Goodbye, pennies.

Well, it's February 5th.  Canadian pennies are officially gone, the last one was minted yesterday.  Well, not gone, there's still like a bajillion of them, but the government isn't gonna make any more of them so it's close enough.  It's about time, I guess.  Nobody uses pennies any more, they're too expensive to make, they clutter up my coinpurse, they've got little microchips inside them recording everything we do so the government can spy on us.  Nobody wants a penny.

I'm still gonna miss them, though.  I liked pennies, even if nobody else did.  I'd collect them in a tin, and throw them at my friend Tree.  Now that pennies are on the way out, I'll have to start using nickels.  That's like a 500% price increase in ammunition!  I can't afford that!  Now I have to switch to elastic bands or something.  And even that's more expensive than pennies.  Times are sad, my friend.  Times are sad.

But hey, at least we got a neat Google Doodle.

Don't Be That Guy

So there are some awesome anti-date-rape posters running in Edmonton now.  Why are they awesome?  They are awesome because, instead of saying "Ladies, don't get drunk or you will get date raped! (because if a lady gets drunk, she is responsible for her rape)" or something victim-blaming like that, these ones are aimed at actually stopping rape.  By realizing that the person responsible for rape is the rapist, not the victim.

This makes me equal parts delighted and terrified.  Delighted, because finally finally finally people are realizing that no matter what a woman does, there's really not much (if anything) she can do to magically protect herself from ever being raped if a rapist wants to rape her.  "Don't drink too much, you'll get raped for being too wasted to stop someone from taking advantage of you!  And even if you're only drinking soda or something, keep your eyes glued to your drink all night to make sure nobody slips anything into it!  Don't walk home alone!  You'll get raped for walking alone at night!  Don't go home with a guy, you'll get raped and it won't be his fault because gee, he walked you all the way home, are you sure you weren't asking for it?  That skirt's pretty short, after all, and you did smile at him earlier!  You should cover up, you're sending the wrong signals when you're dressed like that, of course a guy is gonna take advantage of that. Maybe instead of going to a bar with strangers, you should just stay with people you trust! Oh, your boyfriend raped you? Well you had sex with him before, how was he supposed to know you didn't want it? Look if this is such a big deal, just never leave your house again and you'll be safe.  Wait how many rapes occur in the victim's home?" (4 in 10)

Terrified, because oh my god I should not be so happy to see date rape posters.  Seriously, what is fucking wrong with this situation.  That we need posters like this at all is horrifying.  According to the site that I got this from, "a recent U.K. study involving 18- to 25-year-old males that revealed that 48% of men didn’t consider it rape if a woman is too drunk to know what was going on."  I want to scream at the world until my throat bleeds.  

I like that they shook up the heteronormative rape-only-happens-to-girls stereotype by including a gay pair.  It would be nice if they could have had a lesbian pair, or a woman raping a man, just for inclusivity.  But to be fair, the statistics for that are so low that it seems almost pointless to waste time stopping female rapists when male rapists are so much more common.  Not to make light of female-on-male rape, it happens and it's bad, but it happens so much more rarely than male-on-female (or male-on-male, for that matter) that I can easily understand why these posters chose to go after the ones that are, statistically speaking, affect the vast, vast majority of victims and perpetrators, with the assumption that they could only make so many posters and wanted to have the biggest impact possible.  I think the posters are good.  After I stop feeling all icky and terrified that these posters are so necessary, I kind of want to go to whoever created them and give them a great big hug, because they are pretty awesome.  Well, the people, because this can't have been the work of just one person, of course.  But you know what I mean.  The Edmonton police department is pretty cool and I appreciate their work.  Even if the fact that the work is necessary makes me feel like punching the universe.

Con Artist Or Just A Douchebag?

So either I was conned out of a couple of dollars today, or I donated to a real charity that I shouldn't have donated to anyway.  Whichever one it was, I feel bad now.

Anyway, it was at the Avalon Mall.  I was sitting in front of the bookstore at about quarter past ten, just waiting around and playing Doodle Jump on my iPod.  Next thing I know, some pushy Asian guy is shoving a laminated pamphlet into my hand talking about how there was a disaster in the Philippines last week, and how he's from there, and he goes to MUN here, and he's raising money for the children, blah blah blah.  And he was really pushy.  He didn't really introduce himself or try to start a conversation, it was just shoving a pamphlet at me, and then shoving a little black book into my hands and waving at it with a pen -- I dunno if I was supposed to sign it or if it was a pledge sheet or what.  I should have told him to piss off right then, because he was being really pushy and rude, so even if it was a real charity it was charity-by-guilt and I should have refused to donate anything on principle alone.   I didn't, though.  I'm bad at being immediately mean.  Give me a few minutes and I can be the meanest bitch in the world, but surprise me and the combination of Girls Are Nice Niceness and Canadians Are Nice Niceness take over.  I basically went "Uhhhh have some change and go away."  I had a few dollars in my pocket, and when I pull it out the guy said "It's okay, just donate whatever you have, you can donate all of that" and that's definitely when I should have refused to donate it, because who the hell says what I can and can't donate?  Unfortunately, I still hadn't started thinking at this point -- I have the worst reflexes in the world -- and so I keep the two-fifty I needed for the bus and gave him the two or three dollars left, mostly in quarters and dimes.  He thanks me and wanders off, and it isn't until after he's gone that I realize, "Wait, that was a really sketchy thing that just happened."

