So I live in an apartment that is (supposed to be) all inclusive. The problem is that our landlord is really bad at paying bills. The gas was cut of near the end of the winter for a week and we are always getting the "We are going to cut off your hydro in 7 days" notices. Well the gas got cut off 18 days ago and we haven't seen it since. Luckily in this weather we don't need the heat only the hot water. In the last 18 days I have had about 30-40 seconds of shower time. There have been some really hot days here and the way to do it is to leave the shower all day so that the water in the pipes above ground warms up and then you have maybe 5-10 seconds of bearable water before it gets too cold. The obvious solution people offer is "just move" but the thing is I live in an area I really like for less than this area generally costs, so I sort of look at it like If I want to have cheap rent in this area I'm also going to have to deal with some stuff. Also I think part of my brain enjoys the challenge of removing modern day comforts. I mean people got by without showers for thousands of years also you don't realize how much you appreciate things until they are gone. I now know what is was like to have to boil water whenever you wanted to wash dishes or fill a bath.

Speaking of modern day comforts last week during pretty much the hottest day of the year (I think they said with the humidex it felt like 45 degrees Celsius (thats 113 degrees Fahrenheit) and as far as I'm fucking concerned if it feels like 45 then it is 45) I came up to use my computer and it was not working and wouldn't turn on. It turned out to just be my power supply that had burnt out in the heat (a $10 fix) but it really had me worried that I had lost everything on my hard drives. Makes me think I should back everything up...... nahh. I'm going to use the computer crash as an excuse as to why I haven't updated the site.

Labels: random

I live with my brother (well both my brothers actually). The older of the 2 has a cat named "Chairman Meow" (as seen in the picture laughing manically).

Facts about the cat:
-he is male
-he is black with a couple of white spots
-he is about 9 months old
-HE IS A TOTAL FUCKING DICKHEAD (at least to me)

I think I've always been pretty nice to the cat. I feed him when my brother isn't around to do it, when I eat cereal I give him the last little bit of milk in the bowl because he likes that etc. How does he treat me? Well for one, when I walk up or down the stairs he will "bat" at me with his paws from between the bars of the banister (I'm the only one he does that to). When I walk down the hall he will run up behind me and "attack" the backs of my feet. He comes under my desk when I'm trying to work and claws at all the wires. Worst of all though is before he was neutered he would spray his nasty piss/spray stuff (whatever the hell it is) in my room. He did this several times in my room and once inside my backpack which was in the living room. Again he only does this to my stuff.

So I had forgiven the cat assuming that he was probably adjusting to the new place and that this has all happened before he had been fixed and the major issues (the piss issues) seemed to have stopped. or so I thought.....

Last night I get into bed and am lying there for a minute when I notice that my covers are unusually cold. After a second I realize that they are in fact damp, I jump up realizing that it must be cat piss and flip on the light. So not only did the cat piss on my bed (wetting the covers, sheets and mattress). HE SHIT ON MY BED! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I'm not talking a few little pieces here, this was a full on dump, like 5 or 6 turds, probably the biggest a cat can hold)

If it was a dog doing all of this I would have to forgive it for not knowing any better like the slobbering idiots that they are. But cats are smart so I must assume that he is purposely fucking with me because he dislikes me. Well from now on the cat and I are enemies (I feel like a character in some ridiculous Disney movie where they pin an animal against a person with ridiculous slapstick results, that mentally deficient 7 year olds would find funny.... the problem is that if thats the case I'm fucked.. the animal always wins in those movies and I will end up looking like a bumbling idiot) Whatever the case I'm going to go take a crap in the cats litter box and see how he likes it.

---

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Labels: random

You have to spend 1 hour locked in a room with either:
CUJO






















OR

COJO



















WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE?

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Picture this:
a fairly rich man eats a large sized serving of eggs benedict even though he isn't really hungry.

also

a man unjustly fired from his job spends a night throwing eggs at his bosses car.

Do you think the hen who layed all the above mentioned eggs would be more
offended by one of the situations?

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You meet a Genie who offers you as much money as you would like.
THE CATCH: For every $250 the genie will randomly remove 1 word from your vocabulary. You will never be able to learn or understand the lost words again and when you hear them they will just sound like jibberish. You will have to learn to communicate with whatever you have left.

Facts:
1 million dollars: you lose 4,000 words
avg persons vocab: 5 or 6 thousand words

How much money would you take?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You learn that James Blunt is a psychotic axe murderer













Are you even surprised?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You meet another genie he gives you two options?
For the rest of your life you can only listen to either:
the genre of music that you most despise
or
your all time favorite album

CATCH:

for the genre you hate you can listen to any bands or artists (within that genre) whenever and however frequently you like but that is it.

for your favorite album you must listen to if on repeat for the rest of your life with no break.

Which do you choose?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This idea partially inspired by Chuck Klosterman's 23 questions

Labels: celebrities, movies, music, random

So recently I did some re-tiling here (the bathroom and the kitchen) and seeing as I wanted the highest possible quality product I went off to the dollar store to buy some vinyl tiles. The tiles were 3 for $1 and with any product with such a steep price tag they come with a 1 year warranty. Now the funny thing is according to the packaging the tiles must be installed in a very specific and precise method for the warranty to be valid.... The funny part? The packaging is fraught with so many spelling and grammar mistakes that I don't think it would be hard to make a case for any installation job.

