Big Fish

Julie and I went out today and saw Big Fish. It was very good. I don't want to give away much of what happens as the fun is hearing the stories being told and trying to figure out what is the truth and what isn't.

Suffice it to say that it was a great Tim Burton movie, although not as surreal as he usually makes it. It was surreal enough for what the movie needed though. It even had an actor who's taller than James in it.

And while we were out I got an R2D2 puzz-3D at Winners for $17. I'm going to go work on it right now.

The saga of James & Brock

This comic is so us.

Dim Sum, Unleashed

James (Taka) and I had quite the productive day today.

First we headed to the former Good Luck Restaurant, now the Sun Sun Seafood Restaurant, and attempted to eat our body weight in various forms of shrimp goodies.

Then we wandered about Square One until we started talking like teenagers.

Then we went over to der movie complex and saw Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. It was pretty cool, though if it were about 10-15 minutes longer they could have done more cool things with the werewolves. As it was though, it was pretty interesting and well done concidering the budget is a fraction of what the average American movie is. It's worth a matinee, not full price.

It was pretty wierd though. For the first 5-10 minutes everything was warped. I don't know what happened, exactly, but it was like everyone in the movie was flat-headed and 4 feet tall. You didn't really notice it unless it was a person as they looked all super-deformed. Odd...

So that's how the stock market works...

This is a little demonstration on what economists do all day. Enjoy!

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

This is kind of neat.

You can see what court martials have occurred recently and what the results were. Those soldiers should be on COPS!

Telemark THIS!

I went out today and got some day skiing in. First day skiing so far this year.

It was great though. There's nothing like going skiing a day or two after a huge snowstorm. Lots of untrammelled virgin snow. Of course, once I got through with it, it was quite trammelled and considerably less virginal.

The only problem today was that the wind was blowing right up the mountain so half of the runs were just not fun to ski on. Thankfully one chair worth of runs was on enough of an angle that exposed flesh didn't turn to glass immediately so I just skiied on them for the majority of the morning.

Another good thing about Thursday morning skiing is that there were barely any people there. I got to ride the chairs solo for the whole morning and just listen to my MP3's the whole time without having to make pesky conversation with *spit* boarders *spit*.

Save the penguin!

Man, that Pingu post o' mine was one of the most popular, comment-wise.

Let's see. What happened to me today? I went to work. Came home. That's about it.

Oh, I took back my beloved but busted copy of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter to Rogers Video (Home of the Games Formerly Used as Frisbees tm). I loved the game, but when you have the game lock up at least 2-3 times at load screens to areas you need to go to in order to progress in the game, and the disc looks like it's been used to spread jam on sandpaper, well...

I'm just thankful they have a pretty lenient return policy on used games. I ended up just doing a trade for Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg. It's crazy. You wear a chicken suit AND YOU PUSH AROUND A GIANT EGG! Yup. Just what the world needs... more egg rolling games.

That said, it's really fun and goofy and cute. Even Julie was mesmerized by the sparkly colours and the psychedelic eggs. I need to start importing water from Japan as there is definately something psychotropic in their aquifers.

Oh, and as a side note, playing Tony Hawk Underground on the Xbox with Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory album as the in-game music ROCKS. I do so like my Linkin Park...

HEY! THEY WERE JUST HERE IN TORONTO 4 DAYS AGO!!! AAAAAH! Oh well. I'd have been older than the average fan by probably 5-10 years anyway.

Corner Gas

Has anyone else caught the new show Corner Gas yet? It's on CTV on Thursdays at 8pm. Last week was the first episode and for some reason they showed the second one tonight, but I'm not complaining.

It's a great show. It's set in a tiny Saskatchewan town where everyone's nuts. Brent Butt stars in it. He's a great comedian doing stand-up comedy and his humour has really translated well to the small screen. I'd probably compare the style of humour to Scrubs, but set in a small-town rather than a hospital. And there's no laugh track (thank god) so it's already 90% better than most sitcoms.

