I think people in Calgary can relate

Letter to the Transport Authority

Gentlemen:

I have been riding trains daily for the last two years, and the service on your line seems to be getting worse every day. I am tired of standing in the aisle all the time on a 14-mile trip. I think the transportation system is worse than that enjoyed by people 2,000 years ago.

Yours truly,
A Commuter


Dear Sir:

We received your letter with reference to the shortcomings of our service and believe you are somewhat confused in your history. The only mode of transportation 2,000 years ago was by foot.

Sincerely,
The Railroad


Gentlemen:

I am in receipt of your letter, and I think you are the ones who are confused in your history. If you will refer to the Bible, Book of David, 9th Chapter, you will find that Balaam rode to town on his ass. That, gentlemen, is something I have not been able to do on your train in the last two years.

Yours truly,
A Commuter

"The head casket, please..."

Fido is one of the better films I've seen recently. That's not to say I see a lot of films, because I don't see more than the average person, but if you asked me for a recommendation, I'd tell you I really enjoyed Fido.

Now it's true, I like zombie movies... but this is a very different kind of zombie movie. The premise of the story is that a radioactive particle shower from space sweeps across the earth (can anyone say H.G. Wells or John Wyndham?), causing all the previously dead people to come alive. The Zombie Wars ensue, with municipalities then fenced and gated to keep the zombies outside. But this radioactivity of course remains, so that anyone who dies even within the compound, comes back as a zombie. Funerals thus become expensive because you have to purchase two caskets: one for the body, and the other for your head (which of course has to be cut off to prevent you from becoming a zombie). Hence the post title.

What makes the story absolutely delightful is that it takes place in a kind of alternate history 1950s, where moms stay home and bake pies, little boys innocently play baseball, little girls go to ballet or jump rope, and war heroes are bigger than life. The next door neighbor, a veteran of the Zombie Wars, is more Cary Grant than Rambo, to give you some idea of the tenor of the story.

Into the mix throw an ingenious scientist who invents a collar that suppresses the flesh-eating desires of zombies. Without the threat of him eating you, a zombie can be put to all kind of wonderful uses, and a new servant class is born.

Now, little Timmy has some questions about zombies, like whether they are dead or alive, but his father discourages any talk of zombies after having had to kill his own father who became a zombie. Thus "we don't talk about grandpa" matches the repressed gender role his mother is forced to play and his loneliness and need for a father (which in turn lead to several pitiful looks on Timmy's part).

Mom (played by Carrie Moss) decides it's about time they got a zombie; after all they're the only people on the block who don't have one, and Timmy grows close to the zombie (Billy Connelly of all people), who he names Fido.

Fido gets in trouble, and so does Timmy, but his relationship with his mother grows stronger, as does his affection for his zombie... in short, after a conflict, they all live happily ever after... well, most of them.

The movie wouldn't work the way it does if it wasn't set in what looks like our past. Imagining the same scenario in the future would just produce another stock zombie movie, but this one has a great balance of drama and comedy that made it a unique movie-going experience for us this weekend.

Who's in charge here anyway?

Does anyone else think this story about a school banning MySpace at school and at home ridiculous?

I have a hard time believing 99.9% of parents are behind this move. While I can understand the concerns about such social networking sites, as a parent I would rather the policing of my child's use of such sites come from me, not their school.

Have we really become so afraid of the big wide world out there that we're willing to let other people tell us how to parent too?

A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead

I've found many of these remixed videos amusing over the years, but this one takes it to a new level. Hope you enjoy it too!

The Good Dog Walker

Finding myself living in a city in which dog walkers outnumber runners, I'd like to offer the following tips to those ubiquitous canine ambulators:

1. Pooper-scooper - I don't think I need to explain...
2. When walking a puppy or other high strung dog, put your body between it and the rapidly approching runner, who looks like a game of tag on a fast approach to a high spirited hound...
3. Pooper-scooper
4. A well behaved dog on a long leash is fine... until that leash extends more than 20 feet and I'm trying to negotiate a way over it.
5. Pooper-scooper

For my part, I promise to move to the edge of the pathway when passing, call out which side I'm on, and will otherwise do everything in my power not to excite, antagonize or otherwise bother your dog (or you). I'd call that fair...

To con-fer

I spent the last two days - very LONG days actually - at a grad conference.

About halfway through the first day, I found myself thinking "I've been to so many conferences already... why have I never been to a grad conference?... this stuff is great!"

It might help that it was held at my alma mater, so I knew some of the profs who stopped in, and I actually got the chance to chat with my MA advisor, who I haven't seen for years because she was on sabbatical and then on another leave, so she hasn't been as active in the department in the last little while. She didn't recognize me at first, but then when she did, she was very generous and kind, asking about my program now and inviting me to come by and chat with her about my current projects, which I'm certainly going to take her up on! (this despite the fact that my dissertation is no longer anywhere near her area of expertise!)

I also got an offer from one of the organizers to forward their 'to do' list to help us with our grad conference we're organizing for next month, which will also be a huge help with our own efforts to get this thing going.

But that wasn't the best part of it.

The best part was the students and the presentations. There were some really exciting papers, and the only one that I found really difficult to follow (and thus not terribly interesting) was the one in French. My French isn't good enought to have gotten more than the most rudimentary sense of what the paper was about. If I'd been able to read it, perhaps I would've gotten more, but my mastery of the spoken language is minimal, so I didn't get much out of it.

There was a woman presenting on the novel - Never Let me Go - that I'm presenting on next month at another grad conference, so I was really interested in her talk. Her title hadn't given any hint about what she was talking about, but I recognized the epigraph she began with right away, making me perk up at the end of a long day... Her approach is of course different than the argument that I'm making in the paper I'm presenting, but since I'm also going to be writing about the same novel in the dissertation - which is the whole reason for a dry-run discussion of it at a conference - I'm going to check out the theory she used to see whether it might also suit my purposes.

