Literal Phone Sex

First it was
tea kettles,
and now the SMS everything craze continues with the arrival of
a bluetooth vibrator.

I wonder how long it will take before we start hearing stories about people forgetting to take these things out and turn them off before they head into a meeting or something.

Comment changes

Well, I got rid of the numbers, and gained an extra link. Oops. But on the bright side, we have trackback now, whatever that does. Now here's the important part. Does it still work? Hope so. Can everyone still find the comment links and click on them and put comments in? If not, well, you know where our emails are. Drop us a line and let us know if you have any trouble.

ARAO: A Really Asinine Obligation

Ok, rant time again. Yee ha.

One of the newest places where I volunteer has a stupid policy they call ARAO. It stands for Anti-Racism Anti-Oppression. AT this point I can hear the peanut gallorie booing me off the stage and calling me a racist asshole. But wait wait wait!

Basically the policy says they can't turn people down based on their race, disability, or any other difference they may have. That sounds cool, until you realize what it means. It means that even if they want to turn you down, if you have something different, like I happen to have, they feel obligated to hang onto you. I wanted to do this job where you go with people to appointments that might be stressful or require moral support. Because I can't see where I'm going, they don't think I can do the job. How they think I manage to do my day to day things I don't know. So, instead of flat out rejecting me, they're trying to scare me away from the job by telling me that the situation could be unsafe, or they might get sued if I don't do it right, etc. If they didn't think I could do the job, and didn't really want to give me a chance, why didn't they just fucking say so, and save me the grief of fighting the impossible fight of proving myself to people who don't really want to listen.

Does something fall from the sky and smack you on the head yet? Why does this place *need* to write down in a policy that they shouldn't discriminate?? Have they had a history of discrimination before? When will people realize that policies don't fix problems? We need to change attitudes, and forcing companies to have token women, blacks, people with disabilities only puts faces on resentment. I know, I know, the inventors of these policies think, "Yeah, but if we can just get them into the companies, they can change the minds of the higher-ups and life will be beautiful." Have these people actually worked as a token? It doesn't work. If the boss really doesn't want that person in their company, they can make their life hell and find ways to make them look bad, proving that these policies only keep the best person for the job from having the job.

The peanut gallorie rises again. "Just be thankful they're giving you a chance at all and there is legislation in place to guarantee that chance." But the chance is no good if it's not genuine. It's like saying that everyone who's poor has the right to this little pot of money. But when they get to the pot, they find out it's monopoly money. What good is that? They can't buy things at the store with it, they can't put it in their checking account, but oh the government says they gave them money. It's the same with these stupid bullshit policies. They're not real.

Let's face it. The future freaks me out. I don't know if I'll be able to find a job where I actually feel valued. I have found some volunteer placements where I felt like I had a chance. But when money's involved, I'm afraid that the company will go for the cheapest and least labour-intensive option. Wouldn't you? "Hmmm. I can hire this person who can read the print notices on the wall and all the print resources available to them, doesn't need special software on the computer to make it usable for them, can drive, and will never ask me for anything except the occasional holiday. Or I can hire this blink with the same skills who I'll have to throw a bunch of money into, they might ask for more stuff, and they might complain if they miss an important printed company memo. I choose...lemmy think...the first one."

So I can see where some genius thought legislating companies into hiring people in the minority might have been a good idea. But what they forgot is you can't legislate opinion. Human thought is still free, and it should be. Plus, if legislation was so effective, we could demolish the prisons and fire the police. Does that sound like a good idea to anyone? Didn't think so.

Who Wants To Be A Small Claims Judge?

The other day I sat down and watched Judge Joe Brown for the first time in a little while and I was wondering about something. What the hell happened to that show?

It used to be my favourite out of that whole bunch of court shows. It was the only one that didn't seem overly staged, over-produced and over-dramatic. Well maybe the People's Court, but the People's Court never gets the chance to truly establish a personality before they change judges again. But back to Joe Brown, since my whole point was really about him anyway. The thing that made his show cool was that he was the guy without any sort of stupid hook. He didn't yell at people, he wasn't some sort of do-gooder intent on changing the world 1 dented car or late cell phone bill at a time, and like I said, he just seemed real.

But now, things have changed. Oh, how they've changed. Somebody seems to have got it in his or her head that just being a good judge and trying cases isn't good enough, even though it's been working since like the beginning of time. They've got him randomly polling the audience for no apparent reason in what appears to be some sort of an attempt to make the show more interactive. Since when was court interactive?

"Ok, before we get to the jury, I want to ask you people in the seats, how many of you think that John killed those 6 people and then burned their car?"

Then lights flash, random beeping sounds fill the air, and a nice little yes/no percentage breakdown appears and John gets hauled off to jail because 77% of the victim's families think he did it. That just doesn't happen, and small claims, though not as serious as murder, should be no different. Come on, that $182.31 might mean a lot to somebody, so why shouldn't it be taken seriously? It is court after all.

