So anyway, I’m starting driving lessons, AGAIN, next Monday. My inability to learn to drive (two full AMA courses, folks, count ‘em!) baffles family and friends. A typical conversation goes roughly like:
Some tall guy: “Haven’t you got your license yet?”
Me: “No. Shut up.”
Guy: “Dude, you know, in this lab in, like Sweden - they’ve taught rats to drive. Little rat cars, with gas and brake. Do you know what that means?”
Me: “That I’m… dumber than a rat?”
Guy: “Nooo! That you can learn to drive too!”

Wishful thinking, for the most part. Seriously, even in driving simulations I can’t drive. It’s like… there’s always something more interesting to look at while behind the wheel. A nice Acura RSX passing me in the other lane, a bus with a girl I think I know in it, maybe some cows at the side of the road, something, anything.

Anyway… if I die in a fiery inferno of some kind on Monday, this may have to be my last will and testament. Uhh… let’s see… Vanitha, you can have all my makeup, Kim can have all my clothes, Dan can have all my books, and… uhhh… the three of you can be co-executors and divvy up the rest of my shiznitz as you see fit.

Yesterday marked the beginning of my ‘live radio’ career as DJ Straight-Up at the University radio station, CJSR.
I gotta say, live is much more fun than taped - if only because you can’t edit out every little gurgle, cough, ‘um,’ and microphone shriek. I also got to slip in my two cents about Glo-Fish, those cute little fluorescent beasties that idiots, I mean people, have been writing in to the Edmonton Journal about. Little did the damn drug-smoking hippies know I was going to broadcast my pro-GMO statements on our ‘environmental’ show! Muahahahaha!

In other news, I demand that everyone go to Mark’s blog at once and listen to his SNES soundtrack top-5 countdown, or else.

Yaaawwwnnn… so apparently, someone going by the name of ’science’ has cloned human embryos, again. And there’s the usual predictable uproar. “Ooo! You can’t do that! That’s a little baby! That’s, like, life!” Yeah, sure. DNA from two different people mixed together in a little blob is life. Well, if that’s the case, then a million ‘babies’ died the last time I had a nosebleed. That hair I left on my boyfriend’s coat? That’s one ‘life.’ Suck it up, people. Cloning isn’t going to go away. And the spark of life isn’t any more special or sacred than the right mix of chemicals dripping out of some lab-coated spook’s micropipettor.

Well, the hippies finally got to me. March on the Legislature. Wednesday.

It’s taken me till now to fully recover.

I gotta say, the worst part about the ‘National Day of Action’ wasn’t the vicious Siberian cold, the guy with the didgeridoo, the silly tuition sign they made me carry, or the gamey smell of the assorted hippies. No, the worst part was definitely the look of futility in everybody’s eyes. Everybody - the speech-givers, the security guards, the secretaries coming out of the front of the Legislature (and seeing us, and quietly leaving out the back), the banner-carriers - just looked so hopeless. As if not only were we not doing anything, but we could all have been studying to get scholarships so we wouldn’t have to worry about our damn tuition any more.

As Mark said, “Take that, foul government!”

Pretty much.

I’m never going on another stupid rally again, and certainly not when it’s cold enough to freeze your eyes shut. I’ll leave you with a bit of one of the many ‘revolutionary’ songs we sang on the march (which were all sort of along the lines of ‘So we’ll march day and night by the big cooling tower…’). Ahem. This one is sung to the tune of ‘The Ants Go Marching.”

“Hey Premee, wanna come with us Sunday night and put these bumper stickers on SUVs?”
“Ummm… heh… ‘Honk if you’re destroying the planet!’ Heh. Very, um, nice.”
“So you’re coming?”
“No thanks.”
“What about Tuesday? We’re putting these fake parking tickets on SUVs around campus too. See, ______ made them up so they look real, and here, under offense, you can check off ‘Contributing to greenhouse gases’!”
“Uhhh….maybe you guys should just sort of… count me out… of the whole, you know, SUV thing.”