ChrisTalbot.com

Anonymous Friend says: Here, go to this site, then close it.

Anonymous Friend says: http://www.sharealittlemagic.ca/sharealittlemagic/index.asp

Anonymous Friend says: Or read it... I don't care, just go to it.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Scary shit.

Anonymous Friend says: No, no. There's some charity thing and MasterCard is donating $50K to the BBBSC (Big Brothers...) once 10,000 Canadians visit the site. I wasn't trying to make you in to a Big Brother.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Bastard.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: So essentially what you just did is encourage spamming.

Anonymous Friend says: Oh shut it.

Anonymous Friend says: :P

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Nope. Spamming is spamming.

Anonymous Friend says: It's not a spam campaign.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Well, then you're a spammer. You tricked me to go there.

Anonymous Friend says: Did you receive an e-mail or a call.

Anonymous Friend says: OMG!

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Wha'?

Anonymous Friend says: You're insane.

Anonymous Friend says: :P

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Nope. If you'd told me first that it was for charity and then showed me the link, I would have had the choice to participate.

Anonymous Friend says: This is true. But I didn't want to waste your time.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: You wasted my time. I don't support charities. And on the rare occasion that I do, I prefer to choose which ones I support.

Anonymous Friend says: Click and close was less of a time waster than saying going over it, or sending you the information.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: You wasted like three seconds of my life, fucker. Those are three seconds I could've spent browsing for porn.

Cerebus the Aardvark says: Shit. I must post this conversation to my blog. <laugh>

The mind boggles at how much free time some people have. Check out: Tales of the Plush Cthulhu.

The DVD arrived today. That was quick. And it came with a note scrawled on the back that said: "You're our first international customer!" Well, consider me privileged to be the first person outside of the U.S. to own a copy of this (and that is not sarcasm, people). I'm hoping to watch it either tonight or a bit later this week.

The DVD is actually a DVD-R, so I popped it into my DVD player to make sure it would run. Everything seems good in that respect. If it hadn't worked, I could've just run it on my computer, but it'll be nice to actually be able to watch it on the TV. The DVD has the name of the movie and the director's name written on the top with a black marker, and the thing came in nothing more than a sleeve (I could've got a DVD case, but I can just grab one or throw this in a CD case -- no big deal). It doesn't look like much, but the concept put forth on the film's Website makes me think there will be something to this movie.

Everyone is jumping on the collectable miniatures game bandwagon. Somehow I missed this in June when it was announced, but Logan said he saw a Star Wars Miniatures game in some store or other. Well, here it is.

An email was waiting in my inbox this morning when I popped online to get my day started. Once again, SOE and LucasArts has an offer for ex-Star Wars Galaxies players to come back for free for ten days. They did this several months ago (back around February, I think) after they added some major features to the game (and one can only assume, got them running properly). Well, more changes have been made, and I think maybe even the Jump To Lightspeed expansion has launched. As long as I log into my SWG account in the next month, I'll have ten days to refresh my memory why I quit playing last year. Yay!

Rawl said something to me on Sunday before our D&D session that made me think. The night before, he went to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary, and he said that he could've waited until it was released on DVD to see it. Not because it was a bad movie, but because he said the theatre experience doesn't do anything for documentaries. That's interesting. I don't think I've seen too many documentaries on the big screen, and even the ones I have seen were Imax/Omnimax type of pictures (where the theatre experience definitely makes a difference).

However, with documentaries of the Michael Moore variety or Super Size Me, I have to wonder if going to a theatre is really worth it. Maybe waiting until the film is released on DVD is the best way to go.

Back in the mid-1990s, Marvel launched several connected series that took place in a cyberpunk-like future. Generally referred to as Marvel 2099, the various series took versions of modern era Marvel superheroes and recreated them in the future. For awhile, I read Spider-Man 2099, Punisher 2099 and Doom 2099. I still have the issues that I did buy.

Well, now it looks like Marvel is relaunching the 2099 series, although one site said it's just a bunch of one shots and that they're not connected to the old Marvel 2099 series. Still, I'm a big cyberpunk fan, and the idea of porting existing heroes over into a dystopian future holds a lot of possibilities. The new books launch this week. I'll have to make sure to get Wyldstar to pick up some of the more interesting titles -- ones like Punisher 2099, Inhumans 2099 and Mutant 2099. I don't really have much interest in Black Panther 2099 or Daredevil 2099.

