more than words

maybe it's because of the people i grew up with, or maybe it's because of my personality and predispositions, but i get rather jealous when people don't tease me. granted, not everyone is the type to do so; everyone expresses love in different ways. i can't take a compliment to save my life (a simple 'thank you' would suffice), but i just happen to be the type of person who truly appreciates the gesture of being farted on.

a good, loving inside-joke-jab-at-your-quirks is really quite rare and uplifting, in my opinion. it translates to, "i've taken the time to know you, all the good and the bad, and i wouldn't change you for the world," with varying levels of intimacy. so if i ever tease you, it's because i love you -- and possibly because you are an easy target.

Stardust

while life can sometimes be really, really good, it is, for the most part, mundane, trivial, routine and oh, so boring; this makes a person downright cynical.

once every ten years or so, a story comes along that lets you believe again in things like goodness, dream chasing and the magic of love.

Stardust is filled with legitimate adventure, suspense, romance, humor, pathos, and enough self-awareness to make it a worthy successor to The Princess Bride

- Daniel Carlson, Pajiba Critic

i haven't been this tickled and uplifted by a movie since Le Fabuleaux Destin d'Amelie Poulain (Stranger Than Fiction came close). it is, indeed, this decade's The Princess Bride, rife with fantasy, adventure, romance, suspense and just the right amount of self-awareness. the colours, the soundtrack, the acting are all spot on. even the plot twists you see coming are delightfully executed.

plainly put: gorgeous. i am smitten.

i will not write a review since the one linked in the title is more than sufficient (mild spoiler warning).

it is 4 am

do you know where your children are?

i'm up right now because there is going to be a total lunar eclipse starting at 0451. it will take about an hour for the moon to be fully eaten by the Earth's shadow. for another hour and a half, every wannabe sorcerer and witch in the Eastern Daylight Time zone will be hustling to perform those once-in-a-lifetime blood rites, or whatever it is those crazy cats are doing these days.

there's nothing special about a lunar eclipse other than turning the moon into a hue of red -- like some sort of apocalyptic sign. i really didn't have to wake up, but i said i would and i'm not about to give up free bragging rights. i've got plenty of time to sleep after sunrise (which i will probably watch as well).

so i will head out to stand around in my yard for two hours pondering the mysteries of life, love and ladles (big and little ones). maybe i'll practice some waterbending to pass the time (waterbenders are strongest when the moon is full).

EDIT: 0610
i'm back inside now.
instead of standing in the yard, i maneuvered a park bench to face the West. i sat down as the top of the full moon started to become obscured. at about 1/3 coverage, i went back inside to cook up some breakfast (many mini pizzas). i came back out while they baked in the toaster oven. in the meantime, the moon had the upper half of its face eaten by the shadow. it looked like a kitten head. i wish i had a camera capable of capturing the moon. little point-and-shoots don't really catch the details when shooting astronomical distances.

when i came back out after retrieving my many cooked mini pizzas, it looked like a squashed kitten head. i lounged on the bench, eating my many cooked mini pizzas as the moon turned red. it passed behind some powerline towers as the eclipse reached fullness. with a stationary point of reference, i could visably see the moon arcing down into the horizon. i lost it behind a house.

so then i turned my attention to the sunrise, which was hot on the heels of the moonset. having seen the sunrise many times before under more favourable waterside circumstances, and having run out of cooked mini pizzas, i decided to turn it in. on my way into my room, i saw my mom coming out of hers.

Nerd Corner: Opera Portable

it's software pimping time and i am pimping my favourite thing again.

a good number of people are heading back to school next month, myself included, and there will come a time when you need to use one of the school computers. if your school is anything like mine, the computers will be running Windows and the the internet browsers will be either Internet Explorer 6, Firefox or a combination of the two. and if you are anything like me, having to use either IE6 or Firefox will make you feel unclean. chances are you are using Firefox and you've tweaked the grease out of the monkey. what i'm trying to say is, using someone else's browser configuration is uncomfortable.

enter portable applications. these are your favourite pieces of software, stripped down to fit on a portable drive (e.g. USB flash drive), allowing you to use the programs you are comfortable with on any compatible computer.

i personally use Opera Portable (hereafter denoted as OP). Opera, the desktop browser, is already designed to have a small memory footprint. my current installation (Opera 9.23) is 4.88 MB; OP is 4.66 MB. while most portable versions of applications tend to be nearly neutered or slower than Tarzan on a Japanese IQ test, OP is essentially the same as the desktop (non-portable) version. it is merely repackaged and streamlined to save space.

to prevent caching and stuff from decreasing your flash drive's lifespan (flash memory has a finite number of writes), OP creates an invisible, temporary folder on the computer you are using (so you won't accidentally run out of space on your protable drive). after closing OP, the folder is overwritten and erased, eliminating all trace of your internet tracks from that computer.

