So, you Canadians may or may not have heard that Alexa McDonough, the NDP Member of Parliament for Halifax who has been in office since 1997, is not standing for re-election. For non-Canadians, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is the most left-wing of the major parties, moreso than the Liberals or the Democrats in the States, but still no working class heroes. Be that as it may, it's better to have an NDP MP than a Tory MP, any day of the week.

Anyway, the local NDP needs to nominate someone to run for the Halifax riding (electoral district), and that person would still need to run in the general election to secure the seat (whenever the general election happens, maybe in the fall). One woman, a grad student at Dalhousie University (where I study), has put her name in the hat. Recently, a second woman has thrown her name in the hat. The second woman, Megan Leslie, is a legal aid worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid, an organization that has done a lot of good things and has a good relationship with the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty. Leslie would be a solid choice, considering her demonstrated commitment to the community, particularly those on the have-not side of the spectrum.

HCAP is enlisting people to join the NDP to secure the NDP nomination for Leslie. HCAP is a direct action organization and does not usually dabble in party politics, but sees the benefits of having Leslie in parliament. So the quandary is, do I join the NDP just to get Leslie the nomination? I am opposed to party politics, but I see how change can be affected and immediate improvements can be gained using that sphere, just as Emma Goldman pointed out a century or so ago. On the other hand, do I want to be a card-carrying member of the NDP?

What to do, what to do?

Haven't posted in awhile, blahblahblah, etc.

The key things:

• Yesterday was my 7th anniversary. I can't believe I've been married for that long.


• I obviously love making point-form lists.


• Spent the August long weekend in Cape Breton at a friend's place. Lots of fun.


• Here's the really neat thing. I'm working on a special archival exhibit for the archives. We have a ton of union and labour material, so I've been going through it all, looking for things to put on display. I've found some real gems, such as:
  
  
  
  • a letter from Jack London in which he resigned from the Socialist Party because it had become a sell-out party;
  
  
  • a letter from Martin Luther King, Jr. to a Nova Scotian socialist;
  
  
  • all kinds of great union newspapers, pamphlets, and posters dating back to the 1890's;
  
  
  • tons of photographs of strikes, pickets, and union members hanging out at union halls;
  
  
  • lots of material documenting the 1970 Canso Strait fishermen's strike, which was a really important and heart-breaking strike in Nova Scotian history, with implications for unionism across the country.
  
  
  
  

I'll be putting the display together soon, probably the last week of August. Pictures will be posted on the Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections facebook group. Check it out, yo.

I won't bore anyone with a great level of detail about the ACA conference. Suffice it to say that it was a lot of fun and very, very busy. The topic of the conference was digitization and digital records, so I learned a lot about that and saw what sorts of projects people from across the country are getting involved with. Lots of interesting sessions with a good mix of theoretical and practical. I also met lots of folks and had some good conversations, although I was not an obnoxious, overtly networking glad-hander.

The important thing is that the East beat the West in an epic softball match, 26-14. I was a stellar shortstop that combo'd for a few outs and hit 2 for 3 with 2 runs. The manager of the East team wants me at the next conference to continue the tradition of East supremacy. Maybe the ACA should give softball grants. They seem to take it pretty seriously.

Hanging out with my friend Amanda was also tons of fun. Creighton and I squeezed in time with her whenever we could and culminated with an epic night of food, frolic, and libations on Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday. It was a nice cap to the trek to Fredericton, and now I've been thrown right back into the thick of things in Halifax. I'm really, really looking forward to relazing a bit this weekend.

Later this afternoon, I'm heading off to Fredericton, New Brunswick with my friend, Creighton. We're going to the Association of Canadian Archivists conference there and will come back on Sunday. It's a pretty long conference; it officially gets under way tomorrow, but there have been pre-conference events all week. There will be all sorts of neat topics, like the use of open source software in archives and human rights and archives. If you're really interested, you can see the full schedule here. The real can't-miss event, you will note, is the Friday night softball game. I'm bringing my glove so I can show those old, lumbering archivists a thing or two on the diamond.

We're staying with my friend, Amanda, who just moved to Fredericton to start a new job. I'm looking forward to hanging out with her between conference gigs, exploring Fredericton pubs and what-not. I've only ever driven by Fredericton, as most people do, so this will be my first official visit there.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have some interesting things to talk about upon my return to Halifax.

I haven't done one of these in forever. This one looks like fun, so here ya go. From lovableatheist: "Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along."