I scanned the instructions and have included a few of the best parts (with mistakes highlighted). I know I'm probably the last guy who should be pointing out spelling and grammar errors (as evidenced by this site) but these are too good to leave alone.


- ok fair enough, that may be an honest mistake.


- I fried all the paint on the cement before installing the tiles but for some reason they didn't seem to stick.


- I gather that "must be clean" is an important point. Its a good thing the kitchen and the
bathroom don't have any varmish on them cause the living room is infested.


-Are dust dirts the byproduct of dust?


Who is this MAN-UG-ACTURER?


-My favorite line in the whole thing "Stilet to heals". That's fucking gold


-Well seeing as that sentence makes no sense to me I choose to disregard it.

Anyway for reasons beyond my comprehension some of these high quality tiles have begun to crack after about 1 month. I explicitly followed the instructions when installing them so I don't know what the problem is. It must be a manufacturer defect. So I'm going to write a letter to the company as follows:

Dear Capri Tile
I recently purchased 30 tiles for my bathroom and after just 1 month they have become defective. I am very upset. When someone spends $0.33 on a tile there is a reasonable expectation of quality. I feel that I should be compensated for my out of pocket expenses and distress from this whole tiling ordeal. I am asking for $11.27 to replace my 30 tiles (total with tax) and $50,000 in pain and suffering. As you can understand I will not ship the defective tiles back as that would be further undue expense to me. Please remit a cheque in the amount of $50, 011.27 ASAP to resolve this issue.
Thank you.

Labels: random

So my left ear cleared up today after spending 2 WEEKS with it blocked. I will spare you the details of the affair but it was like having an earplug in only one ear for two weeks... it totally sucked and I'm thankful its over. So I haven't updated because I've been feeling uninspired and have just moved to a new place in a new city so I've been trying to get a lot of stuff sorted out. But I definitely plan on updating this site more often (famous last words... usually when someone says that there is an extremely long period of inactivity). I do have a bunch of new article/projects planned.

Labels: random

If you've never been to the Jesus: With you always site you should check it out.

Labels: random

The other day I was at a convenience store and was standing in line. The woman in front of me was taking a really really long time. I noticed that she was buying only lottery tickets, stacks of scratch tickets and a bunch of the "draw" tickets which have to go through that machine so it takes forever. I hate to judge a book by its cover, but this woman was how do I say it.... a future Springer guest. Anyway she finally gets all the lottery tickets and the cashier rings it up and the total is $120. A HUNDRED AND FUCKING TWENTY DOLLARS!!!!! Now that's just lottery tickets, she wasn't buying any Cheetos, Mountain Dew, Twinkies or any of the other things that her clothes were stained with. She says to the cashier something to the effect "I hope I'm lucky this week". I was pretty annoyed from having to wait for 5 minutes so as she turned around to leave This convo played out...

Me: Do you spend that much on lottery tickets each week?
Her : About a hundred dollars.
Me: Are you fucking serious?
Her: Yeah, so?
Me: Do you know the odds of winning those "draw" lotteries?
Her: No
Me: About 1 in 14 million
Her: blank stare
Me: That's like someone saying to you I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 14, 000, 000 what is it? The chances of it being 25 are the same as it being 13,587,602 or 742,004.
Her: blank stare
Me: Seriously, $100 a week is $5200 a year, if you invested that amount of money each week you would have a nice chunk down the line.
Her: attention seems to have veered off to the shelf of doritos
Me: Forget it
Her: Do you wanna go to Dairy Queen?
Me: ok

So we ate oreo and gummy bear blizzards (her choice) as I explained compound interest and she explained the genius of Larry the cable guy.

Labels: random

This is post #111.
I decided to change up the layout a bit.

My brother let me in on this interesting tidbit:
Yesterday at 123 seconds after 1:00 it was 01:02:03 04/05/06

So for the last 2 days I have been deaf in my left ear, I think I have some sort of infection because it is painful and spending about an hour yesterday flushing my ear out with an ear syringe did absolutely nothing except make me more frustrated.

Losing 50% of your hearing is more like losing 75% because you lose the whole "stereo field". It's really something you take for granted. I think it's the same as if you were to lose sight out of one eye you also lose depth perception which probably also seems like more than 50%.

Labels: random

Near my house there is a plaza/strip mall and beside that there is a retirement home. The retirement home isn't one of those one's where the seniors are being taken care of by people its more just like a community for retired people. They live independently but are far from being rich. They are mostly just average people and I'm sure for the most part they are on a fixed income. Anyway there is one guy who lives there who looks almost exactly like Lee Van Cleef (from the Clint Eastwood "man without a name" westerns). Every time I go to the plaza I see this guy without fail and he is wandering around collecting all the cigarette butts that he can find so that he can smoke them. I always find this mildly depressing. Cigarettes around here cost over $8 a pack (I actually don't know exactly how much they cost they were more than $8 a pack when I quit and that was almost 3 years ago). The majority of that is tax as I'm sure you all know. So I came up with an idea: Cigarette pricing should be on a sliding scale. The younger you are the higher the price and the older you get the more tax is chopped off. Lets say that if you are under 25 cigarettes cost $25 a pack and by the time you are 65 they are $2. I think it would deter a lot of people from starting to smoke because it would be unrealistic for most youths to be able to afford a habit that expensive. But at the same time if you're in your 70s and your still smoking lets face it you should be rewarded for beating the odds.

