What I really want to do is act
The next Star Trek movie might be filmed in Vulcan, Alberta, which is kinda close to where I live. Ok, perhaps it's not quite walking distance, but it's certainly close enough to drive there in the morning and get thrown off the set in the afternoon.
[posted by gavin on Tuesday, August 28, 2001 | link this | talk]

Dirty rumors
Ok, I just set up a message board thing. Try it out: talk, gossip, spread dirty rumors, write a pretty poem for your sweetie.. whatever you want. You can find this message board by following the 'talk' link at the bottom of each post.
[posted by gavin on Saturday, August 25, 2001 | link this | talk]

To the moon, Alice, to the moon
This photo of Jupiter's moon Io is amazing. Imagine how big Jupiter must be.. </awestruck>
[posted by gavin on Friday, August 24, 2001 | link this | talk]

Thousands of minks escape, now pissed off

Grrrr

Stevy Steve and the funky bunch
Stephen Hawking is well know for his advanced scientific theories and his emotional yet haunting karaoke. Or something. Listen to his cover of Air Supply's "All out of Love," and fall back in love, with Hawking, today.
[posted by gavin on Wednesday, August 22, 2001 | link this | talk]

Ambitious plan to combat alien bad breath
Smints Mints want to use the roof of the defunct Millennium Dome in London to create the first advertisement that can be seen from outer space. Apparently astronauts are a prime demographic to the mint candy industry.
[posted by gavin on Monday, August 20, 2001 | link this | talk]

weeeeeeee

Well. I guess I'm starting to freak out.

New caption contest
There's a new caption contest up, and this one has a very odd photo. The old caption contests are archived here in case you wanna see your own or other peoples old stuff. I've also changed the name of it from "Caption contest" to "Evil caption contest", in order to better reflect the evil nature of it all.
[posted by gavin on Saturday, August 18, 2001 | link this | talk]

You are bad
Are you a pretty female graphic designer? Do you identify with them? Then chances are you pirate software, according to this BSA public service animation. Follow the journey of Meg A. Byte, an everyday cute graphic designer gone bad as she is sucked into her computer as a result of pirated software and forced to play 1980 Atari games in order to retrieve her stolen portfolio. Luckily, she decides to license her ill-gotton warez, which gives her the power she needs to retrieve her portfolio, and blow up the big UFO at the end for some reason.

Does this herald the return of 1950s style public service announcements, where the protagonist (usually named Billy or Meg) faces an unrealistic dilemma due to anti-corporate moral standards, and the only escape is to reaffirm those questionable morals resulting in extravagant yet unlikely rewards? Does it?

We can only hope.
[posted by gavin on Wednesday, August 15, 2001 | link this | talk]

Plastic lovin'
Courts rule Barbie now legally free to pose nude in sexually explicit photos
All right! I think we all can guess what I'll be doing tonight.
[posted by gavin on Wednesday, August 15, 2001 | link this | talk]

Simpsons News
This article has a bit of news about the next season of The Simpsons. There's going to be parodies of "Erin Brockovich," "2001: A Space Odyssey", and the "Harry Potter" film. (They've already done a "2001" parody, but this one's a halloween special). There'll also be a bunch of new celebrity guest voices, but who cares, it's all about the writing. Bring on the funny, I say.

Also, Futurama won an Emmy. Hot dawg!
[posted by gavin on Tuesday, August 14, 2001 | link this | talk]

These boots were made for insufferable pain, plus walking
I bought a new pair of shoes yesterday. They look exceedingly funky, with blue leather, orange laces, and brown soles. The down side is that walking now involves feeling like a pair of dogs have bitten and are semi-digesting my feet.

A large part of the problem is that I rarely buy new shoes; I wear one pair at a time until they’ve become leathery rags around my ankles. As a result I’ve decided, starting tomorrow, my new mode of transport will involve sitting in a shopping cart and pushing myself along with a big stick, gondola style.
[posted by gavin on Tuesday, August 14, 2001 | link this | talk]

Bubbles aren't as funny as they look?
The mother of a boy who died from an immune-system deficiency is upset at Disney because they're releasing a movie that makes fun of children in bubbles. Disney's argument is, as usual, if we can't laugh at gravely ill children, what's the point of laughing at all?
[posted by gavin on Saturday, August 11, 2001 | link this | talk]

Damn you British tabloids. Damn you Edmonton
The British tabloids have set their sights on Edmonton, home of the World Athletics Championships, and are calling it 'Deadmonton.' Well, I quite like the city, so I went looking for some patriotic Canadian rebuttal that would support Edmonton and be a rousing oratory equivalent of the big finger to British newspapers...

