I Feel Like I've Been in One...

I can't remember the last time a movie has left me as emotionally drained as I feel right now.

I missed all the hype the first time around, and I was one of the few people on the planet who first heard about the movie when it won the Oscar for Best Picture. But today, I sat down alone, first thing in the morning, and watched "Crash".

That was 2 hours ago, but I feel like I've run a marathon.

Living in Canada, I guess, has sheltered me from a lot of the racial discrimination and unfounded hatred people experience elsewhere as an everyday occurrence. Or, maybe the fact the I'm Caucasian, living in a predominantly Caucasian society has blinded me to harsh realities of the world. Whatever the cause, and no matter how much I thought I "knew" about racial tension from TV and other media, I wasn't prepared for "Crash".

All those people, so tangled up together in a web of hate, distrust, suspicion, and stereotypes, yet never touching, never understanding, never seeing each other for what we all are... People. Just people.

I'm glad that the movie wasn't preachy... I'm glad that it showed the situations, emotions, and inner turmoil of each character as they came face-to-face with the realities of who they are... I'm glad that it let me experience the pain, the struggle, and the eventual enlightenment, without spoon-feeding me moral platitudes like some ABC After School Special. For a change, Hollywood did it right.

If you've seen "Crash", you'll understand why I, with a 6-year old daughter of my own, was brought to tears late in the movie by the scene with the Hispanic father and daughter... If you haven't, and especially if you are a parent, make sure you've got a box of tissue handy.

You've been warned.

Those Wacky German Scientists...

I needed a good laugh this morning... And now that I've had it, I thought I'd share it with you good folks and see if it doesn't just brighten your day up a little bit too.

This one's a few years old now, but it never fails to pick me up. If you're a fan of Clerks, you'll recognize Randal and Dante right away. If you've never seen Clerks, this will either make you glad you missed it, or make you run right out to rent it.

Without further ado, I give you, "The Flying Car"...

Will Someone Just Take My Money, Please?

It happened again last night. I was at Wal-Mart, picking up a few groceries before the start of the week, and I used a couple of $50 bills.

"CSM to Till 14, please... CSM to Till 14."

As usual, the girl working the checkout didn't have the authority to accept my $50 bills. As usual, I had to wait until a different girl, in a different colored smock, came over to Till 14 to examine the bills. As usual, she simply held them up to the light, rubbed them a couple of times, and handed them back to the first girl with a solemn nod. As usual, my bills passed the intense scrutiny of the Wal-Mart CSM.

It could have been worse, I guess... I could have had the misfortune to get a far-sighted CSM incapable of seeing whatever they see when they hold the bills up to the light. Or, worse... She could have pointed to a little sign that says something to the effect of, "Due to counterfeit problems, we no longer accept $50 or $100 bills."

Believe me, I've seen that sign way too many times in recent years!

It's true that, with the increasing quality, availability, and affordability of laser reproduction, counterfeit bills have become a bigger threat than ever before. In response, the Bank of Canada has gone to great lengths to minimize this threat through the use of multiple security features on our money. In addition to the distinctive colors of ours bills, they've also added things like watermarks, holograms, micro-printing, and fluorescence, just to name a few. Of course, not all of the features became available, or were put into effect, at the same time. So, the bills have been redesigned a couple of times. In my lifetime alone, I have seen three different styles of bills (all still in circulation), and the replacement of the $1 and $2 bills by coins.

I'm not even going to get started on the fact that we have no less than 43 different quarters in circulation!

Although these steps have been made primarily to introduce more secure, more difficult to reproduce, paper currency, it has actually created a bit of a Counterfeit Catch-22. You see, with so many different versions of the same denomination bills floating around out there, and the fact the we've become so used to our bills changing so often, you could practically print just about anything with the Queen's face or Sir John A. MacDonald on it and pass it off as the new $7 bill. It's ridiculous!

Here's what I'd like to see:

1. The Bank of Canada picking a style and sticking with it until it becomes the only one left.


2. Wal-Mart employees who are trusted enough to handle a float in their till being trusted enough to hold the $50's up to the light and rub them.


3. Legislation that forces retailers to accept all Canadian currency, despite their fears of counterfeit. If they can't be bothered to learn the security features, they deserve to lose the $50.


4. A commemorative coin (preferably the dollar... the quarter has had the spotlight long enough) with a coffee cup on one side and my face on the other. Now that's what I'd call a Loonie!

Sunday Spotlight: Paper Sack Lifetime

Every once in a while, I come across a blog that, right from the first two sentences, has me laughing. Let's face it, there's a lot more comedy out there on the web than we give credit for... There are some truly incredibly funny people sharing their thoughts with a faceless audience when they could easily have their own sitcom or HBO special. And is there anything more refreshing after surfing through blog after blog of the same re-hashed news than a good laugh?

I think not.

Well, about a year ago, I found myself reading Paper Sack Lifetime by Mr. Kyle. I don't remember how I got there... Maybe it was a link from another good blog, or a random thing from BlogExplosion... What I do know is that it only took me a couple minutes of reading before I added the page to my Favorites.

There was nothing visually flashy about the site, nor is there to this day. It simply doesn't need it. Mr. Kyle's writing is so well composed and so original in it's take on life that the color of the background is the last thing on the reader's mind.

His earlier posts were like a voyeuristic look at the stupidity of people in public... all the brainless things people say to each other when they don't think anyone else can hear, or the things that truly clueless people will say no matter who happens to hear. Most of these "conversations" took place in or around a coffee shop, giving the impression that the author was probably a cog in the massive Starbuck's machine... or he just chose a very convenient venue for his "inspiration".

