Category Archives: General

Mostly pop culture rants. Usually without reason or spell chekin.

Fauna

General

I failed to mention in my previous camping posts about seeing some fireflies for the first time since I was 13 yrs old or so. It really brought me back.

This weekend we saw:

  • a real bunny by the side of the road, floppy ears and all
  • a dead bunny by the side of the road, all of his body was floppy
  • a mole (like…what? Who sees a “mole” these days?)
  • a whole mess of mini-toads. Thousands of them. Like fireflies, I haven’t seen these little cuties since my childhood
  • the most amount of Daddylonglegs I have ever seen in one spot. It was like our tent was Tom Cruise and we were in Minority Report

I am truly a city boy when these little animals amaze me.

Expect pictures soon. I need to edit heavy because I did some of the “Survivor” contest in the buff.

Ewww!

General

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!

This Spartan Life

General

I am agog at this cleverly produced online talk show. Shot entirely on Halo game servers (similar to The Busdriver’s favorite Red Vs Blue) the interviewer, Damian Lacedaemien, tries to find secluded areas to conduct the show but unsuspecting newbies still manage to wander through, armed to the teeth. The first episode has an amazingly intelligent interview with Bob Stein, creator of Laurie Anderson’s interactive CD Puppet Motel as they shoot their way through a beach bunker. “You can’t shoot Bob Stein! He’s above violence!” “Oh… Oh no I’m not!” BRATATATAT~!

I highly reccommend it.

(via BoingBoing)

Spoke Too Soon

General

I was so busy with freelance and painting that I failed to contact the owner of Timothys in the last two weeks. She had my old number and could not get a hold of me and since we didn’t talk, she gone done given away my spot.

I’m not upset about this at all, suprisingly. I was cramming two finished paintings before the weekend and was worried that the quality of them was suffering. Now I have some breathing room.

Plus I haven’t made all my “SOLD” cards yet.

So hold up, people. I’ll let you know when it’s going to happen.

World Class City Braaaains

General

My future boyfriend Cory Doctorow over on boing boing tells me of The Toronto Zombie Walk (www.torontozombiewalk.com – I for the life of me cannot remember banning this URL?). I’m gonna be in Allen Gardens with a plate of brains and a sign that says “Free Brains!” (and maybe I will catch me a zombie Roadrunner).

4 Sleeps to Go

General

I’m taking things to the Dry Cleaners this morning.

I AM AN ADULT NOW!

I have recently discovered that I can make chicken soup. I’m pretty darn good at it. Its the only thing I know how to make that involves boiling the crap out of all your ingredients. How very English. Now if I could only make Nachos soup. That would be cool.

90% of all my underwear have a hole in it somewhere. I am comfortable with that.

I kill plants. Last night I went to bed with my orchid soaking in water. Squishy was only suppose to soak for 15 minutes and wound up swimming for 7 hours. When I took him out of the bath this morning, a leaf fell off. Not good for an orchid. O’Reilly, the shamrock, looks incredibly ratty for some reason and I don’t know why. Dad has moved to South America for a month and was the only person who could save him.

I am totally in love with Devil Girl from Mars. It is like The Day The Earth Stood Still meets Coronation Street meets Mars Needs Women, but the alien is a woman, she’s evil and the pub she frequents is bigger.

And I have to agree with Ms Notwellplanned. Corrie suddenly got very very good. I’m loving Katie’s blurty guilt freaks. And the hypno-ex-boyfriend. HAWT!

Reminder to Sharkboy: we need to make vacation anklets and gay crap like that.

World AIDS Day

General

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!

My New Favorite Show

General

Remember how I absolutely loved Joe Schmoe? You might remember I loved it because it took all the incredibly ridiculous things found in reality tv shows and threw them at an unsuspecting “schmoe” to see if he could withstand the barrage.

I have a new favorite show.

I have only seen one episode and it will probably never play in Canada. Its called Space Cadets and it is brilliant. If you have Bittorrent I suggest you get it right now. I’ll wait.

The first episode took 100 applicants and widdled them down to 12 (with three producer-hired actor plants amongst their midst to move the prank along) and then announced that they were to be taken to STAR City (The Russian Space Tourist boot camp) and 4 would be chosen to be the first British space tourists to be televised on TV.

They didn’t know that the whole thing was fake. And filmed in an abandoned military base in Ipswitch.

Apparently since the show was televised, there has been immense backlash from the British public saying the show was cruel and went too far. I would think that the people doing the biggest complaining probably never sat through a season of (American) Survior and then devoured Joe Schmoe in comparison. After seeing the fist episode I would say that the show’s producers might have omitted the spirit of satire and didn’t put instances of utter absurdity to hint that the show was fake to weed out the “smart” ones. Example: in JS, one of the elimination games was “Don’t take your hand off the hooker!” where contestants had to keep their hands on one body part of an admitted prostitute (actor) for hours. Any contestant who would have stopped for a moment and really thought about that challenge would have suspected the airing of such a racy contest.

In the first episode, the 100 applicants got a battery of mental tests to see if they were “suggestable”, meaning they would believe in something if the majority of the group agreed upon whatever was suggested, even if it meant gravity in space proved them wrong. While Space Cadets so far doesn’t seem like anything more than a practical joke (I am not going to spoil it by reading reviews or news claims stating contestants might sue), I hope they do throw in the odd satiracle jab at reality shows. Apparently there is a bit where they honour a fake Russian Astrodog while onboard the spacecraft. Looking forward to that one…

So far, I say khorosho, Comrade!