My father-in-law just called me. This is how the conversation went:
Father-in-law: Hi there!
Darren: Hi!
FIL: What kind of peanut butter do you like? Crunchy or smooth?
D: Uh, we're not very picky around here, either one is fine.
FIL: Well, which one do you prefer?
D: Ummm… smooth, I guess. It's a little less work.
FIL: Alright! Thanks! Bye!
D: Bye..?!
It was long distance for him to call and ask that. Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing as you.
Thursday mornings this semester have been difficult for me. Two weeks ago, I completely missed my first Second Language Acquisition class because I was looking at an outdated copy of my class schedule, telling me that it was an afternoon, rather than a morning class. Last week, my early arrival for my SLA class lead to the writing of this post.
This morning, my Thursday morning adventures continued, as I woke up vowing to make it to school on time and without incident. I started by getting up at 6am and doing a 1/2 hour of Greek translation, in keeping with my New Year's resolutions. I then proceeded to have a nutritious breakfast and do a quick email check.
I think my day started to derail when I took a little too long in checking my daily website reading, and got in the shower 10 min later than my target time. By the time I had finished (with hair that, yes, smelled like strawberries), I had only 5 minutes to get dressed, collect my school stuff together, pack up the laptop, make a lunch, floss and brush my teeth, clear the snow off my car, and make it to the mall parking lot in time to catch my bus and save myself the university parking fees. It wasn't going to happen.
So I woke up my wife.
Now, Larissa has been off work for a couple weeks with a nasty flu-type bug, but lately she's been feeling better, albeit with a very low energy level. She drove me to school yesterday, and I thought that maybe today, she could repeat this accomplishment and get me to my 8am class on time. Remarkably, she agreed to it.
I powered through the rest of my morning routine, and even had time to take out the garbage on the way to the car. I frantically started the car, scraped it free of snow and ice, and jumped inside, only to have Larissa inform me that she didn't think she was up to driving me. Her exact words were something along the lines of "I can't feel my arms." All I could say was "Go back upstairs and rest, honey. I'll make it to school by myself."
I drove like a madman to try to arrive at my class on time, and cursed the fact that I would have to pay for on-campus parking now. I cut ahead of traffic by utilizing lanes that ended after only 50 or 60 meters, and by executing several extremely well-timed high-speed lane changes. As I pulled into the flat-rate all-day parking lot, I reached for my wallet, only to notice that I had no cash. Eff. I asked at the parking booth if they took plastic. They said "no." Effing eff.
With a growing sense of rage and futility, enhanced by memories of years of unhindered free parking due to my previous employment as a meter reader, I drove back off campus to try to find an ATM. The nearest commercial shopping center had a McDonald's and a Tim Hortons. I turned in and checked if either one had an ATM inside. They didn't. Effity effing eff.
As I pulled out of this parking lot, racking my brain for an idea of somewhere in a 5 km radius that might have a money-dispenser onsite, I caught a glimpse of one of those lonely, isolated, parking-lot drive-through ATMs in the industrial plaza across the street. In as much time as it takes to run a yellow light, I was pulling into this drive-through ATM, half-hanging my body awkwardly out my car window to try to reach the buttons and grab my money before it was spit onto the snowy ground, and re-tracing my tire tracks back to the university parking lot.
I walked into class 20 minutes late. When my professor asked me why, I said "I'm blaming my wife."
You may remember back in this post when I mentioned that I was trying to spend more time at the gym, and change my eating habits to reflect a more nutritionally-conscious lifestyle. While I may have lapsed a bit over the Christmas holidays (actually, over the entire month of December), I have been back on track for a consistent 3 weeks during the month of January, and I've even made an effort to tweak my diet towards even more healthy eating.
In a moment of nutritional enthusiasm that bordered on the idiotic, I decided to purchase a 2 liter jug of V8 juice. I've been trying to up my fruit and vegetable intake to six or seven servings per day, and when I read that each glass of V8 contains 2 full servings, I thought it would be an easy boost. I've since discovered that "easy" was not the right word. A better word would have been "bad tasting". [But Darren, that's two words!] Yeah, I know. But it's late, and I'm exercising my right as a linguist to declare "bad tasting" to be a single compound word. With a space in the middle.
