500 Words Per Day

Girl, Looking Good this Summer ain't Rocket Science

2009-07-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

Not to throw anyone off by writing two posts within the span of a few minutes, but I needed to get some more things off my chest before I abandon this area for another three to six months.

Summer. It's here and I won't say it's "finally" come because it was actually prematurely ejaculating hot glorious rays of sunshine at us back as early as April. Yes, it was late April when we got a good five days of a hot spell, followed by nearly two weeks of the summer sizzles during May. So this whole official start to summer, back on June 20th, was pure rubbish. It was just more ironic tomfoolery. It rained for half the weekend, granted only during the night or early in the morning when no one should care, but it rained all the same. And the clouds came and gave us a bit of a scare. And a BBQ or two were cancelled because of it. Damned summer and those dirty forecasters with their inaccuracies. I'd love a job like that. To be paid to say something. I just have to say something, make a prediction and back it up with a graphic and some numbers. Whether I'm wrong or right, I still get paid. Get me into this racket right now.

But, the topic is summer. And women. Girls! I prefer the term girls for the purpose of this article. "Women" is too staid. It's too dignified perhaps. Because now I am going to objectify a little bit. Okay, a lot. I am going to point out the obvious and that is to say, the girls look fantastic in the summer. And the reason is simple enough. A German DJ once laid out the formula as clear as day: "Hotties minus clothing is Happy Excess".

Oh man, you so right.

Unfortunately, I haven't spent much time at the beach yet so I haven't been treated to the bikini barrage or as some lucky ducks might see, an off-duty stripper/escort/dancer/professional hot girl doff the top and sun bathe au naturale. All the while painfully aware that yes they are hot and yes, they just exposed their mammaries long enough for an undisclosed number of male eyes to drink in and store in their memory banks for future reference. No, thus far I've only limited my random ogling to the streets. It's still a feast of visual treats for your average guy. Oh, how I wonder at how some men resist the urge to glance over when an attractive woman walks by or sits down on the bus. Oh, I'm watching them to see if they glance over. Then I get bored of waiting and go back to my covert operation of sidelong peeks, innocent head turns and other subterfuge to drink in more of the pretty sights.

Full disclosure: I am single with girlfriend and very happy with my relationship. My eyes never stop, however, and I don't ever see an end to it. Who stops looking? You're a liar if you say so. The engine never stops, it keeps purring and the view out the window is oh so good this season.

What's surprised me so far is not that there are a bevy of hot girls who seemingly come out of the woodwork when the temperature cracks a certain limit. Nor is the fact they are exposing more skin than ever before. No, the real reckoning for me, your-attached-but-always-looking pervert, is how few elements it takes for a girl to really put it all together. The checklist, if you please:

1.) Small shorts
2.) Tank or sport top
3.) Flip flops
4.) Legs (and good hips)

I once bowed at the statue carved of the man who invented the high heels. How a simple design has defined the look of women and has endured all these ages. I can't quite place the inventors of the thong sandals up atop the same pedestal but they deserve at least an honorary mention. Flip flops are the summer equivalent of a sexy pair of heels. Instead of the auditory warning of the click-clack, you get more of a scuff-scuff. Yes, flip flops on the right pair of feet attached to the right pair of bronzed, burnished legs can be quite the thing to behold.

I have a slight toe/foot fetish. Can you tell?

The rest of the list is self-explanatory, no? Tank tops to expose more skin and for the fact I've manage to fetishize a nice, lean pair of arms along with feet, toes and other ramdom appendages. And you can't have a nice legs without having firm, healthy hips to go along with them, can you? Is it in the realm of physical possibility? If you're rail thin, those short shorts will never be short shorts unless you're wearing something bought from Baby Gap. You're too thin, you're a waif, you'll blow away in the wind.

Give me a healthy west coast girl. Someone who's raised on a good Candian diet of beef, corn and Chinese take out. Someone who runs around outside or sweats it out on a machine once in a while. Those girls get the shorts and flip flops look to a T. A tan would be nice too but now I'm getting picky. You're all beautiful! I love you all.

Friday, Get your Face On

2009-07-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

Hi, it's me. Where did I go? It doesn't matter. I just wanted to say how out of place I feel when I'm working on a Friday and out on the streets before sundown. No, I'm still working but I've gone out to buy some cheap sushi and to see if the magazine shop has bothered to stock anything worth reading or remotely current. Everyone has got their weekend faces on, the patios are buzzing with laughter, cars are on high intensity as they hurry back home. And the sun: the sun is alive and throbbing and refusing to quit. The weekend is here! The weekend is glorious and it is here, now. Right now.

Meanwhile I haven't got my game face on. Hell, I haven't even shaved. I'm walking back to office, squinting against the low sun. My hair still needs to be cut. It is in Q-tip mode and not especially sexy. And I'm just walking past the patios, the weekenders, the free ones, the liberated. Yes, I suppose I'm not alone. Those leggy hostesses and servers at Earl's aren't doing it out of the kindness of the hearts. The clerks at Timmy's probably have a number of things they'd rather be doing tonight than sling donuts. I know this. Things could be worse for me. Me, the guys working nights this week, the guy who's walking back to the office with his cheap sushi and a quiet evening with the monitors and the web surfing and the blogging.

Things could be a lot worse this Friday night.

Waking Up From a Year of Fitful Sleep

2009-04-06T19:13:00.000-07:00

The subject title is to be taken figuratively of course. I found myself having a sustained moment of clarity today. The first signs of a true spring surely acted as the catalyst to wipe my mind clear of a year-long accumulation of apathy. The sun was out and I could finally shed my wool-lined jacket. I felt focused and I felt good about being alive.

I often come back to blogging after waking up from long periods of slumming, for lack of a better word. I feel as if I've woken up from a most slummy slumber, like a crotchety troll finally emerging from his cave into the sunlight, blinded, stunned and exhilerated all at once. As the troll, a number of realizations dawned on me. I had slept away the past year being perpetually angry and agitated, petty and increasingly careless with my own life. And by that, I mean I didn't care about my life. Beyond the basics of holding down a job, entertaining myself and maintaing contact with a very small group of people, I just could not be bothered to care how my life would unfold beyond the next couple of weeks.

My body had dissolved into a slovenly load of fat. I was constantly getting sick. I had not been able to finish reading any books, no matter how low brow the material. Friendships were left to wither. Bills were left unpaid. Chores and other responsibilites were shirked or dithered. Constantly tired.

It's been quite regressive in an ironic sort of way, seeing as I turn 32 this summer and was probably severaly magnitudes more mindful about my well-being when I was 22 than I am now. What hit me hard today was realizing in full clarity how badly I was walking around as a shell of a man. I really wanted to avoid using cliches, but that's really my perception of my life of late.

I'm pretty sure I do not suffer from S.A.D (seasonal affective disorder) but the positive affect the sun had on me today was undeniable. I suddenly felt grateful for the things I had in life. Well, for the most part. I still didn't think very highly of my job but the prospect of going there didn't grate on me like it sometimes did. I felt a new level of warm fuzzies about my girlfriend (and no, her making breakfast for me this morning had nothing to do with it). Most alarming, I actually felt like I had the worth in me to go do something scary and different.

What kind of scary and different? While it had been percolating in my mind for some weeks now, it now seemed like an even more attainable and exciting. Well, here it is: I want go get back into the creative business. Not the web development that I've put myself through for half a dozen years. And while my friends keep egging me to pursue my love of writing, I took notice enough to see that my motivations to write still hold to a very casual level. I keep flirting with the idea of being a journo but have never felt compelled to follow current affairs or politics all that closely. Other, more specialized topics, yes, but in terms of the broad mainstream vein of journalism, I've felt little interest in it. More on this later.

No, when I say creative, what I really mean is going back to what really got me exciting about multimedia and web design in the first place. Using technlogy. Creating experiences. Making cool shit. If I've had a passion for anything these last couple of year, it's been with video games. Playing them for the most part, but also writing about them, reading about them, championing them, listening to podcasts and consuming every last scrap of news there is to be found about them.

Earlier this year I was brought on to write for a Canadian-based gaming blog and had the opportunity to cover my first video games event as press. It was the 3rd annual Vancouver Film School Game Design Expo. I mingled, interviewed a number of the industry professionals in attendance and wrote a short series of stories afterwards. It didn't cross my mind at the time, but I think I really envied all the industry vets that gave speeches, as well as all of the students, mostly youngsters, currently enrolled in the VFS game design program. A couple of the veterans inspired me because they were people who had done a 180 degree career shift, getting into game development later in their life after doing something completely unrelated. Could I make a similar shift? At the time, I banished such thoughts as insane.

Maybe. Now I've my day of clarity and it feels a lot more than just a few crazy hours of sun-addled delirium. There's a quiet, burgeoning scene out there, a scene where small independent developers ply their trade creating smaller games out of the mainstream retail chain. I want to get in there. It's an exciting place to be right now and especially for someone like me who has a rather slim chance of being hired by a company, it's a great place to learn and hone your craft.

Someone pinch me if they think I've finally lost it. I know there are several hundred steps ahead of me, but I know what the first few are. It's as clear as day to me now.

2009

2009-01-03T23:43:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, someone is asking about that post I was going to write about my various experiences and observations during my time in eastern and southern Australia.

I think I hear my father reminding me to send him the link to my photo album. It's been almost three months since my return and had only just cleared out my carry-on last week prior to embarking on my weekend bro-fest in Whistler.

I still have yet to meet my travel agent for lunch and share all of my rapidly fading vacation memories with her. I've stood her up once already. I think maybe I'm taking my sweet time because I do find her attractive. It's a paradoxical attraction. She's attainable, or "in my league" yet we're both attached so any real possibility of a relationship beyond the professional may as well stay in the realm of complete fantasy.

What is wrong with me? I was talking about my vacation. Or rather, talking about my inability to talking about my vacation that has long passed.

I need blog therapy again.

Snow Day Number... I've Lost Count Now

2008-12-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

I watched the sky dump snow onto our hapless west coast metropolis for the better part of my 11-hour shift today. Listless, with hardly a thing to do but monitor agent statuses and line availability, I would trudge over to the reception area that overlooked the side street where I had parked my Camry.

Splotchy patches on concrete were replaced with muddy white accents until the entire street was covered in picture-perfect white snow. My car soon developed a soft ice cream coating and a low, fluffy fortress wall was later erected to apparently make my escape from work a trickier proposition.

I spied a few deckhands at the adjacent Acura dealership clearing out the driveway and became inspired to do something productive while doing nothing at work. After making another unnecessary sojourn to Starbucks, I waded through the white fields of tire treads and politely asked to borrow a shovel to pre-emptively extricate my car from captivity. With business non-existent, there was only the petite receptionist milling about the showroom floor. The branch manager was relegated to his watchful supervision of the service team, three men strong, as they industriously cleared the parking lot of every last shred of snow and ice.

I flashed my winning smile, gave a slight, knowing nod to the manager, and shovel was mine for the borrowing. Ten minutes and a slightly sore back later, I was back within the sauna-like ecosystem of my office. And still it continued to snow. I would tentatively peer out again from the reception desk, eyeing up the snow and wondering if I should have waited until the very last moments to borrow the Acura dealership shovel. I still had a solid three hours to kill and snowfall stops for no-one.

As it happened, my misgivings were unfounded. The upstairs office shut down a half hour before schedule, freeing me up to get a few precious extra minutes to remove a giant slab of snow and ice from atop my car. The journey back home was largely uneventful. The most notable observation I had was how sensibly everyone was driving. Even the entitled 4WD yuppy-mobile ahead of me was driving a lot slower than I myself was comfortable keeping pace with. Things got a bit dicier on the final approach to my apartment. A steep incline stretching for about 10 blocks, I built up exactly zero momentum coming off a plodding right-turn on a yellow light.

My tires were slipping all over my place, giving off the distinct sensation that my vehicle was not self-propelled but rather yanked along by a loose piece of string. As I triumphantly pulled to the curb outside my place, I realized that I was committed to the spot now. Another 5 centimeters would drop through out the evening with an another hefty dump forecasted for Christmas Day.

It was a rather small victory getting my car back home in one piece. My stubborn resistance to waiting and riding on an sopping wet, overcrowded and smelly bus challenged me to meet Mother Nature head on and emerge the champion. In your face, momma! Our east coast counterparts may scoff at our snowy conditions even now. To temperate Vancouverites like myself, the snow this year has been manly enough. I can't help feel just a little rugged for sliding and jiving my all-season equipped beater back home and no pedestrians or driver-side mirrors were killed in the process.

Posted Price is the Real Price. Imagine That.

2008-12-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

I had got off the bus the other night and I was walking back to my front door when my world turned upside down. I live directly beside a Shell gas station so I'm privy to by-the-minute pump price fluctuations.

The 78.9 cents per litre sign enticed me into rolling up my car to top off the tank. Imagine my surprise when I saw laminated sign taped to all the pumps, boldy declaring that the post price of gas is the actual price at the pump.

Stunned. Speechless. Befuddled?

Finally, after all these years, the gas stations have done away with the charade of selling gas for 3 cents below the posted price. Someone high up must have finally come to their senses. Or perhaps this is just phase two of some diabolical plan designed to coddle us into a false sense of security.

Sick in Melbourne

2008-10-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

It's my third day in Melbourne, a lovely city with a vibrant downtown core and weather a little bit too reminiscent of what I'm used to in Vancouver. I've finally broken out the bulky sweater that I packed. It's rained sporadically since my arrival and I was rained in one morning in Sydney a few days ago too, so it's safe to say I've long left the ball-sweating heat of Cairns behind me.

Since I haven't journalised about my trip since my stay in Cairns, I dont' think there's much point in attempting to summarize the rest of my Contiki tour or my brief stay in Sydney. I'll probably do capsule recaps once I return home and talk about things based around themes and observations, rather than a full-blown, tiresome chronologically correct travel summary.

I'm feeling quite under the weather now and have been feeling quite worn down since the tour ended last Friday. I'll be lucky if I can make it to the Melbourne aquarium and complete a few other items on my To-Do list for today. My head is feeling heavy and I can barely focus on writing this post.

Kicking it in Cairns

2008-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

Day 3 of my trip down under. My first trip overseas in 7 years and my first experience with the famous Contiki tourin group.

A word of advice with planning a trip with Contiki: it's a skeleton tour. The base fee for any tour really just covers accommodations, transport and the all-encompassin supervision of a gregarious, rapid-fire delivery Aussie tour manager. Unless you are going to be motivated to plan your own day outings, all the "special events" are optional and count as additional charges should you decide to do any of them. These include white water rafting, skyrail rides, sailing trips to the Great Barrier Reef, ATV and horseback riding, intro an certified scuba diving, skydving, bungy jumping, and more.

During our tou orientation we were given a rather thorough summary of all these optionals, along with prices. I have to say, even after dropping $1800 total on airfare and another $1600 on the tour, plus several hunder dollars kitting myself out for my vacation, these optional fun trips all seemed quite appealing. Still, with most optionals costing an average of $175 dollars, it became apparent to me that I would have to be very discerning with my purchases. It was easy to rule out the water-heavy activities like scuba and more extremem excercises like skydiving. I had also already pre-booked a 2 night sailing trip from Whitsundays to the inner corrals of the Great Barrier Reef, so all the other sailing excursions felt redundant. That left ATV riding during our stay in Cairns. The ATV experience immediately caught my eye and at $125 for a half-day joyride, it was reasonably priced.

So, the lesson here is be prepared to dish out at least another few hundred dollars if you want to add "content" to your baseline tour experience. Even after we leave Cairns and Whitsundays, we have a good 8-9 days left of touring, with each stop offering yet more optional excursions. It really will add up fast if you're not carefule and happen to be an "experience junkie" when you go travelling. For tamer souls n a budget, such as myself, you'll need to do a bit more soul searching and wallet scraping to pick out the very best activites for yourself and be able to entertain yourself during those "free days" when many other more spend-happy tour participants have gone off on their own day trips.

Another minor grumble I have with this tour is the paucity of included meals. When I booked my tour, I knew before hand that there were only going to be about a dozen packaged-in meals, mostly lunches and dinners, but it's still a disappoint to be 3 days in to your trip and still shelling out cash for overpriced hotel buffets. Or in the case of last night's pub crawl, 20 Aussie bucks bought us a rather tepid BBQ consisting of 3 kinds of sausages and way too much salad, plus a complimentary beer, shot or glass of wine at a succession of 4 different clubs and pubs. Overall, it wasn't a bad deal, but the BBQ was weak and these comp drinks only fetch you the Aussie equivalent of a bottle of Bud or Kokanee in Canada. Thankfully, we'll be treated to our first included breakfast the mornng we leave Cairns for Whitsundays. I'm eager to assess the quality of the foods... whether it's of a baseline quality or something sloppy they just turned out to appease us hapless, ignorant tour participants.

But the clock is counting down on my Internet cafe access. It's been a slack day of sleeping in, gorging on overpriced breakfast buffet and aimlessing wandering the Cairns espanade and tourist centre. Another 2 hours and I'll dutifully hope back on my hotel shuttle bus and retire to my room share of 4 travellers. More on that and the rest of my Cairns stay later.

I've Made My Bed

2008-06-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

I just broke up with the most caring, patient and loyal girl that I've ever met. It was the right thing to do or the biggest mistake of my life.

Daft Bastard

2008-01-03T22:45:00.000-08:00

An older gentleman with an Scottish accent called me a "daft bastard" yesterday. I was in my car, he on the grassy curb next to the forgotten train tracks that run through out my section of town. I had apparently ran a red light at the crossing designed to stop traffic just before the lane met the tracks. These same tracks were built for trains that have not operated in years, perhaps a decade now.

This man was livid that I had run these red lights, as is customary for me, and instead come to a stop at the second set of lights at the road intersection, which in my mind were the only lights that mattered in this situation. This lost soul had chosen the train lights as a reasonable place to cross the street. Other more mindful drivers had stopped at those lights, either out of habit of stopping at the sign of red no matter the circumstances, or perhaps the combination of seeing a red traffic light and a grumpy old pedestrian impatiently waiting to rewrite the rules of the road was a powerful enough visual cue for them to hit those brakes and HALT. To these attentive, conscientious drivers, I salute you.

This does not, of course, let my mild-mannered interrogator off the hook. I reflexively rolled down the passenger side windows when I caught a glimpse of an animated figure off in my peripheral vision. I thought for a moment it was a concerned citizen trying to tell me about a punctured tire on my car or perhaps he was interested in shouting over some encouraging words about my driving prowess. Alas it was no such helpful advice that floated across the lane of traffic, through my open window and into my waiting ear drums. It was a good old fashioned chastisement. The old goat remarked on my failure to stop at the red light and how he was trying to cross the road at that particular spot.

I didn't have the heart or time to counter-berate this man. Time seems to simultaneously stand still and accelerate during these moments of impromptu public confrontations. I never did get a chance to question this man's judgment to cross a busy commuter street where no pedestrian crosswalk exists. An abandoned train track exists there, sure, supported by a set of traffic lights that have obviously outlived their relevance, but a railroad hardly substitutes as an improvised crosswalk for old men.

Like I said, too much logical ammunition to expend on a helpless old man, too little time. The real traffic lights ahead of me switched to green and all I was able to muster was a quick shake of my head, a hiked thumb stabbing backwards and a rather dismissive comment about the train that no longer ran on those tracks. Then I was off, but not before my friend on the curb delivered his parting shot.

"I was trying to cross the road there, ya daft bastard!"

Daft bastard. It had a certain ring to it that confused me more than it actually offended. I immediately thought of Mike Myers in his Austen Powers movies. Then just as quickly I made the associative link and realized it reminded me of the Fat Bastard character.

Daft Bastard vs. Fat Bastard. Yes, I may have been a dick for not going along with the crowd and stopping at a fake set of red lights to allow an old man to jaywalk across four lanes of traffic. In my mind, being called a daft bastard yesterday was less a reflection on my performance as a driver and more of a commentary on a recurring theme in my life of late.

Allow me to explain a little further. I quit my job last Thursday, yet my own team supervisor was still expecting me to come into the office yesterday and work my regular shift. I had even committed to going in to work, the daft bastard that I am, even though I had tendered my letter of resignation and contacted the appropriate representatives about my intention to quit. Well, I never did show up for my shift. Why should I? Aside from the obvious, I had quit and I couldn't stomach going back to that environment for even a few more hours.

It was all a miniature mess of misunderstandings, bad timing and administrative mix ups but I got it all resolved this morning. I suppose if I really wanted to disengage from my contract good and proper, I would have forced myself to return to the office, work a rather meaningless two hours into my shift, then pay a visit to my recruitment representative to officially sign off on my resignation. This rep was still on vacation last week, otherwise I would have walked off the job last Thursday instead of dragging things out into ambiguous employment territory this week.

I think the take home message here is I'm a daft bastard. I'm a daft bastard for failing to obey obsolete traffic lights. I'm a daft bastard for not kowtowing to the whims of belligerent, elderly pedestrians. I'm also an insanely daft bastard for leaving a job without first lining up a new gig to hop over to.

Finally, I'm a daft bastard for having the guts to quit the first job I truly despised. In that sense, sometimes being a one dense, daft son of a bitch is the smartest move you'll ever make and a necessary evil if you plan on saving your life.

On Facebook (When the Crush Says "Hi")

2007-12-11T21:26:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder if Facebook is actually meant to facilitate my online social networking, or if in fact it is a link to my unwanted past. Since I joined over the summer, I've padded my friends list with my share of acquaintances from elementary and high school. A quick exchange of emails or an enthused Wall post, and we were on our separate ways again, never to speak again.

Women from my recent dating past have also resurfaced, Facebook-style. "Dating" may be putting too much of a strong point on it. I went on a one or two non-committal dates with some young ladies and never saw them again, until Facebook. I tried reaching out to one particular girl who I abruptly stopped calling a couple summers ago. I don't think I sustained more than 3 messages in our conversation.

As with my former school colleagues, I sometimes wonder why I even bother keeping the people I've dated on my friends list. Is it all just ego, to add to the ever-increasing tally of random faces on my list of contacts? Strip away all the fat, and you'd be left with the sober truth of me really having 5 close friends, 5 "hang out" buddies and at the most 10 - 15 regular acquaintances. Right now, my list of so-called friends has ballooned into the territory of the mid-to-high 80s. Total bullshit.

But I do draw the line sometimes. There are times when I take a stand and say "no". I'll say no to the incessant invites to add yet another new widget to my already bloated profile page. I"ll say no to the mindless mouse-clicking games, trivia games, personality assessments and any number of time-wasting plug-ins added onto an already crowning achievement in online time-wastery. I'll also say "no" to friend invites from girls how have jilted me in the past.

I suppose this isn't any different from my adding a girl to my Facebook after failing to call her for 18 months. Still, when a girl I went out with twice back in 2000 sends me a friend request, I take notice. She had me stumped, oh for a good 15 seconds until I actually found some photos on her page. I suppose it's no surprise she was able to find me, seeing how we actually did share a couple friends in our tangled web of Facebook. I'm just more surprised that she actually remembered me and bothered to send a request.

Wait, there's no bother at all. Requesting someone to be added to your collection of friends is simplicity itself. It's effortless. That's why people do it. I really don't suppose this girl really cares too much about what's going on with my life. I see ourselves exchanging the usual pleasantries before going our separate ways again. I could always break things up by asking her to return those party photos I'd lent to her after our last date. We could talk about the good old times, like that one week I spent obsessing over her and calling her every couple of nights to ask her out again, but never getting a response.

But no, I don't think that's sanctioned behaviour on Facebook. I'm just another Facebook face to her. I'm just there to be filed into her stack of friends, and likewise I can use her to pad out my own list of 80-something-going-on-90. It's an even exchange. Your empty social credit for mine.

Keep Your Foot Still at the Movies

2007-10-14T22:19:00.001-07:00

I don't know why I've had such a bad run of seat kickers when I've gone to the movies.

It must have started in August, when I really started going out to the theaters regularly to take in the final load of summer mega-hits. There was a 2-week span when I watched The Simpsons Movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, Hairspray and Rush Hour 3. At each of these shows, I was harassed by a seat kicker. The seat-kicking ended after I stopped going to the movies for a while in September. But even now, I've encountered some mild seat kicking in one form or another.

I hate having my seat kicked. For one, I don't understand it. Surely, most seat kickers have had their own seats pounded upon at one point or another. They know how annoying it can be, yet here they are obliviously tapping away at the back of my chair. The other thing that gets me is wondering why on earth they can't keep their foot still. Are we still children here, restless in our chairs, feeling put upon by this movie that's in front of us and realizing we'd rather go aside and play in the sun? I don't get it, and I rarely tolerate it either.

A large majority of the culprits so far have been young girls, which goes some way to explain why they kick the seats in the first place. Women have a habit of sitting with their legs crossed, which puts their leg in a optimal position to swing around and deliver percussive attacks to the seats in front of them. I admit this makes it a lot easier for me to spin around and ask my tormentor to kindly stop their kicking, when said tormentor is of the fairer sex.

I think young people, in general, have a tendency towards this. A variant of seat kicking is the classy resting of the foot on the chair in front of you, even when there is someone sitting there. Depending on how the seats are constructed (high backs, sturdy), this may not be a problem. It becomes a problem when the foot resting transitions into foot shifting and switching between feet. It's not quite as annoying as the "tap-tap-tap" of a full-fledged seat kicker, but if I can feel your feet moving around on the back of chair, I am going to be distracted from my movie. And if I'm distracted from a movie -- even if it's a lousy one -- I'm going to be pissed.

How can we curb this behaviour at the movies? I suppose it's a lot like manners: you're either brought up early to be mindful of this sort of behaviour or you're not. I'd like to think it's a habit that can be untrained or weaned off by aging. Ideally, I'm hoping this piece serves as a public service announcement to bring in awareness. In the end, all that's really needed in open, polite communication. Most seat kickers don't really know what an idiot they're being until you turn around to ask them to kindly stop. And usually, they do. I have yet to meet a huffy seat kicker who takes umbrage with being called out for their misdeeds. Come to think of it, I've met a lot more rude, petulant Movie Talkers than I have Seat Kickers, so I'll give them some credit where it's due.

Lucky for those seat kickers, I'd say. There seem to be a lot more of them, and to be rude and huffy as well? Well, I'd hate to have to take a hatchet to their ankles.

As for Movie Talkers? My God, these pricks need to be shot. But that's another blog post altogether.

Countdown to Thirty

2007-07-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

It's a little less than 3 days until my 30th birthday and I'm feeling fine. Funny to think that if you asked me about turning 30 back when I was still 25, you would have gotten some wacky, over-dramatic soliloquy out of me. It sucks, I'm getting old and what will I do then would be some of the more choice sentiments found in my ramble. That was a particularly tender time for me, since I was still coming to grips with my "quarter-century crisis". Thirty was looming large and, judging by how quickly my life went from ages 20 - 25, it was really just around the corner for me.

I stand at Thirty's doorstep now and all I can muster is a relieved, "MEH".

A small part of me is grateful that my 20s are over and done with. I spent the better part of those years alternately being very afraid and pretending not to be afraid. I also took many small, stupid risks while shying away from the really colossal, moronic risks that might have really changed my life. There was fun to be had, as well as some experimentation. I just wish I had experimented with things even more. Again, it comes back to my fear. It's the fear and insecurity about myself that I've always had and the same I still carry with me today, like an old coat.

As each year passes, I managed to shrug off more layers of fabric from this coat. Turning 30 is just a blip in what is my life-long process of accepting myself. Each year I realize my weaknesses are not always deal-breakers. I get a better appreciation of my own quirks, learn new lessons from mistakes made long past and slowly but surely, I come to cherish the qualities that others recognize in me and the very ones I rarely give myself credit for.

