site news

Comments are now working over at geekent's Buy Nothing Year

(BNY will be taking over geekent.com come December, but you can preview it now, now, now!)

Blogs a-plenty

Along with the sporadically updated main blog here, and the ever dwindling in quality and content entertainment sidebar, and with my insanely prolific work over at Rack Raids (203 reviews in 10 months!), I've started a new blog.

It's called Buy Nothing Year and it chronicles my journey of going cold turkey on the purchasing (but not acquisition) of comics, DVDs, cds, junk food and other such vices for the year of 2008. I realize it's not 2008 yet, but with only 95 days left to go, it's not that far off either. Plus, a lot of preparation is taking place in anticipation of BNY.

The site is basically in "BETA" mode at the moment, with Toast taking on the task of helping out with the design for when it goes live (and when it goes live, this blog and the sidebar will go kaput, and BNY will become "geekent.com"). There are about 16 posts there right now, and it's actually updated regularly (moreso than here even). Take a look, feel free to comment, and believe that an entertainment junkie can cut himself off from the source... or watch as he fails.

On the subject of recent posts...

...I'm not even a Spider-Man fan. Never really cared much for the character, and the first movies were good, but still they were Spider-Man, who doesn't really excite me much.

As a movie fan and a storyteller, I'm just interested in seeing good films, even if it's about comic book characters I'm not particularly invested in.

Just so you know where I'm coming from.

Misplaced thoughts

As of late, and by late I mean about the past 18 months or so, I haven't had a good sense of what thoughts should go where: should I blog them or should I journal them; fit for the masses or send in an email to a single person; should I just call someone or should I write them about it... or should I just tell someone so I can ask them later about that thought I had that I can no longer remember?

With so many thoughts so often going through my brain some days (as opposed to those days where I just sit sedentary at my desk, stare at my screen and drool as my mind wanders into obliviousness), like today, I often have thoughts about what to do with my thoughts, and sometimes by the time I make a decision, the original thought I had which I was deciding upon is gone.

And sometimes you have those thoughts that you feel compelled to tell someone about, and then you keep forgetting to tell them, only remembering when they're not around, and the more you forget the more you build up the expected response to the idea or statement or whatever, and then, finally, when it is said, it really sounds lackluster, and is pretty much received as such.
Like that one.
Maybe.

My life of twenty-aught-six

246.
That's how many blog entries I made on the core blog last year.
I thought I'd slowed down, but that stat states, that I made, approximately, 2 blog entries every three days. Of course, they're not all "quality" blog posts with deep heart and fruitful thought, but they're not all posts about frivolities either, just somewhat.

As many media outlets are prone to doing at this time of year, lets reflect on the landmark moments that happened in 2006, only unlike other media, this is all about me:

The highlight, 100% definitely and unequivocally has been my relationship with Aden. There's no doubt in my mind that this is the woman for me. We started our friendship late in 2005 after crossing paths at work and the Silver Snail (local comics shoppe), and very late in the year (December) I realized I had a bit of a crush on this woman. I had to put her out of my mind for a while, as newfound singledom still had to set in, and a lot of reflection and pondering and maturation and "playing the field" (hah) needed to be had before I was really ready for a relationship. Well, that, and she was rejecting my advances. But when we did finally come together, well, the relationship still took its time, and there was a lot of deliberate care and discussion and genuine soul searching on both our parts to ensure this was going to be a good thing for us. And it didn't take long at all before we both realized it. It's been almost half a year at this point, and I've never been so continuously and overwhelmingly happy with anyone as I am with her. She's not just the highlight of the year but the highlight of my life. A compliment and a confidant, someone I can rely upon and trust implicitly. In 2006 I found what it means to love and be loved in equal measure. How can anything top that?

There were other significant events though. Turning thirty, well, it was more of a milestone than an event. I ignored it as much as I could, but it eventually hits home. Does the number make a difference? I think it does. I think I've matured as much from the lessons that life has taught me as much as the turning of thirty expects it of me. Doesn't mean I can't have my action figures and cartoons, but does mean I need to take more responsibility and really start thinking about the future of my life. That's not a favourite thing for me to do, and I can't say I have a plan of action for how life's going to play out, but getting finances and career and priorities in place for the future, whatever it brings, well, that's something that can't be ignored anymore.

Two of my oldest friends had repeat back surgeries this year. A trying time for both of them, going through multiple surgeries and being crippled for an extended period of time in hopes that, once recovered, they'll have a better quality of life. I'm grateful that they've both survived these hardships, I'm sad that I couldn't be present in Thunder Bay for their support, but I'm proud of them both for their strong will and perseverance through these ordeals and the high spirits which they've both managed to sustain. They're miraculous people and cherished friends, and I bid them both speedy recoveries.

Travel has never been a priority of mine, but this year I managed to forage my way to Montreal with the company of dear friends and had an absolutely delightful time, followed months later by a subsidized trip to London, England for a week's work and a week's pleasure. Being in London, a highly desirable destination for a very long time, for the first time, and with Aden no less, was absolutely spectacular. The only thing that spoiled it was having to come back.

My sister's split with her partner of many, many years wasn't easy on her, but she pulled through it like a champ. It wasn't anything but something that wasn't working right, and it's unfortunate but certainly for the best. I'm proud of her for her resolve and strength even when she felt like shutting down completely and I was so happy I could return the support she gave me fully a year before. I'll miss JD a lot, he was a part of our family after all these years, but am happy for his new life in Whistler and wish him incredible success in everything he does.

Work has geared up, and I've instigated a dramatic shift in my role. I'm not entirely comfortable yet with all the things I'm continually choosing to take on, but the necessity and importance of these projects or concepts are fulfilling beyond my title and duties. It would be nice if I could keep my role as simplistic as it was in the past, but the reality is that it's not a simplistic role anymore.

The move to BOBTown from the Ronces was a difficult one, and certainly not a highlight of the year... a heavily stressful lowlight, the move itself was. The apartment, though, is fantastic, and getting better all the time (with a few ants a cracks being a step back for two forward). Our big BOBTown party is being bumped to the 1st of March-ish, so that we can get some things in order in the meantime. I still need to get comfortable in the surroundings (I've spent only about 45 of the past 90 nights there) but it's getting to be home, taking a lot longer than any other place ever has, though.

Last but certainly not least was my involvement in the creation of two new web presences. The first was Toonage, a Toronto-centric, non-genre denominational music magazine fronted by Melissa Girimonte. It's never easy starting up a projected for-profit endeavor, especially when there are so many already, and Melissa had a good idea and a solid plan. I tried to keep my guns up and go in fighting along side her, but, alas, my heart wasn't in it. I got a few paltry reviews and one kick-ass feature in place before my investment dwindled. It wasn't really a lack of desire, but a lack of interest in the music scene. I intake so much every year that something had to give. Music was it.

On the flipside, Rack Raids has rocketed out of the gate. Spawning from Thor's Comic Column on CHUD.com, it was a collective decision to branch out. Within two months we've already racked up 110+ reviews and some heavily positive feedback. We're still climbing the totem on the web, but, yeah, we're kicking and screaming and making ourselves known. I'm proud of what we've achieved, and I was going to qualify that by saying "so quickly" but most of us have been at this for two years or more at this point.

Overall, 2006 was a year of both learning and growing, both in a very personal manner. I feel so much more comfortable in my skin than I ever have, and 2007 should yield interesting results because of that.

Less super, more aqua.

The Stma In Xstmas

My only annual tradition for the holidays (slightly modified but originally blogged Dec 24, 2004):

About 12 years ago I popped a tape into the tape deck and pressed record. On the radio Brent Bambury was kicking off a Christmas themed Brave New Waves. This recorded document was duplicated and given to my amigo GAK, who agreed that this was probably the best Christmas mixed tape ever (he's right you know).

In the years since the internet and mp3 explosion I've been attempting to track down all the songs on the now well-worn mix tape to make a cd replica of. I've been somewhat successful, but considering how many rarities, records and made-for-radio elements were played I'm almost certain that I'll never find a decent digital replica of everything.

What's a guy to do?

Well, here's what, plug a tape player into the computer and press record on the digital button. I tried this back in 2000 but the technology wasn't ready for me, but now... now... (well, 2004)

The result is, after a decade, the first and still only, as I know it, digital copy of the performance comedy duo Star Wars Theatre's rendition of Dr. Seuss' "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"
(to do a Google search for Star Wars Theatre and Grinch and the only reference is one of my own webpages).

This has been a Christmas staple for me. It's not the holidays until I listen to this recording. Tragedy struck last year (2003) when my copy of The Tape got ruined in the back seat of a now deceased car. But GAK came to the rescue, providing me with a mega cool retro mixed tape this XMas (2004), complete with side one of that old tape. (The sad thing is I now have no tape deck to play these things on).

