians and stuff and I mean no insult and am very sorry and please don’t kill me terrifying Russian monster-people.
 

I downloaded “Communism: The promise and the Reality.”
It’s a six hour PBS series. It’s being fairly polite toward the commies so far. It’s taken a whole half hour to mention that this communism thing might be horrific. They kinda mentioned that Lenin may have killed some people, though they made it seem cool and all. It’s only when Stalin starts going after the Kulaks that the things starts saying anything bad about the whole “worst thing that’s ever happened in human history”. Like things were fine up until then. Lenin killed 15 million fucking people!?!?!??! Why do they have to wait for years into Stalin’s reign to start bashing? It’s fucking PBS. Isn’t it their job to hate communism?

[OH! they just interviewed a guy from one of the show trials who said "what else was I supposed to do?! He sat there and confessed to being a fascist dog and selling the Ukraine to Germany." That's awesome. He shrugged. Poor guy: it sure was hard to figure out those show trials.]

Also though, there was a picure of my housemate Rene on the show. Guess what they did to him? (It doesn’t involve not being executed.)

I’ve been jumping through some hoops with ODSP to try to get reinstated, and as well as they’re making things sound, I was supposed to get money yesterday or today. That hasn’t happened. So I’m going to end up late with rent, and still have no food until at least monday. What has happened though, is I got notice that I’m kicked off of my special diet allowance today.

Traditionally, when a group notices something they consider a loophole in a program, they try to get tonnes of people to use that loophole in order to force someone to close it. Which is what crapcrap (OCAP) did with the special diets campaign. When it backfired and those of us who had been on the allowance from before their “campaign” got kicked off, along with the new people they’d signed up, crapcrap got bored or stoned or something and wandered off. Thanks.

I think they had a parade or something.

To think I once said they weren’t worth killing…

I’m holding a party to celebrate the end of the softwood lumber dispute. Everyone’s invited.
It’s such a good deal: it contributes to Canada’s continuing short-end of the stick experience with “free-trade” with our dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear friends the Americans.
Isn’t Harper great? I haven’t really looked around yet for choice “this is a great victory” quotations from him, but I’m sure they’re out there: conservative politicians are so great at talking tough while laying down and rolling over.

TheStar.com – Revised deal ends trade fight

More and more these days I’m able to remember some of the good things from my childhood. It certainly wasn’t all bad, even though the bad things tend to dominate it, my present, and probably much/some of my future.

But I remember this pop up book I had of gnomes rolling poo balls. It was great. It makes me happy to think of it. I even switched to using a GNOME desktop in the last couple days because some of the icons look just like the gnomes from that book. (Unfortunately, the GNOME desktop makes me want to kill myself.)

If I have a kid, I’ll give them a copy of that book before I send them off to the army (“if they can walk, they can march”, so I’m sending them to some sort of military school at walking age. During the crawling time, I’m going to put one of those baby-jumper suits with a mop on the bottom on them, so they’re at least usefully cleaning the floor while they’re crawling around. Based on this, and my mayoral campaign that’s to include banning animals and children from the city (along with a hygiene campaign against the Irish a la the early 1900’s) I’m probably not allowed to have children.)

If you have a kid, consider getting them this book. I don’t know where you can find it. Some of my books were in German as a kid, and it seems like this might be one of those few, but even if it is, the writing wasn’t important. It was just full of nice pictures and seems like it introduced me to the idea of fantastic little worlds right beneath our noses and the importance of saving just a little bit of my shit each time instead of flushing it so I could leave it under my bed for the gnomes to get at and eat or whatever..

I hate it when I write shit like this in my blog. If you were my friend, and you were writing this shit, I’d come put you down.

Apparently our house is a fire hazard

Everything, according to the repair guy who showed up today, is a fire hazard. From my attitude to the tire fire blazing away on the balcony, is a fire hazard. Everything except that the fire alarm is broken.

Why I’m becoming a micorbiologist/Why you shouldn’t eat at my house (yet)

I think my sole reason for becoming a microbiologist is so that I’ll start washing dishes even when in a hurry, and stop just scraping visible things off them under a running tap.

Of course, for the most part I use plastic plates which I burn when done, so it’s not so bad.

I’m stuck at home today because of dual injuries.
I think I broke a toe doing jumping jacks (I landed with my baby toe under my foot. I was still tired because I’d taken sleeping pills last night, and I just kinda screwed up.)
I also ate rotten beans. I have eaten many rotten things. Rotten beef ranks as best. Rotten beans now rank as worst (short term). I think I puked so hard that it lifted me off the ground. (I’m out of money this month because in my all-consuming quest not to stress myself with the hard work of cooking during my fairly minor withdrawal period, I’d eaten shawarma every day and had just ignored the cost. And I hadn’t gone shopping for anything that wasn’t related to coffee for over a month I think. So I have no unrotten food except some pasta.)

Anyway, I decided to look for a website maybe that would explain how many jumping jacks was too many, flattering myself with the thought that I just tend to overwork myself, and that’s why I screwed up. The first site that came up was a nude jumping jack site. I’m terrified of porn and often (especially when not on my meds) consider plots to ban, or make impossible, sex. But I knew it would be an entertaining site. The kind of nudity lacking in all sexuality that allowed me to actually enjoy watching Showgirls all those times. And god, it is an entertaining site. It’s a pay site, so there’s only the main page to judge it by, but I’m pretty sure it’s all just as good. So don’t be afraid of it. It’s pretty safe from horror.

On the home page there are three large flash blocks. While one of them is loading, I think the bottom one (it happens fast and then dissappears [UPDATE: just right click on it and press rewind in the flash dialogue]), the words “BIGGER, BETTER, BOOBIER” appear! Once they’re loaded, the three blocks are each devoted to a different woman. And each woman has two looped flash movies of them that activate if you hover your cursor over them. The first of each of these pairs is just them exposing a breast, or both breasts. If that’s what the second one of each was, I wouldn’t be posting this blog post thing. No. These ones are little looped videos of the women with silly smiles (or silly attempts at non-smiles) flapping their breasts around. They make me cry. Not sad tears, but the laughing kind. It reminds me of “A Dirty Shame”, one of the greatest movies ever made. If the word “W-H-O-R-E” popped up on screen while the third woman’s video of her squeezing/jiggling her breast like it does in A Dirty Shame, I think I would have had a heart attack laughing.

I can’t believe I’ve just linked to porn…