If You’re Eating Right Now, Stop!

I found this story the other day while I was doing research for the radio show but I just never got around to throwing it up here. Speaking of throwing things up, like the title says, stop eating before you read any further. I’m serious about this.

This story, as far as I can tell, is absolutely true. I got it from
Ananova,
which is a pretty well-respected news source.

Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor.

Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies.

He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up.

Dr Bischinger said: “With the finger you can get to places you just can’t reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner.

“And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system.

“Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.

“Modern medicine is constantly trying to do the same thing through far more complicated methods, people who pick their nose and eat it get a natural boost to their immune system for free.”

He pointed out that children happily pick their noses, yet by the time they have become adults they have stopped under pressure from a society that has branded it disgusting and anti social.

He said: “I would recommend a new approach where children are encouraged to pick their nose. It is a completely natural response and medically a good idea as well.”

And he pointed out that if anyone was really worried about what their neighbour was thinking, they could still enjoy picking their nose in private if they still wanted to get the benefits it offered.

Post Of Colour

I wish that people would stop using the term people of colour to describe minorities, and not just because it’s more of that PC bullshit I hate so much. I’m looking at things more from the angle that it just doesn’t make sense. Don’t even try arguing that it does, because quite simply, you’re wrong. And how can I be so sure that you’re wrong? Well, people of colour is a term invented and used by white people to describe everybody else. Only problem is, white is a colour. Therefore it stands to reason that every person in the world is a person of colour, meaning that it further follows that you are saying absolutely nothing and wasting your time by using the phrase.

Besides, if you’re having a conversation with somebody and you say that you talked to a person of colour today, the person is more than likely going to ask you what colour the guy was, meaning that you’ll have to say black anyway, because African American, unlike white, is not a colour. If you don’t believe me, go into a hardware store and look around for a can of white paint and a can of African American paint and see which one you find first. Actually if you’re ever looking for black paint, I want one of you to ask the guy at the counter to try to find you some African American paint just so you can watch him get all confused and call the manager.

Random Page Stuff

We finally got around to updating the links section of the page as somethings had expired or people had moved their sites or just completely stopped using them and it was pointless to keep them around so hopefully it’s all up to date now.

If you have a page of your own or some ideas of fun things that you think the readers would enjoy, please let us know and we can take a look and see about throwing them up there for everyone to enjoy.

I know beside the comments we still have those ugly numbers but honestly, guys, I’m just too lazy to fix it and it ain’t that big of a deal as our comments still work. Sure it looks like hell but look at the writing that goes along with them on this page. What would you expect? Some day I’ll get bored and sit down and change them up but for now they’ll have to stay the way they are. I don’t even notice them anymore.

I wrote a fun little column for Salty Sports that should get posted sometime today or first thing tomorrow. Check out the other sections while you’re over there too. Great stuff.

I was planning on writing a review of the Trapt album for the Salty Music section but I just ran out of time and have some more pressing things to do but tomorrow looks like a good day to get that done.

More later…. maybe.

The Nerves Are Setting In Already

So I leave first thing Friday morning for what can only be described as a Canadian HOTSPOT, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We’re having our Canadian National Goalball Championships out there this year and they start on Friday night.

It’s weird for me. This is my third Canadian Championships and you’d think by now I wouldn’t get nervous over these things anymore but I’ve never been as nervous about a tournament as I am for this one.

At my first Canadian Championships in Charlottetown, PEI there wasn’t much expected of me. I was just the new guy there to get some experience and learn and I’d get minutes where ever the game situation permitted. I played well for an 18 year old kid playing against 30 year old men and came out feeling pretty good about my performance and our team one the tournament which was even better. I knew going in to that tournament that there was no pressure on me because I was just the young guy and when it came down to crunch time, the veterans would be starting and I wouldn’t be expected to carry the load.

Last year should have been the one where I felt the most pressure. Our starting left winger retired which meant all of a sudden I had to play every game. Also, up until then I had been playing center and being groomed to take over for our current center when he retires in a few years. Now we had no left wingers and so I was immediately changed in to a left-winger and asked to change my game. Also, that tournament was going to be held in Sudbury, Ontario which meant it was on home soil and we had won 6 strait National titles and no one wanted to see that streak end on our own soil.

In the meantime, Canada’s second highest scorer had moved to Quebec and joined with Canada’s top scorer and Quebec was easily favoured to load up the big truck, drive it right in to Ontario and take the title from us. Again though, I felt no pressure. It was odd. But I still felt like I was the young guy and there was no one, and I mean NO ONE that expected us to beat Quebec, or Alberta for that matter that year. We had an inexperienced left winger who’d never played there before and had only been to two mens tournaments total at any position. I had family in Sudbury and I can specifically remember one of them telling me after our first game and Quebec’s first game that his money was on Quebec to win the entire tournament. He sure wasn’t alone as everyone had picked Quebec to win and watching them play when we arrived, it was hard to see how they wouldn’t.

We managed to squeak by Alberta, 2-1, in a semi-final and put us in to the Championship game against Quebec. I can remember warming up for that game with the stands full and just saying “I do not belong here, yet.”. The vets on our team were great in just trying to keep me calm making sure I knew I didn’t have to do anything spectacular… just do what I’d been doing all tournament long. We had played Quebec already in the round robin and while they jumped up on us 3-0 in the first half, we manged to claw back in and tie them 3-3 thanks to some ballsy plays by our right winger and some mistakes on their end. It was hard to keep the nerves calm though. The year before I knew I wouldn’t even see the court in the Championship as a rookie so there was nothing to worry about. This year was different.

