Spit Out Your Coffee Funny!

I was just reading Richard Dawkins' thus far excellent The God Delusion when I came to this passage:

The journalist Andrew Mueller is of the opinion that pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith.'

It was at the point of reading the word Keith and realising the absurdity of a lobster named Keith, or the unlikely pairing of an Esmerelda with a Keith that I had just taken a sip of too hot espresso. The espresso almost made it's way out of my mouth and onto the pages of the book, but I managed to hold it in, though I burnt my tongue in the process. But what was I to do? It was a library book.

The Language of World Domination...

I saw Ken Loach's excellent film The Wind that Shakes the Barley last night, which I highly recommend. There was a song in the film that a group of republican soldiers were singing as they walked through the mist or fog on their way to an ambush which was also used in the final credits. The tune was vaguely familiar and the words were in, I assumed, Irish Gaelic, though a few of them sounded recognizable as English words. The song got into my head, so when I got home I started searching on the Internet and found out this was the song in question:

Óró, Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile

I also found it written as:

Ó Ró Sé Do Bheata Bhaile
Óró, 's É Do Bheatha 'Bhaile
Oro Se Do Bheatha Abhaile
Oró sea de bheatha bhaile

And so on and so forth, etc. Anyone care to try pronouncing that?

Now, I understand there are often different ways of transcribing a language into a non-native alphabet, what with varying dialects/pronunciations etc., and it can take time and effort to get there, but if you are going to adopt that non-native alphabet (whether voluntarily or by conquest), get there you should. All of the Germanic languages that once used runic scripts now use the Latin or Roman alphabet, (Icelandic excluded, they're doing their own thing). It probably took a while for those languages to be, if not understood by others, at least legible to others. Which brings me to my point. In the way that the Welsh never got anywhere because of their ridiculous coracles, the Irish were never really able to dominate the world in any way, because they were entirely incomprehensible. Sure the language has a nice lilt to it and it looks cool and I'll even go so far as to say it's useful...if it's a secret code and you don't want anyone to be able to understand a bleeding thing you've written. Or even have a clue where to begin to figure out how to understand a bleeding thing you've written. And so:


Dear Ireland,

Orthographic reform. It's time.

Sincerely,

TOGM

P.S. We'll even let you have funny symbols over and around your letters like the Swedes and the Vietnamese.

Lies!

Golden Delicious Apples. They are not particularly golden and they are certainly not delicious.

In other news that has not much to do with anything, I may have been jumping the gun a little, but I wore flip-flops for the first time this year, last night. Bring on the nice weather.

Get out of my head!

I was at a party on Saturday night, a party where people were singing karaoke. Someone was singing a Madonna song to which I knew all of the lyrics. That made me realise: I begrudge her the space in my brain that is taken up by her crappy pop songs and all of the other stupid, crappy pop songs that are in my brain, not because I choose for them to be there but because they are ubiquitous. Aarrgghhhh! Now go away.

Many Thanks!

To whomever read my blog yesterday and made the rain stop, I thank you with all of my heart. It was sunny and beautiful today.

Re: The Rain

Someone please make it stop. Now. Please. Please.

Pizza Of The Day!

I like pizza as much as Sparky likes prime numbers, which is a lot. Happy 37th muchacho!


Today's pizza has marinated tofu, spinach, tomatoes, green olives and garlic. And if you'll excuse me, I will now go eat it.

So What!

I found this video over on Parkdale Pictures and it blew me away. I've listened to the tune many times, but seeing Miles & Trane et al. perform it live makes it that much better...

Too much cold!

For some reason that I am unable to figure out my refrigerator is much, much too cold, as evidenced by:
I have it turned as low as it goes and by low I actually mean high which could be confusing. Let's say instead it is as close to cold as it can be without being off while coldest is at the other end of the dial. I've even turned the freezer down. I just don't know. All of my leafy green things, my tofu, and now my yogurt is frozen. It's too much.

In other ice related news, today being NHL trade deadline day, I freed up my morning in case any teams were trying to get in touch with me, but the deadline has passed and I've heard nothing.

Done and done!

I just finished War & Peace, all 1444 pages of it. I should celebrate with a glass of vodka. Budem zdorovy! Vast in scope, it is at times gripping and compelling, other times beautiful and heart-rending, and, not surprising considering it's length, at times just plain old long-winded. I've got to say, the most difficult part to read was the final 44 pages when rather than tie everything up with a nice little bow, our dear Count Leo decided to write an essay expounding his theories on history, historiography, and free will vs. the laws of necessity. Now that this book is done, I'm not sure what is next on my reading list; either James Joyce's Ulysses or Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy.

