17

How I Met Your Mother has 17 professional, fulltime staff writers. Seriously, 17. I can't stop thinking about it, the number 17 keeps repeating in my head. It's the most depressing statistic I've ever heard. I'm sure many of you wouldn't characterize me as a particularly optimistic person, but I'm pretty sure before hearing about HIMYM I would have said that if you assigned 17 intelligent, sane people to solve any problem or produce any one thing on a full-time basis, that they could have a serious impact on the world. Seventeen people assigned to write my dissertation (they could have done it in a couple weeks!); seventeen people assigned to plan traffic flow in the Glebe (1 week?); seventeen people assigned to the question of nuclear fission or nuclear waste or even how to recycle better. I'm still in shock.

After weeks of calculation and consideration, I feel confident in delivering to you, faithful reader, this important information about Canada:

1) Within an error margin of +/-3%, 37% of my students look almost exactly like this:


2) Another 22% look like this:


If I had the power, I would mandate DNA tests to see if, in fact, 59% of Canadians are somehow related to n8.

3) Most people here are named Dave. Sometimes I call Monty, "Dave," but he doesn't like it.

4) The anchorperson who *might* replace Lloyd Robertson on The National (b/c Lloyd is somewhere between 65 and 125 years of age) is named Lisa LaFlamme. In a different country, that would be a stripper's name. Okay, it's probably a stripper's name in Canada, too.

5) Canadians *love* extremely disturbing public service announcements and we lead the world in producing them. The high quality of our PSAs sit in stark contrast to almost every other Canadian-produced movie or TV show which - with very few exceptions - suck ass. This is puzzling because Canadian actors, when they are acting in Hollywood productions, are usually very good (Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Pacey from Dawson's Crack, Sandra Oh) and Canada, when it's masquerading as L.A. or New York or the planet Caprica, looks like a land of gravitas. And yet Canadian-produced shows have been hit with the you-can't-believe-this-because-it-looks-like-an-after-school-special stick like you wouldn't believe. Why?

A public service announcement runs every other commercial break. Here are two of my favorites, both of which are traumatizing and will take you a minimum of 10 minutes to recover from (you were warned!):

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:
*spoiler alert! This will fuck you up! seriously, for realz, seriously!!!*



If only we could channel some of our PSA-making talents into normal programming! I don't even think it would take a writing staff of 17 to accomplish. And I think we could reach higher than HIMYM.

Stumped

Got the organic delivery yesterday and was mostly delighted with all the new veg. Was good to see the usual suspects (apples, carrots), a couple humdingers (tatsoi), and some nice surprises (blood oranges).

But there was one inclusion that has me totally stumped:

A bag of purply-red plants that come with what appear to be their potting soil.

At first I thought it was some sort of herb, maybe basil. But the leaves don't smell like anything (except potting soil) and I ate a leaf and it didn't taste like anything (except leaf).


You wise gardeny-growy epicurious people out there, got any guesses?

The potting-soil part is a bit weird. Am I supposed to plant these again? If so, wtf because it's the middle of winter. Has my organic vegetable company sent me some kind of awesome drug plant that I am too tragically uncool to recognize?

Again: totally stumped. All thoughts very much appreciated.

The Vicissitudes of Lecture Writing

First off, three revelations:

1) My tagine.
Yes, essentially it's an expensive slow cooker. But it makes everything delicious and all you have to do is put stuff in it, fry it for a while, add water or stock or, um, leftover New Years champagne, put the lid on it and simmer for an hour or something. And voila! Comforting, soupy hot food!

2) Olives (related to revelation #1)
Aren't olives fucking amazing?? Nothing else in the entire world tastes like an olive and how can you describe what an olive tastes like to someone who hasn't had one? They are perfectly unique. And they produce delicious, delicious oil! And green ones grow on the same tree as black ones! Olea europaea, I love you. (E disagrees and wishes this revelation would go away)

3) Mustard greens
Who knew? Brassica juncea, I thought you would just be a lot of work with little reward, like your cousin, Kale, but I was so, so wrong. You are the spinach that I am happy to see! You are a leafy green with a pleasant kick that does not taste like bile (I'm looking at you, arugala). You are spicy and sweet and delicious and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to realize it.

