Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.

… It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion. …

— Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living.

On December 7th, I went to the My Chemical Romance show with Thrice and Circa Survive opening. Anyone who is a reader of SE know the reason I went to this show, even though, I knew what sort of evening I would be in for.

Suddenly, I am reminded of the words from the Sloan song, Coax Me :

It’s not the band I hate it’s their fans.

No wait…..it’s the band. And their numb-skulled fans. MCR is just a joke to me. And this is not the first time I have seen them, oh no. This opinion is not based on a single show. MCR has been to Calgary 4 times in 2005, and I was at 3 of those shows. This band is the perfect example of a band contributing to the rise of the fashion-core. The kids who ruined punk music.

Let me say a few things about the roots of punk. Punk is not about dressing a certain way. You do not have to shop at The Source, Mission, West 49 or exclusive thrift stores. It’s not about a certain sport. You don’t have to skateboard or snowboard or ride any other piece of wood. You don’t have to hate George Bush. You don’t have to be against the war in Iraq. You don’t have to be sad. You don’t have to do drugs or drink. You don’t have to be straightedge. You don’t need to mosh or be wreckless. You don’t have to do what you are told.

You do have to be an individual. You do have to educate yourself. You do have to make choices. You do have to have a voice. You do have to express opinions. You do have to vote. You do have to respect others. You do have to respect yourself. You do have to work hard. You do have to be positive. You do have to believe you can make a difference. It’s about finding out what important and making it important.

The guys from My Chemical Romance came out on stage and it was obvious that someone had dressed them up. These guys spent a lot of time on wardrobe, hair and make up. I suppose that’s ok, if they are truly expressing themselves, but I doubt if we ran into these guys the next day they would look the same.

The singer comes out wearing a bulletproof vest. I am not sure what sort of statement that is trying to make. These guys are not against guns. In fact, try to find a single piece of MCR merchandise that does not feature a gun or a knife. Their lyrics are almost in support of incidents like the Columbine High School shooting of a few years ago.

back home, off the run
singing songs that make you slit your wrists
it isn’t that much fun, staring down a loaded gun
so i won’t stop dying, won’t stop lying
if you want i’ll keep on crying
did you get what you deserve?
is this what you always want me for?

This band is not making the world a better place. They are not educating anyone. They are not presenting new ideas. They are not giving out hope. They are preying on your fear. They are preying on your hate. All the while, not producing that much good music.

I think the low point of the evening came for me when the singer decided it was time for everyone’s favorite concert cliche, usually reserved for hiphop and R&B:

“Wave your hands in the air, wave ‘em like you just don’t care….”

This is about the least punk thing you could have possibly done or said. You stand on stage and act like you are tough, and say that your vest is not protection but an encouragement for people to take shots at you. You say you are an artist, an individual….and then you come at the crowd with this? You guys are pathetic.

And what is more pathetic? Kids are eating it up. I saw thousands of kids, decked out in MCR gear, no doubt buying the CDs and singing along about “slitting wrists” and “loading their guns”. This is not punk. This is insanity.

And so if you want to think you are supporting something bigger than yourself by supporting this band (and many others like them), believe what you want. Just know you are just fashion-core in my eyes. And when the next country line-dance revolution comes, I will look for you on the dance floor doing the Boot Scootin’ Boogie. Cause that’s all you are, a marketting statistic. And right now, someone in a tall building is thinking of ways to trick you out of your money in your search for friends and more goodtimes and you can’t wait for them to do it.

Greetings!

It has come to my attention that some people aren’t having very much fun playing movies and the like in their browsers. Things like the Xmen 3 movie trailer just don’t seem to work - but it’s not just movies that suffer. Even very, very funny things like some dude trying not to laugh while giving an interview don’t work. And we can’t have that.

What’s worked for me, is installing this plugin. Now I can watch all sorts of fun media. It’s easy to install too, check out the site, they’ll help you out.

Get the mplayerplug-in.

Address: 351 10 Avenue SW
Type of Food: Thai
2 People ate for: around $41

Last weekend I went to a Thai place downtown called Thai Sa-On. I had been there before for lunch and it was not too bad, so I thought I would give dinner a try.

