I am holding my blog at ransom

OK. Listen people. No one is effing commenting and I don't like it. I understand that I haven't been updating much until now... but you know what? I don't care. I need feedback or this all seems so pointless!

So here's the deal: I am not posting until a satisfactory number of people have left comments. The commenters should state (clearly and concisely) who they are, where they're from and a little about themselves. Here is an example:

Hello, my name is Carl. I live in Oklahoma. A building blew up here once. I am a plumber, though this fact in no way bears testimony to the occupation of the common Oklahomian. We have a very diverse job market.

Feel free to break out of this boring template and be more exciting. This is your chance to shine, people! Be different! Reach for that shining rainbow!

All this applies to anyone who's been here more than -- say -- twice. Capiche? And after a week, this whole non-update dealie effectively expires, regardless of whether the comment quota's been met by you slackers. I just can't stay away any longer than that...

Note: To whet your appetites, I've posted a picture above, which I shall refuse to explain. You'll be left wondering "What's going on?", "Where is that?", and "Who is that handsome devil?" among other things. And you know what? You won't know!!! At least not until my demands have been met. Diabolical, n'est pas? And if you know what the picture's about, then DON'T EXPLAIN PLEASE! Leave me my leverage...

UPDATE: OK, my statscounter tells me that someone from Gander, Newfoundland has already visited and refused to leave a comment... COMAAAAWWWN! I'm not asking for much! Have a heart and humour me please! It's a simple request, and simple things amuse simple people (ie. me).

For your viewing enjoyment:A Non-Erotic Shower Story

I still don't feel like doing a full recap, so I'll stall for awhile longer with an overdue elaboration which I'd said that I would give.

So way back when, at a time when I was rambling on about some bug-related shenanigans, I mentioned about how my shower was busted up and lacked a shower-head. There is a small story which accompanies that vague statement, and that story is as follows:

It was a Saturday. It was a sunny day. It was close to 2 in the afternoon. I was waking up.

I felt my way down the hall along the wall, squinty-eyed and bursting with the joy for life which is always associated with my newly-awakened state. It should be noted that everything following the words "squinty-eyed" in that last sentence is utter nonsense. I was tired, and angry for no particular reason if not just because I now had to do things... productive things, even. Goddamn, life was tough in my sheltered Western society.

So yeah, I shuttered myself up in the bathroom, and turned on the shower-water in an effort to pre-warm the flow. You know how that is. I did the regular get-ready-to-face-the-day stuff -- such as brushing my teeth and relieving myself -- as the water ran, so that by the time I pulled the shower curtain closed behind me, the bathroom was half-full of steam. -- I guess I should explain this little part first: The bathroom in our place this summer was something of a dungeon. Not that it was cold or contained shackles (At least not that I know of... Bert?), but just because no natural light tended to enter. We had a small window in the shower portion, but our landlord had it half-covered by a board so that creepers couldn't watch us pee and cleanse ourselves. Also, said window looked out upon all the splendid scenery that under-the-fucking-deck had to offer, so all we really had was a view of webs and unpainted boards anyway.

So imagine my surprise in my angry morning state, when I looked down through the shower spray and saw a single ray of pure sunshine, sparkling through the mist of the shower. Somehow it had woven its way through the criss-crossing compilation of wooden planks and overgrown weeds, and it now found itself alone in the shower with me. Looking down at this shaft of light, shimmering as it passed through the droplets from the shower nozzle, my first thought was, "Oooooohhh! Pretty!!" Having nothing better to do, I adjusted the shower-head so that the water would spray moreso through the happy ray of sunlight. Sparkle, sparkle -- went the drops of water with their sunly sheen.

Wow. My day was getting better already. So full of possibility was this day.

So as I noted the time (so as to be able to shower at this time in days to follow), I gripped the shower-head and attempted to pull it back up and swivel it into a useful orientation for taking a shower.

But fate was not on my side, as they say in some regions where clichés are of some literary value. The shower-head was ancient-old, and the hinge with which it was attached to a board on the the wall was crapped up and uncooperative. The upward force which I'd exerted proved too much for my little shower-head, and it snapped off.

