Despite the fact that I’m still lossfully unemployed, it’s been a busy weekend. Working backwards, today I read Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood’s latest. Yes, by ‘today’ I mean I began and finished it since I’ve gotten up. Briefly: it’s good. Less briefly: it’s not as unique as the glowing reviews would have you believe. The story itself is excellent, but there have been other settings devised that are similar in many ways. One of my favourite science-fiction authors, William Gibson, also uses a mix of biotechnology, class separation, technology and corporatism gone to extremes to paint a bleak view of the future, although Atwood’s is more apocalyptic. The ever-in-progress short story I’ve been tooling with for years has a civilization-ending plague. I guess the numbers of those who do or want to write science fiction outweight our generally poor ability to extrapolate present conditions into anything but the very near future. In light of current world events, I guess Atwood wins points over Gibson for reminding us that the years to come are not all bright and shining, but hold new and uniquely horrible forms of human suffering.
On a more cheerful note, Saturday was Alice’s (day-after-her) birthday extravaganza. We went to The Keg for dinner, and I had this amazing steak with a “bleu cheese, bourbon and almond” spread... very unique flavours, if very strong. And very pricey. I got her The Tao of Pooh to help her be a bit more calm, since she gets stressed sometimes. I flipped through the book (yeah, I do that) before I wrapped it, and I think I might have to do some more reading on Taoism... it seems to coincide with my world-view in some ways. Not all, of course. While I was buying it, I noticed copies of The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita. I think I’ll add reading the principal texts and literature of the world’s major religions to my list of things to do in my elusive “spare time”.
Anyways, to finish the evening (or before the finish, muahaha) we saw Shrek 2, which was great - lots of humour for grown-ups, and brilliant animation. Keep your eyes peeled for Joan Rivers, “Knights”, the flamboyant Prince Charming, and Funky Town. We laughed pretty hard, and Alice shushed me a couple times - sorry babe -)
Earlier Saturday was a dragonboat practice, which was fine except for running aground on a pipe just off the beach. We had to hop out of the boat so it would float higher in the water, push it off the obstacle, and then hop back in en masse before the water got too deep to stand in, in a sort of bizarre, aquatic version of a bobsled start or something. Good times.
Friday night and Saturday morning were spent with friends of the family. Basically, my mom has stayed in touch with a few friends of hers who graduated from the University of Waterloo, BMath ‘79 Co-op Teaching Option (a mouthful). Two of these are now married, and a third is married to a Waterloo grad of the same year but a different program. Between the three couples, there are seven kids (including myself and my sister) all aged 17 to 22. Because the parents have all known each other and gotten together regularly since way before we were born, we’ve known each other pretty much all our lives, and all come to these reunions. One guy, Kevin, has a loft downtown (he’s going into UofT CompSci 3rd year), so I spent Friday night there with him, his fiancée, his sister and her boyfriend, and they dropped me off at Dragonboat in the morning. I also went to St. Lawrence Market for the first time, and had a great peameal-bacon-on-a-bun sandwich for breakfast. Mmm good.
Anyways, I ramble, and my bed beckons. More soon!
Now Playing: Zero 7 - Simple Things - 05 - Simple Things
Seriously, it’s almost like a lottery. The first round of readmission offer e-mails just got sent out to people trying to return to Innis for 2004-2005, and those offered and those placed on the waiting list follow no noticeable order whatsoever. Perhaps merit was awarded to the ability to schmooze, brownnose, and BS - I got in, I guess, because I used my essay to make myself look like Mother Theresa herself, except younger, male, of a different background and not in any way on the fasttrack to canonization. Anyways, I got back in, and I’m relieved - now to get a job so my parents will pay the $5000 (yikes!) fees. Bless their hearts.
Today was mostly a series of meals: I got up early to go to Cora’s for breakfast with the fam. Unfortunately their fifteen five-dollar breakfasts are no longer so numerous or cheap, but it’s good food. Once of their omelettes had every conceivable breakfast ingredient - mushrooms, onions, other veggies, cheeses (yes plural), a few kinds of meat, garnishes, etc. etc. Something like the TMNT sushi and jello pizza, but infinitely more appetizing. Yum. Then a huge deli sandwich for lunch. Then to Dixie Park for cheap (but non-westernized) Chinese food: Beef and Green Onion with Bean Sprout on Rice Noodle, $5.75. Another excellent establishment, look for the big pink building one light north of Eastgate Parkway on Dixie.
Gah, gotta run - I was going to pontificate, but it looks like there’s no time.
I should really stop being so anal about formatting... making the paragraphing work properly with the blog template just took me ten minutes, argh. Two thumbs up for being awake at 0233.
I’ve got a new link button, so check it out... turns out I was stupid for sticking with Corel PHOTO-PAINT for so long; Photoshop actually is easier to use. Many parts of the site have been updated, btw, and I like it a lot more … it’ll be easier to update. Up at the top there is a new title image and a bar with links to the most recent blog entries and a quote of the day, which has been and will be more of a quote-of-the-several-months for a while yet. I’ve still got to write the script to run that, and think up some original lines that don’t blatantly rip Tat. Still, you really shouldn’t visit jerkcity - most indecent humour ever. I laughed for days.
I’d like to wish safe travel to Monika, who’s heading to India tomorrow today for most of the summer. She says she’ll still have access to the intarweb, though - just through a phone line (gasp, I know, I know). Also props to Mark, who’s abandoned LJ and got a blog account at my insistence... we’ll see who updates more often. Probably neither of us.
Editorializing: On Ontario politics: I bet the Tories are having a huge laugh-up right now, enjoying how they were able to simultaneously overspend and set the next government up to look bad. Jerks. On the Middle East: America and Israel again take out (presumably) innocent civilians. Several years ago, when I first took interest in what’s going on in the (former) cradle of civilization, it seemed that goodwill, disarmament, humanitarian investment and a bit of peacekeeping could just fix the region’s problems. Now I’m beginning to worry, in an uncharacteristically pessimistic sort of way, that there’s a deeper problem, namely: people are (fucking) stupid. Joe Western Hemisphere is too attached to his middle-class lifestyle; Washington can’t see the harm in a little jingoism or a war to stir up the economy; and a bunch of idiots in Iraq somehow believe they have reasons to help the coalition blow up parts of their own country while the Israelis and Palestinians have yet to wrap their heads around the math that says that there’s not enough of that land to go around. The whole situation would be tiresome if it wasn’t so horrible.
OK, 3 am .. definitely bedtime, the job search must continue and there’s a dragonboat practice tomorrow night.
Now Playing: Zero 7 - Another Late Night - 10 - Serge Gainsbourg - Bonnie & Clyde (Herbert’s Fred & Ginger Mix)
For some reason I’m sitting here working on this when I should be out trying to get a job. Yeargh! Procrastination is a huge problem for me... not entirely sure why.