Dr. Tesseract enters the vivarium. We could imagine that he is Daniel Cockburn, had Daniel never given up cocaine (nor never not started it in the first place), and after 15 further years of apathetic days and earthshaking night terrors. The glass walls are alive with fish. Tangerine on steel on neon blue. Above, birds shriek and shit, fighting the bats for dominance of the pittance of rude mealworms which infest the root-filthy vivarium floor. A baboon leaps, unbidden, to Dr. Tesseract's shoulder. The baboon asks: "Where is the hypercube?"

A couple of martinis after work makes me feel like one of the Mad Men. Whatever those are. I've never watched that show. But if I did, I bet it would be like that. The martinis were celebratory: we are declaring an end to the rough days, the all-or-nothing days, and going forward into the new thing, glad to have survived Workplace Survivor. Monday night, getting home before sundown for the first time since the fall, I sat on the couch in the gloaming and thought about the world, and then my lady came over and we got dim sums and watched Let the Right One In on shiny blu, every gently falling snowflake a distinct entity. The ultimate quiet Monday night movie, and it felt pretty good after all the noisy Monday nights (and every other nights) of the recent past.

Dr. Tesseract frowns. We could imagine that he is Chris MacLean, were Chris confronted once again by aesthetic inequity and the disturbingly imprecise vaguaries of True Chaos. Memory and anger collide in Dr. Tesseract's forelobe, and he smells bacon; being a staunch vegan and living in a tube under the sea, he has no language to articulate what he smells, and begins to become unsettled. He stares into the baboon's ageless, midnight-black eyes. No words are needed. "Well, then," the baboon says, "we're fucked."

Today I am working from home, building up a strategy for the big project that will take me into the fall, contemplating burritos or comic books or any of the other things I normally contemplate. I've got a bit of a cold coming on, but I'm not too fussed about it. The heating system in my apartment is doing its best to keep up with the shifting weather, and I am the same. In March, I only need a few days of sunshine to go back to appreciating how nice the grey ones are. Today will be drizzly, and springtime music, and getting shit done.

Dr. Tesseract panics. We could imagine that he is Jeff Szpirglas, were Jeff limbless (and on fire). In gracelessly attempting to gain the console platform he instead launches himself brain-first into the power supply bay. Arcs of light dance and play; the bats advantage themselves in the momentary distraction and decimate their avian counterparts. In the center of the firestorm, body rigid with current and immobile in the certainty of death, Dr. Tesseract sees with the pure sight for the first time in his life, just before the vivarium walls crack and shard, admitting the Pacific. With the pure sight, Dr. Tesseract sees Life - and it is so unbelievably angry.

Posted by tederick at 7:59 AM in j-o-b & poetical & shinybludisks
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Today I am trying something new at work: walking slower. (I think this falls under slow down, so literally it almost seems like cheating.) The last few weeks (heck, few months) of hyperactivity around here have lead to a lot of charging-about. Well, no more! Now, when I go to pee, I am going to walk in a measured, relaxed pace, concurrent with my devil-may-care attitude and undone top button. (Unless I really have to pee.)

This weekend did a rather tremendous job of recharing my batteries, mostly thanks to Sarafina and I's "stumble upon" approach to planning our days. Lack of structure: it's worth it! Especially when it's sunny and warm and wandering around is just "nice."

On Saturday night I saw an 8mm highlight reel of Star Wars, edited by someone who had probably never seen the film, and it was amazing. Here's how I described it to Jason:

"It starts just after Ben's death, when the gang is blasting their
way off the Death Star. They get off the station and then it cuts to
Ben telling Luke about his father, and handing over the lightsaber.
Then it cuts BACK to the Death Star, just when the gang is ARRIVING at
the hangar bay (before Ben gets killed). Then they watch Ben get killed
AGAIN, and blast their way out AGAIN. And then - you guessed it - the
reel cuts back to Ben's hut, for Ben and Luke to argue about whether or
not to go to Mos Eisley. Then back to the Death Star. It's like a Moebius loop where escape from the Death Star is impossible. I think I had that nightmare once."

On the weekend I also saw Phantom of the Paradise, which is where George Lucas stole the idea for Darth Vader. No really.

Posted by tederick at 11:24 AM in galaxy far & j-o-b & movies
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OK Edgar Wright: I am calling you out. We need to get to the bottom of this thing, you and me, because my girlfriend pointed out that if Scott Pilgrim is successful and sequels are warranted, you are gonna keep coming back to my goddamned city and throwing everyone in the place into an unalterable tizzy. And that is unacceptable. I live here. I do my best to make a living in these stressful economic times. And I can deal with the fact that half the people I know are falling over their own feet for a chance to meet you, and I can even deal with the fact that you're making Scott Pilgrim in the first place. But on my days off, I go to my local comic book shop and must now listen to the staff wax philosophic about how much they would like YOU to pop by. So since clearly and officially, this town officially ain't big enough for the both of us, and since I obviously have no means to support myself anywhere else, it's time to meet behind the gym at 3:30 and see what's what. You know what gym, so don't play coy.