Oh I'll regret not having the chance to be a complete dumbass doing completely dumbass things as a 20-year old. Come to think of it, I wasn't exactly the most reckless, dumbass 20-year old out there, not by a long shot. I'll just have to settle for getting into dumbass shenanigans in my thirties, when I'm slightly smarter and just slightly more experienced. The thrills may not be the same, they'll just be different.

So in a sense, I am committed to making my thirties my new twenties. My twenties, minus the fear, the anger and the aimlessness. No, this is not about recapturing my youth like they do in Pepsi commercials. This is about forging ahead, taking risks and jumping on new opportunities.

Young, sadly, is not what I feel. I'm feeling lethargic, I am cramps and aches and I generally couldn't feel more like an old man than I do right now. So here's to creeping across that line into thirtydom in true form: creeking and wheezing, yes, but ready to duke it out for at least another 10 years.

Pendulum Swings Back to 500WPD Blogging

2007-07-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

Job hunting disorientation, the cooler weather today and feelings of borderline sickness all conspired to eat up my hours today and preempt a long overdue post to this humble website of mine.

I never knew managing -- or in my case, failing to manage -- two blogs at once would be so taxing an effort. Just a few months after launching my Xbox 360 blog, I switched full gears into writing video game updates and little else. Much to my surprise, friends began asking about the sudden dearth of posts. Asking is a bit too polite, although I don't want to fault anyone for exercising some good ol'fashioned "bitchin' & moaning". Particularly friends in transit or living abroad were using my blog as live conduit into my life and my extended radio silence left them completely in the dark about little old me.

And now I'm back, not with more empty promises of getting back into regular blogging habits, or even recapping all the petty going-ons that have marred or otherwise enlivened my existence since the end of March.

I just... felt the need to write.

And in the process of my urge to form thoughts and ideas in blog-friendly format, maybe I will ruminate over some things that have been going on in the World of Me.

Unemployment, especially during the height of summer, is a bizarre sort of predicament. The gorgeous weather, uplifting vibe and reams of lovely exposed flesh are not the most conducive motivators for hunkering down inside a job resource centre, library or even at home in front of the online job boards. I've been playing it all off as some free-spirit, happily advertising my unemployed bum status to all who dare to ask and confessing my unadulterated enjoyment of the work-free summer lifestyle. I will say this: of the 3 or 4 times I've found myself without a job, this is undoubtedly my most pleasurable, guilt-free stint ever.

There are a few contributing reasons to my shameless enjoyment. A certain, unhealthy fixation to video games keeps me in the house, out of trouble and away from the general flow of daily consumerism. The weather, at least during one glorious week in May and for much of July so far, as been suitably hot and cheery, and on those days I am tempted out into the beach or the coffee house to wile away precious hours alternately reading or ogling, depending on what affords the best view at the time. My love life has also undergone a bit of a jump-start in defiance of my usual self-bias of someohow being dating-ineligible by mere fact of being unemployed. In that regard, I have pleasantly surprised myself and currently enjoy relearning the ropes: fumbling through the early stages of courtship, or wooing, or whatever sappy formalized term you prefer to use other than simply, "hooking up".

Lastly, I think I'm enjoying my unemployment so much simply because I have progressively let go of my "career transition" stress. Whereas before I might be hell-bent on finding the job, now I have a more positive view on the possibility that the job will find me. Oh, I am still quite in the dark about discovering that magical answer that melds some passion of mine to an actual job title. But I've started to let that go and be at peace with perhaps doing work, any kind of work, and being able to realize quickly if I would derive any satisfaction from doing it.

I wish I could be more clear about that but I feel like I'm rapidly fading in terms of being articulate. My writing ability can feel like it runs on a dusty backup generator: juice fires up for emergency situation, then dissipates quickly. Simply put, my work-free bliss will soon be facing some harsh reality as my employment benefits will run out early next month. The search for a stable, long-term job is taking on a different tactic, the one of finding some stop-gap work ASAP so I can continue my Quest of Finding a Meaningful Career and still have some change left over to eat, sleep on a bed and play more video games.

There are also a couple articles stewing in my Blogger queue, so don't be surprised if you see some new material on these pages in the coming week. Although not a full-fledged promise of a return to consistent blogging, it's the best I can do right now with oh, just SO MUCH ON MY PLATE. You do understand, don't you?

Besides, I love flaunting the irony that is the title of my blog with the actual frequency of my blogging.

Hope everyone is having a semi-interesting July.

p.s. - I've also succumbed to the charms of Facebook. God help us all.

A New Day & a New Chapter

2007-03-30T00:04:00.000-07:00

I had a severe case of the "poor me"s two weeks ago, making it impossible to write anything coherent aside from dropping a couple F-bombs and calling it a night.

I've been trying to come up with a trite metaphor about life and roads and directions, knowing that all it would accomplish is to highlight just how uninspired I can be at 12:09AM on a Thursday evening.

Two weeks ago, I received my walking papers from the current job, signaling the end of my dutiful, perfunctory 15 months of service as the company's webmaster. Like all lay-offs, this one came as a bit of a surprise. My boss trundled into my office near day's end, quickly sat down and got down to business. Sales were down and cash flow had tightened and support staff would need to be terminated. It didn't occur to me to ask why our sales board was so awfully white when he had went through the trouble recruiting the boss' old friend (and hotshot salesman) to rake in the new business. No, I was too busy being bemused and rapidly oscillating my emotions between joy, relief, annoyance and perfect calm.

As I left work that day, I was positive of having already come to grips with my termination. This is what I wanted since January, right? When I reactivated my Monster and Workopolis accounts, that was the time I was itching to get a change of scenery. Now my secret wish was fulfilled.

I drove home, slightly happier and with mind braying with ideas and possibilities.

Not two hours later, I was scanning the rain-slicked street outside my apartment, searching for the malcontent who crushed the driver-side mirror off my car with their own poorly driven vehicle. Still fresh from the shock of newfound unemployment and the memory of my unresolved claim from September, I was beside myself. It really was an inhuman feat to not feel victimized at that point.

I did a point check on my karma rating, wondering what foul deeds I have committed recently to deserve this double-whammy. Not that I'm a saint by any stretch, but I couldn't think of any thing.

Today is my final day at the job. Had one of the owners at our satellite office dump a truckload of menial tasks on my lap these last few days, no doubt gettin' that web work while the gettin's good. After that's wrapped up, it's the slow process of backing up my best work, saving all my personal files, clearing out my browser cache and collecting the few personal effects I have on my desk. It's all very anti-climactic. Even the owners are out of town and will miss my send-off.

Oh yes, I will get my farewell lunch. See, who says it doesn't pay to get sacked?

Bad Day Vancouver

2007-03-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a bad day. I didn't know I was overdue for a bad day like this. This is a bad day that makes me want to close my eyes and sleep for 20 hours. Fuck this day.

Obviously, details to follow...

Hot Bitches in Fiji: The Real Post

2007-03-13T23:58:00.000-07:00

You may remember my orgasmic post two weeks ago about Stacy, the hot Korean contestant in the latest iteration of Survivor. I was busy last Thursday nigth and actually went so far as to tape the episode, thinking the show's producers would do me right and find an excuse to trot out Stacy in her skimpy bikini number again. No such luck.

What they did, however, was present Stacy's dark side. Dark side, you ask, of a hottie? Oh yeah, you heard right. It's that nasty, base side of your personality that'll compel you to not show your tribe mates how to use a French press coffeemaker and give witheringly condescending instructions on its use because some people are obvioiusly too stupid to be alive. Wow, that was a shocker. I wasn't expecting Stacy to be an amiable bobblehead like Michelle, but I sure as hell didn't expect her to be so rude to Dreamz, Alex and Cassandra, over a coffeemaker of all things. The official Survivor forums were aflame, I tell ya! Forum posters were crying bigotry and all manner of extreme, Internet forum-y accusations.

It goes without saying that the show's producers edited the shit out of that scene for maximum impact, just like they do with everything else. There is, just like with the most ignorant generalisations, a grain of truth to what is being depicted. You can't fake Stacy's bitchy (yet still sexy) facial expressions and Alex's subsequent bitching about Stacy and her unexplainable bitchiness for not helping out with the French press. God, what a bitch. And how badly I want to poke her all the same.

With any luck, I'll be treated to a couple more lingering bikini-ass shots of Stacy before her inevitable elimination. Too soon to call? Maybe. After 13 seasons, I can safely proclaim that Rule #1 of Survivor (well, it could be Rule #2 or #3... Top 5 for sure) is this: don't piss people off. Simple enough, right? I don't care if your tribe is destroying the other team in the challenges and you're getting fat and lazy. If you're intentionally not teaching your friends how to use a French press, you better have some kind of master game plan going on in your head. Right now, Stacy looks like she's fat and lazy, and by that I mean she is silky and smooth but taking her tribe's success fully for granted.

So once again, a note, or rather, a plea to the show's producers: If she's heading out, get her naked first. Thank you, much appreciated.

/end horndogg rant

300: Not a Review

2007-03-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

I was jogging through the mammoth parking lot of the suburban Silvercity multiplex, rapidly getting soaked by the weekend downpour. Heero was waiting for us at the entrance steps and we quickly exchanged my rain-drenched e-mail receipt for our movie tickets. Convenience fees are a joke.

This was my first IMAX experience at a Silvercity theater and I can't say the screen felt a lot bigger. I suppose it was wider and curved in at the edges more than normal. Great. Even 35 minutes prior to screening and the plum seats were already filled. We were lucky to have a band of guys shift over a seat so all three of us could sit together and hold hands. Awww.

The lights dimmed and, surprisingly, we got right down to the show. We were spared the 20 minute ad and trailer preamble! For the first time in a long while, I felt like my $15 ticket was actually worth something.

300 starts out like a pimped out, CG-rendered cinematic intro to a big budget video game. The sumptious visuals are a treat to behold from the opening frames and well into the blood-soaked climax of this 2 hour battle movie. You've probably heard or read about it already: the abs, they be toned and the blood runs very thick... to a point. There are spearings galore (and when someone gets run through with a spear, they get run through) and a sprinkling of beheadings and flying limbs to break up the monotony. Despite all the slaughter, the gore never pushed my squeamish buttons, nor does the movie slow down enough to portray the true horror of ancient close-combat.

Director Zack Snyder is simply happy to frame each scene as it were a painting and choreograph the beautiful action sequences like a slow-motion dance. Critics have mocked the overuse of slo-mo in 300 but I for one am thankful Snyder did not go the Tony Scott route and leave these crucial scenes entirely in the hands of an over-caffeinated editor. And while the movie is essentially one extended fight scene -- the first skirmish is the most harrowing, with diminishing returns as the body count increases -- it at least allows us to appreciate how effective a fighting force the Spartan soldiers really were. Wearing nothing more than undies and superfluous cloaks, they harnessed the full power of their simple shields and spears by facing their enemies in a phalanx. Shields linked and spears out, that's how these Spartans rolled.

I looked over at Bilbo during the first clash between Spartan and Persian and chuckled as he pantomined holding a video game controllor. Make no mistake about it, 300 is Troy for the gamer/fanboy generation. It's also the most visually arresting sword n' sandal epic to come down the pipe since the last Lord of the Rings movie.

The graphics, they be very good.

Hot Bitches in Fiji

2007-03-12T01:57:00.000-07:00

This is one of those lame posts that merely teases and promises more writing in the near future. The weekend went by very quickly as usual and I managed to catch the sight of many speared asses in 300. I also watched my taping of the most recent episode of Survivor. And.... I did other stuff.

Will post more soon.

Rob Corddry = The Winner?

2007-03-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

I had the idiot box on last night while trying to get in touch with customer service. On comes a generic-looking sitcom featuring the unmistakable bald pate of Daily Show alumnus, Rob Corddry. I watched in horror as he mugged his way through the opening scenes of this pitiful program. It was so incredibly sitcom-y, complete with painfully obvious "beats" to the setup/punchline dialogue and what sounded like a permanently glued-down laugh track button.

Titled The Winner, the series follows the exploits of Corddry's man-child character. In his 30's, unemployed, balding and co-habiting with his parents, the guy doesn't much going for him and isn't quite motivated to change things. When his childhood crush - a doctor and single mom - moves into his neighborhood, he's suddenly inspired to turn his life around (and get into the doctor's pants, of course).

Aside from a couple good lines out of Corddry, this show is pretty much rubbish. So is this the fate of one of my favourite Daily Show correspondents? While other noteworthy alumni have graduated to bigger and better things (Colbert to The Colbert Report; Carrelll to The Office and the movies), I hardly see moving on to a sucky Sunday night sitcom as a step up.

In somewhat related news, during my search for a cheesy photo of Rob Corddry, I discovered he will be in the next Harold and Kumar movie that's due for release next year. Have you seen Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle? It's a special movie and I'm very glad a sequel is in the works. I could write a whole post about that movie and I think I will.

Digging Through the Memories

2007-03-05T01:13:00.000-08:00

My parents are putting the family house up for sale in April. Dad has been pestering me for months to clear out my old bedroom, so I've finally relented and started picking away at the piles of old stuff gathering dust in there.

Clearing out my room is not unlike an archaeological dig. I realized what packrat I was and still am to this day. I spent part of one afternoon sorting through reams of scribbled notes, receipts for any and every thing, old magazines, school textbooks, spare change in various currencies, more receipts, novels I've never read, electronic pocket games, Artona school photos never framed and did I mention I have shitloads of old receipts??

Excavating my room has been tiring as I attempt to sort out the trash from the gold. There is trash aplenty and the gold has come in the form of old creative writing assignments, some dating back to elementary school. I've also found various projects started up during my days as lonely little boy. There is my attempt at a video game magazine, with my first issue professional drafted on 3-hole lined paper, handwritten in ink of course. I was also pleasantly surprised to find the shooting script to my 2nd-year video production short, along with many cartoons I doodled in highschool which, sadly, I still understand and find amusing.

I went back on Sunday to finish off the dig. There's just so much junk. I was getting impatient with the whole process and picked up the pace, eschewing the separation of recyclables and garbage and just transferring everything straight into the garbage heap, paper-based or not. What did I find today? Income tax assessments, GST receipts, many more store receipts, ATM receipts, binders from highschool and university, loads of books and more fucking receipts. The fact is, in the years leading up to my finally moving away from home, I was probably utilising 10% of my bedroom. The other 90% was used to house all of this crap. It's shocking.

And yet, I found it hard to part with this stuff. Even as I tied up the bags and lowered my junk into its proper home, I couldn't help but grimace. If I hung on to these things, I would never, ever look at them again, let alone think about them.

So why did I want to keep it all?

CBS Survivor: Some Island Somewhere

2007-02-23T00:29:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's Fiji.

I tell you, the time between each cycle of this reality show get shorter each year. Yul and the Race Wars barely faded from memory when they hit us with yet another round of coconut bashing, silly races and Jeff Probst acting smug.

For want of anything better to do, I flipped on the tube tonight and stumbled on the latest episode, the 3rd one into this season. Same old shit, really, nothing much new to report... EXCEPT the very prominent showing of Asians again. They almost fooled me into thinking it was Race Wars Part 2: The Revenge.

No such luck. I was rather surprised, however, when I counted no less than 5 asian players: 2 Koreans, 1 Malaysian, and 1 Chinese and 1 Taiwanese. Making the play for Yul II is Mookie, a business consultant from Connecticut who looks like he could be a very strong contender.

Yes, very impressive, but I really only had eyes for Stacy, the spicy "Interactive Internet Producer" (oh puh-leeese). Stacy sort of blended into the background, as I was initially distracted by the peppy, cute Michelle, until they had their slippery slide ball-toss reward challenge. Then Stacy broke out with her skimpy yellow bikini and I started paying attention right good, bounding off the couch and nearly smashing my face on the TV screen.

Where the hell was this strumpet during Race Wars? Would it have killed Mr. Burnett & Co. to swap her in for humorless Becky?

The Poetic Web 2.0

2007-02-12T01:26:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since I found this video, so I don't exactly recall where I referenced it. This is what happens when you stack up Draft blog posts and put off writing them until they're outdated.

A Kansas university professor puts together a thought-provoking summary of the Internet leading up to the current Web 2.0 trend. This little video showcases what is great about Web 2.0 better than any marketing huckster could ever hope of matching.

A Video about Web 2.0

Super Bowl 2007 Ads Moronic; Civilization Going to Hell

2007-02-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

I'm not into football so I have never wasted an afternoon in front of the tube on a Super Bowl Sunday. Never have and never will. What strikes me about the fanfare around this major sporting event is not the competition itself, but the popularity of the advertising spots. Each year, companies spend millions upon millions of dollars to secure ad time. Over the years, the commercials themselves have become a spectacle unto themselves, sparking off catchphrases and various other pop culture memes that stick around in public consciousness and, supposedly, sells lots of product.

It's been a while since I've seen any of these masterpieces of comsumerism. I'm normally forwarded a shit load of links by friends but the number of them who actually care about this shit has dropped off considerably in recent years. It could have something to do with getting older and grabbing a brain. Well today I was treated to a barrage of Super Bowl ads courtesy of V., my long-time buddy and MSN co-conspirator while I'm at work.

What. The. Hell. Is going on here?

I've manage to watch about 60% of all the ads featured on iFilm.com and so far, with only one exception, they uniformly suck. They are disturbingly bad. The only half-decent one so far is the homophobic/-erotic chest hair ad for Snickers. Aside from that, it's been one irreverently shallow flop after another. It appears ad producers have gone to great pains to be clever and quirky (here's looking at you Doritos, Sierra Mist and GoDaddy) and their strained machinations could not be more transparent. Other ads are simply boring and conventional. There's a Toyota commercial showcasing a tough-looking truck doing impressive things, like having functioning brake pads so it doesn't plummet off a cliff. Wow. Or how about that brilliant FedEx Office on the Moon skit. What the fuck was that?

I think if any of these ad geniuses could nudge, even a little bit, the ol' funny bones, then the millions of dollars they shit out to pay for these bombs could possibly be justified. What's more depressing are the gushing comments attached to all the ad clips on the iFilms website. To preserve my last remaining shreds of faith in humanity, I'm CONVINCING myself that the comment panels are overrun by company stooges and marketing moles. I have to.... because how anyone could derive enough entertainment from these ads that they could first watch them, then take those wasted minutes of their life fucking praising them on a website comments page.

Wow.

But here I am, writing about these abominations, wasting my own finger strength on my own blog. So who wins here? I always hear people say they never actually remember what these commercials are selling, merely remembering that it was funny or interesting or shocking. I'm sure the financial reports of these corporations say otherwise... just a hunch.

One Strand at a Time

2007-01-28T19:04:00.000-08:00

The attractive, middle-aged barber found a little something during my visit last night.

"Oh, you have some white hair here!"

"Really?" I feigned surprise. I've long noticed a freak white hair on my left temple but I thought that was it. Turns out I had a harboured a couple more white fugitives behind my left ear as well.

"Yeah!," she replied, a little more cheerful than I would have preferred. "Are you making a lot of money?"

Interesting. White hairs as an indication of wealth. I suppose it made sense. Age made for experience, experience made for a higher income. I wondered for a second if it was a Chinese phenomenon, to immediately link signs of aging to wealth. To my dismay, I remembered how out of the loop I was with my own culture and was also reminded about my career's perpetual malaise. "Oh no, I'm not," was all I could muster. I smiled weakly, "I wish I was."

That was only partially true.

I just want to do work that challenges and satisfies me.

The white hairs are not a big deal. I don't plan on going out of my way to hide them. I just don't let being reminded about my limited time on this earth.

Playing with My Box

2007-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

It's been while since the days I would get home from work or school, drop everything and dive right into an entire evening of gaming madness. Since acquiring the Xbox 360 last month, I've been able to stave off these long winter nights in my lazy boy recliner blasting terrorists, blasting aliens, blasting rootin' tootin' bandits or blasting coloured, exploding jewels.

I wrote at length about my checkered video console history just prior to Christmas and the last thing I want to do is turn 500WPD into another video games blog. The last console I owned was the Nintendo Super NES and I have to say... Hot Damn, these game systems have come a long way, baby. I could wax poetic for several paragraphs about any number of impressive features sported by the Xbox 360, which I'll refer to as My Box from here on in (no, it's not terribly clever or funny, but I'll do it anyway).

I could gush about how even on my lowly standard-definition TV set, the graphics on these new games range from pretty to utterly jaw-dropping. I could comment on how the design of My Box looks like it was ripped straight out of Apple's product design manual. I could blubber on about how the controllers feel and operate like butta and have wireless capabilities built right in. It goes without saying, once you have gone wireless, there's no going back to tripping over tangled controller wires in your living room. I could also yap about how nifty the online player matchmaking service is and how amazing it is to be able to chat with other players with a headset while gaming, right out of the box. Did I mention that I can use My Box as a media center, streaming ~~smut~~ wholesome video and music directly into my living room?

Well, there would be just too much to cover. My Box has definitely wowed me. I've always been sort of plugged in to the gaming culture by way of the PC and regular visits to blogs like Kotaku, Joystiqu and Destructoid. But now that I'm fully in it, well.. it feels nice join the club. My Box has changed my habits around the house. Instead of being holed up in my bedroom surfing the web and sending naughty messages, I night have been centered around the living and kitchen. It's like quitting smoking by taking up the bottle. Bad analogy, but that's what it sort of feels like. And by god, don't it feel good.

Now who's up for a game of Ghost Recon?

Edit (Jan.24th, 2007): So it appears my new gaming habit has preempted my already infrequent blogging schedule. What I have done is exacerbate the situation even more by starting up my gaming blog, Play With My Box. If you're truly hard up for some entertainment and just need to read something written by yours truly, you can find it at: http://playmybox.blogspot.com

Back in the Saddle - 2007

2007-01-09T01:20:00.000-08:00

I took a short break from blogging to accommodate a little something called Christmas and New Years. Hope everyone had a great angst-y two weeks with the familial relations and enjoyed the many gustatory delights that the holidays bring.

I plan to return to the old rhythm of postings, which is to say, highly irregular postings on unpredictable topics. It's a new year and I'd like to bring in a fresher and stronger voice to this here blog than ever before. How I plan to do this is still a mystery, go figure.

It is late where I am (about 1:24 in the AM), so I'll return in the daylight with my first substantial post of 2007. It will probably be the conclusion to my ode to the Xbox, but hey, I'll make it worth your time.

From SNES to 360 in 13 Years

2006-12-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

My loyal readers who have followed 500WPD from its inception (read: very, very fewof you) may remember this little nugget of video game industry forecasting/analysis back in the fall of '05. In my lengthy dissertation, I commented at length at my general nonchalance following the launch of the Xbox 360 game console. What was touted as ushering in the first wave of "next-gen" gaming amounted to little more than a paltry sampling of very underwhelming, very "now-gen"-looking video games.

Guess what, peeps? Little over a year after that post, I am now a proud, beaming owner of an Xbox 360. No!! Shock!

This development has more relevance to me than it will to anyone else... even myself, maybe about 5 minutes after publishing this post in fact. The last video game system I owned was the 16-bit Super NES. That was back in ooooh, 1993? By that time, I had already discovered the wild wooly frontiers of PC gaming, with the years from 1990-1992 being one big blur of playing the Wing Commander series non-stop on my blazing fast 386 home computer. Gaming on the PC had already won me over. The games just seemed more sophisticated, more daring and gosh darnitt, you could pirate all this shit to your heart's content. My 8-bit NES was collecting serious dust by then and the whole idea of gaming on a console just seemed a little "kiddie". I was a grown geek now, and real grown-up geeks do it up on PCs.

But yeah, when the SNES came out I wasn't intially too impressed. But once I got my hands on the newest Contra game, their Star Wars platformer (forget the name) and Super Mario Kart, it became abundantly clear that I needed to "get with it" and support Nintendo once again. And it was good. I wasted a lot of my remaining high school years renting out games from all the video game stores that had cropped up in my tony west side neighbourhood. Every Friday after school, I'd pop in with the Christian Cock (his cockhood status still but a glimmer in our eyes at the time) and we'd rent the latest side-scrolling beat'em up game and play it compulsively for the next couple days. The next weekend, same deal. Fortunately, there was never a shortage of these Double Dragon knock-offs; they kept cranking them out, month after month.

Anyway, what's my point? I'm lost now. Oh right, now I have an Xbox. Well, after my love affair with the SNES faded away, I had already committed to gaming on the PC full-time. I all but ignored the N64 when it came out around the time I started college. Same deal with the Dreamcast and Playstation. I was content to visit friends and play their games but for myself, I stuck it out with the PC.

Then the PS2 came out and suddenly we had a new king of video game systems. It all looked very tempting, but I didn't bite. So finally, after 13 long years, I have been tempted back to the "kiddie" world of game consoles, and who woulda thought Microsoft would be the one to do it?

Yes, I trash talked the 360 when it came out in late '05. How could I not? The hype was tremendous and I am chronically allergic to excessive hype. I'd see people playing King Kong at the 360 kiosks and think, "500 bills for this bunk?", shake my head and walk smugly over to the PC games aisle. But that was a year ago. The Xbox 360 today is looking like a very different beast. And so is the current state of PC gaming.

In a nutshell: 360 games look impressive now. PC games also look impressive, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg to keep up. My gaming time has been cutting back little by little these last couple years. When I do want to try a new game, however, I want it to play, and play well. No frame stutters, no dialing down of graphics details, no tweaking. Just plug and play and relax on the couch.

Why no PS3? Why no Wii? You may be asking this. Maybe you've fallen asleep already. Well, I'd like to talk more about video games so I'll continue this ramble in a future installment.

Until then, Merry Xmas and thanks for reading 500WPD. It's been an interesting year.

News Break: Yella Fella Wins Survivor

2006-12-18T13:44:00.000-08:00

I previously wrote about my initial then eventual disenchantment with the latest installment of the Survivor TV series. After they merged all the race-segregated tribes after a mere 3 episodes and the hotties turned out to be not-so-hot (Parvati's sexy clown mouth notwithstanding), I promptly tuned out. I did, however, check back in a few times in the past month to discover some pleasant developments.

The most pleasant of all was seeing how well Yul Kwon was playing the game. With the hidden immunity idol in hand, the Korean-American management consultant from San Mateo, CA was carefully leveraging the power of immunity to shape the entire game to his advantage. The other contestants (mistakenly) treated Yul as untouchable once he announced to everyone he had found the idol, and the scheming and power held by the white power bloc (Adam and his bitches, and Jonathan) was all for naught.

I totally forgot to catch the finale last night, so by the time my friend told me the news over Messenger, they were already having their stupid, happy reunion show in front of a studio audience. I scrounged around the 'net this morning and found a couple humourous recaps of the big show:

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/12/18/survivor-cook-islands-this-tribe-will-self-destruct-in-5-4/
and
http://tvcocktail.ivillage.com/entertainment/2006/12/survivor_recap_yul_rules_1.html

I sort of regret missing out, as there were some interesting parts that I might have wanted to see. It blew me away to read that Yul actually offered up his immunity idol to save Becky's neck. To think he was playing the game so well up to that point... and to just piss away his center of power on some chick who's been riding his coat tails since Day 1. Wow. Fortunately, Becky had enough game in her (and self-respect) to turn down the generous offer and battle it out with Sundra for a spot among the Final Three.

Man, I really wish I saw that make-a-fire tiebreaker challenge between Becky and Sundra, if only to see the bored and stunned looks on everyone's faces. Ninety minutes with neither girl able to start a frickin' fire. It got so bad Probster actually had to chuck each of them a book of matches and even then they struggled. Pathetic.

And Becky. Back in September I was touting her as the potential resident Asian hottie on the show but she's turned out to be one of the most, if not THE most nothing player the show has ever seen. I don't believe how bland she was. The post-finale articles have all been giving her shit for being useless and a "non-entity" and it's pretty damn hard to argue with their assessment. It really is hilarious to think she was standing up there with two of the finest contestants I'd seen for a long time, pleading her case to the jury to award her the $1 million. "I think I deserve the prize because I made friends with Yul" sums it up pretty well to me. When I read that she had claimed to have played a "social game" versus Yul's game of tactics and Ozzy's physical domination, I had to stifle a giggle. Girl, you are too much!

