The word of the day is: ambisinister.

So the Yellow Wall got shanooked last night in the playoffs. Well, not entirely shanooked. We got shanooked in the first half: 3-0 for the bad guys going into halftime. Then we (and by "we" I mean "David and Demetre") scored 2 quick goals at the head of the second half, suggesting that we were going to come back strong for either a shootout tie or an outright win. But then the bad guys put Evil Crazylegs on defense duty for the remainder of the game and we just couldn't get a single fucking thing past him. Still, it was a solid game overall and a not entirely disappointing end to a solid season, even if we walk away shirtless. Shirtless! Fie.

I am rapidly, however, turning into a creaky old man. I popped my knee about six weeks ago and I tell ya, it has hurt progressively more with each soccer game since. Nowadays when something like this happens there's a part of my brain that says "Is this one of the things that's going to be with me for the rest of my life?" Like when I started taking daily medication for my thyroid, for example. I looked at that cluster of white pills and thought "every day, for the rest of my life." Getting old is weird.

It used to be, my body would start to feel achey and abused by around the middle of the fall season, Thanksgiving time, telling me that the end of the soccer year was coming and that my body could use the 5-month rest before starting up again next year. This year, though, the aches started in early July. For this and many other reasons, I'm skipping out the rest of the year. Am I "gettin' too old for this shit"? Maybe.

"There are exactly 3 things in the Karate Kid movies that are great: the kick at the end of the first film, the entire second film, and the tag line for the third film." - me, over drinks last night.

Posted by tederick at 10:11 AM in sockey
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Well, this rarely ever happens, but

It's just a blip, caused by my opponent and I both registering our scores so early after the game. But what a game. On no subs, we held a strong team to a shutout, and scored on them once per half. We played our standard roster in the first half and then changed it up to 1 offense, 1 mid, 2 defense, 1 sweeper for the second half, and it just drove the bad guys bugfuck crazy. I played offense - me! I literally stood in their half for the entirety of the latter of the game, waiting. I didn't connect with the one beauty pass from Dave, which otherwise would have got me my annual goal, but otherwise it was a stupendous game all around. Man, we are on an uncanny good ride this season. I'm missing the double-header next week for some cottage time, but I expect that works in the team's favour.

Posted by tederick at 11:32 PM in sockey
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Spider-Man 1. It was Spider-Man 1. And now Danny Elfman will now be a selly-outy sucky wanghole for ever and ever amen.

Yesterday my soccer team won! Which is frickin' unheard of! And I (me personally) had an actual good play! Which is also fairly rare! So tonight's the night for betting on horse lotteries, folks. If it weren't for the TCSSC shipping us further and further into the hinterlands of Ontario on fields that can absolutely not be qualified as "Toronto" or "Central" (or even "Social" or "Club," so I guess really the league should just be called "Sport!" with an exclammation point), I'd say this soccer season is shaping up fine.

Meanwhile, the city of Toronto stole my blue boxes. All four of them. They were there, they were beautiful, they were mine, and now they're gone. We are reduced to pitching empties out the kitchen window at the upright bin in the driveway. Who do you call to charge the city of Toronto with theft? 3QF is going to make it to the end of our tenancy on fucking fumes. By August 31 the only things left in the house will be a broken kitchen faucet, the noise the fridge makes, and six floorboards.

Posted by tederick at 12:36 PM in 3QF & movies & sockey
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Well, here comes a big motherfuckin' storm. Rock on, Toronto!

Being now quite thoroughly besotted with all things Scott Pilgrim, I went searching through the stacks this morning for the Free Comic Book Day issue I picked up back in '06... and found it undeniably gone. I AM SO PISSED. Admittedly, there was a "get rid of the FCBD garbage" comic stack purge earlier in the year, but being as Free Scott Pilgrim is one of the three FCBD titles I can actually specifically remember enjoying, I'm sorta irritated that it's missing and stupid shit like the Viper Comics sampler survives. Stupid piles of garbage and nonsuch! They foil me.

So what else is going on? Well, it was goddamned hot over the weekend, that's one thing. The natural answer was: barbecue. But the problem with that was: I don't know much about barbecues. So I did proceed to, if one is looking at it technically, purchase the briquettes that go with a non-gas BBQ, and then used them on a gas BBQ. The result was... er... significant. Fortunately, nobody got blowed up or died, and there were iced creams enough for all. Praise.

Plus! Soccer! It was a hot sonofabitchin' humid mosquito-infested oh-god-are-dinosaurs-coming-out-of-those-trees-to-eat-us? game last night, but we held a decidedly excellent 4-4 tie in spite of being outnumbered 148 to 1. It was our Crazylegs vs. their Crazylegs (ours won), Everywhere She Needs To Be Stacey like a goddamned psychic defensive dervish, and The Man With No Name Whose Name Is Actually Demetre with seemingly boundless energy and laconic squinting. The memories more than make up for the morning ouches.

This BlackBerry Pearl deal is crazy! Did you know I can receive my email while on the go? The world is insane, and sushi is delicious.

Posted by tederick at 4:27 PM in comix & foodin' & jedi antics & sockey
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Da, da, Iron Man! Deedle deedle deedle-da Iron Man!

(Yeah. That's actually more fun than the movie.)

Free Comic Book Day was lovely, thank you, in rather the inverse of the normal way; it was raining and cold out, so instead of visiting all the comic book stores, I just went to my favourite one and hung out. This means I missed the weed march in Queen's Park and did not get huevos rancheros for lunch, but I did get throttled by the Joker. Plus, after three years of not a week going by where I didn't wish I'd bought the Takara Batman back in '05, they finally came back into stock, my Snailers did a little whamma jamma to secure one for me, and I bought the motherfucker. And... it's... i n c r e d i b l e . Razor-accurate and clockwork-precise. Big Fuckin' Hellboy's legacy is nicely represented in Awesome Fuckin' Batman.