As usual I'm just talking a bunch of nonsense. This would never work out because trying to implement a sliding scale of pricing would be a sheer nightmare for the millions of retailers out there.

Labels: health, random

I read an article this week which went on to say that they have proof now that humans are still evolving. From the article: "University of Chicago researchers say they've found approximately 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection within the past 5,000 to 15,000 years!". What surprises me is that until recently it was believed by many that humans stopped evolving 50,000 years ago (this of course doesn't include the people who think it went down with some dust, a rib, an apple and a talking snake). I naturally assumed that it was commonly believed that we have never stopped evolving. This brings me to a few questions...

Why would we have stopped evolving 50, 000 years ago and what would have been the last major step for us?

If that was the case and you took the DNA of a 50,000 year old person cloned them and raised them in today's society would they have no problem living like the rest of us? I guess that would be the ultimate test of nature vs. nurture but I find that it hardly makes sense. 50, 000 years ago is soooooo long ago. Think about how long ago the bible was written, that was only about 2 000 years. WE'RE TALKING 50, 000 HERE.

I bet (certain) humans have evolved in the past 2, 000 years I think it only makes sense that its a constant process. Its not as if we've reached some sort of plateau of perfection.

Labels: random

About 20% of the world lives on less than $1 a day and about 50% live on less than $2 a day. The gross domestic product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the worlds 3 richest people.

These are the types of stats that many of us have seen before and yes it is staggering to see how imbalanced the world is but the more I think about it the more I wonder what implications this has in the grand scheme of things.

From an evolutionary stand-point we (the western world) are doomed if a major catastrophe should happen to us (be this major weather events, or full on climate change due to global warming, or severe depletion of natural resources and/or fuel/energy sources etc etc.)

We live with unprecedented creature comforts and if you look at how our world has changed in the past 100 years (and again how much it has changed in just the last 10 years) you can imagine the vast differences there will be in in just a few generations down the line. If by some major disaster (as stated above) everything we know was turned on its head and we were forced to revert to basic survival how many of us would be able to make it? I can't imagine myself doing too well.

By contrast if you have made it to adult-hood in an area where it is not uncommon for children to die before their 5th birthday there is a good chance that you are among the strongest in the gene pool. And with that process (sadly) repeating itself for many many years the ones who have made it are surely destined to share genes with future generations. More so than the 400 pounder in Houston sitting on the couch eating Doritos watching the Jerry Springer show.

In terms of natural selection the strong survive. In our culture everyone (with very few exceptions) survives. But this is only because we have figured out a way to stave off the forces of nature and other elements for the time being. I don't however think this is a permanent fix. In the end nature (the planet) will always win. In general we don't give the planet enough credit and are seemingly more worried about the environment than our place in the environment. Sure we should be respectful of the planet but it is arrogant of us to think that anything we do will really affect this earth (in the long run, which is in fact a very very very long run. The earth is about 4.55 billion years old we aren't even a footnote). Have you ever seen a parking lot that has been forgotten about for say 5 years? Its faded, warped, worn out and there are all sorts of plants growing through the cracks. That's what nature can do in 5 years. If we were wiped off this planet the world would make short work of all the crap we left behind.

I guess my point is that while we are moving at light speeds (technologically) we are most likely devolving in terms of basic survival skills. Come the next ice age I don't think anyone will be looking for a php programmer (no offence to any php programmers just the first example that came to mind).

This makes me think back to when we had that blackout (August 2003) which lasted a day or two. What if all the electricity went out and the powers that be said "That's it! The powers gone! and its never coming back! Sorry there's no more and there never will be! We ran out! We didn't want to worry you by telling you earlier!"

Seriously if that happened where do you think you and everyone you knew would be now (two and a half years later in the dead of winter). I can bet you where the guy who lives on less than a dollar a day would be (the exact same spot regardless).

Labels: random

I was in the Goodwill today as I often am and just as I was about to leave an older woman sitting on a chair trying on shoes says to me "Golf shoes are really comfortable" she proceeds to take off a shoe and says to me look at all the padding in this thing. I just smile and say "nice" she goes on to say that she walks a lot and they are the most comfortable shoes. I thought our conversation was over there but no there was more. Just as I was stepping to leave she asks "Do you have any New Years resolutions?" At this point I figure she may just want someone to talk to so I'll play along. I say I do not. She says her New Years resolution is the Learn the Language of Love. I'm thinking wow this is becoming quite an interesting dialog. She says "Feeling love is different than knowing the language and being able to communicate it to others also that her friend has a cassette titled the language of love but that you probably need a video to learn it". She also says I can have that resolution and proceeds to try to think of some others I can have. I half wished that I had just said I wanted to start eating healthier. She says her last years resolution was Wisdom and she goes on to stumble over a bible verse to do with Solomon. At this point I knew where the conversation was heading, the next question was.... "Are you Christian?". I never really know how to answer these questions. I pause and say "No I'm nothing, I was raised with nothing". She mishears me and asks "You're Muslim?" I say "No I'm nothing I don't follow any religion". She goes on to tell me about the 2 different churches that she goes to and that I should come by. She then asks where I grew up and I say "On the West Side" she says she did too and tells me the street she grew up on and surprisingly I grew up on the street right next to her's. I tell her this and she says "oh yeah, that new street" I found this humorous because the house I grew up in is at least 50 years old. The conversation went on a bit longer and she dropped the church thing a few more times. Saying it must be hard to step into a church if your not part of one but she said "The door swings both ways". I'm not exactly sure what that means does that mean that its easy to walk into a church but then if you don't like what's going on inside its just as easy to get the hell out of there. At this point I figured I had better get out of there before the "faith" questions become more pressing. I told her I had to get going so she shook my hand and told me here name and again said that I should come to the church on Sunday. I said "Maybe I will" but doesn't maybe mean no the majority of the time. I think it does.

