Technology is Cool

I found the “3D Buildings” and “Terrain” buttons in Google Earth that turn flat maps into pop-up books with photo-realistic imagery. Much omnipotent fun ensued.

I buzzed the Eiffel Tower. (Not as fun as climbing it).

I meandered through the Grand Canyon.

I spilled over Niagra Falls.

I climbed Everest.

I took a trip to the Vatican and knocked on the Pope’s door.

I slalomed Stonehenge.

I stood at the plate at Wrigley and called my shot.

Then I took off and went flying through New York City, zipping in between buildings.

Speaking of flying, here is a time compression video of 24 hours of global air travel. You can see peak business hours, red eyes, hubs, great circles followed, etc. Heathrow looks like a vacuum. So cool.

Seasonal Affective Standard Procedure

Today it’s like summer. There’s no sting because it’s only -13.

Even this blog suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Which I don’t think is a disorder. It’s an order. It can be predicted and charted.

Summer: Hey, while we’re out we should also go to [another store] because I thought of something else we need.
Winter: We’re done out here. Let’s get the hell off these roads and back home and curl up under the giant blanket and wait until bedtime.

Summer: Wanna go rollerblading?
Winter: While you’re up can you get me some more needless, fattening crap to eat?

Here’s the debate, is it a disorder or just a phenomenon? I believe it is simply a procedural difference between summer and winter. The cold is undeniably debilitating, that doesn’t mean debilitation comes from within. In another example, I was reading about Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome on Wiki (Wiki suffers its share of public and pop culture scorn regarding its validity). This syndrome describes me to a tee but I’m still not convinced that it’s an actual affliction and not simply a report on observed commonalities in human behaviour. This debate is one of the stigmata Wiki suffers, at no fault to its contributors who have good intentions. Ultimately, I’m still hesitant to believe that it’s an infirmity because, if I do, I’ll resign to it, defend it and perpetuate it. On the other hand, a simple procedural change doesn’t account for why I can’t sum up enough creativity to think of anything to blog about for a month, even though I try to hold myself to strict constraints regarding not blogging about absolutely nothing for the sake of blogging. But like I said, today it’s only -13, so it’s like summer. Plus, I’m extra perky today because I got to bed early – before 2 AM! Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome sufferers (read: Delayed Sleep Phase Phenomenon perpetuators) know what I’m talking about.

Yesterday, I conquered. I broke the snowy chains and rose up from the sleepy deep freeze – with lots of help from my personal trainer beautiful girlfriend – and actually went running at an indoor track. And I did it against a scheduled beer-drinking session with coworkers. Take THAT dark winter!

It’s so cold…

Fall teased us with near 0°C temperatures until the first week of December. Then, like it does here, it dropped to between -25C/-13F and -35C/-31F and it’s been that way ever since and it will stay like that until March. Don’t dawdle when in between buildings, plug in your car or it won’t start, don’t drop your mittens in the snow or you’ll lose your hand, type of shit. Repair shops are full of cars with cracked hoses and plug heads that have been ripped off from driving away with them still connected. The roads are such that you can see the brake light reflection of the car in front of you in the sheer ice. People who drive 60 in a 50 zone now drive 50. People who normally drive 40 in a 50 zone now drive 27 – apparently drivers' skill-self-trust/speed graphs are slightly curved. Planes that sit on the tarmac too long are de-iced a second time. Bellaclavas have a white goatee from frozen breath condensation. Your cheeks and nose feel a distinct bite in a subtle breeze. I have to thaw my hockey gear out with a blow dryer before every game because it doesn’t dry in the garage, it just freezes. And I just can’t keep my poor baby warm, she’s cold all the time.





They tell you to pack an emergency kit when traveling in your car. Why? Because this is all you see for hours when driving in this province.




It’s still beautiful country and I still like to watch the sunrise and sunset. I watch it rise during my first smoke break at work and watch it set during my next smoke break. (Where are my vitamin D pills?)

