Fastest Game on Ice, eh?

So now that the Eskimoes have backed into the Grey Cup in the most akward and stumbling way possible, let's talk about hockey.

Remember what I said a few days ago about Edmonton being blue-collar, and having a football team to match? Well throw that away when you get to the Oilers. The Oilers are the antithesis of a blue-collar squad...unlike the teams you see in places like Philedelphia, Chicago, or even Detroit, for the entirety of its history in the NHL, the Oilers have been about speed, grace, and pure skill.

It's almost like the Oilers are the epitome, the representation of what Edmontonians would like their city to be, and during the golden years of the 80's, they were just that. They were glamourous. Flashy. Exciting. And with an undercurrent of grit beneath it...look at how Semenko became a minor hero in the city, even if noone else ever heard of him. The ice at the Colessium has been carefully tended over the years to be the best in the league to match it, the head of the ice plant acknowledged now as the best in the world. Even in the 90's, as the stars faded away, too expensive for the little blue-collar city, the spirit was maintained. Even as the league itself folded in and collapsed under the weight of slow-paced, defensive hockey, Edmonton stubbornly held on almost to the end. Only in the last couple of years before the strike was it finally ended, but the illusion was powerful still.

A lot of people wondered what was going to happen post-strike, and I must say that I'm a bit surprised by how forgiving this industrial city was. But maybe the workers understood here better than other cities might have. This is a labour town...perhaps the strike/lockout was seen in a more understanding light. Or maybe it's just that we have nothing better. Or maybe...we'll accept nothing better.

That's kinda where I want to move in the near future. Why has Edmonton clung stubbornly to the Oilers, a franchise that has faded, a franchise that, according to the 'media' broke public trust last year. Why did they keep that team, while rejecting the Roadrunners, and the Ice before them. What is it about Edmonton that makes it a Big League Only town?

Minor-league sports are a rising passion of mine...but I can't seem to find many of them here. Soon, we'll take a look at why that might be.

Giant Robots, considering labour action againt Getta Star Shine hazard pay.

1. In which an Edmonton blogger talks about sports.

Sit down, get comfy, pull up a chair. This one might take awhile....or, it might not. I'm going to talk to you tonight about the state of sport in Edmonton, and while I have a lot to say on the topic, I doubt I'll be able to keep my head up off of the keyboard long enough to say it all. So there will likely be more. Huzzah!

Let's start off with what Edmonton is: blue-collar, labour, Redmonton. A brown-bottle beer and perogie crowd. Simple pleasures, mostly, and this has generally been reflected in the cities primary choice of sporting entertainment: CFL Football, first of all, and hockey, starting a bit later, but probably the #1 sport now. But lets go back to football for today.

The Eskimoes might be the oldest pro team in Western Canada...iterations of the team can be traced back to pre-WW1 times, when the prefered term was still Esquimaux in English and French. Technically, there have been three or four teams in that time that have had the name Edmonton Eskimoes (or Esquimaux if you prefer), but they're all considered to share the same history. They're the only community-owned team in the CFL, quite a feat in this age, even for a low-budget operation, and they're the 2nd most winning team of all time, behind only the (spit) Toronto Argonauts.

Now here's where culture hits. Football teams, American or Canadian, that are based in working class cities, run the ball. Edmonton has had its greatest success with mobile quarterbacks that can scramble...Warren Moon, Damon Allen, Tracy Ham. Ricky Ray has been a bit of an exception to that rule, but even in 2003, it was the running game that won the team the Cup. Heck, look at the current Lieutenant Governer of Aberta...former running back Normie 'The China Clipper' Kwang. And look at the reputation Danny MacManos gained in this city: despite being one of the best passers ever seen in the CFL, Danny Mac is routinely outrun by practice dummies, and, as such, was never welcomed in Edmonton.

So that's the pro football side of sports in Edmonton: a blue-collar version of the game, on the ground, pound it in your face, no frills. And Edmonton continues to have the highest league attendance of anywhere in the CFL, despite the 2nd worst climate and an outdoor stadium.

This got a bit out of hand, but that's what blogs are for...rambling. Next time, we'll take a look at hockeyside. Hopefully, sometime in the next days/weeks/months a reader will come to understand how each sport fits in here, why the City of Champions was so important to us, and what I think should be done for the future.

