WTF

I don't know what I find more disturbing.
The fact that this went on sale at all, or that someone paid $520 for half-eaten leftovers.


So, ~cunning plan hatching~
The Toronto Film Festival starts soon, all I have to do is find a burger with a bite out of it that 'belonged' to, I don't know, Ridley Scott. Or a pizza slice stolen from Emilio Estevez.
Spike Lee's burritio should get some bids too.
Bids start at only $1, do I hear $10?......

cue the Twilight Zone music

You know those 'tests' that are all over t'internet?
I found this one and it's scary accurate

You are longing for a little love and tenderness. At present you are feeling very sensitive and need a sympathetic shoulder to lean on. You don't need any further stresses, strains or arguments so take a deep breath and relax.

You are very self-sufficient and methodical. You presume to know where you are going but need to find a person who will recognise the way you are, not be too demanding and who is, as they say in Italy, 'Simpatico'.

Matters are not progressing as well as you would have hoped and you are having to make concessions - but you still believe that your goals are realistic it's just that people can't seem to see your point of view. You know what you want but you'll only accept suggestions under duress.

The tension that you are experiencing at this time is perhaps due to physical and/or mental frustration. It would appear that you are not appreciated and as a consequence, the situation is most disagreeable. You seek personal recognition and the appreciation of others to compensate for the lack of like minded people with whom to ally yourself. You would like to surrender and merge with others but your inherent self-restraint makes it difficult for you to open up. This disturbs you as you regard such instincts as weaknesses to be overcome. You want to be liked, admired and appreciated for yourself.

You are greatly impressed by individuality and have interest in people who have outstanding qualities.

I know the trick with these things is that the person reading applies slightly vague comments and forces a fit, but this is about 85% spot on and when I did the test again, deliberately different it was about 30%.
Maybe 3.30am is not the best time to do this, eh?

let's get out of here

let's get out of here
probably the most over-used line in film history and my thoughts today as I sat in the walk-in clinic waiting to see a doctor.
Nothing wrong with me, just thought it was time I got registered with a GP here.
After the form filling with the woman who used a magnifying glass to read my Health services card and didn't see the irony(she probably couldn't) in her desk being beside the opthalmic counter I got to go to another floor to wait with SICK people. With the coughing and the sneezing.
I settled down with my sudoku to wait.
The woman behind me didn't have any sudoku so instead she, like, talked, like, non-stop on her phone, like, to everyone she had ever met. Loudly.
Me:(in my head) ok, that's a 4 so that must be a
her: hi, yeah, so I'm like back in Terono (everyone in Toronto pronounces it like that).
me:(in my head) OK, that's a 4 so that must be a
her: oh my gosh, yes. oh my gosh.
me: (in my head) OK, that's a four so THAT MUST BE A
her: yeah, it's like, my Dad is totally fine with it, but my Mom is taking some time to come round to the idea, blah, blah, yadda, yadda........
me: la, dee dee, dum dee do, la dum de de.
my entertainment then was to listen to the receptionist call out the names, some she really struggled with and a couple must have been made up, ala Bart phoning Moe's Bar.
Mary Hassaparty. Really?

So, anyway, that's a 4 so......
I'm getting too old for this

grouch

anyone feeling a bit grouchy?
these film stills have had the actors replaced by Oscar the Grouch.
Makes it surprisingly difficult to name the film.....


1.










2.










3.

many...my very educated...

How did I miss the news?
Thanks to himself I now know that Pluto is no longer a planet.
Sandra mentions it too.
There were mutterings about it a little while ago but I thought there had been a reprieve.
Worringly when I tried to remember the mnemonic for the order of the planets I couldn't, and found myself naming the planets in an effort to remember the mnemonic.
Bit confusing sentence that one...
So, let's see, any other day old news I can update people on?
Arizona police have denied reports live rattlesnakes were released in a cinema during a screening of Snakes On A Plane, insisting the claims are a hoax.

King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.

Sandra over here has been nominated for a 'Young Blogger' award and if you read any of her stuff it's soon obvious why.
Interesting stuff, well written, that's why.
So go vote for her in this poll.
I had a look at the other nominees, and while there is some interesting stuff there too, your duty is to vote for Over Here.

nother one

1.










2.











3.










4.

The people have been removed from these movie stills. Makes it look a bit weird doesn't it?
name the films to get the connection.

