Winter Storm Warnings

5:00 pm, Thursday March 1st, 2007.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dear Mother Nature.

Sure this idea maybe born from the fact that I can’t get out of my office parking lot right now, but I have a firm belief that we have officially upset the balance of nature, and you’re fighting back.
Is it a coincidence that a winter storm arrives during rush hour in the biggest city in Toronto? Really? A coincidence?
I say nay!
You, Mother Nature, tired of the exhaust that is fuming during the afternoon rush, have decided to fight back by screwing those who drive!
The insanity of this idea might be masking the reality that I AM SO FUCKING PISSED OFF AT THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW!!!
You’ve really, really disappointed me. A lot. Excuse the profanity, but fuck you snow. Fuck. You.


Mother Nature you’re a PMS’ing bitch. Whassa matter? You can’t handle a little CO2? You need your precious ozone layer? Please allow me to borrow a motif from George Carlin/Bill Hicks:

Give me all that pollution shit. Since when is life supposed to be easy? Life is a battle from the day we’re born till the day we die. Flu’s, Viruses, Cancer. This is our battle for existence. Those fuckers are going to wipe out millions, and we’re totally not going to be able to fight back. Internal constitution, not money, not penis length, not guns, but internal constitution is going to be the determining factor for who lives and who gets left behind.


Fuck terrorists, how many people do they kill a year? A few hundred, a few thousand? There are 6.6 BILLION people on this planet. We could have a major catastrophe, loose 100,000 people, and we’d make up that population loss by lunch time because we’re growing at a rate of about 200,000 people a day. 200,000 people. A day. It would take less than a week for us to make up the loss of a million people.

It took until approximately the beginning of the 19th century for the population of the earth to reach 1 billion. You wanna know how long it took us to go from 5.6 billion to 6.6 billion? 10 years. You want to know where I’m going with this. In the last 10 years we’ve added 1 billion people to this planet, and most of them are on the streets driving some cars. And all of them are outside right now sitting, emitting Carbon-fuckoxide.


We’ve fucked ourselves. And you wanna know what might save us? Porn. That’s right, internet/VHS/DVD/magazine/1800callmebaby porn. Let’s gets some fucking porn out there so people stop procreating and let’s get them masturbating a little more and then maybe in 10 years we won’t be completely screwed with so much traffic and so much “we’re killing the planet with our cars.” It’s like (and I can’t believe I’m quoting these guys) the NRA says, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Cars don’t kill the environment, people driving cars kill it. And we’ve got 300 million of those ‘people’ in North America getting around in cars. Man of the Year my ass Time Magazine, more like Killer of the Century. Imagine if animals could talk or vote, we'd totally be removed from our post at the top of the food chain.

Oh, and fuck you major oil and gas companies for this ‘gas shortage’. If I wanna drive around to McDonalds at 10 pm because I have a hankering for a double burger and fries, I don’t need to be worried if I’ve got gas, or where I’m going to get it. Just give me my gas and shut the fuck up about shortages, or I’m going to have to start seriously looking at alternative sources of fuel (i.e. ethanol) and I might start growing my own tomatoes instead of getting McDonalds.


To sum up, the weather is really bad in Toronto, especially for the drivers; to top it off I don’t have enough gas to sit in traffic for 2 hours so I’m really pissed off. I didn’t sign up for this.

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

Sincerely,

Pessimistic S.O.B. with a sense of entitlement.

“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”
– Thomas Malthus

ps. snow is pretty.

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i dub thee

King of Bingo Bango. Or is it Bing of Bingo Kango? Bing of Kingo Bango? I can never remember the lyrics to songs that I might not have heard. If any of you know what song I'm talking about, let me know. Until then, i have a couple of posts. The first is a brief idea I had about a NHL 3 point system. The second is this. Whenever I think of smoking pot again, I remember that I'm not so smart and do things under the influence that make Mike Vick look like a genius.

Stand up and be seen

This is an old-fashioned tip of the hat to one of the good guys in the NHL, Sean Burke. The Tampa Bay Lightning put him on waivers at the start of the season, and when no teams bit, down he went. Not in the organizations plans for the future, he didn't see much action, relegated to minor league third stringer. He took on the role of asst. coach, and even did some broadcast work for the team. His career was basically over, when out of nowhere, the Los Angeles Kings came calling. I can only imagine what the call between Sean and Dean Lombardi, the Kings GM, sounded like.
Sean has put up more than reasonable numbers for the Kings, a hapless team in the throes of a woeful season. He very well might be the last stand-up goalie left in the league. I remember watching him as a kid play for the New Jersey Devils, taking them within one game of the Cup finals in 1990 against the Boston Bruins almost by himself. It's better a guy like this go out in the NHL, not wallowing in the minors.

old world undergroundhog day

...where are you now?
Studies say people will read more posts if they have less words.

My question is, where the heck can I go put all my savings ($43.54) on the Bears? Is there any way I can mortgage my future on the Bears? If I had a choice between Lions and Tigers, I would choose Bears!
I've been working on a picture for a few hours and it isn't coming up. So instead I'm going to post this, Tecmo Bowl Superbowl XLI preview.

