I am eminently concerned with the imminent death of our community.
As of this posting, 12 of the 21 persons I link to in this space have not posted in at least a month, most of them far exceed that figure.
This has made me somewhat sad of late, but now worse things are happening:
Fraser (No link... because he has no more blog) simply disappeared as of a week or two ago. I notice that no one else has posted on this, so maybe I've been left out of why.
Hurley has officially resigned. She'll be pulling the page down in a week she says. So someone can notify me when that link goes dead.
We vied briefly for control of the blogging empire that we'd pulled unwillingly from the keyboards of our friends. Maybe she's done the right thing in pulling the plug now. I can't bear to see this thing die, though.
Have the blogs of the Super Friends really turned into guises for meaningful relationships. Maybe they have. Whenever I leave a comment on a post, I am exercising the relationship I have with the poster. But I don't leave very many comments anywhere anymore.
Nora and Carl haven't blogged in a year. Shame on them. Ben, the Super Friend who didn't come camping, hasn't managed a full-length post since September. Blake, Ellen, and I keep it going, but maybe none of us have the time anymore. Of late, mine and Ellen's posts for the most part consist of travelogues, while Blake's consist of a mish-mash of Youtube postings. Should I really expect people to interact meaningfully when all I can write about is "I went out and got drunk and didn't get laid", again?
On the other hand, I don't think my commentary has changed that much since my first days. I still put care into the posts I write. I still try and make them funny enough to be worth reading. I remember the days when my posts could garner 5 or 6 comments the day they were put out. Now, if comment levels are any indication, I'm lucky to get 5 or 6 people visiting this blog (commenting or not) in a week.
I'll keep typing if you'll keep reading.
Of course, this post sort of discounts the RCG. You all seem to be doing well and fine, and I try to comment on your blozor whenever I feel I have anything relevant to add. You guys (or at least Granite and Binks) preceded us, and will likely outlive us all.
To quote myself, "I don't know what to say".
And that seems like a good place to stop.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
If You're Frightened of Dying, and You're Holding on, You'll See Devils Tearing Your Life Away
But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels...
Freeing you from the earth.
I thought it would be nice to have a little change here on the Ol' Blog. And, as the above quote suggests, it involves making peace, and freeing things from corporeal existence.
Specifically, it involves deleting 95% of the items currently in my bookmarks in Firefox.
And what better way of doing that then by giving them eternal life here on the Internets? After all, even if none of you find it useful, I can use this blog as an external bookmark storage device until it gets destroyed one day.
Oh, and to save time, consider every link presented here to be NSFW. Even if they aren't, the sheer volume of random pages you're going to be looking at over the next little while will probably alert the Powers That Be that you have been neglecting your Facebook during office hours, which may put your employment at risk.
So, without further ado, I present Memories... Part 1
The best way to start a journey of this nature is to crack open a little something special to help pass the time. Why not one of these?
I may have failed to mention above that these links go back over a year (I have lost 3 hard drives in that time, but Foxmarks has kept my bookmarks from being obliterated). It's kind of funny given my current preocupation with sexual frustration, that I was bookmarking pages on the subject so long ago...
With a name like Your Mom, it has to be good.
Vintage geekdom: A page of mechanical robot toys from the last half of the last century. My personal favourite was not actually available as a toy.
Houls of enjoyment...
You are what you eat. Yet another reason to hate vegetarians.
Think Dawn of War was the greatest game ever made? Close, but it's actually second-greatest (Follow the very simple directions to access the actual game).
Hours of fun from an extremely dated game show phrase. Wow... I was just playing with it and I got "You are the rudest weblog". Isn't that awesome?
This is probably the greatest webcomic in existence. Just keep hitting Refresh.
Just a little example of perspective changing over time. Some things change, but others stay exactly the same (The adds today say it's a 50 year record).
A helpful little reality adjuster for all (or maybe only some) who read these electronic pages. When you come to the end of the test, the second paragraph will list two percentages, mine were 96 and 93 (This is deliberately obscure in order not to give the test away).
This level is classified as low. Enjoy.
Think some of your childhood heroes have been raped by corporate merchandising? Oh, and it mentions one of my favourite albums near the bottom of the page.
Simply by reading this blog you should qualify for an exemption to this test, but it's fun to do anyway!
I got this from someone else who blogs around these parts. Not going to say who, but it is really really really worth repeating at this point that these links are NSFW. Seriously, this is Pr0n, and if you don't find it totally disgusting, you have problems. If you're on your own computer, follow the link. But if you have to share the computer with anyone, don't. And with that, here you are.
Have you ever wondered how to make plasma? I didn't think it was that weird a thing to Google...
I'm sure I've posted it before, but it has to be one of the best movie parodies of all time. Right up there with the one that turns the Shining into a family classic.
Ellen could be doing things like this in a few years! (She could also be 3 items up, but it would be really weird to link to it someday)
And some gun porn to finish it off. And, for the noobs, there are no naked women in gun porn. Just naked guns. And not involving Leslie Nielsen either.
Like I said, that was part 1. Looking over my bookmarks, I'd say that there are realistically at least 9 more parts to this saga. And from then on I'm going to make an actual effort to post my bookmarks regularly instead of saving them up for a year.
But wait, there's a real post after all that!
In keeping with my ideas that things should change here, I've prepared a post which conforms more with the sort of things I see on other blogs. Namely, short commentaries on topical subjects (usually some sort of linkable media).
So here goes:
Finally some sensible commentary on smoking.
I have to say that the opinion expressed in that article is pretty much what I've been thinking to myself all along. Smokers are animals. Animals that don't think rationally. Or something.
Mostly, they just stink shit up. Here's a newsflash for hot girls who smoke: Kissing you sucks. A lot. If you're ugly and you smoke, you might as well prepare for a life of misery. But don't worry, every time you feel unhappy with your situation you can just light up a smoke and it'll make you feel much calmer.
But to get back to the article, I'd have to agree that the most irrational thing any smoker can do is keep smoking. Starting to smoke is easy, and most people do it when they're young and impressionable. Although given that all of my friends smoke, I may be somewhat biased in that statement.