So without further bubbling here it is, presented to all of you:

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Star Wars Theatre, an MP3. (only 25 downloads available... if it run out leave me a comment and I'll re-post it)

nb

yes, comments are now working... you need to enter in validation code each time (sorry Joany)
ROCK

(I've taken off the need to be a registered user, with the verification code in place, but it's now kinda glitchy and there's an error message when a comment is entered[turns out the archive settings were reset, is fixed now], but the comment is actually received)

Blog Slow Down

It's not quite like being on strike, but blogging just isn't tingling my giblets like it once did. I go through phases, all us tried and true bloggers/journallers do, where we just don't feel like anything we say really reaches anyone. Perhaps it's because comments are still all wonked up (working on it) and i'm not getting any feedback or perhaps it's just a general sense of malaise as the leaves turn, the weather shifts, and I get to bust my sweaters out. I like sweater weather, but for some reason I'm experience a dramatic case of the SADs, which I don't think I do often but it's getting to me this year.

Life is in chaos but not really. It's now perhaps the absense of chaos that's driving me batty. Settling into BOBTown is going slow, and the bugs in the beautiful place are starting to crawl out (metaphorically speaking, although my familiars, the spiders, have made themselves comfortable). Things like the wonky stovetop elements, the crappy washing machine and the seemingly impossible way of arranging the space are getting to me, as well, the loft in my bedroom seems to serve no purpose other than sweater storage at the moment.

Solidifying plans for a work-then-pleasure visit to London (UK), hopefully today, but you never know with these things. Aden's going to be joining me for week 2, which should be a blast, but until it's booked, I'm going to be a freako about it. I can't help it. I get mildly stressed about these things.

I'm also having a bit of a challenge with my local post office, in that I can't find it. A package was sent to me a few weeks back which apparently arrived on the 4th of October, with BOBTown as the destination and yet I received no notice of where to pick it up. While the sender puts a trace on the order, I'm trying to determine where exactly it would have wound up and quite frankly I have no idea. Even the semi-useful Postal Outlet finder on Canada Post's website didn't yield any fruit (after an hour of walking in the rain).
*Update* Just Found out that the package was returned because it was delivered accidentally one door over (having not yet met the neighbours, well, they didn't know to pass it on).

A few posts back I mentioned Amazon.com was selling costumes... well, it turns out they don't ship to Canada, not via Amazon anyway. But if you go direct to BuyCostumes.com's website, they actually DO ship to Canada, and quickly might I add. The only pisser is I ordered a Space Ghost costume and they sent me a child's medium instead of an adult medium. Even worse, they don't even have Space Ghost children's costumes available for sale, so how'd that mix-up happen??? Now I have to, on my dime, send it back, which is kind of annoying, plus I don't have a Space Ghost costume now. Grrrr.

But it's not like I'm going to Hallowe'en parties as Space Ghost. Nope. I'm going as Nightwing. I've already purchased my unitard from Malabar, I need to edit my mask, and I just bought my gloves and boots (note: MEC's Swellies paddling boots make great superhero boots, and don't let the pic fool you, the treds are black, not white or grey... neato). Now all I really need is the material for the chest/shoulder emblem and someone to sew it on for me (Joany???) and I'm all set. Oh, and some gauntlets. I can borrow my roomie's arnise sticks so I can beat up bad guys... well, let's just say I'm all set. If I'm lucky, I'll be accompanied by Zatanna for the evening. Fishnets...*sigh*.

Oh, and I'm still finishing up the send-outs for the 4-CD sampler. 50% delivered, 80% completed, and 100% behind schedule. A couple international deliveries will be made this week/next week. A couple more still to follow. *Different kind of sigh*

Anybuts, work goes busily and well (it's taken me six hours to finish this post), and I must get back.

Comments now allow commenting, but there's no space for a name, which is bizarro.

uh... okay

Not sure what's going on here yet, but everything should be back to normals soon. Comments work at least.

Okay, everything back to normal, except can't get comments to work. *sighs*

Comments are broken

looks like the comments are broken.
hrm.

Slow brain time

The blog is not on hiatus, but my brain is. So much going on with life, the special lady, work, consumables, other people's lives, recreation, the weather, the world, fruit flies, the big move to BOBTown (that's the Bottom Of Boys Town where the Ronces is relocating to) and other such stuff that my brain is tripping it's breaker roughly every 15 minutes and I'm only getting around to resetting it every 20 minutes, so that's a lot of downtime where formulating complete sentences doesn't really happen (thank god our informal work environment doesn't require structurally and gramatically correct english for email correspondence).

Oh, plus I'm sick, which doesn't help any. I'm not too sick, but I did take last Thursday as a "work from home" day which also involved having Return of the Jedi playing on DVD (the crappy "Special Editions"... nothing special about them)... but a busy Saturday afternoon of playing with a coughing four-year-old coupled with a weakened immune system has resulted in a pricklish cough. Yes, I'm blaming a four-year-old. Being busy has made me a total melon.

The corn's too spicy.
Recoup from crazytown commencing any day now.
Patience is permitted.

Photosucky

Ugh... I hate doing photography. I hate composing pictures, and I hate photomanagement almost as much as I hate photomanipulation. I hate taking pictures with a flash and so my shite little digicam takes shite little photographs. It doesn't help that all the concert venues I take pictures in have shite lighting and that everything is awash in bloody red. Bloody blood red.

I'm not a photographer, and anyone who says photography is easy and that anyone can do it is a bloody twat. Sure, anyone can take a photograph... even Stevie Wonder... but can anyone take a good photograph no. Why not? Patience is a big part of it. One has to be willing to wait for the shot. Me, I got no patience. There's nothing I regret more than wasting a perfectly enjoyable concert attempting to take shite pictures of it. So I rush through it and, well, the results are as should be expected. Another reason is investment and education. I don't want to spend the money for a camera that can do pristine low light photos and I don't want to have to know what lenses to use in what situation. Doesn't interest me and these silly concert photos aren't worth enough to me to take the time to learn or to invest.

What's my point... my point is I'm leaving the photography aspirations to the Carries and the Rannies of the world, and I'll leave the recreational photo enthusiasm/photodocumentation to the GAKs and Ryans. Me, I'm just going to stew in my washed-out shite snaps and keep flickr-ing them just to torture myself. The last concert I was at (last night, the Diableros and Camera Obscura... review... eventually) all my pictures came out crap, barely a salvageable one in the bunch. Why don't I just use a flash?
I don't know. I guess I'm just being stubborn, and I don't want to blind/distract the musicians.
*shrug*

Stupid photography.

Mike Flacklestein is a spamming douchebag

A quick google search shows that, yes, yes he is.
I know he's not real, like leprichauns or Lindsay Lohan, but like both of them, he's still a douche. And apparently he lives in Seattle. Apparently he's insinuating that Seattle is the home of douchebags. I knew about the coffee enemas, but...
Point is, Mike Flacklestein comments should be deleted.

Four More Years

I've hit my 4 year blogiversary.
Doesn't really seem worth celebrating, unless you take into account the volume of people who start a blog and don't make it past their first year. It's kind of like starting a business, in that 25% wont make it past their first year and 50% won't make it past three*. Looks like I'm already a genuine institution...

(Willem Dafoe F***Yeah image totally copped from Dave's Long Box

*source

All quiet on the north by northeastern front

Two posts earlier I've got my concert chart laid out, so don't be too concerned/surprised/disappointed with a reduced/absent turn of blogging for the next little bit. I'm not really doing the North By Northeast bullshit... here's a conversation with a friend as to why:

She - thanks for reminding me about nxne
i'm usually good at keeping on top of these things but just with everything lately it's all been passing me by

Me: I hate festivals... I'm not much for lineups and figuring out schedules...
that's why I've never done the TIFF proper.
Festivals always seem so... exclusive too.
Like it's a big club ... a big no Graigs club or something.

She: hahahah
Pop Montreal is the only music festival i've done but I liked it
wasn't too traumatized by conflicting gigs and what not. But in the end it all depends on your taste

Me: I did NXNE and CMW the first two years I was here and was pretty much soured on the whole festival thing by that point.
I'm not a hardcore enough music nurd to care about "seeing something first" and not a big enough scenester to care about being seen and not a big enough blogger to feel obligated to tell people about this shit.

She: well, if you don't like the festival setting, you can always just wait until the band/movie you want to see comes by again or gets a theatrical release, if at all
that's the thing with film fests though, a lot of it will never see a theatrical release, at least not in North America

Me: yeah...

She: the bands though will probably always come by again

Me: Maybe if I was getting paid to write about these things I'd actually care again
sigh... someday

She: well, if you don't care enough to see these things on your own for your own enjoyment, then it's definitely not worth the effort

Me: the thing is, it's the hassle of being a nobody in these things...
if I had a press pass or an insider pass...
things would be much simpler... takes a lot of the guessing and aggrivation out of it

She: well, yeah, that's the thing. half the point of festivals is to connect artists with the industry as well as the public
but if it were not for the public and their interest, then the industry would have no one to market to
kind of like a serpent swallowing its tail

Me: totally.
I just get annoyed at the imbalance of it though... the last time I did NXNE, I stood waiting in a lineup for 40 minutes only to be told I wasn't getting in (all the while, people with their media badges were breezing on in)
it's that kind of thing that peeves me.
If they had to stand in line too, I wouldn't be so annoyed...
or maybe if they allocated a certain number of media spots to public spots...
shrug

She: unfortunately that's how the festival business works. Media are given priority bec have they to maximize coverage
we could debate this for hours, but i have to go

Me: ja

----------

This definitely isn't all I have to say on these "festival" things, and some of my thoughts up above aren't exactly well thought out (such is "chatting" format, I guess) but, as I said, no time for love, Dr. Jones. Off for dinner and a show.

but first

The Monarch's list of peers - from an outtake on the Venture Bros. episode "The Trial of the Monarch":
Judge: You're on thin ice, but do you get off the ice? No, you jump up and down like a lunatic having a..a conniption fit. Now if it was up to me, you'd have been in chains an hour ago. But this is a trial by jury and it's up to your peers...
The Monarch: Peers?
Judge cont'd: ...to decide this.
The Monarch: PEERS?! How dare you! That repulsive display of humanity out there? NO WAY! A list of my peers would read as follows:
Flying Squid and Tigeriffic; Truckules; Lord Mostly-Magic; King Fantastic Outfit; Fee Waybill of the Tubes; Suicide Girl Tegan; Bill "Superfoot" Wallace; Happy-Go-Clucky and Swiss Misstery; Chaka Igloo; and my 8th grade earth science teacher Mr. Tringe! Oh... and Bizarro Oscar Wilde as an alternate.