Labels: random

I've been neglecting writing and updating this site. This is not a conscious decision but for some reason the winter leaves me uninspired. I suppose being surrounded by death doesn't help.

The plants are dead, there are no animals in sight and the snow absorbs a lot of sound, so even sound seems to die a little.

The snow really does make me think about mortality. All that snow out there was once (part of) a person. Humans are made up of about 60% water. Science teaches us that matter cannot be created or destroyed so all that water has been on this earth (in one form or another) since the beginning of time. I doubt that any water on the planet hasn't been through at least one person. I feel the same way when I see a skeleton on display somewhere. Its strange to think that that was once a person who lived a life and did day to day things and probably had an equally complex human experience as anyone living now.

Its not that death really scares me or anything. I guess being surrounded by snow just makes me think that one day this vessel of mine will also be lying in a pile outdoors as the object of many peoples contempt.

Labels: random

Well today was the first snow. It makes me think back to the beginning of summer. Being the ultra pessimist that I am whenever its the beginning of summer I just think of how it will be over before I know it and low and behold here I am staring down the barrel of winter and summer has come and gone.

Of course the older I get the quicker time passes, the time since the start of summer has happened so quickly. I saw a show on Discovery quite a while ago that had done a lot of research into age and the perception of the passage of time....

You know when you're a kid and time seems to pass so slowly ( I remember probably my first year of school, the summer seemed so long that I thought that you went to school for a year and then you had another year off). Anyway in the study they found that this is in fact true and that the younger we are the longer we perceive time (that's why kids have such short attention spans and get bored so easily). The study didn't really offer any reasons as to why it is this way but here's the scary part. Our mental middle age is 20 years old. Meaning that from age 0 - 20 will mentally seem like the same amount of time as age 21 - 80. I don't think anyone can deny that after they leave high school time seems to pass much more quickly. I cant imagine what it would be like being 70 something. By this study a year would pass as quickly as a childhood day (or even hour).

tags: winter, science,

Labels: random

A friend of my sister's came up with an idea which she relayed to me. It's basically as follows: Imagine someone emigrated to North America from another country (for the sake of this idea lets say a rural area in a country that is not a part of the "western world")Now Imagine that the day they arrived it was Halloween, they would probably think that the way we do things over here is pretty crazy. When she first presented me with this I thought it was funny and imagined this person looking at hordes of children dressed up in bizarre outfits going door to door for an unknown reason. I wondered if the person would think that this is everyday life for us over here. But the more I thought about it the more I came to think that Halloween (to someone from a remote region of a far off land) would be no more strange than how we DO live our everyday lives. If you look at the large scope of western fashion alone (even what the average person wears) it would probably be virtually impossible to tell the difference between most peoples clothes and a Halloween costume. From the middle aged woman with an inch of makeup, a spray on tan, and bouffant hairdo and a dress from 1965 to some decked out goth kid how would a new arrival really be able to tell the difference. I also think that Halloween would probably be a mere blip on the radar compared to all the other sights and sounds of any town USA.

tags:Halloween, ideas, misc

Labels: random

An absurd line of thinking I have been exploring lately is this: What if (no matter what religion you subscribe to) when you die the wonderful afterlife you were promised is gone. Now I'm not saying that it didn't exist but that it has either moved or has been "re-formatted". The best analogy I can come up with is this: When a acorn falls off of a tree it hopes to find a nice piece of earth to burrow itself into and start its new life, Now lets say that the earth is long gone and the acorn finds itself landing in a parking lot. The acorn is basically doomed to roll around the parking lot for the rest of its existence. The acorn would have no idea that once it left the tree that the promise land it had always believed would be there would be altered. I think that somewhere in my mind I fear that when I die my soul will float off to wherever its going only to smack right into the proverbial parking lot and spend the rest of eternity floating around on the surface.

This brings me to a another line of thinking. What am In the dark about as a 27 year old. When you are a child you believe in certain absolutes, the most obvious examples are Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, more complex and less absolute are issues like believing that television commercials are public service announcements. When we get older we realize that these things are completely false and its really just a part of growing up etc. But what if this doesn't only happen when we leave childhood but at other parts of our life as well. How do I know (as a 27 year old) that once I hit 30 I will be let in on truth about some of the things I fundamentally hold to be true (also at other points down the line as well). Of course no one who has passed those ages would divulge the truth, the same way you wouldn't (or shouldn't) tell a small child that there is not Santa Claus (they probably wouldn't believe it anyway). So getting back to the original point what if we spend our whole lives believing in something to be an unshakable truth only to hit a paved afterlife.

I am aware that there are some religions that don't believe in afterlife, I was just using the basic Christian "heaven" type framework for my example.

