Doooh Head

Towards the fundraising that we have been doing lately for my sons school trip to Europe, we had an auction at a local pub.  To say it was a success would be under-stating the whole event.  Every parent of every child going on the trip was expected to get from any business, 5 (minimum) donations of something.  It could be a coupon for a free movie rental, or it could be a free dinner for two.  In any case, us parents mustered up over 130 items that were then auctioned off. There was everything from, like I suggested, free movie rentals, a circular saw, several Golfing tee times at various places, free dinners, lots of t-shirts and caps and stuff like that.  The auction itself was quite fun.  I’ve never really been to one and actually participated.  I bought a tool kit of various drill bits for $27, plus I got a pair of hockey tickets for $25.  I may have over paid for the drill bits but they will be of some use to me so that combined with the whole “its for a good cause” thing made me feel good about it.  All in all I think they doubled, in one fundraising event, the amount of money they had raised, all together.  It was a fun evening and raised alot of money, for a good cause, our children.

On the way home from the auction, it was very foggy out.  I didn’t feel it was a big deal as I could clearly see the yellow centre line, but my wife being the worry-wart that she is thought I was going too fast and suggested that an animal could pop out of nowhere and hit us, or rather we could hit it.  I have never had such occurrances so I wasn’t really concerened about it.  My wife on the other hand has had several instances of hitting birds and had deer jump out from the side of the road at her, etc.  Eventually I slowed down and no sooner than I had, a huge mother-fuckin-buck-of-a-deer decided to cross the road right in front of us!  Luckily he was on the other side of the road, but he was fricken HUGE!  I thought my wife was going to have a heart-attack.  Now what are the chances??!!  In all the years that I have lived out here in the boonies I have never seen any deer the size of that one.  My god it was huge!  Hunting season started out here recently…someone would have been happy to see him!

Yesterday my wife and I decided to go see the Movie Zorro.  My son didn’t want to see it, so we left him at home.  We enjoyed the movie, there was alot of action, and it was very fast paced.  About the only thing I didn’t like about it was that scene you see in the trailers for it, when the horse is on the train, rearing up.  It was too phoney for me.  After the movie we went out for dinner to the local Chinese food restaurant.  It was the typical buffet type food.  After that we hit Chapters.  My son put in his order for a new series of books that he was interested in.  My wife was looking for some new books as well.  I was only interested in getting one book.  The DaVinci Code.  I have read all of Dan Brown’s other books and I was trying to hold out to get it in paperback, but here in North America (apparently) they haven’t and likely won’t release it in that form until after the movie is out.  I’ll start that sometime this week.  I am at the end of Angels & Demons, but it is taking me longer to read for some reason.  I went to bed early last night just to finish reading it, but fell asleep before I could.

JOKE OF THE DAY:
Coming into the bar and ordering a double, the man leaned over

and confided to the bartender, “I’m so pissed off !”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the fellow rattled on, “but do you know what

REALLY, REALLY, REALLY pissed me off? When I looked down and saw

that my feet were only SIX inches off the ground!!”

Going through school, the class “Political Science” is not one that I ventured into or particpated in.  Nor do I remember it ever being offered.  I never went to college per se, but did do some post secondary education at a private institute, and I don’t remember any such courses being taught.  It just seems to becoming apparent (why all of a sudden, I don’t know) that what we call, or rather what I know of our political system, sucks!  Oh I know, thats not some new revelation, but there has to be a better system, a better way to prevent the bullshit that is going on (ala the Gomery Inquirey, patronism, etc).  I think part of the problem is that these dip-shits get into office, and once there, they stay there sucking the public dry.  Maybe its time we try something different.

Maybe we need to have a way to elect a Prime Minister.  Thats it.  No “elected” MP’s, no Ministers.  I don’t mean don’t have them, I mean come up with another way to have them but to prevent the “old-cronyism” that is occurring by preventing these people from being there too long.  Perhaps what we need is a system where there is no political parties.  The Prime Minister is the only “elected” person, everyone else (MP’s, MLA’s, Ministers, etc) are not elected but appointed, or to use a different term, “drafted”.  Instead of voting for some dip-shit, who just happens to be the one person in the area who has enough money and or the guts to even want to do such a thing, appoint people to these positions, just like jury duty.  This will prevent the “old-boys”network” type of thing from ever happening, because every so often a new person is put in place.  These new people, who may have absolutely no experience in politics at all will be forced into it.  Think of how this may change how things work?  Instead of having parties fighting over each other simply because they are in a different party, these people would have no choice but to simply act the way their constituents want them to, or how the job dictates.  They won’t have to worry about whether they get appointed to this commitee, or that one.  They will have one job, to represent their constituents, and thats it.  They might actually get stuff done in the House of Commons.  Instead of fighting over one party being better than the others, or one being corrupt and not the others, they just do their damn work, for their constituents.  Imagine that?  What a change? 