Heh... Truckules. The only other sign of Truckules on-line is this gay trucker fantasy story. *shudder*

Pick your nose and Flickr it

So, you want photodocumentation of what I've been up to for the past week, huh?

JUST ADDED! Current River

See the CILU office raid by 3 hosers

Birthday bowling with GAK and the 'rents

More cute animal photos than should be rationally expected on one person's flickr account

Photojunk.

I upgraded my flickr account from the freebie yesterday because, well, I had a lot of photos. Going to more gigs means I'm taking more pictures. What I realize is this: I'm not very good and/or my camera's not very good.

I generally don't have a lot of patience for playing around with photomanipulation, or much patience for taking them, or sorting and weeding through them, so what I wind up getting are, in general, fairly unassuming and unartistic shots. But they capture a moment. Many moments in fact.

Since most of my photographs are going to be of bands at gigs (the link will take you to all my recent shots) I imagine I'll get used to this new camera of mine (an Olympus Stylus 600), but as of yet I havn't really figured out the proper settings to get a good no-flash picture in barroom lighting. Is there a way? Well, my old camera used to take some great no-flashers, so I know it can be done... ah well.

In taking gig photos, I have realized that I tend to hang to stage left or right, and I don't really manouever around to take shots from varying angles, so my photo series' are pretty stagnant to look at for the most part... and in my stagnation, I realize my photography is pretty unfair to the drummer. Take a look at my gig photos and you can count the shots that feature the drummer on one hand. Sorry rhythm-men and women... I'll get more adventurous soon and catch you next time.

In the event of my untimely passing...

At a party last night with a gang of bloggers we got into a discussion about what would happen to one's blog in the event that they died? I'm sure most people hadn't put much thought into it, but it does pose an interesting question.

I came up with the idea of offering a "Medic Alert" style system where the blogger carries a card or wears some durable jewelry which has a phone number to call on the back in case of death or incapacitation, and on the other end would be an operator with a database of records, with the authority to release the location, username and password information of one's blog to a designated person or persons, or even go into the blog themselves and update the blog with a pre-packaged message.

Accordion Guy has the idea of programming a dead man's code, which you can plug into your blog and set for a specific interval. If you don't blog within a certain amount of time, a prewritten message will pop up on your blog which will tell your readers (and if you have them, fans) who to call to find out what happened to you.

I also like the idea of pre-blogging a series of confessionals to be published only if you're dead. Or, as I think I might do, "schedule" the entries to be published in 50 years (if I'm still alive at 80, I'm sure I won't care). I'm sure my confessionals won't be that interesting though, certainly nothing to the level of always peeing in the sink, as was one example.

For real though, if I die, or become comatose, GAK, one of my best friends and also my server master, will have the capability and the authority to take the geekent blog reigns. That solves that.

Flickr feed

I bought a new digicam before I went to Montreal, and I took my fair share of photos, although I didn't really have a full understanding of all the features and functions, so I took a lot of blurry and or grainy photos.

I'm using Picasa and Flickr now to help manage the near-400 that I wound up keeping, but I botched my first batch and didn't realize it when I started tagging. Hating to repeat myself I've left the currently tagged photos up for now, but at some point I'm going to have to figure out how to replace a photo without retagging or else I'll just have to reupload those 110 photos I've already commented on.
Sigh. Photomanagement is not one of my favourite things.

And I need to figure out how to set up my Flickr for blog posting... wee. Vacations are trouble.

Flickr me

My posts are too long

according to Maria at least. She's gets so exhausted from reading the recent stream of extremely long posts she can't even write a commet to tell me so.

[Littlest Hobo reference here]

I miss The Beard. I know it was overheating my face but still, I loveded it like it was a part of me.
I only hope that, like the littlest hobo or Dr. David (nee Bruce) Banner or the Fugitive or Sam Beckett it's moving from town to town (or time to time) helping people as they need it.

Two days without it and already the comments have been as abundant as when I first grew it. My favourite was the cleaning lady (the one who previously told me through an interpreter I "looked like Christ") who said to me today, without assistance "No bearda?"
I shook my head. "Nope... all gone."
She scrunched her face up. "Aww. Lookta good."
I smiled broadly and said "Thank you" and she gave me another "Ach" with a flappy wave of the hand and a cute older lady smile.
Seriously, I'm going to adopt her as my third grandma. I love the ones I got, but I'm feeling greedy.

I would get into the numerous "young Jesus" and "what happened to Jesus" comments (my response to the latter: "Jesus went into the cave, he's hibernating until winter"... apparently somewhere in my subconscious, Jesus is a reverse ursine I blame Stephen Colbert)

Blogrolling

I'm updating my blogroll soon... anyone I'm missing (aside from maria, jen's scotch blog and robot johnny?)
speak now or forever wait until the next time I update.

For the two wheelers

Poll time for the cyclists out there (Tanya, feel free to take this topic an run with it):
Do you feel safer biking on the road:

a) in daylight during morning/evning rush hour traffic?
or
b) late at night with blinking front and rear lights?

I feel fine doing my morning jaunt across Dundas, although I find the evening jaunt a little bit hairier (especially since the warmer weather and people are driving more aggressively to get home faster). I was just noticing, however, that riding home tonight at 10:30 across Bloor with front and rear flashies going off, I felt safer. Not only could I see the movements of the cars better, but I could also tell better if a car or many were coming up behind me. And it's so much easier to tell if there's someone opening a door (the interior light goes on) or if they're starting the car or just finished parking.
Plus there's less traffic.

Night biking may sound more dangerous but I feel as long as I'm visible via blinkies then I'll do okay (I do get extremely nervous if batteries die out before a night bike).

[putting street sofa pictures here]

(photos by TripleDoubleYou)

[enter jackassery caption here]

[enter witty caption here]

Right on bloody time

Welcome to the sauna server (for those geekenthusiasts out there, you may recall that back in the days before geekent.com I was Trepanning For Fun and Profit as well as the Spider Behind My Toilet, both of which resided in the Sauna). Feels like home, all hot and sweaty... love lift us up where we belong... back in black... etc.
I'm just getting everything back to normal on the blog front, but expect much posting to happen as I have had the blog itch for two weeks but no blognails to scratch with.

If you're coming here from Canada's Superstar Blogger because you saw me in the partial nude all bearded and wet... well... hi! I'm Graig. I blog. About stuff. Mostly about me, and movies and comics and music and geeky things (the geek is me, the ent is entertainment).

More to come...

updated 5:00pm
Pictures are all back in place and archives are working, however if you've linked to an archive previously, the link is likely dead now. The version of Movable Type I'm working with on Sauna has a lot of niftynewness to it so it changed all the archive formattings around when I imported the entries...
Comments are live, and there's a neat MT "trust" feature, which means if you havn't posted before I'll need to approve it, but once you're approved, you're a trusted commenter and access should be immediate.
The "about" page is due for an update, but I'm braindead today, so just a bit of bs for now.
Search isn't functional yet, but will be soon.
Otherwise it's graigblogmadness as usual.

On Hiatus.

Welcome to March.
I'm taking about 2 weeks off to hopefully do a server migration. I'll be itching to blog and likely be doing some blind blogging (stuff that will appear in one big glut when I emerge again) during that time.

If you experience technical difficulties... chances are that's normal.
If you experience a burning, itching sensation, see you doctor.
If you're experiencing a general sense of malaise, see your therapist.
If you're experiencing happy good times at big American party, see too it that you invite me too.
If you miss me in the meantime, I still have email (geekent at gmail dot com) which also now, thanks to the wonders of technology, doubles as a chat system. Or you can call me at my number if you got it, or come see me if you know where I work or live.
I mean, it's not like I'm dying or anything (it's just that without my blog, I'm dead inside).

March 15th y'all. See you back here. I'm pretty sure things'll look pretty much the same.

Prodigal

The plan was to meet up out front of Bathurst station at "half-one" as Sara in her Scots-infected dialect would say. I decided to pop into the Beguiling beforehand and peruse the shelves for the rare and missed issues, plus try to find the Vertigo Pop: Tokyo series Seth Fisher did a few years ago. Spent a lot of time and wound up with a $3 book in my hand. I wasn't doing no $3 interac transaction so I found way too many other things to buy to pad the purchase (why?). I wound up with autographed copies of In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot and its follow-up Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir, both by Toronto's Graham Roumieu. Both are hilarious, and well worth the shelf space.

