they write books about this sort of thing
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Yes I know I haven't blogged in forever, and for that you have my sincere apologies.
My iPod headphones broke today :( But thankfully I purchased a pair from eBay which should be arriving presently.
This'll be a short post since I've got to get to bed soon, but I saw this picture on the Globe and Mail website, and figured I just HAD to share it.
The picture credit is AP I believe.
I had another freaky iPod moment. I have 2 tracks by Lukas Rossi (Fix You, and Livin' on a Prayer). I usually always have my iPod on shuffle all tracks (800 or so), and this morning it played Fix You followed directly by Livin' on a Prayer!
Freaky!
author: m@ » comments:
matt's adventures in dentistry, part the first
Monday, September 18, 2006
So today was the big day, the examination to determine the root (pun intended) cause of my recent jawbone pain. Yay for missing the first half of my work day though!
So 10:00 sees me arriving at the office and sitting down to fill out 3 pages of questions. The receptionist asks me if I want anything to drink. My first response is to ask for coffee, but my brain quickly overrides my mouth when it realizes that some guys face is going to be quite near to my mouth, and I ask for water. Receptionist graciously delivers a bottle of water, which goes unopened on the table beside me as I fill out said forms. While filling out said forms, I happen to watch through the glass doors to the dentist side, and notice the cute assistants. Frowning to myself that one of them is going to be exposed to my mouth, I turn my attention back to the clipboard on my lap and finish answering the questions (Do you have a venereal disease, do you have HIV, do you have AIDs, etc). Said forms are handed in, and return to my seat to wait.
A few minutes later, the cutest of the dental assistants walks out and introduces herself, and another girl who will 'be helping'. I wonder aloud if I should be worried that it'll take two assistants to Xray me, which draws a chuckle. I'm walked back to the big stand-up head Xrayer. I'm told to step into it and bite onto the little plastic-bag covered piece of plastic. Once I'm in there, the cute assistant starts telling the other one what she needs to do, and I realise the other one is in training or something. So, awkwardness ensues while I'm standing in the machine and she moves it around to get it properly set up, while the cute one is right in there pointing at my face and telling her how to correctly position the machine. Shortly thereafter (or abouts) my head is blasted with X-rays for 15 seconds, after which I'm allowed to step out, and shown into an exam room.
Taking a seat on the chair (I'd like one of those for my living room, they're damn comfortable, and recline-y!). The cute assistant swings a computer monitor around the chair infront of me, and shows me my x-ray on it. Now, prior to coming into the office I thought the pain might have been caused by 1 of 2 things. A) my wisdom teeth pushing on the teeth in my lower jaw thereby causing pain, or 2) a cavity. One glace at my x-ray revealed the cause. A nice big black mark on the tooth in pain. I remember from school (I think?) about how cavities show up as black marks on x-rays.
The dentist then comes in and we make a bit of small talk about the shitty weather. He then asks me what's wrong, and I tell him that it looks like I have a pretty big cavity there. So he goes into my mouth with that pick and starts picking around. Turns out that a filling I got some years ago was applied poorly, and ended resting up against the tooth next to the one filled in. This prevented me from being able to floss between them, or brush between there adequately. This allowed a cavity to form and fester. Now granted, I probably should have gone in earlier, but that's neither here nor there.
So bottom line is, that at least I need a root canal done, with possibly a cap. I may also need some sort of surgury called 'flap surgery'. Which, to my understanding involves cutting into the gum from the side, going in between the twin roots of a molar, and cleaning out an infected area. Now that sounds like fun.
The good news is that he didn't say anything about removing my wisdom teeth, except that one might have a cavity... Well, stupid me decreased my dental coverage from 80% to 50% this July, during the annual period where I can change my benefits. So I'm going to get the root canal done ASAP (October 10th actually, $850), and the rest can wait until next year, after I jack my dental coverage up to 90%.
I had asked if I could be provided a copy of my x-ray, but was denied as they told me it was a proprietary file format. I was hoping to have it for this post.
I was going to address this news story in this post, but I think it's long enough and shall save it for another day.
author: m@ » comments:
wellington saturdays
Sunday, September 17, 2006
So last night was The Weakerthans concert. My friend and I got there just after 8, when the first band was playing. It was some jazz trio made up of 3 old men. Thus, we left the venue and went to a nearby pub for a beer. Overhearing another goup of people on a cell phone, we heard that The Weakerthans were to take the stage.
They played a great mix of their older songs, from Fallow, Left &Leaving, and Reconstruction Site, as well as 3 or 4 new songs. The new songs were okay, but I was stoked that they played songs even from as far back as Fallow. After they played the first song of the night from Fallow, John remarked on how they didn't play it very well, so he gave some guy in the audience $20. He did it again later, after playing another and claiming he forgot some words. I took several pictures, but you know how tough it is to get a good picture in a dark venue with no tripod, or nothing to put the camera down on. If you want to see them they're in my Flickr account, so just click over there on the right. They played a great mix, and a lot of songs. There were 2 encores, and had they not turned the house lights up, there would have been many more.