Now, all of the immense water pressure which had, up until that point, directed the flow down through my little ray of happy sunshine -- Well, now it forced that flow straight up out of the hose which extended from the faucet below. A column of water was now flying out of the hose, slamming into the cieling, and dispersing itself into the far corners of the bathroom.

I managed to get the water turned off before the place got too wet, but ideally no-wet is better than not-so-wet. I'm still kind of pissed that I busted the shower-head clean off. Though it wasn't really my fault since it was so old, I have a bad feeling that our landlord is going to try to get us to pay for the fees of getting the new one installed...

Anyway, here's a picture of our headless shower in action (with the water pressure turned waaaaay down, so as not to soak the bathroom [see above]), along with the disembodied shower-head.

Vacationing at Home

OK so first off, I'll explain why I've been no-posting lately. I'm visiting home, and since I've gotten here, I've been busy like every day. Between seeing friends from home, dropping my brother off at McGill, and visiting Lucas in Montreal, I've had no time. Hmmm... does it make sense to say that? "Between... {and then 3 things I've been doing}". Maybe it only works when you have two things... I propose a diagram!Being on my shitty-shit ghetto computer at home, I've got nothing but Paint, so you'll have to make due with the no-frills version.


Get it?! "No time between..."? Ehn? Ehn??? Aw whatever. You suck anyway.

So yeah, this blog drought should be fixed by the time I get back to Newfoundland and get my shit together. In the meantime though, I'll try to post pictures up at some point later in the week, since I have sooooo many of them... There'll be lot of shots of hot chicks... and partying... and drinking... and... naked... and other such words that will get me hits from Google searches.

And second off (if you still remember that all of the above has been the "first off"), I would like to make some shout-outs. While home and speaking with people, I've discovered some people who've been reading my blog, many of whom I had no clue did! So here is the short-list so far... SHOUT-OUTs go to:
1) Mom
2) Dad
3) Danielle Boyle
4) Adam's younger brother's (Jon's) friend.
And an especially warm and ecstatic shout-out goes to #5 on the list (but #1 in my heart), Brian Munn's (My brother's friend's) mom. You go Mrs. Munn!!!

So now that that's done with, I will enlighten you as to a funny fact which I learned last night. But before I get into the bulk of the lesson, I'll give you the preamble: Remember Pop Rocks? Those little hard candies that popped in the moist environment of you mouth? Remember those? Ok, good. < End preamble >
Well, one thing you might not have known was that, when exposed to ice-cold water (or any beverage for that matter), Pop Rocks don't just "pop". They fuckin explode. As in KA-BLAM.

So we had our drinks last night and Emily had Pop Rocks and was putting them in her drink. Since hers had no ice in it at the time, the result was a very disappointing climax that consisted of fizzling and small, unexciting bubbles. We forgot about the Pop Rocks for awhile, but then I unknowingly threw some into my "rum and something" on the rocks (which is a drink that contains only rum with some sort of diluting liquid). My eyes and face were showered with tiny shards of hard candy, and the resulting "CRACK" sound was heard above the ambient conversation and radio noises. We had some fun with this for awhile, by means of quickly and covertly shaking the Pop Rocks container over an unsuspecting victim with an iced drink. I highly suggest you try it.

Eventually though, we became bored of this and decided that there was already enough candy all over the floor. In an attempt to amuse myself, I caught a spider that had been roaming Jana's house and deposited it into a glass, which I had previously filled the bottom of with ice-water. I then threw Pop Rocks at the spider until I no longer found the game entertaining.

But the best part of the Pop Rocks experience was by far when Coleman arrived. He suggested filling my mouth with Pop Rocks, then taking a big gulp of ice-cold drink. Hey -- it sounded like a good idea at the time (coming from the guy I'd snorted Sour Patch Kids sugar with...). So I filled my mouth with the tiny hard candies, took a swig of my drink, and KA-FUCKING-POW! No kidding; it was border-line painful. Everyone who was watching just heard one big POW and saw me jolt after I drank the cold drink. You wouldn't believe how loud it was. I could literally feel the pressure inside my mouth when all the little candies exploded...

