I believe the universe is ending. Sacred laws we knew deep down in the fibre of our beings when we were children no longer apply in this era. This is unnatural. This is perverted. This is blasphemy.

This is madness!

(Madness? THIS IS SEGAAA!!!)

I suffer, because I am angry, because I fear this, because I don't understand it. For one...how are the track events going to work? How would they make sense and even exist in the realm of feasibility?

Is this a great watershed moment in video game history? Finally a rallying point of unity in the community? A great landmark of popculture?

Or is it the end of the world as we know it? (Not exactly, but you can see what I was going for, so screw you guys.)

"La-la-la-loo-loo...Luuuke...Luuuke! I am your fah-ther! La-la-lay-lu..."
"Oh, I've interrupted happy time! Now I know you want to sit there and keep being not slim, but we gotta work a little today."
"...that was from Star Wars."
"I know."

3/28/2007 12:51:00 PM | Comments (0)

Wow, I've been stressed out lately. But I went on an insane, mind bending MBP binge last night, and got all the negative energy out of my system. Friends come and go and relatives die, but Malaysian bear porn always puts things back into perspective for me. Now here are some Provoking Facts from me, Choking Yak, to put you into perspective, motherfuckers.

Note how easily I could have split this post into five separate ones and spread it out over the course of a month. But that's not how we play - we don't compromise the integrity of our content like that. We're raw like mofuckin' sushi, bitchasses.

- Some breaking news, freshly reported just this hour by the Los Angeles Times - the Milwaukee Brewers have traded reserve outfielder Brady Clark for some bullpen help in the form of the Dodgers' RHP Elmer Dessens.

Not a bad trade for either team. LA clears a spot for Rudy Seanez and gets someone to replace the injured Jason Repko, whereas Milwaukee trades from a surplus to address a need and clears Clark's $3.2 million off the books.

Of particular interest is that the Brewers have now traded away their fourth outfielder in Clark, with Kevin Mench heavily involved in rumours all offseason (he's due $3.4 million this year) it's likely he'll be traded as well. Meaning that with Geoff Jenkins, Bill Hall, and Corey Hart as the starters, this could open up a spot for everybody's fourth favourite ex-Blue-Jay-current-Brewer Gabe Gross to make the team as the fourth outfielder. Furthermore, if Bill Hall can't adjust to his first year in centerfield or the Brewers finally realize that Tony Graffanino and Craig Counsell really suck and they move Hall back into the infield...well then guess who's the top candidate to start in center? That's right, The Grossman is.

- We had a grand department reshuffling recently, and today is the first day at my new desk. It's exactly 32 steps farther down the building from where my old desk was, meaning that for every meeting I have to go to now, I'm walking 64 more steps now than I was before. Multiply that by like a dozen meetings a week and a lunch break every other day (I find that food and nutrition in general is overrated), and we're talking like...a billion extra steps...per day! I'm guesstimating here, but I'm pretty sure that I'm literally looking at exactly 1,000,000,000.000 extra steps every single day. That is ridiculous.

But I think I have a slightly bigger desk now, so I'm happy. This is also the most exciting thing to have happened to me in the last four months, so no complaints here.

I also inherited a bizarre half-dead houseplant from the previous occupant of this desk. He moved out in January and left his plant here, that fucking amateur, so that could be why it's all droopy and unhealthy looking. I'm going to nurse him (I've named him Earl) back to health...and then maybe I can smoke him or something.

- Some neato not-really-that-popular music links for you now. I'm almost positive that you could just skip this part and just check out Pitchfork instead...but whatever.

Max is all over these guys already, but I wanted to post this Tokyo Police Club video because it looks like they filmed it with a budget of absolutely no dollars. Music videos...they're that easy. And hey, they're from Newmarket.
Tokyo Police Club - Nature Of The Experiment [youtube]

This video is just balls-out insane though. Song by Grizzly Bear, video by Encyclopedia Pictura. What does it mean!?!
Grizzly Bear - Knife [mov]

I have absolutely no background on this one, I only know that I was surfing around randomly and I came across some electronica weirdness from Australia. Frankly, anything with the lyric "ice cream will save the day" is a win in my book. I'm easy that way.
Muscles - Ice Cream [mp3]

I caught this funny Lindsey Lohan song by Pase Rock a couple months back, but it didn't seem to have enough muster to have it's own post...but now that I've found this song by The Teenagers (I think they're French), I can finally compare them in regards to which is the best female-celebrity-titled-song ever. My personal favourite is still Natalie Portman by Ozma (Rock and Roll Part Three, 2001), which was probably one of the only things I enjoyed back in high school. (I think they're back!)
The Teenagers - Starlett Johansson [mp3]
Pase Rock - Lindsey Lohan's Revenge [mp3]
Ozma - Natalie Portman [mp3]

