So it seems that posting from work will not work now.
Yarg. Back to the drawing board I suppose.

The information contained in this e-mail message is PUBLIC. It may, but probably won't, contain confidential information and may, but again probably won't, be legally privileged. It is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s), but in this case means the general public. If you are not the intended recipient, even though this is not possible because as stated, everyone is intended to see this, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this communication is strictly prohibited. Not that that matters, since EVERYONE CAN SEE THIS. Get it? If the intended recipient(s) cannot be reached (how does that work anyways?) or if a transmission problem has occurred, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and destroy all copies of this message.
Thank you.   ¶ 7:04 p.m. 0 comments

  Sometimes I wonder if I even have a job
Top 5 Pink Floyd Albums:
1. Wish You Were Here
2. The Wall
3. Dark Side of the Moon
4. Animals
5. Meddle

I'm a fan of the Roger Waters era, but it is only because I haven't listened to the Syd Barrett and post-Syd era stuff enough. It is very likely that Piper At The Gates of Dawn or Saucerful of Secrets could replace Meddle at the bottom of that list, but I can't think of more than a couple of tracks from the both of them. The first four are pretty solidified in their placings though.

Top 5 Drinks That Aren't Water:
1. Beer (see next Top 5)
2. Club Soda
2. Jim Beam
4. Orange Juice
5. Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster

I like beer to the extent that if I could drink it all the time without being both indisposed and/or destroying my liver, I probably would. Since I basically can't do that (having a permanent hangover would suck), there are another 4 items. I have two number 2 drinks because if I am having a drink, my hand gravitates to the Club, whereas if I am having a Drink, I usually prefer to get Beamed up. The PGGB at the bottom there is a complicated drink that does not fall into the category of "girly" or "feminine" because I am the only one I know in Alberta that knows how to make it, and that puts me in charge of categorization, not you.

Top 5 Beers:
1. Waterloo Dark
2. McNally's Stout
3. Granville Island
4. Alexander Keith's
5. Labatt Blue

One could make the argument that Waterloo Dark and McNally's Stout are almost the same beer, but I say they are not, because they taste almost-imperceptibly different, and because Dark comes in a much cooler bottle with no neck. Granville Island is also really good because it is dirt cheap (about 7 dollars for a six-pack) and doesn't taste like either cedar or butt.

Top 5 Metallica Albums:
1. Master of Puppets
2. Black Album/Self-titled
3. S & M
4. ...And Justice For All
5. Acoustic Metal

Again, some contention in the 5th place spot, since I had trouble deciding between Load (Metallica at their least metallic) and St. Anger (their hardest album that I like, since I consider the hardest one, Kill 'Em All, to be shite). Then I remembered the bootleg album I have made up of concerts Metallica did with a bunch of other random metalheads in which they play mostly acoustic instruments. The version of Four Horsemen done with a blues harp is of particular interest.

Top 5 Comics:
Oh come on. Can you honestly expect to pare this down to five?

Top 5 Touchy-Feely-Relationship Movies (aka Chick Flicks) I Will Watch Without Complaint:
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Amelie
3. Chasing Amy
4. High Fidelity
5. Free Enterprise
(6.) Run, Lola, Run

(So I cheated. It's my list; lea' me 'lone.) Amelie used to be pretty high on this list, but Eternal Sunshine basically destroys it. The romance-headtrip double-punch is a contender, to be sure. (Run, Lola, Run also packs the same double-punch, but it's more headtrip than romance, and also in German, so it sits at an honorarily-mentionable number 6.) Free Enterprise, while at number 5, is also deserving of special note, simply because it has William Shatner doing a one-man musical hip-hop version of Hamlet, and also Logan's Run satire.

Top 5 Things That Aren't Edible:
1. Cherry-flavoured rocks
2. Glass shards
3. Imagination
4. Electricity
5. Beets

If nature had intended for us to eat beets, they would be both not purple and come with steaks attached.  ¶ 5:03 p.m. 0 comments

  So it's (yet another) slow day
This site made me laugh: Do I need a jacket? Because really, you can look outside and see cloud, but the temperature says 21 degrees; which should you listen to? Or perhaps it's bright and sunny, but cool. Or maybe you're just really indecisive and happen to want reassurance in your choice of apparel, which is nice, really, since there's nothing worse than having a coat when you don't need one. (The opposite is also bad, but not quite, since to a certain degree, you can always start moving around more to warm up. Doesn't help much when it's -40, but if you go out without a coat on then, you deserve to freeze.)

I got that link from Rising Slowly, which I got in turn from the ubiquitous Boing Boing! Hyperlinks are fun, aren't they?  ¶ 3:02 p.m. 0 comments

  Louise, she is a scornful one
I got to go out skiing on Saturday. One of the nice things about living in Calgary is that one is never more than a couple of hours drive away from the mountains, which in turn makes for convenient skiing. Contrast this to Edmonton, where skiing needs to become a long-weekend-long multi-day extravaganza, or to most of the rest of Canada where it exists, but is to Rocky Mountain skiing as wood panelling in cheap 70s motel is to a log cabin. (The "mountains" east of the Rockies would be laughed at by the children of British Columbians and Albertans as being unsuitable for their Krazy Karpets. This is not to say there is no downhill winter activity out there, but it is inferior.)

