a boy in our closet

the mac minions

‘they’ say once you buy mac…you never go back.

‘they’ might be right. we’ll see.

today i took out an extortionate amount of money to purchase a new computer. a MAC BOOK PRO computer. it’s not really even in my budget to do this. but i have been without a computer for over a month now and it is a bit silly when the way that i make money is WITH my computer. so here we go. time to make some money.

but just on a side note… mac store? wow. i had never been in one before (other than to quickly check my emails or to take some fun photos on photobooth) and seriously, those guys have it down.

the first thing i noticed was that i couldn’t see a ‘purchase counter’ or a ‘checkout’. i asked Tess if she could see one and she said ‘no pam, you purchase from a salesperson.’ i glanced around at all the happy-go-geeky sales staff and noticed suddenly that they all had little credit card machines around their shoulders. genius.

also, no sooner had i told ‘preston’ that i wanted to purchase a macbookpro, when a little man came running towards us from (seemingly) out of nowhere clutching a white case with ‘macbookpro’ written across it in black type. he stopped in front of us, silently handed the case to preston, spun around on his heels and scurried off back into the crowds of shoppers.

our jaws dropped as we gawked disbelievingly at our friendly salesman. he didn’t seem phased in the slightest.

tess and i imagined a little room full of small men sitting around on crates, smoking cigarettes, drinking strong liquor and playing rummy, waiting for the red light to start buzzing indicating a purchase. they would then do ‘paper scissors rock’ to see who had to run out the order… and the same guy would always lose (he ALWAYS did scissors dammit he couldn’t help it).

anyway…

so i now have a computer. and to celebrate, i made a little movie about my mac day.

our first video post. this is exciting.

glorious! beet(root) burgers

so canadians don’t feel the need to put the word ‘root’ at the end of ‘beet’ like we do in new zealand. one canadian explained to me that this would be as silly as putting the word ‘root’ after any root vegetable and that maybe we kiwis just need it there to remind us that beets are a root vege. he then asked if we also say ‘carrotroot’ or ‘potatoroot’? we don’t – just to clear that up. but yes, we call beets ‘beetroots’.

anyhoo… the thing i love most about beets is their glorious! colour. (i felt the need to exclamationize ‘glorious’). i figure that anything with such a glorious! colour must be full of glorious! healthy bad-thing-killing enzymes and the like.

turns out that the romans thought the same thing as me… Fun Fact: Ancient peoples believed that the color of beets was indicative of their power. Folklore mentions that beets were eaten to aid the blood: Greeks used beets to “cool” blood, and Romans used beets to fight fever.

right! to eat such magical food, i needed a way to eat them that wasn’t ‘grated in a salad’ or ‘roasted with other root veges’ and that would astonish & amaze any i-dont-like-beet guests that happened to stop by for dinner.

ladies and gentlemen…behold!

i will give away my secret:

in a big bowl, mix together the following:

• 2 cups of grated beet (raw)
• 1/2 cup of grated carrot
• 1/4 cup of finely chopped celery
• 1/2 of a chopped onion (red is fun, but white is ok too)
• a bit of thyme (maybe 1/2 tsp)
• 1 tbsp of vege stock powder or seasoning
• 2 tbsp of soy sauce
• 1/2 cup of cooked oats (yup.. just make 1/2 cup of porridge)
• 1 cup of raw oats
• some nuts (walnuts are tasty)

mix really well like this:

and then shape into patties and cook in a pan.  cook at a pretty medium temperature (like maybe 3-4 if you have a stove that goes from 1 – 6) and cook for a while on each side until they are cooked through.  it might look like this when you are cooking:

and they will taste delicious with the following toppings inside an english muffin (or suitable burger bun)

• spinach (or lettuce)
• tomato
• cheese and/or cottage cheese
• sweet chilli sauce (and maybe tomato sauce/ketchup

MMmmmmmmm.

