Ellie Fish

There's more to life than books, you know. But not much more.

2012-01-28T21:08:00.002-04:00

The best picture-compilation blog for bibliophiles: bookshelfporn.com.

The best picture-compilation blog for CanLitophiles: CanLit is Sexy.

"I once knew a Leslie and she was just awful. Now I hate all Leslies." ~Dude on Parks and Rec

2012-01-27T16:34:00.002-04:00

Now seems like a good a time as any to change my name to my Blues Name: Pretty Eyes Thompkins.

Nightmares

2012-01-20T17:00:00.000-04:00

Because I'm one of those annoying people who is always telling other people about their dreams, I'll tell you about two nightmares I had in the last week.

The first took place in the great room at my cabin. I was there with my dad, and there was a trail of ants under the table, maybe about 6-10 ants marching in a line. As they marched around they got bigger. I asked dad what they were and he said they looked like carpenter ants. By this point they were big enough that we could see wings. They actually looked like cockroaches as they got bigger. They kept growing and I was freaked out, I ran from the chair I was in and onto a couch in the corner of the room. At this point they were about a foot long, they had shiny, hard-plastic-looking white heads with black eyes. One leaped from the floor and hit me in/landed on my face. I screamed and tried to push it off, and that woke me up.

The second nightmare took place in a nondescript lobby somewhere. I was with Alej and a childhood friend Angie. The ring finger on my left hand had a stiff joint and I couldn't straighten my finger all the way. I held up my hand to show them, and before our eyes my entire hand started to swell. It happened really quickly and we all freaked out and Angie got on her cell and called an ambulance. As my hand swelled, it almost seemed to shrink, and my nails got longer, as if the pressure from the swelling was forcing them out. It freaking hurt too, I thought my skin was going to split open. All this happened over the course of a few seconds and I jammed my hand under my other arm because I couldn't stand to look at it. I woke up then, and my hand was tingling. It was gross and disturbing. Fucking nightmares.

Come on!

2012-01-18T08:39:00.000-04:00

What did I just say?

And the story is about Ontario and Quebec! Is Quebec "Western" Canada now? I mean, yes, it's West of parts of Canada, but there's a whole lot more West beyond it. Maybe all of Canada is Western Canada now, with the Maritimes being Eastern Western Canada, BC being Western Western Canada, and the various Territories are Northern Western Canada.

New Plaskett

2012-01-18T07:30:00.002-04:00

Check it out.

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

From the non-stop awesome that is someecards.com

Me (while skating this afternoon)

2012-01-15T17:50:00.001-04:00

" I love skating! I miss it, I should skate more often...[fall hard, flat on my ass].... I hate skating, I never want to skate again."

"...people inclined to comment from the anonymity of a keyboard tend to have opinions they're ashamed of expressing as real face-to-face people."

2012-01-13T12:30:00.000-04:00

Ihave three new media-related pet peeves. I thought I’d share them with you,because what’s the point of having a blog if I don’t use it to force my opinionsupon the world?

Thefirst is the weather. Or rather, the way the weather is reported as if it’s never happened before. Snow in Atlantic

Canada

! Snow in

Russia

and Alaska! Deep Freeze in the Prairies!Will wonders never cease? There’s a reason most awkward elevator small talk isabout the weather: it’s one of the few things otherwise disparate people have in common.We all see, think about, and are affected by the weather every single day. Imean, the snowmageddon thing in Alaska is cool, but doesevery single snowfall in every major population center have to be a separate newsstory? I mean, I live here and I don’t care that we’re bracing for a storm. It’sWINTER it’s going to SNOW and RAIN. That’s what “winter” means here. If it was,say, July and we were bracing for snow that would be something different. If itwas February and Alaska was going through ahumidexmageddon, that would be a story. But the weather doing what it’ssupposed to do when it’s supposed to do it is just assumed. It does not requireconstant coverage.

Holy carp! Snow at high elevations! The people need to know!

Mysecond pet peeve is what I consider to be a lazy journalistic practice. It’swhen reporters use quotes from internet comment sections in their stories. Like,if the story is about a piece that was originally reported in the NY Times, and thejournalist quotes comments from that webpage in their story: “T&AalltheWAY666disagreed with the study’s finding….” Everytime I see some anonymous reader comment in an otherwise legitimate news story, itjust strikes me as lazy and dangerous. I understand this is a way to report onwhat the "average" person thinks, but it gives a voice to all thosecrazy whackjobs who write comments on the internet news sites. I asked my favourite journalist about this and here's what she said:

“Iagree it's lazy. Plus, people inclined to comment from the anonymity of akeyboard tend to have opinions they're ashamed of expressing as realface-to-face people. I think giving them disproportionate space hastens thedecline of our civilization. And I'm not being hyperbolic — I really believethat.

Thatsaid, reporters are under time pressure, and people on the street aresuspicious of talking to reporters (I know – I've done those man-on-the-streetsurveys) so it takes time to sweet-talk them and put them at ease.

Still,I think it's better to do without average-person comment than to take it fromposts. Unless it's a story to show how idiotic people can be!

Love,Mom”

Finally,I think we need stricter criteria for calling a video “viral,” because I’m sickof hearing about them and the current definition seems to be "any video people who write about viral videos have seen," regardless of the actual numberof views. The last story I saw about a viral video said the video had ~300,000views. That’s a paltry .004% of the world’s population. Even if we limit thatto the number of people who have internet access (2 billion), it’s still only~.02%. I think at least 10% of the people on the internet need to have seensomething before it’s called “viral” and before news stories are devoted to it.

2012-01-13T06:53:00.000-04:00

I love each and every person that actually gave money to the Stephen Colbert Super Pac. You are all awesome.

YES.

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

(via Oz)

I love the illiterate foreigners dig.

Old content I never got around to posting

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry, y'all. Until I find more videos of baby animals being awesomely adorable, this is the best I can do.

Ifyou think this is intense scrutiny, you should never watch Sharktopus with me.

Me:I finally saw the 1983 The Thing. Itwas really good. The special effects must have been really great for the time.I don't think they hold up that well, but it'sstill effectively gross when it's trying to be. I like that the alienis something different each time you see it. I'm really confused about itsbiology though. I think I need to watch it again or readthe source material. As I understand, the virus infects something andeither takes it over, or replicates it from the inside? If its goal is toreplicate humans and remain undetected, why does it keep bursting out ofpeople? And when it bursts out of, say a human, why does it have other animalfeatures if it was the human it replicated? And at times it seemed like itneeded to eat the subject to replicate it. Is that how it works? Also,does the virus recognize other infected people?

Hermano: I think you'reputting entirely too much thought into this movie. I'm fairlycertain, without ever having talked to him about it to verify, that JohnCarpenter's primary goal was not to make a film that would stand up tointense scrutiny by biologists. I think he mostly wanted to make athriller that would make people shit their pants.

(At least I'm not this guy).

Who's a big, scary bear?! You're a big, scary bear! Yes you are!

2012-01-06T21:34:00.003-04:00

When this guy attacks, you die from unbearable (ha!) cuteness, not a head wound and subsequent blood loss.

You can't win

2012-01-05T16:00:00.000-04:00

This year I resolve to make no New Year's resolutions.

Crap. Instant failure.

Me Listening to the News This Morning

2012-01-04T06:30:00.000-04:00

Announcer: "...Canada lost the World Juniors semifinal to Russia..."
Me: "[gut-punch-like "Ohhh" sound]"

Announcer: "...front-runner of the Iowa caucus is Mit Romney..."
Me: "[gut-punch-like "Ohhh" sound]...which one is that again?"

As an aside, kudos to Edmonton for not going all smashy-smashy, stabby-stabby over the hockey loss. In the Fail Safe-like future I envision for us, when we have to decide which of our cities to sacrifice for the greater good, I think this will count in Edmonton's favour. Sorry, Vancouver.

Belated Birthday Shout Out to Kimmy

2012-01-02T10:33:00.001-04:00

Happy Birthday Kimmy!

This 9-year-old picture was the oldest picture of us I could find on my hard drive. We look cold. I must have some more on my old external hard drive, but that's in storage. However, you're the unofficial archivist, so I'll trust that you've got all the really old pictures of us.

Anway, I hope you're feeling better and that we get time to hang out in 2012.

Happy New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T15:54:00.000-04:00

Crap! I've got less than 9 hours to come up with my resolutions. Um, I'm drawing a blank. I've already reached Captain Hammer-levels of perfection. What else can I do to improve?

2011-12-30T07:58:00.001-04:00

I didn't sleep last night, and this seemingly city-wide alarm at 1:30am is just one reason (you might need to up the volume):

The upside is that I found this video. It's Christmas-themed, but Downton Abbey fans will forgive me. The rest of you won't appreciate it as much.

While we're on the topic of Materpiece Theatre, their winter schedule is looking good. New Sherlock! New Dickens adaptation with Gillian Anderson! 2012 is looking up my friends.

Not-so-merry post-Christmas depression

2011-12-27T20:18:00.003-04:00

It's all over. No more Christmas.

The Bailey's and candy canes are all gone, so now we must fill that void with 43-inch hi-def 3D TVs.

I hope you had a good one. We had a white one, which is very, very rare here. Also, my awesome aunt made me vegetarian tourtière, and I won the candle race. All said, a very good birthday for Jesus.

tourtière sans meat

My candle, after winning.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

This is the best gift I got this year. If you can't read it, it says "She wears glasses", "Nice", "Playful","Pretty", and "Smart".

Chances of me becoming alcoholic just got smaller.

2011-12-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

Itstarted off a lunch time like any other. I was browsing the internet, thisparticular day I was looking at recipes. I would never actually make any ofthem, but it's fun to pretend I'm the kind of person who would make her ownseitan just to make seitan medallions smothered in wild mushroom sauce. Anyway,I came across an article on wine and read it. It was a life-changing moment.Or, at least, life-complicating.

Apparentlythe production process for wine, beer, and liquor often involves animalproducts and by-products. Things like gelatin, eggs, and something calledisinglass can all be used in wine and/or beer. Now, as a lacto-ovo vegetarianI'm not overly perturbed by egg or milk ingredients in my drinks (so I canstill drink Baileys), but I would be concerned about gelatin or things madefrom animals. Some companies say these things are used, but then filtered out,so the final product doesn't actually contain gelatin, for example. But doesthat matter, really? It was used to make the product, and I know that (now), soI shouldn't drink it. I mean, if the tofu production process involvedthe use of animal meat that was later removed, I totally wouldn't eat it, youknow?

Isinglass,I was mortified to find out,

is made from the swim bladders of fish. TheWikipedia entry contains the sadly ironic note that “isinglass was originally made exclusively from sturgeon, especially Beluga sturgeon, until the 1795 invention by William Murdoch of a cheap substitute using cod.”God. Fish are so screwed.

I've got6 bottles of wine at home ready for the holidays, but there's no reason topanic until I find out which alcoholic drinks I need to give up. I found asite, Barnivore, that has a database of whichdrinks are vegan friendly. It's very useful. All the hard liquor I enjoy issafe. The few brands of beer I like are safe. One of the bottles of wine I haveat home is not. The other bottles are from local wineries, so I emailed them toask about the animal content of their wines. I haven’t heard back yet, but fingerscrossed. If they don’t respond I’ll be forced to accost them in person at themarket, and picket their stalls accordingly.

There arejust so many hidden animal products in stuff. My brother’s current favouritejoke is, when I’m over at his place, to ask if I like something, then say “thesecret ingredient is bacon!” For all I know, this may be true and I just don’tknow it. I can only take so much.

Also,would this be considered a whitewhine, or a first world problem?

Vast wasteland

2011-12-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

I was watching this little video clip of Santa flying around the world last year (well, it was a video of Santa flying around the world's landmarks, but presumably he stopped at some residences along the way). At the end, (around 1:16) he flies around what I'm pretty sure is the CN tower. In the background is not Lake Ontario, or the city of Toronto, but a vast, snow-covered expanse of nothing. Is that really how they think of Canada? One tall iconic building sitting in the middle of a flat, snowy wasteland? Or did they just run out of money for the animation and couldn't afford to give Toronto buildings?

SNOW

2011-12-23T07:28:00.001-04:00

Winter's here. And she brought snow. I say, we let her stay until she becomes tiresome.

“You can’t hit the carolers.” ~ Mom: She may be crazy, but sometimes she’s right.

2011-12-22T14:48:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I don’t know how old I was, it was Christmas Eve and my family was sitting athome after church. Chances are us kids were desperately begging to open just one present (for all her permissivetendencies, my mom was really strict about theno-presents-before-Christmas-morning rule), and to distract us mom suggested wewatch a movie. What movie, we asked. Why, a Christmas movie, of course. I thinkwe had a few Christmas-y things to choose from. In the end, we watched Die Hard. Mom’s argument being that a)it has the song Let It Snow in it,and b) it takes place on Christmas Eve. Now, we don’t watch Die Hardevery Christmas, sometimes we watch Gone withthe Wind, or White Christmas. Butit is, by our standards, a Christmas movie. This fact is usually looked uponoddly by some people who don’t regard it as such. All I have to say to them is:stop this unending war on Christmas!

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho."

This year we’ve been vindicated in our thinking by four separatesources that also consider Die Hard notjust a Christmas movie, but a Christmas action classic! My sources are:

1. TheCoast (independent Halifax paper) included DieHard as part of an alt-Christmas movie watching list.

2. TheAV Club (my favourite pop culture website) also listed Die Hard among other seasonal movies.

3. TheHMV downtown was selling Die Hardwith the more “traditional” Christmas movies (no picture, but Alej will serveas a pers. comm. on this one).

4. RottenTomatoes ranks it the 4^th best Christmas movie of all time (based onfavourable reviews)(!).

So there.John McClain is the reason for the season, folks! (It’s a good thing I don’tactually have a wide readership. I’d probably get a lot of angry emails).

