Content is paramount.


See?! Hair is too short
__________

Get my winamp skin here.

H I A T U S

posted by losir at 6:46 PM

Hey look! I can still update! Cool.

Too bad I have nothing to say. Joy. Except maybe, it's snowing!! 5cm of the white uglies.

....I'm done.
posted by losir at 6:28 PM

FINAL UPDATE

Well, at least for 3 weeks. Come April 2nd, no more free Geocities FTP. Besides, I will be in HK in a week's time (yippie), so there's no point in setting anything up before then.

So that's it kiddies. 3 weeks holiday for this here blog. I will do a "post" in blogger if I find anything interesting to write about, but won't be published.

By the way, I took out my bike yesterday and rode it around for a bit. AWESOME! Bring on summer.

....losir out.
posted by losir at 11:22 AM

Another rare update on the weekend. I was near a terminal, and it had high speed access, I figure: What the hey, I'll just drop by and say hi to myself. [Ed: How much more sad can get get?]

I've been thinking about the Raptors a lot lately. Well, not just lately, but specifically, when they were on that nasty 13+ game losing skid. How can professionals let themselves get into such a horrible slump? All their lives they've been hungrier than the other guy. Their whole being is built from competition. How else could they make it into the NBA?

My theory is self-realization. Self-relization that they are not the best of the best. Like a scrumptous garden toss salad, they are like the red onion rings. Certainly it's delicious, but the wicked vinegrette dressing is really why you ordered it to begin with. So too is the whole basketball team. Yes, they are an important part of the equation, but they're not Vince Carter. They were not the ones that the franchise was built around.

Something happens to you when you realize you're expandable. Something in a man snaps. When most of your life you've been the center of attention, people always saying: "There goes so-and-so, he's gonna play in the NBA someday."; and yet, when you arrive, you are only part of the salad. You're not the main dish. You're not the guy the fans come to cheer. You're not the guy they elect to place on the highlight reel night in, night out. Sure, you're good, perhaps, great. But you're not grand. You're not Franchise.

I think the team felt that. Now I don't know of course and it's just my theory, but the way I see it, the team was devastated initially, losing Carter in the game before the all-stars break. They fought through that and actually won. "Great!" they thought. "A b-ball team consists of five guys. We're a team!!"

Then they started losing. A bucket here, a rebound there. Soon, they realize they've lost three in a roll and they start thinking about Vince. "Man, we haven't won without him...."

Yet they trundled on, secure in their status that they're in the NB-blinking-A. We may not be able to slam dunk the ball down to our elbows, but we can play darnit!.

Lose another two and the media starts moaning about the loss of Vince. Lose another and all of Toronto are begging for Vince to return. Longing, like poltergists...."Walk into the light!!" ....Vince, come back to us.

This is when it begins to sink in. "What if we can't win without Air Canada?" Which is re-enforced as they lose game after game. After about 10 games which is a mental turning point - they give up. Well, in the sense they no longer believe in themselves or each other. Players start getting lazy, they don't hustle, they don't try as hard. All they can think of is "We really can't do it without him. Is he really that good?"

Again, let me stress that I'm speculating. I'm no psychologist, and certainly no friend of anyone on the team. But this is logic and common sense. If you lose a team member, and then the whole gameplan takes a dive, what other logical explanation is there?

Please, don't tell me about the players wanting coach Lenny Wilkens to get canned. There really isn't anyone else close to credentials such as his looking for a job. So although it's possible he may not return next season, that's message to the rest of the guys, not a solution.

But then Vinny came back, and oh-be praise! It's the second coming, wearing purple and Nikes. Go man go! Except, they went nowhere, save south. Maybe it was a team backlash. "Yippie, he's back. We can all stand around now and let the HIM win it for us."

Obvious that wasn't going to happen. Everyone knows you can't own all five opposing members. Heck, even Jordon in his hayday had a Scotty Pippen and Dennis Rodman. So, even the forced early return of Carter, which I'm sure he was made to do, playing hurt; they still lost. Because they didn't want to believe he could be that influential.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you kick a normal guy enough times, he'll stay down. A true athlete fights their way back up, no matter how many times they get the beats. A true competitor wouldn't even allow it to get there.

Look at the Raptors now. They're playing inspired (desperate) basketball. Winning the last four, all fairly close games with Vince definitely gone for the regular season. People realize you must carry the team, and instead of hoping the Franchise will re-emerge, you play harder because the load is placed squarely on your shoulders. At least you want to show the world that you didn't need a Vincent Lemar Carter. I know I would.

Trust me fellas, I totally understand.

....Except, I'm being crushed by the weight of the world.

posted by losir at 8:30 PM

I don't have any interesting stories today. No tales to spin nor yarns to entwine your imagination or snare your attention. Nothing. Running on empty. Flying on fumes. Barely scraping by with flapping arms and baited breath.

This page will soon be gone, a cruel fate dictated by the free web hosting service. Certainly, I could move to another server, as my cousin GizzardSlap have pointed out. Alas, I have not the strength nor patience to endure of such an arduous undertaking. Truth be told, I like to update my page. However, it is in the writing that I glean pleasure, and that can suffice by pen to paper.

To you, faithful reader, my heartfelt thanks. It is because of the tens of you who weather my page each day, that I take small solace in the fact my words are not wasted. Much like a board of overturned Scrabble tiles, my words do not always make sense, nor do they always have a point (hey, like the blanks in Scrabble... D00d!!1) but they are honest, and are birthed from my inner sanctum.