1. Absurdity: Hmmmm.....where to begin? There's something wonderful about the banally absurd. The everyday humdrum that we take for granted makes perfect sense; things that are really irrational and ridiculous and completely, bizarrely unnecessary when you stop and think about them. Things like coffee (bean water from South America? And we're all addicted to it?), sitting forward in a car and being transported in an orderly fashion, most television, and working for a living.

That's one kind of absurdity. Then you have the out-right weird, which isn't as interesting but still fun. These are things that are obviously absurd and most people think so on a regular basis, like Tom Cruise, Scientology, professional wrestling, politics, etc.

Then there's aggressive absurdity, absurdity as a point of pride or a tactic. Things like dadaism, surrealism, absurdist humour (i.e. Monty Python), etc. How can you not love the absurd?

2. Autumn: Ever since I was a kid I've loved autumn. I've always found it to be the most productive, mysterious, other-worldly, and comforting of seasons. I love the colours, Halloween, pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving (two of them!), football, baseball play-offs, the weather, the smell of the air, jack-o-lanterns, feasts, and this odd feeling that I've carried with me my whole life that there was something just under the surface of an autumn day, some indescribable other-ness that can be sensed but never felt.

3. Boston Red Sox: I was a baseball fan when I was younger. I played ball, too. I liked the White Sox, but then the strike happened and I lost interest. Then I tried to get back into it a few years later and the owner of the White Sox tore the team apart and traded everyone away for no particular reason, right in the middle of a penant race. I really lost interest then. Then, years later, the baseball world was abuzz during the playoffs of 2003 as it appeared that the Red Sox and Cubs, two perennially cursed teams, might make it to the World Series. There were tons of exciting moments in that year's playoffs and I got swept up in it. When the Yankees finally knocked the Sox out of the playoffs, I was convinced: I was a Red Sox fan. It seemed the perfect fit, as the Red Sox always played second fiddle to the Yankees, they were always the underdogs, the team that you wouldn't want to root for unless you wanted your heart to be broken. I'm always attracted to that sort of thing, so there it was. Next thing you know, the Sox win the Series the next year and again last year. They've shaken off the old rep and are now champions, but at least I can say I was a fan before all of that. Barely.

4. Bugaboo: My cat. I have a love-hate relationship with her. She's completely white, really light and skinny, exceptionally loud and needy, annoying at times, ridiculous all the time, and just plain bizarre. Sometimes I want to kick her, other times I want to carry her around all day and pet her. Needless to say, it's usually the latter. Oh, and I'm allergic to her, so that's no fun.

5. Cowboy boots: What's not to like? I've had my pair of Durango boots since 1997 and they're still going strong. I love them so much, they're so well-worn and perfect. I like how they look and how they make me feel when I wear them, like I can kick Jesus in the face and there's nothin' he can do about it.

6. Dogs: Really, I'm more of a dog person than a cat person. Dogs are a really absurd animal and so funny to watch. Even when they're just walking around, they have this goofy charisma that I find hard to resist.

7. Semiotics: The study of signs. I got really into this during my art school days. It's a pretty fascinating field and encompasses all sorts of disparate fields, from language and written text to pictures and film. Signifiers and signified, meaning and constructs. Heady stuff.

Whew. Erin, my parents, and I just did a whirlwind tour of Cape Breton and the South Shore over the last four days. It was a lot of fun and insanely busy. Here are the highlights, in point form because I love it so much. First, the three days in Cape Breton, the island in the northern part of Nova Scotia which is famous for its Gaelic heritage and remnants of Acadian culture:

• stayed in Baddeck, adopted home of Alexander Graham Bell. We went to the museum devoted to him and learned all sorts of interesting things about the guy. My favourite thing was that he taught his dog how to say "How are you, Grandmama?" when he was a kid. He was also fluent in the Mohawk language, invented his own water purification system for his house in Baddeck, and invented a form of air conditioning because he was hot. Oh, and it seemed like he invented the telephone as a bit of a lark and didn't really care about it afterward. What a guy.


• Went to Louisburg, site of the famed French fortress which has been reconstructed. It's a pretty neat spot to roam around.


• Went to Glace Bay, site of the Cape Breton Miners Museum. That was really neat, as it was truly a miners' museum dedicated to the miners themselves and the communities that they lived in. The whole museum was from the miners' perspective and that of their families. I learned that in 1925, the miners in Glace Bay burned down all of the company stores when the mining company cut off all credit due to a strike. That was the end of the company store system in Glace Bay. Direct action gets the goods!