In honour of the season, I watchedthe Die Hard quadrilogy (soon to be aquintology) over the weekend. The firsttwo Die Hards are Christmas movies,but the first is just so much better than the second. The second is so clichéd,it seems like it’s the action moviethat started all those tropes about the loose cannon cop (phrase “loose cannon”actually used in the movie) who tries to save lives despite the ignoranthigher-ups getting in his way all the time. (Actually, the proper trope term isCowboy Cop, and Die Hard only solidifiedthe cliché, it didn’t start it).

Fun fact, Die Hard is based on a book. One of the few books I couldn’t findon ABE Books. That must mean its so good that no one in the world wants to selltheir copy of it! I found it used on Amazon, but it must be a collector’s itembecause they were asking $25-60 for it. If you ever come across Nothing Last Forever by Roderick Thorp,pick it up for me.

2011-12-22T08:59:00.002-04:00

Sir Sandford Fleming didn't invent standardised time zones just so you can flout them all willy-nilly Oz!

Shamelessly Good Timing

2011-12-18T07:26:00.000-04:00

My Scotiabank branch has a sign in the window, an official sign by the looks of it (that is, not hand written or just done up in powerpoint) that says:

"Did you recentlyreceive severance pay from the federal government?"

It's politely worded and all, but it might as well say "Did you loose your job, you big loser? Looks like your public sector job wasn't so great after all. Serves you right for taking 40-minute coffee breaks every day. Jerk." I mean, this sign was up before some federal departments even handed out notices to their employees. I assume it was done to take advantage of the vivisection of Environment Canada, since this particular branch is mere blocks away from the Dartmouth EC office where people were cut in the fall. But they left the sign up to catch all the other people to be affected.

I know this sounds insane, but...

2011-12-17T10:46:00.000-04:00

I swear, Elton John was standing outside my apartment building this morning when I got back from the gym. Really, this guy looked just like him. He was just standing there with a cab driver, waiting for someone, I guess.

More Science That Reinforces Beliefs I’ve Always Held: Sundays are evil, and being veggie is good for you.

2011-12-16T16:30:00.000-04:00

A quote from an article on how to critically assessso-called scientific findings (the link on the news site was right next to theheadline: “Your Office Chair Will Kill You”):

“a closer look at the data reveals that eating more red meatalso seemingly raises your risk of accidental death from car crashes and guns.”

Hey, now. If that’s what the data says. Who am I to waste time critically assessing it when it already tells me what I want to hear? I believe it. Lookslike I’m going to be living car-crash and bullet-wound free until I die from mouth cancer caused by my toothpaste (assuming my office chair doesn't get me first).

Also related, but less science-y (as if that's possible) is this article about Sunday Insomnia, which I totally have. It’s theinability to sleep on Sunday nights. They claim it’s due to the stress of theupcoming work week, but I find mine is so habitual that I even get it onvacation and when I don’t have to work on Mondays.

Science That Reinforces Beliefs I’ve Always Held: kids are evil, and swearing is good for you.

2011-12-15T04:30:00.000-04:00

I’m so in love with science that demonstrates things I’vealways thought were true but that hadnever been demonstrated. The first is from an article entitled “Kids areVindictive” (I can’t remember if I read it on CBC or Globe andMail, and now I can’t find it). Initially, not having read the article, I wasall “what else is new?” Having read the article, I know that the headline wasway off, and I don’t think the children’s behaviour could be described asvindictive. It’s more that they’re able to recognize bad and good behaviours atvery young ages (8-21 months). In my books, this is a really good argument thata lot of our morals are innate and not taught to us by religion. Quirks and Quarks is going to (has already) cover(ed) the study, I believe.

Second is a study that suggests that swearing actually helpsyou deal with pain and releases adrenaline. Fuck yeah, swearing is good for you. Whohasn’t been severely stressed out and felt better after belting out some swear words?

In a related article about swearing, someone made a goodpoint about swear words: “banning words is an arbitrary practice, he says, since whattruly offends people aren’t the words themselves, but the thoughts behind them.And thoughts can’t be banned.” For me swearing is okay because there’s nomalicious intent. Like when I call my best friend Bitch, it’s not because she’ssome heinous woman, it’s a term of endearment because there’s love and 23 yearsof friendship behind it. However, there are some words I’ll never becomfortable with, no matter how much people try to “own” them or whatever. Ithink some words have such a history of bad thoughts behind them, there’s noredeeming them.

Love and Joy and Waffles Come To You

2011-12-10T15:16:00.001-04:00

It's undeniably Christmas. The Christmas spirit takes a little work to generate in Halifax. I know I knock Edmonton a lot, but it's not hard to feel Christmasy in that city, when it's blanketed with snow and all the twinkly lights are reflected in the drifts at night. In Halifax, all the lights are ripped down by windstorms and it's pointless snuggling in front of the fire with mulled wine when it's 12 degress and raining outside. My point being, I tend to throw myself into Christmas-themed things this time of year.

This year, I started with the Christmas Parade. The following weekend, Other Auntie and I went to the annual Christmas craft fair at Dalplex. Dalplex is Dalhousie's gym facility. The last time I was inside was 2005, and I was writing an exam. I can't remember which exam. I can't even remember what I took my last term at Dal. Anyway, I was worried I'd suffer location-induced exam stress just from being there, but that didn't happen. After the fair, we met the kids and their parents for the Citadel's Victorian Christmas. I'd never done the Victorian Christmas, and while it's geared more towards kids, I want to go back again next year. I like historical re-creations, especially ones that involve cider and bayonets. Also, the Citadel is a great location, and offers great views of the city.

Last weekend was the Dartmouth Tree Lighting. I went with Other Auntie. It was insane. It was high-child-density chaos. Kids everywhere. I mean, yeah, of course there's going to be kids there, but god. So many children. I literally almost stepped on one kid's face as he was throwing himself around on the ground. The tree lighting was a bit of a let down. Any one-second event with a two-hour lead up is bound to be anticlimactic. The fireworks afterwards, however, were kick-ass. Even the most jaded, child-hating, anti-Christmas person in the audience would have to admit, they were surprisingly good.

I don't know if everyone else is in the Christmas spirit yet, so to help you along I'll first recommend the genius Christmas episode of Community that aired this week (Community freaking rocks. If you're looking for a Christmas present for yourself, get the first two seasons on DVD). Secondly, I'll point you to the videos below which come from my most favourite Christmas Special ever. Seriously, my little heart broke when they stopped airing this on TV.

Google is way off

2011-12-07T06:30:00.000-04:00

This morning, I'd just finished writing an email to Mika about her new baby, when I saw the ad at the top of my Gmail was about baby formula. I tend to find Gmail ads entertaining because mine are usually about U2 tickets or books. Today, for no real reason, I decided to click on the "Why this ad?" link that explains that Google reads your emails to pick out keywords and then tries to sell you stuff. I accept this. I then clicked further to look at their web ads application, which is based on cookies in your browser. They show ads based on the kinds of sites you visit, and on your demographic. The demographic you're assigned in is based on the sites you visit. Upon first glance, I thought: whoa, Google is way off:

Dude, I browse the internet like a 35-44 year old! I need to visit some Justin Bieber sites to get that number down. Then I looked closer, and I thought, holy fuck, Google is way off:

I browse the internet like a 35-44 year old man. I'm not even a middle-aged woman, I'm some middle-aged guy. The hell? I read a lot of news sites, but, like, the Entertainment and Life sections, not Sports and Cars. I check Hark a Vagrant! compulsively, is that a 35-44 year old guy thing? That's the demographic of my oldest brother, and I'm fairly certain we aren't browsing the same things.

I thought Google was supposed to be smart? Out of curiosity, all my fellow Gmail users should check their assigned demographics and see if Google is usually just way off, or if I really am turning into my brother.

April is so far away but that's how long we're going to have to wait to see that Joss Whedon horror film that even I forgot about

2011-12-05T19:20:00.001-04:00

It was made a while ago and something happened with money or whatever. Who cares. It's on the way and it's got Topher and Whiskey from Dollhouse, Tucker's brother from Buffy, and what looks like The Initiative's bigger, more evil twin. It's gonna be all sorts of salty Whedon goodness. If any of those reference made sense to you, you should see it.Even if they didn't, you should see it. I doubt those references will actually be in the movie.

Black Friday

2011-11-25T06:30:00.000-04:00

Whatever you do: DO NOT FALL DOWN.

Good morning, Winter.

2011-11-24T06:30:00.000-04:00

Ididn’t think you’d be sticking around. I mean, you arrived early and we weren’treally ready for you. It seems rude to stick around, doesn’t it? I think itwould be better for all concerned if you went away and came back at Christmas.

Canada Reads Non-fiction (or so she claims at dinner parties)

2011-11-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

I didn’t participate much in CR last year, I think the bookselection didn’t interest me that much. This year they’re doing all non-fic (i.e., true stories),which I think will really turn some people off, but which I also think is agreat idea. They did the thing where they give people time to vote from 40books and narrow that down to 10 and then they let the judges pick fromthose 10. I’ve already forgotten mostly what I voted for, but one of them wasWayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion,which didn’t make the Top 10. In fact, only one book I voted for made it in theTop 10, which tells you something about what a bad Canadian I am.

The Top 5 (and their defenders) are:

The Game by Ken Dryden (Alan Thicke)

On a Cold Road by Dave Bidini (Stacey McKenzie)

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat (Arlene Dickinson)

Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre (Shad)

The Tiger by John Vaillant (Anne-France Goldwater)

The Top 5 I predicted after days of careful thought were: Cockeyed by Ryan Knighton, The Game, Prisoner of Tehran, The Tiger, and Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire. 3 out of 5, I'm not such a bad Canadian after all. The others that didn't make the cut: The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown, Louis Riel by Chester Brown, and Paris 1919 byMargaret MacMillan.

The weather outside is frightful

2011-11-23T15:41:00.001-04:00

So they sent us home early. But since I work 7:30-3:30, I only got to leave 30 minutes early, but whatever. Halifax has snow fever!

This calls for hot chocolate!

Hermano-ly advice

2011-11-22T16:30:00.000-04:00

"SoI suppose you heard Community wasn't picked up for the next slate ofprograms? Stay calm and put the knife down. The new Arrested Development shows will be here before you know it."

I know he means well, but "before I know it" is over a year away.

The world around me goes unnoticed

2011-11-21T16:00:00.000-04:00

I can be unobservant. This probably isn’t something any ofyou are going to debate, even half-heartedly. I like to think that I’m too busythinking important thoughts to notice the details of the world around me. Inreality, I do live in my head, but my thoughts aren’t all that lofty orimportant. This trait of mine leads to awkward conversations with people thatfollow along the lines of:

Me: [pointing to a picture on the wall] I really like thatpicture, is it new?

Sister-in-Law: No.

Me: Has it been there a while?

SiL: Yes

Me: Was it there three years ago when I lived here for 9months?

SiL: Yes.

To date, the biggest thing I didn’t notice was a window atwork. One day I was walking through this mostly glass walkway and there was oneparticular window that I didn’t remember ever seeing before. Obviously, it hadbeen there the whole 1.5 years I’d been taking that walkway on a daily basis – I just never noticed.

Well, I broke my record with an even bigger thing I’d nevernoticed before. The other day I noticed a school for the first time. It’sclearly visible from a highway I take at least twice a week, near an exit Itake occasionally. An entire school that somehow escaped my notice. At this rate, in about 10 years I’ll be havingconversations like this:

Me: [pointing] What’s that?

Other person: (alarmed stare)

Me: Is that new?

OP: No.

Me: What is it?

OP: It’s a door. It’s your front door.

Me: Has it always been there?

Overheard at the grocery store

2011-11-20T15:06:00.001-04:00

Mom: What do you want?
Kid: Candy.
Mom: No more candy. You have enough candy. Do you want some Dunkaroos?

The Christmas season has begun, whether you like it or not.

2011-11-20T11:10:00.001-04:00

Last night was the Halifax Christmas parade. It's officially called the "Parade of Lights" but there's really no attempt made to celebrate any holiday other than Christmas. It takes place at night, so all the floats are lit up and it's all pretty. This was the first time I've watched it with my niece and nephew. They really enjoyed it. Me and their Other Auntie spent most of the parade making snarky remarks (which my niece didn't like) but we enjoyed it too. On a completely different level than the children, mind you.

Least Christmasy Entry

A contingent of Halifax comic geeks with a giant "Nerd Pride" sign and dressed up like various Star Wars characters ("Here come the holiday Jedi warriors"~Other Auntie). They were advertising Hal Con, our very own geek convention (this year the big name attendee was Nicholas Brendan(!)). But putting a Santa hat on Boba Fett and decorating the sand people's weapons with Christmas lights doesn't make it Christmasy.

Least Christmasy Entry Runner-Up
A fitness studio had a small float featuring North pole dancing and people doing crunches. Seeing that float made me feel so lazy. The were in a parade and working on their core, and I was just standing there.

Most Flagrant By-law Flouting
The entry for Peggy's Cove Express (a whale watching operation) was one of those comically little trucks with a giant lobster trap and a Christmas tree on the back. A giant mastiff had his head hanging out of the cab window, and the driver was talking on his cell phone. In front of an audience of thousands ("Maybe he thinks nobody is watching" ~ my brother).

Oddest Meta Statement
The float for Crime Stoppers was a bunch of people in inmate black and white striped outfits, in a fake jail. ("Is that the float for Dartmouth Penn?" "It's....festive."). But the weird thing was that all the inmates were wearing placards that said "Not Guilty" or "I'm innocent." ("Nothing says Merry Christmas like innocent people wrongly imprisoned"). But to me, it seemed like Crime Stoppers was making some kind of comment about how useful the tips they get are, or maybe it was an even broader statement about our justice system. It made me think too much, anyway, and I don't go to the parade to think.

Worst mascots
1. Mr. MacPass
It's just a giant macpass, wearing a hat, with shaky eyebrows and a huge smile. Why is he so happy? Why does he have his name written on him?

2. Tim Horton's
The mascot was Tim's cup with waving arms, but no face.

3. Susie Shortbread
A giant cupcake with creepy googly eyes, a massive smiling mouth, and eye lashes. ("Those eyes creep me out"~Other Auntie. "It has eye lashes!"~Me. "Stop talking about the cupcake. I'll tell her what you said"~Niece).