I also realized that this is full of "What If's", that's just the mood I'm in today

tags:ideas, religion, what if

Labels: random

Tom was right. The picture in my previous post (and this one) is of Klara Polzl Hitler, Adolf Hitler's mother.

I found the pic while flipping through and old book I had and it hit me that I never even considered that Adolf Hitler had a family. Being such a diabolical figure in history, for some reason in my mind he existed as a sole entity that appeared in time without a family history or future (I think in my mind he existed in the same way I would imagine the devil, but in this case we are talking about an actual human being who actually lived). I guess I also never pictured him as a child, only as the confused, demented syphilis ridden middle aged man who is prominently featured on the history channel. Its hard to explain but I guess I don't picture someone who murdered millions of people to have had a normal family dynamic or any family dynamic for that matter. I think that my thoughts are so influenced by films that I subconsciously fill in the untold parts of the story (not with necessarily the most logical events but maybe the ones most important to the overall plot). Prior to finding the picture, in my brain Adolf Hitler just showed up in Germany one day without a back story. I know the parts of his history that contain all the atrocities so the rest had been filed as unimportant.

Labels: random

Without giving any information about this picture I am curious to find out what people think of it. Who do you think it is? Create a story/scenario if you like. I will reveal the answer in my next post.

Labels: random

You will not find a more retched hive of scum and villainy. You know the kind of place I'm talking about.

*its the kind of place that attracts all the degenerates because it has the cheapest cigarettes in town.

*its the kind of place that you buy batteries from because they are ridiculously cheap thinking how can they be different than name brand batteries only to learn that they last literally 5 minutes.

*its the kind of place that seems to only have customers with really strange sounding coughs.

*its the kind of place that has a bargain bin of VHS movies that all suck.

*its the kind of place that has a frozen food section with the lowest grade meat you can find. Oh and the food Isle is shared with something dangerous and/or toxic.

*its the kind of place where they sell T-shirts called "America's Own" brand on the tag, but on the other side of said tag it reads "Made in Bangledesh".

*its the kind of place where Nascar fans get their wardrobe.

Anyway, I'm not even going to mention the name of this store because I think by now everyone knows what type of store I am talking about. At this store I bought a bottle of RC cola, mainly because I had no idea the stuff still existed.

tags: bargain, shopping, cola

Labels: food, random

I am going to start photographically documenting all the bizarre things I see written in washrooms. Yesterday on a paper towel dispenser I saw this written "I fucked my dog...and your dog bucked me". Now it is far beyond my comprehension why anyone would ever take the time to write that. Its not funny (at least not to me) and it there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for its existence. I don't know what its like in women's washrooms but you would be hard pressed to find a public men's room that isn't covered in all sorts of writing. Not all of it is idiot, obscene and/or insulting once in a while there is a little tidbit of thought. My favorite thing I've seen written so far is this "Modern music has no class". That's it! It was in really small writing next to something that was written really large and worth forgetting.

I believe that we only achieve true independent thought when we are alone without (major) distractions. In the world we live in today most people don't spend any time at all distraction free except maybe the 5 minutes they spend in the washroom (unless they are the type that reads). So if there are 2 types of people (in terms of washroom time) the readers and the writers I would hope that the writers use their couple minutes of independent thought to come up with something that may be at least a little bit thought provoking. I've never forgotten about "Modern music has no class" and that was probably 7 years ago. It got me thinking rather in depth about the state of modern music and where along the way it did in fact lose its class. It also got me wondering what particular music the writer had been referring to and what had led him to that specific conclusion. In closing I would like to say may all the dog fuckers lose their pens and the thinkers keep writing.

tags:Writing, words, grafitti, culture

Labels: random

When I was in grade 3 my English teacher told us that there were NO words that had a q without a u directly after it and challenged us to think of an example. The best anyone could come up with was bbq and the teacher quickly quipped in that it was a abbreviation of barbeque and that it didn't count. For the past 20 years I went about my life believing this lie until recently when playing a game of Scrabble it was revealed (in the documentation provided with said scrabble game) that there are in fact 22 words that contain a q and no u.

# FAQIR - Variation of FAKIR, a Hindu ascetic.
# FAQIRS - Plural of FAQIR.
# QAID - A variation of CAID, a Muslim leader.
# QAIDS - Plural of QAID.
# QANAT - A system of underground tunnels and wells in the Middle East.
# QANATS - Plural of QANAT.
# QAT - Variation of KAT, an evergreen shrub.
# QATS - Plural of QAT.
# QINDAR - Variation of QINTAR, a monetary unit of Albania.
# QINDARS - Plural of QINDAR.
# QINDARKA - Albanian currency.
# QINDARKAS - The plural of QINDARKA.
# QINTAR - See above.
# QINTARS - Plural of QINTAR.
# QOPH - A letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
# QOPHS - Plural of QOPH.
# QWERTY - A standard typewriter keyboard.
# QWERTYS - The plural of QWERTY, see above.
# SHEQEL - An ancient unit of weight and money.
# SHEQALIM - The plural of SHEQEL, see above
# TRANQ - A variation of TRANK (i.e. tranquilizer).
# TRANQS - Plural of TRANQ

I now regard everything I was taught by my third grade teacher as false, especially that you need to learn cursive writing because you will use it later in life. Its a lot later in life for me now and I don't think I need it.

tags:scrabble, q, lies my teacher told me

Labels: random

It happened after 911 it happened after the Tsunami and its happening again. Everyone is glued to the media to see the latest on the devastation of the post hurricane Katrina world. Things seem to be getting worse and worse and its all anyone can talk about . What is it about human nature that makes us obsess over tragedy and almost get off on feeling bad for the victims. I don't think people really feel better about themselves by seeing people in worse scenarios, I know I certainly don't yet at the same time I cant stop watching CNN to find out what has happened.

tags:hurricane, katrina, news

Labels: random

If you build a coastal city below sea level you're building a city on thin ice and you must know that it's only a matter of time before disaster strikes. That being said it certainly sucks for anyone that lives (lived) there. I really cant imagine what it would be like to all of a sudden be told that you have one day to evacuate the city where you live.

