Remember this year's Olympic debauch with Salé and Pelletier? Who could forget? If you're a Canadian that is. According to MSNBC News the Russian mafia was involved. Just like Carol's Polish co-worker said when she heard of the whole hooplah in the first place, "Is Russian mafia!" Dirt bags.

I bought myself a couple of gifts for my birthday (I'll be 33 on Monday, August 5th) because I probably won't get anything from anyone else. You say: Aaaaawwwwwww!

Anyway, I picked up the new Resident Evil DVD and Italian director Dario Argento's Suspiria Special Edition from Anchor Bay.



The set comes with 3 cd's the first is the movie with lots of special features, the second in the 25th Anniversary Documentary of the film, and the third CD is the origianl soundtrack by Goblin. Suspiria is not the only soundtrack that Goblin was involved in.

Great! There's a place to go to wait for kitties to use the litter box. Sadly one of their cats (The Black Cat) dies earlier this year. He looked just like my old black cat, Popeye, who lived to be an old cat. I still miss Popeye. Moosh would not like him though.

Here are some Carnies. Sadly, yes. I was a Carnie in days gone by.

It's kind of like being a Fly on the Wall.

Food throughout the ages: Yummy!

I, as people who know me have by now realized, am a huge horror movie fan. I am currently reading "The Monster Show" - A Cutural History of Horror.



So far I've read about such classics as Tod Browning's Freaks and Dracula, the man of 1000 faces, Lon Chaney in his many roles, and of course Frankenstein strring the late great Boris Karloff. Maybe I'll get off my rear end and get into remaking some of these classics. It's kind of been a fantasy of mine for a long time. It'd be cool to see what modern movie making could do with Frankenstein (and not that crappy DeNiro version).

Long live Horror. There's some great modern horror as well. There will always be room for more horror in my world, good or bad (none of it is really bad).

Muhahahhahahahahhaha!

Looks like a trip to "the continent" will be much faster in the not too distant future. The 4300 mile trip to Halifax, NS (where I grew up) from Vancouver, BC (where I am now) would take less than an hour!

Look at the first link on this page. Once again, lunch gets a nod. Hehe! Cool!

If you're a single male, beware of cougars!

UPDATE: Carol's favourite Cougar, Mrs Greenthumbs:



Sadly, she passed away on May 26, 2002. She'll be missed.

Ok, now these people are bananas!

An article in the Washington Post on the weekend talked about F-16s pursuing UFO. I used to love to study all things UFO related. I remember a TV show in the 70's called Project Bluebook which was based on the US Air Force Intelligence project of the same name. It was created to determine "once and for all" whether UFO's were actually otherwordly. The results were inconclusive. It's hard to ignore the many who have seen UFO's. I personally saw fast moving, strange lights in the sky late one night when friends and I were raiding a local strawberry patch. Even US President Jimmy Carter had a UFO sighting. Lots of people still believe that the government is withholding information around UFO's and aliens. The radio host, Art Bell, is a great example of someone who's willing to take a look at things that aren't exactly mainstream.



Chris Carter's creation, The X Files, was popular solely due to people's fascination with the unexplained and paranoia that we are being lied to. I got to be around a lot of the sets and meet the stars of the X Files when it was being filmed here in Vancouver (pretty cool). A buddy of ours, Pete, was a Scenic Painter on the X Files when it was here. Now he's working on Smallville, also filmed in Vancouver.

Carol and I are painting today. I hate, despise, loathe painting.

I'm glad that we have some great tunes to listen to. It makes the grim task a little less tedious. This fine day we're filling our ears and brains with strains of Nirvana's fine tuneage.



I miss Nirvana (so do a lot of other folks). Kurt Cobain's suicide was a turning point in music for sure. Things just kind of slowed down for a while.



We miss you Kurt! I can't believe it's been 8 years already.

Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl has made quite a name for himself with his new band The Foo Fighters (great stuff). Courtney Love is still around (yuck). But what ever happened to Krist Novoselic?

I know that it's only July, but my friend Paul just sent me a picture. See below:



That's why I didn't get the bike or the million dollars I asked for last Xmas. It looks like Santa Claus is dead. Now what are we going to do?

