Chomp

General

So today I feel liberated. Scared. Happy…actually happier than I have felt in a long time.

I quit my job today.

Too right, mates. I got a sharp boot to the backside and decided that it was enough dicking around and leave the bar. Long story short: I mistakedly put up a naughty pic onto the bar’s website that the owner didnt like. I got the call Sunday morn to take it down. Which got me to thinking that I wasnt really doing what I want to do, which is graphic design (web and print) and that I am wasting time sitting around cowtowing to promoters and committees that come to the bar with their hands out and faces blank, expectant for you to give them something just because theyre “part of the community”. Coupled with the constant gnawing at the heels of my brain that I was going nowhere and needed to do something with my life other than foreskin contests, I decided to make the jump. My old job will become a contract position where I will only do the website once or twice a month with the odd poster/pamphlet thrown in. I have other leads as well so Im not sitting idly by and wondering when the next bingo cheque will be.

I could be all bitter and mad and tell you the whole gorey details of how this revelation came about…Maybe some day after all this blows over. Im not sure how the owner is going to take my leaving…he may cut me out entirely as some employers are wont to do, or he might still want me around. My leaving is not even 6 hours old.

As I said, Im liberated. And scared. Anyone need a freelance graphic designer?

This Just In…
I wanted to comment on the whole Siegfried and Roy tiger attack thing. Ok, I think these two have been lucky so far that their tigers havent turned on them sooner. I am glad to hear that Roy has mumbled “Dont kill the cat,” through the bandages. But what makes me laugh is this (from the first news item):

Witnesses said Horn defended himself by hitting the tiger with his microphone. The microphone created a crashing sound in the theater when it hit the face of the male tiger

Okay. Here’s the soundtrack to that mental image:

“Down!”

“Raaaar!!”

chomp.

“Aaaa!”

bong!bong!bong!bong!!!

Is it wrong to laugh at this?

Halloween. You know what you are gonna be?

General

So Im playing a vid game at The Tool Box tonight. Its quiet. Not too busy. Two barflies are playing the game beside me. One skinny, on the game, the other, portly and hanging onto the skinny guy like some drunk bingo winner with a jackpot cheque in her hand. Heres the conversation:
Big Guy: “Halloween. You know what you are gonna be?”
Skinngy Guy: “If all goes right, a marine!”
BG: “If all goes right, Im gonna be a Klingon!”
SG: “First series?”
BG: “God who does that? Who does the first series Klingon!? Come on!”
Grope grope grope…

Packing Fudge

Celebs and Media

Is it bad that my two current favorite shows (ok, three) are from Spike TV? Does that make me slothenly? Lower of class? Crude? I dont care. I love The Joe Schmoe Show. Its art-imitating-life-imitating-art. I feel like Im watching a mix of the Truman Show and Ed TV. And he seems like such a good guy. I lay wager that he will be cool with the whole thing when it gets revealed. Im hooked. I hate it.

Next up is Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Spike buys all the episodes of a Japanese game show a few years old and redubs the whole thing disregarding the original scripts and makes it topical filled with double entendres. Combined with the violent tasks the contestants go through, its a good laugh. It makes me laugh every show.

Finally, Stripperella. Backstory: a few months ago I discovered Pam Andersons V.I.P. which honestly has some funny lines in it. Granted you have to sit through some terrible lines and action to get one or two gems from her (character not yet hired into her agency is about to be shot, Pam blurts: “Leave him! Its not like he’s on payroll or anything!”) Now comes this cartoon she does the voices for. It proves that she is totally in control of her image and her career. And I find it ironic her best work yet is a cartoon character. Best line of the show so far: Evil Character to a Richard Simmons parody character…”This is no time to fudge pack!” (see…he was packing fudge for an admirer who lost 10lbs…I guess you’d have to see it…).

Package

Toronto

So Im in Pharma Plus returning some of those nearly disposable battery operated toothbrush heads. See I bought a “Spin Brush Pro” and picked up just the “Spin Brush” regular or something. They were the wrong ones. So anyway. I ask the woman at the counter if I could return them but I had bought them a while back and inbetween that time I had gone to Calgary and stuff. The package was still sealed so she said “I dont think it will be a problem.”

…And then just stood there

So I look at her. She looks at me. Then glances down one of the isles.

A moment passes.

I make a face that says, “So?”

“Oh theyre in the basement,” she says, like Im suppose to know who ‘they’ are and why ‘theyre’ in the basement.

Another moment.

“Can…you call them?”

“Oh theres no phone in the basement,” she said all conspiratory-esque.

Another moment.

Actually the moment lasted longer than a standard moment. More like an English Imperial moment. All bloated and confused.

“Is there a snake pit on the way to the basement?” I ask.

Her look was one like a Fembot that had just 1) had its face knocked off…all embarassed and exposed; and 2) glazed over like a Fembot that looked like “Whoa…water…Im gonna explode…”

I made excuses and left.

Totally unrelated: I forgot something my sister said in Calgary as we were driving around with Dad and Donald and myself: “I wonder what kind of package you need for a woody like that?” My eyes bug out. She meant the tricked up PT Cruiser beside us. Oh straight people…

Google Me This, Batman

Work

Have you played with the Google Start Up page? All the blocks of text can be dragged and dropped wherever you want. Easier to use than My Yahoo! Friendly! Clean!

I fear my job as web page designer will be obsolete in a year’s time if this takes off. It won’t matter how long I suffer over page balance (like we use to do over fonts and font sizes) because some inbalanced dink will do what they want with the pages they view.

