Ah the halcyon days of winter

This is my favourite time of year...I know, people are saying "what the hell is he talking about?". I get it, the holidays are over, there's a long dreary stretch of winter weather yet ahead, its cold, its dark out, and there really doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

And yet, the silver lining! Football playoffs are going full force, hockey is coming down to the crunch, we are mere weeks away from the start of March Madness and this year, as happens once every four years, the Olympics are on. And not just on, but hosted here, in Canada, and I just can't wait.

When else are you going to have water cooler discussions about the relative merits of the 4 man versus 2 man bobsled teams (or any conversation about bobsleds whatsoever). Like I said, a glorious time of the year!

Last night was the conference finals for the NFL, two weeks till Superbowl. We played poker, watched football and just hung out. Perfect (or it would been if damn New Orleans had covered the spread...). Any guesses as to who my brother and nephew were taking in the AFC championship game??

I'm not enamoured with the winter, and I'll take what I can get to make it easier, but I gotta tell you this is a pretty good time of the year!

Another pathetic attempt...

OK, there are a million celebrity blogs out there, and this is not one of them! I can't stand celebrity gossip, and have less interest in their lives than I do in identifying the malignant brown stain that somehow attached itself to my shoe sometime during a night of pub crawling...

However (I know you knew there was a however or but coming here) I really had to comment on this. Lindsay Lohan...in the interests of fairness I want to state up front that IMHO she has the all the talent(and appeal) of a three day dead golfish in a fishbowl that was left in the sun.

Why then, do you ask, would I waste my time and effort blogging about her? Simple, a news report yesterday regarding her "sex tape" just forced me to comment. Seriously, I understand the shameless (and sometimes humiliating) levels celebrities will go to put their names in the paper, if nothing else to remind people that they didn't OD last year. Celebrity boxing jumps immediately to mind. But Lindsay, what a walking, talking, occasionally staggering cliche!

There are some standard techniques that seem to be employed by young Hollywood starlets when they're desperate to get back in the limelight, many of them pioneered by the queen of self promotion, Paris Hilton. But Lohan? She's trying all of them!

DUI arrest...Check
Bad girl party problems...check
Paparazzi crotch shot...check, check, check ad nauseum
Lesbian relationship...yup, been there done that too

And now, the obligatory sex tape. Come on, if this isn't the most pathetically blatant attempt to get some publicity ever attempted I don't know what is.

And the worst part? I'm freakin' blogging about it! Sucked in by the lamest publicity stunt and here I am, willfully going along with it, ranting away like a good little automaton.

The only positive thing I can think of is that so far nothing she's done has made the slightest difference to her brilliant slide into anonymity. Almost makes me believe in the general sanity of the population...at least until I cave in and watch the damn thing!

That's it, that's all, hopefully I never again feel driven to comment on anything entertainment related (unless its more Vince, the guy really does freak me out....)

A weak mind is the jingle's playground

I'm never going to claim to be a disciplined mind, if anything I'd say I'm about as disorganized and random as a brain can get while still making sure that there's a heartbeat happening.

That being said, there's one area that I truly need to work on, something that if I don't fix it may eventually land me at the top of a clock tower playing "Enemy at the Gates". Here's the issue...When I hear a song, it gets stuck in my head. The worse or lamer the tune, the harder and longer its fixed in there. Hell, for a really bad song I don't even need to hear it, someone need only mention the title and there it is, the lameass soundtrack to my life!

Imagine how you feel when you wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off, and instead of the news its a remix of "My Name is Luca" playing, and in that trapped instant you know your doom...Susan Vega playing in the back of your mind all day long. You find yourself humming it subconciously, catch yourself doing it and look around guilty, hoping no one else heard you.

Now multiply that by 365 days a year...Whether its the freaking MiniWheats ad jingle or the god damned Glee version of Cindy Lauper's True Colours I'm screwed. The damn song is stuck in there playing on an endless loop. Try listening to something I like, no joy, that ridiculous refrain "True Colours...That's why I love you" keeps scrolling through my head.

There has to be a fix out there, some way of turning this off.....<the curiously catchy thread of the theme for Fraggle Rock playing softly in the background>

Another post (New Year's resolution...)

A new decade, a single resolution...A perfect score on the Alcohol Dependency Self Assessment Quiz (http://alcoholism.about.com/od/problem/a/blquiz1.htm)

That's right folks, as sad as it is to say I did not score 20/20 on the quiz. In fact even my two other alcoholic musketeers didn't manage it, though some of the answers are still awaiting final arbitration so there is some fluidity in the final totals...

End result though, none of us were close. Now I am a firm believer in the theory that a goal (and what else is a New Year's resolution) should be challenging, obtainable but only through hard work and perseverance. It’s a new decade and its time to lay out the brass ring which I will strive towards throughout the coming year...A perfect score on the Alcohol Dependency Self Assessment Quiz.

20 questions, 20 chances to say YES! Some of them simple, straightforward and easily met:

Inferior companions...check
Issues at home...double check

However, like any good goal, there are some challenges. What cunning plan can I implement in order to get institutionalized for drinking?

Can I convince my doctor to first treat me for my drinking and then commit me afterwards? That'd be two checks, no mean feat when one considers the obstacles...

Stay tuned, I'll be updating as the score creeps up!

Vince and the Slap Chop

OK, this is my first post on this blog so bear with me. I just really need to get this off my chest....

That guy from the SlapChop ad really freaks me out! I mean seriously, back when he was pitching the ShamWow it was creepy, but at least it was creepy in the way that slowing down to look at a car accident is creepy. You know you shouldn't do it, there's almost certainly nothing there you'll benefit from seeing, and yet for some reason you just can't pull your eyes away.

But that was then, this is now. The SlapChop thing is waaayyyy over the top. Does he really belive we're going to "love his nuts"? I mean OK, props for getting a job where you actually get to throw that statement out there, but honestly, you're a freak. Linguini, martini, bikini...I don't get it, and worse yet, I seem to know it. All of it. The guy's like a human version of the hamster dance song, everything he's dumping out gets stuck in your head.

In some ways I think that's what's really annoying me. Do I really need to have his spiky head and weird eyebrows populating my braincells with images of useless crap? He may be the devil. Not like the big "D" devil, but some minor minion, the patron demon of annoying advertising or something.

I'm really considering an exorcism, you know something involving repeated chantings from Marshall McLuhan while waving around a well thumbed copy of AdBusters..."the medium is the message....the medium is the message".

Even thinking of the time I've spent ranting about this only brings one thing to mind, to quote Joseph Conrad, "The horror, the horror".

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