Sing Me A Song That Everybody Knows

If anyone was ever looking for proof that I need a hobby, then this would be it. (Edit: Link no longer works. Removed)

Of course, this would also be another equally valid proof.

Two points.

Public Service Announcement

If you opened a PayPal account between October 1, 1999 and January 31, 2004 then you are likely entitled to part of the settlment from the recent class action suit brought against them.  The website from which to file the claim, or to find out more information, is here.

Whittle Yer Whiskey 'round Like Blazes. T'underin' Jaysus, D'ya Think I'm Dead?

As I may or may not have mentioned, my sister got married in Jamacia back in April.  Now, since only a few people were at the ceremony, they're having their reception tomorrow in Halifax.  This is probably the first large family get together of relatives on my father's side since I-don't-know-when, which means it's time to get health updates on everyone, whether I wanted them or not.  So I'm finding out who's got what problems, and which ones my grandmother  isn't allowed to know about, as they'd only worry her.

All this, combined with the rather dull location that is Moncton (I don't leave for Halifax until tomorrow), has gotten me thinking about death.  The end result is that I've come to one conclusion:  I don't want a funeral.  The entire standing around in a room in a funeral parlour while people nervfously shuffle in is far too much to wish on anybody.  No, wrap me up in a sheet, break out the whiskey and have a good old fashioned wake.  To me it makes much more sense:  celebrate the life the person lived.

One point for the title.  Any typos aren't going to be fixed, as I finished typing this before the second paragraph had finished appearing.

Peccavi

I started it at the end of February, and figured it might take me a month or two.  It's now taken a total of 143 days, but I'm done.  I think that I shall never undertake something like this again.

Fuck You Student Loans

I submitted an application to New Brunswick Student Financial Assitance (aka Student Loans) back in May.  They asked for a form to be filled out, which took a month to get to me, and I sent it in at the start of June.  Since then they have yet to process my application.  They acknowledge that they have received the requested form, yet everytime I call them they claim that that is why it's being held up.  That is, they claim that's the issue until I tell them that I personally delivered it to their offices and they check and confirm that they have it.  At that point the excuse becomes "Well, we have a large number of applications, so we're backed up."  It would be a nice excuse except I know two people who applied in July for terms starting in the Fall that have had their applications processed.  After that they run out of excuses and tell me it should be processed shortly, something they've been telling me since June.

As of right now I'm borrowing money from my parents to pay my rent and to buy food, I've got UNB's Financial Services Department bugging me to pay my fees and charging me interest on the unpaid amount.  At the current rate I'll be lucky to get my loan for the summer before I receive my loan for the Fall (since it now looks like I'll have to spend an extra term, partly because I spend so much time running around trying to get money).

So, New Brunswick Student Financial Assistance:  

FUCK YOU!

<sarcasm>But I'm not in the least bit bitter.</sarcasm>

I Love The Smell Of Cathod Ray Tubes In The Morning

I think I just blew one of my monitors.  It doesn't show any picture, the buttons don't respond, and the power LED blinks bright green then dim green, which is different from the no signal pattern (bright green then bright orange).  It survived falling on the floor, being attatched to a SPARC (SPARCs start their resolutions in the four-digit pixel width, and that's just for a console), and who knows what else abuse.  What finally killed it was switching the resolution down to 800x600.

If there's one upside, at least this one didn't produce any nasty smelling smoke.

(For Extremely Large Values of One)

I took this from a utility pole along Regent Street.  While I can't comment on the facts that are presented within, I would like to suggest that they work on their math.  (Hint:  Ignore the paragraphs and just read the numbers.)

There's no points for the title, as everybody knows it.  However, I do think that the title would make a good webpage name.

If You Put Butter And Salt On It, It Tastes Like Salty Butter

I saw two movies over the weekend.  One, 21 Grams, starring Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, and Sean Penn — who is looking more and more like Al Pacino with every film — was quite good, even if you had figured out what was going on before the movie was halfway done.  The other was, unfortunately, The Butterfly Effect, starring acting-school reject Ashton Kutcher.  To say that he can't act would be an understatement, and the film was just laughably straining to be a serious film.  To clarify a bit more, I saw the director's cut, which supposedly has a different ending than the theatrical release.  (Spoiler warning!) In this version, Kutcher's character returns to the moment before his birth and kills himself, an action that was badly telegraphed by the dialog after about 30 minutes.  If only the same thing couldn't happen to Kutcher himself, and then we'd be saved from his attempts at acting.

