LGAA Notes

So I spent three days in Red Deer last week at the Local Government Administrators Association annual convention. When the first guest speaker started speaking, all of my fellow interns grabbed a pen and paper and started taking notes. "Pssshhh!" I said. "Notes! This isn't school." So I picked up my own pen and paper and took smart-ass notes. Some of the notes pertained to what the speaker said, and some were just random thoughts. I've provided parenthetical explanations where I deemed it appropriate. Either way, here they are. Enjoy:

-I am taking notes.
-Not to take away from her point, but I have never liked the letter E.
-The more she says "I Generation," the more I want to listen to my iPod.
-"I'll burn the building down." (This is an Office Space quote. The speaker was talking about a person who was upset that someone took her stapler."
-www.mikemackenzie.com
-"Join the I Generation" sounds like a Pepsi slogan.
-It should be FIPP, not FOIP. (This is referring to Alberta's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which is commonly abbreviated as FOIP, much to my chagrin.)
-Rod is such an A-hole.
-Uh-oh! Not the C-word!
-Mmm! Gum!
-Hey, that rhymes!
-Tee-hee-hee! She said panties!
-I lay on my back and put both legs in at the same time.
-Suck it, Lizzy! (Lizzy being Queen Elizabeth II)
-Nobody likes a smart-ass, Mik. (My name tag at the convention read "Mik MacKenzie," which amused me to no end.)
-Just like in Smallville.
-I'm a loner. A rebel.
-"But I still love technology/Always and forever."
-"How can anyone not like you?"
-Why are toothless children cute, but toothless adults are ugly?
-Real notes?
-Yeah, I can do that. (This has nothing to do with the "real notes" comment.)
1. Yes
2. Yeah
3. This does not apply
-170,000
-My doodling is usually words. I word doodle.
-Ha-ha-ha! "My beans!"
-Smartiac Attacks!
-I bet no one else in the room doodled Cthulu burning down the hotel. (The speaker had earlier encouraged us to doodle, and then at this point said that he bets that six or seven people in the room doodled the same thing. I'm pretty sure I was an exception, because I had doodled Cthulu stand above a burning picture of Red Deer's Capri Centre and saying, "Blargh! My arms are too short!")
-Hooray for ABBA!
-I think Kurtis was abducted by aliens. Or maybe eaten by Cthulu.
-Slums of Jakarta would make a pretty good band name.
-My name is not Mik. It's not Erik, either.
-She looks like an older version of Maria Keen. (Maria was a friend of mine in my single days.)
-This is the most boring birthday ever. I better win the laptop. (I didn't.) It's not the worst birthday ever, though.
-Except for Highway 21, of course.
-I should grow my hair long enough to stick a pen in it. Or maybe my beard.
-31 years old, and I have a zit on my nose.
-2+2 does not equal 6, stupid.
-time for the birthday dance! (Then I drew I stick figure dancing.)
-Who's talking?
-I hate it when people say "were" instead of "we're".
-"The near term"; I like that.

I had four more pages of quality notes from Thursday, but the cleaning staff threw them away when I wasn't looking.

Fear From Fiction

I was raised on R-rated horror movies. I've been watching them for as long as I can remember. Alien, Aliens, Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining. I could go on. What do those movies I just listed have in common? I saw them all before I was 10 years old. As a result, I'm very desensitized to horror, both in film and books. I enjoy horror, yes, but it doesn't really scare me. There are only two movies I can think of that can scare me: The Shining (specifically, the naked dead woman that Jack Nicholson made out with) and Signs. The Shining still scares me because I always revert back to the quivering 7-year-old boy lying on the family room floor in the basement of my house in Cole Harbour. Signs scares me because it's a masterfully made suspense movie that touches on fears that resonate just right with me.

Some video games can scare me, but that's because they're interactive and pull me in more than any book or movie can.

So here I am, going through life watching horror movies and reading dozens of Stephen King books, not even flinching at the horrors inside. Then, last week, I bought a book: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: the Best of H.P. Lovecraft. Stephen King recommends him. Lovecraft is basically the father of modern horror. Since I'm an aspiring author who sometimes dabbles in writing horror, I figured I'd read some of his work. As a general rule, I hate early 20th century fiction, and when I started reading the first story ("The Rats in the Wall"), I figured that this was going to be no exception. However, once I got into the meat of the story, I realized that H.P. Lovecraft is seriously effed up. I loved the story. It disturbed me in a delightful way. I read a couple of other stories, but then decided to skip ahead to read "The Call of Cthulhu", one of his most famous stories. I finished reading it last night. I put it down, intending to go to bed, but there was just one problem: the thought of going to bed, alone (Avril and the boys are out of town), in my dark bedroom terrified me. I couldn't get the image of Cthulhu out of my head. Here's a picture of him:

Note the tiny man falling from his claws, and the dead guys on the rock in the foreground. I was sure that I would be haunted by the giant, octopus-headed ancient alien in my sleep. So I stayed up for another hour or two distracting myself with the Mo-Board. When I finally went to sleep, instead of Cthulhu, I dreamt about Star Wars.

