I hand over the apartment keys to my 18 yr old niece. She looks like she’s going to explode with excitement – more excited than I, now that we’re less than a day away from leaving. We’re giving her full run of our place (and a couple of her friends) the two weekends we’re away. She’s going to rock out on Guitar Hero and use the Wii Fit to measure …things.
“I’m more excited about cooking for myself!” She says.
People, get the nerdiest person you know to babysit your cat/apartment. I say that in love: she’s the coolest nerd person under 30 I know and I trust her judgment implacably. Listening to her pre-university stories makes me young again. Plus the stories aren’t littered with drinking or drug paraphernalia, so it’s all good.
It took us about 20 minutes to explain to her how to turn on the TV. Da, who is also going to come in from time to time to groom the cat, didn’t bother to listen in. Too many buttons.
Screw you laundromat! I’m not setting foot in your dingy, grimy, suppose-to-be-clean rat hole again for two weeks. I’ve enough underwear to last me …like… forever!
Tonight I zero in on the 25 shirts and get that down to 15. I decide what to wear on the plane. Here’s a thought: why don’t people dress nicely on planes anymore? Last time I was on one, there were far too many sweat pants. People! Bad! No! Sweat pants are only for post-sex trips to the kitchen for food and maybe the gym.
I can see a future Archie comic, produced by the sinister Dark Horse publishing, where we’re sent 10 years into the future. Veronica’s dad, Mr Lodge, has suffered a massive stroke and is hanging on by life support. Archie is a scotch swilling bitter yesman, hired into Lodge Industries purely by matrimony. He’s approaching his middle age (and middle age spread) and is unable to access Mr Lodge’s vast fortune until he shuffles off this mortal coil. Jughead is a common street thug now and is hired by Archie to pillow-party Mr Lodge’s face. Pratfalls and close calls with hospital guards ensue.
Meanwhile, Veronica is a pill popping socialite with more plastic surgery scars than Mickey Rourke, schtupping Reggie in the back of his dog grooming business. She spills Archie’s plan in the throws of passion and Reggie decides to rat him out to the police, convince Veronica to divorce Archie and marry her to obtain the cash. He celebrates by going to the local gay bar.
Meanwhile, Big Ethel and Jughead, living in sin of course, devise a plan to harvest Mr Lodge’s organs for drug money once the job is done.
Midge, meanwhile, checks herself into a battered wives hostel after her last confrontation with Moose.
Meanwhile, Mayor Betty has become hardened by her lonely solitude and unrequited love of Archie, and has instructed Dilton to fire up the extremely experimental particle accelerator so they can start selling cheap energy to the rest of the state. Moose, dreaming of his glory days on the gridiron, throws one too many switches and all is thrown into a black hole.
You need to watch this at your leisure. It’s a tad long but it’s an utterly mind boggling video of a “Kitchen Sink” sundae being made. Yes, we’ve made reservations at that particular restaurant/den of diabetes.
To quote Patton Oswalt: “BEND OVER ABIGAIL MAE, ‘CAUSE HERE COMES THE GRAVY PIPE!!! BLACK ANGUS, DOORS ARE LOCKED FROM THE INSIDE, FAGGOT!!! At Black Angus, your name is Peaches.”
With the help of George Hamilton, I now have to choose from 23 shirt choices down to 15. Yes, I’m going for 9 days – I just don’t want to be caught sweaty without a change of shirt!
All picture captions top to bottom, left to right:
Felt Leopard, Wall*E, Bleach Robot, Astro Boy
Scream Like a Girl Expedition Everest, Stencil Falcon, Bleach B9, Sioux City
Bear Trap, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em, iPaws, Lenticular AstroBoy
GI Joe (too close to the movie?), Gratuitous Canada Shirt, Bleach Skull, Tin Robots
Shere Khan, Shag Bear Skull, Happy Monkey, Sharkies
Good lord! There’s chloroform in your reusable grocery bag! So says the Canadian Plastics Industry Association. And other nasty bacteria! Because your food is dirty! It’s true!
Because they did a study. And they found their own Dr Spaceman to step forward and tearfully explain how using cloth bags will eventually kill off mankind faster than Skynet. Their study, lead by a respected Dr. Richard Summerbell, at Sporometrics (that sounds like an informercial parent company right there – note: they’re located in a back alley off of Dufferin Street, Toronto.), shows that reusing cloth bags will give you ear infections. Some bags were found to have fecal matter in them!
“I’m sick of carrying this shit!!”
It saddens me that this “American-style” info spin is coming from a Canadian organization. To quote BoingBoing: “the regulator who traded his credibility for a consulting fee should be ashamed of himself”
Saturday! Woke early to go to the gym and and a breakfast burrito (yes, quite low fat thank you, when you build them yourself – more later). We grab a tea and make our way to CBC early for Open Doors Toronto 2009. We thought with all the layoffs the Ceeb is facing soon, it would probably be a great time to go have a gander at this government funded media bunker.
And bunker it was. Security was buzzing, trying to keep track of volunteer staff, who bitched and complained to each other on their headsets. I’m sure the level of security you would normally have to pass through is there to protect Peter Armstrong from marauding fans, and not to hide the somewhat extravagant hallway decorations placed there for the general public not to see… We were first for The Hour studio tour and had to endure some poor volunteer’s worker’s utter mental breakdown for lack of organization in her line. We were shunted to an elevator which ironically (?) the doors would not close due to overcrowding. With all of us explaining to the elevator operator that we needed to lose 2 people, the poor volunteer staffer was about shout “I’M JUST A VIDEO ARCHIVIST! I KNOW FUCK ALL ABOUT HOW TO OPERATE AN ELEVATOR!!” when two people volunteered to get the next one.
The studio was pretty flash, even though the seats looked “cheap wedding uncomfortable” so we know that the money going to the Ceeb isn’t going back into the public. No, it’s being spent on huge screen TVs to tart up talk shows only 1/3rd the Canadian public watches. Here Sharkboy and I are playing George Stroumboulopoulos and Jean Chretien:
We took the next tour of the radio department and had an interesting run of various sound proof rooms. Quite interesting.
After that we went to Osgoode Hall and wandered the dusty hallways of justice.
We then tried to get to the Don Jail but they turned us away due to a 4 hour wait, which was too late past the closing time. I thought to myself “Who would wait four hours to see an old jail?” Disclaimer: I use to manage a traveller’s hostel in Ottawa that was converted from a 165 yr old jail.
Me apparently. Sunday we were back there at 945am and in line. Warned that the line was 4-5 hours long, we stuck it out. And stuck it out. And braved line-jumpers and fidgety kids.
ALL IN THE NAME OF GETTING READY FOR DISNEY!
Bored, in-line video:
The jail itself was probably not worth the 4 hours wait due to the state of the building. But it did remind me of the use to live in the jail/hostel I managed and it just brought back memories of impossible maintenance hoops our staff had to jump through every so often. Pipes bursting, kids falling off bunks, flooding, etc.
After 5 hours in the sun, SharkBoy’s neck looks like an ad for an S&M Red Lobster outlet. Being red-green colourblind and able to see the shade should let you know how bad he got it across the back of his neck.
On the upside, my Wii is no longer calling me Obese. At 214lb, I have moved into the realm of Overweight. Yeah! I made my Disney weight goal with a few days to spare!
Last night I dreamed of O Boy’s Ribs on West Colonial Dr, Orlando. Oh yes, there will be binge and purging…
