The Balance Might Be Fake, But The Stupidity Is Real

Some things just scream bad idea, and this is definitely one of them.

If you go
here,
you can buy either a one month or one year supply of fake ATM receipts. If you're wondering why you would ever want to do such a thing, the site helpfully explains.

Tired of being used as a drink-dispenser? Maybe if you were rich you’d have more luck.

Ever wanted people to think you’re rich? Just casually let them see your massive bank balance on one of our fake ATM receipts, with your name right on it.

Trying to impress that hottie at the bar? Money talks. Hand out your number on the back of one of our fake ATM receipts. They’re a players dream come true.

Sadly, there's no mention of which product you should buy when you get busted and exposed as being the complete and utter arsehole that you most definitely are.

How Buzz-arre.

Wow. Now our mounties are rounding up bees. This story is too weird. I quote.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Mounties in eastern Canada were called in to help round up rogue honeybees after a palace coup this week caused a split in the hive, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

"The beekeeper came to us and said that he lost half of his bees, about 30,000 to 40,000 of them," said Cheryl Decker, spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as the Mounties are officially known.

"He said they were last seen near a Tim Horton's" donut shop on the edge of town, said the spokeswoman for the detachment in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. "He wanted us to help him round them up."

"It's the first time that the police have been called in to help capture bees," she noted.

Beekeeper Rodney Dillinger told AFP the colony was likely "stressed" and became dissatisfied with their queen. So, they raised a rival queen and then sent her into exile.

But half of the hive left with the deposed queen to "look for a new home."

"It's a common occurrence and they are not dangerous, but they look ugly to people who are not familiar with bees and I'm worried someone may attack them with a broom or a stick," he said.

According to reports, the swarm has been mistaken for a bear in a tree and a dark cloud in flight.

Once located, Dillinger said the queen bee would be placed in a bee box to start a new hive, with the swarm expected to follow. "We haven't found them yet. But I know which direction they went," he said.

First off, if the bees were hanging out by a Tim Horton's, you'd think the cops would catch them quickly enough, wouldn't you? Maybe they're happy to take this bee case just because it means staking out the doughnut shop.

And if someone is stupid enough to attack 40000 bees with a broomstick, maybe they get what they deserve.

How do you mistake a swarm of bees for a bear? I can understand a dark cloud, but a bear? It makes me think of that Winnie the Pooh story about the honey tree. "Oh, I'm just a little black rain, cloud, floating up under, the honey tree..." Now I feel stupid.

I hope the Mounties weren't carrying out this mission on horseback, or they'd be sending out rescue missions to pick up fallen mounties who tumbled off the backs of spooked, bucking horses. This brings up another point. Mounties seem to ride in cars now, more often than not, which makes me wonder what makes them mounted police anymore.

And I'm glad this is the first time the RCMP has had to round up bees. It isn't just another day at the office. If it was, I'd really wonder if they had become obsolete.

Your Kid, Is In The, Car!

Wow. After all this talk about kids getting left in hot cars, there are actually devices designed to warn you you're leaving your kid behind. I love it. The parent is essentially on a leash. If they don't take little Johnny with them, it knows this by a weight senser under a car seat or a harness clip in the seat, and they get 10 feet from the car, the key fob starts beeping, and grows more insistent the further they get from the car. Or, there's always the heartbeat sensor built into the Volvo s80 that could start screaming that there's someone in the car. It was marketed as something to let women know if someone was hiding in their backseat, but hey, it might work for this too.

All this integrating stuff into people's key fobs brings me to a scary thought, though. How come these people always forget their kids, but never seem to lock their keys in their car at the same time?

This Is My House Damn It!

Let's hope this never happens to me. I'm always afraid I'll open the wrong door in the apartment building and piss someone off, just like this blind intoxicated Harris County man did. The story is too funny on its own, so I'll just quote it and laugh.

HOUSTON, July 24 (UPI) -- A blind man who drunkenly stumbled into the wrong Harris County, Texas, home was injured when the homeowner fired at him with a shotgun.

The blind man, who lives nearby the scene of the incident, had mistaken the home for his own and argued with the homeowner about whose house they were in, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.

"It was not his residence," said Lt. Michael Young of the Harris County Precinct 4 constable's office. "The homeowner requested that this person leave and the interloper refused, insisting it was his house."

The homeowner fired off a round of birdshot when the intoxicated man approached him, grazing his face and head.

