And now I need some advice

Here's the sitch:

I have been hired for some work on campus with exams. As a "mandatory part of the hiring process", I attended a 3 hour training session. The pay for this? "Free pizza". Okay, I wasn't too pleased about that, but hey, I need some paid work and decided to suck it up and go. So I ate my weight in pizza and listened to people read off their powerpoint slides. It was a piss off to be in a mixed room: half students (payment: pizza), half staff (payment: salary, I would assume), but I managed to stay awake and keep the bitching to a quiet internal monologue.

But just now, I got an email, inviting me to a mandatory "breakfast meeting" scheduled for 8:30 in the morning next week, which will last two hours. There will be a "continental breakfast provided" (yes, I know I'm abusing the quotation mark at this point, but I'm mad). At the meeting, we will be oriented (seriously people, wtf? This isn't rocket science) and be able to sign up for shifts. The wording of the letter makes me believe that they think I'm going to show up for another 2 hours of unpaid work. At 8:30 am. On my birthday*. At this point, I'd like to send them an email back with instructions on how to print out, fold and insert my reply.

At the same time, I don't want to just send them a "take this job and shove it" letter, I want to a) point out that this is a barrier to my participation in the workplace as I don't have the economic means to do 5 hours of forced volunteer work in order to get a crummy job and b) register an official complaint with someone about these hiring practices if they ignore my concerns. Step 1 is to send in an email pointedly enquiring about the payment for attendance at the meeting. This first email should be relatively diplomatic and cheery (but pointed!), so that if it is all just a mistake and we actually do get paid for attendance, I don't cause my big mouth to talk its way out of the job. Anyone have any ideas of what I should say? Care to share my outrage? Or am I blowing this out of proportion?

*The icing on the (birthday) cake is that it takes me an hour to get to campus, and then an hour back.

Edited to add: Hi to those stopping by from Inside Higher Ed! I couldn't figure out where all the hits were coming from, and now I'm blushing a little for having my 15 minutes of fame be because of an anonymous rant. Ah, well, dahlings, I'll take it!

Further edited to add: Yes, dear reader, I have known the heartache of working on my birthday before. Please cancel the consolatory bouquet you just ordered. I'm fine, really.

Net wiZard

I just downloaded and figured out Skype. Yeah, okay, hardly taxing. Email me for my username. Miss Khartoum, I'm looking in your direction.

I've got my back turned on a movie right now. It's The Widow of Saint-Pierre, starring Juliette Binoche and Emil Kusturica. I guess it's good, and certainly the visuals are attractive. But, I choose to blog and answer email instead of watching. The thing is, it's dubbed, and I just can't get into dubbed movies. It's like an extra layer has been put between viewers and actors, and it makes the whole thing feel completely fake. Sure, I need glasses, I can barely read subtitles, nonetheless the over-expressive voices are driving me nuts.

Problem number two: I can see how it ends, a mile off. He's sentenced to death but there is no guillotine on Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, she falls in love with him and tells him that those who convicted him will change their minds if he's good, they don't, he gets the chop. Many tears ensue. Hey, maybe I'm wrong. But I'm not getting involved, anyways.

Now that I've ruined the movie for everyone, let's all go out and rent Goodnight and Goodluck. Best freaking movie I've seen in recent memory. For those of you wanting a cathartic cry without guillotine scenes, rent The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

I had to laugh. I did an image search for "porch" and all I came up with was page after page of bland, cutesy, empty porches. As if the porch exists best as a state of mind, unsullied by the messiness of actually living. Our porch is slanted, vaguely dangerous, occasionally marked by cats, sat on by random people having a smoke, facing a busy street, the best place to watch the ambulances, firetrucks, people walking by. Sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and soon neighbourhood dogs will wander over to lick your hand, someone will ask you for change, a cop car will cruise by slowly, a squirrel will challenge your right to a peaceful moment of silence, the wind will shower blossoms everywhere. It is messy and chaotic and alive.

Plus, minus

+Eating chocolate cake with sunflower seed butter icing.

+Finished chapter two and sent it in for review, in time for a cheshire grin at the seminar.

+Did two more interviews back to back and the participants were so engaged and articulate that it brought a tear to my eye. One of them even emailed me some follow-up thoughts s/he had.

+The Beast is cruising the house, looking for trouble and making me laugh with his hijinx. Just learned something new: he likes cake crumbs and nut butter icing.

+There are now groceries in the house.

