(no subject)

My temp job finally ended last week, so I've got (unknown) time till I get a new assignment, so for now I work on (a)getting my craft-show stuff ready and (b)convincing the temp agency that my last 2-3 paychecks that were lost in the mail. They switched over to direct deposit last week, so my I've got most recent wages, but for some reason they seem unable to check their own records, determine which checks have never been cashed and cancel those checks, then either deposit the amount to my account or (if they must) reissue the checks for me to come and pick up myself. Argh. They're a decent enough employer, except when something like this crops up, whereupon they seem to become all confused and unable to deal with it or explain it to me.

Meanwhile green_trilobite and I saw John Carter (of Mars, damn you) this afternoon. I'm still mulling it over but the short version is that I enjoyed it, any reviewer who claims it's too incoherent to follow wasn't watching closely enough, and it's probably the first adventure film since The Scorpion King in which no character annoyed me in the least.

Random Minor Complaint

We also had lunch in a restaurant downtown, with the usual tv screens in the background. Luckily the sound was off, but at one point I noticed an ad for trucks which began with a "non-fat, decaf, overpriced" cup of coffee being crushed beneath the wheels of the big manly pickup truck RAWR!! Are ads still dissing lattes to prove their salt-of-the-earth masculinity? I thought that had died out a few years ago after Esso stations began selling cappuchino.

I know this shouldn't bug me so much, but during the months I was shipping clerk in a warehouse I never heard any of the guys there say anything against fancy coffees. Admittedly, the topic of coffee rarely came up (mostly they preferred to talk about politics/religion). The only one who ever mentioned Starbucks said he quite liked their lattes. Also admittedly, they probably weren't the target audience for this ad, being a multi-ethnic bunch of guys who mostly took public transit to work; the ones who drove trucks drove full-size freight trucks. The white guy from a rural background who was probably closest to the ad's image of a man's man was the guy who liked the lattes. He also liked kale.

I guess this is the usual annoyance I feel whenever anyone tries to sell a product on the "Real men do (xthing which in fact only *some* men do)" line.

Buds

buds, a photo by ennalss on Flickr.

Saw these three walking through Parkdale yesterday with their humans....