GLOBADOM

I’ve decided to give up numbering these entries. I catalogue everything by number and/or alphabet in my work and home life and it is becoming a kind of sickness. I think I must try to create a little chink in this armor of obsessive-compulsiveness and this is the perfect place to start.

Happy 2005 to you, my loyal readers! Yet, another opportunity to start afresh and attempt to make at least one change, so that in some way 2005 will be distinguishable from 2004. Now that I have given up numbering these entries, I feel I have done my bit and can relax for the remainder of the year.

I recently watched a documentary called “Our Favorite Toys.” In this documentary, I discovered that Twister and Nerf were both invented by the same man. When asked the question, “What makes a great toy?” this inventor gave, what I believe to be, a rather sublime insight into human nature in his answer. He said, “A good toy is one which breaks a rule.” He explained that Twister broke a social/moral rule in that it allowed people who perhaps did not know each other very well to get in very close proximity to one another. Whereas, Nerf allowed children to play with a ball in the house – something mom and dad had previously told them not to do, but could no longer say as the new, softer ball was not endangering their property. I think this inventor understood the innate desire for human beings to rebel against any authoritarian figure or social construct. And, the resulting sublime feeling that ensues when the rebellion is successful and forever changes the way things are done. I often feel hemmed in or constricted by the things I should do, must do, and need to do. And, like most people, the things I want to do, would like to do, or desire to do, seem out of reach or are frowned upon. Of course, restrictions are necessary, but all too frequently I feel they create a strangle-hold on the individuality and human nature that makes each of us so interesting.

New Year’s Eve has been the source of one ridiculous event or situation ever since I can remember celebrating outside of the relative safety of my parents’ home. In previous years, I have been involved in fender benders, altercations with members of the opposite sex and wardrobe malfunctions (thank you, Janet) all on New Year’s Eve. Many of the stories connected with this annual “celebration” are better left out of print. However, I still wonder why every New Year’s Eve is such a disaster. I sometimes think it is because I don’t drink as much as everyone else and that if I did I might at least be left with very little memory of the evening’s events the next morning. I also tell my husband that we have always had a lousy time because we have never planned far enough ahead and gotten tickets to a truly, wonderfully, hideously over-priced event. Yet, I think the real reason for this annual disaster of an occasion is that I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to be celebrating. Should I be thinking: Thank the little cherubs in heaven, that 2004 is finally over? OR Yippee, another year awaits and I’ll have 365 more days to use more or less unwisely? I guess I just don’t get it. And, I can’t decide whether the evening itself or my current attitude is more ridiculous. Oh well, I’ll let you know next year.

Here’s a list of some of the best and worst, or at least most memorable, experiences I have had this year, in no particular order:

-I won a well-contested sprint for second place, against two other riders in a breakaway (the first place rider was well up the road). That was in a Tuesday Night bike race, and it was my last Cat 5 race

-I did the Gary Lund (aka Cardinal Law, aka Sooke Classic) road race on Vancouver Island, an out-and-back course over punishing terrain. I finished eight minutes down. It was awesome.

-I then did the criterium the next day in downtown Victoria. I lasted about 10 minutes before I got dropped, and, in terminal danger of getting overtaken, I gave up at the 15 minute mark. It was dreadful.

-I ate a Beaver Tail (that’s a pastry, not an animal) in Ottawa

-I saw House of Flying Daggers (very good), Elf (surprisingly watchable), the first part of A Shark’s Tale (so bad that I stopped watching it, and this on a flight where I was so receptive to watching movies that the follow-up feature, Elf, seemed pretty good), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (I liked it more than most critics, but it was only so-so), Castle in the Sky (you can’t go wrong with Miyazaki), and House, a new TV show (worth watching, if only to see Hugh Laurie as a grumpy American).

-I read the first 2/3rds of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (good, good, will get the other from the library shortly), a lot of magazines at the newsstand (Car and Driver still seems to be the best general-interest auto rag, Bicycling has ridiculous gear reviews, but has had some surprisingly good feature articles, and I keep reading Mountain Bike Action for some reason), some literary fiction which obviously didn’t make much of an impression on me, the first part of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Choke (ugh), and The Escape Artist, which is just the best, most literary memoir of amateur competitive cycling that will likely ever exist. I also read McCloud’s Understanding Comics, but that got its own post, and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which was pretty good.

-I played Katamari Damacy, a game which, after three months, still holds The Lovely One in its fiendish grasp. It’s ridiculously fun, and doubly so for compulsive personality types! I still play Advance Wars 2 pretty often, and I must again mention WEBoggle, where I play occasionally as “wiredcola.com”, and The Lovely One plays as the brain-meltingly skilful “beck.”

