...and in "real" news

So - lemme get this straight.Once again it seems that some people in Quebec still want to leave but most don't - yawn.What's fascinating is this idea that when the Liberals are in power, they do want to leave, but they're cool when Harper wins.

All you have to do is elect the Conservatives - in a minority, no less - and the number drops 10%. Some commitment to a "Distinct Society."

Call me old-fashioned but I think you should be a bit consistent in your separatism. If you wanna leave, stick to your guns - don't wait to see which type of federalist party is (barely) in power. Otherwise you're just being shit disturbers.

**

Who says Hamas never learned anything from The West?

You have to admire their strong "We don't negotiate with democracies" policy.

Vladmir Putin wins the "No Shit, Sherlock"award for using the words "very serious blow" in his description of how Hamas' election win affects the peace process.

**

That's some heavy news, eh?

Well, I always like to throw in some French-bashing when I can so here's the dish on a couple of Montreal DJs who called Jaques Chiraq pretending to be Stephen Harper - with a French accent, no less. Chirac surrendered to their impression and bought it. Sucker.

**

And I don't think I have enough interesting pictures.

What about this one? It's of WBA champion Nikolai Valuev who is about 7 feet tall and 320 pounds. Really.

The World in a Day - Oscar Nominations

The Oscar nominations are out and of course we should all be happy about that.The Gay Cowboy movie did well, as it should.The horribly underrated Munich also got some props.

My only other comments are:-Star Wars just got the shaft man. At one point I thought Ian McDiarmid might get a supporting nomination but that's a really strong category so I can't complain. But it didn't get nominated for special effects! Talk about taking something for granted. I'll take that opening shot in Revenge of the Sith over anything in Chronic(what)cles of Narnia - and I liked Narnia. The SFX just don't compare.

It's all moot since Kong is a lock but Star Wars got nominated for makeup and nothing else...not even those sound editing ones that no one can explain. There are people more upset than I am

Just behold the Best Song nominees:

Hustle & Flow (2005) - Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman, Paul Beauregard ("It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp")
Crash (2004) - Michael Becker, Kathleen York ("In the Deep")
Transamerica (2005) - Dolly Parton ("Travelin' Thru")

Have you ever seen something so weak?When was the last year this category was good? Even Phil Collins would spice this up.I haven't seen Hustle and Flow but mean to - it'd be nice if Celine Dion sang all of the nominations, just so we could hear her cut loose on "It's Good to be a Pimp.

Here is a good take on the Star Wars snub and other, less-nerdy, things like the fact that this is the first time since 1981 that the Best Picture and Best Director noms have matched up.

Spam of the Day (so far)

Once again I've been stymied by techincal issues at work.
I can paste something as long as I don't format it or include weblinks. Anything else I'll have to email home and then post at night. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm also introducing a SPAM OF THE DAY feature! Everyday at work I get something like 200 spams. Really. Some are really banal but every now and then someone goes above and beyond. It's not just the price of their Viagara/Hoodia/Cialis - it's the salesmanship. It could be a great subject line, amusing email address or even randomized text that happens to be composed in Iambic pentameter

The Runner-Up is "Geisha Bingo"''s offer of "3d Bingo like you've never seen!" but since it's obvious that I've never seen 3d bingo....who cares?

Today's winner is....Azariah Caddy! He (she?) is a professional cialis salesperson.
The catchy subject line (shandrydan spindrift) really draws you in. Then you get the following great message:
C
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V
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A
A
A
L
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G
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A
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$
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69
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10
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)

See more at http://xxxx

Quit overpaying for your meds with http://xxxx


I'm sold!

[UPDATE: I didn't think I'd be back so soon but I just got the exact same email from Fawzi Moorman. Beyond the phonetic resemblance to a certain Muppet, Fawzi also gets points for a creative subject line: "fishy settling." My sense of humour is very fish-based.]

The World of Entertainment

I can't promise that the real world will never intervene but most "news" will follow this banal pop culture vein.

I haven't decided if the TV show Love Monkey is any good yet. It's not terrible - I'll go that far.
But, worth noting is that the show's theme song is the Odds' seminal work, "Someone Who is Cool." I presume this has something to with the Canuck status of the two leads, Tom Cavanagh and Jason Priestly. Also, it's either an alternate take or some soundalike band - but it's not the album cut. If you care.

UPDATE: So, the theme song is actually being sung by this punk, Teddy Geiger. On the show he is some hip new musician who the main character has discovered. In real life he is a hip new musician who sounds a bit like John Mayer on Nyquil with a slightly sore throat. It is not a coincidence that Sony Music is trying to shove said musician down the public's throat. But I'll try not be cynical. Yet.

