This is for all you grade-A jack asses out there who see fit to put those damn midi songs on your webpage. I came looking for other things, and left feeling assaulted by bad, really bad crappy midi “songs”. This makes elevator music sound like angels singing. I hope there is a special place in hell for you people. There, I feel better now.

I think it is interesting how people attempt to falsify their homes when company comes over. By falsify, I mean that what they present to the visitors is often a skewed sense of reality. No dust, the carpet is vacuumed, the radio is turned down, and often fights are kept to a minimum. Certain members of the house reserve the right to hide and not communicate with the visitors. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

My personal tactic when receiving visitors is to not cover any of the reality of my place of residence, which would be basic dishonesty. This means that I do not dust or vacuum, rather, I turn down the lights so that nobody will know the difference. Got dirty dishes in the sink? Provide enough distractions so that the dishes won’t be noticed. Dust is one thing, but dirty dishes is a problems seldom remedied by turned off or dimmed lighting. What usually serves as a distraction are the variables in my place that I cannot control – the walls, the carpet, the bagpipes playing upstairs. I live in a rented basement suite. There are upsides and down sides to such a residence. One of the down sides can be considered an upside depending upon how you look at it, and how you rank the detrimental/beneficial effects of it. The carpet in my place is not the most attractive that I have seen. Firmly entrenched in what I think is the 70’s, but could be the 60’s, my place boasts wall to wall wood paneling, and a shag rug (not in the British sense) that is more orange than brown (depending upon the level of the lighting). An optimist would call it “retro”. Thats the downside, the upside is that crumbs disappear into the carpets depths, likely where they provide sustenance for civilizations that I would rather remain ignorant about. When I vacuum, one cannot tell the difference after. If there was a readily apparent difference, I would likely vacuum more often. A tragedy for countless millions, to be sure.

Recently, while on a wild blue ride through the suburbs, I was reminded of exactly how much it sucks to look for a place to live. Not for everyone, to be sure. In fact, I have twice been involved in the process for others and it worked out very well, obviously because of my impeccable direction. However, this does not translate to when I am looking for a place. This has happened a lot, most of the time, with me just looking to improve on my current wood panneled, shaggy existence. I have found everything from pristine conditions, to dead mice in the sink. My personal favorite was the place in Langley a few years ago that had an interesting bathroom. A toilet, a sink, a window. Not everything you would want in a bathroom. I asked the person showing it to me what I was supposed to do about showering or bathing. A blank stare ensued. I guess I was supposed to just run through the sprinkler. OF course, I did wind up living in a place where you entered through the front door right into the….. bathroom. Don’t worry, I kept the lights off.

I recently was involved in a discussion with Warren B., renowned children’s author and no stranger to BC political issues. He is most widely remembered for his bestselling children’s books : Pop! Goes The Hamster…And Other Great Microwave Games, Dad’s New Wife Robert, You Are Different and That’s Bad, Fun Four Letter Words To Know And Share, and his new release – Grandpa Gets A Casket. To make a short story long, he started to talk about cloning. Technically cloning means making a genetic lineage of identical individuals. Cloning is another one of those terms/phrases that the media has seized and bounced around so much that it is now meaningless, like information superhighway, Cyberspace, or government waste.

Talk of cloning in the media these days often stems from discussions about the genetic engineering of the food supply. Apparently, people get annoyed when those designing food these days start experimenting with such things as growing goat hair on tomatoes to protect then from early frosts. Soon there will be another use for those vegetable peelers. When talking about cloning, some reporter will usually make a comment about identical copies of him/herself walking around, or something equally asinine.

Lets suspend belief for a moment and investigate this for a minute. Imagine you are sitting at a coffee shop, lets say you are in Langley, though any town would do for the purposes of this discussion. Lets say you are sitting there and some guy gets out of a car by the curbside. With the nightmare of cloning being a reality, you might see this guy look exactly like you. Imagine, though I realize it sounds ludicrous, but you might actually see your own clone. Like looking in the mirror. Imagine if this technology became even more insidious, and people might steal DNA from you in order to clone you. Wow, that wouldn’t be all that good, people stealing DNA and all. I’d much rather they steal my pens, like they do now!

I guess that the overall end of the story here is all this could happen. Someone could steal some of your DNA, clone you in a secret laboratory in their basement, and then raise the resulting clone for TWENTY FIVE YEARS in order to scare you at a coffee shop in Langley. Even if someone wanted to do this, I doubt that they have enough patience and time enough to carry the whole thing through. As for rich people wanting to look for immortality, they clearly don’t know how this stuff would work.

