NaNoWriMo

First: Happy Halloween. For this momentous event, I dressed up as a Girl Reading Life of Pi*. Not many people saw my costume, but I can assure you it was a good one. I didn't really understand why everyone loved that book so much until I got to the ending. Those last 10 pages are quite interesting.

Now, on to November. On Thursday, I was sitting in the library reading a copy of the campus newspaper when it came to my attention that November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). Every year, someone sends me a link to NaNoWriMo and I say, "no thanks". But this year, I suddenly see the merit of it**. NaNoWriMo is the month-long novel-writing contest where the goal is quantity, not quality, and the only requirement to win the contest is to reach the 50,000 word-mark before midnight on November 30th (and your novel can't consist of the same word written 50,000 times). There are many winners, and the only prizes are bragging rights, and having a fairly crappy novel under your belt. I love bragging rights, and feel I haven't had enough of them lately. So: challenge accepted. This month (I mean starting tomorrow), I will write a novel.

In order to achieve this feat I'll have to produce approximately 1,700 words/day, according to the newspaper article. I don't think I'll have time to write every day, though, so my own goal will be to write 2,500 words every week day***. Totally doable, right? Considering November is also National End of Term Essays month, and National Your Manager Quit and Your Boss is Giving You More Hours month, I'm dubious as to whether the task can actually be completed. But you never know.

So, I'm writing a novel this November. Who's joining me?


*To clarify: I stayed home and read a book for class.
**This might have something to do with the fact that this year it was my own idea and not someone else's. I believe I mentioned that I was arrogant last week already. No need to say it again, right?
***I know, I know, this math doesn't add up. We English Majors are above such things as mental math or calculators. We prefer to guess wildly and creatively.

Amy and the Postmodern Election Forum

As far as sharing my opinion about the upcoming election goes, I tend to do it in quiet, controlled ways. The idea of putting a Vote For sign on my lawn makes me cringe. "Vote for Judy!" Is that an order? Piss off.

I don't like to be told what to do. I don't like telling other people what to do. Most specifically, I don't like putting up large, brightly coloured signs that issue orders to any stranger who happens to be walking by my house/facebook page/left shirt lapel. Not to mention, I'm pretty arrogant. If I vote for someone, I want to think it was my own idea, and not the idea of a plastic sign. Having said that, I now present you with my opinion, one of many, about the upcoming election.

Part One: Mayoral Candidates

Rhetoric lead-up: Two years ago, I was enrolled in a highly influential class on Rhetoric**. It was in this class that I began to internalize the popular theory that it's not really what you say so much as how you say it. We did a lot of work on the topic of Hot-Buttons: finding the issues that your audience cares about and putting those issues at the forefront. Essentially, learning where your audience's buttons are (the good buttons, I mean) and pushing them.

Post-Modern View: Can we rely on the narrative voices of those who describe our Mayoral Candidates? What is truth? Is anything in these candidates' platforms factual, or are we, the readers, governed by feelings, but conflicting viewpoints, and multiple truths? How can we make weighty political decisions when the reliability of our multiple narrators is constantly called into question? Am I one of those narrators? Am I questioning myself? Is this version of the Mayoral Candidates Forum that I am about to present to you true, or is it one of many conflicting truths?

Say what you will about elections, but a candidate's success does ride, to a great extent, on his or her ability to hit the right 'buttons' for voters, and, more importantly, hitting them in the correct order, at the right frequency, and in the right way. Popularity has a lot to do with being connected to your voters and being able to pick up on what they want you to say (regardless of whether you really believe what you're saying).

Take the On-Campus Mayoral Candidates Forum I went to today. Not being much for politics, I was surprised to discover that we do, in fact, have 4 candidates running for office. Let's see how they measured up.

Brad Gross: A man very passionate about real-estate and taxes, Brad treated us like Boston Tea Party rioters; slamming the government for 'excessive taxation' seemed to be the only plot point of his platform, which begs the question, how stupid does he think we are? Or, conversely, do I really know that little about taxes?***

From what I understand, we're already running a deficit here, and basically any promised programs the government presents us with rely on some sort of funds that have to come from somewhere (read: taxpayer's pockets). So, when Mr. Gross lists the city's taxed services as if they are crimes against humanity, promises tax rebates for virtually every student and their grandmothers, and then goes on to promise 24-hour daycare programs for all single parent families, I begin to question the validity of his statements. How exactly will he be funding 24-hour daycare? Or any other initiative, for that matter?

Rav Gill: Oddly enough, I can't actually remember a whole lot of what Rav said. Shall we blame this failure on me and my wandering mind, or the fact that I'm already fairly biased in Judy's favour? Of course. However, if you want someone to vote for you, you should be able to hold their interests somewhat. What I mostly remember about Rav is that he is young and from the inner city and so am I, and that, of the candidates I saw, he had the majority of responses that were lambasting the other candidates outright (ironic, seeing as how the Rav Gill For Mayor site celebrates his platform as 'not anti-Katz or anti-Judy, but pro-Winnipeg.')

Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Judy's ability to pick up on the issues that were actually near and dear to the audience makes her the star of this Forum. Of course, I was biased towards her. I was biased from the moment I saw her taking the stage, dressed in a bright purple blouse, with a purple flower at her lapel****.

