brainylady

I'm, like, so TGIF right now

Canada cracks me up.* First of all, there is the fact that Ed Broadbent, the former leader of our federal socialist party, is in the race for MP of Ottawa Centre with the (wildly punctuated) slogan "Guess Who's Back!?!" Second, there's the spectacularly unhip (and poorly capitalized) headline in today's Ottawa Citizen: "The NDP gets all jiggy with it: yo, Homey, it's rappin' ed: the ndp you've never seen" (uh, was that supposed to rhyme?). Then there's the video clip of "rappin' ed," in which he wears boxing gloves and challenges Liberal leader Paul Martin to "fight like a man." Clearly, Ed Broadbent and William Shatner should sing duets and take their show on the road. Two crazy Canadian homeys, yo! (Ralph Nader's kicking himself right now because he didn't think of gettin' jiggy with it on video.)

Did you hear the one about the sheepdog with a two-hundred-word vocabulary? (No, I can't think of a punch line for that, but I think it would be something about George W. Bush being jealous.)

China reports that the number of giant pandas in the wild is up 40 percent since 1988. It's probably more likely that counting methods have changed. Pandas are notoriously bad at reproducing -- because, as everybody knows, all the good pandas are either married or gay.

I tried (not very hard, admittedly) to read Ulysses for a university English class ten years ago (in which I was in way over my head), and I'm thinking it might be time to give it another shot. See, I just read this story about the hundredth anniversary of the day the novel was set, which says thousands of people will celebrate by copying some of the things that happened in the story. My first thought was, Oh, so people are going to report in detail how much change they're carrying in their pockets and make a note of every time they pass gas? Fascinating! But according to the article, Ulysses is "a towering tribute to human warmth and kindness." (OK, obviously I didn't get that.)

Here's a long list of disconnected movie trivia: "Think you know your film facts?"

* Well, sometimes it makes me want to scream and tear out my hair, like when I read that Stephen Harper might actually be our next prime minister; if I ever find out you voted Conservative, well, that's a whole other story, but let's just say I won't be very happy with you.