A brief rant about Canadian grammar

This is going to sound harsh, but seriously, guys. When God (or Samuel Johnson/Billy Shakespeare) created English, He included these wonderful parts of speech called "prepositions." They fulfill an important role: making your sentences not sound like they were spoken by someone with Broca's aphasia (tasteless neuropsychology joke). Do you guys not realize how strange it sounds to say "I'm done work today"? It makes it unclear whether you're failing at constructing the past tense or failing at constructing the present. Just one little "with" would make it all so much better.

The worst part is that I've started picking it up, just like I picked up "eh"--which I actually like. I'm being slowly sucked into a bizarro world of Northern grammar.

BTW, the answer to my last post: Barack Obama and Mr. T.

Adventures in Egotism trivia contest

Question: Who are the only two living people to have chia pets made in their likeness?

Google and other internet methods of searching are strictly prohibited.

Why I love Quebec

Because eating "Capitaine Crounch" for breakfast is so much more satisfying than "Cap'n Crunch." I prefer my officers in the cereal navy to be of French descent.

The rampant bilinguilism here is hilarious, especially when its completely unecessary. Yes, I understand that its giving respect to the two language communities, and as an English-speaker here I appreciate the effort. But still, seeing streets labeled "Boulevard LaSalle Boulevard" will always be funny.

R.I.P. MJ

Despite the tenuous grip on sanity the man had, Michael Jackson was an astoundingly talented fellow. He wrote that song, by the way.

R.I.P., bud.

Colo(u)r changes

For all the good it will do, I've decided to "green" the blog in solidarity.

If I made something orange or brown by mistake, please help a poor colorblind boy out and let me know.

D'abord Vous Obtenez le Sucre

First: we're playing a monster three-set show that will run run us from around 9 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. here on Friday. Come check us out if you actually live in this town!

Second: next Tuesday we're playing at a St. Jean Baptiste day celebration. St. Jean Baptiste day, a.k.a. La Fête Nationale, is a holiday that somehow (too lazy to go on Wikipedia) has basically turned into "Quebec Day" and is often an occasion for nationalist/separatist/anti-anglo sentiments...or roving lynch mobs (just kidding, Mom). For anyone who doesn't follow Montreal news, there's a bit of a brouhaha about English bands playing at these things, and we're a band made up of an American, two English Canadians and two Montreal Anglophones. We sort of represent a constellation of everything les Quebecois detest in principle.

To alleviate any language tensions that might arise, we thought it would be a nice goodwill gesture (or hopelessly patronizing insult, but...you know) to translate one of our cover songs into French. Our keyboardist--one of the Montreal Anglos, but fully fluent in French--suggested we do it with "As the Years Go By" by early-70s Montreal-born one-hit-wonders Mashmakan. What he discovered when doing the translation is that the lyrics actually read more smoothly in French than in English, even when keeping the grammatical structure intact:

A child asks his mother, do you love me
And it really means, will you protect me
His mother answers him, I love you
And it really means, you've been a good boy

And as the years go by
True love will never die

Becomes:

Un fils dit à sa mère, "m'aimes-tu?"
Et ça veut dire, "me protégeras-tu?"
Sa mère lui répondit, "je t'aime,"
Qui veut dire, "t'es un garçon sage."

Et au fil des années,

L'amour mourra jamais. (it even rhymes!)

He did a bit of research and it turns out that, sure enough, the lead singer of the band was French, even though the rest of the band were Anglos. Its like he wrote the lyrics in French and ran them through whatever people used for awkward translations before Google translator and BabelFish. Weird. I guess all you die-hard Mashmakan fans who read my blog now have something to ponder.

Iran

Being the political-blog junkie that I am, I've been following the Iranian "election" rather closely in the past few days.

For anyone who hasn't been following, this is the basic gist:

1. Somewhat-more moderate candidate (Mousavi) for president of Iran runs against the holocaust-denying, U.S.-hating, and all-around dickhead incumbent President Ahmadinejad.

2. Mousavi gets unprecedented Obama-like support from college students, young professionals, etc. who are sick of Iran being hated around the world. Mousavi takes what looks like a lead in the polls (although the polls were quite unreliable).

