Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
~Attributed to both T.H. Thompson and John Watson
2003 Archive
Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
~Attributed to both T.H. Thompson and John Watson
Email
2003 Archive
| May 9 | Is it me..? ...or are some things just plain, old-fashioned stupid? That link points to an article about a chili sauce that ranks about 32 times hotter than the hottest pepper known to man. It's so hot it could literally kill you. Diners must sign a disclaimer recommending “protective gloves and eye wear” — but even sweating testers in safety gear were blinded by tears for 30 minutes.First of all, who would voluntarily ingest such a thing? I guess there is no "second of all". Simply put... when I have a plate full of medium wings, I find myself in the bathroom 12 hours later praying for death and biting down on a leather belt. I'm going to lie awake at night having anxiety attacks just from knowing this new product exists and is in circulation. |
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| May 9 | What do you people want from me, anyhow?? Here's a little chart that shows which search engine queries lead people to coreytamas.com.  "What do Canadian people wear in clothing mostly all the time?????????" I haven't even got a joke for that, it's so weird. And as for you people entering "Corey is the dumbest thing" into Google: Knock it off. |
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| May 8 | Progress Coming along nicely. Tomorrow I'm going to shave it to look like a goatee. |
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| May 8 | I miss Lori I can't stop thinking about her. |
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| May 8 | Kill me I have the "Goofy Goober" song from Spongebob Squarepants stuck in my head. |
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| May 8 | Insomnia I slipped into bed and waited. Nothing happened. I laid there and did not sleep. I tried re-positioning the pillows, moving the duvet, adjusting the sheets. Nothing. The spark didn't catch. I lay there, fully awake. Later I do what I think the right kind of position is: On my right side with my head propped up on pillows and another pillow between my slightly bent knees. I add pillows under my head to elevate it more. Then I remove a few to lower it more. Up. Then down. Then on the left side. Repeat. Then, later on, I put pillows in a horseshoe shape around my head with my face down in the middle, arms raised up on them. I feel as if I am shoving my head into a big, feather-filled toilet seat. I then imagine that I look as though I've been shot in cold blood and fell into a pool and that this is the position the police find me floating in. On my back. Side again. Back again. Front again. Side again just for luck. No use. My head continues to rev like a 16 year old boy driving his dad's Honda by himself for the first time. Despite the flurry of cranial activity, I'm not actually thinking anything interesting. Perhaps that's what makes insomnia all the worse; if these were interesting, compelling thoughts maybe I'd get more out of it. I may even cultivate it. No, instead I'm passing the same thoughts around over and over... thoughts which elicite as much enthusiasm and excitement as gum with all the flavor chewed out of it. While I'm at it, my mouth tastes disgustingly similar. Trying the pillows-on-the-side thing again. Still nothing. When I come up with the "face-down in the pool after being shot" idea, I decide to write it up in this blog. Still no sleeping yet. I don't even want to tell you what time it is. I think I may lose my mind this way. |
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| May 8 | My Mom My mom's name is Linda Bishop. She's currently serving at the Bahá'í World Center in Haifa, Israel . The best description I've ever heard of my mom is that she's like popcorn wrapped around a brick. See, she has this really sweet, lovable and very pleasant exterior. She's very huggy and seems almost as if she's too nice to have the mettle for anything really serious in life. Looks can be deceptive, however, as mom has tackled and defeated some of the most outstanding and difficult challenges a woman could ever expect to face. This is probably the thing I will remember most about my mother for the rest of my life; when the chips are down, she is a powerful, clear-minded, brave and deft warrior. She has always shown great ability when under stress. I hope I absorbed some of that as I was growing up. To tell the truth, I might also remember that she has two crowns on her head (where most people only have one). As a result, her hair parts kind of funny and she has to wrestle with it to make it behave. Everywhere I go, people love my mother. There's no-one I've met (with the possible exception of one jackass who shall remain nameless) who didn't both love and respect her. When I meet people who already know my mom, all they want to do is talk about how special and sweet she is. How can I argue? I suppose I could say "You should see the side of her that *I* know", but that'd be misleading because the side of her that I know is every bit as special and lovable as what everyone else perceives. My mom taught me everything I know about unconditional love and what it means to stick with the people you love, no matter what. She's probably the only person who ever completely stood behind me through thick and thin, good and bad, up and down. I believe she is the most forgiving, non-judgmental person I personally know; and those qualities, to me, are a mark of true strength. Like all mothers, she made a few mistakes while I was growing up. That's just par for the course. When I look back, though, I can scarcely remember anything serious; all I can remember is that she tried her damnedest and always loved my brother and me, no matter what. I think that's one thing I really value about what she's taught me: The importance of the phrase "no matter what" when used in the context of loving and supporting people. It's made me a much better person and friend to others. Today is Mother's Day and I did take time to put a little something in the mail for her. Really, though, how does one thank one's mother for all they do for you? I know in my case the only way I can repay the debt I owe to my mother is to be to others what she has been to me. She has taught me the most valuable lessons I've ever learned and I will love her forever. |
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| May 7 | Weirdest thing. My cell phone doesn't seem to be receiving SMS text messages properly (a message sent by Lori from two nights ago arrived this morning at 10 AM), my email seems to be continually delayed (both in and outgoing sometimes by 12 hours). I'm getting a weird feeling about this. Am I in a Stephen King movie or something? Anyhow, if you're trying to get ahold of me and having some bad luck, try the phone. |
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| May 7 | Things you do when you're alone Sometimes I drink hot pepper sauce - the kind you use on hot chicken wings and stuff - right out of the bottle. With the fridge still open. |
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| May 7 | Why I'm done with The Sopranos The Sopranos is probably the best show on TV. Actually, I don't even know if it's on TV anymore because I don't watch TV. I just rent DVDs or download episodes of shows I want to see. Still, this is one of the best shows ever. It's a TV show about a mob boss who spends a fair amount of time balancing the insane demands of maintaining illegal business with his own family life and the healing of pain that a middle-aged guy with issues has to work out. The characters are fantastic; multi-dimensional and extremely well-acted. The stories are fresh and creative and well-crafted. It's funny without using humor as a cheap instrument to bouy a sagging plotline. Best of all, they manage to avoid feel-good clichés that go along with most TV shows; they don't provide easy outs for the moral situations and drama, and that provides a very satisfying experience for an intelligent viewer who wants to give a damn about what they're watching. Thing is, I'm done with this show. I don't really feel like watching it anymore. The thing is that the show centers around Tony Soprano, the mob boss I mentioned earlier. Tony does care about his kids and he cares about his wife and he cares about his aged mother and, like anyone who cares about something, he wrestles with caring for himself. After watching three seasons and what was probably about 30 episodes I've realized that Tony Soprano is a bad person. In other words, the caring he has for the various important people and things in his life doesn't actually have any impacct on his decision making. He still has sex with whatever woman he fancies that'd let him, he puts brutal beatings upon people he doesn't like (if he doesn't actually kill them) and he lies without restraint. It'd be one thing if he was conflicted by the good in his life as he was carrying out the bad... but the connection he has with the "important" things in his life provide no speed bump whatsoever for his cruelty, selfishness and self-indulgence. After watching so many episodes of this show, I assumed that Tony was changing in some way... growing and devleoping... but then he dives back into his old ways without remorse, without thought and without hesitation. And so, I've lost interest. I don't need to watch a bad person with good things in his life turning his back on them when the doors to a better way of thinking and being keep opening. Not for another 30 episodes. Bad guy with a heart of gold? Sure. Bad guy with a heart of compost? Meh. I no longer wanna watch this show. Kind of a shame because it's such a good show. We're going to watch Scrubs from here on in and hope that I don't have to make another post like this in a few weeks. |
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| May 7 | I must be EXTRA hot My old friend Janet popped by unannounced, knocked on the door, stuck her head into my apartment and started "YOOHOO"ing for me. I was napping and had been for a while, so I wasn't really at my peak... especially considering that I was wearing my slob clothes from the night before. I got out of bed with a howling, fierce bedhead, a few days' worth of stubble (remember: I'm growing my goatee. Here's the latest progress) and - Oh God - the breath. Janet said I looked awesome... twice. This astonished me because I did not have my game face on (which is putting it mildly), but what it really said to me was that I have lost so much weight since the last time she's seen me that even my currently Creature-From-The-Black-Lagoon state of appearance is an improvement over the last time she saw me. I'm simultaneously flattered and a bit gobsmacked. I've got this problem with sugar. I can completely quit sugar and not crave it. I can go for days or even weeks without so much as an iota of interest. But as soon as I have one single grain of refined sugar I suddenly become like Cookie Monster. I've been off sugar for a few days now (decided it was time to get a bit stricter with the eating), but today Janet's husband Kevin was kind enough to offer me a butterscotch Lifesaver. And I ate it. And now I want to spoon sugar out of the paper bag I keep sugar in. And it was going so well, too. So now I'm busy chewing cardboard. As it gets wetter, it gets sweeter, so this might actually work. |
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| May 6 | Spring Cleaning Last night I took out the trash. Thing is, I took a huge amount of time to clean my home and throw out the crap that's been lying around which needed dealing with. So I took the garbage bags out, one after the other, all freshly filled with the avalanche of refuse that used to be scattered throughout my home. I ended up with not one, not two, not five, not ten, but twelve garbage bags full on the curb. Even though it was night, I had to take a photo. I just had to. |
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| May 6 | Track The Goatee I'm growing my goatee back. I'll chronicle it here. Let's start with this photo. |
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| May 6 | Lucky Kinda Day Ever have one of those days where everything just goes right? When you put a little effort into something and get a generous return? When the stars are aligned in such a way that luck is on your side? Sometimes it's good just to watch the universe unfold in a friendly way, where a helping hand just reaches invisibly into your affairs and gives you a little extra boost. Nice, huh? Thing is, that's the exact opposite of the sort of day I'm actually having... but that kind of day sure sounds good right now. |
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| April 30 | Movies I've seen a few movies lately that I am going to want to comment on. One of these is The Amityville Horror. I didn't actually intend to see it, but somebody I know thought it would be worth seeing, so I took her word for it and gave it a chance. I can't say I'm pleased with how it worked out as a movie-going experience, but it did give me something to write about. The Amityville Horror is supposedly a "true story" about a family that moves into a haunted house and the father goes wacko. Personally, I liked this story better back when it was called The Shining, but whatever. Cast in the role of the dad-going-nuts is Jack Nichols- er... I mean Ryan Reynolds, who is best known for his role as Van Wilder, a charismatic, likeable slacker who stays in college far, far too long simply because he's having a good time. I personally liked that story better when it was called PCU, but whatever. Anyhow, Ryan has all the dark, brooding complexity of a Blue Mountain E-Card, so they had to punch the movie up considerably by adding orchestral stabs that burst your eardrums every time something scary happens on the screen. This is done so that, in case you don't happen to adequately defecate in your pants because of the cheap, clichéd scare on the screen, you will be forced to do so because of the sudden 120dB blast that's part of the movie soundtrack. I believe the producers feel this is important because, seriously, what's a horror movie unless you defecate in your pants (regardless of why)? Anyhow, I'm getting away from the meat of this "true story". There's a family that moves into a house and gets creeped out. This is achieved by the appearance of a spectral girl child who has stringy hair and pallid skin (she's dead, after all), and she speaks to a living child in order to make the parent wonder why the kid has such an active imagination. I liked this story better when it was called every other horror movie ever made, but whatever. As the story progresses the mother does a lot of screaming and crying (like you do when your kid has dead friends) and other clichés such as the following make an appearance: - Magnetic letters re-arranged on the fridge to make a scary message (not as scary as "Redrum") - Family pet is killed early on in order to create that foreshadowing thing - At one point after the father goes bonkers you think he's dead but he's not. In case it doesn't scare you when he gets back up again after being clocked in the melon, the sound designers help you to evacuate your bowels by throwing in one of those aforementioned orchestral stabs - Turns out the house is built on top of a burial ground where people were tortured and murdered, a story I liked better back when it was called... aw, you get the idea. I read a bit about some of the possible "truths" from this movie as they reportedly happened. It seems that nothing quite as shocking or scary as the movie portrays quite took place, and even the things which were reported to have taken place are in question. Seeing as the movie apparently didn't need to stay too close to the true story (or whatever), it is my personal opinion that the writers should have added a team of deadly ninjas who fought a giant battle against the evil spirits, and this battle should have taken place in Hell in the form of a mega-battle-of-the-bands. Or perhaps a deadly hockey game against zombies. It certainly wouldn't have detracted from the story as it currently is being told in the theatres. Some orchestral stabs may also have helped make it work. Who knows? |
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| April 25 | Updates, Baby. It's been a while since I've given you a window onto my soul and stuff. Why not get you nice people up to speed? First of all, if you don't already know why I put the blog on hold for a few months, you never will. Neener. I have someone very special in my life now, and her name is Lori. We are so very into each other and are definitely making sure the people we know and care about are aware of what's going on. I'm going to talk a lot more about Lori in future entries. I have managed to get a serious hold on this thing called ADD. Welbutrin did not work. Not even a bit. It was like Dexadrine... but it took longer to get out of my system. In other words: It was like hell, only not as pleasant and relaxing. I decided to get away from pharmaceuticals and started working on nutrition instead. Now that... that worked. As God is my witness, it's the only thing that worked. By taking vitamin supplements, seriously curtailing my sugar and caffeine intake and making sure I drink a lot of water, things have really changed for me. With the help of a nutritional healer that I know, I've managed to make wholesale changes. My skin has cleared up. I sleep better. My allergies have disappeared. I'm down to 208 pounds. Best of all... my problems with ADD are clearing up exponentially and, thankfully, all the side-issues that arose because of it. That feels wonderful. It's so awesome, in fact, that I want to tell every single person I know and care about to try doing what I did... the change is that wonderful. Thing is, I remember how I saw stuff like this before I was actually into it and what a big steaming crock I thought it was... so I'm keeping my mouth mostly shut. I still play Warhammer. I got out of it, got back into it. Out of it, into it, out of it, into it... I've decided to stop fighting it and stop feeling ashamed of it. Warhammer has provided me with an absolutely indispensible and highly enjoyable social circle of men who a) don't drink to have fun, b) don't need to get laid to have fun (though for some that's not an option anyhow), c) don't take drugs to have fun, d) are reasonably smart, well-mannered and non-violent individuals. Warhammer is a great way for someone to spend their time and creative energies. In fact, if you can manage to keep your spending in line, I'd say it's one of the best pastimes a person could indulge in. I'm playing a lot more guitar now. Like, a lot. Lori has inspired me a lot to get back into what I love and throw myself into it. So... a lot more guitar. My fingertips burn and ache at times... and it's a feeling I really love. I'm blogging again. Stay tuned... more stories about me falling on my face in the snow or the cat puking in my sandals are on the way. |
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| April 21 | Spring Has sprung. And I'm going to bring this blog back again. |
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| Feb 3 | Owie I plucked the grey hairs out. People, don't ever pluck hairs from your lip. It's not like eyebrows or hair on your scalp. You'll feel it for an hour after you pluck and... it's so not worth it. |
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| Feb 2 | Upon Closer Inspection... Make that three grey hairs. |
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| Feb 1 | Oh Boy. I have a grey hair in my moustach. Just one. Right in the middle. That's so wrong. |
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| Feb 1 | What I Eat Seeing as I don't have any good stories about a cat throwing up in my slippers or me hurting myself on a slippery ice slope or other humiliating misfortunes, I'll explain a little bit about a really big part of my life: What I eat. It's easier in some ways to explain what I don't eat. One thing I've really gotten away from is sugar. There is sugar in places you wouldn't expect it: Vegetables, bread, toothpaste, etc. I don't go far out of my way to avoid that. What I mean is sugar as it occurs in foods like chocolate, the sauce they use on chicken wings, ketchup, salsa, etc. There are three things I've noticed since (mostly) going off sugar: 1) Everything is a lot sweeter than you think it is; nuts, vegetables, you name it. Once you're not so used to heavy sugar, you'll become more able to taste the sweetness in food as it occurs naturally. 2) My allergies have completely vanished. At one time I had a very severe allergy to cats, ragweed, dust, mould, dogs, whatever. Every night I would go to bed and only barely be able to breathe and, in the morning, I would wake up and sneeze until my nose bled. Now that's all gone. 3) I wake up in the morning without feeling like pure crap. This, I think ties into the other thing I've given up... Caffeine. I always drink decaf coffee and stay away from chocolate or cola. I've found that if I'm not injesting caffeine then my sleep is uninterrupted and I don't wake up first thing in the morning feeling hung over. Dairy. The main thing that happened when I stopped eating dairy is the pounds just fell right off. I'm about 215 pounds now and this time last year I was more like 250-260 (I used to tell people 240 because the sound of 260 made me feel lousy). Water. Drinking a lot of it. About 3L a day. The only problem is that I've lost enough weight that I have had to buy new pants, like, three times. |