Ozzy apparently had a lot of support behind him, judging from comments made in Internet world and the final tally of votes cast by the jury. I never really expected he would win, although I admit he was pretty damn impressive. You get that almost every season. There's always that one person who starts dominating immunity challenges so completely, the challenges themselves become foregone conclusions. But that's all he did, impressive as it was. I also still remember early in the game when he was becoming the pack leader on Team Hispanic and he was clearly getting a very big head. Then the tribes merged and, to his credit, he drifted off into the background for the next 25-30 days.

Anyway, I'm getting away from my main point and that is I am ecstatic that Yul took top prize, narrowly beating out Ozzy in a 5-4 vote. What's makes the win even sweeter is that Yul has not been shy about harping on the racial aspects of this season's show. First, he was openly pleased about ousting Adam and ensuring Survivor would be won by someone representing a minority group. Then when he made his case to the jury, he stressed how he wanted to be a positive Asian role model in the mainstream media. Shit, it's almost as if I was out there playing Survivor, but without the good looks and insane six pack.

And for that reason alone, I crown this season of Survivor: Cook Islands - Best Season Ever. (And they definitely need to bring Ozzy or Yul back if they do another Survivor All-Stars.)

Logjam 2006

2006-12-12T10:58:00.000-08:00

As a single, working urbanite, I sometimes think I have things pretty easy. I have a car to drive, money to spend, a spacious and (usually) clean apartment and easy access to all forms of entertainment and recreation. Daily life will require me to step beyond my boundaries on the rare occasion but I can usually handle it without much trouble.

I must say this: there are fewer things more horrifying than flushing your normally trusty toilet and watching the water level rise and rise and rise...

Such was the situation I was faced with over the weekend. I have been living in my apartment for 20 months and have never had any major incidents with the toilet. Sure, the building manager inexplicably attached a brand-new white seat to the pink toilet and waited almost a year to rectify the colour mismatch. And yeah, sometimes the tank had problems refilling with water but you only needed to give it some time before it fixed itself.

This time the problem was a little more severe. I was experiencing blockage. Thankfully, my bowl did not overflow and flood my apartment in toilet swill. But those three seconds of watching the bowl fill up was nail-biting stuff. A true horror show. I had a brief flashback of the last year I was living with my parents back in late '04. My parents had been in a routine of hosting raucous mah-jong parties once or twice a week in their house. With only a single bathroom on the ground level, this meant that the toilet saw heavy use in the course of one MJ marathon session. There was a span of maybe 3 weeks when the toilet would be plugged up, likely due to our guests' liberal use of wiping paper.

I'd get home from work on Monday and lo, I would be called upon to hunch over the bowl, plunger in hand, and attempt to clear up the pipes. It was so bad one time I drove out to London Drugs to buy some of that liquid Drain-O stuff. What did you know, none of the product they had at the store was intended for use in the toilet. Were they kidding me? Was toilet blockage that rare of an occurrence in the general population? I found that hard to believe. It was suggested that I invest in one of those specialized coils that plumbers use to feed down into the pipes and dislodge whatever it is that's causing the problem. Of course they had nothing of the sort in stock either. I ended up buying a couple bottles of the non-toilet drainage solution anyway out of desperation.

The Drain-O nor my manual efforts had much effect on the blocked toilet. After the third straight Monday of working the plunger into a stinky, overused bowl, I revolted and told my dad to hire a plumber already to fix the problem already. He had long since retired and obviously had a fair bit of free time, so I was livid that he did not have the wherewithal to hire someone in 3 weeks to check things out. There was no way I was coming home from a full day of work to play with a dirty toilet while my dad got his ass kicked again at mah-jong. I caved in pretty quickly and cut him a deal: I'll pay for the repairs. Just call someone to find out what's wrong and I'll foot the cost. Please just do it!

Ah, well then my dad sprung into action. He got a plumber to come by to inspect the pipes and they found out the roots from a nearby tree was blocking things up. Isn't that crazy? And how the hell do you fix something like that? I didn't care. The plumber came back the next day and did his work and presto, a fully functioning toilet again. It hit me in the wallet a bit to get this done, although it wasn't quite as expensive as I thought it would be.

Now over the weekend, I had what I thought might be a repeat of that traumatic experience. Being in an apartment, this was our only toilet, so the stakes were higher. Well, what goes around comes around. The next day I had a lunch appointment with the parental units and hit my dad up for two bottles of Drain-O. I went looking for a plunger at Safeway and to my shock and dismay, they didn't carry any. Luckily, the Drain-O worked like a charm. It was sort of fun to see the solution instantly dissolve an errant piece of toilet paper floating in the bowl. They don't call it corrosive for nuttin'.

As for how my home toilet got backed up in the first place... I have to say, I have no idea whatsoever. Like, why does anything happen? Why does the sun set in the west? Why do dogs bark? I cannot fathom why my toilet got plugged. Truly, a modern mystery...

Mid-December Grab Bag

2006-12-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

I don't have a real topic today. I haven't been compelled to blog much these last few weeks. Maybe it's just me subconsciously getting into holiday vegetation mode or perhaps it's my general torpor -- lack of exercise, lack of sleep, you know the deal. Anyway, there are a number of things keeping me interested enough in my own life to write about, so here it is from the top.

I am reading a lot. Now I enjoy the printed word as much as anyone, but never this much. I'm reading 4 books at the moment, with a 5th on the way care of Mr. Postman and Amazon.ca. I don't think I've concurrently read 4 books before, but it's kinda fun to swap one out and resume reading another. It keeps things fresh.

First up is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I've been picking away at this one for months now and I've reached that nasty stopping point of dwindling interest. There's only about 50 more pages to go, but it's sort of lost its magic for me. It is very much vintage Gibson, where there are some interesting ideas at play, but the general storyline just seems like 'much ado about nothing'. It's a similar experience to reading Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties. Pattern Recognition gets credit for being Gibson's easiest read to date and the protagonist-guru this time is a woman, but the man still loves describing EVERYTHING. This normally wouldn't be a problem if he would not rehash the same jargon and metaphors over and over again. After awhile, his meticulous descriptions of things starts coming across as filler prose.

When I started to feel creatively inspired again a month ago, I picked up Problem Solved, by Michael Johnson, from my local Chapters. This is a textbook which surveys common design and advertising problems through out the last century. I'm only two chapters in and I am quite impressed with the information presented so far. The author tries to cover a lot of ground, so I don't expect to be getting the nitty-gritty of the design process but instead the larger brush strokes behind the trends we've seen in the world of advertising. I didn't want to get another web/graphic design "how-to" or something that was too specific to my own line of work, so Problem Solved fit the bill perfectly. It approaches creative design with a broad enough perspective so that almost anyone who works in design could get something out of it.

As mentioned in a previous post, I've also been reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami. I'm about 1/3 a way through this short story collection and I have to say I am fairly underwhelmed. Some reviews have warned that Murakami's writing quality peaks in the latter stories, so I'm holding out for the bigger payoff. So far, his stories have been well-written and easy to read, but strangely boring. He manages to infuse all his stories with this strange dream-like quality, which makes you forget that his characters a little lifeless and have unclear motivations. It may also distract you from his sometimes overwrought descriptions and metaphors that don't quite hit the mark, not to mention the abrupt, open-ended conclusions that leave far too much to the reader's imagination. Murakami also has a habit of telegraphing every subtlety through exposition, causing large chunks of his prose to seem redundant and simplistic. Yet... I am compelled to read on. Despite my complaints, the writing has a graceful, simplistic charm to it and some of the stories contain a certain emotional calmness that is hard to describe. Murakami also indulges in some magic realism, which to his credit, works wonderfully in a couple of his stories.

The 4th book I have on the go is also the most technical. It's DOM Scripting, by Jeremy Keith. This is basically a primer on modern Javascript programming geared for the non-programmer. In my 5-6 years of web design, I've always just sort of "gotten by" with knowing very basic Javascript and never put in the time to fully understand the Document Object Model. Well, Keith's book has been lauded by the web design glitterati as THE primer to get you up to speed on writing Javascript for our modern, web standards-obsessed world. I am roaring through the
review chapter on Javascript syntax and cannot wait to dive into the tutorials. I may finally get a handle on this elusive skill after all.

Well, it looks like this post actually had some focus. There isn't much more to report, I suppose, mainly because my mind is swinging back into getting some work done in the office. Oh, yes, the office. We moved into our new digs a couple weeks back. I've been adjusting very well. I now have my own brightly lit room which I share with our Russian contract programmer. We are situated within a grim industrial complex sadly, butI have a decent view of some trees and the main thoroughfare here in the 'burbs. The office space is about 5x larger than our old place. We actually have a full kitchen, a playroom which houses a TV and Gamecube (and soon to be adding our newly acquired Playstation 3) and some extra rooms that we plan on renting out to other small businesses. One of my bosses has brought in her swank Starbucks espresso machine which I now use to make myself a white chocolate or vanilla latte every morning. Yeah, things could be a lot worse, work-wise.

But I digress. I've been writing for over half and hour and now my lunch break is approaching. Maybe I should get some work done?

A Book in My Head

2006-12-04T00:24:00.000-08:00

I got the sensation today. It was the feeling of wanting to write a book. Maybe not a book, but a collection of short stories. My mind is brimming with idea fragments that are calling out to be put onto a page. I suppose I now join the club of the millions of aspiring writers who have experienced this exact same burst of ~~confidence~~ delusion.

How many of these people end up writing their book or novella? And of the few who do, how many get published?

So far I have a staggering 2 pages of prose. I haven't added anything new for the past week because I've been trying to parcel out what ideas will be included in one story and what will be saved for another. I'm thinking of writing a trio of stories based around a singular theme and organizing all the ideas into coherent blocks is quickly becoming a challenge. It's certainly a task that demands more than a few idle moments spared while waiting in traffic, or while sitting on the can. A pen and a few sheets of note paper may be of some help, or so I've heard.

Now I'm thinking I should reconnect with J., the rugged Brit lady killer I met earlier this year in Self Actualization School, a.k.a. The Landmark Forum. Our cozy weekly meetings were long ago and J. called me out of the blue several months later as I was walking into Shoppers to grab meds for my miserable ear infection. After a few minutes of awkward small talk, he announced his intention to write a book. A book! It struck me as a little random, seeing as the last venture of his we discussed was more along the lines of a scientific-slash-economic breakthrough involving lasers. Don't ask. The finer points completely elude me right now. All the more reason for me to sit him down and join me for a beer before the December holiday craziness overwhelms everyone's social calendar. We need to talk writing, crazy laser experiments and women. Ah, women.

Sidebar note: I've set all of my online dating profiles to Deep Freeze. I'm putting an end to online romance. What started out as a reassuring safety net had in recent years become my sole avenue of meeting new people. So as of last week, I officially retired my profiles and will do dating the way it's always been done: bricks n' mortars-style. Wish me luck.

Twentieth Birthday

2006-11-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a collection of short stories written by Harumi Murakami called, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. The second short was about a waitress celebrating her 20th birthday by working an evening shift at an esteemed Italian restaurant in Tokyo. A sudden emergency with an absentee floor manager brings her into contact with the restaurant's reclusive owner, an elderly gentleman who, upon discovering it is her birthday, grants her one special wish.

The story ends rather ambiguously. The reader is left to ponder what the girl wished for and the author vaguely ties in the clues to the identity of the mystery narrator. As one of the opening stories to the collection, I expected more 'oomph' but I have high hopes for the remaining tales. I rarely keep abreast of literary reviews and this is probably the first time I purchased a book based on a positive review in the papers.

The theme that really stuck with me was the important ascribed to turning twenty. I'm about 8 months away from turning 30, so my twentieth birthday is not a very vivid memory. I don't think it ever was.

I remember having dinner with my parents at Cloud 9, a revolving restaurant. There was a Benson & Hedges fireworks display that night, so after dinner I met up with an old friend from school (I think it was Bilbo, the Christian Cock) and we walked along Robson St. to watch the show over by English Bay. And that was that. I didn't meet a strange old man who offered to grant me a wish. If I did meet this magical man, I would have known what to wish for. It's the same thing I wish for everytime I am about to blow out a birthday candle, for as long as I can remember.

My wish has yet to come true. Some days it feels like even the aid of a genie would do no good in fulfilling this wish.

Do you remember your twentieth birthday? Who were you with? What did you do? What were you feeling?

My Life is a Shit Show

2006-11-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

My life is a shit show.

Maybe it's the shit November weather finally getting to me. You know, the rainstorms, howling winds, the sediment and bacteria-filled tap water, the darkness... There are also, of course, personal events that have acted as precursors to my foul outlook on my own life.

And you know what, it really doesn't bear mentioning on this page. There are many things best left unsaid in a public forum like this. Why keep a blog anyway? Why do I feel compelled to broadcast my meaningless opinions to everyone. The strangers idlely killing time web surfing while work, old friends and relatives who already know a lot of what makes me tick... why? Who cares?

This day of gloom will pass but I wish I had the stones to go on an all out bitch fest while I'm still wallowing in the dirt.

Here's hoping for a cheerier post next time.

Born Again Designer

2006-11-17T14:01:00.000-08:00

As the old saying goes: Necessity is the Mother of all Creation.

My music baby, Union Progressive.com went down for the count over 6 weeks ago and was facing indefinite limbo status until a friend across the pond hooked me up with his new server. Until that moment when his MSN message blipped onto my screen, I was probably wallowing in the lowest pits of career apathy.

Work was dull. The work load had really thinned out and worse yet, the work there was to do was hardly motivating. Inspiring myself to create work for myself (of which there are endless opportunities) was akin to asking me to shove glass beneath my fingernails.

I didn't even care too much when UP went offline, first for a couple days, then longer. After about a week it becamse clear something unpleasant and permanent had taken place. But I didn't even care that much. I was hardly doing any recording, let alone mixing and neither were any of my other DJ mates. Nothing needed to be updated, so why bother? And why shed a tear when barely a year after its launch, my first music website got wiped off the face of cyberspace?

Getting new hosting space was the call to arms that roused me from my creative slump. There was a lead up to it though. It all started when I came across Jeff Croft's website and blog. Jeff is a web designer based in Kansas who blogs about what it means to be a modern web designer. This isn't the usual hum-drum tutorial or white paper on accessibility issues or web standards (although he goes into great length about that as well). His writing is hardly pendantic, instead opting to put a more personal spin on our maddening and misunderstood profession. Recent posts on his blog include things like "Five things I’m doing to get better at web design" and "What does it mean to be a 'professional' web designer?". Well... what DOES it mean? For all the web design blogs and portals that are out there, I'm amazed that so very few writers have bothered to throw a simple question like that out into Internet-land for discussion.

Jeff's site attracts a lot of visitors and many of his blog posts have racked up a pile of user comments. And it's great, the discussions that I found myself reading. And as a result of checking out Jeff's stuff, I very quickly became very interested and passionate about my work again.

There was no going back. Jeff Croft.com was just a springboard to rediscovering the joys of the web design gallery. And more design blogs. And more galleries. And more blogs.

I was back in the game. Or rather, I was ready to back get into it. I was realizing just how much I'd silpped behind in the last 12 to 18 months. The CSS galleries (you can't swing a dead cat without smacking one) have been especially intriguing. The more things change, the more they stay the same! Yes, web design is still largely a congo line of people copying each other's designs. These galleries still read a bit like a photo album to a large family that's inbred for generations. Yet the sheer volume and quality of work has increased dramatically since I first started. It seems like there are more web and graphic designers than ever before. And many of them, sometimes even the students and new graduates, are cranking out amazing work... stuff that frankly, I would be hard-pressed to match. Gone are the days when every designer and his ass was riffing on Praystation or Hillman Curtis. In 2006, everyone's got mad Photoshop and CSS skills and every second person's publishing tutorials or waxing poetic about web standards or DOM scripting or whatever is hot news at the moment. Remember when it was just a handful of pasty, pauncy gurus, like Jakob Nielsen or Jeffrey Zeldman?

Anyway, I blab. But I blab because I'm excited about my career again. I'm excited for my profession. Although I feel a bit discouraged that I have so much catching up and refreshing to do, I'm eager to get back up to speed and to actually excel at my work. I'm jazzed about giving Union Progressive a fresh coat of paint and I've been agonizing over the last week tweaking my design comp just so. It'll probably be another week before I begin to consider writing a single line of markup, but that's OK. I'm enjoying the process immensely.

So, to take a cue from Jeff, I thought I'd post up my own list of the 5 things I'm doing to get better at web design:

1.) Read More - I'm notorious for dropping $50 on a web development or graphic design book and letting it collect dust on my bookshelf. Back when I got that gig in Yaletown working at the Template Factory(tm), I picked up More Eric Meyer on CSS and I have yet to complete one chapter. It's sitting on my desk now, staring me in the face, waiting to be used. Well, I do plan on perusing it more as I strive to improve my CSS coding. I've also recently picked up a nice little textbook on the historical trends to problem solving in advertising and graphic design. The point is, if I'm not going to spend $500 on a night course to upgrade my knowledge, I best be taking advantage of the wealth of information available to me at the bookstore. And that's exactly what I intend to do.

2.) On the Side Action - I've been shying away from freelance work for the longest time. It's been so bad that many small projects intended for friends have sat neglected and unfinished. When I realized that, I've been turning down offers for freelance work as a matter of course, because I haven't been able to trust myself to deliver and stay motivated. I'm feeling different about that right now. At the moment I have my music site dominating all my thoughts. Once I get that launched early next month, I'll probably start work on the new iteration of my 2004 portfolio site in time to launch early in the new year. So after cranking that puppy out, I really want to start designing sites on the side and seek out really ambitious, creative projects. Not only will this keep me fresh, it will be small building blocks to learning more about business and learning the ropes for perhaps working for myself somewhere down the line.

3.) Fill in the Gaps - My design and graphics skills still need a lot of flexing and sharpening, but my programming skills have always been the weakest. One trend I've seen develop over the last 2 years is the comeback of Javascript and "DHTML" in the form of DOM scripting. That, along with CSS and AJAX have really helped to push along the current Web 2.0 movement. Trying to learn database and backend programming still seems a bit of a stretch. But client-side scripting? With the number of projects I've done that actually use extensive JS, you'd think I'd be an old hand at it now, but I'm still as clueless as ever. So... this really ties in hand in hand with #1 above: read more and learn more and finally get to grips with DOM coding, which is rapidly becoming a de facto skill requirement for web designers.

4.) Improve My Writing - For someone who enjoys blogging and writing in general, my overall web page copywriting skills could use some polishing up. I first came face to face with this realization when I was confronted about the overblown, pretentious copy I wrote for Union Progressive. It's hard for me to write honestly since I am susceptible to speaking behind a marketing or promotional facade like a lot of people are. I've also been hampered by my tendency to always treat writing and design as two separate entities when they are in fact very complimentary disciplines.

5.) Take Better Care of Myself - Wow, a common sense thing like good health made it into my list about web design? Well... if you've been living like I have, then I wonder if I should have made this my #1 instead of #5. Getting enough sleep each night, excercising and being relaxed and well rested are all things I have been doing very, very poorly these last few months. I got a big slap in the face a few weeks ago when I hopped onto the scale at my friend's house and watched the gauge jump up almost 10 extra pounds. Look, I'm no calorie counter, but when I effortlessly pack on 10 lbs. (it's not even Xmas yet, man) and start leaving all my belts in storage, something is up... and it ain't pretty.

This doesn't even touch on the countless days when I feel so damn tired, even if I was feeling motivated or creative enough to do something constructive and meaningful, I run out of gas within the hour. It's all about covering the basics, living well and leading a healthy life.

I was going to find a decent way to end this post but my time is up here in the office and I am itching to get home for my nap. (yes, another late night working on my baby)

300

2006-11-17T13:57:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been as much time for idle web surfing in the office this past week but I just finished watching, jaw agape, the trailer for 300, the latest "swords and sandals" epic set to hit the big screen.

O my lord, this movie looks like a work of art. Just enjoy the trailer. It will be in theaters soon enough.

300 trailer

Do What You Say

2006-11-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Integrity. Integrity as a promise fulfilled and as a committment of action, has been short supply these past ten days.

In a cheerier light I might have called this a comedy of errors but it's been so endemic to my life lately that I find it increasingly difficult to joke about.

This is the integrity without the moral, ethical component. This is integrity in its basest form, the practice of doing what you say, otherwise known as honouring your word. The past week has been a carnival of broken appointments, unreturned calls, and empty promises. And that's just what has happened recently. These fiascos have been compounded with the seeming inability of most of my friends to promptly redress debts owing or even simply having the consideration to keep track of bills and balances. I'm the one keeping tabs on this stuff. I'm the one chasing down the money.

If you don't already know, money issues fuck with everything, even close friendships. Okay, so money has not (yet) created massive rifts between myself and my friends. No one has run off with bundles of my money. I've just been feeling a mounting frustration with everyone. Why do I need to remind you? Why do I need to chase you down for this? How could you sleep in and stand me up after making plans 7 hours prior? Does it hurt to set a timer on your clock or use the cell phone to cancel plans? Does your sister's smallest whim take precedence over plans you've already made with someone? Why did you not honour your word?

Before you think I am some kind of grinch that acts like a bean counter around my friends, I will say this. I do favours for my friends. I treat them to meals and don't expect one in-kind. I spot them cash when they need it. Hey, I've had them help me out more than a few times as well. I always make sure to repay them. Sometimes they wont' even ask that I repay them. But if I tell them I'll repay them, I'll be damned sure to do it. Likewise, if you say you will repay me something, I don't care who you are, I expect you to follow through.

Why is this so hard?

From top to bottom, whether it's my closest friends from highschool, random peeps or people I've been dating, there is a epidemic of unreliability and non-integrity.

How hard is it to honour your word, to keep a promise? When you cut through all the b.s. and excuses of being busy or forgetting or whatever, it's all the same. You did not do what you said you would do. You were not your word.

Remember, no moralistic judgements here. But clearly, a lack of integrity is annoying, disappointing, counter-productive and a myriad of other things. Life and relationships just don't work without a sufficient level of integrity. I used to take it for granted but now, getting the short end of so many different sticks, I realize it is almost like a critical life skill, to practice integrity.

And now the fallout from this is I've got to be the heavy. I've got to be the one that broaches the subject. I have to be the one that brings in the awkwardness. I've got to be the one that looks rigid and miserly. I'm the one who looks like I'm asking for a favour, when in fact I'm merely reminding someone of the committments they've made. I've got to be the one who holds people's feet to the fire and who reminds them.

Fine. Maybe that's what it takes. Maybe we've entered a new Era of Flakiness and it's up to each one of us to be a bulwark for integrity. Hell, let's ratify a new public holiday to spread awareness. Call it, Integrity Week or Keep Your Promises Day.

Until that day happens, I have a new set of committments and/or promises made to me. Please note, these are things that were VOLUNTEERED to me. I reallly have to stress that I am not going around tapping out all my friends for favours and acting like a charity case. People are coming to ME and putting their word on the line. And I can guarrantee you I will be waiting for them to make good on their word.

Will they? I'll keep you posted.

Night of the Living Ho

2006-11-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

Hi kids. This is a funny little something I caught on the podcast vine last week. The following was transcribed from a recent installment of the Onion Radio News:

Sexy Nurse Having Trouble Finding Halloween Costume. Doyle Redland reporting.

Curvaceous nurse, Veronica Burson has found herself at wit's end trying to find a good Halloween costume this year. Although Burson admits her fallback idea is quote, "lame", she doesn't see any other choice than to wear her work uniform to this year's party.

"The top 3 buttons are missing, so... it really shows off a lot of cleavage."

Many of Burson's closest girlfriends, including a belly dancer, a female cop and a mascot for a devil-themed liquor company say they're faced with the same problem.

Doyle Redland for the Onion Radio News.

A Digg at Web 2.0

2006-10-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Maybe a sorry is in order for not having anything new to post lately. Now that I've been stricken with my 5-months long overdue cold there probably won't be much to look foward to this week, blog-wise. Nope. Just me staying in, drinking soup, eating oranges and gleefully working my way through Season 1 of Lost on DVD.

And that's on top of the many cozy nights I've already spent with Guild Wars Factions, probably a mere sniff of nicotine compared to the digital crack that is World of Warcraft, but still very addictive on its own merits. Massively multiplayer Diablo anyone? That's what Guild Wars is. Yikes...

Anyway, I'm nodding off at work now after having done some preliminary reading about the release of Microsoft's "long-awaited" Internet Explorer 7. Advance reviews from IT (but non web dev-related) friends so far are kind of bleak. Raise your hand if you are surprised by that. Anyone?... Didn't think so.

After surfing around a bit, I checked back in on Jeffrey's Zeldman's site and found this humourous tidbit about the Web 2.0 trend. For web design curmurdgeon like myself, it provided a couple good chuckles.

Zeldman on Web 2.0

Shit Ass Writing

2006-10-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

This has been bothering me for the past 30 minutes since publishing the post I drafted on Friday. My VIFF roundup was poorly written. In fact, it was unbelievably poor. I would hope to one day read the first few entries I ever posted for 500WPD, skip ahead to the current posts and sense an obvious evolution in style and articulation. Everyone wants to improve at thing they enjoy doing. Sometimes I feel like I am regressing. Even stagnation gets on my nerves very quickly.

I'm sure most of you could give a rat's asshole. But this is important to me. I care how well I write and boy, will I beat myself up over it!

VIFF Roundup

2006-10-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

Roundup, he says. Hah! Four films watched hardly makes for a comprehensive roundup but they were four good ones.

Last Thursday was loudQUIETloud: a film about THE Pixies.
What really needs to be said about this movie? I love the Pixies, I loved their concert at Bumbershoot '04 and I was intent on loving this documentary. Director Steven Cantor followed the band around during their highly successful reunion tour in 2004, The Pixies Sell Out. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about how the film was put together. The enjoyment came from watching the band members' interactions (or lack thereof) in the dressing rooms and while on the road.

Some revelations:

- Charles Thompson (Black Francis) is not quite the arrogant, megalomaniac he's sometimes made out to be. Perhaps he has chilled out now that he is well into his tubby, balding whale-like 40's but he was rather grounded and well-behaved from what was shown in the movie.

- Kim Deal is adorable and acts like a giddy, teenager trapped in a 40-year old woman's body.

- the drummer, whose name I still did not managed to remember, is pretty funny. He's a real character and his experiences during the tour provided some dramatic texture to the film.

- there were no epic spats, nothing was thrown and everyone got along for the most part. We really get the sense that none of the Pixies are really good friends and at the end of the day, don't have much to say to each other.

Not revelations:

- Frank Black's ass is still massive

- the writer for Rolling Stone magazine was quite ready to stick his entire head into said ass (and almost did)

Saturday came around and I checked out my final feature, the French/UK animated sci-fi thriller, Renaissance. This was a well put together film although disappointing in its modest ambitions. The plot is centered around a police captain's search for missing person and is structured as in a police procedural/film noir fashion. Following clues, questioning suspects and they even throw in a throwaway femme fatale character, although she's neither very femme or fatale. Action sequences are few and far between, with very little in the way of gunplay or exciting chases. This leaves us with the story, which is wholly unoriginal (evil all-powerful corporation hunting the secret to eternal life), even with the little twist they throw in at the end.

Still, even if there's little substance to hang on to, the execution picks up a lot of the slack. The animation in Renaissance is superb and very French. There's an amazing amount of detail and stylistic flourishes combined with a very fluid realism. I rarely pay much attention to sound in movies, but I noticed how good the sound editing was in this film as well. And I did like how the entire movie was black and white although it can be argued if it really adds anything to the movie as opposed to being in colour. But everything just looks good.