Ding-dong!

It was Saturday night, Jacquie and I were in the middle of watching the newly-released A New Hope on DVD, and the doorbell just rang. I hit the pause button and sat there. These days, when the doorbell rings and I haven't been given prior notice of a visitor, I assume -- rightly so -- that it's a door-to-door spammer (I've started equating everything to Internet junk mail -- phone spam, door-to-door spam, those kids that stand outside the liquour store spam).

"You get it," I said to Jacquie. "It's your turn." For some reason, I believe I always answer the door. It's not true, but it's a perception I have.

"No. It's night. A lot of things happen to women that answer the door at night," Jacquie said.

"What -- and nothing happens to men that answer the door at night?" Ever since we moved into a house, we've had door-to-door spammers so often that we've become accustomed to not answering the door. It's like with the phone. With call display, you look to see who's calling, and if it's an unknown name or number, you just leave it on the hook and let it ring through to the machine. Why can't someone develop door display?

If we wait long enough, whoever is at the door usually goes away, and that's just fine with me. Whoever was at the door this time was a little more persistent than the people from the gas company that seem to show up every other week.

Knock, knock, knock.

Giving up, I stepped out into the hallway. We have a frosted glass window on the door, so whoever is at the door can tell when someone is in the hallway. There's no hiding once they've spotted you. I walked to the door, turned off the alarm, unlocked the door and opened it. A rather tall man with a crease in his nose was standing there, a smaller guy (Oriental of some sort -- I didn't get a good enough look at him to determine his nationality) standing behind him. I noticed the little book opened in his hand right away (I'm observant that way). It looked Bible-ish.

"Good evening, sir," the big guy with the creased nose said. "How are you this evening?"

"I'm fine. How are you?" I didn't care how he was. I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.

He looked down at his book, and I realized it was open to somewhere in the Book of Matthew.

"I'm sure you've said these words to yourself many times," Mr. Creased Nose said. And then he was off quoting a passage from Matthew.

"Dude, I'm atheist!" I exclaimed, cutting him off. Now it's not too often that I would use the word "exclaimed" when describing something someone said, but I really did exclaim in this case. I was surprised and appalled that he was at my door trying to read Bible passages to me.

"Oh, sir, we respect all beliefs," the guy said. Somehow I doubted that. "Do you not believe because of all the suffering in the world?"

"It's because I don't believe. There's no truth in that book. Why do you believe?" The question was accusatory, as it was meant to be. I felt my anger rising, but I held it in check.

"Because there's evidence--"

"That," I said, pointing at the Bible in his hand, "is not evidence."

"Well, what about creation?" he asked me.

"Evolution," I said. To me, that's all the answer there is. God didn't create man. Man created God to give himself a sense of purpose.

"There is scientific evidence that disproves evolution," he said.

"No, there's not," I said. Scientifically, you can't prove something, but once it's disproved, the theory or hypothesis is out the door. Nobody has disproved evolution. The only disproof that exists is faith in creation, a concept I have considered bullshit since before I became an atheist.

The guy with the creased nose insisted that there was, and that he had some documents in his bag that would show me that proof.

"Would you like me to leave them with you?" he asked.

"No," I said. What were the chances this guy was toting around actual evidence disproving evolution from a respectable scientist? I figured it was somewhere between "squat" and "not a chance in hell."

"Thank you for your time, sir. Have a good night." He stepped away and made his way down the driveway. I hadn't thought I would actually want to watch the newly-CGIed Star Wars, but this Christian spammer had just made that happen. I closed the door and went back to the movie.

I'm listening to some metal (specifically, AC/DC) this morning to blow off some steam from a frustrating weekend. Jacquie and I watched the new DVD of A New Hope (Star Wars, for the uninformed). However, I don't feel like ranting once again about how much I hate the changes that have been made over the years. I kept notes during the viewing, which I'll post later (after I've typed them up).

Some asshole Christian fucktard came to the door during the viewing trying to convert me into One Of Them. These people piss me off. I don't show up at their churches Sunday morning trying to convince them to abandon Jesus. Why do they feel they have the right to come to my house trying to convince me to accept him? Motherfuckers, all.