10 titles

Being a bit of a film geek, I put together a quiz which never happened for various reasons. But I do like pointless little film trivia.
I quite often use film quotes for the titles of my posts and thought that today I could use film quotes for my post.
These are a collection of lines from films where the title of the film is used in the dialogue.
Nothing too obscure and only one from a George Clooney film.
have a go
1. "Who are you?"
"You know who I am."
"I do?"
"Your friendly, neighborhood ---------

2."I was with the project when it was still with NASA, before it was sold to DBA. I was trained in physics. I was sent here to assess the economic potential of -------, whether or not it was a viable commercial property or possible energy source. I was still compiling data when this shit started happening.'"
"Did you run any tests on the ship?"


3. "You hook up with him and you'll regret it. If you live to."
"Thanks, darlin'. I know you got my best interests in mind. I appreciate it, sincerely. I love you, but I gotta get some sleep now."
"This whole world's ---- -- ----- and weird on top. I wish you'd sing me 'Love Me Tender.'"



4."So here's the drill. I'm your history teacher from now on. We will discuss current events. We will call this class -------- ------- -. We meet once a day. Alright, your first assignment is to prepare for me a new paper due tomorrow."
"Oh come on, Sweeney, it took me a week to read 'Mein Kampf.' That isn't fair. Well, what do you want me to do it on?"
"Your brother."



5. "It's called a ----- ----."
"What?"
"A safe room. A castle keep in medieval times."
"I've read about these."
"They're quite in vogue in high-end construction right now. One really can't be too careful about home invasion."


6."You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms or the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain."
"And an athlete."
"And a basket case."
"A princess."
"And a criminal"
"Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, --- --------- ----."




7."If the answer is yes, then don't wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals."
"------------."
"Our courteous and efficient staff is on call 24 hours a day to serve all your supernatural eliimination needs."
"We're ready to believe you!"


8."I don't think there's ever been a --------- to match you. As for this young man, he insists you are Hector reborn. Or was it Hercules? Why doesn't the hero reveal himself and tell us all your real name? You do have a name?"
"My name is ---------."
"How dare you show your back to me. Slave! You will remove your helmet and tell me your name."



9."Hey buddy, I'm not paying you to hear your thoughts on life. I'm paying you to sing."
"Well, I have a microphone and you don't. So you will listen to every damn word I have to say!! You know, it's funny. Some of us will never, ever find true love. Like, take for instance, me. And I'm pretty sure that guy, right there. And that lady with the sideburns. And basically everbody at table nine. But the worst thing is that me, fatty, sideburns lady, and the mutants over at table nine will never, ever find a way to better the situation. Because apparently, we have absolutely nothing to offer the opposite sex."
"You are the worst ------- ------ in the world, buddy!"
"Sir, one more outburst, I will strangle you with my microphone wire, you understand me? Now let's cut the stupid cake, cuz I know the fat guy's gonna have a heart attack if we don't eat again soon. And while we do that, here's a little mood music for you."



10. "Was I trying to say 'Raymond' and it came out ---- ---?"
"Yeah. Funny ---- ---."
"You? You're the ---- ---?"

Alfred: I must have dozed off. My sincerest apologies.

Been a bit quiet on the blog for a few days, general lack of inspiration and busy doing other stuff.
The brother is coming over for a visit in a couple of weeks so it was off to Ikea again for a few things to make the house more suitable for visitors.
Got a chair and for the first time ever, was slightly stumped by the directions.



Normally I am pretty good was this was a bit of a blow to the ego.
Sorted it.
On the lookout for a table, we went to the Elegant Garage Sale, a shop on Bayview avenue which has some great old furniture and general stuff. Toronto is great for lots of independent shops, not just one chain after another and Bayview is a good example of this.
Also, some of the best shop names.
I quite like Giftfellas, the sign in the same type of script as Goodfellas or the Godfather, but my favourite is The Merchant of Tennis.
I don't play tennis and have no interest in tennis, but it's got to be good advertising if I know about a tennis supply shop on Bayview.

really

Just over the Chuck Norris Bridge

A while ago I heard the story of the new bridge (hid in Hungarian, one of about 3 words I know)being built across the Danube in Budapest.
There is a website sep up to allow people to vote on the name of this bridge and at that time one of the apparently serious contenders was to call it the Chuck Norris bridge.
read it here


