Thanks Oilers, for totally ruining my BIRTHDAY!

Back when I had braces, back when I was in high school, back when I had an Oilers jersey autographed by Todd Marchant (in silver) , I was pretty into the Oilers. To the point where my biggest birthday wish was to go to an Oilers playoff game on my birthday. However, thanks to dismal playing—after all, Todd Marchant was one of the highest scorer of the team—and the Dallas Stars, this particular birthday wish never materialized and eventually I stopped caring about the Oilers.

But this year, thanks to Chris Pronger's orbs of power and the Olympics, it just so happens that the Oilers will be playing a home game on Monday. To make matters worse, this could very well be the game that eliminates the Red Wings and OMG SQUEEEE KICK OFF A NEW ROUND OF BATTLE OF ALBERTA!11!!!!1!!1!!

You know what this means right? This means when I'm out on Monday (and Tuesday) to celebrate my birthday at the Strat, there will be shirtless/naked people slathered in blue and copper paint running up and down the Blue and Whyte mile. Worse yet, they'll take up precious seats in bars, waiting for the chance to get electric and wave their silver tinsel pom poms when Shawn Horcoff jam the puck behind Manny Legace during a scramble in front of the net. In fact, I predict the bars will be so full that, we'll have to go the the Strat early in order to secure a seat. In fact, those same people will be on Whyte on Tuesday, honking their horns whether the Oilers win or lose. Therefore, ruining part 2 of my birthday celebration, too.

All I'm saying is that I better not have to spend my birthday in an alley behind a dumpster, drinking cheap tequila from a brown paper bag because the fucking Strat is too full. My only consolation is that Dan said he'll totally join me if it comes to that.

In any case, we'll rendezvous at the Black Dog at 8:00. I'm too lazy to use "e-mail."

Random celebrity post #2

What do Pamela Anderson, Fergie, and, interestingly enough, my #1 favourite, Kathleen Edwards, all have in common? Well, we all know what Pammy and Fergie have in common, but how does Kitty factor in to this silicone-fest? The answer's not really that interesting, but I thought I'd toss it out there for some clever speculation.

Requisite "I'm done!" post

No more teachers, no more books. No more [insert clever line here]. Yes, I'm quite excited that school's out, although my left eye started twitching after my exam this morning for some reason and hasn't stopped yet. But I'm even more excited that my favourite lady, one Miss Amy Sedaris, is coming out with her own book on entertaining called "I Like You." For those of you who have no idea who I'm talking about, Miss Amy is an actress, sister of David, was Jerri Blank on "Strangers With Candy" (yes, that's her) the show she created with Stephen Colbert about a 40-some-year-old ex-hooker, druggie who goes back to high school only to learn valuable after-school special lessons, is a regular on Letterman and makes and sells cheeseballs in her spare time to pay for her pet rabbit Dusty's hay. She's hilarious and some of the chapters in her book include what to do if "A Rich Uncle Comes To Visit," "The Elderly," and how to court a hunter, a dieter or an alcoholic. The book's not even out yet, but I'm inexplicably excited--maybe even "Lindsay Lohan's a redhead again!"-excited.

Just Jack

vs










On account of the fact that I don't have exams and I'm lazy, I downloaded this week's two hour Alias extravaganza and watched it. After seeing Jack Bristow smashed a CIA head honcho's nose into his face to extract information on his daughter while simultaneously revealing that said CIA head honcho is a mole, I inevitably thought of the other TV spy who's also named Jack. Both have a velvety voice, both have daughters who are retards (Sydney, while not a retard in Kim's level, is World's Worst Spy—therefore retarded in terms of a spy), both daughters were kidnapped at one point, both can be described as "loose canon" and debuted in the 2001 TV season, both have a history of torturing prisoners. Both of them are totally awesome!

Hence, we need a poll: Jack Bristow vs Jack Bauer, who'll win?

Kill the messenger

Add another name to the list of people who's asses I want to kick. The newest edition: the hyperactive voice of ET Canada, Cheryl Hickey. Every day when I'm watching Days of Our Lives (that's right, I watch Days—feel free to unload on me, I'm ready for it), the promo for that night's episode of ET Canada comes on and day after day I have to hear Cheryl Hickey's annoying and fake voice. Why do all of the entertainment reporters talk the same way? It's like they're told to over-pronounce their vowels and to stick an A in there wherever possible. Unsure of what I mean? I'll try and give a text-based impersonation of Hickey. All capped words are where she kind of yells:

Hai, I'M CHERYL HICKEY with ET Canada. Tonaight on ET, TOMKAT have had a baby, but what does HOLLYWOOD have to say about it?

