I saw an interesting movie poster on Wednesday while going to see Kill Bill. The title was 21 Grams and at first I thought hmmm, another film about drugs and then I read the tagline: “How much does life weigh?”. Ah, right. I can remember hearing something about this some time in the past. The questions this meme asks us are both intriguing and scary but ultimately beneficial to our growth as a society. Is it possible that the human body loses an amount of mass when a person perishes?

Continue reading 21 Grams →

Not much to say, I’ve been busy reading the debate going on in my ghettopoly post. I’m getting a surprising amount of traffic from google and other search engines with ghettopoly as the search term. There’s some interesting comments and I suggest you click the link.
So yeah, November 2nd was my last post. On Novemeber 3rd, I bought Crimson Skies on the advice of the boys at Penny Arcade and all my spare time has gone into that. Yeah, I’m an addict, what can I say. I love video games. It’s been a while since I’ve found one that engrossed me like this one does – I only hope that I can pull out long enough to write a short story for the CBC literary awards… Of course one needs an idea first… Ah well.

One of the things that I’m jealous to see my southern neighbours enjoy is the rare spectacle of the Northern Lights. I wish I could keep that quiet majesty all to myself here in Winnipeg. The Northern Lights have inspired me greatly for the last year, I’m glad to see that it’s inspiring others with the solar activity as of late. I can still remember the first time I really appreciated the Aurora Borealis, I had to write it down. I don’t know what it is about the Northern Lights that consumes me but maybe it has something to do with the same kind of energy that was prevalent at my Halloween party tonight. Man I love to throw a party.

Continue reading Northern Lights →

Well, emergency’s over and TGM is back up. It’s a strange experience, being heavily involved in a forum. I’m sure a lot of the people on the internet can relate, and it sometimes feels dorky, but it really does have the essence of a small town community in the day to day goings on. The boy / girl ratio is the only thing that I would change. As it stands in todays gaming world there are still *very* few girls interested in FPS 3d shooters. Percentage wise, of course.

Continue reading Everything’s fine →

Agggh, this is not funny anymore – my favorite forum, TGM, has been down for almost three days now! Any milenko brothers who are floating out there in the void, I’ve created a temporary forum that we can use until this matter gets resolved. I hope it will all be fixed up tomorrow (the first of the month), but who knows! Argh!!!

Well I got my first spam comment today. I guess I’m going to have to look into this mt black list thing I read about a while ago. In the meantime, I’ve pre-emptively removed the ability to post anonymous comments.. I didn’t really want to but ah well, that’s the shitty part about the internet. Seems to me the internet used to be a great place up until people started to use it as a medium to peddle their wares and ‘get rich quick’. I suppose it goes hand in hand with technology, but at the same time I miss the purity of the net before it became so commercialized.
Ok, I’m done with the bitching.

Continue reading Creativity →

I read this article from the Times of India that suggests that we could possibly live to the age of 500, if only we sucumb to a little genetic engineering and, oh, say the loss of our reproductive organs. Apparently scientists at the University of California San Francisco tinkered with some earthworms and found they could increase their lifespan by six times. So let me ask you this, if you could, would you do it? Would you voluntarily remove your sex organs so you could live to 500?
For me, it would be no great loss based on my current lack of use. It would probably be for the best anyways – I figure I’m this close to being autistic that any offspring of mine would give Dustin Hoffman a run for his money.

I love trawling through my webalizer server logs… I find all sorts of goodies that I would never come across with my normal day to day surfing. Drink this… has an interesting summary of some of the controversy surrounding the game Ghettopoly. Wendi Thomas has it right when she says:

We’re wrong to focus on the game instead of the truths embedded in the game’s stereotypes.
Most stereotypes are based on a kernel of truth; that’s what makes them so painful and difficult to root out.

This here is the crux of the problem. Exposing the ‘ghetto fab’ lifestyle that is prevalent in popular hip hop is ‘outrageous’ and ‘racist’. Why then are so many songs about 40s and ho’s and popping a cap in his ass? Why are the recurring themes of violence, exploitation and sexism popularized and worshipped? Why do black leaders wish to go after the symptoms and not the disease itself?
It all smacks of those powers that be trying to shuffle the problems that face the ghettos under the rug as quickly and quietly as possible with as little fuss as possible. Perhaps that’s just me being a conspiracy theorist, but at the same time wouldn’t this critical examination of a large percentage of american life be a good time to protest in favour of change for these desperate people? Why is it that the voices of the poor are always lost, their voices falling on deaf ears as they languish in the gutters? It seems that the general concensus is that by ignoring the problem (ie no press coverage) it will simply disappear. In a sense, it will. Out of sight, out of mind is as effective as always.

Hooo boy. My heart was going there for a moment, I was thinking finally – this is it, contact with aliens. JerkSquad!! directed me to this strange site which at first sounded like some kind of parrot for scientology – all about those damn lizards who ‘rule the world’. Not that I mind the message the site is preaching, but the method leaves something to be desired. I read a little more and saw that they were talking about some dark spot on Jupiter which is when my heart started to pick up the pace. Space.com had an interesting breakdown of the communication between astronomers as they tried (and still try) to puzzle out this mystery.
It seems that a