Sunday, August 31, 2008

Oh, down to the river we ride...

Yet another mistake was pointed out to me (thanks Becky!), so now everyone can comment on my posts. I have no idea why it was set so only people with Blogger accounts could respond. Sorry!

Riverfest is going on all week in the city, but having gone both Friday and Saturday, I'd say the only day anything interesting took place was yesterday. Friday, a group of friends and I just wandered around looking for something to do besides shop and eat food. We passed by Hungry Jacks (what they call Burger King here for some reason) several times throughout the day and the same group of bored looking goth kids were always sitting outside. I had to wonder why this was their choice place to mope. Did Robert Smith get onion rings there once? Maybe some day I'll go over and ask them. More aimless walking in search of a Riverfest event, but the only noteworthy thing that happened was passing Hare Krishnas and being given pamphlets by the Socialist Youth Society. Nothing like being told you should consider a new religion and political party by people on the street!

Back at the flat later that night, I stayed up to finally watch a few hours of Rage. Rage is an uninterrupted six hours of music videos shown late at night on weekends. So clearly, this was a bit like heaven to me.

Haha, look at my happy little face! And please ignore my horrible attempt to grey out my flat's disgusting and ugly sofa set. It looks like someone trash picked it from a crack house. Needless to say, I never sit on it. Anyway, I was so excited to watch full videos that have more than just a band playing in a field or a rapper with some booty-shakin' hos (yeah, I'm looking at you, modern MTV and VH1 when you actually take time off from awful reality shows to screen a few videos). The absolute best one of the night was a song that I've heard before, but never seen the video of. It's called 'Letter from God to Man,' by the British rappers Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip. Believe me, it's outstanding and not really as religious the title implies.

I know it's a bit difficult to understand his accent sometimes, so here are the lyrics. Seriously, I was watching this at around 3 am, on the verge of sobbing. Then it changed to The Kooks and my flatmate walked in to get a glass of water and looked at me weird, wondering why I was so misty-eyed over a bunch of rock stars in tight pants flirting with models.

Riverfest Saturday was a bit more impressive because that night was Riverfire and entirely too many people were walking around. So we opted to spend most of the day in the Science Center and Art Museum. They were both pretty neat, though I was creeped out at the sheer amount of taxidermied animals the Science Center had on display. What made it weirder was that every single one had it's cause of death underneath it. I realize that's so nobody thinks they were killed just to be stuffed, but do I really need to know this poor wombat died from impacted bowels? We waited in ridiculously long lines to get dinner, then at 7 a huge fire-spurting plane flew past way too low, scaring the bejeezus out of me and letting everyone know the fireworks were about to begin.

Unfortunately, I did not get to enjoy the display as much as I'd like to because a third of the crowd were taking pictures. Some using their flash. I wanted to scream, "Put your damn cameras down and enjoy the fireworks! Don't you realize your photos are going to suck anyway?" I was so angry that all these people were taking shots that were of the dark sky and one little green spark, then turning to each other and going, "Oooh, that's a good one!" WATCH THE FIREWORKS! Don't take pictures so you can instantly reminisce about that red heart shaped one and miss two minutes of other fireworks in doing so! I mean, I love to take photos and understand that they want to capture their beauty. But take a few really great pictures if you can, then put the camera away. Taking several bad pictures a minute for the entire half-hour fireworks show is just stupid. Since when did photography become about quantity over quality? Grump, grump, grump. Sorry for the rant, it just really annoyed me that I waited all day and people were ruining the show for me.

Today I slept in and am continuing work on a paper for World History, super exciting stuff! Tomorrow is the start of September, maybe I'll be a bit more interesting in the new month. Hope everyone has a good Labor Day! I won't because I don't get the day off. :[

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