Today's wardrobe choices were inspired by: 70s cop. Matty Price was right (he's rarely not), I really shoulda watched Life on Mars while I had the chance. I guess it'll come out on Blu-Ray eventually.

Tell them how it went, Steve. OK, let's do it! Well, on the whole I would say that the last 2 weeks went exceptionally well given their complexity. I think I could have done a bit better at the tail end of this one in terms of really bringing it all to a meaningful close. But a lot of good teamwork got done at the j-o-b; I literally have 12 pages of notes and items to take forward, but action item #1 is getting my work/life back into balance now that the rough period is on its way to done. 7.5 hour days - it is possible. Bill Gates told me so.

It also occurred to me this week that I tend to be self-deprecating and embarrassed when I'm asked what I do and have to answer that I build online training for [insert and rotate company name here]. I presume that's not the optimal state, especially given that on a theoretical level at least, I am quite stimulated by what I do. It's just so far-afield of where most of my contemporaries landed; I feel like I'm Life on Mars, fuck the TV show. Mars is a ring of towers just east of the Scarborough Town Centre, a canopic ecosystem of jealousies and betrayals and lines in the sand. And yet occasionally, I actually get to tell a room full of people that our next project is gonna be named after the Egyptian frog goddess of fertility and resurrection, and explain why. It's not without appeal.

Last night was pizza and Eternal Sunshine and couch-bed; today was supposed to be spent getting my life in order. Instead, through the miracles of scope creep, Little Detour and I mostly just spent the day wandering about, enjoying the burgeoning springtime. So in other words, best day ever.

New band name: Kra-BOMB!-let.

Posted by tederick at 4:19 PM in j-o-b & jedi antics & movies
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And we're out. I'd like to thank everyone for playing! We'll be back next week for more fun and excitement.

Posted by tederick at 4:34 PM in j-o-b
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Down six of ten, and got that all-over tired, partly thanks to spending the morning slinging boxes and partly thanks to a rather productive afternoon. Came home, lay on the couch, fell asleep. Perfect. Then it was laptops, and Spaced, and Sarafina and I ordered Swiss Chalet using a $50 gift card I've kept in my back pocket for just such an "I have absolutely no desire to leave this house" occasion.

Now it's couch and writing and this feeling just right, and trying to trick my brain into going with the daylight savings, cuz there's 2 days of training tomorrow and Wednesday, and early gettings-up. But I'm about ready to call it the best night ever, so I'm not too fussed either way.

"You know, I think we'll all be a lot better off when [Edgar Wright] goes back to England." - me

Posted by tederick at 10:18 PM in j-o-b & poetical
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BLUE GUY IS STANDING 10 FEET AWAY FROM MY CUBICLE. This could be it, internet!

He's leaving... what do I...

FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BOLD!!

....okay I'm back. I'm okay. I followed him downstairs but then he just hung around talking to some woman for like ten minutes. I think he knew I was catbirding him, too. Blue Guy has eyes on the back of his blue head.

Frick. To be continued, internet.

Now lookit: there are more than enough ways for people to get instantaneously in touch with me. MORE THAN ENOUGH. If I get one more BlackBerry Messenger add request, I am going to throw spitballs at a person. Email to both my work and personal account, plus SMS, Facebook, and voice, all come to my BlackBerry. Adding a sixth contact mechanism through the same single device strains credulity. I am available. Enough already.

I must now regretfully declare the U2 of the 21st century a shitty band, which is a sadness to me, because even when they were shitty in the 90s, they were still kind of awesome. No Line on the Horizon = third boring CD in a boring row.

Posted by tederick at 1:06 PM in j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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Yep… that went well.

This morning I saw an ambulance with “emergency” written on the hood in the usual mirror-writing, except that the writing was also upside-down, because apparently in whoever painted it’s version of the world, Objects In Mirror Are More Inverted Than They Appear. What a fucking terrifying vision of hell that would be, if every time you looked in the rear-view the road was flipped skyward, but everything in front of you was normal? I’m nauseous just thinking about it.

Are you like me: do you just not care a whit any more about Watchmen, at all? I don’t see how anything that might be on that screen on Friday would be worth this quantity of noise. They offered me some of the character posters at the Snail last week, free, and I turned them down. If there was a way I could download the experience of seeing the flick into my brain without actually having to take the time and trouble to go to the theatre and do it, I would. Stupid event movies. Stupid everything-that-isn’t-Terminator-fucking-Four right now.

Today is the first day in about a month that there are actual half-hour cracks in my meeting schedule. Who knows what I will do with this new, strange freedom?

It is also the first day upon which, in a variety of matters and in no way related to the actual temperature outside, I can feel the springtime coming, with all of the things that come with it. And baby, you ain’t kiddin’.

Posted by tederick at 11:05 AM in j-o-b & jedi antics & miscellaneous crap & movies
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Now officially getting high off the sheer speed of the thing, I am down day 2 of 10 exceptionally complex, hundred-task days, after which I intend to sleep deeply, and perhaps go for a nice long walk. It's quiet in the office after hours, and I am beginning to think I like it.

