I think I'll rent
Matrix Reloaded this Tuesday... I wasn't actively boycotting it like I am with
Kill Bill, I just honestly didn't care enough about it to want to face the crowds on opening weekend and my brothers weren't too thrilled by it so I just never quite got around to seeing it. I was at the Paramount once in June half-wanting to see it on the IMAX screen, but I would have had to have waited two hours for the next showing, so I just went and saw
The Italian Job instead.
At least I can fast forward through the boring-sounding rave scene and skip the "cake" scene (wherein you see the inside of the vagina) entirely. Also, from what I understand, most of Cornel West's scenes got left on the cutting room floor.
WAS DIGNAN HIDING IN THE BUSHES?
Multiple Murder Suspect Escapes Using Bedsheets
Guess they'll have to take the "daring" bedsheet-rope escape from the mental asylum** scene out of the beginning of
Bottle Rocket now. (It was also referenced during the "Judy is a Punk" montage of Margot Tenenbaum's life in Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson's third film,
The Royal Tenenbaums.)
**Actually, Anthony had the full approval of his doctor to leave the asylum out the window, since he was only there voluntarily, he just didn't want to hurt Dignan's feelings since Dignan had come up with an elaborate plan to help his friend escape...
On
National Review Online today, there's a
good analysis by Patrick Basham regarding why Ernie Eves' Conservatives lost the Ontario election. (Hmm... come to think of it, I'm surprised David Frum didn't have anything to say about the Ontario elections in
the "Frum Diary" blog at NRO, since he's usually the
National Review writer to go to for analysis of Canadian politics.)
WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!
I have to say bye-bye to Rush Limbaugh. Well, not for good, but for at least a month, since he just announced that he's checking himself into rehab for his painkiller addiction, which started after a botched spinal cord operation about six years ago. He says much of what you've heard in the media has been distortions, but he wants to get this monkey off his back for good, and he'll be able to clear up the distortions once he's free to talk about the investigation.
Well, Sean Hannity and Roger Hedgecock are okay guest hosts, but I hope we get at least two episodes a week from
Walter Williams, who is, in my opinion, the best of the rotating Limbaugh guest hosts by far, and I wish he'd be on more often. Also, I liked those handful of occasions when Michael Medved guest hosted... and wasn't Mary Matalin a guest host once or twice in the mid 90s?
Get better soon, Rush, please...
TROLLING FOR GOOGLE HITS
Don't mind me...
Kill Bill boycott, boycott
Kill Bill, the split sucks, the ending sucks, "The Bride", daughter,
Kill Bill spoilers,
Kill Bill script, Quentin Tarantino's worst.
Now that you're here, be sure to read
this (you may need to scroll down).
CONCORDIA NOTES
Like I said earlier, lots of interesting tidbits in this week's
Link... I'll post this a bit at a time and EDIT new stuff in.
First of all,
The People's Potato, has proven, once again, my theory that they aren't just a vegan food collective (shudder) dedicated to providing
freeloading needy students with a
bland decent hot meal, they are just another glorified soapbox for Concordia Marxists (set-up during the ignoble regime of the notorious Concordia Students Union president Comrade Rob Green, remembered by many mainly for the
embezzlement of $196 000 of student money by the VP Finance Sheryll Navidad... oh wait, do I have to preface that with the pussy word "alleged"?) to preach revolution to students, by publishing an
opinion piece calling for students to "walk out" on October 9th and attend that
Canadian Federation of Students rally I told you about last week for the Zero Tuition pipe dream... I wonder if my specific predictions for which businesses will be vandalized will come true?
I wrote
this response:
My Plan...
"Not only am I going to class, but, since the "People's Potato" told me to attend the riot.... erm, I mean, rally, I think I'll eat some veal for lunch, preferably purchased from one of the many fine Sodexho-Marriott concessions on campus."
(For my non-Concordia readers, the old CSU unsuccessfully tried to kick all Sodexho-Marriott food services out of the campus because they were an evil multinational corporation (oh no!) that ran privatized jails, privitization being a "bad" thing to them, making the People's Potato the only food concession on campus. Fortunately for those of us Concordia students that like meat, they failed, and now we have our own Pizza Pizza!)
