This Candy Store Of Ours

Moving On...

2011-07-14T15:45:00.001-03:00

I've Tumbl'd and I can't get up...

http://thiscandystoreofours.tumblr.com

I've opted not to lunch

2011-07-13T15:32:00.002-03:00

... and the Mystery of the Persimmon Cupcakes

2010-12-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

Persimmons aren't a rare sight in our grocery stores, but I'm sure everybody who sees them wonders why they're there. Nobody I've met knows what they taste like or what to do with them, so I'm not sure where the demand for them comes from.

I bought a persimmon last week and I also had no idea what I was going to do with it. It's my second time buying one. The first time was about a year ago and the persimmon I got was of the short, stout variety known as a Fuyu. I eyeballed it for a few days and finally just dug into it with a spoon. I wouldn't say it tasted bad by any means, but I also didn't finish it. It just wasn't a really noteworthy experience, ya know? It tasted sort of like a mild, sweet melon, but with a much softer texture.

This year's annual persimmon experiment was different though. I bought a persimmon that was larger and longer -- kind of shaped like a heart (a real blood-pumping one, not the cutesy cartoon kind). Wikipedia tells me this is a Hachiya persimmon, which the label on the fruit confirmed . Apparently Hachiya persimmon's aren't nearly as good for eating straight, so that idea was nixed right off the bat. In fact, when they are unripe, they are said to taste downright nasty and may even mess up your insides. No thanks!

Wanting do avoid this, I sought suggestions for cooking with them. I learned that it's best to let them ripen for several days (I waited about a week) until they are soft and squishable. When I cut it open, it had the texture of jelly on the inside, but it was surprisingly not as awful looking as I imagined it might be. This was not like the first time I opened a passion fruit, which look way less sexy on the inside than the name would suggest -- unless you're turned on by piles of alien boogers, anyway.

Long story short, I pureed the pulp of the fruit and used it to make cupcakes! The recipe I used called for pumpkin pie spice (I made my own blend) and orange juice, but it mostly ended up tasting like pumpkin pie cupcakes. And yes, I'd even say they taste pretty great, although I can't honestly pick out the flavour of the persimmon in there.

In conclusion, I still have no idea what a persimmon tastes like, but these cupcakes are delicious. This is the recipe I used: Clicky Mclinkenstein over here. I ran out of pulp for the frosting, so I made a super-simple brown butter icing instead.

Back to it

2010-12-13T08:52:00.001-04:00

I stopped writing here for a while because the only thing that still interested me was making fun of people on Yahoo Answers. And then a friend showed me that others are already doing this full-time, such as on this tumblr: Yahoo Answers? How could I compete?

I decided to hang up my keyboard (because that's a thing that people do?) and follow the tumblr for a while. But I quickly got bored because the only thing they seem to find funny over there is the trolls writing about poop and "sperms." Too many legit morons are getting off scot-free, if you ask me. Like Lady Rebecca over here:

She doesn't seem to realize that half of the planet doesn't experience winter in December.

Fun with Kijiji: more than meets the eye

2010-08-09T12:35:00.001-03:00

You really have to wonder sometimes about what goes on behind the scenes of a Kijiji ad. Every once in a while you see one that's obviously got a story to tell. Like this one:

Let's see... A Sony Surround Sound system costs anywhere in the range of $200 to $400, and yet this person is selling a brand new system for $75 because they can't figure out how to set it up? And they lost the box and receipt? And they feel they need 3 decimal places for the price?

I guess this means they also lost the manual, since any new piece of electronics comes with one. And they must have a really messy house or something...

Person 1: "Boy, this looks complicated. Honey, have you seen the manual for the brand new surround sound system I just bought?"
Person 2: "Nope!"
Person 1: "Could you check the box?"
Person 2: "I have no idea where the box went. I think I lost it."
Person 1: "You mean you threw it out? How do you lose a gigantic box like that?"
Person 2: "I don't know. I looked for it and now it's gone."
Person 1: "Fuck it. I'm putting this on Kijiji for less than half of what I paid for it and I shall be happy to do so."

Dear Person 1: You have internet access -- you can use it to look up information about products you've lost the manual for and not have to take a $200 loss on future purchases. Also, it's not nice to steal.

For a few glasses more

2010-06-22T12:52:00.000-03:00

Yahoo Answers... I just can't look away... Today, the question of "8 glasses of water a day: should you or shouldn't you?" remains super popular. I lost my last battle, but we'll see how it goes this time. Once again, someone is asking if they really need to drink this much water, and does it have to be pure water? Does juice count?

I think you already know where I stand on this, but user Mickey Rainheart contributes this answer:

Sweet tea and Juice are good but water is actually essential because our bodies need the moisture from water because we are mostly made up of water. Water improves your health incredibly from the way you look to the way you feel :)

You should drink water alot especially now that its summer...If you don't like the taste get vitamin flavored water or those little packets of flavoring people add to there water...like crystal light or something

This makes me wonder: what does Mickey think happens to water when it is turned into tea? What does she mean when she says we need the moisture from water? Does juice not contain moisture? I don't think there's any question that between water and water with sugar/tea in it, the one without the sugar in it is probably better for you -- but does that entirely negate the hydrating qualities of the water that nevertheless constitutes 99% of the drink? In what way is sweet tea or juice different from the sweetened, flavoured vitamin water she recommends? Is it because it has "water" in the name?

I wonder if Mickey's body knows this information. How does it know the difference between water you flavoured yourself and water that came from the factory with flavouring already in it? As far as I know, my body tends to funnel all of this stuff through the same processing plant -- I don't have different pipes for plain water and flavoured water. What happens if I eat a packet of sugar and chase it with a glass of water? Will they cancel each other out? Will I time travel?

Now I'm thirsty... Which according to Yahoo means I'm at death's door, so I better go take care of that.

Fun with Yahoo Answers: The Questions Edition

2010-06-14T12:38:00.000-03:00

Often with Yahoo Answers, the questions themselves aren't as interesting as the way in which they are asked. This one starts off very broad and then suddenly gets very specific:

"What are some celebrities who dress preppy and are like alexa chung?"

First, name some things (I notice they used "what" instead of "who" as a pronoun for celebrities -- I think that's a telling sign) that fit into this broad category. Oh, and make sure they are in some way like this other very specific person or thing. It's kind of like if I asked, "Who are some actors that you like and are Will Smith?"

A lot of people also just don't know how to phrase questions. I've seen many that don't ask a question, but rather state the thing they want to know more about. YA automatically adds the question marks, I believe:

"Complicated situation!?"
"I want to dye my hair...?"

This guy's got the right idea, but still doesn't get the wording quite right:

"How to clean a tongue?"

At least the basic info is there in the question.

My most despised question style, however, comes from people who ignore the "question" and "more info" fields in the question form and just start typing their explanation directly into the space where the main question is supposed to go. As a result, you don't even get to know what the question is about until you open it. Like this:

"I'm a little confused right now...?"

Yes. Yes, you are. Next question!

"Do you think...?"

Sometimes. Next!

At first glance, this next person actually seems to have worded their question correctly, but it's a trick, because they also have a second question:

"Can you help me with a decorating question?"

I would, but I've just exhausted myself answering your first question.

LOL of the day

2010-06-02T12:41:00.000-03:00

Just when things were getting boring... Thanks, Yahoo Answers!

"How to make crapmeat sandwiches?"

The time has come

2010-05-27T14:15:00.002-03:00

Saw LCD Soundsystem on Monday. Uh... It was awesome and I don't have much else to add. Great band, great setlist, cool lights, etc. They opened their set exactly like this. That moment just after the 3:15 mark was pretty nutty to see live.

untitled

2010-04-23T14:55:00.002-03:00

It's a cork

2010-03-24T12:45:00.001-03:00

I don't really write about television much, but then again there are really only a handful of shows I follow regularly. I do love Lost though, and I don't think it's ever really come up before (spoilers follow).

Artwork by Jared Stumpenhorst. Check out his blog.

Last night's episode finally dove deep into what the hell this show is supposed to be about. I'm sure a lot of fans may bemoan the fact that the show has tranformed from its original "feel," but I'd argue that the current direction seems not only more likely to lead to a conclusive and satisfying ending, but is also truer to the show's origins than many give it credit for. There were times when the show was considered an adventure series, a character drama, a sci-fi show, and lately, a supernatural examination of morality. But has the show really strayed? Or is this the show we've been watching from the beginning? Similarly, some fans of Battlestar Galactica were pissed off that (spoiler alert, again) that show ended with an act of divine intervention, but again, I'd ask if maybe the signs weren't there right from the beginning.

Television watchers are a fickle bunch and, honestly, I don't think they always know what's best for themselves. Would Lost have been more satisfying if it was revealed that the smoke monster was a cloud of nano-bots invented by the Dharma Initiative and Jacob was just something they brainwashed people to believe in using high-technology idea insertion tools? Maybe it would, for some people -- I don't know -- but if you consider that most of the show's early character conflicts were between people who had faith in things they didn't understand and those who didn't (Jack vs. Locke in the early seasons), I think it would have been even more disappointing if that issue never came into play in terms of how the show resolved the mysteries it's taken 5 years to set up.

So far, we've learned that maybe both sides were right to some degree, in that some of those mysteries are explained as a result of science (or, you know, a tv show's version of science) -- as represented by time travel, Faraday, or even the calculable means by which people arrive at the island -- and some are a result of divine forces, such as the smoke monster or the means by which a slave ship ends up in the middle of an island.

But this week's episode addressed what may be the biggest mystery of all: what is this island? As Jacob explains to Richard, it's a cork that keeps malevolence from spreading to the rest of the world. In other words, the island itself is a place where realms dissect, and I couldn't think of a better way to reconcile the fact that the island has mystical properties in some respects and yet plays by our known world's rules at other times. Many cultures actually already have a name for this:

Axis Mundi

As Wikipedians have written, the Axis Mundi is "a plug to keep evil at bay" and it is a "ubiquitous symbol that crosses human cultures." This, in itself, provides insight on another key mystery of Lost: why does the show seem to draw on symbolism from every world religion all at once without every settling on one in particular to form the core of its underlying meaning? The show has borrowed the idea of Christ figures from Christianity, Hindu themes for the concept of Dharma, the I Ching (see the Dharma logo), Egyptian mythology (a statue of Taweret, a carving of Anubis).

If I may theorize for a moment, it's not due to laziness. Rather, it's an indicator that the island and its "deities" (Jacob and the Man in Black) actually exist far outside of any of these religions. Religion is a mechanism used by humans to explain both the miraculous and the devastating things we observe in our world, while the forces that actually cause these things cannot be named or explained with terms as simplistic as those we've assigned to them.

Evil doesn't see itself as evil -- it simply knows it has to exist. Why? Well, ask any Christian philosopher why evil has to exist: because if man doesn't have the free will to choose evil, then acts of goodness are rendered meaningless. You may recall the same argument being made in Clockwork Orange: does Alex's good behavior prove he has become a virtuous person if he has been stripped of the ability to commit evil? You may even recall that the Clockwork Orange scene where Alex is "treated" bears a remarkable resemblance to one in Lost, where Sawyer and Kate find Karl in Room 23:

Meanwhile, Jacob isn't God or even a representation of good. He just knows that he has a job to do, which is to provide balance against the darkness. He is the embodiment of a force to which we've assigned hundreds of different names over the course of our existence. To some, he is God, to others he is light, and to the man in black, he is simply Jacob.

And what does all this have to do with where Lost started? Pretty much everything. If you look at the first season of Lost, the themes of faith and morality (or lack thereof) have been there from the very beginning -- the difference now is that they're playing out in a very literal way. We actually have faces and names (if you consider "the man in black" to be a name) to associate with the elements of light and dark. But more importantly, the show has returned to many of its oldest themes and mysteries, and it turns out that we may just not have recognized their significance.

In the show's Pilot episode, Locke explained to Walt that backgammon is a game of "two sides -- one is light, one is dark," which is "older than Jesus Christ." I don't think I need to say anything else about that.

Meanwhile, Jack and Kate go looking for shelter and in episode 6, they find a pair of bodies in a cave. The bodies are holding a pair of stones: one black, one white.

Finally, I'll end my little rant with these lines from the season 1 finale:

Jack: "I don't believe in destiny."
Locke: "Yes, you do. You just don't know it yet."

Ice Ice Baby

2010-03-16T08:43:00.000-03:00

I've been experimenting a lot with ice cream again lately. Ice cream is a lot of fun to make at home because you get to have flavours that are otherwise unattainable at retail and you can customize it any way you want. The recipes are usually so simple that there's also tons of room for improvisation and creativity. And at the end of it all, you get to eat ice cream. What's not to love?

As far as I'm concerned, the king of ice cream is David Lebovitz. He's a pastry chef (with time at Alice Waters's famous Chez Panisse restaurant in California), blogger, cookbook author, recipe consultant (i.e., he invents new desserts), and all-around fascinating dude. And his blog touts a wide range of ice cream recipes that are both creative and delicious looking. Seriously, he's like the Willy Wonka of ice creams: Absinthe ice cream, milk chocolate and black pepper ice cream, polenta ice cream, Roquefort and honey ice cream, multiple varieties of chocolate, grape sherbet, candied bacon ice cream... The list goes on.

I'd had my eye on the candied bacon ice cream for a long time, and I finally took the plunge a couple of weeks ago. And having enjoyed the experience, I tried a few other things as well.

Candied Bacon Ice Cream
It starts with a standard vanilla custard base, to which I added maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, and spiced rum. And after churning it, I stirred in bits of candied bacon. The end result tastes like cinnamon french toast with maple syrup and a little portion of bacon -- so yes, phenomenal. It was still a little soft when I took this picture, because I neglected to cool the mixture properly before churning it, but it was just as good later as well.

I shared this with a wide group of people, because I was curious to see the reactions. Not surprisingly, it was somewhat divisive. People have a lot of strict ideas about what should or shouldn't be in ice cream, but what bothers me is that nobody could tell me definitively why -- especially those were strongly against it. What it seems to boil down to is that people don't like the idea of having an ice cream flavour based on a food item that wasn't already associated with desserts to start with, such as fruit, chocolate, waffles, coffee, nuts, caramel, vanilla, etc. But in terms of its flavour profile, bacon is remarkably similar to the nuts we love to put in our desserts, with rich savoury flavours, as well as good portions of salt and fat. And yet people love the idea of combining their bacon with maple flavouring to the point where you can actually buy maple-flavoured bacon at the supermarket now. So I guess they don't mind sugar getting into their bacon, but not the other way around. I don't get it, but whatever. Would make again.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt
I don't normally buy strawberries this time of year, but they were on mega-sale across the city, at $1.99 per pound, so I figured I might as well take advantage of it. Once again, I relied on David Lebovitz's recipe to carry me through. Interestingly, the recipe employs a high ratio of strawberries to yogurt, so you end up with a beautiful colour and a strong fruity taste. Looking forward to eating more of this.

