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August 13, 2008

Rain is rain, but free hamburgers are free hamburgers.

"I'm not sure this is worth it!" - Maya

"BBQ chips? That's for junkies and crack whores!" - me

"Does it taste like free?" - Jacbo
"Tastes like wet free." - Admo

July 31, 2008

Google some fishes

One scathing email, two failed mover negotations, two large going-away meals within three hours of each other, one supervisory smackdown, three hotel getaway scheme needs assessments, one unplanned wander around the midtown area, and one half-accurate and hilarious description of my job later, I'm feeling quite a bit better thank you. I would like to go see Batman again, and then I think everything will be set to rights.

No more cell phone driving Ontario? OK. The telecommunications industry and its foibles has been much in my mind of late, but due to various conflicts of interest I will have to publish my findings at another time. Until then, please do not call me while I am driving.

In the more immediate future, I need a couch.

On another topic, I'm not entirely sure how we got a hundred and nineteen shows into this deal before stumbling upon the title "Mamo a Mamo," but we've finally arrived, and with that clever bit of pun titleage, my esteem for Matty Price has grown another hectolitre. Here's Mamo #119: Mamo a Mamo, in which further Batmania is discussed.

And in the "let's further prove that we just don't get it" sweepstakes, Sony is trying to widen the Spider-Man movie platform with a Venom spin-off. I for one couldn't be more thrilled: Spider-Man 3 being the only entry in the series that I can actually enjoy (I own it on Blu-Ray!) and Venom being the worst thing about that awful, awful movie, I must expect that a Topher Grace-headlined Venom flick would be fan-fucking-tastic, not just in a so-good-it's-bad way, but also in a so-bad-it's-hallucination-inducing sort of way. I can see molten rivers of obsidian CG goo in my mind's eye right now... hopefully they relocate the story to a smaller city in the American midwest where Venom arrives as a hapless outsider on the run... and have an orphaned kid involved, who forms a tender bond with the oil-slick-with-a-heart-of-gold Venom... It'll be the story of us, man, who we are right now, all us loners and losers and people made of glop out there. Yeah. That's moviemaking.

July 17, 2008

Ring ring

Me and my boss just tried the thing where you pop popcorn with your cell phones and it does not work. Those videos are fake. I feel fractionally better about my place in the world.

July 16, 2008

We're shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us

Well, and officially, it's summer and everything sucks. Any intimation of having to do anything at all is met by me with a massive IDONWANNA IDONWANNA IDONWANNA IDONWANNA IDONWANNA!! And I am not alone. This entire jive-ass turkey town is staring out the window (wistfully). If I were Ferris Bueller, I would take the Day Off. I am petulant, emasculated, dyspeptic, and blasé. It's something's-gotta-give mode at Tederick Central Command. (TCC: kicking the TTC's butt!)

If I were a fruit fly, I would be bumping lazily against the fruit, accomplishing nothing.

Ugh. To be on a beach, naked, with a bottle of rum...

June 27, 2008

The breakdown of communication, the depreciation of the dollar, and how Stella got her groove back

It's official: I'm a manager. It's also official: I am no longer able to keep up with my email.

I'm holding the line at work - barely - but at home, messages will sit in my inbox for near of a week before I get to them. You'd think the frickin' BlackBerry would make things easier in this regard, but no. The BlackBerry just means I have to process everything twice.

By the way, if anyone knows how to create a "you annoy the fuck out of me" friends list in Facebook, which blocks the status updates of all those irritating shmucks on said list, please kindly let me know.

I wrote this on my BlackBerry, by the way.

May 29, 2008

Three days later

Hello The Earth, I survived management offsite week 2008. At the tail end of same, I also ate way too much food and now I can't sleep. But otherwise, things are all right. I've probably blown all the fitness progress I made over the weekend on three days of bad snacks, but I can buy that back tomorrow and the next day and still be at least half-on ready for Sunday. At least, that's the working theory. (The working theory does not, it should be noted, include thunderstorms and other such bullshit. Are we ever going to get some nice weather around here? Is it possible that "nice weather" is one of those things we're going to have to learn to live without in a post Al Gore world, like bottles of water?)