That was probably the only presentation that intersected with my own research interests, but there were many other presentations that I found fascinating as well, including one from another former MA student now returning as a doctoral student. We did recognize each other, but he was in the creative writing program and I in the literature program, so we'd never been in the same classes, but it was neat to hear what another graduate of the program was doing.

And the best part was the Q&A period. See, at most conferences I've been to, even the most collegial of ones always run the risk that the questions from the audience will not be true questions, but some pompous academic taking the opportunity to spout on about their own research. Those kinds of questions get really boring, both for the other audience members as well as the presenter; and they take up time that others who might have genuine inquiries could be using to ask those questions.

Even my paper went over quite well. Considering I was the very last person on the program, ending my talk only moments before the promise of free pizza in the campus pub (on St. Paddy's day on top of that), I actually got several questions and comments, and the back and forth that the discussion generated seemed to result for a genuine engagement with the paper. It was a very positive experience! Certainly much better than my second conference experience where the only question I got after my presentation was along the lines of "Are you related to so-and-so? Because I'm looking for my sister who was adopted a birth and I was hoping you were her" Huh? How is that a question worthy of the Q&A after a presentation? Ugh!

But that was another story. Yesterday's presentation went very well, and I was immensely pleased! Now all I'm hoping is that the conference we're holding next month will come off even half as well...

What does the world need another English major for?

This was a question I asked myself many times even while I decided to major in English literature. I wondered how useful such a degree might really be in the real world.

Today I was in a room with three people who majored in English: a music producer, a project manager, and a tv/radio personality.

... I guess the world can use English majors after all!

How bizarre, how bizarre

Sunday, I went running in shorts and a t-shirt.

Today I shovel snow.

There's a saying in Calgary: "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes"

40 days

In 40 days, all this conference stuff will be over. Whew!

Not really the proverbial 40 days, but it did find it an interesting coincidence when I added them up that today was the day I decided to blog the conference.

So, in 40 days, the interdisciplinary grad conference that we decided to launch this year, will be over - success or failure, it will be over. When I signed up for this thing, I underestimated the nature of the work. Not the amount, but the way it's been spread out and the length of time it seems to take to check any one thing off the to do list.

It of course doesn't help that I'm 3,000 miles away from all the other committee members. It also doesn't help that we've never done this before, so none of us are really clear on what needs to be done. And we spend a lot of time telling each other what we're envisioning... or at least I do. It seems to take forever to email ideas back and forth, waiting for people to read their email and have time to respond to it.

But it is coming together. We do have a really good group of people working together. And it's funny how my expectations for the group haven't necessarily panned out. Group members are responding differently than I expected them to, which makes for an interesting dynamic.

The biggest challenge is everyone's busy-ness. We've divided all the tasks into groups and everyone has taken on a chunk, but for some people, that means they're doing a lot during one short period of time (including all the post-conference stuff that'll need to be done!) It makes it challenging. So does the long distance. But I'm trying to be patient, and not count the number of emails I send trying to stay in the loop. Hopefully once it's all done, we pull this thing off and don't have to think about it till next year (which is whole different story right there)!

Hockey thought of the day

A hockey player without a stick is a bit like a one-legged soccer player.

For rebeckler

Because another one is scheduled to roll into town tomorrow and to answer rebeckler's question of what's a chinook? (I think she had at least four ???? though, and yes, you guessed right that it's a wind), I dug up the following:

According to the Weather Network:

The term Chinook comes from an Indian word which means snow eater. The Chinook wind is a warm, dry wind that descends the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and sweeps across the foothills and other parts of Alberta. When it moves over heavy snow cover, it can melt and evaporate a foot of snow in less than a day. Also, the temperature rises sharply, sometimes over 20 degrees Celsius in one hour. On average, southern Alberta gets 20 to 30 Chinook days per year.

Wikipedia's entry for Chinooks in Alberta is interesting, including the following facts:

In most recent winters (since the 1980s), chinooks and warmer weather have all but banished winter to just a few spells of sharp cold of one or two weeks, and some midwinter months have averaged high temperatures over 5°C (41°F), similar to the West Coast of British Columbia, where Canada's warmest winters are found.
In Lethbridge, chinook winds can gust in excess of hurricane force (120 km/h or 75 mph). The winds gusts can be strong enough to shatter car windows through air pressure differential. On November 19, 1962, the winds there gusted to 171 km/h (107 mph) in an especially powerful chinook.
In Pincher Creek, the temperature rose by 33°C (60°F) in one hour in 1962. Also, trains have been known to be derailed by chinook winds there.
Calgary is also well known for getting many chinooks, as the Bow Valley in the Canadian Rockies west of the city acts as a natural wind tunnel funneling the chinook winds.

For some, the chinook is a mixed blessing. While it's great to get relief from the cold, persistent chinook winds can fool plants into germinating thinking that spring has arrived, and the changes in air pressure can negatively affect people. Not to mention all that melting snow creates a heck of a lot of slush! The Mountain Field Guide notes some of the effects the Chinook winds can have on people and the landscape:

Relief from sub–zero temperatures
Highly strung people may begin to shake or fidget
Susceptible people may get headaches or suffer nervous disorders
Psychologically, many people fell “better”
Wood may split due to extreme dryness
Fire hazards are increased
It may cause violent grass or forest fires, or cause small fires to spread quickly.

You can tell a chinook is around by the distinction chinook arch that forms in the sky above Calgary, which looks especially nice at sunset.