I’m actually more saddened by the death of a Monorail pilot than any pedophilic weirdo rock star or blond bimbonic celebrity who kicked off this mortal coil in the last two weeks.
When we’ve gone, we always chatted up the pilot when we got to sit in the front. It was like a candid moment with someone who “made it in” at The World. I wish him godspeed to wherever he is now.
Hi! I have a blog you know. Wait before your eyes glaze over I just want to tell you it’s all about nothing and everything that matters to me. Really!
I’ve never really assigned a theme or a niche for this blog. Even the tag line I use sometimes, “the space between Gay and Straight, Stupid and Smart” reeks of ambiguity. For over 5 years I’ve been online confessing, sharing, OVER-sharing and observing for you people. Do I get media recognition? Fuck no. Links, sure but no real celebrity traffic.
SharkBoy.ca gets 14 days of excellent blog content and what happens? His stats are nearly triple mine. He’s been approached by media outlets for interviews and syndication.
Syndi-fucking-cation.
Best I got was a drunken street hollar: “Hey you’re that fucking goof Dead Robot?”
I digress. SharkBoy has turned all of them down (“WHAT!?”) to stay low, under the radar. He’s riding high on Blogebrity and is turning his back on it like Greta Garbo.
As far as blog success, this only goes to show you that when you specialize your blog, people come flocking for as long as you can keep that golden content mana flowing. Like Twittering about what you ate for lunch, nobody is going to spend their time reading the detritus of your life in long winded posts. No, you have to give them something shocking, something new, or something in a clear tone that keeps them coming back. It helps SharkBoy that every day there is some dick who needs to get into his face to express their offset opinions and supplies him with fresh blog content.
Syndi-fucking-cation people. Not that I’m bitter.
Seriously I’m really proud of his output in the last couple weeks. His voice is fun and angry at the same time, like a Quebecois Lewis Black on some incredulous rant. It’s one of the reasons why I married him.
So starting next week, DeadRobot.com is going to only post funny toenail drawing cartoons.
Happy Birfdaie Americans!
As a gift I give you this:
This app is pretty hillarious!! If you work with layers in Photoshop this app will be pretty easy for you. If not, the quick description is you have two photos, the base and the top. You resize, move and erase the top layer so it becomes a “mask” over the bottom layer. Presto! Everyone is a drag queen.
For $2.99 I wish there was a way to adjust the Hue/Saturation of the top layer so it merges better, or a X axis/Y axis resize so pointed faces fit better into oval heads, but it will supply me with some downtime amusements for a while…
Hi Dalton,
I wrote to you a while back about my father’s unacceptable experience in a downtown emergency ward. Thanks for immediately putting me on a mailing list of back-patting propaganda and the nice form letter response. He’s doing fine now if you’re wondering, after a few months being on a PICC Line while he had to wait to see the surgeon.
But that’s not why I’m writing.
This time it’s to ask you to do something about Toronto. Your major money maker is broken and you have the power to fix it. I know you said you’d only step in and legislate the union back to work is if health issues arose due to the mounting garbage. I guess week-long standing, rain soaked garbage isn’t ever a health issue. Good thing they’re spraying the dump parks with deodorizer and spreading out rat traps! That should buy the city (and you) some time.
I know you’re busy with GM and the economy and stuff, but an effective manager doesn’t wait for problems to arise, he confronts them before they become major issues. He provides solutions with wisdom and fairness.
Dalton, I’ll make it easy for you. You don’t even have to legislate them back to work to save my vote for you (long since lost, by the way) – no, all you have to do is get a fair mediator into the negotiation room and show that you care for the people who keep the money coming in for eHealth and who put you into power. Do it now because Torontonians are really tired of this pissing match and need a white knight.
Eternally an Ontarian, But Not Liking The Smell
Dead Robot
During Pride, while we were walking the street, I spied the two owners of Church Street Diner, Richard and Alfredo, standing out front of their “still closed for renovations” cafe with a table and cooler. Nothing showy, no signs, just selling water or Popsicles.
I immediately dug into my pocket and sauntered up for a frozen ice. I asked how they’ve been doing.
“Great!” Richard says, “We appreciate what you said on your blog.”
“So what happened? What is happening to the place?” I ask.
I get an eye rolling response that makes me immediately feel bad for asking. But not so bad I can’t recount it here. “Things… are happening. We can’t comment.”
