I woke up at 4 am and couldn't get back to sleep. Please pity me.

New rule: I am not allowed to buy any more nail polish until I have used every bottle I already own at least once. Even if the new nail polish I want to buy is on sale for a really excellent price. I have several bottles of nail polish I've never actually opened, they just sit on the dresser looking pretty. I have to scotch this nail polish-buying habit before it bankrupts me.

Oh, and Young Miss Weaver might be allergic to chicken, according to the new vet (who looks about 12. I'm getting old). Do you know how many cat foods, even premium grain-free cat foods, have chicken in them even if they don't say "chicken" in the title? I guess it's a relatively cheap, easy to source form of protein. Grumble, grumble. However, i have achieved victory and found several brands of food which feature chicken-free formulas. Natural Balance Limited Ingredient Diets is the one I'm going to try first, mainly because they have 3 different formulas and hopefully YMW will like at least one of them. Will it be the venison and green pea, duck and green pea, or salmon and green pea? She'd better not end up with an allergy to peas.

Starting to feel sleepy again, 1 hour and 8 minutes before the alarm is due to start going off.

(no subject)

Now that the plans are made and the tickets are bought (non-refundable), I am frantically trying to depress my expectations for "Captain America: Civil War". Because it's probably going to suck. If I go in with rock-bottom expectations, maybe, just maybe I'll be agreeably surprised. But regardless, there's an excellent (and not especially expensive) Thai restaurant across the street from the cinema, so we will at least dine well.

Really interesting post from 12_12_12 about Elizabeth Bennet and whether Pride and Prejudice is a feminist narrative. Massive, massive spoilers for "Pride and Prejudice" above. If you've never read it (and if you haven't, I urge you to read it, because it's really good. Believe the hype), avoid the post above until you've read it.

Oh, and in comments there are also massive spoilers for "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy. I won't advise you to read that book, even though it too is well-written, because reading it plunged me into a deep depression (including suicidal thoughts) when I was 13, and I haven't picked up the book again since. Nor read anything else by Thomas Hardy, on the grounds that I can't afford suicidal depressions.

Also from 12_12_12, thoughts on a recent episode of "The 100", which morph into a critique of the way popular culture doesn't show selfishness narratives for characters of colour. And I'm being vague here because I don't want anyone who watches "The 100" to be inadvertently spoiled by my link, but it's really interesting and you should go read it. I have never seen a single episode of "The 100", and I thought 12cubed's meta was just fascinating.

And legionseagle has fascinating meta entitled Intersectionality? Strictly for the Birds. It starts out talking about Stephen Fry, and evolves from there. Go read her. She's much more interesting than I am.

giandujakiss has excellent points about how discriminating against people for how they vote is wrong, even when the person doing the discriminating is on YOUR side. Slippery slope and all that.

And finally, have an interesting article about Star Wars: the Force Awakens (spoilery, obviously), entitled If You Think Rey is Overpowered in Star Wars, the Sexism is Strong in You.

I had an interesting experience this afternoon. I suddenly vomited on the sidewalk of a busy street as I was walking from work to the Skytrain station. A woman passing snapped, "Thank you very much!" in tones of heavy sarcasm as I retched. Then she actually looked at me as she was waiting on the corner, and it was like a switch flipped on her face. She saw a respectable-looking, business casual-dressed white woman in a big floppy straw hat and obvious digestive distress, and suddenly went from looking disgusted to looking guilty. She came closer (though not within splashing distance, wise woman), apologized and asked if there was anything she could do to help.

I ended up just waving her off, saying, "I'm just getting over the flu, and apparently I'm not as over it as I thought." Because the real story is way too complicated (basically, I've been having random episodes of sudden and unexplained vomiting a few times a week for about a year), and it was easier to tell a little white lie than launch into a long explanation of the truth. But I found myself wondering if she would have stuck with her first reaction of disgust if I'd been somehow sketchy-looking, not so painfully, obviously middle-class. Maybe she would've, maybe she wouldn't. I could be judging her too harshly, but I just found it interesting.