The man, whose family said he had been involved in similar incidents in the past, was taken to a local hospital to treat his injuries, which were described as minor.

No charges are expected to result from the incident.

I love the term interloper, and the fact that this man has done this before. Has he gone into the same house by mistake before and the dude's patience had gotten thin? Has he been shot before? Maybe he should take better notes on where he, er, lives so he doesn't have to have doctors pick birdshot out of his cranium. Maybe he'll have a better memory now of where home is.

More Puppy Escapades

Because I can't stop doing these dog posts, and because people seem to like them, here's another list of things that happen to me/things people say to me while Trixie and I are zooming around.

1. Someone actually said to me, "Wow! She knows what right and left mean? How cool is that?" Um, if she didn't, how could I direct her where to go while still letting her prevent me from running into stuff? Most dogs get led around by the leash. But she is leading me, that's what a guide dog would do. But I still have to be the one deciding where we're going, so we have to communicate somehow. Now that I write this out, it does seem a little more complicated than it did it first when my gut reaction was to think, "duh!"

2. As I rode up the elevator with my neighbours, adults, not kids, the man said to me, "So when do we get to pet her?" When? You think you're entitled to get to pet her? It sounded like a kid saying, "Can I have cake now, mommy?" I understand when kids say something like that, but it really shocks me when an adult says it. That, to me, is even worse than someone asking to pet her. This is almost like a demand. She's very cute, I know, but she's also very keen to meet new people, and that's not what she's supposed to do while she's working. All I could manage was, "Um, er, I don't know. Time will tell, I guess."

3. Kids are hillarious. As I've walked into the drugstore, or onto a bus, I've had not one, but two kids turn to their mothers and say, "What? Why is she bringing that dog in here? I can't bring our dog in here!" There is so much disgust and "That's not fair!" in it that I have to wonder if they're the middle child. And I also can't stop giggling. Ah kids and pure honesty.

4. This one always hurts, because it's usually said after she has given someone a good ol' sniffing, tried to eat something off the ground, or done something else equally doggy and non-guide doggy. "Is she still in training?" Gulp. Well, yes and no. A guide dog is always in training, or they lose what they've already learned. But she's fully certified as a guide dog. I keep telling myself this is because she's a wee dog, so everyone still thinks she's just a puppy, and that's more the issue than what she just did to embarrass me. But it still makes me turn just a tad red. Other variations are "Oh, she's still a puppy is she?" or "Is she doing better today?" or my personal favourite, "Is she trained?" All I can think when that one gets spat in my direction is wow, she's that bad that she's made you wonder if she's just a pet dog and I've decided she should play dress-up today. Then I think how could it be a good idea to give people untrained dogs and have them mascarade as guide dogs? That would be, um, disastrous!

I think that's about it for now. But I'm sure I'll have more later as we make our way. Hope I don't sound like an asshole. I don't want to make people afraid to say stuff. Just some of it sounds silly to me, but maybe that's easy for me to say when I've gone through all the training.

Man Vs. Machine

The city of Guelph recently passed a bylaw stating that all cabs must have their sign lights turned off when they are carrying passengers.

That sounds pretty mundane I know, but wait until you hear why.

According to Guelph Police Services Board lawyer Harry Perets, the law is designed to eliminate the confusion and safety concerns involved with hailing a cab. Yes, I said safety concerns.

Perets said some people jump in front of cabs to get them to stop when they see the lights on. Turning off the lights when passengers are aboard could reduce such scenarios.

Jesse Mendoza, Canadian Cab driver and secretary treasurer, said people will jump in front of cabs regardless of whether the sign lights are on or off.

About eight years ago, Mendoza said the company handed out fridge magnets to residents informing them that if the sign is off, the cab is occupied.

That didn't deter people from jumping in front of cabs, he said.

Think about this for a second. I'd say for a minute, but then you'd probably go about as nuts as I did. People jumping in front of cars has become such an issue around here that not only did a taxi service take the step of handing out don't jump in front of the large moving vehicle you moron magnets, but now, because that didn't work, the city had to step in and pass into law what they hope will be a solution to the problem.

