Ugly Feet Part 2

For the Flea, who forgets how ugly they were:

The BEST sign...

Heh.

Ready for my closeup, Mr. de Mille

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

This one is for all you wonderful people out there in the Dark!

via Chris Taylor, who got a much more disturbing result

Ugly Feet

Finally got around to seeing Kill Bill Pt. 1 - must've been Greg's comment on this post - and all I've got to say is that I didn't realize how ugly her feet are! Say what you will about her eyes, face, body, what have you...but her feet are horrid: if they weren't stunt feet, of course.

Hopefully this doesn't get me in trouble with the Deadly Uma Foot Fetish Brigade...

If you haven't seen the film, when you do you'll know the scene I'm talking about.

Ice Cream Time

In support of the Flea I have decided that there needs to be more ice cream on this blog. I therefore present to you Miss Angelina Jolie, one of my favourites, as well as my wife's, although I don't think we like her in the same way...Or do we?

Most recently seen on the screen as Alexander the Great's Mother (!?!), Angelina strikes me as the kind of girl that can drink you under the table while simultaneously breaking your heart into little itty-bitty pieces. All the while proving how much smarter she is than you...

To the humourless blogger who suggested that Flea stop posting pictures of beautiful women on his blog - well, any defiant four letter word you want to pick will do. To suggest content is one thing; to engage in personal attacks is another.

To also equate the appreciation of beautiful women with pornography says more about you than it does about him.

UPDATE 12:47AM - Well obviously I'm not going to draw any anti-sexist ire by being oh so respectful of my subject matter...

So I'll just say that this photo definitely does not have me thinking about her brain or her undeniable "worth as a person." Much baser thoughts come to mind...

Does that make me an evil sexist pig whose conduct in the workplace should be questioned, because I contemplate those legs and those lips...

Does it?

Should my integrity and professionalism be questioned because I like this photo and am willing to say it?

Red Ensign #9

is up at Dust My Broom this week. I don't know how anyone is going to keep up with all the reading if the number of blogs continue to increase as fast as they have...

Sick

Nothing like a low grade case of food poisoning to make you appreciate a waiting bathroom close at hand...

And take the draft dodgers with you...

Stay home, you pathetic whining maggots

Nothing like a direct, forthright title to peak my interest...

Oh my God! The icy cold grip of death has just wrapped its bony fingers around my dangly bits! Streisand? Here? In CANADA? We'll have to burn the whole country afterwards. Maybe they SHOULD'VE elected Kerry!

The sad part is that Canada as it stands now under the supposed "natural ruling party" now has more in common with the views of pampered leftist Hollywood celebrities than it does with the founders of this country:

It must be a sign of the times that the people trying to cross the border this time are more comparable to the spoiled brat in the playground who decided to take their ball and run away home when the other kids decide not to play the game exactly by their rules - "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"

And this is my real, visceral problem with the state of the extreme left Democrats right now. They are willing to abandon their country because they didn't get their own way. They are showing less resolve in the face of adversity than the average Toronto Maple Leafs fan. At least the Democrats have won the big prize within the last ten years. What're they whining about? Leafs fans haven't won the big prize going on almost forty years - they're not abandoning their team (although maybe they should...)

The persecuted leftys believe so much in their country that abandoning it to the slow-witted retros (their words, not mine) is somehow more noble than standing and fighting for their ideals?

Or maybe they believed that propaganda nonsense about how none of the doors in Canada are locked and that nobody shoots anyone up here...

via nealenews, my first stop for news in the morning...

Death and the Internet

It was the summer of 1990. In between my third and fourth year at university I decided not to go home for the summer break. I thought, quite rightly that hanging out in Vancouver over the summer would be better for my social life, as well as getting that pesky office experience that would help my career in the long run.

I shared a three bedroom apartment on Commercial around 47th with very good friends Dan and Allison and fourth roommate Julie, who I remember chiefly for the fact that she used to wash her car clad in nothing but her bathing suit, a fact that me and my beer-drinking buddy Dominic could appreciate as we consumed many a bottle on the balcony over-looking the driveway. She moved out a month or two into the summer and was replaced by another friend Rhonda, who didn't have a car, and didn't prance around in her bathing suit. Quite a pity, actually.

I was feeling pretty happy regarding my current situation when I got a call from my best friend from high school Brent, who was in the area and wanted to see me. How'd he get my number I asked? My Dad gave it to him, he replied.

I don't know if anyone else admits this, but I had grown apart from my high school friends - I really didn't have much in common with them anymore and was loathe to introduce them to my newer, cooler (relatively) university friends.

Yeah, I felt like a complete asshole, so I decided to invite Brent over for some drinks.

His brothers drop him off in an old junker of a sedan and take off, saying that they'll see him. Do we have any common ground left? I ask him what he's been doing. Rigs in Alberta, he says. Gets a contract, makes a ton of dough out in the middle of nowhere, comes to town and blows it. Repeat, repeat and repeat. As he's telling me this, he's eyeing my female roommates in a way that makes me think that this was a bad idea.

I get us out of there. We go to a club in Gastown. The music's loud (great, I don't have to talk to him) and I think a girl I know (and want to know better) might be there, but thankfully isn't. The hours drag on and I realize that we have nothing left to say, nothing in common. This was a big, big mistake. His eyes are prowling the dancefloor, ogling the girls as they glide by to the beat...

