Inside Darren

Greetings friends! Tonight, I have decided to take it upon myself to answer some of your most pressing questions. Although I have not been asked these questions lately, I have been asked them in the past, and will most likely be asked them again in the future. From now on, if you ask me any of the following (in real life), my standard response will be “Go read my blog”.

1. So, where are you from, originally?

What this question really means is “What is your ethnic background?” I am astounded by how often I hear this question - usually within the first 10 minutes of being introduced to someone new. The real answer is that I’m English, Irish, Austrian, Polish, Ukrainian. The distribution of those backgrounds is 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, 1/8, 1/8, respectively.

What I think I’m going to tell people from now on is “I’m Chinese, but ever since my radical-facial-reconstructive surgery following a run-in with a pack of carnivorous sewer-beavers, you can’t tell.”

2. What do you do with a Linguistics degree?

Read electric meters, evidently. Actually, there are many things you can do with a Linguistics degree, all of them requiring you to continue your education well into the post-graduate sphere of life. At the moment, I’m content to criticize people’s grammar and spelling, and make up new words in various languages. My new German word, spelled something like “Schradlehumpf”, is going to catch on faster than fascism in the 30’s.

3. How are the wedding plans going?

They seemed to be going great until a certain hotel in Hamilton that had given us a quote on hosting our reception told us that they had actually messed up our date and booked it out already for a different function. We found this out right after I rushed through my workday and Larissa made a special trip to Hamilton so that we could sign the paperwork.

Now we’re scrambling to find another place fast, before worrying about wedding bands, honeymoon destinations, flowers, invitations, tux-fittings, dress-alterations, writing vows, oh, and finding a place to live.

4. Is it really possible to own the first season of Felicity and Gilmore Girls on DVD, and still be called a man?

Oh yes, my friends. In fact, I have bonded with some amazingly hot women while talking about shared knowledge of these TV series. My finacee was one of them. Try doing that with your Worlds of Warcraft knowledge, or your ability to quote hockey stats. Watching Gilmore Girls = Sensitive, caring man = Chick magnet. It’s a well-hidden secret, which I now bless you with, my humble readers.

5. Why did you write that post about pooing?!

Okay, listen folks: Everybody poos. Most of us do it every day, some of us do it twice-a-day, and some of us like to crap only on even or odd days of the month. But my point is that it is a common, accepted, - even necessary, occurrence. If we can talk about TV shows or movies which we’ve all seen, why not connect by sharing our experiences in the bathroom as well?

Whether you’re the Queen of England, a suburban crack-dealer, or *shudder* a salesperson at Futureshop, we all have to slap our cheeks down on the porcelain deposit-box on a regular basis. Let’s revel in this commonality, and use it to establish greater bonds of friendship. Truly, crapping is the great social-equalizer.

I hope that clears up some of what’s been on your mind lately. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have “the rest of my life” to finish planning.

Warning: If reading about people’s crapping-habits disturbs you, then please do not continue to read this post. Also, if reading about people’s crapping-habits arouses you, go to another website. Because that’s just gross.

I am proud to consider myself to be very “regular”, generally speaking. And when I say “regular”, I don’t mean that I’m average in most areas of my life. I mean that I find myself crapping on a fairly predictable schedule.

I also pride myself on being able to set and adjust my crapping schedule with a minimum of frustration or discomfort. When I went to Japan for five weeks last year (a country that is a full 13 hours out of sync with my own time zone), I was back on proper crapping schedule within three days. What has me perplexed is how my defecating routine decided to change things up on me a few months ago, for no apparent reason.

I now poo twice every morning.

It didn’t used to be this way. I used to get up, eat, dump, take a shower (essential to do immediately post-excretion, in order to rinse off any poo particles which the toilet paper did not see fit to apprehend), shave, brush my teeth, get dressed, and head out the door. Now, I find that I must empty my colon immediately after getting out of bed, proceed through the rest of my morning routine (holding off on the shower until we reach poo-round-two), crap again, and then shower and get dressed before leaving.

The question that I’d like to ask my body is: Why don’t you take care of the entire “firing rear thrusters” procedure during session 1, instead of taking a break and sending me back to the throne an hour later? It seems like it would be much more efficient that way.

Now, I know you may want to suggest to me that perhaps I have simply been mistaken, and have decided to cut session 1 short prematurely, before the entire operation is complete. However, I can assure you, with every faculty in my body that allows me to sense the completion of a poo, that I am unable to push anything else out of my body when I take up the toilet paper roll and bring session 1 to a close. And still I know that, before I leave for work, there will be another session yet to come. A final purging of residual fudge nuggets, so to speak.