+I got a huge envelope in the mail stuffed with media for my project.

+Going to see a film with Red that looks to be one of the year's worst, just because David Boreanaz is in it. I attribute the weird giddy feeling to some sort of spring fever.

+It's Spring.

-I gave myself the mother of all splinters. Playing a fast game of 'run after the jingly ball' with the Beast, I bent down to scoop and toss it for him. In doing so, I drove an exageratedly long spike from the aging hardwood floor between finger and finger nail. I screamed and danced around for a bit, then remembered that it was still in my power to pull the damn thing out. Which I did, but no one was around to witness my skill and bravery. I do have the splinter on exhibit now though, if anyone wants to stop by, admission tickets are cheap and word of mouth for the show has been very positive. It's a mixed media, performative piece, but I don't want to give too much away.

-I don't have anything else to complain about. This has sent me into a frenzy of soul searching and identity questioning from which I have yet to emerge. Thank god I have my splinter exhibit to keep me my mind somewhat occupied.

So, so sleepy

You know that sinking feeling, where everything starts to feel heavy and the best your mental faculties can do is conjure up oddly coloured Celestial Seasoning Tea tableaux in place of actual thoughts? I'm trying to do a little more thesis work before bed and all I can think about are bears in stocking caps nodding into their chamomile. It's interesting, but not useful theoretically. I think I will call it quits after all.

The big plan is to get up early (5:30am?), rustle some tea and work like a demon until I have to leave for an X-Ray, a seminar on Walter Benjamin (oh, purrr!) and a three hour training session for my new job. I want to be done this chapter before I leave at 11am, because I want to walk into the seminar, greet my peers and advisors and hit them with my best cheshire grin of accomplishment.

I'm out of town, working my other job (which shall unfortunately remain nameless here), enjoying some fresh air and the sight of newly born lambs on rickety little legs. Yes, really. I'm not sure what to say that could compete with fuzzy baby animals, so I'll leave it at that for now.

New job?

Well, this'll probably jinx it, but I think I've been offered a job at school. Nothing huge, no more than 15 hours a week for about 3 weeks, but money nonetheless (which is looking good in any amount right now). More exam invigilation, which isn't Thrill City but will be sufficiently up my alley that it won't be too taxing. Just waiting for the confirmation email.

In terms of thesis work, I'm still powering along, trying to get this chapter to where I want it to be. I'd hoped to have it in tonight at the absolute latest, but I'm not sure it'll happen. I've got an interview at 4pm with a person I've been trying to get a hold of for a good long while, and then I jump on a bus for points far away until Sunday or so.

Now, to make a mug of tea, grab a handful of dark chocolate wafers and settle in for an afternoon of blog surfing hardcore thesis work.

Monday morning

Another weekend down in the inexorable march towards thesis completion. I'm just going to throw this out there and see what public accountability will achieve: I plan to defend this thing sometime at the start of May. Chapter two is days away from being a workable first draft, which is encouraging. However, my desk needs a thorough cleaning, as it is starting to sap my will to live. Or at least, my will to work at it. This point was driven home when I scrolled through a few paragraphs of the current chapter and realized that I don't have any citations or concrete examples...because that would require opening a book and there is currently no room for said book opening procedures.

Friday night was novel: I actually went out for drinks with a colleague. It was fun to talk trash and theory, and the martinis didn't hurt either. We went to Fancy Drink place (where I ordered lots of pricey drinks and then got embarassed when colleague insisted on paying but not so embarassed that I wasn't secretly pleased to not have to pay for the drinks) and then we hit up Standing Room only Gay Bar for shots of Jim Beam (yeccch to the power of 10), beers and a couple of games of pool**. I actually made some good shots (they call them shots, right?) and earned some cheers from the peanut gallery.

Saturday night was all home baked cookies and Season 3 Buffy with Red. Cozy and restorative.

Sunday, all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. This is the second Sunday in a row, which is evidence of a rekindled curry addiction. Coupled with cheap ($7) all-you-can-eat, this is a clear and present danger to my stomach. We have a saying which we use every time we go to a buffet: "don't be a hero". This means, don't go for that last plate. Don't eat so much naan. Don't pile your tray with sweet clove rice and gulab jamun, when you are already three stops past Way too Full. Do we follow our own good advice? No. There is always that little bowl of Mutter Paneer, or spoonful of Raita or refill of Chai that calls out. It's always a painful mistake, guaranteed to lead to public moaning on the bus home. We ate so much that we got to the point of Curry Euphoria again, laughing ourselves silly over something completely addled.

