I apologize to everyone in the world.
The real list can be found here.
November 4, 2011
April 10, 2010
March 29, 2010
My little girl’s all grown up
If you’ve ever wanted to know what a baby ball python bite looks like, here you go:
owwwwwwwwwwww
Before you jump to conclusions, I was totally asking for it. She had a bad shed and there were bits of old skin clinging to her. She bit me because I was trying to pick one of the patches off, which I imagine is the equivalent to a random person walking up to you and popping one of your zits.
It didn’t hurt much, snakes strike faster than you can breathe so there really isn’t any lingering pain. My reaction was more one of irritation than agony. I really wanted to get through my life with her without ever getting bitten. Oh well. If/when I have kids, I can start fresh with them.
In other news, I caved and bought an iPhone. But more on that later.
March 13, 2010
Raising Silkworms #3
I know you’re all dying to know what has become of my insane experiment to breed silkworms for fun and profit. Well, here you go:
Not as big as they get (that's what she said)
Now multiply by, say, a hundred and fifty.
They’re really not as much fun as you’d think. Bowser sure likes the taste of them though.
March 7, 2010
Review: Hush
Conrad Coates, Vivien Endicott-Douglas, Graeme Somerville, and Tara Rosling in 'Hush'
Last night Emily and I went to see Rosa Laborde’s Hush, currently playing at the Tarragon Theatre.
It was fantastic.
The script was an ambitious one, intersplicing time and space and memory and reality and dream in ways that could, in the hands of a lesser playwright, have seemed contrived to excess. But Laborde makes it all work – and work seamlessly – using a fairly original science fiction conceit that suspends your disbelief and even sets up a couple of wonderful “OH SH-” moments that I find lamentably rare in theatre.
Also integral to the production’s success are the excellent audio and stage effects I’ve come to expect from Tarragon. A play with this many scene transitions (there are no acts, just a montage of short scenes) is in very real danger of feeling clunky and disjointed, but thanks to some very clever visual tricks, the scenes bleed into each other as smoothly as dreams do. Also, this play demonstrates the definitive way to dramatize a recorded voice message.
As for the acting, the two male actors really stood out for me. Graeme Somerville’s character was dry, funny, and realistically (frustratingly) scientific. I’ve met people exactly like him, am myself occasionally exactly like him, and feel that his performance captures the complexities of someone straining to rationalize scientific reality with human nature without ever veering into absurdity and caricature. Conrad Coates played dual roles, both to pitch perfection. I liked him both as a kind, comforting voice, and as a crazy heathen witch-doctor-something droning in Spanish – acclaim few actors enjoy, I suspect.
So yeah, go see Hush if you’re in Toronto and in the mood for theatre that’ll make you think. It’s on until March 21st. Get your tickets here.
February 14, 2010
Bouncing Baby Bowser
Cute!
In case you’re curious, here’s a photographic display of the ridiculous growth rate common to bearded dragons in their infancy. The photo on the left was taken in late December. The photo on the right was taken today, not even two months later.
In addition to the size increase, I’m also shocked at just how striking her colour change has been. I guess looking at her every day makes the change seem less obvious to me.
It takes a bearded dragon a year to reach full size, so Bowser only has seven or eight months of growth left in her. Which means you shouldn’t worry about her getting big enough to eat me. Unless of course someone cuts me into small enough pieces.
February 9, 2010
Boone Carlyle: Failest of the Fail
Boone Failyle (image stolen from Wikipedia)
To celebrate the return of Lost for its sixth and final season, I decided to honour in words and pictures the one character I love to despise more than any other. Sure Charlotte did shit all, Walt was useless, and I can’t even remember the names of those two idiots who died from spiders. But those craptacular characters can’t carry a candle to Boone Carlyle, the best worst character of all time. The man was fail on so many levels, I can’t help but think that the writers inserted him into the show in order to amuse themselves. Perhaps they tried to one-up each other with their BooneFails. The official story is that Boone’s actor, Ian Somerhalder, was devastated upon hearing that his character was killed off. I say he was crying tears of joy.
