TWIG Notes: Extra Super Shitty Edition

What a week.

On Tuesday last week, my mother said goodbye to her fourth animal friend, Quincy, when his health took a sharp turn for the worse (tongue cancer). He was 13, so it was only natural for things to start going downhill, but he was the last of the ‘old guard’ of pets, and will be missed just as much as the others who have passed.

Thursday my mother went in for day surgery and ended up having to stay hospitalized until Sunday. I won’t go into details, because it’s really no one’s business, but any extra time spent in a hospital is never a good time. I’m happy that the ladyfriend and I had time booked off work already, so we weren’t scrambling to make last-minute plans, and we were able to make sure my mom got home safely. It’ll be a week or so until she’s feeling her best though.

During my stay in Kamloops I also managed to pick up some sorts of illness. I’ve had a very sore and constricted throat since Saturday and yesterday I started oozing mucous out of my eyes (in addition to traditional flu symptoms like fever and sinus congestion). Today I was diagnosed with an eye infection and had some swabbing taken to see if I have strep throat. Needless to say I’m not at work, and while I wanted to stay in Kamloops to make sure things were okay for my mom, judging by how sick I am now it’s probably better that I’m quarantined at home. I’d feel awful if I spread even part of whatever I’ve got to someone else.

And today we received news that my step-father-in-law’s mother entered a coma. She was certainly a fighter, having lived to age 90 and surviving cancer, and she did so with a kind of stubbornness that is admirable.

So in all, This Week In Garrett has been one of the worst in recent memory. The good part is that things can only get better, and I hope they get better damn soon. Somewhere in all of this I was supposed to have a birthday but I think that’ll be celebrated in June instead.

Status Update

There’s been a lot of smoke lately about Facebook’s privacy or lack thereof. The complaints are legitimate: Facebook is constantly changing its privacy settings to, by default, share more and more information to its ‘partners’. And I can’t really blame Facebook, because a) people are voluntarily signing up for Facebook, and placing your private information online and thinking it’s safe is asinine; and b) we live in a world where everything has to be monetized. If it’s a successful idea, it has to make money. I don’t like these facts but that’s just the way things are. As my ladyfriend says, if you’re foolish enough to put private information on a public website, don’t complain that it’s being exposed or exploited.

When I signed up for Facebook three years ago, I did it out of peer pressure. Everyone was signing up, and it seemed like I was missing out on the fun. And it was fun. I got to see photos of people, stalk former high school crushes, and make smartass comments about other peoples’ status updates. Occasionally I’d play a game, and use its events feature to invite people to things like birthday parties or trips to see burlesque.

Now, though, the fun seems to be gone. I spend perhaps two minutes a day on Facebook now, where I basically read status updates and click “Hide” on application or game notifications. Also, as Facebook constantly finds new ways to mine personal information for profit, I’m required to go through all my privacy settings and ensure everything I want kept off Google stays off it (supposedly). It’s coming to the point where I don’t really get anything out of Facebook - and what I do get out of it is essentially Twitter, which I already negatively ranted about.

So I’ve set July 1 as a day to start the 30 Day No Facebook challenge. It’s exactly what you’d think: for a month I try to go without logging into Facebook. If, after that month, I don’t miss it, I delete my profile. It sounds easy, but I don’t know if I can find the will to press the delete button if or when the day comes (ironically, there is no delete button on Facebook). While I have email, a Flickr account, and a blog, my worry is that I’ll miss out on something or on someone trying to contact me for something fun to do. I get the occasional party invite on Facebook, and while I rarely go to such parties, I know that were I to no longer be on Facebook I’d never even get an invite. So maybe the potential loss isn’t that great. We’ll see how it goes, though. Maybe I’ll be a full on hypocrite and quit Facebook to join Twitter.