What they've come up with is fine, but I think I've got a better idea. Let the cabs hit a few of these idiots. Let's face it, anybody who thinks that jumping in front of a cab is a wise decision probably doesn't have much to offer the city or the world anyway, so what's the loss? Why not stack up a few examples so that maybe people might start getting the message and catching a ride the same way every civilized person in this town does. Calling for one and waiting, or asking a parked cab if he's free. And when somebody does get hit, send his family the bill for street sweeping and auto repair. They're the ones responsible for unleashing these people on the rest of us, so why shouldn't they take responsibility for them? That way the city isn't out any money and our collective IQ is a little bit higher because the herd is a little bit thinner. Everybody wins.

It makes me angry beyond words that governments have to regulate common sense. We learn that we need to have respect for the road and the things on it from the time we're old enough to walk. The fact that we need laws and light signals to tell adults what they should already know is fucking disgusting. I know it's never going to change, but it burns me up that people like this are allowed to live in my world, and that they get protected to such a ridiculous degree while they're here.

Now We Know Why They Named It That

A 45-year-old man from New Westminster, British Columbia lost control of the van he was driving Friday night, crashing through a concrete median and going over an embankment before coming to rest at the edge of a cliff about 30 metres above get this,
Wreck Beach.

I know it's not the name of a person like the rest of these have been, but it's ironic and it amused me so I thought it was worth noting.

Courtrooms And Carlin And Blogs, Oh My!

Man, it's been a while since I've been able to post a wacked out dream that wasn't dog-related. But it's finally happening. I guess this one is still kind of dog-related, but not quite as dog-filled.

Last night, I dreamed that the urgent care clinic in San Rafael, the ones that gave me that ugly immobilizer for my bum knee, were suing me. They were suing me because they said I lied about having travel insurance that they wouldn't take anyway, but this is a dream, so on we go.

I had to sit outside the courtroom forever. They kept having delays. I remember thinking in the dream that they told me there would be delays like this when I learned about what I was supposed to do when accompanying a woman to court for Women in Crisis.

Then they finally brought me in, and the court was in recess, and George Carlin was up in front of the remaining people tellling jokes! Ok then. Every time he went to swear, he decided to censor himself. And his jokes didn't make any sense. They were about brushing dogs' teeth. What the?

then it came time for me to speak. I was led up to this desk and told that I had to read entries from the blog where I talked about calling the travel insurance people, because this would somehow prove that I *did* have travel insurance. In front of me was a strange braille display that I'd never seen, and I was supposed to use that. But it was in eight-dot braille mode, and I couldn't read a thing. I asked them if they knew how to change it, and they said no, so I messed with it for a while and somehow got it into six-dot braille, at which point everybody cheered! Ok! Then it was pretty much over, but not before people were fighting over which day of my guide dog journal was the most depressing.

What the hell? That was weird. I know the whole travel insurance thing isn't solved yet, and part of me wonders if it would have been better to just pay the damn bill. We're almost four months later and I'm still receiving notices from San Rafael asking for money. Is that why I dreamed about being sued? But what's with George Carlin and eight-dot braille and the blog and all that stuff? I don't know if this dream is seven chickens in a ring weird, but it's up there.

How does this happen?

I need someone to tell me how it is possible to strap your baby into his/her child seat, drive off, forget to take your kid to the babysitters, go to work all day, still not remember that little Johnny is in the car, only have your memory jogged by your wife who wonders why your kid isn't at daycare, then come outside, and find your kid dead in the car. I don't have kids, so maybe I just don't understand. I mustn't, because according to this article, lots of people do it. Even when I'm running on autopilot, I don't think I'd do that. I might get part of the way to work and then go "Oh shit!" and head back towards the babysitter's. But I have a hard time believing, if I could drive a car, I could get out of my car, turn the lights off and all that stuff, lock it, and walk away without thinking "Gee, have I forgotten something?" Even better, I don't think I could spend a whole day at work without realizing "holy shit the baby needs to go to daycare!"

But this happens all the time. Ug! I kno this is getting old, but I rest my case!

I Just Called To Say I'm Thirsty

I think we're getting into
SMS tea kettle
territory with this one.

A group of postgraduate students from New York University has developed a service [presumably for people who are too stupid to figure things like this out on their own] that will enable plants that are either too wet or too dry to
phone for help.

The system, known as Botanicalls [hahaha get it?], works via moisture sensors placed in the soil that will trigger a phone call whenever a serious gardening emergency is detected.

