K I T S C H — Cate's Blog

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Even my dreams are nerdy

Last night I dreamt that there was such a thing as closed-captioning software that automatically placed the captions on the correct side of the screen, based on stereo sound.

Okay, don't y'all rush down to the patent office with my idea, now.

What? You DON'T love the winter wonderland?

Generally speaking, I like winter just fine. After all, I spent my formative years learning to drive a Chrysler Cordoba in upstate New York. Most of my ancestors hail from close to the Arctic circle. And I'm always the one wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt at work while everyone else is huddled around the space heaters.

But winter's just not doing it for me anymore. You know? It's just not.

It might have something to do with the fact that I fell extremely painfully on my ass the first time I walked to the subway this year. I didn't even realize it was black ice I was walking on until I was fucking sitting on it. Way to clear your sidewalks, losers, as is your legal obligation. I performed the whole Fred Astaire showstopper trying to balance myself -- you know, the flailing windmill arms routine combined with the tapdance extravaganza -- but even that didn't help. The only thing less dignified would be slipping on frozen hork. Which might still happen. After all, there's still about 30 weeks of winter left, right?

And please, don't even try to console me with the groundhogs. My mom had an entire family of groundhogs living in her backyard last year, and those rodents couldn't be arsed to get up and check out the "winter" situation until, like, May. Rodents are not stupid, you know.

So, anyway, what happened when I fell on the black ice? Well, first, I swore profusely. Profusely. And pretty creatively too, I must say. Then I caved in and finally bought the first pair of winter boots I've owned in three years.

Now I'm insanely paranoid to walk anywhere because I'm convinced that the next fall WILL BE MY LAST. Or maybe I've just got a really bad idea for a horror movie script.

Yeah, anyway.

Yesterday it was 66° in Austin, Texas. No connection to anything else here. Right, except for the fact that I really want to live in Austin right now.

Sunday, January 25, 2004

Oh, you must be talking about the Beastmaster!

This is the absolute greatest TV show ever. There's this generically hunky guy, Dar, who lives in ancient times (think Hercules but even stupider) who travels around with his genial male sidekick (think homoerotic undertones galore) dispensing trite "wisdom" about right and wrong while helping people. I think he's supposed to be able to talk with the animals or something, but all that amounts to is that we'll see occasional stock footage of tigers in the forest or an eagle flying around while Dar is "communicating" with them.

Oh, and he carries around a bag of ferrets. Whoop-de-freakin'-do. That really makes him master of the animal world. These ferrets aren't even lively. Whenever he takes them out of their bag, they look all limp and tranked up. My four-year-old nephew could probably handle them with no problem.

Today's episode even had unicorns! Too bad you could see the fake horns wobbling when the horses were running. The best "special" "effect," though, is when the evil sorceror dude turned the eagle back into a man, and instead of sideburns the man had feathers near his ears. You know, because he's an eagle, right? Ooh, freaky, huh?

I haven't seen much evidence of Dar's special fighting skills (he's supposed to be able to emulate the attack styles of various animals, you know), but he sure does twirl a mean baton. He calls it a magical "staff," though. Hee!

This is almost as good as the Damacles show on Made in Canada. Almost.

Friday, January 23, 2004

What smells?

Well, Serbia, apparently -- at least according to the grafitti in the elevators of my apartment building. It's insane, really. Some dolt will scratch the word "Serbia" on the wall with a key. Then, usually within a day, someone else will write "smells" right underneath it. This appears to anger the original author who almost always responds with, "Your mom smells!" The typical reply to that is, of course, "Better than Serbia." The exchange usually stops there, although once I saw that someone had written an impassioned plea to the graffiti people to "stop writing stupid things!"

Because really, it's all pretty stupid. I mean, what kind of loser thinks it's a grand tribute to his country to scratch its name on the inside of an elevator in an apartment building? And stating that a country "smells" just isn't very nice, although for all I know it could be true. It's probably not, though.

What's really sad is that the patent unoriginality of both the original graffiti and the follow-up insult still totally cracks me up every time, even now. And we're talking months that this has been going on. Maybe I'm just easily amused.

But everything's not always sunny and cheerful in the elevator. Seeing the phrase, "Serbian blood is my kind," left me feeling rather chilled -- not to mention a little perplexed by the sentence structure -- until I saw the reply: "Really? Mine is type O!" That nearly had me rolling on the floor. You know, if the floor hadn't been so dirty and germy.

But I think my favourite is when the person writes, "Serbia #1!" and people keep adding numbers after the "1" until it says something like, "Serbia #1472!" Are there even that many countries in the world? Poor Serbia. Way to give it self-esteem issues.

Who's doing this stuff anyway? Is it one unbalanced person using different handwriting for each voice in his/her/its head? Is it some misguided kid who genuinely thinks it's dignified to advertise patriotism by scratching shit onto on an elevator wall that someone will then have to waste time cleaning off later? Or is it all part of a sinister plan for Serbia to take over Canada, starting with an apartment building in Etobicoke?