I'm going to start this one out with a bad comedian's opening line. It's a little classic I like to call "Didja ever notice?"

Didja ever notice...that...wow, this is sounding completely random now, even in my head. Anyways, didja ever notice that R2-D2 always gets told to remain with the ship AFTER he's already taken the trouble to eject himself and start following the main characters?

It happens in both the prequels and the Holy Trilogy. Anakin is walking away from his ship with Padme in tow, and Artoo can be seen in the background, trooping along obediently.

They're already a fair distance away, when Anakin turns around and tells the little guy to stay with the ship. So Artoo turns his little self around and starts rolling back across the SAND to the ship. No wonder Anakin became Darth Vader. His subtle cruely is staggering.

His son isn't much better. In Empire, Artoo takes the trouble to use his little lifty-elevator thingy in his droid socket on Luke's X-wing and starts moving towards his master. In true Skywalker form, Luke looks back and tells him to stay with the ship!

Then of course Artoo gets dragged around into all manner of locations where his little wheelies aren't really meant to go. Forget the polished corridors of starships and pristine hallways of Cloud City. We're gonna bring our astromech along to go clambering around the SANDS of Tatooine, the many STAIRS of Naboo, the ICE caverns of Hoth, the slimy MUDHOLES of Dagobah, and the UNEVEN foliage-laden ground of Endor's forest moon!

However, he doesn't actually seem to ever have any trouble in these places. I guess in most cases he traveled along routes where the ground was more packed down and flattened, though I can't for the life of me think of a way he could have successfully gotten himself around on the forest moon.

There's only one place I can recall where Artoo was actually stopped dead due to an obstacle he couldn't pass, and that was the door on Cloud City that Luke stepped through on his way to the carbon freezing chamber. Even if the door hadn't closed quickly behind Luke, there's no way Artoo could've gotten over the lower part of the frame that cam almost a foot off the ground.

The prequels did give him some more tricks to hide up his metaphorical sleeves though. There's two places where I remember Artoo deploying some kind of crazy apparatus to assist in moving around wierd places, both in Attack.

On Naboo, he used his third leg in a truly bizarre manner to move up some steps. And on Geonosis he utilized the amazing one-time-only rocket boosters. I guess that really was the only way to get around that crazy-ass droid factory with it's conveyor belts aplenty.

Where'd these fancy prequel abilities go over time? The Wookieepedia article on Artoo has summed up some interesting theories...

However, while I'm complaining here, it can be noted that Artoo never complains. He "mostly" just does what he's told, maintains his sense of humour, keeps an eye on those troublesome Skywalkers and Solos, logs away every little bit of information he can get his hands on, and remains secretive and mysterious, even to his jittery buddy C-3PO.

I salute you, Artoo. For all you do, this blog's for you....Artoo...doodeedoo.

Labels: muse, rant

Hear this, citizens of the world, people who I do not know, and have never met before.

Dudes, do not call me bro. I'm not your sibling. I'm not your brother in arms. Don't call me pal or buddy, I'm neither. I don't think you're cool. In fact, I think you might be a douchebag. You might just be a bag of douche. Your collar is turned up and the brim of your hat isn't broken in. For all I know, you kick baby unicorns. You might kick mythical creatures in their faces while they're still infants. Who knows? I sure don't!

Dudettes, don't call me hon. I'm not your honeybunch. I'm not your cuddly snugglebum. Don't call me sweetie because I'm not your sweetheart. I don't think you're cute. In fact, I'm starting to think you're a hobag. You might just be a bag of ho. Your shirt is almost non-existant and your ass-crack shows. You might kick mythical creatures in their faces while they're still infants. Maybe not, but who can say? Not me!

That is all.

Labels: rant

I generally pride myself on being sure of foot, not only on even ground, but also on unusual turf that undulates in unsymmetrical ways. Unfortunately the current tilt of this planet has resulted in environmental conditions that have slowly but surely forged the local landscape into a veritable labyrinth of frozen crags and gullies, putting both my inner ear and my penny loafer purchase to the test.

I don't actually wear penny loafers. I only adore half-assed attempts at alliteration, at the expense of realistic portrayals. Anyways...

The other day my company-condoned clodhoppers (hehehe) lost their tentative grip on Earth's crust due to slippery conditions on the back road, and I plummeted to the deck like Red Leader's Incom T-65 X-wing starfighter into the surface of the first Death Star. I survived the impact though. I bounced back from that without a mark on me. I'm like Bruce Willis from Unbreakable.

