I AM SO DONE!

I am so happy right now, there are hardly words for it.

It's 28 pages on unadulterated, not-yet-red-penned Augstine-y goodness! =D (Which, really, was only supposed to be 25 pages, but as per usual, I can't stop until I'm over and above the requirement.)

My back is killing me from sitting in a bad chair for literally days on end, but I don't need to sit in this chair hardly no mo 'cept to check ma e-mail, so whatevuh!

We'll see if I'm still this joyous in a couple weeks when I get the draft back.

BUT I AM SO DONE AND NOW I HAVE A TWO WEEK EASTER BREAK! WOHOO! TIME TO GO DANCE AROUND IN MY UNDERWEAR! LATER!

Cheez Whiz!

I just did a pretty fun personality test. I recommend it! Instead of doing work! =D

....

I'm almost done my paper.

Benevolent Creator

Online Cartoon Cooking Show

Oh, and this is AMAZING. I would like to do something like this if I had time and resources.

Currently I need to go to bed. But by all means, check this out, very cool!

http://www.8legged.com/entry.html

Ze Clock

Oh wow, this is a cool clock!

http://www.humanclock.com/?s=1

Really neat...maybe I'll submit a photo! =D

...

I have also realized that I didn't get as much work done today as I wanted. How ironic.

Ninja Karate Matrix Goodness! =D

Once again, things I found that you will find funny! Or strange! Or both!

Karate Master- Quite funny, especially considering their karate 'word' while hitting things it "Wuss."

Dragon Blade 2- Very Fun Kung-Fu game with terrifically bad graphics and voice overs from bad ninja movies (I love it!) Man, if I get Shaolin Finger Jabbed one more time...

Keep it Clean Karate- Good for a quick laugh.

Matrix Cow- If you've seen Kung Pow, you've seen this, but I haven't, so this was uproaringly funny. Now I want to see Kung Pow.

OK, that's all for now. Still working on research paper.

Low Notes?

The weirdest thing happened tonight. While I was in De Werf (The nicest cafe in town which also happens to be the most affordable/popular) one of the waitresses asked me, out of the blue if I sang. I said yes, and she said because I had such a deep voice, I sound like I'm a singer. Then she went back downstairs.

Then guys who were with us were saying that she was hitting on me (Which was well, it would have been strange, because she looked way, way older than me, and the way she talked, in wasn't coy, that's for sure) while I was just confused. When we paid for our drinks, she asked me again if I sang, and if I would like to do some singing, and whether I could read music. I said yes to all of these things (because I can, although it's been a while since I've sang in a choir.) and she said, "GREAT!" at which point she gave me her number, and I sang her a couple bars of "Danny Boy" (because they asked me to sing something, and I couldn't think of anything to sing...perfect timing, right?) and she said that they were playing some sort of opera, and heaven knows what I've gotten myself into, but she was very serious, regardless. Anyways, it was, uh, interesting. LOL. Now I have to actually prove that I can sing. Terrific. LOL. Anyways, I guess I can go see, right? Apparently whatever it is that I've just been hustled into being a part of starts playing in May or something.

Can you imagine? Me? Singing in some sort of Belgian choral group? If for some reason they actually let me stay (And do not immeaditely want to deport my out-of-tune kaboose out of the country), I think I'm going to be highly amused. Because heaven knows, I'll probably have to sing in Dutch or something like it. I'll update you whenever I know what's going on, I suppose. LOL.

High Notes

Well, these last couple days have been very culturally inclined...on Thursday I went to the Belgian University Orchestra concert, and yesterday was an exciting day...I went to a Belgian Opera Concert! It was way cool! There are also other various events which I will comment on. I have pictures!






This is an extremely blurry picture of Marianne and Phil. Lately my camera has been taking exceedingly blurry pictures. Oh wait. I forgot to take it off of manual focus and put it back on auto focus. Dang it. I could have had better pictures! LOL. They were two of several people who came out to watch Hannah perform in the university orchestra.





Same blur, different people. This is Rocky and Brian, both of whom are very nice guys. All these people, including Hannah, who's in the orchestra, are in philosophy with me.






