Buzzuzzuzzuzzuzz!

Allow me to apologize right now to the Huppy's mom. She is from South Africa, and will probably not like this post.

Back a bit ago, Huppy and family headed off to South Africa to see the huppy's mom's family. When they came back, I came over to hang out with the little guy and his mom. She said "Hey! I even bought one of those horns they'll play at the world cup! It's called a vuvuzela! Wanna see it?" I said sure, what the heck. It looked like a long-ish plastic trumpet thing with no keys. She blew it a couple of times, and I thought "Neat!" It seemed no weirder than your average noise-maker. Then I started blowing it, and Trixie was not a fan. She ran in great big circles around me, and then the huppy didn't like her crazy movements. Trixie, ya know, I think you were on to something. Now, after hearing them at the World Cup, I tend to agree.

Just listen to this mass of blowing vuvuzelas. When you hear that on TV, they sound like a swarm of bees! Ug, they always creep me out. At first, when I would tune in to the world cup from a distance, I would wonder if they're having to play amid a hoard of vicious bugs. Now that I know it's just the vuvuzelas, I don't think that anymore. But the sound still bugs me.

In my search for a mass of vuvuzelas, I found this neat little video, complete with baby vuvuzela. Duck on speed, or the cries of a terribly ill child. That's a pretty apt description of the sound it makes.

Incidentally, I hadn't a clue how to spell the thing, so I typed into google "What's the name of those South African World Cup horns" and the first result was a wikipedia article on vuvuzelas. Wow, that's crazy smart.

Read My Lips, But Don't Try And Answer My Questions

This story of a deaf guy getting arrested during the G20 insanity made me think about something. If you arrest someone who is deaf, and you have to handcuff them, isn't that sort of like gagging them? I know that a lot of police don't understand sign, but the person couldn't even write a note if they wanted to if they were handcuffed. What's the protocol for letting a deaf person communicate, but still containing them somehow, say, if they're being all violent or something?

Truckin'

Hey there nice trucker guy who is sitting idling in a parking lot, apparently waiting for me to step off the curb and cross it. Can I come talk to you? I need to explain something to you.

I really appreciate the gesture of you waiting for me so I can cross, but we have a wee bit of a communication breakdown here. You see, I don't know you're waiting for me, and I know it's not a safe assumption to make that that truck is going to wait for me, so I don't make it. Maybe you can't see me, and as soon as I step off, you could decide to start moving, and then I'm left doing some evasive manoeuvres. .

You may have pointed at me and waved me on, but I can't see you waving and/or pointing. So, the two of us are in a constant state of "you go ahead." "No, you go ahead." "No, really, you should go." "No, I'm waiting for you!" And unless someone tells me that you're waving me on, I'll never know. It's doubly hard since you're so far away from me that I would never hear you yell "Go!" even if you did.

Second, your big rumbling rig is actually masking the sounds of other cars who may not be as courteous as you, big ol' trucker man. So, while I'm standing there noticing that you're not moving, I can't hear the other cars around you. So I'm still nervous to set off.

Please understand that I'm not trying to shoot down your courtesy. I wish all drivers were as cool as you. But we need to figure out a solution, because I think a lot of us blinks feel the same way as I do. Hmmm. Maybe, if I haven't stepped off, then don't worry about waiting for me. The faster your big truck is gone from the parking lot, the better I'll feel about stepping out. I could wave you on, but it's hard for me to judge that you aren't waiting for something else. After all, you're driving a big ol' truck, and big ol' trucks have a harder time getting out on the road. Of course, if I'm in the middle, watch out for me, as you probably already do, because you're cool like that.

I hope you understand what I'm getting at. On behalf of blinks everywhere, thanks again for being a careful driver.

Carin

Crossing The Line

Now, a cross in a cemetery is considered unsafe in the UK. Apparently, all the headstones must be flat.

Not only that, but any crosses were removed that were there, apparently without informing family. That's just insensitive and disrespectful.

The Prison Needs A Bra To Contain The Boobs They Have For Guards

Brittney Horstman is one determined lawyer. She went in to see her client at the Miami Federal Detention Center and set off the metal detector. Even though the guards knew it was the underwire in her bra, they still said nope. So, she went to the washroom and removed her bra. Now, they wouldn't let her in while braless because it contradicted dress code. So, either way, she was screwed, and her client got screwed out of seeing his lawyer.

Apparently, now the issue is resolved, but that's just dumb.

Wiiiiiilllllliiiiiieeeee!

You know, as much as I have to make fun of Willie Eugene Lewis for climbing into an electrical substation, I do have to give him kudos for being able to walk to the emergency room on his own after receiving the frizzle frying that he did.

Nobody can tell us why Lewis felt the urge to climb a fense and ignore a high voltage sign, except to say that alcohol was a factor, but oh boy can they tell us what happened next. Basically, 40000 volts of electricity shot through Lewis, burning the clothes off his back and the genetals off his body. But despite this, he managed to climb the fense and walk to the ER, where they might have said "holy crap it's a cooked human being!" before deciding he was in critical condition. Lewis had burns to 90% of his body, but I suspect his brain was already fried before this incident.

And yes, I did notice that he who is now without a willie is named Willie.

I Think I'm Gonna Cry. Please, Don't Make Me Cry

I hate computers! Just...fucking hate the things!

Carinmentioned earlierthat my keyboard decided to die out of the blue this morning. Well, we did the logical thing and bought a new one. so what do you suppose happens when I plug it in? Come on, guess. Yeah, same goddamn thing that was happening with the old one. It won't respond after Windows XP recognizes it, and if I unplug it and plug it in to try again I get a message saying that the USB device is not recognized, that a device has malfunctioned and that if I'd like help fixing this problem I can click this message. I'd happily do that if I could use a mouse, but the keyboard is my mouse, and without it I'm effectively mouseless.

So now I'm worried, not to mention ripshit pissed off. Have my USB ports failed? Nothing else plugged into them is yelling at me, but I can't really do a whole lot of tests if I can't use the keyboard to run anything, so that might not be a reliable fact on which to hang my hope. I tried the old keyboard in 3 of the ports and this new one in 2 and none of them worked, so unless there's some kind of driver wackiness at play they're probably hosed. If that's the case, what do I do, and how much money is itt going to cost me to do it? I want the answers to those questions but I really don't want them, if that makes any sense. In my head I'm picturing computer techs with dollar signs in their eyes, and this upsets me.

If anybody has any suggestions or somesuch I'd love them, and if anybody else needs me I'll be in the other room hopefully not throwing a computer off a balcony.

Raving About RAIVE

I just have to write this quick post before I get a move on.

Ok, so this morning, Steve woke up to find that his computer was acting like a dork. He couldn't figure out why. We're pretty sure that his USB keyboard has bitten the biscuit, but we'll only know after we buy a new one and try it. So anyway, I was trying to find a computer store to hit that hopefully was staffed by people with a little more knowhow than the ones that work at some of the chain electronics stores. I remembered hearing something good about a place called PC Trust, so went looking for them.

I found them, but for some reason that I cannot understand, they put their business hours in a graphic. Seriously, who on earth does that? I had tried calling them, but their blasted fax machine kept picking up and squealing in my ear. So Steve had a brainwave. Why don't we run the business hours graphic, which funnily enough was labeled "business hours" *way to taunt the blink*, through Solona's RAIVE service. And it was a great idea.

Basically, you send a picture to RAIVE and ask them a question about the picture. They send you back an email response and answer your question. My question? What are the business hours? Within 5 minutes, I had my answer in my email! I hate to say how cool is that again, but are there any better words?

That was basically all I had to say. Go RAIVE. Everybody should try it out. It's unbelievably easy, and cool.

Oh, and USB keyboards that die without warning can eat a bag of hell.

You Killed My Sister, Now I'm Coming For Yours!

What did these two sisters do to piss off the moose population? I mean, how likely is it that one sister would hit a moose, and then the other sister, while on her way to visit her sister in the hospital, would hit another moose? I'm glad the second sister wasn't injured nearly as badly as the first one, but gees! Do they come from a long line of moose-hunters?

The End Of The World As We Know It?

I really hope that Professor Frank Fenner is wrong about his theory that the human race will go the way of the dinosaur in less than a century, although I can't help to worry that he has a point.

It's scary that I might witness the end of humanity during my lifetime. Just the thought of that makes me feel pretty helpless.

Are The Guitars Instruments of Music, Or Vengeance?

Gees! If you're going to live with Kevin and Dustin Lambert, mark very well whose food is whose. If not, you could wind up getting a beating over it. This is what William Reaume found out. They first started punching him, and then they beat him with an acoustic and an electric guitar.

Gees! Settle down and play some tunes with those guitars, guys! And if I were Reaume, I'd be finding a new place to live. These guys sound nuts.

Oh The Flasher Is A Person In Your Neighbourhood, And He's Showing Off His Meat Each Day

Eeewww. Now there's a backyard gathering the kids won't forget. All was going ok, until their neighbour came out in his thong bathing suit, bent over and intentionally showed his balls to the bunch. When the adults supervising the kids told him to please not do that in front of the kids, he swore and told them if they didn't like it, they should call the cops...so they did.

