Phoque Bardot Murder Burger

Apparently there is a restaurant (a terrible terrible restaurant of filth and hate!) in Quebec called Côté-Est that has shocked and horrified millions by - how dare they - selling a burger.  Awful, right?  I mean really!

This is such a heinous crime that of course righteous and civic-minded individuals have informed the restaurant of their opinions regarding the burger, in the form of hate mail and death threats.  Nothing extreme or anything, of course -- I mean, how else are they supposed to spread their message of love and non-violence?  The only way to share your belief that killing and eating animals is wrong is by threatening to kill humans.  For some reason, some people have been objecting to this?  I don't get it, really.  They aren't saying the restaurant owners should be eaten, like they do to those poor innocent baby seals!  Just that they should be killed!  Which, really, is a fair expectation, don't you think?

All kidding aside, why the hell are the animal rights nutjobs only now getting freaked out by this place.  It's not like they were a vegan place that started selling seal burgers in a moment of madness.  They had beef burgers before this, presumably.  They had chicken on the menu.  They have been selling meat the entire time.  Are cows worth less than seals now?  Is there a hierarchy of animals, where it becomes less and less offensive to eat them?  How come pigs are lower than seals on that hierarchy?  Pigs are adorable.  Look at this guy.  How is this little babykins worth fewer points than a boring old seal not eating ice cream.

Raise them on ice cream for extra deliciousness

Oh, wait, I figured it out!  Clearly, up until now the restaurant hasn't been selling meat made of animals.  They've been selling meat that was not made of animals.  Beef is not made of cows, it is grown on a farm somewhere, and this seal burger is the first time any animals have ever been made into meat for this restaurant.  All the rest they got was made at the supermarket, where as we all know, no animals were harmed.  It's the only thing that makes sense, really.

Dear Drunk Lady Please Don't Grab My Food

Went down to Mardi Gras on George Street the other night with Ash and Yellow Dude, and had a blast (of course).  The evening was a ton of fun.  YD's Jack Skellington costume was a hit, my Vampire Queen costume was exactly what I wanted it to be, and Ash's rocker outfit looked badass.  We heard some great music, saw some great costumes, just generally had the sort of time you'd expect from Mardi Gras.  When we got bored of the street around three thirty in the morning, we hit the Celtic Hearth for some dinner, as we usually do.  Which is where some random woman walking past leaned over my shoulder and grabbed my sandwich.

Of all the weird people on the Street, this lady was the weirdest.  Like, seriously.  I don't go downtown often, but when I do there are always weirdos, and this person was the weirdo to out-weird all weirdos.  Exactly how drunk or how stupid do you have to be to walk past a complete stranger's table in a restaurant, take a liking to their sandwich, and proceed to grab it off their plate?  I was talking about something or other to Ash and YD, and all of a sudden they just got this look of utter shock on their faces.  Ash, momentarily speechless (an oddity, to say the least) managed to point towards my plate and say, "Uh, Robin!" in a horrified tone.

I look over and see some random person's hand clawed around my sandwich and from behind me I hear some woman say, "Oh, can I have this?"  Without thinking, I knock her hand away and hunch protectively over my plate, my hands belatedly forming a shield over my poor groped food and saying, "Um, NO!"  I never did see her face, but Ash and YD told me later that her expression was really offended, and I hear her go "Awww!" in a disappointed tone as she leaves the restaurant.  Maybe she thought that by getting her hands all over my meal I'd be too disgusted to keep it and she'd get away with the bounty or something.  Clearly she has no idea how possessive I get over my food.  Back off, lady.  I'll fuckin' bite.

FUCK YEAH KITES

I went on a kite-flying picnic thhe other day!  It was awesome.  I skipped work and went downtown on the bus with a bottle of pepsi and a box of cookies and two dollar-store kites, and met Tom near some park-like thing.  He brought his fantastic sandwiches and some mangoes and a hot chocolate from Coffee Matters, perfect picnic things.  His sandwiches are really amazing lunchfoods.  He gets a fresh baguette or ciabatta bread or something, and some nice cheese to slice onto it, and some nice thick slices of pepperseed salami and sandwiches it up.  It's really simple, but amazingly yum.  I should have taken a photo to post, but they are so good I couldn't stop eating to grab a camera.  Or rather my iPod, since I've lost my charger and made my camera into an expensive paperweight.  I gotta find that thing.  Or get a new one.  Where the hell do you go for a new camera battery charger?

Anyway.  Nummy picnic on a park bench!  I forget which park, but there were lots of pretty trees around and nice flowers everywhere and a bajillion ants and everybody who walked by had an adorable dog and I just wanted to feed each and every one, but I didn't want to share the sandwiches so I didn't.  We fed the ants some mango, though, because it's really hard to keep a grip on a mango when you're cutting it on your lap without a board or a table or anything.  Mangoes are yum.  I didn't know I liked them until Tom showed them to me.   I should eat mangoes more often.

After the picnic we had to find a new park, because Tom had not realized there were quite this many trees until we came here with kites.  So we started walking!  We wandered the mean streets of St John's until we could find a suitably kite-friendly patch of land.  We would have walked for hours if necessary, though I would have complained ever step of the way.  But we didn't need to walk for hours, we just had to walk for ten minutes or so until we got to The Rooms.  The Rooms, along with all its fantastic displays inside which I will talk about another day because we went there and I took pictures of the giant squid and it's fantastic but it's not the point of this post, also has a very large grassy front lawn with no powerlines overhead and hardly any trees at all.  Perfect for kite flying!

Like I said, we got our kites from the dollar store.  I picked a lovely large parrot-shaped kite and Tom got a traditionally diamond-shaped kite with fighter plane jet things all over it.  Before we went out we agreed that Tom's kite would probably fly better, because after all kites are traditionally diamonds, right?  It must be the best kite-shape if that's what they're all like.  And while we were putting our new kites together on the lawn of The Rooms, it certainly seemed that way.  Tom's kite was much easier to put together than mine, the clip thingy on mine was bent so I had to pretty much break my kite and put it back together to make it work.  But once our kites had been assembled, it turns out that my parrot (whom I decided to name Percival) was a natural flyer, and his wings caught the breeze easily and took him delightfully high up.  Alas, Tom's kite must have been afraid of heights.  It wouldn't go more than five or ten feet off the ground and only flew in dizzying loops before crashing to the ground again.  But it was still lots of fun!  I flew my kite for ages while little children running around turned green in envy, and Tom flew his kite in loop after loop after loop until his string clip broke and his line became hopelessly tangled.  Then, because I was very nice, I let him fly Percy!

He proved to be a much more skilled kite-pilot with a working kite.  While he showed off his skills, I went to his goofy kite and tried to untangle it to see if I could fly it, because to tell you the truth those loopy-loops looked kinda fun.  So I only had half an eye on Tom and Percy, and when I looked away, tragedy struck!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PERCY COME BACK

It was inevitable, really.  Percy crashed into the ground, as kites are wont to do now and then, and his poor cheap dollar-store string-holder broke, so he got free.  Being the excellent flyer that he is, the wind caught him easily and he flew away, loose into downtown St. John's.  I hope he did not land on anyone's car windshields.  That's why I don't have any close-up pictures of Percy, by the way.  I was gonna take some after getting tired of flying him so I could show the world how pretty he was, but you can't take pictures of a kite that isn't there.  Sorry, my fellow kite-fanatics.  You will just have to take my word for it, and also maybe the far-away pictures where Tom is flying him.

But the loss of Percy wasn't the end of the world!  Birds are meant to fly free, after all, and with no more working kites Tom and I went to get some Chinese noodles, because we were right next to one of my favourite Chinese restaurants (Mea Mei Wok Eatery!) and noodles are delicious, and then we went to....THE GEO CENTRE.  Fuck yeah!  I love that place.  I haven't been since I was a little kid!  And it's just as rad as I remember.  There was the Titanic room and the rock wall with the spray bottles and there was a room about oil and stuff and all kinds of geology!  Awesome geology!  The Canada guide from Lonely Planet described the Geo Centre as an interesting way to learn about stuffy boring geology, but fuck that book because geology is always amazing.  

And then the next day we went back to The Rooms!  But I'll save that for another blog post because hey, if I tell everything all at once what am I gonna blog about then, huh?

Sci Fi on the Rock

I went to Sci Fi On The Rock on Saturday!  And neglected to blog about it for pretty much an entire week, because I kind of suck at this.  Oh well.

