Count Me as one of the Lucky Ones.

The other day, I got a bit of an eye-opener. I heard about this weird small mailing list called blind tards. IT described itself as a list for the blind to talk about blind people we have met who are exceedingly stupid. I thought, oo what fun! Here’s the place for me to talk about the blink I met on the bus who wanted to suck coffee through a straw because “I’m blind, andI might spill it!” and wanted me to identify all of her food items through the bags they were in. I thought, woo! I can talk about the first week I was at the school for the blind and how I thought I was in an asylum, not a school. Here’s the place where I can hear similar stories and have a giggle. Maybe I can get some cool blog material. Boy was I wrong. Well, at least it gave me one blog post.

Would you believe that a list of 45 can generate more mail than a list of 1000? These people were the most vocal, most bitter, most unhappy and most dejected blind people I’ve ever met. But at the same time, they seemed to take pride in their bitterness and anger and loved to verbally beat up on anyone who did not 100 percent agree with them. I even saw a new member who stated she was born blind and was pretty bitter and lonely. I have one question for her. Why? I partly understand people who go blind being bitter and lonely. They miss their sight, and they miss their friends who have a way of leaving as soon as they go blind because they’re afraid to face them. But if you’re born that way, what the fuck is your problem? If you’re 20-something and are still coming to terms with your disability, how the hell will anyone else deal with it? Maybe I just answered my own question about the loneliness part.

So, all I can say is, I’m happy to unsubscribe! I can’t take that much bitterness, and I’m happy to not feel that way. I wonder if any of them will read this…I hope so.

What Say You, Freud?

Actually I don’t want to know what Freud would have to say since he’d probably be high as a kite when he said it. But since he was the first one to analyze dreams, and I’m about to talk about a really weird dream I had last night, that’s why I picked him for the title.

Ok, where do I begin? I was sitting in MacKinnon, a building on campus, in class again. This girl came in and sat down beside me, with seven chickens attached to her arm in a ring-like thing. They weren’t in a bag, pouch, cage, or any kind of container. They were just somehow attached together in a circular pattern. What the fuck? Chickens? Attached to her arm? So we’re sitting there andI’m asking her about these chickens. She said they’re part of another class project and she has to take them everywhere. She said the worst part was they always want to peck her arm if she doesn’t have bread around. She said they frustrate her so much that sometimes she just wants to kill and eat them. Finally I offered to get some bread for her. She said sure, but I had to take the chickens with me. So off I went, with the chicken ring. I got on the elevator, and nobody asked me, hey weirdo, what’s with the chickens? They just pushed the buttons. Then the elevator began to swing violently and came to a stop. Then the dream did something dreams like to do. It made the space in the elevator huge, so huge that I had to yell for someone’s attention and ask what happened. They said the elevator was stuck. I asked them to use the emergency phone since I thought the alarm was useless for some reason I don’t know. They found the phone, which was a speaker phone and only went to MacKinnon mainttenance. They said they’d come and rescue us, but it would take a lot of time. Then I got desperate for some reason, and suddenly I was the one who had to dive down onto the next flor. Yes, me with the chickens attached to my arm, had to become a stunt man.

I went head first, screaming all the way, and the chickens started clucking, more than they had in the whole dream, and pecking! They were now pecking my arm like mad! Then I started walking down the street, but it was taking longer than I’d expect because I had to stop and keep the chickens from chewing on me! Then it just…ended.

What is with that? Has anyone ever had a dream like that? Probably everyone’s had weirder, but whatever. What’s the weirdest dream you’ve ever had?

I Feel Like Writing, So I Will

How’s everybody doing? Me, I’m doing pretty well. I’m really enjoying the awesome weather we’ve been having the last little while, and I hope you all are too, unless you’re one of those people who for whatever reason is stuck somewhere with not so great weather, in which case allow me to say, hahahahaha! Ok, that wasn’t very nice, but still, hahahahaha! Seriously though, I really shouldn’t laugh considering that I bitch about bad weather more than just about anyone I know. Snow and cold and even rain are things that tend to fuck up my day, sometimes to a frightening degree. If you’ve ever wanted to see a happy fun person change on a dime and become an angry ranting loon, come hang out with me on a crappy day sometime. I have no idea why this happens, but it does, and I’ve noticed that it gets worse the older I get.

