I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with “Reality TV” and all these newfangled gameshows. I’m not sure when gameshows started being called Reality TV, but that’s just the way it is nowadays.

The best one by far was The Mole, but it only lasted two or three beautiful seasons. It was intelligent and audience could play along as much as the contestants themselves, looking for clues and trying to solve the mystery by the end of the season. But “the smartest show on television” was, apparently, too much for the general public.

Over Christmas there was a new one called Identity, which was great because we could superficially judge people based on their appearance and win money for it. My sister and I had lots of fun yelling at the TV during that one.

“Number twelve has bigger boobs! She’s the Las Vegas Showgirl!”

Recently the big show on campus has been Deal or No Deal, which makes heavy use of the very popular element of suspence but not much else. “Choose a briefcase and then we’ll spend an hour telling you how much you won!”

But I don’t know what to make of FOX’s new gameshow, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Whereas Who Wants to be a Millionaire? asked genuinely difficult (or at least obscure) big money questions, this show does the opposite. While I think all quiz shows have a test to see if you’re smart enough, this one must require you to fail it. It’s both satisfying to watch (because I know all almost all the answers, except for some of the USA specific ones) but ridiculously annoying at the same time:

“ORANGE! Red and yellow make orange!”

“The sun is the closest star to Earth! No, I don’t need a commercial break for suspense before you tell us the answer, it’s the sun! THE FREAKING SUN! THAT BIG BRIGHT BALL OF FIRE ABOVE YOU!”

Suspense doesn’t really work on this one. There was no million-dollar question tonight—the contestant bowed out for not knowing how many years are in two millenia. The category, though, was “5th Grade Physical Sciences”. If I could get on that show all my financial problems would be solved. Unfortunately I suspect my Bachelor’s in Physics will disqualify me…

Addendum: If you’re interested, here’s a blog post on the statistics of winning Deal or No Deal.

Yes, I admit, I googled “skeet ulrich shirtless” last night. But no, it was not to satisfy some latent homoerotic desires for the star of Jericho. It started as a completely innocent conversation about movies and television and just progressed from there.

Somewhere along the way I read that Skeet Ulrich had open heart surgery when he was young, which means he had a sternotomy, which means he has the same scar on his chest that I do. Unfortunately his seems to have healed much nicer than mine did, which isn’t a surprise since I know mine didn’t do as well as the doctors expected. You can barely see it in that photo but its the only one I could find. And no, I will not post a photo of mine to compare.

I know plenty of seniors have sternotomies, but finding another young person who has had one is a bit like Amalthea finding a second unicorn. The nurses always said it was refreshing to give needles to someone with firm flesh on their arm. I saw someone in the university gym locker room last semester with the same distinctive scar and I had a strong instinct to say hi, but it probably would have been weird so I said nothing.

It’s definitely a small detail of a person’s life, that they have a scar on their chest. It is at most a story to tell, but one that is worn forever like a tattoo whether its an interesting one or not. But as inconsequential as that detail may be, it’s still nice to know that I’m not the only one who has it.

Lately I feel I’ve been playing Devil’s Advocate quite a bit. I just hope nobody’s been offended. I have a habit of disagreeing with almost anything anybody says. I do it for the sake of conversation, to flesh out the forgotten assumptions, and see how well people have really thought about what they say. And in the cases where someone is talking about something I actually believe in, I still do it, pointing out the same little problems that I struggle with to get some insight on how they might be resolved, for my own sake! I think I’m just being genuinely curious, but I have a feeling the other person sometimes thinks I’m just doing it because I’m an ass.

Here’s an extreme example but a real one, for the sake of argument if you wish. I only read this online (on a facebook group about the Rape of Nanjing) but haven’t had an actual conversation, electronic or otherwise, with a person about it so this is all new material.

Numerous powerful politicians in Japan have openly denied the incidences of wanton rape, torture, and unprejudiced slaughter. In fact, the current prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi still visits the war shrine that houses the souls of some of the leaders of the perpetration of the Rpae [sic] of Nanking. To put this in perspective, imagine someone like Angela Merkel, or any powerful German politician, denying the Holocaust. Or as in the latter example, Mrs. Merkel visiting a shrine that commemorated Hitler, Himmler, or Hoess. Ridiculous, disgusting, and immoral to say the least.