The phone is a fine invention.

I'm so glad that the telephone exists. Thank you Alexander Graham Bell (or whoever invented it). I could talk on it for hours, and sometimes do. Day or night, coast to coast, through timezones or ozones, makin' phonecalls is so cool.

What are your thoughts on the vernacular?

Vista (or how I learned to copy from Apple)

Two games at one time tonight, and no PVR for me. Damn it, I saw this night coming a week ago and so I ordered a PVR player from my cable provider so I could record the Raptors game while watching the Leafs game. And wouldn’t you know it? The PVR still hasn’t shown up.

Arg.

Anyways, last night, while watching Leafs-Canes, I stumbled upon Raptors TV showing Celtics-Pacers. Nothing really noteworthy about that, however, the program description for the Celtics-Pacers was kind of weird. So I took out my camera and took a picture.



Dino Radja?!?! Seriously? He hasn’t played in the NBA in what, 10 years? Just so you know that this program description was from last night (not that those things even existed outside tv Guide when Dino was playing), here’s another pic I took with the 1st period scoring summary from Leafs-Canes in the background.



I guess somebody was having fun down at wherever they write those program descriptions. Good on them for reminding me of one of the greatest Croatian Basketball players of all time.

And another note from last night, the Sharks lost to the Dallas Stars in a shootout, but it was the first time since game one of their season that San Jose has gone to overtime. In that time they set a new modern era record (modern era=games with overtime) with 49 straight games without having one going to overtime. And it almost didn’t happen too, Philippe Boucher (of the Stars) scored with 2.2 seconds left in the 3rd to tie it.

Also, the 3 point system for some games still sucks.

Go LeafsRaptors Go.

Oh and about the title;

Microsoft Vista's interface looks totally like the Apple interface. Just like Windows was to Macs, Vista is second generation borrowing of ideas from Apple.

Bart gets to ride up front today

The modern pursuit of professional sports; a fascinating subject matter. Altogether banal and indulgent? Maybe. Completely, in point of fact. I know that they are a trivial distraction in a world in need of increased benevolent interventions. It’s just these games that are played are so damned entertaining to me. The human drama, unrehearsed and unedited. A serving of reality in my spoon-fed, manicured world. The crowning beauty being that the winner almost always is the team or individual that combines ability, effort and study (with the great equalizer and ultimate intangible of luck always having a say).

Sports, as far as I’m concerned, can save. Seriously. I see them as a remarkably useful tool. They can (and do) provide us with a natural outlet for our competitive tendencies. They allow us to channel these often (and sadly) malicious manifestations our primeval need to compete with and defeat those around us into a constructive medium. In doing so, we are made better by keeping them out of our daily lives. There are valuable lessons to be learned in sports.

My first passion in sport is hockey. I follow the game closely, and derive immense pleasure in doing so. All said, I really do follow all sports to varying degrees, the only exception being NCAA (I decided I simply can't). Sports, sports, sports, sports.

I like sports.

The first step towards redemption

I, to this day, blame Jack Layton for the fact that Stephen Harper is this country's Prime Minister. I am of the opinion that it was a self-serving, short-sighted and ill-considered move on his part to defeat the then-Paul Martin lead Liberals, and I am finding it hard to forgive him this. Without unnecesarily piling too deeply into it, he chose to trade more seats in the House for less political weight. He spent the entire campaign attacking Martin and the Liberals, leaving Harper untouched. He chose, ostensibly, to allow a man whose politics differ so greatly from the values he represents to ascend to power, and he knew, full well, this would be the result.
Objectively, a Conservative minority, in its turn, may have been the best case scenario for Canada. Paul Martin was not Jean Chretien: he could not keep the good ship Liberal afloat. Canadians needed to feel as though they chose to remove the party from office, to feel as though they washed the stink away, as it were. It gave the Liberals the opportunity at re-birth. Stephane Dion looks promising. I'm no Liberal, I voted for them in the last election for the first time, solely in an attempt to keep Stephen Harper out of government (I also begrudge Layton this, forcing me to use my vote in this manner). My primary political issue is the environment, and I like what I hear out of Dion so far.
Anyhow, this has all led to this: today, Jack Layton took the first step towards reconciling with me. I cannot begin to describe to you my long-time aggravation and ire at ATM fees. It's a damning commentary on the axe that big business wields that hardly a boo has been heard as these fees have crept into our lives, and we have accepted them. Good for you, Jack, you remind me of the Jack that stood up for not selling our natural resources to foreign business and the Jack who pushed valiantly for accessible post-secondary for Canadians. Get back on course, leave the pragmatics to the others.
Before we know it, it'll cost $22 for a 20, and we'lll be told how lucky we are.

You can see the soulless emptiness in that shark's eyes.

Apparently, there are some freaky things alive in the deep sea of our planet. This old shark was found off the coast of Japan or something.


Which leads me to my next point. Random points:

-West coast is probably a better timezone to follow the Australian Open in. Watching the Sharapova-Clijsters match yesterday, I realized that it was ending past 1 am for me, but if I lived, say, in Vancouver, it would end at the reasonable our of just past 10 pm.