However, I don't think the "crazy muslim extremist cleric" is really that far off of the mark when he says that smokers are idiotic for refusing to quit once the full ramifications of the habit are known to them. One could argue that anyone born in the last 30 years should know the full ramifications of smoking before they ever start, but as I said, starting is easy.
Quitting is hard. I cannot think of a single person I know who has smoked to the point of becoming an addict and who has also successfully quit. Almost all have tried, though, with only one or two exceptions. I believe (or Gmail's Quote of the Day tells me) it was John Mitchell who said, "the finest steel has to go through the hottest fire". Of course, he also said, "The Department of Justice is a law enforcement agency. It is not the place to carry on a program aimed at curing the ills of society."
So... take that with a grain of salt. Oh yeah, he was also part of Watergate.
Whatever.
Freeing you from the earth.
I thought it would be nice to have a little change here on the Ol' Blog. And, as the above quote suggests, it involves making peace, and freeing things from corporeal existence.
Specifically, it involves deleting 95% of the items currently in my bookmarks in Firefox.
And what better way of doing that then by giving them eternal life here on the Internets? After all, even if none of you find it useful, I can use this blog as an external bookmark storage device until it gets destroyed one day.
Oh, and to save time, consider every link presented here to be NSFW. Even if they aren't, the sheer volume of random pages you're going to be looking at over the next little while will probably alert the Powers That Be that you have been neglecting your Facebook during office hours, which may put your employment at risk.
So, without further ado, I present Memories... Part 1
The best way to start a journey of this nature is to crack open a little something special to help pass the time. Why not one of these?
I may have failed to mention above that these links go back over a year (I have lost 3 hard drives in that time, but Foxmarks has kept my bookmarks from being obliterated). It's kind of funny given my current preocupation with sexual frustration, that I was bookmarking pages on the subject so long ago...
With a name like Your Mom, it has to be good.
Vintage geekdom: A page of mechanical robot toys from the last half of the last century. My personal favourite was not actually available as a toy.
Houls of enjoyment...
You are what you eat. Yet another reason to hate vegetarians.
Think Dawn of War was the greatest game ever made? Close, but it's actually second-greatest (Follow the very simple directions to access the actual game).
Hours of fun from an extremely dated game show phrase. Wow... I was just playing with it and I got "You are the rudest weblog". Isn't that awesome?
This is probably the greatest webcomic in existence. Just keep hitting Refresh.
Just a little example of perspective changing over time. Some things change, but others stay exactly the same (The adds today say it's a 50 year record).
A helpful little reality adjuster for all (or maybe only some) who read these electronic pages. When you come to the end of the test, the second paragraph will list two percentages, mine were 96 and 93 (This is deliberately obscure in order not to give the test away).
This level is classified as low. Enjoy.
Think some of your childhood heroes have been raped by corporate merchandising? Oh, and it mentions one of my favourite albums near the bottom of the page.
Simply by reading this blog you should qualify for an exemption to this test, but it's fun to do anyway!
I got this from someone else who blogs around these parts. Not going to say who, but it is really really really worth repeating at this point that these links are NSFW. Seriously, this is Pr0n, and if you don't find it totally disgusting, you have problems. If you're on your own computer, follow the link. But if you have to share the computer with anyone, don't. And with that, here you are.
Have you ever wondered how to make plasma? I didn't think it was that weird a thing to Google...
I'm sure I've posted it before, but it has to be one of the best movie parodies of all time. Right up there with the one that turns the Shining into a family classic.
Ellen could be doing things like this in a few years! (She could also be 3 items up, but it would be really weird to link to it someday)
And some gun porn to finish it off. And, for the noobs, there are no naked women in gun porn. Just naked guns. And not involving Leslie Nielsen either.
Like I said, that was part 1. Looking over my bookmarks, I'd say that there are realistically at least 9 more parts to this saga. And from then on I'm going to make an actual effort to post my bookmarks regularly instead of saving them up for a year.
But wait, there's a real post after all that!
In keeping with my ideas that things should change here, I've prepared a post which conforms more with the sort of things I see on other blogs. Namely, short commentaries on topical subjects (usually some sort of linkable media).
So here goes:
Finally some sensible commentary on smoking.
I have to say that the opinion expressed in that article is pretty much what I've been thinking to myself all along. Smokers are animals. Animals that don't think rationally. Or something.
Mostly, they just stink shit up. Here's a newsflash for hot girls who smoke: Kissing you sucks. A lot. If you're ugly and you smoke, you might as well prepare for a life of misery. But don't worry, every time you feel unhappy with your situation you can just light up a smoke and it'll make you feel much calmer.
But to get back to the article, I'd have to agree that the most irrational thing any smoker can do is keep smoking. Starting to smoke is easy, and most people do it when they're young and impressionable. Although given that all of my friends smoke, I may be somewhat biased in that statement.
However, I don't think the "crazy muslim extremist cleric" is really that far off of the mark when he says that smokers are idiotic for refusing to quit once the full ramifications of the habit are known to them. One could argue that anyone born in the last 30 years should know the full ramifications of smoking before they ever start, but as I said, starting is easy.
Quitting is hard. I cannot think of a single person I know who has smoked to the point of becoming an addict and who has also successfully quit. Almost all have tried, though, with only one or two exceptions. I believe (or Gmail's Quote of the Day tells me) it was John Mitchell who said, "the finest steel has to go through the hottest fire". Of course, he also said, "The Department of Justice is a law enforcement agency. It is not the place to carry on a program aimed at curing the ills of society."
So... take that with a grain of salt. Oh yeah, he was also part of Watergate.
Whatever.
Monday, October 8, 2007
If You're Gonna be Dumb, You Gotta be Tough, When You get Knocked Down, You gotta Get Back Up
Is it that time again? Well friends, since I know you've probably done a Lesch-Nyham-esque (No link. Wikipedia fails me at last) job of biting down your fingernails since I last posted, here's a bifurcated account of what I've been doing, given to you almost as if I'd written both halves at the times they were current and then slapped them together now... (Yes, this will be big)
Part 1: Tertiary adjunct to Unimatrix The-Awesome: (Oct 5, 6, 7)
So, another block-busting tour-date goes by. This weekend was great, seriously. I did so much that I almost want to take more time off work just to recover.