Well Stephen Colbert heard about it and decided to see if he could get that changed and have the bridge named after him. So he has started a campaign on his show to get people to vote for him.
I got a bit of a surprise when I went to the voting page.
There are, I don't know, hundreds of names on there for this bridge.
Including, Jack Bauer Hid, Skywalker, Mel Gibson, Bruce Lee and Michael Jackson.
Then there are the music references, Green Day hid, Guns N' Roses, Madonna and Achtung Baby.
I noticed at least 2 of the South Park kids names, Alfred Hitchcock, several football teams (AC Milan, Manchester United), Dr House and Titanic all listed and ready to be voted on.
I quite like the sound of Casablanca Hid but as for Easy Rider, not so much.
Tequila and Bridge are just plain bad.
Voting ends on September 8th and whatever it ends up being called it's going to be a very famous bridge, I just hope it's not the Britney Spears Hid.

Send in the cl....no don't

I mentioned before my dislike and distrust of all things clown related.

Now, it seems they are getting even more devious.
According to the article some of them are abandoning the usual uniform and not dressing as clowns.
This is worrying.
They may be out there, dressed in normal clothes. What if my clownysense (a bit like spideysense) goes on the fritz?
As the bumper sticker says- can't sleep clowns will eat me....
The article also says
"Being a clown is my way of giving a present to the world," said Marta Sanchez Sevilla, 40, of Spain. She's traveled the world with comic relief group Clowns Without Borders, including to Sri Lanka after the December 2004 tsunami.
"Sometimes I perform in hospitals, sometimes old people's homes, sometimes refugee camps," said Sanchez Sevilla, who plays a trouble-prone opera singer who finds all sorts of peculiar objects in her bra.
Not everyone thought she was funny, though.
"She was a bit like a zombie," 5-year-old Thomas said of the clown.

I have limited knowledge of 5 year olds, but from what I do know they are not that fussy when it comes to entertainment, and even they don't like these weirdos.
Please Buddha, Allah, God, Santa and the Easter Bunny, please make them stop.

p.s. anyone want to guess what book I'm reading at the moment?
there's a clue in the article.

...

Opa!

We live just off the Danforth, which this weekend is closed off for the taste of the Danforth street festival.
That's not exactly a secret and there were hundreds of people out strolling and tasting the food all along the street. In fact there were so many people that this guy
was doing good business in tall balloon hats to help friends spot each other in the crowd.


This was one of those occasions where being vegetarian was not an advantage as most of the food was Greek and therefore, lamb featured heavily along with the usual chicken/pork alternatives. (I was reminded of the bit in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was filmed around here, where she announces the boyfriend is vegetarian and one of the aunties say's -no problem, I'll make lamb).



The Mariachi band
were very good and very popular but my spanish wasn't up to singing along.










I was tempted to have a go at the racing cow game though.
Especially as the prize for winning was one of those very cute husky dog toys, see there, at the top of the picture.




The whole thing continues for the rest of the weekend but also on this weekend is the hot and spicy food festival, so how can I miss that one?
The racing cows will have to wait.

bugging me

There are well over 1,000,000 different known species of insects in the world, and some experts estimate that there might be as many as 10,000,000.
That's just species, can you imagine how many individual insects that is?
I can, because about half of them were in my house today.

ok, so maybe a slight exaggeration. There was a lot of the little buggers though.
First, a cloud of fruit flies in the little bin, 2 ants in the kitchen, a moth in the bathroom and one of these, a house centipede


zipping along near the TV, a HUGE black beetle thing and a crane fly
completed my visitors for the day.
I tell ya, there are only so many times a person can try to shoo insects back outside before it's squashing time.
I don't want to think about the bad karma involved in squashing at least 10 of those fruit flies.

a project

The other day, on a blog I sometimes check, there was a post about this.
Project 2996 is all about getting bloggers to write a memorial profile for each one of the people killed in the attacks of 9/11 on the anniversary this year.
You sign up and are randomly given the name of the person and a little bit of information to get you started.
Being a bit impulsive, I went ahead and signed up.
Then, later, thinking about it and speaking to the hubby I was not so sure.
As an idea and a memorial it has a lot of merit, but....
Why should this group of people who died because of a terrorist attack be exalted in such a significant way? Yes they died horribly and I'm sure to their friends and family they will and should be missed and their memories honoured.
But is this really the way? By strangers who knew nothing about them?

Then there is the other part of this that makes me uncomfortable. What about the people who died in the Oklahoma bombing, or Madrid trains or London transport bombings?
Do they get a project too?
I know they numbers don't compare but surely it's not about numbers.
And if it is, what about the thousands of children who die every single day from malnutrition or diarrheoa or lack of clean water.

