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!

 



So. Halloween.

A day celebrating the night where the dead walk amongst the living and the ghoulies & long-legged beasties eat drunken idiots too stupid to stay out of obviously bad places. It’s a night were scary-looking children visit houses looking for handouts. Or, if you were me, a day where you’re stuck at a store where children’s sometimes scary-looking parents visit us looking for handouts.

I don’t give a damn if you’re willing to pay cash. You’re still going to have to cough up the extra bit for the HST. And while I say this with a sincere smile on my face, bear in mind this is one day where me dragging your bloody mess into the stockroom will simply garner remarks along the lines of, “Such great gore effects! What did you use for the blood: cornstarch?” So please don’t be a haggling ass. Just this once?

At the very least the evening has redeemed itself with The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Granted, none of the movie makes any sense to Mel--definitely not the camp, certainly not the cheese and absolutely not the cult status it so rightly enjoys. But she’ll sing along to the music so long as sexual innuendo and sweet transvestites aren’t involved with the lyrics. But for Halloween, she tolerates it for me.

Awwwwww.

Or, at least that’s what I’d normally say, but I know there will be payment demanded tomorrow for this. Oh well. Frank-N-Furter is worth the act of bribery. One of these years I do plan on attending a theatre showing of Rocky Horror, especially since I’m shameless enough to even enjoy the hazing for being a “theatre experience” virgin. And doubly especially since I’d make sure to smuggle in some toast, or at least a noisemaker or two.

Mind you, the sad truth is that with Halloween over, the inevitable rush towards Commercialmas begins. Well, mostly. The in-mall Zellers started beefing up their Christmas display over the weekend, and the Bay has had their tree decorations out on display for almost a solid month. Okay, I’ll begrudgingly agree that we now have less than two months to go before Christmas hits us in the face with all the wet smack of a frog from the Biblical plagues. But I’d as soon not dwell on it just yet. Give me one more week of November, and then I’ll slip into the gift-giving mindset. I promise. I might even sing a Christmas carol this time around. “Hot Patootie” counts, right?

Labels: This ain’t much of a blog by the light of day but by night it’s one hell of a lover

posted by Phillip at 7:49 PM

 


It’s Saturday afternoon. The weather outside has been remarkable fickle if not downright manic-depressive, shifting wildly from cloudy-with-sunshine to gloomy-clouds-ahoy to sudden-and-aggressive-downpour.

I have the day off. Mel doesn’t. So I’ve spent the morning running a number of random errands (library book drop-offs, post office pick-ups and an utterly failed attempt to find Pocoyo DVDs anywhere other than online, since at least locally I wouldn’t have to pay for shipping) and the afternoon with a short but productive burst of writing.

It’s the writing in particular that flummoxes me right now. The last year or so has not been kind to my muse. I’ve had a hell of a time just finding the time to sit down on even a semi-regular basis to write. And typically, when I have attempted to, my efforts unravel and I wind up staring at a screen where I’ve typed ten words and found all of then to be wholly unsatisfying, even if they’ve just been picking up wherever I left off with an ongoing story.

I haven’t been attacked by that somewhat over-hyped bogeyman called Writer’s Block, and I can’t exactly say I’ve suffered a Writer’s Burn-Out either. Though I think I have been starting to noticeably burn out in terms of life itself, and that has drilled its annoying little tendrils into other avenues. It’s only been in the last week that I’ve discovered I can still be productive at writing--I just have to do it in the morning, when I’m at my most alert and energetic. I’m a morning person by nature (contrast to Mel, who is firmly in the camp that believes mornings as a concept are blasphemous, and really shouldn’t start until maybe 11am), which certainly helps. But what I’ve come to realize is that by writing in the morning, I’m not broadsided by the end-of-the-day exhaustion that’s been up to this point rendering me unable to focus or concentrate on anything.

This does prove somewhat problematic, since I only have one, maybe two mornings a week where I can just relax and write for a few hours. As a store manager, I primarily work mornings (and prefer to do so, truth be told), so getting up early to write could mean a 6am rise almost every day if I want to get at least and hour so squeeze in before I run out to catch a bus. I fear I might not be able to survive that sort of routine either, and it’ll start turning into the same sort of aggravating exercises I’ve been experiencing most nights.

We’ll have to see where it takes me, in the end. I admit for a time I was ready to just throw in the towel, fearing the best was already behind me; I had been prepared to abandon writing altogether, which would have been preferable to banging my head against a proverbial writer’s wall until I came to despise it altogether. This at least gives me hope that maybe I was just suffering a little bit of teh crazies, and so long as I’m not dead on my feet all the time, as I have been for a lot longer than I’d have ever liked to have been, things could be looking up.

Then again, this whole strange thing could be caused due to the strange fact that I am inexplicably now a woman, and, branching out from that logic, Mel is now a lesbian. At least, that’s what my Head Office seems to be under the impression of.

I wish I was making this up.

You see, recently Head office switched the company hosting our benefits package. To make sure the transition was as smooth and painless as possible, they sent each of us managers a short form to be reviewed and verified for our new benefits package. Mel happened to be looking it over a few nights ago, trying to see how extensive our drug and eyecare plans were.

There was a pause, then a loud shriek of laughter. This was followed by easily a solid minute of gut-busting giggles as Mel tried to maintain bladder control. You can see why I immediately had to ask what on earth she found so funny on a personal information sheet.

She handed me the sheet and told me to pay close attention to my information. There it was, as plain as the penis I apparently no longer had: next to my name, the Gender box had been checked in by Head Office as “F(emale).”

Naturally, no good came of this. I do believe my first response was to exclaim, “They gender reassigned me?!”

To which Mel, being the caring wife she is, fell over from giggling so hard. And she continued to giggle on the floor for a good five minutes as I alternated between stunned disbelief and pure rage as to how epic a fuck-up this was.

Now I’ll admit: on the phone at work, my professional voice shifts up an octave, and I’ve been mistaken as a female by more than a few people for me to admit that I can sound like a girl. But only in that situation. I have not the slightest fucking idea how someone can make the jump from “sounds kinda like a girl” to “fully possesses female genitalia.”

I mean, hell! Right next to that block was my name. And last I checked, Phillip was not a girl’s name. There are some Greek female variants I’ve seen like Philippa, but I lack any sort of vowel at the end of my name. Even more so, there’s not a lot of us male store managers in this company; you’d think I’d stand out simply because I’m in the minority in that respect.

But no, now I have submit the form with the noted correction: the “M” block checkmarked, and a line running through the previously-marked “F.” And they had better accept this correction, otherwise I’m afraid I’ll be forced to visit Head Office on their tab and prove to them that I am a guy. And it’ll probably involve a “no pants” moment, but one that’s clearly required.

Oh, Head Office. First you take my pride and dignity, little by little as the years go by. And then when you realize that isn't enough, you take my penis from me.

Labels: as part of our new benefits package it’s gender reassignments for everyone, reflections on writing

posted by Phillip at 2:35 PM

 


Today is the day after Octoberfest. Which means yesterday was the last big hurrah for Octoberfest. Which ultimately means my busride home from work was filled with half-drunk and mostly-drunk revellers wearing hats with ridiculously long feathers in them, who had absolutely no idea where they were going (but they knew wherever it was located served beer!) but were very friendly and very loud.

But wait...there's more! It hasn't been the first time I've encountered a large band of drunk Octoberfesters on the bus. But this is the first time they brought a wandering minstrel along for the ride. Yep. There was a university student tagging along, complete with an acoustic guitar and an arsenal of very strange and obviously home-brewed songs that had a lot of repeating lines. (The most interesting song involved sneakers of some sort.) Which was probably a good thing, considering most of the Octoberfesters singing along looked like they'd have trouble carrying on a conversation for more than five minutes before devolving into whooping cheers and more beer orders.

In a sad, sad, sad indication I'm growing up faster than I'd like, while I was vastly amused by their antics, I was somewhat disgruntled by the knowledge that there was a good chance they'd make me miss my connecting bus, and I'd get home from work later than I'd prefer. If not for just wanting to call it a day after a long shift, I'd have been right up there with them, having way too much fun. Oh work, you just enjoy sucking the love out of my days, don't you?

Don't worry, this won't devolve into another Emo-blog. Or an Elmo-blog for that matter...which, upon reflection, is probably worse, since you can ignore the quiet sniffly Emo-blog, but an Elmo-blog is right up in your face with its loud squeaky voice.

In other news, "Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl" comes out this week. Mel's forbidden me to buy it simply by virtue of the title alone. And it definitely didn't help my cause when I read her the synopsis in an attempt to win her over. (I guess she still hasn't entirely recovered from the silly-assed schlock that was "High School Girls Swim Team vs. The Undead.")

