I Loves Me Some Future Shop

It seems like I've finally gotten over the flu I've had for the last 3 days or so. All I have to do now is get my sleeping patterns back on track again, or at least as on track as my sleeping patterns ever get and I'll be set. This makes me happy.

Another thing that's been making me happy is
Future Shop.
I ordered something from them for the first time yesterday and it got here today. Yes, that's right, I said today. It only took them about 24 hours to get my stuff to me, and the shipping was free. The place is going to make me go broke buying CD's I swear.

In yet another piece of good news, Harry And The Hendersons wasn't on at 5:30 this morning, making my sleep deprivation a lot easier to deal with. I attribute this good fortune to the fact that the powers that be over at
The New PL
read Vomit Comet religiously every day and upon seeing what I had to say yesterday, realized what a stupid idea airing that show is, even in such a shitty timeslot and decided to put an end to it.

By the way, I should mention that this post is more than likely not going to contain anything of importants. If you don't want to read the rest of it, too late, you already have.

Some More Rejected Christmas Carols. (WITH BAD LYRICS AND EVERYTHING!)

Well, one of our more intellectually gifted Vomiteers has written in with 2 new Rejected Christmas carols and he has even taken the time to write out the lyrics too. Much thank you.... Well we'll call you Lunchbox's friend. Here they are....

"anyway, the point of this email is to deliver you two famous christmas
carols that i have whittingly (not sure if that is an actual word) rewrote.

song 1

we three kings were driving a car
but we didnt get very far
we were loaded and we drove it
into another car

ohhhhhhhh
when we hit it we took flight
we went flying through the night
when we landed our lives ended

i know that im missing a line, but they are dead, how can they finish
singing when they are dead.

song 2

jimmy the big hosed reindeer
had a 35" hose
and if you ever saw it
youd be like "thats a big hose"
none of the other reindeer
ever got to get a piece
they always knew ol' jimmy
would be the one to fill the crease

then one night one deer named roy
went to jimmys house
he cut off his willy with a ginsu knife
and said "im going to do some hos tonight"

now all the reindeer loved it
they could finally get a piece
jimmy the big hosed reindeer
your member is now decised

there you go, hope you liked them"

Well, there they are. Some tunes sure to be classics soon enough. I am the last person in the world who should criticize someone's grammar or spelling but... whittingly? Ah well. Different strokes for different folks and frequent strokes for this singing bloke.
More later,

Harry And The Hendersons

If I needed any more proof that having the flu sucked major league amounts of ass, I got it at about 5:30 this morning. Since my sleep is even more screwed up than usual these last few days I'm up at odd hours watching TV for lack of much else to do or the energy to do it if I had to. So there I am, flipping channels trying to find something to help me go back to sleep when I see something that I thought I would never see again. Ok, let me rephrase that. Something I hoped I'd never see again. Right there in front of me on channel 16 was a rerun of one of the stupidest shows in TV history. Harry And The Hendersons.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the greatness that is Harry, I'll be kind and fill you in. Around 1987 the Harry And The Henderson's movie came out. It was a cute kids movie kind of deal about a family that happens upon Bigfoot while out camping or something. I can't remember how they found him, for some reason I'm thinking they hit him with their car but that's neither here nor there. If anybody knows, shoot me an email or leave it on the new comment boards when they're up. But anyway, the family decides for whatever reason that they're going to take this big bastard into their home for awhile, I suppose to nurse him back to health since they just finished putting a vehicle up his ass. One thing leads to another and the family grows to love Harry in spite of all of the hilarious trouble he gets the family into and all of the stuff he breaks. They decide to keep him as their pet and as their friend even though they know that they'll have to go to great lengths to hide him from the Bigfoot hunters and the people who live near them who are quite rightly suspicious when they see that the folks next door have a big fucking unidentified animal living with them. Pretty ok concept for a movie when left on it's own. Heck, I remember thinking it was pretty cool back in the day. Of course, the key part of all of this is "when left on it's own," which it wasn't.

Flash forward to 1991 when somebody decides that this movie would make a mighty fine TV show. How he got anybody else to see things his way is something I'm only failing to comprehend a little bit less than how it managed to last for 2 years. Seriously, this show was like ALF, only lame. Yeah, this show was exactly what ALF would have looked like if ALF was a Bigfoot and if all of the funny parts were cut out, and if you replaced the Tanner family with people who couldn't act their way out of a wet paper bag and changed their name to Henderson. Oh yeah, don't forget to replace the good writing with whatever it was they were serving us here. And while we're changing things, replace all of ALF's witty dialogue with classic lines like "grrrrrr" and "errrrrg."

Now having said all of this I have to shamefully admit that for a short time I was a fan of this show. I used to watch it with my brother and sister and all the exposure started to go to my head. Thankfully, even the kids, who were 5 and 3 at the time soon realized just how fucking idiotic this show was and didn't want to watch it anymore. And when you consider that we're dealing with kids who still watched Sesame Street for years to come, that's pathetic.

Something Smells Sexy

Good Day to you all,

Well, I just did some online ordering from ticketmaster.com and I must say that I am most displeased. It's very rare that I do anything online that has to do with my money as there are just too many things that can go wrong. Lately, I've become more adventerous though making a few smaller purchases. But for anything big I tend to do it in person or with my credit card over the phone.

