I am doing some fast research for visa requirements to countries our company sells to and there are some countries out there who insist that travellers staying within their borders over 30 days are subjected to HIV tests or are flat out refused entry if they are HIV+.

I won’t point any fingers, UAE, India (for Americans, not Canadians), Mongolia, America but that’s pretty stupid. Go back to monitoring for H5N1 and stop being idiots.

As an aside, this was on Canada’s Foreign Affairs Site’s Entry/Exit pages:

Although same-sex marriages are legal in Canada, many countries do not recognize them. Attempting to enter as a same-sex married couple may result in refusal by local officials. For more information, contact the foreign government office accredited to Canada.

Thankfully my ring can be converted to body jewelry!

Me ‘n the boys decided to check out Hooters before the movie last night. Before you go all Camille Paglia on me, we were vindicated for our bad judgement in restaurant choices by the bill at the end: $35 for two orders of wings, onion rings and pop. I guess we were paying for the view, which was totally lost on us.

When we arrived, I had to use the loo pretty bad. I dump my coat and head over to the mens, avoiding the waitresses doing their best “Windowlicker” poses at me. I do my biz in a stall and as I am zipping up, I turn to find this scrawled in fairly fresh marker:

“TED HEELY SUCKS DICKS IN HELL”

Not the exact spelling of my name, but unsettling none the less. Since I was the first of our group to venture to the john and none in our group were the tagging types and I had not ever set foot in a Hooters before, I sussed that the author probably meant some other Ted.

Briefly I thought maybe my old boss might had done it, since Rogers iMedia old offices were close by but no, that was nearly 4 years ago. I went through my list of paranoid suspects and came up with nothing.

Still that was pretty close.

I go back to the table and the guys are picking out gay people in the bar, including bisexual women dragged to the restaurant by their boyfriends.

Again, we wake to crummy weather, but that didn’t matter to me. I have been tossing and turning (with the boat) all night worrying: “Am I going to loose it on the zip lines? Oh maybe the bad weather will cancell our excursion! Oh lordy pleeeease!”

We’ve signed up to do “The Belize Jungle Adventure” which entails zip lines at about 200 ft off the ground, through the jungle canopy, just outside Belize City. If you watch Survivor at all, you saw that one team got to do this very same thing as reward for one of the challenges. Not being a fan of heights, I had started to worry about it the day before. I was keeping mum about my fear, though.

We had a few hours before making port so we went up to the gym and did our only workout during the entire cruise. It was lovely to hit the treadmill near the bow of the ship. Very inspiring. We cooled down by walking the upper level outside and watched as the ship moseyed up to the reef that blocks cruise ships from directly accessing Belize City.

Our tender got us to the dock and we waited about 20 minutes for our bus to arrive and found that we were going to do this excursion with a pair of dinner-mates: The Firefighter Mike and the IT Professional, Cathy. We chatted as we waited and I jokingly said that Cathy was brave to do this and she might deserve a present for conquering her fears and made a motion to the jewelry store we were waiting outside of. Zoom! “Come get me when the bus gets here,” Cathy yells back over her shoulder, with glitter in her eyes. I get a “Good lord, Thanks Ted” look from Mike.

I asked Mike if he ever rescued a cat from a tree. Much to my surprise, he had never. Apparently they don’t risk highly paid employees to climb trees. Which makes sense. Call Animal Services. Or just put a plate of food down. Pussies always come down on their own. I snickered.

The bus comes and we are driven in a bit of a round about way through Belize City to the highway. I could see Cathy sitting just ahead of me with her forehead against the glass and I was under the impression that she was either worried about the excursion, like I was, or she was upset at the tremendous poverty Belize seemed to be mired in. Like I was. It wasn’t disgusting or anything, just… poor. The houses in the city were for the most part, windowless and had shutters to cover them. All the “yards” had some sort of refuge in it, possibly left over from the hurricane the month before, who can say.

The road from the highway into the jungle was incredibly bad. Bouncy-headachey-bad. All the way down the highway, past the broken homes and shacks I was silent and worried about the heights. From over the seat comes the dreaded “waiver form” that stated that we must be able to stand on a 2ftx2ft platform, 300 ft off the ground, comfortably. I nearly lose it. I look up at Cathy and somehow, she forgot to sign her waiver and it came back to her when the guide did her tally. Sorry C.

We were given a rest stop 2/3rds the way there, just outside the jungle and they sprayed us down with OFF, which smelled different. After a pee, a juice and a spray we were back on the bus, winding our way into the damp jungle. Most of the people on the bus got off at The Jungle Canopy Tour, which turned out to be a double-decker bus like vehicle with monster truck tires. I was glad we weren’t on that tour as that it was raining pretty hard by then.