I suppose you could argue that the people involved should expect nothing less than to be turned into a spectacle since they agreed to have their cases tried on syndicated television, but still, if I cared what the audience thought, I'd be watching Millionaire instead.

The other thing that bothers me about this new Joe Brown is that he seems more like a character than a judge who deserves any sort of respect. Back in the day he would shut the bickering between people down before it had a chance to get going, but now the show has pretty much degenerated into black people yelling at each other while Joe sits there at the bench like a goddamn idiot. Either that or he's doing this goofy fucking voice while he's making his judgment or pretending to yell at them. Listen to him sometime, how can you take anything he says seriously when it seems like it's coming out of the mouth of a Disney character?

Maybe I'm getting too worked up over this, but it bothers me that everything concerning TV these days is all about "reality," but as soon as the reality looks too real, right away we need to spice things up so people will watch it. Leave it alone! Not all reality is exciting, that's why a lot of people watch TV to begin with, to escape reality. But for those of us who want to watch reality, we'd prefer to watch reality as it is, not as some producer thinks it should be.

Always Follow the Code

Hey Kids,
So I'm back. I missed the ol' VC. blah blah.

On Sunday night I went and checked out a concert for a band I've been listening to a lot lately. They're awesome. They're called Social Code. I know most people know their hit "Beautiful" and it's a great tune. But not even close to their best.

It's awesome cuz they're still small so it's a small club setting concert which is how I dig it. Underground music rocks. And this was quite literlaly under ground. It was held in the basement of another building in Oshawa.

Outstanding punk show. The openers all kind of sucked but it was worth the show. It was an all ages show so there were a lot of teeny boppers around that were pretty irritating but there were some pretty hardcore punks in Oshawa that I didn't know about. (of course I use that term as an endeering one as opposed to how most people use it).

They're a good little Canadian band out of Edmonton. So they're struggling to get fans. they opened the show with Whisper To A Scream. If you don't have it, Get it! They played most of the album and a few new songs which rocked pretty hard. They closed with Beautiful of course and said it was to thank their fans and told everyone to turn to the person beside them and hug them as a thank you from Social Code. I hugged my friend Ashley which was comical since she's a country fan who hadn't heard them until the day before - but hey. she showed up and supported them and actually enjoyed it and downloaded some songs when she got home and that's what it's all about for a band that size. Awareness. all and all a great high energy show. They're passing through Guelph and a few other cities coming up on this Canadian tour. Get out and check them out. www.socialcodemusic.com.

If you wanna get a taste of what they are. A few songs I'd reccomend are Beautiful. Cats and Dogs, Miss You, He Said She Said, and Birds fly. Hell, all of it's good but those are a good start.

PeACE

Chili Anyone?

Frank: "Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a chili cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Coors Light truck, when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted."

Here are the scorecard notes from the event:

*****************************************************

CHILI # 1 - MIKE'S MANIAC MONSTER CHILI...
Judge # 1 -- A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick.
Judge # 2 - Nice, smooth tomato flavor Very mild.
Judge # 3 (Frank) -- Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These Texans are crazy.

*****************************************************


CHILI # 2 - AUSTIN'S AFTERBURNER CHILI...
Judge # 1 -- Smoky, with a hint of pork. Slight jalapeno tang.
Judge #2 -- Exciting BBQ flavor, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.
Judge # 3 -- Keep this out of the reach of children. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich maneuver. They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.

*****************************************************

CHILI # 3 - FRED'S FAMOUS BURN DOWN THE BARN CHILI...
Judge # 1 -- Excellent firehouse chili. Great kick.
Judge # 2 -- A bit salty, good use of peppers.
Judge # 3 -- Call the EPA. I've located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drano. Everyone knows the routine by now. Get me more beer before I ignite. Barmaid pounded me on the back, now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting shit-faced from all of the beer.

*****************************************************


CHILI # 4 - BUBBA'S BLACK MAGIC...

Judge # 1 -- Black bean chili with almost no spice Disappointing.
Judge # 2 -- Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods not much of a chili.
Judge # 3 -- I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds? Sally, the beermaid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 300-LB woman is starting to look HOT. just like this nuclear waste I'm eating! Is chili an aphrodisiac?

*****************************************************

CHILI # 5 LISA'S LEGAL LIP REMOVER...

Judge # 1 -- Meaty, strong chili. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.
Judge # 2 -- Chili using shredded beef, could use more tomato. Must admit the cayenne peppers make a strong statement.
Judge # 3 -- My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Sally saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from the pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw those rednecks.

*****************************************************

CHILI # 6 - VERA'S VERY VEGETARIAN VARIETY...

Judge # 1 -- Thin yet bold vegetarian variety chili. Good balance of spices and peppers.
Judge # 2 -- The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.
Judge # 3 -- My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulfuric flames. I shit on myself when I farted and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that Sally. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone.

*****************************************************

CHILI # 7 - SUSAN'S SCREAMING SENSATION CHILI...

