I took the girls to see "Chicken Little" tonight. I've wanted to see it ever since the first trailer, then they cut out the best line from that trailer. The sad truth is that the movie just isn't that good. There are a few funny bits, but overall it's pretty sappy and the aliens end up being a big disappointment. Plus, after a flurry at the beginning, it takes a long time to get back to the whole sky-is-falling issue, which frankly is to my mind the whole point of making a Chicken Little movie. Fish out of Water and Runt of the Litter are good characters, and there are some neat bits that flew over the kids' heads, but there is no reason not to wait for the DVD on this thing.

The real interesting thing at the movies this weekend is the new Harry Potter movie, and the multiplex was a mess with all the people swirling around to see this thing. I'm not an opening weekend kind 0f guy - just too messy - but I'm plainly alone on this. Several of Brittany's friends were there to see lightning bolt boy, and none of them got in, sending at least two (and their less-than-thrilled parents) into "Chicken Little" with us. I don't care if "Harry Potter ..." is any good or not - they got ripped off.

First off, a few lines from my favorite "I hate my ex-girlfriend" song, "Jude Law and A Semester Abroad" from Brand New:

I hope the next boy that you kiss has something terribly contagious on his lips.

And then later:

And even if her plane crashes tonight she'll find some way to disappoint me,
by not burning in the wreckage, or drowning at the bottom of the sea.

I don't know that girl, and I don't want to.

Later on the same album ("Your Favorite Weapon") is a song called "Last Chance to Lose Your Keys" with the priceless line:

It's girls like you that make me think
I'm better off home on a Saturday night
with all my doors locked up tight.

This guy has serious issues with the women in his life. But Brand New are a great band, like emo with an IQ above room temperature. And I love a lot of emo bands, but the depth of their lyrics is not one of the things for which they tend to be known. Brand New may have the most pretentious song titles I've ever encountered, but they are a great clever band with lyrics that are both subtle but very much to the point (like the girl in "Mix Tape" about who he sings "I'm sick of your tattoos, and the way you always criticize the Smiths... and Morrissey", adding a few lines later "But when I say let's keep in touch, I hope you know I mean I wish that you'd grow up"), and worthy of much more attention than they've received.

According to the New Democratic Party of Canada, a person named Karim Baboolal lives in my apartment. Where this piece of intell comes from I have no idea, because my wife and I have searched for Karim and are unable to find him anywhere on the premises. It's a pretty big apartment, but with two children and thirteen years together we've accumulated a lot of possessions, and unless Karim is hiding in a box of old magazines or in with our Christmas decorations, the guy just isn't here.

Karim Baboolal actually appears to be a former resident of this apartment. When we moved here more than 14 months ago, we would get the odd piece of his mail, on which I would mark "moved" and slip it into a Canada Post box. I think he was an engineer, because for a while we were receiving a trade magazine, along with investment information and solicitations from the NDP. As time passed, each of these ceased, save for the NDP, who every month or two pop off a letter to Karim. I assume they are solicitations; although I've never opened one of these envelopes, they have the feel of a desperate grab by a desperate party. I'm not sure why they keep coming. If the party has any expectation that I will take over Karim's position on their supply line, this is a dream they'll never wake up from. I have only once voted NDP, and that was a strategic move to block another candidate which proved to be a purely useless exercise. I have met some NDPers and for the most part they've been decent, although the smug certainty of their own moral superiority gets to you after a while. And Jack Layton is as bad an example of the breed as can be found, and his wife doesn't help. I would give money to the Bloc before Jack Layton would see a penny.

But the really annoying part of this is that I (and you, if you're Canadian) am probably paying for these letters to Karim Baboolal with my tax dollars. I'm not sure how public financing of political parties works, but I'm pretty certain there are a lot of mailings that can be done on our dime. Every letter they send is processed twice, to Karim and back from me, and in addition to the cost of a stamp, this occupies the time of several postal workers in each direction. It's been almost 15 months and I have returned more than half a dozen of these letters, and the NDP still doesn't get it. I'm beginning to think the next envelope will need to be returned with a cover letter explaining what the tree-hugging vegetarian recyclers at the party office simply aren't catching on to. Time to break out the crayons.