Another Goodbye to an Animal Friend

On Wednesday my mother had our family cat, Moka, put down. This makes three pets passing away in the last four months (plus one more, my sister’s cat, died last month). Aside from Lucy, the loss of Rumpole (the schnauzer) and Moka were somewhat expected; both were in their early teens, which if you like the human-year-conversion scale, puts them in their 90s. Moka had a liver problem, and had withered away to five pounds in her last year, and like Rumpole, got to the point where her condition was just never going to get better - in fact it was only going to get worse. So as the designated family crybaby, Wednesday night I shed a few tears in memory of losing another animal friend.

One of the great things about having pets is the companionship and memories they provide, and one of my favourite memories of both Rumpole and Moka together happened when they were both still very young: I was lying on the sofa in Kamloops, and without prompting them, the cat and dog devised a game to play by themselves. Rumpole would chase Moka under a bed, then run back into the living room and hide under a blanket. A minute later the cat would silently sneak up behind him and try to pounce on him before he had a chance to pop out from under the blanket. The dog would jump out, and the cat would slide under the blanket to take his place. The dog would then snort and sniff and try to goad the cat out. Once he got close enough where the cat could snag his beard (and chomp his nose), the dog would chase the cat back under the bed. This continued for about twenty minutes, until Moka decided she had something better to do (sleep). It was incredible to watch two animals devise a game, with rules and ‘turns’ - I’ve seen dogs play with dogs, and cats play with cats, but never something so structured.

So while we were treated to years of undemanding friendship and love from all three pets, it’s been a sad time to have to say goodbye to them all. I’m sure my mother will get a new dog and cat eventually, and we’ll have new memories, but I’m glad we got to live with such fun and loving animals.

TWIG Notes XXV

It’s the twenty-fifth installment of This Week In Garrett! And This Week In Garrett:

- Earth Day came and went with hardly any fanfare. Do people still care about Earth Day? It’s a pretty vague day to celebrate, and not long before that was ‘turn off all your lights for an hour’ day too. I can’t say we did anything special for Earth Day. I have a feeling people are generally tired of save-the-earth movements the last few years. Besides, what good does turning off lights really do when there’s an oil rig leaking crude oil, non-stop, into the ocean? Or when an Icelandic volcano does more in one week to reduce CO2 emissions - by grounding airplanes - than any human effort?

- Saturday was probably the last stag I’ll ever attend, as my friend Nigel is being wed in a few weeks. We went to Castle Fun Park for activities, Sammy J. Peppers for food, and the Caddyshack for naked ladies. Funny story: at CFP we all tried our hands at a strong-man hammer device, where you smack a giant target with a hammer to measure your strength, on a scale of zero to one thousand. Everyone hit about 830; I hammered home about 710. Standing around waiting, we watched an eight year old kid, a 40-ish mom, and an elderly man all beat my score.

- I had roughly two and a half weeks to read Fordlandia, a book detailing Henry Ford’s dallying in the Amazon to try to grow rubber and to create a picture-perfect Norman Rockwellian town in the middle of the jungle. It’s a fascinating insight into early capitalism and cultural ignorance, but also an interesting account of Henry Ford’s blend of common sense and craziness. He felt people should be paid well, be able to buy whatever they need, learn to grow gardens and provide for themselves, but also feared government, was adamant about prohibition, and had a lot of bad things to say about Jews. I strongly recommend reading it.

- Earlier in the week I bought tickets to see Metric, at the Malkin Bowl at Stanley Park. The ladyfriend and I haven’t seen a concert since May 2007. Metric is a pretty hip Canadian band right now, and I missed out last time they came (to be fair, I wasn’t ‘into them’ as much at that time). Ticketmaster fees paid on two tickets: nearly $40.

- There’s a few things I really like about working in downtown Vancouver: it’s a transit hub; there’s nearly endless options for lunch; ample people-watching opportunities; and a bank machine is always nearby. One of the events I always love to see, however, is expensive cars being towed while their car alarms are going off. I’ve seen it happen a few times: rich asshole driving a Bentley or Rolls or [insert stupid imported car type here] parks in front of a fire hydrant, or a loading zone, or simply a spot where parking isn’t allowed, no doubt thinking he’ll just be a few minutes while he gets his cufflinks polished or her implants massaged. It takes about 60 seconds for a tow truck to string the car up and drive away, and it brings me great joy knowing that the rich person in question is going to have to deal with a tow truck driver or impound lot, no doubt furious that he or she has to deal with the lower-class plebs that shop at Mark’s Work Warehouse. Having lots of money and an expensive car does not grant special parking privileges.