When the cops showed up, they got told that this guy has an outdoor shower in view of his neighbours, and likes to use it all the time. Is that even allowed?

Why would somebody do that?

Not The Sharpest Bayonet In The Stroller?

Now that's just a little weird. Police came and arrested a drunken couple who were pushing a stroller with their two kids in it at around 1:30 a.m. In the stroller, they found open containers of booze. I was expecting that. But they also found a double-edged bayonet. Yup, in with their kids in the stroller was a double-edged bayonet. What the hell?

While they were out on that late-night jaunt, they were trying to steal a bike while wheeling their kids around with them, which was what tipped off a security guard to call the cops. Ok then. Those kids have an uphill battle ahead of them.

There's No Comfort Knowing, Their Bodies Are Glowing...

How about we stop talking about the G20 happenings so we can watch Gummie Chernobyl? Sounds good.

G20 Dumbasses

People are dumb. Because the G20 meetings are going on, some idiots calling themselves the Black Bloc thought they should smash windows, burn cop cars and cause general disarray and hell around Toronto, even saying that "confrontation is welcome" at a protest this afternoon. They want to show them who's boss, eh? Well, ask the nearly 500 people who have been arrested if that was a success. Oh wait, I think that number just went up.

What a waste of time and resources. But maybe that's the aim. Divert enough people outside the perimeter, and then people will be able to pop out of manhole covers inside the perimeter and do who knows what. And what's up with the manholes anyway? When you do this amount of planning, you have to have more on your mind than just joining a protest.

9:11 a.m. Protesters seen coming out of manhole

A security guard describes seeing what he believes were two protesters emerge on to Queen St. yesterday by popping up through a manhole cover.

A man and two women were standing near the manhole cover in front of 20 Queen St. W. yesterday around 1:45 a.m. when two men jumped out from the underground. One sprinted east to Yonge St., said security guard Peter Pangopoulos, and the other stood with the three people who appeared to have been wating for him. The four of them started walking toward the Eaton Centre, he said.

"It was a near-perfect operation," said Panagopoulos.

In amazement, he pointed out the four people to his partner who ran to tell police officers in a Court Services van on Bay St. Police swarmed the four, who were arrested, but the one man who jumped through the manhole opening had already gone.

Inside the manhole cover is a ladder, a rope and white LED lights stretching far down before it goes black. City workers have welded the cover shut.

A ladder and LED lights? What were they trying to do?

I was talking to my mom this morning, and my dad had a good idea. Why don't we hold these G20 meetings at military bases? I'm sure they could build a pretty little convention centre there. It would be far away so it would be both secure and wouldn't screw up the lives of people just trying to get on with their day, and there wouldn't be so many businesses available for nincompoops to loot.

Welcome To The G1984 Summit

If you're in Toronto this weekend and happen to be in the area of the G20 summit, be aware that the Ontario Liberals have decided to take a big ol' steamer on the concept of democracy and it could cost you some money and some freedom.

Regulationspassed quietly with no debategive police the power to demand identification and purpose of visit from anybody who gets within 5 metres of the secured area. And if the police aren't happy with the answers you give them or if you choose to remain silent, you can be searched, arrested, fined $500, detained and possibly sent to prison for 2 months.

I realize Toronto has a Chinatown, but there's really no reason to make those people feel like they're back home by ripping a page out of the real China's policy handbook. This is Canada, we have rights here, and I personally count standing peacefully near a fence I paid a billion dollars for among them.

I have no faith, in spite of what Sgt. Tim Burrows of the G8/G20 Integrated Security Unit tells us, that these powers won't be abused.

"The public has nothing to fear with this legislation and the way the police will use this legislation," he says. "It really comes down to a case of common sense and officer discretion. If you're approaching that fence line, we want to know why."

It's the common sense and officer discretion parts that worry me. Nothing to do with this summit has had anything to do with common sense, and I've seen far too much police misconduct to believe that there won't be at least a few bad apples in the bunch that will take the opportunity to bully people without fear of repercussions.

And on the subject of without repercussions, try this on for size.

The regulation also says that if someone has a dispute with an officer and it goes to court "the police officer's statement under oath is considered conclusive evidence under the act."

I'm not sure how you read that, but to me it sounds like no matter what I say, even if I'm telling the God's honest and the guy in the uniform is making things up as he goes, I'm fucked. What's the point of even having a court system at that point?

these new powers became law last Monday and will only be in effect until this coming Monday, but that's a week too long. I'm all for arresting the professional protesters who are just there for something to do, to get themselves on TV and for no other reason than to cause trouble. But being able to harass people for the crime of just standing there? That's wrong, and not how things are supposed to be done in this country.

Some Weird Ads For Ya

It's time once again for an episode of what the hell is up with these commercials? This one took us a while to put together, and it has less in it.

There's been this ad campaign pushing Ontario as the place to be. I think it started when we moved into this apartment, because I thought it was kind of weird that once I moved, the TV started singing "there's no place like this where I've been" as if it liked my new digs too. I had no idea what it was for until I googled it.

Anyway, in the old song, it used to sing "There's no other place like this for me," but in the newer versions, it seriously sounds like it's saying "There's no place like this for me." So let me get this straight. This person is singing this song about how glorious Ontario is...but they can't live here? Why not? Did they get kicked out?

Am I the only one who thinks that ads for FruitSimple make us sound like a pack of lazy slugs? "It's like drinking a serving of fruit through a straw!" And I should be thrilled about this? Why wouldn't I just eat my fruit? Can I no longer chew? Is my jaw wired shut after a horribly-disfiguring accident?

You know, last year, we wanted to murder the talking Super 8 sign. Well, this year, it has a new voice, and I can't decide if he's better or worse. At least last year's sign had personality, even if that personality was annoying. This one just sounds, um, kinda creepy, and kinda like he's reading as fast as he can. I hate the way he chuckles when he says "I got low rates." Is that the place to chuckle? And don't you think the guy working on his car sounds really, really, really dumb? Yup, sweet-cheeks loves his pie, and loves to say ummm. I wish I could find a link to some audio, but I can't.

During the news, there's always a spot where it says "brought to you by Arvanitis and Associates, dentistry by design." I know they're into cosmetic dentistry, but that slogan always makes our heads spin. What other dentistry is there, dentistry by accident? I would hope you're in dentistry by design, as opposed to "hmmm...what kind of sign shall I slap on my office door here?" But I guess, judging by the contents of our dentists tag, dentistry by accident is pretty common.

There's something about this Marineland Arctic Cove song that has always bothered the hell out of me. It starts off with "They come from a land of ice and snow," and I always sub in, "Now we threw them in a tank at Arctic cove." I don't know, mentioning Belugas' natural habitat just before talking about seeing them in a glorified aquarium has always kinda bugged me. Now, I have come up with a longer version of the Arctic Cove song.

"They come from a land of ice and snow,
now belugas have a tank at Arctic Cove.
Reach out, touch, give them a smile,
they haven't killed a trainer in a long while.
You never know when, they're gonna kill again,
so come on, kids, jump in!
Arctic Cove, Marineland."

Yes, we're evil. And yes, I know it wasn't at marineland where that trainer became a meal.

Every time we see the Oil of Olay Regenerist commercial that brags about how their product does better than the $700 cream, we say the same thing. What? There's a $700 cream out there, and people are buying it? What kind of fools can spend $700 on something to make their face look less wrinkly? Rich ones, I guess. But how do fools become rich?

Whenever we see this Febreeze Fabric-Refresher commercial, We have to wonder what is wrong with this woman, or what is wrong with the person who did the splice job, or maybe a little of both. Listen to how she says "It removes odours of...sports, teenagers, orcooking!" I took the space out on purpose because those words are all squished together. Who talks like that? And who can't live a week without Febreeze Fabric-Refresher? Seriously.

When we first talked about that Charmin Ambassador job, we thought the slogan "enjoy the go" was odd. It hasn't gotten any better now that the commercial has hit the TV. And since this is an ad for toilet paper, shouldn't it be "enjoy the cleanup? And incidentally, does this ad actually show a dog using TP? If not, who goes around inspecting people's butts? Ug. That's almost as bad as "enjoy the go."

And that does it for this round of ads. I said it would be smaller.

Our New Share Buttons...Are They Working?

Blogger now has those share buttons that you see everywhere, the ones that let you send something you like to Facebook or Twitter and perhaps even Foursquare,whatever that is.I've enabled them, but JAWS, my screenreader, can't see them so I have no idea if they're working or what they look like. So my question to sighted folks and those using screenreaders other than JAWS 10 is can you see them and do they work? Shoot me an email or leave a comment and let me know. Thanks.

I Guess It's True You Can Get Everything Cheap At Wal-Mart

Well, isn't this a beautiful way to start off Friday?

We've heard of kids being sold for $5000, a gun and a bird, but $25 outside Wal-Mart is a brand new low. Actually, there was the case of Marcy Pappalardo trying to sell her kid for $10 in gas money, but somehow that hadn't made it onto the blog.

