They may be memory hogs and they might be useless but they’re frikkin’ cute! Konfabulator is now offering free Widgets now that Yahoo has swallowed them up. Here’s a cartoon to help you understand where they came from and what they do. Currently I have the temperature for Toronto, the Simpson’s Random Quote, Werewolf monitor (no, not when Warren Zevon will be popular again… just phases of the moon and the goldfish swimming across my desktop. Of course, if you’re on Mac OSX.4 then you already have them. Point and laugh at the slow Windows drones.

Speaking of Simpsons, Sharkboy tells me that every episode of The Simpsons has a flame somewhere in it. I have the first season and can’t recall if it’s true for those shows. I have my doubts but so far all the shows we’ve watched, there has been a flame of sorts either by explosion or someone lighting up a smoooooth Laramie cigarette. Snopes can’t confirm it. Anyone know where I can prove this?

I would also like to direct your attention to that little button that appeared within the last 24 hours on your Google Customized Start Up Page. Right up there in the left: “Add Content”. That’s right! Click on it and the toolbar DHTMLs out. You can then add all your RSS feeds from your favorite sites and when you’re done, drag them around the page to create your own layout. What? You don’t have a Personalized Start Up Page? Ask nicely and I will send you a Gmail account.

I tell you people, the web is becoming fun again.

Right now I am wearing black socks, my day-old Y fronts and nothing else. I just this moment sneaked a toot out my right cheek. I’m eating a Mac N Cheese Bologna sammich with ketchup.

No, it’s on Dempster’s brown. What do you think I am? Uncooth?

I am waiting for the print shop to open this morning, watching the Yonge Street crowd trundling off to work and I spy a typical “bank worker” guy: almost-too-short cheap dress pants, nondescript shirt, backpack on his thin mid-twenties frame, glasses, just washed slicked hair.

And a samurai sword, sheathed, in hand. I love this city.

I have never posted anything regarding the contents of my iPod but I feel I have to since OldAudioDude gave me a $20 iTunes store and he may want to know what I spent it on. Special note to the people relieving one of these gift certificates: scratch lightly. I tried 27 of a possible 34 combinations to gain access when I accidentally dug so hard into the tail end of the Scratch Here! Revel in my first and last ever iPod music list (now with superstrength DRM!):

E=MC2, Big Audio Dynamite. Sample-y goodness!

The Globe, Big Audio Dynamite II. Reminds me of living in Brixton, near The Cube!

Train In Vain, The Clash. I had to get this. I only had Annie Lennox’s version.

Weathered Wall, David Sylvian. Lookit me! I’m an art fag!

We R In Need of a Musical Revolution, Esthero. She’s back! Her voice is Godzilla and my heart is Tokyo!

Rollercoaster (King Britt Scuba Mix), Everything But the Girl. I needed an atypical Tracy Thorn hit.

Emerge, Fischerspooner. Lookit me! I’m an art fag laughing at the old art fag!

European Son, Japan. Nigel once scolded me for placing England within Europe.

Night In My Veins, The Pretenders. Doin’ it up against a car!

Kid, The Pretenders. Rainy Earls Court song.

Absolute, Scritti Politti. Gay factor 9.5. Makes me dance like a lemur.

Breakout, Swing Out Sister. Rainy Brixton song.

Surrender, Swing Out Sister. Rainy Camden Market song.

Life During Wartime, Talking Heads. OldAudio might remember driving around in Mum’s new Pontiac 2000 with this on the tape deck.

The Rabbit of Saville, Warner Bros. Live. “Can’t you see that I’m much sweeta? I’m your little Sen-yor-ee-tur!”

Five Fathoms, Everything But The Girl. One of the first songs I ever downloaded. And lost.

Hollaback Girl, Gwen Stefani. There is an angry cheerleader in all of us.

Deeper and Deeper, The Fixx. No explanation.

I’ve packed waaay too much stuff. One hockey duffel bag full of t-shirts and telescope. One gym bag full of shoes. One knapsack full of electronics. Even all after all that, I have the little gnome on my shoulder nagging at me that I’ve forgotten something.

Ugly I know. Sorry. Cuts back on the Referral spam.

I’ll be sticking my head back in here every so often so you kids better not have a party while I’m gone.

Later, Squidwards!

Sorry for the outage, kids. Who knew you had to point nameservers to the new boxes that host this site after the original owners pulled up stakes and moved on? There wasn’t much I could do out there in the wild, unless I warchucked and we all know that logging into someone’s unsecured wifi is wrong.

Speaking of stakes, expect blow by blow blog entry and pics from camping soon. One hundred and fifty some odd shots to sort through to post for your fun and ridicule. See video of Condoleeza Rice showing off her bad self! See a beached whale! See more of the same but funnier. I hope.

Thanks to Evil Panda and Griz for a great week. Looking forward to your next visit, boys. Bring Off.

Much like Lucy and Desi in The Long Long Trailer, Sharkboy and I spent 10 solid days camping it up at The Point (not entirely work safe due to slight old man nudity) and we invited along Andy and Paul (Andy is an old friend of mine from pioneer days of GAB).

