Hello Chieftain!

And confidential to Omar and Samir: I'll be stuffing the heroin shipment into some dead babies for you to pick up, so you can take the money and buy a dirty bomb to take on the plane when you fly it into the Sears Tower. Praise Allah and death to the American pigdogs!

Nice knowing you, folks.

Okay, much as I love living in Canada, there are a couple of things that, in the interest of justice and truth, I need to address.

The first involves a series of Public Service Announcements that have been shown on Canadian TV since, apparently, the dawn of time. These spots highlight Canadians who've had an impact in the world, like, for example, Joe Shuster, who created Superman along with Jerry Seigel.

The ad, like all in the series, dramatizes what is meant to be "a key moment" in the person's life. In this case, it shows a twentysomething Shuster saying goodbye to a girlfriend as he gets on the train to move from Toronto to Cleveland. As he prepares to leave, he mentions to her "this new comic strip character" he's been working on.

Now, I can't vouch for the rest of the series, but I have to bust a can of truth on this ad's ass. First of all, Shuster was nine years old when his family left Toronto. He lived the rest of his life--he died in 1992--in the US. Second, Shuster and Siegel (who is not mentioned in the ad) did not create Superman until they were seventeen. The Man Of Steel wasn't even their first character with that name--as high school students, they self-published a novel entitled "Reign of the Superman," about a bald genius (sound familiar?) who conquers the world.

You know if something had been produced in the US that distorted the story so badly, there would be a national outcry in Canada, with cries of "shame on you!" and Members of Parliament banging tables with their shoes (apparently a popular hobby in Canadian politics). Not to mention that Siegel and Shuster gave up the rights to their billion-dollar character for something like twenty bucks and a sandwich (each), so get the story straight, okay? Oh, and the guy in the ad didn't look Jewish, either.

The other, more personal issue, involves Kentucky Fried Chicken. The first time I went to a KFC in Canada, I ordered the standard meal--coupla pieces of chicken, two sides. They asked me what sides I wanted. I said potatoes and mac n' cheese. I got potato SALAD and macaroni SALAD. Canadian KFCs don't have mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, or baked beans.

I'm going to repeat that. Try to understand the implications.

Canadian KFCs don't have mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, or baked beans.

When I complain about this to Canadians, they always tell me, "you can get fries." Dude, you can get fries anywhere. You can get fries at gas stations. I submit that the spuds, the mac, and the beans are as integral to the KFC experience as the chicken, mayhap moreso. This gross injustice can not stand! Shame on you, KFC Canada! Shame!

*sigh* Don't get me started on the anti-Krispy Kreme movement.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

So, got windows reinstalled with no significant problems. I am not by any definition a l33t h4x0r, in fact my m4d sk1llz pretty much $uX0r, so it was nice of them to make the process pretty much idiot-proof. The only hangups were in backing up a 2 gigabytes worth of downloaded comics, 8 gigs of MP3s, half a gig of video files, and a gig of pr0n.

Okay, time to leave the l33tspeak at Fark.

So, yeah, try backing all that up with a CD burner that works less often than the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive, while my wife just wants to know when she'll be able to play The Sims again. Now that it's done, time for the fun of going through all my backed-up warez installation files and figuring out what's what, from files with names like "a32en193" and "wc2k1_62." That's l4m3r, d00d.


Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

So, the computer got a virus, which installed an open proxy server, which is sending out spam. Tried everything else, and the only way to get rid of it is to reformat the hard drive. So if I'm incommunicado for the next couple of days, it's because I'm at the source, arguing with a disturbingly verbose old republican.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Scott now has his own blog, and wouldn'tcha know it, it's full of bright ideas. Check it out.

Christian, your turn.

Come on, you know you're curious. This one is slightly--slightly--less silly than the "satan put them there to test our faith" argument.

For the first time since Star Trek, a fan campaign may be making a difference.
Though if SMG is too full of herself to come back for Angel's finale, I say to hell wit' her. Faith and Kennedy are hotter anyway.

All you Rocky Horror fans, check out this article about the possibility of releasing Shock Treatment on DVD.