It's System Administrator Appreciation Day today. Be nice to the anti-social weiner who fixes your machines. Even is he is Nick Burns. Hehe! Nick Burns rules.

Who wants to marry a sysadmin?

Does help desk count as sysadmin?

I bet they'll steal my RAM when I'm at lunch today.

Just so you know:

I am 45% Geek

You probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the "normal" crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing.

Take the Geek Test at fuali.com

Here's a picture of me in Seattle at Web Design World 2002.



Kevin took this pic after one particularly boring speaker. You can see our new buddy Mark from Intel walking away in disgust.

From one of Carol's co-workers:

"If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one
year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original
$1,000.00.

With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the
beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer,
then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you
would have $214.00.

Based on the above, my current investment advice is
to drink heavily and recycle."

I don't drink, but feel it necessary to pass the information on to those who have that option.

Where do you live? There's a proton that exists in the universe, in the Milky way, in this solar system, on Earth, in North America, in Canada, in British Columbia, in Maple Ridge, on Thorne Avenue, in Thorneberry Gardens, in Number 12, on Moosh's back, on a flea, on some bacteria.

Thanks to Pilar and Bill for the ultra-cool link.

what your odds are?

Photos of cheesy German bands.

Meet Superman.

According to this we may be hooped. Sounds just like something out of Deep Impact (Deeply Impacted Bowels to Carol and I), or Armageddon (another piece of crap). Maybe Bruce Willis can save us.

Yes I'm back and I'm listening to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell album this morning. Don't ask why. I know it's been done to death, but once in a while it's okay.



I liked Meatloaf's part in Fight Club based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk. Palahniuk also wrote the book Choke, which I bought at Barnes and Noble in Seattle. Apparently he's going to be at that location for his book tour soon. Interesting book so far. Very twisted. Me likey.

Yes, I'm grumpy ... and tired. Some doofus either tripped an alarm by accident or in the comission of a burlary last nght at 3:00 am across the street from the Holiday Inn where I was snoring away. GRRRR! the alarm went forabout an hour so I didn't get the beauty sleep i normally require. I feel like I've been run over by a truck, I need some decent food and a nap.

The guy speaking at the conference right now is a flash junky. His company builds entire sites in Flash. They look rather over done and processor intensive to me. I keep thinking, "Do people really still want to use this crap this way?" It's insane. Some of the readers of this rant are comrades from days of yore in a failed venture known as OnlineOffice.com. It was a poorly executed, somewhat moronic idea. It was a Flash site... if you try to find it online.... you won't... because it's gone buh-bye.

In short - Flash = good for graphics and bad for dev.

Video, audio and animation. Oh my! Nap time. headache. Argh!

Gimme a Tylenol. i'm glad there's only one more day of this.

Booooooring!

Mark says:
New XML Tag -
<shoot me>Mark</shoot me>

'nuff said!

Here's the deal, when you have over 500 people in a room, working on the roof with smelly materials is a bad (stupid) thing to do. The Convention Centre's ballroom got so stinky we all had to leave. They "may" give us a snack later on, but I have a headache. Blech!

Well, we're here. Kevin Chan has his Mac on the network at the Washington Trade and Convention Centre. Pretty cool. High speed access free anywhere in the building. All you need is a computer that's configured to connect to a wireless network. Cool. I think I need an Mac. It's starting so, buh bye for now!

I'm off to Seattle for a conference.



I'm going to Web Design World for the company I work for. It should be a good time. There will, no doubt, be a mix of artsy fartsy folk and geeks at the conference. I'm sure a good time will be had by all. Carol and Moosh will be here keeping the home fires burning until I return.

I'll try to update this weblog as often as possible from there, but it may be spotty. We'll get back to regualr ranting on Thursday. And, I'm off!

Wow. You can listen to the Addicts MP3 if you like. I don't know how politically correct this link is, but, oh well.

HAHAHA! I'm driving the bus to Hell. My friend Kellie who sent me this link will most likely be riding the same bus.

I guess a lot of the music that I've listened to over the years really sucks. Well according to this guy anyway. I'm offended. Mayahhh!

Hell Yeah! Gimme one of those.