Speaking of getting older, I want to send out an early happy birthday to my little brother. Ok, he’s not that little, but he’s younger than I am and I can’t come up with a better term than the one everybody else uses, so little brother it is. He turns 20 on the weekend. That scares me. It scares me because I can’t figure out where the time went. It seems like just yesterday I was telling him stories and bouncing him around the living room when we wrestled, and now he’s old enough to drink and vote, and if he tried, I’m sure there’s a pretty good chance he could beat my ass.

Many times I sit around and wonder when exactly it was that they decided to speed up time, and how exactly it was that I managed to miss the memo, even though I know that that’s just the way things work. Time passes before you know it. Things change, people grow up and move on, nothing ever stays the same permanently. Some days it’s hard to get my head around that. I’m only 26, but I already find myself looking back on how much things have changed in my lifetime, and sometimes, even though I hate to admit it, longing for the good old days. Ahh yes, the good old days. The days when there were only 10 channels on TV, and that was just if you had one of those big towers outside of your house and lived someplace that didn’t have a bunch of tall buildings blocking the signal. If you didn’t have that, you got 3, and 1 of them was in a language you couldn’t understand. The days when you could say to somebody that they sounded like a broken record and not get a look in return that said something along the lines of “a broken what now? God, old people suck, and they smell funny. Mom, this old motherfucker is scaring me, let’s go home.” The days when saying something like motherfucker within earshot of your parents would get you grounded for a year. The days when your blog was written down on bits of paper in a book, and you’d flip out if somebody found it and read it, rather than typed out and stored on a server somewhere for everybody to see, even though some people still flip out if somebody manages to find it and read it, but that’s another post for another day. The days before anybody knew what a blog, or even an internet was. The days when nobody wanted to, or was able to be in touch and connected to the office 24/7. I could go on, but none of us have forever to sit here and read it. Time is passing every day, and we all need to realize that, not take for granted what we have and where we are, and spend what time we do have here in the best way we possibly can.

That was much heavier than I was expecting.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever told any of you this story before, but I almost got to see Elvis Presley once. It’s true. I was super close to seeing him, but then my shovel broke.

Ok, I guess some things never do change. I’m still a prick. Sometimes I can be a sentimental prick, but still, a prick is a prick is a prick, or something like that.

Before I go, I want to thank Carin for all of the work she’s done here. It’s easier than it’s ever been to get in touch with us now and you now have the ability to search the whole web and hopefully once Google gets their act together this entire site from here, and that’s pretty much all because of her. Thanks for taking all of the time to figure this stuff out. I’m far too stupid for most of these things, so thanks for everything.

That’s all for now, but I’m sure there’ll be more to come, including, hopefully, my take on what sounds like a pretty interesting Backlash show. And by interesting, I don’t mean good, at least not if the highlights I saw on Raw mean anything.

Ok, I’m gone now.

I’m Sure They Taste Great, And They’re Definitely Less Filling

PM slammed by GO hackers

OTTAWA — Ever wonder what a prime minister eats?

GO Transit riders in and around Toronto may wish they didn’t know after pranksters recently hacked into the commuter trains’ digital sign system and offered their thoughts on the subject. “Stephen Harper Eats Babies,” five different signs stated between Thursday and Monday, at which point the sign system was finally shut down and password protected.

According to GO spokesman Edmund Shea, the regional transit body in no way endorses the messages that interrupted paid LED ads. “It’s electronic graffiti, electronic vandalism,” he said. “We’re sorry if anyone’s offended by this, including the prime minister.”

The Living Definition Of Stubborn

Man spends 50 years in tree after row

The thing that strikes me the most about this story isn’t just that this guy decided to live in a tree for 50 years although that is pretty crazy, but that he’s been up there since his son was 5 years old. Some of the earliest memories I have are of being 5 years old, so that probably means that for pretty much this kid’s entire life his dad has lived up in a tree, refusing to come down and I would imagine missing out on just about everything to do with his son growing up. That’s insane, especially since by his own admission, the fight that led to this whole mess wasn’t even over anything of any consequence. I’ll never understand people.

