The 27th I didn't crawl out of bed until 1:30 again today and I really have to stop doing that. It's been so bloody muggy and hot though the last couple of days that I didn't really feel like doing anything except lying around trying to stay cool. I haven't gone anywhere in the past couple of days so I have to get out at some point tomorrow even if it's just to get groceries. Neil and Chris came over tonight to shoot some stuff for Neil's new movie. Chris brought some lights that he has access to over the summer and did the shooting while me and Neil broke into the house and murdered Nathan. It was fun except it was way too hot even after the sun went down to be doing anything requiring me to dress up in anything beyond shorts and a t-shirt. The 25th Yesterday I drove up to Charlottetown because MacPhee and Nicole invited me to their house warming party. I had some time to kill beforehand so I went to Value Village and actually found a pretty cool t-shirt that I'm fairly sure will still fit me after it's been washed. I have a tendency to not like clothes after I get them home for some reason or another. I just wish I could find more clothes that I like and fit me. I'm tired of finding t-shirts that reach my knees or are built to be used as a tarp. The house warming was pretty fun. I finally got to see their new place which is outside of town in York where it's nice and quiet and country-ish. It's a nice, big place with a huge yard and lots of room for the two dogs and cat to run around in. Meeko the cat would be bombarded by the absolutely insane shi-tsu Chance while the dalmation/lab mix Rascal just wanted attention. Chance was INSANE and would just run around on the hardwood floors unable to get a grip. His legs would just keep spinning and you could push him around on the floor like he was a curling stone or something. He looked like a brown and black mop with frantic legs scurrying after the cat or bouncing off the walls. Jean and Pat showed up and we mostly hung out downstairs watching Ali G all night. It was good to catch up with Jean because I can't remember the last time I saw him, let alone huung out with him. I gave him a lift home at the end of the night and it was super foggy and, for some reason, I wasn't all freaked out that I couldn't see anything. Normally I'd just be thinking there would be a parking space reserved for me and my passenger in a ditch somewhere. The 23rd Here's another show that they made us watch in French immersion. Parlez-Moi featured Marc Favreau who played himself and Sol the hobo clown. Apparently Favreau was a big name in Quebec and was appointed Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 1995 and an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2003. Weird. I figured Marc was probably just some teacher or local actor on some cheap 80s educational program playing a dirty hobo with good intentions. As best as I can remember, the show was supposed to teach kids the French language and be funny. The premise was that Sol would be put in some random situation, place or circumstance—hence the titles like Sol Buys a House, Sol at the Airport, and Sol and the Spies—and we'd laugh while learning French. I don't actually remember if it was funny or not but chances are it helped with my French. I was around the age of 7 or 8 so the subtleties of French humour were no doubt lost on me. If I were to see it now I might find it funny but chances are I'd still be left clueless. I get a really weird feeling when I see pictures like these from the show, especially the split screen of Marc and Sol on the phone. I'm not sure why. I think the intro had music playing over silent clips and I had to watch two French guys have a weird conversation. Sol always seemed extra French to me in the way he spoke and because he had a very elastic mouth or something. I find Sol to be rather creepy and probably found him much more so back in elementary school. He's definitely embedded in my memory though. Man, is he ever a creepy, dirty hobo just to look at him. The make-up doesn't help either. The 22nd Yesterday on CBC, I heard Houston by Soul Coughing start playing as part of a promo for the program Ideas on CBC later that night. First off, Soul Coughing's music doesn't exactly come to mind when I think of Ideas. Secondly, the topic was Canadian prairie bird research and I had absolutely no clue how Houston related to this subject in any way. I chalked it up to someone sneaking one of their favourite tracks into the promo or something because it felt so unsuitable. Well, I happened to be in the shower when Ideas came on the radio and it turns out that one of the researchers in the piece is named Dr. Stuart Houston, though they pronounced it hoos-ton. Now I know what the musical tie-in was for the promo but it really, really seems like a stretch. That was probably one of the most pointless things I've ever written about. After I got my income taxes figured out for 2005, it turned out I owed the feds quite a bit seeing as freelancing cheques don't have taxes taken off of them. In any case, it was expected but it still hurt. Around the same time, I was wanting to cash in my Choice Rewards points on my MasterCard and just be rid of the whole situation before I had to pay my next annual fee that costs as much as some of the junk in their catalogue. I decided that since I'm cashing them in I might as well put my income tax payment on the card, get the big boost in points, pay the statement in full at the end of the month, cash in my points and go out in style with a brand new…toaster oven maybe? I went to the bank, pulled out the plastic, sent a good chunk of change off to Ottawa, dusted off my hands and headed