Inside Darren

For the past few days, I’ve been home sick from work. It hasn’t been the most terrible form of sickness - just a lot of achy muscles, a lack of energy, and a lot of rushing to the bathroom every hour or so to excrete some more diarrhea. My butt is so sore from passing mass quantities of acid feces that I can hardly sit down. On the plus side, I’ve caught up on my Maclean’s reading.

All this extra time at home has allowed me to watch more TV than I usually do, and all this time in the bathroom has caused me to think about why people on television shows are rarely, if ever, depicted using the bathroom at all.

For the average television show, say, Gilmore Girls, or one of the many CSI spin-offs, you can get around the bathroom issue fairly easily. Rory had a quick pee after she arrived at Logan’s place, but before the scene itself started, which may have opened with them watching a movie. Or the crime scene investigator made a quick detour into the nearby coffee shop to pinch a quick loaf on the way to the killer’s apartment to comb through the rug looking for dandruff for a DNA sample.

But take a show like 24, where the concept of the show lends itself to showing everything happening to each main character for a full 24 hours. Granted, I haven’t watched every episode of 24, but I’ve watched enough to know that Jack Bauer must have bladder/bowels of steel, or a very well hidden colostomy bag/catheter system in place if he’s going to chase down terrorists for a full 24 hours without dropping some weight in the loo occasionally. I drain the weasel every 4 hours on average, which means that Jack should have 6 potty breaks per season. What’s the deal?

Kudos, therefore, to the excellent example if television pioneering that is Babylon 5, which showed its characters going to the bathroom on at least 2 occasions. And as a show that’s set in the future, it showcased some interesting future bathroom technology in having the characters clean their hands by passing them through some sort of light field. After all, water use must be carefully controlled in a self-contained space station.

And washing your hands with light looks really cool.

It seems as though Paramount Studios have decided to go out of their way to metaphorically spit in the faces of their movie fans. John Campea, who runs The Movie Blog, had his site shut down for 8 hours recently because Paramount found a picture from the upcoming Transformers Movie on his blog, and proceeded to go behind his back and contact John’s web host about it.

The site is now back up, and words have been exchanged between the various parties involved. To highlight the major issues in this situation, consider the following:

1) John (as well as Doug and I on the podcast) have been giving TONS of free promotion to the Transformers Movie for months, doing nothing but pumping up this movie in the eyes of potential fans. Paramount could not have paid for that kind of word-of-mouth publicity. Many people have commented on the site that they had little or no interest in this movie until John, Doug and I started talking about it. Why would Paramount want to kill that?

2) Going behind someone’s back is a dirty, underhanded way to deal with a problem. If you have something to work out with someone else, you approach them directly, and get it taken care of. This is something most people learn before they’re done highschool. Perhaps Paramount needs to spend some more time in a grade 9 ethics class.

3) This website is currently John’s only means of income. By having it shut down for almost 8 hours, Paramount effectively robbed John of 8 hours’ worth of pay, and thus far have made no offer to compensate him for that loss. I don’t know about you, but if someone took away 8 hours’ worth of my income when I was going out of my way to help out their company FOR FREE, I would be mighty upset.

4) This story has been picked up by hundreds of other web sources in the last 24 hours, and is currently the number one dug story in the Entertainment category at digg.com. Chances are that this move by Paramount will generate far more bad publicity for them then any good publicity that The Movie Blog had generated already. That’s very bad news for Paramount, but potential good news for The Movie Blog, as the site is drawing huge attention from this turn of events.

5) This story has apparently got Doug Nagy very upset. As far as I know, this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. Better say your prayers, kids.

The full story (thus far) can be found at The Movie Blog.

Larissa and I live in an apartment that backs onto a large field, with several trees immediately outside our bedroom window. We also live in an apartment that has absolutely no air conditioning. We therefore have to leave our windows open almost constantly in the summer, just to get some airflow and a bit of a cooling breeze.

In the evening it’s generally cool enough that we can sleep quite comfortably with our bedroom window open. The only problem is that each morning, at about 4:30 or 5am, the trees outside our window are filled with birds, who feel an incessant need to chirp like crazy until the sun comes up.

