Category Archives: Uncategorized

I am picky about the (so-called) reality shows I watch. I refuse to watch any that attempt to match two people in some false true-love ending (even though I’ve only spent 31 days with you, and in those 31 days, I’ve also spent time making out with 11 other women, I really do love you, contestant number 3. Will you marry me and share in the million dollar prize?). There is something dirty and whore-ish about those. I also don’t watch the ones where the object is to dupe the contestants (what Gwendolyn doesn’t know is that her 12 potential male suitors are in fact transvestites!!!… go ahead tv-hollywood, take that idea). And the contests of foolishness and fear are also shows I’ll not watch (tonight’s fifty thousand dollar winner will be the contestant who is brave enough to shove razor blades and spiders up their butt!!!)

I do like a few reality shows however. The Amazing Race is my favourite, followed closely by Survivor. This current edition of Survivor is quite good. The producers and editors do a great job of focusing each episode towards its conclusion, maximizing suspense. Last night, going to Tribal Council, I was sure that Rupert had convinced the others, specifically Sean, to vote out Trish. Yet, when Sean went to write his choice for eviction, he said something “You thought this was your game. Well, now you’re gone, and the game is mine.”
I’m thinking: “Why are you saying that? You’d never say that about Trish. The game was never hers. You can only be talking about Rupert!” So, I thought he had double-double crossed Rupert and Rupert’d be gone. Of course, they did vote to evict Trish, and now blonde-haired John (who was in cahoots with Trish) is in deep shit.
This is why I like Survivor. They do a great job of manipulating the audience, without making the audience feel like they’re being cheated.

As we were watching Survivor last night, CB says “I don’t like that guy with the underwear.” Which guy? “The bald guy” On which tribe? “The guy that doesn’t do anything. The lazy one.” Who’s the lazy one? “The guy who’s scared of animals.”
I knew who he was talking about (Osten), but I wanted to see how long it’d take him to define Osten by his skin colour. He never did. I think that’s pretty neat.

I don’t like the word ‘blog’. Having been in this blog-world for a month or two now, there are acquaintances I now meet who will say something like “I like your blog.” or “I read your blog everyday”.
While I appreciate the compliments, and am somewhat thrilled that anybody at all bothers to read the nothingness I write, I nonetheless feel slightly embarrassed when I hear the word ‘blog’ in association to me. I think part of my dislike of it is that I’ve never been one who willingly participates in fad-ish things, and ‘having a blog’ is currently such a huge fad.
So, when I hear “I like your blog”, in a way I’m hearing “You’re a good Texas two-stepper”, or “That ChiaPet of yours is getting nice and hairy”.

Elliot Smith has died, of apparent suicide. I didn’t even know he was sick.

For those who don’t know who he was, he was a singer/songwriter who, I think, had more potential than he had success. Reading a few tributes/memoriums to/of him, apparently, he also had depression and trouble with alcohol and drugs.
His music was featured prominently in the movie Good Will Hunting.
I became a fan of his soft-sung music about a year ago. Apparently, he self-produced and pretty much played all the instruments (of which there aren’t many, admittedly) on his albums.

Two of my favourite songs of his are “Say Yes” and “Somebody That I Used To Know”. You could do worse than to download those two songs.

How close does this top ten list of scary movie moments compare to your own? What’s the scariest movie moment according to you?

Me? I think the linked-to list favours a few too many recent movies. And while there are many movies that have given me longer-duration scares, I’d have to say that the biggest scare I got from a movie was the ending of Carrie.

Also, for me, Halloween (the original) is pretty much 90 minutes of tension and nerves.

In the last week, I have taken to distrusting our sump pump. It seems to take longer to pump the water out of our sump-pump basin. There is also a curious gurgling sound that accompanies the sumping and/or pumping. A couple of times, it’s taken an interminable amount of time to run through its process. I believe the problem is that one of the stoppers (the one that is set to turn the pump off) keeps sliding up the metal pole. I believe I have fixed this problem with the sump pump.

In my attempted manipulations of the sump pump during this last week, I have learned to appreciate the brilliant simplicity of this machine. I suspect that the people who have invented and perfected the sump pump will most likely not be reading this post, however I feel I must offer a shout out to them: Well done, sump pump people. Well done.

