happy birthday, canada

Monday is Canada Day. I’m off canoe-camping.

Happy long weekend, Canucks!

fuck lando calrissian

I don’t know what to think of Kevin Smith.

Watched Chasing Amy (again) last night. Despite all the yelling, I’d have to say this is my next-to-favorite of all time (after Blade Runner). This is the one movie I know of that caters to that rare demographic, the female geek, by being a chick flick that takes place in the world of comic books and sci-fi fandom. If you’re not the type to be turned on by abundant Star Wars references (cf. the title of this post), you might not share my dismeasurate enthusiasm for it, but I’d still say it’s very entertaining to most.

When I listen to the tight, entertaining dialog of Clerks and Chasing Amy, I’m reminded of how incredibly talented Kevin Smith can be. I say reminded, because what came after Amy is comparatively unfathomably bad: Dogma (saved only by the Ben and Matt dialogs), and the loathsome, revolting waste of space that is Jay and Silent Bob (not saved by the one great “Greedo shoots first” line).

When Smith wrote a few numbers of my favorite comic book, Daredevil, I didn’t even pick it up for fear that it would be an anal raping of the originals. Still, I’m the only one I know who is still holding out hope for his upcoming movie Jersey Girl. I couldn’t even get anyone to come out to see Jay and Silent Bob.

blivit

Chuck reminded me of this word today by mentioning Kurt Vonnegut. The latter coined the word blivit in his book Palm Sunday. He defines it as “two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag.”

Incidentally, blivit is also the past participle of “to become” in Swedish.

And speaking of Sweden, yesterday I was filling out an online question/answer quiz and I was stumped by the question “is there anything special about you?” Well, I think I found it, but I’m not sure it’s special in a good way.

Bibi sent me this link to the Ikea game, where you’re given strange words and have to guess what Ikea item they are. After getting a perfect score, I was told I should get out more.

An encyclopedic knowledge of the Ikea catalog is a special thing, right?

The physics of spaghetti

I wish I could understand why it is that reheated spaghetti always tastes so much better than the freshly-made stuff? It seems this is a rule that suffers absolutely no exception. But it’s not like you add anything to it except heat, so what gives? Whoever can provide a satisfactory explanation for this gets a free plate of reheated spaghetti.

The picture is of me, about five minutes from now… good night all…

work

My job in principle: travel to exciting places, teach exciting stuff to starry-eyed, admiring masses who can’t thank me enough for my brilliance and wisdom, and leave them begging for more.

My job these days: there aren’t too many courses to give in the summertime, so do other people’s work. Travel to Baltimore, spend a sunny day inside a boardroom (starting at 6 AM) doing a sales demo to recalcitrant clients who think I care if we sell this thing or not, then return home at midnight on a Friday, just late enough to have missed swing dancing. Write tech specs, desperately trying to extract information from cryptic, elusive developers.

Now you know why I’ve blogged three times already today. Okay, I’m in a pissy mood, but that’s because it’ll probably be a week before I set foot on a dance floor again. I need a fix!

two websites i like

Human Clock: I love sites that show me that not everyone is boring, and that there still are people out there who are willing to invest their time into something just for the sake of adding fun and weirdness to the world.

The Date Project: a blog that describes a guy’s adventures and tribulations in trying to find a girlfriend. A fun read.

minority report

Saw this last night. I feel a bit odd describing what my expectations were. Normally I wouldn’t have expected anything short of “revolutionary” from a Spielberg movie, but after that twelve-bucks-and-three-hours-I’ll-never-get-back fiasco called A.I., I was actually expecting nothing short of “abysmal”.

Anyway, this was neither. I’d call it thoroughly entertaining, but not really thought-provoking. Of course, not all movies have to be thought-provoking, especially summer blockbusters. But this is a movie based on a story by Philip K. Dick, directed by Spielberg, so I’m forgiving myself for expecting some quality, and for comparing it with Blade Runner.

The vision of the future that Minority Report offers is much more detailed and realistic than that of A.I., and somewhat more optimistic than that of Blade Runner. The distinction between the various classes that exists today seems exacerbated in this vision of the future. The world seems cleaner, faster and safer for the middle and upper classes, while the underbelly of society has gotten even dirtier and more menacing.

The movie centers around a pilot project wherein crimes are prevented before they occur by using precognizants to predict them. This premise is interesting and well-developed enough to sustain interest throughout the (long) movie. However, the film does not explore too many of the philosophical implications of its premise, and it quickly becomes a simple whodunnit set in a cool future.