Check out this story. If it's true and he has murdered that many people, he may be the most prolific serial killer in history. Hey doc, does the hippocratic oath ring a bell? Ding Dong!

Websweepings.com had a link to this today. I had to post it. Yikes!

My guess is that Ellen Feiss is very high!

For a long time I have been a huge fan of zombie movies (yes the bad ones, especially). My gaming nickname is ZombieFreak as a result of that. I had the domain ZombieFreak.com before at namezero.com (not as great as it sounds, read carefully) and let it lapse as I was doing nothing with it. Yesterday I checked, for fun, if it was still available and it was. So I registered it again through AletiaNIC (a great company who I use for hosting too).

Last night I whipped up this logo:



and stuck this splash page up. It's going to be an all things zombie site; everything like movie reviews and more general zombie info! Should be fun. Stop by often. If you dare.

This story is pretty amazing. What's more amazing is the video that goes along with it. You'll need the free Real Player installed to view it.

Our favourite show, Six Feet Under, from HBO has been nominated for 23 Emmys this year. It's humorous look at a family that runs a funeral home in LA called Fisher and Sons. Nathaniel Fisher, the dad, dies in the first episode but haunts the minds of his family. Especially haunted is his his namesake Nate who comes home from Seattle to face the family business he thought he'd avoided.

Frankly, having worked in that industry, they do a bang up job. People really act strangely around death. The folks who deal with death and dying with it daily should get medals.



These are the sons of Fisher and Sons, David (played by Michael C Hall) and Nate (played by Peter Krause). Both are nominated for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series is Lauren Ambrose who plays the younger sister of the Fisher brothers, Claire.



She also starred as Chicklet, a multi personalitied teen, in a much maligned and little known flick called Psycho Beach Party prior to landing her current Six Feet Under role.

The other actors/actresses in the series, and a lot of the other tech and creative folks involved got nods as well were nominated as well. It's nice to see shows with truly talented people getting the recognition they deserve. I hope they clean up.

Why would someone as stupid as this moron call himself "The Brain"?

There's an online tool at AnalogX called VIN View. Your Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) can tell a lot about you vehicle. Try it and see.

I can't wait for: Universal Pictures: Red Dragon

We've been noticing a lot of people waving at the train we take in the morning and afternoon. It's a strange phenomenon. The people always have a weird smirk on their faces; like happy zombies. I don't understand why someone would want to wave at a commuter train. It's like waving at a city bus. There were even guys in a rowing team waving this morning.



Some cultures see waving and other gestures as rude or obscene. Body language is an interesting thing to study.

We're having a few disputes about property lines and noise with the woman next door. I think she would qualify as a Neighbor from Hell. She is pretty nasty. We've asked her nicely to stop the things she's doing, to no avail (I don't want to be specific in this forum). Carol had words with her this evening and she spent the rest of her time outside in her back yard ranting about how we are bad people. It's very hard not to feel really angry at this perso. It's like she wants to fight with us. We're seeking legal help etc. All we want is to be left alone. I hope we can get this out of the way. It's making me nuts (and I'm crazy enough).

Every once in a while I feel like heading home to Nova Scotia. I get tired of the big city here and want to go back to the little city there. My buddy Malcolm is moving back to Shubenacadie at the end of the month. I sort of envy him a bit. It's still home.

Lots of history there. The whole city got blowed up good in 1917. See pic below:



Many people died. It was the largest man made explosion until Hiroshima. Dad's mom lived through it. My parents have a silver teapot that was damaged in the explosion and later repaired and inscribed with the cause of the damage and the date.

Save your dollars for your life in the future. I should have put 50 bucks away when I was two.

I guess some people like the really, really outdoorsy types

Too bad you're so camera shy:



Our friendly neighbourhood sys admin.

Waste some time with Battleships - General Quarters.

The three year old Euro achieved parity with the US dollar today. The canadian dollar (which has been around for a long time) is still floundering against it's US counterpart at 0.65 US dollars (see for your self). Sad. I guess any country that names it's currency a Loonie should expect a lack of consumer confidence.

I can remember Dick Stacey's Country Jamboree in Maine on WLBZ offering to take the Canadian dollar at "pah!" (par). Sort of a dumb thing to do nowadays.

