May the brown-nosing begin!

It's report card time and I already have a kid trying to suck up to me so I can boost his grade to at least a 60. The guy is the only student in my ethics class failing (miserably I must add with an abysmal 42%) and he's trying to convince me to make him pass.

If he had a 56 or 57, maybe. But a 42?? I'll need a bit more than a few sweet words and promises to boost that grade. I'm holding out for cookies and ice cream ;-P What? Were you expecting me to say cash? Puh-lease, I'm not that depraved! And besides, being pregnant and all, I have this wicked craving for ice cream...

Europe in a deep freeze

When my sister tells me that it's very cold in Athens, I laugh. I laugh at the absurd notion that minus 10 celcius is very cold, when my sister knows very well, having lived in good ol' Québec, the true meaning of cold. Minus 30 without windchill, that's very cold. So she better stop her whimpering and complaining about how the cold over there seeps into your bones and how you can really feel it. Sis, I love ya to bits, but minus 10 isn't even in the same ball park as very cold. It's peering out of a window while very cold is ice fishing in the tundra. I even have a friend in Minnesota who can attest to my theory.

However, Europe is indeed going through a cold snap and this gas controversy isn't helping things at all.

Eh, eh, see? I told you!

But nooooooo, no one ever pays attention to these things. The man that some folks in this country have elected as our prime minister is somewhat of a moron. As far as conservatives go, at least Brian Mulroney had some charisma. Steve-o is lackluster to say the least...

And now he's pissing off people who seem to be on a protective/defensive/nationalistic rampage these days. No I am not talking about the Parti Québécois.

This is going to be an interesting 4 years.

The Dormitory Boys

I practically peed myself laughing at these guys. It's silly, it's stupid, but, by jove, they are bleeping hilarious!

Go. Click on the videos. Laugh and laugh some more. It burns calories I hear.

Geeks & Nerds rule!

Yes indeed they do rule and, once again, the big bad school yard bullies won't kick dirt in their face. Actually, they're the ones getting dirt and mud all over themselves in this latest fracas: US govt wants a peek into Google's search entries? Over Sergey's and Larry's dead bodies. Individual rights prevail for now, or until someone else finds a little loophole they can creatively use to their own advantage.

On a different note, I went to the doctor today for bloodtests and prenatal checkup. Little miss/mister feotus has a nice heartbeat and I only gained 4 pounds in my first 3 months. I'm am quite pleased with myself seeing that I have managed to control my weight for the time being. Woot woot!

When the girls go south...

... it's time to put on a bra. Sweet bananas, Drew Barrymore at the Golden Globes last night looked like she had the rack of an 85 year-old. And the dress didn't help, all clingy and practically see-through. I know that Drew is young and hip, but her girls are sagging like over-ripe melons. Yeesh!

What if?

I can't help playing the "what-if" game after reading this little article from the BBC news site. If Zheng He did indeed sail across the Pacific and traced out the american coastline and had he continued exploring the region, our neck of the woods wouldn't look at all the way it does now. Would the ancient Mayan, Inca and Aztec civilizations still exist (or would have existed longer than they originally had)? I can imagine Columbus bumping into a few Chinese explorers and falsely assuming that he did indeed land in China. What would have happened next? A battle royale between the Spaniards and the Chinese? Would France have bothered sending Jacques Cartier? And what if China won? Would I be half chinese now, instead of half french? What if...what if...

T.G.I.F.

This week felt like two, and I am particularly pooped today. I think this morning's breakfast for winning homerooms (xmas door-decorating contest) left me with zero energy. I would like to sleep now. Someone get me a matress and a pillow, now.

I have come to the ominous realization that I will not be at school next year, which means I have so much crap to clean out of my cupboards and a ton of documents to be stored. I think I will enlist some helping hands (in other words, some poor students who I will have suckered into helping me) to move boxes. I sense Rubbermaid containers in my future.

Version 2.0, launch date: August 4th 2006

And if that is too subtle for you, just ask Miss Ardelli for the full scoop on Ms. Alarie's state of well being these days. She apperently blabbed to the entire student body (if not all of it, those who can get the message out as quickly as possible...), that I am pregnant.

So now it is official. Ms Alarie is preggers! Oh the fun I am going to have with my guys! I'm going to milk this for all it's worth (sorry for the pun)

Canadian Spies R Us? Riiiiight

I think I have been vocal about Stephen Harper in the past, if not on this blog, in public, in person, to anyone who is willing to listen to me. Simply put, I find Stephen Harper about as charismatic as a stale soda cracker and I believe his ideas are not only conservative (duh, he is the leader of the canadian conservative party), but also demeening to individual rights. He also seems to be somewhat of an american-sycophant (and this has nothing to do with my good american friends). How's that? Let's see... if he were to become Canada's next leader, he would allow the US to use canadian waters up north for their subs and, his latest idea, to have a canadian spy agency (differen than CSIS), to counter terrorist the ever-growing terrorist threat.

Don't get me wrong: terrorism must be stopped, but NOT by any means necessary. And Harper is sounding a lot like a certain leader of a certain neighboring country that certain folks despise.

Yeesh...

Good ol' pope Ben on abortion

He may be hip wearing designer shoes and sunglasses, but his views on abortion are still archaic, in my opinion. Although I respect those who believe that abortion is not an option and understand their reasoning, passing a treaty that would restrict a woman's right to have an abortion is, well, downright dumb.

*smacks forhead*

Thank you collectedtalk (see comments in preivous post) for reminding me that I have to see Walk the Line... I was raving about it when it came out, and I haven't even seen it yet! Bad, bad, Miss A!