That’s too bad, because the rest is highly satisfying, from the character development to the original action scenes, well integrated into the storytelling. The CG was a lot better composited into the live-action stuff than in, say, Spiderman or Episode 2, and I’d have to say the special FX worked well overall in this movie. Something bugged me about the “jumping from Lexus hovercraft to Lexus hovercraft” scene (that we see in the trailer), like we didn’t really get a feel for the wind or speed of the action, but compared with the other two I just mentioned, this is forgiveable.

One thing that really pissed me off, however, was the shameless amount of product placement in this movie. In almost every scene, you have a blatantly placed parade of Lexus, Gap, Aquafina, Pepsi and Ben and Jerry logos… At least it was funny to see that even in 2054, The Gap still peddles clothes that are completely plain and absolutely devoid of any personality or style.

Finally, the film scores an extra half-point with me, for including a good amount of dialog in Swedish - always a good thing.

I think from this movie I’ll have to conclude that I’m a pretty tough crowd.

Sitting in the airport a minute ago, I thought I saw someone I had known in Sweden, with whom I once had a bad date. Now that I think about it, I realize all my dates in Sweden were pretty bad ones.

I met this particular bad date at my roommate Anders’ 18th birthday party. We spoke for a few minutes in the stairs as I was leaving for another party. A few days later I’m flying out of the house in a hurry to get to class, and there he is, barking out “vill du gå på bio?” at me (want to go to a movie?).

I didn’t even recognize the guy at first. Like a deer caught in the headlights, I freeze and hear myself say Ja, okey. About fifteen seconds later, I’m thinking “what am I crazy? I need to get out of this”. It’s like I was too embarrassed and surprised to flatly reject him. I plan on getting out of it, but the next day he calls, saying he’s bought the tickets (in Sweden, going to the movies is a much bigger deal than here; there’s assigned seating, and you usually buy tickets days in advance, and it’s about 20$ a person). So I’m stuck going.

He picks me up and in the air between us, there’s that embarrassing “date feeling” that you sometimes get on an outing-with-a-member-of-the-opposite-sex-that-you-don’t-want-to-date (this most often seems to happen on business trips when you’re looking for a place to have dinner with a colleague, and end up somewhere uncomfortably romantic). As we drive to the theater he tells me he doesn’t work, isn’t looking for work, doesn’t go to school, doesn’t plan on it, he just lifts weights all day. Accordingly, we’re going to see an Arnold movie. In Swedish, of course. I so want this night to be over, right now.

We get there and to my great amusement, I notice that the two last rows in the theater are made up of two-person loveseats (with no armrest in between). Ah, you gotta love those crazy Swedes… But my amusement comes to a screeching halt when I realize that our tickets are in those rows. I want. To die.

I spend two hours in the dark, scrunched into my side of the way-too-small make-out seat. I have never - never - tried so hard not to touch someone next to me, as I did that night. When we came out, he mentioned his age, 17. It was 1999 and I was 27 at the time, but I lied and said I was about to be 30, thinking this would turn him off. It did. After a very hurried stop at Booger King (believe it), he dropped me off without ceremony and I never saw him again.

I had totally forgetten about him (and undoubtedly him about me), until I thought I saw him today.

baltimore

I just found the old archives going back to March. I wasn’t a very regular blogger, but it’s all there.

And now, I’m going to collapse in a very comfy-looking Holiday Inn bed.

a walk on the dark side

I love this city. I spent the evening having dinner and people-watching on Prince-Arthur with Iris, Gord and Dotan. Montreal is so fine in the summertime, it completely compensates for the winter.

I love my street. When I got home there were some guys I had never seen before playing some lovely guitar on the stairs. I’m leaving the window open tonight.

Dotan just got back from Israel, where a cafe was bombed two days after he had lunch there. I’m getting almost blasé about all these stories I hear from my Israeli acquaintances, like the stupidity of it all should be as obvious to them as it is to me. But it goes back to what I was writing earlier. Sadly we don’t see clearly in conflicts we’re involved in. Ironic…

And in other news, I’m preparing for my short stint in Baltimore. This trip feels a bit like a walk on the dark side of the force. The sales department where I work has been trying hard to get me to join them. This is obviously NOT tempting in the least. In my opinion, there’s just more dignity to being a teacher, at the risk of being a snob here.

But I’m going to Baltimore with them, and there I’ll be making a presentation to a potential client. I kind of had to accept, as things in the training department were rather slow, and frankly I’d prefer almost anything to sitting in a cubicle thinking up new disasters to use in class. So I accepted - this one time - on the condition that I be allowed to tell the whole truth exactly as it is. They might stop bugging me if I really suck at the job anyway.

Well, with the return of new training upcoming assignments, I am assured that this time on the dark side will be very short, and this is a very good thing.