You can’t go a week in some circles without hearing some crack or another about the guy always wanting sex, and the girl not being interested. I mean hell, it’s a comedian’s default line, if he’s got nothing else. One wonders sometimes where it is they come up with it–I always thought that was just something randomly tossed out there. Not according to a survey done in the US. Apparently, we guys want it more, have more of an interest in it, and will probably want it longer. Yep, give us sex and give us sports, and our lives will be complete. Remember that the next time your girlfriend says you’re never satisfied. Oh, you were expecting a post on my or Jessica’s sexual preference/interest level? Sorry.

Well, I can’t, anyway. I get emails from Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, to do with everything from the results of the last game to major trading/other such news relating to my team. Yes, even though the said team couldn’t play their way out of a game with a 25 nothing lead lately. Occasionally, those emails contain free stuff. This free thinggy came from Sirius Canada. Ordinarily, I can’t aford to go throwing money away on something I may or may not like, so this was halfway decent timing on their part. So now, I have 2 weeks to play around with it and see if it’s something I might want to contemplate paying for, should I come up with the money to do so. And now, because I’m good like that, so do you. If you’ve wanted to give their online version a try and didn’t want to pay for it, just fill out this form and enter promo code “leafs” if it isn’t already entered for you. Then, they’ll email you a password and you’ll have two weeks to play. So far, I’m undecided. After two weeks, we shall see.

A 67-year-old guy, supposedly receiving old age benefits in Calgary, Alberta, has apparently made an attempt to rob a bank. Armed with, of all things, a fork. Clearly, someone should be talking to our government about maybe increasing how much he’s getting paid from the Canada Pension Plan. He could use the money. So could I, but I’m too lazy to find a bank to hold up. Or a fork to do it with.

Jessica and I got to talking a couple days ago, and we somehow got on the topic of old-ish commercials. Particularly, that early 90’s or so commercial for coffee crisp. Turns out, she’s never seen it. Ever. For my part, I forgot how it went. Fortunately, the internet knows all. So, because I’ll occasionally do the nostalgia thing, and because in its own way, it’s semi-amusing, I give you the 1990’s, in a commercial. Wanna see? Just hit play.
 

It was recommended to me a few times, primarily by Jessica, that I maybe want to consider checking out a political satire group, Capitol Steps. So out of random curiosity, I downloaded a few of their albums. And have been listening ever since.

Mostly, they do the US politics, which well, yeah, there’s plenty to mock there. But they’ve taken a few stabs at this side of the border too. Everyone’s favourite province to pick on gets a special mention a time or two–hello, Quebec. Especially around the time when they were holding their vote for separation. The awesomeness is surprising. Now, if I can just figure out who it was who did “Let’s Bomb Iraq”. Probably these guys–it’s their kind of thing. Now then. Back to seeing if Beyond Satire has been updated in a month or three.

Edit: I was right, it’s them. Oddly enough, when I heard this the first time I didn’t even know the group existed. I’m awesome. Or maybe not.

Of course, that realization didn’t quite hit me until Sunday, when I finally decided I’d stop procrastinating and go through some of what I pulled off my laptop’s HD last June before I whiped it and installed Linux. And the things I managed to avoid deleting since I bought the thing in 2004 or 2005 actually manage to scare me. Most noteably things that I forgot I was even involved in.

I’ve been hugely into role playing for a number of years. Since highschool, really. Most of my early creations, though, ended up lost between here and there when the first laptop I owned decided it would rather spectacularly break. Physically. Of course, it was a toshiba so that was kind of expected. But I kept, or tried to keep, logs of as much of the old days of RP as I could. Mostly as something to refer back to should a situation come up where I needed to.

One of my adventures in RP was a medieval style MUD, or multi-user-dimension/dungeon/whatever you want to call it, called Eternal Struggle. I played a variety of characters on that game–anything from the somewhat helpful healer to the cold blooded killer with absolutely no problem pinning you to the wall with your own knife. And he’d give you a pleasant little smile while he did it. Reading back through some of those logs, I reminded myself just how much of an asshole I can be. Sometimes, I surprise the hell out of me.

I play a couple of characters in a Star Trek game, too. Star Trek: A Call to Duty, to be accurate. One of those I’ve had going on since 2006. I forgot about some of the awesome RP I’ve been involved in with that one as well, including a sort of special event RP that went on for a couple months, where I got to hang out with and torment the hell out of a few people I didn’t used to talk to until then. One of these days I’ll get around to posting some of the stuff. But right now, I’ll just say, 4 years later looking back at some of these thinggies, I crack me up.

Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing. At least, it is when it comes to me. I’m kind of thankful I haven’t yet gone through and hit the delete key on about 90% of this stuff. Now, if I can just remember to put them somewhere where I can find half this stuff again. Eh, I’ll do it later.

And, because you can probably figure out why on your own without elabouration, list format. Because it’s good.