Anyone remember The Blow? Their single was called Parentheses from their album Paper Television - I think I heard it on The Edge once at a weird, indie hour. I liked it, but I can't remember it. Anyway, one of the guys is doing the solo thing. It's called YACHT and the album "I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real." is coming out in Mayish...I'll probably be picking it up (read: downloading it illegally) just based on the craziness of the single - I think it's some electronic-grunge stuff. Also, I cannot think of another album title composed of more than one sentence off the top of my head, which also amuses me.
YACHT - See A Penny (Pick It Up) [mp3]

I'm not completely sure I get this last one though - it's just straight up TRIPPIN' SON. Maybe too indie for some of you guys, don't know if you'll be able to handle the complexity of the musical and lyrical layers. All I know is that it's more dangerous to me than Heart, Drops Of Jupiter, Adia, and even Cells combined.
Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply [youtube]

I'm so retarded.

Hi Milton. What's happening. Uh...I'm going to have to ask you to go ahead and move your desk again, so if you could go ahead and get it as far back against that wall as possible, that would be great.

3/26/2007 03:22:00 PM | Comments (0)

Have you ever woken up at 2:16 PM in the afternoon only because of a telemarketer call, and suffered a crippling random bout of depression where you feel like the only thing that's worth getting out of bed for is to go and stick your head in the oven?

...yeah, neither have I.

Kelly Clarkson's original American Idol audition. Weird, 20 year-old Kelly Clarkson almost looks kinda busted.

And now some wise words from Van Helsing, one of the wisest of them all...

To have memories of those you have loved and lost is perhaps harder than to have no memories at all.

3/25/2007 05:27:00 PM | Comments (0)

I just sent out a mass email asking the people managing some particular servers to check the clocks to verify that the DST patch went in correctly this past weekend.

That was two minutes ago.

I just realized that in the email, which was sent to a group of over thirty people, I wrote "cocks" instead of "clocks".

That was one minute ago.

Currently I am freaking the hell out because I can't decide on which course of action to now take. I figure that these are my options.

(A) Hope nobody notices.
(B) Send out a quick correction email that reads roughly like "Er...I mean 'clocks'."
(C) Kill everyone on the distribution list.

Quickly, the pros and cons...

(A) Pros - No one will acknowledge it. Cons - But everyone will silently laugh at me because they'll think I didn't know what I did.
(B) Pros - Acknowledge that I do know. Cons - Completely eliminates the possibility of someone not noticing, potential for open ridicule.
(C) Pros - Nothing to worry about. Cons - Lots more work to pick up the slack for all the dead people.

God...every single second I take to decide makes it more and more difficult to go with (B), which makes me wonder why I'm typing this out right now.

I'm just going to go with (A), never acknowledge it, and just generally pretend it never happened. And anyway, I'd be kind of rude, like Beavis and Butthead style, to bring it up even if they did catch it. The same social laws that I often flaunt now protect me from public embarrassment. How ironic. But everyone will know what I did and forever hold that knowledge, secretly, in their hearts. And I will be silently judged.

But in the event that someone brings it up, it's (C) all over the place. I'm almost praying for someone to do it now.

Please also verify the Windows and Java patches by checking that the clocks on the Java GUI and the Windows system time match up.

3/12/2007 09:17:00 AM | Comments (0)

Time for some links.

- It's a big fish. I like how the guy pulls that insanely large fish up and just leaves it with it's mouth cradled between his legs. Just doesn't seem smart to me.

- This greatest Super Mario cheat code ever, courtesy of the MUGEN game editor. Just kills me how the level theme is still playing at the end of it.

- Remember that retarded NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!! video we all (read: only I) loved? Here's another one, with a nice gay twist to it. Beware if you don't watch it, for THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS GOING TO DIE!!! ...completely retarded...just the way I like it.

- Now for no reason at all, three random clips from three of my favourite movies, in increasing levels of sophistication. The Mockingbird scene from Dumb & Dumber, The World Of Pain scene from The Big Lebowski, and The Roger Moore scene from Lost In Translation.

- And last, a neato bonus in the 300 trailer. It's right after the shot of the kissing and the slashing and before the shot of the guy running through explosions, at around the 3:38 mark. After this, I'm willing to put it above even the Cells-induced-car-flippage-goodness of the Sin City trailer. (Here it is again, because you probably want to watch it again now that I mentioned it.) Though it's hard to top the sentimental attachment I have for that one.

