Daily Offerings: June 2006 Archives

So I had an incredibly long, slightly painful, partially annoying weekend. I'd love to talk about it too. Only right now I don't have the time. So here's a meme.

Hockey isn't something I normally watch. In fact, I watched three games this year, all of them from the final series, all of them at Rob's. Super hockey fan I'm not. So after a period of suck so bad that I picked up on it Rob, Jess and I played pool. The suck was the same level as the hockey game, only this suck was our suck and therefore 1000 times more bearable because we could experience all the scratching first hand. No need to watch people yell and moan as someone took a shot and missed; we got to do it ourselves. The only thing that could have made it more enjoyable would have been alcohol. Alcohol or naked people. I could settle for either.

Upstairs was a different story. They continued to watch the game and seemed content to tell along with the people in the stadium. All they needed was to turn the air conditioning up super high because they had high definition and experienced everything ad if they were there, right down to all the sweat that was flying off players, faces:

To enjoy the humor in this I have to explain who was watching the game. I would never have picked Rob's mom, grandmother, brother OR brother's friend as hockey fanatics. In fact when I showed up at Rob's house earlier I mistook his grandmother for a cleaning lady. She was standing in the kitchen with an apron on scrubbing dishes with some sort of fish scrubbing contraption. What else was I to think? Apparently I was to think "grandmother" something said grandmother plans on reminding me every time she sees me.

Rob's brother's friend on the other hand was originally going to watch the game with us. Only we were too clueless to make the connections between the fact that he was downstairs with us and that Rob's brother wasn't home yet. Instead we were quizzing Jess on what hockey teams were from where:

After that Rob's brother's friend thought we were on crack and left. That's when we found out that he was planning on staying with us and we felt guilty. Oh the horror. THE SHAME!

So after the first period when we had gotten tired of watching the game, we switched to playing pool when a perfect opportunity to be nostalgic arose. Jess was bending over the pool table trying to not fail at the game when something clicked in my head. I dove off the couch that I was sitting on and lunged out and smacked her ass. I mean SMACKED. To the point where you could hear the bones in my wrist cracking and the sound echoing 30 seconds later.

We all thought it was hilarious. It was hilarious. At least until we realized my wrist was starting to swell and bruise, and that Jess was walking with a little limp. 10 minutes later I was in so much pain I had to go upstairs to get an icepack. So there I was in the middle of the hockey game about to interrupt a bunch of crazy hockey fans that I had embarrassed myself in front of earlier. And of course, when we went to get the ice pack out of the freezer the whole thing fell out onto the floor. I'm taking it as a sign that I should never bother watching hockey games again. They're too painful.

A long way back I decided that I needed to share my opinion on this new thing that was popping up on blogs everywhere called comment plugging. It involved a script in the blog software that would put the name of the person who posted a comment, as a hyperlink to wherever they wanted (usually their website, since it's what was asked for), at the bottom of the entry.

The very first time I saw this it was at Lost Dreaming (jen.eloquensa.net). When I saw her doing it and saw no one else in any of my blog hopping that had anything like it. I thought it was sweet: a nice little thank you for taking the time to comment on what she had written. Then I moved on and thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward to about a month ago when I started some serious blog hopping again on a rainy day when there was nothing better to do. All of a sudden every single blog I wound up at had comment plugs. It was convenient for me because I could just click on all the links and open them in a background page, then close the ones that sucked or were by people I wasn't attracted to. Yes I know, I'm a horrible person for admitting that but it's true. I'm more likely to stay longer than 30 seconds if I think they're attractive. Unless of course they're articulate and funny, then I just assume they're attractive.
Only it wasn't long before this comment plugging nonsense started to bother me. You would get entries about absolutely nothing with 30+ comments about absolutely nothing. Now let's move past the fact that I'm bitter that these people are getting all these comments. I'm afraid to see what would happen if I started comment plugging. All of a sudden I get people on my site who don't actually care about what I have to say because why does it matter when they get a SWEET LINK TO THEIR SITE?! See where I'm going with this?

It's entirely possible that I was just being bitter. Not being the kind of person who would comment on anyone's site unless it was an entry by someone hot about their hot cousin who farts a lot, I felt I was being cheated out of potential hits. Why couldn't they blog about something interesting so that I too could rape them with comments so that I could up my hits too? Is there no justice in the world?!

Unsure of how I was allowed to feel about this I asked an internet guru about her opinion on the subject. Said internet guru, who will remain unnamed for fear of her laying a huge smackdown on me for quoting her in a crappy opinion piece that I tried to pass off as a decent editorial, solidified my belief on comment plugging:

So there you have it. For those of you who had discussion with me in person on the subject, rest assured knowing that comment plugs won't show up here. I may not have quality writing, but I'm not going to sink to the level of comment plugging to get more hits. Instead I'll do what any other boy in my position would do: write a really large "OMG CHAD FOX IS SO SEXY" and see what happens then.

Last Friday night when I got home I was in a state similar to the one I'm in now. I was tired from working all day and after going out to eat I was ready for bed. The only bonus to tonight is the fact that I have a splitting headache. On ya, and the fact that I now have a near empty bottle of rum instead of a near full bottle of rum because my sister takes alcohol on my desk as an invitation for her and her tool friends to fill their weekendly need to get drunk. Hurray for genetics. So it may come as a surprise to everyone that I didn't actually pass out, as much as I would have loved too. No, the straight world had other plans for me.

When I signed on msn to check my mail, Rob messaged me and told me that he'd been ditched by Dave and that he needed to me to head over asap to play Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II. I spent five minutes trying to decide what to do. My bed is incredibly comfortable and has six pillows. Rob's house is now cat free, and he has a video game from a line of games I love. So I drove over.

I'd like it to be known that the last time I was at Rob's house for a substantial period of time was the night that I was going to tag along to a Magic: The Gathering tournament because everyone else was going and I didn't want to be left out. The plan was to spend the night at Rob's with everyone, and drive up the next day. Unfortunately the fact that there were three cats in the house meant that by 2:00am I was up every half an hour trying to stay alive. By the time everyone woke up I had enough life left in me to phone my mother to pick me up, take like 10 Benadryl and crawl into bed for 48 hours.

So this time there was to be no magic, no friends I no longer get along with, and a sweet video game. Win-win! Only it got better. I soon discovered that Rob's family is holy crap awesome. I also discovered that it WAS possible for me to live there for four days and not have anyone question it. I could stay up until 5 playing video games one night then get trashed off my ass the next. They even recorded Canadian Idol for me so I can watch it when I have a chance. Only it better still be recorded when I get back there or somebody's gonna get hurt real bad. I sat through a whole game of hockey for them.

So seventeen people are arrested in and around the GTA on terrorism related charges, and I'm sitting here excitedly. Every time something like this happens the crazies come out and tell us how all Muslims are terrorists and that we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and make them convert to Christianity. Crazies always make me happy. Much happier than my apparent happy place at Bronte GO, which really isn't very happy at all and is just filled with memories of stalling, shifting up to third, down to second and never turning properly.

Instead I just got a bunch of rehashed crap. Even that stupid Angry in the North blog or whatever didn't have anything good. He just kept saying the same crap over and over again, and betting that they're going to open up capital punishment because of this. I mean, I don't care about capital punishment. But don't waste my time being an idiot when I want you to be crazy.