Category: Dumbassedness

68.666%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

No bar tonight, I’m bagged. Sitting in air as heavy as cotton, drinking a few beers, eating a big meal and eschewing caffeine for the afternoon pretty much wiped me out; we managed to get our executive summary finished before I came back to my room, called Nellie and began the slow descent into alcoholism sleep.

.:.

A few seconds ago I was looking for the Jays game and flipped by Paris Hilton talking to Larry King. If that’s her idea of “acting less stupid” she should be sentenced to 21 days in a library.

.:.

[UPDATE] Ye gods, look at the post title…it’s the decimal of the beast!

[tags]mba, paris hilton[/tags]

A wider platform at Union Station would probably solve about half of those

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That wasn’t taken today, but it could have been if I could be arsed to find the camera. I believe that’s St. Catherine’s in the distance.

.:.

Yesterday, the good: since my team is moving from one office building to another (just down the street) we had to be packed up and out of the office by noon. One meeting later and the six of us were off to T-Bone’s house for a bbq. We sat in her back yard, had steaks and veggier burgers (ok, I was the only one who had the veggie burgers), and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine. Well, proximity to the sunshine anyway; half of us burn within seconds in the hot sun.

Yesterday, the bad: too little sleep Thursday night combined with a few suds and embarassing activity (see below) made me exceedingly tired and I crashed around 10:30.

Yesterday, the ugly: Dance dance revolution. That is all.

.:.

The TTC is removing signs from their escalators that say “walk left, stand right” as there are growing concerns that such a policy causes injury. I have two problems with this.

In fact, last year alone, 138 people were injured on TTC escalators, with 50 ending up in hospital.

While the TTC recognizes the lack of signs is unlikely to change escalator-use habits, removing the signs may protect the commission in the event of a lawsuit.

First, I have yet to hear how many of the 138 injuries had anything to do with walking on escalators.

Second, expecting litigation is a bit much. The TTC is no more subject to litigation over people walking on their escalators than the provincial government is for allowing drivers to pass one another on their roads.

[tags]bbq, ttc, escalators[/tags]

Winner of the first annual Least Absurd contest: the independents

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I finally visited the bakery downstairs (called “Porh Pawh”…anyone want to take a stab at what the hell that means?) since I was walking by it around 7:45. I got an almond croissant, still piping hot…it was really good. Dammit. Fresh, tasty croissants downstairs — literally, I don’t even have to outside — is not what I need.

.:.

Is anyone else having problems with Sympatico? Or is it just me? My connection has been le suck since Saturday.

.:.

I am stunned. I knew it was bad down there, but I didn’t know it was this bad.

I remember being amused when three of the Republicans running for the party candidacy admitted, during a debate, that they did not believe in evolution. I thought, “That’s it. Those guys are toast.” Little did I know that they’d probably just read the advanced polling and were giving their constituents what they wanted to hear. That’s horrifying in and of itself, but the fact that 68% of the party who voted in the president doesn’t believe in evolution is just…staggering. I’m flummoxed, really.

Full story here.

[tags]porh pawh, sympatico problems, evolution, republicans, democrats, gallup[/tags]

A big steel decoration

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The good news: we picked up our barbeque today.

The bad news: our natural gas connection doesn’t seem to be working.

.:.

CBGB came over this morning for brunch. There was much sitting on the balcony. Then there was gelato. Then there was an overwhelming desire to nap, followed by work and some painting. Truly, a red-letter day.

.:.

We watched Nacho Libre (imdb | rotten tomatoes) yesterday. A few funny bits early on, but overall pretty disappointing. I expected more from Jack Black and the director of Napoleon Dynamite. One interesting thing: the female lead, Ana de la Reguera, looked like someone had spliced Winona Ryder together with Penelope Cruz.

[tags]natural gas barbeque, gelato, nacho libre[/tags]

I wonder how her husband feels about that

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Today is my friend Marney’s birthday. Today is also Old Maid’s Day. I’m sure those two things are just coincidence.

.:.

