The Annekenstein Monster

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.

MetaFilter today has a post linking to a site where people can post their confessions, big or small (an internet rip-off of my Canadian Confessions idea). This got me thinking about what I might confess, and that drummed up this repressed memory:
When I was 18 and in my first year at UPEI, I shoplifted a pair of black fake-leather pants from Zellers. I did this because I planned to go the The Barn’s Halloween party dressed as Billy Idol, and I needed those pants. I couldn’t afford, nor bring myself to purchase, a pair of awful nogahyde pants that I’d only wear once. So, I went to Zellers with every intention of stealing them. And I did. It was easy. I felt exhileratingly guilty about it. I think it was the only time I ever shoplifted.
The night of the dance came and I prepared the rest of my costume. I already sported the blond spiked hair, and could manage the Idol snarl whenever I needed it. I also had the punk-inspired gloves, all I needed was a black vest, black studded wrist bands and some cool footwear. I had none of that. So, I went to the kitchen and got a black garbage bag, cut out a vest to wear over my shirtless torso. Then I cut out a couple of black garbage bag wrist bands and painted some white liquid-eraser studs on them. Only the footwear left, and all I could find that were black were my father’s black rubber overshoes. Well, what’s an Idol to do, so I wore them, too many sizes too small, to boot.
Out into the frozen night I went, dressed in garbage bag and stolen pants.
At the dance, “Rebel Yell” inevitably played, and I, at this point needing little coaxing, went out on the floor by myself and slam-danced the hell out of that song.
Surprise of surprises, I won the costume contest, too. I didn’t even know I was entered. I won a 50 dollar bar-tab and shared it with all my friends that night, new-found and old.
So, take that, Crime Doesn’t Pay.
However, as an offer of humility, and to show the error of my ways, I offer up this photo as a sort of penance. You have to imagine the sneer.