• Drove the Cabot Trail, through Cape Breton Highlands National Park, and saw a moose for the very first time.


• Drove through the Margaree Valley, where part of Erin's family is from and found the grave of Erin's great grandparents.


• Ate lots of seafood.


On the South Shore, we:


• Drove down the winding country roads, which was both nice and frustrating, especially when we got stuck behind super low drivers.


• Went to Peggys Cove, of course.


• Went to Lunenburg, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We visited the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic (which included an awesome exhibit about rum-runners based out of Lunenburg during Prohibition.......a truly heroic lot!) and drove around looking at all of the well-preserved wooden buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries.


• Ate delicious sauerkraut and sausage. Thank you, German heritage of Lunenburg!


Busy times, busy times.

From an interview with the late, great folk singer and labour activist on Democracy Now!:

AMY GOODMAN: So, you were an archivist in Utah?

UTAH PHILLIPS: I was an archivist, yeah. I handled 75,000 cubic feet of public records. For an information junkie, that’s heaven. Yeah, I loved studying archival science, and I still have a library in my home that I curate, my own little research library of popular antiquities. And that’s where my mind lives when I’m at home.

AMY GOODMAN: I’ve been speaking with librarians who are very concerned that the country’s archives are now being transferred to the internet, and they’re afraid from there that they will then be vacuumed, that the internet can then be changed, as we’ve seen President Bush, you know, purging words like “global warming” from government websites.

UTAH PHILLIPS: Archival science is in a serious—a serious crisis, and that’s because of electronic media, electronic storage and retrieval. A lot of hotshot, fancy, high-tech salesmen have gone to a lot of archives and archivists and sold them some bogus hardware and software. How many books has the Library of Congress lost? Millions of books, because the images have vanished, whatever the storage system is, electronic storage system is. It’s degraded to the point where the stuff is no longer usable.

In the Utah state archives, the best and most durable records are on paper, from the 1800s, the old Mormon Governor Brigham Young’s papers. Why? Because there was potassium in the water they used to make the paper in their own mill, and that’s a natural paper preservative, you know. And that’s true, I think, of any archive in the country. You talk to the archivists; they’ll say the most durable resource they have is still on paper.

[Spoken like a true archivist]

Been away for awhile and I've felt the absence. Things are going to be pretty busy for me for the next few weeks, but in the interests of catching up, here's what I've been up to the past month or so, with a look at why I will most likely continue to be MIA for a bit longer:

• Road trip to Ottawa with Halifax friends to meet up with Ottawa friends and hang out for a bit. That was awesome.


• I've returned to HCAP. Well, kinda. Haven't had much time to go to meetings, but I went to a mammoth, epic, 4 hour session which focused on long-term planning and analyzing HCAP's priorities. I'll head back to regular meetings as I have time.


• Finally started volunteering at Anchor Archives Zine Library, which I had been meaning to do forever.


• Playing softball, which is so, so much fun.


• I did a 100 hour practicum at the Halifax Municipal Archives, which was a great experience (despite the roughly two hour roundtrip commute to get out there each day).


• Back at the Dal archives for the summer again. This place is my second home.


• My friend, Lise, stayed with Erin and I for a bit as she's between homes. It was lots of fun having her around. We made all sorts of tasty food and watched hilarious TV. It was like a vacation, really.


• My sister and brother-in-law are coming to town today, and my parents are coming tomorrow. That'll keep us busy for the next week and a half.


• Once my family leaves, the next week I'm off to Fredericton for the Association of Canadian Archivists conference. That'll be pretty decent, I think.

So there we are. My update for now.

In his desperate attempt to not face the Grim Reaper alone, Ingmar Bergman grabbed Michelangelo Antonioni. See, it's a good thing I asked him not to take Jean-Luc Godard!

Not much of an Antonioni fan, really, but I really liked L'Avventura. Mind you, I'll probably never watch it again. It's one of those films that you only need to see once. Just to be on the safe side: don't take Jean-Luc with you, Michelangelo!

I finally put my application for the Frame X experimental film grant together. Just finished the budget last night and was reminded in great detail why I left film school and why I don't make films more often. Stupid budget. I think it's a safe guess to say that my budget probably has little to do with reality, but it's done. I'm dropping the application off at the film co-op after work today, which is the deadline.