I admit that there is a difference in the consistency of the “pipe I’m laying” in session 1 compared to session 2. Session 1 usually deals in solid, well defined rectal-deposits, whereas session 2 is a big pile of flaky-residue. Like having a sausage dinner followed by a small salad. Perhaps if there is a proctologist among my readers, you can shed some light on this dichotomy.

In the meantime, I’m just going to keep on “releasing the chocolate hostage” on my twice-per-morning schedule, and hope that my body doesn’t decide to experiment in triple-session-deposits.

Euphemisms for “poo” and “pooing” were taking from The Poop Thesaurus. It made me laugh so hard that I was clenching.

Hey everyone! Just a quick post today to let you all know that I was mentioned in The Hamilton Spectator today! A reporter ran a public interest story about The Audio Edition, the podcast that I contribute to for The Movie Blog, and about a third of the way into the article, my name appears, with correct spelling and everything!

If you haven’t checked out The Audio Edition yet, head on over to this page and download it in mp3 format. I’m on the Monday editions, and the others are just John and Doug by themselves. You can also read the Spectator article here, if you missed the link in the first paragraph.

Freakin’ heck! Just when I thought that my only addictions were Web Sudoku and getting my weekly Battlestar Galactica fix, Julie has to go and get me reading Questionable Content comics. Of course, I’m going to have to read every one of them now. Oh, I almost forgot - I’m also addicted to reading Calvin and Hobbes every time I poo. I’m working my way through the entire collection. Of Calvin and Hobbes, that is. Not of poo.

My latest snack food of choice is Vegetable Thins. I only eat the “original” type, which I’m happy to say contains zero grams of trans fat per 20g serving. They’re also “baked with real vegetables”, which I’m assuming means that there are real vegetables in the crackers themselves, and not that they are simply baked together in the same oven.

So earlier today, I was doing a meter-reading route which involved almost entirely driving, and very little walking. I spent my day navigating around potholes in long farm driveways, and trying to see how much mud I could collect on the underside of my car before rendering it undriveable.

At one point in the early afternoon, I found myself getting sleepy, so I pulled over to the side of this country road I was on, and put my seat back for a quick 20 min power-snooze. I found myself dreaming about driving on country roads, navigating around potholes, and looking for electric meters. When I woke up I thought to myself “I’ve essentially been doing in my sleep what I should be doing in real life, except that when I do it in my sleep, I don’t get paid for it, and my workday ends up being longer.” So I started my car and got back to work. It seemed like the only logical option.

At least I wasn’t having those Sudoku dreams again. Those are brutal.

It occurred to me earlier today that many of you don’t know the places that I frequent daily on the internet. Now, it could very well be the case that many of you don’t give a rat’s hindquarters, but that’s incidental. It’s my blog, and I’ll post what I want, gosh-darn-it, and if you don’t care, there are other blogs out there that require less reading and have more pictures.

Now, for those of you who are interested in finding new and exciting places to frolic-about in, I offer you my favorites list:

Larissa’s Blog - I can’t go a single day without checking out my beautiful fiancee’s blog, for a few reasons. First, I find her writing interesting and insightful. Second, I’m still trying to figure her out, and I’m hoping that the subtext of her blog will offer some clues. Third, she quizzes me on whether or not I’m aware of what she’s posted lately, and if I get the answers wrong, I may not get my lovin’. And everyone knows that I needs my lovin’!

Campea’s Blog - This is more to find out if he’s posted about me, or if there’s some new development which affects my involvement in the Audio Edition. Most of the time, I’m aware of the news he posts here before it appears on the site, since I am often told by him in person. I’ve known this guy for 15 years, and his spelling has never improved. I also find some of his pictures unsettling.

The Movie Blog - I read this site to find out what we’ll be talking about on The Audio Edition. Once, (only once Darren?) I came across as woefully uninformed, and people commented that I know too little about movies to be a contributor to a podcast about them. Fortunately, I’m friends with those who make the podcast, so that lets me keep my mic. Oh yeah, I also go to this site to see if people make comments about the podcast along the lines of “Darren sucks” or “Darren could intellectually whip John and Doug’s ignorant asses with his brain tied behind his back”. I’m still waiting to read a comment of the second type.