Pureed Banana Something or Other
This is really the only failure of the bunch, but not a dismal one. I had some very ripe bananas I had frozen a few days earlier until I could figure out what to do with them. I decided to puree them whole and use that as the basis for an "ice cream," although there was very little dairy in it. I mixed in some full-fat yogurt to give it a bit of creaminess, but in the end that combination turned out to be a bad idea. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but somewhere between the ripe sweetness of the bananas and the tartness of the yogurt was a somewhat unpleasant sensation. I couldn't figure out how to salvage it anymore after that. I tried a few other additions to fix it up, but it quickly devolved into a science experiment. I did eat a bunch of it and it really wasn't that bad, but it's not something I would give to guests. I think if the bananas had been slightly less ripe, this might have been fantastic -- it was just a tad overpowering and they were probably better suited for baking at that stage. On the bright side, I can confirm that pureed frozen bananas have great texture and I do intend to try something like it again. In his latest post, Lebovitz combined bananas with coconut milk and brown sugar. That sounds like a winner to me.

Overheard in Fredericton

2010-03-09T12:19:00.000-04:00

Walking down Victoria St., I saw a dog up ahead, chained outside a house. A middle-aged man was walking towards me on the sidewalk and as he passed the dog, it barked a couple of times. He yelled at it to "Dry up, already." When he passed me, he muttered, "If I was a mountain lion, I'd massacre that dog." And thus my day was made, because really, who doesn't dream about being a mountain lion and massacring another person's dog now and then?

6 Cups

2010-02-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

Well, I lost that round. The water question has been resolved. The winning answer:

"6 cups minimum

about the person who said only drink when you're thirsty - do not follow their advice. feeling thirsty means you're already dehydrated. drink water all day long."

It doesn't seem to matter that several of the articles I referenced in my answer actually dispute this claim. And clearly it's not the number or reliability of sources that mattered to the asker, since I included no less than 8 referenced sources, while nobody else included any at all.

My answer: 0 thumbs up, 3 thumbs down.

At least I can take comfort in knowing that I was voted best answer for this little gem:

Q - Hip-hop,breakdance,tecktonik or other?
A - I'll take tecktonik for $1000, Alex.

And also this one:

Q - What can you expect to happen if you put 4 tablespoons of sugar in your drink?
A - You can expect to have a very sweet drink.

Now, that's useful information!

8 Glasses of Water a Day Keeps the Hypochondriacs Away?

2010-02-23T17:30:00.000-04:00

As with most of my stories, this one begins with Yahoo Answers. Someone named Jess asked a simple question:

"How much water should you drink a day?"

Everybody knows the old adage, that you should drink 8 glasses of water a day. Most of us don't really question it because we've heard it so many times and everybody knows you need water to live. Don't fix it if it ain't broken, right?

Well, not really. If you actually look up this factoid, you'll find that most of the returned articles are about how this commonly accepted rule is not necessarily true. In fact, numerous studies indicate that most individuals are just fine if they have a beverage with meals and otherwise let their thirst guide them. When you think about it, it's ridiculous to assume that a 25 year old athlete and a relatively sedentary retiree would have the same water requirements, so why would both of them chug down 8 glasses of water (in addition to meals and other beverages) every single day? One expends a lot more energy and sweat in an average day than the other, all of which needs to be recouped to maintain a regulated level of hydration. Chances are, they don't have the same diets either, or live in identical climates.

I composed my answer, which pretty much says all of this same stuff. I included links to articles from Scientific American, the CBC, and Snopes. I consider all of these to be somewhat reliable sources and all of them agree on the facts: for a normally functioning person, thirst is a perfectly fine indicator that your body needs water and the "8 glasses of water a day" rule is little more than a myth.

I returned to look at the question again an hour or two later. Seven other people responded, predictably, with everything but these facts. Most referred back to the 8 glasses a day rule; a few went into specific numbers, such as 2L a day; another one dictated that the only sure-fire way to know if your body needs water is to look at the colour of your pee -- this one was a self-proclaimed expert on the subject, since he was a "combat veteran." I'm not sure what I would do if I felt parched, but didn't have to pee. I'd be fucked.... and thirsty.

Out of all these answers, only one was repeatedly down-voted: my answer, of course. And yet, I'm the only person who even bothered to provide a source and explain my reasoning. Should I take a combat veteran's word over Scientific American's? Does ★Love Addict★™ know more about water intake than the CBC's sources? According to the users over on Yahoo Answers: yes, I should and yes, he does.

This phenomenon makes me wonder why people would go so far out of their way to make their lives so much more complicated than they need to be, even when plainly presented facts tell them otherwise. One poster specifically referenced my answer and implied that this was a dangerous way to live your life, because you'll constantly be dehydrated if you only rely on your thirst and common sense.

It seems people aren't even interested when you tell them: "it doesn't have to be this way." You'd think it would be a revelation to marathon water drinkers that they can ease up a little and just drink when they're thirsty or eating. It sounds too good to be true, I guess, and anything that simple must be a lie.

The food industry capitalized on the same thought process when they discovered they could charge you 5 dollars for a box of flour, sugar, dried eggs, and baking soda, and call it a cake mix. In turn, consumers seem to have accepted the notion that a cake is too difficult and complicated to make themselves, even when every single ingredient is readily available at any common supermarket. Likewise, it seems these individuals on Yahoo Answers have come to terms with the notion that even their own body can't tell when they need a drink of water, so someone else needs to tell them when and how much. I honestly wonder how far you would have to push someone of this mindset before they decide to listen to their gut instincts?

Tpyo of the day

2010-01-14T09:43:00.002-04:00

And I found it so early in the day:

"Don't Stop Beveling"

Thanks, Yahoo! Answers.

That's not what "obligation" means

2009-11-27T11:10:00.004-04:00

Thanks, Yahoo!Answers. For a second there, I thought this visit was going to be boring.

Something to pass the time

2009-11-10T12:45:00.000-04:00

You're welcome.

Our Word of Mouth

2009-11-09T08:47:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted much here recently, but don't worry, I haven't abandoned the place. I've just been keeping busy with a new group blog that began operating a couple of weeks ago. Travis had suggested it would be interesting to begin documenting some reviews of local restaurants and began looking for co-writers. We're now a 5-person team and we've managed to put together content on a consistent schedule. Feedback has been great so far, so come check us out:

www.ourwordofmouth.org

Be sure to leave us a comment!

Yahoo! Answers: The Obama-is-Hitler Edition

2009-10-23T12:57:00.001-03:00

I sometimes complain that Yahoo! Answers is a bunch of bullshit, and yeah, it pretty much is. But it's still magnificent to see so much bullshit being churned out on an ongoing basis. For example, we all know people love comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Yahoo! Answers is, like, the place where all these people hang out when they're not holding crazy signs at abortion rallies and stuff.

To really dig into this phenomenon, I did a quick search for the words "Hitler" and "Obama." There were too many results for me to list them all here (seriously!) but I'd love to share some of my favourites.

Alex True asks: "Why is Obama so popular in the same Country that gave us Adolph Hitler?"

There's only one logical answer: Germans love evil like Americans love freedom. What can I say? Guilty as charged. After all, this is the same land that gave us MP3 encoding, Diesel engines, coffee filters, and the Christmas tree. All pure evil.

Marc B asks: "Does anyone here see a simulaearity to Obama and Hitler?"

Unfortunately, Marc B forgot to include a photo of himself, so I can't say if he looks similar to either of these men.

txmatt500r asks: "Does anyone else see a resemblance between Obama and Hitler? I mean all i hear from Obama is blah blah change blah blah blah change. And droves of people going wow he's so cool. Is that not how Hitler started."

Absolutely. Like Obama, Hitler attended Harvard and worked as a community organizer before gaining a seat on the German senate. He married his Princeton-educated wife after they worked together at a law firm. Then they toppled the government, conquered several countries, attempted genocide, and engaged in a suicide pact as the rest of the world dropped bombs on the kingdom they built together.

Rhett asks: "Is it fair to compare Obama to Hitler?"

I'm glad someone has the common sense to question the fairness of this tactic. The best answer, as chosen by voters: "yea, he is the worst president to date." Thanks for clearing that up. So Hitler wasn't a sadistic evil mastermind after all -- he was just really bad at being president.

jake asks: "Does the OBAMA revolution make you understand HITLER better? No, I am not comparing Obama to Hitler but it makes one understand how easily people became frenzied about the whole Nazi party thing."

Of course, and Hitler is certainly the best example we have of people becoming excited about something to the point of frenzy. I think they even had a name for it: Obamamania, which is in no way related to Beatlemania.

Wasp asks: "How many parallels do you see between Obama and Hitler?"

Good idea. There are so many parallels, it makes my head spin. Let's add them all up in one convenient location!

The Deprogramer asks: "Do you oppose or agree with Hitler/Obama's useless eater Genocidal Health Care Reform scam?"

I like how this question gets right to the point and calls out Obama's eater Genocidal Health Care... Wait, what? If I'm understanding this correctly, Obama wants to commit genocide of eaters and disguise it as health care reform.

Tarzan asks: "Why are there so many similarities between Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler?"

Gosh. It must be because they're just so... darn... similar.

Hollywood Prod. asks: "What does it mean when both Obama and Hitler were and are good speakers? Is Obama the third anti Christ?"

Holy shit! There are three anti Christs? And they all have excellent public speaking skills? What it means is that we're doomed.

Neo Neocon asks: "Did you see a teacher got fired for comparing Obama to Hitler? The PC Gestapo is here people. Speak out against the Messiah, and you lose your job. It appears that you don't even have the right to complain about the government anymore."

Yes, because that's what Hitler did. When someone compared him unfavourably to a historical dictator, he fired them. What a mean guy.

Odin Green asks: "What's the difference between Hitler and Obama? Barack Obama laughs louder at babies in microwave ovens."

Silly Odin. You answered your own question! Anyway, yes, it's true: Hitler had an unhealthy obsession with his microwave... in 1930s Germany.

George asks: "If the election was between Obama and Hitler who would you vote for?"

George knows how to ask the tough questions. Hmm... Do I want lazy illegal aliens to get all my healthcare money? Or do I want to sign up for this "work camp" thing? This is going to be a tough call. How many countries has Obama conquered? None, you say. Yikes. I think I feel safer with Hitler.

The shameless kiss of vanity

2009-10-14T12:41:00.000-03:00

Do I really need a reason to post this? No, but it is one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands of all time. All time, I say!

I was fortunate to see The Cure in 1996 on the Swing Tour and I still remember this song being a highlight of the show. It was one of those moments where a song I only had peripheral interest in became an obsession for me after seeing it performed live. That happens sometimes.

This version is from the Trilogy DVD recorded in Berlin, 2002.

I is in heaven...

2009-10-08T08:46:00.000-03:00

Blue skies

2009-10-06T08:44:00.000-03:00

Just wanted to post this because it made me laugh. The sign looks so majestic against that blue sky. A poster on the Trail of Dead message board put this up a few days ago. Apparently it was taken by someone at Austin City Limits Festival last week.

BLT-from-scratch challenge: The Sandwichening

2009-10-02T12:48:00.000-03:00

As I mentioned in my last BLT-related post, the process of making this sandwich was not as smooth as I had hoped. It takes a lot of good timing and a little bit of luck to make all of these factors come together at just the right time. Yesterday, things came very close to falling into place and I decided to take the plunge and finally make this damn sandwich! This is how it came together...

(1) Bread. A BLT requires bread -- I think that's a given. I made a test loaf about a month ago that actually did use wild yeast, but this time around I needed to make a loaf quickly. I referred to the Joy of Cooking for a simple French bread recipe. I mucked around with it a bit, adding some olive oil and substituting a 1/4 cup of Semolina Durum for a portion of the regular flour. However, I had to use commercial yeast, as I let my previous culture die in the fridge. The results were good! The loaves had a good crust and a soft interior.

(2) Bacon. Arguably, the most important part of a BLT. I cured this pork belly about a month and a half ago, but kept it frozen for most of that time. I still had a chunk left that I was able to use for the sandwich, fortunately. Like my first time doing it, the bacon came out a little saltier than it should be, but a quick blanching takes care of that.

(3) Lettuce and Tomato. As mentioned before, my mom was able to supply me with a bit of lettuce from her garden. It was perfect -- no complaints. I've been growing my own tomato plants on the patio all summer long, but unfortunately they didn't even start to ripen until early this week. I was hopeful that at least one of them would be edible by the time this sandwich was made, but no luck. Here's what they looked like as of yesterday evening:

Close, but not quite close enough for my BLT. These tomatoes probably won't be ready for another few days. Fortunately, I still had a fantastic heirloom tomato handy that I bought at the farmers' market last weekend. At the very least, it was organic and locally grown.

So while I can't claim that my sandwich was 100% "from scratch," I think it's fair to say that this market tomato and my mom's lettuce were good enough to meet the spirit of the challenge, which Ruhlman himself stated was to make an American classic without the help of products provided by corporations that many of us take for granted.

(4) Mayonnaise. It's not really a BLT without mayo, is it? My first batch went horribly wrong, due to some oil with an off taste, but my second batch turned out great -- smooth, creamy and light-tasting. I was able to get eggs from a local friend who raises chickens, so they were about as fresh as you could get.

And then I put it all together:

It's not a perfect sandwich. I dropped some bacon on the floor just before assembling, so it was a bit skimpy in that department -- stupid. And I wish I could have used my own tomato. The bread-to-toppings ratio was just a bit off, I guess. But even with those shortcomings, this sandwich felt special. It felt simple, pure, unadulterated and I could see my mark in every bite. That's good stuff.

Yahoo! Answers: Anatomy Edition

2009-09-29T12:50:00.000-03:00

It's been a while since I've had a chance to round up some of my favourite Yahoo! Answers questions. This one stood out today though:

I wouldn't even know where to begin answering this. The lungs would be an awful long way to travel, even if the kid is constipated. If this actually happened, I'd be very impressed.

A BLT update: September

2009-09-29T08:25:00.000-03:00

The deadline for Michael Ruhlman's BLT-from-scratch challenge has come and gone and so far I have not been able to make a sandwich. But challenge be damned -- this sandwich is getting made one way or another.

The hold up has been with my tomatoes, which only a few days ago finally started to ripen. I have no idea why it took so long, but I'm just glad I'm actually getting some.

I also made a test loaf of bread a couple of weeks ago. I made a heavy rye bread, which might be a bit too intense for a BLT, but it was an encouraging experience. It was the first loaf of bread I'd ever baked and I was pleased with the results. It was dense, rich and flavourful, like much of the rye bread I grew up with.