It's been quite the cinematic week. On Saturday, Erin and I made a Super 8 film which follows the adventures of a politically-astute spinning top in its quest across Halifax to counter-spin all of the spin out there. And on Sunday, I made another Super 8 film about chess. I had to send the film to Toronto to get it developed, but once it comes back (and if it turns out ok) I'll try to post it on youtube or something.

Another post-work task: I have to go pick up the bass amp that I bought while making the film on Saturday. We came across a big ol' bass amp sitting out in front of an antique store, so I asked the guy if I could try it. The amp is probably as old as I am, but it still works fine (for now) and it'll be big enough for shows. And it was really cheap, for an amp. I just have to go get it and catch a cab to bring it to my place.

Please don't take Jean-Luc with you anytime soon. I'm sorry that I haven't seen more of your films, but I like the ones I have seen. And there are a few that are very high on my to-see-soon list, I promise. Especially Persona. Ah, you will be missed.

So, does he play chess? You know, Death.......

I can't believe we're the head-liners:



Ain't no one coming to this show, but it'll be fun. Gotta like the poster.

I have a new pair of shoes! For our up-coming 6th anniversary, Erin and I decided to each get a pair of Fluevog shoes. They're normally quite expensive, but Fluevog is having a big sale, so basically, we couldn't afford not to get new shoes. So you see our dilemma.

These are the ones I got:


My toes lust for them. They arrived in the mail yesterday and I wore them for the first time today. This infatuation with them led to a conclusion about myself: I really like shoes. I mean, I don't have an Imelda Marcos-style obsession with them or anything, but I can appreciate a well-designed, well-made pair of shoes. I guess I always have. I've always had an emotional attachment with my shoes. I used to get in big fights with my mom when she tried to throw out an old, ratty pair of my shoes to get a new pair. And by god, I'll keep a pair of shoes that I really like for ages.

Come to think of it, I have lots of shoes. Let's see:

-my beautiful cowboy boots, going on their 11th year!
-my Columbia hiking shoes that I got for our travels, but have now become the go-to pair
-a pair of more formal pair of black shoes, for work and what-not (although I never wear them to the archives because they really squeek on the floor there)
-a pair of really dressy black shoes, for those rare occasions
-a pair of black and white wing tip dress shoes, for those even more rare occasions. But I've had this pair and the other dressy pair for at least 10 years and they're still going strong
-a pair of steel-toe work boots, to prove my working class cred. And because I have had jobs where they were necessary, and they still come in handy when I have to carry heavy things that might fall on my toes, or when I go to punk shoes where some naked asshole might stomp on my toes
-my blue Doc's (aka the Gulag von Godless boots), a gift from the punk gods
-some funky, cheap brown and orange shoes that Alison gave me because they didn't fit her, but they're really not comfortable so I never wear them
-a pair of tennis shoes, for those rare times I feel fitness-y
-I think I have a pair of flip-flops that were great when we were travelling and now I wear them on our balcony
-and now, those sweet, sweet Fluevogs.

Damn, that's a lot of shoes. But they all serve their purposes, and I get good use out of them. And before you go accusing me of trading in the bolshie for the bozhy, remember the Lawrence IWW strike of 1912: give us bread and roses, too! The shoes would fall in the "roses" category.

For those who have finished reading The Deathly Hallows and wanted more from the epilogue (isn't that everyone?), check this out! J.K. Rowling expounds on some stuff that she left out. Neat-o!

Erin, Alison, and I went to check out Shakespeare By the Sea last night. It's Halifax's own outdoor Shakespeare troupe. This year, they're doing The Taming of the Shrew and All's Well That End's Well. We saw The Taming of the Shrew last night. It was good fun, even though it featured a tad bit of the ol- over-acting. Ah, I suppose that goes hand-in-hand with these sorts of things.

I'm totally obsessed with Google Earth now. I've spent a good 4-5 hours in the past couple of days wandering around the world, finding as many past homes as I could remember, checking out this and that. I was able to pin-point the exact locations where this incident and this incident occurred. Neat-o x 2. Amazingly, I also found the house that my family and I lived in in a tiny little village in England (different from the house featured in those two stories), and the house we lived in in a tiny little village in Belgium. And I found all sorts of my favourite places in Obihiro. Maybe the coolest thing I've found so far is the big, black obelisk in Mecca with what must be millions of people circling around it for the Haj. Crazy!