As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding. Blake's different. He understands perfectly...and he doesn't care.

3/11/2007 06:25:00 PM | Comments (0)

This post will be pretty much be like a 100% stream of consciousness post. It might seem a bit odd to call particular attention to that, as due to my poor writing skills and insane thinking patterns, it probably seems like every single one of my posts is a pure stream of consciousness deal. Thus it may frighten you to know that I generally do have a vague and general structure to each post. I guess that's a bit like finding out that a bronze metal winner at the Special Olympics isn't really disabled. But in the long and illustrious history of this site, out of my relatively longer posts (over two paragraphs), I think there have been maybe only a half dozen where I've just started to type it out with absolutely no idea where it was going to end up. This is one of those posts.

I do it whenever I'm really stuck and strapped for content. What generally happens is that I try to rant and ramble for long enough to fill the page with so many words about nothing particularly interesting that you'll just give up and not read any of it. Hopefully you just click away from the site with the impression that this thing is updated on a frequent, if irregular, basis. Has that happened here today yet? No? Probably not enough paragraphs yet. I need to make some breaks to create the illusion of pauses and space.

I used to do that a lot for English essays.

However the problem with paragraphs in this context is that it has a way of breaking down and organizing the text into semi-readable and manageable chunks. Like if I had just combined all these words so far into one lump of text instead of splitting it up into four paragraphs, it would probably have been daunting and intimidating enough that you probably wouldn't have even reached this point. ...so maybe not a great idea.

Usually at this point I just pull a random thought off the top of my head, and end up devoting five hundred words to like...wondering if the model of evolution eventually calls for monkeys to grow the desire to wear clothes and to maybe eventually make monkey sitcoms if their resulting clothed social and economic structure allowed and called for that, and whether those sitcoms would be any good because of their enhanced physical agility and dexterity that would have slowed or prevented the development of slapstick comedy and thus may ironically stumped the overall evolution of monkey comedy...or why Spider-Man can take full out punches from guys like Iron Man, Rhino, or the Hulk and yet still be easily cut with edged weapons like the Green Goblin's razor bats that theoretically deliver less pounds per square inch than the Hulk's punches...

But I don't really have any of those, so I have to go with small personal anecdotes and fluff them up to completely unjustifiable extents and see where that takes me. Join me, won't you? It'll be such an exciting journey.

The fluorescent light in the men's washroom at work flickers like every hundredth of a second, almost imperceptible to the human eye. Every time I go in there I can feel something going wrong with my brain, like how the American army used that microwave frequency to disrupt Green Lantern's thoughts when the JLA was fighting the Ultramarines.

...hurm...not much there, must move on to the next anecdote.

So I've been using the stock keyboard on my laptop at work for the entire time I've been here...and yesterday we all got goodies in the form of new keyboards. I don't know if it's because I'm just not an inherently trusting person, but it's times like these when I can't help but wonder if there's ulterior motives behind it. Like maybe while we're all enamored with our new shiny, spiffy Logitech Media Center keyboards, they're going to fire us all and throw us out on the street. And we wouldn't make a fuss, because we'd all still be like "Well...tough break...but at least while I was employed I had a nice new keyboard!" That's suspicious as hell. I still don't completely grasp the concept of giving people gifts randomly, just out of the goodness of your heart. It's unnatural.

It's a nice keyboard though. It makes just the right key-clacking noise. It's right at that level where there's a satisfying clack to every keypress, and when you're writing an email or a blog post and there's a stretch of sentences that you already have laid out perfectly in your head, and you just completely blitz through it, the amount of clickin' and clackin' makes you feel like some sort of primordial techno-god. I don't know about you, but hearing that and feeling like I can type four hundred words a second arouses me. Sexually. But it's not loud enough that it becomes obnoxious. And most importantly, not loud enough to be notably noticed in the surrounding cubicles so that everybody knows when I'm typing and when I'm not typing. And I'm not looking to arouse anyone around me with my typing prowess, so that's fine.