Next, remember
Comrade Adam Slater's extended sulk about the supposed evils of privatization on campus last week? Ah, there's not one but two wonderful responses from sensible people (yes, yes, "sensible" unlike myself, I know... :P Well, obviously, if I submitted something to the
Link, I'd tone things down a lot too.).
The first is an
opinion piece from current CSU VP Finance Tyler Wordsworth:
Since the time we took office, this executive has accomplished for the students of Concordia, in my opinion, much more than the previous three executives combined. To name a few, we've had the biggest and most successful Orientation in recent memory. We've installed new lounge spaces on the Hall Building Mezzanine, Faubourg basement, and the Hall Building Terrace. We've restored and renovated Reggie's. Financial management is at an all-time high. We published a handbook that is inclusive to all, increased the amount of money that goes to clubs, and more. All this over the course of three months, and all this despite the opposition from Slater or his friends. Not too bad for a "bunch of white frat boys who won't talk back."
But wait... on second thought, quite literally our executive includes people with Pakistani, Vietnamese, and French Canadian blood, a Muslim and an atheist, men and women. Bunch of white frat boys? Hold the phone. Seems to me we also committed to holding an inquiry into discrimination on campus, that we're organizing with the other universities against unfreezing tuition, that so far we're at 90 per cent less paper consumption than last year's executive. Clubs and associations promoting social issues have the full support of the CSU to fulfill their mandates smartly. It would seem to me that Slater would be happy about all we're doing. You can accomplish a hell of a lot more in terms of social change if you work in the established framework and gain the respect of opposing parties. They'll listen to you. It's not quite the same as breaking windows, but it works.
I therefore do find it incomprehensible why Slater and some members of his small crew hate us so much. Is it because, unlike our predecessors, we aren't paying him $1,000 per month to do "legal work?" Unfortunate, though, that instead of working with us to accomplish goals jointly, Slater and some of the old guard choose to perpetually butt heads with the executive. At this point, I could propose that kittens are cute, only to have it shot down as right-wing conspiracy.
So Slater can come to CSU Council meetings and raise dozens of ridiculous points of order, and level inane accusations at the executive. But, like I said, I don't have time for this shit. And despite the cries and woes of Slater, I'll keep on doing my job, the job I was elected overwhelmingly to do. Despite any and all attempts to undermine the executive, to make our job more difficult, to see us fail, despite the faint cries of wrongdoing by the minority, the students of Concordia will win."
Very well spoken, and, for some reason, I get the idea I can trust you a lot more with student money... unlike certain previous VPs of Finance whose names I won't mention... oh, wait, I already did.
The other piece is
a letter from Deborah Millette whom asks the pertinent question "If activists are so right, and 'frat kids' are so wrong why is it that it's the 'destroyers' that ruin our reputation, and not those horrible 'drunken parties?'" She goes on to list the accomplishments of the current CSU:
"Meanwhile, the "white frat kids who want to party," you know, the ones that are cleaning up your mess, have done more for this school than Slater insinuates. Orientation was geared towards students that want to enjoy school and that do want to have toga parties, but also featured events such as housing workshops, sexual awareness kiosks and activities for all tastes and interests. They have totally revamped Reggie's. They have loaned the Co-op Bookstore money interest-free. They cleaned up the agenda so students weren't insulted every time they turned a page. They are not scuffing financial numbers. Every penny is accounted for.
CSU executives are on call almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most CSU executives skip classes or registered for "easier" classes and some have delayed their graduation date so that they can spend most of everyday working for students. Wow, if this is what irresponsible frat kids do, bring on those Greek communities!"
Well, I'd say I agree with everything she says, because I do, but I notice that Ms. Millette is an "International Business" student, so she's obviously a corporate tool in the pockets of the eeeeeevvvvvvviiiiiiiiiilllllll WTO (well, I'm not a fan of the World Trade Organization myself, though from a laissez-faire capitalism perspective in that I think the WTO puts up too many trade barriers and tariffs).
Also, there was this short piece within the
CSU Notes.
