Merry Mexmas!

Wishing you a Merry Xmas from sunny Los Cabos, Mexico!

Can you believe I actually found an image, avaialble for use via a Creative Commons licence, that combined Christmas (since it’s Christmas), Spanish (since I’m in Mexico right now)  and my beloved Flying Spaghetti Monster (since he’s my beloved Flying Spaghetti Monster)?  It’s like a Holiday miracle!

Photo credit: Pitius on Flickr.

Welcome Gabriela Luongo

Word on the street is that Roberto Luongo and his wife Gina have had a baby girl, who they have named Gabriella. So congrats to them.

And thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that we will no longer have to hear the jackasses on the sports radio and TV shows saying: “Will Luongo miss a critical game to be with his wife when she gives birth?” and “Should Luongo miss a critical game to be with his wife when she gives birth?” and “Why didn’t they plan to have their kid in the off season so that it wouldn’t interfere with the playoff run?” and, my personal fav, “This is the most important birth since Jesus.”

Update (5:35 p.m.): Apparently young Gabby weighs 7 lbs, 6 oz.  Which just so happens to be what *I* weighed when I was born.  So, clearly, she is destined for greatest.

Happy Holiday

The Flying Spaghetti Monster wishes you all a Happy Holiday!

My sister’s boyfriend, Jeff, made this for me. Apparently they came up with this idea a year ago and have been giddy with excitement about making it for me ever since. So. Friggin. Cool.

FRUSTRATION!!!!!

So I get home from a lovely camping trip and discover that my internet connection is out. I’ve been internet-less for over a day because Mother Nature apparently didn’t pay her internet bill and there is no internet in the middle of the backcountry. I’m jonesing, jonesing to check my email. I can see that when my internet crapped out on me, I had 13 email messages, because I left my gmail logged in. I call Telus and they try to help over the phone. Some astute questions (i.e., is your modem cord plugged into the phone jack?) lead me to the discovery that the modem cord was knocked out of the wall when Dani was moving her boxes around (as she was here this weekend, picking up her stuff that she was storing here over the summer on her way to her internship). Unfortunately, re-plugging it in and turning the modem off and then on again does not fix the problem. How unplugging a modem can do this is beyond any reasonable comprehension. “We’ll send a technician to check the line,” says the man on the phone. “On September 15th.” “What? The 15th? When is that?? What day is it today? That’s like a whole week? I can’t be without my internet for a week!” I cry. Having been stuck on the Sea to Sky¹ highway for an hour while traffic was stopped for an accident on our way home from our camping/hiking trip had already put me in a sour mood, so I just couldn’t help myself from this outburst. Just the thought of not having the internet for a week makes my blood run cold! I think I feel a seizure coming on. Why don’t you just release a gaggle of hissing wolf spiders and black widows into my place while you are at it??? So pissed off am I that I actually put a cotton swab right through my gums as I was trying to get a piece of cashew out of my lower left gum hole^2,3, causing profuse bleeding but, thank heavens, only minimal pain. And now I’m writing this blog posting in Notepad, with the idea that I will go to a free-wireless coffee shop tomorrow to post it. And, having gotten this off my chest, I can then write a proper posting about my first ever camping trip, which was AWESOME!!!

Written in Notepad at my internet-unabled home on Sat night while waiting for a cab to take me out for dinner. Posted from a coffeshop on Sunday afternoon. Flying Spaghetti Monster bless wireless internets.

¹Or “Sea to Die” highway, as it is also known.
²What do you call the spot where you used to have wisdom teeth, after the extraction?
³Is this too graphic?

Is it wrong for me to love an inanimate object? I’m standing at a bus stop, secure in the knowledge that my bus will be here soon because now I, like everyone else, can call Translink’s automated system and find out when the next bus is coming. I stand here, pecking away at my little keyboard, the smell of pot from the joint the girl next to me is smoking burning strong, and I try to avoid being in the direct line of fire as she hacks up what I can only assume is both of her lungs.

Now I’m sitting on the bus, still pecking away at the tiny keyboard, because you really can’t type that fast on keys that are mere millimetres wide (or at least that’s what it feels like… I’m sure that my phone will soon announce “the fingers you are using to type with are too fat. If you would like to order a dialing wand, please smash the keyboard with your palm.”)

