Kara’s Blog

You heard me. I'm now among one of the elite who have read War and Peace from beginning to end. Not only that, but I am among the elite who read it for pleasure instead of being forced to read it for some other purpose. If only I could read Russian. :D This actually happened last week, but I never got around to blogging about it.

Yes, War and Peace was excruciatingly boring at times--particularly…

School is not over yet; exams have yet to come, but tonight I went through the complicated tribulation of the graduation ceremony and emerged (although somewhat tired) unscathed. The ceremony was long, and at times dull, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless. I cried when our teachers sang, because not only did they sing well, but I thought about all they've done for us during our schooling. It's part of the reason I'm going…

Yesterday was a bad grammar day. I kept on noticing so many little grammar mistakes everywhere I went, and it really annoyed me. By far, however, the largest one was pointed out to me by my coworker--this sign on the front of our GM dealership.

Take a moment to look at it. "Last year GM more than doubled the sales of it's nearest competitor." Firstly, there's the glaringly obvious mistake: "it's" means it is.…

Anyone else noticed this new iGoogle thing that Google has going for it?

What's with the name? You would think that a company as creative as Google would be able to come up with a better name than something that--well, frankly, that sounds like a bad Apple rip-off. And this isn't just Google's problem. iWhatever has become the new "Whatever X" of our generation. I feel sorry for the poor letter--it's not even…

Often you'll read one critic or intellectual or another say something along the lines of how Hollywood is destroying the movie industry, creating cheap flicks at the expense of "art" and "culture". And as much as I am sometimes tempted to agree with this cynical evaluation of our entertainment industry, I can't bring myself to jump on that bandwagon. I just can't.

I have observed that more movies are "packaged" these days. What are "packaged"…

The Visa credit card company is always trying to give us free stuff. Think about it: "win what you buy"? That grocery contest? We all know that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The glorious capitalist system was founded on such a principle. So if Visa is giving away things for free, then they are violating the very foundation of free-market economy.

Is Visa in league with the terrorists? It wouldn't…

For the past week we've been watching The Patriot in history class. The movie is moving in some parts. There are incredibly tender moments, like when Susan finally speaks to her father and breaks down just as he's leaving again. That part almost made me cry. Unfortunately, the latter part of the movie lacked that same emotional fervour, simply because I was too busy laughing.

And this is through no fault of the director. The…

Hi, I'm a Marvel. And I'm a DC.

I'm envious because I have never thought of something so funny. ^_^ Those Mac versus PC commercials are fun on their own, but this parody is very clever. There's 4 in total (the first has links to the rest); #1 and #4 are the funniest, but the other two are still very cool.

Share and enjoy!

I got to miss the entire day of school for a math competition at the university. ^_^

The individual competition was in the morning, so I sat in the lecture theatre with a hundred or so other kids and answered 15 multiple choice and 5 full solution questions (or attempted to answer, I guess). It was pretty hard, but not as bad as last year. I did well on the multiple choice, I think, although…

Now you know.

For you see, Stephen Harper failed to learn a critical lesson of statecraft: never tick off an artist. The problem with annoying an artist, especially someone as influential as Yann Martel, is that artists are, by definition, creative people. And they find very creative, sometimes unexpected ways to get back at those who slight them.

Of course, since the purpose of an artist is to create, and not destroy, Yann Martel came…