So anyway, try it. Really. Do it....!

Coleman's having people over to his place tonight for a pool-and-hot-tub-type shindig, so I've got to grab a shower and get going, but I'll have a real update later.

Until we meet again...


Erm... scratch that wiener-esque ending... how about...
Catch you on the flip-side! Oh yeeeeeah... awesome.

Handouts for the homeless

So as I've said, Craig's coming down tomorrow PLUS I've got a whole bunch of extra food in my fridge. It's mostly bacon, chicken, chicken nuggets, potatoes, butter and eggs -- at least that's all that must be purged from my fridge or else it'll spoil.

And oh yeah, there's beer.

And speaking of beer, there also seems to be a few homeless people over by George Street who get through the weeks by using the generosity of drunks to their advantage. I figure that the right thing to do is for Craig and I to give all the extra food to the homeless guys. I know much better than to give them free beer to wash it down, so instead of that, I think the best thing to do is to drink it ourselves. Look -- I'm just thinking in terms of what would be best for society, ya know...

So when Craig gets in tomorrow, somewhere in between the packing we should get loaded, cook up a bunch of food for the homeless people, and hand it out downtown.

I'm banking that the homeless people will trust the food to be edible when dispensed fully-cooked from two wasted guys... Not to seem insensitive, but I mean -- They're homeless! What do they have to lose? Hopefully they don't turn it down...

If getting drunk and giving out food to the impoverished doesn't constitute a noble gesture, then I don't know what does... That shit's like Noble peace prize, yo.

Moving out and bugs

You know your internal clock is fucked when you're happy to get off work "early" at 3am. Really, I should be going to bed instead of writing this, but you all know how I feel about conventional logic.

I have so much to do before Friday at 2pm when my plane leaves -- namely packing. I've also got to entertain Craig, since he's getting here at about 2pm on Thursday. Being in university, when I say "entertain" I don't mean to make ballon animals and pull quarters out of humorous places on his body -- I mean to drink. And herein lies the problem. I haven't seen Craig all summer, so the plan was that he was going to spend a night here on his way to visit Lesleyanne (the night before I go home) and we'd have a few drinks together. But I can tell you what it's going to turn into:

7AM Thursday: Get home from last "day" of work and go to bed.
2PM: Craig arrives, wakes me up, and we start drinking.
2PM - 4PM: Drink and pack.
4PM - 5PM: Now thoroughly loaded, both take bus down to Ace Electronics to pick up my repaired camcorder.
5PM - ?: Resume drinking with spurs of intermittent packing until we fall asleep.
2PM Friday: Keeping with my aero-travel trend, wake up just about when my flight is leaving the airport.
2:05PM: Drown woes in booze.

Hopefully that doesn't happen, but who knows...

Let's see... what's been going on the last little while... Well, I've been going to the gym every day while simultaneously trying to finish off all of my food in the apartment. I'm eating so much crap! I don't know if these two activities cancel each other out or what, but I suppose it's a little like trying to fill an above-ground pool as you're shooting it with a 12-guage shotgun. Whatever.
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There are alot of bugs in our house. The worst ones are the skinny flying ones with the really long legs. You'd know one if you saw it. About two inches long; really slow. If I were to do an impression of it, I'd put my arms above my head as they'd be if I were about to pool-dive, then I'd repeatedly run into a wall. Over and over again. But each successive hit would be just a little bit to the left. Step forward-left, SMACK, step back, and repeat. And then every once in awhile, just to mix it up a bit, I'd decide to stop running into that wall. I'd turn around, then Superman run (with head down and arms parallel with floor, still in dive position) to the other side of the room, and continue my prior business on this new and exciting wall. Maybe this goes without saying, but: STUPIDEST BUG EVER.

