The news in brief. I'm your anchor, C. Burger Brown. It's farmer o'clock in the morning -- can you feel your feet?


Myself, my siblings, our spouses, the toddler -- we formed a short, dull parade of salt-sprayed cars and drove out to Port D. for Alt.Christmas with Mashed Potato Pop, Noodles, Auntie Spoil and their small, explosively bouncy lap-dog, Chewy. It was my dad's birthday, and had just been my step-mother's. My half-sister's birthday is Christmas Eve, just like Jeebus. We drank lots of wine. Minor emotional contusions were sustained by my sister Xena, but all in all the event was declared good by a majority of the delegates.

I have a Christmas tree that drinks more water than a cow. It is one thirsty piece of wood. Ace reporter Littlestar has been following the story.

The best thing about the snow is that is makes the hellacious half-constructed dog-house portico-whatimafuckit Old Oak is illegally building over the door to the lower level slightly less offensive to the eye. Many things look better buried in snow. I'm living in a very snowy world. The frost sneaks into this drafty schoolhouse, and makes our toes cold. Outside, the air is like a slap in the face -- you're pink amd smarting within seconds. According to the spirits in the mercury prison: it's thirty-one below zero.

The yard truck stalled in the city, trapping Slozo there for an hour or two during the grey hour before dawn. This keeps happening to him. Personally, I have no idea why a truck we'd already decided was only healthy enough to haul shit to the dump or possibly tow boats to the beach (ie, a "yard truck") might start to fail after being driven back and forth seventy kilometers to Toronto four times a week. It may remain a mystery for the remainder of Slozo's stay at the schoolhouse (T-minus two weeks until the impending re-birth of the new, self-reliant Slozo!...right?).

Popsicle has decided to be terrible for a spell. The answer to most questions is a decisive, "No!" For some reason it has become an insufferable ordeal to put pants on. She's happy to wear them once they're on, but putting them on is clearly a violation of her toddler rights and she's letting us know. She'll put on a shirt, sure, or socks or shoes or hats or coats -- but pants, no. She's declared a war on pants. Down with pants, up with people! That sort of thing. "Pease, Papa! No pants, pease. Mama, help!"

I have been researching my new hardware options. It was a journey full of good news and bad news. I'm sure some of you elite computermaninjas would scoff at some the products I looked at (RAID-in-a-box type things), but it must be kept in mind that I am not an engineer. Frankly, I can barely count. I used to have a Linux-based gateway server, and I think took a few years off my life. Also, one of the idiot-proof arrays I looked at comes in a shiny case that would match the idiot-proof computer I'm going to buy. If you think that's entirely without merit as a purchase decision you haven't taken into account the excesses of depraved shallowness that makes the commercial art industry go -- my clients expect to be wowed by the physical presence of my hardware set-up. I'm currently trying to move away from the Matrix-chic of clusters of monitors and multi-keyboards and mixed cabling and move toward a cleaner approach -- LCDs, shiny baubles, wirelessness. (Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Drink Sprite.)

Anybody want to buy a cottage? Please buy our cottage. It's near North Bay. Somebody's got to buy the cottage so that I can buy new toys. I know, I know -- a smart businessman would already have a hardware investment fund saved up and ready to go. But I'm a goof-ball and I've spent all my money on toddly-wifey-McSchoolhouse and shit. C'mon. We've fixed it up all nice. Buy it. I don't want it. I want a G5, and less credit card debt. Save me, lottery faeries!

Okay, I'm back and it's seven thirty. You didn't even know I was gone, because within the confines of this post I am your reality-dispensing godlet, and I nip and tuck where appropriate. Some people would've just gone "dot dot dot" or something, but I prefer to seuagueuueuy.

