Bears repeating.

Trying desperately to find something worth watching on the boob tube I realize that every second and third commercial is about weight loss.

Pills that make you sweat, various torture devices for exercise with and without effort. This book, that book, hypnosis, palates, colonics, no carbs, protein power. The list goes on and on.

I'm sorry, but have people really failed to figure this out?

I have common sense, I know what I should be eating. I know that proper diet and exercise is the way to do it. BUT. I, like most, have no will power. I feel your pain, I really do.

If you can't rely on your own common sense, and have no will power like me. There is only one answer. I know I have mentioned this before but apparently people have not gotten the message.

Weight Watchers.

Don't laugh, people. Weight Watchers is the only program that works. And it is for one reason and one reason only.

It's not the cards, or the menu, or the counting of points. They change their program every other year. It ain't even Fergie.

The only thing that keeps you from wolfing down that extra large pizza solo, is the thought of that lady. You know the one. The old broad, the weight watchers lifer. You step on the scale and she gives you this pitiful look and says, "Oh dear, you gained a pound."

That chick is your will power. And she is stronger than you will ever be. You might think a month down the road that you don't need her. You have all the books, the calculator, the matching bag and daytimer. You don't need to pay this bitch to weigh you every week. But you are wrong, dead wrong.

The second you cut her loose, you are toast. She is what is keeping you from sitting down on the couch and polishing off 3 tubs of Haagen Dazs.

Weight Watchers is forever baby, deal with it.

Well-oiled machine.

Pro support at the Undisclosed Customer Service Center™™ has recently gone 6-6 Monday-Friday PST. However, Americans being who they are, rarely take that for an answer and continue to call the number.

Sunday (the first official day here for the new hours)there are no pro agents scheduled, because pro is closed. Makes sense right?

However, the brain surgeons in charge have forgotten how to turn the phones off. By 11am, the home planet calls to ask why there is no one answering the phones. These being the same Rhodes Scholars who take care of the scheduling. There is 20 people on hold waiting. Frantic phone calls ensue. They manage to get some people to come in for OT.

But, and this is a big but. They can't get them to stay very long. By 8:30pm the place is empty. So who do they turn to? Tech routers. There are only 5 of us, that is usually all we need, since it is Sunday night.

So, there we are 5 tech routers and a team manager, a little blond chick. She twits around switching us from queue to queue. My blood was boiling. I finally comment to the girl beside me, loud enough for the blond chick to hear.

"So, is Blond Chick trained in Pro?"

"Ya, she is a pro TM."

"Perhaps she might think about strapping on a headset and taking a fuckin' call? If she sends me an email thanking me for my 'help' I will lose my mind. Help implies we are in it together....which we are most definitely not!"

And what do you know, 2 minutes later she was on the phones.

Sometimes you have to help them come to the right conclusion.

Just because your you're paranoid does not mean people are not out to get you.

I just wanted some coffee cream and sour cream. That's all. Is that so much to ask?

Apparently I had a contract out on me today. That is the only way to describe it. I felt like every other person on the planet was out to get me. Starting with my downstairs neighbor.

I come out to get in the car and she has me blocked into the driveway. WTF? The driveway is three cars wide once you get inside. But she parks right in the entry. Fuck you, I drove up on the lawn and escaped.

Then I am behind this idiot that is going 10 and swerving all over the road. It made a quarter mile ride take about 10 minutes. I finally get into the store, guess what? No sour cream.

Back on the road again. And again, I am behind this idiot who can't read a speed limit sign and has no idea what a turn signal is. He narrowly misses getting clipped by a semi.

The next store in line is also out of sour cream and they seem to think that their coffee cream is worth a dollar more than everywhere else. NOT. I am waiting to turn out on to the road from the parking lot when some crazy old guy flies out of left field and cuts right out in front of me.

Finally I get safely? into the grocery store. Well the automatic door was acting like someone was controlling it. Every time I stepped through it, it would close on me. It took three tries and finally I jumped through like Tom Cruis on MI.

This all without my morning coffee. It had better be worth it. I get my cream's and head for the checkout. A little girl who is way too young to have a little girl runs her cart up the back of my ankle. FUCK! I can feel that she has tore the skin. What next? I refrain from strangling the bitch, I just need coffee.

A two minute trip to the store, takes 40 minutes. I am not a happy camper.

Happy Belated Anniversary to me.

Again I missed my blog anniversary. It was Sunday, March 10, 2002.

