There are worse things than massive storms...

Long time no write. Too much going on. My mother visited, which was nice, hopefully for her too. She was kind enough to buy me a homebrew kit for Christmas, which I promised not to use before then...

Of course I'll wait till Christmas.

Yeah, sure. Wait 3 months for free beer. Like that was ever going to happen! I consider the final product the present, so since the first batch has a high chance of being rancid and put down to practice I feel that it's okay to start now. That way I should get a successful batch done just in time for Christmas dinner.

So, yes, there are worse things in America than massive storms apparently. This is the start of expressing my annoyance with stupid adverts that have no grounding in reality. There are a few, which I must remember when I see them. Amanda picked up the US postal service one which now causes us both to shout at the telly. They are promoting online stamp purchase, which is fair enough. A sensible web service to introduce. But seriously, is there really "...nothing worse than waiting in line for stamps." as the poorly paid actor proclaims?! Those poor bastards on the eastern seaboard have been lashed by the biggest storm ever to have hit America, but I'm sure they find comfort in the fact that they don't have to wait at the post office to get their stamps. They can print them out when the power goes back on. And when their house gets rebuilt. I know there has to be a bit of artistic license to push a product, but it surely has to have some realism to it! I wish I could find a link to this ad.

Dollar ads are also pissing me off. It's like the pound saver menu ads for McD's, where they show someone with a pound coin and all the fantastic options they have. Here it's the same, a smiley lady with a dollar coin walks into Tim's all happy that even though she only has a dollar in her pocket, she can still get a coffee. What the ad doesn't show you is her coming out empty handed because that dollar doesn't cover the tax added into it. It's not a dollar, it's a dollar and 2 CENTS! Grrrrrr. And just as an aside, the only place that you seem to get tax included in the price is pubs. Either that or beer is tax free. And going by the cost, I doubt that...

Anyway, that's my advert rant done. I'll move on to bad gym chat. This will involve a bit of a digression. I have no choice but to pay fees for use of the uni sports centre (which is called a the Physical Activity Centre, I assume because you get that acronym PAC which satisfies the Canadian need to make words out of initials). So I feel I should get at least some use out of the facilities. For me this stretches to using the showers after going for my lunch time run. It always amuses me when I walk in on a nice sunny day that there are many fools running on treadmills staring at the telly. What's the point of running if you don't go anywhere? Anyway, I hadn't really thought that there might be differences in foreign communal (male) changing room, or locker room, etiquette. So only too late did certain questions occur to me. Is stripping everything off normal? I'm I going to look like a wierdo getting naked in front of my locker? At first it seemed that people were showering in swimming trunks and I had misjudged it. Fortunately not though, possibly the first folk I saw were swimmers. So, for starters it was a bit surreal not knowing what the socially acceptable behaviour was in the 'locker room'. Now, I'm using the phrase 'locker room' intentionally, not just because that's what it's called here. But also because the whole layout reminds me of the rather homoerotic 'locker room' scenes from Top Gun; lines of lockers with a narrow bench in the middle.

They probably 'PAC' it in in there...

This is bringing me towards my point. Well, I suppose I have a few points. One is that, like the Top Gunners, there are a lot of well toned men hanging about, whose torsos are devoid of hair. This is not natural. Unless Canadian men have a genetic predisposition to having no body hair, there is a lot of waxing going on. Since when did it become masculine to remove all ones body hair? I also keep expecting to see name stickers appear on the lockers with things like "Moose" or "Combine" written on them. All very very alien to me. So the prevalence of body waxing is my first problem with the uni gym. The second one is the boring chat between the regular pushers of heavy metal, talking about how much they benched etc. etc.. It's like walking into a cliche. I actually heard these words the other day, "Yeah, I'm in here 6 days a week, working two muscle groups a day." To which his buddy replied, "What's your diet like, you must need a lot of calories,"... "Yeah, lots of meat, raw eggs in the morning. You have to get into the protein powder too. I'd be in 7 days a week, but my doctor said I need to have at least one day resting. So I do a hard cardio work out on that day. Go hard or go home, man! Go hard or go home!".

This guy was fat.

And had no body hair.

Go hard or go home. That shit only applies to the likes of the Sub Club, Arches, Space or (add your preferred hedonistic nightspot here). Go hard or go home. I went home. Twat.

Well, I've banged on enough about shit that annoys me! I was going to review some books I've been reading, but it's late now. Here's some extremely short ones. I may go a bit more in depth later.

Albert Brooks - 2030 - Good. A 'what if' of America spiralling into more and more debt. Future satire.

Irvine Welsh - Skagboys - Gratuitous Trainspotting prequel. Good, but gritty realism somewhat undone by the gratuitousness. Avoid if you are small minded about recreational drug use.  

Iain Crichton-Smith - Consider the Lillies. Highland clearances from the eyes of an old woman. A good read if you've run out of books and your mum has left it behind...

Chow for now.

Oh yeah, and here's another mix. Not that anybody listened to the last one. Which was technically much better!