(Bigfoot's opening words: "I AM NOT CHEWBACCA! Me think Chewbacca jerk. He no can act..."... I wonder what Chewy has to say in response?)

Anyway, I abscond quickly from the Beguiling only to notice that it's bloody raining. It's a bit of a tinkle sure, but it's bloomin' February! During the, oh, four minute walk between the Beguling and the subway station the rain turned into snow and then back again, and then back into snow again, and then rain again. Crazy flippin' global warming.

Sara was running late, and I was standing around wondering if she'd changed at all, having not seen her in over a year I wasn't sure exactly who I was looking out for. Was that brunette with curly hair peering out of her toque chatting on the cel phone her? Yes, I know Sara's blonde but perhaps she got a dye and perm? Who knows.
But when S finally showed up, man, I could have jumped and squealed like a little girl, or perhaps wet the floor like an expectant puppy, but I opted to give her a long, warm, firm hug instead, the kind of hug you save for your family and best of friends and only for those occasions where the distance and time between you has been all too much.

So we sauntered out in the rain, quickly decided to pop into a diner for some food and refreshment and catch up, which wasn't so much catching up as it was just getting the Sara/Graig repartee going. Of course, Sara's Scotsisms had me in giggling fits, slight Ringo Starr-esque intonations every now and again. Over an hour later we ventured back out into the rain and took in the underground Yorkville area, talking loudly about inappropriate things ("huge box of rubbers in the cupboard" was shouted loudly... rubbers meaning "erasers" over the pond).

An hour in the underground and we had to venture back to whence we came for S to meet up with her dinner date. The rain came down hard. Then harder. Torrential would be an apt description. My pants were soaked up to my ass, no foolin. The funny thing was, after I left S at the resto I popped into a cd store for 10 minutes, only to step outside where the rain had utterly stopped. Sonuva blip.

Went home, doffed the clothes, tossed on fresh gear and laid down for a nap.
I hate naps.
Despite my incredible fatigue, I should have stayed awake, because after a nap I always feel a) nauseous b) headachey c) competely dazed. People tell me it's cause I napped too long (wha? 90 minutes too long?), but whether it's 20 or 120 I still feel like the same piece of shit.
Anywho, post-nap, I polished off my viewing of "Big Night" (review tk), ate some gnocci (although I was far too unsettled to eat much) and decided to venture out to Sara's planned drinkup.

In my dazed state, I completely forgot that it was raining all day, and that headgear would likely be appropriate. I stepped out onto the porch, observed the rain and decided it was too much effort to unlock the door and get some sort of scalp cover. My head was soaked through in seconds.

I jaunted up Dundas to the subway station, ignoring the cramps in my calves and keeping my head down so the rain was out of my eyes. When I hit the front of Hugh's Room I heard a nasty commotion. I stopped suddenly and observed the events across the street. This tremendously big Middle Eastern guy had this Native kid in a choke hold, the kid's arm railed behind his back. There was another smaller guy trying to hold onto the kid as well. The kid (probably about 20 years old.. yeah, 20 year olds are kids to me now) was screaming bloody murder. I observed the scene once more... two orange and green cabs, still running, were in an "L" shape, one on the street and one in the donut shop parking lot enterance. Two cabs, two guys, one screaming kid. Wonder what he did. (According to the kid, he didn't do anything, at least that's what he was screaming).

Action Graig sprang into, well, action. With a thrust of my arm my hand was in my pocket gripping my cel phone tight, ready to make a call at a moment's notice. I looked for an opportunity to cross the street but traffic was heavy and cars were slowing down to observe the incident. A third orange and green cabbie showed up and the big guy let the kid go. I watched for a few seconds more and the kid backed up, yelling something I couldn't really hear with the rain pounding at my skull, and then the kid started to jog. Good idea. I continued my sprint up to the subway.

Made it to my destination (which, curiously enough was only a few storefronts down from the Beguiling... I spent the day running in circles apparently), had a few drinks, some great conversation, and by the end of the evening the rain had stopped.

review frenzy

How is it possible that it's easier for me to watch a two hour movie than it is to write a 20 minute review. I'm so far behind, it feels like I'll never catch up. 7 movies left to review, I have two rentals still left to watch on the living room table, and I don't want to watch them because I don't want to add them to the "to review" list, and yet my brainial processes are all tapped out for today in reviewsville (did three film reviews and 6 comic reviews for Thor.. methinks that be 'nuff for one day).
I don't even know why I put this pressure on myself to do these reviews. Does anyone even read them. And half the time they're so bloody off-the-cuff that they're borderline unreadable, because, as you know, I'm a lousy editor (I'm lousy cause I don't even try).
'tevs.

Gakpacking

Hey folks, GAK's travelling New Zealand. Pictures and jealousy ensue.

Distraction

geekent is live again.. the dry-line internet is now active at home (what they neglected to tell me is that although each telephone jack requires a filter the connection to the modem should be direct into a jack, sans filter. Derp!)

I've got a trio of movie reviews to get through, and a best of 2005 music list and some pictures to upload, but first I need to sort through the bulk of my wardrobe that was just returned to me yesterday from my sister. Joined by her partner and my adorable "nephew" (that'd be the black lab Whistler), we had a lovely unfestive dinner and some nice downtime before they shuttled off to their actual Christmas plans.

On the "boo" side, the cable was yanked sometime between Tuesday (when I last watched) and Friday. On the "yay" side: clothes, internet, long weekend, and a microwave (reheating things in a frying pan is kind of tedious).

Happy Chanukkah, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, Cheerful Festivus

Re-blogged

My only annual tradition for the holidays (originally blogged Dec 24, 2004):

About 10 years ago I popped a tape into the tape deck and pressed record. On the radio Brent Bambury was kicking off a Christmas themed Brave New Waves. This recorded document was duplicated and given to my amigo GAK, who agreed that this was probably the best Christmas mixed tape around.

In the years since the internet and mp3 explosion I've been attempting to track down all the songs on the now well-worn mix tape to make a cd replica of. I've been somewhat successful, but considering how many rarities, records and made-for-radio elements were played I'm almost certain that I'll never find a decent digital replica of everything.

What's a guy to do?

Well, here's what, plug a tape player into the computer and press record on the digital button. I tried this four years ago but the technology wasn't ready for me, but now... now...
The result is, after a decade, the first, as I know it, digital copy of the performance comedy duo Star Wars Theatre's rendition of Dr. Seuss' "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"
(to do a Google search for Star Wars Theatre and Grinch and the only reference is one of my own webpages).

This has been a Christmas staple for me. It's not the holidays until I listen to this recording. Tragedy struck last year when my copy of the tape got ruined in the back seat of a now deceased car. But GAK to the rescue providing me with a mega cool retro mixed tape this XMas, complete with side one of that old tape.

So without further bubbling here it is, presented to all of you:

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Star Wars Theatre, an MP3. (only 25 downloads available)

SILLY THINGS TO DO

by me - 11.12.05

Organize your cds/books/dvds/graphic novels not alphabetically, nor by release date, nor by how much you enjoy them, nor even by spine colour, but rather organize them by how many vowels appear in the title. Obviously some are going to have an equal number of vowels so in order to establish dominance, give it a weighting system... say a=9, e=7, i=5, o=3, u=1 and y counts only as consonant, even if used in vowely purposes. Obviously you're going to have difficulty finding things, so say you're looking for "Broken Social Scene: You Forgot It In People", that's o=3, e=7, o=3, i=5, a=9, e=7, e=7, o=3, u=1, o=3,o=3, i=5, i=5, e=7, o=3, e=7 to total 78, which means that if you come across "Swell: Whenever You're Ready" (55) it's going to be before that (or after that depending on if you sorted albums from highest rank to lowest)... Similarily if you look for "Fight Club" (6), you should find it closer to "Crumb" (1) than to "Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace" (92).

Welcome to the Geekent Academy

In meta-meta-blogging, Wendy has blogged her acceptance speech after my first ever Comments Awards. She said "I'd like to thank the Academy", at which point I had to prepare a response:

I'm an Academy now...?
shit, I better come up with some curriculum stat.

- Meme 101
- Superficially Thought Out Relationship Theory 405
- Sequential Art History Masters programme
- DVD watching 201
- Collectors Anonymous support sessions (off campus)
- Reviewing Media With No Talent 301
- Speling Mystaks 101
- Looking Down Your Nose At Others: How To Be A Music Snob (elective)
- Screwing Off When You Should Be Working 202 (requires Floating Through Life 101)
- Floating Through Life 101

Register today.
Geekent.com

more meta

in Joany's comments on the subject of the 40-year-old Virgin "you're gay" sequence:

" Graig, you know how I know that you're gay?
You eat like a chick, dude."

This makes me laugh, and I'm quite certain it always will, mainly 'cause it's true, and it would take an utter LOEW member to come up with such a clever juxtaposition of words. Joan, you're brilliant.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming

Aaaaaand... we're back.

