This is still not the May weather I ordered

I knew something was up when Environment Canada issued its national spring forecast that called for warmer and drier conditions across the entirety of the country this spring. You know how those things go. They forecast sun, it rains. They predict overcast skies, it rains. They predict rain and it rains.

This is the forecast for the remainder of the month:


Allow me to translate:

Friday: rain
Saturday: rain
Sunday: rain
Monday: going out on a limb here — rain!

When I worked at Locarno Beach back in 1996-98 I was understandably obsessed with the weather. Even now I occasionally recall the days of yore when I prayed for sun so I could open the concession and earn a few meager dollars, even as I loathed opening the concession and actually having to be there.

The other night I dreamed I was back at Locarno, arriving rather suddenly, it seemed, and the scene was one of barely-contained chaos. A guy at the counter laughed at me while explaining he was the one who always had some difficult order. It seemed to be whatever it was he wanted — one of those energy bars or something like that — was in one of many boxes in the back. I tried to explain that I didn’t know any of this because I wasn’t there the previous year (or ten). A line-up started to form and I went to the till. An order was rung in for something but I didn’t know what. There was a $20 bill on the counter. I asked the guy if it was his, so I could make change. There was also another separate pile of money on the counter, a bunch of 20s and 10s. Things were cooking. My staff was running about, except they weren’t my staff, they were a bunch of strangers, presumably the staff that had worked there the previous summer. All that was missing was for me to look down and see I was only dressed in my underwear. Just before the dream ended I remember thinking to myself, “At least I’m making some money!”

It was awful. Yech. Dear Brain: No more Locarno dreams. Thanks!

The exciting world of new keyboards

I have a Saitek Eclipse keyboard and the main reason I got it was for the backlit keys. They’re cool in a geeky sort of way and practical in low-light conditions. However, I discovered over time that I preferred not working in low-light conditions on the computer, so the backlit keys seemed less necessary. What was worse, though, was the lettering on the keys being obliterated by my apparently acid-spewing fingers. The E, O, P, A, S, H, L and N keys are all smudged to the point of being nearly unreadable. Awhile back I had bought the Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 which, as the name implies, comes with a hojillion multimedia keys that do everything but iron your clothes and walk the dog. I pulled it out and remembered why I had not taken to it when I first tried it. The keys are ‘low travel’, which is fancy keyboard talk for the keys not sticking up as much and being scrunched a little closer together. The idea is you don’t need to press down as far or stretch as much, thus saving wear and tear on your fingers, whether or not they spew acid.

I find it makes me more prone to make typos because it feels funny. However, this seems as good a time as any to do battle once again with that unforgiving shrew, Mavis Beacon. Stay tuned!

The London 2012 Olympic mascots -or- Your kid’s nightmare in 2 years

The mascots for the London 2012 Summer Olympics have been unveiled. You can read something about them here. They are unique, all right. Apparently Kang and Kodos were unavailable.

I like this quote from the above link:

“What we’ve got here is two giant, damaged teeth, each with a massive, psychotic eye and razor sharp claws. And the blue one seems to be using bright, friendly colours to draw attention to his genital area.

“So these things – designed specifically for children – are basically lobster-clawed pervert monsters that remind them of the dentist. Bravo.”

(Originally seen on Quarter to Three.)

Brain cancer and spam

When I finally broke down and got a cell phone last year I was aware of all the stories that suggest the devices could cause brain cancer, impotence, itchy skin and other assorted afflictions. I don’t really care about all that since living on this planet appears to be fatal no matter what.

What does annoys me, though, is it only took nine months to get my first spam message. It came from some company calling out of Quebec, peddling their unwanted wares under the guise of me ‘winning’ travel dollars or somesuch. No, I will not press 1 to claim my ‘prize’. Yeesh.

In the Star Wars universe, all telemarketers would be based out of Mos Eisley.

Tweaked, part 2

A few tweaks to the current site design:

  • moved Search from the header to the sidebar
  • changed the background to a slate blue-gray kinda thing (will probably play with it some more)
  • made the site name match other links, color-wise
  • broke lots of stuff while experimenting but fixed everything back up

I will be restoring the writing exercises shortly and continue to fine-tune. To the average person this is about as exciting as watching a pie-eating contest where no pies are delivered for consumption but to me it’s like a pie-eating contest where one of those huge dump trucks from a strip mine shows up with 500 metric tonnes of pie.

/geek

I tweak because I can (site update)

I’ve made some changes to the site. Here they are. Woo.

