The Secret to My Success Some of you may have wondered why I'm so at ease at cocktail parties, easily debating both the merits of squeezable cheese and the currency of Aristotle's Poetics. The answer is Concordia's Liberal Arts College. Every year, the college produces young adults who can drop any name associated with any aspect of Western Civilization. In three years, you learn history, literature, philosophy, science, art and music. First-year students are forced to go to New York and weather five days of culture and four nights of keeping other hotel guest awake. Second-year students re-enact Plato's Symposium or Dante's Purgatorio. Third-year students feel compelled to apply for a Rhodes scholarship. Last Saturday was the college's 25th anniversary. About ten people from my year attended and I'm proud to announce that we remained the "difficult" year. After dinner, when the speeches and "talent show" began, we high-tailed it back to the bar to drink, and smoke, and laugh at everyone from all the other years who were listening patiently to someone reminisce about their research into the municipal governements of the Weimar Republic. The vice-principal actually had to come over and tell us to be quiet. Despite not having seen some of my college mates for over a decade, we easily fell into old habits--teasing, flirting, debating, mocking. We are still a bunch of overly bright misfits who know just enough about everything to navigate through any stuffy social occassion.

Diversity in all its ... diversity Did you know you can google in "Swedish Chef" or Klingon...or Gujarati? I didn't, and if you didn't either, check this out. Bork, bork, bork!

One Day a Year I find it somewhat ironic that, on the eve of International Women's Day, Sheila Copps' bid to hold on to her riding of Hamilton seems to have been kyboshed by the conservative elements of the Liberal party. Don't get me wrong: I'm not a particular fan of Copps' and certainly joined in the jeering when she allocated federal monies to distribute Canadian flags accross the country just in time for La Fete Nationale and Canada Day. Nonetheless, she was a bold politician--some called her shrill--and I feel her sense of injustice as 20 years of service to an entity has been tossed into the trash heap. She's a vicitim of the political system, but she was also complicit with it. As I look at my own wanderings through private sector and the politics I play in the name of "professional development", I wonder if I shouldn't be more conscious of how I may be perpetuating structures that, ultimately, value the bottom line (whether it's actual currency or the political kind) more than the human beings that contribute to it. As one of my professors said of political and social theory, "Just when you think you understand it, there's Karl Marx coming 'round the corner winking at you."

Low Carb Madness: Meat Tortillas

When Monogomy Becomes Monotomy Gives some credence to Laura Kipnis' musings that marriage has become "work" and infidelity is the inevitable result.

Diva Kitty

I'm Hello Kitty Snow Fairy!

76.57 Watched the 76th Oscar presentation in HD on a friend's 57-inch television. Another friend ran a betting pool throughout the rather dull ceremony and I'm happy to report that I came in second. I would have won, but I voted with my heart, not my head in the "best male" categories. Depite the fact that Benicio Del Toro is looking very scary these days, his quirky charisma holds unknown charms for me. Tim Robbins won instead and he hasn't done anything interesting since "Short Cuts". Voted for Bill Murray because the character he played in "Lost in Translation" reminded me very much of an older gentleman I had a tryst with whilst in a foreign land. I'm glad that Sean Penn won, as I've always admired the fact that he's a good actor and director. Otherwise, all my other picks were based on this simple rule: If "Return of the King" is nominated, it will win. Only other highlight of the evening was that the cold I have has had an effect on my voice. Everytime the camera panned over Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd, I would croak the word "Hobbitses" sounding exacly like Andy Serkin's Gollum. It kept me in stitches, at least.