One does not generally go to FCBD for the free comics any more, because they so obviously suck. So this year, I only picked up 2: X-Men and Hellboy. Well I haven't read Hellboy yet, but I'll tell ya... that Mike Carey issue of X-Men is a stunner. For one thing, it's an actual issue. I mean, it's not some 6-page cheat story or flight of fancy; it's a real one-off in the real X-Men world dealing with my other favourite new X-kid out of the last five years, the skittish, fairy-winged Pixie. It's drawn like a brick shit house, solidly told for a Carey story, and given that the whole Pixie character is just so clearly a love letter to his hopes and fears for his own teenage daughter, it's sort of... awesome. The whole thing has me paranoid: what if the freebies were all this good this year?

On Sunday morning, I had the best cup of coffee I think I've had in a year. Then I went to hang out with my man Jesus - the saviour! It's been about... what? Ten years since I've been to a Catholic church? It was Sarafina's goddaughter's first communion yesterday, so we all drove out to B-fo and made with the Jesus bread. Church was noisy. They actually did the reading (well, one of 'em anyway; I'm sure there's more than one) about making disciples of every nation. You know, the one that makes Dubya touch himself under the covers at night. Here it is in lolcat. I liked it because it made me feel like I was getting the complete experience, and took my mind off the endless stand!-sit!-stand!-kneel!-sit!-stand!-donate money! rigamarole. I felt like I was in a Koodo ad.

(Zing!)

After hanging out a while, we jetted back to T.O. so that I could rebuild the Wall for the seventh consecutive year. You know what? I think we had our best first soccer game of the season ever. We held onto a 2-1 advantage until 3 minutes before the end of the second half, then had to settle for a tie, but for a first game back after six months of apathy, I don't think it could have gone better. Soccer is hard, but I likes it. Goddamned freezing as fuck last night, but I'm sure I'll be missing it when it's 35 degrees and we're playing the flatlands in full sun.

Iron Man '10, Thor '10, Cap '11, Avengers late '11. Whatthefuckaretheydoingggggg.

My Black(Berry) Pearl is up and running... I've tarried here long enough... happy week everybody.

Posted by tederick at 8:00 AM in batman! & comix & jedi antics & movies & sockey & toys!
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The best thing that can happen at a playoff happened today:! The other team didn't show up!! Because they feared us. Default win, wooooooooooo! So Yellow Wall is now aiming firmly for the middle of the standings in next week's final final. And I gotta say... spending a couple of hours this afternoon shooting at Chris and Stacey didn't suck either. (Hmmm... actual soccer practice. Novel idea.) I've said it before and I'll say it again: no matter what else, Wall wins on spirit every single time. Rah.

D-Coc and I went to see No Country For Old Men last night and I found that it was not to my liking. The evening also served as an impromptu celebration of the conclusion of our Secrets movie project, which was hatched on an evening very much like this one back in April. Hopefully y'all are still planning to come to the One Minute Film Festival in 9 days and will understand better what I am talking about at that time.

Teen Girl Squad's party was in full swing when I got home; I woke up again at around 3:00 because my toys were vibrating in time with the sub woofer downstairs. A brief but restive sleep later I bounded out of bed at 7:45 and went for my regular coffee, and ended up making a whole morning thing of it: coffee, crepes, reading Iron Fist and working on Snapdragon. It was sorta pretty much awesome. Oh, I love my little comic book that's not yet a comic book. I really think it's getting somewhere; it has a shape and a flavour and a meaning and at least one line that I think is genuinely, spectacularly funny. I'm doing some last revisions before I start passing it around to readers. And then... yikes! An artist? Could there be art? There could be art. Gotta get a few more pages done on Terra and then I think we could begin to call 2007 The Year I Started Writing Comics.

Posted by tederick at 4:15 PM in 1MFVF & movies & sockey & the process
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I took a blow to the head yesterday, Internet! I was going in for a header during soccer and the guy coming at me went in for the very same header. Our heads collided, pulverizing my delicate brainmeats. I tell ya, that is some full digital Dolby surround sound awesomeness when that happens. Anyways now I have a bump on the noggin (diagnosis? bad babysitting!) and a general unwillingness to move quickly or think deep thoughts.

Trying to get my leg over the list of movies I haven't seen yet, Matty Price and me went to see American Gangster last night; I was disappointed. It's not that it's a bad film, per se, just relatively unaffecting. The key to making the Goodfellas structure work (and it's not just for gangster movies; it usually also applies to rock biopics, or any other story where someone starts from humble beginnings, the going gets good, and then it all goes to hell) is that the on-the-way-up part of the story needs to be really fuckin' fiun. That way, you get to enjoy the characters and give a fuck that they'll be driving around with a bunch of cocaine in the car while being tailed by an FBI helicopter in the third act. Here, I weren't feelin' it. But between this, Grindhouse, and No Country, there's no denying that Josh Brolin's having a hell of a year.

I am using my bonus hour today to do some patchwork on Terra - haven't been into that script in a dog's age, so not exactly sure what I'll find when I try to set my mind into it, but I owe what I owe and there's nothing like a solid challenge on a cold Monday morning.

Oh and by the way: if I wasn't crushing like a fool before, I sure as fuck am now. Oh life!

Posted by tederick at 6:49 AM in movies & sockey & the process
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I started a new scheme this morning - a new, crazy scheme! Owing to the fact that I am always too tired to write when I get home from work, I am now waking up an hour earlier, and writing before I go. Holy madness and balls-ass shit that's clever. And the really good news (in terms of behaviour reinforcement) is that the first time out, I smacked it out of the park - six pages on Snapdragon including the key beat for the second issue and one sweet motherfucking My So-Called Life hommage on page 17. I'm using Snapdragon (comic) as the warm-up lap before starting Pandaemonium (screenplay). The latter has been knocking against the inside of my head rather fiercely since I thought it up a month ago, and yeah, it's time to put the rubber on the road.

