Simple things amuse my simple mind

The best thing I heard today: "Some people are like a Slinky: not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs."

Just because

THE PIGEON HAS FEELINGS, TOO!

complete credit to Mo Willems

The End

Eating the Profit

So apparently there is a coin shortage in India caused by the razor-blade companies buying coins to make razor blades, which is having a sweet side-effect: the provision of a chocolate bar as change in lieu of a half rupee coin.

Yay barter.

Coo coo for cocoa stuffs

In Cornwall, police are searching for two men who attempted to rob a gas station, but got away with only chocolate bars.

I for one am glad to see that the police in Cornwall have their priorities straight: chocolate above all else. Clearly the aim here is either to recover the missing chocolate or to secure restitution for its loss and has nothing to do with attempted robbery. (I mean really, what's with attempted crimes? No one gets a gold at the Olympics for attempted bobsledding.)

What I want to know is what sort of chocolate bars were stolen. After all, perhaps the chocolate bars were the real target of the hold-up.

I think that the sentences given to these chocoholic shoplifters should be proportional to the type of chocolate with which they absconded. The better the chocolate bar, the lesser the sentence; I reckon that there is nothing unjust about punishing people for bad taste (clearly I'm going to do well in sentencing).

For example, if they went for the UK equivalent of Oh Henry bars, they deserve life imprisonment with a 5-7 year parole ineligibility. Anyone that really likes peanuts perverting their chocolate needs to be removed from the public because they pose a danger to society. If, on the other hand, these five-finger discount fiends were targeting toblerone bars, that should be a mitigating factor, resulting in a slap on the wrist.

Regardless, let's just hope that any judgment rendered in this case does not suggest that the lack of bonnets and crinoline at this petrol station meant that the chocolate was asking for it. After all, there were no wooden carvings.

Reflections on Remembrances

I spent Remembrance Day in a pool learning how to scuba dive.

There is definitely something surreal about standing in a semi-circle in the shallow end of the pool in full scuba gear, observing two minutes of silence with 80 other bathing suit-clad people, poppy-adorned lifeguards, and confused toddlers.

Internal Service Error. You've sunk my battleship.

While trying to navigate a website, this picture came up with the message:

"The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request."

Best photo of a service error ever.

Speaking of things that make me want to go killer-octopus on their ship of stupidity, the house down the street has had their Christmas lights up for a week. It's September. Three months early and wasting energy to celebrate the two-thousand and seventh anniversary of a birth seems a bit excessive to me. I know people that cannot be bothered to celebrate their twenty-third birthday.

However, this indiscriminate over-illumination irks me far less than the new prevalence of public service announcements. I am a fan of small states and the principle of survival of the fittest, two ideals that are not upheld by such announcements. Usually I could not be bothered to protest a specific state-sponsored nanny-ing announcement, after all, the fewer people playing in traffic, the less likely my car is to get hurt and the more perverse the Darwin Awards become. Even Alberta's new campaign about eating healthy does not sufficiently raise my ire to illicit objection.

However, I have extensive reservations about the newest safe driving radio campaign. I do not have a problem with the message that speeding kills, nor with the use of stand-up comedy as the setting for the commercials. Rather, I object to the campaign slogan of "speed limits save lives". Speeding may kill, not speeding may reduce deaths, however, speed limits are just numbers on a sign. The limits in and of themselves do not do anything; the mere existence of these limits does not save lives. The signs do even less - think of the additional property damage done when people run into those signs. Following speed limits may save lives, but there is a dramatic difference between the idea that compliance with a rule saves lives versus the idea that the mere existence of a rule has such an effect. And it is that technicality that has me eye the possibility of finding myself a killer-octopus.

Cyberslacking, Cyberloafing, or Cyberbludging

Today, I was introduced to the word 'Goldbricking', which refers to the practice of using one's internet access for personal use, while maintaining the appearance of working.

In tribute to my newly enriched vocabulary, I thought I'd share a means of internet procrastinating that I came across somewhere.

Step 1: Go to google,
Step 2: put your name followed by the words 'likes to' in quotation marks (for example "Bismarck likes to"),
Step 3: share the first ten results.