Email campaign targets CSU
An email campaign against the CSU, started by one "Izzy Bergman," has resulted in dozens of emails being sent to executives criticizing them for, among other things, referring to Israel's Independence Day as "Al Nakbah" in their agenda. Executives say the reference was added by mistake, having been included in previous CSU agendas, and that other allegations made in the emails painted an inaccurate picture of Evolution's stance on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The campaign's author singled out VP School Spirit and Student Life J. Michael Toews as the only executive which supports Concordia Hillel and Jewish students on campus. VP Student Environment Brent Farrington said that Hillel would be issuing a statement on the Union's behalf shortly.
Yeah, I could easily understand "Al Nakbah" slipping by, since most of us frankly aren't too
au courant when it comes to Palestinian holidays, so, CSU guys, in the future, if you're asked to mention some sort of commemoration with an Arabic-sounding name in one of your publications, look it up at
Little Green Footballs first, just so you can know whether they want you to acknowledge "Cute Fluffy Puppy Day" (May 21st) or whether it's "Time to Blow Up Another Bus Day". Hmm... they aren't implying anything by specifying the campaign-starter as being someone with the name "Izzy Bergman", are they? Ah, I guess it's just because that happens to be the name of the guy that started the campaign and I really shouldn't read anything else into this. Also, there was a letter, not found in the online edition, by someone named Daniel Benjamin that they say was part of this campaign. He also mentions that there is an incitement from the notorious pro-vandalism anti-capitalist group
CLAC (the Anti-Capitalist Convergence). Well, Lord knows, I don't encourage their brand of low-grade terrorism, but I think the deal is that they would have gladly printed blurbs for pro-capitalist clubs if anyone from a pro-capitalist club had submitted anything, but, if no one did, they aren't going to invent a club just for the sake of equal space. I still think the Student Handbook is a tremendous improvement over past agendas, but, the fact is, Concordia conservatives and libertarians, our points of view and political clubs aren't going to be presented in student publications if we don't submit them.
There's one more thing I want to write about, but it's very late and this one will be long... I'll just continue this tomorrow.
WE NEED A "TOTAL RECALL" IN CANADA!
Well, congratulations to new California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger! That's one of three predictions of gloom-and-doom for prominent Republicans that certain leftist posters in
the RottenTomatoes.com "Off Topic Discussion" forum got wrong, wrong, wrong! But, Governor Schwarzenegger,
"what are you planning to export?"
I'd probably have voted for the guy, but Schwarzenegger is a little too liberal for my tastes, both economically and socially, though he did campaign like an economic conservative, which I guess is how he won.
Anyhow, it got me to thinking, what if, somehow, something very similar were to happen here in Canada to, say, upcoming Canadian prime minister Paul Martin? Say that perpetual loser New Democratic Party candidate for Martin's LaSalle-�mard riding (and the
Communist Students' Union Concordia Student Union's "researcher" during the "Evil Empire" years) Comrade Dr. David Bernans somehow manages to find some dirt on Martin (well, some "dirt" that isn't a moonbat conspiracy theory about the eeeeeeevvvvvvviiiiiiiillllll corporations). Who should the hopefully merged and de-"Progressive"-fied Conservatives run as their leader in a "Total Recall" circumstance?
In my opinion, the obvious choice for a "Total Recall" candidate would be... Canadian character actor
Michael Ironside! He played "Ham Tyler" in
V, "Lt. Cmdr. Rick 'Jester' Heatherly" in
Top Gun, "Captain Oliver Hudson" in the (extremely short-lived) third season of
SeaQuest DSV (replacing Roy Scheider's "Captain Nathan Bridger", whom I think married shipmate "Laura Huxley" in the excuse the creators gave as to why he was written off), "Lt. Jean Rasczak" in
Starship Troopers, and "Bob Durelle" in the CBC mini-series
The Last Chapter.
But what would make him a good candidate for prime minister? Because he was "Richter", the bad guy in
Total Recall; finally, we can have a prime minister whom can act like a sleazeball (but Ironside is really a nice guy, from what I understand) and can kick ass when ass is needed to be kicked. Let's shed Canada's pussy "nice guy" image once and for all and have corrupt Unitied Nations delegates from dictatorships and Islamofascist countries tremble in fear should the PM ever speak at the Grand Assembly!
By the way, expect to see a lot about Concordia University here this evening after I get back from class... there's plenty of "gold" in
this week's Link.
R.I.P. IZZY ASPER
I was a little sad to hear yesterday about
the sudden death of CanWest Global Communications Corporation founder Izzy Asper at just 71.