home with visions of salad spinners and deluxe towel sets dancing in my head. Fast forward to my next statement: no extra points for the big payment, an interest charge, and that annual fee I was trying to avoid. Turns out that the payment made on my card, unbeknownst to me, was considered "cash advance" so that means interest started building on it right away AND cash advance charges do not qualify for Choice Rewards points. Sweet, merciful crap. So, had I just sent a cheque for the amount I owed in income taxes instead of using my credit card, I would have: a) saved myself a $34 interest charge, b) been able to switch my card to avoid an annual fee for Choice Rewards, and c) avoided another headache and much frustration. I just don't get why stupid stuff like this always has to happen. I pay all of my bills on time, I'm a pretty nice fellow, I don't cause much grief to anyone yet I still can't catch a break that, in reality, would have only paid off in not even enough points to order a milk frother. But it would have made the difference between a 4-slice toaster and a deep fryer (not that I want either of those things). I guess that's what I get for being greedy. The 21st I came across these supremely classic stills from a show I watched in my early years of French immersion. This is the pineapple named Ananas (cleverly enough, French for pineapple) from the educational show Téléfrançais. I was at Greenfield Elementary at the time when my teacher would roll in the AV cart, turn off the fluorescent lights and play some episodes for us. I honestly don't remember much about the show other than Ananas being the main character and the theme song itself. Apparently, he lived in a junkyard and he would parachute out of a plane flown by his female pilot friend, Pilote (you guessed it, French for pilot). I may be wrong but I remember her having creepy human hands instead of regular puppet hands. Sort of like the Swedish Chef from The Muppets except not goofy because she was a weirdo looking French lady in a trucker hat who takes children and talking pineapples into her cartoon airplane. The only other things I can remember were the skeletons (Les Squelettes) who were actually ghostly, kind of creepy and their C'est l'Halloween song, which still goes through my head at least once a year. Now that I see them again, Les Squelettes were sort of styling in their black padre hats and capes. I hope I look that good when I become a dangly, transparent, francophone skeleton. The 20th I was watching a bit of The Price is Right today and thought how weird it would be if Bob Barker gave up the glam and cheesy glitz of the show to become a televangelist. He'd still have the suits, the smile and the microphone except he wouldn't be talking about pricing games and the actual retail price, he'd be talking about Jesus and other Jesus-related topics. Well, who knows, maybe he could keep all the sparkle and glitz, and treat his broadcast just like TPIR, complete with the models to model passages from the Bible. You know, they'd caress the gilded edges of the pages, make oooh faces when he quotes Matthew and John, and wink with a smile when he says "amen". I'd probably watch that, especially if he kept the same theme song. Isn't that theme a complete work of genius? I honestly think that it's the best game show theme song ever created, if not up there as one of the best television themes of all time. It just says "drive away in you brand new car under a shower of dollar bills and shiny coins to your home with a brand new dinette set, widescreen TV and year supply of Caltrate." I just realized that I never really knew what Bob Barker actually looks like. I mean, I know what he looks like but it's just this vague TV personality head that I could only describe very basically but to actually stop, stare and examine his face in photos is kind of surreal. He's actually a person (maybe a robot or cyborg at this point though) and it's weird to think of him at home in bed reading or cooking up a big potful of macaroni. I doubt he actually cooks macaroni or even does the cooking himself for that matter. He probably eats Botox-infused tofu or some other life-extending concoction created in the TPIR labs. The 19th I'm eating a cold slice of leftover Michael's pizza and it is literally a slice of heaven. Dang, this pizza was and still is (for the next few bites anyway) good. I want more but it's good that this is the last slice because I don't need any more pizza this late at night. I don't need any pizza actually. It was bloody hot today and I didn't like it one bit. It's only going to get worse too but maybe I'll get more used to it as the summer months wear on. No, I won't actually. I never get used to the humidity and the stickiness and sweating. All I can do is lie on the floor in the dark. It cooled off some tonight though and I drove out to the cat house with Nathan and Laine for a bit. It was super windy and a whole bunch of kitties were running around and being playful. I always feel bad after leaving but the fact that the old cat from last year was still there and alive was nice to know. He was just as friendly and docile as usual. He just lets you pet him while he purrs really loudly and drools a bunch. The 17th Tyler and Melissa invited me over for dinner tonight and, of course, I accepted their generous invitation. We had steak and peppers with noodles and it was quite delicious. We decided to watch a movie later too so in between I came home and had an unintentional nap. Oh well. It didn't screw up my evening too much. This is completely unrelated but I've always thought that scurvy was hilarious. It makes me wonder how many people in developed countries