Sad, Rebecca Eckler, sad. Only someone deep in the throes of hubris could think that someone stole the plot of Knocked Up from them. Quill & Quire offers their own take on the [ahem] story:

“A warning to comedy writers out there: if you’re working on a gag in which someone has to buy something embarrassing at the supermarket and the cashier calls for a price check on the store PA system, you better make sure Eckler hasn’t used that one – if she has, she’ll think you nicked it from her.”

Tee hee.

.:.

For the sake of my blood pressure, Christopher Hume needs to stop writing articles like this one about the Toronto waterfront.

[tags]old maid’s day, rebecca eckler, christopher hume, toronto waterfront[/tags]

The people living in 1304: doomed.

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Our patio furniture has arrived. Well, most of it anyway; the the table & benches were delivered this morning, but it’ll take a while to make the cushions.

.:.

While it makes sense that our building has a 13th floor, it’s going to take away a little of my happiness. It always made me laugh a little that people superstitious enough to be upset by a 13th floor would also be dumb enough to not figure out what the 14th floor really was.

If I lived at Cityplace, where there are no 4th, 13th, 14th, 24th or 34th floors, I’d probably laugh myself silly every day.

.:.

There are two types of people in this world: those who find singing animatronic puppets funny and/or charming (past the age of six, anyway) and those who find them a devilish scourge upon the earth. You can probably guess where I stand on the issue. Visits to my local grocery store checkout have become trying as there are whole racks of these things just waiting to tinnily excrete “When I’m 64” or “Roll Out The Barrel” when some kid jostles them.

.:.

Something that got lost in yesterday’s missing post that I feel is worth repeating: last Friday, June 1st, was 10 years to the day since I moved to Toronto. I clearly remember getting off the plane, taking a cab to my apartment at Yonge & Sheppard, being met there by my friend & roommate CBJ and immediately heading downtown to meet friends for brunch at the Movenpick on York Street (which is now a Keg). That seems like…well, 1/3 of my life ago.

[tags]patio furniture, unlucky numbers, movenpick, the keg[/tags]

"Coupons…you want coupons, don't you?"

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Today was day 1 of the mesh conference here in Toronto. I met up with Colin, cursed the caterers for only having bagels to eat, drank as much water as I could and found a seat before the proceedings got underway.

The first (and best) part of today’s schedule was TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington. He’s a pretty frank guy, and when he lambasted Ted Murphy from PayPerPost — calling him “the most evil person in the room” — things got fun. He also spoke frankly about how silicone valley is in need of another meltdown, to get all the PR and money-grabbing types out and let the real revolutionaries take over again.

Tom Williams and Austin Hill were also good, giving their perspectives as two guys who got very rich very young, and have devoted their time to effecting social change. Hill talked about an interesting new distributed computing power saving tool; think SETI@home for saving electricity. Check it out at DarkGreenPC.org.

After a sad lunch (strike 2 against the caterers: only vegetarian options were ceasar salad and pasta salad) I saw a very funny panel with Rachel Sklar, Loren Feldman and Cynthia Brumfield about whether or not old media should be scared shitless of new media. The consensus: maybe a little. New media won’t kill old media, but it’ll scare it into reacting.

I also watched panels entitled “Digital Blinders – Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?” and “The Always-On Generation – What Do Youth Do with the Web?”; the former was more like a university lecture or radio show than panel discussion, while the latter was amusing for how old it made most of the participants feel. A sample snippet:

[panelist] Erica Sum: “How many people in here have been to YTMND?”

[I raise my hand, as do maybe 4 or 5 other people in a room of about 100. Erica then starts talking about how cool it is in a screwy kind of way.]

Confused audience member #1: “Umm, could you maybe describe what that is for people who don’t know?”

Confused audience member #2: “Yeah, like how it’s different than Facebook or MySpace?”

Erica [trying to stifle laughter]: “Oh, it’s not at all.”

You can’t fault the audience members for not knowing what YTMND is, or for thinking it has something to do with social networking, since it’d been the dominant theme of the day. It was just a funny exchange.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Note to self: bring a nutrigrain bar.

