Sunday, November 16, 2003

   Saga of the Girl: Libraries and Cuteness
So last Friday I had to write that other thing. Now that that's out of the way, I'll give the spur-of-the-moment bit . . . . . so it's Friday, after classes. I met up with "The Girl", as per usual. She has a research paper to work on, so we headed to the old library on campus (smelly, broken one). So we spent about half an hour or so searching for books and getting them, laughing as quietly as we could about whatever . . . I mean, to be honest, looking for books isn't that exciting . . .

After she got her books, we got on the bus and headed home. We talked a bit about plans over the Christmas break. You know, who had to come where, when people have to do what, that sort of thing. Talk of Return of the King came up, of course. Kinda funny, actually . . . just thinking about how I had "called" her for this almost a full year ago . . . . .

Anyhoo, the conversation eventually turned to how school is painful and how it was good that it was Friday. After all, Friday = Inuyasha night . . . . .

And then things got weird . . . . .

Now, before I go on, let me explain this bit about "The Girl". She is a rather stoic person. I mean, not in the sense that she's cold and serious or anything; just that instead of "super-bubbly-type" girl, she's more of "glares-at-what-you're-doing-oddly" girl.

Well, in any case, that all changed. The product of Friday, finishing a midterm, and Inuyasha just made her weird. She was talking in this semi-anime voice, making these little "eheh heh" giggly things . . . . . I told her she was absolutely adorable . . . and she smiled about it! (phew!)

Funnily enough (made up word), the term "glompable" came up during the conversation! Apparently she finds Inuyasha extremely glompable in that "you can glomp him, and then after that just sorta tug on his ears and stuff . . ." It was perhaps the cutest thing I had ever seen her do and say ever! She did the tugging actions with her hands, people!!! I swear, rest of the trip home, I couldn't make my face stop grinning!!!

So . . . I REEEEEALLY really really wanted to hug her SO much just then! But I didn't, because as far as I knew, she was still "Stoic not-exactly-affectionate" girl in there . . . . . I did sorta squeeze her around the middle a bit after we got off the bus, though . . . but ya know. Painful situation but not quite. Confusing, no?


Now, as I recall during the busride, she actually told me "not a word of this to anyone!" I then told her keeping it to myself would make me explode, and she thought that would be amusing . . . . . so yes, I'm risking my life to tell you people these things! Do enjoy them now!
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Saturday, November 15, 2003

   Bwa ha ha ha ha!
So, I was just bored suddenly (go fig) so I went to Google . . . I typed: Cream, Nougat, and Mel.

Guys! mO pages can be found through search engines!!! We are THAT powerful!!!
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   STREET PHILOSOPHY # 7: Sleep and Lack Thereof
We are all sleep-deprived people. We accept this. We never cease to complain about it, but we never do anything about it. I wonder why that is . . . . .

Now, I recall as a child that staying up late was like, the ultimate thing. Ya know, getting to watch those late night shows, seeing Saturday Night Live, well . . . live, for the first time . . . these are the sorts of things we thrived for as children. Our parents would tell us to go to sleep, but ya know we didn't wanna . . . . .

Then, adolescence comes along. Suddenly we think we can handle staying up a little later. We're all older, so therefore age must have privileges - ie. a later bedtime. Now by all technicality there is still an assigned bedtime . . . it's just more flexible and able to change to the whim of the sleeper him/herself. Here on, the childhood desire to stay up late is fulfilled; and the body suffers for it.

Then, adult life more or less comes along. Now you WISH you could sleep more - and you do . . . just not at night. Now, the desire to sleep is rampant, yet now staying up late is due to work, management, school, or what have you. Caffeine becomes your best friend, and the bus becomes your bed away from home.

How does this happen? Why does this happen? Did we think our parents were actually just trying to make us sad and miserable?

How foolish we are . . . . . this is gonna be just like when all of our kids start doing strange new things that we can't relate to. They're gonna do that, we're gonna never understand it . . . even though we did the exact same thing . . . . . these are vicious cycles, people!!!
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Friday, November 14, 2003

   No Fire Alarm This Time!!!
Midterm's over! No more for the rest of the semester!!!

How did it go? Well . . . . . I don't want to hope to pray or anything . . . heh . . . felt better than last time, in any case, so we'll see. With some luck, I passed it (which is pretty much all I'm shootin' for [MAN this is sucky!]).

