A giant insect is roaming the German countryside. At an immense 55 metres long, this monstrous bug is certain to ravage the surrounding small towns before destroying us all. Quail, citizens, for our the end of our puny race is near!

Okay, well see the hubub is actually all about the hilarious fact that a bug got caught somewhere along the line in the scanning process for Google Maps. So now it looks like there's a giant bug taking a crap on Germany. Here's a screenshot of someone's browser in case the guys at Google have fixed it or it won't load for you.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

Posted at 06:10 PM | Comments (6)

Thankfully, Angela reminded me that today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dmitri Shostakovich, by in large my favorite composer. His 10th symphony (which I heard when I was still in second year at Douglas College) changed my musical life, and still holds special meaning for me. With a smile, I still remember the VSO performance of the work. After the second movement my compatriot trombonist Peter leaned over to me and quietly whispered with restrained enthusiasm, "That kicked ASS!"

This is because the 10th symphony is widely thought of as Shostakovich's scream of release after conforming much of his musical output to life under to the brutal dictatorship of Josef Stalin. This is how things were under the Soviet system: artists brutally and unfairly repressed, then unable to speak out for fear of arrest, forced to the humiliation of public repentance. So it was for Shostakovich, who while being one of the Soviet Union's greatest composers, found himself continually at odds with the government. His only comfort: acts of musical dissidence which, more often than not, were hastily composed and then stored away in a desk drawer to wait for more progressive times.

Shostakovich is a fascinating man, riddled with brilliance and nervous compulsiveness. So I say, isn't it far past the time that a movie was made about this man's incredible life and music? I can only keep my fingers crossed, because it's long overdue.

Posted at 09:42 AM | Comments (4)

Wine Update: Jeff wanted to go back to Burnaby Heights Liquor Store to see if there was any Burrowing Owl left. There were 2 bottles. Jeff bought both.

We opened one today. I can easily say that it's the best God-damn merlot I've ever had in my short little life. It has an incredible bouquet. It is strong yet incredibly smooth. It has fabulous legs that take forever to run down the glass.

Yeah. I have no regrets. Now all I have to decide is if I want one more glass...

Posted at 08:29 PM | Comments (2)

Ahoy, me mateys! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! First things first, be discoverin' yer Pirate Name. Then, ye might be interested in pedagogical pirate-speak videos. Then discover the truth about the ancient and bitter rivalry between pirates and them scurvy ninjas. Then ye can laugh a spot at our piratey antics from last year when we all dressed as pirates fer yer personal-type amusement. Yarr, that been the first night I kissed that saucy wench Angela... yaarrrr, I've... *sniff* got somethin' under me eyepatch...

Posted at 11:24 AM | Comments (1)

I've added some pictures from our Victoria trip to the Gallery. I've also uploaded a video of someone who is undoubtedly one of Victoria's craziest street performers. Let's call him Virtuosic Violin Vader. I bought buttons of him.

Posted at 10:11 AM | Comments (2)

A spot of luck for once:

One of my bosses, Bill, has assured me that there's few B.C. Merlots the equal of Burrowing Owl. Indeed, the wine has become so steeped in its own notoriety that its become nearly impossible to obtain the stuff. You can buy it from the winery itself, but you'll have to go visit the Okanagan or pay for shipping of delicate bottles (which I imagine can't be cheap). Locally, it's snapped up by restaurant owners because, well, it's really GOOD. While in Victoria I visited an all-B.C. wine store and asked if they had any. They sort of chuckled and admitted that you pretty much have to have some kind of "in" to get it in any significant quality.

Nevertheless, every time I go into a liquor store I check for it. So when I stopped by our local private liquor store I almost didn't bother to humor myself with the exercise. But I'm glad I did, because they HAD it.

19 bottles, to be precise. Who knows how long they'll be there before they get snatched up. At $30 a bottle, it ain't cheap, but who knows when I'll see them again. So I bought three, and before I left called Iain to let him know of their presence. So I picked one up for him as well (I'll be reimbursed later) and carried four very nice bottles of wine home along with the groceries I had bought at the local market.

When I left it, Burnaby Heights Liquor Store had 15 bottles of 2004 Burrowing Owl Merlot. If you want to get your hands on some, you'd best speak now or go get it. They won't be there for long.

SWEET!

Posted at 04:34 PM | Comments (2)

I need this.

There are some people in my life who are really pissing me off right now. I'm coming to realize more and more that my entry almost exactly one year ago has turned out to be complete and utter horseshit: I don't let people know when they piss me off, and I'm using my blog right now as a substitute to talking to people about issues.

See, friends have occasionally advised me that I've got to talk to people and let them know of the issues that are pissing me off before it builds up to horrible proportions. The problem with that is that almost everything that people do pisses me off.

When you grow up as an empathetic person taught at a very young age the inherent value of sharing and caring, you grow up with the unfortunately fallacious belief that everyone shares this sense of good intentionedness. However, as soon as you're introduced to other kids in school, you come to the uncomfortable realization that people are inherently assholes. So you spend your entire childhood being exploited by the peers who suffer from a deplorable lack of empathy. But you get to the end of high school and you start to think, "Finally, THIS is it. A way out. I'm out of the public school environment and I can make my own life, and I don't have to associate with assholes anymore."