  • a new theme: Blocks2
  • added jQuery Colorbox to the photo galleries (this makes the photos pop-up all pretty-like)
  • removed a bunch of links from the sidebar, moved some to the Books etc. page and re-ordered others
  • removed the Sections, uh, section. The Sections links are now only at the top of the page. Redundancy is redundant.
  • killed the ‘jogging’ tag as it is now its own category

The biggest change is the complete removal of all of my writing. I’ve decided to take a different approach for now and will only be making a few selections available on the site, though all of the writing exercises will be back, since they are freely viewable on the Martian Cartel forums. I haven’t modified the theme yet but will be tweaking the colors and perhaps adding a graphic at the top of the site.

My inane posts are, of course, untouched.

Stop not requested

This doesn’t sound good:


My question here is what makes Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights safe? Note that there are also stops only several blocks away from this one that are still considered safe seven nights a week. This is near the downtown eastside (in Chinatown, to be precise, which borders the DTE), so this kind of alert isn’t surprising, per se, but the chosen nights seem a bit broad and like I said, there are other stops nearby. But maybe this has nothing to do with the people in the neighborhood. Maybe Pender & Main gets hit by lightning strikes or mudslides or something.

Tagapalooza!

According to the WordPress Dashboard I have made 314 posts to which I have associated 173 tags. This is approximately 1.8 tags per post.

I know the ‘proper’ use of tags is to use them in a way to facilitate searching and not as witty commentary in and of themselves, but I can’t help it. If I want to make a tag called freakishly big celebrity heads and use it exactly once and never again (what are the odds I’ll find another perfect photo of a freakishly big celebrity head?)  chances are I’m going to do it.

On that note, here are my top 11 favorite tags I’ll probably never use more than once*:

  1. a babe in the 01110111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01110011
  2. Big Brother is mapping you
  3. grocery shopping made hard
  4. manly with a shoulder strap
  5. Mickey gets creepy
  6. pigeons eating pizza
  7. seasons in the schmaltz
  8. skydiving presidents
  9. the end of the world has a big budget
  10. toothpaste madness
  11. Xanadon’t

* technically, I did use #1 more than once, but go with it.

My life as a single-cell organism

In the game Spore you start out as a single-cell creature swimming and surviving in the primordial soup. You then evolve through a number of other stages before ultimately achieving space travel. From there, if I understand correctly, you go on to conquer the universe. Who am I to argue with evolution?

These are my impressions of the first part of Spore, the Cell Phase. I will follow up with impressions on the other phases as I move through them.

***

Spore starts you out like a teenager in junior high school. You have a mouth, an overwhelming desire to eat and procreate and you’re tossed in with a bunch of others who will either flirt with you or beat you up.

The cell phase begins with you naming the organism that you will nurture and grow until its descendents can eventually conquer the universe in the far-flung future. I name my squiggly little guy Bob because I’m a fan of palindromes and Bob is a simple name for a simple guy. He’s single-celled, after all. My first big decision is whether to go herbivore or carnivore. Later you can switch-hit and become an omnivore, which  seems to have all the perks of herbivore and carnivore and no drawbacks. Going omnivore is like being at an all-you-can-eat buffet and liking everything you see, even that curious-looking macaroni salad that may not actually be macaroni. Choosing carnivore seems well-suited for dealing with competing cells  – just eat them! Herbivore feels like the underdog of this primordial soup. You eat the little bits of plant life you can find, assuming some pushy omnivore doesn’t get to them first – or decide that you look tastier instead. The carnivores, of course, only want to eat you.

Bob, evolved

I choose herbivore because I like rooting for the little guy. I give Bob a filter mouth suitable for eating the plant bits and a couple of flagella so he can swim around. He is ready to start evolving!

Bob quickly discovers just how harsh this cell vs. cell world is. The vegetable buds drifting through the water are scarce and there’s usually some mean-looking thing that has evolved into having Bob-crushing jaws hanging out nearby. The other herbivores also seem to have a metaphorical leg-up (actual legs come in the next phase) with little fins that let them swim faster to the food and chow down before Bob can. Bob perseveres, though, and eats enough plant matter to advance his DNA, not to mention his progress bar. He gets access to a mating call and by using it finds himself snuggling up with a doe-eyed cell.

This leads to the Cell Creator screen where the accumulated DNA can be traded in for various new body parts. I have minimal funds, so to speak, and decide that the best defense is a strong offense. Bob buys a nasty pair of spikes for the top of his “head”. If some other cell tries to give him the business, all he needs to do is hit ramming speed and they’ll be sorry!

