Oh, just one more:

From Engrish.

I spent the last two days teaching in St-Hyacinthe. The frequent change of scenery is one of the best things about this job, even if I’m trading Montreal for St-Hyacinthe. Monday, Shawinigan, Tuesday, Trois-Rivières. Woot! The fun never stops!

On top of not being around a computer much these days, and being extremely busy with actual work when I am, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much to blog home about.

What do you think? Should one try to blog when they don’t have anything interesting to say? I’ve often seen bloggers say that they try to be entertaining, and apologize when they aren’t, and that usually draws replies like “you should blog for yourself, not others”. I disagree. If someone is writing for him or herself, why do it online at all?

1. If you had the chance to meet someone you’ve never met, from the past or present, who would it be?
Where do I start? Well, I often think about how cool it would be to show Jane Austen around our century, and to tell her about how relationships tend to work nowadays. I’d also really like to show her the movie adaptations of her novels.
Other than that, it would be cool to talk to Jesus Christ and Leonardo Da Vinci.

2. If you had to live in a different century, past or future, which would it be?
Hm. I don’t think any past century would really be a good place for an independent woman, unless I was wealthy enough in that century to be independent. I’d like to see the next century. 22nd.

3. If you had to move anywhere else on Earth, where would it be?
Anywhere? Somewhere near Parc Lafontaine. Outside the province? Ottawa. Outside the country? Scandinavia or somewhere along the French Riviera.

4. If you had to be a fictional character, who would it be?
Leeloo, from the Fifth Element. I could do with being hot and omnipotent.

5. If you had to live with having someone else’s face as your own for the rest of your life, whose would it be?
It would be strange to be something else than a brunette, so it would be a brunette. And why not someone beautiful? Bjork, or Natalie Portman.

Brought to you by the Friday Five.

From Furry Friends of Fine.

So we wussed out last night. Bought the tickets to The Pianist, and decided we were really not in a mood to be able to handle a two-and-a-half-hour movie about the Holocaust. So we got our money back. Perhaps when our spirits are higher, lighter, we’ll go.

Instead, we went to the video store intent on renting the lightest, stupidest, funniest movies we could think of. The funniest movies I’ve ever seen are Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and South Park: The Movie. The former we’d recently seen, and the latter was unfortunately out. We ended up with The Naked Gun, American Pie (which I’ve never seen), A Fish Called Wanda and a The Great Dictator (a Chaplin movie). We watched The Naked Gun and it worked. With three more funny movies to go, it’s going to be a weekend of escapism.

What’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?

Not that it surprised me any, but I’m feeling more than a little down today, that the world is now at war. Something about the expression “Gulf War II” sounds odd to me, but I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s that I actually remember GW I.

Tonight I’m seeing the last of the five movies nominated for Best Picture, namely The Pianist. This is the story of a man who survives the Holocaust by living in the ruins of Warsaw. My ex left the book at my place a few weeks ago and T’s been reading it, pausing from time to time to tell me how rough the story is. I’ve consequently been putting off seeing it. I’m also feeling that way about City of God, a tough movie about life in the streets of Rio. Paul called it the “most violent movie he’d ever seen”.

Most of the time I feel completely justified in avoiding violent movies. They stay with me, they make me feel bad, so why bother? I so could have lived without seeing Reservoir Dogs. But I think some true stories absolutely need to be told and heard. Maybe now more than ever, it’s important that we have the courage to face the horrors of which humankind is capable. One could argue that nowadays you don’t need a movie to show you that, but that’s not my point.

I think The Pianist will be a good movie, but hard to watch. I don’t look forward to it, and frankly, I don’t think I would have seen it had it not been nominated. But the sad truth is, this is a part of humanity.

I do, however, take heart in the fact that enlightened people everywhere are uniting in protest against the stupidity that’s going on right now. I don’t know about you, but I find myself feeling more patient and understanding towards others in this time of war. I had the same reaction after 9/11. Maybe I just need to feel that we’re not all bad. We’re not, right?

The SPCA doesn’t receive any government help. All of its 3.7M$ budget comes from donations. With the number of animals they have to care for each year, that translates into 32 cents per animal per day. They receive 30-40 complaints per day about cruelty to animals in Montreal. There are only 3 investigators to look into them. Quebec has 8 animal cruelty inspectors, while Ontario has 247. Even when they do find evidence of cruelty, there is insufficient legislation here to get it to stop.

I think when I adopt my pet there in the next month or so, I think I’ll volunteer some time as well.

And start boring you with my stupid hunt for a cheap fridge, stove, washer, dryer and dishwasher.

I’ve found an apartment.

Courtesy of the wonderfully bizarre Dr. Wank (asterisks are mine)
To: The Gang
Subject: Screwing your way to Pluto

In the hung-over aftermath of Gord’s party on Sunday, Jason asked whether the sum of the distance covered by all the thrusting of all the human sex in history has equalled the distance to Pluto. Or to put it more succinctly “I wonder if we’ve f*cked our way to Pluto”. I can’t resist such a “fun with math” challenge, so…

Mean distance to Pluto = 6 000 000 000 km, approximately.
Number of humans ever to have lived = 30 000 000 000, approximately.

From which we get the figure that each human being would have had to engage in .2 km of thrusting, or 200 meters. Assuming the average thrust is 5 cm (yes, yes, there are longer ones, but also a lot of those short grinding ones), that’s 4000 thrusts you have to do in your lifetime to get your quota. Assuming a very modest 20 years of sexual activity on average, with just 20 sex acts per year on average, and just 10 thrusts per sex act (come on, you’ve all been there!), you’ve already done your part. Most of us go way over that.

Mind you, this calculation kind of cheats, in that it gives both partners credit for each thrust. If we want to be fair, we might count each thrust only once for each couple. I won’t get into the debate about “who’s doing all the work”. Either way, this halves our estimate, raising the need for each individual to 8000 thrusts. Still pretty easy to get to: 20 years, 20 acts and a lofty 20 thrusts per act gets you there.

So in conclusion I think we can safely say that we’ve f*cked our way to Pluto. Indeed, we’re getting deeper and deeper into interstellar space each day. And she’s loving it, I can tell.

(lsc’s note: why couldn’t we have problems like that in high school math? oh, and I love my friends)