Labels: there's a Rocktoberfest trying to get on my bus

posted by Phillip at 7:00 AM

 


It's been well about a month and a half of radio silence here on this little bit of nowhere. Most of this has been due to two very specific things: first and foremost, I damn well burned myself out courtesy of the Back To School season at the store, which actually contributed to the second reason, namely that on the days I was able to get home without wanting to collapse, I was too apathetic to even try.

It's been a little worrisome, in a way. I ended up calling out sick for one day and nearly missing another because of sheer exhaustion. Bear in mind the last time I called out sick, that happened a few *years* ago, and was due to me contracting Hand Foot & Mouth. But in 2010, plain old vomit-inducing exhaustion seriously kicked my ass. As a result, I moved at half-speed for an entire week because I knew that gunning around at the old pace would do me in.

Rather fortunately, that particular week ended in a weekend off! Hooray!

Rather unfortunately, Mel had to work that particular weekend off. Entirely. Boo! Hiss! And other such negatory hurlings! Actually, come to think of it, since the middle of September, Mel & I have had opposing days off, ensuring we never get to spend more than a few hours together at a time.

It's not something I can totally be ornery about. I can shake my fist ("Khaaaaaaan!") about the symptom, but ultimately not at the cause. The short of it is: Mel is newly employed, because her old job at the Kitchener store was driving her nearly batshit insane. And I do mean nearly batshit insane. The horror stories about her manager I've collected over the last few months...well, let's just say I'm amazed I hadn't been called up one night to assist in a body dump and alibi creation. (And worst of all, given the rants I've listened to, I don't think I would have felt very sorry for the corpse. At all. Trust me on this one: unless you plan on hearing about two solid hours of pure venom being directed at this personage of retail asshat-ery, assume the worst and don't ask questions.)

But all that is a distant (yet despised) memory, because Mel got headhunted by another store in the mall. They sell very nice shoes that I both cannot afford and cannot wear because they cater exclusively to women. Which is rather sad, since I really liked some of their suede, knee-high winter boots. You know the kind; the ones with a slightly raised hell but the heel is so wide it's not going to do in your ankles by the end of an eight-ho...um, right! Moving on.

In an act that surprised absolutely no one aware of Mel's plight, Mel jumped at the chance and escaped right after the first full week of September. And by all accounts, she's really thrilled with her new job. She's being trained as the new assistant manager, and they seem to be eyeballing her for future management openings. Perhaps most importantly, though, is the fact that her manager is not a lazy, narcissistic, hypocritical nerfherder...which, upon re-reading that, I might have just insulted nerfherders everywhere. I mean, if Han had no issues with being called a nerfherder by Leia, then they can't be all that bad.

In the meantime, life has been continuing as we've adjusted to Mel's new schedule. Ideally come late October into November, we'll have a better grasp of Mel's days-on and -off, and I can coordinate accordingly to ensure some quality time off together. As it is, we have friends and family who need to be reassured that our apartment has not in fact been taken over by sentient robots from the future who are typing this in an effort to blind you from the fact that they are taking over the human race next.


...and I have to go. Mel is mewing from the bedroom.



...and I have returned. Mel is now awake and slowly making her way to the living room couch. All is more or less well with the world.

Anyhoo, the Thanksgiving weekend is nearing its completion. Mel managed to convince her family to shuffle on up here for turkey celebrations and the like, so we've been entertaining company for these last few days. (Which, in a very roundabout way, accounts for why I haven't done any updates for the past 2 weeks: we've been spending out available hours and days off cleaning everything accordingly. Mel's mom is seriously allergic to our cat, and our cat enjoys spreading himself across every article of furniture we have in the apartment. You can see the dilemma here. Multiple vaccumings have ensued.

And yet Canadian Thanksgiving was enjoyed by all. I had to work for most of the time they were up, so I ended up returning home to discover where their latest excursions had taken them (Niagara wineries and Ikea, for example), or that Mel had quite strategically ensured I had as few dishes as possible to wash in the post-dinner lull. There were a fair bit, of course, since Thanksgiving is a multi-item meal, but considering we were eating for five, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been.

Turkey leftovers are going to be a slight issue, mind you. I somehow scored an 15-20 lb. turkey from the grocery store. Beautiful-looking (albeit dead & plucked) bird, and it's compatriots in the display ranged from $40-50. The price tag on mine was $15. It could easily have been a misprint, but it was definitely not a case of someone switching the tags; those tags were connected with a thin metal wire wrapped around the front end of the platic encasing the turkey. You'd have needed to do some serious armwork for a simple prank like that. I spend all of five seconds considering this price before scooping up the bird and hustling over to the self-scans. Hoo-rah!

So, great price for an epic turkey. And Mel accidentally cooked it upside-down. I know, I know; usually that sort of thing happens to me. This actually turned out to be a good thing. Our meat thermometer broke halfway through the cooking process, leaving us to guestimate the time required. Turns out the turkey was cooked for longer than it should have, but because it was upside-down, all the meat was able to stay moist courtesy of the drippings at the base of the pan.

Go figure. Mel has a baka moment, and it actually serves to make a better turkey. If I'd cooked the turkey upside-down, it probably would have burst into flames halfway through. Oh well.

That pretty much brings us up to the present. Mel & I are going to spend our 7th anniversary with some anime and ideally (provided the restaurant we've been eyeballing is open today) some donburi. Mel's had a serious donburi craving for ages. Would you believe that next to no places here in KW that serve donburi. Not even Yummiyaki, our happy mainstay, features that. So cross your fingers and wish us good luck...because this place is all the way in Cambridge. I can't believe the closest donburi meal we have is in Cambridge.

Well, as a parting gift, I leave those of you who haven't already been caught up in it with this new Sesame Street clip:

http://meloukhia.tumblr.com/post/1272028550/sesamestreet-this-tumblr-is-now-diamonds-a

Labels: seasme street, the September that existed somewhere between work and sleep, upside-down Thanksgiving goodness

posted by Phillip at 5:46 PM

 


Today is the first day off I've had in, oh, about a week and a half. And for the next week and a half, the only other day I'll be having off is the Labour Day Monday. And then, ideally for the most part, the Back-To-School season will be done and I can give it the "angry middle finger-wagging of justice" treatment. It's been a particularly bizarre BTS season too, with the start of August being ridiculously busy...and seeing ridiculous amounts of boxes showing up at our doorsteps (thank you, Head Office)...but during this last week of August, both the customer traffic and the stock shipments have quieted down considerably. Not that I consider this a bad thing at all, but I am highly concerned. Whenever something like this happens, I wait for the other proverbial shoe to fall, and we get swarmed. For example, I'd like a quieter Saturday & Sunday shift this weekend, and all indications seem to be pointing in that direction, but you never know. People could still be idiots.

Incidentally, I have once again rocked the store's casbah. After a brief bit o' work in the back, our stockroom suddenly has a floor again. I know, I know; I was shocked when I saw it too. Over the last month I'd come to believe that we would still be contending with stacks of backpacks and storage boxes of lunchbags until Christmas. However, with the amount we've been selling (and more importantly, the amount of restock we are no longer getting back in), I've been able to oragnize almost everything back onto or under the shelving units once more. We can has walking space again! Praise me!

...ahem. I said PRAISE ME AND MY CAPSLOCK OF RAGE!!!!!!1!!!!!





What?! Still nothing? This is ridiculous. Why am I not receiving praises and harmonious monk-like chanting?

Hm?

...I'm getting a report from my wife informing me that, should I desire praises in this little bit of nowhere, I'd first have to find a way to enable comments feature. Also, I'm apparently an idiot and should just stick to somewhat witty banter instead of megalomaniacal ranting.

The inherent problem to this is I've been too exhausted and have no anecdotes worthy of somewhat witty banter. So instead I'll opt to offer you this, courtesy of Chatroulette Trolls. Recall the Old Spice commercials?

It's mutating....

Labels: look at your blog now back to mine now back at your blog again now back to mine, the end of back to school is night (and I cry tears of joy for it)

posted by Phillip at 8:06 AM

 



I'm sure that it seems thoroughly petty for my first update in roughly 2 weeks to be work-related rant. And I'm sure I would agree with you if not the horrid truth of 70.

70 is not a good number. It's not one of those mythical-like numbers such as 3 or 7. It doesn't sound as damning as a 13 (if you're North American) or a 4 (if your Japanese) or even 666 (if you actually subscribe to the book of Revelation being a spoileriffic ending to pretty much everything). And it's certainly not the answer to life, the universe and everything the way 42 is.