how to say ‘procrastinate’ in spanish

soon i will speak fluent spanish.

i have also noticed a trend: whenever i have a large amount of school work coming up (essays, mid-terms etc), i find myself becoming extremely motivated with a new activity.  last semester it was playing the guitar (i even went out and bought a capo to show how serious i was about practicing) and this semester it appears to be learning spanish. 

in my journey to learn the language, i have (over the past 72 hours) downloaded over 15 spanish podcasts to my iPhone, purchased a pocket spanish dictionary, enlisted my friend ivan as my official tutor (hey ivan, please & thankyou!), registered at 2 different ‘learn spanish’ websites, made myself some vocabulary flash cards and started my own little notebook of slang words & phrases.

my decision to learn this language was prompted by my earlier decision to spend this coming summer in peru working with the one laptop per child initiative.   i discovered (a little embarrassingly) in the last 2 questions of my online interview, that i needed to be fluent in the native language of the country i would be visiting.  so when asked to describe (over video) in spanish, a situation where i had been uncertain about a task but completed the task despite that uncertainty, i was desperately googling ‘how to say ‘uncertain’ in spanish’ whilst simultaneously conceding to the fact that the next 12 weeks would now become : operation learn spanish.

oh, i also started an ultimate book list.  you can check it out here.

Goodbye jobs

I hardly ever shop at Safeway, so last night was an exception. I needed to pick up some cottage cheese and decided that I would rather pay the extra $1.50 than walk an extra 3km to the cheaper place. And I’m happy I made this decision.

Usually Safeway has reeeeally long lines. They usually only have 3 checkouts open and at least 7 people waiting in each line. It’s mayhem. Usually. On this particular visit however, something was different. There didn’t seem to be as many people in line and the mayhem I usually would expect upon entering into a Safeway, was mysteriously absent. I then noticed the NEW! Self checkout! And I understood. Now let’s be honest – we’ve all seen these before right? But the ones I’ve seen in the past have been less than efficient and still required a real person to ‘oversee’ you making your purchase. Safeway, however, has it sussed. I scanned my cottage cheese, selected ‘pay by debit’, swiped my card, punched in my pin, selected ‘no bag’ and then collected my receipt. All without making small talk to any socially retarded checkout operators. I almost expected to be paid a minimum wage upon departure, as I clearly mastered the art of scan and swipe within seconds. No-one paid me however, but I looked back as I left the store gleefully and I could see the poor lucky remaining 3 cashiers quivering with fear…technology: 1, working class: 0.

Avatar vs. Sherlock Holmes: What audience is cooler?

Earlier tonight I was watching the David Letterman program and Sigourney Weaver was the guest.  She is in a new movie called Avatar and her appearance on the program this late in the game suggests she is low on the list of people pimping the movie.  Still, her lovely visage brought back memories of when I went to see this Avatar movie, not to mention all the coming attractions I saw.

I went to the theatre on a Tuesday and Tuesdays are meant to be cheap night, but when the ticket teller knows you’re paying cheap night prices, they jack you with special ‘deals’ on the concession stand.  Since you’re paying less for the ticket, you don’t want to come across as some jerk when they ask if you want the ‘deal’, so you just go ‘yeah, shore’.  So I got a ticket to the Avatar movie at 11:15 and a ‘free’ pop and a ‘free’ popcorn voucher from the son of a bitch at the box office window kiosk thing.  It wasn’t even close to 11:15 so with time to kill I decided to get my popcorn and drink and go watch the previews for Sherlock Holmes.  Why?  Well I’ll tell you why: To compare the Sherlock Holmes audience against the Avatar audience based only on the coming attractions that were selected for us to view.  You follow?

