A List

Here is a list:

• Dog Food
• Monster Squad
• The Letter N
• Bundles of Sticks
• Three Bananas
• Existential Anxiety
• Horsies
• Loverboy
• Houdini Getting Punched in the Stomach
• Sausages

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

The Office

Wanna know why I haven't been posting any blog stuff lately? This is why:



That's my office. All those books and articles are crap I need in order to write my thesis. I have to get it done by tomorrow. Current status: Not done.



And if I don't have time to organize my papers or clean up my garbage, do you really think I have time to blog? Do you? Are you retarded or something?



Now go away. Come back when you have coffee or chocolate. *







* Also acceptable are chocolate covered coffee beans, coffee flavoured chocolate, chocolate flavoured coffee, coffee ice cream with chocolate chunks, and jars of peanut butter with a spoon.

Cherry Popping

Today, while working on my thesis (due in about a week), a song by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies "popped" up (HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHH) in iTunes. Remember them? Zoot Suit Riot? Yeah, them. Well, I decided to "take a break" (i.e. procrastinate) and find out what the hell happened to them.

The short answer is "not much."

Their official web site consists of three paragraphs. For example, this explains how they started:

Well, we started in Nov 1988 with a benefit for the striking Nikolai door workers in Springfield, Oregon... We built a giant electrical motorized penis that shot salvos of dove liquid into the audience (still have it in our storage space)... Later we were into mad scientist rock, where we had ideas for crazy inventions which we combined with rock and roll - you know, "kids after the show go build your own shoe tree chariot, here are the blue prints!" *

Awesome. That's about all that's on their site, except a list of shows (I guess they still play live), and insistence that their "flyin saucer seems headed for the sun again with our new ultra mega jam 'Spin the Fuck Around' - the Hippies really get their stanky on to it, bisnatch. See you at the bank!" I haven't heard it on the radio yet, but I'm looking forward to it; these guys are obviously much cooler than the "swing revival" that popularized them.

* I don't feel bad plagarising this paragraph, or the picture above, because the bottom of the site says "No artwork or music may be used with express written permission by The Cherry Poppin' Daddies." I guess that means that without written permission, it can be used. Sweet.

Microsoft Zune Will Play Xbox Live Arcade Games

Although it's been known for a while, Microsoft recently admitted that they are working on a portable media device. In the hyperbolic words of geeks, it's an "iPod killer". It's called the Zune, and looks to have some nice features. Most exciting for me is WiFi - that is, you can transfer songs to it over a wireless network, or even buy songs directly from the iTunes equivalent, right from device. It also promises social music features, such as sharing music collections with other people and getting recommendations; probably something like Mog or Last.fm.

That all sounds good. But here is my completely insubstantial, unsupported rumour to add to the already excessive hype: The Zune will play Xbox Live Arcade games. You will be able to transfer them, wirelessly, right from an Xbox 360 to the Zune, free of charge if you've already bought the game. For those who don't know, Live Arcade is a collection of crappy little games that you can buy for $5.00 - $15.00 each, and are usually highly addictive (check out my Xbox 360's blog to confirm that I play way too much Zuma). They're good for sitting down to play for a few minutes at a time - perfect for portable gaming. So why would Microsoft create a portable gaming system with an entirely new set of games, when they already have a whole library of games that are perfectly suited to portable gaming? It makes so much sense, that I'll just take the initiative and move this from the rumour box to the FACT box. That's right, you heard it here first, on this non-tech blog from a person not associated with Microsoft in any way: the Zune will play Xbox 360 Live Arcade games.

Now lots of people will probably find my blog while searching for Zune rumours. Sorry to disappoint you, people.

But in all seriousness, I'm looking forward to this thing. I've been wanting to buy an iPod for a while, since my iRiver H120 is so outdated now that it's 2 years old. If the Zune can actually offer something better than the iPod though, who knows, maybe they can brainwash me and make me buy it like they did with the Xbox 360. Assholes.

Oh, and check out ComingZune.com, the "viral marketing site" for the device. Depending on your perspective, it either features a giant rabbit, a giant person, and a normal person; or a normal person, a normal rabbit, and a very little person. In either case, there is much hugging and rubbing, and not much about electronic devices. Awesome.

