Zombie Purple

Ow ow ow shit ow ow damnit ow ow ow ow fucking ow ow ow owowowow bloody ankle ow

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You laugh, but it's totally true.

Every New Year's Eve I pray that the forthcoming year brings something good, at last.

Every year I've been highly disappointed.

2009? I still hope, but I'm not overly optimistic.

On the eleventh month
On the eleventh day
They come from near and far away
To pay their respects
To our war dead
By laying wreaths of poppies red

A moment of silence
at the eleventh hour
As the bells toll inside the Peace Tower
Moist eyes on those
Who remember the most
As a long bugler plays "The Last Post"

Written 1992.
Untitled by Lucas Bates is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.


( Background info... )

CNN is afraid of Florida.

At this point, there are 61% of all Florida precincts reporting, Obama leading by 142K votes or so. They've made projections for other states on a lot less so far.

Totally afraid of Florida.

I discovered today that I have just way too many clothes. As in, don't-buy-clothing-for-another-year too many. Go figure.

(Stolen from aphroditeishot) Bold all of the following television shows which you’ve ever seen three or more episodes of in your lifetime. Italicise a show if you’re positive you’ve seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to three additional shows (but keep the list in alphabetical order)
( Cut for your sanity )

So yesterday I went to see The Dark Knight with my nephew. I let him pick the movie and this is what he wanted - no big deal. Normally I probably wouldn't have bothered until it made it to DVD, maybe even until Warner sent my mom a free copy for Christmas or something. (This is how we acquired Batman Begins.)

I'm going to come right out and say it: for me, this movie did not live up to the hype surrounding it. Not even close. It's very hard for me to comprehend why people are falling all over themselves to heap praise on this film and watch it multiple times in theatres to propel it to its $400 million worldwide gross.

Where to begin... How about the first movie in the reboot, to lay some groundwork for my opinion? I did not see Batman Begins in the theatre. I only watched it after the free copy came to us. I didn't see the need for more movies, which would more or less be covering the same ground as the first four. Overall, I thought the movie was interesting, especially since it illustrated a sort of (let's say) alternate history for Bruce Wayne. On the whole, my reaction was largely "meh". Again, I did not understand what was supposed to be so great about the movie. ( More ahead, including spoilers! )

So being the big Stargate geek I am, I was surprised to find out that Don S. Davis passed away a little over a month ago. Even though the show's over and he left after the seventh season, he was a huge part of the show for so long.

Farewell, General.

Oh yeah, I've also been perusing Fail Blog and I Has A Hotdog for funny macro action. It amuses me. And I made my own:

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OK, so I'm not actually broke, but I'm seriously overspent. I dropped $540 in car repairs to get the a/c functioning. I know it's not a necessity per se, but keep in mind three things:

1. I don't tolerate heat well
2. The cruiser already has bad gas consumption and having windows open to generate breeze won't help
3. The car is black inside AND out!

So I'm back to conserving money again, which means I buy little to nothing. I need to try to work my bank account balance back up again. It just generally sucks. I wanted to pick up the new Guitar Hero Aerosmith game. I was planning on taking some vacation time to get some much-needed R&R, as I've been dead tired for the last few weeks - and I wanted to be able to actually get away for a day or three. Oh, and I just remembered that I'm overdue for an oil change for the car, too. Biiiig sigh. It sucks not having a better job. Or at least a better-paying job.

And yes, I'm in pain too - I'm having issues with my left ankle and foot. Last night, I got up after being on the couch for about an hour and a half, stood up and immediately had to sit back down because suddenly I couldn't put any weight on my foot. I tried again after another few minutes and was able to hobble around some. It felt a lot like it did when I broke that foot about 14 years ago, but obviously it wasn't broken. It got better, but happened again later in the night. Today I was limping around the store because the area around my ankle was hurting, and it's still bothering me some now... Not sure what brought this on because I haven't done anything to my foot and haven't been using it any harder than usual. Maybe it'll get better when I have that week off and won't have to stand on it all the time.

So that's what I'm up to. Maybe I'll get more ambitious sometime soon and write some more.

Does not liking Sidney Crosby make me a bad Canadian?

I mean, sure, there's no denying the talent is there, but he feels... Overrated? Or maybe I'm just unconsciously rebelling because he's immensely popular. But either way... Seriously? Team captain?

Oh well.