If you live in Canada you can go here to find out if you have any unclaimed money in forgotten bank accounts. I, of course, have none but entering random and known names into the query tool I found that Harry Potter needs to claim his $12,358.29. Perhaps more gold his parents left him prior to their demise at the hands of he-who-must-not-be-named.

Carol says that Itchy Richie reminds her of our friend Lorne in Edmonton. When you are on Itchy Richie's page hit various letter keys on your keyboard to make him "do things".

But funny... Lookie here.

As many of you know I love horror movies. I have a huge collection of them on DVD. I've never seen anything like All of the Dead before.

Today is Carol's birthday. She is as she like to say and "ol' leelee". I should have done some gift for her shopping here. Instead she got a bike that she took for ride last night.

I also made her some wallpaper for her computer from a picture I took. Pretty flowers. Here's a small version of what I did:



I love you Mrs B!

UPDATE - Carol says she won't do this or this on her bike.

Also, Happy Birthday tomorrow to the bosslady, Pilar and also my buddy Brett aka Bart or Thumbeye turns the big 4-0! I hope you folks have the best birthday's ever!

Some whackos like Duct Tape way too much. I think the removal of it would be the worst part.

MMMMM Boobies!

I found this awesome site on Daypop today. Check out the meaning of the word mallternative. Teehee!

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, Canada, Maple Ridge, Maple Meadows, Mike, Male, 31-35!

Very cool way for people to findout about my weblog.

Remember my spoof on Martha Stewart last week? National Lampoon has put together a really cool mini-site called Martha Stewart's Doing Time. I especially love Martha's Shiv Cozy.

Hand Fart. Aslo known as manualism. My buddy Paulie is actually quite good at this.

Being someone interested in ancient egypt I've often wondered what my name in hieroglyphs would look like. The University of Pennsylvania has a CGI script on their site to help you find out what your name would look like. Here's mine:



They claim it spells Mike, but I don't have any repeating letters in my name. Oh well.

Some Mummy info.

It was another lifetime ago. But there was a time I probably had more then enough empties to create one of these. You can listen to Eleanor Rigby a Beatles standard played on the bottle organ. Very cool.

is <b>GAY</b> !
Thanks Paulie.

Everyone makes mistakes. Some worse than others. I don't usually come out on the side of someone being arrested. If you do the crime you should do the time. However, some of cops in Inglewood, CA seem to think that they are judge, jury and punishers as well as law enforcment officers. As far as one can see from the videotape at CBS and MSNBC the young man being arrested was complying and was cuffed and under control off the attending officers. They pick the kid up like a rag doll, slam him down on the cruiser like so much trash and then while other officers hold him the boy is slugged by one chucklehead cop. See below:



The City of Inglewood explains action it is taking on it's website.

What I saw was nothing short of outrageous. My buddy Bennett explains that it's not a nice time being a black person in LA. I understand him a little better now. These cops must have outweighed this kid by 100 lbs or more and just beat him like a dog. Sad.

I thought the police were supposed to be there to help. If you want to be a cowboy get a freakin' horse and a lasso and move to Texas. If you want to be an action star get an agent and some acting lessons. Leave the policing to people with some compassion and, oh yeah, a brain.

There was no dignity in what happened to that young man. Regardless of his behaviour prior to what we saw what happened to him was one thing - Wrong.


**UPDATE** 23:21 07 09 2002

Relevant to the earlier Beliefnet post this is one of the books I've been reading lately:



I bought it for Carol a few months ago. She read it and now I've been plunking away at it. Interesting and thought provoking reading to say the least. I would love to meet the Dalai Lama.

Here's a review.

BTW, do you know what the Buddhist said to the hot dog vendor?

"Make me one with everything."

The power went off last night in Maple Ridge again. Carol said that in all the time she lived in Saudi Arabia, a third world country, the power did not go out as much as it does at home. We were going to watch the Andy Dick Show and the I was going to post on this here weblog, but alas. No power. It turns out some ding-dong speeding along Dewdeny Trunk Road smacked into a power pole. What a dork. We've noticed a large amount of bad driving going on lately. Pretty scary stuff.