4. Sonar the Navy's mascot black lab
Because when I think of the Navy I think of a black lab. I don't think dogs are even allowed on the ships.

Two awesome videos you've probably already seen but I'm generally behind on internet fads, so they're new to me.

2011-11-17T19:59:00.001-04:00

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.
AND

Having a pet shark never ends well

2011-11-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

I had a disturbing shark dream over the weekend. It tookplace in my parents’ front yard. I had hatched a shark for a pet, I guess. Inthe dream I called it a shark, but it had no fins and looked like a giantplanarian, but with gills and sharp, sharp teeth. It was able to live outsideof water, just in the grass of the front yard. For whatever reason, it wasdecided that I needed to kill it. All I had was a pair of scissors. I don’tknow if I was troubled in the dream by having to kill it, or if my consciousself is so bothered by the idea of having to kill an animal that it’s alteringmy memory of the dream. But I went about the task of killing it. The shark, I think,was pretty docile, up until I stabbed it with the scissors; it didn’t likethat, and escaped me to hide under the tree in the front yard. After that Ichanged my tact. I took off my shoes and socks and walked barefoot on thegrass, luring it to me with the promise of a human-flesh meal, I guess. It took the bait, sinking its sharp littleteeth into my foot. It hurt, and I suppose the pain gave me the motivation Ineeded to kill it. I used the scissors to cut at its mouth to get it to let goof my foot, then after that it was lots of stabbing and slicing. I don’tremember there begin any gore or blood, but I think at the time I was aware ofthe creature’s panic. After it was dead, its corpse was about half the size itwas when it was alive. The dream felt very violent and I was pretty disturbedby it the following morning. Luckily, I’m rapidly forgetting it, so I won’thave to live with that feeling much longer. I won’t be growing any pet sharksin my parents’ front yard anytime soon, though.

I’m never eating cooked food again. Or, at least, not until 6:30pm tonight.

2011-11-14T16:00:00.000-04:00

ButI did read something at lunch that totally grossed me out and made me glad thatmy lunch was a salad and not a stir-fry. It was a story about how cooked foodhas more energy than raw food, and one of the reasons is that cooking breaksstuff down and makes it more accessible to our digestive system. So far, sogood; nothing in there to make me regret reading it. Then comes a comment fromone of the researchers behind the study, who described cooking in this way:"We can think of it as externalizing part of the digestive process.” Towhich I reply, “Ew.” And immediately think of that villain on X-Files who ate women by covering theirbodies in digestive juices to make them easier to ingest. Call me oldfashioned, but I want my digestion to take place in my stomach, the wayEvolution intended.

Thearticle had a shocking number of comments. I thought the insane people who makeinsane comments on CBC.ca would be too busywriting inappropriate and/or offensive comments on the stories about childmurders to bother commenting on a science story. I was wrong. I didn’t readmany of them (not good for my health), but there was one (I assume) vegetarianwho was endearingly excited about some new doc about how meat is bad for youand the environment. The [sic]-worthybit that really grabbed me was how s/he promises: “This films explains all thesciences of it!” They also claimed thatthe meat industry will never allow it to air on TV. I don’t know how true thatis, given how big “TV” is nowadays and the fact that most cable channels willair pretty much anything. But anyway….what was my point?

Some advice

2011-11-12T08:03:00.001-04:00

Cottage cheese and blueberries isn't what you want to be eating while watching a zombie stomach content analysis scene on TV.

Hark!

2011-11-11T13:48:00.001-04:00

Eat your heart out, Oz.

Did you see this piece on CTV? It shows her drawing a Strong Female Character. You can see pics of the signing here, and play Spot Ellie with this video.

If this post makes no sense to you, go to this website. Go! Go now!

Super Bon Bon

2011-11-10T16:00:00.000-04:00

I want to say that the best scene in this week's Castle was when the guys were strutting around in full Elvis to Soul Coughing's Super Bon Bon (video will soon be disabled, I'm sure):

Why was that the best scene? Because Soul Coughing! I love them and I so rarely, perhaps never, hear them on TV or movie soundtracks. I may have heard Circles once, but that's about it (as an aside, the former SC front man, Mike Doughty, has songs all over TV, but they're more mass-market friendly while still being really good).

Anyway, in my search for the above Castle clip, I came across this video that someone made of Fred Astaire dancing to Soul Coughing’s 4 Out Of 5.It's cool, and it begs the question, who has this much free time? And is thislike the Hitler meme where Hitlerover-reacts to different situations? (My favourite will always be the Third Reviewer.It’s funny because it’s true y’all). Are there dozens of videos of Fred dancingto various off beat, seemingly incongruous songs?

This video also begs the question, is the quality of the video reallypoor, or is Fred Astaire in black face? Because that’s…just bad. And people should know that by now.

Things you don’t expect to happen in your 30s: lattes are the new Pepsi

2011-11-06T08:17:00.001-04:00

Dude, this is an actual thing? So wrong.

I’ve given up pop. Yes, again. I do thisevery so often, but I always go back to it. I just love the stuff, but I’mslowly learning to accept how bad it really is for my health. I would usuallydrink diet, which is calorie-free and nutritionally void, but the growingresearch that suggests aspartame induces the same physiological response thatsugar does (insulin production, fat storage) makes sense to me. Also, all thatcancer in the lab rats is disconcerting. Not that I’d ever drink enough toreach those levels, but still. And yes, I myself have used the argument that “everything gives you cancer” which isprobably true, but if I eliminate one source then maybe I’ll get less cancer?Whatever, I’m giving up pop and you can’t stop me.

I’m going on six weeks and I don’t miss it. I thinkthis is in part because I gave it up at the same time that I embarked on acaffeine-free experiment. For 5 weeks (arbitrarily picked) I didn’t have anycoffee, tea, or pop. I find that I missed the coffee and tea way more than Imissed the pop. I think lattes are my new Pepsi. I attempted this becausesomeone I know was raving about how they stopped drinking coffee and they feltso awesome because of it. I felt no different after 5 weeks. I think they werea heavy coffee drinker beforehand. I’m more of a 5-cups-a-week person asopposed to a 5-cups-a-day person. I don’t think my average daily caffeineintake affects me enough for me to notice a difference in its absence. Longstory short, I’m back on coffee and tea. I’m still off the pop, though.

My apologies to anyone who read this post thinking it might be interesting.

Happy Hallowe’en (days ago, I know, but I’m having internet problems).

2011-11-05T15:23:00.000-03:00

My mom is a zombiepurist. She doesn’t like movies where zombies are played for comedy (e.g., Zombieland). In her words, “if you can’ttake zombies seriously, don’t make a zombie movie.” In a recent email shesaid:

“I had this discussion with [name ofa girl I worked with in high school redacted] at Council while we were waitingfor it to start. She was talking about TheWalking Dead and [the zombies’] capacity for strategizing andproblem-solving. She said that all species evolve, and perhaps that includeszombies. HOWEVER, there's no way they can move fast! As the numbnuts sheriff inNight of the Living Dead explained,"They're dead, they're all messed up."”

I think I’ll get her a copy of WWZ for Christmas.

She’s also a big fan of zombie walks.
Isupposed because of the reverential way they treat zombies. Alas, there is nozombie walk in her community. There is, however, a group that participates inThrill The World, which attempts to gets lots of people all over the worlddoing the Thriller dance at the same time. They’re attempting to break a worldrecord, or break their own record, or something. It’s been going on for acouple of years, and I only heard about it this year through mom. Halifaxis supposed to have one, according to the official site (which is absurdly hardto navigate and you have to go through about 3 pages and two sites to get alist of participating cities), but I never heard or saw anything about itlocally. When I emailed the Halifaxcontact I didn’t get a reply. Therefore, I was unable to participate or, morelikely, go and watch.

Mom, in a surprising and inawesome move, didmore than just go and watch. She and her best friend got all zombified and didthe Thriller dance. In public. With people watching. I have no memories of my mom ever wearing a costume. She also talkedto the coordinators of the local event and said they should combine it with azombie walk next year.

Me, Hallowe'en 2042.

I think getting a zombie walk in Northumberland Countyhas become my mom’s new crusade. She said if they do get a walk next year,she’ll make and carry a copy of my favourite zombie protest sign:

What do we want?

BRAINS.

When do we wantit?

BRAINS.

Sadly, while I have no video of mom andher friend specifically (Kimm-my really let me down there), there is video ofthe event.

2011-11-03T12:30:00.000-03:00

The local paper here has this word map thing on their webpage. It's made up from the key words they assign to their articles. I assume it covers many, many months. Why else would there be information on Russell Williams?

What I find most interesting is that enough of the articles misspell "millitary" [sic] as a reference term that it appears in the figure. If only there were someone whose job it was to check these things for spelling errors.

Also, the size and boldness of MURDER is troubling.

MURDER: happening as we speak.

I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating.

2011-11-02T12:00:00.000-03:00

Dear Bell Aliant,

A 10-hour time window is not an "appointment." It's house arrest.

Sincerely,
Ellie

Today in numbers too big to comprehend: 7 Billion

2011-10-30T01:00:00.000-03:00

So, we’re 7 billionstrong now. That number is so big, but it means nothing to me. Maybe if I livedin one of the dense countries, but even in the city I live in there are timeswhen I can go out and not encounter another person (although not today, I swear every freakin' Haligonian was at Sobeys). Still, when I think of 7billion, all I can picture is humanity as this black cloud engulfing the earth.

Oz sent me a link tothis BBC page that puts your stats into a global perspective. I was the 4,510,757,622nd person born on Earth

Wow, BBC infographic, you know me so well.But your use of commas leaves something to be desired.

Which is kind of cool.

This CBC article, however,is somehow less cool. I know it’s supposed to read like a bunch of nifty factsabout our population size, but to me it reads more like the beginning of aconversation about how long we can possibly last on this planet, given howthings seem to be spiraling out of control.

Things I didn't know/remember about Gremlins

2011-10-29T19:23:00.000-03:00

I saw Gremlins last night for what might be the first time. I have vague memories of Gremlins-related things, but I don't know if that's from seeing the movie or just from seeing pieces of it over the course of my life. If I did see it, I was (typically, for my family) way too young because I didn't remember anything. It holds up surprisingly well. It's not scary, but it is still entertaining. I was surprised by how much time they devoted to the creatures. The effects weren't up to today's standards - the movement of the creatures were a little stilted, but it was still fun to watch.

1. Gremlins was made in 1984. 1984! I knew it was from the 80s, but I just assumed it was more late-80s. It's too old for me to have seen when it first came out, but it doesn't feel like it should be that old.

2. Gremlins is a Christmas movie. It takes place over the holidays. I had no idea. I'll have to add it to my Christmas Eve movie list. Instead of going to church, I'll watch it along with What Would Jesus Buy and Die Hard.

3. Gizmo is still way cuter than s/he has any right to be. Just really damn adorable. There were audible "awe"s coming from the audience at many points in the movie.

4. The song over the end credits is very catchy. If I had a cell phone this would be my ring tone.

Poltroonish beavers are just too damn unimaginative for Canada.

2011-10-28T16:30:00.000-03:00

So ignoble.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/beavers-cant-cut-it-as-national-emblem-but-polar-bears-can-senator-says/article2216290/

Well, fuck.I hate this side of politics. Isn’t there anything more important we could bethinking about? Me, I’m far more concerned by the idea of us getting nuclearsubs than I am about an official animal that doesn’t even appear on our coat ofarms. That being said, this totally sounds like something a 10-year-old wouldpropose if she won a Senator for a Day contest. Yes, polar bears would win in a Cute Off, but they aren't the right choice for us.

The beaverhas a strong historical significance. It was a driving force in the settlingand expansion of this country. Polar bears, while gleefully hunted I’m sure,did not. I’d suggest cod (to collective sighs and eye rolls, and a chorus of “weknow, Ellie. You like cod, geeze”) as an alternative emblem because it played amassive role in the initial settling of North America’s east coast. Although, whether weshould be celebrating any animal that made it easier/gave us an excuse toinvade a foreign land and claim it for our own is a whole otherdiscussion.

Resourceful little scamp, isn't he?

The pressrelease, which in the future will be reprinted in the dictionary under “anthropomorphic”said:

“The polar bear, with its strength,courage, resourcefulness, and dignity is perfect for the part [of nationalanimal icon]…. The senator said the polar bear is more noble and rugged.”

Let’s deconstruct this impressive list of polar bearqualities, shall we?

Strength

The strength is genetic, it’s not like polar bears are reallydedicated gym go-ers. Also, they have brute strength which isn’t typicallyregarded as a “Canadian” quality. Unless they mean moral strength or strengthof character, then they're still wrong (see Dignity and Noble below).

Courage

Do animals have courage? I mean, when, say, an elk is afraidof a wolf, it doesn’t stop running and face the wolf to defend itself, youknow? So how do polar bears demonstrate courage? By calmly mauling humans? Theyaren’t afraid of our giant guns? Courage in the face of extinction? “Look howthe polar bear goes on in the face of impending death: making babies and tryingto hunt, as if it thinks it stands a chance. What courage! Let’s capture thatone for the zoo.”

Resourcefulness

In what sense? In the way that polar bears utilize alternativefood sources by going into human settlements to forage in dumpsters because they areincreasingly unable to hunt like they evolved to?

Noble, Dignity

The hell? I give you the dictionary.com definition ofdignity:

1. bearing,conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect or appreciation of the formalityor gravity of an occasion or situation.

2. nobilityor elevation of character; worthiness: dignity of sentiments.

3. elevatedrank, office, station, etc.

4. relativestanding; rank.

5. a signor token of respect: an impertinent question unworthy of the dignity of ananswer.

Come on!Polar bears don’t have comportment! They don’t have self respect, and theywouldn’t know the right way to receive the Queen unless you spent monthstraining them.

Rugged

Does thatmean that beavers are refined? They’re just too damn posh to be our nationalicon anymore?

