Arrrrrrgghhhhhjroijgoherjhjtohjore

I’ve been having problems with…Bell’s DNS servers, I guess, since I’m randomly unable to access websites that I know are there. Like this one. As I hit ‘publish’ after writing a great honking post. I’m not typing that shit up again, so I’ll summarize:

That is all. We’re off to New York tomorrow; don’t know how often I’ll be posting.

False alarm

Fire alarms when you’re trying to relax on a Friday night are a pain in the butt. Especially when you have to carry the cats up and down flights of stairs (can’t wait for that cat diet to kick in). There was no fire, obviously, but the boys were plenty annoyed at being stuffed in their carriers.

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The new Google Talk for the Blackberry is pretty sweet. It uses the same contact list as the full web version of Gmail, and works almost exactly the same way. I was pretty impressed.

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The two songs that Ted Leo posted on his site are both really, really good. I’m looking forward to the new disc. Speaking of music, the new Neko Case is, indeed, excellent. The new Mogwai is also good, but we all knew that already. Their May concert is looking like it’s fo sho now: M2 is in.

They're no here

Ooh, almost forgot: Chromewaves’ Frank noticed that Mogwai will make a stop in Toronto after all. Like him, I think my ears have healed sufficiently since I last saw them. I shall see if M2 is up for it.

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Ever see Ripley’s Game (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? I just watched it this week; don’t even remember how it got onto my Zip list, but I’m glad it did. I liked it very much; Malkovich is better than usual here, and that’s something. I like movies with style; this one has it. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

Come to Tsukuba. We're Number 53!!

Today was one of those days when I just didn’t sit down long enough to do anything until about 4:00. Hence, I forgot to post to Girlfriend Du Jour, forgot to update my hockey and basketball pools (costing myself some points) and haven’t posted anything to my blogs (work-related or personal). But all four of my meetings were good, I got a pile of work done between 4:00 and 7:00 and I still got home in time to watch Montreal pound Boston.

.:.

Another by-city quality-of-life index. Toronto tied for 14th, Vancouver finished 3rd. Five Canadian cities finished in the top 25, but 3 Swiss and 3 German cities finished in the top 10. And as if I didn’t want to visit Geneva and Switzerland already, they finished 1-2.

Where's Andrei Kovalev?

Sorry, busy lately. Bad, bad blogger.

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Here’s why the Toronto Maple Leafs are just like the Republicans: they claim to be victimized, oppressed everyday joes who just want a fair break, when in fact they already get every break in the book. But by whining, bitching, moaning and crying foul at every given opportunity, they convince everyone that they’re the poor put-upon underdog and get preferential treatment. Witness the 12 minor penalties called against the Canadiens last night, including 7 in a row. The Leafs, meanwhile, got away with stuff like Bryan McCabe cross-checking Chris Higgins into the net, resulting in Higgins’ cheek smashing into Ed Belfour’s skate blade. No call, of course, and the Canadiens were called for another minor just when they were threatening to get close in the 3rd. Did the Canadiens deserve to win? Probably not. But when you’re playing your third game in four nights and the refs hand your opposition four power play goals on twelve chances, it’s pretty much impossible to pull one out. In general, the game was shit; the penalties called on the Leafs were equally ridiculous, just fewer in number.

Still on hockey, the Canadiens traded Jose Theodore to Colorado today. I, and every other Habs fan on earth, are remembering the last time Montreal traded their superstar goalie to Colorado and praying that history will not repeat itself.

.:.

Two more basketball injuries, but nothing major. My big toe got cut last week — I think I broke the nail about midway down and it cut into the nail bed — and it got stepped on enough this week that I bled through another sock. I also pulled my tricep while working with a friend; I was pretending to guard her, slipped on the dusty floor and stumbled backward for a few steps…you know, those few seconds when you know you’re going to fall but just keep stumbling backwards, and it seems to last for an hour…anyway, I knew that I was about to run headlong into the wall so I kind of let myself fall, but my right arm kind of twisted as it bore the impact and I strained the muscle a bit. Still, I got it worked out before we started to play.

Some younger guys showed up with Miggles; they started off on fire, jumping all over the place and running up and down and just oozing energy…that lasted about 10 minutes. By the end of the night one of them looked like he needed oxygen…

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Wal-Mart, graduating from tacky to evil, has enlisted bloggers to say nice things about the company. They can all blow me, them and their little flying markdown happy faces.