So what's missing now? My bacon is ready. My tomatoes are ready. I can bake a loaf of bread tomorrow. Lettuce will have to come from my mother's garden. I just really hope there's still some there for the taking. Otherwise, I'm going to have to get creative.

With any luck, I'll have a picture of my BLT by the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

Instruments antique road show

2009-09-17T12:46:00.000-03:00

As a musician, it's inevitable that you end up having a lot of instruments pass through your hands over the years. Some are quickly forgotten, while others are unique enough to stand out from the pack. There's always a eureka moment when you realize you've discovered something a little special. And in the case of older instruments, you have the added bonus of knowing that this is an instrument with history and a story all its own.

Thanks to some kind members of my extended family, I've uncovered an interesting guitar that certainly has an interesting back story. I was told that the guitar had been taking up basement space for several decades and was actually used by my mother-in-law when she was learning to play guitar in the 70s. Was I interested? Despite the less-than-promising description, I'm never one to pass up a potentially exciting find. Of course I'd take a look!

I won't lie: my first impression was a bit iffy. It looked its age, was covered in stickers, and I certainly didn't recognize any of the detailing. It was a hollowbody guitar with a black and gold-sparkle finish, and there was some significant structural damage around the output jack. But it felt pretty good in the hands and I decided to give it a shot based on that.

Once I got the guitar home, I removed all of the stickers, washed off the residue, cleaned and oiled the fret board, and finally put some fresh strings on it. And you know what? It sounded really great. Despite the damage to the body, the output jack seems to still work reasonably well, the action is very playable, and the neck doesn't have any severe issues.

But what the hell is it? I had no idea. My only indicators were an unusual "A" logo on the headstock and an atomic music note logo on the pickguard. My assumption was that it was most likely bought from a catalogue or department store. I started by poking around to see what kind of guitars Sears sold in the 70s and discovered some Silvertones that bore vague resemblences to what I had.

The rest fell into place quite easily. I learned that many of the Silvertones sold by Sears were made by Harmony. As it turns out, they also produced their guitars under several other brand and store names, including Airline, Montgomery Wards, Alden's, and others. And they all had similarities to my mystery guitar. And then I found it: a picture of the exact guitar I was looking for. The "A" on the headstock stood for Alden's, a catalogue retailer.

The guitar is an Alden 9908 Tuxedo single-pickup electric hollowbody -- a replica of Harmony's own Stratotone "Mars" H45. Interestingly, all the websites I saw claimed that it was originally produced from 1962-63, although several web commenters claim the parts on their guitars have date stamps from later in the 60s. That's a little earlier than I was expecting to find, but then again I don't currently know exactly when and where the guitar was first purchased. But I do know that later versions of this model supposedly had a modified pickguard that protected the area around the tone knobs and no longer had the gold sparkle over the black finish, so I'm guessing this one must be from the 62-65 range.

Most importantly, the guitar sounds great and definitely still has some life in it, so I would definitely qualify this as "an awesome find." And as a final piece of trivia, I discovered that the Harmony H45, which this is nearly an exact copy of, was an early guitar used by folks like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Here's a photo of the band from 1964, including Brian with his Harmony Stratotone (front, left).

I'm really happy for you...

2009-09-16T12:54:00.000-03:00

If I've learned anything from the Kanye West/Taylor Swift incident at the MTV Video Music Awards, it's that the internet as a whole is very easily amused. There are, like, a million videos, photos, and god knows what else out there poking fun at the situation already. And yes, I'm just as easily amused, it seems. All of this dumb stuff made (and continues to make) me laugh. More, please!

The Kanye West Apology Generator
Make your very own Kanye West Apology. Be sure to turn on your CAPS-LOCK for extra authenticity. (Link)

I'mma Let You Finish
A lovingly assembled tumblr feed of all the Kanye goofiness you could possibly need. (Link)

Kanye interrupts a game of Super Mario Bros.

Kanye interrupts Barack Obama

The politics of food labels

2009-09-08T12:33:00.003-03:00

Accidental Hedonist called my attention to this latest article (New York Times) on the topic of nutrition-oriented labelling for packaged foods.

The Smart Choices Program lets food manufacturers buy into their program for a fee in exchange for having a recognized health-conscious label to stick on any of the products that happen to meet the program's nutrition requirements.

Of course, as the Times article points out, the program has numerous flaws, not first of which is the commonly understood fact that most of the healthiest products in most supermarkets are those that barely even have any packaging. But more to the point, the article explores some of the dubious products to be granted inclusion in the program, such as sugary cereals like Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Puffs, and Lucky Charms. That's the one with the marshmallows.

How do backers of the program defend the inclusion of these items?

[Dr. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board] said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.

This raises a number of red flags...

(A) If you're "trying to think about healthy eating for your kids" and the best ideas you can come up with are Froot Loops and doughnuts, then you're probably not ready for parenthood. At the very least, you're not thinking hard enough.

(B) Does this mean I can safely assume that anything healthier than a doughnut qualifies as "nutritious"? It doesn't seem like they've set the bar very high for themselves here. Is it okay if I give my kids cotton candy for breakfast? It's lower in fat than a doughnut.

(C) How does Dr. Kennedy think the labelling will help a consumer in this situation? Is it an obvious choice because the Froot Loops have a "Smart Choices" label, while the doughnuts do not? Does this mean the program's aim is to convince consumers that all products lacking the "Smart Choices" label are inherently less nutritious than those that do bear it? Since there are only 10 food manufacturers participating in the program, it seems impossible for them to know what their products are being compared against. Yes, it could be doughnuts. But it could also be a banana or yogurt.

So what is Smart Choices? It's a glorified marketing campaign, basically. Its limited participation guarantees that most of the healthiest products available to consumers will be ignored and it ignores foods' undesirable traits in favor of more marketable ones. As consumers, we all lose.

More importantly, this story speaks to the general issue of health-oriented packaging claims. We may be picking on Smart Choices here, but the same problems apply to almost any product that makes generalized health claims on its packaging. Maybe some of this time, effort, and money should be put into actually educating consumers, rather than just telling them things after they arrive at the store.

In a whisper I'll break your name

2009-08-31T12:41:00.000-03:00

On Friday night, I saw Fredericton's 283 play a reunion show to mark the 17th anniversary of forming as a band. It was pretty great, rough edges and all. For a brief, fleeting moment I felt the sense of community that I remember the Fredericton rock scene having 6 or 7 years ago. Of course, a lot has changed for me since then. I'm a solo musician now, I'm older, and I unfortunately don't have the free time and energy to make it to as many shows as I used to. At times, it feels like I make music in a vacuum.

Fortunately I don't lose much sleep over what other people may think of my music. First and foremost, I make music that I want to hear and that nobody else here seems to be making. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I share it with people and they like it too.

But this post was supposed to be about 283. At least, I think it was. 283 was always one of my favourite local bands simply because they had (have?) the sonic muscle of a jackhammer and yet imbued their music with unapologetic intelligence and emotion. And even at their most technical, simplicity and substance ruled over showiness. It always felt like they were making music they cared about, and that's something I can relate to.

Return of the District Fly 92

2009-08-21T12:30:00.000-03:00

I thought I'd take today to share my two most recently watched movies. Have you seen these? Care to discuss? No? Okay, here's some lemonade.

District 9
(Dir: Neill Blomkamp) I'm sure you're already familiar with the conceit employed by the film, but I'll tell you again anyway: it's styled as a semi-documentary set in Johannesburg, South Africa, where an alien ship became inoperable, stranding its occupants on Earth. The aliens (nicknamed "prawns" due to their appearance) become outcasts, segregated from humans in District 9, where living conditions are terrible and crime runs rampant. The protagonist is Wickus van der Merwe, an official placed in charge of the operation to relocate the non-humans to a new district, further away from the city.

The obvious apartheid analogies are appreciated, although a little difficult to take seriously and didn't particularly enhance the film. For me, the movie only begins to develop real traction when an accident forces Wickus into a friendship of mutual need with one of the aliens, named Christopher Johnson (named by humans, I assume). It's here that actor Sharlto Copley's talents really begin to shine, and that you actually begin to find yourself sympathizing with the aliens. On the other hand, Christopher and his son are the only prawns to be given such developed personalities, while the other prawns seem to be more animalistic. This is a bit problematic when you consider that these aliens are presumably meant to represent segregated Africans, but by this point the movie has already established its footing more in the realm of science-fiction-drama than parable-mockumentary, so it becomes easy to overlook. I can't explain it, but somehow the other prawns become more likeable, simply by virtue of being associated with Christopher. Not to mention the fact that the behavior of the humans is even more atrocious.

And yeah, there's lots of nastiness on display here, coming from all sides. It's a dirty and violent film and the camera (often handheld) does not shy away from the unpleasantness that exists in this imagined universe. A key plot device is the presence of alien weaponry, which is capable of liquifying human bodies, alien bodies, and animal bodies in a number of imaginative ways. I watch a lot of nasty movies, but I can't remember the last time I saw this many heads explode in a 2 hour period.

By the film's end, Wickus is only half-successful in meeting his goals, so you can't really call it a happy ending. But hope is established and I guess that's a lot better than the prawns' previous situation and more than Wickus could have hoped for given his unfortunate predicament.

The Fly II
(Dir: Chris Walas) I'll make this simple for you: The Fly by David Cronenberg is a sophisticated horror-drama and one of my favourite movies ever; The Fly II by Chris Walas is camp horror that's not-quite-average. Basically, the movie falls in the familiar trap of trying to recreate everything that was memorable about the first film and then attempting to one-up it. Sounds great on paper, but when you consider that the original was handled by David Cronenberg, while the sequel was directed by the effects designer of the original, you know you're in trouble.

Remember the scene in The Fly where Seth Brundle tries to teleport a monkey and ends up turning it into a squirming mass of hamburger? That was memorable! And this movie has several of those scenes, which is mysterious because Seth had actually made his teleporter work properly by the end of the first movie. Why doesn't it work anymore? Because we need scenes of animals being horribly mangled, that's why.

Remember when Seth Brundle puked fly vomit on a dude's hand and it melted? This movie has a whole bunch of those scenes. Remember when Seth Brundle's love interest was simultaneously horrified by him and yet couldn't help continuing to love him? This movie has a character like that too! She lives on a houseboat. Remember that bearded guy who you loved to hate but generally had very little to do with the plot? Well, he's actually back in this one, except they had to make him likeable and make him seem more important because he's the only returning cast member. He's surprisingly non-chalant about hanging out with a dude who he knows is part-Fly and most of his dialogue serves only to remind us of what he did in the first movie: "Your dad melted my hand!"

This movie is like a remake of The Fly directed by someone who has no idea what was good about The Fly in the first place. Don't get me wrong, the stiff dialogue and goofy gross-out effects are entertaining, but it's hardly a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.

Ugh + Ew = Super Ugh

2009-08-20T08:30:00.000-03:00

You know when you really despise someone and you say they're a maggot? Like, someone who's total low-life scum and seems to exist solely for the purpose of making you miserable?

There's a good reason for why these people are called maggots and it can't really be appreciated until you've had to deal with a whole garbage can full of them (actual maggots, that is). Super Ugh.

Pasillas 'n soup

2009-08-18T08:11:00.001-03:00

I don't really do recipes, if you know what I mean. When I find one that inspires me, I typically adapt it to suit my own preferences and pantry and then usually try to make it smaller as well, since I'm usually just cooking for two.

This weekend I found some dried Pasilla chiles that I really wanted to incorporate into a meal. Whole dried chiles aren't so common around here, so it's kind of a special occasion. Pasillas, if you're not familiar, are a large, long chile that gets black and wrinkly when it's dried. It's not particularly hot at all, but it contributes a wonderful earthy chile flavour. Here's a picture I stole from elsewhere online:
I decided I would make a tortilla soup based on a recipe I found on Epicurious (this one). As always, I made some changes. I wanted this soup to constitute a meal, so I decided I would make it a little heartier by adding corn, beans, chicken, and a jalapeno. I have to say it turned out quite wonderfully.

So what does my recipe look like? I'll try to reprint it, but honestly there's a lot of stuff I just eyeballed and adjusted as I went along. You'll have to use your best judgement with some of the amounts. I used these ingredients:

3 Pasilla chiles
Ground ancho chiles
1/2 can whole tomatoes
1/2 can of black beans
3 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno (seeded and chopped)
1 small to medium onion
1 fresh and sweet ear of corn
3 chicken thighs
handful of cilantro (washed and chopped)
a dash of cumin
a little smoked paprika
salt & pepper
1 avocado
1 lime
a little olive oil
a bit of grated cheese
a bunch of chicken stock
some tortilla chips

First, clean and briefly marinate the chicken thighs in a little lime juice, olive oil, smoked paprika, and cumin. Fry over medium-high heat until they get some nice browning and set them aside.

Next up, toast the pasilla chiles lightly in a pan. They soften up a bit, which makes it easier to remove the stem and seeds. Chop and set aside a small portion for later.

For the base of the soup, you're going to make a raw puree directly in the pot. Combine 4 or 5 tomatoes (juice squeezed out) with 3/4 of the chopped pasillas, the garlic, the onion (chopped), a tsp of the ancho powder, and a little more smoked paprika. Add a little bit of stock and use an immersion blender to puree the whole thing until it's relatively chunk-free. If you want to use your regular blender, go ahead, but that's more dishes you'll have to do.

Turn on the heat (medium) and let the puree reduce a little bit. In its raw form it kind of tastes like smokey salsa. Once the mixture has thickened a bit, top up with the stock until you have an appropriately soupy thickness and texture.

Add the chopped jalapeno, some black beans, the chopped chicken, the reserved pasillas, and let cook a few minutes longer. Taste for seasoning. I happened to use a store-bought stock this time, so that already had enough salt as it is. No need to add more unless taste dictates it.

The last thing I added was the corn, which I cut off of the cob and basically left raw. I bought this corn just a few days earlier from the local farmers' market: sweet, juicy, fresh and wonderful just the way it is. If you have corn of more dubious quality, you may want to add it earlier.

To put everything together, place tortilla chips in your soup plate and ladle the soup over top. Add grated cheese, a chopped avocado, and the chopped cilantro. Finish with a squeeze of lime to add a hint of brightness. Enjoy.

When simplicity goes wrong

2009-08-17T12:45:00.001-03:00

Warning: This is long, technological, and ranty.

These days, the Apple brand is known for sleek-looking designs, innovative features, and assumed user-friendliness. People buy their products because they trust the brand and expect their purchase to be simple to use, easy to look at, and relatively fuss-free to install.

I feel like I should know better than to accept branding messages at face value, but I can be suckered as well as anyone. I bought an Airport Express on the weekend with the intention of using it to wirelessly stream music from my computer to other parts of the apartment. As you can see in the picture, it's a modest-looking device: a little white rectangle that goes directly into a power outlet. The only other features are three input/output connections (USB, Ethernet, audio out) and a single indicator light that changes colour. How hard can it be to set up, right?