Fact is, I like 42. I'd be happy with 42. But no...I'm stuck with 70.

And why is 70 such a curse-worthy number, you might ask? And more importantly, why is this idiot ranting about numbers when he obviously could be doing more poignant posts about life and its inherent strangeness? Well, the answer to the latter question is: 70. And the answer to the former question will be drawn-out and petty and probably sprinkled with a few choice vulgarities. (Though probably not 'twatwaffle', even though it is fun to say, and I've heard quite a few users of it as of late, mileage always tends to vary in tolerance to the first four letters. of it)

Anyhoo, like Wadsworth the butler in the Clue movie attempting to make a point--"GET ON WITH IT!"--why does 70 vex me so?

70 is the average number of boxes of stock our store has been receiving for the last 5 days straight. Not 'seven.' Not even 'seventeen.' But 'seven with a frickin' zero attached to it.' In the past this might have been a manageable thing, but we have no tables out front of our store this time around to hide/display all our extra bits. The space we have in our store is the space we have for storage, period. And that space has officially run out. Nearly every day for the past week, I have spend over 4-5 hours of my shift desperately trying to open up boxes, price the stock within, and then spend an extra hour afterwards figuring out where the hell to put it all. (And bear in mind, this is all betwene helping large amounts of customers.) It's like a giant 3-D Tetris game, except I don't get any gloating rights for my high scores...and that silly-assed Line block still doesn't show up to save my ass no matter how I stack everything.

Stupid Line.

Where was I? Oh, yes! Petty ranting!

Back to 70 in all its evil Bond villainesque glory. I've spent most of this past week utterly exhausted by the end of my shifts, and particularly annoyed. I know that we have higher traffic over this next while, but there's compensating for the crowed and then there's drowning us in backpacks and lunchbags. I've rearranged our stockroom once every day or two to try and stave off the swarming stock, but it's packed beyond capacity and our floor is about to become an endangered species.

And there's still two more solid weeks of this to go before things might start being reduced. Now you can see why I'd prefer 42 being our store's new number. 42 boxes are a lot more manageable than 70. And I bet I'd actually finish getting through them before 3pm too.

Seriously. How fucking unobservant can these Head Office people be? No other store in our area is getting hammered with stock the way we are. And I know for a fact that there was no chance of us even getting any tables out out in front of the store this year. So how is it that they decided to hit us as if we still had tables. Did no one think to check? Did they all assume someone else had checked? Or is it perhaps the fact that their heads are still stuck so far up their asses they can't see Earth logic anymore? If I weren't so damned tired, I'be be foaming at the mouth and saying, "To hell with the readers' varying mileage, these people are friggin' twatwaffles! Why must my store be punished for their incompetence?!"

Maybe if I'm lucky, tomorrow can be a 42 kind of day. I'll just have to make sure I have my towel handy for it.

But so as not to leave this little bit of nowhere with the retched stench of borderline-Capslock rage, courtesy of Ain't It Cool News, here's a picture of Jim Henson, Frank Oz & Richard Hunt doing what they do best: make me geek.

Labels: can't sleep the number 70 will eat me, Hulk smash ridiculous backpack overstock (and then goes to watch an episode of Fraggle Rock)

posted by Phillip at 6:22 PM

 


According to today's AICN Anime, we can expect this sometime in the near future:

A tv anime version of "high-tension, chaotic comedy" light novels Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, concerning a moe version of Cthuhlu mythos evil Nyarlathotep has been confirmed. A flash anime adaptation has already been produced.

As a fan of the Old/Deep/Elder Ones in all their horrifying non-Euclidean glory, I'm both intrigued and slightly disconcerted all at once. One can only assume that friends like Dagon, Iia Shub Niggurath, Hastur--crap, I said his name!--and even Cthulhu will have cameos. And considering how much I've enjoyed the Cute-thulhu webcomic, admittedly the only way I can see the "moe" aspect done well is if all the dialogue is entirely snarky.

We'll have to see, I guess. Though how the hell one can "moe" up a colour out of space is beyond me...

Labels: Cute-thulhu is coming to save the world by eating us

posted by Phillip at 4:48 AM

 


Tomorrow we switch around our store, so our wall o' purses turns into a wall o' backpacks. This isn't a really bad thing. Or it wasn't supposed to be, until two days ago Head Office cheerfully said, "Oh yeah, and while you're at it, we want you to rearrange the rest of the store before the weekend too."

Aha ha haaaaaa...idiots.

So now my energy's already been halved, if I'm lucky, and I still have a massive undertaking to contend with tomorrow too. Thanks, Head Office. Way to give us advanced notice for this one. In an unrelated note, does anyone have a spare alibi they're using?


And in a moment of sending out the wrong message, yesterday I saw a family wandering through the the mall; there were about 3 kids, the oldest maybe on the verge of being a teenager, accompanied by their mom. On the back of the oldest guy's shirt was the large, neon-green statement "World's Largest Member." And his mother was lovingly rubbing his back in circular motion with her palm...right over this particular declaration.

I can only hope that there's more information on the front of the shirt to give this better if not less squick-inducing perspective. Otherwise, it's a brilliant moment of contextual fail, because my mind crashed right into the gutter after seeing that.

Labels: family togetherness fail, Head Office preparedness fail

posted by Phillip at 4:50 AM

 


The Back-To-School season has been steadily creeping up on us, and I've spent most of this past month desperately trying to figure out where to stash all the backpacks, lunch bags and pencil cases that our Head Office is stockpiling on us. More to the point, I've been trying to stash all this stuff in places that don't include the phrase "epic piles covering most of our stockroom floor." And that's been an effort. At least once a week, I've been forced to spend an entire afternoon rearranging the back just so we can still have access to everything else.

At the very least, the backroom clutter ends this weekend...unfortunately because I get to spend an extra 3-4 hours on Sunday putting all those backpacks out in the store instead of the stockroom. Oh well, it's August, and it's the rigeur-du-jour for this place. Although I'll be eternally grateful once the summer ends. This year more than any other it feels like all I've been doing is alternate between work and sleep. And while I'm a fan of sleeping, I'd as soon have more things in my day-to-day schedule than that and work.

(And as a forewarning, once the craziness of August sets in, there's no guarantee this little bit of nowhere won't go all erratic on its updates again. Just letting you know, since I'll definitely be either working or sleeping, or else trying to get an alibi for the line-up of idiotic customers I was forced the murder with their own stupidity.)

But on the plus side, Mel & I did manage to see Inception this past weekend. Highly recommended, if anything for the zero-gravity/shifting-gravity fight in the final act.

There was also the pre-movie highlight involving me acting like a spaz, and Mel attempting to get me to smarten up by smacking her fist into my side. Unfortunately for Mel, I have a rather bony frame (made even bonier due to all the heavy lifting at work), and instead of connecting with a meaty bit, her knuckles connected with my hip bone. And gave her fist a bruise. That's right, Mel bruised herself on my pelvis...which, upon rereading that line, sounds a lot more perverted than it actually is.

This lead to the following exchange, and thusly Today's Lesson:

Mel: "Ow! My hand still hurts from your stupid hip."

Me: ^-^ "And what have we learned about violence from this?"

Mel: [grumble grumble] "Aim higher."

Me: o.O;;;;

Labels: shooting from the hip and then some, whiney blog is whiney, why am I up to my neck in backpacks again

posted by Phillip at 6:31 AM

 



It's more like a beautiful and unique papermache craft made by preschoolers. But at least it was amde by ones who haven't made a habit of shoving crayons up their noses...well, not yet, at any rate.

As for life itself, I've found myself in a bit of a slump. With all the heat and risk of overheating my laptop, my already endangered writing has now had to be placed on hold. (At least until we figure out what's the best angle for the desk fans, but that might take a bit.) The sad side-effect is that I've slid into a sort of ennui. I'm atrophying as we speak. And soon the world will lapse into depression too, being deprived of my literary genius for so long.

...my, those crickets are really chirping outside.

Anyhoo, today I decided to seek some sort of guidance. I looked up, and plainly asked for a sign from on high. And my request was granted! Woot! Within the hour, one of the students from the universities (as far as I could tell she was Chinese, based on her facial features) strolled in to look at purses. And then I bore witness to the shirt she wore.

In the middle of the shirt was a picture of the Eiffel Tower. To the left were the words: CHAOS. CHISH. HAZARD. And to the right were the oddly-hyphenated words: DON-T-DO-IT.

