Emmy Night!

Today is the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards, so I thought I'd do a quick roundup of the last 12 months in television. I went into this year with one must-watch show. This was, of course, Glee - which premiered after the 2009 Superbowl and became my favourite show of all time.

In total, I have religiously watched six new shows this year and am looking forward to their season 2 premieres
- Glee
- Modern Family (must-see TV)
- Cougar Town
- Vampire Diaries
- Bondi Rescue
I also started watching the The Big Bang Theory this year, even though it was on its third season. It's both delightfully hilarious and features a theme song written by The Barenaked Ladies.

The other big story for Team Dustin was Futurama's triumphant return to television, after a hiatus of nearly 5 years. Comedy central's 22-episode run premiered in June and features the original cast.



Also, I got my photo in the local paper this week.

3D Beauty and the Beast!

That's right, the Disney classic has been released in theatres in 3D. I'm totally going to see 3D cups and saucers singing "Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest . . ."

YAY!

Oh No She Didn't!

That's it, I've finally turned on Elizabeth Hasslebeck. I didn't like her on Survivor (Season 2, if you can remember back 21 seasons ago), but for the most part I've put up with her on The View. Good thing her husband isn't even remotely cute, or I'd be in a bit of a bind. Maybe HE'LL have a cheating scandal like the other male celebs . . .

For the record, I've always been pretty tolerant of Palin as well despite costing the most awesome Senator ever of losing the election.

Clip 1 - Kathy's appearance on The View

If you can't hear it, Kathy's last line is "Anything else you'd like to say, Elizabeth, because this sh** is just getting good?"

Clip 2 - Elizabeth's next day retort

Impressions of New Zealand - Part 5 of 5

41. If you live overseas, the quarterly Queen's Alumni review is printed and mailed from Hong Kong.

42. Living with an arm's-length acquaintance leads to many, many discoveries that you really just didn't want to know about.

43. Due to a more appropriate costume idea, I am no longer going to be Grimace for Hallowe'en 2010, so feel free to snap up that idea.

44. Students can save money on heating by spending greater portions of their time in the library. Or sleeping over with random strangers.

45. Hard liquor is very expensive in New Zealand. Wine, however, is not, and is widely available at most grocery stores until midnight. Guess what the grocery store looks like on Saturday at 11:00pm.

46. In Dunedin, you can openly consume liquor on the street. Guess what the streets look like on Saturday at 11:05pm.

47. Naming your house and putting a sign in your window (the Pink Pussy, Robot Face) is a time-honoured tradition at the University of Otago. The Kingston residents who passed the restrictive by-law because of "The Beaver Dam" need to get a sense of humour, then suck it.

48. No matter where you live, you'll look down on the residents of a slightly smaller neighbouring city as savage. In Dunedin, this is Invercargill. It's hilarious because it's like Saskatooners calling people from Moose Jaw white trash. Bitch, you're from the prairies - you're ALL white trash.

49. Like Canada, NZ has the Big 5 banks. But one owns another, and they're all owned by Australian banks.

50. ANZ culture is very macho. They love advertising that has the undertone of "Are you a girly man? Do you want to prove that you're not? Then buy this!"

Impressions of New Zealand - Part 4 of 5

31. I have tickets to a performance of Miss Saigon that will likely NOT include a helicopter. Or this guy (note: photo is actually from the Toronto South Pacific). But I'm hopeful that it will still be awesome.



32. Japan has a 10-year limit on vehicle life. 11-year old Toyotas are put out to pasture in New Zealand, and are consequently very cheap.

33. New Zealand doesn't let you get married if you'rea non-resident. Probably to avoid a bunch of American gays from getting married, then going back and ruining the sanctity of marriage in the US.

34. Job interviews are terrifying. Especially if they let you talk freely for five minutes to start it off. And you spend two minutes rambling on about Shih Tzus.

35. Bondi Rescue is the greatest TV show on Earth. Admittedly, there might be a program in Uzbekistan that I haven't seen yet, but I'm confident that I'm right.

36. You can easily tell what time a Dunedin woke up, and thus got dressed, based on how they're dressed.
7am - coat, toque, pants
10am - shorts, t-shirt
12pm - pants, coat
3pm - rain jacket, umbrella.