The short version of my story is that I did get it to work -- after devoting almost 6 hours to the cause. And let's hope I never have to change any settings on it, because that will probably set me back another afternoon.

It begins...

First, I install the utility software that comes with the Airport Express. The software is needed to configure the device so that you can tell it to connect to your existing network, which is what I want to do. I try to run the utility, but I get a message that Windows encountered an error and needs to close the program. A reboot solves nothing, nor does a reinstall. Something's causing it to not work, but there's zero indication as to what that may be. The manual doesn't include any tips for what to do if the utility won't run.

So I uninstall the software and proceed to the Apple website to look for a newer version. That often solves these kinds of problems, right? The Apple site has a big "Downloads" button. Awesome, except the Airport utility is not listed under "Drivers" or "Utilities." Ah! There's an "Apple" category that includes "Application Updates." The first thing listed is an "Airport Client Update"... But it's for Macbooks. I reorganize the list alphabetically and see that there are 19 different downloads that start with the word "Airport." I scan for Windows versions and discover that I can choose either version 5.4.2, version 5.4.1, version 5.3.1, or version 5.3.2. Why are all these old versions around? Wouldn't a newer one make them obsolete? They all claim to be for the same operating system, after all. I have no idea what the difference is and the description is virtually the same on each one, so I just go with the latest version.

It gets ugly...

The newer version of the utility installs perfectly and even runs correctly. All my problems are solved! Except, no, they're not.

The utility says it can't detect any Apple wireless devices. I give the Airport a reset using its tiny paperclip-button switch. Detection achieved! Now the utility tells me it needs to connect directly to the wireless device (thus breaking my home network connection) in order to configure it. Great, sure. I proceed through the setup wizard and tell it what I want to do. I provide it with the keys it needs to connect to my home network. Hmm... It says it can't connect to the network, that I should check my settings, and try again -- but I gave it the exact 128-bit encryption key I've been using for 4 years and even my Nintendo Wii was able to use it without a problem. Oddly, the utility now also claims that it can no longer detect the very same device it was just trying to configure.

It gets worse...

Once again, the manual doesn't mention this as a possible scenario, so I decide to turn to the internet for help. Apple must have support forums, right? Strangely, my internet is no longer working. Oh right, the Apple utility disconnected me from my regular network in order to connect to the Airport for configuration. I open my wireless settings and see the usual list of available networks, but now I can't connect to my own network anymore. There are no particularly informative error messages -- just a long wait and a generic announcement that there has been an error -- "contact the network administrator" it says. I think that's me.

The computer and modem both get a reboot, but the problem persists. I check the wireless network settings, but everything appears exactly as it always does. Great, so now I can't connect to anything anymore and I don't even know why.

Into the time machine...

A friend suggests doing a system restore and I restore everything to how it was that morning. My home network works normally again and I can access the internet. Unfortunately, I can't find any solutions that even vaguely address my problem. Then again, I'm not even sure what my problem is, exactly. I guess I would define it as: "Airport can't find network, then everything breaks."

First, I reinstall the Airport utility, since the sytem restore undid my previous installation. I try running it again and decide to try a manual setup. I reset the Airport again to start from scratch and give it my network info again. Soon, I find myself back where I was 40 minutes ago, with absolutely nothing working anymore: not the Airport, and not my own network. I still don't know why.

Into the infinite time loop...

I do another restore, which means I have to restart the computer again. Then I also have to reinstall the Airport utility again, which also requires another restart to take effect. To avoid having to do this all over again, I create a new Restore point for after the utility installation, but pre-configuration-attempt, which is where everything goes wrong.

I take several different approaches, but nothing seems to make a difference. Every time I end up with an error message, a non-detectable Airport, and a non-working network connection. Each time, I have to Restore, which requires yet another reboot (or 3).

Cursed with a hex...

I decide to go back to the web for more possible solutions. Deep in the bowels of the Apple knowledgebase, I discover an interesting tidbit of information: when giving the Airport a WEP encryption key in hex format (which is the only format I have it in), you must preceed the key with a dollar sign ($). Maybe this is common knowledge (is it?), but I don't have any other devices that have ever required this, nor is it mentioned anywhere in the manual, or in the software. Could this be the solution to all my troubles?

Dollars to donuts...

I go back to the Airport utility and take another stab at configuring my lovely new Apple device. I'm careful to place a "$" before my encryption key and cross my fingers. I hit the "Update" button and the utility begins working its magic. I see a message that the Airport is connecting to my home network and it doesn't linger this time! That's good news, right? I think it is, but a few short moments later I once again see the error message that the device encountered an error and that I need to check settings. Aaaand my regular home connection also doesn't work anymore.

For fuck's sake...

I restore the system to pre-configuration settings again to get my network access back. At this point, I'm 99% certain this ordeal is going to end in violence, but just before things get ugly, I notice that for the first time this entire night the little indicator light on the Airport is glowing green. Steadily, even!

I open iTunes and enable the AirTunes function on the preferences menu (which also doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Airport manual). Not only does the Airport appear to be connected to my network, but iTunes can even detect it, and yes, it even sends music to it.

So it appears that the Airport utility software's function is to send configuration info to the Airport and then apply a scorched earth policy to the computer's networking functions. I just hope to God I never need to change any settings and run that damn utility again.

Lessons learned...

The sad part about all this is that I still have no idea what went wrong or why. I can only assume that some unknown piece of software on my PC is running into conflict with the Airport utility, but I couldn't begin to guess which one. And what was happening to my computer's networking abilities each time I ran the utility (even when it successfully transmitted configuration info)? I have no idea.

All I know is that I wasted an awful lot of time this weekend.

Les Paul

2009-08-13T17:20:00.000-03:00

Les Paul was known as the father of the electric guitar and the creator of the Gibson Les Paul. My primary guitar for the last 8 years or so has been a Gibson SG, but even the SG began life as a Les Paul model -- or at least that's what Wikipedia tells me.

The story goes that the original Les Paul guitar was given an overhaul in the early 60s to make it lighter and give it the double cutaway horns that are now a signature of the SG (see below). But Paul didn't care for the new model and wished to have his name removed from it. That version of the Les Paul became the SG and soon the classic model's look returned. Of course, I love my SG, and whether he liked it or not, I have him to thank for the guitar I make all my noise on.

My SG is kind of a weirdo model from around 1979 and it's actually just called "The SG," which makes it very hard to Google. I've only ever seen one other person play one and that's the guitarist from the band No Age, although he appears to have lost two of the covers for his tone knobs. I'm not sure what I'd do without it. Thanks, Les. This is me with my Gibson SG:

From Love to Hate in 60 Emails

2009-08-11T12:49:00.000-03:00

Well... This made me laugh today.

And yet it's also sad and confusing. I can barely fathom how such a misunderstanding could possibly happen between two people who apparently care about each other. This is going to make me sound old, but I actually remember a time when people couldn't rely on email and cell phones to keep track of each other -- quite simply, because nobody I knew had any of those things. I'm not sure how those two thoughts are related, but I guess I wonder if this is further proof that our reliance on technology has made us dumber. Or maybe that's just my own pessimism at work; after all, dumb people have always existed. Hmm... That didn't really sound any more optimistic.

BLT Challenge update

2009-08-10T15:42:00.003-03:00

I've been slowly working away at producing the ingredients needed for Michael Ruhlman's BLT-from-scratch challenge (see here for earlier post on this). Things are coming along well.

Bacon: Check! I cured a 5 lb piece of pork belly, divided into 2 portions. I already used up the first half, but stored the other piece away in our freezer so it would be available for the challenge.

Tomatoes: Almost check! My wife and I planted 4 little seedlings when the challenge was announced and this week they finally started showing some signs of fruit. I've already spotted almost a dozen little tomatoes starting all over them and I'm sure there will be more soon.

Lettuce: As I mentioned before, I'll be sourcing this from my mother's garden. From what I hear, it's growing well.

Bread: This is the area where I still have the furthest to go. I'm not a very experienced baker, but I'm willing to dive in head first and see what happens. I'll be starting my yeast culture this week.

Mayo: I've never made my own mayo, but I sense it'll be a no-brainer, so I'm leaving this for the very end.

Beware the power of Patrick's mind

2009-07-31T08:33:00.000-03:00

Stumbled upon this little gem of a movie poster over at horror movie blog Final Girl today. It made me laugh.

And this one, too, which I think is even better.

I should probably seek out this movie and watch it.

It's a bug's life

2009-07-20T12:37:00.000-03:00

What's with all these insects, lately?

First, we discover crickets in the basement. Then we find that the flower boxes on our patio are being destroyed by aphids. And then ants showed up to start feeding on the aphids. What is a person to do?

We opted to fight fire with fire by introducing even more bugs to the situation. We now have a miniature army of ladybugs feasting on the aphids. Did you know you can buy bags full of ladybugs at garden centres? It's true! And they like aphids -- a lot. According to the internerds, an adult ladybug can eat up to 1000 aphids every day.

So, yeah, right now our patio seems overrun by bugs, but if this works out as I expect it to (and I sure hope it does), the ladybugs will make short work of the aphids and then everyone else will leave when they realize there's nothing left for them to eat. Either that, or they all eat each other as well. It's like a freakin' bug buffet. Fingers crossed.

All About Ebert

2009-07-06T12:26:00.004-03:00

I've been trying for a few months now to put together a post about my love of Roger Ebert -- um, his writing, that is. The post would be eloquent and filled with a shining admiration for a man who writes some of the best blog posts on the internet. But every time I try, I either get wrapped up in sentimental mumbo jumbo or lose sight of my objective.

The simple truth is: Roger Ebert totally fuckin' rules and I don't know how to put it any more eloquently than that. Whether he's writing about the history of cigarettes on film, his battles with cancer, Bill O'Reilly, physical disfigurement, his friend Gene Siskel, patriotism, religion, or even Tranformers 2 -- he finds something interesting to say and says it well.

Some of my favourite pieces (happy reading):

Edit: I fixed a few bad links. Sorry about that.

"They say the sky's the limit, and to me that's really true..."

2009-06-26T08:34:00.000-03:00

This was the first cassette I ever owned. I received it on my 7th birthday in March, 1988.

The New Noise

2009-06-22T12:46:00.002-03:00

Seriously? This is still news?

So, some adventurous souls in Fredericton decided to put on FredRock, a 3-day rock festival, in the city's downtown and it seems a handful of residents weren't pleased about it. As various articles by the Daily ~~Creamer~~ Gleaner and CBC from as far back as April indicate, residents were staunchly opposed to the concept of loud music continuing until as late as 11pm on a Sunday night -- the festival launched on a Friday, but it was the Sunday night slot that seemed to be of greatest concern. Even after the fact, they're still unhappy.

Let me put a few things in perspective:

The concert took place in the same location as the annual Fredericton Exhibition: an event that goes on for a whole week, creates far more traffic (because the FREX lot is unavailable for parking due to the carnival rides), and also continues until 11pm. Oh, and after it ends, the carnival staff tend to party and shout with their outdoor voices well into the morning hours.
Fredericton doesn't really have many other big events such as this one, and even less for those interested in rock or pop music. I may not be a big fan of headliners Black Crowes or Live, but I'm willing to support their appearance (and put up with their music) on the grounds that it could show outsiders that our city is a worthwhile place for artists to visit and capable of supporting large-scale cultural events. All this while supporting a group of local promoters (and their partners) who worked hard and surely put a lot of time and money on the line to make it happen -- without any guarantee that it would be a success.
I live within a block of the concert site. Traffic was barely affected and the noise wasn't as bad as I had anticipated either, although in the interest of full disclosure, I think the stage may have been facing away from our residence.
The crowd also seemed to disperse quite quickly after the show and were no more noisy than the FREX crowds who hang around the grounds for an hour after leaving that event and arguing about who won the crappiest prize toy while waiting for their parents to pick them up.

So, to summarize, a bunch of people spent 3 months complaining and lobbying against an event that would only inconvenience them for 3 evenings (only one of which was a weeknight), while providing a boost for local business and potentially opening the doors to some genuine growth in a city that could really use some. And yet I don't recall these same people expressing outrage and concern over the numerous other just-as-inconvenient events we've hosted every year for decades. Those events didn't all happen in their own back yards, but that's beside the point.

Facts: the Harvest Jazz & Blues festival inconveniences many people, as do the Highland Games, proms hosted at the Delta, Country Music Fest, the ECMAs, the Santa Claus parade, concerts at Officers' Square, Canada Day fireworks, the FREX, etc. I think they're even setting up a new carnival on the exhibition grounds as I type this, and FredRock just ended yesterday.

And why do we let these events pass without holding townhall meetings, airing grievances, and writing to the local newspapers? Because directly or indirectly, these events contribute to the overall happiness and well-being of the people who live in and around Fredericton. Maybe you don't care for all of them -- I sure don't -- but they enrich the lives of our fellow Frederictonians and sometimes that's worth a small sacrifice... Even a sacrifice as huge as being a little cranky on Monday morning because you only got 7 hours of sleep instead of 8.

The BLT-from-scratch challenge

2009-06-09T12:59:00.000-03:00

Whoa, awesome! Michael Ruhlman (a food writer I dig) has proposed a challenge on his blog for all the kitchen and garden-handy cooks out there: make a BLT from scratch and send him the photos.

It sounds simple, but when Ruhlman writes "from scratch," he really means it. He expects participants to grow their own tomatoes and lettuce, cure their own bacon, make their own mayo, and bake their own bread (with wild yeast, preferrably). I've done all of these things before except making mayo and catching wild yeast, so I guess now's a good time to learn.

So, yeah, I'm all over this. My wife and I already have tomato plants growing on the patio, so the next steps will be to source a decent slab of pork belly for the bacon and arrange for some garden-grown lettuce. I don't think it's bending the rules too much if I get the lettuce from my mother's garden, is it? There's a pork farmer at our local market who's great for supplying pork belly. I'll have to talk to them this Saturday.

Writes Ruhlman: "The point is to cook an American classic for ourselves and for our families without resorting to Oscar Meyer, Helmann's, Wonderbread, or even the Florida and California Tomato Growers associations."

"I've never been nice my whole life, but I'll do my best... to be sweet."

2009-06-04T12:45:00.000-03:00

Wud u lik 2 c my veedeeohs?

2009-05-27T08:45:00.000-03:00

I'm gonna keep things simple today. Here's a bunch of dumb stuff that made me laugh/cry or go "ooooh" and "aaaah":

Transforminators (YouTube, clicky here)
Somebody made a mashup of Transformers and Terminator and actually did a solid job. I guess the most convincing aspect is that the voice-over guy could actually does a decent Christian Bale impression, which makes lines about "sweet cars" and stolen sand extra funny. And really, this is only slightly more ridiculous than either of those movies anyway.

