Thanks.

Posted by tederick at 7:16 AM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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Well it's a long goddamned story, but here I am fooling around with live Twitter feeds on Tederick.com now. Not sure if I'll keep it - for one thing it's as ugly as fuck, and for another... well honestly, what's the point? (The script I used is here. And the mod I did on the tederick.com landing page is much nicer.) And my thoughts on the entire subject of microblogging are complex and ambivalent. But hey, it's always nice to know you can learn new things, and after a truly strange evening and having now proven that really any blog post at least should have the decency to exceed 140 characters, I'm out.

Oh, but click over to my Twitter page. How pretty is that.

Posted by tederick at 11:19 PM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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The top three searched phrases that have brought visitors to this site this month:

1. Matt likes to...
2. Normal penis
3. Destro

Posted by tederick at 1:42 PM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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Transitioning... transitioning... while the domain nameservers are switching over I have no email, and through strange coincidence my phone is not taking incoming calls either. Unexpectedly hermited, I am enjoying some peace and quiet. I wonder if the blog will even work in this new, strange server. Well I guess we'll find out momentarily.

Now don't get creeped out, but: I have large windows looking north on a series of apartment buildings, and so rather naturally I gaze out over the vista while, say, talking on the phone and/or ruminating upon things. Now I noticed, just randomly, that on Valentine's Day, one of the individuals in an apartment opposite mine was watching pornography on his very, very, very large television. The television faces the window, and is very, very, very large, and as such (from my vantage point) it essentially is the window, for all intents and purposes. And that window is porn. It was so on Valentine's Day, and now inevitably every time I gaze out on my vista, my eyes are drawn back there to see what's the what now, and it's porn. Lots, and lots, and lots of porn. It's amazing to me that with only the naked (heh) human eye, one can discern porn indisputably from over 1000 feet away. I wonder, had I a much larger television and more than a passing interest in porn, if I would also have my television face the window so that I would be beaming my porn out into the cosmos like my apartment-facing neighbour. I'm not so sure. I've never quite removed myself from the 12-year-old boy gut-feel that porn is something to be secreted, hoarded, and absolutely never admitted to in any tangible sense. Porn is for dark corners, not 60-inch plasmas.

That newfangled HDTV Simpsons opening credits, though, that sure as fuck is for 60-inch plasmas. It was very exciting right up till I realized that this is, demonstrably, the moment that The Simpsons has inextricably jumped the shark. They must now demonstrably be within seconds of being cancelled. Like that year of The X Files with Anabeth Gish and the T-1000. Sweet, merciful cancellation. Can you believe The Simpsons went twenty years? And only about three of them sucked?

Hey - if you saw Medicine for Melancholy at the festival (or elsewhere) (and if you didn't/haven't, you really should), check out the interview with Barry Jenkins on this week's installment of The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell. (The Soderbergh one from a few weeks back, too, is fairly kickass.) Additionally, there's a new Mamo that doesn't seem to be syndicating correctly, so check that out too.

This week was long and complex and performance-reviewy, and I am tired and have yet to get into my whiskey as was promised to me by me, about six hours ago. I'm sure we have much to discuss, like why Dollhouse sucked so bad, but we will have to talk about it later.

Posted by tederick at 8:49 PM in 1701 & movies & podcastery & sex (theoretical) & simps & tederickdotcomdotcom
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ITEM!: Domain nameserver migration still pending. All may be lost but I just can'ts not be bloggin' no mo'.

ITEM!: On Sunday, I watched Kill Bill, and every time I do that, I come away wanting to do it again the very next day.

ITEM!: On Monday, I stayed in the best hotel that has ever been. I would show you the pictures, were I not nude in all of them.

ITEM!: Did anyone hear that Kim Manners died? That's sad, man. He was a class act, and his work on X-Files did, of course, set the stage for pretty much everything kickass about Lost.

ITEM!: I HAVE NOT WATCHED LOST YET SHUT UP.

ITEM!: No you shut up.

ITEM!: No you shut up!

ITEM!: Lando!

