The following is enough content to probably fuel like six individual posts, especially considering the usual quality of standard WAMBAG fare, but regardless…here it is anyway in its entirety. I give you yet another installment of…Choking Yak’s Provoking Facts.

– I think that title has actually gotten to the point where it’s just completely dead to me. At first it had that “it’s so bad it’s good again” appeal. Then after awhile it just became plain old bad, like an infected wound in my side that wouldn’t heal, and eventually developed gangrene and started to smell like almonds. And now it’s just completely dead to me – it’s mention evokes absolutely no emotion from me anymore, good or bad. It’s like Shake Ya Tailfeathers – I can’t even hear that song now. My mind has been exposed to its stimuli so much that it’s actually learned to reflexively tune it out. I don’t even see the code anymore – all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead.

– The first heat advisory of the year was issued yesterday, and thus it was on the hottest day of the year that the TTC conveniently experienced signal troubles that locked down the entire Yonge and University line. I found out afterwards that the service outage was just between 4:30 PM and 5:30 PM as well – conveniently right around that magical 5:00 PM window where like 90% of the downtown core leaves for home. Which resulted in hundreds of grumpy, sweaty would-be-commuters walking up and down Yonge street at the height of rush hour yesterday in 35 degree heat. With things looking grim and the prospects of an enjoyable evening narrowing by the second, I enlisted the aid of one of mankind’s greatest and yet most underappricated (it’s a word, screw you) inventions.

The slushy.

And let me tell you something – no dollar eighty six was better spent in the city of Toronto yesterday than when I paid for that slushy. In fact, to taste that cooling, delicious experience that only a slushy in 35 degree weather could provide, I would have thought it to be a deal even if they were going for like fifty bucks a pop. That was how much I was willing to spent for a 189 mL container of blended ice, sugar, and food colouring yesterday. And it would have been worth every cent.

Combined with the fact that there’s three comic book stores on Yonge between my office and College, I had no choice but to whip out that shit-eating grin. Walking up Yonge street at a pace which I can only describe as “leisurely”, so many people were staring at my smiling, slushy sucking face that I bet that’s how Scarlett Johannson feels like when she’s drinking slushies. I had one of those surreal moments where it seemed like I was living out a beverage commercial…heck, with I Am John going in my ears, I pretty much was living a commercial.

Enjoyed my slushy, picked up some trades in some nicely air conditioned comic book stores, took the still functioning Bloor line across to Scarborough Town, lured Jess into giving me a ride to my car on the other side of town by treating her to an undercooked steak dinner…fantastic day all around, despite the TTC troubles.

Or maybe not so much “despite” but “because of” the TTC troubles. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

Thanks again for everything, Jess.

– So apparently 20th Century Fox is going to attempt to make a movie based off The Sims. So a live-action movie about real life. That’s great work, Fox.

– I’ve been trying to teach myself how to count all the coins in my pocket without taking them out or looking. Just by touch. So everyday before I leave for work, I grab a random half-handful of coins from my coin jar (it’s actually a plastic Breyer’s ice cream container) and practice counting them throughout the day, each time after I’ve forgotten how much there is from the last count. I’m getting better, but pennies and nickels are still giving me a lot of trouble.

I want to get to the point where I can just like dip my hands into a Scrooge McDuck-sized vault of coins, just close my eyes for a minute, and get it within a nickel. And then I want to swim in it.

– It’s been difficult adjusting to these big policy changes that have been going on around here at work. For example, this week they’ve stopped offering milk in the 15 mL containers – now it’s just a communal two litre carton of milk. Thus there is absolutely no way to accurately measure 30 mL of milk to put into my coffee anymore. I’m lost, frightened, confused, and angry.

The first coffee I had post-switch, I poured too much milk into it. It tasted exactly the same, but the knowledge that there was more milk in there than usual felt like it was burning a hole in my very being…and I could not live with that terrible secret harboured in my heart. I started to feel like everyone I passed in the hall was staring at my coffee, and thinking “What is that kid thinking? There’s WAY too much milk in that cup of coffee. What a fucking douchebag.”

I CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS PRESSURE

– Anyone buy a TKO punching bag from a Cincinnati-area Costco recently? You should be aware that they are recalling them because “the fill material in the heavy punching bag does not meet [their] high quality standards“. Before I get to the payoff…the only thing that disappoints me about the story is that they didn’t realize that they could have probably made some serious cash by pawning it off on eBay. I mean it’s a niche market, but there’s a market out there nonetheless. Anyway, apparently the punching bags were full of used underwear.

“That’s not going to be good for business.”
“That’s not going to be good for anybody.”