Short version: Fox currently has no plans for even a bare-bones disc, and there's a chance they don't even have the original negatives! You might find a home-brewed one on eBay, but those will be made from the tape, or from a laserdisc released in the early 80s, the infancy of laserdisc, which is not much better.

Come on, Fox. You released Myra Breckenridge on DVD, for fuck's sake. Quit listening to Sal Piro, already!

Don't click on the RSS button. It doesn't work.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Especially if you're at work.

Courtesy of Die Puny Humans, found by PJ Forrence.

I know you people are out there, I want to know who you are. Just click the comments link and...I dunno, tell me your name. Ten seconds. You can't spare ten seconds? What, you got, like, a life or something?

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

So, when I was just a wee lad, I used to go on vacation to Disneyland with my parents most summers. One of the things that always stuck with me was a sign, just over the Oregon border in Portland, reading EAT in big letters. Though it had been years since I got down that way, I always stayed intrigued at the thought of a restaurant simply called EAT.

This past weekend, Shelveeta and I went down to visit Chris and Angie in Seattle, and from there we did a day trip to Portland. On the way down, we got to talking about the sign we had all noticed, and vowed to eat lunch at EAT.

Well, there were a couple disappointments. First, despite the absolute certainty of my memories, the sign said EAT NOW, not EAT. Second, the restaurant has a name: Waddles.



But the disappointments were mitigated by the discovery of the best restaurant EVER.


Waddles has been there since 1945. As the name implies, there is a duck theme rather halfassedly woven into the decor.







Thankfully, there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to update the decor, which remains gloriously frozen around 1970.







I had a delicious bleu cheese burger that--and this is my litmus test for any burger--I was able to eat without it coming apart in my hands. Shelly had a cheeseburger, which came with this rather unfortunate side of slaw.



I am totally in love with this place. I want to move to Portland, just so I can buy books at Powell's and read them over lunch at Waddles. Naturally, I won't get my chance.



So, my childhood memory of a restaurant called EAT turned out to be false. But at least I got to check out the best restaurant ever before it gets turned into a fucking Wal-Mart.

Go to Portland. Eat Now.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Was the car commercial an unauthorized leak? Or was it part of a viral marketing campaign?

I present to you The Saddest Thing Ever.



From the outgoing mail table in my building.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Just saw The Ladykillers, the new Coen Brothers film. Great flick, and I have a suggestion; sneak in a bottle of booze and take a drink every time you see the boom mic.

Just go, you'll see what I mean.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

My wife just got a PM in yahoo from someone calling himself DragonLance. At my urging, she told him to go back to his Forgotten Realm. When he kept bugging her, she told him he only rolled a 7 (that's 1d20), and that his Charisma wasn't high enough for a reroll. He still kept bugging her, and she told him not to question the DM.

The advantage of being married to a geek: he can help you with the obscure putdowns.


Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Scott put this in the comments but I thought you all deserved to read it. Once again, sir, you sum up a situation much more eloquently than I.

I could not really register the situation for a little while. Until I heard it on the radio I thought it was another one of those hoaxes that went around every six months to stir the water.

I got home just in time to flip around on the television and hear Rush Limbaugh [who should now be seen as the eternal hypocrite] call him a worthless waif of a human being.

That night at at the Dee's cafe on State street in SLC the guys behind me, just as emotional as I spoke of how Kurt had gone on to become the God of the Grey.

See, The good guy above was the God of the holy, and satan was the master of the wicked, so Kurt had lived this rough life to become the God of the grey.

Now, as I am preparing to do the "Richard Lee was Murdered' SHow on public access I think of how it does not matter how Kurt's end went down. It is clear that it went down, and we would do best to remember that by whatever machinations there are out there in the universe, no one gets away with anything. And we all get to enjoy the music of a truly dedicated and gifted group.

So now I can look at the music or even entertainment industry with a bit more knowledge than I had before Kurt kicked the doors down.

I knew that the system was a big machine, but Kurt really showed how it operated with little regard for true magic. Each musician is capable of greatness, but when they rely on hocus pocus instead of really focus, we get this bumper crop of recipe music. Two parts harmony, nine parts imitation of past flavour, and a heaping of corn syrup.