To complement his new spikes, Bob also adds a pair of fin-like appendages that will allow him to turn faster, providing better control in the treacherous currents that he must ply.

When Bob returns to his existence of eating and hopefully not dying, he finds that life continues to be cruel. He may have spikes and fins now, but the other cells have poison, electricity and mouths the size of a city block to eat everything in sight. My brave little cell finds himself at one point sandwiched between two cell behemoths. I use the word sandwich deliberately, because that is what he became in short order.

Fortunately, in Spore death is a minor setback, as Bob simply respawns. With some nimble swimming he manages to find and eat enough buds to evolve his DNA to a level where he can grow legs. For a single- celled organism, legs are a pretty big deal. Bob is excited. He can now leave the water and start a new life on land, a life where he quietly hopes everything isn’t waiting to fry, poison or eat him.

A hair-razing adventure

WARNING! This post contains graphic descriptions of hair removal.

If you like hair READ NO FURTHER.

Several days ago I needed to apply topical cream to my abdomen to address a certain level of itchiness that was making me crazy. I am, as they say, hirsute when it comes to the chest and abdomen so I figured to insure proper application of said cream, I would shave the hair off first, leaving a sexy and smooth surface to work with.

I used my beard trimmer to whittle down the hair to where a twin blade disposable razor could handle the rest. I applied plenty of Foamy and carefully went to work (you don’t have to avoid nipples when shaving your face. At least I hope not). It took awhile and after I was done I observed bleeding in several spots from where I had nicked several moles. Gross. I cleaned up, dried off and applied the cream.

It is two days later and the itching has begun. I am aware of the rich irony in shaving to address itchiness, only to have more itchiness happen as a direct result. There is no question in my mind that I will let the hair grow back. It vividly brings to mind that the people who spend the time preening and plucking at their bodies to make them look ‘better’ could just accept themselves as is and spend that time doing something else that would be entertaining, rewarding or both. Or even just reading the latest trashy novel.

Hair is annoying. It grows the most where you least want it and the least where you most want it. Which reminds me, it’s time to shave my face.

Stupid hair.

The Young and the Runless

Okay, I’m pushing it on the young part, but I am getting rather restless not running. It’s been over two weeks since my last run and there is no detectable pain in my left leg, no matter how I poke and prod it. The worst I can manage is a bit of a tweak when I lift the lower leg up at a 90 degree angle, holding it horizontal. It still doesn’t hurt, it just doesn’t feel the same as my right leg. But that is enough to make me hesitate. Still, I think about going down to the park for a test to see how it feels. If I just run a short distance I should be able to tell if it’s still in recovery mode without exacerbating the injury.

Or I could just bide my time for another two weeks and not risk it.

It should be an easy decision but it’s really not.

Stupid leg.

The Foamy conspiracy

When I first started growing a beard, it was not intentional. I simply skipped shaving for a few weeks because I was in college at the time and looking a bit scruffy was not a problem. One might argue it was even to be expected. A classmate asked me if I was growing a beard. I had never given such a thing any thought because the most I had managed in the past was a weasel-like mustache. But I hated shaving, so this innocent question instantly translated itself in my mind to “You know you can grow a beard now, right, and totally skip having to shave?” I answered “Yes!” and the rest is (fur-faced) history. But for a bit of madness back in mid-December when I got curious enough to check out how I’d look clean-shaven, I have been beardy since 1993.

As I was soon to discover back then, a beard is not easy street when it comes to face care. Sure, I could just let it grow wild and woolly, but then I’d look like a skinny and crazy mountain man. And neck beards scare me. So I had to trim it regularly and shave around the neck to prevent that hair-carpeting-your-body look. This was manageable. But last year I lopped off the sides for a smaller, neater circle beard. This meant more shaving. I adapted, like the brave soul I am.

But now it seems the more I shave, the more I need to shave. It is curious how the body, as it ages, begins growing more hair where you least want it (eg. face), while shedding it from where you do want it (eg. top of head). My current theory is that the shaving cream has a hair growth agent in it, insuring that I need to re-supply regularly. I further theorize that the Foamy can is designed to splooge approximately five times as much cream into your hand than you actually need in order to empty said can five times faster than would happen otherwise, further necessitating frequent refills. Either that or I have a hair-trigger finger because I swear, all I do is tap the button and FOOM the can explodes a grapefruit-sized ball of foam into my waiting hand. I’m not that hairy. Yet.