I am mostly posting this to help force that animated cat image down the page so it’s no longer the first thing I immediately see when the site loads. I mean, it’s funny and all but it’s also kind of weird and more importantly, testimony to my complete inability to write anything, even lousy things, over the past week or so.
There, two paragraphs of text should help. I could also pad this post out even more by inserting a picture…say, an animated cat image…
My history with the Oscars goes something like this:
I can’t say why I lost interest, exactly, but I did. However, I do stay apprised of who and what gets nominated and then wins, so here’s my shallow, uninformed analysis of last night’s winners:
The We Can’t Give You Important Oscars So You Get All the Technical Awards: Mad Mad: Fury Road (won 6 Oscars, all for things like sound recording)
Important Movie We Can Give An Oscar To And Feel Good About: Spotlight (about investigative reporting on naughty priests)
The He’s Been Nominated Enough, Give Him An Oscar, Especially Since There’s No Decent Mimic Performances This Year Award: Leonardo DiCaprio
The We Can Give An Oscar to Pixar This Year Award: Inside Out (this wouldn’t have happened if The Good Dinosaur had been their only 2015 release)
We Love Directors Who Make Very Stylish Movies Award: Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant (it would have won Best Picture, too, except Important always trumps Stylish, see above)
The Skyfall Effect Award: Giving the Best Song Oscar to the terrible “Writing’s on the Wall” because it’s from a Bond movie and Skyfall had an awesome song, so this one must be awesome, too, right?
The I Don’t Know These People Awards (impressively given to three of four acting nominees this year): Best Actress (Brie Larson) and Best Supporting Actress (Alicia Vikander), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Rylance)
The Better Give Him an Oscar Before It’s Too Late Award: Ennio Morricone (87), who won for his score for The Hateful Eight. He had five previous nominations, going back to 1979.
The What Did We Do Wrong Award: To the Oscar telecast itself, scoring its lowest viewership since 2008.
With the recent addition of Family Day in February, we’ve got statutory holidays in pretty much every month:
What we need is a new holiday for June to help smooth over the gap between Victoria Day and Canada Day. Let’s take a look at how the holidays currently break down:
The clear favorite is a holiday honoring some kind of government. This is perhaps not surprising since it’s the government that gets to make the holidays. We already have holidays for the country, province and the Queen. That means we’d probably have to go macro (the world) or micro (the city). City Day probably wouldn’t fly so let’s go with World Day. It sounds grand, almost important. We can say it’s all about remembering how we’re all in this together.
But if that doesn’t fly, we need a backup. Adding more religious holidays would be too controversial, even if Christmas is just a bunch of gift-giving and crass commercialism, and just as many people associate Easter with a magical bunny that delivers candy eggs as they do the resurrection of the son of God. So religion is out.
Family and workers have holidays so it’s highly unlikely another could be squeezed in. Honoring/remembering is also covered adequately with Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day. This really only leaves the “What the hell, let’s slap a holiday in here” category, currently represented by New Year’s Day (come on, what makes the first day of the calendar so important it requires an official holiday? As discussed in the previous post, our calendar doesn’t even work properly).
June is the month in which summer begins, so maybe we could do Summer Day. Except that’s kind of lame. No one would buy that.
Maybe it could be a celebration of some group everyone likes or even loves. Like babies. Baby Day. Except that comes a bit close to Family Day, so probably a no-go. Most people like doctors. Doctor Day. It even has some nice alliteration. On the other hand, a lot of people view doctors as overpaid rich folk that also happen to cure sickness and save lives, so there may not be enough of a groundswell to support Doctor Day.
We need something that all Canadians love and cherish. Framing it that way, the choice is obvious: Hockey Day.
But Hockey Day in June makes no sense, even if the Stanley Cup Playoffs absurdly drag into that month.
Canadians also generally love maple syrup, poutine, moose, beavers, snow and being nice, at least as far as most Americans think (those who realize Canada is not actually part of the US, that is). Unfortunately, these are all too weak to put forth as official holidays.
Well, I give up. I say we just declare some Monday or Friday in June as statutory holiday and it can be whatever anyone wants it to be. We’ll call it National Holiday Day. There, done.
As happens from time to time, I was thinking. In this instance I was thinking about how I used to have a bicycle and in a small way I yearn to have one again.
On the plus side, a bike lets you get exercise without beating up your shins and feet like running does.
On the negative side, bikes require a lot more maintenance than running shoes and despite being a lot larger, are more prone to being stolen (as my last bike–and several before it–was).
On the plus side again, you can cover a lot more ground on a bike, zipping and gliding along.
Negatively, you can crash at high speed or get hit by a bus. I hardly ever crash when jogging. It’s really only happened once (stupid dog).
On a bike you ought to wear a helmet and no one ever describes helmets as “hugely sexy-looking and comfortable.” I wear a jaunty cap when I run and it adds a dash of flair, unless it rains, then it looks like some limp white blob died on my head.
Mainly, though, if I got a bicycle, I’d become one of them–the people I loathe at Burnaby Lake. Which people? These people:
> Wake up
It’s not 6 a.m. yet.
> Wake up
Are you sure you want to do that?
> Yes
You wake up.
> Look
Your bedroom is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> Turn on light
The bedroom is filled with a warm light. You look at the carpeting and can’t remember the last time you vacuumed.
> Don’t judge me
I don’t know the word “judge.”
> Good
Good to know you, too.
> Eat breakfast
You can’t do that here.
> Leave for work
Are you sure you want to do that?
> No
You leave for work.