TNA Lockdown Thoughts

We’re talking wrestling again here, so if you hate the stuff, you know what to do.

I thought Lockdown was a pretty good show over all, but most of TNA’s pay-per-views are, so that’s not surprising. A lot of people like to crap on the all cage match concept and I can understand why to a point, but after it worked last year I thought they might settle down a little. NO such luck, which also isn’t all that surprising, but a man can dream, right?

Anyway, here are a few random thoughts on the show.

*The Team Japan vs. Team USA opener was a solid, fast-paced match that got the night off to a fine start. The crowd was into it from beginning to end, which made things even better. that crowd was great actually, since they were pretty loud for just about everything all night long. I doubt that the World X Cup will draw TNA a lot of new viewers, but if this match is any indication of what the rest of the tournament will be like, it’ll definitely entertain the ones they already have and maybe even hook a few people who are on the fence about watching the product on a regular basis.

*I love the fact that they’re playing up Sonjay Dutt’s Indian heritage, but I seem to be in the minority there. My take on it is that if they didn’t mention it, they would catch heat for ignoring it, but since they are, it’s something that makes him easy for guys to heel on which gives the fans a reason to get behind him, which could add some extra heat to the X Cup.

*Calling Low-Ki Senshi is going to take some getting used to, but I’ll work on it. For now, I can’t say I’m thrilled with the change, but I understand why they had to do it…at least I think I do. Just in case anybody cares, Low-Ki didn’t want to sign the rights to his name over to TNA which is probably a wise move, so they gave him a new one that they could market whenever he wrestles there. And in case anybody is curious about what Senshi could possibly mean, I’ve heard that it translates into something along the lines of Japanese Warrior. I don’t speak Japanese though, so it could just be that people are fucking with me. If anybody knows for sure, toss me an email or leave a comment.

But whether you want to call him Senshi or Low-Ki, he had a fine match with Christopher Daniels. Again, not at all surprising, which is becoming a theme for this post. the thing I’ve always liked about Senshi is that even though he’s not a big man by any means, the things he does in the ring look like they have a very good chance of causing immediate death, which is a great thing to have going for you anyway but especially when you don’t have size to use to your advantage when it comes to getting noticed in the business.

*Watching Bullet Bob Armstrong do is pre-match interview, it hit me again not only how great he is, but how many guys can’t even come close to being that good today. I’m not saying that nobody can work the mic anymore, all I’m saying is that the ability to cut a quick and simple promo without being scripted to the word is becoming more and more of a lost art these days, and that’s sad. If you think I’m wrong, watch guys like Bullet Bob, Ric Flair, Bobby Heenan or Jim Cornette and then watch a lot of what’s out there now and count the number of guys who are relying on a couple of catchphrases to get over. There’s nothing wrong with catchphrases, but when they’re all you have, there’s definitely a problem.

*Speaking of the Bullet, the arm wrestling deal between him and konnan was as good as it could have possibly been, and I hope that this storyline can end now that the good guys have won and even gotten further revenge by strapping the hell out of Konnan and company. This is another one of those angles that’s gone on for far too long, and the crowd chanting boring while they should have theoretically been going insane with joy will hopefully make this fact obvious to the booking team.

*I enjoyed the 6-man X-Division Xcape match for the most part. The only thing that didn’t really work for me was watching Chase Stevens damn near kill himself by landing on his face after missing a shooting star press from the top of the cage. How he managed to not get caught and pull this thing off safely when there were 4 guys waiting in the ring I have no earthly idea, but he did it. I suppose his chances may have been somewhat better had the guys down below not tried to get out of the way for some reason, but whatever. At least he didn’t break his neck again, that’s the main thing.

