Category: Dumbassedness

If I find a stick I'll put it in your mama's butt

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I’ve watched two episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program. I think I’m hooked.

.:.

Earlier this week we watched Me And You And Everyone We Know (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and I’m still not sure what I think about it. It was different, and certainly interesting, but it was almost over-quirky. I don’t know if I’ll remember liking the movie so much as I’ll remember it, full stop. There was a lot about it that was memorable.

It’s also weird to see former Deadwood actors in non-Deadwood roles.

.:.

Toronto city councillor Rob Ford: superdick.

“I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”

[via BlogTO]

[tags]sarah silverman, me and you and everyone we know, deadwood, rob ford[/tags]

Maybe they should send Jack Bauer after Rosie Costello

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Life is always better the day after the Canadiens beat the Leafs. However, Montreal didn’t do much of anything at the trade deadline (picking up a third-string goalie from waivers) while many of their closest competitors did.

.:.

I want this. Bell Canada cannot get this to me fast enough.

Imagine being at work, behind your computer, or holding your BlackBerry, and being able go online and control all the lights, temperature and appliances in your home. About 250 homeowners in Milton will soon have that option through a Web portal designed by Bell Canada and offered through their local utility.

Pair that with a Slingbox and I can take my home with me.

.:.

This woman might be the most repugnant being on the face of the earth who hasn’t killed someone or tortured an animal.

A woman admitted Monday that she coached her two children to fake retardation starting when they were 4 and 8 years old so she could collect Social Security benefits on their behalf.

The mind boggles.

.:.

Speaking of mental retardation, I don’t know how much more of 24 I can take. It’s just boring now. I feel compelled to watch the remainder of this season, but really, I’ve stopped caring for the most part. The only thing I really tune in for now is to see how Jack occasionally manhandles someone (cases in point: nearly breaking his [imminent] lady love’s neck last week when he thought she betrayed him, and in an early episode when he dragged some poor unsuspecting motorist from his car and threw him to the ground, yelling “Don’t get up!”) and to see if they somehow miraculously bring Mandy back into the plot. Other than that…meh. To quote Frank, “Wake me when Zombie Nina* arrives.”

* A&E’s been showing old episodes in the morning. Today I was late for work because I had to watch the end of the episode where Jack kills the hell out of Nina.

[tags]canadiens, leafs, trade deadline, smart home, slingbox, children faking mental retardation, 24[/tags]

Hypocrites 1; Telus 0

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You may remember me talking about how Telus is now selling porn via their cellphones. Well, they bowed to pressure from some customers and the Catholic church — who, let’s face it, really are the moral yardstick by which we should measure ourselves — and stopped the service.

Russell Smith weighs in with a logical, sensible response. Not that I expect his column to change many minds; sense and logic haven’t exactly carried the day thus far.

The way I see it: you can hate porn, or you can love porn, or you can admit that (as Smith points out) the definition of what’s porn and what isn’t is fuzzy at best. What I don’t understand is how you can argue that porn on cellphones is somehow more evil or damaging than on TV, computer screens, magazines or phone lines.

.:.

I just finished my uncle’s WWI book; I don’t know exactly why, but this time around I found it even more engaging. Maybe it was that The Guns Of August provided such a good introduction, or maybe I could just keep all the place & officer names straight this time. Anyway, I blasted through it in record (since I started the MBA, anyway) time. I’ll start Paris 1919 today since I’m home on sick leave.

By the way, the best line from the book was the very last:

“When he read the peace treaty, Marshal Foch burst out, ‘This isn’t peace! This is a truce for twenty years!’ The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. Twenty years and sixty-seven days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Hitler’s Germany.”

[tags]telus, cell phone porn, russell smith, WWI, treaty of versailles[/tags]

Happy Valentimes!!

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If you watched 30 Rock last week you’d find that title funnier.

.:.

Uh oh…is 300 gonna suck??!?!

.:.

A few nights ago on The Daily Show Jon Stewart made fun of last week’s non-stop “news” coverage (which has let up only slightly this week) of the Anna Nicole Smith story.

“She might’ve been our Lady Di?” Come…the fuck…on. Not that I have any great respect for anything to do with the British royals, but Anna Nicole Smith was famous for a) having giant fake tits, b) marrying a decrepit old man for his money and c) being retarded. Those three things, nothing else.

Come to think of it, that may be the most accurate analogy for American celebrity worship that I’ve ever heard.

[tags]valentimes, 30 rock, 300, daily show, anna nicole smith[/tags]

Birthday decadence, part II

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Well…so, that dinner last night was pretty amazing. Yeah, it cost a lot, but we’ve never had a dining experience like that before. Besides, Nellie only turns 31 once.