37. Living next to a daycare is awesome because it's dead quiet after 6pm and on weekends.

38. Pie would be supremely popular in Canada. $4 for a steak-and-cheese filled pastry sounds like exactly what Timmy's customers would go for.

39. Poutine is not in New Zealand. GRRR.

40. In 2010, the Commerce building inevitably has the best facilities on any university campus.

Impressions of New Zealand - Part 3 of 5

21. Cricket is grossly misunderstood by North Americans, who think it's a really boring sport with slightly dumb rules.

22. It's actually more stupid than boring. There's a fielding position called "Silly mid on."

23. Air travel doesn't have to be painful - just avoid US-based airlines. Note: Air Canada was recently voted best customer service in N.A.

24. In downtown Dunedin over noon hour, it's very common to see business-type men walking alongside women in sweatpants and pushing strollers. Adorable family walk!

25. Canadians are one of the World's highest Internet users per capita.

26. Bandwidth is comparatively cheap in Canada; 50GB access costs A LOT more in New Zealand.

27. Yes, I really do need to download that much XXX material in one month.

28. The clearest free-to-air TV channel is the horseracing channel. Presumably, if you can't afford cable you should bet on the races until you can!

29. The Dunedin Casino looks like a standard 6-storey office building. Where's the damn teepee?

30. Last week at Pub Quiz, I got exactly two answers right. One of them was "Ontario."

Impressions of New Zealand - Part 2 of 5

11. Observation #10 notwithstanding, "Wannabe" is the best ringtone ever.

12. Rember when that guy opened Tut's tomb, and died two months later from a bacterial infection (aka "Tut's Curse")? I'm pretty sure that's going to happen to me after venturing into our flat's storage unit.

13. Home insulation is apparently an unnecessary extravagance.

14. It's silly to live in Dunedin and not have a view of the ocean.

15. Ocean view in Dunedin costs 1/10th of what it would in Vancouver.

16. In another win, Dunedin has few, if any Vancouverites. This means you don't have to endure hearing about how Vancouver is better than every other city. Ever.

17. Students are convinced that 15K a year is "enough to live comfortably." Maybe, but I like cable.

18. And indoor heating.

19. And I refuse to eat SPAM, which is apparently available in every country.

20. Unlike Nesquik. Stupid grocery store.

Impressions of New Zealand - Part 1 of 5

Since I landed three weeks ago, many oddities about New Zealand have struck me as particularly curious ordownright silly. To summarize my experiences over the past three weeks, I decided to compile a list of 50 observations about New Zealand and Dunedin culture. I basically took out a notebook, sat at a bench on the university campus for about two hours, and came up with a list of 50 things. They are presented here in five easy-to-read segments.

1. Dunedin has a lot of tight clothing

2. And not a lot of tight bodies

3. For Chartered Accountants, two weeks of unemployment seems like an eternity. For individuals with PHD's in Classics, it's about par for the course.

4. People who are nerds in high school become high school teachers. People who are nerds in university become professors.

5. Sangria is, was, and always will be, the devil.

6. The mullet is alive and well in some parts of the world.

7. Merchants here don't bargain, but love a good deal. I actually had a retail worker downsell me rechargeable camera batteries.

8. The prevalence of smoking in a society might be directly related to GDP per capita.

9. Cell phone users are annoying in every country.

10. Cell phone companies - even more so.

Picture below is of Billy the Exterminator, who has an AWESOME show on A&E. Yep, I definitely watched a 6-hour marathon on my last day in Canada.

Airplane!

It's been a busy quarter, so we're gonna do a mid-quarter update since about 3 times the normal amount of material has happened in my life during Q3 2010. We'll start with a summary of the 14-hour plane ride.

Stage 1 - I hate Toronto
Pearson airport tried to kill me at the start of my journey. I got to Pearson with all of my stuff (~ 50 lbs total weight), looked at the little baggage carts, and said "I don't need a baggage cart - I'm just going to check in, dump my bags on the conveyor (like every other airport in the world), and will only have to carry/drag them for 20 minutes tops."

BIG MISTAKE. Apparently if you fly to the US, you need to carry/drag your bags through check-in, customs, 2nd customs, then security before you get rid of them. My 20 minutes turned into 2.5 hours, and my back was killing me as I boarded a 5 hour flight to San Francisco (to be followed by a 14 hour flight to Auckland). Thanks, Toronto - I hate you too.