Judge # 1 -- A mediocre chili with too much reliance on canned peppers.
Judge # 2 -- Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. **I should take note that I am worried about Judge # 3. He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably.
Judge # 3 -- You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a thing. I've lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with chili, which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava to match my shirt. At least during the autopsy, they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing it's too painful. Screw it; I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air, I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.

*****************************************************

CHILI # 8 - BIG TOM'S TOENAIL CURLING CHILI...

Judge # 1 -- The perfect ending, this is a nice blend chili. Not too bold but spicy enough to declare its existence.
Judge # 2 -- This final entry is a good, balanced chili Neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 farted, passed out, fell over and pulled the chili pot down on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. poor feller, wonder how he'd have reacted to really hot chili?
Judge # 3 - No Report

Bus Entertainment

Man I love bus rides like this, when amusement plops itself down beside you and helps you pass the time. I was sitting on the bus, and this woman and her four-year-old daughter came and sat down beside me. At first it was just average mother-daughter stuff. Then this conversation unfolded that had me giggling for a long long time.

little girl: Mommy, I love you.
Mother: Julia, I love you too.
Julia: I love you all the way to Chrissie's house.
Mother: I love you all the way to the moon.
Julia: I love you all the way to the moon at night, but there's no moon, so I can't.
Mother: Do you love me all the way to the sun?
Julia: I love you all around the world.
Mother: That's a lot of love for a mommy. I love you all around the world too.
Julia (in this little deep voice): That's a lot of love for a Julia!

At this point, I just busted up laughing. Kids are adorable, and it's nice to see a cute conversation, rather than the obnoxious brats you see most of the time. Written down, that conversation looks like nothing more than a pile of nauseatingly stupid sap. But watching it happen was pretty cool. I hope tomorrow's bus ride is equally entertaining.

What the fuck?

There are no better words to express what I'm about to describe. I'm sitting here just shaking my head in disbelief. Please tell me there wasn't some kind of geographic shift that has thrown me to some far off place. I am in Canada, right? The scenery looks the same, but shit is going on that just shouldn't happen here. Shouldn't! No question!

I just heard that a whole bunch of people from the Kashechewan native reservation had to be evacuated to places where they could access medical treatment and clean water. Did a major natural disaster hit them that would cause a sudden breakdown in medical care and clean water? No! Apparently, they've been dealing with poorly-treated water that comes out of the tap looking like ginger- ale as one person described it, for some time now. In her summary of the situation, the Canada AM reporter said the citizens of the reserve had been living in third world conditions.

Ok, I say again, what the fuck? At first I flipped out because everyone started blaming the federal government right off the bat for the problem. I thought, "Maybe nobody notified them. Maybe they didn't even know it was going on." Think about it. How often does one go through Kashechewan? It's not really a stop on the way to Ottawa. Before today, had anyone really heard of it? These reserves can be sort of isolated from the main drag. it would still be pretty nuts, but perhaps conceivable.

Then I read more stuff and started getting really mad. Apparently they've been asking for repairs on the water treatment plants for two years. Two! years! Oh it gets better. Health Canada has been testing this ginger-ale-coloured substance which I refuse to call water, recently, and has been finding nothing wrong with it...until a couple weeks ago they found some E. Coli. The water doesn't look like water, how can it still be ok? Tell me please. Either we're all doomed because Health Canada tests all of our water with the same testing instruments and procedures, or boy do some heads need to roll. I go for choice b...perhaps for the sake of my own sanity. I would like to think that if brown shit started coming out of my tap, I wouldn't be forced to continue to see this shit. It would be fixed. Hell, Walkerton was a tragedy, but it didn't go on for years!

This brings me to my second level of what the fuck. Notice I said, *seeing* this shit, not *drinking* it. Would you drink odd-looking fluid that came out of your tap just because...it came out of your tap so it must be safe? I don't think so! Why did these people continue to drink it, so long that their were deaths and people requiring medical treatment? Is Kashechewan so isolated that they can't get bottled water from anywhere? Could they not afford it? If the federal government couldn't fix the water-purification plants, could the chief not have requested water to be shipped in en masse? Couldn't someone have done Something? This just seems ridiculous! I've heard that natives have become helpless and powerless, I guess this is just a glaring example of it.

Now that all the rage has gone out of me, I'm feeling kind of drained, and can't really think of a good ending for this. It would be meaningless to say "hopefully this will never happen again" because let's face it, it will. If not in the exact same form, then something else equally appalling is bound to happen. We are pathetically slow learners. It disgusts me that it happened, and it shocks me that conditions are really that horrible. I guess all that's left to say is, what the fuck?!?!?!

ESL Fun

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but down the street from me there is a convenience store. This convenience store is run by a bunch of people, duh. They're nice, aside from the fact that things that cost you maybe a foot at most convenience stores cost the whole arm and leg here. But one thing they all share is they're either Indian or Pakistani, and English is not one of their strong suits. They don't like to answer their phone if you call them, and instead of "How may I help you?" all some of them can manage is "what?!"

