King me

The King of Cambodia has a blog! CNN says so. Don't you just want to pet him?

Who dropped my cheese?

In case this deeply amuses anyone else:
people chasing a cheese down a hill.

Multiple fractures and fondue ensued.

The winner, window fitter Chris Anderson, received his 9lb Double Gloucester as he was taken away on a stretcher with a sprained ankle.

"This was a lot tougher than last year. I had a few nasty tumbles."

If you're Bored in St. John's today...

Go down to the waterfront after checking this out: Canada seizes Portuguese trawler.
When these things happen, is it actually exciting?
Was the tape rolling when the Fish Police "boarded it in international waters"? Will there be COPS-style footage on the evening news?
Will there be wildly gesticulating salty Portuguese types spraying flecks of spit as they protest their fishing rights?
Will the CBC insist on using the ridiculously neutered term "fishers" to refer to the perps?
Or will the whole bust be over with a whimper and nary a bang... stay tuned for a report from our special correspondent. [ahem]

can you systemize your uterus?

From today's Social Studies. i.e. ripped off from The Sunday Times of London.

The gender of your children may depend on your choice of job, say British researchers.... In the general population, 105 boys are produced for every 100 girls. [According to the study], among engineers and other "systemizers" [like accountants] the ratio is 140 boys for every 100 girls. Among nurses [and teachers] and other "empathizers," the ratio is 135 daughters for every 100 sons.

a post for Rob

I have small friends that accompany me everywhere. They pop up at predictable times but in unpredictable places, outwitting all steps I have taken to anticipate them. They roar little messages to my brain during my longest, hardest runs and races. But i do not stop to pay them attention. After I'm home, I swaddle and coo them, but they only go away. They are blisters.

I ran the Ottawa Half-Marathon yesterday. My time was actually a personal record -- only 11 seconds faster than my Montreal time 5 weeks ago.
But hey. It's definitely something to be proud of. Because this race took just about everything I had out of me; I pretty much collapsed at the finish line. I had set a goal of 2.00 (almost 3 minutes better than my last time), and was fully a minute better than that pace until the 12k mark. To have run that far that fast in a 21k race is not shabby. At the 14k mark my sister joined me, and it was all downhill from there, literally and figuratively.
Reasons why I couldn't keep up the 2.00 pace: the heat (20C + mucho humidity + hot sun), possibly too much exertion in the last week, lack of long distance training, lack of sleep, not used to ingesting fluids in those quantities while running (hence stomach sloshing and cramps), and lack of mental toughness.

It's not hard because it's 2 hours of running; it's hard because it's 2 hours of racing. 2 hours of your mind pushing your body, and then finally your body fighting your mind when your mind just wants to stop. I was thinking well, if I faint, drop and skid to a stop, the worst that will happen is that I'll have ugly raspberries all over my arms, face and legs.

Saturday night we went contra dancing. Yet again fun above and beyond all expectations. It's the new, underground, dirty heroin.

And I caught up on my taped episodes of Gilmore Girls. Curt said "I'm comin' for YOU", Paris sang "I'm walkin' on sunshine", and Taylor said "Fitty Cent". Good times, bad ending.

OMG

I can't believe Jenny Lewis is the lead singer of Rilo Kiley.
Does anyone remember her from the 80s? Troop Beverly Hills? The Wizard?? aaaaagh!
Which reminds me... Carla Gugino, Kellie Martin, and Tori Spelling AND the robot girl from "Small Wonder" were ALL in Troop Beverly Hills. WTF? I can't find any fan sites about that movie to link to... very telling.

Speaking of Small Wonder:
She's a small wonder, pretty and bright with soft curls....
She's fantastic, made of plastic.
Microchips here and there.

This must be my most random post ever.

To Do this Summer

Bored? Large Canadian Roadside Attractions

I was going to post a picture of Francis the Pig in Red Deer, Alberta, but that would be wrong.

I love Fish Sticks, I could eat 'em all day!

