johnrobe

Whenever I do home improvement projects, I always emerge feeling manly and satisfied. Unless they don’t work. After one of those, I emerge feeling sweaty, inferior and seriously questioning what my fate will be in my frequently-imagined post-apocalyptic future.

This last weekend my project was finally installing the motion-sensitive light fixture that my brother gave me on the back of the house. I figured this wouldn’t be too hard, if everything was up to code in terms of junction box etc., with the light that was there now.

My house has some quirks with its electrical system as we’ve discovered. The previous owner was quite a capable handyman, but his profession was paint and drywall, not electrical, and sometimes the things he did … well, let’s just say they worked, but few were able to figure out how exactly. I hate to make a joke that sounds like a culturally insensitive Polish joke, but the light switches in my house are backwards – up is off, down is on, and apparently that’s the way it’s done in Poland, where the previous owner was from. I tried to rewire it myself, but 20 minutes and several visions of toiling in Lord Humungus’ sugar mines later, I let them be and decided I could learn to love the Polish way.

When I took the old light fixture off the wall, I was very happy and relieved to discover that there was a standard, up-to-code junction box underneath. I happily rewired things, installed the mounting plate, and then spent 90 minutes trying to fit the light onto the mounting plate.

I don’t know wtf was going on with that mounting device, but the one of the screws just wasn’t long enough to mount the damned light fixture properly. I was able to mount it, but there was a gap of about a centimeter on the one side because of the too-short screw. Making it worse was the issue that once I had wired the light fixture into the junction box, I couldn’t just set it down to figure out what to do, I had to mount it or unwire it. Net result was that I had to hold the thing up there with one hand while I worked on my tiptoes with the other hand.

I was frustrated, perspiring, and ready to throw in the towel and contemplate a world with no light in the backyard, when Timmi came down with a great idea – why not use the Mighty Putty we got for Christmas and see if that helped. At first, I thought her idea was crazy, but honestly, I was supposed to use putty or caulk to seal it after the fact anyway, so I thought, what the heck?

Very long story short, fast forward a half hour later, and that light fixture was securely affixed to the wall and nicely sealed to boot!

Now all I need to do is work up the courage to leave the light on without me standing there with a fire extinguisher. We’ll deal with that bit of paranoia in another post.

John General, Rants, Shameless Consumerism

This has been around for a while, but if you haven’t seen it, you’ll join me in getting this song all up in your head.

We got it. You need it. You’ll find it.

It’s just like a mini….

Mall.

John Shameless Consumerism

I don't own a car, something which puzzles a lot of people. I admit, it sucks sometimes, but most of the time the TTC and my bikes get me everywhere I need to go.

For those other times though, I have found my solution! The Hitch is a belt with suction cups on it that lets you latch onto anything, like a van, as shown in the picture above. Really, you sort of need to see it to appreciate the true insanity of the idea.

My big question is, why is the woman attached via her back? I know I would want to be face in, so I was suction hugging that vehicle for all it's worth. It would also be a lot more fun to do a flying hug at something to latch on, a la the David Letterman velcro suit.

John Shameless Consumerism

When I was a kid, I had a novelty t-shirt that said “I’m with stupid” with an arrow pointing to the right. I loved that shirt.

I also loved my “Almost Prefect” shirt. (It was a humourous mis-spelling of “Almost Perfect”. Get it??)

When I was a kid, t-shirts with funny slogans or pictures on them were quite popular. So much so that the Blanford Square Mall, hotspot of Woodstock, had a whole retail stand for browsing and getting your own t-shirt pressed.

Sadly, times change. Novelty t-shirts seemed to go out of style. The t-shirt stand went out of business. The Blanford Square Mall slowly withered and died. It’s now a toyota plant.

But you know what they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Novelty t-shirts are back and wittier and cleverer than ever thanks to the Internet and social networking. The picture on the right, for example is from a Flickr set by a woman who not only has an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt, she takes photos of her with her friends while wearing it. Then there are all the cool web sites where you can buy t-shirts, vote on them, design your own and have them printed and worn by complete strangers. The sheer volume of them is intimidating though. How is one to find the perfect t-shirt in this crazy world of ours?

I’ll tell you how! With the wonderful Please Dress Me, a search engine for t-shirts. I’ve already found so many I love to post here, so I’ll leave you all to it.

John Shameless Consumerism

John Shameless Consumerism

John Shameless Consumerism

I finally started emptying the photos off my phone and here is one that I was really hoping to get up for Valentine’s day, but I missed it, from a little store on Yonge Street.

A condom (just one), some lip balm, and a mint. All you need for a successful date, all in a handy little sachet. Presumably, no directions are included, so you’re on your own in figuring out what order you need to use them. Still, for $1.99, can you go wrong?

Actually, yes you can. Very wrong.

John Love, Shameless Consumerism

John Shameless Consumerism, The Weeb

How is it that people get slower and slower and slower until finally they have to ride around in a scooter, then suddenly they're allowed to motor around at speeds that would make an olympic sprinter scared?

Today downtown I almost had to dive out of the way as 3 older folks wizzed by in formation on their scooters. Now, you are probably thinking I'm taking artistic license, but I'm not. I'm admittedly not an olympic sprinter (anymore) but there is no way I could have caught these people.

Did I mention this was indoors??? Do you need a license for these things? I don't have a car anymore… should I get a rascal?

John Shameless Consumerism

The other day Timmi and I were in Chinatown, having some pho, and afterward, we stopped at a store to look at their vast selection of ceramic spoons and pirated dvds. I love browsing around stores in other countries and places like Chinatown give you the opportunity to do that without leaving town.

Let me tell you, this place was a gold mine.

Among the many treasures we found was a toothpaste section with a wide variety of Chinese toothpastes. The one that caught my eye was a Chinese version of Crest with a dazzlingly shiny box. I knew were just about out of toothpaste anyway, and this stuff was pretty cheap, so I figured why not use this exotic Chinese version of Crest instead?

When I got home that night and prepared for bed, I have to be honest, I was pretty excited. It wasn’t going to taste any different from normal Crest, but it was going to be exotic and exciting because it came from a different tube, a tube covered with letters that were unknown to me.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Reality went something a little like this:

I opened the box, slide out the tube and admired how slick and shiny the new tube was.

I opened the lid and squeezed some toothpaste onto my brush. “Ah, it’s a gel,” I thought, “And sort of a different colour than I was expecting. Sort of a bluish grey.”

Then I put it in my mouth and started brushing. That’s when I realized, this wasn’t like normal Crest.

You know that tea you get in Chinese restaurants? Sometimes called “Jasmine tea”, sometimes called “Green tea”, sometimes called “Chinese tea”? I have a new name for it — “Crest flavoured tea”.

It just goes to show how important context is. I like tea. I love tea actually. I especially like green/jasmine tea. And you know what? I DON’T actually like the taste of most toothpaste. I see it as a necessary evil that tastes better than what my mouth usually tastes like when I’m using toothpaste. That being said, I’m used to toothpaste tasting like toothpaste. Toothpaste tasting like tea? NASTY!

Even so, you know what? I’m still using that weird Chinese tea tasting Crest, despite the fact that Timmi won’t kiss me afterward because I “just taste weird”. Will the taste grow on me? Will I eventually snap and switch back? Why am I so odd?

I’ll keep you posted.

John Photo Snarkiness, Shameless Consumerism