Giant Robot, breaking tackles at the 35 and rushing for a gain of 17 on the play.

Judas Priest!!!

Amazing fucking show tonight...while Anthrax certainly put on a competent show, and made me very interested in seeing them should they ever headline a show again in our fair city, the Priest showed what 37(!) years of experience will do for you in clinically kicking ass.

The whole show was a great big fucking NWOBHM cliche, and it was perfect. A perfectly straight row of headbanging guitarists. A lead singer in a sequined trenchcoat and matching motorcycle boots. Elevators. Backdrops. Smoke fachines. A bloody DISCO BALL. And to start the encore? Entire on a silver and red motorbike!

Great, great show. The albums just don't do them justice...they are METAL.

Giant Robots. Metal, but not nearly THAT metal.

The mind boggles

Web-savvy as you undoubtedly are, you doubtless have learnt about the relatively recently-discovered practice of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan trading gory death pictures for porn...or at least for access TO porn. When I learnt about it this morning, I was prepared to enter the flamewar waiting on FARK.com on the topic, knowing that, as always, there would be SOMEONE willing to defend such a practice.

I won't bore you with the details...flame wars, especially ones about Iraq, are distrssingly predictable. But this one did arouse my interest for hitting a new low in self-cheapening. Basically, many of the posters did not view the picture-taking as bad because, to paraphrase, 'they were criminals anyways'...going on the assumption that the various mutilated and severed bodyparts featured in the gore-for-porn forum were insurgents and terrorists. When it was pointed out that in at least one case, that of a woman with her foot blown off, that even the PHOTOGRAPHER assumed she was a civilian (who had stepped on a land mine), the response was, to me, mind-bogglingly denialrific.

"I don't think that picture is even from in-theatre."

Seriously, at this point reality stops. What mental gymnastics does the mind have to go through to come up with this justification for dishonoring the innocent dead to come up with that? What makes winning a goddamned Internet flame war THAT important that you can self-delude like that? I truly, honestly, and deeply do not understand...and more than anything else in this fucked-up life we seem to be living right now, that scares me.

Giant Robots, on a trip to hell on a motorcycle. At least that's what the crazy man outside Burger Baron told us.

University

An interesting discovery....it is not University that I despise being back in...it's my department.

My one History course is a pleasure and a joy. I like teaching...why don't I like Education?

Giant Robots suspect the answer is socialism.

Nothing in particular

...torrents are strange, but addictive things. I'm watching at LEAST one major sporting event a day, but no longer live. I also need to find some sort of auto racing torrent distro site like fbtz.com is for football. American football would be nice too, but it looks like the traditional sites will handle that no problem. (just surprises me that there's a dearth of NASCAR on them).

...kids are both a huge joy and a huge pain in the ass. Trying to organize a daytrip to Jasper for more than 4 hours is proving to be remarkably difficult...all because of kids. But watching Aislyn kick her legs off the bottom of the pool today and just float on her tummy (holding onto the wall) all by herself, without making a big deal about it or anything, was totally amazing.

...on the brink of winning my first-ever division title in Hattrick! If I win Saturday, it's mine!

...having a way to post to here from my car while driving would be ideal, cause that's where all the best thinking happens. Showers have never done it for me.

...Richard Cheese is very much worth a listen.

...no other game has caused me such joy and frustration as Football Manager 2005. It's simply unreal how it can eat up my life when it's going well, and throw me into fits of utter blazing rage when it's not. And how I never know which is going to happen when I play a match.

Giant Robots. Killing time, and wasting bytes.

Here's a tip...

...for complaining.

I'm learning something. The angrier the complaint I get about the pizza I take orders for, the less likely I am to believe there's a real problem. The angriest customers always seem to be the ones demanding free pizza cause it's 5 minutes late, while the people who have waited patiently for two hours for a pizza that was never made, let alone sent, never seem to raise their voice or shout. It's a funny thing. You'd almost think that people who get all riled up are...trying to get something for nothing?

Nah.

In other news, I absolutely hate my job. Hate hate hate hate hate.

Hate.

...

Haethatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate.

Giant Robots are unhappy at work.






Hate.

Cola Wars

Another observation from the front lines.