And to make those phone calls just a little more interesting, the Botanicalls people have gone to the trouble of choosing voices for different kinds of plants in an attempt to make the alerts friendlier and give them some personality. For instance, if you forget to water your Scots Moss, you will hear a fake sounding Scottish accent on the other end of the line. Why does it sound fake? That would be because the Scots Moss isn't actually a Scottish plant, even though its name would suggest otherwise. this, apparently, passes for clever at places such as New York University, where they've forgotten that those fake Scottish accents are what most folks think Scottish people actually sound like.

Another heartwarming feature of the service allows the plants to phone you again once you've taken care of them just to say thank you.

"We wanted to make sure that you weren't just getting phone calls that were really needy," said Rebecca Bray, a member of the development team. "So we have them calling you back when you've watered them to say thank you for watering me."

Sadly, no mentions of why sane human beings would need their plants to call them to say thank you when they would have to be standing right next to them when all this watering stuff was happening or why those people would need a phone call in the first place were ever made, but we did get this fantastic quote, which managed to bring joy and sadness to my heart simultaneously.

"We hope that the system will help people learn how to take better care of their plants over time, and maybe not even need the phone calls after a while."

I can't help but wonder if the same people who might benefit from Botanicalls would perhaps be better served by a similar system that would remind them to
look after their children.
Just something to consider.

Another Fine Parenting Example

Why didn't this story come in a few hours earlier? I could have included it in my rant about bad parents. Oh well, here it is now, to add to the pile.

Scott Scherer and Melanie Hardrath really love to go watch the Packers play. They really love their memorabilia too. But they don't love getting a babysitter. So every time there's a Packers game, they leave their seven-year-old son locked up in his bedroom with a loaf of bread, peanut butter, jelly, and a bucket to serve as a toilet until they get home from watching the game, often six hours later.

People like that are just too selfish to have kids. Ug. And here's a heaping helping of irony. Scott Scherer was a juvenile counsellor. Really took his job to heart, eh?

Thank God These Two Didn't Breed!

Wow. This story is just, um, well, stupid. The guy feels like an idiot, does he? So he should.

Let's tell a quick version of the story, as quick as possible anyway. Michael Moylan, 45, woke up with crazy head pain. He asked his wife to drive him to the hospital. He wondered why she drove really slowly, making complete stops at all the intersections. Upon arrival, the nurse said maybe the reason he felt like his head was going to split was because of the bullet in it. At this point, his wife April fled the emergency room. When they found her again, she said she shot him by accident while he slept. Since she's a felon, she was not supposed to have guns around, so off to jail she went. But Michael was so nice and forgiving that he tried to bail her out and found out that he had no money because she ran his business into the ground. Because he loved his beloved wife so much, he put their house up as collateral to get her out, confronted her about the shooting, and she admitted she had tried to shoot him on purpose. So...he banished her to the couch for the night. Ooo! If I were April, I'd be shaking in my boots! She begged him to let her sleep with him, and he did!

What the hell? Does he want to die? Maybe the introduction of the bullet will make him smarter. I don't think there's anything to lose. Sometimes I wonder if stuff like this is a joke. Sadly, it's not.

Why are these people having kids?

Lately, I can't stop seeing stories of parents who don't seem to have the first clue how to take care of their kids' most basic needs. Let's count the things I've seen in the past couple weeks.

There's this 63-year-old idiot who left an 11-month old girl, they say it's hers, in a hot car while she went into a store, and then stayed in the store for an hour because there were too many good bargains! To top it off, when the paramedics told her to give her dehydrated and practically frying child something to drink, she tried to give her a bottle of spoiled formula!

I can't count the problems I have with this story. First off, This woman was 63! She should know better! Next, if this kid is hers, she had to go to some lengths to get this kid. Either she had to force her body to reproduce again, or she had to adopt the kid. Why in christ would she then go and be so negligent? Finally, why didn't the story end with Child Protective Services being involved? All it says is she was charged, and someone bailed her out, I assume to take care of the kid again. Just dandy.

If that wasn't enough, I saw a story in which a woman got pulled over for DUI, and the police officer found her two kids sitting amid trash and cockroaches in the back of her car. Oh yeah, and they were also covered in their own urine and feces.

Then there's always the woman who decided it would be a grand plan to let her baby drive her car, well I guess that isn't quite true, the mom was working the gas and brakes. But anyway, they hit a pickup truck, and the occupants of said truck needed the jaws of life to extricate them. Apparently the mom wasn't taking some meds for some kind of mental illness, and it was showing, because she said she let her drive because it felt like the right thing to do in her heart. Uh-huh, and you should have kids why? I was surprised she wasn't charged with something. Meds or no meds, letting your kid work the wheel of your car is negligence!

