On the subway home last night I noticed that two guys at different ends of the car both had their hair done up in high-up-on-the-soft-spot-of-their-heads, single pony tails, much like the Knotheads from the comic The Watchmen. The weren’t sporting the black motorcycle jackets and untucked white dress shrits, however.

I’m curious about this. Will it be a new trend? Is it borne from the comic or is it a hippy-dippy rehash of 60s culutre? Like most youth culture fashion, I didn’t think it was very attractive on a guy.

Speaking of fashion, I had dinner with parts of my family as they converge on Brockvegas this weekend for my step-father’s wake. My neice, who by the way is this year’s playwright-in-residence at Paprika (Tarragon Theatre – plunk! Who left that name here?), turns to me as I am getting ready to leave and freaks out because I’m sporting a “Triple 5 Soul” satchel. She calls me a thug, a gang-banger, etc. Who knew? I just thought it was a nice orange bag with tons and tons of pockets.

I’m now wary about using this bag. I’m reminded of the urban legend of the tourist in England, beaten to a pulp because he was wearng a “wrong” coloured scarf in a football supporter’s neighbourhood.

The whole process of getting pics off a camera phone without a Bluetooth dongle or connector wires is a bit chunky. But here are a couple just for shits and giggles:

The current crap around my monitor.

A buttload of cop bikes.

It’s not too bad quality, I suppose. I did have to do some tweaking in p-shop.

And speaking of “safe camera use”: A fellow blogger I know took a picture of a guy reading in a coffee shop, without his consent, and posted it to his blog. While taking pictures of people in public is legal, this morning I found out that what he did was illegal, only because his post included comments on how “hot” this guy looked, making the publication of this image “sexual content”. I guess that makes him a crim.

Be careful out there, my camera equipped legions! I bet that as our privacy erodes through emerging technology, we will see irrational claims that our souls will be stolen if you make a call in someone’s direction.

Blamblog made me laugh…

I just got called into my boss’ office.

Uh oh.

“Pony up! We gave you those tickets, now tell me: why do we need a blog?” he starts out.

Three weeks ago I suggested that our company travel site use a blog instead of bulky PDF files to present our travel mag online. For my idea I got 2 tickets to see Serenity*. I had forgotten about my comment and now here I was in this 60+something’s office, the owner of a travel wholesaler, having to convince him why he needed a blog. No prep time.

“Well for one, it’s hot. Hot like fire…” He’s unimpressed, not laughing. I read in last month’s Wired Mag that there is a disorder where the inflicted suffers from an uncontrolable urge to lecture on how techincal things work (Asperger Syndrome, actually). At that moment, I wish that disorder was in my genes. I rant on: “Basically its a way to feed information about your product to your customers and let them comment back on your product. It builds a stronger relationship with your client. It can bite you in the ass, but if your product is stable, then you have nothing to worry about.”

He liked that.

So now, I get to blog from work. Well… I’m not actually blogging but I do get to set up the blog, run it for a couple weeks and then release it to the managers.

* Serenity was good. I bet 30 years from now when they release Serenity 15: Revenge of the Boogaloo, this current generation will feel just as good when they come across some future movie that has the same satisfying feeling I got from Serenity, when it eradicated all bad feelings I had from the last three Star Wars crap.

I switched on my old dear friend Beigiey The Computer last night and it woke up and asked “Who am I?”

The drive that held the operating system wasn’t spinning. Thankfully the storage drive was unaffected. Never purchased cheap drives from that “big” refurbished computer parts store on College by Spadina, no matter how seductive the price, is all I’m saying. It lasted a day over the warranty.

Sharkboy’s iBoob is letting me talk to you today. All Hail Jobs!

I am half way through re-installing all the programs and should resume the Cruise story by Thurs night.

Stay tuned for Haitian sorrows, food of the Gods, kissing the ‘Rays, an announcement to upset the right-wingers and a leap of faith in the Belize jungle.

Sorry for the innconnvennience.

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.

(from Laughing Squid, via BoingBoing)

Back when I was hanging out on Zug my first online message board/hang out/drop in centre, members use to trick newbies into clicking on the the web’s most curious picture ever seen (Wiki article – Work safe and you can find the Not Work Safe image somewhere in those links. Good luck). The site is gone now but the picture lives on. Apparently the image’s subject is gone too. No wonder.

Gabbers use to make me laugh every time they posted it because the reaction from seeing this photo was like a punch in the gut. Or bum. Now, Laszlo Toth has been showing the image to his friends and taking their picture at the moment they see it. He encourages you to do the same and shoot them up to a FirstGoatse Flickr stream.

My current fave pic is Ron Jeremey probably thanking his stars he has a good agent.

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.

The Mr Toolbox Bear contest was so dreadful I left half way through. The microphone was hooked up to a crappy speaker and combined with the M/C’s accent I couldnt understand a word he was saying. And Hamilton Terry was there.

Let me qualify some things here: I work in a leather bar doing promotions/website/ads and I have limited contact with customers (not as much as the bartenders). For the most part I like our clientelle but as always in group dynamics, theres always someone who rubs your fur the wrong way. Terry is one of them. I find him annoying. He opens his mouth and its all I can do to keep myself from walking away or yelling at him to shut up. You know the type… it doesnt matter how nice they are to you or how shitty they are…their personality is your nemesis-personality. Your anti-matter personality. Thankfully he lives in Hamilton so he’s not in often. Anyway he was there last night talking all the way through the first part of the contest while I was trying to listen to what was being said on stage, which was a chore due to their crappy p.a. system.

I guess I was expecting more from the night. I got nothing. I had a dream this morning that I was back at my first job out of Media school. But I was so ignored/forgotten that I could walk into any boardroom and sit in on things without anyone questioning my presence. I went back to my desk and found it a dumping ground for old computers, manuals, my cubicle fodder, and…insult to injury…my chair was gone. At that point, OldGrannyShakes, the lady in the office who would complain about everything came up to my cube and told me to avoid the Ham. She felt sick since lunch. Which was weird because we didnt have a cafeteria. Then Lady Penelope woke me.

Things I learned at this summer’s last long weekend:

1. Spiders are huge at the end of summer. Especially when there were tons of mosquitoes
2. Moo Moos (mu mus?) are very comfortable. I can see why fat people wear them
3. It’s bitter to see someone discover a place he loves and have to give it up
4. It’s laughable to see arrogance in a gay trailer park
5. Mr X plays some good tunes
6. Garage sales are much better in rural settings

I would like to take a moment to say to Scott and Mike (lovingly called A and B behind their backs) and “Puddin'” that it was a pleasure meeting you all and I hope that you don’t have to leave. You brought fun to the place.

Pics are huppa here!