But today I figured I would book online with my Visa. So I go through the hole song and dance with the event and number of tickets and move on to the next stage with no major problems. Then I go through and put in all my mailing information and we're still in good shape as we move to the next page. I put in all my credit card information. Now at this point you click on a button that says "Buy Tickets Now". Above this button is IN BOLD LETTERS a quote that says the following. "Upon clicking this link, your credit card will be charged and there will be NO refunds or exchanges. All sales are final.". Well that's ok, right? I mean I want these tickets. So I click....

"An Error Has Occurred."

What? What the fuck? What error? This is my credit card and my MONEY we're talking about here. I don't want ANY errors. So I try to refresh the screen....

"This page cannot be refreshed as it has expired."

FUCK!!!! So, here's where I stand. I've just given information and permission for them to rip $200.00 out of my pocket but have no idea if they've done it or not. At that point, a confirmation page should have appeared.... but none did. I should have received a confirmation e-mail.... but I didn't. Well of course I didn't. That e-mail is triggered by the display of the Confirmation page in your browser which, as well all know, NEVER APPEARED!!!

So, by this time, I'm cursing the internet and my computer up and down. If I click over and do this again there's a chance I will end up with TWO sets of tickets for the same event which is, not only, pointless, but also, not gonna be good for my bank account. But! If I do not do it again and wait the seven days that they say my tickets will show up in and do not get them the event will be sold out and I will not be going, and neither will the good people who put their faith in me to get these tickets for us. (they had no choice, I'm the only one with a visa but still...)

So I sit in anger at my desk wondering where to go from here. I decide to call these people. I use the "Back" button on the browser to go to the page which shows me what seats I was going to end up with figuring that between having that info, and all my credit card info the people at the Ticket agency will be able to tell me if the purchase went through or not. Well..... it's not that simple apparently.

"I'm sorry sir. We're not permitted to give you that information."

WHAT???? You're not permitted to tell me if I JUST BOUGHT TICKETS FROM YOU?????

"Sir. Please calm down. We can't tell you because we have no way to know if it is you or someone else who may want to know where you are."

I HAVE the credit card information here to prove it.

"Sir, you could have stolen the credit card or the info. We have no way to know if you are the legal card holder or a thief."

What difference does it make? If I'm a theif, I'm the same damn one that just bought tickets now tell me if my crime spree was successful or not!

"Sir, your attitude does not help the situation. I will pass you on to my manager."

Please do.

So after speaking with the manager for another 15 minutes we finally worked something out and he was able to tell me that the purchase did not go through and help me get set up with better seats than I would have originally gotten so I suppose in the end things turned out alright... but it was a long long trip to get to that destination.

I Hate Computers

Things, Stuff, Thoughts, Randomness, And More Of The Same

Welcome to Thursday. I'm Steve, otherwise known as the member of the Vomit Comet staff who can spell. Unfortunately, I'm also still the member of the Vomit Comet staff with the flu, and the one with a wonky computer. One of those problems seems to be fixed now but sadly, it ain't the flu. Oh well, at least while I'm stuck here wasting away I'll have a computer to use.

My computer and I have this love hate relationship going on, kind of like Matt and a spellchecker. It sucks. I'm always super nice to this damn thing and I'm constantly doing things to it to make sure it runs properly and that it's secure from any sort of pests getting into it. In return for my kindness, all I expect from it is that it will behave at a level close to stable. When you're dealing with a Windows computer you can't expect much, what can I say? Most of the time, it's pretty cool to me, especially after I bought it more ram. It doesn't crash much on average, I've never had any sort of serious failures, and I can pretty much trust it to do everything I need it to do. But then there are times like yesterday when it just goes insane on me for no reason. Seriously, I couldn't do much of anything without something causing an error in something else that I couldn't explain. They're the kind of errors that you never have and can't figure out why you're having, but the ones that just serve to generally piss you off and mess up everything. So you set about trying to do everything in your power to figure them out, before eventually giving up and running every system maintenance tool you have, taking up about 12 hours of your time...and finding nothing. But then, just as suddenly as the problems started, they're gone. I hate computers.

But on to other topics. Right now on the front page of
Salty Ham
there is a poll asking what new feature you would most like to see added to the site. Go there and give us your opinion, because if you don't vote, you don't count. It's not like you have to write a big essay on the benefits of having more movie reviews either, all you have to do is click a button to pick your choice. Go there, do that, come back, I'll wait.

...

Ok, are we all back on the bus now? Good.

I'm not sure what sort of story Matt is writing, but I'm looking forward to seeing it. I just hope it's in English. Seriously, I'm sure it's going to be good so keep checking back to see what that's all about.

Thanks again to
Karine
for hooking us up with a new commenting service for the site. Hopefully we'll have that all up and running in the next few days or so. I would also like to encourage all of you not to use Squawkbox to handle your commenting needs, because as we found out they try to strongarm you into paying way too much for shitty service. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. The new one will be much nicer, and much cheaper. Just the fact that the free one has more features than the paid Squawkbox, and that the paid version of what we're going to be using is about 20 dollars cheaper and you don't even have to give them that much makes me feel a lot better.

Ok, this post has no real point to it so I'm ending it now. I'll try to come up with something else for later on and I'm sure Matt will be back with something at some point. If we're lucky, maybe it'll even be something that doesn't suck. Hey, a man can dream.