As many of you no doubt remember, this weekend's recipient of my holy grace was the Royal City (No, not New Westminster BC. The other Royal City), and none other than my main man Ben provided a roof for me to sleep under.
The tale starts on Friday at 4:45 when I went back to work to hit on a girl that I work with (under the guise of training her how to open the pool since she volunteered to take the day-shift on Thanksgiving Monday). Unfortunately, the pool was actually really busy and all I did was actually train the girl and then leave.
She asked me to come back when she had her break though. Unfortunately, that wasn't until 6:30, and Ben had told me in a recent email to expect him at my house between 6:39 and 7:42. So I reminded myself that "bitches ain't shit", and told her I'd see her some other time.
Then I bitched about it all night to anyone who would listen.
Which actually turned out to be a lot of people.
You see, Ben's girlfriend has this thing about being clean. You might say it's a sort of normal thing where after working hard all day she likes to clean herself. I don't really get it.
Anyway, the point here is that I was hanging around my house (whining to my parents about this girl) feeling sorry for myself but also at the same time very excited that Ben would be there soon. And then I realized that it was 7:30. And there was still no Ben. He called shortly thereafter to appologize and inform that due to this cleanliness thing they hadn't actually left the old G-spot just yet, but that they'd be on the road at a dangerous velocity very soon. I whined about the girl.
Then Wolfgang called. And we hatched a crazy plan (after I'd whined about the girl): Within 10 minutes of his call he'd packed up his Xbox and brought it and Tingles to my house. We hooked one of them up to my parents wide screen tv and left the other sitting on the couch on the other side of the room.
Then we busted open Halo3 in a big creamy mess all over my living room. Probably the greatest thing ever. And in a testament to Ben's girlfriend's driving skills, they were there to get me before Wolfgang and I had finished the first level. On Easy. Like, they were going really fast. Althought, it was pretty close. After letting them into my house and putting them on the couch with Tingles Wolfgang unpaused the game and we got back into the fight. Specifically, I was running around the bridge with a Grav-Hammer looking for victims for all of 10 seconds before the level ended and we climbed onto a waiting Pelican. So Ben and his girlfriend actually timed it really really well.
We packed the shit up and all boarded our separate automobiles, bound for different locales. The trip to Guelph was boring. There was only relevant piece of information issued:
The girl Ben had been trying to set me up with had begun seeing one of Ben's other friends in Guelph. Those of you who leave insulting comments suggesting that I spend too much time harping on my sexual desires will be happy to know that I have no cause to mention them for the duration of the Guelph story. Which is too bad because I thought that my foibles tended to generate a pretty decent level of humour.
So then we were in Guelph. Ben's girlfriend (and boy does she need a name...) has a great apartment. For a 2-bedroom it's quite roomy, and has a balcony (which is new and exciting to me because I don't hang out in apartments very often). Anyway, he and she need to get gothed up to head out to the bars, and they sit me in front of the Miracle Babysitting Screen and plug in Guitar Hero 2.
Now, bear something in mind here. I've never played Guitar Hero or Guitar Hero 2 before. And I have to say that it kicked ass. Basically Ben and his girlfriend took turns being schooled by me (they were on hard, I was on easy) while the other one was in the washroom or bedroom doing something.
Then we went out. To the Underground for those interested. For those who don't know what that is, think of the Rumours/Othellos/Classics building in our fair city. Now pretend that Rumours changed its name to The Underground and didn't suck. And had $2 drinks before 11. And free pool.
That was the first night. We went and I met a bunch of Ben's girlfriend's friends, including the one who I was supposed to get set up with. And let me tell you, just think of me as a woman. Seriously. Same hair colour, same eyes. Just female. So, smaller shoulders and wider hips. It was weird. Made more so by the fact that she talks and acts like me too. This is likely why Ben thought we'd hit it off so well. Unfortunately, we were so similar that I mostly stared at her in stunned silence. And then I killed her at pool. Seriously, I murdered everyone at pool until I got really drunk. Given that I've never won a game of pool before in my life that probably says something about the quality of the equipment at The Underground.
Speaking of which, the toilets were obscene. I ended up having to go to a bar across the street to take a shit.
Once we were seriously hammered we got offered a ride home. Which was nice. We stopped and got pitas on the way which was even nicer.
Then we ate the pitas while I got my now drunken ass beaten down at Guitar Hero 2.
And then I slept...
And then I woke up. It was later than I thought. Ben's girlfriend had gone out to have her hair done and left us menfolk to our own devices. I'd basically slept through that part, though. I'd barely dressed and gotten into a GH2 song with Ben before we all hopped in the car. We got Harveys. We picked up Ben's girlfriends friends. We went shopping.
It was thanksgiving. We were having dinner together. Our party in the No Frills was Ben, Ben's girlfriend, the girl I was supposed to hook up with (or LiMale), Ben's girlfriend's friend who can cook (or Nordic), and myself, your honoured narrator.
The original plan was ToFurkey for the idiots, ham for people with taste. Unfortunately we collectively balked at the time it would take to make a ToFurkey, so we decided on tofu steaks instead. Other items were potatoes (big fight about real vs pre-made. Real won), gravy ("make sure there's no meat products in it!"), cran (in disgusting jelly form), and stuffing (just regular stuffing. I really just didn't want to break my bracketing tradition here).
We all got back to the apartment and the men began the work of cooking while the ladies sat on the couch and drank. Nordic was basically in charge of this, with Ben in the role of sous-chef. Since I know nothing about the healthy preparation of food I got the fun jobs:
-Washing the knives after Ben has sharpened them
-Peeling potatoes with a cheese slicer (The real source of the fake vs real argument for potato purchases. Unfortunately the "we don't have a potato peeler" argument wasn't really voiced very strongly by the fake side)
-Sitting on the couch with the girls and getting killed in Guitar Hero (having now moved up to Medium difficulty)
Some more people turned up. They're not important. One was good looking, but she was also taken.
