August 29, 2006

It doesn’t seem to remain in-situ

I watched Trainspotting last night, but I still don’t know what “Trainspotting” means. Like I think there was one suggestion of a train in the whole movie, and I’ve been asking my friends if they know what it means, but they don’t.

ANYONE in the world wide web know what it means? Please tell me! I couldn’t even wikipedia it because it would just tell me about the movie and the book. And the online dictionary was like, “do you mean transporting?” I just want to know, I’m very confused.

Tomorrow is my last work day and my last day in Toronto. The next few days will be crazy. As long as I make it to the other side.

Do old men wear boxers or briefs?
Depends.


5 comments:

sue said...

whoa that dilbert is way random.

enjoy your last days of work! see you in ottawa i hope!

Dinah said...

Trainspotting is a British phenomenon that has no real counterpart in the United States. It is the hobby of collecting the numbers of railway locomotives. That is, you hang out near train stations, wait for a train to pass, and then...write down the number of the locomotive.

If you think this sounds like a gruesomely boring waste of time, you're on your way to understanding the point of the book/movie title. Trainspotters have a reputation as nerds in anoraks collecting useless information--in fact the word trainspotter has developed a figurative sense 'person who collects trivial information of any sort'. Imagine the popular image of, say, birdwatchers in America, but without the nature-loving element.

The book Trainspotting made an explicit comparison of the senselessness of heroin addiction to the hobby of trainspotting. This passage did not appear in the movie.

The words trainspotter and trainspotting first appear in Britain in the late 1950s.

This is Dinah talking now. This comes from http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19971015 and is the closest thing I can find.

Dinah said...

Also, I cannot tell you how many times we said that 'Depends' joke when my grandfather was slowly transitioning from hospital to home to nursing home, and was deteriorating rapidly. That sounds a little wrong, I know, but we had to find some humour in it somehow.

R said...

Thank you Dinah! I feel better now having an idea what the heck its all talking about. It was so annoying.... anyway, thanks.

Dinah said...

I took it on as a personal mission to find an answer :) It was more fun than packing.

Have you/will you say goodbye to Brad?