Wednesday, February 21, 2007

No More TOdyssey and a Query on Netspeak

Okay, so I've decided to leave the third day of the TOdyssey up to your imaginations. Okay, I'll tell you something. We went home. There were hugs and puppies. She cried, then I cried, then Melany laughed... she's such a little trooper!
I've recently been thinking about language, possibly because of Melany talking about *shudder* irregardless and how some fringe radical groups have decided to use powerful lobbying tactics to have it added to the English language, and it's possibly because I've been spending so much time on *Gasp!* WoW lately. REGARDLESS (Do you see what I did there?) I've been wondering when certain elements of our online vocabulary are going to make their way into common speech.
I've actually found myself debating whether to laugh at someone, or say LOL to them, depending on the actual hilarity of the situation or their statement. An actual laugh is an honest expession of amusement, whereas LOL is a sort of noncommittal, "Yeah, I kinda chuckled, at least internally, so I'll throw you a bone." word, or at least it is in my mind, but there are circumstances where I actually have to fight the urge to SAY LOL to someone. My friend and D's friend Tim uses LOL as a sarcastic way of making fun of someone's attempt at humour, but he uses it in actual speech!
What about other expressions. There are a number of online acronyms and words that might translate well into our consumer dialect. IMO, IMHO, IRL, BRB, WTF, WTH, ROFLMAO, GTG... these could all easily take the place of the phrases they are short for.
I shudder at the thought but I accept the possibility. Do you think Netspeak will take over English, or are we as English speakers going to fight to keep the language, if not pure, at least as acronym free as possible?

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Valentine's Day

Oh, and happy VD everyone!
Ew... that sounds like a celebration of pestilence.

Goodbye Mr. Churchill

To mollify my mother I have removed the image of Winston Churchill from my blog. He will be missed. When available, I will replace it with an image of Bun Bun composed as to incite hilarity.
Until that time I may try to put in something in place of Mr. Churchill, a placeholder as it were. I will consider the options available to me.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Bunny Girl

I'm going to pause in the recounting of the TOdyssey to make an announcement that most of you have already heard.
Last week, D and I got a new pet, a rabbit we promptly renamed from Bon Bon to Bun Bun. Our reasoning is that she happens to be a lop eared rabbit who may or may not talk and may or may not be psychotic, so we may as well be prepared with the appropriate name. If you don't know what I'm referring to, I will refer you to the Sluggy Freelance link in my links section.
In the week and a half that we have had her, Bun Bun has managed to train us very well.
The first thing she did was put on an act that she was small and terrified and only wanted to be left alone in her cage. This was superb acting on her part, and we totally fell for it. We got used to leaving the top of the cage off because she seemed to feel more comfortable that way, and seemed quite content to remain in the cage.
Today, D woke to find the rabbit roaming free, having deftly escaped the cage's confines. We're not quite sure how, although it is possible she jumped. The height of the cage is not beyond her capacity to vault.
D responded to the fact that our rabbit is an escape artist by doing what I would have done in her place, letting the rabbit out of the cage and erecting the baby gate we got from her original owners instead.
Well, apparently Bun Bun can climb, as well, because I woke groggy and unpleasant to the pitter patter of sneaky rabbit feet outside the bedroom door. I woke up and there was Bun Bun, standing on her hind legs with an expectant look on her face. She took my opening of the door to be an invitation to scoot inside the bedroom and get under the bed. I barely closed the door in time because I NEVER would have gotten her out of there again. It took me another fifteen minutes to herd her back into the kitchen, and eventually resorted to scooping her up bodily, much to her dismay, and depositing her in the cage. It is now locked.
For the rest of the morning I couldn't help but feel the smugness emanating from her cage.
The rabbit is such a sneak that I've actually promoted her to this rank and D has been demoted to miscreant. I realized that in terms of sneakiness, the capacity to escape all bonds placed upon you by higher intelligences far outweighs the ability to secretly plan ways to insert culture into my life. It was not an easy decision to make.
Bun Bun has also become very accustomed to D and I in her short time with us, and now has no problem making plain her discontentment if she is not getting her way. We periodically herd her from the living room to the kitchen so that she can hang out with us while we watch TV in the living room or eat and pee in the kitchen, and she takes the trip between rooms as an opportunity to hide under the kitchen table. Well, if we try to prod her out from under the table before she's ready she gives the ground a good strong thump of dissatisfaction just to let us know she's not happy with being rushed.
One night she also peed on us. We found out this was because she was marking her territory, but I have a suspicion that deep in her heart of hearts, she really just wanted to pee on us.
She's my kind of bunny.
We get along quite well. I'm thinking of consulting with her about ways we can conspire against D. Apparently she gives D the stink eye whenever I'm not in the room, so I think she's got a vested interest in working with me to this end.
If only I could get past this damned baby gate...