CBGB, Nellie and I arrived at Splendido first, with T-Bone joining us shortly after. From the second we arrived we knew the service would be expert in every possible sense of the word. Once we settled in and the ladies had set their purses on the padded bag stools (no, I’m not making that up) we ordered drinks: the ladies chose from the champagne trolley (no, I’m not making that up either) while GB and I each had a cocktail called a Cape Bretoner (Glen Breton whisky, maple syrup, ginger and blood orange), which I quite liked. From there the fun began. The service buzzed in and out constantly, clearing plates and placing new dishes, never bothering us except to describe the dishes and accompanying wines, pulling out chairs for the ladies and folding napkins before you’d even made it five steps from the table. Even the physical placement of the dishes was something I hadn’t seen before: perfect coordination by the three servers with one issuing hand signals to the others to ensure the timing was right. The meal took four hours, but the food was incredible, the service impeccable and the company — of course — perfect.

As it turns out, friends of ours happened to be having dinner there that night; today, thinking about it, I realize we hadn’t seen them since this time last year when they had us over for dinner. Perhaps we only congregate around food. To that end, I made plans to meet up with him for lunch soon.

Anyway, back to Splendido: they were nice enough to write down the entire menu for me (they don’t normally write out the vegetarian tasting menu since it’s prepared, according to our server, a la minute) so I can recount it for you here*:

  • 3 canapes (which they didn’t write down, so I’m kind of going on memory here): cauliflower soup, a crispy wafer with rapini and a cheese & onion tartlet
  • comfit beet carpaccio, fennel, arugula, parmagiano salad
  • shallow friend bean curd and dried soy bean, chili oil, sesame oil, coriander
  • Cookstown vegetables in a truffle broth, herbs, ovile oil
  • potato wrapped courgette carrot galette, cumin scented Hawaiian papaya, coriander yogurt
  • house made linguini in a woodland mushroom sauce
  • cheese plate: Stilton, Selles-sur-Cher goat cheese, Cru de Clocher Quebec cheddar
  • Grand Marnier Soufflé, chocolate infused whip cream, chocolate sauce
  • peanut butter & chocolate truffle

* The standard (read: meaty) tasting menu is on their website. There was an amuse bouche in there as well, which wasn’t written down…it was julienned vegetables in a nori paper wrap, but I don’t like nori paper, so I just ate the vegetables. They were tasty.

After four hours we finally wrapped up the meal and decided to go for a drink. Our server hailed us cabs; when I say hailed, I mean was standing in the middle of Spadina waving them over; needless to say his tip was well-deserved. We stopped in at Panorama, where the great view doesn’t quite make up for the cover charge (wtf?!) and overpriced drinks, before saying goodbye at the subway. We walked home, another birthday done, and by all accounts a good one. If Nellie ever wrote in her blog these days you could hear it from her. 😛

.:.

Halifax has probably set the new record for the world’s largest pub crawl. The story made me think of how it must’ve been at Pizza Corner last night; I assume it was like that scene from The Simpsons where Bart’s elephant is charging the peanut factory and the plant manager starts to give a speech about how “this is the day we’ve all been preparing for” before the elephant smashes through the wall.

.:.

Looks like the 60-story condo planned for the southeast corner of Yonge & Bloor might finally go ahead. While I’m glad I won’t be around for all that construction, I’m happy the corner will finally get a facelift. That intersection deserves better.

.:.

Dumbassedness of the day: a theatre in Florida, faced with complaints about the title of a popular play, is now set to present “The Hoohah Monologues” instead.

[via Boing Boing]

[tags]spendido, panorama, halifax pub crawl, pizza corner, yonge bloor condo, hoohah monologues[/tags]

"Man, that's faster than my recovery after ACL surgery."

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Ted Haggard, he of the megachurch, meth addiction and male-on-male action, now claims to be cured of his homosexuality. This man is going to break the needle on his ridiculousometer.

The Onion weighs in.

.:.

Ridiculousness averted: according to the Quill & Quire’s blog (a great read for all things book-related, by the way) the Ontario Catholic school board* has decided not to pull Snow Falling On Cedars from school library shelves. The controversy (albeit minor) was due to the book being “full of dialogue that contained dozens of curse words, many of them modifying the nouns ‘God’ and ‘Jesus Christ.’”

* Remind me again why Ontario has a Catholic school board?

[tags]ted haggard, ontario catholic school board, snow falling on cedars[/tags]

A gurgling stomach is "one of the signs" of My Lunch's imminent return

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First of all, some big news: my oldest brother is now engaged!!! Everybody pop over to his blog and say congratulations to TimmyD and She Who Must Not Be Named.

Needless to say we’re extremely happy for both of them. We adore SWMNBN, and love how happy she makes my big brother, so we couldn’t be more pleased. Huzzah!

