A month or so ago I was lucky enough to meet the recently-crowned Miss Universe Riyo Mori.

No really, I did. It’s the Japanese connections obviously.

Anyway, she was over at my house back in Belleville and she was visiting some of her friends there since she hadn’t been back to Belleville since winning Miss Universe. She and her friends hung out at my house acting like any other high school girls would when their friend wins Miss Universe. You know, standard stuff. Lots of screaming and happy dances and hugs ensued. Oh and lots of pictures of course.

So what did I get from this experience? It’s kind of a big deal to win Miss Universe. I think. Oh and Riyo’s totally down to earth. She’s not some crazy celebrity type. Not yet at least. Hopefully she stays cool.

Back in 1989 David Hasselhoff did a song released only in like Germany, and it was called Pingu Dance

Pingu is so awesome

I forgot how awesome they are

Okay, I’ve come out of hiding to discuss my displeasure for David Beckham joining almost basement team the L.A. Galaxy…seriously…WTF?

He should have at least joined a better team somewhere else…but hey! his wife IS Posh Spice…I just fear that he’ll get too entwined in the Hollywood lifestyle that he’ll become a useless tool. Anyways, I wouldn’t mind seeing him play in Canada against Toronto FC, that would be pretty awesome. But still, I’d rather have him playing at Real Madrid for a few more seasons before making the leap. Instead of playing along the likes of Raul, Cannavaro and Van Nistelrooy at Madrid…he’ll be connecting passes with Donovan, Jones, and Xavier in LA…I’d take the former over the latter any day of the week.
I hope he does well, I really do, there’s just something about the MLS that just doesn’t appeal to me…only when a team came to Toronto was when I kinda started caring.

Now with David Beckham’s final game with Madrid, finally winning the Spanish League title, I was really happy, but later on when I heard that Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes were there cheering him on…the first thing that came to my mind was “What the fuck are they doing there?”

I don’t think Tom and Katie give a flying fuck about European Football, nor do I think that they care about Real Madrid winning their first Spanish League Title in four years, ending their worst title-less run in over 50 years.

Now I think Cruise is a great actor, but every time he is out in public doing whatever I immediately get suspicious, all because he is a Scientologist…I know, my uneasiness about Scientology may be exaggerated…or not, but there is a lot of “hush, hush” stuff about them that just gives me the creeps.
Anyways, With two of Scientology’s most famous faces attending a Real Madrid game to support David Beckham got me worried that they are trying to recruit him into their “religion”. The worlds most recognizable face and the international marketing force that is David Beckham, joining Scientology would give the the “religion” more international appeal, and possibly expand to other major markets around the world. Its like how Lisa Marie Presley was asked to divorce her husband in order to marry Michael Jackson, so that they could convert him to Scientology in order to appeal more to young people. (She said this in an interview a little while ago, I think it was on TV) This was just before Jackson was accused of Child Molestation, so their plan was ruined.

If Beckham is successful in MLS then it will no doubt, bring in many more international football stars from major clubs across Europe, and maybe then I’ll get more involved in the MLS.
And if David Beckham does join Scientology with his wife (who will probably encourage him to), then I will stop supporting him and speak poorly of him.
Others reasons are…
A) He’s a Bitch to his wife B) I don’t need to buy Adidas boots coupled with David Beckham warnings to get my Thetans checked. and C) I don’t want to “Bend it Like Xenu”

So word of advice for David…Stay away from Science Fiction, it will lead to your downfall.

It rained today in the city of Ottawa. Rained down like the corruption that pervades this whorish city. When you’ve been a private dick for this long, its hard not to take a cynical view of everything. On the outside, this city seems like it’s all talk. She’s pretty enough on the outside, and draws strangers in. But at the heart of things, at the core, lies a decaying world of thugs and underlords; like an apple rotting from the inside out. Nothing is what it seems here. Take this case for example.

I was busy having a staring contest with the phone one fall morning, when Beulah let me know that we had a visitor. In walks this dame who looks like she’s full of pain; too much pain for a woman in her early 20s to take. You can always tell it from the eyes. Skin lies, but the eyes age by experience, not through time.

Still, I had to try really hard to feign disinterest. She had a free flowing bob of red hair, piercing blue eyes, and gams that seemed to go on forever. But the scowl on her face where her smile should have been told me not to try my luck. This broad was 10 miles of trouble on a 2 mile street. But those getaway sticks! And those eyes. A schmuck could get lost trying to find his way back out of those, and in this business you need a quick wits and even quicker reflexes. I could tell already that this case would be trouble. But at the time, I didn’t know how much.