Any skiier will tell you that a bad day skiing is still better than a good day at the office, but the conditions at Lake Louise this weekend, however, were attempting to stretch the truth of that phrase near the to the breaking point. Allow me to explain snice to you. Snice is a word that I may have just made up now, and refers to ice that masquerades as snow. You see, snow is created when vaporous water high in the stratosphere spontaneously condenses and freezes into a pristine crystalline structure, unique in appearance. When enough snowflakes get together, you have snow, and it is a happy thing. Snow packs together nicely, but can also be gently deposited in a large blanket, ensuring the employment of the plow-people, and the enjoyment of skiiers and boarders everywhere. Snice, in contrast, is what you get when your bacardi sneezes before you can add the fruit syrup and the booze. It is more like finely shattered windshield than snow, and does not pack like snow. If fact, when you first see it, it is immediately apparant that it is but a cheap facsimile of snow, inferior in nearly every respect. When it begins to melt, snow simply becomes denser, and when re-frozen, becomes as a crustier, crunchier version of itself. Snice does not; when it thaws and re-freezes, it turns to ice, and if you wish to traverse ice there are far better ways of doing so. (Determining said ways is left as an exercise for the reader. No points for skating - that one's obvious.)

So snice bad, and as a result of basically consisting of nothing but snice, Louise is not so good, and were it not for two things, I might almost be dissatisfied with my Saturday. One, go back to the paragraph before this one and re-read the first part of the first sentence. Two, nestled in the forbidden reaches of Louise's backside, off the beaten path of the Larch chair, there is a run called Rock Garden. It is more or less the result of some moron seeing a large number of boulders and saying to himself, "this would make for a sick run!" Fortunately, most people disagree and do not choose to leave the resort grounds to do this run, and that is why there was honest-to-God snow there. If there were a trophy for Best Snow In Whole Bloody Resort, Rock Garden would be the unchallenged recipient. The only disclaimer to all of the above is that long skis are not advised. Navigating through a field of boulders is tricky when you have 2-meter long planks bound to your boots, and as a corollary to that, the best way to get said planks off your boots is not to try and roll forward as though doing a somersault. Doing that involves potential pain, and the less said of it, the better.  ¶ 1:03 p.m. 1 comments

  Und voila!
Template makeover! And and AND, the return of my comics list! Hooray! As soon as I figure it out, I will also be posting a link to the list of news feeds I read so you can see what I spend most of my time reading on the internet. Yippee!  ¶ 10:30 p.m. 0 comments

  LJ Rabbit Hole Day was yesterday.
(I happen to be on Blogger, and it's currently today, so screw it. This is what my rabbit told me.)

A ceiling tile moves. Carefully, cautiously, a crack appears at the edge, where gyprock meets scaffolding. Nobody notices, of course, blinded by fluorescents and monitors. They only see the corporate landscape upon which they work. Deliverables and action items stand out like signposts on profit margin plains and engineering process roads.

It is through this landscape that the ninja creeps. Unseen in the ceiling, he searches relentlessly for his quarries, propelled by two different daimyos whose aims happened to coincide. He seeks a particularly juicy tidbit of information, buried in the laptop of his other prey, a manager who caused various complications in leaving his last company to join his current one. These complications were of such import that the ninja is now under contract to deliver retribution. This avenue of attack, this physical espionage, is his last option. He has already attempted access through the insubstantial vistas of cyberspace, creeping past IP addresses and DNS servers not unlike the way he moves unseen above cubes and water-coolers now, but with less grace. The forging of a digital entrance proved to be less than fruitful, for the enemy had hired specialists of their own, modern shugenja who dwelt almost exclusively in the abstract realm where code is king and those who can write the proper incantations have abilities of barely-constrained power. The ninja knew he was no match for them in that world, and so it was that he settled on his current choice of action. Should this attempt fail, he will resort to something else, set back but not defeated.

It is not far. The ninja can see the light of day glimmer through crack of corner office's door. Here in corporate tree, where productivity is the sap that runs from root to leaf, even the sun has become enslaved and turned subservient to energy-efficient halogen tubes. The closed blinds help the employees stay focused, they say. The ninja snorts in disgust at this thought and lets the ceiling tile inaudibly drop back into place. Having regained his bearings, he progresses onwards, moving like a spider through the web of scaffolding attached to the bones of the building, for the tiles below him have no more strength to support him than wet bread.