See, I’m not sure who picks the previews before the movies hit the theatres, but I’ll tell you what I want to believe:  I want to believe there is some crazy guy named Phil that everyone calls Crazy Phil and his job is to pick which movie previews get the go ahead for the feature presentations.  I also wanted to see if Crazy Phil just phones it in and uses the same previews for all the films in the theatre (he doesn’t) or see if Crazy Phil selects the movie previews based on which of the audiences he thinks will be cooler (he does).  What I did was vied the previews against each other in chronological order to best assess which audience Crazy Phil has a man crush on.

This is how I judged this thing:  If the preview was good, if it made me want to see the movie, if there was even just the slightest redeeming quality in the preview, then the preview will get some points.  If not, it gets no points or loses points and I’ll probably talk some shit about the movie or the actors.  Each of the previews will be like this Preview 1:  title a vs. title b.  Title a is the Sherlock Holmes previews, title b is the Avatar previews.  Also to note:  Avatar had a preview going when there is normally just trivia and songs on the screen.  You know when you walk into the theatre and the lights haven’t even dimmed and there is people looking for seats and you can still talk and such?  Out of nowhere a preview popped up.  A pre-preview preview.  That preview was for a movie called ‘Nine’, some shitty ass looking musical that is starring one of the losers from the Black Eyed Peas.  Avatar starts off this preview contest down 2 points.

First Preview

Hot Tub Time Machine vs. Piranha 3.d.

Toughest match up all night, thinking back on it.  Strangely enough, if the movies were called Hot Tub vs. Piranha, it would be an equally hard call.  But Time Machine vs. 3.d.?  Wow.  Good job Crazy Phil.  We’re calling this one a draw.  No, two points each.  No, 3 points for HTTM, 2 points for the Fish one.  I probably won’t tell people I saw the Fish one and the Hot Tub one looks funny.

Second Preview

The Bounty vs Shrek 4ever

Both of these lose 12 points.  Terrible, terrible, terrible.  They filmed Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston running around America, one of them a criminal and the other one a bounty hunter.  I hope I’m not ruining it for you, but I bet The Bounty is love!  You know the internet video of the two legged dog that hops around on it’s hind legs, acting like a normal dog?  This two legged dog just sits there.  Sad sad sad.  Shame on you, Spartan.  Shrek 4ever?  Well, the title sucks for starters.  And how many people in the audience were really sitting there going “hey, I wonder if that green ogre is going to call the donkey “donkey” again?’  Spoiler Alert!  He does.

Third Preview

Youth In Revolt vs. Clash of The Titans

Babam!  Youth In Revolt looks good.  I like that Michael Cera kid with a mustache.  Give him a top hat and a cane and whatever those one eyed glasses are called and I think I got another movie.  I saw the preview for this in the summer, and now it’s on every god damn commercial I seem to find, but I won’t dock it points for that.  3 points.  Clash of The Titans looks awesome and it gets 4 points.  I gave it one freebie point and I’ll explain why later.

Preview Number Four

Cop Out vs. Knight & Day

Christ what is wrong with hollywood?  Knight & Day, like The Bounty before it, looks terrible.  Stiff stiff stiff.  Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise.  I guess they play fucking idiots or something.  They are maybe married or agents or I don’t know what the hell, but they both suck.  They should be in big budget movies and instead they are going to get someone in hollywood fired.  Look at this Twilight vampire crap.  Nobody knows the actors and thus at least the lack of chemistry is believable.  Diaz and Cruise we know, so when their chemistry blows, it takes our caring with it.  Knight & Day is that same sad, two legged dog from before, only eating it’s own shit this time.  Cop Out also looks like a miss, unfortunately.  Fun fact:  This movie was supposed to be called A Couple Of Dicks.  The updated title works on multiple levels, see.  I like Kevin Smith, but now I find myself wanting to like him more than how I just naturally liked him before.  I think he’s lost a bit of his edge.  I also like Tracey Morgan but any movie he stars in with Bruce Willis needs to involve Bruce Willis beating him up.  I doubt that happens.  I’ll still give it 1 point, but the preview failed to impress me.  Knight & Day gets minus whatever is in my bank account.  11 dollars and 31 cents?  Mother fucker.  I’m still not spending it on your ‘movie’.