Anybrr, this post is interactive. If you drop in, you must post a punch line. I’ll get you started.

You wouldn’t believe how cold it is here.
(How cold is it?)
It’s so cold…

I saw a squirrel rubbing his nuts.

I tried peeing outside and ended up a tripod with a skinny yellow leg.

I can’t wait to get in from shoveling and get warmed up by a cold beer.

Some wild chill got in my mouth and made my molar ache. (That one is true).

Saskatoon hookers will pay you for a ride around the block.

Gave at the Office/Friends Lost

Here’s a video explanation of a concept called the landing pad. What’s interesting about this is that it’s not so much a video about a particular space in your house as it is a video about a particular space within a woman’s mind. Like a voluntary tumour or a chunk she donated to her retarded brother. I do appreciate the rather large concession though, the allowance of temporary clutter. You can see her blood pressure rise as she begins to talk about what happens when the landing pad doesn’t get processed.

And she goes one beyond to suggest that it become like a “task driver” where anything on the pad that pertains to you is a task you must perform or an item you must process. That’s some pretty forward thinking. That’s the cutting edge in terms of accountability when you think abou– oh wait, we do that here at the office. Employing business practices at home is not revolutionary, it’s out of place. A business functions because its people are both masters of their domain and accountable to the product they put forth. Children are neither.

I used to have a landing pad in my old apartment, it was called the kitchen. Then I had a landing pad for clothes that were in flux between clean and dirty, it was called the entire bedroom. These were more permanent residences than temporary landing pads though. I loved clutter. Clutter was my roommate. Clutter always had my back. Because of clutter, shit was right THERE when I needed it, right where I had put it down (a convenience seldom enjoyed when living with a woman). Picking clothes to wear was easy because clutter ensured my entire wardrobe was always within sight. Me and clutter made some pretty cool discoveries every now and then too, like, “The fuck is that smell?” and “There that shit is!” When I went to sleep at night I knew clutter would watch over me, which was comforting, except that when I tried to walk around in the dark clutter always seemed to be sleeping right in my path. Clutter ensured that doing the dishes was slick and easy because clutter soaked them for a couple weeks. Me and clutter used to laugh at people who were such neat freaks it got to be counterintuitive. “Like when you sit down to turn on the TV only to realize the remote has been ‘put away’ – on top of the TV!” Clutter would say and we would laugh and laugh. *SIGH* I kinda miss clutter. We were tight. Clutter will always have a special place in my heart.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Vinz Clortho

Vinz here is the faithful servant of Gozer, a moldy Sumerian god whose destructive will on Earth is carried out by a victim-chosen incarnation called the Traveller. Vinz, who was present during the previous two times the traveler visited, loves to tell you about them at any given chance. The first, of course, was during the rectification of the Vuldronaii. That time he came as a very large and moving torb. I bet you the Vuldronaii picked a torb because it was probably something small, harmless and immobile, like a root vegetable. Not that day! Then the second time was during the third and what would be the final reconciliation of the Meketrex supplicants. He turned up as a giant sloar!!! Gozer obviously had some sort of beef with Meketrex and, having given his own wayward worshippers two previous chances to reconcile, vengefully roasted all the Meketrex-loving Shubs and Zuuls in the pit of the Sloar.

I don’t think Gozer was a very merciful god. Every time he slipped in the polls a little it was crush this and slaughter that. Then he seemingly disappeared from history. He might even have happily spent the rest of eternity in the nearest parallel dimension if it weren’t for that one nutcase that played to his vanity and reminded him what it was like to be worshipped again 8000 years later. Of course I’m talking about the influential and certifiable Ivo Shandor. Here’s a guy who, after seeing the bloodshed of WWI, figured society was too sick and no one deserved to live. I guess if you’re going to pick a figurehead for your new society that’s based on death and descturction, what better choice than Gozer? So Shandor built what can be described as a lightning rod (in the form of 55 Central Park West, whose ironwork extends through 50 feet of bedrock and touches the water table) for the purpose of drawing in cross-dimensional paranormal turbulence in hopes of attracting Gozer. Then he litters the spiritual landscape with the malignant spirits of those he sacrificed through bizarre yet purposeful rituals on its rooftop. Shandor, as it turns out, was quite the visionary, his legacy nearly came to fruition some 60 years after his death with the third coming of the Traveller. That’s when we met...

