He's playing a bicycle.
Another guy is playing the vacuum cleaner. Seriously.  ¶ 9:09 p.m. 0 comments

  Call it... time-lapse blogging.
I'm writing this posting while I'm watching the Oscars, or rather during the somewhat uninteresting bits in the middle of the Oscars. Right now we're just finished the second Cold Mountain song that was done with Elvis Costello. I'll be coming and going from this as the awards go, so the timestamp at the bottom is in no way representative of the time of posting. So far, the only thing that was unexpected was the instrument Sting played for the first Cold Mountain song. What was that thing? Like a hand-cranked fiddle/mandolin thing. Very strange, but it had a cool sound.

Burned Palm
So in my hasty reformat a while ago, I guess I completely forgot about my Palm. Only found out a while after when I went to update one of the many files I had stored there, and it wasn't exactly available. Seems that since I can't use my Palm at work, I haven't bothered to keep the batteries going, and with my comp reset, everything I had on it is no more. It's not a huge setback, since all my contacts that actually matter are stored in other spots like my cell, but it still kinda sucks. I'm almost still waiting for the other shoe to drop and find out that I had some other critical information I can't live without that's been utterly destroyed.

Just saw a TV spot for Tom Hanks' new movie, The Ladykillers. Looks like Col. Saunders is suddenly a casino robber and has to contend with a cranky landlady. Could be really good, but on the other hand I think Marlon Wayans is in it, so you never know.

Around the net
I wholeheartedly agree.

(Blake Edwards is talking. A lot.) For added fun, Google "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

Radio broadcasting what people are listening to on the street. Interesting concept. I think it would be just as interesting if one programmed their whole radio station based on what people are listening. You could program everything from a PocketPC or laptop, or by radioing in to the base station or something (intersting couple of commercials just went by) and pick your songs based on what random people are listening to. Fill the gaps, and you have a station!

A very funny little blog post + discussion regarding a very pro-war spam email (LotR just won makeup, and I can't figure out what else Scarlett Johannson was in...) and basically just rip it to shreds. If you enjoy seeing people proved wrong and getting picked apart point by point, take a look.

I noticed
I consider it to be rather interesting that the LotR folk that won for best costuming never actually thanked anyone for the award. They just kind of started naming names. The guy did it again when he went up for makeup. (Another LotR win. I'm spotting a trend...) Anyways, I can't think of anything else to talk about. There was some stuff about my dream job, but I'll leave that for later. Also, I'll put up my thoughts on the Oscars, after the fact, since they just gave the award for Sound and I'm leaving. So there g'bye.  ¶ 7:44 p.m. 0 comments

  You have to watch out for Flibbertigibbet. He's tricksy.
An uneventful day. Sometimes I feel I'm channelling Capt. Star with this thing. For those that don't watch cartoons, Captain Star was the galaxy's finest rocket captain, and travelled all over finding new life and selling them things they didn't really need. He ends up on the edge of the universe, waiting for new orders, and manages to condense the rather outlandish adventures that beset him and his crew to some of the simplest diary entries. For example, when the Giant Space Cat comes to live with them and it threatens to grow larger than the planet and they have to get it to run through a hole in space with a giant ball of yarn, Star writes: "An uneventful day. Jones got a new cat, but we had to let it go home."

The difference, I suppose, is that instead of taking an interesting adventure and making it boring, I'm trying to take a boring day and make it sound like an interesting adventure. This can be trying at times, since all I really did today was play some Gunbound and go for a walk, but fortunately I just need to think of something that pisses me off and expound upon it. You might think that having so many boring days would be rather, well, boring, but I don't quite see it that way. Considering that I'm probably living healthier and less stressful, this whole work term is basically like a big 4 month vacation. Nobody pesters me for things, I don't have any real obligations or commitments other than work, and I still get out of the apartment enough to stop from going stir-crazy and acting like a loon. Quite peaceful, really.

Ninjas rule
No really, they do. The only thing is, can girls be ninjas? The guy who does 8-Bit Theater has a bit called "Ask Red Mage", where RM answers readers' questions. An excerpt:

"Dear Red Mage,

I have a very serious question involving to things I know little of. The first is women and the second is ninjas. My question is can women be ninjas? I have studied your column to extrapolate an answer, as women and ninjas are the subject of much debate. It is my strong belief that women cannot be ninjas. It is as silly as a woman being president. From what I have gathered from your column I will lay out the argument, as I see it, in Pros and Cons.

Pro Ninjas are referred to as he, although so is God and they are both vindictive in a way only a woman could be, con. Pro the greatest ninjas of all time are male, Ninja Gaiden, Shonobi, Kato (Pink Panther not the Green Hornet). Con disturbing amount of female "ninjas" in new fighting games, Ayane of Dead or Alive and Taki of Soul Caliber (although her package would indicate her greatest of all male ninjas). By definition anyone who studies ninjitsu would be a ninja, but as you've pointed out who is afraid of girls? How scary is a ninja if any red neck with a wife beater can give her a big "fell down" shiner anytime he gets a couple brews in him.

If there are female ninjas, please explain to me how it is possible. And if as I suspect there are no female ninjas, because they lack upper body strength and higher reasoning. Then let the entire internet know that girls are no more ninjas then I am the proud mother of a healthy litter of kittens.

Justin "Hate-Machine" Cold
Longwood, FL"

Your youth belies your wisdom, young Mr. Cold. It is true; women cannot become ninjas anymore than a man can become a bikini model or a Hooters waitress. The closest they can ever hope to come is a diamond thief in a leather cat suit. These new “girl ninjas” are probably nothing more than men disguised (in Taki’s case, poorly) as women in an effort to gain the upper hand on their chivalrous opponents. If you would like to learn more about this tactic, I refer you to our rich history of 80’s college movies, which are apparently full of ninjas.

I'm not sure I agree, entirely, but there are many valid points made. I mean, most of what is mentioned is, for the most part true, but chick ninjas are still quite cool. I guess the jury's still out on this one, but if I ever hear of a resolution, I'll letcha know. More to the point however, is that the new Ninja Gaiden is out and it sounds quite awesome. The fact that it appears to be hard as nails only sweetens the deal, seeing how one of the few minor beefs I had with Prince of Persia was that it was too easy. This looks just about right. Too bad I don't have and Xbox, or I'd probably be rushing to pre-order now. Given that the 'box is the last console I would like to own, it might be a while. Poo.

Invisibles
In more comic-y news, I've started reading this comic I downloaded on a whim called The Invisibles. It's written by Grant Morrison and is part of DC's Vertigo line of comics for adults, same as Sandman. So far, it's really cool. If you dig the whole Matrix "what is reality" thing, and don't mind having a decent helping of "secret society" tossed in, this just might be your scene. It's really quite trippy for the most part, and as you follow the main character, you're perpetually on this tenuous footing with respect to what's really happening and such, just like he must be. Some of the characters are pretty cool too, from the crazy hobo Mad Tom, to the rather badass King Mob, to the unconventional Lord Fanny. I'm about 7 issues in, but so far it's really good. I just might have to add this to my "comics to buy" list, along with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol.2 and all of Sandman.

I am...

I am Mr Do. I am sedentary by nature, enjoying passive entertainment, eating when the mood takes me, and playing with my food. I try to avoid conflict, but when I'm angered, I can be a devil - if you force me to fight, I will crush you. With apples. What Video Game Character Are You?

I tashte like Alcohol. Heh. Heh. I taste like beer. I like beer. Buy me a beer. I'm not drunk, I can drink plenty without... What was I saying? Beer. What Flavour Are You?

Which Soviet Leader are you? go to:the quiz!


You're Hobbes. First of all, the makers of this
quiz would like to congratulate you. You have
our seal of approval. You are kind,
intelligent, loving, and good-humoredly
practical. You're proud of who you are. At the
same time, you're tolerant of those who lack
your clearsightedness. You're always playful,
but never annoying. For these traits, you are
well-loved, and with good cause.


Which famous feline are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

You're
Liechtenstein!

Most folks don't take you that seriously, but you really make
a big deal out of being independent.  You don't do a whole lot for other
people, but you make the best of the resources available to you.  You really
like snow.  And mountains.  And being independent.  And you're
probably pretty small.
Take
the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Am I?
I so want some of these. You could to some of the coolest war wound movie scenes ever! "Where are my legs!?!?"

Sing with me now! "It's the end of the world as we know it..." Hypothetical situation: kids on the playground, and the crazy one has it in for the popular one. Crazy bites Popular, and Popular and his lackey proceed to beat Crazy within an inch of his life, then lobotomize him and try to shape Crazy into a new, productive member of the class while the other kids just watch. Should teachers now give Pop a reward? (I realize this is oversimplification, but it's a metaphor. Deal with it.)

If they also bring back leeches, I'm never going to the doctor again.

