mike the mountain

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Why do pirates always bury their treasure 18 inches below the ground?
Because booty is only shin deep!

I’ve known about the “social bookmarking” site/app/Web 2.0 darling del.icio.us since it launched, I guess I just didn’t really clue in to it’s awesomeness until today.

OK, so I’m a little slow sometimes.

I am what you may call a voracious reader. I usually have 2-3 books on the go, stacks of magazines that I never throw out (which I’m sure doesn’t annoy my girlfriend at all, right honey?). I can’t take a poop or fall asleep without something to read. The whole “blog revolution” (blogolution? bloggervution? I smell a new buzzword!) has been awesome for a connoisseur of the obscure, inane, insane, wild, wonderful, and OMGWTF such as myself. My brain is Augustus Gloop and the net is my river of chocolate (see, I knew that whole “series of tubes” analogy made sense!).

It was bad enough when I had to hunt and peck around for some nuggets of info, I had enough sites memorized that I knew I enjoyed. Occaisionally they’d link to other cool places that I’d have to remember or bookmark. But then sites like Fark started to gather lots of links together in one place. And then other sites started doing the same thing, on every topic imaginable. RSS feeds came along, and that was like adding a nozzle to the firehose, because at least I could get all the stories and posts and pics and jokes and articles in one place. Bloglines, Google Reader put it all online for me, so now I didn’t have to be at any one computer to go through all my favourite sites and feeds. And they made it so easy to subscribe, I’m now getting a stupid amount of posts, hundreds a day, far more than I could ever keep up with (and still do things like work, sleep, eat)!

The productive life is about efficiencies. I can scroll through a few hundred links, and mark the ones that sound interesting for later reading! For a while it was just in an ever-growing folder of bookmarks on each computer I used… then I clued in on one of the reasons I started this little bloggity-blog all those many years ago, to store and share the cool stuff I find! So a few links here or there, then a big “link dump” every once in a while to clear out the bookmark folders. Not very efficient, but improving. Google Reader added an “Email” link to each post, which allowed me to post the entire article on here, which I thought was really cool, but now I’m stuck with 40 or 50 unpublished articles that I have to go through, clean up, and write some kind of comment about. Yikes. Back into overload again.

So this is what brought me back to looking at del.icio.us. I wanted some place to keep my bookmarks that would allow me to access it from any computer and easily share with anyone who was interested, and if I could keep a bit of an update going on my website here, bonus!

Well, those of you who read this site directly (as opposed to through a RSS feed) should see a new section for “Recent Links” (or whatever I’ve changed it to that day), as well as a link back to my del.icio.us page, where I will be linking to all the various little items of interest I stumble across as I surf the tubes. You can even subscribe to my link feed, and get all those wonderful little links without having to dirty your browser with my digital brain vomit.

The “Links“… um… link… still stays. It’s more of a source list for the individual pages and articles that I’ll tag in del.icio.us. I’m stoked about this, it’s giving me another layer of efficiency that I can use to optimize my time without sacrificing the random knowledge that I’ve been feeding my brain since I got my first Guinness Book of World Records and Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Of course, I haven’t yet got to the point of taking my laptop into the bathroom with me, so Uncle John still has a place of honour… right beside the throne!

Sometimes, painful sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

My girlfriend and I want a house. We have two cars. We only need one car. Her car is paid for.

Anyone want to buy the coolest car I’ve ever owned?

As difficult as it may be for me, I am offering someone else the opportunity to own one of the most unique and kick-ass vehicles on the road today. You can’t get these in Canada. Heck, there’s only about a half-dozen states in the US that are selling them right now. I’ve seen a grand total of three other Scion xB’s in Alberta.

You want a car with a ton of head room, amazing gas milage, buckets of storage space, and an appearance guaranteed to get you noticed on the street… this is the one.

I’ve kept her stock, aside from an upgraded stereo with an MP3 player input jack on the face for my iPod, but if you were so inclined you could mod this thing up like crazy. Do a google image search on Scion xB and see some of the stuff people have done.

You can see more information and pictures on BuyMyScion.com, and you can check out my ads on Kijiji and Craigslist.

I’m asking $24,900. $100 off if you can tell me what my license plate means. If you’d like to talk to me about it, leave a message in the comments or e-mail me at michael@buymyscion.com.

What can I say? I love me some good old fashioned slasher flick! And everything I’ve read about Hatchet makes me very excited to see this one!

I’m not the biggest film snob by any means, I can shut my brain off and enjoy a lot of crap, but I do have to agree with pretty much everyone that modern Hollywood seems to be making a lot more garbage than they used to. Sequel after prequel after remake after reimagining… I know they’re running a business like any other, and a guaranteed mediocre profit on a throwaway flick with a bunch of hot-at-the-moment actors might make more sense to a corporate bottom line than taking on an unknown entity that might bomb… but there’s gotta be someone fighting for new and exciting stories, someone willing to take a risk for the sake of the art. We’re going to run out of stuff to remake at some point!!

Anyway, my point is, if you have any love for the horror classics of this generation (Freddy, Jason, Michael, Leatherface, etc.), and would like to see something new that other real die-hard fans of the genre are going crazy over, get out and see Hatchet this weekend. If it’s playing near you (dang limited release for indie flicks). There’s even a contest over at Horror-Movie-A-Day for the person that gets a picture with the most people they’ve brought along!

Just remember to promise your girlfriend that you’ll watch Oprah with her or something… secretly, she really enjoys these types of movies, they just don’t want to admit it!

… right, honey?