Category Archives: Distractions

Countdown to Disney – Shirts

Distractions, Travel

With the help of George Hamilton, I now have to choose from 23 shirt choices down to 15. Yes, I’m going for 9 days – I just don’t want to be caught sweaty without a change of shirt!

All picture captions top to bottom, left to right:

(L to R) Felt Leopard, Wall*E, Bleach Robot, Astro Boy

Felt Leopard, Wall*E, Bleach Robot, Astro Boy

Scream Like a Girl Expedition Everest, Stencil Falcon, Bleach B9, Sioux City

Scream Like a Girl Expedition Everest, Stencil Falcon, Bleach B9, Sioux City

Bear Trap, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em, iPaws, Lenticular AstroBoy

Bear Trap, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em, iPaws, Lenticular AstroBoy

GI Joe (too close to the movie?), Gratuitous Canada Shirt, Bleach Skull, Tin Robots

GI Joe (too close to the movie?), Gratuitous Canada Shirt, Bleach Skull, Tin Robots

Shere Khan, Shag Bear Skull, High Heels-Wearin' Happy Monkey, Sharkies

Shere Khan, Shag Bear Skull, Happy Monkey, Sharkies

Blizzard Beach, Felt Camo Shark, Felt Mean Robot

Blizzard Beach, Felt Camo Shark, Felt Mean Robot

What Dreams May Not Come

Distractions, Personal Bits

Usually, a few weeks before a big vacation that involves an airport, I start having nightmares about flying. I can calm myself enough to get on a plane sober (or Gravol-ed out) but I can’t seem to shut off my sub-conscious fears, and they burble up from my inner id pit.

We’re 17 days away from vacation, less than three weeks. As of yet, nothing, thankfully. But last night was pretty close:

I’m walking through the halls of the Battlestar called Galactia and it’s festooned with images from the movie The Watchmen. I’m getting more upset because I know I’ve missed half the Battlestar series and the new, updated “Trekkie Toddlers”, Star Trek (joke supplied by CB). What this had to do with Dr Manhattan, I have no clue.

Suddenly the ship lurches and I know we’re going down. Now, I know that “down” is pretty relative to a near by astral body, would probably take a long time to actually happen depending on the angle of re-entry and the Battlestar is a massive ship, but in my dream, instantly the ship was replaced with an aluminum skinned death tube. Hey… it’s a dream.

I woke before anything else can happen. I’m hoping that the lateness in my nightmares will not be concentrated as we get closer to our departure.

Buy My Crap, Pt 2: The Quickening!

Distractions, Gaming

xboxHeads up people! I’m selling off my Xbox360 and a twackload of games (with controllers!). I can’t begin to calculate the savings you’ll experience if you were to buy all this stuff at regular prices, compared to what I’m shilling it off for:

Console
20G Hard Drive; 2 wireless controllers (one white one black); all cords (HDMI ready!); wired-to-controller headset for online chat.

Games:
Beautiful Katamari
Scene It? With 4 wireless controllers and console dongle
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
GTA IV
Orange Box: Portal, Half Life2, Team Fortress 2
Halo 3
Guitar Hero 3 With Wireless Guitar (no face sticker)
Burnout Paradise
Burnout Revenge
Bioshock

All parts are in excellent condition, disks have no scratches. I’m selling because I’m using my other game consoles more. No Red Ring of Death in the year++ we’ve been using it. Console has current operating system updates.

Selling for $425 – Price is negotiable.

Hey! Where you going? It’s such a bargain, the bargain police are after me!

Cynical Futurists

Distractions, You Stupid Dick

Nice piece in the Star today about Eric Yam’s NASA winning, Utopian space station design: where prescreening out all the violent types, providing free health care and vat grown meat are the societal building blocks! “designed .. to be close to the Canadian society that I live in!” You go, Ayn Rand!

He backed up his design with lengthy explanations of how the operational systems would be feasible now, not speculating on future science. When I was a kid I use to draw huge images of spaceships, spanning several pages in my woefully underused math note books (oh the irony) and Eric’s story hit a personal note. Of course mine weren’t as detailed, just cross sections of rooms inside cool looking post-Star Wars ship knock offs. His belief in a better future was as refreshing as removing a fart-filled spacesuit. After reading the article I ventured into the comments and the first one out of the gate is this fun-killing, steaming pile of bitterness:

Good for him. Lots of thought there. Too bad it’s wasted on space station nonsense. Many people will die in space for man’s vanity while the earth is destroyed. Where’s the mortuary? Will their corpses become more space junk? I don’t see a cemetery.

Dude! Holy shit, it’s a 17 year old kid’s dream of a clean, safe future! I bet you run along side the Santa Claus parade and shout “HE’S NOT REAL!!”

I’m always shocked when I come across this kind of thought that man does not belong in space. The exploration of space is far from “vain”. It stimulates discovery and has made us realize our beginnings more deeply, giving humanity a stronger, humbling identity, instead of relying on a fictitious sky god that smites non-like minded individuals. Yes, we have some cleaning here to do at home but maybe if all of us got to look at the earth from space, we’d have a better appreciation of home. Yuri Gragarin’s first (pragmatic) words in space were: “The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.” And later the often quoted/parodied “No words to describe it. Poetry! They should’ve sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful…”

And by the way, to answer Mr Bitter McBitterbum: out in space, we’d eat the dead.

Thursday Awesomeness – Disney Style!

Distractions, Travel

Finally, in our comments: Tell me your worst Disney movie. I’ve Twittered this and will combine all the responses into a post soon.

The Early Gays

Distractions, Personal Bits

These last few Sundays, Sharkboy and I have been getting up at 6am, log our body stats (after a cleansing, lightening poo) with the Wii Fit and then hoof it over to the gym for Aquafit. Yes, we’re the only two gays at the Y at that time, most being still in bed after a night of smart cocktails and masculine fursuits at various bars and such. It’s another world, people. The class is nearly full and sign up is a must (last week I put down “Carlos” and “Rolando” as our names and got called out for it). Granted it’s not Woodys on a Friday night, the average age before we arrive is around 65, but we did manage to chat up a couple nice people, including a 50 year old woman with a sleeve tattoo. At 50 yrs old, I hope my back looks as good as her arm! The bitter queen in me has to mention here that a couple participants look like they’ve walked off the set of District 9 (I know. I’m not Olympic material myself, but I love making Sharkboy laugh with that analogy).

A few weeks back we got up early on a Saturday, made it to St Lawrence Market for some Canadian bacon sarnies at 7am and hopped on our bikes to the island. By 10:30am we were done and waited at the Hanlan’s Point ferry dock to go back home. When the skip arrived, wave upon wave of homosexuals disembarked, each giving us the “Where the hell are YOU two going? The party is on the nude beach!” eye. It was slightly embarrassing but yet felt good to be apart from that crowd. Not that I’m putting down a nice gay day at the beach, but I felt kind of justified for all my gay bar work in the late 90s: I could now look upon that constant party mentality and think it “quaint”.

I admit that we’re early risers. I’ve been getting up at 530am for the last couple months to accommodate my gym time before work, which means we’re in bed well before 10pm. If we’re out on the town, we’re yawning at 11pm and making sheepish excuses to go home. Yes it cuts into our social life sometimes but we can’t seem to help it. We’re both the kind of person who feels like the day is half done at 10am.

I guess we’re ripe to join a sports group or some early morning knitting club or something. I’d be all for a gay men’s Farmers Market Shopping Club. Imagine the looks we’d get just from our cloth bags!