Because of all the rain we’ve had recently, the Vancouver area has been under a “boil your tap water” advisory for a while now and while the situation is improving and the advisory is expected to lift in a few days, people were going nuts - there were fights over bottled water, people were complaining about not being able to bathe their children because it would take too long to boil a tub of water, and coffee shops stopped serving coffee because their machines had water piped into them and it couldn’t be boiled ahead of time.

Okay, so perhaps things were in a bad way.

Regardless, as more than one pundit said, if this is how people behave in the event of a relatively minor health issue (other than a false positive for e coli, which has since been proven to be an error, the water has tested okay - it’s just got silt mixed in it), we don’t want to think about how folks will behave when the compost hits the aquifer…after all, the boiling advisory was only implemented as a precaution and not because there was a serious risk of catching the creeping crud from the tap.

Well, now there’s a new crisis hitting the streets…SNOW.

I know it doesn’t look like much, and in some parts of the world it would only considered a dusting, but you need to keep a few things in mind:

1) Around these parts we don’t get much, if any, snow and when we do, it usually doesn’t last long which means people don’t usually get much experience with driving in it.

2) The drivers around here, surprisingly enough, can’t seem to get a handle on driving in the rain - of which we do get quite a bit - so expecting them to behave when dealing with any amount of snow is like asking that Paris Hilton be taken seriously as an actress.

I’ve often wondered why Vancouverites can’t remember how to drive in the rain, and I’ve developed a theory about this:

a) The human body is mostly water.

b) During dry spells, the body gradually loses some liquid but since it happens over a period of time, the body is able to become accustomed to the slow decrease in moisture.

c) When the rain falls, however, the body soaks it up quickly…this causes the electrical impulses in the brain to short out, causing people to drive like epileptic rutabagas.

It’s only a theory…if you’ve got something better, I’m open to suggestions.

In the meantime I’ll sit at home all snug and warm, watching holiday movies on TV, and try to guess if the roads will be clear enough for me to head up Burnaby Mountain to my fencing class tonight at Simon Fraser University.

“Mother, may I have some more petite marshmallows for my hot cocoa?”

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I suppose it was only a matter of time before people started trying to shill herbal weight loss pills and various \/14grA substitutes on my site - after all, I haven’t bothered to make it difficult for people to send me e-mails - but I am surprised it took them as long as it did to start.

Still, since I have to approve each comment posted to my site there’s nothing that says I can’t have a little fun…

As you can see here, I’m editing their comments into something I feel is more appropriate; While I suppose it’s possible I’ll get bored eventually and stop doing this, part of me wants to keep at it for a while and see what else I can say about the whole spamming process - I mean, really, do people expect that just because they put “Don’t delete this” at the bottom of a message containing 18 links for hemorrhoid medication/stop smoking aids/Venapro (whatever the hell that is) that I’m going to approve it? (Yes, karogros, I’m talking to you.)

I may be a sick, twisted fuck but I do have my standards.

On the other hand, if somebody wants to give me free, unlimited access to some decent porn sites feel free to look me up. I’m sure we can work something out - and it’s not as if you can’t get in touch with me.

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I was watching TV the other day and an Energizer battery ad came on; it’s the one where the Energizer Bunny is used by aliens to jump-start their spacecraft by hooking jumper cables to its ears.

While the ad itself was your typical sales pitch, I noticed that there was a tiny disclaimer at the bottom of the screen; I didn’t get a chance to read it all but I did see one word quite clearly:

DRAMATIZATION.

Dude, WTF?

I’m used to the idea of disclaimers being put in ads because there are people out there who will think they can drive their cars like professional drivers do in TV commercials, and I can understand warnings such as, “Some restrictions may apply,” “Offer may not be exactly as shown,” and “Barbie does not actually fly” but come on…do we really need to tell people that a mechanical rabbit can’t be used to jump-start a UFO?

Honestly, between the sue-happy public and the rampant desire to protect kids from themselves, we’re turning into a society of pussies.