Perhaps they have a 2 year term.  Their jobs would be streamlined to accomodate the things that need to be done, and thats it.  No back-room bullshit happen, everyone is just expected to get things done.

Oh I know this is probabley a very nieve perspective.  I did warn you that I have absolutely no Poltical Science knowledge or experience.  It just seems to me that alot of these damn politians’ time is wasted doing stuipid shit and that all costs us, the tax-paying public, our friggin hard-earned money.  I think part of the problem is that these politians are mostly high-priced lawyers who know the ins and outs of, and how to cover their own asses so well, that so much of their time is wasted, and thus our money is wasted.  Its all just very frustrating sometimes.

JOKE OF THE DAY:

A woman took her car to her mechanic.
She told him “Every time I take any of my friends
out in my car after a while there is this terrible
smell. It never happens when I am on my own.”
This quite intrigued the mechanic so he said, “OK,
lets go for a spin and see what the problem is”. Off
they went. She drove down a one-way street in the
wrong direction at 60 MPH, swerving, hitting the
curb on both sides of the street, narrowly missed
three pedestrians in pedestrian crossings, ran
several red lights, and just missed a policeman on
street traffic duty.
They returned to the shop and she said, “There it is
now; there’s that terrible smell. Can you smell it?”
“Smell it? lady, I’m sitting in it”.

The time is fast approaching.  The time when my 16 year old son will be flying the coop.  Oh not permanently, although I wonder sometimes if he wants to.  He will be going on a European trip this March break with his school.  He will be going to London, Paris, Rome and I beleive into the Swiss Alps.  It’ll be quite the trip.  I wish my wife and I could embark on such a trip, although my wife wants to go on a cruise somewhere warm.  I hope, if the opportunity ever presented itself, that she would be agreeable to such a European trip.  I think she would, but the cruise would defintely take precedence.  This trip, although we have been fundraising and involved in for months now has come to the forefront as of late as we have until the end of the month to come up with the entire balance owing on the trip.  It was a bit of a shock, but I think we will be able to afford it, according to my wife.

I have to keep telling myself, regardless of how horribly my son treats us, and speaks to us (typical 16 year old bullshit) that he will remember this trip for the rest of his life and, like us, perhaps never again have such an opportunity.  When I was 12 or 13 I was fortunate to be able to embark on my own school trip.  Growing up in Toronto, we were happy enough to have friends to play with and bicycles to ride.  Thats all that mattered back then, but when a trip was presented to us, to goto Quebec, my Mother made it happen for me somehow.  We weren’t the poorest family around, but we weren’t the richest either.  Since Quebec was close, compared to going to Europe, we were able to do so on a bus. It always seems, that these trips never have the people going with whom you were prefer to be there with.  None of my friends, that I hung around with went, so there were just people there who I knew and was acquainted with, but wasn’t necessarily friends with.

I remember that we drove through Montreal.  For me it might as well have been a foreign country.  The year was 1975, a year before the Montreal Olympics of 1976.  I took pictures of the Olympic villiage while under construction and I got a few shots of the big “Oh” (The Olympic Stadium) as we drove by in the bus.  Our ultimate destination was Quebec City.  We had been taught French at school (which at that time was a fairly new thing) so we thought we were well prepared.  In a way we were, and we did use as much of the language as we could, but most, if not ALL of the people that we encountered in Quebec City, spoke English as well.  We went to St. Anne de Beau-pres (sp?), a huge ancient (in terms of North American ancient-ness) church whos claim to fame was its miriculas healing abilities of cripples.  They boasted a huge pillar made up of crutches from all of the people that were “healed”.  For a 12 year old, meh!  We spent an entire day, free to do what we wanted in “Hought-ville” (sp?) and “Basse-ville”.  We of course spent the day going from tourist shop to tourist shop, up and down the whole area.  It was like being in a whole different country.  The experience was great and one that I have yet to forget.  I only hope that someday my son will have similar memories of his European trip, it would be nice to also know that he appreciates the financial effort involved on our part, to allow it to happen.  Maybe, someday.

JOKE OF THE DAY:

Queen
Elizabeth II was visiting one of New York’s finest hospitals and during
her tour of the wards she passed a room where one of the male patients
was masturbating.

