Courtesy of Mark. First time I’ve ever been “tagged”!
1. Four jobs you’ve had:
- Research assistant for economics professor. On September 11, 2001 we were working on a SSHRC Standard Research Grant application. In this application, you are required to submit names of potential reviewers. He really wanted “The Chairman of the Federal Reserve”, but upon hearing “that some plane flew into some building in New York” he said, “too bad, I guess he’ll be too busy to review my application”.
- Policy writer at Human Resources Development Canada where I had the great fortune of working on a policy that would instruct lower-level employees of HRDC on how to get “overpayments” on Canada Pension Plan (i.e., seniors) and Disability (i.e., those who hurt themselves working and can no longer work) back from these poor people. Apparently they discovered that the previous way of doing it — calling the bank and telling them to put all the money in the bank account into ours — was no longer satisfactory.
- Teaching assistant where, among other things, I had the pleasure of T.A.ing “Deviance” for an “anarchist” who would later threaten to sue me for an unrelated matter and who was grieved (while being on the union executive, if you can believe it) by all of her T.A.s in three different courses. I also had the pleasure of T.A.ing “Police in Society” with what was possibly the most racist, most sexist and least competent man I’ve ever met. But, I also had the pleasure (and I’m serious here) of T.A.ing “Sociology of Science and Technology” with Phillip Thurtle and that was quite fun.
- I’ve also had the pleasure of working in a number of different law offices as something more than a secretary but something less than a clerk.
2. Four movies I can watch over and over (i.e., amusing and un-demanding?):
- Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
- Alone in the Dark
- Starsky & Hutch
- “Lazy Sunday”
3. Four places you’ve lived:
- Suburbs of Ottawa, Canada
- In the urban core of Ottawa, Canada
- Toronto, Canada
- Perth, Canada
4. Four TV shows I love:
- Arrested Development
- My Name is Earl
- Scrubs (first couple of seasons; it sharked-jumped last season)
- Boston Legal
5. Four places you’ve been on vacation:
- Dominican Republic
- Florida
- Cottage
- ???
6. Four websites you visit daily:
7. Four of your favourite foods:
- La Soyarie products (i.e., burgers and tofu nuggets)
- Chinese (i.e., Bo De Duyen in Toronto)
- French fries (i.e., chip wagon, especially Ole Tin Lizzy on Highway 15 in Smiths Falls)
- Coffee
8. Four two places you’d rather be:
- Asleep
- ABD
9. Four albums you can’t live without (i.e., what I’ve listened to on the past few drives to Toronto — literally, I wouldn’t live without them in that I’d fall asleep and drive into the Canadian Shield):
- Silver Jews “Tanglewood Numbers”
- Stephen Malkmus “Face the Truth”
- Sleater-Kinney “The Woods”
- Broken Social Scene “Broken Social Scene”
10. Four people I insist do this inane shit (because I don’t know enough about them to find it boring):
- I’m not cruel!
2 Comments
The ironic sitemeter reference amused me.
I was being serious. I love sitemeter. It is the strangest thing looking at search words, who is coming from where, etc. Not strange enough that I’d change careers to data mining or something like that, but strange nonetheless. Like the day Slavoj Zizek visited and quickly (within 0 seconds) decided he didn’t like what he saw. (He hasn’t been back since!) Or the time someone searched “smell of a circus” and came up with my post on Minnie’s ears, which I described as “smelling like a circus”. It’s also awesome when someone from the utoronto.ca domain searches “Mark Kingwell” each week.
I’ll take this opportunity, by the way, to strike out “Scrubs” (which is currently circling the bowl despite the news that Zach Braff has taken Mandy Moore off the market, so to speak) and replace it with “The Office” (the NBC version; not the BBC version). I’ll also add a fifth (because it has “Scrubs” content in the form of “Ottawa’s own” Sarah Chalke): The ‘Bu, by the same people who brought us “Lazy Sunday”.
(Anyone know how to add a preview to comments in WordPress?)
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