It was kind of a blast!  Twenty dollars seemed a little steep for a day pass, but whatever.  There was some pretty cool merchandise; I got two fridge magnets, a Storm Trooper with a bow and a Pokeball.  The fridge magnets, I mean, that's what they were.  I also got a knit R2D2 cap and a tribble!  I named the tribble Nimoy and he is now wearing the R2D2 hat.  The tribble came from one of the workshops, a dramatic reading of the episode The Trouble With Tribbles from the original series Star Trek.  That was a blast.  I also went to the Second Most Dysfunctional Writing Panel, which was fun, but in hindsight I wish I'd gone to the Terrible Fanfiction panel instead.  I tried to go to the Steampunk Tea but there wasn't anywhere to sit, so we went to McDonalds instead.  Then I got absorbed into a group of strangers and we went to the movies and saw Jurassic Park.  There was one workshop I really wanted to go to, Build Your Own Airship, but it was on Friday and I had a dentist appointment so I couldn't attend.  Sadface :(

I also got buttons!  I got two Doctor Who buttons and a It's OK Pluto, I'm Not A Planet Either button. The Pluto button was actually free!  I couldn't find a dollar so the woman at the booth was like, "you know what, it's one button.  Here!"  I wish I could find her business card so I could tell everybody to buy things from them, but I seem to have lost it.  Alas.  If I ever find it I'll make a dedicated post specifically for that business, because it really was nice of them to give me the button.  I'd like to repay them with a little publicity in lieu of a dollar.

All in all, it was a good day.  I spent a bit more money than I meant to, because who can turn down tribbles and R2D2 hats, but it was a fun day all the same.  I only went on the one day, because twenty dollars a day?  Ouch.  It double-hurt, because when I checked the website before I went I saw the price and it said it was ten dollars for an adult ticket.  I didn't scroll down to notice the part where it said it was for Friday only and that Saturday and Sunday were both twenty dollars each.  It would have been nice if they'd removed the Friday price after Friday passed, but oh well.  Next year I might go on a Friday instead, or I'll just suck it up and buy the weekend pass for forty bucks.  I'll have to decide when next year comes around and I can see what awesome workshops are on the go then.

Wherefore

Okay, this is a stupid rant coming up.  I know it's dumb.  It's petty, it's nitpicky, it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things.  It does not matter to anybody.  But I have to get it out -- the word wherefore.

It means why.  It does!  It does not mean where.  I can get why people just looking at the word might think it means where since, you know, where is right there in the word.  It does not mean where though.  It means why.  This was made very clear way back in high school, when everybody had to study Romeo and Juliet -- some unlucky people more than once!  And most uses of it seem to pretty obviously mean "why" instead of "where."  Why would Juliet be asking where Romeo is?  That speech is really obviously about why he is who he is, not where he is at that particular moment.  So why does everybody get it wrong?  It annoys me so much!  And I can't do anything about it, because it's just such a stupid thing to be annoyed by.  Nobody even uses wherefore any more, so why should it matter that people don't know what it means?  Even though they should?  Because it's really not that complicated at all and if you don't get it then I can never respect you as a person?

St John's Blizzard

We just got power back.  This is some blizzard, apparently power's going out all over the island.  Not just the city or something, the ENTIRE ISLAND.  Which I guess means I should have named this post Newfoundland Blizzard, but hey, too late now.  I'm seeing photos on Facebook of people who are snowed in -- literally snowed in, there's a four-foot snowdrift against their front door.  Our doors are pretty protected from the wind, so we don't have to worry about that too much.  I've been making an attempt to keep our front door open-able though, by going down every hour or two and pushing it as far open as I can.

Check out my front yard.  I'm not leaving my doorstep to get decent blizzard photos, because fuck getting out of my pajamas today, but you can see enough to make a point.  See that picnic table?

It's a big table, and it's buried up to the seats in snow.  But usually when it snows the top of the table is covered too, and I use the snow on top to measure how much snow fell that day.  Today?  Fuck that, the wind clears off any snow as soon as it lands on it.  And that other flat thing to the left?  That's another table, it's been buried completely.  Forget seeing the street, I can barely see to the end of the driveway.  My house is shaking and creaking in the wind, and my bedroom window is buzzing like an angry beehive.

Everything is shut down today.  My mother tried to call the radio to announce that her work is closed, and they told her that they weren't taking closure announcements any more because everything was closing.  Mom had to use my cell to call them too, because our landlines are down.  I've been listening to CBC's extended coverage of the storm on the big Dewalt worksite radio in the living room and a little hand-crank radio in the kitchen and there's some pretty cool stories people are telling there.  This storm is kind of badass.

Did you wish on a star last night?

