28 November 2004

I can't close my eyes and make it go away...

The drive for a Christmas iPod has begun, so upon the fridge I've posted this:



iPod, Lovely iPod

by Daniel Berger, Esq.
(with help from Bono)
sung to the tune of U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"


I saw on the internet today,
Daniel wants the U2 iPod Christmas Day

How long,
How long can he play the songs?
The battery life is very lon-o-o-ong

‘Cause that night,
He can upload them all,
Thaaat niiiight

Broken CDs under the car seat
Will be no more, the iPod keeps it neat
No more scratched-up discs at all,
‘Cause he'll back them up,
On iPod he'd back up them all

iPod, lovely iPod...
iPod, lovely iPod...

And the downloads have begun,
There is no cost, for songs like U2's "One"
The iPod's got no moving parts,
So if he drops it there'll be no broken hearts

iPod, lovely iPod...
iPod, lovely iPod...

How long,
How long does it take to get songs?
Not long, not lo-o-o-ng...

And it comes with iTunes,
It’s a program that is quite nifty,
And though the price is somewhat high,
You'll eat and drink and forget it with a sigh

iPod, lovely iPod...
iPod, lovely iPod...

U2 iPod~

back later with substance...

Moment of Zen: I AM THE LORD OF SCRABBLE

19 November 2004

The only stickler has resigned

Today I will craft a story using images! However, they're images of text, so you're still going to have to read. Isn't that exciting?

The following pictures are from IRC today. Sometimes you're privy to some of the funniest articles...and then there are the times when things aren't so grand. I love it far too much, but for what reason I really don't know.

Oh, and there they all seem to think I'm a huge alcoholic. I wonder what gave them that silly idea?



Now, in my defense, I haven't been drunk since last Friday. Last Friday was an adventure indeed. Almost a Friday worthy of Ice Cube in a starring role, but not quite. We had planned to go bar-hopping, as it were, and we decided to pre-drink. Well, I had no idea about this pre-drinking plan, and I had no booze, so enter Julie with her generous giving of vodka. I'm not one to turn down free alcohol, so I drank with reckless abandon. Half a bottle of vokda and 45 minutes later I was pretty good to go, thus, to town we went. One sketchy establishment and a pint of Steamwhistle later, I felt quite ready to go home. I don't recall the space between leaving whichever bar we were at and keeling over the toilet and just going for a gold. I was puking like champion, to be honest. At least the saving grace was that the booze was free and I didn't have a huge hangover the next day.

Seems I must have been on IRC at some point that night though...they mock me. Oh, and contrary to what my Finnish friend Gabriel says, I never signed him up for gay porn. That'd be childish...although I do find it quite hilarious.

Continuing!



...I'd better stop it there and explain myself. Our resident hamster and my personal muse, Hammy, has passed on. About two weeks ago he was having breathing problems and had an extraordinarily large tumor on his side, and a few days later he was found lying peacefully in his cage atop a pile of shavings. I was at home when he passed, and when I returned I had assumed that he'd been buried.

Seems that wasn't the case. To this day a hamster resides in our freezer, for preservation purposes.

Now, before you bitch at me about this decision, realize that it wasn't my decision to make, it was Eric's, his owner. So, we've been waiting to bury him on a day when we're all present. When I stated in IRC that today was the day, that was because I thought tonight was to be the ceremony...but that isn't the case. Other things came up, thus delaying the funeral. So, it's been bumped back to Sunday.

Oh, and as for the viking burial? I'm pushing for it to be at the Lake (Ontario), but the other guys don't seem too keen on it. I just have to make the boat seaworthy. Yeah, I've spent a little too much time on the boat, but meh, I don't have much else to do.

More IRC-ness follows, more hamster banter included.



Half-Life 2...I think I may just be swayed to buy it. That is, if Nintendo doesn't manage to send their sultry temptress, the DS, over to my house, begging me to touch and fondle it in ways I'm not at liberty to write about here.

This is provided I can find money by then.

Oh, and I've two more images that strike close to home:


and this one very much so:




It hurts. It hurts a lot.

Moment of Zen: "He's really cold and hard, but he's still fuzzy!" - Eric, in reference to Hammy.

16 November 2004

As clumsy as you've been, there's no one laughing

I think I'm miserable. You know that feeling when you've got a pair of headphones with one scratchy speaker? Where one channel is crystal clear and the other sounds like a Tim Hortons drive-through with faulty wiring? You're sitting there knowing that something good is going on, that being your favourite song, for example, and it would make you happy...if it weren't distorted and mangled. Not long into the song the tinny speaker's faults near overbearing. Distant and unclear, you slowly begin to wonder how much you really want to listen to this song. Soon after that, you question the song itself. What was once a pristine statement of your person, once a familiar and pleasing sensation, once a true representation of self, now is a scratched, overplayed, and unenjoyable experience. All you'd need to do is take the headphones off, but in doing that you'd cease hearing any music.

...I'll come back later.

I only wish I could attain a Moment of Zen.

