Classmate jnadiger is always asking other classmate maikopunk to knit something for him. But his choices always tend towards the untoward and lurid. However, something like this

is much more suitable. You can find out more about knit robots here.

My mom wants me to launch an email assault on Brita because she's had issues with their h2o filters. The last time she changed the filter in her jug, a huge black cloud of charcoal dust washed out of the filter like ink from a scared squid (think Finding Nemo, people). She's worried not about the people in the house, but the dog. She's giving him filtered water and is trying to coerce my dad into trying the partly tainted water from the Brita. Hmmm, that's a very subtle revelation of order of importance: dog first, husband second. My dad has now become the official taster for the pooch.

God bless him if the dog suddenly doesn't want to eat his dog food.

Boxing Day 2005

I spent the bulk (not girth) of the day messing around on the computer, reinstating it to all its electronic glory for the upcoming semester. Actually, it should be better than before because my geek cousin managed to figure out how the official Geeks at Best Buy fucked up their job last year. I had a new hard drive installed last year, and had asked that the old hard drive be made a slave to the new one so I could use it strickly for storage. The wondergeeks did nothing of the sort, so my cousin, hypothetically slapped in the face with the challenge/glove, decided to take on the computer reformatting over Christmas Eve/Day. I'm sure his wife was thrilled. However, I will search out some exotic beers (as so outlined in the newspaper) for repayment.

While shuffling files back and forth, I've been listening to Green Day, American Idiot, which my other cousin had so aptly purchased. We had been driving around the other day when a GD song came on the radio. The conversation consisted of: "Good song." "Yeah." "Like all the other songs I've heard from that cd." "Yeah, I've been thinking of picking it up." And voila, it was gifted to me (with the unspoken agreement to "share"). But can I say that I believe that I'm a huge fan. Not one song has disappointed, and in fact, I've been hooked by all. On first listening! That is a freakin' miracle considering that it usually takes a couple/few listens of even my favourite artists to get my ear bent in their direction. Who knows? Maybe I'm punk. No, I doubt it. But this cd is kick-ass.

I've finally popped up in a classmates dream, and I'll take the part however unsordid and non-scandolous it is. But my role as "mysterious-homework-doer-while-waiting-to-perform-in-a-talent-show" person has given me pause: Am I that boring that people dream of me doing homework? Hmmm, new strategies for the New Year may be appropriate. I'll have to think about it.

Meanwhile, I'm going with cd-giving cousin and a friend to Seattle on Wednesday. Considering that I have little money, this might be a painful trip (all that cheap American candy!). Maybe I'll go into debt for exotic candy canes and high-class chocolate chips. Wow, that sounds as exciting as homework. I'll have to work on that.

Strangeness

Although I'm sure that there are obvious links in the types of books I choose to read, sometimes I'm really surprised by the subtle details which seem to be echoed from one book to the next.

I just finished reading this book , which I found really interesting. I'm not sure how I would have read it if I hadn't taken Diana's class on rhetoric and writing this semester. The premise is very complex: the "literary world is an alternate universe to our very own, in which the people who play the characters in books live normal lives until someone reads their book, which is when they have to perform their roles". There are lots of clever, complex details based on principles of spelling, grammar, and writing (including the notion of the "litera-sea", which is where all the letters float, just waiting for fishermen to pluck them out to spell words). The main character, Thursday Next, goes into the literary world to hide. Of the several cross-over literary details, there is a sub-plot involving Wuthering Heights.

I picked up this book from the bargain books pile from Chapters, and was intrigued by the premise, and I have to say that I really enjoyed the cleverness and inventiveness of the story. It's surreal and smart.

My next book, by a reliable, favourite author, also is about the literary world. In this story, the main character has the ability to "lift" literary characters from their books into the real world. At the beginning, she accidentally releases Kurtz from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". I've only just begun reading this book, but I have already encountered a significant Wuthering Heights reference.

Isn't that weird?

And for an unabashed carnivore, maikopunk, here's a recipe (lenghty) for a guaranteed heart-stopper by 400 pound cajun Chef Paul Prudhomme: http://www.chefpaul.com/turducken.html. It's "turducken", which is a turkey stuffed with a duck which is stuffed with a chicken. Yum! Here's a photo :







It's a rainbow of meaty goodness. Merry Heart Attack and a Happy New Ventricle!

Love letter to my vegan friends:

It's that time of year, and I have a confession to make: I can cook. Not only am I interested in food (those who know me can plainly see that), but I'm also interested in cooking. Also, as we got older, my sister and I decided that it was important to learn the family "secrets" and also to help out my mom, who traditionally has dinner on the 24th.

That said, I'm going to share a favourite recipe with my vegan friends, meladuck and vulture, because it is good, simple, tasty, and veggie.