Posted by tederick at 12:54 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & hotels & movies & tederickdotcomdotcom & toys!
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I'm going to Montreal for a few days and in the meantime, Jason and I are trying to push Tederick.com over to a new host/server/registrar/something I don't know. Presumably/theoretically, the transition should be seamless and should happen later this week anyway, but if it happens while I'm gone for some reason, and there's a problem for some reason, well at least I had this chance to say goodbye.

Posted by tederick at 4:05 PM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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Some days are Jack Daniels days, and Jack Daniels (generally speaking) is little more than sour mash by way of shite. Today the Teet got one over on me again; what I cannot understand is

1. why they refuse to admit when the system has broken down, and
2. why (if the system breaks down every 2 days like clockwork for the entirety of December-March) they don't have a series of processes and procedures in place yet.

Every single time is like it's the first time it's ever happened; pandaemonium reigns in the streets. Nobody knows the answers, information is unavailable, phone calls have to be made. Guys - the system breaks every 48 hours. WRITE A MANUAL ABOUT IT OR SOMETHING.

While entombed in the rolling ball of vomit that is a TTC shuttle bus in winter (all windows fogged to utter opacity as it dips, weaves, and spirals through rush-hour traffic), I read this article about research into female desire being conducted at Queen's University; many comments about Queen's relationship to sexual research have been made on Facebook already, so I shall not add to the pile. I will, however, say that when leafing through the digest-sized bits of information that is the New York Times mobile site (i.e. what you're reading when you're reading it on your BlackBerry), I considered what the digest-sized information squirt of a typical tederick.com entry would be. I think it would go like:

• TTC complaint
• Sex article and/or concern about the end of the world (could be shortened to: sex and/or death)
• Comics discussion and/or Lost theory
• Comment on weather and its relationship to mood.

Alternate with occasional film reviews, Mamo! postings, and pithy rejoinders about cyberspace anomalies, Batman, or work stress, and you've covered the gamut.

Today I started my 200th journal. The very first one, I believe, was started in the summer of 1989 when I was 12 going on 13 years old. As I recall, it concerned my thoughts about my family, some information about Woogie and G.I.Joe, and some Andrian Mole-esque commentary on my progress through puberty. So, as you can see, little has changed.

Posted by tederick at 6:20 PM in i hate mac & jedi antics & sex (theoretical) & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Well, fuck. Here it is the next-to-last day of the whole darned year and all I can think of is the word "Benjmobutt." It is obsessing me. I can't get it out of my head, it's calling me even now, it isn't even fucking funny and wasn't to begin with and yet here it is: Benjmobutt. Frig.

Here's what's also obsessing me:

• My chest hurts. My chest hurts, my hair is turning grey, I can't breathe particularly well at night any more, and my mind has turned into a leaky fucking trap. That's what happened in 2008, for those keeping score: I started getting really fucking old.
• "Leaky trap"? THAT ISN'T EVEN AN EXPRESSION!!!
• Further summarization of 2008 isn't really possible because I have completely lost the thread of what went on here and why. I know that I had, on balance, a pretty terrific year. I know that a lot of people around me did not. I know that the year coming up is going to have serious, significant, ongoing life challenges to it and that a year from now, pretty much everything I currently consider a "core" element of my life has the strong potential to be gone or unrecognizeable. That freaks me out.
• Well, on the good days it "seems like an exciting challenge." On the rest of the days it freaks me out.
• Tederick.com's Woman of the Year is Sarafina, because, I mean, well obviously.
• She glows!
• On a completely unrelated note, it is likely that I am within a stone's throw of no longer being able to manage my stress. This was the year everything started rushing, all the time.
• slow down.
• Hey! Planet! Still be here tomorrow, 'kay?

Posted by tederick at 10:09 PM in cantankerous & jedi antics & tederickdotcomdotcom
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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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Did I dream about the new season of Lost last night: yes.

Did my dream about the new season of Lost involve the revelation of a giant retro robot rampaging around the island, and poor Desmond being turned into a (smaller) robot as well: yes.

Should the new season of Lost, then, be all about robots if it wants to satisfy my desire: yes.

I'm telling you, that Beren & Luthien thing has got to be a movie. It has all the things "the kids" like. They even pull a Zolo when Beren holds up the Silmaril to Carcharoth and the wolf just goes ahead and bites the hand clean off. And whether you call him Dr. Zolo, Minister of Antiquities, or Col. Zolo, Deputy Commander of the Secret Police, he is still just a butcher.

