They got Sick! Real Quick!

Ok, this just pisses me off because I thought people knew better.

Taken from the story in Google News

A five-year-old boy needed a liver transplant after he and his family were severely poisoned by wild mushrooms they picked in Waterloo and ate for dinner last week.

Ok, how did a whole family miss the infamous don’t put it in your mouth ad? Those certainly weren’t muffins or beets, and they sure got sick, real quick.

Failing that, did this family miss the six zillion warnings I’ve heard to not eat wild mushrooms? The ones that say that they could kill you? How’d they manage it? It never said in the article anywhere that these mushrooms looked exactly the same as some mushrooms that this family knew were eddible. It just sounded like the family decided to go for a stroll and get close to nature and pick some mushrooms they saw along the way that looked yummy. Now, because of their stupididy, their little boy will probably never be the same. He’s damn lucky to be alive, that’s for sure. But it makes me mad that something so stupidly preventable wasn’t prevented.

Mommy, it’s Over!

Well, I can’t believe it. Friday will come around again, and there will be one less thing to do, and that is check Jonathan Coulton’s website for the Thing a Week! Sniff sniff! He has decided that, after writing 52 things a week, he deserves a break, and rightly so. He says he will continue to write music, just not on such a strict schedule, and who can blame him? Christ I couldn’t put out anything of any quality once a week for a year if my life depended on it. So I hope he enjoys his break, and I’m sure I will enjoy whatever he puts out next.

The Pedestrians on the Street go Squish Squish Squish?

If some day I’m no longer posting on here and I mysteriously disappear, you can probably guess that I was hit by an insane driver. What is with the drivers up in this part of town? It’s like they don’t bother to look at traffic lights and just barge on through. I know we live on a street that merges with a highway, but here’s a tip. When you’re at a traffic light, it’s not the highway anymore! People do cross there. I have almost been hit by a city bus and several cars, and most times, someone has come by right about then and said yes, it was my time to cross. One day, an older lady who always wants to look out for me walked up to one of these cars, managed to knock on his window without getting ploughed down, and basically told him he should learn to drive better because he almost hit a blind lady. I wished she hadn’t made a scene and was glad she told the driver off and nothing happened to her, all at the same time.

I don’t know how more people don’t die at this intersection. Several times a day, I hear long stretches of squealing tires, but miraculously, I’ve never heard the smash that should follow. Honestly, I see more and more reasons why everyone who drives a car should be tested every few years to see if it’s safe for humanity to let them drive, and some people’s driving privileges should be revoked immediately!

The Horror! You Read My Blog!

Does anyone else find this statement absurd? Not many people must, because I hear people saying things like that all the time. Things like, “I can’t believe so and so found my blog!” and “I didn’t want so and so to know about that, but he found out on my blog.” There are even settings in blogger to make your blog private or certain parts of your profile invisible to certain people.

Do people not know the difference between public and private? If you’re posting on the internet in a place where access is not restricted, i.e. people don’t have to log in to read, it’s public. If you don’t want people to know certain things, don’t write about them in a public place! If you really want to write about sensitive things, at least find a way to make it hard for people to figure out who you’re talking about! Some people make it so plainly obvious who they’re talking about, and then are shocked and appalled when it gets back to that person. That’s especially funny when their blog’s readership consists mostly of people who have been given the blog’s address. Hmm, maybe that’s not the place to vent your rage about your personal friends if you don’t want them to find out, chief.

It would be like signing a piece of grafiti and then being shocked that someone read it and knew it was you who wrote it. Do people not know that there are little books you can buy, called diaries, specifically designed for keeping private things private? They even have locks and stuff so you can keep most prying eyes out. I sometimes wonder if these people are truly surprised that people found their blogs, or if they just enjoy the drama that comes from saying too much.

What’s with All the Junk Mail?

Holy crap! I have never lived in a place that gets so much junkmail! Every day, I check the mail, and every day, there is mail. But half the time, it’s nothing we want. Pizza ads, eye-glass coupons, information on dial-around phone codes, funeral home brochures, dating service booklets, various phone and cable company pitches, cards from the government telling me what Stephen Harper has done for me, some of this every day, ug the list goes on and on!

When I lived in my last place, I thought the junkmail pile was high. But it’s nothing compared to this. Holy crap!

And then there’s the salesmen that somehow get into our secure building with a “no soliciting sign” out front. I think I have a pretty good idea how they get in. Numbnutses hold the door for them! Ok guys, if you don’t know the guy behind you lives there, don’t just let him in. I know you’re trying to be nice, but we have a buzzer for a reason, let him use it, unless it’s obvious that he lives there of course, like he’s fumbling for his keys and his arms are full or something.

The funny part is, at the rate this is going, I will have gotten more salespeople knocking on my door here, in a building with a lock on the door than I did in the old building where we used to live, where security was a dream, we had a problem with homeless people trying to sleep in the laundry room, and I accidentally kicked a guy down the stairs who had chosen that place for his bed. And I’ve only lived here for 3 months!

