Total Dismay

This is a post that is being preemptively created before I even check to see if there is a meme. I have family members who have an interest in metal work and I was taking a picture of the window treatment. Our office space was designed as a formal dining room. There are only two windows in the place with this iron work.

Points of interest in the picture include my neighbors Alpha Romeo (I’m only slightly jealous), the aviary on my other neighbor’s roof (he dumps the poop over the side into the vacant lot) and the giant fennel plants in the vacant lot (bird poop will do that). If anybody wants to link up to me with a post about their view, that would be cool

I turned 39 a couple of weeks ago. Aging has been on my mind. This video made me think about it some more. Thanks guys

Iraq has been on the verge of Civil War off and on for the last few years. America had its own civil war a short time ago and the end of this clip has some interesting commentary about the senselessness of people killing each other because of some silly geopolitical situation. The words are a little sappy and over-simplistic. that doesn’t mean the scriptwriter wasn’t right.

Years ago, I told an Australian that I had never before eaten Vegemite. She told me that I had to try it. It was salty and weird and kinda gross. Trying it didn’t detract from my life a great deal. It didn’t change my life.

Nutella was different. We had a nutella discussion during break and my Roman coworker sold us on the idea of trying it. He was less insistent than the Australian. He didn’t have a special reserve of nutella to push onto the naive whenever they revealed themselves in the same way that Australians seem to with regard to Vegemite.

My life will be divided into two parts, pre-nutella and post-nutella. It’s just that good.

Dick Cheney had a personal interaction with a citizen in Colorado way back in 2006. The fallout from that interaction has been intermittently newsworthy ever since. The man was arrested. The charges were dropped. He filed a wrongful arrest suit. The secret servicemen told conflicting stories when deposed. One of them, the officer that is at odds with Cheney’s personal detail, has been transfered to Guam.

Yesterday, the news was that Cheney’s lawyers are seeking to block the public release of deposition videos on the unspoken grounds that they will go viral in remixed form on YouTube (watch for them). It’s quite a tangled mess and it is all the result of what some people say was just an insincere pat on the back. Oh, and a verbal indictment of the administration’s Iraq policy.

Steven Howards is like a much older and MUCH smarter version of that guy that got tasered. And in case Cheney or his security detail has any ideas, it is TOO LATE to taser Steven now. Actually, my comparison might be a little bit of a stretch. I don’t think he intended to make a scene. I can remember a moment in my own life where I was face to face with a politician with whom I strongly disagreed. I didn’t seize on the opportunity to speak my mind. I was still young and I probably didn’t have any nuanced criticism to voice. It was at the airport where I was working summers in my college days. Actually, I was doing my daily 2 hours of picking up garbage and I had a pointy tool and a bucket in my hands. The political leader of my Canadian province was standing outside the terminal having a smoke. Our personal interaction involved eye contact and nodding.

I was awoken this morning by the sound of rushing water. The pipe leading from the roof to the reservoir had so much water surging through it that the elbow fitting on the bottom had been knocked loose. We were worried that the water might be too much for the courtyard drain. We were also in need of some water in the reservoir. I had to put on a pair of jeans and go put the elbow back on.

When I was crouched there with water up to my ankles and water dropping onto my back I noticed that some of the water was kinda grainy and frozen-like. I am not that good with physics. Can anyone tell me if rain mixed with hail flows with more force than the same volume of water? I had a difficult time getting the elbow to stay on that pipe and it had stayed put through some pretty hard rain in the autumn. This picture is from back in the fall.

I am a Canadian, so naturally I am endlessly fascinated by and obsessed with American politics.

We are a pro Obama household. There is no debate about that. We do ruminate a bit with the question of Hillary Clinton’s still massive popularity among the voting Democrats. A friend of my wife, who is a Canadian living in the US, told her that he was a Hillary fan. He didn’t expound on his reasoning and we didn’t, at first, make any connection between Hillary’s official stance on some gay rights issues and our gay friend’s approval.

Ironically, Bill Clinton enacted one of the laws that Hillary is criticizing. For the record, Obama and Edwards also favor repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Again, for the record, they do not share a bed with the man who enacted it (of course they wouldn’t tell you if they did).

Should the US remain marred in a war that they should never have started, a future President may have to enact a LA LA LA, I Can’t Hear You!!! policy if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is not repealed.

I have occasionally been jealous of those ‘outsider artists’ that live in squalor well below the poverty line and get discovered by some light-loafered art dealer after which they get to live in squalor slightly above the poverty line.

I knew of some famous and prodigious makers of folk art in Nova Scotia. I could easily make stuff just as primitive as them but my education and hygiene are like an albatross around my neck.

My real unselfconscious foray into outsider art came when I discovered computers and MS Paint. Someday my Jpegs will be worth hundreds of dollars and I will eat more kraft dinner and bologna than I had ever imagined was possible.

I was reminded of this video while reading a post about etiquette on a wedding ideas blog called Wedding Idea Source. The post advises against drinking too much at wedding receptions.

The lady singing the duet in this video is Kathleen Edwards. I had an awkward moment standing beside her down at the Khyber many years ago. She’s the kind of woman that attracts me against my better judgement. The manager had been comping all the performers with Jagermeister shots from his fancy new sub zero dispenser and she was quite tipsy. When we made eye contact I got the impression that she was worried that I would say something lame and that she was too impaired to be gracious in that way that minor celebrities usually are when dealing with that crap. I said nothing and I felt appreciated for my silence.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the first time that I played a game of Pac-Man.*

Did you know that it is called Puck Man in many markets, but they changed the name as it was being introduced to the US market. They were afraid that vandals would change the P to an F. There used to be a restaurant called Mother Tucker’s in Halifax and it had absolutely no street level signage.

There is an actual 1980’s arcade version of Pac-Man on eBay with a bid of $487. I can provide you with a flash version for free

I just invented the Pac-Man MMORPG

Isn’t it awesome?