Today I am calling telecommunication companies and eluding their ceaseless marketing campaigns by lies and deceit, and leaving lengthy voice mails for my co-workers along the lines of what Alpine says here. It's fun. While I'm doing that, here's a hot fresh Mamo for your digestion.

Speaking of digestion, yesterday Christy took me out for bruuuuuuuuuuuuuunch!!! (so named because it's so goddamned big.) I am planning to eat again on Tuesday.

Oh: and I might have inadvertently posted some October 2005 blog entries to the front page before re-dating them. So if you thought I suddenly took a turn for the turbo-angsty, that's why. Stupid Movable Type. Is importing HTML-based blog entries into an MT database really that far beyond the ken?

Posted by tederick at 10:36 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & books & dreams & podcastery & tederickdotcomdotcom
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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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Well it took longer than I expected, but some insane crimanal bastard finally figured out that Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog are the same person. So I guess the jig is up on that one.

I'm bored as fuck so let's play, what are people searching for at Tederick.com?

On Google, the keywords are almost an even split between things related to vaginas, and things related to penises. So at least we have some equality among the sexes there. I'm also getting some of the usual hits for Toht, an inexplicable upswing in hits looking for information about Destro, and a new player on the table, being searches related to lesbian Voyager fan-fic between B'Elanna Torres and that Borg woman. Only worth mentioning in that I don't think I ever wrote any Voyager slash fiction. Truth told, I don't think I ever wrote any slash fiction at all, but I've got the memory of a half-eaten grapefruit.

On the site itself, the items most frequently called up in the blog-searchin' box are TV shows that I don't watch (30 Rock appears frequently), items related to Harry Potter (everyone seems to be trying to find something about Horcruxes on this site, but fucked if I know what), and a few disturbing references to ex-girlfriends or people I used to know. Amusingly, someone just searched for "What else has been going on?" cuz maybe they thought I'd just answer them back.

Anyways.

Posted by tederick at 1:31 PM in miscellaneous crap & sex (theoretical) & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Time does keep rolling on, doesn't it? Look, in light of everything that's been going on over the past few weeks, I'm not in much of a place to keep things rolling here, too. I had a really, really good year: there was a solid stretch of time there where I had literally run out of ways to say how freakin' great everything was and how happy I am. And now everything has happened, and for a little while anyway I'm on the other side of the same problem. So...yep. Not for long, but at least for a bit, we'll just take it as it comes.

Posted by tederick at 11:56 AM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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So after two or three years of solid use, I decided to get rid of that Jack Colton scream button on the side of the blog. I've replaced it with Jack Rebney going nuts. Which is, unfortunately, silent (although I guess I could have overlaid any of Jack's excellent sound bites). But still very entertaining when you're bored.

Here is an open letter to Joss Whedon:

Dear Joss Whedon,

Matt

This was prompted largely by the fact that I was so pissed off that Runaways 29 was months late that I was determined not to like it... and then it turned out to be pretty much the strongest issue of the 5 he's done so far. So now he's an asshole for exiting the book after issue 30, and an asshole because 29 was months and months and months and months late. The latter thing is really starting to cheese me off. The man released four issues of Astonishing X-Men in 2007. Four! This goddamn thing has been going on half my life! And now his short run on Runaways looks to end up taking a solid year or more to release, which is playing merry hob with my ability to keep the story going in my head. (The incomprehensible recap at the head of issue 29? Utterly deceptive twattlespeak, says I.) The Buffy issues have been chugging right along, but one imagines it's only a matter of time before he gets bored with them Buffy grinds to a Fray-like halt, too.

Is this my first anti-Whedon sentiment? And is it about punctuality?

Shieeesshhhh.

Posted by tederick at 3:07 PM in comix & joss & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Today Brenda described my single secret game of Scrabulous with Sarafina (which, aside from being alliterationally awesome, is the only game of Scrabulous I deign to play) as being like "intellectual footsie." Which is adorable, accurate, and unintentionally significant. Like my pants. Today I am wearing all brown. Why? Because I'm Matt Brown? No. Because I simply lack the foresight to realize that a) by wearing brown boots, brown socks, brown pants, and a brown shirt, I will be wearing all brown; and b) because I am Matt Brown, this is going to draw attention.

