General

I go downtown today and as the bus is being re-routed down Hastings due to more work on our $2 billion sinkhole, er, <em>subway </em>to Richmond, I notice a rather sizable crowd gathered at the corner before my stop. Turns out to be a protest against Scientology, whose, uh, “church”, is on the corner opposite the protesters. Lots of people waving signs about “killers” and generally how evil those Scientology folks are. My favorite was a guy wearing a cream-colored (and expressionless) mask with a sign that read “I for one welcome our galactic overlords”.

Don’t tell Tom Cruise I made this post.

And speaking of protests, there is a local ad campaign currently running on bus shelters with the theme of “Trivial problem vs. 250,000 baby seals about to get slaughtered. Get angry for the right reasons.” Some examples are the price of gas rising 3 cents a liter, your cellphone signal not working or your shoes being the wrong color. I’ve never found such ads to be effective (for me at least) because guilt is too blatantly manipulative. “You materialistic consumer-driven scumbag, stop worrying about the irrelevant details of your daily life and start frothing at the mouth over the annual seal hunt. Grr!” Yeah, well, what if I was a doctor and that wonky cell signal meant I missed a call that could have saved a life? What if I was a member of Greenpeace and the call I missed could have saved a baby harp seal’s life? Hmm? Your ads aren’t so clever now, are they?

For the record, I am opposed to the seal hunt.

Morrissey refused to tour Canada because of the hunt. There’s another great thing — celebrities and artists picking and choosing what offends them from a buffet of choices then deciding they’ll make their stand over Issue A by boycotting Country B. We miss you, Morrissey. Really. How’s the British campaign going in Iraq? You’ve canceled all your UK dates to register your opposition, yes? No? Do as I do and scrap your fey ways, dial-a-cliche.

There’s a new bakery that sells absolutely decadent double chocolate muffins a few blocks from where I work. I actually have to walk past another bakery to get there. Then there is another bakery across from the double chocolate muffin one. The neighborhood around here is pretty much bakeries and sushi places. But today I went to get a muffin at the new bakery and they had none. I settled for a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie. It was good but not as good. Maybe it’s a sign to stick to my New Year’s resolution and eat carrot sticks or something.

Also, it turns out the version of Rasputin I bought was the truncated single, not the full song from the, uh, classic album Nightflight to Venus. The entire verse about chopping off his head was missing. So I had to spend another 99 cents to get the full version. Perhaps I’ll look for some iTunes complaint site to express my outage over this. Hopefully it will have a simple form with multiple choices to check off, because I like my complaining to be easy and convenient!

I should have my next short story added to the site soon and a shocking announcement about my next novel, too. :O!

When I listen to music I still mainly do it the old-fashioned way, buying CDs and listening to them on my stereo. I rip all the tracks and copy them over into iTunes so I can also listen to them on my PC and iPod. When it comes to buying songs over iTunes, I never buy full albums because I’d rather get the CD and rip the tracks at my preferred bitrate (which is higher than what Apple offers on their DRM-protected songs). So mostly I’ll buy a few individual songs here and there. And I’ve noticed a trend.

I use iTunes to buy kitsch.

I could never bring myself to buy a full Boney M album (although I did when I was 14 but hey, I was 14). I can, however, bring myself to buy their cornball classic “Rasputin” for 99 cents.  Also see: “Venus” by Bananarama (is it possible to buy this song, be male and not gay?), Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose” or even The Mama and Pappas’ “California Dreamin'” which may not be kitsch unless you also watch film footage of them in concert from 1967.

So I’d like to thank Apple for providing me the opportunity to indulge my horrible taste in music and nostalgia for mere pennies! I’m still not buying one of your iMacs, though. Sorry!

Because if you were here, you might update this dang blog once in awhile, something I’ve been curiously unmotivated to do.

But I will have a few updates soon — for real!

I’ve looked over a number of themes for WP and have settled on fsimple for now because it’s simple and I’m all about being simple.

I’ve adjusted the type, color scheme and formatting a bit and will continue to plink away at the general site design. Then I shall dazzle with content.

Who needs content when you can just update the backend that no one ever sees?

I swear I am going to reorganize the fiction pages and finally create a new theme for this place. Really. You’ll see.

Eventually.

I’ve updated the site to WordPress 2.0.1.

Nothing else has been changed.

This may be corrected “soon”.

I’ve finally updated to WordPress 1.5.2. Very exciting news if you are WordPress’s mom or something.

I’ve decided to chuck the previous theme I had created, so the default one will do until I come up with something new and shiny. Enjoy!

c) A little of a) and a little of b). I dunno how people find so much crap to say.

In the meantime, members of QB may have noticed that our forums are down. While we work at lovingly restoring them to their former glory, feel free to share your comments in this blog thinger.

Am I:

a) Really lazy when it comes to maintaining a blog
b) Have absolutely nothing to say
c) A little of a) and a little of b)
d) Rhinoceros!

I will post the correct answer after giving this a bit of thought. Give me a few months.