Don't Feel Rejected You Reject

Well, right now I'm in the middle of work, a column due today for Salty Ham Sports and the first chapter of a story that I've decided to write so you loyal visitors have been rejected today. Well. I'll put an end to that. And it's not like there's been any shortage of stuff to read here anyway as our good friend, Steve has done a couple of solid posts. Let's all bow down to him.

I will get to the comments. I promise. I'm just a bit busy these days and when I get home from work (when I should be doing this stuff) I don't really feel like jumping back on the computer right away and before I know it, the night is over. But I'll get to it. Be patient, kiddies.

So last night the Leafs ran their winning streak to 6 games thanks in large part to the continued improved of Owen Nolan. The guy's a beast and he hasn't really looked like himself since he got to Toronto but he's turned it on lately. His goal last night was typical Owen Nolan hockey where he used his skill to make a couple of New York defensemen look like school children and then his size to crash the net. It's good to see him back on his game with Roberts and Mogilny out.

So it's only 22 days until the big fat man makes his trip around the world. No, not Steve. Our good friend Santa and I couldn't be happier. I love this time of year but I have a certain schedule that I keep where by Xmas Eve I'm usually just about sick of it and won't no more to do with it. I just get that feeling though that I'm ahead of schedule this year. I started with my own Xmas stuff a little earlier than normal so I fear my tollerance for it may also run out a bit earlier than usual. May be a good idea to stay away from me in between Dec. 18 and 24. I know Xmas is the 25th but no matter how sick of it you are, you can't be grumpy on Xmas day.

This also means that I'm only 28 days away from New Years Even which I am eagerly anticipating this year more than most as I have been promised by Steve a great time which better be the case. The last few New Years haven't been overly spectacular and I'm looking for something big this year. Don't let me down you water retaining sea cow.

Lastly, for now, I'd like to send a shout out to the coolest Lil Punk I know. Happy b-day, girly. Sorry I couldn't be there but I'm sure you'll have a blast anyway.

Well that's it for now. I'll try and get back later with something else... maybe something a bit more interesting and try to throw out today's Rejected Christmas Carol of the day.

So until then, this is your Lord and Master, Matt saying.... I really don't like Steve much

People I Don't Feel Sorry For

The longer you spend in this world and the more you observe about it, the more you realize that there are certain groups of people who don't deserve your sympathy. Certain groups of people who you shouldn't have to be nice to, people who simply exist for you to ridicule and for other's to take advantage of. Not that I condone taking advantage of people, but when whatever God you happen to believe in if any has made it so simple, sometimes it's hard to help. Here are just a couple classes of people who have obviously been beaten relentlessly with a stupid stick.

1. People who fall for telephone, mail and email scams.

Ok, we've all gotten them at one time or another. The letters that show up in your mail telling you that "you may already be a winner" or other such nonsense. The ones that go on to tell you that if you'll simply give them all manner of your personal information and send them a small fee, you'll be entered into a draw and will win big, or better yet, that you've already won and all it'll take is your personal details and a processing fee of some kind.

The email from the esteemed Doctor Bababubbubbubbaahbooboo of the Nigerian Office Of Diplomatic Rectal Surgery claiming that for whatever reason, probably a botched procedure, that his family and fortune are in danger and he needs your help. If you want to help him, all you need to do is reply and indicate your interest, and giving him your bank account number so he's got someplace to stash the cash would help too. In return for your generosity and compassion, you'll get to keep a wackload of the fortune.

Or those telemarketing calls you get from somebody happily informing you that you've won the Deviant Electronics Birthday Dildo Lottery and that if you'll simply provide your credit details or call the 1-900 number to pay the processing fee, (which really isn't as large and overdone as it sounds by the way,) you'll be sent your big money payoff.

Now most of us, at least I like to think it's most of us, see this stuff for what it is and hang up the phone, delete the email, or throw the junk in the trash. But sadly, these scams are able to rake in millions of dollars every year. And why? Because people are idiots. When you fall for something as stupid as this, you stop being a victim and commence being a retard. It's pretty simple logic actually. Somebody shoots you, you're a victim, you can't stop them. You get robbed, you're a victim, you're being intimidated and for the sake of your life it might be best to cough up the goods. You get raped, victim. You're most likely being overpowered and you've probably got either a knife or a gun being held to you in a threatening manner. You send the Nigerian guy your banking info, you're a retard. End of story, end of argument.

Then these people have the balls to go on the news to tell their stories and expect people to feel sorry for them. A lot of people do, but not me. Come on, why should I? Most of you have seen these things. They're so obviously scams that they're laughed at or ignored by just about everybody. In fact there are entire websites that exist for the soul purpose of writing back to the scammers and fucking with them. So how is it then that a person in his or her right mind could fall for these things? It's simple. They don't. Idiots fall for them and idiots are not in their right mind because most times they don't have a right mind to be in. The only people I feel sorry for when this happens though are the older people. Some of them just legitimately don't know better. That's sad and anybody who can do that to an old person with a clear conscience is a fucking scumbag. Kind of makes you rethink the validity of that old saying the older the wiser, but that's not the point.