However, in honour of this movie, I have gone through all the films being set for summer release and, ignoring any films that are clearly not aimed at me (kiddie flicks, chick flicks, &c.), as well as ones that I know nothing about, I have come up with the big list of summer movies I'd only see at gun-point (but I'd still have to think about it first):

• I, Robot: Will Smith has one character he plays in every movie.  Add to that the fact that this movie is doing things to Asimov's corpse that I won't go into here, and you have a definite entry onto this list.
• King Arthur: From producer Bruckheimer, the man who brought us Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Gone in 60 Seconds, Con Air, both Bad Boys, Enemy of the State, and Kangaroo Jack.  I don't think I need to say anything else.
• Catwoman:  Anyone who saw the very first teaser (made, admittedly, from unfinished footage) can attest to how badly this is going to suck.  Not even Halle Berry's cleavage — which really should get co-star billing — can save this one.
• Anchorman: I don't like Will Ferrell;  I don't find him funny.  About the only emotion that his acting causes in me is a profound urge to not be my normal non-violent self and punch him in the face.  I'll stop now before I start foaming at the mouth.
• White Chicks: Take my comment about Anchorman, replace "Will Ferrell" with "the Wayons brothers" and "punch in the mouth" with "punch in the mouth repeatedly".  Besides, does anyone seriously think they look like white chicks even with all that makeup?  No, don't bother answering that. It was a rhetorical question.
• The Manchurian Candidate: The original was a creepy suspense film about soliders who come back from Korea brainwashed to be Soviet assassins, and was probably the best film that Ol' Blue Eyes ever did.  The current one looks like, well, crap.  You wouldn't be able to get me near this one for any amount of money.
• Thunderbirds: I've made an exception to the rule of keeping movies not aimed at me off the list with this one.  Essentially they've taken a cheesy British puppet series, and turned it into Spy Kids.  Another part of my childhood dies.
• Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story: I'm loathe to admit that I saw Zoolander, but I have to to tell this little factoid:  In it, Ben Stiller played a model who did all his jobs with a single expresssion on his face.  Whenever I see one of his movies, I can't think of how accurate that was.
• Anacondas:  The first one was fairly terrible, so I have only one thing to say here: why?
• Alien Vs. Predator: The last two Aliens movies were fairly bad, and the less said about second Predator, the better.  Unfortunately, this movie doesn't appear to be a sudden change in direction, quality-wise.  I could, of course, be wrong.
• Exorcist: The Beginning:  There have been three Exorcist films since 1973, and only one of them was worth watching.  This prequel, directed by the man who brought us Driven, Deep Blue Sea, and Nightmare on Elm Street 4, probably won't reverse the trend.

Actually, I lied a little;  I'll likely make the last one a rental once it moves out of new release status, just to see how bad it is.  It should be noted that the above was all the opinion of an admittedly pretentious film viewer; your mileage may vary.

Moving back to The Butterfly Effect, what is it with casting actors for roles as younger versions of other actors based, not on whether or not they look at all similar, but whether they have the same hair cut?  How many people here have the exact same hair cut they had when they were seven?  Be honest now.

The title was originally going to be a quote from The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, but, when even I couldn't find the one I wanted, I decided it would just be too difficult.  Instead, you get a relatively easy one.  One point.

Well, Looks Like We Got Ourselves A Reader Here

If you haven't heard the results of this on the news yet, you likely will shortly.  It still bears repeating though, just because it's so disappointing, yet simultaneously unsurprising.

The National Endowment for the Arts, an American public agency dedicated to promoting all forms of art, recently released the results of a survey of 17 000 adult Americans.  The survey investigated the reading habits of those who participated, and the title given to the results, Reading at Risk, should start to get you worried before you even see the results.

As a quick summary, here's the salient points:

• The percentage of adult Americans who read any piece of literature (poetry, plays, narrative fiction) in 2002 stood at 47%, down 7 percentage points from 1992.
• Those who read any sort of book was down 4 percentage points, to 57%.
• Of the sexes, men were least likely to have read anything, with only 38% claiming to have read a book.
• The sharpest decline was found in those aged 18 to 24, which fell 10 points to 43%.
• Those who watched less, or no, television were more likely to have read a book.

The full results (PDF document) are available from the NEA.  Or, the lazy can just read the press release that accompanied it.

For some reason, I can't shake from my mind the scene in Planet of the Apes (Pierre Boule's novel, not either of the movies), where the anethetised woman goes back through her racial memories and comments on how reading, even reading something simple like detective novels, has become too much of an effort for the whole of the humanity.  All I can say is this: at least the apes haven't started talking.

One point for the title.

Are You Going To Marry A Carrot?

From the words you didn't need to know existed category: arborphilia, adj. ("är-b&r-'fi-lE-&) - obsession with and usually erotic interest in or stimulation by trees. (Derived from the Latin wordarbor, meaning tree, and the Greek philia, meaning friendship.)

I'm not sure exactly how I found this out, but it's probably best not to try and think about it.

One point.  It's an easy one.

Thunder Or Cannon Fire, It's All The Same To You. Adios, Blondie.

Whilst playing around with StumpleUpon, I came across a site called Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.  It's perhaps the most fascinatingly distrubing thing I've come across in a while, so I figured I'd post a link to it here.

One point for the title, as usual.