RRSP

I learned some very disturbing, upsetting, and let's be quite honest, distressing news today. I met with my financial advisor this afternoon. And while everything seems to be going fine, I will, sadly, very sadly, not be able to retire at 35. I'm still dealing with that shock right now. I don't know what else to say. Maybe 40?

Earthquake!

I woke up sometime early this morning to my whole room and bed shaking from an earthquake. I then fell back asleep. When I woke up again I wasn't sure if there had been an earthquake and I woke up from it or if I dreamt an earthquake and then woke up or if I dreamt both the earthquake and the waking up. I'm still not sure. I've not heard anything about it on the news or from other people which makes me think I dreamt it, but at the same time, it felt pretty real. Did anyone else notice it or was it a figment of my imagination?

Snowshoeing!

It's great how, at least for me, getting out into the cold and snow can alleviate west coast inspired S.A.D. Yesterday in Vancouver was grey, drizzly, and all around miserable, as it has been for the past while. Or at least it feels like that. Anyhow, I went snowshoeing on Cypress yesterday with the J-Mac 9000 and what should have been a crap day turned into a great one. As heavy as it was raining down here it was snowing up there. The temperature was just below zero and there was lots of fresh snow. A few times in the past while snowshoeing I've felt that as much as I liked having them I didn't really require them as the snow was already packed down but yesterday they actually felt necessary. We followed a trail up through the woods to the Upper Warming Hut which was indeed a hut but not all that warm. After a little lunch break there we continued our tour by heading a bit further up Hollyburn then through winding and hilly trails in a big loop back to the base camp. We passed a couple of lookouts but visibility was so poor we ended up looking out into a wall of fog. No matter, just being out in the snow invigorated me. And there was hot chocolate at the end.

Pizza Of The Day

Today's pizza has tomato sauce, mozzarella, jerk tofu, red peppers, mushrooms, garlic, green olives, parmesan, and, yes, capers.

An Open Letter...

...to the person that broke into my car on Wednesday evening.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I can only presume that the crack (It is the crack, isn't it? I don't want to rush to judgement.) has addled your brain somewhat, as did you really think that I would leave any items of value in my car when I left it parked at night on a fairly deserted street? As you learned, to your displeasure I imagine, I did not nor do I plan to in the future. And while I appreciate that you have numerous problems and in all likelihood are in great need of assistance and support, I would kindly ask that in the future would you please stay the fuck out of my car.

Sincerely,
Me.

P.S. Thank you for not smashing my windows or actually taking anything.

One Year Old!

One year ago today I posted my first blog entry here. That means today is my blog's first birthday. Sing for it. Does that mean my blog will be entering the terrible twos? Sometime in the next year my blog should become whiny and oppositional or whatever else is supposed to happen then. Look forward to it.

War & Peace Update!

I've just reached page one thousand. That is just over two thirds of the way through the book.

Bad Brains

I was reading an article about Ian MacKaye in Exclaim last week and since then I've been giving myself a crash refresher course in hardcore. And what I want to know is this: Bad Brains...how come no one ever made me listen to them? How come no one sat me down and said, "you need to hear this?" I always wrote them off as just another hardcore band, never knowing what I was missing. Their mix of hardcore, reggae and dub is good. Very good.

My trip to the dentist...

I went to the dentist today to have a filling that I'd had replaced a few months ago replaced yet again, as it has been bothering me for some time. I got in the chair, the dentist froze my mouth then started drilling. Now, having high-powered metal tools whirring and grinding away inside your head is never pleasant, but usually it is no more than annoying or uncomfortable, for me at least. But this time, a few minutes into the drilling excruciating pain shot up the side of my head. I raised my hand, which the dentist had told me to do if it hurt, and he stopped. For whatever reason the freezing hadn't worked as well as it ought to have, so he refroze it, waited for it to take effect, then started drilling again. But again a few minutes into the drilling it started to hurt again, not as bad as the first time, but still a lot more pain then I'd experienced in a dentist's chair before, so again I raised my hand. He then brought out the big guns, some super-duper freezing that I'd never needed before. For the most part that did the trick and the procedure continued with some painful sensitivity but nothing I couldn't take. At least he didn't charge me for it. By the end of it the back of my t-shirt was soaked with sweat from my being so tense. And now...well, now the freezing has worn off and I figure that since I needed two and a half times the regular amount of freezing, that pain that has taken over my head is two and a half times the pain of a normal filling. And don't forget, pain is exponential. I have a question...does Jameson's count as an acceptable pain-killer?

Emasculation

The best insult I've been had thrown my way in the past couple of weeks:

"You're a vegetarian? Oh, I thought you were a man."