Patrick Fousek and Samantha Tomasini sound like quite the pair, trying to sell their kid to a random person after she let Fousek use her cellphone. Then, when that person wrote down their license plate number and police arrived at their house, they found out they're a couple of meth heads, and Tomasini had breast-fed the kid while under the influence. What a horrible mess. I'm glad they tried to sell the kid, but I'm even happier the person they selected didn't just buy the poor little thing. Now the little one can get some help.

People For The Swift Return Of Bryan Danielson

I don't often get a chance to write about PETA and wrestling at the same time, so there's no way I'm passing this up.

I wrote quite a bit in mypostthis morning about the completely ridiculous firing of Bryan Danielson. Well, it appears that among his many supporters we can now count PETA, who have written aletter(PDF) to Vince McMahon asking WWE to hire him back not only because the people love him, but more importantly at least to them, because he's a vegan.

I've pasted the text below for those who can't access PDF files. Note the "hey look at us, we sure do know our wrestling" tone of this thing, which comes off extra lame when mixed in with the typical graphic references to the death of our food.

June 21, 2010
Vince McMahon
Chairman and CEO
World Wrestling Entertainment
___-___-____
Dear Mr. McMahon,
On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the WWE fans among our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'm writing to toss our name into the ring as yet another proponent of the push to bring back Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson). I might not personally carry the same clout as other Bryan supporters like John Cena or Shawn Michaels (although I do consider myself "The Showstopper of PETA"), but I am, along with many of my colleagues, a huge Daniel Bryan fan, not only because he humiliated the Miz and Michael Cole a few weeks back on Raw but also because he's vegan.

Lots of athletes, including baseball slugger Prince Fielder, the NBA's Raja Bell, MMA fighters K.J. Noons and Mac Danzig, and Olympic Legend Carl Lewis, show that vegetarians often leave meat-eaters in the dust, gnawing on their greasy chicken wings as they wonder what hit them. But Bryan represents the quintessential vegan badass. He knows that unlike WWE superstars, animals beaten to a pulp by the meat industry don't want to be there. The worst Hell in a Cell match is nothing compared to what animals in slaughterhouses go through, such as having their throats cut and being scalded alive and dismembered, often while still conscious. Even Mick Foley couldn't withstand that kind of abuse. Just by being vegan, Bryan saves more than 100 animals a year, a feat far more impressive than any of Jack Swagger's "accomplishments." Savvy athletes go vegan for the health benefits, too, as they slash their risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

So what do you say, Mr. McMahon? Bring back Bryan and let him prove that he belongs. And maybe there could even be a storyline romance between Bryan and the gorgeous vegan diva Tiffany! (Who, in your PETA fans' opinion, deserves another shot at Layla.)

Sincerely,
Dan Shannon
Director

This, it should be noted for history's sake, may be the closest I ever come to agreeing with PETA on anything, even though I have no doubt that what you've just read is a big arse load of disingenuous crap. There's no way any of these people give fuck number 1 about Bryan Danielson or WWE. As usual, PETA is jumping on something a lot of people seem to care about to further its own agenda. It's not nearly as offensive as some of the other things they've attached themselves too, but it's the same idea and I still hate them for it.

Don't Get Between This Man And His Cable!

We were sitting around having lunch, and for some reason, I got thinking about an old recording we heard years ago, before there was a blog. It was of a pissed off customer who was very upset that his cable wasn't working, so barraged his cable company with rather inventive, profanity-laced messages. Dogen-faced? I have never heard that one before. My dad, shamefully, used to say "dogen" and then would get shushed by mom, but that's as close to "dogen-faced" as I've ever gotten.

Anyway, all we know about the origins of this recording, based on this transcript of the call, was that it came from a tape that he got from a guy at a cable company.

Goddamn it, it doesn't matter how many times you hear it, it's still funny. I hadn't listened to this in years, and I can't stop laughing!

I only have two things to say about this recording. First, anyone who knows Steve's dad says this guy sounds like him, right down to the inventive swear words. I believe I've talked about this before.

Second, whoever set this to music is a genius! The music makes it even more hilarious.

So, does anyone out there know more about this recording? Even if you don't, I hope you enjoy it. That's quite the inventive swearing, and lots of it.

Floating Away On A Sea Of Booze

Jerry Whipple is one lucky dude. He was having a grand old time, drinking out by the shore I guess, and then he decided to take a rest on a pool floaty...and so he floated away from where he had been partying, and also passed out on said floaty. He'd been drifting for about a mile when some folks saw him from their boat, realized this was a person floating around out there, and called the coastguard to rescue him. When they woke him up, they found him to be quite hammered, and very unaware of where he was, or how long he'd been out there.

Gees! Don't drink and drive, and don't drink and float either!

Parents Acting Like Children

Ok, first we had parents fighting at a high school graduation. Now, they start dukin' it out at a kindergarten graduation! What I can't figure out is if it happened outside school in a field, why was the school placed on lockdown?

That's just totally messed up.

On Prediction Games And Bryan Danielson

I'm not sure if there's 1 show left or if it's 2, but either way, the pay-per-view prediction game is quickly reaching its end.

When last I updated, I had 42 points. There were 5 matches counted for this past Sunday's Fatal Four Way show (you gotta love it when the company can't be bothered to come up with a full card ahead of time), and I did what I tend to do, got 3 of them right, moving myself to 45 and into a tie with 11 other people. Speaking of ties, there is a more traditional 2 way tie for the lead, which is 52. And just because it's fun to point out how awesome I am mostly since I don't get many chances to do it, I did better than both of those guys. I picked 3 correctly, while both of them only managed 2. Woo, go me!

Poor old Ryan S. is still more concerned with setting his consecutive months of wasting his $10 by not sending in picks record and is therefore still at 4. Woo, go him!

Now for a few brief thoughts on the show.

It was certainly better than Over The Limit though that wouldn't take much, and I can't say there was a bad match all night.

The 4 way matches were what you would expect and nothing to write home about, but that has more to do with WWE over doing them and guys usually working them the same way every time than the matches themselves being average. I was not expecting Rey Mysterio to win the Smackdown title, so that was a nice surprise. Hopefully they treat him a lot better than they did the first time he won the thing and for that matter, better than they treated Jack Swagger this time. I did call Sheamus winning the Raw belt, and I liked how it was done. The NXT season 1 guys started raising hell in the arena like they've been doing the last couple of weeks, and they wind up beating the stuffings out of John Cena and Edge. But the bell never rings to end the match, so Sheamus sneaks back into the ring and takes advantage of the situation and pins Cena to win.

Speaking of the NXT guys, those sure were some loud Daniel Bryan chants throughout the night, weren't they? And on that subject since I haven't talked about it, this has to rank up there as one of the stupidest things WWE has done in years. As if firing perhaps the best wrestler in the entire world wasn't bad enough, firing him because he choked a guy with his own tie on a wrestling broadcast and that's too violent because we're PG now makes it even worse. But wait, it gets better. Choking a guy with his own tie goes against an obscure we can't do anything that might remind people of Chris Benoit rule that the company apparently has, yet it's ok for certain guys to use his crossface move, and John Cena can go on TV and call the NXT guys a group of radicals. Pop quiz: What was the name of the 4 man group that Benoit was a part of when he came to the WWF from WCW in 2000? If you said The Radicalz, you win. Oh,and best of luck in your future endeavours. and while we're at it, choking a guy with his own tie equals a firin', but taking a 50-something-year-old stroke victim hostage and driving him like a maniac into a bunch of parked cars is no big deal? Ok, just wanted to make sure I had that clear. If I'm Bryan Danielson or Daniel Bryan or whatever you want to call him, I'm not sure if I'd even want to go back once WWE realizes they've made a huge mistake.

Getting back to the show and on a more positive note, the best match of the evening was without question Chris Jericho vs. Evan Bourne. It was another one of those nice surprises since it wasn't announced ahead of time. The thing I liked most about it was that it wasn't worked like your typical formulaic WWE match. It reminded me more of one of those technical type cruiserweight matches we used to get back in the day. If you don't watch anything else, watch that. For a few minutes it made me forget how stupid wrestling has become.

The rest of the show was pretty decent,but I don't really have a whole lot to say about it. I won't say you must fork over your $40 immediately for the replay, but if a copy happens to fall into your hands or you pick up the DVD when it comes out you shouldn't be disappointed.

Speaking of being disappointed, I think I'll end this post here, get some breakfast and watch Raw. Talk to you all soon.

These Teasers Don't Tease. They Enrage.

I received this from a Humanware press release list I somehow got on, and my reaction was not what they hoped it would be. They wanted to get us all excited about a new device they're coming out with. All I could think was "Not again! Not again!"

This is a teaser campaign announcing a new innovative product from HumanWare. Like it’s always the case with teasers, we only reveal a part of this new product. This message entitled “Speaking of design” shows some details of the sleek design of this new device and how thin it is. Unveiling July 2, 2010. Stay tuned for more details about this mystery product in the upcoming days.

Yup, just like we stayed tuned for info about Oratio. Yeah, Humanware, let's not have teasers. Let's deliver, shall we?

