Today was a nice day. Mrs. C and I woke up in our own time, had a lovely breakfast (including smoothies!) while we watched an episode of my new favourite sketch comedy show Human Giant, went for a bike ride, flew a wind-up airplane in the park, browsed at the library, had a nap, played a little bit of Puzzle Quest and I am preparing for a casual evening of housework and maybe a movie. Dates with your beloved on sunny days are rad.

Anyway, you’ve been all “Chris dropped off the map over a month ago! Where’s he been?” Well, the simple answer is “just not spending as much time on the intarwebbs”. I have been:

- Working
- Going for long-ish walks
- Hanging out with Mrs. C
- Writing
- Reading
- Hanging out in Victoria
- Redecorating a bit
- Rooting for Vancouver, and subsequently Ottawa

That’s more or less covers it. It’s not exciting, but it is pretty comprehensive.

I wish I had more to tell you, but I am feeling tranquil and uninspired. So to make up for my blase entry I give you this classic Ren & Stimpy cartoon:

Because it’s discipline that begets love.

A heads-up for everyone in Vancouver that likes good comics, literature, art, design and non-fiction: the bookstore I work at, Sophia Books (450 W. Hastings) is having a 30% off sale on almost all of our English language stock (except magazines, language reference materials and tattoo books) right now until the end of May (or until we decide otherwise).

The wall of translated manga? Gotta go. Those Bukowski novels? Yep, on sale. That awesome typography book from Die Gestalten Verlag? That too.

So come on down and take advantage of us… er, I mean the sale, ASAP. ‘Cause you don’t want to get down here after all of the animation and design students have ravaged the stock and had first pick—that would be sad.

“Ah lub yooo!”

Today’s Diesel Sweeties is particularly excellent:

It’s funny because it’s true.

In case you were looking for that perfect hockey season wallpaper for your desktop, this guy seems to have the best one out there (as well as a nice drawing of some kind of livestock with a bad puncture wound). I mean, I’m not using it–I’ve got a desktop of Veronica Mars reclining sexily on a bed, and that ain’t going anywhere–but maybe you’ve got that Windows rolling hillside going on and it’s driving you inexorably to the brink of madness.

Really, though, I’m just counting days until he updates it with a giant orca and Roman facing off against each other. Yeah. Because that’s going to happen.

Okay, why is Kurt Russell having lunch with the Stanley Cup? And why does it have arms?! He’s feeding it with his fork! I mean, seriously–what the fuck?!?!

Graeme: Hi Chris, you have a new account. Your username is chriseng and your temporary password is forestocelot.

Me: I want my new pen name to be “Forest Ocelot”. It sounds like a character from Metal Gear Solid… a character who sneakily eats a lot of Doritos and covertly watches Buffy from inside his blanket fort.

Graeme: That sounds like the best activity. I loved the cardboard box suit in that game. ‘oh, don’t mind me, i’m just a cardboard box someone left here’

I can totally imagine the game controls too. Like you have two views, one is ‘fort view’ where you have a little /\ slot to peek through and you have to use some combination of index finger paddles to strafe and zoom, and analog joystick to view the screen, and if you stay in the same position for too long then your arm starts to hurt so it glows red on the little body of the man on the top left corner of the screen, and if it gets too sore then your view starts to waaver and you collapse, so you have to shift from one arm-lean to the other all while keeping your view zoomed in on the television. while you covertly watch buffy, you have to zoom in untill you can see the relevant action on the tv, and a counter starts to run on the bottom of your screen indicating how long you’ve watched for, but you loose points for watching commercials, so you have to quickly not look at the tv, and guess how long the commerials are gonna be, and eat as many doritos as you can. but here’s the catch, you run out of doritos halfway through the first commercial, and so you have to_leave_ the blanket fort, but you don’t want to, so you have to sneak out of the fort, and make your way to your backpack (doritos are not in the kitchen, that is stupid, who keeps doritos in the kitchen). and make it back before the commercials are over. So it switches to godview perspective, and you’re limping because your leg went asleep.

.. yah, forest ocelot. totally best videogame charater ever.

I’m not the first person to complain about this and I know I won’t be the last, but I’ve really got a problem with the pricing structure Marvel’s got for their graphic novels.

Here’s an example. We get the comic shipment in yesterday. Amongst the goodies are All-Star Superman, Volume 1 from DC and Spider-Man: Reign from Marvel. Both are hardcover, the same size and equally thick; both are $19.99 USD. Where they differ is in their Canadian prices:

Superman: $23.99
Spider-Man: $32.00

$8. EIGHT FRIGGIN’ DOLLARS difference on two for all intents and purposes identical $20USD books! Yes, I will grant you that the paper used in Spider-Man is slightly higher grade than that used in Superman, but it’s not EIGHT DOLLARS BETTER. WHY, MARVEL?! Why do you hate Canadians?! Is it because Joe Shuster co-created Superman and he was Canadian?! C’mon, he was living in the States at the time and that was ages ago! You’ve hired tons of Canadians since then; quit hating on us and our decently performing dollar! We still like you… you know, most of the time… when you’re not killing off your major characters really badly. *cough*captainamerica*cough*

Okay, I’m calm now. I just needed to get that out of my system. And as a matter of interest, the Superman’s awesome. A perfect, smart, energetic, ’60s-cum-new-millennium update to a character who was both literally and figuratively dead only a decade ago. Completely fun. I haven’t read the Spider-Man yet.

Aw, fuck. Yeah, I know he was 84. But he wrote one of those books that changed my life: Cat’s Cradle. That fucked all my brains up in Grade 8. I’ve read it at least once every two years since (and usually every year) and every time I get something new out of it; every time I find a new layer or nuance that I never saw before. And that’s to say nothing of the other books he wrote which also fucked my brains, but I could literally be here all night talking about that and chances are you already know what I’m talking about because he probably fucked with the way you see the world too.

In Cat’s Cradle, the central religion is Bokononism, and I think when I die, I’d like its last rites administered to me. In honour of the man and his life, I’m transcribing them here.

God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!” “See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.” And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God! Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now the mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. I will go to heaven now. I can hardly wait… to find out for certain what my wampeter was… and who was in my karass… and all the good things our karass did for you. Amen.

Amen. And good night, Mr. Vonnegut.

My first installment as film columnist for This Magazine is on newsstands now and online for the electronically inclined (which will no doubt be most of you). If you were wondering how I felt about the portrayal of Vikings in the upcoming movie Pathfinder, well, this is your chance to find out all the gory details.