Correction

Thanks to the reader who offered additional information, and my apologies if my research was hasty. Wikipedia offers this info:

In its English usage, Precarity was first used by Léonce Crenier, a Catholic monk who had previously been active as an anarcho-communist. In 1952 the term was used by Dorothy Day, writing for the Catholic Worker Movement

I'll give some links for those who want to learn more.
Precarity on wikipedia

San Precario website

Give us this day a paid lunch break,

And enough bread to eat during it.

I want to take a minute to introduce you to San Precario, patron saint of precarious workers. His feast day is February 29th.

"Precarity" is a word first used by Dorothy Day, who wrote for the Catholic Worker movement in the 50's. She said:

"Precarity is an essential element of poverty. That has been forgotten. Here we want precarity in everything except the church.... When a community is always building, and enlarging, and embellishing, which is good in itself, there is nothing left over for the poor. We have no right to do this as long as there are slums and breadlines somewhere."

I want to offer a definition: have you been a victim of flexploitation?

flexploitation: (low pay, high blackmailability, intermittent income, etc.), and existential precariousness (high risk of social exclusion because of low incomes, welfare cuts, high cost of living, etc.) The condition of precarity is said to affect all of service sector labor in a narrow sense, and the whole of society in a wider sense, but particularly youth, women, and immigrants.

Here is a prayer you might appreciate

Saint Precarious,
Protector of the precarious of the earth,
give us paid maternity leave
and protect chain store workers, call centre angels
and all flexible employees hanging by a thread.

Give us paid leave and pension contributions,
incomes and free services,
and keep us from being fired.

Saint Precarious defend us from the bottom of the network,
pray for us temporary and cognitive workers, and
Extend to all the others our humble supplication.

Remember those souls whose contracts are coming to an end,
tortured by the pagan divinities
the Free Market and Flexibility,
those wandering uncertain, without a future or a home,
with no pension or dignity.
Grant hope to undocumented workers
and bestow upon them joy and glory
until the end of time.

MAYDAY

Bad Education

I've decided to enhance my personal education by reading an article on wikipedia every day. This week I read

-Henry Rollins
-Febreze
-Ash Wednesday
-Kosovo
-Canine Degenerative Myelopathy
-Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney

Suggestions? I need one more.

I know how the caged molecule sings

And thus can explain to you how Febreze works.

There is a modified starch shaped like a donut that entraps smell molecules- that's right, bad smells fill the donut hole.

And therefore the cilia (little hairs) inside your nose don't detect them.

At the end of the rainbow

Argument in my kitchen:

"There are four tastes. Okay, five, but I only begrudgingly acknowledge 'umami'"

[editor's note: umami is a savory taste]

"There are seven."

"What the hell are the other two?"

"Magic and Luck."

Easier link

Some of you may find it easier to access this blog from erinn.zaussome.com, you can do that now, because D. is so smart.

A day late and a pancake short

Those of you who have known me for longer than five minutes know that my food cravings are usually bizarre, descend quickly, and escalate to a level or urgency only seen in movies about space plagues and serial killers on the loose.

So on Ash Wednesday, also known as the day before bargaining and the day that my town was buried in 25 centimetres of snow, I quickly left work, raced home through the whiteout, and started to prepare...

chocolate chip pancakes.

I had been under the assumption that I didn't like pancakes. But once I needed them more than air, I found they're delicious. As if I've been turning down offers of these fluffy griddle cakes for the last decade.

So I whipped up a batch of chocotastic pancakes. A day late for shrove tuesday, and ten years late for all those other pancakes. Fortunately I'm several years early to give up eggs for lent.

It's not a spoiler if it happened 2000 years ago

I'm just starting to watch HBO's Rome, which I understand received some mixed reviews.

However, I need a show and the writers are on strike, so I'm enjoying it, and really looking forward to the rebroadcasting of the first four episodes today on the history channel.

Here's why I like it:

-puts expensive education to good use!
-coarse and violent!
-cast with english accents (wtf?) have them rigorously organized along appropriate class lines!

But what is even better than the show are the summaries on Television Without Pity. If you watch as much TV as I do, you should see this site. For example:

"In this scene, Caesar's up to something. You can tell because he's awake."

Vale,
me.