Eventually we ate. It kicked serious ass. The hams looked like a woman's ass covered in Diana sauce and Poultry Seasoning (Don't ask. There wasn't a lot left in the spice section by the time we got there). The potatoes were fluffy and awesome. I didn't have any stuffing. The gravy was interesting. Remember when we had to check really carefully to make sure that there were no meat products in the gravy? Yeah, there weren't. Because apparently you're supposed to mix it with the drippings of whatever meat you just cooked. I had the brilliant idea to use butter and/or milk. I was not fellated in thanks by any of the gravy-hungry vegetarians present.
Anyway, then all females present (and some of the males) began drinking in earnest. It's still around 6:30pm. Ben and I retire to the guest room (current home of the ManPuter) and rock some Oblivion. It is good times, especially as I've brought the Shivering Isles expansion for Ben to dig into.
Time passes.
Magically it's much later, and the (now very drunk) girls have stopped lying on the floor laughing and passing out "magic" Dollar-Store rings (Mine sucked, but Ben was good enough to trade with me. Then I lost it anyway. There's a lesson there, I think) and are beginning to make very serious noises about heading out to a bar. I've had enough of getting my ass handed to me by Nordic at GH1 (where both players have to play at the same difficulty), and the prospect of $2 drinks at another bar is somewhat intriguing. Also it will stop Ben force-feeding me room-temperature shots of my own vodka.
Much like the night before, we all hop the bus. We take it all the way around its route and into the downtown. We hop off and head slightly farther from the drop-site than we did 24 hours previously. Tonight's bar is called the Vinyl. Some of you may have heard the name before. Don't worry if you haven't. The point is that unlike The Underground who have $2 drinks until 11pm, the Vinyl has them all night long on Saturdays.
Of course, the LiMale (and, again, let me stress that she did not look like a man) told me that the drinks were only $2 until 11 again, so I started in on the double-screwdrivers like a champ.
Things just weren't working though. I'm going to blame it mostly on the seating. We were trying to fit a rather large group (more unimportant characters joined us there) into a medium-sized booth, and it wasn't working. The booth was medium-sized, meaning that it was large enough that you couldn't really carry on a conversation with the people across from you because of the music. This bound you conversationally to the people on either side of you, which wasn't necessarily a good thing and resulted in a lot of people moving around the booth all of the time, with the people who didn't fit inside standing outside of it in a little scrum.
Also, anyone who I would talk to would eventually end up leaving to go smoke. In the end I just attached myself to Ben and went outside whenever he went outside to avoid that sort of situation.
It was raining in Guelph that night. And it was beautiful. As I walked out the door onto the crowded storefront I was overcome by wanderlust. Seriously, do you ever just get really drunk and want to walk around in the rain? It made me, in my stupor, think about life. What was the only thing holding me back from my wanderings? Things. Objects. Possessions. I mean, if I went out into that rain I'd soak my passport, train ticket confirmation slip, credit card receipts, anything in my wallet (including all of my professional certifications), and my USB key.
But what were those things to chain me to that storefront in downtown Guelph? Rain is so potently symbolic. It's a cleaning force from above. Over time the rain can wash away almost anything. If I went out into that rain I'd be washing away all the possessions listed above, for at least at long as it would take to replace them all. Not to mention that such a replacement would likely incur hefty costs. But only monetary costs. Should my bank balance also hold me hostage on the concrete?
who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
I jumped into a consideration of the actual ramifications of losing all my property in exchange for an enjoyable evening in the rain. I also began trying to articulate what I was feeling to Ben. I was on the cusp of something amazing, but I couldn't quite bear the idea of shedding my possessions just like that.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
The moment had passed. Ben and I returned inside.
However, I was left with a desire to wander the rain, even if I could no longer do it in a consciousness-expanding manner of total wonder. It turned out that Ben was actually really into that idea and we constructed a fun plan to pull it off.
Ben convinced his girlfriend that I was being drunk and unreasonable (maybe not that far from the truth) and wanted to go to another bar. I think maybe I tried to convince them that I didn't like the music or something. I really didn't think it would work because the music was actually really good and I kept rocking out to it with LiMale. They seemed to buy it though. They recommended another bar down the street that had live blues or jazz every weekend.
Ben gave a sincere goodbye and I looked sheepishly at his girlfriend and shrugged my shoulders.
We left.
We hopped a cab back to the apartment.
That's a lie. Before we hopped the cab we bought pitas. As we left the bar they'd been playing James Brown, and, well, you all know what I'm like when I'm drunk and have James Brown stuck in my head. Well... Maybe you don't...
Ben and I walked away from the bar into the rain (It had slacked quite a bit and we weren't in imminent danger of losing possessions). He walked tall and strong. I bounced along beside him slapping my hands, snapping my fingers, and yelling "I'm bad!"
As we approached the pita store I noticed 2 smokin-hot-babes outside, one of whom was grooving along in sympathy with my obnoxious beat-boxing and James Brown immitations. I gave her a grin and a "Yeah, that's right".
We entered and there was another hot woman in front of me. I noticed that she had ordered 2 pitas. She was also smiling sporadically at the two other hot girls through the window. I surmised that she was with them, and decided to try my hand at drunken conversation in the hopes of some sort of connection with one of the three of them. I'm going to warn you now: Surprisingly enough, this little story doesn't end with me going back to Ben's apartment with any of these fine ladies.
"You must be hungry." Leer stupidly.
"haha. Yeah, well one of them is for me. The other is for my fiance."
Oh dear. Scan the bar for men about to accost me. "Hmm... Where's he?"
"At home. With the kids."
Dear god... Why stop now? "How many do you have?"
"3. They're 8, 7, and 5."
"Wow. You guys sure waited a while to tie the knot, hunh?"
RandomHotGirl3 has left the conversation
Oh well. I tried. There's at least a 50% chance that it was all bullshit anyway.
We were still in line beside each-other though. I idly watched the clerk prepare her pitas and wrap them both in paper. Then he tried to bag them and had some trouble pulling his plastic bag off of the wall, the end result of which was him slipping the first pita into the bag and then dropping bag and pita onto the floor.
"Yeah, it's OK. You can just drop my pita on the floor." (not in a completely bitchy tone)
"Don't worry, I double-wrapped it." Stifled laughter from the Liam corner. "I always practice safe pita-making."