the benefits of using OP, rather than the provided browser on a public computer, are rather obvious. with your portable application you carry with you all your bookmarks and customizations and tweaks and blah blah blah. sensitive information (online banking, juicy emails to your long-distance paramour, etc) are not blabbed to the computer's hard disk in the event that you forget to log off or whatever. personally, i can spare myself the frustration of trying to use mouse gestures or keyword searches on browsers that aren't configured to do so.

my foray into the urban jungle

i took a trip downtown today, as a result of laziness and circumstance.

i missed a deadline for handing in some required documentation to teacher's college. it was supposed to be mailed in on June 29th, the day before i headed out for Longlac. naturally, the whole thing completely slipped my mind until i decided to check on school stuff a few weeks after i came home. if i were a spazz, i would've spazzed. missing deadlines really sucks, especially if it's important.

fortunately, this deadline was softer than a cashmere kitten in a dryer full of cotton balls. my cohort supervisor recommended that i hand in the papers to the registrar's office personally. i thought i would take the opportunity to explore downtown in a little more detail.

i parked at fairview and subwayed down. since it was nearby, and since she asked, i visited Jacqueline at work. because the escalators to the Bloor line seemed to be congested with people, i thought it would be easier to just walk from Bloor and Yonge to Sherbourne station -- they looked pretty close on the subway map. it took me twenty minutes at my usual leisurely pace.

when i was introduced, the first thing one of her co-workers asked Jacqueline was, "is he your boyfriend?" to which we both laughed and snickered "no"s. it was expected, but i did not have the presence of mind to come up with a witty retort beforehand; opportunity squandered =(

after a brief lunch and sudoku at the Timothy's downstairs, i hiked to Bloor and St. George at my brisk pace, making it in 20 minutes. i did my business at the registrar's office and proceeded to explore the campus a bit. i padded to the library to use the computer. bumped into Dan P. from high school and we caught up a bit. since he is on Facebook, he had a bit of the inside scoop on the friends i haven't seen or talked to in forever. almost makes me want to get Facebook. almost.

i walked back to Yonge and Bloor after some 2 pm lunch, ducking into the new ROM gift shop to check it out. it is one ugly facade, like big giant disco-dice were chucked at, and embedded into the old museum. the rest of the day involved loafing around in malls and then hanging out with a lot of people and being sleepy.

what's the point of this post? i walked a lot and felt that everyone should know. i also act too much like a boyfriend. huzzah!

mystery bug

on Friday, i roamed around the church parking lot with my camera, hoping to get a few shots of anything interesting. the wind was rather gusty that day and it apparently picked up a bug and flung it at me. the bug struck my shirt around the abdomen and clung on for dear life. naturally i brought my camera to bear, toggled the focus to macro and tried to get a good shot of it.

normally i'm pretty good with identifying animals, but this one completely eludes me. it defies any categorization of insect that i am familiar with. it is not a butterfly/moth, not a beetle, not a social insect, not a flier... i can only describe it as... a kiwi bug, on account of its resemblance to a kiwi bird.

it is about the size of a large housefly, but denser. its 6 legs (making it an insect) are rather muscular, like grasshopper legs, indicating some jumping ability. this might explain why it was on the wind in the first place. its carapace looks fairly sturdy with all its parts arranged very compactly. the eyes are relatively large in comparison to its head, suggesting that it relies mostly on sight to do its business. its business seems to have much to do with its huge red proboscis, from which some antennae seem to be attached. i initially believed it to be some sort of bloodsucker, but it doesn't appear to have the penetration power, nor the storage capacity. the drab colouring suggests that it is a tree dweller, so the proboscis could be for more benign use, such as sap sucking or nectar drinking.

through the course of writing this post, i did some digging around online based on the above information. there is no dedicated search engine to finding insects based on physical characteristics, so i had to search the hard way. i looked up "tree insects" can came upon a list of the most common types. a quick image search of the closest type yielded the answer i was looking for. the mystery kiwi bug pictured above is the pecan weevil. i knew all those hours spent reading The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew in grade 3 would pay off.