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Don't Sin Near Me. Anywhere Else is Fine.

On the second day of our trip to Toronto, which I am going to hereby dub the TOdyssey, the first thing I remember is the wake up call. No, I did not schedule a wake up call. No, I did not WANT a wake up call. No, it was not the hotel which was making the wake up call. It was D, having woken up about three hours earlier than expected and run out of things to do while tottering around the hotel room in her gitch, poking me with cold little hands until consciousness reared its ugly head.
I don't actual mind these ministrations. It's become something of an established routine that if D actually has the opportunity to sleep in, she takes advantage of that opportunity and doesn't. I, on the other hand, when given the opportunity to sleep in, nay even the suggestion that sleeping in may be a possibility, leap into it with true passion. We end up connecting somewhere in between sleeping in and getting up early, and the result is D getting several hours of suggestible, gullible tired Jeremy who she then hauls around like a walking purse to whatever morning activities her imagination can conjure.
On this particular morning I actually got a coffee with my wake up call. It was terrible coffee, as coffee goes, but it was the ichor of the black god and hence it left me feeling mildly refreshed. I don't actually feel awake until my third cup but D was not that patient. I was commanded to shower and dress and that we were going to go to Nathan Phillips square again. I assumed that D was feeling better.
I won't go into details about my shower. Suffice it to say I ended up clean.
We left the hotel room, D with a giddy bounce to her step and I with the promise of coffee to come dancing in my head. Yes, I wanted more coffee. See my point about needing three cups at least. At this point I'd had one.
We exited the hotel and the very first shop (I briefly thanked the Black God for this courtesy) up the street from the hotel was a Starbucks.
I had never had Starbucks before. I had avoided it in the same way that someone who drinks Colt 45 avoids even the scent of a Guiness, believing it to be some fouled decoction from the abyssal planes. There was something about the way people talked about Starbucks that had always set it up in my mind as a place a Tim Hortons' regular (heck, a Tim Hortons' thrall) should avoid. It turned out I was correct in my assumptions.
Ordering coffee at Starbucks made me feel like I was filthy, unworthy of the sophistication offered by the establishment. I looked at the menu and it looked as though a dozen italians had thrown up all their adjectives onto an advertisement for homosexual pornography featuring a 50's diner in france. "Grande Bold Cafe Latte Crapuccino." is one example. "Tall No Foam Espresso Malt-shake" is another. Perhaps I exaggerate. Okay, I do exagerrate, but a first time customer should not walk up to the counter and before opening his mouth feel like a complete and total idiot before even laying down his money. It's like being a virgin all over again.
I left Starbucks feeling spiritually belittled, and it seemed the perfect cue to be introduced to a raving madman. The best word for how he walked is loped. He was a loper. Huge strides that carried him rapidly down the street, spreading his word of... something far and wide. At first I thought him inarticulate but it became quite apparent that the gospel he preached involved quite a number of statements about how jesus flows over us and coats us and all sorts of other imagery that seemed quite inappropriate to attach to a divine symbol. His most interesting statement, D and I found, was "Take your sin away from here. Don't sin near me." As though he feels it perfectly acceptable to sin, just not in his vicinity. Now, D and I were walking along holding hands at this point so maybe he thought we were somehow copulating in public (I have no idea what a raving madman's grasp on reality actually is. He might have thought this.) Anyway, we didn't feel like aggravating him further so we took our sin into the mall, the perfect place for it.
The mall was amusing for me. There's a games workshop store there, tucked down in the bottom under the stairs, with bad lighting outside, making it look like a forgotten tobaccanist's shop or an ancient billiards parlour. The one thing I love about games workshop stores is that I can walk in with my girlfriend and start chatting up the employees and immediately realize that while I may be a nerd, these people have PERFECTED that state. They're like monks who have spent thousands of hours fasting in basements, memorizing tables and rules and army lists until they are incapable of discussing any other subject, and so become games workshop employees. I always feel better about myself after that.
