the daily snivel

  Good riddance to bad roommates!

They're gone.

They moved out on Sunday, while I was out helping a friend (and one of the former Review Counsel at the University of Ottawa Community Legal Clinic) and her family move out of their house as they prepared to head back to Toronto. I came back, tired and sweaty but full of good moving karma, and the house was empty. Numbnuts and Dumbelina, as I had begun to childishly refer to them, had finally (and at long last) gone. My messy, dope-smoking, garbage-piling, kitchen-filtherizing roommates of the past two years were finally moving on to their own apartment, which for all I care can now stink to high heaven -- of weed, microwave popcorn, and the fetid reek of the the brown slime that they let grow in the bottom of the sink as they neglected the strata of dishes they'd allowed to accumulate therein -- because it's no longer being shared with me.

Of course, they took a few things with them, including all my good knives, and my Pyrex measuring cup, and they didn't pay their $70 share of the hyrdo bill of the past two months (sticking me with the tab), and I'm paying two rents this month just to be rid of them, but all in all a small price to pay for the amazing peace and tranquility of coming home and having the space all to myself. It's fantastic. At the end of the day, the house is empty and there are no surprises. The kitchen is as clean as I left it (and you have better believe that it is clean. The sink is clean, empty, brown-slime-free, and smells exactly the way a sink should -- that is, not at all), the toilet paper roll doesn't need to be changed, there aren't useless fucktards sitting in my living room watching crap on TV through cable they haven't paid for in over a year, and all the doors are still locked.

I love being home now -- the counters have been washed, the stove is clean, there are no soiled baking sheets, pots or pans, or cutlery on my nice clean glass-topped dining table (or anywhere else), and the bread bag tags have been banished. Just for the heck of it, I'm walking around naked whenever I like, because it's my house for the next month and dangit if I'm not going to let the boys feel at home. I don't tense up when I'm home anymore. I've started using the living room again. The other night I sat in my living room, put a tape in the VCR, and watched Star Wars (the good Star Wars, not the revised Special Edition nonsense) -- just because I could -- while writing an e-mail to a good friend in Toronto.

I threw out all the food they'd left in the fridge because it was morally tainted, and everything else that they left behind is shortly to follow. You hear me, old computer and monitor in the living room that may or may not work but I don't care to determine?! You following that, Pilates workout mat that got used all of twice and forgotten in the living room? Do ya dig what I'm saying, grease tray for their inferior, non-George Foreman grill? Your days are all sadly numbered.

I really am attempting to accentuate the positive though. I sincerely do hope they have a clean and happy home now that they're gone, but I'm comforted by the fact that, either way, it's no longer my problem and no one else will be around to take the blame or cut them slack when things don't get done. Now that I've got space and freedom, I'm also getting ready for the big move with a newfound energy and determination. I purged about half of my knickknacks -- things I've been hanging onto and religiously displaying on the same cluttered shelves since I was 18 -- over the weekend, and packed more boxes. It's starting to come together.

Oooh -- except that I keep forgetting to book a truck! Cripes! Better get on that... 

  Despoiling the Harry Potter spoiler...

My friend Natalie passed along a brilliant link to The Guardian's Book page where readers were invited to submit entries in a contest to find the best rewrite of the [ultimate new Harry Potter spoiler scene] in the words of another author. As my friend states in her message, however, "I don't even want you to dare to visit this website I'm going to provide you unless you've finished reading the Harry Potter because it contains the spoiler of all spoilers splashed in big bold letters every single place you look... Just by visiting the site, the book will be spoiled." So don't read the site unless you've finished the book. But when and only when you finish the book, you simply must, must read the entire climax as written by Irvine Welsh (as cleanly exerpted below):

The sweat wis lashing oafay Ron; he wis tremblin. Ah wis jist sitting in the Gryffindor Common Room, focusing on ma new Choaclit Frog jizz mag, tryin no tae notice the cunt. He wis bringing me doon. Ah tried to keep ma attention oan Wendolin the Weird, who wis takin oaf her bikini toap.

- Potts. Ah've goat tae see the Professor, the boy Weasley gasped, shaking his heid.

Ah wanted the radge tae jist fuck oaf ootay ma specs, tae go oan his ain and jist leave us wi wee Wendolin. Oan the ither hand, ah'd be needin a Cheerin Charm n aw before long, n if that cunt went n scored he'd haud oot oan us, the sick basturt.

Ultimately, you can run the whole gamut here. 

  An amazing fact that is nevertheless impossible to use to pick up chicks.

Neither ladies nor gents will ever be racing to bed you for knowing it and mentioning it conversationally at a party, but after many tedious hours today working on the new website for the Legal Clinic, I was able to work out something of fundamental importance. At least, of fundamental importance to people who work on websites that:

1. Use javascript
   
2. Use javascript variables that must be given text strings in the code in order to display things like titles on the website; and
   
3. Don't come with instructions.
   

And here it is: when you need to enter international symbols in blocks of text, say in French (because you're putting up a website for "Canada's University," which is mighty bilingual), and it is absolutely essential to put those dreaded "illegal characters" (like semicolons; apostrophes; ampersands; slashes; and the rest!) in because French is crammed with apostrophes, you don't need to shoot yourself in the head, painting the wall of your office a delicate shade of you despite the fact that normal HTML code-friendly commands like ' won't work either, because they also use illegal characters (and of course, this step was the first thing I tried when I realized after an hour and a half of trying everything that the reason my index page wasn't working was because illegal characters were in there somewhere).

What you do is, make it an "escape character" by adding a slash in front of the offending illegal character so that Java realizes you're referring to a block of text and not interfering with a line of coding. Thus, evil, illegal, no good:

'Clinique juridique communautaire de l'université d'Ottawa'

Becomes okey dokey:

'Clinique juridique communautaire de l\'université d\'Ottawa'

Useless information, I know, but it took me hours to figure it out, and I needed to say so. Goddamn University-mandated templates!