So: with the exception of Martin J. McFly, every single major Hollywood hero from the 1980s will have been reincarnated in a pointless 21st century sequel once Beverly Hills Cop 4 (heh, that's funny, I wrote Beverly Hills Copy 4 by mistake) rolls off the projector reels in 2010. I like the Die Hard 4 take on the scenario, wherein the United States is so desperate to escape its current emotional landscape that it's resurrecting action heroes from the last time American marquee hearthrobs were tough and uncomplicated. But I know it's actually that having run out of fantasy novels to stripmine, and quasi-classic slasher films to remake, Hollywood is so badly out of saleable market-point ideas that they are actually left with repatriating the icons of the B-movie upgrades they were making three decades ago. 21st century, thy name is pastiche. But with Axel Foley (and, forgive me Michael, little chance of a Back to the Future 4) out of the way, I think we're out of quarters in even this gumball machine: who's next? The Tom Cruise character from Legend?

[Heart stops, realizes we've yet to catch up with the latter-day adventures of Maverick from Top Gun yet]

[starts humming theme music]

As it turns out, when you're all alone on a Wednesday night with a brain full of strategy and a belly full of too many foods, there really is nothing to do besides ponder the utterly imponderables, and wonder who's sleeping sounder than you.

May 21, 2008

I CAN'T SEE JUPITER!!!

"What do these vegan bean-eaters have against cream?" - Matt

I am very content, thank you; content and happy, the last several days were lovely, sunshiney even without the sun, fresh airy even when indoors, excellent in all respects, no you can't have any, go away. Sarafina and I closed the V-day weekend at Skin Tight Outta Sight, where there was much winnings of things and other merry-making, which was a perfect cap to a solidly enjoyable long weekend and involved a Boy Scouts uniform top. So... hot. Things have just resolved and clarified in new and exciting ways over the past few days, and look to further improve in the coming weeks. The only shock to the system was a rather unexpected launch into my new position at work - I'm basically in the management role as of right now. But that's okay, because I feel a lot more solid right now about what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, and where the major signposts are over the next 4 months or so. It was Sarafina's first day at her new job yesterday, too, so we debriefed our mutual awesomeness over sushi, and finished off The War of the Roses before bed. I'm liking all this. I have a slew of team meetings next week, and a very big exciting long weekend to look forward to in June, and I have to hire someone at some point. Otherwise the summer is looking clean, enjoyable, and Batman. Is Batman an adjective? It is now.

Gulu's getting married! Good for Gulu.

Aragorn's in The Hobbit! Good for Aragorn. Boy that seems to have freaked some folk out; I'm more worried that they'll try to shoehorn Orlando Bloom into the Elvenking's palace somewhere. More importantly, though, it looks like we're a few days out from confirmation of the screenwriting tasks on the flick - I'm assuming it's Fran and Phillipa for screenplay, Guillermo and PJ for story. But jeez lord, I want to know what the sequel movie deal is going to be. I don't get it.

I've been listening to "Desert Chase" from the Raiders of the Lost Ark score repeatedly all week. I think it is my very favourite piece of John Williams music, or at least is in the top three, or the top two. Everything that is different and better about Raiders vs. the other movies can be boiled down into that one track - a difference in mood, or intention, or something. We watched the whole trilogy on Friday night - don't do that, eh? It's hard. And it makes Raiders glow like a Shankara Stone, and Temple kick hard ass like a Thugee guard on methamphetamines. And Crusade sorta sucks all of a sudden.

Crystal skulls? I dunno. I'm excited, but very hesitant, about my commitment to Dr. Jones tomorrow night. But I'm going to enjoy seeing it with my girl and my best friend and Christy too, so it's sort of a win regardless of what happens in the eponymous Kingdom.

"And here... we... go." - The Joker

May 9, 2008

Alpert all along

By happy coincidence, I watched season three's "The Man Behind the Curtain" right before I watched last night's episode of Lost, "Cabin Fever." The two rhyme beautifully. The two darkest characters on the show - Ben and Locke - are both born in relatively horrible circumstances at the head of each episode; the mass Dharma grave (and resident corpse Horace Goodspeed) feature prominently in both; and let's face it, both episodes are creepy as fuck. (It's not every TV show that can actually make me nervous, but walking toward that fucking cabin is now shaking loose collywobbles born of every childhood nightmare about the woods behind the cottage.) But really, the most important thing about both episodes is that they kick us square in the face of the obvious: all this time, we really should have been paying closer attention to Guyliner. "Doctor" Richard Alpert, and his perennially boyish girl-eyes, has done some serious traveling of note, hasn't he? Come next season, mightn't we be saying things similar regarding one Matthew Abaddon, keeper of the greatest name in the history of great names? Who exactly was behind the wheel of the truck that hit young Swoosie Kurtz, anyway? Time will tell, and be damn wooshy about it in the meanwhile.

Regardless, last night's was indeed the balls-out goodness. The grounds shifted.

