Of all the sites on the internet, this is one.
There is a knock on St. Peter’s door. He looks out and a man is standing there. St. Peter is about to begin his interview when the man disappears.
A short time later there’s another knock. St. Peter gets the door, sees the man, opens his mouth to speak, and the man disappears once again.
“Hey, are you playing games with me?” St. Peter calls after him.
“No,” the man’s distant voice replies anxiously. “They’re trying to resuscitate me.”
Does this annoy you as much as it annoys me? I’m a university graduate. I’m looking for a job. I get an email and it says, “Guelph career fair.” I get excited! Woo! I can go and look at things. Then I read a little further down, and the damn thing is in Waterloo!
That’s about a half-hour’s drive, if you’re lucky, and there are only a few buses a day that would get you to Waterloo, and then I don’t know how you’d get to this stupid park where the thing is held. What? Are we all supposed to be able to drive? If I’m looking for a *job*, how would I afford a car, even if I could use one? And if it’s a Guelph career fair, why do all the employers have to go all the way to Waterloo? Are they trying to tell us something? Is there no work in Guelph? And, when did Guelph become part of Waterloo? How did I miss that? I must have been sleeping or something. Why can’t a *Guelph* career fair be held, um, in *Guelph*?
Ok, this just makes no sense, and makes me mad in the process.
Pastor urges stock dumping over firms’ support of gay rights
Ok, for once, Microsoft does something right. Along with a few other companies, it wants to add sexual orientation to a civil rights bill that prevents descrimination based on gender, age, disability,
religion, marital status and other factors. Now here comes the infuriating part. A pastor in Microsoft’s own neighbourhood, Ken Hutcherson, doesn’t like this. Does this strike you as strange? religious discrimination is one of the things the bill fights to outlaw. Why would someone benefitting from this bill fight to keep another group from having the same protections? The worst part is if any other group receiving protection from this bill protested, it would suck and would look pretty low. But it looks especially bad when the one screaming is a representative of an entity who spends a lot of time telling people to accept others no matter what. How about leading by example? Oh wait, that’s something most religious leaders don’t do.
And it gets better. He is actually encouraging people who agree with him to buy Microsoft stocks and then all sell them on the 1st of May, driving prices down, or so he thinks. Ok, let’s forget for a second that he will have absolutely 0 effect on Microsoft. Let’s just focus on the fact that he is intending and planning to do harm to someone. Does that sound very fitting with “Love Thy neighbour” and “turn the other cheek” to you? If he doesn’t agree with Microsoft’s position on gay rights, he can go ahead and rail against it at church if he wants. Hell, he and like-minded people can boycott Microsoft if they feel so strongly about this. In fact, he encouraged boycotting them at first, but now he’s saying that would be stupid. May I ask why? Is it more likely that you can’t part with your Windows and Office and everything else microsoft on that church computer? So instead of encouraging people to make a choice based on principles, something everybody is free to do, he’s decided to encourage them to try to hurt the company by driving prices down, which is borderline criminal. I hope that next week, someone comes and vandalizes his church. What’s wrong, Rev. Hutcherson, you don’t think it’s right? Well shut up, because you just did the exact same thing. Maybe the lord works in mysterious ways.
Hello, Friends. And Happy Election Day to you all here in Canada.
Let’s talk politics shall we. For those of you not in Canada this will come down to 2 parties. the Liberals and the Conservatives. There’s a third party called the NDP which is way out to the left but they won’t have enough support to make a run at this. the main issues here are an ultra-right wing Harper (leader of conservative party) who is very pro-America against a scandalous Paul Martin (head of Liberal party).
An interesting side note on this before I get in to my opinions. I was just speaking to a friend of mine and we talked about how many people we know that have said they would have voted for the NDP but they know they won’t win. Can’t help but wonder if that stigma about the NDP party could be whiped out and everyone who wanted to vote for them but voted Liberal just to block Conservatives actually did vote NDP if they could actually make a run at it. Maybe not right away but as people started to see the party gain steam maybe they could eventually be a realistic contender. Something to think about.
I voted Liberal to get that out of the way. I don’t think I have the right to get up here and spout off about this without saying what I did. No one is more pissed with the Liberals than I am but I will never be a Conservative and I unfortunately felt I had to vote for the Liberals rather than the NDP to help prevent a majority for the Conservatives. (see above)
It seems to be consensus (with most people that I have spoken to anyway) that we will be looking at a Conservative government. The question will be whether or not it’s a majority. I tend to believe that it will be a minority. I think there are too many Canadians that are too afraid of a majority government that is so pro-Bush. In my opinion, too many Canadians are afraid of heading to Iraq or wherever G.W.’s next crusade is going to be. I think too many Canadians are afraid of what could happen to public health care. I believe that Canada is, and always will be, a more left wing or centrist country. And let’s face it. A Candian centrist is an American left winger so for us to allow a majority right wing government is probably not in the cards here. At least that’s my take.