When They Say They Give An Honest Telling Of Events, They Ain't Kidding.

I wouldn't have written about this story about a guy gettin' it on with 3 horses, except for what I saw the guy's mug shot had been labeled as. The picture was seriously labeled "horse_fucker.jpg". Yup. That's what someone at the Covington News thought would be a good name for Byron Christopher Jordan's picture on a news site. Somebody's gonna get fired, or disciplined over this one I'm sure.

I Might As Well Crack Open Another One Since I Can't Crack Open My Car

And we thought the guy slugging back a brew while the police wrote him up for DUI was bad. Paul Nigel Sneddon has him beat hands down. This guy got in a car accident after going on a 4-day drinking binge, , and his car was flipped over on its roof, but he still thought he should glug back another one while waiting to be rescued. I love how his lawyer tries to defend that choice.

when Sneddon found he could not open the doors, "he had nothing else to do at that point, so he had another beer."

Yeah, sounds perfectly rational, doesn't it?

John McDonald's Amazing Father's Day Moment

John McDonald is probably my favourite Blue Jay. He doesn't get to play much, but when he does it's always a treat to watch him. He's not really known for his hitting, but as a big play making shortstop he's one of the best in the game.

Johnny Mac lost his father Jack to liver cancer last week, just a few days before Father's Day. Father's Day, as it happened, was one of the all too few times lately that John was called into a game. Before Jack died, the 2 of them had a conversation about baseball and the fact that John doesn't hit all that many home runs. Jack told him to "hit your next one for me", and on Father's Day in the bottom of the 9th inning of a game against the Giants, he got his chance.What happened next is one of those things that you would swear came right out of a movie.

Unfortunately the Jays lost the game, but hitting a 2-run homer for your dad on Father's Day and continuing to live the dream he helped you so much with is a lot more important anyway.

We love ya, Johnny Mac.

The Following Post Is Brought To You By An Absolutely Extremist Whiney Baby...And The Government Of Canada

Well gees Louise, what do you know? Because I happen to bein favour of equal access to information and so don't particularly care for the Conservative government's new copyright bill,that makes mean "absolutist" and a "radical extremist" in the eyes of Heritage Minister James Moore.Thanks, Jim.

He made the remarks during a speech at an international business conference on piracy in Toronto Yesterday.

"The only people who are opposed to this legislation are really two groups of radical extremists," he said. "In the continuum of political ideology, if you go really extreme to the right or really extreme to the left, it actually swings back around."

"These people out there who pretend to be experts, who the media all cite, they don't believe in copyright reform whatsoever," Moore said in comments after the speech that were posted online.

Reform isn't the problem, crappy, poorly thought out reform that has the potential to hinder people's personal growth and equal rights is the problem.

"They will find any excuse to oppose this bill, to drum up fear, to mislead, to misdirect and to push people in the wrong direction and to undermine what has been a year-long comprehensive effort to get something right."

Drum up fear, mislead, misdirect, push people in the wrong direction, undermine...are we still talking about the bill, or have we moved on to discussing the few things his government does well?

As for that spending a year getting it right part...maybe you need another one? The bill isn't all bad, but the stuff that is bad is bad enough to effectively kill the good.

Moore also decried "those absolutists out there … who are babyish in their approach to copyright legislation, who think that any idea of copyright reform will be an attack on individual citizens."

As an individual citizen and apparent baby, I'd like to ask Mr. Moore what I'm supposed to do when there's something I want to read but I can't get it into a format suitable for me and my disability because some publishing company put a lock on it. Is he willing to run afoul of his own ill-conceived industry friendly rules and break that lock for me in order to protect my rights as a consumer and person? Perhaps he's forgotten this, but the idea of reforming something is to make it better for everyone, not just the everyones with lots of money and the right friends.

He urged guests at the business forum to push back against those who oppose the bill.

"When they speak, they need to be confronted, if it's on Facebook, if it's Twitter, if it's on a talk show, in a newspaper, confront them and tell them they are wrong," Moore said.

Feel free to confront me if you wish, just make sure you do it in a manner that's DRM free and technologically accessible to all.

Shakin' All Over

So I'm sitting here looking for food fights and dick jokes to post when suddenly...

Shake shake shake.

"What the hell? Why am I trembling? Do I have the shakes," I think to myself. "No, don't be stupid.

Wobble wobble wobble.

"Well then if I don't have the shakes, what the fuck is wrong with this chair? It looks fine."

Shakeshakeshakeshake.

"Man, that's one big train or something out there...but why can't I hear it?

Wobblewobbleshakeshake!

"Ok, what the huh? What is this, an earthquake?"

Nothing. Normalcy returns.

"Strange. Wonder what that was about. Probably my imagination playing tricks on me. But was it an earthquake? No freakin way, you live in Ontario, for Christ's sake. We don't get earthquakes here, at least not big ones."

Then my email goes off. I look and the first thing I see is a CBC news alert. "Tremors Reported In Ontario" it says, or at least I think that's what it said. It was something like that, but I was too shocked to remember exactly.

I check my CBC RSS feeds, but there's nothing there, at least not about that. There was however a big story onBP's latest bit of incompetence.

I try to give Carin a call. she's out on a walk with Trixie and has been gone a while, should probably check on her anyway. No answer.

I check the feeds again and there it is.Quake rocks Ontario, Quebec.

A 5.5-magnitude earthquake has hit Ontario, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Tremors were reportedly felt as far away as Montreal, Boston and Cleveland.

The first tremor hit at 1:40 p.m. ET Wednesday.

Buildings in Toronto and Ottawa were evacuated in the minutes following the tremors.

We live in Guelph, about an hour and a half or so from Toronto, which might explain why what I felt was quite a bit smaller and nobody was shitting their pants.

Just as I'm starting this post, Carin comes home. she tells me she had some adventures, and I ask if any of them involved feeling an earthquake.

"No...no earthquake," she says. "Wait, we had an earthquake?"

"Yeah we did, and I felt it!"

I'm thinking now that I probably felt it more because I was up higher, on the 6th floor of an apartment building. I don't know a lot about earthquakes and how they're felt, but that makes sense to me.

so yeah...my very first earthquake! We've had them here before, but this is the first time I've ever felt one. It was, for lack of a better word, odd. I'm not sure where it was centred, but it couldn't have been here since I would have thought a 5.5 would raise a lot more hell than this.

Did any of you feel this thing? If so, where are you and what was the experience like? I'd love to know.

Future Shopping At Future Shop Could Be Hard

I meant to write about this a looong time ago, but then I got busy, and after a while, I wanted to find out if there were any updates about the whole situation before I blogged about it. I don't have any, but I've put a call in and am waiting for a response.

It all started when I was talking to Barb on the phone. She said she went to Best Buy and when it was time to pay for what she came for, she discovered, to her horror, that the PIN pad was a touchscreen! This means that a blind person could not enter their PIN independently because there are no buttons to feel. The only way to get it entered would be to speak it aloud to the clerk and have them enter it, and there's no way that's a safe thing to do. That PIN number is supposed to be kept pretty close to you, so announcing it to the world at large is not a good idea. You might as well stick a "mug me" sign on yourself and wait.

I had also heard from Jen that Future Shop was doing the same thing. After hearing from Barb and Jen, I started to worry that this implementing of touchscreen PIN pads is a chain-wide thing, so I decided to go visit our local Future Shop and see it for myself.

I needed to go there anyway, I really wanted an SD card reader. It's sooo slooow hooking up a Victor Reader Stream to the computer and transferring books onto it that way. I heard it's uber much faster if you can just take the card out of the stream, throw it in a reader, plug the reader in the computer and zoom zoom. So my plan was to go in there, get the SD card reader, go up to the counter, try to pay for it, and if I couldn't pay for it, I would take my business elsewhere, and I would tell them why. I would be polite about it, but I would just say I don't have any cash on me, and don't want to speak my PIN. I'll have to go somewhere where I can complete the purchase myself. It didn't quite work out that way, but I think the message got across.

I did this way back at the beginning of May, so I feel bad that it took me so long to get around to blogging about it. Oh well. Things started to take a turn when I realized how ungodly hard it is to find Future Shop. It's in the middle of a giant parking lot, and there are designated places where pedestrians should walk, but they are designated by being painted pink! They're completely flat, there's nothing that feels like a sidewalk. So, I had to get help to even get in there...which would mean when it came time to make my exit, I would need help back out again. Ug!

The nnice lady who helped me get in there walked me over to an associate, a really nice associate. He showed me a few SD card readers, and even showed me how to put a card in one. All I kept thinking was "This is going to suck if I can't pay for this. I hope everybody's wrong."

I walked up to the counter, and the lady who helped me get in there showed up too. I guess she knew I would need help back out again. The cashier said "You're going to pay by debit? Ok, here's the pen." I looked at her, trying to appear as mystified as I could and said, "Pen?" Then the poor girl suddenly realized I would not be able to use this pad, and got on the phone to the manager. He showed up, and realized that they had no other option, and felt really, really bad about this. I said it looks like I'm going to have to go elsewhere because I can't do this myself.