Grounds shifting further: I'll be stepping up to manage my team at work for the coming year. It's been in the works a while but only finally got announced today, so I guess I can actually talk about it. I'm excited. A lot of things that I had been working on since the day I started with the company came to a thrilling conclusion about six weeks ago, and at almost exactly the same time, this next major sequence of events got started moving forward. When I look at the sheer distance I've traveled in my two and a halfish years here, well... I sorta get vertigo. I owe one Old Man a cookie, that's for sure. Big tackle and mysterious ways. Came on like old leather.

All week I've kept having this weird dream that I buy The Golden Compass on blu-ray because I can't resist the foil wrapping, and another one that Indiana Jones is as strange and unsettling as the green M&Ms they've tied in - I mean, they're not really bad, but who looked at the silhouette of Indiana Jones in the prison of their dripping, subconscious mind and thought "mint"? What if his shadow in our eyes was wrong all along?

April 17, 2008

Three months' salary... before taxes???

Back at Worthington Labs in Vancouver BC, till late Friday night; I get Friday to do my own thing, and the other days to do all the other things. My packing this time was a model of utter stufflessness, one half-full carry-on only, and fully a third of the things I brought with me are staying here. I am an "everything you don't need goes overboard" kind of traveller.

For my flight over - and this I'm fairly happy with - I just sat for four hours and reviewed the Lord of the Rings scores with their liner notes and detailed track listings. Clicking from "track 2 - 2:17" to "track 17 - 8:53" to compare the development of a Ring sub-theme is sort of the biggest snobby geek-out I've had with my iPod in a good long while. It was illuminating on a lot of levels. Plus, I got to stare out the window. Everyone assumes because I'm big, I don't want to sit on the window. But then I never get to see!!

I don't smell like me, which is a problem; the terrorism thing means I can't bring my usual deodorant. I don't know how other humans walk around in a cloud of the filth that is a 24/7 Speed Stick. Plus, my perpetual traveling companion (my leather jacket) is still bloody overseas. I'm not Newman!

Is there no sun in this cursed country??? They've got a weather readout by the elevators that looks like it's been set on "cloudy" since the Truman administration. I wonder if it's controlled by levers and wheels, somewhere deep in the bowels of the gulf between Wall Centre North Tower and Wall Centre South Tower, and whether the man who works the levers has a huge grey moustache and is named "Edward."

In the plus column, Vancouver's insane geography is finally starting to make a weird kind of sense to me. If I completely give up on even trying to understand where the cardinal points lie (if someone tells me one more time that "the mountain is north" when the sun is clearly rising behind it, I am going to become murderous), I know how to drive from downtown to the office and/or the airport, with a stop in Kitsilano to go comic book shopping. Plus, great Mexican last night, and actual free parking... nice town.

April 4, 2008

Fin Fang Foom!

ITEM!: I launched 34 e.learning courses this week, a personal best. I told you I could dance.

ITEM!: I want to eat Jason Shawn Alexander's Abe Sapien art for breakfast, and have room left over for pie. That's my second comic artist crush in a week! I am a comic artist makeout slut.

ITEM!: Though predictably, BKV's Logan does not much with the suck.

ITEM!: Red Tent Sisters is starting Menstrual Yoga this Sunday. If you menstruate, consider menstruating with them.

ITEM!: There is a store near my house with a sign in the windows that reads HEM PANTS SAME DAY, but because they ran out of space on both lines in mid-scrawl it actually says HEMPANTS SAMEDAY, and I think Hempants Sameday would make an outstanding name for a butler, and that the Hemp Ants would be superlative villains for an eco-themed comic book about disease.

ITEM!: I finally have an idea that will resurrect Extreme Steve, and I have had this idea for a month, and I have not found time to do it, which explains why Extreme Steve needed resurrecting in the first place.

ITEM!: Some days are all about whether you go into the big scary with a scaredy-cat tremble, or if you walk in whistlin'.

FROOT!!!

April 3, 2008 8:35 PM

Safeword

April 1, 2008 3:13 PM

If you like anything, you will love Nextwave! BOOM!

March 28, 2008 1:22 PM

Predictive text entry

March 27, 2008 7:46 PM

The Batmen and the Spidermans

March 18, 2008 1:41 PM

Yo ho ho

March 14, 2008 9:28 AM

Snowblind

March 10, 2008 1:55 PM

Get stoned and watch The Empire Strikes Back

February 29, 2008 5:10 PM

Where's teh interwebs?!