It’s Thai food, and maybe not even the best in the city, who knows, but I can tell you, they have A LOT of selection. Litterally hundreds of things on the menu. So if you like spicy, or sweet or spicy & sweet or any combination or range of each, they will have something for you. Get yourself some coconut rice, and you are good to go. We happened to order some beef in peanut sauce which was good, and a chicken lemongrass dish, also quite nice.

The food is pretty good, I can’t really complain. I did order a “2 chili dish” (out of 3) and I was expecting it to be a little hotter, but really, that’s my only complaint there.

The service was pretty weak. Jen asked for a pina colada:

“Those are not on the drink menu.”

So, I reached for the menu to see if there was another drink she might like….

“We don’t have a drink menu”, was the response. “We used to have pina coladas, but the ingredients were hard to find.”

Theses guys should visit Safeway.

When it came time for desert, we wanted to try some of the sweet sticky rice with mango (which was quite good!). I asked for a couple of deserts….

“A couple? Is that what I should write down here? A couple?”

“We want two”, said Jen, with an unimpressed tone.

hmmm….not too bright, this waiter. This post could have been alternately titled “How to get yourself a 20 cent tip”.

Overall, this place was about a 2 or 3 out of 5. I could have done without the stupid waiter, and it’s not the cheapest place in the world either, for what you really get. This is not the ultimate thai place, but it’s OK. I wouldn’t recommend it too strongly, I need to check out some more thai places.

More of the same strange cartoons from Toothpaste for Dinner…

Also, if you have some time to waste, this was funny.

Yeah, I am at work, but I am really tired and I am in the strangest mood. Sometimes, stupid things are hilarious. Now is one of those times.

Just so you don’t have to ever think that it’s your fault that things don’t work out … :)

I’m sure this argument works for women too.

Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend — nothingisreal.com

Some may know that I now have the pleasure of owning my first car. Don’t let that fool you - I’m still an ancient 28 years old, I’ve just been very successful at bike riding and borrowing cars . But, as I use the automobile in strange and wonderful places, I have come to realise that there are things I must maintain. Tires are one of those things. Actually, I think that other than oil changes, tires are the only thing. Do you need them? That depends on what you do with your car, and what the weather is like where you drive. Blizzards, ice and snow? Yeah, I think it might be a good idea.

I’ve been learning some neat things while owning cars, but really, I’m not much of a car person. I don’t use diapers to wipe the car down. In fact, I’ve washed my car twice in 3 years. I don’t use vaseline on all the rubber places of my car to keep them nice a supple. I don’t understand anything about my car’s complex inner workings. Washer fluid? Opening the hood? I’m all over that. To be honest, I’m pretty proud of my ability to successfully pay companies to give me oil changes. “Synthetic Oil”, I’ll say, with a knowing wink to the mechanic. I’ll usually get a blank stare in return, which plainly says: “We both know I could put fish oil in here and you’d still tell me I do a great job and give me a tip - so just shut up and give me money.”

So, last year, I was driving around in the city at a rapid speed of 15 km/h and I decided that I would like to reduce my velocity, and perhaps cease motion altogether. Unfortunately, I decided to do that on ice, and after 20 feet of graceful gliding to outsiders, and panicked brake stamping and useless steering to me, I slid into a tree. This particular tree had no roots, had been stripped of it’s bark, and had wires sticking out of the top, which joined it to other nearby trees. Anyway, the point was that I smacked it and bent up my bumper pretty well. Ridiculously well, you could say, but you wouldn’t ’cause it would reduce me to tears. That incident impressed upon me that my tires weren’t what I once thought they were.

Please note that I have a Subaru. I love it. I have very bald tires, but I can take off on sheer ice, corner in snow, and control my car in most conditions just fine. I can’t, however, stop very well … or at all … in those conditions. As I consider stopping to be one of the best parts of the driving experience, I decided to remedy the situation. Also, I drive in the mountains quite a bit - those are usually snow covered roads, at the edge of which is a few hundred foot drop, at the bottom of which are usually sharks with lazer beams attached to the heads, or polar bears, or martians with science labs I’d rather not think about. <kip>That’s what I’m talking about</kip>

What to get?