And incidentally - Bendis is right, Final Draft is awesome for writing comics. One of my major challenges writing Terra and now Snapdragon was the sheer quantity of time it took to format everything as I went along in Word, which is not the friendliest program ever; it was seriously cutting into my mental flow and dropping my page count to a snail's pace. Well not so much any more, my people; I'm flying through the setups now. Oh Bendis. You have earned your egg.

Once again for soccer yesterday, nobody showed up, but after we had defaulted to the other team we had a rather rousing just-for-fun game, and fun it was. The Red Queen was in play, Stacey was teasing me relentlessly for everything, and Crazylegs... well, that man's got some crazy legs. I love my team. I know I say that a lot, but damn, it is just so freaking rare in my life to see a group of people who are just out to have fun and be decent.

And then Jessi cooked us a mighty dinner - she's handy to have around, that one - and we watched some of my flicks, including Bone Daddy 2 which I haven't watched in forever. Oh, and watching a total non-Star Wars person enjoy Far, Far Away as much as she did? Warms my wookiee-lovin' heart.

It is definitely time to move the catalogue forward, though. Looking at my tapes last night, I was struck by how old it all felt. I've finally got a shoot date on VCR 9, but I'm looking forward to moving stuff that is really not of the order of the rest. I've got a hunger on in a big way right now.

Posted by tederick at 10:59 AM in sockey & tederick films & the process
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So I suppose I was tired. Going to soccer was clearly a mistake; in fact, signing up for the entire fall season might have been a mistake. But I went to the game intending to have a nice easy time of it, and instead ended up playing the majority of the game and nearly dying. I came home, watched Batman, and promptly went into a coma. Slept for twelve hours straight without moving, and wouldn't have woken had I not had to go to the doctor for a blood test. Which, on an empty stomach, proved an exercise in hilarity! I got screened for Hep due to the tat, and then had to slog out into the middle of buttfuck to pick up our gigantic new soccer net. You know, the one we're supposed to take on the TTC to the games in the middle of nowhere. Oh TCSSC. Why, why, why.

Oh: I lost over 20 pounds. Actually I probably lost even more than that, and then gained some of it back in the last two weeks. I'm going to get back on the horse with added exercise and better diet, pronto. I plan to be under the deuce by the end of November. Why not? Heroin is so chic again, and with the semi-beard I look like a dire individual.

As I've now been asked several times, I'll clarify: DVD bankruptcy does not apply to birthday presents. DVD bankruptcy, book bankruptcy, toy bankruptcy, and girl bankruptcy shall all be temporarily suspended for the next five calendar days. After that, it's on. I suppose the real goal over the next three months is to see if I can eliminate every single thing in my life. Just, you know, to see what happens.

Now I'm charting out my master plan on my bedroom wall. You know, like in Back to the Future II.

"Yes. Great. I wish you hundreds of fat children." - Inara

Posted by tederick at 1:15 PM in miscellaneous crap & shinydisks & sockey
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Well we didn't win. Got pasted, actually. But hey, fuck it: best season ever. Best team ever, best everything ever. I had a great time with this season, learned tons, and wish it could have gone on another ten games. But even now, some of the faces are changing and the fall season needs organizing. Thank god I have a loud voice.

It is quite the full moon tonight, Internet, if you're outside and looking around.

Giles says Ripper is happening. Well that's not really what he says, is it, if you really read it, but that's how it's being reported. For some reason I find the idea of a BBC-produced Buffy spinoff very comforting. Much more so than if it was an American-produced Buffy spinoff, for example. Perhaps it just feels like there is significantly less opportunity for the usual Whedon network fuck-arounds. Surely, the British don't fuck with anybody?

Thank goodness I'm bankrupt, because otherwise I would be sorely, sorely tempted to trade up to this, just because I like the packaging so gall-darned much and am tantalized by how much space it would save on my shelf. Man, I have a problem.

OK: malaise over with, because I now know exactly what my life is about, for at least the next three weeks. Here we go.

Posted by tederick at 10:58 PM in joss & shinydisks & sockey
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The format war just became interesting again, as Dreamworks and Paramount kowtow to the Microsoft megabucks by going HD-DVD-exclusive. Fuck, and here I was actually ready to call this war "over." Oh well. The first blu-ray disk I shall purchase can be peeped here.

Speaking of war, last night was the best soccer game ever. We were playing the same team we suffered a really frustrating defeat to last week - our team just basically disintegrated in the second half of that game, paving the way for them to come back from a 3-0 deficit to a 4-3 win. Well, none a' that shit last night. It was our first playoff game of the season and with the chips down, Yellow Wall really pulled it together. I mean, we were just on form. Great communication and teamwork throughout, excellent application of strategy to counter aggressive moves from the opposition, and just a general sense of fun without losing focus. I'm really, really pleased. And this means that yes, we are in championship competition for the first time since 2004, and yes, I'll be buying the drinks if we win next week. Who's the wall? WE'RE THE WALL.

Don't you hate it when your iPod inexplicably refuses to shut off in its resting state and just quietly eliminates your batteries over lunch? Of course you do! Because you, the reader, care about the issues of our time.

You know, if anyone around here actually understood what Fight Club was about, I think they'd have a serious problem with my space monkey.

Posted by tederick at 2:38 PM in j-o-b & shinydisks & sockey
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Hangover. Harry Potter hangover. While I could not help but remark, last night, how nice it was to be reading anything that wasn't Harry Potter - there are other stories and characters and events in the world, oh my! - after my short respite I am now starting my second read on Deathly Hallows. Because otherwise, y'know, the DTs. Nonetheless I am feeling downright funky all over. It's like having the same dream two nights in a row. Plus I'm inexplicably exhausted. I think I'm not eating well enough or getting enough exercise or something. I felt so completely wiped and exhausted this afternoon that I came home from work early. It's not as much fun as it used to be, now that looking at porn has lost its appeal. Instead I'm cruising celebrity blogs, because I needed more reasons why I am better than Zach Braff.