We arrive and have to walk through a big cave to get to our gear-up point. Beautiful. They strap us into the harnesses and yell “DO NOT touch any of the straps. Doing so jeapordizes your safety!” I keep my arms perpendicular from the harness. After a few photos (“This feels like a regular Saturday night at the Eagle,” I whisper to Sharkboy) we start our long haul up into the jungle.

Straight up.

Past vines. Past bottomless pits. Along ledges that hang over hills deeper than Riverdale Park. Past “wild” orchids in their natural habitats. Keep moving please.

We get to a kind of rock cave open on both ends with a demo zip line set up. One guide hooks himself on the line and shows us proper hand placement. I am somehow closest to him and expect I am first to try the demo line.

Nope.

I am first in line for the first run.

Holy.

Shit.

Sharkboy sees the fear in my eyes and offers to go first. At this point something welled up in me and said “You’ve preached not to be afraid pretty much for the last chunk of your life, time to practice what you preach.” I hold my head up high and step up to the platform. I could sense that Cathy (and probably the rest of the group) were glad that someone else was going first.

The platform, by the way, wasn’t actually 2ft square. It was a bit larger. I think they were just weeding out the nervous nellies.

Click. Click. Click. “You’re good to go. Don’t bother braking for this leg. It’s too short.”

Go!

“AAAAAAGGGGGG!”

Over way too fast to really enjoy it. I tried to look about but wound up slowing myself down somehow and stopped about 20 ft from the platform. I had to hand-over-hand to get to solid ground.

The jungle was beautiful. I can’t express the colours and the awesomeness. And the thrill of the ground dropping out from under you while your crotch is tethered to what could be described as your mom’s old washing line, was exhilarating. I have no other words to go on.

If you ever get the chance, do it.

Then came the time to rappel over the side of a platform, stuck into the side of a cliff, about 75ft up. Thankfully Mike the Firefighter was in front of me and went first as that it involved a huge leap of faith to step out off the platform and hang there a moment while the guides prepared you for the quick drop. I don’t think I could have done that first.

Again, the rush was exciting and fun. Again!! Do it again!

The day was over within an hour and it was the best excursion of the whole trip. We were punch drunk high after the harness came off with much slapping each other on the back and hooterin’ and hollerin’.

The bus ride back was even more bouncy (if that was possible) and we met up with the Canopy Tour group and listen to them gripe about not seeing any wildlife. We snickered to ourselves over our good fortune for picking such a great excursion.

Dinner and the evening was a blur again. Coming down after such a great day was like the best sex ever. I felt like Barbarella rolling around the back of the Ice Guard’s sleigh, singing a tuneless tune. There was a midnight buffet that had my head saying “OH GOOD LORD STOP EATING!” and my stomach saying “6 more sushi? Why certainly! Oh and could you pile on some cheese too? Thank you” It was all very decadent and midway through my meal in the cabin, with the tv on and the boat rocking I got a bit sad that we were headed into the last day of our trip.

The next day we spent sleeping in and having breakfast in bed via room service. At the first sign of sun (it certainly was a holiday miracle we got some sun on the last day of the trip) we high-tailed it up to the pool and got two chairs for ourselves. And again, we got sandwiched between a newlywed couple who talked over us while we tried to sleep. Next time, we take end seats. At 1pm, we went an ate (duh!) and wandered the ship until dinner. Or so it seemed. We napped, we did the slot machines for about $40 each and then had our last dinner with the gang.

I liked our dining compadres. They had great stories and nary a complaint. They laughed at our jokes and told us some themselves. The food was terrific and the company was great.

Since the weather was far to horrid to go walking out on deck, we went and dropped another $40 in slots and I swear to you, I figured out a pattern and managed to keep going for about an hour, or at least until our backs gave out from sitting on stools for so long. It’s all in the wrist, kids.

Next time, my final thoughts on the cruise (oh thank god!!) and an invitation.

The Final Gallery.

She had a similar Sunday to mine, except for all that work stuff.

Sharkboy and I got up at 8:30am and immediately turned on Coronation Street. 20 minutes later (and with much wailing from Katie), ADD won out and we turned on the PS2 at the foot of the bed and started to play Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That was 9am-ish.

