in which I weigh in on Rihanna
I am still alive, but I have been pretty busy, although it would be a struggle to explain exactly what I have been doing other than working out. There are two new babies in my life, my best friend is now a mom (!!!), and I seem to know lots of currently pregnant women. I also participated in the Seek the Peak race on Saturday, which is a 16.7 km run from Ambleside Beach to the peak of Grouse Mountain (a total climb of 4100 feet/1250 meters). My time was two hours and twenty minutes, which I consider respectable, although it placed me smack dab in the middle of the solo competitor pack. Still, I had a good time and smiled through each of the stage transitions. My time on the Grouse Grind stage was a decent 54 minutes, which surprised me since I had run 10kms uphill to get to the base.

So, further updates.
I read Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden, and it is all thumbs up from me. I highly recommend this, although it is not for the squeamish or faint of heart. It recreates the story of a pair of Cree snipers through some of the big battles of the first world war.

Continuing on with the recent burst of Canlit consumption (previous to Three Day Road, I read A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews), I am now in the middle of Certainty, by Madeleine Thien. The first chapter immediately made me want to cry, but it is a good story, and I love the way she writes. I picked this up because I was impressed with her story “Dispatch” in a compilation of short stories by young Canadian writers.

At my last book club, we discussed the aforementioned A Complicated Kindness. Opinion was diverse. I enjoyed the book, and thought it dryly funny, but another woman felt it was tragic and sad. She put her foot down for the next book, stating she did not want to read “another depressing novel” (at least partially my fault, as I previously chose a book about Rwanda), but her ultimatum was a trifle irritating as I am not in a book club to discuss the Shopaholic series or Bridget Jones.

Finally, while falling into the abyss of time wastage that is MuchMusic, I recently watched the weekly countdown twice in a single day (bad, yes) and found myself annoyed each time by Rihanna's song, “Unfaithful”, not only because her voice talents are questionable, but because the lyrics are incredibly lame. Did she seriously write the lyrics, "I feel it in the air as I'm doing my hair..." and “I don’t want to be a murderer…” Since when does cheating on your boyfriend make you a murderer? She must have a pretty high opinion of herself to think her cheating ways are going to literally kill him. Plus, why do her videos seem to all have a shot of her on a couch, arching her back, and sticking her ass in the air? Okay, I guess that is a rhetorical question.

posted by Tina on 6/12/2006 | 2 comments | #