some days...

Sometimes memories from my childhood pop into my head and they fill me warmth and sadness.  Warmth because they are happy fuzzy memories that happened during a time when I felt the safest and most secure.  Sadness because I know I'll never feel that way again.

For some reason fish chips as a kid always made me happy.  When the other kids were ordering cheeseburgers and big macs, I wanted the filet-o-fish.  Then as I got older I stopped eating the filet-o-fish and starting eating big macs.

I no longer eat big macs.  The last one, I think was around 1991 but fish and chips are still in my top ten.

pet peeve #4

I have two rules when I go to the theatre:

1) Always go to the bathroom well before the movie starts.

2) Don’t talk to me during the movie (it’s okay to make comments during the trailer but only related to the trailer).

My pet peeve is when my fellow movie-goers violate rule number two.  Now, in Canada this has never been a problem for me but here in Italy it seems to be par for the course.  Why is it that when Italians go to the movies they feel it's okay to have a conversation during the movie??

censorship...

....?

Lately I've been noticing that when I click on an unfolding news story on the bbc twitter feed, about 33% of links link back to the bbc's homepage.

This is strange because since I've been on twitter (only about 6 months) the bbc twitter feed has been 100% accurate and now all of a sudden I have to dig through the homepage to find the article I was interested in reading (I know that sounds lazy, but isn't that what twitter was invented for?).

hmmmm....anybody actually know what happened near Tuscon today?

die hard, YEAH!

Every crazy plot begins with just one man http://io9.com/5838255/

That's pretty obvious...if he had asked for suggestions perhaps nobody would have gotten killed.  But what makes you want to watch is the crazy plan.

for example:



And I thought Face/Off was the most ridiculous movie out there that I could love.  But Crank gives us the bridge from reality (ha! like die hard is reality, right?) to comic book superheroes.  Think about it...Crank's protagonist is a seemingly normal human being that was injected with a slow acting poison which slows down your heart until it stops.  The only way to slow down this already slowed down process is to pump himself full of adrenaline...

...which then enabled him to survive an over 600 metre fall.

now I ask you...how can you not want to watch this movie?  It's gotta be good for at least one memorable line (along the lines of one of my all time faves "you just killed a helicopter with a car!"

jar jar har har

The other day I was watching my friend's kids – two boys, one 8 the other 5…and I had so much fun!  It had been a month since I had watched them because they’ve been on vacation for most of August.  As soon as I walked into the house I noticed the gigantic, completely-made-of-Lego-with-moving-parts DEATH STAR!  It even had an elevator!  We then played boats in the little pool, created an aquatic environment in order to house various toys (including Dory from Finding Nemo), built houses of cards, played the Pyramid of Lego game, whined about wanting to play Indiana Jones on the Wii and finally played Star Wars: The Complete Saga – a Lego video game.  The only negative was seeing that moron Jar Jar Binks in the game.  There was a scene where Jar Jar was about to get run over in spectacular fashion by a death star tank but then one of the boys jumped in and saved him.  And it got me thinking “Could Jar Jar actually be tolerable in other languages"?  After taking a poll, I came to this conclusion: no, Jar Jar always induces homicidal feelings and yes, kids are kind of stupid.

On the bright side the Lego version of the Death Star is good for hours of fun.


Update: upon re-seeing this post a week later I realize that the above pic.....sucks ass.


let's see if this is any better:


no...you know, there are no pictures that would render it justice.  you just gotta play with one.

pet peeve #3

People who think the above picture accurately represents Canadian weather all year round.

For those who are misinformed about the geography of Canada, it does not lie entirely within the Arctic Circle.  However, I will concede that Canadians don't feel the cold as much as others as is evidenced here by the hatless crazy man on a sled being pulled by a Caribou in what I can only imagine is -40 degree weather.

facing fear

All my life I've had insect phobia.  More generally a phobia regarding any kind of unidentified flying (or fast crawling) insect and more specifically about stinging wasps.  Up until I was 30 I used to run in the complete opposite direction any time one came within a metre of me.  I would replace that behaviour later with simply walking away and telling people "I know it's crazy but it's the only phobia I have".

Today I was strung by one of the son of a bitches.  And jesus christ did it hurt.  And the hurt kept on going for most of the day...til it stopped.  And, yeah now it's been almost 18 hours since I was strung, it really doesn't hurt more than a sunburn when you've stayed in the sun half an hour longer than you should have.

I now know two things: 1) I'm not allergic and 2) I'm a little less phobic.

p.s. As I was searching for the above photo I came across this website http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/aug/19/notes-and-queries-why-wasps-sting it's made me re-think wasps.

Update: that damn wasp sting took more than a month to heal!