Parking Meter Debauchery

I was walking around campus today, and came across one of those concrete slabs that divide parking lots. I tried to be really cool by hopping up the slanty slide of it and jumping off, landing on the other side. I pulled off the sick maneuver, but then I imagined myself tripping and falling over the slab, and how funny it would be if I did. Then that reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago, which reminded me that I should update my blog with the story:

I was walking home from the bar with a friend, downtown, pretty late at night. A guy was walking down the sidewalk towards us; he was swaggering like crazy, obviously drunk. Then he saw a parking meter along the road, got a running start, and attempted to jump-kick it. Needless to say, metal parking meters are stronger than feet, so he ended up half-tripping over it, nearly falling on his face. Without breaking his stride, as if he did this all the time, he continued down the sidewalk.

Of course, we thought this was hilarious. This was enhanced by the fact that he looked like a stereotypical dork. Big glasses, messy hair, etc. He resembled a drunken Napoleon Dynamite with a vendetta against parking meters. He passed us, but we continued to watch the guy to see what he did next. He didn't disappoint; after walking for another block, another parking meter caught his eye. He walked up to it, dropped his zipper, and urinated all over it.

Maybe he'd gotten a lot of parking tickets lately. Or maybe he was just mad at the first parking meter because it didn't cooperate with his ninja training. In any case, it was great fun. Thank you, drunken nerd, for entertaining me that night, and again when I remembered it today.

Good Dog

Today I was pondering the universe, and I was like, I wish there was some techno music to go along with this pondering, but then I thought, no, not just techno music, but techno music with lasers, because lasers go perfectly with techno, and what goes perfectly with both techno and lasers? Dogs. Yeah, I wish there were some dogs too, but they gotta be doing something kickass, like, say, flying through the air, or getting all friggin wet and shaking themselves off, and they gotta be dodging lasers the whole time they're doin' it, and to top this all off, to put the icing on the cake, so to speak, it's all gotta be in slow motion so you can see their tongues flopping around 'n shit. MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE CLICK HERE OMG!

I Am So Pissed Off

I came across an excellent little game which you simply must play. The Urinal Game tests your knowledge of awkward urinal situations. This only directly applies to males, but you girls may want to play too just to see the deep philosophical questions us guys have to deal with every time we go to the bar. They start easy but get tough quick; I ended up getting two wrong. :(

Speaking of pee, I just tried looking up whether "breaking the seal" (i.e. while drinking, after the first pee, you will have to pee every few minutes therafter) is a real phenomenon or not, with no luck. I have a feeling it's just a timing thing. If you've been drinking a while, then your bladder gets all full and irritated, and it wants to pee many times over. Holding in that first pee will probably do no good, because it's not the first pee that causes subsequent pees, but simply the fact that you've been drinking for so long.

Anyone know anything about this? Have Mythbusters ever busted the seal?

Oh, and please, wash your hands. Sheesh.

I Got Smacked

I got "smacked" by I Talk Too Much, a blog which reviews other blogs, usually with brutal honesty. Welcome everyone who's coming here from there.

The reviewer, Merciless Minx, had a few understandable problems with my template, like the ugly carrot-diarrhea color to the right. Hey, when I put up the new colours, I did say it was poo-brown; I never thought of the carrot angle though.

And I do need to shorten my archive list in the sidebar. The fact that my archives go back to 2000 shows my e-age. It's pretty mainstream now, but only socially retarded nerds were blogging back in 2000. Let's not even mention the fact that I was blogging before that, except I couldn't officially archive it because blogging tools didn't exist. In fact, the word "blog" didn't even exist back in 1997. I called it my "thing of the day" (because the idea was that I'd post something new each day). I think blog is a much more elegant term though.

I'm happy that my precious content wasn't mocked by the review. I'll toot my own horn and put an excerpt here:

This guy has great posts. Nothing pretentious or boring here. I laughed, I cried, I- fine I didn’t cry. But it’s good stuff. Go read for yourself.

If you do want to cry, try this guy's blog post.

In the end I got 3 out of 5 smacks, which, if you look at the other reviews, is pretty damn good. So thanks muchly, people at I Talk Too Much. If you gave me a bad review, I'd have to point out that neither you nor the blogs you review really "talk", since it's all text (unless they've got some fancy audio blog thing), but you didn't so I won't.

But for serious, thanks!

