BORAT HOSTS THE 2005 MTV EUROPE MUSIC AWARDS

Some of you know I’m a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, known for his comedic characters such as Ali G, Borat, and Bruno.

Just a few days ago, Cohen hosted the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in his Borat persona. What followed was a display of comedy not seen since… well, since I saw Borat on TV last.

You can view a promo he shot for the awards show here (Windows Media, 13 Mb). Don’t miss Borat mentioning his delight for “hand relief” and misprouncing Lisbon as “lesbian”. Without a doubt, Borat ain’t the most politically correct guy out there.

So what kind of material did Borat pull out for the show? He didn’t disappoint in my mind. After Madonna’s performance on the show, Borat had this to say:

“That singer before me. Who was it? It was very courageous of MTV to start the show with a genuine transvestite, he was very convincing. It was only his hands and his testi-satchels that gave it away.”

For more Borat quotes from the awards show, please click here.

With such outrageous comments, you’d think Cohen would eventually get in trouble with somebody and now he has. The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan has had enough of Cohen’s portrayal of their citizens as drunken misogynists who frequently refer to animal abuse as a pastime. Country officials are not ruling out legal action. Click here for more on this story.

I wonder what it’s like to be sued by an entire country?

BONUS LINK: See and hear Ali G interact with a few NBA players here.

JUST LEAN ON IT

Because I stayed up late on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it wasn’t easy getting to sleep on Sunday night. At around 3am, I was still relatively awake when a sharp noise pierced the quiet of the night.

“What the hell was that?” I thought. Because of the double-paned windows in my bedroom, street noise is at a minimum. What I heard at that moment was loud though. It sounded like some dude was just leaning on his horn inside his car and just giving ‘er. It so loud I was wondering if it was coming from the secured parking garage for residents.

After lying in bed for a minute or two trying to figure out what was going on, whoever was leaning on the horn started to make “soundscapes”. It wasn’t exactly a melody but it was off and on… then on for a long time… off for like a millisecond… then on again.

Now things began to really turn in my head. Was it some guy slumped over in his car? Was he in dire need of help and signaling with his horn? Because I had just started playing a zombie video game earlier that evening, I thought this is it, the zombie invasion has begun and the first guy to go down was that dude in his car outside my bedroom window.

Then the source of the horn started moving. As evidenced by its diminishing volume and slight Doppler effect, the horn seemed to be moving away from me. It didn’t go away completely, perhaps just down the street. I briefly thought about calling the cops. The horn then moved again, this time so far away that I could barely hear it.

As I closed my eyes, my thoughts turned to if Wendy’s was still open. Several minutes later, the horn sound returned, this time it seemed like it was right outside my window, louder than before. After a minute, it stopped. I heard it again but it had moved away again. It was just random beeps now, every two minutes or so.

It stopped after an undetermined amount of time. I somehow fell asleep in a puddle of my own drool.

The next day, I found out I was the only one in my family who heard the disturbance. Weird.

JUST FRIENDS

Well, they finally made a movie about being stuck in the “friend zone”. It stars Ryan Reynolds and Amy Smart. The movie makes its debut on November 23.

What is the “friend zone”? If you’re like 99.9% of guys out there you won’t need an explanation. For those still clueless (ie. most women), I’ll leave the explanation to a quote from the title character in the movie:

“The ‘friend zone’ is like the penalty box of dating, only you
can never get out. Once a girl decides you’re her ‘friend,’, it’s
game over. You’ve become a complete nonsexual entity in
her eyes, like her brother, or a lamp.”

Amen to that brother. No guy ever sees himself heading towards the “friend zone”. It always takes a guy by surprise. Typically, what happens is that a guy starts off great with a particular girl. They seem to get along, they do stuff together, hang out, and in general, the girl appears to enjoy the poor sap’s company. Then, at a critical moment, when things could turn romantic, she pulls the dreaded “let’s be friends” speech outta no where. There are several variations on the speech but it has been known to include terms like, “love you like a brother” and “I hope we can stay friends forever”.

It’s at this very precise nanosecond that the guy realizes where he is. He is in the “friend zone”. No guy is ever just over the border either. Any guy in this situation is about a bazillion miles in and he checked in penis at customs, he just didn’t realize it until now.

At this point, there’s very little a guy can do. One option is to completely go with it and say things like, “Yeah! I love being friends with you too! Yay!” The guy then stays friends with the girl. Now invariably, if this happens, the girl will find a boyfriend in less than two weeks. It’s also guaranteed said girl will start discussing her new beau with the “friend”. She’ll start saying things like how big her new guy’s penis is, you know stuff the “friend” is just dying to hear. For the “friend”, it’s a lot like taking a tiny bit of poison each time they talk.