As a guy that prefers newspapers to TV news, I'll be the first to admit that I preferred the former Southam papers like the Montreal
Gazette and, especially, the
National Post under the helmsmanship of Sir Conrad Black, but since Sir Black didn't want to have anything to do with Canada, or at least Jean Chretien, anymore, it seems, I guess Sir Black left the Canadian papers in the hands of the next most capable person in Canada, even if Asper was, first and foremost, a TV guy.
You do have to admire the guy for having the gumption and ability to build a media empire from scratch in Canada's ridiculously overregulated broadcast environment, and he was still a great friend of Canadian conservatives and a passionate supporter of Israel's right to exist. I hope his sons will have the same degree of fortitude when dealing with the venom from the Canadian left.
Well, at least I get some satisfaction that Canadian Media Studies textbooks, which invariably seem to be written from a far-left Chomskyite perspective, will have to be rewritten again to identify a new "root of all (media) evil" (up to 2000: Conrad Black, 2000-2003: Izzy Asper, 2003-????: ?)
(Hmm... I bet the pro-Palestinians in Canada are gloating today; well, those of us that support Israel, or at least recognize that it is the only island of sanity in a mad, mad part of the world, may have reason to gloat ourselves within the next couple of weeks,
when Arafat "assumes room temperature", as Rush Limbaugh would put it...)
THE LION KING COMMENTS
Hmm... Tuesday was the release date for the
Lion King DVD, which my mother promised I could get as an I.O.U. birthday present. Plus, I got my G.S.T. rebate cheque in the mail, so I was feeling a little "saucy". Ah, the Hell with it, I thought, and I decided to spring for the "Collector's DVD Gift Set", but on the precondition that I shop around a little. So I went to 5 different stores: store "H" had the set for $50 Canadian... not bad. Then I went to store "MV" and they had it for about $48... decent. The third store I tried was "DVDP", which had it for, I think it was, $45... getting better. The fourth shop on my intinerary was Store "A" which had it for $43... very nice price. But I had one more store to check, and it was Future Shop. The Future Shop experience was a little weird... they had the set for the same price as Archambault... oops, I mean Store "A", $43, except they also had it for $42? The difference? The set which cost $43 had a bilingual outer box, but the set which cost $42 was English-only (though the DVD inside is the same bilingual Canadian edition of the DVD). Truly bizarre... I guess it just costs Disney a little extra to make a bilingual collector's box just for the Quebec market. Actually, unlike some anglophones, I don't particularly mind getting bilingual packaging for non-French language films. Having French on the case makes even the crappiest American film seem just a tiny bit more sophisticated. But, if the unilingual English box cost less, well, I'll be darned if that's not the version I'm buying.
Please note that the DVD inside the Collector's Gift Set is *identical* to the regular version down to the case. Just, along with the standard version of the DVD, in the Collector's DVD Gift Set you get a hardcover book about the making of
The Lion King plus a storybook version of the story with illustrations taken from screencaps. It's nice, but what makes the set really worth it, in my opinion, is the "Character Portrait Drawings"; 9 lithographs of sketches of all the major characters done by each character's chief animator; for most of them, you can see all the lines used in sketching the characters, with the rough lines done in that shade of blue which doesn't show up in black and white photocopies. Also, the black-and-god box which holds the DVD case and the extras is very elegant... possibly the most elegant DVD box in my library, aside from maybe the
Fushigi Yuugi set. Now, is it worth spending the extra money for this set? It probably depends... if you're buying
The Lion King for your kids; probably not... it's nice, but it wouldn't be enough to interest them. However, if you're buying
The Lion King for yourself, then I would recommend it, but, really, it probably wouldn't be worth it if you don't care about the lithographs.