This is the Orchestra. Perhaps the best thing about this picture is that you can see the one girl who is wearing a shawl as CONCERT DRESS. For those of you who don't know, in any symphonic performance, all the men wear tuxes, and all the women wear disproportionate kinds of black, ranging from black pants and a black t-shirt to a full evening gown, a shoulder-wrap, and a tiara. A TIARA, I TELL YOU. It's a good thing my camera can't catch the amount of ugly that this shawl was in the picture, but let me tell you, UGLY. The girls had feathers in her hair, the kind that fashion models wear in Milan, while they walk up and down the runway, wearing various unwearable things, like plastic bags that button up or diamond tatoo body wear. All I have to say, is that they should really have some sort of standard for men AND women in concert dress. I'm just saying, it would prevent certain...uh...fashion disasters. Like tiaras.







Hannah, whom we couldn't really see for most of the concert, is staged directly behind the harp. Alas, all we could get for a photo of her was her head. Sigh. Darn. However, it was interesting to hear all of her stories about being a) the token English speaker, since she was the only one in the whole orchestra, and b) about being the token oboe player, since, y'know, oboe players are always TOKEN oboe players, since they usually only come in ones or twos. They had to import another oboe player from Antwerp because of the lack of oboe. Hannah had a couple solos, and she played first chair, and just generally rocked. (Hannah was a music major before joining the dark side of philosophy.) The concert itself was amazing. They played a four pieces, one was called on the town, the second one had an operatic singer in it, and man, did she have a set of lungs! She sang up and above the WHOLE orchestra when they were playing loud. I was pretty impressed. The third song was a first-time-ever-performed piece by a Belgian composer, which was beautiful beyond words. It was like Lords of the Rings, Korean Folk Song, and Mars by Beethoven, all thrown into one piece of music. It was amazing. I've never had chills like that in a LONG time when listening to classical music. LOVED IT.



The Opera





This is us on our way to the opera. We decided to get some ice cream before we went in. I wasn't planning on doing it, but there was some Dolce Latte ice cream, and if you've ever had it, well, 'I' can't turn it down. It's like carmel-flavoured cotton candy! Um, sort of. That's the closest approximation I have to what it tastes like. =D They have it at Jerry's, if you ever want to try it. And I recommend you DO. Do it now! =D






This is a very blurry photo because we are on our way to get our seats in the opera. Things are very proper in the opera. We were in a hurry because the 'Bell' (Which sounds like the kind of bell you call your cat to dinner with) was ringing, which meant it was last call to find your seats before they closed all the doors, and then you weren't let in, even if you had bought a ticket and everything. Imagine the Sabre Dance playing while we rush to our seats. =D





This is us sitting down, in a real Belgian Opera house! WOHOO! It was way cool. The orchestra is just warming up. I took a picture of as many things as I could whilst appearing innocuous. It's hard to do because Belgian society is very proper to begin with, and it's like, intensified FIVE BILLION TIMES while you're at a fancy occasion. I had to stop myself from falling asleep during the opera because listening to classical music makes me sleepy. That and sitting in fancy clothes.




This is a picture of the ceiling. It was amazing. However, it was also amazingly hard to see because of the low light and the autofocus was off. Dang. However, it really was beautiful. Uh, is. It's still there.






This is a candid photo of Sarah, who was probably asking at the time, "Brennan, why are you taking so many pictures?" Actually, Sarah and Montse and I had a very good discussion about where all the Howards in the audience were. (You know, the rather stuck up what-what cultural elites who find university ragamuffins like us to be lowering their cultural experience.) We decided that if there was a Howard, he was sitting on the balcony to Sarah's left. We rightly assumed, however, that the REAL Howard would be sitting in the box seats, which looked like a royal palace, suspended in midair. Seriously. This place was decked to the nines.





This is to give you an idea of how many people were here. It was a lot. And there's only one coat check line. Good times. LOL.