Ryan Reynolds is Betty White's bitch (Funny or Die, clicky here)
I'd normally have a hard time justifying posting a video that features Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, but it's okay because Betty White is in there too and she hates Ryan Reynolds as much as the next guy/golden girl.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus trailer (YouTube, clicky here)
A very shitty movie with an awesome trailer. Really, I have little desire to see this, but the trailer is very entertaining. Actually, I'm lying -- I do want to see this, but I already know that it will most likely be super-tedious and boring... Except, of course, for the parts with the shark and/or octopus.

In Bb (clicky here)
This falls in the "ooohs" and "aaaahs" category, because it's actually pretty awesome. I don't really want to spoil the experience for you, but if you like music and creative use of the internet, do yourself a favour and go check this out. It's interactive and pretty and you will like it.

One for the kids

2009-05-21T12:56:00.000-03:00

Like a lot of my stories, this one starts with myself reading Yahoo Answers. So this kid is asking for advice on making electronic music and mentions some Victory Records band I don't know. I'm not normally the type who complains about "what the kids are listening to," but WTF is this shit all about?

Like, seriously, this may be the worst combination of these two genres they could conceivably have come up with. A lot of bands have tried to marry punk rock and electronics in recent years with varying degrees of success, but this particular excursion seems to ignore what I think are the best aspects of both those genres in favour of the stuff I'd rather forget about. My brain hurts.

I don't feel old very often, so congratulations to Dot Dot Curve -- you've done it for me today.

Feeling Lost

2009-05-13T12:50:00.001-03:00

So, the season finale of the show Lost is tonight. I'm excited! The show has become a bit of an event in my immediate circle of friends, since we use it as an excuse to get together in the middle of the week and be merry. I believe wings are on the menu tonight. Actually I know they are, because I'm cooking them.

But anyway, some awesome Flickr user made this phenomenal poster that teases at least one of the current storylines people hope to see resolved. Of course, with this show one resolved issue typically results in six new mysteries. But they only have one season left after tonight, so I guess it's possible we may actually see some old questions answered in the near future. So, will we finally see Jacob? Rumors say "yes," but those have been wrong before.

The song that never ends

2009-05-06T08:50:00.002-03:00

So, how about that Coldplay song? The story of "Viva La Vida" and how original (or unoriginal) it may be continues to get more hilarious. First, some guy from a band you've never heard of -- The Creaky Boards -- came out and claimed in a YouTube video that the song was a rip-off of one of his songs. Then career guitar-masturbator Joe Satriani came forward and was all, like, "No, actually, I also wrote the same song already," and actually went so far as to sue the band (not yet settled). And now, Cat Stevens also wants a slice of lame-pie and states that in addition to sounding like 2 other songs, "Viva La Vida" also sounds like his song, "Foreigner Suite" from the 5 minute mark onward (it's a 9 minute-long "epic"). However, whether or not he will also sue Coldplay will depend on "how well Satriani does" (Billboard).

Fortunately, Cat Stevens injects a little bit of common sense into the situation: "It has such logical chords and the melody has to be what it is." In other words, nobody worked terribly hard on this song and if they did, they were overlooking the obvious. And let's be honest here -- recycling chords and melodies is not unheard of in pop music. Songs with the same four chord intervals show up all the time. What matters are the details that allow an artist to make a song his/her own. I'm certainly not going to confuse any of these songs for each other, although they do admittedly have a lot in common, melodically speaking. Then again, so do all of these:

Maybe I should be writing lots of generic songs now so that when somebody writes a similar one in 10 years and becomes more popular than I am, I can sue them.

Am I missing something?

2009-05-04T16:52:00.004-03:00

I've been using Twitter for a while now. It's fun, I guess, although I haven't found it particularly useful or inspiring just yet. However, I can take comfort in knowing that there are apparently people out there who understand it even less than I do.

Remember MySpace? Basically, everybody wanted to have as many friends as possible and as a result, a lot of people were adding anyone who requested their "friendship". The catch was that if somebody adds you, and you accept their request, they automatically get added to your own friend list as well, opening you to all kinds of useless garbage being posted in your comments, inbox, etc.

In the last couple of weeks, I've received follow-requests on Twitter from numerous individuals I've never met before and who have no idea who I am. Just like on MySpace, they appear to be musicians and website operators trying to spread their crap blindly to anyone who will listen. "Oh, your art-house new wave doom-metal band is playing a CD release show in a cafe in another continent tomorrow? I'll totally be there!" But the thing about Twitter is that even if I give somebody else permission to view my updates, their shit won't clutter my home view unless I in turn also request to follow their updates. Um... That's not going to happen.

So, tell me, am I missing something? Are these people gaining something by seeing all my updates about cats and the weather and chatting with friends about bands who played last night? Do they just like having thousands of different Twitterers cluttering their feed? Or do they just go and add thousands of people, hoping that one or two might add them back? (ha ha! you suck.)

Maybe these people would better spend this time working on new music rather than sending updates to thousands of people who don't give a shit about them and just want the extra internet friends.

Something to say

2009-04-30T10:00:00.003-03:00

I feel like I haven't had much to share the last week or two. April tends to be packed to the brim with birthdays, anniversaries, and other similar events for me. So, that's kept me busy. I've also finally gotten around to clearing up a bunch of issues with my music gear, which is great. My guitar amplifier has been fixed, I found a new synth to replace my semi-working one, and all the other parts I need are on order. Can't wait to put it all together.

Even my camera works again after it mysteriously decided to quit for a couple of weeks. It seems to be an issue with the battery or charger, so nothing too serious. That's good news!

Otherwise, I don't think I've done anything interesting. Maybe something really awesome and crazy will happen this weekend.

Islands in the Stream

2009-04-16T13:08:00.001-03:00

I received an awesome box of goodies from Cuba this morning, courtesy of a good friend. In retrospect, it's a little strange to wake up at 8:00 am and find that the FedEx man has left a box of cigars, rum, and coffee on your doorstep.

But the weather's looking up after a whole lot of misery and the broken parts of our house have been rebuilt. It would feel appropriate to stock up on some more Hemingway and enjoy these treasures from our balcony on a sunny day. I'll have to pretend that the big gross parking lot is an ocean, though. The Tim Horton's can stand in for a fishing boat on the horizon, or something.

I Feel Faint

2009-04-09T12:52:00.000-03:00

Just got back from Montreal last night. We saw The Faint and Ladytron, who are currently on a co-headlining tour. Although, really, who do they think they're fooling? Somebody has to close the show, after all.

Anyway, it was a good show, although my wife and I mutually felt The Faint stole the evening. It's not entirely Ladytron's fault, but their soundman should be fired. Most of their set sounded like an impenetrable wall of noise, with some drums and vocals cutting through once in a while. They had about 9 synths on stage by my estimate, but it was near impossible to distinguish a single thing played on them. Just lots of droning noise. There were still standouts, of course, such as "Playgirl" from their debut album, 604, and The Witching Hour's "International Dateline," but many of the songs were pretty hard to get into (or even recognize) due to the mix.

I'd love to be able to blame the sound on the venue -- The Telus Theatre, which basically looks like a big concrete box from the inside -- but The Faint sounded crystal clear by comparison. Every bass line, guitar riff, and synth hook cut like a machete. And they looked like they were having lots of fun, which I like to see in a live band. Speaking of The Faint, it's pretty difficult to find a picture of this band online where they don't look like a bunch of weirdos. Not that I hold that against them, but kudos for the consistency. I can't find a setlist for them, but I do remember that they played all of these songs in an order that's (maybe) vaguely similar to this:

Get Seduced
The Conductor
Psycho
Desperate Guys
The Geeks Were Right
Machine in the Ghost
Posed To Death
Southern Belles in London Sing
Birth
Take Me to the Hospital
Call Call
Mirror Error
Glass Danse
Worked Up So Sexual
Paranoiattack
Agenda Suicide

I did find a setlist for Ladytron though:

Black Cat
Runaway
Ghosts
High Rise
Seventeen
True Mathematics
I'm Not Scared
Season of Illusions
Soft Power
Playgirl
International Dateline
Fighting in Built Up Areas
Tomorrow
Versus
Destroy Everything You Touch

A delicious mess

2009-03-31T10:58:00.003-03:00

I know I rag on Yahoo Answers a lot, but sometimes I'll find answers that briefly redeem the site's users and remind me why I bother to keep going. I enjoyed this exchange, for example:

Q - "Is licking another woman's feet cheating? ...I walked in on my husband licking my niece's feet. As I walked in he was licking the bottom of her foot and I could see he had been sucking her toes because they were all wet. I told them both off but didn't really class it as cheating. He hates talking about it now, but would you class it as cheating?"

A - "Maybe there was ice cream on her foot..."

Perfect as cats

2009-03-23T16:09:00.002-03:00

Since my last two posts were long and ranty, and because it's Monday... Some new cat videos (courtesy of Videogum):

Desperately Seeking Watchers for Watchmen

2009-03-16T12:25:00.000-03:00

I saw Watchmen on opening weekend. I wasn't going to bother going into it, because the web is already cluttered enough as it is with reviews, previews, cartoons, and everything else you can imagine about the film. But then, an open letter came along from David Hayter, the movie's co-writer, essentially begging fans to go see it again. If you hadn't heard, the movie isn't doing so well in its second week. It was expensive and risky to make, so naturally the people behind it want it to do well. But this letter... it reeks of desperation and fails to give me a convincing argument for why I should see it again.

I'd read Watchmen twice before I saw the movie. Frankly, I'm on the side of the fence that says you're better off sticking with the graphic novel in terms of which offers a richer experience. In a nutshell, I thought the movie was entertaining and that it had its share of great moments, but that the whole was just above average. Not the kind of movie I would go see a second time, surely (which is, itself, admittedly rare).

Hayter writes:

You have to understand, everyone is watching to see how the film will do in its second week. If you care about movies that have a brain, or balls, (and this film's got both, literally), or true adaptations -- And if you're thinking of seeing it again anyway, please go back this weekend, Friday or Saturday night. Demonstrate the power of the fans, because it'll help let the people who pay for these movies know what we'd like to see. Because if it drops off the radar after the first weekend, they will never allow a film like this to be made again.

I have a hard time imagining this to be true. As a comics fan, I can attest to the fact that it was a revelatory breakthrough to see a work as dense, mature, and well-respected as Watchmen make its way to the screen, but I'm not convinced a studio suit would see it the same way.

For one, the film gave me the impression that although the filmmakers wanted to create a faithful adaptation of a much loved graphic novel (yes, I believe Hayter in that respect), they were equally, if not moreso, concerned with simply making an extreme action movie with lots of cool fights, violence, and boobies. Not necessarily ingredients that herald a thought-provoking examination of the superhero psyche. Of the "balls" and "brains" Hayter mentioned, I saw more "balls" and less "brains" in the adaptation.

One of my beefs with the movie was its seemingly gleeful obsession with representing the violence of the story. I understand that Watchmen takes place in a violent world, but the treatment of these scenes gave the impression that they were included for the the sheer "fun" of gore and not so much for the purpose of making a point. Would Rorschach's deep fryer attack have been less emotionally effective if the shot of his swinging arm (basket in hand) had been followed by an off-camera scream? Or did we need to see 5 full seconds of the victim's eyes boiling in his face? But as Hayter said, the movie has lots of brains and balls... literally. And apparently that was what they set out to do.

I guess that when Hayter ominously asserts "they will never allow a film like this to be made again," I have to wonder what kind of film he thinks he's made. I was delighted to see so many visuals from the beloved graphic novel lovingly recreated on screen, but throughout the 2 hour 40 minute experience, I couldn't shake the feeling that it felt remarkably shallow compared to the source material. Director Zack Snyder's previous films include 300 and Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake). Meanwhile, Hayter's past writing credits include two X-Men movies and The Scorpion King. I'm not sure how to make this sound like I'm not being a dick, but I'm not really crazy about any of those movies and unfortunately, Watchmen felt like only a slight improvement for either creative contributor -- although, of course, the better-than-average source material probably helped.

Hayter writes:

I'm saying [this] for people like me. I'm saying it for people who love smart, dark entertainment, on a grand, operatic scale. I'm talking to the Snake fans, the Rorschach fans, the people of the Dark Knight.

Oddly, Hayter seems to be aware that his film is not as unique as a film would have to be to warrant this special request. So, will a movie "like this" be made again? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it will. In fact, many have already been made that were more successful than Watchmen. Hayter already mentioned The Dark Knight (aka Warner's license to print money), for example. Sin City was also bleak, stylish, action-packed, faithful to the source material, and certainly also had both brains and balls.

It's not known to many, but David Cronenberg's History of Violence (one of my favourite films of recent years) was also based on a graphic novel. It wasn't faithful to the comic at all, but in the end I think it was a better film for it. I hope they make more movies like that.

Hayter writes:

All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story. With its utterly raw view of the darkest sides of human nature, expressed through its masks of action and beauty and twisted good intentions. Like a fry-basket full of hot grease in the face. Like the Comedian on the Grassy Knoll. I know, I know...

And there it is. Even in his description of the Watchmen experience, Hayter manages to capture very few of the things that intrigued me about the graphic novel. To him, Watchmen is an excuse to make a movie featuring violent rape, hot grease attacks, and blood spraying out of head wounds and do it all under the name of the comic world's most revered piece of literature. And if you call him out on it, he can even say, "Well, it was in the book and we wanted to be as faithful as possible." And he'd be right, except that for all its panel-to-panel accuracy, the faithfulness of the adaptation was only skin-deep. Watchmen the film sure did look like Watchmen the comic, but it didn't feel like it and, if my experience is any indication, it suffered because of it.

Fuck you, VitaminWater

2009-03-11T12:25:00.000-03:00

Slashfood reports:

Vitamin Water has been in the news lately with some contretempts over the caloric content of their brightly colored, somewhat nutritious beverages. So it's fortuitous timing that they're coming out with 10-calorie versions of several flavors. Up for the dietetic treatment are Energy (tropical citrus/yellow), XXX (acai-blueberry-pomegranate/magenta), Multi-V (lemonade/white) and Essential (orange/orange).

More like BullshitWater... I've watched this disturbing trend of "flavoured water" and "health beverages" grow rapidly over the last decade or so. And I still see it as nothing more than a big, sugary heap of crap. First, don't call it water, please. Water is clear, tastes refreshing, and doesn't require you to brush your teeth afterwards to get the taste (and colour) out of your mouth.

Hey, you know what else is flavoured water? Kool-Aid. And Tang. And Coffee. And Tea. And probably many other water-based beverages. Why isn't 50 Cent promoting those? Fact is, once you add a bunch of other shit to water, it's not really water anymore. But I suppose calling it VitaminSugarArtificalFlavourNeonPinkSubstance doesn't have quite the same healthy ring to it. But at least it would be more honest.