Emma's been working flat out on restoring the server after the Brasilian Hax0rz completely screwed it over, leaving some backdoor entries in place, and a few bits of malicious code which sent out spam to the masses and wiped all the users from the server (including the Root user, which if you're a nerd, will mean something).

So, if you've gotten bounced emails... I'm back up and if you've not been finding anything here... well, it's all here now. Only the posts dating back about a week were affected, and I backed up, so it's an easy restore...

#4ck3d

Looks like Emma's server has been hacked by ninola from the "H4ck3rsBR" (Brazilian Hackers, I'm guessing).

They didn't do too much damage, at least not to my site, mainly just main index pages replaced with their calling card. Not

sure how they hacked but passwords have been changed. Not that it will stop anyone else.

Until I get the chance to fix it later, the only buggered pages are the links page - which has been reverted to the old

transparent soap doohickery - and the "about" page was due for a rewrite anyway (although it's backed up at home).

COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Joan
URL: http://freakgirlspew.blogspot.com
DATE: 09/29/2005 04:18:09 PM
Sorry about the troubles. It was me. As you know, I am an elite programmer :)

What once was broken...

Server outage yesterday. Hair pulling, screaming, swearing and guinea piggy sqealing abounded about the household last night but ultimately Emma got the server fuctioning again, so here we are.

PAWS update

While I was outside barbecuing last night (chicken stuffed with basil, parmesean, butter and garlic, and glazed with lemon butter) our neighbour let me know that her husband and daughter had captured Paws and took him to the Humane Society.

I've written them to find out if they could rescue Paws of if they needed to shuffle him off to kitty Valhalla.
(update: they couldn't provide me with any info, except to say my neighbour would have to call in to request any info about kitty... something about privacy laws... or something)

Meanwhile, if you have space in your heart and home, the Toronto Humane Society has some little ones that need a place to stay.

The no-know-nose

People have been bugging me about the new image up top, specifically wondering where that hook nose came from... even my mother said "that's not your nose, that's my nose". But, I'm telling you people, it's the angle. I used this picture for reference:

This picture was taken by Rannie at the Accordion Guy's 2004 GTAB holiday party.

It may indeed be slighty exaggerated but yup, that's all me.

New look

As you can see, I've tinkered and come up with a new design.

Let me know what you think, any problems you encounter and any suggestions you may have.

Cheers,
-Me-

In a prefect world

In a prefect world, if you made a spelling mistake, it would not become another word.

Also in a perfect world, everyone would have a blog. Forget what you hear about oversaturation of the interweb with millions of self-important ramblings day in and day out leaving the snobs who started it all to say "I remember when I was one of thirty people doing this and it was actually interesting, but now everyone's doing it and I'm no longer a clever lonely basement dwelling geek, I just a regular old basement dwelling geek." Everyone should blog.

If everyone wrote in a journal, there wouldn't be newspapers decrying the abundance of notebook toting pencil scribblers on streetcars and in parks. No, there'd be no commentary at all. But since the internet is, in most considerations, a public space, all these blogs are likened to a million voices talking at once. The blogosphere has become the New York Stock Exchange, or the crowd at a rock concert with every individual throwing their arm up in the air trying to get celebrities to pay attention to them and give them their 18 seconds of glory.

Journaling, and by extension, blogging is healthy exercise for the mind (and the fingers). Oversaturation? Who cares, wouldn't it be cool if you met someone at a bar and instead of saying "what's your phone number" or "what's your email", you'd say "what's your blog"?
Blogs often show a personality, and it's not entirely representative of what someone's actually like, but it's more a reflection of what they'd like to be. I'd like to be a bit more cynical, and goofy, intellectual, and cool, and strange. In reality, I'm a Nice Guy, friendly and a bit shy... There are certain people that bring out the wannabe Graig, but most people just make me shy up.

But my blog, for almost three years now, has been my outlet for random thoughts, for strange ponderances, for bad spelling and some fascinating ideas. It's been a place for me to be goofy and it's been a place for me to be grumpy. And sometimes it seems like a chore to get the ideas out of me, but I can't imagine not blogging, just as I couldn't imagine not rubbing my cat's belly when she's doing her belly roll on the rug when I get home.

Blogs, in complete uncynicism, are great, and there should be more of them. They shouldn't be for the shy or lonely or reserved, or famous, or political, or compusavvy or the geeky anymore. They should be for everyone.

But that's just me.

Meanwhile...

some changes coming soon for my 3rd anniversary

Blogs and moms and ipods and comics and movies, oh my!

my mom likes my blog

Remeber that Onion article from about a year ago satirizing the blogger's worst fear ("Mom Finds Out About Blog"). At the same time Blogger put out a sort of tutorial of "what to do if your mother discovers your blog" in almost all seriousness. I want to say, "What's the big deal, people? What are you so afraid of?"
Then again, I've never met most of your mothers.

Well, my mom reads my blog - she's been reading it off and on since I started doing it back in mid-'02 - and you know what? I don't mind. Honest. In fact, I kinda like it.

I'll get on the phone with my Dad sometimes and he'll say "Your mother's been reading your website again," with a tone that suggests he doesn't think she should be reading it, but I always laugh. Mom doesn't hide it anyway, so it's not like he's ratting her out or anything. Often my mother will start sentences with "I was reading on your blog..." which, I admit, for a while made me groan, if inaudibly. But now, you know, it's kinda nice. She's interested in my life, and she likes to ask questions. Part of the reason why it's here is to spread a little of me around to whomever might care, (the other part is the old cliche "I just do it for myself", but it's as true today as it ever was...), and because sometimes saying things out loud is difficult, or it just doesn't come out right.

Does it affect my blogging, knowing my Mother reads this? Not really. I once did a meme that asked if I've ever did drugs, which she read the answer to and I imagine was a little more than surprised, and she called me on it... which I have to expect is going to happen from time to time when I put my life and thoughts out there. It didn't bother me, and it didn't upset me, and Mom didn't treat me like I had a drug problem all of a sudden or anything. She also doesn't like my use of profane colloquialisms, but she understands that my writing is stream of consciousness and, dammit, those words are in there too. I'm really not going to change my writing because someone may not like it or get upset, even she who birthed me. This is a journal, for lack of a better term, and if you're going to sugarcoat yourself in a journal, public or private, what's the point of it?

Having your mother read your blog may not be for everyone, but I really do think it's a good thing, and so does she. She likes reading my blog and said I have a great sense of humour, which is true, naturally. Last time we spoke she even compared my writing to a young Dave Barry... although if she wanted to read Dave Barry she could. But, the best thing is that I know that even if everyone else stops reading, I'll always have an audience with someone who cares.

Awww.

Brokeded iPod

The bane of my existance over the past two days has been, no not my mom reading my blog, but Emma's broken-ass iPod, which stopped doing as it's supposed to do all of a sudden.

It's a complicated and geeky tale of which I'll try to give the abbreviated version.

On sunday evening Emma alerts me to the fact that she can no longer transfer files between her computer (a linux machine, btw, she's hardcore) and her iPod. We plug it into my computer and notice that iTunes does not recognize it either. And yet it still plays music fine. So I click on the updater and clicked update and that's when the trouble happened. As it was updating the updater froze on screen, and on the iPod the "connect to outlet" insignia was on screen. So I unplugged it and connected it to the charger and it had a little progress bar under the Apple logo that stopped about 9/10ths of the way through and then it rebooted itself and the Apple logo was permanently etched into the screen.
All sorts of programs were updated, all sorts of techniques were used, all sorts of reboots were had, and over the span of two evenings, nothing seemed to be working.

In the end I had to dust off the old laptop yesterday, which is about as virgin a machine as a London megastore (what a lame analogy). I installed the iPod software that came with my iPod (not hers, we couldn't find it) and after a series of reboots and unplugging and plugging in, head bashing and keyboard banging, finally the iPod updater would let me reformat her iPod, which I did, and now it rests in its cradle, empty as a pint glass at Andy Capp's place (another lame analogy, what's up with me?).

On Sunday The iPod thing kept me up until about 2 or 2:30 am before I crashed, knowing full well I was doing a 6:00 wakeup the next morning (had to work on London time for a little more of the day than usual)... Monday I worked like a bobby on a treadmill (what does that mean exactly) from 7am until 5:30 which I realize is regular hours for some people, but my soft milky unblemished flesh isn't used to that kind of rigor.

Sunday Delivery?

It's not like Sunday was a total loss to the demons of faulty technology... I made pizza... from scratch, and it turned out great (but making dough is a lot of damn work). Some sauce, some onion, lots of cheese and salami... simple but damn fine. Baked to perfection on a stonewear pizza tray.

The biggest surprise though was a massive delivery of comics on Sunday via Canada Post. Yes, delivery, on Sunday. No it wasn't some rogue agent who absconded with a delivery van and decided to drop off its contents before heading to Reno, Canada Post, the gentleman said, is considering bringing back weekend delivery (which I didn't know they ever had). Being unionized and all I can see this as being contended, but I was certainly happy with it. Will likely mean faster shipping of Amazon.ca orders as well, which is a total plus in my books.

