Today I caught 3 orange goldfish. It was kind of like electrocuting fish in a barrel (not recommended), except replace “barrel” with “small pond out back,” and “electrocuting” with “netting.” These fish were three thirteenths of a 13-fish school that lives in the pond in the summer, and an indoor tank in the winter. Today was moving day. When they went from the cold open water to the warm confined water, they were very confused, so they pooped. The moral of the story is: confused fish poop.

People are sometimes surprised when they learn that I like hockey. I can think of at least 5 times when such surprise has been directed at my general corporal person. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I think it has something to do with those people thinking that I don’t fit the mold of a hockey fan. Of course, I am a hockey fan—and a somewhat obsessive one at that—which goes to show that pigeonholing people is ineffective and, I might add, lazy thinking. Naturally, I am not harmed by not being thought of as a hockey fan, but are hockey fans harmed by not being thought of as like me? Well, not really, because I’m a dick. But if I were a likable person, then they’d probably think that pigeonholing is molten lava on their fairness parade. Not a good thing. The Nermal of the story is: Garfield likes lasagna.

Hockey pools make me think about how motivation and engagement are funny, fickle things. I could barely do basic, generic statistics calculations in school if you beat me with a smart stick and stabbed me with a carrot. But when those same calculations are tied to a random goal (say, finishing in the top 10 of the hockey pool), then I will happily spend 15-20 hours poring over otherwise meaningless numbers—and I’ll enjoy it. It’s like … people excel when they can invest themselves in a thing (in whatever way). Like, you know how they say that orange futures are a better predictor of the weather in Florida than conventional weather prediction? Well, that’s probably an exaggerated story, but the point remains. People who speculate on orange futures have a greater interest in predicting the weather correctly than meteorologists do, because speculators will might lose a lot of money if they are wrong; whereas, when meteorologists are wrong they don't lose any money. So, you can see how this personal investment leads these speculators to excel in an area that they wouldn’t otherwise be skilled in. The Mormon of the story is: spend your time on things that interest you. (Yes, I know, this is a breakthrough and you didn’t already know that.)

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I applied to be an English tutor at the Learning Skills Center up at the university. The person there said they don’t need anyone now but they might later, and I think she meant it. That’s a mixed victory, I guess; at least I tried to do something constructive for once, even if it didn’t pan out. Speaking of pan, I’m starting a new religion based around flute-playing mythological figures and pizza dishes. It’s called panpanpantheism.

I’m taking a film class for fun because I had an elective spot open. 3 of the movies that have stood out for their awesomeness are Crash, Syriana and Memento. I have also been forced to concede that American Beauty is, overall, not a bad movie. Related: I'm looking forward to the new Scorsese. It has Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch in it.

Beds have been getting higher in my life recently. I used to sleep on a futon, but Holly (Holly & Sukham are the owners of the house I live in) decided that a futon would be better for her back, since she’s pregnant (ETA: Oct 28!), so they traded me their bed for it. So I’ve gone from a foot of the ground to about 4 feet off the ground. Also, the McLeods bought a new bed for their guestroom (I tend to be a guest at their house pretty often), and it’s about 6 feet off the ground. If this trend continues I’m going to be that princess in the fairytale who slept on 100 mattresses and there was a pea under the one at the very bottom. I never really got that fairytale. What was the moral? “Don’t be a vegetarian?”

Walking home from school at 10:30 the other night, in the empty Pine Centre shopping mall parking lot, I came across a really big bug. I was cockroach-shaped but at least twice as big. It kind of looked like a scarab, probably, if that’s what scarabs look like. It was dragging itself along in a lopsided way with 2 big claw-like forelimbs. It was going pretty slow, so I think it was hurt. It had round greenie eyes and looked up at me as if to say: “Help, Help, how the F did I get here? I’m supposed to be in Egypt. This is so balls.” So I offered it a ride on my hand, but it just kept trying to crawl underneath it, so I went home.

If you thought this post was boring, you should check out Mattch’s real-life Harajuku adventure. It’s top drawer. Also, you could send me coffee in the mail so that I will be more animated.

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This is Bailey. He is Roxanne's Old English Sheepdog/moose. He is funny & lovable because he is very large and very blind. Watch him take 30 seconds to find a stick when it's right in front of him in a small, small pool.

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School starts Tuesday. To introduce my feelings on this in a four-word foreword: looking forward to it. There isn't much to say after the foreword, except that the reason I am looking forward to it it that, finally, after 31 years, it will be my last undergraduate term (knock on Arborite).

Watched the entire The Office series ("Gareth, you're a knob-end") again, thanks to Ben-Gurion, who lent it to us. Kudos to the surprisingly acceptable American adaptation, which won the Emmy for best comedy, last week. Also watched The Royal Tenenbaums. It was fine, but, as far as Wes Anderson goes, I prefer Rushmore ("What are you wearing?" ... "These are my OR scrubs" ... "Oh are they?"). It's hard to watch movies after becoming accustomed to reading novels. Movies inevitably seem thin on character and plot development, since they have so much less time during which to develop things, compared to novels. Related: time to develop things is a main strength of multiple-season, continuous-story arc TV shows (Lost, season 3 starts soonish!). They end up being much longer than the average novel.

Played pool, "Hungry, Hungry Hippos," & "13 Deadend Drive," in that order, last night, with Shalina, Andrew, & Tonianne The Urban Planner. Even though I lost consistently, it was a moral victory, because I actually left the house (Yes, yes, I am cool).

Hotmail deleted all my messages due to inactivity, which is kind of OK, because it was my 3rd e-mail account, so it didn't have anything important (I tattoo the important messages to the backs of my eyelids). On the other hand, it's completely stupid that they won't spare the measly 25MB of space that the account takes, when gmail gives you 2.7+GB of storage space for free (that's more than 100x as much!). Balls. Undeniably balls. In other boycotting Microsoft news: Firefox 2.0 Beta is quite nice (plug!), imho. It has in-browser spell-checking (plug!), and the tabs (plug!) and drop-down search-engine selection work even (plug!) better (plug! plug! plug!). I still like Bill Gates, though, since he is the world's most philanthropiest philanthropist. I.e., he--well, The Bill & Billinda (Melinda?) Gates Foundation--gives more money to charity than anyone else, barn one.

P.S. This is my 100th post. 3 cheers for no life!

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