Where has the time gone?

Happy St. Patrick's Day.
A limerick:

There was a young man from Lyme.
Who couldn't get his limericks to sound right.
When they asked him why not.
It was said that he thought.
They were overyly long, and far too complex, possibly even dull.

That one kills me.

Drugged and beaten in India.

My sister celebrated the Holi Festival. That's her in the middle.



Apparently they ply you with a cocktails laced with puree'd pot and throw paint at you.



It looks like a lot of fun, don't it? (insert sarcastic look here) I had to look up this ritual, I thought she'd been had.



Maybe they made this shit up just for the foreigners. Take out their frustrations at being invaded by so many of them. Sort of like mass murder without the inconvenience of all those dead bodies.

Pistols at 40 paces.

So we finally brave the 150,000 kilometers to Antigonish for my son's ear appointment. Ok, so it's not that far, but it might as well be. I live in Canada and it's March. I am talking snow people, weather makes everything seem farther away. This appointment was rescheduled 3 times because of weather.

The stupid ear guy won't see us up here till we first meet in his office in Antigonish. It's all about the ability to bill the government.

Anyway, it takes us 45 minutes to get there and we go into the office. I had forgotten what a great bedside manner this moron has.

The whole time we were there (which incidentally was a grand total of 5 minutes) he spoke like the boy was not in the room. In a hoity toity British accent.

(If your playing along, read this while tilting your head back and looking down your nose. Speak as if something were nauseating you. Draw out the sentences and drip them with disdain.)

"Is he allergic to any medications?"

"Been hospitalized in the last 12 months?"

"Any issues with runny nose?" I finally look at the boy. How the hell should I know, he's 15. I stopped blowing his nose 10 years ago.

"Um, he's sittin' right there, why don't you ask him." This is when I get the first of many snotty looks from Heir Doctor. I know, he's British but he seemed like a nazi.

"Does he snore?" He is not going to speak to the boy.

"Does anyone in the household smoke?"

"Just me." He looks up over his glasses, really great snotty look. I am going to remember that one so I can use it myself. It was impressive.

"There will be no smoking within 100 meters of the child." The boy gets a smug look on his face.

"We have two options. One being inserting tubes in his eardrums."

"Whoa, we're going right to the scalpel?" Another snotty look.

"Two we can try medication..."

"That sounds better than cutting him open. I just have the one, you see..." He is generous with the snotty looks. I think it might be a physical thing, he has several really good snotty looks.

"Fine, we will start with these." He passes me a prescription. "Then we will test his hearing again. These medications will be taken by the child continuously without interruption." Heil Hitler! Geez, I almost said that out loud.

So we leave the office and the first thing out of the boys mouth is, "Ah Ha, you have to smoke 100 meters away from me."

"No, you are going to have to be 100 meters away from me when I smoke. Hope you have some good shoes. We should pick up a tape measure so you know when to stop."

I walk the floor.

Tonight I had one of the cushy jobs at the Undisclosed Customer Service Center™. I was walking the floor. This means I did not have to take calls. I was walking up and down the rows waiting for that deer-in-the-headlight look to come over one of the new hires in consumer customer service. I was there to answer questions. And what questions they were.

I have been a tech router for a while now, talking to techs and routing them to other techs. So I had forgotten what dense questions can be put to the unsuspecting cc agent.

"This lady can't tell if her caps lock is on or not."
"Is this a joke?"
"No, she says there are no lights on her keyboard."
"And the typing in all CAPS isn't tipping her off at all?"

"This guy just defraged his computer and now he has a trial version of the software on it. He never had it before, now he has it."
"He used the restore disk."
"He says he didn't."
"He's lying. He doesn't know he's lying but he is. Ask him 'how' he defraged."
Turns out he used the disk.

"This guy wants to know how to de-activate his software."
"Why?"
"He wants to format his device and start again."
"Once he formats, it will be de-activated."
How long did he wait on hold for that pearl of wisdom?

"This woman wants to know if we can do tech support on her computer without her being in front of it."
"Is that really a question?"
Blank stare.
Thanks for playing.

And another thing...

A co-worker asks how I got approved for a day off for tomorrow.

"Well at first she told me that I couldn't have it and I just calmly explained why I needed it. She agreed."

"Really? And that worked?"

"Yes, then I let go of her throat."

I am old. I ain't got time to waste.