"Behold, one pissed as all fuck John Connor." - Harry Knowles

"Two winners and a loser is what we have. And that's unacceptable." - Me

"I'm Switzerland." - Co-worker #1
"What does that make me?" - Me
"You're Iceland." - Co-worker #2
"Great. So I'm not involved, but my economy is falling apart." - Me

Posted by tederick at 6:49 PM in j-o-b & jedi antics
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Spent most of yesterday afternoon doing some goal setting - I now have an actual notebook starting with plans, goals, strategies, and a KKGI matrix, along with a second hardbound Napalm Journal in which to collect bits about Captain Napalm. Had dinner with my lady and talked out some of my thoughts. I feel better. I had a lengthy and surprisingly enjoyable dream about babies and moviegoing, which we will presume to be a good sign.

I had an hour to kill last night between events and yes, I watched bits of Pirates of the Caribbean and blissed out. Haven't done that in a dang long time. Remember when I fell in love? I'm a lucky feller.

Arrived at work today after a nice morning walk and a coffee, to a yet more vasty avalanche of shit, and am putting into place my overall unstated mantra to not get so sad about it. Things will be as they are; the flux is elsewise.

Posted by tederick at 10:19 AM in j-o-b & jedi antics & pirates
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Wait a minute - Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day (yesterday)?? Jeebs, Canadian grade-school history class. How'd ya miss that one.

SOMEONE HAS HAD TOO MANY SUGAR PRODUCTS TODAY AND IT MIGHT BE MATT BROWN. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Today's question is: Who Is Blue Guy? Let me tell you about blue guy. Blue guy is a tall, stately fellow who I have noticed on my morning RT ride with quite a bit of regularity since I started working in Scarborough. He is called blue guy because he always wears blue. ALWAYS. Blue guy is obsessed with blue. He wears blue pants, or a blue jacket, or a blue tie, or a blue hat. ALWAYS. He has blue ribbins braided into his hair. Dude likes blue, I can appreciate that.

So anyways, I noticed blue guy from time to time, but lately I've been noticing him more. And what I've realized is, blue guy not only works where I work, blue guy probably lives in my building. I mean what are the odds of that? And is blue guy actually a government agent monitoring my behaviour? That's the key, man. WHAT IS BLUE GUY'S JOB. Am I going to have to fight blue guy to the death? Is he my new best friend or new mortal enemy or what? So many questions. I'm going to try to snap a picture of blue guy on the subway today and post it for you later, so that you can all keep an eye out for him.

This week was a roughie (not a roofie, though the hangover felt like one). Next week I'm going to Montreal for a few days. This weekend's Valentine's Day, hence the chocolate. And today I realized that it's the thirteenth of February and I have not gone snowboarding at all, nor made any plans to do so before end-of-season. WTF, internet. I gotta reorganize my life.

Posted by tederick at 10:36 AM in j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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Well, I would just rather be at home watching Transformers, is all. Movie, television show, whatever; I could take Megatron out of the nerd case and play with him, too. It's all good as long as it transforms; as long as it ain't here, doing this. Some days - and these days usually occur in summer - your head is just elsewhere. Permanently, systematically sitting in the lawn chair of the mind, with sunglasses on and eyes closed. Trouble being, these days are coming faster and more furious than ever. You can only sit through so many PowerPoint decks where you're told that the new BlackBerry is targeted at consumers as well as business clients - hint for the non-indoctrinated, they all are - before you realize that you're bored outta your fuckin' mind.

So, me and Allison Reid lit out of Dodge, hit the 'Bizzle for an hour and considered the situation, and the situation considered us right back. It seems that you don't ever really reach a "turning point" per se, but rather make a series of intelligent decisions that slowly and inexorably trend you towards the place where you are now, good or bad (or utterly without bias). Then you wake up and you're 32 and HOLY SHIT, YOU'RE 32 and you're here, not there, and nobody ever even asked your opinion.

The other day I was on Demetre's set again - photographs forthcoming, though I feel this weekend's shooting did not lend the spectacular visual gravitas of last weekend's shooting - and I spent the morning as a deep-background extra in a funeral scene, talking to myself, and the afternoon as a P.A./set runner/man about town, Millennium Falconing a TTC bus and sort of trying not to get killed. These things are line with how I usually spend my Sundays. At around 4:30 I was in the parking lot of the Loblaws at Christie and Dupont, trying to start a car that would not start, and faced with about a 30 minute walk back to Demetre's place and the pizza that I had personally ordered but not yet had a chance to sample, and it sort of reminded me of an adventure, or at least a good time. The sun was going down. The movie got done, and now I'm surprisingly hungry to be on to the next thing, if and when and whatever that is.

Posted by tederick at 1:12 PM in j-o-b & poetical
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Take your ease, people of the earth. George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States. At least not in any significant way. (Which differs from the past 8 years... how?) Obamabia (I spelled that wrong but I kinda like it like this) reaches its zenitharack tomorrow, and then who knows what happens. At what point in the week do you reckon they take Barack in the back and tell him about the proof of the existence of extraterrestrials? Do they wait till Thursday, then take him on a tour of all the downed spacecraft and alien corpses? Or do they just show him Crystal Skull on the weekend, and when he looks over at them quizically, they nod and say "yeah"?

