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.

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.

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)

Maybe Blamblog can find his blog soulmate now with Google’s Blog Search Beta?

Yes… I’ve Googled my own blog. I, loser.

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.

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).

Last week the TTC announced the Pizzazz Me contest (http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/pizzazzme.htm) to improve the rider experience. Winners get a metropass!

Holy. Crap.

It’s quite clear that none of the TTC marketing department actually use the TTC. Okay I know that “they’re trying” and that if it’s so awful then they’re just doing their part to make the travelling experience a bit better. But if they actually used the service, then they’d be all “pizzazzed” over the guy I, and the rest of the northbound Yonge car had to deal with this morning. Long off his meds, this gentleman could only wander up and down the length of the car mumbling in high pitched squeaks. His pants boasted his inabilitiy to hold his bladder (thankfully this was a fresh accident because he amazingly had not started to smell of urine). He moved up and down the length of the car parting passengers like Moses. Nobody did anything.

Here’s my Pizzazz Me suggestion: Take the money from the marketing and prizes for this stupid contest and fund at lease one new security guard position. One guard will make a difference.

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!

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!