As for the film, it looks very fine indeed, though it's been a while since I've last seen it, so it wouldn't really be fair for me to talk about the digital restoration. Yes, the DVD does feature one new song, "Morning Report", sung by Zazu (Rowan Atkinson did the voice in the 1994 film, though I really don't know if it's him or an impersonator singing). I thought it was going to be an entirely new sequence, but they just worked it into the scene wherein Mufasa teaches Simba to "pounce" (on poor Zazu). Simba sounds a bit different, but, obviously, Jonathan Taylor Thomas' voice broke about a decade ago, so they couldn't use him for the new lines. I think the scene's better without the song, which is too short, but, fortunately, they do give you the option through the miracle of seamless branching to watch the original 1994 theatrical cut. Of course the menus look great, with a computer-animated Zazu... the only extras I've tried besides the directors' commentary track (which isn't mentioned anywhere on the packaging, for some reason), are a couple of games with Timon and Pumbaa which are strictly kids' stuff, not that I'm complaining (this *is* a kids' movie after all). Well, there's enough bonus materials on the second disk about the making of the film to interest adults.
By the way, as an anime fan, of course I'm very much aware of the old controversy regarding similarities between
The Lion King and the early anime series Jungle Tantei (Jungle Emperor), based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka, which, of course, aired on NBC on Saturday mornings in the late 60s as
Kimba the White Lion, with, of course, many anime fanboys with a real chip on their shoulder regarding Disney films regarding
The Lion King, or, as they call it,
The Lying King as a straight rip-off of
Jungle Emperor/
Kimba (even though I reckon a whole lot of those anime fans haven't even seen an episode of
Kimba, so they're just repeating what they've heard). It was always in the back of my mind when I think of the film until I was fortunate enough to see bits n' pieces of
Kimba, specifically the bits
The Lion King is alleged to have ripped-off, and my opinion? Well, there are really two entirely seperate questions people should be asking:
1) Were vague childhood memories, conscious or subconscious, of watching Kimba the White Lion on NBC an influence on *some* of the writers, storyboard artists and animators whom worked on The Lion King?
and
2) Did the Walt Disney Corporation executives intend the entire Lion King endeavor to be a blatant rip-off of Kimba the White Lion?
I think the answer for question 1 is "probably", but the answer for question 2 is "don't be silly". While I believe that
Kimba was probably
an influence on some of the people involve at the creative end of the project, it's one influence out of many, also including Shakespeare, especially
Hamlet, Old Testament Bible figures like Moses, and, of course, early Disney films like Bambi, and, it's worth noting, that Tezuka had many of the same influences, since great minds think alike. I also believe a lot of the similarities are due to the Disney animators and Tezuka using the same basic animal archetypes which long predate Tezuka; lions are king of the jungle (so, if you're doing a tale with an animal king, it will be a lion), baboons or
mandrills are wise, hyenas are jokers. And, if you're doing a story about a lion king, you'll be setting it in the African savannah, so two separate stories about a lion king or emperor will generally have the same sorts of creatures as a supporting cast as well as the same sort of vegetation and the same sort of topography, with shots in both of the young lion cub and his father standing on a rock because kings need castles and, in the savannah, the only thing which can conceivebly serve as a castle is a large rock with a ledge from which to look down upon their subjects.
Honestly, as an anime fan tired of rip-off conspiracy theories, my response to the question of whether or not
Kimba influenced
The Lion King is "Who gives a flying fuck?" What difference does it make, really? Pretty much everything fictional is inspired by something or other, and, even if you can point to a specific influence, it's usually only one of many things. What's important is what the artist does with the influence, and, sorry, the straight truth is that I think
The Lion King is a terrific film, while I found
Kimba to be fairly pedestrian.
I think this DVD belongs in everyone's library (well, at least if you like animation).
EDIT: By the way, did you know that "Simba" means "lion" in Swahili, whilst "Kimba" means, and I swear I am not making this up, "heap of dung"?
Sunday was a little more straightforward... we all got in the car just after 3:30 p.m. to get to Ottawa. I got my Game Boy Advance and CD case ready but left them on the fricking kitchen table, so I just read a bit of the
Cowboy Bebop manga on the way down to Ottawa, about a two hour drive from Pincourt... well, slightly less than that, but you have to take into account navigating the streets in eastern Ottawa, around the Merivale and airport areas, sort of a medium-density built up area with a lot of "campuses" for various computer giants as well as the usual strip malls and franchises, though this seems to be a bigger "maze" of them than, say, Pointe Claire here in Montreal. I got a cheap thrill from the signs for a convenience store chain that said "Quickie"... I have a dirty, juvenile mind. Before I say anything else, I do have to say the
Cowboy Bebop manga is much better than I heard. I guess a lot of anime fans don't like it so much because it has too much comic relief compared to the series, but I thrive on comic relief. We got our car to her apartment (well, more of a 3 storey multiplex, which she shares with a couple of freinds) just before 6 p.m. My father needed some Scotch tape to do a temporary repair on our Hyundai Sonata, as the little black panel at the corner of the rear left window had come off somehow, and it was making a terrible rattling. Alison opened her birthday presents while I played with her cat, who's much smaller, skinnier and less hairy than our own tabby, but she has a long tail and looks almost like a cat from Egyptian art. She is very shy, but I found a blue, fluffy cat toy attached to a string and I did mangage to get her to come for me, take one swipe and then run away several times.