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| January 29 | Horoscope I just read my horoscope from Yahoo. Now, I'm not a huge follower of horoscopes; I read them for fun and sometimes to scratch my head a bit. Take a look, though: After all this tension and ridiculousness, you're golden. The universe has seen fit to arrange for things to go easily for you -- yes, just this once. And as for that new admirer with whom it hasn't exactly been easy to get together? The roadblocks will officially be removed, and connecting will be easy. Now stop worrying about what's in the past. It might not have been pleasant, but it's over. I gotta say... if that's actually true and it works out that way then I may not have such a bad weekend after all. |
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| January 26 | Resolution As of today, I hereby resolve to do my best to stop using the phrase "let me put it this way". |
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| January 26 | Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue I'm issuing this as a challenge to the other bloggers who read coreytamas.com: To use the old wedding-day adage of "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue" as a jumping-off point for a blog entry in which you cover all four of those criteria as they're relevant to your own life and thinking. I'll be checking your blogs to see if it's there. And yeah, I'll start. Something Old: From my own blog, back on January 23, 2004:Canadians Are So Incredibly Polite It's been snowing a fair amount here lately, then freezing, then melting a bit, the snowing again, etc. etc. You get a variety of walking surfaces from the powery, feathery dust of light flakes up to your armpits to the icy skating-rink-of-hip-breakgage of packed snow covered in a veneer of ice. Believe it or not, this relates to my story and the title thereof. I was in a town called Kanata a couple days ago to do a bit of business. I won't waste all my writing energy describing to you how the road system works in that area, but I will tell you that I will approach this place of business from the adjacent parking lot rather than the proper one because of how tough it can be to negotiate the roads appropriately. Just trust me on this. Anyhow, I've parked the car and am about to step out of one parking lot and into another. Between them is a hill of maybe 6'. Maybe a tad less. It looks innocent enough and my shoes certainly have nice deep treads, but it turns out that this hill is a deathtrap waiting to happen. Thanks to me, it wasn't waiting long. So I step from my car with aplomb, checking my watch and and furrowing my brow like I'm Remington Steele, and starting for the hill with the demeanor that communicates how I expect no trouble getting up. I'll make this brief: I take about two steps, freeze for a moment in terror as I attempt to regain my balance, take a third step and fall on my hands. Seeing as I'm not particularly good at holding myself upright on my fingertips while my toes are skating on slick ice, I fall directly on my face and get snow up my nose. Attempting a quick recovery, I roll on my side (distributing the snow evenly) and push myself up on one arm, getting my legs back under me. I'm making an attempt to bareface my way through this by adopting that look of offense and disgust that international men of mystery do when they've been troubled in their busy day by something ridiculous. Unfortunately, my iron-like facial expression didn't save me from the unfortunate loss of balance which actually caused me (no joke) to spin like a top and land on my back, facing upwards at the blue sky as my ass was slowly soaked by icewater. This time when I roll around I've pretty much given up on saving face (any attempt I could have made to look as if I thought I was still in control would have made me look stupider than I already did). I look around and, yeah... lots of people milling around who are watching me out of the corners of their eye. No one says "Are you alright?", but don't interpret that as callousness; Canadians are the type who wouldn't embarrass you by letting on that they noticed you just made a complete fool of yourself. They just act as if they didn't notice or they're too wrapped up in deep thought to think of you as silly-looking. As I'm watching the pedestrials parade by, each seemingly oblivious to me lying on the side of this hill below and above them, covered in snow, soaked to the skin with little birdies chirping in a halo around my head just like they do in the Flintstones, I realize that I have still got to get up this hill somehow. I huff. I close my eyes in denial. I then roll a bit more, shifting my weight onto one hand as I attempt to come around for attempt #3. I'm up on all fours, feet somewhat flat on the ground and I am looking up, rather like a large dog in position to leap forward, all dressed in twill and chambray. I tenuously rise up onto my feet with my arms waving about to keep my balance. I almost called to someone to throw me a parasol and a unicycle so I could complete the tightrope-walking look. Once I get my footing and balance, I stand motionless with my arms at a strange angle (not unlike how one will fool with the rabbit ears on the TV until they get the signal right and then they just... don't... touch it... again...). If I stayed there too long I'm sure pigeons would have started to land, so I decided to make my move. I realize that it's obvious to you by now that I fell again, but what you might not appreciate is how quickly I fell; I lost my balance just by thinking about moving. The really bad part was how my legs started doing the light-speed treadmill run, sort of like George Jetson. Just one step after another at hyper speed without actually moving anywhere. This time the fall was to the side as I attempted to crouch down and extend a hand, and it knocked the wind right out of me. I looked up as I laid there, thoroughly humiliated, and saw them: Canadians walking past me as if nothing had happened. Some glanced down briefly, some didn't. The last straw was when one older man with a dog gave me a nod and said "Lovely day, isn't it?" I got in my car and made the two difficult left turns necessary to change parking lots.Something New: I realized as I was writing this that if I had done the "Old, New, Borrowed, Blue" thing a few days ago I could have really populated it with ease (old archives, new design, borrowed quote that Jon showed me, new blue header graphic, respectively). My timing is stupid. One new thing: I am seriously considering getting a cat. I don't have a cat any more, but I love cats. I was a little wary of it because I have had terrible allergies to cats in the past, but a strange thing happened: When I went off dairy and sugar I found that my allergies disappeared. At the moment I am no longer allergic to 99% of the things I was this time last year. At one time I would get allergic reactions so strong that I could barely breathe or keep my eyes open. It was horrible. Now? I'm totally fine. And I think that's awesome. My kids would love to have a cat and, you know what? I think I would, too. So stay tuned to this blog because believe me; if I get one there will be photos. Something Borrowed: From Dan Dickinson's Vjarmy, a post so vile and so disturbing that I actually laughed out loud for days every time I'd think about it again. This has been described to me, more than once, as the worst blog post of all time. Brace yourself:Yellow When I came in on Wednesday, I was alerted to some sort of ceiling leak in one of the rooms I can often be found in. I helped to clean up the slightly yellowish liquid, thinking the coloration was caused by the pipes or the ceiling tile or something else. I was just informed that the leak in question was coming from Autopsy. Despite the fact that I've showered twice since then and washed my hands countless times, I feel like I could really use another shower right now. *shudders*Something Blue: Sorry I Am by Ani Difranco. If you've ever been in a relationship that didn't work out and yet you don't feel your heart torn apart when you read this, you should check yourself for a pulse. I can barely read all the way to the end without wincing in pain. Now I'll be checking your blog for your version of old, new, borrowed, blue. |
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| January 25 | Untitled "Beware the weeping of the wronged and orphaned children and the sighing of the victims of oppression, lest their tears should turn to floods and their breaths should turn to fire." - 'Abdu'l-Bahá Thanks, Jon. |
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| January 25 | Sad Weather I watch your eyes go off into a corner of the room Two years are suddenly just yesterday You ask me if I mind you bringing up her name again so soon I will shake my head and let you speak No, I will let you say what you need to say. Never before have I seen so close to me the workings of this wheel Turning and tearing up the ground. The soil where grows the heart of someone I've known so well. The furrowing has left you weak, crying "Why did all this rain come down?" But you won't wake up tomorrow with the spring busting down your door. It's cold again today and we may be in for more sad weather. Looking at the trees flying naked at the sky And somehow through the winter there forms another ring. Violent as it seems, confused and aching, rising, tumbling on this ferris wheel Sometimes we're forced motionless and still To remind us of the changeless things. But you won't wake up tomorrow with the spring busting down your door. It's cold again today and we may be in for more sad weather. Sad weather. Hearing your voice I see you clearly in my mind And you're dancing and saying you're no longer scared. The sorrow and joy like rose and thorn are married close on the same vine And you wrap yourself in all its leaves till I can no longer see you there. I'm longing to wake up to the spring busting down my door. We're all feeling so cold in this lack of something more. In this sad weather. Sad weather. - Roger Lee |
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| January 24 | That explains it. Today is the most depressing day of the year. |
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| January 24 | After Elf, Anchorman, Starsky and Hutch, Old School and Zoolander I've decided that Will Farell really mustn't be allowed to make any more movies. |
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| January 23 | Your Family Must Be A Bit Different Than Mine The thing about Denny's Restaurant that catches my eye is the big sign outside which says "FAMILY RESTAURANT OPEN 24 HOURS". What kind of family packs up the kids in the station wagon and goes off to eat a Philly Melt at 3:50 AM? |
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| January 23 | Thank You Thank you, Peter. I realized when we were in San Francisco that we're friends and brothers, and you were one of the only people who were able to help me feel better when I couldn't do it on my own. Thank you, Mom. Hundreds of phone calls and emails and you never run out of resources to inspire and restore me when all else fails. Thank you, Rachel, for listening and listening and listening and listening and listening and never once giving me the feeling that I was asking too much. Thank you Greg and Dave for being there for that bit of reassurance when I needed it. Sometimes all it takes is a hand on the shoulder from a friend, and you guys gave me that. Thank you Aaron for never stopping, under any circumstances, to be the real thing. Thank you, Dad, for saying exactly the right words at the right moment. Thank you, Terry, for sharing your happiness with me. It was medicine for my ailments. Thank you Ruth and Dora for teaching me what matters and what doesn't... possibly the best gift of all. Thank you to everyone who has hurt me in the last 12 months (and some of you did an excellent job of it). Because of you I had to learn how to be stronger than I've ever been before. Without you I might never have bothered. |
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| January 22 | Return See? I told you I'd be back. |
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| Jan 4 | I was just reading about how Britney Spears intends to leave pop stardom because she wants to become a crime scene investigator just like the scientists on CSI, who inspired her. *sNoRt* |
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| Jan 3 | Wellbutrin You might remember me taking something called Dexedrine and it turning me into a whirling buzz-saw of anxiety and freakazoidishness. Im starting something new called Wellbutrin. It's a different kind of drug for ADD than the Dexedrine. It's not a straight-up stimulant in the way Dexedrine is, but it also has some sort of an anti-anxiety agent and blahblahblah whatever. It's a pretty blue pill. I'm popping it. Expect a progress report. Unless I start clawing my eyeballs out in a fit of paranoid rage. If that happens I'll have someone else type it up for me. If I don't try to bite through their flesh. |
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| Jan 3 | Guitar I am on my way to Macworld Expo in less than a week. It's been a few years since I've attentended one of these shows and it's going to be an unusually big one for me, professionally and personally. MacGamer is ready to make some pretty unexpected and dramatic lurches forward (after a long, dry period) and I am so excited about it that I can barely keep my fat mouth shut. I can't lie, however; one of the main attractions for me (if not the main attraction) is my friends. I will be seeing people that I really like and haven't connected with in ages. One of those people is Al Schilling. Now, Al is the Senior Product Manager at MacSoft, and we've had professional dealings for a number of years now. When the business hats come off, however, we almost always pick up a couple guitars and start playing and singing. Al is just about my speed when it comes to music; good singer, great guitarist and really able to be a showman on a moment's notice. I'm pleased to say that almost every time we hook up at a Macworld show, we usually have a huge crowd of people gathered around us who just want to listen and sometimes sing along. They're usually drunk off their asses, but it's as close to performing as I've come in a long time. Right now I'm working on some songs to play with Al when the time comes. One of them is the Tragically Hip's "Ahead By A Century" (from their album, Trouble At The Henhouse). This is going to be very good for my soul. |
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| Jan 2 | My Life Flashing Before My Eyes That was 2004. |
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| Jan 2 | About Eating I have a pretty strict diet right now. I actually find it quite workable; as much water as I can drink (usually 2L a day or more is all I can stand). No dairy. No caffeine. No sugar. It's not for weight loss so much, but I'm finding: a) It's easier to get up in the mornings, b) My skin is getting clear and healthy-looking, c) My energy is way up, d) my sinuses are clear. I think the diet would work better if it wasn't for the fact that every five or six days I sometimes lose my self-control. |
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| Jan 1 | The Year That Was"Dear 2004, I love you, now please fuck off. Best, Heather." ~ Heather P. Champ(Thanks, Kris) |
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| Dec 31 | This One's For Bill Three names you go by: Corey Joel Hey You In The Bushes Three screen names you have: Jowicota Orbital DogStar Three things you like about yourself: I really like people of all sorts and kinds I make people laugh I'm good with dental hygiene Three things you hate/dislike about yourself: I have Attention Deficit Disorder Weight I don't care a lot about, but I'm not in great shape... and I do care about that Still woefully lacking in understanding of what love is and what it's for Three parts of your heritage: I'm from Cape Breton (I'm not actually sure about much else) Three things that scare you: Hurting someone's feelings My kids will grow up without knowing their spiritual selves That I can't/won't change Three of your everyday essentials: Prayer Water and Vitamins A walk around the neighborhood at night Three things you are wearing right now: My new socks Cargo pants Four days' worth of stubble Three of your favorite bands/artists at this moment: Sarah Slean Tool The Hives Three of your favorite songs at this moment: Day One (Sarah Slean) Main Offender (The Hives) Roll It Up (Crystal Method) Three things you want to try in the next 12 months: Finishing my overdue/outstanding projects Taking an actual, bona-fide vacation Giving up diary and sugar completely Three things you want in a relationship (love is a given): Flexibility Reciprocity Unconditional acceptance of one another Two truths and a lie: Money means very little to me I usually think of problems as opportunities Everyone who says "Yeah, me too" about those two things is always telling the truth Three physical things about the opposite sex that appeals to you: Most of the teeth still intact Eyeballs point in the same direction No moldy smells Three things you just can't do: Eat fried baloney Resist sushi or pho tai Take Dexadrine Three of your favorite hobbies: Playing guitar Drawing cartoons Warhammer Three things you want to do really badly right now: Eat a huge, steaming bowl of pho Get a massage. A good one. Work up the motivation to shave Three careers you're considering: Computer game developer Website editor (though I already am that) Teacher of some kind Three places you want to go on vacation: Mexico Italy Israel Three kids' names: My kids? Ruth and Dora. A third name? Countertop. Three things you want to do before you die: Visit the Baha'i Shrines in Israel again See my kids be happily married Live somewhere where the white people are outnumbered by the non-white people Three people who have to take this quiz now or die a painful death: Kris Boyer Peter Cohen Dan Dickinson |
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| Dec 28 | When It Works, It Works Sometimes in life you make good decisions and follow your heart and it pays off. In fact, most of the time it pays off... the trick is not to lose sight of the big picture and forget about the good decisions and following your heart. Well, this year is almost up and I'm looking back. I've made some really good decisions and I really see them paying off. No idea what I'm talking about? Doesn't matter. Just look at the monkey. |
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| Dec 20 | Winter Though many of you may be tired of hearing my quotidian rantings about my day to day life, I have to say that the banal topic of winter and the effects thereof is right at the top of my list of annoyances at the moment. Today it's -43 degrees Celcius (with the wind chill). When I tell my American friends this, they usually don't flinch because they assume that whatever temperature it is, the conversion to Farenheit will make it seem less terrifying. This is because the conversion usually raises the number, i.e. Zero degrees Celcius is 32 degrees Farenheit. What they don't realize is that there's a point at which the Celcius rating is actually *more* civilized than the Farenheit rating. It gives me great pleasure to tell my American friends that the temperature here where I live is -45 degrees Farenheit. The overall effect of the low temperature in my heated home isn't that dramatic, but the toilet seat is so cold I'm afraid that I'm going to experiene the same thing that happens when you put your tongue on the frozen fence in winter time. So I'm avoiding that. |
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| Dec 17 | Trying Something New I'm ripping an idea off from the Flick Filosopher (one of the best movie review sites on the web) and, by doing so, replacing the idea I stole from Absquatulate (even she doesn't use it any more so why bother)? All those little things I got lined up at the top of the screen are like... well, you get the idea. |
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| Dec 17 | Quotidian I'm going to use this word as much as I can today, regardless of whether it makes sense in the context or not. |
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| Dec 8 | So Much For Those Days Of Looking Awesome Boy, am I sick. I feel terrible. Last night I couldn't sleep more than ten minutes at a time because I couldn't breathe through my nostrils, and breathing through my mouth is a nasty affair that turns normal saliva and lip-flesh into something the consistency of pancake batter. It's every bit as bad as it sounds. And my nostrils? Still packed with plaster of paris. Annoying. |
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| Dec 6 | It's Just Not Right I'm having another one of those days where I look great and yet there's no one around who gives a damn. I can't bear it. |
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| Dec 5 | Humanitarian "I'd feel guilty if I washed my pillows, drowning all those mites" -Rachel |
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| Dec 3 |
A Little Baloney Never Hurt Anyone
I took one of those online tests that are all the rage. Here's what I came up with
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| Dec 1 | Further To The Owie So I was leaving the pimple alone, which is what you're supposed to do. If you mess with it, it gets worse. Thing is, it itches and I involuntarily reached up to scratch it without thinking about it. Then it looked like this. Now, today, it looks like this. |
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| Dec 1 | Owie Mom told me once that when Troy Donahue, as a young actor back in the 60's, got a pimple while making a movie somewhere that they'd postpone filming for a week or more until it went away. I have a really nasty-looking pimple on my head. It's bright as day and sings like a sparrow. It's so nasty I took a photo of it. Here's the photo: Pimple. Now, don't go clicking on that and then complaining to me that you didn't need to see it. The link is labeled "Pimple" and you're the one that clicked it. |