My curiosity thoroughly heightened by the events of last Friday, I asked Kelly, the archives technician about some of the odd experiences she's had in the archives. She said that when she comes in in the morning, usually before everyone else arrives, she'll often hear strange, unaccountable noises, like the sound of papers being ruffled deep in the stacks. Upon investigation, she'll find no cause for the noises, which have stopped. She also said that she's caught glimpses of movement in one wing of the archives, but never the other wing. So now she stays in her office in the morning, until other people arrive.

This got me thinking, and I remembered something that happened a few weeks ago but thought nothing of at the time. The archives are closed to the public by a large glass wall with a door in it. To get into the archives, you have to ring a bell and someone will come let you in. One day, the bell rang and another of the interns, Vinny, went to answer it. He came around the corner and saw through the glass that no one was there. He opened the door and looked down the hall but didn't see anyone. He then came to me and said that someone was playing tricks on us. So we hatched a plan: the next time the bell rings, I would run to the glass door and Vinny would run to a side door that opens on to the main entry, hopefully catching our little trickster by surprise.

About 5-10 minutes later, the bell did indeed ring again and we leapt into action. I came running down the aisle and turned into the entry way as quick as I could, but immediately saw that no one was on the other side of the door. At the same time, Vinny had run to the side door and opened it, also not seeing anyone. The way the two doors are set up allowed for us to see quite a ways down the two hallways that lead to the archives, but neither of us saw anyone running away or attempting to hide.

Knowing that we were up against a real prankster pro, we decided to stake out the front door by hiding in the stacks and peeking through the shelves so we could see anyone approach the main door, but they wouldn't be able to see us. Once we took this position, there were no more phantom rings and that was that. So we got back to work and it's never happened again.

Like I said, I didn't think much of it at the time, just that there was a prankster on the loose. But now that I think of it in the context of the other stuff, it does make me wonder. Just who exactly would ring the bell of a university archives and run away, twice? And how could they have done it without us seeing them the second time? And why did it stop once we were waiting for it, undetected?

Curiouser and curiouser.......

We have a theory, and it is that the archives are haunted. It's a fairly spooky place, all of those stacks towering over our heads, jammed with dusty old ledgers and books and dead people's papers. It can be pretty dark, even in the day time, and the one time I was the last person there and had to turn off all of the lights was a creepy experience. However, that's all just atmosphere, right? But last Friday, there were a couple of incidents that had us scratching our heads and offering a befuddled "hmmmmm......"

One of my fellow interns, foxe139, arrived at work on Friday an hour before anyone else. She was sitting at a table in the archives working while listening to the radio. The radio also has a tape deck, and in order to turn the radio on or off, you have to physically flip a switch. Anyway, the radio somehow managed to turn itself off a few times. The switch itself actually flipped, so it wasn't like it was some kind of electrical malfunction.

Later in the day, she was telling us about this incident and Kathryn, one of the archivists, kind of chuckled but didn't think much of it. Shortly after, Kathryn mentioned that she had lost her work keys and couldn't find them for the life of her and how she never loses things like that. I didn't think much of it and as it was the end of the day, I left for the Grad House with another intern.

At the Grad House an hour or so later, Kathryn showed up and joined us. She explained that she found her keys sitting on a chair in a part of the archives that she hadn't been in all day. So the keys couldn't have fallen from her pocket onto a chair that she didn't sit on, and if someone had found the keys, I seriously doubt that they would choose to just put them on a random chair instead of finding the owner, considering that only a few of us have access to the archives and it would be pretty easy to track down the owner.

Hmmmmm.........maybe someone is displeased with our sorting of their papers. Or it could be the university archivist in disguise, trying to get us to work harder. If so, we're planning on unmasking him, Scooby Doo-style.

The Japanese party was a success. We made way too much food, but everyone did a quite admirable job of polishing it off. Good times were had drinking sake and Sapporo, listening to crazy Japanese music, and spinning a few Japanese tops.

I wore my kimono for part of the evening, but it's fairly hot and the sleeves dangle down quite low and I didn't want to accidentally dip them in curry, so back it went into its hiding spot, not to be worn again for an untold period of time.

Sunday was all about Harry Potter. It was a lovely day spent on my couch next to the window, eating snacks and leftovers, and barrelling my way through the 7th Harry Potter tome, finally finishing it last night. Out of courtesy, suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe I'll elaborate on it more once everyone who wants to has read it.

