dandaman

It's... ALIIIIIIIVE. The first of these two updates is from January 23rd and consists almost solely of Epcot goodness, while the second from February 14/15 features Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and losing my Old Town virginity and getting my first new credit since September. Enjoy the usual insanity. Welcome back to EPCOT, or as Walt stated in his vision, “Everybody Purchasing Crazy-Overpriced Tickets”. (Yeah, I'm sure you have your own alternate acronym. Deal with it.) So, because my friend drove me today but didn’t stay for long, I decided to go the long way to Epcot (i.e. drop-off at TTC, experience “grimy-version” monorail beam for final time). Took about as much time as the regular parking would have anyway, though in hindsight, parking at the Boardwalk would’ve made more sense… but if there’s anything you should know by now, it’s that making sense has no place in my reports. So… yeah. Mission: Sinise, which my sister finally went on the more-intense side and actually LOVED it, and this is coming from the person who comes close to freaking out at the “drop” in Pirates. One little spark of inspiration got replaced by a relative lack of imagination. Irony is never lost on modern-day Epcot, is it? (Also that creepy Eric Idle projection I have dubbed "Moonraper." “Look at all the tour groups! There must be a Brazilian of ‘em!” -- Dan, on the subject of horrible puns “See, my bro, Jaws? He’s actually pretty nice, good with kids. It was always just that damn Roy Scheider… he wanted a bigger boat, J-Dog wanted more screen-time and to look less mechanical. Guess who won? I mean, for God’s sake, he had a whole monologue written out for his death scene and Spielberg didn’t go for it.” (Moral of the above: You can make any picture/caption combo work, as long as you’re clinically insane.) Coral Reef for lunch, and holy crap, chicken with Applewood bacon and pasta = love. Also tasty, but with a noticeably unfortunate lack of bacon. “But why can’t you rebuild past Epcot instead?” – Fanboys Tried to duplicate a shot I took last February. I wouldn’t call it a fail, per se, but… sort of. “Blind taste tests: Nothing bad can ever become of them!” “Mmmmmyes, an unmistakably bold taste… and do I detect a faint hint of liquid failure…?” “…OHMUHGUH ITALY WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN MY PALATE?!” This kid was awesome. It was his birthday, so the mariachi band sang to him while he ate a unicorn pop and didn’t give a crap about said band. WHARRGARBL. I really want this roof, if only to have shingle-installers become incredibly confused, then I can yell at them to get off my lawn, and then when they climb down, to get off my lawn again! Ha-HA! I’m old, you see. Some boats have T-Pain. Some boats have dangerous explosives. Some boats with dangerous explosives need to be overtaken by John McClane. This is one of those three. Choose wisely. I Like Fish. I. Like. Fish. HARIBO HARIBO OMG HARIBO… they’re quite good, is what I mean to say. Pictured: Where I spent an entire half of my first-ever day on Disney property in 1994. Epcot was smart to build the Italy pavilion on the exact opposite side of the park from their liquid failure substation. “And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.” Amen. (And yes, I typed that out of memory. I’m a nerd. Again, I must implore you to deal with it.) The Roman Super Bowl never really caught on, but the losing team was always stoned to death, making it more badass than today’s commercial break with a football game in between. “Well, boys, the pizzeria looks good enough. Let’s set opening day for next week.” “But, sir, remember what happened with Test Tra…” “Cram it, Luigi.” Testing your colour settings out of courtesy. “Our planet has been through a lot this year, but we have not forgotten what is truly important... the great taste of Charleston Chew!” Sidenote: When I typed this originally, I was having my first-ever Charleston Chew. Now I know why Earth President Nixon loves it so. America! **** YEAH! Apple pie! Baseball! Bald eagles! McDonald's! The 80’s! Economic recession! My favourite show on Disney property. (No, seriously. Voices of Liberty first, American Adventure second. These people are awesome.) “Well, sure, I get the $100, but if it’s any consolation, George, you’ll be featured on a lot of fast-food dollar menus some day.” Oh, if I had a quarter for every time I've said that... I'd be broke. “If this car goes under 50 miles an hour we’ll all EXPLODE!” Mounties! Snow! Hockey! Maple syrup! Celine D… uh… Tim Hortons! Sadly, this reminds me that I'm now 19 as of a few weeks ago... and I won't be able to take advantage of Canaba's lovely casinos/alcoholic beverages until at least June. (Then again if I had stayed up there for school, you wouldn't be reading this.) Random night shots to end with. Oh, and also, the driver mentioned earlier brought 3 other friends of ours along that night, so we went to Beaches & Cream after in order to tackle the Kitchen Sink. There were no survivors. February update coming... sometime. Soon, I hope.