Here are the recent non-Potter bullet points:

• Serenity Rose: gloriously healed!
• Mamo #90: the death of my headset!
• New Firefox tab handler: pissing me off.
• One minute movie shoot on Saturday: sunburny but excellent. I can still make it up as I go along, like a champ.
• Cottage plans for the weekend: trembling mightily.
• Yellow Wall: dominating first half of season; second half absences threaten the record.
• Urge to blog: virtually nonexistent. Additionally my blogTO contributions have all but dried up. Have I lost my perspicacity?

Posted by tederick at 4:16 PM in h-pot & podcastery & scars & sockey & tederick films
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Restless, unfocused dreams last night - at one point I was trying Indiana Jones' hat on over and over again; at another, I was about to sit my OWLs at Hogwarts and was flying into a panic because I couldn't remember Wingardium Leviosa - which even I knew was ridiculous, given that it was the first thing we learned in first year. Then Cripps showed up and it all went to hell, possibly as a result of certain soccer-related conversations from the subway home last night. Oh patterns.

Which is all by way of saying, I don't think my brain (or this blog) is going to be much good this week. I'm about a 65% walking Harry Potter repository right now. I'm going to be abjectly useless at work, for sure, and the blog skein might be a tad specific for the next whiles. So unless you're all keyed up to read about my latest Potter thoughts - which will be occasionally broken up by tattoo gushing or the virginity thing I'm writing for tomorrow - this is gonna be a dull week on the blog.

Hey, tattoo: going well, although Sera now resembles nothing so much as a dirty great hunk of scabby scabness. She's itchy, too. Damn itchy. Vitamin E barely keeping ahead of the irritation factor. But I am still very, very happy. Having now gone ahead and done this, I suppose I oughta provide a little information on the whys, but we'll save that for later.

Meantime, meet Serenity Rose.

We creamed the opposition in soccer last night, thanks once again to our substitute goaltender and some fine offensive player from... well... everyone. The only downside to the game (aside from tattoo concerns) was the Bug Storm. Yes, we played in a Bug Storm. We played in some kind of mass migration of tiny gnats that proceeded uninterrupted through the entirety of the first half of the game; literally millions of the damn things were all headed north in a languid, unbroken cavalcade across the flats. By halftime they were stuck to my arm like flypaper and getting under my contacts and god knows what all else. It was most discomfiting. But as for the Yellow Wall - which may soon have to be renamed Yellow Domination - we've got a hell of a team there, folks. It's nice to be in charge when everything's going well.

Posted by tederick at 8:46 AM in dreams & h-pot & scars & sockey
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Well, I'm back. A little too back if you ask me; the wanderlust is running strong beneath. Time to start planning the next chunk.

Last night's soccer game was a hoot, given that we were playing it in the physical equivalent of hot soup. There's sweat and then there's sweat, and last night was the latter. The other team was playing on no subs, so they had it worse. The Red Queen was in play so Stacey subbed for goal, the Ringers have made solid inroads with the Wallers, and if it weren't such a topsy-turvy disadvantage to start with I'd have called it the Best Game Ever. Chris and I came home and ate mightily of salty food products to cope with the desalinization effects, and watched Trainspotting; I couldn't help wondering "where's my bag of money, and when do I get to run out the door?"

My sister moved out of the 'rents place this weekend, and to avoid any after-the-fact ground support my folks are off to Ireland today for a week. Plans to go south for Christmas are also moving solidly ahead... anyone got recommendations re: DR vs. Jamaica? Or anywhere else? My Dominica plans went the way of all things, when all things have no infrastructure. But I'm still after a place where I can do things other than lie senseless on a beach, or tour interesting old streets. I want to climb something tall, jump off something taller, swim under something creepy and drink rum till dawn. Takers?

TIFF passes go on sale in 9 minutes... the closing gate of the 8-week sprint I'm about to start.

Posted by tederick at 9:51 AM in j-o-b & jedi antics & sockey
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Man! I hate new password day! I have been stumbling and tripping over my fingers all morning.

If you ever get in a big argument with some Southern Baptist redneck hick about whether or not God supports homosexuality, look no further than the weather on Pride Day. I don't think I can recall a Pride parade where it wasn't 30 degrees and full sunshine in the city of Toronto. It's uncanny. Clearly, if you are going to be planning an outdoor wedding or something, you should be targeting the next Pride Day.

I, on the other hand, was in Stratford yesterday with my mother, seeing King Lear. It was quite good. Good, not great; there were some awkward stagings in the second half that I really didn't like, and the three daughters were sort of hit-and-miss, performance-wise. Scott Wentworth was terrific as Gloucester, though, and Brian Bedford was a damn solid Lear. It was the first time I've seen the play performed, and the second-last of my must-see-it-performed list of Shakespeare's greatest hits. Need to track down a performance of Henry V, and then I'm into the re-runs. I admit I'm tempted by this year's Othello - haven't seen it in forever and would really like to reconnect. Also scouting around for a Macbeth for the same reason, as well as the simple fact that my interest in that play grows mightily with each year I get older.

All is well. I dropped in for the last couple of minutes of Yellow Wall's soccer final last night, just in time for a shoot-out finish; I am very happy with the team these days and am looking forward to the summer season which has nothing to do with anyone in particular, but is just an overall feeling. And on Friday night I slapped an insane triple-helping of King Kong in between two large burritos, the very definition of decadence - I literally walked from B-Boyz down the alley in back to Cinecycle, watched King Kong Addition (which I wanted to steal out of the DVD player in an ultimate act of "found footage" defiance), then walked back down the alley to B-Boyz and went for it again. Caused an outright panic, too, when I inadvertently capsized the numbering system on my first burrito. Turns out that if you can't be sure your number is the right number, nobody can be sure their number is the right number.

Did a working day at the cottage on Saturday - I finally got to the bottom of the one-minute movie situation, by determining that I could do it on my Mac - if I had six months to spare and a staff of twenty. On the PC (Wednesday night), it will take me less than three hours, start to finish. With both powers at my disposal, I am fairly indestructible.

