felis_ultharus

So montrealais and I went down to the freshly-opened election office, and signed up -- him as candidate, me as official agent. Turns out we're the first to sign up, so until Liza, Thierry, and Whatizname from the Conservatives get off their butts, this is a one-person race :)

Everyone was caught off their feet this election. The election office is still being put together, and they're having computer problems.

Spent the day making preparations for draught two of my novel. I wrote up life histories and vital statistics for my five major characters and two dozen minor ones. Next I work on maps of important locations. This process not only helps consistency, but forces me to consider aspects of a location I wouldn't normally think about.

After that, I write up "the rules" -- because there's so many fantasy elements in the novel, and fantasy-novels without a set of rules because very quickly dangerously inconsistent.

Tolkien had every detail of his fantasy world worked out. Rowling, for all her notebooks, is sometimes inconsistent in how magic works, and unfortunately it shows. The real hack fantasy writers change premises every chapter.

You'd think fantasy would be the most freeform of genres, but actually building a "fantasy physics" requires a lot more organization than a novel where you can take such things for granted.

( According to this meme, I've been naughty this year :) )

So, we're doing English placement tests in these offices that were clearly designed by the Borg. They are identical on every floor, the cubicles laid out in exactly the same way, and the eerie thing is that there do not appear to be any managers or secretaries on the floor -- just rank-and-file employees.

At first I wondered if they were one of those anarcho-syndicalist banks, but everyone was too subdued. Even weirder were the kitchens -- they were identical right down to the colour scheme, to the art on the walls, to the amount of soap in the soap dispensers. Only the fridges were different -- on the upper floor, one was pushed back farther a few feet. Someone is going to hang for that, I'm sure.

Then the thought struck me that it's far more likely they share a collective consciousness, and the reason every floor, and every side of each floor, is identical is so that they, like the Borg, can continue to function even when 90% of the collective is destroyed. As the parts are interchangeable, they can take over one another's functions.

Security is insane there. I don't know whether to be more disturbed by the fact that security is so tight that it's taken two days to process the paperwork to get us passes so that we can use the bathroom at some point during our 8.5 hour days -- or that security is so lax that two English teachers were able to sneak in anyway and spend the whole day there without being noticed.

Anyway, here's one of the weirdest (and most fun) memes going:

( The WinAMP randomizer fortunetelling meme )

I've had plenty worse days -- and it was certainly a better day for me than for many -- but damn it wasn't a nice day. I discovered that

• the Concordia Bookstore inexplicably shuts down at 1 pm (shortened hours I can understand, but isn't it usually 1-5 in the afternoon?)
• something has happened happened to my final cheque, though what exactly I can't tell, since the paycheque person is never in the office when I try to reach him
• I should never wish for rain, even during a hot week, because it will invariably happen when I'm locked out of the house without my keys

However, I also discovered that Susanna Moodie can occasionally be interesting, when she has someone interesting to describe and steals other people's poetry. I have also written more than 10 pages the last two days, though only two-and-a-bit today.

Now, a meme. Very interesting, though it has a truly odd tendency to try and pair up either gay men and lesbians, or gay men with women who aren't single. Probably programmed by Love in Action. Or True Directions:

1. Go here.
2. Pass it on.
( my answers )

Another meme I've picked up from my sister involves taking three entries from the archives -- a sort of introduction to newer friends. It's supposed to be 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months, but my journal isn't a year old, yet:

3 months ago -- Michelangelo, Neil Gaiman, and the heroism of the late Chuck Cadman
6 months ago -- my novel is coming together, which is when I started planning the current version