Dooce - A contender for weblog of the year, and probably the most well-written blog I’ve ever come across. Heather Armstrong, an ex-Mormon in Salt Lake City Utah, writes about her life in dealing with marriage, her baby daughter, her dog, depression, constipation, and motherhood. Her writing style is irreverent and sometimes vulgar, but she expresses herself with brilliance and clarity. I dream of having her life, minus the husband, dog, depression, and constipation. But blogging full-time for an audience of a few hundred-thousand would be nice.

Problogger - A website about professional blogging. Excellent tips, daily updates, and a sense of honesty and integrity rarely found on the internet. The guy who runs this site runs almost 20 blogs altogether, and brings in an income that is close to seven-figures, if not over it. He’s also a pastor. And Australian.

Sympatico Weather - I’m not kidding when I say that Larissa’s dad has a minimum of 2 different weather information services on his computer, aside from the weather websites he visits, and the travel clock he got for Christmas which gives him weather information when he wakes up. I myself just want to know what I’m going to be working in for the upcoming day.

Dwelling In Possibility - Julie Lewis’ personal blog, and one of the most honest examples of self-examination that I’ve seen on the internet. There’s nothing fake about her in real-life, and on the internet there’s no exception. And since I haven’t seen her in real-life for a long time, it’s nice to be able to keep up with how she’s doing through her blog.

Defective Yeti - The personal blog of a writer in Seattle (?), who I personally find quite funny and entertaining. I try to find web pages that make me laugh out loud on a regular basis, and this is one of them. This guy is big on board games, and occassionally likes to throw around some political humour, if you’re into that stuff. Still haven’t figured out why he calls his son “The Squirrelly”, though.

360 Degrees of Sky - Unfortunately, this blog was closed down as of January 11th, 2006. It was an intriguing blog about a British worker in rural Zambia. It was witty, sharp, and well-written, and I’m sad that it will no longer be updated. There aren’t many Zambians living in mud-huts that regularly write for the internet. Or that have power and running water, for that matter.

Doug Nagy - My friend Doug’s personal blog. He and John Campea run The Audio Edition, which I am privileged to contribute to on Monday evenings. Doug’s posts are usually short, with a smattering of his strangely funny humour. An acquired taste, but not an unwelcome one. I look forward to the day when Doug does his own solo podcast, since he is in his best element when he is heard, and not necessarily seen or read.

Blurbomat - The weblog of Jon Armstrong, Heather’s husband (from Dooce - see above). Though not as entertaining as Dooce, he often offers different perspectives on the events that Heather discusses. Also, unlike Dooce, his blog allows comments, so if you want to read about how people are reacting to what Heather posts, you have to go to this, her husband’s blog, to see.

Pearls Before Swine - The online version of a comic strip that has been gaining in popularity lately. Not always laugh-your-ankles-off hilarious, it’s at least as funny as Drabble, and almost on-par with Foxtrot. The drawing style is very high-quality as well. The best strips are the ones featuring the crocodiles trying to catch the zebra.

The Dilbert Blog - This is the blog that I always save for last, since I’m virtually guaranteed to get a laugh whenever I read it. It’s not the Dilbert comic strip, but rather the weblog of the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams. There’s an update almost every day, and he slams the “humour-mallet” into “the ingrown-toenail of funny” every time. An excellent way to start your workday.

List ends. Now go to something productive. After you’ve finished checking out all these sites. And commenting on how they’re awesome.

This was me, back in 1996-ish, about 10 years ago. It’s hard to imagine that the well-groomed, clean-cut, ethnic-looking man that many of you know me as today used to sport these curly-locks of rebellion. At the time, growing my hair long seemed like the right thing to do. Now, I have to wonder, “What was I thinking?!”

Sometimes I dream that I still have long hair. Usually I’m very happy to wake up and find that it is, indeed, short. In case you were wondering, the decision to cut it (sometime in 1998) came when I realized that every long-haired male I saw on the street conveyed a general impression of “street vagrant”, and while I’m sure that there are some very nice vagrants out there, they were not a social group that I was aiming to be classified with at the time.

Larissa has been teasing me about wanting to cut her hair short sometime after we get married. Maybe I can gain some leverage in the argument to keep her hair long by warning her that I could always make a return to my own long-haired days sometime in the future…

It’s been a busy day, my friends, but there have been a few highlights that I’d like to… uh… highlight… for you.

First, I am climbing the ladder to fame! Some of you may know that I participate in a podcast produced by my friend John Campea, editor of The Movie Blog. Every Monday evening, I find my way to John’s apartment, and yak about the movie industry with John, and our friend Doug Nagy.

