The Swamp is going Knut Krazy
Make sure you watch the headlines at the bottom of the screen. This channel has priorities!
My knitting blog is now located at the Needle Exchange!
You saw him here first
Stephen Colbert has done a follow-up to my post on Knut the cute polar bear.
Oh, boo hoo
Eerg… I think I just got hit with a quarter life crisis. I made fun of people last year when they were doing the same thing, but then I watched Clerks II just now and at the end it turns to black and white again and the camera pulls back, and suddenly they’re playing a Soul Asylum song like in the first Clerks, and it brought all this nostalgia back.
It’s weird; every once in a while I get these nostalgia attacks where suddenly for some reason I feel like it’s 1997 again, only I know it’s not. It’s like my brain switches gears and it reverts back to the way it worked ten years ago. It doesn’t help that this whole movie was about moving on and such. Man, I didn’t even like Soul Asylum very much; in fact I didn’t even know “Misery” was their song until I just looked it up on wikipedia. Was it on any soundtracks? It feels very, very familiar.
I was just looking for another movie to watch and for half a second I was considering Empire Records. Dear Lord, that would just make it worse.
Music & Personality
Mixing Memory has a great article about what your music says about you. Apparently in a recent study strong correlations were found between The Big Five personality characteristics and people’s musical preferences. People talk about music more than everything else put together when trying to figure out what people are like. Based on a person’s top 10 favourite songs, assessments of that person’s personality are also quite accurate.
People are using this as an excuse to post YouTube (and/or Daily Motion) links to their favourite songs. I’ve been seeing a hefty amount of Pink Floyd. Based on the play counts and ratings on my iTunes, here is my top dozen (in no particular order):
- Fearless - Pink Floyd
- Lonely Boy - Andrew Gold
- Electric Jewels - April Wine (I couldn’t locate it on YouTube, so here’s Bad Side of the Moon)
- Digital Love - Daft Punk
- Jolene - Dolly Parton
- Di Grind - Kaizers Orchestra (I couldn’t find one with just the music, so here’s a live version)
- The Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson
- Who Are You, Defenders of the Universe? - The Dears (I couldn’t find this either, so here’s Whites Only Party from their new album)
- Sitting - Cat Stevens
- Dirty Work - Steely Dan
- The Millionaire Waltz - Queen
- Hello Sunshine - Super Furry Animals
With the exception of a few songs, this could have been my list last year as well. Haven’t had much time to seek out new music.
Moment Arms
I said it was half a pound of beef. He didn’t believe me. He took out a thing of butter and said, “look, this is 434 grams, it weighs way more than this.” I said yes, because 434 grams is about a pound, and that is half a pound. So he looked for a long stick so that he could compare MOMENT ARMS. He balanced a piece of wood on a can of beans and compared MOMENT ARMS. Then, when the beef was half as far out as the butter, he still would not say I was right. He got a calculator. A CALCULATOR. And then when it proved me right, he said “you win this time.” Which I think is the first time he has ever conceded an argument. Then he said, “but it’s probably less, because of all the packaging and stuff.”
French Onion Burgers (from Cooking Light)
2 tsp. vegetable oil
2 cups chopped onion
1 pound ground round (we made a HALF recipe)
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
1 tsp. salt
4 (1.5 oz.) French bread rolls or hamburger buns, split and toasted
Fixins
- Heat oil in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; saute 10 minutes or until tender. Spoon onion into a bowl; let cool.
- Add beef, pepper, and egg white to onion, and stir well. Divide beef mixture into 4 equal portions, shaping into 3/4-inch-thick patties.
- Sprinkle salt evenly over surface of skillet. Heat salt in skillet over high heat 2 minutes. Add patties. Cook 5 minutes on each side, or until done.
Care to Read about Housing in Toronto?
Of course you do. Here’s an introductory guide to living in Toronto that does not at all involve me keeping a list of links to help me decide where to live next year.
- There are two Co-ops: Neill-Wycik and Campus Co-op Residences. Both have pretty good rates.
- There are also some nice residences without meal plans: Innis College and the aptly-named Graduate House.
- The only independent residence with a functioning website is Tartu College. Well, that’s not true, but the other functioning website had an annoying “cool, hip” vibe and I’m sorry but I refuse to be cool or hip and I refuse to live with people who would be pulled in by that website. Hip inDEED.
Seeing as Toronto is not in need of tenants, prices are pretty steep. Fortunately, it doesn’t look too bad if you’re living in residence. I may even end up paying less rent than The Beau. Ha!