The message couldn't be any more obvious. So, not to worry; I've taken this message to heart and won't invade the Eiffel Tower. Though I have yet to figure out what the hell a "chish" is. I think it has something to do with chickens. And I must admit I'm terrified to Google it, just in case in inadvertently commit an act of Google Seppuku. (I still haven't quite recovered from the "blueberry muffin" search.)


...and if you think that shirt was weird, you should see the one in the store next-door to us. There's a really weird photohop of a giant great white shark's head snapping after some set of shapely legs that appear to be leaping right out of the ocean. And underneath that is some totally unrelated caption about how the rule of etiquette #233 states that "a distinguished gentleman always enjoys three meals a day."

Maybe the distinguished gentleman is a shark, we just don't know. But it does give a great mental image of some aristocratic-sounding shark who has a monocle over one black, nightmarish-looking eye. "I say, terrible sorry to put you in a spot of bother, but I'm afraid I'm one meal short for the day's quota and you appear to be it. I do hope you won't mind the agonizingly painful death I'm about to put you through. By the way, do you have a mint?"

Labels: at least this blog makes more sense than the Tshirts I see these days

posted by Phillip at 4:45 AM

 


So. Here I am, writing in this little bit of nowhere after easily a full-blown month of nothing. And there you are, having already given up on checking it daily and no doubt being stunned that there is something here not dated way back from May. And here is this blog, still looking sexy beneath all that dust.

And to be honest, there hasn't exactly been one good reason for such a gap between entries, oh no. There's been more than a few good reasons. Going back to the end of May, post-Con Report-ish, we found ourselves sitting back and needing another few days off following AN10 just to ease back into that horrid thing called "working to pay off bills." Alas, Mel & I didn't have such days off. For both of us, it was "hey, you're both getting launched into full-day work shifts for the rest of the week." Yep, even Mel was up to her eyeballs in shifts.

Normally this wouldn't have been a bad thing...however, her family was coming up in mid-June. This meant numerous things. First and foremost, we needed to clean the apartment. Mel's mom is nastily allergic to cat hair, and Chance seems to enjoy making sure his fur covers most of the furniture...and the floor...and the air. So, in between tiring work shifts we got to do a total cleaning of the apartment. This included but was not limited to: hardcore dusting, mopping the floors, vacuuming and sweeping not only the floors but also in behind furniture we normally don't tackle.

In the midst of all this, our "cleaning" turned into "cleaning and Spring Cleaning." We ended up going through a lot of our amassed stuff (tm), consolidating what we could, tossing out old things we really had no idea why we'd kept them in the first place, and then rearranging it all so as to hide it better. Of course, now our kitchen, dining room and guest room look pretty darned good, but ow...that was not really a good time to start it.

On top of all this, we also needed to redo the bedroom. You see, redoing the master bedroom was something we've been meaning to get done for easily a year or so. In fact, when we visited Mel's family for our annual post-Christmas Christmas shindig, their presents to us primarily consisted of some very kick-ass accessories to go with the colour scheme we'd decided upon for the bedroom. You can imagine our hope to have at least the basics done for when they arrived; Mel especially would have hated for them to discover their gifts were still sitting carefully in their boxes.

In end, I focused on cleaning and Mel focused on getting the bedroom repainted. (What can I say? She got the hands-on technical genes in her family, and my sister got the ones in mine.) Bear in mind, we were only able to do these things during the late evenings after having contended with tiring work shifts. And usually we ended up finishing all our things by 1-2am, so we were feeling particularly exhausted by the end of all this.

But the good news: in the end, we got everything cleaned in time, the bedroom looks really great with its new colours & decor, and I only got sick on my last shift before taking time off to hang out with her family! Sadly...that last tongue-in-cheek statement was not a lie. I wish it had been. Worst of all, that was a shift I had to split between my store and another store that desperately needed an extra body to help out in the afternoon. I guess the 1-9 shifter called out, leaving just the manager stuck in the store alone for entire 9:30am - 9pm day.

I have no qualms abou helping out like that, but when an hour into helping out at the other store I start vomitting profusely, that's a bad thing. A very bad thing made even worse by the fact that the manager was on her break, getting some needed rest so she could prepare herself for a solo evening shift. Murphy's Law just perfected itself for me that day: stuck in a different store that has no bathroom in the back, and I couldn't stop throwing up for two straight hours. My only saving grace was that the customers came in infrequently, so I was at least able to exercise enough self control not to yarf in front of them. But two small bags filled with you-really-don't-want-to-think-about-it later, I dragged my sorry ass home, wishing I'd taken that day off too.

Anyhoo, Mel's family arrived. Shady sucked up as much attention as she could the entire time, whereas Chance hid from the strange newcomers and only started showing his face in the halls by the third or fourth day. The gang arrived on a Friday and stayed until the following Wednesday. During that time, I did have to work a couple of random shifts, which was just as well since their car could easily seat five and I was the sixth one out. They checked out African Lion Safari (and marvelled at how many idiots still insist on feeding the animals despite all the signs & employees screaming at them to do otherwise), Niagara, and the St. Jacob's Farmers Market. As far as I could tell, a fun time was had by all, and Mel's family quite enjoyed their time up here.

(If you want more blow-by-blow accounts/rants of these trips, you'll have to pester Mel on her LJ. I mean, if you though my blog was dusty....)

That more or less brings us to last week-ish. And I'll admit: I've just been plain exhausted from everything. Going from the Con to cleaning to guests, I've spent as much time lounging and atrophying as possible. Mel's been like that even more than me, and I can't say I blame her. The theory goes that July will be a lot quieter...well, at least until the last week or two hit. And then it's all Back To School, baby.

Excuse me while I curl up into a corner and cry now.

But rest assured, this does not mean you'll be left abandoned once more to roam the desolate wastelands of the Intarwebs. I shall be updating more often, though the frequency of such up-dates is up to de-bates.

See how I cleverly slipped that pun into there? Aren't I a mad genius?

Well...aren't I?


Me: "Mel, the general public refuses to acknowledge my genius! Fetch me the Freeze Ray!"

Mel: "Fetch it yourself! I'm playing Mario Galaxy 2."

Me: "...I'll go fetch the Freeze Ray myself. But be warned, unsuspecting peons! I shall return! MWAH HA HA HA HAH AH HAH HAH HAH!!!!"



Today's Lesson: apparently, you can only purchase DVD seasons of "Ace of Cakes" from the Food Network, and even then they can only be delivered to US addresses. This vexes me greatly and must be remedied.

Labels: I need a vacation after June of 2010, spring cleaning

posted by Phillip at 8:09 AM

 


One of the (few) radio stations our player gets in the store has a new lunch hour schtick: the Movie Marathon Lunch. Essentially, it's a whole bunch of random songs that were featured in movies...though almost all the songs are pretty mainstream and easy to identify which movie they came from.(I'm waiting for someone to request "Freebird" since it was played in both Forrest Gump and Elizabethtown.)

Well, yesterday what did my twitching ears hear but Cindi Lauper's "The Goonies R Good Enough." And, as the title of this little bit o' nowhere suggests, I had a random act of geekery. The Goonies remains one of my all-time favourite movies, and in my opinion has aged pretty damned well. I'm also terrified of some idiot trying to remake it, as is the trend in Hollywood these days.

As for the song, while it played I ended up smiling and replaying in my head the scenes featured around the song. (Where the gang ties Brant to the chair with his own spring-weights and then bike across Astoria to find One-Eyed Willie's treasure.) And then I started reciting most of the lines to myself....

"What are you doing? It took him three hundred and seventy-six lawn mower jobs to pay for that! It's his most favourite thing in the world!"

"Now it's his most flattest thing in the world. Come on!"

^-^ The smiley emoticon is definitely appropriate here. As an added bonus, during the Movie Marathon Lunch the radio DJs play a clip from a movie that featured one of the songs, and callers try to guess the movie. I hedged my bets that the movie would be from The Goonies, since you don't usually hear that Lauper song on the radio. And sure enough, it was! (Sadly, they used a random clip towards the end of the movie, as the Goonies are contemplating getting rescued by Troy while they're stuck in the wishing well. I was really hoping for: "First you gotta do the Truffle Shuffle." "Come on." "Do it!")

However...the first person had no clue what it was from. The wig of shame for them.

And then an unexpected factoid was bounced my way courtesy of the DJ: the reason they featured The Goonies yesterday (June 7, 2010) was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the movie's theatrical release. Yep, Mikey, Mouth, Data, Chunk and the gang are 25 years old, and still aging beautifully.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some nostalgia to indulge in. And then maybe follow that up with The Monster Squad too.

Labels: if you want me to talk about anything else today then first you've got to do the Truffle Shuffle, The Goonies 25th anniversary

posted by Phillip at 6:38 AM

 


Previously, on this blog....