Don't get me wrong, they try to help me when I ask for stuff, and they know when they're beaten and ask some random customer to point them in the right direction when they can't understand me. But I'm just trying to paint a picture for you for the next part of the story.

So I come into the store and want to buy some margarine. Simple enough, right? I go up and ask for some. This is the response I get. "We have...hmmm...becel, and...imperial...and...I don't believe this is, um, not, um butter?"

I had to suppress a laugh, because if I didn't, I would have been laughing for a good minute straight, and that would have been embarrassing for all involved. That is the most entertaining way to say I can't believe it's not butter I've heard, and especially coming from people who can barely speak the language. it was like she was going out of her way to make it more complicated for herself. Maybe that is what I've been doing all along, making things too simple. Maybe I have to take the long way around to get what I want. Next time I go in there, I'll ask for intelligenties and see if I get smarties the first time out. Wish me luck.

You Are Here?

Wow, it's been a while since we've done this, but it's time once again for the bit that's so popular that
Roland
over at Salty Ham decided to swipe it for his own column. He did a nice job with it too, and he even gave us credit for it so the theft is acceptable.

For the benefit of those of you who might not know what all of this is, it's basically a compilation of how messed up a few of you aare. The hit counter captures search queries, I notice those queries, and then the fun begins.

Ok, with that out of the way, let's do this thing.

21 Oct, Fri, 23:07:26
Yahoo:
why is it called the vomit comet

We figured that Vomit Comet was more catchy sounding and easier to remember than as;lfjpoiweuroiu989kjhfkljabsabax,mbm,xcbjlfheweurro;qweurqwpoieuweruirew, which was our second choice. But sometimes I still lye awake at night wondering if we made the right decision.

Thu, 20:41:39
Yahoo:
history of ghonorea

I'm not in the mood to teach history, but there's never a wrong time to help somebody out, so here are a couple of tips:

1. Learn to spell Gonorrhea.
2. Go ask your Mom, she probably knows. Or at the very least she can put you in touch with Grandma if ancient history is more your thing.

22 Oct, Sat, 14:26:22
Yahoo:
short cut to get higenic sex

Why do I get the feeling we're dealing with the same guy from the last one here? And by the way, h y g i e n i c.

21 Oct, Fri, 20:12:07
Yahoo:
picking up slutty girls friday nights boston

Man, some people just never learn do they? But since I'm so friggin helpful, try going outside and looking around. Good things come to those who stand there for a few minutes.

23 Oct, Sun, 16:39:41
Yahoo:
scorpio, horoscopes, sluts

November, newspapers, Boston.

21 Sep, Wed, 21:04:44
Yahoo:
signs a guy is attracted to a woman

Speaking as a guy, I want to let you in on a bit of a secret. We men can be a complicated bunch at times, and sometimes what you may think of as flirting might simply be nothing more than idol chatter, or an attempt at being nice gone horribly amiss. So from where I sit, there are 2 sure-fire ways to tell what the man in question is thinking. You can look deep into his eyes, talk to him, try to read his every move and hang on his every word in an attempt to achieve a greater understanding of who he is as a person. Either that or you can just check him for wood and be done with it.

25 Oct, Tue, 09:18:00
MSN Search:
pitchers of dog cynophobia

Strangely enough, I've never seen Dog Cynophobia on tap in any bar I've ever been in.

By the way, would dog cynophobia be dogs that are afraid of other dogs? And I'm not sure what a p i c t u r e of that would look like, but I imagine it consisting of a dog shitting his pants at the site of a bigger dog.

23 Oct, Sun, 19:42:06
MSN Search:
show me some sciencce fair project that have already been done

Isn't that cute? Some special ed student is trying to cheat on a project. Or maybe he's a professor at a
natoinal unviesrity
somewhere.

And so ends this little diversion for another day. We've laughed, we've cried, we've almost swerved off the road because we were trying to read this on one of those internet-capable cell phones while we were driving. But now it's time to say goodbye. So until we meet again, happy searching. If you need me, I'll be thinkin' about my doorbell and when you're gonna ring it.

It's Bud The Spud From The ...Big Deep Freeze?

Brad sent me this and it cracks me up. And I can vouch for how great those potatoes are, they're...something. Maybe not something you would want to ingest, but they are indeed something. Take it away, Brad!

You know how there are some vegetables, like beans, that you can boil for a couple minutes and freeze? Well, there are some you just can't do that with. Well my soon to be vomitting friends, my aunt freezes potatoes. Yes, potatoes. Which would be all right, if she did it the right way. You can't do it like beans.

The way she does it, they're not in the water long enough to know that they are even wet let alone boiled before they are in bags bound for the freezer. When they come out, ready for cooking, they look like little frozen marbles floating in water. When cooked, they are a big sloppy glop of slop that can almost be sucked up with a straw.

Enjoy your dinner.

Mmm...thought stew.

