a life in the day of me

Ridiculous bear analogies prevail yet again

2007-04-03T22:49:00.000-02:30

So I'm in the library studying some Psych, and I come across this pretty little fact in the textbook:

"For every self-defense use of a gun in the home, there are 4 unintentional shootings, 7 criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides."

So I'm thinking, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA THAT THEY CAN'T JUST OUTLAW THIS SHIT??? How can a tradition penned centuries ago by some dudes who didn't have any concept of social theory, still be upheld so vehemently today?

Trying to see it from another's perspective, I imagined a possible retort to the presentation of this fact. It might go something like this: "The solution is not to ban guns, but to introduce legislation and fund programs that will help control their misuse."

So in light of this imagined arguement, I present this simple analogy:
You've got a hypothetical playpen full of babies who are playing with lego, and, every so often, one of them puts a piece in their mouth and chokes to death. In order to alleviate the problem, you introduce a bear, highly trained in the art of CPR, into the playpen. Now, every so often, the bear will properly carry out his intended task, resulting in one rescued baby. The problem is that the vast majority of the time, the bear simply mauls and eats the children.

So how in the name of God do you solve this perplexing problem? REMOVE THE BABY-EATING BEAR FROM THE PLAYPEN!! Take the fucking bear OUT! Don't send the bear for more training, don't introduce more bears, don't ask for all bears to be registered at the CPR-bear registration bureau, just REMOVE THE BEARS FROM THE EQUATION! BEARS AND BABIES SHOULD NOT CO-EXIST. The dangerous solution makes for a more dangerous playpen for all babies, despite the minor problem that initially existed. So give the trained bears to the police, to handle the REAL problems. Or professional hunters... to... hunt ducks and... albatross...

...OK. So I must admit -- this is where the analogy starts to break down, but you get the jist of it. Guns = bad

My take on several doomsday scenarios

2007-02-28T04:26:00.000-03:30

Everyone seems to be terrified of nuclear war, but I believe that there's an upside to a nuclear holocaust. What possible upside, you ask? Well -- If science has taught me anything, it's that Earth will simply absorb all the energy directed toward it, and will be instantaneously promoted to a higher orbit, most likely outside of Saturn's. Also, if I understand correctly, this orbit will be much more exciting than our previous orbit, and will undoubtedly involve many parties and a large excess of beautiful women.

If you don't get why all this is true, then bone up on your physics.

Speaking of end-of-the-world scenarios, last semester, Craig and I were talking about alternate strategies for dealing with earth-bound asteroids. The whole send-a-rocket-to-blow-it-to-smithereens thing is way too overplayed, bu I've got a better idea, and it's simple...

Hamburgers.

Yeah, that's right: Hamburgers. How does this solve the problem of a massive rock hurtling toward us at unspeakable speeds? Well, simple -- The current world population is about 6.5 billion, so it's safe to assume that it will be 8 billion by the time this plan would come into action. So that means, at any time, half the population (4 billion) would have a line of sight with any approaching interstellar object. All we'd have to do is organize it so that everybody on one side of the Earth -- the side facing the world-obliterated asteroid -- had a hamburger. Everyone would wait until just the right moment, and then some dude from NASA would yell "NOW!", and everyone would throw their hamburgers into the air at the same time. The 4 billion hamburgers, each weighing about a quarter pound, would make for one billion pounds of minced meat hurtling towards said asteroid. I mean -- I don't have time to work out the calculations, but that is a lot of freaking meat. I'm sure it would deflect an asteroid...

But hey -- If it didn't, then we could simply fall back on the alternate plan, which would involve a few people throwing spices and seasoning into the air. These would combine with the hamburger and intense heat before falling back down to Earth, where we would all enjoy delicious tacos in the moments before we were purged from existence.

Old Blog Repost Series - #1

2006-12-16T00:56:00.000-03:30

I had another anonymous blog over the summer, but have just decided to transfer some of the old posts over when I've got nothing else to write about. Sorry if you've already read this...

------ Originally posted August 1st, 2006 -----
So I ran out of gas today...

Yeah -- I know, I know... lame. I know exactly what you're thinking: "Who runs out of gas??? Are you a monkey? Because only a monkey wouldn't realize he was out of gas. No, on second thought, even a monkey would realize that, so you must be something less. Perhaps you are an inanimate object, such as a piece of chalk. Yes -- you are likely a piece of chalk, which would certainly have no concept of a gas tank, nor the degree to which it was filled, yet you have somehow unlocked the secrets of the internet and discovered blogging."

Well, before you get all preposterous on me, I have an excuse. My van is a piece of shit. It must have some type of loose wire somewhere, because the console dials turn on and off. They'll work just fine for a long while, but then everything will just shut off for weeks at a time. I'm talking speed, gear, gas guage, odometer, etc. Though I can live without knowing the core temperature and RPM of my 1998 Caravan, gas and speed seem to be pretty integral to the whole driving experience.

But I'm not completely in the dark, since I've figured out how to manage speed, at least on the highways. Y'see, my van is a rocket. Sadly, I don't mean "rocket" in the sweet-vehicle-that-gets-me-chicks way. I mean that, at 130 kmph, everything in my van starts vibrating and shaking and groaning. I'm talking serious rumbling, as in -- Prepare-for-re-entry rumbling. So the strategy for going the 120-kmph limit is to take my van up to vibration-speed, then reel it in a notch. I like to think that this is how my anscestors used to drive... I feel so cave-man.

So the speed problem is solved, at least for major throughfares, but that still leaves gas to chance, prayer, and (at least in the end) the angle of my van. Which leads me to today, I was cruising through the city, and then -- just BLAM -- car starts stuttering and stalling. I'd just passed a gas station a minute ago, so (being naively optimistic), I tried to pull a no-gas U-turn on a busy road. Taking it wide, I rolled up onto the sidewalk, where this dude -- the nerve of him! -- was just strolling leisurely down the sidewalk as if he owned the place. His back was to me and he was blabbing on his cell phone, completely oblivious to the minivan on his heels.

So I honked. Given his road-side location, I guess he was pretty surprised to see me. I then succintly explained that I was out of gas and needed to conserve, so as to make it to the next service station ("MOVE! NO GAS! NEED EVERY DROP!" out the window as I rolled past). So I got turned around, but since the gas station was up a hill, I didn't get far. At the very least, I learned that gas needs to be at the front of the tank in order to be useful for locomotion. The line behind me was a about a dozen cars long before I deciding that this was no way to get gas into my poor van. So I coasted into a parking lot and left it in the open, not even having enough to make it to a parking space.

From here, I just booted it up to the Irving, where the cashier watched, perplexed, as I inspected the beverages, bought a 2L jug of water, walked outside, and dumped it out. I then filled it up with gas, paid, and ran back down the street. If you live in Saint John and happened to see some dude tearing down the street with what looked to be a large bottle of urine, then that was probably me. Once I got to the van, I realized something. Since recessed gas tanks aren't designed to accept liquid from a generic-brand water bottle, I could only get about $2 of the $3 worth of gas into the tank. And that was only with me thrusting the nozzle of the bottle into the gas openning with great velocity, in an effort to get the last little bits in. Needless to say, gas covered the side of my van and the ground in the immediate vicinity. I guess I can't complain though, since it was enough to get me to the next gas station.

So why didn't we have my van fixed ages ago? Well we've tried, but as I said, the problem is on-again-off-again. What happens is this: We book an appointment with the car dude, but by the time we get it in, the symptoms are gone. The car guy could never find anything wrong, so after 3 or 4 visits, he probably thinks that we're a family of vehicular hypochondriacs.

So... yeah... the end.

Best song EVER

2006-12-14T20:52:00.000-03:30

OK, so apparently they're old news in the indie music blogosphere, but I've just started listening to them, and they are fantastic. Who am I talking about? The band "Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin", that's who!

Take a listen to "I Am Warm and Powerful" if you want to know what I'm talking about. And don't be a douche who sits through only half the song, cause the changes in time that kick in halfway through are part of what makes it so awesome.

Anyway, here's the link!

Let's play a game.

2006-12-13T12:33:00.000-03:30

OK, here's how it works -- Guess what makes this sound:

HHHGGGUH *clink* PLLLHHHHF "god DAMN!"

Can you figure it out? No? It's the sound of me spitting toothpaste all over my glasses, which have just fallen off of my face into the sink.

Go me.

But only one exam left! I'm just heading to bed for the day, and should be up by 8pm to start studying again...

WRITE PATRICK, WRITE!

2006-12-09T02:43:00.000-03:30

So it's Friday night, and my thesis introduction still isn't done. What's more, I don't even have anything written past the outline. All I've got is what Coleman and Craig came in and wrote while I was gone:

Atagcgata Pats thesis is the best thing a monkey ever puked into a pile of
rocks.
CAGTAGCATGTACGTAGCTAGFAGGGGGGGG
hello there young skywalker this is dr doom from the fantastic 4. I have been waiting a long time to talk to you mr CAGTAGCTGATCGA and now we must dual.
Choose your word that stats with H and
I don’t remember the rest.
I choose sword.
Ok H word goes first.
And he hits and takes 47 hp off of doom.
Doom then uses his electric sword to take off 87 hp and H WORD DIES NOOOOOO
ok dr doom rules
Holla
THE EMD

Man -- I'm fucked.

Quickie

2006-12-07T23:32:00.000-03:30

I realize that I haven't posted in forever, but I'll just jump back in like nothing happened. Hopefully I'll do some catch-up stuff later, for all those folks at home and abroad who may or may not stumble upon this site again.

As for right now, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news.
The bad: I'm scrambling to get my honours thesis done for tomorrow. Then I have to start studying for my exams.

The good: I've invented a new drink.
Just buy a 600 mL Coke -- Or wait... Ahem. I mean 591 mL Coke. Fuckin corporate commie bastards weaseling me out of 9 mL of delicous beverage...

So take the bottle of Coke, and drink half. Then go to Tim Horton's (or your preferred local conglomerated pseudo-cafe) and buy a small coffee. Pour into the remnants of your Coke, and -- VOILA -- Coca-Coffee!

Not the finest of inventions, but what can I say... Tastes like ass but helps me pass.

Back?

2006-05-09T22:16:00.000-02:30

Anyone remember "Active Worlds"? My brother brought it up earlier today. What is was was a chat program in which my brother and sister and I all had accounts. The jist of it was that we could walk around this 3D world that was thousands of virtual acres, and we could build houses and chat with other people who appeared to be other good-willed netizens.

Given the recent hoo-hah surrounding child safety on the net, I think this childhood experience should be re-evaluated. Thinking back, it was a very shifty situation. Chris has concluded that our parents had no clue what we were doing, and must have assumed that we were playing a regular videogame. After all, what else would explain why they'd allowed us to join such a sketchy online community when we were no older than 10. Sketchy how, you ask? Well, let's just put it this way -- It wouldn't surprise me if half the Active Worlds members had purchased their first computer by pawning off their large black cargo van, and then paid the first month's internet bill by liquidating their vast supply of delicious candy. Having vacated the playground parking lots, these people now found themselves in their reclining swivvle chairs, basking in the glow of CRT monitors while "surrounded" by small children just itching to talk to strangers.

Thinking back, I remember that every once in awhile, we'd meet someone online who was especially talkative. They'd chat, and find out the general area where we lived, then they'd invite us over to their virtual home, which they'd built at N450 W450... Sound creepy? Yep. But at the time? We'd just made a "friend".

In a way, my siblings and I were sort of like pioneers in 1995/6. Remember when drinking and driving was cool, simply because people didn't know any better? While it may be a stretch to call them "pioneers", we, as children of the unguarded internet, were like those first drunk-drivers -- cruising around the interweb, drunk on information and communication, and running into pedophiles like they were potholes.

Ok, so I just googled "Active Worlds" in order to find a picture, and found a site that seems somewhat suspicious. My suspicions seemed to be confirmed when I clicked a link to read reviews of the different "worlds" (there were a bunch). The only review was for "AWTeen". Here's an excerpt:

So, what could one say about a world such as AWTeen? Well for one it is a diverse place, with younger folks from all over the globe... as the world title, suggest it is a place for teens and teens at heart.

"TEENS AT HEART"?? Hmm... So what qualifies someone as a teen at heart? Is this a valid designation?

"Statutory rape??? Lord no, your honour! I'm just a teen a heart!"

Good grief.

And sorry about the lack of updates or contact of any sort. I've kind of been neglecting the ol' blog -- what with having worked EVERY day since I got back home about 2 weeks ago. And tomorrow, I'm going to Hailfax to host a high-school model UN conference, so... Hurrah!!

-----------------------

Russian credo
RUSSIA: Where the men and men... and the women are too.

-----------------------

Random thought:
If I could be an eternal match-maker, arranging marriages over generations and generations, what would I do? I'd probably mate people with various odd phobias, creating whole families of people who were terrified of ridiculous things. Like bread. At the same time, I would go through the same process with people who really loved those same things that the other families had phobias toward. Over the generations, these would probably turn into fetishes. I would then force both these families to live together. And then I'd film it and make it into a sitcom. It would be called... People Who are Scared of Things and People Who Aren't. I would win a Daytime Emmy.

You know your take-homefinal essay is bad when...

2006-04-18T00:00:00.000-02:30

...the last line of the email in which you submit it is:

Again, I apologize for the oncoming assault on all your rational senses...

For serious. I'm going to bed.

I'm too busy to post right now,so I'll link to Ashley's blog

2006-04-17T20:40:00.000-02:30

The title says it all. No need for any more... y'know... those things... describe-amajigs... WORDS! That's the describe-amajig I was looking for!

Ashley talking about today

Coleman being pseudo-angry at Ashley

Ashley's tribute to Coleman and I

The end.

Bright Eyes

2006-04-08T19:29:00.000-02:30

Bright Eyes - The First Day of My Life

When the President Talks to God (Protest Song on Leno)

That's all I got. I wrote a real post yesterday...

Conversations with myself

2006-04-07T20:36:00.000-02:30

So Ashley says I talk to myself.

Apparently all the time, while I'm alone in parts of the house. My defense is that I'm not actually talking to myself, but only talking in the hopes that someone will listen to me. So it's more an issue of me just being sad & lonely, as opposed to outright weird & crazy -- which is kind of comforting... maybe?

She told me this when I came up from my room earlier today. I guess I'd been cursing downstairs as I was looking for something. I hadn't really thought about it before, but the accusation got me thinking... I suppose that I do speak quite a bit when no one else is around... One of those habits that I don't notice until someone else points it out to me -- Like how I recently found out that I double-up words all the time, such as "cool cool" and "ok ok" and "yeah yeah".

So as I was thinking about all this in the kitchen, I got it in my head that I was going to turn this habit around. I was going to stop it before it got out of hand.

"I, Patrick Cahill Connolly, will hereby never talk to myself AGAIN!" I announced triumphantly.

And then I had to call Ashley back in, because she'd left the room while I'd been mulling it over.

Given that my mom is also prone to talking to herself, I have a feeling that this might be genetic. She also has a habit of making up words that she thinks fit what she wants to say, but I don't think I've inherited that little quirby. But it does seem that my talking-to-myself issue is a little worse than hers is.

Hopefully my problem doesn't get worse with age, but just in case it does, I've got a solution: Surround myself with dogs. It's not seen as quite so odd when people talk to their animals. With this strategy, instead of turning into a crazy old man who talks to himself incessantly, I would simply turn into an elderly fellow who really loves his animals.

So they wouldn't be so much pets, but objects at which to channel my pent-up senility.

Come to think of it, with this solution comes yet more problems, since I would now be an old man who lives in a house full of dogs...

Drats. Is there no way to win?? Am I doomed to be CRAZY?!?

"Yes. Yes you are."

SHUT UP!!!

I haven't died

2006-04-06T16:23:00.001-02:30

So Ashley and I were chilling out in the TV room a couple of nights ago, watching the news. Our house watches the news fairly regularly, since we've only got two glorious channels of antenae-fed televational goodness. Actually, it'd be more appropriate to say that we've got 1.5 channels, since the sound on one of them often freaks out and starts buzzing really loudly for no apparent reason. It's baffling, since it's the CBC station that does this, and the CBC building, with its 20-foot broadcast dish, is located a hundred yards down the road -- so go figure. If you ever stop by our house, there's a good chance that you'll find a buzzing television and at least one person literally yelling at it. I don't think I've ever cursed with so much conviction as I've done when I'm watching that goddamn TV...

So anyway, Ashley and I were watching a news story and Alisha comes down into the room. She glances at the screen, then goes "Oh this guy! He's like 19 now? Started when he was 14 years old, right?"

Ashley and I both: "Yeah..."

"Yeah, I've seen some of his stuff before."

Blank looks from Ashley and me.

"Huh, what? No? What's this kid do then?"

We looked at each other, then back at Alisha, who was keeping a straight face and apparently being serious. Then Ashley answered:

"Umm... child pornography."

Anyway, I'm not sure who Alisha thought he actually was (cause I was laughing as she tried to explain), but she'd coincidentally nailed all the facts on the kid who, testifying at an Online Child Safety hearing, had formerly been mixed up in the kiddie porn business.

I found it funny. The misunderstanding, that is -- not the child pornstar...

Robot fights are freakin' sweet.

2006-03-30T22:23:00.000-03:30

Now all someone needs to do is pit one of these mofos against a monkey. On that day, my life will be complete.

