Somebody doesn't want me to get a flat panel monitor

I was planning to buy a flat panel monitor a couple of months ago when my computer decided to give me problems. After an extended stay in the service department it came home with a new hard drive (magically, it was twice the size of the one it replaced) but took the $$ I'd saved for the monitor.

So I was going to treat myself to a monitor with a portion of my income tax refund. I'm looking around but haven't decided on which monitor to get. Probably a good thing. This morning when I went to play the tape of last night's Davd Letterman, the vcr that taped it turned off after I pressed play. It played fine in the vcr that will only tape in 2-hour mode (so is pretty useless for taping but is fine for copying tapes). Since it played in the 2nd vcr, my guess is the problem is with the vcr, not the tape (I haven't tested any other tapes yet). And it may not be long before it won't tape any more either.

Now the question is - do I buy a new vcr? a dvd recorder? upgrade my digital box to a pvr? The latter isn't an affordable option - either $400 for the box or an extra $20/month on my cable bill.

I want to be able to multichannel tape. Can I do this with a dvd recorder or a pvr?

I love a good sale!

Yesterday I decided it was long past time to get a new pair of Reebok's so at lunch time I headed over to the el cheapo department store. I don't go there often but whenever I do, it seems that what I want to buy is on sale. This week it was buy one pair of footwear, get the other (equal or lesser value) for half price.

I was hoping to spend no more than $50 for one pair of Reeboks but figured I may as well take advantage of the deal and get 2 pairs. Found 2 pairs in my size that I liked. One pair was $60, the other was $40. By my math, the total should have been $80 before tax. My total was just under $53 after tax! I was charged half price for each pair!

Movies I'm Looking Forward to Part 2

I went to Reign Over Me last week (I actually paid for this one; it wasn't a preview) and saw some previews that looked good.

Georgia Rule - http://imdb.com/title/tt0791304/ - Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, Dermott Mulroney - great cast!

Waitress - http://imdb.com/title/tt0473308/

Houdini poisoned?

The article doesn't mention that Houdini wasn't autopsied because he was Jewish.

From Yahoo! News:

Houdini poisoned? Remains to be exhumed

By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer

Get ready for "CSI: Houdini." A team of forensic experts will pore over the exhumed remains of renowned escape artist Harry Houdini to determine whether he was murdered more than 80 years ago, the head of the investigative team said Friday.

"Everything will be thoroughly analyzed," promised James Starrs, dean of the disinterment dream team of pathologists, anthropologists, toxicologists and radiologists. "We'll examine his hairs, his fingernails, any bone fractures."

Legal paperwork necessary to dig up Houdini's body from a New York City cemetery will be filed Monday to get the process started, said Joseph Tacopina, an attorney representing Houdini's family. It could take months before the body is exhumed, although the process should move faster because the family and cemetery officials support the plan, he said.

Houdini died at age 52 on Halloween 1926, days after the athletic magician was repeatedly punched in the stomach by a college student testing the performer's abdominal muscles.

His death certificate listed him as a victim of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. No autopsy was performed, though, and rumors that he was murdered started almost immediately.

"The Secret Life of Houdini," a biography published last year, revisited the rumors and detailed the injection of "an experimental serum" into Houdini shortly before his death at Detroit's Grace Hospital.

The authors suggest the likeliest suspects were members of a group known as the Spiritualists. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing the group's fraudulent seances.

Houdini received an assortment of death threats from the Spiritualists over his final years.

In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman explore a November 1924 letter in which one of the movement's devotees, Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, said Houdini would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out ... I think there is a general payday coming soon."

The exhumation plan received support from Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of "medium" Margery, whose husband Dr. Le Roi Crandon was one of the Spiritualist movement's biggest proponents and one of Houdini's enemies.

"At the very least, there was a group of people who wished Houdini harm," said Thurlow, who was forced to consider that her ancestors may have been murderers. "Whatever the answer is, it (exhumation) will resolve this mystery."