The voice acting was generally excellent as well, with the males throwing in better performances than their female counterparts. The male cast includes the likes of the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, Ian Holm and Jonathan Pryce. The two sisters are voiced by Catherine McCormack and Romola Garai. Their characters are not very compelling partly because they do not get much screen time and also because they are simply not well-formed characters to begin with.

The Root of All Evil = Video Games

2006-10-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I am now a regular listener of CFUN 1410 talk radio. It all started about 2 months ago when I bought a new alarm clock for my bedroom and was trying to set the alarm to play a station of my choice instead of the annoying generic siren. I accidentally set it on 1410 and since then I have been waking up to talk show host, Pia Shandel.

I don't know what her broadcast and journalism background is, but I sort of enjoy waking up to her morning program blaring into my ears. Sometimes you need a loud, prattling radio personality to give you that jolt at the start of your day. And boy, does this woman prattle on and on, on a variety of topics ranging from local news stories and pop culture to info-tainment segments bordering on straight up advertising.

Today the Pia Shandel show got on my bad side for the first time. I was still in bed, eyes still tiny slits, slowly opening up to the morning light coming through the blinds, when I heard Pia start off on her new topic: video games. I perked up a little but was still feeling like I could sleep in another hour and forget about going to work. Pia introduced the news of an upcoming console game, based on the Brian de Palma/Al Pacino film classic, Scarface. Then Pia went completely off the deep end.

Somewhat predictably, she start to rant and rave on the corrupting influence of video games and was so disgusted that companies were allowed to sell violent games. I was fully awake at this point. You know what was really disgusting? The appalling lack of research and intelligence given to this very important topic. In my hazy morning state, I was considering calling into the show, as caller after caller was let on to side with Pia and also rant unintelligibly about the many societal ills wrought by gaming. A single caller, a parent to his credit, finally chimed as the voice of reason and was very, very articulate. Of course, none of his points were given any credence and it was back to the one-sided phone calls.

I was so incensed by this debacle that I wasted more time at work slapping out a rebuttal on CFUN's feedback page. I could write pages on this topic, of the mainstream media's awful coverage of the video games industry and violence in our society, but I had to settle with the following diatribe:

Heard the segment today on the Scarface video game from Radical. I don't believe Pia went there! Actually, I do. Negative, biased news stories against video games are all the rage now. The gaming industry is an easy target and is undergoing the same public scrutiny as other forms of entertainment in years past (TV, radio, comic books, music, movies... you name it)

I believe there was one sane caller admist the madness who put up a very valid, very sensible defense for electronic entertainment and his points were all but ignored.

Incidences of violent crime among youth are at an all time low (at least in the US), so how does that even wash with Pia's massive logical leap that violent video games cause kids to shoot up their own schools? At best, there is a correlation, which is miles away from causation.

I would love to see this topic revisited on Pia's or another host's program and this time invite someone from the "other side" as a guest. Maybe a producer or designer from a prominent local game studio, of which there are many.

And this time, I would suggest discussing a game like Bully, a game that has not even been released yet and has generated much negative press, from various parents groups and crusading anti-games lawyer, Jack Thompson. The sad thing is, this game is being touted as some kind of "Columbine simulator" when it is actually anything but. Judging from the previews from legitimate gaming publications and blogs, Bully is more a simulation of life in boarding school. There are no deaths, no depictions of blood or gore. Players are in fact encouraged to fight against bully characters in the game.

Of course, this simple distinction is all but lost on the mainstream media, which continues to take the easy route and portray video games as the root of all evil. It's sensational, irresponsible news reporting. These recent stories about gun violence are very tragic, but there is soooo much more to the picture than just a piece of entertainment.

Although I enjoy Pia's show and her overall style, I just had to let you know how far off she was on this topic today. Hopefully it will be revisited in a more balanced manner in the near future!

I've corrected it here, but I actually spelled "public scrutiny" as "pubic scrutiny" in that first paragraph. Oops.

Please, people. We need to stop looking at the reasons behind tragedies and the failings of our own society at face value. For every apparent reason for something happening, there are 100 reasons behind that reason. Instead of blaming video games for a miniscule percentage of kids going postal at their high school, let's look at how money is continually being drained out of the public school systems. Let's ask why parents are forced to spend more time at work, leaving distractions like TV and video games to raise and babysit their children. Hell, let's examine why we aren't putting some accountability on the parent's shoulders. Let's go out on a limb and think super-whacky-crazy thoughts and consider that maybe, just maybe... there are always going to be mentally unstable individuals out there who will latch on to anything as way of validating their sociopathic behaviours. There's always going to be loners out there, the guy or girl who wasn't loved enough as a child, the ones that are shunned by their peers for being different. Where's the media attention about funneling more money into support programs for kids, counselling services, critical thinking and media education and a myriad of other things that would make for a healther, safe and smarter society?

Please, for fuck's sake, people. Let's drop the cirucs act and demand some credible journalism from our news and media outlets.

Well, that's the end of MY rant.

The Weakness of Waking

2006-10-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've found that foggy divide between sleep and wakefulness is where I am most mentally vulnerable. If my hopes, goals, anxieties and fears are manifested in dreams through symbolism and metaphor, then it is when I am waking thay they come to speak directly to me. My brain is still booting up from standby and my mental defenses are down. So thoughts and emotions, good or bad, come to me unbidden and unobstructed. It's not often pleasant.

I woke up this Wednesday morning feeling as if I have really pissed away my life between the ages of 21 and 29. A rapidly cycling reel of memories hit me in the face. It was a blurry mess, so I couldn't really pick out any particular moments to mull over. It was just a generalized mass of regrets. There were trips that I never took, jobs I wasted time at, education I never pursued, relationships I failed to foster, lessons I thought I had learned but didn't, lessons that had yet to be learned and visions of a dark future. Okay, so it wasn't all about regrets. I just felt tired and unwilling to get out of bed.

Clearly, this was the kind of cheery morning not even a steaming hot grandé dark roast could help.

I had this coming, this bout of morning weakness. I've been experiencing an occupational crisis. The simple fact is work in the office has been dreadfully slow but it's made me feel like an adjunct to the whole operation. I've pondered the situation and figured it might be the lack of stimulating projects. That theory may wash, if it wasn't for a side project I have going on that does require creativity and control and I have no motivation to work on it.... even for pay! I'm stuck and there's no dancing around that truth.

There's also the age thing. I'm looking 30 in the face and feeling I have nothing to show for it material-wise, relationship-wise, career-wise or maturity-wise. I've always been against the fixation to look at life as a series of predetermined "stages" but it doesn't mean I'm immune to it. Where do I go from here? I think that's a pretty useful question, as broad as it is.

Where do I go from here? At least the question leaves the past where it belongs. Few things are worse than wallowing in bad memory lane.

Well having that coffee and putting some lunch into my stomach has fortified my mind again. I'm feeling the resolve flow through my limbs. In lieu of doing something work-related today I've been browsing through the BC Work Futures website. It's been very informative and I plan on combing through all the different industries of work, even those areas that I know I have absolutely no interest in.

In the meantime, I'll try to cheer up and get back to blogging about bullshit.

VIFF: The Root of All Evil?

2006-10-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

The Vancouver International Film Festival is rolling along now until October 13th. I am watching a small batch of features this year, perhaps a third of my usual movie binge from years past. There just don't seem to be a lot of films that are grabbing me this year and I have compulsively flipped through the program guide for the past 10 days looking for those hidden gems.

I am watching mostly documentaries since there seems to be no shortage of interesting topics, ranging from insomniacs and life-long hermaprodites, to the obligatory investigations into the current affairs in the Middle East and America's role in foreign affairs, war in Iraq, yadda yadda yadda.

The Root of All Evil? screened last night and stars famed evolutionary scientist, Richard Dawkins. The root of all evil, according to Dawkins, is organized religion... or religion period. It is a relic of primitive times, bereft of rational ideas, based on the transmission of faith-based truths and outmoded traditions. Dawkins argues that religion discourages curiosity and critical thinking and in the process reinforces base prejudices and irrational discrimation. In short, religion is bad for humanity and it is taking us backwards not forwards.

My review: well, duh.

First of all, the documentary is excellent and I will just come right out and say I am biased. Ever since I survived my (failed) indoctrination into Christianity by my elder cousins, I've always been flummoxed at the power and prevalence of religion in people's lives. Religion: what is it good for? In the past, I've had fairly intelligent, articulate religious devotees attempt to browbeat me with non-arguments on the validity of religion, and their religion specifically. Well, it usually amounts to something like, "Oh, if you only studied Religion X, then you'd know there is so much more to it than you think". And I'm sure there is. But what about Religion Y and Religion Z? They are quite different from Religion X and they all contradict each other in various ways. Which one is the truth?

I bought my ticket for The Root... feeling so glad an academic like Dawkins had the ballsacks to take the boots to religions of all stripes. The film's agenda is clear as day: religion is hurting the world and it is stronger than ever in the 21st century. Not surprisingly, Dawkins takes aim at the fundamentalists and that's where we get some of the heated, awkward and quite frankly terrifying interviews between Dawkins and various religious leaders.

Let it be said that Dawkins is an esteemed scientist and British, so he is predictably arrogant and condescending through out the movie, from his narration to his clinical probing of his interview subjects. Dawkins takes a few lumps of his own during these theological/rational debates but not a one of these rabbis, pastors, evangelists or cleric can mount a convincing argument in the face of logical reasoning. Dawkins even takes aim at moderate believers, like those progressive priests that support gay marriage, for cherry picking the Bible and being fence sitters on essential issues between faith and reason.

Again, I really enjoyed this movie. It was almost pointless for me to even be at the theater, as it was another case of the movie preaching to the converted. Far better for someone who is actually experiencing confusion in their own faith or someone who is considering taking on a religion, to view this movie. I feel that the message is very important. Yet through it all, I also felt quite compassionate and sad for religion and its followers. The documentary conveniently ignores all the good that comes from organized religion. The many forms of charity and community support offered by religion are not often things you see coming out of laboratories, universities or corporate think tanks. And for the people featured in the movie, religion IS THEIR LIFE. Their entire lives have been constructed around their faith and many of them hold authority positions, which means they also depend on it to feed and clothe themselves. Who is this crusty, arrogant Brit to trivialize their life's work, their passion?

And that's the sad part. Religion is reason proof, which means you cannot convince someone out of it. You can do as Dawkins did and argue until you're blue in the face, but people will hold onto their beliefs. The belief in science, la dee da, is a form of religion if you really look at how knowledge has been udpated over the centuries. But at least science refreshes and updates and changes with the times. Religion? Just a teeny bit more resistant to changes, I'd say. Just a bit...

How to End My "Survivor" Viewing Habits

2006-09-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Merge the racial tribes.

That's it. That's all you gotta do.

In a shocking but not wholly suprising twist, the 4 racially separated tribes on this season's Survivor were disbanded and rejigged to form 2 racially mixed tribes. Say good-bye to Team Cracker; bid adieu to Team Fried Chicken; so long Team Chico and a nice knowin' ya to Team Delicious Bowl of Steamed Rice.

As any diehard Survivor fan (do they still exist?) can attest, the merging of competing player tribes is a fundamental convention of the game. But to merge all four tribes after only 2 episodes, which amounts to less than 10 actual days of the game was a foolish and gutless decision. I don't know about you, but once I got over my mini-outrage at the whole race concept, I was eager to see how each of groups would fare.

While there is a logistical reason for consolidating all the players into two main tribes, I still think the producers could have taken that into account when planning out the season. Namely, they should have allowed for larger tribes in the beginning. Team Taco and Team Lazy had already lost a member each, leaving them with a mere 4 members apiece. Should either of them face tribal council again, it would have made for some awkward voting dynamics. Stalmate anyone?

STILL. Why didn't they just bump up the number of contestants? The entire franchise is on the decline anyway, they may as well pull out all the stops to revive the show. Now I'll never get to find out which race reigns supreme. The Cook Islands will now play out like any old season of Survivor, which completely runs counter to all the pre-season hype. All that talk about conducting a grand social experiment the likes of which have never been seen is just that... deceptive marketing BS.

There's no more reason for me to tune in. Even the babes are nothing to write home about. I had high hopes for Becky, the Korean princess allied with Yul, but she's turning out to be uber boring... and actually not really that hot. Everytime she comes onscreen, I think of her as a cousin or the little sister I never had. I just feel... nothing. And Parvati. She's actually not bad, despite having a bit of a clown face. Her body is tight, befitting a "boxer/waitress" from West Hollywood, I suppose. Unfortunately, she has a rather high opinion of herself what with her whole spiel about working her irresistable feminine charms on all the men in her new tribe. Please. Although her giant clown mouth is strangely alluring, she ain't nuttin' compared to many former contestants on the show.

I guess I should thank Mark Burnett and co.. I've always disliked scheduling my life around TV shows, you know? "Ooooo, I have to get home by 8pm to watch so and so" or "Oh, should I do [insert productive activity here] and record the show or just watch it when it's on?". Fuck that. I now have an uninterrupted block of time each Thursday evening, free to do with as I please.

Survivor = Gutless

Lu Lu Lemon Solidarity

2006-09-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

Posted almost a week ago, I didn't realize this attractive Vancouver blog existed until I stumbled on Rant Vancouver's blogroll.

They posted a little something on the Stuff Sausage phenomenon, certainly old hat to readers of 500WPD, but I did quite enjoy the image they had attached to the article.

Check it out!

Things that Irk Me

2006-09-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

1. Awful, tone-deaf e-mail conversationalists
I have been engaged in an exchange with messages with a mystery girl since, oh, the middle of the spring and it's wonder I am still firing off mail to her a few times a week.

My penpal, who I'll refer to as Meow, is probably the worst e-mail writer in existence. English is clearly her second language, but her messages are usually quite clear, concise and understandable. Furthermore, she is a university student and has been living in BC for somes time. It's more of a content issue here. If you routinely enjoy the interplay of light banter, asking questions, receiving answers to said questions and having relevant questions asked of you in return, then you need NOT have anything to do with Meow. Pleasant as she is, it's been frustrating to think out a reply to her messages, follow up with some comments and questions of my own, then get something like this as her response:

"hey, how are you doing? just got back from school, anything new? hope you have sunny day!"

Yes, she often sounds like she's 16, instead of 26. But did she even read my message? I told her what was "new", I told her what I was doing. Aside from someone forgetting your name, it is even more annoying for someone to be clued out of your conversation with them, whether it is in person or online. After several exchanges like this, I started whipping off very short messages back to her, seeing as she obviously puts very little thought into what she writes. You know what? Her style still annoys me. It's like having completely separate conversations.

"Hey, what do you think of X, Y, Z?"

"Oh hi. How are you? I did, A, B, C today. Bye!"

There is a plus side and that is, of course, the very minimal effort it takes to maintain e-mail contact with Meow. Just a sentence or two will do. It doesn't even have to be remotely related to what she wrote in her last message. Just tap something out and send. Wow, the fucking wonders of modern fucking communication.

2.) Vancouver drivers who won't stop hitting my car
Barely 2 weeks after getitng my car back from the shop, complete with brand new front bumper, I come out of the supermarket and notice a crack on the left side. Judging from the lateral streaks just below the crack, someone had obviously brushed against it with their own car and, knowingly or unknowingly, driven off.

ATTENTION you shitty, fucking drivers in Vancouver: Stop Hitting My Camry. Just cut it the fuck out. Stop. No really. STOP.

Survive THIS

2006-09-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

O.M.G.
For those who watched episode two of Survivor: Race Wars... O.M.F.G., was that not the FUNNIEST tribal council you have ever seen? My hat goes off to Billy for being in an obscure metal band and being completely out of touch with his own reality. Man, I have to say I started rooting for him when he tried to pull a last-ditch attempt to save his ass from elimination but Odin's Taint that thing about finding his true love was straight out of left field! Candice? Shit, I was howling when the perky blonde strumpet threw out her "We love you" like so much discarded tissue paper. This is the same girl who made up some cockamamey excuse to snuggle up next to petulant, all-American boy, Adam. What was Billy thinking? The ensuing comments from Sneery McSneerson (JP) had me bawling with laughter. Oh boy, good stuff I tell ya.

In the end, emerging spicy conchita, Cecilia, decided not to side with Cristina and instead helped cocky-ass Ozzy vote out the Fat Guy. That's Fatty #2 voted off the show, the first victim being another musician, Sekou, from Team Lazy. Have to say the show's producers have done a great job so far of casting people who do not represent overweight people very well.

"Are they slovenly?" - Check
"Are they lazy?" - Check
"Are they of barely average intelligence?" - Check

On a brighter note, Team Math & High Grades (Punta) placed first yet again in the immunity/reward challenge. Asians have so far been portrayed as humourless, smart and able to work well as a team. Hey, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

R.O.T.F.L!!!!

New Body Type Inductee on 500WPD

2006-09-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

I was on my lunch break the other day and was unfairly subjected to some eye poison while eating my panini at the nearby cafe.

Two older women, one with child, were at the adjacent table from me and I could not help but notice one of them as she stood up to pour herself some more water. I guess women of a certain age, of a certain body type and having undergone the minor miracle of childbirth, either develop in one of two ways. They can either recover from the trauma of squeezing a human body out of their tummies and get back into shape, or the birth is just the beginning of the slippery slope down into doughey flabberdom.

As a man, I can't say either of those options are right or wrong. It is certainly quite commendable when a woman can squeeze out a couple rugrats, tones back up and achieves bonafide MILF status. I would say that is the exception to the rule, with the rule being that most women sacrifice their youthful firmness once the family gets going. A similar effect happens with guys. They are energetic, dashing cads when single. Once they get married, the gut kicks in and they start getting schlubby. Many guys in LTRs don't even bother waiting for the wedding bells and begin nurturing their flabby love handles right from the get-go. See, who said generalizations can't be fun?

But I digress. I'm in the cafe, shoving salmon panini down my craw, and my eyes are drawn to this mother's body. She, unfortunately, has not toned up after spitting out her cute little boy. Fair enough. But... she was decked out in Lulu-like workout clothing and the Stuffed Sausage effect was in full bloom.

I was presented with her body profile which resembled a soft, molded grip of some kind of handle. Sort of like the handles you find on lawn equipment or power tools...except fatter. It's this series of consecutive body humps that has lead me to introduce a brand new body type...

Behold! THE HITCHCOCK!!

It's not entirely accurate -- the bottom end is a bit too big in the drawing -- but it gets the message across, no? Lovely lady lumps they are not.

It's a Small Online World

2006-09-20T01:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight was probably the first chance I had to retire to bed earlier than usual... but fuck it. I probably would have konked out 15 minutes early, big deal.

So there I was at another one of these massive group dinners last night. Having first started off in May, the bi-monthly dining events have grown in leaps and bounds. I went to my first one in early June, which included about a dozen diners to one long, cozy table. Monday's dinner at Ouisi Bistro numbered at least 40 attendees.

I waltzed in fashionably late as it has become my habit since my third outing and the place was already hopping. Our group dominated the rear section of the restaurant and there were a scant handful of isolated seats remaining. I picked one of the tables on the elevated platform, away from some of the familiar faces, with the intent to meet some more new faces.

I must have sat there at one end of the table for a good 5 minutes, greeting my adjacent diners, before I did a subtle double-take at the other end. Hmm. Chinese girl, attractive, older... something about her looks so... Oh, boy.

In late June I met a Lz. through a dating site and we met for a first date coffee. Everything was alright after that. I didn't exactly feel the sparks scorching up the air between us, but I had better reserve judgment... right? Truthfully, I had put the shenanigans with W. first and foremost already and wanted to see that through, so I didn't want to put much hope into this thing with Lz. The W. gets pulled out from beneath me and I spend the weeks leading up to my Montreal trip moping around and not thinking about girls. Once I returned, I can't say I had the most burning desire to reconnect with Lz., despite sending her an e-mail telling her how I wanted to meet again, and getting an enthusiastic enough response back from her.

Think it was the last week of July I gave her a call and asked her out for a real date. She was busy and I made plans to call her again... and I never got around to picking up the phone again. Call it lack of motivation or my unfounded bias against "honger"-style women. I just couldn't be bothered to pursue. I was willing to let this one slip away.

In case I haven't yet telegraphed the ending of my story yet, Lz. was at the group dinner, sitting at the other end of my table. She recognized me immediately, even with my glasses on, which puts to rest any debate on whether the Clark Kent/Superman effect really works. She came over, we chatted and the whole situation was suprisingly free of excruciating awkwardness. Seeing her again that night actually rekindled my interest and made me think, "I wonder if I can salvage my oversight".

At night's end, we chatted a bit more and she gave me a hug before encouraging me to find her on MSN to chat. I have never seen her available while online and that she has delusions that we have chatted over MSN in the past leads me to believe she's been going pretty hard on the online dating. My mouth, before I could stop it, one-upped her and promised her a phone call. Oops. Or rather... yay?

I wanted another shot at this girl, right?

Team Rickshaw Reprazentn'

2006-09-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Although I do NOT plan on documenting the entire run of this season's edition of Survivor, I thought it noteworthy to at least chime in my two coppers on the premiere episode. And what an episode! Probst! The stunned ethnic faces! Probst! The chickens! Cao Boi! All the insightful comments about the race wars theme! Probst!!

The Survivor lustre has worn off long ago and this new season doesn't do much to restore the old excitement. What did I tell you?? True to form, the producers wasted no time in making Team Lazy (the blacks) look ineffectual and they crowned a King Lazy (Sekou, the jazz brother) in record time. Usually they will wait at least a few episodes to really start entrenching those stereotypes, but given that they have 4 groups of ethnicities to juggle, they figured that they needed to establish things on a even tighter schedule. But wait, I smell an underdog story arc brewing with this tribe. Or maybe, that's just the smell of....

Victory! I have to say, for a bland bunch of folk, Team Rickshaw (Punta.. or Puta in the show) made an impressive debut, taking first place in the reward/immunity challenge. Reprazent! Actually, no one in the group represents me all that well. They're all American and consisting of two Koreans, a Flip, Vietnamese and a Flip/something else mix. Cao Boi, the "eccentric" hippy-type nail salon manager has stood out as the true character of this tribe, cracking racist jokes before even landing safely ashore on the raft. And that scene with him curing metro-dude's headache with some down-home traditional remedy hoodu voodu was quite funny, if only to see Cao Boi actually fix the headache and not look like a complete crazy old coot.

As for everyone else on Rickshaw... MEH. We got two soft-spoken, chiselled fit guys who seem intelligent enough to handle those Challenges. The Flip girl is pretty boring but she looks buff, so again, good for those physical challenges. The Korean hottie girl... well, I already get the feeling she will be a whiner and possibly dead weight. In order for her to survive (and to keep my interest in the show), she will need to start prancing around in a ripped up bikini and hope Cao Boi starts getting on everyone's nerves.

"Whoa" - Body Sparkles are HAWT

2006-09-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching this TV show after dinner, something called, Dancing with the Stars. In its 3rd season already and very much a product of the mid-00s... in fact all these reality contest shows will be looked back on in ten years as being "soooo '00s!!!". Whether you pronounce "Ohs" or "zero zero" would be entirely up to you and your future self.

I've never watched this show before. The most noteworthy feature of Dancing Season 2 was former WWE star, Stacy Keibler and her glorious, endless legs. I still didn't watch the show for her, but I spent enough time trolling the celebrity gossip and horndogg weblogs to get the gist of it.

So, there I am watching and a few things were readily apparent: some of these dancers are pretty hot, and I had no idea Joey Lawrence is still, or ever, considered an actor. Sporting a chrome dome and admittedly, a pretty chiselled physique, Mr. "Whoa" from Blossom was paired off with Latin dance expert, Edyta. Edyta is Polish and smokin'. She's got a weird, narrow face but that's forgiveable because of her tight rump and nice legs. She spent a lot of time wearing these gigantic leg warmers, however, which really detracted from her overall hotness. Points deducted. Oh yeah, their dance routine was okay, I think...

Later on, some retired NFL legend and dancer, Cheryl Burke took to the stage to do the bunny hop or cha-cha, or whatever... and my mouth was watering. Burke, along with Drew Lachey, is the Season 2 reigning champ and it didn't strike me until then how someone can look cute and sexy all at once. Well, she pulls it off. Petite, funky hair and all smiles, Cheryl Burke is the picture of cuteness. Then I realized that outfit of hers that made her look half-naked (that's what happens with those backless dresses) and the ample bosoms liberally sprinkled with sparkle dust. Uuuggghh. Yeah, that's the sound of me drooling. Man o man. The guy who invented sparkle dust for girls deserves a Nobel Prize, right next to the guy who invented high heels. The world recognizes your contributions to mankind, good sirs.

Bonus round: Burke and NFL guy really impressed the judges, so they will advance at least into the next week. Hot diggity. Next episode, they perform the tango, with Burke wearing nothing but sparkles. Now that's dancing!

Update: The time-wasting, ratings-grabbing results show aired tonight and what do you know, there was an encore of the cha-cha with Cheryl Burke and Emmit Smith. They cloned last night's dance step for step, but I didn't care. Cheryl was wearing the same backless dress, which looked uglier tonight since actually noticing all the yellow tassel, frilly things. But dayooom, she still looked tasty. Definitely a fine balance between the Large Parts and LMB.

Outside Looking In

2006-09-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

I was hopelessly bored and groggy last night and perhaps because of this I found myself reading W.'s Blogger blog again. Don't bother asking why I still had her blog bookmarked; it was likely my subconscious knowing that I'd want to save her page for a rainy day. Turns out all I needed was a night of boredom to spur the curiosity machine that is my tired brain.

So I scanned the homepage of her blog and lo, I found the jewel post I was obsessing over for that week after we stopped seeing each other. She had made an official announcement back in mid-August that she's been going steady with a guy and recounted the time in late June/early July when they first met.

Bingo, just as I had suspected. Turns out she was deciding between me and this other fella in that 2-3 week period after all. In case you need another reminder, the other guy, referred to as J-, won the dating sweepstakes. I read the entire post and felt... mildly happy. W. is obviously very happy with her love connection. I, while not immune to fits of envy, could only feel (cue sappy music) a sense of closure. It's reassuring to know that I saw through the BS break-up speech she gave me on Canada Day. All the gibber-jabber about her intuition and gut instinct was really just the old gloss-over. I'm not faulting her for that actually; realisitcally there wasn't a better way she could have done it. I'm glad she at least made the effort to let me down easy.

To her credit, she also made it seem like it was a real choice she made... although in the back of her mind her choice of words was perhaps steered by how she probably still remembers that I know where her blog is and oh... maybe I check back on it every now and again. Anyway, here's my vague 15 seconds of fame on her blog:

It never rains but it pours in that I went on dates with two boys and both - for once - were very decent. I thought my head would burst keeping their histories straight and even faltered once or twice. (I attribute the plenty to reaching - finally - true comfort and acceptance of being single.) It soon became clear that in an absolute sense, one boy seems to be the very picture of what I'm looking for. Besides, we hit it off right away.

So now, I advocate entertaining all your opportunities to meet people. Every story of a meeting is beautiful because it involved both of you.

So... you maybe get the impression I'm still hung up on this girl? Only a little. She is definitely the one that got away this summer. In hindsight, I was a little too cautious when I spent time with W.. Perhaps spent a little bit too much effort feeling out the situation instead of really living it and giving myself over to it. But what was the problem? She was cute, intelligent, active, a great conversationalist and had a really nice blend of that sweet/naughty dynamic that I seem to go for.

In the end, it probably wouldn't have mattered. She clearly met someone a lot more compatible. It just would have been nice to rule out some factors on my own end. This time, I was the one window shopping and got caught out in the rain, gazing longingly through the glass store display.

Blech. Now this totally reeks of me not having moved on yet... but I have! Really! Alright, alright, the proof is in the pudding. I'll stop sulking now...

Literary Spam

2006-09-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

Have a rare treat for you guys today in a form of a double issue! Two posts! Wow!!

