I'm at school now and kind of tired because I've been here all day but I can't go home because there is no bus until 9:08. So here I am stuffing this wordpad full of mumbles. I'm mostly going to be living at this library for the next month because I have about 50 pages worth of essays to write during that time. I'm pretty optimistic about them though. I'm actually doing research for once, as opposed to just tacking on pseudo-research at the end. I even ordered an inter-library loan for the first time, whatever that is. I sort of hope it doesn't arrive on time so that I don't have to pay the 2 dollars. Haha, just kidding. Actually I'm not.

I am probably moving again on April 1st or May 1st since the owners of some house I live in are going to sell the house (without me in it). 2 of my roomates moved already and Masao my last roomate is working in Mackenzie for 9 days. So I am going to have to face the hauntedness of the house myself. The most haunted room had 3 ferrets living in it for a few months, so hopefully they dehaunted it.

Hung out with Rock on weekend. Nat and Shenelle brought icecream cake over. Icecream cake is better than normal cake. They also built Rock a banapple because she is anti-dairy. How nice is that? 27. The answer is that it has a niceness of 27. If you don't know what a Banapple is it's kind of like an Applanana, or any other word you might care to make up, like if you add a lemon and a tiny umbrella it becomes an Umbrapplananamon.

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Boo. Boo-oooooo-oo. I'm disappointed but not entirely surprised that Canada lost. I don't really want to talk about it but I can't help myself. Canada never really gelled or adjusted to the international game at any point in the tournament. They didn't skate and they couldn't score for their lives. Being shutout 3 times is just ridiculous considering the players they had. It doesn't matter how much bad luck you have (e.g. the disallowed goal today). They played good for stretches, but that's not enough when there are 7 contending teams. I don't really mind that they lost today. Russia was terrific and they deserved to win. It's just lame how weak Canada was overall. Even if they had all the right players and had been focused and playing as team there is still no guarantee that they would have won today. You have to execute and play mistake free hockey in a tournament format like this. But mistake free hockey is an impossibility for any team with Todd Bertuzzi on it. Although you can't pin the loss on one person, since so many stars were invisible, Bertuzzi's trademark dumb penalty was one of the biggest reasons they lost today. Dumb, dumb, stupid, stupid, dumb. I've long been a supporter of his, but you only get so many chances. I hope he never plays for Canada again and that Vancouver trades him.

On the bright side, Mar-tan Brodeur was great today, Canada won a crapload of other medals today, and the women's team won gold a few days ago. Reverse boo.

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Holy crap Canada and Russia in the quarterfinals tomorrow! The awesomeness is too much. I have an early class which ends at 11:20 so I can just watch it on the big screen in the cafeteria. I declare my 1pm class cancelled, at least for me. Hockey>Survey of English Lit.

Russia will be tough because they possess goodness in the form of offensive prowess...ness. They have scored the most goals in the tournament so far. Fortunately they have also been sort of inconsistent (like a certain Northern North American Country which will remain unnamed). They lost to Slovakia and only a 1-0 win against Kazakstan. Good grief Charlie Brown. Anyway, it should be a good game since Russia plays entertaining hockey, unlike the idiotic trapfestivals that Finland and Switzerland try to pass off as hockey. Sewiously dudes. Not cool.

Anyway, Go Canada Og!

In other non-news, I stayed late at school to finish an essay and then walked home between 1:15 and 2:30am this morning. It was pretty warm and dry. I jaywalked across Central because there were no cars nearby, but then the 5-0 pulled up and I thought they might give me a warning, but they didn't. Sometimes exuding geekiness is good because it tells policemen that you are not a criminal. I like walking at night.

I got a 79 on my midterm. Normally I would say that is balls. But I was pretty happy with that since I ran out of time at the end of the exam because I took a short nap at the beginning. Did I mention I'm really good at time management? Hey! And Roxanne got 109 out of 120 on her Hello Kitty midterm. I wish I was in International Studies, but I've heard it involves studying.

Did I mention that Rock and I had a nice Valentine's day? No, I guess I didn't. But I was just thinking that since I am manically posting random things it might actually make sense to post something about the person who makes up 79-109% of my life. Ok, well, that's an exaggeration, besides the fact that it doesn't make any mathematical sense. Anyway, yeah, it was really nice! We went and watched the moon which was kind of orange and it was kind of really cold out. I grew some roses for her (or bought, who can remember?) and painted a painting which was subpar but c'est la vie. And Rock got me the 2nd season of Arrested Development and a nice big red card. I hope that doesn't mean she is cheering for the Russians.

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It is reading break this week, which is nice because it gives me a break from reading.

Olympic happiness:
Team Canada has looked decent so far. The Czechs are having problems, which bodes well for us. Sweden looked a bit sluggish too, also good. Finland and Russia are both looking dangerous. Still too early to tell though. That Chinese figure skating pair was pretty amazing. The girl had a very painful looking crash after spinning 4 times in the air, but they restarted and won silver. Also, Norway should get a giant sportsmanship medal. One of their coaches gave a cross-country skiing pole to a Canadian skier who had broken hers. The Canadian went on to win bronze, and Norway was 4th. Nice.

