2022: A Popcorn Odyssey

Hey, happy belated Easter, here's a picture of my youngest son shooting cross country skiers. Wait. That might need some explanation.

Back when the Olympics were still on, BC Lottery had a pavilion set up where you could try out some of the different winter sports. There was hockey, where you could shoot a puck at a net for prizes, a virtual reality bobsled and biathlon. My boys being my boys, they immediately ran for the guns.

Liam will be five in two weeks, so I figure the first Olympics he'll be able to compete in will be in 2022. With his head start he'll be sure gold by then. Unless they're serving caramel popcorn.

That may change things.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Today is Day 7 of the 2010 Paralympic Games. You probably didn't know that because the world media largely disappeared from Vancouver once the Olympics were over. Even the protestors are gone since they know they won't get any publicity. The athletes are still here though. Still competing even though none of them will come away with giant sponsorship deals or celebrity endorsements. Still competing even though they know that almost no one will be watching them compete because there is little to no television coverage for their events. Still here being amazing.

This is Haitau Du of China competing in the 20 km cross-country event. Just for kicks, try running without using your arms as a counter balance and see how that feels. Then put on some cross-country skis.



The guy with the funny pictures on his goggles is Bart Bunting of Australia who is blind. The man in front of him is his guide and tells him when he needs to turn left or right or when he needs to sprint or when to prepare to go up or down hill.

This is American Alana Nicols who won the gold medal in giant slalom. Those skiers can do over 120 km/h (75 mph) and they're basically sitting in a chair. Next time you're in your car on the highway, try to imagine yourself at that speed, going downhill strapped to a chair with a ski on it. That takes a mighty pair, friends, and I'm not talking legs.

Sledge hockey. You think regular hockey is a rough game?

Finally, men's giant slalom winners Gerd Schonfelder of Germany (silver), Adam Hall of New Zealand (Gold) and Cameron Rahles-Rahbula of Australia (Bronze).

I hope that the International Olympic Committee will one day decide to meld the Olympics and Paralympics into one, because these people are awesome and they deserve the recognition.


*All photos are from Boston.com's The Big Picture which is an amazing site. If you're interested there are many more pictures of the games there.

Three Things

Dear everyone who was wondering about the occupant of Supreme Leader's uterus...

Dear Team Switzerland, you guys are awesome, even though you're Team Canada's kryptonite.

Dear Sidney Crosby, thank you for being Sidney Crosby.

A Warm Red Giveaway

Last night the Olympic torch passed by our house as it made its way around Greater Vancouver, and not wanting the kids to miss something special that they'll totally forget in a few years, we dragged them out the door to catch a glimpse. They were more interested in playing Mario Brothers at the time, but once we told them they'd get to see somebody carrying a burning stick, they were all over it.

The picture below isn't the greatest, but I was holding my little point and shoot above my head, still, it was pretty impressive to witness. What amazed me more than anything though, was the amount of people lining the street. You can't really tell from this shot, but there were thousands of people out there. I don't think you ever really stop to think about just how many people live around you, at least I never have. Sure you're surrounded by houses and you see people come and go, say hi to your neighbour and such, but actually seeing all of those people lined up in one spot is pretty surprising.

Giveaway! I have been lucky enough to receive quite a few fantastic gifts from fellow bloggers in the last few weeks (blogs to follow), and with the official opening of the Olympic games only two days away now I figured it was time to give something back, and tie it in with the games. And what will it be? Well, every Olympics have their must have items, and for Vancouver it's these, the red mittens. If you live outside of Canada you probably won't have heard about them, but if you are planning to watch, trust me, you'll see a lot of them.

So here's the deal. Wait, there is no deal. Leave a comment, that's it. Feel free to tweet about it or post it in some way or whatever you want, but I only care about the comments. Who has time to count all those damn 2 votes for a tweet, blah blah blah? The unemployed guy, right. Well, this unemployed guy is too lazy for that BS. Leave a comment, leave as many as you like. They're a size medium. Oh, and because I'm all about the love, I'll ship them wherever you live, no questions asked. On station in Antarctica? No problem. Uzbekistan? All good. Not that I'm saying you people who have draws and only ship within the continental US suck, because, sure, I suck too, I just suck much less than you do. So there you are. I'll pick a winner Sunday night. Don't forget who loves you.

PS. If you win and have strangely small hands or maybe gigantor hands, I may be able to work something out for you.

PPS. If you happened to read my Monday post, it really wasn't meant to sound like a pity party, but I do have man-cold and maybe it sucked the funny out. But thanks for all the sympathy. And sympathetic kicks in the ass.

Random Tuesday: Avian Fecal Matter And The Olympics

Crocuses. Pretty, right? Except that the WINTER Olympics are only ten days away. Oops.