The funniest solicitation I got, I got over the buzzer. A couple of women said they were offering to come around and help people get to know their bibles. What the hell? At least they were nice enough to buzz, though. Sadly for them, the door didn’t open.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this building. I just find it bizarre that we get so much advertising! A synical part of me wonders if the building managers are getting some kind of incentive to let them in. Probably not, it’s just a weird thought.

Fume Fume Rage Rage Spit Spit Rar~!

Excuse the incoherent splattering of rage. But this pissed me off.

I swear, crap never ends with these people. Remember the Take Back the Night March and our food-bringing vigilantes? Well, they’ve sunk to a brand new low. Today, I get an email from them. It says that they’re actually in debt, so could we please give them some money to pay for the food they provided?

I beg your pardon? These people certainly have balls if they have no guts. There was no fucking money made at this march. Everything that was provided at the march, from the use of the PA system, to the bottled water, to the other little desserts, to the noise-makers, was donated by businesses and private citizens. Nobody else expected to be paid. What’s more, these people have donated food before, they know there’s no money to be had. And, they know that the people putting it on aren’t exactly dripping with cash, either. It’s a goddamn charity event!

But more importantly, why did they make the food if they knew it would put them into further debt? There is no way that they could claim they had no idea it would put them into debt. There was no sudden tragedy that just happened. Obviously the stack of bills was piling up and there were red pen-marks in the budget before they went and made the food. I wouldn’t have even minded so much if, when we had asked them if they wanted to make food, they had said “Sure we can make the food, but we can only do it if you give us a hand financially because we’re strapped.” At least then it would have been up front and honest. Hell, if they couldn’t have done it, they could have said no. But to write us an email now and cry out that they’re in so much debt and need to recover costs somewhere is kind of low. It’s like buying your friends Christmas presents and then saying, “Actually I can’t afford them. Can you pay me for them?”

But what supremely pisses me off is I can’t even feel like they did one good thing for the march. They came out, but they tried to stir shit by chanting anti-police chants. They brought food, but now they expect to be paid for it. It really shows the selfishness of the bunch. I say we don’t give them a single penny, and then ask other, more generous and scrupulous organizations to help with food next year. Dealing with these people is just too much trouble.

What’s to Discuss?

It’s time for a little story. Once upon a time, 25 years ago, there was a man named Keith Secor. He taught grades 2 and 3 in a catholic school. I guess he liked a few of his students too much, and started to french-kiss them on a daily basis. One day, many years later, some of those girls, now women, filed charges against him because of those kisses. Ever since he was charged, the board moved him out of the classroom and gave him work at the board office. At the end of it all, he was found guilty.

Now here’s where our story takes a weird twist. After his conviction, the board actually had to meet and *decide* what should be done with him. Decide? What’s to decide. There’s only one option. He molested kids, he shouldn’t be working with kids, plain and simple! Show him the door! I understand the idea of not firing him until he was convicted, and it would be horrible if they summarily fired him even after he was found not guilty, but he was convicted!

They did decide to fire him, almost grudgingly, or so it would seem from the article. The superintendent said, “we believe we did not have a choice” about firing him, since the Education Act says that anyone convicted of a sexual crime involving minors cannot be allowed to work with children.”

Duh! What’s so hard about that?

Incidentally, while looking for a story on this guy, I stumbled across this page full of complaints about teachers. Paul Primeau in particular is, uh, quite the gem.

Ad Slogans that Need a Little Tweaking

I heard a couple of ads that made me think some strange things.

If the new program from NutriSystem is called NutriSystem Nourish, what did the old one do? Was it NutriSystem Starve Until You’re a Skeleton? I’m scared.

One ad claims you shouldn’t be hungry after you eat. Really? So after my first meal, ever, I should be fine?

Maybe I’m just too damn literal.

Goodbye MSN Messenger, You Just Nudged Yourself Off my Computer.

Ug! That’s all I can say about MSN Messenger 7 and above. Full of bloated garbage, buttons and ads. You can’t even get rid of a bunch of the buttons. You can just move them around. If you lie and say it’s a shared computer, some of them disappear, but not all of them.

Then there are the nudges. Double ug! I swear, the nudge is the most annoying thing you can do. If you don’t feel like you’re getting enough attention, you can send a sound to your friend and cause the conversation window to shake. Hey bud, here’s a tip for ya. If you do that to me, you certainly aren’t going to get any attention from now on. If I’m not answering, there’s probably a damn good reason for it. Like, oh, say, I’m away from the computer. Or maybe I don’t have anything to say. If you have something new to say, say it. Don’t nudge me.

But the final straw was what it did to me yesterday. I was talking on MSN to someone and they said, “Why am I getting song titles in my window. Something about music mix.” I looked and the thing that says show song titles was unchecked. So why in Christ was it doing it? That just creeped me out.

I remember the days when MSN Messenger was simple. There was a spot to type, a spot to read what your friend had typed, there was a way to send files, you could voice chat, you could check your email and you could add people to your contact list. That was all you really needed. Now it’s full of all this bloated shit. So goodbye MSN Messenger, I’ll stick to Windows Messenger. It does what I want, it’s simple and not full of junk…for now.