Pinguuuuu!

Beat this.

Oscar worthy indeed!

I just finished watching Les Triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville) and man, it is amazing. It's a very surreal animated movie with no dialogue. Yes, there are words spoken and most of it is in French, but it's all background noise. None of the main characters speak except maybe in song.

The level of detail in this movie is phenomenal. I'm used to seeing this much extraneous detail in your average anime or a 2D adventure game, but not in North American or European animation.

There are a lot of different techniques, though the majority is hand-painted cel animation. I'd recommend everyone try to catch this at some point.

Did I mention that the main characters are 4 old women, a fat dog and a Tour de France cyclist, all very deformed?

The French Mafia are the major villains


Yeah. You've gotta see it :)

Snow Day!

Well, I got up this morning and I felt bad because I'd booked off my shift and there was really no snow coming down.

Now I'm not feeling so bad. I can just barely see across the parking lot in front of my house for all the snow that's falling. I wouldn't mind going skiing, but I'd be afraid to try to come back up the escarpment.

So off to the PS2 I go!

Are you sure it's not a stat holiday?

Well, looks like a blizzard not seen since the day Julie & I got married has decided to arrive today and will be staying for the next day or two.

I've already booked off tomorrow as 40cm+ of snow doesn't feel like something I want to drive through in order to go into work and not do anything. I mean, Julie is even staying home from work tomorrow and that never happens. I, on the other hand, will celebrate ficticious holidays in order to get a few more days off.

Granted, she did bring work home with her. I was thinking about doing that but then I'd have to bring one of the guys home and that would just upset everyone who didn't get to come stay at my house, so I was forced to take a vacation day instead.

I love this snow though. It's insanely light and fluffy so even though I had to shovel out drifts that came up to my knee, it took next to no effort to do so.

It looks like I'm going to be forced to spend tomorrow curled up in front of a nice warm TV and gaming my brains out. Maybe I'll take a break for reading or playing Smack Pingu or watching one of the movies on my computer that I haven't gotten around to watching yet.

Anyone else wimping out and staying home tomorrow?

Happy Winter-een-mas

Bu-huh?

I love the Glen Eden website just for the absurdity that is the Tube Park. We tried going there on Friday and it was closed. Sure the website says it's closed too, but look at the bottom of the page...

They also told us to call. When we did it says that the park is open and if anyone can get through to a live person on the phone there, I will bow down and kiss your feet. Of course, when you get to the hill, the tube park IS closed.

Sigh.

Well, here's the info on the Glen Eden website as of today. Can you spot the confusion?
---
Today's Surface Condition Machine Groomed Powder
Base Depth 55 cm
New Snow (last 24 hours) Trace
Runs/Lifts Open 12 Slopes, 5 Lifts Open. 1/2 Pipe and Terrain Park are open. TUBE PARK IS CLOSED.
Snowmaking operations in last 24 hours no
Tube Park Conditions CLOSED.CLOSED.CLOSED.
These conditions posted at 8:00am



We look forward to seeing you this season at Glen Eden!



-------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrator (Admin)
Friday, December 19, 2003 - 01:53 pm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Tube Park is OPEN.

Weekend of DOOOOM

Well, it was one of those weekends that just blinked by. I even had the house to myself from Saturday afternoon till Sunday night.

It would have been great had I been around. I worked 3-11's both Saturday & Sunday and on Sunday I was doing multimedia at the church and went from there to Swiss Chalet for some evangelical chicken with James & his mom and then headed off to work. Woo.

At least I got to watch some quality professional bull-riding at work with one of the guys. Yup. Sunday afternoons suck for TV.

I did get the first two Sandman graphic novel collections finished over the weekend though. Excellent comic. I hope the library has the other 6 or so collections so I can really get into this series. It's funny that I've known about the series and read a bunch of Gaiman's books but never actually had the opportunity to sit and read the Sandman comics till now. Ah well. They live up to the hype, that's for sure.

Coming soon to an apocalypse near you...