Since we didn't have too long, we took Alison away to the car, and she drove us to the nearby Red Lobster... except there was a line-up outside. Meh... I was wondering if she could drive us to the Red Lobster wherein we ate birthday dinner last year, but she thought it was too far. (It wasn't too far before... never mind...) So we (well, she) decided to go to the Swiss Chalet across the street, which was still fairly busy for a Sunday evening but not full. I'm not the world's biggest Swiss Chalet fan, but they do decent food. I had fried pierogis for an appetizer, and I had to test both my father's and sister's Cokes to make sure they were diets because my father's now diabetic (I hope I at least have 2 decades left of sweet candy goodness before I have to worry about that). My father's certainly was diet, my sister's... indeterminable, so we had the waitress take it away and bring her a new one. For my main course, I didn't feel like either chicken or ribs, so I just had a beef burger, which was actually very tasty... well, I guess this is a proper restaurant with waitresses, so they have professionals cook the burger. My father had some sauteed mushrooms as a side dish but they were still cold under the surface layer, so he got a little huffed, but they took it away and microwaved it for two mintues and everything was just fine. After dinner, I wanted to walk over to the nearby Blockbuster and get a bottled soft drink for the ride home, but my sister said they had cans of Coke at the apartment, so I waited... We got back to her place, and had her birthday cake, which was cherry chi[ with jam... very pleasant, but I was full, so I only had a tiny slice. We left Ottawa around 9 p.m. and had a long, boring ride home. I tried watching my TV a couple of times, but there weren't any decent stations I could pick up, and, obviously, it was too dark to read manga, so I flirted with unconsciousness in the front passenger seat. And, when we got back, well, our two dogs had left us several "presents" all over the basement, but only on the carpet, not the laundry room floor, so it's harder to clean and smelled like the washrooms at some campsites. Also, I had aciddentally forgotten (well, we remembered on the way to Ottawa, but it was too late) that my cat was still in my bedroom, since she was snoozing on the bed, so she had scratched at the carpet by the door, pulling it up and making the bedroom door hard to open. At least she didn't pee or crap anywhere in my room, or at least anywhere I found.
That's about it...
Oh, I did download and watch the first episode of the live action
Sailor Moon and it is, as I expected, a lot of cheesy fun... maybe I'll have more comments tomorrow or some other time. Good night!
YOKOHAMA MONTREAL KAIDASHI KIKOU (Montreal Shopping Log)- BIRTHDAY EDITION
Yes, Thursday was indeed my 29th birthday, so I'll tell you all what happened in my usual mind-numbingly boring detail.
I got up around 9:30 a.m.-ish, and walked over to the couch, where I lay down for another 15 minutes or so, and proceeded to... erm... not unwrap but unbag my presents. You see, my mother doesn't wrap my presents, she puts them in bags, and stuffs the tops with paper mach�. What did I get? Erm... two volumes of the
Cowboy Bebop manga, a book on New York and a book on oral accounts of September 11th, an optical mouse, a
365 Days of Doom desk calender for 2004, a bottle of Absolut Mandrin vodka and a bottle of Hakutsuru sak� (hakutsuru = white crane), a budget-priced truck-driving game which isn't quite the one I asked for but still decent, two pairs of black Levi's 550s (I used to be a 501-only guy, but 550s are a bit more comfortable), $200 worth of gift certificates to L'Equipeur (Mark's Work Wearhouse in Quebec) and a hooded Wind River sweater. I shaved and showered and spent... umm... a few more minutes than I would otherwise like to putting on the jeans. Oh dear... diet time, I'm afraid. But not on my birthday.
