Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Aunt Phyllis Don't Take No Shit From Nobody

So I’m at the holiday party for a fine up and coming high-tech company called March Networks (remember this name – buy some stocks – etc). And the DJ’s playing all sorts of tunes, from current Top 40 to...well, past Top 40. And, because I can’t just shut my mouth and have a good time, I found myself spending a good part of the night puzzling over the supreme randomness of whoever it is that censors music in Canada.

My guess? Somebody’s spinster aun. Seriously – is it somebody’s spinster aunt? Because I don’t understand why some words make it in, and others don’t. I mean, I understand why Kanye West's ridiculously awesome Golddigger has a radio version. But why can't The Black Eyed Peas tell people that they’re the shit, or Gwen Stefani say that her shit is bananas, when John Travolta can sing about getting his rocks off in his pussywagon that all the chicks cream for?

?huh?

And that’s why I think it’s somebody’s reaaaaally old spinster aunt, old enough to think that John Travolta’s going to be rounding up stray cats in his cars, and really, what spinster doesn’t love a house full of cats? And the other stuff, she probably just can’t make out with her hearing cone, but she sure as heck knows that S-H-I-T spells “moral depravity of our youth!”

Anyway…this was a lot more thought-provoking after six glasses of wine. Hey, that’s not a bad idea…what? It’s almost noon here.

In other news – in case any of you were wondering, the madness last week was two-fold:

1)Planning and preparing for Dan’s surprise! birthday party. Which, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have held at the home we both share, because it makes it tricky to hide supplies for 20-odd people, as in “Hey, why do we have three cases of beer?” “Uh…because I’ve taken up drinking! I mean, more so!”

2)Being mistaken for a computer-savvy person, which I blame entirely on my Arts Student's ability to bullshit about anything. Or the fact that, apparently to the over-forty crowd, anyone under the age of twenty-five can do anything on the computer, up to and including designing professional-quality websites. Yes, the knowledge is downloaded into our brains through rap videos, or something. And since it just so happens that this is for a certain election campaign, I have to work on it outside of my full-time hours, which, boo! But it’s all for a good cause, and I think it’s way awesome, and even though I made DD stay up until 3am on the night of his surprise! party putting on the finishing touches, it was totally worth it. Right, birthday boy? Also, I don't mean to imply that I actually designed it, because, uh, no - that's what "hiring talented professionals" is for.

Speaking of the election, I came across an interesting site the other day called The Elections Prediction Project. I’d encourage you all to check it out, even if you’re not political, to see the kind of partisan blowhards I have to deal with all the time. Kidding! It’s a great site and it helps me keep track of what’s going on back home on the election front. BC is one of the big question marks this time around, so I’m curious about what you guys back in Vic City are seeing. Are their lots of signs? Any front-runners? Does anyone even care?

Thursday, December 15, 2005

MADNESS!!

Hey all,

So - as you can see from the title of this post, this week has been madness. Not angry madness, (well, okay, that too) but busy madness. If my head doesn't explode, then you can read all about it next week, on time, but for now try Scott Feschuk's Blog (Okay, it's Liberal propaganda, but it's also hilarious, which is how I like my propaganda) (and I mean hilarious-on-purpose, not "duck and cover" hilarious).

Floyd out! (See, there's so much madness I've actually gone back in time to 2003).

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Just when I thought I was out...

As some of you may recall, DD and I recently made the difficult decision (okay – it was only a difficult decision for me) to cut the cord. This decision resulted in the gaining of many extra hours which were previously filled with CSI (original series only), endless Simpsons reruns and whatever heavily edited blockbuster was currently playing on TBS (aside - anyone else remember the TBS "Monkeyed Movie Shorts?" 'Cause those were frackin' HILARIOUS).

So what, you may ask, have we done with all those extra hours? Well, for one thing – we watch a lot more movies.

Well, we signed up for Zip again. Remember that one, where you sign up online and they send you movies right to your mailbox? And then when you’re done, you send the movies back, and poof! More movies. Forget that 10 minute walk to the video store – that’s for suckers! We walk 10 feet to the mailbox – nay, skip giddily to the mailbox – and there they are, our little cinematic bundles of joy, waiting for us like adorable little flat, circular puppies, that just want to entertain us.

And entertain they do – so far my biggest find has been the freakin’ awesome Battlestar Galactica series. If you don’t watch it, you should, because it’s great. I never saw the original series, but I had the feeling it was kind of dorky – well not so with this version. It’s well-written with great actors and way-cool action scenes and the premise is intriguing and the storyline is captivating and – although he is, quite possibly, the homeliest man in all creation – I think I love Edward James Olmos, who plays Commander Adama. Actually, what I want is for him to be my new grandpa, and he and Gran’pa Floyd can form a gang and they would be the toughest, gruffest SOBs who ever cut someone down with a terse remark, stared them into submission, and then whupped them – for their own good (I mean for the individual’s own good, not for my grandpas’).

Zip is also a good way for me to broaden my movie-watching horizons – I mean, y’all know how I feel about good and bad movies. With Zip, I can finally pick out all those movies I keep meaning to watch, but don’t have enough pirate vs. zombie action to stand out in the video store. Now they show up, and I get around to watching them – eventually. Like Atarnarjuat, which is a really, really good movie, once we finally sat down and watched it, which took two rental cycles and three days. But so totally worth it!

It’s also nice because you don’t have to agree on a movie – I can watch The Philadelphia Story (which – awesome suggestion Payton) while DD talks on the phone; we both pick movies we want and watch what we want. Although we do have similar tastes in movies (like how the day after we met we stayed in to watch Army of Darkness – now that’s true romance. Oh, also a good movie!).

We still manage to find time to do other things though – like go to the theatre! Actually, we do that a lot less now, but we did catch a couple of flics this weekend: Aeon Flux (which - bonus - is one of those rare movies that is actually directed by a woman - so go see it and support the cause of doubling the percentage of women-helmed films to 2%!) and Harry Potter (A-Mac – we’ll have to see the next one together to relive the old tradition – try not to be getting more ivy league education then, mmmkay?).

I have to say I really enjoyed both, because I like sci-fi/fantasy and cool action sequences and Charlize Theron is waaay hot whether or not you swing that way. So I recommend both, although one is PG fluff with both cartoony sequences and some surprisingly dark elements, while the other has wizards.

Well, that's all for me as of late - although we did find time to put up our holiday lights, mostly because everyone else in our section had done it already and damn those Joneses if they think we're not going to keep up!