“Gotcha.”
I really hope these guys can get the Diner going again soon. Good luck fellas!
Toss that over here, Hot Stuff!
SharkBoy and I relied on the zen approach to Pride celebrations: walk, wander, observe and listen to our bodies. If we got a text to meet up somewhere we did. If we wanted to sit on the wall outside the 519 Community Centre and just watch the flow of people, we did just that. Couple of observations:
Public drunkenness skeevs me. A lot. Especially when the drunks have a heightened sense of “celebration” than myself. And look kind of “just off the subway” suburban. Mostly the drunk people were (I assume) were straight Ryerson students flowing up from the university. Not sure if Pride is in talks with Rye security…?
When you’re so drunk you can’t walk, transporting a 6-er of glass beer bottles is probably not a great idea. A poor chap fell face first onto the sidewalk with a beer-popping SPLAT, tried to get up and slammed face first into The Ladybug Flower shop’s window, which miraculously stayed intact. It was comical and frightening at the same time. Being right across from the Volunteer centre (the beer store parking lot) you’d think the security would be more attuned to open, public drinking.
Drink unitl you get an Arty Shot!
We got to Church and Bloor at about 11:45am for the 2pm parade. Our group of 8 all got a spot on the fence. Of course it got busy and the 8 of us compressed to 5 of us on the fence, 3 taller ones in behind as the place filled up. Remember, it’s raining and miserable, but we stuck it out for all that time. Now, at ten minutes before the parade starts we had to fend off three different sets of people who thought it was ok to just show up and shove to the front of the barricade. At one point I very uncharacteristically told a woman to chew my dirty ass because I had been waiting for almost three hours and there was no way she was going to get up to the front just by showing up as the parade started. This has happened to me at other events too, like The Santa Claus Parade and St Patricks as well as past Prides.
THIS! IS! SEXY!
And My Pride Miracle, you ask? Lean in close. Here it is:
The parade is underway. We’re standing right up against the barracade at Church and Bloor where the vehicles and walking divisions merge and go on their merry way, parade-ready. Various floats are tossing freebies into the crowd with gay abandon, mostly condoms and cheap plastic beads (which the people behind me thought was mana from the gods for some reason and kept slamming into my backside) so being a the “beginning” of the parade they were tossing a lot.
As the mayor’s float went by, there was the usual hootering and hollerin’ but I took it upon myself to get into the original spirit of Pride and get political:
“STOP THE STRIKE! STOP THE STRIKE NOW!” I shout this a few times in the general direction of the City of Toronto float, much to the horror of SharkBoy. You could feel him shrink.
Suddenly I make eye contact with Mayor David Miller just as he’s tossing beads into the crowd. I breathe in and shout at the top of my lungs while locking eyes: “STOP THE STRIKE!!!!”
He reels back and like some star Blue Jays pitcher, and beans me with a set of purple beads. Bong! Right in my forehead. I shit you not.
“Thanks!!!” I yell back with utter honesty and a smile!
Celebrity negates .
More Videos and stuff coming. Here’s a teaser:
The night before Pride and all through the street, not a creature could beat him
In his pre-Pride gyrations.
The Lesbians had had
Their march of solidarity
Their placards were down
The drunk straight kids
Prevailing.
At Yonge and College subway (south east exit) there’s a brilliant interactive ad for Caramilk chocolate bars. The poster has 6 headphone jacks to hear different explanations of how the caramilk is put into the bars (a long standing ad campaing here in Canada that teases the public with the “secret” as to how it’s done). You can see in the bad iPhone pic that I’ve jacked into the “Scientists explanation” cleverly located right over his mouth. Upon jacking in, an audio file plays (a bit too loudly and slightly fast – adding to the giggle factor) of different cultural explanations/theories.
The Cockney explanation was by far the funniest with lots of rhyming and slang. The Zulu tribesman was a tad bit “racial worrisome” (was that really Zulu he was speaking?). The Whale song was relaxing…
I admit that I did feel a bit of a dork standing there plugging my earbuds into each outlet. Especially in a busy subway tunnel with people passing, gawking, but it was funny and because I stopped and interacted with the ad, it won me over. Still, this ad is better suited for bus shelters.
Update: Gizmodo reports of an interactive ad that borders on black humour: Domestic abuse poster changes when you’re NOT looking