Getting down into the bowels of this bureaucratic nightmare was an ordeal. Everyone thinks it's as simple as finding the ventilation duct on the ceiling, rapelling down the oversized shaft and dropping into the room of your choice through the convenient grate. No, the ninja was forced to take a far more circuitous route, a duplicitous affair involving the embarrassment of disguising himself as an unnoticed cube-dweller. To pose as a common worker drone, walking the Path of the Upturned Tie, keeping eyes lowered and purpose in mind, always productive, never questioning. A ninja is none of these things, and he would that the job did not require such actions. Wishing otherwise, however, is a waste of time and he has a far more important task at hand. Such memories are banished from his mind.

The wall looms, insomuch as a wall can loom in the twelve-inch space between false ceiling and genuine. The ninja re-aligns his harness to allow for better positioning above the door to the office, scant feet below him. He thinks of what might have been, had he been able to smuggle his ninja-to into the building with him. With his sword, he could have sliced his way through the weak stone floor beneath him and attack with surprise and fervor, seizing the information he seeks by Way of the Blooded Blade. To his dismay, this organization has had the audacity to install metal detectors, claiming to maintain the security of the expensive technical equipment stored in the laboratories. Thus forced to resort to craftier weapons made of polymer and glass, the ninja turns to them now, pulling a small wedge from somewhere on his person. It is but a simple thing, glass cut into a triangle and having three slender threads running from each corner. The ninja has fixed a scrap of black cloth to one face, forming a crude-yet-effective mirror, and sharpened one edge to form a blade that rivals the finest razor. He takes hold of the threads and carefully arranges them so the glass can be hung at an angle. Checking that his scouting will go unseen in the immediate vicinity, the ninja lowers the glass down past the safety of the suspended ceiling. He rapidly confirms his suspicions - he is alone for the moment, for while a great many bodies abound, they are safely tucked away into their cubicles, stationary, metaphorically screwing widgets onto wongles day in, day out. They are powered partly by coffee and cigarettes, but mostly by cash, and for that reason they work diligently, never looking up.

To any observer, it would be obvious. It is not often that the ceiling opens up and a person drops out. The workers do not observe though, keeping eyes fixed on glaucoma-inducing rectangles of light, relying on their ears to warn of approaching management. It is this early-warning system that betrays them, for the ninja creates naught but minor disturbances of air. He almost smiles as he does so, behind his cowl and his mask, knowing that it will take the executives years to figure out the secrets he employs to move tiles and unhook fasteners soundlessly. They will never learn how he replaced the tile after dropping six feet into a silent crouch and darting behind the open door to the corner office.

The Inner Sanctum. The ninja has no idea when the manager shall return, but he is patient. He drops the second of his tools, a one-hundred dollar bill, on the ground next to the lavish mahogany desk which serves as both the center of the manager's world and the ninja's chosen point of ambush. He drops into the Folded Orchid, his preferred position from which to strike, and he waits.

Time passes.

The manager must have a lunch meeting.

The sun, unhindered here in the corner office, slowly paints the walls a darker shade of rose.

Close of business, the Final Moments. The ninja hears footsteps and a far-too-jovial voice in the hall. Words of fiscal policy and potential terminations drift in on carefully climate-controlled air conditioned draughts. The conversation eventually dwindling to trivial matters, one voice finally says good-bye and departs. The ninja tenses, waiting for the steps to turn and enter, waiting for eyes to fall downwards, pulled by the unvarying gravitation of cold, hard cash ripe for the taking. Just as inevitably, the manager's hand reaches down to investigate the answer to the question: Why is there money on the floor of my office? His findings are not to his satisfaction.

The next events are swift and silent. The ninja strikes thrice, first at a particular vertebrate near the pelvis forcing the executive's legs to become as wet ramen noodles, second at a carefully chosen point near the shoulder blade, inducing the same paralysis of the arms. The third and final blow comes in the form of nylon thread connecting two cheap plastic rings, looping around the throat and suffocating the only method of obtaining aid remaining to the now-doomed man. It would not matter, of course, as by the time the idea that an assassination is taking place registers, it is effectively over. As the last impulses of life course through his body, the manager hears a final whisper in his ear, naming those responsible for bringing about his end and the reasons why. The manager's last thought is "Well, fuck."

The ninja is nearly finished. Silently invoking a prayer for the soul of his fallen mark to be judged fairly in the spirit world, he obtains the laptop he is to obtain and fastens it securely to his belly. It would not do to lose it during the part of the mission that is to come. Wielding his final tool, a telescoping fiberglass rod with a pivoting rubber foot at one end and a carefully cut diamond at the other, he prepares himself for the leap. It took months to prepare for this leg of the journey, and he is determined not to lose his nerve, but nonetheless there resides a wholly irrational fear within his chest. Supressing as much as possible, he looks down to the edge of the window, seeing the parcel he planted there the night before, its handle outstretched and ready to be grasped.