these days actually get scurvy. Now that I actually read about the symptoms of scurvy it's not quite so funny but the word and the idea of someone I know of who might eat terribly and get scurvy is funny. I'd have to make fun of them when they start complaining about having spongy gums. I'd be grossed out too so I'd offer them an orange between fits of laughter. The 16th I drove to Charlottetown tonight to meet up with Andrea about making a website for her and see her play at Brennan's along with a bunch of other people. I hung out there all night long and had a pretty good time, probably due in some part to the four cups of coffee which had me relatively wired. Oh, and the awesome carrot cake made my night. Ryan and Kira showed up, their friend Richard, and Dave Langley walked in off the street to hang out for a while too. It was a really nice evening so the big window was open and we sat streetside or out front which was fine except that everyone and their dog was smoking up a storm. Then this guy named Ashley—who must be one of Ryan's co-workers—joined us and they talked about stuff I didn't care about. The weird thing was he looked to be the perfect amalgam of Dave Noel and Jordan Oakie. I found it sort of surreal but, then again, it could have been the caffeine. At one point I heard this really loud crack and a weird commotion began. Then this goatee-wearing, ponytail-sporting douchebag was confronted by one of the workers and he charged out after spouting some "motherfucker" remarks to the guy he apparently cold-cocked and lay on the floor unconcious. I had no idea what was going on until I looked and saw some guy laid out flat on the floor out cold. He must have been out for a good minute or so and when he got up you could see that he was pretty dazed. He was a big guy too so it would explain why the crack was so loud because it looked like it would take a lot to flatten the guy. A mop-job for the blood, the guy staggered about for a bit and got a hold of himself before the cops showed up. Eventually the lights went back down and the music started up again. Suddenly, everything became rather mundane again but there's nothing like some rabble rousing and a sucker punch to liven up an evening. The 14th It was a grocery shopping adventure tonight. Well, not really but Nathan joined in the fantastic fun and we picked up Melissa on our way to the Superstore. It wasn't really an adventure, it was basically just regular grocery shopping but with more people than just me and when you live here that borders on being an adventure. Lately I haven't had to endure any aisle small talk with anyone but tonight I was stopped twice. It's not so bad, I suppose, but I'd much rather just go get my groceries without having to engage people in idle chit-chat. I find it to be one of the most awkward situations in public when you keep running into the same person you don't really know that well over and over in the aisles of a store. I'm planning on doing a skit about it but when that will happen I have no idea. I did find something extra cool tonight though. And by "extra cool" I mean it's only extra cool to people like me who like old typography and containers, especially when they're made of metal. I had never seen this on the shelf before and I was probably more excited than I should have been to find what is basically a small paint can covered in classic type and full of Irish oatmeal. I wanted to buy it for the can alone but, after I got it home and made some of the oatmeal, I realized that it made sense that a can this neat could only contain oatmeal of the finest calibre. It's the kind of oatmeal you need to cook for half an hour but when it's done it's hearty and reminds me of the stuff my grandmother used to make. I even ate it from a bowl here that's exactly like the bowls my grandmother has had forever. With some milk and some brown sugar on top, it's like it's 8am up west on a Saturday as I eat oatmeal my grandmother made for me while I watched the cows in the community pasture through the kitchen window. The best thing about having oatmeal while I stayed with my grandparents was that she never told me I couldn't have more than a spoonful of brown sugar like my mom did. She just turned a blind eye while I stirred it into my oatmeal until it was an unhealthy brown colour. I couldn't eat that sugar gruel now though. That was basically a bowl of liquid sugar and the granules had more substance to them than the actual oatmeal did. The 12th I gave Laine a lift home around 1am or so and while I was out I decided to stop into the 24-hour Ultramar to get some milk since I'm sans lait and ever so badly want a bowl of cereal. After being buzzed in and seeing a sketchy guy who must have been the cashier's pal, I suddently noticed a weird aroma in the air. It wasn't a typical odour found in a convenience store, instead it was very much a home-cooking scent. I immediately started to salivate because it dawned on me that the place reeked of frying bacon! I had no idea why. Perhaps the sketchy guy was heating something up in the microwave. Maybe it was his cologne. I felt the need to investigate. I brought my milk to the counter and discovered that the cashier was in front of a Coleman propane camping stove cooking bacon. Who the hell cooks bacon on a camping stove at 1am while working in a gas station/convenience store? Apparently this dude does. I want bacon so badly right now. I'd fry up a pound and eat it all at once if I could. Perhaps I should have picked up some bacon with my two litres of milk. The 11th Another week come and gone, another Sunday over with. Sleep, eat, be lazy, eat, be lazy, eat again, and back to sleep. I guess it's not