And then last night's Dungeons & Dragons session can really only be described as a clusterfuck. I didn't have any fun. All I got was annoyed. I was very tempted just to shut the game down and tell everyone to leave. That's how pissed off I was getting. Good thing we ended when we did. I was about to lose it.

More details on the Christian fucktard and my viewing of Star Wars later.

God Is Alone sounds like an intriguing film. Shot in black-and-white and released on DVD-R for the cheapass price of US$3, I couldn't resist ordering a copy from the filmmaker. I must see this movie.

My geek streak is showing. I'm thinking I might take in a showing of Resident Evil: Apocalypse this weekend. Mmm ... video game movies.

Despite my efforts to convince Jacquie to leave the new Star Wars Trilogy DVD set on the shelves, she did indeed purchase it last night. I'm afraid to watch the newly-altered versions. George Lucas is a dipshit.

A gamer jargon dictionary. Awesome idea.

Interesting stuff here. D&D players will know the Temple of Elemental Evil module's artwork: Click me.

Now check out the cover of this Norwegian black metal band's album:Click me.

While working, I really only listen to music in the morning. It's the quietest time of my work day. As the day goes on, I turn the tunes off. Too many calls. Too many emails. Interviews to do. Things to write.

This morning, I started off with some Jimmy Buffett (The Best of Jimmy Buffett) and the moved on to Green Day's Nimrod album. Now the music is off and I'm concentrating on preparing for my afternoon, which happens to be booked full of interviews.

The touchpad on my laptop has been going. Not the whole thing. Just the left mouse button. It doesn't work three-quarters of the time. So I had to hook up a mouse to to the computer this morning. This will take some getting used to.

Happy St-- ... hold up. No, it's not really a happy day. How about this? ... Not-So-Happy Star Wars DVD Day! And to kick off Star Wars DVD Day, point your browser to Dork Tower, which is having its own celebration of sorts.

Jacquie was talking about the Star Wars original trilogy DVDs last night, trying to figure out whether she had the cash for them on release day or not. I'm not sure what she came up with. I wouldn't put it past her to sell her spleen just so she can buy the DVD set of the original-but-heavily-modified Star Wars movies.

I've decided I'm not handing LucasFilm cash for movies that I'll just be annoyed at. When he wants to release the original trilogy with the original theatrical cut (or I could live with the THX versions, too), then I'll give him money for original trilogy DVDs. ... The little voice in the back of my head just laughed and said "fat chance." Oh well. There are always bootlegs.

A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury is one of my favourite short stories of all time. For quite some time now, I've known that it was being turned into a movie. Now that I've seen the trailer, I'm pissed off. It appears they ignored the whole point of the story and turned it into an action film. Assholes.

When it comes to playing games with people, my preference is that we latch onto something a little more bizarre, a little different -- heck, let's just say it now -- a little more "alternative." Sure, we could play Cribbage for a couple of hours ... or we could play The Hills Rise Wild. I'd go with the latter without hesitation. I like weird games, and I pride myself on occasionally being able to track down some pretty obscure-but-damn-fun-to-play games.

Jacquie comes from a family that plays card games. A lot. I don't hate cards, but I dislike them. There are only fifty-two different cards in the deck, and it doesn't take long before all card games start to play the same. However, Jacquie's family plays cards above anything else for some reason. It probably has to do with the fact that there are about fifteen million relatives (give or take twenty-five thousand) that all get together to play cards (just imagine a table the size of Ontario where they're all seated), and you can scale card games up just by adding more decks.

When I'm around a lot of people that I know are die-hard card players, I worry that somebody's going to break out a deck and suggest a card game. Perhaps the worst of these is the notoriously-named Asshole. For the record, I don't find this game even remotely fun. It's mind-numbingly boring and stupid, but I've met a lot of people that play it. Worse, these people can't understand why I don't like it.

Ditto games like Dominoes. A few years ago, my Aunt Pat and Uncle Joe taught my parents to play Dominoes with the twelve-dotted tiles, and ever since they've become advocates of this game. I can almost picture my parents at rallies passing out Dominoes tiles and telling people what a great game it is and that they should really play it.

Dominoes takes about three hours to play, and the game is so simplistic that it's downright boring. There are twelve rounds, each of which play out more or less the same as every other round. The only way I can force myself to play (which I avoid as much as possible, I must add) is to just annihilate that filter between my brain and my mouth and let my sense of humour run wild. Doing that allows me some entertainment while occasionally entertaining others.

