a wolf angel is not a good angel

Colour me unimpressed.

The only real tax cuts are to corporations; the things that will help individuals are (a) minor and (b) deferred for 4 years. Oh, except for the RRSP contribution limit: now it’s higher, so if you’re earning 6 figures, you can put away more. If you’re not earning that much, it doesn’t help — the percentage is the same — and in any case most people don’t max out their contributions. (I am working very hard at catching up now, because that whole compounding thing is good, and because I can do it now, and won’t be able to eventually.)

Most of the budget is all about future promises, the rest is about avoiding Joe Clark’s fate — which was never going to happen, because no one was going to be the party that forced another election less than 12 months later. (Why is everyone saying that? Because it’s true.)

NaPo aside, I like that we’ve got the balanced budget thing happening — the point of a budget isn’t to show off how many taxes you can reduce; I dislike the slow, leisurely repayment of the debt. (I also dislike the lack of debt relief to other countries. However: that is not a budget issue, per se.)

Like most people, I don’t have huge objections to the budget, but I’m also underwhelmed by it. But it really came down to this:

Hey, Stephen, here are some tax cuts and money for defense: will you shut up now? (He did.)
Hey, Jack, here’s some money for municipalities, now go away. (He didn’t.)
Fuck off, Gilles.

I am sure I could use a more misleading title, but it would be hard.

Michele at asmallvictory discusses the idiocy of “emo music causes cutting!”

And she’s right: people, in general, do not self-injure (my preferred term, by far, being more general and less sensationalistic than cutting (not everyone actually cuts); self-mutilation isn’t a word I like either, because it seems to suggest the point is something it generally isn’t) because it’s cool, or for whatever idiotic reasons come up in the media. Michelle Malkin’s post is so uninformed that I’m not even going to respond to it (or link to it); Michele responds to it well, and I’m sure there are other responses around. The book “Cutting” is a terrible, terrible book, though, all about the author as magical saviour of teenage girls.

There are ways to respond to this. There is a lot of information around about it — the best online resource I know of is Secret Shame. I’m not going to repeat the information here: it’s not just a teenage-girl trend, and it’s not suicide (indeed, it’s often instead of) or for attention or any of the other uninformed things people tend to think. Instead, I’ll go the personal route. Which feels dangerous.

(more…)

I’m not sure how to respond to this, in an email from someone looking for a job (I sent out a call to some faculty).

“Dear Ms/Mrs [my last name misspelled]”

The emails are all earnest, and I’ll respond to them all, but I wish they’d been taught certain things about job applications.

• Rename the email something relevant. Re: Fwd: jobs for linguists (fwd) is not good.
• Don’t leave the job description attached at the bottom of the email, and especially not if it’s got the > sign there, too.
• ‘Hi’ is not a good way to start a serious email.
• Please give me your full name and email address at the end. Phone number would be good, too, but since I’m not intending to actually phone anyone, it doesn’t matter that much.
• I want your CV. It’s good that you list classes in the email, and good when people tell me where they are in their degree, but I want the CV.
• If you can’t legally work in this country, why are you wasting my time?
• I’m not impressed that you’re “super interested” in the job. Really.
• On the other hand, it’s nice if you pretend you’re interested in the job because of what you’d be doing and not just because it pays well.

I feel like I ought to email everyone back and give them a crash course, but I’m just going to write them all back and ask them their availability for testing and training.

Off for the first of what one hopes will be many successful job interviews.

This morning I had a wonderful dream. By holding my arms out stiff and pushing down hard, I found I could suspend myself a few feet above the ground. I flapped harder, and soon I was soaring effortlessly over the trees and telephone poles! I could fly! I folded my arms back and zoomed low over the neighborhood. Everyone was amazed, and they ran along under me as I shot by. Then I rocketed up so fast that my eyes watered from the wind. I laughed and laughed, making huge loops across the sky! . . . That’s when Mom woke me up and said I was going to miss the bus if I didn’t get my bottom out of bed; 20 minutes later, here I am, standing in the cold rain, waiting to go to school, and I just remembered I forgot my lunch.
Tuesdays don’t start much worse than this.

Calvin & I feel for you, NK.

Harrison. Hope all is well.

I decided I need to change things. I’m not meeting anyone new, and I’d like to. So: suggestions! Things I should try to get me in contact with people I don’t already know. Preferably things that don’t require a huge money commitment, and clearly things that don’t involve a big drinking commitment. Please remember that it’s cold here, and I don’t like the cold.

This hasn’t ever actually worked for me, mind — I only ever meet people at school, it seems — but the worst it can do is continue to not work. Plus, I might get some good stories.

The other side of the conversation I had last night with my grandmother was about leaving grad school. How long would it take me to get a PhD now, my grandfather asked. Oh, 3 or 4 years (at least), but the problem is jobs; the problem is that I don’t want to move around from adjunct position to adjunct position; the problem is that I don’t want to live in lots of places, and that I am unwilling to make that sacrifice.

And then we got to how and why I disliked living in the US, and I suppose my regret about leaving was clear. It was the right choice, yes, but I still regret it: it was a hard choice, and it required me to give up on dreams (both reasonable and un).

“It’s just as well you left. You’ve only got one life, you shouldn’t waste it being unhappy.”

Well, I went to visit my grandmother, finally. And it was full of stumblings. “Remember how you used to come and visit and go swimming? I’d give you challah before and chicken schnitzel after.” Yes. I remember. I remember, too, when you stopped allowing us to come over.

So we have — yay! — an espresso machine at work, which means my coffee expenses have gone down by 2.5 coffees a week (approximately). On the other hand, I am drinking, on average, 3 lattes a day, where at least one of them has 2 shots.

My excuse is that I’m not very good at making the foam so I need to practice.