Weird that at some point in the last year, and in spite of its suckitude, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull became the definitive treatise in my mind on the American relationship with extraterrestrials. Huh.

EDGAR WRIGHT IS MAKING SCOTT PILGRIM IN TORONTO STARTING REALLY SOON! I know we knew that already, but with day-and-date pix of the director standing in our current blizzardscape, it became scarily present in my mind. I pretty much don't agree with any of the casting, at all. (Mary Elizabeth Winstead? What? The?) Though i can certainly see a Culkin as gay, slat-eyelidded roommate Wallace. The last few weeks, though, have made me realize that if they ever get off their ass and make a Runaways movie, I'll probably have to just leave the country.

So after 2 weeks of near-nonstop computer troubles, I arrived at work today (sick, sad, tired) and found that THE GODDAMN THING WOULDN'T EVEN TURN ON. I'm on a loaner right now while they re-install Windows. The loaner has all the functional capacity of a brick of soft cheese. I can read and reply to emails, maybe. If I try real hard.

I think the next time I am sick, sad and tired, I am gonna read the damn tea leaves and stay on my damn couch. Damn it.

Posted by tederick at 12:27 PM in comix & dr. jones & goddamn politics & j-o-b & movies
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In the Kirk Cameron have-you-broken-a-Commandment test, I am ten for ten. YES! I have defied all of god's laws! This is a lovely gloss on Cap'n Malcolm Reynolds' line quoted above. I am as filthy sinful as it's possible to be, even if being so requires hanging my commission of murder and adultery upon defining murder (as the bible does) as having even a moment's hatred in your heart, and defining adultery (as the bible does) as ever having lusted after a woman, at all. Fuck, if that's the definition, I have committed adultery just by looking at my own girlfriend when she got on the train just now. (She's cute.) I cheated on her with... her. Way to go!

Today was one of those days they warn you about when they tell you not to sell out to "The Man." Phone never stopped ringing. Wall-to-wall meetings. Benefits claim rejected. Overdue invoice got sent to the wrong place. And so forth. God is aware of my sins, and he is comin' at me! HALLELUJAH.

I'm watching The Long Way Down, which is the sequel to The Long Way Round, which is the continued adventures of Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor on motorcycles around the world. This time, Ewan=no beard. It's sort of the perfect life, isn't it. Be an actor, become well off enough that you can afford and organize a massive 10-man expedition across the planet, go and tape it and have the world's best-produced home movie to watch in your rocker when you're a hundred and eight. Not a bad life. I've been thinking a lot lately about sustainability and where it's all going and what we're all supposed to be doing, and I guess chugging around the planet on a diesel engine isn't really useful along those lines, but then neither is sitting here, doing this. It's excess traded for excess, and I bet on a highway in Zambia, even burning through dinosaurs, you're probably on balance eating less of the world than I am right now. And there, there's wide open spaces and a sense of direction. Here everything's vertical.

Posted by tederick at 10:36 PM in j-o-b & jedi antics & obi-wan kenobi & the apocalypse & tv
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Last night I had a dream that I went back to 3QF, and found out that half my DVD collection was still there, along with Chris and Human Rights Lawyer, who were a) living there together in connubial bliss and b) surprisingly athletic. (This dream could not possibly be related to current anxieties about career, life planning, or the end of the world). The fact that I can remember this dream seems to demonstrate that I did in fact sleep, which does not tally with my recollection, but there ya go. I do recall shoving my now-22-minute Guy in the Sky assembly cut into a kind of rough order before retiring to the bedroom in a spectacularly bad mood, and after that there was a lot of tossing and turning and accidental punching of Zam. Which is fair, given her behaviour lately.

I watched Rhapsody in August the other day, which I rather enjoyed, and puts me within a single movie of getting to the end of Akira Kurosawa's rather significant body of work. (I do then have to do some back-catchup thanks to that Eclipse set of the postwar years that Criterion released recently.) I also redirected some Christmas Chapters money towards The Sinestro Corps War, which is shiny and absorbing and much more enjoyable than The Silmarillion which, Beren and Luthien aside, just ain't any fun any more. I also, after a treat of a date with my ladyfriend the other day, finally found that goddamned Joker, so I can stop prattling about that. I still wouldn't mind finding myself a pair of the socks, though.

Today, I am trying to ride out what has been a spectacularly frazzling work-week with a modicum of grace, before fading into the weekend. I may walk home.

Posted by tederick at 8:54 AM in 3QF & books & comix & dreams & j-o-b & movies & shinydisks & socks & tederick films & toys! & zam!
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Was today the worst day of my life? No. No, comically, I have had significantly worse days than this. Today was excruciating. Every single part of my body hurts.

"I cried. Like a baby. A hungry, angry baby." - Mr. Universe

"His game plan for 2009 is to increase revenue by between 4 per cent and 6 per cent, to slightly more than $10-billion; boost capital expenditures by 12 per cent, to $2.1-billion; and spend between $50-million and $75-million to eliminate more positions and continue restructuring." - Report on Business

Chickens chickens chickens. It's all about chickens.

