Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Blah Blah Blah  

*Preface - Welcome to an edition of the long-forgotten Buttugly lengthed posts. Better go eat your dinner and get your chores done first. You know, tuck your children into bed and all.

Did you miss me?

Did you miss me...a lot?

Did you miss me...

...like a child misses their blanket?

Admittedly, I haven't been around here as obsessively as I used to be. And while there are topics that are begging to be covered by me, topical posts take time, and for the last few years, I've been trying to avoid being "that guy" that writes about the food I ate for dinner, or the people I hung out with. You'd be bored witless.

To prove my point, I kept a journal of my entire yesterday, just to give you an idea of the material I've been trying to avoid posting.

Monday, July 16, 2007

8:40AM:
I woke up. The 8:20AM arm flailing action that turned off my alarm clock does not count as waking up. It was merely a reflex. The alarm clock itself was merely a formality. My finely tuned biological clock wakes me up everyday at 8:40AM anyways. Except for last week when I decided to test the hypothesis by intentionally forgetting to set my alarm clock and ended up opening my eyes for the first time at 9:30AM.

8:50AM:
I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and scarfed it down. My mother insists I eat a yogurt a day because I refuse to drink milk.

*Sidenote* - Milk sucks. *End Sidenote*

9:00AM:
I battled against raging drivers rushing to get to work so they can do nothing for the next 8 hours. I follow the exact same route to work everyday. I even merge at all precisely the same spots. An inch more or less and it stresses me out.

9:30AM:
Coffee time.

9:40AM:
Type type type. Produce produce produce.

10:00AM:
Internet perusal time.

10:15AM:
My cubicle mate's friend decided to drop in for one of his twenty or so daily visits. Sometimes he'll just say, "Yo, whatsup man", stare at us for two seconds, then leave.

10:16AM:
He's still here.

*The next 7 or so hours never happened, except for the following event*

2:15PM:
Technically this happened today, but it takes the aggregation of two days worth of material to make this post remotely acceptable. The company security squad performed a random checking of my cubicle last night for violations of the company privacy policy. This is the second time I've failed, both times I've left writable media on my desk. So I hung my head low and took the walk of shame to the security desk to retrieve the writeable media THAT HAS NOTHING ON IT. I think my manager was notified of my repeat-offense. I wonder what happens at strike three.

*Sidenote* - Would you want your security guards to be helpful/friendly? Or would you rather they maintain a mean demeanor throughout the day that properly conveys a frightening image to anybody wanting to threaten the safety of the company's employees/property? I'm divided on this issue with me, myself, and I. *End Sidenote*

5:15PM:
Back to yesterday. A fellow intern has requested a ride to a subway stop of my choosing. Naturally, I oblige, because I'm friends with said intern, and a favor doled is a favor owed. I'm kidding. I don't bank favors. I bank shots in off the back board, Tim Duncan-esqe.

We proceeded to talk about potentially overlapping courses next year, which profs to avoid, and the weather. The trip to the subway station was microcosmic of my conversational skills. Atrociously awkward.

6:00PM:
Upon reaching my bungalow castle, I instantly whined and moaned about being hungry.

6:15PM:
I continued to hassle my mother for dinner while I worked on the daily Toronto Star crossword. I finished, but came to find a word I had never encountered before. Demur. According to the crossword creator, it means "object". Huh! Who would've thunk'd.

6:30PM:
Can't journal. Eating.

7:15PM:
The father decided it was a perfect night to go to the local upper-middle-class-filled-with-old-people mall, Bayview Village. My brother excitedly asked a Chapters sales representative/stock boy about the proper line-up procedure come the night of July 20th.

7:25PM:
My brother mentioned that this is going the biggest book release of the century. For. The. Fifth. Time. Tonight. To burst his bubble, I tell him how reading books is overrated and that by tomorrow, the book will have leaked to BitTorrent. I didn't really mean a word I said, but I still nailed the future.