My level of distress over this has increased recently, because I'm beginning to think the NDP is telling others that Karim lives here. Just last week, we received letters from two different insurance companies directed to Karim. Neither of these had written previously, making me wonder why they bothered to start now. My wife has concluded that Karim probably left the country and these are simply notices related to nonpayment. But that is simply too reasonable for me. I prefer to blame Jack Layton.

If you're still out there, Karim, let me know and I'll hold your mail until you can come pick it up. Either that, or give me a forwarding address. Because Jack Layton needs you. There's going to be an election soon, and he clearly wants to make sure you don't forget about him. And I need you to vote for Jack so he can continue to be a do-nothing little fish in Ottawa instead of joining with his piranha cronies to screw up our big pond.

One of the partners (I work for a law firm) brought his new baby to the office today. Although I have two children of my own, I have a confession to make: I really don't have that much interest in other people's babies. My mother, who taught for over 30 years, thinks babies are fascinating, and my wife, like almost all the women I have known, gets weak at the knees in the presence of anything in diapers (hmm, possible fetish idea to explore). But babies never seem to be doing anything to me, and like most men (well, at least the men I know), if nothing much is happening then I'm not interested. Add to this my almost newsworthy skill at getting the gender of a baby wrong and my inability to say that an infant is attractive when it looks like its been dropped on its face, and I'm just better off avoiding any interaction with parents who go about brandishing their child like the Stanley Cup. So I avoided him. We aren't friends and he surely wasn't looking for me to genuflect over his spawn, but just to be safe I turned left when he and his wife were approaching from the right. It isn't always that easy, but I'll take them when they come.

* * * * *

I'm a little short in my Britannica target today, so that'll be my bedtime reading tonight. The highlight of today so far has been a long article about abrasives which I will soon be getting back to. The sad part is that I actually find the article quite interesting. The Britannica is extremely well-written, like a clever Harpers or Atlantic article. I don't know what this interest in abrasives says about me, but at this point I am going to assume it's something good.

A little snippet from today's Britannica reading:

Peter Abelard (of Heloise and subsequent castration fame) wrote a book sometime around 1135 called "Know Thyself" (English title). Britannica sums up its conclusion as:

. . . human actions do not make a man better or worse in the sight of God, for deeds are in themselves neither good nor bad. What counts with God is a man's intention; sin is not something done (it is not res); it is uniquely the consent of a human mind to what it knows to be wrong.

I dunno. Sounds to me like Abelard was trying to rationalize all the sex he had with Heloise back in the good old days without benefit of clergy. By 1144, he got to find out what God had to say on the matter. But here's hoping old Pete was right on this one.

As much as I'm enjoying "The Know-It-All", I must say that A.J. Jacobs is an insufferable little twit. At least, Jacobs the character is. I suspect the man himself isn't so bad, but as a device the Jacobs who shows up in print is more appropriate for, as the full title advises, "One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World". Jacobs never misses an opportunity to share some nugget of knowledge he has absorbed, whether it be contextually reasonable or not. His wife Julie comes off as rather saintly, calm in her acceptance of life with a lunatic. Jacobs frequently encounters people who either don't appreciate his endeavour, or belittle his intellectual abilities, or both. The most annoying character is his brother-in-law Eric, the kind of overeducated creep we've all met and loathed, the kind of guy you simply must defeat, whether it be in a contest or simply in a back alley with a tire iron. Add in memory experts, Mensans, speed readers and Alex Trebek, and you have a cornucopia of brainy freaks.

By the way, one tip of value gleaned from my reading. If you ever hope to compete on "Jeopardy", make sure you have never met Trebek. That alone is enough to get you disqualified even if, as Jacobs did, it was only for an interview.

My own Britannica experiment started today, with entries on a Finnish architect, the biblical priest Aaron and several Muslim leaders whose reigns ranged from 685 to 1629 A.D. Day one's reading equaled seven pages; at this rate, it will take 168 days just to finish the first volume.

There is also the question of how much I expect to remember. I really have no expectations on this. What I hope is simply to accomplish what any valid educational experience accomplishes - that on some subjects the Britannica will spark a flame to learn more, and I will go on to do other reading independent of my project. Those are the things that I expect will stick with me long after the reading is done.