The only thing I can't figure out is if these people are genetically stupid or if they suffer from what I like to call monetary stupidity. I'm guessing that the answer is somewhere in the middle. You have to have something wrong with you to let your guard down like that, and the thought of all that money being yours is enough to push some people over the edge and convince them to throw all sense out the window. But whatever kind of stupid you are, you're still stupid.

2. College kids who die because of hazing rituals and the people who feel sad about it.

The media loves this stuff. "College students running wild" they call it. Or "kids out of control." Whatever it is, it's all a buzz phrase for "your kid is a fuckup and deserved what he got."

Now I know that sometimes the poor student doesn't have much of a choice in the matter, like one guy that a friend told me about who was pretty much taken out of the dorm and dumped out in the middle of a new city and expected to find his way home with 2 bucks in his pocket. That's different. That's almost what you'd consider harmless teen fun. All he had to do was take the bus home and no, he didn't die. It's a mean prank, but nobody got hurt.

What I'm talking about here are the kids who decide to pledge a fraternity or enter a drinking contest. I was watching
Inside edition
the other night and they had a story about a new trend that is "killing kids." It seems that kids are allowing other kids to funnel gallons of water down their throats as part of some sort of an initiation ritual. This, as you are hopefully aware, is not very smart and certainly not something that a bright and well respected college student would do. Which is why I'm convinced that it's not the bright and well respected students who are dying from that sort of shit. You don't have to pledge to the Fraternity. You can see what they want you to do and say "fuck that, I'm living off campus." Come to think of it, that's probably what the smart ones do. Do people really need acceptance that bad? If so, that's pretty pathetic and if you're one of those people, you probably don't have much of a future especially if you're dumb enough to drown yourself in the name of living in a fucking house. That's all a fraternity is, it's a fucking house. Get over it.

I'm sure some of you out there reading this right now are thinking that I'm the biggest unfeeling asshole on the face of the earth for saying some of this stuff, and if being an unfeeling asshole involves telling people the truth even if it's a harsh one, then you'd be right. It's just that some people don't deserve my sympathy, so I'm not giving it to them. Why be nice about it?

Since the commenting is still broken, you can send any feedback on this to me
here.
I'm not going too far in the next little while so I'm sure if your comments are good they'll find their way up here. Maybe I'll even put up the stupid ones just to further illustrate my point.

The Envelope Please

I just read this over on
CBC News.
It's too funny not to post.

Rumsfeld world's best language-mangler
Last Updated Tue, 02 Dec 2003 13:11:37

LONDON - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has emerged the "clear" winner for a British award given to the worst mangler of the English language.

The Plain English Campaign has handed Rumsfeld this year's "Foot in Mouth" prize for statements he made about the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The campaign strives to have public information delivered in straightforward English.

Rumsfeld's mangled message?

"Reports that say something hasn't happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there are things we know we know. We also
know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know
we don't know."

"We think we know what he means. But we don't know if we really know," said John Lister, spokesman for the campaign.

The campaign says Rumsfeld beat out actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose contribution was: "I think that gay marriage is something that
should be between a man and a woman."

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien didn't even make the short list for his contribution last September when he said: "I know, a proof is a proof. What kind of
a proof is a proof? A proof is a proof and when you have a good proof it's because it's proven."

Previous award winners include actress Alicia Silverstone and British chancellor Gordon Brown. Last year's worst language-mangler was actor Richard Gere,
who said: "I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe and somebody said I was a snake, I'd think, `No, actually I'm a giraffe'."

The campaign gives out eight other prizes for bad English including worst e-mail, bad instructions or confusing regulations.

Letters To Santa

Man, this flu or whatever I've got is pretty horrid. I went to sleep at about 7 o'clock at night without having any food or anything, and this is after a day of eating nothing but noodles and drinking water and stuff like that. So I woke up now, which would be about 20 after 4 feeling pretty damn hungry. So I'm trying to stand up long enough to make some soup, it's just cuppa soup, anything else would be too complicated. So I'm probably up for the day now since I've slept for like 9 hours, even though my whole body is killing me and I'm still tired. But on the bright side, at least I don't have to go anywhere because of it.

But enough about me and my complaining, here's something funny I found in my big stack of email.

If Santa were honest.....

I wud like a kool toy space ranjur fer xmas. Iv ben a gud boy
all yeer
Yer Frend
BiLLy

Dear Billy,
Nice spelling. You're on your way to a career in lawn care. How
about I send you a fucking book so you can learn to read and write? I'm
giving your older brother the space ranger. At least HE can spell!
Santa

Dear Santa,
I have been a good girl all year, and the only thing I ask for is
peace and joy in the world for everybody
Love,
Sarah

Dear Sarah,
You're parents smoked pot when they had you, didn't they?