Fuck, it was cold as balls out there.  I went out a few times (in between Tremors movies) to stargaze, saw a whole lotta night sky and a fair few shooting stars, a couple of them really impressive!  It turns out the top of the hill by my house is a great place to stargaze ever since they cut all the trees down.  Well, it's pretty good.  It's got a lovely view of the city, but the light pollution makes that part of the sky kind of useless, stargazing-wise.  It's right in the wind, too.  Again, you're kind of screwed when it comes to being cold and seeing great stars.  Either you're warm or you see a nice night sky, one or the other.  I wish I could have gotten photos or video of the meteor shower, but my camera couldn't possibly get any decent image of the night sky.  You'd need a crazy-good camera for that, probably.

Supposedly the meteor shower should have still been visible tonight, just not as good as last night (which was when it peaked).  I didn't go out tonight though, last night satisfied me.  I saw some very pretty falling stars last night, and again, it was cold as balls out there.  And I had to be pretty patient to see the stuff I did yesterday.  As cool as meteor showers are, I don't think it would have been worth it to go out tonight, to see far fewer meteors, and under a lot more cloud cover than there was last night to boot.  Let's just watch some timelapsed meteor showers on YouTube instead, ok?

Geminid Meteor Shower

I almost forgot about this!  Have you seen any shooting stars yet?  Tonight's the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, and it's a perfectly clear night with no moon, excellent conditions for stargazing.  It's also cold as fuck.  But cold nights are better for stars anyway, so you're screwed either way.  Can't stay warm and look at the sky at the same time, I suppose.

It's going all night, but I think it's gonna be best later in the night as opposed to now-ish evening.  At least, I hope so.  I can barely see any out right now.  I choose to blame the hour and not the light pollution that comes from living in the middle of St John's.  SKIES HO!

Don't expect a meteor shower to ever look this awesome unless you are on Mars or something. Be happy with what you can get.

Doontoon

So I've spent the last week or so hanging out downtown while I buy shit, eat shit, and admire Halloween decorations that still haven't been taken down.  Wait, hang on, I don't eat literal shit, I just mean like the general food downtown, like greasy chips and the sketchy hot dogs from the vendors on George Street.  Unhealthy foods.  Though the flambe at Magic Wok was pretty delish.  Noodles were ok.  They had a weird texture, so every bite had me going, "Oh, ew, I don't like -- oh, wait, now that I taste it it's pretty good.  I'll have another bite!  Oh, ew, I don't like -- wait, now that I taste it..."  It was kind of awkward.  Deliciously awkward.

Anyway, Halloween decorations.  Is it just me, or is everybody doing the sick pumpkin face these days?  I swear, every third house had a jack-o-lantern vomiting pumpkin guts.  I guess everybody in Newfoundland has finally seen that photo that's been floating around for like a billion years now.  I gotta say, the vomiting pumpkin thing isn't nearly as funny when it isn't surrounded by beer bottles.

Mardi Gras on George Street

So I went down to George Street the other night for Mardi Gras!  It's not real Mardi Gras, though.  That's in February or something.  In St John's Mardi Gras just means Halloween Party.  I don't know why.  It's kind of confusing.  I mean, why steal somebody's holiday if you're not even going to pretend to do that holiday?  Just call it Halloween on George Street, seriously.

But anyway.  Costumes!  This is the first year in a while I actually did a costume, instead of just throwing on some awesome stuff I had lying around.  I went as Wesley from The Princess Bride!  Well, sort of.  The Universe was pretty insistent on me being Stripper Wesley, because when I went to look for a shirt the only ones I could find with the right sleeves were transparent.  The only non-see-through shirt I could find was too small for me, so I couldn't do up the top button properly and my cleavage was pretty visible.  Looked good though.  Not Quite Stripper Wesley is a good look for me.

It was a quick and cheap costume, for the most part.  I already had the sexy boots, and most of it I bought at Value Village.  Except for the leggings.  They were surprisingly expensive, but at least I was allowed to try them on.  I've been burned by leggings before.  You gotta be careful when you buy them, because a lot of the time they are labelled leggings when they're actually just footless tights.  You know what the difference is between leggings and tights?  You can see your underwear through tights.  Always check your leggings for underwear sightings.  And wearing dark panties helps too.

I'm on the phone with Shannon in this picture.  He asked for photos.  You're welcome, Shannon.

I went to Mardiween with Petron, because his friends ditched and Sam didn't have money to get in and then when she could get in she had a headache from shitty glasses, and Ash had to work but she showed up later anyway because she's cool like that.  Petron was a blogless mad scientist with a tube of glowy worms.  It was pretty cool, he did it by sticking a couple of glow sticks in a jar of milk and water.  Then he dropped it and the top cracked, but it still worked.  The seal didn't break so no milkwaterglow spilled anywhere. But he kept rolling it all over the table, because he never learns.