I'm just sitting here, and I have way too much energy. Like super energy. I feel like I just drank a whole bunch of coffee, make that espresso, and I have so much energy that I don't know what to do with it. And that's not good when you're working at a distress line, so I thought I'd try and burn off some of this by writing down whatever the hell comes into my head.

And let's start with a message to mother nature. Stop pissing on my head! I swear we haven't had a sunny day in at least a couple of weeks. It's definitely been sucky for a week straight. You can have your rain to water the plants, but is it really necessary to have a couple miserable weeks Without a single solitary break? Believe me, I'm happy snow hasn't come, at least not snow that stayed. I heard that some slush bullshit fell from the sky on Saturday. I'm just glad I didn't see it. But after a while, the shit weather really brings me down. Believe it or not, the dullness effects us blinks too. So, can we have some sun please?

I don't know why this irritates me, but it does. There was a song called Gimme Hope, Joanna by Eddie Grant. As far as I knew, it was a song about South Africa and all the Apartheid that was going on down there. Now some yogourt company has altered, oh wait, butchered, it and is using the tune to sell their yogourt. Well they succeeded in getting my attention. But it makes me wonder if anything's sacred anymore. Oh why bother asking, nothing is. That's almost worse than a Big Sugar song being in a car ad.

And here's something really creepy that I found out when I told a friend to check out our blog. Apparently there's another blog with a name really close to ours, and someone on it mentioned someone with a name close to mine. Luckily it was Karen, not Carin, but it had me going for a while. I thought Steve had lost his mind for sure.

And I think I'm done. This thought stew was more like a thought soup, the kind they serve at some cafeterias that might as well be broth with a couple vegies in it. I thought I had more to say. Guess not. Well I hope you guys had fun. I'll be back...when I'm back.

Where Was This Stuff When I was A Kid?

Animal lovers slam Choke-A-Chicken toy

Seriously, that's honestly what it's called. But if you don't want to believe either me or The Register, you can check out its official website and maybe even buy one by clicking
here.

And if you're considering picking up a few for the kids on your Christmas list, think about grabbing an extra one for your old buddy Steve, because it seems like something I'd be able to have some fun with. I'm pretty sure I've just set myself up for some abuse somehow but oh well, I won't be the first person to ever be torn apart on the comment boards around here.

Active Listening By The Deaf

Man. I can't believe how people who claim to be good listeners don't really listen. Or maybe they only listen in certain contexts, and then turn off their ears everywhere else.

I said I was in training to work with people who are trying to get out of abusive situations, and that would involve learning how to listen, right? Well, it seems my fellow trainees don't have the talent mastered yet. I was sitting with them, and Martha Stewart came up in conversation. All I said was, "It pisses me off that just because she's a celebrity, she can have the rules bent for her." I'd just heard on the news that she really wanted to go to this pumpkin fest in Nova Scotia and help them raise money. That's dandy. But she's a criminal, which means you have to have a special visa to get across the border. And apparently, she and her 50000 lawyers didn't investigate this until it was too late. So instead of accepting her fate and not coming, she whined and cried like a spoiled child until they made her a special visa.

After I spoke these words, all hell broke loose in the room. Crise of"don't pick on Martha Stewart, she only went down because she was a democrat. and because she's female." erupted all over the place. Of course. I should expect this in a room full of radical feminists. But what flew right over their heads as they started spasming, knee-jerk reaction style, is that whole argument is beside the point. I don't care if she was wrongly accused of ass-raping a goat. The point is she was convicted, and she should abide by the same rules as the rest of the convicts. And on top of that, she wasn't even wrongly accused, so that shred of sympathy is gone. If some other common criminal just found out their great aunt in another country was on her deathbed and wanted to go see her, you know what would happen? They'd find out they'd need a special visa, wouldn't be able to get it, and would have to live with the fact that they didn't hear great aunt Birtha's dying words as long as they lived, and no one would care. That would be the end of it. But because she's Queen Martha Stewart, they kissed her ass and she got special treatment. That was what pissed me off.

But nobody heard that. They heard Martha Stewart and started flipping out about how she was apparently unjustly treated and males did way worse than she did and got off scott free because they were republican males. Ok, perhaps. But you see those things on the sides of your heads? Ya know, they're not just used for balance. They're used to listen. LISTEN! L i s t e n! Next time, before you chop off my head, ears and all, actually listen to what I have to say.

Good Lord

The only problem I can see with this is that if God has as much influence as the lawsuit claims he does, then there's no point in this guy suing him since he can't possibly win unless God allows him to.

Prisoner sues God

A Romanian prisoner is suing God for failing to save him from the Devil.

The inmate, named as Pavel M in media reports, accused God of "cheating, abuse and traffic of influence".

His complaint reads: "I, the undersigned Pavel M, currently jailed at Timisoara Penitentiary serving a 20 years sentence for murder, request legal action against God, resident in Heaven, and represented here by the Romanian Orthodox Church, for committing the following crimes: cheating, concealment, abuse against people's interest, taking bribe and traffic of influence."