There is an interesting dynamic when the three of us are all together - John runs the show and provides the actual content, Doug is the “funny man”, and I do my best to stir up controversy whenever John or Doug try to defend ideas which are stupid, or when they refuse to share my refined taste in entertainment.

This humble podcast has been nominated for a very prestigious Bloggie award, under the category of “Best Podcast of a Weblog”. Now, I’m not kidding myself - this is 95% John and Doug’s baby - but being a part of this soon-to-be-world-famous podcast causes me to offer a prayer of thanks for the blessing of being involved in something successful, and also causes me to inform you, my humble readers, that it would be wonderful if you could GO TO THE BLOGGIE SITE AND VOTE FOR OUR PODCAST RIGHT NOW! Thank you.

Second, I voted in the Canadian Federal Election tonight. Who did I vote for? I’m not telling. Why? Because you always make more enemies than friends when you tell people who you voted for. Also, I hate politics. Especially talking about them. Or it. Is “politics” an “it”, or a “them”?

Third, I’m taking an evening computer course at Mohawk College for the next few months, and I purchased the textbook earlier today. I crap you in the negative when I tell you that it is at least two inches thick, and weighs close to ten pounds.

I could kill a man with this book. It’s called HP IT Essentials I: PC Hardware and Software Companion Guide, and it cost me almost exactly $100.00. For that price, it should have included a back-brace to lend me extra support as I hauled it to my car.

Fourth, Larissa and I have been making wedding plans. I’m not going to write a lot about this topic now, since it would make good fodder for many more posts to come, but I’ll say that we’ve booked our limo and DJ, and found our reception hall (including catering), church, pastor, tux rental place, photographer, and processional/recessional music. Larissa has purchased her dress, we’ve found the bridesmaids’ dresses, and the flower-girl dress. We still need to (among other things) decide where we will go for our honeymoon, and where we will live.

In the old days, weddings used to be a party within the local community, and put-on by the local community. Now, it’s an industry. If there’s anything that has been impressed upon me in all this planning, it’s how many people are trying to reap a profit from couples who are trying to commit their lives to one another.

All we want to do is have a party with our friends, followed by God-approved sex. Why does that have to be so expensive, and so much hassle to plan?

Fifth, if you’re looking for a new addiction, head on over to Larissa’s blog and check out her write-up on Sudoku puzzles. You’ll never look at a 9x9 grid of numbers the same way again.

In this, the second post in our series of Writing for the Internet, we’ll take a look at a technique that is simple, yet surprisingly effective. That technique is using shorter paragraphs.

A paragraph is essentially an arbitrary concept of organization. It’s simply a way of splitting up the space on a page so that the reader is given a greater sense of the organization of ideas found on that page. It makes the text a little more pleasing to the eye by adding in some spatial dynamics to break up the large mass of words that the reader has to deal with.

There are some rough guidelines for when you should start new paragraphs - for instance, the start of a new paragraph should indicate the start of a new idea, or a new aspect of an idea you’re already discussing. But give a chunk of text to 5 different people, and each of them will have different ways of organizing it into paragraphs. Just like people have different ideas of what sizes of pancakes to make from a single bowl of batter.

When it comes to reading text on the internet, people are generally in a hurry - maybe because they use the internet at work, and can only sneak in a few minutes of personal reading here-and-there, or maybe because they think that there’s always something better to read on another webpage. We live in a fast-food culture, and the internet presents us with a pretty large buffet to snack from. In any case, people don’t want to be faced with a reading task that looks like it will take more than 20 or 30 seconds.

By writing in smaller paragraphs, a long post is made to look more “digestible”. Instead of being faced with a huge slab of meat to cut-up and chew, you give them bite-sized pieces to pop into their mouths. Wow, this post is making me hungry.

Let’s take a look at this concept in action. Take a quick look at Crush’s Chronicle, a blog written by Michelle Peters from Larissa’s church in Thorold, and which I personally enjoy reading on a regular basis. While the content itself is well-written, every post consists of a single, long paragraph. This can often be daunting for the reader, making you feel “lost” in the middle of what is being said.

Now, on the other side of things, consider The Dilbert Blog, written by Scott Adams, the creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip. Bite-sized paragraphs, most of them 6-lines or less. Lots of text, but very digestible.

So, if you’re in the habit of writing long posts, and would like people to enjoy reading your blog more, consider breaking up your text into smaller chunks. It’s always easier to eat potato chips one-at-a-time, then to try to swallow an entire potato.

And on that note, I’m getting something to eat.

