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Stop Looking At Me, Swan.


in

I can see the pond in the public gardens and the swan boats seem to be taunting me today. They’re having a cool dip, with exotic women from countries all over the world sitting in their laps, and I’m stapled to a desk writing emails about search engine optimization. Here comes another. See how he grins in my direction, rubbing in the fact that I have to remain indoors for another 3 hours, while he bobs around in duck doody and medical waste.

Here comes another one. Happy bird, I envy you. Even with a dirty bandaid stuck to your rudder, you’re still floating free while I read emails like a veal. Come to me soon, July 4th weekend, so I can escape to the great Northern woods, if only for a moment.

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I’m Not Your Donner.


in Television

The only thing that’s worse than oppressive heat is oppressive heat in the middle of a rainstorm. And the only thing worse than that is having nothing better to talk about than the frigging weather. At least in this scenario no one can accuse me of having a degenerative sweat duct disorder. I have to traverse the city twice tonight for meetings and will undoubtedly stumble through my apartment door around 9pm like one of the Donner Party.

The Oilers lost last night, and although I was bummed it was one of the greatest and most exciting series of hockey, or any other sport, that I’ve ever watched. Now what am I supposed to do? Glad you asked. Luckily Big Brother (the UK version – I’m not that sad) is in full swing, and my router at home is smoking from all the downloading. Year after year I am absolutely transfixed by this show, and I’m not proud of it. Good watchin’.

I have to wrap it up and start the evening’s journey. I’ll leave you all with this insane Lego site, where someone with even more spare time than me has made “dream playsets” of all his favorite pop-culture icons – including Trailer Park Boys. And yes, Julian has a little lego Bacardi and Coke.

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Blood, Sweat and Sweat.


in

My AC unit is a doozy. I would turn my kitchen floor into a rink right now if I mopped it. Good thing that only ever happens after a fork stabbing. Couple the temperature with the historic game 7 of the Stanley Cup that’s in full swing right now, and I’m a happy little penguin.

It’s been hot the last few days in Boston. the new phrase I keep hearing is “Africa” hot. But I think it’s more akin to “trip drunkenly over a trailer hitch into a campfire” hot. Exceedingly warm weather is not my favorite, and I’m going to be putting the dry cleaner’s kids through prep school if this continues.

I walk to work every day as I’ve discussed, and it works out to about 22 miles a week. Lately I’ve been getting to work after these 2 mile jaunts looking like Andy escaping from Shawshank. My favorite joke from last night’s Entourage comes to mind: “I haven’t seen anyone sweat like that since Patrick Ewing retired”. Frig – Carolina just scored. I have to pay attention to the game now and rub my rabbit’s foot. Only I don’t have one, so I’m bound to make the cat really uncomfortable.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Lemonading and Abetting.


in Monday's Quotelet

Appetizer: What is a word that you use that would not be considered common?
I say “porkies” a lot. And not because I’m enthralled with Kim Cattrall nude scenes. Alright, it might be because I’m enthralled with Kim Cattrall nude scenes. ‘Porkies’ is the abbreviation of ‘porky pies’ which is cockney rhyming slang for ‘lies’. When I lived in England, you’d frequently see adults saying to children: “Are you telling porkies again, Nathaniel?!” That always cracks me up, so I use it here in Boston, and everyone looks at me like I’ve hit my head on something.

Soup: What theme of calendar do you have on your wall this year?
I have a delightfully cute calendar comprised entirely of photos of one of my friend’s children. It’s an improvement over my mother’s frequent calendar gifts, which while good intentioned are usually comprised of things like cats with hats or Harry Potter. I have enough challenges at work – I don’t need to hang one of those bad boys up over my desk and become a laughing stock. Besides, there’s no room anymore after I put up all my Klingon translation charts.

Salad: Name 3 people you speak with by telephone a regular basis.
I’m not a big phone guy. My roomate speaks on his phone all night long. More than most 12 year old girls. He’s social, he misses his friends, I understand. But it’s foreign to me. There are few things I’d rather do less than chit-chat on the phone. “So anyway, I’d better let you go.” is how I answer it.

