Constructive Feedback

As a public service to people like Me For President and The Cracker Tool who don’t seem to get it, I thought I would post a short email exchange I just had with somebody who visited the site. His message is in italics, hope I spelled that right, and mine is in the plain old usual posting colours.

“i like your posts and rather enjoyed your web page, but i hate the name.
i don’t think it becomes you nor your obvious intelligence.

Bud Keith”

Here’s what I wrote back.

“Thanks, glad you like the site. But I didn’t name it, the other person who
writes on the site did. He named it after one of the biggest public transit
busses in our area. It’s a pretty apt name for that bus, and some of the
things written on the site by both of us make it a pretty apt name for the
site too. And in talking to some people, they said that the name was eye
catching and that’s why they clicked on it in the first place. To each
their own and I appreciate you taking the time to not only check out the
site, but email about it. I hope you’ll keep reading, even if you’re not a
fan of the name.

Steve”

The point I’m trying to make here is this. It’s not hard to be nice, and it gets you a lot further than being an idiot does. I think I can speak for Matt here when I say that neither of us mind constructive criticism or negative feedback as long as you take the high road and present it the right way. In short, if you’re nice to us while pointing out your problem, we’ll be nice to you. Mentioning our obvious intelligence doesn’t hurt either.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

I just saw these in a weird news publication and since this sort of thing always makes me laugh, and since nothing has been posted here since Monday, I figure I’ll share. Here are a few really strange American laws that are no joke. Remember that no matter what country you live in, you’re paying people good money to protect your interests by passing this stuff.

In Alaska, it is illegal to look at a moose from the window of an aircraft or any other flying vehicle.

In Oklahoma, it is illegal to catch whales or to get a fish drunk. Oklahoma is an inland state.

In Milwaukee, residents must keep pet elephants on a leash while walking them on public streets.

In Muncie, Indiana, it is illegal to carry fishing tackle in a cemetery.

A law at Kirkland, Illinois, forbids bees from flying over the town.

An Ohio law states that pets have to carry lights on their tails at night.

At Greene, New York State, it is against the law to walk backwards while eating peanuts during a concert.

In Waterloo, Nebraska, barbers are prohibited from eating onions between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

At International Falls, Minnesota, it is illegal for a dog to chase a cat up a telegraph pole. Owners are liable to be fined.

It is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pockets in Lexington, Kentucky.

Hey Ya

Hey, Kids.
What’s goin’ on? That doesn’t happy often. Not one thing went up yesterday besides some fun on the comment boards… but that’s cool. If you’re reading this, you came back anyway and for that you get a nickle. Please leave your mailing information in the comment board and Vomit Comet will send you a shiney new nickle.
(Note: Nickels may not be shiney or new)

Well, When I started this I really had nothing to say and was just posting since it didn’t happen yesterday. But as I was signing on the song “Hey Ya” by OutKast came on the radio. Now I’m not usually a a huge rap fan but this for one reason or another I find to be a pretty cool little tune. For some odd reason it’s being played on the rock station here in town and that’s how I got ahold of it and I’ve been humming it ever since.

I’m not particularly sure how it got on the station but it ususually pisses me off when this happens. Despite the fact that I do like this rap song, it’s still a rap song and should not be on a radio station that tells us every 15 minutes that it’s all about the New Rock.

They went through the same thing with Lose Yourself by Eminem when it came out. I admit these 2 songs are not your typical rap songs but they still belong to that genre.

but hey, since I liked the 2 songs, I’m willing to overlook it.

Well that’s it for now but I’ll try and get back later with some more. I’m feeling more motivated today than I was yesterday, and maybe Steve will be too.