Wait, there's more! Some idiot father decided to leave his 3 and 7-year-old sons in the car while he played poker, but "the air conditioning was on so what was the problem?" How about the fact that you shouldn't be playing poker while you have your kids, dumbass.

I know this one's old, but I think it fits here. One night back in March of 2006, at 1 a.m. or so, a Kansas dad thought he could pop into a strip club in Tulsa and leave his four-year-old son in the unlocked car next to a four-lane highway for over a half an hour. The kid got out and wandered in to the club to find daddy. What the heck was he doing out with the kid at 1 in the morning? Hopefully the kid's mom had some sense and made it so stuff like that wouldn't happen again.

And if you're not depressed enough, here's the last story I've heard recently. A couple who can't get enough dungeons and dragons chose to play the game rather than feed their kids. They even had the food in the house, they just didn't give it to the kids. By the time the kids were discovered, one kid could barely walk, and the other kid had only gained 4 pounds in almost a year and couldn't cry or urinate because she was so dehydrated! What shocks me is it took them several days before they actually removed the kids.

I know there are horror stories like these all the time. It just seems like I saw a whole pile of them together. But if this keeps going, we're doomed.

Another Name In The News

This is the best one of these yet, and by an extremely wide margin at that.

Arrested on Tuesday and charged with public indecency after exposing himself and touching an undercover police officer in a local park is 90-year-old
Leonard G. Dickman.

I'm not sure if that can ever be topped, but I'll try.

Have a Holly USB Christmas

Wow, USB gadgets are making a further descent into tackyville. You can now get a His 'n' Hers USB gift set.

Wanna know what's in the men's set? A mini vacuum cleaner with brush, why in hell you would wire a vacuum up to a computer I don't know, a desk lamp, a cup warmer and a mood light pen holder whatever that is.

Now, for absolutely tacktastic, the women's set has the vacuum and pen holder, but they get a fan and lighted mirror and it comes in, how did the author put it? "A feminine-apparently-shade of plastic pink?" Ooo! Sounds like a must have, doesn't it? Not.

Ug, the inventor of the first USB gadget created a monster.

Blueberries!

Not far from where we live, there's this little fruit stand. The guy sells all kinds of fresh fruit, and apparently Trixie loves going there, because when she sees the stand, she's bound and determined that we go there. There's no way I'll pass there without her stopping and pointing her nose at it as if to say, "Are we going in?"

Anyway, I bought blueberries from him today, and man they're addictive! I'll open the door of the fridge to get something else, and my hand will be magnetically drawn to the basket of blueberries, and before I know it, I've stolen a handfull of them. Yummy!

Well, that was a pointless post, wasn't it?

Big Brother is Failing Miserably.

Remember when Britain instituted CCTV's to watch and listen to pedestrians, and then made it possible for police to yell at them? Remember what their reasoning was? It was so the streets would be safer. Well, mission far from accomplished.

On the street with over 100 cameras watching it, the crime rate is far from low. There have been 430 offenses committed on Big Brother Avenue, er, Holloway Road over the past six months including serious assaults, robberies and burglaries.

Having all those cameras actually makes things harder for police because they have to watch footage from every single camera. Duh.

Way to go, guys, way to make the streets safer for you and me.

Meet George Jetson

There are so many questions I have about this story. Where do I begin?

How in hell is something that is 1 foot tall weighing 200 pounds? I cannot imagine how you could pack so much weight into such a small space. No wonder when it is low on power, it returns to its dock to recharge. Who's going to drag it there?

If it checks on your children to see if they're doing their homework, how does it know if they are or aren't? I assume you have to see what it's seeing. And if you're busy watching it, why don't you just get up and check on them yourself? I'm sure you could be far more helpful with math than ten-ton one-foot Louie over there.

And how much does this one-foot wonder cost? They never mentioned that.

This is just weird. I'm having some serious IRobot visions. NS5's anyone?

Please Read the Emergency Instructions in The Seat Pocket In Front Of You. No Really, You're Going to Need Them.

This Brazilian plane crash belongs in an episode of Mayday. Let's count the horrible happenings.

