I have decided to leave behind trusty ol’ wordpress for the more limited but on-the-go-friendly tumblr platform. IT WILL BE BETTER, I SWEAR.

http://megannaise.tumblr.com/

Things you will be able to expect:

• Interesting things that I grab from my extensive and somewhat compulsive Google Readering.
• Suggested portions of pop culture that are guaranteed awesome if you are exactly like I am.
• brevity (most of the time)
• typos (I am sorry)
• Photos that I take which do not expose too much of my personal life so that I don’t wind up worrying my mom.
• A way to guage what my head is doing– everyone finds warning signs for everying a person eventually does on their blog.
• Nice music and clips of things that I care about.
• Mostly things I get from other people– maybe I’ll try to be better.
• Things that I like.
• Facts about me.
• Zero plagiarism (everything I post will have a citation and link to the original– I think that makes it okay? You’ll tell me if I’m being a thoughtless plagiarist and/or jerk, won’t you?)

It’s grey and red (that might change) and it works with my cell phone.

Thanks,

No pressure,

Megan

In an effort to be someone who sometimes goes out to places that have music that doesn’t make me want to die, I went to the Discorder night at the Astoria. Alone. This was intimidating as everyone there is pretty sure that they are cooler than I am and I’m pretty sure that they’re right. Why else would they be wearing such adorable dresses/N.W.A. shirts?

I wore a Louis Riel shirt because that is how I roll and it was “Canada Day”. This shirt made me break my promises:

Drunk Hipster 1: “My friend wants to know if that is Louis Riel on your shirt. He likes Canadian history.”

Me: “Yes it is. [explains at medium-length the "keeping it Riel" pun in small text on the shrit].

DH1: [Smiles politely; half-hearted high-five; gives friend thumbs-up]

DH2: “I am going to tattoo him on my leg. That is one step up from t-shirt. One.”

Me: [Radiant smile; approving nod]

[Amicable parting of ways]

Promises to myself are made to be broken. I’m giving myself points for socializing.

[Note: this post was made while under the influence of beer. I've been meaning to post more and this was the time that I was in the mood to do it. Hopefully it won't end up like that episode of "A Different World" where the eccentric one I think her name is Frankie, decides to get drunk so that she can write really excellent poetry but she winds up getting an F in her poetry class. Don't give me an F you guys! THIS IS NOT POETRY]

I went to see Pixar’s “Up”

• At 11am
• Alone
• In 3D
• It made me cry twice
  • Which fogged up my 3-D glasses a bit

Then I wandered around the mall for a while

• In search of corduroy pants (did not find) and an exit (eventually found)
• Carrying a paper cup of tea
  • From Taco Time
  • Which was too hot so I was holding it with the tips of my nails in a claw-like grip
    • Which made me hunch over a little so that I wouldn’t get hit if it slipped
      • I finished it on the skytrain without any spills.
• Listening to The Hooting Yard
  • Which made everything better
  • Even though he thinks that Stephen Fry is just a regular man with a reasonable vocabulary
    • Which left me feeling indignant when I was already vulnerable

I think I might go for it because they said they’d put a Dalek in the pit and some other things I should be clawing away from. Also the cake would be really chocolaty.

chocolatey pit of daleks

Maybe a birthday cake shouldn’t be a metaphor for my life. Maybe I should have a non-metaphor cake.  Maybe I’ll have a non-Mercator cake. I love non-Mercator maps. I don’t hate cake.

I’m sure Usher worked hard on those dance moves.

Origin story: My cousin and I were watching MuchMusic when the music video for a song called “U Remind Me” came on. We spend the next few minutes blissfully mocking this video until my mom came into the room and said those words. For some reason, I was hit with the realization that Usher probably did spend a long time working on those dance moves. A little door in my mind opened and suddenly I could feel empathy for people who were being even this annoying:

This video required work and foresight? All kinds of people who are annoying have thought about their opinions and worldviews and are coming from different experiences which inform those worldviews? They have feelings? You might think that I might have figured that out by age 12, but no. A little sociopath in me died that day.