Preview Five

Inception vs. Percy Jackson & The Olympians

Go watch the trailer for Inception right now.  Ten hundred points.  Reminds me of the first time I saw a preview for the Matrix, without the long distance phone call explaining the more subtle tenets of Taoism that my uncle epistle’d once he heard I was so enamored with it.  Then again, haven’t spoken to him yet so there you go:  This could be the Matrix Part 2 everyone except those cross dressing wachowski brothers wanted.  Percy Jackson isn’t really my thing but I’m sure it’ll be a good movie.  I’ll give it 3 points on a bell curve for all that other crap I had to watch.

Preview Six Teaser One

Upping the ante, Sherlock Holmes threw in a teaser trailer – teasers being the trailers that are like 20 seconds long and just give you a whiff of what the movie will be like.  Avatar didn’t have a sixth preview or a single teaser but I won’t deduct them marks because Sherlock Holmes’ teaser was of Clash of The Titans.  It was a great teaser, I wanted more, and then in Avatar’s coming attractions, boom, there it was:  A full preview for Clash of The Titans.  Great Day!

I’m not going to count up the points, due in large part because of Crazy Phil’s clear assumption that the Avatar crowd wasn’t too cool.  To be fair to Crazy Phil though, I thought Avatar was going to suck and I would have picked some pretty lousy trailer’s for it, too.  Consequently, Avatar was actually pretty good, so who knows?  Maybe these movies won’t be as bad as they look, you never know.  But I highly fucking doubt it, because almost all of them except for the 3.d. piranha’s looked like garbage.

Top Albums

Every year there are those that complain that new year’s is just another day.  It is, sure, but get over it.  We measure time and as arbitrary as January one is, that’s just how she goes.  That said, January one is coming up and it reminds me to look back and consider which music I got into over the course of the year.  I’m not going to worry about a number or even if the albums came out this year.  I’m just going to tell you which albums I really liked that I found this year.  I don’t know how to do song snippets on here so only the curious of you will be rewarded by hearing this amazing music.

Asaf Avidan & The Mojo’s The Reckoning. Asaf is an israeli guy whose voice is the product a young Geddy Lee and back in the day Janis Joplin harmonizing.  Unbelievable stuff.  Reckoning Song and Weak are two of the most touching song I’ve heard written by someone whose first language is not English.

Rolling Stones Black And Blue. We know everything, right?  That’s how I feel.  Every Beatles song, every Stones song.  We know it all.  Of course we haven’t, but it feels like we have.  At some point we’ve had the radio on and magically the Stones and the Beatles have played in the background and if we haven’t heard every song selectively, they’ve still managed to creep into our heads.  Then all of the sudden some dude gives you the Stones’ discography and Black and Blue rears up and punches you in the face and makes you realize there is still so much to discover from bands we think we know.  Hey Negrita.  Listen to that jam and it might just make you go shit… these guys are British?

The Antlers Hospice. Drastic and beautiful, the album deals with the ambiguity of life when dealing with terminal illness.  The terminal illness of a child, to be specific.  The lead singer’s voice has the haunting familiarity of Bon Iver which adds to the emotional effect of the song writing, yet somehow the album manages to hint at hope despite the difficult theme.   Check out Two or Kettering then go hug a loved one.

Beck Sea Change. I really like Beck.  Just about everything I’ve ever heard by him is, at worse, entirely passable.  So why don’t I get into his shit more?  I don’t know.  I really should be listening to all his music all the time, but for whatever reason there are still a bunch of his albums I haven’t taken the time to consider.  From what I understand, Beck likes to switch it up, album to album, creatively speaking.  If this is true, that would make Sea Change Beck’s country or folk album.  I’m not a crazy country or folk album kind of guy, but Sea Change is all right by me.  And by all right I mean I listen to that shit front to back at least once a week.  I don’t even know what any of the song titles are.