We went down around seven, because that was the only time I could get a ride.  It is unfortunate, because the weather was crap so most people either didn't go, or waited until nine or ten to show up.  Including Ash, who didn't get off work 'till eleven.  So Petron and I were kinda stuck on the street waiting for hours and hours for it to get interesting.  We passed the time by calling random people, getting food at Greensleeves, and trying to harass our friends into showing up.  Also I called Shannon, because Shannon is cool and apparently my phone does reach Clarenville when it wants to, and every other time I've tried to call people in Clarenville it was just being a wuss.  I don't know how a phone can be a wuss.  Probably by being too wussy to call numbers.  Thanks, phone.

But it got cool eventually!  Later in the night people in cool costumes showed up, like the Lego Batman people and the Adventure Time characters.  I didn't get photos of them though.  I should have.  And Ash came down dressed as a mob bitch/mobster/mob boss/person in rad outfit.

After Ash got there, we switched it up!  Instead of wandering aimlessly all over the street like we had been doing, we started wandering aimlessly all over the street and dancing in one of the bars.  Took photos, made fun of people, got photos interrupted.  Seriously, don't bother trying to do a posed photo around drunk people, they think it is hilarious to jump into it.

Petron went home at around one or one thirty, and Ash and I went to another bar and made new friends, Doctor Who, Po the Teletubby and a Free Mammogram machine.  Ironically, Doctor Who was the only one without a sexy foreign accent.  And yes, I know technically he is The Doctor, but face it everybody calls him Doctor Who.  Even the show does it.  Calm your tits.

Also what the heck is the deal with stuff on George Street.  You have to pay twenty bucks to get on the street, and they give you both a ticket and a wristband, but if you leave the street you can't get back on?  What the hell is the point of the wristbands?  Either use the wristbands to say "You have already paid for your ticket and been on the street, so if you leave this is proof that you can come back," or don't bother with the fucking wristbands in the first place, what the hell.

But we stayed on George Street till last call, me and Ash and Tom of the Free Mammograms and Po the Drunk Teletubby, and after that we went down to a really cool little bar with a nice atmosphere and stays open serving alcohol past the legal hour, lets you smoke in the bar, and never cards anyone.  I love that place.  I don't smoke and so far I've always had my ID, but it's cool to know that there's a place like that to go if I am hanging with underage smokers at three am for some reason.  Then we went to Celtic Hearth and stood around waiting in the rain for like half an hour waiting for a table.  Po ditched us to join a group of strangers who got a table before us, and vanished into the night like a mysterious wasted ninja.

So overall it was a pretty rad night.  Well, half and half.  The first half was kinda lame, but only kinda.  Petron is awesome to hang with, and we got some decent food.  The second half was rad as fuck, despite a lack of Petron.  I have no idea how I spent as much money as I did, but whatever I spent it on was probably worth it.  It was a good night.

I spent too much money today :(

So today I went to the mall!  I was supposed to go with Sam, and head up to Value Village to look for a Halloween costume, but she was a butt and decided to feel sick today.  So the Halloween costume search is put off 'til next week, but I still needed new headphones (as you may remember) so I went to the mall solo tonight.  Insert Forever Alone face here.

Overall I'm relatively pleased with my purchases! I got the new Harvest Moon game -- well, relatively new, it came out last year -- and two pairs of headphones instead of just one, because I lack willpower.  Nail polish for the same reason.  But both the headphones and polishes are really cute so it's okay.

I haven't tried the earbuds yet.  I'm expecting them to be pretty mediocre-to-terrible, since they were only six bucks.  I'm sure they will crap out in a month or two and I'll have to buy another, better pair.  I did try the big over-the-ear headphones on the way home, and I think they were kind of shitty?  I can't really tell.  I mean, they don't sound as good as my old earbuds used to, but that might just be because my earbuds were noise-cancelling and these aren't, so I'm expecting them to be louder than I have a right to expect them to be, uh, loud.  Still, that's what I get for buying the cheapest pairs in the store.  I should have gone for the Skull Candy ones, like TK recommended when I called him for an opinion.

I might end up buying a better pair next paycheck and just keeping these as backup.  They are really cute, and they did a good job of keeping my ears warm.  Plus they fold together to be small enough to be (kinda) portable in my purse, and they have that nifty curled telephone-wire on them which just looks neat.  And they were cheap.  So overall, I'm happy with them.

Trust me, they're adorable.