Now that that's out of the way, let me share my lecture writing process.

Stage 1: Denial (Sunday night, 42 hours before lecture)
"No problem. Tomorrow I'll just get up and write a lecture about the Enlightenment. Easy."

Stage 2: Confusion (Monday morning, 31 hours)
"How the hell do you teach the Enlightenment in 45 minutes? No one could ever do this."

Stage 3: Crippling Self-Doubt (Monday morning, 30.5 hours before lecture)
"WTF do I know about the Enlightenment? If I wasn't such a shitty grad student, I would have read all the books on the Enlightenment that were on my reading lists and I only pretended to read. Why am I teaching the Enlightenment? I should be subverting everything. I am bad at my job. This is going to be a disaster. No one told me it would be like this, I did not do this to lecture to 84 snotty punks about the Enlightenment, this is bullshit. I am gripped by fear. I must go to the bathroom."

Stage 4: Avoidance (Monday morning, 30 hours before lecture)
"It is imperative that I update my blog. I believe that I know about the Enlightenment but the knowledge will take time to resurface in my brain. I will be mulling over this problem in my subconscious while I play MarioKart in close proximity to a book about the Enlightenment. I still have HOURS before I need to do this. The day is young. The glory of this job is that I can choose my own schedule. I need to live my bestest life possible, perhaps I'll do some theraputic yoga."

Stage 5: Pressure (Monday afternoon, 24 hours before lecture, after checking email)
"Holy shit, I have a lot to do. There's not enough time. I should be in my office. I am bad at my job. I need to do all this other stuff now. If only I had more time to work on my lecture! The vehemience with which I do not want to write my lecture is startling."

Stage 6: Impotence (Monday evening, 20 hours before lecture)
"What is the definition of humanism? Why is wikipedia so hard to understand? How can I relate humanism to the Pugachev rebellion? Why am I talking about the Pugachev rebellion? What visual can I show for humanism? I will skip humanism and go on to individualism. No one will know. Except maybe the TAs. Fuck the TAs. This is karma."

Stage 7: Panic (Tuesday morning, 5 hours until class)
Fucking motherfucking fuck bullshit fuck cock balls

Stage 7: Embracing the Problem (4 hours until class)
"I am the professor. I can say whatever I want. I am in control. I am in my tree with the Dixie Chicks. This is just a nice talk about the Enlightenment. They are only children. My TAs aren't thinking about me. I can say whatever I want. Be the ball. I am in control. I can say whatever I want."

Stage 8: Mad, Blind Lecture-Writing (1-4 hours before class)
[thoughts irretrivable]

Stage 9: Delirium (giving lecture)
[memories can only be accessed by deep hypnosis]

Resolution: I need to implement a new process!! One with fewer steps and also better steps.

Last Day of the Dinosaurs

Last night E and I watched a movie that literally had us on the edge of our soft, cushy seats. Reader, you will mock me when I reveal the details, but that's fine because you just don't know the truth: this show totally effing rocks. Like, it's amazing. Every two minutes we would turn to one another and say, "Holy shit!!!" I'm talking about Last Day of the Dinosaurs:



There's more video at: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/last-day-dinosaurs/

Yeah, it's on Discovery Channel. Yeah, it's about dinosaurs. Yeah, we're not 7. But we came away from the viewing completely captivated and traumatized. When it was over we just held Monty and shook and cried. They made us care about the dinosaurs and then they. . . well, I won't spoil the ending for you.

Turns out, we came a bit late to the party-o-saurus as the video has been out for months now. It was the most-watched non-sporting specialty viewing event on the November 2010 Sunday night it aired in Canada! It raked in 2 million viewers! That's like 7% of the entire population of Canada and there was probably hockey on that night, alls I'm sayin. Perhaps these powerful statistics aren't helping me make my point.

Find it. Watch it. Experience it. It will rock your effing world.

[SQUEEEE!!! I just found out it's available in 3D!!!!]