Anyways, due to my tremendous foresight, no dishes tonight. Also, for the record, I do need to do the dishes every night, since otherwise I need to prepare my next meal on the ruins of the last. My counter really is that small.  ¶ 5:56 p.m. 0 comments

  So.
Well, I figure I might as well post. I had planned to be out drinking tonight, but plans kind of fell through, so here I am. On the plus side, my Communism shirt arrived! My faith in my mail has been more or less restored now, and I don't think I fear losing packages nearly as much anymore. It was touch and go for a while there, but all is right with the universe again, or at least it will be once I do the dishes. I ran out of time last night (mainly due to that pesky sleeping habit I keep) so I've got a fair bit of skudge in the sink to sort out. The drama of my life continues.

Pitch Black
Received this guy from Zip (living in the same city as the company means fast service!) and gave it a watch, and on the whole, it was far better than I thought it would be. Yes, there are a couple of plot holes only slightly smaller than Texas, but for each of those, there was a nice little plot element that separated the movie from the rest of the sub-par films it could have been like. I mainly rented it because I really want to see Chronicles of Riddick and I'm a firm believer of watching movies in order if given the choice. I particularly liked the ways that the movie was shot, going from the very orange crash scene, to the bright blue day, to the black night, to the green fight. Some of the cinematography was pretty cool too, like the parabolic landscape going from sun to sun. On the whole though, it's basically just about Riddick kicking alien ass, and I hope that the sequel will be at least on par with this one. Thumbs up.

A billionaire. Really.
So there were a couple of new entries on the Forbes Billionaire list today. Who'd a thunk it? Certainly not me. I mean, I know that Harry Potter was successful, but JK Rowling a billionaire!?!? The Google guys I am far less surprised at, since Google is easily one of the biggest internet things ever, but an author? I think the only thing scarier is that at one bil each, they're ranked 552. Yeah, there are at least 552 people that have at least a billion dollars in the world, whether they aquired it on their own power or not. I wish I were one of them. I wish I could fly too, so I'll be sure to post if either happens. I'm not holding my breath though.

I like words
So much so, that I'm considering taking linguistics as one of my options in my next school term. Some of the things I find especially interesting are etymologies and vocabularies, as possibly evidenced by the WOTD link I have on the right there. Maybe it's just an extension of knowing how things work, only more abstract, since it's just language. I mean, some of it's really easy, like seeing how Latin words have evolved to mean things we say in English, but at the same time, I find it interesting to find out how some of the more complex ones evolved, like "Catch-22", "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey", and "scot free". Which is, of course, from an army novel, not from a nautical saying involving cannonball racks, and not from the persecution of the Scottish, respectively, and interestingly enough.

Teh Funny
Must be something to do with the stars, since there were a great many extra-funny webcomics put out today. From Goats' Chaos Pope! to Real Life's FUEGO!!! to Elf Only Inn's "she liked it", there were a greater number of comics than usual that had me laughing out loud. Something else that had me doubled over laughing was the Aqua Teen Hunger Forces I watched. Space Conflict From Beyond Pluto and Dumber Dolls are easily two of the most hilarious cartoons I have seen in a long time. If you like White Ninja or some of the more recent South Parks, do watch these. They're gold in fast food form.

Before the curtain falls
Russia is getting cool again. For anyone who's longed for the days when Russia has just as many cool spy and army gizmos as the US, this should be a bit of a relief. I guess America might want to get a prototype of one of these so they can test their super duper missile shield they seem so intent on making. Personally, I think it's a rather laughable idea to dumb money into a space defense program, but you never know. Maybe those terrorists will stop with the letter bombs and suicide hits and start pulling in asteroids to finish us off. Also, I was being sarcastic there.

For those who like cute kids, here's what they can and do write. For added humorosity, try imagining them being read in various voices. I should think a Clint Eastwood or Max Payne styled cop growl sounds quite silly when talking about the pet they want for Christmas.

Warning: do not click this link unless you want to be scared into never wearing a sweater of any kind again for the rest of your life. Utter fear indeed.  ¶ 7:37 p.m. 0 comments

  Those are my grumblecakes!!!
Yeay gratuitous Strong Bad references! You should really watch the email about outwitting Homestar for the grumblecakes if you don't get it. In other news, I received my first 2 DVDs from Zip today. Now I can finally watch Pitch Black and the Godfather Pt. 3! Hurray! I think the bonus disc for the Godfather series is also in the mail. Is it really bad if you watch the DVDs in reverse? I suppose I should have expected that, and I will definitely take it into account when requesting TV series now.

Late night tonight
Just got back from the pool tournament tonight. My partner and I managed to get through the qualifiers, but lost in the first round of finals. Not that it really matters, since I was really there just to socialize and drink. I think it's really too bad that it's Thursday though (well, soon it will be Friday) since it greatly limits my intoxication. I believe a bunch of the coops and I are going clubbing tomorrow night though, so that should be fun. Thing is, they're almost all Newfies. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but just hanging out with them makes it hard not to talk like an Easterner. I already think accents are cool, but unconciously sounding like I'm from the Rock ain't cool.

Forgive the rapid fire stuff, but
I'm trying to get to bed pretty quick. I just have this post and some dishes and I can safely collapse for a few hours. Since The Passion of the Christ premiered yesterday, I figured I'd mention that. I do want to see the film, if only out of curiousity, and I'm quite sure that it is nowhere close to being as anti-Semitic as everyone says though. I did see a quote from someone who just saw it that struck a chord with me though. They said it was "definitely not recommended for children". The first thing that hit me was that they ever thought it was OK for kids before. I can forgive the aversion of all media and not knowing a thing about it, but just because it's a movie about Jesus doesn't mean it's automatically a G picture. I'm thinking that a great many things about our culture could be made better if people didn't just assume things were OK for kids. Seems that any movie, comic, TV show or video game that comes out has somebody saying that it's not for children. Perhaps if we just assumed that it was NOT for kiddies that we might be more alert towards what the chilluns see? Just a thought.

Running out of steam...
Random tidbits.

- I want to get a tattoo, but unfortunately I have nothing that I find worthy to tattoo on me.
- I can only imagine that it would be nearly impossible to prove who you were over the phone. Imagine if Johnny Depp were to call you right now. You would never believe him!
- Gormenghast is a really cool series of novels, and just as cool a TV miniseries. Definitely worth checking out.
- It would be really neat to have a Wonder Years-esque narrative to your life.
- This woman should be commended. Racketeering indeed.
- I disapprove of the Seal of Disapproval. Since scaring folks with lawsuits isn't enough, they shall launch their guilt-trip campaign.
- If you liked the Geek Hierarchy, here's the same thing for Pagans.

Right. Dishes, then bed. Ciao.  ¶ 9:54 p.m. 0 comments

  Behold!
Changed the title bar to a fancy-schmancy pic. It probably makes the site look rather broken at small resolutions, but if you have any complaints, you know where to reach me.  ¶ 7:14 p.m. 0 comments

  I'm pro-carb. Really, I am.
Something about this Atkin's diet just doesn't really ring right with me. Sure, I understand the logic that's behind the whole low carb movement that seems to have settled in recently, but I just don't buy it. For one, carbs are cheap. You can buy a huge box of pasta and get many meals for the same price as a steak, which gives you one meal. Second, as long as you, y'know, do stuff and not sit around like a gelatinous cat, having the extra energy from carbs is kinda nice. Third, I don't like everything suddenly going from your usual advertising emphasizing the little things like taste and price, to LOW CARB LOW CARB LOW CARB LOW CARB LOW CARB!!!!! (Funny story, I was going to have that all was one word to boost up the "in yo face" factor, but then it looked like blow car, and that just wouldn't make sense.) Lastly, trying to drop back on carbs doesn't really leave you with much left. I mean, you can't even have your standard meat and potatoes, since potatoes are slightly (and by slightly, I mean entirely) starchy, and starch = complex carb.

On other diet-related matters, I remember having conversations with certain people and joking about how vegans have to live on their own body hair and such due to the narrowness of their diet. Turns out this isn't the case, and that some vegans really can kill veggies and eat them, thus avoiding the whole "wait for the apple to fall down" or "wait for the carrot to jump out of the ground for you" bits. For reference:

Vegetarian: no meat products
Vegan: no meat or dairy products; may also refuse wearing leather or wool
Lacto vegetarian: same as vegan but will eat dairy
Ovo-lacto vegetarian: same as vegan but will eat dairy and eggs
Pescetairan: vegetarian diet that includes fish
Fruitarian: same as vegan, but only eats foods that don't involve sacrificing the plant in harvesting (ie. eating apples from a tree doesn't kill the tree, but carrots are out)

Memory hooks and other fun tortures
I have some very odd memory hooks for things. It really doesn't seem to matter what I do to remember something, only that I do something. Hence, I have done everything from throwing my pants in front of the door, to putting a Kleenex on my alarm clock. It's all very odd, but it did help me remember a drinking game I made up while lying in bed last night. I'll let you know if it's any good when next I give it a try, but here's how it goes. It's basically a variation of the category card from Sociables, if you've played that.

You can have as many players as you like, and the more you have would probably make it easier for counting and stuff. Anyways, one player starts and picks a category, something like actors, or bands or something. Best to keep it not too vague and unbounded (ie. not states or provinces that have a set number), for reasons that I'm getting to. Having picked a category, the person then starts listing things in said category, keeping each item withing 10-15 seconds of the next one. Take too long and you're done. Once you run out of things to say and have a total, you pick your victim. That person can then try to name things from the same category and burn you, or pick a different one and avoid burnage. If they get less items than you, regardless of category, they drink the difference (ie. getting 4 less means 4 drinks). If they get more in the same category, you drink the difference. Should they decide to pick their own, they then challenge someone else (or the previous person) to do the same, and it starts all over with the new high total. You lose when you're too drunk to talk.