Watching the footage today I do find it funny (funny strange not funny ha ha) that all the people stranded on rooftops who are in dire need of rescue are the same people who ignored the evacuation in the first place. I imagine some of them were saying things like: "Fuck that I'm not going to the Superdome its not going to be that bad", but I'm sure that's not going through their minds when the water is up to the second floor of their house and they had to break a hole in the ceiling to make it to the roof.

New Orleans may never be rebuilt and it may become a bizarre abandoned nautical ghost town. Mardi Gras will become a legend and the only recorded history of the event will be girls gone wild videos, due to this it will be remembered as an even greater city than it was.


tags:News, Hurricane, Katrina, In The News,

Labels: random

Because Pope John Paul II has been the pope my entire life I merely assumed that popes always had ordinary names. Upon finding a list of all the past popes it has become clear that some of the past 265 popes have had some really cool names.

St. Anacletus (Cletus) (76-88) a pope named Cletus that's too much
St. Sixtus I (115-125) -- also called Xystus I a name like Xystus is damn cool
St. Hyginus (136-140) - it almost sounds like high-genius
St. Urban I (222-30) - I think the youth would relate to Pope Urban
St. Cornelius (251-53) - enough said
St. Innocent I (401-17) - sound likes the name of a movie
St. Leo I (the Great) (440-61) - Leo the great it doesn't get much better than that
St. Hilarius (461-68) - that's hilarious
St. Nicholas I (the Great) (858-67) - good old St. Nick
Lando (913-14) - I think he's in cloud city now

There's lots more too...so any of those names may be appointed to the new pope, There have been 23 Pope John's, 13 Pope Leo's, 15 Pope Benedict's, 13 Pope Innocent's etc. etc. etc. lets see a cool name for the pope.

Labels: random

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Japanese car called the Ellica. Its completely battery powered using lithium ion batteries, but unlike the common perception of electric cars it is extremely powerful. It can travel 370 km/h, it can go from 1-100 km/h in 4 seconds and it can travel 300 km before the batteries need to be charged. Another great thing is that braking energy is absorbed back into the motors to recharge the batteries. Apparently pollution is becoming a big problem in Japan and they are actually looking into ways to solve the problem. The problem at present is that the batteries for this car cost $230 000 making the total for the car $350 000, but if more is put into the research and development of such projects the price will drop drastically also making this world less dependent on oil. Anyway I see it as a step in the right direction.

Labels: random

So since I got those things that you plug in that emit a high freqency which you arent supposed to be able to hear but I can hear them and theyre really annonying, I havent seen a mouse in the house and I just asumed that they had left. but the truth came out when I took a close look at the butter I had left on the counter. As you can see from all the tongue marks on the butter the mice are still in full force. I think that mice may have tongues like cats because this is what butter looks like after a cat has been licking it, but I also get the feeling that it might be teeth marks from the mice.

Labels: random

I have come to the decision that Monopoly is best played when you play it 100% by the rules....none of this land on free parking get $500 bullshit, no land on Go and get $400 bullshit, no paying into the middle, and when someone doesn't want to buy a property it goes up for auction...literally no fucking around.....it works out for a much better game....it does work best when you play it on a computer so the comp can deal with all the bullshit....it is hard to negotiate trades with computer based characters though.....They're too fucking logical....its harder to dupe them.

one other thing...I want to make a t-shirt with a picture of the monopoly guy in jail.....That's funny to me.

Labels: random

this has been fucking with my head....in the picture below the middle interlocking piece is the same colour in both pictures.....you may think its impossible but if you cover the rest of the pic up so you can only see that part it will all come clear.

Labels: random

SAN FRANCISCO -- Baba Ganoush, left, plays with her cloned sibling Tabouli. The cloned kittens are the first two cats cloned by chromatin transfer, a new cloning technology developed by Genetic Savings & Clone, a pet gene banking and cloning company, who produced the kittens as a precursor to production of the first batch of cat clones for the public. It will cost $50,000 to have your cat cloned.

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I used to say "Im not a big fan of Matt Damon but he's in two of my favourite movies". those movies being Good Will Hunting and Rounders, but I saw him interviewed today and he was actually a straight up dude, none of the hollywood shit just an actor who wants to be an actor. I dont know the purpose of this entry.

I bought new shoes today <----- thats the purpose.