I have a theory about these birds, and it might even be extended to a larger range of animal species. The theory is this: Every night, the birds are surprised that the sun has gone down, and when they see that the sky is starting to grow lighter in the east, they either a) think that they have to verbally persuade the sun to make it over the horizon, or b) are so surprised that the sun is coming back (again) that they have to announce it, loudly, to the rest of the bird kingdom, and possibly the world.

I think there is a basis for this theory in other parts of the animal realm. Roosters crowing in the morning could be an example of the same thing. Wolves howling at the moon could be a variation of this principle. It’s a form of conditioning, in that every time the animals exhibit this behaviour, they get the same result (the sun rises, and hence the conditioning is reinforced). And they’re unwilling to risk the consequences of there being no sun if they stop their chirping (or crowing, or what-have-you), and so continue this behaviour every morning until they die, or are killed by people who don’t like being awakened before 5:30am.

This leads into another theory I have about how we came to build houses out of wood, instead of living in caves, like our ancestors did. There must have been some ancient cave-dwelling folks who happened to have a bunch of trees near the opening of their cave, and were continually awakened at obscene hours of the morning by chirping birds. They went outside, chopped down the trees (assuming that they had already developed stone-based cutting tools), and thus eliminated the bird problem. They then thought to themselves “Hey, we could use this tree-material to build shelters anywhere we want, away from the caves AND the birds!”

Thus was born the lumber industry, the real estate industry, and anti noise-pollution associations.

As for Larissa and I, since we aren’t allowed to chop down the trees behind our apartment, we’re going to have to consider alternate means of shutting up the birds. I have a possible solution, but it still needs Larissa’s approval. My birthday is coming up in just over two weeks, and I think I’m going to ask for a pellet gun with a scope.

I am currently receiving somewhere in the range of 20 spam comments per 24 hour period. Is this normal for a blog that gets only 20-30 visitors per day? Somewhere out there at Internet Spamming Headquarters, I believe the following conversation has taken place:

Spammer 1: Hey, this Darren guy’s blog has decent writing and pretty pictures. Do you think we could get away with some ringtone, viagra, and penis-enlargement spam in his comments section?

Spammer 2: Does the guy get decent traffic?

Spammer 1: He’s ranked 4/10 with Google’s Pagerank service, so the site can’t be that small. Although most of his comments are from Canadians.

Spammer 2: Well, Canadians need to keep their newly-enlarged penises erect while answering cell phones whose ringers play Nickelback tunes too, you know.

Spammer 1: Point taken. Engaging spam.

Needless to say, I’m now moderating all the comments before they’re posted. So if you’re wondering why you don’t see your comment till a few hours later, that’s why.

Freakin’ spammers.

You know that your blog is gaining a measure of notoriety when you find yourself dealing with comment spam on a regular basis. For the past 2 weeks, I have found at least one instance of comment spam on this blog every day, which, while annoying to deal with, is a good sign that people are actually reading the thing. If anyone here is interested in purchasing viagra or phentermine, let me know, and maybe I’ll let some of the spam sneak through.

Despite having specifically mentioned in this post that I would be more regular in posting, a quick look at the past few post-dates will reveal that I have not stuck to my commitment. I think it’s time that you, my readers, discovered the reason why:

Skies of Arcadia

Yes, I decided to give this video game a try, and it has monopolized my free time for the better part of the past month. To give you an idea of what it’s about, this game is an RPG that was released many years ago for the Sega Dreamcast, and which takes approx. 50 hours to complete. The graphics are pretty, the characters are lovable, and the storyline is genuinely intriguing. I’m very close to finishing the game, so hopefully normal posting will resume soon. At least until the wedding and honeymoon take place (a week from Friday).

Larissa has had a killer time (and I mean this in the bad way) trying to get our phone service up and running at the new apartment. Bell Canada (the default local phone service provider) keeps telling her “It’ll be working sometime in the next 24-48 hours”. Yeah - that was a week ago. In the meantime, she has to drive 60 km to my apartment just to call her sister or check her email (oh yeah, no internet service yet either). Today they had her in tears, and tomorrow we’re going to call them together and make sure things get taken care of. I think I may start the conversation with something along the lines of “Listen, if you really are in the phone business, how about giving us a phone line? Because so far I’m convinced that you’re actually in the annoy the living crap out of people business.