Well, now that Sony has made a robotic dance troupe, all that's left for us humans to do is hunker down and wait for them to enslave us with their funky beats.

Now that's a deal!

I went out today to go tubing with Tim, my brother-in-law but alas, the tube hill was closed at Glen Eden.

So we wandered over to the nearby Rogers to see what the land of Pre-Owned stuff had for us. As luck would have it, they had Season 2 of 24 for $38 for the whole series. Given that it's retailing for about $70 or so new, that's quite the deal. I also had just received $25 in cash in the mail from that Canadian Tire survey I did way back when.

After they rang up the DVD's it only came to $34, so at the end of my story, it only cost me $9 (out of pocket) for Season 2 of 24 on DVD. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Much better than frittering away the $25 on coffees at Tim Hortons over the next few weeks...

Best thing to happen since Jar-Jar was fed to the Sarlaac pit

I'm now on book #6 (Balance Point) of the New Jedi Order series of Star Wars books. Only 13 more to go before I finish the series. I have to say that the NJO is a great addition to Star Wars.

When you sit down and think about it, there really isn't much more they could have done with the SW universe as it stood at the end of the Hand of Thrawn books. Even by those books they'd more or less come to a creative dead end as there really weren't many more big bad guys available in the galaxy far, far away that couldn't be dealt with through the use of a well placed lightsaber.

Enter the Yuuzhan Vong. They're from outside the galaxy, they aren't affected by the Force and they detest machines and mechanistic technology. They send shiploads of prisoners into suns as sacrifices to their gods. They use bio-engineered technology to wipe out worlds. Heck, they dropped a moon on Chewbacca!!

There's a real sense of doom and darkness to these books that wasn't really present in the earlier books. The Vong are more or less steamrolling through the Republic and everyone is just trying to stay alive, and they're having a hard time doing even that. Everything about them is so foreign to the SW universe that it forces the writers to actually be creative and not fall into the traps that Lucas has succumbed to with Episodes 1-3.

It's nothing too heady... I mean, it's Star Wars fiction. But they've got some pretty heavy hitters from the sci-fi/fantasy camp writing these things so they're actually up to snuff with other, non-series genre fiction. I mean, they've got R.A. Salvatore and J. Gregory Keyes writing some of the books, for goodness sake. J. GREGORY KEYES!! They've got the author behind The Age Of Unreason writing Star Wars! Gotta love that.

Ok. This post far exceeds the daily allotment of nerdity allowed. I'm going to go play something on the PS2 for a bit.

Spooooky

Just finished Fatal Frame 2. Great game. Hella creepy. I don't want to go visit rural Japan anytime soon.

Join the Mother Corp!

This is neat. The CBC is going to be posting its jobs online starting January 30th. I'd love to work there, but I have no idea what I'd need to do to qualify to be there. Hmmm... I'll keep an eye on the job postings and see what is required.

Who knows? Maybe a social-worker/game nerd/computer geek is in demand there.

It's funny 'cause it's true

How many of you can relate to today's Reallife comic strip?

Skiddedy-do-dah, Skiddedy-ay

Man, it's snowy out there. It took me about an hour to get home from work tonight. It didn't help that when I was about 5 minutes from Acton I had to turn around and make the oh-so-wonderful trip back down to Limehouse and up the back roads due to the fact that Highway 7 was blocked off by a lot of flares and a cruiser.

The saddest part was that just before I had to turn around I'd seen a plow going down the 7 in the opposite direction from how I was travelling. When I turned around and went the way it had been going not 3 minutes later, you couldn't tell a plow had been down the road.

But I made it home. Woo! Now if I'm lucky it'll be too snowy for me to get to Brampton for my 2 fillings tomorrow morning. Whee!

Why is it that something like this makes me think of Doug right off the bat?

I can't stop doing these tests!

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

Scowling wilfully towards Autobot City, you're Megatron!