At this point, the lady who helped me in there said "I'll pay for it." I told her no. I said I don't even know her, she just happened to be coming here anyway, and helped me get into the store. The lady said "It's ok." I said "No it's not, how would I pay you back?" She said there was a bank close by and she could help me get there. I said that wasn't the point, and suddenly, she understood. The lights came on and she said "I get it. Because it's not accessible, you don't want to shop here." I said yes. They were really nice, but this is a problem they need to figure out a solution to and they need to see that means loss of business if people can't complete their purchases on their own. Then she got right in it with me and said "I don't even know her. Seriously. I just got off the bus and she asked me for directions to Future Shop and I said I was going there anyway so I'd help her get there." I was relieved because I was kind of at her mercy because as I said, I would need someone's help to get out of the maze of a parking lot and start heading for the mall where I would try again to get a reader. At this point, the manager said I could have the reader. I was in shock. I felt bad taking it from him, but I was impressed with how much he wanted to make things right, and how much he understood that this was serious. He also gave me their head office number, because he thought this PIN pad system was being implemented across the country. He said he would give them a call too.

The next morning, I tried to call the number he gave me, which was 1-800-663-2275, and boy, what a runaround that was! When I asked if this was the way to send a complaint to head office about a chain-wide practice, the first girl I got told me that all she could do with whatever complaint I had was take it back to the store where I said I shopped. What kind of inefficient system is that? If I had a problem with a store in which I had shopped, wouldn't it make more sense for *me* to walk back into that store and complain myself? Why would I need some rep to relay my message back?

I continued on anyway. I figured what did I have to lose? I told her the situation, explaining the whole risk of revealing one's PIN. I said that sure, I could bring cash, but that means I have to call ahead, ask them what the price of my item is, and then get the cash, and who else has to do that? Also, some items you buy at Future Shop are expensive, and it's just not feasible to bring that large an amount of cash in. I could do Visa, but Visa is moving towards chip and PIN, which means using the same PIN pad. Her first reaction was not to acknowledge that this could be a problem worthy of addressing by the company, but that the CNIB should advocate for me. Excuse me? First off, not every blind person is with the CNIB, and second, aren't our voices enough on our own? Do we need some entity behind us before a company will move?

Then, she told me she had done some basic googling, and she *thought* that Ingenico was the one that made the pads, so maybe I could contact them. Again, excuse me? Me, the wee tiny consumer, should contact the company with whom *you* did business, to tell them I can't use their pads? Isn't that your job? Why should it be mine? And she didn't even know if Ingenico was the right company! Thanks for sending me on a wild goose chase. You seem to be into wild goose chases, first the CNIB, now Ingenico. I don't do goose chases without a fight.

She said she would send my complaint on to her supervisor, but I sensed a general lack of enthusiasm or understanding of the problem.

I hung up, feeling defeated. Then I got an idea. I called the Guelph store back, and asked the fellow if he could look around at the PIN pads around him and tell me who made them. He told me that there were 3 units in his immediate line of sight and they were all made by different companies. So I decided to call the number back again and speak to someone else.

This time, I got someone who really seemed to get it. She wrote more thorough notes and said she would send them on. Both reps told me about their company's email address, so I thought I'd use it.

I got a very nice email back saying that the right people would hear my message. The person also apologized for all the trouble I had to go through to get my issue addressed. Later that day, I got a call from the store manager saying he'd never thought of the flat PIN pad causing a problem, and yes, they're showing up everywhere. He said he would talk to their technical people to figure out some kind of overlay you could put over it or something. I said I would be willing to test the system, I'm sure I could find a product or 2 that I might want to buy as an excuse to test out their overlay. Just call me.

...

And I haven't heard from the fellow since. I called in yesterday, but the guy was in a conference call. I left my name, number and concern, so we shall see. Maybe I will have an update soon.

If you live near a Future Shop or Best Buy, are blind and are concerned about this, I urge you to let them know about the problem. If more of us speak up, there's a chance they will see it as a real concern.

I Can't Believe It's Not A Severed Jugular

It's amazing how many of the food fight stories we post involve family members...hey look,here's another one!

An unidentified 21-year-old man recently called police to report that his 17-year-old sister had tried to cut his neck with the sharp edge of a barbecue spatula. Why? Because they got into an argument and shoving match over the differences between butter and margarine after he asked her which one she was using to make macaroni and cheese, that's why.

The girl was charged with fourth-degree assault, butfailed to show up for a scheduled court appearance June 10th,leading to a warrant being issued for her arrest.

It wasn't noted whether or not she was making real mac and cheese or if it was Kraft Dinner. If it was KD, then this story just got a whole lot dumber. I mean really, that stuff is made out of powdered cheese-like substance in a paper sleeve. You aren't making that any healthier no matter what you put on it.

Big Vegan Jesus?

Wow. PETA will seize any opportunity to try and get their message out there. Now, they faxed a letter to the Solid Rock Church saying they'd rebuild thelightning-struck Jesus if they could just inscribe a message encouraging Veganism on the new statue. They wanted to put a lamb in Jesus's arms with the message "Jesus blesses the merciful. Go vegan." The church said no.

I'm sure PETA would have been tickled pink to have a 62-foot billboard with their message on it. I'm glad they didn't get the church behind them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm against animal welfare. I'm just anti-Peta. Just look at what they did when Tim McLean died. Do we really need them having a voice, much less a 62-foot voice?

Nutbars!

I'd Forget My Head If It Wasn't Attached, Just LikeI Forgot These Papers for These Unattached Heads

Ok, what's with all the badly-shipped heads without the proper papers? You're shipping human parts! You're going to get questions, so, Duh, have the paperwork available!

First we had this truck of heads, and now we have this box of full and partial heads on a plane. And the strange part is the truck was in Texas, and that's where these heads were bound for. Sure, they got stopped in Arkansas, but still.

I love how the coroner describes the box as "a bucket of heads." I don't know why, it just cracks me up.

Hot And Ready...To Go To Jail

I guess we can add Nathan Jay Seidel and Tyler Joseph McLaughin to the list of folks not meant to commit crimes. They called for a pizza, and when the delivery man arrived, they pulled a gun on him and demanded his money. He gave them two pizzas, money and his cellphone...but then Seidel dropped the gun, and the delivery man picked it up and gave him several hard thumps on the head with it. Then he ran back to his car and got away. To top it off, after he called in the robbery, the cops arrived to find the two suspects surrounded by pizzas and loose cash, and one of them bleeding from the head. Nope, no trial needed here.

This Is Why We Have An Irony Tag

St. Petersburg, Florida - Starting January 1st, manufacturers are required to sell fire-safe cigarettes in Florida.  But many smokers don't like the cigarettes, which burn out when left unattended.

"90 percent of the people in this store don't like them," said Phil Kassis, owner of PK's Food Store on Haines Road North in St. Petersburg.

"They say they taste bad and make them sick or nauseous."

Some smokers claim the cigarettes cause headaches and nausea and contain dangerous chemicals.

"Fire retardant?  I just want to know what they're really putting in there, and when it'll have an effect on my health," said Tom Frank.

Smokers: "We don't like fire-safe cigarettes"

I'll Hit You Tonight, With A Downtown Train

Why do we still have people wearing headphones while crossing train tracks? I know in one case, they're not sure if he was wearing headphones, but in another that just happened not too long before these last two train deaths, the guy was definitely wearing headphones.

I feel sorry for the folks driving the Maple Leaf train that Friday and Saturday. They hit one woman in Buffalo, and then smoke another dude in Toronto. And we thought the same man getting hit twice by the same train was weird.

Wayfinding Basics Survey

Jen sent me this request for participation on how us blinks get around, so I figured I would put it up here so anyone who is interested could participate. It doesn't appear to have a deadline, and I think at least everybody in North America could participate, as it says zip or postal code. The info is below.

Request for Participation -- Smith-Kettlewell Wayfinding Survey

Greetings!

The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute (S-K), in collaboration with researchers at Accessible Design for the Blind and U.C. Santa Barbara, is conducting a survey of wayfinding tools and techniques used by blind and visually-impaired people in their every-day lives. If you have already participated in our survey, we would like to thank you very much for your help. If you have not yet taken our survey, we would like to invite you to do so. We want to know how you get around, how comfortable you feel in various situations, what other disabilities you have, and what tools and techniques you use in your daily travels. By participating in the S-K Wayfinding Survey, you will extend our knowledge of how real blind and visually-impaired people travel independently. You will also help to improve the independence of future travelers with visual disabilities by sharing your experience.

You can participate in the S-K Wayfinding survey on the web, by phone, or by TTY. The survey should take no more than 20 minutes to complete, and your responses will be completely confidential. We eagerly look forward to your participation and thank you in advance for your help.

To take the survey on the web or ask questions about it: http://holman.ski.org/wayfindingsurvey

Take the survey by phone: (415) 345-2013 -- We will call you back.

Take the survey by TTY: (415) 345-2290 -- We will call you back.

Please share this announcement with any individuals or lists you think might be interested. If you do forward it, please take the time to remove any extra e-mail headers to improve readability.

Again, we thank you for your valuable assistance with this important research project.