The Black Crowes …Until The Freeze I’m one of those people that is loyal to certain bands and would lie to myself if they came out with something I didn’t like.  The Black Crowes is one of those bands.  I don’t even know which albums by them are no good because I’ve convinced myself they are all the greatest.  Until this one.  Released as a fan club only, get it for free when buying another album album, …Until The Freeze was recorded at a studio with a room full of people enjoying the Black Crowes doing what they do.  It feels like you’re in the room with them.

Jadiohead You can find this on the internet.  It’s a downloadable mash up betwen Radiohead and Jay-Z.  Those two are heavy hitters and their styles mash well.  Awesome party music.

L.L. Cool J Walking With A Panther.  When it comes to hip hop, I sometimes consider L.L. Cool J to be a bit of a ‘never was’, more of a R. Kelly than a Chuck D.  That’s because I never listened to this album.  This shit is hot.  Sizzling.  I’m sorry I doubted you L.L.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears Tell ‘em what your name is. I want to have a beer with these guys.  They’ve got that approachable quality of cool to them.  You’re having a bad day, boss on your back, car out of gas.  Shit’s just fucked up.  Then Black Joe or one of the Honeybears calls you out of the blue to say hey and you’re just immediately cool.  “How’s it going?”  “I’m good man, thanks for calling!”  Listen to the song Bitch I love You and you’ll get the James Brown comparisons in three point ass seconds.

Wale A Mixtape About Nothing This mixtape is awesome.  You know what a mixtape is?  They’re basically free music artists do to pump their name.  You get it a lot with up and comers in hip hop.  They’ll collab with other artists they may not know or have clearance from their recording contract to work with.  Sometimes they do it because they are using songs or samples that they don’t have clearance to make money off of.  Sometimes they are doing it just because.  A Mixtape About Nothing uses tonnes of Seinfeld samples and is just a cool album.  You can really hear the fun Wale (pronounced Wall-eh) is having making it.  More label albums need to have that sound of joy.

K’naan The Messengers. Again, this is a free downloadable mixtape.  It’s a project K’naan put together with mixtape extraordinaire J.Period.  The 3 albums act as tributes to Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, and too under the radar Fela Kuti.  K’naan prefaces each album with a little love fest to the respective artists over the beat of reworked songs the artists have done over the years, and the albums flow from there, juxtaposing K’naan’s raps with short stories or anecdotes from his life.  Find the albums on J.Periods web sites.

How come bacon is all right

I just got home and started cooking up bacon.  This is how come bacon is all right:

First of all, bacon is fucking awesome.  It tastes good, it smells good, you can pretty much put it on anything and make anything better.  Find something else.  Seriously, find something else.  Get up, go look in your fridge or your freezer, go look in your cabinets both high and low.  You came back with nothing, didn’t you?

Say you looked in your spice rack.  Just say.  What did you come back with?  Did you come back with cumin?  Did you come back with the dill spice?  What would you put that on?  A sandwich?  Maybe a soup?  Will that spice suffice as a side?  Will that spice knock off a small plate?  Can it knock off a big plate?  Of course it can’t.  It’s just a spice.

Potatoes.  We all agree potatoes have their place.  Their place is placed squarely in our hearts.  And on our big plates.  Big potatoes.  Baked potatoes.  Rushed potatoes.  Scalloped potatoes.  Potatoes.  Hash browns.  Thing is though, they’re all bland.  They are all boring as fuck.  Potatoes are earth apples and nothing but.  Nothing more but nothing else either.  I love them.  They’re delicious and I may have said before that I “lust after potatoes”.  “I’ll eat potatoes however you cook them.”  “Bake them.”  Cook them.”  “Re-heat them.”  If potatoes got left in a dark room on the top floor of a castle, and the eyes of that potato just grew and grew and grew down out of the window, down to the ground where I was standing?  Make no mistake, I would Rapunzel my ass up with my left pocket full of green onions and my right full of olive’s oil and I would wish I’d have remembered to bring a knife and a fork.  I would climb that vine and after I asked, you all right?  I would say You got any bacon?  Because