Posted by tederick at 12:19 PM in blogTO & i hate mac & miscellaneous crap & sockey & tederick films
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I recused myself from soccer on Sunday night because of my very, very tired legs... and regretted it immediately! It poured rain like crazy through the entire first half, so mostly I just spent the game standing on the sidelines freezing to death and yelling semi-constructive cheers. Still, it was a terrific game to even be peripherally involved with, as a number of our regulars had business elsewhere and Janice brought in some excellent replacements. Man, I love playing in the rain. I'm gonna be regretting that one for a while.

Sideshowbi-wan 2: Old Ben! Freaking fantastic. I'm going to be trading up my Hasbro one - which has, admittedly, some sentimental value - for this one for sure. They're really getting it done over there. And I like how the Leia hologram looks like some weird little blue jade Buddha.

Lots going on at the office, and I'm working from home today to shortcut ahead on some projects (because one can never underestimate the value of hours of uninterrupted work, especially when held in contrast to the hours of constantly-interrupted work that are otherwise my mainstay). Other than that, I have little to report, other than that I officially no longer understand Revenue Canada, at all. They just sent me a fuck of a lot of money, when every presumption held that they were going to send me a monster bill. Is the monster bill still coming? Is this how they maintain their reign of terror: through juggernaut tactics designed to destroy one's ability to predict their next move? I... I just don't know what to do right now.

Posted by tederick at 3:25 PM in j-o-b & obi-wan kenobi & sockey & toys!
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I am officially 100% tired of listening to my neighbours have sex. At least the dude seems to be picking up a bit of skill; a couple of months ago he could really only be counted on to give her a short pounding; now he seems to last a solid five or six minutes, but the inevitable downside to that for me is that I have to listen to that shit for longer, and the sympathetic vibrations on the longer time scale send crap flying off my shelves like you wouldn't believe. Also they're way up with the conversation during. She's going at him like a traffic cop. So there you have it, women of the world: communicate your needs, and boy may actually learn a thing or two. Nobody enjoys working in a vacuum.

On Saturday night I went to a BBQ that involved a farting baby and setting off fireworks in a hospital quiet zone. All of which would have been hilarious except that I am on no beer until after Heart & Stroke, so... less hilarious. Oh beer. (I will, naturally, have a bit of rum at world's end on Thursday.) Then on the way home Saturday night I managed a rather spectacular DF (that's detest-fest for those not down with the '94-era lingo) and burned out a buncha negative crap that had been accumulating in the old noggin. So that's... good? I don't know. Saturday nights can be pretty spectacularly lonely times, especially when you're surrounded by people.

See - even right now - Pizzazz and Megatron and Big Fuckin' Hermione are waving around like John Milius on a surf board because the damn neighbours are at it again! Dammit I hate when my blogging gets inadvertently explicated by real-life occurances before I even get to hit "Publish!" Fucking Victoria Day sex. I used to have Victoria Day sex, you know... back during Queen Victoria's actual lifetime, mind you. ZING!

Last night we had a terrific soccer game against a solid team which we worked up into a 4-4 tie; I let at least one of those goals slip right through my legs so I'm irritated about that, and I had a good scoring opportunity that I completely failed to capitalize on, but otherwise it was awesome times all around. Cold as a witch's teat, though; Teen Girl Squad pitched a tent in the back yard last night and I'm sort of curious to see if they'll turn up dead this morning. This is not V-day weather. I got myself the perfect pizza (anchovies, artichokes, mushrooms, green olives, thick crust, garlic parmesan base sauce), wrapped myself up in warmies, and watched Dead Man's Chest till the wee hours.

Hermi Odle slobbers here. It's not over yet.

Posted by tederick at 9:57 AM in jedi antics & sex (theoretical) & sockey & toys!
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I have a long, deep scratch down my left bicep and a small diagonal scratch across the tip of my nose. It's possible that I'm running illegal, underground boxing clubs while I think I'm sleeping. That would also explain why I'm so g.d. tired. That, or the furious workout of riding all the way to Sunnbrook Park only to end up punted into the offense for most of our soccer game, before having to ride back home. I am fucking exhausted, Internet. It's nothing but coffee and Buffy music today to keep me going. Whoa shit the trigger song that made Spike go kill-crazy just came on the iPod. Should I open someone's throat with my fangy-fangs? Mmmm jugular. I'm blood-lusty.

But hey, driving practice! Yeah I had something I haven't had in fifteen years yesterday: a driving lesson. Matty Price is teaching me how to drive standard. This is so that if I ever accidentally get thrown into a cross-country death race, I'll be ready. One can never be too prepared for a cross-country death race. Well anyways learning standard once you know how to drive is a hell of a lot better than learning it when you don't know how to drive. Yeah I'm still lurchy, but I'm getting there. Two words: Dodge Challenger. Two more and some letters: BMW safety training. Yeah.

So as for my Lost theory: I made a list of all the things on the show that my theory doesn't currently explain. Stuff like who the whisperers are, or why they killed a character as awesome as Dr. Arzt after only one apperance. I'm not publishing until I can either explain or disregard all the elements on that list. But I'm working on it.

Posted by tederick at 9:04 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & blood & sockey
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The announcement is out, but with yet another curve ball: three more seasons of Lost, but with two seasons' worth of episodes. A compromise between what, respectively, the network wanted and what the writers wanted. Structurally, though, this throws everything straight to hell. Each season of lost has been a finely parcelled concept - the beach, the hatch, the Others. What now? Well anyways, I'm sure they'll work something out, and I'm even more sure that, as usual, Lost will work way better on DVD.

Every year on Free Comic Book Day we miss this. Or, more accurately, walk through this, and make plans to come back next year. I write for a Toronto publication and yet I never hear about this before I am actually standing in Queen's Park getting stoned for free. Why? Because stoners can't get their shit together to get a press release out, that's why.

Well, I went home and fired up my Nonno's pipe, yes I did, with the finest pipe-weed in the Southfarthing. Then I tried, and failed, to watch Alien.