Stage 2 - Run!
The flight from Toronto was an hour late getting in, so Air Canada very nicely arranged to have someone meet us at the gate and take us directly to the next gate. In all, we have about 10 minutes to spare before the Auckland flight took off, so that was good. Not as Amazing Race-y as it could have been, but it worked out.

Stage 3 - Overseas
Three awesome things happened overseas. First, we hit really nasty turbulence at around Hour 11. When this happens, I instinctively did the following:
- check the Airline radar to see where we're going to crash-land if it comes to that. It told me that Fiji was 1500 miles off, Nauru about 1200, and Auckland about 2500.
- based on this, I concluded that we were basically going to die, so if the plane was going to drop I needed to make sure my last 15 minutes were good
- I changed the channel on the in-flight entertainment to Glee. I figured I might as well go down Like A Virgin.

Second, in my experience, the flight attendants on most airlines tend to be tall-ish blonde women with great smiles. The attendants for my section of the flight were male, and looked like either bouncers or retired rugby players. I don't think ANYBODY asked for a 2nd glass of wine on that flight, and I thought it was kind of neat.

Third, the plane sat 9 across and I had an empty seat between myself and this 50-ish American dude who worked in the geothermal energy business. I'm a nosy Nelly, so on long flights I fairly frequently look around to see what other people are watching on their screens. This man, God bless him, watched what I think was 7 consecutive episodes of Glee!

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Guest Post with K2B

***The following is a guest post summarizing what I loved about London, Ontario from K2B. Afterwards includes my imagination's rendering of the hot boy in question.***
- Captain Awesome


So, I was walking to work today, on not even a block away from my house I see a gorgeous 20 something jogging … SHIRTLESS. It was at this moment I was like, should I trip and fall into his arms.. but I was late for work so unfortunately that wasn’t really an option. As I was walking to Queens, I decided 2 things

1 – Dustin would like to hear about this
2- I would like to hear about hot kiwi boys

Anyways, continuing on my walk I saw in a distance another man running. Now I could tell from afar that he would not be as pretty as boy 1, but I thought hey, can’t be too picky. Well, upon closing the gap I saw it was a 45 year old chubby crazy guy running in order to make the fan in his hand work. And I thought, this is awesome, perhaps I should help him in his quest. But again, late for work and I continued on my journey.

Finally, not a block away from the office I saw a man and woman holding hands, and I thought, aw, cute old people love. Well, I walked by what I am almost positive was a meth'ed out hooker (who had a lumberjack shirt on, unbuttoned with a pink bra on and her belly for the world to see – I will commend her, she didn’t have a gut, but the skin was all saggy and icky). The man she was with I am 95% was either a john or her pimp. And I thought to myself, is there time to cross the street really fast, or would that be awkward…

So, I have come to the conclusion that 2 out of 3 times, Big D has blocked me from a sexy/fun morning, but has saved me from becoming a drug raddled lady of the night. I also realized, while I took the final ascent in the escalator that this quite mimicked Mr. Eastwoods fine work, and as such I have named the e-mail after the cinematic piece of art. I also realized (not for the first time) how boring this office is without you, because there is literally no one else that I could share this story with. So BOO on you for leaving me alone.

A soliloquoy - Not Safe For Work

One might wonder why Blogspot informs you that this blog contains adult materials and asks you to click "Yes" to agree before being redirected. I found this diagram on one of my favorite websites, graphjam.com, to illustrate what I mean by this.



As you can see on the image above, there are various levels of "Not Safe for Work." I assure you that nothing on this site will be higher than an NSFW2, since I myself have only seen a few level 3's on the Internet and one level 4. In conclusion, you're probably OK to view this stuff at work, but probably not when someone's looking over your shoulder.

Cheers

Captain Awesome

Dustin Joins the 21st Century

Today, I bought my first cell phone. My plan includes 300 minutes and 300 texts. The guy at the counter was concerned that it wasn't nearly enough texting. I'm sure most phones do this by now, but you can swap in mp3 players instead of a ringtone.

Obviously, it now sings "So tell me what you want, what you really really want . . ." when someone calls.