I was tagged by this guy.

The rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

And here’s what I came up with:

1. I walk on my tiptoes through puddles and slush because my shoes have holes in the soles.
2. I’ve had the same hotmail account since about 1998, before it was owned by Microsoft, when it was called HoTMaiL, and when frames were a trendy design choice.
3. I’m addicted to bookdarts. Any book I read usually has about a dozen in them by the time I’m done with it, and non-fiction many times more. I buy them in bulk.
4. My maximum heart rate was last tested to be 197.
5. I often eat the same thing for dinner several days in a row, not because I make enough the first time for leftovers, but because it’s easier than thinking of something else to make with the same selection of food.
6. I can wiggle one ear.

I’m supposed to tag six people, but as it turns out I don’t know that many people who blog, so I’ll have to do a half-assed job of it: I’m tagging gablazes, awhinap, and spoonfulofpoon (because he clearly needs something to write about).

In an article on Heath Ledger’s death, TMZ wrote this:

He was found dead in his bed in one of his residences in Soho by his housekeeper at 3:35 PM ET today. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ they believe it was not a crime, adding that prescription pills were found near his body.

http://www.tmz.com/2008/01/22/heath-ledger-is-dead/

Who wants to bet rumors of suicide will be all over the place? Maybe they’ll be true, I don’t know, but it sounds suspiciously like what started the urban legend that Mama Cass choked to death on a ham sandwich. Just because someone is dead and something is found next to them doesn’t mean that it caused their death!

I started looking over vocabulary lists for the GRE general test (a graduate school version of the SATs). My prep book breaks down words into certain types with tips on how to study each. Here are the types I’ve found:

1. Words I’ve never head before
2. Words I will use in sentence but can’t actually define
3. Words whose meaning is actually the exact opposite of what I thought it was

While they tell you to watch out for secondary meanings—I knew the verb “flag” means to mark or signal, but it also means to sag or decline—there are a surprising number of words that fall in category 3. These aren’t just cases of a word being used in a different or new way, but actually complete misunderstandings on my part. Apparently “equivocate” doesn’t mean to get the point across by being very precise (cf. “explicit”), but to use ambiguous language to deceive. And “urbane” doesn’t mean run-of-the-mill or low class (cf. “pedestrian”), but sophisticated and refined. I’m going to have to replay entire conversations in my head to make sure I haven’t completely made an idiot of myself.

What really brought this up again, though, was listening to the song “First Day of my Life” by Bright Eyes. It comes across as a really nice and cute love song with a nice and cute video. (I especially love the clips where one person looks at the other without the other seeing. Psychoanalyse that.) So, as I do with all such songs, I played it through a few times and wrote out the lyrics so that I might sing along. As it turns out, it seems not to be a simple profession of love, but an apology.

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They were spreading blankets on the beach
Your’s is the first face that I saw
Think I was blind before I met you

The singer describes a times when he and the other were together, happy, and utterly in love. At the sight of the other’s face, “everything changed”, as if they had never seen another person before and had not lived until that moment. But, something has been lost.

I don’t know where I am I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realise that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

The two are not together anymore. What happened, we don’t know. All we have to go on is that the singer still loves the other, and wants to be together again. He continues, reminding the other that they felt the same way once.

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up
And you said this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you

How sincere can this be? Is this really a love that was meant to be?

But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy
So if you wanna be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see

Something more was lost than just being together. Maybe something happened that can’t be forgiven, maybe they’ve just grown apart. The singer clearly wants to believe that that love is still there, but on some level it sounds like he knows something will always be missing.

But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time it’s different
I mean I really think you liked me

This love is like a steady job, but it’s no lottery. He’s hopeful that they can work on whatever they have, that it might grow into something it’s not. It makes me sad, in a similar sort of way, that what I thought was a great love song is actually flawed and hurt and hopeful and yearning for something more. In a sense this is a secondary meaning that most people will probably miss.

For once I finally remembered to look up the selections for this year’s Canada Reads before the debates started. There’s just over five weeks left until the process of elimination begins and another book is picked as one that all Canadians should read. Books from previous years have landed everywhere from disappointing to a new favourite. This time around I intend to read them all myself before they get ranked.

First up: Icefields, by Thomas Wharton. Straight off the mark this book gets points for being about a critical time and place in Canada’s youth—the exploration and development of the west, specifically the Rocky mountains and their glaciers. My dad joked that if the book was about glaciers, somebody is going to fall into a crevice. True enough, but it happens in the first chapter, so we can’t exactly accuse Wharton of using a cliche element for his climax, now, can we.

Icefields succeeds very well in painting a picture of this time and place in the Rockies. Unfortunately, the picture is a bit too abstract. On the stylistic side, the use of em-dashes to denote punctuation at the beginning of paragraphs instead of quotation marks was unnecessarily confusing. It was never clear whether the second sentence, the one after the “he said” or “she said”, was more dialogue or back to narrative. The narration itself was confusing, as the narrator seemed to change throughout the book. Nobody I’ve talked to who has read this book has been able to keep the characters straight. Someone I thought was two people my mom thought was one. “I” in one chapter might be “he” in the next. The picture was there, at least, and it was a nice one, but we couldn’t make out the details.

I’m also undecided on how the plot is motivated. The initiating event, of falling into the glacier crevice, does strike up some mystery and solicits curiosity from the reader, but only to end up disappointed. After that first chapter the story doesn’t end up being about that vision at all, but moves to describing an impressionist painting of ice and stone. What more are we to expect, I guess, since something frozen in ice isn’t going to provide much action and conflict.

The book is very Canadian, and certainly does a good job of portraying that aspect, but is lacking in any specifics to make the setting resonate with the reader. In the end I don’t think it measures up to some previous entires in the Canada Reads series.

