Take Your Blazer and Get Out.

The meaning of blog

2010-05-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

My blog is having an existential crisis right now. What is the meaning of its life? What is the purpose of updating it? Who am I trying to communicate with and why?

I would like to build a personal website and import this blog onto it, but realistically, that's probably not going to happen for a while and it's been an excuse for letting my current digital home stagnate. That's what this blog feels like - a little apartment I rent on the web, the place on the internets where I take my shoes off and keep my coffee maker.

Anyway, it seems important, for some reason, to explain why I haven't been home much lately. Maybe my anxiety about my infrequent updates is just part of my general anxiety about keeping routines and order, but it feels important. I'm just not sure why. And I have cultivated a small audience here, which is kind of cool, so I thought I'd just, you know, leave a note on the fridge for you saying I'll be back soon.

Two weeks

2010-03-21T19:04:00.001-07:00

In two weeks, the phrase "today is the first day of the rest of your life" will actually mean something. The big gray question mark of life after school.

The amount of work I have to do won't follow the reliable schedule of bearable in September/January, busy in October/February, insane in November/March.

No more writing papers, or going to class.

Most of the people I know will move away.

It's such a massive concept to wrap my head around. The question "why should I get out of bed today?" has had such a clear answer for so long.

When I took a year off after my undergrad and went backpacking in Southeast Asia, I didn't like not having a clear answer to that question. Most days, it was "because I want to eat a mango in a hammock."

I'm not sure how applicable that experience will be.

I may have to change the title of my blog

2010-03-03T05:57:00.001-08:00

This week in my magazine writing class, we've been assigned two articles about journalistic fraudsters - people who have made up quotes, sources and stories and gotten away with it for long periods of time.

One was by a former Carleton journalism undergrad who got top grades by faking her assignments. The other was about Stephen Glass, who was the American magazine world's "it" writer until his spectacular web of lies unraveled.

They both seem to have been motivated by stress, perfectionism and fear of failure rather than laziness. I bet this happens way more than people think, especially in class assignments that don't actually get published and the source never sees. I think this says a lot about the absolutely insane pressures of j-school, the middle class cult of high achievement, and journalism in general. Not that that makes it right. It just explains it.

Anyway, in the article "Shattered Glass," the writer describes Stephen Glass getting kicked out of the office:

"Lane ordered Glass to leave his office. Glass pleaded to be allowed to take his Rolodex and some files from the hard drive of his computer, but Lane refused to let him. Instead, the only thing that Stephen Glass carried out of The New Republic — after Lane had searched his pockets — was a blue blazer."

He took his blazer and got out.

Not exactly a moment in journalism history I want to be associated with.

Hopefully no one would think this is some sort of obscure reference, like a serial killer leaving clues for the police.

Right?

How I work on my MRP

2010-02-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

(My MRP, by the way, is that thing I went to Malaysia to research and am now expected to turn into a knock-your-socks-off radio documentary)

1) Put aside an entire day to work on it.

2) Go to the gym, grocery shop, clean the apartment, read the paper and faff around on the internet.

3) Holy @#$%, it's 4:00 p.m.

4) Open the word document with my script

5) UUUUUUUUGGGGHHHH

6) Mentally prepare myself to look at it

7) Spend 15 minutes making notes and thinking about what I need to do next

8) Make a few small changes

9) Decide I need to do in depth research on Malaysian sodomy laws in order to fact check a small point

10) Realize I can't do anything else without going back and listening to an interview

11) EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW

12) Spend 20 minutes mentally preparing myself to listen to the interview

13) I SOUND LIKE SUCH AN IDIOT

14) Kick myself for 20 minutes for sounding like an idiot

15) Kick myself for not getting more sound

16) Actually write or rewrite the section

17) Make a congratulatory cup of tea and faff around on the internet some more

18) Realize it's 8:00

19) Panic

20) Blog

21) Repeat.

A thoughtful analysis of the 2010 Olympic opening ceremonies

2010-02-13T11:51:00.000-08:00

I have one of those lefty, urban, ivory tower liberal arts undergraduate degrees they love to hate on Fox News. That means I can't open a newspaper or turn on the TV without analyzing how what I'm reading or watching reinforces or resists the gendered, racialized and class-based structures of power that underpin society.

Trust me, it's a curse. Sometimes I just want to watch Dr. Phil in peace.

I watched the Olympics opening ceremonies last night. And let me tell you, Canadian studies, women's studies and sociology departments across the country are about to have a field day. This is how VANOC decided the Canadian identity should be explained to the world:

A long, long time ago in the frozen and virginal wasteland called Canada, the Aboriginal Peoples who lived there put wolf pelts on their heads and danced around. Their dancing awakened the four great totem poles from their flaccid slumber beneath the snow and they shuddered to erect, majestic attention.

Immigrant communities joined the Aboriginal Peoples and danced with them in musket- and smallpox-free harmony. Some skinny women tottered onto the ice in six inch stilettos and, praise be the Olympic magic, sang songs without falling down.

More skinny women, clad in white Sexy Santa costumes, led the world's Olympic athletes onto the ice to join the dance. Then there were some crazy special effects where whales looked like they were jumping out of the ice and the dancers flew around on wires like Peter Pan and everybody was like, whoa.

Then some people fiddled and tap danced really fast. I left around this point, but I hear Wayne Gretzky lit the cauldron and not a hologram of Terry Fox, which is disappointing.

So I think VANOC's talking points about Canada here are the following:
- Everyone here gets along with each other and respects the environment
- We worship at the feet of our rulers, the Great White Penises of the North
- Canadian women are hot

Field. Day.

Old new journalist encounters new new journalism; is bewildered.

2010-02-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

I did a class presentation on Tom Wolfe last week and I stumbled upon this interview with Tom Wolfe. I still can't get over it. In case you're too lazy to click the link, here's how it goes:

"New York: Hi. I'm Tim from New York magazine.
Tom Wolfe: Hello, Tim. You don't do podcasts, do you?

[Brief pause for understandable disorientation.]

New York: No, but I do video stories. Why do you ask?
Tom Wolfe: Because I still don't know what they are. And I've never known anyone that ever watched one.

New York: You don't know what podcasts are?
Tom Wolfe: I have a vague idea. As far as I can tell, nobody ever watches them.
New York: They're just audio though.
Tom Wolfe: They check out, but they don't check in.
New York: [Mental double take.] Are you pulling my leg? You really don't know what a podcast is?
Tom Wolfe: To be honest, I don't know what it is. I know that you sit in front of a microphone and have a conversation, and some way or another, it comes out on a screen or…

[Pause for a brief explanation of the nature of podcasts and how, for example, one could download an interview with him and listen to it on an iPod or in while driving.]

Tom Wolfe: Oh, see, that part I didn't know.
New York: Do you think now that you know you'll try it out?
Tom Wolfe: No. I never wear earphones in the car."

That's right: The man went from a career built on uncovering trends and subcultures before they even existed and totally reinventing journalism in the process to being totally bewildered by new media.

How does that happen? Is it inevitable that at some point, you get stuck in your ways and miss huge cultural and technological changes? When it happens to me, will I know, and will there be anything I can do about it?

Dear New York Magazine: Please don't sue me for copying and pasting that interview.

Take your nomination form and...

2010-01-26T13:43:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year when a young Carleton student's student council ambitions turn to nominations.

All over campus, these fresh faced and nerdy young go getters are pounding the pavement. They have to get a certain number of nominations to get their name on the ballot. I think. I haven't actually researched this, because I don't care about CUSA bureaucracy, not even enough to spend five seconds googling it.

But these kids care enough to want to involve themselves in it. And they either don't have enough friends to get the required number of nominations out of people they know, or the threshold is set pretty high. So they stand in the hallways and cafeteria lines, harassing strangers to sign their nomination form.

I have a great ready made excuse for not signing petitions or political forms of any kind. I'm a journalism student. Sorry, random student. What if I were called to report on some future CUSA scandal and needed to use you as a source? I can't affiliate myself with you, or anyone else, politically.

Usually this throws people off enough to give up. But not these people. "It's not an endorsement!" they persist. "It's just a nomination. All you're doing is giving me a chance to run."

See, here's the thing though. Let's imagine that the KKK decides it's going to run a slate in the CUSA elections. One of their representatives taps you on the shoulder while you're waiting in line for a bagel. He asks you to sign his nomination form - after all, it's not an endorsement, and why would you stand in anyone's way who wants to participate in the democratic process?

For all I know, these people could be members of the KKK. They could be planning to run on a platform of requiring all students to pledge allegiance to Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il every morning. They could be planning to ban student groups whose views and activities they don't like - which actually happened at York, with some pro-life groups.

Do I support these fictional people's right to run in a student election? Of course. Do I want to put my signature down nominating them? Hell no.

You can tell me it's not an endorsement until you're blue in the face. Even if I wasn't on a strict non-political journalist's diet, I still wouldn't help anyone out with my signature who isn't prepared to give me some vague idea of what they're going to use it for.

Yawn-a-palooza

2010-01-17T18:24:00.001-08:00

A young woman chewed gum and stared into space as a burly man in leather tied her up with white nylon rope.

About ten people watched listlessly as he tied a series of increasingly elaborate knots. Eventually he pulled the rope attached to a wooden frame and hoisted her off the ground. Her long, dark brown hair swung downwards. A half-hearted smile briefly interrupted her gum chewing.

The crowd dispersed. There was no applause.

“You can be next!” announced another, older burly man in leather. In response, he got more blank stares. The crowd shuffled over to inspect a table of whips and riding crops.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Sexapalooza Ottawa, a trade show for people who make a living convincing people to spend money on one of the only things in life that’s free. The spectacle you just witnessed took place in “the dungeon,” a red polyester tent so kinky and incriminating that two sandwich boards and an inflatable devil warn you in both official languages that there are to be Absolutely No Pictures. Who knows whose delicate sensibilities might be offended had images of that fully clothed brunette ended up on Facebook.

To be fair, it was 4 p.m. in Ottawa’s decaying Lansdowne Park, which isn’t normally the time and place for getting loose and crazy. Still, these people shelled out 20 bucks for the privilege of perusing the highest concentration of dildos per square foot in the city. You’d think someone could have mustered a “Take your top off!”

Alas, the only person who seemed interested in anyone taking his or her top off was the event’s M.C. A blonde woman dressed in a military uniform, she took to the microphone throughout the night to assure the crowd the only reason we weren’t all having a wild orgy right now was city regulations.

“It’s getting hot in here,” she whooped. “Maybe everybody should just take off all their clothes! Nope, sorry, regulations won’t let us do that.”

She was similarly reassuring as the crowd watched a half-asleep stripper called Misha Manx reveal nipples covered with black electrical tape. “Regulations don’t permit it here,” she apologized, “but come on down to the Playmate club!”

But no one looked like they were in the mood to stick dollar bills in ol’ Misha’s g-string. The yuppie-looking couples tended to keep their arms wrapped tightly around each other, as if to dispel any suspicion they might be there for reasons other than improving their healthy, heterosexual, monogamous sex lives. Women in their 20s stuck together in groups, making sure to giggle frequently so no one would think they were actually interested in pubic shavers or strap-on harnesses. And lone middle aged men kept their ball caps firmly over their eyes as they inspected porn DVDs with titles like Big Black Titties.

In fact, one of the few people who seemed to be enjoying himself was a man on stilts who kept flashing a pair of rubber boobs at anyone who looked his way. “Woo!” he yelled as he opened his vest for the hundredth time.

Woo.

The 2000s: They weren't all bad.

2010-01-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

Every end of decade list I've seen has concluded the previous decade sucked pretty bad. Time Magazine even called it the worst decade ever. This seems a bit much (Great Depression? WWII?), but there were some undeniably crappy things that happened over the last ten years.

However, I refuse to let the decade of my young adulthood go down in history as one long, violent, bad weather suckfest. There were at least a few things that were OK about the 2000s, right?

This is my short but sweet best of the 2000s better-late-than-never New Year's list.

5) Flat shoes. I can't remember exactly when flats came in style, but they've definitely been around for most of the decade. I feel as though the fact that it's stylish and socially acceptable for women to wear flats to all but the most formal occasions has made the lives of half the human race a lot more bearable over the last ten years. Throw yoga pants in there too. Basically, every time you feel like whining about the last decade, just think to yourself, "at least I don't have to wear foundation garments."

4) Cats on the internet. This item was brought to you by Kate Harper. For some reason, cats and the internet go together like, well, cats in sinks. And cats in things they're not supposed to be in. And pictures of cats and hilarious text captions.

3) Social media in general. C'mon... #iranelection? Social media is often dumb and over-hyped, but occasionally incredible.

2) TV. It may not have been an epic decade for music or other mass pop culture. But I am going to go out on a limb and call this a truly great decade for TV. The Wire, Mad Men, most of Buffy, Battlestar... smart, engaging, intellectual stuff. TV on DVD really freed up the medium to do long form story telling.

1) Barack Obama getting elected. Whatever you think of the man, I definitely felt like I was part of one of those generation defining moments when I watched that election.

Flimsy? Maybe. Does this list make up for all the bad stuff that happened? Nope. But I was lucky, and I had a pretty good decade. I'm not quite ready to throw it into Ms. Dion's "trash can of history."

A series of questions

2009-12-26T10:57:00.001-08:00

I got a collection of articles by Lester Bangs for Christmas. He was a rock music critic in the '70s for Rolling Stone. His writing is in the same "new journalism" category as Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe - first person, stream of consciousness, lots of parties and drugs and weirdos, etc.

This has inspired a series of questions.

1) Whatever happened to this "new journalism?" Why do I get the distinct feeling I would not be nearly as successful if I tried to launch my career with a first-person dope-fueled 3,000 word article written on a cocktail napkin at a Hell's Angels party?

2) Speaking of which, I shout this question into the cyber-void for the millionth time: What's with the hysteria over kids these days posting pictures of themselves drinking on Facebook? These guys wrote about dropping acid as casually as a Gen Y might write a status update about going to gym on the way to work. And everyone thought they were cool and gave them sweet jobs with major magazines.

3) If these guys were writing today, who would they write about? Do we even have youth subcultures any more? Are hipsters the Gen Y answer to beats and punks? Wow, is that ever depressing.

4) Why is Gen Y so boring? At least Gen X was ironic and postmodern about selling out. I'm not sensing the irony.

5) Is there a fake Hunter S. Thompson Twitter account? If not, I might have to create it.

Who's trying to kill the babies?

2009-12-15T19:42:00.001-08:00

Last week I joked to Sonya that I was going to pitch a story investigating a conspiracy to kill babies through faulty consumer products. It seems like every day I hear about another baby product recall.

Am I crazy? Consider this:

- Nov. 9: Strollers that amputate fingers recalled
- Nov. 23: Drop side cribs that trap babies in the side recalled
- Dec. 8: Baby hammocks that can wedge babies into the fabric recalled
- And today's coup de grace: ALL roll up style blinds recalled because of the potential for baby strangulation. This message is brought to you by a creepy and obnoxious cartoon superbaby, a spokesperson for the Window Covering Safety Council (I'll save that for a future blog post: I Can't Believe it's an Organization).

SuperBaby #4 -- Roman Shades, Roll Up Blinds Product Recall from Window Covering Safety Council on Vimeo.

Seriously, someone call Nancy Drew or the Scooby Gang before any more babies get hurt.

Riots, not diets part II

2009-12-12T12:25:00.000-08:00

I have been going to a new gym for the last two weeks. It's a franchise of a certain popular chain. While I was walking downtown one day, I noticed it was right next door to where I was going to be doing an internship, and thought to myself that it would be really convenient to go there after work. I looked online and discovered it had a deal - 14 days for $14. Perfect. I signed up.

I was informed that there was a free orientation for new members. Great, I thought. I figured this would be where they do a fitness assessment and give you a training session with a bunch of exercises to do.

I showed up and looked around. It was shiny and new looking. The change room had hair driers and bamboo plants. I had never seen so much Lulu Lemon in my life.

I met the woman who was assigned to give me the orientation. I filled out some forms. She walked me around the gym - "These are the cardio machines." "This is where they have the group classes." "This is our fitness machine circuit."

She asked me where I usually work out. I said the Carleton gym. "Oh, we get a lot of people here from Carleton. They say they just can't handle that gym. I hear it's horrible and crowded."

Actually, this here gym was more crowded than I had ever seen Carleton's, which is saying a lot. The Carleton gym has a brand new cardio room with big screen TVs. It has a lot less scary looking men on steroids. Also, it's free.

She kept asking me what my goals are. I wasn't sure what to answer. Keep fit and have fun? "No, but what are your GOALS?" Be fit enough to survive the zombie apocalypse? Jeez, I dunno.

Then she sat me down at the same table I filled out the forms and extolled the benefits of a one year membership. I figured this was coming. It was kind of fun, actually, trying to see her figure out a way to convince me. "I'll knock off a bunch of money for you." "I have no idea if I'll be in Ottawa past April." "You can transfer your membership to any other location." "No, you don't understand. I might be in New York. I might be in Singapore. I might be in Iqaluit." "Ummm.... so you're really not interested in a membership." "Nope. Sure aren't."

At this point, she looked significantly less interested in me. She asked if I had any questions. I said: "Well, I thought this was an orientation to, you know, the gym. Like, how to use things, not just where they are."

"Oh, we have that too." "How much is it?" "Free."

Well, sign me up, lady. I'm going to milk these $14 for everything they're worth.

I showed up the next day to discover that two other people had been slotted in to receive the same "orientation." A beefy guy showed up ten minutes late. The orientation consisted of him having each of us try an exercise on the weight machine circuit. Real helpful.

One girl who was also doing the orientation kept asking the same types of questions. How many calories does this exercise burn? Is it true that you shouldn't do ab exercises if you're trying to lose stomach fat?

Then I started looking around me and realized something. I was working out in Eating Disorders "R" Us.

The walls are covered in posters that have pictures of pudgy ginger bread men that inform me I should keep going to the gym because the average person gains seven to 11 pounds over the holiday season. My membership card has a little chart on the back where I'm encouraged to track my weight loss. Other posters inform me that I can lose 80 per cent more weight three times faster if I work out with a personal trainer (I have NO idea what that can possibly be based on, unless they mean I can lose 80% more weight in my wallet).

I also figured out why that lady kept prodding me about my "goals." She wanted me to say I want to lose 10 pounds and two inches in my waist before going on my New Year's cruise in the Caribbean, or something, so she could suggest more things that cost money to help me "reach my goals."

If I told her that, the ethical thing to do would probably be to suggest I see a doctor about my body image issues. I have a feeling she wouldn't, though.

Do you see why I have such a weird relationship with working out? I'd be lying if I said weight maintenance wasn't part of my motivation for staying in shape. But this part of gym culture sickens me, and this is the worst manifestation of it I've ever seen: Keep people paranoid about their weight so they'll keep shelling out dollars for your stupid swanky gym membership.

I recently discovered Stumptuous from Bitch magazine. It has a post about lies they tell you at the gym. You should look at it. I was told a lot of those lies over the past two weeks.

But the woman behind that website also made a great point in the interview I read that helped me set aside a lot of my feminist guilt about going to the gym. It's a good thing for women to be strong. You can be invested in being in shape without being fat-phobic. There's a big, beautiful, happy medium between being a couch potato and being an anorexic, fat-hating aerobics addict.

Anyway. I miss the Carleton gym.

Limited time offer!

2009-12-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

I've been chase producing for a morning radio show. That means booking guests, thinking up ideas for guests to book, and writing scripts for the host, mostly. I like it a lot.

But lately I've been thinking about how the skill set necessary for journalism is very similar to the skill set required for a certain other, much less desirable occupation: Telemarketing.

Things you have to be good at for both telemarketing and journalism:

1) Calling strangers out of nowhere. All day. Over and over. I've lost all sense of telephone social boundaries.

2) Convincing people to do crazy things. I imagine the skills required to convince someone to come to the station at seven a.m. so the entire City of Ottawa can hear about their former OxyContin addiction over breakfast is similar to the skills required to convince someone to Act Now for Five Easy Payments of $20 and a Free Gift!

3) Walking the fine line between scaring people off and closing the deal. It's really hard to figure out when I'm crossing the line into pushy. Especially since I don't have social boundaries any more. But it also sucks to lose someone you could have convinced if you'd tried a little harder.

At least I'm employable in one field.

Discovered: BiblioCommons

2009-12-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

It's internship time again. Today my producer plunked an article about this library catalogue social networking service Ottawa just started using. She asked me to see if I could get the founder on the show.

Turns out the first library system to try out this cutting edge high tech thingamabob is my home town of Oakville, Ontario.

It's sort of like Amazon, but for library catalogues, but cooler. You can review books and other stuff you've checked out and make lists of favourites, and you can follow people whose recommendations you like. You see the reviews every time you browse the catalogue, whether you use the social networking features or not. And if you follow people who have similar tastes to yours, it makes recommendations for you based on your reviews.

According to the article I read, this guy DavidB is 29 and lives just down the street from the White Oaks branch and won $1000 in book gift certificates for using BiblioCommons the most. I also grew up just down the street from the White Oaks branch. I'm wracking my brain to figure out if I known any 29-year-old David Bs.

Say hello to my little friend

2009-11-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

The other day I came home from school, turned on the light and screamed. There was a mouse on my counter. It ran under the dish drainer.

I felt silly for having such a stereotypical response to seeing a mouse. It really wasn't anything to scream about. It was cute and little.

The person subletting my apartment during the summer told me she had a mouse problem, but I hadn't seen any evidence since I moved back in. I'm not sure why he decided to come back. I guess it's getting cold outside.

I have decided to name him Rex Mousey.

I keep meaning to set the no-kill trap my dad gave me, but I haven't been bothered. As roommates go, Rex isn't so bad. He doesn't seem to be eating my food or building nests out of my toilet paper, just hanging out and staying warm.

He poops on my counter and doesn't pay rent, but hey, nobody's perfect.

Carleton's Master of Journalism program: Education you can't get anywhere else.

2009-11-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

Things I learned last Monday:

1) If someone from a Parliamentary committee says you can film their hearing, you still need a press pass.

2) If you don't get a press pass, you're going to have an interesting time getting your camera equipment through security.

3) That person who said sure, you can film the hearing, I'm sure it won't be a problem, ACTUALLY means she will ask the committee at the last minute and there's a good chance someone will, in fact, have a problem with it.

4) You can't film in the hallway of Parliament without permission from the Sergeant At Arms.

5) If you try to explain to the Sergeant At Arms' assistant why you need to film in the hallway of Parliament without a press pass, they will basically tell you you're an idiot and call the head of the Press Gallery.

