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!

 


It's darn near the end of 2011, and I notice that I haven't made a new blog post since early August. It's almost apropos, since that's not too far off from the inception of the reason for this particular post. I'll be honest: I've come to dislike blogging as a whole. Not because I don't have things to write about, but simply because I've been more tired this year than in the past, and as a result have found myself incredibly impatient with the Internet. You can only stare at so many LOL- and Nyan-cats before you find them staring back at you.

However, this is definitely worth dusting off the ol' blogger. Assuming you still semi-regularly glance at this little bit of nowhere...and haven't already seen the ever-so-subtle remarks being made over Kevin's Facebook account...Mel and I have an announcement of particular importance! No, she hasn't agreed that my ass is sexy (and subsequently ushered in the end of the world).

But she is pregnant and we're going to have a baby!

And apparently, votes are already being tossed in for their official nickname of being 'Rampage' regardless of gender. ;p

Interestingly enough, this particular announcement (and the official discovery of it, to boot) is being made rather late in the proverbial game. We had attributed a number of the early baby indicators to other factors--mostly stress-based ones considering we spent the last part of summer and most of the autumn fighting an aspiring bedbug infestation in our apartment. While we are in the process of finding out how far along Mel is, we're pretty darned sure it's far along enough to put a due date around her birthday.

So for any friends going to Anime North 2012, you'll actually be seeing the little tyke there. So huzzah to little otaku-in-the-making once again! But on the plus side, at least we're not so scary as to name our kid Inu Yasha. That'd just be ridiculous. I'm opting to name them Sesshomaro myself.


Mel: "WHAT?"

Me: ^^;; "Um...I meant Carrot Glaces?"

Mel: "You do realize any harm I inflict on you now can be legally whitewashed as 'temporary insanity', right?"

Me: o.O;;;

Labels: epic Baby Daddy post

posted by Phillip at 7:44 PM

 



And at the risk of sounding like a Mortal Kombat game: it has begun. This past week has seen our store’s official beginning of the Back To School season, wherein we did multiple small rearrangings of the store, contended with a lot of shipment boxes and saw a higher than usual crowd of people (typically with multiple kids in tow) coming in.

Normally this wouldn’t have been too much of a problem--this year I’ve staffed us up the proverbial wazoo--but we also had to contend with the week before that…wherein we also had to do multiple *large* rearrangings of the store, contended with an unholy mess of shipment boxes and still saw a higher than usual crowd of people.

Honestly now, we did not need to get 80 boxes for just one day. Now before you call me on whining too much, bear in mind we get shipments every Monday through Friday. And those 80 boxes showed up on a Wednesday. Yep…for the two days before and the two days after those 80 boxes smashed into us, we were already being clobbered by roughly 50 boxes each day.

I swear, I spent most of that week doing only 3 things: opening boxes, trying to figure out how to rearrange our stockroom to actually fit everything from those boxes, and then switching our wall displays around to accommodate the impending BTS season.

Happily, I’m not as burned-out exhausted as I ended up being by this time last year, but I’ve definitely been really bloody tired after every shift I’ve finished for the past straight fifteen days. Hence the more than slight lapse in updates, and my general need to curl up on the couch and be anti-social since all my remaining energy’s gone into simply fighting to stay awake. (At times a winner has been me, and at other times…well, 10pm is kind of a late hour, right? Right?)

Aside from all that, not much else has been happening. Or if it has, I’ve been too preoccupied to notice. For the time being, we’re just muttering mutinous words under our breaths about how the weather forecasters keep promising a thunderstorm to blow away all this humidity, only to have a storm never even remotely manifest. The closest we’ve seen for the entire past month has been little more than a piffly spit of rain that actually ramped up the mugginess rather than cut it in half.

“But hey!” you insist. “Can’t you share something other than your pitiful bellyachings?!” Alas, I don’t really have all that much to give in terms of life-affirming and/or comical anecdotes. But at the very least, I can offer proof to Gaffney that there is still a Fanboys! Fic out there that’s being worked on before The Unnamable Fic is tackled once more….

(I know: shameless self-promotion. How could I betray your valued reading trust?! Well…I could always indulge in more emo-blog.)