The other option requires a bigger set of cojones but this happens a lot less. This involves the guy telling the girl he’s not interested in being just friends and that he thinks they might have a great relationship together. Almost assuredly, the girl will have a differing opinion at which point the dude should walk. The hike outta of the “friend zone” at this point is suprisingly short and they’ll have his penis ready for pick-up as soon as he gets to the border. I will admit, I have never heard of any guy doing it this way before.

Being in the “friend zone” is an oft discussed subject among guys and the existence of such a place is lamented. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but it was me who coined the following phrase:

“I’ve been in the ‘friend zone’ so many times, I own property there because it’s cheaper than renting…”

There will never be a solution to the problem of being in the “friend zone”. People will invent flying cars and wrinkeless linen before that happens. On the other hand, the problem does ensure the video game industry will be thriving for eons to come. Guys figure if they can’t have a girlfriend, they might as well play video games.

I must also add a disclaimer, I am not advocating that guys should not have female friends. On the contrary, I think every guy should have at least one platonic female friend to get an insight into how women think and behave. Guys who have such a friend are better off than guys without.

Well, let’s get back to the movie I was talking about. It has a pretty good web site. You can view the trailer and see the profiles for all the main characters. There’s even a kick-ass ecard that girls can use to send out their “friends”. Now the guy can get the bad news in the comfort of his own home. Also, in a blur of marketing and blogging the title character in the movie has his own blog. In it, he has tips for recognizing and avoiding the “friend zone”.

I’m pretty sure I’ll go see this movie when it comes out, if only for once, I’d like to see another guy take it up the pooper.

VICTORIA'S SECRET

After a year off Victoria’s Secret staged another one of their high-profile fashion shows last night in New York City. If you want more info about the event, you can read about it here. In the interest of both fashion and entertainment, you might also be interested in this gallery. There you’ll find 297 pictures from the runway. It’s, um, quite the set of pictures.

There’s no nudity but if your workplace frowns upon you looking at unbelievably hot women in lingerie, then you might want to hold off until you get back home. Other than that, you’re good to go.

POP-UP BLOCKERS

It’s come to my attention that a lot of you use pop-up blockers with your browsers. In general, that’s a great idea but you have to make sure you’re not blocking anything to do with this site. All my links are designed to spawn new browser windows to keep my blog in its original window. So, if you’re using the Google Toolbar, for example, to block pop-ups and I decide to, I dunno, link to a story about two NFL cheerleaders having sex in a bathroom stall, you’re gonna get nothing.

I also tend to post my own personal pictures that pop-up in a larger window. If you got pop-ups blocked on my site, then all you’ve got to look at are tiny thumbnails.

Every pop-up blocker application has functionality to allow you to specify sites that should bypass the blocking. Here’s to more cheerleader sordidness and less blocking!

GOOGLE HACKING

The term “Google hacking” doesn’t actually refer to the act of hacking into Google’s web servers. Instead, it’s a method of leveraging Google’s immense search capabilities to find information that might not have been intended for public viewing.

Google’s Googlebot crawls nearly every nook and cranny of the Internet, looking for information as it classifies as much of the web as it can. Because it’s so effective, it can find many unsecured areas of web servers that some administrators did not intend for people to go looking. The result is a wealth of files, info, images, and documents that can be accessed just by using the right combination of search terms. There’s even a web site that’s amassed a list of Google searches that can yield specific information. It’s a bit techy, so let’s start with some simple stuff.

Let’s say you want to look for images just sitting in a directory. All you have to do is click on the link below. It’ll give you results for unsecured image directories. You can narrow the search by adding more specific terms, say “birds” if you want bird images. I’m sure your imagination can run wild. There’s some crazy stuff out there if you know what to look for.

Search for unsecured images

You can repeat the search using the term “movies” instead. You’ll find a lot of research based movies from university sites, anything from solar flares to animals in their habitats.

Search for unsecured movies

Let’s take it in a new direction. Why don’t we search for resumes? In a sense, resumes are kinda for public consumption but maybe they weren’t meant to be directly seen by everyone on the Internet. Nevertheless, here they are for viewing.

Search for resumes on-line

There are a lengthy list of things you might want to find on the Internet. Experiment by changing the key search terms. You might be surprised by what you find!

WEEKEND WRAPUP

For the record, I did go back to Swiss Chalet on Friday to once again try to clear my name with Megan/Meghan. Once again, I was informed that she was not working that night. It appears she may not be working Fridays at all now. I wonder if that has anything to do with us? I neglected to ask what her new schedule was. Nevertheless, I had a fabulous double-leg dinner which never disappoints. Tasty!