Main Course: If you could buy a new outfit for someone you know – who would it be and what would you purchase for them?
I’d buy Venditti a purple velour tux, because I’m pretty sure he’d wear it to his wedding.

Dessert: What is the last beverage you drank?
“Lemonade! That cool refreshing drink…” The lemonade at the Au Bon Pain downstairs is so strong, I get a large one in the morning and drink it halfway and just refill it with water all day for 10 hours of lemony goodness. Kind of like non-alcoholic swish.

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Congratulations Katy & Reynolds!


in

The wedding wasn’t a wash. We persevered in spite of the torrential rain and monstrous mud puddles, and the happy couple had a terrific time – as did all of the revelers. I have a new appreciation for red wine and coke, rock candy and Tad. Paying large for a hotel room and then sleeping on the floor of someone else’s while the blanket thief lurks kind of sucks though. I won’t lie.

Enjoy the gallery and your new life together! I am glad you asked me to be there, and I appreciate the offer to name your first born after me – regardless of gender. One love… one life… one thing uh, I believe the children are our future.

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Wednesday Weigh-In #8: Super Big Stylings.


in

We’re losing steam. Not fat. Only 3 weeks to go before the pork ass challenge sputters across the finish line. Will you have made a dent in your spare tire, or has complacency washed over all of us like a Super Big Gulp?

– Monster >> Current: 263 / Last Week – 266 / Target 255 / Lost 3
– Smash >> Current: 136 / Last Week – 136 / Target 129 / Lost 0
– Pyeman >> Current: 225 / Last Week – 226 / Target 215 / Lost 1
– DVS >> Current 245 / Last Week – 246 / Target 210 / Lost 1
– Aubz >> Current: 131 / Last Week – 131 /Target 125 / Lost 0
– BDoyle >> Current: 180 – / Last Week – 182 / Target 175 / Lost 2
– Sly >> Current: 211 – / Last Week – 213 / Target 175 / Lost 2
– Piglet >> Current: 145 / Last Week – 144 / Target 135 / Gained 1
– Not Lance >> Current: 166 / Last Week – 168 / Target 161 / Lost 2
– Greg >> Current: 178 / Last Week – 179/ Target 170 / Lost 1
– Venditti >> Current: 229 / Last Week – 230 / Target 219 / Lost 1
– Ka-Rista >> Current: 155 / Last Week – 158 / Target 140 / Lost 3

Let’s keep it going, and I promise I’ll track down every last person who is still on this list. The wedding I was at on Saturday served fried chicken (genius,) and I still managed to wiggle out of a pound last week. It was probably all of the slick dancefloor stylings afterwards, but that’s beside the point. Weigh in and keep it going.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: The Full Vermonty.


in Monday's Quotelet

Appetizer: About how much money did you spend on gas this week?
Zero – but I’ve been informed, as I did not pay for the hotel we’re staying in Saturday for a wedding in Vermont, that I am paying for all the gas. I can live with that, even though I’m sure I’ll end up sleeping in a bathtub with one of the caterers.

Soup: What is your favortite brand of toilet paper?
What an odd question. Dr. Migilicutty’s Hot Lube With Grits. 2-ply.

Salad: When was the last time you found something you thought was genius?
I remain stunned and amazed at the quality of the American version of The Office. I am halfway through Season 2 on DVD, and it just never gets old. I wondered, how in the heck will they ever find an equivalent of a Yank Ricky Gervais – but Steve Carell was a master stroke. KELLY CLARKSON!

Main Course: What is the least amount of sleep you can get by on per night?
I needs my Zs. Six hours is the bare minimum. Otherwise my eyes feel like mothballs the next day, and I have the attention span of a crow in a keychain factory.

