Category Archives: general

I Hate All Saints Day

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Q. What weighs over 400 pounds and can kill you where you sit? A. My hangover. Between the shoulder I’ve been screwing up all week and the limitless quantity of beer I consumed last night, I’m afraid my everything hurts today. Halloween is definitely one of my favorite times of the year, and this one was no exception. We managed a pretty awesome turnout to the show for a Monday night after a weekend of Halloween parties for all but me, and it is possible that fun was had.

All Saints Day is by definition the lamest day in the calendar. For starters, it’s the day after Halloween. That’s like being the modestly talented local rock band who has to play immediately after The Rolling Stones. There’s a reason that doesn’t happen, and it’s a good reason.

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Skeptical Haiku

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I love haiku. I once wrote a song whose lyrics were entirely haiku. It was a terrible song from my second band, The Fabulous Yobs, called GITBOTH. If you can guess the acronym and were never a member of the band, I will give you something neat. But that’s beside the point. I am going to spend the next ten minutes writing haiku, and we’ll see how many I can get done in that time. Annnnnd….. Go!

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Weed

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I know that several of my readers enjoy the mighty cannabis plant from time to time. Personally, I very VERY rarely consider smoking weed. Despite being the sort of person that looks like they should have track marks on their eyeballs, I don’t generally like doing drugs, and I have a particular hate for marijuana because it robs me of my ability to follow my train of thought. That makes communicating difficult and frustrating, and I love to communicate. Or maybe I just love the sound of my own voice…

At any rate, there’s a few interesting notes I saw today regarding sweet Mary Jane. The first is that they have sequenced and compared two strains of the Cannabis sativa plant, and the second is a great article about the war on pot by Al Stefanelli, which is ripe with facts smashing myths about marijuana.

The way I see it, a simple Cost Benefit Analysis should be done on the War On Dope. If it still makes sense, then go for it, but something tells me that the cost is prohibitive to anything that lacks the deep pockets and talking-points-over-facts nature of government.

Jim

Doing The Job Or Doing Your Job

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I often find myself in a professional setting being asked to job. Jobbing, for those of you who aren’t nearly as dorky as I am, is a professional wrestling term for getting beat. When the unstoppable supervillain gets beat by the up-and-coming kid, he’s doing the job. And I get asked the Business Analyst equivalent far too often from almost every client I’ve ever had.

This usually takes the form of asking me to grace a decision with my blessing when it does not deserve it. For example, I once sat in a room with several of my peers and our client. The client had invested several hundred thousand dollars into a piece of software that we all felt was horribly inadequate. In order to have it work even remotely well, we had to write a wrapper application that helped us through the most menial tasks of the tool, and I personally consider that offensive. If an application is that bad, it should be questioned. Notice, I didn’t say replaced, I said questioned. It may be that some underlying aspect of it is worth the badness, but it may well not be.

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Cussing

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Once again, another video by Stevelikes2curse and another rant by me. This video is about the No Cussing Club, an actual thing made by actual people who clearly don’t have a clue. Like Steve, I like to cuss. I like cussing a lot. Sometimes, you simply cannot express the frustration that you feel without naughty words. And sometimes it’s just fun to do.

In fact, I was given a book called C U Next Tuesday as a gift from my darling friend miss Ethyl Alcohol, the bass player from my old bands Johnny Incognito and The Regurgitones. I had called her a particular word one day, totally as an off-handed jab that wasn’t intended as a horrible attack, but it totally stunned her. This was bad because she was driving. And frankly, it’s a word I have since tried to give up because of the idea that using terms for female genitalia as insults is bad. But I called her it. She saw the book in a bookstore in the airport she was in overseas and immediately thought of me, so she got it for me.

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Thanksgiving

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Regular readers I will trust forgive the quiet long weekend. It was anything but quiet as I got to check out the cd release party for Edmonton hardcore punk rockers Fuquored, and became lightweight champion of the world in UFC 2009. Nor was it a weekend that was not ripe with interesting world news. But it was Thanksgiving and I had me some quiet time with the family.

My American readers are no doubt giggling at me. Thanksgiving? That isn’t until next month! Well, here in Canada, we do ours earlier. So there.

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Music As The Soundtrack Of Our Lives (With Thanks To Kimberly Nichols)

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A long time ago, I was one of the editors of 3am Magazine along with the lovely Kim Nichols, one of those amazing California artist types. She ran a string of articles called Music As The Soundtrack To Our Lives, and I remember absolutely enjoying them. I was just sitting here looking down at a few of the CDs piled near my desk at work. They won’t allow us to use portable storage devices for music on the off-chance that somehow copyrighted music were to make its way to the corporate network and implicate them in a copyright lawsuit, so I have over 50 CDs on my desk and who knows how many sitting in my cupboard, and that’s not counting the impressive collection I have at home and all the music on my computer.

Why do I have so many CDs on my desk? Well, those are the regular rotation. I like to listen to things based on my mood, which is why I never listen to mainstream radio stations. I figured out back in high school that mainstream radio was ridiculously dull, and I like a little more range of options. Don’t get me wrong, the current 40 songs that everyone thinks are the best are the ultimate pinnacle of musical enlightenment, but they just aren’t for me.

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The Joys Of Public Transit

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I don’t have my driver’s license. In fact, I have never had it. Hell, I’ve never even had my learner’s permit. This is not a stance on pollution. This is a choice I have made based on a few key factors. Cars cost too much, other driver’s are idiots, and I like my mornings too myself.

Right now I am on a train downtown. I have an all-morning meeting, so my ride in is quicker than usual. I am not stressed out by other, crappier drivers. I am not trying to get into the next lane. I am not spilling coffee on my Johnson and cursing. I am blogging.

I like that. I like the fact that I don’t have to care and can just use my time as I like. To hell with driving.

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Remaining Silent

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I do not have it in me to be silent. I am a classical example of the term loudmouth. And I am glad of it. I wasn’t always this way. There was a time when I was very quiet. Most people who know me think I am making that up when I tell them, but it is very much the truth.

I was raised in a family of entertainers. My mom was a classically trained singer who sang in the church choir. My dad was a teacher beloved by his former students and the kind of guy you could always find in a crowd by listening to his wonderful rolling laugh. My sister was a singer and actress everyone seemed to know. I was a skinny little shadow of a kid. I just didn’t stand out in a crowd. It wasn’t until high school drama that I began to be comfy in my own skin and find my voice. I remember answering a question near the end of my grade ten math class and having the guy in front of me guffaw, “holy crap, you can talk?”

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