French Learning Cassette Parody

You may enjoy this if,

-you have a crush on a French-speaking celebrity
-you love to swear and drive at the same time!
-you want vocabulary for joining a French revolutionary movement

I made this recording in February. Because it was originally a cassette, and I transfered it manually to the computer, the quality isn't the best. Once I get an agent, we'll re-record. It's ten minutes! Ecoutez!

French%20Learning%20Parody.wma

My Hurricane is better than yours

While the news of my arrival in Ottawa has been delayed, it's finally on the agenda.

Hurricane Keil hits East Coast.

Okay, fine, tropical storm. I've been drinking lots of guava juice lately, and it mellows me out.

I finally got my desk from the furniture hell room. Do you know that new inspirational book called 'Who stole my cheese?' This is the version where you buy a desk and then try to recover it in a cross-country, corporate merger, phone-tag maze of hellfire.

I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say, don't ever buy something in one city and plan to pick it up in the next, unless you're the employee who's going to transfer the funds and make sure the desk is there for you, and you have a way to pick it up for a month after you arrive in case you run into incompetents.

On the bright side, I've made everyone in my house envious of my gorgeous waterfalls-crossed-with-rock-hard-muscles desk. Mm.

And I can comfortably stare out my window at the neighbours from my new luscious desk.

Friday, I was standing on Bank in front of Quinn's pub, and an older man carried a young boy, maybe three years old, out from the patio. The boy was adorable, and the older man - his grandfather? - was smiling and making him laugh. I was staring at them and smiling, but didn't realize it until the man looked right at me and scowled. I was surprised to have been caught doing what I always do - freeloading tender moments with children. You see, I have no desire for tender moments with children myself - but I'll be a voyeur til the day I die.

My apologies to the man for the creepiness.

Also apologies to the OHL hockey player I accosted after Friday's game. I was only trying to touch you in the good fun of a bet. You didn't mind did you? You smiled, so I don't think it bothered you. I mean, I know your team lost and all, but I wasn't being sarcastic; it was a good game. It's my beer-drinking, Row A opinion, that the 67s should have won. I'm sorry, was it the heckling? Should I have toned down my cries of "take it off"?

As a hurricane, I don't discriminate. So take it easy, and maybe close your windows tonight.

Blogs are gateways to more blogs

Check out the blog for my house:

http://hopewellharangue.blogspot.com/

One tilting house. One dirty mouse. One crumbling chimney about to implode.

We call ourselves The Hopewells.

The 100th Post: The Blow-up Doll

The anti-septic kleenexes I rubbed my eyes with before I knew

It's like Alanis Morissette has a grasp on the way we see the world, according to this CTV story. How should I frame this humdrum lottery story, reporter asks himself. Open Jagged Little Pill at random. Catholic school girls? no. Hands in pockets? no. Old men dying as they (or their kin) win the lottery? yes.

I'm sick and my eyes and nose run constantly. My room gives visitors the impression they've entered a hamster's safe zone. The more shredded kleenex the better.

Last weekend my cousin and I did an assignment for her social deviance class where we performed a deviant act (something lawful that went against social norms). Some examples given by her prof were sitting down next to a stranger and striking up a conversation; wearing underwear over our pants; and reading porn in a public location.

We settled on a blow-up doll. After inflating her under some trees and giving her a black dress, we carried her around the mall for several hours, asking whether stores would have clothes to fit her, or whether a certain eye shadow went with her complection. As we descended the elevator to the food court, a group of older men were laughing, and one of them yelled, "Hey! That's my girlfriend!"

Before we had dressed her in the park, from a distance, two young men thought she was a corpse.

My cousin and I acted as though she was nothing more than a purse. In the Tim Horton's line, I held her sideways and swatted the man in line behind me with her toe-less legs. Then we sat down, a small Tim's coffee in front of our friend who was supposed to resemble Jenna Jameson. An older couple struck up conversation with us, and the woman told her husband she wanted to buy one of these dolls for someone named April.

Guess she thought the mouth was there for realism.

Afterwards, my cousin went alone into the Chateau Laurier with Jenna. I followed slightly behind, pretending not to know her so I could watch reactions. When she entered the lobby, the people erupted into screams and squeals of laughter, as though we had walked onto a stage, prepared to deliver scintillating comedy. The gold-trimmed plaster mouldings, white pillars, and burgundy curved furniture were one indication that we had entered a higher realm of the social faux pas. My cousin asked whether a room would be available for her and the doll, and then we left the building, laughter still trailing us. We walked past Parliament hill, past several police officers who merely stared and smiled, before finally deflating her into a backpack.

