Internet! Do you find this ordering of locations as confusing as I do? I can never find what I am looking for without doing a "find in page". I realize this makes me extra-daft, but I really feel this layout is poor.

U.S. soldier Joshua Tabor has been charged of child abuse after he reportedly waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her ABCs.

I quit the world.

I love this gal. More of this, please. Pretty please.

Mary Ann Shadd was the editor of the first abolition paper in Canada and the first woman publisher in North America. By establishing the Provincial Freeman with Rev. Ringgold Ward, she passed on information about the anti-slavery movement to those free Africans living in Canada and those in the United States considering escape.

Known as a rebel from an early age, she was born a free person. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850 allowing the capture of both free and escaped Africans for re-enslavement in the U.S. south, Mary Ann moved to Windsor, Ont. An experienced teacher she opened an integrated school in an old abandoned army building known as "The Old Barracks." Students had to pay $.37 per month to attend. Her goal was to educate both free persons and escaped former captives who had come to Canada.

Mary Ann Shadd’s interest in the abolition movement was established from a young age. Her family home was a station on the Underground Railroad and her parents risked everything to help in any way they could to end slavery.

With the start of the American Civil War, the Union Army recognized her popularity and asked her to help in recruiting Africans. She became the only paid Black woman recruitment agent in the United States.

At the end of the war, Mary Ann Shadd went to Law School. Her status as a woman did not allow her to graduate until nine years after she had completed her courses.

This is so strangely enchanting. Especially the shot of the Trudeaus:

Dr. Daniel Grafton Hill III, OC , O.Ont , Ph.D , LL.D (November 23, 1923 – June 26, 2003) was a Canadian sociologist, civil servant, human rights specialist, and Black Canadian historian.

Born in Independence, Missouri, he grew up in the western United States. In 1948, he graduated with a BA from Howard University. In 1950, he moved to Canada to study sociology at the University of Toronto. In 1951, he received an MA and a Ph.D in 1960.

From 1955 to 1958, he was a researcher for the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto. From 1958 to 1960, he was Executive Secretary of the North York Social Planning Council. In 1960, he was the assistant director of the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation. From 1961 to 1962, he taught in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto.

In 1962, he was the first full time director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In 1972, he became Ontario Human Rights Commissioner. In 1973, he resigned to found his own human rights consulting firm. From 1984 to 1989, he was the Ontario Ombudsman.

He founded the Ontario Black History Society. In 1981, he wrote the book, The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada.

In 1993, he was awarded the Order of Ontario. In 1999, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Wow I had the greatest few days.

Friday I had pretty bad vertigo when I woke up, so I called in sick and spent the morning watching 30 Rock on my netbook. Thank you shared network at 79 Anderson!

Oh also thank you Jairus for spending the weekend installing Windows 7 for me, too. I actually seem to like it, so far! Usually I don't care about that sort of thing.

In addition to the new OS, he also put Ableton Live on there. This is really exciting to me because 2010 IS THE YEAR I MAKE AN EP. Yes. I've decided. Jesse has been encouraging me to make music for years, and even bought me an adorable little guitar with built-in amp for my 32nd birthday. I feel like I've started listening to music differently lately, like figuring out the way things are done. Jesse handed me a little piece of paper last week with my influences on them, which was really cute. I forget who was on the list, other than Solex, Kristin Hersh, and Julie Ruin. I would be very happy if my music ended up sounding like a blend of this.

Saturday I woke up and kind of had a kind of crazy cabin fever that made me restless and whimpery. It was a really nice day, so Jairus put me in a car to take me for a sunny drive. We couldn't get the iTrip to work, which meant we couldn't listen to the This American Life podcast we'd downloaded. It was fine, though, because the silent car was a good place for a long talk about intellectual insecurity and conscription. We ended up at Dick's Drive-in and Dairy Dip where I had the world's most amazing hamburger with cream cheese and avacado. I also drank a chocolate chip cookie dough milkshake. And ate some french fries. I think it's the first time I've ever been uncomfortably full in my LIFE. But I loved it there, a lot. And I never find places in Ottawa that I love, so that's exciting.

