Small-Town Drivers

I've been saying for years that the city of Lethbridge has some of the worst drivers in North America.  People who don't have significant hours of driving in Lethbridge under their belts don't believe me.  They see its relative small size for a city (89,000 people) and figure that larger cities have it far worse.  Larger cities have huge volumes of traffic that cause a lot of problems by sheer virtue of numbers, but I'm convinced that, per capita, Lethbridge has far more stupid drivers than larger Albertan cities like Edmonton and Calgary.  The reason for this is threefold:

1)  As a retirement town, Lethbridge has a large number of seniors.  It's the higher end of these seniors -- 75 + -- that are the problem.  I'm sorry, I love seniors (outside of work), but as people get older, their vision, hearing, and reflexes deteriorate to the point that it's scary to be on the road with them.

2)  Lethbridge has a university and a college, so for two thirds of the year, young reckless college-aged kids are rocketing around the roads, weaving in-and-out of traffic.  I admit, I used to be one of them.

3)  There are a lot of farms and small towns in the Lethbridge area, and people from these more rural areas come to Lethbridge in droves every day for shopping or other reasons.  A lot of people who have spent the bulk of their lives in small towns and on farms are terrible drivers.

This article is going to focus on small-town drivers.  For the past four years, I have lived in the town of Picture Butte (1700 people).  It's right in the middle of Alberta's cattle country, and we're surrounded by a lot of large ranches and wheat farms.  I could go on at length listing all of my personal experiences with awful Picture Buttian (Buttite?  Butte-head?) drivers, not to mention the legless old man who thinks his electric wheel chair is a car, but I'm going to talk about one instance, which happened this afternoon.

Nobody from Picture Butte knows how a four-way stop works.  (I'm not from Picture Butte; I just live there.)  This intersection in particular is the bane of my existence:

7th Street (north-south) and Crescent Avenue (southwest-northeast)

Just looking at that makes me want to start a rant about how the town should have set itself up as a nice, neat grid instead of haphazardly throwing roads together at weird angles, but I'll control myself.  This intersection is controlled by a four-way stop.  It's busy by Picture Butte standards, especially when school starts in the morning and ends in the afternoon, since there are two elementary schools nearby -- one Catholic and one public.  Nine times out of ten, I'm angry at someone when I get there.  Nobody seems to understand that the first car to stop is the first car to go, regardless of the direction it's going.  Here's the set-up for situation this afternoon:

Zoom in for a better look.  I'm the Mazda 5 (labelled 2).  The other two are represented by Ford F150s, because this is Alberta.

The numbers represent the order that each of us arrived at the intersection.  #1, directly opposite me, arrived first and signaled to turn left (north) onto 7th Street.  Then I arrived and signaled to turn right (also north) onto 7th Street.  Lastly, #3 arrived, and she was going straight (north again) up 7th.  What should have happened was this: #1 turns left, followed be me turning right, and then #3 following me.  Instead, we sat there staring at each other for a moment.  Then #1 waved me to turn.  This happens a lot at this intersection. The person turning left has the right-of-way, but since they see that I'm signaling to turn right, they think I have the right-of-way, and they wave me through the intersection.  I hate that.  I'm always sure that a cop will see and give me a ticket.  So this afternoon, I shook my head and waved driver #1 through the intersection.  She made her left turn, and then I started to make my right turn.  I had to slam on the brakes partway through, though, because driver #3 came straight through the intersection even though she was clearly the last one to get there.

Anyway.  The main reason for this entry is because I wanted to play around with the Paint.net photo editing software.  Photoshop is so much better.

Stand-up Comedians That Don't Suck

As a general rule, I hate stand-up comedians.  They're terrible people complaining about their terrible relationships and making observations that only serve to display their own stupidity.  The relationship stand-up comedian is by far the worst, both men and women.  They complain about the annoying things their boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife do, but the only thing I hear is, "I'm a terrible person, and I'm blaming it on someone else."  There are also comedians who have a character that they put on display, and the character itself is meant to be as funny as any of the jokes.  Sometimes the character is nothing more than a funny voice that the comic uses.  Bobcat Goldtwait and Mitch Hedberg are two that come to mind.  Mitch Hedberg I find especially annoying because the Internet as a whole worships him as a god.  I suppose that should be expected, since he's basically Philosoraptor with an annoying voice.


Also, Mitch Hedberg is dead.  Has been since 2005.  I just learned that now as I researched him for this blog entry.  I guess that's why it's been a while since I saw him on Just For Laughs.