Cypress Mountain, which is just north of Vancouver and is hosting free style skiing and snowboarding only had patches of snow left last week. They're trucking snow from the other side of the mountain and then pushing it up the hill with snow cats so they'll have a base for the snowmaking machines to work with. There had been talk of using helicopters to ship the snow in if they had too. I'm sure that won't affect my taxes next year.

Whatever, I love the Olympics and the fact that they're happening right here in my own city? Sweeeeeeet. Not that you'd know that it was happening in my city since it's not being called the Vancouver/Whistler/Richmond 2010 Olympics, but whatever, we have the speed skating oval, and more importantly, Holland House. Every Olympic games since Barcelona in '92, the Dutch Olympic Committee and Heineken have sponsored Holland House, a home away from home for Dutch athletes, families, the media and Dutch citizens. In real life it's a meeting place to drink copious amounts of beer. You don't have to be Dutch to get in, but a passport gets you to the front of the line.

You know what else we've got? A six story high inukshuk built out of cargo containers, that's what.

To all of you who don't live in Canada, an inukshuk is a stone marker used by the Inuit in northern Canada as a navigation marker

Wonder what they're going to do with it after the games? Bet it would look great on my front lawn.

Another cool thing being built here, right in front of the Oval and not so trailer park, is a giant floating sculpture of the Olympic rings. Built of steel reinforced fiberglass beams and filled with foam, it will be anchored in the river in front of the skating rink and filled with 30,000 pounds of cranberries. What? We grow cranberries here.

What else have we got? Goose shit. Snow goose shit to be precise. Approximately 100,000 snow geese stop by here twice a year to eat everything in site like a plague of white feathered locusts on their 4000 kilometre (2485 mile) journey from Russia to the Skagit delta in Washington State. Eat and shit. Everywhere. Geese are big birds.

And so I leave you with shit. Off to Keely's with you.

RTT: ChristmASS

I still haven't seen my favourite Christmas movie yet this year.


Yippee-ki-yay.



Last weekend we were out driving somewhere and had our car radio tuned to a Christmas station. This late 80's electric guitar/synthesizer/orchestral version of Carol of the Bells comes on and Connor gets all excited. "Daddy, it's the music from Halo!" Sure enough, this horrible piece of Xmas music sounds exactly like the background music from the video game. I did look for a YouTube link to the song but I couldn't find it. Just as well, it's terrible. Still, if you find yourself under attack by an evil group of aliens hell bent on eradicating humans at least you've got something Christmasey to listen to.

The other night I was walking to my bus stop after work and I see this woman waiting for a pedestrian to cross the street so she can make a left. And she honks at the guy crossing the road! 'Tis the season to be jolly or not, pull that shit on me and I will key your ass as you drive by. Ho ho ho.


I saw this on Fragrant Liar's blog last Thursday and it was too beautiful not to share.


Seeing a cat with his head stuck up Mr. Potato Head's ass is not something you see every day.

If you've ever lived in a city that's hosted an Olympics you'll know that the Olympic committee can go a little Nazi-ish when it comes to copyright infringement. They put the hammer down on anybody using the name "Olympics" or any form of it as well as any use of the city's name and the date, like Vancouver 2010. For example, there was a pizza place in Vancouver named Olympic Pizza. It's had that name for something like three decades and they were forced to change it. Now, I LOVE the Olympic games and I know they cost a fortune to run, but were they really worried about losing pizza sales? And how exactly to you copyright a 2700 year old event? Anyway, Vancouver based Lululemon introduced a new line of sports wear called the "Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011 Edition." Heh heh. I'm all for stickin it to the MAN.

Low-rise ass cracky jeans. Mom's, if you want to let me see your bum that's A-OK with me, but your nine year old daughter's? That. Is. Just. Wrong.

Monday night around 9:30 our power goes out. As I'm standing in the middle of my black kitchen I hear Supreme Leader shout down from upstairs, "Hey! The power is out."

I'm just going to leave that there.

Yes, I'm going to pay for it.


Go see the Un-Mom's for more crazy Random Tuesdayness.

RTT: Christmas, Cialis and the Olympic Torch

Liam: Daddy, can we play Star Wars Christmas?
Me: *narrowed eyes* Um... sure.

Ever wonder how they get the Olympic flame from Greece to the host country?


Carefully. This is the flame, divided into six separate miner's lanterns, leaving Athens on October 30th for Canada.



Random Tuesday. Really, you shouldn't need an introduction anymore.

Last week this guy in Toronto brought a Lego gun to work he'd bought on-line. This is a picture of him taken from a concerned neighbour across the street from his office.


Police piece together fake Lego gun case, after armed takedown

Once the heavily armed Emergency Response Team figured out it wasn't real they had a good laugh about it.

The temperature has dropped to zero here and it's playing hell on my skin. I feel like I'm molting. I put moisturizer on my forehead and by the time I finish my nose my head feels like a dry lake bed again. My hands look like I've been mummified and dug up after a millenium or two.

