“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of waking up, have just gone through my morning routine for the 8,942nd consecutive time.

It starts with my CD-powered alarm clock, which has contained the same mix-CD since I bought it. In Grade 11. Why mess with a good thing? I can listen to the music playing and know exactly how long it’s been since the alarm has gone off, without having to open my eyes or think excessively hard — both tasks that can be troublesome in the morning.

By the time it gets to Daft Punk, I’m usually at least mostly awake and alert. In University, it usually made it all of the way to Tom Lehrer’s Element Song, which was just one of the many reasons that I was pretty consistently late for class. “These are the only ones of which the news has come to Haaaarvard… and there may be many others but they haven’t been discaaaaavered” became the morning death knell for any pretense of arriving in class on time.

After I get out of bed, it’s time for the shower (optional), and shave (optional), at which point I am usually quite late. There’s time to briefly stare, wistfully, at the Cheerios that sit on top of the refrigerator. They’re mocking me. “You never have time to eat us. Maybe if you give up hygiene. You, too, can taste of the morning oaty goodness.” I hate those smug Cheerios. They think they’re so much better than me.

At this point, I usually do 1000 pushups, take a 30 kilometer ride on my bicycle, and then drive to work, practicing my over-the-top lies in the car along the way.

Since I’ve started work, I’ve started loading leftovers into these tiny, modular lunch-sized containerbowls. Two or three containerbowls makes a pretty good — and pretty varied — lunch. The only trouble is that I’m not sure if I want to be the sort of dude who has his fridge filled with hundreds of nigh-identical meal-units. At that point, it might be time to just give up and buy a pocket protector and some enormous plastic glasses.

This morning, I took cream and sugar to work with me. It felt strange, walking through the park to work, holding a carton of cream. “What are you doing?”, I imagined the park patrons saying.

“I’m walking my cream.”

“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of having cool air blasted up my shorts, am wishing that I had an air conditioner in my house.

According to this thermometer that I’ve been keeping in a pot of boiling water, it’s at least 100 degrees Celsius in here. That is way too hot. I am sweating like Dolph Lundgren in a sauna filled with packing foam. This poor leather couch, it never had a chance.

Admittedly, I’m forced to consider the air conditioner because some of my previous schemes to cool the apartment down have failed. Let’s look at some of them.

Plan A: Bag full of ice.

When the frostbite heals, I might be able to use my toes again.

Plan B: Frantic arm-waving

This plan was actually successful, but I got tired after 9 or 10 hours and couldn’t keep going. I was getting strange looks from the other people on the Skytrain, anyways.

Plan C: Create an Enormous Rocket and Use it to Shoot the Earth Exactly 1 Foot Away From the Sun

Unfortunately, logistical difficulties in this plan created some problems – some couplings melted, I ran out of money, and my engineering lead sued me for having a hostile workplace environment.

Plan D: The Dutch Twist

I had to promise the police that I wouldn’t discuss the details of the Dutch Twist. Let’s just say that those preschoolers will never be the same again.

Plan E: Hat-Fan

Fun but ineffective, as I have exhausted the world’s entire supply of AA batteries.

“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of automation and scheduling, have pre-scheduled each “On the Topic of” post this week.

“Why?”, you might ask, perhaps followed by “why should we care?”. Maybe even “who are you, and why are you in my house, standing over me while I sleep, breathing deeply and clutching a vegetable peeler to your chest.” Yes, I get that last one a lot.

It’s simple, various readers. Because I can try to keep a more reasonable schedule, writing whenever the mood strikes me and then pushing my various insane thoughts into the queue. That even gives me more time to adapt, alter, adjust, poke, prod, pontificate, edit, elucidate, and … um… egg. Additional editing shouldn’t really clear up my lunatic writing style, though, so it’s not really a win for anybody.

The most major benefit, however, is clear. Any time I schedule anything on a computer, it feels like I am commanding a tiny army of unreliable robot servants — something that most of my friends should know is a pretty heady feeling. Someday, if I keep this going, I might not be the only one standing over people while they sleep, breathing deeply and clutching a vegetable peeler. There might be tiny, unreliable robot servants, too. I’d imagine they would be holding a tarp.

“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of eating like a man, man, have just made batches upon batches of man food to take to a barbeque.

First of all, let’s define “Man Food”. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines it as “marked by diversity or variety”, but this is because Merriam-Webster does not contain a definition for “Man Food”, instead suggesting words such as manifold — which, as we’ve established, means “marked by diversity or variety”.

No, Man Food is the sort of food that a man can eat, or take to a barbeque. It’s quick to prepare and loaded with fat. It feels perfectly appropriate to eat man food in boxers on a leather couch. But not briefs. That would be taking things too far. Man Food fits into one bowl, and can be comfortably eaten while “watching the game” — or, if you are, like me, a total nerd, comfortably eaten while watching downloaded episodes of Frisky Dingo. Boosh.

So the first item of Man Food to discuss is Bacon n’ Beans. Bafflingly easy to make and eat, and it scores an 8.4 on the Tom Jones Flatulence Scale.