6) The head of the press gallery will actually tell you you're an idiot, but if you pull a sad puppy dog face and emphasize you're just a lowly student and have now learned your lesson, he might let you film in the hallway anyway.

7) Every security guard who walks by will ask you what the hell you're doing and who said you could do that.

8) When you finally leave and need to shoot some B-roll of the Parliament buildings, there will probably be some guys filming an amateur hip hop video and you'll have the lyrics "I cheated on my girlfriiiiieeeeennnd..." in the background of your shots.

Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside

2009-11-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Some day, I'm going to make a photo essay of Ottawa's hidden ugly side. Homeless people smoking crack in front of Parliament. The canal in that muddy, smelly stage between drying up and freezing over. People lining up at the Salvation Army across from tourist trap restaurants in the market.

A lot of it would be done in a three block radius from my apartment. Hell, a lot of the pictures would be OF my apartment. The abandoned convenience store next door looks like the Blair Witch house, and of course, my front porch still has those delicious grill marks from last year's fire.

All cities try to hide their urban decay behind a picturesque and tourist-friendly front. But Ottawa does it so well it actually fools people. You have to actually live here to see beyond Parliament, beaver tails and well maintained waterfront bike paths.

My bike has been in the shop for the past week, so I've been walking to school. The stretch of Bronson from my apartment to Carleton has some of Centretown's worst urban decay. When I'm biking, I take a less depressing side street. Walking by these houses and the people who live in them twice a day is a whole different experience.

These houses are huge and bordering on historic. They're in a prime downtown location. And most of them are vacant or inhabited by a mix of students and drug addicts and crumbling to rot. It's fascinating.

And that's just the part that looks ugly on the outside. There's a whole world of office buildings and restaurants that look world class on the outside with who knows what kinds of backroom political and business deals going down on the inside.

Some day I'll make this photo essay. Right now, let's stick with breaking blogger's block. Sorry about the three week hiatus, everyone.

To whom it may concern:

2009-10-26T18:48:00.001-07:00

Dear major national newspaper/public broadcaster/Starbucks:

I believe I am an excellent candidate for a summer position as a reporter/chase producer/barista.

I have been a fan of your newspaper/radio or television network/coffee’s crack-like effects for as long as I can remember. My intimate familiarity with your editorial approach/network’s tone/caffeine-induced gut rot will allow me to hit the ground running.

My biggest strength is my multimedia and web proficiency/creative story ideas/ability to look at your coffee cup inspirational messages all day without vomiting. In my previous work experience, I have written stories on a wide variety of topics/worked on tight deadlines/worn a lot of hair nets successfully.

Working with your newspaper/radio or television show/franchise would be an important stepping stone on the path to my career goals as a James Bond-like international correspondent/Rachel Maddow/broke 20-something who lives with her parents.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Claire

Subject verb object

2009-10-24T06:18:00.000-07:00

Know what makes me laugh?

All my friends in journalism school write their emails in news style now.

One sentence per paragraph.

Sometimes two. But not very often.

All my profs do it too.

I have an academic reading review due Tuesday. I don't remember how to write any other way.

I find myself thinking "What's my lead going to be?" for 15-page research papers and cover letters.

It's a sickness.

Help.

Downtown Ottawa destroyed in birthday rampage

2009-10-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

A 30-storey Japanese monster known only as Megababe destroyed most of downtown Ottawa in a Sunday night rampage.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my entire life,” said Pam, a 78-year-old Ottawa resident who declined to give her last name.

“I was returning from Maxwell’s, I mean Diver’s house, I mean my bridge club meeting at around 2 a.m. when I saw Megababe stumble right into the walkway connecting the Rideau Centre to The Bay.”

Only a charred and flattened path from Kent and Lisgar to the Byward Market remains. All residents in the area have been evacuated until further notice.

Employees of a number of nearby LCBOs and Beer Stores are in treatment for shock after Megababe swiped off the roofs of their buildings and lumbered off with their supplies of gin and Max Ice. Police estimate 80 people were injured in a 157-car pile up when the creature stopped to drink her stash in the middle of the intersection of Rideau and Sussex.

Miraculously, no fatalities have been recorded.

Police air-lifted the giant sleeping creature into custody at around 5 a.m. Part of the Peace Tower, which she was spooning at the time, was uprooted in the process.

The incident has sparked a viral “Megababe for P.M.” movement on the Internet. Liberal insiders say she may be nominated for the party leadership as a result of her newfound popularity.

“A 24-year-old, 30-storey tall, binge drinking Japanese monster with purple leggings and a duff puff would be just the breath of fresh air this party needs to attract women and youth back to the Liberal party,” said the unnamed senior source.

The behemoth’s roar of “BIRTHDAY” throughout the night is the only clue officials have as to why Megababe chose this time and place to strike. Some residents claimed to have seen her jump into the Rideau Canal last year, leaving them to wonder whether she would soon return.

“I shrugged that off as just another Ottawa urban legend,” said one Ottawa police officer. “I didn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to jump into that cesspool, even a drunk prehistoric harbinger of doom.”

“Next time we’ll take those reports more seriously.”

Blind luck

2009-10-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Know what's weird? How no one in Carleton journalism ever seems to hand in something that's complete and total crap.

I'm not talking about things that aren't very good. That business article I wrote for Reporting Methods, where I used Sonya's accountant cousin as my financial expert and pulled a quote from an interview with a Rogers media relation person who told me I had no story, comes to mind.

I'm talking about things that are the product of so many things falling through at the last minute you can't pull yourself out of the hole you've dug. Articles with no sources, for example, or quotes from totally irrelevant people. TV stories with three minutes of dead gasping fish rolling behind the voice over (OK, that was one time). Radio shows with dead air filled by the host tap dancing.

It would be nice to think this is because we're all so amazingly talented and professional we wouldn't let this happen. But part of it is definitely total, sheer, statistically mind-boggling luck. Someone always calls at the last possible second. Suddenly, you overhear a couple at the grocery store and discover they're exactly the source you're looking for. Crazy things like that.

One of the hardest things about journalism is a lot of it depends on other people. If no one calls you back or agrees to be interviewed, you're out of luck. But somehow, something always pulls through. Seriously. Always. Like I said, there's never been a complete, total unsalvagable disaster.

What are the odds? Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself.

Discovered: Awful Library Books

2009-10-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

OK, so I discovered Awful Library Books a long time ago, but their most recent post is so hilarious that I decided now is the time to enrich your life as well. It's a blog by two Michigan librarians. Other book titles include "Those Amazing Leeches," "A Passion for Donkeys," and "Jewish Chess Masters on Stamps."

It's comforting to know that anybody can be cool.

Warning: Not for the squeamish (but why are you squeamish?)

2009-10-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to feel like I blog about Penelope Trunk all the time... this is the third post where I mention her (the other two being Discovered: Penelope Trunk and my last J-School TA blog post where I link to her time management article). But I have to say, this video solidified my fan-dom.

There's been quite a bit of controversy over a tweet Penelope Trunk sent recently: "I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f----ed-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."

I have to admit, when I read that, my initial reaction was shock. I clearly wasn't alone. She says 70 people un-followed her. OK, I thought to myself, I'm all for people getting used to and getting over "unprofessional" personal stuff floating around on the internet. But that has to be crossing some sort of line.

Then I read her blog post defending it, and watched that video where she totally takes the interviewer to task (in my opinion). She points out:
- A lot of women have a miscarriage at some point in their life. Miscarriages take weeks (I didn't know this). If they're working, women can't just take the whole time off. That means there are a lot of women having miscarriages at work. Why is no one talking about this?
- Almost all the reaction was about her talking about her miscarriage in such a public way. Only one person, apparently, commented on the fact she has to wait three weeks and drive to Chicago to get an abortion. Whether you agree with abortion or not, it's a right women have in Wisconsin, and that's a huge burden.
- To all the people who are shocked at what they see as her casual treatment of losing her pregnancy, she says: "A miscarriage is preferable to an abortion. Even the Pope would agree with that." Touche.

Are we really all so totally disgusted by women's bodily functions that we rush to shut up anyone who wants to talk about them? Apparently, the answer is yes. I've never had a miscarriage. But I can imagine that sitting at work or in class for three weeks while you go through one, knowing that everyone would think you're disgusting and unprofessional if you brought it up, would be a terribly lonely experience.

You convinced me, P-Trunk. Nice work.

Goin' on a coug hunt, gonna catch a big one...

2009-09-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm amazed by how easy journalism can be. Sometimes you get lucky and things just fall right into your lap. That was the case on Friday night.

I had to do a radio doc for Midweek, a weekly current affairs show on the campus radio station. This class/show may kill me, by the way - every week I have to come up with more than one item, often long form like a five minute doc, plus possible same day items. Anyway, I watched that new Courtney Cox show Cougar Town and I thought I would investigate the mating habits of local cougars. I did some googling around and found out that Maxwell's, a bar on Elgin, is famous across the country as a cougar and cougar bait destination. I showed up on Friday night with a microphone and hoped for the best.

I want to preserve some material here that I’m not sure will make it in. I won’t use full names because these people probably would rather not have this blog come up if someone googles them.

Andy, the bartender who has worked at Maxwell’s for 22 years. Explained to me the cougar history of Ottawa: Apparently there was a bar called Hartwell’s that was a true cougar bar. It closed seven years ago and the clientele moved to Maxwell’s. Has witnessed a middle aged woman named Olga dump her beer in another woman’s purse who stole her seat, then hide behind the bar as the woman chased her.

Zak, a 20-year-old bus boy who gets groped when he goes onto the dance floor to clear glasses. “The worst I had was a woman fully wind up and spank me, so I just continued walking and decided not to acknowledge it… I don’t like to really acknowledge it. I think it’s awkward.”

Rod, bar staff. Once experienced full frontal cuppage as the woman looked him in the eye and laughed. “It’s not Chippendale’s or anything…. If a guy did that to a girl, he’d be tossed out in the street, but she was old enough to be my mom.”

Joe, 25-year-old cougar bait/cougar hunter. On why he loves cougars: “They teach you some things. They like to be in control.” On whether he thinks cougars are trendy right now: “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. I pretty much love cougars right now. And I’m planning on picking up several tonight.”

Pam (not her real name), 53-year-old self-identified cougar, grandmother, and Maxwell’s regular: “I just find that every once in a while we’ll get a younger crowd who will look at us and seem to think, you’re too old to be here. Like, oh my god, you’re too old. And to me, I think everybody should be lucky enough to know that at this age, we can still have fun. And at 53, what do you expect to be at this age? Do you expect to be at home knitting for your grandchildren?”

Liz: A Tribute

2009-09-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

As I prepare for a day that will start with a TA meeting at 9 am and probably end with tears in the radio editing suite at midnight, it seems like an appropriate time to tell the world how much I love my friend Liz.

The last time I saw Liz, she was wearing the kamikaze headband you see pictured here and a big red button button that said "je suis capable." She was drinking Old English out of a martini glass with ice she had scraped out of Michelle's freezer. She wasn't running around yelling "I'm a meercat! I'm a meercat!" like she was in this picture, but I bet if I had showed up a couple of hours earlier she would have been.

Liz likes to find strange boys at bars and parties, introduce them to you, say "I think you two would reeeeaaaaally get along," then run away and laugh as you try to get rid of them for the rest of the night. Liz once went to Canada's Wonderland and at the end of the day showed up on Michelle's lawn wearing only a bikini and a helmet. Liz does what she wants.

Liz just came back from a year of teaching in South Korea. She's about to jet off to South America, where she'll wear terry cloth tube dresses and drink more things out of martini glasses.

Liz likes to have existential crises about the purpose and direction of her life. Hopefully it will make her feel better if I admit that sometimes I'm jealous of the way she lives hers.

Fear and Loathing in American Politics

2009-09-13T16:03:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about the stuff that's been going on in American politics recently: the health care debates, the speech to school children, the guy who called Obama a liar in Congress. Partisanship, political divisions and racism are heating up to the point where it scares me.

There have definitely been insults hurled and accusations made that don't deserve serious debate or argument (the whole "Obama is secretly a Kenyan Muslim" thing being the most obvious to come to mind). But I really think the problem is that neither side makes an effort to understand the other. People tend to camp themselves in either the left or the right at a very young age and stick with it. Having a political position is fine: good, even. But refusing to make a serious effort to empathize with and learn about the arguments made by the other side is dangerous.

I read this essay by Mark Lilla today called "Taking the Right Seriously" and it really made an impression on me. He argues that it hurts liberals to teach courses that treat conservative thought as a pathology, and that it hurts conservatives to engage in a liberal academic witch hunt. He wrote about a professor, Paul Lyons, who taught a course on American conservative thought:

"The students had loud debates over Reagan's legacy, Bush's foreign policy, religious freedom, abortion, even the "war on Christmas"—and nobody broke into tears or ran to the dean to complain. And the more the students argued, the more they came to respect one another. According to Lyons, students learned that that conservative guy was no longer just the predictable gun nut or religious fanatic. And the conservative students learned that they had to make real arguments, not rely on clichés and sound bites recycled from Fox News."

Saying universities are full of lefties and socialists is kind of a cliche. But I had plenty of undergraduate classes where the reading lists didn't have one single book or article that didn't come from a leftist point of view. And, to be fair, I'd be willing to bet the opposite is true of the schools in the United States that have abstinence-only sex ed and teach creationism in science classes.

This is how you explain conservatives in the US calling liberals terrorists and commies, and liberals calling conservatives fascists and nazis. It doesn't get anyone anywhere. It breeds hate and hysteria. But if you're only exposed to one side of the argument, that's all you know how to do.

I'm not sure how you break the cycle. But it's a serious problem, and it's not just an American problem. I'd like to take a class like the one described above. I bet a lot of other people would too.

Ode to Cambridge Food Mart

2009-09-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

My apartment doesn’t have much going for it, but living in the slanty shanty (a phrase I 100% stole from Laura - it describes it so well) has a few perks. These include:

- The world's cutest coffee shop, Raw Sugar, which is right across the street

- $1 samosas at the Indian grocery store around the corner

- Nine billion Chinese/Vietnamese/Japanese/Korean takeout restaurants within five minutes walking distance

- 10 minute walk home from the bars on Bank Street

But the biggest perk of all is now gone. I returned to Ottawa to find the convenience store that used to be next door is closed. Very closed. Stripped down, abandoned and probably soon home to vagrant squatters closed.

Convenience Store Man warned me this would happen. A few weeks before I moved out for the summer he told me rent was getting too expensive and he'd be forced to shut down soon. I took this for the latest in his constant stream of endearing cantankerous old man complaints, but it turns out he wasn't bluffing.

Do you have any idea how fantastic it is to live next to a convenience store?? When I ran out of milk part way into pouring it on a bowl of cereal, I bought more and came back before the cereal got soggy. I drew the line at going there in a bathrobe or a towel, but other than that, I bought my morning Globe and Mail in all sorts of states of dress and undress. He even had movie rentals. Movie rentals! Next door!

I will miss your very convenient store, Convenience Store Man, but more importantly, I will miss you. I'll miss the way you responded with "I'm used to it" every time I apologized for interrupting your chain smoking to buy something. I'll miss the sign you put up in the winter, informing customers to Please Watch their Step as the Landlady has Repeatedly Refused to Remove Ice from the Front Walk and Stairs. I'll miss the way you asked me the same questions about the weather in the same order even if I had already been there twice that day, like a tape recorder, or a robot.

I never knew your name, Convenience Store Man. I would be willing to bet you don't remember mine, either. But you and your amazingly convenient store were a part of my life, and now you are gone forever.

Gone, along with my credit card information, which I handed over when I opened my movie rental account.

I've got my eye on that Visa statement.

An eye misted over with tears.

Help.

2009-08-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

So I have this new job.

I'm the "TA Mentor" for journalism. Basically, the idea is that an experienced TA helps new TAs with training and support. I was invited to apply for this job in the spring and I did, without having much information about what I was getting myself into.

Here's the thing: In other departments, the mentor's main job throughout the year is to organize workshops and informal meet-ups for the TAs. I said in my application that this absolutely will not work for journalism, because every hour of free time is precious. If somebody had tried to schedule monthly meetings "just to chat" about how our TA jobs were going, we would have spat out our red bull as we burst out laughing and gone back to our laptops. If someone had tried to force us, there would have been blood.

I repeated this in a meeting I had yesterday with the new graduate supervisor and the director of this mentor program. I suggested that if I was going to run workshops, the best time to do it would be during orientation week, before the insanity started. This seemed like an especially good idea since this year they're not doing the three-hour giant lecture that's essentially an introduction to being a TA. Instead, they get a one-hour pep talk on why being a TA is important and why you shouldn't slack off, and that's it.

"Great," they said. "We can schedule you in for one hour."

That's right. I have one hour to teach people who have never taught in their lives how to be a TA. One. Hour.

"So what else do you think you should do throughout the year, since you don't think anyone will come to workshops?"

Blink blink.

So here's what I have to work with: One extremely short hour with a captive audience, and one extremely long year with a group of people who are likely to react with murderous rage to anyone trying to add anything else to their plate.

Here are my extremely vague ideas for how I will justify my existence and paycheck:
- Make a lot of it web-based. There's a WebCT site that I'm supposed to run, but WebCT sucks and no one remembers to check it. So I'm thinking of starting another blog, with links to resources on stuff like time management and basic teaching skills, and inviting people to post on the blog as well. It would be nice if there were a way to make this private so that people can actually be candid about problems they're having, but I'm not sure how to do that. I think Yahoo Groups kind of work like that, but that would, again, be something you'd have to remember to log into. Is there a way to make a blog private? Or I could make it a Facebook group?
- Get people to write down what their teaching schedule and office hours are, so I can drop by and see how they're doing. Creepy? Helpful? What do you think?
- Get the MJ1 TAs in J1000, media law, and multimedia journalism together with the MJ2s who had that job last year together for a drink at Mike's Place
- Technically, since they're getting rid of that 3-hour lecture and there's no Gatineau retreat this year, the TAs will have those five hours of training that they're supposed to finish. So technically, they are supposed to go to workshops. What kind of workshops would be the most useful?

Last year after the "intro to being a TA" lecture, I remember a lot of people saying: That's it? That's all the training we get? I'm supposed to go and run a discussion group and decide people's marks now? So seriously: What kind of training and support do you wish you had, and what's the least annoying way to deliver it?

Seriously. Please tell me. I didn't realize when I was applying for this job that I wasn't just applying to be a "TA mentor," I was applying to DESIGN the TA mentorship program for journalism.

Reporter Barbie gets a makeover

2009-08-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Alright, this is getting ridiculous. First I started actually wearing makeup and non-sweat pants to class last year, and getting my hair cut more often than once every six months. Then it was the Lulu Lemon yoga pants. Now I find myself seriously considering taking things to a whole new level. I might just get a pedicure tomorrow.

I know, I know. But they're so cheap here. And my feet have taken quite a beating over the summer. I haven't worn socks in months, except to go running. I think they could use a little more care than my usual DIY amateurish slop of nail polish.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize I have questions. So many questions. Questions such as:
- Should I remove the aforementioned slop of nail polish before I go, which is now chipped to hell and embarassing?
- Should I clip my toenails first?
- Do they clip your toenails FOR YOU??? Ew.
- Will they judge my cracked heels and blisters?
- What kind of bourgeois monster am I, taking advantage of my powerful Canadian dollar to make some poor soul touch and stare at my horrible feet for that long?

I have heard that you're supposed to shave your legs before you go. Suddenly, I have a reason to be thankful for the months I spent last summer working at a pool store with a bunch of Oakville rich kids home from business school. Most of that summer was spent trying to keep my eyes from glazing over as my co-workers talked about pedicures. "I hate it when customers don't clean their automatic vacuum cleaners before they bring them in to be fixed. That's like going for a pedicure without shaving your legs first," is one gem of wisdom that has for some reason stuck in my mind.

That's about all I know, though. Help.

Merdeka!

2009-08-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

Things are wrapping up here in KL. The second annual sexuality rights festival, Seksualiti Merdeka, finished yesterday. Merdeka means independence, and it's timed to occur during the same month as Malaysian independence day.
Volunteers painted the walls of the art gallery where it was held. A lot of the art had political messages. It was a really lovely thing to see.
"I am HIV positive. So what??? Don't let me down... my friends, my family and my lover."

There were two bulletin boards where people could write stories of discrimination or acceptance on pieces of cloth and pin them to the wall.
"I was put in prison just because I'm a transsexual under the syariah law. In prison I was molested, teased, bullied, humiliated, just because I'm different. Why are people so cruel to us?"
"When I was nine, at the school assembly, a girl told everyone loudly that they would sin if they look at me because I don't wear a tudung (head scarf). My non-Malay friends asked if they will sin too, and she said yes. No one looked or talked to me for a whole week."

I really felt I was witnessing the beginning of something exciting. The air practically crackled with energy. It was a safe space, but it was also an open space. Straights, gays, transpeople, queers - the event brought all types together.

On a rational level, I don't believe in things happening for a reason. On a non-rational level, though, it's amazing how often things just... work out. I didn't plan to be in Malaysia for Seksualiti Merdeka. I didn't know the story of a budding activist movement was going to unfold right before my eyes. I didn't know anyone here at all - all my contacts were made over the internet.

In a way, Kuala Lumpur reminds me of Toronto. If you're only here for a few days and only see the obvious sights, it seems pretty dull. It's only when you scratch the surface and get to know the art, activism, and music going on underground that you really start to appreciate it.

And, like Toronto, I've started to think of it as home.

Jalan Jaksa

2009-08-11T02:37:00.000-07:00

I planned my one-week trip to Indonesia with no guide book. I made my decision to spend half of it in Jakarta based on nothing other than the fact that it seemed to make sense to visit the capital city. A few days before I left, I did some research online to see what there was to do there.

This is how the Lonely Planet online describes Jakarta: “Whether you love it or hate it, there is no escaping Jakarta, Indonesia’s overweight capital. This ‘Big Durian’ is filled with all the good and bad of Indonesian life... The first – or only – thought on most travellers’ minds is how quickly the city and its polluted streets can be left behind.”

I am fluent in Lonely Planetese. This is the translation in normal English: “Jakarta is a polluted, noisy, crowded and stressful city with not much for tourists to do. Bet you wish you read this before you booked your flight. Enjoy. Sucker.”

The Lonely Planet was right. The very first thing that happened to me was my taxi driver from the airport misunderstood or ignored my directions and dropped me off at an overpriced guest house in the middle of nowhere. I debated wandering around the city with no map and my heavy backpack looking for somewhere cheaper. Laziness won.

After I went to the film festival and met the organizer for lunch the next day, I found myself wandering around the city getting cat called and nearly run over. Not sure what to do with myself, I wandered in to a cafe to order an iced coffee and read a book.