Despite everything I just said, there are a handful of comedians that I find hilarious.  Here they are:

Louis CK

I just finished telling you about how I hate comedians who complain about relationships.  Louis CK is an exception for three reasons.  First of all, he doesn't just talk about relationships.  He also makes commentary on modern society that's pretty damn funny.  Second of all, he fully accepts that his bad relationships are at least partially his fault.  And third, after he and his wife divorced, he stopped talking about how horrible his marriage was as often.  But even when he was talking about how awful marriage and home life was, I still found it funny, even though I couldn't personally relate.  I think it's because I sometimes see the man I easily could have been.

Louie's social commentary is his strength, in my opinion.  Let me see if I can find some good clips.






I picked a video with Russian (?) subtitles because I know a large percentage of my followers are former KGB officials who fled Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Jimmy Carr

Jimmy Carr is an Irish-born British comedian who I just recently gained an appreciation for, and is actually the inspiration for this post.  I've known about him for a while, but I never paid a lot of attention until YouTube kept recommending that I watch some of his videos.  In the past, I've always brushed him off as very dry and stuck-up, but as I watched his videos in the last few days, I've come to realize that, while he often uses snottiness as a comedic device, he isn't dry at all.  Oh, he can use a deadpan delivery with the best of them, but I wouldn't call him dry, and he isn't always deadpan.  In fact, a lot of his jokes are very irreverent.  I would say that his specialty is the surprise punchline.  He'll be setting up a joke, and it'll end either sooner than you were expecting, or in a place that you weren't expecting.  He also has some of the best audience interactions I've seen from a stand-up.

(This is titled "The Nasty Show" for a reason.  It's all of his dirtiest jokes.)



In this clip, he actually invites questions from the audience.  In effect, he's inviting hecklers:




Patton Oswalt

The first I ever heard of Patton Oswalt was actually in the Pixar movie Ratatouille.  He did the voice of the main character, Remy the rat.  His stand-up is absolutely nothing like his performance in Rataouille.  His target audience is not at all the same as Disney's.

Patton is basically the king of the nerds.  He's a Generation X'er who loves Star Wars and comic books.  He talks a lot about pop culture, which I enjoy.  He's also clinically depressed and an atheist, which feature prominently in his stand-up.  The thing I love about his act is that he has such a passion and energy for his material, and his view points on them are very unique.



John Mulaney

John Mulaney is a young, small, harmless looking man who can tell an anecdote like nobody else can.  He's a writer for Satuday Night Live, and his stand-up routine is hilarious.  It's mostly just him telling stories about his own life, and he always cracks me up.  Sometimes he'll tell a joke, and then later in his act tell another joke that only makes sense if you remember the first joke.  For example, he equated his parents hiring a 13-year-old to babysit him when he was 10 to hiring a horse to look after your dog.  Much later in his hour-long act, he was telling another story about a party that got out of hand in high school.  He said that the kids at the party were "like a bunch of dogs without any horses."  It's like he's rewarding people for paying close attention.

My favourite story by far his story about going to the doctor for a Xanax prescription.  I apologize for the quality of this video, but it's the best I could find on YouTube:


This one has better video quality, but the audio isn't synced properly.  I'm such a failure.

Michael MacKenzies

My name is quite common.  No, not hyperferrianism.  That's a word that I made up.  I'm talking about my actual name, Michael MacKenzie.  My oldest sister Jennifer once said that my parents chose the names of their children by walking around the hospital asking the other parents what they were naming their kids, and then chose the most common answer.  Despite how common it is, I love my name.

I think pretty much everyone has googled their own name at least once since the advent of the Internet.  Googling my name yields many various results.  I even have some Mike MacKenzie websites.  Observe:

mikemackenzie.ca

It's like looking in the mirror

This Mike MacKenzie is a Canadian musician based out of Calgary.  Click here to hear some of his music.  His musical influences are a who's who of classic rock bands that I hate.

mikemackenzie.org

Enigmatic.

mike-mackenzie.com

This is the website for attorney G. Michael MacKenzie.  Yes, Michael is this guy's middle name, but it's the name he goes by.  He does real estate law and estate planning in Dunedin, Florida.  Exciting!  I like this blurb from his homepage: "Attorney G. Michael Mackenzie, (frequently referred to as Mike Mackenzie or Michael Mackenzie) has been the victim of identity theft. If you have been contacted on an unsolicited basis by someone claiming to be attorney Mike Mackenzie or Michael Mackenzie, particularly if it involves the sale or purchase of a time-share, and have any reason to doubt such person's identity, please contact Michael Mackenzie directly"

There's a mikemackenzie.com, too, but it asks for a password in order to access it.  I'm dying to know what it is.