Basically, it's just an excuse to test your knowledge of useless stuff, but since you get to pick your own category, there's bound to be something that you can prattle on ad nauseum about. There are a few extra little rules though:
1. You CANNOT repeat a category unless it was the one immediately preceding. This prevents the repeated use of God Categories like Simpsons characters or sports teams. Also stops someone from listing things that only they know about.
2. You CAN repeat things previously said in a category. This means that it pays to listen to what people are saying, since you could be next.
3. The group CAN veto certain things. This stops people from trying to sneak in silly things into a category. If the group can't come to a concensus peacefully, just have everyone take a good long drink and start a new category.

So if you do happen to give it a try, do let me know if it's any good please!

Repent!
Are you sharing music illegally? Do you fear being caught in a lawsuit? Are you (most importantly) a Canadian? Well step into these guys' offices. The Canadian File-sharing Legal Information folks want to help you in the fight to keep you sharing those mp3s. Also, if you think you are one of the 30-odd users targeted by the recent Canadian RIAA equivalent lawsuits, they have the usernames on the forums. Check it out.

Halt Citizen! Please step forward and be scanned! If you do not have your barcode, you will be taken to the Center for Citizen Registration and Traitor Deporation. (This is actually pretty cool. Don't let my mediocre fiction dissuade you from clicking)

Got a reference to this book from BoingBoing, and it looks pretty cool. I thought Dragons of Eden was kind of neat, and it dealt with similar things. This book seems to go more into some of the nitty gritty details of how the brain works though, and less on the evolution of intelligence. The BoingBoing guy said it was a total mind trip reading it and thinking "wow, this is really cool!" and being thrown when he realized that the bit going "wow, this is really cool!" is the bit that the cool book was talking about.

Anyways, I should probably clean up if I want to get anything else done tonight, and that means getting out of my chair. Daunting task, I know, but I do try occasionally.  ¶ 5:46 p.m. 0 comments

  Happy Grey Tuesday everyone!!!
For those that don't know, today is Grey Tuesday. A while ago, DJ Danger Mouse remixed Jay-Z's The Black Album with the Beatles' White Album to get, well, the Grey Album. Tricky thing is, he didn't/couldn't (not sure which) get permission to use the Beatles' tunes, and now EMI (the Beatles' label) is all in a tizzy. In typical RIAA fashion, they've started throwing lawsuits and cease-and-desists all over the place, and today is the day to protest that. Go to the GT site for more. I've just downloaded the album, and it's really quite good so far. You can download it from about a gazillion different places, all of which are linked to from the GT site. I highly recommend it, since because of all the mirrors, you can have it done in a couple of minutes if you have high-speed.

Zip.ca vs. Gunbound
You all know that Gunbound is one of my current vices of choice. (Lost some more sleep again last night because of it...) Now I have a new one, and I'm unsure of the consequences. Zip.ca started up recently, possibly in answer to my prayers lamenting that Netflix did not cater to Canada. Zip is based in Ottawa (I think), and does cater to Canada, so of course I immediately signed up. Top of my queue so far is Lost in Translation, Rushmore and Citizen Kane, so at least I have some quality flicks coming. The problem of course, is that if I'm watching movies (or doing anything else for that matter) I'm not playing Gunbound. I'm afraid the battlefield of my psyche might soon be an army of celebrities led by Johnny Depp and Orson Welles vs. the cute little tanks and dinosaurs from GB. Might get ugly, and I don't expect all my faculties to survive. Fortunately, my job isn't the most strenuous, so I can have a little downtime during the day. My mental state aside, if you want to get a free rental or something from Zip, let me know, since I can send them out. The selection is far better than I expected, including both movies and a bunch of TV series, and they even have the Criterion Collection of Brazil, my most wanted DVD period right now. This, plus What To Rent, means I'm probably going to end up being a far greater cinephile than I have been until now. You are forewarned.

My new drug
I finally received my antenna today. My dad made two of them for me, but the first got lost in the mail. Since I also have a nifty shirt coming, I really hope my mail service isn't FUBAR. In any case, I now have a grand total of a staggering TWO channels!! Yes, CBC and CTV is about the sum total of English programming I receive that I might want to watch. I also get a kids channel and several french ones, and the rest are just very badly received. Not that it matters, since I really don't watch TV worth crap. The only shows that I am inclined to watch are Corner Gas and Rick Mercer's Monday Report. Oh, and the Daily Show, but it's on at midnight, and on worknights, that's past my bedtime. I'm lame, I know, but I also happen to enjoy receiving about 7 hours of sleep. I also don't own a VCR, so that's that.

Another drug I'm fond of is booze, and as it happens there's a co-op party going down at Dooley's on Thursday. It's a pool tournament, so I'll let you know if I win anything. My pool skills are usually pretty tenuous, but any excuse to drink, I say! Sometimes I get better as I get drunker, but "better" usually means "luckier" in that case, and flukes are not in line with the rules in this competition. Bottom line is, everything's up in the air still, and I will keep you informed (or as informed as one can be from reading a blog...).

If you really believe...
You too can be Peter Pan! If you are though, please stay the hell away from me.

Cool beans! This here is why astronomy is neat. Not much more I can say, but that it's really cool. Mmmyep.

One more silly link here, and this is the history of Sci-Fi inventions. Wanna know who made the transporter first? I'm pretty sure this'll tell ya.

Anyways, the dishes await. I managed to find some pre-seasoned pork tenderloin the other day and I cooked some up tonight. Surprisingly good. Coupled with the veggies after my handy-dandy steamer basket is through with them, and you have some pretty decent eats. Especially for a single male student. Nyah.  ¶ 5:13 p.m. 0 comments

  For when there's nothing better to post about.
I think my blogging is catching up to me in order to bite me in the ass. I'm running out of things to talk about. Considering that most of my day consists of work that I can't talk about and the bus, I'm not too surprised. I'll be damned if that stops me though. One of the fun things about the internet is that you can just spout off about things far too mundane for normal expression. Like doing a full-blown epic war novel about the conflict of feeding the cat or something. Not that I would ever try that. No, not me. Never.

In Ontario
In Ontario, a great many things are different from out west. Like the whole salt on the roads thing, or the Beer store. One of these differences is the produce. In Alberta, it is rare to get good corn, and next to unheard of to get it winter. In Ontario, however, I can buy corn in February, like I did this weekend. It didn't suck either. This pleases me to no end, since I am a big corn fan (not so much Korn, though...). For one, it's tasty, and for another, not too filling. There really isn't a lot in corn, other than some fiber and the bits that get stuck in your teeth. As such, it's hard to rationalize not eating corn when you have the chance, and as I have discovered, I have the chance quite often. Something tells me it will slowly crawl it's way into the "staple food" slot in my apartment, along with Shake'n'Bake and spaghetti. A portent of doom? Perhaps.

There was a recent Queen of Wands a while ago that was about kids' cereal. I think Aerie's right. Those guys are insane, but I think there's another part just as insidious. Other than the mentioned mental illnesses, most of them are quite short. I mean, all these kids trying to get to the cereal, can usually look at their beloved cereal pals in the eye. This leads me to believe that the government is putting something in the cereal to keep the population short. Why would they do this, I ask myself, and to be frank, I don't really know. I only hope that there isn't some secret consipiracy pushing towards a New World Order where the norm is to be a wee one. I mean, I know I'm only 6' tall, but perhaps I had layed off of the Reeses' Peanut Butter Crunch, or the Alpha-Bits, I might have been the next Shaq! On the other hand, I probably would not be eating the Lucky Charms I am currently enjoying in the morning right now. This is a very agonizing decision, and I'm still torn. I think the best course of action is to not worry about it and move on.

Now with pepper!
Interesting little site here about a small case involving a driver's license. It would be comforting to know that I don't live in the nation that shares the world's longest unprotected border with a police state, and I think anyone living in said potential police state would probable agree. Maybe the cop was just on meth or something and wigged out for no reason, since I sure can't think of any reason why you would need to demand photo ID of somebody at random. I think the case goes to court soonish, so if I remember, I might keep an eye/ear/nose out.

Ah yes, the rantings of a lunatic. Thankfully, it's not me. No, if you actually read this site (although it's so poorly made, I wonder why anyone would) apparantly the US government puts little machines into peoples' ears at birth to make them capable of being mind-controlled. I guess there's proof of this somewhere, but you'll really have to go digging for yourself. I only report what I know based on the account of a friend of mine, and I haven't really read it myself. No further comment.

Since 3 be the number of the counting, the number of the sites shalt be 3. Bush going commando and gunning down terrorists is vogue these days, so it stands to reason that a flash cartoon/game be made. Somewhat fun, but I can't make it past the 3rd level. Maybe you aren't supposed to.

