Casting I'd Like To See But Never Will

Greg Kinnear
Plays a grizzled ex-cop turned private detective with an ex-wife who hates him, kids who hate him more. When what he learns threatens to break the thin blue line, he's only got his wits, his underground contacts, and a 1978 Seville packed with weaponry from his days in Vietnam to sort things out.

Wil Wheaton
In a world without hope, in a life without a future, Wil Wheaton is B-Line, a down on his luck freestyle crunk artist who survives by his love of the street, and the rhythms that beat in his soul. Featuring a soundtrack by Jay-Z, TuPac, Ice-T, and Lil John, this is the b-boy movie of this generation. And for all generations.

Tom Cruise
Billy Boynton never had much luck with girls. He never had much luck with work. He never had much luck with anything. In this art-house indie film released straight to the web, Cruise plays a poignant, quiet role as a small man, living in a big world, just trying to carve his own little place of happiness.

John Cusack
Conan the Barbarian, a remake.

Michael Douglas
Toddy Michaels works out a meager living as an Assistant Clerk II at megacorp. Not having relations with models and not being the captain of the industry. This film follows his sorry life until death. At some point he tries to start a hobby chicken farm.

Guide To Vancouver #2: The Olympics

It's upon us. The heaving behemoth of advertising, world sport, international goodwill, and backdoor cronyism, The Olympics. The Winter Olympics, so, I suppose, no need to get too excited. Unless you're from a country that is almost as synonymous with snow as Antarctica, Siberia, or Christmas Coke commercials. It's a Big Deal here. This is the Olympics Canada does relatively well at. Canadians pride themselves in living in cold, inhospitable climates. Naturally we'd excel in the Winter Olympics.

Sport, particularly amateur sport, involves getting very very serious about increasingly trivial things. For example:

• Cross country skiiing spiced up with target shooting.
• Jumping, but not by skiers perse, it's more by gymnasts who happen to use skiis to get lift.
  
• Large rocks. Slid very slowly. To targets. Brooms are involved.
  
• Using gravity and ice to go really really really fast. Have a different one for sitting, sitting with friends, standing, short, long, bumpy.
  
• Moving on ice, horizontally.
  

It's not secret I find most sports baffling. Olympics is no exception. But there's another side of the Games that's even more frustrating. The billions of dollars I, as a taxpayer, will have to pay over the coming decades. It seems every budget, for the villages, security, venues were ten times over budget. Ten times. A lot of the uproar from the left and far left has been, "This might not be the best time to pay public money when all our social services are going down the drain.". Hard to argue with that.

However, some people say that the Olympics really will put Vancouver on the map. I'm not sure it really needs to be on the map any more than it is. And it's not like Nagano and Torino are blustering powerhouses of economy now.

I'm not so naive to believe either side, to be honest. This is a massive world party where the most elite athletics get to compete for accolades and glory and whatever it is that athletes compete for. And time for every citizen to feel unbearably connected to some downhill skiier they had not known about until 1 week ago.

I don't mind SO much that we bleed ourselves dry for a massive world party even if it is for negligible, unmeasured benefits. It's a once in a lifetime thing, the Olympics are. A time for Canadians to do something we rarely do (notwithstanding Internet debates about healthcare and backpacking across Europe): be patriotic. My country, right or wrong, type of thing. Glowing hearts, pride.

What makes it a little hard to swallow is that many corporations that will make tons of money, the untold millions that go to the IOC for I don't know what, and the average Joe, stuck with the bill. But it's a good thing it's going on in Canada, since the Winter Olympics is, to be honest, for the vast majority of Canadians: "Large World Hockey Tournament With Some Other Sports".

And you had so many rah-rah millionaires edging to get the Games here, you had corporate backdeals and people in positions of leadership with more ego than sense hoist this cost upon us. That kinda gets in my craw. But then, hey, possibly 2 golds in hockey on home turf. Rah rah.

First Ride

I grew up surrounded by rich Taiwanese and Hong Kong kids who drove Integras and Supras and RX-7's. Well, maybe not surrounded. There were plenty of normal Canadian Asians in my highschool and university, but the unbearably spoiled ones were damn conspicuous. Maybe it's this that influenced me to get something that, under a dense fog and a few shots of whiskey, might be construed as a sports car.

Then again maybe I tried to get a sporty car because it was my first damn car and I was young and dumb(er).

It was a 1985 Honda Prelude, white. It was an SE (slow version), not an Si (not as slow), but the people who sold it to us painted the damn bumper white (only available in the Si) so it looked like, well, an ass-ugly Prelude SE with a painted bumper.

They were as shady as an Italian in any film depicting 1930's New York and were very, very Russian. They might have been Ukranian, actually. All I knew is they had a thick accent and that far away look that made every day cruelties and injustices not something that bothered them overly. Thick hide, is what I'm getting at. Like maybe they were involved in illegal military action in a country whose borders hadn't quite been resolved or or maybe their closest friends went blind drinking methanol. Something hard went down in their lives at some point. Or maybe they were just gangsters. Just hard because that's what the work required.

I'm not sure how I remember it, but I do remember my dad remarking how they were 'trying to sell quite a few cars'. Which seemed odd. If you are selling several used cars and you don't, in fact, have a Used Car Lot and a garishly sterotypical coat then you're likely operating in the gray zone of everyday commerce.

Luckily my dad was an immigrant too. Maybe not from the same part of the world but I think immigrants all over North America understand each other a little better than they understand Westerners. To wit, life is Hard. Money is money. Haggle with both hands and don't blink.