The only bad thing about All India is that once you've decided that you're done (and that no food will ever pass your lips ever again!), you have to go pay at the take-away counter. Imagine being surrounded by piles of glistening desserts, mounds of savoury mixes, mountains of samosas, oceans of sauces (the glass cases and mirroring at every angle makes this an almost hallucinatory experience). It's all I can do to pay the bill and get the hell out of there, clutching my sides. Luckily I had a couple of wiseacres with me, who gleefully read off the various names of the foods I was trying to ignore, and delighted in making serving suggestions. Now the pain of the memory is but a distant gleam, and the craving is back. Damn you, all-you-can-eat!

Well, back to work. Happy Monday.

**I've always considered pool, like chess, to be one of those things that I appreciate in the abstract but don't want to actually be forced to participate in. This doesn't put a damper on my occasional fantasies of becoming a) a world-renowned chess tournament champion with nerdy eye glasses and a beautiful mind approach to the world or b) a trash talking pool shark who makes a living fleecing the macho dudes who hang out in the various halls on my circuit. Am I so weird for having these alternate-reality fantasies about things that I don't actually enjoy doing? Yes? Oh, okay then.

Unexpected news from the Hague

The ironically named Slobodan Milošević (ex-Serbian president charged with genocide and other war crimes), found dead in his cell at age 64. I won't link to it here, but for a real dose of crazy, take a peep at his followers' website.

Update: According to news agencies, there are some indications that he may have been taking harmful medication to bolster his claims of "poisoning" at the hands of his jailors and to try to get moved to Russia for treatment.

Infernal

In fitting with the theme of the blog, I thought I'd spread the joy of eternal torment to others.

Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle I Limbo

Creationists
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Guys whose names start with 'W'
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

General asshats
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Hipsters
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Scientologists
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Ex-downstairs neighbours
Circle VII Burning Sands

Stephen Harper and his ilk
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

The 2010 Olympic Committee, Landlords
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

The "guys whose names start with 'W'" thing is for Red. I suppose it could have been "guys who only read books about golf" or "guys who steal your copy of Garrison Keiler essays even though they are basically illiterate", but I thought I'd keep it simple for today. It may be the dusting of snow on the ground, or the homemade soy mocha in a Christmas mug on my desk, or the condemnation of others to eternal cycles of vile torment, but something has put me in a great mood today!

A late post for International Women's Day

There's a situation going on in Darfur that is getting worse all the time, while governments stand around looking sheepish (UN intervention is looking possible in the next while, but attacks against civillians, particularly women, continue to worsen). For those who may not be familiar with Darfur, here is a piece from the Sudan Times, a press release from the Darfur-Canadian Women Association.

Mar 8, 2006 — Darfur-Canadian Women Association salutes all Canadian women and congratulates those among them who have been honored on the International Women’s Day for the contributions they have made in making the world more peaceful and enjoyable for all. As Canadian women from Darfur origin we would like to remind all our Canadian female compatriots that their contribution is badly needed to rescue their sisters of humanity in the remote corners of the Third World such as Darfur (Sudan) where the regime has adopted women’s rape as part of its policy of genocide against the indigenous population.

Our dear compatriots, at the time when we are celebrating and being honored on this day, indigenous women of Darfur are in a very volatile situation where they are worried about their lives and dignity. The Sudanese regime has destroyed their homes and property, killed their husbands and other male relatives and raped thousands of them before they ended up with their traumatized children in “concentration camps” guarded by soldiers some of whom are the rapists. The women who live in these camps in Darfur risk their life and dignity when they try to practice any activity that will help them provide their families with basic needs. They cannot even look for the firewood led alone talking about farming. They are either raped or seriously beaten as symbol of humiliation when they leave the camps to fetch firewood.

Dear compatriots, most of the women who live in such horrible conditions in Darfur have never heard of this day (the International Women’s day), which symbolizes women worldwide as the half of the human society. We hope that during next year’s celebrations Canadian women who provide help to displaced women in areas like Darfur will be honored because their work in displaced camps in the remote corners of the world will help women of these areas enjoy this day too.

