This Time, I Attack!

BIHKAL: 1145 Indiana (Part 1)

2007-10-23T17:24:00.000-04:00

Due to a personal request, I am bringing the BIHKAL series out of retirement for another installment. You can thank one Jon B. for this. This week, on Bathrooms I Have Known and Loathed: Avalanches of water that smell like crap! Heating appliances fueled by the rage of Satan! Dangerous experiments with nail polish remover! Absentee landlords! ...And so much more!

For 4 of the 6 years I spent at the University of Kansas, I lived in a charming 3 story plus basement shithole at 1145 Indiana St. This lovely little piece of hell was painstakingly maintained by Eck Real Estate Management. Over the course of my stay, I rented the entire first floor. The apartment was spacious, measuring in at a formidable 1300 square feet. Of these 1300, approximately 4 were allocated to the one and only bathroom. The bathroom was in extremely ill repair, but featured a (mostly) working electric space heater mounted in the wall. The heater was, essentially the inside of a giant toaster (about the size of the bathroom) mounted behind a flimsy metal grate. At some prior point in its lifetime, it had produced enough heat to burn part way through a facing cabinet door, scorch the linoleum in front of it, and burn the hair off of my legs while attempting use the toilet (hint from my roommate: "Just don't pull your pants all the way down."). At some point, I developed the following musical description of the evil beast.

(sung gleefully to an unidentified melody vaguely resembling the theme song to "Denver the Last Dinosaur")

Thermador, Thermador,
Heats the bathroom and so much more!
Thermador, Thermador,
Leaves a brown spot on the floor!

One evening, my roommate Andrew came home from spray painting stuff (a strangely regular occurrence) and we set out to the local pharmacy to purchase materials that would remove BRIGHT METALLIC SILVER paint from flesh. Instead of these materials, we came home with a bar of lava soap, a jar of acetone, and (at least on the part of Andrew) an uncontrollable desire to burn the goddamn house down. The acetone came in one of those crappy little tubs with the sponge in the top that you stick your fingers through to help remove the nail polish (don't ask me how I know this, but I do). Unfortunately, my roommate's giant silver hand wouldn't fit through the wee, finger-sized hole, so he removed the sponge and then commenced maniacal scrubbing. I was making a tasty meal of microwaved hot dogs and crap when I heard: "Justin, check this out!" I went into the bathroom to find the heating beast glowing ominously. The light reflecting off of Andrew's hand made eerie patterns on the walls. In this hand, he clutched a pink sponge with a finger-sized hole in it. He turned toward the thermador, and flicked the sponge.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I lost consciousness for about 3-5 seconds, but I do remember seeing a GIANT FIREBALL shoot out of the wall and rise to the ceiling, leaving behind the smell of burnt hair. When my pulse resumed, I saw Andrew standing in the middle of the tiny bathroom with a look of mixed childlike wonder and terror that seemed to say, "I probably shouldn't have done that." He turned to me and said, "I probably shouldn't have done that..." thus ending the first of many events in the 1145 Indiana St. bathroom that have made me reassess the value and purpose of my life. More to follow...

How Not to Write an Introduction to an Academic Paper

2007-03-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

In the course of my academic life at an undisclosed institution in Canada, I stumbled across the following discarded paper. I'm going to reproduce it in its entirety. On a related note, if this paper belongs to you and you would like it removed, please let me know. Also, please come by my office for a brief lesson on academic writing. My comments are in the full post.

For some reason (as Amy has noted), people seem to teach Canadian highschoolers to begin their papers with amusing anecdotes or sweepingly ridiculous statements, thus ensuring that Canadians will continue to not be taken seriously. From what I can tell, this is either a paper about swearing or the Chinese language.

