Blocked

General, Personal Bits

I am at a bit of a loss of what to say today. Usually I can rant with the best of them. I could mention my dissapointment that This is Wonderland (page has link to the Ceeb’s complaint page!) has been cancelled. I feel for my brother, but in all honesty he is doing fine without the show, hence his absence from it this season. No. I could write about how I nearly lost it last night in Improv class when one of the students, when asked to say the imaginary name of a WWE wrestler came out with “The Lithuanian Steamer” Heh. No. I could mention that I have an Ikea cabinet for sale extremely cheap or it gets thrown out to the dogs (think silver BILLY with grey trimmed glass doors). I could mention I’m glad my Da is home from his trip onboard that Italian cruise ship. I bet he has some stories…
No.

After all that, I’m here to say I’ve reinstated my old City as Blog and some old pics back up on the Gallery section. Now that the office is 99% up and running, I hope to be adding more sooner.

Hello OnStar?

Distractions

If you’ve spent more than 20 min in a car with me then you know that it’s physically impossible for me just to “sit there” and not do anything. Our last rental car was equipped with OnStar and I SO DESPERATELY wanted to press that little blue button.

OnStar: This is OnStar, how can I be of service?
Me: Hi OnStar! Do you like what I’m wearing?

OnStar: OnStar, how may I help you?
Me: I think I’m being followed. Oh no, sorry it was a bird.

OnStar: Hello OnStar. How may I help you?
Me: (throaty, breathy) What are you wearing?

Or my favorite: Get OnStar to flash your lights (their parking lot locater service) and dance in front of the car like some bad 80s video.

“Did you find your car, Mr Robot?”
“Damn it! Keep flashing! …Dancing at the feet of the moon!!”

Boing Boing Jumps the Shark

General

Boingboing.net usually has some pretty cool stuff posted to it but lately I’ve found it’s become a bit too anti-DRM (I’ve only been reading the Sony Rootkit stories) and …well… a bit too slow on the cool stuff. I just got this across my feed:

Adustable Measuring Spoon – Clever! Cory Doctorow writes how these spoons are an “ingenious alternative to graduated measuring-spoons”. Thankfully there’s an update discrediting these super cool spoons as being “hard to clean” and awkward, no matter how much brushed metal and rubber the manufacturer uses.

Apparently Cory D needs to get out more. I’ve seen these in dollar stores last year.

Does anyone else have a new coolhunter site they can recommend?

Sharkboy’s Choice

Personal Bits

It’s a dismal afternoon as Sharkboy stands on the train platform, his arms encircling his utmost love: 600 VHS videos with such titles as Monster Lake!, Pirannha II and Biker Werewolves from Arizona. Nazi guards are all around him, insisting he make a decision on which tapes he is going to keep and which must leave him.

“Schnell!” they bark.

Tears well up in his eyes. Will he let Food of the Gods go? Or will The Swarm meet it’s untimely end? He must choose! *

This weekend Sharkboy and I remodeled the office so I could fit my computer in there. Remodeling meant taking down the 600+ videos he had up along one wall and trying to cram half of them back into an Ikea cabinet and the other half would go into storage. It was sickening to see him get more and more frustrated.

Sunday night I spent an hour on the phone with Linksys trying to get XP to talk to the wireless router. Last time I did this, I spent 3 calls to support before realizing that I was on a 2.4G phone and thats why I couldn’t connect.

The office is far from done. And my monitor dominates my tiny desk but all should be righted in the next couple weeks.

* Please note, I have never actually seen Sophie’s Choice. Consider this a re-imaging of it for my blog entry purposes.

Lazer Anus!

General

Lazer Anus! New! It’s Lazer Anus! Zap! Look out! Lazer Anus! Hey Kids! Get your parent’s permission before visiting Lazer Anus! It’s all about the Lazer Anus! Lazer Anus? Why yes! Thank you! Is that the new nano Lazer Anus? I had Lazer Anus but I lost it on the bus. New Lazer Anus in jumbo pack! Lazer Anus 2.0! LOL Lazer Anus!