I had some idea that V8 did not taste good, but at the time of the purchase there were two other thoughts that outweighed this consideration. One was "If I'm thirsty enough, and concerned enough about my health, it won't be that hard to drink it." The other was "Have I actually even tried V8 before, or was that just tomato juice?" Because, as you may know, V8 looks remarkably like tomato juice. And I do not like tomato juice.
Well today, I finally cracked open the 2 liter container and poured myself of tall glass of two servings of vegetables. Here are the two thoughts that entered my head as I choked down my initial sip: First, "There is no way that I will ever be thirsty or health-conscious enough to drink this with ease," and second, "This does taste like tomato juice, but with a celery-like aftertaste."
I honestly had to do that thing where you plug your nose from the inside, in order to reduce the "bad taste factor". And I had to drink it in small sips, in order to reduce what I like to call the "gagging factor". But I was determined to make it through at least one glass of the stuff, just to feel like I was getting something of my money's worth, and to see if there was any chance that the experience would improve as I made my way to the bottom of the glass. It didn't.
So now I'm left with the options of trying to choke down the rest of the jug, giving away what's left to someone who has had all of their taste buds destroyed in a fire-eating accident, or dumping the rest of the V8 down the sink while experiencing guilt-inducing visions of children starving in third-world countries.
If there's anything I've learned from this incident, it's this: The best tasting way to get a healthy dose of vegetables may be, remarkably, actually eating vegetables. Who would have guessed?
As a short-haired male, I don't have many criteria when it comes to choosing appropriate products for hair care. I don't need to worry about split ends, oily, dry, color-treated, or damaged hair. I'm not looking for extra shine, volume, body, or bounce. And I don't have dandruff issues to worry about either. Really, I just want my hair to be clean.
Having said that, my main criteria for choosing a suitable shampoo is price. This one without the fancy name-brand labeling costs me half the price of the latest "salon recommended" brand, so why not buy it? I may not buy something that says "Billy Bob's 2-in-1 Discount Shampoo and Beer Stain Remover", but if it looks legitimate enough to clean my hair without breaking the bank, I'll pick it up.
Well it's time to add a new criteria to the list: Smell.
The latest discount shampoo that I decided to invest in was Pert Plus 'Fresh' 2-in-1 Shampoo plus Conditioner, and not long after opening it up, I knew I had made a mistake. Long time readers will remember this post, where I described having accidentally stepped into a small outdoor pond while doing some meter reading last year. My shampoo smelled exactly the way my foot smelled after I had that accident. Somewhere on the label, they had forgotten to mention that it was "festering pond chemical" scented. Suddenly a routine showering task had become a reminder of a nauseating past traumatic event.
I resolved to find a new shampoo to replace the bottle of Pert Plus which had inflicted its horrid nasal oppression upon me. Of course, I kept forgetting (how many men think about shampoo when they're not on the actual shampoo aisle of a store?) and so was forced to hold my breath through the entire hair-washing process for several days. Finally, while killing time at a drug store one day (wow, does that sound sad to say), I remembered my shampooing situation, and took action to remedy it.
This time, not only did I look at price – I opened every bottle of shampoo and gave them a good, hearty sniff before settling on my new choice. It's the discount store brand, it's inexpensive (that's the nicer way to say "cheap"), and it smells like strawberries. Now my showers remind me of "dessert" instead of "fetid pond".
Some men might feel like their masculinity would be threatened by strawberry scented shampoo. Not me. I know that it takes a big man to walk around with hair that smells like strawberries.
And it takes an even bigger man to write about it on the internet.
Ghostbusters is one of my favourite movies from the eighties. If there was ever any movie that I was in danger of having completely memorized, Ghostbusters would be it. Not only was it a great concept, a perfect cast, and a hilarious execution, but I don't know if I've ever seen a cooler-looking special effect than the energy stream released by the Ghostbusters' proton packs.
If there's ever been any fictional weapon that I would like to wield, apart from a lightsaber, it would have to be the proton packs that the Ghostbusters used. Well now, through the power of video game technology and the advancement of high definition graphics, it seems that the Ghostbusters experience that I've always wanted may be close at hand.