But damn if it ain’t cool! I can see all my Gmail incomings!

Google needs to let RSS feeds to be added to it but soon…soon…

Back From Calgary, Part the Three: Various bits

Personal Bits

• My sister’s house is massive. I really hope that she can offload it without any loss.
• I also hope she can build the house she wants beside the house she needs to offload. She’s busier than a paper wasp at a pulp fiction convention.
• I wore Government of Canada, Parks Canada rented shorts. I looked like I had canvas diapers on. Mike oddly enough looked kind of like a 1950s dad at a cottage…
• The mountains smell…like pine… We speculated as to whether or not there was a car freshener factory near by when in Kananaskis.
• There are some wicked used book stores in Calgary: I got Caves of Steel and Foundation, Issac Asimov; Salmon of a Doubt, Douglas Adams (I recommend. I was a bit aprehensive when I heard they were raiding his hard drives…Im glad they did); Crytonomicon, Neal Stephenson (I was reading it on the streetcar the other day and this guy punched his girlfriend and pointed at me “HE’S READING IT!!”)

Back From Calgary, Part The Two: Our Hero Eats

Personal Bits

Mike brought me a t-shirt from Vancouver…my second favorite Sushi restaraunt in the world.

My sister took us to the Dragon Pearl in Calgary where they served the best Salt and Pepper Lemon Seafood I have ever tasted. She went on to Freudian Slip-Up the soup appetizer into “Hot and Sewer Soup”. Laughs all around. I got my dad to eat Ethiopian food. He was cool with eating with his fingers but he was more interested in picking up the waiter. “Should I go? I could leave you two alone…”

I had 4 – 5 cups of tea in the morning with the paper. It was heaven. Ive not done that in a long time. Rhino (bro-in-law) insisted on making bacon in the microwave, which was ok, but nothing beats the gooeychooey of fat on a nice piece of smokey.

The last meal we had was at the Chicago Chophouse. $50 T-bone steaks ($5 extra for the garlic mashed potatoes) and (I kid you not) $20,000 bottles of wine. No lie. I had to rub my eyes to make sure the comma was in the right place. The restaruant was total “Beef and Oil” old-boy kinda place with the largest fully stocked bar I have ever seen (to impress the American investors-including the career bartender who knew every single drink on either side of the border, ever) and golf on the bigscreen tv in the pre-dinner lounge. The waitresses were nice in a classy Hooters kinda way. Dinner was about $100/person after dessert.

Back From Calgary

Personal Bits

Back from Calgary! What was the land of “scared white, right winged rednecks” like? The first thing I encoundered was a guy grunting in the washroom stall next to me after I got off the plane.

I met a Hutterite. Think Mennonite but with relaxed attitudes. He was fucking hot…he had a unkept chinstrap of hair and a great weird accent and sold me some tomatoes. His ill-fitting suit (probably cut from the same template from generations passed down) just made him all the more attractive. I could tell he had great legs through his pants. He had big calloused hands that I wanted on my backside. Grrr

I saw a moose on Saturday. It wasnt as big as I expected and I guess TV has desensitized me to their actual greatness (I think it was an adolescent moose, its antlers wernt very big). We skidded to a stop and sat there in stunned silence for a nanosecond…then “Where the fuck is the camera?!” and “Moooose!!!” It trundled back into the woods right after that. I feel great about that.

The Fun Song

Personal Bits

What kind of day did I have today? Let me sum it up with a song from Spongebob Squarepants:

The F.U.N. Song
(Speaking Part)
Spongebob: It’s not about winning, it’s about fun!
Plankton: What’s that?
Spongebob: Fun is when you…fun is…it’ like…it’s kinda…sorta like a… What is fun?? HERE…Let me spell it for you!

Spongebob:
F is for Friends who do stuff together.
U is for You and me.
N is for Anywhere and anytime at all.

Sea Creatures:
Down here in the deep blue sea!

Plankton:
F is for Fire that burns down the whole town.
U is for URANIUM…BOMBS!
N is for No survivors when you’re-

Spongebob:
Plankton! Those things aren’t what fun is all about!
Now, do it like this,
F is for Friends who do stuff to-

Plankton:
Never! That’s completely idiotic!

Spongebob:
Here, Let me help you…
F is for friends who do stuff together.
U is for You and me, TRY IT!

Plankton:
N is for Anywhere and anytime at all.

Sea Creatures:
Down here in the deep blue sea!

Plankton:
Wait…I don’t understand …I feel all tingly inside…
Should we stop?

Spongebob:
No! That’s how you’re supposed to feel!

Plankton:
Well I like it! Lets do it again!

Spongebob: Okay!

Spongebob & Plankton:
F is for Frolic through all the flowers.
U is for Ukelele.
N is for Nose picking, chewing gum, and sand licking.
Here with my best buddy.

(Laughing part)

Sea Creatures: Down in the deep blue sea.

Eroctic Stirrings

Queer stuff, Toronto

I truly hate panhandlers. I do. I got yelled at by one today because I wouldnt look at him or talk to him or anything. Fucking dick. He yelled at me that he had a $10/hr job and that he was trying to make ends meet. “you and me both,” I thought. What annoyed me more was that he did it with a drag queen’s attitude. Dick.

Im looking at a guys forearm today on the streetcar and Im thinking I wish I had forearms like Popeye. He was sexy…then I thought about Baloo in The Jungle Book and how that was my first eroctic stirrings when I saw that movie at the Capital theatre in Brockville…the bit where he rubs up against the tree with his back.