However, Jacquie doesn't find my antics funny in the least, and it's usually a good, long while before somebody coerces me into playing Dominoes again. So that works in my favour, you see. ;)

On Friday, I picked up a couple of CDs, both of which were discs I've been thinking of getting for awhile -- The Baddest of George Thorogood and the Destroyers and The Smiths: Singles. I've been listening to both all weekend -- in the car, in my office, etc. Good fun.

Did you do your duty and speak like a pirate yesterday? I did ... a little bit, anyway. ;)

Yesterday was moving day for Logan. A bunch of us were helping him and his friend Jason move into their new house. Let's just say there was some furniture that was big, bulky and difficult to move. And let's just say there were some gouges left in the walls at a couple of houses. :(

Moving is never fun.

It's been probably about two or three years since I've set foot in a nightclub, but I've recently been getting the itch to go out to a gothic/industrial club. I talked to Rawl about it, and he's up for it if I decide to go.

What I'm thinking about doing is hitting an upcoming Static Saturday at the Diezel Room in Oshawa. I've never been there, but it's close to home and hopefully is worth the short drive to the 'Shwa. We've been talking about maybe going to this week's set, but the fact that it's also School Uniform Nite (DJ Letro's spelling, not mine) is making me think next Saturday might be a better evening to head out there. I don't even have a school uniform. ;)

So Rawlio, Steve and I went out last night to the Wallace Arms pub. That's two nights in a row I've been there. It was cool. We hung out, had some pints and just talked shit. Not much to tell.

Unless plans have changed, Rawl and I will be hooking up Steve tonight for a pint or two. Not sure yet, but it'll probably be at The Wallace Arms again. We seemed to enjoy the place last night, so why not try again?

Another zinger from Doug Brunell at Film Threat. In this case, the target is Disney, but in particular adults that watch Disney movies. His conclusion about adults that watch Disney movies is enough to piss off a lot of people, I'm sure: "Conclusion: Adult Disney fans just aren’t very smart, so they gravitate to movies they can understand."

Back a few years ago before Rawl did his year-long teaching stint in Taiwan, he and I (and Brad Tripp) used to hang out at a pub in Pickering called King Richard's (King Dick's to us regulars). I think I hung out there with Rawl and Brad for the better part of a year before Rawl made the trip to the Far East and Brad moved downtown. The Dick's crowd fell apart, and we've never really put it back together successfully.

Of course, times and situations have changed since then, and various things keep us from becoming pub regulars again. Honestly, we used to spend four nights a week at Dick's drinking pints. When you're living at home and you don't have many bills to pay, you can afford to do that. It's just not really possible anymore. It's not often we go to Dick's these days. And with Just Desserts gone (JD was in the same strip mall), we don't really even set foot in that plaza anymore.

Last night, Rawl, Logan and I hit up a pub called The Wallace Arms just a quick walk from my place. Rawl and I had been there before, and it's a good pub. The draft list is half-decent (mainly because it carries one of Rawl's favourites, John Smith), and the atmosphere seems friendly enough. It's not a very busy place on weeknights, though. Saturday nights might be a different story, as the pub has live bands that come in regularly. I wouldn't know, though. I haven't been there on a Saturday night yet.

If I could afford it, I think I could turn myself into a Wallace Arms regular. It's too bad there's not a good coffee shop in the same strip mall as the pub.

Some political issues I understand better than others. I think it's pretty safe to say healthcare isn't one of them. My post the other day regarding healthcare wait times more than likely showed my ignorance of what was being discussed at the healthcare summit thingie this week.

When I think of healthcare waiting times, the first thing that comes to mind is the crowded emergency rooms, but that's not what was being discussed by the feds and provs (feds and provs, I like that). Now that I've read up on it a bit more, the issue is waiting times for surgery. Bah! I'll go get the pliers and try removing my foot from my mouth.

Personally, I think the dimwit politicians aren't going to find a solution in the next few years, let alone in just a few days. However, I am interested in reading the reports regarding the summit, which ended yesterday. My guess is they spent those three or four days arguing, tabling ideas and then not getting anywhere. ... Oh, how I know those types of meetings.