I haven't played the Harvest Moon game yet.  I'm gonna start it tonight, and I will probably be completely sucked into it and disappear from the world for a week or two once I do.  I will have to do my best not to become completely obsessed.

No promises.

The nail polishes are omfg crazy cute.  I tried the pink and green colours on my left and right hands, respectively.  The pink went on frickin' neon!  I thought it would take a couple coats, but nope.  Straight out of the bottle, blinding pink.  Also it dried into sort of a matte finish, rather than a gloss.  I've never had polish that dries like that before!  I like it.  I always did prefer the feel of a matte finish to a smooth gloss finish.

For the record, my camera does not do justice to the crazy-bright colours of these polishes.  Or to my bright pink headphones, since we're on the subject.  All these colours are like ten times more intense than they look.

So that's what I got at the mall tonight.  It was an arduous journey, but the loot was worth it.  Now excuse me while I go play Harvest Moon for the next eight hours.

I'm a pretend reporter!

Okay I will admit it up front, this is probably a lame thing to be excited about.  But you can just fuck right off, because I still think it's cool.

There was a two-car crash on the Outer Ring Road this afternoon, in the westbound lane of the Paradise turnoff.  Traffic was blocked for a few kilometres back, and there was police and firemen and an ambulance there flashing away.  I was driving home from work with Dad, we didn't see the crash itself but when we saw the big mess Dad gave me the phone and I called up CBC to let them know about the crash and the traffic.  Not five minutes later they reported it on the radio! 

It was pretty rad.  I mean, it's not like they mentioned names or made a big deal out of the report, but I still think it's pretty cool that I got to call in with a report that they thought was helpful or important enough to announce right away on the radio.  And then repeat just as we got home, using the exact information we gave them.  I've done it a couple of times before when driving with dad, but this was the first time it was for something exciting like a car crash and not just "The road is washed out" or "There's construction on that street" or something.

And....that's all I got.  Nothing else interesting going on except for a tuna sandwich that is maybe a little too old to eat.  But possibly not?  I will sniff it.

Oh, no, that's gone bad.  Into the trash it goes.  Bye-bye, sandwich.

Things That Are Awkward

When a strange dude unintentionally follows you to your car trying to make awkward small talk, because you had to wait together at a crosswalk and are headed in the same direction at the same speed.

That was creepy, Strange Dude.  If my car had been any further away I would have stopped at any random parked car, just to get rid of you.

Tropical Storm Leslie

So the house is making a lot of cracking sounds and swaying a bit.  But on the bright side, it isn't raining any more!  I can even see the sun.

The power went out this morning for about an hour, but luckily it went out right the very second I was done making my spaghetti.  Yes, I make spaghetti at eight thirty in the morning, and no that's not weird.  You're weird.  Shut up.

I wish somebody had told me there was a hurricane coming.  I would have stocked up.  Well, we've got food and milk and shit, I don't mean that stuff, but I'm out of pepsi.  I might walk to the store later to get some.  It's not that windy out.

Besides, half the fun of hurricanes is going out adventuring in them!  I had a blast with Hurricane Igor two years ago.  We went out walking around Kent's Pond and that area, and I blew away a couple of times!  Granted, I only went like two or three feet, but it was still cool.  I highly recommend going out in hurricane winds wearing big oversized jackets that can double as sails, it's fun.

Update!!  Storm's over, it's a super-nice day now.  Except for the broken branches all over the lawn.  The wind ripped long strips of siding off the front of the house and broke the fence in the backyard, that's gonna be fun to fix.

Neil Armstrong is dead.

It has begun.

DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Sometimes people suck.

An open letter to some of the more irritating customers of the store we were doing a job for a few weeks ago:

Just for future reference, the next time you try to enter a store from the exit door, and you see a couple of people in flagman vests and hard hats standing on ladders fiddling with wires from the nonfunctional automated doors?  It might not kill you, much to your surprise, if you were to enter through the working Entrance door about five feet to your left, clear of any obstructions.

Also, if the Exit doors have been pulled shut and powered down while people work on them, and while the Entrance door that you should be using anyway is working perfectly fine (again, just five feet to your left!), please do not physically pull the Exit door open.  Perhaps it didn't occur to you that it had been closed for a reason, but maybe the ladder leaning against it and the people obviously working on the door wiring should have been a sign.

