This is the best 3 minutes and nine seconds you’ll spend today:

BOOBIES!

These women are what I want to be when I grow up.

On Saturday, Heather Renee and I piled into the Mini and drove south to America. It was a routine trip, with a routine agenda: lunch at Mi Mexico, Target for incidentals and underwear with superheroes on them, and Trader Joe’s for kitchen essentials. We’ve made the trip a thousand times before without incident, and we assumed the day would hold more of the same.

We assumed wrong.

Thing started off badly when we had the misfortune to get the World’s Angriest Man for a crossing guard. He bombarded us with very specific questions: have you ever been arrested? have you ever been in handcuffs? (I really, really wanted to answer that truthfully, but WAM was in no mood for sex play) what do you do? who do you do it to? where do you work? what position does your desk face? when was the last time you ate thousand island salad dressing? He was especially curious about where Renee and Heather worked; being unsatisfied with their answers of what they did for a living. The questions went on and on, until, for the first time EVER, we were “randomly selected” for additional screening.

Angry Man angrily gave us a piece of orange paper, and told us to pull over to the right. We did, where additional Angry Men told us to get out of the car and go inside for cavity searches. I was ordered to leave my car keys on the windshield, and we all had to LEAVE OUR PHONES IN THE CAR. This was the first thing that made me angry – denying me access to Social Media if things went wrong. Not cool, but as they had guns and I did not, I angrily left my phone in the car and stomped off to the Interrogation Centre.

Inside was slightly chaotic, and full of people. Since I had time to kill, I looked very carefully at my surroundings and the people selected for secondary screening with us. With the exception of the people with the guns, Renee and Heather were two of maybe 4 white people in the room: most of the detainees were Hispanic, Asian, or African. HMMMMMM. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I’ve been pulled aside for “random screening” after having the audacity to be the only non-white person in the room before, so I’m a little sensitive to being singled out. Heather and Renee were appropriately apprehensive about all this, but I was PISSED OFF. Why had we been selected for screening? What were they doing to my car? Are they planning on finger printing us, like they were doing to everyone else? I was MAD, and getting madder by the second. I had squinty face all over, and an ongoing internal dialogue about my options: if they try to finger print me, do I refuse? CAN I refuse? Is standing up for my rights worth my being barred from the US forever? All this and more ran through my head as family after family of non-white people streamed in through the doors. SO MAD, but stuck in line so I fumed and they worried and eventually, we were called up to the counter to speak with Beardy McBorder Guard.

He asked us an abbreviated series of the questions Angry Man had barked at us, emphatically typing on his keyboard the entire time. I volunteered no more than the absolute minimum, and again he was not really interested in where I worked: he asked us all what we did, but only Heather and Renee *where* they did it. Odd, because both of them have far more respectable jobs than I do – they work for Public Service and Educational Institution respectively, whereas I am a trouble-making software brat. Beardy McBorder Guard continued to pound on his keyboard (undoubtedly waxing poetry about our evil Canadian ways), but most of  his attention was reserved for the two female border guards sitting beside him: apparently someone had puked in their Interrogation Line earlier, and THEY weren’t going to clean it up so it just sat there. Awesome.

After a while, Beardy stopped typing and stamped our orange paper a bunch of times, then .. let us go. We weren’t finger printed, and our belongings were relatively unmolested. We weren’t ordered to go to our destination and return immediately, like other families were, and we didn’t have to wait around for additional questioning. I suppose we checked out okay – we had nothing to hide and told the truth – but our questions weren’t answered. Why were we pulled over? What were they looking for? In what way were three Canadians in a small car suspicious enough to require searching? It couldn’t have been the car itself; Ed and I had taken it for a ride down the Chuckanut the day after we got it. It had to be us, but WHY?

We discussed it afterward, and we think the WHY can be boiled down to three points:

• Renee is an International Man of Mystery, and her passport has stamps from such questionable places as Botswana, Vietnam, the Used Kingdom of Cambodia, the UK, and France
• They realized that I was actually half white and therefore didn’t need the additional probing that FULL Asians require for some reason
• Heather is entirely too innocent; they couldn’t believe that anyone is truly that good and nice

The rest of our trip was without incident: we ate lunch, went to Target, bought snacks at Trader Joe’s. There was concern that getting back into Canada would be problematic, but our return was also without incident and we were back home by 6pm: tired, but with our rectums and most of our dignity intact.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens when I go south next.

they’re listening

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve found the Saddest Place on the Internet. No need to thank me!