Ah . . . . . so what do I need to reinstitute next post? What're you guys missing more, "Street Philosophy" or "Canadiana"? Do I have any other featurettes that I've forgotten about? Cause I forget if I have or not, ya know . . . . . but yeah, I need to surf around! Oyasuminasai!
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Thursday, November 13, 2003

   Three Weeks of Recap!!!
Alright, so with "Cream Filling & Nougat" and Rememberance day, I haven't been writing about regular stuff lately. I'm gonna try to make it up in point-form:

-Parents came back from their vacation. I don't have to cook anymore.
-Schoolwork slowly starting to suck more and more. Not good.
-The car came back! No more smelly Civic for me anymore!
-Bought the Return of the King model game. Models look awesome, though my Gandalf was defective (snapped staff).
-Went to Karaoke with a bunch of people including "The Girl". Turns out people think I have a good oldies/rock-alternative voice.
-Everyone got MSN! Yay!
-I'm really loving having these private channels to chat with people. Gives quite a lot of freedom for talking about . . . . . erm . . . stuff.
-That "Attila" miniseries was bad!!!
-The tutoring job I have teaching English to a neighbour is coming along nicely. I don't know if I'm helping at all, but we'll see.
-Bro bought "Return of the King" for PS2. I already finished it. Fun game.
-Still wanna buy "Call of Duty" but I really shouldn't since I'm gonna have finals within the next short while . . .
-I REALLY want it to be December 17th right now!
-Whenever I see something that has nougat in it, I laugh to myself now.
-I didn't really do anything for Halloween. Poop.
-The day after Halloween was a Halloween swing dance at school. I dressed up as Indiana Jones.
-Which reminds me, I gotta buy that Indiana Jones DVD set some time . . .

And yeah, that's more or less everything I can remember right now. So with that, I say good day, and now I am off to study for my CompSci midterm that is later today! Whee! [plop!]

Peace!
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Vimy Ridge - April 9, 1917
This will be my final memorial post for Rememberance Day (which, as I type, is almost over). For today, I'm going to talk about a battle from the First World War that has essentially reached mythical status in Canada . . . at least, for the ones who actually know about it . . .

For much of the war, Canada fought on behalf of the British Commonwealth. Its military divisions were spread throughout the British divisions; its orders came from British commanders. Nevertheless, the Allied generals were willing to give the task of capturing this large, elevated piece of land overlooking the flat plains of France to the Canadian commanders as part of the larger British offensive across the entire country. For the first time, all four divisions from the Canadian corps were fighting as a single unit.

As most people know, a great deal of the war was strategized around "send everyone across and hope some of them don't get machinegunned or exploded" - this, as noted, made for huge loss of life at little gain. Well, no one wanted this to happen that day . . .

Preparations for this attack was started months in advance. The plan was essentially to have a "rolling barrage" or artillery exploding just ahead of the advancing troops, who would then walk short, timed distances behind it. Imagine walking to a schedule of maybe 20 yards a minute while stuff blew up directly in front of you. That was the plan.

And the plan was done almost flawlessly. That morning, 11,000 large guns started blasting the ground in front of the Canadian soldiers - as a news columnist put it, it was "shock and awe 1917-style."

By the next day or two, the stretch of land that had ended 150,000 British and French lives over a span of two years was taken. It was the first truly successful allied offensive of the war, though at the cost of 3,600 lives; supposedly after that, Canadian troops were often sent in first as shock troops of sorts in later battles. It is said in many forms that "Canada went up Vimy Ridge as a colony, and came down as a nation."

I had a pretty gung-ho Socials Studies teacher. He liked telling us these things. Aside from that, there are all sorts of stories about Canadian tenacity in that war. During the gas attacks at Ypres, the story goes that the Canadian highlanders (soldiers who wore kilts), in response to the chlorine gas, peed on their hankerchiefs and held them over their faces so that they could hold their positions! Nevertheless, Vimy Ridge continues to be the most celebrated moment of Canadian participation, 1914-1918.


Please note: I mention these odds bits of stuff not because I'm trying to stir up any sort of flag-waving whatevers or anything. It's just that these are some really incredible things that happened, and I don't think enough people - a fair majority of Canadians included - know about then. And all of it . . . every bit of it . . . . . deserves to be known.
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Sunday, November 9, 2003

Asia During World War II
I don't mean to be especially depressing today, but I think this is important too. Now, the Holocaust was an atrocity to mankind, no one's arguing against that. The thing is, people know about and think about it often enough that it is not forgotten . . .

It's the other side of the world I wish I knew more about . . . . .