Jesus Crustacean

The weekend was quite fun. The booze party was a success. If I blew the blood alcohol level I did during the party while driving, I'd be arrested for driving while dead. I guess when you don't rinse with water before blowing, you can get up to levels that should be lethal.

I spent the rest of the weekend downtown at Sunfest (which is a fest in a park with much international music and food), and also attended the London Gay Pride Parade.

It was pretty nice. I got some free condoms and lube, which is always useful. I'm sure it's much more extravagant in big cities like Toronto, but I'm so glad we have the parade at all in conservative little London.

The protestors really piss me off though. I can handle the usual "Gay People are Freaks" signs. Whatever...free speech and all that, even if it's for purely evil purposes. You don't see me standing outside of churches every Sunday with signs saying "Jesus is an Asshole", but I sure hope the pride parade protestors would not have a problem with that. Same deal, right?

What really pissed me off was a sign saying "AIDS is God's cure for homosexuality". That's not only downright hateful and evil to the core, but it just makes no fucking sense. What are the kids in Africa with AIDS? Collateral damage? Fucking morons.

So next year I'm going to bring signs saying "heart attacks are God's punishment for eating shrimp". It makes as much sense as the AIDS sign (none), but does have a Biblical basis:

Leviticus 11:9-12 : Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

I'll quote great statistics like "did you know that nearly 95% of people who have had heart attacks ate shrimp sometime in their life? God's love at work!" I'll ask the protestors if they've ever eaten shrimp, and if they say yes, I'll call them freaks and abominations. Then I'll run away, telling them I don't want to catch their heart disease.



Further reading:

• God Hates Shrimp
  
• Church Sign Generator
  

Edit: Jesus God Damn Christ! Looks like I'm not the first one to come up with this idea:

Sports are Gay

I'm usually not at all into sports, but I just had to tune in to see Italy prove, through soccer, that they are genetically superior to every other race. It was very sad to see our weakness exposed, though, when Zidane headbutted some Italian player in the chest, sending him flying. It was also one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Click here to simulate being Zidane yourself. Ahh, the beauty of the internet...something insane happens one day, and by the next day, there are already high quality video games exploiting it.

Miscellaneous Facts

• Speaking of sidewalk etiquette, I was pushed off the sidewalk by two moms today. They obviously don't read my blog.
  
  
• If they did want to read my blog, one way to do it would be to search Google for "how much does hemroid surgery cost". Phronk.com comes up as one of the top 10 search results (and someone actually clicked on it...sorry you didn't find what you were looking for. And sorry about the hemroids.)
  
  
• Wolfmother is an awesome band. I need to buy their CD. I also just read that Thom Yorke (lead singer of Radiohead) is putting out a solo CD which releases next Tuesday. Sweet.
  
  
• I've set a date for my thesis defense. August 17th. On that day, I will be a MASTER OF SCIENCE unless I fuck up bad. Bow before me science, for I am your new master! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
  
  
• I should be working on my thesis right now.
  
  
• Tonight we're having a party at our place. The only purpose of the party is to get people (and ourselves) drunk so we can evaluate and compare breathalyzers for use in psych experiments. Does that make us losers? Or so cool that we got the Canadian government to foot the bill for a kickass party? You decide.
  
  
• Have a great weekend, blogfriends!
  

Sidewalk Etiquette

Since I have a driving phobia, I end up walking on sidewalks a lot. I think there is an unspoken etiquette that most sidewalk users follow. For example, if two people who are going in opposite directions meet, both of them should go to the right to avoid collision. Some people, however, violate sidewalk etiquette, and that can annoy me. There are three main types of people who do this:

1) Moms. OK, so baby carriages take up space. But being a mom does not permit you to take up the whole sidewalk and push everyone else off of it. You're just as capable of moving a few inches to the right as I am. This especially applies to moms who travel in packs. Go single file when someone is coming, just like a pack of non-moms would. Popping out a kid doesn't make you more important than everyone else. New moms already get "courtesy parking" at the mall...what more do they want? (Speaking of which, can really fat people use those spaces too? How is that different from being pregnant?)

2) Lawn Cutters. I was once walking down the sidewalk, and a giant ride-on lawn mower was cutting the grass beside the walk, going in the opposite direction. As I approached, he saw me, but needed to swerve onto the sidewalk to avoid a tree or something. Instead of waiting for me to pass, he pulled out directly in front of me. We both stopped. I'm not going the long way around you, buddy...you're the one driving a vehicle on the sidewalk (see below). You could've waited 2 seconds for me to pass, but now we're stuck in this weird standoff. So he eventually went around me and I continued on my merry way. I'm glad he didn't decide to drive over me, because those blades looked pointy.

