Russia regains international notoriety by becoming a world leader in balloon sculpture.

Posted at 11:26 AM | Comments (3)

Tomorrow is the busiest work day of the year. Wish me luck.

Posted at 10:34 PM | Comments (2)

I noticed something today. For the umpteenth time I saw a woman carrying a La Senza bag on the bus, going TO work. Like, they have their lunch in there or something else. It strikes me as odd, perhaps because I'm a man, but it seems like this big flag: "Look here! I wear particularly sexy underwear!" Now, admittedly, they are terribly handy looking bags. They're sturdy for paper, often a convenient size, and have nice little rope handles. Still, whenever I see someone carrying such a bag, my first thought (being a heterosexual man and all) is naturally what they look like wearing said underwear. Ladies, what's your take on this: terribly handy bag, or shameless attention grab?

Work is a bit of a mess right now. One of our employees has sort of gotten ill and not gotten well. Now we have to replace him. This is the third time we've trained someone into that position and had it not work out somehow. This comes at a particularly bad time where it is the busiest time of year for us (annual reports for all companies with a year end of December 31st are due March 31st), and also a major Vancouver law firm is considering us for outsourcing all their EDGAR filing business. This would, at maximum usage, represent a 66% increase in our current business. Good news, but bloody difficult too, since we would have to train a minimum of two new employees. Hopefully we can find someone with some office/computer/basic HTML skills who's responsible and a fast learner.

This is on top of the fact that we need a serious upgrade to our database including some kind of job-management system. Also in need of an overhaul is our mailserver; our Cobalt RAQ systems are getting a little long in the tooth. I'm hoping to sell Andrew on an Apple Xserve, perhaps by suggesting that I take over the administration of our mail system. Here's hoping...

Posted at 08:51 AM | Comments (8)

Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!

-- Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu

I agree. Xenu is clearly misunderstood. All hail lord Xenu!

(If you have no idea what this is all about, check here. It also helps to know the great secret of Scientology.)

Posted at 12:23 PM | Comments (5)

Today's story of corporate greed arises, shamefully, from what is arguably the current core of geek culture: comic books. It seems that Marvel and DC have jointly filed a trademark for the word "Superhero" and all variants of it. Now they're going to use said trademark to bully smaller comic upstarts. Why? Because they're assholes, I guess.

Companies, particularly American ones, should be thankful that they operate under the glorious free-market capitalist system. They're not restricted in the way that they would be under communism. However, they don't seem to appreciate this freedom. Instead of working hard to develop superior products to their competitors, they resort to these kind of dirty tricks to get their way. So much for the idea that "the cream always rises to the top". These days it's: "The company with the most inventive legal team stays at the top and crushes all innovation in their industry". If DC and Marvel want to maintain their market share, all they have to do is keep nurturing their already fantastic intellectual property. There's no need to stomp all over the little guys.

Remember: when competition doesn't work, capitalism doesn't work.

Posted at 11:53 AM | Comments (1)

I'm back in the swing, as far as writing music goes. It's been a while since I was last doing it regularly. Now I've challenged myself to get a complete song ready for lyrics class within the space of a week. We'll see how well that turns out.

So often when prompted to talk about music composition for a while, I perennialy face a response of, "That's incredible, I could NEVER write music." So then you bask in this superhuman assessment of yourself for a bit and just try to smile humbly and not say anything. In the meantime, a mental battle ensues between the desire to placate with a response of, "Oh, anyone can write music if they put their mind to it!" and the thought of people who are really bad at writing music but continually persist at it nonetheless.

Angela is frustrated in the extreme by her assignment to compose something for her music technology class. Composing is a new experience for her, and I can see her grappling with the eternal composer's struggle of trying to get what's in her head out into the real world.

It's no fun. Like I said, I'm back in composing mode; skills and mental processes that haven't been used in a while have come back to me. So now I'm never free. At any given moment there's at least one melody playing in my head. Perhaps it's something I heard for the first time recently, my brain continually fondling it's fresh new contours. Otherwise it's something I'm writing, my mind working out texture and direction. I'd almost forgotten what this is like. It's difficult to really explain, and it's ominous. The absolutely constant presence of music is rather consuming, and a bit annoying. You wish for silence, but you can't have it. You CAN'T. A mixed blessing, but for the moment I'm glad it's back.

Posted at 01:26 PM | Comments (2)

Something from my past got dropped into my most recent lyrics project. Back in the days when I was dating the singer, I came upon her one day reading a rather beefy novel. Curious of most literature, I picked it up to have a read over the synopsis on the back cover.

"This can't be serious."

It was Left Behind. For those of you who don't know of this book, let me give you the condensed summary. One day, all the good, faithful Christians vanish from their everyday lives, resulting in chaos on a mass scale as machines lose their operators and so forth. Those who are LEFT BEHIND determine that the rapture has occurred, and that they, the unbelieving heathens have been LEFT BEHIND to face the coming apocalypse.