Paper Bumblebee

as seen on Engadget: here is a little something for the Transformer fans. even if you hated the Michael Bay movie, you've got to give this guy props for building a scale model of the new Bumblebee out of KFC buckets and custard cake cartons.

whimsy

on a lark, i did some cheap redecorating of this blog. and by cheap, i mean i only used the predesigned stuff -- none of that fancy html/xml/php/javascript stuff.

the colour scheme is more neutral; white and grey and black match with pretty much everything on your (the reader's) setup. i shrank the font size because i like it that way and i don't respect the visually impaired (use Opera to zoom if you need to). i moved the sidebar to the left because the template i picked had it there. i changed the header text to something less russian -- brownie points to whoever actually could tell what that old header line (Это курам на смех) means, or where it was used prominently.

tags

i finally got around to posting up a list of the tags i use for my posts. i was about to manually enter them when i found that blogger can do it for you; thanks, blogger!

in the process of tagging all my old posts -- which i will eventually get around to completing -- i reread some old stuff. some of it was cryptic and required a bit of detective work to decipher what i was saying. some of it cracked me up; boy, i used to be really funny. all of it reminded me of who i used to be and hinted at who i am to become. by golly there is a lot of stuff i tag as nerd.

comfort zone

do you know how rhinos mark their territory? they take a big dump and then kick it to spread it around. people are like rhinos.

i shared this before at the last Aletheia Winter Retreat, coincidentally where i made this sign.

normally, at church/fellowship overnight events (camps, retreats, etc), i don't have to -- how do i put this politely? -- evacuate my colon drop a dookie plug the plumbing shed some weight. this happens without any conscious effort.

for one weekend, my body will instinctively know that there is no comfortable seat to make my deposit, and thus closes up shop. it doesn't matter how many vegetables go in, nothing comes out. walk into my house and i'll shoot for the nearest porcelain.

at Aletheia Winter Retreat, i finally felt comfortable enough to sink some treasure -- in the bathroom with the door that did not lock no less. it wasn't a big deal, just a mild psychological breakthrough. during the campfire sharing time, after most people had done the serious stuff, sharing about loneliness and finding God or whatever, i told them about my catharsis and how it was an indicator of how close to them i felt. i'm not sure they were comfortable enough with me to hear it in such candid terms, but when you're comfortable you can put yourself out there like that without a care.

i knew i was comfortable in Longlac because after the first night, i inaugurated the bowl upstairs. by the second week, we were so comfortable with each other that we didn't mind other people listening in on our symphonies (at least the three guys had no problem with it). dude, some people have rhythm. no duets though (out of courtesy).

candid camera / a startling revelation

i must be so annoying =D

i recently reacquired the password to my second flickr account. since i am so gainfully unemployed, and since i've been such a shutterbug as of late, i thought i'd get off my lazy rump and start uploading. only about 40% of my shots make it online (blurries and pointless shots stay on my hard drive), so i'm learning to shoot more and decide what's good or not later.

---

today, i picked up tiffany c. from her house to go to church early because that's just how the schedule worked out. the first thing she said was, "my sister said you looked 14."

this would explain why the younger ladies latch onto me, and why the ones my age are much less inclined to do so (they have higher standards).

a few months ago, i was catching up with a friend whom i had slightly lost contact with. she told me that if i ever wanted a girlfriend, i would have to bolster my reputation with the parents age group at church and appear more mature. this was followed by the awkward reveal that she used to have a huge crush on me; i am denser than a yuletide fruitcake log.

obviously, i don't think very lowly of myself, so my immediate reaction was, "hey, i'm plenty mature" as a good poop joke flitted through my mind. this was followed closely by, "why do i have to perform for them? is this some sort of dog show?"

of course, i understand that maturity in a man ups his attractiveness four-fold -- who wouldn't want to be attractive? but i will not go out and pretend to be more mature in front of others because that is immature; it is tantamount to slathering a layer cake of makeup on to appear beautiful, glitzing up to appear wealthy and wearing platform shoes to appear tall.

X-tian Music

for the most part, i do not listen to Christian music. i don't mean that i don't listen to Christian bands (or bands associated with Christianity -- another discussion in an of itself) like Switchfoot, Lifehouse, etc; i mean the stuff we normally sing in service.

i sometimes find myself asking, why is that? everyone else seems to be into it and aware of what songs are floating about on the airwaves, while i remain blissfully ignorant. the only answer i can come up with is that these songs just feel weird. it's like petting a cat (or shark) backwards; neither party really appreciates it.

i write this recently returned from summer retreat. the times of worship we had were quite awesome. except for the little niggling at the back of my mind, that weird feeling that sat there in the corner and looked at me funny. was it because the songs were too high for my range? was it because i took my socks off?

it wasn't the people playing the instruments, singing the songs. it wasn't the people swaying and dancing around me. it wasn't the hard and knotty carpet under my feet. it was something i could feel inherently in the music of some songs that was off-putting.

possible bug-a-boos:
Illogical Lyrics -

open up, you heavenly gates,
let the king of glory in;
open up your hearts to Him,
let the king of glory in

i first encountered this gem at Iawah. it bugged me then (for multiple reasons) and it continues to bug me now. isn't the king of glory already inside? was that line thrown in just for balancing the second half of the quatrain on a metaphorical level? and it's not just the chorus that bugs me; the rest of the song is all over the place in terms of range, direction and tone. this sort of thing really distracts me from worship.

