My Brother’s Face

Celebs and Media, Personal Bits, Work

Yesterday was a bad day. I was home sick with a hoarking chest cough and sinus headaches when there was a knock on the front door. Mailman. Mailman with a registered letter.

Kids, registered letters usually mean bad news. It was. The dizzy lady who owns the house I rent is coming back from Victoria and needs it back. I wake the roomie (who is sick too) and tell him the bad news. We reminisce a bit about how nice it was to live there but thats about all we can do. The rest of the day is spent yelling inside my head, things I could say to change her mind:

“Crime is up! Turn on the TV and every morning is a new story about someone getting shivved.”

“Toronto in April is so wet.”

“NO! Nonononononnononooooo!!!”

Today, after a sleepless night I struggle to get my ass out of bed and get ready for work. All yesterday I had a creeping feeling that my workstation was being touched by coworkers who had no clue. And behold, one had. Here’s a sample of what I had to clean up:

“I saved those JPGs inside your Documents and Settings folder.”

“Not in My Documents?”

“Nope. Docs and Settings.”

Why he put them into that folder is beyond me, its a frikkin operating system folder. I look. They’re not there. He cant remember where he got them from, nor can he remember where they went. Bloody typical. But that’s not the point of the story.

I am waiting in the -20C weather for a streetcar and the first one that goes by isn’t mine, but has an ad for my brother’s TV show. He’s standing behind the principal cast, his eyes are wide like a deer caught with his hooves in his dad’s porno drawer. It made me smile. I wanted to wave my arms like an idiot and point. I am resolved to steal one off the TTC somehow, or at least get a photo of it for this blog.

It made all of yesterday better. Im wicked proud of him.

New Feature!

Distractions, Hobbies, Personal Bits, Queer stuff

I’m using “Gallery” for my photo content management now. I’ve heard good things about it and decided to give it a try. I may convert the rest of the photos to it at a later date.

Meanwhile, enjoy the photos of Sharkboy, Barbie and I, as we take on Niagara Falls!

(Ed- I’ve long since stopped using Gallery. Check out the Gallery link in the upper right)

B and E

Favorite, Personal Bits

I get the call at 9:20pm:

“Hey! How are things?”

Sharkboy: “Not good…”

Sharkboy was just finishing up Pirates of the Carribean when he heard a noise coming from his bedroom. Flicking on the light he looks up to his small window (the small, basement-sized one that is just above the roof of the adjacent building next door, yet right at the top of his wall) to see a guy with a screwdriver poking at the latch on the window frame. Both men freak. Both run to the back alley. Sharkboy chases after him in his bare feet (in hindsight, this was probably not that bright, but in the heat of the moment…) and yells “I’ve called the police!” Would-be robber gets away.

Then he calls the police.

6 cops show up, take the screens for fingerprinting and then case closed. Damage done: one broken window, two shattered apartment-dwelling human’s nerves.

When I lived nearer to the Village, I was broken into while I was out . My roomies were at home at the time, “occupied” in their bedroom. The roomies thought the noise in the apartment was me bumbling around, when it was really two kids shoving stuff into their napsacks. It wasn’t until one of the robbers opened their bedroom door to get an eyeful of hot gay action did they realize they were being burgled. They chased one of the kids out the front door and heard the second leave via the back patio.

I come home to an apartment full of cops. They ask me some questions then ask me to see if any of my stuff is missing. One of them follows me up into my attic bedroom and as he crests the stairs he exclaims: “Holy! They really did a number up here!”

I am notorious for not putting dirty laundry in its hamper, nor do I put clean laundry away. I generally live the slob life.

“Yeah,” I say slowly, “A real number.”

Damage done: my Nintendo 64; $30USD I was saving for a trip to Kentucky; a pair of GAP chinos, which I took as a compliment towards my fashion sense, and my big city livin’ virginity. It took me a full 2 weeks to realize they went through my sock drawer.

Cold Blooded Mountain Or Why I Love Sharkboy (Part the First)

Celebs and Media, Favorite, Personal Bits

Sharkboy and I are watching the Cold Mountain DVD:

Sharkboy: “This is a great movie!”
Deadrobot: “Yeah, surprisingly. They did the editing on a Mac.”

Silence.

Sharkboy: “It was shot in Transylvania or somewhere.”
Deadrobot: “I heard that. They had a real problem with vampires flying in during shooting. (My best Nicole Kidman Aussie accent) ‘Ah kint werk with these constant inneruptions!'”

Silence.

Giggles.

Self Conscious

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

I’m Bear for a Day! Where the hell is my crown, staff and sash?!

If you’ve come to check me out, the pics are down the right hand side there. Feel free to stick around and read.

Pulls tv remote, magazines, old food out from between the couch pillows

If I knew you were coming I would have cleaned up a bit.

OHMYGODAPPLECRAP!!

Personal Bits, Tech

The Shuffle and the Mac Mini are hardly unexpected, what with all the lawsuits Apple has been handing out like they were XP Windows Updates. Already GAB has called the iPod Shuffle the “iSuppository”.

But why do I want them so?!? Is it the Sans-Serif font on all their product? The clean design? The fact that I find Steve Jobs sexy (for his brians, only, of course)(though, I bet he’s hairy under that turtleneck…)(where was I?)?