Over an hour was spent in the mall, window shopping, browsing for outfits for D, although she actually showed little interest in buying anything, or even looking, but we were trying to waste time while waiting for events to start at Nathan Phillips Square. On several occasions she rued the fact -rued it I say- that she'd woken me up so early.
Eventually we decided to head back towards the hotel to pick up our skates and do some skating before Nathan Phillips Square opened. On our way saw the raving madman again, who appeared to be growing short of breath, but was still marching strong, this time on the opposite side of the street. I realized that his circuit must take him up and down Yonge street, allowing him the opportunity to harass thousands of people a day. Quite the ambitious madman.
We got to the hotel without incident, grabbed the skates (yes, we hauled them with us to Toronto) and went back to city hall.
It should be mentioned that I enjoy skating. I got D her skates for Christmas and mine as well, and we've put them to good use. I'm not very good at skating but then again, I'm not exactly that adept at walking either. There is one thing that I excel at, however, and that's spatial perception. It is easy for me to notice that I am close to another person and avoid impact with said person by the expedient of moving out of the way. This is a talent that 98% of children somehow lack, or neglect. D and I were consistently the targets of ballistic infants whose only goal, as far as I could determine, was to hamstring the adults on the skating rink and claim it as their own territory Lord of the Flies style. I even saw one of them playing with a conch. It became eventually perilous to stand still on the rink, let alone maneuver around the injured skaters littering the ice, so we decided to check out a cooking demonstration.
We were pretty cold when we went inside city hall, so we were ready to be entertained by anything that happened to be going on when we got there. D and I had a quick argument which I quickly won, about what event was about to start (this is the first argument I've actually won by dint of being correct, so it was a memorable accomplishment) and we sat down to watch some opera singers.
There were three women called the Duelling Divas, whose individual names I've forgotten, because what I primarily noticed about them was three things:
1: They were attractive
2: They sang very well
3: I knew none of the songs they were singing, but D knew them all
So I sat there and enjoyed three hot women singing while D spent her time actually listening to the music. It worked out for both of us.
The presentation that occurred next was for lack of a better word dull. The description in the pamphlet intrigued me, but it ended up being a very pleasant jamaican woman rhyming off her spice shopping list for half an hour. She was herself a charming lady, but unfortunately if I wanted to listen to someone talking about their shopping... well, I can't honestly say that's an entertainment I would choose.
Following that was an East Indian woman performing a traditional dance that I found quite intriguing not because of my fondness for East Indian women (she was too old for me) but because while I could not necessarily interpret it, the dance seemed to be telling a story about the woman's day, her activities, may in fact have been a microcosmic representation of a woman's entire life. I would love to have a better understanding of that type of traditional dance to better enjoy such a presentation but in my own limited capacity I found it quite fascinating.
From there we were off to lunch. A quick stop back at the hotel to drop off the skates (Raving madman was now crouched in a doorway, muttering to himself, apparently having run out of religious go-juice). We had lunch at a restaurant D had visited years before called Fred's Not Here. I, as usual, was worried we'd be late, but we ended up arriving early and had to sit at the bar in the basement (which was actually a sub restaurant called the Red Tomato). D mocked me for ordering a ceasar. I like ceasars, and I don't have to defend that fact.