So, what dumbass is out there complaining about the calorie content of VitaminWater when they already have perfectly good water available to them for free? Water that doesn't taste like shit and look like it was peed in by Care Bear, I might add. Do they really need the vitamins that badly?

Hey, you know what else contains vitamins? Bananas. They're delicious! So do tomatoes and spinach and carrots and... Actually, most food contains vitamins and/or other useful nutrients. You probably eat some every day! So, again, why the Care Bear piss? It tastes gross, looks gross, it's unnecessary, and in spite of any claims it may make, any usefulness it may have can be made obsolete by simply eating normal meals and having a glass of (real) water.

Fuck you, VitaminWater.

Previously enjoyed

2009-02-26T12:39:00.000-04:00

I like to enjoy things. Here are some things I enjoyed recently.

Depeche Mode - "Wrong" (link). Like a lot of bands I loved growing up, Depeche Mode have had their ups and downs. I thought their last album was a huge improvement over the not-so-exciting Exciter, but still not the band I fell in love with. Long story short, I wasn't expecting much from their new single, so I was pleasantly surprised when I actually really liked it. It's modern and new, but it also captures a lot of the things I love about Depeche Mode -- the urgency, the atmosphere, the dark pop sensibility. This sounds like it could have been written in the era of Black Celebration or Violator.

Star Trek Edits (link). Basically, this guy took a bunch of footage from Star Trek: The Next Generation and re-edited it to make hilarious short vignettes. I haven't watched them all yet, but what I've seen is gold. Although I have to admit "Beard on Beard" freaked me out a little bit. I'm not sure I can ever look at Riker with a straight face again.

Pizza Hut in Italy (link). Courtesy of Funny or Die, this video adds new (and more accurate) captions to an incredibly dumb Pizza Hut ad, which originally tried to suggest that a group of Italian food-lovers would not know the difference between a well-made, hand-crafted lasagna, and one from Pizza Hut. If anyone is actually taken in by this BS, then they deserve to eat at Pizza Hut.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead (links in text). AYWKUBTTOD has been one of my favourite bands for years now for a multitude of reasons, but they still never fail to entertain and surprise me. Last week, a kind user on the band's fan board uploaded a 10-minute mini-documentary from the band's early days, and quite simply: it rules. In those 10 minutes you get a tidy recap of all the insanity that led the band from obscurity to, well... not fame, but certainly not obscurity anymore. It's worth the download (link). Second of all, holy crap there are a lot of awesome videos of this band on YouTube. Check out this 2003 performance of "Richter Scale Madness" as some show promoter tries to get them to stop playing (they don't). I also love the tradition of using lyrics from Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" in the song's bridge. It's a pretty beautiful juxtaposition (link).

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
And when we get there...
And when we get there...
We could just kill kill...

Fun with Yahoo Answers III: Politics Edition

2009-02-25T12:28:00.000-04:00

I can't help it. I keep going back for more. Some days Yahoo Answers is like a freakin' train wreck where the cars keep coming and there's no end in sight. Today, it's all about the politics. Some highlights:

Why have there been so many crashes since Obama became President? 3 Airplanes, 2 deadly, and the Stock Market? Clearly, it's because Obama hates freedom. Or because you're an idiot. Whatever.
Hey Liberals, do you still want to Free Tibet? Think about the consequence, millions of tibetan refugees would come to your country as refugees, how would you feel about that? I'm not an expert on the whole Tibet situation, so maybe I'm way off on this... But if Tibetans were free to live as they wanted and in no danger of persecution, why would they be fleeing their country as refugees?
Should President Johnson increase the United States troop commitment to South Vietnam in 1965? He definitely should. I'll tell him to get right on it.
Have you ever noticed that Obama supporters are incompetent at driving? No... I... didn't notice that. Is this person following people home and surveying them about their political beliefs? How do they know this?
Does the fact that Obama is left handed worry you at all? I shiver and shake all night long, just thinking about it.
Why do my friends and family believe I am racist when I refer to Obama as the banana king or banana eater? Because bananas have feelings too.
Why do those who hate freedom want to keep drugs illegal in the US? Uh... Because they hate freedom?
Was hitler a good guy? Yes. He just has a bad reputation because he was a mean drunk (and he was drunk all the time).

The Weekend: It's Over!

2009-02-24T12:48:00.000-04:00

Holy crap, we got a lot of snow this weekend. That must be some kind of record.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. It's been a full week since I posted last and that post was full of miscellaneous info about my weekend. I guess that's what this post will be as well.

Saw an all-ages show and it was a good time. All Ages shows have become somewhat of a rarity in Fredericton, but luckily some good folks I know are trying to change that. The only options in recent years have been metal shows, which is fine, but I'd prefer a little more variety. It was a bit inspiring to get out and just enjoy some music for the sake of it, without the pretense of having it be a social event or going drinking or whatever it is people do at bars while they're ignoring the music. I spent some time the next day recording noisy guitars for songs I'm working on.
I made creamed spinach, inspired by last week's episode of Top Chef (go Stefan!). My mom used to make this for us all the time when we were kids. I haven't had it in years, so it was actually a bit of a nostalgia trip to eat it again (along with a pile of mashed potatoes, of course).
Jorge Garcia's blog is a lot of fun. If that name doesn't ring a bell, he plays "Hurley" on the tv show Lost. His blog is mostly fluffy day-to-day stuff, but he provides little behind-the-scenes glimpses that are entertaining (probably moreso for fans of the show) and occasionally it's even educational.
The Oscars happened. I didn't watch and I haven't seen all of the major movies yet, but I did participate in a pool. I lost pretty badly, I assume.

Things I did this weekend

2009-02-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

Not watching the Grammys. I'll probably check 'em out later and fast-forward through all those boring awards between the music. Actually, I'll skip some of that, too.
Cooked the 3rd course in a six-course meal. I made a south-west style salmon & scallop cake, with avocado and a tomato salsa. Delish!
Drank many Cuba Libres and jammed on an old organ with a bunch of people I'd just met.
Learned about Marsala wine and finally tasted some.
Discovered that my NES has been on since New Year's Eve. Thank God! Now I can pick up that paused game of Rock 'N Ball.

WTF, last.fm?

2009-02-06T08:24:00.000-04:00

According to my sidebar, Last.FM knows what I've been listening to the most this week, but is a little sketchy on the details. I have apparently listened to everything an "undefined" number of times. Not sure how that works. Either it knows or it doesn't... Doesn't it?

Flight of the Awesome

2009-02-04T08:07:00.000-04:00

I'm so glad to see new Flight of the Conchords on the air. I know the duo talked about how difficult it was for them to produce all the new music for the season, but it looks like it was worth it. I've particularly enjoyed seeing some of the other characters on the show get in on the singing. Murray has had multiple singing parts and even Mel and her husband got in on the reprise of "Hurt Feelings" in the newest episode. I'm gonna miss this show when the season ends.

"Hurt Feelings" Bret & Jemaine's rap

"Hurt Feelings" Cast reprise

Reviews!!!

2009-01-28T12:47:00.000-04:00

I've been enjoying this blog recently, called Reviews Reviews Reviews. Basically, they're all about assigning arbitrary values to anything at all. For example, in the last week or so:

Scientology received 2%
Hats received 65%
Bob Seger received 90%
Radishes received 70%
The Robertson Screw received 91%
Notorious (movie) received 56%
Bride Wars (movie) also received 56%

It's all pretty great, if you ask me.

Things I learned from IMDB

2009-01-26T08:38:00.001-04:00

Reading the comment boards on IMDB can be quite an enlightening experience. There are so many fans and trolls with something to say, I learn something new each time I visit. For example:

The word "ambientation": A commentor notes that the movie Pumpkinhead has good ambientation. You can go ahead and use that in your next film class assignment.
Pulp Fiction is a "snooze-fest": Heroin overdoses, people's heads being shot off, armed robberies, gimps, rape, and intimidating mob bosses are all all pretty boring. Couldn't they have put something a little more exciting in here?
Prison is made to look "nice" in The Shawshank Redemption: It's been a while since I watched it, but didn't he get raped and beaten multiple times while in jail?
If Maggie Gyllenhall showed her boobs, The Dark Knight would have gotten an Oscar nomination: Just like Kate Winslett.

TED and the Art of Baking Bread

2009-01-16T11:19:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the TED series of talks available online. It's a difficult concept to describe, but essentially it consists of brief presentations given by various specialists and professionals on topics that they know a lot about. The topics can cover almost anything under the sun, so you never quite know what you're going to get, but it's almost always interesting and engaging.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the latest talk is by master baker Peter Reinhart. I've been using Reinhart's book "American Pie" as a basis for my pizza making and based on that experience, I can tell you that the guy clearly knows a lot about bread and about pizza. Check him out:

I'd Watch It: "The Homesick Alien"

2009-01-13T08:44:00.001-04:00

Note: I'd Watch It is a new feature. Basically, I make up a very fanciful synopsis for a ridiculous movie in my head and then piece together a soundtrack that will set the tone for my imaginary film.

Plot: Max, an alien from a distant planet, crashlands on Earth after he is separated from his flight squadron and struck by space debris. His ship damaged beyond repair, Max assumes a human form and begins a new life in mountainous Colorado as a ski instructor. Years pass and he becomes romantically involved with Haley, a young librarian who comes to him for instruction. Just as things begin to get serious, Max has an accident caused by faulty ski bindings, flies off the trail, and winds up unconscious. When Haley finds him, she is horrified to discover that he is returning to his scaley purple alien form and his secret is revealed. Unable to console her, Max flees and a military manhunt begins for the extra-terrestrial. It seems things couldn't possibly get worse when Max learns that a rescue team from his homeworld has found his crash location after years of searching. They intend to evacuate Max and then destroy the planet, lest the Earthlings ever decide to come looking for them. Now Max must choose between returning to the homeworld he misses dearly and saving the woman who showed him true love (but is repulsed by him).

Soundtrack:
Smashing Pumpkins - "Spaceboy"
Tori Amos - "Space Dog"
Patti Smith - "Looking For You (I Was)"
Radiohead - "Subterranean Homesick Alien"
Sonic Youth - "Silver Rocket"
The Stooges - "Search and Destroy"
Franz Ferdinand - "Outsiders"
Garbage - "Alien Sex Fiend"
David Bowie - "Life on Mars?"
Elton John - "Rocket Man"
Nat King Cole - "Fly Me to the Moon" (closing credits)

2008 in Music

2009-01-09T12:45:00.000-04:00

I made a top 10 list of 2008 albums about a month ago for a local message forum I frequent, but I already regret some of my choices and placements. I suppose I should take heart in knowing that these lists are entirely arbitrary anyway and that probably not many people paid attention to it. For my own amusement and peace of mind, I've revised the list as follows:

1. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
2. Mates of State - Re-arrange Us
3. Why? - Alopecia
4. Sigur Rós - Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust
5. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
6. The Notwist - The Devil, You + Me
7. Ratatat - LP3
8. Ladytron - Velocifero
9. Bell - Bell (EP)
10. Portishead - Third

Fun with Classifieds

2009-01-08T08:42:00.000-04:00

From Fredericton Kijiji:

Wanted: orcarina
Price: $25.00
Address: Fredericton, NB
Date Listed: 06-Jan-09

hi i would like to buy a orcarina like the one that is in the game zelda

I was going to respond, but then I remembered that my ocarina can't make you time travel.

Praise Jebus for Photoshop

2009-01-06T12:20:00.000-04:00

I have no idea where this came from or even how old it is, but it seemed worthy of sharing given the recentness of Christmas. Robin is so insensitive.

Learn about the origin of the panel (CSBG!)

I can think of at least two things wrong with that title

2009-01-06T08:19:00.000-04:00

I learned today that The Joy of Cooking has introduced a line of frozen foods, which seems to defy both the "Joy" and the "Cooking" aspects of the brand name. As one blog states (Eat Me Daily): "The Joy Of Cooking, our ass. More like The Joy Of Probably Getting Cancer From Standing Near The Microwave. We wash our hands of you."

For real.

I'm not one to entirely shun convenience foods. I understand why they exist and I think I understand why people buy them. I'll even suggest that they're a forgivable indulgence once in a while, in spite of my love of real cooking. This use of the JoC name, however, is disheartening. Some suits have chosen to take the mainstream's onetime bastion of real food and turn it into another branding opportunity for something entirely contrary to its very name and reason for existence. Fuck that.

Fun with Yahoo Answers II: Food & Drink Edition

2009-01-05T08:27:00.000-04:00

Whoa! Have I really not posted anything since Dec. 17? I sure haven't! What can I say? It's been busy. I've been tired. I don't owe you shit. Yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, I'm still being thoroughly entertained by Yahoo Answers, so let's have some fun with that to kick off the new year. The food section has been particularly great lately. Recent favourites include:

What are ribs made of?
I want to drink a shot of pine sol?
R u ment 2 boil lasagne sheets?
Why is Giada De Laurentis so hot and sexy even though she cooks and eats a lot? How can I date her?
What is the difference between thick and thin coconut milk?
NON STARCH BREAD PLEASE HELLP?
This beer bottlecap won't twist off, what is going on?

Hey, you smell like meat, dude

2008-12-17T11:56:00.002-04:00

Not only is it a gimmick, but it's a particularly foul one. Thanks to Burger King's new body spray, you can now smell like a hamburger. The chain describes it as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat." Good luck with that.

Burger King’s scent of love now flame broiled (Boston Herald)

All quiet on the blogging front

2008-12-17T08:27:00.000-04:00

It's been quiet on the blogging front, I know. Don't get me wrong, I've been enraged by a number of matters related to both pop culture and world events, but I've been short on time these last couple of weeks to rant about them on the internet.

It's almost Christmas and December has been whizzing by me at unprecedented speeds. I feel like I'm standing on the platform at a train station watching the behemoths roll past at blurring speeds. I guess that's what a lot of my life feels like, but I'm okay with that. I just do my best to keep up.

I've also been immersed in all things New Order... I'm playing a cover set of their songs for The Capital's annual Christmas event on Thursday and it's been a rush trying to get everything done in time. Thankfully, I had some help this year and it looks like things are turning out well. I think we'll be able to play a 7-song set, which is the longest I've ever been able to pull together for one of these shows.

Black Friday

2008-11-28T12:20:00.000-04:00

There is no sale big enough or present important enough to warrant this... Merry fucking Christmas.

Wal-Mart worker dies in Black Friday stampede

March of the Dandrew

2008-11-24T08:45:00.000-04:00

We've been watching The Amazing Race this season. The show's been running for 13 seasons now, but I'd never even seen a single episode until this year. Anyway, last night's episode nearly made me pass out in laughter. The teams had to put on Russian military uniforms and perform a march. Sounds easy enough, but if one of your team members can't coordinate movement between his arms and legs, it might be a bit more difficult. I can't even begin to describe what it looks like, so just see for yourself...

