Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

A day or two has passed since Mel's blow-out with her Dad & his girlfriend (though it was mostly with her Dad's girlfriend, and mostly her, not Mel's, fault), and things are returning to some semblance of equilibrium. While she's still not her usual self, she's at least recovering and letting the psychological wounds heal as best she can.

Myself, I'll stick to tenderly nursing a slow-burning grudge, thank you very much. And while I've since discovered that half a bottle of Hakusturu Sake won't hit you as bad if you stretch it out over 3-4 hours, at least I know that at her worst moments Mel was able to be among friends--a very comforting thing since I couldn't be there for her due to my work shift (and as a result, me discovering what happened after the fact).

So it's been no small miracle and relief to me to have seen her bouncing and smiling again tonight. For the most part, all it took was some cotton candy. Not a block away from our apartment complex, a very small carnival opened shop earlier this past week. It's been here before, leasing part of a large parking lot usually devoted to the sale of new & used Fords. In past years, the carnival's lasted through a good chunk of the summer.

In the past, we've never checked it out because of time constraints, hectic schedules and general disinterest. But tonight at Mel's request we walked over and checked out the carnival. It's the standard fare. You know the kind: over-priced, not a lot of rides to choose from, games where you can win a small toy and proudly walk away...before moments later realizing you've just blown $20 getting that small toy.

We had just enough cash onhand to go on one of the rides. It came down to the tried-and-true Ferris Wheel, and a sit-down ride that had you going up & down & around in circles before reversing and doing all that backwards. Mel let me choose. I asked her if she this was really a wise idea she had thought through. Mel then said she trusted me.

Halfway through going up & down & around in circles, Mel shouted to me the words that have since become the title for today's little bit of nowhere. She also shouted a few choice vulgarities when our carriage began swaying back and forth.

But she was rewarded in the end with a very large bag of cotton candy.

I don't know what I enjoyed more about tonight: the temporary adrenaline rush (adrenaline junkie that I mostly am), or seeing Mel giggle profusely as she skipped home and gorged on sugar. Tonight's carnival may have been only a temporary distraction, but it was still exactly what she needed. I haven't seen Mel this happy in days, and it's good to see her smile again. The smiling suits her much better.

Seeing her messily devour an enormous handful of cotton candy like she was a Viking warrior attacking a large chunk of meat, however...

Today's Lesson: if you casually and quietly stand around on the fringes of a movie set, it's remarkable how easily you can get mistaken as one of the crew.
posted by Phillip at 12:33 AM

 

Due to unexpected and unpleasant events from earlier this morning that were out of my control, and which I discovered after the fact, I have decided that tonight my new best friends are half a bottle of Hakutsuru Sake, and one of my fics wherein many dark and bloody things happen to characters I don't particularly like. Anyone venturing into the nearby vicinity might want to be a little careful upon enterring; body parts will be airborne and plentiful.

On a related note, I now hold a newfound understanding of why angry people actually feel soothed when listening to angry music played/sung by angry bands. A very macabre form of catharsis, I admit, but it's carthartic nevertheless.

Today's Lesson: nothing drives your writing forward quite like channeling all the emotions that are dark and vexing. Not recommended on a daily basis, but it still is very effective.
posted by Phillip at 5:58 PM

 

Mel & I spent last night with Donna and Gabe in Brantford. Things were looking optimistic for us as we headed out for an evening walk...until some very ominous changes began to take place. As we strolled down the street, all the people seemed to vanish. The fog started rolling in, and the already cold & damp air seemed to chill us even more. More scattered trash appeared on the streets and sidewalks. More and more stores appeared, being boarded up or looking like they hadn't been used in ages. And then I found an antiques shop with a very familiar name, and I realized what had happened.

Brantford had become Silent Hill.

And with me being the Silent Hill fan and all, Donna made sure that we got to tour the area they'd be using for some of the exterior shots. Yeah, I embraced my inner geek and bounced along, giddily identifying various drug stores and bars and shops I recalled from the game. And in all honesty, last night's natural fog and rain just added to the effect. Alas, there was no camera onhand; I couldn't get a picture of myself standing at one of the more identifiable landmarks from the first Silent Hill: an entrance to a circular brick tunnel, which subsequently is blocked off and rendered a dead end.

I'm still geeking over the experience, and am lamenting the fact that they'll be shooting over the next few days, and I will not be there to see it. Donna has assured me though that she'll take some pics of things as they develop. So now all I can do is gaze out through their balcony window and wistfully think of empty towns, and demon pacts, and everything suddenly going to hell in a handbasket when you come out of the girl's bathroom in the local school. Oh, and kicking evil things in the 'nads so they don't come back to life.

No, I'm serious. In the first Silent Hill, that's how you keep your enemies down. Well, you just have to kick them, truth be known, but where's the fun in that? Though John and I, when first playing the game, only discovered much later on that kicking enemies in the crotch actually had some value aside from being sadistically amusing.