On another note, I've been having some weird computer problems this morning on my laptop. I was kind of "late" for work because my laptop wouldn't boot up properly. A pain in the ass, for sure, and this type of thing happens about once or twice a month. I really wish I could afford to buy a new laptop, but no dice there.

I did some quick rearranging of my office today. I moved the phone into a more convenient space, which is something I've been meaning to do for months now. I just hadn't got around to it. Today, the deed is done, though. Now the phone is right next to my computer.

I noticed one stupid error on my part in my blog. I've been referring to Paul Wells as the editor of Maclean's. Duh. He's not the editor. He's the back page columnist. D'oh!

I'm getting pretty sick of hearing about healthcare in this country. Let's fix healthcare (for a generation, no less). Let's fix waiting times in emergency rooms. Let's find everybody a family doctor. Let's not privatize healthcare, 'cause that's just wrong. Blah, blah, blah...

Yeah, whatever. Right now, the federal blowhards and the provincial screw-ups are meeting to discuss fixing healthcare for a generation, which is a feat that the rest of the country knows they're not capable of. Enough already. Healthcare is in the state it's in because of the abuse that it takes from those who leech off the system. And frankly, privatizing bits and pieces of it isn't going to hurt it ... although I'm sure I'm in the minority with that opinion (or so it seems).

I don't really take advantage of the healthcare system. I kind of have a family doctor, but I haven't seen him in years. I'm probably behind on my shots (that makes me sound like a dog that needs to see the vet). However, I don't get sick all that often. When I do get sick, I hit up one of the local walk-in clinics, which I'm a big fan of. I've yet to wait more than forty minutes to see a doctor in a clinic, and then they're quick to get me out the door.

Only when I'm in serious pain or I'm truly broken do I go to the emergency room. After all, the name of the place says it all: It's for emergencies only. However, you can see people walk in whining about a minor headache or a sniffle. Oh, for crying out loud! These people should pop a couple of Tylenol, drink some O.J. and get some rest instead of clogging up hospital waiting rooms.

But as Jacquie would say, I'm "narrow-minded" and "opinionated" and "frustrating." :P

It's a week today that the original Star Wars trilogy comes out for the first time on DVD. I have mixed feelings, although I believe they're leaning more toward the negative than the positive.

From early reports, George "Fuck The Fans" Lucas has apparently made some more changes to the films -- over and above what he did in 1997 with the Special Editions. I don't necessarily have a problem with him making modifications to the movies, but only so long as he releases the original unaltered movies as well. Shit, I'd buy both versions. Hell, I'm a regular retarded Star Wars lemming. Release the original dirtied cut, the cleaned-up THX cut, the Special Edition and the new edition and I'd probably buy them all. That's what kind of idiot I am. I love my Star Wars.

However, that love is disappearing more and more each day. The prequel movies have been satisfactory, in my opinion, even if there were some dumbass things in them. But Lucas just pisses me off more and more, and I find myself becoming an ex-Star Wars fan.

Wait another couple of years and I'll probably learn to despise the films -- unaltered original trilogy and all.

Don't you just hate it when your phone gets buggered up right before a conference call? I had to do a mad scramble this morning to get the phone upstairs in the master bedroom and bring it downstairs to my office. What a pain in the ass.

I suppose I should have a funeral service or something for my old phone. ;)

In place of a regular roleplaying game session last night, I brought up a couple of my more bizarre board games and let those that were there choose which one to play. The choices were The Hills Rise Wild, which is a great game based on elements of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos that pits players against each other in a brutal fight to be the first to find the Necronomicon and summon the Elder Gods, and Zombies!!!, a survival-horror game where the players are people in a city plagued with zombies and the first one to get to the helipad and escape wins.

We ended up going with Zombies (I'm dropping the exclamation points). We chatted for awhile before getting started, and so we actually didn't finish the game until about 10:20. While I've played Hills a few times before, this was the first time I played Zombies. And y'know what? It was damn fun. We had a couple of issues, such as the fact that the one hundred zombies that come with the game aren't really quite enough, but overall, Zombies was a blast. I think everyone enjoyed themselves ... even Jacquie, who I figured would be the one who would like the game least.

Now that the trial game is over and it's clearly a good game, I'm thinking of looking into getting a bag o' zombies from Twilight Creations (the company that makes the game) and maybe picking up some of the expansion packs.