The doctor replied, “Same problem, better health plan.”

I saw it in the theatres and enjoyed it for what it is.  It was released on DVD yesterday so I thought I would take the opportunity to go an buy it and complete the entire 6 movie set.  Future Shop (here in Canada) was selling it for $20 but only on Nov. 1st.  I showed up after work, perhaps my first mistake.  There was a big and fancy display for the movie as well they had someone in a Darth Vader costume there helping to promote its sale.  They also sold light sabres and other Star Wars stuff.  I was on my way home from work, so all I was interested in doing was purchasing the movie, and being on my way.  Life is never that simple.  I went up to the display to get the movie and almost walked out with episode II.  I turned around and realised that they had all of the episodes there as well as box sets.  I didn’t want any of that.  I already own the other five movies.  I just wanted episode III.  I continued to look around, went to different aisles of movies.  Nothing.  I asked a few of the sales people about it, and beleive it or not, they had sold out!?  WTF?  Then I realised what they had done.   They had put it on for that low price to lure people into the store to buy other shit, and that they only took so many copies of it and sold it for that price.  Once those were gone, that was it.  Well that just pissed me off.  I mean I knew they had many many more boxes of the movie in the back room.  They just wanted to hold out selling it to get the extra $6 the next day.  Well I asked someone else if I could get one (as I knew they had more) at the sale price, and they insisted there weren’t any left.  I said they were full of shit and left the store.  I was actually going to go and buy a new set of headphones for use here at work, as well I was in the market for the biggest damn TV I could find (well maybe…), but too bad for them.  They lost a $6,000-$7,000 sale to me because they wouldn’t give me a movie for $20.  Oh well, I guess they didn’t want my business.  I hate being made to feel like I succumbed to their damn marketing trickery.  I may never go into that store again.  Not because I didn’t get the movie for $20, but because they tricked me into going there in the first place. 

Also, now I’ll wait to buy the damn movie until it shows up in the $6 crappy-movie-bin at Walmart.  Too bad for them all!

JOKE OF THE DAY:

One morning while making breakfast, a man walked up to his wife and pinched her on her bottom and said,

“You know if you firmed this up we could get rid of the postman, the gardener, the pool man and your brother.”

JOKE OF THE DAY:

One day a college professor of Psychology was greeting his new college class.

He stood up in front of the class and said, “Would everyone who thinks he or she is stupid please stand up?”

After a minute or so of silence, a young man stood up.

“Well, hello there sir. So you actually think you’re a moron?” the professor asked.

The kid replied, “No sir, I just didn’t want to see you standing there all by yourself.”

I’ve been watching the internet change over the last 20 years and quite frankly I don’t know if I like where it’s going.  It used to be fun.  Exploring it, looking around, finding things out there that you would never even consider looking for outside of it in the real world.  Now-a-days, corporations have gotten more and more intrenched in it and the internet has become more commercialized than it ever has been or perhaps even was originally designed to be.  Now it seems the internet is on a collision course with our other bastion of time-wastery, TV.

Now, how is this going to play out I wonder?  Is the internet just going to be another delivery system for TV or is there some other hidden agenda involved here whose main purpose is to subject us all to even more advertizing crap?  There has been talk of commercials on our damn cell phones, we get adds on just about every web page we hit, and in our inboxes…well, we don’t have to be reminded of how annoying that is.

The big hype is that you will be able to watch what TV shows you want, when you want.  Of course this is all going to cost you.  Imagine if you pelase, you will have to have a “media PC” setup near your TV, but instead of paying for cable to watch TV from, you will only have cable (at least) to access the internet from, and then of course, your TV shows that you want to watch will be streamed to your media pc, then to your TV.  Now how is that all going to work?  Will you have to specifically goto say Comedy Central’s website, order (pay for?) a TV show you want to watch, stream it to your media PC then watch it whenever?  So instead of going to one delivery system (your local cable provider), you will have to know of, and know to goto each TV shows’ website to get the content you want to watch.  This will be good for the shows you know you want to watch, but what about new shows that you don’t necessarily know you want to watch yet?  And how will you find out about them?  Does this mean there will be commercials on these TV shows that you download?  How sucky will that be?  And what will be the cost to get a show?  A dollar?  More?  Less?  How will the cost of watching TV shows like this compare to paying $35/month for cable or satellite?  I don’t see how they can make it comparable, so what would be the benefit to me?  With satellite now, I may not be able to select when I want to watch a particular show, but I currently have enough of a range of different times from which I can watch a show that it is satisfactory enough, at least for me.  And what will all of this kind of TV show streaming do to the overall speed of the internet?  Sometimes it seems slower than it ever has been, but doing this, I’m sure will only add to the confusion.