Concluding our little tete-a-tete tonight, I think I shall play some Gunbound or maybe some Jak 2, and then go to bed. I was a complete zombie at work today, and I don't really want to be so again tomorrow.  ¶ 5:58 p.m. 0 comments

  Because I'm lazy.

Rayne: "Going out for chinese."
John (to reader): "For most people, you assume he's talking about food."
-Rayne and John, from Least I Could Do

I wasn't originally going to put a LICD quote up, my three choices being Sluggy Freelance, Real Life and Cigarro and Cerveja respectively. The problem with those two though, is that they're not really that quotable. I mean, they are, but you need to read the whole strip to understand it. All three are great strips though, and if you want very beefy backstrips, Sluggy has been going since 1997 or so, so there's a LOT to read.

Slightly odd
I guess it's two posts today, since my last one was technically this morning. Do I care? Not really. To distract you from noticing that I really don't have anything to say right now, here's a link.

Also, if you're more interesting in figuring out what's going on with the zebra in space thing, click here. I don't really get it, but I'm also not too sure that there's anything to get. However if shiny things distract you, this might also do the job.

Legos rule. I really wish that I had this much Lego. I mean, some guy made a fully functional rollercoaster complete with a full loop, all done out of regular parts (ie. no extra scaffolding). The speed record for building the Star Destroyer is kind of neat too. Seems a bunch of folks decided to build a Lego set that normally takes one person about 13 days or so to put together (it's the most complicated, brick intensive set there is, apparantly) and did it in just over an hour. If these got together and applied themselves, why there's no telling what kind of stuff they could build really really quickly!

And that's about it. Nothing much else, except that Outkast's new album isn't that bad. I don't normally go for ghetto/hip-hop/rappish/dance/R&B music (I just kind of lump it all together), but this doesn't suck. I much prefer Speakerboxx over The Love Below though, mainly because Big Boi does faster beats than Andre 3000. Except for "Hey Ya!", most of TLB is slower and less rappish, and I just plain didn't think it was anything special. Another album I just got was The Rocky Horror Punk Show, which is basically the soundtrack to Rocky Horror, only all punk and ska covers. Entertaining enough to listen to, but if you haven't seen the movie you'll definitely miss all the context.

So yeah. Going to bed now, since I have to work tomorrow. Pesky thing, that work.  ¶ 8:20 p.m. 0 comments

  In the happy time between days...

"Look Peejee, I'm a zombie sex-kitten. 'Cunnilingus and braaaaaains... cunnilingus and braaaaaains!'"
Aubrey, from Something Positive

Something Positive is quite possibly one of the most balls-out funny comics ever, web or non. If you like the stylings of Maddox or Something Awful, then this is right up your alley. Sarcasm and bitterness, when combined in the right situations make for funny of monolithic proportions, and where Maddox and SA fail sometimes (or often, in the case of SA) due to making the butt of their jokes more or less real, S*P just makes up its own due to being fictional, and is the better for it. Best to start from the beginning though, since many of the characters some warming to before you know what they're about.

Linux, part deux
Gentoo Linux rules. It really does. From what I've used of the emerge/Portage system, it's like software installation heaven. You just say "Hey Linux! Go fetch me GAIM!" or "Yo! Go get me Gnome!" or "Bitch! Go make me a sammidge!" and like an obedient little serving wench, Gentoo runs off and prepares whatever you want, and even checks to see that you have everything you will need to enjoy said program before doing so. Best of all, everything ends up being compiled on your system, tailored to your setup, so it all runs like a dream... in theory. See, as cool as this is, I didn't actually get to do anything with it. All the Portaging I did was in the very extensive and complicated install process. I thought I had enough Linux in me to get through a stage 2 install, set everything up and be off to the races like I was when I installed Mandrake. Gentoo, well she is not so easy.

So after literally 18 hours of compiling and setting up, I finally decided to cut my losses after going for the magic reboot and watching my root partition not mount. That, in English, basically means that nothing happens, right quick. So I am back in Windows yet again, to my shame. I really so very much wanted to use Gentoo, but I need to nurse my wounds and learn a bit more about Linux first. I hear there's a newer Knoppix disc out, so I'll have to play with that a bit.

On the bright side, at least I can still play Gunbound!

Movies and thumbs
I've recently seen a few movies that I'd like to share my opinion of, first of which is Amelie. For the longest time, the best romatic-type movie that I've seen has been Chasing Amy, mainly because it's a romatic comedy, but with dick, fart and gay jokes. Oh, and lesbians. Now, however, Amy has been dethroned by Amelie, mainly since Amelie is just too quirky not to like. I am also completely convinced that it could not have been made in any language or culture other than French. Simply from the opening credits with the narrator talking about flies and tablecloths, the movie sounds just right exactly the way it is. They said in the extras that Jean-Pierre Jeunet was a control freak, and it shows. Thumbs way up on this flick.

The other one is a rerun, and that is Brazil. Gilliam is one of my favorite directors, mainly because he does things in very surreal and weird ways. Brazil is no exception, and it has the further bonus of being a black comedy. Sure, on the surface it's a love story, but the thing I really love about the film is that it's so layered. Under the main love story is a layer of nicely black laughs, some of which you just need to stop and wonder at, since it's so believable. I'm positive that if it weren't for computers rendering things paperless today, we would be just like the people in Brazil, all caught up in bureaucracy and paperwork. It's even kind of scary, since we just might still. The DVD I have of Brazil is not the greatest. The video quality and the audio leave much to be desired, and there is nothing at all for extras. I so very much want the Criterion Collection, but it's at least 75 dollars online and 100 if I buy from the local HMV. If anyone should happen to send me a copy though, I'd probably make you my new best friend... Anyways, thumbs way up on this guy as well.

I'll probably give my opinion on Rushmore soon, since it was recommended to me by WhatToRent.com, and I liked another of Wes Anderson's movies, The Royal Tenenbaums. Only left for me to decide is whether to just buy the DVD sight unseen (which my track record of doing isn't too shabby...) or just rent (which, for various reasons, I hate doing for disc media).

Gnomes ate my spleen, and other delightful stories
Well, only if you consider gnomes to be Sims. For your daily prescribed dosage of mind-tripping, just think: You're playing the Sims, in which your Sim is playing SimCity, and in the SimCity, there are more Sims playing the Sims whose Sims are governing SimCities populated by more Sims playing SimCity... We might just start some bizarre quantum Sim-explosion or something.

Just when you think you've figured out how to "guess the number of M&Ms in the goldfish bowl", someone comes along with something like this. I mean, really! How would you think of this? Just staring at a bowl of candy and think... I wonder if I can get more M&Ms into that bowl than that other, spherical candy? Probably the same people that measure the friction of dragging sheep over various surfaces.

Listen to this once, and you'll be hearing it all week in your head. I remember seeing another cartoon of the same song that was much funnier, but damned if I could find it again.

So yeah. Seeing as how it's like 1:30am where I am, and I've basically spent the whole day trying to get my computer to work like I want it to, I'm going to bed now. Ciao.  ¶ 10:53 p.m. 0 comments

  Steamer baskets: They bring out the color!

"'Dear Mr. Mayor, when John Lennon said that the Beatles were bigger than God, he overstated the issue. I am sure we can agree on that. But when I say that the Jonesco Robovend is at least on nodding terms at the local shop with a certain Jesus H. Christ, I'm simply stating a fact."
-Tim, from Scary Go Round

Poor Robovend. From those humble beginnings to being lynched by the wicked Robotanians (their country's main export is dismay). What an end for such a noble coffeemaker. But that's not what I want to talk about tonight. I'd much rather talk about veggie steamer baskets and how much your day can be improved by sleeping in.

The steamer basket is basically just a metal thing with holes in it that can hold things above boiling water. In this way, does your food get cooked by steam power alone. It's the trend of the future! One of the curious side-effects of steam cookery however, is that if you were to say, make broccoli this way, it turns green. I don't mean green in that it is already green, but rather green. Green cranked to 11. Bright forest green. How the steam manages to seep into this vegetable and coax out all the colour (and by extension, flavour) is beyond me. A miracle of science for sure though.

As for the sleeping in stuff, you are probably already aware of the benefits to waking up in your own time, well rested and with the sun already up. Do note that this is in contrast to being rudely woken by a loud, shrill noise, still groggy and it still being, for all intents and purposes, night out. The tricky thing though, is that normally one only gets to benefit from said "happy waking up" on weekends. Well, due to an unforeseen alarm clock button-pressy-error, I got to have that happen to me this morning. Of course, most of the "happy" was removed and replaced with "panic", but it's still more pleasant than the alternative. Plus, I got to work almost full hour less today (since I arrived an hour late, but still sneaked out only about 10 minutes later than I normally leave). Yes, I am a horrible person, and I do feel guilty for all this, but seeing as how nobody seemed to care, and that I get paid for the time anyways (no time cards for me... and even if I did, it would be the same hours every day for simplicity) all is forgiven. Well, I forgive myself. Can't speak for all of you.