1 - New All Season Tires
This was my 2nd place finalist - it’s what I have now, is cost effective (being less than new tires and rims) and gives me a few years on the life of my tires. If I get Nokian all weather tires, I even manage to get some tires that “Meets Rubber Association of Canada severe snow performance requirements.” The problem is that the tires won’t last as long, and really don’t have as good grip, as dedicated winter tires. I’ll have to go through this again shortly. But my aunt Laurey has these tires and she just loves them, they’ve done her very well.

2 - Just keep the tires I have, and be more careful
Well, I like to think that I’m fairly careful, and I wasn’t going that fast when I smashed up my bumper. And yes, I will admit that just about every driver in existence thinks they’re a great driver and I very possibly suck ass. Either way, this option is completely unacceptable and really means I’m too lazy to pay attention to my safety. That might be true, but I can’t use that argument for the passengers I have in my car, or the other drivers on the road. The commitment I made when I bought the car compelled me to buy something better - I am responsible for my car - personally I think people forget what they’re really doing when they get in the car and direct a +1 tonne mass of metal and flesh randomly accross the planet. This was rated #4.

3 - Throw some winter tires on my rims
Winters on my rims wasn’t a bad idea, but then I’d have to switch my tires on and off alloys every spring/fall. That can actually hurt the alloys over time, and more importantly costs about 90$ every time you feel like doing that. So, better tires is a good thing, but the maintenance costs threw this option to a #3.

4 - Get new rims and throw winter tires on them
The obvious 1st Place Winner of the “What the hell should I do about my inability to stop” contest. Turns out that if you buy some rims and get the tires put on them, you get free tire installation, rotation, balancing and all that good stuff for the life of the tires. So, all of a sudden it costs nothing to switch between winters and summer tires. I got some good rims at about 80$ a rim (heavy steel so I can continue to off-road) which is great ’cause I can destroy them and not hurt my pretty alloy rims. After much profound brain things going on deep in my head, I decided that most cost effective solution over time was winter tires and new rims.

At the end of the day, I spent less on my new tires and rims than it would to fix my bumper, and that was just a little dent. Considering the winters will last at least a good 4-5 seasons of heavy use, I really think winter tires are a must-have for all us hosers who enjoy being out in nature during the winter. For the record, I went with Michellin X-Ice tires from Kal-Tire. They were excellent to deal with, and very helpful. I highly recommend them.

I will admit it, this is not the standard SE fare. And I am also sad to post this and have the Narnia post get bumped down. But hopefully this will benefit some dude out there who is bummed about going to this movie for a girl.

Wanna know a secret? It wasn’t that bad. Meaning, if you have to watch it, you can do it, and even think of some good things to say about it at the end so your lady will feel like your tried to like it.

I am not saying I loved it. I am not even recommending it. But, if you need to impress a lady, and she happens to be into this sort of movie, you can do it. It’s almost exactly 2 hrs long, so it’s not a marathon.

I don’t know how to review this sort of movie, since I had no expectations and knew nothing about it, I will break it down into the good and bad:

The Good
1. Keira Knightley is pretty hot.
2. You will pick up a lot of funny “English” things to say, so next time you are making fun of someone British, you will have some ammo to impress your friends.
3. You might get some insight into how a girls mind works. If your girl likes this movie, there is a reason. I will not tell you anything more than that. If you watch it, watch for the reasons your girl likes it, maybe you can learn some tricks.
4. They have a lot of cool furniture and houses and stuff….so I guess if you are into antiques…..ok, I am streching now.
5. whew….#5. OK. You could say that you gained some insight into how the class system of 18th century England worked….maybe that’s cool to you, you could be a history geek. Oh, I know! The theatre was practically empty! Man, I could totally but my feet up the entire movie, I like that.

