It’s the time of the season

In the last couple weeks a cold has been spreading, well, like a cold through the student population at Brock. It’s been over a week since I noticed the first victims sitting beside me in lecture and on the bus, spreading their germy secretions over every communal surface in reach. I suppose I’m lucky to have held out this long.

Alas, I have fallen

So far it’s only a drippy nose, but I’m starting medication now. I’ll never understand people who insist on “letting a cold run it’s course.” Especially if you have to be out in public anyway, why suffer? You’re not doing yourself any favours and all that sneezing is just making more people sick.

As an added bonus, the non-drowsy pills are making me feel a little crazy. You know that Pizza Pockets commercial with the man in a stomach suit? The “brain” set is just an empty room with walls that look like brain. (Unfortunately I can’t find it on Youtube.) That’s a bit like how I feel now: my consciousness is in a bit room, slightly removed from what’s happening in reality.

To put it another way, it’s like I’m dreaming but awake. Make sense? Anyway, I like it.

[mp3] “Dire Tribe” by Gomez

[mp3] “Time of the Season” by The Zombies

[photo] “soup repetition” by saralynncantor

New Bond Title Revealed!

 

Quantum of Solace? How odd.

Since this movie is going to pick up where Casino Royale left off, I doubt it will be very faithful to Fleming’s Quantum of Solace. And let’s hope not. A quick google reveals that it “has Bond attending a boring dinner party in Nassau.“

“Quantum” probably has something to do with those newfangled computers that could hypothetically break any code. Imagine what an evil-doer could get up to with one of those babies! Gold, diamonds, nuclear weapons – all he has to do it walk up to the vault and it’s his for the taking.

As an added bonus, a quanta is the smallest possible division of energy, so it could be a measure of how much solace our poor Bond gets from avenging his true love’s death. (Tangentially, this is also where the airline Qantas gets its name, as airline seats are the smallest physical space in which a human can be shoehorned.)

It’s not a very  satisfying name, as Bond titles go. But when you’re starved for another installment in the series like I am, every little bit helps.

Quantum of Solace is set to open November 7, 2008.

[photo] Jay Maidment/Sony Pictures

Did I Speak Too Soon?

No sooner did I lament the sorry state of federal government in Canada and the unlikely progress of any plans for high-speed rail in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor than Premiers McGuinty and Charest get together and announce the intention to begin considering the study of the possibility of high-speed rail along the St. Lawrence. And all this with the cooperation of the federal government.

Granted, they’re aiming low and investigating a type of train that might be more honestly called higher-speed rail, but I’ll take it. By simply acknowledging that rail links will play a substantial role in future transportation, the political discourse has been shifted from “none or some” to “some or more.” With the Conservatives taking the side of “some” high-speed rail, the rest of the federal parties, all to the left of the government, are pretty much forced into advocating for more.

Sure, countless similar studies have been commissioned over the years, but let’s pay no attention to that because I’m tempering my cynicism tonight.

[photo] “St. Pancras Station” by sean-b