First of all I admit that as far as I can remember that I had not heard of this massacre before this past Sunday night, although while living in Japan I did hear about two controversies involving it: Japanese history textbooks glossing over the actions of the Japanese military during the war and Koizumi’s visits to the war shrine. As I said, I knew very little of the former, but I didn’t understand what the fuss was about in the case of the latter. This is in part because I didn’t know anything about it beforehand, and quite possibly because what I was told about it was told to me by my Japanese family and friends through an only semipermeable language barrier. My instinctive reaction to the above quoted paragraph was to disagree completely. Even now, having read more about the Nanjing massacre and the Sino-Japanese war in general, I still don’t see Koizumi’s visits to the shrine as either ridiculous or disgusting, and certainly not immoral.

I realise this may offend people, so let me reiterate—I am not saying that the massacre is nothing to get upset about. It was an incredible display of human cruelty to say the least. But (the problems of revisionist histories aside, which are wrong) can we really say that visits to the shrine are “ridiculous, disgusting, and immoral”?

Let’s look at the analogy offered of visiting a shrine dedicated to Hitler. This is fallacious in that Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine honours almost 2.5 million people who died in the name of the emperor, wartime or otherwise—it is not a shrine specifically to the architects of the Nanjing massacre or even the war in general. However, there are about 1000 convicted war criminals included in their ranks, so maybe it is a minor point. The question is this: Would it be immoral to visit a shrine to Germany’s wartime dead, Hitler, Himmler, and Hoess among them, just as we honour ours on Remembrance Day?

The difficulty is in that the Germans and Japanese were the aggressors in the war, fighting for a cause which we consider to be immoral today. But even with that, I would suggest that remembering the dead, regardless of who they are, doesn’t carry with it approval of what they may have fought for. Perhaps it just sounds like I’m preaching forgiveness for all sins. Maybe I am. At the very least we should remember that young men with families and friends and lives ahead of them die on the enemy’s side just as easily as on ours and that that loss is no less lamentable. I would go as far as saying that there is nothing immoral in visiting even a shrine to Hitler, the de facto archetype of immorality himself, if only to remember the atrocities he, like the Japanese military, committed so that we might better ourselves for it.

So, as Douglas Adams said (in an entirely different subject but a debate nonetheless), “That is my debating point and you are now free to start hurling the chairs around!” Or, since this is the internet, let the hate mail roll in!

A year to the day from when DNTO brought up the subject of a Pop Culture Blind Spot, recent conversation has indirectly reminded me of the subject again. I have many, but one that bugs me is pop music. When somebody asks me what my favourite band or singer is, I always draw a blank. I can’t even articulate what my taste is.

Part of the problem is that I’m never up to date on current music. I don’t have MTV or Much Music and the only radio I listen to is CBC Radio One (thus the DNTO reference). If CBC plays it and I happen to both hear and remember the name of the artist or song I like by the time I get to my computer I’ll make a note of it. Otherwise, even if it’s at the top of the charts, there’s a good chance I haven’t heard of it, or if I have, that it doesn’t appeal to me.

I have no particular loyalties to genres or artists. And while I tend not to like Pop or R&B, there are still a few songs that catch my ear. But even if I love a song there’s a good chance I won’t know who sings it or be able to identify anything else of theirs. My taste change so much that there’s no point in even trying to say what they are. I have a few favourite Top 40 type songs when I’m in the mood for them, but I’m just as likely to put on some Disney songs or a Dvorak Symphony.