Oh wait--that was last year. Oops!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled Con report:


CON FRIDAY

The morning was a write-off. Mel had to go in for a 4-hour shift ending at 1pm (due to Scheduling Dumbasses at work at her store). I had the full day off, so it was left to me to get up early myself and nab all the usual perishables we'd need for our Con food/meals.

I also had to grab an order from RightStuf at the post office (happily located right next door to the local grocery store). Normally this would have been used as extra swag money for the Con, but RightStuf being evil had some seriously good deals on some DVDs I was going to be gunning for anyways. And with the timing of it all, I might as well have considered it Conswag.

By the time Mel got back home via a cab, I had the car packed & ready to go. Shady came with us, and Chance & Tachi were left in the care of my mother while we were away. Off we drove, to Infinity and Beyond!

No, wait...wrong movie.

Luckily our timing couldn't have been more perfect. We glided through into Toronto with minimal fuss (a minor miracle considering this was a summer Friday), got to the Doubletree Hotel by 2:30pm and discovered *gasp!* no one was in line for checking into their hotel rooms. How the hell did we manage that? It might have had something to do with the epic line-up for the hotel elevators, but you never know. I'm blaming the lobster banditos myself.

We got ourselves checked in, and by the time I rolled my dolly cart o' awesomeness (stacked very high with coolers and Con gear) up to the elevators, the line-up there had vanished. Of course...two out of the five elevators were already out of service due to upgrading (though, if the rumours are correct, this wasn't by choice of the hotel management; mostly it involved serious tardiness and asshat-ery on the part of the fix-it contractors), meaning we had a few thousand otaku needing to glide between floors and only 3 cabs to do the work.

I'm sure those elevators hated us by Sunday. Hell, Gimpy the Wonder Elevator even put in multiple appearances, so I'm guessing they were quite grumpy when all was said and done. With regards to Gimpy, it was his usual fare: he refused to acknowledge the 5th floor entirely, and occasionally enjoyed skipping all the floors going up to just drop us off on the top/12th floor. Oh, Gimpy, how I've missed you.

Anyhoo, we ended up with a room on the 10th floor--best floor, incidentally, since it means you can easily snag any elevator going up or down, and it'll probably be near empty no matter what time of day it is. (Sucks if you're on the 2nd to 5th floors, though; you might as well walk up to a top floor and wait for an elevator that isn't already packed solid with people. You'll have better chances of getting to the ground floor faster.) Plus, our room was right near the corner overlooking the space between the Con hotel and the convention centre itself.

This gave rise to what is fast becoming my favourite AN pasttime: otaku watching! You can just unwind in a chair and watch otaku lumbering along with huge bags of swag, Cosplayers posing everywhere (which turns into the Name That Character/Anime game very fast) and people tempting fate by jaywalking into oncoming traffic. Frankly, I'm amazed someone hasn't managed to invoke Darwin's Chainsaw of Natural Selection yet.

After getting ourselves registered as Con panelists, we idled out in our room until the festivities began. This marked Shady's third Con, and while she knows we'll always return and try to spend as much time in the room with her as we do outside, she will always sulk whenever we leave. Seriously sulk. And glares, as if to say, "Yeah yeah, I know. You're abandoning me for anime. I'll just sit here on your pillows...alone. See if I care. *sniff*"

Though we did spend a lot more time with her in the room this Con than before. And that's mostly because almost all of our panels were in the same block of time on Friday.

Mel had her "Best & Worst Moments in Anime" right as the Con started and the Dealer's Room opened. Even then there was a decent turnout, so I guess swag isn't everything to some otaku. (Blasphemers that they are.) From there we hustled ourselves to the Dealer's Room, since we had only 2 hours to play with before I had a full 4-hour block panels taking up the remainder of the evening.

Naturally, the first stop you must make in the AN Dealer's Room is at Starstruck Entertainment, aka The Cage. Not so creatively called this nickname for the giant red cage it resembles. (Kind of hard to miss.) They've always had insanely epic sale items in years past. This year was no exception.

Hordes of normally $40-60 DVD box sets were going for $10-15 each. I managed to score Nerima Daikon Bros, and all of School Rumble for $25. They even had all of Vandread for $10, a series that only recently dropped down to $60 elsewhere. Damn, I want to know how they scored this! And more importantly, what they'll have next year.

Mel also scored a Kirby plushie (Kirby from Brawl, where he puts on a chef's hat, grabs a frying pan, and uses his final move to suck all his opponents into a giant soup pot to boil them for lunch) and I scored a Battle Royal explosive neck collar. I also was surprised to discover that the shirt I wore today--"The flying hamster of doom rains down coconuts on your pitiful town"--was a surprise hit, with a lot of people asking to read it, and then ask where I got it.

Sorry, everyone! It was a gift from a friend in the States, and I couldn't even tell you where he got it from.

After a hasty once-around the room (wherein we grabbed some manga titles we'd been hunting for, and Mel bought a gorgeous kanzashi from Maral's booth), it was off to more panels!

Yuu Watase: a small showing of people, but they were very interactive and fun to talk with. We made a few of them converts to some series, and overall I think it went quite well. We'd probably have had more of an audience if it had been on Saturday, but what can you do. I'll still take a small but fun audience over a large sedate one.

FicFicBoom: with no "cyanide" pills to kill us off for bad ideas this time, I opted to bring the Wig of Shame. I think Nightbreak only had to wear it once, whereas the rest of us had it on (or at least were threatened with it) three times easily. This remains one of my favourite panels, if anything for Nightbreak, Gaffney, Savage and myself resonating off each other's terrible writing ideas and making a bad potential story even worse. Next year we're contemplating having a panel devoted strictly to creating an epically horrible fanfic.

SailorMoon: a large audience this time around, and there was a lot of interaction. Especially (if not sadly) with the preteens in the front row who were in dire need of some Ritalin and an indoor voice. It's great to have the enthusiasm, but not the volume when you're trying to make sure you can hear everyone in the room and vice versa. Ah, the enthusiasm of youth is wasted on the young, I believe the phrase goes. Despite that, I was pleased with how the panel turned out.

Fandom Entitlement: this was our first year trying this one out (the inspiration for it being a panel Christalia had been on at a Writers Convention in the spring). Timing was against us for the most part: it was late at night, we were competing with a dance, a rave, an Anime Hell viewing, and most otaku just being wired for their first night at the Con. But once again, the small crowd we had was very interactive and had some good ideas/discussion points, and we had a great set of panelists.

By now it was midnight. (Hey, I warned you it was long block of panels.) So Mel & I trudged up to our room, took Shady outside to pee and retired for the night.



CON SATURDAY

Due to some slight technical difficulties with my own portable alarm clock (that had absolutely nothing to do with me accidentally dropping it on the floor and effectively breaking it just as I was packing it into my suitcase before we left for AN), we had to set the hotel alarm to wake up. Loud little bugger too, but it's just as well. I dragged my groggy butt out of bed at 9am, showered, took Shady out and had breakfast.

By now, it was about 10:00 and Mel was conscious but not awake--as is her usual morning state. I've long since learned that in her world waking up before 11am is blasphemous, and anyone who forcibly tries to poke her awake will not only lose their fingers, but have said digits shoved into any number of one's orifices.

We also made an interesting discovery: our floor had all the ladies who were participating as waitresses in the ever-popular, maid-themed cafe for the Con: Cafe Delish. You can imagine my surprise as we walked out into the 10th floor elevator lobby, only to be greeted by easily over a dozen women in frilly, black & white maid costumes. The following conversation then ensued:


Me: ^-^ "I think I've died and gone to fetish heaven."

Mel: ^-^ "Oh, death is certainly coming for you if you don't stop eyeballing them."


We left the maids to their serving, and headed over to the convention centre. Considering how we'd already acquired most of the "Hitlist" swag we'd been eyeing, the Dealer's Room didn't hold an OMG MUST GO MUST GO MUST GO allure. We meandered on over, had a more thorough walk-through, bought a few more things, said hi to Kevin & Jason at the Dragonstar booth, and then went back to our room for lunch.

This pretty much describes how most of the rest of Saturday & Sunday ended up. We'd meander over to the Dealer's Room in the convention centre, meet up with random friends like Matt or Jen or Nightbreak, then meander on back and relax in our room whilst watching the otaku. I suppose it comes with the territory of being what would be considered an Old School otaku. I know there are otaku who've been in the game longer than I've been alive, but with going on near 15 years of being hooked on anime I think I've earned the right to be a little more laid back. It's fun watching the newer (and usually younger) fans scramble wildly about; their enthusiasm is certainly contagious, but I've come to enjoy not having my entire Con schedule booked solid with one activity/panel/event to scramble to after another. That, and I really really enjoy having more than 4 hours of sleep a night for the weekend.