I actually caught one by the wing a few days ago as it was taking a breather from all of its strenuous running-into-wall affairs. I ran into the bathroom with it, lifted the toilet seat, and threw it into the bowl. Then I pulled the flush handle, thinking that it'd go down the drain with the water.

Wrong. The thing was, it's huge disgusting long legs kept it from getting wet enough to stay in the toilet water. When I realized that it was coming back up out of the toilet, I started swatting it back. Thinking quick, I attempted to pull off some toilet paper with my left hand, all the while repeatedly swatting the bug back into the toilet bowl everytime it tried to escape. And all this time I thought I couldn't multitask!

I was determined to actually flush the bugger while it was still alive, so when I got the TP ripped off, I gave one last swat and tried to throw the toilet paper on top of the flying bug. I thought that it would land on the bug and drag it down into the water where it would be covered in wet paper-matter, rendering it flushable. But the fly proved cunning. He averted the descending toilet paper and attempted once again to rise out of his porceline confines. I quickly threw down the lid, wondering why I hadn't done this before.

So now the long-legged fly was buzzing around in the toilet, but I had no way to get it into the water. I tried cracking the toilet seat a few times to throw TP in, but it kept coming oh-so-close to escaping. Next, I remembered that we had a detachable shower-head on a hose... or rather, we had a detachable hose, sans shower-head... (maybe I'll explain that story later). I grabbed the hose off of it's hook, cracked the seat a bit, and threw the end into the dark interior. Then I cranked on the tap water. "Take that, bitch!" I thought to myself. I worked the hose around inside to make sure that I'd gotten the fucker completely wet. When I was satisfied, I flushed the toilet. As the flush-noise subsided and the refilling process began, I popped open the toilet lid, holding the running hose in one hand with the intention of turning it off right after.

Then the goddamn bejeezin bug thing, defying my ingenious plan and the law of wet-things-fall, started to fly the crap out of the toilet bowl. I impulsively tried to squirt it back in, but due to the concentrated spray of the hose, I succeeded only in soaking the area in the immediate vicinity of the toilet. As the fly rose above the rim of the toilet seat, I executed a no-look throw of the hose into the tub, and at the same time made a few final attempts to swat the bug back into the toilet. The hose landed in the tub and, since unsecured, started shooting water all over the place. As the cold water was propelled up the sides of the tub and onto the wall behind me, one of my rogue swats was miscalculated. I squished the bug against the rim of the toilet and it fell dead into the water.

Very unsatisfying.

On a postive note: By the time I got the bathroom cleaned up, the bug guts were pretty much gone off of my hand.

Salmonfest: Part 2

OK so I've got a few pictures left from Salmonfest that I figure I should publish somewhere, so why not in another post? The gist of these photos are that they were taken as I stumbled home from the concert. You see, after the concert was over, I lost Pete and missed the shuttle-bus to our campsite. At this point, I wandered up to Uncle Barry's (Where a bunch of people were staying just a little ways up the road) and crawled into Nikki's tent to figure out where everyone had gone to. I guess somehow I got mixed up and thought that she'd said that Fancy, Pete, Bert and Ania had all gone back to Redcliff campground. In hindsight, this made no sense since all except Pete were staying with Uncle Barry. In fact, I later learned that Bert and Ania were asleep in the tent right next to me.

But at the time, I'd decided that my one and only option was to get back to Redcliff. I thought it would be just a little jaunt down the road. It turned out to be longer. Keep in mind that I was utterly wrecked at this point in the night. I tried to find my way to a main road but, after passing by this big creepy church (see below), I found myself at a dead-end. I could see lights on the other side of the woods at said dead-end, so I trudged through and found myself along a wooded road in the middle of nowhere. There was a sidewalk, so I followed it for awhile before running into this couple who were stumbling in the opposite direction. I explained my situation in my native tongue of Drunkanese and miraculously, they actaully understood where I was trying to go.