It's odd, but I just don't really feel the need to do a lot of LJing anymore. But there are some odds and ends:

I'm watching the new Password revival (game show junkie that I am) and IMO, it's not as good. There's way too much emphasis on the "Million Dollar" part.... I mean, why bother having two contestants compete when, out of each game, about 66% is devoted to the million dollar run? At least one of the future episodes is going to have Betty White in it. It wouldn't be Password without Betty White.

As if you probably haven't already heard, but Harvey Korman passed away on Thursday. He was a fantastic comedian... In honour of Mr. Korman, enjoy this clip from Blazing Saddles, my favourite movie role of his:

It's Saturday night.

All the people who are online on ICQ and MSN right now are in Away mode.

There are barely any new updates on my LJ Friends page.

This is maybe a subtle hint that I shouldn't be home on Saturday nights on my computer, but rather out with people. Heh, too late now.

I meant to do this earlier. I'm a known procrastinator though. I was also going to post each line of lyrics followed by the answer, but I'm short on time. So here's a handy link to the list.

The answers:
1. Lionel Richie - All Night long
2. Paula Abdul - Straight Up
3. Heart - Crazy On You
4. Loreena McKennitt - Mummer's Dance
5. Steve Winwood - Higher Love
6. Gorillaz - 19-2000
7. Cobra Starship - Snakes On A Plane (Bring it)
8. B-52s - Roam
9. Two-mix - Rhythm Emotion
10. Mr. Big - To Be With You
11. Boston - More Than A Feeling
12. All-American Rejects - Move Along
13. Rockapella - Carmen Sandiego
14. Republica - Ready To Go
15. Nadesico - You Get To Burning
16. Meat Loaf - Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through
17. Crash Test Dummies - He Liked To Feel It
18. Origa - Rise
19. Beatles - Lady Madonna (Love)
20. Billy Joel - A Matter Of Trust
21. KT Tunstall - Suddenly I see
22. Madonna - Hung Up (Live)
23. GLaDOS - Still Alive
24. Billy Joel - Still Rock And Roll To Me
25. Roxette - The Look
26. Counting Crows - Mr. Jones
27. Black Eyed Peas - Pump It
28. Aerosmith - Falling in Love
29. Seal - Kiss From A Rose
30. Sailor Stars Theme
31. Meat Loaf - It Just Won't Quit
32. Simple Minds - Don't you forget about me
33. Rihanna - Umbrella
34. David Bowie - Modern Love
35. Gwen Stefani - What You Waiting For
36. MOVE - Romancing Train
37. Boney M - Rasputin
38. Billy Joel - The Longest Time
39. K-OS - Crabbuckit
40. Stevie Wonder - Part Time Lover
41. Go West - King Of Wishful Thinking
42. Paul Van Dyk - Time Of Our Lives
43. Beatles - Real Love
44. Yumi Matsuzawa - Asu No Egao No Tame Ni
45. Mika - Grace Kelly
46. Shania Twain - I'm Outta Here
47. Maroon 5 - This Love
48. REM - Bad Day
49. Genesis - Invisible Touch
50. Heart - Alone

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 50 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strikeout the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!

( Guess away! )

My grandmother passed away today.

The nursing home where she was staying called this morning around 9am. Someone had gone in to bring her in for breakfast and saw she wasn't well - not terribly coherent, low blood pressure. She was taken to the hospital and was discovered to have had a heart attack. My parents left, and I joined them after returning my nephew (who'd been staying with us for the last few days). Before she had her stroke almost eight years ago, she had decided against any extra measures to keep her alive, so the hospital arranged to have her taken back to the home for familiar surroundings.

I wasn't really in a good mindset to be able to stay, so I came on home to watch after the dogs, planning to return with my parents tomorrow for one last day.

She passed away peacefully a little over two hours later.

I know this has been a long time coming, ever since she had the stroke in 2000, and I thought I was prepared for it, but I really wasn't. I miss her terribly already.

I don't have any photos of her when she was well, but this one will do - this was taken in December 2001 when she was still in pretty good health.

The funeral will probably be around the middle of the week... I'm just going to cut it off here since it's getting hard to see the screen.

I am again falling in love with the library.

I have this really nice, almost 7 foot tall bookcase in my room, and it's crammed full of novels, textbooks, tech manuals... But I've read all the fiction recently and don't really care to read all of it again. I could buy more books, but why drop the money and add to the overcrowded bookcase?