Peace-Love-Unity

People Are People, And Sometimes That’s Pretty Sad

I’m not sure why people feel the need to find something to offend them. Take for example some real winner on our comment boards just a little bit ago. I just happened to come and check the site for comments and new posts from Matt as I do through the day when time allows and I saw a few comments under a pretty nice post Matt did about life and putting in just a little extra effort to make things better. Somebody was actually able to read that entire post and zero in on only one word, completely missing the point, taking everything out of context and making him or her self look like the biggest tool in the universe. Seriously, if you have nothing better to do than to look for words to interpret the wrong way to try to find racist remarks or something else to get yourself offended, you my friend are a pathetic waste of time and space. If you want something to get all in a tizzy over, scroll down the main page and look through the archives, I’m sure there’s something there that would upset you quite nicely, and more fairly than the use of the word cracker by a white guy no less, to describe himself, and not even in a racist way. Get over yourself, whoever you are. You’re really quite pathetic if that’s all you’re about. And don’t bother emailing or commenting to say that you’ll never come back and read this site again, that’s fine with me. You are the exact kind of person we don’t need here, and the hit counts look pretty good without you around trying to cause shit. Oh no, I swore, call the word police.

The bottom line here is just like Matt said to you, “lighten up.” And I’d like to add “get a life and a clue” to that, because it needs mentioning.

Nuts To You, And Your Silly Realism Too

I just saw one of those things that drives me completely batshit nuts every time I see it. Right now on WWE.com they have a short interview up with Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Right at the beginning of the story, the author of the piece says the following.

“After taking the RKO from “Legend Killer” Randy Orton, Cuban headed backstage to mingle with the WWE Superstars, happily snapping pictures with many of them, and specifically seeking out Kurt Angle.”

What in the hell is WWE thinking letting something like that make it to print? Randy Orton is one of the company’s next big stars or so they want us to believe and they’ve been trying to sell everybody on the fact that the RKO is a deadly and very dangerous move. It finishes off some of the toughest guys in the wrestling industry on a weekly basis. When he drops legendary wrestlers and helpless women with it, it’s a shame and Orton is portrayed as the scum of the earth. But good old Mark Cuban, sports executive? Doesn’t phase him at all. He just heads backstage happy as hell to be there and mugging for the cameras.

Yeah I know, wrestling is scripted and when Orton hits the RKO on people, he’s not really killing them. I’m well aware of all these things but let’s apply the same logic to movies for a second. You watch a guy get blown to smithereens right before your very eyes. He’s done. He’s taking the big dirtnap, at least in terms of the storylines. Now suppose that the next shot you see is the dead guy partying it up with the same guy who just killed him. That would look pretty stupid and nobody in the entertainment business would ever be dumb enough to actually do something like that, right? Well, apparently not.

The WWE website is supposed to be an extension of the company and to a point, its storylines even though they use it, and rightfully so, to inject a little more humanity into the characters and to promote things. But when you word an article the way that they worded this one, it takes away all of Randy Orton’s credibility. A lot of the people who read WWE.com aren’t the hardcore fans who understand how the business works behind the scenes and they base all of their opinions on what they see on TV and what they’re told to think by the company. When you present those people with something like that, why should they ever take anything that happens in the ring seriously again? And for that matter, even those of us who know what’s going on to a greater degree still want to suspend disbelief and we want things to make sense. We want to be entertained by good logical writing and by solid action in the ring. We want to be made to feel like what we’re investing our time into watching and caring about means something. But when we see something like this, it just cheapens everything.

The really sad part is that had they simply not given the time the interview took place and not mentioned the RKO, all of this could have been avoided. Say he was hanging out backstage in the afternoon before the event, no harm done. Why did they have to say that all of this took place afterwards, even if that happens to be true? The wrestling business isn’t above not telling the truth, hell, the entire concept is built on trickery and things not actually being as they seem. Why did they have to pick something like this to be honest about?

Maybe I’m just griping over trivial things but to me, it’s those little things a lot of the time that make something great. And when those little things should be so obvious to people who should really no better, it just makes it even worse when mistakes like that are made.