Two Dutch sisters, Dionne and Lianna, sat down at the same table as me. We drank martinis. We went for dinner in the market food stalls. They invited me to come for a drink at a bar on Jalan Jaksa, the main backpacker street where their guest house is. This is the street I was trying to find when I was leaving the airport.

“Our guide book said it’s like Khao San Road in Bangkok,” said Dionne, rolling her eyes. “It is NOT like Khao San Road.”

Oh man, were they ever right.

Khao San is famous/notorious for being a 24-hour circus, where you can drink on the street and can’t escape the blaring techno music or people trying to sell you gigantic lighters. In a way, Jalan Jaksa IS sort of like Khao San - if it stuck around partying in Southeast Asia for a few too many years and woke up one morning realizing it was bankrupt and suffering from arthritis and alcoholism.

On Khao San, you can’t escape the neon signs and seizure-inducing strobe lights. On Jalan Jaksa, all they have is one sad looking banner spelling out the name of the street in sagging and half burnt-out Christmas lights. On Khao San, everyone drinks like it’s New Year’s. On Jalan Jaksa, everyone drinks because if they stop drinking, they’ll remember they’re on Jalan Jaksa.

Anyway, so there I was, sitting on a plastic patio set drinking beer with two Dutch sisters, trying to forget I was on Jalan Jaksa.

One of the bar owners took a liking to Lianna. Dionne and I resisted their attempts to get us to sit at their table until they started brandishing a bottle of tequila.

So there I was, sitting on a wooden bar stool, doing tequila shots with two Dutch sisters, a Brazilian guy who came out of nowhere when he saw the tequila, and the two gap-toothed and robustly moustachioed men who own the bar. One of them decided I was his new friend. “My daughter, my daughter,” he kept calling me.

So there I was, dancing at the front of the bar because Lianna had taken over the microphone. The ladies of the night were linking arms with the cockroaches and doing the can-can. The sewer rats were clinking shot glasses with the bar owners and the Brazilian guy.

So there I was, in my bed in my overpriced guest house far away from Jalan Jaksa. Afternoon sunlight was peeking in through the curtains.

Jalan Jaksa, man.

That's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it.

2009-08-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

Part of the reason I came to Indonesia was because I wanted to do a little research into what gay life is like in Malaysia's neighbouring Muslim majority country. I discovered through some online researching that a queer film festival was showing its closing film on the night I arrived in Jakarta.

I emailed the head organizer, explained what I was doing in Malaysia, and asked if I could get on the invite list. He said sure - but the film was going to be in Indonesian with no English subtitles.

I decided to come anyway, figuring it would be a good way to meet people. I imagined the movie would be something weighty and serious. I didn't expect to understand what was going on except during the sex scenes.

Instead, I got Benci Disko.

Benci Disko is about... well... it's about a sailor and a really over the top gay guy who wears a leopard print tank top and heart shaped sunglasses for most of the movie, who I think are brothers, and this girl, who I think is their sister, and they enter a disco competition, for some reason. That's about all I know, and that's about all I needed to know. And I haven't actually watched the trailer above because the internet here is too slow, but I sincerely hope it gives you some sort of idea of how hilarious this movie is.

I met the guy I was exchanging emails with for lunch the next day and asked where I could get a copy. Sadly, it hasn't come out on DVD yet, but he said he would mail me one when it does. I'm going to email him once a month until it does. Then I think we should have an Indonesian disco theme party and watch it.

Kuta Beach in Bali kind of sucks

2009-08-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

As my taxi drove me from the airport to my hotel in Bali's Kuta beach, I looked out the window and judged it within 10 seconds with a sigh and a shrug.

I knew I was staying in Bali's most touristy area, but I guess I was expecting it to be a little bit less... lame. Giant signs for MacDonalds, KFC, and overpriced boutiques jut into the sky like the novelty wooden penis carvings you find at every tourist stall lining the streets. The resorts and restaurants are all designed to look like temple ruins, which gives the place a weird Vegas-y feel. And the place is overrun with families with children. I have never seen so many sunburned knee high mini-people.

Last night I went on the hunt for 20-something backpackers looking to go on the piss (a charming English expression for getting wasted and dancing). I knew they had to exist - beach + $1 beers + Southeast Asia = backpackers. I wandered in to a restaurant, overheard mixed accents at the table next to me which meant they weren't travelling together and had probably met that day, and joined them.

This is how I found myself at a cocktail stand in a back alley drinking something neon green and lethally strong out of a plastic cup with a lid and a straw. These holes in the wall are Bali's version of Thailand's bucket stands, and if you're ever in Bali wondering where the backpackers are, this is your answer. And this is also how I became aquainted with Bali's community of a very specific type of backpacker - the kind that never leaves.

This is globalized capitalism's little loophole. The western dollar is worth so much more in these countries that you can spend your life working for a few months at home, then living the life of a Southeast Asian beach bum for another few months until your money runs out. I'm a millionaire for the third time in my life right now - I've also been a Vietnamese millionaire and a Laotian millionaire. Sure, it's a life of alcoholism and instability, but it's basically a philosophical choice about the meaning of life. If you don't think slaving away at 9 to 5er for 45 years to scrimp and save for a meagre retirement is a particularly meaningful way to live your life, either, you can literally just drop out and run away.

This is a totally rational life choice to make and, quite frankly, I don't understand why more people don't make it. What does bug me, though, is when this type deludes themselves into thinking they're having some kind of deep cultural experience. "There's just something about this place that draws me in," I kept hearing. Yeah, dude. The thing about this place that keeps drawing you in is the fact that it's intentionally designed to cater to your every desire. You want cocktail? You want massage? You want girl? Of course you do. Cheap cheap.

Personally, if I were going to drop off the face of the earth in Bali, I would do it in Ubud. Ubud is a little town north of Kuta that I drove to on a motorbike yesterday. You have to brake to let chickens cross the road. It's surrounded by rice paddies. And this is no exaggeration - every other building is an art gallery. A lot of the art is mass produced souvenir crap, but there are also a lot of serious gems. I biked away with a backpack full of paintings and a big smile.

I would love to spend more time here and bike further afield to the volcanoes and tiny villages and jungle temples. But sadly, I'm only here for three days, and I'm too hung over to do anything today besides blog and go to the beach. Next time, maybe.

Good signs

2009-07-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

The other day I sent my MRP supervisor a massive email detailing everything I've done on the project so far, and everything I plan to do. I told her that if I'm doing anything wrong, she'd better tell me now, because once I leave, that's it. It's not like I can hop on a bus and do follow-up interviews from Ottawa.

She had two main concerns:

1) I'm trying to cover too many themes. Surprise surprise, I'm neurotically over-researching.

2) WTF???

OK, so she didn't actually write WTF. What she did write was something more along these lines: So let me get this straight. You found a professional drag performer with a Yale degree, a guy who checked himself into a Singaporean Christian ex-gay ministry a la But I'm a Cheerleader only to later renounce religion and become the main organizer of KL's version of Pride, and a closeted dude who confessed his entire life story to you at a gay bar out of nowhere for no reason then agreed to do it again on tape?

Are you sure these people are for real?

The answer is yes, I'm sure these people are for real, although now I have to do some annoying fact-checking to appease my supervisor (Hello, is this the Singapore division of Straight is Great? Did you ever have a resident by the name of...).

And I'm going to take this as a sign things are going well, since nothing sells a story like a good WTF.

Riots, not diets

2009-07-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I was lacing up my new running shoes to go for a jog around the lake. The cleaning lady comes on Saturday, and my roommates were out. I asked her to tell them where I was if they asked.

"Good," she said. "You are getting fat since you came here."

This is probably more shocking to you than it was to me. In Southeast Asia (maybe all of Asia, I don't really know), people say things like this. They're not insults, they're observations. The sky is blue. The earth is round. I am getting fat since I came here.

I laughed and said I know. Malaysian food comes in two categories: carbs fried in fat and fat fried in carbs. The only way to avoid weight gain is to have the will of Hercules and cut portion sizes.

But she didn't stop there. "Yes, face, fat. Back, fat. Exercise good. But you need to eat less too."

OK, this was crossing the line. I still tried to laugh it off.

"When you come back, you eat. Jogging will do nothing if you eat."

I jogged away, trying to suppress my rage and keep myself from thinking about how I apparently looked to everyone else: A fat, sweaty white girl trying to choke back tears as she ran.

Now, here's a confession: I am fairly obsessive about my weight. I just don't talk about it. Ever.

I don't talk about it because my fat-phobia comes with a generous side helping of feminist guilt. I know that even at the heaviest end of my weight range, I'm still squarely within the healthy body mass index for my height. Therefore, the only reason for me to care when I gain weight is because of an unrealistic body image created by the patriarchal corporate mass media etc. etc.

In other words, every time I eat an apple instead of a candy bar or expend brain power counting the calories in my lunch instead of reading a book, the patriarchy wins, a little. This sucks. I hate it. But the way I feel about myself when I let things slide and gain weight sucks more. So I keep doing it.

Lose lose situation.

I blame this largely on the fact I was a fat child. When I saw "Little Miss Sunshine," I immediately thought: Dear God, they invented a time machine, plucked me out of my desk in the fourth grade, and cast me as Olive in this movie. Ask Sonya. She's seen pictures.

I came back 45 minutes later. My roommates had brought me lunch. I gave the cleaning lady a dirty and triumphant look as I threw away most of my rice.

I could practically hear The Patriarchy laughing.

Discovered: Rozz

2009-07-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I typed the link to Rozz's website wrong. Should work now.

Last weekend I went to Penang, an island on Malaysia's west coast. My editor at TNG gave me the phone number of a guy she's known for a long time who does drag performances at a bar there. I texted him to arrange an interview. Cramming interview requests into single text messages is a skill I did not expect to develop, but I find people here get freaked out if you call them out of the blue, and that texting for work-related reasons is much more common.

I wanted to reproduce the conversation that followed exactly, but my phone appears to have mysteriously erased its messaging history, so this is a rough approximation:

Me: Hi im claire wrkin on a doc abt sxuality in msia jacq gave me ur # wld u do an invu?

Rozz: I don't know how conducive it would be, but you're welcome to come to my show tonight. Starts at 10.

Me: Sounds good ill be there

Rozz: I won't be hard to spot. I'll be the loud obnoxious drag queen.

Me: I like you already.

So I went. The bar was gorgeous - garden out front, arched front porch, retro 70s decor and a fountain off to the side of the dance floor. I was there with a guy I was traveling with doing research on a similar topic for an international gay rights group (long, boring story - in a nutshell, small world). We ordered Blue Hawaiins because they had a half priced student special and drinks at gorgeous retro 70s bungalow lounges on Malaysian islands ain't cheap.

I already knew Rozz had sung in Broadway shows and was likely to be pretty damn good, but was unprepared for what was about to hit me.

Check out his website, a music player will launch. Sort of a cross between Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey, no?

Anyway, Rozz told me to come back two nights later and do the actual interview. "Whatever else you write about me, make sure you tell them the nails are real," he said. I inspected. He spoke the truth.

The interview lasted about half an hour. Then I just sat there and talked to him for about two more. He's hands down the most interesting person I've ever met.

Rozz was born to Muslim parents (but wasn't raised Muslim) and went to high school in Malaysia. I asked when he started doing drag performances. "Well, I guess it was when I did my first performance." He said no one ever bullied him in high school, and no one's ever harassed him in Malaysia or tried to raid the bar he sings at in Penang.

I asked him why he thinks that is, and he basically attributed it to having a loud mouth - he said the jocks in high school were more afraid of him than he was of them.

So many people I meet in Malaysia seem to have this paralyzing fear of rocking the boat. Of course, there's a lot to be afraid of - detention under the ISA, for one thing. But the more I learn and the more people I talk to, the more it's clear that fear of what family and peers will think is a bigger factor keeping LGBT people quiet than the fear of being arrested and charged.

Rozz doesn't just rock the boat. He decided this boat sucks, is cramped and smells funny and has a poorly lit makeup mirror. So he jumped out a long time ago, and prefers to swim.

This seems to be working out pretty well for him.

So long, TNG.

2009-07-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day at The Nut Graph. I took my blazer and got out. Literally. I kept it in a drawer attached to my desk.

They're finally starting to run all the features I had backed up in the server, from when we weren't sure if I was going to get my student visa or not and they couldn't publish my byline. So look out for articles on KL's changing indie music scene and why Malaysia isn't likely to revoke its sodomy laws any time soon, as well as more feature interviews in the Found in Malaysia section.

That internship was the most challenging thing I've ever done. I often wanted to beat my head against the wall. I frequently found myself getting home at 9:00 wondering what in the world made me think being a reporter in Malaysia was a good idea. And the fact that all my hard work was sitting backed up in a server made it even more frustrating.

But damn, am I ever glad I did it.

I got tons and tons of contacts for my MRP. I was even able to make my interviews for the sodomy laws article do double duty, and now have one of the leader of the opposition's lawyers and a conservative Muslim member of parliament on tape. That's a blog post for another time, possibly titled "Putting the 'fun' back in 'fundamentalist.'"

And more so than that... it was just really, really cool to work for that organization.

In Malaysia, the print media is controlled by censorship laws. Because the laws only mention print and broadcast media, online news sites can't actually be charged under them. So they're popping up like crazy, and criticizing away.

I have never heard of this happening anywhere else. You hear about people turning to blogs for their information in countries with media censorship, but I've never heard of entire, fully functioning newsrooms developing a parallel media system.

The Nut Graph is the coolest one. It's like a hybrid between Canadian lefty news commentary stalwart rabble.ca and The Toronto Star. It does these intellectual feature news analyses that are sort of a news story/op-ed hybrid, but it also does daily news reporting. This is what I think is missing from the "alternative media" in North America like rabble - it's not really news media, because it's not gathering and reporting the news. It's letting the usual corporate suspects do that, then ripping them apart for having a corporate agenda, as if this is surprising.

The Nut Graph has a political agenda, definitely. But in Malaysia, being in favour of free speech and against detention without trial makes you a rabid radical in many quarters.

I really liked writing these news analyses. I really liked being allowed to use my own brain to deduce what the implications were of the interviews I was doing, instead of having to call an "expert."

This week in the journo blogs, everyone is blowing a gasket because the editor of the Financial Times predicted almost all news websites would start charging for content within a year. Cue the usual self hating journalistic whining. You can't charge for content, because newspapers don't produce enough original content of value for it to work, goes the argument.

Want to make a subscription based pay wall work for your news website? Get the government to pass sedition and censorship laws against the print and broadcast media. That's why Malaysiakini, a competitor site to TNG that focuses more on breaking news, is so successful - if you want original content of value, it helps if it's illegal for your competitors to produce it. In fact, Malaysiakini is the only successful paywall news website I've ever heard of.

Perspective, people. Perspective.

Why I’m going to stop listening to grown ups

2009-07-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, the blog and Twitter-spheres have been a-flutter over a report written by a 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley about the media consumption habits of teenagers. The report states, among other things, that teenagers don’t like to look at banner ads or pay for things online, don’t read newspapers, don’t listen to the radio, don’t use Twitter and like to play video games.

The first wave of blog coverage treated this like a revelation from above. My God! We traditional media types really are in trouble! And teens don’t use Twitter? My entire world has been turned upside down!

The second wave was a backlash. People started to point out things like the fact this “report” contained zero objective research and was, in fact, just one 15 year old’s opinions and observations. One from the BBC also pointed out that he and his friends don’t necessarily represent every teenager on the planet.

My first thought was actually that someone should investigate Morgan Stanley for employing child labour, but never mind.

The original rush of coverage was a very interesting exercise in how tuned in these supposedly tech and media savvy commentators actually are. Anybody who thinks that the fact 15-year-olds don’t read newspapers and don’t like online banner ads is breaking news... well... hasn’t talked to one in a while. A long while.

Compare this to the reaction this blog post got. The title kind of says it all: “Why being an employed journalist is the best thing that ever happened to me.” It challenges a lot of what has become the new conventional wisdom: Traditional journalism jobs will soon no longer exist. Journalists will have to learn to build their own websites and become entrepreneurs to survive. Everyone will have to learn to be a one-man multimedia marching band, equipped with video camera, three blackberries and a microphone for every assignment. Oh yeah, and this is a good thing, because of crowd sourcing and community building, or something. Grit your teeth, grin, and enjoy the future of journalism.

This post also makes these arguments: Readers care more about reporters uncovering new stories than filling websites with multimedia doodads, learning a beat inside and out is more valuable than learning web design for a journalist, and this controversial kicker: Journalists have valuable skills they deserve to be paid for.

Check out the angry comments.

I read these media type blogs in a rather lazy way: I subscribe to an RSS feed called Journalism Blog Mashup that aggregates a lot of the biggies. I’m glad I started reading them. This Fleet Street Blues post came to me through it, for example.

But I’m even more glad I read the initial wave of reactions to the Morgan Stanley intern report, because now I know that they often don’t know what they’re talking about.

If these people, who supposedly know so much about the changing role of media, are surprised that teenagers would rather listen to LastFM than traditional radio, why should I listen to them when they tell me I will never get a real job and had better start learning HTML yesterday?

I’ll make the same disclaimers Fleet Street Blues did in a follow-up post: Of course learning computer and multimedia skills are important. Of course journalism is changing like crazy, and nobody knows where it is headed. Of course a lot of traditional jobs are becoming redundant. Of course there’s more J-school grads than jobs.

Also, I’m no luddite. I think citizen journalism is awesome, not something to be afraid of. I think social media and the internet are revolutionizing the world. Also, I’ve decided I don’t really care if newspapers survive or not, as long as journalism does.

But still. I think there’s a bizarre trend of self-hating journalists cropping up. Boo hoo, we deserve to descend into poverty, we’re so irrelevant, everyone wants to read blogs instead of us and we deserve it.

This is a totally useless attitude. I’m going to gleefully stop paying attention to it.

A little perspective

2009-07-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

I don't read Canadian news much these days, but I did hear about the hooplah around Stephen Harper accepting and possibly pocketing a communion wafer at a Catholic service.

Here are some words I've seen used to describe the scenario: scandal, outrage, desecration, controversy, sacrilege.

Strangely, a communion scandal erupted in Malaysia a few days later. Except this took things a step or two further.

A writer for the magazine Al Islam decided to go undercover at a Catholic mass to see if he could find any evidence of Muslims being converted to Catholicism, or the church using the term Allah. Conversion out of or into Islam is, to make the understatement of the year, a rather touchy subject in Malaysia.

Muslims are covered by a parallel, state-level syariah legal system. Some states require Muslims converting out of Islam to undergo counselling and have an official body rule on whether they can convert or not; some charge apostasy as a crime. Also, if it's not totally clear what religion someone is, it can be tricky to figure out things like inheritance. And if that wasn't complicated enough, Malay Muslims and indigenous people get special treatment under the constitution, which translates into affirmative action type quotas in education and business.

Remember when I said Malaysia was the most complicated country on earth? Anything I write about Malaysia for non-Malaysians seems to require an encyclopedia of background information. Also, please don't draw conclusions based on this about Islam or Malaysians. As far as I know, Malaysia's unique in the way it ties up Islam and Malay ethnic identity in its constitution. Also, scholars disagree on what to do about Muslim apostates, but the Qu'ran says there is no compulsion in religion.

Anyway. The communion thing. So this guy from this magazine goes undercover at a Catholic mass. He writes that he sees some people who look Malay, but doesn't see any evidence of attempts at conversion or the use of the word Allah (The use of the word "Allah" by other religions is also a touchy subject). When the time came to take communion, he accepted it, but spat it out and photographed it. The photograph was published along with the article in the magazine.

I'm not a religious person. Also, I'm a journalist, and I'm not supposed to have opinions. But it seems pretty clear to me that this is ACTUAL blasphemy and disrespect of communion. Poor Harper was just confused. Either that, or he ate it off camera, and the whole controversy is over nothing, like he claims.

Other things Canadians don't have to deal with that we shouldn't take for granted include detention without trial and sedition laws.

All of this also reminds me of a guilty moment in my own childhood. I used to sing in a Catholic church choir, even though I'm not Catholic. The first time I sang at a service, most of the other kids in the choir got up to take communion. I went with them, but I had a vague feeling I was doing something wrong, so I put the wafer in my pocket.

That's right - I actually did what Harper was accused of doing. Although in my defence, I think I was about 11.

I told my mom about it and she was kind of half shocked and half thought it was funny. She explained the whole "body of Christ" thing to me. I asked if I could eat it. She said yes. So I did.

In conclusion: Communion and religion are confusing. And count your blessings. Both the secular and the religious ones.

Discovered: Joe Kidd and Malaysian punk rock

2009-07-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

I've been working on an article about how venues for indie music have changed over the years in KL. I got the idea for it because my roommate took me to an opening party for a merch, zine and CD shop called Ricecooker the day after I got here. The guy who runs it is named Joe Kidd and he's pretty much the father of Malaysian punk rock. I'm gonna guess he probably wouldn't characterize himself that way, but he definitely plays a big role in spreading punk and DIY culture in the country. Say hi to Joe:

As you can probably guess, not everyone in Malaysia is thrilled about kids spiking their hair up, rebelling against authority, and playing loud, noisy, political music. Joe says the cops regularly urine test everyone at shows in rural areas for drugs. A few years ago there was a big raid on a New Year's eve show where about 400 people got rounded up, loosely based on the perception of black metal being tied to satanism. And just last year, Joe's band provoked what has been described as a riot at a rally for the opposition coalition when they performed a song about "ass-licking" that ended with the lead singer showing three inches of his boxer shorts to the crowd.

The opposition coalition in Malaysia is a weird and often unstable mix of a socialist-leaning party, a social justice/reform-minded party, and a pro-Islamic state party. Some members of the latter were less than thrilled about these antics - although as Joe pointed out in the interview, some defended him and said a lot of his band's criticisms of corruption were "spot on."

I asked Joe if there are any upcoming happenings. He said that soon, there's going to be a show in a very small town on the east coast, half an hour away from where he grew up.

This is where I need you to help me. Do you find all of this fascinating? Because I sure do. But it's also extremely possible that I've developed a weird, niche interest in Malaysian misfits that is not shared by my fellow Canadian citizens. Also, I have a soft spot for kids making home made punk rock shows in unlikely venues, because I, too, was once a 14-year-old rebel who was known to bust out a skank and a mosh at Oakville concerts held at the YMCA and ice rinks.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm wondering if I could tag along to this concert and try to freelance something out of it.

To me, the story is just the sheer "WTF??" factor, the contrast of kids embracing this subculture and making it their own in a small, rural town in a developing country. There's also a kind of circular-ness to Joe returning to the region where he grew up. In terms of what's "new..." well, I dunno. I'll find something.

