funny because it's true

just some funny thoughts that stumbleupon led me to, apparently from this place (click).

"Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk. "
-always. sometimes i even cross the street, just in case..

"Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f was going on when I first saw it. "
-it's not so much that i didn't know what was going on, it was more that as a kid you miss half the jokes that are meant for adults. i remember watching wallace and grommit: curse of the wererabbit, and there's this one part where wallace is naked holding a box up to cover his body, and the box says "may contain nuts". guaranteed no child noticed or got the joke.

"I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it. "
-i think this goes for every movie buff/movie snob out there. basically my entire uni faculty.

"How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said? "
-haha, i got caught for smiling/nodding too often, so now i usually ask twice, and then if i still don't hear it ask "sorry, one more time?" and if i still don't understand i just laugh and say "i'm sorry i'm def or something, i have no idea what you're saying"...but then again, this goes right out the window when drinking is involved, the smile and nod comes back full throttle.

"I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call. "
-very very true.

------------


(sorry, no idea where i found this. probably funeralface.)

in other news:

i went to gimli yesterday and stayed the night, it was a lot of fun. i missed the majority of the after midnight partying though because i got sick and fell asleep lol, go me.
EITHER WAY i pretty much spent my entire day at the beach, then at a few people's houses/cabin's for the evening. we did some laying around, cartwheeling, inflatable boating, swimming, inflatable boat attacking, badminton, dancing, video game playing, music listening, and a whole lot of smiling. i had fun :)

i just had google translate a swedish blog i've browsed now and again for the past while. obviously i've never understood what the person was saying. it may surprise you that i'm not fluent in swedish. i was just looking at the pictures before.
anyway, i thought that was really neat that google can do that. now that i can read what the blog girl is writing though, it still doesn't really make sense....

examples:
"Vette fan what happened. Something struck snapped.
Liver liver liver, perhaps a bit more edge than encountered before but clearly at full life."
"I have a lack of other victims and dryers do not carry a camera with me. Have pain everywhere. I have been to hell and with sore muscles in the throat. Went home with misty eyes coated lens. I look look look but forgets to look, of course. Jumps to an upset deer when something unexpected turns around the corner (a fat cyclist)."


...it's kind of like poetry...

book/movie updates

here's my thoughts on what i've read and seen (the only ones i remember seeing right now) this past month: (if you want to know what the books/movies are about, click on their names to bring you to their imdb or amazon pages. i'm awful at describing things so i thought i'd leave it for the professionals)
books:


running with scissors - augusten burroughs
i'd seen the movie, which i thought was ok. the book (like most things) was a lot better. i liked it a lot. it was a quick, interesting read. it's crazy that it's all apparently a true story. 3.5/5


dave gorman's googlewhack adventure - dave gorman
really good, really funny. he's pal's with danny wallace (who wrote the yes man and join me, both which i recommend) and writes in a similar style, if you've read any wallace, check out this fella. it was laugh out loud funny. i liked danny wallace's books better, but either way, read it. or if you don't like to read (what? really? what's wrong with you?), he's also a stand-up comedian and you can find this googlewhack adventure as a stand-up performance on youtube. 4/5


my booky wook: an autobiography of sex, drugs and stand-up - russel brand
i bought this book because i liked russel brand. honestly, i like him less after reading this. i guess i'd been in the mind-frame of reading funny books, and since he's a comedian i thought this would be funny as well. things he thought would be amusing stories really weren't. i think his comedy is better to be seen than read. it didn't really leave me feeling sympathetic for him at all, it kind of made me think he was a twat the whole time. i still think he's funny as a stand-up comedian or as the rockstar in forgetting sarah marshall, but the only reason i would tell you to pick up this book, would be to look at the pictures in it of him as a boy and teen. some are amusing. 2/5.

movies:

i FINALLY saw the big lebowski. it was great. steve buschemi had such a small role. but he was still funny. john goodman was great and obviously so was jeff bridges. not much else to say on this one. if you haven't seen it, go watch it. now. 5/5


i also finally saw the girl who leapt through time. i'd been wanting to watch it for a while because i thought it had an interesting concept. i didn't like it as much as i thought i would. it's no spirited away or princess monoke, but it's still decent. the friends who i watched it with liked it quite a bit. if you like anime, i'd say check it out. 4/5

oh the subconscious..