> Bah
You don’t see any bah here.
> Look out window of SkyTrain and enjoy the view
You see a slate gray sky and rain comes down in sheets.
> Close eyes
You close your eyes. For a moment it is silent, then the intercom squawks to life with an announcement.
> Listen to announcement
“This is SkyTrain Control. A family of squirrels is on the track between Broadway and Nanaimo stations. Your train is being momentarily held while SkyTrain personnel investigate. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience.”
After thirty seconds the announcement repeats.
> Listen to music on phone
Your phone has no charge as you did not plug it in last night.
> $#%&^!
You don’t see any $#%&^! here.
> Wait
You wait.
“This is SkyTrain Control. A family of squirrels is on the track between Broadway and Nanaimo stations. Your train is being momentraily held while SkyTrain personnel investigate. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience.”
> Wait
You wait.
The intercom comes to life and someone on it loudly clears his throat.
“This is SkyTrain Control. A family of squirrels is on the track between Broadway and Nanaimo stations. Your train is being momentraily held while SkyTrain personnel investigate. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience.”
> Wait until train is moving
The train begins moving.
> Check time
It is 7:49 a.m. You are going to be late for work.
> Call work on phone
Your phone has no charge as you did not plug it in last night.
> Well that’s just great
You don’t see any well here.
> Shut up
How rude.
> This sucks
Can you be more specific?
> Look
You are in a SkyTrain car.
In the car you see the following:
Several passengers
Crumpled newspaper (under seat)
Spilled soda
A bicycle
The floor is covered with a sticky liquid that is slowly snaking toward yor feet.
> Cry
Do you feel better now?
> No.
How negative!
> Save
Are you sure you want to save? Your score is 10 out of 500, giving you a rank of Newbie Commuter.
> Yes
Saved.
> Quit
Are you sure you want to quit?
> Yes.
We get an extra day this month, but February 29th lands on a Monday so it’s really just a bonus day of drudgery and work.
And we still don’t have practical flying cars yet. Or impractical flying cars. Do I even need to mention the lack of functional robot butlers, the promised life of leisure as machines handle all menial work, leaving us humans free to create, explore and invent ever-better chocolate chip cookie recipes? I think not.
All told, 2016 is merely okay so far. It could be worse (Yellowstone super volcano erupting without notice), but it could be better (being able to control the weather–and super volcanoes–would be handy).
Questions that don’t have definitive answers that could keep you thinking for a good long spell:
My answers:
Today I spent some time editing a Word document. This is not an extraordinary thing on its own. In the year 2016 it is quite mundane.
However, I wasn’t just making a few simple changes to words or phrases, I was trying to edit a table. In one instance I was editing a table that was within a cell of another table.
I do not recommend doing this in Word unless someone is actively threatening you with a firearm or if refusing to do it would lead to something worse than Hitler.
Even then I would give it some serious thought.
I made the analogy to a co-worker that editing tables in Word was like driving a car with square wheels. Sure, it might be possible, but would you really want to do it?
No, you would not.
(The $9.99 in the title is the monthly price for the most popular Office 365 subscription, which gets you Word along with several other programs that might also drive you crazy if you try to create or edit tables in them.)
Some believe that when you die you go to Heaven. Some believe–including, but not exclusively those of the aforementioned group–that if you’ve been bad you’ll probably end up in the land of brimstone, damnation and fun instead.
The sticky part, of course, is that no one really knows because we’ve yet to see definitive evidence of someone keeling over dead and then shambling back from The Great Beyond to give us the inside scoop on the whole afterlife thing.
Assuming there is something that persists beyond the physical body, what would prevent those who have moved beyond physical form from stopping by to hang out and maybe explain that mysterious what-happens-after-you-expire thing? Would it cause the two realms to spontaneously poof out of existence? Are our physical brains too dumb and silly to comprehend the next phase of reality? Is The Other Side just too cool to share with lowly mortals? Do we need to patiently wait until we’ve evolved to look like those giant-headed brainiac aliens on the original Star Trek?
I must admit I’m kind of curious.
But I can wait. Say, another 50 years or so.
The first 23 hours of 2016 have been okay. I got a Compass card for transit since they’re now mandatory. It worked fine at the fare gates at Sapperton. Metrotown station doesn’t have gates yet due to station upgrade work. Instead they have little fare post things. They were very fussy with the card and I hate them.
I weighed in at a whale-like 169.5 pounds this morning due to holiday excess. The good news is the holidays are all done now so the shoveling of unneeded food should end. Should.
It was cold and sunny, except here in New West where great banks of fog rolling off the Fraser blotted out the sky and gave the area a spooky look.
That was about it.
It is Christmas Eve and as I enjoy some tea on this cool, crisp evening, here are my five favorite things about Christmas, in no particular order:
Bonus favorite thing: peace on Earth, if it ever actually happened.
With three days to go, Weather Underground is forecasting partly cloudy conditions, a 0% chance precipitation and a chilly high of 2ºC for Christmas Day.
Good: no rain
Good: no snow
Meh: 2ºC isn’t exactly summer weather but it’s still above freezing
I can live with–nay, embrace–this yuletide forecast. A crisp, cold day is roughly a billion times better than a torrent of rain or a bunch of snow that turns to rain and creates rivers of slush and when you come back from a walk you find your pants are somehow soaked all the way to your waist.
So here’s hoping.
Also, I am still sore from my run on Sunday. This is not weather-related but didn’t seem worthy of its own post (I write after devoting yet another post to a cat gif).