First, let's talk about the obvious. I've written some pretty ridiculous papers during my 6 year stint as an undergraduate in English and computer science, but I've never started a paper in quite such a...striking...fashion. Moving right along, what's with that initial semi-colon (for some reason this bothered Amy more than anything else)?. I enjoy the author's assertion that "globalization" and "economic union" are fancy words. After this, we move directly into the land of the hideously mixed metaphors: "...transcends all of the boundaries chaining modern society to the past: culture, economic status, profession, religion, nationality...." Wow. That's one fancy-ass boundary you've got there. It can even chain things together! I only point this out because it's exactly the opposite function from that which a typical boundary serves. Also, how about that impressive list of boundaries? Just to be clear, we're still talking about "Yo bitch," right? The sentence continues, via a deft comma splice, to present one of the most startlingly vivid and unnecessary similes I have ever encountered. We are then treated to a variety of meanings for the word "fuck." Maybe this is just my opinion, but it takes an incredible mastery of "tone of voice" to convey "the act of making love" with the word "fuck." If anyone can figure out how exactly how this is done, please drop me a line. And then this interminable sentence ends with the most fabulously logical conclusion I have ever heard: "I guess that makes swearing is a lot like Chinese." Q.E.D. folks. Were I grading this paper, it would be extremely hard to refrain from scrawling, "I guess that makes your paper a lot like a pile of flaming poo!" right next to that line. Finally, we have, "Prepare yourself for extensive linguistic training." Yes sensei! Actually, wait a minute, sensei. What sort of linguistic training is going to happen here? Maybe how to (in one short page) violate virtually every rule of English grammar and composition? How to confuse your reader so badly that by the (sadly unavailable) second page of your essay he or she has no idea whether you're going to discuss slang, swearing, Chinese, or the state of solid dairy products in the sweet Canadian summertime? As a final note, look at the upper-left hand side of the page. Apparently we're already 10 pages in! Amy's hypothesis: this is actually the begining of a PhD thesis, after the associated of front matter: table of contents, acknowledgements, etc. *shiver*

My Life in the Wellington Cthulhu Cult

2007-02-22T16:13:00.000-05:00

Here's a little gem that I've been sitting on since my trip home for winter break.
Deep in the underbelly of south central Kansas lies a little village named Wellington. Wellington is populated almost entirely with the psychotic religious, the morbidly obese, the mentally challenged, and the vagrant elderly. It should be noted that in south central Kansas there is a non-trivial intersection amongst these groups. I got the joy of spending 1 hour in the Wellington Wal-Mart waiting for my flat tire to be fixed. Why don't you take it somewhere else, you ask? Because, like many small towns with a Wal-Mart, there is nowhere else. As a result I got to spend about 45 minutes at ground zero for what my sister affectionately refers to as the "mutard invasion." After being rescued by my sister, we drove around Wellington searching for the particular piece of small town Americana that is "the Screamin' Jesus." A little explanation is probably due here. Having already exhausted their store of respectable, recognized churches (and I'm even including the Assemblies of God in this list), Wellington decided to start making up their own. One of these is the "Joy Fellowship Church." It occupies a rickety multi-story house behind an auto repair shack's parking lot. I can only assume that the Joy Fellowship Church is devoted to the worship of Lovecraftian elder gods, given its quaint decoration. You see, someone has decided to hang a giant painting of Jesus on the side of the church. It's visible from the highway, and it's been painted by someone who's never seen an actual human being! Without further ado, here it is:

Ia! Ia! Shub-Nigurrath! The goat with a thousand young! There's something very scary about the eyes and mouth of Jesus (which is not something I thought I would ever have to say in my entire life...thank you Joy Fellowship). I don't know if it comes through in the picture, but they've used an incredibly black shade of black for Jesus' pupils and gaping maw, resulting in the distinct feeling that behind his malformed mask, Jesus is a cackling void of absolute vacuity. Maybe that's what they were going for. It's worth pointing out that the face in the photo is at least 15 feet tall.

BIHKAL: John's Williamsburg Practice Space

2006-08-13T23:10:00.000-04:00

I just returned to Toronto after spending about a week with John in New York making music. Said music was produced largely in a dank basement hole in the charming part of New York known as Williamsburg. In an exciting first for the BIHKAL series, I have photo documentation!

After finding the building, opening the front door, descending a frightening set of stairs into a Silence of the Lambs-esque basement, we find the following hallway:

What could be lurking at the top of that wee ladder? A linen closet? Surely, dear reader, you know better than that. Let's open the door (which you'll note is already slightly ajar) and see what lurks behind. It's...