3) Bikers. A bike is a vehicle. Vehicles go on the road, walkers go on the sidewalk. That said, I realize that it would be suicide to bike on some busy roads, so it's necessary to use the sidewalk. All I ask is that such bikers realize they are in a place they are not supposed to be, and yield the sidewalk to its proper occupants when necessary.

There was one time this particularly pissed me off. I was walking Willard with V, and some old dude was biking toward us on the sidewalk. As he approached, he started ringing the bell on his bike. We moved slightly, but we weren't going on the grass to avoid him. He continued down the middle of the sidewalk, rung again as he went by, and came within inches of running over our dog. I turn to V and say loudly "what the fuck was that?" It still pisses me off just thinking about it. It's like a car driving onto a soccer field and honking because people are playing soccer there. Then attempting to run them all over when they keep playing. Asshole.

When I'm on a bike, and need to use the sidewalk, I either switch to the road when people are walking in my path, or go around on the grass. People who are walking should not be affected at all by my passage, because they are in the right place and I am not.

Follow these simple guidelines, and you will avoid my wrath.

To compensate for the grumpiness of this post, here are some happy words: SUNSHINE, JOY-JOY, RAINBOWS, SATAN, HEARTS, PUPPIES, KITTENS.

One Hundred Original Ideas for Horror Movies (#17 - 21)

See #1 to #5 for the first 5 and an explanation, then #6 to #10 for more. #11 is a secret hidden bonus. Then #12-16.

• 17. Monkey Shampoo Terror! A group of Rhesus Monkeys escapes a laboratory where a cosmetics company was testing a new shampoo on them. As revenge, the monkeys cover the city in bubbly shampoo. Nobody can see through the bubbles; chaos ensues. Cars crash, people fall over, and the shampoo irritates their eyes and skin. The monkeys begin to kidnap people while they are incapacitated by the bubbles. They perform painful psychology experiments on the humans. When they get bored with that, they start throwing feces and slaughtering people. The sight of a splash of blood flying through a sea of shampoo foam is eerily beautiful.

• 18. Earwigs: I fucking hate earwigs. With their crawly little legs and pinchy little pincers. A horror movie about earwigs doesn't even need to have giant earwigs, or mutant earwigs, or even killer earwigs. Just have completely normal earwigs run around pinching people and, of course, burrowing into peoples' ears to lay eggs in their brains. (Edit: And doing this. UGH!)
  
  
• 19. That's a Spicy Meatball: A new restaurant opens up in town, and bills itself as having the spiciest food even created. A street kids who's in a gang is found stealing from its back alley and they make him a dishwasher. He starts noticing strange things; people who he saw in the restaurant the day before are reported dead on the news; his gang friends steal some sauce from the restaurant and also end up dead. He discovers that the sauce they use on their meatballs is so spicy that it burns holes in the esophagus, leading to a painful death. He steals a tub of even more potent, undiluted sauce, and carries out his brilliant plan: He puts the sauce in Super Soakers and uses it to defeat all the rival gangs.
  
  
• 20. Zombie$: Oh no, zombies! Ugh! It's got me! Phew! It grabbed onto my pants and they slipped off...I've escaped. Hey...why is it sniffing my pants? Perverted zombie. Oh...it's...what the hell? It's taking out my wallet. All they want is money? They don't even want to eat our brains? Just money? Social commentary? What?

• 21. Nobody Understands Me: A depressed teenager comes back from an emo music festival, and finds that nobody understands him. Literally. Whatever he says is incomprehensible to other people. "Mom, can I take the car to the mall tonight?" "Honey, I have no idea what you're talking about. I hear the words you're saying but they make no sense. Something about cars and malls? I don't get it." Frustrated, he tries writing things down, but people look at his writing as if it's an article in advanced theoretical physics. Finally, he tries the computer in his parents' basement. It works! People understand him! He becomes addicted to Myspace, World of Warcraft, and online chat rooms, surviving off of pizza ordered online, then becomes obese and covered in bed sores. He dies of a heart attack several months later, when someone pisses him off by stealing his +12 Axe of Faerie Strength.