2007/06/29

French Story

I came up with an interesting story for my Français 12 exam; the topic was: "You're going on vacation. After an hour of travel, you realize you're on the wrong bus."

So I told the story of Oskar Lafayette, a toxicologist who works at a methadone clinic in Vancouver. He's depressed, because all he sees is heroin junkies every day, so he decides to go on vacation. To Moscow.

After an hour of travel, he realizes it's impossible to get to Moscow by bus. It turns out he's headed for Moscow, Idaho, where there is nothing interesting, just potatoes.

Being the toxicologist that he is, he starts experimenting with potatoes in his hotel room, and within a week has develloped a cure for heroin addiction made entirely from potatoes.

There's one problem, though. Idaho doesn't seem to have any addicts to let him test his formula. Suddenly a tour bus pulls up; this is the week of the Moscow, Idaho International Jazz Festival. Suddenly he has all the heroin addicts he could wish for.

A month later, he's a millionaire and hero thanks to his wonderful universal cure, and everything is great!


2007/06/18

I wouldn't be me

If I didn't screw up important things on a regular basis, I wouldn't be me. As such, friday was the deadline for residence application, and I missed it. There's a waiting list though, so I guess I'll just hope lots of people make Harvard and decide McGill sucks. Or that lots of people flunk out. Or something... but that's not the funniest or stupidest thing I've done lately. Not by far.

This is a pretty good representation of one of my stories... it stems from what an incredible moron I can be when I'm by myself, but this one has a good ending, not like some others which end with "burning eyebrows smell really bad, but the curry rice that didn't spill still tasted pretty good", "so I accidentally smashed all the plates one by one with a 15ft long boat hook", or "I never saw that flip-flop again, but my feet regained feeling eventually".



Anyways, I drive a little car around at work, a Kawasaki mule. It's very good at doing donuts on softball fields. I was at work one afternoon, a little bored, so I decided to spin it around and make it skid. Unfortunately for me, I turned too sharply going too fast and flung myself out of the car (I found out later that it has seatbelts). This in itself was not painful, the grass was soft and a little damp; the perfect vantage point to watch the mule roll full speed across the remainder of the field into the outfield fence.

With a dull thunk and metallic squelch, the back wheels lifted an inch or two off the ground. The dirt caked onto the undercarriage flung out in every direction like a rainbow with only one colour, brown.

As the dust cleared, I looked around in every direction. There was no one: not a single person, car, deity, or suspicious-looking dog. Nothing! So I backed up the still-running cart, thinking how ridiculously lucky I was. That was, until I tried to turn left. It seemed reluctant to do that, preferring to make a loud rattling noise and shake the steering wheel. It turned out that the front bumper had bent into the right tire, poking it and preventing it from turning left. That's fine, I thought, I just won't turn left anymore. But that's harder than it sounds, so I had to figure something else out.

I went home and got some wrenches, bashed the bumper with a sledgehammer until I could see the bolts that held it on, and took it off. Problem solved. Now, I had to destroy the evidence. The tire tracks were easy enough, I just used a rake, and I replaced the crumpled fence panel, then hid the bumper at the back of the shed. No one suspects anything, but I have several explanations handy by now in case anyone asks.

2007/06/17

Endurance Contest

The B-52s and Santana are still battling it out on my wall, with no end in sight.
That is some weird masking tape. Why would 43 other records fall down and just leave those two? It's too bad, because the guy on Santana's cover's left shoulder used to become the mountain in Joni Mitchell's chalk mark in a rainstorm, such a seamless transformation.

And now I don't have to worry anymore. I ripped them both off the wall myself. I can sleep again.
But I made sure to take down Santana first, because I bet myself the B-52s would win.