worst jobs

Mr. Able: i worked for my dad once

Roo: how was it?

Mr. Able: he paid me 10 pounds to scrape barnacles off of about 200 planks
how was it? it was absolutely fucking horrible
you can't imagine the smell
and barnacles? they don't WANT to come off

Roo: jesus
that is hilarious and awful

Mr. Able: yeah
that and gutting whelks are probably my two least favourite jobs ever

Roo: what the hell are whelks?

Mr. Able: large shellfish
you have to remove their gut cos it is full of sand
so you squeeze them until the end of the gut pops through the skin, then grab hold and yank it out

Roo: oh god
that's disgusting
in the worst job ever category, A and my friend Chris McC always tells of a biology student who got a job masturbating rats in a lab

Mr. Able: frankly wanking rats would be a doddle compared to gutting whelks

Roo: hahahahaaaaa

Mr. Able: i bet they have rat wanking sticks or something

Roo: I think he had to use his fingers
my friend Graham had a job working in the field as a bio student and he had to milk red squirrels

Mr. Able: whereas whelks? you have to pull the guts out with your fingers

Roo: grasping their tiny teets between forefinger and thumb

Mr. Able: and they are slippery!
jesus

Roo: fuck, that whelk job takes the cake I think

Mr. Able: you can milk anything with nipples

Roo: hey
I want to post some of this convo
on my blog

Mr. Able: do it do it do it!

Roo: ok

Mr. Able: i remember blogs
are people still writing those things
how quaint
i can barely keep up with tweets nowadays
my brain is fucked

making myself sick

Hi there, legions of readers! (?)

So I never really watch TV anymore, but yesterday I discovered that my rabbit ears pull in the channel that airs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Thank you, Jebus! I also glutted myself on the new 90210 and feel inexplicably good about that.* Finally, at about 1 AM I watched Barack Obama's acceptance speech online, because I thought I should get caught up on that sort of thing.

Well, it was nice to hear something hopeful. See, this last weekend I read most of Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire and just got so profoundly depressed about the world and how crappy humans can be.

Also the ice shelves are breaking off in the Arctic now, too.

So. ELECTIONS IN THE USA, eh? Here's my quick assessment:

- McCain = the man does not even know how to use a computer **
- Palin = hahahahahahahahaha ***
- Biden = you'll forgive me that as a Canadian I am only figuring out who this guy is now
- Obama = it's about time we had someone with a "funny name" in power****

We're facing a shitty, shitty election in Canada soon too. Why shitty? Because Stephen Harper, our gross little Prime Minister knows the Liberals under Stephan Dion***** are weak, and is ready to strike and take over the country with a conservative majority. You just KNOW that he'll stop being all "right of center" as soon as they've got the win in the bag and go all super right-wing. Bleh. And I know I'm not the only one who thinks he might be an alien in an ill-fitting rubber human suit. Hello: Stephen Harper's majority. Goodbye: our water tables to the oil sands, arctic ice shelves, programs that help people who are struggling, health care, etc. etc. etc.

So I'll vote Green and hope for the best.


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* Which just seemed to go on and on. (How long was that premiere, like three and a half hours?)

** But then, George W. had never left the United States before becoming President. JESUS, AMERICA, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? How is anyone going to understand the finer points of statecraft when they have never really grokked that there are actually other places in the world, and heck, even different cultures, like.

*** But dear god, if they get in, say goodbye to ANWR, and all else that is even close to holy. Still, at first I was all depressed about her, because you know, at first glance she seemed to fill in all the McCain side blanks and have some broad, if reactionary appeal, (far from Washington/Bush cabal, supposedly anti-establishment, young and maybe slightly more tuned in, etc. etc.). But now I think it's just hilarious because she's so unbelievably underqualified. Then again, on that same note: GEORGE W. BUSH.

**** From my few years of studying Arabic (I am so not kidding) Barack is one way to transliterate the word "blessing", related to baruch in Hebrew. That's a lot of pressure, but maybe he could live up to his name even a little? Also Hussein, his middle name, is related to the word for "good" but as these things go, there have been quite a few good as well as quite a few not-very-good Husseins in the world. Anyway, I know that he has speech-writers and stuff, and a lot of it is simply rhetoric, but it was just so pleasant and heartening to hear someone saying the things he said.

***** Who? Yeah, EXACTLY. Dion's very smart and would be a good PM, but I just don't think he can win an election against the swaggering bully Harper. Why do people vote for assholes? Why does gentle and thoughtful come across as "weak" in the political arena?

If I Twittered, this would be a tweet

My puppy finally shat that tissue he wolfed on Saturday.