Monthly Archives: July 2004

Table Tennis Dorks

Aaron has his thing for the snow­board­ing girls, the ones with the pig­tails on the moun­tain who sup­port the Canadian gear com­pa­nies like West 49, Nick has his for long­board­ing girls, Jeff for the hock­ey girls, and Trolley for the…girls. I think the whole idea is hilar­i­ous, and chuck­le to myself when I read about peo­ple like Alexandra Kosteniuk, the attrac­tive Russian girl who became Grandmaster at the age of 13, in the papers. I always imag­ine chess dorks swoon­ing over some spec­tac­u­lar move she makes that’s beyond my com­pre­hen­sion.

Then I saw Biba Golic face some­one in the 2003 Killerspin com­pe­ti­tion, and real­ized that I’m just a table ten­nis dork. It’s not so much the fact that she’s a pro­fes­sion­al table ten­nis play­er, but the fact that she plays aggres­sive­ly, almost uncon­ser­v­a­tive­ly. It’s like Jonathan and his thing for drum­mer girls who play with an aggro-ape stance, instead of the dain­ty, elbows-raised pos­ture that so many female drum­mers seem to have. There’s some­thing about a girl who plays like a guy, whether it’s table ten­nis, drums, or even games. This is going on the updat­ed list soon.

Table ten­nis dorks. I won­der if I’m the first.

Ghost World

I usu­al­ly have to be in a very spe­cif­ic mood to watch Ghost World, but some­thing about it is strik­ing a chord with me right now, and this time it’s not just SJs sullen voice. The humour is dri­er than Rushmore, which says some­thing about the skills of Terry Zwigoff’s as a direc­tor. The risk of unsat­u­rat­ed humour is that it very eas­i­ly goes unrec­og­nized, espe­cial­ly with­out a laugh track. The last time I watched Ghost World was before I ever saw Mr. Show, so it’s only now that I can real­ly appre­ci­ate David Cross’s cameo per­for­mance.

Seymour is my god, cause it’s obvi­ous­ly him and he does­n’t care.

Step Into Freedom

I start­ed off the day with my Breathe mix, an ener­getic col­lec­tion of songs that makes me think of deep inhala­tions against a rush of music.

Friday after­noon. I was tempt­ed to leave work ear­ly, but held on until 4:15. I put my head­phones on, and as I stepped out of the build­ing, Honour (Juno Mix) by VNV nation was the first thing to come on. It just floored me. I mean, that song is what I based my Breathe mix on.

Hearing the words, “Notify ground troops”, is the best way to step into free­dom.

One-Year Mark

I think I’m com­ing up to my one-year dry spell mark, but to be hon­est, I’m not sure. I used to tease Trolley about his dry spells, but now, well, yeah…heh.

I’m aim­ing for four. We were watch­ing a dat­ing show on the Life Network once, and they were try­ing to set up this guy who had a full out four-year dry spell. On his actu­al date, he could­n’t stop talk­ing about how his fam­i­ly had an inter­ven­tion con­cern­ing the amount of time he spent on the inter­net. He kept going on and on about how his par­ents want­ed less than two hours a day but he was adamant on keep­ing at least four. My the­o­ry is that any­thing past three years does dam­age to the brain. I want to be able to doc­u­ment every dis­in­te­grat­ing part of my intel­lect Charlie Gordon style. I’m dying to find out if it’ll be a grad­ual process, or I’ll just sud­den­ly wake up one day with­out my san­i­ty.

I got the idea from Dave, a guy on the floor in res in first year. He was in the reserves, so he always told us these crazy sto­ries about when he was serv­ing. One time he had to stay awake for three days, doing noth­ing but eat­ing and defending/digging a trench. After the 30th hour he start­ed start­ed hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. After that, Pita and I made a pact to pull a simul­ta­ne­ous three-nighter, just to see if we’d start to go insane, but I keeled over in my room at about the 23rd hour. I had nev­er pulled an all-nighter before then.

This time though, I’ve had a bit of prac­tice. Not three years prac­tice, but prac­tice. I want to go for as long as pos­si­ble, sort of like serv­er uptime.