I am thinking, however, that my Da would like the Mac Mini, to get him off the 500mhz Aptiva he’s on right now. Its so slow and buggy, you’d think you were using a 486 on a 14.4 modem. He already has a flatscreen monitor. And the “service calls” I get when I go over for free dinners would be reduced greatly (you know the ones: “I dont know where the camera downloaded the pictures to” or “My email is broken” etc). iLife would solve lots of his worries. Hmmm…..

EVP

Distractions, Hobbies, Personal Bits

…or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, if you will. I first heard of it in William Gibson’s book “Pattern Recognition”: the lead character’s mother becomes obsessed with trying to “hear” messages from her husband who was lost during 9-11. It seems the interpretation of the soundfile is souly up to the listener, hearing what they want to hear. Pretty much like ghost writing, like my Italian Grandma use to do (she claimed to speek to a small child and wrote in the most curious handwriting when answering herself).

Right now I am all freaked out alone in my house listening to the fish tank filter, wind on the skylight and furnace whisper to me from the basement. I was looking for some reviews on White Noise (all of them saying “dont bother”) and stumbled upon www.aaevp.com. I’ve listened to their audio library and cant stop the creeping gooseflesh up and down my legs.

As a kid I was obsessed with alien abduction, Bigfoot and ghost photography. I would scour our small town’s library for all and any books on the subject and would work myself into such a frenzy that I would be sleeplessly freaked out for days. I use stare into our TV in hopes to see a spirit appear over my shoulder in the inky blackness of the idiot tube.

Right now as I type this, I am feeling that same anxiety after listening to some of the audio files on aaevp.

Its like I am a kid again and I am the only one awake in our rambling huge house in sleepy backwater Brockville. One summer night, I had churned myself into such a state after scouring over Sasquatch photos (the one of the guy in the ape suit looking back at the camera two frames before disappearing into the woods) that I was frozen to the bed listening to every bump, creak and groan the house would make. I hit the lights, got up and threw my legs over the side of the bed and looked down to the open book on the floor… open to the drawings Betty Hill had made of her alien captors, precursor to the X-Files “Greys”.

I can tell you I didnt sleep for days and that I nearly crapped the bed in fear of leaving my room to go down the long dark hallway to the loo.

Eventually I stopped looking at that stuff, loosing my faith in the otherworlds. But right now I swear to you I can hear mumbling as the fan on my CPU churns out messages from the afterlife, and I am dreading the climb down from the attic, the chores before bed and the lights out before closing my bedroom door.

GOING TO BED NOW!

Parlour Tricks

Robots

Hey! Lookit me! I can ...uh...For the last 5-7 years, various overseas companies have been holding press conferences and rolling out their robots to fan dance, run or wisecrack with reporters. This one claims to be the most advanced so far, by virtue of being connected to a server by wireless high speed.

While this is very Hollywood I, Robot and the best way for a robot to have access to massive amounts of storage it would need to “learn” using current technologies, it’s still just parlour tricks.

I get kinda embarassed, anthropromophically, when I see these poor little metal and plastic midgets paraded out in front of the press. These robots are just puppets, and I yearn to see some humanity in them other than what is placed into them by sweaty, uncreative programmers. Press conference when the ‘droids can hold their own, not their creator’s hands.

“I will see you again next time when I will have become wiser!”

Fighting The Amazon Part 2

Tech

You will recall I sent an inquiry to Amazon (click this post’s title for refreshment and koolaid). I got a reply:

To: deadrobot@rocketmail.com
From: “Amazon.com Customer Service”
Subject: Your Amazon.com Inquiry
CC:

Thank you for writing to Amazon.com with your comments about the pop-up window.

Customer feedback like yours is always important to us as we continue to determine ways to improve the shopping experience for everyone who visits our web site. I will be sure to pass your message along to the appropriate people in our company.

We will forward your comments and feedback to the appropriate department for consideration. Customer service is not in a position to make changes to web site features or functions. Likewise, we cannot make promises that other departments will make changes at our request. The most we can do is to be sure that your comments are forwarded to those who have these responsibilities.

Please let me assure you that I have done so.

Thank you for your understanding and for taking the time to write to us. We hope to see you again at Amazon.com.

Best regards,

Sara D.
Amazon.com Customer Service
http://www.amazon.com

Pop Up windows? Am I talking to a robot? I never mentioned pop-ups…

Here’s my reply:

Hi Sara D.

I am usure what you mean by “pop up window”. My inquiry was regarding unsolicited links placed on my site to your “phantom” URLs (shop-it-now.com).

I am hoping my request was directed to your accounts receivable because of the links your automated spiders keep on putting on my private site, paid for by me, out of my own pocket, my non-money making site, my virtual money pit, the thing that doesn’t make me any money (as opposed to your multi-million dollar, publically traded site). I would be happy to keep your links there if you are willing to pay for them. Seeing how they keep appearing after all my attempts to block them, I will take that as an agreement you are willing to pay for advertisement on my site. I need to know who to send my measly, hand-written invoice to.

Lets save each other the embarrassment of awkward silences and broken promises, shall we? Why not just give me the email of who I need to speak to? I don’t want Amazon to incur any outstanding charges due to late payment and I want to stop wasting your time as well as mine.

Yours,

Ted