i was in the car with my mom and dad and we were going to check out a haunted house or something of that sort. when we got there and were sat in the waiting room waiting for our turn to go in, we realised that it was a cursed house thing, and the only way to come out alive or uncursed was to make it through the house. when we discovered this, i hoped on my dad's back and he just ran through the rooms of the house as fast as he could. upon entering each room, you would know the task at hand, such as avoid the grip/bite of the zombies, ect. my dad ran with us as fast and he could, and in the last room, something incredibly fast would chase us and we had to beat it out the doors if we wanted to survive. we made it.
we went back o the car and drove home. i asked him what would happen to my mom which we left in the waiting room, and he said we probably wouldn't see her again. she could get lost in the house forever, and when she died her body would just appear somewhere. when we got home, his hair and beard were incredibly long and he looked young. my mom was somehow at the house and her hair was long and she looked old.
we all fell asleep and when we woke up, my mom, sister and i had all been turned into half humans, half animals. my sister was a zebra, my mom i think was some sort of monkey, and i was a bird (later in the dream though, i was the zebra). we looked the same, but had markings of animals on us. like my sister had zebra stripes all over her face and body, and i had wings on my back (it looked like how some people get wing tattoos). we realised that since my sister, mom and i never completed the house, but entered it, we were cursed and turned into animal-people. my sister got really upset and tried to cover her stripes with make up, it kind of worked. i tried to tell her that we could still go out in public, we would just look like those people who tattoo themselves to look like lizards and cats and things. then we realised that people who we used to love wouldn't accept us as these animal people, and the lives we knew were pretty much over.
my family went back to the haunted house to warn people not to go in. the waiting room of the house was full and two people had just entered the rooms. we told the family in the waiting room that they were going to be cursed now and told them not to enter the rooms. they freaked out and we decided there must be another way to escape.
now it's winter outside and we're all in this big building. we see there's zombie-type people or something outside who want to kill us. we take turns holding the doors closed so they can't come in, but the cold air from outside hits our hands and depending on our animal, the start to turn to hooves (or wings, etc.) and we realize that cold weather will make us permanently turn into the animals.
there's probably about 100 of us inside the building and someone decides we're going to dig our way out. somehow we chain the doors closed and all get to work on building tunnels. after a while of digging, a huge underground tunnel system is built (the tunnels are built through snow, but didn't effect us like the cold air did). in one of the rooms off of the tunnels is a big expensive looking room that you'd see in an action movie of spy headquarters. the guy who's now kind of running the show, tells me which seat in this office thing will be mine, but says i have to go back to the main building and get cream for the coffee (he makes a big deal out of this for some reason). so i crawl through all the tunnels and go to the kitchen which is visible from the door where all the zombie people are still trying to get in. someone is guarding the door, but i know that as soon as i get the cream, the zombie people will break through the door and attack. so i quickly dig through some containers under a sink and find cupcakes and things. finally i find the cream. i'm super nervous the whole time looking for the cream, and somehow know it's all a dream, so i make myself wake up as soon as i have it so i don't have to deal like the zombies.
(sorry if there are tons of spelling mistakes, i haven't gone over it yet)

my dreams are so odd. i should write horror novels or sci-fi books based on my dreams.

(p.s: i can't help but think my dream was influenced by that video i posted yesterday that uses old people's voices coming from animals. also i bought the book shutter island that is coming out as a movie about a guy who investigates an insane asylum)

do you like lion steaks?

video by British animator Nick Park, entitled Creature Comforts (1989). Nick interviewed some people who live in retirement homes and used their thoughts about it by illustrating them through these animals’ thoughts on living in a zoo.

i liked this.

i start school this thursday. kind of looking forward to it. i think it's going to be interesting, but a heavy workload. also, i just found out my friend is studying art history as wellm but at the u of w :)

i thought i posted this before, but now i can't find it. sorry if i have posted this twice. it's lovely though so actually, i don't mind if i do post it twice. i like the way this kid dances. i like the way all kids dance. all bendy knees and spinning.

i heard a commercial today, and in it, it said something stupid that made me smile: "maybe she's not singing, maybe her lips are dancing to the music"

interesting article:


"Seeing in the Dark
New Ideas / by Joe Kloc / January 14, 2009
A blind man shocks researchers with what he sees.

Patient TN was, by his own account, completely blind. Two consecutive strokes had destroyed the visual cortex of his brain, and consequently, his ability to see.

It is not uncommon for stroke patients to suffer brain damage, but the case of TN — referenced by his initials, the general practice in such studies — was peculiar. His first stroke had injured only one hemisphere of his visual cortex. About five weeks later, a second stroke damaged the other hemisphere. An assessment of his brain function revealed that after two strokes, TN, in his 50s, was clinically blind.

Known as selective bilateral occipital damage, TN’s unusual injury made him the subject of much interest while recovering at a hospital in Geneva. Researchers began examining him and discovered that despite his blindness, he had maintained the ability to detect emotion on a person’s face. He responded appropriately — with emotions such as joy, fear, and anger — to a variety of facial expressions. Observed activity in his amygdala — the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions — confirmed the curious results.

To further test the extent of TN’s abilities, researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands devised a simple yet decisive experiment: an obstacle course. They arranged boxes, chairs, and various other objects down a long hallway. The team then asked TN to navigate the course without any sort of assistance. TN was skeptical, as he required the aid of a cane and a guide to get around. But eventually, he decided to participate. Researchers recorded the result in their recent paper: “Astonishingly,” the report reads, “he negotiated [the course] perfectly and never once collided with any obstacle, as witnessed by several colleagues who applauded spontaneously when he completed the course.”

TN’s rare condition is known as blindsight. Because his stroke damaged only his visual cortex, his eyes remain functional and as a result can still gather information from his environment. He simply lacks the visual cortex to process and interpret it. Sight has changed for TN from a conscious to a largely subconscious experience. He no longer has a definitive picture of his surroundings, but he has retained an innate awareness of his position in the world. He is, to some degree, able to see without being aware that he is seeing.

The researchers explained that TN’s success indicates that “humans can sustain sophisticated visuo-spacial skills in the absence of perceptual awareness.” Similar abilities have been observed in monkeys, but TN’s is the first study of these abilities in humans. According to Beatrice de Gelder, a neuroscientist from Harvard and Tilburg, who helped conduct the study, “we see what humans can do, even with no awareness of seeing or any intentional avoidance of obstacles. It shows us the importance of these evolutionarily ancient visual paths.”"