Incidentally, the set right now is covered in snow. I hate snow right now.

And upon rereading the title, I'm particularly glad that I can honestly say it never had to be titled, "I Came, I Saw, I Geeked In My Pants". Or did that just belong in yesterday's little bit of nowhere.


Geek Note to Self: next time, must bring trusty pick-axe. In case the nurses attack.
posted by Phillip at 6:23 AM

 

Remember how, long ago, I mentioned I'd discovered what the term "meatus" means, and subsequently what part of the body it refers to? Well, today Mel gave me the chance to use it in a sentence. I'm very afraid now. It's just one of those words that's both funny and disturbing to hear used in a conversation (at least one not between doctors) , and only if you know what it means. I feel as if I've just violated some sort of English language law or something.

Mel would like to add here: "Wimp."

And on a somewhat related subject, a few nights ago Mel & I took up the task of cleaning up our large storage closet. For the past year it's epic space has been home to a lot of empty, uncollapsed boxes. It took us a few hours, but now there is definitely more room, and our front hall is now significantly uncluttered.

Now protocol required we clean up the uppermost shelves in this closet, the shelves that are high enough for even me to want to use a stepladder. As we were pushing a few re-organized boxes back up onto the top shelf, one box caught on something. I found this rather peculiar and hopped onto the stepladder to see what had been hiding up there.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled down a 2002 issue of a local swinger's magazine! I understand that swingers need specialized magazines to read too, but this was really a case of too much information. I don't want to know that guy who lived in the apartment before us was seeing if there were any girls or guys up for wife-swapping or a menage. I really don't. It makes me fear the reason our walls were repainted before Mel & I moved in. Or why the kitchen counter was replaced beforehand too, though this may explain how that enormous crack in the counter got there.

He also had, we discovered courtesy of some invoices left in the magazine, a lot of medical expenses in 2002 as well. I can only hope they weren't swinger-related....

Today's Lesson: apparently you are a wimp if you can't use "meatus" in a regular sentence without feeling like you've molested the English language somehow.
posted by Phillip at 4:00 PM

 

It sounds almost like something out of a deranged version of Grand Theft Auto, but here you have it:


British motorist injured by flying frozen sausage

LONDON (AP) - A British motorist, driving home from work with his car window wound down, had his nose broken by a flying frozen sausage, an official said Monday.

The 46-year-old man was driving near his home in South Woodham Ferrers, Essex, east of London, when the sausage came through the window and hit him on the nose, a spokesman for the Essex Ambulance Service said on condition of anonymity.

"The man said he was making his way home after work and had the window down because it was such a nice afternoon," the ambulance spokesman said.

"He said he saw a car coming the other way and felt a searing pain in his nose.

"His nose was undoubtedly fractured and he had lost quite a lot of blood.

"It must have been an incredibly lucky, or unlucky, shot to get the sausage through a moving car window. I have never seen or heard of anything like this before."

Essex police said they were investigating the incident.

The link's here: http://healthandfitness.sympatico.msn.ca/News/ContentPosting.aspx?
contentid=8df327f6a7634975b6d181a8d2ecef16&show=False&number=0&showbyline=
False&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc


In other news, apparently I lied about yesterday's "details at eleven." There are no other details. It's not even eleven. But rest assured that Mel celebrated her newfound landed status by, the instant it was official and we were back in the car, making so many usages of the word "bitch" that I could have sworn she was Eric Cartman singing about Kyle's Mom. Not to mention she also added some colourful new vocabulary I've never heard her utter before.

Though in all honesty, Mel deserved her moment to rant, and that female Customs Officer at the Niagra Rainbow Bridge border was in dire need of having the sequoia surgically removed from her ass, or getting injected with a good dose of valium.

Chest stubble status: not very itchy. It's also not growing back very fast.
posted by Phillip at 8:50 AM

 

Mel is now an officially landed immigrant of Canada. And to celebrate, the first words to come out of her mouth upon landing were an impressive string of vulgarities that left me quite shocked and amazed. Ah, customs officials: could you people be any crankier if you tried? (On the other hand, ah, immigration officials: could you people have been any nicer?)

And I managed to survive my first day as manager without the store burning down or me curling up in a little ball, rocking in a corner and sucking my thumb. I'm almost disappointed. Maybe today. You never know.

Today's Lesson: cats may make for good alarm clocks, but I'd still rather have an alarm to turn off rather than a cat letting his fully body weight land on my liver.
posted by Phillip at 5:42 AM

 

So tonight will be the very last Friday I probably ever work again in the store before moving on the Conestoga Mall location. (Admittedly I'd prefer it being the last Friday I ever work at a Bentley store, period, but to all things in good time.) I'm not exactly sure how sentimental I'm going to get, especially since I do have to work tomorrow's shift as well. But for the most part this will be the last real time I get to work with all my friends who share the same sufferings and desires to impale all the stupid customers we meet on a really big and pointy stick.