The book has sold very well in the United States, where there are numerous Christians who are puritanical, idiotic, and apt to take the Bible literally word for word. Reputedly, the book is well-written, and after the rapture a political drama ensues akin to a Tom Clancy novel whilst much ruminating is done on the nature of morality and the meaning of life. Be that as it may, the premise of this book still disgusts me to this day, and for all the window dressing it may have the book remains one thing only: a Christian exercise in mental masturbation. It is the elaboration of the fantasy that one day God himself will descend from the heavens to say: "You, you, you, and you... you're right; come with me to paradise. Oh, and you, you, you, and you... you're wrong; so I sentence you to damnation."

All this is yet still prime evidence of an unspoken, underlying desire of most fundamentalists: find a way to force anyone not like us to believe what we believe. The refusal to coexist with those with different beliefs, appearance, or ways of life is one of the most dangerous human urges we posses. Left Behind not only strokes this egotistical streak in fundamentalist Christians, it is a disservice and slap in the face to anyone with different beliefs. If a novel appeared in the Arab world that described Allah descending from heaven to smite America with fire and brimstone, we in the west would rightly call it a piece of hate-inciting propaganda. But how about when an exclusionary apocalyptic novel is written from a Christian perspective?

Well, then we call it a bestseller, apparently.

Posted at 10:27 PM | Comments (4)

Spent the whole day with Angela today. That was lovely. She helped me complete my largest ever inukshuk. It's been about six months now. We didn't really celebrate, except for basking in eachother's company, talking, listening to music, making kissy faces and googly eyes, and a bunch of other stuff. Oh, her smell is still on my shirt, hold on...

*SNORRRRRT!!!!!!!!!*

Ah yeah, groovy... yeah so also Chris and Denai came over with me and Angela to my parents to have dinner and socialize. Of course Andrea came along, and she's very well-behaved and growing very fast, yes she is, YES SHE IS! ...

Watching Chris and Denai with Andrea has made me realize two things. First, I do want to have kids someday. But second, I'm very happy to wait many a year longer. Babies are very demanding little people and consume a lot of your life, more than I'm willing to give up... just yet.

Posted at 06:20 PM | Comments (1)

When I came back from getting my lunch today everyone was gathered around Andrew's workstation listening to "Captain". I also got an e-mail from one of my classmates asking how she could download it so that she could listen to it on her MP3 player. Neat. :-)

I'm having a bit of a weird time here. It's been growing for a few years now but it's really reached a head lately. You see, I'm being observed with qualities such as "articulate", "attractive", "outgoing" and "confident". Not that I'm complaining, but you see from someone who was shy, beat up on the schoolyard, and a twig-boy covered in pimples during puberty, such descriptors are somewhat baffling.

I guess two specific things have happened. First, I can honestly look in the mirror and say I've fully finished growing and have moved on to the aging part. Not that it's a bad thing; I rather prefer looking definitively like a man and not a kid. Second, after many years of arduous learning I've mostly figured out how to deal with people. I say "mostly" because interpersonal relations are a chaotic, ridiculous, and inefficient mess which I argue no human can ever master. People are prone to making assumptions, being self-concious, and whether deliberately or not, playing foolish social games with eachother when what is actually required is honest, sincere communication. Having to account for all these negative factors often leads to overanalysis on my part. Nonetheless I am usually determined to get as honest discourse as possible out of people so that I can better relate to them (either that or I just don't bother caring). I've realized that parsing social information now takes up a huge amount of my brainpower. Watch, listen, learn, relate. Despite generating this apparent illusion of "confidence", I'm still eternally annoyed by the concepts that out system of social relation are based in, particularly in terms of the unnecessary degree of propriety which is often involved. Honesty, used delicately, and acceptance are usually the best policies in my view.

Posted at 01:38 PM | Comments (2)

Natalie Portman is now hotter than ever, because of this SNL skit. Is the ability to take oneself not at all seriously an incredibly sexy attribute? Yes; but it also helps if you hit an SNL cast member with a chair. HAWT.

Is it just me, or is the Mac market share steadily inflating? Analysts will probably say it's just me, but I can see it around me. Iain got an iBook a few years ago, then Chris W., Alex and Jeff got a Mac Mini, then the Dixons bought one from me. Scott Kurtz at PvP switched. Now as I watch, the boys from Penny Arcade find themselves swirling deeper and deeper into Macdom. This digital culture that has been created by Steve Jobs, of iPods and smooth lines and easy creativity software, it's spreading. I like it.

Posted at 10:13 AM | Comments (3)

Madness! Taking two lyrics students who are teetering on the very brink of sanity and assigning them to work together on a collaborative project? Surely this is tinkering with forces that humanity was not meant to take in hand.

So after several weeks of work pitching lines, collaborating over the phone and MSN, or slaving over GarageBand, a truly polished piece of wacktacery is created. Have a listen to Captain, our song which pokes fun at the state of the outmoded Sci-Fi actor. Inspired by William Shatner, Mark Hamill, Jonathan Frakes, and Wil Wheaton, to name a few. Lyrics are available here. Thank you Deirdre, it was great working with you!

UPDATE: I want to share with everyone in the GarageBand community that, yes, you can make a theremin in GarageBand. So I've posted instructions on how to.

Posted at 12:59 PM | Comments (3)