Now settle down and wipe the drool off your lips. I want to talk about a somewhat tired topic: e-mail spam. I don't get a whole lot of it drifting into my work e-mail account these days. It wasn't that long ago I'd open up my mail reader each morning to find half a dozen tantalizing offers for penis enlargement and I would wonder (sometimes aloud), "How the hell do they know?" My current account at work is by no means a fortress of security, but the junk mail gets filtered surprisingly well. It's rare that I get even an isolated spam message sneak through our defenses, but it still happens.

On Wednesday, I had one such interloper appear in my inbox. It was sent to me by one JeffreyWoodard. His message was titled "yeast", and it was a odd pairing of sales pitch and... prose. The pitch opens up wtih some blah blah about a company's new financial reports and recommending your purchase of some bogus company stock portfolio. Right below this, is a good solid 3 or 4 paragraphs of prose, resembling an excerpt of a really, really bad short story. Here's a sample:

This was about twelve oclock, I should think. She raps or taps upon the walls,the ceiling, the floor, with fine rhythm and cadence.
De Morgan observes that after the seances with Mrs. But, said he, what you tell me isvery singular: I shall go myself to Mrs.
I workedfor them part of the time, and part of the time I boarded and went toschool. She increases their weightor lessens it according to her pleasure. I dont think I shall hear anything from anybody, but if Ido I shall find out the trick. I did not know what to think ofit, it seemed so strange and unaccountable.
At the house of friends withwhom she went to stay she was persuaded to sit at a table with others. I workedfor them part of the time, and part of the time I boarded and went toschool.
I did not know what to think ofit, it seemed so strange and unaccountable.
One evening, about bedtime, I heard therapping.
I heard it a number of nights, as I slept inthe bedroom all the time that I staid there. Myers, in the presence ofProfessor and Mrs. My warping bars were in their chamber,and I used to go there to do my work.
It may briefly be stated that of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICANinquirers the secretary, Mr. I told him not to go outdoors, for perhapssomebody wanted to get him out and hurt him.
He said she was a powerful medium through whom he intended tomanifest.

Ok... what the hell was that about? These shysters... always up to no good!

Race Wars

2006-09-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

*Sniff* *Sniff* You smell that? *Sniff* Smells like controversy. No... *Sniff* Smells like racism. Hmm, getting closer. *Sniff, Sniff* Ah, now I know. It smells like the new season of Survivor.

The stuttering grandpapi of reality junk TV is back again, pitting prize-hungry camera whores against each other for the chance at a million dollars and the title of Sole Survivor. The next installment in the long-running reality series will take place on the Cook Islands (a bunch of tiny islands in the South Pacific, near New Zealand). Yes, another watery, beachy locale... nothing new here.

What IS new (sort of), is the introduction of yet another attention-grabbing "twist" to the standard rules of Survivor canon. The contestants, 20 in all, will be divided into their starting tribes based on race, which means that... well, it means the game is, err, sort of made um... it''s like this, it drastically affects the way the challenges will be, um.. okay, I give in. Let's be frank: this does nothing for the series, it does nothing for the game.

Douchey douchebag host, Jeff Probst, solemnly espouses the new twist as some kind of grand social experiment. First off, I feel there was already plenty of racial (and gender) tension in previous seasons of Survivor. If it didn't come "naturally" from the actions of the contestants, it was quite easily fabricated by the show's producers, with their hyper-manipulative editing of footage and interview sound bites. If you're gonna pull off a controversial stunt like this to reinvigorate your long-in-the-tooth reality show, at least be honest about it.

Just come out and say, "Hey, we know race is still a sensitive issue in America. And if you don't think so, then hell, we'll MAKE IT a sensitive issue. Come and watch regular folks like you make racist on a remote bunch of islands while they build shitty huts, cook shitty rice and race through 26 shitty obstacle courses through the shitty jungle." Their shameless audacity would disarm me out of my pop culturally programmed stupor and I would respect and love them for it.

The 4 tribes are separated as follows: Team Cracker, Team Taco, Team Rickshaw and Team Lazy.

If there's one advantage to this whole race wars concept, it's that they're not longer limited to painting the token black guy as The Lazy One. Now they have entire team of lazies to work with. Look... I've watched my share of Survivor, probably 5 - 6 full seasons and I've stumbled on the more recent iterations while channel surfing in the past. There's always a black man or woman thrown into the mix of contestants. Without fucking fail, the black man is always portrayed as someone who is lazy or someone who's a quitter. Every damn time. The women are usually painted a bit differently, but hardly any more flattering. The black women I've seen on the show are always portrayed as obnoxious complainers or incorrigible gossip fiends. It's actually quite disgusting how consistently the show does this.

Having said all this... I am VERY tempted to tune into the premiere on September 14th. Being Chinese, I could have some fun rooting for Team Asian Persuasion: they seem to have a pretty interesting mix of personalities. The new cast also features 2 hotties, one asian and the other on Team Wonderbread. There are only the two, but you know you'll see them in bikinis and/or scanty rags at some point and the environment is always condusive to nurturing a nice, albeit bug-bite pocked, tan. Sooo... those are the hooks for me right now.

Damn you, Mark Burnett. Your show has reached new lows, but sadly, you've seduced me into tuning in for at least one evening.

This Long Weekend

2006-09-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

I scrapped the ClinTicker for the last week since, quite frankly, not a whole heckuva lot has happened in the personal realm.

Sure, work has been a touch frantic. Due to a certain hurricane named John and its direct course right into my company's main locale of business, the shit has been rapidly piling up, quite ready to hit the proverbial fan. Since you can't negoiate with Mother Nature, we've been left to quelling undue panic and working the damage control. Oh yes, and re-doubling our efforts to get our other venture rolling in another part of the world. There's something to be said about that cliche about having all one's egg in the same basket.

So the Labor Day Weekend struck and I jumped on the opportunity to game like a madman; I've been dicking around with the timeless Neverwinter Nights and recently fired up the gloriously mindless shooter, Painkiller. The boys dropped in Friday night to record a banging mix on my mega system. I quite enjoy hosting these spin sessions; my guests bring the booze, everyone gets nice and sauced and the good tunes get cranked out all night.

Back in May I was boasting to a few people that I would do the Grousse Grind once every weekend for the entire summer. I sure hate it when my mouth signs cheques that my ass can't cash. At least I finally got my butt up onto that rocky Stairmaster this morning. L. and I tackled the Grind in exactly 2 hours... a rather pathetic time but to completely absolve myself of any shame, L. required many breaks on the way up and I didn't want to leave her behind. L. is the cute, innocent girl from the cafe that I asked out maybe a week after getting back from vacation. Today's Grind was our 3rd date and I am still waffling about her. She is obviously a very sweet, very perky young lady but it's almost like I want her to have more of an edge. At times I feel like I'm her big brother or something, instead of a guy she's dating. We are getting along fine so far but I'm not finding a lot of common ground.

This is classic me over-thinking everything to do with girls. Still, that spark hasn't been lit up yet with L.. What does it say when I'm out with her and I catch myself scoping out other girls? For one, it may mean that I'm a superficial prick. But there's something deeper going on too. Baahh... I shall give it some more time.

Is it just me, or my posts getting more and more asinine?

Clean Bill O' Health

2006-08-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

With my excruciating tongue sore and ear infection incident like, soooo last week, I tied up the loose ends today with an early morning visit to the throat, nose and ear specialist. Given the number of questions I was peppered with and various examinations I was subjected to, this surely ranked among the most expedient doctor visits in my life.

Dr. W. was nice enough, but he caught me off guard with his blunt, rapid fire questioning. What brings you here? What did your doctor say? It still hurts? It feels tight? How do you mean? How do you feel now? Were you ill before? Were you just worried... about cancer?

Yes, I was at a bit of a loss at the third degree but that last question I'll revisit in just a moment.

I couldn't help but notice the curly sticking out of Dr. W.'s left nostril but thought little of it. If you only knew the epic gardening battles I wage with my own nasal follicles. He wore a vision headset, pulled up on his forehead, but never used it. If it was darker and he wasn't in fact a slight Chinese man with protruding nose hairs, I might have mistken him for Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell. Maybe.

On the subject of nostrils, the good doctor stuck a probe up both of mine, prodding me to say "Eeeeee" at one point to, I assume, prevent me from spasmodically jerking away as he pushed that probe up, up and up into my head. He warned me, in typical understated doctor-speak, that it would feel a bit uncomfortable. Well it feels like a probe is going up through your nose, blazing a miniature trail of fire along the way. The slight burning, probe going through your brain sensation was not very pleasant.

He also did the old reliable trick of sticking a bright light into my ear canals. More questions. Did your doctor look into yours ears? What did he find? Do you think there's fluid in your ear? In the parlance of the Internet: WTF, sir. WTF? If you're going to ask me something I can't possibly answer with any reliable certainty... and you're seconds away from looking into my ears to find out anyway... does the question need to be asked?

Thankfully, Dr. W.'s trek through my orifices barely lasted a few minutes. He didn't find anything out of the ordinary and seemed to make me feel a bit silly for visiting him in the first place. That's when he asked if I was worried about a deeper problem, like possibly having cancer. With my usual straight face, I just told him I wanted to make sure whatever it was I had last week had completely cleared up. Is that so wrong, people?

Because I had developed a second, lesser sore on the left underside of my tongue, Dr. W. merely suggested that these sores can sometimes impact to a degree that affects the inner ear... or something like that. As I had mentioned earlier, the entire appointment felt like it had ended before it had really began. Lickity split.

Doctors!

The Mystal Interchange

2006-08-31T01:22:00.000-07:00

Contrary to my promise, I haven't yet got around to uploading the photos of the commitment party from two weekends back.

Please enjoy this YouTube special presentation instead, courtesy of C., video editor extraordinaire. (There is an excruciating 3 seconds of me dancing very poorly. Please try to ignore this)

The ClinTicker 2000: August 21st - 25th 2006

2006-08-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

There's not much to report this week. Work has been duller than poo and it's made me start questioning the reason behind my existence once again.

Right after my friend's "wedding" bash, I developed a humdinger of a sore on my tongue and it's been agonizing me for days now. Yesterday I discovered I also have an ear infection, so add that to the mix and tickle me pink, thanks very much. The upside is I used that as an excuse to take a day off from work and just chill. I needed that.

Funny though. Almost exactly 1 year ago, I had gotten a nasty eye infection -- I think it was pink eye -- and had to start up on a similar type of antibiotics that I'm on now. I was unemployed at the time and was barely a week in to my Transitions career exploration program. What a nice program. Sure, it was a great excuse to attend this thing every day and just keep busy, but it also opened my eyes to some careers that I had ruled out in the past or not even thought about. I also met some great people there and a few of us even kept in touch as recently as May, when 6 or 7 of us met for dinner. Granted, I'm probably still as confused and indecisive about my grand career plan as before, but Transitions showed me how change can be okay... and you can enact big changes at any stage in your life. And shit, I had to do a lot of public speaking!

And here I sit. Employed again 8 months running and still clueless. And scarfing down the antibiotics once again.

The ClinTicker 2000: August 11th - 21st

2006-08-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

A little late with the ClinTicker report this time around. I can barely remember what happened at work last Friday but I certainly had several minutes to spare to mash out a few words on the keyboard. Well kidz, that's what Mondays are for...

Committment Party 2006 - Drunken Revelry, DJs and Cupcakes
My old high school buddy, M. and his live-in partner, Cy. got hitched on Saturday. Although it was officially not a celebration of marriage, there were all the trappings of a traditional wedding: chaos, last-minute changes, mad dashing about, dancing and cupcakes with a generous 2-inches of solid icing. The festivites kicked off early in the evening with a scenic beachside photo shoot of the happy couple with friends and family. A prolonged, but delicious dinner at a Greek restaurant followed. The night concluded with the dispersal of almost everyone over the age of 35 and a trio of DJs (myself included) took to the decks and rocked out the party until the restaurant owners ordered us to get the hell out so they could get some sleep.

This is probably the most fun I had spinning music in my 2 years of being an amateur DJ. I'm usually squirrelled away at home sweating over my recording sessions or playing to small pockets of other music enthusiasts at the ANZA Open Dex nights. But this night was special. People were in the mood to party and it was a menagerie of close friends, people I'd never met before and familiar faces I've seen only a few times since graduating high school... all united and DANCING. I, along with Ti. and Sc., thought we were in for a tough sell with nothing but house and breaks to keep everyone entertained. To my pleasant surprise, they ate up all the breaks we could dish out and then some. I not-so-slyly positioned myself to start playing at the peak hour, just shortly after midnight, and I KILLED. Yes, I am not known to pat myself on the back too often, but I will take full credit this time. People were going nuts to the music and I had such an awesome time behind the decks.

Truly one of the most memorable weddings I've been a part of, even though it wasn't a wedding.

I'll try to link to some Flickr photos of the event in my next post.

Oral Pain
On a more sober note, my body is giving me the heave ho again and punishing me for my careless ways. I'm currently suffering from a painful case of canker sores... at least that is what I think they are. I got the first one on the side of my mouth in the middle of last week. It just sort of flapping around right now and it doesn't really hurt any more. In fact, it hasn't even turned into an open sore yet. The one that really hurts is the sore at the rear underside of my tongue. This sucker makes it hard to drink and even harder to eat. Home brew remedies abound to combat these kind of sores and it looks like I'll be gargling with some salt water tonight to ease some of the discomfort. I've had some luck with that before so here's hoping the salt water wash does the trick.

Livingstone Lives On

2006-08-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through video gaming blog, Kotaku, and was surprised to find a post leading me to an interview with Games Workshop co-founder, Ian Livingstone.

I'm a big a fan of the Games Workshop properties as much as the next guy who didn't have the time, money and geek friends to really get into games like Warhammer. I was actually too busy sulking, playing Super Nintendo and sulking some more. Same story with my friends, who can add "trying to get laid" and "demolishing cars" as part of their daily agenda. No, what really perked me up about the Livingstone interview and put me into nostalgia mode was that fact that he and Steve Jackson started up the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks series, of which I still own many of the books. I have some fond (and some very maddening) memories of reading through these books in elementary and early highschool. I always thought of them as "Dungeons & dragons Uber-Lite" because of their simplistic rules and combat system. That didn't stop me from buying tons of them, of course, and for a kid that had a serious lack of friends to play with, it was better than nothing. This handy Wikipedia entry does a better job that explaining the FF phenomenon better than I ever could.

Anyway, I did some further "research" aka. goofing off at work, and discovered that the FF series survived until 1995, after which the series went on extended hiatus before Livingstone returned with a pair of new gamebooks in 2005. The series is now published by Wizard books , who have done a fine job of resurrecting these literary oddities for a new generation to enjoy. They've also reissued many of the classic FF books from the 80s, complete with new Wizard branding and cover art. The new covers are neat, but can't touch the originals released by Puffin. These new covers definitely look targeted to the Harry Potter set and lack a lot of the edge you would find with the old covers. Dare to compare? - old and new. Also compare this with this. Ain't no friggin' comparison, in this geek's humble opinion.

Ian Livingstone has largely abandoned the pen & paper/gamebooks industry for greener pastures and now works as Product Acquisition Director at Eidos, creators of the Lara Croft Tomb Raider games. That's probably for the best. I was tempted to check out the latest book the series, Eye of the Dragon, for old time's sake. Some of the fan response, however, leads me to suspect that not much as changed with the Fighting Fantasy gamebook in the last 20 years. That applies doubly to Livingstone as a gamebooks writer: I've always found his particular adventures (Deathtrap Dungoen, Trial of Champions, Forest of Doom) to be high on the challenge and unfairness and low on story and engaging prose. No, actually I do remember chucking a lot of his books against the wall during fighting fits of fantastical rage. He really did screw you over a lot in his books!

But hey, Steve Jackson has jumped back into the gamebooks game too, so maybe there's still an opportunity in the future where I'll get to relive my mispent youth and have some fun while I'm at it. Who am I kidding? I'm going to waste some half my afternoon browsing through the Wizard catalogue...

Life Chores

2006-08-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of time to blog now. Let that soak in a bit before reading on...

I used the free time I have at the office today to catch up on a stack of ugly bills. A couple stern, past due reminders from the hydro company, annoying cell phone bill and my always impressive Visa statement. Visa bastards dinged me $30 for not making a full payment last month. Just awful, those credit cards.

Another game of Ultimate awaits me tomorrow but I don't know if I want to commit. I've been dastardly tired this week I actually feel partially drunk. Hauling my load out of bed has been a trial of epic proportions these past couple days. I'll even sleep through the blare of my alarm radio for 20-30 minutes before finding the necessary will to act.

With most of my bills settled up, I now face the prospect of cleaning up the apartment. It's in dire need of a dusting and vacuum and the bathroom could use a wipe down later this week. The kitchen's looking alright since I managed to outwait my roommate thereby forcing him to clean all the dishes in the sink. The fridge, however, is gonna be all me. I have too much old food in there. I don't look forward to performing a "Kitchen Reset" on the fridge, but someone's got to do it and it may as well be Lazy Ol' Me.

Leaving work early today to complete an errand. Going to get myself some nice foam. I'll let you know how that goes.

Monday Blah

2006-08-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

How does a key stop working on the same lock? That's what my coworker and I were pondering this morning as we huddle in front of the office, locked out and rather bemused. All the principals were away until Thursday and the building management proved to be very unhelpful. It still gave me a nice excuse to visit our neighbours next door and speak with the comely interior designer, M. and borrow their phone.

A. and I retired momentarily to fetch our late morning coffee and returned in the hopes of trying out Te.'s keys when he arrived. Te. is our Czech applications programmer and always the last to come into the office each morning. I tried reaching one of my bosses to no avail. We contacted A.'s mother, who also happens to be my boss' sister, to get some alternate phone numbers to try. She promised to call back in 20 minutes once she had a chance to check her phonebook. She never did.

Luckily, her assistance was no logner required. We were debating the merits of spending the rest of the day on the beach when the elevator dinged and Te. walked out. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly, depending how grumpy and cynical you are), Te.'s keys turned inside the door locks, at long last freeing us to drone away at our desks.

I had dropped my muffin during the lockout and opened it up to see if it was mashed. Nope, all good, except that I ordered a blue berry oat bran muffin, not a banana muffin. Banana muffins blow. It's hard enough to mistake "blue berry oat bran" and "banana" when you say it. They also look completely different. I wonder how they fucked that one up. This day was really boding well for the rest of the week.

Great. I had just spilled my cup of water all over my desk, drenching a few papers and nearly putting some work CDs, my iPod and my cellphone at risk. Strange thing that happens when you spill things on your desk. It sets up a series of potential dominos, just waiting for you to set them off. Sure enough, after the spillage I leapt to my feet and started pulling out the Kleenex for damage control, in the process nearly knocking my iPod to the floor and spilling the rest of the water from trying to mop up the water from every little nook and cranny on my desk. The news is so right: liquids suck.

This day, if you haven't already surmised, sort of sucks overall. I thought I had a fair bit to do today, but I don't. You would think not having any bosses around would spell instant party, but it does not.

Barber Shop

2006-08-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

I knew I had a long wait ahead of me in the barber shop. That's why I had my book with me, a cheap-o Book Warehouse special of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

An older man is in the middle of his cut when I walk in, with two customers still in queue ahead of me. Based on the meticulousness of the barber, I estimate an hour before I would be walking out of there with my new haircut. I sit down, still debating if I should even bother getting my trim but quickly commit to waiting it out. I didn't wake up early this morning for nothing.

I spend the next fifteen minutes alternating between my book, the blare of CNN on the ceiling-mounted television and regarding the barber's progress with his clients. My barber's a middle-eastern man in his late mid-late 30s and has a rough-hewn, roguish handsomeness which makes him resemble the middle-east version of ex-Bond actor, Timothy Dalton.

CNN begins to test my patience because I'm trying to read my book and realize I've spent 5 minutes on the same page. William Gibson's writing style has come a long way since Neuromancer but his latest book falls into a similar trap of being overly descriptive. The plot is captivating enough, but I'm over 130 pages in and it barely feels like anything of real import has happened yet.

Back to the headline news on CNN. There is something very awful about this network. The barrage of talking heads does little to hide the impression that this is little more than MuchMusic dressed up in pop-commerce-journalism. There's a quick, slick video roundtable on the Lebanon crisis in which they slip in a segment called Blog Voices. From what I could ascertain, this was CNN's attempt to acknowledge that they are up on the going-ons in the "blogosphere" (an insufferable term that has usurped old stinkers like "cyberspace" and "e-commerce") and use blogger content for their own purpose, while at the same time taking this golden opportunity to discredit the information. They are, after all, only bloggers. Quite disingenuous.

Timothy Dalton the barber is speeding through his haircuts much faster than I had expected. He's down to his last job before he gets to lay his scissors into my fuzzy, spikey mess. A couple walks in and take up seats right by the entrance. They look eastern european in origin and the woman, blonde and slim, is quite attractive. Everthing on her body is either brown or tan in colour which matches very nicely to her light-roast tan. I do a few quick sidelong appraisals and decides she wears her summer skirt and flip flops very well. She's got a slim upper body but her legs are thicker and have a bit more definition. Silky smooth. Interesting.

The couple apparently made an appointment with the barber's colleague, who is running a few minutes late. I clue in that the euro guy's English is not up to snuff and he has his lady friend to provide direction on his haircut.

It's finally my turn to take to the cutting chair. I'm extremely scruffy this morning. I didn't bother to shave and threw on a sweater too short overtop a t-shirt that is way too long. I take off my glasses and Dalton ties the smock around my neck. I'm telling him to trim my hair and I can't help but feel like a blind man. My eyesight is terrible now. When I look at my reflection, it appears as if I'm bald, with my hair having receded to places unknown, or at least into the dark, murky blur of the shop's back wall.

The haircut goes pretty well. I always doze off with my eyes open when I have my hair cut. The barber has a way of grasping my head with one hand to position the proper angle that is very dominating but also gentle. I never seem to notice barbers positioning the heads of their customers as much as they do for me. Maybe I'm always daydreaming and letting my head loll into strange positions too soon, forcing them to reset my head again.

CNN is still blaring away. Another blurb about the situation in Lebanon and my barber allows himself a snicker. I don't get it. I start daydreaming about the tapas restaurant I plan to visit on my date tonight. Abigail's Party is a pretty original name for a restaurant. I ponder the last time I asked someone out who wasn't from the internet and my search comes up empty. Maybe it was last summer, when an old friend valiantly tried to set me up with his wannabe model friend. But even that started off as innocent chit chats on MSN Messenger. I give up trying to remember and acknowledge myself one last time for taking my dating efforts back into meatspace.

The barber does an excellent job on my trim, eliminating the garbage around my ears and my neck and retaining the overall shape of things. I pay Mr. Dalton, who graciously thanks me for waiting. Before I go, I grab my novel off the counter and brush off this large grain powder that was lying around.

I know I might be running late for my early lunch appointment with my dad, but I stroll over the two units to peer into the chic little clothing boutique. I saw a drop dead gorgeous woman working here a couple weeks ago. She looked like a younger, less glossy Kelly Hu. Sadly, I didn't see anyone inside.

At this point, there are no more clouds from the somewhat dreary morning. I turn back the way I came and set off to meet my dad and the rest of my weekend.

ClinTicker 2000: Returning from Montreal Til Today

2006-08-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

My inner thighs are now complaining as part of my recovery from Ultimate the other night. Well, you have to admit my posting regularity had improved dramatically leading up to my short trip to Montreal. I even squeezed in a post while experiencing a lull in activities over t here. Then I came back, and pptthh, back to my trickleage of postings. Well kids, that's why I do the ClinTicker, to give you outdated but condensed summaries of full posts that could have been. Anyway, it feels like I have a lot to write for the next 5 - 10 minutes so I'll get things rolling now...

Volunteer blogger gets sacked
My contributor's account for BeyondRobson.com unceremoniously deleted. The editor, Ar., felt that my posting frequency has never been sufficient or consistent enough and now that they were finally deciding to pay their writers, the posting requirements would become a little stiffer. So that was that, booted out of the inner circle of quasi-journalism!

To her credit, Ar. was apologetic and left the door open for me should the time come when I would be motivated enough to contribute 3- 5 posts per week. It's ironic because I had been doings things around town and keeping better tabs on upcoming local events/news but could not get it up to post on the blog. I am currently awaiting a similar fate on Kitsilano.ca, where I have submitted a big 2 posts since joining in late May. Their posting requirements are ridiculously lax andI still haven't been able to satisfy them. Talking just about the Kits neighborhood is tough. It's just there... the same old Kits. It really makes me feel that I've lived in this city way too long because I can't seem to find anything novel.. or just anything that interests me about one of the most popular areas in town.

Camry Gets Pwned by U-Haul
My beloved Camry Power was roughed up by a shitty driver and her rented U-Haul truck late last week. Coincidentally, it was the first day I got carpooled to the office, so I had left my car unattended for the entire day and was oblivious to the damage done to my car until the next morning.

Thankfully, the culprit was honest and left a detailed note on my windshield that outlined her name, driver's license number, cell phone number, the U-Haul plate number, a sincere apology and a special Grand Theft Auto rating of just what a piss poor driver she was. I was very thankful for the note, since it made for smooth transactions with ICBC (fairly unhelpful) and my extended insurance provider (much better). Granted, it was merely convenient for the driver to leave her honest note on my car, since she disclosed that she had insured her truck rental. Smart girl.

My deductible is $300 and I've been warned that I will likely have to wait a couple months to get that moolah back. Oh well. The damage to the Camry is significant, with the front left blinker completely smashed half the bumper was hanging off the body. Value of the repairs will probably exceed $2000. Times like this when I don't grumble about my premiums and feel very lucky to be insured.

Union Proggressive Progressively Improving
Ti., one of my DJ mates, finally came clean and offered many blistering, but helpful, criticisms on our DJ site, unionprogressive.com

In summary, he told me to cut the amateur act, remove the fluff writing and garbage photos and get with the program. Ouch. We had another meeting of the minds (in itself a somewhat amusing story...) and I polled Ax. and Ta. about Ti's suggestions. I was a bit surprised to find out they agreed with most of it. And so it was back to the computer where I've been steadily streamlining the content and prettying things up, and I have to say the site is looking a lot cleaner and much more focused.

The site has been up for almost a year and it took that long for someone to finally give me some real input to help improve the site. As harsh as I found his complaints, I have to credit Ti. for getting involved with the evolution of Union Progressive. You can't always have people slapping your back and saying "it's all good" when in fact the website you've been coddling for 10 months has been too wordy, borderline pretentious and marred by some truly awful, sub-amateur digital photographs.

DJ Seeks Audience with Bar Owner, Eats Pho Instead.
There's a lounge/pub downtown called Tribeca which I have been eyeing up for a few months as a potential venue to host an official Union Progressive night. Now that I have amassed a small posse, recorded some decent demo tapes and finally printed up some professional-looking business cards, I was ready to make my pitch to the owner.

I rallied the troops for the attack, even dragging out Ta. despite her severely weakened and hung-over state and we converged on Tribeca last Thursday evening. Imagine our surprise when we found the dimly-lit, classy lounge had been taken over by a Vietnamese restaurant. Remnants of Tribeca could still be found, like their chalkboard menus, Tribeca signage and the statue of a half-naked Greek god, which made for an odd-looking but still very classy, pho joint.

Ti. and I arrived first, jaws agape. The situation was quite amusing and since I was still in need of dinner, I relented and went inside for a bowl of vermicelli. We decided to let Ax. be taken by surprise as well. Because she was borderline ill, I gave Ta. a warning in case she didn't feel like hanging out now that Tribeca was gone. She came anyway.

It was a slight shot to to the morale. The crew spent several futile minutes brainstorming other viable place that would be receptive to us starting a DJ night with them. The good news is everyone recommitted to the idea of going full bore on the streaming radio station which we've bandied around since the inception of UP. We've started our DJ recruitment in earnest now and will hopefully have a decent roster of show hosts in the next 2 months. If anyone knows a DJ, you know who to talk to.

