They shall remember forever/The day they played the Men of Leonard 2 East!

Yeah, the title's a Remember the Titans ripoff, but so what? Our floor just won the annual Leonard Bowl (yearly touch football competition established in 1959, between all the different floors of my residence, Leonard Hall), and I'm pretty pumped. It was great to be playing some really competitive sport again: I've definitely missed that. Anyways, today is definitely another sports day: Canucks playing at 4, and the Lions in the West Final at 6. Seems like most of my weekends are spent watching/playing sports, but it's definitely always a good time. Now, if only more of the Canucks' games were on TV out here!

Funny link of the day: SNL cowbell sketch: http://homepage.mac.com/kellydean/Music/iMovieTheater34.html.

Note: You need Quicktime to watch this, which bloody Apple has now decided that you can't download without also downloading Itunes. However, if you're a Mac hater like me, or just already have good music software and don't want to fill your hard drive with Apple's useless extra stuff, it's possible to find a slightly older version of Quicktime on the web that can be downloaded as a stand-alone package. Resist Apple's evil plot for bundle-focused world domination (hmm, sounds like they're taking a cue from Microsoft: I hope someone hits them with an anti-trust lawsuit as well.) This has been my geeky rant of the day...

Words of the Day: (as always, from the Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd)

ARAGLIN (n. archaic)
A medieval practical joke played by young squires on a knight aspirant the afternoon he is due to start his vigil. As the knight arrives at the castle the squires attempt to raise the drawbridge very suddenly as the knight and his charger step on to it.

BANTEER (n. archaic)
A lusty and raucous old ballad sung after a particularly spectacular araglin (q.v.) has been pulled off.

BEALINGS (pl. n. archaic)
The unsavoury parts of a moat which a knight has to pour out of his armour after being the victim of an araglin (q.v.). In medieval Flanders, soup made from bealings was a very slightly sought-after delicacy.

FARDUCKMANTON (n. archaic)
An ancient edict, mysteriously omitted from the Doomsday Book, requiring that the feeding of fowl on village ponds should be carried out equitably.

FORSINAIN (n. archaic)
The right of the lord of the manor to molest dwarves on their birthdays.

GOOSECRUIVES (pl. n. archaic)
A pair of wooden trousers worn by poultry-keepers in the Middle Ages.

SHENANDOAH (n.)
The infinite smugness of one who knows they are entitled to a place in a nuclear bunker.

THROCKING (participial vb.)
The action of continually pushing down the lever on a pop-up toaster in the hope that you will thereby get it to understand that you want it to toast something. Also : a style of drum-playing favoured by Nigel Olsson of the Elton John Band, reminiscent of the sound of someone slapping a frankfurter against a bucket. An excellent example of this is to be heard on 'Someone Save My Life Tonight' from the album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

THROUCKMORTON (n.)
The soul of a departed madman : one of those now known to inhabit the timing mechanisms of pop-up toasters.

WARLEGGAN (n. archaic)
One who does not approve of araglins (q.v.)

Our shows are formidable/But many times, we're given rhymes that are quite unsingable!

Well, I'm back from NY (actually got back last Monday at 5 AM, but had a busy week with no time to blog). The trip went pretty well: got to see a lot of cool stuff, like the UN and Times Square. Madame Tussaud's wax museum was also sweet, as you can see from the photos of all the celebrities I met. The highlight would have to be Spamalot though: for a Monty Python geek like me, this is the Holy Grail (pun intended) of musicals, and it exceeded my expectations enough that I got suckered into spending more $$ on souvenirs! Anyways, I now know when I'll be returning to B.C.: I'm flying in on Dec.16, and arriving early in the morning on the 17th. I'll be back until about Jan. 6., so hopefully I can get to hang out with all of you again (if I haven't passed the terminal threshold of geekdom by that time)!

Current activities: Reading ballycumbers, coming up with brisbanes for reading ballycumbers instead of working, and continually experiencing farmhams because of my time spent reading ballycumbers.

Words of the day:
BALLYCUMBER (n.)
One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.

BRISBANE (n.)
A perfectly reasonable explanation (Such as the one offered by a person with a gurgling cough which has nothing to do with the fact that they smoke fifty cigarettes a day.)

FARNHAM (n.)
The feeling you get about four o'clock in the afternoon when you haven't got enough done.

Song of the Day: Rage Against The Machine - Guerilla Radio (I've been replaying my classic Tony Hawk 2 game on my laptop, and this is the best song in it)

NY PICTURES: Click on a picture below to see it enlarged. Scroll over or click to see the caption (in the filename).

The K-nig-hts of The Round Table

Well, a lot has happened recently. The last couple weeks have been midterms of death, especially tonight's Linear Algebra, which gave me a severe cranleigh. Tomorrow is my last one, but it's in Chemistry, so not as bad, and it's also not worth very much. On Friday, I'm going to New York City for the weekend as part of an organized trip through our residents' society, which should be a blast: I'm especially looking forward to seeing Monty Python's Spamalot (the Broadway adaptation of Holy Grail) on Saturday, which will be amazing: it won best new Broadway show last year, and is continually sold out, so I had to get a ticket through a Ebay-like internet site: pricy, but I think it will be worth it. I'll do my best to avoid hickling, and hopefully won't stumble due to lack of bleans. Also went out and splurged on a digital camera today for the trip: I much prefer having pics on my computer to just having hard copies, and it will save me the time, hassle and $$$ of photo development. This week is officially Monty Python Week: in addition to going to the aforementioned show on Saturday, I just watched Meaning of Life (Python film) for the first time on Monday, which was awesome, and dressed up as the lumberjack (from the Monty Python song) to go trick or treating with some friends Monday night (we reckoned that we were still young enough if you count mental age). I'm also going to my biweekly SPAM meeting tomorrow, to even further saturate myself with Pythonic greatness. Anyways, in New York, I may also experience a chicago, a duluth, a droitwich and could possibly see a quedgeley. Looking forward to it...

Words you may not have previously encountered before this blog (from Meaning of Liff, the Douglas Adams book, not to be confused with the similar style of the Monty Python film Meaning of Life mentioned above):

CRANLEIGH (n.)
A mood of irrational irritation with everyone and everything.

HICKLING (participial vb.)
The practice of infuriating theatregoers by not only arriving late to a centre-row seat, but also loudly apologising to and patting each member of the audience in turn.

BLEAN (n.)
Scientific measure of luminosity : 1 glimmer = 100,000 bleans. Usherettes' torches are designed to produce between 2.5 and 4 bleans, enabling them to assist you in falling downstairs, treading on people or putting your hand into a Neapolitan tub when reaching for change.

CHICAGO (n.)
The foul-smelling wind which precedes an underground railway train.

DULUTH (adj.)
The smell of a taxi out of which people have just got.

DROITWICH (n.)
A street dance. The two partners approach from opposite directions and try politely to get out of each other's way. They step to the left, step to the right, apologise, step to the left again, apologise again, bump into each other and repeat as often as unnecessary.

QUEDGELEY (n.)
A rabidly left-wing politician who can afford to be that way because he married a millionairess.