-Sites I surf too often? Well, besides the stuff in my teeny tiny blogroll, there’s Penny Arcade, Colby Cosh, Lileks’ daily Bleat, Mickey Kaus (and the rest of Slate, too), and some other sites which I have forgotten, so they obviously weren’t that memorable (and I’m not admitting to reading Fark).

-the best things I ate this year? Timbits are always good. The Lovely One made some really nice cookies. My own crab apple jelly was and is sublime. Tuna Tataki. Numerous trips to Guu, maybe my favourite restaurant right now. Afternoon Tea at Chateau Laurier, with Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry as an aperitif. The stunningly good Johnnycakes at The Reef (locations in Vancouver and Victoria). Pastries at Notte’s Bon Ton on W. Broadway, and that one really wet day when I was cold and soaked and undernourished, a 2-piece order of Church’s Chicken tasted like the best meal I have ever eaten.

-I posted a monster time in the Pacific Populaire. So fast, I still can’t explain it except through the awesome power of wheelsucking

-having two friends bounce off my rear wheel and fall down? That was terrible.

-riding in the velodrome again was great. As was chatting briefly with Lori-Ann Meunzer at the velodrome.

-I used a Nikon Coolpix 2500, acquired cheaply from Supafamous Eric. Combined with Picasa, we rule the photographic universe. Actually, the Coolpix fits in a very important niche: it’s not the best, but it was good enough and it was cheap enough. Never let anyone tell you that the first quality can trump the other two qualities.

-I rode the beat-up Bianchi commuter, an outmoded Pinarello, an underused Kona mountain bike, the BMX LX, and the fixie. Good bikes all. But I also got to test-ride a Cannondale Six13 Record, and if you have the opportunity to experience this wonderful machine, I highly recommend it. It is so choice.

That’s all for now.

Much more than two weeks late, I’ve read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. It’s a virtuoso work.

I am not especially interested in comics. I (shamefully) collected a year or two of early “Punisher War Jounals” in high school, but I got over that. I also devoured every Asterix or Tintin comic book in every library I could find, but I think lots of kids did that. Okay, and I do like borrowing the occasional graphic novel when I’m wandering through the library. But that’s it. I could quit any time. Really.

Excuses aside, I’m not a studied reader of comics, but McCloud’s book is an excellent introduction to the medium (not, as he makes clear, the content) and the trick that makes me declare it virtuoso is that he not only writes his monograph as a comic book, but his theories are clearly best explicated that way. The comic is the explanation and the example, and this happens on every page. The book feels like it would have been twice as long and half as good as an essay.

Technically, the work is thoughtful. It’s an intellectual delight. I can’t say enough good things about it. I want to go back and read it again right now. Maybe I will.

After what must be my longest cycling hiatus in years, I got back on my bike for a good long ride on Thursday. I put in a comfy two hours, and it felt good. Now I have to start mounting all those goofy parts I bought at the Boxing Day sale.

It feels good to be strong. I spent so much of my life in a weaker, flabbier state than these last few years, and I’m not going back. The joy of being able to push my body hard on the bicycle is something that can’t be related easily (yes it can: it’s endorphins).

Ahem. So I’m saying I like riding my bicycle.

Christmas chocolate’s all gone, so it’s time to think new year’s resolutions, which I take fairly seriously. First resolution: lose 10 pounds, minimum, to hit my racing weight. I have until the serious races start, which is Easter for me. No problem: Lent is always a good training period. Wait, there’s still some Bailey’s in the fridge. But right after that is gone….

The Lovely One and I spent the stroke of the new year in a movie house, watching the conclusion of House of Flying Daggers.

Let’s just admit it right now: the Chinese are gonna win. There’s a billion of them, they’re starting to get rich, and their movies really don’t suck. It’s time to learn Mandarin.

Ahem. This film is wild. I’m not going to make you wait for my conclusion, or tease it out of the review. I would recommend the film, even if I consider it…I’m not sure what I consider it, except that I didn’t feel perfection, and discussing whether or not that was a flaw in the film or the reviewer would require spoiling the heck out of it.

So instead I’ll talk about a few peripheral issues without really discussing the film. That should be fun.

The music has the typical spare, Chinese style, and is all the more impressive for it. The wire-fu action? Absurd and jaw-dropping, just the way I like it. The plot? I don’t want to spoil it. Indeed, I knew almost nothing about this film before I got into the theatre except that it starred Ziyi Zhang, it was a Chinese costume drama, and I expected something in the way of daggers that flew, and I think that added to my enjoyment.

I want to muse about some of the plot and theme elements, but I’m not going to. So let me just end with the non-spoiler that the dagger-flights are impressive, but that this film, like “Crouching Tiger,” is about a lot more than tricky combat.