The only thing is that like for all new keyboards, the set of Insert-Home-End-Delete-PageUp-PageDown keys is always configured differently. So I have to rewire the psuedo-touch-typing (I don't really use my pinkies for anything other than Enter) section of my brain, because they moved the End key to the upper right and doubled the size of the Delete. End is actually the key I use the most - moving it even farther away is just sadistic. It's messed up is what it is. So now I'm Paging Down instead of Ending all the time...I have to fucking look for the End key every time like I'm some sort of slack-jawed, senile, computer illiterate faggot. God, life isn't even worth living anymore! I really don't need this type of stress in my life. I don't know why they can't just standardize them like every other key on the board - every company's gotta change it up for every single keyboard they put out, in some grand delusional quest for ultimate ergonomy. ...ergonomecy? Ergonomancy? Is that even a word? Should I have just said "ergonomics?" Damned English.

Anyway, for a piece of equipment that I heavily use for like eight hours every weekday, getting a nice new keyboard is not an insignificant change in my life. I'm not exactly sure, but I roughly guesstimate that I type like five bajillion words a day, so even a slight upgrade in comfyness per letter represents a big improvement when multiplied a bajillionfold. It's a lot like how I have to spend weeks scouting out potential candidates whenever I need a new hat - holding marketing surveys, studying results from focus groups, hiring personal image consulting firms, and a full spectrum of sabermetric analyses to determine the potential success and bandwagoning potential of the sports teams that appeared on them. At least when I used to wear hats a lot more.

Regardless, I have already begun designs to steal this keyboard and swap it with my crappier home one, which I use like 16 hours every weekday after I come home from work.

Speaking of crappy personal anecdotes - I went down to the Richtree Market Restaurant in the Eaton Centre earlier at lunch, which are the natural nesting grounds of my favourite prey - the delicious apple crumble. And the piece that the nice girl handed me was so massive and crumblicious that the plastic case thingie she put it in wouldn't even close properly. There was crumble exploding out of it, like it could not be contained and was laughing and jeering at the universe at large for even considering such a fantastical notion.

You just know sometimes whether or not it's going to be a good day. Generally you'd like to figure that out at the beginning of the day, but it's hardly reasonable to complain about finding out at lunch time. At least you found out. Because at the very least, it's like you know the rest of the day certainly isn't going to be bad.

Ever wake up with like Walking On Sunshine, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, or whatever your personal happy song is? (You Set Me Free by Michelle Branch) Generally that's a good sign of a good day. That...or you're gay for having Wham! on the brain unprompted. Or you look outside to see a nice clear blue sky, roll out of bed with your hair already good and combed somehow, or the gate at the front of the parking lot is busted and not taking any money so it just lets you in for free? You just know things are looking up when your crumble's overspilling. It's like waking up on a Saturday.

I am having a good day.

And I think that's a good note to end on.

Can you hear the jack whales singing?

3/08/2007 05:38:00 PM | Comments (0)

A little look at life in the office.

From: Yak's Coworker [mailto:yakscoworker@work.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 12:10 PM
To: Yak, Choking [mailto:chokingyak@work.com]
Subject: Are you a cool person?

Check it guys.

Attachment: cool_test.html

Yak's Coworker: 1
Choking Yak: 0

3/06/2007 05:30:00 PM | Comments (0)

Oh that's right - I have a website.

To make up for it, here is a disturbingly intimate view into the life of Choking Yak. The things I share with you now have never been fully revealed to anyone before. You have been warned.

I give you...pictures of what's inside my pants...pockets.


And then the contents of my wallet.


More regarding my lucky 7 of spades (I just call it lucky, I don't really think it's actually lucky), because people always look at me weirdly when they find that in there, like it's not a normal thing to have the 7 of spades in your wallet or something...high school, lunch time, Big 2, cafeteria, every, single, day. That eventually got a little bit boring, so I started cheating like crazy to spice it up, see what I could get away with before people noticed. Suffice to say, I got away with a lot. Pretty easy as long as you keep it to rounds during when it's your turn to shuffle. I'd put down a 3,4,5,6 on top of an old pair of 7's as a straight, tuck cards under my hat while pretending to scratch the back of my head, tuck a diamond in a heart flush...it probably helped that everyone there was so trusting and stupid.

So one time I stole a 7 of spades - just a random card, no special sentimental meaning, in case I needed it for a flush or something - and lunch ended while it was still tucked in my hat. So I forgot to give it back. I don't even remember who it belongs to anymore.

That was like eight years ago.

Anyway...I've always felt that knowing the contents of a man's wallet ranks somewhere between "getting drunk with them" and "having homosexual relations with them" on the Guy Intimacy Scale. So now I have laid bare the contents of my wallet for all the internet to see. And we are all closer now because of it.

I will now sell four copies of "The Three E.P.'s" by The Beta Band.

3/06/2007 01:23:00 AM | Comments (0)