And finally, I lost the tag to my bag of milk which tells you what the expiry date is, so now I’m drinking milk without a safety net. I could wake up one morning, eager to consume a bowl of Maple Nut Oatmeal Crisp, and discover that I’m pouring cottage cheese out of the milk bag instead of wholesome dairy goodness. It would be wasteful to throw out a whole bag of milk in anticipation of its going sour, so I’ve resigned myself to sniffing the milk through the hole in the bag each morning before breakfast.

This is life on the edge, my friends.

This post was originally written on a notepad in my car this morning.

All this week, I’ve been doing my meter reading in the city of Hamilton instead of in Haldimand County, which is 90% rural. This morning, as I write this, I’m sitting in my car in downtown Hamilton, waiting for stores to open so that I can read their meters (which are mostly in their basements).

I’m bored, and a little frustrated that I have to extend my workday by just sitting in my car. However, I am presented with the opportunity to participate in one of my favourite work-related activities.

Sleeping.

Yes, one of the benefits of this job is that I work alone and free from supervision, so napping in my car can be done with impunity, as long as all of my meters are read by the end of the day. From time to time, I’ve indulged in a quick, 20-min powernap in the middle of my day, just to keep me functional and properly rested.

I have to keep in mind, however, that this is downtown Hamilton. Not that there’s any danger of being shot, but you could have to deal with the occasional homeless vagrant drooling on your window. My policy is to keep the windows up, the doors locked, and my hand near the horn, which I’ve modified to sound like someone shouting “Get away from me, weasel-face!” It’s effective while parked and on the road.

I still have a good 20 min to kill, even after having written this. Doors locked? Check! Windows up? Check! Horn functional? Check!

Nap time.

It’s 10:30pm, I’m sitting at the computer in my underwear, and I’m almost finished washing over a week’s worth of dirty dishes.

Yes my friends, the dishes had become unruly. They had already conquered the sink and half of the counter, and were preparing for an invasion of the surrounding floor space, and possibly the tops of kitchen appliances. The only available option was to slap on the rubber gauntlets of cleanliness, take hold of the sacred scrubber of oppression, douse it with the enchanted liquid-soap of grease-cuttery, and open a can of whoop-dish!

I cannot put into words how much I dislike the washing of dishes. I never felt this way until I found myself living in a basement apartment with only a single sink with which to wash. Until that point, I had had the use of a dishwasher, and on the rare occasions that I did dishes by hand, I would do them with another person, and make it a social activity.

Larissa, on the other hand, loves doing dishes. She likes the feeling of satisfaction that one acquires by looking at a completed task, and visibly seeing the results of your hard work. Since she works as a teacher, it’s often hard to see how your efforts pay off in students’ lives, but with dishes, the difference is evident immediately.

While I also enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that one earns by washing a crap-load of kitchenware, I feel that the annoyance of the work itself overwhelms any happiness that is experienced in finishing the task. I feel the same way, incidentally, about cutting the lawn, or shaving. Sure, the grass, and my face, both look better afterwards, but doing each monotonous, repetitive task uses up valuable time that could be spent watching movies, or re-reading the Dune novels.

For a while, Larissa and I had a fairly good dish-washing system in place. I would save up my dirty dishes for the entire week, and on the weekends when she would visit, Larissa would have the privilege of washing my dishes for me. I knew how much she enjoyed this task, and I didn’t want to deny her the fulfillment of seeing a job well-done. And just so you don’t think I was being lazy, I would contribute by putting away what had been washed and dried, and by searching out appropriate music selections that would create a fun and happy atmosphere for her dish-washing.

Lately our weekends have been so busy in taking care of last-minute wedding and moving preparations, that when we come back to my apartment, all we both want to do is relax and eat Smartfood popcorn. Thus, the dirty dishes multiply, and I am forced to tackle them myself.