After but a moment, for few remain, he exhales, steadies himself and sets about the final task. One surgical cut here, another there, the heel of his hand snaps out and it happens. The glass snaps in a nigh-perfect circle just large enough for him to fit through, while the silence he has adhered to almost religiously thus far is shattered by the perimeter alarm. Originally intended to be silent and for the purposes of maintenance and safety in case a large bird or other foreign object manages to break a window and force an orifice into the building, it has been renovated into a state-of-the-art security tool. The ninja knows it does not matter, however, since he will be gone long before a response can be prepared. Foot-first, he extrudes himself through the window and leverages more and more of his safety into the fingertips of one hand, while the other slides down to free the parcel containing his life-line from the side of the skyscraper.

The doorway to the office is filled by corporeal shadows. The elite security team employed by the company, clad all in black and armed with the latest in smart-weaponry has arrived far sooner than expected. Seeing the ninja, the barrels of their armaments raise and open fire as the ninja lets go. The window explodes with the impact of a thousand steel-tipped hailstones, and down below, plummeting, an aluminum frame blossoms into wings of origami. Like an invisible, deadly Mary Poppins, the ninja is borne away through a forest of steel and glass by a westerly wind.
  ¶ 4:21 p.m. 0 comments

  I don't write enough.
Go read How To Blog. I just did, and I found it quite inspiring, such that provided I can keep some of those tips in mind, I'll try and put more of them into what I write. More on that later, but first:

Go (attempt to) vote at the Bloggies. I say (attempt to) because you probably won't, but the page is a great page of links to stuff about blogs, and really just kind of goes upwards, outwards and onwards from there. It does not however, twirl.

Back to writing. I don't really like it. The whole typing thing; I find it to be too slow and prone to re-reading and editing. I could easily just not re-read or edit my work, but I find it's infectious and I do it anyways. Blogger? If you're listening, please allow me to post my mp3s to here, since if I could do that, I could audblog so much more. I dislike having to call the states. In fact, just allow the posting of any files smaller than a few megabytes. If you/your superiors can offer a gigabyte of email to any random joe, you can do this. Please do. If anyone comes after you about copywrite infringement, resist with all the power you can. If we can post text, we can copy anything digital, so screw 'em and give in to freedom. If you let this come to pass, you will be my new best friend and I will name my first born (Name picked by wife as a concession to...) Blogger Crowe.

Ok, maybe not. I suppose if I did that, I would be stuck on the couch for a long time.

Ok, so I probably don't have the guts to try and name my kid Blogger. I might grow those guts though, and then my promise just might be fulfilled.

And while I'm at it, Mozilla Thunderbird? Hon? Sweetie? I love you and all, but the whole "truncating lines so that they make a nice column" thing just has to stop. It makes for very ugly looking blog-by-email posts, and at the very least should be optional. And if you could have an option to just default to plain text emails for everything? I think we would be set for life if you could do those things. I'll try to go to counselling to stop the shouting, but sometimes the things you do just make me angry. At times like that I start thinking about pine or Sylpheed CLAWS and the things that could have been. I don't like that. I want to stay with you, Thunderbird. We can work things out, right?

Lastly, for lack of a better denouement, I'll return to a long forgotten argument had between classes at least a year ago, but I don't remember when, about what gender computers were. I shall state for the record that they are emphatically female. While they tell you they're based on logic and do exactly what you tell them, they never do either.

(Sexist joke of the day brought to you by Jesus' Peanut Butter Cups. (Ok, not really, since as far as I know that one's mine, but it's a decent way of sliding in the link, no?))

(Religious joke of the day brought to you by Goats.)

(Review of Goats brought to you by Websnark and Comixpedia.)

(I'll stop now.)  ¶ 10:56 p.m. 0 comments

  I did it again
The political compass, that is. It's comforting to see I haven't really changed much in a year. I'm still down in the bottom left with Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. That's not to say anything about me or about them, and I don't want to imply anything, but according to the compass people, that's where I am and where they are. Draw your own conclusions.

Economic Left/Right: -4.50 (- indicating collectivism/communism, + indicating free market)
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26 (- indicating libertarianism, + indicating authoritarianism)

Both values are on a scale of 1-10, I believe.
  ¶ 7:36 p.m. 0 comments

  Game Girl Advance doesn't update nearly enough.
It's only been in the past week or so that I've seen anything out of them via RSS. This might not mean they've been silent, mind you, since I know a number of sites whose RSS just broke and I haven't bothered to follow up on. Still, I personally have not seen much from their feed lately, and then today I saw this: an idea so simple, you wonder why it hasn't been done already.

Think about it: what if you started up a multiplayer game of WarCraft III and none of the players built anything but workers and buildings? The natural state of the world is for the races of WarCraft to peacefully coexist (although you would eventually run out of resources), and this tranquility is shattered by player actions.
...
Once we have a game system where the player is trying to maintain peace through a series of interesting choices (the same as one would make war in a typical Real Time Strategy), we can make things more complicated. What if the player not only needs to maintain peace, but also needs to be in a dominant position over the other players?