Bear With Me, Kids

It should be noted before continuing to read this post, I am running on roughly 18 minutes of sleep… and those 18 minutes were on a commuter train… Let’s Go!

An odd little metaphore for life that I saw this morning that probably only occurs to those of us who are currently deprived of sleep, or those who have nothing better to do than to read more in to things that is really there. Since currently I fall in to both, I’ll share this with you.

This morning I was attempting to travel down town Toronto on a Go Train which in the mornings are just a mess due to all the commuters going back and forth to work.

To board the train, you have to go upstairs from the terminal on to a platform. On this particular day the train had stopped in a mannor to which right outside the doorway to the staircase to the platform was one of the doors to ONE of the cars on this train. As I walked on to the platform and looked on to the train and saw hundreds of people jammed in to this ONE car, most of them having no seats of course and having to stand. I decided this was not worth my aggrivation as, like I”ve already stated, I was running on NO sleep.

So I walked by the door knowing that there were probably more places to get on that wouldn’t involve me having to stand pressed against a large burly man that had not seen a stick of SpeedStick in 4 years and a woman screaming in to her cell phone “SELL! SELL DAMN YOU!”

I walked no more than FIFTEEN FEET to the VERY NEXT DOOR and got on. There SEVEN people in this car. I grabbed a seat comfortably on my own as I wasn’t in a particularly social mood and waited. As we waited for the train to leave I would periodically look out the window and watch more and more people pile in to that car because there was a door right there.

“How the hell is this a metaphore, you crazy cracker?” you’re probably asking. Well let me explain.

It took me a grand total of 19 seconds and 14 footsteps to go to the next door and get a comfortable seat and have an enjoyable ride to my destination. Those who saw an open door 9 inches from the stairs and nearly shit themselves over the convenience, conversely, all stood together in one large grumpy, frustrated, upset mob.

Those in life who are willing to do just the smallest bit more are those that seem to get through life happier. Was it really that hard to see that there was already more people in that car than it could handle and they were all upset about it. Was it that hard to walk to the next door which was no more than 15 feet away? Of course not. It was by no means any kind of inconvenience to take this very minimal amount of effort and walk to the next door, and I was rewarded with a seat by myself and a quiet ride while everyone who took the easiest possible solution were all granted the opportunity to surround themselves with their own kind and be as pissed off and frustrated as they’d like to be.

Those who consistantly do the very minimal but sometimes important little extra things seem to be the ones that get through life that much more enjoyably. We should probably all take a page from these people. This morning I took a page from their book, and I’m quite glad I did.

More later, after some coffee perhaps.

Sunday

Yes, I know today is Monday but since most of the stuff I’m going to talk about here took place yesterday, the title works. Who’s site is it, anyway?

Sorry for not getting anything up here since Saturday by the way. Just wasn’t into it yesterday and since nothing really happened, I figured rather than tell you all about my day again I’d just keep my mouth shut and let you all enjoy Sunday either elsewhere or skimming the archives for memories of Sunday’s that have come before. Besides, the most productive things I did yesterday were the dishes and some cooking, neither of which are much fun to read about I’m sure.

I managed to catch parts of the Grey Cup game last night, looked like a pretty solid game from what I managed to see. I’m happy Edmonton won especially after how Toronto was robbed by Montreal in the Eastern final last week. I had an East against West bet with somebody that I lost because of the outcome but I’m happy to part with that 5 bucks because in the end, justice was served.