- I subscribe to GQ magazine, and I’ve noticed a marked decrease in females featured in its pages. Last month’s issue had zero photo spreads of hot celebrity women; this month’s has one photo. When I started subscribing there’d be at least 2-3 pages of some cleavagey trollop per issue, but lately they’ve seemingly been replaced by ads of oily hairless dudes in their underpants. I think GQ is trying to turn me gay.

Still Got Game

I don’t play video games nearly as much as I used to - as someone who’s had video games in his life since the days of the Commodore 64, the hours I put into playing games for the rest of my life, starting now, will probably never equal the hours I put into playing games before now. It’s probably due to three factors: one, there’s very few games that hold my interest long enough to keep me coming back; two, I’m married, and video games aren’t terribly inclusive; and three, I’m too cheap to buy games, too disinterested to rent them, and too lazy to illegally download them.

In the past 20-or-so years, though, there’s a few games that stick out in my mind as being special. The kind of games that pushed the boundaries of what games were or did something that made me want to play them. One of these games is Rez, and it was mostly the reason I bought a Dreamcast, the doomed Sega machine that died face-down in the muck of the never-ending Video Game Console War. It blended early 2000s electronic dance music and user actions in a new way, with each action executed with the beat of the music. As you progressed through levels, the music would begin to layer, or ‘evolve’, and as you progressed through the game the graphics too would ‘evolve’. Rez didn’t really push the limits in terms of storytelling or graphics, but it was addictive and experimental. It was something to play through for the experience of playing it rather than for the reaching of any particular goal.

I remember trying to spread the Rez experience to people I worked with throughout the years and the reaction was always split down the middle: either someone loved it or thought it was dumb. It’s hard to describe and the experience doesn’t translate well just by watching, but below is a video of one of the levels in Rez, just to show a little of what it’s all about.

Sadly I don’t think games like Rez are (or ever were, really) viable. Games cost a lot of money to make now, and aside from the occasional downloadable ’small’ game on Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network, experimental games just don’t get exposure. These types of games seem to have faded away in the current generation of the Console War, which is a shame.

Happy Anniversary

It’s the fourth anniversary of blogging at garrettknights.com, which means a traditional gift of flowers and fruit (next year, I get wood). In the four years of blogging I’ve written 370 posts and received 1208 comments. That’s an average of one blog post every 3.9 days and an average of 3.2 comments per post. While I would love to have a better days-between-posts average, I’m actually surprised I’ve even kept with this whole blogging thing since 2006.

Just for fun, what happened in 2006?

In March 2006, NASA lost contact with the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, leaving it to voyage on into the Neutral Zone where, any day now, Klingons will discover its message of peace and destroy it.

In June, Serbia and Montenegro separated and became independent states. And I bet you still can’t point to Montenegro on a map without looking it up (I sure can’t).

Also in June, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq, signalling the end of the war and the triumph of Freedom over Terrorism. Oh, wait, not really.

In August, some would-be terrorists are caught in the UK, and the rest of the world isn’t allowed to bring liquids or gels on airplanes in their carry-on luggage.

Also in August, a bunch of pinhead scientists demote Pluto from planet status to dwarf planet status. In about 80 years the scientific community will have to deal with planetary reparations.

In November, a Jackson Pollock painting becomes the most expensive painting ever sold, at a price of 140 million dollars. Yes, it’s one of the ones that’s paint drizzled on a canvas.

In December, Stephane Dion becomes leader of the federal Liberal party. Remember him? You do?? Why?!

And on December 30, Saddam Hussein is executed. Or was he?