My Bookmarks

Here is a list and descriptions of the websites that I visit on a daily basis:

Cracked.com "America's Only Humor & Video Site, Since 1958"

For years, Cracked magazine was the most successful Mad magazine clone on the market. Cracked magazine is no longer in print, and really, is Mad really going to be that far behind? Are there still people out there who find the Mad-style of humor funny? No, I didn't think so. Cracked decided to focus all of its efforts into its website, which is a million times more funny than the magazine ever was. Part of the reason that I like it might be because the writers are predominantly men who are close to my age and have similar interests that I do. Nerdish interests. They specialize in list-based articles (they also specialize in dick jokes). For example:

8 Customers Everyone Hates
7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey
7 Classic Disney Movies That Taught Us Terrible Lessons
The 20 Most Ridiculous Batman Comics Ever Released
The 7 Dumbest Things Ever Done by Airport Security

There are also six full-time bloggers on staff. My favourite two of these bloggers are Daniel O'Brien and Michael Swaim. Michael Swaim is also the host of Cracked TV, an online series of short videos which is really just more list-based humor.


The Mo-Board "A place for Mo-Mos, Non-Mos, Ex-Mos, and even Anti-Mos to make friends and chat."

While the Mo-Board isn't the birth of hyperferrianism (that would be bolt.com), it is his current place of residence. One of the many, many message boards on bolt.com was the Mormonism/LDS board. As time went on, and bolt rapidly became a place that was unbearable to be (I'm not just being an ass; the place no longer exists), one regular frequenter of the Mormonism/LDS board saw fit to venture over to Proboards and create The Mormon Board, which eventually became the Mo-Board. There was a mass exodus of the regulars of bolt's Mormonism/LDS board to Andrew's new Mo-Board, a place free of the many, many, many ills of bolt.com. We're a very tight-knit group, and I consider most of them real friends, not the lesser breed of online acquaintances. Several of the members of the board have met in real life. Personally, the only two members of the board that I've met are the two that I knew in real life before the Mo-Board existed, but I plan to change that someday.

Facebook

You all know how I feel about Facebook.

Mary's Attempt at a Blog

This is my younger sister's blog. She blogs and posts pictures of herself and her family.

The Emily Needs to Take More Pictures Blog

This is my youngest sister's blog, which she doesn't update nearly often enough.

Pat's Photo A Day "A scrapbooking grandmother's pictorial journey through life, one day at a time."

This is my mother's blog. She uses it to post pictures and talk about grandmotherly things. It is also the source of most of the family news that comes my way.

Mommy Moments "Tales of 3 great kids and their snap-happy Mom"

This is the blog of one of my older sisters. Like Mary, she uses it to blog and post pictures of herself and her family. She's also a professional photographer, so they're really nice pictures.

Edmonton Oilers - The Official Web Site

My favourite hockey team's official web site. It is a source of great joy, anger, and frustration. It's also a great resource for when I miss hockey games due to travel, Tree House, or Rock Band.

hyperblogianism "Jokes, social commentary, and other miscellaneous thoughts of my online persona, hyperferrianism"

I don't think a description for this one is necessary.

MiKenzie, Inc. "Established 1978. Mike MacKenzie, President; Avril MacKenzie, CEO; Kenneth MacKenzie, Jr. Vice President; Alexander MacKenzie, Not An Explorer"

My first blog. This is where I keep people updated on my family. MiKenzie, Inc. was coined by my former roommate, Zac Erickson, and is an amalgamation of "Mike" and "MacKenzie".

Jandrew Edits "a collection of humorously edited footage"

I was introduced to Jandrew Edits by cracked.com, which will often post links to sites that they enjoy. This guy takes existing footage (mostly from Star Trek: The Next Generation and, more recently, Back to the Future) and cleverly edits them for short, funny clips. My favourite one is called "Bridge Buffoonery"

Memories of the '90s "I'm either one of the youngest Gen X-ers or one of the oldest Gen Y-ers, depending on which text book you look in. I turned 12 in March of 1990, and these are my memories of being a teenager in the last decade of the 20th Century."

My third blog.

Avrilcakes

This is my wife's substitute for a blog. It's her Shutterfly page, where she posts pictures of her family life. It also has a journal feature, which she uses as a blog.

amywoolf

The blog of another one of my older sisters. Like Mary and Sara, she uses it to blog and post pictures of herself and her family.

White Ninja Comics

Another site that Cracked.com introduced me to. It's a comic strip that updates three times a week chronicling the adventures of White Ninja, a man with an unclear history whose age changes from strip to strip. Sometimes he has a wife and kids. Sometimes his kids are teenagers, and sometimes they're little. Sometimes he's a child. He's even a baby in one strip. It's hard to put a finger on why it's such a funny comic strip, but I absolutely love it. I'll post some of my favourite strips here.