Overheard at World Youth Day:

“These chairs are for pilgrims who want to go to confession, and therefore I have a choice between their souls and your asses. SO THE CHAIRS GO BACK!”

- My friend Tom (a Catholic priest), to a bunch of Parisians who wanted to sit on chairs rather than on the floor (like 19 980 other pilgrims), and so were stealing chairs from confessionals.

Recently I rented a documentary on swing (part of that award-winning PBS Jazz miniseries), and some old guy said, “whatever music you were listening to when you were 14 or 15 years old, stays with you forever”.

Well, I’m listening to 80s music right now, something I hate to love. Eye of the Tiger reminds me of going to see Rocky III (A fighter. A lover. A legend.) with my cousin. Over and over. Pour Some Sugar on Me, a male stripper who did a show at my Cegep. If You Leave, my pink prom dress (God!). Love in an Elevator, my best friend’s older brother, who was 18, and sooo cool. Tainted Love, the high school dances chaperoned by my parents (can you say style cramping?). Take on Me, my first concert. I was actually wearing royal blue corduroys and a checkered shirt in primary colors. No, I wasn’t retarded.

Favorite 80s tunes? Memories?

Recently, Treefen asked me in a comment what I mean when I describe myself as a disillusioned environmentalist. Although I’ve thought about the environment a lot, I’m not done thinking about it, so my current position is still full of contradictions. However you asked, so here goes.

My father raised me to be very outdoorsy, and I grew up very much a tree-hugger. I started a neighborhood ecology club at age 9. At age 20, I organized a clean-up day for an abandoned field in my town. The mayor showed up, and there was much rejoicing.

I think the problem with my attitude back then was that I eventually wanted things to be not better, but perfect. I was hoping we’d clean everything up (atmosphere and lithosphere), invent completely green technologies that would maintain the ecosystem in a constantly balanced and self-replenishing state. Eventually, we’d only use energy and resources that are completely sustainable.

Well that’s nice.

But then in university, I started a degree in Ecology, and that’s when it happened. I became keenly aware of exactly how dire the planet’s situation is, and how my idea of ecological perfection could never realistically be. It was like being placed in the total perspective vortex. I realized that even if everyone in the world instantly became enviro-conscious, we could probably only slightly slow the decline.

Now, this is where I come off sounding horrible. The urgency of the situation didn’t increase my motivation, but rather I started thinking that all this time I’d been cleaning up after everyone else, but that nobody cared, or cared enough, for it to make any sort of significant difference. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to spend my life fighting a losing battle, feeling unhappy, desperate, angry, frustrated at everyone else for happily consuming, but eventually wasting my breath.

So I switched programs from Ecology to Biology. And my advisor’s exact words were “Shame on you”.

Am I totally anti-environment? Of course not. But right now I’m just doing the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle thing in my own life, cleaning up after myself, trying to minimize my personal contribution to the problem. But I’m not comfortable with this. It’s not enough.

I’m still trying to find a comfortable position and level of involvement in the matter. I’m wrestling with the fact that the more involved I am, the more frustrated I become with the situation. Being this little involved doesn’t feel right either. So I’m strangely schizophrenic on the issue.

Someone asked me a year ago, if I was stranded on a desert planet with 100 children, and had to help them establish a new society, what would I teach them? Truth first, but then respect for nature, humility towards the animals and plants they eat, the ground they tread.

I wish we could start over.

Today at lunch, I went for sausages and beer with some colleagues. I recognized the waiter.

He used to be the manager of a bar where I worked as a waitress ten years ago. Back then he must have been 25 years old. And here we are ten years later, I’m in a business suit, and he’s waiting on me, only a few blocks away from where we used to work together. The strange thing is, I was very embarrassed and tried to look away to avoid being recognized.

Why is that?

Fellow Montrealers! I’m looking for a bigger apartment. At least a 5 1/2, at most 1000$/month, reasonably close to a metro (Plateau and NDG much preferred), available anytime between September 1st and the end of the year.

I have excellent references as a tenant. If you hear of anything (apartments, good places to look, etc), please let me know… Thanks!

Went out for noodles and drinks (not in that order) with Bill and her beau, Paul and his friends. Left them at 10-ish to go to swing practice, but went home and collapsed.

Probably should have caught the movie.

It had to happen… Is my blog hot or not?

(thanks Dave)

The other night, I put on some water for boiling (no, I don’t only cook pasta) and sat down to blog. About 90 minutes later, I walk into the kitchen and find that all the water’s evaporated and the pot itself is now cooking. I take it off the bright hot burner (the mark of which is now permanently embedded in the defunct pot), and hear it popping and cracking angrily as it cools down.

Is blog-induced property damage the first sign of addiction? What are you guys doing to me?

Granted, this isn’t as bad as the time I was racing home to catch the X-Files and had a slight fenderbender. It was an episode I’d already seen, and I was taping it…

Wow, things are incredibly slow all over the Montreal blogging scene today, compared to the post-pissup comment extravaganza of yesterday…

Anyway, so it’s lunchtime and we were just discussing “weird places to meet chicks/guys”, which led to the conclusion that people normally meet in pretty normal places (parties, bars, work, school).

This in turn led to a debate about whether or not we’d ever place or respond to personal ads. On the one hand, as perfect as someone seems in an ad, you always have to wonder why they had to place an ad if they’re so bloody wonderful. On the other hand, I’ve personally known very attractive people who have placed ads, so they’re not all duds by far. On the third hand (whatever), I’ve never known any couples who got together that way…

So what of it? Have you ever placed? Responded? With what degree of success or disaster? Would you ever? What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever met someone you subsequently dated?

Yes, church qualifies as weird.

For some reason, I think this is kinda cool.