Lunch was for me amazing. D was not so enthused. She had her tastebuds back so she was able to tell that the gnocci dish she had this time was dreadful compared with what she'd had at Romagna Mia the other day. It was venison over spinach gnocci and she found the gnocci starchy and lacking in flavour. She enjoyed the other aspects of the meal, her appetizer and her dessert. For dessert we had bread pudding... which was not the best bread pudding I've ever had.
My appetizer was escargot "purses" which were actually little pastry puffs with the escargot inside. They were delicious. For main course I had their "Holy Basil Stir Fry Chicken" which was.... well, holy. I devoured it the flavour was so robust and delightful. There was not a scrap of food left on any of my plates. D had leftover main course AND dessert, but claimed this is because she was getting over a cold.
I'm not sure what we did with our afternoon. Memory fails me. I do know that we found something to do to entertain ourselves until dinner, which was at the Drake Hotel.
The Drake Hotel was where we were going to drop the most cash out of any of the restaurants we visited on the weekend, so we got there anticipating a fine, classy establishment full of people in suits, sort of like somewhere Niles and Frasier would frequent. What we got was... something else.
I can best describe the Drake Hotel as a combination of Jane Bond, Del Dente's and The Starlight. The entrance to the hotel was a standard lobby, with a couple of funky chairs and statues and a hostess dressed in one of the most atrocious outfits I have ever seen, at least when visiting an establishment which charges $35 per person on a Price Fixe menu, let alone on a regular basis. She had a jean miniskirt. There was a run in her stocking. She looked like Uma Thurman after a bad drug trip and a hurricane of clothing set free by Courney Love. It was bad.
But what was worse came next. She was dealing with a couple who had never made a reservation. We were standing in line behind this couple. The hostess' co hostess came in.... and proceeded to ignore our existence. We waited there while the co hostess greeted a couple that came in after us, sat them, returned, greeted another couple and seated them, before the first hostess who was now finished with the reservationless pair decided that it might be important to attend to us. By this point both D and I were livid.
We were taken inside the restaurant but our table was not ready yet, as we were early for our reservation. Fine, I can understand that. We took a seat at the sushi bar. Yes, there was a sushi bar. I drooled while watching those two men make plate after plate of spicy salmon rolls.
Of course, my fascination with the food only held at bay my growing anger for so long, as our reservation time came, went, and then fifteen minutes passed. I finally got up and went up to the woman who would actually be seating us and she told me that our table was almost ready. At this point, I was ready to explode.
And then, like a miracle, things started to get better.
A very pleasant, very perky young woman, quite stylishly and professionally dressed and as courteous as you could ever want found us at the sushi bar, took our coats, took D's hat and escorted us to our table. She was blonde and almost diabetically sweet to us.
At our table we were almost immediately offered glasses of champaigne to apologize for the fact that we had been sat late. The server was professional, prompt, and knowledgeable. The food was spectacular. I had sushi, a lovely risotto, and some sort of lemony dessert. That's the only word my mind brings to bear on it. Lemony. I can't remember anything else about the dessert.
Suffice it to say we were not only mollified but left the restaurant feeling quite content, pleased with our choice and with the overall level of service the hotel had shown us, even given the ineptitude of certain individuals.
Our next and final activity of the night was to visit Second City, which we do almost every time we visit Toronto. Telling you about the sketches would ruin them if you ever see them. However, D and I were howling with laughter almost the entire evening. If you go to Toronto, go to Second City on a Saturday night for their 10:30 show. It's worth it. Stay for the improv after. It's almost better than the main attraction, sometimes.
Satisfied in our hearts and in our stomachs we walked home through the growing cold of the early morning. The TD tower was surrounded in mist and glowing green, and I wondered if the city is ruled by a supervillain called the Toronto Dominionator who strikes down with fury from his sickly emerald tower.
D laughed at me because I'm a nerd.
At the hotel, we watched TV, then slept. The next day we would be leaving.
And I will tell more later.