The inmate argued that his baptism was a contract between him and God who was supposed to keep the Devil away and keep him out of trouble.

He added: "God even claimed and received from me various goods and prayers in exchange for forgiveness and the promise that I would be rid of problems and have a better life.

"But on the contrary I was left in Devil's hands."

The complaint was sent to the Timisoara Court of Justice and forwarded to the prosecutor's office.

But prosecutors said it would probably be dropped and they were unable to subpoena God to court.

Welcome To The White People's Happy Time Hip Hop Sing Along

I know that covering rap songs and turning them into country or folk songs is sort of an old gag, but I still think it's funny, and since I know other people think it's funny too, here are a couple more that I've just found.

Both of these tracks were done by
Jonathan Coulton,
who I know absolutely nothing about beyond the fact that he did a really nice job on them.

Have a listen to
Baby Got Back,
and
Bills, Bills, Bills,
which you'll have to scroll down the page a bit to find.

Enjoy.

Steve, Don't Eat It!

Here's some nice random vomit-inducing fun for you.

I'm sure at some point we've all had this experience. You're in the grocery store, and as happens every now and then, you come across something sitting on a shelf that makes you stop in your tracks, examine it and say to yourself or to the person next to you, "what the hell is that, and who in their right mind would want to eat it?" Well luckily for us sane unadventurous types somebody does eat it, and he's even cool enough to describe the experience on his website in something he calls
Steve, Don't Eat It!

Everything from Potted Meat Food Product to Silkworm Pupas are fair game, and he even tested out those Beggin' Strips dog treats to see if they did in fact taste like bacon. His conclusion? Apparently they don't.

I was laughing so hard by the time I got through all of the stories that I actually had tears in my eyes. Seriously, go read this stuff right now, just make sure that you're not eating or drinking, and that you haven't recently done either one.

Even More Odd Inventions

In keeping with the weird shit that people create and try to sell theme that we have going on around here this week, I give you
StrangeNewProducts.com,
a site that I found yesterday without even looking for it. What can I say, I'm just that good, or maybe that lucky. But either way, finding entertaining and relevant material without doing research or any other sort of work whatsoever rules.

The site is updated daily and features descriptions of all sorts of new products. Some are kind of cool, like the
Sidekick Blood Glucose Monitor,
and some are so completely stupid that they rival even mp3-playing breast implants, such as the
Psychotronic Wishing Machine,
which you really need to read about if ever you're searching for a good reason to smash your head into a wall or find enough motivation to do it to someone else. There's a lot of other neat stuff there too, so give it a look. It seems like a fine way to waste a few minutes every day.

The iBoob?

Coming soon: the mp3 breast implant

Need I say more?

Checking In, Saying Hi, Writing Things Down

I hope that everyone who celebrates it had a good Canadian Thanksgiving. Mine was great, thanks for asking. It was a good excuse for me to see my family, who I don't see nearly as much as I'd like. It was also a good excuse for me to eat ridiculous amounts of food. The last time I can recall stuffing down so much dessert in a 24 hour period was last Christmas, but last Christmas there were 3 dinner gatherings, not 2. And through all of the eating and catching up, I still managed to learn something. That broken telephone campfire game that I'm sure most of us played as kids is a lot more fun when you're playing with a buzz and when a couple of the people in the circle don't have the greatest hearing.

It was nice to see the Leafs finally win a game on Tuesday night after a couple of shootout losses to Ottawa and a loss to Montreal on Saturday that I didn't watch. I was one of the people who was upset before the season started about them not making a whole lot of big name signings, but I'll say now that I'm pleasantly surprised at how well they've been playing. Even in losses, they've got quite a few guys who are all over the puck and creating good scoring chances. Now if they could only get a lead and hold on to it for more than a couple of minutes at a time, they might just have it made. But having said all that, there's still a part of me that wonders if we could be in for another year like we've had in the past, where goaltending keeps them in a lot more games that they have no right winning, or even coming close in. I guess time will tell, but I'm going to make a really bold prediction here and say that we're not looking at a cup contending team this year.

Man, has WWE been sucking more than usual lately or what? I can find good in wrestling where a lot of people can't, but even I'm finding myself having trouble coming up with good things to say about the last few weeks of programming. I honestly think it's some of the most boring and uninspired crap I've ever sat through, and I've watched a lot of wrestling in my life, a fair bit of it bad. The sad thing is that WWE, with the talent pool they have access to, should find it impossible or at the very least exceedingly difficult to put on horrible and unimportant shows week in and week out. Yet somehow they make doing so look absolutely effortless, it's amazing.