Here are mine (spot the references to Ariel Sharon, Sharon Osborne, and elementary material):

1. "An award winning speaker, Sharon likes to combine reading excerpts from her book with a dynamic presentation comparing the traditional "war model" for communicating with the new, Powerful Non-Defensive Communication model she has created."
2. "Sharon likes to read, listen to music, and run."
3. "Sharon likes to pose as a caring, maternal mentor."
4. "Sharon likes to say that he stands up to terrorists to show he is not afraid. In fact, his policies are driven by fear."
5. "Sharon likes to say she's “lived 50 lives in 50 years” and it sounds a fairly conservative estimate."
6. "Sharon likes to play with her blocks and her drum but she doesn't like to share."
7. "Sharon likes to draw. Hector is good at spelling. They like different things. They are both special."
8. "Sharon likes to talk.. .so I let her do all the talking."
9. "Sharon likes to cook, can’t you tell!"
10. "Sharon likes to sew or iron while Stan does the budget on the computer."

My favourites are numbers 6, 8, 9, and 3.

The site from which number 6 is from gave me this comic:

Debra, did you make this comic?

Cannibals are the only people that use 100% of the brain

It's that time of year again when squirrels are collecting acorns and nuts.

"Well of course, Sharon," one might say, "that's how nature works."

Throw in a head shake or an eye-roll and that's how one might respond to my statement. But there's more. On campus, this fairly regular - and some might even say mundane process - is far more compelling. See when the squirrels collect their acorns, they often chew them off and let them fall from the tree to the ground, from where they will collected at a later time.

"Yes Sharon," one might add, "that's how squirrels collect acorns. Squirrels are all efficient like that."

But wait, there's still more. As the squirrels do this on campus, the meandering students become walking bulls-eyes. I saw two different students nearly get hit. It was awesome.

I wonder if the squirrels get 10 points for students and 15 for faculty. Bonus points for anyone on skateboards.

And now for a complete 540 degree turn

"Eugenics is the answer, you are the question."

I'm going to leave that without any context.

Something about a Syrian Bunker

Some random tidbits I've collected:

• It seems that the universal minimum age for riding an elevator alone is 14.
• The deeper magic in Harry Potter is quite similar to that in the Chronicles of Narnia (and Jesus, for that matter).
• Some people hang baby shoes near the exhaust pipe of their car. I'm assuming it's for luck, but I'm not sure. (It is somewhat visible in the picture.)
• There's no point on going off roading in a jeep if one doesn't get a flat tire.
• King Herod was a perfectionist.
• Carob seed were considered to have uniform mass and were used to measure weights before standardized measurements; the word carat is derived from carob (a metric carat is just over three carob grains or 200 mg).

noun noun verb adjective

Every once in a while, the results of a mad lib are worth sharing with the world. My favourite lines are in purple.

Think different

Here's to the yellow ones, the socks, the zebras, the blenders.
The medium-rare pegs in the silly holes.
The ones who poke things differently.
They're not fond of noses, and they have no kitten for the status quo.
You can close them, peel with them, lament them, limit or enhance them.
About the only thing you can't do is electrocute them.
Because they defenestrate companies.
They duck. They sew. They calculate.
They humidify. They zip. They time.
They remedy the elixir forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you giggle at an empty mirror and see a work of apricot?
Or sit in a drawer and stop a chain that's never been ambled?
Or swim at a red outlet and see a plane on wheels?
We make frames for these kinds of people.
While some may see them as the straws, we see panel.
Because the ones who are crazy enough to change the leisure suit, are the ones who bite.

In fact, in hindsight, the entire thing may just be an ode to Kim Jong Il. I mean the leisure suit, the mobilizing of the planes on wheels, the outlet of red communism, the disinterest in the status quo, and the number of people that want to put him into a jail frame. I guess that means we cannot electrocute him.

That's the thing that's great about Mad Libs, it can take completely innocuous words, string them together, and give them a completely different meaning.

Now to help draw up plans for our bomb shelter wine cellar

I'm driving a car for this week in Israel. It's a white Daihatsu Sirion that we've affectionately named milk dud (milky for short) it's white, looks like a miniature milk delivery truck, and is a bit of a dud.

Yesterday, I parked on a filled in hole that was caused by a katyusha rocket.

As well, apparently there is a place not that far from here where one buys hotdogs that are stuffed (made?) in front of you. (As in they put the meat inside the casing while you watch.)