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| Nov 29 | Astrology Mom sent me this a few days ago. It's cribbed from an astrology site she visits (she's not really serious about astrology, but we both look into it for fun from time to time): You're about to open your eyes to something you've suspected to be true for some time. It won't be bad, so don't worry. You will end up in an extremely different frame of mind than you've been in, though. I realized recently that I don't have enough really good underwear. I don't think this was the realization in question, though. I'll keep you posted. |
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| Nov 25 | Want To Get Me Something For Christmas? I want a kilt. A good one. |
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| Nov 18 | Christmas And That About It Which Sucks Every time I hear Annie Lennox singing Winter Wonderland over the speakers at Giant Tiger*, a piece of my soul dies. *Canadian department store that makes K Mart look like Macy's. |
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| Nov 3 | Colin On The Re-Election Of Bush "I'm just telling everyone I'm Canadian from now on. No paperwork that way. I'll be from the Province of Donutoba." |
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| October29 | Nicole Ritchie How stupid do you have to be to be paired up on a TV show with Paris Hilton, and you're referred to as the "dumb one"? |
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| October27 | This Is How You Say It "So, my day has been like swimming in an overflowing chamber pot." - Peter Cohen That about sums it up. |
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| October26 | Update, Or Something Like It Here's the update on my life: It's not really going well right now. There, I said it. I've always felt like there was a certain degree of shame in admitting that things aren't going great, so coming out and saying so doesn't make me feel all that wonderful. Saying it in a public forum is even worse. But there you have it. I felt like giving a big dose of truth here... if for no other reason than to be able to bring that quote from Fight Club to mind: "People with this kind of honesty make me go a big rubbery one" So what's not going well? 99% of you wouldn't care. What I can say, however, is that my attitude is simple: Things go badly so that you can build up the strength to get things going well. Trees grow dead branches, they get lopped off by someone who cares about the tree, and a better branch grows. A garden gets choked by weeds, someone who cares about the garden yanks them out, and healthy flowers/vegetables/whatever grow. This is how things work. My life is in rough shape right now, but... it looks as though it's a matter of something needing to be removed to make room for something better to grow in its place. Sure, it hurts to experience amputation, but it's better than letting the gangrene spread through your body. So, as it is, my life is going pretty crummy... unless you look at it in the perspective of making me a better, stronger person... in which case it's going not too badly. Here's hoping that when the wind tries to blow the dead leaves off my branches that I'll let them loose. |
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| October25 | Reality I was in a Games Workshop store recently talking to some guys about I forget what, when I overheard a conversation between some of the patrons and some of the staff. It was an animated conversation about how one of the Warhammer armies, named "Skaven" was created and came into the world. You see, there's this thing about a tower that some village was trying to build and then a stranger came to the village one day and said "I'll help you build the tower" and so they let him and when he did something bad happened and rats grew big and picked up weapons and started killing everyone. I kinda checked in and out of the conversation as it progressed, but what amazed me was the length of time that this conversation was spanning; it was a good 20 minute conversation about how Skaven came into the world. They then all joined into an animated discussion about who that mystery person who built the tower was. Could he have been this guy? That guy? The other guy? (The names escape me. Sorry). It was not a casual discussion... this was something these guys really cared about. This was something that they obviously gave a lot of thought to on those nights when they lie awake, staring at the darkness. I thought to myself "Is this how far these people are out of touch with reality? That they put this kind of thought and energy into wondering where non-existent rat people came into being and who was the other non-existent person who made it happen?" I felt a little weird being around this, so I left. I was a little worried that if I stayed there for too long that my own grasp on reality might start to dissolve, it was that serious. I wandered next door to a hair salon that I frequent and looked for some new shampoo, of which I was in need. Now, as you can imagine if you have ever been in a hair salon, there was no shortage of hair products. I stood before the shelf which served my usual brand and started rifling through the bottles to find the shampoo. I found conditioner, which isn't really that exotic of a choice. I found leave-in conditioner, which is a bit more unusual, given that most people use a conditioner before they get out of the shower/bath/whatever. There was a styling gel, which was also nothing unsual. "Firm" and "light" varieties indicated the differing degrees of hold that each could offer. I also found styling gel for thick hair and for thinning hair. Ok, good enough. There was also styling cream, forming cream, pomade and sculpting cream. There was a product I forget the name of, the purpose of which was to make your hair shinier and one called "mud" that was intended to make it less shiny. If the mud wasn't interesting to you, there was also "clay" and "stucco". There was a finishing rinse, for when you were done washing and conditioning, as well as a product I couldn't quite get the hang of but appeared to be a sort of varnish that held your hair in place once you got it "just so". In addition I also saw several varieties of hair spray and no fewer (I kid you not) than five permutations of shampoo. This is all from the same company, by the way. I did a little quick math and realized that if I were to use all their products in one sitting that I would be putting roughly a gallon of product on my head every morning, would take ninety minutes to get ready to leave the house and could pay about $200 monthly in upkeep to make sure the products didn't run out. There were several posted advertisements which shockingly indicated that, yes... this is what they expected you to do. At that moment I rethought my perspective that the nerds in Games Workshop were out of touch with reality. Though I didn't particularly care to waste my time trying to theorize on where the Skaven came from, I was definitely certain that a handful of shampoo, a handful of conditioner and a pea-sized blob of gel run through your hair is all the work a man should probably do on his coiffure before he goes out to greet the world. |
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| October 19 | I Got Nothin' Been a while since I've updated, but there's a good reason for that. I've been doing lots of living lately, but not the kind of living that makes for good reading. Don't worry; I'm not lettin' the blog expire. I'm just waiting for something *real* good to tell you. |
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| October 8 | What Attention Defecit Disorder Feels Like Today I took a look at my office, which is a small but cozy room that I've worked in for about five years now. It was a sty. I mean a complete disaster area. A horror show. As I surveyed the arena of disorganization and mess, I decided it was time to clean it up. When I beheld the scene, I realized that a few quick pick-ups, a little straightening and a bit of stacking would transform this room into a completely clean, completely habitable environment again. And so it began: I picked up a few things, moved them to the right place, and then turned my attention to the next thing. Following that, I cleaned yet another thing, tossed a bit of garbage that had been hanging around and sorted a few items. And then I went blank. Where only seconds before I had been busily cleaning along while humming to myself, I suddenly forgot where I was in the process of things. Where only moments before I coudl see the patterns and the logical flow of cleaning, I was suddenly struck with a sort of psychological blindness where I could not figure out what to do next. I could not figure out where to begin, neither could I decide which thing comes next. Do I move my books? Wait, if I move my books I have to make room with my DVDs, but... this DVD case is empty and I can't put it away until I find the DVD that's supposed to go in there... I think I left it in this pile, but this pile has CDs and DVDs mixed together, so I gotta sort them out. Wait a second, some of these CDs belong to friends of mine so I gotta make a new pile. There's no room to make that many piles though, so I'd have to move some things to clear a bit of space. Will I do it on the desk or the... wait. Where was I? (long pause) Do I move my books? Wait... if I move my books I have to make room with my DVDs, but... this DVD case is empty... The state of stunned paralysis came to an end an hour and ten minutes later when I realized I'd been sitting in the same position trying to figure this problem out for so long that my foot fell asleep. |
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| October 6 | Honk Honk File this in the "Stuff I Shouldn't Enjoy" category: When I have parked my car and have gone into a place of business such as a bank or the post office, I like to look out the window and see if I can actually see the car. If I can, then I will wait until pedestrians walking by come really close to it. Then I hold up my key chain and with the little remote-control button, I will set off the car alarm (which honks at full volume in short, never-ending blasts). I really shouldn't do this to people, but it just makes my entire day. I particularly like waiting until skater kids are really close (you know, the ones with the pants half way down their butts). They tend to jump highest when the horn starts blasting. |
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| October 4 | I Only Stare This Way At You... I'm on this kick where I can't stop listening to the Police's Does Everyone Stare? I used to think this was the dumbest song they'd ever written and now I can't stop listening to it. What's wrong with me? |
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| October 4 | Today's Quote "If you think you know me, you don't. If you think you want to, you do." |
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| Sept 30 | All Kinds Of Fine Damn, I look good today. What a waste. |
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| Sept 30 | Holy. 23,000 words written in this blog since February 6. And here I was thinking I was busy doing important stuff. |
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| Sept 30 | Chocolate, Star Wars, Hot Water, Squash, Perfume A small collection of thoughts I've had over the last few days. First thing: When a kid comes to your door selling chocolate, buy some. Even if you don't want any. Even if you're allergic to the chocolate. Ask what the fundraising is for, but just so you can be polite and take an interest, i.e. don't withhold on the basis of who gets the money. Buy the chocolate. Buy two bars if you can. This is important stuff. Just trust me on this. I rented the Star Wars movies (Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. Obviously Episode 3 isn't available). It's an interesting thing how these movies can simultaneously be some of the best and worst of the sci fi genre. I think PVP author Scott Kurtz summed it up best in this cartoon, but I have to say that I think there's great power in Lucas' choice of symbols, archetypes and story. Here's something I whipped up about the ten best things Star Wars has to offer: 1. Watching Ray Park (Darth Maul) do his thing is like watching a symphony in motion. 2. Alec Guinness does more acting in one scene with the corners of his mouth than most actors do in their whole careers. 3. There is no such thing as a movie that isn't improved by Muppets. 4. When it comes to giant, awe-inspiring machines of war, nobody out-does George Lucas. 5. Boba Fett == Still Cool. 6. Jango Fett == Arguably even cooler. 7. The sound design of every film in the Star Wars series is downright amazing... and it keeps getting better. 8. I'm amazed how the sight and sound of lightsabres clashing can still quicken the pulse. I really am. 9. Darth Vader's voice. 10. Lots of awesome video games spawned from the movies. 1. Jar Jar Binks was one of the worst ideas ever in the history of stink-o ideas. 2. Mark Hamill? Carrie Fisher? Harrison Ford? Not really very good actors. 3. George Lucas? Not really a good director. 4. If you can get Sam Jackson, Ewan McGregor and Christopher Lee into a movie and still fail to make me go "WHOA! That was INTENSE!" then you're doing something wrong. 5. Jake Lloyd. Cute kid. Needs to die... 6. ...but Hayden Christianson is such a bad actor that he single-handedly makes points 2, 3 and 5 irrelevant merely by his presence. He really needs to die. 7. Lucas should never have screwed around with the movies and kept adding CGI to the old masterpieces. It wasn't necessary. If the story is good then adding new lizards or creepy crawly creatures or whatever isn't necessary. Look at a movie like Finding Nemo... that movie could be done with sock puppets and it'd still be amazing. Why? Because the story is great. Star Wars should enjoy the same distinction. 8. I'm not completely convinced that he had the whole vision from the beginning. He maintains that he did, but certain elements of how the six movies unfold give me the impression that he was making a lot of stuff up as he went along (like, if he had the story all mapped out from the beginning, am I comfortable that he had brother and sister Luke and Leia playing kissy-face so much? I dunno). 9. Some of the costuming is kind of ridiculous (especially on Padme Amidala in Episode 2... that's some pretty psycho-freaky-sex gear she's wearing from time to time). 10. If you're a little older, like me, you'll remember the disco version of the Star Wars theme that was on the radio for a while back in 1977. Whoever was behind that still isn't forgiven by me yet. In other news, my hot water heater went out of commission on Monday. It was 14 years old (which in hot water heater years is like 200000 years old), and so it suddenly decided to go south and spray water into my neighbour's basement. So it was slated for replacement, which happened today (after me not having hot water for two days and piling dishes up to the ceiling). On a seemingly (but not) unrelated topic, I took the kids to another fair on Sunday. After taking them to the wash-out that was Almonte's über-lame, ride-less fair, I felt that I owed them. We went to a nearby community called Carp that has a pretty impressive fair and we rode tons of rides and played skee-ball and man... what a great day. Oddly, though, the fair grounds were completely dusty and all of us (kids and me) got covered in fine dirt from the day out. I gave the kids a bath on Sunday night, as I always do, and though the kids protested I thought it really was a good idea given the day we had. The next morning I checked out the tub and I had to laugh because there was silt-like dirt all over it. It was quite amazing. You could actually write your name in it with your finger. This was totally unusual for the kids (even at their worst) and I knew that it was mostly them bringing the Carp fair grounds home with them on their dirty little bodies and feet. I couldn't rinse the tub out yet, though; I had to take a photo or show someone first. It was just too incredible. I didn't actually get around to it, though, and the next thing you know the hot water heater guy was in the house on Monday poking around with the pipes while I was out on an errand (I had given the landlord permission to let him in while I was gone). Well, the hot water heater guy went upstairs to check the bathroom and though he said nothing I know he saw the river of sludge that was in the bathtub. I was mortified because even though he was silent I think he believes the tenant of this home: a) Doesn't wash the tub out after a bath, b) Is a filthy, pig-like slob covered in dirt, and c) Plays with Polly Pocket dolls, as there were a few scattered around the bathroom. I cleaned the tub without taking the photo. I just had to do it for my own peace of mind before some other hot water heater guy comes in. Gah. Alright, moving on to a different topic; tomorrow morning I go to play Squash again with Rob. I've had a rather irregular schedule lately of playing, mostly because summer-time plans and what-have-you have made either Rob or me unavailable on Squash days, so... we just kind of gave up for a while. Now, I have to confess that even though I've dropped 50 pounds since the early spring, I have lately been eating like a slob and doing almost no exercise. In fact, that's kinda why I'm eager to get back into it, but I know that I'm going to do about five minutes of playing and then fall to my knees, clutching my heart, sweating like a waterfall, face purple and begging for a strawberry-and-cream frappuccino and a chocolate brownie. I just hope no one is there with a camera to capture that moment. The last thing I'd like to say before ending this really long and rambling blog entry is: If I can stand outside and smell your perfume from the other side of the Home Depot parking lot, you're wearing way too much. Go home and wash that off before someone lights a cigarette and ignites you in a churning ball of flame or something. |
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| Sept 21 | Update Server hasn't changed yet. I'm too lazy to worry about that. Actually, it might be more of a matter of me just having other things to worry about. Anyhow, like I said, I doubt it'll be much of a difference on your end except for a few little things here and there. I will not be enabling comments, however; I'm asked about this sometimes - why I don't. I don't wish to seem particularly self-congratulatory or –even worse– arrogant... but I do like to keep control over a certain tone on this blog and it's too easy for all those who enjoy the anonymity/impunity of the internet to see comments section of a blog as an engraved invitation to be an ass. I have a rather long trip coming up where I will be trying to knit together several professional, medical and personal stops along the way. Even now some of the details are tentative, but I can already see that I'm going to be quite exhausted by the time I return. Alright, you don't really want to hear about all this. What you want to hear about is Canada's Wonderland. I went to Canada's Wonderland with my buddy Jon (here we are at a bookstore the night before, and here I am walking along Bay street looking like a drug dealer, while Jon looks like... er... not a drug dealer), and it was great. For those of you who are yankees or whatever, it's a theme park that's kind of below Disneyland but above Six Flags and stuff like that. We kinda did it on the cheap (which wasn't as hard as I thought it would be), but it was still terrific. Jon and I have a very different perspective on how to "do" a theme park. I like the spend the least amount of time in lineups for rides because I figure that if you only have a little bit of time then you should try to spend it actually doing stuff, even if it's not the Biggest Attraction™ stuff. Jon is completely different; he basically picks the biggest, barfiest ride and decides that it's worth waiting in line for 45 minutes (yes, that is a photo of ONE LINEUP TO ONE RIDE) so he can get 90 seconds of barfy thrills. That thing you're looking at in that photo is a spire where you go up 22 stories and then get dropped on your can at about 60 MPH. It was not incredibly pleasurable, but I did it because we had to wait in line for half an hour to get on it. We did go on some legitimate coasters rather than just the Can-Drop-O-Matic, so it wasn't a wash. I didn't take my kids with me and I'm sort of glad I didn't. As much as it appears to be a kid-friendly place, it's really a 10 to 12 year old friendly place mainly; I think a lot of the rides are too intense, the walking around is too long (it's a big place) and the lineups are asking way too much of smaller child (especially in the hot sun). What's more, the branding and advertising that goes on at this place is totally off the meter; I'm not particularly fond of the way my kids get subjected to so much advertising as it is, but this would have totally overloaded them. I'm going to take them to another "Old-Style County" fair this coming weekend (one with rides, like a normal fair... because I don't want more henna tattoos this time). I think that'll be better... lower-intensity rides, shorter lineups and probably just a better overall day. Oddly enough it may not be a lot cheaper than Canada's Wonderland (as you can do that really economically) but I have to say that fairs and rides and stuff are about kids having a good time. Anyhow, you were probably reading up to get more entertaining stuff, right? Here's a picture of me jumping on a bed. How's that? |
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| Sept 16 | Moving I'm going to move this blog to a different server. You're not going to notice a lot of difference from your end except that I'll be basing the blog in Moveable Type technology which will enable me to do RSS feeds and more some other advanced features. If you just pop in here to read and leave, you won't notice any difference. If you're into RSS feeds and searchable archives and so on, then that might interest you. As you were. |