14 November 2004

Addendum

Quick post that wouldn't fit in the chatterbox:

Sean, you seem to think my post is an attack on you, when it's not. My blog is here so I can hone my writing skills, something very important to me. In that respect, I don't see the problem in the expressing of - god forbid - my complaints, no, my musings, on current events. I knew full well that what I wrote would get a rise out of some people, and if you want to believe that it was a sole attack on you, then that's your hangup. Being immersed in the university culture while having the ideals that I do is difficult, and don't think that you're the only one who gives me guff about how I think. Not everyone in school so strongly believes that Moore is the messiah as much as you do, most believe in him because it's the in thing to do. I very much respect your stance on the subject, it's what you believe in and you've obviously gone through a fair bit of deliberation to come to the conclusion that you've reached, so why can't you deliver the same respect unto me?

My posts in the chatterbox are not an attack on your "e-"masculinity, but it becomes again a matter of respect. You've got a point to make, and should you do it anonymously it falls into the realm of obscurity and nears the border of cowardice. And while my blog is an obviously flawed, biased, and self-important repository of swill, I do believe in what I write and I stand firmly beside every single word that I have written since I've started it.

I suppose what I'm most curious about is what you're attempting to argue about in the first place. We're on the same side at the core, anti-Bush. Just because I don't subscribe to the ideals of Moore makes me an inferior, and - I've been told - "uneducated and uninformed" individual? And although I believe that Farenheit 9/11 is a 2 hour high-school quality cry for attention from a money-mongering egotist, it doesn't mean I don't share your core beliefs. You know me better than that. So basically, I'm asking you to drop it. You're not going to change how I think about it, nor I you. And if you want to talk to me about it in a more civil environment, let's do it over a pint, not over the digital pissing-match grounds here.

Moment of Zen: Katamari Damacy (PS2) is fucking excellent.

12 November 2004

Hibernate, eh?

My computer and I are at odds. She sees winter coming and, not unlike a woodland bear curling up into a fuzzy 400-pound man-killer, she enters hibernate mode. The difference is that a bear would be roused out of sleep by an irate human being yelling obscenities at it, where Nemu just sits complacently and does nothing. And though it is tempting to bring out a firearm in this case, you wouldn't shoot a bear if it was sitting atop all of your music, anime, and documents simply because the carcass would be very tough to move and the stuff under him would probably get gross and possibly maggoty. While the maggot-laden carcass is a far cry from the metal and plastic retard preschooler that is Nemu, it would still be a hassle to get my crap out of her.

That said, I should be back online hopefully tonight. Hell, I might even craft a real post. But for now, I've got to go get some coffee.

Moment of Zen: Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca is the pinnacle of female beauty.

04 November 2004

So, Bush won. Good for him. Don't expect any praise for him from my side of the border, much less from me. I had this elaborate plan to take a shitpile of people to the Niagara River, brandishing Canadian flags and flipping off the States in silence. After a bit of deliberation, I decided that doing so would be a waste of time and would accomplish nothing. What can we really do? Oh sure, we can go to a large city and protest and pretend we're all instilling change by hooting and hollering and yelling about our discontent...but does this accomplish anything? Maybe if this were 1968, but now? Not so much. Bitch, moan, complain all you want, if you're unhappy with the Bush administration, go do something about it, but make that something worthwhile. Are you going to find time to be another Ghandi, fasting yourself to near death to prove a point, or are you enjoying your plentiful food and living conditions too much? Are you going to be a burning monk? Are you a person who would stand up to a tank? Or would you rather hope for a saviour to show out of the ranks to do the dirty work for you? Sure, you may have a firm grasp on the teat of someone like Michael Moore, but he's no saint, no messiah, and no answer to the problem. He and a handful of other sycophants have given a faint glimmer of hope to Gen-J, that is, the Jaded Generation - those individuals who will blindly despise one leader or figurehead (in this age, Bush), cling to an ideal fed to them by the truth-stretching sycophants who abuse their media image to further their own delusional beliefs, and don't open their minds to anything that might tip them a millimetre closer to the right. For example, for the most part it is universally agreed that the war in Iraq is bad. Of course it is, it was a farce, a cover, and a waste of time. The Jaded Generation believes "It's bad! Get out of Iraq! You don't belong there!" An understandable school of thought, albeit one that only reaches the fifth grade. You have to secede from the extreme left just a little bit to realize that once you step in shit it takes some effort to wash it off.

Nah, I'm not going any further, rambling is boring now. Point is, Bush has four more years, for better or for worse (more than likely the latter). Do something about it or don't complain. Accomplish something.

Moving on...

I've been getting back into the writing scene, a little bit of this and that. Starting work on a script for a movie I'll never make, doing scripts and layouts for the comic that Rei and I have to start (for the third time), and a couple of short story things that I've been meaning to kick out for a while now. I'd get more in-depth about them, I'll save that for another time.

For next time:
Why Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine character is the greatest any man could ever be, and why Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa is the epitome of female beauty.

Moment of Zen: Man walks along the railroad track, he's going someplace and there's no turning back...