So forget my whole example here. As usual I have taken a worthwhile discussion about a timely issue in the world and followed it with lame excuses and the whole thing fizzled near the end. I mean really, seeing someone who looks JUST like you stepping out of a car right in front of you is something that would never happen. I’ll try this discussion again later when I have actual, realistic examples.

Today was a pretty great day. I went for a walk, bowling, and saw a movie for only 1 dollar. All this and with friends that I hardly ever get to see. This is the sort of day that, for me anyway, doesn’t come around all that often. Sometimes, I actually get pretty bored. Now, lets take the life of a normal housefly. Sure, they may only live for about a week or two, but I bet its a pretty good time since they don’t have to eat anything and they have to do all their procreation in that time. I am not saying that my life is radically different than this, I was just making a superfluous observation.

I think that I (and other men as well) tend to approach shopping from a different perspective than say, women. This often means that I don’t approach shopping at all. If the situation becomes dire enough that I actually have to venture into the modern day structure known as a shopping mall, its probably because either : (1) somebody is dragging me along with them, (2) articles of my clothing are actually tattered to an extent where they are falling from my body, or (3) I am lost again and need help finding my way home. Don’t be alarmed, I was actually kidding about number… 2. I tend to approach shopping much like a “smash and grab” robbery. I know what I want going in. I know approximately where to find it. I go in, get it, and leave with haste. Now, this is different than those other people who treat the experience as shopping in a much different way. If we were to continue the robbery analogy, these “other” people would go into the bank looking for money. They would then be distracted by all the other features that the bank offers. Mutual funds, RRSP’s, the rise and fall of the interest rates, the new arrangement of the withdrawl slips. Sure, they may emerge hours later with the money (and likely with a LOT of other things the bank may offer), but by then the reasonable time limit has expired and the cops have surrounded the building. IF we were to continue this even further, the getaway driver would end up paying for all of the aforementioned “crimes”.

I think I carried this slightly too far. My analogies start off ok, but then they tend to carry the reader on a ride like a runaway bobsled to hell.

I am attempting to steer my meager programming skills towards the goal of learning exactly how html tables work. I may go completely mad trying.

If you asked me years ago, two things that I never would have wanted to be involved in any with were yogurt and “professional” wrestling. Well, those weren’t the only two things, there are others where I will draw the line. Kareoke for example. I thought that these assertions were rather concrete. However, as I write this I am eating yogurt. So much for concrete assertions. This all got started because I went on a trip to Ottawa to visit family. While on the flight I made the dubious decision to have the “cold” breakfast rather than the hot one. My decision is more understandable if you saw the sausages. I can still hear the screams. Anyway, here was this yogurt, its bacteria addled plasticness staring me in the face. So I ate it, erasing the memories of past traumatic experiences with yogurt that I had suffered years ago. I won’t go into that now. However, I am adamant that the declaration about wrestling and kareoke will carry on for many years to come. This is further backed up by being forced to watch ³wrestling² while in Ottawa. Let me tell you that I am no closer to being able to stand it.

Air travel is much like bus travel in that you are forced into close quarters with others that are not of your own choosing. I saw a few people on both of my flights that I would have much rather sat next to than those that I did. On the way there I was met with coldness. I sat down and smiled at the woman next to me. She leaned over and whispered something to her daughter. The daughter looked at me and giggled. I can only image what the hell she said, but I somehow don¹t think that it was positive. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the flight. Actually maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I went completely deaf during the flight (from the effects of cabin pressure or something). Let me tell you, from all appearances the movie Entrapment isn¹t the best cinematic effort ever laid to film. Nor is it better if you cannot hear any of the dialogue. At least we didn¹t crash. And this time, nobody urinated in their seat next to me like that last flight I was on, nor did we have an emergency vehicle flanked landing like that last time I went to Ottawa.

When I was at the Royal bank today I was told that I could have dealt with my student loan at SFU at the Royal bank kiosk that was there. Why didn¹t I know it was there? Because SFU prohibited royalbank from advertising the fact that they were there. Anything to serve the students better.
I haven¹t updated this page even though I have much to say about the trip to Ottawa since I have finally more or less finished working on my parent’s site. Not my choice of subject matter, but I built the whole damn thing. It probably only took me about 200 hours to build it, which probably indicates my lack of experience in such matters. But, in my own defence, there is a lot of material on there.

While that site has gotten about 1000 hits in 3 months, and mine has about 700 in one year, don¹t look for a similar theme from me anytime soon. I might totally redesign this site though.