Club Soda and Gunbound
Match made in heaven if you ask me. And since by coming here, you basically are asking me. See, club soda, oddly enough, is one of my favorite things to drink of late (beer tops it though). The reason why is that it tastes good and is fizzy, but is basically just water. So I come closer to that mythical 8 glasses a day, but it seems like I'm drinking pop. Another plus is that since it's just water, I don't need to rinse the cans before I add them to my wall. See, I'm barricading the cupboards in my kitchen, and have almost filled a full row. The goal is to get 3 to 4 rows deep before moving out.

Now what does one do when drinking their beverage you might ask. Well, since I have to work most days, going partying is somewhat out, so Gunbound has arisen to fill the gap. I usually get about an hour in or so a night, unless something else comes up. This game is highly addictive, and deservedly so. The simple games are some of the best (or so I have found) and Gunbound is one of the simpler ones. Sure, there are a plethora of options and things to pick from, but at heart, it is your simple artillery game where you choose an angle and a power level and try to hit the other tank. Give it a download some time.

Corners of a sphere.
That is, only if you see the internet as a sphere. It could just as well be a cube or a rhombus. Or maybe a vast expanse of nothing, the likes of which you might experience here. I so very much would like to try one of these things, since I'm interested to find out just how buggy I would go if I were to just turn the world off. I'm guessing I'd start talking to myself and imagining conversations, but one can only hypothesize. Maybe one day these will come to Canada, but even then probably only in Vancouver.

For some, it is only a breakfast food. For others, it's a way of life. Yes, your favorite form of bread is not honored in full online form with this tribute to toast. I'm sure everything you ever wanted to know about toast can be found through here, and probably some other stuff you can't. Sometimes I ever doubt that you can find literally anything on the internet, but remembering sites like this always alleviate such fears.

Another blog for y'all: Plastic. Yet another active member of the blogsphere, and one that focusses more on links than anything else. Plastic also seems to be insanely popular and worth a look, if only to see what thing they're serving up today. (Top story today is about classical music. I'll talk about that later.)

And without further ado, it's over.   ¶ 6:09 p.m. 0 comments

  The pain... it hurtses...

"The beefnut humps your elf into a fine paste"
-Bob (or Neil) from Goats

You really should read the comic before making judgement on that quote. It mocks D&D though, so you may just find it amusing nonetheless. You'll have to forgive me though if this posting is shorter than usual. I've just returned from my biweekly buckling of swash, and have determined that it is really (really!) fun. As cool as martial arts are, it's just plain cooler when you have a sword. I will probably be in the process of procuring my own equipment, so I just might have some new toys when I go back home to school. The down side is (and there always is one) that I'm reasonably sure I've pulled a muscle in my groin, so I really want to go to bed. Hence, all that's left is for me to rattle off some random things.

The rest.
Some names that I think are cool:
- Copernicus (astronomer)
- Adirondack (rock on Mars)
- Malachi (biblical)
- Gabriel (angel)
- Mags and Fags (magazine and smoke shop on Elgin St.)

Some movies I want to see:
- Nothing So Strange
- Full Metal Jacket (no, I have not seen it yet)
- Pitch Black
- Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead
- Bubba Ho-Tep
- High Fidelity
- Rushmore

My results on a couple of stupid personality quizzes:

Seer

The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla


schizoid

Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla


Morpheus

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

More of the rest
I still can't believe that this is a TV show. If by watching only a few minutes of A Simple Life made me several IQ points stupider, watching this must be like the wholesale slaughter of brain cells. I have not seen it, and will not. Ever.

If you're someone who likes reading really strange things, then this might interest you. I haven't really looked at it, but from my initial appraisal, I haven't the foggiest idea what it's supposed to be. Creative writing assignment? The results of a bad acid trip? Let me know if you figure it out.

Interesting little article about a nicely obscure album created from remixing other groups' work. Supposedly there is an online protest next week where another DJ will be hosting copies of it for download, so I might get it and see how it is. At any rate, it's almost given RIAA a collective anneurysm, (sp?) so it's all right by me.

Right. Sleep now. Need healing.  ¶ 8:57 p.m. 0 comments

  Winamp and I? We're TOTALLY through. Over. Kaput.

"Is it bad if your mayonaise tastes like alien infection?"
-Guy from The Thing, from Force Monkeys

Ah, Force Monkeys. How we've missed you. Yes, the most loyal and diehard fans are still around, trolling on the happy forums, but the comic has a slight case of dead right now. Fortunately, it's successor, The Indomitable Mr. Stick should be coming soon, like a phoenix from the ashes, but it seems to be a very procrastinatific phoenix indeed. I can't blame Sam though, since he's the one doing the whole drawing bit and I'm sure that takes a long time. I do hope that the writing has been continuing all this time though and that we will have one bitch-ass story waiting for us at the debut.

Winamp ate my babies.
A veritable dingo in disguise, that one... See, we hit it off really well. It sounded great, and looked pretty, but unfortunately it moved in and started eating my food and not paying for gas and stuff. I was happily listening to Outkast's Speakerboxx/The Love Below, when all of a sudden Winamp threw a tantrum and decided to start not playing music and crashing my computer. Needless to say I kicked its sorry ass out into the street with naught but a dime to its name. I'm back to my old standby, WMP9 (heh. "whump"), at least until I get rid of Windows entirely. Yes, I've decided to flip (again) over to Linux, this time using the Gentoo distro. The biggest reason being is this Portage system they've concocted. Basically it's like the communist form of software distribution. You just use this emerge command on your terminal, and Gentoo will go and download the software and install it for you. Cool, right? But wait, there's more! For the low, low price of free, it will do all that, plus check to see if you have all the other programs needed to run what you want to install! Ever try to install something and then find out you need Java, or a C compiler to get it working? Portage will check that in advance, and will get everything you need at the same time! And that's not all! It will also keep your system up to date with the latest patches and fixes for everything you have installed on your computer, including kernel fixes. Perpetual cutting edge technology, at your fingertips! This might not excite some, but to a geek like myself, I just have to try it. Even if it only lasts for a week and I go back to Windows, it'll be worth checking out, if only for curiosity's sake. I'll hopefully get everything set up this weekend or shortly thereafter, so I'll let you know if it works like I hope, or if I will have to get a new computer due to smashing this one out of rage.

Things... in mittens!
Things like mammoths? How about ice mammoths that shoot icicles from their trunks? Because I play one of those in Gunbound. I think this game is growing on me, since I almost overslept this morning from playing too much of it last night. See, Gunbound is like Scorched Earth, only with more interesting, simpler mechanics, and little chibi anime characters. And you get to have a triceratops as a tank! Unfortunately, the only people who play this game that are of any intelligence are either friends of mine, people from websites I read (like PA and Porkfry) (and these two groups are a vast minority) and 9 year olds who take their anonymity for granted. Other than just being annoying, it's almost a chore to learn the game, since nobody will explain things or cut you any slack at all. Understandably so though, since I know if I see someone struggling with something, the first thing I do is call them a "n00b", followed by laughing at them and shooting their ass off a cliff.

All this is due to the betrayal of anonymity I mentioned. Being anonymous is like having a warm snuggly blanket around you, (you get a cookie if you guess the movie reference!) not dissimilar to hiding from the monsters at night as a kid. With the blanket, you are safe and free to sleep peacefully. Some people don't though, and choose instead to taunt the monsters, knowing that they are safe. The internet is the same way. Since nobody else knows where you live, or can come give you wedgies and swirlies at recess, there's no reason not to simply insult people and be an ass in general. Anyone who plays Counter-strike also knows where I'm coming from. The only downside to acting like a retard is that people get angry with you, and due to the aforementioned retardation, chances are you don't care. The cycle continues. Your best bet is to simply ignore them until you can beat the punks at their own game. If you're actually good, their whole strategy crumbles and they run away to pout. Getting to that level of skill can be rather arduous though.

For the greater good!
I am so totally making this pumpkin for Halloween this year. Definitely would be super creepy on the porch, especially if decently backlit.


Now in boxes of Oatie O's, FREE Hoth play set!

Also, possibly in the same box, you can now get an eight-legged hermaphroditic pickled pig! Isn't science grand? Not much more to add on this one, since it really speaks for itself. Would look great on my mantle, only I don't have a mantle.

Finally, an excellent case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't". Personally, I find some perverse sort of excitement seeing these all-powerful companies seemingly brought to their knees. Makes you not feel so bad for not being a boardroom exec. To make things last longer, try not to think of the way they'll buy themselves out of the jam. (You just did, didn't you? Weeeeeeak.)

Anyhoo, due to the nature of preparation involved with my cheese pudding, (it's better than you'd think!) my dishes are basically done already, so off I go do play more Gunbound! My handle is cornixvagus since my usual tag of Crowebert was taken. Gimme a shout if you play.  ¶ 5:34 p.m. 0 comments

  Comes in 31 great flavors!

"What a boring place this world is. Welp, I guess I'll just destroy everyone."
-Aram, from Men in Hats

Because he's such a nice guy... Not that I really want to destroy everyone in the world (...yet.) but rather, I just liked starting an article like that. No, what I was really going to harp about was the coming doom. You see, because RIAA is so bloody insane, and apparantly their madness is contagious to the extent of cross-oceanic infection, if I stop posting quite suddenly, it's because I've been shipped to the Bering Straits (or is it straights?) to do slave duty in the ice mines. There isn't any way that this can be seen as a good thing, in my opinion, mainly because it's a lovely attack of biting the hand that feeds you.