After that, it's a whole new crew that (heaven help us all, me especially) I now have to inspire and command. The really sad thing is I have no idea what I can get away with personality-wise. Everyone here at the current store knows I can launch into my "Fabuloooouuus!" routine at the drop of a hat. They equally know that I can string unusual words together and create some colourful new vulgarities. Now I'll probably have to be some paragon of virtue and work ethics. Where's the fun in that?

Oh well, in the end all I can do is brace myself for Monday and hope that I'm not forced to dismember anyone and stuff their remains in a suitcase. (I swear, one of these days someone's going to find a corpse in a suitcase, and me shooting my mouth of in this blog will come back to haunt me.)

In other news, this Sunday Mel and I get to make a break for Niagra Falls and the US. Whereupon after crossing into the States and marvelling at its beauty, we'll turn right around and go back to Canada--whereupon Mel can officially land, get certified and everything, and then shortly thereafter apply for a SIN card. And after two years of being stuck around the apartment, she can finally start working here in Canada.

For some reason I've now got David Bowie's "Changes" rolling around in my head. It's appropriate, at any rate.

Turn and face the change... (cha-cha-changes!)

Today's Must-Acquire Item: as seen in Gemini Jetpack, our local Anime/manga fix..."The Strongbad Emails" DVD set. You know you've hit paydirt when your webpage is able to release actual DVDs of its video clips.
posted by Phillip at 6:51 AM

 

I have been meaning to write more in this blog. Really...Honest. It's just that with everything that's happened in the past 2 weeks, every day winds up being a blur, and every evening winds up with me somewhere else and this little bit of nowhere being the furthest thing from my mind. So here's the quick synopsis of everything missed:

-Spring is definitely in the air...and I've got teh bug bites to prove it. I don't know how I managed to get so many of them, or where exactly it happened, but I have anywhere up to 5 different bug bites on my legs. And they itch. A lot. There's what looks like a mosquito bite on the the upper left cheek of my ass. I always keep that portion of me covered; how in the hell did a mosquito get up there? And I do really want to know the answer to this?

-Last week, as part of a birthday present from her mother, Mel & I went to see the Mamma Mia! musical. I am by nature distrustful of musicals, as I'm really hard-pressed to suspend my level of disbelief to a point where I can appreciate people spontaneously breaking into song and all the extras instinctively knowing the dance choreography. Rocky Horror and Buffy's Once More With Feeling up to this point have been the only two exceptions. Well, now I have to add Mamma Mia! to the list. I was very pleasantly surprised and enjoyed myself thoroughly. If you're in Toronto and have the chance, see the show before it ends in May. Only problem: it's been over a week now since we saw the show...and I still end up with half a dozen ABBA songs in my head at any given time. They've even edged out my usual chorus for Scarecrow's If I Only Had A Brain for "daily song that pops into my head."

-The Fanboys! Confic Baka Royale now has 35 pages to its name and is still going strong. Now comes the scary part: 35 pages into the fic, and the "Battle Royale" game hasn't even started yet. But on the plus side, we've definitely got the "introduction" and the "introduction to the introduction" down pat! Already we've got 3 evil Chaosfics thrown into the fracas, with one more particularly fiendish one Servo devised. Ah, we're soaking in it...

-Work has taken a unique and potentially good turn with me finding out very late last week that I'm going to become a manager of one of the other stores in Waterloo. This is part of the reason I've been so busy: having to keep up things at the old store, and at the same time getting prepped to run the new one. I remain ambivalent about the promotion, though: while I revel in the thought of ruling my own store with an iron fist and capricious will, there is the significant chance I'll have to contend with more headaches than I'd prefer. The responsibilities I'm more or less used to, having run two of the seasonal kiosks. Then again, those two flew under the company radar, leaving me a lot of room to play and not a lot of "do it this way" supervision. In the end, all I do is give it my best shot, and if it all goes to hell at least I know I'll be able to rescue a nice set of luggage before the store burns down.

Today's Lesson: 5 out of the 6 DVDs of Vampire Princess Miyu TV series, all of them new and shrink-wrapped, for less than $50 is a GOOD thing. Of course, now Miyu joins about 3 other Anime series Mel & I have where we've got pretty much all the discs except for the first one. Go figure.
posted by Phillip at 5:48 AM

 

In a move akin to Ernie having to "put down the ducky", CTW (and quite possibly PBS, as they help fiannce the whole show) is featuring a new change on Sesame Street. Cookie Monster, the last bastion of rampant impulsive eating of...well, really anything when you look at it (ie., cookies, cookie containers, Gordon's car), is about to go on a diet.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/07/tv.cookie.lessmonster.ap/index.html

I personally am at a loss for what to say. The last of my three favourite Sesame St. muppets have been violated in some way. First Grover (who got ousted by Elmo), then Ernie and now Cookie Monster.

