Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

I’ve been neglecting my friends and my blog-readers. And for that I apologize. Stupid work.

So here’s not one, not two, but three week’s worth of selected (by me) news snippets courtesy of Harper’s.

The Labor Department reported that the economy created a mere 96,000 jobs last month, thus failing to keep pace with the expansion of the nation’s work force and confirming that George W. Bush has the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The White House reacted to the bad news by declaring that the poor job numbers prove that the president’s tax cuts have been working.

double ewe tee eff?

The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive it. The inspectors said that there was no evidence that Iraq continued to possess chemical or biological weapons, and they concluded that Hussein refused to admit he had disarmed because he wanted to maintain a deterrent against Iran. [New York Times] President Bush said that the report proved that Iraq was “a gathering threat.” [New York Times]

double double ewe tee eff.

A Washington, D.C., policeman arrested, cuffed, and jailed a woman for eating a candy bar in the subway. [Associated Press]

Republicans in Michigan were calling on authorities to prosecute Michael Moore for offering to give clean underwear to college students if they would promise to vote. [Associated Press]

Cheney claimed that he had never before met Senator Edwards; newspapers then published a photograph of the two men smiling and speaking together at a prayer breakfast. [New York Times]

Chicago experienced its first murder-free night in five years,

Britain suspended the license of the factory in Liverpool that was supposed to manufacture almost half the American supply of this year’s flu vaccine. [New York Times] Public health experts have long warned that it is insane for the United States to depend on two companies for the country’s flu vaccine. [New York Times]

Mexico declined to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart next to the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, and paleontologists [Reuters] in China discovered 130-million-year-old fossils of Dilong paradoxus, an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, with impressions of feathers all over its body. [New York Times]

Korean and Italian researchers developed a tiny robot with multiple legs designed to crawl through a patient’s guts. [New Scientist]

Scientists with NIZO Food Research developed an artificial throat that breathes, salivates, and swallows. [New Scientist]

A nineteen-year-old Singapore man set a world record for the number of hamburgers he could stuff in his mouth. “I’m on top of the world right now,” he said,” because everyone’s going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth.” [Associated Press]

United States military personnel who worked at Camp Delta, the largest prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, revealed that many prisoners there were tortured by being forced to endure strobe lights and cold temperatures and extremely loud recordings of Limp Bizkit. [New York Times]

I wonder if they got royalties.

A senate candidate in Oklahoma warned of “rampant” lesbianism in the schools. [Associated Press]

People in Detroit were debating the wisdom of creating an “Africa Town” district, where the city would give special loans to black businessmen. [New York Times]

A quadriplegic man succeeded in checking email and playing computer games via a microchip embedded in his brain. [Nature.com]

The federal government reached its $7.4 trillion debt ceiling and was forced to delay contributions to pension plans. [Washington Post]

Police in Burlington, Ontario, were searching for someone who glued shards of glass to playground equipment. [CBC News]

The Global Amphibian Assessment announced that 1,856 of the 5,743 known amphibian species are at risk of extinction

Absentee ballots missing the names of John Kerry and John Edwards were mailed to Ohio voters. [Cincinnati Post]

Two Polish doctors and two ambulance workers were charged with murder for killing patients in exchange for kickbacks from funeral homes. [Associated Press]

Boston police killed a woman with a non-lethal pepper spray projectile after the Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees to win the American League Championship Series. [Associated Press]

Six Buddhist monks from Ratchaburi, Thailand, were arrested and defrocked for holding wild drug and alcohol parties. [New York Times]

The British Armed Forces officially recognized its first Satanist, a sailor on the HMS Cumberland who will now be permitted to perform Satanic rituals on board. [BBC]

Have I mentioned this already?

