toluene

notes:

• i am happy to be part of the burgeoning trout lake consensus around keeping the new rink and community centre in the same location. this evening, after voting again for option 'a' at this morning's meeting, i saw a sign tacked up in the park urging me to attend and vote for 'a' to preserve the park. excellent! the frustrating aspect of the meeting was the palpable distrust and cynicism with which most residents seem to be approaching the planning process.
  
• i want to know more about british india. this is a time and place about which i know very little, aside from the gandhi myth and vague images of opulence, heat, and the pathos of an empire in its last days.
  
• i have over one week's worth of music on my hard drive now. i have made a 'smart playlist' that lists every song that i have not yet played. once i hear the song, it disappears. i've been listening to new songs all day.
  
• an overdose of quinine can induce abortion.
  
• USDA regulations do not permit the addition of MSG to irradiated products.
  
• on that note, while last night was cultural theory, today has been food information and chemistry. i started reading a wikipedia article about berries, and have been led about through all sorts of food additives and different vegetables and am now reading about cargill foods.
  
• the global supply chains of modern food production are incredible. i read up on cargill initially in the summer of 2003, when we lived on dundas st. we'd take walks along commissioner street and look at the train yards. i saw a boxcar with 'cargill' on the side, and looked it up. cargill.
  
• we'll go for dim sum tomorrow morning, at the golden phoenix. after that, we'll go to superstore to buy a new electric kettle and a 12-can box of tonic water. see, today i got a bottle of plymouth gin and 4 limes. as there was no tonic in the house or at the husky station across the street, i had to drink wild turkey all day. what a shame.
  
• i listened to sarah mclachlan's fumbling towards ecstasy over and over again while re-reading the hobbit in... 1995? 1996? thereabouts. listening to the album now, i remember that i really enjoy it. it also makes me think of re-reading the hobbit
  
• i'd like to spend time getting drunk off of beer in cans at a local park this summer. maybe trout lake, maybe somewhere farther afield. perhaps we'll move by the time it gets hot, and we'll have a large patio for drinking on summer nights.
  
• we went to ubc on bicycles and found the paprican building. we also saw a large group of sheep. i want to go back and explore. it might be hard, as we'll be lacking the natural arrogance of students, and won't be senators of the institution. we won't have any friends in high places to get us out of trouble.
  
• reading about irradiation reminds me of how fascinated and horrified i was a a child reading about radon gas. it seeps out of cracks in basements. the silent killer.