Screw this sitting around the house stuff. I’m going trick or treating tomorrow.

“Aren’t you a little old to be trick or treating?”
“yes, but it’s not like real kids actually come to your door anymore, so I know you have a ton of candy that’s just sitting there and no one to eat it. So hand it over.”
“This is a good argument. Here is your candy.”

Who’s with me!?
I’m heading out at 8:30, unless someone wants to come but can’t go till a little later. Come by early and we’ll carve some pumpkins.

-dean

[image:551:l]Last halloween we made a gingerbread house, complete with gummy bear body parts tacked to the wall, off-kilter windows made from crushed lifesavers that melt to form a nice pane of candyglass,and various gummy critters on spikes (toothpicks)
[thumb:550:l][thumb:549:l][newline]

We also made a Gingerbread Necronomicon.
[image:552:l][thumb:548:i][thumb:553:l][newline]

Just thought I’d share.

-Dean

So a random dude made a list of the top movies of the last 30 years. Of course I don’t agree with a good chunk of the list, but it does have most of the geek movies on it, so that’s cool.

http://seoblackhat.com/2006/10/26/250-best-movies-made-in-the-last-30-years/

I broke it down by movies I’ve seen after the break.
(more…)

I promised someone I’d Eulogize IGA, so here goes.
[image:546:l]
Before we begin, some people call it I.G.A. pronouncing each letter individually. Around our house it’s pronounced ig-ga, just so we’re on the same page.

When I first moved back to Vegreville, Jason Pyle stopped by to visit me. Jason is the son of Mike Pyle and uh… Jason’s Mom… whose name I’m not sure of… but I only ever met her like 2 or three times and was never introduced formally… so, it’s not really my fault is it? (edit: I’m told her name is Judy.) I mean, I’ve actually called their house and asked her absentmindedly “is Pyle there?” (cause when you name your kid a common name like Jason, they tend to have to find another handle) “Which one?” came her giggling reply. Anyway, the Pyle family owns the IGA, and I know their kid and that’s what’s important to this story.

Jason and I headed out to pick up some snacks. I know a lot of people buy their junk food at the convenience store regardless of the time of day. However, I’m (arguably) not retarded. So, I tend to shop at the regular grocery store if it’s a reasonable hour and the store is still open. (By the way, IGA’s hours of 9am-9pm 7 days a week were awesome because I could remember them, unlike any other store in this town.) So we wandered in and I picked up some nachos and salsa or something and we proceeded to the front till.

“So what? Is the hiring policy here that you have to be smoking hot to work as a cashier?” I quietly ask.
Jason looks at me with that ‘I know a secret’ grin and proceeds to say to the cashier “hey Nicole, so what are Mom and Dad cooking for dinner tonight?”

You know how when you see old people and they say “the last time I saw you you were THIIIIS small?” Well the last time I saw Nicole she had no front teeth, was about a meter tall, and was being constantly shooed out of the room by Jason as I was discussing whose teddy bear was more adorable with her. (for the record, it’s still clearly my bear, Radar.) So needless to say, 30 minutes later when I picked my eyes, mouth and pride up off the floor, Jason had a good laugh at my expense.

Months later, after the embarrassment wore off, I started going to IGA again regularly…
____________
So, I’m online on http://www.nexopia.com (soylentdean) and a comment comes in “I know you, you shop at IGA.”
“Wow, I totally do, you must be that cute cashier.” Says I, after checking out all of her photographs which were all of tiny figures in the distance and blurry obfuscated photos of someone who is maybe possibly the girl I’m thinking of, at the time.
“DAMN STRAIGHT!” Says she.
(You know… In a small town, ‘you shop at ___’ is a pretty safe bet Chrissy. I bet you could use that on anyone assuming you know they’re from Veg.)
I go to the store, I see her. She seems to recognize me, but it could be that recognition I tend to get as “that guy who brings his own canvas shopping bags”
Several times I shop and several times we have the conventional checkout conversation.
Hello.
Social niceties.
later.
Maybe it’s not her? Damn I wish she’d post some more representative photos.

Back to the store. There’s that girl again, facing shelves. I’ll go down this aisle even though I need nothing down there.
I smile and nod.
“GAH!” she exclaims as I walk past.
“are you alright?”
“I thought you were going to hit me.”
“I come off as the sort of guy who just randomly attacks girls I don’t really know in grocery stores huh?”
“yeah… I guess.”
So I purchase my goods and have a mock battle with her for my receipt.

Maybe it is her? Oh she updated her pictures. It totally is.
Yay I have a fight buddy!