Posted by tederick at 6:58 PM in j-o-b
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So,

I get up, get on the subway, get all the way to Kennedy station. At no point on my journey is any announcement made to the effect of "the entire Scarborough Rapid Transit line is down today." I arrive at Kennedy, find the entries to the RT blocked off. There is no signage, there are no announcements, there aren't even any TTC employees around to inform passengers as to where on the platform one might find a shuttle bus. When I ask a TTC employee for that information, he yells at me because he's just gotten on-shift and doesn't know. When I ask a second TTC employee for that information, he yells at me that the shuttle buses load where they always load, at the end of the station. (I presume he had somehow miraculously gleaned from my appareil that I could not, ever, possibly be someone who would not already have that information.) The driver of the shuttle bus announces that he is driving an RT shuttle bus from Kennedy to McCowan, and then drives to Scarborough Town Centre and stops. When I am still sitting on the bus, he asks me why. I tell him I'm going to McCowan. He yells at me, because no buses are going to McCowan and I should know this. I get over to McCowan, and find the station locked. An employee inside yells at me for trying to open the door. (The station is the only on-foot access point to Consilium Place, where I work. Well, the only one that doesn't involve trudging across an unploughed field that is four feet thick with snow.) I walk the rest of the way.

I wish I got to be as bad at my job as the TTC gets to be at theirs.

I arrive at the office to discover that the Tederick.com database has dumped the category information for every post on the site, so after retrogressing the database to Sunday afternoon I spend a half hour manually reconstructing the 20-odd posts created since then.

I receive one cancellation and two no-shows to my morning meeting, and think that perhaps I will go in a corner, drink my egg nog, and contemplate the mysteries of a world in which, on three and a half hours of sleep and in spite of all the aforementioned information, I am still in a somewhat humourous mood.

Posted by tederick at 9:29 AM in i hate the ttc & j-o-b & tederickdotcomdotcom
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• A jigsaw puzzle of me and Sarafina as adorable Japanese people in love
• Batman underpants (the bum says Batman; the crotch is Batman)
• Kill Your Boyfriend by Grant Morrison (from my girlfriend)
• little.com by Grant Steadman
• A Pirates of the Caribbean colouring book
• Chocolates!
• A Jack Sparrow Pez dispenser
• The 1960s Batmobile
• An American Express travellers' cheque which is, as my friend Gina pointed out, really an Iron Man DVD in disguise
• $50 to spend at Swiss Chalet.

Some themes are emerging.

And as for what I got Sarafina, I will be posting a thing about it soon. (With pictures.)

Today I am spending my time doing a manual, page-by-page migration of a legal compliance course that might just as well have been written by chickens. It's the worst thing I've ever read in my life. Honestly, the scribblings on our bathroom wall are more useful from a learning perspective. (Plus, they have pictures. Every mens' room wall has the exact same drawing of a penis - always the exact same. It's one guy, a guy with what I can only presume is an incredibly misshapen wang, going from bathroom to bathroom around the world, drawing that thing.) Well anyways. I didn't mean to digress quite so far there, but I'm bored and pissed. Learning shouldn't be crappy. Zwuh.

Well anyways, like the Jewel of the Nile says, when the going gets tough, the tough get goin'-ga-goin'-ga-goin'! Hoo! Ha! Hoo ha ha hoo!

Posted by tederick at 3:16 PM in j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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What surprised me more? The swank sweetness of the Novotel Aeroport, or the fact that apparently the French trust their partners enough to have semi-opaque french doors as the only barrier between loved ones' bathroom duties?

Posted by tederick at 1:38 PM in bathrooms of the world & hotels & j-o-b
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Today, my cat Zam is eight. EIGHT! That is a fat stupid age.

Also today, my team got me a 1960s Batmobile model to put on my desk (next to my other Batmobiles). I am all Batmobiled up over here. So far for Christmas 2008, Matt Brown: 2, rest of the world: 0.

But wait'll you see what I got YOU.

Tonight I have to do one of those things where I have ten different things to buy, at ten different stores, which actually form a straight line (well, more of an "L") between Yonge and Wellesley, and Queen and Spadina. So I guess I'll just walk along. I've been slowly back-filling the blog archive with material from before the Movable Type migration lately, and reading all my florid former prose has me riled up.

Posted by tederick at 4:09 PM in batman! & j-o-b & tederickdotcomdotcom & zam!
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In case you were worried that between Iron Man and Dark Knight, comic book movies were just getting too awesome this year, The Spirit is here. She's a good mother.

Holy. Moly.

I spent the entirety of the day - I mean, literally blocked off the calendar, sat away from the computer and ignored email, went through (and created) pages and pages of notes - planning. Planning for every single rock and eddy that's coming my way at work in the next 12 months. Creating strategy, building business cases, allocating resources, boiling down major objectives into teensy tiny tactics. Y'know what (unsurprisingly)? One day didn't sack it. So I'm gonna have to do more of it, as things continue to gliss down over the course of the holidays. But I got a substantial amount done today, enough so that I actually feel less than completely worthless. (I mean... wait... what? Good. I feel good.) Boy, sometimes you come around the turn on those double negatives and you're flying out of control through a guardrail and into a lake. And the lake is meat.

Now all I have to do is book the sixteen different holiday social events, and I'm made out of stars.