Though I do like Scott Kurtz's take on the whole thing, as voiced by one of his strip's characters, Brent: "Cookie Monster won't be singing 'C' is for cookie anymore. Now he's going to sing that cookies are a 'sometimes food'. I guess parents just can't be bothered to teach that lesson anymore. How about instead we have Big Bird sing that 'parenting isn't a sometimes job'?"


Chest Stubble Status: only mildly itchy and irritating.
posted by Phillip at 5:43 AM

 

Remember that episode of "Family Guy" where Peter tries to prove himself to his father, and manages to get the Pope to endorse him? I personally laughed myself silly at the whole spoof to the campy 60's Batman where Peter exclaims "To the Popemobile!", and then we get the old Batman theme music starting up.

Suddenly that parody takes on a whole new meaning...

Superpope of Colombia
Oddly Enough - UK Reuters

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Pope John Paul II is being reborn in a Colombian comic book as a superhero battling evil with an anti-Devil cape and special chastity pants. The first episode of the "Incredible Popeman" is about to go on sale in Colombia and shows the late Polish pontiff meeting comic book legends such as Batman and Superman to learn how to use superpowers to battle Satan.

"The pope was a real-life superhero, of flesh and blood," said Colombian artist Rodolfo Leon, a non-practicing Catholic who has been working on the comic book for about a year.

Like any self-respecting superhero, the Incredible Popeman has a battery of special equipment. Along with his yellow cape and green chastity pants, the muscular super-pontiff wields a faith staff with a cross on top and carries holy water and communion wine. In the comic book, the pope dies and is reborn with superpowers beyond the infallibility Catholic doctrine gave him on Earth.

Leon said he was saddened by the death Saturday of John Paul II, whom he admired. The artist worried some people might be offended by such a revered figure becoming a comic book hero, but said the reception so far has been good.

Apart from predominantly Catholic Colombia, the book will be sold in Poland and publishers in Mexico, Canada and the United States have expressed interest, Leon said. He also plans to produce Incredible Popeman action dolls. "He isn't John Paul II any more," Leon said. "From now on, he's the Incredible Popeman."

Here's the link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/oukoe_pope_comic

I guess it was only inevitable that we see this. I mean, we already have a Jesus action figure and a Moses action figure. And just to make things interesting, a Nietszche action figure too.

But in the end, I'll stick with my Buddy Christ, thanks.

Today's Lesson: it is counterproductive to your health and overall sense of well-being to down a shot of malt vinegar. Gyaaaaaa....

posted by Phillip at 10:14 PM

 

And so this past weekend, Mel's birthday was capped off by a fear, raging snowstorm and the death of the pope. Quite the ominous way to celebrate one's birthday; it sounds like something out of a Lemony Snickett novel, only I'm sure Mel is not a trio of orphaned kids. At least, last I checked.

In other news, I received an Email today proclaiming: "FREE CONDOMS!"

This made me wonder: just who has been enslaving them? Are there condom mills out there where poor little condoms are chained and forced to perform cheap labour for corporations? What sort of cruel monsters have imprisoned these hapless condoms, refusing to let them run free in the wild?

I'm now filled with morbid curiosity to Google a search for the "Condom Liberation Front." Cringe at your leisure.

Today's Lesson: always check beforehand to make sure that the toothbrush you've grabbed at random is yours. It might just be the dog's.
posted by Phillip at 7:55 PM

 

The back of our apartment complex looks out to a parking lot and the back of another small 6-pack of apartments. There's also a small workshed belonging to that small 6-pack. This morning when I took Shady out for her morning walk, much to my surprise I discovered anywhere between five to six abandoned toilets, complete with bowl and tank.

Where did they come from so suddenly? Had I unwittingly stumbled across some secret toilet burial grounds, a sacred gravesite where all toilets seem to instinctively know where (pardon the phrasing) to go when they're about to die?

Or were these toilets migratory and had just returned from the south? For that matter, did National Geographic do a special on migrating toilets and I missed out? And if so, does anyone have a copy I could watch?

In other news, Mel discovered that her much loved game "Age of Empires II" can in fact be played on Windows ME. She subsequently stayed up to about 7am this morning playing the game. I only know this because I awoke to sunlight pouring through the living room window and the sound of a mouse being vigorously clicked. Afterwards I retired to the bedroom and went back to sleep. In any case, Mel is asleep now and will no doubt be rather groggy and/or grumpy when I have to rouse her in about a half hour.


Today's Lesson: nothing screams evil like an April Fool's prank involving your girlfriend or wife smiling and telling you she's pregnant.
posted by Phillip at 7:53 AM