So it looks like Lord of the Rings stage show will be delayed. This thing will either be good or suck mightily but know this if you're getting tickets: The Mirvishes are awful coy in the way they sell tickets - their web site does not clearly indicate which shows are previews and which are not. The ticket prices don't even change when previews end (ie there is no discount for seeing a work in progress rather than a final show) so doublecheck if you're going.

Also, you have a better chance of Ayman Al-Zawahri being nice to George Bush than you do getting comps for any Mirvish show. Just so you know.

And, having done some research, it looks like I can indeed add other contributors to this so-far egocentric endeavour. If you think you'll have something amusing to say on a semi-regular basis, just say so and I can work the magic. You only have to meet the following criteria:
-I have to know who you are
-You have to have a suitably amusing alias
-Um, that's all I can think of for now.

The News - Election Shakeups

course, a blog being what it is, it means that what I posted first is now way at the bottom. So, technically, you might wanna start there and work your way up. I leave the choice to you.

I don't know about you, but I'm relieved to see that after an electoral result that shook the world to its core, we're finally getting down to establishing a proper transition and setting up the business of serious government.And it's not just the Conservatives, Hamas is giving it a go too and making sure the dollars keep a-coming. Swiss Bankers need to eat too.And who said that they don't have a sense of humour about the whole darned hullabaloo?

AND, in local news, my taxes aren't going up too much.Did you know that the biggest part of my taxes goes to pay for the police and then the second biggest part goes to pay for social services in Toronto. Mike Harris' legacy of honest-to-goodness Common Sense continues to bear fruit into the new Millienium

Signs of the Apocalypse - Big Momma

I hate to start things off with two "Signs of the Apocalypse."
Really there should only be one or two of these of the week. Plus a Random Thought per day...plus, I dunno, normal news stuff.
But this is just...a bummer.

It seems that Big Momma's House 2 was #1 a the box office on the weekend.
Do you know anyone who saw this film? Do you know anyone who knows anyone who has seen either of the Big Momma movies?
It's not a race thing because I didn't see the movie with Ryan Reynolds in a fat suit either and that boy is ripped. So, what's going on here? What does it all mean?

It made nearly three times as much money as Underworld which I also haven't seen but it's somehow frightening that, no matter what other factors intervene, more people would rather see Martin Lawrence in a fat suit (and all the hillarity that ensues) than see Kate Beckinsale in skintight latex (and all the carnage that ensues).

Don't worry. In two weeks Final Destination 3 (there's a joke in there) and The Pink Panther (I'm not sure there are jokes in there) both open and that should set the box office afire, putting Big Momma in her proper place.

Random Thought #5 - The Self Google

Have you ever googled yourself?
Of course you have.

Early on, I used to actually come up high on the list when I googled myself. Now I've been shoved down the list. By whom?

I'll tell you:
Some gay guy (not that there's anything wrong with
that) who writes for The Advocate, and a famous
Brazilian economist (not that there's anything wrong
with that). I'm not clear if the guy is a Brazilian and an economist or just some guy who is an expert on Brazilian economics...
I'm also not sure - they could be the same guy, the gay guy and the Brazilian guy.
I do know that I'm neither.
I'd like to be higher up on my own google search.
Who wouldn't?

Signs of the Apocalypse - PM's don't die....

Probably I won't be able to do this every day but it will no doubt be an ongoing series.

I actually had to read this twice and do a web search to make sure it was real. And it is, children. It is.
It turns out that being a failed Prime Minister qualifies you to be the next Simon Cowell (or, gasp, Zack Snyder!).

That's right - they've combined the integrity of American Idol with the pulsepounding excitement of the Prime Minister's Office and yielded something that, sadly, isn't even one of the worst things in the short history of reality TV. Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark and John Turner judging future political leaders...or something like that.

How pathetic is this? I mean, three of the four are Tories, two of THEM drove their party into oblivion and half the judges are the most Barely Prime Ministers in this country's history.

That said...do you think it's cool being Kim Cambpell? I mean, imagine this scenario:
You're a middle aged man in some bar in LA. There's a kinda cute blonde over at the bar. Petite but smart and sassy.
You get to talking, go on a few dates. Then she lets the bomb drop: "I used to the be Prime Minister of Canada." Probably she'll neglect to mention the whole "Then my party only won two seats and ceased to exist even though we founded the country," but still....not bad, huh?