Bacon is delicious.  Bacon smells good.  Bacon looks good, too.  I grew up in a society where thin is in.  Bacon starts fat then gets skinny.  That shit is in my head.  I’m like What the fuck am I cooking?  Am I going to eat this?  This shit is fat.      But bacon gets skinny.  It shrivels up.  It’s pretty well a weight loss commercial.  Cigarettes you can eat, sort of thing.  This whole smoking thing fucks me off a bit, actually.  I’ll go outside, right?  I’ll go outside.  That’s fine.  I’ll do a tonne of shit for cigarettes.  But I’ll misspell cigarettes.  I’ll never misspell bacon.

Second of all, bacon is the b plan.  The B plan, even.  I’m in serious belief that this whole diet thing right now is a fad.  Fat people are fat because they are stupid.  They’re either stupid or rich.  They’re worried.  Fat is just a mindset.  Bulking up is good.  We all need fat reserves.  I hate being too fat, but I hate being cold even more.  When it gets cold, I don’t mind a bit of chub.  Don’t complain.  That’s just how it is.  But where am I going to get that chub?  Glad you asked.

You can bake bacon.  You can fry bacon.  You can throw bacon in a god damn microwave and that shit will work too.  But will you ever reheat bacon, mr. potatohead?  Of course you won’t.  Because there is none left.  I bet you animals that don’t make bacon are yelled at by the animals that do make bacon only because the animal making bacon is tired of being killed and eaten.  And never left over.  And finished.  Until it is gone.  Ironically, the animal that makes bacon has the likeliest chance of being forgotten because everyone is tired of this thing beaking off about how bad it’s got it.  Oh, everyone wants to eat me.  Oh.

I fucking beaked off big time two days ago.  I was cooking ribs.  I got these ribs for a fucking juicy deal at the local grocery store and I didn’t even marinate these sons.  I just threw them on the barby.  I cooked the one side for a good forty five, flipped them, then thirty minutes later I guessed they were done.  I cut them in half to see how they cooked, took some with me, inside, to see how they tasted, and god damn if I didn’t come back to the biggest grease fire humanity has ever seen.  The rest of the ribs were fucked.  Charred.  Charred like charred.  I got the ribs off but the barbecue kept on fire and burning and the whole time I was looking at this thing, trying to make my teeth keep cool around the shitty ass ribs I had burned the fuck out of.  I just kept thinking Never happens with bacon, does it.

And say it did?  Say it did happen with bacon?  What would happen?  You’d eat that shit.  You wouldn’t even eat that shit.  First you would be like Are you okay bacon?  Do you know where you are?  My name is Brad and I’m a friend of yours.  It might take you a minute to adjust to your new life, but I’m going to take care of you.  I’m your new family.

Bacon is all right.

Oh and also, when you get fake bacon, it’s always fake.  You never have real fake bacon.  You can imitate anything except for bacon.  Bacon and coffee.

dating? not us.

i somehow got onto the subject of dating with one of my canadian friends.  which reminded me of the time i moved to vancouver (3 months ago) and i was confused about this whole concept of dating that seemed to take place in these parts.  i wrote home to one of my good friends to see if he could offer any advice and this is what he sent back… i hope he doesn’t mind me posting it…

Dating? I’m Kiwi. Kiwis don’t date. We get drunk and pash. If we have sex more than once, then we’re going out. If we stay together for 7 years without either getting married or having kids, we have to get married, or break up. Simple. Why would I know anything about the subtle and complex art of dating?

needless to say, it never worked out with the guy i was seeing at the time.  maybe i have a few things to learn.

google chat bot says

“there is no time like the present to buy flood insurance”

try it out here