Starrs, who presided over the exhumations of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo, said that if Houdini was poisoned with heavy metals — arsenic or mercury, for example — there should be evidence of that more than eight decades later.

"I wouldn't be involved if I simply thought this was bringing a rabbit out of a hat," he said.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Radio Station Points

I collect points on several of the local radio stations. You get these points by knowing songs that were played at certain times, listeners' names that were said on the air, bonus codes, doing online surveys, clicking on advertisers' websites. Points can then be exchanged for prizes - movie passes, dvds, concert tickets, radio station merchandise, etc.

Until yesterday I was only successful at getting movie passes. They're pretty easy - between the radio stations, newspapers, moviecontests.com, and whoever else gives them out - there are more passes to get than there are seats in the theatres. The production company wants a "sell out". Of the 5 premieres I've been to with passes, I think people were only turned away from one.

But I digress.

Whenever I've tried to win a dvd or concert tickets, I'm lucky if I can log in to the station's website or, if I can, if I can even get the chance to click on the "buy" button. Usually I don't see the button and by the time the page refreshes, the item is sold out. Twice I've been able to click on the "buy" button but the item was sold out before my transaction completed.

Yesterday I got lucky. One of the stations doesn't post the onsale time on their webpage - you have to listen to the station. I don't. But I noticed they were selling (out) their basketball movies yesterday and just happened to be on the page when the "buy" button was displayed for "Hoosiers" (2DVD version). Clicked and won!

Of course now I don't have many points left on that station and probably won't have enough when the Stargate Atlantis 2nd season DVD boxset goes on sale. But there will be lots of bonus codes this weekend so maybe I will.

Larry "Bud" Melman dies

I loved his appearances on Letterman...and I remember him handing out the hot towels.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/obit.melman.ap/index.html

Letterman's Larry 'Bud' Melman actor dies

NEW YORK (AP) -- The balding, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's late-night television shows has died after a long illness.

Brooklyn-born Calvert DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, the Letterman show announced Wednesday.

He made dozens of appearances on Letterman's shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: singing a duet with Sonny Bono on "I Got You, Babe"; doing a Mary Tyler Moore impression during a visit to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her 1970s show was set; handing out hot towels to arrivals at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Cue cards were often DeForest's television kryptonite, and his character invariably appeared in an ill-fitting black suit behind thick, black-rimmed glasses.

"Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself -- a genuine, modest and nice man," Letterman said in a statement. "To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him."
DeForest's gnomish face was the first to greet viewers when Letterman's NBC show debuted on Feb. 1, 1982, offering a parody of the prologue to the Boris Karloff film "Frankenstein."

"It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life," he once said of his first Letterman appearance.

DeForest, given the nom de tube of Larry "Bud" Melman, became a program regular. The collaboration continued when the talk show host moved to CBS to launch "Late Show with David Letterman" in 1994.

The Melman character opened Letterman's first CBS show, too -- but used his real name because of a dispute with NBC over "intellectual property." DeForest, positioned inside the network's familiar eye logo, announced, "This is CBS!"

DeForest often drew laughs by his bizarre juxtaposition as a "Late Show" correspondent at
events such as the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway and the Woodstock anniversary concert that year.

His last appearance on "Late Show" came in 2002, celebrating his 81st birthday.

DeForest also appeared in an assortment of other television shows and films, including "Nothing Lasts Forever" with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.

There will be no funeral service for DeForest, who left no survivors.

Find this article at: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/obit.melman.ap/index.html

Last night's "Boston Legal"

There was a character in last night's episode, "The Bride Wore Blood", with the same last name as me (spelled differently according to tv.com).

That makes 3 tv shows my name has been used in. The first was "Nemesis", an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (the cute bad guy had my name). The 2nd was the season 2 premiere, if I remember correctly, of "Star Trek: Enterprise" (the crew were locked in their quarters and my namesake crawled through the Jeffries tube).