Talladega Nights
People are seeing this movie left and right. I hear it's a riot, even better than the venerable Anchorman. Time to crack open the phonebook, get on the horn and see who wants to check this out with me.

Ultimate... Ass Handing on a Plate

2006-08-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

The ClinTicker 2000 will be fully functional again tomorrow (Friday) after a lengthy period of inactivity.

But today, I wanted to talk about the art of whipping a frisbee around a grassy field.

Oh, I've the usual experience of passing a frisbee back and forth among friends, thanks to something called a childhood and a modest string of beach BBQs and backyard parties where I wasn't content to just sit and eat charred meats all day. It's the tossing of a frisbee, oh pardon me, a disc in a coordinated manner that has me a little stumped.

I played my very first game of Ultimate last night with a pickup group I hooked up with through a cute girl at my dining club. It's a fun, running-intensive game that has uncovered some terrible truths about my body. First, I'm still way out of shape. Second, I'm not a limber 18-year old any more. Actually, I'll call cop out on my second admission there. Age is not the issue. J., a fellow dining club member who was also at at the game, is a few years my senior and is in phenomenal shape. No, I think I can admit that although I've jumped back on the Fitness World bandwagon, no amount of grinding away on the ellipticals could prepare me for the Ultimate full frontal assault on my cardiovascular endurance.

There really is no substitute for getting outside, getting your hands and knees dirty and engaging your entire body in a singular mission of chasing down an airborne plastic disc. I suppose it didn't help that both teams played grossly short-handed for most of the evening. We kicked off several rounds 3-on-3, before a couple stragglers boosted us up to a 4-on-4 skirmish. Suffice it to say, a lot more running around required of all players as opposed to a proper regulation game of 7 players per team, with substitutes!

Look closely and you'll pick me out on the field. I'm the guy most likely bent over, hands on knees, and panting after every touchdown. That is the same guy who also had a penchant for skidding on the damp grass with his crappy runners, botching give n' go passes and launching wobbly discs way out of bounds, clearing the reach of any teammate by a good kilometer or three.

Thankfully, this wasn't a league game and everyone was casual about the game, despite the drubbing my team received for the longest time and even after we took a mercy trade for a better player/captain. No matter how many passes I fumbled or overshot, someone was there to offer encouragement or helpful advice. And thank god for that. It motivated me enough to pull off a few impressive scoring assists as well as a touchdown of my own early in the night. Ah, the glory of the sport. The spirit of the game!

My legs felt like death when we packed up at 9:00pm sharp. That was almost 2 hours of uninterrupted running around like a headless chicken. And today, I feel pretty useless. My legs are sore in new and interesting regions and even my lower back has joined the party. Will I go back next week? Probably. The people are good and with any luck, the weather will hold out for a while longer. Some of the players are fairly experienced, so if we're feeling ambitious we can form a team and join one of the many leagues in town for some real competition.

Me, I'll be happy to contribute disc-fumbling skills any day of the week. BRING IT.

Vancouver vs. Montreal: The Inevitable Comparisons

2006-08-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a brisk two weeks since returning from my jaunt to Montreal. With the exception of spinning records and listening to music on my precious first iPod, I've been terribly unmotivated since coming back to Vancouver. It's easy to write it off as post-vacation blahs, except that I was only away for a little over a week, in effect missing 6 days of work. Vancouver was still at the tail end of a brutal (by Vancouver standards) heat wave and it was comforting to sleep in my bed again and breathe in the drier, fresher air. Although I could have used a few more days of exploration in Montreal, despite the oppressive humidity over there, I was glad to be home.

Or was I?

I don't know how to really compare my experiences in Montreal to my life in Vancouver without sounding like I'm totally pissing on my hometown. I have a reverse bias, in that I've lived in Vancouver for so long that almost nothing fazes me anymore. The city has changed so much in the last 29 years and I've paid so little attention to it that time it's like nothing has changed at all. Instead of a fascinating memory stream like a time lapse video, I get an eery sense of stasis... of time standing still.

A week in a new city surely isn't long enough to uncover all the negatives of the same, but it's given me a taste of something new and very appealing. I'd like to make it easy for myself and mention two great things I noticed over there. The first, is the social vibe in Montreal is so much more textured and varied than it is in Vancouver. While there are visible cliques and groupings in all cities, in Montreal they are all so out in the open and simply co-exist in this great melting pot of subcultures. Every group seems to mind their own business accepts everyone on the outside so long as they keep to their own thing. As a results, you'll see all manner of people on the streets and everyone seems to embrace their own sense of style and individuality. In stark contrast, the people in Vancouver seem to be a lot more homogenous, with everyonef striving to become (or just buying into) some sort of socially acceptable image.

The second thing, of course, is the women. I've had a lot of help from different people, whether it be my sister, B. or my architect friend, R., in trying to describe just what makes the ladies in Montreal so attractive. It really boiled down to their sense of style, reflected in their urban chic fashion sense and their overall attitude. Girls are infinitely more creative and stylish in dress and conversely, they are much more willing to wear less. Whereas you routinely see women in Vancouver conforming to a certain "uniform" of trendyness or looking like they are trying too hard, you will find women in Montreal who just look comfortable in their own skin, even if they look distinct and unique from anyone else in a 3 block radius. I saw so many short shorts, summer skirts, mini skirts and skimpy tops over there that I just gave up trying to scope out everyone who passed. And most of it, believe it or not, did not look slutty. It just looked right.

There's more to report, but I'll save it for another day.

Update on Updates

2006-07-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

Alert the press: I turned 29 today. I tell you, the birthdays keep getting more and more low key. Also back from vacation and wondering how much of it is worth blabbering about on 500wpd.

The humidity right now rivals that of Montreal. What's really annoying is that I got that perpetual film of sweat on my boyd and I'm wearing this t-shirt that latches on to my sweaty skin like tape. I'm also sitting on a chair that has no ventilation, so I'm getting swamp ass just sitting here moving my fingers.

Well, the inspiration should strike any day now. When it does, you'll see some more words here.

Winding Down and Winding Out

2006-07-22T16:10:00.000-07:00

Well it isn't officially over yet but I conclude my Montreal vacation tomorrow afternoon. Today has been an interesting, albeit very inactive Saturday. The rain and clouds have provided a welcome respite to the insane temperatures and humiditiy levels all through out the week. The overall wetness has also discouraged any activitiy outside of my sister's comfy apartment. I also allowed myself maybe 4 hours of sleep from the previous night, making me extremely sluggish and bored, even as I type out this post.

I should probably start some packing. It'll be quiet tonight. A late dinner with the sister followed by some beers, then it's off to bed with my ass. Tomorrow will be a last brunch in another delicious Montreal eatery before I'm Vancouver bound. Sad to be leaving this lively city but also glad to be returning home where I have access to a car, my plush bed and many exciting projects waiting for me.

A long-winded vacation recap to follow...

Outta Here

2006-07-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

I leave for Montreal tomorrow morning, so you probably won't be hearing from me again until after the 23rd of this month. It hasn't sunken in until now, but I am very glad for this trip. As fun as the summer's been so far, it would have been dreadfully Vancouver-samey were it not for this much-needed change of scenery. Paid up the ass for my roundtrip tickets, yes, but that's what you get for proscrastinating.

What's going down in Montreal? Well, first off I'm spending some quality time with my sister, B. who I last saw during Christmas and her boyfriend, C., who I probably haven't talked to in a good year. There's also the annual film geek festival, Fantasia, which is well underway and I've already missed a few screenings of some good flicks. I'll be able to catch a good 6 - 8 films during my stay, finally!

Aside from that, there will be much strolling around, visiting the typical sightseeing hotspots, visiting nightclubs, scoping out the city's impressive array of record shops, sampling some nice restaurants and hooking up with a couple new DJ friends I've recently made.

So yes, 500WPD-heads, consider me MIA for the next week. In the meantime, I did add to my previous post about the ill-fated job I held last year, so scroll on down and check that out. Lots of rambling... you'll enjoy.

Au revoir.

Laid Off Anniversary

2006-07-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

I was laid off from a shitty job one year ago to this day.

I'm chilling out at home and my eyes are quitting out, so I don't quite have the concentration to go over all the great things I remember about my job in trendy Yaletown. Tune in tomorrow and I'll have some bon mots to share. Maybe.

UPDATE:
I am miserably tired today even after copping out of writing a full post last night by saying I was far too tired. In rather predictable Clinton fashion, I stayed up for another hour dithering around with things.

Anyway, my work shift has zoomed by as a result of behing half-conscious for much of the day. Which brings me to our original topic: my old job. I worked for a young web development firm based in Yaletown last year for about four and a half months. I actually ran away from a decent job that was saddled with a lousy 45-minute commute in order to take on this new job. It would enable me to take on a new role, better career prospects, shiny new office digs, no need to drive my car and just a badly needed change of scenery.

Little did I know this job would turn out to be my most frustrating, stressful job ever. It didn't faze me that I was filling in for a longtime, much beloved employee. What eventually pushed me to the brink was filling in the massive void left by the absent worker and taking on an entirely new realm of ressponsibilities. Sound exciting? Well, I won't lie, I was pretty stoked in the beginning. The pace in the office was fast and I was given a few opportunities to expand myself beyond what I thought I was capable of. It wasn't long, however, before I was saddled in responsibilities that amounted to covering 3 full-time positions.

I should also add that, barely out of my probation period, I finally left the family nest and moved into an apartment with an old highschool/university pal. So this job, which would soon go from sketchy to pretty crappy, was quite important to my survival. When my boss e-mailed me on Saturday afternoon to single-handedly code a mission critical project, something I had not even been asked to start, by Tuesday, I complied. When they sneakily did not adjust my probation pay to the proper wage, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and handled it nicely.

Although the job turned me into a lifeless zombie for the better part of 4 months, there were some perks to enjoy. I'll outline them here and mix in some random observations made while on the job:

The new office, ready to go by the time I started working for the company, really was very swank and impressive. It did end up feeling very bare and clinical, but still miles ahead of their old office and where I was coming from.
One of the owners frequently brought in his adorable lab retriever to work. It was probably one of the gentlest, most well-trained dogs I had ever met.
Subsidized group workouts with professional trainers... which I took advantage of exactly once, until they switched the schedule to an early morning workout. (I was already trudging into work at 8:30am each day, so no thanks)
Catered lunches. This was a bit misleading. According to many longtime employees, the company used to have a chef on staff who would prepare a lunch for the office every day. How sweet was that? Well, they had fired him well before I came on board, due to his supposedly questionable food handling practices and his inability to cater to the irritatingly picky eating habits of a handful of workers. What ended up happening was a rotating schedule was made up so that everyone took turns preparing lunches. The head honchos would bring in loads of food from Costco each week and would stock up our snazzy, but cramped kitchen (complete with patio!). The patio meant that when summer rolled around, our lunches would often involve burgers and charred pieces of chicken breast. Eventually, a recently demoted sales peon was assigned the unenviable task of preparing lunch every day! Poor guy. He ended up doing an amazingly consistent job, although he did try to pawn off his lunch duties onto me a few times which really pissed me off. He never seemed to bother anyone else to make lunch in his stead...
Private gym! Yes, this is true and it's a shame I used it only about a dozen times while I was there. Our gym was actually a forgotten section of the fitness club located on the floor below us. This meant that sometimes a gym staff bearing an impossibly perfect-sphere ass would come in with a client and share the space with us web development freeloaders. Actually not many people from my company took advantage of the free gym. It wasn't the best-equipped place in the world, but it had all the basics, plus plenty of dumbbells and a couple of TVs and channel-changing privileges to boot.
My desk was right beside one of our expansive windows, which afforded me a pretty clear view into the back room of a famous sensual massage parlour down the block. I wish this part was more exciting. The most I ever saw was an OK-looking chick in a bra. Most of the time it was just a backroom staffer packing linens and dumping laundry. Being the bored, overworked boy's club that we were, that still didn't stop us from bringing in a high-powered pair of binoculars for that rare chance that we might, one day, see the cash & prizes.
The babes. This is Yaletown after all, so there was never a want for scoping out decked out, yuppy gym babes. It became a daily ritual to walk past this one fake-looking babe after disembarking the bus and walking the 2 blocks to the office. She was pretty phat and dressed very well. In the gym, she would probably be a cross between a LMB and a GI Jane. Yum. I never did witness that whole cliche of the bleach blonde Lululemon bimbo who carried their teeny toy dogs in their teensy little handbags. I must have been busy gawking at their hineys.
My "uber" Macintosh G4 and my impressive 30-inch widescreen LCD. I have to say my desk setup made me look important. While everyone else sufficed with a single LCD or dual monitors side-by-side, I was rocking the pinnacle of visual stimulation. I was also using an Apple computer, which made me want to convulse in fits of rage two or three times each day. It's a wonder I didn't throw it out the window before left the job.
My peers were generally pretty cool, although almost everyone got on my nerves at some point. There was a short period of time where we had at least 4 DJs, including myself, working in the office. Anyway, only 1 survived into August and it wasn't me. The sales guys were all generally nice, but a few of them infuriated me with their practice of promising ridiculous shit to clients without consulting... ooh, I don't know, a designer like myself or the devs first to see if it was actually POSSIBLE. Yes, one particular salesman had a knack for consistently writing cheques with his mouth that his ass could not cash. Unfortunately, it was I who ultimately bore the brunt for his breaking his flamboyant promises, wasting time placating clients and finding ways to keep them from leaving us because he had essentially lied to them to their faces.
More on my peers: my fellow developers were a shade better than the sales team. One of the DJ dudes trained me in my job and I ended up working very closely with him for the first 2 months. Although he was a young, smart kid who taught himself little bits of PHP programming, he seemed incapable of picking up even the most rudimentary CSS coding. This became a problem when he would botch up simple edits and I would need to spend valuable time setting things back in order. There was a Korean kid who I reallly liked, mainly because he was so nice and he saved my ass many times with his programming skillz. The resident all-round computer whiz was your stereotypical, nerdy-looking bespectacled guy who would act distrubingly condescending to you, even towards other programmers and the team lead. Ah, the team lead. We'll call him A.. He was a seemingly very intelligent and nice guy who I later determined was the most subtlely effective bootlicker I have ever encountered. I started off liking A., but it soon became clear he had become too buddy-buddy with one of the owners, to the point where you'd always see them leave work together and A. would even help him walk his dog, run personal errands and generally became far too integrated into the boss' life. Coupled with the fact that he was a sharp pencil and it was no surprise when A. eventually became the manager of development. As he dug his heels into his managerial role, A. soon met the fate of many a low-to-mid level manager... he got eerily, freakin' robotic. His over-articulate manner of speech and his practiced mannerisms reached insane heights, to the point where I could no longer relate to him as a real person.
I think business does that to people... If you look at the two owners of that company, I would say they were a prime example of the yuppy, every-man-for-himself ideology. Both of them were still in their 20's... but there was never a whiff of any youthful idealism about them. They had accomplished quite in bit with their company in just 5 years, that I will not dispute. Yet... it was always uncomfortable for me to be around them. I once overheard the younger of the two espouse the greatness of the Liberal party during the provincial elections and I got sick to the stomach. Such a short-sighted, self-serving attitude... And the other owner, well he was slick and I remember having a single non-work related conversation with, about dating of all things. Well, it was no surprise to discover he was dating like mad and having trouble finding a girlfriend. He had the money, he had the trappings of success, but wow, the guy had the interpersonal warmth of a polar ice cap. Come to think of it, maybe that's why he and A. got along so well.

Well, I've blabbered about my old job during my current job shift long enough. It's in the past. Bring on the present.

The ClinTicker 2000: June 30th - July 7th 2006

2006-07-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

Morning Workout
I experimented with going to the gym before my shift this morning and it was... painful... at first. Getting out of bed was easier than expected, since I was committed to honouring my promise to do the gym thing today. Once I got started on the elliptical, however, I started to feel out of sorts, like I was stoned or something. Well I got through my workout and only had to cut out the stretching because I was going to be late for work. I'm happy to report that I feel VERY alert and alive today at the office. I am going to extend this test run for the next week and see how it all flies. Hope waking up at 6:30 gets easier...

Reborn
I've been a little grumpier this week due in large part to my aborted love connection with W.. It was a necessary week of reflection, reading and a renewed resolve to get myself centered again. In the game of life, the dating game has always been a game where I've entered the field wearing faulty equipment and without being armed with an actual game plan. This is bullshit and I've reached a breaking point. I am tired of not having full control of this area of my life and playing nice with everyone. Why has it taken me this long to realize nobody -- and I mean nobody, not even the sweetest, most seemingly sincere girl -- Plays Nice. I probably sound bitter and a little ruthless now, but I'm not. If anything, I'm angry with myself. Angry for selling myself short all these years and submitting myself to the pitfalls of dating instead of playing the game full out. Hey, I'm coming (I hope) from a place of strength and freedom. I only want to get what I want without hurting anyone. Is that so wrong?

Montreal
In less than a week I will be on a plane to visit big sister B. in the land of poutine. Very stoked. Sadly, I don't think I will be playing any bar gigs with the iBreaks or Metrolium crew, but I do plan on checking out their events and maybe even sit in on S.'s net radio show. I will be gone for just over a week, so don't expect any posting during my absence, although I may try to pop in a few pithy comments midway through my vacation.

Toilet No Flushy
Okay, the toilet in the men's room on our floor needs to be fixed once and for all. The lever is always jamming, tenants are leaving their stale piss in the bowl and it's becoming a royal pain in ass. The toilet is now conveniently set up so that to flush, one simply need to stick one's arm elbow-deep into the water tank and flip open the stopper that runs the water into the bowl. As much joy as I derive from dunking my arm into tepid flush water, I'd have to say the old school technique of depressing the flush lever to flush is so much better.

Breakfastaz Breakin' it Down TONIGHT
Aw yeah, that's right. This trio of nu skool breaks darlings is making their to Richards on Richards for a night of hard, breakbeat fun. Also on board is local hero, DJ Akeel, one of those rare, nice DJs who I got to interview for Beyond Robson.com recently. If you hate breaks, then these guys would probably never make a believer out of you, If you love breaks and haven't heard of the Breakfastaz, please give your head a good shake. You can get yourself psyched up and caught up by checking out some of those mixes on one of my favourite music sites.

Dark Day

2006-07-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

The clouds are out today and the temperature has dropped considerably. Not exactly my idea of a good start to July. Getting out of bed was easy for the past few weeks. Often times, I wouldn't be able to sleep in on weekends even if I tried, thanks to the sun, heat and overall positive summer vibe.

I had planned to hit the gym before going to work today but when my alarm went off at 6:45, I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. I reset my cellphone alarm timer to 8:00, popped into the john for a second, then fell back into bed.

I awoke at 8:00 but zoned out in bed for another 20 minutes. My morning routine would be totally shot if I didn't get out of bed soon, so I got my ass out of bed and made a committment to hit the gym tonight after having dinner with my mom.

I would say I'm relatively sober about it, but I'm still thinking about W. 3 days after she asked for us to stop seeing each other. A flood of thoughts about the incident kicked into rapid cycle as I drove to work, which immediately put me into a nasty, grumpy funk. The randomness and abruptness of her decision has been hard to shake off. What's even worse is that I felt so blind-sided. It makes me wonder if I'll always be in a state of being unpleasantly surprised and then I think if that's actually better than knowing something bad is heading down your path way ahead of time.

I'm inclined to think W. has some personal issue of her own to work out for herself and that it wasn't meant to be. But man, I'll never know and that uncertainty drives me up the wall.

Five minutes away from the office I realized I had left my cellphone at the apartment. Wonderful. There's a possibility I have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

This Dating Life

2006-07-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

I'm trying not to have a breakdown about dating but there is no getting around it: dating can, and often does, suck the big one.

In a rather timely move, the latest issue of the Westender has a cover feature about begin single in Vancouver. There are two main articles that focus a lot of attention on the aloofness of Vancouverites and how even visitors from typically "tough" cities like New York and LA find our closed, icey social habits alarming. We like to make nice, but we seem pathologically rooted to our defenses. As dating expert Lisa Ronis puts it: "People are generally very cordial, but they don't let you in." Well I'm all for avoiding self-fulfilling prophecies but I do believe these are valid observations. Women and men tend to hang back a bit more here and this timidity amps up the dating game-playing rituals to unwieldy levels. It drives me nuts sometimes.

In the grand scheme of my life thus far, singlehood is what I know best. I've actually come to really enjoy the advantages of the single life. In a year where I have been bombarded with weddings and wedding announcments, I have kept my perspective and realized that a whole realm of possibilities still lies before me. My friends and acquaintances have their committments to their life partaners and I have my free-wheeling singleton status and that is the way things are. There is no better or worse in the equation.

But in the last 2 or 3 months I have recommitted myself to getting back into the dating game...and it's been a fun, albeit rough-ass ride. I won't mince words: I want to meet someone good. I have no qualms about leaving behind the single life for an extended period of time. I want to meet someone good, but I don't have crazy expectations either. And I don't mind trying something new now and again. Modern dating is just so messed up, for lack for a better word. It's almost like dating services and online dating have deluged us with too much choice and turned dating into a series of business transactions. Meeting people in the course of daily life is no easier and it's still the same deal: everyone's stuck in window shopping mode, always holding out for something better. I've certainly been guilty of this, even up to this past Canada Day weekend. My question is, when does it stop?

I recently made friends with a British expat, who I'll call J. J's a real gent and is probably the nicest alpha male character I have ever met. Spending his work week as a writer of financial proposals, J retreats into the wilderness every weekend to camp, hike, rock climb, bike and work as a river rafting guide. We were at the Naam one night and he shared with me his observations of the Vancouver dating scene. He talked about the unending series of smart, beautiful women he'd meet, all in their 30s', who for whatever reason were still floundering around as singles. He also commented on the very strong vibe through out of most of these women wanting to settle down already, if only they could meet Mr. Right.

I could only shrug ruefully. I answered, "No one knows what they want." Maybe it's always been this way, but it's never just about real emotions anymore. There's status, prestige, image, economics, beauty, upbringing and a myriad of other factors that come into play when people are sizing each other up during the dating ritual. What would happen if we all just dropped our acts for once and committed to relating to each other as real people... people are aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but people who are all the same, just looking for a meaningful connection. But we're still window shopping.

And dating is so unpredictable. There is no other human endeavour more prone to bizarre randomness. For me, I had the rug pulled out from me so suddenly, my head spun off its axis. One day two people can't keep their hands off each other, only a few days later, there's suddenly talk of "intuition" and staying friends. How can you explain these things? Surely, I was not innocent in all of this. Remember my boastful report of having 3 dates in 2 days? Whatever. I set a new record for myself and it means absolutely nothing. I made a choice and whittle it down to one girl. As if the power of my intention sent ripples through the fabric of life, the person I choice to stick with decided it wasn't going to work. Fabulous. You can't predict shit like this.

There are, of course, lessons to be learned from everyone that comes into my life, dating partners or otherwise. What choice to people have but to keep plugging away, whittling down the candidates, reassessing their own expectations, working the numbers and striving to fulfill that one simple, basic need that has become such an obtuse, intricate and even cold process. I will be among these hopeful singles. In a city of singles, we are all searching, hoping and waiting. And we are all blind.

Goodbye Gravis

2006-07-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

This athletic, lounging lovely is courtesy of the official Gravis website. The photo of the worn out Gravis sneakers is aalllll me.

Last week I bid farewell to my beloved Gravis Factors. I first bought them in 2001 and they have been with me through countless raves, club nights, at least 3 jobs, several trips, a few visits to the gym and countless kilometeres of walking. They were probably the most comfortable shoes I have ever owned. Even my new pair of Gravis, done up in their current styles, does not match it for comfort, not by a long shot.

But every shoe has his day. The Factors were getting dirty... caked with permanent grime, the treads were just smoothing out to a fine polish and they were just losing their old comfort. The final nail in the coffin was stepping into some nastiness one night and not wanting to deal with the clean-up. So rather unceremoniously, I laid out my beloved Factors for a solemn picture moment, gave a moment of silence and silently packed them away into the dumpster behind my apartment.

I know they were just a pair of sneakers. The best damn sneakers I ever had.

The ClinTicker 2000: June 23rd - June 30th

2006-06-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

Montreal DJs get Hot for Clinton:M
I've been trading links with these guys for several months, but I finally made some interpersonal inroads with Somsay and Dee Bass from Metrolium this week. It started innocently enough, when I tagged Somsay on MSN and asked him about choice clubs and events to scope out when I go visit his town next month. We got to talking more in-depth, one thing led to another and the guy graciously invited me to spin at his Friday night weekly, July 14th to be exact - the day I get off the plane! Just like a superstar. Well, I was flattered, flabbergasted and excited.
Update: the Friday night is looking like a no-go. Somsay put too many DJs on the card, and me being the outsider, was easily ousted off the line-up. Currently sharing mixes and DJ stories with Dee Bass and maybe, just maybe I might be invited to play his Monday night special. It would be really cool to represent Vancouver during my Montreal trip. Vancity jocks are apparently well respected over there and after listening to some mixes from both Somsay and Dee Bass, I definitely feel like I have the chops to bring honour to Vancouver's many DJs.

Action Around My Office
I work in a sleepy little neighbourhood where nothing usually happens apart from the constant stream of tourists strolling about, taking pictures of stupid things. Well the sirens of emergency vehicles filled the air this week, starting on Tueday, which saw a boat in the harbour burn to a blackened husk after its owner applied too much flammable wood polisher to the hull. Fire crews seemed to take their sweet time getting to the scene. A couple days later, I drove past a nasty looking accident involving an SUV and a pedestrian. The man was laying motionless in the middle of the crosswalk and the impact left a massive dent in the vehicle.

3 Dates in 2 Days
Definitely a new record for me. The last date is debateable... I'd say it was more of a hang out session than anything else. We got together and checked out a show at the International Jazz Festival. NoMeansNo! What? Are you kidding me? Note to festival organizers: NOT JAZZ. Still, the opener acts were rather jazz-inspired as well. The first was Zu, a trio consisting of a sax, guitar and drums that banged out energetic, meandering rhythms and not much else. Wibutee, aside from having a wicked name, were the spotlight of the show, playing very groovy progressive jazz tunes that would seem to fit perfectly well with the opening credit sequences of spy or indie movies. Anyway, back to the dates: hey, sometimes I manage to impress even myself.

Moving On Up
I was offered a raise and bonus at the ol' day job. Superb. One of the owners psyched me out with a much higher figure when she first announced the good news. Then the other owner, the one who's good at math, brought it back down to reality, so the actual amount of the increase isn't all that impressive. The bonus, however, is quite nice: a week's stay in any of our luxury condos in Mexico! Shazam.

Watermark Gets the Shaft... Again... And Again.

2006-06-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything against the Watermark Restaurant on Kits Beach. I had lunch there with my parents when it first opened last July and found it be a pleasant place to have a mildly overpriced meal.

They outfitted the restaurant with all the necessary ingredients for success in Vancouver...

ULtra modern design, with liberal use of glass... CHECK
Lanky, attractive waitresses... CHECK
A nice view... CHECK
Open kitchen layout, staffed with many cheffy looking chefs... CHECK
Willingness to allow Clinton to cancel multiple dinner reservations in a row... CHECK

Okay, so you're wondering about that last one. I exaggerate, of course, when I talk about cancellig all those reservations. They were all done over a period of say, 5 months? Back in January I was giddy over a girl who I went out with a couple times before she disppeared for a few weeks to enjoy her vacation in Costa Rica. When she got back, I jumped the gun a couple of times, booking a table at Watermark in anticipation of our next date.

