Mother Nature

This picture was taken at a logging camp in Sweden. It shows the roads leading into what remains of the forest. Its not photoshopped this the view from the air.

More Viral Videos

First up....

Are you hot? The search for Americas hottest cartoon.






Next a fantastic commercial for Evian Water.

Dance, White Boy, Dance

Love it....




Here is a link to the full and better quality version.

Gay Marriage and Domestic Partner Benefits

With the Gay Marriage debate in Canada finally put to rest, the debate is heating up among our friends. Last year while Mark and I were on a holiday with two other couples that we have been friends with for years, the marriage question came up. Okay I brought up the marriage question if were going to be honest. I wanted to see what the other couples were thinking. It was an even split. First of all a bit of history, Mark and I are the "newest" couple at 13 years the other two have been together about 17 years and 25 years approximately. I was really surprised by the fear that the discussion brought out. I have always seen myself as being married at some point, but it was only in the past few years that it became a legal option, and took on more relevance for me. I have discussed marriage with Mark to some degree and he really does not want to get married. I don't think that it has anything to do with our relationship, at least I hope not, but he always tells me that its just a piece of paper. I won't go into all the reasons that it's not just a piece of paper as that's not the point of this rant.
Currently as a common law couple we share all the benefits of a married couple in the eyes of the law as well as our respective employers. The company that Mark works for and I used to work for is a very progressive employer and offered domestic partner benefits almost fifteen years ago. This was a time when there was no other legal option for gay and lesbian couples other than a common law situation. Now that there is an option, how long until companies start insisting that employees be legally married to continue to receive these same benefits. I don't think its a huge leap to make. Here is a link to an article from the U.S. where the trend has already begun.
Just something to think about while were on the quest for equality.

Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead

In 2004 a fantastic comedy/horror film was released called Shaun of the Dead. It was a spoof of all the zombie movies that have been made over the last few years. It was not a very big success at the box office but did fairly well on dvd, I think you could call it a cult film.
The creators of Shaun of the Dead are back with another spoof on a classic formula. This time they go after action/cop movies with Hot Fuzz.
The trailer is not great but the word is the movies is hilarious.
Simon Pegg wrote and starred in Shaun also has penned the new Hot Fuzz.
Avid movie watchers might recognize Simon from a small role he had in Mission Impossible III with Tom Cruise.

Here's the trailer for Hot Fuzz




Shaun of the Dead, rent it if you see it at the video store.

Nintendo Wii - I finally got one....

The Nintendo Wii launched in North America on November 19th, 2006. After almost two months of searching I was finally able to purchase one last week. All right it wasn't exactly two months of searching, I was hoping that I would get one for Christmas but no one else in the family was able to find one for me. I did spend a a few days driving all over Ottawa and Gatineau looking for a store that had a system in stock. I must have visited about thirty stores minimum. I'm sure some of you are thinking that I'm crazy. I started my quest in earnest back on Dec 27th with my brother. The first store we went to had no Wii's surprise surprise, but they did have PS3's. Which my brother snapped up quite quickly. Without getting to technically geeky the PS3 is much more advanced than the Wii in a processing capacity and technological advances, but I have always been a huge fan on Nintendo and their games.

My addiction goes all the way back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System known as the NES. I spent hours playing Super Mario Brothers on that system and to this day I have never actually completed the game.


That lead to the Super NES a few years later and more Mario games.






Next up was the Nintendo 64 and arguably the greatest Super Mario game of all time. Super Mario 64. Recently resurrected on the Nintendo DS.





Not long ago Nintendo said goodbye to the cartridges that had given them years of financial success and switched to cute little cd's, with the launch of the GameCube. The system launched with Mario Sunshine yet another award winning game staring that fantastic little plummer named Mario.