Anyone who wants to know what Bea Arthur looks like now can go over here, because the grand old lady has finally been inducted into the TV Hall of Fame, emphasis on grand old lady. Those hands. Wowahs. Anyways, I guess now I will literally never get to see Bea Arthur in person and I will spend the rest of my days kicking myself for not going to see her one-woman show back in '04. I am a mighty, mighty fool.

Those pics of Angela Lansbury (same page) made me remember to tell you that I am no longer calling my band Jessica Fletcher. It will now be called Queen's Royal Starship.

Posted by tederick at 5:28 PM in j-o-b & movies & tv
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I am now Facebook friends with Dorothy Zbornack, and I am going after Blanche Devereaux.

I could do without these 5 a.m. wakeup days when my brain instantly goes into "spin" and I end up with no better solution than to answer work emails. I'm sure this is only temporary, as my work life (along with everything else) is about to go into that gentle 3-week sleep. For all the ways it is damned inconvenient, I do love my city under snow. I stood in my living room at 5:30 this morning just watching it, and watching the steam from next door wash over the skycraper canyon in front of me. It's beautiful. I digitized aboput half of the Guy in the Sky footage yesterday - if nothing else, it's gonna look tremendous.

Still breaks my heart.

More Dan Aykryod news: in addition to his largely indigestible wines, the man has vodka available in crystal skulls. Now that's a quirky conversation piece I could get a handle on, if it didn't cost fifty bones (get it?) for a small bottle. I like that Dan Aykryod's career now basically revolves exclusively around mystical boosterism and the shlepping of booze. Relationship? Maybe?

I read Brian Azzarello's Joker on the weekend; on the whole it has been a year for Joker interpretations. Miller's tattooed dragon, Morrison's super-persona trashing and reinventing itself time and again, and of course Heath Ledger's dog chasing cars, which is not so much an interpretation as a wholesale revision, and far and away the most useful such revision ever done to the character. Azzarello's is somewhere in the middle. He's playing in what is essentially the Nolanverse crossed with the traditional comic world, and to reasonably good effect, all of the characters grounding more successfully than they do when Killer Croc is actually a giant crocodile. Plus, we get the first Nolanish appropriation of the Riddler, which one can presume is the first of many. It was like with the Joker genie out of the bottle in Dark Knight, Riddler secretly went from abysmal bottom-tier joke to "Next Interesting Villain" in everybody's subconscious minds. Hell, I've even got a sketch of him in my back pocket, which I doodled in the Annex the day after Halloween...

I feel better today than I have in many days, which might be denial or it might be grim acceptance. I'll take it, whichever it is.

Posted by tederick at 8:58 AM in batman! & comix & foodin' & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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I'm making a list and checking it twice, and on the list is terror. The constraints of good teamship prevent me from waxing too philosophical about the last two days, but I will say that if the responsible leaders of my organization were in the market to create a substantial quantity of pre-holiday fear, they achieved mightily. Bravo! Beyond that, their other achievements remain murky to me.

In the meantime, Nonreligiousholidaymas shopping. The list is surprisingly short this year, partially because I got some of the key items out of the way in November, and partially because I no longer spend time with any of my friends. Plus, I don't know if you heard, but the economy is in a downturn. And the Space Robot prorogued the shit out of Parliament - couldn't have prorogued it more in a hundred years of trying. I'm going to Nathan Phillips Square this afternoon to hear Jack Layton pronounce the word "parliament" in person. (I suggest you join me.)

Last night Daniel and I went to see Ballast, which made me think there's a very obvious and interesting idea for Demetre's villains/twins movie which I might try to put to paper. Ballast was also a rare moviegoing experience where I went in with literally no awareness of the content of the film, at all. And it also felt like the first movie I've seen in about four months, although I know that's not true. I have got to get out more. At some point in the next 4 weeks I should really see:

• Australia!
• Frost/Nixon
• Milk
• Rachel Getting Married
• Slum Dog Millionaire

to say nothing of all the movies coming out soon that I should also see. And I will confess a naughty craving to double-feature Twilight and Punisher: War Zone.

(Show me.... Matty Price!)

Posted by tederick at 10:34 AM in goddamn politics & j-o-b & movies
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Do you ever want nothing so much as to go home, drink rum, and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

"...but you don't, because you're in a hospital, with resuscitating equipment!!!" - Dorothy Zbornack

Posted by tederick at 2:26 PM in j-o-b & the rum diaries & tv
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Lord god, writing that thing for blogTO put a B-Boyz craving in me that could carve wood. The good news is, after what I would call a disappointing run of maybe 5 or 6 months at this place, the large chicken I laid hands on tonight was actually the best burrito I've had in a year. I wish it had been twice as long and three times as fat. I woulda eaten it all night.

I suppose that means I am officially going with Ian, who is opening another Burrito What (working title) in the Annex soon. I can't for the life of me think of a good new name for the franchise, though. Burrito Girlz makes the most sense, because... I mean, well, let's be realistic here. But I suspect that ain't gonna work for reasons both moral and legal. It wasn't till I found out you can forego the $500 prize for the equivalent value in burritos that I really started trying to think of something, anyway. Now I'm probably humped.