Have you ever been on tv?

Is it just me that finds this sick?

http://www.macleans.ca/homepage/magazine/article.jsp?content=20070305_103058_103058

Won't you be my baby?

At 'adult daycare,' naps and sippy cups are fine. As for spanking, well ...

MARTIN PATRIQUIN | Mar 5, 2007 |

The place where men go to be babies is on the second floor of an anonymous whitewashed brick triplex in working-class east-end Montreal. Visitors walk up salt-stained stairs past a crucifix bolted to the wall and into another world, where the smell of cigarettes is replaced by baby powder, diapers and strawberry-scented No Tears soap. Sylvester and Bugs Bunny decals adorn the walls, and the faint, happy melody of Frère Jacques emanates from the kitchen.

"Annabelle" is dressed in a thick sweater and stay-at-home jeans, and she worries that your cheeks got too cold outside. She hangs your coat and leads you, a grown man, by the hand into the living room decked out with all the colourful staples of childhood: a rocking horse, a castle playset, a playpen. Annabelle's specialty is arts and crafts, and she promises scratch art, a snack, a bedtime story and a nap. But first, to business: it's $150 an hour to be treated like a baby at ABDL, short for "adult baby lovers and diaper lovers," and you have to pay upfront.

The transaction completed, Annabelle's exaggerated grin returns -- though she is confused by a question about the sexual nature of a grown man wanting to be pampered and petted like a child. Some of the other nannies, it's true, spank their charges, but "I don't like to hurt my kids."

"There's nothing sexual at all about it," Annabelle says, grinning once again. "Now, would you like a diaper change?"

ABDL purports to be the first of a handful of places in North America catering to those grown men -- and they are overwhelmingly men -- who find comfort and pleasure in reliving the helplessness of childhood. According to Karl, an owner of and practitioner at ABDL, the experience means different things for different people. Since the overgrown daycare opened last November, it's hosted a range of people, from those who love to wear diapers to those who pretend to be small animals, or like to splash around the bathtub or just need to be mothered.

There is a sexual side, to be sure -- a spanking is never just a spanking when it comes to adults. "It can be sexual, but not here," insists Karl. "There is no sexual contact whatsoever."

Instead, he says, literally acting like a baby is all about protection and regression, a way to hearken back to the days when a soiled diaper was the worst of one's troubles. Whatever it is, "infantilism," as it is known, was deemed just kinky enough to be the fetish of choice on a recent CSI episode, in which the victim was a ruthless millionaire casino owner who died with a diaper rash. "It's only the truly powerful that have the luxury to relinquish power," said investigator Gil Grissom, sagely.

Karl would agree: he lists bankers, lawyers and financial advisers as clients, most (but not all) of whom dress up and act as babies only to let someone else be in charge for a change. "When I'm stressed I put on a diaper and I watch TV with my nanny," Karl says. "When I have sexual relations it has nothing to do with diapers or nannies. It's totally different. I'm like a Mini Wheat."

---

Annabelle is pleasant but firm in her directions. "Make sure you use different colours, or else it will all look the same when you draw your scratch picture," she says. When the student does well, she unwraps a lollipop and plunks it in his mouth. She teaches Grade 5 in real life, and is in the process of adopting children. One of her other "children," of the $150-an-hour kind, recently bought a gigantic stroller. He wants her to push him around the park during the summer. "The last thing I need is for a journalist to get a picture of that," she says. "Can you imagine, on the cover of Journal de Montréal?"

At naptime Annabelle reads Le crocodile amoureux ("The Crocodile In Love"), about a forlorn amphibian that falls hopelessly for a giraffe, in a soft, cooing voice meant to prompt sleep. She gets up, cranks the musical mobile and quietly walks out, leaving you to stare at yourself in the ceiling mirror or at the gang of googlie-eyed plush toys watching you from the other end of the oversized crib. There are stacks and stacks of adult-sized diapers on a bookshelf nearby. You've just drank fuzzy peach juice from a sippy cup. Sleep isn't possible. When Annabelle comes back 10 minutes later, she sees her client with his eyes closed, just for show. "You look beautiful when you are asleep," she says.