as bad as all that actually but it just seems that the days all blend together lately. The freelance life has been pretty slow as of late so I mostly just chase my cat around, read magazines and drink coffee all day long. I've been going for walks fairly regularly at night though when it's nice. I usually get to stop and play with some kitty that's roaming the streets late at night like I am too. Well, not exactly like I am. After all, kitties don't listen to iPods or wear sneakers with orthopedic insoles, and I don't roll around on dirty curbs or run away from cars. Even though the weather isn't all that great I don't mind it so much at night. The other night it was so calm and just barely spitting rain with a big full moon. It's been pretty much the same over the last few nights so it's good for walking, and also for mischief… I came across some troubled youth last night rearranging letters on signs. Hooligans! To think that they're out running the roads at all hours of the night causing mischief and grief. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Simply ashamed. Oh, here's a photo of a sign a bunch of us messed with a few years ago. The 10th I drove up to Charlottetown with Nathan, Laine and Sharon tonight to see The Omen. It was really good but I definitely want to see the original again because it's been such a long time since I've watched it. I don't remember a thing about it actually but I thought they did a great job with this one in any case. They relied on a lot of recent or current events to interpret the signs of The Apocalypse so I'd be interested to see what incidents they used in the original to interpret the signs, if they did that at all. Just goes to show that the church could pretty much use any significant event from any time period and make it fit in as part of the signs of the End Times. As much as I liked this version, I guess I was mistaken to think it was a thriller. Apparently it was a comedy based on all of the laughter from the stupid, ignorant fuckers sitting behind us. I had no idea it was funny to see someone suffer a brutal death or be assaulted horribly. But hey, that's just me. I must not have a very good sense of humour. The 9th I recently found a strip of negatives sitting in the "door pocket" (for lack of a better term) of my car and don't know how long they've been there or who they belong to. I guess it must belong the previous owner. In any case, I scanned the negs to find three crappy, pointless photos so I figured I might as well post them because I have nothing better to do. If you're interested in seeing these fine examples of photographic genius them just click on the frames. The 5th Well, it's about damn time I updated my site. I've been sick of my old design since I made it back whenever the hell that was. Too long ago, scary long ago actually. A bunch of useless crap and crappy design did abound. I figure I only need a few key areas so why bother with a bunch of sections and content that no one would ever see, let alone use? So the new design is bubbly fun with toys and retro goodness. I still have a lot of work to do in order to get my portfolio redesigned and updated with new content though. Work is sort of slow right now so this will be a good time to get this end of the site finished up. After that maybe I can focus on something new like converting old demo tapes to CD or, more importantly, skit tapes to DVD. This stuff is never going to get done if I don't stop sleeping in past 1:30pm though. I really need to make an effort to get up earlier but no matter how many alarms I set or how much I try to coax myself into dragging my lazy ass outta bed, nothing ever seems to work. Sometimes I think it would actually be really worthwhile to pay some engineering type to rig up my bed so that it tilts up and dumps me onto the floor in the mornings. The thing is, the bed would need to stay upright for fifteen minutes or more otherwise I'm liable to crawl back into bed. The 4th When I was a little kid, our bathroom didn't have a shower so when my mom was giving me a bath and washing my hair she had to dump water over me to wash out the shampoo. Problem was, the damn jug she used held a LOT of water and I had to hold my breath while she dumped the whole thing over my head. My little lungs had a very tough time while I held my breath. I hated it and thought maybe she was trying to kill me. I obviously loathed any bath that involved getting my hair washed. Why she didn't just dump a bit of water at a time instead of the whole friggin' thing makes no sense to me. I'm watching my Spider-Man cartoon collection and so far have come to the conclusion (though, I've felt this way since I was a kid) that The Rhino is, quite simply, lame-o. He is so uninteresting and just plain dumb. He wears a fucking rhino costume for crissakes. Electro looks dumb too but The Rhino looks like a total oafish goof. His hideout is even in a damn rhino cave at the zoo! I read about how he became The Rhino through experiments and radiation, blah, blah, blah. Still lame. I know there are a ton of villains and heroes alike out there in the comic universe that are complete wastes of cape and cowl but…look at the image above. I mean, come on. I kind of feel sorry for the guy because it almost looks like he was eaten by a rhino. Maybe he knows how ridiculous he looks and how lame his persona is, which would explain the chip on his shoulder and why he tries to make himself seem more glorious than he is by stealing gold, melting it down and making a statue in his own image. I just feel bad for him. He probably has serious daddy issues too. The 3rd I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand tonight with