Movie poopshoot

John Singleton was shooting his new movie, Four Brothers, all around my office building (Queen and Spadina) for the past two days. You can always tell a major shoot's around because there's frickin' trailers everywhere, and PA's who think they're the law telling you where you can and cannot go... I support cinema as much (probably more) than the next guy, but you can't tell me I can't walk on a city sidewalk just because Marky Mark's trailer is there.

Found the local productions listings, and the much rumoured hurtin' that Toronto's film industry is experiencing is, well, fact. There's a half dozen movies and a half dozen tv shows shooting around town, and that's it. Seems quite low compared to past years... although January's never really a good time to film, especially not with the coldness around here

ReceSS and more

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Pissa

The Beast, a strange magazine from Buffalo has drafted their 50 Most Loathsome People of 2004. Yeah, all the expected celebrities, pundants and political peoples are on the list and a few surprises. It's hilarious, though, doling out punishment to each of the guilty.

My favourite:

13. Joan Rivers

Crimes: The most ghastly face science has managed to create without the use of chemical weapons. As a pioneer in facial reconstruction, she shows us that, in the future, every famous woman will gradually turn into a cross between a sickly geisha and the Joker. The red carpet fashion-cop shtick she does with her broken, spiritless daughter is such an obvious inferiority complex manifestation we almost feel sorry for them, until we remember they're making millions of dollars for it.

Smoking Gun: The sheer, ugly self-hatred of a woman with that face, that voice, and that personality nitpicking Nicole Kidman.

Punishment: Face falls off into wet cement at Mann's Chinese Theatre.

Snowpants

My Moms bought me a pair of shell pants, you know the expensive, rugged, outdoor type that makes that "fweep fweep fweep" sound as you walk. I normally wear them in the spring/fall as I bike in the rain/wet road conditions, but it's cold enough out these days that I need the extra exterior protection. The problem is they aren't very fashionable. I feel like I'm twelve again.. I rode my toboggan to work! Wanna go crazy carpeting later?
But I'm thankful when I wear them, especially when I wait outside in neg30deg weather for 20 minutes for the streetcar to come and then the streetcar subsequently breaks down and I need to wait another 20 for another one to come. Yes, very thankful.

iTuned Out?

One of my resolutions this year was to purchase the bulk of my music on line via iTunes or other similar mp3 download places like Bleep, iTunes, or Zunior... and yet I just found out that iTunes sampling rate is 128kps... which is satisfactory (like, the bare minimum ripping compression rate), but when a cd's compression rate is actually over 1300kps, there's a pretty big gap between. Zunior uses 192kps and Bleep uses 205kps (both with using LAME compression technology).

I think I need to rethink this. I dunno... does it really make a difference? I mean, I'm not a sound snob. I can't really tell the difference between a 192kps mp3 and a wav file. Then again, I can really tell there's a difference in some songs on my iPod, but I think that's more the mastering of the cd (which can be produced at different volumes... or even take an old cd from the early 90's compared to one of todays cd's and it's like the old cd is on "hush" mode).

I think I'll try a few downloads from a few different places (when the money provides), but I think I'm going to keep with the cds for now (that way I can sample and resample at a compression rate I'm happy with until the on-line retail catches up).
It's an insane amount of listening, even if you are being selective.

#^(!@*%

For the second year in a row I got a quotable quote in the Exclaim reader's poll. It's almost regrettable that it's for the Arcade Fire. But I have to admit it's a nice quote... and hell, yes, I still mean it.
The AF backlash is happening, overexposure at its worst. And it's not the band's fault, but the fans. Just think, if blogging was around in '98 we'd all be sick to shit of Neutral Milk Hotel and "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" too.

Meanwhile I keep recording on-line exclusive music...
this week's CBC Radio3 zine showcases 101 (yes, one hundred and one) Concerts and Sessions recorded exclusively for CBC (and then rerecorded exclusively for me by way of my computer). Bands range from Death Cab For Cutie to Ted Leo, Buck 65 to Young and Sexy. It's overwhelming, really.

February Doldrums Got You Down? DVD BABY!

What's out (abridged from the special ed):
Feb 1
- The Brak Show vol 1 (It is I, cloneborg)
- Sealab 2021 vol 2 (BIZARRO!)
- Wonderfalls: The Complete Series

Feb 8
- The Fresh Prince of Bel Air: The Complete First Season (You know all the words to the theme song... you know you do, don't try and deny it! I love this show.)
- The Greatest American Hero: Season One (Believe it or not..)
- Malcolm X: Special Edition
- Miami Vice: Season One (Michael Mann where he began, with Crockett and Tubbs... white suits, no socks, guns and lots of neon)
- Rocky III (the forecast... is paaaain. And some other Rocky stuff out the same day)

Feb 15
- Angel: Season Five (no more Buffy stuff on DVD ever! I made the geeks cry.)
- Donnie Darko: Director's Cut (YESYESYESYES, they made me do it)
- Half Baked: Fully Baked Edition (Classic Dave Chappelle, see what Jon Stewart's been talking about for the past four years)
- The Ice Pirates (oh, no way, I've not seen this since the mid-80's)

Feb 22
- Cube Zero (wow, I didn't even know there was another Cube movie, this one a prequel. I love these films!)
- Heat: Special Edition (if you don't already own the old edition, you MUST own this one. One of the greatest movies ever)

and jumping ahead
April 05 - Primer. If there's ever a movie screaming for repeated viewings and a commentary track...

Wash That Grey Right Outta Your Hair

Yeah, the grey hairs are becoming more numerous, but I don't care.
I don't.
I'm actually looking forward to my Reed Richards temples and eventual salt'n'pepper mixture.

I've just learned how to properly care for my hair, making it more managable than ever before. The trick is to get out of the daily wash-rinse-repeat cycle and instead opt for a shampooing once every 5 to 7 days.
Instead, using small amount of good conditioner on a daily basis and keeping my hair under a toque until I get to work. No "product" needed. Even when it's at this annoying lenth it is now, I don't have any trouble with it.

I just blogged about my hair...
oi.

One hundred and ninety seven

That's how many new blog comments spam I got from "online poker" and "free online poker" and "free party poker" overnight...
No to mention the fifty odd comments spam I received from them yesterday... and to think I thought I was going to get through December clean and clear without friggin gobs of comment spam (I've only had about four or five spam comments since the end of November...) *grumble*

It took me 45 minutes and a repetitive stress injury to delete all that shit out.

I'm never gambling again.

email blaff

apparently the spamfilters on my regular email (the ATsauna.org ones) are exxing out any AThotmail.com and ATyahoo.com.

If you're not getting through try geekent{AT}gmail.com... and I'll speak to my peeps and see what's up.

where'd this come from?

by/via GAK

Away dismay

I have to admit right off the bat that I've been way way way behind in anti-SPAM technology... no I don't mean removing the pull keys from the tins at the supermarket, rather the software and codes that block annoy messages from "Paxil", "Party Poker", "Texas Hold-EM", "Levitra", "Cialis", "Viagra" (apparently someone thinks I have erectile difficulties and need to resolve it with a gambling addiction). My emails for work and personal use are both regularly inundated with spam, although I have fairly decent filters that keep most of the trash out (although I find it highly annoying when my spam filter in Outlook at work - I use a text browser for personal - announces I have a new message and it's just some shit in my filter).
The biggest problem is my blog. I have a lousy anti-spam commenting system, and this weekend while I was away I got absolutely blitzed with well over 100 spam comments, as opposed to my usual 15 or so that I wake up to every morning. I know the technology is out there, I've just not caught up to it yet, and so I'm systematically shutting down the archived comment ability (basically as I have been going through and deleting spam I've also been closing off the comments so no more can come for that post). I know there's also an MT plugin that will close off comments for you from beyond a certain date but I'm too lazy to investigate... but with over 1000 posts I've got a lot of comments left open... for now (and I've still not learned my lesson as I'm leaving comments on new posts open as well. I'm an idiot sometimes).
As annoying as it is to have to purge all this garbage out of my blog shite, it's also a little relaxing in a weird way, just repetitively clicking the same things over and over for twenty or thirty minutes... man, talk about a productivity killer. I wonder what the current economic/corporate time/hours lost is due to dealing with spam.
Hrm.

post 1002

Yup, I've as of two entries ago I've reached number 1000... that's not including the 200+ ent.etc entries, the oldstuffs from dirtymonkey.nu and thebiglist.org, nor the new 21minutes. I should really check my life.
Hey, it's busy, and I still make time for blogging. Wow. Ain't I good.

I like this picture:

Many people may feel that this is an allegory of life, thathope is being crushed under the weight of GAK's gargantuan Italian leather loafers, but, really people, do not give up. GAK's loafers aren't that big compared to HOPE, it only seems that way.
That's Emma's restrapping her sexy vintage strappies, by the way.

times (they are a) changin'

you may notice a little something different about this blog... or else you're just not very observant.

I've been thinking about this layout for sometime (and even discussed it previously), and now it's finally here... and I did it all in one day (with Emma's assistance on some php and css troubleshooting, naturally... she's handy).

But it's not like this is all I've done today (having dragged my ass out of bed around noon), I've also done the laundry, made a damn tasty Rhubarb Crumble, and did the dishes after dinner (and read a few comic books here and there). All in all a successful Sunday afternoon, thank you.