Uproarous laughter from the Liam corner. She turns, "Yeah, I guess I should have tried that."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
"Wait, I'm sorry..."
She was gone.
And 5 minutes later so were we.
When we arrived at the apartment, the plan was simple. Ditch the possessions, eat the pitas, and walk in the rain (now very seriously reduced from its torrential beginnings).
We did. It was glorious. We sauntered bravely around Guelph talking, talking, talking. It was good for me, Ben. Was it good for you?
Then we launched into an extended GH session at the apartment and waited for the girlfriend to return. There was some drama while we were gone and she needed Ben more than I did when she got back. I spent the time before my eyelids began to inexplicably close attempting to master songs on Easy. Unfortunately I could only play through a whole song twice in a row before it began to grate on my ears. So I didn't master any.
The next morning I didn't see the girlfriend. She was still sleeping when Ben and I took the bus back downtown (turns out the train station was around the corner from the bars we'd been drinking at). The downtown looked very strange in the sunlight without its normal covering of drunken post-secondary students.
We picked up the ticket (a process which was helped by my handing over of the ticket confirmation mentioned above), which took 15 minutes because the woman wasn't at the counter and had forgotten to put out the "ring for service" bell.
Then we went to a comic/games store around the corner, where we easily whiled away the 40 mintues before my train came. Ben and I together conveyed interest in the entire range of items for sale in the store. We overlapped on anime and manga and some comic titles, while he covered all other comics and graphic novels as well as action figures. I mopped up the scanty remains with my interest in the Warhammer stuff they had all across one wall. While there I discovered possibly the greatest books I've bought in my entire life: The Dark Horse Comics Aliens Vs. Predator Omnibus Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 which together encompass massive portion of the comics I read voraciously as a child. The were a lot Aliens and Predator comics that I wouldn't mind having reprinted in convenient Omnibus form either, but this will do for now. At 400+ pages each it took me at least 2 days to finish them.
Upon my return to the homestead I dressed up and went out for Thanksgiving at my grandma's house. Good times and good duck were had. At this point it is worth noting that at 2 out of 2 thanksgiving dinners I attended turkey was not served. What a rebel I am!
Oh... and then I spent 30 hours playing Halo3 with Wolfgang, pausing only to sleep on his couch, and then wake to the sight of him staring over me. Then we played some more. Then my eyes fell out from the pleasure of it all.
Interlude: Tuesday
The next morning I went into work to hit on the hot girl I mentioned 10^5 paragraphs ago. Clearly by this point everyone should know that "hit on" means talk to. In a non-sexual context. You see, she works for the swim-team at my work one morning per week as well as weekends, so every Tuesday we hang out for an hour or so before she goes to school (at the same place 90% of those reading this went or go to high school, but that's incidental). During the course of this conversation I convinced her to skip 5th period and hang out with my until the late buses came.
It was good times. Except for the part where she was showing me the new addition to the school and Mr. Smith made fun of me for being a bum.
Part 2: Where the Wild Things Are (Oct 12, 13, 14)
That brings us to this past weekend. The 4th tour date was upon me. A trip to see the Greatness that is Wolfgang. There were no formal plans. There were loose ideas like Halo3, dirty Phil's, the mall. I figured I'd just play it by ear.
I had a slight conflict of interest, though. Her name was "that hot girl from work". If I wanted to see her that Friday at work (side note: It's easy to see this girl at work and hard to see her anywhere else. She's in school, she lives waaaay out of town, and she can't drive) I couldn't take the bus to Waterloo, I'd have to take the train, which wouldn't be arriving in Waterloo until 9:30, making for an interesting journey to Woflgang's (given that I've never been to the Kitchener train station before and would need to navigate my way across the Tri-cities). I figured it was worth it.
It was. We had a good time, I got to Kitchener alright (after being an hour early for my train because my brain has issues with the 24-hour time they stamp on your tickets), and that set me up for the next adventure of the night which was (as mentioned above) finding my way to Wolfgang's house.
Luckily some frantic phonecalling during the hour I spent realizing I was an idiot at the train station had given me the frame of a workable plan.
I had drawn myself a small map showing the street I needed to take to get from the train station to King St. in Kitchener. From there, my options were varried. I could hop the GRT and ride up the University, or I could spend most of the night walking all the way up King St, turn onto University, and then walk to the University.
I chose the first option, and prayed for good luck. You see, according to Wolfgang, just after I left school the Federation of Students pushed through a recommendation that our student cards be usable as bus passes on the GRT. However, the administration had fought back with the totally unreasonable idea that the cards should only count as bus-passes when students were on campus. If you happened to have a co-op position (and a very large percentage of Waterloo students are co-ops) in Waterloo you'd better get used to full-price bus rides.
Anyway, so the point of this story is that they need to install special card scanners on all GRT buses in order to discern the "real" students from the "co-op bitch" students. But they haven't done that yet. So anyone with a WATCard can just walk up to a bus, flash it, and get on for free.
Or so I was told.
I stopped at a McDonalds on King and got myself a double quarter-pounder and an iced tea. Strangely, my credit card was declined twice while trying to purchase them. Luckily I had cash, but still. It could have been bad news.
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Yeah. I just need to kill this post off and keep going. There's a lot more to be said, but it's just going to take too long.
In summary:
-I got there
-We got drunk and played Halo3
-Tingles dyed her hair
-Repeat last 2 steps
-We tried to go out for breakfast on Sunday. It was too busy
-I came home and hung out with the hot girl from work at work
Weekend concluded.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
Oct 19-21: I bust mad skills all over Brooklyn. Brooklyn Ontario. Starring myself and the beautiful and talented Nick.
Oct 26-28: I man-cannon myself to Guelph in order to "spend time with Ben" (read, take an advanced aquatics course and want to kill myself all weekend) [Ben, this is your formal warning that I'm coming to your house that weekend]
Nov 2-4: I promised some dude at the Y that I'd go to a show in town that weekend. But in order to keep to the Tour rules I'll need to stay at someone else's place in town. Tell your folks.
Part 1: Tertiary adjunct to Unimatrix The-Awesome: (Oct 5, 6, 7)
So, another block-busting tour-date goes by. This weekend was great, seriously. I did so much that I almost want to take more time off work just to recover.