I dont consider myself to be brand loyal or to be a shill for any product or company but I bought a specific brand of shoes at least a year and half ago ( I wish that I had kept track of when I had bought them ) anyway they have been the most durable shoes Ive ever had. I walk over 10km a day so the amount of wear I do to a pair of shoes is at least 10 times the average person...anyway the last pair of shoes have lasted all this time until the soles wore down ( I feel a good pair of shoes lasts until the soles wear down without any of the stitching coming undone). So today I went back to the shoe store where I got the shoes and dug out the last remaining pair that they had of the same shoes...and now I will know exactly how long they last because of this stupid pointless post.

Labels: celebrities, movies, random

Abstract spam poetry volume 2

word jealous mile welcome delight near discipline? water independence hardly
entertain island late season principle carriage occasion! daughter window
together brilliant while just ache, used one check weeks learned drink prairie
has below problem! meeting stay kitchen therefore youth rather ten.
college health cannot fresh nice figure instead" piece circumstances lady sale
appearance explain world else" seeing honest pity anxious,
stopped often luckily supper occurrence because step list, nice meeting reached
definite swimming thing practically class soon" definitely difficult cause
considered free finished sunday subject her, such box horse argue done got.
shook escape charge problem pattern wanted quick walk past, being develop
development fast appearance all handwriting arms, church he evening bit control
brilliant added drink dog. called body quite deal alone build committee,

Labels: random

This is the text in a spam message I recieved today....W3F

discipline wednesday wine quarter continuous near destroy" were made dare
immediate development miss. opinion replied world shall usually rising drew
blood, road seem next raise moved this justice clock visit" ten choose real
grave aware tough wind,
have to-morrow seem mothers arrived down else. whatever burst lie he finding
responsible bed. destroy satisfied bird everyone usedto sandwich picture
yesterday frightened! light next college ladies all him air develop. profession
whether humorous period they discuss point!
sometimes body corner knew itself another, usually central room rather, nothing
eleven placed women hungry to-morrow most lived main" stairs always again
neighbor seemed ticket reply joy giving placed"
wreck temper oclock manners son itself desire? size none books think met lie
usually those except, ways doing conscience dropped social temper final safe?
secret pair goes number calendar, exciting profession bread living.


its actually almost like abstract poetic genius...I like the part about "destroy satisfied bird" and the ending is great "exciting profession bread living" I think what we all hope for in life is an exciting profession bread living.

Labels: random

When I heard that Munch's "the Scream" had been stolen I thought 2 things.... 1. I'm glad that I got to see it in person (in 1997) 2. Why wouldn't those bastards let me take a picture of it when I did see it. The painting may never be recovered and I had a chance to take a photo of it but the fuckers at the museum wouldn't let me, even after I said that I wouldn't use a flash. Its ridiculous that they worried so much about photos being taken but yet the security was lax enough for 2 dudes to walk into the museum and pull it off the wall.

Labels: random

I just finished watching the 1962 version of "Day of the Triffids" and the story is pretty much 100% different than the book, which is actually probably a good thing seeing as most adaptations turn out rather poorly in comparison after reading the novel. The only things about the story they kept were the fact that a meteor shower blinds everyone on earth and that there are flesh eating plants called triffids. I didn't mind it but I still preferred the book ( but when the hell isn't that the case.

Humans probably aren't supposed to live as long as we do, I think if we were we would grow a third (and possibly forth and fifth) set of teeth at some point. It doesn't make sense that our first set of teeth last us 8 years and then the next set are supposed to last the next 60. I keep wanting to say "pair" of teeth but that definitely isn't right.

The other day while in the supermarket an old man with about 10 items let me ahead of him when I had 2 items, I said "are you sure" and he said "sure I don't have anywhere to be". This made me happy and Karmacly balanced out my experiences with old men and line ups, because about a year ago while waiting in line for coffee an old man butted in front of me. I was furious, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs what an injustice it was. I wanted to say "WHAT THE FUCK YOU OLD BASTARD, IM IN A RUSH ON MY WAY TO WORK AND YOU PUSH IN FRONT OF ME, YOU DON'T HAVE ANYWHERE TO BE UNTIL YOUR MEETING WITH ST. PETER TO JUDGE YOUR LIFE". I held in my anger that day ( it was also 2 days after I had quit smoking so I was pretty fucking edgy) but in the end everything is balanced out. I guess the moral of the story is some old men are kind and some are big selfish dickholes, actually I shouldn't really separate old people from everyone else because the same applies for everyone. Big selfish dickholes get old too.

Labels: movies, random

Sometimes coincidences happen that are way too bizarre to be random, either that or I just had a really strange day .

for the past 5 minutes I've been trying to figure out a way to explain this story and it wont work out right so I will have to paint the scene with an abstract brush.

cafe-->bar
outstanding warrant-->12 o'clock news
bar-->cafe


fuck it...I'm tired.

Labels: random

Today I wish I was Greek. Greek with a mild gambling problem. Going into the Euro Cup the odds on Greece were 80 to 1. So if I would have dropped say 100 thousand dollars at the beginning of it all I would have 8 million dollars. Even this last game the odds against Greece were 11 to 1.

Good Time is here again. Good Time ran away last week. Good Time came back. Good Time Seems wary of this house. Good Time was born at the old house. Good Time looked like a mouse when he was born. Good Time hid behind the furnace and cried all day yesterday. Good Time hid under my bed and cried all day today. Good Time hasn't been eating. Good Time is the name of my cat. I think Good Time can see ghosts.

I think cats in general can see ghosts. They definitely seem to be watching things move that us humans cant see. They do have much better night vision than us so maybe they have some kinda infared thing going on.

