I was cool about the previous District 9 trailers after the second/third viewing. Oh dear it’s going to be another Alien Nation but with a reverse Apartheid message wa wa waaaa.
New trailer kicks me in the balls and tells me to stop whining. Funny thing is, we’ve seen these effects before in this summers dolt-busting Transformers and Terminator, but this movie is FRESH and NEW, which makes it AWESOME in my books! Click it!
For the last few days our HD channels with Rogers have been not all that HD-y. See the video below:
I know it’s not a faulty PVR because our digital box in the bedroom does the same when you run an On Demand video, not so much live TV. It’s purely the amount of info not being dumped into the player and the buffer not having any reserves to maintain image cohesiveness.
I wonder about Roger’s infrastructure. If they promise HD TV (which is 720p, by the way, not 1080p – their own hardware displays it) then they should be able to transmit that much info all the while offering the internet (here’s where I blame all you BitTorrent theives) and Home Phone to their customers. When we were having issues with our Home Phone, a technician confessed that the junction box out back that services 7 homes was actually split wired for 11 outlets and that might be “the problem”. He also said that if it gets rainy there is standing water in the bottom of the box. Granted we’ve had no issues since the fall with our Home Phone, but the above mess is starting to happen more and more.
Stay tuned, dear readers. I am calling Rogers soon to see what they can do.
UPDATE: I’ve done some searching and found this gem: Rogers Compresses it’s HD signal. While this comes as no surprise, the quality does. Ease up, big boy!
And now to bring the mood back up…
As I get older I get more paranoid that scammers are out to get me as my mind be-feebles.
I fear I’ll be prey to tricks like this:
I’m actually more saddened by the death of a Monorail pilot than any pedophilic weirdo rock star or blond bimbonic celebrity who kicked off this mortal coil in the last two weeks.
When we’ve gone, we always chatted up the pilot when we got to sit in the front. It was like a candid moment with someone who “made it in” at The World. I wish him godspeed to wherever he is now.
Happy Birfdaie Americans!
As a gift I give you this:
Hi Dalton,
I wrote to you a while back about my father’s unacceptable experience in a downtown emergency ward. Thanks for immediately putting me on a mailing list of back-patting propaganda and the nice form letter response. He’s doing fine now if you’re wondering, after a few months being on a PICC Line while he had to wait to see the surgeon.
But that’s not why I’m writing.
This time it’s to ask you to do something about Toronto. Your major money maker is broken and you have the power to fix it. I know you said you’d only step in and legislate the union back to work is if health issues arose due to the mounting garbage. I guess week-long standing, rain soaked garbage isn’t ever a health issue. Good thing they’re spraying the dump parks with deodorizer and spreading out rat traps! That should buy the city (and you) some time.
I know you’re busy with GM and the economy and stuff, but an effective manager doesn’t wait for problems to arise, he confronts them before they become major issues. He provides solutions with wisdom and fairness.
Dalton, I’ll make it easy for you. You don’t even have to legislate them back to work to save my vote for you (long since lost, by the way) – no, all you have to do is get a fair mediator into the negotiation room and show that you care for the people who keep the money coming in for eHealth and who put you into power. Do it now because Torontonians are really tired of this pissing match and need a white knight.
Eternally an Ontarian, But Not Liking The Smell
Dead Robot
Toss that over here, Hot Stuff!
SharkBoy and I relied on the zen approach to Pride celebrations: walk, wander, observe and listen to our bodies. If we got a text to meet up somewhere we did. If we wanted to sit on the wall outside the 519 Community Centre and just watch the flow of people, we did just that. Couple of observations:
Public drunkenness skeevs me. A lot. Especially when the drunks have a heightened sense of “celebration” than myself. And look kind of “just off the subway” suburban. Mostly the drunk people were (I assume) were straight Ryerson students flowing up from the university. Not sure if Pride is in talks with Rye security…?
When you’re so drunk you can’t walk, transporting a 6-er of glass beer bottles is probably not a great idea. A poor chap fell face first onto the sidewalk with a beer-popping SPLAT, tried to get up and slammed face first into The Ladybug Flower shop’s window, which miraculously stayed intact. It was comical and frightening at the same time. Being right across from the Volunteer centre (the beer store parking lot) you’d think the security would be more attuned to open, public drinking.