As many of you no doubt remember, this weekend's recipient of my holy grace was the Royal City (No, not New Westminster BC. The other Royal City), and none other than my main man Ben provided a roof for me to sleep under.
The tale starts on Friday at 4:45 when I went back to work to hit on a girl that I work with (under the guise of training her how to open the pool since she volunteered to take the day-shift on Thanksgiving Monday). Unfortunately, the pool was actually really busy and all I did was actually train the girl and then leave.
She asked me to come back when she had her break though. Unfortunately, that wasn't until 6:30, and Ben had told me in a recent email to expect him at my house between 6:39 and 7:42. So I reminded myself that "bitches ain't shit", and told her I'd see her some other time.
Then I bitched about it all night to anyone who would listen.
Which actually turned out to be a lot of people.
You see, Ben's girlfriend has this thing about being clean. You might say it's a sort of normal thing where after working hard all day she likes to clean herself. I don't really get it.
Anyway, the point here is that I was hanging around my house (whining to my parents about this girl) feeling sorry for myself but also at the same time very excited that Ben would be there soon. And then I realized that it was 7:30. And there was still no Ben. He called shortly thereafter to appologize and inform that due to this cleanliness thing they hadn't actually left the old G-spot just yet, but that they'd be on the road at a dangerous velocity very soon. I whined about the girl.
Then Wolfgang called. And we hatched a crazy plan (after I'd whined about the girl): Within 10 minutes of his call he'd packed up his Xbox and brought it and Tingles to my house. We hooked one of them up to my parents wide screen tv and left the other sitting on the couch on the other side of the room.
Then we busted open Halo3 in a big creamy mess all over my living room. Probably the greatest thing ever. And in a testament to Ben's girlfriend's driving skills, they were there to get me before Wolfgang and I had finished the first level. On Easy. Like, they were going really fast. Althought, it was pretty close. After letting them into my house and putting them on the couch with Tingles Wolfgang unpaused the game and we got back into the fight. Specifically, I was running around the bridge with a Grav-Hammer looking for victims for all of 10 seconds before the level ended and we climbed onto a waiting Pelican. So Ben and his girlfriend actually timed it really really well.
We packed the shit up and all boarded our separate automobiles, bound for different locales. The trip to Guelph was boring. There was only relevant piece of information issued:
The girl Ben had been trying to set me up with had begun seeing one of Ben's other friends in Guelph. Those of you who leave insulting comments suggesting that I spend too much time harping on my sexual desires will be happy to know that I have no cause to mention them for the duration of the Guelph story. Which is too bad because I thought that my foibles tended to generate a pretty decent level of humour.
So then we were in Guelph. Ben's girlfriend (and boy does she need a name...) has a great apartment. For a 2-bedroom it's quite roomy, and has a balcony (which is new and exciting to me because I don't hang out in apartments very often). Anyway, he and she need to get gothed up to head out to the bars, and they sit me in front of the Miracle Babysitting Screen and plug in Guitar Hero 2.
Now, bear something in mind here. I've never played Guitar Hero or Guitar Hero 2 before. And I have to say that it kicked ass. Basically Ben and his girlfriend took turns being schooled by me (they were on hard, I was on easy) while the other one was in the washroom or bedroom doing something.
Then we went out. To the Underground for those interested. For those who don't know what that is, think of the Rumours/Othellos/Classics building in our fair city. Now pretend that Rumours changed its name to The Underground and didn't suck. And had $2 drinks before 11. And free pool.
That was the first night. We went and I met a bunch of Ben's girlfriend's friends, including the one who I was supposed to get set up with. And let me tell you, just think of me as a woman. Seriously. Same hair colour, same eyes. Just female. So, smaller shoulders and wider hips. It was weird. Made more so by the fact that she talks and acts like me too. This is likely why Ben thought we'd hit it off so well. Unfortunately, we were so similar that I mostly stared at her in stunned silence. And then I killed her at pool. Seriously, I murdered everyone at pool until I got really drunk. Given that I've never won a game of pool before in my life that probably says something about the quality of the equipment at The Underground.
Speaking of which, the toilets were obscene. I ended up having to go to a bar across the street to take a shit.
Once we were seriously hammered we got offered a ride home. Which was nice. We stopped and got pitas on the way which was even nicer.
Then we ate the pitas while I got my now drunken ass beaten down at Guitar Hero 2.
And then I slept...
And then I woke up. It was later than I thought. Ben's girlfriend had gone out to have her hair done and left us menfolk to our own devices. I'd basically slept through that part, though. I'd barely dressed and gotten into a GH2 song with Ben before we all hopped in the car. We got Harveys. We picked up Ben's girlfriends friends. We went shopping.
It was thanksgiving. We were having dinner together. Our party in the No Frills was Ben, Ben's girlfriend, the girl I was supposed to hook up with (or LiMale), Ben's girlfriend's friend who can cook (or Nordic), and myself, your honoured narrator.
The original plan was ToFurkey for the idiots, ham for people with taste. Unfortunately we collectively balked at the time it would take to make a ToFurkey, so we decided on tofu steaks instead. Other items were potatoes (big fight about real vs pre-made. Real won), gravy ("make sure there's no meat products in it!"), cran (in disgusting jelly form), and stuffing (just regular stuffing. I really just didn't want to break my bracketing tradition here).
We all got back to the apartment and the men began the work of cooking while the ladies sat on the couch and drank. Nordic was basically in charge of this, with Ben in the role of sous-chef. Since I know nothing about the healthy preparation of food I got the fun jobs:
-Washing the knives after Ben has sharpened them
-Peeling potatoes with a cheese slicer (The real source of the fake vs real argument for potato purchases. Unfortunately the "we don't have a potato peeler" argument wasn't really voiced very strongly by the fake side)
-Sitting on the couch with the girls and getting killed in Guitar Hero (having now moved up to Medium difficulty)
Some more people turned up. They're not important. One was good looking, but she was also taken.
