Barkerburgh

…<font title=”Pushing Daisies - seen the premiere thrice - and it kicks - but don’t tell anyone…”>but I can’t talk about the ones I really like, or they’ll get cancelled</font>.

So I’m walking down Parliament and I see this unicycle. Then I see a second one. I ask the guy if he’s with the unicycles. He tells me he is. He tells me his kids unicycle and he’s taught Regent Park kids to do it. Then I see a third unicycle. I assure him I’m not mocking him (I’m totally not - this is so cool) and I ask him if I can take a picture. His kids come out of the store (I ask their permission too) and I got the picture.

Swear to God, it’s like living in France, only without the mimes.

Last night was hot TV at my place.

First off was the one hour season premiere of Family Guy, which was an abso-totally-lutely hilarious take-off on the original Star Wars - no, Nerdapalooza, not Episode 1; the original movie, later subtitled ‘A New Hope’ to fit into Lucas’s diabolical - ahem - plot.

Stewie as Darth Vader, Peter as Han Solo! Chris as Luke, rescuing his mom, as Princess Leia, from the cell on Death Star - his mom! Get it? Get it? At one point,when the laughs lulled out for a minute, I felt sad. Then the laughs started again, and kept coming.

Good for the soul.

Then at midnight was Discovery’s repeat of Episode 1 of ‘Race to Mars’ (premiered earlier that evening). As I’m sure many of you know, I am of the opinion that we (as a species, but me personally especially) should have been living on Mars by now. Instead, NASA has concentrated on growing Space Tomatoes on the shuttle and trying to see if ants can be trained to manipulate small screws in zero gravity. Bollocks.

So when the fictional team made orbit successfully around Mars after some Earthside supplier/contractor-caused technical glitches, I nearly cried. ‘God speed, John Glenn’s spiritual descendants!’ I thought. Okay, I didn’t, but I’m thinking it now. Episode 2 is next Sunday.

<hr />

In Non-TV-TMSL news, I’m discovering more and more cool stuff to do with MediaWiki. The latest trip is that, using a very simple block of code, you can create a list that is dynamically sortable by the viewer, or just by default. I had been inputting and/or rearranging Glossary/Encyclopaedia/Dictionary entries in alphabetical order just to keep them easily browsable later, but now I don’t even have to do that.

Usually, of course, with these sorts of things, the highly nerdal documentation sucks syphilitic donkey ass - it’s unclear to start with (often overly technical - like the cartoons in <i>Scientific American</i> - or obscure, like the cartoons in the <i>New York Review of Books</i>) and if you do exactly what it says in the example - <i>exactly</i> - it doesn’t work. Then it takes five hours of experimentation to get it to work. And if you forgot to document your own progress in figuring it out, then you do it all again next time. “I” have to do it all again next time.However, with the sorting of lists (and tables!) it was fairly clear and straightforward. My Sandbox test worked almost immediately and then I applied it to a ‘real’ page - viola!

Better and better!

“Oh, the wonderful things I shall know on the morning of the day of my death!”

If y’all haven’t seen Stranger Than Fiction, with Emma Thompson, Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal, then I suggest you do. Sharpish. Here’s Roger Ebert’s review.

I was over at Peter, Leslie and Simon’s (sans Peter, he was off Indiana Jones botanying in Australia) for dinner on Saturday. Leslie made enchiladas and cob-in-the-corn, I visited with her and Simon and then we watched this movie on On-Demand.

I loved it. It’s still spinning through my head.

And no, I don’t like everything. I don’t see many movies and I just really enjoy what I really enjoy.