Spicy Red Cabbage with Apples:
Ingredients:
4 packed cups shredded red cabbage (1 lb)
1/2 cup water
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, thinly sliced
1/4 cup red-wine vinegar (because I know that you have well-stocked pantries)
1 1/4 tsp salt (that's one and one quarter tablespoons)
1/4 cup sugar
4 whole cloves
3 tbsp unsalted butter

Method:
Mix the whole bunch in a Dutch oven. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium. Cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 to 25 minutes, until cabbage is knife-tender. Enjoy.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Thanks to jnadiger via meladuck, I will now be known as "Buttons Sugar-socks", which is my elf name. Now all will be well.

Find your own elf name here: http://www.jokesunlimited.com/christmas_elf_name.php

The coolest bridge ever. It is in London's Canary Wharf district, and is a pedestrian bridge which crosses an inlet to the Marks and Spencer headquarters.

I'm trying something new, with the help of jnadiger. If it doesn't work, bug him.

Inspired by meladuck's art postings, I have decided to add some of my own. I was looking for a photo of the rolling bridge in London, and found these manipulated pix, which look like something that Van Gogh would have done.

I am ashamed. It has been so long since my last entry. It has been at least a week. That's the joy of working in the service sector while going to school...as soon as they hear that you are free, the work your ass until you're near tears. So I've been smiling and wishing people (about whom I care very little) a very Merry Christmas because, you know, I'm miserable, and I'm not going to fall prey to political correctness. It's Christmas, damn it, and I'm not going to ignore it for anyone.

I've been blogless since school ended, but I've noticed that my friends have been happily (perhaps) blogging away. I envy their dedication and work ethic. Once I no longer had to write anything, I stopped completely. But then I read posts from friends such as: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jnadiger/, http://www.livejournal.com/users/meladuck/, http://www.livejournal.com/users/vulture_/, and http://maikopunk.blogspot.com/, who have all been faithful to the blogging ethic, and I was inspired to return to the blogosphere.

Now, do I have anything to say?

Not really. I'm spending my time today being really tired after working several shifts in a row, culminating in two 10-hour shifts which left me anything but merry. But it's not like I had much of a chance of being merry, anyhow. I was supposed to go carolling with a classmate, who had invited a few people from school, but the combination of my weariness and bah-humbug-ness just isn't enough inspiration for me to go. Apparently, the houses in her neighbourhood put on quite a show...perhaps I'll catch it at another time.

My cousin has surprisingly arrived from Toronto, so I suppose that I should do some visiting. Other than that, I'm wasting time saving all my saveables onto cds, as I'm going to reformat my harddrive over the holidays. Nothing says Christmas like wiping your harddrive clean and starting over (perhaps it's more of a New Year's Eve thing?). Also, the ever-loving parents bought me a new monitor for Christmas, so I want to get the reformatting done before I set that up. I might have just exposed my ignorance...perhaps it doesn't matter if I set up the monitor before or after, but that's my plan. Oh, and I'm compiling my long list of email spams; I'm collecting all the random subjects to make some sort of dadaist poem/series of haikus. You really can't miss with lines such as: "on go my subordinate speedwell" and "is bring he oil microwave".

Today is study-all-day-like-a-fiend day, which is the sequel to last night's watch-vacuous-tv-until-you-fall-asleep night. I don't feel like being too introspective, so today's entry will be one I've had in reserves for a couple of days. It goes like this:

What is wrong with some people who have so much snot in their heads that they can casually tilt forward at the waist, shove their finger onto one side of their nose like Santa Claus, and blow out a stream of snot so viscous and lengthy that I can see it from 60 yards away? Seriously, how do they do that? I couldn't do that if I had to. And I've seen it happen more times than I cared to (why, oh why do I look?), with snot streams coming from both men and women. I remember the first time I saw it happen.

It was way back in my innocent high school days. During our graduating year, some of us went to Europe on Spring Break. I can't remember where we were, somewhere in England, France, or Germany, and our grad class president (who was so classy that he ironically didn't manage to graduate) bent over some garbage can somewhere and blew out a snot stream. The best part was that 90% of the group had worn their school jackets on the trip, so there was a very easy way to determine who was part of the snot-spraying group. Luckily, I had decided that the jackets (black and white) were really ugly, and I hadn't purchased one. Therefore, I could argue that I wasn't part of the black and white, snot-spraying Canadians who were leaving a trail of slime and destruction in their wake.

Speaking of waking, I was woken on the first night by said class president, who had ripped the hotel's fire extinguisher off the wall and was dangling it out my hotel room window trying to scare some of the girls who were in the room below. However, they weren't in that room, so we got in trouble. If I remember correctly, we had made our tour guide cry more than once during that trip, and she apparently quit after dropping us off at the airport.

But back to the snot: who has that much snot it their heads, and why? Is there any room left for brains, or are their heads filled with snot?