Everyone knows that commenters on YouTube are terrifying due to their flagrant stupidity and sheer volume of responses. The same goes for those who comment on news stories, where you’ll find the very bottom of the primordial ooze barrel; the sort of people our extraterrestrial forebeings hoped we would have weeded out of the evolutionary chain long before this point. If it’s even slightly controversial or common sense, you can be assured there’s an entire Bible-based organization out there foaming at the mouth trying to stop everyone from moving forward as a species, all in the name of specific parts of an old book they choose to highlight as “proof” their bigotry is justified.

And then there’s the people who comment on comic strips.

In addition to the web comics I read daily, I also follow a few traditional comic strips on GoComics.com. With one exception, there are dozens of comments below each strip made by people responding to what the characters are saying in each panel. It’s .. weird. I don’t know why it bothers me so much that there are adults out there who start each day by giving advice to the mother from For Better or Worse on how to raise her kids, but it does. It’s creepy. They call back older conversations between characters, suggest things they should do or say, give relationship advice, analyze every little thing. In one strip I read, the commenters are freaking out because the main character made a “Godfather” reference – but she’s only 9, so SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE! SHAME ON HER PARENTS! Seriously, what. I know that, in the grand scheme of all the things wrong with the internet, this is incredibly trivial – but I find it incredibly unsettling to see people with such stake in what these fictional people do. It ain’t right. Internet, stop being creepy. Thx!

I have a headache that is entirely too big for me to deal with.

Why all the fuss? This isn’t sexy at ALL.

this started out as wikipedia fan fiction and grew to a 3-book deal with a bidding war over the movie rights.

All you get today is a list of things that suck, and a terrible pun. Sorry.

Operation: Rummy Gummies was a success.

We opened the containers after 5 hours to check on them, and a few brave volunteers tried out the gooey contents within. The cherries in white rum were deemed “really tasty”, but the other two batches were eye-wateringly strong so we added the rest of the gummies to the sticky liquid and let them soak for a few more hours. Just after 4pm, we opened the lot of them (and made the entire floor smell like a distillery – oops). I gathered some supplies for the unveiling, and we dove in:

presentation is everything

oh dear god

The gummies had soaked up most of the alcohol, but didn’t dissolve – they turned into a slippery, seething mass that looked almost alive:

i swear i saw them moving

Once they had been plated, Adam was true to his word:

down the british hatch

The gummies had been soaking in rum for almost 8 hours, and they were STRONG. They were also deceptive – you could eat some (they tasted like cough syrup) and not really feel anything except your tongue going numb, but once your body absorbed the goo you were in for a bit of a shock. I ate four pieces or so, and felt mostly fine – I still had work to do, and I managed to answer some questions without sounding like a complete fool – but an hour or so later, my world was spinning. I stumbled off my bus, unsure of why I felt so out of it (apparently the potent combination of booze and sugar also made me stupid) but going with the floaty feelings for lack of anything better to do. Then .. I passed out.

It was half “really long week and I’m tired” nap and half “WOOOOOO BOOZE”, but I had myself a nice little sleep on Friday evening before tucking into several hours of Diablo 3 and corn nuts.

So, the overall verdict:

• Rummy gummies are awesome
• I still can’t hold my liquor
• Gobs and gobs of sugar might be the secret to keeping the burning at bay
• Phase Two of this experiment will involve tequila (for me), vodka (for everyone else), and Heather’s birthday
• That batch will be prepared several days before the party for maximum effect
• I love my job

insidious!

sorry about your desk, tyson

Next up: why Heather, Renee and I were detained by The Man (hint: RACIAL PROFILING)!

If I’m going to do anything at all, I’m going to do it with style.

Yesterday one of our (many – I think they’re breeding) co-ops posted an article in chat about Rummy Bears: gummy bears soaked in alcohol. This sounded like the best idea I’ve ever heard in forever, so instead of being satisfied with “ooh we should do this someday” I MADE IT HAPPEN:

sorry about your desk, cory

I bring candy in to bribe my coworkers into liking me (and to look the other way when it comes to my flagrant furniture hoarding), so I have a stockpile in the cupboard for emergencies. I knew one of those emergency candy buckets was full of gummy candy and I have a lot of alcohol at home that simply collects dust on account of my wanton teetotaling, so with the help of my new Brit, we quite literally put two and two together. There are three buckets of gummies fermenting on the windowsill: cherry gummies in Añejo Blanco, random berries in Añejo 3 Años, and gummy worms in Añejo 7 Años. They’ll soak until 5pm or so, and then we will crack them open and feast on the goo inside.