**Keep in mind that all these pictures look alot brighter than they should. I just used a very slow (sometimes 15 second) shutter-speed. In combination with my drunken swaying and swaggering, that also explains the extreme blurriness of some.**


There was a little wooded park on the opposite side of the road a little ways down, and they directed me to go over there. -- Now let me just say: I keep using the adjective "wooded" to describe things, but from now on, it will just be implied. This was a pretty rural place, so just insert "wooded" before every noun I use from now on. -- From there, I was supposed to simply hop a fence on the other side of the park ("But don't let anyone see you or you'll get a fuckin' huge fine!") and travel along the abandoned railroad tracks until I got to the highway. Simple, huh?

So I get to the fence that I was supposed to just "hop" and this is what I see:


I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "hop", I clump it together with words like "skip" and "prance" -- all simple activities which little girls can perform. I was expecting a waist-high fence... not a motherfucking monstrosity of an 8-foot barricade surrounded by dense underbrush! So after pressing through a dead-end forest, this is where it started to get messy. Oh yeah, and did I mention that it had poured all night, so that both myself and my surroundings were soaked through and through. Utterly.

I decided that it was useless to try to climb over the fence in my current state, so I opted to just squeeze underneath. I pressed myself against the ground and dragged myself through a rather large puddle, almost becoming pinned between the locked gates and the dirt. I walked a little further down the overgrown path that I found myself on, only to find myself in a rocky field with a giant white pile in the middle. I figured out that it was a big heap of tires covered in some kind of massive white tarp. This was all unfamiliar since the drunks who I'd received directions from hadn't mentioned this. I ended up crossing the field and sliding down an embankment, only to find myself along the "abandonned tracks". They seemed to have been paved to make a walking path.



Above is a picture of the pathway. For reasons unknown to me now, I figured that the ultimate way to make this picture more meaningful and symbolic was to get a composite shot that combined two things: 1) the moon glowing off ashphalt on a back-woods trail... and, 2) my arm covered in fucking mud. I've good a bunch of shots of this scene or similar ones, where my arms makes appearances with varying degrees of visibility. There are a bunch where my whole arm literally bisects the shot, and another which is really blurred because I'd needed a couple-second shutter-speed to get a bright enough picture at night and I'd fallen over half-way through taking it.

So I wandered along this trail for a good 15-20 minutes, then found a little path off of it that lead to -- from what I can gather, what with the lumber lying everywhere -- a lumber-yard.


Wondering where this mystery "old highway" was, I decided to find my own way there, so I continued up a trail that ran through the woods behind tha lumber-yard. This was stupid.


It's a miracle that I was not eaten by a bear or something of that nature.

Sooooo... I come out on the other end of this trail after maybe 10-15 minutes of walking and jumped another smaller fence. It was a good thing that the trail decided to end since it had been slowly dying. It was becoming less of a trail and more of an "area of shorter trees". I came out at what looked to be an abandonned truck weighing station. I say "abandonned", but it probably wasn't really. I'm betting that they aren't the most well-kept facilities under the goverment of Newfoundland. It basically consisted of a run down trailer with a little dirt road running along-side it, with a truck-length of scaffolding running along either side (of the little strip of road). I'm guessing that they used that to inspect the trucks... So I found the front gate to that whole enclosure, and yet again crawled underneath the chain-link fence to get out. I looked back at the outside of the fence (where I now stood), and was mildly amused to see a large "No Trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted." sign on the gate. Then again, earlier on in my drunken escapade, my muddy arm had amused me to no end (as evidenced by its many cameo appearances in my photos), so that shows how easily amused I was at that point in the night.

Beside the sign was a little intercom system with a CALL button on it. Unable to resist the urge, I rang the "doorbell" and scampered down the road, giggling with glee.

So I was now walking along what I can only assume was the "old highway", marching in the general direction of all the lights and music coming from Redcliff.


Walking along this road, I eventually got to the campground, where I prompty passed out in the back seat of our car: Wet, dirty, and reeking of all things nature. All in all, the whole ordeal took up about 3 hours of my life, which surprised me since it hadn't seem that long to me...
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And just for the hell of it, here are the pics of my clothes when we got home the next evening. Three days worth of grime and deep-woods filth, for your enjoyment!