I think this is an absolutely great idea, and that it would make for an innovative, engaging game, albeit one that may only achieve moderate success. Why? Because it would likely be either mismarketed or misreceived. I see war games being popular because they give the opportunity to enact all the romantic, attractive aspects of war without all that nasty bloodshed, loss of life and destruction that entails the real thing. This would drive away some of That said, I don't think the game would appeal to the fans of the "other" strategy genres, in which the onus is on development of technologies and societies, since that sort of thing would likely be less emphasized.

I challenge anyone to make a game like this, or to show me one that's already been developed (example from the linked article notwithstanding). However, my personal prediction of the commercial success of "PeaceCraft" (as it is dubbed by GGA), provided that it is done well, is to be similar to that of Kohan: a solid, well-executed game that has developed a following, but nonetheless remains off the radar for the more casual gamers.
  ¶ 1:17 p.m. 0 comments

  HURRRRRRRRRRRR
I listened to an album I had on my computer for the longest time without ever really looking at: In The House of Secrets, by the Sandmen. I have no idea where I got it, or when, or who this band is, but it's not bad music. It has kind of a blues-rock feel to it; feels somewhat laid-back, but not afraid to march inexorably forward with the beat. I suppose that's somewhat of a paradox, but I don't particularly care. Think kind of a blend between a shaven, Country-less ZZ Top and some Eric Clapton. Or perhaps not. (I could be inventing these analogies off the top of my head for lack of better activity.) Still, if on the superfluously remote chance you get a chance to listen to the album, I recommend at least listening to Snowman (first track) and Ode to Will (in the vicinity of track six).

In contemplating my lack of having something to say, I thought of what could be a decent gimmick for a blog (not that I intend on starting another). Basically, I might have mentioned (or you might have noticed first hand if you have met me in person) that I have a good memory. I don't know if it's photographic, but I do have the recall of minutiae down pretty pat. That said, my idea was to simply write about whatever I happen to remember regarding some object at random I come across during a given day.

Example: CD by the Wallflowers (Bringing Down the Horse). I ordered the album through my early membership with Columbia House, a relationship that haunts me to this day. The Wallflowers themselves are an example of my early musical taste, something I don't consider now, in hindsight, to be very refined. When I got the album, Sixth Avenue Heartache was all over the radio, as was the Cartigans' single (Love Me, I think it was called). The selection of the Wallflowers' album in particular was more or less the result of having not minded the single and still having several "free" CDs to pick. The prodigy of Bob Dylan soon faded out of the spotlight, but he nonetheless ended up paving some of the way towards some of the stuff I listened to in high school, being somewhat mellow Alternative stuff, with some Rock. Basically, representative of the radio I listened to at the turn of the millenium (1998-2001): Matchbox 20, Marcy Playground, Metallica's S&M, Our Lady Peace, the Tea Party, Fastball, Matthew Good, Barenaked Ladies, and so on. Some of those bands are still around, some of them have since vanished into One Hit Wonder-dom. Since then, my tastes have gotten progressively harder and harder, to the point where I consider myself to be largely a metalhead while at the same time wading simultaneously forwards into the progressive/psychedelic genres and backwards into the classics. I still have a lot of my old music, though, and it pops up now and again in my playlist, keeping it real, yo.

So yeah. Whether I start going on more about this in the future, I have yet to decide. Maybe when I don't have anything to talk about and don't want to go all Adaptation-ish and talk about not having anything to talk about. I'm thinking more and more that that's overdone, so I'll shut up now.
  ¶ 10:48 a.m. 0 comments

  Reticent as usual
I've been uncharacteristically verbose in Internet-land. I'd rectify this, except that I really don't have anything to say. This time last year I was mostly chatting about what I was cooking, while this year I don't cook. Last year, I wasn't really doing anything at all in the evenings, and this year, I'm not really doing anything at all in the evenings either.

In short, I'm boring, and I don't really care, so I'm not going to change. In the meantime, now that I'm nicely into a somewhat post-modern post about my not posting, I'll change the subject entirely.

... or not. Nobody wants to read about opossums anyhow.
  ¶ 4:17 p.m. 0 comments

  Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
Before you even bother to question, yes, that title refers to Helena Bonham Carter. No, she's not dead, but she does play a corpse in Tim's new movie. Also not surprising in the slightest is Johnny Depp's involvement. I wonder if they both did this flick at the same time as that other one? All that's needed now is to complete the Burton family by having the music done by that guy who did the music for a lot of other stuff.

While it might sound like I'm sour about the whole thing, I do want to see Corpse Bride. I happen to love the style of animation used in Nightmare Before Christmas, and I'm glad it's coming back to the bleak morbid themes it was meant for after being spoiled utterly by that blasted Peach movie. This year is going to be a good one for cinephiles, I am thinking.  ¶ 5:10 p.m. 0 comments

  I said something about music on Sunday.
I think it was about having X songs, where X was a number that started with a 6 and had about 4 digits. This was a lie.