But seriously, if you journalism-savvy classmates of mine think it would be a waste of time, please tell me.

"We ain't got no place to go, let's go to a punk rock show, come and take me by the hand, we're gonna see a punk rock band..."

So white I'm clear

2009-07-04T00:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I woke up, made my morning Starbucks coffee, and got ready to go to work at my unpaid internship with a non-profit alternative news website. Sadly, I live too far from work to ride a bike like I do in Ottawa, so I take the monorail. I selected The Low End Theory from my full, illegally downloaded discography of A Tribe Called Quest albums to listen to on my full-sized iPod. Both at my flat and at the office, I'm the only white person around, which is totally adding to my authentic cultural experience abroad. So different from last year when I took a year off to backpack and just hung out with other tourists - erm, "travelers."

Sadly, this also means I'm of limited usefulness as a reporter since I don't speak Malay - but I'm totally trying to learn it. I even listened to an online audio lesson the other day. Saya tidak boleh bahasa Malaysia. That means I don't speak Malay. Being a vegetarian is also infringing on my cultural experience, as is the fact I just can't bring myself to eat with my hands yet. Good thing I eat fish and have a "what I don't know won't hurt me" policy - which I've been told is very Muslim of me.

I set up an interview for an article I'm writing about spaces for indie music shows in Kuala Lumpur. I take notes in an ordinary spiral notebook because I wasn't able to find any moleskins before I left.

At night, I went out to a gay bar with some people I met last weekend - for research purposes, of course. You see, I'm making a radio documentary for my Master's research project about gay communities in Malaysia and how they have a vibrant, open presence here despite international impressions about the legal, religious and cultural environment. Finding subjects - and an internship, and a place to stay - was surprisingly easy: I met them all on Facebook before coming here. Isn't the internet spiffy?

Today I think I'll finish season two of The Wire. There's gotta be somewhere I can find a pirated copy of season three around here.

So that's 20 "Stuff white people like" posts that apply to me. And I bet I missed some. Should I kill myself now, or later?

Serious research

2009-06-28T03:49:00.000-07:00

Today I met Lisa's friend Phil and a bunch of his friends for lunch. Lisa and Phil, as you long time readers may recall, are the reason I got the idea to come here in the first place.

So anyway, it was a great big awesome queerfest. I got tons of interesting info for my doc. We're all going out gay clubbing next Friday - for research purposes, of course.

We ate dim sum for lunch, then went to a cafe for cake and coffee. One of the guys decided the waiter was cute. He and his friend gigglingly asked for a comment card so he could write his phone number on it. They didn't have comment cards, but told him he could write a comment on a piece of paper.

The two of them, giggling like schoolgirls, concocted an entire survey. "How was the service? Poor, fair, good, excellent (and hot!), check." They wrote the guy's phone number on it, made a cover out of the place mat (they even bound it with string), and presented it to the baffled waiter, giggling hysterically. Then they proceeded to act mortified and giggle more every time the waiter walked by.

Tragically, I was not running tape. I may have to find another cute waiter and convince them to do it again.

In conclusion, premise of doc confirmed: Despite sodomy charges against opposition politicians and fatwas against tomboyism, gay people are not exactly, shall we say, repressed, fearful and closeted in KL.

Don't get used to me posting every day, by the way: Hilarious things just keep happening to me lately.

Same same but different

2009-06-27T00:11:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I was sent to cover a court case appealing a ban on a book published by Malaysian feminist NGO Sisters in Islam. The case got postponed, and I didn’t even end up doing a story on it. But I did meet Brigitte, a law student from the States who’s doing an internship with SIS.

She invited me to a party last night. I went. It was at a very swanky condo and full of foreigners who were in KL to work or study.

In that sense, it was different from backpacking. In many other senses, it was deja vu all over again.

Everyone’s answer to the question “So how do you know these people?” was, “I don’t!” Seems that everyone got invited in a similar way: they met somebody who knew somebody throwing the party who said “Hey, you’re foreign too, let’s hang out.” This, of course, happens when you’re backpacking all the time: Insta-best friends are made for a day or a week, drinking ensues, and the memory lives on only on Facebook.

The United Nations of Drunks phenomenon was also a throwback. People there were from Tahiti, Thailand, Singapore, and Chicago. All we really had in common was that we were in Malaysia temporarily, and by extension had enough cash to do things like throw dinner parties at condos and go clubbing. Slightly different from backpacking, when the connection was that we had enough cash to buy a plane ticket to the other side of the world but not enough to stay in a hostel with an indoor toilet, but similar.

By the time we coordinated our collective attention spans for long enough to get out the door, it was 2:30. We pushed our way to the centre of the dance floor and danced like obnoxious lushes for approximately 15 minutes before the lights came on.

I had a serious flashback to The Heart of Darkness, a club in Phnom Penh frequented by gangsters and rich Khmers. It had a stage-like platform in the centre. Mega and I used to hop on and start line dancing. I’m still not sure how we learned to line dance, but we broke out the choreography as often as possible.

Dudes would hop on too and try to dance with us, but we’d refuse unless they let us teach them the line dance. Soon we’d have a gaggle of rich Khmer gangsters line dancing on a platform in the middle of Phnom Penh’s most notorious club.

I said Asia blog 2.0 would be more journalism and less gin buckets. It’s possible I lied.

Reporter Barbie does Malaysia

2009-06-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

This morning, mid-commute, my phone rang.

I answered it, and had the typical "Hello?" "Hello?" "Hello?" conversation that happens every time I try to make communication happen in this country with a combination of zero Malay on my part and limited English on their part.

I deciphered enough to figure out it had something to do with an interview request. I told them I'd call them back when I got to work. Three seconds later I got a text message.

The text message I understood: It said the politician I had requested an interview with days ago was free this afternoon. Was I available to come and meet her at her office at one?

My deadline for that article was the end of the day today. I had finished writing it yesterday - or so I thought.

As far as I was concerned, the chance of that politician calling me back was slim, and the idea she would want to do an in person interview hadn't even crossed my mind. With that in mind, I had come to work in flip flops with wet hair and left my camera at my apartment.

I got to the office and sat down at my computer. I Google mapped the address. It was in another city.

I called my editor, who wasn't in yet.

"Hi, Jacq."

"Hi, Claire."

"So one of the politicians I called wants me to meet her at her office for an interview this afternoon."

"Where's her office?"

"In Selangor."

"Selangor is the state we're in."

"Oh, uh, I knew that. Shah Alam, it's in Shah Alam. How would I get there?"

"There's no transit, you'd have to take a taxi. It would take about 45 minutes"

"Uh, OK. Um, so, should I go?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Well, it's a 45 minute taxi ride away. Can I ask if we can do a phone interview?"

"A politician is granting you an in person interview. We are not lazy journalists."

So. I guess I'm going then.

So I put on my suit, which I keep in my drawer, over my flip flops. I scribbled some interview questions. I got in the taxi.

The taxi driver didn't get lost, thank God, although he did charge me an extortionary price. We got there about fifteen minutes early. I handed him a 50 ringgitt bill.

He didn't have change. The taxis next to us didn't have change. The reception counter didn't have change. No one in the city of Shah Alam (which is in the state of Selangor, as I now know) had change.

I have too much pride and too much experience with Southeast Asian taxi drivers trying to rip me off to hand him the bill and tell him it was his lucky day. I made him run - literally run - with me as I looked for the cafeteria in the state government building. I finally found it, bought a gross bag of chips to break my bill, threw the extortionary fee at him, and ran to the elevator.

I arrived breathless and sweaty at the politician's office. Her assistant informed me she was in a meeting and would be late.

The interview went fine. The taxi driver back to the office charged me an even more extortionary price than the first one. I ran up the stairs to the office and conversed with my editor, who decided that given the new information my article should now be a two parter - in other words, I had an entirely new article to write and the first to revise by the end of the day. It was 3 p.m.

I feel that my day highlights a number of key points about my experience in Malaysia so far.

Number one: I am insane. I picked the most complicated country on earth (I really believe this is true, possibly the subject of another blog post), with a language I do not speak a word of, to be a journalist in. Last time I was in Southeast Asia, I thought the language barriers involved in explaining I was a vegetarian were frustrating. Multiply that frustration by a zillion, and that's maybe approaching how it feels to try and interview a police chief about why he's revoked a permit for an opposition party to hold a political dinner.

Number two: I don't know anything about Malaysia. I thought I did. Then I tried to be a journalist here. I routinely do things as stupid as realizing I can't tell the difference between what state and what city I'm in, or thinking honorifics are people's names.

Number three: I am as stubborn as hell. Even though I'm so exhausted I can't move by the time I get home, even though I feel like a stupid baby pretty much every day, I'm determined to make this work. I literally came to the other side of the world, god dammit. I'm going to do what I came here to do.

The people I've met so far are awesome. The organization I work for is awesome. I think I wrote a pretty awesome two-part series of articles today. But there are certain things that can't be solved by awesomeness or stubbornness or journalistic rat-like cunning.

One is that I don't speak Malay, rendering me of limited usefulness to my workplace. Another is that the problems with my visa that cropped up out of nowhere are still following me around. I'm right in the middle of dealing with that extremely complicated loot bag of fun, so I'm not going to get into it, but it's majorly stressful (the worst that would happen is that I'd have to give up my internship, though - I could still stay on a tourist visa and do my MRP).

But I'm hoping that the problems that can be overcome by experience get, well, overcome by experience.

Anyway, I have to go find a cake to take to an expat party.

The ultimate crackpot scheme begins

2009-06-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, hi.

Long time no see. I try to keep myself on a minimum deadline of one post a week, but I've slacked the last couple. I have an excuse though: I've been preparing for the ultimate crackpot scheme. I have taken my blazer and left - the country. I'm in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, enjoying a tourist weekend before I start my internship with independent alternative online publication www.TheNutGraph.com and doing research for my radio doc.

I have to admit, my main emotion over the last week or so has not been excitement. It's been sheer panic. It quickly sunk in that I had committed to a gigantic project on the exact opposite side of the world involving the cooperation of people I had met solely on the internet, with extremely high pressure to succeed, and quite frankly, a limited knowledge of the country I was about to report on and zero knowledge of the official language.

This was not helped by a certain friend of mine pointing this out to me: "So wait a minute. You just sent out emails saying you were doing a documentary on an extremely controversial subject and people just showered you with job offers and places to stay? You HAVE been to Asia and know that you have to be careful what you get yourself into, right? You ARE sure these people are who they say they are, right?"

Cue spiral of paranoia.

All of which dissolved once I got out of the taxi and into my lovely new room in a garden view flat, which I share with a very nice married couple who are about to start a film production company. Who yes, offered me a sublet out of nowhere on the internet. The flat is filled with cats and books and music. I love it.

The moral of the story: Always depend on the kindness of strangers (My parents are having a heart attack right now as they read this. Hi, dad).

The flight was terrible. There were eight screaming babies in my part of the airplane on the flight to Hong Kong, and I sat in the middle seat by an ancient man who smelled funny and needed to be helped up every time I got up to use the bathroom. Also, the recycled air triggered my allergies (my assmar!) and everyone probably thought I had swine flu as I sneezed continuously. Also, I'd say about 15% of the people on the plane and in the Toronto airport were wearing swine flu masks. At least I'm not the only one indulging in a spiral of paranoia.

But Kuala Lumpur is great. I've got deja vu in the best possible way. Today I had a sugar cane juice, rode a monorail, and had weird garbage water fall on me like, five times. Asia, I love you.

The biggest deja vu trigger is the smell. I was trying to figure out what exactly that distinctive Asia smell is composed of. I settled on mosquito coils, cigarette smoke, motorbike exhaust, and miscellaneous rotting garbage piles. You know, the smell of progress.

Seriously though, KL is super interesting, amazingly multicultural, with a cool Muslim twist. I was tempted to buy a knock-off Coach logo tudong today (the Malaysian version of a hijab). Maybe some other time.

After this, I visit the rainforest in the middle of the city (you read that correctly), then head to the mall to attempt to buy an outlet converter for all my rechargeable electronices (if I can't find one I'm seriously screwed), then meet up with my roommate/landlord to go to an art show where I will apparently meet a lot of people I'll be working with at TNG.

Asia blog 2.0 begins. This time with less buckets of gin and more journalism.

The news this week was totally gay.

2009-06-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

Today, I was on the online news desk, meaning it was my job to rewrite stories for the web that came in from TV and radio reporters or on the wires. I was told to prepare myself for a busy day of six to eight stories.

It was a slow news day. I got two. Luckily, both were really interesting - one was about American prisons cutting back on meals for inmates to save money, and the other one was about gay penguins who adopted an abandoned egg in a German zoo.

As this blog entry goes to press, there are 238 comments on the gay penguin story. That's a lot of comments.

I got kind of mesmerized scrolling through them all today. I found two categories the most interesting. Category one is people denying the penguins are gay. How do we know, they ask. Maybe they're brothers. Maybe they're just into hanging out. Can't two men, erm, penguins, live together and raise a child without being gay?

My understanding (this is a wire lift, so it's not like I have been to this zoo myself) is that the penguins definitely get it on. Maybe I should have made that more clear and perhaps embedded a video. But moving on.

The other category, which covers the vast majority of the comments, was people saying something to this effect: Hooray! Homosexuality occurs in nature, and now we have proof! Debate over! Queers win!

While it's kind of awesome that people think a story about two gay German penguins definitively destroys all homophobic arguments, it's also kind of disturbing. To me, anyway.

What I want to know is: Why do we need to prove that homosexuality is "natural" for it to be socially acceptable?

It reminds me a bit too much of your mom telling you not to stare at the girl with buck teeth because she can't help it. She was born that way. Of course, if she could have chosen, she would have had nice straight teeth like the rest of the kids. But the Good Lord in his wisdom decided to make her crooked. So be nice to her.

I think the same attitude is behind the unwritten journalistic code of not outing gay politicians. I watched a documentary called Outrage that outed a number of closeted American politicians who support anti-gay policies. The argument was that it's in the public interest to know this information, because it concerns public policy.

Another example cited in the documentary was a politician who was dating one of his staffers and charging his expense account to fly said staffer around the world with him. The media did not report this, because it would have violated the "no outing" principle.

The media drags straight people through the mud for their carryings-on all the time. It's not always done tastefully. But the general guiding principle is that, if it's in the public interest to know, report it. By saying queers get held to a different standard, the media is basically saying that their queerness is so unfortunate, so potentially damaging, that they're willing to hold back their duty to report to the public if it would out them. And this is doing them a favour?

The other story from this week I have to mention is the lesbian axe murder acquital. This is a predictable response, but if it was a straight couple, would the headline be "Accused in heterosexual axe murder trial acquitted?" Sexuality did play a role in the axe-murder trial, so it makes sense to mention it, but putting it in the headline is sensationalizing.

This isn't hard: When someone's sexuality is in the public interest, report it. When it isn't, don't. And think hard about the philosophy underlying all supposedly good intentions.

I say it isn't hard, but it is. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I picked an MRP topic with the maximum number of potential ways to offend various groups of people... an MRP about LGBT/queer people when I can't use the terms LGBT or queer (CP style), and how their lives are affected by the state and society they live in although I have to make sure no one interprets that as "a backwards country like all them Muslim countries" (because that's definitely not what I mean), and how life is definitely hard and they definitely experience oppression but not nearly as much as Canadians might think they do.

So that's good.

Discovered - Howard Owens and TheBatavian.com

2009-05-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I really wanted to go to a summit on the future of journalism held at Centennial College today, but thought I couldn't go because it was invitation only. Then I remembered that I "work" at the CBC. So I asked my boss if I could cover it. He said yes, I got a press pass, and I spent a perfectly lovely day listening to various important online news folks talk about what the heck we're going to do with this crazy interweb thing and the fact it doesn't make us any money.

A lot of interesting things came out of it. I'm doing a feature on it for CBC.ca and will spend most of tomorrow writing about those interesting things, so I'll just link to that later instead of going into it now. What I want to write about now is Howard Owens of TheBatavian.com.

The reason I want to tell you about him is because instead of spending his time blogging about how Google killed the newspaper star, he came up with a solution. As of June, he will be making a living solely off his website, which publishes local news for a town of about 60,000 people in New York state. Here he is:

That's right: It's possible. It can be done. Put the noose back in the drawer and break out the champagne, J-kids: There's a chance we're not going to starve to death.

He was helped along by a few major things. First, he started out with a $5000 a month advertising budget from GateHouse Media, where he worked when he came up with the business model for the site. Second, he knew how to be his own web developer. Third, he has no kids and his wife helps him run the site.

Still, though, I think it's possible to replicate his basic model without an outside advertising budget, html knowledge, or a wife. This is the model: Find a town with a local newspaper that doesn't have a website, or has a really bad one. Preferably have existing ties to said town. Aim to cover the news better and faster than the local newspaper. Make promoting the community and local businesses your mission.

I find one of his strategies for making money particularly brilliant. When he approaches a local business about buying an advertising spot on the site and they say no, he asks if they'll give him a couple hundred bucks in gift certificates instead. Then he writes a post selling the gift certificates for half price. Boom - Business gets customers into their store and trying their stuff, and he gets the money from the sales.

Some people at the conference session were uncomfortable with this concept and thought it mixed advertising and content too much. I agree with his response - People aren't stupid. They know the gift certificate sale isn't a news story. It's an ad.

I also like his philosophy on the principle of journalistic objectivity. Owens is a libertarian. He is on a mission to promote local businesses and bring down chains. He says this is "overtly political." But he also reports The News, in a traditional sense. And this works online, and it works in his local context. And I think it's neat.

So anyway, rejoice away.

I lie to children.

2009-05-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

I used to teach swimming lessons in lakes at camps in the summers. This is a lot harder than learning to swim in a pool. It's colder, it's deeper, there are less things to hold on to, and most of the time you can't see the bottom.

I've probably told hundreds of scared children that there's nothing to be afraid of, that there are no sharks in lakes, that the fish are friendly and can't hurt them.

Today, I had to make a photo gallery of invasive species - that's plants, animals, bugs and fungi that were brought here from somewhere else and are now taking over. This ugly bastard is one of the photos.

This is the cutline I wrote to go with it:

"The sea lamprey is an eel-like, jawless fish that entered the Great Lakes from the east coast of the United States through the canal system. It feeds like a monster in a low − budget horror movie − it uses its mouth to attach itself to a healthy fish, gore through its scales and skin with its tongue, and suck out its fluids. The sea lamprey has contributed to the extinction of three species of cisco fish and the collapse of commercial fisheries. (Invasive Species Specialist Group)"

That's right, kids. There are no sharks in lakes. But counsellor Claire didn't tell you there are FOOT-LONG BLOOD-SUCKING VAMPIRE EELS.

Sweet dreams.

Fantastic quote

2009-05-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

"The ego is a primitive device installed in your brain to tell you when to flee from tigers. Unless you regularly interview tigers, it will misinform you during any interview, hectoring you with concerns about your next question or whether you dressed properly." - Investigative journalist Eric Nalder.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/expose_2007/etools/loosenlips.html

Twex?

2009-05-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

I was on Twitter and I saw this tweet from Marshall Kirkpatrick, who's the head writer for ReadWriteWeb (which you should totally read if you want to be ahead of the curve on all things technogeek):

RT @marshallk feel like I'm in a giant room filled w/ thousands of people doing their thing but leaning in to talk to each other at times. i love twitter

This is an interesting point. But besides that, it made me realize why Twitter gives me a sense of deja vu. It reminds me of old school chat rooms.

Anyone remember those? From the giddy, hedonistic early days of the internet? When it was a really cool, new idea that people could "hang out" online?

Then they got creepy and porny and mostly full of sad lonely dudes trying to have cyber sex. I wonder if they still exist. Well, I mean, they exist in specialized formats - SoulSeek, the downloading program I use for music, has chat rooms where all 13 fans of experimental screamo free jazz synth noise around the world can chill and trade albums. But I mean the ones that are just a big, crazy free for all, with no discernable theme.

That's a lot like what Twitter's like. Just like the old-style chat rooms, you learn to filter the noise and just "lean in" when you see something interesting, but for the most part, it's pretty anarchic.

Anyway, this led me to a second brain wave - I wonder if people are starting to have cyber sex on Twitter?

I don't mean through direct messages. That wouldn't be any more eyebrow raising than people using Facebook and MySpace like dating services, really, or cybering over instant messaging. And I don't mean people trying to peddle porn - that also happens pretty much instantly on every new internet medium.

Twitter makes it possible to have cyber sex like people did in the old school chat rooms - publicly, in real time, with everyone... watching? Listening? Reading?

Whaddaya know... like shoulder pads and high waisted pants, everything old is new again.

This led to a series of related brain waves... there could be Prostitwits. There could be #orgies. There could be swinger tweetups.

I twitter searched some dirty words. I didn't dig up any public smut, but I also didn't look all that hard.

I would have to turn myself in to the hype police if I pitched two stories about Twitter in a month. But someone else should totally run with this.

Rant rant

2009-05-13T17:51:00.000-07:00

I'm reposting a ranty comment I made on my friend's blog. She was discussing how today in class she was told that early in her nursing career she will suffer multiple nervous breakdowns, be the victim of constant judgey gossip, and accidentally kill someone. None of this, I gather, was prefaced with a "probably" - it was more of a "enjoy your straitjacket, sucker."

I've brought up a lot of these points before, but in reference to people telling journalism students how dumb they are for going into journalism (I just wrote "journalism stupid" instead of students... ha). I think they also apply to a lot of other programs. Also, it's one of my favourite pet peeves. Begin rant:

You know what? Rant time. Why do profs do this? It's not just nursing, and it's not just journalism. I've heard the same thing from people in tons of other disciplines. Why do professors seem to think that telling their bright eyed and enthusiastic students that their chosen profession is horrible, the future is bleak, and they're stupid for picking it is a good idea? Being realistic is one thing. But I don't think most students are dumb... Most students, I think, go into university programs knowing what they're getting into, and having already decided that they're passionate enough about it to pursue it despite ruthless competition, low pay, or in your case the prospect of accidental murder. If they change their mind, they'll drop out. They don't need professors rubbing it in their face.

In the case of nursing, when you can't really have enough nurses, it's downright socially irresponsible for your profs to use these scare tactics. In the case of journalism, music, philosophy, international development, and a million other majors where there's too many students who want to do it and not enough jobs for them, programs should limit enrollment. It's also socially irresponsible and cruel to let thousands of students into a program, take their tuition money, then essentially laugh at their stupidity by telling them their degree is useless.

Argh. Argh. Bleah.

To this I add: It also devalues the institution the prof is working for by saying getting a degree from there isn't going to help when graduates look for work. PR fail.

Commuting sucks.