Fun with Yahoo Answers

2008-11-21T12:45:00.000-04:00

A friend turned me onto Yahoo Answers several months ago. It's an amusing website that's occasionally even sort of useful. I'll probably sound snooty for saying so, but I'm frequently also astounded by the ridiculous questions people pose there. Really, the only thing worse is the answers that are sometimes given by others. I think my favorite question today was easily this one:

"What chemical is in alchohal [sic] that makes you drunk and dizzy?"

The answers are pretty funny too (it's the yeast, obviously), but it's often hard to distinguish the joke answers from the idiot answers, especially when the question is so dumb to begin with. At the very least, I can be happy that the Obama/McCain Democrat/Republican-baiting questions died when the election ended.

Other winners:

How do I convince my wife to allow the maid to sleep between us at night?
I am latino and i can't dance. Am I a weirdo?
can someone write me a kinda emo poem about a girl loving a boy but he didn't realise it until it was too late and now she is dead?
Should i use draino on the kitchen sink?

"Oldboy" starring ... Will Smith (??!!)

2008-11-07T08:45:00.000-04:00

I haven't been in the habit of reporting movie news here, but this piece of info is truly a head scratcher. According to Variety magazine, Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are looking at remaking the Korean revenge movie Oldboy (2003). It's one of the most memorable movies I've seen in recent years and I'm definitely not the only one who holds it dear -- the movie received rave reviews (82% fresh out of 119 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes) and won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Given the cult popularity of the original and the fact that it's in Korean, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that an American remake is being considered. But names like Spielberg and Smith are more commonly associated with big summer blockbusters (especially when you put them together like this) than they are with something as visceral and gut-wrenching as Oldboy. It packs a Hulk-sized fist of emotional punch. Without giving away any of the film's twists and turns, Oldboy puts its lead character through Hell and then somewhere even darker. I'm not sure I can picture Will Smith in some of those places. This isn't exactly I, Robot, ya know? Hell, it's not even I Am Legend. It's bleak, disturbing, and it will leave you with a lot of difficult questions to ponder.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how this turns out -- maybe it won't end up being made anyway. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the plot's most extreme details are changed to make them a little more palatable to a larger audience.

Obama

2008-11-05T10:37:00.001-04:00

It begins...

2008-11-04T08:55:00.000-04:00

Hey Americans! I'm sure you don't read my blog, but good luck with that election thing today. Go vote! I'll be watching your results on the tee-vee.

American voters head to the polls for historic election (CBC)
A historic election, no matter the outcome (CNN)
Americans flood to vote as election day dawns (TimesOnline)

Spooky, Scary

2008-10-31T12:30:00.000-03:00

As I mentioned before, one of my favourite Halloween pastimes is to indulge in some freaky movies with friends. We've had several such marathons over the years and I was thinking today about what some of my favourite movies are in the genre. I have a hard time with lists, because calling anything my "favourite" feels like I'm being disrespectful of all the others I love. But I'm going to give it a shot anyway -- just for fun. These aren't the scariest movies I've ever seen, nor are they the best, but they are the ones I love for reasons entirely my own. I don't think I could limit myself to just 10, so here are 13 of my favourite freaky flicks (order is mostly arbitrary, although I feel pretty strongly about #1):

13. Suspiria (1977)
I said that some of movies on this list are not actually very scary, but I do find Suspiria pretty damn frightening. The gothic synth music has a lot to do with it, as does the movie's outlandish color palette. Really, the movie's greatest special effect is its juxtaposition of many surreal elements with unflinchingly raw depictions of death. It's a very unsettling combination of fantasy and groin-kickingly horrible nastiness. Memorable moment: the razor wire room.

12. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Although it's also damn scary, it fascinating that this movie doesn't even come close to matching the notorious reputation it's earned over the years for bloodshed and violence. For one, it's not nearly as bloody a movie as you might expect. Most of the best scares come through dialogue, set design, cinematography, and implied violence. It's easily one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen and even the ultra-low budget never hampers that ($140,000, supposedly). Memorable moment: the dinner scene -- so good, they reused it for the (crappy) sequel.

11. Slither (2006)
Slither is more of a gross-out comedy than a horror film, but that's right up my alley -- especially because it succeeds so well at both. It's a shame that this movie performed so terribly in theatres, because horror-comedies are a rare breed and it's even more rare when they get the balance right. Plus, Nathan Fillion (Serenity), and Elizabeth Banks (Zack & Miri, W) produced some genuinely likeable characters. Memorable moment: squid Grant takes down a cow.

10. The Descent (2005)
I've seen this movie twice now and although it's rather bleak, the second viewing cemented that I really liked it. For one, it manages to be scary even long before any flesh-eating monsters show up, often just through the use of lighting and environments. Second, there's a lot more going on in that cave than just victims running from predators. You get to know a lot about the characters' backstories and an entirely separate personal drama plays out between them as they try to survive their ordeal. Memorable moment: Beth reveals Juno's betrayal.

9. 28 Days Later (2002)
I know it's not exactly perfect, but several aspects of this movie struck a chord for me. For one, Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) totally rules in this movie and deep inside, I cheered at his transformation from a simple bike courier to a Rambo-like force of nature. Meanwhile, the excellent soundtrack, haunting scenery, and performances by the likes of Brendan Gleeson (Gangs of New York) lend a little gravitas to what might otherwise be another silly zombie movie. And no, I'm not interested in arguing about whether or not, it's really a zombie movie. Memorable moment: Frank looks up at a crow.

8. Bubba Ho-tep (2002)
This is one bizarre trip of a comedy-fantasy-drama-horror movie. Bubba Ho-tep is anchored by two phenomenal performances: Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) as an aging Elvis and the late Ossie Davis (Do the Right Thing) as JFK, who was dyed to resemble a black man after an assassination attempt. Together, they live in a nursing home and team up to fight off an ancient, evil mummy. On paper, none of this sounds like it should work, but the movie is full of pleasant surprises. Memorable moment: Elvis chooses the simple life.

7. Ravenous (1999)
Here's another wacky one. Two of my favourite actors, Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) and Guy Pearce (Memento), are put together in a cannibalism movie on the US frontier with lots of perky banjo music. Once again, there's a lot more going on here than just a horror movie or even a simple black comedy. It's multi-faceted, it's entertaining, and it's thoughtful. Memorable moment: "He was tough. But then, a good soldier ought to be."

6. Romero's "Dead" trilogy (1968, 1978, 1985)
I'm bulking these together because I couldn't choose a favourite. I think they all have their pros and cons. Dawn of the Dead is the most thoughtfully composed of the trio, Night of the Living Dead is most haunting, and the oft-maligned Day of the Dead remains the most visceral of the bunch. I'm probably less harsh on Day than others because it's the first one I saw. It certainly takes a while to pick up steam, but once the film gets rolling, there's some pretty remarkable mayhem on display. Memorable moment: the demise of Captain Rhodes.

5. Alien (1979)
Alien is great, because not only is it genuinely scary and intriguing, but it's also exceptionally well made. Directed by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator), it is particularly remarkable for its dense atmosphere and impressive sets. The actors all pull their weight, the effects are phenomenal given the film's budget, and the suspense is almost unbearable in the film's key scenes. I don't know what else to say. Everything here just works very well. Memorable moment: there's a stowaway aboard the shuttle.

4. The Thing (1982)
Speaking of aliens, The Thing by John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York) features probably the coolest alien I've ever seen on screen. As the title suggests, there's absolutely no way to describe it other than "a thing." It has no shape, no voice -- it just is. And that's scary as hell. Memorable moment: Um, that head has spider legs.

3. Re-Animator (1985)
This movie probably isn't as great as its spot in the list might suggest, but I can't help loving how wacky it is. I love how the solution to every zombie problem is to make more zombies, like maybe it will turn out better this time. The fact that the characters never learn anything from their errors and that actor Jeffrey Combs (The Frighteners) manages to hold that scornful scowl through the entire film make this amazingly entertaining. But the late David Gale as Dr. Hill steals most scenes anyway, even if he spends most of the film separated from his body. Memorable moment: I can't decide between the decapitated zombie head's attempt at sex or a character getting strangled to death by another's re-animated intestines.

2. The Fly (1986)
Director David Cronenberg has been on a roll again in recent years (History of Violence, Eastern Promises), but this remains one of my favourite movies of his. A remake of the 1958 sci-fi classic, The Fly is probably the closest thing to a pure horror movie he's ever made and it packs one hell of an emotional punch. In retrospect, the film is a perfect encapsulation of Cronenberg's fascination with the human body; here, humanity and monstrosity fight for control of a single body. It's both horrifying and heartbreaking. Memorable moment: Brundlefly wishes for death.

1. Evil Dead 2 (1987)
Not only is Evil Dead 2 one of my favourite horror movies ever, but it's probably also earned a spot in my general list of favourite movies -- horror or otherwise. While the first entry in this series was a respectable nightmare of unrelenting shock and gore, the sequel deftly adds slapstick comedy and absurdism into the mix. Like its predecessor, Evil Dead 2 does little to hide its amateur roots, but what it lacks in polish, it makes up for in sheer inventiveness and energy. Bruce Campbell (TV's Burn Notice) as Ash spends most of the movie by himself, the hapless victim of torturous spirits and his decapitated girlfriend, but his greatest enemy turns out to be his own posessed hand, which he is forced to remove with a chainsaw. And then his night really gets bad... Anyway, this movie is awesomely entertaining and you should love it, too. Memorable moment: "A Farewell to Arms."

Honorable mentions: Phantasm 2, Grindhouse, King Kong (1933), Braindead, From Beyond, Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Videodrome, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween (1978), Jaws, The Exorcist, Army of Darkness, The Sixth Sense, The Hidden, Silence of the Lambs

No Easy Cure

2008-10-27T12:38:00.000-03:00

The Cure's new album, 4:13 Dream, was made available for online listening in its entirety this weekend, via the band's MySpace site. This is the first time I've heard the album as a whole. Frankly, my expectations were low, because the four singles leading up to the release didn't really do that much for me. As it turns out, those are actually some of my least favourite songs on the album. I'm as surprised as anyone, but this is by far their best and most consistent album in a long time -- probably since the days of Wish, back in 1992. Incidentally, it's also the first album since 1992 to feature guitarist Porl Thompson in the lineup, so maybe it shouldn't be so surprising after all.

Like I said, the four pre-release singles really don't do the album justice. Album opener "Underneath the Stars" and "The Hungry Ghost" are stand outs, while songs like "Switch" and "It's Over" exhibit an intensity that The Cure haven't shown in years. It's a nice change of pace after the drudgery of Bloodflowers and kinda half-hearted self-titled album. Yay!

Geek Out, Slip In

2008-10-24T12:34:00.002-03:00

The last few years, I've used Hallowe'en as an excuse to bring together people at our place to watch some ~~totally fucked up~~ scary movies. I'm sure the same thing happens in countless other households; it's always good fun to watch this type of flick with friends. This year, I think we're moving the festivities to a friend's house with a big, new tv, but the tradition seems likely to stay alive. That excites me. All signs indicate that we'll be returning to a certain John Carpenter film that I probably don't have to name. I haven't watched it in 2 or 3 years, so I'm ready for another viewing, and there are a few among us who have actually never seen it. Plus, it's a good movie, so I have no qualms about watching it again.

On a related note, there've been lots of new movies lately that I want to see. I already took last weekend to catch up on [Rec], a spanish horror movie that came highly recommended. I didn't think the movie was all that phenomenal, but it definitely had some very effective moments. The material was well-worn and cliche-ridden, but a few small tweaks to the formula almost made it feel fresh again. Apparently there's now also an American remake called Quarantine (with Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter), but I hear it sticks very closely to the original. I don't really understand the point, so I probably won't bother with it unless someone can give me a reason to.

I'm also very curious to see this Swedish vampire movie that's getting very favourable reviews all over the place right now called Let the Right One In. By most accounts, it's not a pure horror film, but that doesn't make it any less intriguing. Plus, it's named after a Morrissey song, so that's bonus points right there. Unfortunately, I'll probably never get to see it in a theatre. I'll have to settle for a trailer for now...

I was listening to the sound of the waves breaking

2008-10-17T08:39:00.000-03:00

Finally, some finished music from the new ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead album appeared online today. It's in crappy MySpace quality, but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying it. The last album was definitely not the band's strongest effort, but the new stuff sounds pretty awesome, so far. More raw, more powerful, and generally livelier than anything from the last few years. That bridge in the second half of the song is pretty intense. I'm officially excited.

Listen to "Bells of Creation" (MySpace)

Cereal killer

2008-10-16T12:23:00.000-03:00

Once again, I felt overwhelmed today by the number of ridiculous/scary food-related items in my RSS feeds.

Maple Leaf mulls use of listeria-curbing additive (Globe & Mail)
Surely, the answer to making overly processed mass-produced meats safer for mass consumption is to process them even further and extend their already swollen ingredient lists with a just-recently-approved preservative.

CFIA issues warning over No Name flour (CBC)
This doesn't seem to be a significant issue so far, but apparently stores in Ontario have received flour that's jacked up with "high levels of folic acid, iron, niacin, riboflavin and thiamine." Curiously, no mention is made (in this article or others) of how all those extra vitamins and nutrients ended up in the flour. Is it a common practice for these things to be added during processing? What's wrong with just grinding up wheat? Isn't that how they make flour? Or is that process not cutting it anymore? Or did a strain of super-wheat accidentally enter the mill?

More will fall ill from E. coli, officials warn (Globe & Mail)
50 people are thought to be infected so far (although not all of those are confirmed yet) and more are expected, after an E. coli outbreak at an Ontario Harvey's fast food restaurant. As if the people of Ontario didn't already have enough to fear from tainted meat and flour full of excessive vitamins, now they have another bacteria outbreak to track down. As one commenter on the article states: "...we are all doomed to die in a giant plague." More precisely, it seems we are all doomed to die in a giant plague that will most likely be created by ourselves in the first place.

Man continues making kebabs after discovering corpse in kitchen (Reuters UK)
Also, flies on a chicken, spit on the floor, blood, and a dude smoking... That all sounds pretty safe to me. I'll take 3, please.

Fortified water... for dogs (via Accidental Hedonist)
If our society has reached a point where people are paying money for products like this, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that we're also poisoning ourselves on a daily basis with new bacteria, chemicals, and poor safety measures. Did I mention it comes in four delicious flavours? Peanut butter, parsley, spearmint, and lemongrass.

Election Time Again

2008-10-15T10:56:00.005-03:00

Hey, so we had an election in Canada yesterday. Turns out the butler did it. Actually, no, but that would have been more entertaining. Basically, we have slightly fewer Liberal seats, but slightly more Conservative and NDP seats. The Greens made a big leap in the overall vote, but still no seats (6.8% of total vote).