So maybe making a monkey fight a robot isn't humane but... well... then I'm not picky. I'd be just as happy to see a baby duke it out with the robot.

Babies don't "duke", you say? Well... then that's their fault.

Story/VIDEO from high school

2006-03-25T14:24:00.000-03:30

Ok, I should really be working on my essay right now, but I need a little break, so I'll gonna tell a story.

Back in grade 12, Adam "Lefty" Leclerc and I were working on a Physics video project: "The Adventures of Fiz & Ix". Hmmm... come to think of it, maybe I'll post it sometime... It's a whole lotta nonsense, but it's still mildly amusing.

Well anyway, we were filming at my house for awhile, and Coleman said that we could use his place for a scene in which we needed to throw one of his cats off the deck (Man oh man, I really need to post that video). So we get to Coleman's place, and I've got to tell you: Coleman has a really nice house -- all hardwood and glass-panel doors, and tables with really thin legs. So we're in his house -- no one else is home -- and we catch his cat in the garage. Since we're not quite ready for the throw-the-cat-off-the-freakin-deck scene, Adam and I are debating how to keep the cat in one place. Being the geniuses that we are, we figure that the best mode of action is to tie one of these things (usually used as a stake to tie my dog out in the backyard) around the cat's neck. If you have to know, we've got it with us (along with some twine) for possible use as props in the movie.

So we tie this big honkin' metal spike around this little cat's neck, and -- dontcha know -- she starts to walk away. Looking back, what follows makes perfect sense, since all this stupid cat knows is that she's strutting along and suddenly hears this grating, rumbling sound as if something's following behind her. So all her catty instincts come into play and she started running. In the split-second as she's speeding up, Adam ad I both look at each other -- surrounded by all the breakable, expensive things in Coleman's house -- and we're both thinking the same thing: "Good. Lord."

So the cat freaks out and starts tearing through the kitchen -- between the legs of the hardwood stools and around the corner into the "living room". So maybe you're not familiar with the terminology, since maybe it's a Maritime thing, but out here people don't "live" in the "living room". For some reason they just gather all the expensive and pretty things in their homes, and place them all in this one little enclosed place. Yeah -- it's beyond me...

So I'm just about full-fledged panic at this point as I tear after the cat, hearing all the bangs and smacks of the metal on wooden floors and walls. Luckily for us, it doesn't get any worse than this, since as the cat was sailing past an inwardly open door (on the way into the living room), the twine was pulled underneath and so the metal stake was been pinned on one side. Good thing I'm not skilled in knot-ery, because if the twine hadn't released the cat, the stake might have eventually been freed as the cat flailed around. Or Coleman's cat would have strangled itself, but that would hardly have been a negative aspect...

So anyway, here's the video we made for that school project. Not the best quality, but it was fun. And yes -- we are doofuses.

School strikes back

2006-03-22T00:39:00.000-03:30

Unfortunately for myself, I'll be working on a bunch of things for the next two weeks, so I probably won't be doing any major updates. Possible exceptions may exist for after the Burke House Formal on Saturday, but that all depends on how my essays go...

In the meantime, here's something I found in the WalkSafe room tonight: The synopsis on the back of the "Godzilla VS Megalon" VHS.

The whole point of "borrowing" it was to take a picture, but just in case you can't read it, here's what it says:

The evil Seatopians have a plot to take over the world by unleashing Megalon-a giant cockroach-like monster. The people of Tokyo need their hero Godzila to save them, but where is he? Scientists build the cyborg Jet Jaguar, who can change size and shape at will, to find him.
Meanwhile Megalon has found a new friend-Gigan-the giant metal bird with a buzz saw in his stomach. Together Megalon and Gigan wreak havoc on the Earth, and only Godzilla and Jet Jaguar can stop them!

Closing remarks

2006-03-19T19:34:00.000-03:30

Alas, the magic of the mystery of my broken window is no more. Ashley solved the puzzle earlier today while talking to Keough...

"So Ashley, was your house pretty beat up after?"

"Oh yeah, like... you don't even know."

"So how was Pat's window?"

"How'd you know about that???"

"Huh? We were standing in the driveway. The window flew open and Pat crawled out, pulled himself across the pavement, and threw up in the snowbank."

So yeah. The story was not as magical as I had at first thought it might be. I think Friday night was a low-point in my life. Don't get me wrong -- I was the happiest kid on the block right up until the moment when my GI tract started running in reverse. It's just that I have never been that drunk -- for that long a period -- in my entire life. All in all, even though I did lose vast reserves of dignity and bodily fluids, I don't think I've ever had such a prolonged sense of glee... or rather, man-joy, because as I've said before, guys don't tend to do the whole "glee" thing.

So yeah, since I awoke Saturday morning in my frigid bedroom, beneath a broken window -- a window in which the pane had not just been pierced, but of which the whole frame had been removed and replaced upside down -- since then, it's been a weekend of rediscovery. And now it's coming to a close.

But before it's over, here's one last video from the morning after. I'm not a big fan of it, but Coleman and Ashley are insisting that I post it up anyway. I guess it provides the context around the "poop" remark made in the previous video...

Over and out I'm done. Hope everyone had a good St. Paddy's Day weekend!
And sorry about not responding to any comments, but I assure you that I've read em' all and really appreciate them :)

Our house is broken. [PICTURES/VIDEO!]

2006-03-18T15:38:00.000-03:30

Every party we host seems to be a learning experience.

One of the invaluable house party lessons of yesterday evening was this: Do not ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, throw a party -- an event at which drunk and unreasonable people are prevalent and encouraged -- Do not throw one of these things when you are low on toilet paper. Trust me. Once your stock runs out, people tend to improvise and get "creative", to the detriment of those who own the house.

Here's the damage for the night:

broken screen door
3 broken windows
glass in my bed
someone's barf in Andre's bed
3 gallons of water in Coleman's bed
like 7 of Andre's shirts ruined
a towel with -- ugh -- on it (hint: it was in the TP-less bathroom)
downstairs bathroom door ripped off

It's hard to decide where to begin. Let's see... As alluded to yesterday, I ripped my pants before heading out to the biochemistry faculty mixer. Being that I was already pretty intoxicated, I elected to leave the same pants on and just head over to the mixer as-is (see picture below). In hindsight, it was one of my patented BAD ideas to go to a social event in a pair of pants which left my boxers showing, especially considering that my profs and the head of the department were also going to be there. So I show up wearing the most attention-seeking get-up possible, consisting of a reflective green novelty vest, an orange construction hat, and a squirt bottle full of booze at the hip. I didn't buy a single drink the whole time -- just made my own rum & cokes. They let it slide since it was my birthday :)

So at some point I decided that it would be a good idea to go talk to Dr. Mulligan, the head of the department (extreme right in picture below). This man's a great guy, having always been cool to me, since I get like 90s in his classes and I talk to him fairly often. But, this being said, he IS pretty straight-laced and proper, so he doesn't drink. So I go up and join in on his circle. A few minutes later, there's a lull in the conversation, and one of the secretaries from the Biochem office just says "Oh dear...". I look down and see that my pants are hanging particularly wide open on the right-hand side, exposing pretty much my whole leg up to the belt-level. Still sitting in the circle with the faculty, I quickly take off my reflective green novelty tie and use it as an elastic to wrap around my leg and hold my pants together. From my (perhaps distorted) viewpoint all seemed to go well from there, and as the mixer wound down I mentioned to some of the professors (half jokingly) that there was a party at 12 Hatcher afterwards.

Back at our house, things began to get fuzzy. I know that we walked home around 8pm, bringing a trail of people with us. I also know that Dr. Nag, the prof for my Biological Membranes class, did show up and was drinking at our house until like midnight. Since I don't feel like telling the story of the whole night, nor am I even reasonably capable of doing so, I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking. I only have those from the pre-party portion of the night, since my camera went MIA for quite a stint once people started arriving. Due to the lack of evidence of both a cognitive and photographic nature, I feel I need to stress this: The place was apparently packed. Pretty much our whole three-floor house was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Lovell says that I personally spent half the party standing/dancing on tables, and this was simply because it was the most efficient means of transportation. It would literally take the non-table-oriented folk several minutes to make it across the room, given that every surface was occupied by the throngs of swaying drunks. Estimates from the people I've talked to place the numbers at between 80 and 100, but it's hard to say since not everyone was in the same room. There were people in everyone's bedrooms, on the deck, in the driveway, crammed into the living room and kitchen -- You name it. OK, so on to the pictures!

Before going to the mixer, we did some setting up. Since we don't own a vacuum cleaner, we found some pretty nasty scenes under the couches we tried to move. Instead of actually cleaning it up, we just shuffled furniture around (bringing up the couch from my room) so that space was maximized, while all the exposed dusty spots were minimized. Looks pretty clean in the end, doesn't it? I assure you that it's all an elaborate deception.

I found an old lamp which, despite being extremely fun to play with, had somehow managed to elude any of us tenants since we'd moved in, way back in September. I found it under a bunch of crap in the front closet, and immediately began swinging it around with reckless abandon. I was smacking it into walls and furniture and people for quite some time before it lost my interest. I rediscovered it this morning and plugged it in as we talked in the living room. Periodically, when conversation would start to die down a bit, I'd just be like "Well... back to work." and then I'd throw this big friggin lamp over my shoulder and just stand in the middle of the room with it dangling by my waist. I also wore it around for a good few hours as I cleaned the house, since the long cord gave me a pretty good range of motion. Maybe I'll wear it to class on Monday...

For reasons beyond my current sober-state comprehension, Andre and I were head-butting each other for a few minutes. Yeah, I know... I'm blatantly feeding the stereotypes for college-aged males, but what else can I do? Not head-butt people, you say? But that's preposterous! I was wearing that hardhat all night, and since there happened to be an old hockey helmet floating around too, the stage was set and it was just waiting to happen.

Me and Andre and Ash getting/being drunk before the party. Nuff said.

The next morning, since a bunch of our clocks had been changed, I barged into Ashley's room claiming that it was 11AM instead of 9. I changed her clock to the "correct" time. When she figured it all out, she got kinda mad at me because she'd forced herself to get up when she thought it was so late in the day. Mhen. Loves ya Ashley!

So yeah, we (Chipper, Ashley, Alisha, Coleman, Andre, Kim and me) sat around all morning trying to piece the night together, before moving on to the cleaning/repairing. I've got a video of Coleman explaining what Andre had been doing after some unknown jerks threw an iceball through his window and shattered it. I think it's pretty funny. Just to let you know though, the mention of me and poop was based on a previous conversation that we'd been having, and is in no way -- I repeat, no way -- based on reality! I guess that since my recollection of the evening was so hazy, they'd tried to get me to believe that something had happened when it hadn't...

FREAK OUT!!!

2006-03-17T16:44:00.000-03:30

Today is my birthday.

I woke up at 8 o'clock, drank bailey's in my coffee, then went to class. I have a spray bottle (hooked onto a carabener) which I've had hooked to my hip since this morning. I bought Coke on the way to school. I have rum in the spray bottle. I've been to the Breezeway twice today. I've been to Bitters once. I am quite possibly drunk. I've had a rum & coke in my hand all day, even as I sold ice cream for the UN Society fundraiser. The tiny room we had rented reaked of booze thanks to me. When small children came by for ice cream, I slunk away. I don't have a problem drinking in public, because it's my birthday. Besides, I had the advance over Campus Enforcement -- I had the elemtent of surprise. As in "SURRISE! I'm drunk in public! Betcha didn't expect that, didja?"

Yeah, so my parents named me Patrick, since I wa born on St. Patrick's Day. With that calibre of originality -- just looking at the day of the week and naming me after it -- it's a wonder I wasn't named "Thursday" or "Porkchopnight". Wahtever. Out house will be ridiculous and I'm going upstiars to help set up now. My pants are ripped. My couch wouldn't fit upstairs and we had to cram it up the narrow stairwell, and my pants ripped.

Stream of consciousness or what? Pictures/ mroe posts to follow.
Thanks to everyone who gave me happy birthday shout out today!

PS - O'brian threw a snowball at me today as i was holding a cooler (ice cream sale). I tryied to duck my head, but it's didn't work. All it looked like to anyone else was this: Dude standing there with a cooler. Guy throw snowball 3 feet over his head. Guy ducks his face down really quick and smacks his face full-force into the cooler he is carrying, then starts bleeding from the mouth. The end.

PARTY!

2006-03-15T01:11:00.000-03:30

HOUSE PARTY AT 12 HATCHER ON FRIDAY!!!

It's a liquor-luck (modified version of a potluck), so everyone needs to bring an exciting type of liquor. The deal is that whoever brings their own liquor puts it into the community cabinet, and they're allowed to drink whatever they want from it. We want everyone to bring twenty-sixers/quarts, but if you're extremely cheap or otherwise poor, then flasks/pints will be allowed -- you'll just have to keep in mind that the cabinet won't be quite so all-you-can-drinkerific.

So yeah, this should be fun, especially since it coincides exactly with my birthday, and in the same week as Saralynn and Raylene's! I'm am SO pumped!

And tomorrow night (Wednesday) is Open Mic Night for SL and Raylene's birthdays! SO HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARALYNN! HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAYLENE!

This week is turning into a throw-away...

Sorry bout the lack of updates, but I'll probably start writing more next week when the work starts to get heavy :)

LibrAARRRRRRy!

2006-03-10T10:31:00.000-03:30

As I was walking up the enclosed stairwell in the library, I saw this guy who looked a little familiar. I passed him, trying to place his face, but it wasn't until I was headed up the next flight of stairs that it came to me.

"Hey," I called out, leaning across the railing overlooking the stairs below, "Didn't you fall through my deck last semester?"

"Huh?"

"Yeah, you fell right through the railing and landed on your face."

"Oh. yeah... I was pretty drunk."

You sure were, you big, fat party animal, you... and quite a jerk, if I remember correctly, though I didn't say this part out loud. Had he been able to even stand upright that night without falling into a kiddie-pool, he probably would have been deemed fair game and had his ass kicked six ways past Sunday. I don't even understand that expression, but I'll assume that it means "kicked really freaking hard".

On a related note, the whole reason that I was in the library in the first place was to check out a few more books. I happen to have a lot of books out at the moment, so as I checked out these extra two, I asked what the limit was.

"There isn't any limit on the number of books you can sign out," said my good friend Library-Patrick.

"Whoa whoa whoa. No limit? As in, there's nothing in the library code that allows you to prevent me from signing out as many books as I want?"

Reluctantly, "No..."

And that, my friends, is a lack of foresight of the highest degree. And it got me thinking. I walked over to the public computers, and did some quick research. From what I can tell, there is absolutely no Guinness world-record for the most library books signed out at once. None.

Given the library loophole that seems to be present, I can outright plunder the library -- like some type of goddamn library pirate -- and there's absolutely nothing those stinking library beaurocrats can do about it! OK, that's unfair... there was no need for the "stinking" comment, because all the library folk seem rather pleasant...

But the point is that I can plunder! -- PLUNDER, I SAY! Plunder and pillage and plunder some more -- just like real library pirates would do, were they to exist! And then they'll put my name in a big book, where it will live for all eternity. Or at least until some other knavish library pirate pilfers me bounty. Ahem. My bounty... My fame.

...YAAAAAARRRRRRR.

All pirating aside, I think I'm going to email Guinness World Records to see if the record actually exists.

If only blogging were always this easy

2006-03-09T22:52:00.000-03:30

Coleman came downstairs just as I was giving up on trying to write a blog entry. I started to explain that I just wasn't getting any blogging vibes tonight. Naturally, he had something to say.

"What do you mean? It's easy. Just look around your room, pick out an object, and blog about it!"

"Coleman... That's a stupid idea."

"No, it isn't. You just have to make something up."

At this point, Coleman put on my cowboy hat (don't ask) and started swaggering around my room with what he no doubt imagined was a dashing cowboy-strut. He then started in with a drawling, monotone cowboy-voice, "I was born... a ramblin’ man --"

I cut him off, "Coleman, that is a song and you didn't make it up."

"...Oh."

And now I'm blogging it... because I'm a sucker who falls for Coleman's clever attention-seeking ploys. He gets great satisfaction from being blogged about. I think he should get his own blog, cause he's free-loading off of mine and I don't fuckin appreciate it.

What a jerk.

On being irresponsible

2006-03-08T00:16:00.000-03:30

I've done absolutely no real work in the past two nights. For complicated reasons, I didn't need to go to any of my classes this morning, so last night, Coleman and Julia and I had a few drinks and watched a movie while everyone else in the house got high.

As Ashley mentioned in her blog, I spilt some water in the kitchen last night. Since she tried to call me on it, Coleman and I picked her up and used her socked feet, her back, and her head to wipe up the floor and counter. It was funny. I laughed.

