My name is Brenda.

I am in my early twenties. I grew up in Calgary, then I moved to Toronto, where I lived for four years of Bachelor of Arts and one year of working for the man. Well, I worked for a man. We didn’t really get along.

In late August 2006 I moved my life, my boyfriend and my vintage red formica kitchen table across the country to Vancouver, where I am engaged in some higher learning of the film studies variety. Yes, film studies. No, no writing about them, not making them. Yes, I have considered that that doesn’t seem like a very lucrative career.

I used to write for a campus paper in Toronto. Once, when I criticized his short “experimental” film in print, an amateur director wrote into the paper and called me a “contemptuous mediocrity.” He also pointed out that a key prop was a “glitter globe, not a snow globe.” I still have that (tear- and/or vodka-stained, typewritten) letter somewhere. That was pretty much the high point of my career in journalism.

I like indie rock, movies of all kinds (except those in which someone bets someone else, My Fair Lady-style, that they can make someone over for some kind of annual formal ball, and then they fall in love/befriend with the makeoveree, and the makeoveree inevitably finds out about the whole cruel wager and then stutters “Tell me I was a bet“*), novels, Television Without Pity, custard tarts, arugula, and cardigans. I drink coffee every morning. I vote NDP and I usually assume that stuff is the patriarchy’s fault.

My boyfriend is hosting my website for me, so now we can never break up.

My Amazon wishlist is here.

This is the third version of my blog. The archives go back to 2004, but I was posting on a blog as early as spring 2002. The earlier archives are offline. All commenters are welcome; I have to moderate new commenters to keep away the spam. It’s pretty easy to scan through the list of held comments and separate the real ones from the fakes, but if I accidentally delete a genuine comment that you left that wasn’t shilling for your porn or pharmaceutical website, I apologize in advance.

If you want to contact me, you can do so by email to my yahoo account, which is under the name brendajanec.

*The actual My Fair Lady is excepted, of course.