Someone remarked a few days ago how funny it was that suddenly everybody’s a rower. Four months ago we were a bunch of hopefuls who had (mostly) never been in a boat and had no idea what any of the catch, drive, and recovery were, sweating our way up stairs and around the basin for who knew what. This week we were standing at an organizational meeting for winter training and the summer season, planning out our lives as if they revolved around the sport.

Today I had a similar moment of realisation. You know that sudden surprise you get when you catch your reflection in a mirror and see that somebody glued a large rainbow clown wig on your head without your noticing? It’s the shock of realising that the picture you have in your head and what you actually look like are completely different. Today, I was walking from the weight room at the gym to the locker rooms, and happened to glance in a reflective window along the way. I wasn’t wearing a clown wig, but I was surprised for a moment that I was wearing baggy shorts. Your average Joe would just call them “shorts”, but to me they were surprisingly baggy because at some level I just expected myself to be wearing spandex. That’s what rowers do. Wear spandex around and forget that it’s weird.

[Flip the lights on/off]

I remember thinking that one of the things I don’t like about old movies is all the silence. But, that’s okay, I thought, it’s just a different style. Not every scene needs to be bookmarked with some contemporary easy listening as cues to what emotion the audience should be experiencing, though it might be nice to enhance the mood a bit more. I don’t know the history at all about when background music started to become commonplace, but I didn’t even realise how ubiquitous it was until I watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy—famous for its soundtrack—without music.

There was an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer without any voice or music. I gather that was a stylistic choice where the lack of soundtrack enhanced some of the stuff that was going on. In the case of this episode of Grey’s Anatomy, however, it was clear that there was supposed to be music, just something about the recording had left it out. At first it had an unfinished quality to it, but I got used to it, and enjoyed the episode just the same.

The real shock came on the episode after that, where all the musical cues came back. What surprised me was not how the actual songs, played under the narrative dialogue for example, contributed to the show, but how at all times there was some kind of elevator music going on punctuating every look or gesture. After being sobered by the previous episode of simple dialogue, it felt like watching a children’s cartoon with over the top sound effects pulling me by the hand through each step of the way. I actually had to stop watching, it seemed so juvenile.

Is this a bad thing, I wonder? Does this subtle but more constant kind of laugh-track enhance the experience or just dumb it down? I don’t even know if Grey’s Anatomy is exceptionally bad in this respect or representative of television in general. I just know it will be distracting me next time I watch a primetime television drama.

I’m in my last semester of my undergraduate career. With but three required classes left to take and probably about a dozen to choose from, plus the freedom of an elective under the Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory option instead of a regular letter grade, setting my schedule has become an exercise more in aesthetics than anything else. I noticed, coincidentally, that the philosophy department’s class in aesthetics is not offered this year. Turns out I don’t need it. I’m having no problem seeing things as I want.

I’m conscious that I’m going to be applying to grad school in the next few weeks. I’ve already taken an extra year here and I don’t want the admissions committees thinking that I’m just screwing around with the extra time. “The Art of Listening” was thus the first cut from the list of possible electives. And frankly, I’m more interested in taking a harder but more interesting course than a bird course like that anyway. Still, interesting courses that would have been fine in my first or second years in Anthropology, Sociology, and Religion, among others, stick out a fair bit after so much solid physics, math, and philosophy.

I sat in on a philosophy class that certainly looks like a perfect elective—it fits well with my minor and compliments the study of physics very well. Plus the description talked about all those sorts of questions that come up while sitting around waiting for code to compile or atoms to decay but never get properly answered. Unfortunately, twenty minutes in I was wishing for it to be over. I had this intense feeling that it must be July, and I realised it must have been because the only other time I’ve wanted to leave a classroom so badly has been because it was a warm, bright, sunny afternoon outside. So despite how nicely it would fit in on my trasncript, this particular class had to be cut.

The second philosophy class was one chosen because it seemed the least terrible of the required options given. The History and Philosophy of Ancient Science. I guess that sounds like it compliments physics as well. Little did I know how perfect it would be—this year the class focuses on Ancient Greek Mechanics, which, though completely different from its modern cousins, would have sounded great coming in the semesters after Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics. Even better, the professor was one of these rare characters who speaks like she’s telling a story, not merely regurgitating information. She would run her hands through her hair, making it point in all directions, and sounded almost giddy at the prospect that someone might build little mechanical toys for their final project. I could have been Marshall with a man-crush on Gael. This class could stay.

Right or not (probably not), I’ve also realised that I’m beginning to consider how nicely the required textbook for a class will fit on my bookshelf. This is largely an after affect of clearing the thing out, trying to keep only one text in each main area. I found myself reluctant to give up my Schaum’s Outlines not because I ever used them but because they make a nice matching set. In my particle physics class, I’m tempted to skip the required text (a graphic blue paperback monster) in favour of the one by Griffiths, first because it is by Griffiths and also because it’s nicely bound. If only it wasn’t twenty years old. Dare I buy the new edition coming out in a few months, just for the aesthetics of it sitting on me shelf? Though clearly I’d have to buy a real copy of the EM text as well to match. Meanwhile, I’m highly motivated to stick with Optics not because I want to take the class (I do) but because the textbook is of the same series as my Relativity text from last year. I was even secretly considering buying the particles book in the same series because they’re just so damn sexy. Through in the cosmology text, for no class in particular, as well while I’m at it. Or maybe I should just get a grip and worry more about doing the readings instead of what the readings look like.

I should say, I also bought myself a big furry toque with big floppy ear flaps. I was feeling really quite fantastic on this day of courses, textbooks, and winter headgear. The only downside to the day was that when I arrived home Ponyboy was no longer asleep on my couch to experience what an awesome boyfriend I was, having left to go meet a friend visiting from out of town. Oh well. Twice as much food for me.