The TTC is a mess, of course. Streetcars are messed up because of random weather-related nonsense. Like power losses that line up twenty streetcars to block up regular traffic and inconvenience me oh so horribly. They ran a shuttle bus instead. The dude didn't have a sign on his bus saying where it was going, pulled into the wrong spot, and proceeded to get angry when people asked where his bus was going. Serious.

Car crashes too. It's interesting how a simple dented car or two on the tracks can cripple the system.

I had to get off the thing and walk the rest of the way home, a task that took a half hour extra, and, interestingly enough, the streetcars still hadn't resumed to pass me and interrupt my trudge with a flash of irritation.

It's cool though, I can still get around-ish. I can still get to places. Locations, if you will. I got to Indigo, and I got the Promise of the Witch-King in hardcover for eight bucks. That's because it was on sale, and I also had iRewards. I got to BMV books and got some Star Wars comics, the old Marvel ones. Yes. I also got to the World's Biggest Bookstore and got the Lando Calrissian Adventures. You know why I did that last one?

Because Lando Calrissian is the fucking DUDE.

Labels: live, rant

I was going to let it go with that last cop-out posting for the day, but I just had to come back for more. I re-discovered a soul-shattering activity today. Cleaning! Fuck, I hate cleaning. Cleaning needs to DIAF, if you catch my drift (that's "die in a fire" if that drift passed you by).

Cleaning sucks mooseballs. For serious. Today my girlfriend suggested that cleaning my apartment would be a good idea. I thought this was a silly proposition indeed, as I was still basking in my post-birthday state of lethargy. Yes, it was my birthday yesterday. I am now an astronomical twenty and four years old. Oh well. At least twenty-four is better than a googolplex.

Anyways, my apartment did need a good clean, as I'd let it drift into a state approaching a bio-hazard. She insisted on cleaning the washroom, and in the end, I let her do that. I know, I know, the whole "Matt, how could you let your girlfriend clean your washroom?!" bit, but she insisted I tell you! It's like she thought I would do an unsatisfactory job or something. I can't help it if I'm easily distracted by gleaming objects. Not that anything was exactly gleaming in that washroom, but that's beside the point.

So while she did that, I dusted and tidied the rest of the joint. Dust is so stupid. I mean, what is dust? It's little particles of random stuff coming off of other stuff or something. We have too much stuff these days. I bet cavemen didn't have to worry about dust.

After all that nonsense was over, the place looked pretty sweet, and it still does (hopefully I can keep it that way for a while). And just to illustrate that I'm not a total jerk, I did indeed go with her to her house to help her do her weekly chores and clean up over there. I can now say with truth in my voice that I've vacuumed carpets at a sorority house.

How you take that last statement will say a lot about your mental state, so be wary of the fact that you may be as warped as I am.

Labels: live, rant

I hate Dumbass West Station (or Dundas West Station, as it's more commonly known). It is one of the most annoying stops on the entire subway line here in Toronto.

The number of fleshwads crowding in and around there during the day is roughly a googolplex. That's a number so big that you can't even write it down in decimal notation because there's not enough matter in the universe to write it on. Wikipedia taught me that.

What should be a half-hour trip can be elongated to almost an hour because of the sheer number of walkers and talkers that are trying to cram their oily hides into the subway over at Yonge and St. George, and then take it to west to Dumbass West, where they all get off to travel towards one of the poles.


There are two streetcar pickups at Dumbass West, which constitute what I like to call the Loop of Doom. One car goes south on Roncesvalles, then east on King. The other car goes south on Roncesvalles, then east on Dundas.

Quite often, while I wait for my precious King car to slippity slide it's way into Dumbass West, I shall witness not one, or two, not negative thirty, but yes as much as positive six Dundas streetcars roll in and out of their confounded docks, dropping off and picking up infinitesimal amounts of human cargo. That is to say, the two or three random nomads who take that line.

Meanwhile, I'm standing with the googolplex over on the King side of things.



Apparently it doesn't occur to them to divert one or two of those cars to start filtering off the throng of commuters standing out in the frigid night. Or (mod forbid) send a new empty car from the Roncesvalles yard at the south end to help out. Although, if that were to occur, I'm sure fares would go up another ten cents to compensate.

Finally, enter the operator who pulls his much-awaited electric sardine can all the way up to where myself and the googolplex are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in order pump more bodies into the fray, rather than kick 'em out a little way back in the vast wasteland of nothingness due east.

Myself and the googolplex then board the evil hell trolley and proceed to get really friendly. As in one foot's inside a purse, the other's got a dog sitting on it, and some lady's been forced to set up camp in my armpit. By the time I finally get to my stop, I'm holding a bag of fresh produce and wearing someone else's underwear.

And yes, that map is kind of backwards. Just pretend that south is up. I wasn't really paying attention.