The Cola Wars didn't really do much in the way of changing peoples drinking habits, I've noticed, save to spread apathy amoungst people. Basically, when you get right down to it, cola tastes pretty much like cola, and the variations are minor to say the least. And after working in Pizza Hut for awhile, I can say with some confidence that 90% of the people, if asked to choose between Coke or Pepsi, would say, 'meh'.

The only place left? Vancouver. That's the ONLY place in Canada that I handle where people will actually NOT drink Pepsi when I offer it to them (despite the Red logo, the 'Hut is decidedly Blue when it comes to drinks). I have to wonder if it's some sort of ingrained rebellion, challange everything spirit that the Vancouverites have, or just delusional thinking that there actually IS a difference.

Giant Robots prefer RC Cola, all things considered.

Work is F.U.N.! (tm)

Or, to expand the acronym, Fucking Unbelievable Nonsense.

The phones are STILL all screwed up. So no customer service. And the orders were getting to the stores in a spotty fashion it seemed. So lots of complains there. And big thunderstorms literally blowing up one or two stores. More complains. And no customer service, I believe I mentioned that. Who got the crap end of the stick?

If you said the operators, who don't control the phones, nor the weather, give yourself a pat on the back.

F.U.N.

Giant Robots. We're F.U.N. too!

So that was comedy...

When you're a gigantic, world swallowing, opposition crushing souled megacorporation, whose very existance is predicated upon the theory that any person, anywhere, should be able to pick up a 100-year-old device known as a 'telephone', dial an easy-to-remember number, and be rewarded with hot, fresh foodstuffs delivered to their door, it would make sense then, that one would keep the phone system in as perfect a working order as one could; and because nothing is perfect, one would have several levels of contingency plans in place, should the unthinkable happen.

Or, if you're Pizza Hut, you pretty much throw your hands up in the air and go 'Eh, whatre you gonna do?'

I won't complain much though...getting paid for two hours of reading Harry Potter beats a stick in the teeth any day.

Giant Robots. With contingency plans, AND a secure bundle.

So, I'm a trend whore.

And downloaded and installed OpenDock today. Nifty program, I must admit, even if it's a bit too 'Aqua-like' in tendancies...but at last I have a Dock again! Now if only LiteStep was actually user-friendly now, and I could have my precious, precious background menus....

Giant Robots rarely have transparency sliders. But when we do, we rock!

Thoughts from the Pizza Wars

So here was a fun one tonight. Guy (sounded like a kid, but whatever) calls up, wants a pizza, small. No problem. Wants it made half and half. No problem. Wants half with pepperoni. No problem. Wants that half with extra sauce. Problem.

See...sauce is a liquid. And like all liquids, it's not really going to like being slanty, which is what will happen if you put more of it on one side of the pizza than the other. It'll want to move. It'll especially want to move when you heat it up...say, to several hundred degrees Celcius. I just don't think it's gonna happen.

So I told the guy so, explaining that, while I certainly could ask the store to put extra sauce only on half of the pizza, I certainly couldn't guarentee it. And after some repetition of this key point, the guys tells me that, 'Fine, I'll just try another pizza place.'

Er? Has Panago mastered some art of slanty sauce that Pizza Hut still lacks?

Giant Robots like to be flat too.

My newfound dream

A movie, staring Will Wheaton as a young actor trying to escape the rigors of his child-actor stigma, who escapes to Canada to work as a customer-service represenative for SaskTel.

"Fields of Wheaton"

Betcha the Canadian Film Board would give me 50,000 to make it....either that, or "Bend it like Doug".

Giant Robots aren't funny at midnight on Sundays.

You know you've hit bottom at work when...

...a customer calls, asking if you would put semen on a pizza. When you (hopefully) reply in the negative, he asks why then, is there indeed semen on his pizza?

Other than that, a pretty good night.

Giant Robots don't spooge, on pizza, or otherwise.

Nothing much really...

Nothing much terribly profound or interesting to talk about tonight. Mainly that the mental cleansing that I got from hanging out with good friends for the past few days has done my body more good than sleep ever could...my stress levels are at new lows for the past few months, and that's a good thing. Course, after another weekend at the call center, I'm sure they'll be right back up there again...

I always think of things to talk about while I'm there, but never write them down to write them down. I should do that.

And I beat Super Robot Wars Compact 3 tonight! But Mazinkaizer is sad, because not a single Super Robot was involved in the final battle...(they really suck in that version of the game).

