Political crack-ness

What possible objection (other than they are on crack) could a parent have for letting their children sing he national anthem in school?

N.B. school silences O Canada

"He would not say why the parents didn't want their kids taking part, citing privacy reasons."

Okay, I get the prayer thing....not all kids are the same religion.

BUT YOU ARE ALL IN CANADA!!!

If you don't want to be here...there's the door. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out.

If anyone out there has a credible explanation for why you would not want your children singing the national anthem of the fuckin' country you are residing in, lets hear it.

"Mommy, don't!" A child's final words.

Mom confesses to murder.

This sort of thing is what makes me think that the death penalty should be global. This woman held her daughter down and wrapped a piece of twine around her neck and strangled her. All for a man.

And no, the man did not tell her to do it. He expressed that he was unable to live with the child, and told the mother to choose. I doubt that this was what he had in mind but he was aware of what transpired after the fact. Yet he told no one.

I think he should be in jail as well, not driving around free in the same car that held the dead body of this little girl.

Her mother needs to be put down, after all, that's what they do if a dog bites. It should be much worse for a mother who murders her own child.

Don't you think?

Very Cool!

I thought this was very cool. A fullscreen gigapan of the inauguration.

So I am zooming in on faces, and you can get very tight. Then I ran across this...


What do you have to do to get erased from this thing?

Interesting.

"Borrowed" from My 2second Shelf Life.

You have the right man, why does it matter?

I get it. You are all excited, history in the making and all that.

But everyone is acting like this is the first black guy to get a job.

I mean, hasn't this election proven that there was really nothing stopping you from having a black president except yourselves? If all you wanted was a black president, then you would have voted for Jesse Jackson. All you had to do was get out there and vote.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like America is selling Obama a bit short. The media makes it sound like the only reason he got the job is because he is black.

America wanted the right person for the job, and I think they got him. It just so happens he is black.

Sick as a dog and beat to a snot.

For the last week I have been sick as a dog. For three nights I couldn't sleep because I was unable to breathe lying down. Finally I ended up calling the doctor.

"I can't breathe, can she see me?" I ask the receptionist.

"How soon can you come in?"

"I am in the parking lot."

I make it up the stairs and just about collapse, I can't catch my breath. She gives me a puffer (Salbutamol) and some antibiotics and tells me if it doesn't relieve the symptoms to go to the outdoor and get iv steroids.

Today I can finally breathe but I am beat to a snot.

UPDATE:

No broken bones, no need for CAT scan.

The kid that did it is still 'at-large' but charges have been drawn up for assault causing bodily harm. Apparently the kid is know to police and has done this sort of thing before so The Boy thinks nothing will come of it.

I can tell you that it will not be the case this time. This time he has fucked with the wrong kid.

Nobody breaks what is mine!

The Boy is broken.

I get a text from The Boy.

Could you pick me up at the hospital after work. Someone hit me in the nose and the cops saw it and they are taking me to the hospital to have it checked.

What the hell?

Apparently he was walking next door from his house to the pizza place when one of his so-called friends came at him and hit him in the face with a pipe.

I show up at the Outdoor (ER for you yanks in the audience)and find that the cop has just dumped The Boy and left after he got his statement. The doctor tells me his nose is broken and most likely the bone in his cheek and there is possible muscle damage that will require surgery.

The Boy looks like...well...he looks like someone hit him in the face with a pipe. His nose is forming an S and he will have a pretty good shiner in the morning.

I start to tell the doctor that it was a pipe, not a fist, that he was hit with and she says, "Were you there?"

"Ah, no. If I were there the other kid would be here as well. With tubes and wires coming out of him. I would be in cuffs and there would be doctors and nurses running around saying 'STAT' and shit!"

So, I take him home with me because he will have to be woken up every two hours to make sure he is not nauseous and he needs to be back at the hospital at 7:30am for a CAT scan.

I don't bother trying to phone his father because he never answers the phone anyway. I sent him a text. I am told he finally knows how to read these. We shall see.

Too much?

Thought I would see if my brother Dave was ready to add me back to his facebook. After all, who disowns their own sister?


You think he'll respond?

Should people need a license to become parents?

Is it just me? I mean are people so dense as not to see the obvious possibility of danger? Especially at something like a monster truck rally? Or maybe they are just so self absorbed as to ignore this inner voice, just so they can go have fun without shelling out money for a babysitter.

I remember one year my sister-in-law wanted to take my then four year old son to the Shrine Circus. I agreed, she had been to this circus before, I couldn't imagine she would take him anywhere dangerous. At the last moment my mother and I decided to go as well. We thought we could find my sister-in-law pretty easily and sit with them. As it turned out, it was not easy to find anyone at this event so we ended up sitting by ourselves.

I have to tell you that I was frantic from the moment we sat down until I finally got The Boy the hell out of there.