Why Watermark? I don't know really. The food is nicely presented but pretty unremarkable for the price you pay. When I lunched with papa-san the one real standout was the encrusted pan-seared tuna. It was good enough to order a second helping. I chose to have a dinner date at Watermark because a) the environment is nice and b) lack of alternatives. Normally, my mind is brimming with restaurants I would like to try. Opening new restaurants is like a sport in this city, so there really is never a lack of places to sample. But put me on the line to figure out where to dine on a date, and suddenly I'm Mr. Tourist who doesn't know fine cuisine if it slapped him in the face. Some of you unfortunate ones may remember the wannabe glamour model I tried to date over the course of last summer. For our final painful outing, I actually made a last minute swap and took her to Cactus Club instead of Feenie's! Cactus Club!! I continue to hang my head in shame...

Where was I? Right, so things with that girl back in January turned flakey, but not before booking, then cancelling 2 dinner reservations. Advance a couple more months and I think I did the same thing with a new girl. Into the future a little bit more, I booked, then cancelled a lunch reservations for Mother's Day. No... they actually wouldn't accept any reservations with less than 5 people for Mother's Day. Screw them! Still, I came back for some more fun for Father's Day. My father, the frugal man that he is, refused to go to Watermark for fear that it would hurt my wallet too badly. Awwww, what a sport! Finally... seeing a nice young lady now and was this close to taking her to the Watermark, then decided to check out Lucy Mae Brown instead. Now that dinner kicked my wallet in the nuts... but it was worth the bruising, oh yeah babeeeey. That time I didn't even bother calling in to cancel. I was using them as my backup reservation in case Lucy Mae Brown fell through.

Does this mean I'm destined to never return to the Watermark to nibble on their savoury seared tuna? It could be one of those signs, you know. A higher power out there is trying to tell me, time and time again, to gather up some creativity, rub those brain cells together and pick a restaurant based on merit and not on how it juts into the view of the beach like a gian, metallic splinter. Fairly good views from inside. Look at the exterior and... well.. it almost looks like it doesn't belong there.

Until next time... remember to do more cooking at home, unless you have a hot (or even lukewarm) date.

Another Post About My Dysfunctional Relationship... with Sleep

2006-06-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

Photo by klsmith77

A couple of strange things have been happening to my body of late. The first, and least believable phenomenon, is that... I no longer crave meat.

You heard me right. Meat. It just doesn't turn me on the way it used to anymore. I can't drive by a KFC and fantasize about what a guilty pleasure it would be dig into a bucket of extra crispy, undisclosed chicken parts. No, there's not more fantasy. I just see the sign and immediately feel like I want to double over and vomit. I imagine the grease and mulched up chicken flesh coursing lazily through my intestines, their journey progressively slowing down until it all comes to a complete halt. All that half-digested sludge just sitting there in my gut, motionless and completely disgusting.

It doesn't stop at meat. I don't find french fries very appetizing either. Strike that. I can no longer get it up for anything that spends anytime being dipped in batter and oil. I start feeling weak when I see that stuff and immediately seek solace in a vinegrette-drenched big salad, soups and any kind of fruit I can get my hands on.

What? What on earth has happened to my body? What is this travesty? What did you do with the real Clinton? Where did you discard his lifeless body, you evil doppelganger from hell?

I figure this recent changein my diet has been a reflection of my body finally having enough of years of abuse and has decided to revolt. I'm a guy, after all, and I've lived through my teens and the better part of my 20's as one of those invincible eaters. Essentially, I knew I could shove any edible substance into my craw, healthy or not, and my youthful metabolism would make short work of it. I was unstoppable. Aside from turning into a Skinny Fat Guy in my early twenties, I never suffered any ill consequences for being such a shit eater.

Well, call it payback time for my body. And call it gettin' old. Hey, if it takes a full-on biological rejection for grease and regular overdoses of meat, then I'm all for it. The first step towards healthier eating is removing the natural temptation of those sinful foods and my body and I are deciding to work together on this front. Perfect. I ain't complaining yet.

What I would like to complain about is the original reason why I started writing this post, hence the title that subtlely makes references to sleep and the implication that, surprise, I don't get enough of it. To wit, 6 hours of sleep is not cutting it anymore. That's how much I'm averaging now and it's starting to really kill me at work. My job title may as well stop being "webmaster" and instead be "senior corpse that sits at a desk all day". This radical change in my body is part of parcel of getting older, yes, but I'd also like to believe my body is desperately trying to communicate with me and to get me back on the straight and narrow.

I can't explain why I end up staying up past my "bed time". And when I say "bed time", I'm referring to a vague hour of the night when I think, in very general terms, that I should hit the sack so as to get my daily recommendation of 8 hours of slumber. I simply always find things to do late in the evening. There's always something to do... whether it's writing, e-mailing, reading, updating my websites, browsing new music, chatting on MSN, writing sweet nothings to the ladies or a myriad of other things that I amuse myself with.

There is one way to get my attention. One very foolproof way to get me to change my ways, even temporarily, is to hang the spectre of sickness over my head. Yes! Make we wake up with a headache and extra sore muscles. Throw in some random aches, make my head feel heavier than usual and a few sniffles of the nose to really get me scared. Because we all know a tired body tends to be more prone to illness and without fail, I usually get sick at the worse times. Correction: when is it ever a good time to get a nasty cold or flu? Hint: NEVER. The days of being a carefree kid and using an illness to skip out of a day or two of school are long over. Sad, but true.

And I know I should have used a few of my sleepless nights to put some thoughts together about real estate, which is what I have been promising to write about for the past week. And I would, except I got nothing. Or rather, I recently stumbled on some articles that offered up some interesting ideas that I might want to try to incorporate into my ramblings. We'll see what happens in the coming days. In the meantime, I'll try to reset my body and replenish it with a few consecutive nights of restful sleep.

As the Weather Turns

2006-06-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Can we talk weather? I think I'm entitled to bitch about the weather here a few times a year.

So it's June in Vancouver and as much as I'd like to believe the hype, summer is clearly not here yet. Or rather it is, but it is being its usual manic Vancouver self. The day started off with some spirit in the form of a neighbourhood parade in honour of... well, in honour of the neighbourhood and all the businesses that make their home on my idyllic little street. It was a nice little bit of community spirit. A tad self-aggrandizing but aren't all parades like that to an extent? Besides, what else you gonna do at 9:30 on a Saturday morning? Sleep? Pah! Not if the sirens and bagpipes have anything to say about it.

The plan later that afternoon was to take a leisurely rollberblade around English Bay with Bilbo the Christian Cock. As you can see, the clouds got quite menacing and the pitter patter of the rain disuaded me of my humble ambitions.

So the afternoon turned out to be a bit of a wash. Just stayed indoors, pretended to mix some tunes and tooled around until it was time to head out to my private DJ mixing bonanza. I like to call this even the Meeting of the Minds. It was the first time I had gotten my little crew of miscreants together in one room. Talk about long overdue. The intention was to talk business and talk about the future of our DJ collective. Can't say we stayed focused in our conversations, but we got through the general gist of things. After our dinner meeting, we retired back to AJ's still rather spartan apartment in the burbs to throw down a very glitched-ridden, but interesting marathon mixset.

And that, friends, was my Saturday.

Blogging At Work - New Post Brainstormin'

2006-06-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

I've kept a substantial backlog of musings to blog about but I've forgotten most of it due to the psychic purging that took place from finishing up my Fitness World trilogy.

So I need another day or so to regroup and will be back to converse about the almost fetishistic real estate culture in my fair city. It will either be an illuminating or poorly researched rant, likely the latter.

Fitness World: Scoping Chronicles Part 3 of 3

2006-06-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my final (or is it?) segment of my gym babe oggling magnum opus.

Before I begin I would like to thank everyone for their support and for keeping their catcalls of "dirty old bastard" to a minimum. I would also like to pay tribute and give credit where it is properly due. In Part 2, I revealed to you the archetypes, the overdone "Make Up Monster" and the delectable "Large Parts". Both of these terms were originally coined by my good friend, who we'll refer to as Bilbo in order to protect the innocent. We'll be encountering even more terminology coined by my brilliant friend, who I should add, is a faithful Christian, unmarried and gets 20x more ass than I do. (I'm sorry, Bilbo, but even you must agree the irony is much too delicious to ignore) He is known with great reverence among our close-knit group of idiots as the Christian Cock. Check the headlines, you'll be hearing about this superhero very soon.

If I could perhaps add one final disclaimer, it would be to advise all my readers, men and especially my gentle female followers, that although there may be a hard kernel of truth to these demeaning categorizations, they are made in jest and cleary with tongue firmly planted in cheek. And whenever I say "tongue in cheek", I can't help but picture someone pantomiming fellatio with her tongue... Is it just me? Okay, it's just me.

Well, now that's out of the way, we really should get down to business. I really skimped on Part 2 and later realized that there are many more types of babes to talk about than I originally predicted.

On with the show!

Chunky Monkey
This one's easy. You may remember the pool of saliva I left at your feet when describing the Large Parts girl. Depending on my mood on any given day, I may on occasion mistake a Chunky Monkey for being a Large Parts, when in fact the lady in question is simply just borderline blubbery. Remember kids, if it looks like they've breached the body mold that God poured them into, then they no longer qualify as Large Parts.

I have no big beef against Chunky Monkeys. They are here for the same reason we all are, to get fit and to nurture their shakey sense of self-w9rth. We get into problems, however, when the Chunkies don't get that they are not yet in fabulous shape and wear gym attire unbefitting of their body measurements...

Stuffed Sausage
If you've lived in my city for any length of time, you've witnessed the phenomenon known as Lululemon. I won't get into too much detail but Lululemon is a local company that's been around for the better part of 10 years and specializes in yoga fitness wear. The trendiness of yoga, combined with Lulu's sleek styles and cachet, has made their various lines of tight pants and midriff-baring sport tops de rigeur fashion for every and all women in Vancouver.

No, scratch that. The clothing is available to all, of course, but there's only a select phylum of woman who should be seen in Lululemon clothing. For example, watching a Little Miss Breakable or a Large Parts pumping away on the stairmaster while dressed head to toe in skin-tight Lulu-wear is usually enough to pull the pin from the grenade in my pants. But to see a Stuffed Sausage waddle around in the same clothing is several shades worse than staring at the sun. We're talking optical poison here, folks.

Stuffed Sausage: picture it, shudder, shake it out, and move on.

Rape Me Factor
Alright, you're thinking I've crossed the line now. Before anyone gets up in a huff, let me just say that I do not condone rape of any kind, whether it be bodies or Third-world countries. Let me also say that this term is the creation of my genius friend, Bilbo. That's right, Bilbo the church boy! I love it! This guy is Christian and he sometimes outdoes me in the perv department. To be completely fair, I laughed my ass off when he first pointed out the Rape Me Factor and found it worthy of inclusion into this post.

These girls simply do not know when to stop. Rape Me Factors are quite often very young (17-20), so they are more apt to get their fashion cues from Cosmo, MuchMusic and their 18-year old idiot boyfriends rather than using their own good judgment, of which they have none. In their vain attempt to look "sexy", they will don shorts that are way too short and tops that are far too small. Combine that with their nubile, but still developing bodies, and you have something that simultaneously attracts and repels the eyes.

You'll only see these girls in gyms located in the most affluent parts of town. I don't think even these female numbnuts would have the balls to wear what they wear (or don't, in this case) in the less shiny neighbourhoods. Quite simply, they are begging for someone with a mustache to stalk them in a deserted parking garage.

Phone Maven aka. "No Sweat"
This girl works out without working out. She also spends way too much time yapping on her cell phone. You know the type. They'll be pedalling away on the stationary bike, level set to a challenging "1", and on a lengthy phone conversation that just can't wait. I've seen more of these chickies in the past when I used to patronize the local community centre gyms. I have yet to see a Phone Maven at Fitness World, probably because of the price tag attached to the place. Did you know that a drop-in session at Fitness World costs $15 for non-members? Insanity.

Getting back to the point, Phone Mavens usually don't need to be on the bike since they are often young, skinny Asian girls. They may be Toothpicks but more often fall somewhere in between a Skeletor and a Little Miss Breakable. Like, they are thin but they didn't work for it, so their muscle tone is lacking and may even harbour an impressive pooch instead of the soft, flat abs you'd get on a fitter chick.

You can also spot Phone Mavens out of the crowd by the tell-tale brain tumours hanging out their ear.

CBC Girl
No piece about gym babes would be complete without a few choice words about the CBC Girl. In case you're out of it, CBC stands for Canadian-Born Chinese. And let me tell you, the CBC honies I have seen thus far at Fitness World are in top, fighting form.

CBC Girls trump their overseas counterparts in a few key areas. First off, they've been raised in beautiful British Columbia (or pick your Canadian location of choice), replete with a steady diet of hormone-enhanced meats, fruits, veggies, dairy and water. Vancouver CBC Girls tend to nurture their already superior upbringing with an active lifestyle, frequent trips to the beach or tanning salon and a healthy sense of desirability.

CBC Girls and LMBs share the same body type, that is, small and tight.

Varsity Chick
You can tell a Varsity Chick by their university-emblazoned sweatshirts and other paraphernalia, as well as by their super athletic bodies. These girls are interesting in that they can attract your wandering eyes and also command a certain kind of respect. Whatever it is they train in, be it hockey, soccer, track and field... keep doing it, baby. Daddy likes.

Some of them may not be the prettiest girls on the block. In fact, most of them are pretty average in looks when you get right down to it. A few of the Fitness World staff look like they may have been Varsity Chicks in a past life. They make up for it, of course, with their battle-hardened heineys and the aura of being more low-maintenance, casual chicks.

G.I. Jane
Before you start picturing a buzz cut Demi Moore doing one-armed push-ups in the rain, I'll just tell you to stop right now. It's not what you think. I'm actually questioning whether I should even have this category, since I've only ever seen two or three woman at the gym that actually made me think the name, G.I. Jane.

These chickies mean business. They are no-nonsense gym users. Their bodies are rock-hard and they dress in Lulu-style clothing but tend to eschew the girly pinks and blues for blacks and army greens. Their breasts are also gigantic and almost out of proportion with their bodies and are most likely doctor-assisted. You'll find them wearing trucker-style caps pulled down low over their eyes, hair cinched into ponytails and the earbuds firmly planted in their ear. And yes, that would mean their iPod Nano is strapped to their arm, which always makes it look like they are monitoring their biometrics instead of just listening to music.

If you haven't pictured them in your head yet, these ladies strike an imposing form. Physically, they are very desirable, yet they are so business-like, so imposing, that only the bravest chump would even try picking them up. See these earbuds in my ear? Yeah, that means, "Don't talk to me, you're not here. Can't you see I'm sculpting my body to perfection? Don't talk to me."

No, I have not tried making idle chit chat with a G.I. Jane.

Lemonator
This is another easy one. If you've been following along at all, then you know Lululemon fashion figures heavily into the daily babe scenery of Vancouver. A Lemonator is a girl, usually a LMB, Large Parts, Toothpick Girl or CBC Girl that is draped head to toe in authentic Lululemon attire. They even carry a Lululemon bag around with them.

They're still hot and nice to look at. I just think you can go just a bit overboard with your love of a certain brand of clothing, no?

Scythables
Umm... hmmm. Um, well, this is another one of Bilbo's terms and it's almost more inappropriate. If you know the concept of the "butter" face, then you may be able to guess where Bilbo was going with the "scyth" thing. Yeah, it's kinda gross. God, Bilbo, you are such a freak. I take no responsibility for this!

And that, my furry little friends, is the end of my foray into the pig's trough of blogging. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it and hopefully my future wife never stumbles upon this blog. NEVER.

My eyes hurt. Time to retire and come back here with some clean posts once again.

Fitness World: Scoping Chronicles Part 2 of 3

2006-06-01T00:07:00.000-07:00

It's here, people! It's midnight and I'm tired but I'll be damned if I don't at least get started on the highly awaited follow-up to my first post about Fitness World, which is easily the Starbucks of fitness clubs in my neck of the woods. To refresh your memory, you can look over the goods here and read my semi-sequel to that post about my girly arms.

Here it is, Part 2 of my continuing saga to visually molest every attractive girl I see at the gym. It sounds distasteful, because it is and it's the reality of all men who set foot inside the flesh pile that is Fitness World. Anything else is a full out lie! So I'm going to lay it all out here and now: I likey to appraise the many hot females at my gym. There are many, many archetypes and I've tried to distill it down to any girl at the gym who I'd take a second look at. So if you're perhaps looking for my analysis on the granny who reps a 2.5 lbs dumbell for five minutes before calling it a day or my take on the sweat-soaked yuppie dude on the stationary bicycle, you may be a little disappointed with the next 500 or so words.

With any luck, my superficial and demeaning terminology will catch on to our present zeitgeist and I'll become the next pop culture phenom. Stranger things have happened, no? To the post!

Little Miss Breakable
These gym girls are small, compact packages of sexual sin. They are usually not the most scantily clad bodies on the floor but you can bet they are up on the fitness fashion and are clad in at least 1 garment from Lululemon. Part of their appeal is directly attributable to their moniker. That is, in our more confident moments, we men have this bravado about our own "prowess" in the sack and in particular, with women who are small in stature and seemingly easier to "handle". Therein lies the origins of the name Little Miss Breakable, because many of these babes are so tiny and tight, the manly thrusts of our members would surely pummel their fragile bodies asunder.

This fantasy is of course preposterous on every conceivable level of physical possibility, not to mention the legal/moral implications of literally fucking a girl to pieces. *Ahem*, moving on...

Toothpick Girl aka "Skeletor"
This babe is essentially a Little Miss Breakable gone horribly wrong. Regular gym visits and a healthy diet are replaced with a dangerous flirting relationship with every girl's suitor tag team from Hell: Anorexia and Bulimia. I don't personally find these girls very arousing to gaze upon, although I may find the rare one who has a hint of actual hips or breasts or just a very pretty face. Since when does Lululemon produce loose-fitting, baggy clothing? Oh right, they don't. These girls are just freakin' skeletons. Some guys would jump at the chance to slide their shaft into a random, bony orifice, but not me. Next!

Blah Blonde
If you don't know me in "meat space" aka. the Real World, then you don't know my affinity for the stereotypical hot blonde. There is something about an attractive blonde woman that is hard to beat. It's that Aryan nation kind of poise and inherent superiority that somehow turns my crank like a madass, horny mofo.

That said, I've noticed that all gyms, not just Fitness World, are rife with the Blah Blonde. This is the blonde girl who has defied the laws of nature and has managed to not be attractive. Now this doesn't mean they are hideous to look at. They are simply very plain. They typically do not have a lot of tone and definition to their bodies, appearing rather square and blocky. Stubby limbs and a pale complexion usually completes the unsatisfying picture. Man, the paleness and freckles! Can someone please tell me why Blah Blondes are pale and have that rosy cheeked look that makes them look almost childish?

I've included these ladies on my list because they do have potential to be stone-cold hotties. That's why I keep seeing them at the gym sweating it out on the ellipticals with their obscenely red faces. They obviously want to get hot and Aryan on our asses. Ironically enough, almost all of these plain Jane blondes are actually real blondes, as opposed to their hotter counterparts who are more prone to sport the dye jobs.

Large Parts aka "Sexy Chunk"
Now we get into the good stuff. These type of babes are quickly rising up on my list of "ones to watch". A girl who qualifies as Large Parts probably embodies what is most widely desired by men when they go looking for a female playmate. Mainstream media would have you believe differently. I could describe these girls as being curvaceous, but that wouldn't do them justice. These days, "curvaceous" connotates fat and these girls are far from being the typical fat, sloppy chicks.

Imagine if you will a plastic mold of the female form, shaped to allow ample room for showcasing all the prime locations of excitation: tits n' ass. Then imagine that the almighty Creator then pours into this mold the meaty substance of our lady. The flesh is poured into the mold in abundance, stressing the limits of the mold but only enough to create an uneasy tension. The mold holds, so what we have at the end of this process is a body that is full, yet contained, tight yet pliable. And best of all, you are guarranteed a sizeable booty and decent rackage. Yeah, you heard me. RACKAGE.

Big, giant bonus points for a Large Parts who also happens to be a blonde and sporting a perfect cinnamon summer tan. These type of girls are quickly becoming my favourite, can you tell? God forbid I'm crossing a busy street one day and I spy one of these girls out the corner of my eye...

The only downside to these chicks lies in the future, when they may suddenly stop working out and spontaneously transform into sloppy fat chicks. The mold breaks and the blob inside expands and goes crazy.

Make-up Monster
The name says it all really. These gym babes do not quite understand the full concept of working out at a gym, and that is to exercise and get sweaty and filthy because you're exerting your body towards a physical, healthy goal. Reeking of perfume and caking on the eyeliner normally does not work to further this sort of objective. But there's no keeping the Make-up Monster down, oh no. They lay on the make-up and can sometimes be caught reapplying their rouge or whatever in the middle of their workout.

To be fair, most of these types often pick a fairly pleasant-smelling perfume to douse themselves with. They also tend to be fit, older women so they are obviously in a battle against the relentless forces of nature to retain their fading good looks. Basically, they are still worth scoping out. Just sometimes their obsession with image and their own insecurity only serves to make them look desperate and manufactured.

Time Fighter
I must give credit to the 2005 Uma Thurman romantic comedy vehicle, Prime, for this choice term! I haven't seen the movie, but I read a review that recounted the moment when a male character refers to our alluring, but aging protagonist hottie as a "time fighter". Brilliant!

Time Fighters are the Make-up Monsters minus the nauseating chemical overload. These women mean business. They are lean, they are cut and they probably leave you in their dust on the Grousse Grind. The elite Time Fighters are often yuppie MILFs who know what's fashionable to wear to the gym but are at least mature enough to have some class and not expose every nook and cranny of their immaculate bodies.

Sure, their skin shows the ravages of years of careless sun exposure and they show a little crows feet action in the facial regions, but who cares? They still look great and they have years of sexual shenanigans under their belts. Just imagining the bedroom scenarios are enough to get me in a tizzy as I use a mirrored pillar to sneak some sidelong glances at these mature lovelies.

And that, folks, concludes Part 2 of this series. If you're a woman, congratulations for still reading my blog. Join me for Part 3, where I will conclude my finely tuned analysis of Sporty Spice, Just Right, Phone Maven, G.I. Jane and many more!

Nights are Getting Shorter

2006-05-31T01:33:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about the sun setting later in the evening or any sort of idle chit chat about the seasons. I've been yearning to get down to more writing since the beginning of last week. I'm in a pissy mood because it's 1:30am and I'm getting frustrated with Life truly and utterly getting in the way of catching up on e-mails, writing, updating Union Progressive, recording a new set and it goes on and on.

I blame my new commitment to working out (properly) at the gym, which is sort of a stupid thing to blame, considering I want to get in shape in time for su... oh shit, summer's already here. See?

Then there's the extraordinary amount of social activity I've found myself in the past week. Trust me, this is not to brag. This is truly an anomaly. I won't get into it now, except to say it has kept me away, for better or for worse, from my home PC more than I would prefer. And I am positively bursting with things to write about here.

So, that much vaunted Fitness World post? IT'S COMING. God damn fuck it, it's coming. I need a good 20 - 30 minutes to put that monster together and I am simply not in command of my eloquence at 1:30am on a Wednesday morning. Tomorrow will be more of the same. I have a small window between getting off work and going to my parents place to maybe start writing a portion of the Fitness World stuff, after which I'll be tied up until about 11:00pm.

It's a retarded situation, for lack of a better descriptor. When I have time to piss away at the computer, I have nothing to write. Once I get inspired, now all of a sudden I'm Mr. Outgoing with a Social Calendar. Oh woe is me!

Aaaaand the bellyaching stops NOW.

Bye.

Bloggin At Work - Jacked'ness of the Eyes

2006-05-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

It's one of those mornings when everyone seems late for work. I just sat down with my coffee and wondering how my eyes will hold up for the rest of the day. My eyes are seriously jacked today. They felt very icky and uncomfortable during the drive over to the office. Maybe I didn't wash up well enough before leaving the apartment. I think I can attribute some of the eye jacked'ness to my lack of sleep again.

I forced myself to stay up another 30 - 45 minutes last night just replying to e-mails and puttering around on the Internet. I was also fleshing out my notes for my long-awaited Fitness World post, Part 2. It's coming! It's closer than ever to being written. Now that I've finally started spending some quality time at the gym again, I've been able to better articulate why the babes are the way they are and what really turns my crank. Only one of my readers has any real interest in reading this piece aside from myself, and I suspect he really just wants to live vicariously through me. They don't quite grow the hunnies in Kamloops the way they do here in the Big City.

Giddy up. Back to work.

Singing and Guitar = Hilarity

2006-05-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday night after a hectic and woefully short Victoria Day long weekend. I'm writing an e-mail to this weekend's blind date and in the background are the sappy strains and falsetto of that insipid James Blunt tune, "You're Beautiful". My roommate is back to practicing his guitar and singing with the help of Mr. Blunt.

Before I go on, I should declare how much he's improved his guitar-playing skills in the past 6-8 months. Without any professional instruction save a few instructional DVDs, my roommate has progressed from his tentative, tinny chicken plucks to pulling off fairly confident strumming patterns. His latest feat is to strum a pop tune whilst singing the lyrics, in key and without too many rhythmic anomalies.

That part is still a work in progress.

There I was typing away at the keyboard. "You're Beautiful" hits its climax, prompting James Blunt to take the falsetto into overdrive. My roommate follows suit, to hilarious effect. I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. It sounded like he was playing around with the pitch of his voice or trying to harmonize with Jimmy Blunt, but it really wasn't working out. It was a key clashing mess. But it was funny.

Props to my roomie for pushing himself in this direction. At 28, this is pretty much his first foray into musical training and he's been pretty diligent about it. He's had to learn the really basic stuff the hard way, the stuff I take for granted like time signature, counting beats, scales and all that jazz. And the singing... well, singing is one of those things that people seem to be deeply embarassed about. Even those who can belt it out have a strange modesty about it, like it's a talent that should be hidden away from others or the hardwork that went into developing the skill should be downplayed. Well, I'll be the first to say my roommate's singing was atrocious in the beginning in every possible way. Simon Cowell would have had a field day with him.

Lately, however, my rommate's really upped his game. His singing is still a ways off from being pleasant, but he's hitting the notes and learning to keep the rhythm and apply inflection and feeling to his voice. Laugh all I want but the day will come when he'll pick up his guitar for a song, and the voice of angels will emit from his mouth.

Okay, maybe angels is pushing it a little. Even the songs from the likes of Blunt and Jack Johnson are hard enough to swallow when sung by their creators...

Blogging at Work: Acceptance

2006-05-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

I had just finished slogging through a logo design at work and popped into my personal webmail. The coordinator from the writing program sent me the results of my application: I'm in!

They had me worried there for a moment. I would have preferred an acceptance letter via snail mail so I could eagerly tear into the envelope, heart pumping furiously as I unfolded the letter. E-mail is so anti-climactic.

But who really cares. I'm in!

Some tough decisions lie ahead of me:

What do I do about my job?

How will I support myself during the program?

Should I save up cash and cancel my trip to Montreal and cancel any plans of promoting a club gig this summer?

Should I move closer to campus?

Should I sell my money-grubbin' car... my beloved Camry Power?

Should I...wait for it... MOVE BACK IN WITH MY PARENTS?

It's decisions like these that bring a little spice to the daily grind... and make me want to distract myself with frivolity so I can hold off on making any of them.

More Nickelback

2006-05-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

Just a quick follow-up to my Nickelback rampage a couple days ago...

I found this wonderful video of a Portugese concertgoer taking matters into his own hands with the aid of a rock and sufficient projectile force directed towards Mr. Chad "Poodle Head" Kroeger.

A fellow Blogger has also posted some tasty invectives against Nickelback and MuchMusic. Do you feel the hate? I do, and it's chawsome to the max.

Rock on.

This is What I'm Talking About

2006-05-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

For the first time this year, I woke up and I felt uncomfortably warm. I had left my window open through the night and I was still hot.