Let’s alsoaddress the irony of a senator in love with an animal doomed by myriad bad nationaland international governmental policies. If I thought for one second makingpolar bears our animal would help them at all, I’d probably be behind it. Thetruth is, though, that polar bears (and polar bear babies) are about ascharismatic as Canadian megafauna gets, so if that won’t help them, nothingwill. When the last polar bear dies in the Calgary Zoo (the zoo whereanimals go to die), maybe then we can change our animal to the polar bear as areminder of how horribly we failed them.

Kiefer Sutherland, animal ethics, killer sweaters, and dirty pillows: something for everyone!

2011-10-25T18:15:00.001-03:00

A theater downtown hasbeen showing older/classic horror movies every weekend for the past few weeks.Being the pop culture junkies that we are, Alej and I have been going to all ofthem. The first was Lost Boys, the1987 vampire movie. I had thought it was based on a Stephen King story, but I thinkI was confusing it with Salem’s Lot. I had never seen either. I don’t know why Inever watched Lost Boys, we had it onVHS when I was growing up, but I was probably too busy watching The Monster Squad to care about KieferSutherland as a very giggly vampire. I don’t know if that was intended to be acharacter trait of these vampires, but they never stop laughing. Those are somehappy vampires. It was an okay movie. It had some laughable special effects andlots of cheesy action. It was also apparently the start of the Corey craze thatswept the nation back when I was still too young to care.

The second movie wasthe original 1970s The Omen. Anotherone I hadn’t seen. I thought The Omenwas pretty good – there was one death in particular that was shocking in thatit was so well executed, I didn’t expect that level of quality from a moviethat old. Overall though, I don’t think Alej liked it. It moved too slowly forher. I agree, there was a very long, slow build - especially by today’sstandards. There was also a very odd buddy-road-trip kind of thing shoved inthe last third of the movie.

Before they play the movies, one of the theatreemployees warms up the crowd by telling us facts about the movie. There’s ascene in The Omen where a goldfishbowl breaks and the fish spill out. They did not, to my relief, use realgoldfish in the filming of those scenes. However, in another scene, to get somebaboons to attack a car, they locked a baby baboon in the car to try and incite the baboons. When thatdidn’t work, they locked in the alpha male. They didn’t want to kill any fish,but psychological manipulation of primates was okay with them. I know I have adocumented history of selective animal cruelty, but if you make the effort forthe fish, you should also make an effort for the baboons. That’s all I’msaying.

The third movie was Carrie, one of my mother’s favourites. It,along with anything Romero, was on the TV a lot while I was growing up. My momis a big horror/suspense fan. One of my mom’s favourite activities is to watchhorror movies while she knits (Which, when you think about it, could be ahorror movie in its own right. A little old lady knits while she watches horrormovies and all the bad stuff she sees while she’s knitting gets woven into thesweaters she makes for her grandkids, and when they wear them people start todie. We’ll call it Death Sweater.That’s the perfect name, because it’s easy to make sequel titles: Death Sweaters, Death Sweater: theUnravelling, Death Sweater: Dyed in Blood, etc. Although, in the UK we’ll have to change the title to Death Jumper which doesn’t work so well…).

Anyway, Mom can watchthe same movies over and over and doesn’t get tired of them. And she did thiswhen we were kids too. She was always trying to get us to watch them with her:“Leslie you’ve got to see this, it’s so good. This is the movie that turned meoff ketchup forever, even though they only use corn syrup for all the blood!”and I was just like, “Mom, I’m 7. I want to watch Parent Trap.” My landlocked Ontarian brother blames his fear ofsharks on mom letting him watch Jawswhen he was too young for it. Think what you may about my mom’s parentingphilosophy and lack of censorship; she’s the model of sanity relative toCarrie’s mother.

Actually what struckme most about Carrie were a) the gym uniforms (sweet mother of Jesus, thosethings were awful) and b) the way the gym teacher was constantly slapping,swearing at, and throwing around her students. It goes without saying that youcouldn’t do that today, but back then the students were more upset over havingto exercise than they were watching their teacher slap a student. Fun factabout that movie: Sissy Spacek was willing to use real pig’s blood in thefamous climax. But they didn’t. I suppose someone other than Spacek didn’t seethe need to kill lots and lots of pigs just to make a movie.

Up next: Gremlins!!

2011-10-25T17:14:00.001-03:00

I went for a walk alongLake Banook and through Sullivan Pond Park on Sunday and something was off. I was about 45 minutes into my walkwhen I started to think that something was weird. It was a typical Halifax Fallday: thick clouds with patches of bright sunshine, too cold for just a t-shirtbut too warm for a hoodie over your t-shirt. People were out jogging, biking,walking; kids were running wild in the park, there was a gaggle of old people(a murder of retirees?) racing their little motorised boats very slowly throughthe Pond. Everything was normal, and I didn’t realize what was missing until Iheard it: a helicopter. It’s just not a proper Halifax day until you see or hear a Sea King. They flyby my building at work daily, and Saturday when I was walking to the library Isaw three. To me, they play as important a role in the classic Halifax skyline as the casino or those twin officetowers. I wonder if the new helicopters will fundamentally change the feel ofthe city?

I don't have any pics of sea kings over the city, but I have one of me in one, flying over my old neighbourhood. Close enough.

Change is still bad

2011-10-25T17:04:00.001-03:00

I got no feedback onthe temporary re-design of my site. Maybe y’all were too busy weeping andwriting good-bye cards while staring longingly at screencaps of the old design.Either way, I didn’t like it - itfelt like you had to work too hard to read the posts. They should just be therewhen you open the page, right? So, I’m back to something more traditional(read: boring). Sadly, I can’t seem to get it back to exactly how it wasbefore, so I’ll be playing with the templates some more. Brace yourself for somemore change, but far less change than before.

Dear mom. I saw Carrie last night. I just wanted to thank you for not being a super-religious whack job. Love, Ellie

2011-10-22T10:03:00.000-03:00

The Doctor is the Monster

2011-10-16T11:30:00.003-03:00

A few weeks ago I went to see Frankenstein at the Neptune Theatre. I read the book years ago and didn't like it, but I wanted to see the play version mostly out of curiosity. I really loved how it was staged. I wasn't too enamoured with Victor's portrayal, and the monster wasn't as gruesome as I would have liked, but overall it was pretty good. I actually don't remember the book that well, but I think the play did change a few things, probably because there's only so much you can do with the play format.

Anyway, after seeing the play I dug out my old review of Frankenstein I wrote in 2003 and thought I'd toss it up for all to see. I sound really angry. I think maybe I took the book too seriously. (Also: spoilers). (And bad language).

You know, I'm only halfway through this, but I think that I can write a review that will rival The Last Canadian in length and bitchiness. Translation: this book is not one that I find especially enjoyable.

Victor Frankenstein is the whiniest little bastard ever. Oh, woe is he! What a child. He works for years - years! - to give life to dead flesh, then gets all freaked out when it works. He sends his monster away because the sight of it pains him. I can't begin to express the irresponsibility of this, not to mention sheer lack of compassion or humanity. He just casts this monster out, and then gets all pissed off when the monster kills his little brother. Hello? What the fuck did you expect, Victor? That the monster would run off into the woods and quietly rot away? Did you think he would cease to exist once you severed yourself from him? Living things don't work that way, once they're alive they just keep on livin'.I just can't get over this. If I dedicated years of my life to that sort of project, then saw the Monster's arm move for the first time, I'd be all, "Dude, I'm God." I would have liked Victor a whole hell of a lot more if he did have a God complex. As he is, he is the most spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed, irresponsible child since Linton Heathcliff (about whom I wrote: "He whines over everything, complains about everything, and is no more a man than I."). Victor is just like Linton, completely girlie in every bad sense of the word.

Shall I go on? After making the Monster (I hate to call him that, but he has no name, unless I give him one...Mr. Monstér. It's french) he is bedridden for months. Bedridden! He’s, like, 24. Again, if this were me, I'd be in Geneva picking up my Nobel money. After Mr. Monstér kills little brother, Victor is mad as hell at him. He's also overcome with guilt which he goes on and on about. And on. Oh, and then he talks about his guilt. It's all about Victor. As guilt ridden as he is, I don't get the sense that he thinks that casting out his creation was wrong, just the actual creation. See? It was his fault that he created the thing, but everything after that instant is the fault of Mr. Monstér, not Victor. I guess the nurture over nature debate wasn't one Vic paid much attention to.So, after Mr. Monstér tracts him down and narrates his sad tale (a few chapters I didn't mind too much, except that Mr. Monstér seems to have Daddy's penchant for self-pity) Vic agrees to build him a bride. Then, what does Vic do? Vic goes on vacation. Again, if my creation demanded a mate and threatened the life of my family, I don't think I'd run off to the Hamptons for a few months before starting work. There is some justice, however: poor little Vic is unable to enjoy his trip. 
I was formed for peaceful happiness...[Mr. Monstér] might remain in Switzerland and wreak his vengeance on my relatives. This idea pursued me and tormented me at every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace.Oh, I'm sorry Victor. Is the hideous creature you made while toying with the laws of nature wrecking your repose? Is the monster that you created and damned to an existence of exile and hatred bothering you? I bet your life is awful hard, eh? Poor, poor Victor. I'm sorry that your own thoughtlessness has come back to ruin your life of ease and fortune. How will you go on? All I want in life is for Victor to take responsibility for his actions. I want him to say, “This all could have worked out if I had a) never made this thing or b)taken care of it and treated it like a living being and not a monster to be shunned.” But, I doubt Victor will ever really suffer the consequences of his actions.Or maybe he will, I haven’t finished the book yet.

2011-10-16T10:42:00.001-03:00

There was a resurgence of Summer over Thanksgiving. Summer came back and gave us sun and heat for three glorious days. It was remarkable, walking around in sandals and capris on Thanksgiving weekend. Of course, Autumn eventually noticed and dragged Summer kicking and screaming back to it’s watery grave.

Last Friday, however, was another matter entirely. It was so freakin' cold. Alej and I went out to Digby to do a few hikes. Both walks were shorter than we expected. The first was mostly along a beach. The second was a lovely walk through the woods.

Five-year-olds agree: change is bad.

2011-10-16T10:31:00.003-03:00

But it's also inevitable. I'm trying out a new blog format. You can change the view by clicking on the options at the top of the blog (Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, etc.). You can also organise by Date and Label. Utilize the comments option and let me know how much you hate it.

Speaking of resistance to change, I think mine is genetic. My SiL told me a story about my niece recently. They replaced their dining room set and were selling the old stuff on kijiji. My 5-year-old niece freaked out when she found out that one particular chair was going to be sold. She cried, and cried, and hugged the chair, and wrote it a good-bye card.

Urban Living

2011-10-15T12:06:00.000-03:00

For those of you who are always asking me about Dartmouth housing prices (Oz) I'm going to direct you to two recent episodes of the HGTV show Urban Suburban, which is a very similar show to Property Virgins, except the home buyers are presented with three urban and three suburban homes and have to choose. Two recent episodes featured Dartmouth as the urban option. I take umbrage at their definitions of "urban" and "suburban" but whatever - you can see my neighbourhood on TV! And, also, my friends A & T's neighbourhood (the one referred to as cookie-cutter).

2011-10-04T20:59:00.000-03:00

Psychic Ellie, FTW!

2011-09-29T20:47:00.000-03:00

Earlier today I was thinking about how long it's been since there was a fire alarm at work. They used to occur with maddening regularity, but I don't think there's been one all summer. Then, this afternoon, the fire alarm went off! Freaky.

2011-09-26T07:29:00.001-03:00

The first song I heard on the radio this morning was King of Pain. I thought it was a nice coincidence to start off my week. Also, I really love that song.

It’s my destiny to be the King of Lame

2011-09-25T11:11:00.000-03:00

Today in “Ways inWhich Ellie is Lamer than She Wants You to Think” I will confess to what I’ve been listening to on repeat for the past two weeks (although, the very fact thatI’m putting this on a public forum could be construed as evidence of the factthat I want people to know how lame Iam. This whole internet-voluntarily-forgoing-privacy-age is such a confusingtime). I’ll wait while youguess. Like Jeopardy, your answeronly counts if you say it out loud. The answer isn’t necessarily surprisingjust, you know, kind of lame: the soundtrack for the reviled Broadway musical Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, with musicby Bono and The Edge.

When I first heardabout it I thought it could be kind of awesome. I’m not a huge Spiderman fan,but I look forward to every U2-related project with the same faithful enthusiasm and while I amsometimes disappointed, mostly I am not. But, as time passed, and all I readabout were all the problems that plagued the musical, I kind of assumed itcouldn’t be good and figured I’d never listen to it. Then I saw Carney open for U2, and I found out their frontman plays Spiderman in the musical, and then Isaw the video for the single, and I was bored one night, so I got thesoundtrack and had a listen.

It’s pretty standardmusical theater stuff. I don’t know anything about the plot aside from it beingthe usual Spiderman origin story. Because of that, some of the songs makelittle sense to me, like the green goblin singing that he’s a “65 millionsdollar circus tragedy” and then going on about all the widows in the worldbeing in New York.Anyway, the cool thing is that most of the songs totally have the U2 sound, andvery Bono lyrics, and both Bono andEdge sing on the some of the tracks (Edge singing is a dig deal. He hasn't been lead on a U2 song since the early 90s). So, it simultaneously satisfies the partof me that loves musicals and thepart of me that responds to U2 music. Two, I assume adjacent, parts of my brainthat have never been happy at the same time before. It’s quite remarkable, andaddictive. It’s quite awesome to have those two things combined.

So, now I think thereneeds to be more cross-over in the things I love or otherwise enjoy. I’mthinking of a musical with lyrics by Douglas Coupland and music by Bono &Edge. It’s about The Doctor time/space traveling in the TARDIS with CharlesDarwin and Joss Whedon as his companions, starring the cast of Arrested Development, liberally pepperedwith references about how awesome fish are. It would have a niche audience, butI think I would die of happiness listening to it (if I had Photoshop I would totally make a picture of this musical, but you'll just have to use your imagination).