If I’m going to fall off my self-imposed wagon (twice in one month – I clearly need an intervention for my out-of-control drinking), I’m going to do it in the most ridiculous manner I can find. This fits the bill pretty well, I think. Stay tuned for the sloppy aftermath! If this works well (and really, this is just an experiment – we’re doing SCIENCE), I’ve got an AWESOME IDEA for tequila and strawberry cream gummies.

Can’t wait until 5!

I’d been playing a game with myself for the last few months: see how long I could go without wearing pants. Since I started this job in April, I hadn’t worn pants to the office: 33 straight days of my naked shins, flapping in the wind. It was glorious.

Unfortunately, due to our unseasonably shitty weather, I’ve been cold. Really, really cold. I finally got tired of freezing my ass off, so I decided to cave in to social norms and wear some stupid pants already. Are you happy, society? My thighs aren’t touching! Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?

So I’m wearing these fucking pants, and I’m also having the WORST GODDAMN DAY EVER. This can’t possibly be a coincidence: THE PANTS ARE TO BLAME. FUCK YOU, PANTS! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!

I arrived at work this morning to discover that my laptop had crashed during the night. Annoying, but it happens a lot – which is why I’m always really careful to save my work. Unfortunately, the crash was pretty catastrophic and the rarely-helpful Auto Recovery fucked up just to make things extra awesome. End result: I lost about 8 hours of work; my entire Tuesday. I am not happy. And none of this would have happened if I hadn’t worn fucking PANTS today.

Between these goddamn pants, my missing work and the bus boner I was assaulted with yesterday, I think I deserve an orphaned kitten from Turkey.

A passing Twitter conversation with Sara_InTheCity has unearthed a shocking twist: my mother have have LIED to me while I was growing up. We compared notes, and it has come to light that both of our Asian-flavoured mothers shamelessly used fairy tales to bend our innocence and naiveté to their cruel whims. I am outraged. I am heartbroken. I am .. experiencing deja vu.

Yeah, I already blogged about this exact topic in March of 2010.

No wonder I haven’t been writing much lately – I’m OUT OF STORIES TO TELL. DAMNIT!

I need to go have some ridiculous adventures. NOW. Before it’s too late.

they never end

I kind of wish I’d become one of those insufferable “too busy living life to blog about it” folk, but the truth is I just haven’t felt much like writing. Stuff has been going on – Ed’s birthday dinner was a blast, I visited the Lego Store on Saturday and managed to not buy everything in sight (but I did come away with a few new pieces), and on Sunday I orchestrated a surprise pickup of Renee at the airport as she returned from her month in Botswana, featuring the triumphant return of the Terrifying Bieber Masks. Things have been fun if tiring – the weekend wiped me out to such a degree that I dozed through most of Monday and crashed for an epic nap the instant I got home from work. Today I am more awake and I have a bagel. Things are looking up!

.. not that it’s really helping my drive to write. I’d like to blame it all on the weather, as it’s unseasonably cold and grey out there. Truthfully, I know I have no real reason to be anything less than sparkling and dripping with joy: things are great. My job is beyond awesome, things with Ed are the way I like it (mostly naked with a lot of D3 co-op), and the Mini is fantastically fun. I’ve not yet started planning our trip to London later this year, so I’ve got hours upon hours of anal retentive research to do (not to mention all the lovely packing). Things are super, and yet this cloud persists. I wish my birthday didn’t depress the hell out of me – it never used to be like this; I used to be really excited about my birthday – but these days, all I can think about is how I’m old and I still don’t have a pug and my feet should never be this cold in June.

Some sun would be nice.

And a pug. I saw a pug puppy on Sunday at Deacon’s Corner, and my heart broke into a million little pieces. She was a fawn-coloured puppy around 10 weeks old and so cute and snuffly and everything I wanted in a pug and I wanted to keep her. Alas, I had a car full of Bieber masks and no desire for a criminal record so I had to walk away .. but ever since then, my pug lust has been rekindled with a vengeance. All I want is a dog before I’m too old to enjoy it. What’s so difficult about that?

Man, now I’m hungry AND sad. Boo on you, Tuesday.

Wake me up when I remember how to be interesting.

ed’s butt eventually killed off mankind :(