I know that some people didn’t like the finish of this match, but I didn’t mind it. Maybe it should drive me nuts that they did something as silly as having Petey Williams land on Scott D’Amore’s shoulders instead of the floor when he fell from the cage so that Sabin would end up winning when he hit the ground first, but sometimes things like that just work, and for me, this was one of those times.

*On just about any other day, I’d have to call the Samoa Joe vs. Sabu match a bit of a disappointment, but considering that Sabu had a legit broken arm, there’s no way I could possibly do that and still be considered sane. There wasn’t a whole lot to this match, but it still accomplished what it needed to accomplish. Joe got another big win, and he got it over Sabu, which is a fairly big deal.

*I absolutely hated the Capture the Flag match or whatever the hell they were calling it. Everybody was working hard and there was lots of action, but for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, it felt like this thing was about 7 years long. If I have to blame something, I guess it would be the finish, but I wasn’t happy long before that point. Let’s talk about the finish anyway though since it was so unbelieveably stupid. The Ref got knocked out, Team 3-D captured the flag to win the match, their music started, people cheered, and then everything stopped. You see, it wasn’t officially a win since the man in charge didn’t see them take the flag. Realizing this, those dastardly men from Team Canada took the flag and put it back so that it would appear to the referee when he woke up that none of this had ever happened. All of that I’m absolutely fine with. What I’m not fine with is what happened next. the match continued, and it eventually ended up with Team 3-D winning anyway, which makes the whole ref bump utterly pointless. Ref bumps for the sake of ref bumps are a bad idea, because they make ref bumps that are supposed to mean something mean nothing when they need to.

Another thing that drove me nuts was that they didn’t show a huge part of the big victory celebration. The whole crowd was singing the American anthem while the announcers just talked over it hyping up other things, completely missing what could have been a pretty good moment.

*Larry Zbyzsko is ridiculously entertaining, and I hope he ends up staying on TV as a character in some form even though it looks like he’s being written out. His spots interrupting all of the backstage interview segments trying to figure out what management’s big announcement was were great, and his reactions when he finally found out and when Raven came out were fantastic. He’s certainly one of those people that some of the younger guys could learn a thing or 2 from if they watched what he does and when and how he does it.

*I’m not sure what to make of Christy Hemme signing with the company. I’m glad she’s got a job, but I’m not sure how much she can do since they’ve already got plenty of women on the roster with nothing going on. They could start a women’s division I guess, but considering that they’ve only got an hour of major tV to work with each week and they’re having trouble pacing things as it is, that’s probably not a good idea.

*Christian and Abyss had a great match, possibly Christian’s best since he’s been here, and definitely his best since he became champion. The only semi-negative thing I can say about this match is that they should think about laying off the thumbtacks. Abyss seems to use them in every PpV match he has, and kind of like ref bumps for no reason, when things like that are done too much, they lose that special oh my God feel that they should have. but that being said, they worked just fine here, and the extra bag of tacks was a nice touch and really helped put things over the top. I’m glad to see this feud continuing if it means that there’s potential for another match as good as this one.

*I should probably mention before I move on that Jim Mitchell cuts one fine promo.

*The Lethal Lockdown main event was quite good, and if it will be remembered for anything, my guess is that it will be for AJ Styles dropping from the ceiling of the building and putting Chris Harris through a table on top of the roof of the cage. It was probably safer than it seemed, but it was another one of those things where I was surprised A that somebody would be crazy enough to try it, and B that neither man was seriously injured or worse as a result.

*I figure that we haven’t seen the end of the Sting Jarrett feud since even though he was on the losing team Jarrett wasn’t the one Sting beat to win the match in the end. I’m sure we’ll end up getting a Sting vs. Jarrett 1-on-1 match somewhere down the line, and I’m ok with that as long as we only have to see it once before both guys move into some new storylines.

As usual, feel free to let me know what you thought of the show. We like interaction around here, it’s fun. And if any of you saw Backlash, which is probably just finishing up as I type this, what did you think? I’ll be watching it in the next few days and hopefully I can get something up before the weekend when I head out of town. If I don’t, oh well, but I’ll try.

Code Monkey Like Fritos, Code Monkey Like Blog Tweaks that Work!