I don't mean to brag or anything, but it turns out I have 21 DAYS worth of music. Twenty-one days, thirteen hours and forty-five minutes worth of music, unevenly distributed across 7205 songs. I am now going through all of these songs in order to make a readable, searchable, nicely formatted media library in Winamp.

I do this because I enjoy the pain, apparantly. If you have a tenth that many songs, which is still a lot, don't do what I'm doing.  ¶ 9:11 p.m. 0 comments

  Things you learn whilst looking at skylights
I can't speak for anyone else, but it hurts my eyes when I look at something intensely lit, which is to say not exactly bright or shining like the sun, although that certainly applies, but also like walking outside on a sunny, snowy day. All the intense white after spending all day indoors under fluorescents gives my eyes the same feeling as when I'm focusing on something very tiny for a long time. That sensation where you physically feel your pupils contracting to deal with the light.

It occurred to me that it would be super-cool if we could have more control over that. For instance, what if we could totally contract our pupils to the point where we could stare into the sun or a spotlight. What if we could expand our pupils for low-light scenarios? It's like one of those biological frills that didn't come in the human model, and can only be had when you procure a cat or a lemur.

Following this train of thought to its necessary terminus, which for me at least involves superheroes or sci-fi, I think a character with very subtle biological perks would be neat. Like the pupils, or having a more finely tuned inner ear, so he or she can always land head-over-heels, which is to say, your feet are touching the ground and you are very much not supporting your body weight on the pavement with your face.

I think that would be really neat, but then again, I'm a little odd.
  ¶ 12:00 p.m. 0 comments

  I thought it was safe to go swimming again.
Am I the only one creeped out about this? Man remotely controls shark. Seriously, like anyone who saw Jaws at an early-ish age, the possibility of shark attack scares the bejeezus out of me. Now we have to worry that people we don't like will go out and hire a squad of hit-sharks to do us in. Don't even get me started on the whole "further reaffirmation that all our thoughts and personalities are simply the result of a particular combination of neurochemicals and can be changed with science" meme.

They say some things are better left alone. I guess the inside of a shark's brain doesn't fall into that category.
  ¶ 4:51 p.m. 0 comments

  I have a lot of music.
During my computer de-meltdown, I burned all my music to DVD. There was 11 of them. This amounts to approx. 300 albums, but I am really not sure on that one.

Total number of songs as reported by Winamp: 6962. Number of songs that I have not listened to in a long time when loading all 6962 tracks into Winamp and hitting shuffle: lots. I should do this more often.  ¶ 3:04 p.m. 0 comments

  Magnets.
Checkboard Nightmare makes me laugh again.

1. Take one insane character.
2. Mix in one random idea.
3. Add a dash of last panel surprise twist that just takes a good idea pitch and bats it out of the park.  ¶ 9:02 p.m. 0 comments

  Avast, ye criminals!
Aight. So I'm back in Paragon, and things have changed a little. Bunch of new features, little interface doohickeys, most of which are pretty handy. They've allowed high-level heroes to team with low-level ones, like reverse sidekicking, and all the XP you gain there goes into debt, which is handy. Apparantly there's a Lord of Winter or something in town, so snowball fights are in. You can now gather badges and additional titles, so high-level heroes look even more awesome. (Think: The Mystical Amazing Dr. Strange, Master of the Uncanny.)

It's good to be back.

My new character, having discovered that a) Pianoforte is still around as I left here, and b) I can't use that name on the Virtue server, (whether because there's another Pianoforte there, or because my character is still around, I don't know) I rolled up a new gal: Bonny Ann. As in the pirate. It took a little bit to figure out how to get a dark magic-based ninja-type into the pirate mold, but here's what I came up with.

See, in my world, Bonny Ann (no relation to Anne Bonny*) was the pirate. She took down all the big ones, from Edward Teach the black-bearded one to Bill Kidd to Hank Morgan. She was skilled to the extent that she considered using a sword a handicap, and honed her martial abilities to near perfection. After amassing a mountain of treasure and running out of colonies and other pirates to pillage, Ann eventually learned of the dark arts and managed to transport her ship and crew to Neverland. Yeah, the one with Hook and Tinkerbell - let me finish. Having a brand new world to plunder, she deposed Capt. Hook, seized his ship and crew and eventually had Neverland in her gloved fist. In her final duel with Peter Pan, self-appointed chamption of childhood, she was taken by surprise by a previously-unknown pixie. This wasn't Tinkerbell - Bonny had put Tink to death as soon as possible to rob Pan of his flight - but this faerie was packing. One pixie-dust overdose later, and Bonny was put through one of the most horrible acid trips in existence. She emerged a new woman, having seen the hell she was responsible for through the veil of madness. She fled Neverland immediately, and arrived in Paragon City. (Time doesn't pass out past the second star to the right, remember?) Now she seeks to mend her ways, helping the citizens of this new world.