I grew up watching cartoons on TV before they became nothing more than product placement devices, and they still had all of the violence included…yet I never thought that I could fall off a cliff like the Coyote, impact the ground, leave a body-shaped crater and walk away with no serious injuries except a case of “accordion body.” Did someone have to tell me this? Were there disclaimers on the TV telling me, “WARNING: COYOTE CANNOT ACTUALLY HOVER IN MID-AIR UNTIL HE LOOKS DOWN”?

Nope…it’s called having a grasp of reality…understanding that I was watching something that wasn’t real.

Example of a typical Sylvester/Tweety cartoon where Sylvester and another cat are fighting to see who gets the bird:

- Cat tosses frying pan at Sylvester
- Sylvester ducks behind door; pan bounces off closed door.
- Sylvester opens door, pokes head out and sticks out his tongue.
- Iron flies into frame, nailing Sylvester in face.

Typical cartoon humour, right? Well, here’s how it was edited in one version I saw recently:

- Cat tosses frying pan at Sylvester
- Sound effect of frying pan hitting door (but no visual of same).
- Sylvester opens door, pokes head out and stick out his tongue.
- Iron flies into frame, nailing Sylvester in face.

I wonder what the point was of editing the scene in that manner? The only reason I can think of for showing one physical act of violence (the iron) and not the other (the pan) is because in the original cartoon you see the cat throwing the pan, so by eliminating the shot of the pan hitting anything you remove part of the cause and effect…since we never saw the iron being thrown in the original cartoon, it doesn’t count?!?

I can understand that some of the old cartoons are no longer shown because they played on certain racial stereotypes that at best were lame and at worst offensive, but I’d really love to see studies on the number of frying pan and iron-related injuries caused by kids who imitated what they saw in those old cartoons - hell, I’d bet more kids were injured by jumping off rooftops trying to be Superman.

There may be hope for the future, though…I’ve noticed that the Energizer ad no longer has the disclaimer on it. I’m hoping that means somebody with brains realized that only hardcore conspiracy nuts would try to jump-start a UFO with a mechanical rabbit, and walked over to the Legal department and smacked them in the face with a frying pan.

What a wonderful world it would be…

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It’s been raining out here. A lot.

No, scratch that - make it a helluva lot.

I understand that, being Fall, it’s expected that leaves will gather on the ground, blocking storm drains and causing water to back up on roads. I also understand that driving your car through excessively large bodies of standing water is not generally advised.

However, I do not understand driving through standing water and ending up with this:

(Click on images for larger versions)

Once I’ve laid out the scene of the crime, as it were, I’ll explain what exactly happened to my car…

I was driving westbound on Lougheed Hwy. towards the intersection of Lougheed and King Edward; I was going to turn north onto King Edward to get to the Canadian Tire store to do some shopping. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology known as Google Earth and Photoshop Elements, I even have visual aids:

The arrow shows my direction of travel, the blue area represents the water on the roadway, “B” shows where I stopped my car after I encountered “A,” which was a tree branch that was submerged under the water.

Considering that the water wasn’t that deep (I don’t know exactly how deep it was but I was able to move through it as long as I drove slowly), I find it hard to believe that a tree branch could be big enough to do so much damage to my car - but what can I say? There was no other vehicle involved (or indeed, anywhere near me at the time); that’s what brought me down.

After the impact (with a suitably loud noise), I was able to back my car up a bit from position A and get to position B where I waited for a bit until I could get back into traffic; the car stalled shortly after I pulled over which must have been due to getting bogged down somehow when I hit the branch - it appears I flooded the car (pun not intended) because after waiting a few minutes the engine started up and the car ran with no problems. I pulled back into traffic on Lougheed and went home, all thoughts of Canadian Tire gone from (what passes for) my mind.

Of course you all know what comes next…the dreaded insurance claim.

I lucked out in some ways but not in others.

Luck: The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), the company I have my insurance through, allow you to file claims either by phone or online…my claim was simple enough that I was able to file online.

Not Luck: My claim doesn’t fall under Comprehensive as I’d hoped, but under Collision - which means that my rates would go up if I go ahead with the claim.

Luck: I discussed this with an ICBC rep and was told that my total rate increase would be about $60…split over 3 years. I can live with that since it’s bad enough I have to pay a $300 deductible to get my car fixed.