This is the Olympic flame at the Canadian Forces Station in Alert, North West Territories. Alert is only 817 km or 508 miles from the North Pole and is the "northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world."* If Santa needs to borrow a cup of sugar, this is where he goes.


The photo was taken at night, but since it's dark 24/7 there from October until March it may as well have been taken at noon.

Can somebody tell me how I close comments on old posts? The endless links to Asian porn were all funny to begin with but now it's just getting old. Plus, now I've started getting ads for Cialis in French and I can't figure out if it's a good deal or not.

The Olympic flame travelled 26,000 km (16,155 miles) by land and 18,000 km (11,184 miles) by air on it's trip around the country. Fittingly, it was only delayed once in Churchill, Manitoba.


Don't pick up hitchhikers.

The drive-thru lane at Mcdonalds should come equipped with gas jets. If you take more than three minutes making your order your car should be set on fire. I don't care if the kids are screaming. I don't care if you just received an important phone call. I don't care what your excuse is. It's McDonald's and it's the drive-thru. Know what you want before you get there. Fuck making correct change, fuck what toy the kids want for their Happy Meal and fuck arguing your bill at the take out window. If my fries are cold by the time I get home I will hunt you down and eat your heart.

Merry Christmas.

Go see the Un-Mom's for more merriment.


*Wiki

Olympic torch photos courtesy of The Big Picture.

Olympics! Penguins! A Plague Of Locusts (kinda)

What a weekend, where to start? Winter Olympics? Snow? What else happened? There was something else... never mind, it'll come to me. Guess I should do the Olympics since I put this one off already. Friday night we bundled up the kids and headed off to the official opening of the Richmond Olympic Oval. The Canadian speed skating team has been practicing on it since October, but this was the first time the public was allowed in. The mayor was there, some city councilors, gold medalists and the Premier (US viewers-read governor). The Prime Minister was supposed to be there, but I guess he was too busy trying to figure out how to keep his job to show.

We've been able to watch them build it from the beginning because we have to drive by it most days of the week and it's on my bike route as well.




I'd like to tell you I took these amazing shots, but it was actually somebody from Reuters who probably wasn't using a Sony Cybershot. The majority of my shots sucked, but I did manage to get a few good ones.



The roof on this building is amazing. It's almost 6.5 acres in size and made up of a million board feet of pine which is the equivalent of 6000 trees. Whoa! Easy there, tree hugger, wait for the rest of the story! Those 6000 trees came from the interior of our province and were all killed by a rotten son of a bitch bug called a pine beetle. The trees were salvaged by the government in an attempt to show these trees can still be used commercially. Otherwise they'll just have to be burned. Sadly an area almost the size of Colorado has been devastated by the pine beetle and aside from cutting down the trees and burning them, there's not much else to do with them, so this is a good thing.


The picture above is a storm water runnel which captures run-off from the roof. The roof, because it is so big, collects a lot of rain water, and instead of just siphoning it all off into the river it is diverted into a big sediment pond beside the oval. Some of the water is brought back into the building and used to operate toilets. It's also used for some other stuff as well, but damned if I can remember what. Whatever, I know two little boys who enjoyed playing in them.


The most memorable part of the evening though would have to be returning to our car. Because the building isn't finished yet, it doesn't have a parking lot. Oh, and there was only room in the grandstands for two thousand people. And it was raining. We parked a few blocks away and walked along the dyke to get there. When we left the rain had been joined by gale force winds and the wind chill had to be somewhere near what emperor penguins have to endure in Antarctica. De-light-ful. I typed this holding a pencil between my teeth.

The Olympics, Cannibals & Lesbians

It was supposed to be a lazy Sunday with the family, emphasis on the lazy. Then I made the mistake of going over to Colepack. Carrie has this giant headed evil animated fitness nazi on her page who keeps track of how much she's run. I hate her. She mocks me. The animated Nike girl, not Carrie. No, she mocks me too. Anyway, every time I go to her site, that bitch (not Carrie) is always pointing at my muffin top and calling me jelly ass and something just as endearing. So today I flipped her off and decided to jump on my bike.

And really, that's about it for the exercise bit. I rode my bike. The end. So how about some pictures? Like the winter Olympics? This is the speed skating oval which is being built in my city. I was going to do a post about it a couple of weeks ago but then I found out it will be opening to the public in the middle of December. Might as well wait until I can show you some inside pictures.



Where was I riding? No Proposition 8 in my province, in fact, we build nature trails for all sexual orientations. I can get married to whomever I want, except that I am married and can't add a second line to my team. We're pretty liberal here, but not that liberal.



And my youngest, while cute and cuddly looking, has developed a taste for human flesh. Still, he's my son and I will always support him. One piece at a time.



Finally, to Casey and Team HASAY,



(sorry, bad sound. "Being fat and out of shape hurts less.)