Dessert: June is a popular wedding month. Do you know anyone getting married?
Uncanny! I am attending Katie and Reynolds’ wedding in VT tomorrow as I said, and then Jason and Amy’s nuptuals in Niagra Falls come October. I’m not even sure what town we’re headed to tonight – I am just jumping in the car when my sister shows up and letting her worry about it all. She loves it when I sleep the whole way during a long drive. The Canada wedding will involve some travel, as I’ll also be up for the stag & doe in September – but I never see those cats and it’ll be well worth it. Maybe if Jason is done boycotting the blog, he’ll chime in with something clever to say. Have a good weekend.

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Wednesday Weigh-In #7: Better Late Than Porky.


in

Hello kids – the clunky, sporradic application I wish I hadn’t started this blog – called Blogger – has been down all day. I apologize to those of you who have been waiting with baited breath for this week’s rotund results. Put down your frozen concentrated orange juice tube full of bacon grease and pay attention.

– Monster >> Current: 266 / Last Week – 268 / Target 255 / Lost 2
– Smash >> Current: 136 / Last Week – 137 / Target 129 / Lost 1
– Pyeman >> Current: 226 / Last Week – 226 / Target 215 / Lost 0
– DVS >> Current 246 / Last Week – 248 / Target 210 / Lost 2
– Aubz >> Current: 131 / Last Week – 132 /Target 125 / Lost 1
– BDoyle >> Current: 182 – / Last Week – 184 / Target 175 / Lost 3
– Sly >> Current: 211 – / Last Week – 213 / Target 175 / Lost 2
– Piglet >> Current: 144 / Last Week – 146 / Target 135 / Lost 2
– Not Lance >> Current: 166 / Last Week – 168 / Target 161 / Lost 2
– Greg >> Current: 179 / Last Week – 183/ Target 170 / Lost 4
– Venditti >> Current: 229 / Last Week – 230 / Target 219 / Lost 1
– Ka-Rista >> Current: 158 / Last Week – 158 / Target 140 / Lost 0

I’ve definitely hit a plateau. I think I will be able to get down to 220 in the rest of the time alloted, but 215 is a pipe dream at this point. It’s just as well, because I’m not prepared to cut off an arm. I don’t know what I was thinking. Smash continues to drop, probably due to her recent move, and DVS claims his scale is broken – which doesn’t exactly bode well for him. I haven’t heard from Venditti or Ka-Rista in 2 weeks, and I will be busting chops Thursday to get all of the results in. Stay tuned.

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A New Radio Pye? Maybe.


in Pye in the Face

Last FM is extraordinarily cool. If you’re not familiar with it, sign up now. I have added a chart in the left hand nav where you can see, and listen to, the last few songs I have played for myself. It tracks all my preferences and creates an on-the-fly radio station which has no boundaries in terms of artist catalogues, bandwidth or diskspace. The only problem is it looks like crap.

Do you really care at what time of the day I listened to one of these songs? You probably don’t care that I’ve listened to them at all. If I can figure out a way to get the box narrower, it will be staying. If not, I’ll keep looking for another musical solution for PITF. In the meantime, you’ll have more Pixies, Happy Mondays and Tragically Hip than you can shake a stick at. Just walk away.

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Shut Up, Annie Lennox.


in Musical

Here comes the rain again. Have you looked at the forecast? Looks like the sun may make a brief appearance Saturday afternoon, but other than that as of tonight we’re going back to Waterworld. This is actually good, because I have people coming to fix my roof Thursday and they’ll be able to spot leaks while they’re doing the diagnostic. And by ‘spot leaks while they’re doing the diagnostic’, I of course mean cancel the appointment because they don’t work in the rain.

