Anger

Only been following the headlines for the past couple of days, quite literally only seeing headlines in newspaper boxes, about the shooting match on Yonge Street.

So, today as I've caught up with the story, waded through the backlog of articles on the killing and wounding I have grown remarkably angry. Physically angry so that I begin to shake if I let it go. So want the cowardly little-prick perpetrators to suffer.

To vent, I'll have to have a good maniacal scream when I'm outside later today -- beats punching a hole into the drywall of my office, as I really want to do.

Fucking guns and the idiot politicians who for the past 40 years have not banned them outright in this country and made having one an immediate and inescapable crime with serious outcomes. God help us some asshole can't fire his gun at firing range or kill a skeet or shoot gofers on his farm, or (and this is a doozie of an argument) collect guns.

FUCK!

Merry Christmas

This is as cute as it gets as Christmas. (Although the caption is totally consumer focussed -- asking for lots of gifts from Santa)

Merry Christmas ALL!

P=[sx(s0-j)x(10-t) ÷ (A+1)] x [nsubset y ÷ n subset y + n subset o]

That, as determined by a British nuclear physicst, is the winning formula for pullilng a "cracker" -- those thingys that two people pull apart with a bang (and a prize pops out) at Christmas dinners.

I'd give you the link to the story (and explanation of formula)in the Nationa Post today, but that paper's digital filing system either sucks or is locked behind pay for view walls.

Last year the good scientist "defined the maximum height for heels on women's strappy little party shoes, factoring in force, mass and fashion appeal."

The formula for that, and the cracker forumula take into account alcohol consumption.

Gifting

We did a secret Santa thing within our group at work this year -- took the Hindu to convince the boss, the irony of which I love.

So what would you get me, the alcoholic vegetarian?

I received a BBQ cookbook (with beautiful pictures of pork and beef and birds sizzling on the grill) AND a gift card for the LCBO.

I've just now stopped laughing. And no one seems to find it very funny.

Let's not put the Christ back in Christmas, let's instead put the liver and colon diseases back in Christmas.

So, what I really received from the secret Santa is an excellent anecdote :)

Steve

Sullied

I admit, with prodding, to have read one of Dan Brown's books -- not the Da Vinci Code, the other one with "angels" in the title; can't remember.

Even though I read the book on a 17 hour non-stop flight, it was still a painful experience. Indeed, an experience that left me feeling sullied clean through to my stitched bindings. The book sucks on each and every level I can think of. Even the shimmer of redemption in the man's ability to build some suspense is bollocksed by the fact he uses the device each and every chapter -- whether 5 lines or 15 pages long.

I grant authors grow and his next novel may be of greater value to the reader or the sellers of ink. But there is growth and then there is an author being kidnapped by aliens in the night and replaced with someone who can write. My doubt remains such I shan't go near the man's work again.

A colleague at work mentioned during one of my rants last year about having lost something fundamental in my soul in my reading Brown that the book did represent one of the finest movie treatments he'd ever seen. And dammit, he's right. The book shows nothing, tells all -- and what we need are visuals (forgetting the crap, er, fault lines in the plot and its facts, er, details). I can't help think if Brown was a screenwriter all of his movies would be tell all, show nothing, but I digress.

And thus it was I saw today the first full trailer (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/da_vinci_code/) for The DaVinci Code, Ron Howard's cinematic take of the book, which (the book does) continues to defy proper taste by remaining on best seller lists for, well, supernaturally long periods of time, and by doing so proving again the masses are fuckwads.

And from the trailer, the movie I conclude is going to be a truly excellent ride of entertainment. I didn't notice if Brown wrote the screenplay -- gawd help each and everyone of us if he did -- but it looks like his novel will indeed prove to be an awfully long, but jolly good movie treatment.

thick

I read this in the Globe today and want to believe it (a victim of if it's in print it's gotta be...), but it seems, well, not possible:

If you were able to fold a piece of paper a quarter of a millimetre thick in half 50 times, it would be so thick it would reach from here to the Sun.

I'm sure the couple of engineers that read this blog occassionally will chime in.

My other thinking on this problem is that you could never reach the sun with the paper as at some point the distance from the sun reached by the paper would be such that the heat would continually ignite the paper creating an incredibly long wick. But wait, would the paper burn in space without O2? Sigh, I've wasted my life not offering it to science... I guess I make up for that with having checked that little box on my donor card on my license.

In other news:

China's leader refused to lend (initially, for several long moments) his pen to Japan's leader at a signing ceremony today. Only at the interjection of Malaysia's leader did the pen request get met. China's still a tad pissed at the Japanese leader's insistence on praying (as he says it's all he's doing) at a shrine which houses remains of unsavory war criminals.

In Hong Kong those zany South Korean farmer protestors jumped into the harbour in repudiation of trade talks going on there. Given that harbour is maybe only a bit cleaner than Hamilton's, perhaps the self dunking is an effort to grow an extra appendage -- which has gotta be handy for weeding crops if you're a farmer.

No film at 11. Pics, yes, but for share only.

sundry

Death and Humour:

Richard Pryor died. How sad. A truly funny talented man. Another, ahem, flame extinguished.

Excited Impatience disguised as cultural differences:

Sent a gift (Christmas) to Korea. Had fairly lengthy conversation last week about the traditiion of gifts being held and opened on Christmas day, or at least at a designated time. He over there had the courier box, the packing box and the wrapping off the gift before the courier was back in the elevator. Sheesh. Mind, also had the conversation about not looking at the customs declaration to learn the value of the gift. He looked at that too :)

Parking:

Parking is more expensive in downtown Calgary now than in downtown Toronto. By a considerable amount. Ah, boomtime.

VOTE

As we head to the polls in Canada:

For the cynics:

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river."
— Nikita Khrushchev


"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
— Adolf Hitler

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
— Ronald Reagan

"Read my lips — NO NEW TAXES!"
— George Bush

For the media analysts:

"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read 'President Can't Swim'."
— Lyndon B. Johnson

For the believers:

"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist."
— George Marshall [as in, The Marshall Plan]

"The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now."
— Lech Walesa

"All the world wondered as they witnessed ... a people lift themselves from humiliation to the greatest pride."
— Corazon Aquino