• Sarah Palin joins up with Fox News? Who didn’t see that one coming from a mile away? Really.
• Simon Cowell to say goodbye after this season of Idol? I’m surprised he lasted this long. And considering there’s already tension between him and Paula’s new, non-musically inclined replacement, come on. You didn’t miss this did you?
• One child per family is going to end up being bad news for China, but who didn’t figure on that. By 2020, they’re projecting 24000000 single men. I wonder if Canada and the US would consider a woman shortage criteria for refugee status.
• And, the well duh award of 2010 goes to? Mark McGwire bulked up with the help of steroids during his record breaking year. And finally admits it. Not that the admission was required–he hasn’t come close to being that good since, and if he was naturally that good he’d of managed to pull it off. Nope, no surprises here.

If stuff gets any more obvious it’s probably going to put news reporters out of business. Which some would argue might not be a bad thing. Oh well, at least we’re not hearing about Stephen Harper and the non-parliament again. I’ll take it.

For the longest time while I was in school, highschool primarily, I’d always try to find something resembling an excuse to put off, avoid doing, or just plain forget about ever doing anything that vaguely resembled homework. Sure, eventually, most of it would get done anyway–not without the insistance of my parents, of course. But on a personal standpoint, I didn’t see a whole lot of point to it. You spend an hour or so in class beating a topic to death, and just when you think it can’t get any more beaten to death, the teacher throws an asignment at you that takes you an additional couple hours when you get home. And you usually don’t end up learning a whole lot more from the extra work than you did in class–or, at least, I didn’t. Now, rince and repeat the same procedure for every class you have the privelege of attending over the course of a semester. Head, meet pressure cooker. No wonder we threw small parties at the end of June.

Flash forward to my post-highschool life, and people are starting to clue into that fact. Particularly, the people running Prince of Wales Public School in Barrie Ontario, which conveniently enough is about half an hour from where I was living when I did the highschool thing. Last year, after some arm twisting, they managed to ban the asigning of homework. And, surprise of surprises, they’re noticing grades are actually going up.

“As a whole we found marks have started to go up, our Education Quality and Accountability Office data has improved since we started,” Jan Olson, the school’s principal said in an interview with CTV’s Canada AM.

He says there are also fewer behavioural issues as a result of the ban, and academic improvement was observed across the entire spectrum of students: wealthy and poor, special needs and gifted.

See, mom? I told you homework was bad for me.

Today turned out to be emergency “pick up crap I forgot I didn’t have” day. Convenient enough, seeing as it picked today to be several varieties of cold. Still, the trip wasn’t a total loss. I did manage to survive the insane crowds that apparently decided today was also the day to be crammed into every store from wall Mart to Food Basics, and everywhere in between. Standing in one of those stores–I think it might have been Wall Mart, I accidentally ran across a nifty song by a singer I hadn’t heard about until today. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it before, though. The song’s by Chris Daughtry, and is apparently a little over 3 years old. I’ve had the song in my head since I came home, so on random impulse, I yanked the album. If anyone wants it, fire a comment at me–it’s free, or as free as one can get it.

The song, called “Over You”, is also up on Youtube–although they were nice enough to turn off the embedding options, so you get a clicky clicky instead. Now, I just have two questions, one of which I’ll search out eventually. Which movie’s sound track does this song belong to? And, why did no one inform me of this? I feel cheated now.

Equally sadly, whoever created it is probably hoping some stupid sysadmin will get a hold of it and actually believe it. Surprisingly, there are sysadmins out there who’re that stupid–I did tech support for a few of them.

From: spam@email.address.removed
Date: Sat 02/01/2010 10:01 AM
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Dear spamvertising asshole. I don’t use webmail except in emergencies. And my provider, when it works, actually has a clue. And can form proper english sentences. Please do you and me a favour and die in a grease fire. No love, a very unimpressed geek.

PS: You fail epically at life. Computer user’s license revoked.

And in this case, our way involves all manner of creative thinggies that started last night. We took off from here at about 5 or so, and I proceeded to complete my own personal challenge to stay up since the morning before until past the official welcoming of the new year last night. My parents were having a sort of new years eve dinner, so we went over for that. It went a lot better than I actually expected it to, though largely because things have gotten a lot less dramatic in recent years. Mom made her usual spagheti and garlic bread, we hung out and talked, and then killed the rest of the night watching movies. At some point I’ll stop being an unmotivated slob and start posting movie reviews, but it’s probably not going to be today.

Today was spent mostly sleeping and recovering from the last two days. Then, the parents wanted to get together for a new years day dinner. Usually, it involves some kind of meat and potatoes at their place, but this year they felt like going out. Neither Jess nor myself were in much of a Chinese food mood, but that’s what the majority wanted so that’s what we got. It wasn’t all in all too terrible, just not something we were immediately looking forward to. Still, we enjoyed ourselves, not to mention filled ourselves to near busting. Now, the trick is to attempt to find something resembling a decent movie on TV, and try not to do the food coma thing. And to keep up with certain blogging traditions I’m trying to start up over here–those are next. The last few days were tiring, but definitely fun. I’d do them again if I could. Maybe this time next year, perhaps. And, possibly, with a few more people.