Alternative iPod Operations

General

I wear thin leather gloves during these times of temperatures between 0C and -10C. They’re standard issue OPP gloves and while they are pretty darned strong, they’re so thin I can pick up subway tokens when I wear them.

Despite their functionality, when I first put them on, they are too cool to operate my iPod. I discovered this yesterday while leaving the office. I could have rubbed my fingers together to heat them up, thereby making the Play sensor kick in, but no. I had to go do things the special way.

I tounged the Play button.

…it worked.

I now officially “love” Apple products.

New Banner

Personal Bits

True to my word, I am starting the “guest banner” run this month.
I thank daryl vocat, first in with his redition of me in leather. Yeah that’s me when I was skinny, just behind the font there. He used that image for an article in Xtra magazine about sport and masculinity. You can’t see that I’m in all leather and gripping a pigskin.

The Cumberland 4 – The Worst Movie Theatre in Toronto

Hobbies, Toronto

…and I’ll tell you why.

In the days when the last of the large cinemas were deemed money black holes (bye bye Uptown!), the Cumberland should have been the first to be taken out to a secluded field and glocked in the temple.

The Cumberland’s sound system has the worst sound leakage of any theatre in Toronto. You can hear the Alliance Atlantis promo from adjacent theatres during moderately quiet moments. While Brokeback Mountain was far too quiet for us to understand what Ennis was mumbling, Caché was so loud at times we were pushed back into our seats harder than that poor Memorex ad guy. Apparently the heating is erratic because there are Canadian Tire baseboard plug-in heaters in the aisles (is an electric appliance sitting in a fire route a bad thing?) but the night we went, the room was somewhat warm, making me doze off. And finally, the crowd that goes there, while seemingly more educated than say… oh… a Scarborough multiplex movie viewer, are exceedingly thoughtless and self centred.

At our viewing of Caché, in our row, there was as a woman holding 5 seats in the centre of the aisle. No problem. Three times people pushed past us without asking if the seats were taken only to discover that they had to push back to get out. That wasn’t so bad. When a woman pushed past me and knocked the top of my popcorn bag into my face with her purse I judged that to be pretty bad. No apology. If you’ve been to the movies with me, you know I love extra flavour powder. Sharkboy turns to sit down and looks at me, covered in faux cheese powder from forehead to nipples and takes a kernel from his bag and sops some powder off my shoulder and laughs.

Later, the one of the two women who came in behind us decides it’s snack time. Up she jumps and hits me in the back of the head with her purse. No apology. She did the same thing at the end of the movie too. This time I got a hand on my shoulder and a “Oh sorry, dear” in my ear. Better late than NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

Finally, I have never been in a theatre where 1/3rd of the audience arrives at least 10 minutes into the film. We’re talking past the opening credits here, people. Not during the ads but during establishing shots. Parking SUVs in the area must be a darned pain.
I guess I am expecting more sophistication from a theatre that shows fine art slides instead of ads before the show. But I know better now. Never again will I go near the Cumberland unless it’s to see bulldozers raze that hell hole flat.

Who Actually Solved the Crimes?

Favorite, Personal Bits

Sharkboy: I solved the mystery of the Blood in the Bathroom Sink.

Dead Robot: Oh?

SB: Yes. It was you. You emptied a can of diet Pepsi into the sink and it dried there. I can prove it by the emptied crushed can in the garbage by the toilet. You have the memory span of that guy from Memento.

DR: When I move in, am I going to get this every time I do something around the house?

SB: Not my problem you’re moving in with Scooby Doo.

DR: Scooby Doo never solved the crimes. He stumbled upon the solution, never solved them. It was always Velma or Daphnie. Come to think of it, Fred rarely ever did either.

SB: He was the mask puller.

DR (in Fred’s voice): “Holy shit! It was Mr Chestshitter all along!”