Also today, Chad posted the thousandth Tederick.comment. Huzzah for bloggeratunum, miscellany, and their unholy unions.

Last night at the exact moment in Zathura when the two boys realize that their house is floating through outer space, Sarafina exclaimed "Isn't tonight the eclipse?!" and jumped up and ran outside. The problem with eclipses being, they take a really long time and don't look like much until the very last second. In the context of this very cold February, I greatly preferred fluid-medium starfields and bad kid acting.

I am using the expletive "what the bleepin' F!" rather a lot this week, both because I enjoy it and because it regularly applies to every single jink and weave in this crazy old everything that's happening, from my cell dropping calls repeatedly, to figuring out how to use a new LMS. (To finding Rebecca.) I am very tired and my belly is disturbed. But I'm on my feet, in love, and I'm gonna get comics and then Lost and then Lost and then bed. Thursdays are just easier than the other days.

Posted by tederick at 2:46 PM in miscellaneous crap & tederickdotcomdotcom
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"Captain Teach assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time.... In time of action, he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandoliers, and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a Fury from hell to look more frightful."
         - from "The Life of Captain Teach" in A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates

I went all the way up to the yogashoppe only to find it unceremoniously closed for this three-day weekend that all Ontarians but myself (and 60% of the rest of us) do not get to enjoy. Curses! So, I came back home and played Super Mario Galaxy. That thing is crazier than hell. It makes me wonder: does Mario even remember that he used to be a plumber? Or is it all just comets and stars and the ability to turn water into ice just by the consumption of a mushroom?

Gaining purchase on level 1, I switched over to a little classic Super Mario Brothers, and as my score was so greatly improved over my last similar co-venture, I must forcibly conclude that my previous weak performance was because girls have cooties and cooties inevitably destroy a boy's ability to play video games. This latter statement was the most important thing I learned in Grade 4.

I know it's a big awesome Internet and all, but when the guy who designed the tattoo that is on my arm actually comes along and joins in on the Tederick.comments, I get minor Saturday morning goosebumps. Now if I could only get Bendis to comment on my plan to throw an egg at his head and the subsequent ignominy (1, 2, 3), I'd call myself well-connected.

Right. More peanut butter cookies, a bit more Wii, then off to D-Coc's to deconstruct(Coc) his brain.

Posted by tederick at 12:18 PM in comix & galaxy far & pirates & tederickdotcomdotcom & wii
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You know what cures up the winter holy-fuck-me-it's-so-cold blahs right quick? TAKING ACTION! Tony Robbins style. Yeah, as we all well know, I am a huge, huge procrastinator. But I also hit occasional Monday mornings where it's all GO TIME. When these Mondays occur, the entire back burner's worth of inane plans gets moved into gear, and forget it: it's a headier tonic than holding life and death in the palm of one's hand. True story.

Speaking of death, per my script revision notes to D-Coc this morning, the following shall adorn my grave: "YOU MIGHT GET LOST"

Or I might stick with my longtime go-to, "Don't everybody thank me at once."

And speaking of heady tonics: the WGAF attitude, once one has formally moved into "Bay of Pigs" mode on all the impossible projects, is not a bad one either.

Actual stuff people have searched for on Tederick.com:

• "Elisabeth"
• "Hug a cop" (which must refer to "YOU DO NOT HUG A COP!!")
• "squad"
• "thriller"
• "Matt Brown hates his ex-girlfriend"
• "zomb"
• "heart problem"
• Six, I shit you not six, variations of the spelling of "Sarafina"
• and, of course, "boobs."

"I'm gonna go ahead with... whatever the hell I want at this point, and that's gonna be fine." - me

Posted by tederick at 11:02 AM in j-o-b & jedi antics & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Huh, I apparently completely wiped out the categories database on Tederick.com at some point in the last 24 hours. (Got it back.) Might have been because I was trying to import October 2005 into Movable Type, or it might have been some other gallfuck thing. Who knows. But it means I lost something lovely I started writing last night when I got home... one of those things you can only write at 2 in the morning when you're jumped up on B-52 coffee. Alack.