I also took some videos, since I knew the pictures would suck. The first video is a portion of the song Plea from a Cat Named Virtue and can be seen here. The second one is the first encore, John came back to do a solo version of One Great City. You can hear everyone singing along to the chours lyrics "I hate Winnipeg". That video is right here. Rather than embed the videos in here just follow the links, cuz embedded videos are ugly.
I ended up purchasing two shirts, a black one with a red line-design whose proceeds all go to R.A.Y., a charity for street youth. Another grey shirt with a cat's head on it (perhaps a cat name Virtue?).
Bottom line, it was a kickass show. Go see them if you're lucky enough to get the chance.
author: m@ » comments:
fatality666
Thursday, September 14, 2006
In interest of doing some research for myself into Kimveer Gill's blog/profile, I headed over to google to see if I could find a cache of his profile. I'd heard that the profile had been shut down by the police, and as it turns out I'm not skilled enough, but I headed over to boingboing.net and found that Xeni had posted a google cached copy of his profile on vampirefreaks.com. Sure, I'd heard news folk talk about things contained in there, but I know that news people tend to be idiots when it comes to anything internetly. I also wanted to see what more that was to him than what the media covered. They seemed to mainly focus on the fact that he played Postal, was a 'goth', wore a trenchcoat, and generally hated everything.
His profile is filled with quizzes and surveys, such things as 'how depressed are you', and 'how will you die?' (suicide, which incidentally was the way he went). Strangely, in the 'what is your heart filled with?' survey, he scored highest on 'wonder'; 'hate' was second.
He prefered group dates over single dates, chocolate over vanilla, and has been in love. His goal for this year was to 'stay alive'. To the question 'How would you like to die?' he answered 'Like Romeo & Juliet, or in a hail of gunfire.'
Amongst his 'likes', he lists: Heavy metal, Germany, first person shooters, kittens, swords, sawn (sic) off shotguns, assault rifles, semi-automatic handguns. He lists his favourite tv shows as: The Daily Show, Chapelle's Show, and Law and Order: SVU.
His list of 'hates', ends with: 'GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING JOCKS'.
He filled out a 'what crime would you most likely commit' survey, to which he scored 'murder'.
Anyone interested in looking at his page can follow this link.
His pictures appear to still be available online, and have been commented on by people after his death. The pictures and comments can be viewed here. They may not be available later this evening.
Is this all morbid? I don't think so. Unless it's morbid to want to try to know more about someone's motives and life. What he did was an incredibly awful and pointless thing, and I'm in no way condoning or accepting his actions.
author: m@ » comments:
here's your ho ho ho
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
So Lukas just won the latest season of Rockstar. 2 Seasons and 2 winners from Canada, that's pretty damn good, I think. Granted, who's heard anything lately from INXS? Not me...
I occurs that I should have done a 'live-blogging' cover of the show, but too late now.
awww now he's brought Magni out to play gee-tar.
I think they made the right choice, Dilana (while good) wasn't the right fit.
Once again I have to apologise for the delay in blogging, but really nothing has happened that warrants blogging. I'm thinking of quitting my job, but I have to stay there until Dec. so I can get my annual bonus.
Holy crap I want one of those new nanos! The only bad part is that the black only comes in 8GB size, and is the same price as a 30GB video ipod... the 4GB comes in the other colours, but NOT black... bah.
it's only 1/4 of an inch thick!!!
This laptop is hot on my lap, so I'm going to retire.
author: m@ » comments:
over my head
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I bought the newest version of The Walrus magazine the other day, and after reading straight through it I got to the last page, and was rewarded with this! (click to make it bigger. DO IT!)
I wanted to make a story with the individual pictures, but since blogger's picture insert thing is SO lame, I'll have to devote more time to doing it as an image file in photoshop I guess.
In other news, I finally got around to calling my last hope for my desired frames. The lady there said they had them (only in one colour, she didn't say which), but that they had sold them a month or so ago. Figures, stupid fates. Oh well, I guess I'll have to order them from eyeglasses.com if I want that specific frame. That raises concerns over duty and customs taxes though, which will NOT be reimbursed (boo).
Anyways, you're welcome to steal that picture I posted and make your own epic stories! I'm interested to know which one is your favourite.
author: m@ » comments:
just know that these things will never change for us at all
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Not much to blog about.
Lately I've been reading a lot of Christopher Moore books. I started out with A Dirty Job, which regular readers may remember I got for my birthday back in May '06. Well since then, I've purchased 4 more of his books. They're excellently-written pieces of fiction, and extremely pleasurable reads. He's got an excellent sense of humour and whimsy.
For someone who's looking to break into his writing, I'd suggest first A Dirty Job, but second to that Bloodsucking Fiends, which is about a young woman who wakes up one night to find out she's a vampire. I'm on the hunt for Lamb - or the gospel according to Biff, but last time I was at McNally Robinson it had been sold!
In other news, the picture in this post is proof positive that my scanner is working again. yay! Stupid HP scanner/printer/thing.
I was looking through an old Stuff magazine from 2001, and I stumbled across this (click on the image to make it bigger, otherwise it's useless):
$28,000!!! Only 5 years ago. According to bestbuy.ca today, the current price for a similar unit is only about $7,000. That's for a 58", but still. Amazing.
author: m@ » comments:
The picture credit is AP I believe.