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Stronger Than A Pot of Tim Horton’s.


in Consumables

“Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, thrice the amount used by Timothy McVeigh to demolish a government building in Oklahoma City. Cellphone detonators. Switches. Computer hard drive. A 9-mm pistol. Soldering gun. Camouflage gear.” – Toronto Star

This weekend’s terrorist arrests (read this) in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) will hopefully bring a renewed – or first-time to be more specific – sense of urgency to Canadians, and are incidentally of absolutely no surprise to me. Thank God this new awareness of the realistic domesestic threat level is going to stem from this news – and not an actual flattening of the ACC, Rogers Center (Skydome) or CN Tower. I have long maintained, and you can ask multiple people who’ve been bored to tears by my theories, that Canada will be the next Western country hit by a major terrorist attack. The new government was a welcome power-shift for me, and Harper’s era is probably just in time. Harper, from yesterday:

“The raid that netted 17 Toronto-area youth and men proves Canada is not immune to violent attacks. Canada is a target because we value freedom, democracy and the rule of law.” I’m going to take a stab at another translation here, and it’s not because he was speaking French – Canadians are perceived as infidels by extremists, just as surely as Americans are. We’re all North Americans, and we’re all fair game. A flag-on-the-knapsack works well on rude German waiters, but it might as well be a bullseye to the radicals, mon ami.

I will never forget walking back to my Boston apartment on September 11, 2001, watching people crying into their cellphones as they tried to reach or get news on their loved ones in New York City. I worked near a bonafide potential target, so was sent home around noon on that day. At the time, I had a pretty devious analog cable descrambling method, and was able to get a live feed from MuchMusic which is the equivalent of Canadian MTV (except they actually play music videos). They filled a room with high school students and passed a mike around – the opinions expressed were painful, and resonate with me to this day.

To paraphrase: “Yeah, well… like… maybe now the States will wake up and see that they can’t, like, push the rest of the world around anymore or nuthin’.” This distancing sort of opinion has only gotten worse over the last five years, and Iraq – regardless of how you feel about the motivations – is the first American-involved conflict that Canada has not contributed forces to in over a hundred years.

I am not going to pretend to have any special insight into world affairs. But I do read the news every day, from multiple sources, and consider myself reasonably informed. I was worried at the dialogue coming out of my home country, and I am exstatic that these bastards were nabbed by the CSIS before they could do anyone any harm. I take a great comfort in the new awareness that will likely stem from this incident. That was a close one, and there’s a silver lining.

“This isn’t just slumming with jihad. For the benighted who claim that the war on terrorism is terrorism: Here is your war.”

UPDATE: A great editorial from the Globe and Mail.

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July Sublet Sought.


in

Two friends of mine are coming to Boston this summer for a month in order to make a documentary. They are based in Sweden and are just looking for an apartment for the month of July. As I know many of my readers are Boston-based, some of whom even like me, I thought I would throw that out there. Drop me a line if you have an, albeit brief, opening. They are a couple and would need one room. God forbid they should stay with me. This place is already like a bus terminal.

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It’s OK To Be A Little Excited.


in Movies

I read a lot of “insider” movie news websites where folks in the industry leak really sensitive and current information under silly pseudonyms. So basically “Highlander79“, who is actually a 47-year-old studio executive, leaves the boardroom after a major meeting, sneaks up to his office and spills the non-disclosure beans while probably cloaking his IP address. All the internet nerds then rejoice by dressing up as Jawas, masturbating to the deleted scenes from the special edition Legend DVD and then feeding a mogwai after midnight. At least that’s a normal Friday around my apartment.

I usually keep what I read on these movie sites to myself, as I would actually like to reproduce some day. However there have been some doozy rumors floating around lately and I’m just a little bit excited, in spite of my attempts to only appear marginally really excited. OK – Here are the big two:

– Indiana Jones 4 is sorta, almost, nearly a go. Keep your “…and the Temple of Geritol” jokes to yourself. Harry can still whup some ass. Although as he’ll now be much older, I guess Indy will probably end up fighting communists of some sort. There are so many good jokes here but I have to get this written and get out to an appointment. George Lucas on the script he’s been working on for 10 years – “I think it works like crazy“. Let’s just make sure we get around to it before Connery dies.

– Die Hard 4.0 could begin filming at the end of the summer, and the existing script is an “epic“. It’s called 4.0 because it has McClane battling internet terrorists with the help of his young hacker-genius son. “Yippiekayay Motherfu… – I mean Yippiekayay!”

And just because I love YouTube:

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