Dear Santa,
I don't know if you can do this, but for Christmas, I'd like for
my mommy and daddy to bet back together. Please see what you can do.
Love,
Teddy

Dear Teddy,
Look, your dad's banging the babysitter like a screen door in a
hurricane. Do you think he's gonna give that up to come back to your frigid
mom, who rides his ass constantly? It's time to give up that dream. Let me
get you some nice Legos instead.
Santa

Dear Santa,
I want a new bike, a Playstation, a train, some G.I. Joes, a dog,
a drum kit, a pony and a tuba.
Love,
Francis

Dear Francis,
Who names their kid "Francis" nowadays? I bet you're gay.
Santa

Dear Santa,
I left milk and cookies for you under the tree, and I left
carrots for your reindeer outside the back door.
Love,
Susan

Dear Susan,
Milk gives me the runs and carrots make the deer fart in my face
when riding in the sleigh. You want to do me a favor? Leave me a bottle of
scotch.
Santa

Dear Santa,
What do you do the other 364 days of the year? Are you busy
making toys?
Your friend,
Thomas

Dear Thomas,
All the toys are made in China. I have a condo in Vegas, where I
spend most of my time making low-budget porno films. I unwind by drinking
myself silly and squeezing the asses of cocktail waitresses while losing
money
at the craps table. Hey, you wanted to know.
Santa

Dear Santa,
Do you see us when we're sleeping, do you really know when we're
awake, like in the song
Love
Jessica

Dear Jessica,
Are you really that gullible? Good luck in whatever you do. I'm
skipping you

Dear Santa,
I really really want a puppy this year. Please please please
PLEASE PLEASE could I have one
Timmy

Dear Timmy,
That whiney begging shit may work with your folks, but that crap
doesn't work with me. You're getting a sweater again
Santa

Dearest Santa,
We don't have a chimney in our house, how do you get into our
home?
Love
Marky

Mark,
First, stop calling yourself "Marky", that's why you're getting
your ass kicked at school. Second, you don't live in a house, you live in a
low-rent apartment complex. Third, I get inside your pad just like all the
burglars do, through your bedroom window.
Sweet dreams,
Santa

Just Checkin' In

Hey everyone.

Just checkin' in cuz I ain't posted anything today and Steve is a piece of shit... err... I mean sorry. Steve feels like shit. My bad.

So our comments are down. That's great. Much thanks to Karine for passing on some info for other options for commenting and I'll try to get that figured out in the next day or so when I get some time. Squawkbox can kiss my ass. there was no mention of having to upgrade when I set up... so fuck them.

Ummm. Well it seems I really don't have much to say. That's a lie. I got lots to say but the Leaf game is about to come out of intermission so I'm gonna go watch the 3rd and see my boy Owen Nolan wreck some more bodies. But first...

We'll start something that I'll try to do everyday. We'll call it The Rejected Christmas Carol Of The Day. Some of these will be mine, some I will steel from other places and hopefully you'll send in your suggestions to me or Steve or on our comment board when we get it back up and going.

The first one I'll steel from my friends in that great punk rock band, The Vandals. So today's Rejected Christmas Carol is....

"My First Christmas As A Woman"

Take Care, All

Well That's Just Great

So it seems that I'm coming down with some sort of flu. It really isn't very nice at all and it looks like I'm going to be stuck pretty close to home for awhile. This means that 1 of 2 things is going to be happening.

1. I'll be posting all kinds of stuff since I've got lots of time to think and search out weird things, or

2. I'm going to kind of drop off the face of the earth for the next while and Matt will be doing everything.

Whatever happens, I don't think this whatever it is is going to be gone anytime soon.

More later?

How To Waste Time: Part 7425

I'm sure you've all gotten those emails with the weird questions in them. The ones that ask stuff like why do they call them French Fries if they weren't invented there? Or, why do people say it's colder than hell outside when everything is obviously colder than hell to start with? Well, a friend of mine sent me a link to a website that's like those emails to the extreme. There are pages and pages of these things. If you're looking for something to do to avoid work, or to pass the time between posts over here, go there and try to get through reading all that stuff without your head starting to spin trying to answer it.
Crazy Thoughts.com, it's stupidly good fun.

Comments Are Broken

Ok, like the title says, the comments are broken. It seems that the provider won't allow us to continue to use the service unless we pay them $31.36 Canadian to get their pro version. Not sure yet what we're going to do about it but if anybody knows of a cheaper option, or if the service we use is worth paying for,
please let me know.

By the way, if
Karine
is reading this, what if anything did you pay for your commenting system? I like yours a lot better than ours.

So until we sort all of this out, all of you with comments on anything should email them to us.

Steve
Matt.

More on this as we figure out what we're gonna do.

To Hell With Canadian Tire

So the other day I'm at Canadian Tire. For our not-so-Canadian friends its basically a hardware/sporting goods/home supplies combination store that you can usually find what you're looking for in. On this particular day, it is absolutely packed. There are about 7 counters, only 2 of which are opened and no less than 35 people lined up at each one. So, I get talked to the guy ahead of me and he's just as frustrated as I am. He is purchasing a $1.99 set of picture frame clips to hold them to the wall. I am buying a $3.99 set of specialty batteries and we will both wait at least 20 minutes for these small, yet important purchases.

At that moment, another counter opens and there is a mass stampede towards it. I end up third in line, the guy I was talking to me is second and there is one woman ahead of him, obviously first and we're in much higher spirits as we're going to get out in a decent time. This woman is purchasing a $269.00 ceiling fan. And she's doing it with.... Canadian Tire Money.... NNNOOOO!!!!

Again, for our non-Canadian friends. This is basically a coupon system specific to the Canadian Tire stores. Problem is, the donominations are 5 cents, 10 cents and 25 cents. Basically, you can't have a $50 bill in Canadian Tire money. They're small coupons. Back to the story.