I did try, though. I went through my playlist of about 2650 songs and, although I like all of them from time to time, I picked out the top 5% or so that really are my favourites, or that I at least have a reason for enjoying. They come with a disclaimer: I reserve the right to not like any of these songs at any time, and there may also be many that I love but just didn’t feel like tolerating today when I made the cut. So, for the record:

Anastasia - Reminiscing With Grandma
Anastasia - Finale
Cats - Mr. Mistoffelees
Evita - You Must Love Me
Jesus Christ Superstar - Heaven on Their Minds
Jesus Christ Superstar - Pilates Dream
Jesus Christ Superstar - King Herod’s Song
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Joseph Megamix
Julian Lloyd Webber - Variations 1-4
Marti Webb - Tell Me On a Sunday
The Phantom of the Opera - Think of Me
The Phantom of the Opera - Angel of Music
The Phantom of the Opera - Masquerade / Why So Silent
Arrogant Worms - I Am Cow
Avenue Q - It Sucks To Be Me
Avenue Q - Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist
Avril Lavigne - I’m With You
Avril Lavigne - Why
Julie Delpy - An Ocean Apart
Julie Delpy - A Waltz for a Night
Ben Folds - Fred Jones, Part 2
Ben Folds - The Luckiest
Ben Folds Five - Brick
Ben Folds Five - Evaporated
Ben Folds Five - Kate
Ben Folds Five - Magic
Ben Folds Five - Steven’s Last Night in Town
Blink 182 - Adam’s Song
Blink 182 - I Miss You
Bob & Doug McKenzie - Take Off
Christmas In The Country - Good King Wenceslas
John Denver & the Muppets - The Christmas Wish
John Denver & the Muppets - The Peace Carol
John Denver & the Muppets - When the River Meets the Sea
The Muppet Christmas Carol - It Feels Like Christmas
Cirque du Soleil - Alegria
Cirque du Soleil - Rain One
Anton Dvorak - I. Adagio
Anton Dvorak - II. Largo
Anton Dvorak - III. Scherzo
Anton Dvorak - IV. Allegro con fuoco
Beethoven - Sonata Pathetique - 2nd Movement
Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 - 2nd Movement
Debussy - Clair de lune
Edvard Grieg - Hall of the Mountain King
Eric Satie - Gymnopedie I and II
Gustav Holst - I. Mars, The Bringer Of War
Gustav Holst - IV. Jupiter, The Bringer Of Jollity
Johann Pachelbel - Canon in D
Rachmaninov - C Sharp Minor Concerto
The Magic Flute - Queen of the Night Aria
Aladdin - Friend Like Me
Aladdin - Prince Ali
Beauty and the Beast - Belle
Hercules - Go the Distance
Hercules - Zero to Hero
Hercules - I Won’t Say I’m in Love
Hercules - The Gospel Truth
Lilo & Stitch - He Mele No Lilo
Mulan - Be a Man
Newsies - The World Will Know
Pocahontas - Steady As The Beating Drum
Pocahontas - Just Around The Riverbend
Pocahontas - Savages (Part 1)
Pocahontas - Savages (Part 2)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - The Bells Of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Out There
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Heaven’s Lights Hellfire
The Lion King - Circle of Life
The Little Mermaid - Poor Unfortunate Souls
Dragon Ash - Grateful Days
Dragon Ash - See You In A Flash
Dragonheart - Finale
Enya - Flora’s Secret
Fraggle Rock - Let Me Be Your Song
Fraggle Rock - Our Melody
Fraggle Rock - Goodbye
Fraggle Rock - Sunlight And Shadow
Fraggle Rock - Why
Fraggle Rock - Bring Back the Wonder
Fraggle Rock - Friendship Song
Fraggle Rock - Follow Me
Fraggle Rock - Here to There
Glay - WE ALL FEEL HIS STRENGTH OF TENDER
Goldfinger - January
Goldfinger - Tell Me
Great Big Sea - Boston and St. John’s
Great Big Sea - The Mermaid
Great Big Sea - Wave Over Wave
Green Day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)
HUSKING BEE - The steady-state theory
High School Musical - What I’ve Been Looking For
Jimmy Eat World - hear you me
Jimmy Eat World - if you don’t, don’t
Josh Groban - Remember When It Rained
Les Miserables - At The End Of The Day
Les Miserables - Who Am I
Les Miserables - On My Own
Liz Rigney - If You Were Mine
Liz Rigney - Kerry Dancing
Liz Rigney - MacPherson’s Lament
Liz Rigney - Red Petticoat
Lord of the Dance - The Lord Of The Dance
The Fellowship of the Rings - Concerning Hobbits
Donald Swann - Bilbo’s Last Song
Donald Swann - I Sit Beside the Fire
Man of La Mancha - I Don Quixot
Man of La Mancha - It’s All the Same
The Mikado - I am so Proud, If I allowed
The Mikado - On a tree by a river a little tom tit
Moulin Rouge - Closing Credits Bolero
Moulin Rouge - Come What May
Moulin Rouge - Elephant Love Medley
Moulin Rouge - The Show Must Go On
Moulin Rouge - Your Song
Julian Lennon - Cole’s Song
The London Metropolitan Orchestra - An American Symphony
The Prince of Egypt - Deliver Us
The Prince of Egypt - The Plagues
Regina Spector - Apres Moi
Rent - Seasons Of Love
Rip Slyme - 135BPM
The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Science Fiction Double Feature
Savage Garden - Two Beds and a Coffee Machine
Dana Glover - It Is You (I Have Loved)
Jason Wade - You Belong To Me
Shrek - True Love’s First Kiss
Sowelu - Rainbow (original mix)
StudentRick - Meet You Halfway There
The Corpse Bride - Tears To Shed
The Corpse Bride - The Piano Duet
Titanic - Hymn To The Sea
Treble Charger - Just What They Told Me
Yann Tiersen - Le moulin
Yann Tiersen - Sur le fil
Yanni - Aria
Yanni - Reflections Of Passion
the flaming lips - yoshimi vs. the pink robots
HY - AM1100
Jon Brion - Over Our Heads
Of Montreal - Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games
Andrea Boccelli - Conte Partiro
Audrey Hepburn - Moon River
Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton - You Don’t Own Me
Bill Withers - Lovely Day
Britney Spears - Toxic
CBC - Hockey Night in Canada (2000)
CBC Television - Olympic Theme
Cat Stevens - Morning has Broken
Charm - Diamond Song
Douglas Adams - Titania’s Theme
George Westerholm - Trevor
Hawksley Workman - A Moth is not a Butterfly
Hot Hot Heat - Talk to Me, Dance With Me
Incubus - I Miss You (Acoustic)
Irish Decendants - Barretts Privateers
James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover
Jeremy Fisher - High School
Kermit The Frog - The Rainbow Connection
N.E.R.D - She Wants To Move
Nelly Furtado - Powerless (Say What You Want)
Original Cast - Open the Window
PDQ Bach - Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
SHS Concert Choir - In Flanders Fields
Sarah Mclachlan - When She Loved Me (Toy Story 2)
Sufjan Stevens - Chicago
The Go! Team - Ladyflash
Wuthering Heights - Main Theme (Piano Version)