Soon, I will be home and I’ll upload this to my blog (which will then be automatically imported into Facebook, for those of you who read my blog postings there instead of reading my blog…). And the world will be blessed with yet another pithy blog posting from me, all thanks to my shiny new Treo. That, and the fact that I finished the book I was reading on the bus ride to dinner¹, and so was bored enough to write this.

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OK, so apparently I was bored enough to write that yesterday, but not motivated enough to actually upload it! It’s now the next day and I’m at Kalev’s in the middle of watching Night Watch, a Russian horror movie that we saw over a year ago in the theatre that just so happens to have the BEST. SUBTITLES. EVER. But we paused the movie ‘cuz Kalev keeps getting phone calls! You may be interested to know, however, that we are watching Night Watch for a very special reason… As it happens, Day Watch, the first of two sequels, is coming out in theatres this weekend. And as it also happens, there were two contests² that Vancouverites could enter to win passes to see a sneak preview of said sequel. Contests that Kalev and I may have asked our friends ever so nicely to enter in the hopes of increasing our chances of getting our mitts on those tix. And, as it so happens, not only did Kalev and I both win double passes, but so did no fewer than FOUR of our friends!³ And just to add the cherry on top, I also just so happened to be one of the first three winners of the Georgia Strait’s contest to pick up my passes, so I also got a copy of the book “Day Watch.” A book, of course was what I really could have used yesterday when I started writing this posting!

Oh yes, for the record, I’m on yet another bus (and have been since about the middle of the last paragraph). And I have no fewer than 4 books in my bag today: the library book that I brought with me to read on the bus on the way to work this morning, the copy of Day Watch and two books that I picked up as Christmas presents, if you can believe that!⁴

¹Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, in case you were wondering
²One from Videomatica and one from the Georgia Strait. I suppose it is possible there were more, but these were the two of which I was aware.
³I think that this is sufficient evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was using his Noodly Appendage to ensure that I saw this movie.
⁴I don’t think I’ve ever started my Christmas shopping before Dec 19.

A scientific analysis of things that suck vs. things that rock

Dave from Touch You Last has returned from his lengthy, unexplained absence from the blogosphere, bringing with him his latest find: Sucks/Rocks. Now, don’t be confused like I was when I first read that title… I thought it was a site about things that “Suck Rocks.” In fact, determines if something “sucks” OR “rocks.” Dave’s explanation of the process:

“the site will search for all instances of positive phrase relating to your term versus negative phrases relating to your term (‘Peanut Butter Cups are wicked!’ as opposed to ‘I can’t stand me no goddamn Peanut Butter Cups!’) It then takes these positive and negative hits, factors in some complicated maths, and comes back with a ranking from 0 to 10, with 0 being a black hole of sucking, and 10 being something that rocks more than anything that has every rocked before.”

Now, being a scientist, I can’t just go using any tool without first performing an assessment of reliability and validity. First, reliability demands that the tool give a consistent answer. Dave’s analysis indicated that toques rock (with a score of 10) and american beer sucks (with a pathetic 0.3). As you can see from Figure 1, my analysis yields the same results:

Figure 1: Reliability Analysis

Thus, we can conclude that Sucks/Rocks is a reliable tool.

For something to be considered a valid tool, we have to make sure that it is accurate – in this case, that when Sucks/Rocks says that something sucks, it does, in fact, suck; and when it says that something rocks it does, in fact, rock. Since we know that things that suck, suck, and things that rock, rock, I decided to use the word “suck” as something that sucks, and “rock” as something that rocks for my validity assessment. Figure 2 demonstrates that Sucks/Rocks is a valid assessment tool:

Figure 2: Validity Analysis

Now that I have conclusively proven that Sucks/Rocks is a reliable and valid measure of that which sucks and that which rocks, I can use this new breakthrough in scientific analysis to test a few hypotheses. I decided to start out with an example for which we all know the answer, which will further strengthen my case that Sucks/Rocks is an accurate measure of suckiness and rockitude:

Figure 3: Canucks are superior to Leafs

Yup, as we all knew, the Canucks rock while the Leafs suck! I was a bit surprised that the Canucks only scored a 7 (as we all know that they are a perfect 10… I hope that my use of the word “uglification” near the word “Canucks” in my in-depth trade analysis didn’t decrease their score!). I suppose there is bound to be some margin of error.