We’ve all probably heard the saying “a million monkeys at a million typewriters” and how it’d take a million years for them to reproduce one of Shakespeare’s plays.
Well, someone created a Monkey Shakespeare Simulator (Java enables) to test the theory. You go to the page, and the program starts up, recording a simulation of the daily activity of thousands of monkeys randomly tapping at keyboards.
What it is checking against is the first page of each of Shakespeare’s works. So, if ‘Gloucester’ was the first word of one of the plays (not counting title, written by, etc.), the simulator would only acknowledge a match from a monkey that typed ‘glou’ as part of its random typing. In this instance, a result of 4 letters matched would be recorded.
Currently, the record is 8 letters matched. Or in other words, some simulated monkey managed to randomly type the first 8 letters to one of Shakespeare’s works. Not a great record.
Last night, I let the simulator run all night long. When I got up this morning, my simulated monkeys had been typing for over 30,000 days and had managed to tie the current record, as one of them had randomly typed the first 8 letters to “The Merry Wives Of Windsor”. As I write this post, I’ve had the simulator running, and its 50 million monkeys (and population growing) have, in 2000 simulated days, managed several instances of matching the first 7 letters from several of Shakespeare’s works.

Co-incidentally, over the night last night, the monkeys were successful in reproducing the complete text to Nils Ling’s “The Truth About Daughters”.

Go to the Box Office Oracle and fill in your own blanks to have the oracle tell you how much money your movie willl make. Since Hollywood is all about dollars, see if you can beat me. I grossed (domestically) 14-24 million dollars.
Here’s what I did with a movie called “The Annekenstein Monster” (due to a problem with my browser, I couldn’t use the ‘choose other’ option. If I could, I’d have made totally different picks):

The Annekenstein Monster (PG-13)
(Revenge Fantasy/Talking Animal)
Starring Ewan McGregor and Rosario Dawson
Also Featuring Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, and Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by John Woo
Screenplay by Stephen Gaghan

Projected Budget Range: $70-79 Million
Planned Release Date: November

Projected Box Office Receipts:
$16.63 million (Opening Weekend)
$94.86 million (Total Domestic Gross)

Chance of getting Oscar Nomination: 9%
Chance of winning at least one Oscar: 2%

Critic Most Likely to Praise: Ron Wells, Film Threat
Critic Most Likely to Skewer: Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post

I guess some topics are just guaranteed blog-worthy. The aim, I also guess, is to be the first in your incestuous circle of bloggers to publish a post on those items. Because once posted by another, nobody wants to be a copycat.
So, I’ll not post about the Habs third jerseys.

Perhaps Peter’s ‘post outside the box’ reply to this is the bee’s knees when it comes to contemplating new posts.

When watching professional baseball, moreso than in any other sport, you can still see the little kid in the athlete.
Football (American) players are too hidden by the equipment. Hockey players too. Golfers look too much like dads. Football (the rest of the world) players aren’t hidden by equipment, yet, for some reason, don’t imply the little kid that they once were.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that baseball players spend a lot of time standing around, waiting. In all other sports, the athletes are active, and in that activity we see the professional. When ball players stand around, waiting, we can glimpse the Little Leaguer who stood around. They kick the dirt, bite the strings on their gloves, chew gum, young and old alike.
Just an observation.

I swear, I had this movie pitch written up weeks ago.
So, here’s the movie:
Well-off, successful, happy businessman Ben Oldfield (Tom Hanks) is a huge Cubs fan. Trying to catch a foul ball, he may have caused the then-leading Cubs to lose Game 6 of the NLCS. Ben has to be escorted away by park security. Cubs lose game, and all hell breaks loose for Ben and his family. Cubs lose game 7 and it gets much worse for Ben.
The rest of the movie is how Ben and his family (wife: Diane Lane, kids: whoever) cope, suffer and strive to regain the normalcy of their lives amid the insane and fanatic hatred and anger they receive from many of the people of the city in which they live. It’s all about fate and the delicate thread upon which we live our lives.
I swear I had this pitch written weeks ago.