Ok now I think I’ll officially freak out Jonathan Coulton for stealing lyrics for this post’s title from one of his recent…things a week? Thing a weeks? what is it? Anyway, his songs he puts out and now gets paid for by some people, woohoo!

But the point is right now, I feel simultaneously like a code monkey and an inventor, although if I met a real inventor, s/he’d probably think this little creation was child’s play and tell me I’m only a code monkey. I, Carin the short but giant geek, after being inspired by Steve the giant visionary, have managed to turn our names where it says posted by into snappy links that will let you send the author of that post an email if you don’t want to put your two cents on the comment boards. I know we’re probably inviting spam and hate mail, but it could be fun!

It was weird going through the process of making it work. First you wonder if it’s even possible. After you’ve worked on it for a while and have swayed from thinking it’s impossible to thinking it’s totally possible, you hit a breakthrough! You go from realizing you’ve almost got it, to having what you’ve just done fail miserably, and then you finally have everything work flawlessly! Victory is sweet! Oh god I’m such a baby code monkey. Oo oo, ee ee, ah ah!

Bring Your Own Google

I guess some productivity came out of some rage. After I ranted about the google blogsearch, I got us a handy dandy little regular google search box. So, I pass the ball to the sighties. Attention working sets of eyeballs, does it look ok? Should it be in a different spot, in a different colour, size, anything? Or, does it look just fine? We know it functions, but it still hasn’t found most of our blog. Oh google, you have some work to do. But in any case, we have a not so functional blogsearch box that we can’t seem to garbage, arg, and a very functional websearch box!

Happy googling.

Backlash Predictions

We don’t talk nearly enough wrestling around here these days, so this is the first step towards changing that. If you’re not a wrestling fan, you’re free to skip this whole thing if you wish, but why you would want to take a pass on something I wrote I have no idea.

WWE’s Backlash pay-per-view will take place just a few short hours from now, and since
Salty Ham
doesn’t do Roundtables anymore, I thought I’d put my predictions up here. I haven’t done a predictions post in a long time, I know there are wrestling fans out there who read this thing and hey, posting is good, so here we go.

I’ll use the old Salty style of who should win, who will win and thoughts on the match because I got used to doing it that way and because it’s a good way of doing things.

By the way, you can feel free to leave your own thoughts on the comment board or in my
inbox,
both of which are always open for business.

WWE Championship Triple Threat Match
Champion John Cena vs. Edge vs. HHH
Who should win: Edge
Who will win: John Cena
Thoughts: They never should have taken the belt off of Edge in the first place, but they did, so there’s no point in bitching about that now. but even though he’s lost it and that’s bad, he shouldn’t win it back here. With the ECW show coming up in June and all signs pointing to RVD cashing in his title shot that night, it would be better to leave the strap on a guy like Cena who whether it be a positive one or a negative one, always gets an amazing reaction from a crowd. The ECW fans will eat that man alive, and a lot of times with Cena matches, the fan response makes things seem much better than they really are. You could make a case for Triple H, but it seems like he’ll be turning face shortly and it would be stupid to stall his momentum by putting him in a situation where he would no doubt be booed out of the building. Besides, with ECW coming back full time in the very near future, it would get things off to a fine start if one of that company’s biggest stars won a match over someone as hated by the masses as Cena.

Shawn Michaels & “God” vs. Mr. McMahon & Shane McMahon
Who should win: Michaels and “God”
Who will win: Michaels and “God”
Thoughts: If you’re one of those non-fans who decided you were going to read this anyway, no, this is not a joke. God is honestly scheduled for a match on a WWE pay-per-view. Yes, wrestling is stupid sometimes, I know. But since this match is happening, I’ve got no choice but to talk about it. I won’t say much other than that the whole thing is stupid, the feud has gone on for far too long and that I’m praying to Shawn Michaels’ tag partner that after tonight it will all be over. I’ll miss watching Vince McMahon lose his mind on live television, but if that’s the price I have to pay to get this over and done with, I’m beyond fine with that.