1. The runway is dangerously short and nicknamed the aircraft carrier.


2. It's slippery when wet.


3. It was newly-paved, but they didn't bother to cut grooves in it to drain water.


4. They never closed it, despite the lack of grooves being a, um, risk.


5. Other planes have skidded off, but landed on grass without any injuries. Ya think that would have been a warning?


6. It was raining pretty heavily when a plane tried to fly in.


7. The plane missed the runway, crossed a busy highway and crashed into a gas station and a cargo depot.


8. Everybody's dead, and there's no passenger list. Way to go, fellas.

Now, some director of engineering is claiming that this was not due to rain. Yep, whatever you say, chief. How much are they paying you to say that?

Wanna know something else scary? This is apparently the worst crash in their country's history, only by a margin of about 35 deaths. They've had several other serious crashes this year.

And here's the scary icing on the cake for me. I have friends who are going to Brazil in the near future! Let's just hope they get home alive.

WWWWWWHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?

Ok, why in the blue bloody christ is Peter Whitmore getting offered a plea deal? Why why why why why? Somebody tell me why! Please? Now!

Ok, now that I've got the incoherent brain-rattling rage down on paper, let me try and write like a rational human being. He kidnapped a kid from Manitoba, sexually assaulted him, caused another local kid to go missing, did who knows what to him, and before that, he had been convicted of sexually assaulting children. These convictions go back years! How many? Try going back 14 years, to 1993! He's been busted, released, promptly re-busted, released, lather, rinse, repeat! Wanna see details of why this man should rot in jail forever? Read this timeline. If that's not a dangerous offender, by christ I don't know what is.

Dear old director of prosecution Murray Brown says he's doing it for the good of these kids. I get that it's hard to go on the stand about this, and defense lawyers can be assholes, but how is it benefitting greater society to give him a plea deal that is a life sentence allowing him to apply for parole in a measley 7 years? He's already been jailed for 5 and that didn't deter him. What's another 2? I know it's only the possibility of parole, but it's still there! If you're a dangerous offender, it's a hell of a lot harder to get out.

The part that really burns me up is when Brown says he's doing this plea deal thing to spare the kids from testifying. Then he says it would also short circuit a lengthy dangerous offender hearing. Uh-huh. That's the real reason, isn't it, Mr. Brown? Maybe the reason this bugs me so much is often times, when my dad wanted to do something, if he didn't get his own way, he'd then say he was doing it for the sake of us kids. I know it's a comparison to something much more trivial, but that kind of bullshit always bugged the hell out of me.

I'm finding myself without an ending for this post, except to say that if the families were promised that he would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and this is the fullest extent of the law, we have a sad justice system. But is this news to anyone? How much do you want to bet that when he is next paroled, he molests another kid? He's only 36. He won't be that old when he gets out.

I'm Weak In the Fleece For You?

I want you all to try to listen to this song and tell me whether or not you think Serena Ryder sounds like a sheep.

"Would you mind if I got drunk and said I want to take you home to baaaaaaahed?"

Helping You Feel Better About Yourself

I've seen me some stupid people on Family Feud before, but I don't remember anything that comes close to topping
these guys.

What I can't figure out is how they made it to Fast Money. that means they had to have won, which seems impossible. And if they won, that means that the people they beat could very well have been worse, which also seems impossible.

Note for the blind people: The video won't start playing automatically when you click the link. You have to go into the Flash movie and press the replay button a couple of times before anything will happen.

Are You There God? It's Me, The Law

Back in October 2005, I posted a story about a Romanian prison inmate who
filed suit against God,
claiming that the lord took bribes, didn't help him in his time of need, and was in many other ways pretty much a no good scumbag. Well, after almost 2 years, there's finally an update.

Prosecutors in Timisoara, where the claim was filed, have decided to drop the case because
God doesn't seem to have a home address and they can't locate him.

And before anybody asks, no, I have no idea how or why it took 21 months to sort this out.

Clearing the Backblog

Hope you folks like these random posts, because with all that time I didn't write, I've created quite a, well, thought backblog. I'm sure I'll be able to write something more focused soon. But until then, have a pile of thoughts.

Remember back in another random post, I said I forgot something? Well, I remembered it, and keep forgetting to write it down, so I'm writing it down now. What was it again? Just kidding.