Eventually we ate. It kicked serious ass. The hams looked like a woman's ass covered in Diana sauce and Poultry Seasoning (Don't ask. There wasn't a lot left in the spice section by the time we got there). The potatoes were fluffy and awesome. I didn't have any stuffing. The gravy was interesting. Remember when we had to check really carefully to make sure that there were no meat products in the gravy? Yeah, there weren't. Because apparently you're supposed to mix it with the drippings of whatever meat you just cooked. I had the brilliant idea to use butter and/or milk. I was not fellated in thanks by any of the gravy-hungry vegetarians present.
Anyway, then all females present (and some of the males) began drinking in earnest. It's still around 6:30pm. Ben and I retire to the guest room (current home of the ManPuter) and rock some Oblivion. It is good times, especially as I've brought the Shivering Isles expansion for Ben to dig into.
Time passes.
Magically it's much later, and the (now very drunk) girls have stopped lying on the floor laughing and passing out "magic" Dollar-Store rings (Mine sucked, but Ben was good enough to trade with me. Then I lost it anyway. There's a lesson there, I think) and are beginning to make very serious noises about heading out to a bar. I've had enough of getting my ass handed to me by Nordic at GH1 (where both players have to play at the same difficulty), and the prospect of $2 drinks at another bar is somewhat intriguing. Also it will stop Ben force-feeding me room-temperature shots of my own vodka.
Much like the night before, we all hop the bus. We take it all the way around its route and into the downtown. We hop off and head slightly farther from the drop-site than we did 24 hours previously. Tonight's bar is called the Vinyl. Some of you may have heard the name before. Don't worry if you haven't. The point is that unlike The Underground who have $2 drinks until 11pm, the Vinyl has them all night long on Saturdays.
Of course, the LiMale (and, again, let me stress that she did not look like a man) told me that the drinks were only $2 until 11 again, so I started in on the double-screwdrivers like a champ.
Things just weren't working though. I'm going to blame it mostly on the seating. We were trying to fit a rather large group (more unimportant characters joined us there) into a medium-sized booth, and it wasn't working. The booth was medium-sized, meaning that it was large enough that you couldn't really carry on a conversation with the people across from you because of the music. This bound you conversationally to the people on either side of you, which wasn't necessarily a good thing and resulted in a lot of people moving around the booth all of the time, with the people who didn't fit inside standing outside of it in a little scrum.
Also, anyone who I would talk to would eventually end up leaving to go smoke. In the end I just attached myself to Ben and went outside whenever he went outside to avoid that sort of situation.
It was raining in Guelph that night. And it was beautiful. As I walked out the door onto the crowded storefront I was overcome by wanderlust. Seriously, do you ever just get really drunk and want to walk around in the rain? It made me, in my stupor, think about life. What was the only thing holding me back from my wanderings? Things. Objects. Possessions. I mean, if I went out into that rain I'd soak my passport, train ticket confirmation slip, credit card receipts, anything in my wallet (including all of my professional certifications), and my USB key.
But what were those things to chain me to that storefront in downtown Guelph? Rain is so potently symbolic. It's a cleaning force from above. Over time the rain can wash away almost anything. If I went out into that rain I'd be washing away all the possessions listed above, for at least at long as it would take to replace them all. Not to mention that such a replacement would likely incur hefty costs. But only monetary costs. Should my bank balance also hold me hostage on the concrete?
who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
I jumped into a consideration of the actual ramifications of losing all my property in exchange for an enjoyable evening in the rain. I also began trying to articulate what I was feeling to Ben. I was on the cusp of something amazing, but I couldn't quite bear the idea of shedding my possessions just like that.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
The moment had passed. Ben and I returned inside.
However, I was left with a desire to wander the rain, even if I could no longer do it in a consciousness-expanding manner of total wonder. It turned out that Ben was actually really into that idea and we constructed a fun plan to pull it off.
Ben convinced his girlfriend that I was being drunk and unreasonable (maybe not that far from the truth) and wanted to go to another bar. I think maybe I tried to convince them that I didn't like the music or something. I really didn't think it would work because the music was actually really good and I kept rocking out to it with LiMale. They seemed to buy it though. They recommended another bar down the street that had live blues or jazz every weekend.
Ben gave a sincere goodbye and I looked sheepishly at his girlfriend and shrugged my shoulders.
We left.
We hopped a cab back to the apartment.
That's a lie. Before we hopped the cab we bought pitas. As we left the bar they'd been playing James Brown, and, well, you all know what I'm like when I'm drunk and have James Brown stuck in my head. Well... Maybe you don't...
Ben and I walked away from the bar into the rain (It had slacked quite a bit and we weren't in imminent danger of losing possessions). He walked tall and strong. I bounced along beside him slapping my hands, snapping my fingers, and yelling "I'm bad!"
As we approached the pita store I noticed 2 smokin-hot-babes outside, one of whom was grooving along in sympathy with my obnoxious beat-boxing and James Brown immitations. I gave her a grin and a "Yeah, that's right".
We entered and there was another hot woman in front of me. I noticed that she had ordered 2 pitas. She was also smiling sporadically at the two other hot girls through the window. I surmised that she was with them, and decided to try my hand at drunken conversation in the hopes of some sort of connection with one of the three of them. I'm going to warn you now: Surprisingly enough, this little story doesn't end with me going back to Ben's apartment with any of these fine ladies.
"You must be hungry." Leer stupidly.
"haha. Yeah, well one of them is for me. The other is for my fiance."
Oh dear. Scan the bar for men about to accost me. "Hmm... Where's he?"
"At home. With the kids."
Dear god... Why stop now? "How many do you have?"
"3. They're 8, 7, and 5."
"Wow. You guys sure waited a while to tie the knot, hunh?"
RandomHotGirl3 has left the conversation
Oh well. I tried. There's at least a 50% chance that it was all bullshit anyway.
We were still in line beside each-other though. I idly watched the clerk prepare her pitas and wrap them both in paper. Then he tried to bag them and had some trouble pulling his plastic bag off of the wall, the end result of which was him slipping the first pita into the bag and then dropping bag and pita onto the floor.
"Yeah, it's OK. You can just drop my pita on the floor." (not in a completely bitchy tone)
"Don't worry, I double-wrapped it." Stifled laughter from the Liam corner. "I always practice safe pita-making."