Look in a mirror and feel the evil. Then eat the mirror. You eat mirrors for breakfast. You are a badass death robot. You busted on Optimus Prime. You. Are. Megatron. Go outside and burn some animals, because you're worth it.

AND:


Take the Affliction Test Today!

Congratulations, you're the bubonic plague!

You're infamous. You're usually deadly when left untreated. You're spread by a flea.

That's how cool you are.

You can proudly tell the world that you wiped out much of the human population of the Earth hundreds of years ago.

Just call me Typhoid Spiggy

Well, the last day or so I've been feeling pretty nauseous and wiped out. I barely survived going to church and small group today so when we got home I decided that to be on the safe side I'd call in and get coverage for tomorrow.

Turns out I'm staff #3 to be puking my guts out at ye olde groupe home. If I were you, I'd stay away from Peel 1 for the next couple days until this blows over. Yeesh.

I don't feel bad about calling in sick if I'm part of an epidemic though :)

Woohoo!

Which Genocidal Maniac Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Stalin is cool, in a brutal dictator kind of way.

Which Survivor of the Impending Nuclear Apocalypse Are You?
A Rum and Monkey joint.

Highway to Hell

Bleh. I had to drive back and forth to St. Thomas today.

If we'd gone yesterday it would have been smooth sailing. But noooooo. The snow has to come on the day we have to drive 1 1/2-2 hours away for a baby shower. Grr...

I can still see tire tracks in the snow in front of me. And having my brother Dave in the passenger seat bouncing around like a kid with ADD on caffeinne pills for most of the trip didn't help much.

At least we made it home in one piece. The roads weren't too bad on the way back until around Kitchener area where they got non-plowed all of the sudden. Oh well.

It was cool seeing all the cars in the ditches. Some of them were in very akward positions, for cars. We almost saw a transport truck take out a Neon when the transport decided that tailgaiting at 100Km/h during a snowstorm on slippery roads would be fun. Luckily we didn't get stuck behind any plows or witness any accidents. Just people stuck in ditches.

Hopefully the plows will be out in full force tonight and it won't be bad driving tomorrow on the way to church.

An Moral Test

I received this from Jenn today. It made me think long and hard before I could answer it. Ethical dilemmas are so tricky.

---

With all your honor and dignity what would you do?

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. Please don't answer it without giving it some serious thought. By giving an honest answer you will be able to test where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation, where you will have to make a decision one way or the other. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous. Please scroll down slowly and consider each line - this is important for the test to work accurately.

You're in Florida...In Miami, to be exact... There is great chaos going on around you, caused by a hurricane and severe floods.

There are huge masses of water all over you. You are a CNN photographer and you are in the middle of this great disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless.

You're trying to shoot very impressive photos. There are houses! and people floating around you, disappearing into the water. Nature is showing all its destructive power and is ripping everything away with it.

Suddenly you see a man in the water, he is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken away by the masses of water and mud. You move closer.

Somehow the man looks familiar. Suddenly you know who it is - it's George W. Bush!

At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him away, forever.

You have two options. You can save him or you can take the best photo of your life.

So you can save the life of George W. Bush, or you can shoot a Pulitzer prize winning photo, a unique photo displaying the death of one of the world's most powerful men.

And here's the question (please give an honest answer):


Would you select color film, or rather go with the simplicity of classic black and white?

Home Despot

Now this is where I want to get some gift certificates for next Christmas.

Gotta love their little disclaimer.

This page is a parody of the Home Depot, whose stores have a much smaller selection of surface-to-air missiles.

Stunts!

Check out the Vice City Tribute video that's circulating on the net right now. Some of the stunts with the motorbikes are insane!

Yup, It's A Small Town Alright

The big news in Acton this week, at least according the the front page headline in the local paper.

"IGA is now Sobey's."

Yup. They ran a two page article about the fact that our local grocery store is turning into a Sobey's come February.

Man, that's small-town.

African or European?

Finally! We can now find out the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

Now if only we could definatively answer what my favourite colour is, we'd be set!