See, I'm a music pirate. I admit this. I haven't bought a CD from a record label in years, and I don't plan on doing so. The only music I've bought lately (and this is in the last 8 months or so, so it's not quite recent) is a couple of discs from Freezepop and the Spaceship Zero soundtrack by the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. The common theme behind those purchases? I know my money went to the artists, since I bought it from them. In this happy new digital age of the internet, there is no reason why one cannot do self-publication around the world from the comfort of their own home. Just look at webcomics. If the record companies did something for me other than just bring the music from the artists to my local store in shiny packaging, I might consider coughing up the dough, but as it stands now, they profit far more than a middleman should. It's like one of those kids in Mexico that you will give a buck or two to for fetching you a newspaper or something, except that unlike the little Mexicans, record labels aren't living at a relatively low living standard. I know that's not the best analogy, but it's what I came up with just now, and I don't like changing these things unless that little part of my mind called a "conscience" (yes, people have these, even if you may not) says otherwise really really loudly. Regardless, while wanting to have a representative willing to publish your art (music or otherwise) leaving you free to make more of the same is all fine and good, giving someone control of everything you make is not. Until the copyright situation changes 'round dese parts, and I can be reasonably sure that (what's the figure nowadays?) 2 bucks of my 15 to 20 that I drop on a disc will go to the artists, I will continue my happy musical theft. If it promotes change, great. If it really does kill the industry, well I guess that's a shame, but I firmly believe that a new one will arise that won't make the mistakes of this one. Besides, I'll still have all the cool mp3s I have now. (I'm a selfish bastard, ain't I?)

In a similarly themed adventure...
I think I might just be Windows Media Player free. For a while now, I figured that having the player drop down to be in the taskbar was enough, but on a whim last night, I downloaded Winamp 5. Yeah, 5.. they skipped 4 for various reasons, don't ask. Regardless, other than one particular feature that really pissed me off (you can't import your playlists! whose assinine idea was that? import every other goddamned kind of media you like, but not the playlists? WTF?!?) it's quite nice. I like the smaller player, and it's reasonably pretty, and even sounds better than WMP9. (Heh, now that I think about it, you can pronounced WMP as "whump". Yeah, I'm easily amused.) So I just might be a re-convert, since despite the playlist thing, I now open them directly and I can find my music easier. (I don't need to remember if a particular playlist is labelled by album, or starts with a "00" or something. Just go to the directory.)

Also in keeping with the music theme I've got here, I just got a copy of The Darkness' Permission to Land. Awesome album if I ever heard one, and I've decided I'm definitely a fan of "fun" rock. See, The Darkness take their inspiration from the crazy rock groups of the 70s and 80s like KISS and Judas Priest, back when rock and roll was about sex, drugs, partying and in general having fun. None of this "gloom, doom and angst" crap that the 90s were so full of. I mean, I like Nirvana as much as the next guy, but other than them and Alice in Chains, any band out of Seattle has not exactly been super great. (That's right, I don't think Pearl Jam is one of the greatest bands ever. Why this causes rage among some people I know is still a mystery.) Some might think that the lead singer of The Darkness could be a mite annoying, due to his singing at least an octave higher than most girls, but I don't really mind it, and I Believe In A Thing Called Love is a rocking song any way you cut it. Only beef I have is that some of the songs on the album are a bit too ballady. Perhaps some harder rocking was in order? Still, I hope these guys do more stuff along this line.

Self correction
I was reading some of my posts a while ago, and I've found that I don't exactly use the most varying word usage. I mean, I say "apparantly" way too much, and start just about every paragraph with "So...", not to mention all the "I guesses", "turns outs" and "first/(second)lastlys" that are scattered about. I'm trying to make a concious effort to not do this, but I'll probably forget after a while. My memory, while good (and I do mean good) still has its flaws. Not to really toot my own horn (meep!) but I like to say I have a near-photographic memory. I can still remember the house I lived in when I was like 4, almost to the point of being able to draw a floor plan of it, if that's any indication of my mental retentiveness. Only reason I don't say that I have a true photographic memory, is partly because I'm not sure, but also because I still forget things if I don't write them down or repeat them a few times. I'm much better at remembering concretes, as opposed to abstracts. Still, it's better than having to write things on my hand, I suppose. Feel free to send me hate mail if you disagree.

Because I care
Ever notice the Google art? You know, on holidays and stuff, the Google logo goes all Renaissance and fancies itself up. Well, the people at Fark can't get enough or something, since they've decided to make fake Google days. My personal favorites are the "Googol" day, the National Dyslexia Day and the French surrendering one.

What to Rent.com. This is easily one of the best websites ever. It takes in your tastes in movies, and then based on your current mood, will recommend you a movie to rent. I've only played with it a little so far, but on its first go, it recommended Rushmore to me, and I have been wanting to see that movie for months. After 24 hours, you can say what you thought about what you were recommended (you need a day to form a good opinion, rather than just fanboying everything up) and the program goes from there. I know for a fact that this would be a welcome addition to certain circles.

More weird art. Now some of these are just creepy. This guy does art all about a bunch of faceless people in crowds. Interesting to look at once, but I would never want this on my wall. I think I'd have nightmares or something...

Anyways, I'll finish up by saying that I just tried Gunbound, and it is quite superlative. Except for the worse-than-Counter-strike player base that is. I'll post more about it after I've played it more. Until then, read some Questionable Content! It rules, and after reading a couple of strips, you won't stop! (At least, I didn't...)  ¶ 5:22 p.m. 0 comments

  In a new trend today...

"Brother-A, I don't smoke because of some myth of addiction. I smoke because it's cool."
-Sean, from Instant Classic

And so it is, Sean... so it is. So I'm going to start my posts this week with a quote from a webcomic I read. I don't really have any reason for doing this, but if you can think of a better way to find a beginning, then go right ahead and use it in your blog. As I was saying, smoking is cool. All the kids that did in high school because they thought it was cool? They were right. Call me old fashioned (er... again, I guess) but I think there's a certain kind of 1920s style in smoking. Maybe I've just been brainwashed by the tobacco companies and film noir movies, but smoking has its own kind of elegance that goes hand in hand with ritzy parties, high culture and badassness. This doesn't mean that I smoke though, or even that I want to, so don't get that idea. Well, I should really rephrase that, since I probably would smoke tons if it weren't for that pesky side-effect of "increased chance of death" that gets tossed in. Even if I thought there was a kind of elegance and style to shooting up with battery acid, or cyanide, or something equally lethal, I wouldn't do it. It's really too bad they can't make a cigarette that was good for you, without all that harmful chemical slurry. Because I'd buy them... you can count on it. Until then, I'll have to settle for the slightly less cool, not as stylish "breathing clean air, not bothering people around me, keeping nice teeth and breath, and continuing to do all of that until I'm like 80 or something" thing that I do. It's a shame, really.

Yay for internet quizzes!
So I was randomly whizzing around the blogsphere (what I believe is the current term for that little subset of the internet for blogs and livejournals) and I found this little quiz. You might have got in an email before, but I haven't, so here it is, as filled out by me (due to the whole "me being single" bit, I lied about the girlfriend bit. I hope you don't mind).

Choose a band/artist and answer only in song titles by that band: Monster Magnet
Are you female or male: King of Mars
Describe yourself: Powertrip
How do some people feel about you: Dopes to Infinity (it's a good thing, really)
How do you feel about yourself: I Control, I Fly
Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend: See You In Hell
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend: My Life Friend
Describe where you want to be: Cage Around The Sun / Temple Of Your Dreams (I'm not picky)
Describe what you want to be: Black Mastermind
Describe your car: Ego, the Living Planet
Describe how you live: Nod Scene
Describe how you love: Negasonic Teenage Warhead (it means something, I'm sure...)
Share a few words of wisdom: Look To Your Orb For The Warning

The reason I bring this up is because it was actually kind of fun to fill out. The restriction of having to answer with song titles puts a kind of brain-teaser twist on things. So go do it yourself and email it to your friends. Despite what they say, they really do like getting these things in their inboxes. Also, make sure you make it look like it's been forwarded about 300 thousand times without having those old addresses and >>'s deleted. That only adds to the fun!

Link the drink sink
So you might have heard this, it being relatively large-ish news in the Business World, but I guess some company named Comcast tried to buy Disney for 66 billion dollars. Now I'm all for Mike Eisner keeping the throne and I support his decis- Oh wait. Never mind, he decided to axe traditional animation from Disney's "To Do" list, and since I consider that to be a move best described as "stupid beyond all recognition and a sure sign that any form of credibility Disney once had has forevermore been killed, not to mention one of the death knells for an art form (at least in the mainstream)"... Go Comcast!

So I guess there are new weapons of mass distraction out there on the intarweb. Something to do with "email bombs". I guess these little guys start at like 7kb, but decompress within seconds to sizes of hundreds of megabytes, and don't stop until your hard drive is full and rather FUBARed. Oh, and they trigger when your virus scanner tries to scan them. If you ask me, it sounds like a fun way to terrorize friends that are totally paranoid about their computer, but don't really know how it works. (Insert evil grin here.)