I woke up in the middle of the night, because my cheeseburger sense was tingling. I lay in bed and thought about a cool train. It wasn't super-sonic or anything -- it was a steam-engine train, manned by robots with riveted copper bodies stained with streaks of oxidized green. The tracks that the train ran along were composed of the bodies of tiny polymorphable robots which flew out of twin sets of vents by the cow-catcher, jetting ahead of the train to assemble themselves into a section of track; once run over, they dissolved the track behind the train and jetted back into vents on the caboose. If you were to take a high speed snapshot of the streams of little robots working, you'd see that they essentially look like the Doozers from Fraggle Rock except they're made of tin. Like little metal Super Marios. They take each other apart with little metal crow-bars, and seal each other into place as ties and rails with tiny little jack-hammers. Their work is a blur. My cheeseburger sense continued to buzz so I got up and felt around in the dark for a robe. I couldn't find my robe, but I found Littlestar's robe. I stuck my head into the tiny loft to hear Popsicle breathe, and then padded downstairs to my laboratorium. I saw my that my critical render job had failed. I rescued it and resumed the render. Now I'm trying to stay awake so that I can stitch the two broken pieces together once the job is done, so that I can encode the motherfucker and burn a DVD before the courier gets here. Nothing like an invigorating Christmas deadline! Then, once that's safely off, I can get on with the other project I'm behind on. Whee!

Want to imagine a fun motion-graphics project? Picture this: fade up on a decrepit old scarecrow of a human being, who croaks, "My life used to full of pain. Terrible, terrible pain. E-ve-ry daaaaaaaaaay." And then it basically goes downhill. It's a video all about how people who are nearly dead recently missed being totally dead by the skin of their teeth, ostensibly by taking wonderful, wonderful medications from an impartial transnational pharmaceutical concern (the people paying me). Off-camera one of the gleeful interviewees confesses to the director how much his life is worth in payments to that concern: eighty thousand dollars a year. "Expensive drug," says the director, crouching beside my chair as I load up the footage. "Are you sure you don't want a chair?" I said.

Littlestar is awake. She's wearing her auxiliary robe. It is a snugglier one, and has been freshly tied, so it is therefore more difficult for me to gain access to her cleavage. But nature finds a way. But the blinds are open and the sun is coming up, so breasts are put away and kissing subsides. She goes to check on the toddler.

Okay, now Popsicle is here. She's sitting with Littlestar and giggling, enjoying a morning's hot milk. I think we're going to make bacon. Good, double-smoked bacon from North Bay. (Damn, where am I going to get my sweet, sweet bacon once we let the cottage go?) My render still has an hour to go. Fock!

Didn't I have some retarded motif heading into this diary? Oh yeah, telegraphic burst udpates. Sort of fell of the trail, I guess. Appy-polly-loggies.

Now I'm being chastised for forgetting to put away Popsicle's bitticles and kipplies after changing her and putting on her clothes (she was surprisingly co-operative about the panting). Popsicle wants bacon, too.

Outside the window the village has been replaced a low-resolution white paste, which resembles the shapes of the objects had previously been there in only the vaguest way. There used to be a white and blue house across the street I'm pretty sure, but now there's just a snowdrift. It's like The Day After Tomorrow except it's today, and the subplot isn't retarded.

I hate shovelling snow. Old Oak bought a snowblower which makes life easier by wasting your time spending a quarter hour blowing off the loose, top centimeter of snow before you actually get down to the work of shovelling the snow underneath. Um. On the other hand his idea to drive the 4x4 around with a piece of sheet metal on the front of it like the world's homeliest baby zamboni was right on the money. I can see our driveway. It looks like it has a giant marshmallow parked on it.

Hey, you know how I mentioned in my last brief entry how a friend of mine had asked me to delete a passage from my HuSi diary? Well, now he wants his pseudonym retracted too, because he thinks he might trademark it for himself. I have complied. The revised text makes for an interesting read...it now has a sort of blixco's Ornate and Kate vibe. Littlestar wanted to know why I didn't just choose a new pseudonym for my friend (instead of [redacted]), but I feel that it's neat to have the standing diary reflect its own history. It's an anti-Dorian Grey policy.

So, who's next? Maybe the Lipgloss Gypsy doesn't want to be a slut anymore. Just drop me a line, and I'll expunge it. I'll bend over and smile politely. I'll wave like the queen, sideways and regular like a clock.

Mmmm...I smell bacon. Gotta go.