Ladies, do you experience . . . frigidity!?

click to enlarge

The year is 1947. America has single handedly crushed the axis war machine. The whitehouse gladly gives Russia the "unsightly" half of Germany, and the coloured folk had their own bathrooms. Men were real, bread winning men. Boys had dogs and dirty knees and girl had tea parties. Women had only two real problems, frigidity and getting slapped for not bringing her husbands slippers fast enough. Yes, life was so much simpler back then.

Good grief, is this what womens magazines were filled with fifty years ago? Threatening girls that their smell could break up families and drive loved ones away? Call me naive, but I thought cold-war era fear mongering didn't extend beyond politics.

I love her horrified face. You just know that this is the biggest problem she's encountered today. "Oh sugar, first I burned my tea biscuits and now THIS!"

Reading this ad, it comes to mind how terrifyingly frank women are. I mean, have you ever seen the cover of Cosmo?
"What kind of skank are you?"
"How to seduce the pants off everyman in the room."
"Additional dirty article."

When guys have problems, we internalize. Beyond the occaisional commiseration of a well placed knock to the genitals, we don't talk about our . . . stuff that much. But wow, open a womens magazine and it's health class in overdrive.

Are you girls really that complicated?

For added fun, read the article in a strongbad voice.

Stupid Greeting Cards

Greeting cards are a huge industry. I mean, what better way to make a few large than providing for middle america's inability to coherently express itself, with trite, store bought mishmash? Ah yes, the good ol' 1st world answer to problems, buying something. But I digress. Like any outlet of mass media conglomerates, greeting cards have their fair share of steaming crap. Some cards are just dumb, ugly or so bizarre you think you'd think you were back in college, dropping acid with Christopher lloyd. Behold, a terrifying example of what some people make for a living:

inside: Cha cha cha!

Well hey there, its the birthday Gecko. Nothing says Bonne Anniversaire like a reptile decked out in mariachi drag. Or maybe its just the Geico lizard, fresh off a Tijuana bender with a rough trick named Jorge. CHA CHA CHA, indeed.

inside: We didn't get you a birthday present together, too.

Speaking of reptiles, what the heck are these two? Someone call Jeff Goldblum because there's a pair of Sun burned Crapasaurus Rex's loose. And just what exactly is that second C-Rex steering?

Front: Do you have any books that aren't for Dummies?
inside: Lucky there are cards for dummies. Sorry I forgot your birthday.

Books that aren't for Dummies? Depends, do you have any cards that aren't drawn by drunks with cerebral palsy? Seriously, it's like some bent pop art over and raped it. And why is she clutching her stomache? Is she so appaled that someone would question her inventory, or does crappy art just give her gas? It's not enough that someone forgot your birthday, but they decided the best way to make up for it was to buy the the ugliest card they could find. If someone tried to give this to me I'd kick them in the teeth. Twice.

inside: Hope your birthday's the bomb!

Oh, the metaphors, the METAPHORS! Happy birthday, celebrate your conception with a card of men in phallic headwear. Where in america did they find a group of 18 middle aged men eager to be immortalized in an image of such sexual context? San Francisco? I can only imagine the Mahito's and body shots that followed this shot. Take off those missles boys, its time to see your guns! Bang bang!

inside: It'd be a cold day in your know where before we'd miss wishing YOU a happy birthday.

Look, its the Sunshine State Skinny Dippers, here to wish you a happy B-day. You got me birthday manboobs? You shouldn't have! I'd go on, but ugh, my stomache is just too weak.

blank

The cardmakers elected not to include any verse on the inside. They felt that the heartfelt message of the card was straight forward enough that it didn't warrant any further explanation. The tender warmth of these aquatic beasts makes them well suited to any sentiment.
"Happy Birthday, save the whales!"
"Congrats on your promotion, Save the whales!"
"Sorry about your dead gramma, remember, Save the Whales!"
"Happy Anniversary, honey, Save the Whales!" Wait, skip that one, you'd wind up on the couch at night for sure.

inside: Flourescent light is the enemy

Dude, I don't know either. This is just . . . WOW. What do you say to a card like this? Thanks for the nihilistic reflection on modern society? I love the lime green bikini made (apparently) of plastic wrap, I infer this because you can see right through it. It was also nice that the artist wanted to tart her up a bit with Cover-girl's new San Antonio Whore line of blush. How can flourescent light be the enemy? By reminding you of what an assexual humanoid in a garbage bag swimsuit looks like? Flourescent light is not the enemy, craptastic cards are the enemy.

J to the Eazzay, R to the Kizzay

My life is not easy.

Now, before you size me up for tight fitting black jeans and an acoustic guitar, let me elaborate. My web-log purports that I am a "nice guy", and I am. I pet kittens, smile at the geriatric and supress the urge to slap people who ask if it is "hot enough" for me. But my genial appearance hides a very dark secret.