**Note: My socks are NOT supposed to be striped. You should see my shoes! Just tonight I threw them into the tub to let some of the crap soak out.

Poem fragment and other junk

Ok, I was in the lab and I thought of a few lines of poetry, but as always, I'm probably not gonna bother to finish it... Here it is anyway:

So gather 'round friends,
And we'll sin till we're saints.
You steal the calf,
And I'll bring the gold paint.

I dunno. Maybe it could be the chorus to a song or something -- beats me.
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I've decided that from now on, whenever I'm walking in the general direction of a garbage can in public (especially outdoors), I'm not gonna waste this chance encounter with a waste disposal site. As I'm walking towards it, I'm going to pick up a piece of garbage off the ground, and throw it in as I pass by. Then I'll continue on my merry way -- simple as that. Why waste the opportunity??? The only effort it'll take me is the energy to bend down. Somewhat sadly, in most places, I won't even need to stray off course, since it's pretty much guaranteed that there'll be at least one piece of garbage between the trash bin and I.

I highly encourage everyone else to start with this routine too! Come on, it doesn't have to be Earth Day for you to pick up someone else's junk. Together, we can make the world a cleaner place -- well... if not the whole world, then at least the small section of it within a 20 foot radius of every trash can.

Scissor shit

So I was in the lab today and looking for the scissors, so I asked Luckshman (the dude I work with) where they were.

He said, "Oh, I was using them over here to cut something."

Being critical as I am, I thought to myself, "Talk about redundancies. Was the 'to cut something' really necessary? Talk about redundancies."

heh.

I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to think of any other practical use for scissors except "cutting something". I can't use them to write a letter to my Nanny, I can't use them to prevent sunburn, and I certainly can't use them to contact the president on an urgent matter of national security. These are among the many things which I simply cannot do with scissors. Feel free to submit your own "Things I Cannot Do With Scissors" suggestions.

Or don't. Whatever.

Just don't make fun of me... or I'll cut you.

Things I've learned while washing tupperware

Ok, first: Read the title. Ok, now read the following:

So I was cleaning out a tupperware sandwich contai-- Bah! An intermission story! I'm sitting in the TV room and the window's open, and all of a sudden a big rush of wind came through for a second, then stopped just as suddenly. Knowing my physics, I know that, since our apartment is constant volume and assuming constant atmospheric pressure and temperature, the only way this would happen was if something was to open up for air to escape through, such as a door (PV=nRT, bitches!). I went to check and Bert hasn't come home. This makes the aforementioned event sort of bizarre. All I can guess is that someone assumed that the house was empty and the door was unlocked (it's the middle of the day and I should be at work), so they tried to break in. Maybe they heard the music and left... Sketchy. Or maybe I'm just paranoid!

So back to tupperware: I was just washing dishes and learned a valuable lesson. Again, there's a physics (or maybe chemistry) theme in there somewhere... probably something about the root mean velocity of molecules. You see -- theory tells us that temperature signifies just the AVERAGE velocity of all those crazy molecules of the substance. There are actually many molecules of the substance that have higher and lower energies -- so it's kind of like some molecules can have higher individual temperatures. In this case, the substance I speak of is water. Hot water. Scalding, in fact.

The tap water in our apartment is for some reason exceedingly hot. It pretty much evaporates as it leaves the faucet. So what I did, thinking I'd be safe, was fill the tupperware I was rinsing with this ungodly hot water. Then I shook it. Then all of those wonderful above-average molecules -- those above the temperature that happened to be pretty damn close to boiling -- broke free from the confines of their solid state and attacked me. The tupperware exploded and scalding hot water drenched my forearms.

As I screamed like a small child, I realized that I'd learned a beneficial lesson in applied chemistry. Hopefully the redness will go down and I won't have to brush up on any beneficial lessons in applied medicine. First-aid, that is...

Life is truly a journey.

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**Update: I was reading up on the UN in the great outdoors this morning trying to get a tan and I burnt. Ouch.