Went to see the animation show tonight at Cinema du Parc with Awesome Erin and Emile. Totally worth seeing if you get the chance. Highlights include:
- unspeakably funny polish short.
- amazing montreal short: When the Day Breaks
- poignant radio heads
Others included a Cezanne-esque deal with the devil, a super macho australian cgi short that was a cross between Armageddon and Dune (the movies), a very silly guard dog, a cool short called "the meaning of life", awesome kung-fu claymation in a very scary hospital, and the sample ladies at costco. (I don't know why i'm listing them here, probably so that I can remind myself in my old age.)
We giggled and sighed and oohed our way through the shorts. Something about animation makes you feel less serious about it as film, you almost feel like it's wrong not to be wearing pajamas while you watch.

True story about fishsticks:
When I was 8, I got to meet Captain Highliner. (I never questioned before why he showed up at our day camp that day, maybe he just um, liked kids. Or cod stocks were low.) We sat on the grass and stared as his beard and he told us to eat fish.
Funnily enough, my mom had actually packed me highliner fishsticks in my lunch. But I was a little star-struck, it must have been his beard, and Captain Highliner never found out.
Poor guy... I think he was an actor pimping himself out in the Santa off-season (the beard is a giveaway). Yet another sad reason why Christmas should come more than once a year.

who me, competitive?

Interesting article about how women shy away from competition even when they're good at it, while men who still suck rush in. Any woman who's contemplated an academic career probably feels this in her gut.
What women want. Best excerpt:

A friend of mine, a businessman who buys companies, told me one of the first things he looks at is the gender of the boss.
"The companies run by women are much more likely to survive.... Women C.E.O.'s know how to hire good salespeople and create a healthy culture within the company.

Plus they don't spend 20 percent of their time in strip clubs."

go read this

Someone else's take: Lessons learned from Revenge of the Sith (short and worth reading)

Episode III: aftershocks

I saw Revenge of the Sith last night with a jolly crew of 5. (Anne-Marie was in town from Quebec, which explains why I had already drunk a pint and a half of Stella before the show. Nevertheless the judgments I am about to pass are quite sober.)

There's nothing quite like a new Star Wars film to simultaneously excite and disappoint . The unanimous verdict on the film was "[gnash teeth, wring hands, suppress reservations] Good!"

I give Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen a lot of credit for wringing as much character as possible from their idiotic dialogue. But in the end, Anakin is still a dumb-ass -- an impatient ambitious macho youth too immature to not be impetuous. His turn to the dark side was the dumbest setup ever and rather disappointing given how much of the saga has hinged on it.

Ian McDiarmid (as Palpatine) was great! yoda was a delight. wookiees rock. the fight scenes were too long and distracting. (Why are all blockbusters just trailers for their video games?) I hope on the dvd you can turn the lightsabres off, because you couldn't see what Anakin and Obi-Wan were doing, and that would a shame and a waste since they were so hot when practice duelling in their street clothes.

However, none of my friends actually threw up from their motion-sickness, and no animals were harmed (since it was shot entirely on blue screen), so the venture must be considered a success.
Sigh. If only George Lucas didn't hate actors so much.

My conclusion is that Luke Skywalker is just an emasculated version of his father, in that he's just as dumb but less angry. He also had it considerably easier. If you watch Return of the Jedi again, you will see how the Emperor gives himself away at every turn. (Luke is about to finish off pops when the emperor cackles "That's it... now join me!". Only then does Luke hesitate and go "oh wait, no. No, i won't.")

The only difference is that at the critical moment (of going over to the dark side) Luke had all the cue cards handed to him, and Anakin was too dumb to muzzle his testosterone and use his brain. Luke is very much the eunuch where Anakin is the raging young bull.

Estar Guars

Simon writes in from Panama to say that the local population is excited about the latest installment of "Estar Guars". Como se dice "Wookie"?

