Thanks to Jane, I’ve been introduced to the joy of literature that is Kurt Vonnegut’s writings. They’re slightly absurd, edgy, slightly amusing, and complete with illustrations. This, for example, is my impression of what Mr. Vonnegut might draw in one of his novels:

It’s a book, a collection of papers covered in ink printing and bound together, the kind of thing Mr. Vonnegut wrote to bring the ideas from within his head to the masses. This book in this particular image is called Breakfast of Champions.

As I’m falling asleep now, I have to call it quits for the night, but I’ll be sure to write more about the book when I’m done.

ETA: Excuse the rough drawing — that’s the best I could muster on my trackpad, and it’s no felt marker.

This is what Ryan sent our E3 Crew (Jane, Chris, Dennis, Travis, Paul, Mark, Marc, Petar, Yuri, etc.), as they needed some positive feedback before into the exam.

Extremely hilarious.

Unfortunately, positive feedback leads to only one thing — instability. I hope they can keep things together for the exam. =)

And now this reminds me of a joke I’ve heard before, the likes of which I would hope Dr. Oliver would tell in his E3 exam prep talk that he infallibly gives:

When the first airport was built in Poland, the planes kept going down for unexplained reasons. Nobody could figure out what the hell was wrong, and everything seemed to be in perfect order, so they decided to call for an engineer.

The guy came in, did his rounds around the plane, and then stepped on. The engineer announced that before the next departure, he would like everybody from Czechoslovakia on the right side, and everybody from Poland on the left. After that, the planes never had any problems.

When asked how he did it, the engineer replied, “It’s simple. You kept trying to put poles on the right hand plane.”

"How do you measure, measure a year?"

It’s kind of funny how your perspective of time changes according to what’s happening in your life. Come exam time, you (or at least I do) tend to measure the days in terms of time left to study.

It’s not early Sunday morning right now — it’s 3 days until my Algorithms final, and 5 days until Communications. It’s also 10 days until EBC… the light at the end of the tunnel.

After two other classic blog entries with this title, I figured I had to keep up tradition.

I’m now the proud owner of a 2006 Toyota Yaris RS in “Absolutely Red”. And let me tell you, this car is an absolute blast to drive. Notable features: manual transmission, great gas mileage and emissions, really well thought-out design, and a bunch of other stuff that’s not incredibly useful to list here. It’s all on the Toyota website. Needless to say, it’s comfortable, but also quite enjoyable to get around in.

It’s been a while since I’ve actually “really” driven standard (though I did learn to drive using stick), so I’ve been stalling here and there and otherwise being not incredibly smooth. But it’s getting better, and for the first time in some time, I’m really really really enjoying driving. I assume the novelty will wear off eventually, but until then, vive la Yaris. Thank goodness the roads are clear and mostly dry.

That’s about all for now, but I’m sure I’ll have more interesting stories to share as I learn more about my new “ride.” Don’t forget to ask to take a look or go for a drive — I’d be happy to indulge you.

Oh, and while I’m not normally the type of person to name my things, the thought has arisen of naming the Yaris. I think its name (optional of course) will be Eurostar, for many reasons.

P.S. Does anyone know someone who might have a copy of the “Uncle Yaris” advertisements that have been kind of popular on Canadian TV? I’ve never seen one, and am quite curious about them given that I now happen to own a Yaris.