I start looking for reasons to go to IGA more often just to bother her.
_______

There’s a new girl, or at least one I haven’t seen before, at the till, I’m beginning to think my initial impression of the hiring policy wasn’t inaccurate.
My plan of buying fewer items every time and making more trips to IGA is paying off in more ways than just the delight of fresh ingredients for my meals.
“You know you’re the only person who comes in here with your own bags.” she says one day.
“You’d think it was because I’m an environmentalist. But really I just hate plastic bags and how you never want to throw them out because they might be useful later and you end up with a big sack full of them underneath your kitchen sink.” I respond.
She laughs but seems a little disappointed.

I only bring canvas bags some of the time. Other times I just opt to carry the stuff in my arms. When she’s there she’ll yell across the store at me that I forgot my bags now. It entertains me. I secretly stop bringing my bag just so I can laugh when she gives me heck (steph still brings the bags though when she comes).

I tell Steph that I was snooping around on friends lists and I found another iga cashier on Nex.
“Should I be jealous?”
“Clearly. I’m obviously shopping at IGA for a new girlfriend.”
“What’s her username?”
“Moo with some asterisks”
“moo? that’s awesome.”
“I think it must have to do with her name which is like Mevisha or something… though that only half makes sense, now that I say it out loud maybe it was muvushu or something with an oo sound.” (note: nope I was right the first time.)
“Did you message her?”
“No, what do I say? Hey, I’m that creepy guy who’s twice as old as you. You’re totally from that store!”
“maybe leave out the creepy old guy part.”
“Hey, you’re totally from that store!”
“That works.”
“You’re fired as my socialization with IGA girls agent.”
“you can’t fire me, I quit.”
___________________

“you know what I hear?” Says that guy from IGA who’s not one of the girls from IGA and is not a pyle and is not that nice bald guy who’s always always there.
“what do you hear?”
“well we were all talking and you’re the only guy who brings in a canvas bag”
“that’s a shame. you’d think more people would. Seems environmentally sound.”
“yeah, except I hear you do it because you just hate plastic bags.”
“this is more or less true.”

Whoa. Apparently I was the topic of discussion around the checkout counter at some point. I feel loved as a weirdo. Truth be told, I dig all that environmentalist stuff. Hell I read http://www.treehugger.com every few days. But it’s not out of a “oh noes doom and gloom the world is going to sink under the ocean!!!1111oneone” sensibility. it’s out of a “man, everything is so wasteful.” sensibility. Energy efficiency. Renewable resources. Recycling the stuff we’re using. Call me crazy, but it just seems to be the responsible thing to do. But if you called me up and asked me to come protest against a nuclear powerplant or something that environmentalist greenpeace types would do, I’d try not to laugh in your face and explain just how dirty and crappy the coal plants we’re using now are.

Sorry about the tangent. Back to the insanely long, stream-of-consciousness IGA post.

IGA. I love that one tennis ball that was stuck in your outer wall for the longest time.
IGA. I love your easy to remember hours.
IGA. I love your frost generating freezer, I really wish I had a good lighting rig and camera to snap a photo of that when I had the chance.
IGA. I love your free cookie club cookies you used to give me when I was little.
IGA. I love your prices that were always better than the Extra foods prices. Sure they try to trick people by jacking up the name brand stuff and then selling their no name stuff at the same price as your real deal stuff.
IGA. I love that weird floor cleaning thing that someone was always running just because they had it and it was probably fun to use.
IGA. I love how one time i asked Mike how Jason was doing? and he said “he’s supposed to be here right now working, why are you his friend?” in an annoyed angry voice and I was all.. “I mean your son, Jason. I’m that guy who’s been his buddy for like… 15 years.”
IGA. I love how in the winter you could basically park wherever you wanted. because the handicap zones were covered by the snow.
IGA. I love how your winter parking lot was the ideal place to pull the e-brake and execute car ballet.
IGA. I love how you stayed afloat through all the years and all the rumors of your impending demise, well at least till that goddamned walmart came.
IGA. I love that section of fence that they’d rebuild for a day or two and then people would just get pissed off that it was in their path and either trample it, or ram it with a car or take wirecutters to.
IGA. I love that part of the parkinglot that wasn’t really all that useful for parking where the seagulls would gather and i’d feed them subway sandwiches.
IGA. I love that unexplained odour of french vanilla between your dairy cooler and the bulk chocolate bar rack… what is that anyway?
IGA. I love that my car just barely fit between those posts on the side of the building if I really wanted to go that way.
IGA. I love that guy… with the bald head. who’s always there getting carts and taking in the rug and stuff.

