Andy Cocker

I miss Canadian bacon. It may seem a little odd considering my initial disgust at their fatty bacon. But now I’ve come to miss the jar of bacon fat on the bench. When I cook bacon here, it’s all too lean to have any fat left over to keep. There’s more bacon for your buck that way; I just miss the handy flavouring aid that a glass of bacon fat provides. The lentil soup’s a bit plain: chuck in some bacon fat. The tofu’s tasteless: bacon fat my friend. Romantic evening: bacon fat candle.

Maybe I could by a fat pig and stick a tap in its side like a rubber tree

On other fronts, I’m downloading about 12 GB a week. The only problem is my monthly limit is 12 GB. And my hard drive is full.

And to think I’ve been wasting my time with DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball. What a fool I’ve been.

[ed: As I recall, this used to link to a page describing a game even more dedicated to pandering to fans of large poorly rendered breasts everywhere. But alas the link is dead.]

I’ve been seeing a lot of these lately. I’m almost getting the hanging of it. I didn’t end up working on my birthday. Having woken up at 6:30 am and had breaky and got dressed, I got a call telling me that I wasn’t needed. As I was up and ready I felt like I should take full advantage of the morning so I slept on the couch for two hours. By evening I managed to get enough energy to go and watch some friends performing. Oh yes, contempory dance is a favourite of mine. The theatre only holds 100 people so each show sold out.

The most exciting present I got was a wireless keyboard and mouse. If Shannon presses the connect button on her base station I could type directly on to her computer.

I guess that covers my weblogs for this year. Your turn for the next blog Jackson.

This comes as a surprise to me too. I don’t know how half the year could disappear like that. I meant to write about how quickly time was disappearing at the start of July but the time disappeared too quickly. I’m not sure where it all went. I was in Banff and now I’m here.

I’ve got $750 of excess to pay off for bumping into that other car. That could have payed off a third of my credit card which I recently lost, so now instead of the number 4940 5213 0444 4441, it’s something horrible.

The only solution I can see to my lack of money is hard work. Not very exciting at all. I hate early mornings. I hate getting up before dawn. I hate getting up before noon actually. I hate the early mornings more than working in the rain and the wind and the splinters in my hand. I hate working on my birthday.

Jessica Alba, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight. For the ends of Being and ideal Grace I love thee, to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints, I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! You are so gorgeous in this flick. How can it be that you are so beautiful?

Yet why is it that you are in such an ordinary film, boo? Clearly all that this film has got going for it is you dropping science with your moves. I can see they make the most of it by including you in every scene. Don’t get me wrong. You’re probably ballin’ with cheese an’ cream. To have a whole movie with you in every scene playing the astounding Honey Daniels is all that but you should really get you’re freak on in a block buster so that everyone is made aware of your greatness.

Just a 411 Jessica. You shouldn’t be hanging around with Chaz. He’s better than the b-boys in da hood but he ain’t working in no barbershop. Word up his real name’s Dr Pratt and he’s an ER doc in Chicago who’ll be bagged up real soon. I wouldn’t roll with him if I was you.

While I ain’t gonna spread dead presidents for the soundtrack, it’s a relief that the tunes ain’t all hiphop, makes it fresh you know? The director ain’t bunk an’ def. Ay yo trip I is down with the bling bling. Represent 143.

DVD Review

Woah, sorry for that. Sometimes I’m too cool even for myself. I’ll try and speak more slowly for you guys. The DVD has a plenty of extra features, though the merits of some of them are debatable. I very much enjoyed the commentary with the director and Jessica Alba. They offer no real insights into the movie and some of their anecdotes aren’t very interesting but for those who can’t get enough of Jessica, it’s great. There’s also a learn how to dance like Honey feature for those who can’t get enough of Jessica and want to dance like her.

The less exciting extras include the deleted scenes and the lame outtakes and the music videos. None of these looked interesting even on fastforward. There is also ‘Behind the Groove: The Making of Honey’ which I didn’t get around to watching. All in all, it’s clearly worth at least hiring out as a weekly, if not an overnight.