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| Sept 16 | Good Times I had a chat with Jon Menon recently. He lives in Italy, but is currently visiting family and friends in Canada. When we connected a couple days ago, he asked me if I wanted to meet him in Toronto this weekend. My response was basically this: "Yes, I'll go if you promise me I'll have one f*@%king good time while I'm there. I'm completely serious. I have to have a seriously riotously good time. I need this. I need to have some fun."His response (without delaying for a split-second): "Fine. Canada's Wonderland?"What could I say? "Perfect."And that, my friends, is why Jon is The Man™. This weekend I'm off to ride rides, eat sugary crap and I may also get one of those giant foam fingers with "#1" printed on it in neon pink. |
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| Sept 16 | Ping I'm curious about something... who reads this stuff I'm writing? I don't keep a counter or anything and I never check my stats. Tell me if you're reading. |
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| Sept 14 | Reaching Out To Embrace The Random...I embrace my desire to- Tool, Lateralus |
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| Sept 13 | If You Don't Know Anything About DOOM 3, Don't Bother Clicking That thing about the the pants that I said below kind of reminded me of this. |
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| Sept 13 | You Smell Bad I'm going to begin this post with a digression and state that saying "You smell bad" is the right away to indicate that someone has a disagreeable odor. A lot of people believe it's correct to say "You smell badly", but this is wrong; "badly" is an adverb, which modifies a verb, and therefore that statement would communicate that you perform the act of smelling without skill or aptitude. "Bad", on the other hand, is an adjective that describes the smell (rather than the act of smelling), so when you say "You smell bad" it means the person to whom you are speaking has a bad smell. Now on to the point of this post: I want to say a few things to people who smoke. Dear Smokers, You smell bad. Sincerely, The Rest Of Us. It needs to be said: People who smoke smell bad. Non-smokers don't say it out loud very often because, instead, we just get used to it or get tired of saying it. It's true that a few of us will militantly strike forth to express our disgust at the way smokers smell, but there are so few that do it ends up looking as if they are only a handful of nutjobs and are, therefore, easily dismissed. Sadly, this isn't the case; every time a non-smoker sees another non-smoker going off on someone who smokes, we secretly think "Awesome. I wish I had the balls to do that". We don't think "Wow. What a nutjob". What smokers don't realize is that the smell is very strong. if I'm in a car at a stop light next to a car with a person smoking in it, I can often smell their cigarette, even if the windows of both cars are rolled up. When someone who smokes hangs their coat next to mine, I can smell their odor on me for days unless I clean it. Kissing a smoker is the worst thing in the world; the taste of their mouths is like licking out a garbage can full of butts. In fact, as I walk down the street and I see someone who is smoking coming the other way, I often hold my breath for as long as I can so I don't have to get a whiff of the person or the trail of stink that follows them for several seconds. Non-smokers have to deal with this all the time, and smokers don't realize it. In fact, they often don't believe it. It might be because they have diminished senses of smell due to smoking or maybe they just don't want to face the fact that they smell so bad, but most smokers will disregard these claims. Non-smokers know I'm telling the truth, however. Disregarding for the moment that your fingers turn yellow, your face gets haggard (it really does... just because it happens too gradually for you to notice doesn't mean it doesn't happen) and you waste an enormous amount of cash on buying cigarettes, the bottom line is that you smell just plain terrible. It's not that we don't love you (well, those of you that we would love anyway, regardless of your habit) and it's not that we're unwilling to put up with a lot of nasty pollution coming from your person, but it's sort of an insult for you to actually try and say that you don't smell bad. It's a complete diss when you think you can toss back one Tic-Tac and the stink just magically vanishes. It's an affront to basic physics to suggest that you can crack the car window roughly half a centimeter and every last trace of stench will be whisked magically out of the car. I guess the thing is... smoke if that's what you want to do. There are far worse things in this life. Just remember, however, that you can't pretend that you smell great. You don't. Peee-yoo. |
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| Sept 12 | Pants I'm wearing pants right now. These are pants that I used to wear a few years ago. I then gained a lot of weight and I couldn't wear them anymore. Haven't been able to since about 2001 or so. Today I saw them in my drawer and I decided to slip them on. They don't just fit... they're loose. Like, too loose to wear without a belt notched up to the fourth hole. Little victories like this make a difference. The truth is that I've lost some weight from stress. there's no arguing that. I have also lost weight through improved diet, exercise and generally decent living (as best I can). Overall I think it's a good thing. I have more to say about weight and so on, but I'll do that later. Nap time right now. |
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| Sept 11 | Nice I just gotta say that when I get told four times in one day by different people that I look like I've lost a ton of weight, I get all "Awwww yeah". |
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| Sept 11 | Please... someone... Take these nacho chips away from me. I can no longer help myself... |
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| Sept 11 | The Fair The Almonte Fair is in town this weekend. I got the two girls dressed up and ready to go, and off we went. Unlike the fair in previous years, the midway stuff (i.e. rides) didn't come because apparently there's some problem with insurance or something. Needless to say, a fair that != rides is a fair that == teh suck. When the girls and I got there and there were no rides, they were pretty crestfallen. And me, stupid as I am, was building the whole "ride" thing up all morning. "Which ride are YOU going to go first? What about YOU?" ...things like that. While I tried to come up with a decent plan B, I plied them both with hot dogs. As you can see here and here, Dora is easily plied. Ruth not so much (Dora did her impression of Puss In Boots from Shrek 2 as well, so there was much levity). The two of them spent a bit of time playing midway games like scoop-a-plastic-duck-with-a-stick (here and here), and get-a-crappy-prize-for-your-trouble. We also spent some time looking at really fuzzy chickens. At one point we ran into their cousin Jeremy (here and here) and they liked hanging out with her for a while. Dora did get something vaguely ride-like when she cut loose in the inflatible castle (here and here) while Ruth slurped down a sno cone (here and here). One of the highlights of The Incredibly Sucky Fair was how we all got henna tattoos (Ruth's was a vine, Dora's a rose, and I got two: God and Heaven in Japanese characters). Like most fairs, it was a sort of collection of crappiness thinly veneered with a layer of sugar coating (check out this picture of one of the trailers that sold sno cones; their brake light is jury-rigged from a metal ruler. That struck me as truly trashy for some reason). In the end analysis, however, the kids did manage to have some fun and no one got a sharp stick in the eye. I give it one thumb up out of two. |
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| Sept 10 | All The Stupid Ideas Most of my really, really stupid mistakes aren't done consciously so much, but more because I don't actually use reason or logic to think about what I'm doing before I do it. For instance, I smoke approximately one cigarette every eighteen months because it takes about that long for me to forget how absolutely nasty and vile cigarettes are. At that point I have successfully traveled from "Get this disgusting implement of Satan out of my mouth before I throw up on the carpet" to "You know, a nice smoke would be kind of refreshing right now". Then I take a puff and eighteen months of denial are washed away. I made just such a mistake tonight. I decided that I wanted to do something kind of take-out for the kids (because usually Wednesday is take-out day, but instead we had healthy, home-made meals), and I didn't want to do pizza again. And I didn't want to do Chinese. And there were a lot of the staples that I didn't want to do. So I stopped at the worst possible place in the entire world to get food... a place that I could only go for food if my memory was completely wiped clean of the last encounter I had with the establishment... the place that makes food so bad that it can almost be classified as toxic in and of itself... Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now don't get me wrong... I firmly believe that McDonald's is garbage. I believe that Wendy's is garbage. Taco Bell, Burger King, White Castle... all garbage. It's not that I think those things are somehow mystically good for you. It's just that Kentucky Fried Chicken is *worse*. The chicken is literally soaked in grease. I've never seen anything like it. After handling a drumstick I was literally unable to touch anything else without leaving a trail of slime. My poor kids are usually able to do things like eat chicken and then hold a fork, but their hands were so nasty they couldn't even keep a smooth dining implement in their tiny fingers. The french fries that came with the meal were awful... equally greasy but also mushy and soft and bound together by some strange bonding action that comes from being soaked in oil as a collective. The gravy was starchy and had that near-gelatanous texture while being salty almost past the point of my ability to keep it in my mouth. The pinnacle of nasty, however, came in the two side-salads: Macaroni and potato. each of them was crafted with some sort of mayonnaise mixed with sunscreen and the exotic, mysterious essence of athlete's foot. I tried both salads before serving them to the kids and I literally had to spit it out, as if I'd eaten something that normally lives in the small intestine of a goat. Not good. Vile, disturbing, horrid. Now I have reset the counter on my memory; I will not touch KFC again until the memory of this evening has completely left my consciousness. I am estimating ten years. Check back on my blog in late 2014 to see if I have wandered up to the counter and asked for the Family Meal, complete with cardboard, oil-absorbing bucket. |
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| Sept 8 | Writing I write. A lot. I didn't always think I was going to be a writer. I thought I'd be a visual artist or a musician or anything but a writer. You see, I never really had a lot of respect for writers. I think it's because most of the people I knew who called themselves writers were really just too lazy to learn a skill such as an instrument or how to dance. This isn't to say I never respected any writers, but in general I found most people gravitated to that identity because it's so hard to say when someone is a bad writer. When you can't sing, people know instantly. When you can't write... it's not as obvious. I think there's a lot of truly bad writing out there just because people think that they can hide behind the fact that most of the public can't tell good writing from bad. I've found at this point in my life that I am, in fact, a writer. I didn't choose it. I don't even think it'd be my first choice. It just is what I am. On an average day you could add up everything I write; blog entries, email, AIM, reviews, stories, pen-and-paper letters and you would probably find a good 5,000 words, easily. When I get up in the morning, I start writing. I write for work. I write to keep in touch with my loved ones. Once I've done all my work-related writing and my daily correspondence, I write more. I write to unwind. I write as my treat to myself at the end of the day. I write stuff most of you will never see. I write stuff that most of you will see. I can't keep enough journals and blogs to contain it all. I don't know if I'm really that good. I know that my writing sometimes entertains me, which I like. I know that people enjoy my writing sometimes, which is also awesome though I know that sometimes that's just a matter of casting a broad-enough net. I know that my writing makes me money, so it's got to have something special enough to distinguish itself for financial compensation. I know that when I'm in the groove of really writing something I have a solid grasp on that it's like shooting fish in a barrel; I have the sense – and it's usually right – that I simply can't lose. That the piece will be good. That it'll make sense. That people will understand. When I was a kid of 10 years old I used to write strategy guides for video games... sometimes 20 pages long or more. I would sometimes write commentary or editorials, all by hand. I'd write all this baloney and have no where to put it. After these stacks of foolscap would live under my bed for a few months, they'd usually go in the garbage. Funny about the video game thing, as I now do that as a living. I was just thinking about how I now have a few online journals going, belong to social networks that encourage writing (which I do), have papers all over the place... etc. etc. It is now occurring to me that I am not quite where I want to be yet. At the moment I am thinking about a book. Maybe a couple. Unlike a lot of my stupid ideas that seem great at the time and later turn into old gum, these thoughts about writing a book have been haunting me endlessly. I think that it's going to happen; I just need to let my thinking catch up with the inevitability of it. |
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| Sept 7 | On Second Thought ...if you wanna buy a picture of Chris Barylick on a T-Shirt, you can write to him here. I may have been a bit harsh in my analysis of the market potential for shirts with his face on it. |
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| Sept 7 | Well. Isn't Chris Precious? I ran this a few days ago at MacGamer when our Senior News Editor, Chris Barylick, turned 27. You gotta take a quick look at it before you read this next part. Done? Ok. Cool. Now check out the ensuing conversation with Chris from today:  At least he didn't want to have the fetus discussion again. |
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| Sept 7 | My Night 9:45 PM: Go to bed 3:45 AM: Wake up, play Total Annihation 4:10 AM: Back to sleep 9:10 AM: Wake up, make online journal entry |
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| Sept 5 | Movie Review Nobody wants to read an extended blurb about why I think Hero is such a fantastic movie, but I just have to say something about it (I saw it last night). So here are five reasons why you should see Hero: 1. It depicts almost superhuman hand-to-hand combat (even with the wires and special effects you still have to marvel at the staggering skill of the actors who do the fight scenes) but does so in a way which progresses a tale of love, betrayal, devotion and honor. In this way it's the only worthy successor to Crouching Tiger that I've ever seen. 2. The director is someone who understands the importance of beauty in film. This is a point that seems completely lost on Western film-makers. Some of the scenes are so beautifully created you can almost taste them. I made a joke to Rob (with whom I saw the movie) about how you could freeze-frame at any point of the movie, take a screenshot and use it as your desktop for years to come. 3. The story is quite excellent. I love watching foreign films of most types because, unlike Western movies, you don't always know how they'll end. This tale has great characters involved in an interesting plot, and both are unraveled a little at a time as the film progresses, revealing a bit more until you realize how very complex the story actually is. 4. Interestingly, there's a distinct lack of blood or gore. I'd hazard a guess that this is because of Chinese censorship laws which prohibit the depiction of peoples' guts falling out or spurting jugular veins and stuff, but I'll say that I find it quite a refreshing change. Without the distraction of stomach-turning effects I find that the attention stays on the story, the concepts and the ideas. After Kill Bill I have to say that I don't really believe that spraying blood everywhere makes a story or the action within it any better. 5. If you like seeing arrows stuck in things, boy... is this the movie for you. I can't say there are no criticisms, mind you; the fight scenes are numerous and, while beautifully created, tend to be a bit repetitive (though the scenic backdrops are always very luscious and appealing). Despite the abundance of combat, it might also seem a little slow to people who are looking for a non-stop action roller-coaster thrill-ride. Regardless of my checks in the "con" column, I'd say that Hero is the best movie I've seen this year. We'll see if I still think so after I watch The Station Agent tonight... |
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| Sept 5 | Keltie Turns 30 Keltie turns 30 today. Aside from her liking Pho Tai soup and being a general pain in the ass the two of us don't actually have much in common. But hey... happy birthday. |
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| Sept 3 | Dare To Dream This morning from Peter Cohen on AIM: what happened on penny arcade's home page today is largely what I imagine would happen if you and I ever started working together. If you're going to go look, scroll down... it starts with "My Day At Work". Do it quick, too... they change their home page content on Monday. Anyhow: God, he's right. He's so right. And the thing is, the roles could easily be reversible. I'm going to make myself a Darkspur this afternoon. Just FYI. |
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| Sept 2 | Steve To The Rescue He made me feel better with this email: "I put it in the dishwasher, turned it on, and in about five minutes I watched foamy bubbles ooze out from between the edges around the machine's door." This is the absolute, honest truth: there is nobody on the internet who makes me burst out in loud, unexpected laughter as much as you. You'd think I'd learn to expect it, but it always takes me by surprise. You should be making money doing this somehow. The problem is your humor is probably a tad too smart for all the stupid people who spend money. True? I dunno. But it was nice to hear it. --bliss-- :) :) :) |
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| Sept 2 | Dumb Song Gets Through The Defenses In the last few years there's been a wave of heavy metal crossed with teen angst that's hitting the radio. Groups like Nickelback are a good example of that; heavy guitar-driven music that talks about self-esteem problems and regret (among other things). It's not that I don't think there's a place for it, it's just not generally for me. I like heavy music, to be sure, but I find the top 40 "pop" style of metal a little less than challenging for my palette. More power to them for being able to play guitar on the radio and have it make them money, though. The lyrics also don't speak to me very deeply. I'll take the more seasoned, evolved lyricism of Tool or The Deftones over Nickelback. It just feels more adult. Again, I'm not trying to slight anyone's tastes... I'm just talking about what I'm into here. Pop metal and teen angst aren't generally my diet. Imagine, then, how surprised I was when I heard this song on the radio one day; it barely registered with me at the time but I've been playing it over and over in my head until I finally acquired the single. "Cold" by Crossfade is the song, and it's such a Nickelback ripoff that it almost makes one laugh; the throaty, overwrought vocal... the thick wall of distorted guitar... the predictable verse-chorus-verse... and, of course, the self-loathing, teen-angst lyrics intended for every sad, 16-year old boy in the world to see themselves as the modern-day Job, lonely and alone and steeped in regret for things they've scarcely had the lifespan to accomplish. I say "surprised" because even though most of the song is a throw-away for me (lyrics like "I never really wanted you to go / So many things you should have known / I guess for me theres just no hope" ...it's the early 21st-century version of "Moon, Spoon, June"), I was caught by the throat by a very simple line that penetrated my defenses and wouldn't leave my head. What I really meant to sayIt struck me as so simple and cutting that I almost think these top-40 skids must have arrived at the lyrics by accident, like that million monkeys at a million typewriters thing. There's a place that everyone arrives at where they want to say "I'm sorry for what I did". Some people can say that, some can't, but it's just part of human emotional existence... to be sorry for something you've done. Referencing it in a song has to be done with skill because it's so commonly felt that it's banal and unprovocative. There's a place beyond that, however, which is goes deeper than simply doing something wrong. There's a place where you stop looking at what you do as the mistake and you start to look at yourself as the mistake. What I really meant to say...The apology isn't for doing something you shouldn't have when you knew better. It's an apology for not knowing what you're doing wrong because it's simply what you do; not until you've left a smoking hole behind you does it begin to dawn that your way - the one that comes to you naturally - is the wrong one... and there's no changing it. ...is I'm sorry...The apology says "I'm sorry you met me", "I'm sorry I was in your life", "I'm sorry that you made the mistake of coming close to me". ...for the way I am.I wish I wasn't spending so much time repeating this to myself and feeling it touch me in a place I'd really rather not think about. I wish I could listen to this song and not hear my own voice talking to everyone I ever loved. |