Another thing we already knew:

Figure 4: Females are better than males

Interestingly, when I tested the phrase “Flying Spaghetti Monster,” I received this:

Figure 5: The Flying Spaghetti Monster works in mysterious ways

I’m pretty sure that this means that either (a) the FSM rocks so hard that he cannot be quantified, or (b) he used his noodly appendages to interfere with the tool, just because he can. I’m currently working on a grant proposal to investigate this line of research.

OK, so now that we know that Sucks/Rocks is an accurate way to make measurements and comparisons (except in cases where the Flying Spaghetti Monster chooses to interfere, which, of course, is true of all measurement tools), I feel confident that we can use it to determine definitively the answer to the age old question: Ninjas vs. Pirates?

Figure 5: The answer to an age old question

Beth Is A Frood Who Really Knows Where Her Umbrella Is

If only that were true. Now that Vancouver is settling nicely into its normal winter weather (7 degrees and raining), it would be prudent to know where one’s umbrella is. I, of course, lost my umbrella. I guess if I want to get really technical about it, it’s not exactly “lost,” since I know exactly where I left it. I left it in the cab that I took home on New Year’s Eve. It’s a shame because that was a nice umbrella – a sturdy one that didn’t turn inside out at the slightest breeze like my umbrellas usually do. Of course, that is because I usually buy the cheapest umbrellas, knowing that I will inevitably lose them anyway. This sturdy umbrella is one that I found on the bus… I instinctly grabbed it off the seat next to me when I was getting off the bus, as it was black and I thought it was mine, but then as soon as I got off the bus I noticed that my own cheap umbrella was sticking out of the top of my bag and the one in my hand was clearly one that someone had accidently left on the bus. So I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset about having lost it, since it wasn’t really *my* umbrella anyway. As the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s noodly appendages giveth, so his noodly appendages taketh away.

Christmas Booty

Being a good Pastafarian, it was important that I got some good Christmas booty (not booty). And good booty I did receive!

First of all, Kalev & I had a wicked good dinner, the ingredients of which were purchased at Urban Fare in Yaletown, where Kalev informed the cashier that it was “our first Christmas together.”^*

Here we are enjoying our wicked good dinner:

Now, onto the booty! As for gifts given, most of the gifts I gave were things that I made^**, although I did purchase a few books, including chicken books for my dad from the American Poultry Association^***, Rob Feenie cookbooks for my mom & sister^****, and the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Kalev. Stuff I made included baked goods^***** and these wicked cool shot glasses:

Evidence that I made these myself include these artsy self- potraits^****** of me with a paintbrush:

I’m also making something for my roommate, but don’t want to mention it here on the off chance that she actually reads my blog. She’s not back until the New Year, so I haven’t made her present yet. But I know exactly what I’m making and it’s going to be super cool!

I got spoiled with a lot of cool gifts. Kalev got me a paper shredder (which I have been dying for!) and books 4, 5 and 6 of Y, the Last Man (which I have been dying to read since he first introduced me to the series). My parents sent me a Chanel lipstick palette ^******* and money for a Magic Bullet^********. My sister got me a watch, which I’ve desperately needed since my apartment ate my old one. And my niece, as usual, got me awesome stuff! She’s quite good at chosing presents, especially considering she is only 2 years old. She got me this T-shirt:

and this cold virus soap dispenser:
She liked this soap dispenser so much that she got one herself too. It’s blue. We like blue.

My roommate hid a whole bunch of stuff in our closet and called me on Christmas to inform me of its presence. Included among the closet booty were this awesome picture frame she made for our Snow Rat picture:

and ball in a cup. A few weeks ago we’d seen this on Family Guy:

I have no idea why we found this so freaking funny, but we couldn’t stop laughing. And so I got ball in a cup. But my ball isn’t attached to a string, so I need to worry if I don’t catch the ball!!

Anyone wanna come over and play ball in a cup with me?

^*While technically true, it was not in the way that the cashier thought. So we enjoyed a good laugh at her expense. We are nice like that.

^**Because it’s so much more personal that way… not because of my abject poverty, why do you ask?

^***You know, the APA.

^****To commemorate our trip to Lumiere.

^*****Given to a few lucky peeps!

^******This is why I shouldn’t be left to my own devices too often. I get bored very easily.

^*******She informed me via sticky note that “A “Dr” should have a little Chanel”

^********The blender, not the other one.

Happy Holiday!

Happy Holiday!

May you be touched by his noodly appendage this holiday season!