I doubt my mom realized that this was going to be one of those “life lessons” that parents like to give. But throw out that line and the memory of that shocking realization will remind me (ahem) that the world is nuanced and binaries suck and maybe I should look at the perspective of people who, say, voted for Harper.

So thanks, Usher. For working so damn hard on your dance moves in that stupid, stupid video.

[If I had to express this week in one sentence, it would be: "I just found some cheese in my bed." If you're curious, it was cheddar.]

What I did discover this week (besides chedder where it should not be):

• Wilco are pretty good. Apparently a lot of people already knew this. Maybe they’ve known it since I was in high school. But THAT IS FINE. I’ve been playing catch-up with a good century of recorded sound and video and it would be great to think that I’ve caught up  to 2002 already (even though I haven’t even really made it past 1930).
• My new favourite history book is technically fiction. Europeana was written by Patrik Ourednik (I’m spelling his name wrong because I don’t know how to make my keyboard add Czech accents). It’s told in this wonderful monotone that lets the narrative skip all over the place without getting caught up, like so many books do, in trying to express the atrocities of the twentieth century with big words. It’s like the twentieth century from the perspective of a sociopathic child (a really smart sociopathic child) and the lack of emotion combined with unusual juxtapositions is hella affecting. It’s also got these sort of gloss notes in the margins that say things like “EUROPE WAS DECADENT”,  “WIND RUFFLED THE CORN”, “TELEGRAPH” and “THE HORSES WERE DEAD”.
  [Note: I heard about this book from Last Plane to Jakarta.]
• Jarvis Cocker has been making music!!!
• Sarcastically responding “Jagerlicious” when someone asks how the shots are is kind of a dick move. But what else can I say? “Like poisonous root beer as usual, my good man!” I suppose I’ll maybe lie next time.

Also I’ve been jonesing all week for a bouncy castle for grownups, singing this to myself:

Well here’s boring for ya: Accountability! Last post I got involved in the #amazonfail internet outrage (though without actually using that hashtag on my twitter. I’m no good with the hashtags). Anyway, I didn’t really explain my self orwhat was going on, and that’s bad show. Generally, the whole thing comes down to stupid algorithms and some guy in France switching things around wrong. It wasn’t some kind of big ploy on Amazon’s part to get more horrible people to use their site. It was mostly complicated algorithms  being glitchy. I’m still mad at Amazon for not being more vigilant about their algorithms– particularly in terms of the underlying assumptions that they represent– and for the terrible way they dealt with the whole thing, but it’s nice to know they did’t hurt Stephen on purpose.

Here are some pretty good articles addressing the issue:

This one is pro-Amazon to an extent, but not in an annoying way.

This one made me think about algorithms and the ethics of metadata, which I do not think about very much.

This one mentions Doctor Who in the first sentence or so!

If I were to procrastinate, I hope it would take the form of making a video like this:

He is charming and nobody is allowed to make him sad.

Maybe you could click on the link that says “Amazon Rank” and make the tiniest dent in the google link network that nobody understands but that I am trying to exploit. I promise nothing but good will come of it. This isn’t like those emails you get that start “Hello my friend”, this is going to instead stick it to some sort of man. Some sort of man who isn’t Stephen Fry.

You might think that my big realizations of late would be related to procrastination or chronic escapism, but I’ve already had those and I’m ignoring them. Yesterday something else became completely clear to me:

My autopilot

When I was little, I’d get obsessed with things I was afraid of (this was pre-zombie phobia). That’s the only reason why I know anything about volcanoes, tornadoes, flying-saucers (thanks, Mars Attacks) and bees. (By the way, this is the best thing I’ve seen about bees ever:

).

But I’m not feeling too afraid at the moment. I’ve been asking around for suggestions but things have pretty much gone downhill since “Why don’t you try videogames, like Dungeons and Dragons?” (Though mostly because that conversation devolved into listing other things which aren’t videogames, like an RPG where I am allowed to voice my disapproval of the misuse of “blatant” and “flagrant” but otherwise fight for non-prescriptive grammar).

I guess I’ll have to read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies for now, and let the cool come to me.