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| Sept 2 | Kleenex Thanks to changes I've made in my diet, my yearly bout of severe allergies has arrived with significantly less strength in its muscles. Normally I'm laid out like a beached whale for the month of August and early Sept due to allergies to ragweed and whatever other crap might be floating around. This year, however, it's much less. I'm sniffling and everything, sure, but it's not like I want to scratch my eyeballs out with a fork. Nonetheless, the allergies have set in and I had a rough wake-up this morning because it felt as though someone had poured plaster of paris in my nostrils and somehow got red ants *inside* my eyeballs. I keep a roll of toilet paper by the bed to blow my nose in. As you can see, I've been busy.  |
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| Sept 1 | National "Do Everything Wrong" Day I've always had a problem with the detergent I put in my dishwasher; it clumps up and sticks to the dishes. I didn't make it to the grocery store on time to get some of that slick, sexy, "Liquid" detergent, so I thought I'd be a real genius and mix the dry detergent with some liquid dish soap until it was smooth so that it didn't get stuck to everything in sight. I put it in the dishwasher, turned it on, and in about five minutes I watched foamy bubbles ooze out from between the edges around the machine's door. It reminded me of those old episodes of the Brady Bunch where someone would put a whole box of detergent in the clothes washing machine and the hijinks would ensue with everyone in the family up to their armpits in soap... except this was my kitchen, and I did not feel hijinky. Earlier I tried to force an nearly-full pot of soggy noodles down the sink, thinking that if I smushed them up as they went into the hole that there would be no blockage. Well, as you already know, physics wasn't really my strongest subject, and there was about four inches of water in my sink that wouldn't drain. I went and got the plunger and started plunging but, on the first stroke, squirted myself in the eyeball with a jet of liquified and partly-solid wheat noodles that were mixed with dish soap and some of the broth they had been soaking in. Needless to say, I won't have any appetite for that dish in the near future. Worst of all, I really hurt Lori's feelings today. It was one of those things I wish I could have stopped time and somehow gone back to fix, but... there's no doing that, is there? It brings to mind how Hell is reportedly nothing more than being in the presence of God when you are exposed to the reality of His holiness, and the regret you feel for all the opportunities in your life that you missed to do the right thing. I find that easy to believe tonight. I just feel terrible; she's so sensitive and I can be so careless (particularly when jacked up on dexedrine). I listened to sad music all night and cleaned my home (I always clean when I'm upset). There's no feeling in the world like hurting someone you love and, afterwards, being able to see clearly that it was your fault. I will concede, however, that little bits of salty noodles in your eyeball can add insult to injury. |
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| August 31 | "...And In The Darkness Bind Them" Alright. Let's talk Dexedrine. It reminds me of The One Ring in a lot of ways; it transforms someone into another person. It's heartily sought-after. I love and hate it just as I love and hate myself. It's not going to last. I'm going to try it for a few more days just so I can say that I did it and did it right, but it's not something I can really work with. Every time I take it I spend the day feeling like I've taken a tazer shot to the head. I imagine that my doctor and ADD consultant will advise me to try different doses or different schedules or whatever, and I will, but... I'm keeping an eye open for other things because I don't believe this is the thing that's going to smooth out my wrinkles. |
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| August 27 | Not That Kind Of Abuse. Sorry. A friend who shall remain nameless (because the embarrassment would cause many problems) pinged me today and demonstrated a lack of care in composition. Anyhow, this is about the post just before this one. Friend In Question: abuse my ass... Corey Tamas: WTF? Friend In Question: your latest entry Corey Tamas: I think the punctuation you're looking for is "Abuse, my ass." Corey Tamas: Not "Abuse my ass" Friend In Question: Oh yes! *blushes* Friend In Question: anyway, what i meant was that i think that dog is very cute |
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| August 27 | Only You Can stop the abuse |
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| August 25 | You Can All Relax Now My favorite pair of socks was split up, one of them having gone missing. I just found it. I feel a lot better now. |
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| August 25 | Quote Of The Day "And while New York has had a mild summer all around, I still seem to be the only one who is standing in the humid subway stations, soaking in sweat; the single sloppy, dripping loser amongst an army of perfectly coiffed, impossibly thin hipsters." It gets better. Read the rest. |
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| August 24 | Heal It Up I just mentioned this song in the "Hear, Feel, See" area above. It's by Concrete Blonde, one of those bands that I will adore until the day I die. I go through phases like this: Listen to some Concrete Blonde, check out another band for a few months or a year, back to Concrete Blonde, then off to another band. Return again to Concrete Blonde, then off I go. Back, forth, back, forth, etc. After having been listening to their album, Mexican Moon (available at the link I gave in the header area) for about ten years or more I am ready to say that Joanette Napolitano is one of the greatest rock vocalists ever. It pales so quickly when you take something as powerful and flexible as her singing style and try to reduce it to words, but even so; her voice is incredible to me. In an era where female singers tend to have little-girlish (Britney Spears), choked-in-the-throat (Gwen Stefani) or laughably hystrionic "R&B" embellishments (Christina Aguwhatsherface), I'm not surprised that Napolitano didn't make more of a splash in the top 40. Heal It Up is an excellent example of what she's capable of. She starts low in a threatening contra-alto range and builds the intensity nice and slow through the first two verses leading into the chorus. At first I always have my hair completely blown back by her Hammer-Of-Thor voice in the chorus cutting loose, but I am also always struck by how she can deliver the verse with with such power and transition into the four-bar-long, fortissimo notes of the refrain. In particular, my jaw just drops when I hear her move from the howling final note of the second verse right into the long chorus. It makes the hair on my arms stand up. Sometimes it makes you wonder how many female musicians are out there in the world, making their mark and creating definitive rock music that we'll never hear. |
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| August 24 | Coffee So this morning I decided to go out into the sunshine in my stylish jeans and my new black long-sleeved T shirt and take a very quick trip around downtown Almonte. In doing so, I stopped into the Bread and Butter bakery and picked up a coffee and a croissant, which I had been craving (yes! I am craving food! With sugar and caffeine!). When I got home I realized that I had not taken my daily medication yet, so I popped one and went back about my business. Well, as it happens, the coffee is still sitting there cold and the chocolate croissant is going stale. I am suddenly overtaken with a revulsion for both of them. Oh, the cruel irony. Today no fewer than three people all independently asked me if I've lost weight. I believe I have. Thing is, it's in part because of the drugs... but not for the reasons you may think. I am still eating three meals a day (ok, well, two... though I try to do three) because I force myself to eat them. The last thing I want is to forget I have to eat, pop a handful of chips once a day and end up dying of scurvy. So that's not going to happen. What has happened, however, is that my desire to take portions that are too big for me has subsided and my desire to snack just because I'm bored has completely died. What's more, my desire for sugary, sweet food has also abated, so I've been living on modest but healthy portions of the four basic food groups and water (no dairy in general, though I am eating yogurt). In addition, I'm also trying to exercise semi-regularly, though I find this to be a challenge; I'm doing it, but it's not easy. So yeah, I have lost weight. Time for new pants. |
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| August 21 | Drugs If I were you I'd be getting sick of hearing that there's lots going on, but very little that I want to share here. Yeah, it does kinda suck to be you, but... I'm hoping you'll understand. I will share something now that I wans't going to talk about: Drugs. I'm on a medication called dexedrine. It's for the ADD I mentioned, and it's the drug I've been waiting for that I spoke about on August 2. So far it's nothing but a big gift basket full of side effects. Here's what I'm experiencing so far: 1. Sleep is disturbed. I took the first capsule on day one at 4 PM and didn't sleep for 36 hours following it... and I felt no fatigue whatsoever. So that couldn't have been good. I am sleeping a little better now that I'm a few days into it, but sleep hasn't been the same. 2. I have no appetite. At all. I have zero interest to eat. I actually find it kind of interesting because the foods that I've been really addicted to (for instance, Pepsi) I simply cannot even look at. The thought of drinking that stuff makes me want to throw up. I believe it's my brain hanging up a big red sign saying "no more stimulants, please. KTHXBYE". Anyhow, one thing I have been trying to stay on top of is my over-eating, and though starvation or malnutrition is no substitute, I am finding the urge to "snack" has evaporated. This does qualify as something of a victory in my book. 3. Dry mouth. When I wake up in the morning I need to use a butter knife to pry my lips open. This has another interesting and not undesirable side-effect; I'm drinking tons of water. Not soda. Not juice. Not coffee. Water. It's what I crave right now when my mouth is dry. I have been trying really hard to drink more water and, let me tell you, it's a lot easier to succeed when you're actually craving it while not craving something else that's loaded with caffeine and sugar. 4. Anxiety. This is hard to put my finger on; I think I have more anxiety, but I'm not entirely convincced. Ok, yeah. I'm lying. Yes, I do have more anxiety, and it sucks. Anxiety is so very much not what I need right now. It's not constant; it sets in the second half of the day after the real good part is over (I have a nice, mellow, Rocky Mountain high for the first half of the day when I take it). 5. Pooping. We won't even discuss this. 6. Spelling mistakes. It's not that I don't know how to spell anymore, it's that my brain just seems to stop putting all the letters into words. These aren't standard mistakes like their/they're/there mistakes. These are mistakes like spelling my name Coey, or orey, or Crey. It's not that it's such a crime, as there's always a spellchecker to tell me when I'm going off base, but I'm getting teased now. How about the benefits? Well, I'm holding off judgment on that for now. As it is, I haven't been able to get used to it enough to actually try functioning while under the influence... so I can't report any great victories, yet. On the other hand, it takes several days for the body to get used to this drug and I believe once mind does I will start to find ways to use the highs and lows to my benefit. That's what it's all about after all. In the mean time, it's all about getting that last bottle of water down before I head off to the bathroom. |
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| August 17 | Man ...do I ever smell good today. Why is that, I wonder? I only wish that there was someone here with me tonight that could enjoy how awesome I smell. As it is, I don't even have a cat to share that with. Oh, well. One-man party of smelling myself, I suppose. Try not to be too jealous. |
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| August 15 | Scratch One Curly Straw So my kids are eating very well made hamburgers and drinking freshly squeezed orange juice through curly straws, and my youngest, Dora, has a problem. She says that there is meat -as in bits of hamburger - in her orange juice and she has NO idea how it got there. So I've decided to start with a challenge to her to help herself. So I had her a fork and tell her to gently take it out and put it on her plate.Fast forward a minute later. She tells me that the straw is blocked and doesn't work anymore because there is meat in it. She's been sucking like a lamprey eel on the straw and managed to pull a hunk of hamburger - which never should have been in the orange juice in the first place - about five inches into the twisty straw canal. I tell her that she can get down from the table and go play. The straw has been retired. |
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| August 13 | Next Up... Still nothing to report just now. I'm having a sad day. Get lost. Well, actually, I have lots to report, but not here. There's stuff that goes in the blog and stuff that doesn't. This doesn't. Not just now, anyhow. You can still get lost, though. |
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| August 9 | Indeed. Nothing to report just now except that I have a mild cold (very low grade) and I blow my nose a lot. |
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| August 6 | Tango Every step in life is meant to orchestrate itself with a step taken by someone or something other than you. The point isn't so much where and when you put your feet down while you dance, but only that you create a beautiful dance with your partner, who or whatever that might be. Cha, cha, cha. |
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| August 4 | False Alarm I'm not nearly as burned as I thought I would be. I'm quite comfortable, actually. Thing is, I'm lightly burned... but in strange places. Like my lips. And my palms. How did my palms get burned, exactly? It's a mystery. |
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| August 3 | The Inevitable Happens I use a tanning bed about twice a month. I have a minor skin problem that clears right up when I do. Sunlight does have a similar effect, but the convenience of the tanning bed as far as being able to do it all when I feel like it or have time is really nice for me. Ever since I've started using it, however, I've been a little concerned: What if I burn? I did once on a tanning bed about four years ago. I went in for my first time, there was a new kid at the desk and he asked me how much time I wanted. I said "I dunno. Half an hour?" and he said "Sure", forgetting to notice that I was fish belly white and that he'd have been smarter to just put me in a microwave instead. After that session I basically spent the first day feeling like I was one of those marshmellows that gets roasted over the fire too long; Sheathed in a barely-there, crispy outer layer of brittle shell, holding all the soft parts in... but just barely. I spent the second day pretty much the same, cursing things like light and air and the anguish they caused me. Third day I peeled like a gigantic reptile and could be found anywhere in the house by following the diaphanous, tissue-like layers of skin that were falling off my body. I didn't have an experience like that today... but I did burn. I was in for too long. Now I'm at that delicate part of the process where I can feel the strange buzzing of my skin having been baked like a cake but have not yet seen the spread of red, crispy flesh. It's these in-between times that torment me most, knowing it's coming, knowing that I will wake up tomorrow morning cursing myself. More later. I'm off to sit in a tub of aloe vera and pray for death. |
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| August 3 | Rained Like Hell, My Ass Got Soaked Last night it rained like hell. That was kinda nice. Thing is I left the window in my car open just a hair and the rain drenched the seat. Went for a little car trip earlier. My ass is soaking wet. Wet denim. It's not pleasant. |
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| August 3 | That Kind Of Night The last few nights here in Ottawa have been real stinkers. Humid, muggy and sweltering. I don't have air conditioning in my house, so there wer several fans laboring throughout the night to keep me and the kids cool. I am more interested in their comfort so they get the best fan while I get a fan that I think was assembled in 1945 by the same people who used to assemble those all-steel-and-rivet airplanes. I have not enjoyed trying to sleep through those nights. Tonight is different. It's cool. I'm not sure why, but all that humidity is gone. The air is not killing me. The heat is not making me flop like a fish on the dock. The air is sweet tonight and there's a breeze coming through the window. I can smell the air. It's rich and lovely. My feet and legs are getting cold from the draft coming in through the window, but it's such a relief I'm just going to let it happen for a while. |
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| August 2 | Speaking of Waiting I ordered chicken souvlaki from a local restaurant. I do this on certain days because the food is really good and not very expensive. I've been counting the minutes until it arrives; opening the screen door a few inches, poking my head out to look, coming back in... opening the screen door a few inches, poking my head out to look, coming back in... opening the screen door a few inches, poking my head out to look, coming back in... I've finally come to realize that I'm acting like Marlin in Finding Nemo where he's teaching his son how to poke his head out of the anemone and look for predators: Go out, look around, come back in... go out, look around, come back in... go out, look around, come back in... and if you want to do it a fourth time, that's ok too... |
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| August 2 | Waiting waiting waiting As I have mentioned a few other places in my blog, I have ADD (attention deficit disorder). I haven't provided much detail, but it's a fact. With the stress I've been experiencing lately, the pressure of it has really mounted and it's really bothering me worse than ever. Luckily, I've been prescribed some medication to take care of it and, reportedly (I've done some reading) the results are very good. But I don't have the medication yet. There are two doctors involved with handing these pills out. They are both going on vacation, alternately. So I'm waiting for them both to be in the area at work at the same time so I can get ahold of this stuff and get started using it. The ADD and all the sattelite problems that go along with it are really knocking me off my game. So I'm waiting. And waiting. And waiting. |
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| August 1 | Nastiness It's time to wash the cloths in the kitchen. I have dish towels, tea towels, wash cloths, whatever. It's time to wash them. They're in the machine right now. They've been basted in detergent until they're sopping, and I've added bleach to the little thingie you pour bleach in. They're being washed with scalding hot water to boot. You see, I've never been satisfied with how clean these things are (or aren't). After 100 washes they still smell wrong. I can't take it. I'm supposed to wash my dishes with these. I'm supposed to wipe my kids' faces with these. Every time I pass one of the towels or cloths under my nose I want to herk up all over myself. Tonight is the Alamo for those little bastards. Tonight I keep washing them until they smell like daisies. And yes, I'll change the lint trap in the dryer before I throw them in there. I'm not an idiot you know... |
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| August 1 | Sleep So last night I had great plans. I put the kids to bed at 8:15 or so (a little late for them, but not very). We did our usual round of snuggles, prayers and the rest. Then, when I was finally done, I left their room and got ready to do all the things I had lined up; cleaning, writing, laundry, you name it. It was the perfect plan except for the fact that I put my head down at about 8:30 and didn't wake up again until 6:30 the next morning. The kids will be up within half an hour but, strangely, I feel quite ready for the day and don't even mind losing the chance to do all that work I wanted to do. My back, however, feels like someone spent the entire night whacking it with a nine iron. Otherwise, I'm good. |
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| July 31 | Plans This month I don't feel like hanging around at home much. I am thinking about visiting the Baha'i temple in Willamette, Illinois, and maybe taking a trip to Montréal to visit some Baha'i holy places there as well. I wouldn't mind seeing my family a bit, either. I'll get back to you and let you know if I manage to accomplish this or not. |