Nathan and Laine, and thankfully the theatre wasn't full of loud, foolish teenagers. It was a pretty entertaining movie and stayed true to the other two films. When I heard Ratner was directing instead of Singer I was worried it would be turned into a ridiculous mess but it was still a great superhero movie and I found it as enjoyable as the other ones. I'm reading this book my grandfather gave me called Bread & Molasses which is about a poor family in a miner's town in Cape Breton during The Depression. There's a part in it where the main character talks about when he had a bad fever/flu and, with no pills or medicine available, his mom gave him a spoonful of molasses followed by a spoonful of SULPHUR! The weird thing is that I've actually seen my grandfather do this himself and he told me how it was an old remedy to clean your system out. Maybe this book is where he got the idea. I asked a pharmacist the other day if sulphur might actually be helpful in getting over a flu or cold. He got this blank look on his face and said that ingesting sulphur is not a good idea and he doubted that it had any medicinal value but he wasn't sure. The body can't process sulphur so it has to come out somehow and in the book the writer said it would come out of their pores and they could actually see it collecting in their clothes at the end of the day. I think I'll stick to NyQuil. The 2nd There is currently only one tape in my car and I need some more to add a bit of variety. While I enjoy White Zombie's La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1, I need some more listening options and, as much as I love CBC Radio 1 and 2, occasionally they can get a bit on the boring side. There certainly isn't anything else on the dial around here that I can stand except maybe the French jazz station from time to time. Commercial radio drives me absolutely insane. I normally bring my iPod but when I'm just going to get groceries it's easier to pop in a tape for the short drive. So, in an effort to round out the music I can listen to while running errands, I'm going through old tapes I have kicking around and found some classic stuff I all but forgot about. I used to dub Brave New Waves or Radio Escapade every now and then in hopes of catching some good tunes while I slept (or did things other than listening to the radio late at night). One tape is from a 1999 BNW broadcast and may very well be the first time I ever listened to Mogwai, specifically Stanley Kubrick. Such a good song and here I am seven years later still without a Mogwai CD. Seven years…holy crap, I can't believe it's been that long already. Just goes to show how much crap I hang onto over the years. There's also a tape with some ultra-cheesey yet entertaining disco versions of tunes like Eleanor Rigby, and Inagaddadavida. The more I keep listening the more I realize what a weirdo mix this is. I'm writing as I listen and it's gone from crackly disco on vinyl to music comprised entirely of video game music and sound effects or inspired by video games. Now it's lounge and some kind of Barry Adamson-esque secret agent track. Maybe it is Barry Adamson. I should buy some of his albums. I still have half a dozen tapes or so to listen to again so I'm sure I'll come across some more good stuff. Ever since I've starting using iTunes and my iPod I've usually just hit Shuffle and let the music play. I rarely listen to an entire album, usually only when I buy something new and give it a few play-throughs. After that it just goes into the mix for a continuous stream of completely random tunes. Going from Primus to The Ventures to Black Sabbath doesn't bother me. I like shuffle, I have since I started buying CDs because I was getting tired of the same sequence of songs over and over when I listened to tapes. Bloody tapes… Though, I'm reverting now to listening to one album at a time, in the proper track order, because I've completely lost all touch with half of the albums I own. It's all a jumble now because I'm always shuffling my entire library on songs and any new albums I have are getting lost in the mix. I don't attach myself to them like I used to in the past. I used to play the shit out of some CDs for days on end and now it's two or three times tops. I'll even buy a number of albums from one band at once and listen to them in a row and then have no separation in my mind for each, they all run together and nothing stands on its own. It sucks. I miss how it felt to listen to Love It to Death and then buy School's Out and have a completely different attachment to each album. I've only recently started downloading album cover art into iTunes and it's made me realize even more just how little I have a feel for most of my CDs. I've always felt the packaging and artwork is a strong part of an album as a whole but this shuffle business detaches me from all of that. I'm a completist, a collector, a graphic designer and someone who appreciates more than just the music an artist or group presents with each release. The visual and tactile can be as much of the album's experience as the music itself. My iPod and iTunes are really convenient but I miss things like the typewriter text from the Pearl Jam booklets, the storybook feel of Daisies of the Galaxy, or the cow licking its own ass hidden under the CD tray in Undertow. Maybe as I listen to an album I should take out the case and flip through the booklet. It would give me a chance to read lyrics too. Then again, if I'm going to do that why bother ripping songs into iTunes when I could just listen to the damn CD sitting in the case in front me? Now it's Tea and Thorazine by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire…I love mix tapes.