(via Drawn!) Link!

I think I am going to try shaving a robot on the Sharkboy…

1) She talks. Non stop. But I guess that is on par for anyone who has their fingers in your mouth. No chance whatsoever of getting a word in edgewise. At the end of the cleaning, my Dentist came in to inspect her work and looked up at the TV to see Dr Phil (more on that in a moment) and he asks what today’s show is about. She launches into such a disjointed monologue, emphasized with finger pointing at the screen, that the writers for LOST would have been envious: “He’s got two girlfriends but one is his wife and she the girlfriend, is her ex best friend and he’s had two kids with them within a month of each other and he cant decide…”

I shoot a look at my Dentist. His eyes are sheilded of course but they tell all. Nothing. He’s sat through this rant before.

2) She has a sense of humour. On her “Wall of Teef” or “Wall of Great Gums” or something, there is an area of nothing but cats. I am assuming cats from clients. Unless she’s a crazy cat lady, which wouldnt surprise me one bit. Smack dab in the centre of the cat collage is a picture of ALF. I dont know if its a sick joke or what. But it’s funny.

3) She loves Dr Phil. I have never seen a show of his, nor have I seen his initial appearances on Oprah, either. It was like watching Desperate Housewives on Quaaludes. “I. Will. Leave. Him.” chants a upper middle class woman so mired in low self esteem, she makes Kirstie Alley look like… Dr Phil. Of course, I am biased because of all the screaming, punching Springer/Montel/Maury/Ricky Lake shows I’ve seen.

I am sure Dawn (of Dawn’s Brain) and Evil Panda (of Dark Designs) can back me up on this:

You are contacted by a potential client (yay!), usually sent to you by word of mouth, and you’re making a shopping list with the money you will make as the client begins to explain their needs. Then it starts going south. You get a bad vibe and you start feeling that if you get involved with this project you might as well pick up your banjo and join the band on the deck as the design takes on icy water.

I just deflected a job that stank of sink. The client sent me a url of a site in development that the wanted my opinion on how to make it “better”. They also offered “suggestions” of what they would like to see. One of the questions they asked was “What program created the code?”

How odd…

I looked at the site and other than some garishly coloured graphics, I could find no fault in the code or the site layout. Whoever created the site knew their stuff: the CSS was like looking into the face of God. It was compliant to all standards and worked extremely well in Opera, Safari, Firefox and IE. The layout was smooth and professional and in the end I really could not see why they wanted to revamp this development site. I basically said to them that the site is done, just change the colours, dump the bright graphics and stop spending your money on redesign after redesign.

I got this back:

…your input was excellent.
In one paragraph you described the problem and
Offered (sic) the only solution possible.

Thank you again

I breathed a huge sigh of relief as there was no “…now can you do it?” attached.

Of course I just spent 2 hours of my freelance life for free but I think I deflected hours of aggro.

I have a paranoid friend and I love him to bits.

He keeps a small, cut up meatloaf tin over his apartment door letter slot. He says it to stop people from looking in at his $10,000 worth of computer bits. Once I tried to put a birthday card through his slot and wasn’t able to because of the snail mail firewall.

He has the most virus protection on his computer I have ever seen. He was shocked when he discovered that my computer doesn’t have an Admin password. In a conspiratory tone, he tells me of a way of putting a password in twice to make sure my box is secure. His wireless router’s password is changed daily.

He tells me that the Weathernetwork.ca, under order from Tourism Ontario, puts “nice” weather stats up before a long weekend, regardless of its going to be rainy or sunny, motivating people to travel. He wonders what kind of kickbacks The Weather Network gets.

Last night, over Rolo Blizzards, he made me stare at a cut out of Ronald McDonald. Close. Hard. He tells me that for the last 10 years, TV commercial Ronald has been played by a woman. It was the closest to a “Pulp Fiction” moment I have ever been to.

The Toronto In and Out Film Festival (who’s site is down as I type this) will be screening this movie (titled “Bear Cub” for us non-Spaniards).