Giant Robots n'est parle pas le francais.

If you ordered pizza tonight...

...I'm sorry.

Sorry that you waited half an hour listening to the most annoying ad in the world.
Sorry that the store closed while you were listening to the above.
Sorry that the store ran out of ingredients.
Sorry that we don't give you credit for either of the above.

I'm sorry that I rushed through your order, though I was polite about it.
I'm sorry that there were 100 people in line behind you, so that I had to rush.

I'm sorry that my idiot bosses decided it would be just fine to have 10 people handling calls for two provinces on the night before Canada Day.
I'm sorry that I work for them.

Giant Robots. We're sorry.

Cheap and Trendy Fads

My wife put me on to this thing...like most blog activities it's kinda silly and juvenile...but I kinda like it. Basically, I'm putting my music player on random, and then I'll post one lyric from the first 20 songs that come up in the playlist. See how many artists you can guess!

Take a look at who you are, pretty scary,
Nu Gdye Zhe Vui Devchonki?
They say it's my fault, but I want it so much,
So when I smoke out run into the trees, turn into Sonny Bono,
We can't rewind, we've gone too far.

あ～君に！あ～いったい！　今すぐに超えろ行きたい！
Don't do you know it's 2 in the morning and the party's still jumpin'
I flow better when my colors show,
I might be a little young, but honey, I ain't naive,
Still what we've got's glorious!

Baby! ロックンロール県庁所在地!
Plug me into your block heater,
Do you want to light up the waves?
There proweses potent, and secretly stern,
We all squeezed the stick, we all pulled the trigger.

There wasn't much in this heart of mine,
Sometimes I write addresses too sloppy when I jot 'em,
Maybe half the fault is mine that the sun didn't shine on Barrington Street,
But noone makes a sound, they follow,
あの日の君は。

Giant Robots: Following the Herd since 1976.

I love my neighbourhood!

Now I certainly can't claim to live in a really 'bad' neighbourhood...even by the standards of my fair city up north. It's not really a very GOOD neighbourhood...but it's pretty far away from the 'hood. Call it the 'ighbourhood, if you must.

But still...its got its share of interesting people. Most of them seem to live in the walkups across the street...rather amazingly, they're even lower-rent than ours, and attract an even more intersting kind of client...namely, first-year college students. When you put a bunch of teens on their own for the first time together in a place like that, things get fun!

I imagine the police must actually like getting calls out here. It's not really dangerous, gives them something to do, lets them laugh at stupid kids. It's sure great for my own personal Human Comedy scale.

Giant Robots: bringin' it real from the street, yo.

Brains....delicious brains...

So what happens to people when they pick up a phone, or use the internet, or do anything that doesn't require face-to-face interaction? What causes their brains to turn off?

I'm not talking about the usual loss of any sense of self-restraint or sense of personal decency towards your fellow human that seems to be a given on the internet, or with some particular phone customers...but rather that little bit of common sense that should kick in...perhaps when ordering a pizza?

When you have a coupon for a large, two-topping pizza, you will get just that. A large, TWO-TOPPING pizza. Now, it may come as a shock to many out there, but Supreme is NOT a topping. Meat-Lovers, is NOT a topping. Veggie, is NOT a topping. Why on earth would you think that it is? Oh, thats right. You don't think when you order pizza.

Giant Robots: Now getting time and a half for no good reason! And whose days off are Mondays and Wednesdays again.

RSS Tickers?

So what's the deal with this RSS stuff anyways? Seems like a really cool thing, to get automatic, selected news and website updates...but all of the aggregators I've tried today kinda don't do what I want? They're either browsers (which I've already got two of, working just how I want them already) or tickers. Now a ticker is JUST what I want...but why hasn't anyone made a new one? Or put in such radical features such as date filtering? I don't really want to watch a newscrawl of every article on GrandPrix.com posted in the last YEAR...

Giant Robots are meticulously maintained, and updated to stay with the times. Why aren't news tickers?

Taking a cue from Mr. Horner...

...I've decided to post my off schedule here. And yes, I know how fucking gauche it is to tell people to read my blog to find out about my life, but when I'm not home to answer the phone...

June 20th and 22nd are off, so far everything else is work.

Giant Robots like low-stress jobs. Why don't my supervisors?