1. Make a longhand list entitled “Ten Things To Do During A Power Failure While You’re House-sitting.”
2. Read an entire book. (”X-Treme Latin! Unleash Your Inner Gladiator”; it’s basically a phrase book. From the Country Music Favourites page - ‘Sine Te Tam Miser Sum Ut Videaris Etiamnunc Adesse‘, which translates as ‘I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Like Having You Here‘.)
3. Read Monday’s Globe and Mail, front to back, even Sports.
4. Ingenuously ask the neighbours if their power’s back on.
5. Disingenuously ask the other neighbours if their power’s back on.
6. Worry about the old lady across the street who seems okay but you’d feel bad if you found out something happened to her when you didn’t check.
7. Stare longingly at the blind TV. It can’t see you, so it’s not fulfilling its destiny. (Me! It can’t see me!)
8. Believe Reality when the power comes back on for about 3 minutes but then, haha, goes off again.
9. Try to teach yourself piano but give up when you realize that while you may never be the new Keith Jarrett, you just might be the new Charles Ives and that’s dissonantly disturbing.
10. Clean out the freezer. By eating.
11. Add some items to the list after #10.
12. Phone some local friends to ask their voice-mail, in all seriousness, “Is your refrigerator running?” But use a funny voice and an accent.
13. Read an entire Mad magazine. (March, 2007)
14. Make anagrams in fridge magnet letters out of “Squarebob Spongepants” (”Barges Squab Opponents”, “Abbess Pang Toque Porns”, etc) and “You talking to me?” (”Image Look Nutty”, ” Teat Ugly Kimono”, etc).
15. Return from the Stone Age when the power comes back on after almost exactly 3 hours.

So today, my 50th birthday (thank you, I don’t moisturize or shit, I just don’t go out in the sun a lot and I quit smoking 26 years ago…) and I’m watching CNN this morning. An item comes on about a kid in Louisiana named Justin Barker getting beaten nearly to death at some high school. There but for the grace of dog, thinks I. Then they talk to his parents. His father’s name is - get ready - David Barker.

Now I can ego-google my name and find all sorts of cool names, and a lotta not. So this really doesn’t mean anything. However, I was raised to believe in all sorts of religious hooey and supernatural/ESP/space alien crap, but while you can get the kid outa the bullshit, the kid has to work really hard to get the bullshit outa the kid.

It was just a weird jolt on my birthday to hear that man’s name in that context.

Now, with all due respect, time to party.

So I’m watching a White House press conference on CNN in which President Bush plans to announce his veto of the recent bill passed by Congress to fund stem cell research.

He outlines his moral and ethical reasons for his veto and then presents a victim of spina bifida who had her damaged bladder replaced by one grown from adult stem cells in the lab. (I have not independently verified this with my sources.)

Moments later, he refers to her condition (which he had to have been briefed on) as - and I kid you not - spina biffid-eye-da. Spina bifidida.

Why don’t his handlers drill him?

A few weeks ago when he was in Russia, he referred to a conversation he’d had with Putin and quoted himself: “Vladimir - I call him Vladimir…” which name he pronounced to rhyme approximately with polymer, as opposed to the more proper Anglophone pronunciation which should rhyme approximately with polymeer.

Can’t wait for tonight’s ‘Daily Show.’

Well, Jericho has been disencancelled! This is a message from Nina Tassler, president of CBS.

She warns that once it returns for seven midseason episodes next year, viewership will have to be higher than before, and current fans will have to recruit new ones. I wouldn’t do that. Too shy.

To be honest, it almost lost me midseason when they were concentrating on the ordinary people of Jericho trying to adapt pre-war normal lives to the realities of the current situation. I admit I drifted. But the last few episodes got me back because they started getting contact from the outside world, as the various federal governments (at one point six claiming the title) tried to aid the recovery, and we found out more about who was responsible in flashbacks. That was when I appreciated the folksy, homey tone of the ‘personal lives’ episodes more. These were small farm-town Kansans, not ‘Red Dawn’ action hero teens, with God Scriptwriter on their side from the start.

Now if the fans would only send nuts (or, you know, muffins or cheese baskets) to the devils who cancelled Studio 60 and Veronica Mars.

The bastards have cancelled ‘Jericho’ too.

Just when I was really getting into it.

‘Everybody Loves Fucking Raymond’ gets renewed for 23 years and they gang-probe us on this.

Well, I hope all their walls come a-tumblin’ down.

(Moments later: Then there’s this response from the fans. It’s in a response to a line used in the last episode based on this true story.)

The bastards have cancelled ‘Veronica Mars’ too.

‘According to Fucking Jim’ gets renewed for 23 years and they gang-probe us on this.

Well, they can kiss Mars.