I spent about $150 at Sports Junkies. Highlights: a set of RX100 brakes (nice dual-pivots) for $10. A beautiful Easton handlebar for $14, and a nice seatpost for $17. Complete TT bar for $5, and a non-fancy but sturdy rear mountain bike wheel for $14.

Maybe the fanciest find was a light set for $5, sans charger. Nice light set, though.

Today, I prepared a Boxing Day brunch for my family. The brunch went well, but in the process of making the salad I cut one of my fingers. Later, in the course of a series of pathetic attempts to detach the counter top dishwasher from the sink I injured another part of my hand. So, consequently, this makes it rather difficult to type. You are thus treated to a shorter entry than usual. Merry Xmas.

I get a rather sublime form of enjoyment watching holiday movies and specials. Sometimes, it is difficult to find the time to watch all of them. Therefore, in order to share my enjoyment with you, I list below my favorite quote from each of the shows I enjoy. I hope these bring knowing smiles to your faces or possibly lead you on enjoyable quests to find the film or special each is from:

“A guinea? For me? Hey, what for?” “I’ll give you one guess.” “To keep me mouth shut?”

“Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to.”

“You don’t like coconut?!! Hey, brainless, don’t you know where coconut comes from?”

“Fuuddgge. Only I didn’t say “fudge.” I said the word.”

As for the ridiculous, I think we have to momentarily enter the world of toyland. I love shopping for toys for my niece and nephew and for the assorted offspring of our friends. However, I recently came across a doll that certainly qualifies as ridiculous, if not completely disturbing on multiple levels. She is a whip-carrying, black bodysuit-clad, busty plastic creature. She is Catwoman Barbie. One can only hope this doll has been as popular as the movie. Or, that its manufacturers realize that its true niche will be in the bargain bin of stores with multiple “Xs” in their names.

This list is somewhat random, and very heavily electronics-skewed, except for one item: Sports Junkies Port Moody Boxing Day sale, which is the only sale I expect to attend. I’m planning to be there at 0800, and if you snake the road shifters from me, I’ll stick a bike pump in yer spokes!

Ahem. Come drop by if you’re in the area. It’s mostly mountain bike oriented, but the deals are hot and heavy.

All prices rounded to the nearest dollar. I’ll not be party to pretending there’s a difference between $9.98 and $10.

The best deal so far is already rolling: Future shop has a sale on refurbed Canon A75 cameras. $229 in a web-only deal, 32 remaing as I post. That’s a great camera at a great price. The A85 is on sale too.

Staples has a wireless B (not G) router for $19, and a Logitech cordless mouse for $10.

Superstore appears to have a variety of video game deals: two PS2 memory cards for $35, and games for the major consoles starting at $10.

London Drugs is advertising a Digital Camera Accessory Kit for $10, which includes the usual cheesy tripod, mini-case, strap, and cleaning cloth, but there’s also what looks like a charger and two AA batteries in the picture. If those are (as I suspect) NiMH bits, that’s about as cheap as you’ll find a charger and batteries. Pick up two to fully equip your Future Shop-purchased camera.

More decisively, LD has an Energizer charger with four AA NiMH for $25, also a deal. $15 for a 4-port USB 2.0 hub, $30 for an SMC wireless-g router.

Finally, London Drugs has a pretty good deal on the Pentax 33 WR. Good macro mode, no manual modes, but hey, it’s washable! No, I’m not joking.

Back to Future Shop: $1000 for a nice-looking Toshiba laptop, $280 for a refurbed Compaq desktop, no monitor, $58 for an MP3-playing car stereo, $20 for a no-name DVD player, $20 for a wireless keyboard and mouse from Benq, who are definitely gunning to become the next brand to graduate from crappiness to credibility. Future Shop definitely seems to be the best retailer for quantity and quality of deals.

Best Buy has a laptop for $900, and only another $50 to add a wireless card. $180 for a compact 4 megapixel Sony camera, but bewarned: no zoom. $20 for the same no-name DVD player as Future Shop, $1000 for a decent-looking Samsung 42″ projection TV. Don’t be scared off by “HD-ready” TVs: you’re pretty much committed to an outboard decoder if you want HD channels from your cable or satellite provider, so there’s no need for the over-the-air HD tuner that these TVs don’t have. $500 for a widescreen TV, but HD?

Wal-Mart has $10 PS2/XBox controllers. Save-On has $15 FRS Radios.

Share & Enjoy.

Merry Christmas. I got the Star Wars Trilogy, some shirts, and a Sports Junkies gift certificate, among other things. If all goes well, I will post a summary of the better local Boxing Day deals today.

Upcoming items I need to post: my WiFi antenna build, detailed instructions on how to make fenders just as cool as my new bike fenders, more Ottawa pictures.

My family. You’ll have to trust me on this, but not one of these people is mugging for the camera.
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