Monday, April 16, 2007

Memos: Well Running Dry

  • I still run into people who say they read this blog. I can't imagine why, I haven't had nearly the output as I used to and I'm wondering why. I used to get really attached to a topic, like an election or something else, and feel like I had something to contribute to the general discussion. Now I feel like there are other people who can write better than I do and who have a more consistent output whose work I'd just be replicating. It's not that there is very many Canadian political blogs worth reading, most of them are too inward-focused and more concerned with petty fighting among other bloggers than with communicating with a mass audience and acting as a watch-dog to the press. On the other hand, there just isn't the overarching drive and purpose that the US-based Liberal blogs have when they go up against the most corrupt and criminal US administration in history. I've tried, really I have, but I just haven't been able to work up the blind rage and personal hatred for Stephen Harper that I have for Bush. He's just far too dull for that.

  • Why doesn't homemade bread brown properly when you toast it? It also sucks for making egg-in-the-basket. I still have a whole half a loaf to get through that my grandmother brought me and I'm fresh out of ideas and jam.

  • I went to the PEI Fashion Week show, yesterday. The event is a fundraiser for multiple sclurosis, and they apparently sold out of tickets, which is great news. There were some local designers featured, as well as other independent Canadian designers thanks to Heather from Absolutely Fabulous, who obviously put in a lot of hard work and had a really novel bit where they brought out a girl before their segment who was dressed in nothing special and had no makeup on, and said they would bring her out later with a complete makeover, since their store also has a little beauty salon. It's not like she wasn't gorgeous to begin with, naturally, but they really did great work in such a short time. I'm clearly not normally one who knows the first thing about fashion shows but this was just a fun evening. Afterwards Kelly and I had a good time making fun of people and just generally being awesome like usual, so it was a good night.

  • Filipe Massa won the Formula One race in Bahrain today. It's great to see he's actually learned how to drive. Good for him.

  • I still don't have a new baseball team I can really get behind. The Blue Jays are playing better than they have been in years and years, but I think I still have more of an interest in National League teams. The Cubs would be too obvious, the Mets still have Mike Piazza who's a gigantic tool and ruins the whole team for me, the Marlins are tainted by Jeffrey Loria, who would make me happiest if he could just dive into a vat of live, starving rats. I just miss the days of having my Expos, when I could sit in front of the TV with a whole packet of saltine crackers and watch for hours, and get really excited and into it when the game was close. It's just not the same when you aren't emotionally invested in one of the teams, as much as baseball is still my favourite sport to watch.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Memos: Just Say When

  • Had a pretty good weekend, nothing really stood out but it was fun to go out to the Bucket Truck / Flush show last night and just float around and talk to whoever I run into. When you go with a group there's always the feeling like you need to keep track of where everyone is and what people are doing. But when you go by yourself you can be a lot more free to just take a stroll and chat with whoever you come across. Much less stress and more possibility of finding something or someone you weren't expecting.

  • A dude friend of mine just sent me an animated heart 'wink' over MSN. Not sure how I feel about this.

  • I've been finding myself getting into conversations lately where I end up explaining a topic to someone and they always tell me that no one has ever made them understand whatever it was so clearly. This was especially true with the course I tought at work over the last couple of weeks, but also just in general conversation about things like economics or agriculture or fish stocks. I wonder if this is an actual talent I might have.. to absorb a complex topic and relay it so people can understand it. Maybe the all-over-the-place nature of topics I cover on this blog even though I'm really only writing for a core audience of like 6 people might pose the same need. I should think about this further.

  • You know what I haven't had in a while? An honest-to-god, out-and-out, head-over-heals crush on someone. That initial feeling you get when you get to know someone new and exciting, before the inevitable let-down, either from the rejection or just reality dawning that it wasn't the perfect person you imagined, can be quite the thrill. Not sure I want that again, but meeting someone new might be nice.

  • OK, time to try and get some sleep. Even though I never seem to be able to properly fall asleep on Sunday night. Having to relinquish my weekend and fall back into the weekday routine is rather an unfortunate pill to swallow.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Memos: Hey Pussycat, Smile a Bit

  • Felt really gross today at work, exhausted even though I had 8 hours of sleep, and stuffed up and my stomach felt weird. I feel better now, though, which is good because I'm giving anotehr course at work tomorrow.