I wonder if it counts as insomnia if I don’t even try to go to sleep in the first place. A week without school or any other commitments earlier than 14:00 have given me a feeling of being suspended in limbo. There is no sense of time anymore. Not even the sun can guide me through the day, blocked out of my apartment for the few hours it shines by thick blinds.

Each night there’s a point where I know logically I should go to sleep. Instead I stand in my middle of the room and wonder what I can do. Make a snack, perhaps, or watch a movie? I have a book to read but that is far to serene for my otherwise wired self.

Last night at 3:00 I found myself on my couch wrapped in blankets, watching an old movie I’ve seen half a dozen times before. I was tired, but still didn’t feel like sleeping. After some time I was lying down, eyes closed, back to the screen, just listening to the dialogue. Not an unusual place to find me, I must admit. Somehow my couch often feels more inviting than the flat impersonal mattress of my bed.

I was aware of a sex scene happening behind me, a seduction twenty-five minutes in the making, and at the same time developed an intense craving for cheese fries. It was what the two lovers had shared moments earlier at the fast food drive-through. Some kind of Freudian desire on my part? One can only wonder.

I figured it had been long enough since I brushed my teeth that a snack wouldn’t taste like peppermint or Listerine. Toast and cream cheese. Right food groups, wrong foods. But it did the trick.