I knew that the moment of crisis had arrived when I found myself saying to Larissa over the phone “I think I may skip breakfast tomorrow, because I don’t have any clean bowls for cereal, and there’s no counter space to use for buttering toast”. Larissa’s response was something along the lines of “Why don’t you wash some bowls, then?!” Point taken.

I’m happy to say that the counter is now usable, and the bowls have all been washed. However, I now realize that I’m out of cereal and bread, and it’s too late to go to the grocery store.

The crisis continues.

Reading electric meters is a unique job in many ways. There aren’t many people who do this type of work (I doubt many of you who are reading this know of any other meter readers aside from myself or those who work with me), and in my particular office, we have four people who read the meters for our entire county. I work outside. I work completely on my own, often speaking to nobody else for my entire workday. And I’m not paid by the hour, but rather by the amount and type of meters that I read on each route.

Because I’m paid by the meter, and not by how long it takes me to read them, it’s in my best interest to work as quickly as possible. I know that this route I have in front of me pays $150, so whether I finish it in 4 hours or 6 hours is up to me. I can have a long, leisurely workday, or a hurried workday with more time at home afterwards. Generally, I prefer option 2.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that people seem to get very disturbed when they see other people moving too quickly, or working at a speed that seems out of the ordinary. There have been many times when I’ve been jogging through my route, or even walking at a brisk pace, and found myself being told by people on the street to “slow down!” or “take it easy!” As if my trying to shorten my workday was intruding on their sense of comfort, somehow. I have a few ideas as to why this could be the case.

First of all, people who are running, or even just walking quickly, tend to look suspicious - like they’re running away from someone or something. And if there’s no visible person or thing chasing the person who’s running, they could be running from something imaginary, and therefore be insane. By slowing down and walking at the same pace as everyone else, one gives the illusion of sanity, even if they really are in an insane hurry. Perhaps people would like me to give off more of an “aura of sanity”, instead of the image that I seem to be projecting now.

Second, I believe that we have some sort of psychological need to “keep the pace” with those who are around us. If someone is in the midst of trying to busily accomplish a long list of jobs, while someone else in the room is lazing around on the couch watching TV, either the busy person will give up and join the lazy one, or the lazy one will get yelled at to “get up and do something!”, so that the busy person does not have to feel busy alone. Perhaps my running is making other people feel pressured to run, when they really don’t want to.

Third, people who are rushing are more likely to miss something that is going on around them, and either make a mistake in their task, or get into an accident. After all, we wouldn’t have rules against speeding in a car if people were just as skilled at driving at high speeds as they are at low speeds. Perhaps those who tell me to “slow down” are worried for my safety - that I might trip on their sprinkler and land chin-first in their petunias. Or maybe they’re afraid that, in my haste, I’ll miss-read their meter.

For the record, I have no intentions of slowing down. This is my job, and since I’ve had a few years’ practice at it, I believe that I do it well at any pace, and would appreciate other people not telling me how to do it better. After all, I don’t walk into lawyers’ offices and try to offer them suggestions on how to more accurately rip people off. I trust the professionals, and they should trust me.

For some reason, even outside of work, I’ve always been very comfortable with running from point A to point B, rather than walking - even when my speedy arrival at point B is not an issue. I just have always figured that it’s better to be somewhere, rather than being on my way somewhere. You have to drop a book off at the library? Why walk, when running gets you there twice as fast? You need to walk up 3 flights of stairs to get to your apartment? Take them two-at-a-time briskly, and you’re at the top before you know it! Plod up each stair individually, and it feels like you’ve been walking up them forever.

Some may say that I’m not taking time to “smell the roses along the way”. Well, for starters, I’m allergic to pollen, so smelling flowers is not always a pleasant experience anyway. But here’s the way I see it: Getting places quicker, (or finishing work faster) allows me to “smell the roses” in the places I want to be at, rather than smelling whatever I end up stepping in along the way.

And if there’s really something I should be taking notice of en route, I’m sure God will throw a sprinkler in my path to get my attention.