I hope I have brought a little bit of joy and mirth to your life, and maybe even a little bit of thought. If I have made one person laugh in this year long journey, then it has been good. Laughter is the best medicine, or so it be coined. Mayhap mine not be medication, but at least a brief delightful distraction from the ho-hums of the internet.

I am not biding you farewell, or adieu. I am merely sharing with you that I am at a crossroads. Like the famous words in Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade, the keeper of the Holy Grail doth spoketh: "Choose wisely."

If I choose to continue, who would I be serving? If I desist from anymore online writing, who shall miss me? The age old question beckons: "Who the heck do you think you are?!" I am no one. not even a blip in the sea of blogs.

T'is be not self-pity. I am merely pointing out nothing's irreplaceable. Heros are fogotten, only to have others champion the cause. Figureheads are replaced, and yet the ideals still linger. Even icons of society pass on, and yet, though fondly remembered, people always find another who can fill their shoes.

I leave you now with a poem.

The world has shattered, nothing left to lose.
The strength that I gathered, is entwined like a noose.
For much as I wanted, it wasn't meant to be.
Fate has much responded, to remove myself from thee.

I stare and I claw, with broken fingernails.
I stagger and I crawl, in coffin with final nail.
What I regard as wealth, may now come to pass.
Stop feeling sorry for yerself, and get off your freakin' ass!

....heeeeeeeeeeee :D
posted by losir at 8:14 PM

I have done the impossible. Oh baby!

From here on out, I can do anything, be anyone, beat everybody. I feel like Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, or Neil Armstrong. In short, I feel like a heel.

I cut myself shaving today, with an electric shaver no less. I thought that wasn't supposed to be possible?! Oh well, I have defied the laws of physics, the rationale of science, and mysteries of the universe.

I just had an epiphany.

....what if I'm the missing link?!
posted by losir at 12:09 PM

You know what they say: A picture is worth a thousand words. That's why I'm posting pictures, because quite frankly, I'm much too busy to write a thousand word essay to describe how crappy snow in spring really is.

With freezing rain to boot!

....I knew this would happen when old man winter stopped using Head & Shoulders.
posted by losir at 5:58 PM

Lara Croft, eat your heart out!

....Um, sorry love, but somehow pink pistols aren't very threatening.

posted by losir at 3:19 PM

It's the hair I tell you, the bloomin' hair!

Now my guy friends are shunning me. One goes out and buys his own food, several are MIA from their cubes, another guy is hanging out with a different group. Ex-co-workers are scared of the cold, yada yada.

Come on hair, grooooooooooow.

...Remember, Rogain lets you keep the hair you have, and that's the idea.
posted by losir at 12:37 PM

It has been a horrible, horrible weekend. So much so I have to say it twice.

On Friday, I got the mother-of-all-ugly haircut. Now the sides and back is good, but the front, my barber just cut off way too much. Dang, I feel like I just got smacked with a 2x4 ugly stick.

Wait, let me first quote from my buddy Helter Skelter: Assumption is the mother-of-all fudge ups. How true.

As I sat on the chair with still a full head of hair, I told the dude: "I'm spiking my hair up now, and not just gel-ing the front part up. So I guess I need the top to be shorter too." He concurs, I smile. With visions of studliness and killer babe-magnetism in mind (hey, I'm delusional okay?!), I sat there happy as can be. Barber starts off with the electric sheers. All good so far.

Next thing I realize, I'm looking like a bald eagle with peach fuzz on top. The front was so short I felt like the kid at school trying to gel his head for the first time - you know the type, all sticky, stiff, not unlike a helmet. It just doens't look right from any angle. Now, I'm a guy through and through, and we aren't supposed to care about stuff like this, but I'm telling you, if you saw it, you'd pity me too.

Anyway, because of that, my self-confidence hit an all-time low. We're talking off the scales low. It's pretty sad.

That Friday night, Fido and I went to a local pub for beer. Feeling generous, I decided to buy the first round. Walking up to the bar, I spot an extremely cute bar-keep. Fido later found out she was an Irish-Malaysian mix. Sort of like Mariah Carrey with Chinese eyes. Hot!!

Having not worked out consistently for a week and dressing like a slob, I walk over there, timid as a mouse. I was not jaunty, there was no spring in my step. In effect, I shuffled over with my eyes cast down. The walk of the damn, if truth be told.

I quickly mumbled "Two Buds." without making eye-contact. I didn't look around (there were several attractive females in the vicinity, but I didn't bother checking any out, in fear or being laughed at.) I didn't talk to anyone, look at anything, just anxiously waited for the beers to arrive. I grabbed my wallet and took out fifteen dollars, knowing that a beer there would be Five-fifty each.

When she came back with the change, she put down a toonie and two loonies. As I reached to grab the toonie, she smacked her hands down on all the change, covering them. Now normally, that would be a great conversation starter, maybe to the tune of "Hey, help out the needy, don't be greedy." - or something resembling wit. Instead, I slouch my shoulders, peer down at my shoes, shrug and walk away with my beers in hand. Totally silent, without even a peep or eye-contact.

I feel like Samson with his hair cut off. My power is gone, my strength is naught. I feel like a hundred pound weakling. Sigh. At least if I wore a hat, I coulda be gansta-cool or something. Instead, I really felt like a total loser.

So I ended up shelling up at work the whole weekend, which was worse because I didn't get anything done, and that got me more mad.

....Doesn't rubbing brandy on the scalp promote hair growth?
posted by losir at 12:16 PM