All I know is that I have now asked to withdraw from the project.

Allow me an Eddie Izzard moment

Eddie says it so much better than me:
The same people who make toasters make showers. They have a turny button too, and that lies. It goes turn turn turn for hot, or turn turn turn for cold. But the only position we're interested in is in between there... and there. One nanomillimeter between extremely fucking hot, and fantastically freezing!


And that, folks, IS my shower.
The cold tap anyway. It real is less than that' ' much of a turn between 'hmm that's just right' and 'arghh'.


There has been some competition for the computer this weekend as himself has a new computer chess programme as the old one wouldn't load properly. Conversation in FutureShop with assistant: I'm looking for a computer chess game, I have the one with the old bloke on the front of the box, is there a newer version of it?
Assistant: o-k. They might be over there let me check for you.
We find the game he means and he points out to the really quite helpful assistant the picture of the old bloke on the front and now the assistant knows which game to go to if someone wants the one with the old bloke on the front.

And he's started a blog. The link has been added.

So, with less time to spend on the computer and the weather in Toronto being lovely this weekend, hot and sunny but with much lower humidity, woo hoo, I have neglected the ole blog.
I have said before that even though I am a bit of a film geek I wasn't going to do film reviews, I have slipped a little in this resolve, what with mentioning The Corporation and all and now one more very minor slip.
Clerks II is very good.
See that wasn't such a big thing, it's not a slippery slope, I promise.

what kind of person is the corporation?

Whilst watching The Corporation on TV last night, a Canadian documentary film I first saw 2 or 3 years ago, I realised just how much of it I had forgotten. There was so much - interviews, statistics, archive footage and narrative it was overwhelming. One of the main things I remember is the whole segment on Fox news. The idea that a current events/News show had no need to tell the truth was disturbing to me.
Watching again the film-makers tried to determine the kind of personality that drives the corporationwas interesting. They used an analysis like a psychiatrist would a patient and ticked off boxes to even formulate a diagnosis. The 'average' corporation is psychopathic.
The first time I saw it it had me thinking for days and I'm sure this time will be the same.
Recommended.

for jaysis sake

Had to put the word verification back on for the comments as the spam has started.
Back to dyslexic nightmares again.
and why is dyslexic so hard to spell?

knit: verb. To cause to grow together

Believe me, no one is more surprised than me.
Growing up in Dublin, I and pretty much everyone I knew went to convent school.
And you learnt things the way the nuns wanted you to do them.


(BTW, does anyone have any idea how difficult it is to find a picture of a nun on the internet? Lots of shots of funny nuns or sexy nuns or men dressed as nuns. Anyone who has ever actually met some nuns knows they are not really any of those things, except maybe for that last one.)
The other night, I was clearing some stuff the previous owners had left under a table in the basement and I found a pair of knitting needles and some wool.
The nuns had taught me to knit in school so I was convinced that I would be able to pick it up straight away. Just like riding a bike right?
No. Not really.
I didn't have a clue how to start.
So I did what I always do when I want to know something.
I goggled it.
And as usual the t'internet did not let me down, although I was a tad surprised at just how many knitting sites there are.
Prepare to be amazed, knitting and purling (got to know the lingo).
Here it is, my masterpiece.
Please no applause, just throw money.

TTMMS #6

OK Go - Here It Goes Again



How did they get the idea for this?

Something in my eye, about a cup full

Eyebrows have a couple of purposes. They are important in communication, a raised eyebrow can say a lot.
The other function, allegedly their main duty, of eyebrows is that they keep moisture (sweat, mostly, but also rain) from running down the forehead and straight into the eyes.
Well I want a refund, because mine don't work.
Practically everyone else around me, on the street and the underground looked cool and fresh and I looked like I'd lost a water fight.

So the cinema was a little oasis of cool and the film(Brick) was good too.

Today it's

36 degrees.
feels 48
48!
Which is 118.4 degrees Fahrenheit for the non-metrics out there (Taffy).
Now, I'm no expert, but to someone from Dublin, in relative terms that's round about the temperature of lava.
So, I'm off to the cinema, I don't care what's showing, I'll be there for the air conditioning.
later

It's

TOO
HOT
TO
BLOG
almost midnight and still feels 42 degrees.
so I'm off to eat ice cream and you can't stop me.