I was left in the car, sitting in the drivers seat. It sat low. Real low. Vertebrae snapping low. Low enough that one had to get used to gauging the speedbump height. So I sat there, admiring my first real Ticket To Freedom. They haggled for about an hour. Later I found out it was over about 25 bucks. I did not find this unusual.

It eventually broke down. That's how I learned about timing belts. Our family isn't much into cars, so all my car lessons are expensive and fraught with confusion.

But all in all it was a good little car. It had a stick shift, which, to be honest, was pretty much the only thing I cared about. It cornered pretty well, not that I raced it at all, or have enough skill in driving to know what a really good cornering car does. But I knew It wasn't a floaty mass of turgid springs and body roll like my uncle's Mustang, or the family Dodge Caravan, so that was enough for me. It also, I guess, went from 0-60 in slightly less than 10 seconds, but I drove that thing like your great aunt drives her Toyota Tercel, carefully, worringly, with the softest and most gentle hand possible. Because to me I realized it wasn't a SUPER RAD FAST CAR WAHOOO, it was A Way To Get Out Of The House. Which is really far more exciting.

Things My 11-Month Old Can Do That Is Unacceptable For 47-Year Old Accounts Manager Brad Diaderod Currently Enjoying a Stopover In Muskegon, Michigan

• discover leftovers in folds of clothes, proceed to eat it.
• with slow, deliberate precision, find an unidentifiable piece of lint on the ground, then contemplatively eat that too.
• drop Cheerios™ on the ground, one by one.
• be startled by vacuum cleaners.
• obsessively hold onto furniture while walking.
• hesitantly reach out to every dog he sees.
• giggle uncontrollably for apparently no reason at all.
• expect strangers to smell his head.
• eat like Robocop.
• lean violently away or towards someone, depending on his disposition to that person.
• cry when sleepy.
• slowly approach the TV until face is squished against it, ensuring 129% of daily radiation intake.
• stare at strangers, unblinking, while drooling.
• continue doing whatever he was doing when others attempt small-talk.

Things I was pretty sure everyone did until I found out no, it was just me.

Thanks metamonk, for the idea.

• Beat-box to musicals
• End every order to a waiter with 'etcetera, etcetera, etcetera'
• Mistake Halloween for Christmas.
• Flip off crossing-guards.
• Hold an undying suspicion that peanut brittle is really dehydrated peanut butter.
  
• Regularly behead all the Animal Crackers™, make a hunter's trophy room from the box.
  
• Pronounce Pterodactyl with a 'p'.
• Use cowboy placemats.
• Wonder why everyone on The Office lost their accents.
• Use the e-brake when braking foot gets tired.
• Talk to infant son exclusively in the voice of Soundwave.
• Use CB conventions when using cell phones on the road, over.
• Think PETA was a celebrity softcore channel.
• Think Kinkos was something else entirely.
• Give directions to bus drivers.
• Play Sudoku with letters.
• Watch anime muted, with Happy Days audio playing over.
• Write down favourite bumper sticker slogans.
• Drink whiskey in the shower (during the summer).
• Watch the LPGA with the volume cranked.
• Laugh during Pulp Fiction.

Keyboard Function Keys That Didn't Quite Make It

Thanks stresstwig, fount of ideas and facial hair.

"Inform Miss Penny That One Of The Vacuum Tubes Has Blown, BLAST IT" - yelling was more efficient and cleared Babbage's blood of dangerous humours.

"YELLING" - Functionality was merged with Caps Lock.

π - use of circles and any calculations with circles was seen to be a sign of a weak mind, weaker constitution, and a moral fibre that was entirely suspect.

"Definitely Nazi"/"Most Likely Nazi"/"Carrier Pigeon Error" - Enigma was a very specialized machine.

"Nuke It" - Part of the original DARPA spec, it was thought that there may be a need for more safeguards.

"Check Connection Time to BBS " - Ones parents always needed to use the phone before this became an issue.

"Power Down Memetic Cyclotron " - Can't think of a reason, honestly.

"Toggle" - Apparently in Urdu this means an imaginative way to soil ones underwear whilst balancing on an inverted sun umbrella.

My Dog's Suggestions On A More Orderly Household

Thanks metamonk, for the idea.

Just leave the food on the ground, seriously. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking I care whether or not food is in the dog dish. It could be beside, or, let's be honest here, inside a toilet, and I'll still eat it. Clinging to a rather disgusting belief that I care either way is an insult to both of us.

Accept that I will slobber on anything and everything. Especially the children. Just tell yourself it's better to have e-coli infused dog slobber on them than the spackle of mucous and food that was there previously.

Why are you throwing away dog bones? They dry out and can puncture your garbage bags, leaving a mess everywhere. Just throw it on the ground. I'm sure someone will dispose of it properly.

Invest in scented candles. Much better than dog baths. I like the way I smell, you hate giving me baths, win-win.

Dirty laundry isn't. It's a marvellous treasure trove of fascinating smells. Please pile it high and everywhere. Tell visitors it's a 'living post-humanist look at canine-hominid cohabitating symbiosis'.

You know what's better than giving yourself a manicure, which is sure to leave human skin droppings (ewww!) and various files and things scattered about the home? Scratching juusut behind my ear, my hair acts as a natural and gentle exfolia-aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.

Take a nap.

Go for a walk.

Take another nap.

The dishes can wait.