Rich sent this to me. I've never heard of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, but now I'm psyched about it.

So ever since I started using Blogger's comments application, it has become impossible to post a comment as anything other than "Anonymous" without a Blogger account. Of course, my good friend The Law wasn't going to just let that go. He thought maybe he could create a Blogger ID but not a blog. ... BZZ! Wrong!

He now has an empty blog sitting at laws-world.blogspot.com. I'm told it'll remain empty. The Law doesn't want to join the cool kids and become a blogger.

I'm just glad my preview of EverQuest: Omens of War came out readable. I was asked last week to take an in-game tour and throw this together ASAP. Well, it's done, it's up and hopefully it doesn't suck.

I like doing previews like this, though. They don't take nearly as much time as reviews do.

There are some freaky recipes on the Internet. Take turducken, for example. I'd never heard of this until today. Blame goes to The Law for pointing it out.

With the number of problems the holodecks caused the Enterprise D over the years, wouldn't it have been logical to take the damn things offline?

I got a fair bit of work dumped on me yesterday, and part of it is filtering into today's schedule. Simply put, I have to be out of the office for awhile at an in-person meeting downtown.

And tonight I have to try to get a preview of the soon-to-be-released EverQuest: Omens of War expansion written for Game-Over.net. I did a tour of the expansion on Friday afternoon, but I just haven't had time to write it. ... The expansion gets released on Monday, so if the preview isn't written and on the site by Friday, it's kind of useless. Considering the timeframe, I probably shouldn't have taken this assignment on.

This weekend was quite good, but I'm happy it's over. My sleep-deprived brain was starting to play tricks on me. Let's take it from about Thursday and go from there...

I'm not sure why I suddenly felt like drinking martinis on Thursday night, but I did. Listening to some blues and jazz, I did the alcoholic thing and drank about five martinis in the span of about three hours (that's just an estimate, as I really have no idea how much time had passed between martini number one and martini number five). I talked with Rawl that night, and told him what I was drinking. Well, that led into Friday night, as Rawl was getting the martini bug.

Friday night was another drunk. A couple of martinis and a twelve-pack of Sleeman Honey Brown later, and Rawl and I were standing out on the street talking away. Unfortunately, the master bedroom's window opens up onto the driveway, and Jacquie doesn't sleep through noises very well. We got told to shut up and come inside a couple of times before we finally gave up and returned to the house. Rawl crashed that night and was up and out of the house before Jacquie and I dragged our sorry asses out of bed.

I didn't get more than hour's sleep that night, unfortunately. You know what's it's like when you stay up way after you start getting the nods and your body decides to wake up again? Well, mix that in with some heavy drinking. I couldn't sleep. It was probably one of the worst bouts of insomnia I've ever had.

Saturday was all about getting ready for the Sunday barbecue. We picked up meat, buns, veggies and desserts. By 2:00, I was beat. I couldn't think straight enough to drive. I tried to have a nap in the late afternoon and evening, but it didn't work out very well. However, I slept like the dead on Saturday night.

Sunday was the barbecue. Sean and T (my parents' dog) came over about noon-ish and hung out as we finished our preparations for the 2:00 start time. My parents and Jacquie's parents went golfing and planned to return later in the afternoon. By 2:05, nobody else was there except Sean, Jacquie, T and moi, so Sean (aka Monkey Boy) and I got the GameCube up and running and played some Mario Kart: Double Dash. It was in the middle of a grand prix that our first guests arrived.

The barbecue was excellent. I believe the final count was somewhere around eighteen or nineteen people (I really must figure it out) in attendance. We ate a lot, drank a lot and then had a lot of leftovers. The highlight of the food was probably Steve showing up around 5:30 or 6:00 with a live lobster, which he butchered in the kitchen (making a mess, of course :P).

I'm not sure when the majority of the guests left, but I made sure to try to see each and every one out. Rawl was the last to leave -- unless you count Jay and Yvonne, who crashed in the spare room and didn't leave until Monday evening. Jay drank enough that he had a rough night. As far as I know, he was the only casualty. After he passed out, Rawl finished up drinking his water (by this time, he and I were both stone sober) and then headed out. That was about 1:30.

