It’s kind of typical that Sharkboy and I zipped up to The Point for one night to see how long it would take to put up his new Columbia Cheeta-class tent, yet not take any pictures of it!
Anyhoo. Pics are up from the 24hrs of intense camping stupidity.
Wake up! Breakfast Television isn’t the paragon of morning TV but it’s the only show good enough to have on in the background while Sharkboy and I drag our asses around as we wake up (I know Hamtaro is usually on but I usually sleep through it).
(For our non-Toronto readers, its our city’s only stock “kooky” morningtainment news/info/live eye show with your typically mismatched pair of the blonde beauty, Liza, and the perpetually suspender-wearing Kevin. I’d link to their site but it’s scary.)
This morning Sharkboy and I were at seperate apartments (someone has to do my laundry) and I had the show on out of habit. Today’s email topic was “Bad summer fashions” and since I was up and at my computer I fired off this:
Bad summer fashions? Easy: capri pants on a man. Okay for women, creepy for guys.
And Liza, you would rock so hard if you could say “HI SHARKBOY” for me.
Sharkboy and I have had a running debate on how men in capri pants may or may not be flattering. I think that if a man wants to look like a 1960’s version of Betty Cooper then go right ahead. Expect me to be snickering though.
Despite all my badmouthing about the show, she read my email and to my suprise, Kevin agreed that he wasn’t comfortable with capris on a man. Then she said, “Because I never miss an opportunity to Rock Hard: HI SHARKBOY!”
EEEE!!! She did it! I wait. No phone ringing. I call and wake up Sharkboy. Damn it! The one time he sleeps in past 7am and he misses it.
I’ve spent waaay too much time on writing about this.
Owch. Slamming two toes into the leg of my couch this morning, I could hear the crunch of bone and sinew. “That’s going to hurt,” my animal brain said, nanoseconds before the pain arrived. It’s funny how we have these moments of clarity before the flood of pain comes to our brain like a late party guest.
Wiggle. I am totally macking (as you kids say these days) on Firefox Mouse Gestures. Its like magic! However, I have lost pages due to lazy dragging. If you’re like me and spend hours looking at pages, I suggest it. It’s like short hand for the internet.
Worry. Stupid, I know but I rode the subway this morning dreading a terrorist attack, despite the armed police they had on the platform. Actually I think it was them who triggered my angst. In the last 48 hours Canada’s media has been reporting that we should be ready for an attack because of our involvement with the “liberation” of Afghanistan. How the foosh do you prepare for something like that without becoming some paranoid freak or worse, fanatical, like the terrorists?
Trumped. My brother got my Da set up on high speed internet for his new iMac Mini with –shudder– Sympatico when I was days away from getting him a mid-range Rogers account. Without this turning into a big Rogers Vs Bell argument, I have never had any kind of satisfactory customer service with Bell, the company that when I was with them, could not produce a Mac tech support guy whenever I called in. Rogers isn’t much better but at least they seem to have their poop together when it comes to the technical aspect of the web. I think I’m upset because my Bro stepped on my toes. I mean, I would never supply anyone in my family with audio/entertainment equipment advice so why would he do so for Da and the internet when he knows thats my backyard!! Just kidding. But from now on, any technical support questions from Da will be routed to Ottawa…
Finally. There are new pictures up in the Camping gallery. None of them are work safe and if you’re family reading this, there are one or two of me nude. You are warned.
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.
In a word: Weak. Spread out venues and lack of advertising beyond Xtra ads and the banners up on the street poles lead to a watered down day. The fact that The Black Eagle, the only leather bar in Toronto, didn’t utilized their storefront speaks volumes.
Currently there is a divide going on within the Leather community, all vying for your leather cash: Folsom Fair North, official holders of the Canadian name of the popular American fair, and The Church Street Business Improvement Association who hold the power to shut down Church street from Isabella to Alexander, with their own Church Street Fetish Fair. These two events are slated a couple weeks apart which makes me wonder if Toronto will experience some sort of fetish-fatigue.
While FFN has the organization and polish, the BIA has the strength of venue. Rumor has it that these two groups are unwilling to combine and so they both remain seperate and weak. Imagine if the FFN boys had the area of Church Street to put on their party. Throw in the co-operation of MLT and Spearhead and that would be a weekend that would be proud enough to sell internationally. Sadly, they can’t come together due to some pissing contest that happened behind the scenes. The ironic part is that the leather community, when commenting on itself, always mention comradery and inclusiveness in leather.
I did notice that both events had pretty much the same volunteers and same merchants, so that is a start. Which leads me back to the fatigue issue again. Nothing new was offered (other than the demos going on in Kawartha Park) that was already displayed at FFN so CSFF lost out on that.
In all, I’d give the day a C-
This morning, Toronto was treated to 5 light aircraft dragging huge banners behind them extolling the new services Air Canada has to offer. I’m sorry I didnt get a photo, I havent worked out taking clear shots using the camera on the new phone (yeah we broke down and got one each).