Big Bang Collision Strangely Underwhelming

Some people threw "end of the world" parties today, but unfortunately for them, they're going to have to live with the hangover tomorrow. The Swiss particle accelerator did not open any black holes to my knowledge, and it's sort of hard to hide a thing like that. Don't look in the dresser -- noooooo!

I acquired a dresser today. I didn't steal it, but "acquired" sounds more sophisticated than simply, I bought it for $10 at a garage sale from a cranky heavyset woman who added a surcharge to the price her husband offered. Is there like a fuel tax now? I'm the one carrying it home. But who argues with ten dollars? (That's rhetorical. I know people too).

My cousin who is visiting right now helped my carry stuff home. With a kiddie filing cabinet balanced on a desk chair, her line of sight was on par with the horizon. She is fond of what she calls the Armadillo - going into the fetal position and then when the coast is clear, springing out. I'm happy she didn't need to do this while carrying my belongings in the middle of the street. However, it may have come in handy yesterday for comedian Geri Hall, when she was escorted out of a press conference by the RCMP after heckling romanticisms at Stephen Harper. She said she represented the single female voter, and as police hauled her out of the room, yelled, "I love you! I want to love you!"

Lucky for her, her membership on the cast of This Hour has 22 Minutes landed her a one-on-one interview with Harper minutes later.

Guerilla reporting. It works under the guise of comedy.

In unrelated matters, if you're into post-apocalyptic photography check out the exhibit by Robert and Shanna Parkeharrison: http://www2.oakland.edu/shatteringearth/artists.cfm?Art=37. I saw it at the National Gallery today. Scroll down on their webpage.

Poussez sur la mur!

While sitting along the canal this afternoon, my feet dangling from the Hartwell concrete lockers that adjust the water levels, a yacht floated up below my feet. The husband was trying to pull a two-point turn in a space scarcely larger than his leather upholstered boat.  "Poussez sur la mur," the husband yelled to his wife, as she lanced the wall with a metal pole. 

I was sitting with my classmates in the shade of a tree, savouring a hot dog, when I spilled mustard on my pants. I was compelled to wear pants today, despite the 30 degree heat. I asked Ian to pass me a napkin, but as he did he said, "Guess we should have thought twice about the free food."

Maple Leaf Foods, the napkin said. Food taint scandals: the greatest time to bargain mass food orders.

The couple was now headed directly towards the concrete wall, the boat wedged horizontally in the vertical canal.

I'm hoping the boat isn't a metaphor for my future as a TA. Having students was never something I longed to have. They've happened by accident, and I don't know how to break it to them. You see, kids, nine months ago, the papa of my programme offered me several thousand dollars. That's how you came to be.

According to a fortune cookie today, which bore twin fortunes, the outlook is good. One said I should share my insight with others, and the other said I had charm and good sense. I think this is a case of positive thinking, but hey, I do what I have to.

Don't ask what we're paying

We arrived at the house Saturday while the former tenants were still cleaning out. They looked at us with skeptical, pitying eyes, the kind of look you might get from someone who comes out of a brutal final exam that you're next to write.

Sue, our street-watch neighbour across the street, yelled over to us, "I wouldn't rent that house if I were you!"

"Why not?"

"No good. Kitchen fell from the second floor to the first. Furnace is ready to blow up. It's a fire trap."

After taking a brief tour of the place, we went outside to verify we had the right house - 200 Hopewell; this was it. The funhouse floors upstairs, the mildewy tiki bar in the basement, the miniature battalions of booze bottles, home brew, and beer cans - it was all ours. The crater in the front lawn became part of a new mythos of the new residence -the 1 meter deep hole a wishing well where hope ran together like a rat-infested sewer. Hope was the only thing keeping this house's walls from collapsing.

After a visit from Bill Rye the House Guy, another helpful neighbour, who happened to be a civil engineer, we all felt better about the house, minus the smell, the missing screens, and the tonnes and tonnes of garbage. He kept telling us things could be so much worse, comparing it to the Queen's student slum.

Isn't that a poor comparison, seeing how bad the Queen's slum is?
At least you don't have rats!
We have mice.
At least you've got half your cupboard doors.

Half of us slept in the house last night whilst the other half took off for the welcoming arms of some obscure relation.

Who knows how many rental houses have brought extended families together? I, on the other hand, opted for throwing open the windows and sleeping on an air mattress in the hope that maybe Bill is right. The house won't drop one floor to the one below, and with sonar contraptions the mice will hate our warm, moist habitat for the next year.

We'll fill in the Hope Well in the front yard, and ask our neighbours to pray (On our street we have a chaplain, two ministers, and the head of Divinity at Carleton) or else perform an exorcism on the spirits which have not been friendly to us yet.