----------------------------------------
Joshua A. Miele, Ph.D.
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2318 Fillmore St
San Francisco, CA 94115

Trauma To The Groin

I was looking at the search queeries, and someone's looking for the guitar chords for Heywood Banks's song "Trauma to the Groin." Well, damn you, now you've put the song in my head. So, while I don't have chords for ya, here's the song. Ya know, with all the traumas to the groin we list up here, I think the song needs a spot.

Senseless Census Violence

The story of a rather large nutcase holding a census-taker against his will gives me chills just because it's scary, but it also gives me the chills for a more personal reason. I know my mom was an enumerator for some elections stuff when I was little, but I could have sworn she did census stuff too. She would talk about how it scared her to go to certain houses because dogs would run at her and bark and stuff. That's nothing compared to this. I can't even imagine this happening to her, and the thought of it scares me.

I would recommend that noone ever visit James T. Brewer because he sounds positively scary. Anyone who would threaten a census worker, take his keys, take him to a building on his property, melt a pop can with a blow torch and then ask him what the torch could do to his hand, and tell him that the next census worker that comes to see him may not leave has something wrong with him.

And I'm amazed that Travis Ryder went back out the next day to continue going door to door. I think I'd need some time to collect myself.

These Kids Have Been Without A Mom For A Long Time Now

This story makes me so sad. I can't imagine what these kids have been through. I'm glad the older one had the brains, and guts, to call the cops.

I guess one day, their mom decided she'd had enough of her two boys, 11 and 6, and was going to leave them behind in Arizona so she could go to California to be a stripper, which was apparently her dream. That's right, aim high.

The older boy called police, and they came to try and figure out this mess. After it became clear that she was seriously going to abandon the kids and never wanted anything to do with them, they started making preparations to have the kids transferred to their dad. When the older kid tried to hug his mom goodbye, she punched him in the stomach!

What I can't figure out is how she was able to stay under the radar for this long. This is the kind of story that makes me feel like I need to find something happier to balance it out.

Tears Of A Clown, Because They Scare All Those Around

Remember that study a couple of years ago saying that British kids were afraid of clowns? Well, I guess British adults are afraid of clowns too, so much so that John Lawson Circus has introduced a service to help them get over their fear. Yes, they have a clownselor on site to help them get desensitized to the sight of clowns. Wow.

Stick 'Em Up, Or I'll Make You All Sticky

What a dope. I guess, at least Jose Alejandro Romero had something in the waistband of his pants, and it was sort of a gun. Too bad it was only a caulking gun. And did he think a good accomplice would be a transgender prostitute? That's kinda a memorable accomplice.

I guess the cops haven't got him yet, so I shouldn't laugh, but I don't think it'll be long before he's in jail.

We Say: The Charges This Time

Remember that firebombing of an Ottawa Royal Bank? Well, here's who got charged with the incident, and they're not the demographic I pictured.

• Roger Clement, 58, of Ottawa, charged with arson causing damage, possession of incendiary material, using explosives with intent to cause property damage, and mischief.
• Mathew Morgan-Brown, 32, of Ottawa, charged with arson, arson causing damage, possession of incendiary material, using explosives with intent to cause property damage, and mischief.
• Claude Haridge, 50, of Ottawa, charged with arson, careless storage and handling of ammunition, and mischief.

And here I was expecting people in their early 20's. And gees, what's with all the ammo?

I wonder how ex-professor Denis Rancourt feels about a couple of his students now. Would he protest their arrests now? And I hope this doesn't come back to bite him in some way if it shouldn't. Anything can be taken to the extreme, and if his classes only pushed for people to get involved in causes and speak out for what they believe in, then his classes shouldn't get blamed for how a few people chose to get involved.

Something tells me that, at the G8/G20 meetings, these three men won't be there. They'll be in some j3 meetings.

A Truck Load Of Heads, Is Rollin' Down The Highway

Thanks Ann for the lead on this one.

Yikes. That would be a scary morning for police in Royse City, Texas, who stopped a giant trailer for speeding. The guy was acting kind of suspiciously, so they looked in the back of the trailer, only to find 2 dozen embalmed human heads staring back at them. It turns out the guy was transporting them so they could be used for science, but until police had that paperwork in their hands, things were a little tense.

Am I the only one who finds it hilariously ironic that the judge presiding over the case's name is Williams, and he also said the heads were being mistreated? I wonder if he's any relation to Ted Williams?

Now, here's a chance to make fun of myself. The other day, we were listening to the ballgame, and the out of town score board came up, and Ted Lilly was mentioned. I looked at Steve in shock and said "Ted Lilly? Isn't he dead?" Steve said "No...although when he was pitching for the Jays I wished he was dead sometimes." Because apparently I was in dumbass mode, I could not figure out who I was thinking about, and looked at Steve and said, "Then who's the one with the can of peas on his head?" I think it was a tuna can now that I think about it, but Steve knew what I was talking about, started laughing and said, "That's Ted Williams, Carin," at which point I realized exactly how stupid I just sounded and started laughing too. At least now I know for sure that I had the right sport. I knew damn well his name was Ted.

I Hate To Say I Hate Ray Stevens, But Right Now I Almost Hate Ray Stevens

Good God,Ray Stevens' Caribou Barbie Sarah Palin tribute songis so bad it makesthe one that Hank Williams Jr. didsound almost good. This thing is seriously so fucking atrocious that I can't even believe I'm wasting my own bandwidth on it, and I'm the same guy who uploadedthat wretched version of Panamalast year. I'm also the same guy who would say this song sucked even if it was written about somebody I actually liked. Jesus Ray, what the hell happened?

There's avideo versiontoo if you're hating yourself extra much today.

I'm sorry, I can't end this post on that note. I just can't do it. I must put the universe right.This helps,but it's hard to watch after what I've just seen. I lost a lot of respect for Ray Stevens just now.

Fund-Raising His Balls Off

Ow ow ow ow ow!

Ok, now I think I can tell the story.

Joe Cooper and his friends were wanting to raise money for a local hospital by waxing their chests. I guess Joe was the only one who felt brave enough to agree to have his groin waxed. It turned out to be a bad mistake. The waxer got a little too enthusiastic, and ripped off six of his seven layers of skin there, and if he'd done anymore, Cooper would have lost a testicle! Ow ow ow ow oo oo oo ee ee!

So, ironically, Cooper ended up needing help from the very hhospital for which he was raising money. But I guess he raised a fair bit, so I guess it worked out in the end.

Disarmed And Dangerous

Remember back when a kid got raked over the coals for having a tiny toy gun in the hands of a toy policeman? Well, now, if you decorate a hat with army men, who of course carry teeny weeny guns, you suffer a similar fate. David Morales wanted to decorate his hat with army men to be patriotic. The hat got banned because of the weeny guns. The principal actually said that if he had army men without guns, that would be fine. But how many toy soldiers don't have guns? They're soldiers! They have guns!

This angered the retired commander of the Rhode Island National Guard, and he came to meet with officials to tell them how ridiculous this was. He even said he would give Morales a medal for wanting to honour soldiers with his hat. So I guess it didn't end terribly. But still, that policy is ridiculous.

The pervs On The Bus Yell "Yes Yes Yes!"

Yuck, I have talked about weird things happening on the city bus, but thankfully, never have I seen someone flashing and humping something, while yelling "Yes! Yes!" I sure hope it stays that way. James Lanzer can stay off our buses up here.

Strange Noises In The Dark, Strange Songs On The Album

Well, I have yet another Austin Lounge Lizards album to review. I went to their site, and woohoo, you can at least see the flash buttons now. So you can stop the music so you can read their stuff! Awesome! So, since "Strange Noises in the Dark" always greeted me before I could shut off the music, I decided to buy that album...and...um...what an odd album! It was put out between "The Drugs I Need" and "Never an Adult Moment" so that gives you a timeframe. I think some of the songs would be funnier if I knew the backstory. Some of them were funny anyway. So let's go.

Strange Noises in the Dark
I would always get this damn song stuck in my head. It's pretty simple. He and his girlfriend broke up, but she still lives close by, and he keeps hearing strange noises in the dark from her apartment and it's slowly driving him mad. The tango sound to it cracked me up.

We Always Fight When We Drink Gin
Funny. When there's a drink I have that has gin in it, I say stupid things like "Whatdya suppose they put in this gin?" But I've never thought about fighting. But if this couple gets into the gin, hide the shotguns!

Susie Rosen's Nose
Um ok then. Some Jewish girl who once had a huge nose got a nose job and now her Jewish friends are all upset because she doesn't look Jewish enough anymore. Er something.

You Can Eat Dog Food
Ann sent me this summary of Rush Limbaugh telling poor kids to go dumpster-diving for food, and all I could think of was this song. It's basically the same message. Don't tell me you're too poor for food, eat dog food. "Eat along with Rover, 3 times a day."

Jesse + Phil
Um...ok? I guess the lizards think that Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm, deep down, aren't the jerks they appear to be. In fact, they are gay and should run away together. Right then.