Uproarous laughter from the Liam corner. She turns, "Yeah, I guess I should have tried that."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
"Wait, I'm sorry..."
She was gone.
And 5 minutes later so were we.
When we arrived at the apartment, the plan was simple. Ditch the possessions, eat the pitas, and walk in the rain (now very seriously reduced from its torrential beginnings).
We did. It was glorious. We sauntered bravely around Guelph talking, talking, talking. It was good for me, Ben. Was it good for you?
Then we launched into an extended GH session at the apartment and waited for the girlfriend to return. There was some drama while we were gone and she needed Ben more than I did when she got back. I spent the time before my eyelids began to inexplicably close attempting to master songs on Easy. Unfortunately I could only play through a whole song twice in a row before it began to grate on my ears. So I didn't master any.
The next morning I didn't see the girlfriend. She was still sleeping when Ben and I took the bus back downtown (turns out the train station was around the corner from the bars we'd been drinking at). The downtown looked very strange in the sunlight without its normal covering of drunken post-secondary students.
We picked up the ticket (a process which was helped by my handing over of the ticket confirmation mentioned above), which took 15 minutes because the woman wasn't at the counter and had forgotten to put out the "ring for service" bell.
Then we went to a comic/games store around the corner, where we easily whiled away the 40 mintues before my train came. Ben and I together conveyed interest in the entire range of items for sale in the store. We overlapped on anime and manga and some comic titles, while he covered all other comics and graphic novels as well as action figures. I mopped up the scanty remains with my interest in the Warhammer stuff they had all across one wall. While there I discovered possibly the greatest books I've bought in my entire life: The Dark Horse Comics Aliens Vs. Predator Omnibus Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 which together encompass massive portion of the comics I read voraciously as a child. The were a lot Aliens and Predator comics that I wouldn't mind having reprinted in convenient Omnibus form either, but this will do for now. At 400+ pages each it took me at least 2 days to finish them.
Upon my return to the homestead I dressed up and went out for Thanksgiving at my grandma's house. Good times and good duck were had. At this point it is worth noting that at 2 out of 2 thanksgiving dinners I attended turkey was not served. What a rebel I am!
Oh... and then I spent 30 hours playing Halo3 with Wolfgang, pausing only to sleep on his couch, and then wake to the sight of him staring over me. Then we played some more. Then my eyes fell out from the pleasure of it all.
Interlude: Tuesday
The next morning I went into work to hit on the hot girl I mentioned 10^5 paragraphs ago. Clearly by this point everyone should know that "hit on" means talk to. In a non-sexual context. You see, she works for the swim-team at my work one morning per week as well as weekends, so every Tuesday we hang out for an hour or so before she goes to school (at the same place 90% of those reading this went or go to high school, but that's incidental). During the course of this conversation I convinced her to skip 5th period and hang out with my until the late buses came.
It was good times. Except for the part where she was showing me the new addition to the school and Mr. Smith made fun of me for being a bum.
Part 2: Where the Wild Things Are (Oct 12, 13, 14)
That brings us to this past weekend. The 4th tour date was upon me. A trip to see the Greatness that is Wolfgang. There were no formal plans. There were loose ideas like Halo3, dirty Phil's, the mall. I figured I'd just play it by ear.
I had a slight conflict of interest, though. Her name was "that hot girl from work". If I wanted to see her that Friday at work (side note: It's easy to see this girl at work and hard to see her anywhere else. She's in school, she lives waaaay out of town, and she can't drive) I couldn't take the bus to Waterloo, I'd have to take the train, which wouldn't be arriving in Waterloo until 9:30, making for an interesting journey to Woflgang's (given that I've never been to the Kitchener train station before and would need to navigate my way across the Tri-cities). I figured it was worth it.
It was. We had a good time, I got to Kitchener alright (after being an hour early for my train because my brain has issues with the 24-hour time they stamp on your tickets), and that set me up for the next adventure of the night which was (as mentioned above) finding my way to Wolfgang's house.
Luckily some frantic phonecalling during the hour I spent realizing I was an idiot at the train station had given me the frame of a workable plan.
I had drawn myself a small map showing the street I needed to take to get from the train station to King St. in Kitchener. From there, my options were varried. I could hop the GRT and ride up the University, or I could spend most of the night walking all the way up King St, turn onto University, and then walk to the University.
I chose the first option, and prayed for good luck. You see, according to Wolfgang, just after I left school the Federation of Students pushed through a recommendation that our student cards be usable as bus passes on the GRT. However, the administration had fought back with the totally unreasonable idea that the cards should only count as bus-passes when students were on campus. If you happened to have a co-op position (and a very large percentage of Waterloo students are co-ops) in Waterloo you'd better get used to full-price bus rides.
Anyway, so the point of this story is that they need to install special card scanners on all GRT buses in order to discern the "real" students from the "co-op bitch" students. But they haven't done that yet. So anyone with a WATCard can just walk up to a bus, flash it, and get on for free.
Or so I was told.
I stopped at a McDonalds on King and got myself a double quarter-pounder and an iced tea. Strangely, my credit card was declined twice while trying to purchase them. Luckily I had cash, but still. It could have been bad news.
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The maximum amount of time for a post to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Liam.PostTimeout or by changing the value in the administration tools.
Yeah. I just need to kill this post off and keep going. There's a lot more to be said, but it's just going to take too long.
In summary:
-I got there
-We got drunk and played Halo3
-Tingles dyed her hair
-Repeat last 2 steps
-We tried to go out for breakfast on Sunday. It was too busy
-I came home and hung out with the hot girl from work at work
Weekend concluded.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
Oct 19-21: I bust mad skills all over Brooklyn. Brooklyn Ontario. Starring myself and the beautiful and talented Nick.
Oct 26-28: I man-cannon myself to Guelph in order to "spend time with Ben" (read, take an advanced aquatics course and want to kill myself all weekend) [Ben, this is your formal warning that I'm coming to your house that weekend]
Nov 2-4: I promised some dude at the Y that I'd go to a show in town that weekend. But in order to keep to the Tour rules I'll need to stay at someone else's place in town. Tell your folks.
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