Wasted Manhours

There is a dearth of trash receptacles in the arrivals lounge in terminal three of the London Heathrow Airport. In fact, I saw more people engaging in bicycling (you know, where two people lay on their backs, put their feet in the air, and pedal against each other - as opposed to the type pictured to the left) than garbage cans.

I do understand the reasons for the lack of litter bins, but I have no idea about the bicycling.

Oh and the whole arrivals sequence in the movie Love Actually is only part rubbish.

I do bite my thumb sir

While walking along Canary Wharf, I was told that one can say things that are offensive and still be politically correct if one is quoting something directly and does not show support for the proposition.

“There are three O’s of bad driving: Old, Oriental, and Ovaries.”

Living by Analogy

As I sat there shaking my fist and yelling consensus ad idem out my car window, I knew I was going into the correct profession. It was a timely confirmation, having just endured articling week, secured future employment, and realized that I’ll be married to my profession.

Articling week is an interesting experience. It’s like the biological clocks of most second year law students begin ticking and they are all start dating with the intent to wed, with the added reality TV show feel of contrived junior high-like rules that everyone has to follow. If it were a Discovery Channel special it would be called “Legal Mating Rituals.”

First, firms post openings much like personal ads in the classified section. Some firms prefer long walks on the beach, others prefer a good intimate conversation, and yet others prefer to make you slave away for them while they crush your soul and dampen your spirits. Next, upon seeing the postings, law students send in their application packages to the firms they like (or all of them, for those using the shotgun approach) in hopes of getting asked on a first date. First dates are awkward. Both the firms and the students are trying to figure out if they like the other party and if the other party likes them (a “good fit” if you will), all while operating under strict timelines and with numerous third parties. Some students play hard to get, others are quite forward about their feelings, while others embody desperation.

In the end, the firms ask a subset of the students it dated on second dates. These second dates vary from an interview over a classy dinner, to an interview over coffee, to an interview over dinner with several of the other potential students being pitted against each other.
Then comes the suspense. Students wonder if their favourite firm will propose to them and firms wonder if their choice students will say yes.

Now enter the contrived rules. No firm can propose before a set date and time. Firms can express interest in students, but they cannot pressure students to divulge what they will say to a proposal. There can even be a blackout time during which the firms cannot contact the students.

Finally it’s 8am. Phone calls go out and firms propose to students. Students that accept a proposal are engaged. Their marriage will take place just over a year later, barring any unforeseen circumstances (of course, they all stay motivated during the next year). As of 8:04, the grapevine gets going; who’s engaged? To whom? And who received numerous proposals?

The dating analogy continues; some marriages are happy and long-lasting, while others end divorce – an associate may be courted and wooed by another firm, or choose to go in-house, or because the associate no longer wants to practice law. I wonder how a firm feels if it thinks that it was the reason that a student was turned off of the legal profession.

Now in lieu of an actual wrap-up of my post: in London, I heard a TV announcer refer to toilet paper as loo-roll.

Your face better taste like candy

If giants existed, I wonder if they would play dominoes with flat screen TVs.

It is interesting to discover what one ponders whilst chasing a distant red dot along miles of Alberta highway on the return from an adventure.

Some realizations I have reached during long stretches of highway driving:

• Veal is cute
• Alberta is a beautiful province, big, but beautiful
• There are lots of trees and cows and sheep
• Some trucks do not like being passed
• Nicole has interesting ways of trying to invoke jealousy
• It is not good to drive whilst feeling stuffed like a gopher in Torrington
• Em can climb up the side of mountains
• Candy Mountain is not a funny allusion to someone that has not seen it
• Erin makes funny noises when poked
• Cotton Candy can melt
• Nick Tam remembers the giant dinosaur
• Bugs like windshields
• Lightning is pretty

I'm Suddenly Malignant

The number of Mute Swans in the Thames is declining, and a few years ago, a British Tabloid accused asylum-seekers of trapping and barbecuing the Queen's swans. While the accusations turned out to be baseless, the Queen's ownership over the swans is a true, albeit curious, anachronism.

Based on a statute from 1324, The Queen technically still owns all the sturgeons, whales, porpoises, and dolphins within three miles of UK shores. In the 12th century, the English monarch was also granted ownership over all the mute swans in England (swans were a good source of food, and common people had to turn to Turkeys for their dinners instead).