A toilet!? Yes. This is the first (and I sincerely pray) only bathroom I have ever encountered that requires mounting. Also, note the size of the tiny little poop deck: approximately 2.5 by 3 feet. Comfy. Let's take a closer look:

The first thing of note is the electric meter, thoughtfully installed so that it can be easily monitored from the throne. It's tastefully framed by two roughly hewn pieces of plywood. Next, note the sink at the upper left of the picture. The sink crowds the toilet leaving two options: sit down or perform the acrobatic half-in half-out maneuver illustrated below by a man who is not John:

A close examination of the inconvenient sink reveals some unsavory looking bar soaps and a shard of mirror with the reflection of an uncommonly well proportioned young man:

Also, note the red safety scissors (!?), carefully tucked away behind the power conduit serving the non-functional light.

Below is a view of the commode, which again illustrates the incredibly cramped quarters.

We can see some reading material left on the toilet tank. What foul literature could lurk in this small cubicle of filth?

Emily Post's Complete Book of Wedding Etiquette! And a filthy toilet paper tube! And three napkins, which are the only toilet paper-esque substance in the entire area. I learned this latter fact through an intense personal difficulty that was eventually resolved by means of a bad collection of independent poetry that had been delivered to the building. Apparently that's what the scissors are for..

You Sweaty Scenester Bastard!

2006-07-21T01:59:00.000-04:00

I've successfully made the trek to Kansas, despite minor hangups at the border and a nightmarish experience with a caged, incontinent, woolly poop machine in my backseat. I will post the details later if I'm feeling sadistic. Anyhow, my sister took me to a concert tonight. Ah the joys of the Wichita indie "scene."

Okay, so we saw the band Chiodos. They're not really my usual style, but they rocked pretty damn hard, and I had fun my with my sister. I seriously hope that I regain my hearing. Apparently, the show was supposed to be an eighteen-and-over affair at the wonderfully adequate J.C.'s House of Rock.

Upon arriving at the House of Rock, I find: 1) This is apparently not an eighteen-and-over show. This is made apparent by the fact that 2) The mean age of the crowd is approximately 16.7. At this point, I begin to feel like a cross between a chaperone, loser bastard, and dirty old man. I've just quit smoking, and am dismayed to find that 3) People around the age of 16.7 in Wichita think smoking looks really cool. I never realized just how irritating clove cigarettes are until I shared the air for three hours with a 16 year old scenester choad who won't man up and buy a pack of Marlboros. Oh, yeah, and: 4) Three people were apparently murdered in this club a few years ago, when it was a swingin' hispanic club with the creative and enigmatic name of Club Mexico. Amanda may post some extra grisly stuff later, as she has been crawling Google with the determination and vigor of a hungry Shih-Tzu at a Sunday picnic. Suffice it to say that they had to change their full name from "Club Mexico: Where We Won't Shoot And Dismember You," to the more austere, "Club Mexico."

This set the tone for the evening (in fact the opening band even invoked the spirits of the slain men in a desperate ploy to appear edgy, even relevant). It's me, my sister, and 300 16-year old indie kids. And there's no bar in sight. As I watched the bands I spied such interesting folk as: "Guy in a camo t-shirt, tight girl's jeans, white belt, and giant white sweatband parading around with an inflatable sword (lest we mistake him for someone normal)" and "Girl with shag haircut and contemporary t-shirt #327." I was educated in the ways of "hardcore dancing" by about 10 under 18 punks in varying stages of undress, and got to watch most Chiodos from behind a large man in a sweaty System of a Down t-shirt that smelled like a giant bag of anuses. Fun. Oh, and then there was the "dancer" whose pants were slowly heading south as he gyrated arrhythmically to the rhythmic sounds of Chiodos, revealing his blue BVDs. It was all that I could do to keep from grabbing the waistband of this scrawny little scenester bastard's undergarment and giving him the wedgie to end all wedgies, refusing to let go until the waistband broke, tugging with the might of some mythical wedgie beast--part crocodile, part hippopotamus, part lion, 100 percent ass-rending terror. Seriously. My sister had to hold me back.

Despite my grumpy grumblings, I did have fun with my sister and Chiodos were pretty cool (if a little loud for my aging ears). Sorry about the wedgie beast, I had to go to the dentist and all they had to read besides Marie Claire and Highlights was an aging National Geographic about the Egyptian afterlife. One man's souleater is another's wedgie beast. Also, I found the bar as we were leaving. It looked nice.