Has anyone else noticed that, among all the phone drones out there, the Swiss Chalet delivery phone drones are the most humourless of all? I could swear they turned their human trainees into cyborgs to be more efficient. When they pick up the phone, they greet you with something that sounds like "hellothankyouforcallingswisschaletcanihaveyourphonenumberstartingwiththeareacodeplease?" Huh? What? Where? who? I'm still stuck at Hello. Even if you make a joke, there is no laughter, there is only "nextitemplease?" Everywhere you go, you're going to get someone who sounds like a zombie, but this is a consistent thing with Swiss Chalet. I think the lady who sold me Chalet soup when I had that brutal cold was the last of the humans.

Can I mention how much I hate hate hate writing big collaborative reports? I mustn't be a team player or something, because I can't stand having to come up with ideas that we both agree on, and then wrangling them into something resembling intelligible english. For the past 6 weeks, I've been working up at the university doing an audit of various areas of their website to tell them how well they work with JAWS. The way it works is I work in tandem with a guy with functioning eyes, and when I have a problem, he tries to tel me what he's seeing in comparison to what I am. Then, we have to write a big report to explain it to the powers that be. Seems simple enough, right? I wish!

Every time he gets his hands on it to edit in his input, the input he adds is either riddled with errors and redundancies, cannot be called decent sentences, or all of the above. I spend more time editing the jabber than adding new input. I showed it to Steve, and after the third sentence, Steve was confused beyond belief, and he knew what I had been doing for the last six weeks. Fixing the report was so brain-sapping that I said to Steve that my brain felt like it needed to write blog posts for nourishment. Well, we know how many of those got created, don't we? If only we always got what we wanted.

Note to anyone about to take a plane anywhere: Do not watch the show called Mayday before you go. You'll wonder if flying is such a great idea. That show is fascinating, but lord you realize how much human error goes on, and then you wonder why there aren't more crashes. Air traffic controlers that don't seem to understand the gravity, ha ha, of "we are out of fuel," engineers that are eyeballing up parts to see if they fit and they don't, pilots punching the wrong entry points into their autopilot and, quelle surprise, getting lost. Ug. You wonder how good an idea it is to put your life in their hands. *Tries to remember* did I watch Mayday before I went to San Rafael? I know I thought about things in it through the whole plane trip. But maybe I'm just neurotic. But the show makes you realize how rare a true mechanical failure is. they're most often caused by human error.

And because people love dog stuff, I figured I'd throw some more doggy tidbits in. I learned yesterday that Trixie is not a fan of being splashed by a truck driving through a puddle. She backed up, spun around and shook her whole body to get the water off. I just couldn't stop laughing. Yep, I'm heartless.

Remember when we called her Visa? Well, now she's upgraded to Visa Gold because she really goes out of her way to be, well, in ours. Holy crap. Silly girl moves and ends up more in the way than before.

Also, remember how, in the mornings, she'd get up and flop like a fish on the rug? Well, now she'll do it on the bare floor! Trixter, doesn't that hurt? But if you're having fun, knock yourself out...well, don't do that. That's what I'm afraid will happen! She also will shake her whole body, but she'll be right next to the couch, so she'll wack right into it! One day, she decided to shake her head the way she does, and I heard a loud click! Dad said that was the sound of her head hitting his knee! Ouch!

I have learned to respect that thumpy tail and its distructive power. We had to more firmly attach the basket we have on the door to catch the mail because she had wagged into it so hard! That, combined with her womping her head off it made it all crooked.

I wish I could record the noises she makes when she dreams. Sometimes, she wags her tail in her sleep. Other times, she makes these itcy bitcy barks. I have to wonder if she's having a good dream or a nightmare. If only I could speak Trixie.

Next week, the guy who does followups for the school, who is also the guy who interviewed me last year, is coming to see me and see how Trix and I are doing. He's coming at 5 at night so we can walk through Friday rush hour. Really putting Trixie and I to the test, isn't he? I'm a little nervous, a lot excited, and a little nervous all over again. I want to hear him say that we're doing well, I pray I haven't let some things slip, I want some pointers on some things, and I hope he doesn't think those things are stupid. Hopefully I'll have a story or two from that.

I think that's about it. Holy crap that was a huge post. Hope it wasn't too long and drawn out.

Hello? Is This Thing On?