...but unfortunately I could only find this article from the Edmonton Journal, which is about as rousing as an empty fridge. In an attempt to make Edmonton exciting, the author uses these stirring arguments:

• [Edmonton's] identity comes from the cold, the vast sky, the empty spaces, the river


• The city is [like] a rig worker arguing with a university professor over taxes. 


• It's [like] an agnostic disagreeing with an evangelical Christian over abortion. 

And finally:

•  The 'Ton, U2's Bono called it. I like that, too. The 'Ton of opportunity, of ambition, of fight.

And really, is the best argument against your city being boring the fact that you have a big, cold, empty sky. And that it's inhabitants like to quibble with each other over dull, dull issues?

And then there's this Edmonton Journal opinion, an argument that old people should hang out at bars because "Young troublemakers would think twice about misbehaving around their parents, grandparents and other seniors," which doesn't help.

But then I found this Ottawa Sun article, which playing the big brother role (not in the Orwellian sense), actually has some teeth to it, like:

Yessir, there's nothing quite like kicking back in the fog with a warm, flat beer recalling the day Cedric's horse stepped on the polo ball during the big match at Pimple-on-Thigh, or reading great-grandpapa's diaries about the days when he was stationed in Inja and the sun never set on the British Empire. (See: Lost Civilizations.)

Is it getting smoky in here?
Humanclock.com is auctioning off the right to have your photo taken for the 4:20 time slot. Humanclock is a clock that uses a series of photos of people physically depicting the time somehow. And 4:20 is when you're supposed um, chill, baby. Haha, when will the whackyness cease? Never, I hope.
[posted by gavin on Thursday, August 09, 2001 | link this | talk]

Fish with English accents
Well this is a awfully strange.
[posted by gavin on Thursday, August 09, 2001 | link this | talk]

Not the brightest cat in Denmark
A kitten in Denmark jumped into a washing machine and was trapped in there while it was running for twenty minutes. The kittens owner rescued it and took it to the vets and, even though dizzy and oxygen deprived, it recovered fully. Then it went home and jumped straight back into the same washing machine. There's a reason we're the dominant species, folks.
[posted by gavin on Wednesday, August 08, 2001 | link this | talk]

Star Wars title announced
Someone told me the new title of the next Star Wars movie today, and I thought they were just joking. But then I checked the official site, and it turns out it's true: the next movie will be called "Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones". I hear it was a toss up between "Star Wars: Anakin says 'hi'" and "Star Wars: things begin to happen"
[posted by gavin on Tuesday, August 07, 2001 | link this | talk]

Wanna see a big, bald man bounce around and scream?
Steve Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft, and one of the most powerful men in the world. Hey, let's watch him have a psychotic episode.
[posted by gavin on Sunday, August 05, 2001 | link this | talk]

Mavis Beacon Teaches lovin'
I have a "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 9" disk sitting next to my keyboard. It's been sitting there for a few days now, tempting me to install it and beef up my typing skills. And while the lure of fast typing is strong, I suspect it will not be quite as strong as the lure of laziness. And another confusing twist is, I don't know how it got here. It just appeared one morning from nowhere.

But I suspect Mavis shall soon find a home up on my shelf of long forgotten software, along with other educational titles like "Teach yourself French" and "Mathematics made simple." This may help explain why I no get smart like scientist.
[posted by gavin on Thursday, August 02, 2001 | link this | talk]

Public loo guide
Raymi's got her guide to public toilets up on rocketpack. I'm very particular about my own washroom; I keep it super clean and cozy, since it's where I do 90% of my thinking and almost 99% percent of my pooping. Altogether, I spend a lot of quality time in there.
[posted by gavin on Thursday, August 02, 2001 | link this | talk]

Internet toys
Feel like playing with stuff hundreds of miles from you? There's a live video camera focused at a light-up marquee sign in some guys appartment, and using this form, you get to write what message is displayed. (I wrote "That wasn't coconut milk.")
[posted by gavin on Wednesday, August 01, 2001 | link this | talk]

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