Monday 15 October 2012

Things about which I get aggresively excited

I was at a BBQ over the Labour Day weekend. Amongst the burgers, Prosecco and setting, late summer sun, discussions turned to good movies and then to the German film, The Lives of Others. The mild-mannered artist sitting to my right advanced the opinion that maybe the ending dragged a bit. That is when I found myself waving my finger and yelling in incoherent half sentences - "Are you insane?" "He goes to the archives and realises --" "He's at the theatre and talks to the SAME guy." -- "The little dude is a POSTMAN!" I was half out of my chair at this point, belligerent finger waving like a weapon, so agitated it was all I could do to remember to keep sipping my bubbly wine.

There are some things, books, movies, TV shows that I am loudly, blindly and forcefully a fan of, and this post is my inaugural edition of `Things About Which I Get Aggressively Excited

The Lives of Others (Das Leberen der Anderen in the original German) was made in 2006. It's set in Cold War Berlin and examines the effects of the incessant state surveillance on both the watched and the watchees.

If this sounds like a lame downer, YOU'RE TOTALLY WRONG! It's a fantastic, fast-paced and fascinating film (hee - "F"s) with an ending that will knock your socks off and leave you with faith in the human race, or at least in the decency we can show each other in our personal relationships. It's got luminous performances, sexy subversives and the most unlikely likable character ever. 

If you haven't seen it, get yourself to Netflix pronto and DO not let me catch you slagging the ending.
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Thursday 11 October 2012

Sexy Veggie

A colleague has grown a rather special carrot...








It's the hairy bit at the tip that is truly freaky...



FYI -- One of the Google autofills I got as I tried to find out what that hairy bit is called:






The real concern here, is, what does it say about global health issues  that "hairy tongue" becomes a default Google search. 

Monday 8 October 2012

Canadian Thanksgiving Resolutions

In the frozen wastelands of the North we have Thanksgiving on the first weekend of October. This is more sensible than our American brothers and sisters, I think, because the weather is better, the leaves are prettier and it's a good distance from Christmas, meaning that we can quite happily have two turkey-dominated feasts without them being so close together that you're still working off the Thanksgiving-related turkey farts when you sit down to your Yuletide feast.

Anyway. We have a venerable tradition in Canada where we make Thanksgiving Resolutions, this tradition is as Canadian as feeling unjustifiably smug about our Medicare system and collectively agreeing that Stephen Harper just shouldn't smile

While I may have just made this tradition up, I am sincere in my new resolution... Which is to get better with the blog posts. If anyone is still checking my infrequently updated blog, I vow to do better.