3. On Friday--election day--Ahmadinejad (who has the support of the military, the ruling clerics, the militias...etc.) unexpectedly massacres Mousavi 65%-35%, including winning Mousavi's home district handily and several areas that haven't voted for an established conservative candidate in...ever, really. Hmmmm.

4. People start to get a bit pissed. All hell breaks loose. Protests in the street get attacked by police. The cops break into the dorms at Tehran university and beat the shit out of/arrest students. And kill five of them. Mousavi holds a big rally Monday (today) and appears at it. The streets are filled with hundreds of thousands of protestors.

I find it very hard to concentrate on work when I watch what might be a revolution unfolding. It's exciting, scary, and a bit depressing. I feel pathetic sitting watching the live blogging of it (warning: some graphic photos/videos) from my desk in Canada while thousands of students my age and younger are out in the streets getting beaten bloody and shot for some semblance of democracy and human rights. I guess there's nothing I can really do--what, am I going to fly to Iran and fight in the streets?--but its that classic internet-age paradox of being able to know everything about anything while staying distant and uninvolved.

I just bought a ukulele

And I'm going to learn this song. Life is good.

Also, just in case anyone has never seen it, this guy is fucking unbelievable on ukulele. Who knew it could be such a beautiful instrument?

On the same note...

Here's a way to kill some time.


"100 Unintentionally Hilarious Spam Subject Lines"

Spam tactics

Those of you who know me or read this blog may know of my love for the subject headings of spam e-mails. I think they're a brilliant source of unintentional humour (Canadian spelling, eh?). Some of them are so poetic and amazing ("double her portion with your new proportion!") that I almost want to buy whatever product they're selling just so they're inspired to keep plowing through whatever-to-English dictionaries and coming up with them.

Apparently their strategy works, because now legitimate craigslist apartment listers are resorting to the same tactics. While making my daily procrastination/apartment search pilgrimage to craigslist, I spotted this headline:

$950 / 1br - Apartment With Strong Mojo. Will Make You Feel More Awesome*.


Now this is obviously tongue-in-cheek: the ad is written by someone who has a fairly strong grasp of the English language, and it's actually pretty damn funny. "You will walk in, and you will be amazed at this apartment," it begins. "This apartment is no ordinary apartment. This is an extraordinary apartment for you, an extraordinary individual."

Not really that far removed from "with a giant instrument, you will feel a bigger man," or "We hae [sic] the best alarm-clocks for your small buddy down there," (both emails I've received in the past several days) now is it? The next step is claiming that this apartment will, in fact, enlarge your penis. They're already promising feeling more awesome, although it must be noted there is a disclaimer at the bottom telling us that increasing in awesome feelings may vary.

Guitar porn for the day

Sigh...if only I had $2000 dollars.

Gibson Les Paul 1960 reissue on craigslist

A brief note

My second-to-last post garnered some rather pointed criticism from friends (okay, one friend), so I thought I should make something clear. I'm not down on California summers, or the golden state in general. I'm just amazed by living in a place where things stay alive between May and December.

Best. Spam email subject. Ever.

"Look Here or get AIDS!"

Why I love it here

In a California summer, the sun is an oven. It lightly toasts the hills and leaves everything from the asphalt to the spiky leaves of the live oaks sucked of moisture. The breezes that do come are dry, and in their wakes the rustling of the leaves has a brittle timbre. The skies are clear, plain blue, but for some reason--air pressure? the prominence of brown over green in the landscapes?--the blue always seems tinged with a hazy white. It's paradise, sure, but it's Eden after a drought.

There's something different about summer here. Maybe it's just the product of those everywhere-but-California summer rains, but the sun in Montreal doesn't sear the streets like it does at home. You can feel the open bodies of every piece of flora in the city taking in every last ray, from the maples covering the mountain to the flowers in the balcony boxes to the grass blanketing the parks. The contrast of the verdant landscapes against the deep, rich blue sky of a Northern summer is shockingly vibrant, even to my color-deficient eyes.

It's also the attitude of the people. Trapped inside for more than half the year, they escape en masse to the parks and peaceful bliss of the plateau streets with determination: we will enjoy this, dammit. I certainly feel it. Even with the summer stretched before me, I feel the need to suck every last second of sunshine out of the air and to store it up for the brutal winter I know I have ahead of me.

Plus, this city has the most beautiful women I've ever seen, and they all wear sundresses in the summer. Which is nice.