I remember my friend Erik Tessier telling me that he had read somehwere that people were prognosticating that Johnny Depp would one day be the greatest actor of our generation.  We were teenagers.  I didn't know very much about acting, but I thought to myself, "sure, I can see that."

Then one day somebody said to Johnny Depp, "Hey!  If you dress up like a drenched clown and run around acting like you're drunk all the time, we'll pay you 20 million dollars…

...and you can do that as MANY TIMES AS YOU LIKE".

Johnny Depp on board for 'Pirates' 4—Newsday.com

Just when you think…

It could not possibly get any better…

It does.

This American Life – the standup routine about sleep is worth the price of admission.

About Gmail Paper

This is going to change everything…

I find it interesting, of course, that now that I have plenty of free time to write whatever I want, I don't have anything to write about. This must change, and it must change. To quote the words of my pastor here,

"Danny, we must see this change. It must change Danny and we must do it!"

That could basically be implied to any situation. I'm really just pointing out that he likes to call me Danny and use the word "must".

Now. Let me make one thing clear:

You do not call me Danny. Nobody calls me that. Even my own father doesn't call me Danny. In general, I don't like it, and if you call me Danny and think you're being coy, I'll say something once or twice, and then secretly dislike you in my thoughts. Plus when it comes time for fun pranks, you'll be at the top of my list.

My pastor has somehow gotten around this, and my Mom, Aunts, and Grandma. So you need to be a small Mexican woman or a very confident South African; otherwise I think you should stick with Dan or Dan Ray. And it's fine. We're good.

Also:

Whistling:

Me and colleague Crystal are arguing about my facebook status, which says, "Dan just noticed that walking around the hallways whistling the "death star" theme evokes funny responses." I thought that was pretty funny, Crystal says I'm strange and that whistling is strange, especially whistling star wars. Lame.

Lame:

It occurs to me that lame is a great word to use to silence somebody or end an argument. I mean really, what can you say against lame? "Not lame?" Well that's lame too. How you say it makes all the difference, but if you just inflect it properly, nobody can come back from it. Try it. Try it on your kids…

Mom I don't wanna go to bed!

Go to bed!

No! I don't want to!

Why not?

Cause I want to stay up and watch more tv!

Lame…

Kid will be sleeping inside of 10 minutes, I guarantee. Some may disagree. Lame.

Construction:

The nice construction people at my work have decided that from about 8:30am to 4:30pm would be the perfect time to start drilling into the wall right next to my cubicle (and everyone else's) with a 40-foot-tall drilling machine. During this time I have:

• heard several people complain
  
• watched the Dean of the Business School run around frantically trying to get the construction workers to stop drilling with their 40-foot-tall drilling machine
  
• found out just how wonderful in-ear noise cancelling headphones truly are
  
• eaten a lot of bagels from solly's, with solly's fresh-made cream cheese, and
  
• asked several people over email, "hey do you hear a noise or anything? Is it raining outside?
  

Seriously though. It's really loud. Imagine if you took the biggest metal mixing bowl in your house, put it on your head, and then somebody stood on a chair behind you with a pair of chopsticks and a wooden spoon and they played drums on the bowl rapidly while screaming "African Drum Solo!" It's that loud.

Other Stuff:

• Bought a new (cheap used) bike. Giant size. Since I'm a giant. Anybody need a morning cycling partner? I'm thinking 5-10k rides.
  
• I've decided to learn how to play the djembe drum. My instructor will be youtube.
  
• I've been sending about 20-30 emails a day outside of my job. Why?
  
• I need a vacation. Anyone got any good ideas (trips to see family and friends in California don't really count as a "vacation")?
  
• I'm getting a lot of flak for not wearing a bike helmet. Including – but not limited to – obnoxious Canadian men coming up next to me in their cars and giving me a hard time about it. Do you think that's fair? I don't think it's fair.
  

- DK

I was having a nice coversation with some colleagues when all of a sudden one of them threw out that phrase. I don't know who Masrapstalnik is or why he would be being trade, when it dawns on me…
...Oh yeah, I'm in Canada. I sometimes forget, but then I'll be in a conversation where three office workers, one who is a manger and a male, and two who are in completely different departments and are female start a conversation about somebody with some strange foreign sounding last name and they all know who they are talking about. This is not my experience of all things sports.

For instance, I'm quite certain that had I gone to Sheryl Kerner, my former manager at another company I used to fork for in the U.S., and asked her, "Hey do you think Cal Ripken Jr. will retire?" Her response would be, "Who's that?"

For those of you who don't know, Cal Ripken Jr.. is probably one of the top 10 most significant baseball players of the last 20 years, if not all time. Most american sports fans remember vividly the moment that he broke the record for consecutive games played in 1995, the event which some think saved baseball after the 1994 players strike. You get the point. There isn't an American sports fan alive that doesn't know who Cal Ripken Jr is.

Even in light of that, I wouldn't be surprised that Sheryl didn't know who he was. Neither would I be surprised if a number of men and women in the office didn't know who he was. Some Americans just aren't interested in Sports. Likewise, a lot of Canadians aren't interested in sports, but that has nothing to do with hockey. In Canada, knowing about hockey is as central a daily concern as what one will eat, whether one will have a good day, or just the weather in general (which is a BIG daily concern here). Anyway you get the point. Somehow everyone who's Canadian is clued in. And I honestly don't know where they get their information. Maybe it's in the water. And maybe they drink special water that I don't drink. Either way, Canadians (even Canadians in "sunny" Vancouver) are crazy about hockey like…

...well like Canadians are crazy about hockey.

That was supposed to be my Monday Morning Update. Um. I also went on a retreat this weekend. That was pretty fun. You can get info on that here. The baby post is done, but since I put it off, new babies are being born every day (Congrats Kyle & Sarah). I need to get two more picures and hopefully it's up tomorrow.

