Bus Entertainment

Man I love bus rides like this, when amusement plops itself down beside you and helps you pass the time. I was sitting on the bus, and this woman and her four-year-old daughter came and sat down beside me. At first it was just average mother-daughter stuff. Then this conversation unfolded that had me giggling for a long long time.

little girl: Mommy, I love you.
Mother: Julia, I love you too.
Julia: I love you all the way to Chrissie’s house.
Mother: I love you all the way to the moon.
Julia: I love you all the way to the moon at night, but there’s no moon, so I can’t.
Mother: Do you love me all the way to the sun?
Julia: I love you all around the world.
Mother: That’s a lot of love for a mommy. I love you all around the world too.
Julia (in this little deep voice): That’s a lot of love for a Julia!

At this point, I just busted up laughing. Kids are adorable, and it’s nice to see a cute conversation, rather than the obnoxious brats you see most of the time. Written down, that conversation looks like nothing more than a pile of nauseatingly stupid sap. But watching it happen was pretty cool. I hope tomorrow’s bus ride is equally entertaining.

What the fuck?

There are no better words to express what I’m about to describe. I’m sitting here just shaking my head in disbelief. Please tell me there wasn’t some kind of geographic shift that has thrown me to some far off place. I am in Canada, right? The scenery looks the same, but shit is going on that just shouldn’t happen here. Shouldn’t! No question!

I just heard that a whole bunch of people from the Kashechewan native reservation had to be evacuated to places where they could access medical treatment and clean water. Did a major natural disaster hit them that would cause a sudden breakdown in medical care and clean water? No! Apparently, they’ve been dealing with poorly-treated water that comes out of the tap looking like ginger- ale as one person described it, for some time now. In her summary of the situation, the Canada AM reporter said the citizens of the reserve had been living in third world conditions.

Ok, I say again, what the fuck? At first I flipped out because everyone started blaming the federal government right off the bat for the problem. I thought, “Maybe nobody notified them. Maybe they didn’t even know it was going on.” Think about it. How often does one go through Kashechewan? It’s not really a stop on the way to Ottawa. Before today, had anyone really heard of it? These reserves can be sort of isolated from the main drag. it would still be pretty nuts, but perhaps conceivable.

Then I read more stuff and started getting really mad. Apparently they’ve been asking for repairs on the water treatment plants for two years. Two! years! Oh it gets better. Health Canada has been testing this ginger-ale-coloured substance which I refuse to call water, recently, and has been finding nothing wrong with it…until a couple weeks ago they found some E. Coli. The water doesn’t look like water, how can it still be ok? Tell me please. Either we’re all doomed because Health Canada tests all of our water with the same testing instruments and procedures, or boy do some heads need to roll. I go for choice b…perhaps for the sake of my own sanity. I would like to think that if brown shit started coming out of my tap, I wouldn’t be forced to continue to see this shit. It would be fixed. Hell, Walkerton was a tragedy, but it didn’t go on for years!

This brings me to my second level of what the fuck. Notice I said, *seeing* this shit, not *drinking* it. Would you drink odd-looking fluid that came out of your tap just because…it came out of your tap so it must be safe? I don’t think so! Why did these people continue to drink it, so long that their were deaths and people requiring medical treatment? Is Kashechewan so isolated that they can’t get bottled water from anywhere? Could they not afford it? If the federal government couldn’t fix the water-purification plants, could the chief not have requested water to be shipped in en masse? Couldn’t someone have done Something? This just seems ridiculous! I’ve heard that natives have become helpless and powerless, I guess this is just a glaring example of it.

Now that all the rage has gone out of me, I’m feeling kind of drained, and can’t really think of a good ending for this. It would be meaningless to say “hopefully this will never happen again” because let’s face it, it will. If not in the exact same form, then something else equally appalling is bound to happen. We are pathetically slow learners. It disgusts me that it happened, and it shocks me that conditions are really that horrible. I guess all that’s left to say is, what the fuck?!?!?!

ESL Fun

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but down the street from me there is a convenience store. This convenience store is run by a bunch of people, duh. They’re nice, aside from the fact that things that cost you maybe a foot at most convenience stores cost the whole arm and leg here. But one thing they all share is they’re either Indian or Pakistani, and English is not one of their strong suits. They don’t like to answer their phone if you call them, and instead of “How may I help you?” all some of them can manage is “what?!”

Don’t get me wrong, they try to help me when I ask for stuff, and they know when they’re beaten and ask some random customer to point them in the right direction when they can’t understand me. But I’m just trying to paint a picture for you for the next part of the story.

So I come into the store and want to buy some margarine. Simple enough, right? I go up and ask for some. This is the response I get. “We have…hmmm…becel, and…imperial…and…I don’t believe this is, um, not, um butter?”

I had to suppress a laugh, because if I didn’t, I would have been laughing for a good minute straight, and that would have been embarrassing for all involved. That is the most entertaining way to say I can’t believe it’s not butter I’ve heard, and especially coming from people who can barely speak the language. it was like she was going out of her way to make it more complicated for herself. Maybe that is what I’ve been doing all along, making things too simple. Maybe I have to take the long way around to get what I want. Next time I go in there, I’ll ask for intelligenties and see if I get smarties the first time out. Wish me luck.