Seriously, I could not imagine how any parent with half a brain would take their children to such an event. As we sat down, they first brought out the elephants. Never in my life have I seen such completely dejected, miserable, joyless looking animals in my life. All I could think of was that if these animals ever decided to just fuck off, there would be absolutely nothing anyone could do. And don't even get me started on the tigers that they had enclosed in a flimsy chain link fence-like pen.

After I finally got to The Boy and we were making our way to the car, I saw other parents leading their children in the opposite direction towards a rather long line. I stopped dead in my tracks and my blood ran cold. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Another of the elephants was fitted with some sort of platform/saddle on his back. Six to eight children were sitting atop this thing while a circus worker was leading the elephant around the parking lot. Looking into the eyes of this animal, it wasn't hard to see it was not happy. The only thing that was stopping this elephant from just taking-the-fuck-off was a chain around its foot the likes of which you might find attached to a German shepherd in your yard.

How could a sane person look at that setup and think, "Oh ya, that looks fuckin' safe enough from my child." Are you kidding me? Give your fuckin' head a shake!

And that was a circus, admittedly geared for child entertainment. I only have to hear the words monster truck to know it is not an event that I would ever take a small child to. I can't imagine what possessed this family to take their children.

I feel bad for this family losing their child but if you want to go to an event like this, please leave your children at home.

Otherwise, when I am Queen, I will revoke your license, Crayon!

BRRRRR!

All week it has been very cold here. Last night it was -26C (that's -14F) when I had to venture out to drive The Boy home from his girlfriends. The car was not at all happy that I was trying to make it do anything in this weather. I was concerned at one point it would just refuse to take me any farther.

I sat for quite a while just to be able to see out the windshield. Even then I had to scrape the 'inside' just to see out. The clutch was sluggish and I felt like I was arm wrestling for the gears. Not to mention all the lights on the dash were going crazy. The open door indicator, even when the door was closed, and the fasten seat belt light when (you guessed it) I had my seat belt on.

The weather is not fit for humans or machinery. And that goes for pipes to. This is the second morning I have woken up to frozen pipes.

The first night of the really cold weather, the landlord calls and asks me to open up the hot water tap a trickle to keep it from freezing. That night I had nightmares of the drain getting clogged and me having a flood. All kinds of fun'ness. I once (once) lived in an apartment building but it was a nightmare. Before I went to bed, I would make sure nothing was turned on (ie:stove, iron, etc)and would double check my ashtrays to make sure there was nothing smoldering. Ok, so I am slightly OCD. Even after 10 minutes of checking and rechecking, I got no sleep at all worrying about who was checking all the other guys smoldering ashtrays. I had to move out. I just couldn't take the sleep deprivation.

So now I am in a house with just one other apartment, less worry. Or so I thought, except for the nightmare about being swept away at sea.

I wake up in the morning and there was no flood and the water was still running. So, I figure I can turn it off, right? Three hours later, no hot water. Frozen pipes. Three hours, that is all it took.

So, the landlord comes and borrows my little portable heater and heads to the basement. An hour or so later, the water is flowing again. What I am 'assuming' is that he has fixed the problem. I hate that word, assume. It never ends well. Sure enough, I wake up this morning to no hot water again.

The landlord just left, he is starting to make me nervous, suggesting that we leave an electric heater going in the crawlspace to keep the pipes warm.

Uh, and possibly burn the house down? There has got to be a better, more copacetic way to keep your pipes from freezing. One that doesn't involve me having nightmares.

Missed out on the Barter again.

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Suffering through Another American Idol season.

Seriously, Dude. You don't have one, not one friend that is not completely insane? Someone who will say to you, "Uh, I hate to burst your bubble, Dawg, but you cannot sing."

You see people with ten or fifteen 'friends' waiting for them outside the audition room and you are thinking, how does one person accumulate that many completely tone deaf friends?

Again I sit here with my ears bleeding. Mind you, I watch the first episodes religiously simply for the terrible auditions. After that it gets boring, week after week. Unless we luck out and there is another Sanjaya Malakar in the mix that makes it onto votefortheworst.com and keeps surviving every week even though they couldn't carry a note in a bucket.

Of course you can tell when you are going to hear someone amazing because the show takes the time to interview the contestant at home. No surprises there.

You can also tell by the outfit a person is sporting if you are about to witness a train wreck. Seriously, if they have half their hair dyed (badly) red and the other blue, and can't put together a shirt to match their pants, you can pretty much tell it is going to be painful to watch and listen to.

And just an FYI. If you think you need a gimmick? You probably do.

Rebate checks not honored at Staples.

So, I was heading to Staples one day and my sister says, "Here, take this." and hands me a rebate check she got from Staples. She had purchased a labeler and there was a mail-in rebate check sent back to her for $20.