Now I'm back at work, but the next two weeks are boss-free. Both of the full-time archivists are on holiday, so the name of the game for the next two weeks is self-discipline.

Erin and I are having a Japanese party tomorrow night. We're cooking up all sorts of Japanese comfort food, none of the stereotypical sushi for us. No sir, we're having Japanese curry, yakisoba, cold soba, edamame, okonomiyaki, sake, and some other stuff. I'm probably going to wear my kimono, as there just aren't that many kimono opportunities these days, are there?

We made up some invitations with pictures of some of our favourite Japanese things, such as the kappa above. That little tyke is sure to bring out the masses.

Speaking of Japanese things, I forgot to mention that since I've been going to kyudo here, I finally had a chance to use the bow that my old sensei gave me as a going away present. It's pretty amazing, stronger than any of the ones I used in Japan. And it's made from bamboo, which is really high quality. The only problem is, it needs a name.

I've got it down to two choices: Toshiro Mifune or Shichiroji.


OR

???????

The French test went all right, I suppose. I mean, I bombed the conjugations, I had trouble thinking of the most simple expressions and words, and I kept saying the Japanese "hai" instead of "oui." In fact, the only thing I could think of was Japanese, but I managed to squeeze out some French. They probably thought I was insane.

However, the woman who tested me said I have very good pronunciation, which is awesome. And she said my comprehension is pretty decent, too. So she put me in the second level of the beginner's courses, of which there are 4. I'm pretty happy with that, at least I'm not an absolute beginner. So I'll be registering for the fall sometime relatively soon. Toot toot!

The evening's other event was band practice. We tried to learn 4 new songs tonight, which was probably too much as now I'm exhausted. Two covers (a Queers song and a Circle Jerks one) and two originals (the one that I wrote being about Wesley Everest, entitled "Paul Bunyan". It rocks, needless to say).

And that brings me to 90210. Erin and I managed to watch every last episode of the second season of Beverly Hills, 90210. And we regret not one minute of it, in all of it's ridiculous, high-waisted denim, terribly acted, early 90's fashioned, hackneyed, morally self-righteous glory!!!!

The trouble is choosing my favourite moment of the season.....so much to sift through. However, I think it comes down to the episode where David Silver's old friend Scott shoots himself. Hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!

As a matter of fact, here it is! It's a long clip, so if you want the highlights, skip to about 3:50 for some erotic denim dancing, and then to about 1:00 till the end of the clip. That's the money shot!

I'm finally putting my money where my anglo mouth is. Today, after work, I'm heading over to the Halifax branch of the Alliance Francaise and taking a level test so I can start taking French classes in the fall. Time to get serieux. Learning French is not only one of my goals for the year (at least starting the process), but it's one of my life goals. Just gotta do it.

By all that is holy, I should already be fluent. I took French classes in California and did pretty well. I took a French reading course at Carleton. I lived in Ottawa for three years and had plenty of opportunities to learn and practice (but never took advantage of them). Oh, and there was that whole two years in Belgium thing, but let's not go there. I was more interested in frites, travel, and beer at that time than hitting the books and making the French talk, although that's where I first learned the little that I know.

So there we go. I can do this. I got fairly decent at Japanese, and from that I learned that all it takes is the time and effort. My goal is to be able to put French on my resume by the time I'm done with my MLIS in two years. That's do-able, as that's how long I studied Japanese and I've put that on my resume (with disclaimers). And one day I'll hopefully be able to read Camus and watch Godard in the original versions. Fantastique!

For those who guessed that Gorby is Erin's, Ikadigan is mine, and Peter Henri is Alison's, you are CORRECT. In less exciting news, it looks like Gorby won by a landslide. Screw all of you. Except for the brave souls who will support Ikadigan until death. The best news is that at least Ikadigan did better than Alison's lowly Peter Henri, which came up with a big fat GOOSE EGG. That goes along well with the second part of Peter Henri's name, the Disillusioned Onion.

In more disillusionment, the Halifax IWW is suffering from wobbly-style attrition. Folks are heading west in search of work, although they're heading to places where there are IWW branches already (including Toronto). But enthusiasm is still high. I think we just need to get started with workplace organizing and stop wasting time trying to get a GMB up and running before hand.

Jesus, if I have to go through one more union pension file here at the archives, I'm going to stab myself with a rolled up quarterly financial report. Oh, how I long for the strike files!