February 23, 2008 6:15 PM

Half done

February 20, 2008 2:11 PM

I'm dating a rock star

February 18, 2008 11:20 AM

This bed is on fire

February 14, 2008 7:36 PM

Cassandra's dream

February 13, 2008 7:37 AM

I want this rum

February 11, 2008 2:05 PM

I am disinclined to acquiesce to that request.

February 11, 2008 11:02 AM

I am the Nosmo King

February 8, 2008 6:42 PM

The new Captain America

February 7, 2008 11:20 AM

I got the best one.

February 5, 2008 1:39 PM

Fuck this week.

February 1, 2008 5:52 PM

Such sweet sorrow

January 31, 2008 10:44 AM

All you need

January 24, 2008 10:50 AM

A thousand words

January 17, 2008 6:14 PM

À propos of nothing...

January 15, 2008 9:07 PM

Hey, I've died twice

January 12, 2008 6:09 PM

Barbossa is hungry

January 8, 2008 5:53 PM

Yeah yeah yeah

January 2, 2008 9:17 AM

Love is blindness

December 21, 2007 3:51 PM

Peter Street is open, and we are serving burritos.

December 20, 2007 5:39 PM

Maelstrom!!!

December 10, 2007 3:21 PM

Death does not wait for you to be ready

December 7, 2007 6:45 AM

I guess I'll die another day

December 6, 2007 4:57 PM

Hard part's over

December 4, 2007 9:27 PM

The girl in question

November 30, 2007 6:28 PM

Yowk yowk yowk

November 29, 2007 5:39 PM

The further adventures of

November 28, 2007 10:57 PM

Parade

November 25, 2007 2:18 PM

No life!

November 12, 2007 9:28 AM

They say it was predictable, and yet, no one predicted it

October 31, 2007 5:20 PM

The demise of the grand scheme

October 30, 2007 6:03 PM

The minute I stop telling you how awesome you are, you can assume I'm in love with you.

October 19, 2007 1:36 PM

Live fast.

October 11, 2007 11:46 PM

Love will tear us apart

October 9, 2007 6:52 PM

It hurts and I can't remember sunlight

October 5, 2007 2:35 PM

It's always about the girl

October 2, 2007 10:59 PM

The virgin queen

September 18, 2007 1:03 PM

Have some soup

September 5, 2007 11:28 AM

Zone

September 4, 2007 7:13 PM

Oh, inverted world

August 20, 2007 2:38 PM

Sera got scabby

July 17, 2007 6:26 PM

Begin landing your troops

July 9, 2007 9:51 AM

Over the edge, over again

June 19, 2007 11:02 PM

Flip the ship

June 12, 2007 5:06 PM

Last stop before the end of the world

June 5, 2007 3:25 PM

Girls are nothing but trouble

May 29, 2007 9:45 PM

Androids/dream/electric sheep

May 17, 2007 2:04 PM

Two words: Tino.

May 1, 2007 8:45 PM

This happens at my office every single day.

April 28, 2007 10:10 PM

You drift too far will you swim towards the shore

April 21, 2007 10:18 AM

God is not noodly

April 11, 2007 9:24 PM

West of Windsor

April 2, 2007 5:18 PM

Well, yes

March 29, 2007 10:37 PM

La Nausée is a novel by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.

March 23, 2007 6:02 PM

Go get Buffy next week

March 14, 2007 6:01 PM

I want that ship.

March 7, 2007 6:02 PM

Abandon Toronto!

March 1, 2007 3:55 PM

The end of the war

February 21, 2007 7:19 PM

Why do you act so stupid? You know that I'm always right.

February 20, 2007 10:24 PM

I don't believe in panic, I don't believe in fear

February 16, 2007 10:46 AM

In my experience...

February 14, 2007 4:00 PM

The girl who could not feel pain

February 13, 2007 10:53 PM

Time and music slowly dissolving

February 10, 2007 1:33 AM

I am not lost.

February 8, 2007 10:55 PM

Scribed round the edges

January 29, 2007 6:09 PM

Your Monday morning Meatwad

January 29, 2007 7:13 AM

It's one of sixty-two.

January 20, 2007 3:54 PM

Your Friday evening Frylock

January 19, 2007 9:38 PM

Teenage F.B.I.

January 17, 2007 8:01 PM

Strange currencies

January 15, 2007 9:33 PM

Jurassic park

January 4, 2007 10:48 PM

James and the complete and utter lack of a giant peach

January 3, 2007 10:53 PM

Hey, Habanero

January 3, 2007 7:09 AM

James fucking Bond.

December 28, 2006 4:15 PM

I saw a penis on the Internet today and I thought to myself, "Well, that's... that's just fine."

December 19, 2006 1:28 PM

Dans le Montreal avec la Marie-Sylvie et also la poutine!!

