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September 27, 2007 >> DodgeballYesterday marked my re-entry into the noble sporting pursuit of team dodgeball, a hallowed game revered throughout the ages for separating ye olde Jocks from thou bespeckled Nerds. Our team of grad students, being aforementioned Nerds, may have been hesitant to embark upon this great adventure. Perhaps some of us recalled Phys Ed class where we were mediocre at best, balls-in-the-face at worst. Perhaps some of us thought a Masters degree would excuse us from sending our wasted, dilapidated bodies into combat ever again. But then we drank a lot of beer and it started to seem like a good idea.
Our first opponents, a team cleverly titled "Freshmen", were a bunch of freshmen. First years. Rookies with lithe bodies, as yet untouched by the unflattering weight gains of the Frosh Fifteen. They quickly crushed us beneath their youthful heels, 'dodging' our cannonades and retaliating in kind. They threw balls at us: blue ones and yellow ones and red ones, while we kept tabs on how many of us got pegged in the face. The teammate with the most facials at the end of the season will get a prize, hopefully some sort of cold ice compress to ease the swelling beneath the eyes. I kicked someone in the kneecap with ill-spirit and poor sportsmanship. We lost.
Somewhat demoralized, we tried to do some team-building but nobody had seen a Disney sports movie in quite some time. Heartwarming speeches are hard to ad lib, y'know. Somebody actually writes that shit. So we practiced hitting each other in the face until our second set of adversaries showed up. Actually only four of them showed up, which is technically a forfeit, but we decided to let them play because we selfishly wanted to feel good about ourselves by destroying a severely handicapped team. They were freshmen too. As it turns out they gave us a run for our money but dodgeball is a war of attrition, my friends, and no matter how unskilled your army is you can still kill a lot of Krauts if you fire wildly into the air.
So we won, sorta, and our dodgeball future is off to a roaringly sexy start with a 1-1 Win-Loss record. It's not like the movie where every team you face is some sort of themed stereotype, unless that stereotype is good-natured, punk-ass kids. If we take on a bunch of Brazilian breakdancers next week I will let you know.
Posted by Chris at 10:31 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
September 24, 2007 >> Assisted Learning
As usual, I am enjoying being a T.A.
Chris: "Okay so elevator cinema refers to films that rely on layered realities, right? Like in the movies 13th Floor, or eXistenZ. But not the Matrix. That only has one layer of reality."
Class: *blank stares*
Chris: "Oh right, you guys grew up on Power Rangers and shit. Okay, so imagine you're having this dream where you are fighting all these pumpkin-headed monsters and then you wake up. WHEW! Only a dream! But then a pumpkin-head monster kicks down your door and you realize that you're still in the dream. And then you wake up again and go WHEW! Because the dream is over. You're actually on an airplane taking an uncomfortable nap. But then a pumpkin-head monster appears outside your window... it's flying! It's flying! It's gonna mess you up! And then you wake up. What's real? What's virtual? These are the questions which define elevator cinema."
Class: ?
Chris: "I can see you understand."
*Class draws a myriad of pictures of me being attacked and/or terrified by pumpkin-headed monsters as positive feedback that class has been a SUCCESS! Also a few queries: "What are you going to be for Halloween?"*
Posted by Chris at 10:24 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
September 20, 2007 >> Perpetual Mario Machine
The Perpetual Mario Machine is a set of custom levels for Super Mario World (Remember that? SNES madnezz??) designed by some Japanese guy. In these levels, Mario completes the entire stage without any player assistance whatsoever; in fact, if you even brushed the controller Mario would be instantly eviscerated. Instead you get to sit back and watch our placid hero get bounced willy-nilly around the stage, guided apathetically to the level goal by the level itself.
This is weird. We all know that Super Mario Brothers is a game. It might, in fact, be the game. But all the definitions of what a game entails demand interaction as a central function: ergodic activity, as supernerd Espen Aarseth puts it. There's gotta be a player, there needs to be some kind of feedback loop employed. Otherwise it's TV, or a movie, or jerk-off material, or whatever. Not a game. So here we have a veritable icon of video gaming (Mario the semi-retarded plumber!) subverted into passive entertainment. It's almost as curious as that awful movie they made.
However, the 'player' - or the person holding the controller - still has choice I guess. You can move or jump through the Perpetual Mario Machine levels... with the near-certain knowledge that you are dooming Mario through your participation. You can choose how he dies, if you wish, or you can hands-off and let him bumble towards a brighter future on his own. Interactivity is limited but it is there. Watch and Mario wins. Play and Mario dies. So yes, we're looking at a game here, but a pretty shitty one.
Posted by Chris at 03:13 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
September 18, 2007 >> Soft throbbing headache
The droning of human conversation usually assembles itself into some sort of point: how somebody was 'so wasted', perhaps, or something about shopping. Those are the usual configurations of speech here in Toronto. Occasionally a voice tears its way out of the low buzz with noteworthy incoherence... another language! Chinese? Arabic? Swedenspeak? That's one conversation you couldn't understand even if you cared to try, which makes it more intriguing by default. They're probably talking about shopping, but maybe (just maybe) they're talking about immortality. And how to, y'know, get there.
With a soft throbbing headache there is no drone. There is no buzz. Every conversation is a sharp shot, information about shopping being forced into a cranium which honestly has no desire to learn anything more about shopping. There's a sale here, there's a sale there, there's a sale everywhere. I am learning.
With a soft throbbing headache, it is possible to learn much more about the world than ever before. Instead of idly tuning everything out, you are tuning everything in. You may not want to, but the irreparable knowledge of where "that skank" got her "skank clothes" is lodged inside your squishy brain. H & M. She bought them at H & M, like everyone else. See? You still remember. There's a sale there right now, by the way.