Writing this, I wonder if anyone's still reading. We both screwed off for a good long time. 15 days? eek. Have we ever done that before? I'm too lazy to scroll through the archive and check. But I think it's pretty rare. So rare that Ann Adams, the sweet lady that she is, wondered if we were ok. Yep, we're ok. We just got busy for different reasons, and the computer made a meal out of my last attempt at a post. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to save the post as the computer freezes, rebooting the computer, seeing the file you saved, breathing a sigh of relief, then opening it, and all you see is c:\blog.txt. Nope, that wasn't the post. So rather than writing that one again, I figured I'd do a random thoughts one to get me going. *hits save first.*

Something has been puzzling me for a while. I went to the store to get Trixie a tug toy. She ripped Babs's old tug toy in half, and then gnawed the everloving hell out of one her puppy raisers gave her so the rubber was hanging off and revealing hard plastic. So I thought I'd better get one made out of rope or something. I went into this store, and the first few tug toys they showed me were stuffed animal-like things with springy legs. I didn't want them because I thought she might get at the stuffing. But I especially didn't want the one that looked like a chihuahua!

What is that? dog-devouring practice? "here, killer, have a tug Schitzu. It'll get ya all nice and strong for the real ones." Then they see the neighbour's yappy little bichan frise and they think "Ooo! a tug toy that moves on its own!" and before you can say sit, Gurrgurrgurrgurr yipe! Yipe! Yipe! What in christ are the makers of toys thinking? Are they hoping for a lawsuit? I was lucky enough to find a tug toy that consisted of a rope with knots at each end. I've never heard of a living knotted rope, so I think I'm safe.

I must be really nuts because I had another weird dream about a random dog following Trixie and I home. This one was worse, though. Not only did it follow us home, it mauled Trixie so badly that it broke one of her legs. In the dream, I was with another girl and her dog, and we came upstairs and the dogs were playing. Suddenly, I thought the play got a little rough, so I came over, and found myself sandwiched by 3 dogs! Three? Um, uh-oh! Here we go again! Like in the other dream, I tried to pick up the phone, but they wouldn't work. This time, every phone I tried to use, including my cell phone, yammered ads at me. Lucky for me, my parents showed up and took Trix and I to the vet, who yelled at me, demanding to know what took me so long to get there. This must be because Trixie got an eye and ear infection dealt with, the ear infection probably being caused by another dog licking her ears and me not getting them wiped out well enough. But man! Two dreams about random dogs following us home? Weird!

And in other dog news, news that I'm horribly behind on writing up here, Barbie has made it home from GDB with her own black lab named Rosamae. There's a picture up on her blog if ya wanna see. And my final bit of doggy goodness, if you just can't get enough guide dog school fun, *listens to a large groan from readers which is outdone by a cry of nooooo! from Steve*, Jessica is at GDB training with her woofer, Newmar. I'm sure you'd get used to calling him Newmar, but that sounds like an alien planet or a factory or something. Sorry, Jessica, he sounds like an awesome woofer, but the poor soul got quite the name. I'm sure he's already grown to suit the name for you, though.

Ok, ok, enough dog things. Moving on to....the TV. I saw a couple of commercials that made me sit up and take notice. One was for a deodorant that provided...prescription-strength sweat-protection. What? People need prescriptions for this? How the hell much do they sweat? Maybe more people who ride the bus should get that.

And then there was a commercial for a truck that was supposed to be always ready for fun. It's name was the Dodge Avenger. Yeah, because an avenger sounds like such a party animal. It sounds like something that would run you down when its driver was having a fit of road rage. Nothing should be called an avenger, unless it's an army tank.

And what is with the commercial that seems to be only people singing the alphabet to a rock tune? Is it some kind of literacy thing? All I know is I'm walking around singing the new rocky alphabet. Thanks for the refresher. I didn't need it, but thanks anyway.

Now that I can use a bunch of functions on my phone, I do things I never thought I'd end up doing, like, texting. I looked at people writing messages on their cell phones and thought, why don't you just, er, call them? But I've realized that sometimes a text message is more efficient, in theory at least. But when you're me, and take...forever..to..write...a...message, maybe the efficiency is gone. I now sort of understand why the silly codes you see everywhere were created. But I will not use them. Here I am looking for ways to capitalize letters and use real punctuation. The English language means too much to me to give in to the dark side!

The English language means a lot to me, and so does my ability to speak French, but apparently I'm losing it. The other day, I had the opportunity to speak French, I opened my mouth, and no sound came out. I ended up caving and speaking English. I felt so bad. Damn it I didn't want to lose it, but it appears it's slipping away!

And I think that's about it for now. I will write more stuff, sooner than 15 days from now, hopefully.