Anyone want to hear the story behind this photo, or would you rather I preserved the mystery and let you come up with your own scenarios?
Month: September 2003
People have questions about the Worst Date Ever story.
AKMA finds The Artiste (mentioned in part 3a and part 4) intriguing and would like any more stories I have about him. Boss Ross’ Boss, Mr. Noss, wants to know about The Waitress and her new transgender girlfriend (don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything; I just haven’t mentioned her, as her role in the story is tangential). Rick McGinnis suspects that I patched things up with Crabs. A number of people have asked what happened to everyone in the story, and others ask if I ever have normal dates.
All these questions will be answered, but I shall defer that answer until next week. Not only will you get the denouement, you’ll even get a story in which I return to the dance club from part 4. You’ll find it amusing: it’s got more drinkin’, more druggin’, more violence, more ABBA, more butterscotch schnapps, more freaking out and a guy who had a bit part on Earth: Final Conflict where his head exploded.
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Seen on Queen Street West today
While biking to work this morning, I saw this and had to take a photo:
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A very good house
(Sung to the tune of It Was a Very Good Year)
When I was thirty-two
I had a very good house
It had hardwood floors, exposed brick walls
and central air
It looked debonair
Too good to be true
When I was thirty two…
Our landlord is selling the best damned house I’ve ever lived in (not counting those in which I lived with my parents). As I write this, a real estate agent is taking people through Big Trouble in Little China, the lovely TV-worthy bottom half of a historic house that I’ve been renting since August 1999. I’m posting these recently-taken photos just to let the record show that yeah, I lived in a swank all mod cons place.
Here’s the first thing you see when you enter the place. The living room, with bits of the dining room visible through a portal in the dividing wall the background. Note the hardwood floors, exposed brick walls and lack of a giant inflatable bottle or other beer advertising paraphernalia.
A couple of geeks I know commented that they’d have decorated the place with server racks and obvious computer gear. This is the housing equivalent of putting a yellow spoiler and a VTEC sticker on a Honda Civic. Despite the fact there are seven computers, two professional programmers with actual computer science degrees and ethernet and WiFi throughout the house, it doesn’t look like an electronic surplus store. Geeks do not have to live in Radio Shack squalor.
Paul relaxes in our incredibly comfy couches while watching Xena vs. Lexx.
Just kidding, the show doesn’t exist. But some of you got aroused for a moment, didn’t you, you sick little monkeys?
This is where I like to “get my read on”.
We are the best-fed bachelors in the neighbourhood, and here’s where the magic happens. At least this is where the magic happens before dinner, hur hur hur!
When company comes for dinner, a dishwasher is a godsend!
The kitchen has a “window” that looks onto the dining room. The dining room table — a Parsons table, for you design fiends — is the first piece of furniture that my parents bought after we moved to Canada in 1974. Note the fully-stocked bar in the background and candles at the ready on the dining table. Yes, ladies, I’m taling to you.
The fireplaces have since been bricked in, but there’s just enough room for a brick brazier containing the Ubiquitous IKEA tealights™. To the left of the fireplace is the music studio, with my old analog 4-track recorder, Paul’s 8-track digital recorder, one of my stereos, my trusty WaveStation synth and a karaoke machine (it’s the silver box at the lower left), which functions as our vocal amp.
I’m going to miss the place.
I’m going to have to balance the slightly more serious tone of that last post with the goofiness of Hulk Hands!
These were given to my nephew Aidan, who had his second birthday party on Saturday. They make roaring sounds just like everyone’s favourite gamma-iraradiated sociopath whenever you hit something with them. Unfortunately, strange noises scare the little fella, so right now, it’s the grown-ups who’ve been having fun with this gift.
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Quote of the day
Bush said he insulates himself from the “opinions” that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories.
“I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news,” the president said. “And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”
I didn’t know “objective” meant “hand-picked sycophants who are on your payroll”.
Keep in mind that executive managers of all stripes — from the president of the United States of America to someone who runs a day care centre — is going to need the “big-picture view” of what’s going on and will rely their subordinates to give them a short precis of what’s going on. That’s why they’re called “executive summaries”.
That being said, all news is subjective. Anything that someone tells you is filtered through their own particular worldview, which is influenced by their education, knowledge, socio-politico-complexo-migraino leanings and all those other niggly details that make each person unique. It’s not that Bush (or for that matter, any of us) want objective news, he wants news that fits his worldview. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for the disciples of Supply Side Jesus), Bush’s idea of “objective news” is probably FOX News. Hey, it says ‘Fair and Balanced’ right on the label!
The myth of “objective” news, according to Ben Bagdikian in his book The Media Monopoly, was created by newspapers in order to avoid alientating advertisers. Anyone who believes that any given newspaper is objective is a sucker and should apply to the Accordion Guy Remedial Media Literacy Course. For the low cost of just one Apple PowerBook a year*, I will tell you what to think!
Isn’t there a line in Macchiavelli’s The Prince that warns you about the dangers of surrounding yourself with yes-men and listening only to them? My copy’s nowhere near me, but I’m sure there’s a classics major among you…
(* I stole this idea from Cory Doctorow, whose plan is to keep himself on top of the tech wave by creating a religion where he is the chief cleric and adherents must buy him the latest and fastest PowerBook once a year. “I’d only have to recruit one person,” he says.)
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Cats and other unsexy things
Nerve gets it right about cats:
Attachment to a non-human mammal that doesn’t give a fuck about you bespeaks emotional damage. It’s the kind that transforms you from “alluringly quirky” to “certifiable.”
Remember, folks: Cats are not pets. They’re egg rolls waiting to happen.
Cats are but one of the fifty items on their “Unsexy List”. Yes, it’s filler written by a bunch of people who gathered in the Nerve.com employee lounge over Snackwell cookies (“they’re low fat!”) who’d be operating the fry machine at McDonald’s if there weren’t an Internet, but:
a) it’s sorta funny
b) you probably don’t want these people touching your food.