Muse-ic

I chose this song of the week pretty much solely so I could use that title for my post. It's a horrible pun and I am not afraid to use it.

This song (Bliss by Muse) reminds me of being on the city bus. Mostly just because I tend to listen to it on the bus on the way to school, not because it has anything to do with buses. Because nothing is "so easy to love" about a bus, and they certainly don't "resonate happiness." They resonate crankyness.

First day of school tomorrow.

Kill me now.

Song of the Week FAIL Vol. 57

BAH. Song of the Week last week was actually up for two weeks. I forgot.

This week (or two, or month, as the case may turn out to be) the song is My Moon My Man by Leslie Feist or just Feist as she is usually known as. She is Canadian, and no, she's not good because she was on an iPod commercial, she was on the commercial because she's amazing.

My cousin says I look like her. Calls me Feist sometimes. I suppose maybe we have a similar chin. And we both have the bangs thing going on in brownish hair. And, of course, I can frequently be found at airports, dancing on those moving conveyor belt sidewalk thingers (this would make sense to you if you had've clicked the previous link and watched her video).

Those things would be great if they weren't so fun to fool around on. I mean, their fun factor totally outweighs the practical side of them. I'll be on one, going forward in the proper direction, and I'll suddenly get the unoverridable urge to dash in the opposite direction. To run off against the current of groved metal and people and hand luggage and children starring down at their feet in wonder as they take steps that carry them unnaturally far forward. And then I stop abruptly and allow the walkway to take be backward a few feet, then start running again. So I don't end up getting anywhere faster. I don't really get anywhere.

They are just so gosh darn amusing.

Canada Writes.

O Canadian literature. The beloved Margaret Laurence. The other Margaret, the Atwood one. W.O. Mitchell (I always say it as Whooooa Mitchell in my head. And out loud. I can't control it). Lucy Maud Montgomery, who ensured that the little island of Prince Edward will forever get a steady stream of Japanese tourists making the pilgrimage there to see the real house of the fake red headed girl in the fake town of Avonlea, in the real town of Cavendish..... incidentally, all she succeeded in doing for me was ensure that the main character was so bloody annoying that I couldn't force myself to finish reading the series, I got to maybe book number six and thought "goddam. Anne is having offspring, the stupidity is multiplying. Must stop."

..... but I digress.

So yes. Canadian writing has fans all over the world. But one little piece of Canadian work is garnering some unexpected attention for just who seems to be a fan of it. You see, deep in the vaults of the CIA, live the assholes who devise torture methodes, and they have a copy of Transport Canada's 92 page epic Survival in Cold Waters: Staying Alive.

It is a piece of writing generally used by folks inclined to go boating out in the frigid waters that hug our shores to, you know, stay alive and such, should the ocean fancy jumping up into their boat, or their boat fancy diving into the sea. But the CIA, they take the use of this study a bit farther and use it to help the doctors gauge how much pain they can put prisoners through with the use of cold water dousing, without killing them.

I do not even know where to begin pointing out the things wrong with that sentence.

First of all, using a SURVIVAL guide as a means to inflict maximum pain on a human being? It's a tad disgusting. Sure it is out there for general use, but this is never what it was intended for. A person is supposed to learn from that guide how to survive, escape a disaster in cold water with their life, preserve themselves while trying to minimize the pain they experience. But the CIA turned it into a guide to pain, a goal of severe trauma with a side plan of keeping the prisoner alive.

Second, what kind of doctor takes part in torture? Certainly one who has no business calling themselves a doctor. Despicable.

A survival guide turned into a torture guide.

I think I'm going to go bash my head against a wall for a bit.


Well, at least I now know what to do with my copy of Anne of Green Gables: use it to beat the shit out of people. But you know, not 'til they're dead, just until they're thoroughly annoyed.

Who is John Galt?

I had meatballs for lunch today.

Also.

Work today involved a lot of sitting and starring at a solution whilst it sorted itself out through a column of silica gel and drrrriiiiiiippppped ever so slowly into an Erlenmeyer flask (Invented by that guy over there to the right, Emil Erlenmeyer in 1861. Not to be confused with Oscar Mayer, who made a hotdog around then that still looks and tastes exactly the same). Erlenmeyer flllask. Erlenmeyer flaaaaask. I think that might be in my top ten of favourite word combinations. I could say it maybe 72 consecutive times without getting tired of saying it.

Anywho, I would pour the solution was that I was working into the top of the glass column, and as the liquid trickled through the tube, getting itself all pure and what not, I had a lot of time to do nothing. So instead of doing nothing, I read Atlas Shrugged. And I'm only about 213 pages in, so don't nobody go spoiling it for me.

It's wierd. I can't read a whole lot of that book in one sitting - it's just too depressing and frustrating to immerse myself in for too long - but when I'm not reading it, all I do is think about it. Or change the Erlenmeyer flask under the column. I feel like I've reached the climax of the story, but I have about 80% of the book to go. Every character is either a detestable piece of scum dredged from the bowels of the Valley of the Severely Dim, or an intelligent, ambitious person, a prodigy in their field of work, and therefore despised by the aforementioned scums.

I'm still waiting for the part when Atlas finally shrugs and the world goes tumbling off his shoulders and shatters on the museum floor. I'm sure it happens soon.

But. I don't know what to make of this book. Philosophy like this makes one part of my brain scream and another part shoot into thinking overdrive. It's intriguing. It's riveting. But every so often I have to stop and just puzzle over humanity. Could we really end up like that? Is society destined to become a giant contradiction of itself? Can humans as a collective sink to such loathsome levels that they especially hate themselves?

Who is John Galt?

Shut up brain, just shut up.





Side, mostly unrelated, note: If you google john galt erlenmeyer meatballs, this post comes up first. Woohoot.

Update 25/08/09: Not anymore. Fuck.

Another Great Victory for Vikings: Spam.

I've never had spam, but I'm thinking of trying the Spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, and spam.

SQUIRREL!

This made the front page of the National Post, this past Friday.

Straight from the Too Damn Cute files comes this inadvertent snapshot.

It's not exactly news I'd expect on the front page, but it's definitely cuter than Stephen Harper, or some other stupid thing that might make the national newspaper's cover.