Fu-Queues

2006-06-14T15:34:00.000-04:00

Already this week, I have spent an inordinate amount of time standing in line. Thus, today's post will provide an introduction to a new and fascinating Canadian professional sport: waiting.

The prototypical Canadian waiting team features 2 members: Amy and myself. I have also had success in singles waiting, which involves a slightly higher level of strategy (frustration). Essentially the waiting game is played as follows:

The defending team faces any number of attackers. Their goal: keep the attackers waiting for as long as possible. A great example of defense strategy is the McDonald's lobby trap. In this system, the defenders lurk as far away from the one open register as possible. This location is kept secret, so the attackers have no idea which register to queue up in front of. The attackers counter by staying toward the back of the lobby, which allows the defenders to continue with a strong lurking game. If an attacker breaks through this defense, successfully placing an order, the defenders change their play-style from lurking to Brownian motion. They move around in a random fashion, bouncing off of fry-stations and burger-bins. Throughout, it is important that the attackers can see their food, waiting to be picked up and placed on their brown plastic tray. Under no circumstances, however, should the defenders make a direct effort to this effect. Rather, they should continue to oscillate aimlessly around the kitchen area, half-heartedly picking up meal components only when their motion brings them suitably close to them.

Allow me to give you a play by play account of one of my recent matches:

Defender: McDonald's
Attackers: Justin and Amy vs. Mathematically-Challenged Adolescent Without Sufficient Money vs. Belligerent Man Who Doesn't Want Lettuce on His Big Mac.
Play-by-Play: Justin and Amy arrive at McDonald's, slightly ahead of Belligerent Man. It would seem that they have the advantage, but McDonald's is running a strong lurking strategy. As they are waiting for an open register Idiot Adolescent comes out of nowhere and sidles smoothly to the front of the queue. By now Belligerent Man has arrived, and asks if Justin and Amy are "in LINE, or WHAT?" Justin and Amy affirm that they are, indeed, in line, while Mathematically-Challenged Adolescent begins his order:

Mathematically-Challenged Adolescent (MCA): "How much for a Big Mac and a large Coke"
McDonald's Employee (ME): "..." (15 seconds pass)
ME: (begins slowly pushing buttons) "...$5.87"
MCA: (looks at the $5 bill in his hands, then hands it to Employee)
ME: "That's not enough..."
MCA: "How much for a small Coke?"

(It is important to note that MCA does not suffer from any recognized mental handicap.... He's just a little dumb)

At this point, Belligerent Man comes into action!

Belligerent Man (BM): (belligerently) "OH, FOR CRYIN' OOT LOUD!"
Justin and Amy (JA): (look disgustedly at Idiot Adolescent then back at Belligerent Man)
ME: (begins slowly pushing buttons)
MCA: (fingers $5 bill slowly with grubby hands)
ME: "$5.67"
MCA: (hands $5 bill to Employee)
ME: "...That's still not enough"
BM: "LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE DRINKING WATER TODAY, KID!"
MCA: "How much for a cheeseburger and small Coke?"
ME: (begins slowly pushing buttons) "$4.12"

Mathematically-Challenged Adolescent hands the grubby bill to ME and takes first place! It's now a race between Justin and Amy and Belligerent Man. Suddenly a new register opens!

McDonald's Employee 2 (ME2): "I can help you over here."
JA: "Okay, we'd like a number 4, with a--"
ME2: (walks suddenly to fryer)
BM: (moving to register operated by ME) "OKAY, I'd like a number ONE, with a COKE!"
ME: (begins slowly pushing buttons) "The combo?"
BM: "YES!"
ME: "What do you want to drink with that?"
BM: "A COKE!"
ME: "Okay, is that it?"
BM: "NO LETTUCE ON THE BIG MAC"
ME: "No lettuce?
BM: "ONLY MUSTARD AND ONIONS!"
ME: "Okay."
BM: "Actually...I'LL TAKE ME A SECOND BIG MAC!"
ME: "Okay."
BM: "NO. LETTUCE."

At this point, McDonald's Employee 2 arrives and takes Justin and Amy's order. It's now a race! Luckily McDonald's Employee 2's random motion carries her to the burger bin before the other employees can finish taking turns spitting on Belligerent Man's Big Mac, and they eke out a second place finish! Another exciting match in the exciting world of Canadian waiting.