In the 15th century, the crown gave ownership rights in the swans to others, including the Vintners' and Dyers' Companies, both of whom still share ownership of the swans in the Thames with the Seigneur of the Swans - the Queen herself. There is still an annual practice of Swan Upping, where mute swans on the River Thames are rounded up, caught, marked, and then released to keep a census of the swan population and to establish ownership rights over the cygnets.

The morals of the story are three-fold:

• Being the Queen of England carries with it a lot of added duties;
• the British are very traditional; and
• the Queen can have all the sturgeons, dolphins, porpoises, whales, and swans she wants, I just want a pet duck.

Don't panic, I'm mostly harmless

My goals for this post:
1) Use my favourite Daily Show quote for the week
2) Divulge a highly entertaining story without breaking any promises or betraying any confidences
3) Make an allusion to Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

I used to respect a certain individual, until last week he cut a cheque and accidently made it out to himself instead of the intended recipient and all the [respect] I had disappeared like a horse in a jello factory.

Yay. Three for three.

I'll disabuse you of that notion in the hallway with a prosthetic limb

The notion of unconditional love seems like an antiquated concept in the age of Las Vegas weddings, 24 hour marriages, and ubiquitous divorces; and it appears that Sir Paul McCartney is paying dearly for his beliefs. A quick search on Google News reveals that Heather Mills will be receiving a $68 million divorce settlement to conclude a marriage of less than 4 years -- she's being paid over $17M/year of their marriage, or about $46,575/day, or about $32/minute (I'm told that that is a significantly higher rate than a 1-900 number or an escort). Do you realize how many starving children in Africa could be fed for that amount? If she were to only take $30/minute and donate the difference to one of those dollar a day foundations, she could support 24 orphans and give Angelina Jolie and Madonna a run for their money.

I find it difficult to be very sympathetic towards Paul. One should have to pay for one's stupidity and it seems to me that anyone that has found truly unconditional love would want to sign a prenuptial agreement to illustrate that the marriage was not incentivized by money. However, I am concerned about the $68 million windfall that his ex is receiving; giving someone who tries to influence an unrelated country's domestic policy regarding clubbing seal such a substantial sum of money could be detrimental. Fortunately, karma will be restored, in part; bookies everywhere are going out on a limb and are taking bets about whether Heather's leg will fall off during her upcoming performances on "Dancing with the Stars."

On a much more positive note, here is the story of a cute penguin that was saved near Japan.

I wonder how many penguins one could buy for $68 million?

At least three.

You can't throw children at a problem, unless the problem is a blender

Anyone that knows how to transform a shower into a giant goldfish bowl, please let me know. It is important. Very important. I'll even endeavour to not be unnecessarily cruel to the fish.

In consideration, I'll explain why there is no difference between horses and peanut butter.

Also, does anyone want to buy 2 Oilers tickets to the Minnesota game on March 15? I bought them the day before the trade deadline.

Duck Duck Goose Cookie Crane

I think that this Cigarro & Cerveja comic sums up my outlook on life perfectly:
This particular comic was even entitled quack.

Speaking of which, I was given the most amazing Chanukah gift (yes I know it was over two months ago): I received a set of rubber duckies that glow or light up when they are placed in water. I now want to have a dinner party so that I can use them in a centre piece. I cannot wait until the ducks fly north for the summer.

On a related note, today I was told that over 20% of the world's cranes are in Dubai. I thought that the statistic was referring to the bird variety of cranes, but it turns out that the statistic refers to the fact that about a quarter of the world's construction cranes (~30,000 of ~125,000) are opperating in Dubai. That's somewhat disturbing.

They dress real bad and they think they're New York

I've had this song stuck in my head since Wednesday, which is when I ventured to Toronto to moot about the Supreme Court's Labaye decision. (The court held that a club called l'Orage in downtown Montreal, which had eight mattresses strewn across its third floor to enable its membership of over 800 individuals and their guests to engage in anonymous swinging or group sex or orgies (pick your characterization), is not a common bawdy house because the acts taking place on the third floor are not indecent.)

It turns out that since the decision, such acts have been embraced on a much wider scale. Note the "everyone else" category in the photo (this is the sign for a store on Bay Street in Toronto, that seems to have a similar clientele to that of l'Orage).

I'm also quite convinced that Air Canada is happy with the SCC decision; it means that it is no longer indecent for Air Canada to try and screw all its passengers at once.