Why can't it be me? I'm the one who's all into stuff like superpowers and x-ray vision... when will it be my turn? Of course, living in Russia, among the wreckages of many a nuclear submarine just might have something to do with it (not that I want to imply that all of Russia is a nuclear wasteland. I'm sure it's a very nice country with beautiful fjords). At least on the bright side, there remains hope for the rest of us to spontaneously develop mutant powers (or until this girl gets debunked.)

Bonus picture! What's your high score?


In closing
Couple of things to finish up on. First, apparantly the UT2k4 demo has been released on Linux already. Not only does this rule a fair bit (since Linux really does get shafted in the games department), but it's rather shocking. Not only the Mac software but Linux as well? At the same time as PC? For demo? Wow. Maybe it has something to do with being basically an expansion of a year-old game...

Lastly, apparantly the Neo-Geo and the Genesis ran on Motorola 68000-series processors. I just think that's kind of neat because I've programmed them at school.

And now... to the dishes! Yah!  ¶ 5:22 p.m. 0 comments

  Et voila!
Better late than never: Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!

Back on topic, what you see is the result of boredom at just past 12 in the morning. And do you know the hardest bit? Figuring out where that "about" box should go. I decided that I didn't want one big sidebar like the first design, so I had to find some way of moving it around. I was going to have it go top-left, with the rest of the blog just kind of oozing down the middle, but that didn't look as good as I wanted. So you have the result. Probably not the last of changes either. For example, as soon as I find my copy of Photoshop, I'm going to try and whip up a nifty little title graphic to replace the rather lackluster one you see there. But that can come later, as for now it is time for me to talk about... things.

Things
So if you aren't bowing before the new layout, well, you should. I'm rather proud of it, since this is one of the more firstish forays into the fun happy land of CSS. Turns out you can do just about anything with regards to layout and styles and stuff with webpages and things. Definitely something worth learning if you plan on doing any web development. Anyways, one of the new additions made is this likes/dislikes thing at the top. Just kind of an introduction thing if you're new, which I somehow doubt that anyone reading this is. Not that I'm questioning my audience here, it's just that I have a hard time believing anyone's Googled their way here yet. And that, in turn, is largely a result of Google not having put my site into their database yet. So yeah. Anyways, I feel I should clarify the dislikes I've got there, since they may or may not cause some confusion. By "stupid people", I don't necessarily mean people who are not smart, but rather ignorant people who blind themselves to truths and refuse to learn. Pisses me off to no end. And by "double standards", I mean exactly that: things that are ok for one group for one reason or another, but not fine for another, equivalent group for no reason at all. Now some may think "that ain't right", since I'm probably one of the larger hypocrites I know, but the way I see it is that being hypocritical is fine since it's only one person. When you have many many folks being hypocritical, you have a double standard. One of those "exception becomes the norm" thingamajigs. Lastly, by "street clothes", I mean the whole "belt your pants at the ankles", "have a stocking thing under a crooked cap", and not so much wearing your insanely baggy clothes as much as hanging them on your person. Now I don't have anything against baggy clothes, it's just that you still need to conform to the purpose of said clothes, and that means belts are for waists, not knees. Call me old-fashioned, but that's my opinion. It might also have to do with the personalities of people who tend to wear said clothes rubbing me the wrong way, so there's also that. In closing, I've also added my instant message info for anyone who feels like chatting. I'm usually available whenever I'm at home (since my apartment is little more than a big room, so I can hear it bling) so feel free (only if you're not a jerk though).

More things. Hyperthings, perhaps.
So I just saw Cube 2: Hypercube recently, and figured I'd share my thoughts. Basically, if you like the first Cube, then this one probably won't disappoint... that badly. It is definitely a B-movie, with nary a celebrity in the whole thing and a hefty dose of questionable acting, but the concepts set out in the first one are (sort of) brought to the next level in Cube 2. Once again, you've got a bunch of seemingly-unconnected people stuck in a big construct of cubes, and once again, they need to figure their way out. As premises go, there are worse, and again, since the set is basically just the same room over and over again, it's easy to film, but like I said, if you've seen the first one, things are very similar here. You've got the same sort of math-slant to everything, but the puzzles are not quite the same (although references to the first one are made). Basically, it's just another really weird movie that is kinda fun to follow along, if only to see how the next person dies, or what next evil thing the cube throws at them (although all the creative traps from the first one are ditched in favor of more subtle quirks). I liked it, for the most part, but it isn't for everyone.

Another little fun thing I read about a couple of days ago (see, a lot of the stuff I write about doesn't go up as I find it, since I keep my ideas and links in a kind of queue, so to speak) is some new technology about delivering internet access. Turns out some companies down in the States are toying with the ability to deliver the 'net through the power grid (that isn't the article I read, but it covers the same thing). The idea has promise, and the FCC okayed it, last I checked, so you just may plug the modem of the future into the same outlet that can power your toaster. Also makes for interesting thoughts on appliances that use networking or the internet. Don't ask me why your oven would need email, but if someone will pay for it...

!!!sdrawkcab yaeY
Couple of links that Harrm shot me a while ago. First up is a creepy little movie off of New Grounds. I don't have a clue what it's about, but it is super cool, and has a killer soundtrack. Don't know the language though...

Next is a set of neato web games, all to do with spy stuff! Now I'm sure that this isn't how we, I mean, they do it, but it's close enough for gameplay purposes. I managed to get a 100% first try on the briefing thing! Seems having a near-photographic memory does help out every now and again.

In a very sad story, it seems we may not be able to look into space quite the same way for a little while. Seems NASA has said 'no' to the upkeep of Hubble, and the whole thing is going to crash into the Earth somewhere in 2007 or so. Too bad, really, since it's a really valuable resource for looking backwards in time, essentially. I finished reading Asimov's The Universe a while ago, and I'm curious about some of the new theories about space that have surfaced since the writing of that book (sixties or so...). I also have a copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos here, but I'm holding off on that one. I'll let you know (as usual) how it is when I get around to it.

So I guess that's about it for now. Until tomorrow, may you never write notes to remind you of things to write about in your blog and then completely forget what they mean the next day. Like the time I forgot to mention the ice sculptures sometime last week, and I scribbled "ICE" on a scrap of paper in the middle of the night, since it occured to me, and the next day I was all like "Ice? What does that mean? Was I going to write about drinks or something?" Then I remembered and it was all good, but don't do that. It causes "teh crazy".  ¶ 4:17 p.m. 0 comments

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
In an effort to get my mind off of the trailer-trashyness of my last meal (does it get worse than KD with wieners and ketchup? Well, other than swapping the ketchup for BBQ sauce, that is...) I'm listening to Into the Electric Castle again. Wicked album if ever I've heard one, and I think the reason is the instruments. Yes, the dominant sound is the vocals and the guitars, but there are many many places in the disc where more unconventional instruments like flutes, mandolins, lutes, minimoogs (whatever those are...) and cellos (yeay cellos!). Makes for a much different listening experience than your typical cookie-cutter guitar/vocals + guitar + bass + drums band formula. Now I'm not saying that doesn't work, since it is the norm for the recording industry, but it's nice to have a change every now and again. Also, another band that I've neglected to pimp is Nightwish. Basically the unholy spawn of speed metal and classical opera music (it sounds way better than that description implies), these folk are from Finland and they kick ass. I've got a link on the sidebar there, and I have all (pretty sure) their albums if you want a sampler or something. In line with the new links as well, I've added a new blog (well it's more of a site, really...) to the list of those that I read, and this one is Honey Bee Manor, as written by Kitsune. I think I mentioned her blog last time, but the whole site is entertaining enough to link to. Plus, her link button with the kitty rules!

The Days Day!
I think that it's quite depressing to think of how many "Days" we actually have. I mean, Mother's Day, Father's Day and those are all fine since they've been around so long, but this Random Acts of Kindness day? National Compliments Day? Do we really need a special day to set aside so that we can compliment each other? Does that mean we can have a National Insult Day too, since to have the one and not the other would be so politically incorrect and unequal. Or maybe we can recognize all these days in National Day Day, where you go around and do things exactly as normal, but bearing in mind that you're honoring all the effort put forth by people you've never heard of to make Days for us to enjoy. Food for thought at any rate...

Another thing I found interesting was an article I saw recently about nuclear proliferation. One of the points raised was that for all America's ranting and tirading about weapons of mass destruction and how we can't have them in the hands of terrorists and blah blah blah, I haven't heard very much about the fact that the US is still researching new ways to blow things up. I mean, apparantly one of the projects going on at ARPA/DARPA/Pentagon/Evil Black Ops Division/Some other government agency is the development of mini-nukes. The goal is to make these tiny nuclear bombs that can level down to a city block, but leave virtually no radiation or other nastiness. Now there's a double standard if I ever saw one, and one of the things that burns me up more than anything is the double standard. Why is it completely acceptable for Iraq and Iran to be attacked and ostracized for having nukes and bombs and stuff, when at the same time, major players like the US and China can freely make the same thing scot-free? (Just writing that makes me wonder where the term scot-free comes from... maybe a remnant of the British being anti-Scotland or something?) Anyways, I can't find the article, so no link, but trust me, it was interesting.

