One more line that clearly labels my bLog as less “Family Friendly” than Erik’s. My influences being Something Awful and the Rotten.com Library.

Anyhoo. Remember I mentioned I’d ditched coffee, excessive refined sugar and pop? Well, after sleeping like a Coke-fiend and needing a boost to get through a very important class today, I ordered a medium Double/Double. I worked and I got everything I needed from the review for the final. Now my hands are shaking and I feel like faeces. Here I though having a coffee would cause a re-lapse.

The world’s reply: “And?”

The needs of 28 outweigh the business brought by 30,000 a week. So the Docks do everything they’re legally required as far as serving the alcohol goes, but thanks to the incessant pestering of a cluster of grumpy old cranks, the Alchohol and Gaming Commission decided to make upa new law.

This is the kind of treatment businesses have to look forward to in Toronto: The first Amish Metropolis. CityTv, being the impartial reporters they are, have been running the story on CP24 ceaselessly for the least couple days referring to the Evil Docks’ lawyers anonymously like the greedy, malevolent corporate monsters they are. Then they cut to the six or seven victorious besieged residents toasting their success in the war against proftable business. Now they can sit in their backyards reading or tittering about curtains in peace.

If The Docks really were violating noise laws for years like they say, why the fuck haven’t they been charged for violating noise laws. Lock the building until they promise to keep quiet, but if they’re (apparently) following the rules and regs to serving alcohol, then the Alcohol Commission isn’t involved. Of course, Bureaucracy doesn’t work that way.

While I regret that Jeb and Cassandra will be going (one possibly to Erik, which will be a great home) I’m going to use any proceeds to purchase a guitar (As mentioned in the comments of “Sam Roberts and Musical Limbo”). I greatly anticipate the middle of August, which should be when things have settled enough for me to visit Long and McQuade and pick it up. The question that burns at me right now is what to get.

Read more

But after a review of my finances, transportation, contacts and temporal limitations I’m going to have to thin my gun cabinet, starting with Cassandra, my still almost virginal Norinco CQ311 with redone furniture. Fact is I can’t drive out to a big enough range to use it regularly; The range I’m joining is an indoor handgun range. The shotgun, Jeb, a Remington 870 with choate stock is pretty but also utterly superfluous. They’ll be happier sold, I’m afraid.

Read more

By now City of Villains should be routine and I can make an honest assessment of its qualities, which it has plenty of. About a year ago I tried to get back into the game when I reached an impasse playing World of Warcraft and lasted a couple weeks and stormed off vowing never to return. While I remain bitter about what Cryptic did with my playing experience on “City of Heroes” at least they seem to have made an honest attempt to stop the shit that drove me away last time.

Penny Arcade, Ctrl Alt Del, most of the gamers I group with in CoV and an article read in one of the popular game mags say that once you actually stop playing WoW and stay away you eventually get this feeling that is errily like kicking a bad drug habit. Having gone through it, I agree it happens, but I’m going to try not to be overly critical of the game just to justify my not playing it anymore. It can’t be that bad if I played it happily for ten months. Although I did play it unhappily for one month.

Read more

Although this time I didn’t doubt him.

I highly recommend and Wordpress users get above version 2.0 and pick up Akismet and end all their Comment worries.

Will brought up a good point yesterday, “It’s not that the movies from the 40’s and 50’s are better, it’s just that time has filtered out all the era’s ‘Ultra-Violet’ and ‘Waterworld’ level bombs.” I attribute a similar and more sinister “Revisionist History” to one of my many social Pet Peeves. As time goes by, people tend to remember what they want instead of what probably really happened. I’ve even caught myself doing it from time to time. I suppose there’s a bit of merit to not wanting to re-live when your father abused you or the ridicule of your classmates in grade school, but in the end you’re just lying to yourself. It’s corny, but if you can’t be honest with yourself, what’s the point?

Read more

I can’t put my finger on it, as there isn’t really anything special about the music, but I’ve really enjoy Sam Roberts’ albums so far, “We Were Born In a Flame” and now “Chemical City.”

There’s something I can appreciate about an album I can just throw on it slides in to the atmosphere like it was always there. But no matter where it is if I stop and listen, I find myself tapping along.

I know too few people these days that can keep me up to date with the music of the hour. I don’t talk to Teddy nearly enough these days (which I quietly vowed to change at the Big Ingerman Birthday Party last weekend) and one of my co-worker’s supernaturally deep knowledge of electronic music is still a little specialised. The result is re-playing all my 1998-2001 music I’ve been lax in expanding on.

It might have something to do with growing old and no longer “getting” modern music like Good Charlotte, A Simple Plan, Linkin Park, and the current lust for Hip Hop, R and/or B, and Gangstar Wrap. I don’t feel like ranting, though.

When I heard Israel invaded Lebanon under the pretext of a raid that killed and had some of their soldiers kidnapped, the The Gleiwitz Incident immediately sprung to mind. Watching the whole thing unfold, it all seems unbelievable if only because it’s seem (to me) to be such a twisted evolution of the events we should have learned from leading to the other border skirmish that saw generations lost in conflict.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, and my history can be a little vague in spots, but I think this is going to get worse before it gets better. It seems the only thing keeping Lebanon’s backers (Syria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan and everyone else whose border touches Israel’s) from shooting back is the vast network of Allies backing Israel. 1914, anyone?

Israel’s history with defensive actions is spotty at best, as demonstrated with its unwillingness to move out of Gaza and the Golan Heights; Which I believe is against the Geneva Convention. If no one tries, what’s to stop them from camping out in Lebanon for some new real estate?

I won’t even get into the ammunition this will supply for the Western World’s enemies (read: Terrorists). Suffice to say, I’m apprehensive about where this is going, especially considering Bush and Harper happen to be in power right now.