If after becoming fed up with the previous store customers the aforementioned vested-and-helmeted workers create a barricade of lawn chairs to deter people like - well, to put it bluntly, people like you - please do not shove the lawn chairs aside and try to pull the Exit doors open so you can enter the store.  As I said, the functional Entrance doors are five feet to your left, and labeled in large, bright green letters.  I apologize for inconveniencing you with this arduous detour.

Finally, when the nonfunctional closed barricaded Exit doors have been further decorated with a hastily made sign saying "Please Use Other Door <------" scrawled in Sharpie on a scrap of printer paper.  When you came up to the door, gaped uselessly at the sign, and then turned to me saying "Uhh, can you open the door?  I can't get in."  I just wanted you to know that the pause before I told you to try the Entrance door to the left wasn't because I was trying to understand your question.  I was just desperately hoping to spontaneously develop some dark magical power with which to strike you down.  Sorry again for the inconvenience.

George Street Fest

Alternate title to this post, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LET'S HAVE A DANCE PARTY!!!!!!!

But yeah, the concert was rad.  Beauwater in particular was friggin' sweet!  I had so much fun I kind of don't know where to start.  I guess being in chronological order then get distracted later in the post and have everything be a muddle?  That sounds good lets do that.

Went down with Ash of hell on heels, and since both of us had wisely decided to eat absolutely nothing of substance before going down to George Street, as soon as we got onto the street we had to find somewhere to grab a bite.  So we get some club sandwiches at O'Reilly's pub and basically chilled there for a while, people-watching.  We saw Fat Fabio, this chunky guy in a tee shirt walking down the street with a big grin on his face, long luxurious blond hair blowing in the wind.  Actually I should save the people-watching till the end of the post, or else I'll just get sidetracked.

So anyway, me and Ash are just sitting around in the pub half-listening to the pretty awesome music from the opening band, and when we're done eating we go out to check them out.  I wish we'd eaten faster, because as it turns out these guys were freaking AWESOME.  I only caught the last part of their set, unfortunately, but they ended with a really great cover of Hey Jude, which my camera mostly mutilated with the audio but hey, at least I got it.  It sounds kind of crappy in the video, but that's none of it the band.  Band rocked this song.

Anyway, Ash and I were totally blown away by these guys.  They were crazy good!  We were so impressed by them that we had to go up after they had finished their set and ask what the name of the band was -- we'd missed it, since we only got in at the end.  And the singer was like "Beauwater -- here!" and gave me an album.  I know!!  It's awesome!!  I'm listening to it right now, it's fun stuff.  

The next band was pretty good too.  Not as good as Beauwater, but still fun.  The guy on keyboards was awesome.  We actually met him like hours later, as Ash and I were walking down the street looking for a not-completely-blocked bar (and ended up in Scanlan's, in case you were curious).  Turns out the lead singer is his dad.  We never would have guessed!  He seemed pretty young on stage.  The singer.  Keyboard guy was I guess a teenager?  I'm terrible at guessing ages. I'm gonna say "somewhere between ten and thirty."

Third Eye Blind was pretty cool too.  Honestly, the first time I'd ever heard of them was like last week when Ash said "Robin, you're coming to see these guys with me on Thursday."  So I was like "Okay," and downloaded a best-of cd to figure out who the heck they were.  I listened to them for a while and was like, Oh!  These guys! These are the guys that did that one song.  Or part of it, at least."

The two and a half minute part, specifically.

But the...band?  Is it a full band or is it like just the one dude, like Owl City or City and Colour?  Because only the one guy was doing the talking.  Whatever, I'll look it up later.  What was I going to say?  Oh right, I was gonna say something about how it's always cool when the band/dude is so pumped and energetic and totally into it that he gets everybody in the audience pumped too, whether or not they started out as pumped-up fans.  Like I started the evening going "Well, it'll be pretty cool, I guess.  Beauwater was rad, so hopefully Third Eye Blind will match up to them!"  And they totally did.  Guy had glow sticks, hucking them into the crowd.  He managed to toss a few up to the people hanging out the second-story windows above the road, that's a pretty good arm!  If only the beer girls earlier could throw like that.  But they only tossed t-shirts to the people jammed up in front.  Which on the one hand, they waited around and jostled to get in front so I guess they deserve a bonus for being good fans?  Or something?  But on the other hand, did they really have to give all the shirts to the front-row people?  Get the beefy guy to toss a few to the farther-back people.  Not at me, because I really don't need a beer-shirt in the face.  But Fantits next to me was fair shrieking for one.  I'm getting off-topic, I'm saving the people-watching for last.  I'm still talking about the band, aren't I?  I think I am.  Band was cool.  I like glow sticks.  Singer dude was good at making me really excited to see him, even though I honestly didn't really know who he was.  I would post the videos I took of Third Eye Blind, but it took an hour and a half to upload the Beauwater video so I'm not gonna do that.  At least not today.  Maybe tomorrow or next week when I've forgotten how annoying that was.