Monday was Dungeons & Dragons in the afternoon. I didn't get more than two or three hours of intermittent sleep on Sunday night, so I was somewhat off while trying to run the Monday afternoon session. Still, everything went fairly well, and the party managed to fight and scare off a young blue dragon. The cleric just about got toasted, but he lived through the help of the paladin's squire.

I slept like a dead baby last night and poured myself out of bed in time to start working.

End of summer barbecue (or BBQ, if you'd prefer) is today. We got burgers. We got dogs. We got some chicken. We got some redneck salads (potato, macaroni). And we got beer. It's all about the beer on Labour Day weekend.

I'm a geek of many persuasions. I'm a roleplaying game fanatic. I'm an anime fan (but I ain't no otaku, hear!). I collect comic books. I play video games (and I play some of them online). I'm a war gamer. I like board games. I enjoy obscure and foreign films. I read and watch science-fiction. And I have a fairly eclectic taste in music.

As a kid, I grew up during that hellish period known as the Eighties. Music sucked. It was mostly pop rock by the likes of Phil Collins, New Kids On The Block, Madonna and others. I listened to pop music as a kid, but I didn't really become terribly interested in music itself until the late 1980s, when I began to learn to play the guitar. I took a strong interest guitar rock at that point. Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and, my guitar idol, Yngwie Malmsteen. As I started high school, I slipped out of playing guitar, and while I still have my acoustic and my electric guitar, I don't play anymore. Frankly, it's because I sucked.

College is where I really started to appreciate different types of music. When I entered college, I was on an old rock kick, listening to 1050 CHUM here in Toronto and listening to everything from the 1950s to the 1970s, with my preference being late 1960s and early 1970s rock music. I had gone through a new country phase and had pretty much abandoned it during high school, and then I went back to old rock.

However, college started broadening my horizons. I became intrigued by the gothic subculture and soon found myself listening to Bauhaus, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Sisters of Mercy and other dark rock, gothic and industrial bands. That led to bands out of the mainstream. Nitzer Ebb, Cat Rapes Dog (I still love that band name), Beborn Beton (which is now my favourite synth-pop band), Joy Division and others. College turned me into an industrial music listener, although I listened to heavy metal in its various forms (which I took an interest in circa Guns 'N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction album back at the end of the Eighties).

I can probably blame my friend Tom (although it's blame in a good way) for continuing my education in the different forms of music. I had never really gotten into classical or jazz music, although I did enjoy some blues, before I met Tom. He showed that there was more to classical than Beethoven and that ilk, and I soon started listening to Klaus Schulz and Philip Glass. My classical music education continues, and is far from complete.

However, jazz is what really struck a chord with me. I'm far from being an expert on the subject, but it was nice to start understanding the music. To many, jazz (outside of the Kenny G and pop jazz stuff) sounds random, as if it didn't have any structure. The truth is it has a structure. It's just different from the structure of other forms of music. It's unique. And once I started to understand that and really listen to the music, I was able to appreciate it.

My guilty pleasure is that I enjoy country and western music. I'm not talking about new country here, although I do admit to liking Alan Jackson and a couple of others from 1980s and 1990s. I'm talking about old country music. If you can tolerate country and western, there's nothing quite like Hank Williams -- or Johnny Cash, for that matter. Add in some Willie Nelson, Kris Kristopherson and Waylon Jennings, and I'm a happy man. It's a mark of shame how often I listen to the Highwayman album.

Of course, like with anybody, there are music forms I don't like. Rap, outside of the Fresh Prince humourous rap, isn't really for me. Reggae is something I can't get into, either. Most pop music isn't my style. There are others, too.

I'm a geek of many persuasions.

This piece by Cecil Adams talks about the artificially high value of diamonds. It's a good read, and I'm tempted to look up the book he mentions within.

Y'know, a lot of my most memorable drunks have been in strip clubs. ... What does that say about me?

I really do enjoy reading Paul Wells' Inkless Wells blog. For those that don't know, Wells is the head honcho editorial guy over at Macleans, which is probably the best news magazine on the planet (and one that I should be buying a lot more often).

Wells has a talent for taking in all of the political bullshit that comes out of the mouths of the various Canadian politicians, digesting it and coming up with a half-decent interpretation for us layfolk. I'm sure that's gained him a few enemies amongst the prime minister's staff, too. He points out all of their hypocrisies. Heheh.

I have really have to admire the man. He knows his stuff.