I am an astounding jerk.

Ho, ho, gentle reader, collect yourselves. Gentleman, retrieve your fallen monocles and tend to the women who have doubtless fainted with shock. Underneath this soothing, romanesque face is a raving lunatic waiting to escape and wreak general havoc.

You may be wondering, "Braden, if you are the stunning {donkey} you claim to be, why do we adore you so?" Well, this is caused by what I like to call a semi-premeable membrane of prickery. In similar fashion to the underwear models in bottled water commercials (though without the heaps of sexual ambiguity) the often divisive and caustic things I intend to say and do are quickly filtered and refined to something more civil and entirely unremarkable.

For instance:

"Augh, you hagrid sack of wrinkles, take these awful photographs of your disgusting mutt and hobble back on home to continue slowly mummifying yourself in ointment and Goldbond!" becomes : " Why yes, ma'am I would be happy to make your photocopies of this becoming bichon frise."

-aside: Who owns a Bichon Frise? It's the canine equivalent of that creepy effeminate guy you went to school with. The one EVERY one knew was gay, but not the gay you see on TV with spunk and sequins and fashion sense. He stays in the corner of the library rereading the illustrated encyclopedia britannica hoping for fuzzy wing-wongs in the anatomy section. I . . . don't know how that quite works as an analogy here, but it does, rest assured.

But the point here is that my inherrent jerk-barrier has upper limits, and I'm starting to think it doesn't replenish itself fast enough to deal with the startling array of stupid the city like to direct my way. And with university coming this fall, I'm all but certain I will reach critical mass and my unrefined acid will spew forth with startling urgency.

Brace yourselves.

Well to do

I'm listening to dashboard confessional at midnight here, so forgive me if I wax thoughtful.

I feel like I'm setting out now. Like a sea-farer on a a ship sailing through the waves, I can't see anything but horizon and beauty. My life hasn't turned out the way I planned. At all. This is not where I ever wanted it to be. But I am happy. I make my life good or bad. I have my agency, my will. I can choose to be grumpy or I can choose to embrace what I have made. I may have regrets, and maybe its not too late to fix things, but for now I can only go forward and take this new era for what its worth.

My mum is getting a job that pays more and, more importantly, isn't at Southern Stationers. I'm starting University this fall. I got into the BFA program, so I'm happy. Its going to be hard, because in all actuality, I can't really afford school without loans. This is going to be a sharp change from how unfrugal I used to be. Ah well, here we go.

Wish me luck.

A visit to Angry Rant Farm

I'm in a vindictive and malicious mood. So pardon the bite, Jace, but Im going to take a page from your book (err, blog).


People in need of a violent beating:

Well, lets start off with an easy one, The Church of Scientology. What kind of respect do you think you deserve when your building looks like a dirty backwater Vegas casino? The giant LED billboard doesn't help your credibility much either. Listen, stop acting like a bunch of delusional crackpots and maybe people will take your half-baked religion seriously. Of course this is contingent on Tom Cruise dying in a horribly fiery plan crash, but hey, his Thetan will just be reborn, right? Hopefully in something less annoying, like a bowling alley attendant.

The legal department at the RIAA and the MPAA. Yes, piracy is bad, we get it. We got it seven years ago when Napster got shut down, we got it three years ago when you started going bat-s*** crazy with your lawyers. But so is suing every man, woman and child. Here's a tip, making a signifcant portion of your per annum profits in LAWSUITS, is a despicable business model. Customers are not criminals, you insane jackals.

The people who charge $2k for logo design, spend months working on it, only to present something that looks like microsoft word found in the toilet after binge drinking Mr. Clean. A vomitous mass of traingles and circles accompanied by times new roman is not a logo, it is a design ABORTION. Y'know what? You hacks don't deserve a beating, you should shot. Through the teeth.

Eczema. Get off my finger now or start paying rent, you psoriasis wannabe.

Telus. Alright, you conservative redtape fetishists, fess up. Your highspeed network works like it was built out of dog hair and horse crap. My connection is out more often than Courtney Love is drunk off her feet. And when it is up AND working properly, my 'high-speeds' that are supposedly 100x faster than dial-up barely touch over 30kb/s. And thats exactly what I think of your customer service, BS. If the signal is so weak that it
can't make it from an outlet, through a 20 foot cable, to my PC reliably, don't get your call centre drones to condescend to me about electromagnetics and currents and a textbook full of material those highschool dropouts only hear about on CSI. Please send me an executive, I want to spit in his eye. IN HIS EYE!