*cut to Jaime Foxx talking shit about something, who fucking cares*

Later toanight you'll get to hear ALL ABOUT Hollywood's reaction to the previously unheard of idea of a WOAMAN giving birth.

AND, are Nick and Jessica getting back together? We'll tell you why she is still wearing her wedding ring.

*cut to stupid ET music and me throwing shit at my tv*

Someone should make a bottle of Axe body spray that attracts lions and killer bees, then douse Cheryl Hickey in it. I think it's the only appropriate thing to do.

Random celebrity post

I think I've finally figured out what's wrong with Katie "I'm carrying L Ron's Xenu child(ren)" Holmes: she has no breasts.



WTF?

Hypocrite junction

I thought I hated the guy who lives on the ground floor of my building. He always leaves safeway bags full of garbage outside his apartment door for me to see when I make my way into the building. I think that's gross. Still do. However, this evening the guy in G-4 redeemed himself when I made my way in the door. First, he said hi to me. Then as I was walking past him he asked me if I was going to take the elevator. This story can only be told in dialogue format for full effectiveness.
G-4: You taking the elevator?
Me (aka 1207): Yeah, did you need me to hold it for you (he was headed to the front door with a safeway bag full of garbage)?
G-4: No, I just wanted to warn you that I almost got stuck in there earlier today. I was halfway between floors and the thing stalled out on me and sat there for a minute before it started up again. Piece of shit.
Me: Shit...I'll take the stairs then. I heard we're getting new elevators here in September. Some guy on the 11th floor told me that.
G-4: (makes a scoff sound) Hmph. Yeah, and they're going to start cleaning this place too, right?
Me: hahaha.

fin

On the long and painful walk up the stairs (took them two at a time, since I didn't get to run or play basketball today), I realized that my Crap Shack is the friendliest building I've ever lived in. I don't have a Kramer next door to me, but everyone's nice to everyone else here. They acknowledge each other on the premises and we talk about how shitty the building is when we're in the elevator for half-hour periods. The crap nature of my Crap Shack has fostered an overall great repore among its tenants. In an odd way, I think I've actually developed an attachment to my Crap Shack. I'll even go as far as to say that as long as I'm living in Edmonton, I'll call the Crap Shack home.

And that's just the tip of the hypocritical realization iceburg—check the sports blog for the other one, if you're interested—because I'm topical like that.

Second post of the day!!

And to commemorate the debut of our new contributor, Tyson, I've created a new banner. Is it more crap? Is it more shack? Or is it just more AWESOME with the bull surrounded by beavers atop an albino beluga? I'll let you decide.

Also, on the "since Tyson and I care, you should care, too" front, Lindsay Lohan is a redhead once more!

I don't need to see that!

To mark my debut into the blogosphere, as well as becoming the newest contributor to the Crap Shack, I thought I'd share some of the shows I've become addicted to downloading from the net that aren't included in the $25 I pay Shaw Cable each month. In the future, look out for some juicy D-List celebrity gossip from one of the only two people in Edmonton (the other would be Iris, obviously) who give a fuck, ironic or otherwise. And for the record, my shack? Not so crappy.

1) The Comeback (HBO): Lisa Kudrow (above) as a washed-up former sitcom star pushing her mid-forties trying make it in the business once more by filming a reality show focused on her comeback. In two words: double-vomit.

2) So NoTORIous (VH1): A not-so fake reality-based sitcom starring the Queen of the D-List, Miss Tori Spelling as herself. You'll watch out of pure pity/curiousity but stay to watch her audition tape for Steven Soderbergh where she plays a Latin S&M prostitute named Lola. In two words: Farrah cameos.

3) Weeds (Showtime): Suburban housewife starts dealing drugs to make money after her husband dies starring a post-Billy Crudup Mary-Louise Parker and co-starring a totally fucked-up Wilma Flintstone. In two words: Elizabeth Perkins.

Retreat quote book

I was going through my camera bag when I finally came upon the quote book that we had during the retreat. The contents of the retreat quote book have been so far privy to the 13 of us who went on the retreat and was deemed too inflammatory to put in the regular quote book. But since the booklet is barely holding itself together and it might take another 8 months for it to resurface again, I've decided to transcribe the contents onto a more permanent medium: the pinnacle of stability known as internet!