Today I opted to wear my newly-purchased Battle Royale collar, as well as the official Battle Royale shirt I'd received a year or so ago from Mel (an advanced birthday present she'd bought while at the con). And once again, in a puzzling way, I was a hit. A lot of people were stopping me to ask where I'd acquired either the shirt or the collar (and sometimes both). Many were disappointed that I'd gotten the shirt years prior; I guess no one was selling BR shirts this year...which I guess someone needs to remedy for next year. Even more people were stunned when I told them I'd gotten the collar from the Dealer's Room. I don't know how you couldv'e missed the display: so long as you took your time looking over each vendor's table, you'd be hard-pressed to miss a 3-foot tall rack of exploding collars.

Anyhoo, skip on ahead to the afternoon, there was the Fanfiction Panel. Once again, a good showing of people (who seemed oddly preoccupied with self-inserts and Mary Sues, if the numerous questions related to those topics is any indication) with an equally enjoyable group of panelists. Mostly. Nightbreak, Mel & Tim were excellent otaku & fellow writers/editors to interact with. He Who Shall Only be Known As SAM, on the other hand, tends to represent most everything I find wrong with fanfiction, fanfiction writers and writers in general. Thankfully he was kept reined in for most of the panel.

By the time Saturday evening rolled around, a bunch of us (including Ysa & Chris) ended up gravitating to the bar down in the Doubletree's main lobby. Once again, it seems odd that the best times of the Con for me came when we were just chatting with a bunch of friends/fellow otaku, but maybe it's the age talking. That, and I'm probably jaded from having seen so much anime in years past. You even mention the word "fansub" to a recently-inducted newbie, and they'll stare blankly at you. I fear I'm just one OVA away from prattling on about how otaku today have it easy, and those damned newbies need to git their Cosplayin' asses off'a my lawn! Wait...I did actually talk about how otaku today have it easy.

Oh God, noooooooooo!!!!!



Uh, what was I saying? Oh yes, the bar. Mel & I bowed out sometime around the 11pm mark to go visit Roupen at the JPop dance. The crowd was huge, the music was loud and security was one rubber glove away from performing full body cavity searches.(A sad necessity, considering the last year or two's troublemakers. Morons that they were....)

Despite the massive bass beats and screaming throngs, it was interesting to hear Roupen talk about how must of the used-in-anime songs weren't in as high demand anymore; most of the requests coming in from both the pre-Con online polls and the onsite list were primarily JPop and KPop (Korean pop). And his all-time favourite song "Caramel Dancing" was being requested on every 5th line.

He ended up using it to placate fans after the power blew out and they had to reset the systems. Five minutes of otaku chanting for music and slowly drawing closer to the DJ's stage makes me realize how a goldfish must feel as it's slowly being lowered into a tank filled with piranhas.

Sadly, once again I think my age is starting to show. I used to love being out in the dance itself, but for the last few years I prefer soaking up the energy from afar. I don't think my body has enough stamina in it these days to go all-out on the dance floor for a few hours. But hey, that won't stop me from at least stopping by and sampling the frenetic euphoria of the crowd.

Mel & I ended up bowing out from the dance and retiring by 2am. A decent hour, if you ask me, especially since we had no high-priority events left to be paranoid about missing.


CON SUNDAY

I think I ended up groggily rising around 10ish. Mel was up & about by 11am. The one thing I like about Con Sundays is how everyone has this tired but satisfied air about them. Most of the otaku are exhausted but still stoked on that last shot of adrenaline as they try to squeeze in as much enjoyment out of the last day as possible.

No fancy shirt was worn today, incidentally. I was just a generic otaku in the crowd. I'd have worn the Puchuu hat, but I didn't realize until after we'd arrived in Toronto that I had left it behind. Dammit.

With me having purged most of my Conswag cash, and Mel not really having anything left to shop for on her hitlist, we once again meandered the Dealer's Room. I tossed my last bit of cash into Artist's Alley. We'd gone through the day before and looked to see if anything caught our interest. I nabbed two prints from an artist who didn't really do the anime/fanart thing, but had environment pictures that I can only describe as Scenery Porn. Epic, beautiful and they looked like they can right out of a beautifully rendered game. If this guy isn't employed for his artistry skills, then there truly is no justice in the world.

As the Con wound down into the afternoon, Mel & I hit the pool briefly before once again making our now-traditional post-Con dinner at the Doubletree's Ginko restaurant. We would have gone swimming after dinner, that pesky "no swimming after eating" rule be damned, but the waterslides would have been closed by then, and I've been jonesing for some waterslide action for the last 2 years. So hurrays for waterslides! (And amazingly enough, the pool temperature wasn't freezing. Just a pleasant luke-warm temp.)

I think what I like about eating at Ginko's after the Con is how the atmosphere there is completely at odds with the atmosphere of the con. After a weekend of massive crowds and constant noise, it's great to unwind in a small Japanese restaurant that's both quiet and not filled with people. This might probably be due to the fact that Ginko is quite upscale, and most otaku would as soon spend $100 on swag rather than a nice dinner...but I'd as soon go for dinner.

Does this shame my honour as an otaku? Or do I get to prattle on about this makes me an upscale nobility-type otaku? Do I get bragging rights?

Anyhoo, Jen & Matt were up for dinner, so the four of us had some fantastic dishes (as always, when it comes to Ginko's cuisine). Matt also bought a large bottle of really nice chilled sake for us to drink with the meal. I think he & I ended up doing the equivalent of two-fisting our drinks, as we had about two glasses for every one that Mel & Jen drank. Buy hey, sake that good shouldn't be left to waste in the bottle. The downside is: after tasting ambrosia like that, I fear some of the other chilled sake I normally drink will taste like engine grease. I spend enough money on manga as it is, I don't want to be a sake elitist too! My wallet can't take that level of abuse!

With dinner over, we chatted a bit with Jen. Mel ended up calling it an early night and crashed, but I headed over to the Fancrew Dead Dog party being hosted by Gaffney & Nightbreak in their room. It was great to see everyone again, including some who hadn't been at the Con like Sarah & Ginny, and lots of festive celebrations ensued. We got to see Chris and his friend try 100 Year-Old Eggs...which disturbingly look like they're filled with a blueish sort of jello. Just don't ask what that goo is. Your brain will despise you for it.

Sadly, I ended up missing Storytime with Chris, but I didn't want Mel to feel neglected. After saying farewells to the gang, I headed back up to our room, chilled with some manga and then crashed.


POST-CON MONDAY

The best thing about coughing up the extra cash to say in the hotel over Sunday night is that you're not stuck for hours out in the hotel lobby or on the convention centre grounds guarding your horde of swag & suitcases. Especially good for us, as I'm not about to leave Shady in the car for hours while we stroll about.

I managed to get myself up for 9am, and shuffled downstairs to say good-bye to some of our further-than-TO travelling friends. Alas, I missed Ysa & Chris; usually they head back to Halifax later in the day, so I thought I could catch them hanging out in the lobby. This time around they had an early, early flight out, so I missed them entirely. Dammit. Sad panda in the snow, and all that angsty-ness.

But luckily I was able to see Gaffney & Nightbreak before they left for their respective planes & trains. Once Mel & I checked out of our rooms later in the morning, we packed the car and then hung out in the lobby (with Shady, of course) with Roupen, Matt, Jason and a few other friends & associates. It was there that Roupen mentioned last year's car accident at the end of the Con, and how it ended up giving rise to this magnificent Demotivational Poster:




(Which only makes sense if you're: a) an otaku, and b) know anything about the series Deathnote. But magnificent nonetheless.)

While the rest of the gang headed over to Perkins for lunch, Mel and & had to head home...as restaurants have some silly policy about not letting dogs into their establishments. I mean, honestly now, our little Shihtzu could easily be considered a seeing-eye dog, right? Right?

We got home with ridiculous ease and time to spare. Suddenly it was 1pm, and we had nothing left to do all day. This sort of thing hasn't exactly happened to us in...oh, wow, maybe 3 months. I puttered about unpacking the food and organizing our swag pile. (Hey, the new manga & DVDs won't integrate themselves into our collections!) Mel just collapsed onto the couch and decompressed from the noisy crowds. One disadvantage to working in retail: when you get the noisy crowds day-in and day-out, and uber-crowd like the one at AN tends to aggravate you pretty quick. Holidays are meant to escape from such things, but eh, what can you do? For all the good things the Con brings, I'll deal with it!