Zootfly, a game developer, is in the midst of producing a game for the X-Box 360 which looks absolutely freakin' AMAZING! The development of the game is currently at a bit of a standstill, due to some sort of licensing issue, but once this puppy hits the shelves, you can bet that I'll be begging my X-Box 360-owning-friends to pick this up and invite me over. Here's some footage to whet your appetite.
UPDATED: Looks like YouTube took down the footage of the video game. Sorry folks. I'll update the link to the video when someone else posts another copy of it somewhere. Thanks to Dave for catching that. Freakin' copyright laws.
UPDATED 2: Looks like Dave pulled through again. Besides winning a ten-year-old bet against me recently, he also provided me with this link to the video at another location. Yeah Dave! You'll get a job soon, I just know it!
According to this news report, MySpace is being sued by the parents of several young teens whose children have been assaulted by people they met through this popular social-networking site. Now, I'm all for protecting innocent people from being assaulted or exploited, but doesn't this seem a little ridiculous? I mean, that's like people suing hotmail for allowing messages they don't like to arrive in their inbox, or suing the phone company for allowing stalkers or harassers to make threatening phone calls.
Isn't the best option in these situations to teach your children how to follow safe, sensible principles when they interact online? I'm going to teach my kids not to follow a stranger into his apartment when he asks them to come up for tea and cookies, not sue the landlord of the apartment for not installing "appropriate security measures" to prevent children from going there in the first place.
Perhaps the freakiest part of this entire news story is the final line of the article. I honestly can't believe that they printed that. Sure, kids are being raped, but at least the stock price for the company that owns myspace.com is doing okay!
Am I the only one who thinks that society has to get its priorities straight?
I was half an hour early for my 8am class today. I didn't necessarily want to be so early, but if I want to avoid paying for parking on campus, I have to park at a nearby shopping mall and use my free bus pass from there. Doing so puts me on campus half an hour early. So, just to make sure you understand how this story begins, it was 7:30am.
The room where my SLA class was going to be held was actually a music classroom, with a chalkboard that had musical staffs permanently drawn thereon, and an upright piano at the side of the room. Since I had some time to kill before anyone else arrived, I thought I'd pull a chair up to the piano and tickle the keys a little.
Now, I wouldn't call myself a pianist. I would say that I play some piano, which is several notches below "pianist". I believe the piano-playing hierarchy goes Masher, Tinkler, One-Finger Amateur (the "Mary had a little lamb" phase), Two-Finger Amateur (the "chopsticks" phase), Full Amateur, Intermediate (student), Plays Some Piano (that's me), Piano Player, Pianist, Tori Amos, and finally, Keith Green. I used to be at the "piano player" level, but I've dropped down a notch in the many years that I've been completely out of practice.
As I was goofing around with a few little tunes, a skinny, slightly disheveled man in his late 40s with a set of keys dangling from the belt loop of his jeans suddenly walked into the room and was talking to me. My immediate thought was that he bore a striking resemblance to Chris Cooper in the movie Adaptation. My second thought was that this man must be a janitor here (the keys were the clue) and that I was in trouble for playing the piano. Our conversation went something like this:
Chris Cooper: Hey! You're disturbing people!
Me: Really? Are there classes going on already?
CC: No.
Me: Well, who am I disturbing?
CC: Me.
Me: Oh! Sorry, I was just goofing around. I can totally stop.
CC: Naw, I'm just messin' with ya. You go on – it was nice.
After having said this, he sat down in a chair nearby, and waited for me to keep playing. Now, I was just having fun in my own world at the piano – I don't really know how to play anything for an audience, and the last thing I wanted was some wacky old janitor critiquing my goofy little ditties that I like to play for fun.
As I sat there trying to figure out how to get out of this situation (or at least make the Chris Cooper guy go away), another guy (who was from the Audio-Visual department) walked into the classroom, wheeling a digital projector machine and a computer on an A/V cart in front of him. He started making small talk with both of us, and when he noticed that I was sitting at the piano, started telling us how he used to be able to play all these Rush songs when he was younger.
