Yes, it’s the time of year where every other post is a complaint about the weather. We are on track for a wetter than normal November and in truth it doesn’t really bother me much. However, seeing this on the mountains makes my toes scrunch up in horror.
Damn snow.
I finally decided to replace the generic nature image in the header of the site with a new generic block of colors I made using my highly developed artistic skills. This may change yet again.
See below.
It turns out writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days really cuts into the time you normally devote to going on about various inanities in your blog.
On the plus side, I am near 32,000 words as we hit the halfway mark, about 7,000 words ahead of the pace and I think the science in my story is probably more accurate than the science in 2012 (more on the in the next post). And mine is a horror story.
1980 is when the movie musical Xanadu came out. This was only a few years after Grease — which was a huge hit, so naturally musicals came into vogue again and not surprisingly most were crap. Xanada featured Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly (!) and the music of ELO. Sure it was high concept nonsense but I was 16 and didn’t know better. I recall coming away from the movie having rather enjoyed it.
Tonight, for reasons unclear to me I visited YouTube and checked out a number of songs from the movie and yikes, it’s terrible! Yes, the ELO songs are still great but they stand on their own quite nicely. In fact, it’s better if you close your eyes and skip the whole looking-at-the-video part of them. This is a musical that makes Grease look like a masterpiece and that one wanted you to buy Stockard Channing as a teenager.
Horribly dated, horribly shot, campy, kitschy but only somewhat self-aware of it, I get the feeling the actors had fun shooting this and Gene was content to pad the inheritance for his kids but if you can watch this with anything less than your jaw hanging open, unable to articulate how horrible it is, you’re a better person than me!
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may still be worse, though.
Here’s the clip for All Over the World. Out of context I haven’t the foggiest what exactly was going on here. I think they’re picking out clothes for something. You know how that goes.
Tonight I saw the Halloween-appropriate Paranormal Activity. Shot in a cinéma vérité style, this low budget effort featured a good cast and nicely ratcheted up the stakes as said activities became more and more invasive. I have to admit I’m a sucker for the pseudo-documentary style of film-making and I think this one did a solid job of portraying the demon-afflicted couple in a (mostly) believable* manner. Less satisfying were the people occasionally talking (nervously?) amongst themselves in the audience and a number who constantly got up from their seats, perhaps feeling some nausea from the occasionally tipsy camera work. The guy to my left spent most of his time literally on the edge of his seat leaning forward and then glibly said at the end, “I want the last hour and forty minutes of my time back.” You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Fraidy Cat!
* okay, there were several not-so-believable bits. SPOILERS FOLLOW. LOOK AWAY TO AVOID! Micah and Katie document the manifestations in their home using a big-ass video camera and the film shows them regularly reviewing the footage via a laptop “hooked up by Firewire” as Micah states several times. At one point the couple leaves the house with a Ouija board on the coffee table, with the camera recording it. The planchette busies itself scooting across the board and then bursts into flames. This was not enough to make them think perhaps staying in the house might not be a wise idea. On the final day, Katie insist on staying and says everything will be fine, then goes to sleep with a, I daresay, devilish smile on her face. Apparently Micah never reviewed this clip because I’d get the freak away at that point. But maybe that’s just me.
After the movie we strolled down Davie Street and being the clever lad I am , I quipped about Halloween on Davie — could you tell the difference? There were a surprisingly large number of people in costume, ranging from ultra-basic (cat ears) to elaborately made-up vampires, zombies and overweight cowboys. And fireworks. Lots of fireworks that even as I write this are still exploding somewhere a few houses over. People seem very intent on getting their money’s worth this year. Interestingly, Nic said this kind of tomfoolery isn’t indulged in back east. Maybe they just eat pumpkin poutine instead.
As originally seen in The Huffington Post.
Kimberly Daniels believes that Halloween is a very naughty sort of occasion. Some choice quotes from her piece on the subject:
During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure.
Those mini-Snickers you plan on handing out to the wee ones? Not only will they rot their teeth but also their soul!
During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.
And finally:
There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have. Then declare with me: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”
I think Ms Daniels would not approve of the decorations out in front of the house. I’ll have a few more added to the Halloween gallery tomorrow, including the pumpkins in all their candlelight glory. Everything is courtesy of the demented mind of Tim, of course.