Anyway, the people-watching.  It's the most fun you can ever have on George Street.*  I think I mentioned Fat Fabio earlier, didn't I?  We saw Skinny Fabio afterwards, too.  If only they could have met.  And hipster chicks in weird outfits.  There were two of them, with like...I think it was floral bras/tank tops or something, and supertight short-shorts that go way up over their belly buttons.  It didn't really look bad, just kind of....weird.  It would fit right in on some haute-couture fashion show, but I've never seen real people try to wear the clothes that models wear on a runway.  Mostly because those outfits are weird.  And then there was Fantits.  She was standing next to me for most of the night, and she was hilarious.  She was obviously a huge fan of Third Eye Blind, and kind of a bigger girl.  She was cute, though.  Anyway, she was very loud in her appreciation of the band, and as soon as they showed up she started bouncing.  But not up and down kind of bouncing, she jumped really weird. She went sort of rocking forward and back as well as up and down, so it was like she was boob-tackling the girl in front of her.  Seriously, I was almost worried that she'd get a concussion or something.  Especially odd, she was very concerned with not getting in peoples way and constantly apologized to the people around her for being in their way or blocking their view.  But she never seems to notice the girl she is boob-assaulting.  Or head-assaulting?  Since it's her head getting assaulted, and the breasts are the assault-weapon.  Maybe headboob-assaulting.  I'm getting distracted again.  She was obviously a huge fan, from the superexcited bouncing that started as soon as the band came on and didn't stop for the entire show, and also she knew literally all the words for all the songs.  It was kind of impressive.  

*Citation needed.

I wish I'd had my iPod on me at the concert.  Not to listen to music, but so I could take notes haha.  I just know there are a million things I'm forgetting that I wanted to talk about later, but fuck if I can remember them now.  I suppose if I remember it I'll write another post.  In the meantime, have another Beauwater video!  Not one I took, of course, but there are a few up on Youtube.  Dang, I like these guys!  I should go to another show of theirs one of these days.

Things To Do In St John's

I love St John's, but it can be kind of boring.  There's not really all that much to do around here, aside from drinking and doing the touristy see-the-sights-oh-look-cabot-tower-and-colourful-houses stuff.  I remember one tourism commercial that I saw all the time in college.  It started out with a bunch of people closing their shops with a disembodied voice going "When the sun goes down..." and then partying at george street or a concert, "The city goes up!" and then thirty seconds of Epic Parties that do not actually happen here.  I was like "Yeah, sorry, I don't think there's really any good way to spin the 'everything in the city closes at five pm' line, guys.  Thanks for trying, though."

So when I was hanging out with a friend on Sunday, we couldn't really think of anything to do.  Sunday's even worse than the rest of the week, nothing's ever open on Sundays.  So, to find something interesting going on in the city, we turned to Google.  What the hell, I figured, we'd go the touristy route and look there. So I looked up "things to do in St John's."

Omfsm.  Tourists must haaaaaaate us.  In one list, the top two attractions closed a while ago.  The top one, Auntie Cray's, was a deli or something (how exciting!)  that closed down in 2010.  Rocket Foods now occupies the space it used to be in.  And the second item down the list, the Science Centre, used to be the coolest place to visit....when I was a little kid.  I don't know the exact date that the Science Centre closed, but it sure as heck isn't there now.  And another list I looked at was even worse.  While as far as I could tell all the attractions it included still existed, way down near the bottom City Wide was listed as an attraction.  Do you know why City Wide isn't a St John's tourist attraction?  City Wide is a taxi service.  Ooooh, look honey!  It's a rare St John's cab!  Get the camera!

Oh, dear.  I'm looking at the City Wide website now.  I think the word you're looking for is 'perusing' and not 'parousing.'  Also, I know you tried your best, sweetie, but I think the last words I'd use to describe your website would be "fascinating and entertaining."  Especially since more than half of the links on the site lead to pages that haven't actually been created yet.

I See Alive People

I went kayaking last Wednesday at long pond.  There was some Asian guy on the walking trail, standing by the water and singing in a language I didn't understand.  It was pretty impressive!  He stuck around singing for like half an hour, and man.  Dude had some pipes, you could hear him all over the pond.  I wonder what he was singing.