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| July 31 | NSFW Wisdom "...this life is all bullshit, except for a couple of reasons. It will be over quick, and there will be no more shit like this." That's what my friend Jon told me today. He's right. It's got a blunt edge, but he's right. |
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| July 30 | A Footnote I wrote sort of hastily that I want to do art. There's a little more I could say about that. I have a degree in music. I have been playing guitar for 20 years. I have five guitars and several other instruments. I have several independent recordings, have done probably a couple hundred gigs if not more and I even used to teach. Do you know how many songs I wrote last year? None. Not one. I can forgive myself that for the last year or even two, but when I get to the end of 2004 I don't want to look back and have my greatest artistic accomplishment of the year be an expert job of painting a space toy. |
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| July 30 | Kind Of Like An Update, Only Not So Much It's been hard for me to know how to update here. I've got so much and yet so little going on at once. Some great fortune, some bad misfortune, but I'm having trouble spinning it into something that would be interesting to people that aren't *me*. Those of you who have blogs of your own will understand just what I'm talking about. I do want to thank all of you who have stepped forward to call me a moron for not changing the lint filter in the dryer more often. I have, in fact, learned that you can set fire to your home by leaving the lint filter in for too long. That's quite a little tidbit! I suppose I should stop trying to make winter clothing out of the pads of thick lint that I pull out of there, but I have to say that it almost seemed like a perfect plan. Well, it seemed like the perfect plan until I started getting emails calling me an idiot. I suppose you all had my best interests at heart, right? I'm about ready to give up Warhammer. This is going to meet with some incredulity among those of you who have come to know me lately, but it's true. My life has both high and low points right now (it is far from without happiness, but the average day is an uphill struggle a fair amount of the time). Even so, there just doesn't seem to be room for this kind of hobby either financially, schedule-wise or even just in my brain or heart. I don't feel like playing games right now; I feel like making art. So I'm finishing with the paint on the last of my Warhammer stuff and I think it'll be going on Ebay. If you're the kind of person who wants to start a kickass Warhammer army, I may be the guy you're looking to connect with. I was going to wait until tax refund season to sell it all off on Ebay (because that's when I figured the suckers would be spending in full force), but I think I'm going to go ahead sooner and get it out of the way a lot sooner. I've got lots of other stuff I may want to share soon, but not quite yet. I do, however, have some smaller-scale advice for you until that time comes: - Check out Triplets of Belleville - Avoid House Of 1000 Corpses (I believe we covered this) - The Bourne Supremacy is actually pretty good unless you get motion sickness easily That's about all I have for the moment. Keep your pants dry; I'll post again as soon as. |
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| July 25 | Kill Me. Last night I watched Rob Zombie's House Of 1000 Corpses. All I can say is that I'd like to remove my brain from my skull now and rinse it out under the tap for several minutes. Why do I do things like that to myself? |
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| July 20 | Party Time My little girl is turning 7 on Tuesday. Wednesday she's with me at my place. She will already have had her birthday party by then (at her mom's). Any suggestions for something I could do for a 7 year old girl and her 4 year old sister to make the day feel special? |
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| July 19 | The Lint Filter The lint filter for the dryer is an astonishing piece of technology. As most of you know, a lint filter catches the shmutz that falls off your clothes while they're being dried and helps keep it out of places where it doesn't belong. My interactions with the lint filter are very rare because I keep forgetting it exists. I throw clothes in, I punch the button, the thing turns on, they come out dry. It's like a magic trick. Over a period of weeks and months the lint filter starts to get very full and, as a result, the clothes don't get dry as quickly. This is because the air doesn't move efficiently inside the dryer anymore and the result is that less drying happens. I keep forgetting this is why the clothes take so long to dry. As I put a load in tonight and punched "105 minutes" I started thinking "Man, that's a long time for this thing to do its job", especially considering that the contents of the dryer are basically a face cloth and a sock. Then it dawns on me that the lint filter could be full. At this point (which was tonight) I look at the little drawer from which the lint filter is pulled with a certain amount of trepidation; I haven't been in there for six months. I'm a bit afraid of what could be inside. I pull the drawer and the dense mattress of lint literally springs out, it's so compressed. This little rectangle of fabric shmutz, roughly 10 inches by 5 inches, could stop a bullet. I cannot begin to imagine how something can be fashioned from the dusty offspring of my shirts and underwear. I'm charmed by it, though. My plan is to empty the lint filter every six months for the next few years and save what I pull out of it. By the year 2008 I will have enough material to make nice, thick winter coats for myself and both my kids. |
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| July 19 | Regarding The Abundance Of PC Games I wrote this in the MacGamer Forums tonight and felt like copying it here. The subject is about how people can get so much more quality gaming by buying a PC instead of a Mac. "...the illusion of choice is really just that; an illusion. I say this because I review Mac games and I play almost everything I get my hands on (which is usually given to me by the publisher). After having done this for about six years, I can say that there isn't much variety out there. You have your Warcraft clones, your Quake clones, your Civilization clones, your Rainbow Six clones, your Myst clones and your Sims clones. Sure there are small differences between them, but essentially every game I play, at best, rates as a tiny evolution of the genre as a whole or a gimmick to make the old standards seem temporarily fresh. I don't mean to sound particularly negative, but this definitely is my feeling about most games now. Even within the smaller pool of Mac gaming you see the same stuff over and over. I really don't consider playing $30 - $50 to play Warcraft or Quake over and over again as much of a 'wide range of choice'. So when I see arguments about how there's a paradise of PC gaming out there that we're all missing, I have to laugh. Why? Because if you play just a dozen of the hundreds of Mac games available you're probably playing the exact same games at least three to six times before you're done. The promise of playing the same games over and over again two or three hundred times doesn't really hold a lot of allure for me. When there are breakthroughs in game design, and I mean breakthroughs (I'm not talking about the evolution of Unreal Tournament 2003 to 2004), those almost without exception come to the Mac platform. The rest? I seriously could not care less if they ever get ported or not. I've already played Quake/The Sims/Warcraft/Rainbow Six/Civilization/Myst, thanks." |
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| July 14 | Sometimes Things Just Work Thank you, Rob and Kris, for the cool soda water, the popcorn, and the refreshing of my perspective. I'm now ready to meet the day tomorrow with a big smile on my face and sunshine in my heart. And I was due for that. |
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| July 14 | Speaking of Quotable... Why do you read blogs? I read only a select few and, to be honest, most of what I read is dreck. People out there, by and large, are not good writers. Sure, they give it their all and they're even kind of regular sometimes with the updates, but there's no entrance exam for Livejournal, and I sometimes think there should be. That being said, once in a blue moon you find these little gems that just make the internet worthwhile. From Queserasera.org: "I skip town tomorrow to do my stint on the Texas bridesmaid circuit, where I have been informed that I have a hair appointment with the bride and the bride’s mother on the day of the wedding, and I think we all know what this means: there’s an updo in Texas with my name on it. Also, the rehearsal dinner is going to be held at a barbecue restaurant, and while several people have encouraged me to make eyes at the groomsman with the biggest belt buckle, I just don’t think I have it in me." From Tikkabik.com: "So tonight Bonnie and I stopped at Wal-Mart to do some shopping after dinner. I spent about a buck on a black baton with a yellow nylon string affixed to the end of it. At the end of the string is a rubber bauble with plastic feathers. It's a cat toy." "As far as the cat is concerned, I just bought him an Xbox with a 51-inch projection TV and a 5.1 surround sound system." |
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| July 10 | Fight Club I own the DVD. This is, by far, one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's not easy to watch, but it really does something incredible. It's called Fight Club. Fight Club is, by far, the most quotable movie I've ever seen. "Bob. Bob had bitch tits"If you haven't seen it yet, take a look just so you can throw these quotes around in conversation. |
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| July 9 | Alanis Would Say It's Ironic I was just noticing that at the top of this page I have "Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle", and yet my May 24 entry demonstrates how mean I can be to Chris Barylick. I find that amusing. |
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| July 8 | Surprise Ok. I'm updating. As we can see from the last entry (May 24, right below), I haven't been updating my blog much. Kind of hard to articulate what the delay is all about; just so many unusual and strange things going on with me, both good and bad, and I don't think I'm going to actually try to sum everything up. You'll just have to bear with me. I did decide to change the color of the site. I'll keep last year's entries (linked above) in the old color and this year's entries in this color. I think. Unless I change my mind. So what's new? I'm traveling a lot; some business, some pleasure. I'm playing some Warhammer. I'm making some music. I'm getting ready to do more writing in my blog, so if you keep checking hoping that something is going to appear here, stay tuned. |
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| May 24 | Hammerhead Haven't been updating much lately, as you can tell, but I thought I'd post this thing that happened lately between me and Chris Barylick, a guy who works for me. It was about this photo.  |
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| May 17 | Most Accurate Description Of Me I've Read To Date "You're like a little lab animal. "Gimme my pellet!" <click click> "Come on!" Yeah. Thanks, Lori. |
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| May 14 | What Did You Think It Was For? I have a cell phone, but I buy my minutes ahead of time. This is my way of protecting myself. If I don't have a limit to how much time can be used then I'll chew through minutes like nobody's business and run up an astronomically high bill. I know. I've done it before. Now I like to keep things under control as much as possible. I buy time for my phone in the form of a "phone card" that can be picked up at the convenience store just around the corner. There's a whole lot of staff there that rotates in the usual way that staff do, but the one I dread is the large middle-aged woman with the glasses perched on the end of her nose (with string around neck). She's not bad-natured. She's just not real smart. I don't usually hold that against people, but she's not real smart to the point where she impedes the process of buying products. For instance, she'll be in the middle of slipping lottery tickets into their holder thing when I come to the counter with a newspaper and a bottle of water. She will ask me to hang on while she finishes placing lottery tickets in the slots. I say "Sure". Then this leaden, plodding process begins: She stuffs a ticket into a slot, eyeballs it through her bifocals, repositions it, looks again, removes it and replaces it, shifts it a bit, gives it an appraising look and then gets another ticket. The process repeats. I check my watch. I drum my fingers. The store is empty and I'm standing there. One minute goes by, two minutes. Finally I say "Maybe I could ask you to please ring this through and then you could return to the lottery tickets?" A moment of blank staring and then she agress. "Oh! Right!" she says. There have been several incidents like this. Anyhow, I go to the counter and, in my sweetest voice, as for a $50 phone card. She looks at me for a moment with a stunned expression and asks "For your phone?" I pause and blink. "No," I say. "It's for my barbecue." |
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| May 14 | Recycling Guy Sorry I haven't been setting up the cam. Friday mornings have been a little weird here lately. Anyhow, last week RG came at 7:05. That's quite a difference from the previous week when the bastard came at 9:16. Right now? It's 10:01 and he's still not here. What the hell is he doing? I think I'm going to get a BB gun. Edit: Recycling guy showed up at 10:43 AM. |
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| May 13 | The Week That Was Summer is finally here in Almonte, Ontario. Today I sat out on Rob and Kris' patio with them while the sun beat down on me and it was that amazing clear-blue-sky but almost-too-warm feeling that I love before the real dog days start in earnest. I'm sitting out on my own front step tonight eating my dinner as the sun goes down (well... it's actually down now, but whatever). No mosquitos, spiders or other creepy crawly things yet. The week has been hard for me. Increased turbulence (that I'm not going to detail here) has made me sad at times. On the ther hand, some new things that are very happy... downright blissful for me are taking place, and that's a gift I never expected at this time in my life. Oh, and by the way: Susan, don't sweat it. It's all good. |
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| May 10 | Some Updates It's been a strage few days. My life has been on a non-stop vortex lately of up and down; pain so bad I never thought I could ever experience something so severe and survive. On the other hand, there have been some new gifts and new blessings that have straightened my back and reminded me of how much I love my life and, like the pain, it's the kind of happiness I never used to think was even possible. Not much in the middle. For those of you who pray: Don't pray for my happiness. Pray for my strength. |
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| May 6 | Ticket to Heaven Ou Dong soup. Added Vietnamese Fish Sauce while cooking. Then add Thai chili/garlic sauce and Hoisin sauce. Eat and go straight to heaven. It's not as good as Pho Tai, but at 12:10 AM in Almonte Ontario it's a really damn good substitute. |
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| May 4 | Breakfast This morning the kids got up before I did. This isn't so unusual because I often sleep until striking distance of Ruth's bus coming. They get up way before I have to and they are good at entertaining themselves. This morning they were rattling around downstairs, which didn't set off my red flags for two reasons: They don't usually get into any trouble when up before me and, also, I was dead asleep for the most part and unable to properly process incoming data. Later, Ruth came up the stairs with Dora in tow and a giant cookie tray with two bowls and a glass of something on it. This was Ruth making breakfast for me. I sat up and tried not to breathe directly on them as Ruth set the tray down. She's aware that I am on a somewhat strict diet, and so she chose the breakfast entreé very carefully: - A bowl of plain Triscuit crackers - A bowl of plain tortilla chips - A glass of Rice Dream fortified rice beverage She also drew a little good morning picture for me that said "I LOVE YOU DAD" on it and there were lots of multicolored sketches of I-wasn't-too-sure-what on it (my eyes were somewhat bleary). And so it was this morning at 7:09 AM, EST: I sat in my bed with my two little girls eating nachos, crackers, drinking rice milk and having a lovely little time. |
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| May 3 | Baked Beans Note to self: The kids don't like baked beans. They won't eat them no matter what you do. Stop lying to yourself. |
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| April 30 | Foiled. The cam is off now and no-one (including me) got a look at the Recycling Guy this morning. I believe he arrived around 7 AM EST, but I'm not sure. I slept in kinda late. I did cap some pics through the day. Interestingly enough I managed to catch him going in the other direction (as you can see from the pics below). And, just for the hell of it, I caught a schoolbus. But... I'll have the cam back up next week.
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| April 29 | RGC is Live Ok. The cam is live and the link is here. If you don't know about the Recycling Guy Cam yet, read the April 22 entry below. Be on the lookout. I'll be watching, but you guys are my ears and eyes. |
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| April 29 | It's That Time Recycling Guy Cam getting set up tonight. If you see him on the cam, make sure you note the time and, by all means, grab the photos. I might miss it, depending on when he shows up. Hang in there. I'll get it set up shortly. |
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| April 29 | Learn Something New Every Day "People with ADD don't have enough neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, and so the brain doesn't work unless you are genuinely interested." My friend Jon told me about that. It explains an awful lot. "the minds of people with this issue--he [author of a book we were discussing] didn't call it ADD, but a "reward system dysfunction"--follow a very efficient strategy--> maximize the production of dopamine, since we don't have enough. No interest in something, no dopamine. The brain's survival strategy kicks into gear." Survival. Interesting, huh? |
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| April 28 | Stinkyfeet Diary Not for the faint of heart: This is a journal from a site called TheSpark.com where the author spends the better part of a month trying to give himself athlete's foot. I seriously laughed out loud while reading this, and I never do that when I'm on the net reading stuff (sorry, folks... even if I tell you that I'm LOL, I'm not LOL). In a world of Livejournal Entries where people talk about how much they hate their job, how their schoolwork is lagging or how they like candy, this guy really writes the kind of stuff I'd love to have the ability to write. Not that I want to go to that extreme, but I love the guts and I seriously burst out chuckling many times. But take that part I said about it not being safe for the squeamish seriously. Really. |
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| April 28 | The High Point Of My Day My bright point of the day was this morning with my youngest daughter Dora. I realized just how darn well Dora and I get along. We have amazing chemistry and it's such a great feeling. I had a great morning for that reason. The rest of the day was vomit in a travel mug. |
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| April 27 | I Want A Cookie As you all know, I'm on a rather tight diet. It's of my own doing; I wasn't forced onto it. I just thought it'd be a good thing to do. Well, I bought a bag of cookies for my kids because I thought they'd like to have one occasionally (parents will know that once in a while we stoop to bribery to get them doing what you want them to do. It's shameful). The problem is that I can't be anywhere in the house where I don't think I'm smelling those lousy cookies. Now I can't get them out of my head. It's torturing me. Must not give in. Update... No, wait. It's not the cookie I want. It's something else. I can't put my finger on what. As I have alluded to before, I haven't had a great month. I've lost a career opportunity that I thought might be excellent. I've lost my best friend. I've lost my true love. I've a certain amount of access to my kids. I've become aware of some serious health problems that are probably going to affect me for the rest of my life. All in one month. My gyroscope has officially been tipped over. I'm profoundly lonely and making my way forward in this strange morass of emotion, mostly because my children are watching me and learning about how one deals with adversity by studying my every move. I'm struggling, but I'll land on my feet. I promise. In the mean time, I want a cookie. Diet be damned: I'm going to go eat one. |
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| April 23 | If You Had 9:16 AM, EST In The Recycling Guy Pool, You're A Winner! After running the Recycling Guy Cam all night, I finally caught him taking the recycling away (the cam is off now by the way). It was a solid 9:16 AM EST that he showed up, and this small photojournal below illustrates it (click to enlarge).