My work life is bleeding into my home life, by way of the BlackBerry. It took about 8 months but I am fairly well addicted to that thing now. It's tough times at the j-o-b and the result is a sense of always being "on," which is slowly frying my brain. Still, could be worse; my boss went to a 7:30 meeting today. On the day they send me an invite to a 7:30 meeting, I am firing myself.

In retaliation against all this, I am going to make egg nog. I am going to fully engage the spirit of the season by way of the mixing of eggs with creams and rums. I tell you this: I make a mean egg nog. And I might just sip at it, looking out the window when all the world's gone quiet.

After an 8-issue storyline, I give Secret Invasion a miss. Ultimately it just wasn't enough story to be worth all the falderal, and the endless tie-ins and also-rans in the other titles was enough to drive me clean out of the thing for 2008. Weirdly, I'd call the DC megavent more interesting to me overall than the Marvel one this year. I still don't have a sweet clue what actually happened in Batman RIP, but it kept me more engaged, which is more than I can say about any other DC title in five years.

I want that Joker. I want a lot of things, actually, which is most of my problem. Some nights, I get to sit on the couch and spitball some jokes with my lady. And that - that's all right.

Posted by tederick at 5:52 PM in blogTO & comix & foodin' & j-o-b
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The good news today is that my friends and colleagues in Mumbai are safe; the obvious bad news being that many people in the city, unfortunately, aren't. It's been a very dispiriting day, overall. We have a handful of Tederick.commies in that part of the world, too; if you're reading this, we are certainly thinking of you.

Sometimes when scary or sad things happen, or even if I'm watching a particularly glum episode of television, I call my girlfriend and tell her I like her. Well, come to think of it, I do that most days anyway.

On the good days at my job, I am essentially doing an impression of one of two different people who have been my bosses in my time at the company. On the really good days, I'm doing a combino-impression of both. Today was one of those days, and the good days always make me reflect on how much those two people added to my life. Earlier this week, though, was one of those days where I was doing a rough interpretation of the arrogant wanker I was in high school. We call those "bad days." On those days, I deserve whatever swordplay and stormy waters I get into. A minor slap-fight is small price for being a pigheaded noob.

Working late tonight, but from home, where my lovely couch does what I need it to do, and my task list takes care of the rest.

"Have you ever had the dream where the Cannonball is crawling up your leg with a knife in his teeth? Cuz I have." - Me

Posted by tederick at 5:01 PM in dreams & j-o-b & the apocalypse
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Not only is Chinese Democracy actually coming out on Sunday, not only can you actually listen to the whole thing right now on MySpace to prove it, but the Dr. Pepper thing is actually happening too. Get your free Dr. Pepper coupon for 24 hours starting at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Do it even if you hate the substance, because they owe us, man. They owe us for 1994 through 2008, man. They owe us for the last three tracks of The Spaghetti Incident? and the first two tracks of Lies. They owe us for the rock n' roll.

Here's where we're at as of this week:

• The TTC makes me so angry I want to punch chickens
• Werner Herzog's Nosferatu does not suck
• Harmful to Minors turned out to be a surprising page-turner
• I would be indebted to anyone who knows where I could find peppermint-striped pieces of 8 1/2 by 11 paper.

Meanwhile, here's an experiment you can try at your job. Don't turn your computer on. My computer ate its brain on Tuesday night and it took security and tech support a stupendous quantity of time to stop scratching their ass holes and actually fix the problem, so I spent Wednesday morning computerless, and was inspired to go the entirety of the day in like kind. I'm an e.learning guy. I needs me some computin'. But just leaving that godawful box in a drawer and sitting on the other side of my desk, working only with my phone and a piece of paper, was relatively liberating. I had my feet up a lot of the time, and I looked out the window somewhat, and I listened to music. I had useful conversations and stirred shit up. Give it a try, if only because when the apocalypse comes, you won't have your computer anyway. Be more of a pirate than not, is all.

Cleaning clown-goo off my fingertips and looking forward to an anniversariffic weekend.

Posted by tederick at 11:19 AM in books & i hate the ttc & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap & movies & pirates & sex (theoretical)
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Adam and I's crack scheme to buy each other do-it-yourself muppets for Christmas was tagged and bagged by the sudden unavailability of the product on the FAO web site, in favour of the same kind of "I.O.U." they used to deal out when the Star Wars figures ran out back in '78. Still, the notion is goddamned appealing, especially since we are entering into the project double-blind (i.e. Adam will design a muppet of me, I will design a muppet of Adam, and neither of us will see the other's designs until the toys arrive). Plus, this saves me the bother of ever having to figure out how to make a muppet of Stanley J. Keramidas. FAO can make the muppet Stanley for me, and muppet Stanley could then co-chair my team meetings from here on out.

Less than 2 weeks out from shooting Guy in the Sky and everything is peppermint paper and rock n' roll. I'll even have lavolier mics this time around - lavs, and no storyboards. I'm flying a whole new kind of plane this time around, and if things go really well, I'm gonna figure out how to shoot something on the Scarlet next year. I even have something like a mission statement, the rules of which I am consistently breaking on a daily basis but regardless, folded up in my wallet right now, alongside a poem that I like quite a bit. Inspiration started small but once it got going it was everything good and loud about the world.