And you think: I bet you say that to all your babies.

---

There is a child in every one of us, Karl says, and before anyone judges a grown man in Pampers, just think: how many of us hang on to the threadbare blanket or worn-out teddy bear because it reminds us of when we were far more innocent? Infantilism isn't a sickness or a fetish, he says: it's a matter of degrees.

Dan Savage disagrees. The syndicated sex columnist, whose blunt and graphic advice on all things carnal can occasionally make paint peel, says infantilism is just another male-dominated submission fetish, like cross-dressing and bondage. "Men are kinkier than women, period," he says. "Some like to argue it's because men are socialized to make demands and go for what they want -- sexually, socially, professionally -- while women are subject to the exact opposite socialization."

What infantilism isn't, he adds, is dangerous. "People into infantilism are not sexually attracted to children or infants. They want to be infants, or be treated like infants, usually by grown women. They long to experience the intimacy of infancy and the complete lack of control that characterizes that condition."

It is certainly how Annabelle sees it, as she spreads cold cream on your hands and buttons your coat. "You don't have a scarf?" she asks disapprovingly, then hugs you a little too tightly and a little too long. Then it's out the door, as she waves goodbye like there's a school bus waiting outside.

Goran Visnjic leaving "ER"?

Saw this on Ask Ausiello today - http://www.tvguide.com/News-Views/Columnists/Ask-Ausiello/default.aspx

Question: ER fans are dying with this long break. Is there anything at all you can divulge about what to expect after the hiatus is finally over?— Sara
Ausiello: Lots of awkwardness for Reela, a new love interest for Sam in the form of med student Larry Weston (played by relative newcomer Marc Jablon), and a likely trip to Croatia for Luka and Abby to visit his father and possibly tie the knot. My theory? He'll find some reason to stay and that'll explain Goran Visnjic's disappearance next season.
===
Anybody know if it's true? If so, why? And why do I care?

Movies I'm Looking Forward to

Reign Over Me - http://imdb.com/title/tt0490204/ - I usually don't care for Adam Sandler but he looks like he's doing a really good job in the previews.

The Hoax - http://imdb.com/title/tt0462338/ - Richard Gere was on Letterman talking about it and showing a preview. It's about Clifford Irving and his fake bio of Howard Hughes.

Spiderman 3 - http://imdb.com/title/tt0413300/

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - http://imdb.com/title/tt0449088/

What are you looking forward to seeing in the next few months?

Quote of the Day

"If God had wanted us to have elections, He would have given us candidates". - Mary Chapin Carpenter (Bottom Line, New York, 22/1/90).

Feel free to comment and/or add your own quotes.

Jackson Browne - Nina Demos

I downloaded or traded for this set a long time ago but am just getting around to listening to it. 30 tracks that Browne recorded in 1966 and 1967. Doesn't sound like Browne at all vocally (his voice was deeper then). Some songs have similar tunes to later ones. These Days from 1973's For Everyman appears here as I've Been Out Walking with different lyrics.

http://jrp-graphics.com/jb/nina.html

I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking these days
These days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to

I stopped my ramblin'
I don't do too much gamblin' these days
These days
These days I seem to think about
How all the changes came about my way
And I wonder if I'll see another highway

And I had a lover
I don't think I'll risk another these days
These days
And if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
Well it's just 'cause I've been losing so long

Well I'll stop my dreamin'
I don't do too much schemin' these days
These days
These days I'll sit on cornerstones
And count the time in quartertones to ten
Please don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them


http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/jackson_browne/these_days.html

Well I've been out walking
I don't do that much talking these days
These days-
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
For you
And all the times I had the chance to