Luck: My preferred body shop has a branch close to where I live, plus they have an on-site claims assessor (which means I didn’t have to make a separate appointment to get the damage inspected), plus they have free loaner cars.

(Sorta) Not Luck: I can’t take the car in to be fixed until next Friday.

While I’m pissed at the situation, it could definitely be worse in a number of ways…I could have damaged the car to the point that it wasn’t drivable, the damage could have been so extensive that the car could have been written off (unlikely under the circumstances but when you consider I’ve had a car shot by the police - however, that’s a story for another day), my rates could have gone through the roof, I might not have had the money to get the repairs done…so I think I got off pretty lucky.

If I EVER find that tree branch, though, I’m gonna take a dull chainsaw to that motherfucker and make it pay for what it did.

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Recently, I was treated to a membership in the Vancouver International Film Centre for my birthday - it included a free ticket to any showing and since the VIFC was holding a retrospective of Canadian horror movies, I decided to indulge myself with one of the unsung classics of the genre:

This movie is a classic example of what you can do with $36,000 in 1973 dollars and the talents of the Sudbury, Ontario film industry.

(Yes, I’m joking - well, at least about Sudbury. Speaking of Sudbury jokes:

Okay, I’m done now.)

Before the movie actually begins the audience is treated to a public service announcement by the producers who feel that because the movie includes scenes of extreme gore and violence they must give us a warning before they’re shown. The warning consists of a siren and a clip of a man supposedly barfing into his handkerchief (to me, it looks as if he’s trying to eat his hankie):

The movie starts inside a funeral home where the owner asks his mortician to stay late and handle a body that’s just coming in, apparently the victim of a wild animal attack. After telling Bill the Mortician to do his best work, he hops in the hearse and drives around for a few minutes, talking to himself about nothing much before driving back to see how it’s going.

Bill has done a great job of fixing up someone who supposedly had his face nearly torn off - after all, there’s only one HUGE scar left on the corpse’s face!

We then go into a flashback - although this is not immediately apparent (no harp glissandos or visual effects on this budget, no sir!) - of two couples (this being the late ’70s, it’s the traditional boy/girl system configuration) taking a boat ride to a deserted spot where they set up camp, they drink beer and engage in some miscellaneous fondling…we get some gratuitous boobage as well as a shot of said topless girl riding her boyfriend (unfortunately she’s still wearing her bikini bottom and besides, it’s shot from the waist up).

Eventually everybody gets bored and start talking about what to do next. A rock concert is suggested but shot down as they’ve been to far too many shows recently. After a while, someone comes up with the great idea of spending the night in a graveyard because, after all, it’s Friday the 13th!

Plot Point #1: No good ever comes of doing strange things on Friday the 13th.

Once they get there, it starts to rain so instead of going home, they set up shop in a crypt that just happens to have an open door.

Plot Point #2: Open crypts are never a good thing.

While the foursome are thinking of what to do next, one of the guys remembers a game his uncle used to like to play…new from Milton Bradley - “Let’s Try to Conjure Demons!”

Plot Point #3: Some families are more dysfunctional than others.

We then see everybody holding hands while the guy chants, “Lucifer! Lucifer! Barabbas! Barabbas!…” and some other names that may or may not be gibberish; I can’t be sure because my family never engaged in this sort of crazy behaviour so I have no devil-worshipping uncles to ask.

Nothing happens, however, until the guy gets the bright idea to turn a nearby wall-mounted crucifix upside down and then repeat the incantation.

Plot Point #4: Foreshadowing: your indicator of quality!

Eventially, something does happen - corpses start popping out of the ground and, of course, they hunger for human flesh:

True to tradition, the woman who took off her top and let her boyfriend fondle her is set upon, torn apart and eaten…but first, here comes the warning!

Plot Point #5: Some traditions endure…in horror movies, the slut dies first.

The gore was surprisingly good, although according to the program guide they used pineapple as one of the ingredients and I certainly didn’t see any pineapple - not that it really matters, as I don’t like pineapple much.

The guy who started the whole damned thing gets attacked and injured, and the other two help get him out of the crypt while “beating away” the zombies with a shovel (I’ve seen kittens beat on each other harder than that). They get in their car and head to the hospital where Injured Idiot is taken into surgery while the remaining girl is sedated and given a room to sleep in because, as we all know, girls are fragile and can’t handle shocks such as seeing zombies eat their friends.

