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Showing posts from December, 2009

Keyboard Function Keys That Didn't Quite Make It

Thanks stresstwig , fount of ideas and facial hair. "Inform Miss Penny That One Of The Vacuum Tubes Has Blown, BLAST IT" - yelling was more efficient and cleared Babbage's blood of dangerous humours. "YELLING" - Functionality was merged with Caps Lock. π - use of circles and any calculations with circles was seen to be a sign of a weak mind, weaker constitution, and a moral fibre that was entirely suspect. "Definitely Nazi"/"Most Likely Nazi"/"Carrier Pigeon Error" - Enigma was a very specialized machine. "Nuke It" - Part of the original DARPA spec, it was thought that there may be a need for more safeguards. "Check Connection Time to BBS " - Ones parents always needed to use the phone before this became an issue. "Power Down Memetic Cyclotron " - Can't think of a reason, honestly. "Toggle" - Apparently in Urdu this means an imaginative way to soil ones underwear whilst balancing on an inv...

My Dog's Suggestions On A More Orderly Household

Thanks metamonk , for the idea. Just leave the food on the ground, seriously. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking I care whether or not food is in the dog dish. It could be beside, or, let's be honest here, inside a toilet, and I'll still eat it. Clinging to a rather disgusting belief that I care either way is an insult to both of us. Accept that I will slobber on anything and everything. Especially the children. Just tell yourself it's better to have e-coli infused dog slobber on them than the spackle of mucous and food that was there previously. Why are you throwing away dog bones? They dry out and can puncture your garbage bags, leaving a mess everywhere. Just throw it on the ground. I'm sure someone will dispose of it properly. Invest in scented candles. Much better than dog baths. I like the way I smell, you hate giving me baths, win-win. Dirty laundry isn't. It's a marvellous treasure trove of fascinating smells. Please pile it high and everywhere...

Christmas Family Letter 2009

The year, as is the case when you get a certain age, has passed us by faster than you can "Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet was made TWENTY THREE years ago?". And so it has. This year has been slightly more eventful than others. We've had another child on January 16th, 2009. A boy this time. A somber, serious boy who will look at you with soulful eyes full of life's regret and the eternal struggle of self-actualization until you play peek-a-boo and he kills himself laughing. He's a mystery. His birth was little on the long side, but everything came out swimmingly, we were out of there in record time because we've done it before and as much fun as hospitals are, they're no place to raise a child. What else is there to say about him. Well, he's a baby, he doesn't have a whole lot of opinions. He likes to crawl, he likes to hold things and stand up. He's really into objects. He'll be crying bloody murder like someone has just suckerpunched him...

Things I Would Do For Fun If I Had More Moxie

Buy a security guard outfit, stand in the foyer of a very swank theatre, wait for the opera intermission, then bustle about, pushing people aside saying, "Move along, move along." Sneak into a gynecologist's empty patient room, then scream at the top of my lungs, "The baby's going to come outta WHERE?" Drive at exactly the speed limit. High-beam and honk at others that don't. Make a buncha mix-CD's featuring Grandmaster Flash and the Funky Bunch, New Edition, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Cannibal Corpse, put a barcode on them, and sneak them into the library CD section. Sing the national anthem at the top of my lungs, with a few incorrect words, give a ribbon to the first person to correct me. Put 2 chairs and a desk, interview style, on the street. Put a camcorder on a tripod. Interview any and all people who sit with me. Alternate between an interview for a legally suspect and highly dangerous job, a celebrity interview (with questions intended f...

Guide to Vancouver #1

The Olympics are coming up.¹ That's why I'm going to do this series of posts, where I'll expound on my general overview of the city I live in/around/in a suburb of: Vancouver. Vancouver is, first and foremost, a city that seems to be always ranked near the top of this and that livability study. It's also tiny. A hamlet. 2.5 million people live here, if you include the suburbs. 600k if you count only Vancouver proper. This gives most of Vancouverites a bit of a complex. A phrase you'll hear often is 'world-class city'. Maybe too often, maybe too forced, usually coming down from some chamber of commerce or some captain of some industry. We're constantly preening and trying to make ourselves a little more important than we are. True 'world-class' cities, like a CIA operative or someone who actually enjoys Christmas cakes, never have to proclaim it. I don't think you'd ever hear someone from Paris, or London, or New York, expound about how ...

Cooking

I like to cook. I'm not much of one, but some of our friends tend to think I can . The trick to this is learning how to do the big dishes; the type that have been trodden into our Western Subconscious as Real Cooking. Think June Cleaver or any meal as depicted in safe and painfully wholesome Disney movies. Turkey, roast, rack of lamb. Large portions of vertebrates prepared well. I can't bake to save my life, or do much of anything other than roasting animals, but I still bask in the small glory within our circles of friends of Someone Who Won't Burn Water. There was a certain reader in mind when I wrote this, my little cooking tutorial. Then I realized that this person might think 'learning to cook' as being able to prepare a 6 course meal and dessert cart using nothing less than a Coleman Stove and a rather heat tolerant teacup. I will then presume this little post is for those of you just taking the plunge. Who wish to brandish a spatula with grace and aplomb and...