Now almost 4:00, back on the couch with toast and tea, wide awake again, back to square one. Another hour needed settle down once again and have any hope of going to sleep.

Today at least it’s only 2:00, but that craving for cheese fries is coming around again, and today all the equipment I need is waiting for me in the fridge. Not exactly an appropriate midnight snack, but it’s just Friday night. The regular dirge of academia is still more two days away, and until then its all the late-night melted cheddar I want.

Come late Sunday night it might be insomnia. Yesterday, and tonight, it’s just a lazy ass good time.

Nay, I say my mom is cool! Yes, that’s my mom there on the right, volunteering at Arty Gras, a fundraising event for the Saint John Arts Center. She’s got the best mask out of everybody, I dare say.

A cold February winter afternoon, a rich cup of hot chocolate, 70% pure like all respectable chocolate should be, and good company made for a nice afternoon today.

How have I not known about this place before? And now, how can I have hot chocolate anywhere else? Certaintly the brown water at Tim Horton’s will no longer suffice. The traditional grandma’s style chocolate in front of me was thick and beautiful, and enough of it to make for a full meal in itself. It was probably wise we didn’t also order the chocolate fondue to snack on along with it, as tempting as it was. Next time, mon chéri.

It’s always good to catch up with old friends, although at times errily reminiscent of that line from Before Sunset:

It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s—they’re now married. Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is and that I taught them to care and respect women. I want to kill them!

But it turned out just to be one of those things lost in translation, across languages and cultures both. It’s unavoidable at times. (There was also no appropriate translation for how rich the drink was.) Natsukashikatta ne! I had forgotten how fun it is to have loud inappropriate conversations in public places, hoping nobody around happens to understand the language.

Everybody loves mini-wheats. You’ve got your classics — the regular frosted and the brown sugar frosted — and then there’s the new guys, vanilla and maple flavoured. Both great choices. I always notice that when they go on sale they sell out very quickly.

I’m not sure about the new Strawberry flavour though. The other new flavours weren’t a big change since they still basically looked the same, but there’s something about a big bowl of fluorescent pink in the morning that makes me think I’m not being quite as healthy as I could be. I’ll stick to the maple or brown sugar flavours from now on, because that’s definitely health food. (Or maybe I should avoid the “frosted” part all together and eat All-Bran Strawberry Bites instead, eh?)

Google can do more than you realise, as these hacks show. I particularly like the Google Talk one, which when given a few starting words will finish the sentence in an oracle-like fashion. Since Google is all about webpages, I asked it what it thought of Booberfish.com by starting it off with “Booberfish is…”

Booberfish is a piece of my Heart
Will Go On the web.
The Web
The Semantic Web
is a pesticide?
Is a decentralized organization
an international Journal.

I added the line breaks for poetic effect, but the words are just as they came out. After that it started turning into gibberish, but this much was pretty good. But alas, the fickle nature of the web means that the results aren’t reproducible.

I also wanted to try Word Color, which is a program that will search Google Images for a particular term and average together the colours in the top results. You can find out that sky is blue, money is green, blood is red, etc. I wanted to see if it agreed at all with some my own notions of colour (such as momentum being green and electricity bright blue) but it’s a Windows program, and I didn’t feel like figuring out how to compile Delphi code at the moment. Well, I know what colour words are anyway without having to google it.

A recent post on ni.vu.ni.connu about a recent post on The DEWLiner’s Art Blog about an intersection of Scully Way and Mulder Ave in Ontario reminded me of a similar place here in Montreal.

When I lived in Verdun, my regular bus took me through this intersection. If I still took that bus, I might be tempted to go out and take a picture, but for now I’ll just settle on a screenshot from Google Maps. I know the intersection of Duke and Wellington may not be exactly on target, but it’s a pretty good hit for the famous jazz musician.

It don’t mean a thing
If it ain’t got that swing
Doo-wat doo-wat, doo-wat doo-wat
It don’t mean a thing
All you got to do is sing
Doo-wat doo-wat, doo-wat doo-wat
Doo-wat doo-wat, doo-wat doo-wat