On Friday, the inevitable also happened. Someone from work found my blog. It didn’t come as a surprise really. I knew it would happen but I just didn’t know when. All it really takes is to put my name in Google and there you go. That’s what Tim did around 5pm. I saw the access on my server logs about 20 minutes later. I was also able to see he searched for his name on my blog. The search came up empty of course. From the day I started my job, I was very cognizant of the dangers of putting too much info about work on a blog. People have been fired from their jobs for doing exactly that. So while you’ll read about what game I’m working on and when I’m working OT, you’ll get very little info about my co-workers or anything that personal. I certainly wouldn’t air out on my blog any beefs I might have with upper management. You’ll have to ask me in person if I have any of those.

The rest of the weekend was quite uneventful. I drove out to UBC on Saturday to play hockey with what turned out to be a disappointing crowd. It was 3 on 2 for most of the time. Tyson did his best in asking a ton of SJC people to play. Nearly everyone’s excuse was that they had too much work to do. No matter how bad SJC will continue to slide into suckiness, that excuse will always be there.

After hockey, we headed on over to the Thunderbar for some beer, food, and the Canucks game. The T-Bar is a decent place to watch several games actually. The bar overlooks the ice surface so if you’re lucky, like we were, you get to see UBC varsity hockey at the same time. For those living on-campus, you can’t beat the convenience, especially if you’re itching to get back to work after the game.

Sunday was a most boring day, the highlight being my trip to Safeway to buy an 8-pack of frozen pizza.

That is all.

THE REGULARS

For about two months now, I’ve been taking the same bus every morning to work. I’m not alone in this habit. I regularly see the same people on my bus. Some are unremarkable in their appearance and behaviour, they’re just normal folk trying to get to where they need to go.

Then there are those who make me wonder what the hell their story is. The most notable person is this woman in her 40s or so. She’s got really dark, jet black hair which makes me believe it might be dyed so. Her hair is about shoulder length and she’s tied it so that a single tail comes out of the top of her head. It’s not a good look. She also has these really thick glasses, your prototypical Coke bottles if you may. The quirks are many for this person. First, she has this big fascination with newspapers. On most mornings she’s got at least the Vancouver Sun and/or one of the free morning dailies with her. Yeah, a lot of people read on the bus, but she’s different. Every once in a while, she’ll feel the need to rip out huge sections of the paper out. This isn’t coupon clipping, we’re talking pages at a time. She’ll stuff the ripped out pieces in her handbag. What she does with them is still a mystery to me.

Her other quirk verges on the annoying. This woman seems constantly late for something. She’s always looking out the window to see what the traffic conditions are in front of the bus. It’s like she’s always behind schedule and needs to be somewhere five minutes ago. Whenever we get into heavy traffic or a construction zone, she’ll start to fret and mutter to herself. Weird. She’ll also start to mumble quietly when the bus has to pull over to pick up passengers along the route. Doubly weird. She gets off the bus one stop before me downtown. I have no idea where she’s going. A job? Paper recyling plant?

There’s also an older gentleman who seems to have warped space around his body. When you look at him, he doesn’t seem like a big guy. He looks slightly portly but I wouldn’t say at all fat. When he sits down though, he takes up like a seat and a half. I don’t get it. He seems to be all the way over to his side but his body is so wide. Also, and this is completely unfounded, he kinda looks like one of those older guys that you later find out was a Nazi who fled to Canada to hide from his past. Man, conjecture is fun ain’t it?

The final person is this younger guy who is obviously a university student. At first I thought he might be an SFU student taking classes downtown but I’ve seen him run for the 44 and 99B. He’s clearly a UBC student. He must live somewhere in Coquitlam and commutes everyday to UBC. You know I’ve heard of these poor bastards that have to do that everyday but this is the first time I’ve seen one in person. He usually has a chemistry book out. I’m guessing he’s either a first or second year student. If he’s a first-year, I’ll give him the rest of the year tops before he goes crazy from the commute. He’s also got the narrowest jeans I’ve seen in decades. They narrow down to basically the width of his ankles. It’s straight outta of the 80s. It maybe the jeans that causes this but he sits with his legs crossed in a manner that if I tried it, I’d crack both my walnuts.

Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if someone else on that bus was writing about me in their blog?

BAH

Both Google and Blogger were both down the entire time that I wanted to post. They only restored service just now but me gots to go to bed. The meaning of life will have to wait another day.