Obligatory Post of the Beast

2006-06-06T23:15:00.001-04:00

"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."

--Hamlet III.2

"What the hell?
No 'Sympathy for the Devil'?!"

--Me

In honor of the (questionably) ominous date, every site I frequent has apparently decided to publish some kind of infernal list. Particularly infernal is Allmusic's The Devil's Playlist. , I'll admit that the best strategy when reading anything concocted by Allmusic's editorial staff involves a large grain of low-expectation-flavored salt. All the same, this list is rather atrocious. Allow me to enumerate its failings in a smug fashion:

Allmusic's typical obscurist holier-than-thou-mutual-admiration-fest. For instance, note that Bauhaus was not fringe enough for this list. No, they had to choose a track from Peter Murphy (Bauhaus lead vocalist)'s solo career. To be fair, they make the track sound mighty good!

No Nick Cave. Come on, you've got to be kidding me! Okay, if Nick Cave wasn't obscure enough, they could always have chosen anything the Birthday Party ever wrote. Interestingly enough, they even have to invoke "Red Right Hand" in order to describe a more obscure track that was chosen in its place in order to placate the insidious hipster contingent.

At this point, I must point out that both of the choices mentioned above seem very apt, and it may just be that my taste in music is too pedestrian for the AMG staff. Even in the throws of obscurism, however, they seemed to find space for such staples as Black Sabbath, Slayer (honestly...), and even the Eagles' "Hotel California." And (you must be thinking) the incredibly obvious "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones. Nope. Not even mentioned. NOT EVEN MENTIONED! DAMN YOU, AMG EDITORIAL STAFF!

Also absent from the list: Electric Six. Hey, Tenacious D made the cut, thanks to Ms. Cammila "Look - At - Me - I'm - Being - Irreverent - So - As - To - Point - Out - How - Silly - It - Is - That - A - Critic - Of - My - Acumen - Must - Stoop - To - Choosing - Songs - For - This - List" Albertson. Speaking of Cammila Albertson, let's look at this dumb bunny's other choice: U2's "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car." Um. I'm pretty sure that song has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE DEVIL! Great. I can only assume that the Stones were bumped for this questionable choice.

I can't take it anymore. What's the deal with U2 anyway? I'm sorry, maybe it's just because the first U2 album to come out after the point at which I became seriously interested in music was Pop, but I just don't get it. Yeah, U2's good. But there's always some jackass at the party that seems to think U2 are revolutionary. Good, yes. Catchy, yes. Well crafted, yes. Great, occasionally. Revolutionary, no. They write good rock/pop songs (including the occasional exceptional track). That's it, folks.

So, the (very humble) beginnings of an appropriate 6/6/06 playlist:

Electric Six - Devil Nights
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Red Right Hand (or possibly Loverman)
Liars - We Fenced Other Houses With The Bones of Our Own
Murder by Death - Devil in Mexico
Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Algae and Tentacles - Dr. Polichik

And here, dear reader, I leave off for further suggestions...

BIHKAL: Riverside Perk

2006-05-29T23:24:00.000-04:00

It’s time for the next installment of my N-part series: "Bathrooms I Have Known and Loathed." This time, we’ll take a journey back to my late teen years, a good deal of which were spent at the Riverside Perk coffee house in Wichita, Kansas.
I always rather enjoyed the Perk. The coffee was good, the atmosphere was good, and occasionally you would see ridiculous paintings by local artists. My favorite? An 8 foot tall carrot, rendered in a cubist style, complete with a frame made from 10-inch wide hammered copper. It could have been mine for the low, low price of only five thousand dollars. If you buy in the next twenty minutes, we’ll throw in a 5 foot radish! That’s a three thousand dollar value, for free!

Anyhow, in this small local coffee shop lurked a bathroom left over from CIA experimentation in psychological torture techniques. A crack team of hardened surrealists could not have developed a more unnerving public space. The bathroom was always very clean and well kept, and no single component was particularly disconcerting, when considered in isolation. Taken as a whole, however, the bathroom insinuated itself into the darkest depths of my lower mind. In an attempt to recreate the effect, I shall now switch to second person; please secure your safety bar, and keep your hands inside the car at all times.