If only VIA weren't so expensive

2011-09-25T07:54:00.001-03:00

Has anyone else noticed that planes seem to be falling out of the sky recently? Every day there's another report of some kind of crash, or collision, or accident. It's alarming. It could just be that these things are more reported than in the past, but it feels like some modern horseman of the apocalypse.

I can't tell those two Republican guys apart

2011-09-16T20:20:00.001-03:00

I have a shirt that says "America is Scary." I bought it back around the time they legitimately elected Bush. At the time, I felt the sentiment was true. Then, suddenly America wasn't scary any more. They elected Obama! Things were looking up! Meanwhile, in Canada it felt like we were the scary ones. (Albeit, without t-shits to tell us so. At least according to Google image search). My point is, there was awhile there where I felt like I couldn't wear the shirt in public because America didn't really deserve it.

I'm beginning to think that time has come for me to wear the shirt again. It feels like America is getting it's scary on again. Granted, everything I know about American politics I get from The Daily Show and Moron's With Signs. I'm sure they don't downplay the scary. Even so, with only a precious year until the next election, I suspect things are only going to get worse.

Speaking of the election, I can't tell Mit Perry and Rick Romney apart. Wait. No. It's Rick Perry and Mit Romney. Part of it is the names, informal first names, last names ending in -ey. There's little there for me to latch on to as distinguishing. The other problem is that when looking at both of them on the screen, I don't know which is which. They might as well be the same person to me. I gather that one of them is a front-runner, but I don't know if it's the one that annoys me, or the one that genuinely scares me. History would suggest that it's the latter. I think I'll actually be happy once the Republicans decide on a candidate, because then I can a) stop trying to remember who everyone is, and b) focus all my worrying around one person.

Shut up R

2011-09-16T12:08:00.000-03:00

Click to enlarge.

Get set. Go.

2011-09-13T07:06:00.001-03:00

Sometimes when I'm purchasing something and the cashier says "swipe your card when you're ready," I get the urge to just stand there, card in hand, and staring at the debit machine. I'd do this until the cashier says "you can swipe your card now." Then I would shout back "I'M NOT READY!"

'Cause, really, that phrase is so stupid. Swipe when you're ready. As if it takes lots of mental preparation or coaching.

How could it happen? No one knows. But it did

2011-09-04T22:13:00.001-03:00

This went under my radar, but Kristy Swanson (the original Buffy) is in a shark movie with D.B.Sweeny from Cutting Edge (although I also remember him from a show called Strange Luck that Fox made in the mid-90s when they were trying to capilatize on the success of X Files and they aired a whole whack of sci-fiy shows).

But my real reason for this post is this movie: Zaat. The trailer is a narrative mess, so I imagine the movie would have been nearly incomprehensible.

Admit it, those first 40 seconds you were like, "With a few more genetics credits, that could've been you, Ellie." That's what I thought anyway. Then, of course, I thought "pollute the universe? with a spray bottle? Won't that take a very long time? and what's with the near-subliminal shot of the couple making out? Who would want to see just the last 15 minutes of a movie anyway?"

I found this on io9, along with other aquatic-related monster movies. I hadn't heard of most of them, including Blood Beach, which should really be renamed Death Sand: The Sand That Eats People.

Art of Fiction

2011-09-02T17:29:00.006-03:00

I was already excited for the new Wayne Johnston book A WorldElsewhere. Like, really excited. Then I found out that the author EdithWharton is a (I think, small) character in the book and I had a bibliogasm. Howawesome that my favourite female author would be a character in a novel by oneof my favourite male authors. (I haven’t reviewed my favourite male authorratings lately, but I think I’ll put that off until after the next Wright comesout).

At themoment I’m reading two things. The first is Underthe Dome by Stephen King. I read King initially as a kid because my momliked him so much and his books were (and still are) all over the house. Inhindsight, I was probably way too young to be reading those books, but my momwas never one to censor us. In recent years, Mom & I have given up on King.We’re of the opinion that he hasn’t written anything very good since gettinghit by that van. It may just be a coincidence, but regardless, we generallylike his work pre-van, but post-van has been less than exciting, e.g., the snotmonster in Dreamcatcher? I mean, that’s hardly at the artistic level of a giantspider masquerading as a psycho clown, is it?

So, when Under the Dome started to get goodreviews from trusted sources,and people were saying it was the best since The Stand (which is his best book, I think) we had to read it. Momread it first and said it was great with the caveat that the ending is pat. I’m900+ pages into it (90% done) and while it’s good, it hasn’t struck me as beingcomparable to The Stand. We’ll it’scomparable in that there are things in TheDome that remind me of things in the Stand, certain character archetype andthe like. I’m most disappointed by the fact that the calm-voice-of-reasoncharacter in The Dome seems to be StuRedmond, the calm-voice-of-reason character from The Stand. In my head, I see Gary Sinise (who played Stu in the TVmovie of The Stand). And there areother analogous characters, but I don’t think anyone reading this really cares(if you do – let me know!). But in terms of greatness, I would still recommend The Stand over The Dome. Anyway, youcan decide for yourself soon enough, I just read they’re making it into a miniseries. (They’re also remaking The Standinto an actual movie, which will suck, because there’s just no way to distill thatbook down into 2 hours. Maybe if they did it as a trilogy or something. Thatwould be awesome).

However, The Dome isa very interesting study of a town’s rapid descent into chaos. Basically, atown is cut off from the world when a giant, impenetrable dome descends andtraps them inside. The power-hungry local politician and his henchmen quicklytake over. So far, it reminds me a lot of Lordof the Flies, which I mentioned to mom in an email and she replied “I not onlythought of Lord of the Flies, but theRepublican Bush administration. All that gathering up of the goodies forthemselves under the pretext that they knew best and it was the right thing todo for everyone. I just now thought of AnimalFarm in that connection too! Maybe the defining sign of a civilization indecline is, first of all, the rampant unchecked greed of the elite and, second,the acquiescence of the population in their taking everything.”

The second of the things I’m reading at the moment, on theside, is the Buffy Season 8 comics.After Buffy ended, Joss Whedon et al.wrote a Season 8 in comic book form. I’ve never been a big comics person, but Iwas curious about these and my BFF just happened to have them all so I borrowedthem and am almost done volume 7 of 8. And – wow. I’m impressed. It’s very trueto Buffy –but also very differentfrom the show. At times it’s genuinely hilarious and there are lots of in jokes.One of the great things about the format is that they can bring back belovedcharacters at will – like Oz (Willow: “you alwaysknow just what to say when you bother to talk”). The over-arching big bad ofthis “season” ended up being simultaneously a let down and also kind of great. Also,some of the stuff in the comics would never have made it to TV, unless Buffy airedon HBO. Joss Whedon has a dirty mind. Next I’m going to read the Angel comics. I hope they found a way tobring back Wesley.

Speaking of vampires, I think this season of True Blood is the best since the firstseason. As long as you ignore all the stuff with Sam, but I do that everyseason anyway. I know PaleOz really liked last season because of all thevampire rights issues and such. I apparently don’t need that much socialcommentary with my soft core vampire porn, because I find this season far moreinteresting.

Reports from someone else’s homeland

2011-09-02T17:25:00.000-03:00

My mom called me at work theother day. My parents are visiting relatives down south right now, so when mymom called me long distance in the middle of the day, I thought for suresomeone was dead. Thankfully, she was just calling to tell me that The Help isn’t racist and that it justdepicts a racist situation. I’d heard some bad things about The Help, which really put me offwanting to read it. Apparently my mom thought this was eating me up inside andfelt the need to let me know right away, pretty much as they were leaving thetheatre.

She sent me an email withthings she’s seen around during her visit so far. She’s really not one for takingpictures, but she does have an almost eidetic memory, even at 61.

Bumper sticker: Jesus is Lord,not a swear word

On the side of an auto body shop: Serving you andthe Lord

Billboard: Jesus fish, with the words "Do you know I love you? I do"

Billboard: "Who's thefather?" to advertise just that service [at least they got the punctuationright].

Billboard: picture of Obamawith the words "It's we the people, not you the president"

At the Decatur Farmers' Market: one of thoseuniversal "no" signs on the door, forbidding handguns.

Cute story:Aunt Janet ate lunch with her grandson andstepgrandchildren one day. One of the kids whose grandmother wasn't there askedif Janet could be his grandma. Jayden said, "She's my NANA. She's got 12guns and 15 tattoos, and she's my nana." [My Aunt Janet is the one whopulled a gun on someone who broke into her house once.]

It's the most wonderful time of the year, but...

2011-08-31T16:30:00.001-03:00

When I called hurricane season the most wonderful time of the year, I didn’t mean to imply that I love the destruction of it all. I just meant that it’s an interesting time to be living on the east coast; I like watching the predictions of the storm tracks, and I like having to haul my patio furniture in every couple of weeks and move my car so that it’s not under any trees. I don’t like that people die in these things. Just wanted to make that clear.

I find it unsettling that we’re already at K on the hurricane list. In 2009, we were still early in the alphabet at the beginning of September. This time last year we hadn’t gotten to E yet, and when Juan hit back in 2003, it didn’t get here until the end of September. At this rate, Hurricane Leslie (2012, baby!) will hit in mid August.

Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus (not to be confused with Mega Pyton vs. Gatoroid, which I think is a common mistake.)

2011-08-27T23:45:00.089-03:00

Here it is my friends. I know you’ve been waiting for this. God knows, I’m getting sick of Oz’s shouty 2am phone calls “I WANT CRACKERS. WHY HAVEN'T YOU WRITTEN ABOUT MEGASHARK AND CROCOSAURUS YET? MY ARM HURTS.”

And I’m live blooggin it!! If I had twitter I’d be describing it in a series of 140 character snippets.

[Fine print: this is actually really freakin' long. And totally spoilery. So if you get bored, or the movie is ruined (or, "ruint" as they say out here) for you, don't say I didn't warn you.]

Urkel gets first credit. It’s worth mentioning now that I will not be bothering to remember his character’s name. I may, however, do The Urkel if y’all are lucky. Maybe my version is cut off, because they haven’t listed Debbie Gibson or Tiffani yet.

And we’re in the Congo. Some merc is supervising a mining operation and drinking. Way to multitask! They find…shells. They mine those now? The merc is Australian. Kind of. I think he’s supposed to be Australian. You know that because he drinks a lot and says “crikey.” Oh, he’s also the first to die. Awesome. Crocosaurus takes no time in emerging from the mine and eating the merc and scaring away the ~~slaves~~ workers. Croc is pretty big, and very smooth-looking. Maybe the texture layer for the CGI cost too much.

Cut to the USS Gibson (cute, crappy B movie, very cute) somewhere in the Atlantic. I think mega shark is about to make his entrance (her entrance?). Urkel is playing a shark scientist, I think. He seems to be keeping shark silhouettes in a tank (on a Navy ship?) and plays the sounds of “dying fish” for them. Dying fish sound suspiciously like dolphins, I must say. WTF does a dying fish sound like, aside from the sound of flopping? And that’s only out of the water. Urkel also has a little something going on with one of the female navy chicks. He appears to be on the hunt for mega shark because he doesn’t believe it was killed by the giant octopus. But everyone thinks he’s crazy. It’s Moby Dick all over again. I wonder who is Queequeg in this scenario?

Dude! Awesome shot of someone “typing” on a computer and nothing is happening on the computer screen.

So, Mega shark breeches over the boat, just for fun. The disruption to the boat causes Urkel’s girlfriend to be crushed by what looks like a rolled up sail, but I can’t really tell. I mean, if a warship did, for some reason, have sails it wouldn’t store them all willynill on the deck like that. But I suspect the writers were like, “fuck it, she’s on a boat and boats have sails. No ones going to watch this thing anyway.” There’s a lot of blood. Urkel is all teary and sad and now he’s out for revenge.

Mega shark appears to be jumping over the ship repeatedly just to screw with ‘em. I can think of no other reason. He’s not eating anyone yet, and if he wanted to sink the ship, he could have done that from the start. Somehow the ship sinks, and Urkel is the only survivor because he has the foresight to put on scuba gear, but doesn’t think to tell anyone else? So much for no man left behind, Urkel.

Back in the Congo some Paul Hogan-y character is hunting boar or something. A rep from the diamond mine (ah, so they weren’t mining shells) is trying to hire him to hunt Croc. She’s inexplicably attired in a LBD and heels. IN THE CONGO. But she’s wearing glasses and her hair is really messy, which I think we’re supposed to interpret as her being naïve or new to her job or something. Poor man’s Paul Hogan is some kind of “goblin” hunter who’s wrestled with two headed creatures with 15 tails. Did I miss that movie? I like him. His character is even more ill-defined than Private “Shark Guy” Urkel. I don’t know what his characters name actually is, but I’ll call him Paul.

Stupid chick is now standing ankle deep in swamp water. Scratch that! She’s actually standing on Croc, who tosses her into the air and eats her like a snausage (try as I might, I could never get my dogs to do that trick. They were always lazy and would drop their head to let the treat fall on the floor and eat it from there). Then Paul gets eaten, but spit out, and it looks like Croc passes out or just goes to sleep really quickly. I think I missed something. Oh, he must have poisoned Croc, since in the next scene he’s got Croc strapped to a flatbed truck and is going to load her on a boat.

Urkel, meanwhile, is in interrogation and is having some kind of a breakdown. A woman walks into the interrogation and takes it over, forcing the other guy out. She then introduces herself as Hutchens from NOAA (She spells out the letters instead of calling it “no-ahh”). Damn. Who knew NOAA had authority over JAG? She said she represents high ranking military (really? Is there more than one NOAA? The only NOAA people I’ve ever met did fish and zooplankton work) and she wants Urkel to help them find the shark.

Oh, hey. At some point Croc laid eggs. I’m disappointed in Paul. I thought he was in it for the animals, but it turns out he’s in for the money. So Croc wakes up and escapes into the Atlantic. I guess its fortunate she’s a giant, prehistoric saltwater crocodile, or else this would have been a very short movie. Now the NOAA person is recruiting Paul to help in the hunt for mega shark, and she doesn’t seem to believe his stories of a giant crocodile, because I suppose the NOAA Intelligence Branch hasn’t received that information yet.