Olympic sadness:
I realize it is foolish to quibble over the complex and historied rationales behind including some sports. Still, some sports seem redundant. Skeleton is cool, but seriously, isn't it just luge on your stomach instead of back? And isn't luge just bobsled with a smaller sled? I like them all, but the skillset seems to be exactly the same for all of them (well, you have to be a bit crazier for skeleton/luge). So, dividing what is essentially one sport into three just cuts the talent pool down to one third for each sport. Which just makes for poorer athletes and dilutes the value of actually winning a medal. The same goes for "parallel giant slalom" snowboarding. I love watching the halfpipe, it is one of the most exciting and unique winter spots. But "GS" snowboarding is just bastardized ski racing. If you pitted skiers against snowboarders on the same course the skiers would win easily 9 out of 10 times. It's like, hey let's give out 6 medals for going slow. Boo. Boardercross is pretty cool though, but they should make it full contact. Or at least give them those big nerf things they used to have on American Gladiators.

Lost
Wednesday's episode was cool. Hieroglyphs so spooky! What do they mean? Did Locke really stop the countdown? Ooh! I read some translations that say they probably spell out "cause to die" or "to die". Although one of the symbols never stops spinning, so it can only be guessed at. And why are there so many different symbols? What different messages could there be? Anyway, no one knows. It's intriguing though. I read a different theory that hypothesized that the hatches are nuclear bunkers and the countdown is related to shooting off nukes somehow. Hmmm. The thot plickens.

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A new study suggests that video gaming is healthy for your brain. Also, it might slow down the again of your brain. Also, apparently being bilingual helps in a similar way. I'm never doing homework again.

The old picture was gimped, so here is a new one which is kind of about video games but I just put it here because I like it. It is a lego recreation of Katamari Damacy, which is a wacky Japanese game where you roll a giant ball around and stuff sticks to it.

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Here is my completely scientific and not at all biased prediction of how things will go:

Group A:
1st place: Canada 2. Czech Republic 3. Finland 4. Germany

Group B:
1. Russia 2. Sweden 3. USA 4. Slovakia

Quarterfinals:
A1 vs. B4 (Canada vs. Slovakia): Canada
A2 vs. B3 (Czechs vs. USA): Czechs
B1 vs. A4 (Russia vs. Germany): Russia
B2 vs. A3 (Sweden vs. Finland): Sweden

Semifinals:
Canada vs. Sweden: Canada
Russia vs. Czechs: Czechs

Gold Medal Game: Canada vs Czechs: Canada!

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I love Lost. It's my favourite show that is currently producing new episodes. I can't really recommend it to anyone who doesn't already like it because it has a continuous story-arc which is about 30-40 episodes long now. So it won't really make sense if you jump right into it. You could watch season 1 on DVD (or download it) though, and then it would make some sense.

The episode yesterday mostly served to clarify that Sawyer (and Charlie, somewhat) is a bad guy. But it wasn't all that convincing. He conned the woman he pretended to love out of $600,000, he stole all the guns from the armory, and he committed a semi-violent pretend kidnapping. But he is such a likable bad guy (anti-hero) that you can't help but like him. Granted, if his turnaround doesn't happen until the end of the show, which is years away, his evil behaviour will probably escalate, still.

I wish I had a class where we analyzed Lost instead of plays from the 16th century or whatever. I mean, I appreciate the value and genius of them and blah blah blah, but I find it hard to engage with anything before the 19th century. Someone I was talking to who is taking Sci-Fi Lit this term said they talk about Lost in it sometimes. I wish I was in that class, but it doesn't bother me that I am not, since it was the right decision not to take it (for various reasons that I won't bore you with). Anyway, I think Lost is as artistically valid, and in some ways better, than a novel. Well, I think well-written continuous story-arc shows are in general. Or something.

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Tea is a good. Tea is a small good that is knit so tightly into everyday life that we take it for granted. Kind of like music. Wherever you go, there is someone to give tea to you. Home, Hawkins Lake, China, Buckingham palace, it's always just there. Wireless internet is good, but it's easy to imagine life without it, places without it. Tea is only a tiny thing that makes every day just a little bit better, but it's easier to appreciate because it is so fundamental and shareable. It is easier to enjoy things that you aren't afraid of losing. The quest for the best is a quest for distraction because it is nearly impossible to find a thing which you can call absolutely superior. Meanwhile you ignore what is fundamentally good about whatever you do have. Or something.

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"I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together."

That's what Ernest Hemingway told me, when I was sort of reading some book of his in the library. I wasn't really reading it. I just like to read the first line or page of a book. A teacher of mine always says that the first line of a book usually sums up the whole story. So, why read the rest? That takes soooo long, plus I have a headache.

Marshall McLuhan said that he would only read every other page of a book, and then if those pages were interesting he'd go back and read the rest. I don't think he actually did that, because he was the sort of thinker who would make things up to prove a point. I guess the point is that you don't have labour over the details to understand a thing. I could say how this affects my study habits, but that would incriminate me.

I try to be a frank and simple person, but I think Ernest (we're on a first name basis) would still trust me, because my story doesn't hold together.

Btw, I deleted the rambling version of this post twice, but it kept undeleting itself. So now I am just reposting it as a new post, without the rambling. Blogger has been effed-up lately.

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