2009-05-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

Oh hi,

I'm back.

And the reason I've been gone for a while is this: I have about three hours a day when I'm not either getting ready for work, working, commuting or sleeping.

I'm commuting to my latest internship at CBC.ca from my parents's house in Oakville. I'm not going to bother calling it a silly name, because someone from the CBC has been reading my blog regularly for a couple of months. I suspect it is my boss, because I put it on my resume. Oh, hi.

Anyway, the work is good. Commuting, on the other hand, sucks.

Sucks is not nearly a strong enough word. It's like I can feel the sands of time slipping through the hourglass. I can hear the grim reaper laughing as he plucks precious hours of my youth from me on the QEW. I can smell the stench of resentment and misery on my fellow passengers when I take the GO train instead of driving in with my mom.

Clearly I'm being melodramatic. But I really do hate commuting. There's no good reason for it, really. I read the paper, mostly. I think it's the sense of feeling trapped. And also the sense of feeling cheated. When I was done for the day at CP, I could literally do whatever I wanted to. When I'm done for the day at the CBC, I have no choice but to sit in gridlock or squished on the GO train for an hour and a half if I want to sleep in a bed, as opposed to under my desk or in the gutter.

I understand why people do it. Living in the city is stupidly expensive, and even more so if you have kids. And people like being able to afford a yard and a house bigger than a shoebox and all that stuff. When I say I'll never, ever, ever commute from the suburbs, people older than me usually give me a sort of "we'll see about that in a few years" type response and knowing look.

I'm not going to get into whether or not I want kids. But let's just imagine a hypothetical aspiring journalist in her mid twenties who, for whatever deranged reason, did want to have kids. To me, this lifestyle sounds infinitely more pleasant than doing the suburban commute:

- Own compact but liveable condo or townhouse walking/biking distance from work

- Take kids to park regularly

- Spend quality family time maintaining a community garden plot, possibly in said park

- Have three extra hours per day with which to make nutritious dinners and lunches, make snowmen, play, and otherwise spend quality time with kids

- Be well rested and pleasant instead of cranky and angry upon returning from work

- Possibly, in some sort of beautiful dream world, even exercise in the mornings

- Hire someone to clean condo/townhouse with all the money saved by not owning a car. Teach kids to ride the bus at age 4. Possibly bike kids around in one of those hilarious stroller/wagon pulled by a bike things that you see parents using in the Glebe. Have even more free time. Take up crocheting with said free time. Teach kids the value of living a simple lifestyle with minimal material goods.

My point is, there is no possible scenario in which I can imagine commuting from the suburbs being something I would want to do.

Excuse me, it's my bed time.

"Man, Claire's posts have been so boring and journalism-y lately. Where's the juicy stuff?" Read on, friends.

2009-05-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to my friend Michelle’s house (no, not Megababe; yes, everyone I know from home is named Michelle). We’ve known each other since high school and were briefly roommates. She was having a barbecue, and I was in town, so I popped by for a beer.

“Popping by for a beer” turned into a few beers, which turned into Michelle’s friend somehow convincing me it would be a good idea to come to the bar even though I was wearing my usual jeans-T shirt-hoodie-Converse sneakers uniform. Which turned into a fantastic discovery.

El Convento Rico’s. A gay bar in Little Italy.

The decor seems to be bowling alley/casino inspired, with TVs flashing in exhaustingly bright colours and more disco lights than usual. They play the usual Madonna/Beyonce/Village People type gay bar fare, with the usual midnight drag show. They have booths along one side that appear to be swathed in mosquito nets.

But what makes it fantastic is the clientele, composed of four distinct groups:

1) Young gay men

2) Aging lesbians

3) Straight men hoping girls will get bored of dancing with men who aren’t interested in them, thus increasing their odds of picking up at the end of the night (you can find these fine specimens of humanity at any gay bar), and:

4) Straight women throwing stagettes, dressed in veils, cat suits, and head bands with vibrators strapped to them.

A gay bar doesn’t seem like the first venue that would spring to mind when planning a stagette, but apparently it’s quite popular. So popular, in fact, that according to the people I was with who came there often, there’s a stagette party almost every time they go.

I don’t care how much you hate Madonna. This is a hilarious sight. Just sitting down and people watching is worth the cover. The bridal party women throw themselves at the gay men, the straight men try unsuccessfully to grind with the women from behind, the lesbians stand around and drink, and everyone overstimulates themselves with flashing lights, glow sticks, alcohol, and vibrating head bands. Not recommended for the epileptic.

And to conclude I leave you with this video, reposted from The Peach. You're welcome.

Head scratcher moment

2009-04-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

My dad was driving me back to Oakville with all my stuff today. I'm going to be here for the next six weeks doing an internship with CBC.ca before heading to Malaysia.

We were listening to a report on a private radio station where the reporter was badgering a woman at the Tamil protest on University Avenue to explain why her cause was important enough to reroute traffic. I made some comment about it being annoyingly one-sided.

Then my dad made an interesting point.

He asked if I ever listen to news on private radio - I said no, my radio dial is pretty much permanently stuck on CBC Radio One. He pointed out that more people listen to private radio than the CBC. Sometimes, private radio covers local news-type things better than the CBC.

If I only listen to the CBC, how would I know what competing news other people are listening to, how their reporting measures up, and why a lot of people choose it over Radio One?

This was one of those so obvious I can't believe I missed it moments. We were effectively told in our radio class not to bother with other Canadian radio news - that the CBC is the only source of "serious" radio journalism in Canada. Whether or not that's true, it's a viewpoint that effectively gives the finger to the people who choose to get their news from private radio. It's sort of the snobby journalist equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "John Jacob Jingelheimer Schmidt" instead of listening to what's going on around you.

No one in this business can afford to do that right now. If somebody's pulling in more listeners/viewers/readers, everyone else had better figure out how and why. That doesn't necessarily mean throwing your standards out the window and copying them, but it does mean making an open minded, informed decision.

Maybe I'll write down the numbers of some local talk stations to flip back and forth. On the hilariously huge and old fashioned walkman I'll be taking to work on the GO train because you can't listen to the radio on an iPod.

Edit after reflection: I guess I should start reading the Sun for the same reason. And watching CityTV. Jeez.

Discovered: Penelope Trunk

2009-04-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it feels like all I do is read blogs, write posts, click on Twitter links, write Twitter updates, and add all the interesting stuff I find to Google reader. I've become so immersed in Web 2.0 that it's become my Life 2.0.

Anyway. One internet phenomenon that I've come across through all this webernetting is Penelope Trunk and her blog Brazen Careerist. It's extremely possible you have, too, because she says she has 30,000 subscribers. I've become increasingly fascinated by her for a number of reasons:

1) She likes young people. She has a company that helps employers find new hires, and she talks up Gen Y all the time. This is a refreshing change from the stuff I'm used to reading, written by certain baby boomers with large salaries, about how my generation is lazy, whiny, self-entitled, and spoiled.

2) She takes the theory that writing about your personal life online is unprofessional, steps on it with a stiletto, and grinds it into the ground. I have long complained that this theory is outdated. Older people should accept that people from my generation are going to mix our personal and professional lives online, and embrace its potential instead of freaking out about it and firing/not hiring us.

One of the reasons that Trunk's blog is so popular is because it dispenses good career advice. The other reason is she backs up her arguments with juicy references to her personal life. Go to the "About this blog" section and you'll be greeted with links to the posts where she describes the breakdown of her marriage and the start of her dating life. She recently wrote about screaming at a date for refusing to perform a certain sex act.

These details make people keep reading her blog, and by extension make them more likely to remember and use her recruiting company, and by extension help, not hinder, her professional success. Whatever you think of the process, the outcome delivers.

1) I'm having an absolutely wonderful time trying to figure out what I think about her particular brand of feminism. I've never actually seen her write the F-word, and it's likely she wouldn't use it to describe herself. She's what my profs and classmates in my undergraduate women's studies classes would have eye-rollingly described as a post-feminist, and what she describes as being realistic.

For example, she recommends that women educate themselves about methods for looking younger, because, as she writes: "Aging is not equal in the workplace. Women are penalized much more heavily than men." She counsels women not to take sexual harassment cases to court because they'll become pariahs and be blacklisted in their industry, and writes: "Each time in my career that I have ignored sexual harassment aimed at me, I have moved up the corporate ladder. "

This is normally where I would hurl curses at my computer, close the window, and never read the blog again. But her take on these issues is a lot more nuanced than the end result of her advice (get a facelift and ignore your boss's butt squeeze) would suggest.

Trunk didn't just "ignore" her boss's sexual harassment. She cagily went to management, told them about the situation, and asked to be transferred to a department she preferred to work in but had no openings. In her view, it would have been crazy to take the harassment to court and potentially harm her career when instead she could use it as an ace in the hole to get a better job.

She's also written awesome posts about sexism at the G-20 summit and the myth that every moment you spend with your children should be a bundle of precious joy and only a terrible parent would occasionally find it boring and unfulfilling.

I'm suspicious of anyone who describes themselves as a political/philosophical "realist." It generally seems like a moral cop-out to do whatever is in your own interests instead of trying to work for change. "We'll never achieve nuclear disarmament/end patriarchy/end our dependency on fossil fuels, so we might as well make sure we can outnuke our neighbours/get a boob job/control resources in oil-rich countries by military occupation," the line of reasoning goes.

And while I clearly call BS on that line of reasoning, that doesn't mean I think everyone should go out and martyr themselves for various causes, either. I think what Trunk did in the sexual harassment scenario was smart. If every women who experienced sexual harassment took their case to court, would the practice end? Maybe. Is it practical for every woman to do this, and should we fault them if they don't? No.

So in conclusion, this woman is fascinating. Read her blog. Not that she needs any promotion from me.

Boring housekeeping post

2009-04-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

It was brought to my attention (by my mom) that a lot of the links on my clippings sidebar weren't working. I fixed them. So check out my awesome CP stuff!

Yeah, the cat's out of the bag, The Newsly Newswire is CP. Whatever. Someone call CNN.

Why won't anyone think of the bunnies?

2009-04-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

As Ottawans know unless they've been living under a rock, yesterday was the biggest protest on Parliament Hill in years. In case you have been living under a rock, you can read my story about it here.

The day before that, I got sent to Question Period. There were two things that made me wish I had a camera.

One was the juxtaposition of Tamil protesters and people smoking up on the lawn of Parliament in celebration of the stoner national holiday, 4:20. Stepped up police presence and a competing demonstration, and these dudes and dudettes still come out by the hundreds to fight for their right to party. Brazen.

The other was pointed out to me by a security guard as I was about to walk through the entrance. She was kneeling down by the grass.

"Want to see something neat?" she asked. I said sure.

She lifted up a patch of grass to reveal a hole full of tiny, squirming, newborn bunnies.

I squealed.

Fast forward to 35,000 people tramping around the Hill yesterday. It was a peaceful protest, yes, but I am concerned for the safety of the baby bunnies. No one was protecting their rights. Their well-being was overlooked.

I guess when you build your home in the shadow of Parliament, you risk becoming a casualty of democracy.

Poor bunnies.

Can I be an intern forever?

2009-04-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

When I got an email offering me an internship position with The Newsly Newswire last January, I freaked out a little bit.

The newswire (which I'm not naming in case my editor has a Google alert set up for it - not that I'm saying anything bad about it, I just figure he doesn't need it delivered to his inbox as soon as I hit "publish") is the most important one in Canada. Almost every major newspaper, magazine, broadcast outlet and website in the country subscribes to it, which means they can pick up and broadcast or reprint any of its content.

The whole point of a newswire is to get things out faster than everybody else. This is roughly how I imagined an average day would go:

"Brownell, we need you to cover the press conference on the circus clown strike. Here's a video camera, microphone, still camera, and laptop. We need you to file a report with video, audio and pictures in an hour. The conference starts in five minutes - run!"

In fact, it's been exactly the opposite. It's sort of like freelancing, except I get a desk and a phone. I walked in on day one, they asked me if I had any story ideas, I pitched two, and they said "sounds great - work on that."

I start at 10, I'm done at 5, I get a lunch break. I wrote three stories last week, which to me feels like a life of leisure, but according to them is better than the average intern.

They put my first story on the wire today. I'm ashamed to say that I'm feeding the media obsession with Twitter, but it's a pretty good story, in my opinion. Googling my name under "pages from Canada" has revealed that it's already been picked up by several websites - including Macleans.ca! Hopefully it will make it into some newspapers tomorrow too.

The other story I pitched, about youth unemployment, is going on the wire tomorrow to be picked up by papers on Monday. I'm not sure when the third one I wrote is going up, but it's about how small towns in Eastern Ontario are trying to attract tourists who don't want to spend money vacationing abroad because of the recession.

Look, ma - I'm a real journalist.

I'll update with more links as they come up.

Interview FAIL.

2009-04-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

"Hello, I'm a reporter from the Newsly Newswire. I'm working on a story about how small towns in Eastern Ontario are trying to attract tourists to boost the economy during the recession."

"Uh huh."

"I was looking online, and I discovered that Smalltown, Ontario just had its second annual goat run."

"Oh, yes."

"Were you involved in the goat run?"

"Yes, I was one of the organizers."

"Can you tell me more about it? How does a goat run work?"

"Well, there were about 200 participants. The winner is picked based on how close you come to predicting the finish time."

"I see. And do participants come from outside of Smalltown? Does it attract tourists?"

"Yes, we get quite a few participants from out of town."

"Are you intentionally marketing it towards tourists?"

"Actually, I was talking to someone from the county about that the other day. We're thinking of making up pamphlets."

"Oh, really! That's great. When's the next goat run?"

"Actually, we're having another one at the end of the month. It's going to be a relay race."

"A relay... huh? How do goats run a relay race?"

"Pardon?"

"Well, how would they hand off the baton?"

"I don't.... oh.... *stifled laughter*"

"Excuse me?"

"You think... the race... is run by goats."

"It's not?"

"No. 'Goat run' is just a nickname. It's run by people."

"I see."

The Newsly Newswire, by the way, has an open concept newsroom. This interview was heard by every reporter at the desk.

Liveblog experiment: 50 exams, 48 hours.

2009-04-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

What did I say about blogging lending itself to the worst of times rather than the best of times?

I have 50 exams to mark. The exams were in the format of four essay questions that students were given in advance and had three hours to write. Four essays + three hours = a lot of panicked scribbling. Some students filled four exam books.

I am going to try to finish them in two days, because I have a dream. A dream of a day off. A dream of waking up on Sunday, going for a bike ride through scenic Centretown, cooking a week's worth of delicious and nutritious meals, reading a book, and going to bed at a reasonable hour in order to be well rested for my internship starting Monday. A dream that does not involve finishing my marking in a panic at 2 a.m.

If you can dream it, you can do it, is what I'm telling myself. If it takes me half an hour to mark each exam, that's 25 hours. That's two 12.5 hour days. That even gives me time to sleep.

But it will require discipline. Strict time limits for how long it takes me to grade each answer. Moratoriums on staring into space and hitting refresh on Google reader.

On the other hand, it's the perfect liveblogging scenario. Read with me as I descend into madness, dear friends.

Check for updates throughout the next two days.

Friday

10:20 a.m.: About to spread exams on bed. I finished question one on about 10 of them yesterday. Strict 10-minute time limit per answer, with the goal of reducing it to seven as I get into the swing of things.

Anyone else a recovering livejournal-er? Then you'll get the reference:

Mood: Optimistic

Music: Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde

1:20 p.m.: It's going faster than I thought... I'm averaging five minutes per answer. Still sane. Just consumed delicious tuna melt on a bagel. This is all fascinating to you, I'm sure. Maybe liveblogging is as stupid and mundane as critics say it is. About to make cup of coffee #4.

Mood: Full.

Music: David Bowie (I'm multitasking: getting to know classic discographies better as I mark. Dylan, as usual, was great for a few hours, but then I wanted to never hear a harmonica again).

2:54 p.m.: I'm officially done marking question 1 on all 50 exams, which means I'm 1/4 done. Have started muttering to myself as I mark. Going to the grocery store for a break.

Mood: Excited for sunshine.

Music: Still Bowie.

3:41 p.m.: The grocery store was closed. I forgot that it's Good Friday, and that normal people are home with their families cooking ham and eating cream eggs.

Attempted to bike to the store in Lulus, which kept getting caught in the gears. Had to wrap my right pant leg in an elastic band. Very recession chic; nouveau hobo, if you will. I can see the headlines now: "Lulu Lemon yoga pants cause traffic accident: 'I'm going back to skinny jeans,' vows cyclist."

Mood: Angry I have to go back to marking so soon.

Music: CBC Radio 3.

5:36 p.m.: There's one student who underlines key words as she writes. This makes it super easy to read and mark, because I can see really easily if she's making the points she's supposed to make according to the grading rubric. Also she writes in big, round, neat print. I want to hug her. People I do not want to hug include students who write in cursive and students who write in very light mechanical pencil.

Mood: A little concerned that I'm not maintaining my earlier pace.

Music: CBC Radio 3

Cups of coffee: 5

8:54 p.m.: You know how when you say the same word over and over you forget what it means? The following words have blended into meaningless pablum in my brain from reading them 500 times (whether they meant anything in the first place is a whole other matter). I have to concentrate really hard to focus my eyes on them. They dart away when I see them, like accidentally touching a hot stove:

- Patriarchy

- Construction

- Prostitution

- Capitalism

- Media images

By the way, this is a women's studies class.

Six exams away from the halftime show.

Mood: Stiff.

10:09 p.m.: Forget this, I'm going to Megababe's.

Mood: Thirsty.

Saturday

10:06 a.m.: The two answers that are left to mark have the most potential for long-windedness. This is going to be fun.

Mood: Bring it on.

Music: Lisa's housewife mix (mostly Belle and Sebastian, The Shins, Cat Power and Elliott Smith. Very non-grating).

12:47 p.m.: Got cabin fever and decided to take a walk and pick up lunch. My neighbourhood's a smorgasbord of cheap and tasty treats, and I decided to try something new: a cheese and mint pie from the middle eastern bakery a couple of blocks down the road.

Oh. My. God. "Pie" is misleading: it's a cheese/mint filling stuffed in a greasy flatbread and toasted like a Quizno's sub to make it melty. Huge and delicious... and $2.25. Why do I buy groceries?

Focus, Claire. Focus.

Mood: Unfocused.

Music: Belle and Sebastian.

3:34 p.m.: This has kind of stopped being funny and lighthearted and become actually depressing. About to make attempt #2 at going to the grocery store.

Mood: Defeated.

6:30 p.m.: Done question three, which means I'm three-quarters finished. Pretty good, yeah, but it basically guarantees I'm going to be at this until at least midnight, and that's if I don't take a bunch of breaks.

Mood: Second wind?

10:48 p.m.: I'm done. I powered through those last exams with laser-like determination. I thought I would feel like cheering, or at least like crying, or getting carted away in a strait jacket. I don't really. I just feel annoyed that I spent two days of my life doing that. Also, I am super up to speed on my Canadian indie music now, after listening to CBC Radio 3 for probably something close to 20 hours in the past 48.

Mood: Hungry... and terrified the prof will make me regrade for having too many As.

Carleton's Master of Journalism Program: Not as Terrifying as I Make it Out to Be

2009-04-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I had a phone conversation with someone who will be starting the MJ program next fall. She'd been following my blog for a while, apparently, and wanted some insider knowledge about what to expect.

Prospective students reading my blog to learn about the program had never occurred to me. In retrospect, though, it makes perfect sense, given my "Carleton's Master of Journalism Program: Kind of Like A..." series of post titles. I just found out that when you google "carleton master of journalism," result #3 is this blog's first post.

Anyway, I can't remember exactly what she said, but she made a comment that was something to this effect:

"Do you even enjoy the program? Because based on your blog, it sounds sort of stressful and terrible."

Yikes, I thought. Stressful and terrible? Stressful, yes. Terrible, no. Was I really giving off the impression that the program was some sort of never-ending hell cycle of sleepless nights and cold calls?

I'm going to say the overall tone of my posts comes out as negative for the same reason the news tends to report the negative. People have an urge to write and read about extremes and things that are out of the ordinary. Nobody wants to hear about the days when I wake up at noon on a Saturday, read the paper, clean my apartment, and maybe do some leisurely marking - for the same reason that nobody wants to read headlines to the effect of People Enjoy Break from Work: Experts Credit the Weekend.

And I don't want to write about them. I get the urge to blog when life is at its craziest, like last Friday.

Anyway, like I said in the last post, I love this program. I really do. In general, I think it has a good balance between the practical and the academic. I've learned so much in the last eight months that it makes my head hurt to think about it.

So please, little prospective MJs, don't get the wrong idea. Don't run away screaming when you get your acceptance letter. The craziness is part of the fun. Mike's Place pints taste best when they're in celebration of a day spent running around the city putting together a same day newscast. I swear.

Also, I don't want to be single-handedly responsible for a decline in applications. Especially when the faculty is reviewing my proposals for funding to go to Malaysia. Eep.

The reflection post.

2009-04-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

Last Friday many of my classmates reflected on a time when the last day of class was the easiest day of the year. A day when the only reason you showed up was to receive your report card, a rice krispie square, and a pat on the head.

Those days are no longer. Last Friday we had to produce our final TV newscast. My partner and I had to put together the arts and sports reports. I was filming a high school improv tournament until 10:30 the night before, was back on campus by 8:30 to shoot a standup, found out at 9:00 that I had to include twice as much material as I thought I had and reshoot said standup in a better location, then spent the rest of the day frantically editing, filming the unveiling of a sports car, trying to memorize all the arts listings for the weekend, editing more, getting in trouble for what I thought was the brilliant idea of not bothering to write a script, sitting through two takes of the newscast, writing three course evaluations, and finally being allowed to get out of there and start drinking.

Phew.

I showed up at my parents' house last night in a zombie-like stupor, looking and probably smelling like the living dead. I'm not even going to tell you what I had due on the other days of last week. I wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone fainting.

And yet I love it. I had a fantastic year. I learned more than I thought it was humanly possible to learn in such a short period of time. I found out I really like a lot of things I didn't expect to like, such as local news and radio producing. I met a lot of awesome people.

If I could pick a year of my life to repeat over and over a la groundhog day, I think it would be 2008. There would be that unfortunate four month stretch where I hustled heaters and salt chlorinators at Pioneer Family Pools, but it would start with partying in Laos and end with my first term at Carleton. I would be 23 forever. Not bad.

I'm excited about next year. I'm excited about the summer. I'm excited about my life in general, and the career path I've chosen. I am stubbornly optimistic that it will not end with me being evicted from not being able to pay the bills by freelancing and having to move back in with my parents at age 29.

