Peaeater

In Canada, we celebrate Victoria Day every year on the Monday preceding May 25th, in memory of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). I'm not sure why. In Victoria, where I live, the conjunction of the Day with the eponymous City means we must have a parade. We have had for 107 years. "Every minute of this 2-1/2 hr parade will leave you entertained" touts our official tourism website. Well, whatever. Somehow I end up watching every year anyway.

A lot of American high school marching bands show up for the event, and they're mostly really good, for high school students trapped in polyester. Part of the fun (every minute, folks, EVERY MINUTE) is to try and guess what the hell tune they're playing. Sometimes it's obvious ("Louie, Louie"), sometimes it's more challenging, as you strain your "top of the pops" trivia skills to the limit. One in particular had me stumped. The tune was tantalizingly familiar - I could even hum along - but I couldn't for the life of me name what it was. My sister didn't know. My wife hadn't a clue. I was like, I KNOW THIS, but I couldn't identify it. Until suddenly, as the last rank of tubas was passing, I had it: Ozzy Osbourne, "Crazy Train".

Ozzy Osbourne? OZZY? OSBOURNE!? Now, I love Ozzy, but for me, that song is a symbol of my long-hair headbanging days. You know, rebellious youth and loud, possibly Satanic music. And here they are, these kids, turning my rebel anthem into an easy-listenin' family-parade-day brass-n'-woodwinds favourite. I hated every one of 'em. Then I remembered who was wearing the burgundy and gold, one-size-fits-none bibbers and jacket with matching spats for a two mile stretch on a public street in front of 90,000 spectators. And felt a lot better.

Loose and lose are DIFFERENT words in the English language. For the love of GOD, if I see one more person use "loose" when they mean "lose", I'm going to gnaw a hole in my belly and pull out enough intestine to strangle myself out of sheer blighted hope in the human condition.

It's because yesterday I was using a third party control for a popup calendar. The control itself is great, and I was perusing the list of control properties, when what to my wondering eyes did appear, but the CalendarPopup.EnableLooseFocus property. The say what? Uh... some kind of focus where the rivets have joggled free and are rattling around because I prefer that over a TIGHT FOCUS? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Doesn't the Law of Grammatic Entropy which governs such words as qwik, ez, and donut (nee quick, easy, and doughnut) DEMAND that longer words collapse to shorter ones due to the overwhelming pressure of human laziness? How then the extra "o"? It's actually more work: the finger expends double the calories as it redundantly hammers the key. Obviously the Grammatic Entropy law is being counteracted by the Law of Orthographic Horsepower which says that if one letter is good, more must be better.

Next on the block: its versus it's.

Not much of a rant, nor a muse. We're all in Boston, attending Inmagic Dealer Days. Or more accurately, we're done attending dealer days and now are trying to relax even though the hotel bar closes way too early. Somehow I've not been able to sleep well, though that is normally NOT a problem for me. I could use a bucket of Visine.

Long in the making, short in the viewing, fair-to-middling in the amount of edifying content; this short film sucks away 5 minutes of your life and never gives it back.

Synopsis: Andornotter Peter Tyrrell looks back with fond memories at crusty old Andornot and Inmagic websites regurgitated by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, then introduces the new Andornot website with the help of Benny Goodman and His Orchestra. 5 mins.

http://www.peaeater.com/AndornotWebsite.wmv