“Look, you just can’t stampede into our series,” Dark Mayhem said. “Beyond it being just plain rude, you idiots are going to completely ruin everything we’ve managed to establish as canon.”

Rei glanced over at Carnage. “Your series has canon?”

“Well, it has at least two cannons,” Carnage said. “I’m going to be mounting those babies onto Escafanboy tonight too!”

Naturally, sweatdrops ensued. “Are we even talking about the same thing?” Rei asked him.

Of course, the ongoing conversation continued just as heatedly as before.

“Oho, like you Fanboys are any better?” the Narutard self-insert laughed derisively. “We’ve read up on each of you guys, studied your fics. There’s over twenty full-blown fanfics in your series, and in all that time what have you accomplished?”

“I’ve perfected my recipe for salsa,” Demolition offered.

Travis Tranquility gawked at him. “You what?!”

“Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Makoto said. “It really is good salsa.”

The Narutard pointed at Chaos. “And you’re the saddest avatar of them all.”

Chaos was of course indignant. “Why, I’ll have you know that I’m the lead character in this world!”

The enigmatic, normal-looking avatar paused for a few moments as he contemplated these bold, brilliant words. “But you don’t even serve any viable purpose,” he said, speaking for the first time. “You’re useless. You’re irrelevant. You’re the Gema Ball of this series.”

“Wha--I am not the Gema Ball!” Chaos exclaimed.


[Cue Gema floating through the living room!]


Gema: “One of us, gema… one of us, gema…”

Chaos: -.-;; “Hysteria, smite him.”

Hysteria: >) “Eyebeams!!!”


[Cue the eyebeams sizzling through the air & fragging Gema!]


With a rather dispassionate look on his face, Pesti-chan watched as the charred remains of Gema floated down onto the kitchen counter. “Well, I *was* going to eat that bowl of salad,” he sighed.

Minako could only scratch her head in confusion. “How did Hysteria hit that thing with her eyebeams if she’s still in the bathroom?”

“With the door closed too,” Ami added, now also perplexed.

“It’s one of life’s great mysteries,” Setsuna told them. “Try not to dwell on it or you’ll break your brain.”

They all turned to Usagi, who was writhing painfully (and yet so comically) on the floor as she grabbed at her head. “It huuuuuurts!” she sniffled.

“I warned you not to dwell on it,” Setsuna said, shaking her head.

Meanwhile, fuming about this newest slander against his already tarred-and-feathered name, Chaos stomped up to Anarchy. Anarchy casually glanced up from what was left of the six-pack of Yebisu beer she’d already consumed.

Summoning the very passion of his core being, Chaos slammed his hands down on the coffee table and stared Anarchy in the face. “Anarchy!”

Sipping her beer, Anarchy leaned back in an attempt to distance herself from the now teary-eyed Chaos. “Is there a particular reason you’ve turned into a blithering idiot, or is it just that time of day?”

“You don’t understand!” Chaos said, and pointed angrily at the normal-looking avatar. “He said I was the Gema Ball of this series!”

Anarchy’s eyes narrowed as she slowly turned her gaze to the aforementioned Newbie Sue. She glanced back at Chaos and said, “I have no idea what that means. Is it humiliating?”

“Absolutely!” Chaos said with a nod.

Anarchy shrugged and went back to drinking her beer. “Sounds accurate, then.”

“It is not!” Chaos shouted, once again slamming his palms down on the coffee table. Unfortunately he didn’t look before he slammed, and as such sent his hands right into the pointy bits of an errant Togepi. After a brief intermission wherein Nurse Minako volunteered to stitch up his hands, and Chaos instead went to another medical facility with nurses who weren’t so scary—


Dark Mayhem: “So where’d you go?”

Chaos: “Silent Hill.”

Hotaru: [sigh!] “You are such an idiot, Chaos-chan.”

Chaos: “What? Everything was fine so long as I walloped their grotesquely malformed bodies with my pick-axe every now and again.”


--Chaos took his cause back up with Anarchy. “As I was saying,” he continued. “It is not right, and I will not tolerate anyone insinuating I am the Gema Ball of this place.”

“Insinuate, hell!” the normal-looking avatar shouted across the room. “I’m blatantly stating it.”

Chaos spun around and glared at the rival Mary Sue. “Hush, you! I’ll show you how things are done in these fics. Anarchy, I demand an ass-kicking!”