Also, Ashley things that she might go on unemployment. Normally, I'd be against this blatant manipulation of the system, but I know that she'll use the time to volunteer, cause that's just what she does. It's not like she'll just be sitting around all day, smelling bad and contributing nothing to society except a stream of illicit drugs. **cough Hendric cough**

Aaaaand tonight was volunteering at WalkSafe with Coleman and Fraser. Being that I'd picked up a bottle in Ottawa and that Fraser was heading off for Amsterdam soon, we started talking about Absinthe. Supposedly, the wormwood extract in the real-deal stuff makes you go crazy with a condition called Absinthism -- resulting in dementia, hallucinations, and seizures. Since wormwood grows along the highways in Newfoundland, we got into a discussion about making our own authentic Absinthe, since the stuff you can get in most parts of the world is only for novelty purposes -- lacking that key crazy-maker wormwood ingredient. I figure most of the effects wouldn't be that bad... with the possible exception of the seizures. Then again, even the seizures wouldn't be so bad if we put a positive spin on them. For instance, if we thought of them not so much as seizures, but moreso as... involuntarily rocking out. That sounds bad-ass, doesn't it? Shit -- even people with epilepsy probably wouldn't feel so down about themselves if, instead of telling them that they had a debilitating condition, we told them that they simply had a subconscious urge to rock-out hardcore whenever the strobe-lights started going.

Chaos Theory

2006-03-07T03:27:00.000-03:30

What is chaos theory, you ask? I'l tell you what it is. Chaos theory is eight screeching Sparks -- basically just mini-Girlguides with half the maturity and twice the vocal pitch -- confined in a small gymnasium-like enclosure.

I just got back from CANIMUN (which was a blast, by the way), and volunteered to help with the "What Kind of World" UN awareness program, put on by the UN society. Since one of our society members is the leader of a Sparks group, we figured we'd go over and enlighten them as to the ways of the United Nations.

Let me just say this: Five-year-old girls have no interest in learning about the purposes of the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC). Actually, I don't think it's so much that they have no interest in ECOSOC, just that they have an inexplicable amount of interest in screaming and running around in circles -- which doesn't happen to be conducive to learning about ECOSOC.

Basically what we did was try to do little games to get them to learn about basic issues like human rights, UN organizations like ECOSOC, and the purpose of the UN itself. I admit that it was probably over their heads, but it ended up going pretty well -- At least for yours truly. I worked with kids for two summers, so I know all the tricks. As a result, they wanted to play my game twice, instead of telling me that my game was boring (which they did to the other presenters). Also, as we played the wind-down game of tag, a little girl tapped my knees to get my attention, and then gave me a hug.

That made my day.

While I'm on the topic, little girls playing tag in a confined space is hilarious. As I'm told, tag is used at the end of every Sparks meeting in order to tire everyone out -- and I must say: these kids make manipulation look easy. Let me set the scene: Leader yells "Tag! {Insert little girl's name}'s it!". Little girls begin running counterclockwise around the room, screaming constantly. After a few minutes, the girls are still running in the same direction -- shrieking their little heads off -- and it appears as if the majority of them are now somehow "it". Soon, the rate of whirling of the tag-circle slows considerably, and the screaming begins to subside as the little girls become oxygen deprived. One by one, they fly out of the spinning ring, only to crash against the wall and slide, panting, to the floor. I'm told that it works every week, without fail.

Other things that happened:

Two girls simultaneously slapped me in the ass. Under other circumstances, this may have made me feel sexy, providing that the girls had not been FIVE FREAKING YEARS OLD! Baffled as to what the appropriate response to this might be, I elected to just ignore it.
While playing one game ("What Time Is It Mr. Wolf?"), I was chasing this one tiny little girl, who I tagged on the back of the shoulder with like two fingers. Only TWO! Let me tell you -- this little girl flew. She was airborne for like three and a half seconds. Oddly, after she hit the ground, she got right back up and continued with her screaming and giggling. What a trooper.
During the opening UN spiel, one of our guys asked the big group of girls "What do you guys think the United Nations are for?". There was a few moments of utter silence, before one diligent child piped up "Counting!". I mean -- double-you-tee-eff?!? I found this really funny. Kids say the darndest things, don't they?

Week-long Hiatus

2006-03-01T01:56:00.000-03:30

Ashley's here, my school crap is done, and I'm leaving for the airport in about and hour... Should be a good time in Ottawa doing this whole model UN thing!

I probably won't get around to updating while I'm gone, but I'll be back on Sunday night -- Ya know... just in case anyone cares :)

I realize that I've been slacking it up lately in terms of original content, but I'm thinking I'll put a little more effort into my posts when I get back.

Summer Video 2004: St. Martin's Trip

2006-02-27T00:19:00.000-03:30

Starring: Adam, Coleman, Andrew & Pat

OK, as promised, I'm posting a video from way back in the summer of 2004. The background is this: One night earlier in the week, we'd driven my van out to this middle-of-nowhere dirt road off the highway. The "road" was basically just marshy land that had been beaten down by trucks. You need to drive up this way to get to some pond in the woods called "The Deep-hole", where people used to go swimming in the summer. To give you an idea of how bad it was, though we didn't get it on camera, there was an empty car stranded in a big puddle of mud up to the carriage, cause it had run over an drop-off an gotten stuck.

So yeah, we got to the end of the road that night, and it had been pitch black. We walked to the bank of the stream that you have to cross, looked down, and everyone freaked out cause there was a big bloody dead cow laying on the riverbank. We freaked out and drove home. I actually had that on tape at one point, but my brother taped over it. Fuckin' jerk. And you know what he taped over it with? His stupid, ugly friends, that's what.

Just kidding. His friends weren't that ugly...

So this video is when Coleman, Adam, Andrew & I went back to find the cow. Cause we're that cool. {That was the kind of stuff we did. Sometimes we'd pick out random destinations in the distance (such as big houses or cell towers) and try to find them in the car. For some reason the was actually really fun most of the time! I've got video of Jana and I out on an adventure to some place called "Backland Road", and maybe I'll post that sometime too.}

So after that cow search, we decided to drive over to St. Martin's (a little town about an hour away), and go see the caves along the shore.

Before you watch it though, you should thank Adam "Lefty" Leclerc for sending the video back to me. I'd lost it at some point, and the DVD with all the raw video files broke, so he saved this from oblivion. You go girl.

And also: HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY ADAM!!! Coleman and I did a webcam toast to him earlier, with Bailey's and Crown Royal whiskey, but you know what else I'm gonna do? When I get home to New Brunswick, I'm gonna make you a pizza. That's right. No no no -- tut tut -- thank me later.

So here's the vid. Enjoy, kiddies. If you can tolerate through the beginning, it gets better...

NOTE: If the video doesn't work, that's probably because it is stilling being processes. give it some time and it should be up within a few hours.

Yay YouTube!

2006-02-25T22:27:00.000-03:30

Hurrah! Just discovered YouTube, so I decided to post some old crap. The bulk of stuff is all stored away on DVDs, so this'll have to do for now...

First up is McAllister's Saint John Idol rendition of "Lean on Me", from way back in the summer of 2004. The main reason I signed up for YouTube was so that I could post more videos from that summer, so those'll come at some point in the distant future.

Note: Check out this site: Ask A Ninja. HIIIIII-LARIOUS! The first two videos (Episodes 13 & 12) seem to be the best.

(P)reviewing the week to come -- An Update.

2006-02-25T19:45:00.000-03:30

YAH!

Pending List of Things That Make Me Happy:
1. Ashley is coming back to Newfoundland on Tuesday night!
I love this girl. She was supposed to be living with us this past school-year, but unforeseen circumstances forced her to -- Hmm... how shall I put this? -- bail on us. Just kidding Ash, you know that I completely respect your "unforeseen circumstances". Just glad you're coming back. In honour of Ashley, I'm going to throw together a picture collage of her.

And here are some of the desktop background that she would make when she came over to visit and I wasn't there. Being as stressed out as I was the first year, I probably wouldn't have made it through without her... It was nice to come back from the library at like midnight, tired and grumpy, and find one of those backgrounds. Except for the "Welcome to Loserville" one, but that was just funny.

2. I'm going to Ottawa on Wednesday morning to participate in a NERD CONFERENCE! Yay!!! I'm in the UN Society, so I'm going to CANIMUN, my first collegiate-level model UN simulation. Woop woop! I'm representing Pakistan in the World Trade Organization ECOSOC room. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have chosen a room that had nothing to do with anything I was knowledgeable in, cause yeah -- I've had to "cram" for this for the last few weeks. It's like a whole other course. So anyway -- We'll be going to seminars, taking part in debate, and getting a custom-tour of the Pakistani Embassy from their Ambassador. Hurrah!

3. And I'm going to see the Metric concert on Saturday night! I've jsut started listening to them recently, so I'm kind of new to the scene, but from what I can tell, they rock. Hardcore. Technically, the concert is sold out, so we're going to take the scalper route. So barring any unexpected pre-concert muggings or knifings, it should be a splendid concert.

Wow... this has been kind of a sensible post... Well... then.. um... VAMPIRE HOOKERS EAT PANCAKES. That's better -- just a dash of nonsense.

Midterms on my terms

2006-02-24T00:37:00.000-03:30

Don't you love how communications have sped everything up? I've been studying for my German History midterm (which is tomorrow morning), and thinking about all the "Ages" and "Eras". You know -- Romanticism, Beidermeier, The Renaissance... People used to stick to the same ideas for decades. Some of these movements took up the better part of a freaking century! Nowadays, we've got fads that last less than a year. I mean -- what's with that? I'm pretty sure fads didn't even exist way back in the day, or at least if they did, they were too fucking slow to be recognized for what they were. What would it have been like if everyone had had cell phones back in the 18th century, to speed things up a bit? I'm sure that, rather than going through a whole century of the Age of Enlightenment, by the mid-1700s people would have simply been exchanging remarks on "that whole fad of reason that everyone was going on about for a year or two". Then they would have gone back to playing POG.

And what if the reverse were true? What if ideas and concepts still moved and changed so slowly? Well, then we'd have things like the "Age of Pokemon" or "The Chuck Norrisment".

---------------------------------

Also, I had a midterm this morning. Julia and Pete stayed over and we crammed all night. Though I absorbed a bunch of info through the whole ordeal, the main thing I've learned is that if I condition my mind and body, I can force it to write a good test. But when I say "condition", I don't mean in the new-age-healthy-diet-positive-thinking way. The key is to engage in increasingly destuctive behavior -- cookies and donuts for supper, 3 large cups of coffee throughout a sleepless night, and a swig of Bailey's in the morning on the way out the door. That way, your mind recognizes the frightening trend and, in hopes of salvaging its only means of conveyance, it will put on a good show and ace the test.

So I must commend my brain on its decision to do well. It's a good thing it didn't make the mistake of trying to call my bluff, because I would have hated taking that shot of Drain-O after getting back home...

What the funk?!

2006-02-16T21:08:00.000-03:30

The only thing worse than studying a whole bunch, is studying a whole bunch and then CRAPPING UP ON THE FLIPPING MIDTERM!!!

I need a pick-me-up.

How about this: If everyone mails me a tiny bit of crystal meth -- I don't ask for much, just whatever little bit you might have lying around the house -- then I should have enough to get me through the next week. Come on... Sponsoring starving children is so last year. The year of our lord 2006 is all about supporting the potential drug addictions of Canadian college students.

Besides, you've got no excuse not to, cause the postal is free...

--------------------

On a more optimistic note...

A HAPPY BABY!!!

If that doesn't put a smile on your face... well... then maybe you should keep your stimulants to yourself. You clearly need them more than me.

Perfecting the spread-eagle power-nap

2006-02-16T00:51:00.000-03:30

Yesterday, I rediscovered the fact that I've got a midterm coming up this Thursday. That being said, I naturally found myself in a single study-room in the library today. And following my approximately biweekly routine, I found myself becoming tired and taking a nap beneath the study-room table.

Y'see, normally I curl up right under the desk and remain in the same position until my 3 hours in the tiny room are up. Today though, I must have unconsciously spread out, taking up the whole diagonal of the square room's floor.

Normally I do pretty well in keeping track of when, approaching the 3-hour limit, I should crawl up onto my chair and attempt to look presentable. Why look presentable, you ask? Because that's when hot chicks, having been told by the librarians that they're to boot you out of the room -- that's when they come up and knock on the door. I guess it's not strictly hot chicks who do this, but today it happened to be.

The problem was that I was still sprawled out unconscious on the floor.

I woke to tapping. I was immediately alert, and before I'd even openned my eyes, I realized what was going on (Apparently I sleep lightly while napping on thin carpet from the 60s). Whoever was at the door would definitely be looking through the little window right about now, puzzled by the figure on the floor.

After several moments, I realized that, by the way I'd spread out, one of my feet was preventing the study room door from openning inwards. The knocker couldn't open the door even if they wanted to. Having still not moved or openned my eyes, I decided that my plan of action was to be one of strict inaction, ie. I would Ignore the problem and hopefully it would go away.

It didn't.

Following the third set of knocks (and after miming an awakening that would get me into the Screen Actor's Guild), I openned the door, apologizing profusely. I couldn't even make eye-contact, though this was partly because my own eye-contacts were stuck to my eyeballs and causing me to blink uncontrollably.

So yeah: I felt stupid. She felt stupid.
Everybody feels stupid.

The end.

British comedy? Yes, please.

2006-02-13T19:19:00.000-03:30

OK -- best show EVER. At least until they make a show featuring crime-fighting alien robots which can turn into roller-coasters on demand.

< ASIDE> On realizing that my suggested ultra-show sounded strangely similar to Transformers, I googled "Transformer roller-coaster" to see whether this had already been done. What I found was the page of a dude who takes Transformers waaaaaay too seriously. A prime quote is this: "I understand that the Autobots were the ones who wanted a fair fight, but what kind of an idiot puts Omega Supreme in the middle of an uninhabited field 500 hours away from the battle?" What kind of idiot, indeed. Well, apparently the kind of idiot who is a fictional animated robot from space, whose sole purpose is to amuse those of the "Ages 7 to 13" demographic bracket, that's who. < /ASIDE>

Well, anyway... the real show I want to mention is "The IT Crowd", a British comedy show put out by Channel 4. I have decided that I love this show (even from seeing just the second episode), and therefore I will introduce you to it.

Here are the episodes so far (in order), for your viewing enjoyment:

Note: The last two episodes aren't available yet, but the links are directed towards the search results on Google Video which will soon (hopefully) have the video itself. That way, as soon as they're online, they'll show up.

Wet socks

2006-02-13T10:27:00.000-03:30

The Meteorological Service of Canada's WeatherOffice defines St. John's weather as "freezing rain changing to periods of rain this morning then to a few flurries this afternoon. Rainfall amount 5 to 10 mm."

I feel that stringing a series of Indo-European-derived characters together to form a description of the climate does not do justice to the shit that is outside. The sidewalks are filled with the kind of snow that is thin and crusty on top, yet wet and slushy just below. And cold. Did I mention "cold"? Because it's cold.

Whole intersections and portions of road seemed to be flooded due to the rain and melting snow. Twice was I splashed by passing cars. It was just like in one of those clichéd romantic comedy moments, except that I have yet to make out with Julia Roberts (which definitely would have happened by now). And I haven't heard any Shania Twain music.

So I sat through my first class just fine, though my feet were soaked so badly that my late entrance was marked by squeegy-wet shoe sounds. I came to the library afterwards, and (due to the high moisture-content of my sneakers) my feet were really starting to itch. My first idea was to go into the public bathroom stall, remove my socks, fold it up in utilitarian toilet paper, and wring the hell out of it. Unfortunately, due to the one-ply-edness of said toilet paper, this didn't do much good.

Having readorned my feet in their feety attire, I emerged from the stall. I then realized that the bathrooms had automatic hand-dryers. "Oh Patrick, you crafty devil you," I thought as I once again removed my soaking shoes and socks. There were two dryers so, as I stood on top of my shoes, I stuck a sock on the nozzle of each one and let them do their thing. As I stood there, mentally patting my self on the back while watching my socks inflate, I remember vaguely noticing that my corner of the bathroom was starting to smell like feet.

"Dah well, who's gonna say anything?" I thought, before mentally giving myself a high-five.

I'd been there for a good 15 minutes, and was working on the last shoe when some dude said, "Man, that really stinks."

I shrugged it off, but it was at this point that I stopped mentally giving myself the wink-and-the-gun. Maybe it was in my head, but I began to notice the new-comers sniffing the air as they entered. Were my shoes that bad? I mean, I'd never had a smelly feet problem before... Coleman had a smelly feet problem, but me? Naw. Surely this was just a by-product of having 62 psi of hot air blown through every pore of my socks and shoes... But still...

I put back on my not-quite-dry right shoe and slunk out of the bathroom.

So now, here I am -- two relatively dry feet, and no skin off my back.

However, having stood directly in front of gale force, sock-flavored winds for upwards of 20 minutes, I'm praying that I don't smell like feet myself...

WalkSafe

2006-02-09T19:08:00.000-03:30

I signed up to volunteer for WalkSafe this term, so this past Tuesday night, it was Coleman and I, stuck in a small office for several hours with nothing to do. After like an hour of doing nothing except making free popcorn and playing with the walkie-talkies, Coleman suggested that we each snort a line of hot chocolate (also free). Cocaine strikes fear into my pagan heart, but for some reason anything else seems like an acceptable idea. Don't ask. It couldn't be any worse than Sour Patch Kids sugar...
So we rolled up some pieces of the WalkSafe manual, set up some lines with my library card -- rebels that we are -- and got it over with. The powder didn't hurt but it was persistent, so we snorted some water to flush out the chocolatey-ness. And y'know what? As gross as it sounds, it kinda tasted good. I mean, all you'd need to do would be to snort some hot water and it would be like -- I dunno -- real hot chocolate. Freshly brewed. In your nose.