Shoehorning - this is when a contemporary verse is written, or exerpted from another song and literally shoehorned into a rendition of an established hymn, e.g. Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone). when it's done well, such as the aforementioned example, it augments the song and takes it to nifty places. when the verse that's shoehorned in does not work, it blows up the entire song like nobody's business. here's a good hymn: Fairest Lord Jesus. here it is, in my opinion, ruined: Fairest Lord Jesus + shoehorned verse.

i wish i had copies of both that you could listen to. the shoehorned verse is innocuous and unassuming and really dull in writing. musically it sticks out like a thumb that has fingers growing out of it. planting it into the hymn as a chorus only compounds the badness because it is refrained and repeated. the hymn is in C. the chorus is in F. F is the 4th note on the C scale. there aren't any hard and fast rules to songwriting nowadays, but there are things that sound good and things that don't. while F is one of the nice notes on the scale, it is not a standalone note; as such, it is not a standalone key. it's a leading note that is used to build expectation for musical resolution (returning to the home key C or the dominant note G). this verse rips the listener out of the hymn and takes him or her nowhere in particular. and that hurts.

Electric Rock Show Circus - not associated with any particular song; but more of an issue of taste. Christian praise songs have veered into rock concert territory. the songs are all about flashy electric guitar riffs, pounding bass, intricate drum solos and stratospheric vocals. rock is the cool, hip thing to do. it sure does get the crowd going. but when every song seems to be a huge eardrum-busting rock-out show-off fest, i will get up and go. the absolute worst is a balladic hymn song getting an Evanescence Bridge Buster -- you know, like the radio edit of My Immortal. it sort of works in that particular song, but not for praise and worship. the EBB is a commercial gimmick, a hook in the song to lure shallow listeners. P&W is not about glory hogging.

of course, this could all just be an issue of musical taste. i prefer acoustic music, when you can tell if the singers and instrumentalists are actually good at what they do. i like music the same way i like food: slow -- for the purposes of savouring what's in it. for the most part, contemporary Christian music just doesn't do it for me; it is lyrically and musically shallow. there is some really good stuff out there, i'm sure of it; i just can't be bothered to wade through the dross to get to the gold.

this world is small

i was umping a game last week and one of the players on one of the teams was someone i just met in my second last semester of school in Children's Literature. she'd not a church-goer but she was invited to play for "Anointed". the following day (sunday) "Anointed" umpired our game, and i got to chat a bit with their coach, Jo, again. one of the assisting umpires knew most of the players on our team because they all go to University of Waterloo. she didn't recognize me, even though i called her out for leading off at second base, until i reminded her.

the next day (monday), i went to Markville Mall to take a gander at some day packs, as my trusty red one (for skates and other miscellany, like Longlac and camping and high school) was beginning to deteriorate. as i began my quest, i spied out of the corner of my eye someone that looked like Jo in the distance, talking to a friend. as i returned my attention to my quest it looked like she saw me too, and seemed to have a moment of fuzzy recognition as well. i didn't turn back to confirm it on account of aforementioned quest (that did not bear fruit).

---

i took Cheryl to Pacific Mall today to see if we could (miraculously) find a USB data cable for her Sandisk Sansa C-140 MP3 player, since she left it back home in Longlac. we trawled the mall for about an hour, going past every store and talking to the people behind the counters of the techier stores. i did not play the usual Pacific Mall games of a) counting cellphone stores (tough) b) counting bubble tea stores (tougher) c) counting pirated DVD stores (toughest).

after sufficient boredom and not finding what we came for, i decided to take her over to Market Village to see if we could find soprano-melissa where she works. on the way over in the toaster oven heat, two girls walked past. one looked mildly familiar and i thought, hey, is that Mary from UHS where i taught grade 11 physics two summers ago? it wasn't. so we trundled into the slightly air conditioned older sister of Pacific Mall and quickly identified the place that soprano melissa worked. it was upstairs.

turning towards the place after getting off the escalator i make eye contact with Mary from UHS where i taught grade 11 physics two summers ago, who was with her mom and little sister. what a coinky-dink. we small-talked for a bit -- where she would be going for university, etc; i didn't tell her i was just thinking of her (not in THAT way) because that would sound three shades creepier than i normally try to project. anyways, this was actually the third time bumping into her. the first was at the entrance of T&T early last year; the second was at TJCAC during the program that followed Project T-dot last summer.

after that we found melissa fairly easily; she was standing at the reception desk. we then went back to Pacific Mall to get some bubble tea from Food Jungle (real fruit, not powder) because she had a discount card (10% off!). there we bumped into Kelvin and his parents who were just out for a summer afternoon something.