October, 2008:

I forgot to mention that I’ve been back in Vancouver since Thursday. Unfortunately I came down with SARS as soon as I returned and have been housebound this whole time. Thankfully my mother sent me home with some turkey and apple pie on the plane, so I was able to live off of that for a few days.

Between my illness, my cat’s illness (she just got $140 of ear infection), my 2 months of poverty and the impending apocalypse, I’m going to be avoiding society until further notice. And since there’s nothing going on in my life beyond the thrills coming from my television set and the constantly changing health status of Shebang, I’m not going to be blogging much either. Unemployment was fun until it put my life on hold and made me (especially) boring.

Good luck with whatever you’re doing. I’ll see you on the other side of whatever it is we’re about to cross.

It’s been a relaxing few days at Mom’s house here in Kitimat. Unfortunately it’s been raining pretty much constantly since I arrived, so I haven’t been able to go out and take any photos. Though I haven’t really felt like moving much. That plus all the baked goods I’ve been eating mean that my jeans may not fit when I get home on Thursday.

I am typing this on my laptop while the tail of the Maine Coon in the photo above is flitting across the keyboard in annoyance at me not paying attention to the cat at its other end. In other words, I’m feeling right at home. One major difference here, however, is that both pets in this household (this and the family dog, Seven) have this thing for crawling under your blanket and curling up against your leg. Which is cute until they start licking your feet, which is gross of course but on the other hand (foot?) they need to be exfoliated anyways.

I baked some cookies today. Those who have tasted my cookies may now proceed to be jealous of my parents, who have a full batch all to themselves. Tomorrow will supposedly be a marathon kitchen day of turkey and apple pie, so those who have had Mom’s pie can proceed to be jealous of me.

I was rather upset to find out upon arrival here that there’s a recount ordered for my riding from last week’s election because Ujjal only won by 33 votes after all. I read about some rather racist conspiracy theory regarding the behaviour and motives of the polling clerks, and I really hope it’s unfounded. The results of the recount, or even if it’s happened yet, haven’t been published, so I am eagerly awaiting the news.

Despite my wish to suspend real life while I’m up here, I’ve done some contract work (though not much yet) and have been setting up phone interviews for next week. If these interviews don’t pan out, then I’m kind of screwed, since currently there are no other advertised jobs I can apply for as a DBA. I’m trying not to worry about my future, but it’s hard not to notice how the world markets are going to hell in a handbasket. My only comfort in all of this is that I haven’t lost any wealth, since I never had any to begin with. Somehow, though, that’s not keeping me warm at night, so it’s a good thing there’s a furry pet in its place.

Last night was strangely exciting for me. Unable to find anyone to have an election-results-watching beer fest with me, I sat at home alone and split my attention between the election coverage on the various local TV channels and the interweb, which gave me instant results about my riding. Despite being told that my riding is a “safe Liberal seat” the first results had the Conservative candidate ahead. What followed was a very close race between the Conservative and Liberal candidates, where as the polling station counts were added, the difference between the two was sometimes as little as 25 votes. I was cursing the gods on Twitter but at some point the Liberal was on top and climbing steadily. In the end Ujjal Dosanjh won by less than 800 votes, which is hardly what I’d call safe. That’s like “I’ll pull out before I come, honest!” safe.

After guilt-tripping Jen for not voting, she and I were trying to figure out who these sudden new Conservative voters were, and what happened to our neighbourhood. We were this close to feeling misrepresented in parliament. Phew.

In comparison, my dad’s area is now under a Conservative (Dad can’t complain since he never bothered getting citizenship) and my mom’s area was a big NDP win. Well, if this doesn’t make you feel all democratic in your innards, I don’t know what else could be done.

Now that the election is over I finally can go up to visit my mom in Kitimat. Not that I couldn’t have gone before, and I would’ve visited in September except that once the election was called she started work at the elections office every day. And there’s no point me visiting Mom if she can’t devote every waking moment to me. It would be so cruel to her. So I’m flying up tomorrow, to stay for a week. Conveniently my contract job started today, and I have a phone interview next week, so I can’t completely relax when I’m there. Timing being everything, everything obviously wants me to suffer.

I might’ve decided on a longer stay, but I couldn’t find a friend to feed my cat twice a day (it’s a lot to ask) and I’ve had to pay someone to board her for the week. This person is a stranger to me but a friend of my stepmother’s and her nickname is “The Cat Whisperer”, so I feel somewhat confident in leaving my cat with her. My biggest worry is that my cat will like her better. Supposedly my dad and stepmom’s two cats like her better. Though I believe they’d like me better too if they saw me more often, but I think that about everyone.

It occurred to me that I’ve never been in Kitimat in the fall. Winter, spring, summer, yes. Never in the fall. So that’ll be nice, to see it look different, to see the leaves changing colours. Hopefully there’ll be some good photo ops.