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I’ve listened to the first 1/3 of the not-yet-released Fiery Furnaces disc Bitter Tea, and I fear what we have on our hands here is Blueberry Boat v2.0. It’s too bad; I had such fuckin’ hopes for us.

Beast Confessor

A follow-up on yesterday’s post about the Enron documentary: Andy Fastow testified today that both Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were aware of all his funny business, and approved it.

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Hooray for eMusic. They had the new albums from both Mogwai and Neko Case (Mr. Beast and Fox Confessor Brings The Flood respectively) available for download today…and download them I did. Unless something goes really awry, I suspect both of these will end up on my year’s end top ten list.

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Even though I feel like ass, I’m playing basketball tonight. Gotta do somethin’; I’ve been a lazy, lazy man of late.

Oh, to be a blue Versace dress…

OK, so, the Oscars:

  • Jon Stewart: very funny. I think he kicked ass (especially the Cheney joke and the “Three 6 Mafia: one Oscar; Martin Scorsese: zero” bit) but I don’t think they’ll ask him back. I think his humour goes over the head of a lot of the viewers.
  • God bless God for making Salma Hayek.
  • Crash didn’t deserve to win best picture. It was good, but it wasn’t the best of the year. Likewise, Reese Witherspoon. Good, but not even in the same league as Felicity Huffman in Transamerica. Rachel Weisz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, George Clooney: well deserved, all.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

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As I said yesterday, we watched three movies over the weekend:

  • North Country (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was pretty good, but not as spectacular as we were led to believe. Basically equal parts Norma Rae and Dead Poets Society, with some Fargo thrown in accent-wise. Worth a rent, though.
  • Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was up for best documentary, so I wanted to watch it before last night. I love documentaries, and this was a good’un; slick production, topical story and a truth bizarre enough to be prize-winning fiction. Highly, highly recommended.
  • 9 Songs (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is one of those films that I think I liked, but could never recommend to people. It was porn, basically. We knew it was nothing but concert footage (of some very good bands, by the way) interspersed with some dialogue and some explicit sex scenes, but we didn’t know how explicit it would be. It’s the kind of stuff they can’t even show on cable, not even on shows about porn. But it wasn’t tawdry, or exploitative; it was a pretty accurate representation of the lives of a couple as they go to concerts at the Brixton Academy, eat breakfast, go on holiday and fuck repeatedly. If you’re the type who can see filmed sex (and filmed music) as art, you might like it. If nothing else, it’s an interesting experiment.

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There’s a bunch of stuff in the news that caught my eye:

  • South Dakota has, for all intents and purposes, banned abortion. America must be a very scary place for a lot of people right now.
  • Toronto Hydro plans to roll out citywide wi-fi like some other major cities in North America.
  • Halifax is still debating the construction of two towers in the downtown core. Personally, I think they should do it; no matter what you build in Halifax, if it’s more than 10 stories, it’s going to block somebody’s view of the citadel or the harbour. I’m sure people thought Purdy’s Wharf was a giant mistake too, but it’s become just as much a part of the cityscape as another building there.

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Today was a long, unpleasant day at work. [Corleone] I keep getting sucked back in [/Corleone] to the technical stuff; moral of the story: never believe someone when they say they won’t expect a temporary solution to become a production solution. They spaz when the so-called temporary solution goes away, even though it’s not your job to provide them with anything. I did my part, I was a nice guy, I saved their ass for a month, but I made sure to wash my hands of it. Still, I got it done and managed to fix a few other things as well. Best of all, I have no meetings scheduled for tomorrow, so I have a whole day to catch up on the work that I’ve missed by essentially wasting my last two weekdays.

Sunny days

I looked at the long-range forecast today: Friday should be sunny with a high of 11 degrees. I practically drooled.

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Hmmm…a week from now we’ll be in New York. Last time we were there it was around this time of year, but it was beautiful. First nice day of the year, and everyone was in the park. Whoooooo!

It's hard in here for a blogger

It’s been a busy weekend, so there’s a lot to spit out. We watched a pile of movies, and we’ve been busy all day running errands and preparing for a little Oscar get-together tonight. Best things about the Oscars so far: Jon Stewart, Salma Hayek and “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” winning for best original song. Worst thing: all the shameless whining by the academy stiffs about the evil of DVDs.