Parents who name their kids stupid, stupid names. I don't mean bizarre spellings like Amie or Kortney (which is a sin unto itself), I'm refering to parents who think carving up perfectly normal names and stitching together abhorrent franken-names. Refuse like Dreydon. Seriosuly, what is that? It sounds like something Hercules fought while knee-deep in minotaur turd. And actors, really, your kids will have enough garbage to put up with living in your shadow, do they really need names like Apple or Prince Michael?! You need a curbstomp, in a hurry.

The selfproclaimed 'EMO' crowd. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. You aren't introspective, you aren't mysterious, you aren't misunderstood. You are nothing more than whining, contrived and hypocritical consumerists. The artifical way your 'culture' dresses your emotional imbalance under the guise of 'suicide and teenage angst' belies a very real issue. Writing pathetic musical slop about how no one understands you is such a fallacy. People understand you very well, especially marketing executives. That's why you are a key sales demographic, that's why companies make huge profits off you. You aren't punk. You are a derivative mass, eager to suck at any corporate teet that disguises itself as underground. So hang up your etnies, whipe off that mascara, boys, and wake up. YOU ARE TOOLS.

And while we're on the subject, lets address the term emo itself. Six years ago it meant something different. It meant a kind of music. Now it gets tossed around as much as Bush tosses around terrorism. Emo is music. The pouty girls in fishnet and black, and sullen guys in mascara are morons. Let's get it straight. (Marshall, you are granted clemency from this, because you are a rocker. Rockers can wear make-up, but just barely)

PETA. Why am I a monster because I drink milk? You self-appreciative sacks are about as credible as a kidney transplant in Queens. Milk does not make me fat. Being a lazy man makes me fat. You know what, in for a penny in for a pound; Vegans and Greenpeace, you are ridiculous too. Cheese is not evil, oil is not evil. If you want to live on an island and experience a hedonistic granola life-style, be my guest, in fact, I'll help you find one. Vandalism, theft and public mischief don't further your platform of environmental stability, it furthers that platform that you are a troop of poorly educated miscreants.

Okay, thats enough hate to fill one post for the day.

Public Service Announcement

Hey, just wanted everyone from Lethbridge know that I in NO WAY think you should ever buy office supplies from Southern Stationers. Besides the obvious fact I'm going to school, I do not approve of the unethical way they treat employees. Management is rude and belittling, often times bordering on harassment. Wages are not in anyway linked with to the job you do, your experience or net profitability (why else would a new part time cashier make the same as someone who has been with the company for 13 years??) The store has been sold because the owners, Gary, Leslie and Diane seem to care more about hot tubs, trips to Italy and Cuba more than they do about the staff that has worked for the family for 20 plus years. Now a good portion of the staff will be experiencing major changes to their jobs and entire positions and departments are being eliminated to make the buyers happy. In a few months we will be called Corporate Express. The name change is merely superficial. The same bosses will run it and then same seedy tactics will keep it in the black. Avoid us, please.

Am I writing this out of anger? Absolutely. What other emotion do you think is acceptable here?

Tents, Fireworks and scary bathrooms

This weekend was the annual "drive -90-minutes-into-the-mountains-spend-a-day-watching-pass-folks-get-blitzed-watch-fireworks-and-spend-2-hours-in-traffic-fest" Also known by the admittedly less descriptive "Thunder in the Valley". There is a podunk lil town called Blairmore that has one of the biggest displays of fireworks each summer to commemorate . . . well, booze, I think, rum to be specific. HURRAY!

This year it involved driving up in a rented JEEP with some classy gals. Style! But the day would not be complete without a visit to the mountains neighborhood cesspool gas station.

Nevermind the fact we had to fight through two seperate bike gangs and a throng of fe-mullets to park, the station was infested in a more colorful assortment of the typical spring-break frat riff-raff. I made the unfortunate mistake of having a bladder and needed to relieve myself at this waypoint.

Oh no! No no no no no, I should know better. Rule number one of road trips is NOT TO PEE IN PLACES THAT SELL HOT DOGS, ICE CREAM AND TACKLE. As I had my wee, I was treated to the cheerful image of an alien prophylactic with cute prophylactic attenae emerging from
what must be some sort of interstellar spaceship designed for lightspeed birthcontrol. Zipping up, I moved to the sink with every intent to wash my hands. However, HOWEVER! There was not a soap dispenser in sight, nay nay, there was instead a styrofoam bowl filled with neon pink liquid soap. This was not a welcome sight in and of itself, but to further compound the problem, the bowl and soap were themselves quite dirty, having dark chunks of unflatering material floating about.
I'm sure you'll agree, the dilemma here was very concerning. But, using the combined power of my intellect and my intense fear of hepatitis I decided the best course of action would to be run like a little sissy out of there. I bought an ice-cream though. That managed to assuage my excited emotions.