You walk down a small, short hallway, through a beaded curtain, past an antiquated pay-phone. You turn right and find the men’s restroom. You open the door. The first thing you notice is that the room is very small: only about 5 by 6 feet. There is a single toilet and a sink. Also, the floor is not quite level. This creates an inexorable pull to the rear of the room, while ensuring that no single corner in the bathroom is quite square. The whole affair is vaguely disorienting, in a subliminal sort of way. Your disorientation grows as you notice that the walls are all papered with a giant brown cowprint pattern. Yee-haw! The walls seem to swim in and out of focus, like so many little dogies gettin’ along in the dusty parts of your psyche. Attempting to find your grip on sanity just long enough to relieve yourself, you decide to focus on some particular place in the room. You look directly forward, above the toilet. Looking back at you: a 1950’s pinup girl dressed in full cowboy get-up, complete with six-shooters and spurs. And she’s topless. And she’s looking directly at you. And so are her breasts. You suddenly have the irrational fear that someone is going to open the door and catch you staring intently at Chesty LeRoux’s last stand with your pants undone. You turn quickly to your right only to find…

SOMEONE STARING AT YOU!

It takes awhile to recover from the initial shock, then you realize…

YOU’RE STARING AT YOU!

Has the bathroom actually warped space time?! No, there’s just a giant mirror (insert obligatory "The English Beat" reference here) installed directly to your right (recall, if you will, that this room is already incredibly small). Now you, too can enjoy catching yourself staring intently at Chesty LeRoux’s last stand with your pants undone. Oh yes, above the mirror: a giant pair of steer horns (only slightly larger than the kind you might find as a hood ornament on a Cadillac El Dorado). At least there’s a strange 50’s western theme emerging. This gives you comfort. It all begins to fit together (if perhaps a little sloppily). Then you turn to your left. Look! It’s another picture. A picture of a topless ice skater. An incongruous topless ice skater.

Now, your choices have been reduced to a giant longhorn-framed portrait of the jackass currently trapped in the hellish "other place" that is Riverside Perk’s bathroom, Shootout at the Double-D Corral, or Tiffany the Inexplicable Topless Ice Princess. You look towards the corner, the last potential refuge for your poor eyes. There you find an antiquated breaker box, complete with scarily decayed wires hanging out of it. "Surely, this can’t still be powering this entire building," you think, when suddenly it emits A GIANT BLUE FLASH and the lights go out. While you attempt to finish your bathroom business in the dark, the doorknob begins to rattle and jangle maniacally. You manage to squeak, "Hang on a minute," in a tiny frightened voice, then fasten your belt and escape, only to find the attractive coffee-shop girl blocking the doorway. You scurry back to your table, happy to have escaped with your sanity. So happy that two hours later when you realize you’ve been walking around for two hours with your fly undone, you’re not even upset. It just reminds you of how wonderful it is to be alive—alive in a world where the familiar rules of logic, time, and space still apply.

Yes. This actually happened to me.

X-Men Movie and Computer Woes

2006-05-28T22:50:00.000-04:00

Amy dragged me out to see the new X-Men movie on Friday. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Maybe it's just because I went with low expectations, but I don't understand why reviews for the movie have been so lukewarm. Is it great cinema? No, but neither were the first two. I understand that the character development and dialogue were not quite as sharp as in the first two movies, but I found the plot at least passable rich, and I felt that the conflict between the X-Men and the Brotherhood exhibited a moral ambiguity and complexity largely lacking in the first film.

We had the joy of sitting in front of about 12 people from Yorkdale Mall's Apple Store. Amy's commentary on this situation is better than I could come up with. To be fair, my experiences with Apple support at the "Genius Bar," have been incredibly positive. These particular fan-boys were most likely sales droids, which from my experience are largely under-qualified automata whose existence consists almost entirely of waiting for Steve Jobs to pull the string coming out of their backs so they can spout disingenuous Apple propaganda.