In the meantime, I am Indiana Jonesing one step ahead of the giant rolling ball, until at least Thursday at 3. I have my boots on to help me with this.

"Well if service providers could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?" - me at a team meeting, paraphrasing Obi-Wan Kenobi

"Pickles are ruining my life." - this woman

Posted by tederick at 3:09 PM in ADAM & j-o-b & obi-wan kenobi & tederick films & youtubery
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I went to the doctor today and learned a few things:

1. I now officially weigh less than 200 pounds. This was the goal, lo those many years (well, a year and a half) ago when I was so stupendously overweight. This brings up an important point I've been wanting to make: for much longer than I've actually been in the process of losing weight, people have been coming up to me and exclaiming at how much weight I've lost. This is because I used to be fat, and probably in peoples' mind's eye, I am still fat. But this begs the question: if I was so fuckin' fat, how come none of you people actually told me I was fat? Fuck. It's all well and good for you to moon about how slender I am now, but jeez, help a brother out when he needs help, not when he's doing fine!

2. I am also now officially a migraine sufferer, which = I have way better drugs now. Rah.

Otherwise I am as fit as a fiddle (and no longer so fuckin' fat!) and with the exception of taking half the blood in my body, the process was painless. I might have a bit of degeneration in the bones of my neck: this is because I am so fuckin' old. But unlike being so fuckin' fat, being so fuckin' old is something absolutely no one has any problem telling me I am.

I spent yesterday learning how to make decisions rapidly, and also how to rapidly assess if you should make a rapid decision, by way of a secondary decision-making process. Yes: this is why the economy is collapsing.

Posted by tederick at 5:19 PM in j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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I am not particularly concerned for the safety of my job, although one must of course be continuously aware in today's economic climate that if one works for a large corporation (I do), it is at least within the realm of possibility that your indefatigable, we-make-toilet-paper-and-everybody-needs-toilet-paper job might become irrelevant with little or no warning. Like I said, I'm not too concerned about my current state of employ, but darkening financial times do bring out the paranoiac in people. Unrelatedly, I was reading Joey's blog (you know him as The Accordion Guy) - he worked with Jason and I on a project or two back in the Bearshark days, and of course he's enough of a Toronto fixture now for me to keep an eye on him on a semi-regular. He got laid off recently - not fired, laid off, the sort of thing that is probably going to infiltrate the web development industry rather spectacularly over the next 18 months or so, because as Sarafina pointed out the other day, if the end of the world came, what are we actually able to contribute? - and he's been writing about the job-loss, and I just wanted to say that if you're feeling at all precarious about your career right now, this entry will make you feel better. It's lovely. I mean, it might also make you feel worse, what with the step-by-step description of the laying-off process. But I promise, at the end, it will also make you feel better.

Hey Canada: you're voting in 7 days. What I would like, at this point, is a complete game change in Canadian politics, because the obvious reality is that this election has become The People Who Don't Want Stephen Harper Any More vs. The People Who Do, and if it were actually taken on those terms we would win by a fucking landslide, but instead we will be forced to endure a CRAP minority and directionless government in the midst of perhaps the greatest economic shitstorm my generation will ever see. That is fucking bad, man. Now would be a superb time for a would-be despot to do his thing.

Posted by tederick at 8:33 PM in blogsphere & goddamn politics & j-o-b
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"It's crack cream. You put it on your crack." - Matthew Price

ITEM!: I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever shoulda tried to go without internet in the home. The wi-fi signals in my building are locked up tighter than... uh... tight... things. But why complain, Matt? Well, in spite of my bravura technology-couldn't-possibly-be-that-important stance (and yours too), it's surprising just how much daily information you need to get off teh intrawebs. I'm not talkin' no Facebook email mumbo here, I'm talking simple stuff like where to go if you're bleeding from the head, or want a copy of Final Fantasy III. Fortunately, I have set myself up to have internet installed sometime early next week, whereupon I can finally start downloading some TV, which is the other thing I never shoulda given up.

ITEM!: I never shoulda cut all my hair off, either. As much as the long hair was driving me insane, the short hair is making me really, really sad. Who knew? I guess my internal image of myself changed sometime this year.

ITEM!: 175 emails upon my return. Pitiful.

ITEM!: Yesterday with my ladyfriend was pretty much the best day ever, from neck to nuts. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm doin' ok with that.

ITEM!: Things my house needs: soap tray, bath mat, chairs, a sofa (on order), plants, pots and pans, steamer trunk, framed Japanese Prestige poster, the internet, scratching post, a personality

ITEM!: Burn After Reading is rather tremendous, if puzzling; the flick fucking ends like a slap in the face and I would say it had done so too soon, were I not completely unable to figure out a single storyline, character arc, or plot element that had not actually been satisfactorily resolved at the moment the credits rolled. It feels a little like a magic trick, or more accurately, a game of three-card monte, but I respect the deftness with which I was tricked.

"I'm not set up to mold hard rubber." - Harry Pfarrer

Posted by tederick at 3:32 PM in 1701 & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap & movies & tv
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