Perhaps this TV-streaming won’t be for everyone.  I know I will, and already am, questioning whether or not I will actually consider it, but my concern is that at some point it won’t be an option, it will just be what we have, and thats it.  I want choice, I want to be able to choose whether or not I want to use this ability.  Like Pay-per-view.  Its there, I have access to it whenever I want, but its not the only mechanism I have access to for watching movies.  My concern is that since the proliferation of the internet throughout the world that this may be the only way (left) to watch “future” TV, and I won’t like it.

JOKE OF THE DAY:

A woman and a baby were in the doctor’s examining room, waiting for the doctor to come in.

The doctor arrived, examined the baby, checked his weight and
found it somewhat below normal. The doctor asked if the baby was breast
fed or bottle fed.
“Breast fed,” the woman replied.

“Well, strip down to your waist,” the doctor asked. She did. He
pressed, kneaded, rolled, cupped, and pinched both breasts in a
detailed, rigorously thorough examination.
Motioning for her to get dressed he said, “No wonder this baby is under weight! You don’t have any milk.”

“I know,” she said, “I’m his grandmother, but I’m glad I came.”

I have a cell phone.  So do millions and millions of other people in this world of ours.  How many of us actually use or partake in all of the “addons” that cell phone companies offer up?  With new phones these days you can get new ring tones for them as well as images that can be used as background images on your phone, screen savers, themes so that they look a certain way, you can get games for them, as well as other applications that will run on them.  Why?  I mean, to what end?  Its only a damn phone, plus each thing you get, you have had to pay for it whether you realise it or not.  Its not a gaming console…its not an MP3 music player…its not good at, or good enough at allowing people to surf the internet from and/or its too damn expensive to do so, so whats the point?  My little Nokia can do all of that stuff, but wow is it painful to add a name and phone number into it quickly.  Text messaging, though can be fun is just a huge pain in the ass on these tiny phones.  Maybe my problem is that I have big thumbs and its difficult to press only one of these tiny buttons at once.  Voice recognition, in any form on these things are too crappy to even think about, plus the usability of them, just in general is getting slower and slower.  My little cell phone, suppossedly runs all kinds of Java-based applications, and most of the software pre-installed on it are Java based. Cool!  No, not really.  I have noticed in the last little while that all of a sudden, my damn cell phone is getting slower and slower.  Ya know how in Windows, after using it for months and months, and even years and years, it all of sudden is slow in processing stuff?  What was at one time seemed like a “fast computer” is now slower than mollasses running up hill in the middle of winter.  Well thats what my cell phone is like now and I don’t think there should be any reason why it is like that.  I tried adding a game once.  A free game offered up by the cell phone service provider.  It sucked the biggest monkey balls ever!  So I deleted it.  Ever since though, my cell phone seems to be very very slow at doing what should come “naturally” to it.  Displaying its main window now takes a long time.  Snapping a pic using the built-in camera is horribly slow.  To top it all off, I got the special cable to allow the phone to be connected to a computer.  This way, any pictures I take, I can simply download them to my computer and do what I want to them instead of using the providers’ “service” for doing such a thing, which costs you each time you upload a picture.  Well that worked fine for a few days, now the damn software for it, is so slow and crappy, that it barely works.  I used to be able to sync up the built-in calendar with my Outlook here at work, but that doesn’t work anymore.  Half the time while I am downloading my pictures, it craps out saying that it lost connection to the phone.  Why?  It doesn’t tell you.  It just stops working.
I came across, yesterday, while surfing the internet for something, some software that allows the same thing, from my phone, but isn’t software built by the manufacturer of the phone.  I was a little perplexed that such a thing even existed.  I haven’t tried it out yet, but I am going to.  The Nokia software blows huge chunks!

JOKE OF THE DAY:

A
mother and father took Little johnny to a nude beach. As the boy walked
along the beach, he noticed that some of the ladies had boobs bigger
than his mother’s, and asked her why.

Shortly after, the boy returned again. He promptly tells his
mother, “Daddy is talking to the dumbest girl on the beach and the
longer he talks, the dumber he gets.”

Upon feeling cornered by the Canadian media during a visit to Canada’s capital, Ottawa, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, waved her hand in front of her, Jedi-like, and said “You do not need the US to return billions of dollars of illegally imposed duties on Canadian softwood lumber”.  The media then marveled at how nice of a smile she had.
Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew was seen “head-bobbing” in agreement.  When asked about it, he responded with “It is an important issue. But it is a trade dispute. Duties, what duties?”