Anarchy arched one of her eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

“Without question,” Chaos agreed, nodding smugly.

Anarchy sighed and slowly lifted herself off the couch. “If you insist.”

Twenty minutes and particularly brutal ass-kicking later, Chaos hobbled back into the apartment in crutches, covered in bandage wrappings. “Perhaps,” he warbled, “I should first have specified whose ass I wanted you to kick.”

“Oh,” Anarchy said in mild surprise. “You mean it wasn’t yours?”

“Why would you think that?!” Chaos exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” Anarchy said with a shrug. “It’s your perverted fetish, not mine.”

Labels: Captain Whineypants of the 51st Retail Legion, Curse of the Fanboys

posted by Phillip at 9:16 AM

 


It's nearly mid-July, which means two very special things:

1) there's a lot of gorgeous sunny weather out there I'm doing my best to enjoy when I'm not trapped inside a mall, which has for the most part been using Shady as an excuse to take longer than usual walks around the neighbourhood; and

2) I am roughly 1 week away from having the two most commonly used words in my vocabulary being "f'ing backpacks."

You may laugh, but once again I must remind you: it's nearly mid-July. I've already received the set-up instructions for when we turn the store into "back-to-school hell". (Though not necessarily as far as the kids are concerned. More and more over the past few years all the kids who come in shopping are surprisingly revved up to go back to classes. I can't tell if this is because they miss their friends, or they've already regressed about how much they bitched about the homework, or if it's simply due to the fact that they're shopping for new swag. Sadly, from what I can tell, it's mostly the latter.)

Mind you, this year I am a lot more prepared for the crushing crowds that await us in August. Having cut my teeth on last year's "hey, new mall, new store, let's all flood the place at once!" stint, I'm armed with more staff and have already been prepping the stockroom to receive the impendingly exorbent overstock. So I am cautiously optimistic about this year...which I'll really need. Between last back to school and the Christmas season, I brought myself to the threshold of totally burning myself out, something I've only been recovering from in the last moth or so. (And mostly by deliberately easing down from my usual pace at work.)

In other news of the season, I am alarmed to discover that I am apparently quite tasty. Not in a "seriously, I don't need to hear about what you & Mel do when no one's around" kind of way (though to answer that, I generally say or do something silly, and Mel verbally lambastes me for it. Not quite as glamorous as you'd been hoping, is it?), but in an "itchy without the tasty" sort of way.

Yes, with it being near mid-July, it's mosquito season. And for some bizarre reason, this year I'm getting eaten alive. I don't understand it. I've got bite marks all over my arms and legs, and even a small community of them at the base of my spine. In years past, the mosquitoes have hardly cared about me. At worst I'd get one or two bites a season. A season! And now I've been bitten more times in the past 2 weeks than I've suffered probably in the last 5 years.

Quite honestly, I'm baffled.

Even with Mel joining me on our walks, she is left alone. But me...I swear there's a neon "free buffet" sign hovering just out of my line of sight that all the blood-suckers are responding to. I haven't been itch-free for ten days straight. Normally I can Zen the itchiness away and ignore it, but that's been particularly difficult a task when you Zen out one itchy spot, only to have four more start itching. Honestly, is O+ that popular with the mosquito crowd now?

Other than that, it's the typical "calm before the August storm" for me. Laundry's in the process of being laundered, my cat is hunting the dog, Mel is still asleep and I'm contemplating having a Corona at 10am whilst diving into the 'Battle Royale meets 1984' book "The Hunger Games."

That, and I have Nyancat stuck in my head.


Help?

Labels: can't sleep mosquitoes will eat me, nyan nyan nyan nyan nyannyannyannyan nyan nyan nyan

posted by Phillip at 6:38 AM

 


Not too long ago, we had opted on cold meat deli sandwiches for dinner; they're quick, easy and leave very little of a mess in the kitchen. There's the added bonus of a nearby local grocer called Vincenzo's that has the most awesome array of meat for a lot less cost than your standard Zehrs. They sell more than 4 different types of procuitto, people! Over 4 types!