We’re treated to scenes of the OR (which are filmed in such a way that they avoid showing any surgery FX, saving on pineapple) and a nightmare sequence where the girl dreams she’s turned into a zombie and starts eating her boyfriend (not that way, you pervs!).

Injured Idiot dies of his wounds and is sent to the funeral home, which brings us back to the present (remember Bill the Mortician?). After the body is placed in a casket and stuck in a viewing room, the director of the funeral home sits down to have a few drinks and fill out some paperwork; this leads into what can easily be the best part of the evening…

The CORPSE EATERS DRINKING GAME!

Guy scribbles his name - take a shot;

Guy drinks right out of the bottle - take TWO shots

BONUS ROUND: When the filmmakers were adding the sound FX in this scene they botched it and the sounds are out of sync; I started thinking about ways to make the movie even more fun than it already was -

Sound effect out of sync with action - take a shot

- but I realized you’d be too wasted, if not dead from alcohol poisoning, to continue watching the movie.

Eventually the funeral home director starts to hear noises from the viewing room, so of course he does what any sane person would do - he goes to investigate. What does he find?

Reanimated corpses hungry for flesh!

The man is attacked and his eyes torn out (we get a nice shot of an eye on the floor) and after a suitably long period of bad camera angles and psychedelic music, we cut to a scene of the funeral home director being stuck in a straightjacket and plopped on a chair as he screams, “I’M NOT INSANE!”*

The camera pulls away from the outer walls of the asylum, and the end credits roll.

I wish I could describe this movie in better detail as the words I have written here do not do it justice; if you thought that Plan 9 from Outer Space was the worst movie ever made, I can tell you from personal experience that it no longer holds the title - CORPSE EATERS does - but one of the reasons it’s so bad is because it’s only an hour long! I know it sounds like I’m contradicting myself but I’m not; if it was at least 20 minutes longer it would achieve MST3K-worthy status but as it is, it’s just too short to riff on successfully. The extra time could have also helped explain the ending - was the entire thing dreamed up by the funeral home director and there were no zombies at all, or did the zombies stick his eyes back in their sockets and then clean up the room before taking that long-overdue vacation in Puerto Rico?

Of course, adding more gratuitous boobage certainly wouldn’t hurt.

*For those of you who don’t remember where this was previously mentioned, you can relive the fun here.

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You thought I was finished talking about Halloween, didn’t you? Well, I’m not…but not for reasons you might imagine.

Starbucks (aka CoffeeConglomoCorp) came out with a Halloween “Advent calendar” this year; I use the term because it’s the closest I can come to describing it - a candy-filled treat shaped like a haunted house, with little drawers to hold the loot:

When you remove the drawer and reverse it, it changes the overall picture of the house:

When I first got this, I thought it was a great idea but I soon realized that it had its problems:

1) While they got the number of drawers right - 13 - they aren’t numbered, so you don’t know which way to go…bottom to top, or top to bottom - or do you just start opening drawers at random?

2) The drawers were either difficult to remove or they popped out at the slightest tilting; there was no middle ground.

3) The most damning problem with this concept, however, was the candy itself:

They came in two styles: an orange jelly with a sugar ghost decoration, or an orange jelly with a sugar jack ‘o’ lantern decoration.

Fer gossake, Starbucks…where’s the variation? Where’s the surprise? Where’s the chocolate?

At least with your bog-standard Advent calendar you get chocolate (admittedly not Godiva or Callebaut but hey, it’s chocolate) and there are more than two different shapes.

It would appear that the discerning candy connoisseurs that shop at Starbucks -

(insert pause for laughter at such a ludicrous idea)

- agree with me…the haunted houses were originally on sale for $15, but wound up on sale for $5.

Of course, I bought two more.

I think I’ll replace the crappy candy with something decent for friends and family, and use the original dreck as part of next Halloween’s handout to the kiddies…after all, I have a reputation to maintain.

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When it comes to being a packrat, the technologies of today offer me far more opportunities to collect “just in case” items than in the past. Case in point: cheap, disposable LED devices.

