Hot One

Today was something like 42 or 45 with humidex around here, perfectly gorgeous day for sitting around lounging, but instead I spent it in an over air conditioned office at the university. I cringe to think how much of my tuition goes to keeping the buildings at 20 degrees all summer long. I'm glad there's no drilling going on this week though cause today woulda been 14 hours of dust and sweat, culminating in pure exhaustion.

Instead I'm trying to get a game of soccer or something going, but of course everyone will pussy out, and say 'oh yea, I'd love to play, but I'm too tired tonight...blah blah woof woof'. I need to get some exercise after sitting around most of last week being too tired to do anything to strenuous after work. But really though, I just want an excuse to drive around with my new deck in my pimpmobile. Yes, that's right, a 1994 Caravan with body rust starting to take over is the definition of pimp. But it just needs some TLC, and I'll whip it into shape.

After working 60 hours in 5 days last week I'm looking good for having some holidays at the end of August to go camping and maybe do some legitimate work on the van. But that's still over a month away, and if I plan on something its guaranteed not to go down, so I won't set myself up for the fall.

Music Stats 1

I mentioned last week that I'd try to incorporate some of my music stats in here. I'll try to do this on a weekly basis, but we'll have to see what happens.

"...on days like these you gotta find it in some other way..."

Well this week I've gotten myself into helping with a borehole drilling project which means long days in the field, but outdoors. And while the Southern Ontario humidity still distinctly irks some, I am enjoying actually workin up a good sweat at work, even though I'm dog tired when I get home. By the way, if anyone can tell me how a dog gets tired lazing around a house all day I'd be grateful.

Don't have the time to post anything substantial. London won the 2012 Olympics, glad NY didn't get it, because even though its a global event, everyone knows it would turn into 2 weeks of celebrate New York, and further fuck up the city's traffic for those working there to make a living (not that elsewhere isn't similarly affected, but NY is always second city one thinks of when it comes to traffic congestion next to LA).

Found "Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly" via Matt Good. Matt also has a new music blog up.

I need a shower and some food, although I'm probably too lazy to barbecue myself something nice.

Has Anyone Seen Accountability Running Around?

Its been two and a half weeks since I first posted on the Downing Street Memo and almost 2 months since first brought to light, I admit I missed the first boats on that one. But it seems as though the entire American media, and rival parties in government who are supposed to challenge those in power over their actions have missed ALL the boats. The Bush administration didn't even deny the claims of these memos, and yet the whole affair of starting a war with no forseeable conclusion under false pretense has been shurgged off without even a slap on the wrist as though a child had innocently broken an antique vase.

Linda McQuaig questions what exactly it takes to have substantial evidence to hold the Bush administration accountable on. One would think with memos like this substantiated by members of both governments involved would hold some significant weight, but instead Bush keeps plugging on with non-fixed timetables, and doing the Bushy things he does like shrugging off global climate change solutions yet again.

With the impending retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court, and the possible resignation of William Rehnquist in the not too distant future, the Democrats if no-one else should be seizing the opportunity to apply pressure, and in doing so hopefully force Bush into choosing middle of the road replacements in the Supreme Justice bench instead of the far right leaning personality that many are fearing. Agenda following personalities, leaning strongly to either side of the political playground will only serve to damage the situation further I feel. What is required are intelligent, honest replacements that will weigh out decisions carefully and thoughtfully with no predisposition or bias, but obviously these days in politics honesty is far more than can be expected by the United States citizens, or observers anywhere.

Oh yea, and Happy 4th of July to my neighbours south of the border.

Improper Technique

I haven't been drinking as much lately as I had been, and it caught up to me Thursday night/yesterday morning. I had myself a mickey of Bombay, just enough to be in a happy daze, and didn't think anything of it, falling asleep watchin some infomercial. When it comes to harder liquor I'm usually in the clear for any kind of after effects, its beer that kills me, but apparently my body felt it should punish me for not drinking so much lately, and gave me one hell of a headache yesterday morn. Granted, I didn't have myself a glass of water or two before I crashed to rehydrate, but like I said, hard mixing usually is good to me. I have narrowed my situation down to two options, drink more, or drink more and accept that I'm getting old. Perhaps a third: drink less and accept that I'm getting old. But that should only be given consideration under the most dire of circumstances.

That said, I didn't much feel like posting about my buddy's fiancee's deformed fish yesterday. Black moores (which is quite the redundant name for a fish) turned orange, orange goldfish turning white, its crazy I tell you. But then the fish are something like 12 years old, so I guess like old people, we can ignore their slight shortcomings with age.

And while not having the motivation to post, I did some browsing around and found a couple gem sites. The illustrator of bunny suicides might be seen shortly on Dr. Phil, but has found a hilarious way to express a twisted personality. And since I find it hilarious I guess that speaks volumes about myself as well.

The second of them was this sweet piece of merchandise. How could something like this not have existed until now? How come I didn't think of this myself? Move over Bill Gates, there's a new kid in town, and they're selling the most flashy, gaudy, and yet stylish belt buckles you will ever see. Those big ass Harley Davidson and State of Texas belt buckles have officially been put to shame and are cowering in the deepest darkest corners of display cases across North America.

TGIT

Wooo long weekend starts now. Apparently those crazy west coasters are hittin the sauce a bit early. No reported casualties or anything so far, so I jest. Wouldn't be a very good way to start the long weekend. As usual I'm sure the weekend will fly by, but I intend to make the most of it and try to get some lazy ass friends out to play some soccer or baseball or SOMEthing. But it will likely end up being the typical chorus: "its too hot", "i don't like [insert sport]", or "i have plans".

Right now I'm waitin on goin out for some barbecue and beverage action. Have a fresh charge in the batteries, so hopefully some good photo ops present themselves. Been pretty dry on the images lately, and quite frankly pure text pages tend to be boring. Especially when they don't really say much.

On the not saying much theme, I realized I didn't have my plug-in installed that logs songs (artist, title, number of times played, etc.) in winamp. I turned that on, so in a week I'll post a site friendly version of the top 10 songs and artists or something.

Ride's here, gotta roll.

Shrimp 4, Me 0

Sometimes in cliche land people's eye's are bigger than their mouths, and their stomachs more coercive than the grey matter upstairs. That was apparently the case for me on Thursday night when I came home from work and had some shrimp that had been sitting in a bowl in the fridge since Monday evening. Sure I questioned its integrity. Sure a couple of the tails had turned slightly yellow and I threw them out, but I simply could not let the good looking ones go to waste.

Skip forward a chapter (we live in the DVD age now after all, no more VHS/Beta for you) to Friday morning. Stomach cramps, running to the bathroom every 10 minutes, and a general feeling of nausea.

This chapter had low budget, poorly scripted sequels on Saturday, Sunday, and today, with a decreasing frequency of the bathroom runs since I thought a reduced intake of food would give me some reprieve from the cramps and for convenience sake, the trips to the can. And now it seems like this anthology has come to an end 4 days later, although some reading of those handy dandy health sites all over Google and Yahoo suggested that food poisoning generally does last 4 to 7 days, so maybe I'm just par for the course.

MIT