I'm more an "ideas" person

I "invented" this in grade 2 or 3:



New Invention Roller Coaster
Can take you to school, outerspace, and under water. 10 people can fit in one.

(Really, all the places a kid would ever need to go!)

Even then I knew that numbers 10 and higher should be represented numerically, and that numbers under 10 should be written out. (Remarkable!)

I clearly remember deciding to make the whole transitway out of wood. (In the center of the drawing you can see I actually drew one panel of boards held in place by nails, then gave up and just coloured the whole thing brown to convey the idea of wood.) I guess my understanding of structural and material integrity was a bit underdeveloped. Because otherwise I suppose I might have thought about using something a little stronger than wood to go into outerspace and under water.

Note also that I deliberately set a few of the roller coaster cars on a collision course and their drivers look worried, and that the driver splashing into the water is screaming. I think I imagined collision course cars would just hop over each other somehow, but then, as evidenced in my materials selection, I really wasn't thinking that clearly about the details. I probably just set it up like that to make my friends laugh.

Also dig the Hello Kitty stamps. And that I was doing some arcane name-numerology-love-compatibility calculations with my friend Joanne's name and those of some of her suitors/love-interests.

Joanne ended up being a competitive biathlete. I wonder if things ever worked out with Kevin or Jason and if they liked her lycra outfits and rifle.

The "Voice of Canada" was a Russian Jew and "America's Sweetheart" was a Canadian Catholic!

If that doesn't prove that we can all just get along, what does?

So, WOW! Who knew! Well, it's not entirely accurate to call Lorne Greene a Russian Jew. He was Canadian, but his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who came to Canada. And his middle name was Hyman!(I almost typed "hymen"... sorry.)


I suppose it doesn't actually mean anything. I was just surprised and delighted by this somehow.

The reason I found this out is because I discovered his handsome mug on a Canadian stamp today, joining John Candy, Fay Wray, and Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart"!

They were issued in May. I suppose I don't buy stamps very often.


Today I bought 5 books of them, and now I have little Lorne Greene heads all over my stuff (and my face) (and there are some in the elevator to our building now too).

Get them now from Canada Post!!

men who I will never date, part I

As many of my friends know, and as I posted about in May 2005, (so long ago!) I have tried Internet dating.

Here are some examples of men out there who I will NEVER date:

Tagline: "Do you realy know what you are looking for?"
I am looking for someone who can spell "really".

Tagline: "Looking for someone special"
Well, I'm looking for someone totally average, nondescript and unoriginal. Oh, there you are!

Profile includes line: "I want a woman who likes to laugh."
Naturally I hate laughing and I am suspicious of people who like to laugh. I prefer people like my psycho roommate from university, Monika N, who as we discovered a few months after she left had been dealing crystal meth out of our basement. After a presumably loving, awesome time high on E and crystal meth (or whatever, I mean, what do I know from drugs?) at a rave, she'd sit in the living room staring into space, coming down with an almost visible black cloud of chemical hate over her head. I want someone like that, but like, a man.

Profile includes line: "Hello ladies!"
Goodbye, fucktard!

transubstantiation

Every now and then, I forget about the goodness of The Onion. And then I remember. And then I get to read stuff like this:

Super Priest Can Turn Anything Into Body, Blood Of Christ

blargh

Ah, like everyone else I'll coast on the second trailer for the Borat movie instead of writing something original.

There's too much writing out there anyway.

Jagshemash!

Cross-cultural humour is getting a total working-over by Borat, huh?



In reading this poor little article about Borat printed in the illustrious Globe and Mail, I was struck again by how curious it is that so many people still think Sacha Baron Cohen is making fun of Kazakhs, so much so that it's becoming an international "issue".

Here's a newsflash to the confused: he's making fun of US! North American and British ignorance about other cultures, our manners (or lack thereof), our hypocrisies.

If anything was right in the world, it would be North Americans and Brits feeling put on the spot and embarrassed, not Kazakhs. Why, for example, do we focus on the satirical anti-Semitism and outrageous sexism of Borat (which I find darkly hilarious), and not on the genuine anti-Semitism and sexism of some of the people he catches off guard?

Exhibit A:


Trailer for the movie:

UPDATE: My dad thought that the first clip was so awful that it had to be staged, and figured the line about shooting an animal that was already extinct was the giveaway. I don't think it was staged.

at last, gin and vitamins

A coworker of mind who is a young urban hipster and probably a bit crazy, well, I record his rambles sometimes. I like recording what people say. I was just cleaning up my desk and found this one, scribbled with a red pen on three sticky notes:

I think gin was taken with a lot of remedies because gin can open you up. Older remedies used to give you a typical tightness and gin counteracts that. And then you'd drink it with tonic, because tonic was a health beverage at one point.

The gin does many wonders. It's like caffeine, which will open up air passages. Abe Lincoln was an asthmatic and Maxwell House gave him a cup of coffee during an asthma attack, and he was like, "Good to the last drop."

For example, if you've been taking pills and feeling bad after, you can get rid of mild headaches with a shot of gin. I mean vitamins too. Gin will help you absorb vitamins, or if you take a bunch of supplements and feel sick because it's too powerful, gin can clear that right up.

OK class, is that clear? Exam on Friday.

Secrets of Hahn-Jean-Jean

Some people think it's properly pronounced "Haines Junction". But if you're in the know, you pronounce it Hahn-Jean-Jean, nasal and with a French accent, so that's "Jean" not like "JEEEEN" but all Frenchy with a soft J like "zhjon", but clearly, what the hell do I know about phonetics?

What you do if you're REALLY in the know is reserve this little cabin on Granite Lake that I'll show you pictures of in a minute. I'm not going to tell you HOW to reserve it but I think it involves emailing some woman somewhere, maybe her name is Eileen or something. She tells you when it's free and you work it out with her when you can go. It's not her cabin though, it belongs to the "crown" but was built I think, and is maintained by, a Conservation Officer (CO if you're in the know) whose name I forget but he's obviously really generous and thoughtful. Maybe his name is Dan.

Then you drive to Hahn-Jean-Jean with your sister's canoe on the roof and maybe your sister and her awesome boyfriend and her sweet dog.



Then you pick up the key at the gas station in Hahn-Jean-Jean and drive a bit further to this dirt road and then down the dirt road until you have to park the car because otherwise you will feel it slowly splinter apart around you with metallic groans and the sudden pops of tires going flat because it wasn't built for that kind of driving. Then you carry the canoe and the rest of your stuff down the road:



Then you get to the boat launch:


And then you paddle across this often windy lake:

And then you hike for a few hours:

And then you stop here:

And you make some dinner and dry your socks and then enjoy some nine year-old bourbon, scrabble, a swim, and a spectacular little view of mountains, and maybe even use the sauna, although we didn't because we got the cabin so hot with a nice little fire in the wood stove that a skinny dip in the very very very cold lake followed by going back inside was actually perfect.

That's what you do if you're in the know.

WARNING: Doing this on your last weekend after a month away and then flying immediately back to your hometown on the redeye and going straight to the office for a day of work will severely mess you up and leave you feeling STARVED for more cabins where there's no one around and there's kindling in the wood stove and split logs piled beside it and clean cups on the shelf and cozy little bunks and the soothing hiss of the kerosene lamps and your awesome sister doing dishes after a delicious dinner.