Another Little Rant...

I went to see Apocolypto on it's opening weekend. I wanted to go see Blood Diamond, but my friend Nic refused as he doesn't like war movies... I guess he didn't know what Apocolypto was about. In any case. I went to the movie despite the fact it was directed by Gibson (who I have to say has revealed himself to be a less than impressive person in recent years). Overall I thought it was a good movie. A bit too bloody perhaps. One thing really bothered me though. Before the movie starts there is a quote: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. ” The implication being that the reason the Mayans fell to the Spanish is because their civilization was in decay. I cannot say whether or not this is true (it's not like I was there and I am not an expert on Mayan civilization past or present), but I suspect that a civilization as complex and advanced as the Mayans was not conquered due to any internal moral deficiency (or the moral superiority of the Spanish), but rather due to the new diseases introduced by Europeans, and the superior weapons technology they possessed. It set a bad tone for the movie, even though you don't see a single white face (at least not an obvious one) in the movie until the end. The atrocities perpetuated against the aboriginal peoples of the Americas can not be justified by claiming native civilizations were self-destructing. It's simply not true.
o.k.
I feel a bit better now.

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Just a Little Rant

Can someone out there please explain to me why it is people put little quotes at the end of their e-mails? Honestly, I really don't understand why. I mean, I'm not stupid. I get that it's supposed to provoke deep thought on the part whoever it is who gets the email. But have you ever noticed that it's the people who forward emails that say crap like "if you pass this on to all your TRUE friends you'll win a million dollars, and if you don't forward this to everyone in your address book in the next 5 seconds Santa Claus will die" or something equally vapid that end their messages with a deep thought? There it is, at the bottom of the email: "Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable" -Sydney J. Harris (I should probably know who this person is, but I don't). Honestly. I mean really. What. The. Fuck.
People who pass on retarded emails like that should be barred from having "deep thoughts" as part of their email signatures.
O.K.
I'm going to bed now because it's 1:30 in the morning, and I'm sick. And tired.

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The Weather Outside...

Oh the weather outside is frightful... This week we had the first snowstorm of the season. In less than 24 hours, more than 18 inches of snow fell. It was also pretty darn cold out for Deroche at a chilly -13° C. More than -2o° C with the windchill. I stayed at home for 48 hours straight (unheard of in normal circumstances). 48 long, boring, can't-even-get-to-the-store-to-buy-milk hours. Don't get me wrong. I like snow. Snow is one of the few things I miss about Northern Ontario (where I lived for 5 LONG years). Of course, when it snowed there it had the annoying habit of sticking around for months... Still, every time it snows here it creates absolute havoc. People panic, drive off the road and flip their cars. In our defense, the snow in the Lower Mainland is nothing like the dry, powdery stuff that falls in the rest of the country. Oh no. We get wet, slippery snow, frequently followed by freezing rain (as if the weather gods suddenly remember that it's not supposed to be cold enough to snow in lotus-land). To make things worse, cities and municipalities have tiny budgets for snow removal, and if we get a really big dump of snow there aren't enough plows to keep the roads clear. I have, however, come up with a fool-proof method of ensuring it doesn't snow again this season: I am buying a pair of winter boots. The second I spend good money on something, it's guaranteed that I will not need whatever it is I have bought. You can all thank me at the end of the snow-free-rest-of-the-winter.
I have included a picture of my back deck. I suppose I really could have put the patio furniture away sooner. In fact, the reason it probably snowed in the first place is that I left the furniture out. If I had made the effort to put it in the barn, there would have been no need to do so, because it never would have snowed...

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The Grand Master of Indian Trivia

I have come to realise that a lot of people have an overinflated opinion of their own intelligence. Fortunately for the sake of my ego I am forever meeting people who are way smarter than I. In fact, it happens on a pretty regular basis. Just recently I met a fellow by the name of Tim. He is a lawyer from England and was travelling in India, apparently something he had thought of doing for many years. Tim was (in my mind) the quintessential Englishman: quiet and reserved but with an absolutely wicked sense of humour. Tim is also uber-intelligent. Not to say that he was vain in any way. Quite the opposite in fact. Tim's rather uncanny ability to retain information came to light one night when we were having a friendly little game of India trivia. There were very few questions that Tim couldn't answer. How many times does the average Indian driver honk his horn in a kilometre? What, don't know the answer? Ask Tim. I'm sure he would be happy to let you know (the answer is in fact 15). What day did India become a country of one billion? Tim knew that too (sadly I have already forgotten). No matter how obscure the question Tim was rarely without an answer. Needless to say he won the game. Thank God I was on his team. Otherwise my poor fragile ego wouldn't have survived...
The picture here was taken at dinner in Amritsar. We had left Chamba at an ungodly hour and travelled all day, first by jeep and then by train in order to get to there. Upon arrival it was straight off to the Golden Temple. We didn't get back to the hotel until about 10:00 p.m. Tim was looking remarkably fresh, all things considered...

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Bill

I wrote a blog about Bill and sent it off to him to ask if it was o.k. to publish. He never answered. So either:

1. he doesn't check his email all that much
2. he hated what I wrote
3. he really doesn't like me
4. or all of the above.

So I won't say anything about Bill.

I'll let him speak for himself.

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