Just to be clear though, 13 people sequestered in a log cabin with little entertainment beyond drinking, smoking up and homosexual chicken means that some of these quotes don't make any sense to outsiders and may not be funny to you. Also, the handwriting is shit, because of all the drinking and smoking up and homosexual chicken, so people may be misquoted.

---

It's 10 o'clock and I'm already playing homosexual chicken.
-Dave, on the night's entertainment.


Tim: Steve Smith, eat some fucking ass!
Steve: If you want to eat some ass, eat some ass!

Dave (after kissing Steve's ass cheek): I'm warming it up! Don't critique my style (after a moment of hesitation) I cannot eat your ass in front of 7 people! Steve, you win.

When you initiate with kiss with tongue, that is an insinuation of homosexual chicken.
-Steve, on the rule of engagement concerning homosexual chicken.

If we're going to talk about something loud, let it not the licking someone else's anus.
-Dan, concerned that people staying in the nearby cabins will get a whiff of the night's entertainment. However, we later found out that the family eating outside near us are either deaf/mute or they're Germans who doesn't know English.

Steve, I would have you give me as many suggestions about the Purity Test as you wont before I would have you eating out my Managing Editor's ass.
-Dan

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Dave licking my ass!!!
(bwa ha ha ha)
- source unknown. But who ever wrote this down did put down the three exclamation marks.

Steve: Jake's nickname is now rainbow troughton
Cizzy (somewhat stoned): Is that the official name for "licking ass?"

Chris: Marshmallows are good man.
Matt: A truer thing have never been said.

MY WAD GROWS!
-Steve in reference to his Monopoly, um, "wad."

It's more about the precision and distance that my wad would go.
-Dan, rebuttal.

Mountain Dew ... if you close your eyes, it tastes just like Mellow Yellow.
-Mike.

I won all over your face!
-Dan, not sure whether it was referencing Monopoly or homosexual chicken.

My anus is as clean as a whistle and should be treated properly.
-Steve, after a shower.

I'm the KY Jelly to the fucking you guys are going to give to campus.
-Dave, on being Managing Editor

If you can't take it in the ass either way, why play homosexual chicken?
-source unknown

You fucking liar. You TOTALLY have Trooper!
-EiC Dan on Dave's iTunes library.

On the second night we played a very complicated drinking game (I think it was called 3 man) which involve two dices that we grabbed from the Marvelopoly set and an upturned tissue box. Basically, you're suppose to roll the dices on top of the box, if you drop them, you'll become "3 man" and will have to drink whenever somebody rolls a 3 until somebody else becomes the 3 man. Various number combinations result in different drinking rules ie storytime, rhyming game, make a rule.

(unknown): make a rule!
(unknown): no nouns.
O'Leary: you mean the Terry Schivo rule.

For the son of God, you sure suck at this game Jesus Christ.
-O'Leary,referringg to the drinking game. Matt temporarily acquired the nickname of "Jesus Christ" after somebody made up the no name rule. For the same reasons, Mike was Erik the red for a while.

On the rhyming game
Dan: Airport
Mike: Scare-port

Later, on another rhyming game: airplane -> scare-plane -> Claire Danes.

If I am high right now, this will trip the fuck up.
-Cizzy, on the whispering rule.

The anus is difficult because Steve has clamped it shut regularly.
-the story from storytime.

Our EiC is Rain Man
-source unknown

I'm going to fucking demonstrate what's the best thing ever, blueberries and M&M!
-Matt or Chloé

I'll put my fucking margarine down as collateral.
-Mike, on questions about whether he'd pay five dollars he'd been spotted in poker.

Why is there margarine in your bed?
-Dan to Dave

"Nascent handjob" should be out of our vocabulary from now on.
-Jesus Christ, Jasper 11:45

Hey there, fuckface!
-Chloé to Dan.

This is not beautiful. I look like Vince Vega!
-Dave, on getting barrettes put in his hair

Cobra Kai?

Seen about a half an hour ago. I wish someone could have heard the joy in my voice when I drove by this.