...but nothing over 9000, alas, unless you count their sheer coolness factor. Yes, I'm geeking over groceries. I have officially reached adulthood. We'll see how long I can last before we have to start attaching the "mature" part onto that title. If I'm lucky, it'll only be when I'm in my 60's, and that will be attributed more to my age than my attitude. Responsible adult, yes. Mature adult...nyaaaaaa.

Or even better: NYAN!




...anyhoo, back to the meat. I had already eaten, being quite ravenous upon my return home from work. Mel opted to have hers later. And wouldn't you know it: about an hour or so after, the following conversation ensues:

Mel: [not so subtly nudging me]

Me: "Yes?"

Mel: ^-^ "Hungry!"

Me: "And?"

Mel: ^___^ "Help with nom-noms!"

Me: [getting up off the couch] "Okay, okay, I'll...wait a minute. Did you just tell me to get into the kitchen and make you a sammich?!"

Mel: "Yes, but my way was cuter."

Me: o.O;;; "That's still the same thing!"


So, yes. I have been demoted from "husband" to "sammich maker." But on the plus side, I get to wear a really cool hat for it. (Okay, so not really, but I'm seriously considering putting it on every time I'm required to do the sammich thing for Mel. It's big and black and has a large feather in it. Not as cool as a fez, mind you, but I think it works for the kitchen.)

In other news, the past week has been filled with families and gatherings. Last weekend, Mel & I trekked out to Hamilton to pay homage to my niece, She-Who-Is-Dangerously-Aware-Of-How-Cute-She-Is-At-Only-Two-Years-Old Josslyn. Naturally, I shutterbugged all over the place, and even managed to snap a decent picture of Mel in the process. Bear in mind that Mel's philosophy on having her picture taken is a lot like my grandmother's: whenever possible, she either averts her head or demands a happy face sticker be tacked over her face in the picture. This can only lead to disaster on my part, for that only fuels my desire to sneak in as many photos of her face as I can. Being her husband/butler/sammich-maker, I think I'm entitled to that.

One added bonus to the visit was that my Dad came down from Nova Scotia for it, and planned to stick around a little afterwards. It was very cool to be able to spend Sunday hanging out with most of the family in a "we're not going to run around everywhere" fashion. A day or so after that, my Dad jumped over to KW to spend a few days with Mel & myself. In the process, I managed to procure an extra day off for myself, which was great: we hit the Farmer's Market, and spent a decent amount of time just driving around town. A lot of old places and landmarks my Dad remembers have either changed or are altogether vanished.

All in all, a fantastic time was had, and this really lights the proverbial pilot light under my butt to get over to Nova Scotia within the next year. (Something I'm sure Ysa & Chris will object heavily to ;)

This left me with only four working days last week. I know, you say: what could possibly go wrong in those mere four days? The good news is nothing went wrong. The bad news is: Head Office slammed us with a multitude of desired changes & rearranges, one after the other. I have spent all my shifts scrambling around to get markdowns completed, switch around the luggage wall, remerchandize one of our large display carousels...and on Monday, I have to change all the signage before I open. At least the added bonus there is it means I can get paid to go in early for once.

They could have just as easily split all these tasks between last week and this week. Last week we had no outstanding work orders from Head Office, and were kinda bored between customers. Now it's non-stop. I'm starting to think it's planned this way. Maybe they have the Cobra Commander on their payroll, and since he's little more than a washed-up megalomaniac now, he has to take his petty grievances out on us retail grunts. Though if he did work at Head Office, that would explain a few silly-assed ideas & policies that have come down the pipeline....

There's a potential crossover fanfic here, I'm sure of it.

Labels: and knowing how silly your employers can be sometimes is half the battle, family reunions, stop typing labels in here and go help with nomnoms

posted by Phillip at 6:42 AM

 



Aaaaand, tada!

After 6+ months on the vanished list, due to popular demand this blog has magically reappeared! But don't for a moment think that you'll get any of that "behind the scenes/how'd they do that?" treatment. Mostly because if you do, you'll be subjected to lots of sad little remarks about how work is attempting to kill me; about how tired and rather apathetic I've been when it comes to updating the world about my life; about how--ooh, Mel has gummi bears! Shiny.

...hey, at least she's not staging a gummi orgy this time around. (She says, and I quote, "they're too tired to have sex right now.") Rule 34, folks. Even Mel adheres to it.

