Category: General

We knew stealing that music was wrong. Stealing is never OK. But, it was just too easy. So we told ourselves we were just “sharing” the music, because everyone knows that sharing is a good thing. But then we learned what we were really doing. We heard our favorite recording artists telling us that our “sharing” is really shoplifting and piracy. We were stealing from the musicians and singers we love! That was when we looked at each other and said: “No more! It’s time to make it right by giving back what we stole!” And that’s just what we did! We sent back all the MP3’s we’d illegally downloaded. Every one of them!

Won’t you join us in sending them back?

This from Harper’s Weekly: “You got a pretty face,” President Bush told Scott Reid, a senior strategist for Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada. “You’re a good-looking guy. Better looking than my Scott, anyway.”

President Bush ordered NASA to build a permanent base on the moon and and to make preparations to send men to Mars; NASA responded by abandoning future maintenance missions for the Hubble Space Telescope, thereby condemning the telescope to a premature death.

Disease experts warned that the bird flu infecting humans in Vietnam could combine with the human influenza virus and start a global pandemic.

Some exciting things happened today: I got a little bracelet thing from Garett & Lea in the mail; I bought antipasto at Costco; Anghold gave me a haircut; I went to “the gym” and looked like an idiot on some kind of elliptical machine. I watched the “Around the World” video from Daft Punk again. Probably my favourite of music videos (which typically I do not enjoy), though Peter Gabriel’s vids are usually entertaining.

Stewie says I’m too specific in my tastes. What he means is I don’t like rap. All rap. And it’s true. Same thing with hiphop. I bought the Beastie Boys double CD anthology to give them another go – do they count as rap? Anyway – I don’t really like their rappy songs. I like their song Intergalactic Planetary, and a few others. But I sold the CDs. I also don’t like reggae at all. Not even a little bit. Unless you count The Police, whom I am quite fond of. I don’t like top 40 tunes. Now this is all speaking generally (although specifically I have never heard a reggae song that didn’t make my skin crawl) – I’m not saying that there aren’t rap/hiphop/top 40 artist with talent. I just don’t care for their wares.

So, that’s what I don’t like. However, I do like some rock, heavy metal, punk, lounge, classical, industrial, techno, country, jazz, “ethnic” – whatever that is, blues, and I’m sure many others. I am not vehemently against any of those genres like I am with reggae and most rap/hiphop. So, there you go. That’s something you may not know about me.

I’m going to have to get up early this weekend, so I need to start going to bed before 6am. In principal I like the idea of going to bed when many other people are getting up, ready to go to work or school or assassinations, but in practice it bites me in the ass sometimes (when I actually have to do something during regular business hours). So this week I plan (again) on going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. It’s my new year’s resolution. No wait – my new year’s resolution is 72 dpi.

Tomorrow is the first time in 2 weeks that I haven’t had something planned – so I may actually get some work done.

This afternoon I had a dream that there were a bunch of superheroes fighting. It started off (I think) with the Fantastic Four announcing that they were replacing some other superhero team (I think the Avengers) but that quickly devolved into three monsters fighting. The best part is that as they fought, they grew larger and larger, until they towered over skyscrapers beating the tar out of eachother. I think at least one of them (the bad guy) grew every time he got hit – but the others kept on trying to beat him into submission. Then Thor threw Mjolnir (his hammer) deep into the bowels of the Earth for some relevant reason. It was a fun dream. Second best dream type ever.

Tonight I play Spaceship Zero – this is the preliminary playtest of the same scenario I’ll be running at Weathertop this weekend.

I was planning on going to bed early (before 3am) tonight – but instead I made this web site about cereals in anticipation of the Cartoon Party: http://thickets.50megs.com/cereals.htm

Tell it to Queen Doppelpopoulos…

Janet had a haiku contest and everyone – EVERYONE – should go to her site at psychicle.com to vote.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the 7th Annual Saturday Morning Cartoon Party will be held not on February 28th, as previously supposed, but rather on February 21st. What would you say to that? (By the way, the theme this year is doppelgangers.)

E-cybopooch is part of the family now, and he deserves your e-respect!

In a sweeping coup of procrastination, I rearranged my nerdy D&D and Spaceship Zero miniatures last night. I even cleaned up a bit. Yes, it came to that.

So I had to get up before 2pm today to go downtown to the Vancouver Police Department. For this Mentor volunteering I’m doing, they require a criminal record check. I took the bus to the heart of the delightful East End. When I got on I put in two loonies and the box told me I owed another dollar. The bus driver said “I saw both of them” and so he overrid the box. Then he announced to the entire busload of passengers that the ticket machine was acting up, so the next time it happened he was going to say “stupid machine!” and he asked the entire bus to repeat “stupid machine!” after him. So at the next stop an old lady got on and the box did it’s thing again. The bus driver said quietly to the old lady “yeah, it’s broken – watch this: Stupid machine!” and the entire bus yelled out “Stupid machine!” That was fun.

Then on the bus ride back I was the first one on the bus when it was at the beginning of it’s journey (the #50) and the bus driver asked me if I had seen the front page of the paper – the headlines were “Who is stealing transit fare?” or some such. Then we had a little discussion about how they decided not to instal proper turnstyles on the skytrain stations as it was too expensive, but in the long run it will save them money. And he read out a bunch of boring statistics, quoting from the newspaper, about which stops had the most people without proof of fare payment on them. Even if those stats are true – they are meaningless.

Anyway – the criminal record check went swimmingly and I wager that I’ll be mentoring by Friday. I’m putting the Toren back in Mentoren.

Not stupid – ignorant.

So I get on the bus in Coquitlam, and I put in my three dollars, which as I understand it is the fare for a two-zone pass. I say to the bus driver “two zones, please” and I plunk in my three bucks. I sit down and look at the thing – it says three zones. I don’t think anything of it. I only paid my three dollars for two zones so it must be right. I transfer onto the skytrain station. All is well. At Broadway Station, I get on the 99 and put my transfer into the slot. It comes back reading “upgrade required – $1.00.” I’m confused but I’m not going to argue with the driver while there is a line of people waiting behind me. I have a toonie and ninety five cents in change. I drop in the toonie and the driver gives me a new transfer, taking away my old one. So now I’ve paid a total of $5 (although one of those dollars was Ang Holds, which makes it even worse) for what I thought was a $3 ride, but the worst part is not that I’ve spent two extra dollars, the worst part is that I’ve spent two extra dollars that I feel I should not have had to. That’s the kind of shit that ruins your whole day.

Double-yoo-tee-eff?

Overheard today on 10th Ave, some thin, balding guy in his late 30’s or early 40’s talking into a cellular phone:

“Okay but here’s the thing: I agree with you 100%, but right now we need the money and he’s got the fuckin’ gun.”

And on a lighter note: clowns!

News from Harper’s:
Bush was disturbingly disengaged (“like a blind man in a room full of deaf people”) during cabinet meetings, and that many high-ranking administration officials have no idea what the president wants them to do and that they operate on “little more than hunches about what the president might think.” – Former secretary of the treasury Paul O’Neill
The International Monetary Fund published a report warning that the United States’ budget and trade deficits threaten to destabilize the entire global economy.
Britain released plans for new emergency powers that will permit government authorities to ban public gatherings and to destroy or confiscate private property without compensation.
A large new study found that up to half of all plant and animal species on land could face extinction by 2050 because of global warming.

Here’s a thought I had while lying in bed this afternoon: if a century is 100 years, and 100 per cent is 100 out of 100, shouldn’t a dollar be called a cent because it’s 100 pennies? Who’s in charge of these things?