.:.

Obviously, if I’m at home writing this, I wasn’t able to attend the free screening of Severance that I won passes to earlier this week. I was feeling too wonky, and have too much to do tonight. As soon as I finish writing this I plan to do an hour or two of work while I watch the hockey game. Dagnabbit…I wanted to see that movie too.

.:.

Things I’ve learned in the last 36 hours: never wear a white dress shirt to the dentist (that pink shit they polish your teeth with sprays) and screens for balcony doors are outrageously expensive (we’ve been quoted >$400 each).

.:.

An instructional video: how to break up with advertisers.

[tags]mesh07, severance, dentist, balcony screen doors, bring the love back[/tags]

We can, we're strong, we'll beat it

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

New music I’ve been listening to:

  • a sunny day in glasgow . “5-15 train”
  • black taj . “woke up tired”
  • dandy warhols . “she sells sanctuary”
  • dt’s . “330 freedom”
  • fujiya & miyagi . “casettesingle”
  • jandek . “nancy sings”
  • junior boys . “in the morning (hot chip remix)”
  • katie melua . “i cried for you”
  • kissaway trail . “61”
  • maximo park . “our velocity”
  • motor . “bleep”
  • papercuts . “take the 227th exit”

The Kissaway Trail and DT’s songs are particularly good.

.:.

From the “disgusting for more than one reason” file, we have this from CNN: a woman in Texas says a jury shouldn’t blame her husband for microwaving their baby, they should blame the devil.

Holy shee-ite.

Anyway…

.:.

Wrote 2/3 of my paper today. Couldn’t bring myself to write the whole thing. Bad, bad MBA candidate…

[tags]kisaway trail, microwaved baby[/tags]

Water, water everywhere, but trust me, you do not want to drink it

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

On sunny & windy days, this is a pretty typical view: beaucoup de sailboats. More pics over at flickr.

.:.

Enough already with the whining about gas prices. Seriously. It’s cheaper than milk. It’s cheaper than orange juice, Coke or cough syrup. It’s cheaper than bottled water. And yet, there are people like this:

“It’s always like this,” Harris said as she filled her SUV at the Esso station at Lake Shore Blvd. E. and Leslie St. “They spike it up on weekends. They spike it up on the long weekend. They always have an excuse. It’s refinery problems, or it’s terrorism in the Middle East, or hurricanes. Oil is down, so there’s no reason for high prices.”

First of all, you drive an SUV, there’s no reason for you to complain about high gas prices either. If you can afford a gas guzzler, you can’t be strapped for cash.

Second…the same free market economy that made you wealthy enough to buy an SUV is what makes gas prices go up and down according to demand. Of course they’re out to charge you as much as they can; why wouldn’t they? YOU KEEP PAYING IT!!

And please, no excuses about “I need my car to get to work.” Buy a smaller car. Take public transit. Bike. Walk. Car pool. Choose to live closer to work in the first place. If you can’t (or won’t) do any of those things, then by all means, produce the contract you signed when you bought your car stating that gas prices would never, ever go up. Don’t have one? Then buy some oil company stock to offset the losses that you’ve chosen to inflict on yourself.

Side note: it’s interesting to watch the Toronto Star cover stories like this. On one hand, the Star wants to stick to big business and take the side of the poor consumer, but on the other hand they want to be the environmental advocate (ironic, considering they’re a newspaper) so they come across as conflicted in these cases.

.:.

As much as I despised Jerry Falwell, and as cold an emotionless as I can be sometimes, and as much as I think it’s hilarious, I simply cannot bring myself to buy this shirt.

[note: if you don’t get the punchline, read this.]

.:.

A week-old post on Torontoist that I didn’t look at until just now has some great concert footage of the Arcade Fire. The scene in the middle of the clip is the best one; my favourite part is how Richard Reed Parry replicates a snare drum sound.

[tags]toronto, lake ontario, sailboats, spire condominium, gas prices, toronto star, jerry falwell, torontoist, arcade fire[/tags]