Lastly – I’d like to say I’m a big fan of the commercials that started before the last American election election and continued for our election north of the border that are all about getting young people to vote. Saying that they dont’ care who you vote for – just vote. All of my friends have been talking about this election as passionately as we argue about the Leafs. it has become important for young people and I think it’s great. So if you haven’t yet – go vote – for anyone. With things being as close as they seem to be this time around – your vote actually might mean something.
My god, TV is just filling up with this crap. It shouldn’t surprise me. Nothing should surprise me anymore. But for some reason, this show did.
I had the TV on in the background, and this show called Cheaters came on. Basically, the premise is people who suspect their significant other is cheating contact the show. Then, the show sends out private investigators to follow the suspected cheater, and of course, the only ones that make it on the show are the ones that get caught. Then, the guy who runs, or at least narrates the program, comes to talk to the cheated on, and shows them the proof. And it doesn’t end there. The narrator then urges the cheated on to confront the cheater. He then contacts the detectives, who inform him that the guilty one just happens to be up to no good at the current moment. So, cheated on and narrator show up in a public place where the cheater is, and make the biggest scene possible.
Ok, first of all, it makes me laugh how these shows all try and make themselves seem like they’re doing good and moral things and they care about the supposed poor unfortunate souls who ask for their help. No no no, we’re not using slime to serve as entertainment. That’s not it at all. We’re trying to save them. Hey, the slime asked for it by coming on the show, but I love how these shows try to make themselves seem like some sort of do-gooders. Cheaters said they did this only to lay bare the pain caused by cheating. No guys, you’re just trying to profit off the worst aspects of people. Springer does it too, going into a big sermon at the end of the show about how they should take care of themselves and each other. But that doesn’t stop him, during the show, from encouraging the audience to yell whore and other insults at the participants.
And then there is the slime themselves. At the beginning of this show, they explain why they think their boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating. By the time they’re done their little monolog, I’m thinking, don’t you have enough stuff on him/her already to confront him/her without having surveillance teams tail cheater and company for days and days? Wouldn’t that be a hell of a lot simpler and more straightforward? I mean, this one woman was having women calling him late at night and the guy would get all sheepish when they’d call. Isn’t that enough to sit down and go, hey dude, I think you’re cheating? Do these people really doubt themselves so much that they need to see pictures? Or do they just like the drama? Do they like to have it rubbed in their faces over and over again? I’m starting to think it’s the second.
So after the cheating suspect gets tailed for a while, there’s the big meeting between the dude from Cheaters and the cheated on, which is filmed. He doesn’t just hand the person the report and say, here’s your stuff. No no no. We get to see the guy showing the stupid idiot the dirty pictures, which we’ve already seen. So we get to see the person either break down or fly into a rage, in public of course.
Then there’s the big confrontation. The part that cracks me up is when they have this little rendezvous, the cheater is *always* having his/her own rendezvous, perfectly timed so they can go make a scene. This makes me wonder if the whole thing is as fake as springer. And they’re never at a motel, or at one of their houses. They’re at a public place like a restaurant, or my personal favourite, buying a Christmas tree. They walk up to them, and screaming ensues. This really tells me they must like drama. I mean, these people forget that not only are they humiliating the cheater, they’re humiliating themselves by airing their own dirty laundry! And maybe I’m weird, but this almost seems worse than the people who get up on talk shows. Yeah, they’re on national TV, but the chances of nextdoor neighbour Joe being home and watching are…possible, but not nearly as likely as him strolling down the street when you’re having this little free-for-all in the mall parking lot. People in the mall parking lot aren’t choosing to watch this crap. They’re just going about their business, and there you are. And it’s likely that they know you.
And that’s not good enough for the narrator guy. he has to get in there and try and ask the cheater questions like, “What were you thinking?” and “How can you explain this?” I don’t know about you, but nothing makes me more angry than an outside person sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
The whole thing, from start to finish, is just so trashy. We don’t need any more of this shit on TV!
Hellen Keller went to town
riding on a pony
stuck a feather in her cap
and called it BLEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHGHGHAG
I missed out big time yesterday. Really, really big time. I was just a few short steps and a few short seconds away from snagging myself one of the coolest political souvenirs in history, but stupid me decided to stand out in the shitty freezing rain and wait for the bus instead. God, I’m such an idiot. Let me explain.
There was some sort of an exhibition type thing going on yesterday in the building where my radio station is, [yep that’s me, Mr. Aware Of My Surroundings], so of course there were all kinds of tables set up where different people were promoting different things as tends to happen during events like this. I didn’t pay them much attention on my way in beyond thinking to myself “wholly crap, where did all of these people come from,” but looking back on it now, I kind of wish I had.
Fast forward to a couple hours later. I’m sitting in the studio doing my usual thing when somebody comes in and says “hey, they’re handing out condoms downstairs that say “Liberal Party of Canada” on them.” Obviously the first words out of my mouth were “they are?” And of course they were closely followed by “did you bring me one?” He didn’t, but through time and distance I’ve managed to forgive him.