The Bad
1. This movie is an 18th Century version of Dawsons Creek. Do you like Dawsons Creek? Neither do I.
2. The language might (no…it WILL) lose you. At first, I was like, “What the heck did she just say??”. But by the 1hr 50min mark, I was starting to understand some of it.
3. The movie is totally void of action. It might as well be a radio play with a slide show, that’s how little movement there is on screen. I thought that it was called a MOVIE….MOVE- EE! MOTION PICTURE! I think a duel of some kind between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham would have helped things out A LOT! That might not be in the book, but a good sword fight would have picked things up a little. But, knowing this movie, the duel would have probably been a game of chess or backgammon. Boo.
4. It was a little slow. Or fast. I am not sure. It seemed like the people who made this movie were assuming you knew some of the back story (if there is one). It took me 30min to figure out what the deal was with this family. I will clear it up for you: These people are pretty much red-necks. This is the trailer park of England, and these silly girls are trying to date the high-society guys.
5. The girls on screen were just as silly as you remember them in junior high. I thought perhaps in the last 200 yrs somewhere was where giggling and jumping around was invented by girls. Nope, lots of that in this movie. And the mom of the family…..man, I could see why that Mr. Darcy dude looked like his dog just died the entire movie. Look at his future mother-in-law! And the sisters! I know where they will be spending the holidays!
5. 5 The guys aren’t much better. Mr. Darcy is the ORIGINAL emo kid and his buddy Mr. Bingley looked like he was getting ready to have a LAN party. One sad geek, one garden-variety geek. Either way, GEEKS!

So there you have it. No sword fights.

Saw The Chronicles of Narnia on Friday, they did a fantastic job of following the book. I give that a 4/5.

The movie has obvious religious symbolism, which isn’t suprising if you’ve read anything by CS Lewis. Actually, if you google “The Chronicles of Narnia,” the first sponsored link on the right is “God loves you,” which I found funny. But it’s very well done, and has some really great messages to relate. As Jeff pointed out after the flick, one of the better messages is that of forgiveness. Not only all that; it’s a really cool movie! Great special effects, and cool characters. We even got to watch it on a screen that reflected light weirdly in the middle left part of the screen, so it looked like there was constantly a bright light there - I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a movie in a theatre whose screen needed to be replaced. Not really sure how it can get worn out … but it was!

I really don’t understand why they didn’t start with the first book, which I found to be a great book in itself. But they did get just about all of the 2nd book in this movie, and you’ll hardly notice the 2:20 hours fly by. I imagine for those who haven’t read the books, it would be a bit confusing.

But really it’s just as cool as you’d expect - they chose great actors for the kids, although I disliked the actor playing Susan, she just didn’t match what I had in my head. I guess that’s always a problem when you read the book first, is that you have these ideas of how the characters will act, and then you see someone else’s ideas, and for some stupid reason, you pick at them. I think they all did a fantastic job, though.

Definitely worth watching the movie. Liam Neeson as Aslan was a great choice, he has an excellent voice.

I work in marketting, and the core of that is creating demand where there isn’t one. And I am not just into any sort of marketting. I am in interactive marketting, which is a little vague, but for this post, it should satisfy you to know that we use a lot of technology.

I don’t know where I was during the “dot com” crash. I didnt even really hear about it until months and months after it had happened. There was this new thing, the Internet, and some people figured out how to make money, or at least make it look like there was a possibility you could make money. “Dot Com” became everyone’s favorite suffix.

“I’m a consultant charging way way too much money and really doing no work. Tell me what you do for a living.”

“I’m a manufacturer of toothpaste tubes.”

“Well, now you’re toothpastetubes.com. I’m going on break.”

But let me show you how marketting and technology together created the crash, and how hopefully, we won’t get fooled again…

I give you, the

Gartner Hype Cycle!

So many buzzwords right now. Have you heard of Web 2.0? There’s a good chance even your mom has asked you what it means. Want to know what Web 2.0 is? So does everyone. I work all day on the web, I didn’t know there was an official release yet. When was Web 1.0?

Marketting is about creating demand, especially for something no one needs. Right now, we are climbing that steap slope of expectation. Everyone is waiting for someone to come out and tell us what Web 2.0 is. Will it be MS? Sun? 37signals? Who?

Or is it that there IS NO Web 2.0? Perhaps this is just the natural phenomenon of technology merging with culture. I think that’s what we are dealing with. Web 2.0 is akin to:

• Certs - now with retsin!
• Cholestrol free!
• Zero trans-fats!
• Do not pay until 2007!
• Puppy Chow - new improved taste your dog will love!

Or it could be that dogs are just hungry and will eat there own crap if you don’t stop them.

Brent out!