And then the next day, I rubbed my nose, and a chocolate boogie fell out. Gross, huh? Well... you know me -- Can't say I lack class.

Correction: You can... I just won't listen.

-----------------------

We had an intervention last week, and the end-result was that Hendric is moving out on the 12th. I've avoiding talking about Hendric for the last month, since we were living together and it would have been incredibly awkward if he'd ever come across my blog. But... after he moves out it's all fair game, so I'll be sure to post a review of "The Chronicles of Hendric". Who knows -- maybe I'll even make a movie poster for it. Cause I'm that cool.

And someone gimme your address so I can send you secret mail!

Mail fraud?

2006-02-07T16:29:00.000-03:30

For whoever's still listening, who wants to be part of my grand postal experiment??? All it involves on your part is your address. What I'm thinking is that I could cheat the mail system by sending a stamp-less letter via the return address. All I'd have to do would be to write the desired destination as the return address, and an even further-away fake destination (such as freaking Paraguay) as the "real" address. I'm not sure about this, but I don't think that post office dudes are technically allowed to just throw mail out, so they'd have to send it somewhere. As long as the return address is closer than the apparent addressee, then they'd just send it back to where it came from -- wink wink nudge nudge. I'm guessing it would be best to have the fake address as an international one, since then the North American return address would be cheaper.

Suck on that, you fascist postal bastards.

P-A-I-N is a four-letter word.So is A-R-M-S for that matter...

2006-01-27T09:31:00.000-03:30

On Wednesday, I went to the gym for the first time since the end of the summer. I got maybe half-way through my routine, but then had to stop I felt like I was going to throw up on my shoes. Well anyway, I thought all was well and good, but it's two days later, and I find myself lacking several degrees of freedom in my arms. To be precise, I've lost almost 45 degrees of freedom -- any further and they hurt. It's awkward because, given that my joints can't approach straightness, it looks kind of like my arms are in running mode, but my body's only walking. Very awkward.

So today, being the worst so far for pain and angular restriction, I was left with three options:

Run everywhere, so as not to look stupid.
Constantly brace myself against walls and corners and pillars, while using my other fist as a fulcrum to straighten out my arm manually (This only lasts so long, before it starts to bend back again).
Act like a robot.

I adopted a combination of all three for use over the course of the day.

Hopefully, my arms start to get better over the weekend, so that I can make it back to the gym by Monday...

Laying low tonight -- doing some reading or whatever -- so that I'll feel justified in going out tomorrow. It's the Burke House reunion, and I guess there are people coming from waaaay back. Brandom told me today that even people from its pre-co-ed era are showing. That's like before 1991! Wow.

Anyway, I'm out.

---------------------------------

Oh and just in case you have the urge to spice up your boring old desktop, here's the official PAT wallpaper. Do it! Just right-click the linked image. All the cool kids are doing it... Ok, well... I'm doing it. And I seem to remember someone once referring to me as "cool".

Also, here is the unofficial JAY wallpaper, which I made in the summer for some reason. Which reminds me: "Hey Jay, I made a wallpaper of you in the summer! Hopefully that's not too sketchy..."

Roadtrip!!!

2006-01-27T01:01:00.000-03:30

Got on a bus, drove out into the barrens of Newfoundland, went to bars, got drunk, came home at 3am, made a ruckus.

Here's comes the pictorial... but first:

Coleman dropped something behind my desk, and got stuck when I made him pick it up. Then I took pictures, because it was funny.

Lovell and I looking serious. We are sauve devils.

2006-01-27T01:00:00.000-03:30

Lovell and I looking sad.

2006-01-27T00:59:00.000-03:30

Lovell and I trying to pose as extremely happy. This was hard, because I really hate Lovell. I don't think I quite pulled it off.

2006-01-27T00:58:00.000-03:30

Craig. Craig says, "I stole this rum & coke because it is almost as black as me."

2006-01-27T00:57:00.000-03:30

Jennifer and Fancy. Fancy says, "I HAVE LOST ALL SENSATION IN MY FACE! YYYYYES!", then pumps his fist into the air. Classic Fancy.

2006-01-27T00:56:00.000-03:30

Craig and Billy and some girl who I should probably know... If I do, then I apologize profusely, but Craig's man-locks are in your face.

2006-01-27T00:52:00.000-03:30

Heidi and Pete -- I think this is a priceless Kodak family moment.

2006-01-27T00:51:00.000-03:30

Pete and Danielle. Pete is one smooth son of a bitch. Vvvvery sneaky...

2006-01-27T00:50:00.001-03:30

Sarah trying to avoid pictures.

2006-01-27T00:50:00.000-03:30

View of a church from my vantage point, sitting on the road outside the bar.

2006-01-27T00:49:00.001-03:30

Heidi trying to avoid pictures.

2006-01-27T00:49:00.000-03:30

Me trying to avoid the avoidance of Heidi in pictures.

2006-01-27T00:48:00.000-03:30

Creepy Mills.

2006-01-27T00:46:00.000-03:30

Creepier Billy. I think... I think he's trying to communicate...

2006-01-27T00:45:00.000-03:30

Recent "polls": Canadians are stupid.

2006-01-24T17:20:00.000-03:30

I don't like the guy below me.

I don't trust the guy left of me.

It's too fucking cold above me.

The only forseable solution is to the immediate right...
-- the goddamn ocean.

Down here all the fish is happy
As off through the waves they roll
The fish on the land ain't happy
They sad 'cause they in their bowl
But fish in the bowl is lucky
They in for a worser fate
One day when the boss get hungry
Guess who's gon' be on the plate

Under the sea
Under the sea
Nobody beat us
Fry us and eat us
In fricassee
We what the land folks loves to cook
Under the sea we off the hook
We got no troubles
Life is the bubbles
Under the sea

Someday...

A few things about me that you may not have known

2006-01-23T21:37:00.000-03:30

Well, it's been a few days already, so before these few days turn into an exceptionally long dry-spell, I might as well say something. Anything, really. So here goes...

I was not alone in the womb.

Yeah, that's right, people. Through those long trimesters of development, as I was maturing into what would one day be birthed as seven pounds and some-odd ounces of organic joy, I was not alone. It would be a whole lot cooler if the truth were some type of sinister secret, such as being womb-mates with a devil-child who was immediately burned -- but such is not the case. The simple fact is that through the whole pre-natal ordeal, I was accompanied by an empty placenta.

Yep. That's all. I know what you're thinking: "BOOOO-RING."

And I couldn't agree more. I imagine that being in utero with an empty placenta is about as much fun as being stuck in a small room for 9 months with a corrugated cardboard box. Or Stephen Harper. Sure, an empty placenta might seem fun at first -- just as boxes can be to children for several minutes -- but in the end, all you've really got is an empty space that was made to contain something, but doesn't.

So yeah, I was born, and the placental evidence seemed to indicate "Hooray! Twins!", but then they opened them up and one placenta said "BABY!" and the other said "Psych!"

So here's the second part of this very special things-you-may-not-have-known-about-me feature: I've got a little scar on the left side of my chest, right above my armpit.

Back in grade 10 or 11, I somehow came across this little hard bump in the aforementioned area. Being the determined lad that I am, I started poking and picking at it. Before I knew it I was digging at it with a pushpin, bleeding profusely all over the bathroom. And lemme say -- though I didn't know what this thing was, it was WAY in there. We're talking mesodermis here -- Maybe even endodermis -- down in the layers where the skin gets fibrous.

So anyway, after at least a half hour, I finally got this thing out. At first, I thought it was a little rock or something, but then I looked closer. What it actually looked like was a tiny little tooth -- a molar -- complete with the hollowed out center and the twin bumps that molars have. So I was like "cool", and I put it in a pill bottle and brought it to school to show all my friends, cause I mean, hey -- what else was I going to do with it?

So how do these two Pat-facts relate? Well, they don't really... but I can hypothesize.

What I think happened is that when my twin and I were both little fetii, he used to come over and chill at my crib sometimes. He knew it was against the rules, but he was the rebel-type, y'know? Then one day he came over with some brew-dogs and got really wasted and couldn't find his way back out... And... then he bit me... and he died.
The end.

Wow. Enough of this. I'm at the library and it's time to get back to work.

On a side-note, road-trip this weekend was AMAZING, so I'll have some pictures up at a later date. Over and out I'm done.

I cartoonified myself!

2006-01-21T17:04:00.000-03:30

Still needs to tweaking, and it doesn't exactly look like me, but close enough!

Revised schedule

2006-01-20T10:19:00.000-03:30

So it's 10:30am. I had this highly motivated plan on the go, which went a'little something.... a'like this:

9am: German History class.
10am: Run at the track for an hour.
11am: Go home and shower and eat.
1pm: Come back to school for a UN Society meeting.
2pm: Do some studying in the library.
5pm: Another UN meeting about CANIMUN.
6pm: Go to Biochemistry Mixer.
8pm: Head to Mandy's for party.

So in short: Work. Work. Work. Work. Work. Work. Drink.

It's regressed into this:

9am: German History class.
10:30am: Go to Biochem Mixer.

Which shortens to: W-Drink.

Since the mixer doesn't technically start until 5, I'm planning on just going to the Breezeway (campus bar) right now, splitting a jug with someone, and depressing the living bejesus out of my pre-frontal cortex. How I'll deal with the UN meetings has yet to be considered...

In other news, Coleman wants me to interview him on my blog. To this, I give an emphatic "Go fuck yourself!". Get your own blog you commie bastard! What -- you think you can just drop yours and be a regular feature on mine? I'm not even a regular feature on mine...

So after the guy has the nerve to ask me to interview him, he redeems himself with a commendable idea: In preparation for the next Conservative government, we should open our own private health care clinic. "But Patrick," you might think, "You and Coleman have no credentials to practice medicine, nor do you own any supplies." True. But what we lack in "qualification", we make up for in enthusiasm and Neo/Polysporin. Ulcers? Here, drink this. Cerebral hemorrhaging, you say? Slap a little Polysporin on your noggin, my friend. And don't worry -- the toast is fine.* Though I'm no doctor, I'm of firm belief that Polysporin can fix everything from crib-death to clamydia.

Or as Coleman and I were saying at the time, we could just open a clinic without any intentions of helping the sick or injured. People would come in, and we'd be there with a barbecue, handing out hotdogs and hamburgers. "Defibrillator? No, but how would your dad like a delicious ballpark frank?" And the best part is, we'd just charge everything to Medicare -- a grand ol' government-subsidized barbecue.

Hmmm... so it's already waaaay past 10:30, so I'd better go find someone to booze around with, if this is actually gonna happen :)

*You might have to be Canadian to get this reference. Oh, Heritage Minutes, how I love thee. Almost as much as Hinterland's Who's Who... Anyone else ever wonder what happened to the Arctic Ptarmigan?

Another thing to do if I were feeling evil.

2006-01-18T19:42:00.000-03:30

I don't know what's with all these evil posts in a row. Should I be concerned? Dah well -- I'll just get out all of this belated teen angst :)

DIRECTIONS:
Take a puppy, and tie a kite onto its collar. Then wrap a bow around its neck. Then buy it a ball for it to play fetch with. Sounds pleasant, right?
Take the puppy outside to play with it for awhile. Then throw the ball in the direction of your friendly neighborhood electrical sub-station.
The end.

In theory, this could work for a small child as well, except that I don't believe that small children enjoy playing fetch quite as much. I suggest substituting the ball for something that appeals to children... such as... Pokémon cards or... POGS? They're still hip with the kiddies, aren't they?

---------------------------------

So I was at Toys R Us today, indulging my inner child, when I saw this big honkin' thing of construction paper. I mean -- I wasn't feeling too much like doing crafts, but for eight bucks, how can you go wrong? I'm sure my future holds many crafts in store for me. So I reached to pick it up, and lemme say, this was not just your average booklet of craft paper. This was a solid brick of good ol' fashioned, all-American, 400-page construction paper, made especially for bulk-buy consumer whores such as myself. In fact, rather than "booklet", it'd be more appropriately called a construction paper encyclopedia. Keeping in mind my ineptitude with respect to all approximations of volume, dimensions and weight, I'd say that this thing clocked in at a good 15 lbs.

I'm definitely going to pick me up another one of these when I get to be a parent, cause I'm thinking it'd serve dual purposes: 1) Useful during craft-time with the kid, and 2) a fine substitute for a baby-sitter -- I could just huff this thing on top of my child and I'm sure they'd be pinned for several hours. But what am I talking about... "pick me up another one of these"? I'll probably have the same one, in all its child-crushing splendor, still perfectly suitable for any and all the crafting and constraining that I see fit.

------------------------------------

So hurrah, it's that time of the week again: OPEN MIC NIGHT!
Aaaaaaaand... LOST! I'm finally caught up, except for the 10th episode, which is airing again tonight, so I'm all up ons this.
And after OPEN MIC, I'm going to head out early to go over to Burke. I guess people are going to be over there hanging about, so I'll join in. Plus, Craig's heading home this Monday so I want to make sure I see him a bit before he trucks er' back to the Q-dot.

Something to do if I were feeling evil.

2006-01-18T10:03:00.000-03:30

This is the only "Pinky-and-The-Brain"-esque caper that I've ever thought of:

Somewhere in the world, probably in Venezuela, there is a bird that sounds exactly like the cross-walk sound. You know what I mean -- that chirping sound that cross-walks make to help guide the blind through busy intersections.
Well, if I were feeling mean, I would just catch a few humdred of those (via illegal poaching, of couse, since I am feeling mean) and bring them back to civilization. Then I would campaign to host some type of International Summit for the Visually Impaired in a dense urban centre. I would hold the openning ceremonies outside, in a park situated between several busy throughfares. Then, as I stepped up to the mic for what was supposed to be my introductory speech, I would release the hundreds of exotic cross-walk birds on the unsuspecting crowd. And I'd start yelling "WALK! WALK! THE SIGN SAYS WALK!", resultings to mass disorientation, since every blind fibre in their body will want to walk.

Take that blind people and the ecosystem!*

Of course, only if I was feeling mean.

---------------------------------

Actually, this might not even work in a few years, since they are slowly but surely replacing all the chirpy sounds with computerized voice countdowns. If you haven't heard one of these WALK-sign things before, it consists of a creepy robot voice counting down from 10, with all the odd numbers originating from the sign on one side of the road, and all the even from the other. I guess this helps guide the blind in the right direction.

They recently installed them at home, so at one point, Coleman and I tinkered with the idea of finding a visually impaired person, putting on our best robot voices, and confusing the crap out of them. This would probably not work though, since if television and movies have taught me anything, it's that blind people have uncanny hearing and cane-related-kick-the-crap-out-of-me skills.

*Note: I don't really have anything against blind people. Being politically incorrect is just a pasttime. Besides, it's not like they're going to get the chance to be offended by my site -- blind people can't use computers, silly.

Eep... OK, that last one felt wrong.

For the friend who's allergic to everything...

2006-01-18T00:23:00.000-03:30

Here's a fun activity for a lazy summer day:

1. Catch several dozen bumble-bees in a jar.
2. Throw jar in freezer and go out to buy some delicious peanut-butter. If you are already in possession of peanut-butter, then do a little jig for a half hour, hopping around and singing in a Irish accent.
2(b) Send me the video.
3. After the bumble-bees have stopped moving (and not too much longer after their last twitch), remove them from the jar and quickly yet carefully apply the peanut-butter to their undersides, making sure not to cover the wings or stingers.
4. Place them back in the freezer, since some will probably have started moving by then.
5. After a few more minutes, remove the jar from the freezer, open it, and throw its contents under the door of your sleeping, hyper-allergenic pal's room.

And when you hear that your friend has woken up and enjoyed the surprise, you'll barge in and say "IT WAS ME! I THREW THE PEANUT-BUTTERED BEES INTO YOUR ROOM!" And then he'll laugh, or at least try to as his throat closes off. But you'll laugh twice as hard, making up for his wheezy little wiener-laugh.

And then you'll stab him in the heart with his Epi-Pen, or whatever it is that you do with those things.

A good time had by all...

-----------------------------------

You know what's ridiculous? That.

You know what's intense? This is intense.

Get it? "THIS" is intense...? ...in tents...? Bah! Whatever. You suck anyway.

-----------------------------------

Coleman wants to get a rabbit. He says that they're on sale for $25 bucks at Pets Unlimited. I say go for it. With prices that cheap, you can just flush it down the toilet if it's not what you expected.

Next you're gonna tell me Mr. T isn't cool...

2006-01-10T23:54:00.000-03:30

So according to MacGregor, Chuck Norris isn't funny anymore.

Ever watch that episode of Doug where some trendy dude on his favourite TV show wears Doug's exact outfit -- you know... the green sweater-vest with the khaki shorts? And then Doug goes to school the next day and everyone is wearing the same outfit as him, but no one seems to remember that he had it before it was cool? Then at the end of the show, the fad ends and everyone tells Doug that it's time to let it go, but in reality Doug's just wearing the same fucking thing that he's worn every day since time immemorial? And remember how they tell him it's played out, and that it's not cool anymore? And finally, the end credits roll and the giant egg pops up and plays that funky music?

Yeah -- I feel like that.

Doug. Not the egg.