December 15, 2006 9:41 PM

Girls on roller skates punching the sh** out of each other

December 12, 2006 10:37 PM

The first time I smoked guess what? Paranoid.

December 4, 2006 7:28 PM

So basically we're as confused as ever, but with paper now.

November 27, 2006 2:43 PM

The chinaman is not the issue here, Dude.

November 20, 2006 7:26 PM

Matt is both super and girly.

October 26, 2006 9:38 PM

Give me a minute and I'll tell you the setup for the worst joke ever

October 23, 2006 9:26 PM

Wherein a decision is made regarding the state of my fingernails.

September 26, 2006 10:35 PM

First among the fallen

September 25, 2006 6:23 PM

Party!! (1)

September 22, 2006 9:01 PM

I can get you off. Maybe not the boat...

September 6, 2006 8:37 PM

T Minus

August 29, 2006 8:29 PM

She is a Chechnyan prostitute, and you will refer to her as such.

August 25, 2006 10:55 AM

Two computers at once

August 21, 2006 5:24 PM

Why I want to throw an egg at Bendis' head

August 14, 2006 10:18 PM

mobility

August 10, 2006 9:28 PM

Because I'm stupid.

August 3, 2006 9:34 PM

Prologue

August 2, 2006 6:49 PM

Wheel of fortune

July 31, 2006 10:02 AM

This is NOT an indictment of your opinion of Seven Samurai

July 11, 2006 7:30 AM

You can't spell Brangelina without bran

July 6, 2006 7:38 PM

An evening of well-mannered frivolity

July 1, 2006 11:36 AM

Super, man.

June 28, 2006 4:04 PM

Oddments and tweaks

June 27, 2006 6:49 PM

The second least helpful advice

June 23, 2006 11:18 PM

Polysporin

June 23, 2006 10:55 PM

Right down in the house

June 22, 2006 9:27 PM

Propackstination

June 14, 2006 8:35 PM

Bad first dates

May 30, 2006 5:37 PM

How I spent my TTC strike day

May 29, 2006 7:35 PM

Detox?

May 22, 2006 12:27 PM

This was a two-shower day.

May 5, 2006 6:56 PM

Split infinitives

April 26, 2006 8:24 AM

Excellent socks

April 25, 2006 8:03 AM

Lo for the coffee

April 18, 2006 10:37 AM

Junior high

April 13, 2006 6:02 PM

Please. You think if I could Jedi-mind-trick this one, I wouldn’t come up with something better than "you deserve to get paid"?

April 12, 2006 8:11 PM

Thank you for introducing me to the girl of my dreams who I can never, ever be with

April 11, 2006 10:03 PM

Compliments are confidential.

April 8, 2006 11:21 AM

I'm not drinking any FUCKING MERLOT!!

April 6, 2006 3:16 PM

Baby, you ain't kiddin'.

March 22, 2006 9:55 PM

C for Clenfretta

March 18, 2006 11:33 AM

Bran-day

March 15, 2006 9:41 PM

Last man standing

March 10, 2006 8:06 PM

Moroccan wad

March 9, 2006 8:24 PM

Routing

March 8, 2006 10:30 PM

No, you're not talking

March 7, 2006 5:14 PM

Either sex or a conversation, ideally both

February 28, 2006 9:13 PM

Fuck sick.

February 27, 2006 3:45 PM

I always sleep with my guns when you're gone

February 23, 2006 6:47 PM

Microsoft: please take my penis into your mouth and apply a pleasurable sucking motion as I become erect and then, ultimately, achieve orgasm

February 9, 2006 6:14 PM

Whack your support person

February 6, 2006 8:06 AM

Nice dead ferret

February 5, 2006 10:43 PM

If droids could think, there'd be none of us here

February 2, 2006 8:26 PM

This here? Oh, it's just my package. God delivered it, I signed for it, the world keeps on spinnin.'

January 30, 2006 9:08 PM

Diagnose this

January 23, 2006 6:03 PM

Girls smell nice.

January 13, 2006 7:06 PM

More video. Simulated conversations. Play.

January 12, 2006 7:40 PM

If my calculations are correct, when this baby gets up to eighty-eight miles per hour, you're gonna see some serious shit

January 10, 2006 11:17 PM

Keep living in denial, Bernice

January 4, 2006 9:15 PM

Numfar! Do the dance of shame!

December 30, 2005 7:57 AM

The golden claw

December 20, 2005 8:00 PM

The longest night of the year

December 20, 2005 5:50 PM

Daytime

December 19, 2005 9:16 PM