* So I got it backwards. Sue me.

So all that was simply to justify why my pirate:

• fights with a sword;
  
• has dark magic powers;
  
• can fly. (I really want a flying character, and after a pixie-dust overload, who wouldn't be able to defy gravity?)
  

So whaddaya think? Comic gold, or not worthy of a bad Howard the Duck crossover?  ¶ 8:37 p.m. 0 comments

  Glah!
This is what happens when you post and don't check up on it. They look like crap, all because my silly University webmail client appends new-line characters in the middle of lines, so's it looks all purty.

A pox on it, I say. All better now, though.  ¶ 3:10 p.m. 0 comments

  The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Before reading Questionable Content, I had never heard of The Arcade Fire. (I had also never heard of the Futureheads or Broken Social Scene, but that's another story.) A while ago, I snagged myself a copy of Funeral, their album from 2004, and it sat around for a while while I got to it.
That (the getting to it) happened not too long ago, but it was this week that this album finally sank in, like a runner who intended to take a shortcut through a muddy bog. I didn't intend to like this album as much as I do, but it just kind of opened up and I fell in.

Simply put, this album is beautiful. It has a very mellow, almost understated tone to it that just makes you want to sit and appreciate it for what it is. The tracks are all relatively different, each with their own individual sound, largely thanks to the wide variety of instruments and objects used in them. (One track opens with an accordion, evoking memories of the theme from Amelie, while another is complemented by a kettle whistling in the background.)

John Allison picked this album to be at the top of his Best of 2004 list (as annotated by Shelley), and I couldn't agree more. I may not be one of the first to proclaim how great this CD is, but I probably won't be the last, and when the dust settles, Funeral remains the first truly great album I have listened to in 2005.
  ¶ 6:17 p.m. 0 comments

  Worlds of Warcraft Angers Calculon
In hindsight, this post should be linked up the wazoo. Good thing I'm both at work and lazy. Anyways...

WoW is better than God. I've heard from so many sources that this game is the Second Coming of the Electric Interw3b Jesus and contains 20X6 orgasms per second while playing. Also, it buys you a new BMW when you install it.

Alright maybe not, but it is still supposed to be damn fine. My beef is not with the game, but rather the distribution that surrounds it, or rather the lack thereof. Every EB I've been to has been sold out. Amazon.ca only has "used" copies being sold by some jackhole in PEI for a hundred and eighty dollars a pop. EBGames.com is on back-order. This game is rarer than the elusive three-ringed tanuki of Northern Iowa, and those only show up on the 3rd Friday the Thirteenth of an odd-numbered leap year when Saturn is in the hemisphere of Orion, and we wants it!

Why should this be? Seriously, I can't think of a single reason why you should have to go to the store to buy this game. Half-Life 2 could be had digitally, why not Worlds?

"But wait," you say. "Half-Life 2 came out using that villainous Steam service, where you have to log in with Valve and can only play when they say!"

Really. You don't say. That sounds remarkably like every other MMORPG ever conceived. In fact, even when you do have a physical copy of the game on CD, DVD or vinyl, as is your preference, you still need to download all the updates and patches released since launch, of which I am certain there are many. Sure, maybe you don't want to have to download the whole game, but then again, that didn't stop Valve from releasing their game into stores in a shiny box. (Sure, you could argue that they were forced into that one, but that's irrelevant.)

Why, Blizzard, WHY?! You are such an awesome company. If you were a woman, I would have you carry my babies. Please, please, PLEASE, offer WoW as an all-digital release. Maybe even toss in one of those 7-day trial memberships, and gain the possibility of overtaking Eversmack in the MMORPG realm. (Yes, I'm aware this is remote. Hyperbole, people!) In the utmost sincerity on my part, you are holding back progress. Please stop, if not for me, than for... well, me. I haven't ranted about this to anyone else yet, but if the world knew, it would be on my side! (Based on preliminary market research provided by The Top Of My Head, Inc.)

As it stands, now I am thinking of turning back to my last MMORPG love affair, City of Heroes. See, I got a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths for Christmas, and it reached into me. It found the little heartstring labelled "Superheroes Are Freaking Awesome" and just started plucking away, and now I keep thinking about all the ridiculously cool stuff in Paragon City that I never did. No costume changes, no power swap quests. I don't think I even found the right archetype for me!

So, as soon as I have got my computer going again, (I am getting ready for the Great Purge presently) I am going back to Paragon City. For hero concepts, I did think of a couple, but I decided that I didn't get to play as Pianoforte enough. Therefore, the black leather-clad, fedora-wearing crimefighter will make a comeback, this time not as a gravity controller, as awesome as that was, but as a scrapper with super-reflexes and Netherworld powers. Still working out new backstory ideas and power sets, but she'll be awesome, I tells ya! Awesome!