A little while ago I deleted my friendster account. I never liked friendster, really. Sometimes I hated it. It was novel at first. One thing that especially irked me was the people who have over 100 people on their ‘friends’ list. I guess different people use it for different things. I chose to take the ‘friends’ in frienster literally. I had a policy where if I didn’t actually see you regularly, or if you weren’t in Vancouver – basically if you weren’t actually my friend – I wouldn’t approve your ‘friendship’ request. To me friendster is mostly a thinly veiled dating service. Why would it be used for anything else, when any decent email program has an address book that you can just make a ‘friends’ entry for your bulk emails? When I did occasionally visit the friendster website, which was primarily when I got an email saying that I had a message (it would be too easy for friendster just to forward the actual message to me), sometimes I would check the ‘gallery’ to see if any of my friends had friends of friends who were single. Nothing ever came of it – I never emailed someone to say “hey – you don’t know me, but you do know John who knows Sally who knows me, so hey…how about a date, huh?”

We played D&D last night and it was fun. The gang is on board a galleon. They’ve had to be hired on as workers, which required a lot of shenanigans, since none of them (except the NPCs) have any sailor skills. The ship is under command of their enemies, so they have to constantly be careful not to expose themselves. This is particularly difficult because Paul’s wizard character used a magical ‘hat of disguise’ to get on board the ship (wizards are not allowed) and they are now travelling through a zone that negates magic. This zone surrounds an island called The Flame of Mesir-Ramok. The island is all that remains of the domain of an ancient dragon god-king, who was so nasty that all the other gods got together centuries ago to destroy him and his continent.

Anyway, Marlo’s spindly elf character (Marwen) couldn’t pass as a sailor, so she was trained to be the cook. So far, even though she took 6 ranks in the Profession: cooking skill, she’s rolled a 1 for both consecutive meals she’s prepared for the crew, and the officers are demanding that something be done about her. The salty sea-dog captain, who has a thing for elves and orchestrated the whole arrangement for Marwen to be cook in the first place, told the crew he’d see to it “personally” and demanded sexual favours from her, otherwise who knows what will happen.

Meanwhile the wizard spent the last 24 hours hiding in the spare rigging or throwing up from seasickness, or both. It’s pretty entertaining as a DM.

The nice, velvety cloak I’ve had for years in my tickle trunk belongs to Jon Metzger. I met Jon when I met Nathan and Devin, years ago. When I moved into Vancouver, I didn’t know anybody, so I went to The Comicshop and put a little ‘want ad’ on the bulletin board. It read something to the effect of “I want to play Call of Cthulhu.” Likely it was slightly more clever than that boring sentence. Regardless, I didn’t really care to play CoC, I just wanted to meet people who played CoC because I knew we’d get along. We actually ended up playing my one and only game of Vampire. Or…wait…actually I think Jon did run a game of CoC…using the Dreamlands. I digress.

Jon came over tonight to pick up his cloak. His friend Iman is going to somebody’s Hallowe’en wedding so he wanted to borrow it. I haven’t seen Jon for a long while. I see his dad more often than I see Jon, just because his dad seems to be wandering around downtown whenever I go. I used to use him as a model for my illo photos a lot. He makes an excellent, if thin, viking. His painted likeness made it into Dungeon magazine when they converted to 3rd edition, and is on the cover of The Necronomicon Files. The last time I saw him he had long hair, and gave me a CD of his music. It’s still around somewhere (the CD, not his hair) but I can’t remember the name of it. We talked about the VIFF (Jon always sits in the front row) and being ‘artists’ with day jobs. He finally got internet access. I explained how my phone to email ratio is about 1:300. It was a pleasant chat.

On Tuesday Marlo and I (well, mostly Marlo as I was drawing) made more ginger snaps. Things went slightly awry when Marlo put in 3 times as much molasses. Oh, Marlo. We tried to compensate with my elite math skills, but we only had so much flour and we ended up burning a bunch of the batch (or, if you prefer, a batch of the bunch) anyway. But burnt snaps are better than no snaps at all. I just had to dig out my scraping knife.

We also watched 3 of the 4 remaining season 2 Enterprise episodes and an episode of Home Movies.