Labels: random

Where to begin holy crap.....

The news story today about the friendly dog that stop the killing spree still floors me. In case you haven't heard a man from New Brunswick drove to Toronto and went to a park with the intention of going on a killing rampage, but while at the park a dog ran up to him and started playing with him. Apparently the man was an animal lover (more-so than a human lover I guess) and he thought that if there was such a nice dog in the neighborhood that the people must also be nice so he turned himself into the first police officer he saw. They found multiple guns with over 6000 rounds of ammunition along with knives and a machete. He was going to just kill people at random.
The dog should get his own tv show where he roams around from town to town and fixes problems (pretty brilliant idea for a show) I've got a song for it too.... there's a voice that keeps on calling me, on the road that's where I'll always be... the show should be called "the dog that stopped a massacre".
In all seriousness though this case with the dog is the 3rd thing that makes me believe in a higher power.

I read the book "All Day Breakfast" by: Valerie Joy Kalynchuk the other day it was a really good little book. Much love to my sister who bought it for me.

Labels: random

People just dont seem to get excited about politics like they used to.

Also people dont seem to wear hats like they used to. Look at that pic its a sea of hats.

Labels: photography, random

Last night I came face to face with a raccoon on my back porch, I was going to the store to buy ginger ale and he was eating garbage as ususal. We both stood there for a minute just staring at each other, like a couple of deer in the headlights. I took a couple of pics of him but when I went to get closer he ran and hid under the back porch. It got me thinking about raccoons, I really cant picture them living in the wild at all. It seems like they are exclusively city creatures, just moping around at night feasting on peoples trash. I guess I never knew where they lived before either, but now I know its under the porches of the world. Well at least my porch.

Labels: random

Today I picked up this little game called blip. I was hoping that a little electronic device called "blip" would create some interesting vintage blip sounds. Well I was mistaken because it makes no sounds next to the sound of the timer counting down. To make matters worse I got bored of the damn game in under 10 seconds. I guess a "digital" game from 1977 has little to offer in todays world apart from a little nostalgia, but hell its older than me so it does nothing. Anyone want to buy it?

Labels: random

It never ceases to amaze me how much people buy into without even thinking...

Today I heard some people raving on about a low carb diet as if it was the greatest thing ever. I dont know why the millions of people on these low carb diets cant see that its just another diet like the many before it. Cutting Carbs as opposed to cutting fat, wow what a brilliant idea. The expression "Everything in moderation" is best for this situation. If you eat a balanced diet and exercise you probably wont need to go on a fad diet. It wont be long before cutting fat out of your diet is what youre "supposed" to do again.
anyway this is just a very stupid example of what I was thinking about...

A long time ago someone came up with the brilliant crux of marketing "create a problem and then sell a solution". I really have to commend the person who came up with that one casue it really is quite amazing that it was pulled off so perfectly. Its actually so far advanced from the basic concept that it is more like web. Here is a breakdown.

Fast Food/Junk Food<---You are too busy to cook for yourself, and processed food is so fucking good....you know you cant live without it.
+
TV<---Hours and hours of non-stop programming that provide you with commercials (which are really just public service announcements about new products. Isnt it amazing that they provide this service for us for free?? and cable is so cheap.) Tv also provides an alternative to exercise, a window into "celebrity" life and the the overall feeling of inadaquacy.
+
Magazines/Movies<----More unrealistic expectations for the general public.

But wait maybe not...you can be happy too if you just try out this new diet...it'll
work we swear...
by the way the diet industry is a multi-million (probably billion) dollar industry.

I know this all seems very simple and if youre thinking all this is so obvious that it needs not be stated then I commend you, but Ive had similar conversations with people who honestly never think about this stuff and amusingly enough find it rather profound. Most of those people are what you call consumers.

Labels: health, random

Within the past few days Vivendi Universal completed a merger with NBC and it was barely a blip in the news...This kind of stuff isnt even on peoples radar. I dont know if many people know that there are only 6 major media moguls left. Bertelsmann, News Corp., Vivendi Universal, Walt Disney, Viacom and AOL - Time Warner. (although I think that Time Warner dropped AOL, Im not sure if thats true but I think I remeber reading that.) Anyway if you could see all the holdings of these individual companies you would be surprised to learn how much information is each of these companies control, and as they continue to merge more and more of everything we see, read and hear is controlled by less and less people (higher up the ladder). Six compaines may seem like a lot but when you look at the breakdown these 6 compaines were once hundreds of individual companies. Someday there may only be one or two of these moguls left yet everytime a merger or buyout happens it is buried in the news. Can you figure out why that might be.

Labels: random

Gas Prices are the highest they have ever been and today was one of the earliest smog advisories reported-----> The answer seems simple to me.

Labels: random

Its really humid up here today-> Diet Caffeine free Coke isnt as bad as I thought I remembered it was-> That old guy at the hardware store looks like a caricature of a cheap imitation of a muppet-> the crack head was back in the office today standing beside a puddle of spit yammering on about the most absurd things yet acting as if it is important business (I guess it is to him)-> I bought a copy of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" for $5 (its worth just buying movies when the cost $5, when you take into account the $3 rental charge and the inevitable multiple day late fines)-> Latoya really shouldnt have been voted off though, I really saw her winning the competition.

Labels: movies, music, random