Now I'm looking for that song on my iPod and contemplating the many coffees I am not having.

I have plenty of things to do, but mostly right now I'd like to be under my tent-like sheets in my quiet house, playing tic tac toe. These are January things. Why doesn't January's task list agree?

Hey, found the song.

Posted by tederick at 12:32 PM in miscellaneous crap & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Maybe they'll find Indy IV on their quest to save the world from aliens.

Sorry about the nobloggatry. Something's not working right inside these days. Or maybe I'm just too busy. Or somethin'.

Posted by tederick at 6:43 AM in movies & tederickdotcomdotcom
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I've been handing out Man of the Year here on the ol' blog since way back in 2000, when this utterly inconsequential no-prize was awarded to the conceptual godfather of the whole deal, Richard Hatch. At the time I was proud - yes, proud! - that no non-dude would ever win the entirely uncoveted "of the year" title here on the site, but from the very early goings in 2007, I was fairly aware that the ship was about to capsize. Men are just so uncompelling these days! And if we're trying to note the person who had the biggest effect on the Tederick.comverse for the calendar year of the award, cast your eyes no further than the little category we like to call h-pot: did anything else in 2007 even come close?

There was a whole lot of Potter prattle over the summer, but I think the entry called Dumbledore's Army does the best job of getting into exactly why this all mattered so much to me. Rowling created a book series; Rowling's book series created a culture. That culture is, beyond compare, the warmest, kindest, most inclusive, most exclusive fan base I've ever had privilege to be even remotely associated with, and it brought the big hugs n' happy for the majority of my year. That's really something.

Doesn't hurt that the book was the best I've read in a long, long time, either.

J.K. Rowling is the very first winner of Tederick.com's Woman of the Year. Previous recipients of the now-defunct Man of the Year include the authors of Civil War, Matty Price, Woogie, Peter Jackson, Master Yoda, Mark, and Richard Hatch.

Posted by tederick at 11:04 AM in books & h-pot & tederickdotcomdotcom
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"Holy god, that's a lot of zombie pants." - what I kept misreading on my own blog, every time I jumped into Tederick.com today

Well I just got in a fight I couldn't win with my own lightswitch. I mean honestly - people keep trying to assure me my problems aren't unique, but could that happen to anyone else?

Trying something new: comments are still moderated here on Tederick.com but they now publish immediately. (Well, actually it takes about 30 seconds.) My ability to manage junk has increased exponentially in the past 12 months so I think it's relatively safe to assume that only a couple of spam comments will get through, and that I can get rid of them within a few hours of their arrival. Soooooo... we'll see how this goes. If it chucks up, we'll go back behind the gate.

I am a new level of bendtacular. I had that day at yoga! The one where Gudrun (Yoga Instructor B) came over and said "you're pretty flexible!" Which, for me, might as well have been "I have never seen any human as proficient in the art and science of body-bending as you, Matt Brown, currently are." But yes, I was particularly flexisome today, and still feeling good about it 8 hours later. Stuff I couldn't do 3 months ago came easy as pie today.

Now get your nerd out and revel: someone (with the auspicious screen name of effulgent12) has done what I have long wanted to see, and Godfathered the Angel flashbacks in their entirety. Including Spike, Darla, and any other ancillary characters. 22 episodes at 8 minutes apiece makes a fuck of a lot of watching, so I haven't done it yet, but I watched a bit. It's pretty cool, and so painfully geeky! Oh someone needs to give that effulgent12 a big nerdy hug.

Will Mulder and Scully stumble across Frank Black in X-Files 2? I sincerely hope the answer is "BLARGGHHHH!"

Went out for a much-needed pair of beers tonight, and realized that it is in fact Tuesday, not Monday, which means it's technically my Wednesday. Ordered a buncha stuff off the internet to take advantage of the continuing fire sale that is Amazon.com vs. .ca. Must go and fold clothes and finish The Matrix now. New frogpipe: so good. Between this and the Pillows From God I'm calling my room the place to be nowadays.