Our first soccer game yesterday was terrific. Tina scored the game-tying goal in the bottom of the second half, everybody was in good spirits in spite of the nominal shortage of female players, and our game-on banter was near-poetical in its mastery of the banterrific form. I also got another 15K on the bike Sunday morning, solved a few crises and challenges with speed and efficiency, and fell ass-over-backwards in love with that Sensational Spider-Man issue I mentioned, once I finally read it. A whole annual about the now-elusive concept of how relationships actually work. I obviously can't comparison-shop but I'd say I chose my weekend Spider-experience wisely.

Posted by tederick at 8:24 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & comix & sockey
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I don't want to gloat too much about the tower of gladness and light that is my day job, but good lord in heaven, it's been awesome lately. The other day we had a bubble gum chewing contest. Today one of my vendors took my team out for a steak lunch. And on Friday? There were flying monkeys. Actual flying slingshot monkey toys that scream when you send them launching across a bank of cubicles. An aerial flotilla of shrieking kamikaze monkey plush. Flying. Monkeys. And sure, work too. But monkeys!

I had a notion that I wanted Big Fuckin' Hellboy to come in and stand on top of my cabinet, lording over the entire office space. But as loyal readers will recall, Big Fuckin' Hellboy broke his back a few years ago, and that makes him a bit... "dainty." So I bought a Medium Sized Fuckin' Hellboy to take into work instead. And I think him quite good.

So anyways, Friday was cool with the flying monkeys and yesterday was our last soccer game of the year and I took a tremendously satisfying full-body tumble onto my back. My body needed a decent pounding of earth, and hadn't had one this season, so it was nice to get it in for the last game. But otherwise, the weekend's work on the 1MFVF reel handed me my ass. We have a new Destroyer of Worlds - no longer Demetre - and while the show reel for Wednesday night is now in pretty decent shape (and I've already sold $150 worth of advance tickets, how cool am I!), the nightmares of 2004 will not go away. I know something is going to break. I know it.

Posted by tederick at 7:26 PM in 1MFVF & j-o-b & sockey & toys!
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Fine, you're so clever: how do you hit on the hot offensewoman playing opposite you in the first playoff game of the season? No really, tell me. I want to know. (Just don't bother with the comments on this site which are, of course, still broken.)

I tell ya, it's an abomination. Everywhere I go. And I can do nothing. My Tn'O column for next week starts with the line, "When it comes to dating, I am essentially a special-needs child."

So anyways, first playoff game and we lost 1-0 to the top team in the league. I didn't even know we were playing the top team in the league and I'm glad I didn't, because knowing would have freaked me out a bit. We played hard. Particularly Jeff, who had a really solid second half offensively speaking - he was all over that ball. It was crazy. Unfortunately, I must count myself as the reason for our single-goal deficit. They had a good cadre of male offensive players who were big with the power, and I had position on one of them and was holding him away from the net, and I knew that if I just stayed where I was he'd be forced to shoot and deflect off me, and in spite of fully being aware of this fact I made the stupid decision to rush him. As soon as I did so I knew he would get around me and score, and so he did. Sucks because in a 0-0 shootout in overtime we would have had this suckers. And then we woulda been number one, baby, deal with that!

Posted by tederick at 5:45 PM in sockey
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Me, Huntsville, the Goo, and the Smrt car. Possibly the last voyage of the Smrt car, come to think of it; I can't believe we've been banging around in that thing for two whole years already. I can't believe wankers still swarm me when I get out of it and ask the same five questions. People: they have been around for years now. Get on the internet or something.

I got up damned early on Wednesday morning and left Toronto before rush hour, figuring that I'd beat the traffic and then have breakfast north of the city, before making my languid way to Huntsville for noon. I was eating at the Island of the Sirens before nine, way ahead of schedule, and then I just cruised Highway 11 and enjoyed the late-October scenery. I tell ya, going down to NC in the spring is fun and all, but one of these days I want to take a road trip north in my own country. Not that there's necessarily anything to see up there, just that I enjoy the process rather a lot.

The Huntsville occasion was a 3-day offsite for my entire department. You should have seen the damn room they had me in: I have never been in such a place in my entire life. I was supposed to be sharing it with another guy but we couldn't make the door between the suites work, so he had his little one-bedroom and I had what was essentially a palace all to myself. Here's the living room with view of the lake:

And if I'd known there was gonna be a 50 square foot back deck, I woulda brought some chiba. Anyways it was a perfect time of year to be up in the wilds, and a pretty good gang of people to be up there with too if I do say so myself. My favourite part was a mass outdoor team-building simulation on Thursday where half of us were blindfolded, and the other half were unable to walk and had to direct the blind folk to gather survival implements. I was blindfolded. And I was a perfect island of Jedi calm in what can only be described as a roiling sea of mismanagement madness! Well not that bad but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I had someone I completely trusted guiding me, and when things got hairy, I also had the loudest voice in a large group of loud voices and could make my points spectacularly well. So that was cool.

On Friday I got the hell out of there and beat it on down south to the Goo, a trip that was supposed to take 5 hours but actually took 3, which lead to me hanging out at the Book Shelf and reading and blogging and generally yessing. Then it was yet another queer somethingorother at the Grad Lounge, which somehow manages to happen every single time I'm in the Goo. Also, there was Lost and Indian food, and more Lost, and then some Lost and also Lost. But good company, because watching Lost with Bex and Macelod - particularly when, say, Ana Lucia and Libby get shot - is goddamned fun beyond reckoning. And did anyone else notice that the woman Locke home-inspects in "Lockdown" is Sayid's ex-mama jama? Cuz I didn't (but Bex did, much is my shame). Yeahba. I tell ya, I'm sure going to miss the Box when it is finally cast asunder by Paris-going Mennonites and the lure of co-habitable vegans. But this, too, is life.

Funny that I've only ever hung on to other peoples' college cohabitation experiences, first with Jen in Kingston and now with the Box. Gee, do ya think I maybe shoulda gone away to school instead of wussing out with York? But then, I never woulda met Laurier.