Though that egg was pretty funky.

Fuck all you poseurs.

Except Erin, cause she gave me that Chuck Norris picture back in the day. I doubt the signature's real, but who really cares anyway?

I feel like crap. Now you do too.

2006-01-09T11:30:00.001-03:30

I enjoy using railings when I'm sick.

Does that make me a bad person?

Ow.

2006-01-09T02:22:00.000-03:30

I just shaved off a chunk of skin in the vicinity of my carotid artery. I'm off to go improv a band-aid by masking-tape...ing a wad of toilet paper onto my neck... I thought I'd blog it first, since it was one of the most exciting occurences in my otherwise noneventful day.

Except -- oh yeah -- Coleman got a pneumatic-electric-automatic telescope thing for Christmas, so we took it out to the backyard to take it for a test-drive.

Let me just say this: If anyone makes any cracks about Coleman and I going star-gazing together, then I might just have to break some legs. Maybe if I call it something less -- how to put this... -- something less suggestive of homosexuality... then it won't sound so bad.
How about "sky-ogling"? No... still not right.
Maybe... "star-glaring"? Or better yet, "star-glowering"! Yes... that'll work. The term conjures the image of two dudes standing in the back-yard -- arms crossed -- frowning up at the sky and drinking beers. "Star-gazing" brings to mind two people lying on their backs, shoulder-to-shoulder with their bodies pointing in opposite directions. Definitely not what we planned to do...

So we went outside to star-glower and, after discovering that we lived in a brightly-lit city from which only the moon and airplanes are visible, we turned Coleman's $200 telescope away from the sky and towards the windows of our neighbors -- Our distant, across-the-valley neighbors.

It was kind of like Hitchcock's Rear Window. Except we only looked at parking lots, a cieling fan, and a lady at her computer.

...

Come to think of it, it was nothing like Rear Window.
Like I said, my day was uneventful...

Oh dear. I seem to be bleeding onto my shirt.
Where's that masking tape?

Picture Recap

2006-01-07T19:31:00.001-03:30

Ok, so I've had some photos on my camera for awhile, sitting around and not being much use to anyone. I guess I might as well post some of the better ones up here.

First off, we've got the before Christmas pics:

Coleman finished his last exam, and being the happy kid that he was, he came downstairs to my room and tore his socks off his feet.

He then stuck the tattered socks in Alisha's face.

And when I wasn't looking, he stood on my bed and took a big bite of a chocolate christmas ornament that I'd hung from my vent. Yep... he even ate the decorative foil.

The rest of the pictures are from Burke House, on the last night before everyone went home for break. I'm only going to explain those that I feel need explanations.

Thumbs up: Craig gives his seal of approval. Cut your hair you hippie...

Me placing make-up on Kristen's face. Notice how I could have said "applying", yet chose to say "placing". The former word would imply an underlying sense of order, whereas I just put colors in places that I felt like it.

Pete, Bert, and Billy in Martin's room.
Notice Bert's exam mustache. That's class. Class worthy of capital "C". ON second thought -- Class worthy of capital punishment.

We swapped hats...

-----------------------------------
Back home, we rented a room at the Courtney Bay Inn, so here are the choice photos from that:

Adam pressing himself against the window (???). I think he's going for the creepy-gremlin-on-the-airplane-wing effect...

Justine, Megan and Andrew on the bed. Those glasses were my dad's from the 70s... I never actually believed that the 70s were as bad as they said, until I saw these beasts.

Erin and Andrew posing.

Some guys invited the girls upstairs to a party earlier in the night. The didn't go at first, but we went up later, only to find the door ajar and the room empty.
So we stole some pizzas and and like three 60s of liquor. Then Erin and I felt bad so we took the booze back, but goddamn that pizza was good. What an awesome swindle!

We also had some group photos, but they must not have been on my camera. If anyone has good pictures, send them to me, cause I didn't get much!

-----------------------------------
And lastly, on our last night the remainders (Andrew, Jenn, Adam, and me) went driving around looking for something to do. It was a Wednesday night, so the best thing we could think of was to drive around and try to find a certain cell phone tower of our choice.

We picked out one and spent a good half hour driving around, then trekked up this service road.

We finally got to it, but I couldn't figure out a way to get it to show up on film. Mhen, whatever. I'm over it.

-----------------------------------
So now that those pictures are out of the way, I'll have a real update sometime soon! Over and out I'm done.

Christmas ramblings

2005-12-28T02:57:00.000-03:30

Fun with demographics:

-- MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hopefully you're having a goddamn Jesus good time.

-- HAPPY HANUKKAH! Who needs the son of God when you've got a distinct lack of foreskin? Moses and dreidels represent.

-- HAPPY STATUTORY HOLIDAYS! To all you other unclassified religiosos, have a good nondescript morning and a very good recommencement of the Gregorian calendar.

So yeah, it's been awhile... I've been busy with my recent carousings and haven't had much time for blogging, but I've started to miss it. Which leads me back to this typing-thinking-typing-erasing-spending-hours-writing affair. It's wierd, cause I'm not sure if I like doing the actual work, but I seem the enjoy the end-product -- the end-product being the shit before you now.

Before I go any further, let me explain something. I'm going to divulge a piece of informatics that, before now, only a handful of people knew. I figure that pretty soon I'll need to explain it to a bunch of people anyway, so what the hell: I have a single boob. Correction -- I HAD a single boob. I guess I had this crazy deal where one of my glands decided to go all-out mutiny on me and start with an "abnormal growth pattern", leading to a single small boobular-looking thing on my left side. Yeah -- I know... weird. Tell me about it.

But as of right before Christmas, I had cosmetic surgery to remove it. I was sorta hoping that they'd give it to me -- I don't know -- in a jar or something, after the surgery, but nay -- I didn't get any jar-boob for Christmas. Tragic, I know. What I did get was a whole bunch of pain and discomfort and a missing nipple.

THAT'S RIGHT: There is a distinct lack of nipplage on my left side. I mean -- I've got the decorative skin discoloration that normally accompanies the nipple, but no little nubby thing that defines the the damn thing! But whatever, who needs a nipple anyway? Pfffft... not me. I'll hang in there without it.

On the positive side, I have always wanted a nickname, and this opens up the door to many interesting possibilities. As Adam "Lefty" Leclerc has already suggested, I could be "Unipple" now. Y'know... sorta like an abbreviated form of uni-nipple? Or how bout "Anipplar"? Pronouced sort of like you would say "asymmetrical"... Or hey -- how bout "Asymmetrical" itself?! Man, the possibilities are just endless. Just thinking about all these options has made me slightly -- no, even more -- mildly excited. Hurrah.

-----------------------------

So over the holidays, my brother and I were talking about a segment that aired on CBC's The Rick Mercer Report, in which Stephen Harper and Rick Mercer parodied that Nike ad. You know... that one that originally showed Iginla and Naslund dogding pucks that the other shot from the roof of a building? Well, anyway, Chris thought it was hilarious, apparently for the sole reason that Stephen Harper appears so... natural looking. What he didn't realize was that this relaxed air couldn't possible have come naturally. In fact, I suspect the CBC needed to hire a professional anesthesiologist to pump Stephen Harper full of 3.5 L of morphine in order to achieve that "natural" look.

Frankly, this Harper dude doesn't seem to be a good representative of the Canadian people. He appears more suited to be lurching around yelling "MORE BRAINS!" than sitting up at 24 Sussex Drive.

-----------------------------

My family and I played a new car game on the way to Moncton yesterday to see my brother off on his flight back to Montreal. As I've said before, my parents are firm believers in the positive dietary powers of cheese. Every time my brother or myself come home for any period of time or receive a care-package, a large 2kg block of marble cheese changes hands. So on our way to Moncton, we had this block of cheese sitting on the back window of the car. The game evolved so that whenever we took a tight turn, we'd hear the shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-CLUNK of the cheese sliding across the back window and ramming with all it's dairy-like momentum into the side of the car, after which we would all yell "CHEESE COLLISION!" in unison. I kid you not. My brother with corroberate this.

It was a great game though. No winners or losers -- just a group of four happy people, a dog, and a single 2kg block of cheese, coexisting peacefully in a confined space for upwards of one-and-a-half hours. OK, maybe I lied: there was one loser. At first, it was just my brother and I playing, but then my mom joined in. She was welcomed unquestionably into the game. We all played happily for awhile before my Dad, who had previously remained absent, decided to chime in. While the cheese was still in the shhhhhhhhhhhh sliding phase, my dad yelled "CHEESE COLLISION!" by himself. There was a silence from both the cheese and the other passengers in the car. The block had ended up running into a piece of newspaper and so, lacking sufficient momentum, there was no CLUNK. The rules were fuzzy at best, but we all agreed that this constituted a loss on my Dad's part. We all though it better if he didn't partake in the Cheese Collision game any longer.

---------------------------

I'll post pictures later, but that's all I got for now!
Peace out and such.

Appendices

2005-12-13T17:00:00.000-03:30

I'm pretty busy studying at the moment -- filling my thinker with things that need thinking -- but I figured I'd just post up some random semi-relevant things that've been cluttering my computer. This is more for me than anything else, since I tend to lose the hard-copies of most everything...

Appendix A: The final page of "L-I-F-E Is A Four-Letter Word" by Nicholas Monsarrat, torn out of a book in a bar on my birthday earlier this year.

Appendix B: The disconnect notice which we received on the day which it was supposed to occur.

---------------------------------------

I'm currently studying for my Microbiology final. Last time I was studying for this class I was up all night, wired on Red Bull, and performing some of the most ludicrous acts of studitude (Sure it's a word. Trust me.) that I've ever been involved in. Though it's commonplace for me to pace around, sometimes rapping and drawing things out on my palms Hellen-Keller-style, I've never acted out the formation of a biofilm before. Think you're an intense studier? "Biofilm: The Patrick Edition" consisted of me falling to the floor, flattening myself against it, making squishing sounds, then throwing my dirty laundry on top of myself. Had anyone been looking in my window at 4am, for whatever reason, I think they might have concluded that they had just witnessed a man snap under the immense pressures of academic life-- reduced to a quivering shell (because I did quiver as I made oozing sounds), unable to face the world and most likely in the process of soiling himself.

Hopefully there's no need to be that intense about it this term...

Some things are best told in a more dramatic manner.

2005-12-12T15:21:00.002-03:30

Coleman wanted me to write about this, so I did. Hopefully no one here is a great fan of rational thought... I think the only audience who would ever enjoy this play would be... deaf... babies. And even then, only if it had a lot of flashy colors and a venue with variously-textured items which hung from the rafters.

ACT I

SCENE 1
{BASEMENT ROOM on 12 HATCHER STREET. A large 3-storey house with central heating containing a duct that goes from the floor of COLEMAN's room upstairs to the ceiling of PATRICK's room in the basement. PATRICK sits on his bed, contemplating important-like chemistry things while surrounded by books and looking suave in his black velvet housecoat. It is very silky and smooth. Masterpiece Theatre theme is playing in background.}

COLEMAN enters.

COLEMAN
I've got it! The most ridiculous, stupid idea ever! I can't belief I didn't think of it yesterday!

PATRICK
What now Coleman? Can't you see I'm studying?

COLEMAN
But this is super important.

PATRICK
As important as when, at 4 o'clock in the morning as we lay in our beds in residence, you felt it necessary to host a whistling competition -- A whistling competition in which you falsely claimed championship and continued to fashion yourself a crown out of construction paper. A wicked crown based on lies and deceit and goddamn horrible whistling?

COLEMAN
At least twice as important as that.

PATRICK
Ok well in that case, what are you thinking?

COLEMAN
(Walking beneath and inspecting ducts running along ceiling.)
Do you think that this duct in your ceiling comes right down from my room to yours?

PATRICK
Well... we do talk through it all the time, but there's got to be some twists and... U-joints in it. It can't go 3 floors straight down...

COLEMAN
I think we should test it out. I've got a ridiculous, stupid idea that I've been working on all morning.

PATRICK
As much as I do love ridiculous and stupid ideas, I am currently studying and wearing a black velvet housecoat. It is very silky and smooth. I have no time for your shinanigans tonight.

COLEMAN
Come on...

PATRICK
Ok.

COLEMAN
Splendid! I'm going to go pour water down my vent, and then we can figure out where it comes out. Hopefully.

PATRICK
(Moving to below duct.)
Ok, I'll stand beneath the ducts and monitor the situation from down here.

(COLEMAN exits. Fade out.)

SCENE 2
{UPSTAIRS ROOM on 12 HATCHER STREET. Stair climbing sounds, before fading in as COLEMAN enters with a glass of water.}

COLEMAN
(Moving to the vent.)
You ready Pat?

PATRICK (Offstage.)
Ow! Yes. But the duct is really hot from all the heat going through it.

COLEMAN
OK, I'm pouring it down now...

(Pours water down vent.)

PATRICK (Offstage.)
Hey! I can hear it! It's coming straight down into the pipes...

COLEMAN
Aha! I am victorious! I am champion!

PATRICK (Offstage.)
What? How is there any concievable way in which this was a competition? -- Oh wait...

(Pause.)

The duct is getting very cold along the bottom...

COLEMAN
Really? How very interesting...

PATRICK (Offstage.)
Wait a second... (Pause.)

Ahhhhh! My books! My precious notes! Ahhhh! A bucket! Coleman, bring a bucket! Quick!!!

(Cut to black. Sound of heavy footsteps running downstairs.)

SCENE 3
{BASEMENT ROOM again. PATRICK has his hands cupped below the ceiling ventilation ducts, which are rapidly leaking water all over his notes and room.}

(COLEMAN enters with a bucket, trailed by ANDRE. Both laughing.)

PATRICK (Angrily kicking notes and books out of the way.)
Hurry you idiot! My hands are getting full! This was a horrible idea!

COLEMAN (Placing bucket beneath the leak and placing his arm around PATRICK.)
Well, at least we all learned a valuable lesson...

PATRICK
I hate you.

(Tuba plays the WAOW WOAW sound.)
(Fade out.)

SCENE 4
{Spotlight fades in on OLD MAN sitting on a stool front stage right. A SMALL CHILD is sitting on his lap as he holds a large, old-looking book.}

OLD MAN (Closing book.)
And that, my young boy, is another tale of Patrick and Coleman's failed attempt to lead the lives of mature, liberated members of society.

SMALL CHILD
But what happens next Grandpapa? What happens to Patrick and Coleman?

OLD MAN
I can't tell you that! There are so many more stories to tell before we get to the end!

SMALL CHILD
Please Grandpapa?

OLD MAN
Oh fine. Patrick wins 182 million dollars with which he buys a small tropical island and donates the rest to The Jump Rope for Heart foundation. He later discovers that he's been conned into buying a large floating sandbox supported entirely by pool noodles. And Coleman dies. Of gonorrhea. I'm told it was very painful.

(Masterpiece Theatre theme fades in as OLD MAN and SMALL CHILD walk offstage. CHUCK NORRIS enters stage right. CHUCK NORRIS does 3 backflips and a round-house kick. CHUCK NORRIS exits stage left. Lights fade out with Masterpiece Theatre theme.)

---------------------------------

Man -- I'm awesome. Take that Shakespeare. Bitch please.
I suppose I should stop procrastinating and get back to studying...

Christmas-sy-ness-erie and failure

2005-12-11T22:26:00.000-03:30

Today, Coleman and I kicked off Christmas with a good ol' fashioned house fire. Though it might be more exciting if I meant this in the danger-filled, fire-department-involving, somebody-gets-hurt way, all I mean is that we made use of the fireplace. You see -- Technically, we weren't really supposed to be using the fireplace at all (on landlord's orders), but we figured that if the contractors had put all that effort into building a freaking fire-resistent hole into our living room, then we better god-damn-well use it. Plus we had a bunch of mail flyers and boxes and... a t-shirt lying around, and we needed to clean up a bit.

Coleman looking awed. Or just excited, cause we were burning shit.

Coleman, no doubt yelling something ridiculous...

Awwwww... we're so wholesome.

Look at all that freakin garbage. Isn't is crazy how you can make shit disappear with just a little bit of fire? Hm... Maybe this is how arsonists think...

And then Alisha and I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Also, I gave my room a quick post-exam clean-up cause it was getting a little disgusting. I'd been leaving all my laundry on the couch, since I was too lazy to fold it every time I did a load. This had been going on for awhile, cause I think I'd been picking my morning clothes out of this pile for at least two "couch-fulls" . So anyway, I actually folded it all and found that, as I was shaking the wrinkles out of a few articles, a couple little bugs flew out. And you know what kind it were? Earwigs! Those little ones with pinchers sticking out of their poopers! (Not that it should matter to most people what type of bug is flying out of their clothes... Any time that you find one of the lowest forms of life living within your umkempt clothes, you tend to question your place in the whole hierarchy...) But yeah, I know: EFFING DISGUSTING! My clothes had been there so long that earwigs had started living in them. Needless to say, I was much too lazy to wash them all again, so I just shook all the rest twice as hard, and threw them into my drawers. So what? I hate laundry much more than I hate bugs. Plus, I could freeze the earwigs with canned air, which provided for some residual amusement from the whole affair.