I am heading off to Ottawa again. This comes as a welcome respite from the horrors I have just experienced in : exam period. I only had two final exams this semester, but I will say that the SFU abbreviation of BICH for biochemistry is appropriate. The psychology exam went uneventfully (for me anyway), and I managed to do well even with a pretty steep curve to climb. Biochemistry was difficult, but since I had studied for a week straight, it went ok as well. Nobody had a panic attack during this one either, which was not the case in the psychology exam. I guess some people thought that it was hard.

I don’t mind flying, but I hope that this trip to Ottawa does not include emergency vehicles. Last time, on the way to a plane change in Calgary, something went wrong with the plane. We had to circle Calgary for about an hour, and when we finally did land, all the emergency vehicles came screaming out to meet us. It not as bad as it sounds, but it was worsened by the fact that the guy in front of me was less than calm, and the old lady next to me kept pissing herself. This did not make for an enjoyable emergency situation. All I have to say to the flight attendant who acted inappropriately stressed during the whole thing is : maybe this isn’t the job for you. Perhaps you should try something less stressful like crocheting or something.

I was watching an episode of the Simpsons today and Bart said something about grandpa getting his meat cut up for him. Homer says : “Why should he have it so good! I’m working my ass off here!………uh GREAT steak honey!

I have lived through this one, and I don’t recommend the particular repercussions that came my way. It is closely related to flinging open a closet and saying : you call this “nothing to wear”? There are many different ways to wind up in trouble with a woman, and I have stumbled across many of the best. All seemed obvious upon later inspection, yet were all too easy to miss before I fell into them.

I have been doing a lot of web page programming lately. I wondered to myself last night why we weren’t taught a useful language in grade 12, like C++ or HTML or something. Then it occurred to me that, in 1993 when I graduated from high school, that there were approximately 3 web pages in North America. Now I have three web pages. I feel old. Just wait until I start running into people younger than myself who can’t remember time before the internet. It will be then that I will start saying things like “When I was your age….” and it will then be a slippery slope down towards greying hair and multicolored tube socks from there.

I used to have the nickname of Murphy. This of course, was in reference to Murphy’s law. You know, the “what can go wrong will….” law. For some crazy reason, people have thought that this actually pertains to me. I have thought long and hard on why this was related to me, but I had to cut my thinking short when that meteorite crashed through the roof of my apartment. After I had cleaned up all of the water from the broken fish tank (after cutting myself on the glass) and plugged in a replacement keyboard to my computer (irreparable bending one of the pins), I resumed thinking. I have no idea why I should have the nickname Murphy. Its just not something that makes sense.

Why are people outraged when they discover that in fact, the “Blair Witch Project” is NOT real. Is it because they think they were deceived by cunning filmmakers or because they realize just how mind numbingly stupid they are. Right now, one of you reading this out there is going : “Its FAKE?”.

I was on the bus once and was listening to the conversation being waged next to me. They were discussing homosexuality. The asked me if I had an opinion. I said I might, but I am biased. No, not because I am gay or anything like that (not that there’s anythign wrong with that…), but because I think I am a lesbian trapped in a mans body. Strangely, they thought this was an offensive thing to say. I was merely trying to be funny, and missing that, potentially stupid. But offensive? No.

I once had a “girlfriend” who claimed the reason I never knew what the hell was going on with us was because I hadn’t been given a copy of the script. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Even without a script, I played the part of the clueless dumb-ass pretty well. Call her, she would agree.

Today the script (what? you never got one? ) called for a trip to a large shopping mall called metrotown. Our protagonist : me. The quest : to buy a watch. The script did not mention anything about VISA cards inexplicably ceasing to work, the bank machine later gobbling it up, nor the snotty attitude of the jeweler in the jewelry store – “perhaps you should come back when you have some money…. Sir”. All of this after I showed her how to load the new roll of paper into the till. Today our protagonist saw all kinds of people at the mall. Really, a mall is a microcosm of society. You see everything there, the nosepickers, the totally like, like totally like slutty, like teenage girls everywhere, and those that instantly give you the impression that you are glad this isn’t a dark alley. I maybe paranoid, but as that famous person that I have forgotten the name of said : Being paranoid merely means that you have all of the facts. This being said, our protagonist, against all odds, managed to survive the experience without being declared fatally killed. At least, so far as I have lived the script.

I’m going to humanely put a bullet in the head of this update before it causes more carnage and the rest of the neighborhood chickens go missing. Thanks bye.

I went to the beach yesterday. Actually, its not what you think, it was all in the name of research. I needed to get some seawater for an experiment that I am running at SFU. I am drying seaweed in order to determine if desiccation is a reason for the zonation of intertidal algae. You see, the ones that grow up higher are exposed to the air for longer than those that grow right near the water edge (at low tide). Expect a long and boring paper on the subject here in a week or so.