Life is good. The future is bright. Happy April.

Prank or paranoia?

2009-03-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

I've been getting a lot of emails in response to my online postings putting my apartment up for sublet. Tons of people tell me they want to come see it, even though it's slanty and occasionally on fire. Sometimes I schedule three viewings in one day. I rush home from school, appointments, and post-class beers to make my bed and sweep the floor for them.

I get my hopes up.

Then they don't show up.

This has happened three times now. Three no shows, and several more last minute cancellations.

I would chalk this up to the general flakiness of people on the internet, if it weren't for some odd facts...

All three of the no shows shared a last or first name, which I will not repeat here. A couple of others have had names that are variations on a celebrity's name.

It's just weird on so many levels. It seems so much like a joke, trick, or conspiracy to waste my time that it can't be true.

Also, who would play such an elaborate joke? Is there really someone trolling Craigslist and Kijiji making up fake email addresses based on fake names and giggling as they schedule and fail to show up for apartment viewings?

Lamest online prank ever. Right up there with "is your refrigerator running? Then you'd better catch it..."

Most depressing fortune ever.

2009-03-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

I went out for Chinese food last night. This is the fortune I got in my fortune cookie:

Ouch.

Carleton's Master of Journalism Program: Kind of Like a Reality TV Show

2009-03-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

I was flipping channels during the commercials on The National and briefly stopped on Hell's Kitchen.

Various little wannabe chefs had prepared dishes based on tuna for the head chef. The dishes involved things like balsamic ginger reductions and braised leeks. The nervous little junior chefs stood terrified in front of the beautiful products of their hard work and talent.

The head chef proceeded to tear them apart systematically and question their every decision. "Why didn't you put more sauce on this?" "I didn't want to drown out the flavour." "Well, that's a shame, because it's rather dry, ISN'T IT?"

Even the ones he praised were concealed in a torrent of criticism. "Those leeks are chopped too large, and using your mom's cooking as a muse is rather pedestrian, but other than that, this tuna is delicious. Everyone else needs much more work. You, you need more work too, don't get me wrong. But it's acceptable."

It's uncanny how much this is like my program. We kill ourselves looking for the best story ideas. We obsess over every little detail. Then our professors question and criticize the smallest detail of everything we produce, in front of the entire class.

This leads to paranoia, panic attacks, and petty criticism. And alliteration. Apparently.

You know what? ALL of those tuna dishes looked delicious. Those scared little baby chefs had to work hard and show a lot of talent to be on that show. And there is absolutely no way I could have made that balsamic-ginger reduction glaze, let alone figure out how much to put on my tuna.

We're good at what we do. All of us. Obsessing over every detail is fine in the production stage, but the problem is when you take it home with you.

But nobody wants to be a reality TV also-ran.

It actually happened.

2009-03-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

I've been half-joking all year long that whenever I hear about a fire in Ottawa, I check to see if it's my building.

I live in a million year old house that's been chopped up (badly) into apartments. It's in Chinatown, which is the suspicious fire capital of Canada. And my landlord's been trying to sell the building.

People like to tease me about my Eeyore-inspired philosophy of life, which is that if you always expect the worst, you're pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen, and prepared when it does.

So last night at 1:30 a.m. when I was awakened by a fire fighter pounding on my door and telling me to get the hell out fast, I knew what to do. I threw on my coat and winter boots, unplugged my laptop, and joined the rest of my neighbours in the street watching the mayhem.

I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I couldn't be sure where the fire was coming from or how bad it was. All I could tell was that my section of the building was definitely not on fire, and that our porch definitely was. A fire fighter hacked at the wood fence dividing the porches of the house's two units to try and put the flames out.

"Rats," I thought. "Now where am I going to park my bike?"

This thought was immediately followed by: "I wish it was a newscast day tomorrow and I had the camera equipment. I could sell it to the A-channel."

We were only outside for about twenty minutes before the various authorities told us we could go back inside. Apparently they were able to respond right away because there was another fire down the block. Oh, Chinatown.

No one seemed to know how the fire had started, but since it seemed to have started on the porch, there was speculation that someone may have set our recycling on fire. When I left to grab a paper this morning, I noticed that our recycling bin was seared onto our front walk in a charred, semi-liquified blob, which would appear to support that theory.

My front porch looks like a bomb hit it. It still smells like smoke. Piles of seared, chopped up wood are lying all over the place. The siding around the door frames is partly melted and peeling back. The mailboxes have been twisted into unusable shapes by the heat.

Before the fire, I was thinking that today might be a good day to finally put up a Craigslist posting to sublet my apartment for the summer.

Apartment that is somewhere between a bachelor and a one-bedroom for summer sublet.

Perfect for one person, or one person plus one shifty couchsurfer who doesn't mind sleeping on the kitchen floor.

Easily accessible fire escape that you could totally turn into an awesome balcony with patio furniture and a barbecue.

Slantiness and poor renovation makes you feel like you live in an M.C. Escher painting.

Front porch slightly crispy.

Five minute walk to beer store.

Rent includes stray cats.

It'll get snapped up right away for sure.

Read some good news.

2009-03-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled upon this incredibly hopeful and beautiful blog post. I'm going to copy the quote that was lifted from the blog I discovered it through, The Journalism Iconoclast, because I agree that it sums up the post the best:

"And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie."

Like a lot of undergrads, I became enamoured with the concept of revolution, then disillusioned by it. But this post stirred up some of that old excitement. Maybe we should stop listening to all the doomsday prophets who keep telling us we're idiots for getting into a dying, unsustainable industry. Maybe now is the most exciting time to be a journalist. The end may be near for the old model. But maybe that's a good thing for those of us who want to be part of something radically new, participatory, democratic and relevant.

It's a sunny day in Ottawa. It's a good day to be a journalism student.

It was a good morning.

2009-03-12T15:27:00.000-07:00

I woke up bleary-eyed at 7:00 this morning, last night's manic episode long gone, resentful at having to commute to another 8:30 class in sub-zero weather.

I left my house and turned on my iPod, which was halfway through this week's CBC Radio 3 podcast. My ears were greeted with... a French rap about partying in a Jacuzzi by Acadian group Radio Radio.

"Je porte une grosse furcoat dans ma jacuzzi
Ma vie a changée depuis qu'j'ai une jacuzzi
Et je mange des onion rings dans ma jacuzzi
Chaque jour c'est Noel pi je paye point de taxe"

Please tell me they are coming to Ottawa soon and bringing their Jacuzzi and rotating girl with a disco ball on her head with them.

Do yourself a favour and watch the YouTube video. It's the best thing that's happened to me all week.

"J'ai une grosse Jacuzzi, comme dans les movies..."

It begins.

2009-03-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

In Tuesday's TV class we did an exercise where we were given a bunch of footage of a fish farm tank that burst onto a road in Whitehorse and had to edit it into a news story complete with voice over. My TV news team is a journalistic dynamo, don't get me wrong. But when it comes to technical skills, we're, well, new. Brand new.

So in order to get our video done on deadline, our pictures didn't match our sound. We had footage of gasping, flopping fish when we were talking about the president of the company. We spent our last 30 seconds making a text graphic that read FISHPLOSION!!! in the hopes we'd get points for not taking ourselves too seriously.

Last night, I dreamed it was the night before my MRP was due. In my dream, for some reason the only material I had was the fish flop video. I had to hand that in as my major research project, and sit there as my classmates, professors, and everyone I knew watched it and laughed. Then I had to get up on a podium in front of everyone and make a speech about it.

Thus begin the year-end academic panic dreams. Right on schedule. But this time the mood is different. Instead of despairing, I feel manic. Right now, for example, I'm trying to convince myself to watch TV and go to bed, but I'm having a hard time drowning out the snarling demon voice telling me to run around the block, drink a red bull, and stay up all night researching media constructions of the Canadian military as a peacekeeping force.

I'm compromising by blogging over a glass of wine. So far, still sane. Stay tuned for updates throughout the month.

What's wrong with Ottawa?

2009-03-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

Last night Sonya and I ventured out into the strange and unsettling world of nightlife in the Byward market, and I feel it summed up everything I love and hate about this city so perfectly that it requires internet-sharing.

Let's start with hate. I. HATE. The Byward market. It's the Disneyland of urban planning. It feels like the product of a city council meeting where the councillors decided they needed to "jazz up" the downtown core. I can just picture some dweeb in a Calvin Klein tie saying "You know what would really give Ottawa a hip, pedestrian feel? An open air urban market." This statement, in my imagination, was met by rousing pats on the back, the uncorking of champagne, and the drafting of forms for the owners of bars, poutine shacks, and souvenir stalls to fill out so a committee could decide if they were hip and authentic enough to win a place in their new 'hood.

Fast forward to a Saturday night in March 2009, in which Sonya and I are standing in a very long line outside a certain pub in the market. Yes, you non-Ottawans read that correctly: A line. At a pub. This fact alone would be enough for people in any other city to laugh at the suckers and go to any other pub next door. But alas, this is Ottawa, and the same hellish line ups were snaking out of every establishment in a four block radius. Also, we were supposed to meet friends there.

So we stood in said line for about half an hour, when we finally got to the bouncer and compliantly showed our ID. I look to the alley where the entrance is on the left and see... another line. "What is this? Some kind of post line up line?" I ask.

"Yes," the cross-armed bouncer informs me. "If you don't like it, good luck finding a shorter line somewhere else."

He had a point, and we were still waiting to hear from our friends. So we joined the post line line.

"What a scenic alley this is," enthused Sonya. "This exposed brick and stucco is totally worth the wait."

"How lucky are the people who live in those apartments above us?" I agreed. "They can come sit on those fire escapes and hang out in this alley every day."

A waitress interrupted our sarcasm to ask if we wanted to order drinks. This was one of the perks of making it to the post line line, apparently. But we weren't quite VIPs yet: all you could order was beer and shooters. Sonya does not drink beer. So she opted for a Jager bomb.

That's right: We each paid $4.50 for the privilege of chugging beer and Jager bombs in an alley.

We reached the end of the post line line, where we were informed the cover was $6.50.

Two lines. A 45 minute wait. And a $6.50 cover. FOR A PUB.

That was the last straw. I daintily swigged back the last of my beer, threw the plastic cup in the garbage, and stormed out.

We went a few doors down to Zaphod's, where the line was shorter and you get a dance floor in exchange for the cover charge. We texted our friends, who met us there. We drank stupid space ship themed cocktails. Dancing ensued.

In my opinion, this all stems from Ottawa's identity crisis. It's essentially a small town that has had big city features thrust upon it. It feels obligated to at least look like it's trying to be cool and fun, but in reality it would rather drink a cup of tea and go to bed at 10:00.

I love my Ottawa friends. I love the canal. I love the Parliament buildings. I love the crazy, grungy Chinatown neighbourhood I live in.

But when it comes to night life, Ottawa, please: Stop being a try hard.

I'm moving into a bomb shelter.

2009-03-05T09:16:00.001-08:00

Global warming is going to flood the earth, we're entering The Great Depression II, and I've lost count of how many countries have nuclear missiles aimed in my general vicinity.

I thought that was enough to worry about, but apparently I forgot about ASTEROIDS.

Apparently one came this close to hitting the earth and causing nuclear-scale destruction last Monday.

Sometimes I wonder if it's foolish to plan a career, what with the impending rapture and all.

Apology

2009-03-04T09:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Lulu Lemon yoga pants:

I would like to offer you an apology.

I spent years making fun of you. I was even a member of a Facebook group called "Down with Lulu Lemon." This deep seated prejudice was the result of the fact that my arch enemies, Dumb Rich Girls from My Hometown of Oakville, Ontario, have adopted you as your uniform. You can see them at the mall or walking home from high school wearing identical black Lulu Lemon yoga pants, candy coloured Lulu Lemon hoodies (all different colours, of course, because having the same clothes as your friends would be OMG mortifying), and carrying giant Lulu Lemon tote bags. This cult of Lulu Lemon leads these girls to abandon school work and reading books, pursuits which their 25 hour a week retail jobs do not leave them time to enjoy. Their entire pay check is then spent on gas for driving their daddy's Benz to the mall in Mississauga in order to stay up to date with the latest Lulu additions.

And so I wrote you off as brand slavery. How ironic that the ancient spiritual pursuit of yoga has become the platform for yuppie consumer culture, I scoffed.

Then I went to a clothing swap, where a pair of said uniform black Lulus were up for grabs. I needed more workout clothes, and decided that the fact I got them at a clothing swap cancelled out the brand name, so I took you home with me.

Then, last night, I went out for drinks after class where I ate deep fried zucchini sticks followed by half an alfredo pizza with three cheeses and M&Ms. I quickly required freedom from the confinement of a waistband. I went home and put you on.

Your stretchy, yet substantial fabric hugged my love handles like a mother cradling a newborn baby. You were supportive and forgiving. You made my butt look fabulous.

I must admit that in the past, I have marveled to myself at your ability to look like dress pants to the untrained eye. You are a shape-shifting miracle of modern technology. You are consumer culture's gift to women.

I still would never pay full retail price for you, Lulus. But I will never mock you again.

How to get people to pay us for doing our jobs

2009-03-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

This is a topic that has created some ruffled feathers in the Carleton MJ blogosphere lately: Are we walking into a profession that, like the music industry, offers a product people want but refuse to pay for because you can find it free on the internet?

We're not the only ones talking about this. Here's a sample of some views from other media types:

Alan Mutter says newspapers were crazy to offer content for free online in the first place, and they're crazy if they don't start charging people for it now. He also has a really good point about how aggregates like Drudge Report are cleaning up by selling ads on websites that get zillions of hits a day that do nothing but link to content they didn't have to pay to produce. Yikes. Never thought of that.

Paul Robinson says newspapers have been undermining their own ad revenue for years by offering free online adspace to try and entice advertisers to buy print space. He also has a point form list of things newspapers should do to revive their business model. This is my favourite one:

"Customers do not want to pay for anything. Ever. You have to work hard to convince them it’s worthwhile. You’re doing an awful job of that, so stop trying to do it."

Steve Yelvington has some good but depressing points about why he doesn't think the idea of providing news through iTunes-like software will work.

Meranda Watling wrote a really interesting post that includes the concept of "the silo effect," in which media types only listen to each other and not the readers, leading them to come up with bizarre theories about why people aren't reading newspapers any more that have nothing to do with reality. She talked to quite a few people who understand why having fewer reporters on old-fashioned beats with less time to do investigative work is a bad, bad, bad thing. I commented gushingly on her post. I am a geek. Whatever.

What do I think? I think offering everything for free online obviously isn't working, as evidenced by the media bankruptcy armageddon that's going on right now. I think making people pay a subscription fee to access individual newspapers' websites won't work, either, because people will just go elsewhere and no one will see those precious ads on your site. I agree 100% with Meranda Watling that media types are too cynical about public demand for things like city hall and school board beat reporting. People want and need that information.

I am sick of this leap in logic: People aren't buying newspapers and are getting their news online instead, therefore they don't care about thoughtful, investigative print reporting and are more interested in 15 billion live tweets and sound/video clips a day than one balanced, well-researched article, therefore let's send out our one remaining employed reporter to the news conference armed with a mic, a video camera, a still camera and a blackberry like a one woman marching band and give her half an hour to file.

Media types consume that type of journalism and go "Oh, new, cool, the way of the future!" Normal people consume that type of journalism and go "What the heck is this, who has time to look at all this stuff, and how come I still don't know how this affects me?"

I'm not as cynical as Steve Yelvington about the iTunes model. People are buying those ebook things these days, right? And iPhones? There's gotta be some sort of subscription model to an aggregate that tailors the news you buy to your interests.

One thing that's different about music and news: People don't just like news, they need news. And they need it continuously. They will never get all the news they need and say, OK, my news collection is now complete. I realize that the fact that music and news are very different is part of Yelvington's point about why the iTunes model won't work, but there's got to be some way to take that into account.

Dear sir or madam, we regret to inform you that you are cut.

2009-02-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

"Dear Claire Brownell, Thank you for applying to work at The Prestigious Post as an intern in 2008."

Oh right, I'd forgotten I applied to that.

"We have made our decisions, and I am sorry that we will not be offering you an internship for this year."

Rats. Oh well. Better luck next time.

"I know that may disappoint you. There are several people we would love to have working here and whom I know would do a great job. All of us regret the loss of that opportunity and the message we send when we decline applications from good people."

Yes, well, c'est la vie. It was a long shot. Also, that "whom" should be "who." Maybe they will hire me as a copy editor.

"Our decisions may say a lot more about the size of our intern class than they do about your talents and abilities, but it is natural to take rejection personally."

Wait... what? I didn't take it personally. Why would I take it personally? Who would take it personally? Should I take it personally?

"Please hang tough. If journalism is what you love to do, you will find a way. If the Prestigious Post is where you want to work, you can still get here. Today’s decision in no way forecloses future opportunities."

Some people think that? Why would they think that? I'm not going to drop out of J-school over this. Do some people drop out of J-school over this? What do you mean, "hang tough?"

"Stay smart, keep working hard and be flexible in journalism’s transformation. There will be untold avenues to achieve your career goals. I look forward to seeing that happen."

What was it? The clippings? It's not my fault the only published articles I had when I applied for that internship were about partying in Southeast Asia. The resume? The tone of the cover letter? Did I come on too strong? Should I have put more effort into the piano playing and tapdancing? Was it the swimsuit competition? What was it? WHAT WAS IT???

"Sincerely, Anne Important Editor."

Dear mom: TV is going great.

2009-02-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

Today was day 1 of learning to be a TV reporter. I had my reservations about TV from the get go, because I dislike the following things:

1) Carrying heavy stuff

2) Worrying about how I look

3) Being legally liable for $12 000 dollars worth of equipment

But it's part of the program, and apparently we all have to be able to shoot video, edit audio, play the piano and tap dance for the web these days if we want to be employable. So I gamely put on my best Reporter Barbie outfit, complete with pearls and make up, and arrived ready to learn.

Step one: Take the battery out of the charger, put it in the camera, and take it back out again. I successfully get the battery into the camera, and gently push it out again.

Whiz-BANG! The battery shoots out of the camera like a cannon ball and hits Peach squarely in the uterus. Peach is torn between clutching her stomach in pain and laughing hysterically. Off to a great start already.

Step two: Framing a shot and focussing it. "Let's pick a student at random for an example," says the tech guy teaching the lesson.

One nanosecond later, a broadcast quality close up of my face was on two very large television screens at the front of the class.

99% of the time, I take being low maintenance to extremes. It takes me 45 minutes to get ready in the mornings, including breakfast. I have gotten one manicure and zero pedicures in my life. I wear my hair in a ponytail almost every day, and the only reason there's anything in my wardrobe besides hoodies, jeans, and t-shirts is because my December internship forced me to go shopping.

But there are a few scenarios that bring out my repressed beauty anxieties. One is getting my hair cut (the lighting is very bright, you have to look at yourself in a mirror the whole time, and everyone who works there is wearing 90 pounds of makeup and is dressed like they're going clubbing). Another is being on video. Bad pictures? Whatever, you can blame the shot. There's no hiding from video. That is what you look like. Puffy cheeks, bloodshot eyes, staticky hair, and all. In broadcast quality close up. On a very large screen. In front of my entire class.

Step 3: Put the camera and tripod together and do some practice interviews with classmates.

My group and I walk in from break to find our camera missing. "Someone must have mixed them up and taken ours by accident," we reason out loud.

Tech Guy goes white. "Could you please... go check... and find it... now?"

Did I mention these cameras are worth $12 000, and we signed a form saying we're responsible for paying for them if it's our own fault they go missing or broken?

Dear mom: TV is going great. Today was our first day and I rendered my friend infertile. Also, someone took our camera and now I owe Carleton twelve grand. I'm sure I can pay that back in ten years or so. Tim Hortons has had a help wanted sign since September.

We found the camera. We even set the tripod up, turned it on, and took a sequence of shots.

But it took us about two hours. That's going to be real impressive when we're interviewing real people with better things to do.

John Hodgman is amazing.

2009-02-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

My father knows me well. He's responsible for my affection for Tom Wolfe, nerdy '60s and '70s prog rock, and of course, Battlestar Galactica.

So when he tells me I'll like something, I listen. I went home for a couple of days over reading week, and was told I would like John Hodgman's blog. John Hodgman is the PC guy from the Mac v. PC commercials and a regular on The Daily Show. Upon lurking through his blog, I also discovered that he used to be Bruce Campbell's literary agent.

Who's Bruce Campbell, you may say? Take your blazer and get out.

In conclusion, John Hodgman's blog is a collection of the obscure, weird and vaguely unsettling. Three of my favourite things. Enjoy.

Martha Gellhorn is amazing.

2009-02-19T13:36:00.001-08:00

Seriously. The Face of War is the newest addition to my list of books that changed the way I think about the world, writing, and life in general.

Martha Gellhorn was a war correspondent who reported on conflicts from the Spanish civil war to the war in Vietnam. If she wasn't allowed into a conflict zone, she stowed away on a ship or truck to get in. She had no patience for the official version of events and insisted on seeing everything with her own eyes. Her trademark was telling stories about regular people that exposed something uncomfortable just by being true.

The journalism blogs I read are a constant stream of flap about how journalists can revive the media. Their prescription usually has something to do with multimedia journalism, social media, and killing newspapers in favour of web news.

Let me throw a crazy idea out there: Maybe the internet has nothing, or very little, to do with why people aren't reading newspapers. Maybe it's because no one's writing anything that inspires them to read. All my heroes of journalism - Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and now Martha Gellhorn - are from another age. They're also all rule breakers. They didn't play it safe. They chewed up journalism text books and spat them out. And the end result was riveting.

Take Your Blazer and Get Out extends a warm welcome.

2009-02-16T18:13:00.001-08:00

I just discovered how to get at my blog statistics through Google Webmaster tools.

In the past two weeks, 25% of my blog's appearance in searches was from people googling "medieval torture devices."

To all you S&M fans who now read my blog: Welcome and enjoy.

Reporter Barbie misses the obvious

2009-02-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

In today's newscast it was my job to cover Question Period in the house of commons.

I've never been to QP. I've been in centre block once, when I was interviewing the House of Commons Curator during my internship. But I figured it wouldn't be too hard. Listen to politicians yell at each other, elbow some people in a scrum, grab a clip or two, get out, look like a big shot.

There were a few things I did not take into account:

1) Parliament is BIG. Really big. And complicated. There are lots of security checks and "do not enter signs" and security guards who get nervous when you look like you don't know what you're doing. Which I did not. I wandered into the press room and looked around like a deer in headlights. Two security guards asked if I needed help. "I'm a journalism student. I'm covering Question Period." Awkward silence. "... So... I guess I'll go do that now." I left quickly so I didn't have to hear the muffled laughter.