Saturday evening, Jesse took me on a dream date, which was going with him to Raw Sugar to see Catriona Sturton (formerly of Plumtree, and friend of Hope and Mal) perform. There are photos and videos of the show here, which everyone should check out. Particularly the videos. SO CHARMING. She was really excited to meet me, which was flattering and adorable. We're Facebook friends, and she says I have the best status updates of anyone. I don't think that's true, but I still appreciate hearing it! She greeted us at the door of the cafe (one of the OTHER places in Ottawa that I love!) and said that she was actually going to send an individual message to each person who had RSVP'd to the facebook event, telling them it was okay if they didn't want to come becuase it was too cold out. Also, Catriona is the Canadian director for the Dollywood Foundation!!!! SHE WORKS FOR DOLLY PARTON. I can't really think about it for too long or I get the vapours.

Anyway, it was really fun to be on a music-adventure-date with Jesse, and Catriona's set was so amazing and inspiring. Afterwards, she wanted to make sure we met her parents. Her mom, Trudy, was hilarious. Our conversation went something like this:

Catriona: Mom, dad, this is Audra and Jesse. Jesse is a really great rapper.
Trudy: (turning to Jesse) Is that true?
Jesse: Yes, I am really great.
Catriona: Audra works for the NDP.
Trudy: This prorogation is terrible. You have to tell people.
Me: I'm doing my best! Stephen Harper is a tactical genius, hey?
Trudy: NO! Don't say that! He's devious.
Me: Uh, sure. That's what I meant!
Trudy: It's GOOD to be tacitcal. He's not GOOD.
Me: Um, he's good at making things happen that he wants to!
Trudy: [Lots more talk about how Harper is mentally ill and requires chaos to function and just stayed in bed during the last prorogation.] No one is talking about this stuff!
Catriona: Audra is, mom.

Aw!

Jesse and I had a nice Sunday morning in bed, then headed out to Jeff's place to do a photoshoot for Jesse's next album. I am a big fan of Jeff's work, especially his nudes, and it was fun to see him do his thing. There were some topless shots taken, and if they don't end up on the album's cover, I hope they end up somewhere because I think they are gonna be pretty hot. After the shoot, Jesse and Jeff and I met up with Jairus at delicious Pubwell's. We hung out for many hours, talking about music and ... mostly music, actually. Then Jeff left us, so Jesse and Jairus and I went and bought an icecream cake and spent the rest of the night playing video games, including my one of my FAVOURITE videogames, Peggle.

I had my ultimate moment of personal video game triumph when I got ULTRA EXTREME FEVER, which is what happens when you get ALL of the pegs, as opposed to just all of the orange ones. When you do that, it looks like THIS:



... which is basically the videogame representation to my emotional state by the end of such an awesome weekend.

[I'm reposting my Black History Month entries, and filling in days I missed so I have 28 entries. Feel free to repost any of this anywhere.]



Rose Fortune was born into slavery in Virginia, owned by the Devone family. They escaped to New York City then the Nova Scotia town of Annapolis Royal in 1783 when she was ten years old. Fortune came from a family of Black Loyalists, (escaped slaves and free Blacks who joined the British army during the American Revolution to find liberty). The British army promised any slave freedom in return for their loyalty.

In the late 1700s she appointed herself policewoman of the Annapolis Royal, located on the north shore of Nova Scotia. Although Fortune carried no badge, she had a unique way of dressing. Her petticoat showed under her dress, and over her dress she wore a man's waistcoat and an apron. She wore a lace cap which was tied under her hair and a straw hat on top of the lace cap. Her painted shoes had heels which were several inches high. She usually carried a straw basket and wore white gloves and mittens. Her dress was later adopted by many of the Black Pioneer women when they went to market.

Fortune also started a trucking service for ferry boat passengers using a wheelbarrow to carry luggage to their homes or hotels. Fortune died in 1864 at the age of 90. Her funeral was held at St. Luke's Anglican Church in Annapolis Royal. She is buried in an unmarked grave in the Royal Garrison cemetery.