That brings us to the present and the Wii. If your not familiar with the new system the major technological advance is the controller. Nintendo has really been considered a third place player in the console wars for the last few years. The sales of the PS2 and the Xbox eclipsing that of GameCube. So what did the bigwigs at Nintendo decide to do? Go after the non-traditional gamer. When Will Wright and Maxis tried this with the development of the Sims game they tapped in to a market that was largely ignored and produced the largest selling game of all time. Nintendo focused on making a controller that was accessible to everyone. They eliminated as many buttons as possible and made the controller motion sensitive. So all you have to do is basically wave the controller at the screen and the characters will respond accordingly. Since I got my Wii home and took it out of the box I have conducted I highly scientific experiment with my friends and family. Over the last week we have had many people over to play, with their ages ranging from late twenty's to their earlier sixties and there has yet to be a person who didn't enjoy playing Wii sports. This system is going to be huge. I guess its already huge selling almost 2 million units since its launch. Now the countdown begins for Mario Galaxy which is expected to go gold in March.











Here is a video in the style of the PC and Mac commercials comparing the benefits of the PS3 and the Wii. Enjoy.

Allison Quets - Kidnapper

You maybe already familiar with the story of Allison Quets the Florida women who kidnapped her twins from their adopted family. She came here to Canada, Ottawa specifically because she head that we were a child friendly city, what ever that means. Here is an excerpt from the Ottawa Citizen today from the people who have been hiding her for the last few days.

Her Ottawa-area supporters are adamant that Ms. Quets poses no threat to the twins. On the contrary, they say, she's an honest, sincere woman who loves her children and didn't intend to give them away in the summer of 2005.

Ms. Thompson broke down at one point while seated beside her husband, recounting their experiences with Ms. Quets this past week.

"I'm just amazed," she said. "She works so hard and it's impossible to explain as to why a mother who was with her children has to prove that she's the one who should be with them.

"She didn't do anything wrong other than loving them."

Ms. Quets has stayed at their one-storey home since Thursday night, resting and regaining strength after six days in Ottawa police custody.

Where do I begin....

She didn't do anything wrong other than loving them??????
She kidnapped them and fled the country. That sounds pretty damn wrong to me.
I feel bad for this woman, who made a very difficult decision to give her children up for adoption, and now regrets what she had done. Except that she had nine months to think about what she wanted to do and decided to give her children away. What about the adoptive parents, they followed all the legal procedures, and lets face facts its not easy to adopt children in North America. These people that think there helping this woman, but I don't think they realize the harm there doing.
What do you think people would be saying about this kidnapping if it was the father of the twins that had snatched them from their legal family. I promise you it would be a very different reaction than the one your hearing now. They would be calling for his head on a plate.
What about all the future adoptive families.
As a person that has contemplated adoption, what kind of message does send to potential families? You can follow all the legal procedures and have all the details in place then two years after you have raised this child(ren) the birth mother can change her mind and say I want them back...
Or worse steal them.
I will be following this case closely I think that it could create a very dangerous precedent.
These children belong to the adoptive family now.
As much as I can sympathize with the birth mother who now regrets her decision to give her children away. There is no justification for her to break the law and steal these children away from their legal parents.
If she had followed the rule of law and proceed to fight this in the courts I would have been a bit more sympathetic. The fact is though, were talking about a woman in her late forties who had plenty of time to think about what she was doing. This is not a confused, scared, sixteen year old girl. This women was an educated person who had to now exactly what she was doing. Then to try and blame it on postpartum, depression which is an insult to all women who has suffered from this debilitating disease is unconscionable. You do not suffer from this before you give birth only after.
I hope that this women is given an appropriate sentence as well as some psychological counseling.
That and a strong message is sent to adoptive parents that their rights will be upheld.