It used to be that if you were building props and wanted to have blinking lights you’d need to build a dedicated electronic circuit, or pay someone else to do it for you. In today’s world, however, this is no longer the case as evidenced by items like these:

From left to right, they are: a green/yellow flashing LED button, a 4-colour LED flashing mouthpiece that fits in the mouth (fun at parties) and a red/blue flashing LED button.

The LED buttons have magnet bases so they can be attached to any ferrous surface or to thin fabrics; you turn them on by twisting the top clockwise, which completes the circuit. The mouthpiece is simpler to operate; just press the button. Once everything’s turned on, you can watch them light up the darkness!

In addition to those, which can be purchased in bulk from the Oriental Trading Company, I was checking out the Christmas stuff at Canadian Tire and found the latest addition to my electronic junkpile…miniature chaser lights!

Check out the Chasers in action!

I’ve already used the flashing LED buttons and mouthpieces in some props, and I figure it’s only a matter of time before I find a use for the chasers - until then, I’ll just set them somewhere easily forgettable so I can drive myself crazy looking for them when I finally do need them.

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Author’s Note: From time to time I’ll be posting about things that bug me and what I’d do about them were I given carte blanche - here’s the first in a series…

Today, I tried to renew a subscription for an association I belong to by going to their website; I was looking forward to this because they’re based in the US and being able to renew online, even with a $1.94 “internet processing charge” would be cheaper than going to the bank and getting charged $5 for a US money order, then spending another buck on postage.

Alas, it was not to be.

While the mandatory fields included “state” and “zip code,” I incorrectly assumed that since there was a pulldown selection for “country” I’d be given some leeway, but no…if I didn’t enter a state and 5-digit zip code, I wouldn’t be able to process my membership renewal.

Since the assn. newsletter I received in today’s e-mail was the edition stating that the online registration was available I wrote a reply asking if the site could be updated to allow non-US members to use it; I received a private e-mail saying that it wasn’t cost-effective at this time to alter the form but if I were willing to call the registration person (long distance, on my dime), he’d try to register me over the phone. I figured that a call might be cheaper than the time and gas to hit the bank, plus the bank fees for a money order, so I gave it a shot.

Unfortunately, he was unable to process my credit card information for some reason; I’m thinking it’s because he was entering it on a US computer when I’m located in Canada…I may be off-base here, but stranger things have happened.

When the smoke cleared I ended up going to the bank anyway, but I was able to combine it with other errands so it wasn’t a total waste - still, it pisses me off that things like this happen. I know that there’s a lot of pre-built merchant systems out there and that the association isn’t completely to blame for using something that doesn’t allow people outside the US to access it, but I do blame them somewhat for not thinking of this before they implemented it. I asked if they could at least put a notice on the site that the renewal forms can’t be used without having a US address; they said they would do so but it hasn’t happened yet.

This long, drawn-out preamble is meant as a lead-in to how I’d change things if I were Emperor of the World:

1) All pre-built shopping cart software would be written in either a country-specific or worldwide version and sites would need to clearly mark them as such…no more bullshit of having the option of selecting a different country when you can’t complete the transaction.

2) While we’re at it, everybody would standardize how credit card numbers are entered on their sites; while most sites want you to enter your CC# with no spaces between the numbers, there are still some sites that expect you to include the spaces - and what’s worse is that almost NOBODY lists the format they want it in, which means if you don’t do it the way they want it’s just rejected with no explanation - and you’re so desperate to order your goat porn Chick tracts that you keep trying various permutations in the hope that eventually, you’ll get lucky.

3) Oh what the hell…hey, people that program ATMs, here’s one for you: If I enter my PIN incorrectly, tell me right away - don’t make me wait until I’ve punched in all my transaction details, and only then tell me that I messed up and I have to start all over again! Sweet zombie Jebus, folks, do you really think someone trying to fraudulently use a bank machine is going to be deterred by making them take extra time to guess a PIN? I suppose it could be worse, though - everybody should be grateful that you’re better at designing ATMs than you are with electronic voting machines.

I’m not asking for much here, people, but be warned - HEADS WILL ROLL.

Now put down the Twinkies and Mountain Dew, get off your fat coder asses and get to work.