The Second World War started in 1933 for many people in Asia. Japanese expansion put plenty of Mainland Asian territories under occupation. Late that decade, things got especially worse . . .

This is what I ask for all of you here. I want you to look up information about Hong Kong in World War II. I want you to look up Nanking / Nanjing in World War II. Now, what happened to the oppressed in Europe was brutal, but some of the things that happened in China were just sickening! Civilian prisoners used for bayonet practice; mass executions; Chinese girls and women aged 8 to 80 being declared prostitutes . . . it was a horrible time.

The worst of it, though, was after the war. Now, there was the Nuremburg trials in Europe, where all the Nazi party leaders were tried for war crimes. Prisoners of war were paid compensation for any labours they undertook, and Germany apologized and made its peace with the world.

Japan, however, was a different story. Now, a military tribunal was set up in Asia to handle war crimes in the Pacific. However, things got messy when China became a Communist country . . . suddenly The US wasn't as willing to help them out, needed Japan as a Pacific ally, and the whole debacle of Nanking was quickly swept away . . . . . even now, Japan still has not officially acknowledged the existence of the war . . .

Now don't get me wrong, I hold no grudges against any people today and am indeed very intrigued by all things Japanese (my being here is a testament to that). I'm just saying - not only as the grandson of people who lived during these times, but as a human being - that these things must not be forgotten either.
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In Rememberance . . .
Rememberance Day / Veteran's Day is coming up soon. I noticed mostly because there are a bunch of people around my school selling poppies now. The first couple days I held off on buying one because I was wearing my suede jacket and didn't really want to put a pin through it . . . well, a couple days later, I just thought, "what the hell is one or two pin holes compared to the whole point of wearing a poppy?!"

Aside from the poppies, there were was a Holocaust information week thing going on as well. Inside the student union building, there were information posters and booths talking about everything from the ghettos to the death camps to the peoples themselves. Outside, a table was set up with speakers, where people were reading out all the names of every known person who died in the Holocaust - it had been the third day or so of nonstop reading, last I checked.

Well, I bought mine on Thursday, pinned it through my jacket, and walked to the bus loop to go home . . . all I know is, as I started walking, I just thought about stuff. I have all the respect in the world for enlisted men and women, I really do. As I kept going on, I just wondered to myself: would I ever be able to do something like that for my loved ones if the need arose? I'd like to think I would, but in reality I'm really not sure if I could . . . . .

So yeah, for the next bit of the week or so, I'm gonna leave my intro as it is above for that reason.

The poem "In Flanders Fields" is a very famous war poem (and arguably the most famous poem from World War I). It was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who fought on the western front of the war for Canada. Tired of looking at all the death and carnage of war - especially after the death of one of his students - the doctor jotted down this poem about the burial grounds near which they fought. In 1918, McCrae died of pneumonia while still on active duty.

This poem is read in schools among other places all over the country every year. It's a simple reminder that our way of life was not just handed to us. While war is never a good thing, and sometimes it is waged for the completely wrong reasons, there are still the times when it is a necessary evil lest harsher evils befall the world. It's times like this where war isn't fought for your country or your ideals . . . it's fought to protect the ones you care about.
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   I'm Exhausted . . . . .
Man . . . write a 15-part story and then spend rest of the day playing Return of the King for PS2 (my brother caved and bought it) . . . . . takes a lot outta ya! And I was supposed to do homework over the weekend! Aw hell . . .

So, I'll talk about all the cool things that happened to me over the past two weeks or so tomorrow, alright? Alright . . . . . to quote the Cheeb': "Peesh!"
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Saturday, November 8, 2003

   Cream Filling & Nougat: World's Finest (Chapter XV)
The refinery, despite already being abandoned and closed, was now in complete ruin. Evidence of the ten minute firefight was everyhwere: bullet casings, blood, and wrecked machinery and walls were strewn about. The remaining Pi's were being escorted into wagons outside while the wounded on both sides were taken to ambulances. And out from an office on the third level of the building came one free woman, one escorted woman, and two incredibly weary men.

They were met on the walkway on the third level by the commanding officer of the counter-terrorist teams, who was quick to offer his hand.
"Sir," Cream said as he shook the captain's hand, "you can't believe how grateful we are, you came at the best possible time." The captain smiled.
"I'm glad I could be of service," he said, "but you should really thank a certain trucker who radioed in your location." Nougat snapped out of his disorientation abruptly.
"You're kidding! It was him that got you guys here?!" The captain continued.
"Well, he radioed on an emergency frequency that there were two 'weirdoes' with guns here . . ." Cream lost his composure and laughed out loud; Nougat did the same until his head started hurting again. "Anyway, we got the locals to send a car by, and that's when they heard the fireworks . . . I take it we have you two to thank for that?"
"Guilty as charged," Cream stated plainly.
"You're welcome," Nougat offered.