2) Parliament is noisy. The rumours are true: MPs are rude. Very rude. They talk through each other's speeches if it bores them, they yell insults at each other across the floor, they try to drown each other out with heckling. Besides being obnoxious, this makes it very hard to figure out what's going on. I only realized there's a little radio phone thing you can hold up to your ear that amplifies what's being said when it was almost over. And even with that, you still have to strain.

3) MPs don't wear name tags. Even news junkies and political nerds like me don't know more than a few MPs by sight. This means that if you miss who's talking, you're SOL: "Some MP in the back left corner who I'm pretty sure is from the NDP said..." doesn't cut it in a news cast. The little map of who sits where doesn't help.

So I spent most of QP sweating about all of the above, plus the fact that the house was half empty because it was a Friday and not much was being said. I left for the scrum with the vague plan of standing in the biggest crowd of reporters, shoving my mic in front of whoever they were interviewing, and somehow spinning that clip into a story. This plan was foiled when only two MPs stopped to talk to reporters, and one of them was speaking French. Did you know that there's actually a literal back door in the House that MPs who don't want to talk to the press can leave by? Neither did I.

So I came back to campus rattled and downtrodden, told my editor there was no story, and turned a press briefing on a court case that I'd gone to earlier that morning into a short, crappy story.

It's not my fault, I consoled myself. There was nothing going on. No one said anything that hadn't been said 900 times.

Then I read this in The Globe and Mail online.

Crap. Only a new development in a GIANT POLITICAL SCANDAL that I totally missed because I was too busy panicking there was no story.

At least this was an in-class newscast and not a real assignment. Right?

How cool is the internet?

2009-02-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

I saw that that journalism professor whose blog I read had been to Malaysia a few years ago doing journalism research.

So I emailed her and asked if she had any contacts who would be able to help me with my MRP or write me a letter saying they'd act as my supervisor abroad to help me apply for funding.

She forwarded that email to a few people.

They forwarded that email to a few people.

Now I'm in touch with three Malaysian professors and nine Malaysian gay and women's rights activists on Facebook.

To everyone who says young people's use of social networking sites is a big dumb narcissistic waste of time: Take that.

Making more effective use of my blogging time

2009-02-08T08:16:00.000-08:00

Last semester Mary McGuire gave our print bootcamp class a guest lecture on multimedia journalism. I'm a total dweeb, and I took notes about all the stuff she recommended we do and spent a day over the Christmas break doing it. I made an iGoogle page, which has way too much stuff on it. I subscribed to a lot of blogs and feeds in Google Reader. I started a deli.cio.us account. I still don't Twitter because I don't really get it, but I'll probably crack soon.

I probably only read about 20% of the stuff that shows up in my Google reader, and 15% of that is new posts in my classmates' blogs. But one blog that I find myself actually clicking on and reading consistently is American journalism professor Mindy McAdams' blog Teaching Online Journalism. She's on part 2 of a 15 part series of how to become a superstar multimedia reporter.

I decided I would attempt to follow along. Step 1 was to use feed readers and subscribe to blogs. Check! Totally on the wagon. Multimedia reporting superstardom, here I come.

Step two was to start a blog. Check again! But wait. As I read more carefully, it became apparent that my blog isn't the type of blog she's talking about. While I do attempt to make posts that are relevant to broader issues faced by journalism students, it usually falls under the often sneered at "personal" category. What she recommends is making a blog that also serves as your own personal website with links to make it easy for employers to access your clippings. She was a little vague on exactly what it is I'm supposed to be blogging about, but I'm pretty sure it's not my witch doctor experience at the dentist or the love poems my friends wrote me for my birthday. Also, I fear that I often slip out of the relentlessly "professional" tone I'm supposed to take in all my online endeavors. This blog is meant more for friends, family, and anonymous internet stalkers/fans. I wouldn't put the URL on my business card, although I do make sure I keep the fact that anyone can read it in mind, especially after learning said lesson the hard way.

But I kind of feel like if I'm putting all this energy into it, I should probably be able to benefit from it professionally, too. But what else besides my life do I have enough material to blog about on the regular?

Mindy recommended this blog by an American journalism undergrad. The topic is, basically, being an American journalism undergrad. He blogs only about his journalistic endeavors. There is no mention of his personal life. He's spent a lot of time and effort cultivating a readership. He totally could, and I'm sure he does, put a link to his blog at the end of every email, comment, and cover letter he ever writes to anyone. As Mindy says, it will probably help him get a job when he graduates.

But... no offence, dude, who will probably read this because I linked his blog... it's also, well, pretty dry and technical. I'm not particularly interested in what kind of camera equipment he's bringing to cover the special olympics, for example. He's a prime example of an undergrad who got 100% sucked in to journalism, and now eats, sleeps and breathes it. That's cool, that's his thing. But if I tried to keep a similar blog, I would abandon it in a week out of boredom and frustration.

The reason I maintain this blog is because I need an outlet for writing in a style that isn't just for school. Cynical, dry, boundary-pushing humour is kind of my thing. And contrary to all the advice I keep getting, it's served me pretty well professionally. I put an article about using fire poi to busk for beer money in my Carleton portfolio. My boss's reaction to reading my blog about my internship adventures was "It was funny. You're a good writer." The head of the CP Ottawa bureau said he liked my travel writing, then offered me another internship.

So I'm thinking this blog could use some re-vamping. Less personal, more commentary. One idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a while is to start a fake news blog. It would showcase my writing without forcing me to take things too seriously. I think I could commit to a weekly fake news post. It's not like there's not enough material out there. Ideas for this week include "90% of outrage at Michael Phelps was over misinterpretation of the term "watersports:" Study;" "Mike Duffy to write series of erotic novels based on Canadian politicians;" "Journalists out of story ideas: Articles have already been published on how the economic downturn has affected everything."

This could obviously land me in hot libel water, too, but I think there are ways to do it carefully.

Maybe I'll do some test runs in the current blog to see how they go over.

I KNOW.

2009-02-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

If I hear it one more time, I'm going to scream.

"It must be awful being a journalism student in these tough economic times. What with there being no jobs and all. Not that there were any jobs before. But now even people who used to have jobs are losing their jobs. Gee whiz, are you ever in trouble. Bet you wish you'd gone into something recession proof. Like law school."

This is sort of like how strangers sometimes stop me on the street in the summer when I'm wearing sandals to tell me my feet are weird. I know my feet are weird. I have looked at my weird feet every day for the past 24 years. Bringing it up doesn't help make them less weird, or help me deal with my weird-feet anxiety issues. There is pretty much nothing new or useful to be said about my weird feet, so I'd rather not talk about it.

Continuing this metaphor farther than I'd planned to, I also don't really care that my feet are weird. I shamelessly walk around in sandals anyway. Maybe I'm nuts, and maybe this is some sort of sacrilege, but the sum total of my secret thoughts, fears, and anxieties about the horrible journalism job market is... I don't really care. I'm going to shamelessly keep learning about journalism anyway, because I like it. It's fun. I think I'm pretty good at it.

"It's so awful, new journalists have to spend years doing contract work, or freelancing with no job security." Actually, that sounds great. I get to spend a few years trying out different things, finding out what my strengths, weaknesses, and interests are. Then, one day, the economy will resuscitate, and I'll swoop in like a vulture on all the juicy media jobs that are suddenly up for grabs again.

Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll get sick of living in a slanty slum and taking the bus and not being sure whether or not I'll have a paycheck next week, and I'll go into PR, or put together podcasts for some company, or launch my backup plan of writing a bestselling series of trashy romance novels. That's totally fine too. I'm serious about wanting to become a professional journalist, but I'm not going to jump off a bridge if those aren't the cards life deals me.

So this is an open letter to everyone: I know there are no jobs. I don't live under a rock. I didn't pick journalism over law school because I thought it would make me a millionaire. I picked it because living my life to the fullest is more important to me than a guarantee that I can make a down payment on a house in the next five years.

But thanks for your concern.

You win, radio.

2009-02-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

My thoughts on radio have officially gone from blah to skeptically interested to I think I might want to be a producer for a living.

Last week, to my surprise, I became the producer for the week's current affairs show, which "airs" (they don't actually let us on the air yet) right after our class's two newscasts on Fridays. I didn't even know what a radio producer did until last week. I'm still not sure I actually know what a current affairs show is. Pretty much all the instruction I was given was that a show based on some sort of theme that included an interview, a documentary, and a tape talk needed to come into existence in a week, and it was my job to make sure that happened.

I liked it. I like coming up with fun, witty, topical themes (ours was "Ottawa, I love you, but you're bringing me down.") I liked writing funny, cheeky script. I liked coming up with ideas for the various segments... twice, in fact, because all of our original ideas fell through. I liked problem solving, and having to power to decide to run with a segment on a YouTube video called "OC Transpo Strike Ruins Hitler's Plans" despite our prof's reservations. I liked being more concerned with interesting stories than news value.

And, I'm not going to lie, I liked telling people what to do and not actually having to do it myself. "You met an ex-Nortel employee at the bar last night? Call him up and ask him if he's having relationship problems." "The therapist won't talk to you? Then stand outside a psych professor's office door until he gives you a clip, dammit!"

The only thing I didn't like, in fact, was not getting any of the glory. Mm... sweet, sweet glory. No glory for the radio producer. Someone else gets to read your best lines. No one hears your voice. It's one of those jobs that nobody notices is being done at all unless it's being done badly.

The newscast looked pretty fun too. I was jealous of the reporters who got to rush to city hall to do live hits about the transit talks. It was pretty amazing how fast everything changed and adapted and still came together, for the most part.

Basically, radio seems like it has all the good parts about broadcast (the immediacy, the scene-setting, getting to play with equipment) without the bad (worrying about what you look like on TV, lugging around heavy cameras and lighting, ratings and "infotainment" over serious reflection and analysis). So what if only two elderly ladies sipping tea are listening to Radio 1 at any given time? Those ladies are getting the highest quality journalism tax payer money can buy.

On top of all this, today I was given a sign. I was listening to Radio 1 while I put groceries away, and lo and behold, a short doc came on... about... the rising popularity of university intramural dodgeball. I KID YOU NOT. Dear CBC producers: If you're going to use my ideas, at least give me an internship.

Do you hold my future, radio? Perhaps.

My Essay

2009-01-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

My Essay on Lyse Doucet

By Claire Brownell

Lyse Doucet is a presenter for BBC World News. She is from Acadia. Her accent is funny because she is from Acadia and also hangs around with British people a lot because she works for the BBC so her accent is British and Acadian. This makes a lot of people say that she is annoying when they comment on YouTube. Acadia means "On account of the beauty of hte trees." in 1604 many people in Acadia died of scurvy. Sometimes Lyse Doucet is a host for The Current. The Current is a CBC radio show where they interview important people. One day I would like to work for The Current too.

I went to the National Archives and they said they had a video with Lyse Doucet in it but I wasn't allowed to watch it because I might reck it and they onely had 1. So I wastched a video on YouTube and Lyse Doucet said that people in Sweden watned to use the Euro in their country. The Euro is the kind of money that people in Europe use. I thought Lyse doucet did a really good job talking about this important issue.

In conclusion i think Lyse Doucet is an important Canadian war correspondent and I also think that I would be a good Canadian war correspondent and that you should let me go to Rwanda to learn more about this important issue.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqKCrjJ-uiI

Medieval torture devices: Part II

2009-01-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

Are you there, God?

It's me, Claire.

Please stop picking on me.

Remember, dear readers, when I told you about how I had to get the same tooth filled for the third time in two years, and how this was just the latest in a lifetime of bad dental luck that started when I was seven years old and the only kid on the playground with braces and granny glasses? I didn't even TELL you about the ordeal I went through trying to get a toothache looked at in Laos, when I was taken to a corrugated shack a half hour on a dirt road out of town that housed some stained mattresses, several chickens, and a rusted out dentist chair. "I am dentist," a man in a surgical mask greeted me as he emerged from behind the pile of mattresses. "Please have seat."

Knowing that my options were to A) Run, and live with an increasingly painful toothache since this was likely the most modern dental institution I would find in northern Laos, or B) Stay, grip the edge of my seat, and get ready to bolt if I heard the sound of a drill, I chose B. Turned out all he did was look in my mouth with a mirror and give me some antibiotics.

You would think that would be the craziest dentist-related story that anyone would ever hope to experience in one lifetime. You would be wrong.

Yesterday I returned to the Carleton dentist to get my cavities filled. He froze my face, told some jokes, and proceeded to drill my teeth open. Partway through the procedure, a nervous-looking woman came in and informed him that there was a patient who had been waiting for hours and there was no one to look after them.

"Sorry," he said. "We're short staffed today. This will just take a moment."

I was left to bite a cotton ball, watch tennis on mute, and try not to gnaw at my frozen cheeks or tongue. For half an hour.

This happened at least three times. It's a bit of a blur. I can feel my brain trying to block out the memory already.

Finally we were nearing the end of the ordeal. The dentist went to pull out a wedge that was lodged between my molars. His hand slipped. He sliced my upper lip open.

"Oh gosh! Oh, gee! Oh, goodness, I am so sorry! Um. Um. Well, I can freeze that now and put a stitch right in it."

A stitch??? I thought, as I could not talk, my face being frozen and my jaw being held open by a doorstop-like piece of plastic. What have you done to my FACE???

"Or maybe I can just put a band-aid on it..."

FOR GOD'S SAKE, DECIDE.

"I know. I'll just put the band-aid on and... hey, hey Bill, come over here a second, will you?"

The dentist disappears to have a brief consultation with some other dude in a white coat, who comes into the room, stands over me, and points.

Just stands there, pointing, about six inches away from my face.

After this has been going on for a few minutes, the dentist seems to remember that this may not be something I would expect. "We practice certain forms of traditional medicine at this clinic," he said. "He's transferring his energy to you to help heal your lip faster. Are you open to this?"

"I gueth tho," I said. What else could I say?

Anyway, finally it was over and I went to the counter to pay, traumatized and feeling sorry for myself.

"That will be $375," the woman at the desk said.

I handed her my insurance card from my mom's health plan.

"Actually, $375 is the amount your insurance declined to cover," she said. "Will that be cash or credit?"

So yesterday I paid $375 to spend three hours having my teeth drilled open and cemented shut, wait for other patients to get taken care of, and disfigure my face.

I give up. I am never going to the dentist again.

So radio is kind of cool, I guess.

2009-01-17T09:12:00.000-08:00

Last night I was listening to As It Happens and one of the interviews had this intro:

"Psychiatrist Karen Norberg knit an anatomically correct brain. Naturally, we had some questions."

This was immediately followed by the first question: "Dr. Norberg, why did you knit an anatomically correct brain?"

I like it. It's witty. It gets right to the point. It's exactly the first thing you want to know when you hear someone knit an anatomically correct brain: "Why the hell would someone do that?" (The answer is, basically, "Because I could.")

Of course, the second thing I wanted to know was "What does a knitted anatomically correct brain look like?" Which, of course, As It Happens could not answer.

The Telegraph online could. It looks like this:

So I get it. I get how radio can do some things that print can't, and I get how print can do some things that radio can't, and I'm starting to get into the CBC and NPR, and I can actually see how my gay rights in Kuala Lumpur idea might actually work really well on radio.

What I really wish, though, is that I could hire my own personal audio tech and just tell her or him what I want done with my interviews and scripts. So far, I totally hate audio editing. It's picky. It's boring. It takes forever. Maybe it's just because I'm new and I'll like it when I'm better at it. I hope so.

I hope you're having a good laugh up there.

2009-01-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

Last week, after hours on the phone with the women's studies department, I received the good news that I would be a TA for Women's Studies 2801: Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice.

Amazing! I had been hoping to TA a women's studies class since the summer. The idea of discussing feminism with a group of wide-eyed, idealistic, and rabble rousing ladies warmed my cynical journalistic heart of steel. Right before the prospect of pounding the pavement for interviews in -35 weather with no buses flash-froze it back into ice.

I met Mega for coffee at Rooster's, and what happened next can ONLY be explained by God mistaking me for ThePeach. This is exactly the kind of hilarious cosmic joke that would get played on her. Maybe her bangs threw him off and he deflected his Hilarity Ray onto the nearest brunette.

Mega: I finally picked my winter term classes. I'm done all my psych courses, so they're all electives.

GinBucket: Ooo, what are you taking?

Mega: Intro to Spanish...

GinBucket: Oh, cool!

Mega: Some poli sci class...

GinBucket: Sounds good!

Mega: Oh, and you're going to love this one: Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice.

GinBucket: *Screams*

Mega: The Tuesday tutorials conflict with the poli sci class, so I have to switch to a Wednesday one.

GinBucket: *Screams*

This proves it. God hates feminists. The Sarah Palin set was right all along. Tomorrow I am moving to Texas, getting knocked up, and spending the rest of my life changing diapers and reading the bible.

Right after I teach my first tutorials. Which, to add to the cosmic conspiracy theory, are apparently not a problem since the other TA for the class also has a student she knows in her tutorial and was going to ask me to swap marking with her anyway.

I am going to look at this as a practical experiment in non-hierarchical teaching methods. Together, Michelle and I will challenge the patriarchal paradigm that sees the teacher as superiour to student. Barriers will be broken down. Structures will be subverted. It's activism in practice, really.

In fact, it will be so non-hilarious that the Lord in his infinite wisdom will get bored and go back to torturing ThePeach. Knock on wood.

Getting older

2009-01-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

Last year, I celebrated my birthday on Don Det, one of the 4,000 islands on the Mekong river in the south of Laos. It involved a cake fight, mustard, buckets, and being banned from buying a monkey. You can read about it here.

I said it would be hard to top. I was right, but my friends sure put up a valiant effort. Last night involved a cake fight, guacamole, buckets, and making cleavage out of balloons. If the host of the party had a monkey for sale, I think he would still let me buy it.

Mega and her roommates wrote me a series of poems for my birthday. Here are some choice samples:

C is for Claire

L is for Large Brain

A is for Awesome

I is for I like you

R is for Righteous

E is for your nice epidermis

- The Ginger

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Gingy was nappin

I wish I was too.

- Diver

Overall, I call it a great success. Here's to my mid-twenties.

Medieval torture devices

2009-01-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a collection of Hunter S. Thompson's articles. In one about the superbowl, he quotes a football player describing the ritual of being interviewed every day by the same reporters on the same topics as being "like going to the dentist every day to have the same tooth filled."

Know what else is like going to the dentist over and over to have the same tooth filled?

Going to the dentist over and over to have the same tooth filled.

I have a broken filling between my last two left bottom molars. This is the second time it has broken and the third time I have to have it filled. The Carleton dentist says it's because I clench my teeth in my sleep and that I have to wear a mouth guard at night.

I have a horror of dental devices since going through the miserable ordeal of braces and night headgear from the ages of seven to 10.

If the filling breaks again, I give up. I would rather let my tooth slowly rot out of my face than have it filled for a fourth time. And I would definitely rather be a superbowl football player doing press conferences every day. Quit yer whining, Manny Fernandez.

Also, I just realized that it's been three weeks since I last updated my blog. Sorry, folks. Now that I'm back in school and have other things I should be doing, I'm sure I will be more on top of things.

Well this is just... neat.

2008-12-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

Damn, I want to read this book now. And then join a Muslim punk rock band.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/us/23muslim.html?em

My RA job: a flashback montage

2008-12-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've blogged about my RA job yet. So here's the deal: the rest of my peers got TA jobs where they did things like run discussion groups, mark papers, teach people how to use photoshop, and other tasks that require at least some degree of intelligence, skill and mental stimulation. I was assigned to be the research assistant for a professor who's writing a book on women in the CBC in the '50s to '60s, and a journal article about Canadian feminist newspapers.

Right up my alley, you might think. This is also probably what the director of my program thought when he assigned me the job (it was either that or 'A feminist, eh? We'll show you what we do with THOSE'). Well, yes, except that my main duty was transcribing interviews word for word with very, very, very old people, who mumble, trail off into unrelated anecdotes, and get angry when they're asked questions they don't remember the answer to. Ten hours of that a week gets a bit tedious, to put it mildly.

Well, today I finished it. I transcribed the very last word of the very last interview, after plowing through three weeks worth of backed up work. And so in commemoration, I present to you My RA Job: The Montage.

(Cue music. Violins, perhaps.)

Scene 1

(Claire walks up to the Special Collections desk at Library and Archives Canada.)

Claire: Hello, I would like to order this list of audio materials.

Desk lady: (Types them into computer) I'm sorry, but these are not available for use at this location.

Claire: Um, then how am I supposed to listen to them, since that is my job?

Desk lady: They are only available in the main storage location in Hull. They are open only on weekday mornings. Very, very early on weekday mornings.

Claire: But I go to school on weekday mornings.

Desk lady: Well, then I suppose you'll just have to get there extra early.

Claire: Please check one more time before I die of a heart attack.

Desk lady: Alright, but... oh wait... ha ha, I entered the number wrong. They'll be here in two days.

Claire: *Dies of a heart attack*

Scene 2: The audio consultation room of Library and Archives Canada

Claire is transcribing an interview in which not one, but two Very Very Very Old Ladies are interviewing EACH OTHER.

VVVOL1: Now, if you could remember anything about the women's senate party in 1763...

VVVOL2: Oh, now, let's see, yes, I wore a red dress, no, no, it was blue, and it was Mary, no, Marjorie, who put on the party.

VVVOL1: Oh yes, wait, no, it was Mary, it was Mary after all, and your dress was red.

VVVOL2: Yes, yes, I remember now, and oh, didn't they have the nicest sandwiches.

VVVOL1: Yes, but now, what were we talking about, oh yes, the women's senate party, and you made that speech...

VVVOL2: Oh my, yes, now that speech, I wrote that speech while I was caring for my husband, who was injured in the war, you know, and back in those days, the only medicine available was cod's liver oil and pressed garlic...

VVVOL1: Oh dear, I believe we've gotten off topic again, now where were we, oh yes, the women's senate party of 1763...

(Claire ejects the CD and throws it across the room like a frisbee. It hits a security guard. She waves.)

Scene 3: The Special Collections desk again.

Claire: Hello, I just had a question about the material on this CD...

Desk lady: *Goes white* Oh God. Oh God. Did you take that... from the audio consultation room?

Claire: Well, yes...

Desk lady: Into the hallway???

Claire: Yes, but it was just a few feet, and I...

Desk lady: No archive materials are ever. Ever. Supposed to leave. That room.

Claire: Oh, OK, well, sorry, but if you could just answer my quick question...

Desk lady: *Grabs Claire by elbow* I must immediately escort you back. Please keep your eyes forward and the CD visible at all times.