7:45PM:
My brother and father headed off to the LCBO. I went to my old stomping grounds, Laura Secord, for some French Crisp ice cream action.

*Last Sidenote I Promise* - There is a three year separation between me and my brother. He's still technically in his teens. And don't get it twisted, I'm the older sibling. Is it odd that he's the one going off to buy alcohol with my dad while I'm going to get an ice cream cone? Am I the only one who finds this peculiar? *End Last Sidenote I Promise*

8:15PM:
They still were not done deciding between domestic or imported beer. Who cares. I headed over to the store across from the LCBO that I have never wandered in before. The friendly young lady working in the store recommended I check out the cigar room. It smelled nice. Because I was a complete cigar newb, I asked for personal recommendations, and got the standard "you can't go wrong with Cuban cigars". She went on to claim that smoking cigars was more of a lifestyle choice. I failed to see her point, but nodded anyways because I was in way over my head. I was even attempting to smell the different cigars. They all smelled remotely the same. Because I caught a cold over the weekend and couldn't smell anything anyways.

8:30PM:
I thanked the nice lady and finally headed home with nothing to show for a mall outing. Terribly disappointing.

9:00PM:
Have you seen Shaq's Biggest Challenge? Go find it and watch it. High comedy.

The rest of the night is a blur of personal reflection time mixed with some Nintendo DS Big Brain action. The game insulted me by insinuating I had the brain of a 27 year old, which apparently is not a good thing. According to the game, I'm supposed to be shooting for a 20 year old brain. The game is skewed and does not factor in something I like to call LIFE EXPERIENCE. Learn things Nintendo, learn things.

There was the day in its entirety. I'm never doing this again.

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 11:59 PM .


Monday, July 16, 2007

Have You Heard?  

*Preface - Wondering why I haven't posted anything that takes about 30 minutes to read lately? Or why I didn't even notice my now-fixed but was-problematic 'read more' link? I'm about to tell you why... next time I post... potentially. But for now, I, Buttug McOysty, proudly presents to you:

The Song of the Half Year + A Few Days - Umbrella!


No, don't go for the red x button at the top right corner of your browser window. And please don't click the back button. It's not the Rihanna version. It's not even the remix with Jay-Z's mailed in verses. Somebody has gone out and redeemed the song. Peep:



I couldn't award this prestigious title to Make Me Better - Fabolous (ft. Ne-yo) because it's a straight sample off some old RZA stuff, but this song's the hottest thing burning up the radio these days, and I'm going to link it anyways:

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 7:17 PM .


Friday, July 13, 2007

It's Not A Community, It's Not A City...It's A Communicity!  



That's, like, totally, like, where I, like, live, like, yeah!

Like.

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 12:08 AM .


Monday, July 09, 2007

Dear Hotmail Administrators,  

I have used your email service for quite a few years. In part, because you pretty much forced me to sign up for one to use your popular messenger service, and partially because I wanted to divert junk mail away from my yahoo account, which, back then, was my primary email account.

I now regret the decision of using my Hotmail account for the junk mail that inevitably comes when signing myself up for a variety of things. Simply put, your spam filters are as leaky as the vegetable an old bucket. Granted, that is why you have a "junk" button, just in case something gets by your frustratingly flawed filtering system.

But in the past two weeks, I have labeled a specific message "junk" about ten times, and what do I find this morning when I log in because Windows Live Messenger informs me that I have two unread emails?

I FIND TWO UNREAD EMAILS WITH THE EXACT SAME TITLE, EXACT SAME MESSAGE BODY, THAT I HAD PREVIOUSLY LABELED AS JUNK.

This is simply unacceptable. Do your employees sit around all day wondering why the sky is blue?

It's time to overhaul the entire department. Starting from the top, and going right through to the bottom, hire an actual monkey to replace the current "monkey" to take care of spam filtering.

I hate Thank you for nothing.

xoxo

Buttug McOysty

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 5:47 PM .