Take Raw Homecoming for example. That show had an Ironman match between 2 of the best workers the business has ever seen, a Ladder match featuring 2 guys who's names just about noone can argue come almost immediately to mind when the words Ladder match are spoken, and appearances from a huge list of legends that are rarely if ever seen outside of local independent shows or a WWE TV cameo now and then. But still, somehow, some way, the folks at WWE managed to turn what could have easily been an event that should have been talked about for months if not years to come into just another show, and not even a good one at that. A non-finish in an Ironman match? Ironman matches decide champions and end feuds, they don't...whatever the point of that was, they don't do that. The match was great, but in the end I felt let down, and after 30 minutes of Michaels vs. Angle, that's not the way anybody should be feeling. The Edge vs. Matt Hardy ladder match was good, but it was over before it really had a chance to get started. You had 3 hours and an overrun, why not shorten something else, like one of the million pointless interview segments that accomplished nothing more than poorly advancing bad angles, or worse, wasting TV time on things that weren't going anywhere beyond this 1 night? This show could have and should have been so much better than it was, and the fact that it didn't even come close speaks to some huge problems behind the scenes in WWE in my opinion, for whatever that's worth.

I got a call last night from one of those survey companies. No, I'm not upset about it, I don't mind those. They're sort of fun, they're not trying to sell you anything, and those polls are one of the only ways you can get your government to consider listening to you, even if all you are is anonymous guy number 5423 in poll number X19. Who you are doesn't matter, because you're a voter, and everything related to voters and their feelings is measured in numbers, so politicians tend to live and die by them, changing their positions on just about everything under the sun based on each new set that lands in front of them. Ok, where was I? Right, the phone call I got yesterday.

It started out normal enough. The guy introduces himself, asks me if I'm over 18 and whether or not I've got time to answer a few quick questions, completely standard stuff. Then he launches into some questions about the province's electrical system and my feelings on various aspects of it. How we should be generating our power, how important environmental concerns are when making such decisions, that kind of stuff. Then he hits me with one I'm not expecting.

"In the last 4 weeks, how many times have you shopped in an LCBO store, and how would you rate the service on a scale of 1 to 10?"

For those of you who don't know what the LCBO is, those letters stand for Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which as should be quite obvious to hopefully everyone reading this, has nothing to do with hydro. I'd love to know how those 2 subjects found their way into the same survey, especially since they were the only 2 topics covered. It wasn't a long, drawn out questionnaire on my feelings on all sorts of government-run services, it was hydro and booze, that's all. That's totally random and I'm overly curious about it. Why wouldn't they have put the booze questions in a survey about health care, that would have at least made some sense. As things stand now, the only theory I can come up with as to how those 2 things became related is that lots of people drank beer during the big blackout a couple of years ago, and they would have had to get it from an LCBO location. I really should have asked, but I was kind of in a hurry and now it's driving me nuts. Oh well, it's my own fault for not taking the extra time to find out.

Wow, I didn't realize this while I was writing, but I suppose this story kind of has a bit of a moral to it. Slow down, take your time, and ask questions. It's the only way you're ever going to learn anything.

And on that happy note, I'm going to take a few minutes and learn a little about what my lunch options are. I'll talk to you all a bit later on.

It's Completely Useless, But Somebody Will Still Pay For It

A company called PG Tips has created what is probably the first, and hopefully the last,
SMS tea kettle,
a product that they hope will "revolutionize tea-time."

The concept behind the kettle, which the company is calling ReadyWhenUR, is simple enough. Whenever you want to boil some water, all you need to do is send a text message to the kettle's phone number that says "switch on," and it will do so.

But though the concept is simple, I don't see how the execution could possibly be the same way for a number of reasons.

First of all, you have to fill the thing with water yourself, which means you would have to go to the kitchen and lay your hands on it before you could even consider using the "convenient" texting feature. At that point, why wouldn't you just plug it in? It would probably take less time.

Then you still have to grab the mug and ingredients and make the tea yourself, and you also have to watch for the kettle to boil because it isn't capable of messaging you back when its done, nor does it have a whistle, which is one of the most basic tea kettle features in history.

So lets recap. It doesn't fill itself, it doesn't make tea, and it doesn't let you know when it's finished, but it does have a phone number and an understanding of the English language that consists of an amazingly impressive and astounding 2 words, and it probably comes with an inflated price tag too. I'm sure that at this point I'm not the only one who's thinking wow, I can't wait until next year when these things go on sale. I'll be buying one for everyone I know. But seriously, if this is what our so-called "wired world" is going to be like, count me out.

For Its A Jolly Good Person

The following bit of stupidity was sent to me this morning:

Hi All of you wonderful volunteers:
There is an Agency Fair being held at Stone Road Mall for Thursday, October 13, 2005, 10:00am - 2:00pm.
We are in need of a couple of volunteers that can person the booth at stone road mall see the following details:
1. 9:30 Set Up - to 12 Noon
2. 12 Noon to 2:00 and take down
If two people are able to offer a couple of your hours to person this booth please let me know by today end of the day..thanks...

If that isn't an example of political correctness gone absolutely insane, I'd love for someone to please explain to me what is.