This brings to me the first of my computer woes. I love my Mac. I even had a disturbing moment there when I almost turned around to enter an argument the sales droids were having about Apple hardware being overpriced. You know you've become a zealot when you start arguing with Apple employees because they don't like Macs enough. Anyhow, one of the things I love about OS X is the fact that all of the text boxes in every Cocoa application have built in spell checking capabilities and, more importantly, Emacs keybindings. Years of using Emacs have pretty much crippled me when it comes to editing text on a computer. Here we come to the problem: neither Firefox nor Camino use the standard Cocoa text widgets for text-entry boxes. This means that my keybindings no longer work! I've been (grudgingly) using Safari, but I've recently discovered that Blogger's support for Safari is sketchy at best. As a result, I am currently writing this post in Camino. I know that I can easily simulate the Emacs bindings in any Mozilla browser, but they're just not quite as slick as with Safari, which even supports multi-line kill/yank with CTRL-K and CTRL-Y.

Much more irritating is the ongoing saga of my video card (a rapidly aging Tyan-manufactured Radeon 9800 Pro). Essentially, it continues to lock up after about 15 minutes of Rise of Legends. I've tried every combination of driver/software fixes. Finally, this afternoon I yanked the little bastard out of my computer, and removed its heatsink. The fine folks at Tyan had applied thermal grease to the GPU with all the meticulous care of your typical Taco-Bell-sour -cream-gun-operator. I fixed it up as best I could without a spare tube of thermal paste, and then reassembled it. The card seems to run about 10 degrees C cooler now, and I think I may have finally fixed my lockups. Strangely, I've never had any issues with Half Life 2, so I still suspect that there may be a Direct 3D related software bug lurking somewhere in my drivers. Next time, I'm buying nVidia.

BIHKAL: The Shakespeare Cafe

2006-05-25T23:59:00.000-04:00

As I've noted before, Toronto is rather clean for a city of its size. This does not, however, mean that every space in the city is spectacularly clean. Allow me to tell you a tale of one space that was spectacularly less than clean. To begin, I must describe "The Shakespeare Cafe." Picture the typical yuppy coffee shop: bar-top tables everywhere with people disinterestedly reading the news, a few overstuffed sofas, a few overpriced pastries, and some cute little plants and faux statues. You're getting close to picturing the Shakespeare Cafe. But you'd also have to add the giant Chinese buffet crammed in the corner as an afterthought, as well as the three televisions showing "Driving Miss Daisy" and the tiny convenience store selling batteries, feminine hygiene products, cigarettes and candy bars. And, as a final touch, 3 feet down from the candy bars you can purchase liquor by the drink. A very odd place, to say the least.

While at the Shakespeare Cafe, I am struck with an impending disaster of the gastrointestinal variety. In recognition of my French-Canadian friends, let's just say that I feel as though a "numero deux" is imminent. I begin to nonchalantly scan the room, searching for the facilities. Finally, I see a dark passageway leading south past the magazine rack. I go down said passageway and come to a locked door. A sign hangs on the door. It has been written with what appears to be a Crayola marker and has since yellowed and almost disintegrated. As Crayola markers and standard copier paper are apparently a very expensive commodity in these parts, the sign has been painstakingly laminated with scotch tape (of which there seems to be an endless supply!). The sign hangs at a bit of an angle. Written on the sign in broken English is: "Restroom ONLY for PAYING CUSTOMERS. Turn knob after we buzzer you." Unfortunately, the cursive "z" looks rather like a "g" when hastily written and smeared on a dark bathroom sign, causing me to wonder, "Just what the hell do I have to do to use the restroom in this place!?" Putting these thoughts aside, I try the handle, which is smeared with the sweat of a thousand sweaty-handed men. Nothing happens. I throw my shoulder against the door. Nothing happens. I see the small Asian woman who sold me my coffee coming around the counter, and so I ask about the bathroom, and gesture towards the door. She tells me, "Wait. I buzz you. Then open door." She descends into the bowels of the Shakespeare Cafe, which at this time are the most horrifying place I can possibly imagine.

Soon, however, I won't have to imagine.

A buzzer sounds from the door, followed by a mechanical click. The whole experience is remarkably like that scene in Silence of the Lambs where Jody Foster goes to see Hannibal Lecter in the maximum security prison. Behind the door is quite possibly the scariest bathroom I have ever been in. Now I know why Toronto is so remarkably clean: all of the city's filth has simply been piled into the men's room at the Shakespeare Cafe, guarded by an electronically locked door presided over by a small Asian woman selling coffee, Chinese buffet, and liquor by the drink in her spare time. I'll insert a line break here for you to ponder this fact.