And a hilarious bitchy review in the New Yorker:

The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion....
The young Obi-Wan Kenobi is not, I hasten to add, the most nauseating figure onscreen; nor is R2-D2 or even C-3PO, although I still fail to understand why I should have been expected to waste twenty-five years of my life following the progress of a beeping trash can and a gay, gold-plated Jeeves.

So Anthony Lane ends up hating on Yoda:

Any educated moviegoer would know what to do, having watched that helpful sequence in “Gremlins” when a small, sage-colored beastie is fed into an electric blender....
Also, while we’re here, what’s with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. “I hope right you are.” Break me a fucking give.

star wars star wars star wars!

I'm SO excited to go see "Revenge of the Sith".
Before I wasn't. Now I am. Because I got chills reading this review. woohoo!!!
I think this adequately sums up my jubilation:
What could be better than an army of Wookiees?

Maybe i'll go with my friend Scott, and we'll walk home acting the climactic fight sequences, making the sound effects ourselves. It sure was fun to do that in 1997.

gaming 1, reading 0

Cool, short Article in this week's New Yorker about how current pop culture -- namely computer games & tv shows -- are more cognitively interactive than, um, reading books.
I'm so glad I spent my youth playing Sim City Classic instead of reading Tolstoy.

Also from another New Yorker article about concert tours & Metallica:

[I]n an era of file-sharing and iPod-stealing, ... the ways in which artists make money have grown more old-fashioned. The value of songs falls, and the value of seeing an artist sing them rises, because that experience can’t really be reproduced.

I've turned comments on!

For anonymous responders -- just let me know you are or i'll go mad...

word to the wise

Puns are little 'plays on words' that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water."
-- Dave Barry

Jag vet inte!

Your Inner European is Swedish!

Relaxed and peaceful. You like to kick back and enjoy life.

Who's Your Inner European?

tunafitty and beyond

I hate it when things are over before you know they're over.

Like when you're really looking forward to the last class of the year with your favourite English teacher in grade 9, and then you find out the class has been cancelled. You didn't get a proper last class, to enjoy the last hour of having this amazing teacher. Instead you get to run around the playground like a banshee, but still... it's bittersweet. And the cheer you let out, when you find out you're getting out of school early, feels like a betrayal, a false echo.

Things never stay the same right up until the end, when the end is forseeable. The ground begins to shift, like before-shocks for an earthquake.

It's not a mood-killer, not necessarily unpleasant, but it is almost always a shock. And then comes the nostalgia, even before the final curtain has come down.

taking the crazy train

So there was this guy... who won the undergraduate irritation tiara in the linguistics department while I was there a few years back. Like all linguists, he has a second hobby, and he's just as obsessive/compulsive about it. His Montreal Metro site is pretty well known (and you know he's a linguist when he posts it in Catalan and Esperanto) -- and has some crazy-ass cool shit like this: (click on map)


The teal line makes a lot of sense. There's already a train tunnel through Mount Royal, and a line from downtown along the 40 to the airport would be a godsend.
The yellow line extension would make the Pine/Parc intersection even more of a futuristic nightmare. A tram would really work best here.
The pink line however, seems to me like something drawn with lipstick after a crack binge.
Well, at least he didn't put a metro stop on Mt-Royal.

How did he come up with these names? Ukraine? Frobisher? Maison Radio-Canada? Someone's gotta do better...
I think these lines would get named after Quebecois heroes. Like "ligne Rene-Levesque", "ligne Gilles-Vigneault", "ligne Richard-Desjardins"...

Doldrums

I can't shake this lethargy... May has arrived, I figured out the government owes me $500 (finally!), I ate well & slept well over the weekend, but I can't shake this feeling. It's been only a week since my race, and I'm probably still recovering. And it rained for like 5 days straight.
I think I need a few days of mild sunshine and light breeze to puff my sails. Anyone want to take me on a vacation? Maybe just shopping?

Come to think of it, maybe there is a simple explanation: I watched the Exorcist on Friday night. Boys have a strange sense of what's fun. Or maybe it's because of the hostage situation Saturday night, first at a $90 birthday dinner, then later at the bar.