Came home, played a drop-dead freezing game of soccer in pouring rain yesterday, Chris is ill with something other than what I was ill with so Jeff channeled himself some goalie action and proved stunningly effective. ("The Power of Chris Compels Me!" was heard often.) And honestly, by the time I got up to go to work this morning, I'd completely forgotten where I was employed. Mmm five day weekend.

Posted by tederick at 9:26 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & hotels & j-o-b & jedi antics & sockey
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I'm going to Huntsville on Wednesday morning and then the Goo for the weekend, so naturally I get a cold. Balls. It's in the "circling" stage right now so I'm trying this Cold FX thing that my parents rave about, saying that it cures colds. Although I suspect that if there was actually a cure for the common cold I would have heard about it? At least in that I'd notice that people had stopped using "the cure for the common cold" as their example of the end-all be-all human scientific endeavour?

When I had to choose an authoritarian command figure from the Star Trek universe to loom proudly over my desk and remind me real men are explorers and that explorers lean forward, did I choose fisticuffy Kirk or that namby-pamb Riker? Big bad Sisko or so-damn-fashionable Picard? She-is-from-a-world-now-alien-to-me Worf, monkeywrench O'Brien or gay Sulu? Fuck no. I chose Captain Christopher Pike. Yeah that's right. Here's why:

1. Über nerd cred for going with lesser-known character
2. 1964 is as far as you can get chronologically from the Berman/Braga dynasty
3. Jeffrey Hunter's sparkling eyes.

What else happened? Oh yeah: I went back to soccer for the first time in like two months. It was a sort of insanely fun game, on the worst pitch I've ever played on. This field had rolling fucking hills. It was like playing soccer in Super Mario Land or something. And me? Not so much the "in shape." I could feel the massive ribbon of flab around my midsection as I tried like hell to get in gear in the first half of the game. Good news being, I think I found my gear in the second half. At least, I found my accuracy and my willingness to run. I really need to get more exercise. Why? Because I like running.

We went to the Lakeview after the game and they have a Benedict Burger! It was actually pretty crappy. And I didn't have my camera. But someday I'll have it again, take a picture, and post a proper review for the BC. Which, by the way, my dad seems to be in love with. He's got a couple of new places he wants to take me to try the benny. Which is adorable! If there's one thing I always know I can bond with my father over, it's grease.

So at this point, as alluded to over the weekend, the big push on my end is to get a bunch of things off my plate before the new year so that I can hit the ground running in 2007 with some new creative tasks. Some of the things leaving my plate are longstanding commitments that I'm putting behind me, and others are residual creative projects that needed tying off. Oh, and I'm not dating any more. I'm not even attempting to date. I am swearing off that shit until January at the earliest. I am going to focus on my own thing, maybe try to hook some of my friends up with my other friends, and do what I can to promote happiness on the planet Earth. That will be fine with me.

Posted by tederick at 9:20 PM in miscellaneous crap & sockey & toys!
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There were six of us. There were thirteen of them. We held them scoreless for the entire first half. We held them scoreless for twenty-five minutes in the second half. We held them scoreless with the sun in our eyes so fierce I spent five minutes literally being unable to see, and reacting to plays based entirely on poorly-honed Spidey senses. We held them scoreless long after the sun had gone down. We held them scoreless so magnificently for a while in the second half - as they came on and on, with ever-increasing pressure, while we danced them in and out of our end like we had preternatural cognition of the outcome of the game - that I thought there might be actual fits of rage as shot after shot of theirs went wild, went rebounding back towards their goal, went punting up the field as though we had limitless reserves of strength. We held them scoreless for so damn long that when they finally got a shot past us - and this was a team "us," by the way - it felt like a moment from another game altogether, not this game we were playing, not this scoreless 0-0 showdown that would be told of in story and song. And then Steve scored, tying it up; and then they scored again with three minutes to go, throwing down what had otherwise been a magnificent last stand by six magnificent yellow walls. And nights like that are only redeemed by the degree to which they prove that despicable old adage: it's not whether you win or lose. It's how you play the game.

Posted by tederick at 11:33 AM in sockey
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I came back from the cottage weekend (longer report to follow) to find Yellow Wall on top of the soccer standings in the league. WTF? I'm out of it for a little while and everyone gets delusions of grandeur?!

Here's the cool-ass carnivorous plant set for your desktop, which I saw on Jocelyn's web site last week and have been mooning over ever since. Unlike her, I do have an Office Space-type work environment in which to place this deadly constellation of vegetables that eat animals. So for twenty-five bucks I am seriously considering that shit.

Miami Vice tonight and Lady in the Water tomorrow, and yet for some reason all I want to do right now is go see POTC2 yet again. I am truly Jack Sparrow's bitch.

And finally: Dirty Harry. It's almost worth the flight to London, just to see the itty bitty Potter penis. Particularly if I get a whole gang together, all wearing t-shirts that say "Itty Bitty Potter Penis." Particularly if said shirts were designed and worn by a certain Silver Snail employee who is, most likely, even more interested in this than I am. Oh, opportunities.

Posted by tederick at 10:02 AM in h-pot & j-o-b & movies & sockey
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And then I got hit.

Seem like a non-sequiter to you? It sure did to me. I'm not sure what happened before it, or even after it really, but I know I got hit. I think I was trying to block a guy who I later nicknamed The Thing. I think his knee got under my shin guard on my left leg and hit my bone. And I think I now have a bump on my leg so big that it actually looks like I have a second kneecap. I can at least be comforted by the fact that when this gigantic, throbbing mass breaks open, the spiders inside will rule the world with an iron fist. Because they're my spiders.

It's interesting, though; remember that episode of House last year where he had to go off the meds for a week and he got through by breaking his hand to trick his mind's "gating mechanism" for pain? That shit's very real. I was not back on the field two minutes (after 25 minutes of pulling a Peter Griffin on the sidelines), when The Thing stomped on my foot, damn near breaking my toe. And within moments, I could no longer feel the pain in my leg at all. It was really quite extraordinary. Then I took a ball to the exact fucking spot of the bump. The world flashed white and I very nearly passed out. And then I decided I was gonna stop getting in The Thing's way.

