Rediculousness

There has been lots of press lately for The Da Vinci Code and despite the fact that I've heard the movie kinda sucks, I'll go see it and so will everyone else because seriously that's what people do when Tom Hanks and the ridiculously cute Audrey Tautou are in a movie.

I've also been seeing just about every ploy imaginable to capitalize on the book/movie. Christian groups are either putting out prayer discussion DVD's or picketing theatres (or both). Every single television channel has some kind of look at Da Vinci or the myths in the book. The History Channel in particular has capitalized on the whole thing with no less then 3 shows I've seen advertised and there are a host of DVD's for sale and in the rental stores uncovering the Da Vinci Code. There are board games and don't even get me started on the number of religious books that are coming out right now. Seems like the talk shows are overrun by authors writing about God and the Church and Government ...

This got me thinking, someone has been left behind is all this hype? One of my childhood hero's has been sadly overlooked and deserves a place in the Da Vinci come back. Leonardo himself.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a long history tied to Da Vinci and in fact their leader, Leonardo, takes his name sake from Da Vinci himself. I don't think it's a stretch to say that he may in fact be the incarnation of the great master and under the teachings of Master Splinter Leonardo has grown into a legendary figure in his own right. It is also little known that Ninja Turtles have a long and colorful history with the church that dates back to the Second Crusade when they were said to be the preferred bodyguards of Louis VII of France.

So marketers everywhere take note, a great hero of our time who can easily be tied to The Da Vinci Code has been left behind. Leonardo is a figure everyone can get behind and heal wounds caused by The Da Vinci Code. I expect people everywhere to put aside their differences and right this wrong by supporting the creation of a new saga for the Leonardo and The Ninja Turtles cowritten by Dan Brown and Pope Benedict XVI and directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Mothers Day is always a special treat and this is the first time in years that I've actually been with my Mom for the special day. I admit, I'm awful with dates but luckily the commercial world as always was there to remind me with sales and specials that mothers day was coming.

I spent a lovely day with my Mom started by a homemade breakfast because turns out the place we were going to go for breakfast takes reservations on mothers day, ooppppps! I think it worked alright and it was topped off with red wine poached pears with goat cheese on the patio, mmmmm!

My Mom wanted to go and check out the Kelowna arts fest that was on downtown so off we went. I was a little disappointed by the fest but the food was great. So while the morning started with class it quickly descended into grease.


We rented a movie to finish off the day and of course my Mom took the opportunity to rent something I had vetoed during many rental negotiations before. It was only later she reminded me that Jennifer Lopez and Robert Redford were in the movie which led to a long discussion about how Bart the bear who's also in the movie might eat them. To my disappointment he didn't but it was a surprisingly good movie even though Bart went hungry.

Anyway Happy Mothers Day to all you Moms out there!

It's been exhausting playing God to my little sourdough but finally it's over and he has slid out unto the world to be eaten.

Day 4, I did nothing and the dough was happy.

Day 5, I was supposed to add more flour but instead I drank beer with Kent. Some creator I am.

Day 6, I added flour and water to my yeasty starter and shaped it into a loaf. The shape it will have for all of it's days.

Day 7, I looked unto the dough and it was good and ready to be cooked. It took an hour of intense heat and trial but the dough emerged a loaf and looked unto its creator and it was good.

With my spare time recently I've taken to the kitchen in a big way. A couple of days ago I went a little crazy and made four loaves of whole wheat bread and started on a sourdough. I came across the recipe when I was flipping through one of my favorite cookbooks by Jamie Oliver trying to figure out how to use up the lemons that my mom keeps buying because they're pretty. The dough actually takes 5 days to make so I was pretty excited to try it because I have a strange affinity to doing things that are hard. We're at day 3 already and like the recipe says it's old school bread, practically biblical.

On the first day I said, "Let there be yeast", and there was yeast. Not just any yeast but yeast from the clean clear Kelowna air. The recipe has you set the dough outside for an hour to gather yeast and who knows what else from the air. If you're in India I wouldn't suggest putting the dough outside though, not sure what would happen to the bread if exposed to that much pollution. I think some freaky mutant sourdough that could walk might be created.

On the second day I did nothing and the dough was happy.

On the third day I said, "let there be water and a handful of flour" and there was water and a handful of four. The whole thing is smelling abit like beer so I've definitely created life. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll create mountains and seas for my little sourdough and then start tempting the yeast with more sugar to see if they bite the apple but we'll see.

I've not had a ton to do lately with resumes floating around and me waiting for eager calls. So I've decided to tackle the long awaited Cosmetic Surgery on my blog. She has held up well and her rugged good looks suited my writing from India but now that I'm back I felt she needed a more elegant face for the world. And before my Mom gets mad at me for being sexist and assuming my blog was female I will add that actually I decided she was to be a she. Something about a voyeuristic diary seems feminine to me so my blog is a female though I'm still working in her name.

Anyway, I took a nice template and made some careful incisions with my recently developed photoshop and CSS skills. I pulled back the forehead abit, fixed the nose, abit of lipo and sent her to the tanning salon. I realize that this metaphor is getting freaky but I was thinking about NipTuck a lot today for some reason.

I think she's come back looking fairly good. I'm particularity excited about the implants that have made the menu much more busty with a weekly chart of what I've been listening to on my iTunes from LastFM and some deviantART of the day.

Let me know what you think but watch your comments she's very sensitive about her looks.

I don't normally watch the annual White House Press Dinner where the press and current administration sit around and make little pat on the back jokes about each other. For one thing I don't think we get C-Span in Canada and for another, if we did I would delete the channel from the TV. But when I heard that Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report was giving the closing speech I had to find a copy of it. Lucky for me the internet is around and it's already posted all over.

If you've ever seen the Colbert report he does pretty much the same thing he always does pretending to be a crazed right wing interviewer (you might recognized his style from Fox News) only this time Bush is two seats over and the generals he is mocking are in the room. It's priceless. The uncomfortable silences after cutting down pretty much everyone in the room from the press to the President are the thing of legend and I hope it will go down in history as one of the gutsiest and greatest displays of political comedy. I seriously was waiting for a secret service person to shoot him. Check it out and remember, I'm not an American so it's ok for me to questions their government.

Video - http://movies.crooksandliars.com/WH-Dinner-Colbert.wmv
Torrent (this is the whole thing, the last 20 min are Colbert) - http://www.mininova.org/tor/296239

Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you [the liberal press] write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!