So like I've said, I just finished up with the bulk of my exams. Man -- I've gotta say that it is such a relief to be less dependant on coffee. My sleep hours had been insane. In the two nights before, I'd had 3 and 2 hours of sleep respectively. Why, you ask? Because I had 3 exams within a 24-hour-and-1-minute period, which sucked. Sucked balls, even -- because, had I had that many within a 24-hour period, I would've been able to defer one, which would have rocked immensely.

But I didn't, so I wrote the effing exams, having only 3 hours of coffee-fueled sustenance with which to study for my last exam in the between-time after the preceding one. To commemorate this low-point in my academic life, I fashioned this shirt during the incoherent daze of that morning:

Though I failed in many ways that day, I did succeed in staying true to the shirt. And that little bit of success kept me sane. OK -- slightly sane. Had I been completely sane, I wouldn't have thought that I'd seen all those tiny little bugs flying around my room while I was studying (though my laundry might validate their existence). And I probably wouldn't have seen those nonexistant people turning the corners ahead of me, only to turn it myself and find empty halls. And I certainly wouldn't have killed that hooker. But like I said, that small sense of success in living up to the shirt allowed me to feel a little better, cause -- hey --at least I hadn't wasted a perfectly good shirt for nothing... All I'd wasted was hundreds of dollars in class fees...

--------------------------------------
Public service announcement to the French (best read in an exaggerated accent):
Wear deoderant. You'll wonder where de odour went.

Yet another benefit to being named "Max Power":
You can be hanging out in bars with friends and make comments like, "I'd like to see her on Max Power". I also opens up many other opportunities to speak in the third person, which is my second favourite person to speak in.
--------------------------------------

Also, everyone should start listening to "The New Pornographers". Their song "The End of Medicine" comes highly recommended. So listen to it. Twice.

Disconnect Notice?

2005-11-30T20:08:00.000-03:30

OK, so I just got home from the library awhile ago and there was a hand-addressed envelope in the mailbox. It was from Newfoundland Power. Due to the fancy cursive writing on the front, I was expecting something like an invitation to a birthday party for... electricity... or something. But nay, it was (as the title says) a disconnect notice for our power, set for tonight. I guess a guy had dropped by to inquire personally as to why the hell our bills were not being payed. You see, it's supposed to be our landlord's job to take care of the bills after we give him the money, but this notice brings up the pressing question: WHERE THE CRAP IS OUR MONEY GOING?!

But fear not, the landlord owns a few houses and used to actually live in this one himself, so we're thinking that the disconnect notice is a warning for one of his other properties. Hopefully that's the reason, but just in case, Coleman's preparing for the worst. He's currently wearing one of those little headlamp dealies, kind of like the ones coal-miners use. Yep... don't ask where he got it... Coleman has a lot of useless crap. Or rather, he's got useless crap that would be considered useless until some ridiculous situation like the current one comes about.

I'm going to enjoy some warm food while it's still feasible.

Chainlink

2005-11-29T15:06:00.000-03:30

I was thinking...
Ever notice how chainlink fences in urbanized areas always have garbage clinging to them and lying around them. Well, walking to school today through a school field, I was thinking that, all-in-all, this makes for a pretty ugly environment. I got thinking about how much of an eyesore they were, and how much better these places would look without them -- as if the mess were a flaw of the fence.

And then I realized that there isn't anything particularly wrong with these fences themselves -- They just slow the blowing garbage long enough for us to see what slobs we really are.

What's wrong with me?!!?

2005-11-29T10:56:00.000-03:30

Where's my spark?? You know... that little thing which allowed me write all that wonderful crap for the past year -- that little thing which allowed me to vent and rant on a regular basis -- purge my mind of the nonsense within? Where is it?
I don't know where the urge went... but it's loss, for me at least, can be expressed with one word: Tragic! Like a bashful squirrel in a pile of pancakes, I can't even form a decent metaphor anymore! Oh the shame!

...Well... at least I still have onomatopoeia. BAM BOOM WOOF POOP!

Hey -- Wait a sec...

That last one was't onomatopoeia... it was simply a childish noun... NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Onomatopoeia, have I lost you too???

Uh... yeah... OK, short recap -- This week is set to rape me, so I've got to get this out now:

This past Saturday was the Burke house Christmas party, and even though I'm not technically part of the house anymore, I was allowed to show up anyway... AS SANTA!!! I've got to say that it seems to me that whenever you're Santa, no matter who you are, you automatically feel like a pimp. Well, I guess that's wrong; I should hope that department store Santas don't feel like pimps, because with all those children around, that'd be sort of... gross. But I know I felt like a pimp. Bitches and Ho's indeed.

So anyway, when Martin gave me the cue to come over, I stopped working on my labs and bolted the whole length of the 10-minute run to Burke. I got there, put on the suit, and -- wait. The suit needs a little aside. [This Santa suit was the mother of all ghetto-style suits I've ever come across. The only way it could have been more welfare were if it had been made entirely out of foodstamps. All we could find was the old hat and jacket, so we improvised a beard and pants, using synthetic snow and a pair of bright pink sweat pants which -- oddly enough -- we'd found in the corner of Martin's room.]

So, while banging a drumstick on a cowbell, I entered into the dimly lit downstairs lobby where everyone was "socializing" (ie. getting their booze on). As soon as I came out, all the drunks started yelling and crowding and touching. As I squinted above my mustache and tried to make sense of all the drunk-talk that was flying around, my first thought was this: "I am WAY too sober to be here."

But it worked out! It was actually so much fun giving out the presents, even in the stone-sober state I was in at the time. And then after that, there was bunny-juice. Good times. So all in all, it was a good night.

Oops, I thought that I'd explained bunny juice on this blog already, but when I went to link it, I couldn't find anything. Here's the quick down-and-dirty. If you're one of the lucky 12 who are picked to make bunny-juice for Christmas party, this is what you do:

Take $1000 in hard liquor and pour it into a recycling bin
Everyone takes a shot (called the death pill).
Pour in $100 in concenterated juice mix, Tang, and fruit slices (this is done in waves, taking a shot after each addition until all the juice mix is added).
Stir the whole shebang with a giant wooden paddle.
Serve chilled.

I did this last year and it was SO much fun! You have like 20 shots of progressively weaker drink, and by the end you don't know how to pronounce your own name. Only in residence...

Sorry if this is a tad incoherent, but it's rushed, owing to the fact that I've got to get back to work. No time to proffread! ... heh... I'm so tongue-in-cheeky.

Later peoples-who-still-read-this!

2005-11-24T21:47:00.000-03:30

So as I've mentioned before, I live by an elementary school. This makes it so that I'm constantly re-exposed to all the wonderful stimili that grammar school had to offer; the kids playing that game with the ball tied to a pole, children screaming and running in circles, the over-bearing parents picking up their offspring, and yes -- the elaborate system of bells.

As I was stepping out of the house earlier today, one of those obnoxious bells went off, and it got me thinking.
"I mean -- wasn't it just horrible how these kids were being trained? They've got them working under a static schedule, every destinations pre-ordained -- every room exitted and entered on the cue of a mechanical bell -- classically conditioned, like fucking Pavlov's dogs? How sad... Glad I'm past that."

And then, as I left the school behind and plodded on to my one o'clock class, I realized this: I had no reason to pity these kids. I was still on the same schedule -- I'd just been trained to do it without the bells.

See you on Sunday.

2005-11-18T17:57:00.000-03:30

Things I've learned in the past 36-hour day:

Everything is funnier when you're tired.
A box of Ritz crackers and a pocket full of multivitamins is not a breakfast to go.
When you're waiting through the last presentation before it's your turn in front of the class; when you've been up all night; when you have no doubt drank the equivalent output of 3 stalks of coffea shrubery -- it is at this point that muscle fatique will set in. And it will be muscle fatique of the spincter. You haven't experienced true public speaking anxiety until you've been forced to seriously contemplate your escape plan should you accidentally wet your pants while waiting your turn to present.

I'm heading to bed in a few minutes. I wonder how long you need to be asleep before it's technically considered a coma...

I am pumped about this sleep though. I'm going to be REM-ing in record time. Most pronto, indeed.

I plan on shattering the nap-snooze barrier -- picking up momentum as I'm propelled ever-so-quickly up through the known stages of sleep -- and as I cast aside the ragged alpha waves of this worldly tomb that is myself, I'll embrace the rhythmic comfort of the delta -- soaring silent-screaming from the safety of this cold hard substantial, into the soft abstract infinite of the coma-sphere.

God bless Psychology 1000. And beds. Always the beds.

Excuses, excuses...

2005-11-16T09:59:00.000-03:30

This is really weird... I'm not sure why I haven't been writing much on this thing lately...

You see, usually I'm just chock full of cracked out ideas and musings, many of which any self-respecting monkey on methamphetamines would hastily repress. But lately, I just can't think of anything. That might be putting it the wrong way, cause it's not like I usually have to brainstorming session before plugging my thought into the good ol' computator -- I just think of things throughout the day which I have the urge to write about. In fact, I used to actually carry a notepad around sometimes, just so that I could jot down subjects (on a whim) which I felt needed my attention in blog format.

But as of late, I just haven't been having as many of those light-bulb moments. Kinda odd... wonder what the cause of this is...
Could it be the utter lack of sleep? Possibly. I'm lucky to get up to 6 hours nowadays, and more often than not, it's less...
Could it be that I'm maturing in a respectable member of society -- one who can concern himself only with serious and important matters such as his future and... the gross domestic product of Uzbekistan ($47.59 billion)? Highly unlikely. In case you're new to this scene, I licked a gas station this weekend.

So here I stand. Not sure why, but this slow pace may keep up for a little bit longer, to my chagrin. I'll write when it's in me, but I can't say how often that'll be. So if by chance you enjoy reading this shit, I'll just say this;

"I'm sorry. You'll just have to wait for my brain to starts working again..."

Or stops working, depending on how you look at it.

AND PS - In case anyone cares, I always try to respond to comments (so as not to be an ungrateful host), but I've fallen a bit behind lately. I will get back to them though!

Tom Green is ridiculous.

2005-11-11T16:41:00.000-03:30

So I randomly checked Tom Green's blog because there was a link from Muchmusic, and I guess he's a hardcore blogger. He actually posted his real cell phone number and took a video showing how long it took for people to call, and he's been talking to strangers like non-stop on the phone for the last day! How cool is that? Seems like a really down-to-Earth -- if not exccentric -- thing to do... I'm going to see The Jimmy Swift Band play at Junctions tonight with Erica Stone, so maybe I'll try calling him while there...

By the time I'm sober, I'm probably going to regret posting this...

2005-11-11T03:26:00.000-03:30

Dear Peoples,

I am drunk.

Sincerely,
Pat
--------------------------------
Today, I went out for the first time in like 2 weeks... it's been a long period of sobriety and sensibleness, but I figured it was a good time to put an end to all that crap.

Coleman and I invented a new game tonight. I'm not sure what to call it, cause now matter what, it will sound bad... but I suppose "The Licking Game" would do best. This game came about as me and him were walking to get pizza from Big Bite. I don't know exactly how it started, but the gist of it was that we'd take turns daring each other to lick different objects on the walk there and back. Here's the list of the stuff we licked during the course of the trip.

Coleman

The pole of a street sign
A parked SUV limosine
The yellow flashing light at a crosswalk (he stood on my shoulders)
a freaking dumpster
the drive-thru speaker at Subway

Pat

the side of a van
the exhaust pipe of a parked car
a bus sign like 7 feet up a telephone pole
the Ford hood ornament of a car waiting at a red light
the nozzel of the dispenser at a gas station

So yeah... if I start posting even less now, it's safe to assume that I've come down with some horrible, horrible disease. And before you talk about how stupid a game this was, let me just say that... OK, I got nothin'...

But this is funny... Oh, Vin Diesel -- you so CRAZY... (Props to Bert for finding this)

God hates everyone.

2005-11-07T11:58:00.000-03:30

I have found indisputable evidence that God hates humanity:
He allowed for the invention of my nail clippers.

I don't have a picture of them, but take my word for it -- they truly are a cruel instrument. They're just like regular nail clippers, but they've got this little platic thing around them that catches your nail clippings.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know what you're thinking... sounds practical, don't it? Well, the catch-22 is that the little lid that holds your clippings inside is tighly jammed on. You're supposed to just pull it off, but when closed, there's only a little crack that you can wedge it open from. And what's your first instinctive method of openning it? With your fingernails, of course -- The very fingernails which are now trapped inside this God-forsaken device.

It's sort of like having a device that cuts off all of your fingers and places them inside a mason jar. Don't ask me why such a device would ever be needed... I suck at analogies... But anyway, since no one who uses the finger-remover can possibly open the mason jar, you've just got a big ol' jar full of fingers that no one can open.

Which is kind of like my nail-clipper. It just keeps filling up with nail-clippings...

So anyway, that's my beef. Moo. The end.

PS - I added links to some "Classic Posts" (term used loosely) on the sidebar, for those days when I don't get to update and you-slash-I am really bored...

COMMENT REPLIES:

Anny and Raph: Hey! Boo. For your informatics, it's a little color I like to call non-gender-specific white, which is Patrick-speak for plain old white :)

Chris! I always got mad cause you'd misplace yours, then take mine and when I'd go to get them back, you'd claim they were yours the whole time and I never owned them! I seem to remember this happening at least twice, but then again -- I've got brother-bias...

And Sally, you are definitely bragging. Shut your dirty, rotten whore-bag mouth. GAH! Wow... that felt so wrong to write to you! What I meant to say was: I LOVE SALLY MACKERETH! She is the shit.

meish: Well... now that you mention it... I have been noticing that a single, unbroken shaft of pure sunlight has been striking them every morning for the past month. And then there's the choral music... Hmm...

MacGregor: Probably true. But whatever.
And thanks dude!

LOL and Lucas, your comment made me laugh out loud in the library -- A geniunely frown-inducing environment if there ever was one -- And it made me laugh twice. haha... "multilingual retarded vampire from Iceland"... what the fuck?!

Legally correct -- Politically Incorrect.

2005-11-05T19:42:00.000-03:30

Don't be mad at me, because I'm just pointing out the absurdity a the term that I heard on the news :

Aggravated sexual assault??

Isn't that just legal jargon for "She was asking for it"?

UPDATE: OK, I've been enlightened by mandy. I guess in legal jargon, "aggravated" has a completely separate meaning of which I was totally unaware. Dah well... despite the correction, it was still funny to me. I laughed.

UPDATE #2: And Megs, if you read this, I saw that you called but I'd been at the library and left my phone in the study room! I miss yoooooouuuu!

Patrick's new theory on losing stuff

2005-11-03T21:46:00.000-03:30

As some of you folks may already know, I lost my wallet awhile back when we had a party -- or rather, I re-lost my wallet when we had another party, depending on the timeframe from which you chose to look at it. But what I forgot to mention was that I found it again! Woohoo, says I! How, you ask? Well, we just threw yet another party, that's how.

All I know is that I came downstairs to clean up after our halloween shin-dig, and my wallet was just sitting on the counter in our dirty, dirty kitchen. How did it get there? Well, sometimes you just have to take things for what they are and not ask questions that may confuse and baffle you. I'll assume that someone I know had found it and just chose to return it that night. It's even possible that they gave it to me personally... though I was in no position to remember a trivial event such as that.

So anyway, I bet that this let-it-be-and-it'll-work-out attitude can be applied to other situations too... well -- at least in those situations in which you lose something. Just leave things be, and shit will work itself out.

Dishes dirty? Don't sweat it. Just let them build up long enough, and eventually the bacteria will evolve so that they'll clean themselves.

Lost your child at the mall? No problem. Just calmly go home, then on the weekend, throw a party. With any luck, you'll come down to clean on the following morning and find your baby smack-dab in the middle of the kitchen counter, gurgling happily among the empties. Trust me on this one. I've had experience with this type of thing.

The day after

2005-10-30T12:30:00.000-03:30

So... let's see... what's new with me?

Well, we had a kickin' halloween party last night and I went on a tear like I haven't really done since the first weekend back in school. First off, though no one really recognized it, my costume was awesome. My costume was that I was dressed as Donnie Darko wearing his halloween costume. It was all my idea. Certainly not Coleman's -- No sir. It took me all day to make, what with getting to the Walmart and putting it together. I made it with masking tape, some Walmart clothes, an iron, and just a little bit of love. Here's a day-after pic of me in my get-up, looking all Donnie-Darko-esque:

But last night, I was more fun-looking than that. Here is my rendition of me being a fun Donnie Darko:

Picture me moving to Cha. Cha. Cha-Cha-Cha. If that doesn't scream "party like it's 1999" then I don't know what does... except maybe a robot whose sole purpose is to yell "PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999!!! PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999!!!" over and over again in a crazy robot voice, but that's beside the point. The point is that I had fun last night. End of story.

Whoa whoa whoa, hold on -- What am I talking about? This is not the end of story! The end of the story tends to follow the story, of which I haven't even started. As usual, I will use visual aids to tell the tale. We took a good bit of video too, but I can't get that up on the internet in a timely manner. Maybe I'll put it on Google Video sometime...

WARNING: This "story" is going to be all over the place.

