Oops, I haven’t updated in exactly 2 months. Well I guess it didn’t help that Alkali went down so there was no domain to visit. So everyone’s favourite Chinese-American gave me some web space and for the first time arioch I setup a proper script to update with. I’m finally out of my 1996 method of manually writing the HTML and uploading through FTP when I wished to add to my journal. I still have to figure out an easy way to import all my updates dating back to 2000. I really don’t think adding each post manually and then backdating individually them would be worth the effort.

I guess I can start with my whereabouts of last semester. I started with five courses and ended with three. BSc in out of the picture and BA is back in! My marks were as follows:

Yes, the above table indicates that I almost failed first year biology. On the final exam I didn’t know anything when it came to the last couple weeks in the course so in the short answer section I was filling in the answer spaces with quotes from The Simpson’s and pleads for the marker to pass me. If I make them laugh maybe they’ll love me.

I flew back to NS in late December, did the family thing, spent way too much time on holidays as usual (I didn’t fly back until Jan. 9th). I also had to suffer the wrath of dial-up Internet. *shakes fist*

During that time I managed to read No Logo and in my opinion, a quarter of its length should have been cut. There was so much repetition and tangents that lead nowhere that sometimes reading was frustrating. Why didn’t she put the case studies on Nike, McDonald’s, etc. at the start of the book so you don’t have to read the same examples hundreds of times in other chapters? It was a decent read although the culture presented in the last half or so of the book is pretty much irrelevant in 2004. I also started reading Nineteen Eighty-Four but I only got about 1/3 way through it on my plane ride back. The only other Orwell I’ve read was Animal Farm in grade 10 (11?) English class where I disliked it simply out of principle that it was forced on you along with the interpretations the teacher would dictate to his humble servants students.

While I was home I really had nothing to do except watching really poor movies on satellite TV. Amongst the trash was Dumb and Dumberer. Sweet Jesus, I think my hatred for Hollywood’s teet sucking ways has increased ten-fold. While the two main actors played the characters well, the writing was abysmal. Most of the jokes were stolen directly from the original with a very small fraction of the funny included. These moments I’ll spoil below:

• Original: Lloyd and Harry play tag in the van resulting in “The Gas Man” yelling, “GUYS! GUYS!”.
  Sequel: Lloyd’s dream sequence where Harry’s mother and the token hot chick in the movie are squabbling over Lloyd until here interrupts with, “GIRLS! GIRLS!”
• Original: Lloyd and Harry play tag in the van resulting in “The Gas Man” interrupting.
  Sequel: Lloyd and Harry play tag in a convenience store until the clerk interrupts.
• Original: Lloyd has a sexual fantasy dream sequence about Mary “Sampsonite”.
  Sequel: Lloyd has a sexual fantasy dream sequence about a bunch of chicks in bikinis.
• Original: Harry has a bathroom scene where he evacuates every ounce of waste in his body.
  Sequel: Harry has a bathroom scene where a melted chocolate bar ends up getting spread all over himself and the walls. This was actually the only part of the movie I laughed at – where Bob Saget walks in yelling, “There’s shit EVERYWHERE!“. But the source of the humour was already done in Half-Baked.

  Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck dick for coke. Now that’s an addiction. You ever suck some dick for marijuana?

  It’s only funny because the quote is coming out of Bob Saget’s mouth!

• Original: Harry exclaims, “Check out the ass on that!” to which Lloyd quips, “yeah, he must work out”.
  Sequel: Harry exclaims, “I can’t she’s wearing those [short and tight] shorts” to which Lloyd quips, “yeah, last time I wore shorts like that I got beat up”.
• Original: “Funny” vehicle: moped.
  Sequel: “Funny” vehicle: short bus.
• Original: Lloyd and Harry have a falling out and Lloyd trades the van in for a moped to which Harry has a diatribe on the stupidity of his actions, finalizing his rant with, “… and completely redeeming yourself!”.
  Sequel: Lloyd and Harry have a falling out and Lloyd steals a polar bear Harry enjoyed at a local museum, bring it to his house where the same fucking situation happens.

The list of “more than just similarities” continues. Avoid this shite at all costs. In happier news, I watched Garden State and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle yesterday both get my thumbs up. Well worth a rental.

In other entertainment, the new season of Jack Bauer Power Hour has started and yet again I’m glued to my monitor television set for every episode. During the holidays I also watched some re-runs of Lost so now I have two television shows I actually watch. Although I don’t know how many times they can milk the scene of somebody walking alone in the woods to hear some noise outside their field-of-vision. Oh, my sister and her husband also bought me season two of The Office on DVD. I’ve already seen many of the episodes but its absolutely worth owning it – just for the “mix of Flashdance and MC Hammer”. Mr. Toad!

In early January Canada also won gold at the World Junior Hockey Championships. So being Canadian, I have to cheer… and stuff. In related yet complete unrelated news, my intramural hockey team also played and won our first game of the semester Tuesday with a 6-2 score. I likely played my worst game in months because I had to play defense with the absence of our best defenseman (and player) that isn’t playing semester. It’s also possible I’ll be stuck on defense for the rest of the semester because nobody else wants to go back AND some our worst skaters are already on D, which won’t bode well once we start playing well-skating teams… like who we’re playing next week. I believe they beat us 8-1 three months ago.

In music news, I Mother Earth‘s vocalist Brian Byrne now has demos of his solo material online. It’s “country-ish” but I’m really enjoying some of the tunes, especially “Arizona”. I believe he’s still shopping it around to record labels and plays the odd show in Ontario. I’m going to make an update later about my most listened to albums of 2004, but I don’t feel like compiling that at the moment. I’ll just procrastinate like I do about everything else. For instance, I’ve been meaning to switch university programs for 4 years now yet it still hasn’t been done…

• Now Playing: Slint - Spiderland - 06 - Good Morning, Captain