Total seats for 2008 (plus 2006 numbers):
143 Conservative (up from 124)
76 Liberal (down from 103)
50 Bloc Quebecois (previously 51)
37 NDP (up from 29)
0 Green (no change)

Fredericton's results look like this:
Keith Ashfield (Con) - 17,968 (42.61%)
David Innes (Lib) - 13,316 (31.58%)
Jesse Travis (NDP) - 6,440 (15.27%)
Mary Babineau (Green) - 4,273 (10.13%)
Ben Kelly (CAP) - 168 (0.4%)

This marks the first time in 15 years that Fredericton has a non-Liberal candidate. There was also a significant showing for the Greens, with the 2006 candidate (Philip Duchastel) pulling in only 884 votes (1.88%).

It's groin-grabbingly delicious

2008-10-06T12:49:00.000-03:00

I somehow ended up reading food reviews at McSweeney's recently. I never even realized they covered that sort of thing, but then I happened upon an entire page of them. What a treasure trove of awesomeness.

Orbit Mint Mojito Gum
"It tastes enough like a mojito that if I were nauseated from drinking too many mojitos and my friend gave me a piece of this gum, I would punch her in the tits."
Mary Turner

4-Alarm Spicy Chicken Sandwich From Wendy's
"I cried a little, and couldn't taste anything for a long time."
Peter Scott Bartsch

Flapjack Shot (Jack Daniels and maple syrup)
"It tastes like when my grandpa used to make us pancakes when he was drunk. Only now I'm the one getting drunk. And there aren't any pancakes."
Jacy Wojcik

Bubble Yum: Hershey's Genuine Chocolate Flavor
"...it cost 95 cents for a five-piece pack, which is just too expensive for something so fucking gross."
Angela Colford

The Goddamn Batman

2008-10-03T13:08:00.003-03:00

Thanks to Mary for pointing me towards this little beauty... Have a good weekend.

Blinded by the light

2008-10-01T12:46:00.004-03:00

Hot on the heels of protests against the films Towelhead and Tropic Thunder, the latest film to draw the ire of activists is Blindness. The film was directed by Academy Award nominee Fernando Meirelles (City of God) based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago. The IMDB summary reads:

A city is ravaged by an epidemic of instant "white blindness". Those first afflicted are quarantined by the authorities in an abandoned mental hospital where the newly created "society of the blind" quickly breaks down.

In a Huffington Post article, a representative of the National Federation of the Blind says:

"The movie portrays blind people as monsters, and I believe it to be a lie," said Maurer, president of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind. "Blindness doesn't turn decent people into monsters."

...

The movie reinforces inaccurate stereotypes, including that the blind cannot care for themselves and are perpetually disoriented, according to the NFB.

Now, I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen enough other movies and read enough books to know that the intention of the film is most likely to establish an allegorical scenario, not to antagonize blind people. Blindness may not turn decent people into monsters, but mass epidemics can. There's a very significant difference and -- maybe I'm too optimistic -- I think most average moviegoers can figure this out as well.

Blind Activists Plan Protest Of Julianne Moore Movie (Huffington Post)
"Blindness" movie trailer (Apple Trailers)

Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience...

2008-09-26T12:50:00.002-03:00

... and so do I, apparently.

I still love you, David Letterman

2008-09-26T09:47:00.002-03:00

Sometimes I forget how awesome David Letterman can be. Shame on me.

Ordinary people

2008-09-24T13:50:00.001-03:00

"I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough, when they know those subsidies have actually gone up – I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people."
Stephen Harper after $45 million in cuts to arts and culture funding

Full article: Ordinary folks don't care about arts: Harper (The Star)

Age of Credulity

2008-09-24T09:40:00.000-03:00

Roger Ebert's latest blog posting is, as always, fascinating and insightful. There's some important background for the article, but essentially he delves into our ability to perceive irony -- something he suggests is becoming increasingly important in the post-Pulp Fiction age of movies. Basically, we are more ready to believe things and take them at face value, no matter how crazy or ridiculous they seem to sound.

In one example, he pulls an interesting quote from the New York Post's review of the season premiere of Heroes. Reviewer Adam Buckman writes:

...[Heroes], which was once so thrilling and fun, has become full of itself, its characters spouting crazy nonsense.

Here's one I wish someone would translate for me: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends - rough hew them how we will," spouts the enigmatic industrialist Linderman played by Malcolm McDowell, who should win an Emmy for keeping a straight face while reciting these lines.

Ebert responds:

Perhaps McDowell kept a straight face because he knew he was quoting one of the most famous speeches in Hamlet. I don't expect everyone to have read Hamlet, but I would hope a New York critic might have run across it once or twice. Still, we all have our blind spots. After I once quoted Dr. Johnson, I had an editor who asked me who the doctor was, and whether he practiced at a Chicago hospital. So let's assume Buckman knew Hamlet by heart, but had forgotten that one sentence.

Roger Ebert's full post
New York Post review by Adam Buckman

The Sick Critic

2008-09-23T13:38:00.002-03:00

I guess if there's a silver lining to being sick as death for several days, it's that it lets you watch a lot of movies. I managed to take in a few last week...

Escape from New York (1981, directed by John Carpenter). Carpenter's The Thing is one of my favorite movies and Halloween has its moments. Unfortunately, this movie hasn't aged as well as as either of those. For an action movie, an awful lot of it is just really boring. The movie aims for grand-scale theatrics, but by modern standards, it feels stilted and decidedly unremarkable. The Manhattan prison island never feels as foreboding or marvelous as I think it deserves. Kurt Russell is great though and Isaac Hayes was a welcome surprise, although he seems wasted; he rarely gets to show how his character, The Duke, earned such a badass reputation. In the end, both the action and the movie itself are a bit anticlimactic.

Doomsday (2008, directed by Neil Marshall). Speaking of gloomy near-future action thrillers, this is also one. Also like Escape, it features a hero who must cross over into a contained area and face perverse dangers on a secret mission to retrieve something important to her government. It doesn't really add much new to the established boundaries of the genre, but it's entertaining, and I guess that's what counts. The premise is enticing and it's wonderfully excessive in all the right places, but it also has a good sense of humor and the actors all seem comfortable in their roles. I've never seen Rhona Mitra in anything else before, but she holds her own quite nicely as an action hero. Malcolm MacDowell plays yet another jaded villain; he could probably do these roles in his sleep by now.

Closer (2004, directed by Mike Nichols). There are some aspects of this movie that I like a lot and some that really annoy me. Infidelity is played like a game between a bunch of people who seem to be almost as ugly on the inside as they are beautiful on the outside. They all have their likeable moments, but I can't say I cared too much if any of them found happiness. Then again, the film works better as character study than as narrative, so maybe I'm just lucky for not finding this relatable at all -- I don't know. It's nice to see Julia Roberts in something a little more sophisticated than I'm used to, but Clive Owen still steals the show.

Versus (2000, directed by Ryuhei Kitamura). I can't even remember where I heard about this movie, but it really wasn't worth tracking down. It's a movie that has a few interesting things going for it, but doesn't actually do anything well. It's a poor gangster movie, a below-average samurai movie, and only a half-hearted zombie movie. Fans tout it as a horror-action-comedy, but it's not particularly scary, funny, or thrilling. There's a lot of posing and other senselessness that I might have found very cool when I was 10 years old, but mostly it's just lame now.

A Feast of Pizzas

2008-09-22T09:30:00.000-03:00

I've been sick all last week and neglectful of all blogging and other internet-related functions. I'm sure you've all been obsessively abusing your "refresh" buttons.

As Meg commented, I do write a lot about food, and I think that's going to continue. In the past, I maintained a "food journal" at a blog called Accidental Hedonist. They feature some insightful writing, but in the end it's not really my site and I feel I'd rather share my creations and ideas directly with my immediate friends. I hope this stuff doesn't bore you.

We recently hosted a dinner for family where I decided to focus everything around pizza. I prepared enough dough for six medium-sized pizzas, which I hoped would let me play with the toppings and provide enough variety to satisfy all seven diners.

Pizza #1: tomato sauce, anchovies, olives, roquette, mozzarella

Pizza #2: tomato sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, roasted red peppers, basil

Pizza #3: basil pesto, chicken, roasted red peppers, parmesan

Pizza #4: caramelized onion, rosemary, blue gouda, pancetta, parmesan

Pizza #5: tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil, (1st half) olives & anchovies, (other half) chicken

Pizza #6 was put up to an informal vote and I produced an encore of pizza #4, featuring the caramelized onions. The sweetness of the onions with the woodsy perfume of the rosemary and sharp cheeses produces a pretty sensational combination, so I'm not entirely surprised it was a favourite.

And there you have it. I think I've made myself hungry again.

I thought it was a documentary

2008-09-08T13:11:00.002-03:00

Why Jurassic Park is pure fiction (Globe & Mail)

Fuck.

In related dinosaur news:

Dinosaur comics rule (qwantz.com)

The Vegetarian's 100

2008-09-05T09:50:00.000-03:00

In response to The Omnivore's 100, the blog Tigers & Strawberries has issued The Vegetarian's 100. I guess you know how this works now, so I'll just get to it.

1. Real macaroni and cheese, made from scratch and baked
2. Tabouleh
3. Freshly baked bread, straight from the oven (preferably with homemade strawberry jam)
4. Fresh figs
5. Fresh pomegranate
6. Indian dal of any sort
7. Imam bayildi
8. Pressed spiced Chinese tofu
9. Freshly made hummus
10. Tahini
11. Kimchi
12. Miso
13. Falafel
14. Potato and pea filled samosas
15. Homemade yogurt
16. Muhammara
17. Brie en croute
18. Spanikopita
19. Fresh, vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes
20. Insalata caprese
21. Stir-fried greens (gai lan, bok choi, pea shoots, kale, chard or collards)
22. Freshly made salsa
23. Freshly made guacamole
24. Creme brulee
25. Fava beans
26. Chinese cold sesame peanut noodles
27. Fattoush
28. New potatoes
29. Coleslaw
30. Ratatouille
31. Baba ganoush
32. Winter squash
33. Roasted beets
34. Baked sweet potatoes
35. Plantains
36. Chocolate truffles
37. Garlic mashed potatoes
38. Fresh water chestnuts
39. Steel cut oats
40. Quinoa
41. Grilled portabello mushrooms
42. Chipotle en adobo
43. Stone ground whole grain cornmeal
44. Freshly made corn or wheat tortillas
45. Frittata
46. Basil pesto
47. Roasted garlic
48. Raita of any type
49. Mango lassi
50. Jasmine rice (white or brown)
51. Thai vegetarian coconut milk curry
52. Pumpkin in any form other than pie
53. Fresh apple pear or plum gallette
54. Quince in any form
55. Escarole, endive or arugula
56. Sprouts other than mung bean
57. Naturally brewed soy sauce
58. Dried shiitake mushrooms
59. Unusually colored vegetables (purple cauliflower, blue potatoes, chocolate bell peppers…)
60. Fresh peach ice cream
61. Chevre
62. Medjool dates
63. Kheer
64. Flourless chocolate cake
65. Grilled corn on the cob
66. Black bean (or any other bean) vegetarian chili
67. Tempeh
68. Seitan or wheat gluten
69. Gorgonzola or any other blue veined cheese
70. Sweet potato fries
71. Homemade au gratin potatoes
72. Cream of asparagus soup
73. Artichoke-Parmesan dip
74. Mushroom risotto
75. Fermented black beans
76. Garlic scapes
77. Fresh new baby peas
78. Kalamata olives
79. Preserved lemons
80. Fried green tomatoes
81. Chinese scallion pancakes
82. Cheese souffle
83. Fried apples
84. Homemade frijoles refritos
85. Pasta fagiole
86. Macadamia nuts in any form
87. Paw paw in any form
88. Grilled cheese sandwich of any kind
89. Paneer cheese
90. Ma Po Tofu (vegetarian style–no pork!)
91. Fresh pasta in any form
92. Grilled leeks, scallions or ramps
93. Green papaya salad
94. Baked grain and vegetable stuffed tomatoes
95. Pickled ginger
96. Methi greens
97. Aloo paratha
98. Kedgeree
99. Okra
100. Roasted brussels sprouts

That gives me 68/100. Apparently I make a much better vegetarian than an omnivore. Or maybe it just looks that way because the Omnivore's 100 list contained a lot of items that seemed purposely put there to make it look more adventurous, whereas this list contains a lot of real food.

...27, 28, 29, 30 Rock

2008-09-03T20:00:00.001-03:00

Two 30 Rock-related items:

Jennifer Aniston to guest star in Season 3 (Coming Soon)
I happen to know some people who are big fans of "Friends," so this should interest them. Since David Schwimmer also appeared last season, maybe we can still expect more of them to show up eventually.

A revealing interview with Alec Baldwin (The New Yorker)
Baldwin is extremely candid as both highlights and lowlights of his career are revisited.

Palin' in comparison

2008-09-03T13:30:00.002-03:00

From People Magazine:

Given her young age and relatively short resume, why is [Sarah Palin] any more ready to be president than Sen. Barack Obama?

JOHN McCAIN: I don't think it's a short resume. She first ran for office back in 1992. I don't know what Senator Obama was doing then, but the first time she ran was 1992. That's 16 years... (full interview)

A few clarifications: by "office," he means she ran for city council of Wasilla, a town that had a population of less than 6,000 people at the time. Palin became mayor in '96 and held that until 2002. From 2003-04 she worked on an energy committee and in 2006 she made her way up to Governor. As for what Obama was doing back in 1992 (since McCain asks), he was lecturing on constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School and directing a voter registration drive for Illinois. He became a state legislator in 1996 and a US senator in 2004.

Chrome Dome

2008-09-03T10:00:00.000-03:00

I don't normally get all that excited about computer geek stuff (that may be a half truth), but this new Google browser, Chrome, sounds fascinating. For starters, it looks pretty sleek. And if any of the tech jargon I've been reading is true, it seems to have some unique properties under the hood as well.

New Google browser takes on Microsoft (Globe & Mail)
News article.

Chrome: The Comic Book (Google Books)
Google-produced comic book the explains the ins and outs of the new browser.

Chrome download page

In a world...

2008-09-03T09:50:00.000-03:00

Don LaFontaine, whose voice you may recognize from thousands of movie trailers, died Monday at the age of 68.

Voice of movie trailers dies (Globe & Mail)
News article that includes some details about LaFontaine's life and achievements.

5 Men and a Limo (YouTube)
A short film made for the 26th Annual Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards. Features LaFontaine and four of his contemporaries from the voice over field. Pure gold.

Trailer for "The Terminator" (YouTube)
An example of LaFontaine's work.