The new Queens of the Stone Age album is coming out like tomorrow or something, and this is their first single. You can find the real video off youtube, but this one is crazy. Anyways, It’s an awesome track with Julian Casablancas from the Strokes providing some vocal backup.
They also have another track released a little while ago called “Era Vulgaris”, its a pretty “sick” track featuring Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.

And as for regular blogging…i’ll get around to it

This past weekend I went up to Ottawa and it was my first time back since I lived there over two years ago.

It started a week ago when Rob W suggested we go on a road trip to the capital to experience the Stanley Cup fever in person. I had been wanting to go back to Ottawa ever since I left because I love the city and all my friends from back home live there as well. Daveed was down for my birthday and it wasn’t hard to convince him to come with us so the plan was set. My friends in Ottawa were all available for the weekend and last Thursday I also found out that Meghan was going home for the weekend so it was shaping up to be a great trip.

Rob came down to Waterloo late Thursday night and we stayed up pretty late. I was working on a new feature for Delilah and Rob was doing something a little less productive. Morning soon came and I had a pretty hard time getting up. We were planning on leaving by noon to pick up Daveed and Rob’s friend Dave in Toronto and it was now 11 am. I ran downstairs to wake Rob up. His words to me were something along the lines of “I’m not getting up. I’m going to sleep in til 2 pm.” After some physical threats he agreed to get up and we managed to leave my house by 12:30 so we weren’t too far off target.

Rob drives a Prius. It’s like from the future or something. I’m quite certain of that. We used the sweet, sweet GPS to guide us to find Dave and Daveed in Toronto while listening to Sirius satellite radio. I’m starting to sound like a commercial, but travelling in a car like that is pretty damn pleasant. We quickly realized it was going to be confusing with two Daves so we took to calling Rob’s friend Mark-Dave instead (Mark being his middle name).

Leaving Toronto was another matter. Given that Rob’s future-car couldn’t actually fly, we were bound to the reality of traffic jams. At 3pm. What the hell? Driving was painfully slow. Daveed repeatedly screamed out the window “What are you all doing?! Why aren’t you at work?!” to no avail. Nobody was listening. Damn commuters. Why don’t they take the Go Train? Seriously, it was ridiculous seeing all the single-occupancy cars. What ever happened to car pooling? We are hopeless.

We coped by listening to the wonderful commercial-free radio and dancing to classic 80′s music. I also successfully executed the decades-old maneuver of the air-honk. You know, trying to get truckers to honk their horn by motioning them with your arm out the window pretending to pull the horn. The trucker had a cowboy hat so I thought sweet, this guy’s old school. He’ll do it. I stuck my arm out and busted my move. He looked at me with a sad look on his face and shook his head. I think they get in trouble nowadays because it distracts drivers. But then a look of “what the hell” came over his face and he blew his horn. I was pleased. I think it’s a dying tradition. But I’m keeping the dream alive.

We were a little past Pickering when Mark-Dave suggested we take back roads to Ottawa. Less traffic and more direct and shorter route towards Ottawa. But we’d definitely go faster on the 401. We weren’t sure what to do so we designated Daveed as The Oracle. He chose the back roads. The Oracle had spoken. We stopped by a McD’s soon after we got off the 401 around Peterborough. I calculated my meal out to 1500 calories. I figured that’d keep me satisfied until we reached Ottawa.

We were greeted with a damp, wet rain as we arrived in Ottawa and after dropping Mark-Dave off at his house and then our things at Arjun’s place, we went up to the market for food and drink. We checked out Heart and Crown but there was a line-up so we settled on going to the Aude Dubliner and chilled there for a while. Arjun and Tony joined up with us and then we visited Zaphod’s for a bit.

At Zaphod’s we met up with Arjun’s roommate Mark who referred to Rob as Rob Zombie. We tried to get Arjun to bust some moves but he was being all shy and boring. Beat It came on and we forced him to do some MJ dancing which lasted 10 seconds. Daveed challenged him to a dance battle but I think Arjun was afraid.

We spent the rest of the night hanging out at Arjun’s apartment and we were up until the wee hours of the morning. We all got up around 11 on Saturday and sat around all tired and lazy. We had a good breakfast at Cora’s to get things started.