Intercontinental Championship/Money in the Bank
Champion Shelton Benjamin vs. Rob Van Dam
Who should win: Rob Van Dam
Who will win: Rob Van Dam
Thoughts: This shouldn’t be a hard one to call, but for some reason I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Shelton went over but Rob won back the Money in the Bank shot in a rematch somewhere between Monday and June. This one should be pretty good, and other than the title match, I think it has the best chance of being match of the night unless of course “God” or Shawn Michaels decide to work a miracle, which is entirely possible.

Kane vs. Big Show
Who should win: Kane
Who will win: Kane
Thoughts: I have no idea where they’re going with this whole Kane is hearing voices and losing it whenever somebody says the date of his movie opening thing, but unless something changes and changes quickly, where they’re heading is down the long and winding road to Thisisretardedburg. I cannot possibly put into mere words how stupid this whole thing is. I’ve heard people comparing it to WCW’s late 90’s angle where the Ultimate Warrior was haunting Hulk Hogan but nobody around him could see it but everybody on TV and in the arena could, and I can’t come up with anything better than that. By the way, for the non-fans, what I just wrote makes no sense to me either, and I’ve been watching this stuff for almost as long as I’ve been alive.

Women’s Championship
Champion Mickie James vs. Trish Stratus
Who should win: Mickie James
Who will win: Mickie James
Thoughts: This is the only storyline I can think of in the current crop that has been consistently interesting and well built over the course of several months. I like the new twist they’ve thrown in, with Trish now acting like Mickie in order to try to get inside her head and drive her as crazy as Mickie did her. I’m not sure where they can take things from here, but putting the belt back on Trish and blowing off the feud wouldn’t be a good idea since Mickie is something new and fresh as opposed to Trish holding the belt, which has been done time and time again. I get the sense from watching the shows that a lot of fans feel the same way I do, and as we’ve seen with John Cena and even Rey Mysterio to a point, the fans have no problem voicing their feelings about things they don’t like, and I’m sure that the last thing WWE would want on their hands is another face champion that gets treated like a heel. As for the match itself, it should be fun, but I doubt we’re going to see a clean win. My guess is that Trish gets herself disqualified and Mickie retains.

Carlito vs. Chris Masters
Who should win: Chris Masters
Who will win: Chris Masters
Thoughts: This is a weird one in the sense that I’m pretty sure that no one, and I include WWE Creative in this, has any idea where it’s going or how the hell it’s supposed to get there. When the angle started after WrestleMania, it wasn’t clear to anybody which of the 2 was the face and who was the heel, and while it’s still not the easiest thing to figure out, my guess is Carlito based on the way things have been booked so far. But they’ve got a long way to go if they want to establish him as a true fan favourite and if Masters loses he’s pretty much doomed, so unfortunately, Masters needs to win and this feud needs to continue for the sake of both men’s careers.

Ric Flair vs. Umaga
Who should win: Umaga
Who will win: Umaga
Thoughts: There’s not much you can really say about this match other than Umaga needs to go over fairly strong here in order to keep his new guy push and monster character going. It’s way too early for him to be doing the job for anybody, even if that person is Ric Flair. I’m not sure what happens once this match is over, but you can’t have anybody beat the crap out of a guy like Flair without giving him a rematch unless you’re going to retire him, so I guess they’ll have no choice but to find a way to continue a storyline that should have never started in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense to bring a new guy in and right away put him in the ring with Ric Flair. New guy’s job should be to kill people dead for a few months before moving on to more competitive fights once he’s established. It’s really pretty basic stuff, and I’m amazed that somebody like Vince McMahon can’t remember it considering that he used to use it so well.

Those are all of the matches announced so far, but it’s possible that another one could be added by the time the show starts since there’s no Tag title match that I’m aware of.

I’ll put up some thoughts on how things turn out once I have a chance to see it, whenever that is. I rarely watch anything as it happens anymore, so you could get your Backlash review just in time for SummerSlam for all I know. But no matter what order things get posted in, there will be show thoughts and I’m looking to do quite a bit more wrestling writing here, so either be warned or be on the lookout, depending on which side of the wrestling fan fence you’re on.