After Opera Hours








We now went for a walk to get Sarah a new Manneken Piss keychain, since her's had broken, and left nothing but a little Manneken head dangling from her keychain, which she apparently found grotesque, so we went for a walk to find a cheesy tourist shop where we could remedy this situation. Along the way, we came to what I like to call, "The Extremely Sad Saint dying of the Plague" statue. (Or as I like to call him, E.S.S.D.O.T.P.) Why is he sad? He's sad because people wont stop manhandling him like a piece of cheap furniture. Citizens of Brussels, for reasons unbeknownst to us, whenever they walk down the street with this statue, touch the whole length of the saint's body, touch the dog's head who sits next to the E.S.S.D.O.T.P., and then kiss the saint's right breast. We watched about 10 different people do this in the course of five minutes. Some people also touched the shield and this thing that looked like a cross between a mouse and a frog near the bottom as well as a shield in the battle scene above the saint, while other, just passing by, quickly ran their hands up the saint, or gave him a quick kiss and went on their way. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this, but it was definitely interesting. Who knew people from Brussels were so superstitious, yet some unreligious, eh?





While we waited for Sarah to buy a new keychain, I made Montse try on random hats. Hee hee. Some things never get old. Really, I just use my friends as full sized Barbie dolls. I love playing Dress-up with other people. Especially if there are ugly looking things around. MUHAHA. LOL.


After this, we went home, and we went to have something to drink, and good times were had by all. Very cultural. =D







This was last week sometime. I was working very hard on my research paper. And as per usual, work turns into uh, me making something out of whatever is handy at my desk. So, I made a little man out of wine gums. I call him, 'Marty.'





Here's another view of Marty, from the front. Unfortunately, Marty is no longer with us. After plotting to take over the world with him, he was going to give me up to the Soviets. To make a long story short, Marty is now sleeping with the fishes.


And I'm half done my research paper, in case anyone is asking.

Translation Exercise

I was going to write a lot here, but I decided I would just put up the cartoon. Blogger is giving me trouble today with uploading images, so I have less time to do blog, and more time needing to go back to paper. I've decided that sitting in a bad chair for more than 8 hours at a time is a bad idea. Ouchies. Alright, well, I HAVE to go. So, later peeps! I'll write a little more tomorrow, I think.

Happy Intergalactic Cow Day!

For those of you who don't know, March 21st is Intergalactic Cow Day. This has become somewhat of a celebratory event for me and some of my closest friends. For those of you who do not understand, just moo and be content. Alright, time for me to moove along to bed. If all goes well, I'll be done my research paper by the end of the week, and the tears will cease from my eyes! Well, probably not, but that's because my eyes are officially infected. Um, sort of! OK, gotta go!

Yay! Movies!

I think I'm becoming rather used to the idea that I may prefer to watch bad movies for the rest of my life. This particular bad movie that I'm interested in was searched out and inspired by Will's current play he's doing, "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" which is available on a 2001 video. (Who knew? But not by the group Will is playing in. But go see his play.) The previews are AWESOME. I am also planning on getting some more bad movies if at all possible. (Which shouldn't be very difficult, given the nature of most movies to be bad.) The next on my list is "The Crawling Eye." I was thinking about 'The Man With the Brain Who Screams," but it got bad reviews on Amazon. So, yes, if you got me bad horror/ninja/documentary/anything painful movies, I would be grateful! (That's a hint for my birthday, Dad.)

Also, putting this into colour was a lot harder than I expected. Why can't I be a speedy artist, like a short order chef or something. Like, the ability to cook a breakfast meal in less than ten seconds or something, only with art. (Actually, I'd like that skill of quick breakfasts, too, now that I think of it.)

In other news, I'm really not getting any work done.

Three Weeks in One Update!

Yay!

OK, well, I've started my 20 page paper, and I'm ready to take my prelim thesis proposal to my promoter tomorrow. I have never had such a hard time getting to work. I'm such a procrastinator. However, in my defence, which is small, like my brain, I was sneezing for most of today, and my eyes have been going from tearing buckets to being so dry that I thought I could use them to sand down my desk in the Venus de Milo. Then I realized that I still needed desk to use my computer. And how would I give you the equivalent of Venus in pictures without a desk? I would need to use my coffee table or something. But it would have to stand on all the books on the coffee table, and I don't want to look at the books right now. The books make it hurt. So on to the pictures!


The Party



This is Sarah and her boyfriend Mike. I forget what they're examining, but we helped (sort of helped) Montseratt set up for her joint birthday party. It was fun! And colourful! =D Mike is visiting for about three weeks or something, and then he's going back to Canada. Very cool, and the party was very cool. Like, ICE cool. (I'm saying that so Montseratt doesn't freak out and think she had a bad party. I was nearly accosted three seperate times in which I had to assert the high quality of said party.)



This is Montseratt opening a gift. There was a funny moment where Montseratt tried to get everyone's attention for the opening of the gifts, and one of the birthday peeps was in the washroom. It was pretty anti-climactic. Especially after Montseratt went to all the trouble of popping a balloon right next to my ear.





This was some of the amazing food we had. Half of it I helped pick out to make! =D =D =D Um, except that we had olives. I keep trying to convince myself I liked olives, but I don't. And I shouldn't try and convince myself I like them. But really. They taste like feet. And people kept asking me where the Rice Krispie Squares were...it's a long story about how people have never ever had them for the most part and don't even know what they are and that Montseratt kept saying we were going to make them in the middle of the party. I said we should wait because everyone was eating the candied marshmallows we were going to use to make the snack. I miss North American style marshmallows.

The Dinner



This is Sarah and her boyfriend Mike who are cooking in MY STUDIO. WOHOO! They came over and cooked salmon in a white wine sauce and some awesome tasting potatoes. They learned the rather painful experience of trying to cook in studio. (aka. We ate at 8 pm or something) However, everything was amazing, and they are great cooks. I certainly don't measure up to them. Luckily, I make up for the lack of skill with inviting other people more often. =D





This is a picture of what we had. I only have one pea on my plate because I literally ate a bag's worth of peas while we ate for everything to cook. Those peas, uh, may or may not have been for everyone and not just me. I can't say for sure, though.


The Trip



Now, this is the real deal! This is my trip to Amsterdam, which was exhaustingly great fun. I went and visited friends of my grandparents, Henke and Nicole. This picture is me missing the train because I'm really dumb, and no matter what I do, I always mess up my train schedule. Instead of having seven minutes between trains, which I thought WAS TOO LITTLE, I instead went into Brussels versus going through a different route through Mechlen, and thus my train arrived from Leuven at 9:37, and my train direct for Amsterdam departed at 9:37. I ran for the train. I almost made it. The doors closed as I was about 10 feet away from getting on the train. Yeah.

Anyways, I phoned Nicole, and told her what happened, and it actually turned out to be a good thing, since it gave them more time to get organized, so I felt ok about that. But also guilty. Like BECAUSE I'M TOTALLY DUMB. On the bright side of things, this was my first time EVER travelling by myself in Europe (No, serious, I'm not even joking) especially all trans-country-like, so I'm proud of myself that I didn't end up in Hamburg or Nice or something. Other than this minor mix-up (Re: I can't put train schedules together properly) the rest of the trip went fairly smoothly. I even met some Canadians on the trip up! It was a good way to pass three hours while they told me about all the pot they were hoping to smoke that weekend. I told them funny jokes about Steak tartar. It was a good trade-off, I think.




This was me buying myself Hagen-Dazs ice cream to make me feel better about making a mess of things. It was MACAROON flavoured. Have you ever heard of anything so weird? Me neither, so I had to try it. I must say...it's certainly as weird as it sounds. However, macaroons are the bomb over here for people, quite the treat, so I suppose I could see it's popularity. It makes at least as much sense as coffee ice cream.





This is me and the fam getting ready to go on a BOAT TRIP around Amsterdam. Way fun. When they met me at the airport, Nicole and Henke were the most nicest people I have ever met in Europe, they were so nice to me. And, wow, the hospitality. Anyways, we went and had a quick lunch (mainly because I hadn't eaten anything) and they bought soup for me, and we went on the boat tour, which was awesome. I can't begin to tell you how nice these people are. They're amazing parents too.




This is one of the many Asian women on the boat tour who cuddled Nicole and Henke's kids. It was cute, but also hard for Nicole and Henke, since what is bad behaviour is soooo cute to everyone except the parents. The unbelievably cute kid on the lady's lap is Luik.




This is a picture of Luik, and his younger brother Niek. They're terrific kids, and they played me out by the end of the weekend. I forgot what it's like to be around really, really young children. It's so nice. This was them being cute and walking on and jumping off the bottom of a lift. It was less cute when we went up the flight of stairs and they tried to jump off the top of it.