.:.

We tried a new place for Winterlicious last night: The Savoy. T-Bone joined us once again, along with her friend AS. We had a MUCH better experience this time than we had at 1055. My wine (can’t remember what it was…something Tuscan) was really good, my starter salad was excellent, my mushroom risotto wasn’t bad (I don’t like mushrooms, but even then…pretty decent) and my creme brulee was just right. The service was also very good, and best of all our table was in an enclosed booth, so the four of us felt very private and cozy during our meal. To top it off, it was actually cheaper than the typical ‘licious meal — $25 instead of $35 — so we definitely felt like we got our money’s worth.

The Savoy could very well become a neighbourhood joint once we move into our new place.

.:.

I seem to have buggered up my knee somehow. Tried to run on it Sunday afternoon and had to hobble to a stop after 45 seconds. This happens occasionally; hopefully a day with the knee brace should fix it up. But of all the weeks not to be able to exercise: Winterlicious week. Deadly.

.:.

This post on the Showcase Sideshow blog makes an interesting observation: the quality of Mexican directors right now is pretty impressive. It’d be pretty tough to find a better trio of films than Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro), Children Of Men (Alfonso Cuaron) and Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu) in theatres right now.

.:.

Holy blessed mother of hotpants, this Washington Post story takes climate change denial to a whole new level of silliness:

Hardison, a parent of seven here in the southern suburbs of Seattle, has himself roiled the global-warming waters. It happened early this month when he learned that one of his daughters would be watching “An Inconvenient Truth” in her seventh-grade science class.

“No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation — the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet — for global warming,” Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is “one of the signs” of Jesus Christ’s imminent return for Judgment Day.

His angry e-mail (along with complaints from a few other parents) stopped the film from being shown to Hardison’s daughter.

The teacher in that science class, Kay Walls, says that after Hardison’s e-mail she was told by her principal that she would receive a disciplinary letter for not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to present “controversial” materials in class.

Seriously…if you’re the school how can you discipline a teacher for that? You’ve opened the door for teachers to be disciplined for discussing anything, since there’s always some nutbag parent who’ll get their knickers in a twist. Teaching evolution? Sex ed? Geology? Astronomy? Prepare to be disciplined. Hell, if a kid’s parent works for Verizon they’re even likely to complain about the math.

[via Cinematical]

[tags]engagement, savoy restaurant, winterlicious, climate change, inconvenient truth, frosty hardison[/tags]

Guide dogs, polar bears and cats…oh my!

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I watched most of the world junior semifinal hockey game between Canada and the US today (thanks, TSN broadband!), and watched overtime and most of the shootout in the TV room with a bunch of colleagues. It took the 7th round of a shootout for Canada to finally complete the comeback win. It just kept going on and on; I actually yelled at the TV once, “Do they not realize I have a 1:00 meeting?!??!” before Jonathan Toews finally put it away and Carey Price (Canadiens draft pick; natch) stopped the final American shooter.

I went from nearly having a heart attack to running down the street for a meeting.

.:.

Pat Robertson has either gone senile or just hasn’t gotten enough press lately. To wit, he’s claiming that God spoke to him about some terrorist attacks. I don’t believe there is a God, but if there was, he sure as shit wouldn’t waste time talking to Pat Robertson.

.:.

Nellie talks about all the donations made in our names this year (in lieu of xmas gifts, as per our request). There’s some great stuff on there: animal protection, environmental concerns, anti-poverty, education…good stuff, all. Makes us feel warm and fuzzy.
[tags]hockey, world junior championship, pat robertson, terrorist attacks, charitable donations[/tags]

Hello, bigoted pot? This is retarded kettle calling. You are black.

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The best part about this CNN story regarding the imminent gay marriage ban in Massachusetts: the colossal irony of the accompanying picture.

[EDIT: I suppose it could be an opponent of the gay marriage ban carrying this sign, which would kill both the irony and my witty subject line. Therefore, I choose to stick with my original interpretation: the man holding the sign is a weenie.]

.:.

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog has yet another thought-provoking post, this time about the decline of violence in recent decades and the 20th century overall (despite what the news might suggest). Being the Economist’s blog, the topic is tied back to factors like wealth and trade, and to the question of whether economic prosperity reduces violence; my opinion is that it does, but the writer himself points out one of the most common arguments against such an opinion:

“Increasing trade has made it harder to go to war without at least temporarily doing violence to one’s own economy. Of course, I believe this argument was once advanced as a reason that World War I was impossible.”

By the way…cat-burning? I couldn’t have lived in the 16th century.

[tags]gay marriage ban, massachusetts, economist, free exchange blog, decline in violence, cat-burning[/tags]