Family Pictures!

Click the pic above to be redirected to my loving brother's MySpace, where he's got (almost) all of our family trip pictures posted. These are from when the family came over from NB and we drove across Newfoundland to see my sister in the Stephenville Theatre Festival. Fun times!

EDIT: Holy crap when did I get so freakin tall?!? Or when did my family shrink?
Maybe I just stopped slouching in pictures...

Ugh

Well... I've gone and done it again. I've just stayed up all night and listened to new music and drank a 1L box of apple juice. Ok, maybe this is the first time I've done this... Hooray for Mondays! If anyone happens to be walking by my place today, drop in and kick me in the face please.

Well, in the very least I can tell you guys the songs I like most out of this new batch. Can't guarantee you'll like em though.

Mull Historical Society - Can
Built to Spill - Twin Falls
Death Cab for Cutie - Styrofoam Plates
Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
Supersystem - Born into the World
Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely
Neutral Milk Hotel - Wishful Eyes
Mull Historical Society - The Final Arrears (give it till chorus at 1:00)
Nick Drake - Day is Done

If anyone's bored, lemme know what you think. Of course, if you tell me that they suck, it won't crush me. I won't really care :)
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Also, check this out: It's a flash video for "Cigarette" by Ben Folds which I find wicked. I know you'll like it Coleman!

Sticky keys

Ok wow. So some of the keys on my keyboard were sticking and, not wanting the random keystrokes to register with the computer, I walked to the other side of the room to sit down and pull some of the keys out, clean em, and test others. I did one, then looked up to see that all the shit I had been "typing" was making it to the computer. So I said "Fuck this" and went to my room on the other side of the apartment. I thought for sure that this had to be far enough, since usually if I do so much as lean back in my chair with the keyboard on my lap, the signal doesn't make it past my knees.

I came back after maybe 10 minutes of removing keys and lubricating them with my own spit, only to find that my account had logged out with the "Switch User" button and that I was on the WELCOME screen. After switching caps-lock back off so that could put in my password, I found that a bunch of search, internet, and file folders had openned themselves up. Also, somehow I'd sent this text message to some dude named Jamil's cell phone:

"uuuuuuuuuuuuui8bji,buujjjjjjjlluyforfhhhhh hhhguioplkjhhhhjhhhhhhhjjytg78990-000000000000000oooppp0hgfdsaqwertyuiop[]="

Somewhere in there I said "buuj", "forf", and "qwerty". Not quite the completely works of Shakespeare, but I think it'll do. I don't know who this Jamil guy is, but my guess is that he's gonna be pretty confused next time he looks at his phone.

And I think it's worth noting that by this time -- after writing this post -- the same keys are back to sticking again. Maybe they need more spit...

Another "puzzle" game!

Anyone remember OWL Magazine -- that Canadian kids magazine? Well remember that puzzle page they used to have at the back of every issue -- the one where it would show you magnified photos of everyday object and you'd have to figure out what they were? Well anyway, here's my own version of that. Can you guess what this is? No definite commitment to giving away free beer this time, but give it a try anyway. Because we've discussed this already, my brother is excluded from guessing, so don't even thinking about ruining it Chris!


So anyway, I'll post the full picture up in a few days maybe... If no one gets it, I'll try to think of a good hint first.

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And check this out: A Jewish watch! Read the specs... Ridiculous.

Man's best friend

Ok, I've been thinking...

In dogs, the characteristics that we value most are naively blind loyalty, unconditional trust, eternaly contentment, and generally a dog that's just happy to be alive. Theses animals have been tamed down from their wild form -- their desired traits distilled -- through years of careful and painstaking breeding, often with other closely related dogs. Follow me on this: All these traits and more -- naively blind loyalty, unconditional trust, blissful contentment -- with just a touch of inbreeding?

Is it possible that, after all these centuries of careful refinement of the breeds, we've created not some line of tamed super-canines, but merely mentally challenged wolves?