Posted by tederick at 8:48 PM in joss & movies & tederickdotcomdotcom & zombies
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Sadly, the long-promised Tederikipedia project is stillborn. As much as it was truly hilarious to contemplate the site having its own wikipedia, from a management perspective, it was just turning into such a pain in the ass. I'm sure a few years down the line they'll have improved the tool to the point where yobs like me will be able to use it productively, but that time ain't now.

Sigh. This means I have to keep updating Jasper Online manually.

Things have been going pretty well lately, Internet. For one thing, I really feel like I'm "getting it done" at work nowadays; my recent switch in focus to instructional design has really reenergized my daily grind. O'course, this could just be honeymoonin', but we'll see. It feels right. (Or, as I was about to put, righter.) And my off-hours plate is full-ish, but not overwhelmingly so, and there are some new and interesting after-hours stuff getting started that I'm sure I'll be blogging about plenty in the coming months. On the whole (though this is premature) I would say that 2007 has been a pretty important year for me, personally.

Actually, why is it premature? If Hallowe'en is my "most wonderful time of the year" a la Christmas, then maybe I should start tallying my years as Nov 1 - Oct 31.

Nah, fuck it, that's George Bush thinkin'.

But in the meantime, and now that the cat is largely out of the bag, here is the updated list of everything I've ever been for Hallowe'en:

• A filthy little Arab (yeah: I grew up in those 1980s)
• Indiana Jones
• A wizard (my wand kicked ass. It was a clear tube of plastic that had green liquid and sparklies in it, which was the absolute height of cool when I was a kid.)
• Vincent from Beauty and the Beast
• Storm Shadow (I even did the red arm tattoo, which I was pretty damn proud of at the time)
• Batman (movie version, with black leather cowl... aw yeah)
• The Phantom of the Opera (the year where parents on the street started refusing me candy. It broke my 13-year-old heart.)
• The Grim Reaper
• Romeo (call me a cheeseball freak, but that could actually be my favourite picture ever taken of me with a girl... but then there's always:)
• Spike (which was... I mean, come on)
• Harry Potter
• Captain Jack Sparrow (which, no matter what anyone tells you over the course of the next three days, I have only been for Hallowe'en once)
• River (damn, that was an ugly idea)
• Clark Kent

What have we learned? Well, for one thing, partner yoga is the best yoga. Second: the ones who don't get it, ain't gonna. And third: I love Hallowe'en so much it makes my head spin. I've got next year's costume picked out already, and let me tell you, I'm a man of my word.

My wig finally arrived yesterday so I'm going to make such a delightful ass of myself at work tomorrow... work, Starbucks, the Snail, Burrito Boyz, and every other place I visit over the course of the day.

Posted by tederick at 6:03 PM in j-o-b & miscellaneous crap & tederickdotcomdotcom
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No, I don't have time to blog right now but I apparently have time to come up with titles.

Posted by tederick at 12:45 PM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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Well folks, and it is difficult for me to even put to words how I feel about this, as of today I have been blogging in one form or another for a clean decade.

Ten. Fucking. Years.

The very first iteration of Tederick.com - then known simply as Tederick's Home Page - launched on Geocities on this very day in 1997, containing, if I'm not mistaken, my thoughts on that night's episode of Deep Space Nine. (I am pleased that even in the pre-blog internet universe, my brain, when asking the question of "what does a person need with an online presence / web journal / whatever they're going to be calling this in five years?" answered the question with "geeking out about shit.")

Later on, there was a little news area about Infinitely Brown Productions - then all tied up in the production of the never-completed Centipede '97 - and eventually some production journals for Bone Daddy 1 (and later, Bone Daddy 2). There was the now-infamous Jen Page, there was a Winnie the Pooh quote, and if I'm not mistaken, there was a picture of three girls playing naked in mud. There was this picture, which I like to think of as the unofficial first episode of Extreme Steve. There was a rudimentary "this is what's going on in my life right now" page that got updated any time the information changed, but without archiving the previous contents, so there was no way to track the evolution over time - you just got what happened to be there that day, for as long as it would last. (Boy, wouldn't it be something if blogging came out that way - the now you see it, now you don't approach - instead of all this archiving shit, as though any of this content is actually worth something.) At some point I twigged to putting up the Keramidas Kronology, and a page about custom Star Wars action figures, and some info about Toht - i.e. the skeletal beginnings of shit that is still going on at Tederick.com to this day. Though archives before March of 2000 simply don't exist, by that point I was apparently blogging daily and archiving my work. The site had been through three redesigns by then, and would go through eight more.