I hope to keep this one short. We had a surprisingly enjoyable day today at school, although I was a little unnerved by a favourite teacher's revelation about the final exam. For some reason, I had always thought of her as extremely fair, but now I have my doubts. When talking about the final exam which is happening on Friday, she said that she wanted a mean for the class of 68%. I was a little surprised by that. That is quite low, as far as I'm concerned. I'm all for instructors being fair, but I don't like talk like that. It sounds like she wants to fail some people, which I think is unreasonable. Sure, it's also unfair to have everyone lumped up near the top, but there's no need to be mean. And then, when my group got our report back, I got the impression that she took a mark off just because she didn't want anyone to get a perfect score. Her comments were extremely positive, and then it seemed like she took off a random mark. I can't complain because we did extremely well, but still...marks should be given for the work that is done. Anyhow, enough bitching.

The rest of her class was a waste of time. We practiced interviewing skills, which sucks, and she knows it. She always prefaces the content which Maureen makes her include by saying "Maureen wants me to do this" and then kind of rolling her eyes ever so slightly. Too funny.

And Sandra's class, though unexpectedly long, was enjoyable, too. I soon realized that I had sort of slacked with her whole research project, and the fact that I chose something easy to work on all semester somehow meant that my "pitch" at the end was boring. There wasn't enough controversy in my dyslexia topic for an interesting angle, although I guess that there's still time to come up with one. Once again, the rebel Ed surprised most of us (I think) by covering the very intriguing topic of insectiside spraying on commercial airlines. I think that he has a winner, there, and so did Sandra. And James, dear James, is too clever for words, and decided to pitch his story to children's science magazines, which I think was a brilliant idea. I'm so jealous of his cleverness.

Oh, and I got most of the class interested in James Lileks. Now I see that he has a new book out which I'll have to scour the book stores for. But that will have to wait until after exams.

And now, it's time to study Gucker.

One day down, four more to go. And then it's back to the grind of having to be pleasant to drunken assholes during Winter Celebration parties. Who are we kidding? They're Christmas parties, for Christ's sake. Nothing takes the fun out of Christmas parties than having to work them, and believe me, I've worked so many that I make the Grinch look downright jolly. (Oh, why did they have to attempt to make a live-action version? it was so misguided, especially the prosthetic schnozzes they put on all those poor actors. I had nightmares for weeks.)

So we have just two more days of classes, one study day, and then two of the most polar-opposite final exams: research methods and Maureen's class (I have no idea how to classify it, except the horror of grammar plus some essay questions). Wrapping up this week will be interesting. We've already started the roller-coaster of emotions as final papers are being handed back. Luckily, I did stunningly well in the class that really counts, and sort of well in the class which is just a waste of time. Steven decided that I didn't do enough analysis, even though I did 13 pages of analysis with liberal sprinklings of text references. Still, our classmate Alex managed to squeeze in more text references today just in his classroom comments than I put in my 13 page paper. That kid has some talent.

I latently apologized to maikopunk for not picking up her phone call on Saturday night when she was wondering where we were. She was waiting at the donut place, and we were late getting there because, once again, I couldn't remember where I parked my car. I'll have to invest in a GPS just so I can find it. Anyhow, I wanted to assure her that I wasn't ignoring her. I had just mistakingly shut my ringer off instead of setting it on "vibrate". From now on, I'll double-check. No hard feelings, I hope.

And now, it's time to go back to the grammar. I'm seriously considering ditching the text book and using School House Rocks as my study guide. Thanks to meladuck for finding the link. If you listen carefully during Maureen's final, you might hear me humming.

Why, oh why, was I in such a miserable mood this morning after a delightful night of grammar wrangling?

I met the classmates at The Grind, an all-night coffee place/gallery/free place to snog, and we opened our books, and we talked obliquely about grammar, and we talked. At the end of 3.5 hours, a couple of us had realized that the most important thing we had learned (besides the clarity derived Sara's persistent unravelling of the mess of appositives, antecedents, and predicate nominatives...thank you, Sara) is that there is a lot that we don't know. But we had some fun while finding that out, so...yay? (or yee-HAW!)

After we were "done", we moved the grammar rodeo down the street to Duffins' Donuts (is that the right name?). This is, I believe, the apparent site of Angie's food poisoning. So far, I have remained undamaged. But if I did suffer ill-effects from a tainted donut, it would serve me right for cracking James' clever code (make circle with thumbs and index fingers), and inviting myself and the others.

But this morning, when I took the ever-charming dog for a walk, I was immediately incensed by the reckless, selfish drivers who were speeding past us through the flurries and along the black ice-covered roads. Sure, it's an open stretch of straightaway, but there's a park, and plenty of houses, and lots of people out walking their dogs and children (the law: both must be on a leash at all times). So I had to refrain from shaking my fist and yelling at the careless drivers (most of whom had the new driver "N" on the back of their cars), and instead enjoy the pleasure of my face freezing in the blowing snow while waiting for my dog to find the most correct spot to make his daily deposit. He loves the snow and the cold, and is in no hurry to get back inside to get warm. On the other hand (or end of the leash), I'd rather be studying grammar than feeling my face harden. And believe me, grammar is no walk in the park on a summer day, either.

I guess that I'd better get back to it.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.