Darfur-Canadian Women Association
E-mail: darfurwomen@yahoo.ca
Telephone: (403) 217-9121

From the sublime to the ridiculous

I just looked out the window and let out a bit of a whoop, it's snowing! This is what it looks like out there. Okay, I lie. It looks nothing like that outside my window. Big, soft flakes are now disappointingly turning into a mix of wet snow and rain. The weather this past week has been so violent...high winds, lashings of rain, hail. I'm somewhat surprised that the roof hasn't peeled off the house like the top off a cheap tin can. Pleasantly surprised, that is.

Got up early, dealt with the garbage and recycling, cursed over the fact that our ex-housemate has left no forwarding address and keeps getting heating bills (and if she pops up one day to ask me to pay late fees on the bill, she's gonna get an earful like nobody's business. Okay, calm, calm...breathing deeply...big yoga breaths..letting it go...). Listened to The Current, which rocked as usual. Stories covering disputed parkland in Quebec, a documentary on the symbolism of the bridges of Bosnia/Kosovo and an interview with the widow of a CBC journalist who died a year ago from cancer of the esophagus.

The Crossings piece was excellent, the first of a three part series on the Balkans. Today it discussed the sparking ability of the Mitrovica bridge which lies between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. Violence is always just a rumour away, and when it starts again, it usually starts on the bridge before spreading to the rest of Kosovo. I believe you can listen to it through this link. Tomorrow, the series takes a look at a Bosnian Serb who made it big in Chicago and came back to build a bridge over the Drina. He then set to work on Slobomir Promo (Freedom and Peace) city in the wasteland near his bridge. Of course, the "city" (only a few buildings to date) features some built in advantages for capitalist gain, such as a little 'free-trade' zone for manufacture. To keep with today's theme, I'll probably spend some time with Ivo Andric's Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini cuprija) when I have a moment for pleasure reading.

Of course, after the high point of The Current, ten oclock rolls around and the Giggler takes over the airwaves. The minute I hear the music for Sounds like Canada, I switch to BBC Radio4 or, really, anything else. There was a time when I could handle listening to Sheilagh Rogers, but those days are over, by gum! It may be slightly hypocritical to muse about someone else's self-involvement on a blog *blush*, but it can't be helped in this case. The topics are boring ("today I'm broadcasting from a quaint fishing village in New Brunswick, where I'll be talking to Joe who runs the corner store and suffers from narcolepsy*") and her interviews are the most execrable, painful nonsense I've ever had the displeasure to listen to. Honestly, Sheil, I don't care what *you* think about being in a quaint village or how *you* feel about narcolepsy. Get out of the way and work on finding the damn story! It didn't used to be this bad, she was trained by Gzowski and was a decent interviewer, which is why they gave her the morning show after his retirement. Then it became "all about Sheila, all the time". Thanks luv, I'll pass**.

*Apologies to quaint villages, New Brunswickers and narcoleptics. All of these are fine topics for the radio, just not every day! And if you see Sheilagh Rogers approaching with a tape-recorder, for the love of god, don't make eye contact!
**Apologies to non-Canadians for an excessively maple-centric posting, I'm sure y'all have no idea what I am talking about (eh?). Please consult the mothercorp for clues. Don't feel bad if you don't care, I'm surprised you've managed to stay with me this far.

Blog against sexism

We all have the stories. Of being treated as lesser for being what we are. Of having to bust our asses to prove we are just as good, always walking a line with our students and colleagues to avoid being put in the mommy/bitch/de facto coffee fetcher/silly young thing box. We also fight back. If your students tell you that they don't need feminism anymore, tell them Maggie's story, or your own.

Since this is what the blog format was created for, I'll start with the waaah: my hand is still fucked up, doc says I may have arthritis (yay!) or a 2.5 year old fracture that will never heal (yay!) or something completely different (um, yay?). I also did not get shortlisted for the contract translation job, which fills me with rage (productive, I know) since I think my translated samples were pretty darn good (maybe the best ever? ok, ego back in check) and my time for completion of the task was faster than normal professional translation speeds. Wondering how I will make enough $$$ to go to Eastern Europe if I don't get a scholarship. And my data analysis books are overdue but I need them for the next few days, so I will be eating the library fines.

But then there's also non-waaah: finished my fellowship application and just got a post office confirmation that it was delivered successfully by today's deadline. Did more conference work and got most of it done, despite having strong initial misgivings that it would eat up too much of my time. Drinking homemade soymilk mochas. Came up with a kick ass article idea and title on the bus yesterday. Planning coconut curry for tonight's dinner. One week to possible completion of chapter two. Birthday rapidly approaching.

I think it all balances out.