And that's pretty much it. We relaxed in the evening watching some of our newly- acquired anime DVDs. I took Shady out for a long walk and got to see not only a large gathering of ducks & ducklings in the nearby canal, but also a pheasant (or at least a semi-large and obviously flightless bird related to a pheasant) prancing about in front of the local elementary school. I've never seen a pheasant in this area before, so it was a bit of a surprise.

You can imagine I had to hold Shady back from chasing this new and interesting quarry.


So. There it is. An ultimately long-winded account of Anime North 2010. Mel & I have already signed ourselves back on for next year, so I guess it's just a question of what happens between now and then. But if I'm not ruling the world by AN11, I think I'm going to be sorely disappointed with how my New Year's Resolution didn't pan out.

Labels: Anime North 2010 Con report, in my fetish heaven all the maids will also wear neko-ears and glasses and--OH GOD NO I'M SORRY MEL IT WAS JUST A JOKE JUST A-------

posted by Phillip at 5:35 PM

 



Sometimes this poor blog does get neglected. Sometimes it does feel like this blog has suffered the fate of the ark at the end of the Raiders movie, where it's gotten boxed up and hidden away with hundreds of other such boxes in a secret, dusty warehouse whose identity is only revealed later on in a slightly underwhelming sequel that features sad-looking CG groundhogs. That's what this blog might feel like. Only without the CG groundhogs.

But I could post a picture of a CG groundhog if that helps!


...or not. Mel's threatened me with a sharp elbowing to one of my favourite kidneys should I attempt that. Part of the reason for that grossly long-winded analogy is due to the ridiculously busy week preceding the happy reprieve that always is and has been Anime North...followed swiftly by going right back to work as usual. (Which sadly tends to end with me passing out on the couch by 11:30pm.)

There were interesting points of reference across the board, of course, so here we go!


LONG-WEEKEND SATURDAY (BEFORE THE CON)

Mel decided to surprise me by redoing the tiling in our main hall and front entry. And our apartment managers decided to surprise her by painting the doors and replacing the locks for every apartment on our floor. Now I'll admit that while I liked the old floor tiles, the new ones look spectacular and really brighten up an otherwise darker spot in the place.

On the other hand, neither of us were pleased by the fact that we were forced to leave the door to our apartment open for 8 hours that day. Sure, the supers said they had someone on the floor to keep things "secure" but with an L-shaped hallway and 12 apartments to deal with, I know I held little faith in them keeping some random bastard from waltzing on in to our place and sashaying out with some DVDs, a Wii and the dog. Blind luck that Mel happened to have the day off, so she was able to putter around the apartment and keep any prying eyes moving right along.

The pets weren't too pleased, though; our front door had to stay open while it was being painted and then while said paint dried. Shady's not too bad with staying away from the door, but Chance being a cat...well, he's got an unhealthy obsession with the hallway as it is. Both of them had to spend a greater chunk of the day in the bedroom, which normally they don't mind...but in a case like this, if we're around they think being sent to the bedroom is punishment for something bad they did (ie, peeing on the carpet). So the poor twosome ended up thinking that we were angry with them all day when that wasn't even remotely the case.

Grr. Argh. And all that aggravated jazz. (Which would make for a great band name. Tonight's performance will be Aggravated Jazz, featuring hits from their smash breakout album, "Dance Robot Dance!")



LONG-WEEKEND SUNDAY

Work, work and more work. But I volunteered for the shift to help max out my hours for the week, so it was passable. And Mel opted to work at her store too, since I wouldn't be around. So happiness is extra cash in the next paycheck. Then once we got home, I made dinner and washed dishes, while Mel worked on more of the floor retiling. (Subsequently whereafter her kneecaps and back had serious points of contention with her.)

It was then that we discovered we were going to be kidnapped by some friends, Caitlin & Mike, and taken out for a picnic barbecue. I like these sorts of kidnappings. Yet little did we know the horror that would befall us....


Mel: "Why are you being overdramatic?"

Me: "It's a blog, I have to be. Besides, remember what happened that holiday Monday?"

Mel: "Refresh my repressed memory, and you lose a testicle."

Me: "...do I at least get to choose which one I can keep?"




VICTORIA DAY MONDAY

Hooray for a day off! Now we can sit back and relax and...what was that, Mr. Building Super? You need to change out the locks on our door? TODAY?

At the very least, once again the timing ensured we were around and not letting our door be thrown open to chance and random strangers walking off with my Backstreet Boys CD collecti--er, I mean, all our console games. Mel tried to sleep in, and I kept guard as the Super attempted to remove our old deadbolt and install a new one. Theory goes it should take no more than a half hour at most, yes?

Cut to nearly 2 hours later, when our new deadbolt is finally installed and door can be closed. Apparently, our old deadbolt (which preceded our arrival into the apartment) wasn't inside the door but mounted on the back. Great for having it auto-lock behind you so you don't always have to doublecheck and make sure you locked it upon leaving...but not so good if it auto-locks and you forgot your keys inside. (Don't worry, it only happened to Mel once...well, maybe twice.) The back-mounted deadbolt was easy for them to remove, but it also meant they had to drill a hole through the door and the doorframe to get the new locking system in.

Still, you say, shouldn't that be easy with the right drill?

Good news: they had the right drill. Bad news: our door frame had a giant metal plate right overtop where they needed to drill. Even more bad news: this metal plate was fused into the base building structure, and wasn't coming off, period. They had to carefully bore a hole through the metal, slowly enlargening it as they went.

This would be where I facepalmed myself.

And to think, originally they had been planning on finishing up their painting job on some of the other apartment doors, eventually getting to our locks later on in the afternoon. I happened to mention them in passing that morning that we were going to be gone by early afternoon. Guess who didn't have a key for our deadbolt lock, and needed us to be physically present to let them in? Sometimes it pays to see if you can get shuffled up to the top of the priority list. ^-^

Anyhoo, once they left us in peace, we got hastily showered & dressed, and were whisked away to one of the city parks. The weather was beautiful: sunny without being humid. Naturally this meant everyone was at the park. Blind luck we found a spot on a quiet sideroad nearby. We didn't have to walk very far at all.

Mike brought his portable charcoal BBQ and some hotdogs, we brought some drinks & snacks, and everyone spend the entire afternoon and a good chunk of the evening just relaxing. Shady came along, as well as their dog Montie (who adorably resembles a Wookie crossed with a poodle), and they spent most of their time lounging...or in Shady's case, asserting her seniority over another dog three times her size. That's our little diva.

Our picnic ended up being established right next to part of a large figure-8 pond in the park. This was deliberate since we could use the shade from the surrounding trees, and also so Mel could get her fill of sheer cuteness in watching all the ducklings swimming in the pond. And there was cuteness. And she squeed a whole lot that day.

Shady, on the other hand, discovered something new to chase. As some of you may recall, years back she'd taken up a hobby of chasing small birds. That came to an end when she finally caught one. In spite of me & Mel actively allowing her to chase them, she never went all-out the way she used to. This does seem to match Shady's overall personality: it's never the prize she's interested in, it's the chase. And since she caught one bird, all the others no longer seemed interesting to chase.

Then she discovered geese.

Now Shady's pretty well-behaved. As a result, she's off the leash a fair bit, even outside, and she still sticks close to us. We let her off the leash for a bit in the park, assuming she'd be okay. Then the following conversation ensued:

Mel: "Well, I'm not exactly sure why you'd even want to do something like that. It just irritates the--SHADY, NO!!!"

The sudden look of horror on her face was priceless. I spun around just in time to see a little white blur shooting out across the grass, followed quickly by a large flock of geese flinging themselves into the water. Yep, Shady has decided to hunt more exotic quarry. Quarry that's her size if not larger. Needless to say, she went back on the leash for the rest of the day, which she mostly didn't mind, though whenever some large clusters of geese were nearby she strained herself trying to get at them. I did run with her a few times to let her chase a few, but she was leash-locked the whole time. In fact, the only geese that didn't trip over each other trying to escape her were the nannies looking over the goslings. Yeah...we didn't let Shady get anywhere near those ones.

I should also mention the heron we saw in the pond. Beautiful bird, but I'm pretty sure he was stalking us. He was already perched in the water near where we set up our picnic, but after we arrived he kept getting closer and closer, always tipping his head to the side or looking straight at us. I'd be turning around every now and again, only to discover he hadn't left.

Then he tried impress us with his fish-catching skills. Seriously, he nabbed between 5-7 fish while we were there. A lightning jab into the water, and he was pulling out all sorts of fish, usually the latest one being bigger than all of its doomed predecessors. The allure of nature at work quickly ended when he swallowed a particularly large fish, and Mel squeaked about how his neck was wriggling as the fish slid down to his gullet.