As for Survivor Series, can’t say it was horrible, but I’m not going to call it a blow-away show either. Honestly I’m going to have to watch it again to get a better feel for it. I kept nodding off throughout the whole thing because of a serious lack of sleep over the last few days. I caught pretty much everything but I just wasn’t in a clear state of mind at the time so it wouldn’t be fair to either praise or come down overly hard on it just yet. I will say this however, that Smackdown 5 on 5 match sucked a long, hard, juicy fat one. Even though the right team ended up winning, the match was just put together so poorly that none of that even mattered and they didn’t really get anybody over any stronger, other than maybe Cena. Granted putting Cena over strong in the match was really important, but they really dropped the ball on the Bob Holly thing. Getting him DQ’d in the first 30 seconds after hyping up the confrontation between he and Lesnar for so long was just a bad move. I hate those quick elimination spots, they accomplish nothing other than making guys look either stupid or weak, and when they’re done so quickly like they were last night it makes things even worse. I understand part of it is a time thing, but pushing people forever as tough guys and then having them get pinned by 1 move just makes no sense at all. And what was there to be gained from having Lesnar tap out again? It won’t lead to anything serious for Benoit, those kind of things never do. Sure there might be a feud but I can’t see Benoit winning it, he never does. Maybe I’ll write up a more detailed thoughts piece once I’ve had a chance to watch it more thoroughly for all of the wrestling people who read this, or maybe I won’t. Time will tell I guess.

One other thing I wanted to mention. Yesterday marked a month of us hit counting the site. Just for the sake of interest, as of this writing, we have had exactly 1572 people visit this thing. Thanks to all of you, especially all of the people who keep coming back. Sure that number might seem pretty small to some people, but I’m impressed with it, I had no idea that so many people cared what Matt and I thought about anything.

Ok, I think that’s all for now. I’ll try to put something together for later and I think Matt is back today so hopefully he’ll have some fun stories to tell.

Later all.

Musing

I’m not really sure why but I just got thinking about that Puppetry Of The Penis show that’s been touring around the world the last couple years. If you don’t know what that is, it’s these 2 guys that use their penises to create things and do what could best be described as stupid human tricks. That whole concept weirds me out. I mean it’s one thing to figure out that you can do things like that, but the first guy to realize it had to not only tell the other guy, but also get him to admit that he could do it too, and then convince him that if they just put their heads together, (oh gees, that wasn’t even intentional,) that they could make some good money by traveling around showing people that they are masters of dick trickery. Maybe I’m missing something. Ok, I probably am because they’ve got piles of money and even a DVD of their act now.

I wonder how many people went to see the Vagina Monologues because they thought it was a ventriloquist act.

I was watching Cops tonight and I saw a commercial for the 11 o’clock news where they were talking about an elderly man who had just finished walking across Canada. We would find out why at 11. I bet he just went out to get some milk from the store and got lost.

Speaking of Cops, we’ve got a Canadian version of that show called Serve And Protect. I swear that this show is all the stuff that they edit out of Cops. It’s the same idea, just without all of the action and excitement that makes Cops interesting. To give you an idea of just how completely lame Serve And Protect is, I saw one episode where they actually aired a routine traffic stop. I’m not making that up. They pulled a guy over, had him show his licence and registration, asked him how fast he was going, wrote him a ticket and then let him go. Wait, I’m not even sure if they even wrote him out a ticket at all. They did however ask him where he was heading, so fear not, the suspense factor was still in full effect.

God, Canadian TV just sucks. Other than the comedy and the news programming that is, we own America hands down there. It’s really cool too because sometimes the comedy and the news overlap, like whenever the Prime Minister is giving a speech. You have no idea how much fun it is to watch him on TV. The guy can’t speak either French or English competently but he’s the best option we have for a leader, has been for about 10 years now. The guy’s even more fun than watching Bush, because Bush just massacres the English language, Chretien is completely inept in both official languages.

Hmmm, not really sure how to end this post, wait, I’ve got it!

Posting By Request

Well, here we are. I was asked politely by our friend
Karine
to please post something, because she loves us and misses us when we’re not around, and because the lack of content today is making her head spin. Ok, so she actually said something along the lines of write something because I have nothing better to do than read this, but who’s keeping track? So just because she visits the site every day for some reason and even went so far as to link to us in something called “blogs I like” on her own site, I’ll post for her. I’ll warn you though, this is going to be the worst post ever, because not feeling well and going absolutely nowhere all day doesn’t really make for quality blog entertainment.