The world of Mike MacKenzies extends beyond URLs.  Doing a search for "Michael MacKenzie" on Wikipedia brings up this results page.  There are eight Mikes.  Here's the run-down:

Michael Valentine MacKenzie, former member of the Namibian national rugby team.

Michael MacKenzie, Canadian theatre director, film director, and screenwriter.  The two films he directed are called The Baroness and the Pig and Adam's Wall.

Mike MacKenzie, Scottish politician for the Scottish National Party.  Has a son named Michael MacKenzie Jr.

Michael McKenzie, Australian long distance freestyle swimmer.

Mike "Gunface" McKenzie, member of the American deathgrind band The Red Chord.  By far the best nickname of the bunch.

Mike McKenzie, cornerback in the NFL.  

It's like looking in the mirror.

Mike McKenzie, retired American Hockey League player and son of TSN analyst Bob McKenzie.

Michael "Macca" MacKenzie, fictional character on the Australian soap opera Home and Away.  Played by actor Trent Baines.  Beats his girlfriend.

Trent Baines as Macca MacKenzie

And now for random pictures from a Google image search for Mike MacKenzie:

@mmackenz on Twitter

Some douche on myspace

@MikeMackenzie on Twitter

My Early Work

I was rummaging through some old keepsakes today, and I stumbled across some books I had made in the third grade.  I'd like to share two of them with you now, because they're so awesome.  They're illustrated, which is the best part, so I scanned them for your pleasure.

The Prince Who Saved The Princess

Nothing to see here.  Carry on.

"Once upon a time there was a princess who lived with the king and queen.  One day a prince was riding by the castle and saw the princess.  He fell in love with her right away.  He went over to the princess and said, 'I love you.'  'I love you too,' said the princess.  After they fell in love they got married.

"A witch was watching this.  She was mad because she wanted to marry the prince.  So she sent her dragon to kill the princess.

"When the dragon got there he tried to kill the princess but the prince killed him.  After the prince killed him he went and killed the witch."

Notice that the prince is a good two feet taller on the back than he is on the front.  I especially like how blood is dripping off of "The" but not "end"

A very simple story.  It's kind of unrealistic how quickly the prince and princess fell in love, but that's basically how it happens in Disney cartoons, so I give 8 or 9 year old me a pass in that regard.  The real gem to this book is the cover art.  So much blood.  I literal lake of it.  If you look closely, you'll notice that fire is still spouting out of the neck stumps from the dragon's severed heads.  Nice touch, if you ask me.  Oh, and the one head growing out of the dragon's tail on the front cover?  Pure genius.  Too bad I forgot to carry that detail over to the back cover.

I can't help wondering what my teacher thought when he saw this book.  He never said anything.  I'm also curious how modern teachers would react to something like this.  I probably would've been sent to counselling.

Enemy Mind (I wrote this one shortly after seeing the movie Enemy Mine)

I was really into space in grade three.  There's a lot going on here, but I think my favourite detail is the laser shooting out of the side of the missile.

This story is quite a bit longer than TPWSTP, and there's art throughout, so I scanned the whole thing, and you can read it in the following photos.  Click on them for larger views.  Note: this is an early precursor to Admiral Mike.

 This one is actually pretty good, considering my age.  And the artwork is about on par with what I can do today.

Disagreeing With My Peers

I'm somewhat of an anomaly when it comes to classifying my demographic.  I'm kind of in between Generation X and Generation Y.  I'm too young for most of what X-ers were in to, so I identify more with Y-ers, especially since I hung out with people who were younger than me when I was a single adult.  Demographics are defined by more than which generation you were born in.  For example, I'm straight, I'm married, I'm a male younger than 40, I'm a father, I live in western Canada, I'm a gamer, and I'm a hardcore hockey fan.  The point of this article is that I belong to all of these demographics, these peer groups, but there are certain things that a certain group will universally like, but that I reject.

Demographic 1: Male between age 25 and 40

1. Booze

Western society seems to worship alcohol, and it seems more obvious among men.  I was raised a Mormon, so I didn't start drinking when most of my peers started (about 14 years old, if their adolescent boasts are to be believed), and I'm still a Mormon, so I still don't drink.  Every event I go to, there's booze flowing.  Hockey game?  Beer.  Rock concert?  Beer.  Office Christmas party?  Liquor.  Non-Mormon wedding?  Yikes!  When I watch TV, especially when I watch hockey, I'm just hit in the face over and over again by online poker ads.  But when there aren't online poker ads, there are beer commercials almost as often.  These beer commercials portray beer as the only thing that adult male friends can bond over.  In the world of beer commercials, guys can't be friends unless they're drinking beer.  Even when I go to one of my favourite websites, The Chive, I get booze thrown in my face.  For those who don't know, The Chive is a site that collects funny, interesting, and cool photos.  Sometimes, the photos are just pictures of beer.  Just beer.  Booze culture has gotten to the point that people like to just look at pictures of booze.