I love it but I hate it!

What's with Bush today?

He's suddenly decided to do something I applaud and am happy about, but I am having a really hard time being enthusiastic given that it IS Bush implementing it.

He's going back to the moon. And using it as a launchpad to Mars. Which is great.

But it's Bush.

But it's a moonbase and a manned mission to Mars and a mandate and real funding for NASA.

But it's Bush...

ARG!

Of course, I could probably think of a dozen conspiracy theories about him using a moonbase as an orbital weapon platform or something, but I'm content to be idealistic this time and be happy that at least now someone is willing to have a plan for NASA and space in general. Of course, he might just be using this as a campaign thing to try to recreate the JFK moon mission phenomenon.

Ah well. Let's just sit back and watch :)

Maybe I should be a detective...

Well, my great sojourn to the Doctor is complete. It turns out I've got a flat foot. Not flat feet, just a flat foot. I went out and picked up some arch supports and will see if that helps out.

Of course, this morning when I got up my foot barely hurt at all. Go figure, the day I have a doctor's appointment about something that's been bothering me for the last month and a half and it pretty much goes away... Sigh.

Shooosh!

Anyone want to buy some ski boots? I have my old pair just gathering dust and I wouldn't mind clearing them out.

They're rear-loading Nordicas, about size 10-11ish. They're in good shape, concidering their age. I still like them, but they're too small. My new boots are very comfortable (and the right size).

If anyone wants them, let me know or I'll be forced to sell them on E-bay :P

I'm scared and afraid!

Well, I've finally made my appointment to see my new doctor regarding this crazy foot of mine. I'm going in today (wednesday) at 11:10am. Eek! I haven't been to a doctor (for myself) in about 4 years or so. I have been to the hospital once or twice, but I figure if it's not worth going to Emerg for, then why bother? :)

Hopefully my wait in the doctor's office tomorrow will be slightly less than my last visit to the ER which took about 7 hours...

CBC Nerd

Tod Maffin has a new blog site, /Nerd, that lets you read his Radio One technology bits before they air. I was a regular chat-room guy back on the TodRadio site when that show ran a few summers ago and even got on the radio (well, my comments did) a few times.

There's a story on his site detailing his woes with Bell Expressvu. I do like Bell, if only because however bad they are, the alternatives are even worse. However, my experience with them is limited to phone and internet service. Given my recent experience in the BellWorld store and some fun I had back when I joined the trial for the High Speed Ultra service, I'm not surprised with the horror story of the Expressvu install.

Heck, when I was setting up that WAN a little while back, I went into the BellWorld store looking for a wireless adapter. "Oh, we don't carry all the computer parts. We just have a few things." This is the same store that sold the lady I was doing the setup for her wireless router. Sheesh. If you're going to sell one part of the WAN, you really should have the receivers in stock too. Oh well.

Move On

Check out this site, Moveon.org, for some neat news from the hippie leftie radical nuts in the States.

I really like the Bushin30seconds sub-site. They put out a contest to make an ad about Bush (not a nice one, of course) and the winner gets aired during the State of the Union address. They showed a few of the finalists on the news and they're, for the most part, pretty slick and good, in a 'the-Republicans-are-evil' kind of way.

Hey, with the Canadian political scene pretty dry at the moment, I have to get riled up about something. About the worst I have to worry about from Martin this week is that he'll eat too many tacos in Mexico.

Cheap Stuff

I went out to the mall today and found some great deals.

First was the second Buffy the Vampire Slayer game, Chaos Bleeds. I got it used for the Xbox for only $24.99, which meant I had to pay a grand total of $3.50 since I had a $25 gift card.

Then I got Buck 65's CD, Talkin' Honky Blues for $12.99! Woo! It's pretty good, so far. I popped it in the van at work and the guys loved Wicked And Wierd. They were boo-boppin' around in the van as we listened to it :)

Gotta love Mondays

This was the second week in a row where I've had to go in and work the morning shift at work. The nice thing about this is that day shifts are really slooooow and I can get lots of paperwork done. The even better part is that both mondays I've been able to go down to the ski hill and get in a couple hours of runs right after work. Gotta love that.