Of late, the theme of the writing has changed a bit, as will happen with all good blogs. Now, the situations are obviously fictitious... but no less funny. I'm reminded more now of the quirkier comedy of Monty Python or Kids in the Hall. Not that it is actually anything like those, but it's the only way I can think of to describe the oddly hilarious scenes Mr. Kyle paints.

All right, then. The seed has been planted and my recommendation given. Now it's up to you to find out for yourself just how funny this guy can be. Go ahead... Go have a laugh or two... You've earned it.

Photo of the Week: Desktop

This one's a bit of a departure from my usual subject matter... It's actually a picture I took a couple years ago of some trackballs and a pool ball I keep on my desk at work. I've always liked the near-Black & White quality of the shot, and it's been my Windows desktop background since the day I took it. Hence, "Desktop".
Posted by Picasa

I Got Lucky Last Night

I'm what I would consider to be a "heavy sleeper"... Not that I actually gain mass as I lie there unconscious, but once I'm asleep, there's no waking up until the alarm goes off in the morning. I don't even have to get up in the night to use the washroom... After all the times I've ordered the Jumbo Jumbo Drink at the movie theatres (for the low, low price of only half of your next paycheck!) then had to force myself to "hold it" through the last 20 minutes of the show, my bladder is one tough hombre!

In High School, this was particularly a problem for the aunt and uncle I lived with. Waking me up in time for school was a challenge in and of itself... And believe me, they tried everything! My uncle hid my alarm clock so I couldn't just reach over and hit "Snooze"... He poured cups of water on my head...He even set off the smoke detector outside my room once. It was a little disconcerting that that last one was the least effective method of pulling me from my comatose state...

I'm telling you all this so you'll understand just how weird last night was.

For no apparently reason what so ever, I woke up in the middle of the night. Weird, huh? Wait, it gets better... I sat up and took a look at the clock, just to see how close my estimate of "middle of the night" was. I'll admit it took me a second or five to comprehend what the flashing "1:27" meant... Does my clock flash in the middle of the night? It doesn't do it in the daytime, I'm sure... Did I hit a button without realizing it? Am I just blinking really fast?

It turns out that, roughly 1 hour and 27 minutes prior to my unexpected awakening, we had experienced a short "power disruption". My lightning quick nocturnal mind surmised this fact as I went out of my room and found the clock on the stove flashing "1:28", the clock on the microwave blank, and my PC (which is always on because you never know what hour of the day a hacker may need to sneak past your firewall and corrupt your data) absolutely silent.

The clock on the VCR hasn't stopped flashing "12:00" since the day I hooked it up, so I can't say that helped any in my brilliant deduction.

So, I chugged a bottle of water from the fridge, reset the clocks, peeked in on my kid, then settled back into bed for a few more hours of sleep. It was then that I noticed both alarms on my dual-alarm clock had reverted to the default "OFF" setting during the power outage.

5 minutes and a few curse words later, I finally figured out how to reset them, without having to go on a hunt for a manual I'm positive I threw away, and I was off to sleep.

Now, this whole episode may seem rather mundane to most of you, but to me it was like a one-in-a-million thing. When I consider how screwed up my morning would have been, how late for work I would have been, and how bitchy this would have made me had I not uncharacteristically awoken in the night in time to avert disaster... Well!

I think I might just go buy a lottery ticket today... Or at least a backup battery for my alarm clock.

I'm A Two-Gum Kinda Guy

There once was a time when chewing gum either came in a stick, a ball, or a mouth-filling brick. Back then, I was definitely a one-gum guy. Nowadays, however, almost every brand of gum comes in a little blister pack of "Chiclet"-style pieces. As such, I am now a two-gum kinda guy.

(As a side note... How old am I that I feel the need to use the words "back then" and "nowadays"??? Sheesh!)

The fundamental problem with being a two-gum kinda guy is that an even number of pieces per pack is required to achieve a consistently acceptable gum-chewing experience. I have yet to come across a brand of gum that doesn't provide an even number of pieces per pack, so you'd think there wouldn't be a problem.

But you'd be wrong.

Gum is the universal share-treat... Anyone can ask you for a piece of gum and you won't even hesitate before handing it over. It's just a given that gum is to be shared. Period. Because of this phenomenon, the equal distribution of gum by two's is never totally under the control of the two-gum kinda guy... At anytime, a one-gum person could ask for a piece, completely disrupting the balance of the pack.

If this happens early enough in the pack, the two-gum kinda guy has a good chance of encountering another one-gum guy and restoring order. But, if the single piece is removed when the pack is down to its final four, the two-gum kinda guy finds himself smack-dab in the middle of a dilemma in which he really only has 3 options:

1. He can offer a single piece to whoever wants it, running the risk of looking like a cheap-skate if he encounters another two-gum kinda guy.
   
2. He can stuff all three remaining pieces into his mouth and spend the next hour or so looking like a cow chewing its cud.
   
3. He can throw the odd piece away and suffer the nagging regret of good money wasted.
   

No matter how you look at it, it's a toughie!

I suppose the only real way to get around this problem would be to carry two packs of gum... One for yourself and the other two-gum kinda guys, and a back-up pack to be used only in a one-gum emergency. In fact, you could take it a step further and make sure the back-up pack is one of the truly horrible flavors, thereby ensuring that the one-gum guys will eventually come to know you as "the guy with horrible gum" and stop asking you for a piece. This is definitely a long-range plan that will require focus and determination, but I think it just might work...

Now, try to imagine all this and walking at the same time!