Have you pondered? Good, because whatever you're thinking of cannot come close to the horrors that I faced on that dark day. At first, I was struck with the distinctive potpourri of urine and raw sewage. Everything was harshly lit by two flickering fluorescent lamps. In the unnatural light, I discerned two urinals on the wall, one leaking onto the floor, the other covered with a black plastic trash bag. There was no sign on the urinal, simply a large black Hefty bag secured with tape. But, as they say, a large black Hefty bag is worth a thousand words. Directly across from the urinals was a stall that was closed. I unlatched the stall, expecting to find a group of mole people waiting in the dank corner. Rather, I found a dilapidated toilet and a large flat white object about 7 by 13 inches. I was thoroughly repulsed at this point, but I had come too far to turn back. I examined the toilet. It had a seat, which was lucky for me, considering the circumstances. The seat was clean, save for a single, meticulously placed drop of urine. I rapidly wiped this away with a swatch of toilet paper, and pretended that I hadn't seen it. I then proceeded to answer the call of nature, hovering half above the befouled toilet seat. This was tricky, as the seat was attached by a single hydrogen bond between itself and the one remaining molecule of porcelain on the toilet. The toilet had apparently been cast from cement, and then later covered in porcelain to keep up with the increasingly baroque tendencies of bathroom style. The latter had flaked away, leaving some kind of stone dwarf-throne above which I now teetered. I reached for the toilet paper, only to find that there was only 1/5 of a roll remaining. Furthermore, the roll was only half-attached to the wall via a rusted, broken fixture. It was attached in such a manner as to make its removal impossible without ensuring its fall into the brown water pooled around the toilet's base. After completing the task at hand, I turned to flush the toilet. Suddenly, I placed the large white object. In my desperate delirium, I had taken it for a large air freshener. No, in fact it was the top of the toilet. That's right: the toilet's tank had no cover. Gazing into the naked tank revealed a mass of rusted machinery thatat one time probably served as a flushing mechanism. I tentatively turned the lever on the toilet. It turned a full 360 degrees and nothing happened. Upon examination, I realized that it was not attached to anything in the toilet. My only choice was to roll up my sweater and reach into the toilet tank until I had found the chain that, in happier, lighter times, had been attached to the handle. I pulled this up and (thankfully) the toilet flushed. I immediately proceeded to wash my hands in the sink. The soap dispenser was empty, as evidenced by two pieces of filthy soap left sitting on the counter (normally I would consider "filthy soap" an oxymoron but in that horrifying space outside of time, far removed from the light of Heaven, it was not). While washing my hands, I noted a second door in the bathroom, leading deeper into the Cafe.

I shudder to think what could have been behind that door. It had been boarded closed, and then duct-taped for good measure. It was half broken, hanging on its frame as though someone had kicked it in from the other side. I dried my hands and left.

The hand dryer was brand new and worked perfectly.

New Series: Bathrooms I Have Known and Loathed (BIHKAL)

2006-05-25T22:41:00.000-04:00

They go by many names: bathroom, washroom, restroom, even the austere "W.C." Call them what you will, they all have the potential to spell out one thing: bowel-quivering terror! In keeping with an earlier promise, I have decided begin an N-part series, titled "Bathrooms I Have Known and Loathed," devoted to certain facilities whose horrors are boundless. Each part in the series provides an in-depth account of my experiences in the hellish depths of the world's most vile restrooms. These are places where the laws of time begin to blur, Lovecraftian settings that, by all rational reckoning should not be.

Shortly, I shall post the details of a foul encounter that sets the mood for our tour of horror. Before I do that, however, some background. Before moving to Canada for graduate school, I briefly visited my girlfriend in Toronto. I was amazed at the general cleanliness of the city, especially considering its size. During this visit, I (unfortunately) developed a theory that partially explains the urban anomoly that is Toronto. The post which follows details the experience that inspired this theory (apologies to those who have already read this in an early form...by now you should be familiar with the shameless recycling of old material that I tend to pass off as actual creation).

So...

2006-05-25T00:28:00.000-04:00

I finally decided to break down and join the infernal ranks of the self-obsessed. Here you'll find random witticisms, streams and streams of epic, adequate prose, and probably a lot of jokes about poo. Enjoy!