How fail is Boone Carlyle? Let me explain through pictures.
Early on in the first season, we were treated to many minor BooneFails – at least one per episode. The most obvious example is the time Boone dove into the ocean to save a drowning woman. This was the result:
Jack saves Boone from death, but not even his medical expertise can cure the fail.
The woman Boone tried to rescue drowned anyways.
It’s plainly obvious from the get-go that Boone is overly protective of Shannon, his half-sister. Awkwardly so. Of course there were jokes to be had from the … unusual … nature of their relationship, but come on. They’re probably just really close, and being stranded on a smoke monster/polar bear-infested island brings out some weird behaviours. I’m sure their relationship is completely on the up and up, as this requisite flashback episode will show:
Half-sister, all wrong.
Oh Boone, you’re so practical with your finances. Of course the easiest way to save money on your wedding is to keep the number of guests low. What better way to do that than by making it so that the groom’s family and the bride’s family are the same family?
But our prudent pal knows that incest isn’t necessarily a survival skill, so he turns to a fellow survivor to teach him how to get by on the island. Does he turn to Jack, the leader, strong and smart and also a doctor? How about Sawyer, crafty and shrewd, always aware of the situation? Or perhaps Sayid, former member of Saddam’s Republican Guard and able to kill a man with his pinky?
Well Boone, who do you choose for your mentor?
OH SH-
Too bad Boone didn’t realize John Locke kills everybody.
Which leads us to Boone’s inevitable demise. Yes, Boone Carlyle has the ignoble distinction of being the first major character on Lost to die. And how did he die? In the most retardedly ironic (ironically retarded?) fashion possible:
Prosti-palooza of Fail.
Boone dies in a plane crash.
Let me explain just how hilariously, insanely, impossibly Fail this is. Boone survived a plane crash, only to die in a plane crash. And not just any plane crash.
Boone's last flight. Oh wait.
A plane crash involving a plane THAT WAS NOT EVEN FLYING.
Boone was killed by the airplane equivalent of getting hit by a parked car.
Jack prepares to amputate Boone's leg for fun.
It took him the whole fucking episode to die.
February 5, 2010
Breeding Goddamn Crickets
Your lives are an affront to nature.
The only reason crickets figure at all in my life is that they represent the most easily accessible food source for Bowser and Chelley. Until my silkworms begin maturing, which won’t be for a few more weeks, I am stuck with crickets.
I’ve worked out in my head that, on any given month, I will be spending at least a hundred dollars on crickets alone. On goddamn crickets. I’m better off breeding them myself. Which should be a fun and interesting project, much like the silkworm breeding experiment, except …
I despise crickets. They’re jumping cockroaches. Worse than cockroaches actually, because roaches are lower maintenance. Crickets demand things like warm temperatures, moist soil, specific foods, and certain population densities to breed. Roaches, on the other hand, require a shoebox and your garbage. That’s all.
Oh, and you know what else is great about roaches? They’re QUIET. They live out their lives in sweet silence. Not like crickets, which chirp day and night and make it sound like the disgruntled ghost of a campground has decided to haunt my apartment. And don’t give me that ‘oh, cricket chirps are a nice nature sound’. Hells no. Male crickets chirp because they’re horny. A cricket chirp is the equivalent of someone you hate sexting you every ten minutes. A cricket chirp is spam from a bad porn site. A cricket chirp is a lascivious wink from that guy you met at some bar that you ended up sleeping with because, although you hate yourself for it, you hate your father even more.
Oh, and roaches are more nutritious to boot. If it was legal in Canada, I’d be keeping Dubia roaches. I hate crickets.
January 31, 2010
Raising Silkworms #2
THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.
So it’s been 8 days. I got up to wake up the girls (all of them need heat/UVB lamps on to simulate daylight) and when I checked on the silkies, I noticed this chaos taking place inside their hatching container.
Now it’s a mad scramble to cook up some food for the little buggers. But I guess it’s official – I rule animals. I should’ve become a zookeeper or something.