Sharkboy was more interested in pounding the crap out of people than actually running missions so the game’s advancement was slow going. Seven hours later, at 4pmish, we turned off the PS2. The room was covered in cans of diet coke, bags of Doritos and a box of bon bons and we hefffed ourselves out of the bed (smelling curiously of teen boy) and went to No-Freakin’Frills-Really-No-Frills-At-All-We-Ain’t-Kiddin’-About-The-Frills and got pea soup and fixin’s for ham sammiches. Back at the apartment, we sat with our meal as Braveheart played out for me for the first time. I could not take my eyes off of Mel’s hair. It was the star. It had more acting cred than Mel as he mugged for his dead wife. There was sad hair! Ready-for-action hair! “We shall never be slaves” hair! “Lookit my bum, you dirty English swine!” hair! I swear, that wig should have got the Oscar.

And I doubt one minute that the future Queen of England slept with a Scottish terrorist*.

After the three hours of wigging out with Mel Gibson, we got in the shower. After the shower we got sweaty. After that we stayed in bed. I scooted over to get some Lemon Chicken and Hot N Sour soup for bed-sore snacks. The TV was shut off at 10pm.

That’s how Sundays should be.

* Please don’t start a big comment war about my using the word “terrorist” to describe a Scotsman. I’m being topical.

Those statues The Flight Centre uses to display current prices creep me out. When I see them out of the corner of my eye I always have to do a double take. I see one every day on the way to work and think it’s a guy who I know works for the FC and sometimes subs in the agency by my office, but since we “did it” a few years back, he’s decided that he doesn’t remember me. That’s right. He has sexamnesia.

Speaking of which, I sort of side with the guy who claimed he was afflicted with sexsomnia. I know someone who has it and witnessed it first hand. So to speak. ‘Nuff said.

I am signing up for Bad Dog Theatre’s improv program today. Wish me …er… break a leg. What do I hope to get out of it? ATTENTION! Attention I deserve! I want my own g-d show or a spot on SNL. So people can say “I knew him when he was funny.”

Today, however, my back is killing me. It’s been steadily getting worse to get out of bed since Monday and this morning, Sharkboy had to push me to stop me from falling back onto the matress and pooping the bed. I’m ok as soon as I’m up but its that initial inertia that is rough. He thinks it’s my kidney.

I walk into my lunchtime comic book shop and the guy behind the counter is friendly. The kind of friendly that makes me think he might be confusing me with someone else. “Where were you yesterday?”

“…Uh…”

“It was shipment day!” he says pointing to the rack at the back.

“Eeeee!” I shout with my fists balled up beside my cheeks. I run to the rack.

Currently I’m tracking the following comics:

Rocketo: By Frank Spinosa, the story of a young navigator from an alternative Earth. The story is so lost in translation that it’s really hard to follow but the ink work and character structure is amazing. Gotta love a two timing, think-with-his-fists, best friend in the form of a dog.

Aeon Flux (movie tie in): Timothy Green II’s artwork harkens to Mike Kaluta and his Starstruck series.

Supreme Power: Nighthawk: drawn by Steve Dillon who brought The Preacher to life. Sort of reminds me of Dave Gibbons but creepier.

The Fantasic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan: I’m enjoying this one immensely. Especially the mix of Manga, anime and good old USofA heroism.

Whatchoo reading? Books? Manuals? Chicken feed bags?

I’m cleaning the bathroom. What is it?

This morning I had my boss under my desk on his hands and knees.

The Great Canadian Dream?

No.

He brought his dog into the office on the weekend and the poor pooch puked all over the underside of my desk for some reason. When I told the boss, he was quickly down there cleaning.

I’m impressed! He’s the owner of a large(ish) company and he takes responsibility for his dog’s barf.

In between my legs.

I love the new Stumbe Upon extension for Firefox. I just found this demo reel and thought it was cute.

Last night was a bit much.

Brokeback Mountain made me feel good. I left feeling hopeful that Hollywood movies could move away from the dopey stupids they’ve been in for the last 30 years.

Unfortunately the audiences will have to change with them. Prior to the movie a family of three, Mom, Dad and daughter sat behind us and moments before the movie started, the Mom touched Sharkboy’s arm and said:

“Can I ask you a big favour? Could you please slouch so I can see over you during the movie?”

Sharkboy came out with the best rebuttal to that ever:

“What? So I can break MY back on this mountain?”

I am so flustered that I dont recall the rest. She moved away and Sharkboy removed his baseball cap.

During the movie Dad was chowing down so hard on all his candy/popcorn that I was seconds away from telling him to grow up. Near the front, two twinks giggling hard during the sex scenes were told to Shhh! A woman laughed and said “Oh My God!” at a rather touching moment. These gay love scenes are fairly “new” to a theatre audience and I could understand their need to vocalize their discomfort, but these childlike reactions were embarassing.

If I was Ang Lee, I’d be so Hidden Tiger on their asses.

To get the scent of romance and feel-goody-ness out of our heads we went home and watched The Devil’s Rejects.