So I hurried to the car, and my mother tried to get to Ile Perrot station to catch the late-morning commuter train, since we wouldn't have made it in time to get to Pincourt/Terrase-Vaudreuil station. However, the parking lot of Ile Perrot station is by Highway 20, about 100 metres away from the actual platform, which is a little walk up a path up a hill. Considering the gates crossing Perrot boulevard were already beginning to descened as we were getting out of the car, I didn't think we were going to make it. We made a pathetic attempt at running, but to no avail. So, we had to call our father who was going to meet us for lunch that we were going to be a little late, since we'd have to take a bus from Pointe Claire. The choice of where I'd eat my birthday lunch was left up to me, but I really had no good ideas, though I did say to my mother that "Chinatown would be a little too far away"... well, not really, actually, it's just a little troddle down de la Gauchiti�re street from Central Station. I guess I was tired, so I wasn't thinking quite straight (well, I often think fairly straight but not completely straight, if you catch my drift). My mother told my father on the cell phone that I didn't really have any preference (well, I often don't quite have a preference, if you catch my drift), and my father apparently said something about Chinatown, so my mother said that he had read her mind. We drove to Pointe Claire, and my mother mentioned to me that she wasn't particularly bothered by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on her little circumpolar jaunt with 60 Canadians, including rich Canadians like D�nis Arcand, staying at the finest Russian hotels and hogging military transport aircraft when we have Canadian troops ready to come home after their tour in Afghanistan whom are stuck on the tarmac because Mme. Clarkson's using the only available aircraft; she was saying this because
Tommy Schnurmacher has come out strongly against Mme. Clarkson; I tend to agree with Tommy on this and most other things, but my mother's entitled to her opinion, I guess.
We got to Pointe Claire station and the parking lot was unusually full, so we had to park quite a ways down from the pedestrian tunnel. I like to call that tunnel under Highway 20 the "urine tunnel" but they seemed to have cleaned it fairly recently, so it didn't quite smell as much as usual. I don't normally like getting on the 211 bus at Pointe Claire because they're usually too full and I hate standing, but the bus that came along was an 1980s Novabus and not one of the more recent Novabus low-floor monstrosities with fewer seats and a low centre of gravity, so there were still bench seats available in the back. So I played
Golden Sun: The Lost Age as the bus travelled downtown. At Lionel Groulx Metro station, my mother asked if there were any washrooms nearby, since there aren't any in Metro stations (for the public, at least) but I told her that I thought the closest public washroom was in the McDonald's on Notre Dame street two blocks south. But I told her there were certainly washrooms in Complexe Guy Favreau, a federal government building on the western fringes of Chinatown connected to Place des Armes Metro station, so she decided to hold it in until we got there. I played
Golden Sun: The Lost Age a little more on a bench in Complexe Guy Favreau while I waited for her. (By the way, I'm at the point in the game wherein I've learned "grind", so I could get the ship past that rock in the strait and now I can explore the Western sea.) After she was finished, we walked east along de la Gauchiti�re, and, at the crosswalk, we spotted my father across Saint Urbain street, and we had to wave a few times to get him to notice us, as he seemed to think we were coming to meet him from the south.
We went to the Jade Palace buffet restaurant in Chinatown. We were seated. My mother had some difficulty being seated because there was a bag behind her chair. My parents thought it was from the Chinese party at the next table, so they got the waitress to speak to them, but it wasn't there bag and they just took it away. I was feeling a bit hot since I didn't get much sleep the previous night and I was wearing my Wind River hooded sweatshirt I had just received for my birthday. I had Won Ton soup with those little fried noodle things you soak in the water and it was very good. Then, for my main course, I had 2 slices (very thin) of seafood pizza, several chicken balls (they had the red sauce with pineapple chunks, but, for some reason, I decided I'd rather have them "plain"), a spring roll, a fried dumpling and a couple of regular dumplings... I skipped the chow mein this time. It was all very nice, though the fried dumpling was a little gooey, though I think it was meant to be that way. I sort of wanted a Coke or Pepsi, but never got around to ordering it, but the water was filling enough. After we had paid for lunch, we walked west along de la Gauchiti�re towards Central Station, passing the Maison Haunt�e theme restaurant with the fake demons hanging out the windows and this park made out of the ruins of an old church.