No, in a way it really gets worse.

You see, because then you enter the adult world. You have to deal with adult things. You'll have to deal with people who shirk their adult responsibilities, professional, monetary, or even simple politeness. People you work with, are friends with, LIVE with, are related to. Then you have to find a way of courteously pointing out their gross discourtesies (which itself is incredibly ironic) because if you're not polite enough or even just catch them in the wrong kind of mood, they'll basically just freak out at you and you'll have to stand your ground and argue with them about something they clearly should have considered in the first place.

And they argue so fucking much. It's amazing how a planet so full of so many problems can quite curiously be inhabited by so many people who are reputedly NEVER WRONG ABOUT ANYTHING EVER.

And I'd love to be able to dress them down right here and right now. I'd LOVE to do that. I even wrote the whole long paragraph just now and let them all have it at once. But I can't post it, because it's wrong and that's beneath me.

Growing up as a socially awkward child/teen has made me hyper-concious of propriety. In public situations I'm always thinking to myself: "Am I being polite? Am I standing in someone's way? Have I said or done anything that might necessitate an apology? Do I *GASP* have OTHER PEOPLE'S BEST INTERESTS IN MIND IF I TAKE THIS ACTION?!?!?" Because I WANT to be NICE to people. IMAGINE THAT.

So I'm just asking you to take one minute out of your selfish little lives right now and think to yourselves: "Did I do something to piss Jesse off? Did I, just perhaps, do something that MOST people would consider impolite? Irresponsible? Downright rude and insulting?"

If so, why don't you restore a pixel of my utterly shattered faith in humanity and say to me, "Jesse, I feel I may have wronged you. Will you accept my apologies?"

What a pipe dream... people suck.

Posted at 10:26 PM | Comments (4)

Despite not being in a great mood for writing socio-political commentary, I'd be remiss to let this day pass by without saying at least something.

I'll never forget how I felt on that morning when I saw the twin towers collapse live on TV. Knowing that, as I watched, hundreds of people were dying before my very eyes. It was horrible; one of the most horrible crimes against humanity in my own time. I was in no way immediately involved, and yet I felt violated because what little sanity and goodness remained in my human world had been demolished by madmen.

I am ashamed to say that this horrible feeling allowed the equally mad Mr. Bush to pull me along on his "war against terror" for longer than I'd care to admit. It is probably for this reason that I'm now so dead-set against him: I feel like my emotions were exploited to political ends. But violence can't be solved through more violence; and certainly not when it's directed against people who had nothing to do with the violence in the first place.

So on this day as the media and news encourage me to remember September 11, 2001 with sorrow and reflection, I find it extraordinarily difficult. Because that reflection is always followed by the echoing southern drawl of, "... And that's why we must remain ever-vigilant against terror." What an age we live in when I can't even give myself the luxury of even feeling compassion and sorrow for my fellow man, because as soon as I do, some warmongering yokel will trot up and exploit that sentiment for political ends. That, my friends, is truly a crime against all our humanity.

On her LiveJournal, my old friend Susanne reminded us all of another anniversary that's gone overshadowed. While bombs continue to explode in Iraq and Afghanistan, while terrorists ominously remind Americans that more is yet to come, consider that this, to the day, is the 100th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi first adopting his methodology of satyagraha, or non-violent protest. He called upon his fellow Indians to defy the new law and suffer the punishments for doing so, rather than resisting through violent means.

History, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Posted at 06:59 PM | Comments (4)

They got him, the guy who killed JP. And word behind the scenes is that it'll stick.

Whatever happens to that bastard now is too good for him.

Posted at 09:45 AM | Comments (3)

Mutants and Masterminds, the superhero RPG, has been a fun pastime recently. Even better are the pictures that some artists released on their websites for the upcoming M&M sourcebook, "Golden Age". Meet Canadian Shield and his sidekick, the Red Ensign.

Posted at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

Since I learned about the death of Steve Irwin, better known as "The Crocodile Hunter" or "That Aussie Git on TLC", I've been trying to think of something to say that was irreverent yet not terribly inappropriate. It's rather hard to do.

The general consensus among my group of friends is that the guy has been pushing his luck for years now. When he played with his newborn son in front of a crocodile in a show at the zoo, a lot of people reacted negatively. Of course, Irwin insisted he was in "complete control" of the situation and refused to apologize.

This is an important lesson; I hope you're ALL listening. You are never "in control of the situation". Control is an illusion we create to keep our puny human minds in a region of sanity. But there are only degrees of control, and those degrees are much slimmer margins that we'd like to admit. As Iain said about this incident, "If you roll the dice enough, eventually you'll roll a one."

So the next time someone tries to tell me, "It's okay, I'm in control," or "As long as you know what you're doing you're in total control," I will think of this and tell them firmly that they're deluding themselves. Sure, more often than not you'll get away with taking that risk. But the odd time you don't you may end up biting it and leaving your young child in a world with one less parent. So you should ask yourself, are you willing to gamble with that bet?

Posted at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)