Anyways, home now. Knew this thing would make walking difficult, but I'm surprised to find typing so challenging. Regardless, behold behemoth:

I may continue to document My Son here, because I expect he'll be nifty colours by morning.

Posted by tederick at 10:43 PM in dr. house & sockey
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My friends, we are winning the war on comment spam here at Tederick.com. WINNING, motherfuckers. I don't even know why you spammers try any more. You will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER get one of your spam comments on my site. Not even for a microsecond. My tools improve by leaps and bounds every time you come up with some paltry new offensive. You don't stand a chance. We are winning. You are losing. Nyah nyah nyah.

Fun things to say on the subway this morning: "Everything was fine, until we got screwed by Jesus and his evil empire of pain." That's right, I put it on Jesus. I refuse to brook troth with any god-figure who is responsible for all the good stuff but ducks out of sight when life becomes annoying. Fuck that! Rise up against your Judeo-Christian oppressors, my friends! The time is now!

I wore my Superman shirt to work today. Today sure as hell was the day to wear this thing. Everybody gets a big grin on their face when they see Superman coming. There is something to be said for the instant iconic identification of Superman. It makes me happy. It makes them happy. It makes me happy to make them happy. I have had some damn good times wearing (and at least once, stripping out of) my Superman shirt.

Also I got a cool green soccer ball for free today and me and my friends spent ten minutes damn near destroying the office by banking it off walls and cubicles and (maybe, just maybe) computer monitors. So I'm pretty happy all-the-way-a-round.

Posted by tederick at 4:04 PM in j-o-b & sockey & tederickdotcomdotcom
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At this point I'm pretty much saying that I've gotta wear my outdoor hat every time I play soccer. Any time I wear it, we win. Tonight we played a double-header... and won a double shutout. A DOUBLE FUCKING SHUTOUT! A 7-0 win and a 6-0 win! I scored a goal in the second game that wasn't technically supposed to be a goal, I was mostly just passing to Tina... but then it was a goal. So I'll take it.

At the bar afterwards Demetre, Steve, Chris and I roughed out the rest of the Snakes on a Plane franchise. Goes like this:

First you have Snakes on a Plane. It does monster business and they want a sequel so they decide to go with Bears on a Plane.

The bears work great because they're fucking enormous and cause much plane-related destruction. But the fans really miss the original "snakes" conceit, so the third film goes back to basics, but with a new twist, by giving us Snakes on the Batmobile. It's two hours of Christian Bale in the full bat suit flailing his arms about trying to beat on snakes in the Batmobile while simultaneously maintaining control of the vehicle.

At the very end of the film he finally kills the last snake and rolls into the Batcave. He pops the hatch... and the camera tracks outward to reveal that the Batmobile is surrounded by bears. Thus setting up the fourth and final (?) film in the franchise, Batman Be Bears. Actually maybe they never even make the fourth film, they just leave it as a big fucking TO BE CONTINUED, BITCHES!!! to fuck with cinema-goers for the rest of time.

All right!

Posted by tederick at 11:06 PM in movies & sockey
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I took a fall at soccer today that completely reset my clock. I went sprinting in to snag a ball from a player, my foot connected with his on the reach, and BOOM - I went flying, smacking the earth with every square inch of flesh and bone I possess. I was pretty messed up for the next five minutes. And in spite of this, I totally loved that fall. I think there is some unseen value in having your body pummelled and pounded every once in a while. I think those Fight Club guys were onto something. There's just no way around the fact that as much as it can hurt or fuck with your physionomy, feeling the grassy earth reach up to smack you with 210 pounds of equal and opposite force is pretty goddamn divine in its own weird way.

We had a beauty game overall, and I cinched it by scoring our third goal off a nice pass from Linc that required only a hint of finesse to bounce the shot off the keeper and into the net. My finger went up, Mark jumped on my back, Lisa shouted something about my unseen skills, and I'd taken my requisite single goal on the season. The fact that we're in dire straits about getting a full team together for summer has me rather bummed, actually. After six games, it only now feels like we're finally getting into the rhythm. I want another twenty weeks of soccer!

Posted by tederick at 11:19 PM in sockey
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Being in the first part a daily collection of miscellany, and in the second part a complete waste of your time:

I've sort of randomly processed the fact that Deadwood has been cancelled; it seems odd that a show has been cancelled before its season has even started. (Actually, does anyone even know when Season Three starts?) But anyways, they've announced today that there will be a 4-hour finale to be shot and shown to conclude the saga. So that's good I guess. But I'll miss me my Bullock and his swingin' brass testes.

Soccer was brutal last night. We got our asses solidly handed to us 9-0 by the same team we tied 2-2 against just three weeks ago. What a difference an Eliopoulos makes. I don't know what happened, man, we just couldn't put it together. Under the depressing circumstances, Chris and I can hardly be blamed for spending much of the second half of the abysmal game staring at the girl on the next field over, who was wearing a red tank top with an extremely accurate "10" emblazoned across her chest. She really was.

Here's a picture of me at the cottage last August in those days of madness and grief following the break-up:

I call the photo "You broke my heart; I broke this tree." On the whole I do highly recommend a week of back-breaking physical labour as a means to dealing with an unexpected loss. However, be prepared for the difficulty upon re-entry. Once you get back to the city, you may in fact notice that everything's as shitty as when you left.

And finally, c/o my darling Macelod and re Lost: "i went out and watched the entire first season over the span of 4 days and now i'm obessesed. i have Lost dreams when i sleep. ohh, last night i had a Lost/x-men cross over dream where it turned out Magneto controlled the island. it was pretty awesome." And I reply: best theory ever. And reiterate my earlier "ONE OF US! ONE OF US!"

Posted by tederick at 5:41 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & miscellaneous crap & photoblog & sockey & tv
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