[At this point I got distracted trying to figure out where Debbie Gibson and Tiffani were. IMDB informed me that they were not in Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, but are in fact the stars of Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. How silly of me to mistake the two.]

Paul joins the hunt. He and Urkel seem to have a history, and they don’t get along. They take off with the NOAA agent in a helicopter to investigate reports of giant eggs near some island. The send the shark guy because “some sharks lay eggs.” Yes. Okay. Some sharks lay eggs. But you’ve got an entire military vessel dedicated to finding this shark and by now you should have a basic understanding of it’s biology. Also, shark eggs look nothing like Croc eggs.

The US military decides to bomb the hundreds of croc eggs they find, and Croc comes out of hiding to defend them. She looks much better in these scenes – like she actually has scales. Sadly, the fighter jets miss her and some of the eggs, so she heads off to Miami. They ready the National Guard.

Meanwhile, mega shark catches a torpedo in her mouth and throws it away, after jumping through the air with it.

Back to Croc, who is attacking what I assume is supposed to be Miami. Urkel and Paul are debating how to fight the Croc and of course the answer involves using nuclear power of some kind. Doesn’t it always? And, wow, the nuclear power plant technician is very easily convinced to produce an arc flash. He doesn’t even need any confirmation of the order, he just takes the word of the guy on the phone. And then the tech salutes his boss. Aren’t nuclear plants civilian facilities?

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Suddenly Croc is in Orlando. How? It’s like a 4h drive. I know the Croc is big and fast, but that’s hard to believe. Anyway, Croc snacks on some Orcas at the aquarium. Croc doesn’t like the arc flash and gets all stompy on the military before retreating to the ocean.

At this point there’s some talky debate back at the USS Sharkhunt. Then we cut to a pretty blond scientist studying one of the Croc eggs on a submarine. She’s talking to herself. I do that when I do science, so that scene was probably the most accurate depiction of a scientist I have yet to see in any of these movies. Mega shark is clearly offended by this approaching-genuine display of science and promptly eats the submarine. Mega shark likes the tasty, tasty giant, prehistoric saltwater crocodile eggs.

More talk on the USS Sharkhunt.

We’re an hour into the movie now and so far, there’s been no versus at all. I should say, Croc is clearly the star of the show. She’s been way more interesting, so far, than mega shark. I don’t think mega sharks heart is in it anymore. I think the fame has jaded her.

The plan is to lure mega shark to the Panama canal and…sic Croc on him? Actually, no. The plan is to trap both Croc and mega shark in the canal and then blow them up. This all sounds like some elaborate excuse for the Americans to invade Panama.

And we’re on a different sub now. Why weren’t all the subs recalled and put in dry dock? Mega shark could troll the ocean and eat them all in one day. This sub is on a mission to retrieve some Croc eggs that they can then use to bait the Panama canal. As a back-up, Urkel has brought his hydrosonic balls. Initially designed to repel sharks, he now has to reverse it to attract sharks. Was the sound of dying “fish” what he used to repel sharks? Wouldn’t that attract them? Unless it was the sound of dying sharks…but then why didn’t he just say that?

Action shot of Urkel running down the pier carrying a machine gun.

So, the Croc is apparently walking to the canal, taking the highway. From Orlando? I’m sure she swum part of the way.

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The navy attacks mega shark with no success. Croc arrives at the canal and shows those navy bitches how it’s done. Thus, at 1:07, this movie’s raison d'être is realized. There’s a lot of tail biting and swirling. In the midst of the battle, they break a canal wall and a tidal wave descends on Panama city. It sweeps mega shark along with it, through the city streets. They continue to fight. They seem to be out in the ocean now. I think they’re reusing the fight footage already, or the fight choreographer was really low on ideas. It seems to be all the same tail- and fin-bitey stuff we saw in the Canal. There are a couple of shots where you can totally tell they used stunt animals.

We then find out that Croc has laid thousands of eggs all over the worlds oceans. I know I harp on these shows way too much, but are Crocs known for their parthenogenesis? I know some reptiles are capable of it, but I don’t think crocodiles are.

Back in fake-science land, the USS Sharksarefish?Areyoushittingme? is getting reports of baby crocosauruses. I have no idea of the timeline of this movie, but that seems like a very rapid gestation. (Is it gestation in an egg? Probably not.)

The new plan is…can you guess? Come on, take a guess. Yes! You got it. They’re going to nuke ‘em.

Mega shark happily eats yet another sub (the USS I Heart Nukes) and Paul gets the best line: “I think The Shark just went nuclear.” Hee hee. Urkel calls Paul a fake-ass pirate.

Croc is now wreaking havoc in Hawaii. She sure does get around.

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Wow, the NOAA Enforcement Officer can fly helicopters. Not well, though. Because it crashes and Urkel has a PTSD flash-back to his fiancé who was crushed by a sail. And Paul gets all bromancy and pulls him out of it.

Mama Croc is in pain from all the bombs and the sound of her cries is apparently drawing her babies from all over the globe.

Action shot: Urkel and Paul running with machine guns in slow-mo down the beach with waves crashing around them, dodging both Croc and friendly fire.

Paul and Urkel are out on the ocean now. In an inflatable boat. Y’all remember that boat I used for my field work in Alberta? They’re basically in that boat. Dude, just so unsafe.

Long story shot: Urkel’s sonic balls work in attracting the shark, Croc, and Croc babies. There’s more battling. Mega shark finally goes for the throat, and somehow Urkel triggers the nukes that mega shark swallowed and they all die. Or do they? They don’t seem incinerated so much as stunned and unable to swim. But everyone thinks they’re dead, so we’ll go with that.

Then there’s some sentimental stuff and it’s over.

I think writing about it as I watched it was a bad idea. It took me days! And I think I may have enjoyed it more if I’d seen it all at once. Anyway, there you go Oz.

Funniest moment:

Latino man calling to Anglo dude: Louis!

Anglo dude: It’s Lewis!

Funniest moment, which may be unintentionally funny:

Urkel to Admiral: …it’s insanity. We’d be putting people in jeopardy.

Admiral: Then I suggest you bring your hydrosonic balls with you.

...constantly cracking my skull against things.

2011-08-27T22:57:00.001-03:00

I’m freshly back from seven days at sea. It was a good trip – lots of work, though. And after the second day or so it’s really repetitive (like most field work I’ve done), although I got to see some cool stuff: giant lobster, octopi, and lots and lots of scallops. Also, one cod! The cod was the highlight of my trip. It’s been…(doing the math)…8 years since I’ve held a cod. It was only a little guy, though. I’m pretty sure s/he survived.

I don’t have any pictures of the work, I was too busy actually doing it. And it was really dirty and I didn’t want to get mud and seawater in my camera. I do have some scenery pictures from around Grand Manan, which was where the survey was.

I liked life on the boat. I find it surprising how well I slept on the boat when we were steaming. The rocking of the boat and the overwhelming noise of the engine put me right out. At night, when the engine is off, it’s completely different – you can hear every creak and lapping wave. It’s nice to be home, though, where I can shower and where I’m not hitting my head on something every few minutes. Seriously, I have bruises under my hair from constantly cracking my skull against things.

Here's a picture of my feet in my ~~coffin~~ bunk. I hit my head on the top of that thing a lot.

2011-08-20T20:13:00.000-03:00

Alej and I finally went sea kayaking. It's one of those things we always talk about, but never get around to doing.

Of course, my eyes are closed in most of the pictures, but here are some good ones Alej took (again, I'm using these without permission. Thanks, Alej!).

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

2011-08-20T19:51:00.002-03:00

NOAA’s 2011 Atlantic seasonal outlook calls for:

6-10 Hurricanes (maximum sustained winds: 119+ km/h)
3-5 Major Hurricanes (maximum sustained winds: 178+ km/h)

2011-08-19T12:15:00.002-03:00

If you were wondering, the new Paul Simon album is awesome. Also – dude is 69!!

The 8th time I saw U2…

2011-08-12T19:24:00.000-03:00

…was very different from the 7^th time, despite very similar set lists. Actually, I was hoping for the same set list as the show earlier in the month, just so I could experience again those songs I was, let’s say, distracted during.

Let’s begin with the difference in location. This show, the last show of the endless, 2+ years 360degrees tour, was at Magnetic Hill in Moncton, New Brunswick. If you happen to read the U2 fan sites (c’mon, admit it: you check them every day), you’d see fan reaction to the announcement of the last show in Moncton was generally “Where?” and then, after they googled it, “Why there?” My reaction to the rumours was “U2 will never come to Moncton.” I was wrong. I’m still not sure why they came here, but I suppose a venue that holds 100,000 people in the middle of three provinces they’ve never played before kind of guarantees a large audience. Also, they’re Freaking U2. They can play wherever the hell they want. They could play a show on a floating barge in the arctic and people would go.

The next difference was the fellow attendees. In addition to the Traditional Three (my BFF "B", and our mom), B’s husband, Johnny**, also came. He’s not a U2 fan per se, but they drove all the way from Ontario for the show and it made more sense for him to come than not.

Then there was the difference in weather. The forecast for the day was rain. Not just a chance of rain, but guaranteed rain for the whole day and potentially into the evening. At the Toronto show, there was a chance of rain but it never actually rained. This time we knew it would rain the whole day. We knew, and still we didn’t really believe it would. We thought about umbrellas, but they were banned from the venue, so we would have had to throw them out after waiting in line. I considered borrowing my rain gear from work, but didn’t. I also considered rubber boots, but they are not comfortable for standing in all day. In the end, we wore the dollar store ponchos we’d bought for the Toronto show, and resigned ourselves to being wet. The forecast was also calling for a warm day, so wearing heavy rain gear on a warm, wet day was unappealing. We figured the field would turn to mud, so I ended up wearing and old pair of walking sandals, and my BFF wore $4 flip-flops with the intention of throwing them out afterwards. They were a bad choice as the sole would sink in the mud and required a lot of force to pull out. By the end of the night, the field was strewn with broken flip-flops and lots of people were barefoot. (I ended up abandoning my sandals in the parking lot of the park n' ride - they were gross and not worth the energy it would take to clean them).

The next difference was our attitude re: the GA line-up. Our strategy would have been to get there early and wait. That works well in Toronto when it’s sunny and dry, and you can stay in a hotel a few minutes away. Moncton hotels were charging insane rates for nights around the concert, so we decided to stay at my place in Dartmouth and drive up the morning of. Also, this venue had more GA tickets, proportionally, than a show at the Sky Dome would, so I figured we’d be competing with more people for prime inner circle spots. Then there was the prospect of standing in the rain all day. In the end we decided to not kill ourselves getting in line super early. We’d enjoy the show no matter what, so being in the inner circle wouldn’t kill us.

On the day of, we left Dartmouth at 7am. Yes, I believe this is “not killing ourselves.” I mean, we didn’t want to be miles from the stage, you know? I was banking on a 3 hour drive, than another hour to get from park n’ ride to the venue. The city was offering a park n’ ride service so people could park at designated lots in the city and take a shuttle to the venue. We got to Moncton around 9:30 and were at the park n’ ride lot by 10am. The choice at this point was to sit in the dry car for an hour until the first shuttle arrived at 11, or call a cab and go the venue right away. We called a cab. I’m so glad we did. We got into the line-up at 10:40 and a bunch of people arrived right after us. We were number 378-381^th in line. Inner circle, here we were to come!

The time in the line-up was wet. There wasn’t much we could do but sit and huddle under our ponchos. There was no reading, playing cards, or dice this time. Occasionally we talked to the couple ahead of us, or the youngish guy-on-his own behind us. Generally, we did very little. I drank lots of water and made sure I ate lunch.

There was a fair number of people who had camped out or otherwise gotten there very early. Around 1 o’clock or so, they compressed the line – meaning they told everyone to get rid of their crap and stand up. Some people stashed stuff in the woods to come back for later. Most people just abandoned their crap in the line up. Walking through it later was pretty disgusting: a water-and-mud soaked mess of abandoned tents, camping chairs, sleeping bags, ponchos, umbrellas, food, water, beer, clothes, blankets, tarps. Our GA philosophy is to not bring anything expensive so that you can throw it out. Some people were leaving behind inflatable mattresses – both the pool kind and the kind you would probably pay $30 for. So wasteful. The line-up wasn’t as fun as it was in Toronto. Part of that was the crappy weather, and part of it was the people. The chain smokers a bit in front of us were annoying (why am I always near the smokers?), and there was this group of younger girls behind us that sang out loud during the sound check for Arcade Fire. They sang along in a way that implied they only knew some words, or just liked very small snippets of the songs.

When you get in a GA line up like that, they usually give you numbers – basically to discourage line-jumpers. The numbers have no official role, but honest people take them seriously. As we were moving to go through the gate (around 3pm) a woman siddled up next to my group, keeping her head down. The woman in front of us looked at her and looked at me with a “who is that?” look. I shrugged and the woman and the line jumper had the following exchange:

Woman: Excuse me? Do you have a wrist band? What number are you?

Line jumper: Huh? What?

Woman: They’re checking numbers, what number are you? [at this point, the rumour was that they were checking numbers. But they weren’t, or they had stopped]

Line jumper [holding out her arm silently – she’s #498]

Woman: You have to go back, you’re not supposed to be up here [showing off her #377 wristband]

Line jumper: They told me the number doesn’t matter

Me: It matters to the 100 people you’re cutting in front of.

Woman: We’ve been here longer

Line jumper: Okay, I don’t mind waiting.

Then she kept shuffling forward with the line and every time we told her to go back (I was involved now) she said she "doesn’t mind waiting" all the while not actually going back, or stopping to let 100 people pass. Eventually the woman in front of us pointed her out to a security guard. The guard clearly didn’t care, but pulled the woman out of line anyway to avoid a scene.