Sunday, July 08, 2007

The Condensed Gatsby  

Gatsby - Daisy, I made all this money for you, because I love you.

Daisy - I cannot reciprocate, because I represent the American Dream.

Gatsby - Now I must die, because I also represent the American Dream.

(Gatsby DIES.)

Nick - I hate New Yorkers.

THE END


Thanks to the fantastic people over at Book-a-Minute, I can once again claim to read at a 3rd grade level.

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 8:59 PM .


Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Music, What Goes Around, Comes Around  

*Preface - Thanks to all who participated in the insane freestyle battle my last post incited. We should do it again soon. Go check out the commenting section to decide for yourself who won. I'll give you a clue though, it wasn't close, and it was me.

Bumpin' Flow 93.5 on the drive home, Rihanna's new hit song, "Shut Up And Drive", comes on over the radio.

I look over to my right at the soccer mom talking on her cell phone as she attempts to navigate her way through rush hour traffic and smile at the appropriateness of the song to the situation.

Then I realize that I am listening to Flow 93.5, a self-proclaimed urban hit and groove tune station. And when they say urban, they are referring to the musical genres rap, reggae, and R&B (or as I'll bluntly put it because that's the association people will quickly draw, "black music").

Rihanna has a darker shade of skin, so I mean we're all good, no? The virtual world's most accurate encyclopedia has informed me of the fact that she's actually Barbadian, so reggae roots can't be that far off, so again, we're all good, no?

Have a listen for yourself. I'll wait.



*Hands on my hips, impatiently tapping my left foot*

I thought you'd never finish, so I went to get a Popsicle. I hope you don't mind...that I don't mind whether you mind or not.

The first time I heard this song, there was no way I would've pegged Little Miss Sunshine Rihanna to be the one responsible for the semi-catchy song I want to sing/yell at most talking drivers that are incapable of multi-tasking yet still attempt to. It's something I would've instantly labelled Avril Lavigne, or Hilary Duff. But Rihanna?

Actually on second thought, I understand the business, and I understand the dynamics of how an established and loyal fan base. Because Rihanna previously delivered "urban hits" such as S.O.S. and Unfaithful (still one of the dumbest songs ever created, so dumb it incites me to ROFL every time I hear it), she now has leeway on an "urban hits" radio station, and can get away with a pop-rock song here and there. If anything, it was trending that way with the album's first single, Umbrella (yet another rofl-dumb songs).

I get it. Totally.

But then a few songs later, I'm treated to a healthy dose of Maroon 5. MAROON FIVE. The group has no established fans in the hip-hop community, as they've only dabbled in "black music" as guest performers once or twice to my knowledge. And the band's lead singer has possibly the highest, unmistakably whitest, voice this side of the equator. And to top it off, the song only uses three cuss words in total. Take another "urban" artist getting tons of radio play, T.I., his "Big Things Poppin'" contains seven no-no words IN THE CHORUS ALONE! Do the math! It's so parental-discretion-advised-rated that he's had to change the words for the radio mixes! I'm not saying it's right, but that's just the trends. And Maroon 5 is not a part of the trend.

Color me befuddled.

Popular music truly goes in cycles. Pop music seemed primed for a return anyways, and is probably sitting around in a corner waiting for a chance at the limelight. And apparently, the Spice Girls are reuniting for a tour.

Coincidence?

Me thinks not.

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 6:10 PM .


Sunday, July 01, 2007

I'm Starting An Interactive Blog Experience  

*Preface - Explain why MIMS is hot! Link to an explanation you found. Attempt to write out your own theory. I realize it's been a good half year since this song came out, but the fact that I'm still pondering the claims he makes, and the fact that I run this blog, those facts are both completely irrelevant. I'm aawesome. Head over to the commenting section, it should all be going down there. I hope. Allow me to start.

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posted by Buttug McOysty . 9:23 PM .