Now, some things that need to be figured out...
1) the leftmost panel - I had a reason for it but I don't quite recall what it is yet. Hopefully it will come back to me.
2) the rightmost panel - is being imported from the remains of the old "what's entertaining the geek/ent.etc." page which noboy was reading, so via the wonders of php, it's now up front. The goal will be to make each entry a link that pops up into a small window with a quick summary of what it is. I have a lot of restructuring to do to the existing 100 entries so that they format better (although some of the older stuff won't be touched).
3) stylistic tweaks - the spacing and lettering will be adjusted... eventually. It looks a'aight right now, so it'll do until I feel like playing.
4) fixing any buggy pages that pop up - I keep noticing more, so I must correct that shiznat.
5) superimposition - putting my mug into Epstein's afro. Not a high priority.

And we out.

Oh yeah...

Yesterday marked the 2 year anniversary of Me and Blogging.

Ha, blogging has been my mistress longer than Emma has.

Speaking of reviews

(See post below)
over in my ENT.ETC. section I've added a new category:
Mini-Reviews

These are less fleshed out than the reviews I do over on Dirty Monkey Bugspray Fun (most of them are, but as I look at some of them and they aren't quite so mini...), and are mostly owing to the sheer bulk of videos I've been renting this year (around or above 50 so far). But it's not just videos (which can be viewed separately in the DeeVee category), but theatrical releases (see theIn Theatre category), concerts (the live category), CDs (see On Disc), Books (Pages cat), Comics (Sequential Art), Television (Tele) and the odd peek at web sites (Web).

The purpose of the ENT.ETC. section wasn't actually meant to be any sort of review or analysis section, but more a repository of "what have I seen/heard/read", or moreover "what did I buy"... the addition of some "what did I think" is only a natural progression.
I only wish I had done this years ago.
And in a few years' time I'll probably be regretting not further breaking down my mini reviews into single mini reviews. Ach, maybe when time allots itself.

Anyway, yesterday I did 13 mini-reviews of the following:
Lost In Translation; Underworld; A Problem With Fear; Pieces of April; Night of the Living Dead (60's); David Cross:Let America Laugh; Word Wars (a Hot Docs film); Gambling, Gods and LSD; Bollywood/Hollywood; Atanajurat:The Fast Runner; Dawn of the Dead (70's); and The Gods Must Be Crazy 1 & 2.
Go see

Where is the love?

Why it's right here.

Yes folks, it appears I have my very own blog stalker... someone who professes to hate me so much and yet all one can really read is the pain of unrequited love between the lines.

Using such clever pseudonyms as "Stupid Hater" and "Mr. Obvious" this poor guy/gal/thing has such a deep, dark love for me that the only way they can express it is by repeatedly leaving comments of a deceptively negative tone on my blog.

Why, just check out the comments to the previous entry (the one about Ikea)... my little jaded friend wrote (under the guise of Stupid Hater):

YOU ARE STUPID! I HATE YOU!

Why just the day before, he/she/they/it wrote two comments to my blog (which I hadn't updated since the weekend due to being busy and having an honest-to-gosh life), both of which were accidentally deleted as I was purging the viagra and other spam comments from the system... this one signed Mr. Obvious was attached to this entry (paraphrased, of course, due to faulty memory):

well, maybe you should stop biking on Dundas West. JERK.
Mr. Obvious.
P.S. Your blog sucks.

Remember in grade school when a boy would pull a girl's hair and taunt them and push them in the mud and put a worm on their shoulder, all because they liked them but didn't know how to express their emotions, so those emotions manifested as hostile agression. This type of playground psychology obviously applies here... If you read between the lines... my "blog hater" is telling me not to bike on Dundas West because they fear I would get hurt. Oh, I can accept that love, but alas I cannot return it for my heart belongs to another. Which leads us to this comment (also deleted accidentally, and paraphrased once again):

GOD, your girlfriend must be desperate if she couldn't find anyone else to live with but you.

And this isn't just a recent phenomena. Nope, (as witnessed in this post, this person has been coming around my way for some time (Sympatico IPs all around). If they didn't love me so, why would they keep coming back? Each stroke of the keyboard spewing forth barely offensive vitriol is yet another testament to my blog stalker's devotion.

Ah, it's so nice to be spat upon with such affection.

limbo

still in flux with the server transfer
images are missing,
the archive page and other stuff... hopefully sorted out soon.
More great content coming your way as we barrel towards post 1000.

Vendetta

It seems that someone really doesn't like my blog(s).
Two of my most recent comments:

Another thing to worry about is the fact that your blog more or less sucks, that you spend way too much time on it as opposed to doing anything worthwhile with your life and that your entire audience seems to consist about 3 of your friends.

Sorry, that's 3 more things to worry about.

and then there's this:

As additionally evidenced by the fact that no one comes here, this blog is pointless, boring and stupid.

Please make it better in the future, or you will loose your one and only visitor (me).

Thanks.

Either they really hate my writing, or are really concerned that I'm not living my life to my full potential because I'm spending too much time blogging. Either way, he/she/they/it seem to think I care about their random, anonymous opinion (hey, does anyone know how to track i.p. addresses? Theirs is 64.229.152.124... just curious). I don't blog for an audience (mostly), I blog because I enjoy it ( I also write in journals, which I suppose is equally a waste of time) . The fact that people read it, and the fact that I've made some friends because of it is just gravy.

And I'd like to thank my three friends that visit 80 times a day each, to comprise my averaged 240+ visits per day, but apparently the sham is up. You don't have to come here so frequently anymore.

Graig Links Around His Own o'Sphere

Hey kids, not many posts here this weekend, but lots of Graig-like entertainment around the web... starting with look at all the movies I've watched this year (31 since December 31st... I would say, WOW, I need a life, but I've also started writing a new book, I've been out to a bunch of different music-related events and I still have a job. Plus I found me and the mizzuz a new apartment, and donated my car to charity. This is unusual, me being this productive.)

Two.
I must warn you all about the horror that is Skye Sweetnam, which infected the Jonny James/Spitfires & Mayflowers/Gentleman Reg gig on Saturday. (Really kids, heed this warning. Skye is falling and bringing lots of suckage your way.)
(also, I know I should just turn the comments off on this post, because I know I'm sure to get a lot of teenybopperfangirls writing asking for Skye to send an autograph or something... but at the same time, I like a good laugh at brainless wee children's expense)

Three.
Spellbound DVD reviewed.

Four.
Lest we forget, I've been making SOUP! (I also made a raisin pie, just before my oven blew up and the window collapsed in...

Five.
I take a look at the best and worst Television shows, sparked by the Sun's Top 25 TV Shows and Worst 25 lists
(via Chromewaves

dns problems

if you're reading this blog:
- you managed to figure out that www.geekent.com/blog doesn't work, but just geekent.com/blog does.

if you can see colours and boxes and soap:
- then your browser has cached my template and you can see all the beautiful css formatting

if you can't see colours and boxes and soap:
apologies, it should be fixed soon, maybe

if you're actually reading backdirt.net right now:
then something's gone incredibly wrong because this is not Laura typing

if you miss soul coughing like I do, and you live in toronto:
Frank has some good news (i'm there like doughty's underwear!)

server problems fixed soon ... promises...

update::
obviously it's working now... we're not getting into it.

Archives are now up and running

really...

go see for yourself

thanks to emma and gary for the assist with the jumpboxes. (the "Individual Archive" is a bit messy)

What I like About Blogs

Over in my little "entertainment" section of this blog, the area where I mainly just update what I've watched or read or bought recently, I've been getting at whole tonne of comments (relatively speaking) on one post in particular (which I find amusing because I thought I had comments turned off for that blog), the one for the The Joe Schmoe Show...

It was an amusing series and quite a lot of fun, and yes, brilliant (it'd be interesting to see if Matt has any psychological issues - oh, like trusting people, maybe - in the fallout after the reveal). I've gotten 23 comments on this post (I come up 12th in Google for "the Joe Schmoe Show") up to and including October 30th. It's weird... there's like, five words in that post and there's hundreds as many in comments. This is the strange thing about blogging, is people coming in by happenstance... not that it has any relevance, but, still... weird.

the 100th Transparent Soap entry spectacularrrr

So this is it, the 100th post on Geek.ent.
This would seem like a bigger deal if I didn't just import 653 of my older archives from a different server... JUST FOR YOU!!!

Over the next few days I'm going to be going through my old archives, re-categorizing them, fixing up some glaringly obvious mistakes when possible (but probably not as many as I should) and fixing up the archived titles. Also I'll be tweaking the templates and getting the archive page up and running (as currently you can only read stuff by either clicking on the category next to a post or searching) FINALLY!

Of course, these older archives belong to my previous blogs (which are still in tact by the way... though they are redundant and unnecessary and gaudy as hell at this point)

There was the original, the fame-maker, the Spider Behind My Toilet, where I waxed spastic elastic about this and that (blogging started for me upon my term of unemployment in the Spring of 2002), plus exposing my innate motherly conditions as I worried about the status of my beloved arachnid house guests (you *will* be able to find these stories under the category "spiders" once I get the archive page up, but for now, just go to the link above, as the entire saga is detailed down the sidebar).