I thank Kurt for everything he did right. And that was a lot.

Thanks Rich,
Peace within,
Scott



Copyright 2004 Scott Lindsley

Please don’t let it happen again.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, this week marks ten years since Kurt Cobain killed himself, and, though I’ll take any excuse to listen to Unplugged In New York, I feel this deep feeling of dread.

I was at work the day they found his body. A couple of hours after the announcement was made, while I was still reeling from the initial shock, my boss, who knew I was a Nirvana fan, felt the need to come ask me how I was doing, and I made the mistake of saying I was (and these were my exact words), “kinda bummed.”

Apparently this somehow designated me as the official scapegoat for Nirvana fandom in his eyes, as he took every opportunity he could that day to regale me with his opinion of Kurt Cobain’s hygiene, his drug habits, his musicianship (said boss being an aspiring commercial-jingle composer), and anything else he could find at which to take a cheap shot.

And, as I’m sure you know, he was far from alone. That very day, Ted Nugent wormed his way onto some radio show, trashing Cobain in an attempt to stave off his own irrelevance. Rush Limbaugh called him a piece of human debris. Andy Rooney, in one of his famous crazy-old-man rants, blithered about kids these days and how this wouldn’t have happened in the good old days of the great depression.

Oh, and Religious Brother, an ambulance driver, took great delight in telling me how many copycat suicides he cleaned up.

The musical revolution that Nirvana had ushered in had suddenly had the rug pulled out from under it. We tried to deny that it was over, but music that was sincerely felt, that came from a personal place inside, quickly became unfashionable, and on the musical charts, groups like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains gave way to soundalikes like Stone Temple Pilots and Bush, who eventually gave way to boy bands and jailbait pop princesses.

Time heals many wounds, and we’ve once again come to a place where we can simply appreciate the music, free from the ugly details of Kurt Cobain’s death. But with all the talk this week about the anniversary, I’m just afraid that the old bad feelings will be stirred up again, and once again I’ll be constantly shit on for being depressed that one of my favorite musicians is no longer around to make music. But just in case Religious Brother calls me up to gloat, I’m gonna have Nevermind playing at full volume to drown him out.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Watch this refreshingly fucked-up commercial. You'll be glad you did.

Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

As I pointed out on Jack's site, just because I understand the rules of "proper" grammar doesn't necessarily mean I think they should always be obeyed. Think of the opening of Star Trek (waggishly referenced in this quiz): To seek out new civilizations, to boldly go etc etc. Would it sound as cool if it was "to go, boldly where no one...?" No, it would just sound awkward.

You also get told a lot not to "verb" nouns. But think about a sentence like "Bull Heinman Gary Coopered up to the jail cell." You now know the exact manner in which Bull Heinman approached. Much simpler and more elegant than "Bull Heinman stepped up to the jail cell, swaggering like Gary Cooper playing a tough-guy in an old western."

And, let's face it, people who use "whom" are just being pedantic.



Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

Forgot about this pic. NSFW.

...specialises in the sale and letting of residential property in Islington, Highbury, Hackney, the City, Camden Town and the surrounding areas.

Angie, the cake gauntlet has been thrown. I expect you to respond in kind.

Why couldn't I have datedthis Miss Hell?

I am told that, *ahem*


Scott DeathBoy has made Bad Sounds. You will listen to them. NOW.


That was his, btw, not mine. But check it out anyway.

People, we have to nip this in the bud.

NO theme today, just a few things that didn't fit into other categories. I wanted to post a gothic redhead with kitty ears wearing a french maid outfit, but the only ones I could find would get me arrested.



Those are the safe ones. Here, here, and here are a couple for when you get home tonight.

Thanks for allowing me to share this little glimpse into who I am. I was glad to bring you this experience, and proud to present these pictures, except for this one, for which I am deeply, deeply sorry.
Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen

I've scared you all off by now, haven't I?

No? Well then how about this one?

Tomorrow: potpourri!
Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen