You may be ready to claw your eyes out right now, so this will be my final words about him.

The words from his daughter today were difficult to take. I'm empathic, so her pain added to my own.

I attended the Victory Tour show here in Montreal in 1984. That it was 25 years ago now blows my mind!

Yes, he became a strange, freaky person over the years. Hell, I razzed him for it. Regardless, he gave a lot to charities (I own the We Are the World album), he did add a lot to music, because of him I learned how to Moonwalk and broke out of my shell in high school, he eventually helped me to move on from the death of a friend that grad year, and he broke many race barriers in his life.

Thank you Michael. You left us too soon, but you will always be remembered.

Voting for the Aurora awards ends July 15th. If you're Canadian and haven't voted yet, please do http://www.prix-aurora-awards.ca/English/AwardProcess/voting.html

If you're already a WorldCon member the vote is free. If not the cost is a mere $5 CDN.

Tonight's results episode of So you think you can dance reminded me of the tragic three losses we had this week, two of them in the last day alone. All three have had jokes made at their expense, and in one case they had a far longer life, but there's no call for jokes now:

Ed McMahon (86): Johnny Carson's announcer, and through Star Search the person who discovered among others Drew Carrey and Dave Chappel.

Farrah Fawcett (62): I grew up with her season on Charlie's Angels, and her poster was a part of my cultural zeitgeist. She lost a 3-year battle with cancer.

Michael Jackson (50): Thriller and the Moonwalk were both a huge part of my high school years, his song, "Out of My Life" played a huge part in my time mourning the loss of a major school friend. His import to music and dance can never be overstated. He had a coronary today and never recovered from it.

All three have different meanings to me, but I'll miss them all.

After more than a year of trying, I got oln the scale at my gym and saw that I was 120lbs again!

RIP David Eddings

The Belgariad is one of my favorite series.

My genre world has shrunk again.

With the rush to get one, I've done it before bed.

You'll be able to find my page now at http://facebook.com/jeffreyab.tou

My summertime guilty TV pleasure has begun... I am nowhere near a dance expert, I just like watching it.

I don't yet know the dancers' names well, but in one duo, a guy slid under his partner while doing the splits. That was cool!

I saw how different my views sometimes were from the judges: I found the lady in the Bollywood routine looked not terribly genuine; the judges loved her performance.

I also think after a year I've learned how to tune out Mary Murphy.

Based on that first show I think the Haitian man and his partner will be cut. They didn't seem emotionally connected to their routine. It just came off as just another job.

I haven`t found an English report yet, only French ones, but David Carradine was found dead in a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand today, where he was shooting a film. He was 72.

Update: There are now reports in English, one here

Today is the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon's bed in for peace, held here in Montreal.

What is sad is how 40 years later, we still haven't got much peace in the world: the Middle East is still a nightmare, there's a war ongoing in Iraq (peace there is a joke) with soldiers still dying pointlessly.

Still, a dream was had here all those years ago.

I was watching Innerspace: Star Trek on Space: the Imagination Station last night, and they showed the KAG leader currently in Toronto in full Klingon gear, my buddy Kriquor Armejian!

Picasso's still hasn't reopened. One of the owners had said he hoped to by April first (not that claiming April Fools Day for opening was really believable).

Maybe this part of the Montreal scene IS gone for good.

In the classic series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 42 is a sacred number. This may be apocrypha, as I haven't read it in many years,  In what I think I remember the heroes meet the wisest being in the universe. It's asked what the answer to "life, the universe and everything" id.

The answer given: "42".

Why I bring that up: I'm now the answer to life, the universe and everything. I'm 42.

I just watched the second one aired on Space on my DVR.

I found them a lot drier than the BSG ones, most likely because of the speakers. I didn't find them as lively.

I'll end up jumping around the timelines for awhile here. I have some of these in 3 different e-mail areas:

April 20

• 08:44 @sylko Je suis Quebecois, un Anglophone a Montreal confortable en Francais. #
• 09:10 Morningtime, waiting for the city glass studio to check my patio door. #
• 09:12 On Windoze now, and I can actually type when a Tweetdeck notification pops up. A rare thing to like about this OS. #

April 22

• 19:29 Earth Day, I'm not so impressed Earth LIFE though I would. #

April 23

• 02:13 Lil Rounds they realized this week lacker herself in style? I felt that from Day 1. #AmericanIdol #
• 02:14 Anoop Desai I'll actually miss. #AmericanIdol #
• 03:06 Late sleeptime again. No wonder I'm always tired! #
• 07:55 100 years of the Habs marked by a clean sweep on them in round one of the playoffs. Why would anyone want to buy the team after that? #
• 23:58 I got my first haircut of 2009 today! No more Einstein hair until next winter. #

April 24

• 08:51 good morning Tweeps! I overslept my normal Actonel time, so I'll move it to Monday. #life #
• 10:43 #followfriday @healemru @jdupervil @gurudata @thebitterguy @teemonster #
• 10:46 I just shaved, now i have to finish getting ready for the day. My balcony doors are supposed to be repaired. #life #
• 10:48 @ RandomGreatDeal How well can you find deals in Canada? #

April 25

• 01:55 I just finiday OS upgrade to Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. #
• 01:56 finday=finished an all-day #
• 11:14 I'm copying the Aurora vote URL to give someone. #Aurora #worldcon #
• 13:38 The ants are in my living room now! The exterminator Monday isn't soon enough for me. #
• 21:38 It was 27 degrees in my bedroom. I opened the window quick! #

April 26

• 01:10 @MissSuccess That Website proved to be too resource needy. #
• 01:15 Just joined a twibe. Visit twibes.com/Comicbooks to join #
• 01:20 Just joined a twibe. Visit twibes.com/Writing to join #
• 01:34 My PVR was replaced Saturday. I lost over 2 weeks in a hard disk crash. #
• 13:23 I'm not used to frequent tweeting yet. #
• 13:24 Lazy Sunday... #
• 13:44 I want to enter a 1-page dungeon contest. #
• 14:34 @aureliom I was always in public schools myself. #
• 16:57 @MissSuccess I'm designing a Website for my fanzine too, but it won't be so fancy. :) #
• 17:14 @chrispirillo #MUT My last girlfriend had street thugs as friends. She made stuff up about me; one said if he saw my face again he'd shoot it #
• 20:17 @Zargas Es Espanol o de otra region? (Excuso por mi Espanol Canadiense). #

April 27

• 00:39 @Zargas OK. Yo soy proxima. / I didn't want to guess... I didn't remember if 'bienvenido' was Spanish or Puertoguese... I don't speak that. #
• 01:22 @Zargas Thanks. I'd forgotten that! #
• 07:44 writing an overdue Letter of Comment for a fanzine. #writing #zine #
• 11:37 It isn't May yet, and I need my a/c. It's too warm! #
• 12:20 @joenoia That was on the Joshua Tree album. A great one. #
• 23:10 Did they ever end this volume of Heroes big! #

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I'll stop here for now. I have to get to sleep for now.

May is a big birth month: my cat Squeaky turned 16.

I wished her a happy birthday. Not surprising, she didn't understand me. All that mattered to her was the extra cuddling. :)

Even with my bedroom window open for air, it's 27 degrees Celsius in my bedroom, and I'm having trouble getting around.

I'll have to call my installer Monday.

A Videotron technician replaced my PVR today. The HD had broken on the old one, so I've lost over 2 weeks of recordings of my soap.

In early May I'll buy a portable SATA drive to back things up from now on... but this really sucks.

Today is Earth Day. All morning I've been hearing about the things people are doing.

Thing is, a single day isn't enough. Where people are doing things today, they should really do them everyday. Great concept, just too short.

http://www.bobfreemanboard.com/forumdisplay.php?f=13

This message board on pro-wrestling I moderate. Outside of the head of the board I only have 3 other regular message posters, ones who rarely if ever post stuff related to the subject matter. They usually just post crap to insult me, often leading to me just deleting their posts outright.

I know there are others on my Flist here into pro-wrestling. If more of you come there and post, the signal-to-crap ratio will  shrink -- and I'll stop wondering why I haven't given up on this.

Actually I was back from Burlington yesterday, but it was only Sunday that all was back...

I'll explain: we stopped at a convenience store near the Canadian border. As we got to my sister's home on the West Island, by dad realized we had forgotten my wheelchair in the parking lot there.

Fortunately the store held on to it for us. My youngest sister brought it back as she crossed the border herself.