Claire: Uh, alright, sure, but I was just wondering if this is the right recording, because I was looking for...

Desk lady: *Hisses* Never. Ever. Do. That. Again.

Claire: *Dies of a heart attack*

Scene 3: The audio consultation room of Library and Archives Canada

Claire is sitting in one of the little cubicles with headphones, attempting to put one of those giant reel to reel tapes on the tape player. Every time she successfully balances on the player, it plays for a few seconds then falls off.

Claire: $&@*#($*!@&#!(!!!!!!!

People from the neighbouring cubicles give her dirty looks.

Claire: Sorry. *$^#@*#$@!!!!! Does anyone else know how to work these things?

Everyone either ignores her or shakes their head no. Claire tries one more time and this time the entire tape falls off the reel in a tangled mess.

Claire: MOTHER &@#$^@!##$!!!!!

Claire stands on a chair twirling the reel in an attempt to untwist the tape. A security guard walks by. Claire waves.

Scene 4

Claire is transcribing an interview on her laptop at her apartment.

Terrified researcher on tape: So, can you tell me what year that was? '51? '52?

Old lady: Well, now, I don't know! That was 40 years ago!

Terrified researcher: But you can't give me even a rough idea of when, was it before the national broadcasting conference, or after...

Old lady: National broadcasting, now, it was called the broadcasting conference of Canada! Don't you know? Haven't you read anything?

Terrified researcher: Uh, yes, right, I'm sorry, I'll make a note...

Old lady: Now you're rustling your papers! That's going to make noise on the tape! Don't you know anything about broadcasting?

Terrified researcher: Uh, I... sorry...

Claire: SHE'S TRYING SO HARD! WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN? JUST LEAVE HER ALONE! LEAVE HER ALONE! (Puts head on desk and cries)

Anyway, it's been fun, and it is with regret that I must take on another position. But all good things must come to an end.

Excuse me while I mine my parents' wine rack.

I can't believe that just happened.

2008-12-16T06:49:00.001-08:00

I sent in my Battlestar article to MONDO yesterday and got an email back this morning.

There is a new TV editor and she has decided to take a firm stance against putting anything BSG related in the magazine.

That's right... I'm too geeky for MONDO. MONDO, the site that had Batman themed content for like, two solid weeks when The Dark Knight came out. MONDO, that has a comics section, editors obsessed with Spiderman, and once ran a series of Buffy fan articles years after the series finished.

Well, that's a blow to the ego.

So I'm making you read it instead. Blogs: helping rejected writers force their material upon an unwilling audience since 1999.

Suckers.

Just Let it Happen.

I’m about to take on an ambitious task.

I’m going to try and convince everyone who reads this article to start watching Battlestar Galactica, and to keep watching it until they’ve caught up to the last episode that aired mid fourth season. The show is starting up again on January 16, and you’re going to need the full Christmas break to prepare.

This being MONDO, bastion of pop culture nerdery (whatever, embrace it), many readers will not need convincing. However, I believe that a subtle approach is necessary to convert the skeptics, the people who respond to the argument “it’s the best show on television” with “yeah, but I’m not into spaceships and all that crap.” I want to be able to bring up the show at a bar and be met with a lively round of conversation, goddammit, instead of the usual chorus of “Shut up, geek!” followed by napkins and straws being thrown at me. So even if, especially if, you’re an ardent science fiction hater and the mere mention of the title makes you want to beat me up and steal my lunch money, hear me out.

I’m going to ease you into this. You may claim that all forms of science fiction give you seizures, but I bet you’ve enjoyed it in the past without even realizing it. OK, fine, you hate Star Trek. Acceptable. You may even hate Star Wars. A shame, but to each his own. But I bet you’ve watched Futurama through to a commercial break at least once while flipping channels. That show involves a spaceship, robots and the future: it counts. I bet you liked The Matrix and Independence Day. That counts too. I bet you’ve read Slaughterhouse Five, A Clockwork Orange, or 1984, and I bet you wrote a stellar book report on it. You’re busted.

Sneaky? Perhaps. Unfair? Maybe. But hey, I just proved that just because a book, movie or TV show has elements of science fiction in it doesn’t mean you won’t like it. A whole new world is now open to you. Thank me later. I’ll see you at the “Environmental Sustainability in Frank Herbert’s Dune Series” book club next Tuesday.

Now that your knee-jerk genre prejudice has been dealt with, let’s move on to Battlestar. I may be forced to give away some minor plot details in order to make the most convincing case possible, so if you’re already hooked but not completely caught up, proceed with caution.

The cast is hot and often half naked. OK, so this may be a cheap way to get people interested. But it’s true: BSG has a little something for everyone. Straight male? One of the main characters is a blonde model who often struts around in a very skimpy red dress. Straight female? Locker room scenes of buff, manly army guys wearing only towels abound. Gay male? Locker room scenes of buff, manly army guys wearing only towels abound, plus there’s Felix “Gaydar” Gaeta’s adorable man-crush on Dr. Gaius Baltar. Gay female? Katee Sackhoff plays short haired, cigar chomping, ass-kicking tomboy Lieutenant Kara Thrace, and... get ready for this... Lucy Lawless plays a bisexual robot (unfortunately minus the Xena breastplates). I challenge you to watch two episodes of this show and not incorporate at least one of the characters into your sexual fantasy roster.

The writing is riveting and the acting is fantastic. I don’t get hooked on long story arc type shows very often, because I find that most of the time they quickly disintegrate into the realm of the soap opera. But Battlestar sets itself up with a story line interesting enough to sustain an entire series without jumping the shark. I’m tempted to describe the premise, but every time I try I end up saying “I know that sounds really lame, but...” Just trust me that it’s not, and remember that this isn’t the first plot involving a futuristic robot war you’ve enjoyed (remember my point about The Matrix and Independence Day?). The creators of the show consciously try to make the daily lives of the characters believable, showing you where and how they live instead of having them just wander on and off the set like on Star Trek. This distracts you from the fact it’s set on a spaceship, I promise. Again, there’s something for everyone: intrigue, action, sex and drama. There’s just enough action to keep the romantic plot lines from getting sappy, and just enough romance and personal drama to keep viewers engaged who yawn watching fight and shoot-out scenes. The problem is that the very plot elements that make the show great are also what make it difficult and confusing to watch the episodes out of order. Why does the same actor seem to be three places at once? Why is Baltar the only one lucky enough to be able to see the model in the red dress? All will be revealed, my friend. Take the time and watch from the beginning. It’s worth it.

The plot features intelligent, complex social and political commentary. I would go so far as to say it’s the best I’ve see on television, ever. The show makes parallels with terrorism and the Iraq war, with the humans and robots (called cylons) holding competing religious belief. In season three, the cylons occupy a human settlement, so the humans develop an underground insurgency using suicide bombing as a tactic. Sound familiar? The fictional premise allows the writers leeway to explore controversial topics that would probably get them pulled off the air if the setting were more realistic. It also means the themes can be incorporated seamlessly into the plot without appearing preachy or out of place. Other topics brought up include abortion, freedom of speech, class politics, torture, and labour rights.

Christmas break is the perfect time to rent a season, hole up in your basement wrapped up in a blanket, and not leave the house. It’s snowing; you don’t want to go outside anyway. You’ll have an excuse not to talk to your family. You’ll save money by not going out. And when the series comes back on in January, you’ll be babbling about it excitedly to anyone who will listen instead of telling geeks like me to shut up.

Just let it happen.

A cautionary tale.

2008-12-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I showed up to work five minutes early, giant yellow purse packed with all the essential tools of my trade, eyeliner carefully applied, blazer jauntily buttoned. "Boy, I sure am a picture of responsibility and professionalism," I thought as I looked at my put together self in the bathroom mirror. "Who wouldn't hire me? I am clearly amazing."

"Good morning, Claire," my editor said to me.

"Good morning, Kate," I cheerfully replied.

"Are you enjoying your internship?"

"Why yes, it is going fantastically," I said. "You will notice that I emailed you all three 850 word articles last evening at 5:30. Would you like to assign me some other work to do while you read them? Or shall I just bask in the anticipation of praise, like a puppy waiting for a tummy rub?"

"So you're really enjoying your internship?" She pressed, smiling knowingly.

"Why, of course I am. Ha, ha, ha. Hard work, federal politics, not having to deal with all those pesky tax forms since I don't get paid, who wouldn't?"

"Because I found your blog."

Heart stops.

Jaw drops.

Hockey buzzer goes off in head as I frantically try to remember exactly what I said in my most recent posts.

"I have this Google alert thing set up..."

Crap. Last week's quarter life crisis where I reassessed my career path. Being less than thrilled about fact checking stories on fertilizer policy at midnight.

"And it tells me every time the name of the newspaper gets posted online..."

OH CRAP. Gin buckets. Saying the House Curator's job is to scrape gum off historical objects.

"And so it emailed me when your posts came up..."

CRAP. CRAP. Asian prostitution. Drug tourism. How did I manage to fit all these things in one post?

"They were funny. You're a good writer."

Huh?

"Here's your pay equity story back. My edits are in bold."

And so I stared at the computer, trying to make sense of what had just happened, picking up the pieces of my sense of identity as a together, unflappable intern. I mean, editing my pay equity story.

Yes, I know that anyone can find what I write on this blog. And I've definitely been playing fast and loose with my usual rule, which is if I can think of anyone I wouldn't want to read it, don't write it. But I didn't know that it was as if I was emailing my blogs to my boss every time I wrote the name of the paper (which, yes, I am carefully avoiding using).

It could have been a lot worse, that's for damned sure. So let this be a lesson to you. A cautionary tale, if you will. I'm ramping up my standards. Not only will I not write anything if there's anyone I wouldn't want to read it, I will assume it is getting emailed to everyone and everything mentioned.

Dear Kate:

If you are reading this, I really did enjoy my internship at your fine newspaper. I feel that my unintentional candidness gives you a more well rounded and honest perspective of my performance. Also, now you know how hard I worked. If you hire me in the summer, I promise I will not blog about pieing politicians or mention the name of your publication and Asian hookers in the same post again.

I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Claire Brownell.

Internship week 2: A lot less terrifying?

2008-12-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

Mega was right. Despite the fact that I have a similar workload this week, I finished work at 5 today with two rough drafts done, anticipate being done by 6:30 at the latest tomorrow, and am about to watch two hours of Kenny v. Spenny.

AND.

I have a press gallery pass for Parliament!

If I had a digital camera, I would definitely post a picture of it. In fact, it would probably be my new profile picture on Facebook. You'll just have to take my word for it that it has my name, The Hill Times, and the Parliamentary crest (there's probably an actual name for that), and a picture of me that looks like someone squished my head. It's beautiful.

I interviewed the Curator for the House of Commons Collection today for a feature profile. Basically his job is to keep track of all the historical stuff in the Centre Block and make sure no one sticks their gum on a bust of John A. MacDonald. Nice guy. We somehow got on the topic of Cambodia, and now I'm slightly concerned he'll Google me and find my MONDO articles and have his image of me as a fresh faced go-getting intern drown in a bucket of Samsung and Red Bull. Note to self: launching your journalistic career with a series of travel articles about drugs, prostitution and binge drinking can lead to future awkward professional situations.

Tomorrow I'm interviewing the woman who plays the bells in the Peace Tower at noon. She used to be a doctor in Spokane, you know.

And my pay equity article is turning out to be quite exciting, and led to a brief but lively exchange with a spokesperson for a certain government department that I should probably not discuss in detail in my blog. Ask for details in person.

Coming soon on Take your Blazer and Get Out:

- The wife leaves town: Mega, Lisa and Claire consume 17 pies, 36 gin buckets and the beer store's entire stock of Max Ice

- I starve to death and cry myself to sleep in my lonely, wife-less state

- I discover that attempting to do 30 hours of backlogged transcribing in 30 hours leads to hallucinations and uncontrollable fits of shrieking

Stay tuned!

Oh. AND. Mega has a blog now! Find it on my blog roll or at http://andthatswhyisleepwithaguninmymouth.blogspot.com.

Internship week 1: still standing.

2008-12-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well! I was right. That was interesting. Not quite in the way I thought though.

My dreams of chasing down politicians while yelling hard hitting questions about accountability and parliamentary precedents were crushed Monday morning when I was handed a stack of assignments on resources, next week's focus topic.

So instead, I found myself frantically making phone calls trying to get interviews on such topics as fertilizer regulations, offshore oil in Newfoundland, and Arctic research. I had a meltdown Wednesday night around midnight as I was still banging out my fourth article and wondering if I had damned myself to a life of working 16 hour days and doing interviews on my cell phone sitting cross legged in bus shelters in subzero weather ("Oh, yes, you're the NDP Indian Affairs critic... yes, of course I have time to talk to you now. Please excuse the sound of rush hour traffic and my chattering teeth").

Realistically, it wasn't that much more work than a normal week at school, where I'm used to never getting a day off and working all night. But there's something about having to be in an office from nine to five that adds extra misery to the realization that it's 10:00 p.m. and I'm reading the Fertilizers Act to fact check.

But Mega reminded me that any new job seems overwhelming at first, and that maybe it would get easier. And it did... once the deadline was over things were pretty easy, and I spent the afternoon getting a head start on assignments for next week, which will hopefully mean I'll be less crazed. I even pitched a story idea that I got the go ahead on... and it's a story about the Conservatives rolling back pay equity! I'm getting a story published about feminism! Who woulda thought?

Another weird thing I noticed is that after spending so much time exerting every ounce of energy sounding professional and articulate in five billion interviews with important people, I immediately became a neanderthal when I slipped back into normal life mode. "What kind of coffee would you like, miss?" "Uh." "How many sheets of bus tickets do you need?" "Duh." "Yo Claire, how's work going?" "SO. HUNGRY."

And I'm making it sound like it was all stress and caffeine. It wasn't. I definitely got a perverse kick out of calling MPs and lobbyists and pretending I knew what I was talking about. "So how long have you been with The Hill Times?" they would ask me. "Since Monday," I would respond. ".... Oh." I went to a conference on renewable fuels and interviewed the woman in charge of a $1 billion biofuels fund. I wrote a really interesting article on drinking water quality in First Nations communities. And I saw my five (FIVE!) articles the way they're going to be laid out in Monday's paper with my byline, and damn... my name looks good in print.

But I think the strongest indication that I still like journalism is that I came home from work today, made myself dinner, turned on the 6:00 news and started blogging.

Career path confirmed. Lisa, start baking that pie.

Political chaos? SWEET.

2008-11-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

What the hell crazy episode of the Twilight Zone did I just fall into?

Yesterday television talking heads were bemoaning how dull the last election was, and Canadian politics in general... now there's an opposition coalition that feels more like a third world military coup than something that would happen here.

Yesterday Stephane Dion was a hilarious political has been that the Liberals couldn't wait to write off as a giant embarrassing mistake... now he might be the Prime Minister in a week.

Yesterday the Governor General, unelected representative of the Queen of England, had a job description mostly consisting of signing things and wearing fancy hats. Now she's going to decide whether the coalition goes ahead or an election gets called.

Yesterday I was happy to be finished with a story about intramural dodgeball... now I'm a reporter on Parliament Hill.

If they have me answering phones and making coffee or writing stories about politicians' pets, I might throw a tantrum. Because this is so... freaking... COOL.

Oops.

2008-11-27T11:59:00.000-08:00

I was going to come home and immediately do my law take home exam, edit my essay for my elective class, and put together an internship application.

Instead I wrote an article for MONDO about Battlestar Galactica that I'm not even going to submit for like, two weeks.

Forget Christmas. Someone should make a countdown to BSG advent calendar.

Team Volvo

2008-11-23T17:42:00.000-08:00

I slept from 6:30 to 11:00 in a living room with six other people, I smell like an ashtray’s ashtray, I had to take a bus home from Montreal half blind because I lost my contacts, and someone spilled a bottle of Orangina in my purse.

A typical Volvo weekend.

A few of my friends and I used to drive up to London a few weekends a year to visit our friend Mike, aka DJ Busdriver. We started calling ourselves “team Volvo” because of the car we drove up in. Basically we would listen to Bus spin records in his basement, or occasionally at a gig at a bar, spend the night spooning on the floor, have a pizza and coffee party when we woke up, and go back to our ordinary studying and working lives.

Favourite Bus quote: one New Years we were all crashing in his room when the phone rang. Bus: “Who needs the phone? Everyone I know is in my bed.”

Last night was a Volvo reunion. I saw people I haven’t seen in years. Friendships were reaffirmed, grudges forgiven, smiles were on everyone’s face. It didn’t hurt that we were there to see Joe Nice, North America’s biggest dubstep DJ, and the crowd was going absolutely nuts. There were a few wrinkles, like when some drunk girl accidentally on purpose almost walked off with Megababe’s purse and hoodie, but in general good times were had by all.

Sometimes I forget how awesome my friends are. They’re graffiti artists, vagabonds, t-shirt designers, DJs and party promoters. They’re the people who just do things instead of talking about it. Despite layers and layers of baggage and friendcest, we manage to stick together out of our love for this crazy music no one’s ever heard of and each other.

So far I’ve totally failed at describing dubstep. Here’s what Joe Nice has to say about it, which I think is beautiful:

Deep in the heart of South London's underground lies a sound that percolates in the streets and vibrates the speakers...dubstep is the soundtrack. A vibe that rests on the edge of relaxation and explosion, that flourishes in the middle ground of the comfortable sounds of soulful house and the unbridled energy of drum & bass.....

Music made in London -- forged from multicultural influences, syncopated rhythms and loads of bass.

Dubstep.

Not too fast....Not too slow....Just right.

Dubstep = Bass + pace + space.

Dubstep = Beats + bass + boom.

Dubstep = A force of nature.

Dubstep = Infection + reflection.

Dubstep = release + restraint.

Dubstep = The irresistible force meeting the immovable object.

Dubstep = The art of the invisible.

Dubstep = Mood music that's strictly for the headstrong.

Dubstep = What is now and what is next.

Dubstep = Musical soul food.

If anyone’s interested in seeing it for themselves, a girl we’ve gotten to know is putting on a fundraiser for the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre at the Elgin St. Freehouse on December 6. You have to see how packed this teeny tiny bar gets for these nights.

VOLVO.

Epiphany

2008-11-22T16:24:00.001-08:00

I came to an epiphany today.

All these years I thought I was resisting going to my brother's hockey games because I hated hockey. Well, actually, to be truthful, I thought it was a combination of hating hockey and being a selfish brat who couldn't be bothered to support my brother in my childhood and adolescence. I would go to extreme lengths and make up outrageous excuses.

But his team was playing Carleton today, and I was short on excuses and figured I was probably over being a spoiled brat, so I went. And I think I figured it out.

I don't hate hockey. I hate hockey rinks.

They smell like a refrigerated gym sock. They are full of obnoxious ads for car dealerships. They blare out of date music between plays (Blink 182?? Seriously???). The stands are occupied by puck bunnies with platinum blond highlights and frosted lipstick and middle aged white men with Bob and Doug Mackenzie accents clutching cups of Timmies and yelling things like "Deke! Deke! Deke! Deke Joe! Hit 'em hard!"

Ew.

No wonder when I'm silently panicking about something I imagine a hockey buzzer going off over and over in my head.

Anyway, I managed to actually follow the game itself. I think dodgeball may have awakened my inner sports fan. Too bad my brother's team (U of T) played like the living dead and lost 3-0. There were actually times when I was tempted to yell "Try passing, you hosers!"

Please don't make fun of me about the hockey buzzer thing.

Am I crazy if I hand this in?

2008-11-20T17:56:00.001-08:00

Ass15.Brownell

BROWNELL, Claire

Nov. 20, 2008

It was a battle of David and Goliath proportions. A bittersweet tale of the triumph of the human spirit. A sporting event to write home about.

It was Athletics 1 versus CUSERT in the intramural dodgeball semifinal.

“If Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that we can’t possibly lose,” said Craig Elder, Athletics 1 team member.

CUSERT, made up of members of Carleton’s student emergency response team, was in a three-way tie for first place and Athletics 1 was in third going into the match. Athletics 1 was in an underdog position since they had less spares and two of their key players were injured. Elder had one arm in a tensor bandage from a previous dodgeball incident. The burly and bearded Carlos Funes was limping on one crutch after aggravating his bum knee playing soccer.

The last time Athletics 1 played CUSERT was immediately after members of the emergency response team administered first aid to Funes when he injured his knee. Two Athletics 1 members were taken out of commission in that soccer game, Elder said.

“They were taking Carlos away and we asked ‘Hey, are you guys playing a dodgeball game later? Because you’re playing us,’” Elder said. “If we start losing tonight, could you maybe run to a payphone and call the ERT? Some of them are sure to be on duty.”

On the walk to the game, Elder, Funes and Brian O’Shea debated the wisdom of burning a CUSERT magnet in voodoo effigy for good luck. They decided it would interfere with their status as “the good guys” and potentially move them into the “villains who deserve a comeuppance” category in the balance of the universe.

Instead, they decided to hang their strategy on a number of new plays. These included the Berserker, in which one team member yells gibberish and runs to the line kamikaze-style to distract the other team; the Goliath, in which the tallest team member is attacked; and the Medusa, in which players aim for the ugliest member of the opposing team.

But these strategies were quickly abandoned for the struggle to survive against the disciplined and well-conditioned CUSERT. They were calm and collected as they stared down Athletics 1 with fire in their eyes at the start of the first five-minute match.

“Don’t get hit, don’t go for the catch, just stay alive!” yelled Funes, leaning on his crutch as he played coach from the sidelines, hoping the situation wouldn’t get so dire that he would feel obligated to play.

Athletics 1 won the first match, but things started to go downhill as Stephanie Harding had to take herself out when she was hit on the ear. Both teams held steady with four players each in the game until CUSERT made a catch thrown by Karina Auclair with two seconds left. The third match was another quick loss for Athletics 1 as CUSERT sniped off players one by one, eliminating them all within three minutes.

Match four had to be an Athletics 1 win for them to stay in the game. They held strong for the majority of the match, but were unable to hold their own after a few lost players, eventually leaving the injured Elder alone in a three-on-one. He held strong for 30 to 40 seconds, dodging throws until all the balls were on his side. Once he threw them back and the firepower was against him, he was quickly eliminated.

“We played hard. The other team came out fighting, we expected that. I don’t want to make excuses, but the injuries really held us back. Ultimately, they were just better conditioned, and a couple missed catches really turned the game against our favour,” Elder said.

Their faith in Hollywood endings shattered, Athletics 1 walked, hobbled, and limped towards Mike’s Place for a post-game pint. The pink-clad Renfrew House team who was playing in the next round of the semifinal jogged past them, yelling cheers in unison.

The quest for dodgeball glory continued.