I just ate the MOST FANTASTICALLY SPICY egg and toast I have ever had, and probably one of the top three spicy things I have ever eaten in my life. I should have known what was in store when my mom had to leave the kitchen while I was making it, complaining about respiratory tract irritation. I too damaged my nostrils when I lifted the lid off the pan to check on its progress. Fantastic. IF YOU DON'T HEAR FROM ME IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS, please come visit me in Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga. Bring magazines. Thanks. ...Art

Happy Birthday

Hey Joe. Happy 28th birthday.

...now how's about YOU give US a gift and update your blog?

All the best,

...Art

So I have a bottle of Tetley iced tea in my car. It's ten below zero. The bottle was in the car the whole night. I'm driving now looking at the bottle wondering what they put in this shit as it's not only not frozen but not even slushy. Really, the best tasting antifreeze I've ever had. ...highschool was a strange time for me, don't ask. ...Art

BS entry for the sake of posting

I have very little to say.

It snowed a lot yesterday... I shoveled snow at -20, with winds to the north-west at 48km/h. That's a lot of windchill. I wore my one-piece snowboarding suit, goggles, gloves... I only had a t-shirt on under the suit but I was really toasty warm. I can't imagine being homeless and out on the streets on nights like last night.

That puffy snow got me thinking about hitting the slopes. I bought a season's pass, I might as well use it, eh? The last several attempts have been less than successful; people bailed. I ditched plans when people were getting delayed by medical tests and such and I deemed it not worth the drive as it got later and later in the day... I really want to go snowboarding. I need to make this happen.

I'll try again tomorrow afternoon... we'll see how this goes.

Other than that, I'm going to add a couple of blogs to my links, and maybe remove some... Joe hasn't updated in forever, and both the sober and high blogs have fallen into dusty neglect. Like his website. Rhys is blogging again, sort of, well... he set everything up again, posted once, I dunno if he deserves a link but I might add him. I'll prolly also add Jodi and Doc, 'cuz... I dunno why. Why the fuck not, I guess? Don't cost me shit.

I intend to take this entire blog and dump it elsewhere soonish anyway, but I guess a couple of links shouldn't be too much of a bitch to add.

...meh. Like I said at the beginning, this is a total BS entry. Plug your nose to get past the stink, enjoy the post, and welcome the new blogs with your clicky mousey cursor manipulation device.

...Art

DEATH TO SPONGEBOB!! h0m0f4g!!!

READ THIS ARTICLE!!

...That's right, read carefully all of you, but especially Iza and her little clan of Spongeheads. I know you guys link over here from Iza's blog every once in a while. Spongebob's a h0m0f4g!! Put THAT in your nice little Christian Girls' Pipe and smoke it!

So take your Spongebob panties, PJs, socks, pillows, cake figures, and whatever else you've got marked by The Beast and BURN IT ALL!! Burn it and REPENT!!!

...Okay, I'm done.

Silly Americans with their stupid organizations.

...Art

What the fuck? Gordon's in Whitby closed January 3rd? AM I NEVER TO HAVE A HALF LITRE OF WINTERBOCK AGAIN IN MY LIFE? Sigh...

SIGNIFICANT NEWS UPDATE

Headline got your attention?

So I got home from what should have been a 45 minute round trip some three hours after leaving, and now I've got some news to share.

The dealership wants $1000-ish to fix my car. Stuff that should have been under warranty, but now isn't so much. I'm going to have myself a good time with this one.

Also, today's a special day. This evening will mark the second year anniversary of the night I lost my fucking mind.

See, two years ago I was talking to this girl on the phone when I had a brain-fart. Maybe I didn't get enough oxygen to the Think-Blob, maybe I had a small siezure, I really don't know. But, for some reason, I asked that girl if she'd like to go out with me. Give "us" a try.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I freaked out. What was I thinking? This girl, nine years younger than myself, from a strong Catholic family, had absolutely nothing in common with me. On paper, we weren't only very incompatible, we were a downright bad idea. A bad idea that could have resulted in a hospital stay for someone, or even a funeral.

Instead, that brain-fart resulted in the best relationship I've ever been in. For two years and counting.

So, Iza, thanks for the past two years, they've been fantastic. Sometimes confusing, often strange, but absolutely wonderful. I'm looking forward to many many more years of strange times and confusion. I'm sure it'll all be great.