I really don't want to be there. I'm going to have a word with my Dad about giving out my phone number. Thankfully, I'll be moving soon so the fact that my address is known, isn't that big a security risk...

I'm an awful, awful person.

The night's winding down - I ask him when he's calling his brothers. He looks at me funny. Call them? They'll pick him up tomorrow, he says. Oh, so where are you staying? He stares at me and I feel the obligation of five years of high school. Five years of getting each others back when everyone else thought we were losers. Five years of being there when the other needed him. When his Dad beat the crap out of him and he started to drink uncontrollably our last year of school, who talked my parents into letting him stay until graduation? Yeah, that was me.

I tell him to get ready to go - we'll hail a cab.

Cool, he says, I just gotta go to the bathroom. He heads off as I try to think about how to explain this to my roommates.

He comes back, looking a lot more tired and groggy than when he left.

We hike up to Granville to hail a cab. It takes longer than I expect, but it's a Tuesday at 2am and Vancouver ain't Toronto. I look over and notice that Brent appears to be asleep. I can't wake him. At all. A sudden realization sweeps through me: the fucking bastard took something in the club and now I have to deal.

The first cab slows, stops. When he sees me moving my prone friend towards the rear door, he puts the cab in gear and floors it, leaving me and my friend alone again. Brent slumps onto the sidewalk and rolls over snoring. I hate him at this moment. Really.

I'm tempted to leave his ass on the sidewalk and make my own way home. Minutes go by and I'm still contemplating it. Friendship aside, I couldn't think of a plausible explanation for his brothers the next morning.

I have to drag this human anchor along with me.

Finally a cab and then finally home. Hauling his ass up the stairs and throwing him on the floor of my room. Looking at the time: 3:20 am and contemplating what a shitty time I've had. I try to sleep but can't.

Morning's not much better. He's ogling my roommates again, and even worse, playing with a Swiss Army knife over and over again like one of those compulsive freaks that cut into their forearms again and again and again. He's talking about us all renting a houseboat and having parties in the Okanagan.

I want him dead. The thought actually crosses my mind.

Hours pass. Finally his deadbeat brothers show up. I am relieved. I can't get him out the door quick enough. We'll do it again he says. I say sure and think to myself never in a fucking million years...

His brothers ask if I want to buy a calculator. They have a choice of about 50, all in the trunk of their car. They show me this in broad daylight. Great, I think. A "business trip" for them.

Brent gets in the car and says "See ya."

The car drives away and I never see him again.

I climb the stairs back to the apartment and throw myself onto the couch with relief, the tension washing out of me...

"What the hell was that all about?" says Allison.

"I have no fucking idea. Anyone wanna lay odds that he'll be dead in a gutter within five years?"

I felt bad for saying it, worse believing it. I vowed to myself not to give him a second thought...

...and I didn't until I was playing around with Google the other day.

And came across his mother's obituary, which mentions that her son Brent had "preceded her into death."

What a stupid way to put it. I googled further and came across his name in someone's online family tree, listing his death in December 1997.

He was 28. He had a "partner" and a daughter named Jordanna...

As I sat in wonder at the power of the information age, yielding all this information at the whim of a few strokes of the keyboard, I also sat and thought if there was anything that I could've done to help him; was he tied to his fate to be dead at 28 just the way I'd off-handly predicted in a moment of anger?

Rest easy, Brent. I'm sorry I couldn't help you, and I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend.

I'm sorry that you've wasted your life and have a little girl that will never know you.

I'm sorry I didn't know until now, years later, that you were even dead.

If I'd known, maybe I could've stood by you that one last time...

Red Ensign 8

The newest Red Ensign Standard is up at bound by gravity. Go check it out.

I'd like to take credit for the well-ensconced tradition of actually stating why one flies the Red Ensign. The only reason that I did it originally was to avoid confusion: what the hell was a "kraut" themed blog doing flying the flag of one of the nations that were on the opposite side of World Wars 1 and 2? But I think the idea has caught on, and I'm very impressed by the differing reasons that are cited each and every edition. I hope the tradition is continued.

Burnt

The new job and commuting is leaving me pretty burnt by the end of the day. I find that all creativity has fled from my brain and I can't string together the whatchamacallits...words! Yes! Definitely words!

I was talking about something...Can't seem to remember.

Hmmm. I'll have to start writing stuff down during the day.

Bias, what bias?

I took a radio in to work today. Everyone at my new job has some sort of radio / computer speakers at their desks - I didn't want to be left out.

Much to my chagrin, the only station I could get was CBC radio. Maybe it was the building interfering with the signals, but that was the only station that could reach my desk.

I was subjected to a whole bunch of blathering by the supposedly informed callers about the evils of George Bush and how "everyone" wants him out. It was almost overwhelming, as the CBC could not seem to find one person who had voted for Bush. If you were to believe the coverage, John Kerry was going to win in a blowout of massive proportions.

After 30 minutes of this I decided to turn off the radio. The blatant, save the U.S. from bushitler attitude of the callers had me slightly unnerved. For quite awhile this afternoon I actually contemplated what a Kerry victory might mean for the U.S., and the world.

I have to say again to my fellow Canadians: a Kerry victory is not good for us. We are among the outsourcers Kerry complained about. A Kerry-led U.S. would punish us for daring to compete for American jobs. And deep down we know it, don't we?

Hopefully a decisive victory is acheived soon so everyone can shut up for four more years. And the blogosphere can find something else to talk about.