My first thoughts on finding out about this new Wheel of Time book were concerns about whether Robert Jordan will live long enough to wrap up the series. He’s getting on in years and by his own admission it’s going to take at least 3 more books to finish the series, which is I why was slightly worried when it turned out that his latest book is a prequel, and doesn’t advance the series. Some quick research revealed that he is only 55 so according to the Bureau of Statistics he should live for another 10 books. A big relief.

The cynics among you maybe under the impression that Robert Jordan knows when he is on to a good thing and is just churning out novels. Well, that might be the case. And yes, the first book about a farm boy who is given a sword and finds that he has magic powers, is a little cliched. I don’t care about those things. I’m happy to just read the series and enjoy the journey. I find the pleasure of finishing a book is always tempered by the knowledge that I’ll have to find a new book to read. With the Wheel of Time there’s always another book. It’s like watching Star Trek.

‘New Spring’ is a prequel set 20 years before the first book. It is about Siuan Sanche and Moiraine Damodred while they are training to be Aes Sedai. This gives ‘New Spring’ a different feel than the other books. First of all it follows the perspective of different characters. In the rest of the series Moiraine and Siuan get much less focus as Robert Jordan tends to write about Rand and his friends in the other books. Following new characters is refreshing. Second, he only writes about 2 characters, not the normal 6 to 8, and they are together most of the time so the plot is a little faster. Finally, most of the story takes place in Tar Valon which I like more. This means less time is spent on worldbuilding and more on the characters and events. At one point Robert Jordan seemed determined to send his characters to every city on his map leading to a convulted plot and pages and pages of descriptive text. I prefer a better plot and characters.

As in his other books, he has an easy to read writing style which mitigates the length of his books. It still feels like a long book but the intricate plot rarely drags. The overall result of the plot is the same as the other books — little happens.

That’s it for this year. A partly successful year. We’ve got jobs and a place and tv so we are set for a couple of months.

I keep underestimating the cold here. I really should wear more than two layers. There’s a vicious wind tunnel in Wolf St which we hate but we have to cross to get to work.

I’ve got pictures of our place and they’ll be up as soon as the loser with the G4 gets off the internet as there’s only one space for laptops here to use.

Jackson’s resolved not to play computer games in 2004. I give him 10 hours before he breaks it.

Tom doesn’t want to mention this news for fear of jinxing it. He’s still a little stunned. I expect wacky things to happen all the time so I however am quite willing to tempt fate. We’ve all got jobs at the same place, except for Jacko because he’s not got a permit of course. We all lined up at the 50’s diner this morning as per the instructions on the sign advertising the forthcoming opening and hiring of staff. There were about 25 people turning up this morning and almost all of them got jobs.

The guy interviewing asked what jobs we’d like and Matt went for server and Tom and I choose busboys as we’re not so confident in our serving abilities but in retrospect, we could probably have asked for server positions as well, especially as we were at the front of the line so we had first choice of positions.

So we’ll get a place tomorrow and we’ll be all sorted, except for having to work everyday. The diner opens on Monday so we have a few shifts this week cleaning the place as the health inspector will be checking shortly.

Poor Saddam, I feel sorry for him. I’m not saying I agree with his evil ruling style, but the newspapers here are so pro-USA that I can’t help feeling on his side.

The internet timer is counting down so I’m going to wrap this up. More soon.

The broken link has been fixed for the other movie.

I’m less tired and my flu has almost gone, so things are looking up. There are several good job leads for tomorrow. We’ll be up early. I might enhance my resume with some non-facts. If we’re still jobless mid-week, things will be grim.

There’s still trouble with accents but smelly man has become more friendly. I’ve got hope.

I am tired and sick. Someone’s given me the flu. I hate these early sunsets. It’s screwing with my body clock. And it’s cold. Damn cold. And dry, which doesn’t help my sore throat and dry eyes. I’m going to have to wear a third layer. Not everything is bad though. More pics are up of Canada.

There were 8 other job hunters walking along the strip of hotels yesterday. Things are looking bad. I bet Jackson doesn’t even read my blog let alone his past messages.

No, we don’t have a lighter.
No, despite your insinuation that our dinner looks good, you’re not getting any.
Yes, we’ve heard that asking to see the manager about jobs is supposed to work, but it hasn’t for us.
No, we don’t like you. Can you go away?