Let’s just start out by describing my day, and what it consisted of. I woke up this morning far earlier than I had planned to the forces of internal evil knocking on my stomach and telling me they wanted out. Not much fun, and it pretty much set the tone for where the rest of the day was heading.

Then I turned on the computer, checked my email, and then checked out the site here for comments and anything Matt may have posted while I was gone. I responded to the comments and then went to check our hit counter to see what kind of business we’d been doing around here. I was pretty impressed with you people as usual. All the hits are very much appreciated, no matter what Matt says about you guys, I like you all, even most of the dumb ones. After that I went and checked out the other blogs I usually take a look at every day, reading and commenting where required.

With all that out of the way and the running to the bathroom still in full swing I went and woke up my girlfriend to see if she’d do me the biggest favour ever and cover for me at the place I needed to be today. She said she could, and she did, so that was quite the good thing because the stuff I had to be doing didn’t really lend itself to spontaneous trips to the can.

Moving right along, I made myself a pot of soup and ate a granola bar while it cooked. Talked to the girlfriend about various things while this was going on. Then when the soup was finished I sat down to eat it and said goodbye to her as she left to do my job, since I’m a lazy prick and decided not to do it myself, er, um, because I was sick, oh yeah, that was it.

When I finished the soup I signed on to MSN for a bit to see who was on. Then I set about surfing the net for no other reason than I felt like it. I also picked off whatever email came in. Wow, this post is so stupid and I respect anybody who has stuck with it this long. Just remember that this is all Karine’s fault.

During the course of surfing the web and having MSN conversations with people, I also had to answer my phone a couple of times because it rang, which is usually the best excuse to answer the phone. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the running to the bathroom, because I sure couldn’t.

Eventually I decided that as long as I was home I might as well do productive things so I did a little bit of work on another project that I have on the go, which you’ll all be let in on shortly. Speaking of that, if you can write about music once a week, don’t forget to
email me.

As the day goes on I start to feel better, which makes me happy. Then my girlfriend returned to the house, which also made me happy. She actually got back just after I started writing this stupid post.

While talking to her about her day I started supper because we were both hungry. Didn’t have the energy to cook a big meal, so it was bacon and toast all around. Pretty good stuff.

Skip ahead a little ways and here I am, writing the rest of this post and watching the news. I also just got up and turned on some more heat, because it’s kind of cold in here.

Hey, they were just saying on the news that a U.S official says that the group fighting against the American occupation in Iraq, the one that’s been planning and carrying out all the bomb attacks, is a pretty small group of only about 5000 people. That kind of got me to thinking that if the States just wait things out a little while, the terrorists will eventually run out of suicide bombers, assuming that they don’t recruit any new ones and then they won’t have to worry about getting blown up anymore. Hey, it’s just a thought.

And so ends this horrible post. Remember, it’s all Karine’s fault, blame should be placed squarely on her. By the way, be sure to visit her blog, which you can find a link to in this post or in the pile of links on the right, because she uses titles for her posts now, and that’s pretty snazzy.

Wait, partial blame can also go to Matt, since he didn’t have anything to say today. Yes, Karine and Matt are both responsible for me having to inflict this on you all.

Steve Needs Your Help

Do you like music? Are you literate? Are you creative? Can you write things once a week that don’t completely suck? Well neither can I, but I need your help. I need 6 people who are seriously interested to send me an email at
sendstuffhere@rogers.com.

When you send me an email letting me know that you’re interested, I’ll write you back, give you the scoop on what all this is, what exactly I’d need from you and what you have to do to be part of something that could one day be quite a big thing. Remember, only write me about this if you’re serious and can write something once a week by a specific day on the subject of music. I don’t even care what kind of music it is. If you can speak indepth on the underground single string guitar and trombone scene, that’s fine. All I need are interested parties to help me out here. Thanks guys, it’s much appreciated.