This song gives me every emotion at once until I can hardly breathe:

From this article:

Imagine that you are undergoing a fairly routine surgery – say, removal of uterine fibroids or hysterectomy. During or right after the procedure, while you are still under anesthesia, a group of medical students parades into the operating room and they perform gynecological exams (unrelated to the surgery) without your knowledge.

Do you consider this okay, or an outrageous violation of your rights?

Regardless of your feelings, you should be aware that this is standard procedure in many Canadian teaching hospitals.

Medical students routinely practice doing internal pelvic examinations while surgery patients are unconscious, and without getting specific consent, at least in Canada.

Guidelines in the United States and Britain say specific consent is required but, by contrast, Canadian guidelines state that pelvic examination by trainees is “implicit.”
---

Jesus! I find this pretty shocking, actually.

What do you think?

How would you feel if you found out you had a pelvic exam without your knowledge while you were unconcious?

I don't work in the building in my LJ icon anymore, but look at the beautiful view (as documented by Jairus) from my new office!

From this article.



What they’ve done here is changed a round-faced, pug-nosed little girl with baby fat — the kind of role model girls have less and less these days — into a svelte and fashionable young woman who appears to be wearing makeup. It wasn’t enough for Rainbow Brite to be in charge of all the colors in the entire universe, in spite of being only somewhere between the ages of 6 and 10.

----

What do you think?

There are three reasons why!

1. Not only did Cadbury not use slave chocolate, but they'd actually committed to making the Dairy Milk bar fair trade.


2. (From this article) The company's Quaker-inspired tradition of caring for staff, established by its founders, is still in evidence. The site has a dentist, chiropodist, swimming pool and pensioners' club, and a clock tower stands over a war memorial decorated with poppies paying tribute to dozens of Cadbury workers who died in the two World Wars. Some workers live in company houses at discounted rents. Myriam Jordan, 82, who worked for Cadbury for 15 years, as did her father-in-law for 46 years, still receives a free Cadbury parcel at Christmas and a free trip every year.

3. They make insane 5 minute commercials like this one:

I feel kind of stupid for only putting down how many days it'd been since I met Jesse, as if I'd arbitrarily just decided to calculate it all of a sudden. It's five years. Five years and two days, by the time I posted about it. This post is just to let you know that I don't ACTUALLY keep track of the days, and that 1827 doesn't have any kind of special significance!

Okay more from me later. I woke up feeling weird about that.

This is a really good post:

------
When the Haitian people get to elect their governments fairly, they consistently want to vote for people whose primary platforms include providing services to the poor. And when that happens, countries like Canada and the U.S. cut aid to Haiti, and start funnelling money into projects like funding the opposition parties. The latest trick is to rig the elections process so that the parties that the poor majority like aren't allowed to run.

Even since 2004, Haiti has seen three major disasters. The 2004 Hurricane that destroyed Gonayiv, the two hurricanes and two tropical storms that hit the island in September, 2008 (that, again, devastated Gonayiv, among other areas) and now the 2010 earthquake. You'd think that after the first two disasters, we'd make it a priority to help build up infrastructure: roads, hospitals, emergency response teams, etc. But no. Canada has focused an inordinate amount of "aid" on elections, political reform, police and soldiers. I've sat in both the Canadian and the U.S. embassy in Haiti and listened to officials tell me that security must be the first priority because security is a necessary prerequisite to encouraging business interests. If you wanted security, maybe you shouldn't have overthrown the government in the first place!
------

It has been 1827 days since Jesse and I finally met in person, after months of being totally smitten online. We sat at the North End Diner for hours. Eventually they started vacuuming, and finally kicked us out. We hovered outside the door for another 10 minutes or so, each of us wanting to hug the other a bit more than was appropriate, given our situations.

There is no photographic evidence of that first encounter, so I offer instead its closest approximation:




He is the best friend I've ever had.

Okay there is this clip they keep playing on the "news" about something that happened in Florida: It's getting so cold there that the iguanas are going into involuntary hibernation (made up science terms, I have no idea if that is technically acurate) and falling out of the trees. Things falling over is pretty funny to me, as are inconvenienced animals.