I just endured watching two movies that I downloaded off the Oscar list. Capote and Munich.

How were they? Glad you asked. Let's just say that I wasted 4 hours of my life that I will never get back.

Both of these were based on true stories, well sort of.

In the case of Munich I am sure there is no proof that this guy headed up this task force that killed the Palestinians. But who the hell cares, it was a stupid movie. If they were going to make it up, they might have made it a bit more interesting. As it was I was routing for the PLO. I can't spoil it by telling you how it ends because I don't believe it did end. I thought maybe I didn't download the whole thing, but I was wrong. It was just stupid. Or I didn't get it. Either way, I am glad I didn't pay $10 to see it in the theatre.

Just when I thought I couldn't suffer any longer, I queued up Capote. Holy shit, what a yawner. I kept thinking that it would get better, but it never did. The only thing that kept me awake was the grating sound of Philip Seymour Hoffman doing his Capote impression. I am not even sure what the hell the movie was about. Was it about Capote? Cuz it didn't really get into his life, or what he was like. Was it about the murders? Can't say, it didn't really get into the details of that either. All I got out of it was that he was jealous of Harper Lee for writing To Kill a Mockingbird.

I did previously see A History of Violence, I enjoyed it. I thought it was a very interesting story. However, what perplexed me was that William Hurt got nominated for an Oscar for his role. I had to run it again, cuz I didn't remember him even being in it. He was, for about 5 minutes in the end. Just long enough to get shot in the head. What the hell is up with that? Viggo Mortensen was great in this movie, but he got nothing.

I also downloaded Crash, Syriana and Good Night and Goodluck. However, I am so disappointed with my movie experience today that I think I will hold off till next week to watch them.

And another thing...

Anyone else find a black rapping cowboy the least bit disturbing?

Hello? Can anyone hear me?

Haven't felt like posting lately.

But then again, who cares?

No one reads this shit anyway.

And the Oscar goes to...

Who the fuck cares.

Is anyone watching this? I am not quite through it yet. But I had more fun watching paint dry.

Basically it's video montages (preambled by speeches about how these movies absolutely must be seen on the 'big screen')no dig at the downloading community at all there. These riveting montages are interspersed with awards being given to people who no one knows for movies that no one has seen.

There were surprises. After all, with all the hoopla about the gay cowboy movie, we all figured they would bring it all home. But when Clooney got the first Oscar I thought "wow, this could be a good show". I was wrong. They faked me out by giving out the best actress oscar early.

Those Bastards!


Even the dead people montage was a yawner. Anyone recognize any name besides Richard Pryor? Hell I thought most of those people were already dead.

I was looking forward to the part where they have the original artists performing the best song nominees. I missed the chick from the song from the Crash. Never saw that one either. And the one from Hustle and Flow, well, I thought that was a joke. I think even Dolly was embarrassed by the song she sang, not one of her better ones. But when 'its hard out there for a pimp' won, I stopped paying attention.

Only funny part in the whole thing was when John Stewart looked at the camera incredulously and said, "In case your not keeping score. Martin Scorsese, zero oscars. Three 6 Mafia? One." Then even he couldn't supress a giggle. What the hell is up with that?

This year the pickin's were mighty slim. I never heard of half the movies and the ones I did hear of, I never wanted to see before and now I know I will never see them.

I can't even string a sentence together properly. This broadcast has sucked the intelligence out of me. This is truly 3 hours I will never get back.

And another thing...

Did I say three hours? Fuck, I am still suffering. But its like you can't take your eyes off it, you keep expecting it to get better. I am still waiting.

I'll tell you what's bugging me...

You can't say a prayer or mention God in school, but this kid can wear a 10-centimetre-long ceremonial dagger. Exactly which ceremony are you performing at school? Does it involve giving thanks to a superior being? Cuz, that ain't allowed.

You only give a shit because they are cute, I don't hear you say a word about how the pigs and chickens are killed.

Only till he figures out that that might be were he spends his golden years.

Oh ya, tell them they just can't come. That will stop 'em.

Holy Crap. The man is long dead. Who the hell cares now?

Whoa, another shocker. Anyone who ever called customer service for anything could have told you this one.

Ya better watch it now. Don't want to build up a resistance for those teen-age years when you will really need it.

And another thing...

I say to the boy, "I can't wait till you get your license so I don't have to drive you everywhere."

To which he replies, "I ain't driving this piece of shit."

And how was your day?