For someone with a terribly poor memory, this soft throbbing headache is a remarkable boon. Toronto is eating you alive with its facile concerns, but now you know a secret: you can lightly bash your skull with a ballpeen hammer and while your ears ring the world is your Wikipedia.
Posted by Chris at 05:45 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
September 14, 2007 >> Buy me some Dragon Force!
I am probably more excited by this than is rightfully proper:
DRAGON FORCE!
Of course, I'm too poor to buy Guitar Hero III. One of the things about grad school is that you feel like a big man when you find out that you're getting lots of funding. Then when it's time to GET that funding, and you need it for things like - say - food or rent or Guitar Hero III, your wang deflates. They give it to you parceled up in little chunks, starting well after the need for that money becomes desperate. They give it to you grudgingly. A many-ringed hand reaches out through a maze of red tape and paperwork and you snatch eagerly at the fistful of dollars it holds. But no! The hand pulls back into the morass, taunting you. Not yet, not yet. Wait it out little donkey.
A PhD guy in my program is planning on begging for change every morning, right outside the Graduate Studies office on Bay Street, until we get our cash. Employing shame, he will prostrate himself before the economic supermen (and superwomen) of this city. He will show them once and for all that academics are poor as fuck and that we, too, need handouts to fuel our brains.
Oftentimes I wonder why society would think it good and proper to fork out cash to thinkers, thinkers who most often don't contribute anything tangible back. Sure, we advance canonical thought here and there, and perhaps some psychology studies leak out into advertising and P.R., but for the most part academia is a sexy little bubble. We're really very lucky to get paid to do this. It's just hard to feel lucky when you're eating 79 cent cans of spaghetti.
Posted by Chris at 02:59 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
September 13, 2007 >> Skylines of Dubai
Some of the dazzling sights and sounds of Dubai (sounds not included). Although the city is dominated by weirdo-cool architecture, there are interesting warrens spread beneath the monolithic skyline. And, of course, the whole shebang is encompassed by desert: pink sands, yellow sands, orange sands and basically more sand than you'd ever care to eat. Sand is not for eating.
A skyline perpetually under construction, featuring a tower that is a very, very big tower (also under construction).
The infamous 'seven-star' Sailboat Hotel, whose real name - as I recall - was the Burj-al-Arab. It's really hard to say that until you see it spelled out for you.
So many skyscrapers, so much steel. "Which hotel are you staying at?" "Oh, the one that looks like a sphinx with blood-red windowpanes for eyes."
The super-sexy Sheihk Ziyad neighbourhood, populated only by the super-sexy playas of roaring industry.
Here is where Muslims pray!
The Gold Souk, which unsurprisingly has many, many gold things for sale. Special discount for Canadians!
One tower or two? Hover over the image for solution!
Note: your browser may not support this quest for knowledge.
Feet a-burnin', face a-roastin', scuttle scurry back to air conditioning and Arabic music videos. Arabic music videos, as an end note, are entrancing in their ridiculousness. Guys sing their love for girls. Girls look alluring and properly disinterested until the guy smashes down their door, still singing, and forcibly molests them. Then they usually get married but sometimes the man, his passion slaked, decides that she's not really what he wants after all. Cue deux ex machina appearance of girl #2, who prances off into the sunset with her new rapist boyfriend. Original girl gets to cry on her bed for a while.
Posted by Chris at 11:35 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
September 12, 2007 >> Lull storm lull storm
Into the second year of grad school and my mind seems to think we're already finished. "Hell no I won't read," it says. "Let's go back to the Middle East!" My brain liked it in the desert because humidity is a good excuse to be lazy.
So the world seems a little bit absurd at the moment. I can't take it seriously: everything seems like a dream version of everything since I returned. By which I mean that course outlines and tutorials and a piece of paper proposing that I will eventually write something nice and spicy - well, none of this shit feels real to me. It's not immediate. Watching the sun bellow and blister as it's dragged beneath the horizon seems more immediate. Galactic warfare seems more immediate.
I imagine that seriousness will return eventually, like a dog that you never really liked. You drove it out into the sand dunes and left it there, figuring it could eat cacti and drink iguana pee. On the way home you remembered that movie Homeward Bound and thought, "I hope Seriousness isn't like those asshole pets from Homeward Bound. He better not come back somehow." But you're sure he won't, because he's pretty stupid (which is why you didn't like him in the first place). And Disney movies tend to portray animals with inordinately high I.Q.s, spawning a generation of disappointed kids crying because their clownfish won't quip. And then you pull into the driveway and there he is, Seriousness, sitting on the front steps with his tongue out and a big pile of poo on the mat. Not only is he smarter than you, but he's fast as fuck too.
Posted by Chris at 07:28 PM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
September 05, 2007 >> illness intermission
I will tell fun things about Cairo soon, but right now I will tell you something not fun. That something is taking two whole days and a bevy of vehicles to weave my way home across continents. It is saying goodbye to girlie-girl, although I still feel somewhat close to her because apparently I am sharing her prior illnesses now. There is a delicate balance between throat and stomach, between bowels and mouth-hole, about what materials to take in and what materials to suddenly expel from The Body. I am trying to figure out the pattern, but nothing useful yet. Mostly just a whole lot of puking and shitting and making odd noises, certainly the auspicious return to Canada I had been anticipating.
But, of course, it's always better to be sick in the comfort of one's own home rather than a foreign country. The only thing worse than feeling wrung out like a janitor's towel is feeling wrung out like an Egyptian janitor's towel. So sorry, technical difficulties while I overcome the Africa inside of me.
Posted by Chris at 08:21 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink