Hi

It's been about 11 days...I just thought I'd let everyone know what's been going on in those days.

Feb. 5: Super Bowl. The Super Bowl Buffet Spectacular was pretty spectacular. At first, there were bologna sandwiches and KFC. Then people started bringing real food. Weeds brought cupcakes and five-alarm chili and Dre and VA brought salad and chicken fingers (the good kind.) We had several sad Seahawks fans there and they went home after the game to eat a whole birthday cake and say the dog did it. I think the refs lost because the Seahawks fans were crying conspiracy, but I think they're just a bunch of fucking crybabies.

Feb. 7: Watched Good Night and Good Luck (and good times, and good smoking...) with Weeds. Good show, but it's now out of theaters, so tough luck if you missed it. A little dry and political for most people I'll bet (especially the Academy) but I had done a paper on McCarthy for HIST 251, so I found it interesting. I wrote the paper on how the anti-Communist consensus of the American people, the fact that the executive branch didn't try to stop him initially and poor far-eastern foreign policies all somewhat justified McCarthy's actions. I tried to make the argument that McCarthy was a scapegoat for a broader anti-Communist movement and that his actions were understandable given the context of the time. The main point of this paper was to piss off my communist prof. I knew that I was right too...she gave me a C+ based on shit like paragraph development and not enough primary sources. They actually addressed the first point (mass hysteria by the American population) a little bit in the film, but overall, it's pretty biased toward Ed Murrow's viewpoint. I didn't expect the film to be fair and balanced or anything, and David Strathairn still put on a brilliant performance as Murrow.

Feb. 8: Airplane ride. It wasn't looking good early in the day, especially at 11:00 when it started snowing. It was pretty much a game time decision, and when I filed my flight plan, I was told that it was snowing in Red Deer. But when I got out there, it was bright and sunny and the only clouds were far off to the southwest. On the way back from Red Deer it was pretty windy and my approach was pretty bumpy. But my approach was straight down the center line and the actual landing was pretty soft. High winds don't really scare me...I got my glider license in Gimli which offered 90 degree crosswinds pretty much on a daily basis and I did my private license in Calgary, which was pretty windy as well. I guess high winds don't really happen that often here because I think I was the only one to fly that day. Bitches...

Feb. 10: Watched High Fidelity with Mick and Mick's wife. It was a pretty good story. Made me laugh to beat the band...parts, anyway. I thought Jack Black kind of overacted a bit though. And I must admit that I prefer the midlife crisis story that doesn't all work out in the end, like American Beauty or Sideways. I guess Lester did have everything worked out in the end...for about 3 seconds before he gets snuffed and in Sideways, we're led to believe that Miles ends up with Maya, but he's still a failure as a writer and has to go back to teaching 8th grade.

Feb. 12: Went to Lister for movie night and caught the last little bit of Clockwork Orange. I was only there for the discussion though. It went pretty good until we launched into a big discussion about how the movie makes you feel. I was more than content to argue about state intervention and free will, but whatever.

I'll put up my Oscar picks after I've seen more of the movies.