Amy, are you really basing your vote on a woman's wardrobe choices? Well, whether by accident or design, Wasylycia-Leis was the only candidate lucky enough to fit in with the crowd of purple-attired university students. Yes, today is the day where everyone who is against homophobic bullying is supposed to show solidarity by wearing purple. So, whether she opened up her facebook page this morning and saw the reminder (as I did), or got a tip-off from her son, or just happened to pick something purple out of her closet, Judy immediately stood out as someone who knew what was going on at the University. Whether or not she actually cares about homophobic bullying is, of course, open to debate, but she cares enough about our opinions of her to present herself as such, and, measured against other attendees (or, more importantly, absentees (see below)), that's worth something.

I will also give her props for not actually calling attention to the colour of her shirt (which makes it seem less like a grab at popularity), for bringing up the Veolia debacle, for appealing to student's eco-conscious attitudes, for discussing Winnipeg as a whole (rather than as a taxation project), and for in general talking to the students like she actually knew what the students were about, and for telling Rav Gill to actually answer the questions and stop harassing her.

Sam Katz: I will have to give Katz bonus points for being the only candidate arrogant enough to not show up at all. Is that 5 Forums he's missed, or does this make it number 6? The thing is, in order to make voters think you care about them, you have to actually show up and make it appear as though you do. Judy was criticized today for 'throwing a hipster dance party' for young voters (Get Your Vote On). What do dance parties have to do with voting? About as much as On-Campus Mayoral Candidate Forums do to Mr. Katz, it would appear.



**You know, the class where I managed to demonstrate my complete inability to maintain my dignity in front of my professor (read: the infamous locker room incident, the Rush Limbaugh incident, the imposter professor incident, and others that are, mercifully, not available for public viewing).

***well...yes...

****Okay, so my bias actually begins in grade 11, when she came to discuss feminism and politics, and is compounded by the fact that she is the only politician who I've actually met on more than one occasion (which is, of course, helped by the fact that her son was the grade below mine and we share a few of mutual friends).

Do you ever have one of those days where your ecocriticism assigned readings comparing animal slaughter to rape and abuse of women to the eating of meat makes you so distressed you have to cap off the evening by spending over an hour on Cute Overload watching the same corgi doing a belly-flop into a lake over and over again to numb your mind to the sad facts of reality? I have...

daily dose of irony

in Ecocriticism, discussing Al Gore's erroneous insistence that 100% of ecologists are in agreement about the global warming crisis:

female student*: "I mean, it's not like we need to have irrefutable proof that the world is going to end to convince us to start worrying about how our habits are detrimental to the environment. Just because I don't know for sure that putting a whole bunch of chemicals in my hair is going to destroy the earth, doesn't mean I'll assume there's no point in buying organic hair products or something." flips turquoise hair over her shoulder. "he's got to give us some credit."

thus spake the girl who loaded herself up with blue hair dye again this weekend. It was only after I had left the classroom that I realized my hypocrisy. No, apparently he doesn't have to give me credit.


*a.k.a the author of this post, a.k.a me.

kids use Axe Bodyspray to set themselves on fire

check it out: finally, a use for Axe that I can approve of. (but I would argue against the Seattle news team's editorial staff. Who's to say that using body spray to set onesself on fire is 'less sexy' than using body spray to attract women? Personally, I'd rather have a guy try to attract me by setting himself on fire than by coating himself in noxious-smelling chemicals just to 'smell better'.)

Showering: the Final Frontier. But first, some acerbic and pointless commentaries on people who care more about the Earth than I do.

A few years ago I was flipping through a pompous eco-concious magazine where people who thought they were better than all us gas-guzzling Gaia killers could write in about the ways in which they were being nicer to the Earth than we were*.

First, I came across a letter from a misinformed do-gooder who suggested that if we could all turn off our engines for the 5 minutes it takes to roll through a fast-food drive-thru, the earth could breathe easier. He included a diagram of a gigantic ramp (patent pending. No seriously) that began at the order station, at which point the drivers would shut off their engines and roll on down the line to collect their grease-laden treats.

The problem with this being that it is likely you'd be burning more gas restarting your engine at the end of the line than you'd be saving by rolling through the drive-thru. Other problem being that fast food chains are one of the many culprits of the ecopocalypse anyway. If he'd sent in a diagram of a laser beam programmed to destroy fast-food chains and fast-food chains only (patent pending), I would have been liable to respect him more. Also it would have been a nice thing to photocopy and paste to my bedroom wall, and then I could have felt like I was being eco-conscious too!

Next, I came across a letter from someone who said her family was trying to conserve water by 'showering' using a bucket and ladle. She claimed she wanted to write in to inspire us all to do the same, but I knew that the bitch was really just trying to overshadow us with her more impressive eco-conscious action-plans. The suggestion water-conservation websites give out to concerned individuals is to shower shorter, and maybe less often. And here this woman cared enough to stop showering completely. I also knew that this woman was probably bald, or at least had a very thin head of hair. No way would I be able to sufficiently wash my full and glorious mane with a dinky ladlefull of water.

The years passed, I graduated from highschool, embarked on an unemployable yet fascinating and highly informative path of educational studies, and then, one day, I found myself crouching in the bathtub with an icecream pail, an old margarine container, and a bottle of Vegan 96% Organic!! Shampoo. Guess how much water the average 7-minute shower uses? 35 gallons. Guess how much water is actually needed to fully cleanse a 5-foot-6, 150-pound woman with a very full head of shoulder-length hair? Less than a gallon. Oh yes, people, I've become One of Them.


*Okay,maybe it was just an old copy of AdBusters. And maybe they were actually trying to convince us that average people really can make a difference! But I preferred to read it as a thinly veiled attempt at a senseless world-wide guilt-trip.