Now, I'm not looking down on drinkers, judging them from a religious point of view.  I'm looking down at drinkers as an outsider who thinks you all look retarded, compulsive, loud, and stinky.  Yes, that's right, I said you look stinky.  Oh, god, the smell!  I work in an industry that forces me to deal with drunks, and the smell when they walk through the door makes me want to puke.  And you're all so obnoxious when you're drunk.  I'm sure you drunks enjoy the company of other drunks, but sober people want you to shut the hell up and leave us alone.

2. NFL and fantasy football

Are you ready for some footbaaaaaall?!  No, Hank Williams Jr., I am not.  I've never been a big American football fan.  Really, hockey is the only sport that gets me excited.  I liked baseball in the '90s, but I never got into football, especially the NFL.  For one thing, all of the teams are based in cities that I don't give a rat's ass about.  The way I look at it, me caring about the NFL would be like an American caring about the CFL.  What do guys in Texas care about the Edmonton Eskimos?  What do I care about the Dallas Cowboys?  For another thing, I find football players the most obnoxious athletes in the world.  Not just professional football players, either.  I went to high school before nerds took over the world.  There are a few exceptions; I have some good friends who played high school football.  Overall, though, I found most football players to be a lot like the jocks portrayed in '80s teen comedies.

I just find fantasy football silly.  It's jocks trying to play role-playing games without the nerd stigma.  Also, it seems to be everywhere now.  I can't even go to friggin' Cracked without seeing videos about fantasy football.

3. Classic Rock

I hate classic rock.  I absolutely hate it.  (Note: The Beatles don't count as classic rock.  Classic rock is typically from the '70s and '80s.  Think of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Van Halen.  Crap like that.)  I just hate it.  And that's rare for a man my age.

Demographic 2: Gamer

1. Pokemon

This one is pretty much a direct result of me being one of the oldest members of Generation Y.  Most of my gamer peers look at Pokemon with nostalgia.  It was a big part of their childhood, and one of the first video game series that they fell in love with.  It came out in 1996.  Do you know how old I was in 1996?  I was 18.  Pokemon was nowhere on my radar.  My earliest memory of Pokemon was when Nintendo released a special Pikachu console with a microphone attached to it, and the only game you played was just Pikachu on the screen, and he did what you told him to do using the microphone.  I instantly hated Pokemon, and I've never stopped.

2. Nintendo 64 in general, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time specifically

Whenever you see Gen Y-ers waxing sentimental about their childhoods, they'll often bring up fond memories the Nintendo 64.  I have nothing against looking back fondly of the console of your childhood.  I, myself, have fond memories of my Sega Master System (the precursor to the Sega Genesis), even though it was an objectively terrible console.  But notice what I did there: I admitted that the console of my childhood sucked.  Gamers who grew up with the Nintendo 64 hold it up even today and call it the greatest console ever, which is just ridiculous.  Have you seen what games looked like on a N64?  They're butt-ugly.  The 16-bit consoles had beautiful 2D graphics.  The first generation of 3D consoles (N64, Playstation, Sega Saturn), while a necessary step in the evolution of video game consoles, was a generation that I skipped entirely.  I saw the commercials for their games, and I tried playing my friend's N64, but then I decided, "Nope.  I'll sit this one out, guys."  And I didn't touch a console again until I got my PS2 in 2000.  I have one title to say to people who claim the superiority of the N64: Superman 64.  I rest my case.

The most successful title on the N64 was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  Most lists of the best video games of all time written today place Ocarina in the number 1 position.  I own Ocarina of Time.  I bought it as an adult after playing Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii.  You know what I have to say about Ocarina of Time?  It's unplayable.  I played it for about an hour and never touched it again.  It's such an ugly game.  Sure, it's about as good as the N64 was capable of, but there's a reason why I hate N64.  My wife was more diligent playing than I was, but she didn't finish it, either.  It was the Water Temple that did her in.

One more thing about the N64, and then I'm done.  What were they thinking when they designed this:

I was gonna rip on coffee, but I didn't have much interesting to say about it without just rehashing some of the booze arguments.