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PLEASE VOTE.

That’s all.

I’m not gonna tell you who to vote for, but I will tell you that you need to make your voice heard - preferably by studying all of the issues and candidates on your ballot, then making an informed decision…even if it comes down to “the lesser of two evils.”

For the record, I have dual American/Canadian citizenship and vote in every election.

I love absentee ballots.

I hate Diebold.

I hate people who bitch and moan about government and don’t take the time/effort to cast their votes.

I hate that personal freedoms are being eroded.

I hate that the system tries to play on our fears.

I love living in a country where I can still have a say in what happens.

I hate thinking that even if I vote, it may not make a damn bit of difference - however, if you don’t play the game, you lose your right to complain about how it turns out.

In other words…

PLEASE VOTE.

Thank you.

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It is my curse, and I do not say this lightly, that I have a mind (or what passes for one) stuffed to the gills with trivia - I may not remember where I left my car keys but I can tell you the license plate of the car that John Drake drove in the opening credits of THE PRISONER (KAR 120C) or my Washington State drivers license number from over 25 years ago (I’m not listing it here for obvious reasons but it consists of the first 5 letters of my last name, the first letter of my first and middle names, 3 numbers and 2 more letters).

While being a font of (relatively) useless information can be useful on occasion at parties, there are quite a few times I’ve been in a situation where something has been funny to me because of my knowledge but it’s useless to explain it to others because, not having access to the irrelevant information I carry, they won’t understand. It’s a basic principle of jokes - if you have to explain them, they aren’t funny.

Examples:

1) While watching a movie last week, I laughed when one of the characters kept yelling “I’m not insane!”  because it reminded me of a campaign song for a fictitious Presidential candidate in a Firesign Theatre routine:

Papoon for President

there is no one to blame

Papoon for our Chief President

you know he’s NOT INSANE!

If you knew that bit you’d probably have laughed if I’d turned to you in the movie theatre and whispered, “It’s George Papoon!” If you didn’t - well, you wouldn’t understand why I was laughing.

2) If you’ve seen Mel Brooks’ movie SPACEBALLS (which, as an aside, was a great movie but suffered from being released too long after STAR WARS first came out), you’ll probably remember the diner scene towards the end that was a takeoff on Kane’s death scene in ALIEN - but unless you’re into old Warner Brothers cartoons you probably didn’t get the reference to ONE FROGGY EVENING when the chestburster started singing and dancing:

Hello my baby

hello my honey

hello my ragtime gal…

Of all the people watching the movie, there were only 3 of us who got the joke…the rest of the audience looked at us and wondered why we were laughing our heads off.

Kids these days…Pshaw.

On the other hand, there have been times that I’ve been able to impart some of my trivia wisdom to others - for example, I’ve been able to educate E on the finer points of film music to the point where she can often identify a score by Bernard Herrmann or Jerry Goldsmith because I’ve exposed her to enough of their music that she can recognize their styles. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make up for the difficulty of finding people willing to play Trivial Pursuit with me - let’s face it, would YOU want to play against someone who can point out when a trivia question is wrong (Gamera is a giant shrimp? Huckleberry Hound is Augie Doggie’s dad? WTF?)

3) I’ll finish this off with a little test to see how good your trivia skills are…please take a look at the following picture and answer this question: What is this cartoon character’s name?

Did you say “Gossamer?” Well, in the words of MXC’s Captain Tenneal: YOU’RE WRONG!

Find a copy of the Bugs Bunny cartoon Water, Water Everyhare.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

(dum de-dum-de-dum…)

Okay, now that you’ve watched it you know what I’m talking about. For those of you who weren’t able to locate a copy, I’l quote the relevant part here:

“Oh, Rudolf! There is a rabbit loose in the castle…return him to me and I shall reward you with a spider goulash.”

I rest my case. While this wasn’t Rudolf’s first appearance, it was the first cartoon where he was referred to by name (how’s that for trivia? Am I good, or what?).

I don’t know what the hell the writers of The Return of Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century were thinking when they decided to rename Rudolf as Gossamer, but I consider it my solemn - nay, holy - duty to do what I can to ensure that this naming travesty does not go unnoticed.

Thank you, and good night.

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