I’m about forty minutes into the ‘Transformers’ movie, and I’m so impressed I couldn’t finish. The action and the animation is about 1000 times better than I remember. (However, the music is exactly the same magnitude worse than I remember. It’s a cross between middling Tears for Fears and early Def Leppard, and it shows up - complete with lyrics like ‘We know that time is on our side, we got the passion and the pride’ - at the most inappropriate moments ever, such as every single fight scene). And some of the dialogue is priceless. “I have better things to do tonight than die!” Springer shrieks at one point. I mean… considering that he’s a robot… he probably doesn’t. Really. Does he.

Today I learned an important life lesson. It goes like such:

“When asked by the CBC to give your opinion on the abortion debate, you will probably be taken more seriously if you’re not holding a cup of chocolate pudding and showing off your nice brown teeth to the camera.”

True story, folks.

Zowie! It does indeed ooze cool - and not just ‘cos I came up with the winning slogan, either. ;-) Check it out, guys: Mike’s Two Cents, the new version!

And now… back to parasitic wasps.

Due to the surprisingly-fast and positive response to my ‘Gilgamesh’ post, I am now posting another literary masterpiece, a single line from Mark’s and my Japanese 101 presentation.

“Mark: ” It is, mostly is tasty is. The plain gauze ? plain gauze ? of the ?? is tasty very, is, but to be less crowded going back and forth is unpalatable, is. Also liking and coming tastily are. “

Much like ancient Babylonian tales, some nuances may have been lost in translation.

Today’s literary offering: the five-minute ‘Gilgamesh,’ or ‘He Who Saw the Deep,’ the 6,000-year old Babylonian tale of friendship, loyalty, courage, mortality, and prostitutes.

The Gods: We haven’t been up to much lately. Let’s make a perfect man.
(They do.)
Gilgamesh: Wheee, I’m perfect. Hey everybody, make me king.
The Gods: We’re bored again. Let’s make him a buddy. And just for kicks, let’s make it a wild man.
(They do.)
Enkidu: Grrahrghnnahghh. (Runs around eating raw gazelles and denning with cheetahs.)
Trapper: Lousy wild man keeps scaring off my game. I think I’ll make him be civilized. Hmm… what’s civilized… I know! Prostitutes!
Shamhat: Hey lover, have some beer and some bread. Whoops, there goes my shirt.
Enkidu: (Is suddenly civilized.) Woohoo!
(They take him to the city of Uruk, where Gilgamesh is king.)
Gilgamesh: Hooray, a companion. I love you, man.
Enkidu: I love you, man.
Gilgamesh: Let’s get up to trouble.
(They go to the Forest of Cedars to get wood for a new temple door, and encounter Humbaba, an easily-offended forest God.)
Humbaba: BLEAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!
Gilgamesh: I changed my mind. (Cries like a girl.)
Enkidu: Just get the damn tree already.
(They kill Humbaba and return to the city in triumph. The Gods get very annoyed and send a wild bull to kill them, but they kill the bull instead. The Gods get even more annoyed, and make Enkidu sick.)
Enkidu: Aargh, aargh, ugh, I wish we hadn’t pissed off the gods.
(He dies.)
Gilgamesh: My only friend is dead and now all I have is my immense riches, my own kingdom, a harem full of concubines, the strength of a thousand men, and my stunning good looks. (Cries like a girl)
(He decides to wander the world in despair.)
Uta-Napishti: You look terrible, Gilgamesh. And I should know: I’m a God. Why are you so miserable?
Gilgamesh: My only friend is dead and I just realized that I can die too.
Uta-Napishti: Not if you go to the bottom of the ocean and pick this type of coral that lets you live forever.
Gilgamesh: What a good idea!
(He does.)
Gilgamesh: After all that work, I think I deserve a bath.
(As he is bathing, a snake comes up behind him and eats the coral. As it slithers away, it sheds its skin, proving that the coral was the real McCoy.)
Gilgamesh: SHIT!!

The End.

I can’t wait for this week’s wildlife lab. Last week was beetles, and we got to play with these, which are jade-headed scarabs.
I was priviledged to get the dominant male of the colony, and I gotta say - he was about the most ludicrously-beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. And they really are that shiny, as if they’d been sprayed with lacquer. My TA suggested I get a good close look at his horn, so I put my face up close to my palmful of beetle to look. It turns out that they don’t really like carbon dioxide: it makes them nervous, sort of like a human smelling natural gas in an enclosed area. I guess I can’t blame him for his reaction, which was to start chewing on my thumb and then fly away. (Pretty as they are, they sound like lawnmowers once they’re airborne. He zoomed out into the hallway and a couple of us tracked him down by the noise alone. Great days, folks.)

This week: a Mexican rose-kneed tarantula! Boy oh boy, I gotta bring my camera for this one.

Oh yeah, and one final thought: I recently read an article on CNN.com about how 2-7% of the internet population actually has a blog. “Holy crap!” I thought, thinking of the people I know with blogs, “that sounds low!” But when you think about it, how many people on (for example) Rob’s link page still post entries to their blogs? I’m sure there are people there who haven’t put one up since last September.

And for those of you out there rolling your eyes going “Yeah, well, bitching about MSN hardly counts as a blog entry!” remember the purpose of many people’s blogs: to empty out their brains so they can remember things like the 14 orders of Albertan fish in subclass Teleostei. Or just to rant. Or annoy people… uhh… better cut my losses and go start that damn research paper, no?

Once, I wrote a thirteen-page research paper in five hours, start to finish, including looking up the papers and doing a couple of charts. I wonder if I’ve still got the balls to try that again… err… not that I, uh, ‘need’ to or anything.

Also, last Thursday’s John Acorn the Nature Nut class included another episode of, well, John Acorn: The Nature Nut. This episode was about digger wasps, which are about the least likeable things on God’s good earth. Man! Are they nasty. Their only good aspect, you’d have to concede, would be the fact that their stings are only long enough to penetrate softbodied insects, such that if you pick one up and it starts frantically jabbing its abdomen into your thumb you’ll pretty much be safe.

And finally, today’s Profound Notebook Thought: “Tibetan throat-singers and their general world-view. How must they feel, knowing no one else in the world can do it?”