Oh, and on the question of reading the 1974 edition instead of the latest flame - other than the sciences, and the day-to-day events through which I have lived and observed from afar, not much has changed in 31 years. The French Revolution is still the French Revolution. It may be more interesting to see how some tastes and perceptions have changed over the years. Plus, the current Britannica apparently has room for such eminences as Madonna, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Donald Trump, entries I am content to miss.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a devotee of reference books. Even as a child, I owned well-read copies of the World Almanac, as well as every Book of Lists and People's Almanac produced by the Wallace family writing factory. We had a set of the World Book encyclopedia, and many an hour was spent reading up on whatever caught my interest at the moment. My mother also purchased a set of child-oriented thematically-organized reference books, I believe called the Childcraft series, which I eventually read in their entirety. My push to read even had a benefit when it came to the dreaded "sex talk". My father was ill-equipped to handle such a discussion. However, my mother had purchased a four-book Life Cycle series which dealt with these issues. Regardless of her intent, I read these books with great urgency, then over a two- or three-night series of conversations enlightened my three younger brothers on the mysteries of male and female sexual development. It may be a conicidence, but since to my knowledge none of us ever fathered a child out of wedlock or contracted an STD, I would consider those evenings successful.

Even today, I have a large library of reference materials. I recently joined the Folio Society, mainly to get my hands on their introductory set, which consisted of an atlas, biographical dictionary, dictionary of world history, a book of quotations and a general short encyclopedia. My almanac collection continues to grow, and I own thick volumes on subjects ranging from baseball history to collections of spells to fairies.

But the jewel of my current collection is the 19-volume macropaedia from the 1974 Enclyclopedia Brittanica. A few years back my then-employer was purging their library over space considerations, electing to rely more on online and CD-based research tools. Many volumes were available at no cost to employees, and I seized the Britannica. What became of the accompanying 11-volume micropaedia I have no idea (and never asked since I only recently learned of the distinction). Since taking possession, I have frequently considered reading the entire thing from A to Z. Thanks to A.J. Jacobs, I am now about to do so.

Jacobs is the author of "The Know-It-All", an account of his cover-to-cover reading of the 32-volume 2002 edition. It's a very entertaining book, with some bits clever enough that I actually dared to laugh our loud while using public transit. I highly recommend it. Anyway, looking at my 19 volumes, I'm not so intimidated by the task just knowing that Jacobs handled a much larger assignment. He read as much as five hours a day (presumably due in some part to a publisher's deadline) while I will hold myself to the less bracing minimum requirement of 30 minutes per day. I have made no effort to determine how long it will take me to complete this task, and I don't want to know.

Why take this on? Because for some time, like Jacobs, I've been feeling less smart than I used to. Part of this is age, part the shortage of time to keep up on things that I consider important, part the changes in my priorities and experiences in the move from a me-centric to family-centric environment. Pre-parenthood, I read all the time. Even now, reading still constitutes my main entertainment, but it's more magazines and similar light diversions that I can dip into and out of, not the serious commitments of "Gravity's Rainbow" and the like of my past. Through this endeavour, I hope to at least push my brain to work again once in awhile. I'll let you know how it goes.

As expected, Brittany's performance of "Fat" was the highlight of her musical theater class yesterday. She got dressed in the adjoining room so no one could see her before the performance, then bounced in when the music started. Now, Brittany is as slim as is possible without being unhealthy, so to see her wallowing in her new poundage is quite a sight. My wife said her teacher could barely hold in her laughter, though her classmates made no such effort. Afterwards, they followed her into the next room to see where the fat came from - a body pillow wrapped around her midsection. (Once again, her classmates had never heard the song before, as I make yet another contribution to expanding the musical knowledge of a generation.) After class, the teacher told my wife that a few of the girls (presumably including Brittany) are good enough to perform solo in musical theatre at competitions. I sure hope she doesn't mean this year, since the cost of dancing is already pushing me into borderline insolvency.

Next week, they have to do a scene from a movie. Right now, it looks like she'll do something from one of the Harry Potter flicks, since Brittany has a costume from her 9th birthday party at a showing of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban". I'm pushing for "Lord of the Rings" (I love Sam's speech at the end of "The Two Towers"), but suspect I'll lose out. Too bad - I already have the music for that one.