Author: Jason Doucette

I got to see a Kung Fu the Legend Continues episode this weekend. Here’s a helpful cultural interaction primer I assembled as I sat through the show: Observe… as I… talk slowly… just like… David Carradine… who is… Chinese… I guess…. I don’t actually know much about the Kung Fu story, is he supposed to be Chinese? Does he talk slowly because he’s a Shaolin priest? I hope not, because that might make watching Shaolin Soccer difficult. er.

Ok, no joke, I’ve been looking for this for many many years, and now it’s coming out on DVD. I’m hoping that this is an indication of how great my week’s going to go. Also kinda on the movie theme, I fogot to mention that I saw a car with a vanity plate of “SHIBBY”, so I just did. It was a white cadillac.

We went to see Star Wars again, which was incredibly expensive for a movie that’s been out so long. I’m hardly talking about the admission fee at all, it’s more about the three wacky transit systems we had to navigate to get to the theatre. Still fun. They had one of those movie magazines at the theatre, and after looking at the upcoming movies, I feel a need to quit my job, move to Hollywood, and pick up my damned movie check. Come on, “rap singer Eminem plays a young Detroit rapper who expresses his anger through music“? I can’t imagine a porn script that’s harder to write than that.

Quick tip if you’re going to get a season pass at Canada’s Wonderland: wear a white hat. You digitized photo will be pretty much blank for half your head, and um, some people will find it easier to look surprisingly like you. Of course, these same people will be disappointed that they spent so much time mastering some weird smile and then the guy at the turnstile doesn’t even look at the photo, which also makes the “wear a white hat” advice pretty meaningless, but it’s still more fun.

I’m really enjoying these 10 hour a night naps I’ve been taking lately. Sadly, on a regular work schedule, that would mean going to bed at eight, so…yeah anyway.

(12:27)

It’s some kind of Caribbean festival in Toronto this weekend, and while it involves a big parade today, there’s always an unofficial annual parade the night before. This is the parade involving hundreds of cars with subwoofers booming up and down Yonge Street. It’s the longest street in the world, but most of the attention is on the South end, which is coincidentally the are I live in. As mentioned here, “vehicles will be diverted on to side streets if traffic becomes too congested“, and AngelA informs me that they were indeed diverted right onto our street. If the music wasn’t loud enough, there’s always the next door neighbour on the balcony giving the play-by-play over the phone. Apparently it was quite the spectacle, but I missed it all. Was I out drinking or partying? No, I was out cold. Slept through the whole thing, I did. In fact, it’s possible that the whole thing was a big hoax, an “And to think that it happened on Mulberry Street” kind of event, but I doubt it. All I know is that I was out for a good 10 hours, and it was good.

Mia has pointed out all that is wrong with my city. This is Toronto’s public web site. This is Okotoks, Alberta’s public web site. It has a Flash intro, because they are l337. The mayor is Bill McAlpine, and I’d post his email address so you could go “d00d!”, but I don’t want anyone to get spammed anymore, so instead, why not give him a call at 403-938-5336 and thank him for the only government site I’ve ever seen with a link to a Fraggle Rock page.

You know what sucks? Getting to work 5 minutes late to find out that your 10 o’clock meeting is actually going on right now in a building that you passed 10 minutes ago. Of course, every meeting I’ve been to this week has started 15 minutes late, and I don’t know if this one was an exception, but I sure didn’t miss much. Except breakfast. It was waiting for me when I got back to my desk at 11. I’m eating my lunch right now, and expect to have supper around midnight, except I’ll call it “noon” and wink dramatically.

I just found out that Billy Dee Williams and I are going to be working side by side in August! This is very exciting! Ok, it’s the building beside mine, but that’s still a side which complements my side nicely. He’s going to be at some sci-fi convention. I think it would have been interesting if they’d combined the smaller than usual Comdex with something like that. Instead, they’ll probably have room 101: some sci-fi convention, room 102: parking lot management symposium. I’m not making that up, they had a parking lot symposium a few months ago. It was fascinating, they had seminars on hospital parking lots, municipal parking lots, shopping centre parking lots, and probably a range of certification options, because certifications are necessary for all things, and you don’t want a hotel parking lot manager taking on a casino parking lot without proper retraining.