Anyhoo, here we are once again: you attempting to read this little bit of nowhere, and me attempting to update it on a regular basis. There's no guarantee I'll be anything even close to regular in the entries, but the current plan is to at least tac something up once a week.

To start: Anime North 2011!

The Con was very enjoyable this year, even if the cold from hell attempting to pound me into the ground before it even started. (And you know that it's a particularly sadistic strain of cold when you down an entire bottle of Buckley's over 2 days, and the cold just laughs at the effort.) After a rocky start--fun with the rental car, and the Walmart pharmacy being anything but efficient--we managed to pack ourselves and Shady up, and we were off to Toronto!

The Doubletree Hotel was ready for us this year, with all five elevators working for once. I will say it made a surprising difference: you barely noticed any lag time in waiting for elevators, and there didn't seem to be a lot of stopping-on-every-floor whenever the cabs were going down. Not even a minor sign of Gimpy the Wonder Elevator...which does make me kind of sad. Gimpy was always a mainstay.

The greatest heartbreak about the Con this year was mostly room-related. For the first time in about 5 years, we didn't have a window facing the TCC. Instead we got a scenic view...of the hotel rooftop. Awe-inspiring, truly awe-inspiring. So sitting at the windows and Cosplay-watching was pretty much off the roster this year, but we managed.

Anyhoo, we snagged our Panelist badges, hoofed it over to the TCC, met up with Nightbreak and just loitered about in the looooooooong line for the Dealer's Room. We did have fun watching the Cosplayers and trying to break Mel. Unfortunately, Mel pinched back.

Once we did get in, the Dealer's Room offered a lot of great and varied things. I will say it was a very good Dealer's Room this year, and I'm sure many an otaku went home with sobbing wallets and a shitload of swag. Oddly enough, Mel & I didn't really come home with a large haul. It's strange to reflect on, in many ways: I myself have been an otaku for going on 15+ years now, Mel for almost as long, and in that time we've collectively built up a sizable DVD collection and a pretty decent manga collection. Matter of point, for the last two years I've been focused on acquiring backlog titles that are harder to come by. As a result, there's not a lot left that really catches our eyes these days.

However, I did finally locate the X movie, and I somehow stumbled across a brand new Dominion Tank Police for $10. Mel nabbed a kanzashi from Maral's booth, some Mokona chess pieces and some very cool fanart from the Artist's Alley.

Amidst all this we managed to hang out with random members of the Fancrew, as well as the Fic Bitch and Dejana. Huzzah for friends! Huzzah for socializing with people who aren't customers!

And then there were panels as well. Fandom Entitlement was fun, especially since we had more people this time around (last time we were competing with the Dealer's Room and the One Piece panel). Sailormoon was filled with fans rejoicing the return of the manga series. Yuu Watase featured many people who hadn't yet heard of the new Arata series, so we spent a bit of time pimping that. Fanfiction was its usual good stuff, though I think given the crowd and interest there is the possibility of expanding or dividing it into a number of different panels with specific focuses. Aaaaand then there was FicFicBoom, which once again giddily devolved into Savage, Nightbreak, Gaffney and myself trying to break the audience. Bonus points for the all-hat orgy, the 4 Gospels shipping and Sean attempting to kill himself with a squeaky mallet. (Sometimes it's not necessarily the panel that makes it great, but the people you're on it with, and FFB remains my favourite still. ^-^ )

In between it all, Mel & I lounged in our hotel room (I played with Shady, and Mel played Plants Vs. Zombies), and lounged in the TCC parking lot as we idly watched the Cosplayers go by. I swear I'm more and more into the people-watching as years go by.

By the time Sunday rolled around, there was a welcomed dinner at Ginko's with Matt, Gary and Jen. Ohooo, do I love their sashimi. If I could just lay it all out on a table and roll around in it naked, I...uh...nevermind!

Now all of that is over. The Con is now 12 months away (again), and I've spent the last week fighting off that creeping cold--which has tried to kill me at work three days in a row now. But on the plus side, at least my store didn't burn down in my absence!

Wait...that means I still have to actually go to work. Dammit!

Labels: Anime North 2011 Con Report, the blog that wouldn't die (or update for that matter)

posted by Phillip at 5:45 PM

 



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