  • Finished re-reading Breakfast of Champions today. What I love most about the book is Vonnegut's way of mentioning an object or a concept and the ngiving a humourous description of waht is is, as if the reader was fro manother planet and was unfamiliar with things like pornography or fast food. The thing I am most fascinated by with him ersonally is his stated unconditional love for music. He says even a military marching band, who's purpose is to celebrate the thing he hates the most, violence and obedience, can bring a tear to his eye.

  • Somethi9ng I love about the show Heroes: when Hiro and Ando are speaking in Japanese to each other, the subtitles don't just appear at the bottom of the screen, rather they are all over the place, and it reminds me of a comic book's speech bubbles. Man I am agitating waiting for NBC to show another new episode. The last of April can't come fast enough. Same goes for The Office.

  • What is with CBC radio on PEI's right-wing, pro-business content? It just seems so out of place. Who's pulling the strings there, anyway? I think I'll write a longer post about this next time Michael Hlinka spews his horseshit and I'm not fortunate enough to be out of radio earshot and I'm consequently worked up.

  • I went out to dinner with my dad today at Pizza Delight in the 1911 Jail. It was pretty good for what it is, but I noticd that the pizza I ordered was pretty much exactly the same quality as what you can buy in the grocery store nowadays. I remember as a teenager how awful frozen pizza was. But the best was still when I was on a made-from-scratch pizza kick. You could get really good fresh dough from the Sobey's in Saint John, where I was living at the time, when I worked at Point Lepreau, and I'd cook up sausages and use canned pineapples and good little red onions.. I should do that again. I just don't seem to enjoy cooking as much these days, though. I think what happened was that when I was working at Lepreau I would get home at 4:30, watch Win Ben Stein's Money, then start to make supper. And by the time I had everything prepared and cooked, had eaten, and then cleaned up after everything, it was rolling up on 8:00pm, and since we had to get up so early to get on the road for the 45 minute to an hour commute, that meant it was nearly bed time. I like it on the weekendss, though, when I can relax and cook and not feel like I'm taking up too much time.

  • Recently every time I'm out in public at a restaurant or someplace, and there's a lull in my own conversation, and I overhear the people at the next table over talking, about 50% of the time they're talking about facebook. Ugh.

  • Book question: I thought The Da Vanci Code was very very overrated, but I seem to hear better things about Holy Blood, Holy Grail. To anyone who's read both: Is Holy Blood Holy Grail any better than the other one? Or should I just skip it?

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Memos: Buckle Buester Edition

  • I'm having a really frustrating problem with my new iMac. The jack for the speaker cable I had plugged into it broke off inside the port, so now there's a tiny bi of metal in there that I can't get out becaause Idon't have a teeny-tiny pair of tweezers and I don't have sound on my computer because the internal speakers won't work when it thinks there are headphones plugged in to the speaker port. The best solution I could think of was to buy a Griffin iMic from Ebay, but I'll be grateful to anyone who can help me fix the actual problem. I'll then be able to use the iMic for higher-quality recording from my laptop for when I get around to starting podcasting again.

  • Had a really great visit with Justin yesterday. We hung out at his place for the afternoon and then went to Razzy's and ate lots of greasy food and stuck around and had great conversatoins about the usual topics; music, music and music, with a little contemplating the universe in between. It turns out that the world's biggest Kurt Cobain fan lives in Charlottetown and works at Razzy's Road House. She was enjoying sitting and talking to us, seemed like she was starving for interesting conversation.

  • Probably goiing to see Fuck the Facts at Baba's tonight. I love when they do the Sunday night heavy metal shows. The band is has quite a dirty sound, hardcore-influenced grind and some trash elements thrown in. My ability to sling obscure heavy metal genre names like a pro has slipped sinc my metalhead days. I wonder what it is about metal fans in particular that predisposes them to such ludicrous lengths of dtail when categorizing the exact types of music they listen to. Maybe it has to do with an appreciation for structure and order that might have attracted them to metal in the first place, since the music itself can be quite complex. On a side note: apparently gifted kids are more likely to be into metal than other kids. Go figure.

  • My DVD player can play DivX movies that I download and burn to DVD. Being able to fit 13 episodes of Heroes onto one $0.50 disc is beyond sweet.

  • I seem to be encouraging all of my friends to move away. What's up with that? The fact that I actually like it here most of the time seems to make me a rarity to hear most people talk.

  • I'm starting to listen to the audio book of Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Even though I've already read it it's en even better experience to have it read by a skilled reader, the bitterness and wry humour come out so much better.