When are they going to have certifications for stuff people care about? I want to be a certified “guy who can pick a ripe canteloupe from the pile”. I’d pay money for a membership card along those lines.

We now resume our broadcast day.

For the curious, the theme for Tuesday was the breakdown of protective measures, Wednesday was the impossibility of self-removal, and today, well, it’s still in progress, but I’m voting for self esteem among the weak.

I’m no longer able to chuckle about spam. I swear, up until last week I’d get maybe 2 or 3 emails a week, but an address that used to be on VP is on some mega-list out there, and now I’m getting 5-10 a day. On the bright side, some of the emails contain pictures of naked people, but on the other hand, I don’t get to choose what they’re doing. This also makes it difficult to check my email from work. I thought about installing a filter, but I have a better idea, which of course isn’t ready yet. Soon. Oh, how they’ll pay… And yeah, I know about the obfuscation systems out there, and yeah, I’m working on that too.

Via Obscure Store, a man has put his head up for auction on eBay. The winning bidder will get to put a tattoo of his or her choosing on Jeff Swanson’s freshly shaved head, and he will remain bald for a year. Of course, with a $100,000 reserve bid, he probably thought it was a pretty safe yet still funny thing to do, but then someone went and met the reserve. I need to print out articles like this to remind me that there can be consequences to my actions, or at least to remind myself to charge a decent price.

Other stuff probably happened today, but my orthotics are in, so I gotta limp over to the doctor’s office before they close to pick them up. Seeya tomorrow.

(22:00)
From a fortune cookie someone bought me today: “You have a potential urge and the ability for accomplishment“. What the hell does that even mean?

Damn, small entry today. But you know, it’s all in, um, how you use it? G’night all.

(7:53)
I’m depressed because I’m not on antidepressants that make you have orgasms when you yawn. That’s so much better than dry mouth.

There’s this co-worker of mine, and to say that he’s mildly interested in UFOs is like saying I’m mildly wearing pants. Sure, I could just forward this link to him about a possible close encounter between some F-16s and a UFO, but I’m going to send him this link instead, which is about some contaminated oysters that killed some people. The news site says that the two stories are “related”, so apparently we have some common interests. How odd.

By sending a link to a co-worker, I can kind of justify the fact that I’m at work on a Sunday, because that’s about the only work related thing I’ve gotten done today. Ok, that’s not entirely true, I did discover a lot of ways not to do something, but doesn’t mean much progress has been made on the actual project. It’ll make for good discussion in the status meeting though: “great news everybody! I’ve 100% ruled out the use of spinning banana graphics! Extensive research has proven that they’re not appropriate for a system with no GUI!” Argh, code drop is tomorrow night.

As I’ve been too busy (or boring) lately, here’s a tale from my mental archives: I was called by a telemarketing firm on Monday, but it was kind of a good call, because they wanted me to come in and be part of a focus group for some banking stuff, and they’d pay me $75 for it. Even better, the meeting would be in the same building as TVA, at the same time as TVA, so I could just slip out for a bit and come back with a wad of cash. Of course, for some strange reason I wasn’t eligible for the job, so the caller was essentially doing what all telemarketers do: wasting my time and making my dinner go cold. Fast forward to Wednesday. I’m on my way to TVA and a guy with a clipboard hops on the escalator behind me. He’s with the same market research company that called Monday, but he has questions about beer. Again, I don’t qualify (I’m not between 30 and 35, so I’m guessing it was something about my Carlsberg years). This is getting ridiculous. I’ve been turned down for two of the, say, five things I know the most about in the same week. It’s payback time. We’re still on the escalator. I start talking to him. He’s got nowhere to go, so he foolishly responds to my questions. By the time we get off the escalator, he’s in a full fledged conversation with me, and he’s realized his error. With every word his eyes are dancing towards his target audience of males aged 30-35 that keep walking by, and he can’t bother them because he doesn’t know how to get out of the social situation I’ve created. Finally he breaks down and just says “I’m sorry, I have to work here”, but he feels really bad about it. I wanted to say “yeah, but I had to eat my dinner Monday and you guys didn’t care about that”, but he was already running away with his tail between his legs. He was still there 3 hours later, but I was too tired to play again.

