Archives for June, 2010

Maybe if our armies had more brown soldiers, our wars would kill people more peacefully.

Lots of law students like to have “Confidentiality Notices” in their email signatures. This is the online version of fine print, except actually, as opposed to merely deceptively, useless. Whereas bona fide legal documents like to sneak in their threats where they know your eyes are too tired to care (“This product is guaranteed for life, until you break it.” or “And now we own you.”), law students, having little of value to say except that they’re one bell curve from having suits tailored in-office, can only tell you they’ve sent you an email that may or may not have been intended for you.

As a result, as part of email threads about everything under the sun, including the weather, I get this kind of inanity nigh daily from people who have nearly as little power as grad students:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email communication may contain private, confidential, or legally privileged information intended for the sole use of the designated and/or duly authorized recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient or have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately by email and permanently delete all copies of this email including all attachments without reading them. If you are the intended recipient, secure the contents in a manner that conforms to all applicable provincial and/or federal requirements related to privacy and confidentiality of such information.

There is the rare law student who must have missed the session during Orientation when the Dean, some random judge, and every single exec member of the student council (including the Social Justice reps whose election campaigns consisted of colour posters of themselves kneeling next to Poor Black Child From Africa And/Or Haiti) told the incoming class You Are Special*. This is the kind of law student who has this kind of thing in their signature:

“POSSIBLY” CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email communication may or may not contain private, confidential, or legally privileged information, depending on what the author is saying and how he feels like that day. Usually, it will be intended for the sole use of the designated recipient(s); however, at times, you will be expected to guess who he actually wants this email going to. If you are not the intended recipient, please undertake an existential inquiry into the spirit of mankind and human relation, and let this inform your decision about whether the email is intended for you. Do not act hastily and delete it. You may want to inform the author of any fruits of your existential search into the human condition.

Thank you, NC.

 
 
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*Orientiation was the strangest experience of my life. I have never before felt like I was actually in kindergarten — largely because when I was in kindergarten, I was 4 (I was an early-achiever. How things have changed.), so pleas to “Please, please be nice to each other” (I swear, we were told this five million times in the space of six days) fell on age-appropriately deaf ears.
That was the Mantra 2, Mantra 1 being “WELCOME TO THE CLUB.”

Pursuant to our last conversation, dear readers, here is a question:
What is the funniest thing that has happened to you all week? It needn’t be very hilarious, merely the funniest of your week.

Regular readers — all three of you — will notice that the site now looks identical to how it looked a mere three days ago, with the exception of the absence of that last post where all of you came crawling out of the woodwork to mock me. Thanks for the love, guys.

In fact, it has been 72 hours of harrowing digital daredevilry on the high internet seas, commencing innocently enough with a backend upgrade, and ending with three new databases, and in between too many hours on my cell phone arguing with too many customer representatives, also my introduction to the world of big dumps (SFW).

Still, we lost that one last post and 2 days’ worth of comments. Regrets.

Anyway. We now return to our regular programming.

Did you know you can buy flat bread that’s been pre-spread with za’atar? This is like the pinnacle of food design.

In Montreal, I live in the most Arab neighbourhood I’ve lived in since I left Jeddah a decade ago. Which means Nane Zaatar is about to become a daily staple. With hummus.

On a related note, I really hate that I can be starving and overfull at the same time.

I walk to the grocery store. Along the way I walk by a couple, two young white people my age. The girl is a blur of generic t-shirt and skirt, the boy of generic t-shirt and jeans. I think the girl had black hair, I think the boy was blonde. The accessory that precludes all other clarity is the giant fishbowl in the boy’s hands, and the bright goldfish in its centre, looping thick and torpid circles of fire around itself. On my other side, an generically old man lifts his stick with agonising accuracy towards the bowl. But the stick is too short. It doesn’t make contact with anything, managing to avoid even me.
No one falters, everyone keeps moving, and the boy’s eyes narrow.

I walk back home and two women, one in hijab, and three little girls, one in a stroller, are filing out through the entrance. I wink at the middle child. She begins to smile and then raises her hand to point at me. “Yucky!”
I think. It sounded more like Yuggy, which could be any one of a number of languages for anything at all.

I have been beset this past week with flashbacks to conversations from this past year where I was arrogant or imbelic or — jackpot! — both.
I hope other people have worse memories than I do. This is unlikely. My plans for self-reinvention feel feeble.

In other news, Scaborough had a power outage today. So I took a nap and dreamt dramatic dreams. Then I woke up and our basement lightbulbs were brighter than they’d ever been.

My neuroses are much, much more banal than they were a year ago. I’m not convinced that’s progress.

In other news, the title of this post rightly belongs on a 15-year-old’s LiveJournal. But that was my day for you. I spent my rainy sunset inside a muggy car. How about you?