I found it amusing how technology has infiltrated the campground. On a couple nights we watched movies on LCD projectors beamed up onto the sides of trailers or on laptops in prefab gazeboes in the middle of the woods. One camper had a few illegal downloads of exceptional quality and we tried our best to shun this heinous activity (pfft!). Meanwhile most of the drunk campers were wearing some sort of LED bracelette or bauble on the rec hall dancefloor, like the 90s rave thing never ended. The most complicated device we had at Camp Robotic Shark was… well… a robotic shark! While walking by The Source in Tillsonburg, I spied the hottest geek employee ever. His rugged good looks and bald goatee’d head commanded me to buy a remote controlled shark that scooted around the pool for all of 5 minutes before needing another charge. Dick purchase, really.

Our greatest purchase was this (note the “52” keg – kept our drinks cold all day long in 32C heat).

A major portion of the week with the boys was spent by the pool. We never really got our asses into gear to do day trips into the surrounding area. I suggested the Casino in Niagara or the Farmer’s Market in Kitchener (albeit a day late), someone suggested Skidoos down at Turkey Point. Yet all suggestions were ignored as we floated lazily in the pool. I feel somewhat guilty about that but I think the boys did have a good time regardless. They had their own car so it wasn’t like they were hostages and could have gone off on their own. There. I feel better after that justification.

The only daily ritual we had was cleaning the pool. To get Mr X free of his volunteer cleaning of the pool and get our asses to breakfast faster, we assisted with the organizing, vacuuming and skimming of the pool. It was a Tai Chi-like exercise swirling the sucker along the bottom of the pool as the sun rose, sucking up sand, grass and bugs while Sharkboy would replace the deck chairs to attractive patterns. This was pretty much a Sisyphussian activity since only moments after we opened the gate, the chairs would get dragged around to suit people’s groupings. Still, it did allow us to reserve the best seats in the pool.

Midweek, The Busdriver showed up and immediately made a connection with Paul as that they both loved slagging conservative US politics. We then ordered The Busdriver to make-over the Chicago Boy’s contribution to the Great Burn: Condoleeza Rice was transformed from Secretary of the State to booty momma with backcombed big hair. Gambling Addicition Barbie was magically made over from groovy 60s chick to Mullet Sportin’ Midrift Showin’ Trailer Barbie. They went up nice, especially when we sprinkled crushed sparklers in their hair. Vids coming soon!

We convinced the Chicago boys to stay on an extra day and they only got to experience the “build up” to Bear Weekend at The Point. At least two US Bear groups were in attendance and they started to roll in (ha!) on Thursday/Friday.

At this point, I really should have been carrying around a small notebook to record all the rediculous things I overheard while floating in the pool. The best was a bottle blonde bear sauntering into the pool area while we were setting up for the day and sitting beside someone who looked like he had spent the night out in the woods. He leaned in close to his friend and said: “I have a long memory and I won’t forget what you did last night.” I was straining at the bit not to ask what the hell he had done to garner this bear’s ire but good sense won out.

The only downer from the week was Sharkboy getting a couple phone messages from family members informing him of his godmother’s passing. It didn’t interrupt our week, however.

One of the highlights of the week was discovering that an extremely shy, yet very attractive older Bear was interested in tussling with both Sharkboy and I. Very flattering. The darn dirty shame was we only discovered this within the last hour of our stay at the park.

Coming back to Toronto was truly surreal. Everyone was wearing clothes. People were rude and strangers didn’t wave hello to you as you passed them on the street. Attitude abounded, even as we strolled along Church Street. We spent a couple hours fantasizing about how we’d fix up The Point if we had won $1 million.

We’ve booked for Labour Day but might go back for a night before then.

UPDATE: Pics are up here.

I was walking behind a text book atypical family of four (Dad, Mom, Son, Sis) on the way to work this morning and as they approached a city block the Dad pipes up:

“Okay, on this block, we’re going to pick up all the garbage on the sidewalk!”

Slight grumblings from the son and saunters over to a can by a doorway. The daughter took off, excited to get the most crap on/in her tiny mitts. Mom picks up a couple of wrappers and Dad went right into a bus shelter to get a Kleenex. Ew.

Now, I was amazingly proud of this family. They collected for one city block and stuffed stranger’s trash into a bin at the end of the block. They made picking up garbage on the block fun and helped make the city a little bit cleaner. More people should be as considerate.

But my negatory self, perched up on my shoulder with pitchfork and red catsuit, thought: Dad’s pretty cheap if that’s their form of family entertainment.

I so want to see The Aristocrats! Here’s a clip of the South Park kids’ version of the joke (via World of Wonder). Crappy animation safe for work, but audio certainly isn’t.

Dinner with the playwright brother last night:

“How many hits on your blog?” he asks, as we settle in, post nosh.

I puff out my chest, “Over a million a month!” *

Collectively the eyes of everyone sitting at the table bug out, Mom included. “A million?!” Mike blurts.

“Yup!”

“You know, you’re doing what I do for a living… Free.”

“Uh.”

“Did you enjoy that pie? Soulpepper paid for it.”

Don’t worry. My site is still ad free and there are no embarrassing “tip jar” links anywhere.

Yet.

Though, it was a nice pie.

* I don’t mention that “hits” are pretty relative, especially if you’ve had a computer virus associated with a missing file from your site. But it sounds good. I actually count “page views” which, despite being down for 8 days this month, have already passed the halfway mark of last month. Thank you, faithful readers!!

This is like standing outside the changerooms at the Gap! Choose the hefty Bear body type and don’t skimp on the facial hair!

(via Bacon N Ehs – baconandehs.blogspot.com – cut n paste kids, “blogspot” is on my banned list due to spam.)