This means that this woman is going to count out $269.00 in Canadian Tire money. Needless to say that there is a sizeable grown from the crowd behind her which, of course, she does not acknowledge. She whips out this encyclopedia of Canadian Tire money and begins counting outloud as she lays it down on the counter.

Had this been a good day for me, the woman behind the counter would have allowed a few of us with the under $5.00 items to pass through as she counted... or at the very least been counting along with the woman. But no, not on this day. On this day she allows the woman to count out over $250.00 in 10 cent donominations and THEN picks up the pile and counts it herself to make sure that it is correct. The guy ahead of me and I begin to wonder how badly we need to hang pictures and power unimportant objects... or if the Canadian Tire corperation would really miss our combined 7 dollars after the parade of coupons they were getting back.

We did eventually get through the line. Ironically,the 35 people ahead of us in the other line left well before we ever did. What a royal piss-off.

good-day and PUT YOUR FUCKING COUPONS AWAY WHEN MAKING MAJOR HOME PURCHASES!

A Tale Of Adversity

Gather around, all, as I will pass on to you an inspiring tale of adversity.

This past weekend in Guelph a hockey tournament for boys ages 10-12 was held. It was open to teams from all over Ontario. One of the teams that decided to attend was from Peterborough. The tournament was to start on Friday evening with a game between Peterborough and London.

On Friday afternoon there was a terrible accident on Hwy 401. (the main East/West Hiway through the area for those who don't know). It kept traffic backed up for hours. Since the Peterborough team did not travel together on a bus, there were parents and players trying desperately to get to Guelph in time for the game. One father went north and decided to take a different Hiway until he got by the accident. He went north to the next Hiway and as he turned on to it he was side swiped by a transport. Both the 12 year old Peterborough goaltender and his father were killed instantly.

In Guelph, the rest of the team assembled in their locker room and wondered where their goalie and his father was. The father had been very involved with the team through his son's 3 years on the team and it was not like him to not be there. So, they assumed that the two had gotten stuck in the gridlock on the 401 and would not make the game and would be there for their second game later that night. This father was so involved with the team, he had their game jerseys in his car with him so the team as also left without them. They were forced to play the first game in a local Guelph teams practise jerseys as league rules prevent a team from playing without distinguishing jerseys.

They played their first game with their backup goaltender and lost rather convincingly. At game-time for the second game, still no sign of the goaltender or his father so they played their second and last game for the evening without him and lost again, this time not so bad. The kids returned to their hotel after a tough night while the coach did what he could to find out where his missing team member and volunteer were.

The next morning the young boys grandfather got a phone call asking if he knew this name. He of course said yes and was told that the two had been in a bad accident and asked him to come down and identify the body. This was at about 4:45am. He drove the one hour from Peterborough to Toronto and identified the bodies to be his son and grand-son. He then got back in his car and drove another hour to Guelph to the arena where his grand-sons team was to play at 8:30am. As he walked in to the teams locker room as the boys were suiting up for their first of four games on the Saturday having already lost their first two and knowing that they wre all but out of the playoff picture.

The man told the coach what had happened and asked if he could speak to the team. He started by telling these 10, 11 and 12 year olds exactly what had happened in no uncertain terms. They were, of course, shocked. The coach suggested that the team tell the officials that they would not compete in this game as they were not emotionally prepared to do so. The Grandfather cut him off and continued to talk and said that he knew his son and grand-son would want the team, if they were able, to continue on and compete. The entire locker room sat perfectly quiet not knowing what to say. The grandfather said that he would leave it up to them and would understand either way and began to leave.

The 11 year back up goaltender that had played so poorly the night before in the absense of the starter stood up and said "Let's win this for him guys.". The boys all turned to him and did not let up with a cheer, but simply knodded in agreement and took to the ice to play their game. The Grandfather was later quoted as saying "I've never heard such devotion and confidence from a child as I did when this boy said that he was going to play."

In something that seemed to be more of a movie than real life, the boys went out and competed with heavy hearts for the four games that they had to play that day. Amazingly, the unskilled, back-up goaltender put up 3 shut-outs and a one-goal against effort in the teams four games carrying them to 2nd in their pool and getting them in to the Sunday playoffs despite the two losses Friday night and the emotional burden they played with.

On Sunday Morning they beat their semi-final opponents in overtime by a score of 1-0 giving the team another shutout and launching them directly in to the final.

So there they stood on Sunday afternoon, with a second-rate goaltender in another teams practise jersey without one of their team mates ready to take on the tournament favourite, Toronto. The game proved to be uneventful as this Peterborough team rolled over Toronto quite easily winning the game marking the first time they scored more than 3 goals in a game during this tournament. Somehow these kids had done something impossible and you couldn't help but be happy for them. However, even at 10, 11, and 12 years old they had no interest in celebrating. Following the buzzer to end the game, they shook hands with toronto and left the ice and went home. They simply had no interest in celebrating as what they had done was easily the most emotionally draining thing that had ever happend in their short lives and they simply wanted to be with each other, not with the cheering crowd. They saw nothing to cheer about.

While that sounds like something from a Hollywood movie or cheesey Disney production, it's all very true. It really puts things in perspective when you think about. Even as kids, they understood the tremendous weight of what had happened and responded to it with maturity far beyond their years. A man I know was a parent at the tournament for the Oshawa team and he said you couldn't help but cheer for them... and shed a teer as they left the ice after the championship game.

