O Canadia

It's Saturday! And I'm spending the day writing my research paper! Woooooo!

The Olympics opened last night! I'm a huge fan of the Olympics. It's always fun to watch the winter ones while curled up with a cup of hot cocoa. And the results are always so surprising. I mean, I never can guess who will win the most medals (that was sarcasm).

What I love about the Olympics is the sense of internationalism. It's the one time we ever hear about African countries (who cares about starvation when you have national sports competitions!) and various tiny countries no one cares about such as Andorra, France or Britain. But most importantly, it gives the opportunity for one of the most secretive countries to validate its existence.

Olympics are the
One chance Canada gets to
Prove its existence


Really. We never hear about Canada. Why? Because no one cares about them! They're a peace-loving, French-speaking country, which we simply can't associate ourselves with. It's like having the Flanders right next door in "The Simpsons." But finally, when The Olympics come round, Canada finally gets to take advantage of the fact that it is always under 3 feet of snow. Of course, we're still going to own them.

Euro-peons

Well, today is finally, at long last, Friday. But it's not just any Friday. For those of you date-ly impaired people, today is Friday the 13th. And you know what that means...

A week and six days until Thanksgiving!

And lucky for us, our central campus dining hall, "Okenshields," is kind enough to remind us of that fact... with Christmas decorations? That's right, all of their decorations are already up: hanging ornaments, Santa Clause hats, crucifixes, the whole shebang. I won't talk about this dilemna though, since I already ranted about it in my post "The (Storefront Decoration) Nightmare Before Christmas" back a month ago when I first noticed Christmas decorations here and there, and the sound of Christmas in the air (the chimes playing Christmas carols...).

Now onto other previously-not-talking-about topics.

Remember my post yesterday in which I talked about those musicians? Well I discovered another musician who is absolutely amazing. His name is Jamie Cullum, and he has a fantastic jazz cover of Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music." All of you probably haven't heard of him. The reason? He's European (I can hear all of you going like "ohhhh, that explains it" on the other side of the interwebs). You know who else is European? Melody Gardot (I was tempted to say Hitler, and I'm sure some of you expected that), the lady I linked to the other day. Mika, who I linked to a while ago, is also European. So why is it that all of these fantastic musicians that are huge in Europe are mostly unknown here (well, not Mika, but the other two)?

The answer is today's haiku:

I have no idea
Why on earth Europeans
Have such great music


Were you expecting a straight answer? I considered something making fun of them, but then I realized that a tactic such as that would not really help my case and point. Although they still are great fun to mock.

One reason I suppose may be that Europeans' culture does not promote vanity as much as Hollywood does. Why is this relevant? Well, Jamie Cullum, who has all the makings of a pop star, looks like a cross between Dwight from The Office and Elijah Wood. And as a result, girls do not fall head over heels in love with him, something required for popularity in America. Talent is not nearly as important as being dreamy, case and point: The Jonas Brothers. If looks were not an issue, I think the popular music in America would be closer to being on-par with Europe's.

Sorry for the bad joke in the title, but I couldn't help it.