Tonight I finally finished my Black Company art. While I worked, Stewie printed up a bunch of ‘Where the Great Old Ones Are’ Thickets shirts, and we watched Payback with Melg Ibson. They smashed his toes with a balpeen hammer and then he tore a hole through the back seat of a limo and squirmed through it from the trunk. Silly. Tomorrow I take a break from drawing for D&D for playing D&D (quel ironie!) and on Saturday it’s Chris & Angie’s Hallowe’en party. Since our rock show this Friday got cancelled, we must take the greyhound out to Chilliwack again, unless Stewie decides to rent a car. Toot toot!

Oh a tugboat whistle goes toot toot toot!
It toots high
And it toots low
But the toot toot toot don’t mean a hoot
It’s the chuga chuga chug that makes it go

That was from a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon.
You’ll remember this one from the episode where Bugs takes that little circus penguin that cries ice cubes to the north pole:

Bugs Bunny he came to Martinique
When he arrived he was pretty weak
His knees look like they would buckle in
His tribulations caused by a penguin
Now he’s built a boat on which they both could leave
He hope that fickle fate have nothing up her sleeve
If he can accomplish this daring thing
A miracle to Martinique Bugs did bring

I didn’t pay my phone bills (I was going to, I swear, I just wasn’t ready) so Sprint disconnected my phone. Naturally I got the notice in the mail too late to do anything about it. But I paid with a credit card so it will be back up in twenty four to forty eight. Boy do I feel dumb. I think I look dumb too. But I don’t sound dumb, because if I sounded dumb I’d only say “nhhhh nhhhh.”

I was planning on seeing The Eagles of Death Metal, Helmet, and Metric this month. I also toyed with seeing Goatsblood and some other band I forgot the name of. I didn’t see any of them. I haven’t seen any of those bands before and it’s a shame that I missed them, but I don’t feel too broken up about it. There are things I like about seeing live music (the music, spending time with friends) and there are things I don’t (crowds, bars). But missing them was pretty unavoidable due to work. I’m almost finished the art for Black Company, which technically was due on the 12th. If I’m diligent I’ll get the last 2 pieces done today. It wasn’t a very dynamic weekend for the same reasons, but one of the good things about Marlo is that she doesn’t mind hanging out while I work. She can sit on the couch while I’m sitting at the drawing table, and we can both enjoy watching Enterprise – to her it’s all new, to me it’s just entertaining background noise that keeps me entertained while I draw. It’s a pain, sometimes, that we can’t watch the movies on our list because I can’t actually pay much attention to what’s on the TV while I draw. But we did watch The Others on Friday night after I finished my work for the night. It was pretty good. Very suspenseful, my favourite kind of horror.

Anyhoo, some time ago I wrote up a list of all the best Enterprise episodes (and the ones she needs to watch because they’re part of a major arc) for Marlo but since she’s become enamoured with the Vulcans and Dr Phlox (and rightly so) I’ve had to add a few things to that list. Here’s what’s left of the ‘must see’s before we can move on to season three:

The Communicator – Reed and Archer retrieve a communicator left behind on an alien planet, but are captured in the process. I like this one because it deals with culture contamination.

Judgment: Archer stands accused before a Klingon tribunal of conspiring against the Empire, and faces a lifetime sentence on Rura Penthe.

The Breach: Enterprise is asked to evacuate a group of Denobulan geologists from a world that has been taken over by a militant faction. Really good drama from John Billingsly, aka Dr. Phlox.

Bounty: A Tellarite bounty hunter captures Archer intending to turn him over to the Klingons for a substantial reward. Tellarites were seen in the original series, but to my knowledge not in TNG, DS9 or Voyager.

We’ll probably have to watch most of Season 3, even though it’s annoying.

So far season 4 has been good. And I’m really looking forward to next weekend’s because a) it showcases backstory from the eugenics war, (Khaaaaan!) b) it shows the orions, and c) Brent Spiner plays the criminal Dr Arik Soong an ancestor of Dr Noonian Soong (Data’s creator).

Now back to work for me. Byeeeeeee!

I really should be drawing instead of writing this – but yeah.