I just thought I'd share that with out as it touched me.

Be Safe

Something Else To Read

Just wanted to let you all know that my latest column is now up over at Salty Ham. It's kind of long so I hope you've got some time. You can check it out by
clicking here.

Unions Scare Me

If any of you happen to work somewhere that is unionized, you should be a little bit frightened after reading this.

There's a story in the news about a guy named George Pavlovszky who works for the city of Moncton New Brunswick here in Canada. He was fired, and quite rightly so I might add, after showing up to work drunk, armed with a shotgun and demanding to speak to his supervisors. Well, the Canadian Union Of Public Employees, or CUPE for short, has decided to file a grievance against the city to get him his job back. The city has said that they're going to fight the case, thank God. A union representative said that even though the union has no legal obligation to fight for the man's job, he paid the ultimate price in the workplace by having been fired.

So what about the people that Pavlovszky was trying to hunt down? Couldn't they have paid the ultimate price in the workplace by being killed by a drunken union member? I guess that doesn't seem to matter to these people. I know unions are all about protecting workers who have no business being protected from anything, let alone employed half the time but come on, this is going a little too far. This guy is potentially a danger to everybody there, and CUPE, which is one of the biggest unions in the country, still feels the need to fight for him. By the way, I should also mention that Pavlovszky is currently in jail after being convicted on weapons charges following the incident.

The story never mentioned where this guy worked, but for some reason, I'm betting on the post office.

Oops

Not sure how that happened, but I messed up Carin's link somehow. Oh well, I'll fix it now. If you want to check out her website you can do that
here.

Sure, I could have just taken the first post down and fixed it before posting it again but that would be something a non-lazy person would do, and we just can't have that.

Guest Rant

This was emailed to me by our friend Carin for me to post. She makes some really good points about the way universities opperate. It's a really good read. By the way, if you've got something to say that you think the world needs to hear, feel free to
send it to me.
Just make sure it somewhat resembles the English language or it either won't get posted, or it will and we'll make fun of you for a world wide audience to see. But we here at Vomit Comet World Headquarters are all about giving the people a voice, and since you are the people, we're offering it to you. Against our better judgment in some cases, but what can I say, sometimes we're just too nice. Anyway, take it away, Carin.

university? deals? What's this?

The other day, I had to print some stupid paper from some stupid class. Yeah, so? Well, my printer was broken, so I had to use the public printers up at the university, and I saw something that summed up the whole philosophy that universities and colleges seem to have nowadays. Ok, now you think I'm crazy. How could a printer make me philosophize? I guess it's a sign that my nose has been too deep in the books. Well, let me explain. I had to buy one of those print cards that lets you have the privilege of buying your own paper on which the printer happily prints your essay, note, piles of research, or printed material for whatever dreary purpose dragged you to the library anyway, all for the low low price of 10 cents a sheet. but the print card lets you print mass quantities with relative ease, sort of like the way you pay for cell phone minutes in advance.

Anyway, when you buy your new fangled print card, the price is $2 and you get 10 sheets, supposedly, for free! I know what they want us to think. "Well Yippee hoo! The university is giving something to me for free! That's sooo coool!" But think about this for a second. I'm no expert in the cost of plastic, but there's no way that thin piece of crap plastic is worth $2. No way in hell. Maybe it's worth $1. You are paying outright for every single sheet you get. They're just making sure you buy at least 10 sheets so they don't get ripped off, god forbid, if you only use one sheet.

But then you say, "If you're going to print out scads and scads of pages, wouldn't you be happy to already have 10 on your card?" Well, if you're printing that much, guess what? You're going to have to give them more money anyway, and you already paid for it. They're not saving you anything, except maybe the two seconds it would take to find that extra luny to pay for those 10 sheets.

Ok, now you think that maybe I should seek therapy for getting worked up over printer paper. But it's more than that. This whole supposed deals thing is just their clever way of taking your money and swearing to you that they're offering you a deal, so you won't feel like they fucked you so badly in the ass.

It's everywhere. They tell you it's cheaper to pay up front for a meal plan, and then you find out that first off, it's fucking expensive, so you wonder what it would have been like to pay meal by meal. Next you notice that they've given, er, ahem, made you pay for more meal points in this plan than you'll ever spend, that you can't use them in certain places at certain times, and if you don't use them by April, well, tough. They get the money anyway, ha ha. On top of that, they've made two different meal plans, designed to suit your ass-fucking needs. There's the on-campus one that I described, and then there's the off-campus one. Oh yes, now that you don't live on campus, thus eating there is not compulsory, you can use it wherever you like whenever you like, and you can top it up with oh so easy to pay payments of $200 during the semester, but if you let the semester end, you have to pay $575 to revive your now dead meal card. Ooo! Which plan of fucktitude will I choose? So many options!

And to add insult to injury, if at some point you realize that you have no chance of using all your remaining meal points, you can sell them, but only to those who are on the same plan as you. So if you're on the on-campus plan, your only hope is to find an unbelievably gluttonous pig who empties out the cafeterias daily and just can't keep the points in his account, because more than likely, everyone else is, well, probably in the same boat as you. And then there's the ridiculous $50 that is incorporated into your meal plan solely to cover stolen and broken dishes! God damn it, does anyone actually believe that a university cafeteria is feeding us on their
finest china? Do they actually expect us to believe that from all the money they rake in from the student body, they're just too damn poor to replace the odd smashed plate and missing glass? It almost makes me want to steal or break something so I can feel like I'm getting my money's worth!