The remainder of the day was unremarkably entertaining. Hamburgers, dogs, friends, that sort of thing. It was, however, punctuated by the realization that I have no idea how to put up a tent. I am, of course, familiar with the concept: Poles must be inserted and the tent raised, and eventually people may go inside of it. But that is about where I exit the realm of knowing. I can commiserate with my comrades in that none of us really knew how in the end.
It took a team of approximately 8 people working to get the beast of a nylon sleeping quarters put up. I won't even mention the time it required.

After the tent episode, we ambled into town and took our places among the great unwashed masses to watch the expensive display of things blowing up. The display lasted about half an hour, and I'm pretty sure it successufully punched a hole in that pesky ozone layer. So here is a heads-up, if you want that bronzed godlike glow to you, head to Blairmore AB, " We destroy the ozone, so you don't have to!"

Additionally I got asked to do some more engagement photos Sunday night for a good friend. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm getting better at this thing.

Isn't Alberta Grand?

It looks like as Albertan's have a fascination with big things. Takle that, Texas! (Don't hurt me Amanda!)

BIG THINGS!!

Of special note, check out Lethbridge's wind gauge, boy that's funny, and not without truth. This place is wicked windy.

Portoflio is gone, now the waiting game.

So I dropped off my final portfolio today at lunch. The Admissions Lady was nice enough, if a bit intimidating. If anyone cares HERE is a link to my portoflio, as a pdf hosted on rapidshare. Wish me luck.

Edit: Whoops, no, I lied, that is the original corel draw file. I wil upload the pdf later.

Porfolio Finished and New Photos

Well, thank heavens, I finished the last of the new projects required for my art portfolio, and with 2 days to spare, no less! Now I get to agonize over whether or not the Faculty of Fine Art accepts me :S :(

But on the brighter side I took some pictures!

Here is a self portrait, because, well, you know.


And beside it is the photo I took for the portoflio theme "This container is too big". I really like it. I'm such a vignette whore on my photos (when I'm not entering on worth).

I am a terrible photographer

No no, let me elaborate. I dont take pictures enough. My new camera has hardly been used. I feel like I should get out more with it. But I just never have the time or inspiration anymore. Why is that? Where the heck is my ruddy muse?! I did go to dragon boat races today and got this shot. Its awful but whatever.



and it also does have some ps work done to help with the background.

I am a university student, sort of

Well I'm accepted to the U of L for general studies. My admission to fine-art is pending my portfolio, which is due in a week. Crap. Time to get to work.

Windows Genuine Advantage

As more and more consumers adopt broadband internet connections, content delivery systems are evolving in a way to excise traditional retailers and physical storage media. The growing popularity of Apple's iTunes music store and the Direct-to-Drive PC game delivery are just two examples of this.

But this prevalence of true “all digital” content makes piracy even more of a concern than it already is. Traditionally, software required the actual disc to be in the drive to operate. When CD writing technology became widely available, the industry began using CD-keys and copy protection to ward of piracy. The problem is that all of the currently employed methods have required the disc itself to be physically present, something users are beginning to decry.

New anti-piracy measures to cope with disc-less installations and content are in high demand. Unfortunately, no one has yet managed to get the proper balance of bottom-line protection and user satisfaction. This isn't stopping Microsoft from taking another swing.

As is the norm for many of its announcements, Microsoft is raising the ire of users from one of its new OS features, a little thing called Windows Genuine Advantage. For seasoned watchdogs of MS the name itself raises the hair on your neck.

At it's core WGA is an anti-piracy maneuver from the company. PC's running the company's forthcoming Windows Vista will use an internet connection to connect to Microsoft and verify the authenticity of the Vista license. And it's this constant connection that has users worried.

And who can blame them, when the last sweeping attempt to stem piracy resulted in Sony's root-kit fiasco of 2005? It's especially concerning when you consider MS's less than stellar security track record; if its current flagship products are so riddled with security holes that patches are being issued at a startling rate. Can we really believe a guarantee from Microsoft that the frequent (and, for all intents and purposes, invisible) transmittal of system information will not pose a security threat?

Well, yes and no.

Obviously, MS will do its utmost to prevent that from happening. But that doesn't mean that some time down the road what was once secure will still be safe. CNN'esque fear mongering aside, it's a valid point of worry. Cyber crime has proven to be resourceful and creative when exploiting potential security.

It clearly isn't THE solution to OS piracy, Microsoft would be naïve to think so. But it's a step in the proper direction. And with big corporate support for downloadable software and upgrades it may be the push that starts the tech ball rolling.

Heaven help us

To those who clumsily wielded democracy to get Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) elected to senate:
Thanks for that. It is totally comforting knowing that hamfisted, backwards-thinking, mouth-breathers like him are in charge of deciding how the shape of the future internet is being moulded.
I'm sorry, and Canada gets made fun of for our politicians? Thanks for trying.