But even though he’s off the hook, I’m not. I’ll never forgive myself for not trying to find that table on my way out. I honestly consider it a lost opportunity, and now all I have to look back on is that lost opportunity and a head full of questions, questions that will now most likely go unanswered until the end of time. Questions such as who thought that was a good idea? Or did nobody consider that the first thing that 97 people out of 100 would think when they heard about this was going to be well, if you’ve ever wanted to be personally and directly screwed by the government, here’s your chance? And how did they manage to fit “Liberal Party of Canada” on those things? I mean that’s a lot of letters. I’m counting 20, and then you still have to factor in the spaces. Wouldn’t a slogan of that size look really funny once the guy goes limp? Or did they print it on those extra large magnum condoms that some guys like to buy to impress the girl behind the counter at the drugstore? I’ll probably never know any of this stuff now, and that’s a shame. It’s a shame and it’s my own fault.
I’m not sure if there’s supposed to be a lesson in all of this, but if there is, I suppose it would have to be don’t let opportunity pass you bye, or maybe have safe sex and vote, or perhaps even have safe sex while voting, I don’t really know. All I know is that I’m a broken man, a broken man who’s short 1 political condom.
Female kidney turns lumberjack on to housework.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is by far the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Ok boys and girls, story time. Have you ever noticed that when you sign up for hotmail, or yahoo, or payPpal, or pretty much everything anymore, thanks to the spammers, *curse you all*, you have to tell the website what letters and numbers are in that little picture box thingy? I understand why the measure is there. It’s there to increase security so automated piece of shit bots can’t sign up for a million accounts and then use them to proliferate the internet with message upon message about how to make my absent weener bigger, buy cheap pills and remortgage my absent house. Perfectly cool. But what they and you might not know is that my thing that makes the computer talk can’t read those picture thingies. It just says graphic whatever they’ve decided to call it. The same goes for every blind person’s thing that makes the computer talk. They just can’t interpret pictures without captions.
So what some companies have decided to do is beside the picture, they have a link that says I can’t see this picture, and then you get an audio representation of what’s in the picture. So a garbled voice says the numbers and letters you’re supposed to type and they even are nice enough to give us a spot on that page to put them in. If we’re not lucky enough to have that, some companies tell us a place to phone or tell us to email or ask for our phone number and phone us.
However, some companies don’t even acknowledge that we might have a problem with that fuzzy picture in the box, and one of them, unfortunately, is google. I’m lucky that Steve and Matt started this blog before this was in place, otherwise there might not be a vomit comet since blogger is run by google. Although that may make some people celebrate, that would make me sad.
Alright, story time is over, here comes the help part. The people at
Blind Access Journal are trying to change this. They have started a petition over at petition online. This will be running for a few months, and once he has enough names, he’s going to send them, with a cover letter, to Eric Schmidt, the CEO of google. I believe that this petition has a lot more weight than those stupid email petitions, because for one thing, it’s on an official petition website, and second, I know this guy exists and he is going to send this thing to a physical person who might do something.
There are a few ways you can help if you feel strongly enough about it. He is asking for help in drafting this cover letter, so contact him through his website if you have ideas. He is also going to post the letter as it is being written, so you might be able to help out more with its construction as it goes. Finally, you can sign the petition. If you’re worried about what is going to be said in the letter, you might not want to sign until you see it, so keep an eye on the Blind Access Journal website.
Just trying to use the power of the net to spread the word.
I can’t believe how easily some people can earn the media’s sympathy if they just use a few key words. I saw this episode of Sixty minutes that aired last October. It was about this guy, Charles Robert Jenkins, who because he got scared, decided to defect from the army and surrender to North Korea. Then, quelle surprise, they kept him there. He stayed there for 40 years, and when he managed to get out, he went on Sixty Minutes, talked about how secretive and dictatorial the North Korean government was, the stuff that happened to him while he was there, and how poor the country was. Again, I say, quelle surprise. What did you expect? Did you not learn anything about the country that, before you got it in your head that they would swap you with Russia who would merrily hand you back to the U.S. like some missing child, was your fucking enemy? Hell, I’m not even fighting North Korea, and I remember the bullshit they came up with a couple years ago when some trains had a nice collision and exploded, killing and wounding a ton of people. You know what they did? They refused to take assistance from other countries because they didn’t want them to know the state of things, and they ran their regularly scheduled praise the government message on TV. Doesn’t sound like much has changed.
Anyway, my point is, why are we having an outpouring of sympathy for this guy? He wasn’t even just some random private who just enlisted and then got scared. If that was the case, I could make the excuse that he did a stupud thing but he was young and inexperienced. He was a fucking sergeant commanding a squad. This was not his first battle. It sucks that he had to experience the totalitarian dictatorship of North Korea first hand, spend 40 years where he didn’t want to be, and go through hell, but he does not need a spot on Sixty Minutes to tell his story as if he was some hapless victim of circumstance. Ever heard the phrase “you made your bed, you lie in it?” The way I see it, if someone had surrendered to any country but Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or other countries deemed scary by the U.S, the media would likely look at their story and say, “Them’s the breaks, chief. You’re a moron. Next story, please.”