And then there are the compulsory fees that you pay with your tuition. Hey, I like the idea that I'm paying to have access to the athletic centre, counseling services in case I snap over these crazy fees, or the tons of other services on campus, if I *truly* had free access to them. Wanna know the truth? You only get a few free counselling sessions, and then they ration them out unless you're willing to pay more. Way to help out someone who's so stressed out they've come for counseling!

If you want to take a course at the athletic centre, you have to pay more! I just don't get it.

Maybe I'd understand if I could take a long hard look at the bills everybody has to pay, but there has to be some huge profits being gained at our expense. There's no way that thousands and thousands of students, plus how ever many alumni they manage to railroad into donating money each year, can't adequately finance a university as it is, and the tuition rates and donation requests are almost always going up! Why do we keep having to pay more for shit we should have already paid for?

And then there are the little things. Like when the old man who only seems to show up when graduates are parading past him so he can shake their hands has a birthday, and the university goes all out and buys a huge cake. Ooo!
Free cake! Nope. Like I said on the day I saw them do that, "I paid for that cake." It especially angers me when I see that, and then step outside and see that my friend in a wheelchair cannot get to class because they haven't cleared the snow from the ramp leading to his lecture hall, or can't open a door because the button has been broken for the past month, and nobody's gotten around to fixing it. How about paying the snow clearing guys or the maintenance men instead of wasting our money on a god damn cake. Maybe they can make a bridge with it when it's rock hard and he can wheel over it to get past the snow. Or it can serve as a door stop and keep the broken door permanently open. Until then, it has no use at all.

Yup, this all started out with a stupid print card. Maybe I think too much. Maybe I expect stuff to make sense. Logic? What's that? All I know is I'm being fucked in the ass by my education, and all I can do is bend over and take it. I don't know if I feel better now, but there, I've said it.
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Check out my website!
right here!

If you have any feedback for Carin, her address is on her site, or you can send your thoughts to me and I'll pass them on to her.

People At Work

Reading Matt's little rant about the people he works with kind of got me thinking about some of the things that piss me off regularly in my own experience. I'm not sure why some people are so annoying especially when they should know better but hey, there they are.

As most of you know, I do a show at a local radio station. I love working there and for the most part, everybody there is pretty nice to me and I can't think of a single one of them that I can say I don't like. But having said that, I can't think of a single one of them who I haven't wanted to smack at some point for breaking the number 1 rule of radio, that being don't piss off the guy on air. Maybe that should be don't distract the guy on air, but one generally leads to the other so bare with me here.

It never fails that at some point during every show I do, people will feel the need to do 1 of 2 things. Either congregate outside of the studio and talk loudly to each other or come into the studio when I'm on the air doing a segment and start fiddling with stuff. This could mean anything from trying to find something on the shelf full of tapes on the other side of the room to opening a package of something behind my head. The worst though is when they try to tell me something when I'm reading to the listeners. I'm not sure what they're expecting me to do since it's not like I can just say to the entire listening audience, "hang on a second, something far more important than you people has just come up and I'm no longer worried about the flow of what you're listening to nor how good it sounds." And generally what they have to tell me is something along the lines of, "I've got a really funny story related to what you're talking about right now." Ok, tell me when I put the music back on, it can wait.

It's not even like I can cut any of them some slack either since each and every one of them work there in some form or another and most of them get involved with the on air stuff. If they were people coming in off the street it would still be agrivating, but it would be a little easier to understand. It's not that way when you're dealing with people who should know better and most of whom have more experience than you do.

And it doesn't end there. To fill up some more of my time I do some volunteer work for a telephone service that takes calls from people in distress. We get calls about everything from people wanting to kill themselves to people who are upset because their VCR didn't record Friends. You never know what you're going to get when you pick up the phone and you have to be ready for pretty much anything at a moment's notice.

So let me set a scene for you. I'm sitting in the room on the phone listening to a caller. I'm taking in everything they're telling me trying to process it the best I can and get a bit of an understanding of what their situation is. While I'm doing this I'm also thinking about what direction I should be taking things in. What questions should I ask? How should I ask them? Is there more to this story than I'm getting? Is this person in any immediate danger. Pretty high stress stuff sometimes. Then, while the possibly frantic caller is taking the bulk of my attention as they should, somebody who works there, for pay I might add comes in there and tries to talk to me quietly about there being cookies on the table in the other room or to tell me she's leaving for the day. Shut up! There is a phone attached to my head, and it's not there for the hell of it!

The only thing worse than that is the overly helpful pain in the ass fellow volunteer who feels the need to tell me who I'm talking to. The person who breezes in to take over for me and either tries to ask me in a whisper who it is on the phone, or manages to overhear the voice on the other end and then franticly tries to explain to me that it's Bob and you have to ask him about his flower garden to make him settle down. Of all the people who should know not to do that, shouldn't it be them who has to work the phones and probably has to put up with the same stupid crap from somebody else there? Trust me, it's not any less annoying when you do it.

Ok, somebody in here just cut the biggest fart in the universe so I have to leave the room now. Yes, definitely have to exit post haste. More later when my nose hairs grow back.