April 03, 2012

GeekMusci: Track 2 - Datarock!

The second post in my GeekMusic reviews from GeekPlanet.ca

http://geekplanet.ca/portal/2012/03/geekmusic-track-2-datarock/

GeekMusic: Track 1 - Art vs. Science

This is the first in a series of posts I'm throwing up over at GeekPlanet. You can check out my review for Art vs. Science's video for Higher.

http://geekplanet.ca/portal/2012/03/geekmusic-track-1/

December 01, 2010

With Great Paranoia Comes Great... uh, Wait

A couple days ago, while I was heating up some frozen food in the microwave for the babyboy, I had a bit of a startle. I opened the microwave upon completion of the 30-second, high-power cooking cycle and a spider ran out of the microwave! He (okay, maybe she-- I couldn't say) ran out and skittered under the microwave to disappear into the darkness beneath, presumably to plot revenge from some sinister, web-coated corner of my house, unreachable by human hands.

Now, I admit I don't know much about entomology or microwave ovens other than the basics of both but surely something is very wrong here. Can it be that I have unwittingly created the progenitor of a race of mutant spiders, endowed with cruel human intelligence by the transforming power of a Hitachi microwave oven, bent on retribution for countless generations of slapped, crushed, poisoned, and now irradiated arachnids? Given that much of my understanding of radiation comes from sci-fi movies and comic books, I can only say yes-- yes, mankind is now doomed to extinction by a kingdom of spiders.

For what it's worth, I'd like to apologize to all of you right now for unleashing an arachnid-driven genocide of humankind. My bad-- I'm really sorry.

Still, I remain cautiously optimistic that I may be bitten in the near future and have already begun to shop for spandex!

November 25, 2010

The Past, and How Bad It Must Have Sucked

All things have a genesis. Innovations and inventions have a starting point. Before that point of origin, the thing in question existed only as a dream, a spark of imagination in one person's head. History is thus divided by a single and specific instance of creation.

There must have been a time before you could get bacon-wrapped sausages. There is an entire history before that point, a whole era, quantifiable and pitiable, in which sausages wrapped in bacon simply had never occured to anyone. Or maybe, in  Douglas Adams way, someone came up with the idea but was then somehow atomized, consigning the intervening generations to further wallow in their naked sausages.

...

Okay, wallowing in naked sausages conjures an entirely unintended image that I wasn't prepared to discuss, so let's table that particular tableau for another date.

Still, damn, huh? Bacon-wrapped sausages: that's some good stuff!

September 10, 2010

It's the Law!

I appreciate the need for certain rules of order in our modern society. If some things were left to choice, anarchy might prevail and all would be lost in senseless revolution.

That's why I'm happy for the simple rules that guide our daily existence.

Like the fact that it is required by law that the song We Are the Champions necessarily follow We Will Rock you on every radio station on Earth. Can you imagine if this were not so? Traffic would grind to a halt as drivers in the millions would be shattered emotionally. Civilization would grind to a halt! Madness would prevail and we'd be reduced to a nomad society where might makes right and lives would be worth less than a full tank of gasoline and Mel Gibson would be our only way to Fiji.

That's just too much to contemplate.

Thank, classic rock stations, for keeping that from happening!

May 31, 2010

Schizophonia!

It strikes me that where there is money to be made there is always someone lined up to profit off someone's misery.

It further strikes me that I may be one such person.

The prominence of jackasses wandering around with Bluetooth earpieces for their cell phones -particularly in Wal*Mart, accessorizing a snazzy pink, stretched-to-the-breaking-point spandex, or on the ears of loud-mouthed show-offs in front of me in the checkout '1-8 items' lane of the grocery store (with their Audi TT and their Tommy Hilfiger man-capri pants, you know who I'm talkin' 'bout!)- makes me long for the day when people just used cell phones so you wouldn't have to stop and wonder if the guy talking to himself was actually talking to himself or not. Remember the days when you'd see someone jabbering to himself and you'd know that he or she was a little off? It was like nature's way of saying "Heads up; shit may or may not go down." Nowadays, you have to stop and pay attention to see if the guy's actually got a phone of some kind.

The line between mental illness and being a jerk is getting blurred and, to be fair, I have more sympathy for those who are mentally ill. At least they have an excuse. What's yours, Ms. Decaf-half-soy-non-fat-ristretto-with-Splenda?

In fact, to help out those who have mental illness of the kind that makes one prone to outbursts in the street or prolonged conversations with people I can't see, I would like to start a business. For particularly aware schizophrenics who are aware that, for whatever reason, those around them don't see the lizard people that talk to you daily, I would like to start manifacturing and distributing fake Bluetooth headsets.

All you have to do is slap one on your ear and Presto! you're not crazy anymore, you're just a jerk with a Bluetooth! I know, crazy street people: it is a bit demeaning to have to pretend you're a Bluetooth loser, but it's a small price to pay to be able to really get into conversations with angels in the food court without having some damned security guard interrupting you every fifteen minutes.