So, off I go to Staples. As the girl is ringing up my purchases, I hand her the check. "Oh, sorry, we don't take those here."

"What do you mean? Its your check, why wouldn't you accept them?"

"Sorry, you have to take them to the bank." Well that is a pain in the butt, but now I am committed.

I take it to the bank and cash it on the following Monday.

Fast forward to more than a week later I see this on my bank statement.


For the life of me I cannot remember what this was. So I fire off an angry email to my bank. There is no corresponding $20 entry in the last 3 months on my statements. And I get this reply, "The entry labelled "Item Rtd Unpaid" refers to the cheque from Staples that was deposited into your account on January 9, 2009. This cheque was returned because they placed a stop payment on it."

Are you kidding me? Now I have to wait til they mail the stupid thing back to me to find out what the hell went wrong with it.

Although, now it becomes clear why they wouldn't accept it at Staples, they probably knew it was worthless.

Interested?

Yeah. Uh...its called...HOOKER!

I want one!

You should check out the Steampunk Workshop. This guy will show you exactly how to make these things. I might try the keyboard myself, I have a couple of these laying around.

I love how they make new things look old and old things into new items. Way cool.

And it hugs back.

I thought this was creepy. And not just when I read this article.

I actually worked with a lady that showed up to work one night with this sweater on. It was white and sort of looked like fur. The weirdest thing was, I had this uncontrollable urge to stroke it and told her so.

"I don't know what it is, but I want to pet you."

She laughed and told me the sweater was actually made from the fur of her dog. I believe she said it was a husky. She told me it took six years of saving the brushed out hair of this dog to make the sweater. I didn't ask were a person stores this sort of thing, I just backed away quietly without making eye contact.

I thought she was the only lunatic. Apparently not.

That's Five, Canada!

Canada wins its fifth straight gold medal in the World Junior Hockey Championship.

We take hockey very seriously in Canada. Even if you don't follow it, as a Canadian, you just know about the Loonie in center ice at the Olympics. You just know.

And where else does the leader of the country get his pic taken with a guy painted gold, just cuz he asked? (Wish I could find the pic, but I saw him do it during the game.)

It was an exciting game.



What Canada is all about. Canada/Russian game. Canada ties it up with 5.4 seconds remaining.



Goes to a shootout. Canada wins and goes on to the gold medal game against Sweden.

Or you'll what?

They say there will be legislation in place to ensure that we all use iridescent bulbs by (I think) 2012 in Canada.

How the hell do they plan on enforcing that one? Aside from not selling me the old ones? How can the tree-huggers just dismiss the danger of these bulbs in favor of the misguided belief that they are saving the planet. What good is the fuckin' planet if there are no humans left on it?

I was watching 16x9: The Bigger Picture, and they are saying that these things emit UV radiation. What? Do they plan on revisiting this or what?

The US aren't any happier about it.


The solution? Put your trust in government they will not allow our health to be jeopardized.

BWAH! I almost choked on that one. The real solution? Stockpile the incandescent light bulbs and make a fortune on the black market when the tree huggers using CFB's start dropping like flies.

You might be a 'Canadian' redneck.

Was down at The Sister's and we were outside saying our good bye's. I was looking over the nephews Hummer (He actually let me drive it a few feet in the yard) and we notice that the spot where The Sister's truck had been parked had clear signs of some fluid leakage.

"Mom, your truck is leaking something."

My nephew and I take a closer look. "What do you think it is?" Says The Sister.

Both my nephew and I pick up a piece of snow with this liquid on it and smell it. No odor.

Then The Sister about loses her mind. In complete unison the nephew and I both lick the snow...yes, I said lick the snow, and say "Antifreeze!"

Blizzard. Jan 1, 2009

It started to snow on New Years Eve, and didn't stop til January 2nd.

Some photos. Some mine, some from friends.

Watching my car get buried.






I am not the only one with a buried car.

Kim


Nadine


Anna


Digging out.



Some video of the action.







UPDATE: I'm free!

An impasioned plea from Noah Wyle.

Climate change (notice he doesn't call it Global warming anymore) is eating away at the natural habitat of the polar bear. They predict they will be extinct in our children's lifetime.



Who the fuck cares?

Tell me the beef cow will be extinct and I will rally behind you.

But seriously, everything goes extinct eventually. Surprisingly I am completely okay with the extinction of the dodo and equally joyful not having dinosaurs around as well.

Unless they come up with a away to push the earth farther away from the sun, I doubt we can do much about Global warming.

Have a look at this. Environmental Hysteria.



Interesting that one of the founders of Greenpeace, agrees with Penn & Teller.

Part 2
Part 3

Or this one on EcoGuilt.



Interesting that Al Gore is the one making a shitload of money on peoples hysteria over offseting their carbon footprint. (He is that largest seller of carbon credits) Cha ching!

Part 2
Part 3