On my way home through terminal three of YYZ (in which there are many signs protesting the disproportionate rent that the GTAA has to pay the government for their airport relative to other airports - a cause which garnered no sympathy from me), I noticed a display of polar animals. One of them was a seal. I will now indulge myself with a pictorial post script to my previous post:

What would happen if a seal cub

was clubbed with a billy club

to be served in a club sandwich

to a school club
one of whom had just joined the

?

That better be one tasty seal cub club sandwich.

On an unrelated note, my moot coach made sure we ate our protein, endeavoured not to "cramp our style," and warned us of the danger of contracting a disease because the comforters on hotel beds needs not be laundered between each guest.

Once you pop, you just can't stop

Hunting for sport seems to be a waste of meat.

I wonder if there is a market for clubbed seal cub club sandwiches.

Clearly I'm not a vegetarian because of any moral opposition to killing animals.

The best thing about the third world is the cheap parking

I love Valentine's Day. It is the best example of how commercialization and development can make so many people miserable.

In tax class yesterday, I wrote a poem for the occasion:

Ducks go quack
Cows go moo
Frogs go ribbit
And Dogs go poo

Taxes go up
Horses make glue
The Earth goes round
And Hallmark screws you

To be fair, Hallmark has managed to do a great job of ensuring that misery gets lots of company, while turning a healthy profit. My inner entrepreneur is jealous.

How have you evolved enough to stand upright?

It has recently come to my attention that Lexus has made a vehicle that can parallel park itself.

.

This enrages me on many levels.

Besides the fact that it takes longer to program the bloody Lexus to park in a spot than it does for most normal drivers to actually park, and the fact that I doubt that most people that are unable to parallel park can line up a car to the extent necessary for this function to work, I can hear Darwin spinning in his grave. Our so called civilized society has 'evolved' to a level where the principle of survival of the fittest has been replaced by a survival of the richest. It no longer matters what abilities an individual has, nor what talents he or she chooses to hone. Rather, if you cannot do something, you can pay to get it done.

As a rule, this opportunity for wealth redistribution in exchange for a service does not bother me because it ensures that people can exploit their relative advantages, resulting in a system with more optimal production. (It also ensures that I shall have a job in the future.)

However, my soulless capitalist nature does not extend to roadways. Unlike classrooms, gender neutral washrooms, and the political correctness movement, roadways are not there for the sake of making everyone feel like they belong. In fact, if one cannot understand the concept of traveling the speed of traffic, or if one believes that snow prevents normal driving, or if one is afraid of turning left or changing lanes or driving near semi-trailer trucks, GET OFF THE ROAD!

And if you cannot figure out how to parallel park your bloody luxury vehicle, you do not deserve that parking spot; leave it for someone that has the minimal competence and coordination to turn their steering wheel while their car is in reverse. Park a little bit further away, walk the extra couple of blocks, and see if that provides sufficient motivation to learn to do what almost every sixteen year old can accomplish.

One might think I am over-reacting, after all, advances in technology have been implemented to help mankind exceed its physical and mental limitations, to enable individuals to be lazier, and in general to make life easier. However, there needs to be a limit to the extent upon which people rely on technology, and I think that this is that limit. Allow me to argue by analogy: if Lexus had been undermining natural selection in this manner on a more global scope, maybe the dodo wouldn't have gone extinct, or maybe the the gimped tiger that was left for dead by its mother would survive without learning to hunt or fend for itself, or maybe being a vegan would be a viable lifestyle choice. But who really wants a world that is full of dodos, gimped tigers, and vegans? Fake parallel parkers are no different.

To summarize, I am irked that Lexus is undermining evolution.
If you see a Lexus parallel parked in a spot that you wanted, blame technology.
And why would someone give up eating real ice cream?

Right now they're building a coffin your size

I desperately want to feed bread to a duck

"It's scientifically irrefutable, in a way that global warming isn't"

Do it:

http://www.davidandgoliathtees.com/games/throwrocks.html

Regardless of how misogynistic I am, this is something I often contemplate doing.

Credit to Erin and Georgia, despite their attempts to teach me tact.

Being irreplaceable means you can't get promoted

Girl 1: Boys are good for carrying heavy things, reaching high shelves, and opening jars.

Girl 2: Actually I have this metal device that you can use to loosen the pressure on jars to make them easier to open.

Girl 1: Yet another handheld device that can be used to replace men.