This Day In History - The Ice Storm Of 1998

I can't believe that it was nine years ago that we were suffering through one of the worst ice storms in memory. I remember things start off slowly with some predictions for freezing rain. If your are at all familiar with Ottawa, freezing rain is not uncommon at all. We normally take it in stride.
This storm was different.
Over a period of four days we got something nearing 85mm of freezing rain. It was actually a beautiful sight with everything covered in ice.
It was strange living through it because it was happening in slow motion. It never really rained that hard it was more like a steady drizzle. We were very luck. Our power never went out once in our house. Power was out all around us be we were spared. Some homes in the surrounding villages of Ottawa had no power for weeks, I think at the height of the storm almost 2 million homes were without power.
Mark and I didn't get away without any problems though. Because we both work in the grocery business we weren't given the luxury of staying home like most of the people in the city. We were expected to make our way through all the ice to work. I remember the first day not being to bad, slow going, but I lived very close to work. It was the second day things got ruff. Sometime during the first night a lovely tree in our front yard gave way under all the ice and collapsed towards the house. We were very lucky that it did not hit the house but the tree was just far enough away to land on our front step. No damage, but we had to climb through a tree to get out our front door.
I think my most vivid memory about the ice storm was about work. I was working in a fair sized grocery store at the time and we would normally have about four or five cashiers working during the day. I remember trying to keep things moving smoothly because it was busy.(The worse the weather forecast the busier the store gets) It was about ten o'clock in the morning when the City of Ottawa declared a state of emergency.
I had never experienced panic buying before but I got witness it fist hand. All our customers were very calm but the store filled up in what seemed like an instant. I just remember getting on a cash and having the store owner call anyone he could to come in and work.
Normally when we know there will be a huge increase in business we can plan ahead and order in supplies, but the week after New Years is traditionally a very slow time so stock was low. We started running out of things by about 3pm in the afternoon. We we ran out of staples like bread, and milk. Thats when people started to get worried. I remember getting a call from a Citizen reporter asking what was going on, a customer had called to say that there were going to be shortages.
We survived.
I was looking back for info on the ice storm and I was surprised to read that 1998 was also an El Nino year and thats what most weather forecasters attributed the strange weather too.



Fast forward to January 2007 and were in another El Nino year. I took some pictures around the house because were having some freaky weather again, but this time its the kind that I love. We have been above freezing most of the winter.
In fact winter really hasn't even arrived yet. There is now snow and its been so warm over the last few days the spring flowers have started to bloom.

Here is a link to some information on El Nino if your interested.

Summer Movies In January

Now that Christmas is over and the summer movie season is not that far off all kinds of new trailers are hitting the net.
Here are a handful of movies that look promising.


In no particular order:


The Simpson's Movie - This a movie that I have been waiting for for years. There have been rumors about this movie for at least five years now. Finally its getting done.
The trailer gives me hope that it will be done well.


Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

I really didn't expect much when I saw the first Fantastic 4 movie, but it was a really fun movie.



300

This movie is not one I would normally be interested in, but there is something about the look of this movie.



Music & Lyrics

Nothing like a good romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore with the added bonus of spoofing the 80's.



Wild Hogs

Talk about star casting. Here's another comedy staring Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy, and Marisa Tomei.



Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

What can you say about Harry Potter its going to be huge. Harry is certainly starting to look older.



Primeval

This one is not for the faint of heart. I haven't seen a really good horror movie in quite awhile I hope this is the one to scare the crap out of me.

Classic Disaster Movies

Being born in the early 70's I was lucky enough to be of age to see some of the classic 1970's disaster movies. Most of these movies I watched with my father on television. I have always loved a good disaster movie and that has not diminished over the years. I love watching some of the old trailers touting the all start casts that they have assembled for a movie experience never before seen. Most of the early disaster movies were almost comical in special effects and acting, but that's what gave them their charm. So I decided to make a list of some of my favorite disaster movies.

In no particular order:


Earthquake (1974)
This was a fun movie lots of falling buildings and Charlton Heston to boot.









Airport (1970)
The first movie was probably the best, but the sequels had their charm.



The sequels were:

Airport 1975 (1974)









Airport '77 (1977)
This was the sequel where the plane ended up at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe a tribute to the Poseidon Adventure.








The Concorde: Airport '79 (1979)










The Towering Inferno (1974)
Probably one of my most favorite 70's disaster movies. I remember trying to stay up late to watch this movie on t.v.


More Later.