So, we get into the general area of the show, but we weren’t quite there yet. The field was on a hill with the stage at the bottom of the hill. We were let in at the top of the hill. Security was clearly concerned that we’d all run break-neck down the hill to get into the circle and someone would get trampled and die. They made us wait at the top of the hill for about another half hour. We were still in a reasonable facsimile of the original line up. There was a couple of line jumpers and fast-walkers ahead of us, but that can’t be helped. They tried to lead us down the hill in an organised manner. Two security guards holding a piece of CAUTION tape between them lead the line down the hill towards the stage. I appreciate their attempt at crowd control. I really do. It worked until about halfway down the hill, when the people in back swelled out and started running for the stage. No one died or was hurt (as far as I know) so I suppose they did their job.

We headed for the inner circle and grabbed some empty ledge on the outer rim, with a similar on-Bono’s-left view as the previous show. The outer rim is as far away from the main stage as you can get in the inner circle, but when you turn around, you’re maybe 8 feet from the outer stage, so you get to be close to the guys when they go past, and still have a good view of the stage. It also has the added bonus of a ribcage-high security wall that you can lean against. Such support is very valuable to my mom who was a week shy of turning 61, and myself since I'm apparently incapable of standing anymore. Also, spots along the wall like that are easy to defend, and more comfortable for sitting. Which we did. Another bonus of the inner circle is that it’s not the field, so there is flooring and not mud.

Shortly after we got into the circle, the rain stopped. We gladly took off our ponchos. We compared wet marks on our clothing. Eventually me & B went to get food and left Mom and James to defend our spots. The line ups for food were pretty long, and probably only got longer as the day went on. I had resigned myself to eating just french fries, figuring there wouldn’t be much by way of veggie options. There was a stand selling samosas which I was really excited about (samosas are the new ice cream - I can't say no to them) until I realized it was only beef and chicken. Then, I saw the felafel stand. It had a crazy line up, presumably all the veggies were in that one line. But, after waiting 30 minutes, I was able to have some thing more substantial than fries. Although, I had fries too. Walking back through the mud slick was tricky, and kind of gross.

The first opening act was a group called Carney and the second was Arcade Fire. Both were fine. Until a moment ago I wasn't sure who Carney were and why they were there. I still don't know who they are, but one of the Carnies was involved in the Spider-man musical that Bono and Edge wrote. I know that people love Arcade Fire, but I’ve never really given them a chance, so I have no real opinion of them. Except, I think that one of girls might be legally insane, or maybe her brother is also in the bad and their parents made him let her in. They also seem to have taken a page from the Bono Songwriters Guide and put lots of wordless chanty parts in their songs. Songs like that always seem to translate well live.

The coolest pre-show thing was the fly-by by the military jets. Two of them did about three fly-bys of the concert. That was a surprise and nice touch. I bet the field looked awesome from that high up. I wonder if they took pictures?

Eventually, the pre-show music started. We were impatient for U2 to start, and were waiting for the strains of Space Oddity. For this tour, that was the song they played before the band came on stage. Each time a song ended, B and I would wait expectantly for the next one to start. We usually, almost involuntarily would exclaim “Fuck!” when it wasn’t Space Oddity. (We have this odd effect on each other where we swear more than normal when we get together). The youngish guy who had been behind us in line was now in front of us in the inner circle. One of our in-unison exclamations made him laugh. My mom told me later that he’s a pastor from a church in NB. I don’t know if knowing that beforehand would have altered our behaviour any. Knowing us, we would have swore more. And probably made fun of Jesus. (I’m kidding! About the Jesus part, at least).

Then, finally, it started. It’s always so exciting when they come out. People go insane. The first really awesome, exciting thing for me was during Until the End of the World where Bono and Edge were on the outer stage and stopped right in front of us. This is the absolute closest we’ve ever been to them. If I reached, and they reached, we could have touched. It was a really incredible moment.

Where we were turned out to be good for getting close to everyone at least once. Larry only leaves his drum kit once, to walk around the stage and bang on his bongo. I spent a lot of time trying to film and take pictures but at some point I stopped, because I didn’t want to be so preoccupied with getting pictures that I didn’t actually watch them. That’s why my video of Larry is so short:

For the most part, the set list was exactly the same as earlier in the month. I was perfectly fine with that. A couple of notable changes. After I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Bono sang a verse of The Ballad ofSpringhill, at which point I turned to B and said, “Does he know he’s in New Brunswick?”

He also changed the lyrics to Stay. I think the performace of Stay earlier in the month was more emotional, but I love when he changes his songs, so I appreciated the new ending:

Original song:

Three o'clock in the morning
It's quiet, there's no one around,
Just the bang and the clatter
As an angel runs to ground.

Moncton lyrics:

Three o’clock in the morning

As the trucks roll out of town

'110 shows, strangely it feels like home
Glad my wife is here tonight, not a night to be alone

Everyboby’s lover, everybody’s brother

All came here for the show

Some loves are just so hard to let go

Three o'clock in the morning
It's quiet, there's no one around
Just a bang and a clatter,

As 360 leaves town.

I didn’t mention this about the previous show, but before Beautiful Day, Bono asks the audience to imagine a man in space, looking down on earth from above, and then they cut to Mark Kelly in the space station. He’s playing with word cut-outs and he spells out Beautiful Day. He then greets the crowd with “Hello Moncton” (in Toronto he said “Hello Toronto.”). The Moncton came out more like “Monk..Tun” so I wondered if they spliced it together like that Lawrence Olivier add for diet coke. Then he said he was looking forward to coming home and says “Tell my wife I love her very much. She knows.”

I’ll admit, at the first show I didn’t make the connection to who his wife is, so it wasn’t as emotionally effective. My mom knew, and said she cried when he said that. It was more emotionally effective the second time.

They ended the second encore with Moment of Surrender, and I think Bono had asked someone to get champagne, because one of his roadies came up and said something to him and Bono replied into the microphone ”Well, I’m not leaving until I get champagne.” And they didn’t. I don't think Bono wanted to leave. Bono talked a bit, then I saw him motioning to Edge and I thought he was saying “one more” but it turns out he was saying Out of Control. We got a bonus performance of Out of Control! Then he still didn’t want to leave the stage, so after chatting with some of the audience, spraying inner circle people with water and the frantically-acquired champagne, they then sang 40. 40 is a great song because it leaves the audience chanting and a good audience will carry it on for a long time. They sang 40, then left the stage one by one. Larry is usually first on, last off. He did a little drum solo, waved good-night, then grabbed the mike and said “Thank you Moncton, we’ll miss you guys. Good night. God bless. ” Larry never talks. That was huge.

This is already very, very long. I won’t go into details about the difficulty in leaving Magnetic Hill and the poorly managed park n ride. The show ended around midnight, and it was 3:30am before we were on the highway heading out of town. I drove us back and we got to my apartment at 6am. I managed to stay awake on the drive home. I drank coffee, and I sang quietly to myself – this helped a lot, actually.

The rest of my pictures are here.

Set List

Even Better Than The Real Thing
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
Until The End Of The World
I Will Follow
Get On Your Boots
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For/ The Ballad of Springhill
Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Beautiful Day
Elevation
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Miss Sarajevo
Zooropa
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Discotheque
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Scarlet
Walk On

Encore 1

One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Encore 2

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
With Or Without You
Moment Of Surrender

**Not his actual name. The current running gag is that a) my dad can never remember his real name and calls him other J names, and b) Johnny will actually respond to any J name thrown at him, apparently due to a lifetime of never being called by the correct name (kind of like how I will now respond to both Lindsay and Leslie). At one point during the show, I quoted Bono’s opener to Until the End of the World: “Jesus, this is Judas.” And when I said Judas, Johnny looked over.

'cause I eats me spinach

2011-08-12T16:10:00.013-03:00

I gave blood today and it went well. Again. I'm so pleased. The one iffy moment came when they tested my iron and -for the first time in my long and storied donation history - it was one point too low to donate. The tested it again, though, and the second time it was 12 points higher. Yeah me! Apparently there was plasma or something in the blood drop that brings down your iron reading.

I had my usual healthy amount of concern about donating this time, due to my donation history, my recent episode at U2, and the rumours going around that lots of people were fainting in today's clinic. While I was donating, someone who had donated earlier in the morning and fainted was brought back in from their workstation. I guess they were still feeling badly, so someone wheeled them in on an office chair, and the CBS people laid her down and got out a monitor of some kind. At least I've never had that bad a reaction. I don't think sitting in the library would have helped her.

2011-08-10T14:15:00.002-03:00

If y'all had told me that you can get free coffee with cell phones, I would have gotten one years ago.

The 7th time I saw U2…

2011-08-09T19:38:00.009-03:00

…we got in line at 8:40am and were 411^th in line. Really, we could have been there earlier, but the tradeoff for sleeping longer is being further from the stage, and we were aware of that. It was already an improvement from our first GA experience in which we got in line at noon and were 600+ in line. This time I could indulge my “first in line” fantasy and it didn’t seem so crazy.

Our time in line started, as I mentioned, before 9am and went until 5:30pm when they let us into the SkyDome. In those hours, we read, played cards, played a dice game, baked in and complained about the sun, purchased U2 merch, talked with fellow line-upers, and discussed dream set-lists and placed bets on which obscure or old song they were going to surprise us with. In hindsight, the time went quickly. The longest part of the day was when the clouds cleared and we had the full force of July in downtown Toronto beating on us. Eventually the sun moved behind the dome and we were saved.

Behind us in line was a recently married woman from Charleston, whose honeymoon was following U2 around for most of the summer and going to every show she could. With her best friend. He husband was back home, apparently. Or maybe off on his own honeymoon. She mentioned she got married to Hallelujah (Here she comes). She’s one of those fans who is a whole other level of obsessed than I am. I don’t own any iron-on U2 jean jacket back-patches, which I think should be the benchmark for separating the sane fans from the fans they make scary movies about. Or, at least, from the fans who aren’t stuck in the 80s or in possession of motorcycles. I mean, I don’t think she wore the jean jacket ironically. This woman also had the nerve to visibly disapprove of my mom’s favourite song. That’s just impolite. When you don’t agree with someone else’s favourite song, you just rip them apart in your head and out loud you say, “Oh, yeah. That song Bono did with Rhianna was a classic.” Mom’s favourite song is New York off All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and she didn’t like it initially, but it took on new meaning for her after 9/11 and she liked how U2 used it as a tribute song in the aftermath of the attacks.

So, after the mad dash into SkyDome and the sprinting toward the stage to an accapella chorus of “Don’t Run!” from security, we found ourselves in the inner circle. We were on what would be Bono’s left when he got on stage in 4 hours. The last time we were in the inner circle we were to Bono’s right and had a good view of Bono and Edge. This time we would have a good view of Bono and Adam. Larry, the drummer, was hard to see from our position. We were second in row from the stage. The people in front of us, the ones right next to the stage, got in line at 4am. One girl in front of us was there alone. I was surprised by the number of people in the inner circle who were there alone. Waiting in line for 12 hours is bad enough, but to do it without someone to talk to and save your place in line when you go for food or to the bathroom has to be hard. She wasn’t very talkative.

Next to that girl was a guy with a fairly large group. He was also dressed up: sparkly silver pants and a discoball hardhat. Around his neck was an Ontario license plate reading “U2BROTHR.” He is, we would find out, something of a local celebrity among the Toronto U2-fan community. One person actually came up to him in the circle and said “U2brothr! I saw you from over there and just had to come over and meet you!” Accompanying U2brothr at the show was a guy wearing a “Larry Mullen Band” tshirt, a guy wearing a “Finally my first U2 concert” t-shirt (on the back: “I’m with U2BROTHR”), and a guy who looked like Bono ca. 1996. There were all members of a U2 Facebook group and frequented U2 cover band shows, of which the 1996 Bono was the front man. U2brothr was pretty cool. He’s met Bono a few times and says the secret is “having no shame.” He also quite awesomely helped me defend my friends spot on the floor when she went to the bathroom during the opening act. Some chick flew into the spot, it was like she dropped from the sky: I have no idea where she came from. He told her to leave. He was more imposing than me, so she listened to him.

(I was going to put links to all the Youtube vidoes from that show, but this awesome person has a pretty comprehensive collection of good quality videos from that night, so check them out. All my pictures are here).

The last two shows we saw on this tour, they opened with Breathe from the most recent album (recent as in 2009). I didn’t expect Breathe again, but I did not expect what they opened with. I was expecting at least a song from the recent album, and when the music started it took me longer than it should have to identify the song because I wasn’t expecting a 20 year old song. They opened with Even Better Than The Real Thing and proceeded to play 3 other Achtung Baby songs. It was like being at a ZooTV show (one of my life’s great regrets that I didn’t “discover” U2 until after the ZooTV tour). The next surprise was perhaps one of the best versions of Stay I’ve heard live. Stay is off Zooropa, the follow-up to Achtung Baby. Zooropa is not widely loved among U2 fans, but for the most part I like it. It does contain my least favourite U2 song ever (Some Days Are Better Than Others), but it also has the awesome Wanderer with Johnny Cash, and First Time, and Stay, and Numb. I’m kind of getting off topic...

I don’t know when it happened exactly, but sometime between Stay and the next surprise-song (4 songs later) I had what I now call one of my “episodes.” I really don’t know why. I wasn’t giving blood or doing yoga. I think it was a combination of the heat, dehydration, standing up for hours on end, not eating much, and jumping up and down and waving my hands in the air non-stop. So, I spent the second half of the concert trying to not pass out. It’s about as crappy as it sounds. At one point (I think it was after Sunday Bloody Sunday) I asked a stranger if I could have some of her water. That, and the protein bar and nuts I’d snuck in, helped somewhat. I lasted the show, didn’t pass out, and for the most part was able to enjoy it.

I was kneeling on the ground digging in my bag for food when the next surprise song came on, and it was Zooropa – the title song from the album. Zooropa! That was totally on the list of songs I never expected to hear live. I’m glad I was conscious enough to enjoy it. They also played a tiny bit of Discotheque – which I don’t hate as much as I used to.