Two of the counter-terrorists came up and took Karmel into custody, and the captain headed back down to take care of some other affairs. Cream, Nougat, and 'Mel stayed on the walkway and just looked around. The realisation that they were still alive continued to evade them.

The three of them - 'Mel flanked by the other two - leaned forward, resting their arms against one of the side railings.
"Guys," 'Mel said, still looking down at all the clean-up activity, "I knew I could count on ya. Thanks."
"Hey," Nougat started, "we're pros! We've been in way stickier places than this before!" Cream added,
"That's right . . . though, to be fair, this wasn't exactly a cakewalk either."
"Ah, cake is for suckers . . ." Nougat said quickly; Cream could only laugh. 'Mel looked back and forth at the two of them, grinned mischievously, and jumped up, wrapping an arm around each man's neck, jolting them towards her sharply.
"Well I'm glad to see at least that other problem's out of the way, th- . . . . ."

'Mel was cut off by two loud bursts of gunfire from the ground floor. The sound of metal impacting metal grabbed everyone's attention upwards, where a Pi who had managed to elude detection was now falling, crashing into machinery as he neared the ground. The split-second of relief ended when the Pi's motives came to be: he had thrown a device of sorts at the three people in the middle of the open area . . .

The device exploded dramatically as it neared one end of the bridge, severing it from the walkway on the far side of the building. Cream, Nougat and 'Mel all lurched and screamed as the walkway began to give and swing down, taking its passengers with it. Nougat managed to loop his foot around one of the side rails and catch 'Mel's arm; Cream in turn was able to catch the other arm.

The three were now suspended by Nougat's foot with 'Mel caught in the pull of two significantly larger men.
"This is what they mean by out of the frying pan, right?!" Nougat yelled as he strained to keep his hold of the swinging rail and his friends. 'Mel didn't comment, but the pain on her face was evident . . . and Cream couldn't stand looking up at it anymore.

"Noug'!" he shouted up, "hold on to 'Mel, I'm gonna drop off!"
"Whip'! Don't you do a damn thing!" 'Mel shouted down in return.
"Yeah Whip'!" Nougat said, "You're not the one who hurt his head-"
"No I'm not, but you are!" Cream looked down, gulped, and looked back up. "Look man, in your condition you can't hold us both, and 'Mel definitely can't handle this either!"

'Mel was about to protest again when the hanging walkway groaned and shifted again; Nougat almost lost his footing. Accepting reality along with the blood rushing to his head, he looked down to Cream.
"Just . . . land on your feet, okay?" 'Mel looked up at Nougat, shocked - Nougat could only shrug slightly as best he could. "See ya in the ambulance, Whip'." Cream nodded, looked to 'Mel one last time, and let go. She screamed, and he cursed as the ground neared him . . . . .


* * * * *


"So, that was really stupid, huh?" Nougat said to Cream as the ambulance raced through the dark streets. Cream scratched at his leg which was held fast in a plastic splint.
"Meh. Could've been worse . . . you could've been the only one to get the sympathy care from everybody . . ." Nougat laughed hard, tracing his fingers along the freshly added stitches along the top of his head.
"Fair enough . . ."

'Mel, who was sitting between the secured gurneys, spoke.
"You boys have to be the absolute most retarded pair I have ever met!" Cream and Nougat laughed and agreed. "Seriously! Where are your priorities?!" She looked at Cream. "You could have killed yourself dropping that distance!" Cream nodded - 'Mel turned to Nougat. "And you let him do it!" The painful laughter continued to fill the ambulance.
"Well," Nougat said, "he's a pretty light guy, and he owed me for my taking on most of the fight with that big guy, so . . ." Cream smirked.
"Yeah, and this poor nutty bastard just had to get his ass kicked, so I didn't have the heart to see him get wrecked any more." Nougat arched his eyebrow as he looked over.

"Call it even?" he asked.
"Surewhynot." Cream replied. 'Mel just leaned back, relieved and content, as the two men - still laughing somewhat hysterically no less - reached out and lightly hammered their fists together.


And I think I'm done here. I've now missed out on over two weeks of regular postings, so I'll have to catch up on that. Hope you all enjoyed this "little" tale, and I hope I answered all your questions and responses. And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to shower . . .
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