There was the time before people understood what blogging was, when I fielded inordinate questions at parties and other gatherings about exactly why on earth I'd put all of this stuff about myself out there where anyone could read it. (Oh, you Facebook-bound hypocritical bastards.) There was SURVIV.ORg, which arrived in perfect time to kickstart the site's readership and define the format and style of the blog content in a way that, fortunately, was at least "with its time" if not quite "ahead." There was the body parts weekend, which gave birth to Vagina Fridays; there was the blogsplosion when everyone I knew was suddenly blogging too (though many of them never made it past Phase Four, as defined by Matty Price); there was the tormented life of the reviews section; there were the two or three times I suffered loss so painful and public that I could do nothing but stop dead for a week or two before dusting myself off and starting up again; there was The King of Carrot Flowers, Part I, and everything before, and everything afterwards. And the day I finally capitulated to the inevitable and launched a content management system, which presaged the still-forthcoming Tederikipedia, which presages the next thing that's gonna happen which I'm not telling you about.

It has been a long damn time, and I absolutely swear, I thought for sure I'd be done by now. For me, the blog always had a format and a shape... and that shape dictated a loose narrative/expressive structure that would, eventually, conclude itself. But we are way and well beyond the wilds at this point, and all seems well. So no sense in stopping now.

This concludes the first ten years. Thanks for reading.

Posted by tederick at 6:32 AM in tederickdotcomdotcom
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Yesterday Chad and I blocked out the last two issues of Terra; I'm going to try to complete my pages this week and then it's done, mercifully done, by way of never really ever being done, but done nonetheless. Sweet doneness. The all-enveloping warmth of doneitude. Bon chance.

Here's a Mamo!

I am now officially counting the days until my vacation. Today, for example, there are 24. (Like the show!) I woke up this morning and it was unusually cold in my room and my brain had the momentary luxury of tricking itself into believing it was September. Then I bitchslapped that brain back into August! Oh yeah. Total control.

Now maybe you can help me with a problem I'm having, Internet. Over the past few weeks, there have been a surprising number of comments posted to very, very old posts. I know what you're thinking: spam, right? Well by my definition, spam has to have some kind of point, like an outbound link drawing one to a spam web site, or whatever. It can't just be shittily-written non-sequiters with questionable connections to the content at hand. I'll give you an example: this guy. Or a much-less-safe-for-work example here. Are these commenters human? Or merely stupider robots than usual? What happens to A.I. when it forgets that it's A.I. and starts to believe it has an opinion on vaginas and eggs benedict? Is this the end of the world? ...or the beginning? YOU DECIDE.

It is fucking Monday. It is fucking Monday, Internet. I'll be back later to talk about Pirates of the Caribbean.

Posted by tederick at 9:22 AM in podcastery & tederickdotcomdotcom & the process
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Thanks to Adam McNeverMakesHisDeadlines, today's episode of Extreme Steve is going to be a little late.

Today I had what I suspect is the typical Lulu Lemon experience:

1. Resisted going to Lulu Lemon for literally years because of the icky trendy overpriced bullshit factor
2. Finally found a pair of shorts I actually liked, which were on sale
3. Except they didn't have my size
4. Or my colour
5. And then I searched all over town
6. And failed
7. And ended up buying a different pair of shorts at twice the price that I liked half as much.

Please, someone, anyone, tell me I'm not alone.

Rachel Couldn't Be Hotter in a Bajillion Years of Trying Weisz is playing mom in The Lovely Bones. Good fucking call, PJ. But given what needs to happen in the dad role, that makes casting her male lead about twice as hard. If they hadn't just worked together I'd say Hugh Jackman could really crank that one outta the park, but... well. Them's the breaks.

Best poster of the summer. Really looking forward to that flick.

