On my travels yesterday I saw two billboards advertising, of all things, Saskatchewan! My favourite said "45 minute commutes? Not in Saskatchewan," and the other one showed a picture of a typical suburban house on sale for $178,000. Contrast that with ads on the train advertising vacation/retirement properties in the BC interior, no prices listed there, of course, because if you have to ask you can't afford them. There seems to be an east-west economic continuum in force: if you've made money in Calgary, you can go west to luxury, but if you can't hack it in Calgary, go back east where life is easier on a budget. That movement mirrors the economic division of a lot of cities, where richer neighbourhoods are on the west side and poorer neighbourhoods on the east.

Gertrude Stein should have been a lawyer

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it. - Form and Intelligibility

or a judge

The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand. - Q.E.D.

Just finished reading Lynn Coady’s latest book, mean boy. Set in 1975 New Brunswick, it follows a young poet through his second year of undergraduate drinking and professor-poet adulation. She really nails the undergrad creative writing workshop experience, so much so that I was squirming through certain scenes. Bad, bad memories of my naive and pompous ideas about poetry. Like all Coady's books, it’s brilliant and hilarious. She writes the kind of books I read way too fast and regret ending.

Wanna participate in a democratic process? Pretend your concerns matter to your elected representatives? Fight federal cuts to culture funding now!

For the first time in over a decade, I don't own a car. Although I've always avoided driving as much as possible, it's really inconvenient not to have the option. The other night I decided on my way home from school to buy a bottle of wine. There's one wine store in the ritzy neighbourhood where I live, but their cheapest bottle runs about 14 bucks, and I just refuse. So I went home and searched online for the nearest LDB stores (aw, government-contolled liquor sales -- so retro). There are two liquor stores that would take a good half-hour walk each way, and another wine store that's probably a 40-minute walk. I weighed how much I wanted a glass of wine against how much my self-image would suffer if I walked for over an hour in the dark and cold and rain just for a drink, and I decided to forego the booze. For now. If I had my car, I wouldn't face that dilemma. If I was still in Calgary, the problem wouldn't come up either way. I was trying to think of any place I've lived in Calgary or any place anyone I know has lived in Calgary that's more than a few blocks away from a liquor store. I can't think of any. Even in the suburbs, you never have to go further than the nearest strip mall. I'm not proud of Calgary and what it can represent: deregulation, excess, whiskey and steak dinners, retrogressive attitudes. But I'm not not proud of it, you know? Sometimes it's a tonic against the faux-enlightenment Vancouver prides itself on. Maybe my neck is redder than I'd like to think. Maybe I should stop making vapid political generalizations.

I should get danger pay for my part-time web editing job. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks writing descriptions of all the academic programs on offer at UBC for prospective students. And now I want to take them all. Everything you can learn about is so interesting. I love linguistics, I wish I had a degree in it. And how come I never took any psychology courses in my undergrad? Not to mention sociology, and economics. Freshwater science, biochemistry… why the hell not? I’m sure I could study science if I tried. Also there are a lot of languages I’d like to learn.

While a normal person would just read a bunch of books on all these subjects, or do some web research, my sickness compels me to want to take courses and enter degree programs. It’s kind of sad. And it’s not as though I’m even a very good student. I have terrible study skills, I procrastinate, I have major problems with authority figures, I get defensive and paranoid when anyone expects me to participate in class, I can’t handle any kind of competition, and I have no respect for the institution. I don’t really understand why some people work so hard to get a good grade. I either want to learn the material or I don’t; I respect the prof’s opinion or I don’t. It took me this long to realize that grade point average affects career opportunities. I swear when I was doing my undergrad, that never occurred to me.