We parted ways with our father at Central Station, and I navigated my mother through the maze of tunnels of the underground city to get to M�tro Video in the basement of the former Simpson's department store, below the Famous Players Paramount cinema. I picked up my main birthday present, an uncut, subtitled
Sailor Moon season 1 DVD boxset, which was just $125 (before 15% sales tax), not a bad price for 46 half-hour episodes and over 1000 minutes of animation (well, okay, since it's
Sailor Moon, a fair percentage of that 1000 minutes is recycled transformation and attack sequences, but I digress), as well as a boxset of the 1st season of
King of the Hill ($35, but that's only 13 episodes). At the cash, my mother thought she'd get the
Sleeping Beauty DVD just for my sister, Alison (who shares my birthday, though she's 3 years younger than I am), but I mentioned that I had rented it a couple of weeks back and thought it was the most beautifully animated of the Walt Disney-produced Disney films, so she got one for me too. There was too much for one bag, so they put the
Sailor Moon box set in a separate bag, and I decided to take that one with me to class, so I was doodling
Sailor Moon as my teacher was explaining Aristotlian virtues and other ancient political concepts.
During my 2 hour break between classes, I needed to pee, so I decided to get some exercise out of this and I climbed up 9 stories of steps in the Hall building to get to the tenth storey washroom (yes, the gay cruising one...). After, I found that wacky thing about the Jewish conspiracy at Concordia which I told you about the other day. On the way down, I had a Pepsi in the 7th floor cafeteria, then I went downstairs and crossed under the street to the library building, since I had to look up some books on my chosen topic, "Natural Law", to come up with a rudimentary outline for my term paper in my History of Legal Systems class... should have done it before, but I didn't get to the library before to research, and there was nothing in the course outline that said the term paper outline couldn't be hand-written, so I got 9 titles off the computer, and then came up with a very barebones structure for the assignment (thinking I'll tie "Natural Law" in with Conservatism, Libertarianism and Capitalism, so it was easy to pull topic headings out my ass), and spent some of the class, when I wasn't taking notes, writing out my bibliography so I could hand it in at the end of class.
I went to Pharmaprix to get a couple of blank CD-RWs (and Sundae Smarties and a bottle of Vanilla Coke), and, since I didn't feel like waiting to take the 9:15 commuter train back to Pincourt, I took the 211 bus back to Sainte Anne de Bellevue where my mother picked me up. My birthday dinner which I had requested was pasta shells with a shrimp-and-bacon sauce (yes, sorry Jewish friends, I'm very pro-Israel, but I'm afraid I also like the taste of shrimp and bacon... please don't be offended) and I watched some DVDs and wrote in this blog and went to bed very, very late, as always, but I didn't have to be up early.
Ah, I wanted to tell you my ultimate "
Sailor Moon on YTV" story, but it's much too late now. I'll see if I can tell you tomorrow evening, after I get back from my belated birthday dinner in Ottawa with my sister... we shall be eating at Red Lobster, which is a real treat for me since they closed all Red Lobsters in Quebec in the mid-90s. If you made it through reading all that, I congratulate you once again.
"'MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!' UPDATE" UPDATE
Well, I didn't know about this earlier... I read in
this entry in the Little Green Footballs blog about
this post in the bilingual Merde in France blog about
this article in the Hindustan Times about Paris mayor Bertrand Delano� giving honorary Parisian citizenship to the Left's favourite cop-killer. (I thought Paris already did that once?) Well, I guess that
Mumia hasn't killed a cop in over 20 years now, so he's a real swell guy. Or maybe the award's for his allegedly great writing? (I don't think so... even if his stuff had been written by a guy who hadn't killed anyone, I'd still call the writer even more of a moonbat than Mark Morford.)
According to the Hindustan
Times, "His case has provoked particularly vivid debate in France, which abolished the death penalty in 1981. French school children are required to study the case as part of their education." Oh, gee, that is just sick... do they at least give equal time to Daniel Faulkner's widow Maureen's
counter-arguments or do young French students just learn the same old leftist whitewash about how he's an completely innocent political prisoner of the fascist American regime, I wonder?
