When I was in elementary school and enjoying the benefits of being drunk with power being the de-facto head of the Library Club, I would walk home very slowly, the drawstring Riverside library bag with the alligator on it dangling from one hand, holding a book in the other hand, reading. This wasn't really a problem, because most of the way there were sidewalks, and peripherally you can walk a straight line, or at least a line between curb and lawn, without smacking into anything. My peripheral vision developed pretty well mostly because of this habit, which my mother always swore would end with me bashing into a telephone pole (the joke was on her, as we lived in the suburbs, and telephone poles were by and large on the insides of the sidewalks and not really in my path).

Sometimes, though, when I get really involved in what I'm reading, my peripheral vision winks out of effectiveness and I don't see where I'm going. Like writing without looking, I keep walking more or less in a straight line, but streets don't remain straight indefinitely, and in New West there are more things-on-poles in less likely and logical places. My mother's failure to smack me in the head more often is doubtless to blame for the fact that today, after checking House of Leaves out of the library, I walked right into a signal post, with a loud and, to the group of small children behind me, amusing *clang*. Actually, I wouldn't have heard of House of Leaves if not for Livejournal, so I also blame you people. All of you. Even the ones who never mentioned the bloody book, which for the record is making me twitchy, not in the ack-the-computer-is-going-to-eat-my-soul way of Spirits in the Wires, but in the this-is-taking-a-long-time-to-get-into-and-I-am-absorbing-just-enough-detail-to-get-impatient way.

Damnit.

(Put a picture through that facial recognition software. Apparently I resemble Monica Lewinsky. And Anna Kournikova, and Kate Winslet. And... who else... Michael J. Fox. I don't remember the rest. I don't know how I feel about that. Although I think mostly the matches were because I was grinning. Er. *skepticism*)

Friend-who-asked-me-to-feed-the-fish has still not answered either e-mail or telephone message. Went there, snuck in, knocked on things, knocked on other things, phoned offices, got yelled at, came home. Am starting to panic. Thrive, little fishies, thrive! o.O

EDIT: I can't decide whether it's just vengeful and vindictive or actually childish that I am sort of looking forward to the canvassers for this stupid election. Possibly due to the Liberal canvassers during the last provincial election who not only treated me like I was three, but also seemed completely incapable of considering what possible issues a student with thousands of dollars of debt and what amounts to a minor in political science might want to discuss, rather than rambling about the economic boom and the tax cuts and the blah blah bullshit blah transparent garbage blah. Especially the Conservative canvassers. I might actually listen for more than three minutes with something other than contempt on my face this year to the Liberal canvassers, but for the Republican Alliance nutjob Conservatives who come knocking the expression is going to be, at least at first, something like acute puzzlement, then carefully studied calm disapproval, then condescension (depending on the height of the canvasser), then a calm and pitying dismissal including my hesitation about voting into public office somebody for whom the use or expression formal logic is so far over his head that its basic precepts might as well be painted on the bottom of an Air Canada jet.

See what I did there? ;)

THIS CANNOT END WELL EDIT: Did I mention that there is now a (password-protected) Paxverse Wiki?! That's right. A searchable database into which I have been inputting articles for a solid three hours, now, and am stopping at this moment only because I have run out of things I had already written down. *eeeeeeeeee* arion_knight is an enabler. That's right. So when I go mad in public and start explaining to strangers the difference between Natural Magic and Mutation and how they didn't figure out the relationship until Areahannah and Katia went into space, left the Earth's magnetic field, and were left only with biological mutations, and they come and haul me away and lock me in a padded cell, you'll all think well of me, bake me cakes, and blame him, right? Bake him a cake or two as well, I suppose, because I'll be insane, but happy, and hey, people imprisoned against their will get book deals and movie producers all the time, right? ;)