This is me standing in front of a Castle. A CASTLE!!!!!! YES!!! CASTLE!!!!! We went on a children's tour in Dutch here. I understood 15-25% of it, which I consider to be really good for how my comprehension level is progressing. It was a really nice place, but because of the weather, we didn't look around a lot.





This is me trying to explain to Henke how to use my archaic digital camera. I kind of look like I'm swatting something. These photos were taken because Nicole said we should. She was right, as usual.




Now I kind of look like a tiger. Rawr.






This was me eating a liver pate sandwich for lunch. Nicole and Henke had me eating salmon and cream cheese bagels for breakfast and pate sandwiches for lunch. I kinda liked pate, even though I don't remember what's in it. That's also code for don't tell me what it actually is. I'm blissful this way.

Henke promised to let me try smoked eel next time I come. WOHOO!







This one of the best parts of my whole trip. I got to see a real, live, windmill! DAG, yo! It was, wow. Very cool. I had a super Dutch moment. I think Nicole and Henke were amused. Actually, I think Nicole fell asleep. This was on the way back to the train station, and I talked Henke's ear off. I like to think I was doing it to keep him awake, but I know it's because I didn't want to sleep and seem like I was really that tired from the weekend, but I think it wore everybody out. And I also think that because their kids had been sick lately they hadn't been getting a lot of sleep.



OK, well, that's it! Actually, there's a lot more, but I gave the slimmer version, mainly because it's two in the morning, and I need to sleep. Also, I need to save some for stories for later! Besides, like you've even read this far! Woo! OK, well, I should go, so there's an update, and there will be more this week. Wohoo!

I missed writing here.

We will resume programming after a few short messages from our sponsors

Namely, that my thesis proposal is due on Wednesday, so I will post cool new stuff when it is finished. I'm done all the reading I need to write it up, but it's a question of how spacey I am today. So, sorry for the lack of posting, I know I feel I've been neglecting...my...fanbase....who read this....every day....well, ok, so by time you read this I'll have updated. WHATEVER. Just so you know.

Art stuff

OK, I just decided to do something new and MYSTERIOUS for my next little project. I will let you know how it goes.

Um, I'm only telling you this so that I will actually do it.

OK bye!

Cartoon...maybe more to come soon! =D

Originally, I was going to have ducks flying from the sky and bombarding me in the second to last panel. However, it got late, and my Lenten promise has been to go to bed at a good time, so I left it for today. And, then, today, I couldn't figure out how to make it look like the ducks were falling from the sky without making it look gory, and I didn't want that, so I left it as it is. There. Now you know some of what goes on in my head. =)

Belgium weather is so persnickety that you have to wear five layers, and be prepared to take off two, then get rained on, dry off, then get snowed on (which turns instantly into water, especially when you forget you have snow in your hood, and then bend over to pick something up. Not that that happened to me. Uh...no.) and then realize that your clothes are really, really wet, and you're going to have a bad hair day no matter how hard you try and wear that Canada cap with pride. Well, relative pride. I look like a dooshbag in a hat. But it's that or walk around looking like a drowned rat. Be happy that Saskatchewan has relatively stable weather.

I'm going to go see a movie today, and that's nice. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep lately, but it's mostly because I've been staying up late doing stuff like reading and chores and I don't know where the time goes...but I know I don't have enough. ;) Anyways, I wish to say more, but it must wait. Lent is relentless! Especially on me! Off to a movie!

Late Posting

Just wanted to apologize for my lack of posting lately. I have been doing more reading than hanging around my computer. Anyways, I will probably have a cartoon up in the next couple days. Just so you know, everything is going well, and I am sorry to hear about the Sheaf controversy back home. (For those of you who don't know, the local university newspaper has been caught publishing some rather offensive cartoons while not publishing the now famous Muslim cartoons.)

Anyways, I would simply like to bypass all of that, and hope that everyone is having a good day.

To make up for the bad cartoon karma that is going around, I want to share with you my favourite cartoon I have ever found on the web. It makes me laugh every time I read it. You can find it here.

And I have recently found a cartoon about philosophy which I found funny. Well, it's sort of about philosophy, you might want to look up the philosophical dictionary definition of nihilism before you read it if you're not acquainted with the term. It's funny either way, though. Check it out.

OK, off to relax a little on Sunday before play practice.