In the Headlights

Culture Quest

Yesterday was Mensa's annual Culture Quest.  Each chapter puts together a team to spend an hour and a half on a Sunday afternoon answering impossible questions.

We started at 4 PM and finished at 5:30, then spent an hour looking things up.  Topics ranged from chemistry and physics to literature, geography (of Antarctica, no less) and history, movies and birthstones.  Quite the range.

It's the third year I've done this, and it's about my only active participation.  I'm getting to know the members, at least the ones who like the trivia type stuff.  Same time, next year, guys.

Lisa hosted this year.  We had food (chicken wings, lots of chocolate), drink (I had diet root beer) and good company.

Lisa has a new dog named Claudine.  She was rescued from war-torn Lebanon through Best Friends.  It looks like a German shepherd, maybe mixed with a golden retriever.  She's a very sweet dog.  She has spells in which she attacks her hind leg, but never seems to hurt herself.  She's blind in one eye.  Lisa lost a dog in December but seems to be healing.  She and Claudine are apparently devoted to each other.

So all in all, a well-spent afternoon.  I ate a lot of junk, and got covered with dog hair.

[Image from Fly on the Wall]

La Langue

OK, I got it off my chest a couple of days ago.  Travelwise, the return from Montreal ranks high on the list of  bad trips I have taken.  Montreal itself, however, was a whole different experience.  In addition, it was unexpectedly warm...the first few days had highs in the 70's, and lows in the 50's, followed by a few with highs in the 50's. 

There were a number of highlights, which I'll talk about in coming days.  Basically, they boiled down to the food, the wine, the antiquity, the churches, and the opportunity to practice speaking French.

I'll start with the language. In Montreal, most people are bilingual, French and English. I grew up an Army brat, and I learned to speak French as a child when we lived in Verdun for four years. In fact, my first two years of grade school were spent in a French school. 

When we moved on, we reverted to English and never used the French.  So I took four years of it in high school, and some in college, and then, never used it.

I've been to France a couple of times since, and found myself falling into using the language, though my vocabulary was limited, and I got over my head easily.

In Montreal, it didn't matter that I got in over my head.  All I had to do was ask them to change to English, and things moved right along.  That motivated me to stick my neck out and try my French on a regular basis, and in just a week, I found myself defaulting to "bonjour" and "merci".

Sandy, who'd been to Montreal before and also had studied French was also right in there "s'il-vous plait-ing" like a native.

I'd love to go back for a longer period, just for the immersion in the language (and the wine, and the food, and the cobblestones...).  I've heard Quebec is just as beautiful.  Either way, I'd love to take a month of vacation some time and rent a small apartment and just concentrate on the language.

Right now, the prospect of a month off makes me salivate, but the chances are right up there with winning the lottery.

That doesn't mean you can't do it.

Urinal Carnival

I'd think some of these urinals would be downright scary. The mouths, in particular.  Fortunately, I don't have to use them, myself.

[Thanks, Sandy]

SNAFU

This will be a short post.  Mostly because my battery is about to run out.  And my power cable is in my luggage.  And my luggage is still at the airport.  It's 5 AM.  I'm about to go pick it up.

Don't know if I should give this trip home the award for worst trip ever.  It was pretty bad.

We got to the airport in Montreal about 1030 to make sure we'd have plenty of time to clear customs before leaving.  No problem there. 

Then the wait began.  We finally left the airport about an hour and a half after we were scheduled to leave.  Some issue with getting passengers off the plane who needed a wheelchair.  It was one of those small planes that you climb stairs to get onto.  I wonder how those passengers got on in the first place, or why no one thought about it ahead of time.  It can't be the first time that's ever happened.

We finally landed in Atlanta two hours late and about 30 minutes after our connecting flight left.  Problems with head winds and all that.  It is probably the first time in recorded history that a flight actually left on time. 

We went to the desk to find out about a later flight and were told that they were all booked and that we would have to spend the night in Atlanta.  Very bad news.  Making it worse was the fact that the flight they had us booked on left at 5:30 tomorrow night.  24 hours after the cnacelled flight. Talk about a stress test.  If I had an occult aneurysm, or narrowed coronaries, it would have been the end right there.

My friend Tim and I decided to rent a car and drive from Atlanta to Jacksonville.  We finally got a car, but of course couldn't get our luggage.  We were told that it would probably go on one of the later flights they couldn't get us on.

We headed off, after noting that I-85 and I-75 went south together and then split.  After about a half hour, we pulled over, having noticed that we didn't see any signs for I-75.  Turns out we started south of the split, and were headed southwest on I-85 instead of souteast on I-75.

We decided to cut across on smaller highways and try to pick up I-75.  To make a long story short, we drove about 7 hours, arriving at the airport here after things had closed up.  We found our luggage behind a glass door, but couldn't find anyone to get it for us.

Returned the rental car (dropped the key and contract through a slot), retrieved our cars and headed home.  I got home at 3 AM.  It's 5 AM now.  Couldn't sleep, thinking about my luggage.  It doesn't take much to keep me awake, and this was more than enough.