And I had a lover
It's so hard to risk another these days
These days-
Now if I seem to be afraid
To live the life I have made in song
Well it's just that I've been losing so long

I'll keep on moving
Things are bound to be improving these days
These days-
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them

Bad Movies

I love bad movies - the kind made on a budget of $1.50 that you can watch over and over, find the mistakes, laugh every time you watch - not the kind that are so bad there isn't even anything funny about them and you wish you had the time back that you spent watching them. Almost in this category is Highlander: The Source which is a straight-to-DVD release that is supposed to come out sometime this year. Adrian Paul, Jim Byrnes, and Peter Wingfield aren't hard to look at - they are the only reasons I don't want my 94 minutes back. I've heard that "they" want to reshoot parts of the movie. The only thing that will save it is to go back to the original idea (where do immortals come from?) and start the movie all over again. But that won't happen.

My all-time favourite bad movie is the classic Plan 9 From Outer Space - the worst movie ever made by the worst director ever, Ed Wood.

I'm adding to my Ed Wood collection. In addition to Plan 9, I have Glen or Glenda (I Changed my Sex), Bride of the Monster, Night of the Ghouls.

Other classic bad movies - Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (I don't think Return of the Killer Tomatoes or either of the other 2 sequels count as classics but Return does have George Clooney) and Little Shop of Horrors (with Jack Nicholson as the guy who likes to go to the dentist).

Maybe not a classic but certainly worth one viewing - It Conquered the World (Peter Graves, Lee Van Cleef, Beverly Garland - great cast! - what were they thinking when they read the script? Something that looks like a giant aspargus conquers the world. Great idea for a movie! Let's do it).

Bad - no redeeming features - not even worth watching once - Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.

I know I've forgotten some bad movies I've seen and enjoyed.

Anybody have any favourites or not-so-favourites?

Job Description

Can somebody explain this?

Review inventory worksheets in Excel for quality assurance Attribute costs to assets in inventory on the worksheet Formatting the worksheet in order to upload costs to assets in the business system using an interface Review errors and potential errors with case officer

I've used Excel. I'm guessing that the formatting and upload is specific to the company and will have to be explained to whoever gets the contract. I don't know about - Attribute costs to assets in inventory on the worksheet. This temp position pays very well, doesn't require French and "experience is an asset". So they're willing to train but it would help if I understood what the position is.

Next contract

This morning I took some time off work to register with yet another agency (I had applied for a specific job they'd posted on Monster.ca). Looks like if there's an election I have another contract a week after this one finishes (I could start right away but Passover and Easter screw that up).

The election hasn't been called yet; the government hasn't fallen to a non-confidence motion but - the Conservatives (boo, hiss) are playing Liberal attack ads (why would there be attack ads if there's no election?); Justin Trudeau has announced he'll run in the next election (no point in announcing his intentions if the election is a few years down the road). Maybe the Conservatives think that since the Liberals recently elected a new leader, they're not completely organized yet and an election now will give them a majority or a bigger minority.

The job - same one I did for Elections Canada a couple of years ago. Data entry for people applying for Special Voting Rights (people who aren't in the area where they vote at election time - out of the country, studying in another city; Nelly Furtado who figures she'll get mobbed if she goes to the poll). If things haven't changed in the last couple of years - no headphones while we're working, no Internet access at all (or limited to EC's site and Canada Post to check postal codes), breaks and lunch are at specific times and timed almost to the second. OTOH, there's very little work until the day of the deadline to get in the application (and maybe a couple of days before) so as long as we show up EC is happy. We can read, chat with people around us, play cards, etc. Last time I averaged a book/day and talked to everybody around me.

I started a blog (with apologies to The Bee Gees)

I don't like blogs but since I'm currently on a contract where I don't have email access and can't get to Yahoo! Groups to see mailing list messages, I figured this would be a good way to keep in touch with people.

However, since I'm at work, nobody except some co-workers will know about this blog until I get home.