"Person a booth"? "Person?" What the hell is that? Have we truly reached the point where it's no longer acceptable to use the word man? And if we have, why do we have to use person instead? Why not ask for a couple of people to work the booth, or maybe to staff it? Well ok, perhaps to some sick twisted pervert staffing the booth would involve having sex with it, you know, the whole staff of life thing, but that's a stretch, and we can't just go making up new words because now and then a few crackpots might interpret something in a way that we didn't intend for it to be interpreted. Or maybe we can, I mean after all, we're already personning things because somebody has a problem with us manning them.

But that's my point. If we find new words for things because a few people don't like the old ones in some cases, where do we stop? How do we as a society determine who's interpretations are valid and worth looking into and who's are just flat out stupid? In short, where do we draw that line? Or maybe a better question would be should we draw that line at all? Perhaps it would be considered discriminatory by some if we did.

But wherever and whenever that line is eventually drawn, and for the sake of the sanity of the sane it had better be drawn soon, I hope that I never have to turn on my radio and hear the announcer say that there's a classic from David Wilpenises coming right up after the break because he's not allowed to say Wilcox anymore, or that I never have to turn on my TV and catch a rerun of the Penis Van Lesbian Show because there's no way that saying Dick Van Dike could possibly be appropriate under any circumstances.

Sure, you might laugh at those examples now, but take a look back through history and realize just how much language has changed, and then look to the present day and realize how many people want to change it even more, and how much those people want us to give up for the sake of being non-offensive and inclusive. When you stop and think about it, what I'm worried about might not be quite as far fetched as it seems, and that's pretty sad.

Thought Stew cooked up in the Mind of an Insomniac

Well, here I sit. It's 6:00 a.m. and I've been up since 2. Yea great joys. So I thought I'd babble about some things that have been on my mind. Sorry for not being around lately, life has been keeping me very busy. Not uninspired, just tired.

First of all, not being able to sleep means you're likely to see some really annoying infomercials if you have the TV on, which I did. This one commercial came on that was trying to sell something that would help you lose weight. Nothing new there. But this thing was just wacked, and makes me think if we continue on this path, we'll all de-evolve into slabs of stone from inactivity. They call it a sauna belt. It's a belt that you strap to the area of your body that you'd like to be less, well, roly-poly. It heats up, making you sweat and apparently lose weight. It actually makes a point of saying that you can lose weight, an inch per hour, while making no effort. Ok, how lazy are we getting that someone can shamelessly sit there and say that? Then again, it is late night TV. But it sure makes me wonder if this is just one big scam. If you're sweating, aren't you going to get thirsty? And if you're thirsty, aren't you going to drink water, and then....put the weight back on? And if you're not drinking water, aren't you dehydrating? And if you're losing all that sweat, enough to lose an inch an hour, where is it going to go? I don't think I want to hang out with anyone wearing one of these things. I also noticed they never mention how much it is. Wonder how much these people would try and soak people for who want to buy this thing?

On the topic of useless things, I got thinking about something I had to use as a kid. Does anyone else remember the abacus? Probably not. I think there are only a few of us around who were actually subjected to that thing because our teachers thought it was a good idea. Well, maybe some teachers could actually teach it so it was, but mine sure couldn't.

Ok I think everybody knows what an abacus is, right? Apparently some chinese math wizzes started using them before they had calculators and loved them to death. The thing consisted of a huge number of columns of beads, each containing four beads. The beads could be pushed up from the bottom to represent numbers. Above the columns was a row of beads. These could be pushed down and each of them represented 5. The far right column and the far right bead in the row represented 1's, the next column over represented 10's, the next column over represented 100's, etc. So if you pushed up beads from the bottom you could make 1, 2, 3, 4, or 10, 20, 30, 40, or 100, 200, 300, 400, yada yada yada yada bla bla bla. Now, the beads on the top could make 5, 50, etc. and if you added beads from the bottom, you could get 6 to 9 of whatever you wanted.

Bored yet? Well hopefully I will make my way to a point soon. It was an ok concept when they were teaching students how to count. I could understand that. You count how many beads and you can sort of physically see numbers to a point. But where it became a curse of doom is when they started making me multiply and divide. Ok, Say I was multiplying 34x10, or whatever random cursed numbers the teacher threw at me. You'd put 34 on the left and 10 on the right and have a pre-set number of columns free between them..and put the answer there. Anybody see a problem? You basically had to do the math in your head. The abacus just became a place to display the answer. Maybe my teacher was just a dope, but I swear to god that's the way I was taught. At this point, I just wanted to hurl the abacus across the room because it was serving no purpose whatsoever. At least when people multiply and divide using pencil and paper, they're doing it in smaller chunks and the numbers on the paper actually help. I just want a calculator at this point.

And here's a weird phrase. "Catchment area." I'm starting to volunteer at an organization and that's the phrase they use to describe the area that their organization covers. But doesn't catchment area make you think of a rain gutter or some kind of drip-catching tray? Maybe I'm just weird, but wouldn't district or region be simpler?

And that's about all I could come up with, isn't that sad? Hopefully Steve can come up with something better later.