So anyway, as is turning into a recurring event at our house, a bunch of the guys ended up riding a storage container down the stairs and out onto the lawn. I got kind of daring with the cameras and went for some extreme photography and cinematography, so I've got some crazy pictures and video of people barreling down the stairs towards me. For example, here's Ian (dressed as JFK), doing his thing:

I sort of just met Ian tonight, cause he's a frosh and I haven't been around Burke all that much. I'd heard about him though, cause people were telling me that he's like a mini version of me, at least in the sense that he gets drunk and thinks that stupid ideas are good ones. Well anyway -- hats off to you Ian.

Speaking of stupid things, the masking tape bones started to fall off of my costume last night, so I used the iron to re-apply them. Not so stupid, in and of itself, but the catch is that I refused to take my shirt off first. The masking tape actually browned. I sort of forgot about it until I saw the video this morning...
Lesson learned: Irons = hot.

And oh yeah, we got the Community Jug on the go this time. At odd intervals, we'd go around the room with the jug and everyone would have to pour a bit of their drink in. After it was filled to our satisfaction, we'd go back around and everyone would have to drink out of it. I've gotta say... I was skeptical at first, but it actually turned out tasting REALLY good. I'd say that the first one ws the best... So yeah -- here's Andre holding it up and being an idiot:

To explain the costume: He's a chick magnet. Get it? Kind of a good idea, because any other time that you extend your arms out towards women, wiggling your fingers and yelling "MAGNETIZE!", you end up looking creepy. Wearing this costume though, you end up with girls latching onto you. Go figure.

At one point, Tony didn't look like he was having enough fun, so I took it upon myself to make him smile -- manually, that is.

Jesse's costume was that he was not Jesse. He didn't really have anything when he arrived, so he just cut up a liquor store bag and put it on his head.

Ok, I'm getting tired of writing, so I'm just gonna post all the rest of the pictures (of those that turned out), and you guys can see them. Whatever.

End of story.

The low-down on the slow-down

2005-10-29T12:12:00.000-02:30

Sorry about the little hiatus thing I've been doing, but I've been realizing a few things:

I've been really busy lately,
I need to get out more, and
I enjoy making frivolous lists.

We're having a pre-Mardi Gras (on George Street) halloween party tonight (12 Hatcher Street!), so I can't say much now cause I've still got to get my costume on the go! If anyone has any good ideas in the next few hours, let me know!

UPDATE: Clearly the mainstream news media has not gotten ahold of this yet, but I found this while searching for George Bush pictures on Yahoo Images (I'm the poster guy for the UN Society). Forewarning though: This is a picture of George Bush butt naked in his younger days. He is so fucked. This rivals even lemonparty.org. Ugh...

Zit shit

2005-10-26T17:41:00.000-02:30

The only thing that grosser than seeing someone with a big, huge zit on their face is seeing that person leave for a minute and when they come back, the aforementioned zit is gone. It's in these situations that I can't help but picture them popping the zit, which is like 11 times more disgusting. Which is weird, cause what else can I expect them to do.

So in other words, the only thing more disgusting than a big pimple is the remedy.

Has anyone else thought about this before?

The delicious dinner

2005-10-23T19:48:00.000-02:30

A few nights ago, Andre was supposed to have made supper for Alisha but forgot to. Later in the night, while Cowman was over, Alisha made a comment about how hungry she was since her brother hadn't made her anything.

Let us pause a moment for a brief aside -- as in like Shakespeare does -- for those of you not living in Newfoundland:
"Cowman", you ask? Who names themselves Cowman? Well, Cowman does, that's who. Cowman is quite possibly the sketchiest/funniest/interestingest person I know. He moved in with his girlfriend when he was like 15 -- he was engaged and like 12 hours away from getting married at 19 -- he now sleeps on the tiny, 4-foot bed upstairs on Wednesday nights after open mic... lets see, what else? He's got a tattoo of a cow on his arm -- Very few people know his real name -- he wears one of those "french painter"-type hats all the time... you know the kind I mean! Anyway, just thought I'd explain Cowman. He's a cool guy.

So anyway, Alisha was complaining about being hungry so I, being the gentleman that I am, said that I'd make something for her. I grabbed a hotdog bun from on top of the fridge and proceeded to fill it with the following: canola oil, steak spice, onion powder, peanut butter, the contents of a teabag, Aunt Jemima pancake syrup, and one slice of processed cheese. Alisha wouldn't touch it, but Cowman said that he'd give it a try, so he took a bite.

Then he took another bite.

When he was about half done, he told us that it tasted like garlic bread with peanut butter on it. This somehow convinced me to try it. Let me tell you -- I almost threw up. It was a gustatory insult of the higher order. My tongue retreated past my uvula, and I gagged what was left in my mouth out into the toilet. Not at all fun.

Cowman had a few more bites, at which point Coleman entered the kitchen scene. Not having seen me expel my portion, he gave it a try, too. Yeah... I've gotta say... it was fun when it wasn't me. Andre, Tony and Alisha were having none of it, so Coleman and I decided to hold Tony down and make him eat some. We enjoyed only limited success, but by the end of it all, Tony had peanut butter and Aunt Jemima covering at least half the surface area of his face. I would've taken a picture, but Tony wouldn't leave it on his face long enough for me to take the batteries from my keyboard and put them in the camera. I'm guessing the smell from his angle was pretty bad.

Anyway, that's all folks! Labs and a-studyin' to do!

Every day is garbage day

2005-10-21T19:40:00.000-02:30

I guess we've started a garbage game or something here at 12 Hatcher. I have to say that I'm not so much a fan of this particular game. I much rather prefer games which don't smell... nor fall on the ground where they end up stuck to the bottom of my socks.

I'd changed the garbage for like the last three times, so I was finally like "Ok, fuck this. Someone else is going to have to do it."

Or so I thought. It's now just ridiculous. But I'm soooo stubborn...

As Tony, Andre and I were gathered in the kitchen and I was taking this picture, Tony said something along the lines of "Man -- We're taking garbage to a new level!" to which I replied, "Well... if by 'new level' you mean the second floor, then yeah -- I suppose we're about halfway there."

I think Coleman will cave first. Unless, of course, he reads this first...

Getting my study on... no matter what.

2005-10-19T16:56:00.000-02:30

I'm always in the library looking for good places to study, but with midterm season being upon us, study rooms tend to fill up quickly and the wait-line gets longer. But I think I've figured out a good solution:

There a comfortable-looking, spacious study room up on fourth floor that never seems to be in use. I figure I could go in, get my study on, and not be disturbed the whole time I'd be there. The only catch is that it's the "assisted learning" study room. It's got all these magnifying and braille machine dealies and CD players for playing audio-books and stuff... you know -- for anyone with sensory disabilities.

So I'd go in here, and if by chance someone came in to see who was using the room without booking it, I'd simply look at them blankly and then just keep yelling "WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?" until they'd left.

The only problem I can foresee is that maybe they'd start signing to me. In that case, I'd just play it cool. I'd probably start doing the macarena or something. Y'know -- I'm sure I'd say something. So what if the macarena in sign language means something like "You honks like pretty dog sandwiches." I'm sure they'd just leave me be at this point no matter what.

Re-lost wallet and punched Coleman. Woohoo for Saturdays.

2005-10-16T16:20:00.000-02:30

First off, I was playing around with my camera today and took a bunch of pictures of my bed from the ceiling and stitched them all together. Who knows -- If I'm really bored, maybe I'll do it for my whole room...

---------------------------------------

Last friday I lost my wallet.

Yeah -- crap.

Any sort of ID that I'd had in my possession had been in it, so I now had nothing. No student ID. No driver's license. No medicare card. No nothing. Since it was the Thanksgiving long-weekend, I couldn't even get a replacement backcard until something like Tuesday.

Yesterday Peter (our landlord) was over installing the new door, and he found my wallet in the hedges of our front lawn. I guess that I threw it aside when we were riding down the main stairwell in the storage container, presumeably because it was digging into my butt as I careened over the steps. So I went out again last night -- against my better judgement, I might add -- and guess what? I lost my freakin' wallet again!

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know. I'm an idiot. But hey -- at least it was a fun time. To be truthful. I only had my driver's license and student card in there this time, since everything else was drying on the floor of my room at that moment. So I guess a week in a bush makes a wallet wet. Go figure.

And Coleman just sent me this joke which he says his psych prof sent to him! Lovin' it!

FEMALE PRAYER
Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray for a man, who's not a creep,
One who's handsome, smart and strong:
One who loves to listen long:
One who thinks before he speaks;
One who'll call, not wait for weeks.
I pray he's gainfully employed;
When I spend his cash, won't be annoyed.
Pulls out my chair and opens my door,
Massages my back and begs to do more.
Oh! Send me a man who'll make love to my mind,
Who knows what to answer to "how big is my behind?"
I pray that this man will love me to no end,
And always be my very best friend.
Amen.

MALE PRAYER
I pray for a deaf-mute nymphomaniac
with huge boobs who
owns a liquor store, fishing boat and a Ferrari.
This doesn't rhyme and I don't give a shit.
Amen

Speaking of Coleman, I guess I punched him in the face last night. Seriously. He showed me the mark right between his eyes.

We ran into Lovell in 180 (a bar), and he was sitting at the bar, so I decided to smack him in the back of the head. Due to my state at the time, my coordination was somewhat compromised, so I completely overshot his head and effin' smoked Coleman. When I'd missed Lovell I apparently started to close my hand, so by the time it made contact with Coleman's face, it was a full-fledged fist. Lovell, who hadn't even known that his head was in danger, turned around just in time to see me clock Coleman between the eyes and knock him over. Connie was working the bar, so I guess her and Lovell got a kick out of it! There were only a few of us in the bar, and the bouncer is cool, so he understood and I didn't get kicked out or anything.

And here are a few pics of our ghetto Thanksgiving dinner here at 12 Hatcher. It actually turned out not so half-bad. Kinda. They didn't have any non-frozen turkeys left at Sobey's, so we had a Thanksgiving duck instead. Yep, that's right -- a duck.

I only used the inside rolls when I was putting the rolls in a bowl for the meal, so we had a roll-ring and nothing at all to do with it. So I put it on my head. It seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do at the time.

And oh yeah: I tried to do the worm last night in Julia's kitchen. It didn't work out too well, and I fell on my face. My chin really hurts today. And just so y'know, my "worm" consists of me jumping up into the air as high as I can, then diving head-first into the ground. So I guess technically it's only the start of the worm, but usually I can pull it off, although there was this one time a few summers ago when I attempted to do it in Coleman's driveway and made myself bleed...

Elaboration

2005-10-15T15:37:00.000-02:30

Ok, there seems to be some confusion about The Game. Trust me -- this is a lot easier to explain and understand when done in person. I guess I just didn't do a good job of the explanation in the type-face format.

To answer a specific question; You're not playing before you know about it, but only after someone explains it to you (which I clearly haven't done well). From that point on, you ARE playing. And just because of the way it works, it's not really possible to STOP PLAYING, you're just simply playing while cheating (by not acknowlegding your loss when you remember about The Game).

But I digress. Here's an example:

Ian is walking down the road 3 months from now with his special lady-friend. He sees a "lost dog" sign stapled onto a telephone pole, titled with the word "LOST" in big, red letters. This reminds him, for the first time since today, that he's been playing The Game. So he now says "Crap! I lost!" out loud. His special lady-friend looks at him like he has just announced that he is the celebrated Papaya-king of the grand Republic of Hoochiville. He then explains The Game to her, and they continue on their merry way.

The Game

2005-10-14T11:42:00.000-02:30

I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret. You guys all know that's I've got a new stupid game for every day of the week, but I'm going to tell you about "The Game". As in, the mother of all effing games. Get ready...

So there are only 3 sinple rules to this game:

You are always playing The Game. 24 hours a day -- 7 days a week -- 52 weeks a year -- until you keel over and die during an episode of The Price Is Right, which by the way is still hosted by the eternal-cyborg-thing that is Bob Barker.
You only lose when you remember that you're playing The Game.
When you lose The Game, you must say aloud, "I lose," thereby making any other players in your vicinity lose as well.
You must then explain The Game to anyone around you who hasn't previously been playing. They are now playing.

So basically, you're always winning until you lose. At which time you drag other people into it. I suggest making a shirt that says, "You lose." You know... if you really want to be a jerk.

And yeah I know, you're thinking, "Can I just explain The Game to people even if I haven't lost?" But AH-HA! If you think to explain it, then you've already lost, so this situation can never come up.

The great thing about The Game is that you can say that you're not playing anymore, but you're just kidding yourself. You're always playing, even if you pretend not to. In this case, you're just breaking the rules.

Another cool thing is that, after playing for awhile, you'll always be surprise who else is playing too. I tends to get around. And contrary to what you might first believe, you can sometimes go months without remembering that you're invovlved.

So go forth my children, because by this point, you're already playing. Game on.

An all-encompassing theory of public defecation

2005-10-13T11:48:00.000-02:30

Warning: This post uses the word "poop". Deal.

I have a theory. I think that, when in a public restroom with other people, everyone pushes harder when either the faucet started running, the hand-dryer starts going, or another toilet is flushed. Maybe not on purpose, but I think your subconscious goes "Sweet merciful Jesus! Ambient noises! Jump into action!"

When it's utter silence, with just me and some dude sitting not three feet to my left, with nothing but sheet-metal and two thin coats of 1970s-era lead-based paint between us, I just can't do it.

I used to think that I might have been the only one, but then yesterday, I found another. Just me and him -- all the above-mentioned criteria fulfilled -- and neither of us did anything for like 10 minutes. No one came in to break the deadening silence which, on top of being awkward, is odd since mid-day library bathroom traffic is normally pretty high. (Look, I'm a library junkie... I know these things.) So usually I just wait for the buddy next to me to move on, but he was clearly thinking the same thing as me.

Sadly, he won the stand-off. I just left and came back later. I'm not bitter though. He was a worthy adversary. Besides -- my legs were starting to fall asleep... what else was I gonna do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know... I realize what you're thinking: "This kid's a wiener," "This guy sounds like a girly-man," "This dude has deep-seeded pooping issues," -- And hey -- All valid points. But the fact of the matter is, I just can't. Some of you may be blessed with the ability to poop on command without regard for time or place, and for that I envy you, but I lack that capacity. End of story.

By Request

2005-10-12T20:53:00.001-02:30

McKay left a message saying that there weren't enough pictures of her on my site. So... TA-DAH! The most entertaining one I could find on my compy, circa New Years 2003/2004 at Coleman's place. Hope you like it Erin!

Busted Doors and Broken Spirits

2005-10-12T00:08:00.000-02:30

I was walking to class a few days ago and as I passed an elementary school during recess, I had to stop and watch for a little bit. For anyone who hasn't done this before, let me just say that watching children frolic in their natural habitat is the most amusing thing ever. They're so freaking amusing! Now all I need in order to fully take part in this ever-popular pasttime is a trenchcoat and some delicious candy. I kid, I kid... but yeah, I know... it sounds kinda creepy. I figure that as long as I'm not 47 years old and mentally undressing them, this activity is considered socially allowable. It's gotta be at least ten times as entertaining as going to the zoo. Maybe 11.

-----------------------------------------------

And last night was ridiculous. For the first long while it was only me, Coleman and Andre playing poker and having a few drinks. I'll give you the quick run-down of the night:

Earlier in the evening, I cooked some left-over fish cakes because I didn't have much else to cook at the moment. We waited patiently for the half hour it took to cook them... then, when they were done, Coleman and I threw them out the door at the side of our neighbor's house. It seemed like a good, spontaneous idea at the time. It's OK -- They're students too, so I just know that when they came out of their house this morning and saw that fish cakes had been forcefully propelled onto the siding of their home, they completely understood.

Later on in the night Coleman, who had just finished using the bathroom, was attempting to make his lavatorial exit. But when he turned the doorknob something odd happened. Naturally, he assumed that rotating the doorknob would result in the regular outcome -- this is, the opening of the door, and his subsequent release from the lavatorial confines.

But hells no.

The knob turned. A crack was heard from within the door. The knob continued to turn -- Round and round, to no avail. I guess some critical element had snapped off, leaving Coleman trapped in the bathroom. He yelled for awhile, and when we eventually heard him above the music, we came to the rescue. The window was too small, making that escape route out of the question, so we decided that taking the doorknob off was the best way to go about this problem. The screws were on the inside, so somehow coleman got the knob off from his side, but for some reason the door still wouldn't budge! This called for drastic measures.

Andre told Coleman to move back from the door, took a few steps back, and just charged the thing. The press-board door splintered out of the locked and closed-tight position, pieces flying all over the bathroom.

So long-story-short: Coleman escaped. Door broken with a big crack through the middle. Andre happy to have had the chance to break through a door.

People ended up showing up later on, and we again hauled out the large storage container and rode it down the main stairs. I didn't get any pictures, but we had the front door open this time, so we'd go down the stairs, straight out the front door, over the landing, down the front steps and across the lawn. My ass was really sore the next morning.

And yeah, I lied about the whole "broken spirits" thing in the title. I just thought it sounded cool... but if you're really looking for some kind of broken spirit dealie... well... erm... Coleman stubbed his toe yesterday. Apparently it hurt quite a bit. Or so I hear.

Guess who that charming kid on the left is...

2005-10-05T00:45:00.000-02:30

Me chillin' at the bottom of my driveway with the neighbors and brother, back in the day...
And no, I was not wearing a halloween costume. My parents actually allowed me to wear that outfit on a regular, year-round basis. Anyone else find it creepy that I had a taxi hat... and a tiny red bow-tie... and suspenders with little yellow hands that held my pants up?