So I go to Google and look up "flood in the philippines" and the only articles that pop up are from August.  I immediately start feeling like a moron, because what kind of idiot lets a stranger talk them out of three dollars?  Granted, it's only pocket change, but still.  I've been kicking myself ever since -- I should have realized that the guy was ambushing me, I should have realized it was sketchy as fuck that I didn't hear of any disaster, I should have realized he was being way too pushy, I should have I should have I should have.  Anyway, I can't change anything by thinking about what I should have done.  Worst case scenario, some asshole has a handful of small change and the confidence to try scamming someone else (hopefully someone who is quicker on the draw than I am).  Best case scenario?  While my initial Googling didn't give me anything, a friend has linked me to a news article saying that there was, in fact, a flood in the Philippines last week, so it's possible that it really is just a pushy guy with a charity.  I still shouldn't have donated, because charity by guilt is a shitty way to get money and it's really rude to ambush a person to look for handouts, no matter the cause.  But at least it could actually be a real charity.  I'd rather the change I was conned out of actually go to saving people from floods or whatever instead of paying a jerk's bus fare.

Well today sucked

I haven't been having the greatest day.  Nothing really huge happened, my parents didn't die or I didn't find out I have cancer or I didn't get killed in a car crash or anything.  It was just a whole bunch of petty irritating things that added up to one sucky day.

It started out looking like a good day!  A friend of mine from Clarenville was coming to town for the day and I was supposed to hang out with him.  I was super pumped for this, because he's pretty much the coolest guy in the whole world and I never get to see him, not since I moved back home after college.  Plus I have adorable new socks!  Clearly today was supposed to be the most awesome.

But I hadn't realized how early in the day he was getting in and leaving.  I had to go to work around noonish, and we pretty much wasted a day.  It was boring, we were supposed to do a prewire but when we were in Tim's one of Dad's friends called up and since they were right around the corner dropped by to have a cup of coffee with us and catch up, and we ended up sitting around gabbing for like an hour.  Or Dad and his friend did, and I sat around playing games on my iPod.  So we didn't have time to do much more than check out the house we were pre-wiring and figure out what we needed to do, then go home again.  So now we're a day behind schedule. Fuck.

By the time I get home and call my friend, he's already headed back to Clarenville.  So, fuck.  That is lame.  I did not get a chance to hang out with Awesome Friend, and if I had realized beforehand what a waste today's workday was I could have just not gone and seen him while he was in town.  Fuckles.

Oh well, hopefully he'll come by again soon and we can hang out then.  It's not the end of the world or anything!  So this evening I was all, "Hey, I'm not gonna stay inside all night just because I couldn't hang out with a friend!  It's not that bad out, I think I'll go for a walk.  In fact, I think I'll go for a walk to McDonalds and get an apple pie!  I do love me some apple pie, yes sir."  Those were my exact words.  I said them out loud to an empty room, it was weird.

So I go for my walk, listening to my iPod (specifically, listening to the soundtrack for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic -- fuck right off, those songs are happy as fuck) and when I get to McDonalds I go to the bathroom.  Oh, how I hate the bathroom at McDonalds.  There is no room to open and close the stall door (unless you're in the big handicap stall), you gotta lean way back and pretty much hang over the toilet bowl to get in and shut the door.

And so there I was, twisting backwards like a contortionist as I work out the complex close-the-stall-door technique, when I hear a *plop* sound.  Which let me tell you, is not something you want to hear when you're leaning awkwardly over a toilet bowl and not actually using the toilet.

I hadn't realized my ear buds were hanging out of my pocket.  And had fallen into the toilet.  In a McDonalds bathroom.  And they are the only headphones I own.  So now I can't listen to music until I get to the mall and buy new headphones, which probably won't be until next week sometime.

So yeah, in short, not exactly a fantastic day.  I have had worse days, and I will have worse days in the future, but today is not all that high up on my list of Days That I Enjoyed.  Clearly I need to end this day with adorable cat gifs and go to bed before it gets any worse.

Awwwwww!

Neil Armstrong is dead.

It has begun.

DUN DUN DUNNNNN