So this dude thought he'd be a good samaritan and collect all of the iguanas he believed to be dead. Or hell actually maybe that's just the reason he is giving and he was actually going to eat them and make shoes out of them, I dunno. Anyway he loaded up his car with them but once he'd been driving a while the body temperatures of the iguanas started warming up and they all came awake. CAN YOU IMAGINE? Suddenly you car is crawling with iguanas?

What else is new with me? I need to sleep so badly. I keep being thwarted and thwarting myself. It's more fun to keep playing this video game with Jesse, or to watch another episode of The West Wing with Jairus, or read LJ on my Blackberry in bed. I'm lousy at going to sleep, even though I crave it and daydream about it all the time. I need to just put on a blindfold and listen to the sounds of a room, it knocks me out in about 10 minutes.

What is my problem, anyway?

I ended up wearing fishnet socks to work beacause they were all I could find. They seem warmer than non-fishnet socks. Is this possible y/n?

Sarah Curry has had some luck recently posing some questions to her readers. Here is a sampling (with my answers):

Five minute supper: FIVE minutes? I'm not sure! But I like to saute up some frozen cut-up chicken breasts in olive oil, lemon juice, and dill, and throw it over some pasta.

Comfort food: Nutella, plain chips, old cheddar on a chewy baguette.

What has been your most rewarding volunteer experience?: Getting the Pantages Theatre to donate 20 free tickets to the AIDS Committee of Toronto's Deaf Outreach Project for an ASL-interpreted performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. There is zero chance that any of our clients would have EVER been able afford a ticket to something like that otherwise, and everyone had the best time.

Finally, also from Sarah's LJ:

"I found out that a lot of people with greyhounds use them as therapy dogs, visiting seniors' homes, etc. Also there's a program where kids who have low reading skills can visit the library and read to a dog, since the dog doesn't care how well they read it's a good way to build confidence. Isn't that the cutest thing you ever heard of? "

ASDFASDFASDF CUTEST THING.

(p.s. Jesse remember when Zoe used to sit like she is in this LJ icon??)

Two things I want to do so bad that sometimes I think I might cry just thinking of them:

1. Own a dog. I used to daydream of whippets, but Sarah Curry has made me want to adopt a retired greyhound instead. If I had a dog to hug, I feel like my life would become EVEN MORE AMAZING. I look wistfully at every dog I see, for real. Thinking about having a dog makes things go quiet in my tiny mind.

2. Live in the UK. Every sane adult in my life (excluding my father) had a Welsh accent and I've watched a LOT of All Creatures Great and Small, so I basically feel like everyone in the UK is the SWEETEST AND NICEST. For this reason, it is something I am drawn to in this real inner-child way. LUCKY FOR ME I am eligible for a UK passport. I collected all the paperwork I need last year, and all I have to do is send it in!

I've got a strange lingering sadness about the death of Lhasa de Sela. Maybe because I put her on every mixtape I made for about 3 years. Maybe because the CBC obituary mentioned that she is survived by her partner Ryan and cat Isaan.



I'm going in - (Listen here).
When my lifetime had just ended
And my death had just begun
I told you I’d never leave you
But I knew this day would come

Give me blood for my blood wedding
I am ready to be born
I feel new
As if this body were the first I’d ever worn

I need straw for the straw fire
I need hard earth for the plow
Don't ask me to reconsider
I am ready to go now

I'm going in I’m going in
This is how it starts
I can see in so far
But afterwards we always forget
Who we are

I'm going in I’m going in
I can stand the pain
And the blinding heat
'Cause I won't remember you
The next time we meet

You'll be making the arrangements
You'll be trying to set me free
Not a moment for the meeting
I'll be busy as a bee

You'll be talking to me
But I just won't understand
I'll be falling by the wayside
You'll be holding out your hand

Don't you tempt me with perfection
I have other things to do
I didn't burrow this far in
Just to come right back to you

I'm going in I’m going in
I have never been so ugly
I have never been so slow
These prison walls get closer now
The further in I go

I'm going in I’m going in
I like to see you from a distance
And just barely believe
And think that
Even lost and blind
I still invented love

I'm going in
I’m going in
I’m going in