Wouldn't you feel that you'd really scored? Wouldn't you call all your buddies and say, "You'll never guess who I nailed last night?"
Of course you would!

Random Thought #2 - Passwords

In signing up for this thing, I had to come up with a password.
One sucky thing about living these days is how many passwords you have to remember. What did humans in previous generations do with all this brainspace? Can you believe that you know your credit card, debit card and PIN numbers all off by heart?

Particularly annoying to me is that these sanctimonious web sites all tell you to use something you've never used before. Sometimes they order you to use some stupid combination of numbers and letters...

The result is that there are all these web sites I've been on for like 10 years now and they have these old passwords with references to things from 1993 or they are spelled wrong and I don't have the heart to change them. It'd be too much like pulling the bottom log in that Jenga game...I can't risk it.

And so, for this site, I used my #2 Most Frequently Used Password. No one will ever guess it because it is both a minor pop culture reference and, as it turns out, spelled totally wrong. Too late now.
Anyone else have an outdated password they can't part with?

Random Thought #3 - Batman

Best Line Reading in Movie History:
Jack Palance in Batman (1989).
I understood the WORDS but never, until a few months ago, did I actually understand what the sentence actually was on paper and how Palance's unique reading rendered it distinctive, but barely comprehensible:

"Say this son-of-a-bitch connects us with Axis Chemical. What kind of damage are we looking at?"

On the page it lies flat. In Palance's hands...well, let's just say Bill Shatner would be jealous, so great is the drama.

Random Thought - More Star Wars

Due to high demand (or free time at work, rather) here are the 3 most overrated Star Wars characters.

# 3 - Dack. So, lemme get this straight. Luke Skywalker is going out to attack the AT ATs on Hoth. They set him up with a guy who, one would presume is one heck of a tailgunner. One might even assume he's the best guy in the fleet - maybe second best after Wedge's gunner. And one shot, a few sparks and dude is dead. Next thing you know Luke is distracted, his speeder is down and everything's gone to shit.
"I feel like I could take on the whole Empire myself," says Dak before croaking.
Yeah, right.

# 2 - Emperor Palpatine. Okay, dude waited all patientlike before striking. He killed hundreds if not thousands of Jedi and lord knows who else. But he only held on for, like, 18 years! I haven't seen so much planning coming to nothing since those Martians attacked earth without realizing that they were allergic to our weeds or whatever (literary/Spielberg reference!). Talk about no exit stragey.... So, points for effort, but if you're going to spend a lifetime planning for something, try to hold on longer than til the first blue milk-drinking punk comes along.

#1 Admiral Ackbar. All I have to do is recount the following series of events:
-Rebel fleet exits hyperspace to find the entire Imperial Navy waiting for them
-They get no readings on the Death Star shields
-Their communications get jammed
-Lando realizies the shield is still up
-The Death Star lets loose with its superlaser
-Says Ackbar: "It's a trap!"
For that "No shit, Sherlock," moment, he gets the prize.

It's tempting to list Boba Fett here since he really doesn't do much and does, in fact, get killed like a bitch but I don't want to upset any fanboys who probably google "Boba Fett sucks" every day to bring people in line.

RANDOM END STAR WARS NOTE:
Did you know that Cliff Claven is the Rebel officer who breaks Chewie's heart by closing the shield doors? Of course you did.

Random Thought #1 - Underrated Star Wars

Who, I ask, are the most underrated characters in Star Wars?
(For now I'm thinking Original Trilogy. We can deal with the prequels in a later post but since Ric Olie is so obviously the frontrunner, it seems nearly worthless to even try).
Well, I've pondered it long and hard and here are the undisputed Top 3.

#3 - Arvel Cyrynd

What do you mean you've never heard of him?
Oh, I guess it's easy to be underrated when your only line is "AAAAAh!" and you can't even fly your A-Wing for 5 minutes without getting blown up by some random TIE Fighter?
Well, Cyrynd turned the tide, folks. He crashed his teeny weeny craft into the bridge of Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer, The Executor when its shields were down. Then we all watched that bitch keel over like it'd been hit by 60 nuclear bombs and hoped he would reap the rewards of posthumous military honours! If I lived in the New Republic I'd be honoured to send my kid to Arvel Cyrynd Public School (wipes away tear). He was the best leader of Green Squadron ever.

This information is not, by the way, information available from the official StarWars.com website which is shocking.
Where's the love?

#2 - Lobot

Some wanted Lobot to be #1 but he remains my #2. First, there's the grey-cream blouse/vest combo.It's slick. It says 1983 or 2183 or even a hell of a long time ago when dudes wore blouses and vests without people talking shit.