I called up BC Hydro to report the outage and spoke with the snottiest customer service jerk on the planet. I mean if you don't want to answer phones at a job where people are going to be upset on the other end (which I wasn't actually) get a job raking leaves at the cemetery. That's what I did. I didn't have to talk to anyone else except the other antisocial loonies working there. Where do I file a complaint?

Go to Beliefnet.com to find out. Let me tell you, pondering these questions were good exercise for me.

It turns out I am 100% tuned into Mahayana Buddhism. After reading the info about Mahayana Buddhism I would say that's accurate. I better get out my robe and sit under a tree like Siddhartha Gautama.

She does exist. Here's a picture of her to prove it:



Annoying?

She may even take part in The Osbournes in Season 2.

Another picture here.

It looks as if Martha Stewart may be in some hot water due to suspected insider trading.

If she is convicted of said offense her TV show may look like the following:

This week on Martha Stewart's Living in the Slammer she and her guest, Charles Manson, make booze from raisins and sugar they stole from the prison kitchen. After that they discuss how not to get sold for a pack of cigarettes and what to do to avoid being shanked in the chow line.



Dig the cool pic I did.

I know Canada Day is over but check this out. Canadian superheroes? And no it's not Wayne Gretzky.

It's all back-ass-ward: elgooG

It's getting to be that time again. The trailer for Peter Jackson's next episode of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is ready for viewing. The middle child has a lot to live up to as far as expectations go. The Empire Strikes Back is case and point. This book compred to the first is a little slow, the Gollum stuff should be great. I'm looking forward to the Christmas 2002 release of The Two Towers and the November release of the Extended Edition of Fellowship of the Ring on DVD.

I just discovered this really cool tool for updating and editing this weblog. It's called w.bloggar. It makes editing so simple monkeys could do it. It also adds features that I kind f thought were missing from Nucleus, (although it's an extremely powerful program on it's own) the back end to this site. I quite like this little tool and I think I'll use it. Creating your own weblog is pretty simple. We may set one up for Carol too (that is if she'll use it).

You can download (or learn more about) w.bloggar by clicking on the following graphic:

Blow by blow, swap by swap and growl after growl!
Round after round of feline fighting.

See it here: Cat Boxing!

Just in case you need a chart to follow. It even comes in two parts for you convenience. You can learn a lot about yourself and your intake of dietary fiber. Just click on the links and answer the questions. Be honest:

Part A

Part B

I'm not sure how healthy I am, but it's funny.

Again with the vanilla...

There's always something. Often Mr Gates' OS does not make sense, nor does it do what it's supposed to. ARGH!

I love this. You f***ing guy

In Wolfville, Nova Scotia, one of the towns dad grew up in, there's a by-law stopping smoking on stage. Apparently, in one scene, integral to the storyline, the characters mention it being smoky in the room. I guess the actors will have to act their arses off to bring that one across.

I don't smoke any more. Nor do I think it's a good idea. But this is ridiculous.

Why does it always have to be Nova Scotians. Looks like we're not as sharp as we seem to think. Duh!

This is absolutely horrendous. Carol must be angry at me to be sending such nauseating things. It get's worse.

Is this art? Hell, if we would have known we could sell it for that much, we'd have paid off the house long ago. I think I'm, as they say, full of it. Can it and sell it. Brilliance!

We had fun in Pender Harbour. I was connected via Brett's laptop at my whim. That's how I posted to this site.



I took a ton of pictures with my camera (that I dropped and broke on the ferry). It needs repair at Nikon, but oh well, "shit happens".

I did figure out how to do some cool things with the camera before I frigged it up.

Check out this little animation of Moosh swimming and diving for rocks. It's about 125kb so it may take a moment or two to download.

Hopefully I can get my camera repaired quick quick!

In Florida a couple of pilots are facing drinking charges for reportedly being drunk on the job. The plane was on the runway, but got called back to the terminal. Lucky for all involved.

A word to the uninformed. These two got caught. Odds are there are more.

Hiccup, flaps up...hiccup!

Of course, it could be worse.

July 1 = Canada's Birthday.



Happy Birthday Canada!

Canadians do things just a little different. Take the great Canadian hunter for example.

Enjoy your day. Drive safe!