-Raptors won, nay, stole a game last night against the Hornets that they had no business winning. I've said it before (about the Raptors), and I'm going to say it here again;

"If Fred Jones could refind his game, if Mo-Pete and Mitchell could kiss and make up, they'd be scary. They're very close to having the best depth in the East.

Jefferson out for the Nets for 6 weeks. Remember when the Raps went .500 on their stint without Bosh including their West coast trip? Well, the Nets start their West Coast trip.... Wednesday. Now is the time."

Nets lost on a buzzer beating 3 pointer by Monty Ellis to the Warriors last night. Advantage-Raptors. Earlier this year I bought a seven game flex pack because it promised first dibs if the Raptors have extra games. I'm not going to say the magic "P" word, just going to call it extra games, lest I jinx it.

-Another note about the Raps, Ford and Bargnani weren't playing. Ford is resting his ankle during this homestand and Bargnani has the flu. Humphries filled in adequately for Bargnani last night.

-All-star games are for 15 year olds. That's the last time I remember placing any weight on a game. And that was because Vincent Damphousse, a Leaf at the time, won the All-Star game MVP and scored 4 goals. There wasn't much to cheer about as a Leaf fan, and no-one outside Toronto cared, but I cared because he was a Leaf and he was a better player than Lemieux and Gretzky, even if just if just for a brief moment.

-I can't believe how stupid of a game "Deal or No Deal" is. Seriously? Pick a case, and then pick ones out of the one you didn't pick? We're on the verge of "Heads, or Tails!" being made into a flashy game show. The worst part is, it's totally addictive. Lets just put it this way, I caught the west-coast feed of it late last night, and I really wanted to know what was in the cases she was picking. As much as I wanted to tear myself away, I couldn't help but flip back to it. I hate that show, I hate myself for watching that show. Good on them for making something that could last 5 minutes last a whole hour and make it dramatic. I'm going to go stick my mouth on my car exhaust now.

-mmm... I love turtles. I'm not saying that because they're paying me (because they're not), I really do love turtles.

-Chris Bosh is going to average 20 & 10 this year. He's so kick ass.

-Speaking of kick ass. Usually when someone says they've "destroyed" an opponent, it is looked upon as slightly arrogant. Somehow when Roger Federer states it, it's an understatement. 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 in 83 minutes in a semi-final of an open and he had this to say about it

"It's just unreal, I'm shocked myself. I've played good matches here, but never really almost destroyed somebody. That's a highlight of my career."

Roddick won 6 (six) points in the second set. More on the game here. An ode to Roger here.

And finally, a clip of what Roger has done to Andy previously. If life was a video game, Andy would be the human player and Roger would be the computer player, and the computer has decided that it will win this game and get to any shot that the human player makes. When I'm the human and the computer decides to do that, I pretty much have the same dejected reaction as Andy and do to my controller what Andy did to his racket.

Guess who the Jays just signed?

and it's not Esteban Yan or Billy Crystal.

Articles without titles beget titles without articles

I have been playing in the wonderland of Whistler/Blackcomb for the past 5 days. I can't feel my legs anymore. That is some kinda mountain up there. Skiing is fun. Skiing under a wide, blue sky is astouding. Skiing under a wide, blue sky in fluffy pillows is stupefying.
Bears vs. Colts superbowl should be an entertaining game. All-star break in the NHL. Mid-way point in the NBA. Remember Marcos Baghdatis? It seems he checked out quietly in the second round of the Aussie Open this year. His story this time last year was just beginning.
I will write more often with much to say. I will write more often with much to say. I will write more often with much to say.

Fox Lunch

Four months ago I carved this out of a can of Klik (which is just another brand name type of Spam). It's all one piece. I used the fat in the can for the white on the tail and chest, a little stone for the nose and part of a broom bristle for the whiskers. It took me about two hours to do.
There are crocodiles and tigers and even three headed dogs, and there are foxes too.
Hossim, and anyone in Toronto, should go to Lee's Palace on February 2nd to see a band called The Golden Dogs. For the love of all animals and the Holy rock and roll show. Seriously, they are an amazing band and will be your new favourites after only a few notes. Don't forget your dancing shoes.

Lisa's tiger-repellant rock

Who would win in a fight? I present to you, the latest instalment in animal fight club.....Crocodile versus Tiger! Who will win? Place your bets..... now!




Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle

I for one welcome our new insect overlords

I'm Kent Brockman, on the eleven o'clock news tonight...a certain type of soft drink has been found to be lethal, we won't tell you which one until after sports and the weather with Sonny Storm.

So, what's going on in Vancouver? Here in Toronto, we're back in January with -10 degree windchill. But we do have really cool exploding ball sunsets. To wit.


That was taken about 20 minutes ago. I'm doing this new thing where I take a picture of the sunset every afternoon. Basically, it gets me out of the office around 5 pm, even if I'm not leaving then.

So anyways, I hear crazy weather stuff is going on in Vancouver, and figured that our good friend King Pindar took some Ottawa weather with him when he moved.

You know what I think this post needs? One more Simpsons quote about the weather. Take it away Lisa.

The national weather service says dawn is still scheduled for 6:20 tomorrow and to please stop calling.