You Are Here?

Wow, it’s been a while since we’ve done this, but it’s time once again for the bit that’s so popular that
Roland
over at Salty Ham decided to swipe it for his own column. He did a nice job with it too, and he even gave us credit for it so the theft is acceptable.

For the benefit of those of you who might not know what all of this is, it’s basically a compilation of how messed up a few of you aare. The hit counter captures search queries, I notice those queries, and then the fun begins.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s do this thing.

21 Oct, Fri, 23:07:26
Yahoo:
why is it called the vomit comet

We figured that Vomit Comet was more catchy sounding and easier to remember than as;lfjpoiweuroiu989kjhfkljabsabax,mbm,xcbjlfheweurro;qweurqwpoieuweruirew, which was our second choice. But sometimes I still lye awake at night wondering if we made the right decision.

Thu, 20:41:39
Yahoo:
history of ghonorea

I’m not in the mood to teach history, but there’s never a wrong time to help somebody out, so here are a couple of tips:

1. Learn to spell Gonorrhea.
2. Go ask your Mom, she probably knows. Or at the very least she can put you in touch with Grandma if ancient history is more your thing.

22 Oct, Sat, 14:26:22
Yahoo:
short cut to get higenic sex

Why do I get the feeling we’re dealing with the same guy from the last one here? And by the way, h y g i e n i c.

21 Oct, Fri, 20:12:07
Yahoo:
picking up slutty girls friday nights boston

Man, some people just never learn do they? But since I’m so friggin helpful, try going outside and looking around. Good things come to those who stand there for a few minutes.

23 Oct, Sun, 16:39:41
Yahoo:
scorpio, horoscopes, sluts

November, newspapers, Boston.

21 Sep, Wed, 21:04:44
Yahoo:
signs a guy is attracted to a woman

Speaking as a guy, I want to let you in on a bit of a secret. We men can be a complicated bunch at times, and sometimes what you may think of as flirting might simply be nothing more than idol chatter, or an attempt at being nice gone horribly amiss. So from where I sit, there are 2 sure-fire ways to tell what the man in question is thinking. You can look deep into his eyes, talk to him, try to read his every move and hang on his every word in an attempt to achieve a greater understanding of who he is as a person. Either that or you can just check him for wood and be done with it.

25 Oct, Tue, 09:18:00
MSN Search:
pitchers of dog cynophobia

Strangely enough, I’ve never seen Dog Cynophobia on tap in any bar I’ve ever been in.

By the way, would dog cynophobia be dogs that are afraid of other dogs? And I’m not sure what a p i c t u r e of that would look like, but I imagine it consisting of a dog shitting his pants at the site of a bigger dog.

23 Oct, Sun, 19:42:06
MSN Search:
show me some sciencce fair project that have already been done

Isn’t that cute? Some special ed student is trying to cheat on a project. Or maybe he’s a professor at a
natoinal unviesrity
somewhere.

And so ends this little diversion for another day. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve almost swerved off the road because we were trying to read this on one of those internet-capable cell phones while we were driving. But now it’s time to say goodbye. So until we meet again, happy searching. If you need me, I’ll be thinkin’ about my doorbell and when you’re gonna ring it.

It’s Bud The Spud From The …Big Deep Freeze?

Brad sent me this and it cracks me up. And I can vouch for how great those potatoes are, they’re…something. Maybe not something you would want to ingest, but they are indeed something. Take it away, Brad!

You know how there are some vegetables, like beans, that you can boil for a couple minutes and freeze? Well, there are some you just can’t do that with. Well my soon to be vomitting friends, my aunt freezes potatoes. Yes, potatoes. Which would be all right, if she did it the right way. You can’t do it like beans.

The way she does it, they’re not in the water long enough to know that they are even wet let alone boiled before they are in bags bound for the freezer. When they come out, ready for cooking, they look like little frozen marbles floating in water. When cooked, they are a big sloppy glop of slop that can almost be sucked up with a straw.

Enjoy your dinner.

Mmm…thought stew.

I’m just sitting here, and I have way too much energy. Like super energy. I feel like I just drank a whole bunch of coffee, make that espresso, and I have so much energy that I don’t know what to do with it. And that’s not good when you’re working at a distress line, so I thought I’d try and burn off some of this by writing down whatever the hell comes into my head.

And let’s start with a message to mother nature. Stop pissing on my head! I swear we haven’t had a sunny day in at least a couple of weeks. It’s definitely been sucky for a week straight. You can have your rain to water the plants, but is it really necessary to have a couple miserable weeks Without a single solitary break? Believe me, I’m happy snow hasn’t come, at least not snow that stayed. I heard that some slush bullshit fell from the sky on Saturday. I’m just glad I didn’t see it. But after a while, the shit weather really brings me down. Believe it or not, the dullness effects us blinks too. So, can we have some sun please?