DK

For whatever it's worth, the hockey player in question was named Trevor Linden

All's Quiet on the Northwestern Front

This is one of those weeks where all in my world seems to be filled with peace and free of trouble. Maybe I'm just feeling sentimental, maybe I'm on drugs. I'm not sure.

Top of the good news is that Jane and Dane are finally home with Ben and officially "out of the woods." Now I can go meet Ben and get my picture taken with him, and the baby montage will be complete and ready for posting.

I had a cold all weekend which stunk, but somehow the weekend was still able to be filled with fun and frolick. I also somehow managed to meet a bunch of new people, hang out with old friends, and even hang out with a really old (chico) friend who was in town visiting. That last one was my friend Meg Wolf who is visiting Vancouver from Southern California (northern mexico), but she'd get shy if I mentioned her name, so we'll just keep that between you and I.

In my leisure (being sick) time, I've been reading books that are far too complicated for me to understand and watching old episodes of Star Trek – DS9. This, combined with a foggy head from a stuffed up nasal passages makes for some pretty interesting dreams. Think commander Worf on the Bridge of the Defiant travelling through time while speculating on the extent to which Christological events may be efficable on our eternal redemption.

If Worf was a preacher, I would totally go to that church.

I had good conversations at Fun City. This is nothing new. But particularly Lynsey and I got into a couple of topics that I think are pretty interesting and crucial (apologetics – blogging about it now). Fun City's pretty much the greatest. The difference between my house and the Friends house is that none of us sleep with each other and Friends is lame.

Other than that and the fact that every conversation last week and this weekend were about the white people blog, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, TAL was good this week, as always.

DK

Have you ever typed the word "fail" into google images? Guaranteed good time. For maybe hours.

Brody beat me to the punchon posting links to this set of pictures. Basically they just make all the celebrities look chubbier, but it's still cool.

I haven't linked to Brant Hansens site in a while, although it is still probably my blogging inspiration (I swear that guy must spend three hours a day blogging, I hope he's getting paid). Anyway right here he tells the funniest joke that he's heard in a while. I agree. It's the funniest joke I've heard in a while. I told my roommate last night and I'm pretty sure he's still laughing.

">Annie is calling out to all of us to post our favorite cover songs. I'm hesitant to post a favorite anything related to muscic, but her use of the Pet Shop Boys got me remembering the beauty of 80s pop, which led me to downloading all of my pet shop boys onto my ipod (apparently I don't have always on my mind). This reminded me of probably one of my favorite bands growing up, Cause and Effect who had their keyboardist die. I thought they were done but apparently they got a new keyboardist (novel) and have been playing ever since!¹ Cool. I've got some catching up to do.

Anyway, that line of thought helped me realize that I do indeed have a favorite cover, which is a cover of one of my favorite all time songs. It's Frente performing "Bizarre Love Triangle", originally by New Order. This obviously reminded me of how much I loved new order and now I need to go find their CD. Thanks.

Here it is:

1. Interestingly, one of the best Star Trek, TNG episodes is titled "cause and effect" [ƒ]

I think maybe I've already complained on this blog about the whole coffee shops never fill up my coffee thing on this blog. So sorry but I have to complain about it again.

Because I seriously end up thinking about this every single time I go for a coffee.

Now let me make some things clear.

First off I like by. Coffee black. Completely black. No sugar, no cream – none whatsoever. This means that I don't need any room for cream. Where I came from this didn't really seem to be too uncommon. In fact, I remember when I was younger I used to work on restaurants and we were instructed to ask customers when they ordered coffee if they would like it black so that we didn't waste the little cream and sugar packets if they didn't want them. Apparently in BC nobody drinks their coffee black because whenever I tell people that I drink it black they just look at me funny. Like really? Ok, well do you want to put some cream in your black coffee though?

Seriously? Really?

Hence whenever you order coffee here they fill it about two thirds full and hand it to you smiling as of they gave you some poo In a box for your Christmas present but they knew you'd be long gone before you figured it out and cursed at them under your breath.

And so they never fill your coffee. And the thing is i really like their coffee. I mean its not like I'm such a caffeine addict that I'm really happy about having to go pay a solid $2 for a cup of brew when I could make it for free at home (and I like me the coffee I make at home). When I show up at your coffee establishment, it's because dang it I want your coffee.

So when I drive halfway across town to to to jj bean (the best coffee) I'm really hoping to get that full cup. Why can't they take that as a compliment?

…at this point you're probably asking yourself the question, "Man why can't the guy just ask them for a full cup of coffee. I'm sure they'll oblige."

Well Mr. or Mrs. Smarty Pants maybe you wouldn't mind telling me the freaking magic word then.

Because no matter what I say my cup always comes back half empty, i.e.,

This always leaves me in the awkward position of having to ask the coffee person to go back and fill it up the rest of the way. You can imagine how hard it is to phrase that one without sounding like a petty spendthrift. I'm thinking of starting to say, "Listen, just give me a coffee, the whole damn coffee."

Advice? I really hope this isn't making me sound like a cranky old man…

DK

p.s. sorry about the grammar errors, I wrote this on the iphone in the coffee shop

I think this is useful for us environmental types, because it gives us an alternative to throwing away the paper cups, which leads to less overall trees, or recycling the paper cups, which just leads to more paper cups and no more trees. This way we can use the paper cups to re-create the trees that they came from. And the best thing: it takes way less paper cups to make a paper-cup tree than paper cups that an actual tree produces. This is like super-uber recycling because it results in many trees from one tree. Now I can feel exceptionally good about asking for a paper cup instead of a mug when I have fogotten my travel mug but still want to have warm coffee. Because when you get it in a mug it gets cold really quick. Too quick.

DK