The first aircraft was dragging an Inuit bird design. The second was a cropped headshot of the Statue of Liberty. The third a cowboy. Fourth: a cropped “OLLYWOO”. And lastly, AC’s URL.
Nice stunt. The one colour illustrations were clear enough to be seen from that height, but I am sure the Inuit bird might have been lost on some. It took me a while to realize that in context of the other banners, it was to represent B.C. or Vancouver or Emily Carr’s floating ghost. Or something. The Liberty head could have been replaced with a stinky cab driver and they could have dropped garbage on the city with NYC verve and attitude, while the Calgary Cowboy banner plane could have just dropped bombs on our overly-Liberal Toronto. Lastly the OLLYWOO banner was a nice touch for all the industry types in town for the TIFF.
Now. About that whole bankruptcy thing a couple years back…?
While this was effective (Im writing about it, yeah?) I think Im starting to get Ad-fatigue while scooting around Toronto. Dundas Square isnt done yet and I dread going there because I’m either so dazed at all the crap to look at, like some Eastern Bloc European let loose at Costco, or Im bumping into Eastern Bloc Europeans dazed at all the crap to look at. At Yonge and Isabella, by my Da’s condo, up on the side of the ever deteriorating Church of Scientology, there’s a video billboard that makes his livingroom look like something from Blade Runner on good nights. If they’re shilling anything using bright and gaudy images, his condo is lit up like an acid trip. When circuit parties roll into town, advertisers have taken to spraypainting the URLs of the event on the sidewalks of Church Street. Now keeping your head down to avoid a constant barrage of ads while out for a stroll is no longer an option. While trying to drive by Yorkville during TIFF, I was held up at a light by one of those roving billboards, the midsized trucks with nothing on their flatbeds other than a poster for a movie or some such nonsense. The truck had t-boned the intersection, not allowing north bound traffic past it. I leaned out my window and yelled “I am SOOO NOT going to see that movie because you’re blocking traffic!” I got the finger.
Dont get me wrong. I think the anti-postering law was a foolish waste of debate. I like street posters when they’re put up with respect of property and other posters. But the large stuff like the blimps and the planes and the video walls are making me think we’re living in a city of booming carnies vying for your attention.
The Globe has a story of internet gloom and doom: Canadian children are running amok across broadband internet, downloading anything not passworded down!
The illegal downloading has cost retail music stores more than half a billion dollars in lost sales since 1999, a study by Pollara for the recording industry estimates.
While some observers believe Internet piracy is a widespread phenomenon, most illegal file swapping is done by younger Canadians, the Pollara report sys (sic).
Canadians between 12 and 24 years of age are responsible for 78 per cent of illegal music downloading, even though they make up only 21 per cent of the population, it says.
Wired Mag recently claimed that 30% of all internet traffic is BitTorrent movie transfers so this is no big bit of news. But I was curious as to this company Pollara…
According to their website, Pollara conducts market research using up-to-the-minute internet technology like “Rogers@home”.
“Rogers@home”? That hasn’t been around for about 5 years now.
Oh wait a minute. Looking back at Pollara’s homepage, you can see that the copyright branding is stuck at year 2000. Even the “Chairman’s message” is dated June 6th, 2000 (funnily enough, the HTML file is called “chairmess”). He hasn’t said anything more relevant regarding market research or online studies since the dotcom bust? It certainly validates all their hard work in their internet research when their “Web Based Services” section reads like a pre-bust-how-we-gonna-make-money-on-dis-innnernet-thing manifesto, while all the links on their “Remote Viewing via VPN Webcast” page (including the ever-so curious “demonstration”) are dead. In an ironic statement from their site they offer “your producers, designers and marketers (to) attend a session where customers give instant feedback on your site’s design.” Coming from a site that seems like it hasn’t been updated in years, I say “Physician, heal thyself.”
This is obviously a company that knows how to conduct internet research, by golly! Like their study where they find that men are more likely to swear at their computers when frustrated.
Wow. Shocker.
To be fair, I have noticed that Pollara has been called “one of Canada’s best known and most respected polling firms” (Broadcaster Magazine) so maybe they’re good on the ground, but they certainly don’t instill any confidence in me to trust them on the web.
South African malfunctioning robots run rampant! Angry mobs with pitchforks standing in protest! Traffic backed up! New police recruits vow to kill marauding robots!
I think it’s just bad translation but the headline made me click it:
Clothing update!
Underwear: 9 pair
Socks: 10 pair
Swimwear: 3 pair
Pants: 3
Dress shorts: 2
Gym shorts: 2
Shoes: 3
T-shirts: 9
Dress Shirts: 5
Ties: 2
Suit: 1
Windbreaker: 1
Day Trip Bags: 2
Sunglasses: 2
notebook: 1
I can’t frigging wait!!! Its like I have bees in my pants…fighting the ants!!
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.
I get a MSN moments ago with an interesting link:
Silently in the last month or so, Rogers has been capping and data throttling High Speed Ultra users (yes the ones who’ve paid for unlimited data transfer) who seem to be using Bittorrent.
It’s ok. You Ultra subscribers said that this was ok in your End User Agreements.
Hello, Sympatico?