So I needed to get some seawater. I went to the village of Belcarra in order to do this, since this is a beach where there weren’t too many people, as I didn’t feel like explaining why I was going down to the waters edge and getting a big container full of water, and taking it away in my car. While there weren’t many people there, I had to explain it anyway.

Twice.

The first girl that came up to me suggested that I should get something from the pop machine if I was so thirsty. The sort of sense of humor that I like. I liked her since 1) she was genuinely interested in what I was doing (or at least acted like it) and 2) she was at the beach, and was wearing approximately 2 – 2.5 square feet of “beach attire”. This was distracting since I was attempting to explain intertidal zonation and distribution of seaweed. Actually it would have been distracting no matter what I was trying to explain. In short, I forgot my name. She had the audacity to think this was funny, and really, it was.

A second girl was hanging around the parking lot, and asked very much the same question about why I was toting a large container of water. However, her attitude left much to be desired, as the question was posed in very much a “you’re obviously a freak, and I am perfect so I can act like a bitch” sort of way. If you’re going to be nasty, pretentious, and condescending, why ask the question at all?

The real highlite of the day dealt mainly with me carrying this rather large container of sloshing, smelly, seawater back from my car to the lab at SFU. The closes parking spot that I could get was about 500 meters away, which turned out to be a lot larger that it looked from the car. Muscle fatigue while carrying heavy, wet objects in public is always interesting, every single time.

Back at the lab, Doug, the instructor of the course, says :”You didn’t have to go get that, I could have gotten you seawater at the lab downstairs”.

This basically sums up my whole week, and possibly next.

“You’ve won a million dollars in our sweepstakes, how do you feel?”

This is not how the day usually starts. It usually starts with an utterance of impending vengeance upon the nearby alarm clock. Then the vengeance begins. The other day, however, the usual morning routine was shattered by the ringing of my telephone. This is not a common occurrence. The telephone I mean (mornings happen quite a lot around here, much to my chagrin). I answer the telephone :

“You’ve won a million dollars in our sweepstakes, how do you feel?”

What do you say to something like this. There isn’t a rehearsed contingency for this up my sleeve.

“I’m just tingly all over.” And then I hung up.

Perhaps it was the young, female, monotone voice on the phone that didn’t exactly lend credence to the statement. Its not that I would turn down instant millions, its just that the message had better be sent in a professional, mature manner in order for me to believe it.

And then, later, the dreaded wheels in my mind started turning.

What if this wasn’t a young teenage girl with a telephone prank up her sleeve? What if the laughing in the background was in fact a television or something, or perhaps a coworker had just regaled a rapt audience with wild tales of the weekend? What if I had really won a million dollars, and my terse, sarcastic reply had rendered me amounst the poor (monetarily) for the rest of my life? What if the shattering of my morning routine had really been a good thing, and not the apocalypse from the telephone that I had envisioned?

I guess I’ll never know. Maybe she’ll call back.

I want to know what happened to the notion of personal responsibility. Sometimes, when you screw up, it just simply is your fault. Its not because government didn’t offer you the right programs, because the girl at the grocery laughed when you dripped your atm card down the gap between the checkout parts, or because today it was raining. It is because YOU screwed up. What I really don’t understand, is when people do something stupid, and then sue others in order to ease their “pain”. Take some idiot in North Vancouver for instance. He was mountain biking on some trail, bit off more than he could chew, and broke his leg. I should mention that this particular idiot was 15 years old. His parents sued the GVRD because of the accident. Now, I just cannot see why this is. The parents should have been somewhat responsible for their kids actions. Secondly, barring the first point of parental responsibility, the kid who broke his leg should be responsible for being partaking in such an activity. But the GVRD? What responsibility do they have to a 15 year old kid who decides to drive his bike down a mountain? This is the kind of behaviour (the litigation) that ruins the fun for everybody. I don’t get it. If I had done that, even at 15, my parents probably would have asked me why I was so stupid to have tried something like that. And so they should. When I walked backwards off of a ramp in elementary school and broke my jaw in 5 places, the school was very worried that my parents were going to sue them. VERY concerned. Why? They could have taken all the things off of the playground, and covered the entire thing in level grass, and I still would have found a way in order to hurt myself. This is not the schools responsibility, so far as they don’t provide play equipment that is overtly dangerous, such as an archery version of dodge ball, or swings that are over pavement, not sand. My point is that people seem to far too often blame others for the consequences of their own actions, frequently ending up suing others. This lack of personal responsibility is only one of the symptoms showing up in or society. More on this later.