In other news, the Canucks extend win streak to six.

The suppossed hurricane Wilma, that was due to hit Nova Scotia, fizzled out to nothing more than a typical “Nor-easter” that just contained significant amounts of rain, a bit of wind, and nothing more.  “We’re all okay…Mom!”

JOKE OF THE DAY:

An old man was driving down the Interstate at 22 miles per hour, never going faster or slower.

‘Well, we just came off Interstate 134.’

A-ron (a co-worker) sent me this picture. I had to show it off on my blog(s).

Hurricane Wilma is on its way here today. By the look of the satellite imagery it will stay mostly offshore but you never know. I was going to stay home and batten-down-the-hatches, but decided that my wife is home today so she can take of that. Besides I have a car-pool responsibility everyday. Its actually more of a hassle to call her and tell her that I’m not going into work than it is for me to actually get up and just go. If I don’t take her, then she has no alternative means of getting to her school. Is that my fault, no, but the guilt of it all is still there just the same.

JOKE OF THE DAY:

Willie comes home from work, as he walks in the door Ethel grabs him and says, “Come on, Willie, we’re going upstairs!”

Willie replies, “OK. That’s one of my favorite things!”

As soon as they get upstairs, Ethel grabs Willie, throws him down on the bed and jumps aboard. Willie protests, “Stop, Stop, We can’t do it that way anymore!”

Ethel asks, “What do you mean Willie, I like it that way, and so do you.”

Willie replies, “You’re sure right on that, in fact that is one of my favorite things. But if we do it that way any more I’ll lose my job.”

Ethel asks, “What do you mean Willie? That doesn’t make any sense!”

Willie explains, “The boss called me in the office today and told me, ‘Willie, You screw up one more time, and you’re fired!’”

This is what I woke up to on Saturday:

Thats right…a mouse swimming in our toilet.  Oh an he was more than alive.  I tried flushing him, twice, but when I described doing that later to my wife, I got berated for even attempting it.  I figured if a load of shit can go down the toilet, it can suck down a mouse without any problems.  He just didn’t want to go.  I had to reach in and grab him out.  He didn’t like that either.  He also didn’t like getting smacked against the sidewalk outside and then ending up in the garbage, but thats what he gets for preventing me from having my morning dump!

Went to see the movie Doom, starring the Dwane “The Rock” Johnston.  It was ok.  I thought the video game was better.  Scarrier.  We ended up renting and watching the movie Crash.  Now that was disturbing.  The scene with the little girl almost made me cry.

Took the dogs to the dog wash…we could have just left them outside on Sunday as it rained all day.  They have been doing alot of scratching lately, so we decided to give them a nice flea bath.  They didn’t like it.  Later, while we were watching TV, Rollie (the male dog) was sitting beside me on the couch and I was petting him, when I noticed a funny growth on his back.  My wife and I checked it out and found that he had a tick, and it was full, of blood.  My wife went and got some rubbing alcohol and soaked the little blood sucker until she was able to pull him out.  You have to make them let go, you just can’t pull them out else you end up leaving their jaws stuck in the dog, and thats when they can do alot of damage.  She got all of it.  The dog is ok.

JOKE OF THE DAY:

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT NEWFOUNDLAND & THE NEWFIES!!!

If you’re a Newfie,you should be proud! Here are a few tidbits
of information that you may have never known before:

WE WERE……

The first province to respond to the Titanic distress signal.
The first to vaccinate for smallpox.
The first to host a transatlantic flight.
The first to have wireless communication in the world.
The first place to discover proof of the theory of continental drift.

WE HAVE……

The oldest street in North America.
The oldest city in North America.
The oldest rock in the world.
The oldest continuous sporting event.(Regatta Day rules!)
The largest university in Atlantic Canada.
The most pubs per square foot in Canada.(George Street)
The longest running radio program in North America.
Caught the world’s largest invertebrate. (giant squid)

WE ARE……

The funniest people in Canada. (ask anybody)
The only province that has four identifiable flags.
The only province able to land the space shuttle. (Stephenville)
The most giving people in Canada (Stats Canada)

A NEWFOUNDLANDER……

Built the world’s first artificial ice arena.
Invented the gas mask.
Was once governor of northern Rhodesia.
Was with Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg

WE ARE THE ONLY PROVINCE TO HAVE IT’S OWN……..

Encyclopedia.
Dictionary.
Pony.
Dogs.
Cultural publication.