I don’t know why this irritates me, but it does. There was a song called Gimme Hope, Joanna by Eddie Grant. As far as I knew, it was a song about South Africa and all the Apartheid that was going on down there. Now some yogourt company has altered, oh wait, butchered, it and is using the tune to sell their yogourt. Well they succeeded in getting my attention. But it makes me wonder if anything’s sacred anymore. Oh why bother asking, nothing is. That’s almost worse than a Big Sugar song being in a car ad.

And here’s something really creepy that I found out when I told a friend to check out our blog. Apparently there’s another blog with a name really close to ours, and someone on it mentioned someone with a name close to mine. Luckily it was Karen, not Carin, but it had me going for a while. I thought Steve had lost his mind for sure.

And I think I’m done. This thought stew was more like a thought soup, the kind they serve at some cafeterias that might as well be broth with a couple vegies in it. I thought I had more to say. Guess not. Well I hope you guys had fun. I’ll be back…when I’m back.

Where Was This Stuff When I was A Kid?

Animal lovers slam Choke-A-Chicken toy
Seriously, that’s honestly what it’s called. But if you don’t want to believe either me or The Register, you can check out its official website and maybe even buy one by clicking here.

And if you’re considering picking up a few for the kids on your Christmas list, think about grabbing an extra one for your old buddy Steve, because it seems like something I’d be able to have some fun with. I’m pretty sure I’ve just set myself up for some abuse somehow but oh well, I won’t be the first person to ever be torn apart on the comment boards around here.

Active Listening By The Deaf

Man. I can’t believe how people who claim to be good listeners don’t really listen. Or maybe they only listen in certain contexts, and then turn off their ears everywhere else.

I said I was in training to work with people who are trying to get out of abusive situations, and that would involve learning how to listen, right? Well, it seems my fellow trainees don’t have the talent mastered yet. I was sitting with them, and Martha Stewart came up in conversation. All I said was, “It pisses me off that just because she’s a celebrity, she can have the rules bent for her.” I’d just heard on the news that she really wanted to go to this pumpkin fest in Nova Scotia and help them raise money. That’s dandy. But she’s a criminal, which means you have to have a special visa to get across the border. And apparently, she and her 50000 lawyers didn’t investigate this until it was too late. So instead of accepting her fate and not coming, she whined and cried like a spoiled child until they made her a special visa.

After I spoke these words, all hell broke loose in the room. Crise of”don’t pick on Martha Stewart, she only went down because she was a democrat. and because she’s female.” erupted all over the place. Of course. I should expect this in a room full of radical feminists. But what flew right over their heads as they started spasming, knee-jerk reaction style, is that whole argument is beside the point. I don’t care if she was wrongly accused of ass-raping a goat. The point is she was convicted, and she should abide by the same rules as the rest of the convicts. And on top of that, she wasn’t even wrongly accused, so that shred of sympathy is gone. If some other common criminal just found out their great aunt in another country was on her deathbed and wanted to go see her, you know what would happen? They’d find out they’d need a special visa, wouldn’t be able to get it, and would have to live with the fact that they didn’t hear great aunt Birtha’s dying words as long as they lived, and no one would care. That would be the end of it. But because she’s Queen Martha Stewart, they kissed her ass and she got special treatment. That was what pissed me off.

But nobody heard that. They heard Martha Stewart and started flipping out about how she was apparently unjustly treated and males did way worse than she did and got off scott free because they were republican males. Ok, perhaps. But you see those things on the sides of your heads? Ya know, they’re not just used for balance. They’re used to listen. LISTEN! L i s t e n! Next time, before you chop off my head, ears and all, actually listen to what I have to say.

Good Lord

The only problem I can see with this is that if God has as much influence as the lawsuit claims he does, then there’s no point in this guy suing him since he can’t possibly win unless God allows him to.

Prisoner sues God

A Romanian prisoner is suing God for failing to save him from the Devil.

The inmate, named as Pavel M in media reports, accused God of “cheating, abuse and traffic of influence”.

His complaint reads: “I, the undersigned Pavel M, currently jailed at Timisoara Penitentiary serving a 20 years sentence for murder, request legal action against God, resident in Heaven, and represented here by the Romanian Orthodox Church, for committing the following crimes: cheating, concealment, abuse against people’s interest, taking bribe and traffic of influence.”

The inmate argued that his baptism was a contract between him and God who was supposed to keep the Devil away and keep him out of trouble.

He added: “God even claimed and received from me various goods and prayers in exchange for forgiveness and the promise that I would be rid of problems and have a better life.

“But on the contrary I was left in Devil’s hands.”

The complaint was sent to the Timisoara Court of Justice and forwarded to the prosecutor’s office.

But prosecutors said it would probably be dropped and they were unable to subpoena God to court.

Welcome To The White People’s Happy Time Hip Hop Sing Along

I know that covering rap songs and turning them into country or folk songs is sort of an old gag, but I still think it’s funny, and since I know other people think it’s funny too, here are a couple more that I’ve just found.

Both of these tracks were done by
Jonathan Coulton,
who I know absolutely nothing about beyond the fact that he did a really nice job on them.

Have a listen to
Baby Got Back,
and
Bills, Bills, Bills,
which you’ll have to scroll down the page a bit to find.

Enjoy.