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| April 22 | Recycling Guy Cam Now Online It's Thursday night. That means tomorrow the Recycling Guy is going to come and pick up the recycling. I decided to set up a cam by my front door so that you can see what I'm talking about. This cam will update every 30 seconds so you can check out how long my recycling has to sit on the curb. Here's the cam. It'll be active till tomorrow AM. I should warn you that during the night hours it may not be so clear (not sure how this cam deals with low light), but in the morning hours it'll be 100% visible. And then you can see my arch-nemesis. Will it be 7 AM? 10 AM? 12 noon? No one knows. Least of all, me. You can grab the latest image here. The image will appear foggy because the window the cam is looking through is foggy due to me doing some drying of clothes in the house. It'll clear soon. Safari users might have to empty their cache between viewings (it's a Safari thing). If you don't want to do that, I suggest you check the image in a different browser like IE. Anyhow, yeah. That's my car. This is my street. Last but not least... that is my recycling in the blue box. |
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| April 22 | Important Message Tonight I'm going to try to set up a webcam that I'll leave on all night and, hopefully, you can watch to see what the recycling guy does and when he's going to show up. I'm currently looking for software to run this that I don't have to pay for. Any suggestions? (Macintosh-only please. Duh) Update: I ended up using something called "Wuffcam". Check back in a bit and I'll turn the cam on. I want you to see the recycling guy. |
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| April 18 | Regarding Tron And The Desire To Be Part Of It I was just reading a thing about this guy who set out to make himself an outfit/costume based on the movie Tron. A fellow named Jay Maynard goes through the various steps he took to actually create a "Tron" suit which includes fabric paint, electroluminescent wire and stuff he bought off Ebay. Now, it's clear that there's lots to make fun of there; first off, the guy doesn't have Superhero written all over him (not that I'm throwing stones; I'm not exactly Adonis myself). Secondly, I can't really figure out what the real-world application of an outfit like that would be. Do you wear it to the supermarket? Do you use it to pick up chicks? What exactly is its purpose? I mean, sure... I play a purposeless hobby called Warhammer, but I don't dress up like Warhammer dudes (though some do). I don't suppose those things are so important, but what really keeps me scratching my head is this: Who is going to look at this and then think that this belongs alongside it? I do kind of admire the guy's tenacity though. |
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| April 18 | Happy Birthday, Shawn. Who knows when or if I'll get a chance to tell you. You were co-star in many of my happiest memories over the last 12 months and I hope your next 12 months are full of joy, whether I'm there to co-star or not. |
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| April 18 | Crisis and Opportunity In Chinese, it's the same thing. |
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| April 16 | The Recycling Guy I hate the Recycling Guy Every Friday morning is "Garbage Day". The Garbage Guys come around and pick up the garbage (I'm sure you were able to piece that together on your own, but I'm trying to be thorough). They're normally here between 9 AM and 11 AM. Those are civilized hours; by that point Ruth is at school, I've been up for a while, everything's moving along. It's simple and easy to take care of. The Recycling Guy also comes by on Friday morning, but he's a little different. As a responsible citizen in my community, I do make a point of trying to recycle. I almost always have a blue box full of empty plastic containers, boxes and newspapers, so getting it dealt with on Fridays is always of interest to me. The problem is that the Recycling Guy isn't reliable. He comes at different times. For a while he was coming at 6 AM. If you know me at all you'll know that there's no way in hell I'm going to get up at 6 AM to sort recycling and put it outside (particularly during the winter months, which is when the 6 AM visits began). I therefore put the recycling out the night before, no matter how little I felt like it. I got into the habit of doing this and before long the Recycling Guy stopped coming so early and started showing up at around 10 AM. A person can't help but ask themselves why it is that they're going out in the middle of the night to put out recycling when they could just as easily do it at 8 or 9 AM and still come in well under the deadline. I stopped doing the recycling late at night (which was nice because I found it hard to remember and inconvenient) and started doing it first thing on Friday morning. That was about the time when the Recycling Guy decided to start coming at 6 AM again. Regularly. On goes our evil chess game of me trying to strike a balance between having to put the recycling out so long before it arrives that it's impossible to really remember and putting it out too late and having to bring it back into the house for another week (which I always thought of as a "mock execution", if you will, for cereal boxes and maple syrup bottles). I've spent too much time waking up at dawn and fretting about whether or not I have the time to get the recycling out before he arrives, and forcing myself out of bed to do it despite the fact that (unknown to me) his arrival is still three to four hours away. I've spent too much time coming home at the end of the day to see the recycling still sitting on the curb, a sure sign that –no– 7 AM wasn't actually early enough. Try again next week. Last night I put out the recycling. I got in at about 1:30 and I was really dog tired... so much so that I had to literally drag myself back out with my eyelids nearly shut and put the damned recycling on the curb, just in case he put in an appearance before I was awake the following day. Today I stood at the window and watched Recycling Guy as he arrived to pick up the blue box of goodies. He had the Doobie Brothers' "Listen To The Music" blaring from his truck (you have to play while reading this story it to get the full effect: .wmv or .ram). He empties the recycling and then drives on. I am incoherent with rage. I am stupified with anger. I very much desire to cause him physical harm. Why? Because it's 1:00 PM. |
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| April 15 | We Have A Winner Today. Today was definitely the worst day of my life. No matter what comes after this, it can only get better. Lucky me. |
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| April 12 | Oh, look at that. I was wrong. At first I thought April 9 was the worst day of my life. Ho ho ho. How wrong I was. It turns out TODAY is the worst day of my life. Really makes me look forward to tomorrow, I can tell you that much. |
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| April 11 | On the subject of ApostrophesDear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?Thanks, Christine. |
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| April 10 | Felt Like One More This is the week's Friday Five. Thought I'd answer it while I was on a roll. 1. What do you do for a living? I play and review Macintosh computer games, and am published in both print and web. 2. What do you like most about your job? I love the people I get to meet. I love writing. I love that I can be at home with my children. I love that it brings out the best of my characteristics and seems not to touch on my worst. 3. What do you like least about your job? I often feel as though I am contributing exactly zilch to the world by doing this job. 4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because _____... ...someone didn't do something they said they were going to do. 5. What other career(s) are you interested in? Honestly, no joke, I've often thought I'd like to work in Florida on the beach renting Jet-Skis to tourists from a small shack under a palm tree. I know that sounds like I'm making it up, but I'm really not. It'd be such a 180 degree change from where I am at present that I have to admit... I daydream about it from time to time. |
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| April 10 | Filler. I'm doing one of those dumbass Livejournal-style quizzes, mainly because I can't stand seeing that last post at the top of my blog page anymore. Ok, buckle yourself in because this is probably going to be pretty boring. // series one - as usual -- Name: Joel William Corey Tamas -- Birthdate: May 28, 1969 -- Birthplace: Sydney, Nova Scotia -- Current Location: Almonte, Ontario -- Eye Color: Green -- Hair Color: Brown -- Righty or Lefty: Righty -- Zodiac Sign: Gemini -- Innie or Outtie: Innie // series two - describe -- The shoes you wore today: Black Doc Martins, thick sole, could use a bit of a shine -- Your hair: Short, neat, unremarkable -- Your eyes: Weary -- Your weakness: Too many to list -- Your fears: Also too many to list -- Your perfect pizza: Sun-dried tomatoes, soft crust, oregano you can actually taste -- One thing you'd like to achieve: Balance // series three - what is -- Your most overused phrase on AIM: "____, Amigo", as in "Thanks, Amigo" or "Hey, Amigo" or "Don't spread those naked photos around, Amigo" -- Your thoughts first waking up: "How much longer can I sleep before I risk putting the trash out too late and missing the garbage truck?" -- The first feature you notice in the opposite sex: Attitude and personality. -- Your best physical feature: I have an extremely straight nose. -- Your bedtime: I aim for 11:00 PM, but usually achieve 1:00 AM. -- Your greatest fear: Going through my entire life without realizing my full potential -- Your greatest accomplishment: I doubt I've done it yet. To date? Probably learning how to pay rent on time. -- Your most missed memory: Too many to list. // series four - you prefer -- Pepsi or coke: Pepsi, but I don't drink either. -- McDonald's or Burger King: Just the thought of either makes me feel ill. -- Single or group dates: I don't date, myself, but I think group dates can be very good. -- Adidas or nike: Whose life is so empty that they seriously give a sh*t? I mean, really. -- Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Neither. Make it yourself. -- Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate, though I don't eat that either. -- Cappuccino or coffee: Latté. -- Boxers or briefs: Boxers // series five - do you -- Smoke: Just a cigar every year or two. -- Cuss: WAY too much. It's something I really need to work on. -- Sing well: Well enough for what I sing, but not well enough to sing more than I do. -- Take a shower everyday: Normally I do, though I might skip a day here or there. -- Have a crush(es): I may have had one in the past but it registered so low on my richter scale that I can't even remember it. -- who are they: Who knows? Not me, obviously. -- Do you think you've been in love: Yeah, only every day since birth. -- Want to go to college: No thanks. Been there, done that. Got the degree. -- Like high school: I actually believe that high school is one of the most harmful things a young mind can be subjected to. -- Want to get married: A second time? No thanks. I'm still recovering from the first time. -- Type with your fingers on the right keys: Pretty much always. -- Believe in yourself: Depends when you ask. -- Get motion sickness: Never. -- Think you're attractive: At times, sure. Everyone can be attractive if they want to. -- Think you're a health freak: That's my objective, yeah. -- Get along with your parents: Can't complain. -- Like thunderstorms: I think so. There's something about staring out the window at a torrent of rain with flashes of light behind it that makes me meditative. -- Play an instrument: Guitar, mostly. // series six - in the past month, did/have you -- Drank alcohol: Last time was 20 years ago. -- Smoke(d): Never had the interest. -- Done a drug: See "Drank Alcohol" -- Have Sex: That's a bit too personal, but yeah... I have. -- Made Out: Is this suggesting that one normally has sex (see above) without making out? WTF? -- Go on a date: Uh, no. -- Go to the mall?: The mall? I don't think so. A mall? Sure. -- Eaten an entire box of Oreos: (vomiting sound) -- Been on stage: No, but if you had asked a little earlier I could have said yes. -- Been dumped: I've put in a status request. I'll get back to you. -- Gone skating: No. Too busy having all that sex I mentioned above. -- Made homemade cookies: I don't think I've ever done that in my life. -- Been in love: In the last month? If you count it as a continuation of one that started a while back, sure. -- Gone skinny dipping: I'm in freaking Canada. The snow isn't even gone yet. Give me a break. -- Dyed your hair: No. -- Stolen anything: No, but I'm thinking about taking it up. // series seven - have you ever -- Played a game that required removal of clothing?: No... or yes, I did, but it was so unremarkable that I can't remember it now. -- Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: 20 years ago, yeah. -- Been caught "doing something": Something? Yes. Something? No. -- Been called a tease: I wish. -- Gotten beaten up: Not really. -- Shoplifted: No. -- If so, did you get caught: WTF? -- Changed who you were to fit in: Haven't we all? // series eight - the future -- Age you hope to be married: Bit late for that discussion, I think. -- Numbers and Names of Children: Two girls, Dora and Ruth. -- Describe your Dream Wedding: Three things: a) Iron Butterfly, b) Macaroni salad, c) Wireless high speed access. -- How do you want to die: Sword. Straight through the heart in one stroke. -- Where you want to go to college: Again? No where. -- What do you want to be when you grow up: Ninja with laser eyeballs. -- What country would you most like to visit: Different countries for different reasons. Let's say Iran for the moment.. // series nine - opposite sex -- Best eye color? Don't care about the middle part, but I do like white around the outside. -- Best hair color? If she's got hair then hey, she's got the interview. -- Short or long hair?: Short or long doesn't matter. Don't go in-between with the mullet. -- Best height: Tall enough not to need a phone book on the chair while we eat dinner. -- Best weight: I really have no preference, aside from the aversion to extremes on one end or the other. -- Best articles of clothing: Kangaroo costume with working pouch. -- Best first date location: Mental instituation, Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder Ward... because it'd be clean. -- Best first kiss location: Right here, right now. // series ten - number of -- Number of girls I have kissed in my life/Number of girls you have made out with/Number of girlfriends you've had/Number of boys I have kissed/Number of boys you have made out with/Number of boyfriends you've had/Number of drugs taken illegally: Not answering any of these. Sorry. I will say that if I were to answer them, I would most certainly take exception to the distinction between kissing and making out. I would like to see the manual, please. -- Number of people I could trust with my life: Right now? List is kinda thin. -- Number of CDs that I own: Maybe about 100. -- Number of piercings: One in each ear. -- Number of tattoos: One. A triple forte on my shoulder. Kinda looks like this, but without the box around it. -- Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper?: Too many to count. No, really. -- Number of scars on my body: Maybe about four. -- Number of things in my past that I regret: I don't know if numbers go that high. |
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| April 9 | What we believe Today was probably the worst day of my life. I thought I had some bad days, but today was the worst. I'm scoping my memory as far back as I can and I really can't think of any day I've had which tops this one in pure horror. I am in extreme pain with no end in sight. Naturally I can't get into the details too much here. Some of it is just plain too intimate. Most of you will understand; some things don't belong in a blog. It begs the question of what it is that we think this is about. Why do we go through these things? Why do we suffer? I believe that gold is purified by fire. It exists in its imperfect form when it's mined and, with refinement and extreme heat, gold becomes what it is meant to be. So it is with the human heart. When the fire comes it's meant to burn away the impurities and pollution. It burnishes and polishes you. It makes you realize what matters and what doesn't. I'll sit here and savor the experience, terrible as it is. Why? Because this is how we grow. |
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| April 8 | Chicago O'Hare I was recently in the Chicago O'Hare airport for a short layover on a brief trip out west. O'Hare is a large airport and, unlike Ottawa's pretensions of being a teeming hub of connectivity, O'Hare really is a teeming hub of activity. There are peculiar technologies implemented there which exist for the sole purpose of managing enormous crowds moving from point A to point B. Case in point: on the way to terminal C, which is a roughly ten minute walk from the terminal where I first arrived, there is a long underground corridor that includes a roughly two or three minute ride on a moving conveyor-belt sidewalk (where you can choose either to walk or just stand still and be carried along by the machinery). Above the moving sidewalk is a gentle, soft light display of many soothing colors that undulates in nonthreatening, agreeable ways. At the same time, speakers pipe in a light, elfin chorus of soft bells, much like an idiot savant version of Lionel Hampton playing twelve-tone row. There's no melody or process of tension-release (as is the norm with most music). Instead, this is a never starting, never ending rambling of peaceful, meditative music meant to accompany the lights in creating an atmosphere of non-specific glee and safety. What I immediately realized is that the management of hundreds and thousands of travelers – all running late, tired and feeling uncomfortable in the bovine-like flow – has become an issue due to O'Hare's massive size. Thus, we find ourselves subjected to this mind-numbing display of non-committal sensory ticklings intended to keep us from feeling the urge to commit homicide. It seems to be working; I purposely played a little game with myself where I let the moving sidewalk carry me while I stood still and listened very closely to the bells and watched the lights. Then, I tried to imagine strangling someone to death (I'll decline to identify whom just at the moment). Oddly enough I had a hard time picturing how to do it and, instead, could only imagine me and my victim staring into each others' eyes, having completely forgotten why it was we were face-to-face and having a weak, puzzled discussion about why we can't remember our own names. A good parallel would be the scene from Finding Nemo where Dori and Marlin find that big fish with the teeth that has a light bulb hanging off its forehead. I begin to feel apprehensive about the fact that it could all be a trap to lure me into an abattoir and succumb to being filleted without putting up a fight. The moving sidewalk ends and bumps me back onto tile. The sensory hallucination is over. I head to gate C4. |
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| April 7 | Google Go to http://images.google.com/ and enter my name ("Corey Tamas"). The results are pretty impressive. |
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| April 6 | Simple I'm having a bad month. A really bad one. I don't feel like updating my online diary. I don't feel like doing much other than crawling under a rock and becoming compost. It's a bad month for me. Very bad. Extremely bad. I thought you might want to know. No need for flowers or Blue Mountain web postcards (in fact, please don't send those. They suck). I'm just having a bad month. I'l let you know when the horror of it is over. In the mean time, go look at something funny. I'll be back before long, I'm sure. |
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| March 27 | Dumb mistake == Nasty, sick feeling... Today I accidentally erased all the trash in my email client. That might not sound like much, because my in and out boxes are still intact. The problem is that I had over 22,000 emails in that trash box. I used to search them like they were my archives... finding email that goes back many, many years. If I ever found myself saying "what was the name of that guy who, in 2001, wrote to me and asked about a palmpilot", I could just do a query on my trash folder. I know that some folks probably would prescribe that I keep all that stuff in an "archive" folder somewhere, but... a bit late for that now. I sort of want to vomit. |
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| March 27 | The conundrum For some reason today I have itchy palms. They're extremely itchy. I don't know why. They're driving me nuts. The problem is that I don't want to tell anyone about it because I think there's a dirty joke about itchy palms and I just don't have the heart to hear it right now. |
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| March 26 | Oddly enough... So that was a real long break, huh? Today I felt really crummy. Very bad mood. See, I've had the week from Hell. Some people say they've had the week from Hell because of some extra work or some troubles at home. I would like them all to collectively shut it. This week has SUCKED for me. Sucked from day one all the way up to the last microsecond of day last. Bad week. Very bad week. So this morning I was feeling way blue. I decided I would try some self-medicating. I went to the nearby mall and decided to buy myself some jeans, as I haven't got any good blue jeans currently in my drawers. After I bought them, however, I still felt like crap. I went ahead and bought myself an awesome new jacket (this, in fact, but in a better color). Still didn't feel good. I then proceded to buy myself a pair of new sunglasses. Still not better. I got a shoe-shine. Still nothing. I even bought some writable DVDs for $2 apiece (that's really cheap). Still feeling like crap. Then I got my hair cut and you know what? I felt better. As far as the pants go, I'm glad to report something that shocked me: since the last time I bought pants (about 8 or 9 months ago I guess?) I've lost six sizes. It sounds like a celebration for me, except that I'm still sorta fat, which begs the question what kind of beluga whale I probably was 8 or 9 months ago. Ok, now stop bugging me. I'm on break. |
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| March 26 | Little Break I'll be taking a break from my blog for a short while. There's stuff going on in my life that I can't post here (I might later, though) and I'm not particularly inspired to write anyhow. I figured rather than listen to everyone tell me that I'm not updating enough that I'd try just letting you know that I'll be back at it probably within a week or so. Good? Good. |
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| March 24 | Various Ways To Lose Weight The first way I've been losing weight is in exactly the method you'd guess: My fat ass is shrinking. I shaved my goatee off the other day as a lark (the one on my face; I don't have one on my ass) and once it was gone I was struck by the difference in my appearance since the last time I had a clean face. At first my reaction was that I thought I looked like I was sick, but then I was like "Oh, no... that's not it... you're actually becoming less of a fat bastard". So that was good. I'm having trouble sticking to this crazyass diet I keep telling you all about; I like eating junky food a lot and it's convenient to get ahold of (what's easier to get when you're out on the town: Pepsi or Soy Milk?), but I'm trying my best to stick to it. I think the effects are becoming manifested, so I like that. I don't care about getting wrinkles. I don't care about getting grey hair. I don't really even care about my receding hairline. The fat, however, has to go. I'm also losing some weight by taking my Warhammer stuff and storing it in my back room. The amount of space opened up in my office by removing all Warhammer-related items is striking. I decided that I should pay a little less attention to Warhammer just now and that I should, instead, focus on my home and family a bit more. I was amazed, however, when I managed to fill about five really big boxes with various crap. I didn't realize I had THAT much stuff. It's a little embarassing, actually. I've also decided that I'm going to sell a big chunk of my stuff off on Ebay (my Necron and Tau armies, for those of you who are interested). The cash would be a treat to have, the extra space in my office would be great to keep and, most of all, I want to simplify my life a bit. I'm not quite ready to be completely done with Warhammer yet, but... I'm almost starting to lean that way. I'll probably finish a lot of my painting before I do though: Just to say "It's done" and also to get a higher price when I resell it. What I'll do after that, I have no idea. Perhaps I will begin to interact with cool people again and discuss things other than how dice might actually be sentient. |