So here's today's post.  I'm on my way back to the airport to get my luggage.

ADDENDUM:  Picked up my luggage, then got about 3 hours of sleep.  Have a massage scheduled for this evening, and after that, I hope to get more sleep than I've had in one block for a very long time.  G'night.

Friendly Food

I'm in Montreal, encountering lots of friendly food.  Here's some more friendly groceries.  I love photos anthropomorphizing food.  These have been going around in emails, and from the hole in the top one, I'd guess probably originated in a calendar.  Or put up on a bulletin board.

Whoever created them is brilliant.

Montreal

My sister's family lived in Maine for quite a while, and frequently took short trips across the border to Montreal, but I never had the chance to join them.  Now I'll finally get the chance to see this famous city on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, and maybe practice my very rusty French as well. 

I have a meeting to go to, and by the time this post is published, I'll have been there a few days.  I'm preposting hoping that I'll be so fascinated and exhausted (in a good way, I mean) that I won't have an extra minute for anything else. 

So much to see and do (and eat).  Churches, shopping, Olympic Stadium and parks and casinos.  Montreal is the second largest city in Canada (after Toronto).  It's name is actually derived from Mont Royal, a mountain in the middle of the city.  Montreal is the second largest French-speaking city in the world (after...guess where?)  It looks like there's tons to do there.  Hopefully we'll find our way around on the Metro.

My good friend Sandy, who is now retired and has some leisure to travel, will be coming up too, though she got a better flight and will get there first.  Since I have meetings to go to, her job will be as tour guide, finding the best stuff to see, and the best places to eat, so that when my colleagues and I finish our sessions, we don't have to think too much.

It'll be great. My camera is packed.  I'll keep you posted.

[Photo by Ben Soo, from Montreal.com]

Permanent Commitment

Stryder sent us this link to a fascinating tattoo gallery.  Celebrity Tattoos features some of the geekiest tattoos you could hope to see on non-celebs (think Super Mario Brothers) and some pretty geeky ones on superstars as well.

Kind of makes me think that perhaps stardom has mainstreamed some otherwise out-there, possibly dangerous people.  I've always liked Johnny Depp, and thought he had some potent bad-boy sexuality, but seeing him in full-color tattoos with smoke billowing out of his nose makes me think that but for Edward Scissorhands, he'd have been on Skid Row.  Gotta love that he didn't stick a rose or a dragon or something over the "Winona Forever" tattoo.

Same thing for Angelina Jolie.  She has a breathtaking beauty, and is kind to third world children, but you look at her tattoos, and you have to wonder what goes on in that head of hers.  When she yearns for the wilder Billy Bob days, well, she still has the tattoo.  (Maybe...I don't know when that picture was taken.)  Anyway, I'm sure they all mean something.  To someone.

I find them fascinating, but still in sort of an antisocial way. On other people, I mean.   I know that when I get something new--a piece of jewelry, shoes, haircut, the fascination will wear off in a few days.  I'm sure it's that way with tattoos as well.  So why bother.  Something big and in-your-face, I'd regret pretty quickly, I'm sure.  It'd give me something else to frown at in the mirror...and a little butterfly, or something like that?  Why bother?

The site also has links to places you can get permanent or temporary tattoos, or if you like to wear your heart on your sleeve, you can get T-shirts with David Beckham's tattoos on them.  All the gain, none of the pain.

[Images from Celebrity Tattoos]

Guns Don't Shoot People

They shoot deer.

Wait, something shoots people?  What is it then?  Oh, yeah, people shoot people.  With what, I wonder.  Knives?  Baseball bats?  Baseballs?

I, like many, waited for the other shoe to drop.  It never did.  After the shootings at Virginia Tech, I waited for someone to ask why someone with a psychiatric history, or without one for that matter, should be able to buy the firepower to protect a fortress, without a waiting period.  Or with one.

Why?  because a few testosterone-sodden folks feel that if you can't kill a hundred deer in 3 minutes, your rights are being infringed.  Never mind the rights of the victims who fall prey in increasing numbers to nuts out for "revenge."

Yes.  It's your second amendment right.  Written back in a time when a gun was necessary to put meat on the table, a tool without which you and your family would likely starve.  Taking it away then would have been like taking away your right to go to the grocery store now.  It was probably included as an amendment to the bill of rights so that the people could form a militia to protect the U.S. from outside attack.  No such call now.

And for protection too.  Back then, you loaded your shot and powder into a gun and tamped it down before you could get off a shot.  Still, you needed it to protect yourself against villains.  Or Indians.  Maybe pirates. 

Now the population has become the prey.  To protect the interest of a few for whom bigger and more is always better (think about putting your decision-making about this in the hands of Tim "the Toolman" Taylor).  The truth is, most of the people are not similarly armed.  That's why one man with guns can take out 31 victims. 

