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there’s an engine oil commercial on and it’s playing Collective Soul in it. To me, that just seems weird. I mean, you’d think if an ad for a car product was going to play Shine, it would be for a wax or something…

also, I’m watching the original Conan: the Barbarian movie right now. I’m not going to see the remake because that seems like a waste of a remake. I feel that it would be about as good as the Dungeons & Dragons movie, and if you’ve seen that, well… you know… You know that big wheel thing that’s in the middle of nowhere at the start? do they ever really explain it, or is it just some random slave wheel? I mean, you’d think that the slave drivers would realize that making a slave do that for hours a day for years would turn them into giant, pissed off slaves who could probably beat the shit out of you pretty easily.

been a bit going on around here lately. one of my plants died. That made me sad. It was my sweet banana pepper plant. My habaneros and cherry peppers are still going strong though. And my tomatoes finally started to bloom. Now maybe if we get some fucking heat instead of rain and hail every goddamn day they’ll turn out alright…

there was a bomb threat against a lawyer’s office down the street from our building today. that provided about an hour of entertainment watching through the windows. the emails at work about it were sent about 50 minutes after it all started, and had all the information wrong. seeing as how I’m a big believer that social media can probably get you relevant details faster than the radio, tv or email, I hit twitter with a rolling play by play about the cop cars, cops and barricaded streets and soon found out that someone heard about the bomb threat. at least that way we were ahead of the game in the office instead of everyone on the other side of the building wondering why we weren’t being evacuated.

it also pissed rain here a lot over the last week. and by a lot, I mean it flooded out of the sky and broke shit. seriously. the floor in Bower Place mall was bulged and split open and leaking because the pipes couldn’t handle it. parking lots were flooded, cars were stalled, streets were shit to drive on, you could see about 15 feet in front of you. BUT. it still hasn’t beat the monsoons while I was in Dhaka.

Since it’s Red Deer, and it’s summer, and there are cowboys around here apparently, it’s Westerner Days. Because we’re out west. The kick off parade was Wednesday morning. Last year I was actually in it with RDRDA, but because of timing this year (read: someone didnt get the parade application in on time) we got to sit on the sidelines with the kiddies who were losing balloons like fucking crazy. I swear. There were probably more balloons let go and flying away than there were floats in the parade. The weird thing is that I only saw one kid make the “oh fuck I just lost my balloon SAD FACE WITH GIANT POUTY MOUTH NOW!” when I was a kid, that shit was tied to my wrist and there was no fucking way that thing was getting away.

We also spotted a prime specimen of Douchebagness Uberous, otherwise known as the Giant Douchebag, as picture above. I’ll not go into details as I’m sure that picture is ample evidence to identify him as such.

and today was sushi lunch. and then coffee at the coffee bus thing, which I hadn’t been to yet which is actually pretty awesome and delicious.

aside from those, I decided that after a few years of toiling in the political wilderness, without a party or affiliation, I would join the Alberta Party. No, not those crazy separatist guys. It’s a new party that isn’t the Tories, isn’t crazy like the Wildrose, and is probably going to be much more engaging and effective than the provincial Liberals. I read through the party charter, policies and have been following it and the local candidate on twitter for a while. I liked what I was reading, so I went to a meet and greet with the Party leader and local candidate who shall henceforth be known as Danielle Klooster. mostly because that’s her name. So anyway, meet and greet, beer, handshakes, and now they want me to help out with a bunch of stuff. Gotta say, I’m pretty happy about it, it’s a new challenge, something to help build that could help change the direction of policy in Alberta and might actually put a dent in four decades of stagnant Tory rule here.

oh, and I had a shitty sleep last night, so now I’m tuning out a bit, leaving Conan on, and probably going to dream about crushing my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women. best goal in life in a cheesy movie EVAR.