There’s this guy at work, whose name is Pete, who seems like an okay guy. Most of the people who work there are…I’m sure they’re nice people, but they’re just not my style. I kind of feel guilty about how much I keep to myself there. Various people ask me questions – about my hair, my other job, what kind of music I listen to, etc. I keep my answers succinct. Yes and no whenever possible. I have a bad work attitude, and this is it: leave me alone, I don’t like being here. Anyway – Pete. He and Jamie are friends (Jamie got me the job there, he’s an old friend from Duthie’s) so I figured I’d test him out. So we pass one another in the rows of books occasionally and I’ll drop a question on him out of the blue. For example, has he seen the Big Lebowski, does he listen to Tenacious D, and that sort of thing. So far his answers have been excellent. That’s encouraging, but he must think I’m a freak. But he did tell me yesterday morning about how Hallowe’en was banned at a school in…Puyallup I think, because they’re worried it might offend (get this) wiccans.

That’s the exchange rate right now. I remember when it used to be about 1.6

In all my time flying in airplanes, I don’t remember ever seeing a commercial pilot who wasn’t white, and over 40. I wonder if they have to stay clean-shaven, too, or if they’re allowed to grow beards. You know you’re in for a world of heartache if you’re lifelong dream is to be a 747 pilot and you’re swarthy.

On Tuesday night Marlo and I made vegan ginger snaps. They’re not as sweet as I’m used to, but they’re still quite tasty. Strangely the organic maple syrup was slightly cheaper than the regular kind. I guess it doesn’t make that much difference when you come straight from an old tree.

So everyone knows that Mr. Wendy, the “unofficial” spokesperson for Wendy’s, gets paid by Wendy’s, so he is in fact an official spokesperson. Right? Okay good.

Let me recap my weekend for myself:

Friday night: I don’t know what happened except that I slept over at Marlo’s (EDIT: Marlo dyed my hair blue and we watched Home Movies and Enterprise).

Saturday: took the Greyhound (too early) to Chilliwack;

Geoff Edwards picked us up and took us to his recording studio in his lovely home. The recording went well except I mispronounced ‘Miramichi” so the whole thing has to be redone (I’m redoing it tomorrow).

Met with Chris & Angie at Bibles for Missions, where I bumped into my old boss, Dave Short (the Book Man). Missed band practice, unfortunately. Our band has lousy communication so I didn’t know if it was happening until Friday, and I didn’t know when exactly it was happening until it just about started.

We went to Value Village. Between the two thrift stores I got a handsome new pair of pants ($4) and a nice silky shirt ($6).

Lunch at the Airport Cafe was goooood – they had the hashbrowns I like. And we had scrumptious pie.

Chris took photos of Marlo and I for a future painting. We got to see all the paintings in progress. Fabtabulous stuff as always.

Sushi for dinner at a joint downtown that was pretty good. There are only a few things on a sushi menu that I am inclined to eat, now that I am going to stay away from yam tempura for a while.

Watched some self defense videos, Mr Show and a David Cross tour documentary. Cross is funny, but he sure was an asshole to some people. Sea Biscuit (the chihuahua) slept in Marlo’s crotch. I was jealous.

Sunday: breakfast and some Star Wars trivial pursuit. I goofed on an easy question at the beginning, opening up the board to Chris. The thing about SWTP is that the turns go on forever, because we’re all experts on Wars trivia, it’s hard not to get a question right. Except the ones about X-Wing pilot actor names.

Lunch at Husky. Worst experience I’ve had at the Husky House – I ordered nachos. The nachos were the kind you get in bulk at the Save-On-Foods and the cheese was processed. No guacamole either.

Stopped at Save-On to take advantage of the bulk bins. There is nowhere within walking distance of my place that has bulk food. Don’t tell anyone, but I mixed in the more expensive chocolate covered coffee beans and macadamia nuts with ‘bridge mix.’ Then we stopped in at The Book Man. I was hoping to get Marlo a discount on the kung fu book she bought but the person at the till was a stranger to me.

Chris drove the four of us and Sea Biscout out to Krispy Kreme where I bought 2 donuts for myself, 1 for Stewie, and 1 for Marlo. One donut I got for free and shared. Then Marlo got dropped off at home and so did I.

A joyous venture all round and one that we shall make a habit of. Look out, Chilliwack, Torlo’s back in town.