Merchant's Lunch
What the? This is made worse for me by the fact that the main singer is the same guy who sang in "Rasputin's HMO," so the hair was already going up on my neck before I could even hear the message. But when I tried to understand it, it just made my head spin. A guy came into a gloomy restaurant in Tennessee full of miserable people and the place was gross, and a green-toothed woman told him she was the queen and he had to entertain her, and he ran away and drove as hard as he could to get the hell away from there. Am I missing something?

Tastes Like Chicken
Apparently this guy will eat anything, and it tastes like chicken to him.

The Lonely Yodler
Another what the hell moment. A girl taught him how to yodle and then left him, and he couldn't find another girl, and was the lonely yodler. Ok then. What's up with the line "I joined a yodling club but that was not for me,
I'm looking for one partner, they all had two or three..." Right. Um, moving on?

Why Couldn't We Blow Up Saddam
Yup, we get the picture. I love how they have no problem talking about how he was all cool when he was invading Iran, but now, nononono! He must go! I can see this one crawling into my head.

Snopes' Glory
This one is an instrumental. Weird. I wonder if it's written in honour of Snopes mentioning them in that Saguaro post of theirs? But it will remain a mystery.

The Miracle Baby
Oh dear, oh dear. This is how a three-year-old boy interpreted what his dad said about the mysterious baby that arrived while he was gone. "The miracle baby was sent to mamma by heaven..." I'm sure dad was being sarcastic, but the kid took him literally.

When I'm Cleaning Windows
I was listening to this song and thinking "Gee, haven't I heard this before?" It kept ringing a distant, distant bell. But it took Steve saying "Hey! Is that seriously that George Formby song?" Yes, yes it was, and a damn fine cover of it.

Maverick_ A Love Song
The story of a guy going from wanting to change the world to basically becoming a puppet. "When you sell your soul, get an awesome price. ... Call the tune and watch me play."

Banana Slugs! Racing Down the Field
Hmmm...if I am to believe the ID3 tags on this song, the lizards are no fans of UC-Santa Cruze. And...S u l g s? They think they're banana slugs who can't spell, I guess.

That brings us to the end of yet another lizards album. Wow. I'm amassing quite the lizards collection, and I have much more to go. Actually, it looks like I have 4 more albums to get, and I will have collected the whole set of CD's anyway. There are DVD's too, but the CD's are what I want first.

One Of The Many Reasons Why Jim Ross Is Awesome

If you're a wrestling fan and you've never checked out Jim ross'sblog,you should. He still works for WWE though not in the announce booth where he should be, in my opinion, but working there doesn't keep him from being honest. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to figure out what he's going for and there are times when you can definitely tell he's trying to hold back a little, but if you catch him on a good day likeyesterdayyou'll find stuff like this answer to a fan question that suggests he really doesn't give a good god damn what his bosses think anymore.

I agree that Miz and Zach Ryder might make a really good tag team but there is much more money in Miz right now as a singles wrestler which is likely why Miz and Ryder will be tag champions in a couple of weeks.

What can I possibly add to that? Thanks, J.R.

The Trews - Highway Of Heroes

I just heard this song on the radio for the first time and had to find out more about it. It's the best new song to come along in a while by a pretty wide margin, and on top of that, a good deal of the money it makes is going to a good cause.

"Highway of Heroes", was co-written and co-produced by The Trews and Gordie Johnson (Big Sugar) and was inspired by the 2006 death of Captain Nichola Goddard from The Trews' hometown of Antigonish, NS. Canada's Highway of Heroes, is the section of the MacDonald-Cartier freeway named to honour those who have sacrificed all in service of country.

You can purchase "Highway of Heroes" world-wide exclusively viaiTunes.

Net proceeds from sales will benefitthe Canadian Hero Fund,
), an organization that assists the families of Canadian military personnel through academic scholarships.

The video was directed by Tim Martin.

You can watch and listenhere,and be sure to buy yourself a copy if you're an iTunes person. Hopefully soon they'll release it elsewhere so that iTunes refusenicks like me can buy it too.

I'm Not Making My Own Lunch, But I Will Make Some Trouble For Both Of Us

26-Year-old Jason Matthew Werryis most definitely one person I'm totally not telling to back off and get his own sandwich. His father tried that once, and here's the police account of how it worked out for him.

Jason Werry hurled a candleholder at his father, hitting him in the head.

Jay Werry, who has a concealed weapons permit, pulled a gun on his son. Jason Werry hit his dad, and Jason Werry’s girlfriend gave Jason Werry a gun. Jason Werry pointed the weapon at his father and hit him in the head with the butt of the weapon.

Jay Werry bit his son on the left arm and both went to a hospital emergency room. Jay Werry had several loose teeth and two “gashes” on his head that required stitches.

“(Jay Werry) said he is afraid that when Jason gets out of jail, that Jason will come and kill him and his family,” a report states. “Jay is torn about what to do because his wife always takes sides with the kids.”

Jason Werry got a tetanus shot for his injury and was arrested and taken to jail.

In addition to the tetanus shot, he also got felony charges of aggravated domestic battery and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. No word on whether or not he ever got any lunch.

Going Snaky

You know how much I love a good snake story. Imagine you're driving along, and suddenly, there's a snake's head sticking out of your AC vent. Well, Patty Everett doesn't have to imagine that. That's what happened to her. I love how, when asked if she was scared, she said "Well, somebody crapped in my pants." That's one way to put it.

Luckily for her, she just happened to see the head pop out on a stretch of road near a vet's office, so her brother ran into the vet's office and got some help. The vet turned up the AC to slow the snake down and then pulled it out with forceps.

What I don't get is why the snake died. They never explained why, just that it did.

And what I also don't get is why people always lose one shoe. If shoes are going to be lost, it's always one of them. People must have thought she was nuts when she jumped out of the car, lost a shoe, and was jumping around holding onto her grandbaby. Nobody would have been able to see the snake. It kind of reminds me of that time a bee flew in the car window and somehow landed under me. Without thinking, I flipped upside-down while still in my seatbelt. Mom thought I was nuts until she saw the bee. I didn't even know what kind of bug it was. I just didn't really like the idea of a bug in my shorts.

I wonder how a snake would get in an AC vent anyway.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart, The Literal Video

If ever somebody decides that DVS versions of music videos are a good idea, this is how it would have to be done.Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version.

Yes, they've changed the lyrics for the whole song and are singing what's happening in the video. It's hilarious when you can't see it, and I'm sure following along with those functional eye thing's most of y'all have makes it even better.

Internet Explosion Jesus

Remember the demise of the jesus statue, which led to us finding out about the "Big Butter Jesus song? I guess lots of people liked that song, and have been writing new endings for it describing, well, Big Butter Jesus's end. There's electrostatic Jesus, which I thought was his, but upon closer inspection, it's not his. But it's funny, so I thought I'd link to it. Here's another video, complete with sizzling jesus. Oy! hearing that sizzle gives me the creeps.

And I couldn't find an audio version, but I got Heywood Banks's supposed new lyrics from this blog post, and she got them out of the Dayton Daily News, so hopefully they didn't screw 'em up.

“One night Big Butter got hit by lightning
It burned to the frame wire in a giant grease fire.
Some blamed it on Satan, and boy, that would be frightening
But I thought it was Jesus’ father who was in charge of lightning.”

And The new chorus:

“Big fireball Jesus, flaming shot Jesus, charbroiled Jesus, Opa! Jesus,
extra crispy Jesus, bananas foster Jesus, I’m put out it’s not Jesus, Charcoal-y
O Lord.”

Yes! Yup, Heywood's version wins! Barb, does that sound like the right words?

What Are The Chances?

This story about a personal injury lawyer whose name is also Justin Bieber made me chuckle. The poor fellow was getting inundated with friend requests because everybody thought he was the other Justin Bieber.

But this also made me think of that Shaved Bieber extension for Firefox. Would it unintentionally shave this Justin Bieber from the net? If so, Greg Leuch had better change that, or he may have a lawyer on his tail.

Who would have thought there were two Justin Biebers out there? Crazy stuff.

I'll Have The Breast And A Wing, And The Cops Can Have The Collar When They Get Here

I understand that robbery is the kind of hard work that can make a man mighty hungry, but at the same time I also understand that sitting down to enjoy your hard earned mealin the restaurant you just held up with an air gunis a poor, poor idea. There's an unidentified 38-year-old British criminal who I hope also understands this now, as he's been arrested for doing exactly that at a Southern Fried Chicken restaurant.

He sat down to eat the meal and was still tucking in when armed cops alerted by staff burst into the diner in Colchester, Essex.

An Essex police source said: "We've come across some stupid criminals in our time but this beats all. Normal practice is to grab the cash and run. But this man was obviously controlled by his belly rather than his brain.

"After running in with a hoodie and scarf hiding his face, he took them both off to stuff his face with chicken.

"The staff he'd just waved a gun at were gobsmacked.

"He sat there eating for 20 minutes so they had tons of time to dial 999.

"Staff thought it was a bizarre TV stunt. It just goes to show, you shouldn't carry out a heist on an empty stomach."

When Life Doesn't Give You Lemonade, Cause A Disturbance!