The post title is a phrase someone googled to get to my website today. Depending on what definition of gay they meant, I might be able to help them. Today I managed to avoid all possible happiness, so they were right on with that one. I’m sure I also avoided homosexuals, but not on purpose; it’s just that I was home most of the day, and when I went outside it was cold and dark and there weren’t many people out there. They might have been gay, but when it’s that cold, isn’t everybody gay? Well, it wasn’t that cold, but it was scarf-wearing cold. Bright, stylish gay scarves.*

A while back I showed an online acquaintance a news article about how someone in the local tourism industry wanted funding to advertise to lesbians, because Vancouver is a popular vacation destination for the same-sex demographic. I was rather surprised to see him get upset over this news, since I assumed that most guys I knew were at least ambivalent to the existence of homosexuals, if not particularly for them. In fact, I don’t know how you can live in Vancouver and hate gays. I suppose that’s easier than living here and hating (for example) Asians, but that’s still a lot of pointless negativity, not to mention missing out on all the great restaurants on Davie Street.

I tried to find humour in what he was saying to me in response to the article, because it’s otherwise kind of depressing:

[him] why don’t you spend money for facilities for normal people? why transform this beautiful city into a place where you dare not leave your kids alone?
…
[me] what are lesbians or gays going to do to kids?
[him] I wouldn’t have the courage to leave even a 16-to-18-year-old boy walking on Vancouver streets
[me] why, because gangs of lesbians are going to attack him?

I couldn’t get a straight answer from him, nor could I get him to admit that homosexuality and pedophilia are not the same thing. He also thought it was wrong for gays to have or adopt children. Obviously he thinks being gay is contagious like rabies in dogs, that someone who’s gay is going to go bite someone else, who then becomes gay and bites other people, and then goes and pisses on a fire hydrant. Although instead of biting it would be butt sex, and right on the sidewalk (where it’s not safe for children to walk).

I actually like the idea of lesbian gangsters, but unfortunately my imagination ends there for anything that’s not a porn movie plot (I suppose A Clockwork Orgy might be a good reference in this case) (it’s hilarious). But, really, I wonder where the idea came from that gays would attack people in public and be, uh, violently gay at them? Maybe it was from some old world stories fathers would tell their sons to scare them into not masturbating in bed.

Now, I don’t mean to be intolerant myself in the sense that I’m intolerant of people who don’t tolerate what I do (like, I don’t want to be biased against racists, although it’s really hard and I can’t tell if I’m being hypocritical or not) but I wanted this guy to admit to being homophobic, and he didn’t think he was. In fact,

[him] I’m not an homophobic but everything has its limits

I had no answer to that.

*I always like to say a bunch of politically incorrect statements at the beginning of such a discussion, just to get it out of my system so that I don’t accidentally say something wrong later on. Like how I used to tease my one black friend about having grown up in the ghetto, and didn’t find out until months later that he actually did grow up in the ghetto, at which point I felt really bad but he figured he’d just told me about it already.

I’ve been thinking: when a cat kneads at your lap before curling up on you, or licks your hand in that cute bristly way, how do you know its true motives? I mean, sure, maybe it loves you, but then again, maybe it’s acquiring an appetite for longpig.

Here’s my theory:

kneading = tenderizing
licking = marinating
scratches = cutting you up into smaller portions for faster cooking times
bites = actually not a good idea since the punctures may lead to lost juices during cooking

There’s that brain parasite, right, that cats give their owners? That makes us docile? Guess what people, we’ve been domesticated. We are the feline equivalent of cows. If I had any aggression in me at all I might be upset about this. Moo.

Note I’m typing this as my cat is lying on my neck, obviously trying to strangle me in preparation for dinner tonight. I am only speeding up the process by straining my neck to see the computer screen.

Well, I hope I’m tasty.

(Gill is perhaps spending too much time at home)

(Via The War on Folly)

Well, not really. One thing I’ve been surprised to discover is that I don’t have oodles and oodles of free time like I was expecting. Or at least I don’t have oodles of time sitting around with nothing to do. There’s always stuff to do. Or stuff to recover from having done last night.

I feel like I should’ve been paid this week for writing two long tests for some possible job with a big company that’s big enough to have its applicants write multiple tests. Or maybe I should be paying them to write the tests, because it was all very reminiscent of university; especially the staying up late to get things done bit, and the lots of drinking afterwards. I’m pretty sure from this last test that it will be the last I hear from this company about the position, which is sad because I want the job, but at the same time, I’m scared about how many more tests there might be. If I really liked tests that much I’d still be in school.

Above was my very ergonomic test-writing setup, which you may feel free to copy for your own home office. It was great until my cat started sneakily curling up on top of my notes when I needed them. I think secretly she doesn’t want me to work ever again and is trying to sabotage my opportunities, but explaining that welfare will not pay for her extravagant lifestyle is lost on her. Neither did she grasp the concept that I was applying for a job that would have me working from home, which is exactly what she would want. Fine, cat, I hope you’re happy when we end up in a cardboard box.

I know I shouldn’t care what others think (unless those others are awesome), but I’m getting slightly annoyed by people talking to me as if my still being unemployed after a month is proof of laziness or general incompetence. I also pulled my application for a potential DBA job last week because the recruiters were being jerks and talking to me like I’m a poor desperate sod who would do whatever they said. I have since learned that that is expected behaviour from recruiters, which is now making me sad and questioning humanity as a whole.

All I know is, I’m needing this time off, and anyone who questions that should perhaps come over so I can tell them in detail how hard I’ve been working these last four years, and then promptly bite their head off to prove that I’m still in the process of recovering from the chronic stress. That’ll show them.

By the way, if you are a potential employer who googled my name when I applied for your company, hi! I’m not this weird in public, really I’m not. You want to hire me, you do. The doctors say I am ready to rejoin society.