I recommend that if you slightly align yourself with hairy, easygoing men or consider yourself hard core Bear, you rent this movie instead of going to the theatre, especially since the extras on the DVD show a little more humour and different facets of the story than what you’ll see on screen (you can get it at 7/24 Video on Church). The themes aren’t new but it is a first for the Bear community. At least I think this is the first fully “Bear-identified” movie… Cachorro is about Pedro, a Bear living in Madrid who has to take care of his nephew and has to change his promiscuous, somewhat love-shy life and in doing so, becomes a better person bla bla bla. I make it sound boring but its far from it. There are a few scenes that had me blubbering and holding my breath.

One thing about the translation/subtitles: I hope you can speed read. I’m not sure if the Spanish language is actually that quick or I’ve become a slow reader. You may need to hit REWIND a couple times. Which isnt a bad thing because 99% of the guys in this movie are frikkin hot.

I have to agree with Sharkboy when he said half way through Cachorro: “We need to have more Bear parties.”

An addictive and fun game.Love the Crazy Cat Lady. (From Boingboing)

I’m skivving off work at the moment. Looking for two-man hammocks (is that homoerotic?) and I find this on the Costco site.

Does the US Army shop there, post-Iraq, end-of-aggressions?

I discovered that I had not transfered all my old blog before deleting it off the server. I showed my boss the WayBack machine at Archive.org and thought to look in on my old stomping/griping ground “mytorontoapartment.com”. I am sitting here at work, slowly adding to the archives. Feel free to scan them. I’ve had to edit them slightly only for broken links and long gone images. So no ‘unfeasably larged testicle raccoon animated GIF’ anymore. Sorry.

My first day without a job. I went in and cleaned out my desk and handed over the keys. It felt good. Last night was a good fun bar shift. Near the end there were 9 guys around my bar and some of them I have had sex with (and would again) and the others I would have liked to. At one point I had a guy with a huge foreskin kneeling on top of my bar, serving shooters out of it. Here’s a tip for you bar-going types: If the bartender buys you a drink, don’t tell him you find the busboy attractive. A guy did just that to me after I bought him the drink. I then put on my best liar-face and proceeded to explain that the busboy was a female to male transgender and if you didnt believe me, look at the eyes and hands. Oh, and ask him outright, he’s very very proud of being transgendered. I then stirred the pot more by going over to the busboy and saying “That guy at the end of the bar likes you…he wants to know your background.” So the busboy went over and struck up a conversation. You should have seen the guy’s eyes as he went from the busboy’s face, hands, hairy forearms, back to his face…looking for any signs of femininity. I will miss that job.

I went and saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre this evening. It was like watching a American Eagle Outfitters fashion commercial for the first 20 minutes and then BAM in walks R. Lee Ermey as the sherrif. Someone must have given him acting lessons after Full Metal Jacket because he pretty much stole the show, other than Jennifer Beal’s boobies.

I went and saw Kill Bill this afternoon. It was impressive, action-packed, stylish and clever. Your basic Tarantino film. I recommend it to all who like anime, Japanese fighting movies, 70s pulp fiction, and Uma Thermin. Lucy Liu was ok, but she only had one good scene where she looses her cool. She could have had great acting but it was replaced by an anime hommage for her character set up and development. Gotta love the camera shot through the hole in the assasinated politician at the two escorts looking back and screaming. Brilliant. The only troubling thing I think about post-really-cool-movie elation is that most of the fight scenes weren’t really original. There was the decaps, the dismembs, and even the sword-over-the-head-kill-the-guy-behind-you-before-swinging-it-down-onto-your-opponent move. I wonder how many movies will be made with these Hong Kong wirefight moves? Like the slo mo/fast action pan in The Matrix, we will probably get tired of them and move on.

I just got a call. My first extra gig is on Prom Queen. The made-for-tv story of that guy who took his male date to the prom. Exploitation upon exploitation! Just give me the cash! This should be interesting.