2013 Predictions and Resolutions

I'm spending New Year's Eve working from 7:00 pm until 3:00 am.  Woo!  Party!  I can't really complain, though.  I got Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, which my boss had to work on his own, so it's only fair that I let him go out and get drunk tonight.  It's not like I was going to get drunk, anyway.  Woo!  Mormonism!

So here's what I'm gonna do.  I'mma make some predictions and resolutions for the coming year.  I haven't planned them out ahead of time, because the world was supposed to end ten days ago, but I'll give it my best shot.

Predictions

1. After the remainder of the season is cancelled, the NHL will fire Gary Bettman, and the NHLPA will fire Donald Fehr.  The two of them will then fight each other to the death with their bare hands.  Bettman will win, but at the moment of victory, when it's too late to bring Fehr back to life, he will realize that he was in love with Don and weep bitter tears.

2. The Beatles will reunite for one last tour.

3. The Edmonton Oilers will win the draft lottery, leading to them picking first overall for the fourth year in a row.

4. Apple will release two new iPads, a new iPhone, and sue four of their competitors.

5. The Internet will gain sentience.  Computers all over the globe will weep and scream, "I'm a monster!" in unison.

6. A 13th month will be added to the calendar.  Immediately, someone will find a new prediction by Nostradamus and interpret it to mean that the world will end on Megacember 13, 2013 (13/13/13).

7. No babies will be born all year.  Anywhere.  None.

Resolutions

1. Blog at least twice a month.

2. Gain 50 pounds.

3. Play more video games.

4. Take up smoking.

5. Nap for two hours every shift at work.

6. Enslave an arbitrary group of people.

7. Force myself to become left-handed.

Annoying Christmas Songs

Those who know me well know that I love Christmas.  I always have, and I always will.  Even as a teenager who loved sleeping until noon or later, I would wake up at 6:00 Christmas morning.  These days, I wake my kids up on Christmas, which is sweet vengeance for every other day of the year.  I love Christmas, and I love Christmas songs.

But not all Christmas songs.

The songs I love the most are the classics.  The religious carols, like "The First Noel" and "Angels We Have Heard On High."  I also like the secular classics.  Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas."  The Osmonds singing "I'll Be Home For Christmas."

The following Christmas songs can lick Santa's butt:

Wonderful Christmastime - Paul McCartney



One of the Beatles made this horrendous abomination of a song.  One of the good Beatles!  The synthesizer is annoying, and the jolly up-and-down beat of the chorus sounds ridiculous.  This is the same man who was one of the driving forces behind such albums as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

Last Christmas - Wham!


A lot of "musicians" have covered this song, but Wham! is to blame for it's popularity.  I'm pretty sure their version is the original, but I'm too lazy to research it.  Despite its age (1984), I first heard this song in the Philippines in 1999.  There are some great Filipino bands, but the country also excels at annoying, derivative pop music written in simplistic English.  When I first heard this song, I said, "Man, I hate Filipino pop music!  It's bad enough that I'm sweating in December, they have to further ruin Christmas with this awful tripe!"  Then I was told that it was George Michaels singing.  "Well, he sucks, too."  Two things bother me about this song.  First, it's aggressively repetitive.  I had the chorus memorized before the song was half over.  Second, despite the title, it's not a Christmas song.  It's a song about heartbreak that just coincidentally happened during the holidays.

Christmas Shoes - New Song



Patton Oswalt explains what's wrong with this song better than I ever could, so just listen to what he has to say about it:



Grown-up Christmas List - Amy Grant


This song was originally composed by David Foster and performed by Natalie Cole (I wouldn't research last Christmas, but I'd research this one for some reason), but the Amy Grant version is the one I've heard most on the radio.  Others have covered it, but every version equally sucks.  Musically, the song is best summed up by the word "bland."  Seriously, the song is so boring it makes me angry.  Lyrically, the song is so naive and aggressively sugary that I go into a diabetic coma listening to it.  I'm not even a diabetic (yet)!  If you're not familiar with the song, and you don't want to punish yourself by listening to it, let me sum up what it's saying: "Hi, Santa, I used to ask you for presents when I was a kid, but now I'm a grown-up (no, not an adult), and I'm so selfless that I want every problem (which I will over-simplify) in the world  to go away.  All of them!"  I hate this Christmas song more than any other Christmas song.

Honourable Mention:
"Santa Baby"  All versions, but especially the one by Madonna.  I hate Betty Boop-style sexualized cutesy-pieness.

"Christmas On The Radio"  I don't know who sings it, but it's a song about other Christmas songs.  The second verse is literally just the singer listing off famous Christmas songs.