Those who have mastered Super Mario Kart will have encountered that racing skill known as “drifting”. This is when you attempt to turn a corner, but allow your car to slide a bit so that you can really punch the gas as you head into the straightaway. Now, I’m no racing expert, but I believe that in real life, drifting does little to aid you in winning an actual race. Mostly it just looks cool, sounds squeally, and takes a hefty dose of rubber off of your tires.

It’s interesting that Nintendo, who makes Mario Kart, is a Japanese company, because in the latest installment of The Fast and the Furious, the main characters have to go all the way to Japan in order to learn about how to make their cars slide around corners. Maybe if they had done more video game playing and less skirt chasing back in America, they could have got their education in “drifting” without all the hassle of traveling to Japan. But then, they wouldn’t be able to chase any Japanese skirts.

The trailer for The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift can be found at Yahoo Movies, and if you’re expecting it to be dumber than a bucket of pork, I believe that your expectations will be fulfilled. I myself have actually been to Tokyo, and I can tell you first-hand that I didn’t see any drifting at all. Well, that’s not entirely accurate - The layer of smog that I saw from the top floor of a large office building was drifting a bit.

And if you think that watching smog drift gets old fast, I can guarantee you that The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift will do the same.

Those who have known me for a few years know that back in the late 90s, I developed an obsession with a particular television show. This obsession led to my purchasing every episode of said show on DVD, watching them multiple times, and even learning some new words in a few languages that technically don’t exist.

That TV show was Babylon 5. I also own ten Babylon 5 novels. Yes, I wear my mantle of geekiness without shame.

People who are fans of science fiction television have often debated the excellence or lack thereof that has been showcased in Babylon 5’s five year run. For reasons that are difficult to understand or explain, sci-fi fans typically are polarized into one of two camps: The Star Trek camp, or the Babylon 5 camp.

Star Trek fans generally contend that Babylon 5 is actually a rip-off of concepts that first appeared in the spinoff series of Next Generation, Deep Space 9. They point to the fact that Deep Space 9 was the first to air on national television, and highlight a list of very legitimate similarities between the characters, initial plots, and main settings of each show.

Babylon 5 fans generally contend that Deep Space 9 is a trite, watery, formulated, time-waster, crafted by Star Trek executives in an attempt to quash the only sci-fi show that had enough guts to step up to the plate and try to get a piece of a television market currently stuck in a Star Trek monopoly.

In the course of geeking off on the internet tonight, I came across some interesting articles on wikipedia. One is simply the main entry for Babylon 5 itself, which contains some extremely interesting factoids. For instance:

B5 was one of the first shows to be shot in 16:9 format, in anticipation of high-definition TV.

It was one of the first to use CGI as its main effects tool (which is now the standard for sci-fi television).

It was one of the first to portray actual laws of physics in its space battles.

It was also one of the first sci-fi shows to use story arcs that spanned several years (which is a widely-followed technique in modern sci-fi TV, such as in Battlestar Galactica or the Stargate series).

However, the reason I bring this topic up tonight, and the reason I mention all of the DS9 info, is because of this wikipedia article, which actually lays out all of the similarities between the two shows, and gives a concise account of what was going on behind the scenes in the creation of both shows.

I personally believe that the information offered in the above mentioned article favours the view that DS9 was developed using concepts which first originated in the B5 development plans, with the intentions of maintaining Star Trek’s sci-fi TV monopoly in the face of rising competition. However, there’s no debating the fact that both shows took very different routes in how they progressed, and that, by the end of each show’s run, Babylon 5 was by far the superior of the two. B5 fans talk about the show being “life changing”. DS9 fans talk about how “that chick with the spots on her head was hot”.

I’ll conclude with this: As a testimony to how amazing Babylon 5 is, and how amazing my fiancee is, Larissa actually took the time to sit down and watch all 110 episodes of B5 with me during the time we were dating. By the end of the series, she had become a fan, and she is by no means a natural lover of sci-fi. How many geeks out there can make that claim about showing their girlfriend Deep Space 9? And how many DS9 fans actually have girlfriends?

I rest my case.