Drink unitl you get an Arty Shot!
We got to Church and Bloor at about 11:45am for the 2pm parade. Our group of 8 all got a spot on the fence. Of course it got busy and the 8 of us compressed to 5 of us on the fence, 3 taller ones in behind as the place filled up. Remember, it’s raining and miserable, but we stuck it out for all that time. Now, at ten minutes before the parade starts we had to fend off three different sets of people who thought it was ok to just show up and shove to the front of the barricade. At one point I very uncharacteristically told a woman to chew my dirty ass because I had been waiting for almost three hours and there was no way she was going to get up to the front just by showing up as the parade started. This has happened to me at other events too, like The Santa Claus Parade and St Patricks as well as past Prides.
THIS! IS! SEXY!
And My Pride Miracle, you ask? Lean in close. Here it is:
The parade is underway. We’re standing right up against the barracade at Church and Bloor where the vehicles and walking divisions merge and go on their merry way, parade-ready. Various floats are tossing freebies into the crowd with gay abandon, mostly condoms and cheap plastic beads (which the people behind me thought was mana from the gods for some reason and kept slamming into my backside) so being a the “beginning” of the parade they were tossing a lot.
As the mayor’s float went by, there was the usual hootering and hollerin’ but I took it upon myself to get into the original spirit of Pride and get political:
“STOP THE STRIKE! STOP THE STRIKE NOW!” I shout this a few times in the general direction of the City of Toronto float, much to the horror of SharkBoy. You could feel him shrink.
Suddenly I make eye contact with Mayor David Miller just as he’s tossing beads into the crowd. I breathe in and shout at the top of my lungs while locking eyes: “STOP THE STRIKE!!!!”
He reels back and like some star Blue Jays pitcher, and beans me with a set of purple beads. Bong! Right in my forehead. I shit you not.
“Thanks!!!” I yell back with utter honesty and a smile!
Celebrity negates .
At Yonge and College subway (south east exit) there’s a brilliant interactive ad for Caramilk chocolate bars. The poster has 6 headphone jacks to hear different explanations of how the caramilk is put into the bars (a long standing ad campaing here in Canada that teases the public with the “secret” as to how it’s done). You can see in the bad iPhone pic that I’ve jacked into the “Scientists explanation” cleverly located right over his mouth. Upon jacking in, an audio file plays (a bit too loudly and slightly fast – adding to the giggle factor) of different cultural explanations/theories.
The Cockney explanation was by far the funniest with lots of rhyming and slang. The Zulu tribesman was a tad bit “racial worrisome” (was that really Zulu he was speaking?). The Whale song was relaxing…
I admit that I did feel a bit of a dork standing there plugging my earbuds into each outlet. Especially in a busy subway tunnel with people passing, gawking, but it was funny and because I stopped and interacted with the ad, it won me over. Still, this ad is better suited for bus shelters.
Update: Gizmodo reports of an interactive ad that borders on black humour: Domestic abuse poster changes when you’re NOT looking
With the passing of Michael Jackson I became painfully aware that the whole blog thing was dead:
Number of people who mentioned the King of Pop’s passing from my 52 followers: 50
Number of mentions of the one gloved icon’s demise from my blogroll: 2
The numbers are telling. The party is over.
Within an our of MJ’s death TMZ was reporting (via their blog) that the internet was “maxed out” with Tweets and Facebook updates. I guess TMZ had nothing else to report at that moment.
I’m not saying that blogs will end as of today, but it’s pretty obvious the whole online meme of confessing your soul out to the universe has moved on to faster pastures. The personal blog is on the downturn. Which, to me, is a bit sad. Not that I’m bashing Twitter or Facebook, but I do see these mediums as being limited and distracting when getting your full feelings and thoughts out.
Much like a car horn: Twitter is great to get your attention. Annoying when the hand stays on the button.
You have to remember I’ve lived through Geocities and Webrings. I’ve seen this stuff come and go in waves.
Me? When it comes to blogging I’m going to be like that last guy at the party, scraping out the room temperature bean dip with shards of crackers.