I was happy just to find an excuse to not have to entertain the janitor for the next 20 minutes until my class started, so I got up from the piano and started going through some of my class notes. The A/V guy and the janitor guy started doing all this reminiscing about Rush, and the next thing I know, the A/V guy is sitting at the piano, cranking out some Rush tune and singing, while the janitor is giving him a big "thumbs up" and nodding away with a huge goofy grin on his face.
It was one of those moments where you think "I never imagined I would be experiencing this particular event when I woke up this morning". Also, "I'm going to have to blog about this."
When the impromptu Rush concert was over (he only played about 2 1/2 songs), Chris Cooper got up and left (presumably to, I don't know, DO HIS JOB or something?) and the A/V guy finished hooking up the computer to the internet. I passed the rest of the time before class reading Dinosaur Comics.
The moral of the story is this: If you want to play piano undisturbed, make sure you lock the door. That, or: If you want to impress a janitor, learn some Rush tunes.
A few weeks ago, for the first time in many, many years, I re-watched E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. As a child of 6, I remember watching this movie in the theater with my family, and forcing my dad to take me to the bathroom during the climatic "E.T. is dying" scene, because wetting my pants would have made the trauma of seeing a lovable alien kick-the-bucket unbearable to my young heart.
I remember my dad being frustrated with me as he held me up to the urinal, and I was torn between thoughts of "What am I supposed to do? I've only got the bladder of a six-year-old, and I gotta use the bathroom!" and "Hey dad? Is E.T. really going to die?!" The end result was that I missed a few minutes of the film, which I thankfully had the opportunity to finally see a few weeks ago.
Something I didn't see, however, was a scene that I clearly remembered from my childhood viewing of the film, involving Elliot writing electrical schematics on the wall of his classroom in chalk. It happened while E.T. was pulling apart the Speak & Spell, and was part of the whole setting-the-frogs-free fiasco. When I mentioned this scene to my movie-buff friend, he said that he didn't remember anything like that. Convinced that I wasn't crazy, I went hunting for evidence of this missing scene.
I came across this picture in my 1982 copy of the E.T. storybook, published by Putnam.
While the quality of the picture is not the greatest (due to wonkiness created by scanning printed pictures into the computer), the picture clearly depicts the scene I remember. Now, did I simply see this scene in the E.T. storybook and assume that it must have been included in the movie at some point? Or was this scene actually in the theatrical release of the film, but never released in video format? It's not part of the deleted scenes on the DVD, and I can't find any reference to this scene elsewhere on the internet.
If anyone out there has any idea what the deal with this scene is, please let me know. For those of you who have access to the storybook, or would like to find this picture for yourself, the ISBN number of the book is 0-399-20936-0, and while there are no printed page numbers in the book, the picture comes on the page right before the one showing Gertie having dressed up E.T. in old-lady clothes.
Maybe they just added this photo when they were creating the E.T. storybook, or maybe I'm not the only one who has been missing a scene from E.T. since he was six years old.
This morning, as we were checking out the weather at theweathernetwork.com, Larissa noticed that the forecast for today called for "triangular" ice pellets. For some reason, we thought it was so funny that this website would show triangle-shapes for the predicted pellets.
As of right now, those ice pellets are are falling in St. Catharines, Ontario, where we live. As we ran from our car to the entrance of our apartment after arriving home from church today, one of us was heard to remark "Man, these triangular ice pellets are painful!"
Laughter ensued.
Larissa's mom sent me this puzzle via email earlier today. Usually I'm not big on forwards, but these kinds of puzzles are supposed to be what I'm good at. And I'm stumped. I know that at least 3 people who read this site are smarter than me, so I issue this request: Solve this puzzle!
First the picture has 12 people, and then after the transition, it has 13 people. I've tried counting heads, I've done screen captures and printed "before" and "after" shots of the picture, all to no avail. I can't find the answer to the puzzle anywhere else online. I'm sure it has something to do with a less substantial piece of one person becoming a more substantial piece of another person, but I can't narrow it down. Frickin' frick!
UPDATED! With a little more careful searching, I found the answer here. Don't look at it until you legitimately give this puzzle a shot!