The Spider, after much frustration and grumbling using the Blogger interface, transferred over to Movable Type. Not long after getting used to that interface (and spanning a few nasty site designs, thankfully not preserved), I volleyed for a name, and came up with Trepanning For Fun And Profit.

I decided to grab a domain with my name connected to it Gee for "G" for Graig, K.ent for Kent, my last name... hence Geek.ent. I've reached my hundredth post on the main blog (and there's been 66 posts on the little sub-blog where I detail all the entertainment things I've watched and bought, more for my interest than you... that's the ent.etc. thing you see kicking around the site.)
This actually makes for a total of over 800 posts sitting on this blog... 800 posts in 18 months... that's 44 posts a month, with 1.5 posts per day average. Had I kept up my original unemployed me blogging pace, I'd likely have well over 2 posts per day.

Anyway, this carnival ride will continue, and I promise, not another site redesign/name change until post 1000.

Nu look

hoy thur gooten lookink, vot iz happenink...
yanks to eemajan fer das azizstenz.

Contest...the results with bated breath

So I held a Contest and nobody came.
Well, not nobody. Almost Nobody .
But I've listened to the suggestions (a great percentage of them by this dude) and I've decided upon the winners following this criteria (but not in that order):
-is it a band I've heard before?
-is it a band they've heard before?
-did they find me an mp3?
-how many songs, if not a specific mp3, do they expect me to listen to? Sheesh. If they didn't provide a specific song to listen to, I picked the first one off the list... which may have not been the best way to judge.
-I think a little passion went a long way

So with no further ado, here's the winner:
Andy presented me with Twink which he promised me would blow all the others away... and he was right!!!
Congrats Andy, you win a copy of that CD compilation thing and your coice of either the Ghost World trade paperback or a kitschy Superfriends tradepaperback. Email me and lemme know.

In our runners up for the remaining 3 copies of the ceedee, we have, again, Andy, who gave us Xtrawidth (which turns out to be his own project...), Jeremy with his Ladytron - Seventeen suggestion (which I heard before, but still rocks socks), and finally David who said I.Me.Michael - Still Can't Remember was a damn fine song. He was right.

Leave a post, send me an email, call me up, knock on my door... let me know how you want your prizes delivered kids.

And stay tuned for the "The Spider Behind My Toilet" 100th post SPECTACULARRRR contest... coming very, very soon.

Close to Closing

The CONTEST is nearly at a close... just need to listen, and judge...
Go on over to the Big List for the run-down (all good selections, just rather pathetic the few amount of people that got involved... not the people, just the number of people)(*digdigdig*)

****CONTEST TIME AGAIN****

Everyone loves music, don't they? Well, maybe not the deaf, and yet, for some reason closed captioning still feels it's important to put the musical note symbols up on screen when music is playing... and I've been told that the deaf feel music through vibrations, and that yes, they can enjoy music too (I'm sure the deaf would love raves, wouldn't they?)
Anyway, what could be better than finding new music? Well, how about getting a free cd of the stuff... likely all stuff you've never heard of before, but dayyam it's goood...
I have created a cd compilation called Take Off, Hose Down & Eat, and you can win yourself 1 (one) of 4 (four) copies ... here's how:

Goto a freebie mp3 site: (check out wRyan's Truly (1)Free (2)Music (3)Series (4) for a great rundown of freebie music)
Find a song you've never heard before, but you really really like.
Copy the link to the song (or a page where the song is linked) and paste it in a comment to this message (a copy of this message can be found on Gringo Starr: The Spider Behind My Toilet, GTA-Bloggers, and the Big List (all posted Sept 28))

I will choose my four (4) favorite submissions (just a hint, I like non-mainstream music) and thus be the winners.
To sweeten the pot, I'm thinking that the song I like the most will also get a graphic novel (winner's choice of Daniel Clowes' Ghost World (from which the movie was based) or the kitschy Superfriends collection (Wonder Twin Powers co-operate!!!))

Contest Rules
1)Enter as often as you like, but no duplication of songs.
2)Everyone welcome to enter
3)Contest ends October 17, 2002
4)No Purchase Necessary

ch0ch

the spider is going through changes yet again... I cant not promise that it won't not be not black and white still, but I'm toying with ideas, which are few and far between for some reason (I used to be really into geeking with web design crap.. meh)
So, thus we go with heavy use of whitespace... the space is white and heavy...
and no internal scroll bars.
h'za!
shoutout to andy who's at lunchables.blogspot.com... go say hi.

merf.
I'm working right now if you can believe it.
Did you ever want something to happen so badly (like having an upset stomach so you wouldn't have to go to work) so much that you actually get one (actually, I don't think it was the wishing my stomach was upset so much as the onions and orange juice that did it...)
Onions and orange juice???
Now who's pregnant.

I bought a blogger bag from cafe press, just for the hell of it... it's small enough for comics and a notepad, which, sometimes, is all you really want to carry with you when you go out for the evening.

Also, registering some domain names...
waiting for confirmation.

Listening: Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X

Whahoo... come see the spider,

Whahoo...
come see the spider, the spider, the spider
come and see the spider get yer legs blown off.
huh..
just go see, lucy.

****CONTEST****

I HAVE one (1) COPY OF DE LA SOUL: 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING (slightly used but in great condition) TO GIVE AWAY TO one (1) LUCKY POSTER WHO GIVES ME ONE GOOD REASON "why you don't already own a copy of De La Soul: Three Feet High and Rising"

The best post gets it (as determined by me).
Will accept more than one reason.
You can post more than once.
Making fun of other posts may win you points.
Contest closes September 17, 2002.
All entries are valid except for Gary who I know already owns a copy so there... but he's welcome to make fun fun.

General Poll

Tell me how bad my site sucks (design or interactivity or whatever) and why in 100 words or less.
Thanks to wRy for deluging me insecurities and whatnot...

*CONTEST*

The contest is CLOSED... but keep your eyes peeled on the Spider Behind My Toilet for more free giveaways... cause giving things away is fun.

I have 1 copy of Y:The Last Man#1 free to give away to the first person to post a response to this post ("Girlfriends get the comics second from now on")(not this specific post, but the link)

terms and conditions:
everyone allowed to enter except Emma and Graig
if you live out of town, comic will be mailed to you
if you live in town, the comic will be dispensed via a hand to hand trade off the next time I see you.
no need to claim win on your taxes, it's just not worth it.

but yeah

but yeah, even though I posted here again... go to the other place, awrite?

My MT site is broken

My MT site is broken like my sveatband, so I post here until it works again.

Gary is an old friend from high-school back in Thunder Bay whom is now leaving the Big Smoke for the Big Apple. As procedure goes for these "going from one country to t'other" things, Gary must pack up his posessions and move them forthwith from his apartment. And yet, he has no place to be moving them to, as of yet, in New York, so he must storage what cannot be taken along, which, well, is most of it.
Now, let me tell you a little something about Gary... Gary is much like most people I know: he's very good at obtaining things, but sometimes has a little difficulty letting go... what I mean is, essentially, his place is full of "stuff"... paper stuff, box stuff, bookstuff, record/tape/cd stuff, trinket stuff, action figure stuff, clothing stuff, wiry stuff etc etc et al. So Gary's been having a gay old tyme in deciding what to do with "stuff", much "stuff" is being pitched to the recycling bin in the sky (well, actually, it's behind the house), more "stuff" is being given away, and still more stuff is being packed up and put into storage.
But that doesn't quite take care of it all. There's always more "stuff", that stuff that you don't wanna give away, but you also don't want to rot in storage... so, it's that stuff that I've so graciously taken upon my abode. Yes, I am now the curator of the GAK-audio archives (tapes and cds alike)... ... well, such hardships life presents to one.. no?

Anyway, I feel like I've been rambling forever.
Making way for a speedy departure, last night the G-TAB held a "get the fuck outta dodge" party for Gary, along with a welcome chuckwagon for new recruits Sam and Melissa from Vancouver, and David and Jacqui from Montreal. At least Gary feels humbled by the fact that it takes four to replace his one (sure G... whatever)
Anywho, photo's are here, courtesy of:
*Rannie the Photojunkie
*Jayme's Silvergull
*Carla's Infrared Eyes (shots #4 through 9 were actually taken by, ahem, me)
*and Liz will have snaps eventually.

For all that were a little more than worried that Gary would be sent off from Toronto without at least one more hangover, well, there's always tonight when the work bums meet the out of work bum in a "dropped the ball" "surprise" "get the fook oot" party at the little Waq pool place on Queen... huh?
yeah.

more later.

you must go wwwDOTsaunaDOTorgBACKSLASHspider now

you must go
wwwDOTsaunaDOTorgBACKSLASHspider
now
sucka!

so yeah, I moved

so why are you still coming here?
Go to http://www.sauna.org/spider if ye feelyat so reclined.
seriously.
go.
now.
so commands mojo jojo.

take a peek...

if you curtail your ass over to www.sauna.org/spider, you'll see the new design for Gringo Starr: The Spider Behind My Toilet (deceased), as well as new posts. Things are still a bit www.sauna.org/spider">rough around the edges, but thanks to Movable Type I can do all sorts of crazy dooky rather easily... come, come witness the new Spider, in all its greyscale glory...