Daveed, Rob and I headed over to Elgin to visit Tony, Nana and Uzo and proceeded to wander down Elgin to watch the Sens game. The streets weren’t too busy but every table at all the bars were taken so we decided to test our luck in the Market. We ventured back up to Heart and Crown and to our surprise there was plenty of room so we took our time scoping the place out and settling on a good table.

The next 6 hours or so was spent eating, drinking and watching the game. It was one helluva game. We also ran into a bunch of people from Belleville and some of my dad’s old karate students.

Meghan didn’t end up coming out with us because the lucky girl ended up watching the game from a box, for free, with free drinks and food all night AND with The Trews. Ahhh so jealous. I won’t bother getting into details but Meghan wrote an account on Delilah.

After the game we went over to the Brig where I was supposed to meet up with my friend Andrea and her friend Lori. We worked across the street from each other back when I worked at NRCan during my Ottawa days. I told the guys to go inside and start drinking while I waited outside for Andrea. So there I was, waiting around, and I was about to call Arjun to give him an update since he didn’t come out with us when I was attacked from behind. It was a sneak-attack hug from Andrea. My ninja senses failed me. I thought I’d be prepared but I clearly haven’t been training enough. I blame it on the alcohol.

The rest of the night was spent drinking at the Brig and I made it home around 2 am. Actually I have no idea when I got home but 2 am sounds good as far as this story goes. Although Daveed had headed home almost an hour before I did he wasn’t at Arjun’s place. Rob was missing too. I tracked down Dave and he had apparently taken the bus back to Arjun’s but missed the stop (at Lees) and ended up way out at the St. Laurent mall. He eventually made it back safe. As always when he’s drunk.

Sunday we slept in a bit and confirmed that Rob Zombie had gone to Mark-Dave’s place and crashed there. Rob, Dave and Mark-Dave left just after noon and I stuck around in Ottawa. I spent the afternoon hanging out with Andrea and then later visited Nana, Tony and Uzo.

Today I caught a ride back to Waterloo with Meghan and thus my weekend journey came to an end. This was definitely one of the best weekends of this year and I look forward to going back to Ottawa again.

If you must write “lol”, or “lmao”, or the robust and heady “roflmao”, make sure that it is in response to what someone else said (don’t “lol” at your own jokes), and that it fits the situation. Very rarely does someone roll on the floor, laughing their ass off, so make sure that your use of “roflmao” reflects this.

Further, do not weave these abbreviations into a sentence unless it makes sense. The best way to check if you’ve used an abbreviation properly is to read the abbreviation as if you had typed it out in full. “Laughing out loud hahah look at that idiot” only makes you look like the idiot.

alternate title: ok, you might not think this is funny, so I’ll write something else later

Before I get into the specifics of this one, let me explain a few things.

Actually, Dorothy Gambrell can explain them better. Go here, read this, and come back. I’ll wait.

Now you probably understand the problem with self-defining a group of people based on something this arbitrary. It creates a climate of “you vs. us”, or “us vs. them”. But this is only part of the problem of self-defining. There are more problems associated with definitions which are based on economic status and the like. But this isn’t about that. I’ll probably never address that subject, because I don’t feel like it’s my place or like I’d be able to handle the subject properly.

Which now brings me to the subject of the grups. My nerd brethren, do you remember the episode of Star Trek where Kirk and the crew land on the planet where anyone who reaches adulthood becomes sick and dies? The planet is populated by children because of this, and they have created a unique social structure, and language. They call adults “grups”, a play on the term “grown-up”.

Now, people believe that they have uncovered a social pattern in the 30 somethings and late 20 somethings who have a certain type of style and listen to a certain type of music. The discovery of this has lead people to create a term for this disparate group of people. They’ve called themselves “grups”. The term is closely related to “yuppie”, a pejorative term for young adults from Generation X (I say pejorative, because most people do not self-identify as a “yuppie”). How is this different than “indie kid” or “hipster” or any other label? Labels never define who or what someone is, but they give you a shallow idea of what they could be like. This can only lead to problems in the future, my friends. Down with the “grup” label, and up with individualism and being awesome by your own rights.

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I feel like this is extremely incoherent, but time necessitates this, unfortunately. My brother Kwaku, and Liam (he comments here a lot) are in Ottawa, and we’re going out for a bit. Read this article for more info on grups.