I decided to come home early from the hill tonight when I almost sat on a little kid on a snowboard when I was getting on the chairlift. I blame him as he didn't get on the chair properly and somehow ended up on the exact opposite side of the chair from where he was supposed to be, but he was a boarder so I guess that there's not much hope for him :)

CBC on Monday

Well, the new shows on CBC TV are starting up.

I liked Rick Mercer's Monday Report. It's essentially Rick Mercer doing The Daily Show once a week. But it was funny and it had a lot of good biting social commentary.

I liked it so much that for the first time in almost 10 years of net surfing, Userfriendly.org is no longer my homepage. I've now made the Monday Report site my homepage. Eek!

The Newsroom was The Newsroom. I like the show in a kind of weird sense. If I don't watch it, I really like it, but it can be tough to sit through an episode. It's wierd that way.

I'd better go downstairs now and watch This Is Wonderland. It's supposed to be pretty good too. I'll let you know!

Are too!

'Sadistic Bastard'


What Type of Lunatic are You? (With Cool Pics!!)
brought to you by Quizilla

Am not!!

Congratulations! You're Gandalf!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Bash

call your isp
god help whoever has to help your sorry ass
how do i call internet explorer?

Today's Bash.org quote was brought to you by 3, 9 and the letter Q.

Lost in Translation

I just finished watching Lost In Translation. Now my new goal is to find out how much it would cost to go to Tokyo and just hang out for 2 weeks. I absolutely loved LiT.

As per the discussion that emerged from my Last Samurai entry, Lost in Translation is probably as in-your-face as you can get for a Westerner plopped into Japan and left to fend for his or herself. I'd also recommend Enlightenment Guaranteed, but it's a very VERY dry movie as opposed to Lost in Translation which is pretty fun to watch.

I also found out that in Tokyo, you don't call 911 in a fire. You call 119! Thank the wierd alien dude over at the Tokyo Fire Department website for that tidbit.

"That's 119, not 911 if you light yourself on fire and find out it's not much fun!"


Sgt. Extinguisher wants YOU to fill out the required paperwork before you can put out the fire.

Baby, it's cold outside...

It's -31 C with the windchill today. Yeesh! Good thing I'm planning on staying put on the couch in my PJ's for the whole day.

Thankfully I've finished watching Season 5 of Buffy so I'm going to just hunker down with a big cuppa hot chocolate and play Gladius all day.

Nothing like a frigid January Friday to make videogames seem even better than usual :)

Mars Rover Review

Fargo over at Gamespy did a pretty funny 'review' of the Mars rover, Spirit. It only got two stars out of five though, mostly for the lack of multiplayer. It did get high marks for not crashing into a crater though.

Tell us something we didn't know

Here's a newsflash: There's no Iraq - al-Qaida link. Well, not aside from the link to that news story itself. Not only that, but the head of the new weapons inspection team is going to quit too.

It is kind of sad that news like this that was pretty self-evident, oh, a year ago, is now being officially sanctioned after the fact. At least I can take solace in the fact that it wasn't my government doing all the misleading.

Ah, it's fun being a snide outsider :)

Stupid Buffy

I hate it when I start watching these season box sets. I just started watching Buffy Season 5 last Friday and I'm only 3 episodes away from finishing it (for a grand total of 22 episodes).

Normally it would be ok for me to be glued to the TV this late except that I have to go to the dentist in about 6 hours. Then I have to work until 11pm.

Bleh.

It's like 50 Cent only with the exchange rate...

CBC has also been playing 'Wicked & Weird by Buck 65 the last few days. I guess it's been around for a while but I only just heard it this week.

I love the lyrics to this song. While the Hey Ya song is just goofy fun, this one is just funny and goofy.

Yeah yeah... I know that didn't make any sense. My wording skills are not goodly enough nows. Must play Fatal Frame 2.