This dude!

Works Every Time

When I was in grade 1 we were lined up at the door to come back into school after recess in our little grade 1 line, as we were told. While waiting in line, the back of the line would always push the line forward into the door and then spring back so the grade 1 line would look like an accordion before they let us inside. Well this one time the teachers popped the doors open just as we were springing back and reloading the next compression, when, the front person tripped over the metal door frame and the second person didn’t have time to think and tripped over the first person and the third person didn’t have time to think and so on. After a few seconds there was a pile up of about 20 kids that had ALL tripped over the person in front of them. I don't know how it happened so perfectly but there was a heap of squirming and groaning kids and me pissing myself laughing with the teacher standing over us yelling at us and giving us shit. It may have been the funniest clumsy gong show I've ever been a part of and thinking about it still makes me laugh till this day.

When I was in College I was rocking back in my chair at the back of my computer class until finally I did it. I got too cocky and rocked back just beyond the tilt apex of the back legs and, with silent flailing arms, went ass-over-teakettle and smashed the back of the chair into the hard tile floor. Pieces of the plastic chair went flying and every one of my classmates turned around to see the source of the noise just in time to see my legs flying up in the air. I couldn’t keep from laughing as I righted the chair and sat back down in it. I leaned forward and buried my face in my arms on the table while my shoulders quietly bounced up and down in a breathless church giggle. I guess I was laughing at the fact that no one saw me doing the backstroke of terror while on my way to horizontalhood. When I had finally regained my composure I sat up and leaned against the chair back which, weakened from the previous impact, promptly snapped off dumping me on my ass again.

Watch The Skies!

Helmet Sales Have Risen In St. Walburg...

Last night I witnessed the most amazing clash between Earth and a menacing celestial wonderchunk. Linz and I were driving around the north end of Saskatoon at 6:26 when the pitch black sky suddenly grew white, lighting up the landscape and the interior of the car. It was as if God himself bent down to take a flash photo of the entire city. I turned my head in the lucky direction to witness, in the distance, a huge red fireball descend from the sky. It was so large and close that individual flames could be seen thrashing from the falling mass. Fiery fragments were breaking off and burning up. The sight was purely apocalyptic. Now, I’ve seen Armageddon and Deep Impact and admittedly I thought “Oh shit” as it rocketed towards the ground at a ridiculous speed. But then all of a sudden the fireball disappeared seemingly a few hundred feet above the ground.

On the radio this morning reports were coming in from eye witness accounts as far as Manitoba and Alberta. A lot of them were sure it hit the ground since, from that distance, it dropped below the horizon. A rumbling could be heard all over an area near the AB-SK border and it rattled windows of homes in Lloydminster.

Despite that the fireball stopped above the ground it is likely that fragments did hit the ground. Once the mass slows down enough due to the friction of the atmosphere and the gas surrounding the object is no longer ionized the object stops burning and dark pieces of rock continue to fall the rest of the way to Earth.

This. Is. Simply. Amazing.





I thought of the “Uhh, Houston… Whoopsie!” incident that occurred a few days ago when astronaut Piper lost her shit while spacewalking outside the Endeavor. A wily grease gun escaped her clutches while working on the International Space Station. But apparently NORAD has confirmed the falling debris to be natural and not man-made.

Tangent:

That was a close one. Is it just a matter of time?

The Mayan Calendar hints toward an event on December 21, 2012. Some blindly say doomsday. Some say that's just when the Mayan odometer rolls all its 9's over to 0's. That is, however, the next time the sun will pass back through the spiral plane of the Milky Way at its densest, an event which some argue coincides with mass extinctions on Earth, perhaps due to increased impact events.