Second, he's a man of mystery. Did he get born into a family of Lobots or did he like just apply to work security in Cloud City, rise up through the ranks and then get told, "We want you to run the show but you'll have to shave your head and get cerebral implants." Did he have to think twice?

All I know is that when Lando called, dude came to the rescue like the bad ass mofo that he is. Well done, Lobot.

*A side note. Did you notice that Lobot looks a little like that actor guy? The one who played the principal in Back to the Future ("You're a slacker, McFly!") and the admiral in Top Gun ("I have to send you two jokers to Top Gun!"). Weird.

#1 - Nien Numb

Talk about a guy who never gets his props. Dude's small, doesn't speak a word of english but when Lando needs to take the Millenium Falcon into the belly of the beast, who's the Butch to his Sundance? Nien Fucking Numb, my friends. The sweetest, sexiest Sullustan this side of Dantooine. Look how he wears that captain's vest with style.

Han Solo might need some big ol' wookie to be his co-pilot but give Lando that freaky, looking little bundle of moral support any day. If there's one guy who earned the right to be at that crazy Ewok party (Yub Nub like it's 1999), it's Nien Numb.

And a final note - did you know that Cliff Claven is the major who breaks Chewie's heart when he closes the shield doors on Hoth? Of course you did.

Manifesto

Herewith is my consitution (which is not legally binding in any sense of the word):

A Manifesto of Weblove - my promises to YOU

In Theory I will update this thing every weekday until I get bored.
In Theory everything will be amusing or at least midly entertaining or at least somewhat intersting or, at a bare minimum, written in English in a legible, easy to read font
In Theory the grammar will largely conform to modern standards without being all prissy
In Theory I will "stick it to The Man" by doing updates ONLY during work hours. *
In Theory I will never refer to any third person by their actual name. They will remain entirely recognizable to anyone else but lawyers have advised that if I (to use an example) lovingly call a Stephen Harper-voting friend, QuasiFacist Boy, then we can all have a good laugh and no one gets hurt.
In Theory, I will do just a bit of writing here and there while liberally linking to other web sites that have tickled my proverbial fancy.
In Theory I will ask you to contribute wherever you can. I don't know how this all works but, at the very least, make use of those COMMENTS links...and not for "Great site!" type stuff. I wanna see controversy and, like, ideas...you know?
In Theory, I will post one random thought every day.

*Due to techinical issues (ie the fact that my office still uses Mac OS9) it looks like I'll be able to write these posts during work hours but probably have to actually post most of them in the evening. I hope that counts for something....

Raison D'etre

So, I was kicking back, listening to My Humps, while playing my X-Box 360, wearing my new American Apparel duds, reading A Million Little Pieces (in disgust!) and listening to my Ipod (shuffle, not Nano) and thinking, "How can I keep my edge?" How - and don't we all ask this? - can I say ahead of the curve? Think outside of the box? Be contemporary?
And then it me - the world needs another pointless blog.
It needs my blog.

I figure I can come here, ramble, promote shit that more talented/interesting/lucky friends are doing; use some PG cursing at random (see previous subclause); link to interesting news items I'm far too lazy to write about myself; link to amsuing wire stories about escaped pandas or, say, Vanilla Ice losing his wallaroo (True Story!); compose elaborate essays on why Stephen Harper is the best thing to happen to this country since Nickleback and so on.... Just don't be surprised if we engage in a ribald email exchange and you soon see me regurgitating it here.

Anyway, setting up this thing was pretty easy, except that I had to come up with some kind of codename and I really wasn't prepared for that. Hopefully I can change it later. Here are net alias pitfalls I encountered:
-don't want to come up with something too nerdy: "SexyBest666" or "Dragonslayer"
-don't want something SUPERnerdy: "E=mc2" or "NewtonsApple"
-don't want something too of the moment: "joeytribiani4ever" or "Imtoosexyformycat"
-don't want something based on a recent spam: "UofPhoenixMastersProgram" or "500%morecum"
-don't want something that you're already using for a web password: "HelloKitty" or "rehcselFdivaD"

So where does that leave me?
Sometimes, when surfing the web, I use the nom del plume, 'TJ O'Pootertoot' which is the name of a cannibalistic restaurateur ("Would you like some our delicious pooterballs? It's
pooter-meat...with a taste that's oddly familiar!") from The Ben Stiller Show. So, fairly obscure but not TOO obscure.

When I come up with something better, I'll change it.