I warned him...

It was funny. I lent the Firefly DVD set to my brother on Monday. He watched it in two days and called me tonight to say, "WHY DID THEY CANCEL FIREFLY!? Now I understand what you've been ranting about the last year or so."

Chores

It's sad. Ever since I got my MP3 player I've been doing more chores and work since I get to listen to music now and dance around.

Live in Acton

Speaking of pretty good music, of which my previous post will either convince you I know or don't, Linkin Park's "Live In Texas" CD rocks. If you like Linkin Park, I'd highly recommend you give this disc a listen. It's essentially a 'best-of' mix from their previous two albums but they do a good job of getting the crowd involved.

I like Linkin Park.

What's cooler than being cool? ICE COLD!

Last weekend I had Jessica Simpson's ear-worm of a song, In This Skin, or whatever it's called, stuck in my head for about 2-3 days. I don't listen to commercial radio so I have no idea if this song is new or not, but I was watching Oprah earlier in the week and heard the song.

The chorus, "Nothing but a T-shirt on", was running on a loop in my head for much longer than should be permitted by the Geneva Convention...

Mercifully, I have CBC to thank for putting Outkast's song, "Hey Ya!" in my head. It's almost as much as an ear-worm as the Jessicca Simpson song is, but it's actually good. I like the video for it too.

I have it on my MP3 player on repeat now.

Headlines from the year 2035

Julie sent me these today. I got a kick out of them and so should you. If you don't, let me know and I'll just kick you instead.
---

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, California.

White minorities still trying to have English recognized as California's third language.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops & livestock.

Baby conceived naturally -- Scientists stumped.

Authentic year 2000 "Florida chad" sells at Sotheby's for $4.6 million.

Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon.)

Iraq still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least ten more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but Pres. Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesday only.

35 year study: diet and exercise is the key to weight loss.

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.

Upcoming NFL draft likely to focus on use of mutants.

Average height of NBA players now nine feet, seven inches.

Microsoft announces it has perfected its newest version of Windows so it crashes BEFORE installation is completed.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.

Congress authorizes direct deposit of illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.

Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman.

It's either withdrawal or I'm having a seizure...

I've now gone two days with nary a game played the whole time. I blame the surfeit of books from the library that I'm trying to plow through, the Buffy Season 5 DVD's and the skiing.

I will have to rectify this gaming deficit by getting up early tomorrow morning and carving a swath through the gladiatorial arenas of Gladius.

Ah... it's nice to be geek.

I think my shaking might just be from the fact that it's negative thirty up here on the Escarpment. Brr....

Damned Boarders...

My brother Dave & I hit the slopes last night for a few hours. It was a lot of fun going night skiing. I haven't had the chance to do that in ages.

The snow was pretty good. They did have snowmakers going, but we had received a goodly dump of snow during the night before and most of the day so that made for very nice ski conditions.

Except for the boarders. It was like every half hour or so the mountain would just spontaneously vomit 30 more kids on snowboards who had nothing better to do than fall down at the bottom of the exit from the chairlift. Stupid boarders...

We had fun on one hill though. Neither us were wearing our goggles to start since there wasn't any wind and it was at night. We went down the one hill and immediately realized our mistake. There were three snowmakers going full tilt on that hill. We'd go through one, have our eyes scrubbed raw from the ice particles and by the time you got your eyes cleared from the first blast you were going into the second one, and so forth.

So we have now dubbed that hill The Retina Blaster. It's like sandpaper for the eyes. Thankfully I did have my goggles with me and I put them on and wore them for the rest of the night. Dave, unfortunately, didn't have any goggles with him, so I just made sure we kept going down that run for the majority of the night. I think he was legally blind by the end of the evening :)

I also got a chance to try out my new MP3 player in a real-world environment and I must say I was very happy with it. No more listening to whatever crappy music is blaring out of the speakers at the chalet. Nope. I can listen to my own crappy music wherever I want to now!