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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Memos: Up Late Again

  • Idiocracy is the funniest movie I've seen in years. Yes, that appears to be what Sabrina was referring to in her previous post. (Remember kids, only you can prevent PUI - posting while impaired). I'm pretty sure I'll never not crack up at the phrase "Welcome to CostCo. I love you."

  • Tonight I have to finish coming up with trivia questons for tomorrow since I'm hosting it again. Rather than repeat myself here, I'll just link you to the Facebook event here. Yes, the entire universe is on facebook now, except you. You're the only one left. What's wrong with you, anyway?

  • I'm slowly working my way through Heroes and it's taking over my life. I'm up to episode 8 now. I'm only continuing to watch it because no one can learn perfect English and drop an accent in under a month so I know Hiro is going to be OK. The rest of the characters can pretty much go to hell.

  • Has anyone tried the new restaurant that has set up shop where Leo's used to be? I hear it's pretty intense, so I need a date to check the place out with. Inquire within.

  • I'm slowly getting aclimated to Robin's Donuts coffee since it's the only game in town out in hell Stratford. But one thing I can't handle are their breakfast bagels. They're even more ghetto than usual for Robin's. They use boiled eggs instead of the wonderfully fattening fried way McD's and Tim's do, and instead of toasting the bagel they heat up the entire thing in the microwave, bagel and all. Have you ever eaten a microwaved bagel? It's like chewing raw dough who's main ingredient was Vaseline.

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

Memos: Hot Action Edition

  • I've been loving A/V's Hot Action CD lately. It's the perfect thing to play loudly through my AirTunes to get me moving more quickly while I do laundry or pick up around the house.

  • Last night I watched a bunch of episodes from Season 2 of "The Office" (UK) and then watched a documentary that came with my DVD set. The funniest part about the documentary was the rest of the cast saying that the reason the atmosphere worked so well was because they were genuinely annoyed by Ricky Gervais almost all the time. I can completely understand this. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to stand the guy in real life, either.

  • So the Apple TV is apparently only Component Video or HDMI only. Is there a similar box already out there that will work with regular TVs and can grab video from a computer on the lan and display it on the TV, hopefully with a remote and decent UI? Any suggestions would be welcome. What about XBox Media Centre? I've heard contra Ming's doubts that it's still perfectly alright for playing modern compressed videos.. I should read more about people's real life use of it.

  • Almmost certainly getting an iMac this week. Was on the phone with the Little Mac Shoppe on Friday and am going to go in either Monday or Tuesday to make the order.

  • Everything electronic that Sabrina has purchased has failed to work for one reason or another. So apparently I'm now re-purchasing everything, and they all seem to work. Odd. Who knew that a "Magnasonic" DVD player wouldn't be quite up to scratch? Seriously - Magnasonic. They don't even try anymore.

  • Currently reading The Changing Face of China by John Gittings. It's rather slower going than I had thought. There is a rather unpredictable rhythm in the narrative switching between illustrative anecdotes which can be read rather quickly and more concrete information that needs to be read more slowly if one wants to retain a proper timeline of causes and effects. The book also manages to stay neutral on the verdict of the rightness or wrongness of China's current path and simply presents the events as they occurred, noting deviance from Mao's philosophies and goals but not passing judgment. I'm still only about halfway through, perhaps I'll write more when I've finished.

  • I haven't had any desire to write about politics lately. Not sure what changed, I used to always have something to say about whatever was in the news. I still read my usual political blogs, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, Hulabaloo being the best ones. But perhaps I just don't think I have much to say that isn't just reiterating some brilliant piece by Digby or Tristero or whatever super talented writer has decided to tackle a subject before I've gotten to it. Canadian politics perhaps is just in a lull at the moment, but at the same time there isn't quite the level of absurdity pervasive in our politics as exists in America which makes reading about it so entertaining.

    On that note, Raul Duke at The Immortals Co-Opt has been kicking all sorts of ass lately. Go read the last few entries.

  • I couldn't leave the house yesterday because I was waiting for the oil man all day, and today I slept in into the afternoon. I needed to catch up since I was not getting much sleep through the week, just lying in bed unable to even begin to feel tired, as happens with me from time to time. So other than some house cleaning I haven't really done much this weekend. And now I'm looking down the barrel of my alarm clock going off tomorrow and having to go back to work again. Not pleased. *sigh*

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