Ross-tastic

Through the last eight months, many great ideas have been kicked around the Gateway office. Mike Larocque and his TV show about former politicians from rival parties being forced to live together in the same house, obviously, is the first one that comes to mind. The best idea, however, saved itself for the last press day of the year. Somehow, as it always does, the topic of Ross Prusakowski came up while we were playing videogames and hanging out in the couch room.

The topic of Ross’ connections with the SU were discussed, and that evolved into the single greatest programming idea since Flavor Flav met reality TV: Rossy needs a show on CJSR where he talks politics with people form the SU. The show’s name?

Meet the Prus.

Living in Alberta

The only mistake I made was that I should have taken a video so you could hear how loud the hillbilly's truck was.

The Best Part

It’s been an eventful couple of days. On Sunday night, my crap shack was evacuated due to a fire alarm. It was odd to see all of the people from the building together. It was like the Losers and Cat Lady Hall of Fame was having an induction ceremony right there on the spot. Me? I live here solely for the purpose of filling the blog with valuable content and this hole of a building is a goldmine in that respect. Anyway, the evacuation was a circus. I spent 20 minutes outside in the parking lot with the three girls who live at the opposite end of the hall from me. One of the girls is missing a leg. I felt it appropriate to name her One-Legged Woman. I have a song about her that I made up around Christmas time. I won’t sing it, but I will say that there’s a verse about how she hopped her way into my heart and stole the show. Anyway, she makes no effort to hide the fact that she has one leg. She doesn’t rock the prosthetic, and she pins the loose leg of her pants back, like she’s challenging people to stare at her as she passes by you with her arm crutches. The evacuation would have been extra hard for her, since she must have had to hop down from the top floor of the building to get to the ground level when the alarm went off.

Four fire trucks arrived at the crap shack and after a 30-second meeting of the minds, they determined that there was no fire in the building. In all honesty, I thought that they let us back in kind of fast, but whatever. It was two nights ago. Get over it.

The most disturbing part of the night came as I made my way up the stairs once we were allowed back in. I could have taken the elevator, but I don’t trust it when I’m in there by myself; if there is ever a time for the shitbox to break down (aside from the regular interval of it stalling out every two to three days between midnight and 6am), it would have to be when there are ten people crammed in there. So yeah, I’m walking up the stairs with about 20 other like-minded people and I start to notice some gross shit in the stairwell. First, I saw the standard cigarette butts on the steps. This is nothing new. Then I saw pills. They could have been Tylenol cold and flu, but I like to think they were ecstasy tablets. Aside from the standard dirt that’s piled up all over the place in the stairwell, I had one more discovery to make on my way back up to the twelfth floor. Somewhere around the seventh floor, I saw it trying to hide behind a pipe. It was torn open and discarded, which, in itself made me wonder about what kind of stuff happens in this building. There on the ground lay a discarded condom wrapper. It was a red Durex package; the tin-foil type, as opposed to the plastic ones (I prefer the plastic wrappers, myself, for no legitimate reason). I didn’t have time to take pics of the stairwell with all the people in it, but here are a few shots of the stairwell after it’s been cleaned.



Yesterday morning, instead of listening to music from my phone, I took my crappy looking discman to school so I could listen to J-Live. I had one of his songs in my head all day at work. I listened to it again on the LRT when I went home, too. I woke up this morning and checked my mail and who has sent me an email, but J-Live himself. He accidentally cc’d me on an email about the production and engineering for a song. It was an odd coincidence. I wrote back to him and asked him if he wanted to do an interview, and we're going to be talking on Friday. I think the coolest part of making an unknown hip-hop artist your favourite musician is that they’re totally accessible to you. Let’s see fucking Springsteen email you by mistake, Mike Larocque. Let’s see it. That’s what I thought.


This is easily my longest blog post ever.

Hot + Tube = PARTY!

Pay special attention to the level of alcohol in each picture and note how it gradually depleted over time, thus explaining the scale of last night's debauchery.


The dog that nobody liked. It jumped onto Tim's crotch this morning. It was hilarious.


Bringing the hot and ameretto to the hot tub.




Dave's bedroom decor. This was the bedroom he grew up in and developed his acerbic wit. Really.

Dave's family.

After taking photos of Dave's Pooh poster, somebody told me to take a photo of the carpet. I don't know why.



Mike told me to get him some ice. I was too drunk to do it properly.


There was still Screech in that bottle at the point.

Somehow, somebody saw fit to take multiple pictures of Dan's crotch. I deleted all but one.