Love ya lots...

...Art

New Nine Inch Nails album being released May 3rd. While it should have been out two months ago, it's nice to have a firm release date. Guess who's doing some shopping early May? Wonder if that means the tour that should have kicked off early this year will be pushed back to the summer... Meh. I should probably get back to this winter storm driving thing before I hit someone. ...Art

I just had the strangest dream with William Shatner, a lunch party, a theatre production, a family of white and Middle Eastern kids who... steal cell phones and store them by throwing them into the lake... just off their dock. Eventually I'm confronted, there's a stand off... the police got involved... I never did get my phone back though. And just how did my sister know William anyway? This was one of those really realistic feeling dreams with a very consistent time line than lasted a couple of hours... wow. So detailed. I think I need therapy. I'm going to try getting a little more rest now. Hope I'll fall back into this dream again. Wow. ...maybe I should lay off the drugs. ...Art

Technolo-jesuschrist.

So after over half a year of waiting for USR to update my router's firmware so it stops sucking, I've finally gotten them to request that head office give me money back. Apparently, I'm to hear back from them within a week or so about that. Meh. In the meantime, my refurbished Microsoft router which I picked up for all of $20 is, after its OWN firmware upgrade, burping along quite nicely. Sure, it's only 8.8% as fast as the USR router, but it's still three times faster than my internet connection is anyway so who cares?

...I know, I'll probably regret buying Microsoft in a month or two when this one bursts into flames or something.

You know what they say, the day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner, right?

My phone, a Samsung A680, has been acting up again. Crashing on a whim, sound quality is terrible... but I don't have any real alternatives on Bell Mobility at the moment so I'm sitting tight with yet another inferior piece of technology.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Why is it that all these things get released when they're clearly not ready for it? The router, for example, shipped with v1.14 when *I* bought mine. Now they're up to v1.64, and tech support admitted to me that XBOXes crash the router, VPN connections crash the router, and that it randomly crashes when connected to a DSL line... which is what I just happen to have. The Samsung... well, I've brought the crashing to the attention of Bell months ago and they still can't fix it. In fact, I called Samsung and asked about the error code and their own customer technical support people told me they have no idea what that error code means. I mean, if the manufacturer doesn't know what those error codes are, who the fuck does? And this phone replaced a Sanyo phone that had similar issues... no one tests these things enough.

So. I think it's a bells and whistles issue. They try to get the phone to do all sorts of things, break those tasks up among a bunch of people who's job it is to "Make it so"... and no one knows what anyone else is up to. Then, when it's time to smash all the parts together, things don't go quite as planned.

A plea to the engineers: Stop making things gee-whizzy. MAKE THINGS WORK.

Less with the fancy, more with the stable.

And maybe, just maybe, certain things were never meant to do what you're asking them to. Do we really need cameras in our cellphones? I'd be really happy with a cellphone that worked AS A FUCKING CELLPHONE.

It's people like the guy who made this thing that are ruining life for everyone else. A toaster... should not dial out to retrieve a weather forecast and burn an image related to the forecast onto your morning toast. A toaster... SHOULD TOAST YOUR FUCKING BREAD. Full stop. End of task.

I don't want a can opener that can get me onto the internet, I don't want a toothbrush radio, there's no reason for my boots to have a built-in remote control for the ceiling fan, I want shit that works. I want things that do whatever they're supposed to do reliably, without tech support, for years and years to come.

I'd like to lead a revolution against products that merge stupid random shit into a device that does everything, but does nothing especially well. I would like to organize a movement to boycott companies that put out stupid shit. And, I would like my toast toasted, not sunny, rainy, snowy, cloudy, OR fucking foggy, JUST FUCKING TOASTED!!

Who's in with me?

...anyone?

...hello?

*Sigh*

...Art

So I put some cash in the ATM this morning. Only I'm out a couple hundred dollars. Why? I'm sleepy and fucked up that whole decimal point thing. Being credited 1% of your actual deposit has a fun way of messing with you. Especially worrisome when you've fed the money into a Hong Kong Bank of Canada ATM and you're a Citizens Bank client... We'll see how honest the banks are about this. Yes, today will be a special day indeed. ...Art

I'm high and drunk. Happy New Year people!