CHEESE!
The legendary, awe-inspiring, totally awesome List of Lists!!!! Actually, it's not that special at all, except for the fact that I found it totally by chance after accidentally Googling "lol". (Freak GAIM mishap... go figure.) Other than that, it's just a weird collection of lists, organized in list form.

For those of you that are Transformer fans, and especially those that have the robots but can't transform them, this should help. Similar to the Lego instruction site I posted a while ago, this place has the transforming instructions for just about every Transformer that there ever has been. It's like the Holy Grail for Optimus Prime or something.

If you read Mac Hall, you've probably already seen this. I guess this is a digital art project Ian did for school or something, but it's really neat. I think somewhere in here is his art portfolio and links and stuff, but I just can't get tired of hitting the little dino dude with the ball and watching him spaz.

On a closing note, when I was buying a coffee at Second Cup (the best coffee shop in my happy little opinion), there was a genuine, grade-A certified, completely crazy lady there talking to nobody in particular about the wonders of Christ and how powerful his name was. I had originally planned to sit and start reading Neuromancer, (considered the novel that "started" the whole cyberpunk thing... I'll let you know) but I decided that she was just too weird and I left. Somewhat anticlimatic, but whatever.  ¶ 5:00 p.m. 0 comments

  Bangers and Mash, contrary to (possibly) popular belief, is simply Sheppard's Pie.
You have no idea how much I was let down when I found that out. It was like learning that there is no Santa, only a drunk old guy in a red suit. I had this fanciful mental picture of some incredibly arcane and obscure dish, known only to British pub-goers who wear strange hats. Something so bizarre and so English (nationality, not language) that it could only be described as "bangers", accompanied by this equally esoteric "mash". And in truth, it's simply ground beef, gravy and mashed potatoes all baked together. Don't get me wrong, it's a very very good dish, but I was still disappointed when I found out what one of my favorite foods that Mom made at home could also be called. The perplexing epilogue to all this is that I probably already knew that, since the whole bangers and mash thing popped into my head for no reason a couple of days ago as if it had a will of its own.

Moving right along, with only a very thinly disguised segue, I think I had the most lamerest, loserest supper ever. A hamburger on bread instead of a bun, and fries that weren't fried, but baked. I'm fully aware of the health benefits here, but it's still the culinary equivalent of the Go-Bots compared to the "true" burger and fries' Transformers. Yeah, that's right, you Go-Bot fan who somehow Googled your way here, Go-Bots suck and were for the lame kids who didn't know about Transformers! Ha, I say to you!

So I'm sure that only about 2 people here know what I'm talking about there, and I'm pretty sure they both reside in my skull. But I digress.

Swords rule
So, as I announced yesterday, I tried out this whole fencing thing last night. Turns out it was pretty cool, even though I mostly only did very basic footwork and stuff. I'll be going again on Sunday for more, since apparantly more people show up then due to the larger gym being available. I guess I'll be starting with only one rapier for now, but I hope to eventually move to the dagger and rapier styles or two rapier or rapier and cane stuff later on. It's my goal. Now the fact that those options exist may befuddle you momentarily, until you read the next sentence. See, this whole deal is put on by the SCA, or the Society for Creative Anachronisms, otherwise known as the weird medieval re-enactment folks. And I don't entertain any thoughts that these people aren't weird, because they are. Very much so, in fact. But the thing is that they happen to be the kind of weird that I can relate to, which is completely fine in my books. Plus, I still haven't decided if I will be participating much past the fencing or armoured combat bits. (It's like full-contact wailing on each other with huge wooden swords in full plate mail! How cool is that?) Besides, you get to fight with two swords!!! Come on!

On an only-slightly-related note, I did learn a very hilarious story about Crotchpunte (sp?). Turns out, in the Middle Ages, some knight took offense at all these "learned masters" of the combat arts that were making manuscripts of their styles and running extravagant schools to teach others and such, and decided to parody it. He wrote up his own manuscript about the fighting style of Crotchpunte, in which the sole goal is to kick the other man in the balls with a big green shoe. Try as I might though, the mighty internet refused to give me more information about this, so I have no link. But it would be quite amusing to see these brilliantly rendered, intricate 16th-century diagrams captioned with rhyming couplets in which the only color is the green of the shoe kicking the other man in the nards.

More miscellaneous ramblings
On the way home last night, I went by City Hall, and there were people making snow sculptures, and one of them was a 12-foot tall bust of Wolverine! For some reason, that's immensely nifty. As for the rest of the "sophisticated art", some of the ice sculptures haven't fared too well. Combination of the melting and probably some vandalism as well, many limbs have fallen off (such as the poor, poor Gundam), and a lot of the sculptures have certainly seen better days. They do look really cool at night though, when all lit up with colours and such.

I'm also convinced that the previous occupant of my apartment got deported. A phone bill arrived today for him. Now I don't know if this is simply a "last bill", or if he actually forgot to cancel his phone line before he moved, but the sheer amount of stuff I get is starting to make me believe he was simply kidnapped and whisked out of the country overnight. Maybe even within hours...

Last bit before I go to do some links, and that is that the Bear here in Ottawa really isn't as good as the Bear in Edmonton. Sure, we get Cubb Carson, but I don't listen to the radio enough for that to matter, and what I do hear is a lot less "rocking" rock, and more "pop" and "rap" rock, like Outkast and No Doubt. Sure, the music isn't bad, but for a "rock" station to be playing it... that just doesn't sit well with my ears. Unfortunately the only decent alternative to the lesser Bear was shut down within a week of my moving to Ottawa, so I'm stuck. Boo.

And now, something completely different
Monty Python plugs rule. So do other people's blogs, when said blogs are entertaining. Now some of these blogs include Porkfry (of PA fame), Hot Buttered Funk, SkullzDotOrg and Honey Bee Manor, authored by Porkfry, Butah P, Apok and Kitsune respectively. Now they've all teamed up to form a blog equivalent of the superhero team, entitled DuckDuckDuckGoose.com, or D^3G for short. Basically I think the general idea is to kind of segue from the last person's topic into one of your own, but whatever. The point is that it's good reads (all of them, not just the last one).

The best xylophone evar. Send it to all your friends.

While I really don't endore dressing up animals, mainly since it is stupid and only amuses the simple masses, it's still fun to say CATS IN HATS! Rats in hats comes in a close second.

Lastly, this is just a really really cool picture that I found somehow. I think it's taken from a kite, but it could just as well be from Superman with a digital camera.

And that's that. I am now going to think about doing the dishes, decide to not do the dishes and go play some Jak 2. Also, to all you paraskevidekatriaphobes out there, you're going to die.  ¶ 4:26 p.m. 0 comments

  Marty Feldman, the original bug-eyed wonder!
Forget Steve Buscemi, this is the guy that started it all!


Anyways, I've noticed that I've been making more and more short posts after the big one. I don't know if this is a trend or a phase yet. I also don't know if it even matters. I do know that I'm going fencing tonight! Yay! And of course, the hardest thing to do so far was find a bloody "athletic supporter". Nice little euphemism there... what ever happened to cup? Anyways, even despite the recommendation from the guy I talked to about starting, I had already planned on getting one of these. Gettin' me nards shish-kabobbed is not a notion I wish to entertain. So I went to the sports place in Rideau Center, and of course the only sizes they have are small and extra-large. I know I'm not a small, and I'm reasonable sure that I'm not an extra-large, since the waist size was in the 40" area for the jockstrap. I couldn't even do the mix and match thing, since again, the only sizes there were small and extra-large. So I ended up going about 5 blocks out of the way to another place where they maintained a reasonable selection of product in stock and found one that would fit more comfortably. So there's the little story from today that you probably didn't need to hear. Moving on!

Schwing!
This is the coolest case mod evar. To quote Force Monkeys, on a scale of one to sauce, it's definitely on par with ravioli, and maybe even lasagna. Hell, mod isn't even a proper term, since that would imply only modification to the case, and this is clearly the result of an overactive imagination, too many free PC parts (he uses 40GB hard drives for eyes!) and far too much bodging skill. To the clueless, "bodging" is Brit slang for building things out of spare parts that are rather cobbled together. Like... wow. It's a bug! What more can I say? Coolest PC case evar. EVAR. (At least as of the time of this blogging.)

Ever wonder which came first, eggs or popcorn? At least as far as eating was concerned? Me too. That's why I'm glad that this little timeline has informed me that it was indeed eggs, at about circa "before years had numbers". Popcorn, on the other hand is from about 3600BC. So there, thppp!

So some of you may know that people have long made gay fan-fiction about Lord of the Rings. Some may have even read some. But now with the movie, we have stars to Photoshop into happy homo-erotic pictures! And guess what happens when these come into contact with said stars? And by contact, I of course mean that they were asked to sign such a pic. Priceless expressions.

That's about it.
No really, I need to get going. I don't even have time to do the dishes! Horribly lazy, I know, but whaddya gonna do? I'm over here, and you're over there. Or the other way around, depending on how you look at it.  ¶ 4:21 p.m. 0 comments