Memoirs of a Geisha and The Producers

Taking full opportunity of my time off until the 9th (yes, teachers have it rough...), I decided to go see Memoirs and The Producers, not just because I have the time off, but this was also an assignement I gave my students over the Holidays.

Both Geisha and Producers were looooong, and if you are not a fan of the period-piece or the Mel Brooks-humor, it can be the longest 2-plus hours in your life.

Geisha was beautifully shot and stunning to watch. I am a sucker for movies that have "pretty costumes" and Geisha is full of that. On a more social level, the story depicts women in 2 lights: the woman-obejct and the woman-goddess. As much as they were admired by men, geishas considered themselves as artists with an almost diva-like attitude. It was necessary for them to act respectfully, although there is always one or two biatches in the crowd of goddesses...

The Producers is a Mel Brooks comedy. there is no other way of seeing it. If you don't a chuckle out of a gay-choreographer witha package the size of a melon, then this isn't your movie. Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell steal the show, while I felt Matthew Broderick's acting was a bit contrived. Maybe it worked on stage, but in front of the camera it felt too long and dragged out. Of course now, I will never be able to look at a picture of Hitler without giggling.

I'm glad I went to see Geisha, but I would have waited for the DVD for the Producers.

Whedon-ism at its best...

If there were a vote on the meaning of life, I'd go with Joss Whedon's bit of wisdom:

"However silly it may sound, and however inconvenient it may be when you’ve got a bowl of cereal in front of you getting progressively soggier, there is in fact no spoon."

Happy New Year!

But in a few weeks it will be the "real" New Year, according to my good friend CFoo...

Now that everyone is sufficiently stuffed & rested, it is time to embark on a new fun-filled and relatively pain-free new year. I shall start it off by a recap of stupidities said in 2005 by some twits who claim to posess brains. This collection of verbal faux-pas comes from Media Matters (mediamatters.org) and I actually found out about it from Le Devoir, a french newspaper published in Quebec. I'm not a huge fan of Le Devoir (they sometimes have seperatisit-tendencies which, to be polite, irk me), but now and again, they do publish some good articles and special reports on current events.

Most outrageous statements of 2005

Here are the most outrageous statements Media Matters for America has documented this year. From attacks on women, Muslims, and African-Americans to a call for the assassination of a foreign leader to an open invitation for Al Qaeda to "blow up" San Francisco to a claim that gay marriage would lead to unions between "a man and his donkey," these statements acutely represent the extreme conservative speech we found in the news media in 2005. (We tried to limit the comments to a Top 10 list, but it was simply impossible.)

• Former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett: "[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." [Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America, 9/28/05]

• Pat Robertson: "If [Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." [Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, 8/22/05]

• Bill O'Reilly to San Francisco: "[I]f Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. ... You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." [Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 12/8/05]

• Bill O'Reilly, agreeing with caller that illegal immigrants are "biological weapon[s]": "I think you could probably make an absolutely airtight case that more than 3,000 Americans have been either killed or injured, based upon the 11 million illegals who are here." [Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 4/15/05]

• Rush Limbaugh: "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/12/05]

• Rush Limbaugh on the kidnapping of peace activists in Iraq: "I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/29/05]

• Ann Coulter: Bill Clinton "was a very good rapist"; "I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties"; "I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning." [New York Observer, 1/10/05]

• Ann Coulter: "Isn't it great to see Muslims celebrating something other than the slaughter of Americans?" [Syndicated column, 2/3/05]

• Radio host Glenn Beck: "[Y]ou know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? Took me about a year." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, 9/9/05]

• Tucker Carlson: "Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he's nice, but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada." [MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson, 12/15/05]

• American Family Association president Tim Wildmon: Liberals "don't have the kind of family responsibilities most people have, and certainly not church responsibilities." [American Family Radio's Today's Issues, 5/11/05]

• David Horowitz on Cindy Sheehan: "It's very hard to have respect for a woman who exploits the death of her own son and doesn't respect her own son's life. ... She portrays him as an idiot." [MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast, 8/16/05]

• Radio host Neal Boortz on the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams: "[T]here will be riots in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere. ... The rioting, of course, will lead to wide scale looting. There are a lot of aspiring rappers and NBA superstars who could really use a nice flat-screen television right now." [Boortz.com, 12/12/05]

• Pat Buchanan: "Our guys" in Iraq "have got every right to have good news put into the media and get to the people of Iraq, even if it's got to be planted or bought." [MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, 12/1/05]

• National Review editor Rich Lowry: Given EPA-mandated "small-flush" toilets, "[h]ow is it possible to flush a Quran down the toilet?" [Young America's Foundation speech, 8/5/05]

• Neal Boortz, suggesting that a victim of Hurricane Katrina housed in an Atlanta hotel consider prostitution: "I dare say she could walk out of that hotel and walk 100 yards in either direction on Fulton Industrial Boulevard here in Atlanta and have a job. What's that? Well, no, no, no. ... Well, you know what? [laughing] Now that you mention it ... [i]f that's the only way she can take care of herself, it sure beats the hell out of sucking off the taxpayers." [Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show, 10/24/05]

• Focus on the Family founder and chairman James C. Dobson: Same-sex marriage would lead to "marriage between daddies and little girls ... between a man and his donkey." [Focus on the Family radio program, 10/6/05]
• Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid: "Have you noticed that many news organizations, in honor of former ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings, have embarked on a quit smoking campaign? So why don't our media launch a campaign advising people to quit engaging in the dangerous and addictive homosexual lifestyle? ... It appears that the homosexual lifestyle is as addictive as smoking." [Accuracy in Media column, 12/14/05]