The next surprise came at the beginning of the second encore. This is where Bono wears his laser jacket and has the pendulum microphone that he swings around on. The last shows I saw, they started the second encore with Ultraviolet, also from AB. This time they didn’t, they played another song I never thought I’d hear live: Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me – from the Batman Forever soundtrack. To me, this was the biggest surprise. Just the day before, on the drive to Toronto, I’d held my BFF’s copy of the single and said wistfully “I want them to play HMTMKMKM” AND THEY DID. Mind you, such wishful thinking didn’t work on all the other songs I said that about, but it did in this case. So awesome. The presyncope was worth it to hear Bono say “Oh, Lordy.” They ended the encore with an emotional version of Moment of Surrender that was so good, it made me like the song more.

Then it was over. And we took a cab back to our hotel, where I drank lots of water and tried to assure my mother that I was fine. It was hard to convince her that it wouldn’t happen again at the next show we were going to in a few weeks. And I won’t tell you if it did or not, so you’ll have to read all about that concert too! Ha!

Full Set List:

Even Better Than The Real Thing
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
Until The End Of The World
I Will Follow
Get On Your Boots
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Beautiful Day
Elevation
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Miss Sarajevo
Zooropa
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy / Discotheque
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Scarlet
Walk On

Encore 1

One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Encore 2

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill MeWith Or Without You
Moment Of Surrender

Zombie Walk!

2011-08-07T20:55:00.000-03:00

Today was Hali's zombie walk. It was much larger than I expected - and very impressive. My favourites were Super Mario Zombie and the baby zombie.

Hell's Gate

2011-08-07T20:12:00.001-03:00

(Shout out to Alej for the photos, which it occurs to me I'm using without permission, so I hope she'll forgive me...).

Two weeks ago, a group of us had planned to go surfing. We were unable to do so due to annoying fine print on the groupon we were going to use for the lesson and gear. Instead we decided to do this hike we'd heard about called Hell's Gate/Three Pools. It's a series of waterfalls and swimming pools. Since it's on NS Power land, it's technically trespassing so isn't in any of the published hiking guides that I've seen, but it's one of those things that's well known among locals. We found some ill-described directions on the net and took off. It's out past Wolfville, about an hour outside the city. We parked and entered at a what looked promising but ended up being a very wrong spot.

We ended up fording a stream, and bushwhacking for about an hour. We were on trails occasionally, but for the most part we were just following the river and assuming we would come to the waterfalls eventually.

We found the old Hell's Gate power station, after which the falls are named. Creepy, creepy name. It was a perfectly lovely area, so I have no idea why it was named that.

Once we found that place, we discovered the real trail to the falls, and soon found them. There was a family at the first pool. They were swinging off a rope into the water. None of us really wanted to do that, so we just went swimming instead.

Eventually we went looking for the other pools. The next pool we came across was empty (of people) and had No Diving signs due to the shallow water. The third pool was crawling with locals (read: drunk teenagers) so we watched the wildlife for awhile. We marveled at how far they carried their beer in from, and how the girls made the hike in flip flops, and left before we started saying "kids today!" We went back to the first pool, but by then it was busy too, so we left.

We hiked out on what we figured was the "right" path - and it was. Now we know how to get there, and more importantly we know to get there early to avoid the crowds.

If you're so inclined, there's lots of videos of hooligans jumping at the third cliff.

Holy. F^&k.

2011-07-31T09:37:00.001-03:00

Or, Things Worth Waiting 6+ Hours In the Rain For:

My crappy ass camera took this yesterday. I'm not even using the zoom.

Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me

2011-07-18T07:55:00.002-03:00

More to come...

I'm writing this at the airport

2011-07-18T07:45:00.001-03:00

...but I'm not posting it until I'm back from my trip. I'm really paranoid about advertising on public forums that my home is empty and will be for some time. But, I wanted to write about my driver to the airport. A while ago there was a groupon (technically, a Team Buy) for a discounted ride to the airport. It is not cheap to take a cab to the Halifax airport, so I bought the coupon and used it for my ride today. The driver (named....wait for it.....Leslie) called 10 minutes before he was supposed to arrive and asked where my street was. Then, after parking in the middle of the street to let me in and load my bags, he proceeded to take a wrong turn off my street and didn't seem to notice that we were driving away from the most obvious route to the highway. I mentioned that we were on the wrong street and he turned in the direction of the correct street, but when we reached it, he still proceeded to the non-obvious highway entrance. Based on that, and the fact that he was driving an American car (i.e., speedometer in mph, not km/h) I'm guessing he's new to our fair city.

But that's not even why I'm writing about him. I'm writing about him because he is perhaps the worst self-professed vegan ever. In his defense he described himself as "85-90%" vegan, in that a couple of times a year - for special occasions - he likes to gorge on seafood or a steak. Nothing says "Happy Birthday To Me" like betraying your own personal belief system! He then went on to describe vegans as people who don't eat things with faces, or stuff that comes from things with faces. So, he's a vegan that eats scallops and urchin roe (and possibly lobster). I mean, sure, they don't have faces per se (although scallop and lobster have eyes), but they're still living, gas-exchanging, reproducing creatures. Just because they don't have features which are easy to anthropomorphize doesn't mean they're vegan-friendly. Oh, and he also told me about how he used to catch sharks and pay some guy to make them into dog food.

Clearly, the English language needs a new word for all of those people who call themselves vegetarian or vegan but still eat animals. "Hypocrite" is already taken.

08 July

HaliMouth, this is Summer...

2011-07-03T17:48:00.000-03:00

...she's a bitch, but she doesn't overstay her welcome.

It was such a glorious weekend here. Canada Day was beautiful and Saturday too. Today we tried to go to the beach - four beaches actually: Martinique, Lawrencetown, Rainbow Haven, and MacCormack's:

Of course, this being early summer in NS, it was windy, foggy, and cool. So, our plans of reading on the beach were ruined, but it was still a beautiful drive and a nice road trip.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

2011-06-23T21:17:00.000-03:00

Today Deb & I were email-talking about how we hate cleaning and I shared the above sentiment with her that I got off a postcard but have since adopted as my personal philosophy. Then I was over at my old place tonight, doing the insane final clean-out, and I had the following thought: I could never kill myself by sticking my head in an oven. It would be too much like housework.

Did you notice I was gone?

2011-06-23T21:14:00.000-03:00

I've been uncommunicative lately. I've been busy: I had almost two weeks of field work, then I started a new job, and then I moved apartments. I haven't finished unpacking yet, but I do have my bookcases assembled and organized. That's the most important thing. Below are two pictures of my books in alphabetical order by author's last name. Each pile represents one letter.

The more geeky among you will notice that (hey! my foot!) this isn't a normal distribution. Not that you'd expect something organized alphabetically to follow a normal curve. There are three distinct peaks, though, at C, M, and W. The strong C cohort is make up primarily of my Couplands. M, I think, is just a common first letter for surnames, and the Ws are mostly my Whartons. Not pictured are my non-fic. I only have about half a bookcase of non-fiction and their system of organization is far more wishy-washy.

I don't have anything else of note to share. Oh, but if you get a chance to see a show called Garth Marenghi's Darkplace don't pass it up.

The End

2011-06-16T07:48:00.000-03:00

11pm was my limit, I gave up and went to bed. But the Canucks lost, which I saw coming ever since Oz told me they would lose. I'm glad the play offs are over. Now I can shave this beard.

Second Period

2011-06-15T22:53:00.000-03:00

Oh - no! I don't want to watch Don Cherry. Sweet Jesus. What is he wearing? I know, I know this is his thing, this is what he does: he's Canada's Elton John circa 1980s. But...this? Is awful.

It sounds like this Thomas guy is really good. Maybe I should be cheering for him. I find the commentary hardest to follow when they use other sports metaphors in their hockey commentary.

Do Vancouver homes have bomb shelters? I think people are going to need them tonight after the 'nucks lose and civilization collapses.Maybe it doesn't translate well to my tiny computer screen, but shouldn't the audience be more batshit crazy with excitement? Shouldn't giant, beer-bellied grown men be overcome by hysteria in the aisles? Shouldn't they be weeping with joy just for being this close to a Cup? Or, like me, have they already given up?

Did that Bruin dude just squirt "home" water on the ice? Surely they aren't allowed just to pour water on the ice?

Bruins are leading by 2 now. I'm starting to get tired, I probably won't last much longer. The Bruins seem good - why didn't they win this series before now? Although, it looks like the Canucks are trying now. Not that it's going to matter, the Bruins are leading by 3 now...

The hockey players want to run,they want to hide, they want to tear down the walls that hold them inside

2011-06-15T21:32:00.000-03:00

I'm watching The Game. Part of it, at least. They played U2 right at the beginning and got my attention. It's already 9pm here and dangerously close to my bedtime, so I might not watch the whole thing. I'm moving on Saturday and I've already packed my TV, so I have to stream the game online. Not ideal, but so far there hasn't been any skipping, so it might work out. Oz, I was going to call you but my phone isn't working. Based on what you've taught me about the Canucks, I fully expect them to lose.

I should be honest. I'm not even watching the game. I'm listening to it while I type this, and check my email, and catch up on my favourite blogs, and look at new releases on Amazon (new Elizabeth Hay!). But listening to it is useless when you don't know any of the characters names. I only know Maxime Lapierre, and I'm supposed to hate him because my BFF said he's an ass. This would make much more sense if I was actually watching. Maybe I'll try that for awhile...

Awww! Puppy!

2011-06-09T20:07:00.000-03:00

I think this is making the Facebook rounds, so you might have already seen it, but I would be remiss if I didn't share.

"I'm angry. Waste always makes me angry, and that's what all this is, sheer waste." -Rhett Butler

2011-06-01T07:12:00.000-03:00

Granted, Rhett was talking about the civil war, but the sentiment still applies. A friend forwarded me an email about Fish Fight, a campaign to reform the EU's fishing policies with respect to discarding. The campaign seems to be fuelled by the desire to not waste so much tasty, tasty food - and you can probably guess how well that sits with me. But, anything that ultimately helps the fish has to be trumpeted.You can watch their promotional video here.

And you thought it couldn't be done

2011-05-27T17:12:00.000-03:00

I give you Sharks in A Supermarket:

Suddenly it all makes sense

2011-05-27T07:23:00.000-03:00

I've been contemplating this cross-Canada craptastic spring weather. There was an interview with one of the Slave Lake residents saying that they're stuck doing nothing and the rest of Canada is "enjoying spring." I'd like to reassure her that no one I know is "enjoying" spring. I think "enduring" is more the right word.

There was this concept in high school English that I never quite got - but it was that thing when the weather mimics the tone of the book. Like, if the characters are depressed, it will be raining outside. I don't think it was pathetic fallacy...Kimm, you probably still have your notes. Look that up for me, would ya?

Temporarily forgetting all the science I know, I think that is what's happening in Canada. I think the weather is reflecting the moods of our people. I only came up with this theory in the shower this morning, so it's not fully formed yet. But it's what I'm going with. Refute away. If you can.

Happy 2-4!

2011-05-23T20:53:00.000-03:00

Spring has almost come to Halifax. Almost, but not quite. It stopped raining for a couple of days, and the sun came out today. It was nice enough to sit outside and read, as long as I sat in direct sunlight, and out of the wind, and wore long sleeves. But it wasn't warm. By now, it should be warm. And there's more rain in the forecast. Rain all week. Crappiest. Spring. Ever.

Yesterday a group of us went hiking. It was supposed to be sunny, but it was overcast and about 9oC. Some of us were wearing mittens and toques on the hike. Crappiest. Spring. Ever. But it was a great hike. None of us had been there before, but it's a large trail system less than 30 minutes outside the city. It was very well marked and had some really nice vistas. We only did about 9km and there's plenty more of the trail left for us to explore on another day.

And changing topics completely: is anyone out there still watching Bones? Because holy crap, WTF? What a horrible, stupid, Chris Carter-y thing to do.

Good luck in The Rapture, y'all

2011-05-20T21:43:00.001-03:00

I don't expect to be taken to Heaven tomorrow, but if you do let me know and I'll take care of your pets for free (and, if I'm begin honest, I'll also probably raid your fridge and help myself to any good books or DVDs you may have. What do you expect? I am a heathen after all).

Dear America,

2011-05-03T07:10:00.000-03:00

I'm sorry I was so hard on you in 2004. If there's any such thing as karma, I think we're experiencing it now.

And here we go

2011-05-02T21:20:00.010-03:00

9:16pm
I haven't actually looked at any results yet, if there are any. I haven't sufficiently braced myself.

9:25
Wow. My riding went NDP, and historically it's very strongly Liberal. However, Conservatives are up two seats in the maritimes.

9:26
MacKay won his riding, but that's no surprise. Creepy: CTV has head shots of the party leaders, but they aren't still photos, it looks like video clips of their heads, so the images hover and move a little and it's awful. I think I remember them using this method for the Superbowl or something.

9:37
They're talking about bin Laden. Is anyone else bothered that he was just living in the suburbs?

9:40
Conservatives shut out of Newfoundland. Why aren't we all moving there? CTV has lots of screens to show the results on. The guy keeps saying "and if you follow me over to this screen..." and he's got a whole other infographic to share.

9:49
I do wonder what the turnout is going to be for this thing.

10:26
Ugh. Stop writing on the screens. What's happening over at CTV? Boo - refined results. But still lots to come in, and they're saying 11:30 over and over, but I'll probably be in bed by then. Election results were so much easier to stay up for when I lived in Edmonton.

10:32
Ignatieff is so fired. I wonder if Justin Trudeau is old enough to be party leader yet? I find the preliminary results are so stressful. Oh, no. They're saying that Justin Trudeau might not win. And Stephane Dion still has a riding? I did not know.

10:40
Peter Mansbridge is promising us a wild ride. Still, the urge to cry is already building in me.

10:44
The CBC "decision desk" just called the election for the Conservatives - but they aren't saying minority or majority.

10:47
(desolate silence)

10:50
The adult education center that I volunteer with had a mock election. It was meant to get the students excited about the election, and also to let them know what to expect at the polls and how to vote. I think some of them had never voted. They emailed the results out:

NDP: 50%
Green: 22.2%
Liberal: 19.4%
Conservative: 8.3%

If only.

10:58
This is where I go to bed. Conservative majority with NDP opposition. Good luck May!