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| March 24 | Overheard in the Bath: My two girls in the bath playing with their toy mermaids: Dora: ...and the prince wanted to marry me. Ruth: But you did not want to marry him because he was too scabby. Dora: And he was too kissy. He wanted to kiss me and stuff. Ruth: Yeah. Yucky. |
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| March 23 | Another thing: When I re-read my post of March 18 ("Right Now) I realize that I spelled "Soda" wrong. I decided to leave it because I think "Sodae" may be the plural of "Soda" in Latin, and I love that. It makes me want to say it more. Incidentally, yes... the wings and sodae were not part of my diet. I'm back on it now, btw. I had a few days of weakness. No more chicken wings and sodae for a while. p.s. Sodae. |
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| March 23 | For the record: Death Race 2000 sucks... like, a lot. |
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| March 18 | Right Now I'm about 1 minute from getting into the bath and soaking there while my laptop is on a stool next to the tub so I can watch Death Race 2000 and on another stool (lower) will be some chicken wings and sodae. I may be there all night. Seeya, suckers. |
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| March 18 | A Conversation with Devin Kent. Devin: I feel I should tell you, I read through the entire archive of your blog this morning. ;) Corey: Oh yeah? What did you think? Devin: Well, it was interesting to see your vow to not swear slowly crumble away. ;) But you must have been doing something right because I certainly kept reading. Corey: Oh yeah. I kinda let myself down on that, huh? Devin: Little bit, little bit. At least you tried, though. Corey: I did! Corey: At least I don't say FUCK Devin: Also, I could've gone my whole life without seeing your buttcrack and not have been unhappy about it, but alas. Devin: Other than that, I enjoyed myself. ;) Corey: Serves you right for clicking. Corey: And for the record, I think my photos of Celine Dion are much scarier. Devin: Unfortunately, most of the links are broken. So I only saw the thumbs-up one. Corey: That's the worst one anyhow. |
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| March 17 | Still got nothing... sorta. It's true. I still got nothing. Kris, however, did send me a little tidbit: It's a collection of dumb AIM conversations. It's not going to appeal to all of you, but... if you're like me then you'll recognize the strange humor of some of the teeth-grinding vacuousness of some of the users of this great big Internet. Let me give you an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about: SkyGurl4: yah know yuor icon...is that you?Here. |
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| March 15 | I got nothing I really do want to update my diary, here. It's not that I don't want to. But I got nothing. I don't really feel like telling you about what's transpired since the last time I made an entry (last Friday). Some of the stories are just too banal (Warhammer games) and other things that might be really cool (meeting of the Almonte Social Action Players) are really only interesting to me; at least to the degree that I don't know how to tell the tale to you to keep you reading. Come back in a couple days. I'll see if I can work up something to write about. There's still snow on the ground so the odds are good that during the week I'm going to fall in it while strangers pass by. |
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| March 15 | Dear Colleen, I told Colleen to read my blog (which she hadn't yet). Note to Colleen: References to you, specifically, go back no further than November 27, so you don't have to read back any further than that unless you want to read about how a can of Diet Coke exploded in my car, how I glued my eyeball shut and how my cat shoves her ass in the toothbrushes. By the way, I get about 150 - 200 hits a day on this webpage (on a good day) and now they all know you're a good kisser. Expect some email and phone calls. |
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| March 12 | Friday Five Here's the Friday Five. Corey is officially out of ideas. 1. What was the last song you heard? In its entirety? Probably the one I played on the bass this morning. It's a song I wrote that doesn't have a title yet. 2. What were the last two movies you saw? Prophecy (IMDB), which sucked. The Corporation (IMDB), which literally changed my life. 3. What were the last three things you purchased? Tickets to The Corporation (see above) Vietnamese dinner with Pho Tai and spring rolls Parking 4. What four things do you need to do this weekend? Get a can of paint from a guy (for use in the painting contest thing I mentioned below), go to a pot luck dinner for all the cast of Everyday Impossible (and write little love letters for them), have a birthday party for my youngest daughter tonight and I should really try out the press copy of the Return of the King videogame for Macintosh. 5. Who are the last five people you talked to? Sophie, Ruth, Dora, Rob Riendeau, Joy Stratford (wasn't that thrilling? There arent' many among you who know who they all are). |
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| March 11 | Oh, Yeah... a few other things... I got food poisoning today somehow. I sort of feel like what it would feel like to have a screwdriver shoved into your stomach, only with about 10 or 12 more trips to the bathroom per day. It's a real party over here. Some important stuff is happening that I'mdying to tell you about, but I can't yet. Maybe early April or something. Anyhow, I know something you don't know. Neener. |
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| March 11 | Gee. Is It March Already? After getting pestered to update this site (thanks Rachael, Marla, Colin, Christine, Beth, etc) I decided it was time to actually do it. The problem is that I get into this repeating cycle where a lot of stuff happens and I don't feel like taking time to write about it yet, and then more stuff happens, and the less I wanna tackle that huge job, and then more stuff happens, and you get the idea. Then I've got people telling me things like "Your blog needs updating. Get to it nerd boy. Or else". Let's get down to it. Happy And Merry Intercalary... In the Baha'i Calendar there are nineteen days per month and nineteen months to the year. This leaves four days at the end of February (five on leap years like this one) we call "intercalary days" or, in the original Arabic (I think it is), Ayyam-i-ha. Ayyam-i-ha is what Baha'is do instead of Christmas. We exchange presents, we get together with family, in general we have a whole lot of fun during this festival. Most importantly is that for my kids, who aren't Christian and have to grin and bear it when the rest of the world is making a big whoop over Christmas, finally get to have a party all their own with presents aplenty. They get to dress up in their fancy dresses,do all sorts of fun things and enjoy a holiday as all kids should. It does a parent's heart good to see it. Fast Times In Almonte Following Ayyam-i-ha is the period of the Baha'i Fast, which we are currently in. Baha'is refrain from eating anything between sunup and sundown (including the drinking of water or whatever). Every morning before the sun rises I get out of bed (which for me is a Herculean effort) and woof down some food that will get me through the day. When I tell people about the Fast the reactions vary from "How the hell can you actually DO that?" to "Just sunup to sundown? You call that a Fast?" For me it's not that bad (Sophie is a different matter – she turns into a moron when she goes without food. It's actually kind of amusing). I do have to admit that, because of the diet I'm on (that I told you about before), it's kind of hard to get up at 5:30 AM and stare at a bowl of yogurt and flax seed oil, but... what's the point in believing in something if you're not going to at least give it a go, right? The fast ends on the 21st (on a holiday we call Naw Ruz, which means "New Year"). The Last Time I Will Ever Kiss Colleen (*sigh*) The play I was in is now done. For those of you who have been following the progress of my thesbian activities, you'll know that I had some trepidation about kissing a certain "Colleen" in the first act, scene 3. Well, I've managed to plant one on her upwards of a dozen times since (all within the context of the play, you pervert), and I gotta say – she got it down pretty good. I wanted to mention that to her, but there's no real way for a man to say to a woman "Hey, your kissing technique is really darn good" without giving the wrong impression. Just trust me on this. Of course, I also had to traipse around the stage in my underwear (silk boxers with red hearts on them) and make serious smoochola with Rachael Crowder which left my face and neck covered in lipstick and my lips bruised (it's all in the pursuit of dramatic excellence, ladies and gentlemen). After those two things I have to say that kissing Colleen was the least of my worries. Jokes aside, this play (called the Everyday Impossible) was one of the most magical, satisfying, rewarding exeriences I've ever had in my life. Both nights we did it the crowd was absolutely jubilent and – even though it sounds corny – I think we actually inspired some people to make changes in their personal lives. It was about as good as this kind of thing could ever get. I miss my fellow actors. I love them so much and we did such awesome work together. I just hope I'm blessed with a chance to do something like it again. Squash I now own a squash racquet. I do not, however, have the goggles yet. Rob has a squash racquet, too... but mine is better. I Gotta Be Me I've decided to enter a painting contest where you paint Warhammer miniatures up and enter them for judging. I've decided to do a squad of ten of these, except mine won't look like they're made from grape bubble gum. |
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| Februrary 21 | Friday Five Done Right I was considering doing the Friday Five this week, but I don't think anyone can sum up my sentiments better than Peter can. It's like he's right inside my head. |
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| Februrary 21 | Just Wastin' Time Today I listened to Otis Redding's "Dock Of The Bay" about 20 times in a row. I just set iTunes for loop and let it go. The song is so good I don't even have words. Why don't they make music like this anymore? |
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| Februrary 19 | STOP SITTING THERE STARING AT ME ...Stupid cat. |
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| Februrary 17 | Alarms I can't really use an alarm to wake up in the morning. I mean, I can, but it doesn't work the way it should. See, if I know there's an alarm that's going to go off, I start waking up hours ahead of time. I keep waking up every few minutes until it becomes ridiculous to wait for the alarm, and I just reach over, shut it off and get up. It's actually a very stressful way to wake up. No, I prefer to just let my 3 year old come into my bedroom while it's still dark outside and demand that she be fed immediately. At least I sleep right up until the second she arrives. |
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| Februrary 17 | Chimwemwe This is a photo of my best friend Chimwemwe on Kasungu Mountain in Malawi. Just looking at him makes my heart happy. |
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| Februrary 16 | I Am Not Your Help Desk The thing about running a Macintosh gaming site for a living is that people have this strange idea that you're their personal tech support desk and are directly affiliated with Apple – possibly even receiving shares from profits. I find myself getting email from people who not only expect me to fix whatever their Mac-related problems are, but are really huffy about it to boot. For instance, I once got an email with a very short message therein that said "THE GAME IS NOT WORKING!!! I DEMAND YOU GET BUSY AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!" No signature or anything. Just the irate message. I didn't even recognize the name on the email address. I think, however, my favorite thing is when people try to threaten me with buying a PC if things aren't going their way; like if I think you're going to buy a PC then I'm going to suddenly straighten up and fly right before that terrible calamity takes place. "Dear Sir, I find the performance of Halo on my Blueberry iMac unacceptable. You had best look into this matter because I am very, very close to giving up completely and purchasing a PC. Signed - Some guy". I get tons of these. No joke. So here's my response: Dear Some Guy Who Is Threatening Me With Buying A PC, |
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| Februrary 16 | Cleanin' Up This morning I took the entirety of year one of this blog and put it into the archives (linked at the top of this page). We'll see if that makes the bandwidth consumption any better. Not that I actually care. I added a brief "Who am I" at the top of this page. There are more people comin' through here reading my blog lately and I thought I should maybe post some kind of Corey Tamas summary. It was either that or the photo of my butt. |
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| Februrary 15 | Nerdfest Ok, let's not make a big deal out of this. I got my brother's digital camera and took a bunch of shots of my Warhammer miniatures. |
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| Februrary 14 | The Things We Learn Last night I went out with Shawn and my brother, Terry. We went to East Side Mario's and had us some wings. That's right; I had wings too. They don't happen to be part of the diet I'm currently observing, as the Coke I drank is full of sugar and the sauce for the wings is as well. But they were tasty. Yes, they were. Unfortunately, the taste of the wings is the last real chance I had to experience any pleasure where the food was concerned. It took maybe half an hour before the entire meal gripped my lower innards like an alligator with a Welsh Corgi. It seems that asking my internals to deal with hot sauce, caffeine and sugar after two weeks of yogurt, almonds and Perrier is too much to ask. I was having a pretty good time playing trivia and teaching Shawn sign language 101 until I had to run to the men's room and stay there for quite some time. So it goes in nature where things just right themselves on their own. I won't be eating any wings from East Side Mario's any time soon. |
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| Februrary 13 | Wow. Has It Been A Week Already? Friday Five. Q'uelle surprise. 1. Are you superstitious? No, but I believe in spiritual forces having an effect on the material world, so some people might accuse me of taking karma into account when making decisions and plans. 2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition? I love the football/baseball/basketball players or coaches who win a game and then don't shave, shower, change clothes, fix their hair or anything because they think it'll keep the streak alive. They start out the season looking like Brad Pitt and end it looking like this guy. 3. Believer or not, what's your favorite superstition? Well, ok. This is muy stupid because I'm not even superstitious, but I've had this streak for about 10 years where every January 23rd something bad happens to me. Girls break up with me, gigs fall through, injury happens. Like I said, I'm not superstitious but I just keep noticing this. Except this year I was ok. Who knows why? I'm actually feeling a little sheepish telling everyone this. 4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual? Luck? Not really. I don't believe in randomness. I don't believe things happen for no reason. 5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not? I do to an extent. Its roots are in the Zoroastrian religion, which taught its followers to study the stars. You might remember the Three Wise Men from the Bible who found Jesus using a star; they were Zoroastrians. I believe the word "Zodiac" is a derivative of "Zoroaster". But how much of the original teachings are found in the Zodiac we know today? I doubt much, if any. Still, it's worthy investigation. |
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| Februrary 12 | I Almost Lapped The Friday Five The Friday Five is supposed to be done on Friday, but I didn't do it on Friday, did I? I'm doing it on Thursday evening. That means tomorrow there will be a new one. Those of you who read my blog who aren't too bright will see one Friday Five posted here and then tomorrow, when another one is released (and if I decide to do it), will say "Wow. Has it been a week already?" I'm doing this Friday Five, despite it being a bit lame, because I'm trying to make a point of updating my blog relatively often. Rachael gets upset when I don't and I don't want to fall out of favor with Rachael. She's vicious. 1. What's the most daring thing you've ever done? I asked someone to give me $15,000 of his own money so I could make part of a video game, and then another $85,000 for the rest of it. And he agreed. 2. What one thing would you like to try that your mother/friend/significant other would never approve of? Drop everything I'm doing, all my work projects, all my responsibilities, start a new band and start playing clubs and bars and other seedy places. Also, I'd get a Flying-V shaped guitar so I could pretend I was in KISS. 3. On a scale of 1-10, what's your risk factor? (1=never take risks, 10=it's a lifestyle) On the inside I'm a 9.5, but out of consideration for other people in my life I hover around 2-3. 4. What's the best thing that's ever happened to you as a result of being bold/risky? I tried mixing basmati rice with oyster sauce and balsamic vinegar once, and... it turned out to be a hell of a snack that I continued eating for years. 5. ... and what's the worst? I don't really know. For whatever reason, all my bold risks seem to work out. |
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| Februrary 11 | The Mind Boggles Why do people still use this? |
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| Februrary 11 | Getting Ruth Ready For School There are many days when I get both kids started on their day all by my lonesome, and today was just such a day. We have a routine where her and her sister get dressed, eat breakfast, play some, brush their teeth and hair, and then I take Ruth to the bus stop while Dora waits indoors (don't worry; the bus stop is about five paces from the front door. Dora usually watches me through the window). Most parents will know this without having to be told, but the key element of the morning routine is time; everything has to happen on a very tight schedule. Wake up at X time, dressed by Y, put on coats by Z and then catch the bus. This morning Ruth was dragging her heels because she wanted to color or play with Groovy Girls. I give her as much time to do this as I can. I also give her warnings as the clock ticks. I say "Twenty minutes until bus time, Ruth", and then "Ten minutes" and then "Five" and finally "One minute". This helps her to more easily transition from play time to bus time. The one thing I always forget is that the clock on my computer (the one I time the warnings by) is about four minutes slower than the one in the kitchen. I know that her bus arrives at 8:15 by the clock in the kitchen, and because I always leave five minutes' grace by the clock on my computer it turns out in actuality that we really have one minute until the bus comes when we commence with dressing in outdoor clothes. I sometimes wish that our coat-and-boots-putting-on-time could be video taped, because I am certain it's funny to watch. It doesn't always feel funny at the time, but I do really epitomize the means-well, but not-too-bright dad. This morning I put her snow pants on backwards. Add 20 seconds to remove and redeploy. I also put her boots on the wrong feet. Fixed that. I eventually grabbed a pair of mittens and put them on her. "Dad," she complained "these are wet inside". Oops. Remove those. Put another on. "DaaaAAAaad... these are wet, TOO" she moans. Ok. So I take a third pair of mittens and put them on her. I ask if they are too small. She says they aren't. Once they're both on she has a whimsical look on her face that says "I was kidding. They ARE too small", and the mittens only just cover her palms, but no further. What's wrong with me, seriously? I tell her to stand on the front step and watch for the bus while I look for another pair in The Bin. The Bin doesn't look deep, but it really is. There are mittens in there that date all the way back to the 18th century and earlier. There are mittens I've forgotten we owned. There are mittens I don't even recognize. I am rifling around in The Bin searching for a pair of mittens that match and having trouble doing it, all the while worried that her bus is going to come. The mitten search is rather like that card game "Concentration", where you flip one card, then another and try to get a match... and the point is trying to remember where all the cards are so you can flip two alike. I find a mitten that looks like it mated with a mitten I saw a few seconds ago. Is it the same mitten? Do I put it under my arm and search for its brother? I do this. Soon I am seeing another mitten that I know I saw a twin for. I store that under my arm as well. We get up to four mittens before I actually get a pair. By this time the outdoor portion of the morning is brief; after so much mitten-hunting and snow-pants-reversing there are only a scant few moments left before the bus arrives. I am standing on the sidewalk facing the corner the bus rounds to make sure I spot it at the earliest moment (lest we fail to leave ourselves time for a proper hug and kiss before she boards). Ruth is behind me on a hill of snow punking around doing something. I am speaking to her absently without facing her. She lifts a snowball roughly four times the size of her head, raises it with both of her little stick arms, and peels me in the back of the skull with it. This is the part of her personality that most reminds me of her mother. When she finally gets on the bus we complete our morning with the very brief but consistent ritual; I watch as the bus pulls away. For once she actually turns in the window and sees me before the bus is gone (she usually doesn't). She's smiling at me but, as the bus pulls away, her little smile melts. My heart breaks. This will haunt me all day. When she gets off the bus in 7.5 hours I will have an extra big hug for her. In the few paces it takes for me to get back to my front door, I spit in the snow. It's the color of green primer. |
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| Februrary 11 | Suffering For Your Art Sometimes after a night when I've been painting a lot of Warhammer stuff with spray-paint green primer, I'll get up in the AM and, after my morning tinkle, I'll blow my nose and see the color of the primer I used the night before filling the Kleenex. This worries me a little bit. I've considered switching to a safer hobby like Golf because you almost never hear of someone blowing Golf balls out their nose. |
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| Februrary 10 | I Am A Dog. With No Plans. Sorry I haven't been updating much lately. I've been meaning to; I often think of things in the car to write or maybe while I'm washing dishes, but it goes right out of my head. Right now I'm trying to manage MacGamer, my game project, my household, different finance things, some freelance work, Warhammer when I can squeeze it in, and some time being a miscreant layabout. That last part is really hard, but the payoff is so very good. I just finished a week-long visit from my mom which actually did not suck! She was funny and generous and easy going and washed dishes and did laundry and, overall, made my load a whole lot lighter. Thanks, mom! I love you! Now... to finish the work I didn't do while she was here. I think I feel an ulcer coming on already. Uggghhhh. |
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| Februrary 6 | Best Quote I've Seen In Ages "i enjoy the photos of dogs on indoor tables best. those dogs are rebellious and can form plans. outdoor table dogs are just being dogs. with no plans." |