I climbed into my car and it was baking in there.

This is it. Summer is nigh. Bring on the honey-bronze suntans, capris, sarongs and flipflops.

Blogging at Work Part 2 - Here's Your Nickelback... and a Sword Through the Brain Pan

2006-05-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

"Nickback."

That one word was enough to snap me to attention and shake off my headphones in alarm. I play my music loud, but never loud enough to miss what goes on in the office behind me.

I looked over my shoulder and locked eyes with my coworker. "Nickelback?" I wanted verification but was cringing at the thought of advancing this conversation any further than was required.

"Yeah, Nickelback. People think they're from Vancouver but they're actually from Alberta." Uh-uh, here it comes. "They're good!"

Okay, I should tell you know, I am usually not a killjoy in the workplace. I come in, I exchange pleasantries and banter, goof off a little and once in a while, I'll perform the job I'm paid to perform. In essence, I keep any harsh opinions to myself and keep things light and airy with the people I work with. However, a sentence involving the words "Nickeback" and "good" was simply too reckless and callous to be ignored. I don't need to know the context of the dialogue that gave rise to Nickelback. All I know is this conversation had to be deactivated, and quickly.

I immediately set upon my coworker's praise of Nickelback like a rabid timber wolf. I don't quite remember what I said, but I do remember stringing some choice adjectives together. "Generic", "assembly line" and "poodle hair" are a few bon mots I recall from my attack, coupled with henious facial expressions that would indicate I would sooner inhale a bowl of fresh buffalo semen than subject my ears to Nickeback's interpretation of music. I'm far too generous actually. If you are not aware already, Nickelback contructs their albums by feeding potatoes and the colour beige into an industrial-sized contraption known as the Insufferable Mainstream Rock-O-Matic 3000. So in go the spuds and beige, out comes radio-friend rock noise that is more forgettable than last week's dental floss.

Yeah... I let my views on Nickelback be known. Like an expert swordsman dispatching his opponent with a single, graceful sweep of the blade, I silenced all possible happy talk about Nickelback with just a couple of concise, venomous comments. Unfortunately, it was clear my coworker's feelings were caught in the crossfire. My zeal to stamp out Nickelback may have been construed as a personal attack, which was definitely not my intention.

Well it worked: All positive Nickelback sentiment lay in a pool of gore, blood still geysering from the fatal blow delivered by my razor-sharp, musical polemic. My coworker fell silent, stared into her monitor and continued typing. She's a gregarious talker personality, so those few seconds without a peep from her were deafening.

Hmm, yes. I felt like a dick, stomping on my friend's Nickelback love as harshly as I did. So I followed up with a question to soften the mood a little. Surprisingly, it worked, even though it resulted in another lost minute of agonizing Nickelback talk. Oh well, I managed to salvage a potentially awkward afternoon at the office. It was pretty boorish of me to put down my coworker's affinity for the national treasure that is NICKELBACK.

Yet if it was anyone else, I would not have felt any guilt. And neither should you. The next time some mouth-breather decides to publicize his admiration of Nickelback, unsheath your katana and strike quickly. Aim for the neck and follow through with your swing. Youu want to remove the head in one clean swipe.

Of course, my metaphor is long over. Decapitate the tone-deaf idiots! If it's a friend or family member, a caning session Singapore-style or good old-fashioned excommunication should suffice.

I Have Puny Girl Arms

2006-05-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

I was visiting Fitness World the other night to have my "service appointment". What this entail is an impressive battery of questions with a cheerful personal trainer after which I am measured, weighed and found wanting. And I get to stand barefoot on that funky machine that sends electrical currents through my body to ascertain my body fat ratio, water to weight ratio and other useful stats that have nothing to do with actually motivating me to exercise.

That statement carries more truth than you'd think since I completed my assessment with flying colours. My body water ratio is excellent, not to mention my body fat percentage, waistline and any number of measurements of worthiness. Despite feeling like a slug most days, I'm actually in fine, fighting form, thank you very much. That's it, I'm done! I'm turning in my membership and retiring to my couch at home. My casual fling with getting fit and toned has truly been a slice of heaven.

But I didn't race out of the gym, waving my results in the faces of all those suckers toiling away on the stationary bicycles, shouting, "Pedal away, suckers! I'm in totally good shape and I hardly ever bother to come here! IN YO' FACE!!". No, that would have been inappropriate. And really, my mania was only hiding one very shameful fact: I have girly arms!

Rewind the tape. My trainer was wrapping tape measure on various parts of my body. I held out my right arm to have my impressive guns measured, as if they didn't speak for themselves already. "Now flex," she commanded.

I flexed carefully, mindful not to strain myself and bust open the tape measure with my exposive muscle contractions. My trainer quickly noted the numbers and exclaimed, "Ah, that's the size of my biceps!"

"Oh yeah?," I started, suddenly feeling a little smaller, "well, that's... impressive!"

Yikes. I appraised my trainer again as she ducked down to write notes onto my worksheet. She was probably in her early 40s and not an unattractive lady, although time has definitely done its work on her face. In my very humble opinion, skin cream trumps make-up, every time. Although the trainer's face was no longer tight, her body certainly was. Her rump was pretty typical of other Fitness World trainers: compact, clinically round and definitely something you could lovingly polish to a dazzling shine before placing it on your mantle to show off to all your house guests.

I continued to check her out, but in a more antagonistic way, not unlike how guys size each other up to see if they would come out on top in a hypothetical scrum. Well, I wasn't entirely confident that I could wrestle my trainer down in a play fight, even on my best day. Just knowing her biceps are as large as mine is a total mind fuck. Who am I kidding? She would kick my ass, and I'd probably enjoy it.

So my service appointment wasn't a total wash. I do have my own set of goals to shoot for, in terms of packing on a few more pounds of muscle weight and trimming down those love handles. I was hoping to get a basic workout program created before leaving, but that was to be saved for a second appointment. Wonderful. How come I get the feeling I will be humbled again next week? And by a girl!

Blogging at Work Part I - Welcome to the Sandbox

2006-05-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

My most loyal readers (aka. The Painfully Bored) may remember one of my early 500WPD posts about video games and my infatuation with the now released title, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I bought this game a mere week after its release in March and have played it obsessively for 50+ hours. The game is a resource-hungry behemoth and has long emasculated my humble PC. I've been forced to scale down the detail to a meezly 640x480 screen resolution, with many of the bells and whistled turn down or off. Amazingly, the graphics in Oblivion still knock my socks off.

Despite the eye candy, it's not visuals that have hypnotized me into sinking 3 straight weeks into this game. The world represented within the game is absolutely massive, filled with hundreds of NPCs (non-player characters), thousands of lines of spoken dialogue, a couple hundred quests to undertake and another few hundred points of interest to explore, whether it be an haunted abandonded mine, ancient Elven ruins, shrines, a quiet village stricken with a mysterious disease or one of a dozen major cities. Each of these cities in turn houses its own ruling party, citizens who own houses and follow their own daily schedules... [deep breath]... shopkeepers, inns, guilds, gladiator arenas, gardens and lots of other great shit.

It's essentially a great big sandbox of a fantasy world. To reiterate, I've played the game for over 50 hours and I have barely progressed through the main plotline. The game is grand and huge and complex and really has no definite "End" in the traditional gaming sense of the word.

The sandbox approach to games has been around for years (remember SimCity?) but the trend is gaining traction with mainstream gamers. Some high profile sandbox games coming down the pipe are:

Spore
I could attempt to describe this amazing game by Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, but gaming blog Kotaku has been diligently following the game's development. Check out their sweet videos and E3 coverage.

Grand Theft Auto 4
The grandaddy of sociopathic sandbox games has recently been announced for a October 2007 release. Q4 2007! That is, like, so far away. Unacceptable.

Who am I kidding? I'm still only halfway through San Andreas. I don't know why I ever stop playing that game, it is so naughty.

Actually, if gaming at all interests you, Kotaku is pretty much being updated 200 times a day, now that E3 is in full swing. E3, of course, is the annual tradeshow for the games industry which, in terms of sheer sensory bombast, has been known to eclipse even Las Vegas on her best of days.

My Future in Print

2006-05-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

The slapdash preparation of my application and portfolio piece for admissions into the Print Futures program culminated in a 2-hour group interview today.

I skipped out of work early this afternoon. The clear skies and cool spring air made me think I was bumping off early to go rollerblade around the seawall or drink beer on a patio somewhere. What actually happened was a generally pleasant, 45-minute drive to New Westminster. I don't know what to make of this place. It is wedged in there between Burnaby, Surrey and the Tri-Cities districts. It's like this nether region of meh suckiness. Harsh, you say? Likely, but you tell me what's cool about New West!

I've lived in the Lower Mainland all my life and it's a bit surprising that I only have two distinct memories of New Westminster. One memory is of my visit to the Paramount strip club as a giddy 19-year old and the other is of getting lost during Friday traffic earlier this year, trying to find the Highway 1 exit so I could progress towards my weekend ski trip in Kamloops. And today, of course, when I went back to the college to attend my interiew into this writing program I applied for. So 3 memories total. Ok scratch that, 4 memories now. As a child my parents inexplicably took me to some shit-ass discount store to check out clothing. Damn, what fine memories these are. They shall be cherished forever.

Lucky me, Douglas College is right smack in the middle of what must pass for downtown New West. Today was a breezy and sunny day, so under that lighting, the old streets don't look too depressing and were clear of drug addicts. Perhaps they were shying away from the glorious sun and catnapping until their next fix.

The Douglas College "campus" is like any other community college: feels like a high school. Except cleaner and they're missing the regimented rows of lockers in the hallways.

I arrived in that break period between classes, so students were still filing through the halls and milling around outside the lecture rooms. It was a bit disconcerting to lose my way a little, trying to find my room number and seeming to miss it at every turn. Drat, how can 3300 not be here...and if it is here, it's not labelled! You know what, I felt like I was in Grade 8 again or frosh at UBC. FROSH!

Of course I'm older and wiser now, so I was still cool as can be and gingerly retraced my steps to my final destination. No one looked at me funny, which was great, since everyone seemed 6 - 8 years younger than I.

Wait, the irony. It's delicious: I'm just trying to say something about my group interview, for a PROFESSIONAL WRITING program, and here I am prattling away about how I got lost in the hallways and gee willickers, these college students are actually younger than I am. Wow.

Fuck. Let's fast forward through this crap, shall we?

Turns out the group interview was just myself and another fellow I met at the information session held last month. And the interview part was indeed an interview, consisting of me, this other guy and the two program heads. I was under this impression that I'd be meeting a lot of the instructors and getting a chance to talk shop with them about the curriculum and what I should look forward to as a full-time student this fall. Oh the silly ideas I implant inside my own noggin! No, no, THEY were interviewing ME and the other guy, who I'll call Mike because that is his actual name and I'm already tired of defacing him as "the other guy".

Wow, so this interivew was a bit trickier than I expected, mostly because I was completely unprepared and already nervous with anticipation of the grammar and summarization test that they would be issuing to us at the end. For the actual questions, I felt I answered them pretty well. It was sort of cool to do the interview in tandem with Mike, taking turns responding to the same question or variations of. The two matuer ladies interivewing us were also doing a nice tag team with their questioning and thankfully avoided silly job interview-style bullshit like, "If you could be an animal, what would you be?" Now that I think of it again, I answered my questions a lot better than Mike did, although he seemed much calmer and level-headed. I felt like i was the most nervous guy in the room most of the time. True to form, I still managed to inject some humour into my rambling answers, which cracked some smiles but heck if that actually made a difference in the evaluation.

The grammar test was 1 hour long, a bit of a bitch but on the whole pretty manageable. I was so relieved that they merely tested us on identifying mistakes as opposed to forcing us to identify proper terminology. Well, they did sneak in a couple of those. I am kicking myself for not knowing what an independent clause is. I really wracked my brain over that one but it's one of those things where you either know it or you're shit out of luck. I even threw down a guess and was this close to scoring a fluke out. The definition of course, is so simple it's stupefying.

So where does that leave us? It's only going to take them a week to select all the applicants that made it into the program. Getting through that door will give me the power to select from a range of possibiltiies. Going back to school is going to mean dropping my job and assuming the role of the Poor Student. Two years and $7000 later, I'll be a lean, mean professional writing machine. Or rather, I should be. And even if I'm not, at least I hope to be employable.

I'd hate to move back in with my folks. And I'd hate to ditch my car. I could try for a student loan, but spending two years without a full-time job is gonna be a massive shock to the system. I'm going to need to sell drugs, or busk outside the school in between classes.

Yeah, right now at this very moment, I really don't know what will happen. I'll work something out when the time's right. I usually do.

Kitsilano is my new beat

2006-05-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

As if I needed more blogging responsibilities to heap onto my plate.

I'm now the newest contributor to another local blog, Kitsilano.ca. Oh boy! I am really screwing myself for keeping 500WPD updated on a consistent basis, eh?

Thankfully, I am not required to write as much as I am for Beyond Robson. Rob L, the site's administrator and main writer, suggested a post every month or so would be enough. That sort of blows my mind, seeing as there's only us 3 writers on staff. The site could benefit a lot from more frequent updates, but... I'm not sure I'd be ready to step up to 1 or 2 posts per week at this point in time.

Giddy up. I have no idea what I'm going to write next for Kitsilano. Because I'm such a lech, I considered doing a Kits "Babe of the Month" type of deal where I interview a fine female specimen who lives in or around Kits. I could select someone who is a businees owner or is prominent in the community to, you know, lend my writing a hint of credibility.

And yes, I would be featuring photos, of course. As they say: Pix or STFU!

Shit Getting Done

2006-05-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

I am hooked on the Waiter Rant blog and obsessively reading his older posts that I missed the first time around. It's like a good TV drama. There is a definite continuity to each of his posts but I can jump around as much as I please, reading his very lastest stories and going back 2 years to his very first posts, without missing a beat or getting lost.

Getting lost. That's what I should be doing today. I've wasted so much time at work it's wonder I even bothered to show up. It's a classic Friday for me: most of the tasks requiring the most heavy listing are over with so I'm left to my own devices. Pick away at this, pick away at that. I launched a another new site but it's seriously lacking copy or even photos of property (it's a Hawaiian vacation rentals website). So it's out there, it's live, it's just woefully incomplete. Par for the course, really.

Five years in the web development industry and I can tell you deadlines are bullshit. Granted, I've only worked for small companies with less than 50 staff members. Maybe I should get a job with a Fortune 500 company and see how well I sweat it out. Anywhere else, a deadline is more of a guess or wishful thinking.

As it stands, this is my Friday and nothing needs to get done and nothing will. Life is good.

Communication Breakdown - Right Before My Eyes

2006-05-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

How many times can you recall being a witness to incompetence in motion? How many times have you actively watched a communication breakdown take place and recognized the instant a ball was dropped?

Last Sunday started off like so many Sundays. I reluctantly got out of bed at noon. My body felt like the gnarled roots of an old forest tree and the only thing keeping me from complaining from feeling so tired was the knowledge of not having to go to work.

With lunch and coffee on my mind, I got myself ready and trekked out with the intention of visiting my neighbourhood Starbucks, followed by a trip to one of my favourites, Mix Bakery. You can get some nice bread at Mix but their grilled sandwiches are even better. I alternate between their Chimayo Chicken sandwich and the Granny Gobbler, a turkey sandwich that is to die for.

Medium dark roast in hand, my final stop was Mix and I expected to be in and out of there in 5 minutes. I walk in the door and the place is jam-packed. I've never seen the place so busy, even on a weekend afternoon. The store is not terribly large; just a short row of 2-person tables and a counter near the window for patrons who like sitting on stools. Every seat was filled and an impressive line-up to the cash register nearly reached the door.

There was a group of 4 teenaged boys ahead of me with exactly the same idea as me: grab a delicious sandwich to go. Three clerks were attending to the madness behind the counter. One in particular was pretty cute, sort of your prototypical "girl next door". She's all bright smiles and is really easy to look at. Anyway, these guys in front of me order up their sandwiches, which are obviously selling like hotcakes at this point in the day. The last in the group to order requests a Chimayo Chicken, exactly the sandwich that was on my mind too. The Girl Next Door checks the display rack and reports back saying they're all out so she'll have to ask the kitchen to start making some more.

So she heads off to the back, which I should say is wonderful to look at. I tend to like bakeries that have the open view concept that allows customers to see what's going on behind the scenes. It all looks so fine, homey and oddly enough, comfortable. All I can think of when I see stuff like that is "fresh" and "homemade" and "Tastes Great!". I've even felt the urge to get a job as an assitant baker, just to hang out in the kitchen, learn something practical and soak up the atmosphere. Anyway, off she goes to get more of those chicken sandwiches made. It's finally time for me to order and another clerk has stepped in to assist me. Maybe it was not being fully awake or I was just plain being thick-headed, but I ordered a chicken sandwich anyway, knowing full well that I would have to wait at least another 5 minutes. I remember Girl Next Door telling the other guy it would be 5 minutes. Oh well, what's the big deal? It's Sunday, I've got nothing going, so I'll wait.

The new girl helping me out was not so cute. Thin, bespectacled and generally dorky looking. I don't think I really noticed her until now. She seemed slow and awkward so I figured she was a new hire. I order my sandwich and she goes through the motion of checking the display case. Nope, none there. By then the cutie had come back and bespectacled girl finds out there's a new batch being made. I knew this was the case and agree to wait. Normally, I just pay what I ordered and just wait for them to give it to me. I slide on over to the end of the counter where the cash register is. No one rings me up, not the skinny guy with the buzz cut, not Girl Next Door and most surprising, not even the girl who took my order. I look over: the line-up is gone. I was the last one. Still, there are tasks to be done and all the clerks are getting orderes ready and busy bustling.

Sure enough a few more customers come in and I'm still left there at the cashier's desk with money in my hands. The Girl Next Door stops midstep at one point and asks if I've been helped. "Uhh, yeah sort of. I ordered a sandwich and they're making more in the kitchen, right?" She just smiles back and goes on her way. Okay, so now I'm worried that my order never got registered. The dorky girl never took my money, at least not until I got her attention and asked if they wanted my money. Turns out they do.

So after I pay, I settle down with a copy of The Province and wait for my lunch. Ten minutes pass. The kid who ordered the same sandwich is still waiting with his friends, who have all been devouring their lunches. I'm a patient dude. I'm Zen. Another five minutes pass and now I'm getting fidgety. The Province is a bore and I'm worrying about the Starbucks coffee I left in the car. I want to bring my coffee in to drink while I wait but I start worrying about committing a faux pas for bringing in a competitor's product into Mix. I snap out of that line of thinking quickly though. I've been waiting twenty minutes for a grilled sandwich. Fuck them if they don't like my Starbucks coffee.

I get back with my drink and resume my place at the table. A few minuets pass and that kid finally gets his sandwich. He and his buddies bolt out of there. More time passes. Man, I've been a patient S.O.B.

I walk up to the counter. "How's that sandwich coming along?" I think I'm barely smiling. I probably look very bored, borderline grumpy.

"Oh... yeah I'll get that for you." I no longer find Girl Next Door as cute as I did earlier on. A few seconds later, she calls out to me, "Did you want it grilled?" Yeah, now she's just annoying. She had totally forgotten about my order. "For here or to go?" To go... and for the love of all that is good and holy just bring me my fucking sandwich. I could have said something similarly rude, but I'm just too nice of a guy.

I sit back down and look at my watch. Half an hour! Girl Next Door rushes over and serves me my sandwich on a plate. "Um, I wanted this to go."

"Oh, I'm sorry! I saw you sitting here and thought you were staying."

Kill me now. Thankfully, she got the sandwich wrapped up and bagged without any further incident. Leaving that store with my long-awaited sandwich was surprisinlyg anti-climactic. If there was a way I could have walked out of there in slow motion, arms raised with my sandwich cupped in both hands. Maybe add a subtle halo effect to it. Cue the angelic choir music. Over-dramatic? Meh, maybe. It's a delicious Chimayo Chicken sandwich, after all.

I don't know how else I could have handled that situation. I watched the incompetence unfold before me and I had a premonition about it too. I have to learn how to get on people's asses more.

A Club-goer's Icebreaker - Option #3561

2006-04-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

It's almost 3:00am on a Saturday morning and I'm in a club enjoying the final stretch of a DJ's set. The jock in question has already spent most of his audience's goodwill for the last 15 minutes and has resorted to selecting a random mix of tunes to wrap up his set. The flow was gone. Ah well, it was still an excellent performance while it lasted.

I check my watch. Yup, it's about that time to start heading for the door. I look over at my roommate and he's looking a bit dazed, swaying in that particular, too-tired-to-dance-yet-too-wired-to-sit manner that is pretty typical of clubbers. Just then, an older guy in his 30's who I've spotted a few times earlier sidles up, smiling. He looks like he wants to chat.

Me: "Hey, what's up?"

Him: "Hey aren't you getting tired, standing there?"

Me: "What?"

Him: "You've been standing there for a while. You must be tired."

Me: "Oh, well I'm taking a break from dancing."

Him: "Yeah I'm just seeing the way you're standing... I would just be so tired standing like that for so long."
[While saying this, he imitates my standing posture, which by the look of it leads me to believe I was handcuffed and locked inside a broom closet for the last 15 minutes without my knowing it.]

Me: "Uh huh."

I think right about now my friendly smile may have changed to something a little less favourable. The concerned stranger smiles, nudges me on the arm and walks off. I wanly smile back.

Deep down, I know this dude probably meant well, however, I'm an asshole who needs grist for his blog, so there are a few points that I would like him to consider after our little exchange:

1.) Firstly, say it, don't spray it.

2.) I'm flattered that you were observing me long enough to notice I was standing at the outskirts of the dancefloor for a longer than a few minutes.

3.) I'm evern more flattered you care about my well-being. However, I've done exactly what you've done before, taht is go up to strangers and comment on how they're standing rather than, oh I dont' know, dancing or sitting. Maybe you truly were in awe of my amazing standing strength? Were you wondering if I have thighs of steel? Feet of cement? A spine of titanium? Based on my own experience, I was more inclined to think you were implying that I wasn't having fun or doing what was expected in that situation, which was to dance and get sweaty. Well...

If you were creepy enough to observe me for the whole night, you would have seen that I was shaking my moneymaker since the tail end of the first opener act, and all the way until the headline DJ. The only break I took was near the start of the headline act, when I went for a much needed water and sitting break. In total, I was probably dancing for two and a half hours. But who's counting? I certainly didn't notice.

4.) You're ugly. And you're a dude. Seriously, if all you were going to do was comment on my standing I would much rather have that conversation with a girl, preferably a scantily clad one, who has been dancing as much as I have and as a result is glistening with an alluring film of girly sweat. Yum.

5.) Finally, you need to work on your icebreakers. Commenting to a complete stranger about their standing is, without a doubt, lame to the max. Whatever happened to asking someone what they thought of the show, how their night's going or even better, introducing yourself and buying a drink for me? Hey, maybe your awkward icebreakers work miracles on drunk chicks, like your haggard-looking trophy Asian girlfriend, but they don't pass muster with this China boy.

Did I mention you're ugly? Please go away.

5 Words Per Decade?

2006-04-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

I am reminded, without fail, but my loyal fan base whenever I've lapsed in my posting frequency. I admit, I've let this fair blog collect a shit load of dust lately. My objectives were so brave and lofty ... back when I was unemployed, playing Neverwindter Nights all day in my PJs and largely subsisting on leftover meals passed over from my parents. Ahh those were the days.

Here's the deal: I need some time to regroup. I know all my devoted followers are positively falling off their seats in anticipatoin of the much-hyped second installment of my Fitness World exposé. Hear me now, faithful readers: your patience shall soon be rewarded and you will be blessed with an abundance of bad, perverted prose and much juvenile worshipping of finely sculpted female parts.

Aside from that, there are a number of other personal topics that are dying to get out onto the keyboard and up onto this blog. I'm making a committment to use this coming weekend wisely to see if it'll be possible to continue a pretense of even writing something new every WEEK let alone every day.

More to come...

Vegas, baby. Vegas

2006-04-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's quite impossible to describe a first-time experience to Sin City without resorting to tall tales and marketing slogans. That's because everything you've heard or seen about Vegas, whether it's through the media or via personal accounts, is dead-on. Las Vegas is a wonderful, disgusting city. There is no subtlety here. None. It is what it is and it makes absolutely no apologies for its indulgences, artifice and pitiful lack of indigenous culture.

And I have to say, for 3.5 days last week, all this manufactured "stuff" that is Vegas was a breath of fresh air. Figuratively speaking, of course. I realized how amazingly grimy and decrepit the city actually was. The freshest air I actually breathed was when we got off the plane back at the Seatac airport in Seattle. The 3 days prior was sort of a dazed wonderland of blinking lights, perpetual clattering of gambling chips and fake titties.

Here's to you, Las Vegas. You're about as subtle and pretty as a jackhammer, but I'll be damned if you aren't a jolly good cesspool of sin.

Talented Bloggers: Waiter Rant

2006-03-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

Blogging has really exploded since Blogger came onto the scene. Everyone blogs now. Even commercial websites are laid out in a format that resembles someon'e blog. You know the style: lots of white space, catchy letterhead design, neat columns and regularly updated news items on the home page. Amist the blogging clutter, a few talented writers inevitably stand out and get noticed.

I discovered a gem recently, call Waiter Rant (www.waiterrant.net)

Waiter Rant is a day-to-day journal of confessions and astute observations made by a certain head Waiter of a certain fancy New York bistro. Our mystery waiter's identity is always withheld and all names have been changed to protect the innocent. It's a very entertaining blog and it's no surprise. The Waiter is a personable writer who has a great eye for detail and a knack for embellishing his stories with just the right amount of colour and infusing them with a healthy shot of pathos (more on that later). And like a lot of readers out there, I've always wondered what goes on behind the scenes at those restaurants... the backroom banter, the politics and the thought processes of that friendly smile serving you that glass of wine. Plus, there always seems to be something interesting going on at the restaurant where Mr. Waiter works. If everything he says is to be believed, there is no shortage of yuppie prick customers whose behaviours range from saintly to the boorish and downright disgusting.

Waiter Rant is insanely popular, with each new post racking up dozens upon dozens of adoring reader comments. I spent a few days last week binging on the site. It's been around for over two years, so I have an immense backlog of material to plumb through.

Turns out I've pretty much my fill of waiter nightmare stories for the time being. I began to tire of writing when recurring themes began to stick out: 1.) The rich make for easy targets, and Waiter seems to take great pleasure in skewering them whenever the opportunity arises. I'm not a yuppy by a long shot, but it gets a bit much when he presumes to know so much about his customers. Yes, they may be rude and ridiculously drunk on their own sense of self-entitlement, but let's try to not dehumanize them so much, hm? 2.) THE PATHOS: Oh boy, as good as his writing his, the Waiter can't seem to resist imbuing every second yarn with a feel-good lesson on human suffering, loss, love, happiness, generosity... hey take your pick. Sure, I understand that's part of the power of good writing. I'm constantly amazed at how he takes fairly hum-drum daily situations and spins it in such a way that I HAVE to finish reading. But... there's not escaping it, he's a bit of a cheese monkey. Does everything have to have such gravity?

But that's just my rant. Maybe I'm just jealous of the guy's site and its popularity. Or maybe I'm just a very jaded, dude, bereft of even the simplest of human emotions. Check it out and decide for yourself.

EDIT: Hehehe... just burned off some time reading some of the older entries off the blog. Okay, it's a really entertaining piece of work and when the waiter hits his stride, combining his unique blend of insight, humour and pathos, it really does work. Some of his customers from Hell are so unbelievable, it's appalling to think people like this exist.

The Name Game

2006-03-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

I put the question out and my legions of fans answered the call. What was to be my DJ name? The feedback was near unanimous: stick with the real name or a variation thereof.

Clinton M: you've held onto your throne once again. I guess there's no beating you... for now.