I hate wind.

2005-10-04T15:41:00.000-02:30

Always blowin' and tousling my locks. Man... And did I mention that I needed a haircut of the highest degree?

But ok, I take back that wind comment. It was an unfair generalization on my part. I don't hate all air. Calm and orderly air is A-OK by me. It's just air that moves in excess of 60 kmph that I hate. That's where I draw the line between amicable air (the kind of air that I might invite over to meet my elderly grandmother) and bastardish air (the kind that I wouldn't offer a glass of water if I ever came across it parched in a sweltering, windless desert).

Yeah. You heard me.

PS - I've got midterms over the next few days, so if I go into radio-silence mode for awhile, then that's why.

Shit hits the fan

2005-10-02T23:45:00.000-02:30

Tonight brought on the end of an era here at 12 Hatcher Street.

When we first moved into this place way back at the first of September, one of the main draws to the room upstairs was that it had a relatively new ceiling fan installed in the... well... in the ceiling. Clearly. Coleman immediately claimed that living space, naively thinking that all this accessory would provide was a refreshing current of stale air on a warm night. Oh Coleman, how wrong you were.

We hadn't been living here a week before we'd discovered "The Fan Game" (not to be confused with "The Water Game" or "The Waving Game"). The Fan Game involved standing beneath the ceiling fan and just kinda daring yourself to jump up. We didn't do this all at once -- it was more like an ongoing event. Whenever I was up in Coleman's room and one of us thought of it, I'd just be like "Hey... Coleman..." and motion towards the fan with my eyes, and that would be it. You might say it was a... challenge. And who says no to challenges? Losers -- That's who. So we'd do this... You know -- just to see how close we could get to sticking our heads into the fan, but sort of without the intention of really doing it. I mean -- we knew that eventually one of us was going to actually do it, but we just didn't think that that day would come so soon...

So there we were tonight, two idiots jumping up and down below a ceiling fan like a pair of mentally incompetent chimpanzees hopped up on methamphetamines. And then it happened.

Coleman hit the fan.

The game stopped.

Coleman stood there.

And that was the end of it. Obviously, I had to do it too -- you know -- just to put the game to rest, but besides that... it was done. And all that we were left with was this bitter, empty feeling.

I think this probably says a little something about life. You think you've got this great and wonderful thing above you, just out of reach, and you spend a big part of your time down below trying to get to it -- making the attempt, but doing it half-heartedly -- not really trying to actually touch it. Because you know that if you do, it won't be as great as you'd built it up to be. And then one day, almost by accident, you reach that goal... only to be left with a now-wobbly ceiling fixture with a few too many attached hairs circling above your head.

So thank you oh-cherished ceiling fan, for bringing us so many minutes of pure, child-like joy. May your Part & Labour Warranty never be negated, and your resale-market value never stray too far from your MSRP. I salute you.

The real ultimate frisbee

2005-10-01T14:40:00.000-02:30

Ok, I wasn't planning to blog today, but I just had to when I saw this:

So Jesse came over awhile ago, and Tony & him got really high. Like -- Tony is pretty hardcore, so he usually deals pretty well but when he was pouring water for himself, his hand was shaking all over the place and he was saying "Maybe I should take a shower..."

So anyway, here's the funny thing: Him and Jesse went out back to play frisbee. I've got to say that two really stoned guys trying to play frisbee is the funniest thing EVER! We were watching them out the window, and what they'd do is that one of them would whip the frisbee at a tree or somewhere random, then it seemed like they'd completely forget what they were doing. They'd wander around for awhile, then they'd remember to go find the frisbee. This continued in the same manner the whole time we were watching. Every once in awhile, they'd both just completely stop playing and one would follow the other and they'd just walk in loops and figure-eights for awhile. And throughout the whole she-bang, they seemed so disoriented... I think it was the best thing I've witnessed this week.

So I propose a hip-hip-hooray to tripped-out frisbee, the most entertaining sport I can think of at the moment. Someone should start a league or something...

Thanksgiving weekend stuff

2005-10-01T01:03:00.000-02:30

Ok, cool news -- but first, some other shit.

I've been up since 7am yesterday morning. Yep... Except for a power-nap from 5-7 earlier tonight, I've done about my day with effectively zero energy. My reserves are depleted -- my get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone -- my second, third, and fourth winds are gusting at 0 kmph -- but somehow I'm still in the realm of consciousness. Go figure.

So here's the cool news: So I was up all last night supposedly scribbling out a lab, and in between playing guitar and cooking up a 4:30am-lasagna, I ended up talking to Madeleine real quick at like 3:30 in the morning. I guess that she knows someone who'll be in St. John's next friday, and she wants this chick and her roommate to hang out with us for at least a night! How cool it that?! I guess that she failed to mention to the friend that she's sending her to meet someone who she met over the freaking internet. I mean -- I'm not adverse to someone sending hot chicks to meet people (especially when people is me), but isn't the first rule of the interweb, engraved on some thick slab of silicon way back in 1983, "Thou shalt not meet."? But whatev, cause I guess it doesn't really say anything about shipping your friends over to meet your sketchy internet acquaintances.

So really, now I just sit back and wait for the hot chicks to arrive... all I have to do is prevent Madeleine from realizing how creepy I really am until it's too late to warn her unsuspecting friends. So I should probably just stop writing... but I never was the type to entertain a sensible idea.

Well, as long as I'm being creepy, here's my planned itinerary for the night, (which should clinch the creepification deal):

8:00pm --> Hot chicks arrive.
8:00-8:30 --> Introduce hot chicks and play ice-breaker games.
8:30-9:30 --> Play "Risk: Star Wars Edition".
9:30-10:00 --> Make lewd gestures and sexually harrass hot chicks in general.
10:00-10:45 --> Play drinking games, ie. Ride the Bus (Best Drinking game EVER)
10:45-11:00 --> Try to convince hot chicks to make out.
11:00pm --> Go downtown.

Well, that's about all the inappropriate things I can think of for the moment. But I guess I could stand to throw in a few more minutes for lewd gestures. I reckon you can't never have too many lewd gestures.

I'm having a low key night over here, since I've got midterms next week and I've got to rest up. I'll probably be heading to bed right after I finish writing this... Yeah, I know -- fun times, indeed. But what can ya do?

And just so you guys from home know it, I'm missing everyone a whole bunch! That applies to both friends and family too, cause I know that they read this every once in a while, too!

I Miss Home: Photo-Enhanced Memories

2005-10-01T00:23:00.000-02:30

Here are some classic pictures from the distant past (ie. two years ago):

This was at my house on the last night of Christmas break back in first year. Me, Jana, Garrett & Craig all stuck our faces in a cake that had been lying around. I woke up groggy and was at first really pissed about who messed up my cake. Then I saw the pictures and it all came flooding back...

At the Canada Day fireworks two summers ago I believe. As per usual, I was dragging the camcorder around with me.

Same party: Lucas thoroughly enjoying his Amaretto.

Same party: Garrett... grabbing... Jana? Listen: I don't know.

New Years 2003 at Coleman's: Adam and Erica chilling at the table. Adam's probably repeating something from "8 Mile", no doubt.

Same party: Sarah, Coleman, Jeanette & Sally -- Portrait disrupted courtesy of Coleman Black.

Same party: Adam and Shannon being buddies.

Thanksgiving 2003: Shara, McLean and Craig. I miss McLean...

----------------------------------------------

Dropping Chris off at University: Chris looking very sneaky...

The whole family just before ditching the jerk in his new home. I kid, I kid... I LOVE YOU, BROTHER!

Me and my parents right before boarding my plane to Newfoundland this year...

Type-O clubs... or club Type-O's? I choose the latter.

2005-09-29T01:35:00.000-02:30

So earlier tonight, we were walking over to the Breezeway from Mandy's, where we'd been watching LOST, when somehow we got talking about blood-types. Turns out that, miracle-of-miracles, we had two O-positive blood-types in our midst -- Alisha and Mandy. I guess those are really rare or special or something because type-O can give to any of the other types (A, B, or AB), and like 87% of the population is Rhesus "positive". Because of this, they were going on about being universal donors and they thought that they were all cool shit.

Universal donor basically means that you can give blood to pretty much anyone if they need a transfusion, but the catch is that you can only receive blood from another of the rare universal donors if you need a transfusion yourself.

So being that they thought they were all "unique" and "special" because they could "save lives" and stuff, I suggested that they should just go start a club. Some type of club in which only universal donors could join. And they could have big meetings to talk about how awesome they are.

And then wouldn't it be oh so awful if -- Tragedy-of-tragedies! -- someone were to walk into one of said meetings and -- Oh... I don't know -- open fire on them? Or maybe just severely beat the majority of them? But wouldn't they fight back, you ask? Well, there couldn't be that many of them, and besides -- I'm sure they'd be too weak to put up much of a fight, what with all those good-samaritan blood donations that they do...

So they're all in the hospital, waiting for their blood-type to show up... Wouldn't that be a kick in their fuckin' type O-positive pants? At this point I might walk through their ward, having just donated a big ol' bag just brimming with useless type B blood, and I'd sing a little song to myself out loud. It'd go a little something like this: "Ooooooooh... it's so great to have bloooooooood... to fill my vascular systeeeeeeeem! So great to have bloooooood.... that my bone mar-ROOOOOOOOOW makes meeeeeeee!"

And then, as I trilled off the last note, I'd finish off my post-donation sugar cookie and make a graceful exit from the trauma ward.

Bitter? Noooo...

Always muster coordination before scratching as itch

2005-09-27T12:55:00.000-02:30

I used to be able to say that I'd never gone to scratch my eye and instead picked my nose.

As of today, I can no longer make that claim.

And I've got to say, my eye had been really itchy, so this scratch-that-wasn't was primed to be a really vigorous one. I can only imagine how it looked: This dude walking across the library lobby, his right eye twitching a bit, then suddenly he crams his finger up his nose in one quick motion...

Man... my nose hurts...

The Day-After Party Recap

2005-09-25T03:29:00.000-02:30

NOTE: If you don't want to read a bunch words, then feel free to skip to the pretty pictures near the bottom.

So I was supposed to take a nap earlier today -- and I eventually did -- but originally, before I was about to lay down I got on the internet for a second. And I found this wicked-cool site! It tells the story of the transatlantic tunnel, a tunnel that began secretly during World War II and had been sold to a private company by the sponsoring governments after the Cold War ended. According to the site, it's supposed to open in 2009. Now that I'm actually writing it out, it seems so stupid and unbelieveable. It turns out it's a hoax. And I'm a gullible idiot. Before I found out about the whole non-reality aspect of the project, I got myself all excited and therefore couldn't sleep anymore.

Damn tunnels... Whenever you want to take a nap, know who always goes and ruins it for you? Tunnels, that's who. It's always been that way, and due to the inherent nature of tunnels, I don't think that's ever going to change. Fuck tunnels.

So yeah, I got all pumped up and made a fool out of myself by waking Coleman up from his nap and going on about this crazy tunnel under the ocean. He was half asleep, so hopefully he won't remember... because if he takes just a few coherent, waking moments to think about it, he'll realize that it was just a hoax, and then the razzing will start. I can hear it now... He'll say... Well, I can't exactly hear it all, but I know what words he'll use... OK, maybe I don't even know many of the words he'll use... but you can be goddamn sure that he'll use the word "tunnel". And maybe several repetitions of "idiot" somewhere in there for good measure.

So last night we had a party. It was pretty kickin', as far as parties go. Andre and Alisha both got sick. Tony disappeared into the night. Coleman and I got really drunk and wandered over to residence with a strange man in skin-tight leather pants. His name was Gavin. And he was pushing a girl with a broken ankle in a shopping cart. Oh the fun times in Newfoundland.

So let's tell some stories. We all just invited a bunch of people, and Tony was no exception. One of his invites was some big guy, but not one of those fun big-fat-party-animal types. He showed up loaded and did nothing but stumble around with a glazed-over look on his face. I like to think that if, just prior to the party, a brain surgeon had performed a complicated and dangerous procedure in which he'd replaced this dude's noodle with a delicious Poptart pastry, his demeanor would have remained about the same and not a soul in the place would have noticed... except that maybe he would have broken out a few "BEE-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"s.

OK sidetrack: Landlord Peter stopped by at the begining of the night to give us the keys to the shed. This event in itself was nothing spectacular, except for the fact that he casually mentioned that there was a kiddie pool in there that we could use if we wanted to. Did we wants to? Yes. Hells yes. Yes we did. I originally set it up in the living room and had the hose running into the house. Peter was tearing up the carpets and putting in a new floor in about a month, so I didn't think it'd be a big deal. I second-thoughted this great idea, fearing that it might be one of my patented "bad ideas". I carried out a brief survey and surprise -- Surveys say that a pool full of water in the living room is a BAD IDEA. So we moved it out to the deck.

Main-track again: So anyway... Coleman, myself, and Andre jokingly tried to throw Alisha into the pool, but our drunken Big-Fat-Non-Party-Animal (henceforth known as BFNPA) stood in the way and wouldn't let us do it. Keep in mind; we're all friends and Andre is her freakin brother! The dude continued to be an idiot, pushing Coleman across the kitchen and creeping on Alisha by trying to kiss her later. Everyone had had enough of this guy, and if he did anything else, Coleman said that he wasn't going to be able to stop himself from punching him.

And here's where the night began to take a turn for the worse for BFNPA. He was doing his thing on the back deck -- ie. standing solemnly by himself and staring into the Nth dimension -- when all of the sudden he just passed out in mid-stand and keeled over into the kiddie pool.

For the next half hour, he did essentially the same "standing around" act in our kitchen, except in a slightly more aqueous manner. After this, as I was coming in off the deck, I met him in the hall. He was lurching in my direction, headed for the door. As soon as I saw him bearing down on me and heard the shouts from the kitchen, I knew what was happening. He had a glassy look in his eyes that was a slightly different incarnation of BFNPA's regular glassy look. It was the I-don't-know-where-I-am-and-there's-bile-in-my-throat look. He was about to be sick.

I threw myself against the wall, and he barrelled past me, out the door and onto the deck. I then went downstairs to my room where Alisha and Alex were chillin' out. All of the sudden, I heard a loud crack and a commotion outside. Deciding it best to investigate, I crawled out my window and found myself in our driveway. Apparently, our party hadn't been good enough and the driveway had decided to throw a bash as well. And who was on the exclusive invite list, you ask? Well, none other than Big-Fat-Non-Party-Animal's face.

He'd been leaning over the rail of the deck, being gross and sick as only BFNPAs can do, when the railing had given way and he'd fallen face-first into the ashphalt. I guess Lovell had just happened to look out the screen door at the guy, and had heard the crack, then saw him disappear over the edge.

I could make any number of jokes about getting "smashed" and whatnot, but that would be heartless. He was an idiot-drunk, but we were still worried about him. We did our best to check him for concussions, then sent him home with someone who hadn't been drinking.

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So yeah, all-in-all: good night. I finally gave away the last of our Mexican tequila/gasoline. Erin and Saralynn were the lucky recipients of those shots. Don't they look pleased?

And then there was the funnel. Here are some pics of Andre drinking from it. What he didn't know was that all 1.3L of it had been filled. He thought he was getting a beer and a bit, but people **coughRaylenecough** had poured in a rum & coke and a Rev. Naturally, Andre remained in bed until about 4pm today...

And I got some shots of Metcalfe doing it too.

And then there was the kiddie pool. Good times.

And before I go, I'll mention a fact that someone else happened to notice at some point in the night. Incidentally, there were 3 sets of twins at the party: Raylene & Saralynn Cheeseman, the Metcalfes, and... two girls who Andre knew... I forget their names though! What are the chances of that?

Whatever. I'm out!

PARY PARTY PARTY, etc.

2005-09-22T19:33:00.000-02:30

Ok, here's the deal. We are having a party on Friday (tomorrow) night, and anyone can come. Ideally, you should know one of us -- either me, Coleman, Alisha, Tony or Andre. We've got a whole house at 12 Hatcher Street, and it's just waiting to fill up with rowdy, drunken individuals.

Here are a few reasons why you should come:

1) Andre's out right now buying a bunch of tubing so that he can run a funnel along the railing in the main stairwell.

2) I guess we're doing something called the "community pot", where every time someone enters into the main room, they have to pour a little of their drink into a big pitcher. When the pitcher's full, then the whole goddamn process reverses and all who enter must take a drink from the community pot. And that, my friends, is how bodily-fluid-borne diseases are spread.

3) This will be the end of my reserve booze so after this, there'll be no more drinking on my part till the end of the term. At least no more drinking on my own dime -- but if someone were to graciously donate to me a large volume of fermentastic beverage, I would be obliged to accept. So what? I can't help it if I'm now poor.
Well... In hindsight, I coooould have helped it... but let's not quibble over details.

4) If you come, you will get to see me in all my tie-around-my-head glory -- and hopefully others will join in, so BRING A TIE! You're not having a truly good time unless there is a tie around your head to prove it.

LINK: You thought you were extreme? Well... you're not. These guys are.

Jobs I would like to have...

2005-09-22T01:14:00.000-02:30

Oh I-wish-I-wish I was the owner of the convenience store at the next exit. Can you guess who my target demographic might be? Selective tourism or what...