^I don't know... as much as we want the gold (and vengeance for Monday's game), Canada made some pretty costly mistakes last night towards the end that could have very well ended in an overtime loss.

Natalie post-wisdom tooth extraction = HAWT.

Mens Hockey Canada 7 Russia 3 CANADA CANADA CANADA CANADA

Rutschebanen... Hundeprutterutchebanen... Lisebergbanan?

Bakken is the Mole.

I SEE it.

A necessary loss for Canada; gives us an extra game to fight through and get our sh*t together for the gold. Hell of a game!

I'd read earlier from Elvis Stojko about how he didn't think Lysacek should have won: http://bit.ly/bUk4KT ...But at least he seems to hate the game more than the player, unlike the entirety of Russia, it seems. Sochi 2014 should be an interesting place, indeed.

I went to Old Town / Fun Spot for the first time with a friend on Sunday; quite an awesome place, especially Old Town's shops and that crazy banked go-kart track apparently endorsed by 15-foot Walt Disney. Plus we were first riders of the day on Windstorm!

Whether a Megalite or a MegaBudLight, it'll still be a product of Europe...

For arguing about curling (heck, for discussing curling for longer than two sentences), I bestow the title of Honourary Canadian to all participants in the last few pages. Congratulations, eh?

^ I think eating Robb's wings qualifies as an endurance-based sport. // Would explode Olympic Village toilets, though

Found this in my e-mail inbox. How to Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich, by the Losties Jack 1. Gather ingredients 2. Point gun at ingredients and shout "HOW DO I MAKE A SANDWICH OUT OF YOU?!?!?" 3. Breathe heavily through your nose as though you were about to hit ingredients 4. Give up and make the sandwich yourself, and eat it bitterly Kate 1. Make separate sandwiches, one with peanut butter and one with jelly 2. Take a bite of the peanut butter sandwich, declaring it the best 3. Take a bite of the jelly sandwich, declaring it the best 4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 ad infinitum 5. Follow peanut butter or jelly sandwich into grave danger Sawyer 1. Throw the jar of jelly at wall, sneering "I don't need no sandwich" 2. Call the mascot on the jar of peanut butter lots of clever nicknames 3. Huff and puff and stomp around and grumble a lot 4. When no one's looking, make perfect, even, symmetrical peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sit in a corner, enjoying every bite Locke 1. Sit idly by, believing that the ingredients will find a way to make a sandwich out of themselves 2. Lose faith and make the sandwich anyway 3. Realize that you were the instrument by which the ingredients chose to make a sandwich after all 4. Run around the room and grab everyone's knives, insisting that their sandwiches will do the same in time Hurley 1. Make sandwich 2. Eat sandwich 3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 ad infinitum Sayid 1. Procure 23 milligrams of uranium-20 2. Set hadron supercollider to eight megajoules 3. Program a sandwich-making macro using Cobol or Visual Basic 4. Act all tough-like Desmond 1. Eat sandwich 2. Call the sandwich "brother" 3. Place peanut butter slice over jelly slice 4. Spread jelly on the other slice 5. Spread peanut butter on one slice 6. Take two slices of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly Ben 1. Steal someone else's sandwich 2. Claim you coerced them into making the sandwich for you all along 3. Say you'll tell them everything if they make you another sandwich 4. Stare at them all creepy-like Libby 1. Lay out plans for one of the most intricate, fascinating, and delicious sandwiches of all time 2. Just as you start making it, get shot Danielle 1. Apply peanut butter 2. Disappear for eight months 3. Apply jelly 4. Disappear for eight months 5. Eat sandwich

NBC had groundbreaking coverage even before the Opening Ceremonies started on the 12th:

The opening ceremonies are on my birthday... in Canada... without my being in the damned country. There's something wrong with that. Regardless, I'm most looking forward to men's and women's hockey. Looks like Day 10 is the first with a Canada vs. USA matchup, should be interesting being in "enemy" territory.

I vote the next contest be Honk For Crap II: Ty's Electric Boogaloo.

I'd laugh harder in 30 seconds than I ever did in one whole Leno show.

Opened for about a month, closed, opened again, closed again a few days later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park#Looping_water_slide

"Reality star" sounds akin to "assistant fry chef" to me.

If the entire park is not scored by John Williams, nor features Captain Dinosaur's Pirate Rip-Off, I will be sorely disappointed.

Well, now this thread's made me both laugh and hungry. Went on Sunday, new place is coming along nicely.

It is, under January 19th.

Congratulations! I'll definitely be there for some Canadian support one of these times. (Going tomorrow actually, but I'm sure I'll end up seeing you at some point this spring.)

I think Uncle Bernie's Abandon Mine is sort of the "plywood standard" for whoredom.