Labels: live, rant

Today a big bloody blot splattered on the otherwise pristine document of my day. It took the form of a small woman whose shrill vocalizations nearly took down my deflector shields (which are quite sturdy indeed).

Imagine, if you will, a busy coffee shop, where gratuitous amounts of un-caffeinated human meat units seek to end their current caffeine-deficient states and go about their jittery stimulant-assisted lives. It's loud. It's hectic. And I am making drinks at ye olde bar, a furious flurry of flailing limbs marking cups, pumping syrups, pulling shots, and of course, steaming and pouring bovine extract.

Into my ears floats the horrid sound of a customer trying to do something other than stand damn silently and wait for their drink before leaving my sphere of awareness.

Old Lady: "On the quad...!"

Me: "..."

Old Lady: "Oh, on the quad expresso!"

Me: "...what?"

Old Lady: "On the quad expresso, can I have it extra foamy? There's foam on expresso right?"

As I pondered her poor grammar, incorrect pronunciation and odd request, it occurred to me that I had no quad espresso in my drink queue. So I grabbed a short cup and quickly tapped the double shot button twice to pull her some shots and get her out of my face. As I did this, I explained to her:

Me: "Espresso has a crema on it, but I don't control the amount or consistency of it with this machine."

Old Lady: "I can't have it extra foamy?"

Till: "TALL LATTE!"

Me: "Tall latte."

Old Lady: "What?"

Me: "Look, would you like me to put some milk foam on top of it to make it more foamy?"

Old Lady: "Oh, I'd like that very much!"

Me: "Okay, no problem."

At this point, the shots have finished, so I take the cup down from the machine and start to scoop some foam into the cup.

Old Lady: "Is it decaf?"

Me: "...was it supposed to be?"

Old Lady: "Yes, I'd like it decaf please."

My eye started twitching at this point. I abruptly dumped the shots into the tray on the machine.

Old Lady: "Ohhhh...."

Me: "Don't worry about it, decaf coming up."

Till: "GRANDE CARAMEL MACCHIATO!"

Me: "Grande Caramel Macchiato..."

Old Lady: "What? I don't want caramel."

Me: "What? No, that's something else."

Old Lady: "Oh."

The decaf shots finished at this point, and I grabbed the cup off the machine again, getting ready to put some foam on it.

Old Lady: "Oh, it's a paper cup?"

Me: "What?"

Old Lady: "Do I have to have a paper cup?"

Till: "DOPPIO ESPRESSO!"

Me: "Doppio espresso..."

Old Lady: "No, I want a quad expresso."

Me: "No, that was something else! Look, do you want a for-here cup?"

Old Lady: "Oh yes, I'd like that very much!"

At this juncture I started wishing that I could slap customers in the face without fear of consequence. I silently left the bar to go grab a for-here short cup (which is like a little tea cup) from the shelf around the corner. Upon my return to the bar:

Old Lady: "Oh, is that the only cup you have?"

Me: "What? Why?"

Old Lady: "You don't have any mugs?"

At this point I did something that I've never really done before while at work. I openly glared at a customer. I stormed off to get a for-here grande cup (which is a mug) from around the corner, then came back to the bar in silence and poured the four cursed decaf shots into it from the paper cup.

Old Lady: "Oh, thank you!"

Till: "SHORT CINNAMON DOLCE LATTE!"

Old Lady: "Wow! It sure is loud in here!"

Me: "Short Cinnamon Dolce Latte..."

Old Lady: "I bet you like to go home after work and enjoy the silence!"

This was where I pulled out the deadpan gaze. I then started to put a scoop of 2% foam on the top of her quad espresso.

Old Lady: "Oh, can I have the foam in a separate cup?"

Literally seconds away from leaping over the counter and throttling an old lady, I think I did a pretty good job of diverting that negative energy to simple teeth grinding, as I scooped a bit of foam into a for here short cup and sent her on her way. I think I might have let out an ear-splitting howl of discontent should she have then asked for the foam in a for-here cup. Luckily, what little sanity I had left was spared as she wandered off, apparently pleased.

All because she wanted a for-here quad espresso macchiato in a grande mug.

Labels: live, rant, work

I think it's high time for some wrath. Seems like so many fucking things grind my gears these days, and like the masses before me, I feel that I must unload all of my thoughts on that bullhonkey onto the interwebs.

Seems like a better alternative than overtaxing the delicate inner systems of the ears belonging to the innocents I actually happen to like in real life. People like funny, not angry.

I guess nobody will like this.

I'm going to say fuck a few more times, just for fuck's sake. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.

Labels: live, rant