I'm really sore today though. I didn't feel achey at all till about 11pm last night, but now I can barely walk. Crazy muscles, needing exercise and what not.

Want to see something cool?

Check out this site and download or watch the entire sequence (the 18 meg file). I saw a documentary about how the guy who did this video did it all by himself. It's pretty impressive.

It seems that NASA finally figured out how to land on Mars. I wonder what happened to Beagle 2...

Hyperbole is out of control!!!

We had a nice day out today. We went into Brampton and spent all of our gift certificates that we got for Christmas and then went to the Keg for a nice post-Anniversary meal. I had a yummy filet mignon with a bleu cheese and roasted garlic coating. Mmmm....

We learned that one does not go to Future Shop on the last day of their Boxing Week sale. It was a rather picked over store that we visited. Luckily, they had ONE copy of the game I was picking up.

I got Fatal Frame 2. I like the warning on the back:
WARNING!
DO NOT PLAY THIS ALONE!!!

It's supposed to be the SCARIEST GAME EVER so I warned Julie that if I come up to bed and am shaking like a wee babe, it's just the game.

We also went and had the pleasure of shopping at Indigo.
*shudder*
It scares me that there are stores that make Chapters seem like a haven for bibliophiles. The scary thing is that they're both owned by the same people! I guess we can thank them for having 3 tellers working to service a line-up that must have folded in on itself several times before reaching the doors to the store. We had about 20-30 minutes to kill before the Keg opened and the lovely people at Indigo helped us kill those pesky minutes dead.

Oh, and then we came home and just finished watching the always excellent movie, Bend It Like Beckham. Did you know that Gobi means cauliflower? I wonder if the Gobi desert is where they grow cauliflower. If so, someone should start planting trees there so we can wipe out that insidious plant. I hate cauliflower.

Now I have to go and read all the books I got from the library and from the bookstore. Sigh.

Five WONDERFUL years...

Today is Julie & my 5th anniversary! Woo! 5 years and we've got a house and a kid on the way. Not too shabby for a couple of youngin's like ourselves.

Unfortunately, the weather isn't cooperating. I was hoping that we'd have another 6 feet of snow today like we did on our wedding day, but it looks like it's rain all weekend, which of course means that there will be no skiing for Brocky for the next couple days. Oh well.

Murder most foul!

According to CKCO news, Acton was quite the den of scum and villiany last night.

"Police are investigating a murder in Acton.

A 15 year old boy was fatally shot in the chest by another teen."

*Update*

Turns out that the person who shot the boy was a 17 year old guy from Brampton. There were a couple kids outside passing around a gun and the 17 year old put a bullet in the chamber and shot the Acton kid in the chest.

Just goes to show that you can't trust those Bramptonians, no siree.

My foot STILL hates me...

Hmm... According to my post of December 9th, my foot was annoying me then.

It's still pretty sore and it's been pushing at least a month since it started hurting so I'm going to go see the doctor next week and get a new foot.

Then, so long as snow falls, I can go skiing!

Firefly rocks.

Well, once the champagne stopped flowing here at the Wager residence last night, James & I settled in for a 4+ hour Firefly marathon to usher in the new year properly. Julie, of course, had been snoring since about 9:30 and that meant the TV was our's!

After watching through the entire series in almost one sitting, I am still miffed that it got cancelled. I was mad when it was cancelled while I was watching it every week and I'm still mad.

Supposedly there is a movie in the works, though I haven't heard if it's actually going to be made or is still in that murky limbo movies get to before they're born. James mentioned that they might bring the series back too, but I have no idea if that's true or just wishful thinking.

If you haven't seen it, go rent the DVD's and see some of the best, most innovative and well-written sci-fi to come down the pipe in years.

Happy 2004!

Happy New Year everyone!

Unfortunately, the big ball in Times Square didn't snap off and go rolling through the crowd, just like it fails to do EVERY year. One of these days I'm just going to give up and stop watching the New York telecast...