Which brings me to the library. I'd stopped going. I really don't know why. I actually seem to go through this cycle every couple of years. I'll go, then I'll stop going. Then I'll start going again. This time I returned because I decided I wanted to read James Patterson's Alex Cross books. I had borrowed one from my cousin and loved it, but I didn't realize that the book had a sequel.

I definitely didn't want to try buying them all. The overflowing bookcase, y'know.

I tried using the online system to search for and reserve books, but I couldn't actually request anything since my account was expired. This prompted a trip into a branch for renewal, and I picked up a book while I was there - a non-Alex Cross Patterson novel. Oh, and paid a $2 fine I'd had since 2003. I'd like to know what that was from, but I can assure you it wasn't the reason I stopped going to the library.

Ah, the Ottawa Public Library. One of the few good things to come out of the amalgamation. Thirty-three branches, and access to the entire collection of books by way of the reservation system.

Hell, even before the amalgamation, we had it good in Nepean. We didn't notice anything different except the addition of another 30 or so branches and a lot of books. The NPL had a computer system as well - text-based terminals. Positively archaic by today's standards, but I loved it. They also had the reservation system, so rather than having to head out to Centrepointe to pick something up it could be brought to Barrhaven. And then when I discovered there was modem access to the system... I was in heaven.

Actually, it was initially a bit of a shock when my family first moved here and we started going to the library here. I mean, we lived in Belleville, population all of 35K or so. Going to the library there meant going to the one location downtown. One. Now, I'd say it was easily the size of at least Centrepointe if not the Main branch in downtown Ottawa, but it definitely did not have computerized searching. Card catalogues. Manual.

But I am once again reveling in the glory of the library. And making good use of the online system. I've already picked up one requested book and three more are on the way to the branch near the store... Plenty of stuff to read - just the way I like it.

So much for encouraging myself to post more.

I guess I should do a minor life update. So.... The Christmas shopping season. I did not work the overnight shifts. Be nice if I had, but I didn't. Why? Well, one person I work with, N, went to our GM in mid-October and asked to do the overnights, and he OKed it. I didn't even really get a chance for consideration.... Maybe that's not true, because my sup did say he wanted me to do it based on what he'd heard from everyone else about how well I did on the previous two years. Didn't make a difference.

So I got to work my first Christmas season on the sales floor. It was OK, really. I still would've preferred the overnights, for two reasons: 1) I really enjoy the work and 2) N did not do that great a job. My sup and I talked multiple times about how stuff was not getting done, but the management did nothing to change the situation. Whatever. I've mentioned several times before that I'm pretty much done with the job, and the moment I can find something to replace this for work I'm gone.

Boxing Day went OK as well - I decided to use some of the clout I'd accumulated (and the fact that I'd started the three previous Boxing Days at 3 a.m.) to get a closing shift, so I could actually enjoy Christmas Day and not need to be at home in bed by 8pm.

My Christmas itself was pretty good. Money was tight once again, but my parents got me some nice stuff including a couple of new games to keep me occupied. Somehow I managed to overspend myself. Not sure how.

New Year's came and went, bringing a welcome end to a miserable miserable year.

My dad had been working on contract with this one place for about four months, but earlier in January they ended it. Then he went on to another contract, but after a week they called him back - and hired him on permanently. He's in. He has a steady job, steady pay. No probation period. Benefits coming soon. It's driving, and his pay isn't anywhere near where it used to be six years ago, but we can live on it. Whew.

My car sorta died two weeks ago, too - would not start. I had to have it towed in for service, and it turns out that there is an aftermarket starter or security system installed that I did not know was there. Fantastic. The dealership I took it to for servicing ended up disconnecting the device rather than removing it, since they don't want to risk damaging the car. It works once again.... And I'm kind of regretting the decision to buy the Cruiser. Not because of the breakdown. It's because it costs me ten dollars in gas to drive over to the St. Laurent area and back. And how much it cost in gas to drive to Nova Scotia last summer. I didn't realize how much of a guzzler this type of car is. Oops. Well, much as I love driving it, I think if I can ever get another job, I'll be buying something new. I'll definitely be able to afford it then.

I was also looking at going back to school this fall, since my job prospects are poor to say the least. The only catch is, by the time I started looking I was too close to the application date to be able to decide on time. So this will have to get pushed back another year. Argh.

That covers it, really... Oh, I bought Rock Band. Fantastic game, by far more enjoyable than Guitar Hero. I want to get some people together for rocking.

So.... How long until Toronto declares a state of emergency?