Mmmmm, tasty. So, who wants hotdogs?

Anyhoo, the day sailed on by with alarming speed despite us doing very little. Even then, it was a fantastic day off; I need more of these, especially ones where I get paid not to have anyone at the store. Canadian government, take note of this.



TUESDAY - THURSDAY (BEFORE THE CON)

Lots of work, and lots of hours of it. Mel & I both worked full days for Tues/Wed, those being opposite shifts to boot. Not entirely fun, especially when we had to pack and get all of our final bits of prep work done for the impending Con. Mel at least had Thursday off, and was able to relax as she finished off her hitlist.

And me...well, I ate some bread that had gone a few days past its 'best before' date, so I got to spend the evening before the Con throwing up. Yay! But at the end of the night, we were still able to get most everything packed, the dishes washed and the apartment cleaned.

We'll leave the report here for the time being, if anything to leave you foolishly loyal readers with the mental image of me yarfing in the bathroom.

With any luck, you'll be able to sample the concluding bits later today or tomorrow.

Labels: AN10 Pre-Con Report, apartment door fails, don't look but I think that heron is following us, Shady vs geese

posted by Phillip at 4:33 AM

 


You know, sometimes my store’s Head Office frightens me. This doesn’t happen often. Oh sure, they aggravate me a lot, and they infuriate me on an almost weekly basis, but frighten…well, those are special moments that leave me curled up in the corner of my bed wishing that I could instead be worrying about the clown eating me should I fall asleep.

Consider this past Friday: an Email came in from Head Office, asking us to remove this extra tag that could be found dangling off a bunch of cosmetic/train cases. Now these cosmetic cases are scary enough, and like 50% of most our stock left me asking what sort of groovy drugs our Buying Department’s on, because…damn. Generic colours are fine by me, but honestly--zebra print with neon pink or green trim? Or a black background with kissy-lips plastered all over it?

But I digress. So there was an extra tag hanging off these cases, and Head Office kindly requested we remove them. Now up to this point I hadn’t really taken a closer look at any of these tags; as far as I was aware, they just featured the “JGarden” label and a brief but tedious description about the product. Nothing stated there to earn their subsequent removal, in my opinion, but Head Office doesn’t do this sort of thing without a reason.

I checked the offending tag. And I kid you not, here’s what was written on the lower half of it:




First things first, of course: it seems oddly contradictory to say it complies with safety standards but could still warp you and/or your progeny’s genetics, but I guess it’s the same principle for the warnings on cigarette cartons.

And second: what in the fucking nine levels of hell?!

I don’t know about you, but that sort of warning doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me to sell these things to random customers.

Okay, so now I understand why Head Office wanted us to cut those tags off (and I can only imagine the sort of panicked calls they got from customers who bought these cases when the warnings were still affixed), but it’s not exactly like I can un-see that warning. If someone asks about the quality of one such case, how do I respond? “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. It’s a perfectly normal cosmetics case and does not potentially give you cancer or scary little mutant babies. Honestly! Would I lie?”

The rationalist in me does try and calm me down by pointing out that warnings like these are pretty much the rigeur du jour in the US. Plus, without any further studies or information to back it up, the warning itself is quite vague and almost caters to fearmongering. And yet…birth defects, people! I know that everything gives you cancer these days, but birth defects aren’t usually something you expect to see on a list of potential, malevolent side-affects.

I’ve got a stack of these in the back, so does this mean I have to worry about shriveling testicles from handling them?


Anyhoo, to help cleanse my little bit of nowhere’s palate (and to help you brainbleach away the mental image of malformed testicles), here’s a little something I picked up off from Comixed, an affiliate website of “I Can Has Cheezburger”:







I laugh because I can absolutely hear Statler & Waldorf performing this bit.

I cry because I know the punchline is also true.

Labels: This tab contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer or birth defects or seeing the dead or spontaneous outbursts of lines from Avenue Q at inappropriate times

posted by Phillip at 7:02 AM

 

This past Friday, our evening staffer put out the recycling bin so the mall maintenance staff could empty it. Sometime between when she left that night, and when I showed up to open the store the next morning, our recycling bin vanished. Now as far as I know, bins like that are not want to pick themselves up and jet off to Vegas for a weekend of binge parties, gambling and trying to get a gig as a corpse on an episode of CSI. This can only mean that someone else walked off with our recycling bin.

I know, I know: I'm thinking it too. What sort of a deranged idiot steals a recycling bin? Well, apparently the answer to that is: someone who's traversed our mall before. Thankfully, when apprised of the situation, the mall admins managed to find us a replacement recycling bin--and put our name on the side of it in big, black permanent marker letters. I'm trusting that the next time we put this one out, it'll still be there waiting at the front doors the next day. If it's not, I'm going to have to sadly admit that KW is so silly that it's under siege from a ring of recycling bin thieves.

In other news, yesterday I saw the following slogan on the slingbag of a university student:


And I'm inclined to agree with it. We should all try to be a little juicy, as Soilent Green is so 1970's.

I've also been entertaining the idea of taking The Lord of the Rings, and switching all the main villains into LOLcats. Imagine if, in Fellowship, down in the mines of Moria Gandolf goes up against the epic, fiery Basement Cat LOLrog. I can just see how that would go:

LOLrog: "CHEEZBURGER!!!"

Gandolf: "You! Shall not! Has!"

I'd also like to point here that I am not responsible for any broken keyboards due to you smacking your head against it after reading that cleverly idiotic little pun. ^-^

Labels: come back recycling bin come back, Happy Juicy Engrish Slogan Funtime, LOLrogs

posted by Phillip at 7:22 AM

 


For the most part, I really don't understand consumers. Oh, I certainly will acknowledge I'm one of them, though generally speaking my tastes and purchase proclivities are rather specific. There's also the fact that I was never big on mall-trawling, and my time in working in a retail mall has only amplified that particular distaste. (These days, I only enjoy checking out different malls simply because they're different; I don't care about the stores, but it's fun to walk in and cheerfully think, "I have no idea where anything is in this place! I love it!" And yet...it's rather sad too.)

What all of that rambling means is, despite being a consumer, I really am utterly boggled about the consumer mindset. Consider yesterday, a Saturday: a day in which the weather alternated between pleasantly cool but cloudy, to flat-out downpour. Now I've been in the retail game long enough to know that during days of periodic showers/storms, the time between such rainfalls is immediately seized by people who want to go out but not get wet. We like storms since they tend to keep people away from the mall, but fear when the rain ends: once that moment hits, we have about 20 minutes to gird our loins before a sudden onslaught of people in the mall.

Yesterday was an altogether maddening anomaly. Sure, between the bits o' rain we had sudden jumps in customer traffic...but why is it that even during the periods of rain we had even more people showing up? It was like half the people were thinking, "Gee, it's raining. Let's go out somewhere instead of relaxing at home! I bet no one's at the mall right now!" And then the other half were thinking, "Hey, the rain's stopped. Let's go to the mall, I bet no one's there right now!"

Idiots.

We were practically wall-to-wall busy, from the start of the day right until the end. (And even then, I still ended up getting out late due to some last-minute customers who were still around even 10 minutes after we'd closed.) The worst part of this is that, despite the crowds, everyone was ridiculously cheerful and friendly. They were pleasant, they were courteous, and worst of all, they made it impossible for me to curse any of them under my breath.

Why? Why won't the customers let me hate them?! This upsets my entire consumer paradigm! Life has lost its purpose and meaning to me!




Le sigh....

In a way, I suppose I should have expected Saturday to be that level of batshit buggy. The ominous portents were all there. I mean, come on: when a choral group just plunks themselves down in the foodcourt, and begins an impromptu acappella performance of Carmina Burana's "O Fortuna," you know the day's going to hell from there.

You may think I'm joking about O Fortuna. Amazingly enought, I'm not. Not only were they belting all the parts out loud enough that I could hear them down the corridor and recognize the song, but they were doing an incredible job without any accompanying music (and having to also outsing the muzak being pumped out by the mall speakers).

Admittedly, a part of me wanted to run up and shout, "Play Freebird!" once they were done.

So, huzzah for unexpected O Fortuna. Boo-urns for the wrath their song descended upon my store. Yes, you read that right: I'm blaming O Fortuna for how busy we were. Let me savour this one moment of pithy selfishness!





Dammit.

Labels: Carmina Burana for the Customers, O Fortuna ruined my store

posted by Phillip at 8:31 AM