So yes.  People kill people.  People with guns really kill people.  A madman with a knife or any other weapon can kill maybe one or two before someone neutralizes him.  If he's frenzied, he may slaughter more.  But it pales in comparison with the number of people he can kill with sophisticated firepower.

Cho was able to get his Walther P22 and his Glock 19 with little trouble.  These semiautomatic pistols release one round for every pull of the trigger.  Given a large enough magazine, that type of efficiency can do a lot of damage.  So granted, they are not the most efficient you can get.  He could arguably  have done more damage with an assault rifle, though it would have been harder to conceal, or a fully automatic weapon, either of which would have been legal.

Why is this allowed here when the rest of the civilized world got rid of guns long ago?  One reason is political lobbying.  So much money goes to politicians from the NRA that they don't dare cross them.  And many conservative states want to keep their guns.  Fine.  Let them keep their historical replicas, their target shooting guns, their revolvers.  Someone has chosen to interpret all this as that these people want individuals to own semiautomatic rifles.  Maybe theyr'e not really that stupid.

The  strident arguments in favor of NO gun control are being brought to you by the same individuals who masterminded the Iraq War, and are chipping away at your civil rights.  They may be shrill and strident.

Do you really think that makes them right?

Now I hear that if the student population had been allowed to carry guns on campus, someone would have taken out Cho before he could have done all that damage.  Does anyone think that escalating this and increasing gun access is the answer?  If guns were banned tomorrow, it would take decades to get the ones that are out there off the streets, but it would be a start toward sanity.

Arming more individuals to protect against the occasional madman is mad in itself.  The statistics show that a homeowner pulling a gun against an invader is as likely to have it taken away from him and used against him as he is to foil a crime.  And privately owned guns are more likely to be used against a family member in an accidental firing or in anger than against a home invader.

It's time to stop the madness.

Yeah.  It's people who kill people.  People with guns.  It takes two to tango.  No people, no killings.  No guns, no killings.  What do you suppose is the answer here?

Addendum 5/11/07.  Captain makes a good point.  I forgot to credit the source of the photo, something I am usually meticulous about doing.  It's from Team Glock.

Only Human

Aren't we all.  This movie was recommended by Cate, who knew I loved Little Miss Sunshine and assured me that if I liked that, I'd love Only Human.

This is the story of two lovebirds who go for a family visit so that he can meet her family.  Leni's a TV personality, from a Jewish family in Spain. He's a University professor.  Her family's a bit strange:  her mother is a bit anxious, father is a workaholic, brother embraces causes fanatically:  he's going whole hog over Orthodox Judaism (so to speak), her sister is a nymphomaniac, and her niece is a very strange child.  Grandpa is blind and reliving the war.  He keeps a loaded gun in the closet.

Leni introduces Rafi, and the family embraces him...until they find out that he is Palestinian.  As they are trying to come to grips with this factoid, the plot begins to unravel.  Rafi, trying to help, offers to heat up the soup that is the evening meal.  As he struggles to get it out of the container, it slips out of his grasp and out the open window.

He leans out the window and sees that it has beaned a gentleman who is lying on the pavement.  He drags Leni downstairs.  She convinces him to grab the soup while she calls emergency services.  They return upstairs with the soup.  She never actually sees the victim.

Rafi is riddled with guilt and keeps looking out the window.  His behavior gets increasingly strange as he gets more anxious, particularly as he looks at pictures and comes to believe that the victim was Leni's father.

The movie is over-the-top often, and pretty silly.  Everyone is dysfunctional to some extent.  But it moves along with plot twist after plot twist.

Fortunately, the couple are pretty endearing.  Will they stay together?  Watch and find out.

[Image via City Paper]

Rigatoni with Brie, Grape Tomatoes, Olives and Basil

This lovely recipe comes from Bon Appetit's Readers' Quick Recipes section, May 2007.  Very smart use of this very mild, meltable cheese.  They note that brie coats the rigatoni like a creamy pasta sauce.  Since you remove the rind for the recipe, they recommend that you place the brie in the freezer for 15 minutes before cutting off the rind.

1 12-ounce wedge of brie, rind removed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 2 cups)
1 12-ounce package of cherry tomatoes, or grape tomatoes, each tomato halved
1/2 cup quartered pitted Kalamata olives
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon (generous) dried crushed red pepper
1 cup (packed) fresh basil leaves,coarsely chopped, plus sprigs for garnish

3/4 pound rigatoni

Off heat, place cheese, tomatoes, olives, garlic and crushed red pepper in a large skillet.  Stir, separating cheese pieces.  Mix in chopped basil.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to the bite.  Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta cooking liquid.

Add hot pasta and 1/4 cup reserved liquid to skillet with the cheese mixture.  Place over medium heat and toss until cheese is partially melted and sauce coats pasta, adding more reserved liquid by tablespoonfuls if dry, about 5 minutes.

Season to taste with salt.  Transfer to a shallow bowl.  Garnish with basil sprigs and serve.

[Image via Selezione Baladin]