The recipe I used calls for two cans of Heinz Pork n’ Beans, and an equivalent amount of Great Northern beans. This is common in recipes for food rookies like me – 50% prepackaged, to provide a standard, easy-to-understand base, and 50% real, adult ingredients to give the illusion of culinary grandeur.

The important part is to sweat an onion with some sliced bacon chunks. Heck, straight-up adding that to canned pork and beans is a solid step forward, beanswise. Maple-smoked bacon works especially well for this, because, hey, we’re playing with the Brown Sugar Spectrum, here. (Remind me to write an “On the Topic of the Brown Sugar Spectrum”, later. )

Once the bacons and onions are ready, just mix ‘em up with the beans. Now it’s time for random flavor ingredients! Ka-kow! Molasses, smokey barbeque sauce, onion powder, dry mustard powder, brown sugar, these are all friends, because they are all part of the Brown Sugar Spectrum.

At this point, all we have to do is pour into a casserole dish and bake for 350 degrees at 30 minutes. The resulting dish is meaty, sweet, and satisfying, like this picture of Dolph Lundgren.

“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of made-up beverages, have just invented a beverage.

I call it Chumbuzzle. Here’s how it’s made.

Ingredients:

• 2oz white spiced rum
• orange zest
• lemon zest
• kiwi zest
• Zest brand soap
• 2oz Smeshkylovka vodka
• leftover take-out chinese food
• orange juice
• 2oz Peach Shnapps
• cherry syrup
• a bartender
• 2oz Southern Comfort
• 2oz Scope Mouthwash

Construction

• Pour the rum, vodka, Southern Comfort, peach schnapps, and Scope into a small metal bucket with some chilled marbles. Ensure that you use only high-quality marbles for this. Swish the liquid ingredients around with the cold marbles for 52 seconds, or until you are bored.
• Sprinkle the orange and lemon zests on top. Eat the kiwi zest. It may be furry, but power through it. Be a man.
• In a separate small metal bucket, combine the Zest soap and the take-out with salad tongs.
• Ceremonial Chumbuzzle dance. Left, left, right, right, pelvic thrust, pelvic thrust, sprinkler. Remember, silly dances are like life’s cheat codes.
• Throw out both metal buckets. Ask the bartender to make a ‘Chumbuzzle’. Explain that it’s just a rum and coke with a silly name.

“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of not working especially hard, and tunes, have just discovered a new internet service.

A few years ago, I fell in love with Pandora, an online radio service. I give it a song, it recommends songs that are like the song that I gave it.

Because you liked: Aqua – Roses are Red

We recommend: A sharp blow to the head. What the hell, dude.

I’m pretty sure that I found Ladytron as a direct result of Pandora recommendations, so, awesome. But then, gasp, they stopped offering Pandora in Canada. They say that it is due to ‘licensing restrictions’, but in Canada, we know that’s a bunch of crap. It’s actually because they hate Canadians, on account of our universal body hair and constant moustache parties.

So I gave up on internet radio. Pandora won my heart, and then broke it, and then threw it at the wall, then put it in a blender, then ate it, then regurgitated it, then reconstituted it, then put it in a box, then sent it to France.

It wasn’t until just today that I discovered Grooveshark, a service superior to Pandora in just about every way. The song selection is as massive and unrestricted as my passion for steamed hot-dogs. I pick songs that I like, drop them into a playlist, and then can listen to them. It’s like having iTunes, but connected to everybody’s library.

It has a built-in recommendation engine, so I can once-again be aurally punished for listening to absolutely terrible bands. I can also save playlists that I like and use them to punish share them with my friends.

The only catch is that they occasionally play an advertisement. The advertisements are, at least in my imagination, context sensitive – so, if I listen to a lot of Cake music, they will try to sell me ironic T-shirts and beards and ironic T-shirts with beards on them. If I listen to a lot of death metal, they will try to sell me the beating heart of a llama. If I listen to a lot of Aqua, they will try to sell me Disney products and euthanasia.

So, long-and-needlessly-meandering-post aside, if you are a desk-bound workdrone in need of more adequate tunescaping, I recommend poking around Grooveshark.

“On the Topic of” articles expound endlessly on a topic that is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Good afternoon, the internet. I, Curtis Lassam, tireless champion of bandwidth, have just had my internet connected.

Which is awesome, because the internet, to me, is like an appendage. Not a really important appendage, like an arm, but at least one of the less critical appendages, like an ear or a nostril. In the same way that I would feel a little odd with one less ear, that is the way that I feel without internet at home. At the very least, I would need to tape one side of my glasses to my head.

The telecom guy came to my house at a very inconvenient time of day. People looking to get internet and TV installed have two options: Either they get it installed during normal work-hours on a weekday — something that is, in my opinion, completely worth taking a vacation day for — or, alternatively, waiting in line for exactly one billion years for an available weekend installation date. I ended up opting for secret option number three – having an unemployed girlfriend.

The installation went smoothly, though, and when I came back from work I had connectivity once more, as well as television. The cable box included the full TV mumbo-jombo super-television mega-TV pack, and yet somehow forgot to include anything worth watching.

But, far more importantly, my home has reasonably fast internet, internet that I can use to play video game (yes, just one video game), read comics, and communicate with others.

I still have to tape my glasses to the side of my head, though.