A Month Till Christmas...

... and the tree is up!

Update, I must!

Now Playing: Serenity - End Credits

I've had another birthday! Woohoo! Over the penultimate solar sojourn (Steve, I know you'll get this one) I've grown even more decripit and useless! Yay!

*sigh*

I'll just go off into this corner and die, shall I?

Anyway, Linda, Julia, Mimmie, Steph and I met up on a Saturday to jointly celebrate both Linda's birthday and mine. But what was to be done? The cinemas were bereft of quality viewing (NB - this was before Pride and Prejudice opened) and we were at a loss. Bowling? For a lark, I say, "hey, why not karaoke?" and am horrified when they take me seriously (honestly, don't you hate when that happens?) and soon we are on our way to Echo Karaoke in the middle of Chinatown.

Chaos ensued.

By which I mean, we spent six hours at the Karaoke place, screeching our lungs out. :D To be entirely fair, I was the only one screeching; Linda, Julia and Steph were remarkably tuneful, while Mimmie (oh, wise, sage, most august Mimmie!) refused to sing at all. In any case, it was a delightful time, despite my incessant mike-hogging and yowling. We only stopped because the place was closing, and also towards the end, my vocal cords were tap-dancing in an attempt to get me to shut up. Oddly enough, the next day, I was still in possession of my voice, though attempts to sing in Church failed miserably.

Before that, though, the frater and I went to see Serenity. For those five of you who've been living under a rock (heeey! what's it like down there?) Serenity is the movie continuation of Joss Whedon's untimely cancelled TV show, Firefly. The movie is pretty damn awesome and the fact that it did poorly at the boxoffice is, I think, a damning indictment of the tastes of moviegoers in North America today. I mean, you know the universe is fundamentally unfair when the Scooby-doo movie gets a sequel (wtf? seriously, wtf?), and this movie tanked. Anyway, if you get a chance and it's still playing at a theatre near you; you really ought to watch it - it's different, daring and pretty gorram entertaining.

Really, really want to watch Pride & Prejudice, but alack, have no one to see it with me. It's really odd how none of my female friends here have read the book. (Hem, I'm going to assume you have?) I mean, this is quite possibly my favourite book ever, and yet I am surrounded by people who have never read this seminal text! My anthro prof over the summer, Ivan Kalmar, pinpointed this book as the ancestor of all those romance novels in which Guy meets Girl, they hate each other and then fall in love and roll around in haystacks, or whatever it was people did before the internet. Its TV descendants include tropes such as "Will They Won't They" and the niftily named "Slap Slap Kiss." What's particularly funny to me is how guys recoil utterly from the idea of watching this movie. To wit:

Guy: I want to see Pride and Prejudice this weekend.
Me: *goggling in shock*
Guy: It doesn't seem to be playing at any of the big theatres downtown
Me: *even more shock*
Guy: Yeah, my girlfriend wants to see it, not me.
Me: Ah.
Guy: Yeah.
Me: All is made clear.

I don't think there'll be the same paucity of companions when I go to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I was dismayed at first to read that there had been significant cuts to the novel, but my fears have been assuaged - they left the ferret scene in! How awesome is that? The amazing bouncing ferret is in!!!

*ahem*

must be off,

Yours distractedly,

Sharon

Irony and Incompetence

Now Playing: Depeche Mode - Precious

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is holding a disciplinary hearing for a Toronto gynecologist. A medical expert testified that there were problems with 37 out of 70 hospital cases administered by the gynecologist. Some of the more stunningly egregious errors include performing a tubal ligation on a woman who was already pregnant & nicking a patient's bowels during surgery. This isn't the first time this gynecologist has been in trouble; in 2001 he had a disciplinary hearing in which he was accused of mis-prescribing mistoprol and missing the diagnosis of a ruptured uterus & falsifying records among other things. All in all, the man seems fairly incompetent.

So why do I bring this up, you wonder? There was one detail about the case that struck me as being deliciously ironic. The doctor in question is a Sankar Vaidyanathan, a name that seems fairly innocuous until you consider the etymology of his name. In Sanskrit, "Vaidya" means physician, as it does in Hindi.

Yours in inappropriate chortling,

Sharon

Material Girl

Now Playing: Ivy - Ocean City Girl

In their November issue, Toro Magazine ran a feature comparing headphones, and now me want. I mean, I was doing fine with the earbuds that came with my mp3 player, but now I really crave/want/desire/need a pair of good headphones. This Denon one is the most affordable of the lot, but it's still not what I'd term a casual purchase. The Bose headphones are much pricier, but just so pretty. In the just-plain-outrageous range is this one from Grado Labs; honestly, who needs hand-crafted mahogany headphones? According to Toro, though, the sound is like a pair of hi-fi angels cooing in your ear, so I suppose you get what you pay for.

*sigh*

Yours in fiscal inadequacy,

Sharon.

Not a good human being?

Now Playing: Lakshya - Agar Main Kahoon

So the other day, I'm waiting for the Spadina Streetcar and there's this woman with a pram (that's "stroller" in Canadian!) waiting ahead of me. When it's her turn to get on, she makes a few abortive stabs at getting the thing on board, and then glares around at the rest of us till someone helps her get on. Now, normally, I'd agree with her - but this woman, in addition to having a one-and-a-half-year-old on board, also had three full bags of groceries stashed in the pram. Asking someone to help you get your baby on board is asking them to act in the spirit of decency; asking them to carry your groceries for you as well is asking them to be volunteer sherpas.

We didn't have a car for the longest time, either, so everytime we went grocery shopping at costco's and bought tons of food, we knew better than to take the TTC, and expect our fellow riders to carry our jumbo-sized honey-nut cheerios on for us - we'd take cabs instead. Is that so radical an idea?

Yours in uncaringness,

Sharon