Posted by tederick at 2:19 PM in movies & pj's playground & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Thanks to the intrepid efforts of Chia the Chris, I finally have Windows installed on my Mac - and things are starting to feel like they're getting back to normal around here. The most salient outcome of which is that my DVD profile work again, which oughta interest Teen Girl Squad, who are becoming fairly excited about the possibilities inherent to having the equivalent of a Blockbuster upstairs from their home. The other big news of a technical nature is that I am embarking on a large new initiative for Tederick.com:

If all goes according to plan it will basically replace all of the site's off-blog content, except for the reviews and film pages, and become - yes, you guessed it - an editable repository of Tederick lore that will define the capital achievement of the first ten years of Tederick.commage, while thrusting ust us boldly into the next ten years. I'm not sure exactly which web dot oh this is (2? or are we onto 3 yet?), but I'm excited, particularly about the page about Extreme Steve. That will be hilarious.

I think, dollars for doughnuts, the last three or four days have been about the best long weekend I've ever had. Or certainly, in the top five. It all just came together for about 100 glorious hours - and man fucking howdy, was I glad. Felt a bit weird to struggle out of bed this morning, and weirder still to get hit by a sun so bright it actually hurt to walk eastward from the Starbucks to the subway station, but I'm back on the rails with at least a vague recollection of what it felt like to be me yesterday.

The other night I dreamed that I had a very large number of lumps under the skin of my torso, which were regularly spaced and oddly circular. I managed to massage one of them out of myself (having tried with another one and only succeeded in breaking it), and found it to be a small disk of concrete which, when broken, positively guzzled tiny plastic stars and crescents in various bright colours (pink, green, blue, gold) all over the place, everywhere I went, like a comet trail. And I went to my doctor and said, "Are you really sure I should have all of these concrete disks with stars inside them, inside of me?" And she said "yes."

Posted by tederick at 9:52 AM in dreams & jedi antics & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Tederick.com is winning the war on comment spam, Internet. Spammage? Down 80-frickin'-percent! Yes this sort of thing actually gets me revved up. WE ARE KICKING ASS HERE GUYS. I would feel bad for the spammers... if they weren't worthless, rape-crazed cockroaches.

Extreme Steve, unfortunately, will not be appearing this week due to some delays in the art department for episode 43. As I'm sure you can intuit from the past few weeks' issues, this one's gonna be a doozy - a real season capper, and I'm quite proud of it - so it's taking a bit longer than usual. Extremely sorry! Perhaps this Mamo will be a balm to your injured soul? Recorded yesterday, I really enjoyed it. One of the upsides to us not Mam-ing as frequently as we used to is that when we get around to it, we've got a sweet fuckload to talk about. Like the Joker, Summer Glau, and Pirates, Pirates, Pirates. Woot.

I've said it before but I'll say it again: I haven't been this excited about a Harry Potter movie since the first one. Man howdy that thing looks brick shithouse. That shot of the DOM Avengers sprinting down the row of prophecies while all hell breaks loose behind them... yeah I'm all about that in a deep and personal way. "We're in this together." Damn right.

Hope for humanity alert: New York cabs go green by 2012.

Another year: gone! Strangely enough the show that most made me notice that a whole season has once again passed us by was Heroes, the one whose pilot got me so damn excited that I was making Watchmen references. Man that show is jus dreadful. Actually the word that really describes it is clumsy. Spectacularly clumsy. The commercials for various summer movies that aired during the finale were significantly more enjoyable than the finale itself... but I'll give the episode a pass, if only for Shaft. Goodness gracious, the world needs more Shaft.

Posted by tederick at 8:18 PM in h-pot & podcastery & tederickdotcomdotcom & tv
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I suppose rather predictably, here are the key search terms that have brought internetophiles to Tederick.com:

• vagina
• autocunnilingus
• hairy vagina
• oily vagina
• old vagina
• origami vagina
• vagina massage
• autocunnlingus [sic]
• vagina anatomy
• fucking vagina
• Sarah Silverman's vagina
• meat curtains
• queef

Queef incidentally is pretty much the grand grandpappy of search strings for the site, ever since December '04 and the original vagina post. I guess not too many folk out there are blogging about the queefage.

Posted by tederick at 11:26 AM in tederickdotcomdotcom & vagina fridays
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My god, if you Google miscellaneous crap, Tederick.com comes up third. We have scored the bronze in the crapolympics.

Posted by tederick at 5:18 PM in miscellaneous crap & tederickdotcomdotcom
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