The White Stripes

How many of these songs do you recognize?

-Let's Build A Home
-Black Math
-Ball and Biscuit
-In the Cold, Cold Night
-Instinct Blues
-Stop Breaking Down
-Cannon
-Astro
-When I Hear My Name
-I Fought Piranhas
-Catch Hell Blues
-Icky Thump
-Seven Nation Army
-I'm Slowly Turning Into You
-Hotel Yorba
-De Ballit of de Boll Weevil
-Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
-Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine
-300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues

I've been following the White Stripes for a long time now so I recognized most of them (not necessarily by title, but I knew the songs). They certainly put on a good show, they sound great live, but.... to a casual fan (and one who has been listening for a long time), this was a horrible set list!

Maybe it was because they were headlining at a blues festival that they felt like they had to play a lot of songs with a blues sound, I don't know. What I do know is that I missed a hell of a Rider game to listen to a bunch of White Stripes B-sides.

Songs I would have loved to have heard: Conquest, Rag & Bone, Hello Operator, Fell In Love With a Girl, Hardest Button to Button, Blue Orchid, The Union Forever

Spore

Take a look at one of the future games being put out by Maxis, makers of The Sims.

http://www.spore.com/about.php

Basically, it's similar in concept to The Sims, but you evolve from the cellular origins of life all the way to the point where you are colonizing other planets. It's pretty ambitious and I could see this being way more addicting than The Sims, based on the countless ways that your creatures could turn out (You earn DNA points along the way which allows you to "buy" certain characteristics, allowing you to survive).

Check out the official trailer which can be found here.

Any wagers on how long before right wing organizations start sending out press releases condemning this game as being sent by the devil? I wonder if they'll be allowed to play this in Kansas...

Happy Canada Day!

The day is almost over here in Ottawa so I guess I should send out a "Happy Birthday" to Canada. I don't think I'm going to make it downtown to watch the fireworks. I've never really been a fan of fireworks. I'm of the opinion that if you've seen one show, you've seen them all. In 2004 when I was in Vancouver, they held an international fireworks competition, with such countries as Canada, Spain, China, Sweden, Mexico... I mean, they were alright, but nothing special. If I wanted to see a colourful happy face exploding into the sky, I'd just try LSD.

So enjoy this day, even if you don't like fireworks. At least it means you get tomorrow off!

Sicko

I went to see Sicko last night, the latest documentary from Michael Moore. It's your typical Moore movie - biased facts used to push a liberal point of view. Fortunately, I'm liberal so I bought into it :) I think that the main point of the movie is to show why the USA relies on HMO's instead of a universal healthcare system. (answer? Money, money, money - The American Dream)

Moore often compares America to Canada in his documentaries and Sicko is no exception. He talks to a few people in Canada about their experiences with the healthcare system. Of course, none of them have a single bad thing to say. Granted, after seeing how it goes down in the States, I still believe that our system is superior, but it's not without it's own flaws. Obviously he didn't talk to anybody in Canada who had been waiting for months for required and urgent surgeries. Then again, he also didn't talk to anybody who had to declare bankruptcy to have their finger sewn back on.

Moore spent some time talking about healthcare in Canada, Britain, France and Cuba. I was astounded to see the quality of care that they receive in Cuba. Apparently they have one of the top healthcare systems in the world. All four of these countries used some form of a universal healthcare plan, the main difference being how they handled prescription drugs (of the four, it seemed as though Canada was the only one that charged a lot of money for precriptions, granted still well below what is charged in America).

I'd recommend this movie if you've enjoyed Moore's past work.

But The Bible says...

The Catholic Church is speaking out against the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS in Kenya. Their solution? Men should only marry virgin brides. So very counter-productive to all of the work that has been put into educating African people on aids prevention.

http://pressesc.com/01183307636_catholic_church

DEEEEE!

Anybody who was worried about the loss of Nate Davis, Omarr Morgan, Davin Bush and Jackie Mitchell is probably feeling a lot better about our defense after last night's game.

8 sacks. 3 interceptions.

For the first time in 10 years, Montreal loses it's home opener. We had some great personal performances on the D, in particular:

Eddie Davis - Game MVP as far as I'm concerned. 10 tackles, 1 sack, 1 interception.

Our offense, although not spectacular, was efficient and protected the ball. How about that opening play, a 32 yard pass to Jason Armstead?

There are some areas of concern that showed up last night. Obviously our running game was virtually non-existant. I think that once we get Wes Cates in the backfield (rumoured to be happening for our home opener against his ex-team, Calgary), we will see a much improved ground game. Childs did show that he's got some great hands and that's why we'll keep him out there. I fully expect to see plenty of two-back formations in the future.

Another area of concern was our return game. A few times Jason Armstead elected to just crumble on the ball rather than trying to make something happen. With every other team in the league making full use of the new blocking rules for returns, we really need to step it up in this department.

Looks like Kent Austin is just the man we needed. The team went out there and did something that we rarely saw under Danny Barrett - They played the full 60 minutes. No fourth quarter breakdowns on D, no second half urgent come back attempts by the O. We saw a consistent four quarters from this team. Almost as refreshing as that Gatorade bath Kent took after the game, courtesy of Makowsky and O'Day.

Stereograms

Like those magic eye posters? Like tetris? Like mixing things together that don't seem to belong together? You're gonna love this:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/36795242/

So far, my high score is 5301 on beginner, and temporary loss of function in my left eye.