To wrap things up, I just want to mention that my limited-edition, autographed gel case-wrapped Fancy Ultra-Fresh album by Freezepop arrived yesterday, and it's really good. The majority of the aural gold is in the first four tracks, but the rest are nice poppy synth, just like the rest of the tracks Liz, Sean (the other one) and the Duke have put out. We like it, yes we do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have about fifteen to twenty minutes more work to suffer through.  ¶ 2:04 p.m. 0 comments

  One more post 'afore I go back to the basement
Checkerboard Nightmare is drawn by Kris Straub. He has a gift for sarcastic wit. It is comics like the one he drew today that make me realize just how much I love webcomics. Also, go read Gabe's commentary on said strip

Internet forever, baby! Long Live The Web!
  ¶ 11:21 p.m. 0 comments

  In which you go read
Hugh Macleod doodles on the back of business cards. He also happens to be one of the most insightful writers I've ever read about being creative. Sure you could object that I've probably only read one or two things about creativity, but I don't think that's fair. Why? Because.

Go read his book/blog/site/thing. No matter what you do, be it write, draw, sing, engineer, gripe or fabricate: it will help you. Creativity is something that is useful in all circumstances, in all fields and to all people. I most highly recommend it.
  ¶ 10:23 p.m. 0 comments

  E! Piff! Ah! Nee!
So yes, I've been rather silent here. There are many reasons for this, largely the fact that my computer is in a cardboard box and is rather not plugged in, but that's incidental. I'll be back blogging soon and the three of you that are still waiting in vain for me to bring you something screwed up from the far corners of the Internet can just keep waiting. So sorry, but seriously, I've hit one something important here.

Let me illustrate the scene here for you: my parents' computer is, when you ignore all those important "in the case" parts, much cooler than mine. They have a wireless keyboard, a precise wireless mouse and an LCD monitor. I have none of these. The closest I come is my Intellimouse Explorer, but as certain people I know will tell you in a heartbeat, those are crap. I know this, and I've accepted it. What matters in a PC is not the keyboard, and it is not the monitor. Those let you interact, yes, but they are not power in the same sense that a video card capable of programmatically generating music, lighting and textures is. I've seen this run on lesser, more inferior computers, and my computer can handle that program, and it is cool. Not shark-jump cool, but the good cool.

However, the interaction is not to be downplayed. In the same room as my parents' computer, there is a green chair. This chair is big. This chair is comfy. This chair reclines. The combination of this chair, plus the lack of tails on both mice and keyboard was just too enticing for me to pass up, and I don't think I can work at a computer the same way again.

There is but one hangup, and that is the display. Yes, LCD monitors are nice on the eyes, and they are pretty and slim and sleek and sexy and all that fun stuff. They are not, however, large, and that is the important part. If you want large, you need to get a bigger screen, which in turn requires one of three things.

Thing the first is just a big 'ol goddamn CRT tank. The 17" and 19" behemoths are nothing compared to the leviathans that are 24" CRT monitors. Having a desk made out of rock or metal is not quite my cup of tea though, so I veto this option, and I veto it good.

Thing the second is a TV, by virtue of the magic of TV-out. My computer can do it, but the loss of resolution and general lack of TV in my room make this slightly inhibitive. I have no problem saving up to buy a killer screen for my DVDs, PS2 and PC all, but I think my thinking will become clear quite soon. In the next paragraph even.

Thing the third is a display of pure light. None of this corporeal display bullshit -- just beams of photons, shot forth from the great eye of the projector onto the virgin white wall, ready to be covered with the grandeur of the Lord of the Rings, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or even Windows XP. Just waiting to soak it all up. Yes, I have seen the potential of having one of those fancy-dancy digi-projectors you may see at school or at work mounted on the ceiling in your own home, and we wants it, my precious, we wants it. It is the final ingredient, and now that I have tasted the joy of surfing the net from a big overstuffed recliner kicked back in the Slack-Ass Position, wiggling an optical mouse on the arm, keyboard tip-tapping happily away on my lap, and I want more.

The more is the projected screen, and it will be mine. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow*. Maybe not even next year. But someday. Someday, I will have it, and the world will know fear.

Or perhaps that was just some bad fish it had for lunch the other day. Who can tell with them anyways?

(To sum up, for those that skipped to the end: Recliner == good. Wireless == good. Big screen == good. Let X be the end product of tying those three up with Internet.

X == orgasmically good. And not just because the Internet is 90% naked ladies.)

* Tomorrow, incidentally, is either "Andrew gets to electrocute himself wiring the house so's he can get Internet in his room" Day, or "Andrew gets to drive himself bonkers trying to set up a wireless network in the house so's he can get Internet in his room" Day. One might even get the impression that I would like to get the Internet in my room. Funny, that.

Oh, one final thing: Pre-shrunk is quite possibly the best blog of this year. I think there might be one shirt I don't want. Also, you can have a gold star if you can guess the shirt I want the most!
  ¶ 9:29 p.m. 0 comments