IGA. Mostly I love the fact that this is easily the longest post I’ve ever blogged and I didn’t even know I had this much to say about you… man I need to hit the sack.

no IGA… thank YOU for the shopping.

So I’ve taken to popping popcorn on the stove in pots. Nothing wrong with my hot air popper, I just wanted to do something a little different. The technique is basically…
Cover bottom of pot sparringly with popcorn.
Cover popcorn sparingly with oil.
Cover pot with lid (important.)
Turn on burner.
Shake pot around to avoid burning.
Wait for popping to slow to a near stop.
Pour popped popcorn into a bowl.
Dance.

The varying flavours come from varying the type of oil used. Sesame is better than Canola and Olive, natch. Forgoing the oil and cooking the popcorn directly in butter tastes pretty yummy but it’s a bit trickier because butter burns. The other day I decided “Garlic butter” was the way we were going to play. But I couldn’t find my garlic press, and I didn’t feel like doing the thing where you crush the garlic with the flat of a big knife because that would necessitate dirtying both a cutting board and a knife. So I did what any upstanding citizen would do, I sliced the garlic very finely with a potato peeler.

what?
Well that’s what I did.
Shut up, I’m telling the story.

Anyway, My garlic popcorn was delish. and in the bottom of the bowl I found, as a nice by-product, some fried, lightly-salted garlic chips that were about the tastiest thing I’ve had all year.

So today I decided I didn’t even want to bother with the popcorn and I’d just make the garlic chips. So I slice an entire hunk… what do you call the entire cluster of cloves of garlic anyway? or is the cluster the clove and the little section that you break off the thing that I don’t know the name of? Actually that sounds right, cause you ward off vampires with a clove of garlic, and that’s always like an entire rope of clusters in the movies. So, I guess I slice up an entire clove of garlic, carefully into fine slices with my potato peeler. And put them into a frying pan with some canola oil. Pull them out and… HORRID.

Maybe it was the salt? nope, now they’re heavily salted horrid.

So I guess the plan for later this week when I buy some more garlic is to try it in butter and see if I can re-delight my tastebuds.

-dean

Steph’s been looking into buying a lineolated parakeet lately. http://pics.hoobly.com/full/2WZLOMCSDU7VBRBJHE.jpg So she’s been googling up pictures of birds constantly. Every time she scrolls past an albino one I go “awwww.” She says I should become a breeder, and breed only albino birds. I said I’m way ahead of her and I already have a name for my business “Polly want a Cracker”.

-dean

At San Diego Comic-Con last year Dave drew some laughs when he said “Command+Z” (which is the key combination for undo on a mac, for those who don’t know.) Command+Z in itself, isn’t all that funny, except when you say “I can’t draw with a real pencil any more because there’s no command+Z”. But Dave said it like any good Canadian would “Command+Zed”. So the laughter stemmed from the instant recognition that he hails from the great white north.

In trying to picture the scene (I wasn’t there, I just heard about it.) I’d always thought of him responding to it with “yeah I’m from Canada Eh?” Cause you know… saying “eh?” to people is a comedy well that never runs dry.

Anyway, the point of all this is that if I were to write a book about canadian identity, it’d have to be called “From eh? to Z”

-dean

So you know Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska? The Series of Tubes guys who’s always getting his internets delayed? Turns out he’s 4th in line in terms of Power in the U.S. So it’s like this;
President,
Vice-President,
Speaker of the house
Ted Stevens.

Now, Originally I was going to post about how screwed up it was that Ted Stevens could, through a series of unfortunate events, wind up running the show down south. Then I remembered who’s currently in charge and thought, “Oh yeah, I already knew it was screwed up, this just furthers that opinion.”

But anyway, I’m really just posting this so that I can link to a YouTube Video with John Hodgeman explaining the series of tubes thing because I know my Dad loves those Apple ads they’ve been running lately.

-dean

So last year all the emo kids had those stupid awareness bracelets. Just little cheap silicone rubber bracelets that you can wear to show (off) your support for a cause. So like a pink bracelet would have “breast cancer” written on it and theoretically some of the money you spent on the bracelet goes towards cancer research.

[image:545:l]

I wear this black one from time to time.
“oh that’s odd, I’ve never seen a black awareness bracelet before. What cause is that” Says girl behind the till with 20 bracelets running up to her elbow.
“hacker” Sez I.
“oh…” she grunts with a sudden look of loathing.

Good times.

All it takes to have an embarassing moment is swapping the first two syllables in kabuki.

-dean