Hey, it’s past 10 on a Saturday night and I’m at work!

It’s not as bad as it sounds. Ok, the working the weekend thing is pretty annoying, but I went out for dinner and stuff with friends tonight too. I have a life, yessir. Don’t let the work schedule fool you. I feel the need to explain this to the building security guard. That’s right, I’m insecure, but I’m secure in my insecurity.

Stuff that I know I’ll forget before I can do anything about them: there’s some IT school near TVA that has a sign out on the street. One of their programs is Certified Webmaster of Science. Do you think they understand how diluted “certifications” can get? Is this as funny to the owners of the school as it is to me?

Another thing that’s new near TVA: Hooters. (I’d post a link, but I’m at work, which should give you enough of an idea if you haven’t got a Hooters near you. It’s not a strip bar, just a tight shirts and short pants bar.) This is great, because sometimes it’s hard to give directions, and now I can just say we’re a block West of Hooters, and it’s all perfectly clear. They have a sign out front too. It says “kids eat free on weekends”. I’m told that people actually do go there with their families. Future leaders of the free world, I’m sure.

Back to proving that I did do social things this evening, we went for some of that vegan soft serve I mentioned a while ago. After I ordered mine, the lady was about to pour it out of the machine and she turned to me and said “this is the no fat no dairy stuff, you know that, right?” That was kind of the whole point, and I can’t imagine anyone complaining about it because it’s the tastiest stuff ever, so I decided to take it as a compliment towards my incredible physique, a more subtle version of “sir, you are far too fit for a non fat product, and your skin is far too perfect for a non-dairy dessert. Please, allow me to serve you a fatty lump of cow pus”, if you will. That’s right, she was complimenting my appearance. Why, she was practically hitting on me! She was probably trying to get my phone number. I can see it all now. “Sir,” she almost said, “may I please serve you some dairy products, and rest assured if you give me your phone number I will call you later this evening to see if you are suffering from any symptoms commonly associated with lactose consumption, and in the event that you are, which I would find unlikely, for your high level of health is so astoundingly obvious, you may also give me your address and I will be over to administer to your discomfort, for we are a full service establishment, if you know what I mean, sir.”

It’s just as well that the shop was busy and she just served me what I ordered, anyway. What with being at work and all.

Incognita covered the basics of World Youth Day here, and I figure it’s a better backgrounder than I could write, so go ahead, I’ll wait here. Welcome back. Now, picture everything she wrote, and amplify it with the fact that I live downtown amidst all this. I’m still not sure how a “day” can last all week, but maybe they’ll try to play it as some kind of a miracle or something.

I’m just killing time before the news, hoping there’ll be some news about the Pope Squat and the police response. I was just watching Newsworld for the second night in a row. There was a segment yesterday about a guy giving out condoms at one of the events. Some cops asked him to leave because it “wasn’t appropriate”. Believe it or not, I’m not the only one who got annoyed about that. Lots of people wrote and called in, and they did another story about it tonight. There’s something about the police acting on behalf of the church that’s unsettling… There are a ton of cops downtown this week. We’re talking several at most corners. They’ve been on their best behaviour so far, so I’m really curious how the squat will go.

I didn’t see the Pope, but I did see his helicopter flying through the air. I kept saying “popepopepopepope” in a kind of helicopter rotor type rhythm. I think everyone was impressed with my skill. I also sparked a debate. What would happen if the Pope decided to quit? I’m not talking retirement, I’m talking “hey guys, I was getting out of bed this morning, and I got to thinking, there’s a lot more money in the private sector”. Not this Pope, of course, some future hypothetical Pope. Most people said that he couldn’t quit, it was a job for life. Would people just keep following him around everywhere he went? It would be odd.