Well, there have to be animals with mental disabilities somewhere, so why not in our living rooms? How would we know? Think about it? To be blunt, we might be surrounded by retarded (grrr... I hate that word.) animals, and we'd never know...

The long-awaited SalmonFest recap

Cue FOX music.
**Ba-bada-baaaah ba-ba-baba-ba-ba bada-bah ba-ba-ba-baaaaaaah**

Cue royal-sounding bugles.
**Bugle bugle bugle** Or whatever sound they make.

Cue up-lifting song We Are the World by Michael Jackson feat. Lionel Ritchie, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, etc.
**We are the world, we are the children, We are the ones who make a brighter day...**

Ok people. Calm down. Nothin to see here... EXCEPT THAT I'VE FINALLY GOTTEN AROUND TO -- well, doing what the subject line says. No use repeating myself now, is there?

And as usual, I will be telling this tale with all the wit and charisma of an orangatan with a mentally debilitating disease... plus twice the good looks. And yes, I realize that you don't tell a story with good looks, but I thought -- what the hey -- I'll throw it out there.

So for all of you who Salmon Festival is foreign to, here's how it works: The vast majority of the youth of Newfoundland congregate in Grandfalls-Windsor for a weekend of music and drinking. And while they're enjoying the concert, they'll be staying at the fabulous RED CLIFF CAMPGROUND! (Imagine that last sentence in your mind's best Rod Roddy voice -- God rest his soul) Below is a morning-after picture taken from one of the "streets" in the campground. It's not so glamourous in the light of day...


And here are some other random pictures of the campground (And yes -- that's a hot tub on the back of a flat-bed truck):


Sorry if this is pretty incoherent, but I just tell it as it is. These pictures are the main thing I've got to go on in deciphering the events of the weekend, and as for chronological order -- well, you'd know it just as well as me.

The first night, I ended up sitting up with the Squires girls and Loder all night, and it was a BLAST! I didn't go to bed till morning-light. Actually, I just remembered now. Someone told me that I could sleep in their tent, but they didn't give me very good directions, so I just went in a tent. The thing was, there were people inside. Naturally, I yelled at them. Not sure why. I can only imagine what that must have been like for them: Sleeping in a tent with your significant other, only to groggily wake up to a drunk stranger yelling at you and telling you that you were in his tent. So when they started to wake up, I left. I vaguely remember sleeping in the back of a station wagon of which the trunk had been left open. I think I just wanted somewhere to sleep that was out of the rain. So anyway, here are the pics of that night:


Oh and Janet's in one of those pictures too! Actually, I saw her the next day in the liquor store, and I asked her "Sooo... were you at Red Cliff last night?" She told me really bluntly that she'd been me for awhile, then she walked away. I guess she may have been a little pissed. Who knew that girls found it insulting when you forgot about their existence for a brief period of time... that's news to me.

The next day was the concert, and since this year The Tragically Hip, Finger Eleven, and K-OS (who no-showed) were scheduled to perform, the place was pretty packed. Here are the pre-show (or moreso pre-me-paying-attention-to-show) pictures:


Please note Fancy and Lesleyanne's looks of glee. Or rather, Lesleyanne's expression of glee and Fancy's expression of man-joy. Guys don't do the whole "glee" thing.

Here's a few pics of Lesleyanne and me:

Lesleyanne falls asleep -- I pull her hair. It's a thing we have.

Oh and here are Bert and Ania on the way to the concert. In the rain.


And here are Susan (who I hadn't seen in forever) and Fancy (who appears to have no clue what's going on), respectively:



As for the above photo, one of these shoes is not mine. I have no clue where it came from, nor where it went. All I know is that when I was looking through the pictures the next morning, I saw this one and had to check my feet to make sure. Who knows where that shoe is today...

And next we have my horrible concert photography. Pretty good considering I know nothing about the concepts of light and shadow... and... focal points? I've got a pimped out camera, yet I don't know how to work it...


One thing: me = awesome


Ok, there's a little more, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll hop to it at a later date! Over and out I'm done.