Gees! Pedro Vargas needs to either not drink so much, or settle the hell down, or both. Is it reasonable to smack around a restaurant manager because they didn't have any lemonade?

I hope the food he bought from the fast food spot across the street was good, and I hope they had lemonade, because I doubt jail will have any lemonade for him.

The Biggest Father-Son Fight Ever

Here's something the folks at the Rock Church in Monroe will be talking about for a while. Near the church, there used to stand a 62-foot, six-storey statue of Jesus...until I guess God decided to strike it down with a lightning strike. Now all that remains are some smoking ruins, and a lot of onlookers.

I find it funny that this happened the same week that Zachary A. Bowers shot his father dead after dear old dad said "Shoot me, I dare you." Was god saying to Zachery, "This is how you do it! Now that, that's how you get rid of someone!

Let's rip this story apart, because there is just so much here to laugh at.

Neu said indications are lightning struck the right hand of the statue.

Gees, God struck his own right hand!

As stated by a guy standing watching the big ol' Jesus burn, “I had to see it. What else are you going to do on a Monday night?” Hmmm. I can think of a few things.

The statue was constructed of wood and styrofoam over a steel framework that was anchored in concrete and covered with a fiberglass mat and resin exterior, according to the church. It was slated to undergo renovations this summer.

Hmmm! Wonder why it burned then! And oh it got a rennovation, that's for sure. It got a divine rennovation.

“I can’t believe Jesus was struck,” said his brother, who noted the giant Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was untouched. “It’s the last thing I expected to happen.”

Maybe porn isn't considered to be so bad by the big man upstairs after all. Or maybe the sign is untouched because it isn't six storeys high and made of wood and styrofoam.

Now I want to find this Big Butter Jesus song mentioned in the story. That didn't take long. Wonder if he'll have to make a new song now?

All kidding aside, what a totally freaky thing to have happen. The highway won't be the same.

This Ain't Your Grandpa's Computer...Actually Yes, It Sort Of Is

Jack Zylkin has designed what he's calling aUSB typewriterbecause...because...ahh hell, I'll let him explain it.

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence.  Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad!  The modification is easy to install, it involves no messy wiring, and does not change the outward appearance of the typewriter (except for the usb adapter itself, which is mounted in the rear of the machine). So the end result is a retro-style USB keyboard that not only looks great, but feels great to use.

Hereis a short video of it in action, and if you've watched that and decided that you'd like your own, old Jack will be happy to sell you one for a cool $150. However if you're both cheap and mechanically inclined, you can get everything you need to build your own for just $75. Have fun.

Are You Ready For Some Football? Not So Fast, Waterloo People

A lot is being made of the University of Waterloo's decision tosuspend its football program for the upcoming seasonin the wake of what is being called the biggest doping scandal in the history of Canadian university sports. Everybody seems to have an opinion on it, some saying it's what had to be done and congratulating the university for responding so well and doing the right thing, and others calling it a ridiculous over reaction that's ruining the lives of many because of the actions of a few.

Personally, I fall into the latter camp. Putting the entire team of around 62 on ice for a year because 9 people tested positive for drugs is to me kind of like trying to kill a fly with a machine gun. It's a foolish thing to do, nobody with any sense would do it, and more than the fly will be damaged in the process. A lot of these kids are in university mainly to play football, and some of them have a decent shot at making a career out of it. Shutting them down in what for some is their last year of eligibility to play and consequently one of their last good chances to get looks from pro scouts is a horribly unfair thing to do and completely flies in the face of what universities and colleges are supposed to exist for, giving their students/customers every advantage possible in terms of making a living out of whatever path they choose.

What I don't understand is what it is that makes this situation different from anything else that can go wrong in a university setting. If 9 or 10 people in a class of 100 cheat on a French exam, does the school brass fail everyone and shut down the language arts department for a year? No. The guilty parties are dealt with and everybody else moves on with life, still able to pursue their degrees. Or taking it out into the "real world", when Major League Baseball figured out that hey, we've got a steroid problem here, did they pitch teams with cheaters on them out of the league for a season or worse yet, shut the whole damn thing down? No. They somewhat reluctantly introduced a testing program and brought in punishments for players who failed it. Everybody else was free to carry on business as usual, just like the innocents at Waterloo should be allowed to do now.

If the University of Waterloo truly cares about the welfare of its students, those responsible for putting the kibosh on the football program will immediately take on the job of making sure that every single player who wants to is able to play football somewhere else, or failing that, start writing refund cheques. It's the right thing to do.

Was She Paying Her Overdue Fines Back With Food?

Man, it would suck to work at the Boise public library after 74-year-old Joy Cassidy had dropped her presents into the drop-off slot. What on earth would possess her to pour corn syrup, ketchup and mayonaise into a library's drop box, ruining whatever books were in there? They still don't know, but hopefully, this will stop now.

We Are Spoiled Miracle Whip, And We Will Not Tone It Down

I read the story of a HAZMAT team being sent because of a huge container of rotting mayonaise, and immediately thought of Steve's post about cleaning out the fridge and finding that turkey gone wrong. Just imagine if we'd left the turkey for much longer.

The story goes that two people were inspecting an empty house, and found themselves having trouble breathing and having burning eyes. So, they called emergency services, who sent the HAZMAT team. After evacuating the neighbourhood and searching the house, they found the cause, a barrel containing a five-gallon container of rotting mayo.

Ok, who keeps that amount of mayonaise anyway? Were these people feeding an army?

I'm sure that will be a memorable event for years to come for that neighbourhood. They thought they had a meth lab. It turns out they just had a giant vat of nasty mayo.

Touchy Subject

I had something happen to me yesterday that I thought deserved a blog post.

I went to the post office to mail something. When I left, I told Trixie to find the door. She walked over to what she thought was the door, but it wasn't. A person came over and said they'd help me find the door. Cool. Then, they proceeded to move around behind me on my left side and grab me! This did not go well, because a. I was startled, and b. so was Trixie since she's on my left. Fearing she was about to get stompled by human feet, she did a little dance. Then, the person thought Trixie was turning around to bite her, backed off and said "I should have known not to touch you I should have known not to touch you."

Well yeah, but not because Trixie was about to take a great big chomperoo. I am capable of hearing and understanding speech. Talk to me! There is no need to push me around. If you don't know how to help, ask me. It's probably best to ask anyway, since some of us will elect to take your arm, and some of us who have guide dogs may just follow you. If you don't know your left from your right, that's fine. Just get in front of me and tell me when you're turning. I will hear where you're going and follow you.

The funny part was she said twice "I'm going to help you." and I thought "yeah? Well start giving directions." I did not expect to get grabbed. Silly people. Why do they think we're deaf and/or stupid too?

Growing Up Guide Pup

Thank you, guide dogs blog. I just got introduced to the coolest YouTube channel ever. If Ricki makes it as a guide dog, I hope her handler is into YouTube, because they will get to watch their guide dog growing up. How awesome would that be? I would kill for a YouTube channel of the Trixter.

But because I don't have that, I give you Growing Up Guide Pup! The first episode you see is week 18, but if you start at the beginning, you will find them all.

The thing that's double cool about this is Amie Chapman explains the things puppy raisers do to get puppies ready for guide dog life. Pretty awesome. Check out week 1. Ricki really hates that crate of hers. Yippy yippy yip yip yip!

I'm going to have lots of puppy videos to watch.

B and B? Nope, Try B and E

That would be a weird thing to have happen. You're sitting outside in your yard with relatives, when one of them goes inside and finds a credit card on the stairs that doesn't belong to you or anyone there. You soon find out that it belongs to the strange man sleeping in your bed, who turns out to be a confused man by the name of Walker Bruce. Somehow, he thought your house was a bed and breakfast, came in, left his credit card on the stairs for payment, and went to bed. Now, he's been taken by police to the hospital so they can figure out what the hell's wrong with him. They think he's on drugs, but they don't know.

I think everybody was lucky in this case. Bruce didn't take anything from the home, and they didn't take his credit card and take it for a ride, and maybe he can get some help now.

I'll Have The Sweater Meat Road Pizza

Considering that we tend to put a lot of the male flashers we write about into thedo it yourself category,I guess it's only fair to putCherelle May Dudfieldthere too even though there doesn't appear to be any sort of sexual motivation for what she did, unless she's got some kind of strange being hit by an automobile fetish, of course.

According to reports, the 18-year-old New Zealander agreed, after being dared by friends, to stand in the road and put on a bit of a show for passing motorists by showing them her protuberances. By the way, 100 bonus points to anybody who gets that reference.

Anyhow, as the story goes, one of those aforementioned motorists, likely distracted by the aforementioned show, ended up running Dudfield over with his car, cracking his windshield. But rather than haul him into court for careless driving, the right thing happened for a change and Dudfield wound up pleading guilty to disorderly behaviour charges and was given a fine of NZ$275.

It also needs to be noted that the judge in this case was a fellow by the name of David Holderness, who if there is any justice left in this world is hopefully now known as David Over The Shoulder Boulder Holderness. If this is not currently the case, I urge anybody who can to make this happen as soon as possible.