I don’t think I’m cut out for this fancy Facebook thing. I haven’t updated my status since my birthday on September 19th. Somehow I’ll pull through, though.
More on this possibly later!
Today marks the end of Geocities, perhaps the most popular service early on in the days of the World Wide Web to allow the masses to make their presence known on the Internet. And that presence was largely made through the heavy use of automatically-playing background midi music, epileptic seizure-inducing animated gifs and the liberal use of Comic Sans. The spirit of Geocities will never die, though, and not just because tripod.com still exists, as the whole thing has pretty much been transplanted into myspace.com.
Meanwhile, with pre-made templates and tighter control on design elements, personal blogs like WordPress and social networking sites like Facebook have largely reined in the more gaudy elements of those manyfold Geocities sites. In a way it makes me a little sad, in the same way that one witnesses the loss of innocence when a child stops believing in Santa. In another way is makes me glad because many of those sites provided compelling evidence that the average net-user had the taste and design chops of a moss-covered rock.
UPDATE, August 25, 2022: LOL as the kids say--every video I linked to was removed or blocked. I may try to find alternate sources someday, but for now, marvel over what you might have seen! SECOND UPDATE: Ah hell, I went and found all of them again. No need to thank me!
When I was the operator of the Locarno Beach concession from 1996-98, I often chatted with the lifeguards there. The head lifeguard happened to be the brother of Terry Jacks, famous Canadian songsmith and he was mentioned from time to time, as his lifeguard brother Craig was also musically inclined and was known to pull out the acoustic guitar on occasion, adding a little extra color to the sandy shores.
Terry Jacks’ most famous recording is probably “Seasons in the Sun” which the wikipedia link reveals was originally meant to be a Beach Boys song. That might have been interesting. Instead, Jacks recorded the song himself and earned a place in the hall of fame for schmaltziest songs ever recorded. I’m pretty sure there is an embedded hidden message imploring the listener to parody the song.
The Irish “boy” band (in quotes because they are all pushing 30, it seems) Westlife did a cover of the song and after stumbling across it, I felt compelled to watch to see if they could one-up Mr. Jacks. I believe they have. I present below the new, even schmaltzier version of “Seasons in the Sun”. By the way, if you’ve never heard of Westlife, that’s okay, as they appear to have had little success in North America while over in the UK they’d sold something like 10 billion albums. Different strokes and all that.
Bonus time! A little more searching and I discovered that Nirvana also recorded “Seasons in the Sun” with, uh…alternative lyrics. Featuring Kurt Cobain on drums:
Ah, what the hell. Here is Jacks himself singing (well, lip-syncing) the song back in 1974. Dig the ‘burns and leather pants.
Okay, so apparently the Beach Boys did record the song and their version is the peppiest but it also adds a verse about a cheating wife and lovers, giving the song a distinctly creepy vibe. The video is a montage of still images. I’m also beginning to think there was a cottage industry in covering this song that I’ve somehow managed to miss for the last 36 years.
I have often cultivated tastes that are a bit out of the mainstream. I’m not saying my tastes are refined or cultured or anything, because my reading list will quickly prove otherwise, but I still manage to avoid by design or accident most of pop culture. To wit:
This isn’t really good or bad, just a thing.
To complete this random post, the Robert Zemeckis-directed version of A Christmas Carol featuring Jim Carrey that’s out this holiday season looks really really bad. I mean, astonishingly bad.
Today the CRTC revealed its new framework in regards to Internet usage.
“Canada is the first country to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to internet traffic management practices” — CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein
Here are the dramatic changes the CRTC is putting in place to make sure those big ol’ ISPs like Rogers, Bell, Telus and Shaw keep in line:
The ISPs can pretty much do everything they have been doing and on top of that have now been given the green light to soak subscribers with even higher fees based on some undefined standard of usage. The notion that they would offer discounts for off-peak hours is, of course, laughable.
This has to be one of the mushiest, dunderheaded set of regulations I have ever seen. Not surprisingly, all of the major telecom companies are pretty much fine with it.