During last night’s bit of pre-festivities festivities, we got to talking about music we ended up growing up with–conveniently, while listening to a small subset of the music we grew up with. Somehow we ended up on the topic of the old rap band “Chris Cross”. And I’ve had one of their, well, less annoying songs in my head since. So early this morning I stumbled across a video of it. And, after watching it a second time–this time without the issues of a less than stable connection, I’ve decided it’s no less annoying 13 years later than it was back then. Except I still grew up with it. And, since I did end up actually liking this song at some point during my somewhat questionable childhood, have a video. Can’t vouch for quality of video, but I’m only slapping it up here for the song. Enjoy, and thank God backwards jeans didn’t actually catch on.

I’ve been known to keep a very random, very scattered, and very eclectic collection of music around, both on my local machine and/or various attached hard drives, as well as within my Jango playlist. I like to think my selection of ringtones reflects that. I go from the commonly played to the rarely played usually in a quick breath. A rarely played Matchbox 20 song, “How Far We’ve Come”, has been my primary ringtone since pretty much the first week I got this phone. I think I might have heard it played by someone other than me a grand total of… once in that time. This morning, in the span of about an hour and a half, I got to hear it coming out of my phone 4 or 5 times. Granted they were all either not intended for me or telemarketters, but still. This morning, my ringtone has become an overplayed song. In honour of that transition, have a video of the said song. I’d embed it here, but he or she who is behind the original upload of that video has decided to complicate matters to the point where that’s not happening. So, you get to click instead. And while you do that, I’ll go contemplate changing it.

As expected, Jessica’s graduation went off absolutely with no problem whatsoever. She got her diploma, we got a picture, and everyone got to relax a little afterwards with something alcoholic and good conversation. We hit a local bar after the cerimony for a drink or two, and to do some general talking/venting/otherwise unstressing, before coming back to the apartment and crashing. We took it easy on Friday, the only thing going on being Jess having had to do that earning money thing–I’ll never understand why it is that can’t just go away for a day. The evening was spent around the apartment, not really doing a whole lot. There was, of course, the usual talking, relaxing, and being all kinds of glad the routine gets to change for the better. Saturday was the interesting part of the weekend.

Since the beginning of the week, I’d been planning to have a private get together among friends in honour of Jessica’s graduation from massage school. She’d worked her ass off for the past year and a half or so, and didn’t have time to do a lot of that while she was doing it. So I sent a few emails around, made a phone call or two, and got a couple of Jess’s closest friends–and, conveniently enough, folks I’m becoming quite good friends with as well–onboard for our own version of a grad cerimony. That happened last night. The morning was spent at Wallmart, picking up what little odds and ends we needed throughout the week. After that, the only thing we did other than generally cleaning up was making a run for alcohol. And, after $52 and some change was handed over, we had the keys to some goodly awesomeness.

Julie and her husband came over at about half past 3, and after spending about an hour just shooting the shit, we cracked open the booze. Before all too long we’d gotten to the point where we were feeling more than a little relaxed. And when that happens, the randomness knows no limits. We did everything from vent about our respective employment or lack thereof, to mocking certain less fortunate people who weren’t here–thank god–to defend themselves, to even tossing out opinions, thoughts and points of view on the government and its benefit or lack thereof to the average joe. They left early, and Jess and I did a bit more drinking and talking. We expanded on a few of the points brought up, and actually had a very nice little debate going on–I kind of wish I could have recorded it. I think in parts of the conversation we got a little bit too caught up, but hey, that’s bound to happen when you’ve got two very opinionated people in the same room with alcohol.

It was well after midnight by the time she fell asleep. I went and flopped over about half an hour or so after by rough estimation–I wasn’t exactly keeping track of the time last night. It was well into the afternoon, about 2:00 or so, before we were both up and mobile for the day. I don’t think awake came until later, though. Today’s been spent pretty well recovering from that. The most exhausting task on our to do list at the moment is laundry, and that’s being done now. We leave for Canada again on Thursday, Jessica’s birthday is on Tuesday, and Wednesday’s probably going to be spent packing and maybe stealing an hour or two’s sleep. As for the rest of the week, I have absolutely no idea what if anything we can safely say we have planned. Maybe we’ll get lucky and plans will invent themselves. In the meantime, here’s the picture we got from Jessica’s graduation. It was taken on a cell phone, so quality may end up sucking slightly. Enjoy, or something.

The latter is obvious to anyone who’s actually using the service, but I’ll get to that momentarily. Jess and I spent the majority of this weekend thus far kicked back and relaxing. She graduates on Thursday, so we’re sort of trying to gear up for that. Also, because we haven’t really had a weekend where we can just sort of not do a whole lot of anything that often since I came down here. Friday was taken up largely with music, dancing, awesome food and a little alcohol. We turned the majority of her living room into a dance floor, and just had ourselves a slow dance or 4. We ordered from a new–to me, anyway–restaurant,