Other posts in this series: Writing for the Internet Part 1

The other day, as I was looking through some old photographs, I suddenly remembered these Waterful games that I used to play as a kid, back before there were affordable video games available. We owned the game on the left side of this picture, although I remember the container being red, instead of yellow.

These games were full of water, and by pushing the button on the lower-right, you would squirt the water inside the game, and try to maneuver the pieces into some sort of pattern. The pyramid game, which we owned, required you to design different pyramids by arranging different coloured triangles, and the game on the right in the picture is tic-tac-toe. I still remember distinctly the actual feeling of pushing on that button, and trying to get those triangles to fall in the proper order…

You would not believe how hard I had to look on the internet, first for the names of these products, and second, for pictures of them. Does anyone else remember playing these? If you have any that are still functional in your possession, it seems like there’s a huge demand for them in the “retro-gaming” market. Looks like I’m going to have to do some digging in my parents’ basement this weekend…

For those of you who are just joining us, the following piece of information is essential to understand this post - I read electric meters for a living. Now that you’re up to speed, here’s the rant:

It seems like every month or two, I come across a customer who is upset with the fact that I have stepped on their grass while attempting to accurately take a reading of their electric meter. They seem to think that I am somehow violating the sacredness of their turf, or causing unspeakable damage to their landscaping arrangement, possibly de-valuing their property and setting them up for a major financial downfall when they try to sell their house, not to mention bringing shame and ridicule upon them from their neighbors, whose grass has been trod upon in a more delicate fashion, if at all.

Today, as I was plugging along through the small town of York (a locality that consists of maybe 35 homes and a gas station), a man opened his front door and confronted me on this issue. His first words to me were something along the lines of

“Hey, don’t you people believe in sidewalks or driveways?!”

If you want to put somebody in a defensive-stance right from the get-go, refer to them as “you people”. My mood instantly shifted from “let’s try to resolve this issue” to “What can I say to you which will feel satisfying, yet not get me fired?”. What I replied with was

“Well, there actually aren’t any sidewalks on this street.”

Which was very true. There were some sidewalks on other nearby streets, but when your town has only 35 houses, you can only afford to sidewalk-ize a few streets here and there. The customer retorted with

“Well there’s a driveway here! Why don’t you use it instead of walking on everyone’s lawns! You know, I have a dog, and if he bites you, or if you slip and fall on my lawn, don’t expect to sue me over it!”

At this moment, the only replies I could think of were the ones that fit into the “Likely to get you fired” category. I decided to go the minimalist route, and said “Alright…!” with a hint of menace and indignation. At the same time, I turned around and walked down his driveway, and typed this exact message into my meter-reading computer as a note on the customer’s account for future readers:

“Don’t walk on grass - Customer is a dink”

And I have to admit that I think “dink” is a very appropriate word. It conveys my displeasure, while containing a juvenile implication, which accurately captures my thoughts about that customer’s attitude: Juvenile and displeasing.

In defence of meter readers everywhere, and their walking habits, let me say this - We spend our days walking outdoors, exposed to the elements. Sometimes it’s wonderful, but often it can be very uncomfortable, like in the cold of winter, the sweltering heat of summer, or during a rainstorm. It is in the best interest of every meter reader to take the shortest possible route to each meter, so that exposure to the elements is minimized. We don’t walk on your lawn to insult your property. We do it so that we can finish our workday in 6 hours instead of 12.

Taking 8 to 20 steps on your grass, once per month, is not going to destroy your property. You won’t even notice. In fact, since we’re only on your property for an average of 30 seconds per month, the only way you could take notice is if you were sitting inside, staring out your window, waiting for someone to come by so that you could pick a fight with them.

Maybe the man who told me off today was a decent fellow, who just couldn’t log onto his siamese-midget-fetish website this morning, and had to take it out on me. Or maybe he’s a crazed serial-killer who eats his meals on Nazi dinnerware and keeps a collection of his victims’ eyelids in his basement. Either way, he saw it as a worthwhile enterprise to step out of his front door and tell off a complete stranger for something that was of little-to-no significance. My friends, is it really worth it?

So next time you see a meter reader walking across your lawn, say a nice prayer for them - something along the lines of “God, bless that utility-worker, and protect them from frostbite, hypothermia, sunburns, bug-bites, and the uncomfortability of rain-soaked undergarments” (as per the appropriate weather and season at the time of the prayer), instead of saying to yourself “Do I have time to find and sharpen my machete before that meter reader leaves my property?” In the end, I think it will create a better world for all of us. Amen.