We also decided that the next Catholic World Youth Day should be held in Belfast, Ireland.

In other news, in order to work the title into the body text (yeah, like they all make sense), you’d think I’d talk about my ankles or something, but I’ve moved on. I’m talking about porn now. Ok, not so much porn as a working in an adult video shop. My job sucks, but I don’t often feel the need to sanitize. I mean, damn, there really are people that broadband can’t help.

Ok, I just saw the 10 second blurb about the squat, and it was basically squat. I did like the fact that the news about a protest for affordable housing was followed by the daily market report though. G’night all.

Ok, the subject was going to be “A walking open wound, a trophy display of bruises”, but Incognita decided to play along with my earlier game, which to be fair, I did start, so there you go.

Now my shins hum like street lights.

See, I like to think that I have a high pain threshold. If I’m at the dentist, for example, I’ll sit there and take whatever he or she throws at me. I’m not quite at the point where I can have a tooth pulled without getting my mouth frozen (my Dad actually did that once), but still, high tolerance. The thing is, I have to be in the chair, metaphorically speaking. Maybe it’s a growing level of common sense, but I have a hard time bringing additional pain onto myself. I’ll take it, but I won’t ask for more. Bringing the metaphor to reality, I guess that’s why I rarely go to the dentist.

The point, if any, has to do with my legs. As I may have mentioned earlier, my (physio) therapist needs me to be in pain for her to be able to diagnose the problem. The only way I know to aggravate my shins is to run for several sessions over the course of a few days. So I did. My (physio) therapist should be very happy with me. If the Buddhists are right, and life is, indeed, suffering, I’m headed to Nirvana. Medical orders, can’t be helped.

It’s hard enough to look big and tough when running, so I can imagine what people thought of me when I was making strange little whimper sounds with every other breath. Great fun. My motivational tricks are amusing too. I’m limping along at 6:20 in the morning, and I’m trying to get myself to do things my body doesn’t want to do, has made very clear that it doesn’t want to do, and all to save a few bucks. Hey, at $45 a pop, I want this thing diagnosed soon so we can move on to getting better. You know, after we repair the damage from the testing process.

I’m on my way over now. If this doesn’t work, I’m just getting one of those scooter things.

Update: Everything went as planned. All that remains is to hide my legs under ice in always frozen lakes.

I’ve been living by myself for the past few days while AngelA’s at her cottage. I’ve been left on my own for a day or two in the past, but this is the longest stretch for quite some time. I feel like such a grown up.

It’s kind of like being a bachelor again, except there’s a few differences. One, I don’t have any obligation to go out and “meet new people”. Two, she’s coming back, so I actually have to keep the place tidy. Win some, lose some.

So, today’s “live like a bachelor” tip is: if you sleep on top of your covers, you don’t have to make the bed. How cool is that?

Of course, even though I’m getting some decent work done, isolation has some disadvantages, most of which involve my brain going way too far on some chains of dubious logic. For example, here’s an excerpt from a call I had with my mom this weekend:

Me: Yep, AngelA’s gone.
Mom: She’s coming back, right?
Me: (joking, honest!) Well, she did pack a lot of stuff…

This is the point where a mother is supposed to laugh and say something like “oh, I’m sure you two will be fine” or whatever. Maybe that just applies to moms who don’t own bongs, because here’s the actual reply:

Mom: Yeah, that’s how it was with your uncle when it happened to him.

Yay! I got to spend the next 24 hours wandering around trying to figure out what that meant. What did AngelA and my mom talk about last weekend when I left the table to go to the washroom? WHAT DID SHE KNOW?

I talked to AngelA on the phone yesterday, and she swears it’s all ok. Still, if this post turns out to be “not at all funny” in the sense that it’s MY groin that gets hit, I’m going to feel pretty dumb, but I really wanted to share the making the bed tip. I was smiling all the way to work with thoughts of my cleverness from that one.

Tomorrow we’ll have a lively discussion on pest control techniques.