I’m taking a week off!

I’m going on an all expenses paid nation-trotting voyage next week so there will be less Rob on AOV. Unless I can find some kind of net access on the road.

I trust Steve will keep it real in my absence, if not, go read some of Matt’s stuff at the greatest e-zine in the world. Feel free to read other content too, but think of AOV when you see Matt’s stuff.

In other news, I just saw AI and it was amazing. It was long though. If I was the world famous director, I would have cut it off at one point, but it kicked back up for another half hour or so. I’m being vague but when you see the flick, you’ll understand. It’s kind of like the new Godzilla (not 2000, just ‘Godzilla’), that movie had like 7 climaxes and possible times to end.

In England, a Pony who had an “exotic past in a wildlife park” gave birth to what scientists call a “Zeedonk”.

I for one think it’s cute. Too bad about the scientist’s name, ‘Shebra’ is much cooler. Here’s hoping that someday well discover a squoctopus…

Sundays I like to sleep in until 10. But I’m not today. It’s 8:30 now, not 10. And I can’t fall back to sleep, because I’ve moved around too much.

At about quarter after eight, I was rolling around on my bed when I heard my door crack open a bit, then close. I heard this, but decided to stay snoozing.

Two minutes later, my mom comes into the room and says, “Rob, 911’s here, but you’ve been asleep, you didn’t dial did you?”

I hadn’t. But I crawled out of bed to see a cop at my front door checking things out. Saying they got a call ten minutes ago from my line. We have two phone numbers, the one with the DSL did it.

The 911 guy (who I assumed was a cop, I was too sleepy and dumb to look at his uniform, but he was packing heat), said that something happened with a guy not long ago and they think it was the internet. “Something about email or something, but I don’t know that stuff, so I can’t say”.

This made me think, yesterday morning at about the same time, my phone woke me up by making a strange ringing noise. It ‘blipped’ once, and then 30 seconds later, ‘blipped’ again. I don’t know any more about phones than that guy knows about the internet, but that DSL line also rang a few times last summer and I answered to find a strange noise (not a modem handshaking). But my phone actually calling somebody seems a little strange. Has anybody heard of this? We’re calling Island Tel tomorrow to see if they’ve ever heard of this or if they’ll tell us we actually dialed the number without knowing.

I think I’m tired again, I’m going back for another hour.

I was sitting in the waiting room of my ENT doctor’s office, and I heard the regular music broadcast interupted with a boil order followed by the cancellation of all the Charlottetown area schools.

Looks like boiled-water sponge baths and hair dippings for the next week or so. Unless you want to attempt the whole javex-in-the-tub suggestion for killing e-coli.

I don’t know what to think. Somebody jumped Cookie Monster and kicked his ass.

One cool thing is that guy who beat Cookie’s name is ‘McPhatter’. What a great last name.

Alex, a friend of mine, has been busy taking pictures of pretty island things. He sent me a collection of them.

You get so used to scenes like these living here (if you ever drive out to the country), you tend to forget why the tourists keep coming.

… is what millions of preteens and teenyboppers are asking themselves as the poor Backstreet Boys seem to be having some problems according to Salon.

As far as I can tell as an innocent bystander, boybands (unlike the Moffats) are still all that and a bag of chips among hip young people and I know that genres don’t just vanish, but, could this indicate the beginning of the end of the boyband era? Or are the Backstreet boys getting too old and ugly?

I have recently been informed by an avid AOV reader that for some reason (no doubt chemical or theological) when you burn a cup from McDonalds, you get a greenish blue flame.

I anxiously await my next campfire experience.

I found this link on Slashdot, and found it interesting.

There is work going on to make our TVs push ads that target us individually. I guess we’ll fill out forms, dial a number when we see something we like, or something like that until the Man figures out what we we’re most likely to buy, then shows it on TV.

At first I didn’t like that concept. But. I realized, commercials are much more tolerable if they are amusing. Could I convince the Man that I’m all about beer and need thier comercials? Could I request commercials, say, by writing them a letter saying “I’d sure love a powerful, singing toaster that can download toast recipes at 128kps” and get the cool commercials?

As long as we have to watch commercials, they might as well be tailored to suit us.

Common Errors in English has been one of my favorite sites for a very long time. I’ve never noticed it being updated. But it remains a source of endless entertainment.

It’s full of (you guessed it) common English mistakes which should be brought to everybody’s attention, even if they are accepted. Like ‘Lo Fat’ or ‘Lite’. Reading it is both humbling, and rewarding, because it seems for every item I see that makes me say “I’m glad I’m a genius and don’t say that“, there is about half an item that reminds me how ashamed I should be about my use of our nonsensical language.

I got a kick out of the following:

“This is the sort of English up with which I cannot put.” – Winston Chruchill, on the topic of ending a sentence with a preposition.

Now, if we can only do something about Islanders who say “I seen him kick my car, so I bet him up”.*

* I did not mean all Islanders. Just a healthy handful. Matt and Steve speak better than I do and they’re Islanders. I’m from Winnipeg, and I respect Islanders.