We started that game and both teams played an outstanding first half and the half ended still knotted at 0-0 and both teams had sunk in to a rhythm. I had been struck in the chest hard with the first shot of the game and blocked it and at that point realized that I was now in to the game and I could hang with these guys. I had nowhere near the same skill level as them but I knew I wouldn’t be outworked. We started the second half and immediately got scored on on a penalty shot. Our captain tied it up 2 shots later knowing that it was his fault we’d been scored on. A few minutes later he scored again to put us up 2-1 and we just grunted out the last 3 minutes to claim our 7th and most unlikely National title in the streak. It was an unreal feeling.

I was later that month named to the Canadian National team which was a great honour for me but I’ll get to that later.

This year, the man that had moved to Quebec has since moved here to play with us making us the overwhelming favourites to win again in Saskatoon. He gives us that much more offensive power. Thing is… there’s no pressure like being the favourite and not getting it done. We went in last year with nothing to lose. Everyone had counted us out so you just go in and play your game. This year everyone is gunning for us. Also, our streak of 7 strait National Championships started in Saskatoon so it would be nice to come back after 8 years and keep it going there.

Plus, this year is an Olympic year and the National team gets re-selected and it will be largely based on performance from this tournament. Last year I had no idea that I was even being considered and this year I know that there’s me and one other guy gunning for the last spot on the team and he looked really good in our last tournament in Montreal. So, on top of feeling pressure for our team to perform, i have a bit of pressure on myself to have a good showing to make sure I’m on that flight to Athens for the Olympics.

Also, with having such a good year last year our Ontario team has put some more responsibilites on me since I showed I can handle it and I need to show that I’m ready for that.

So while our team has gotten significantly better over the last year with my improvement and the addition of Dean from Quebec, it almost feels like there is more pressure to perform because if we don’t come out with Gold this year there’s going to be a lot of “What the hell happened?” coming our way afterwards… and no one wants that.

Well this hole post has been nothing but typing what’s on my mind… but that’s what a blog is I suppose. I’m sure most of you stopped reading after the second paragraph anyway. I got 4 days to get myself ready for this because than it’s crunch time and if you’re not ready to go, someone else will be and you get run right over.

I’ll be sure to let you know when I get home how it all went.

I’m Torn

I just read in the news that a Russian court has banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses from the city of Moscow. Yeah, a court made being a Jehovah’s Witness illegal. I’m not quite sure how to feel about that. Part of me is really upset that such a stifling of religious freedom could be allowed to take place anywhere in the world for any reason, but part of me is pretty happy for a lot of Russians who can now answer their door again when somebody knocks on it without fear of getting stuck talking to some guy with a handfull of books trying to sell you his beliefs like some sort of traveling insurance salesman.

More Commercials

Writing about the shoe store ad earlier today and then reading the comment that was posted underneath it got me thinking about a couple other commercials that have kind of always bugged me. Let’s go down memory lane a little bit here since these are both a few years old and I don’t think either of them air anymore. And I’m not sure if anybody outside of Canada will ever have seen these but that doesn’t make them any less stupid or disturbing, as you’ll soon see.

I remember quite a few years ago a literacy foundation started running a series of ads promoting adult education classes or something like that for people who couldn’t read. That in itself is a really good idea and I’m not against it in any way. But having said that I do think that perhaps the people writing the commercials should have thought about signing up based on their stupidity. In every one of these commercials there was always this one part at the end that just made me look at the TV and laugh and think what the fuck at the same time. The end of the commercial would come around and the announcer would say, and I’m pretty sure I’m remembering the exact quote here, “for more information on how you can get help, look in The Yellow Pages under learn. L E A R N.”

Read that quote again, I’ll wait. Hopefully by now you’ll realize just why that’s so funny, or at least dumb. First of all, these people can’t read, how are they going to know what they’re looking at and how is spelling it out for them going to help. It’s not like you can draw pictures of the letters or something like that and make it all make sense to them. And let’s say that you did manage to teach them how to find the word learn, there’s still the matter of them reading all of the other stuff under that heading and figuring out what the numbers are.

So now that we’ve established that it’s pretty unlikely that anybody signing up for the classes is going to do so completely on his or her own, let’s look at the other side of this. Anybody they get to look this stuff up for them is already going to know how to spell learn so it’s pretty much a waste of time to tell them how.

Ok, since I’m not really good at writing transitional material, let’s talk about hot dogs now, because that’s what the other commercial was about.

Again this one comes from a few years ago. Mapleleaf Foods started marketing something they were calling the 100 percent all beef all meat frankfurter. Catchy name isn’t it? But it’s not the name that makes the commercial or the product bad, it’s the slogan, which could arguably be the worst slogan in the history of advertising.

“The new Mapleleaf 100 Percent All Beef All Meat Frankfurter. Because all beef doesn’t always mean all meat.”

I swear on anything I could possibly swear on that I’m not making that up, that was their real slogan. Just makes ya wanna fire up the old BBQ right now doesn’t it? I honestly almost gave up hot dogs forever after I saw that commercial the first time and it didn’t get any easier to watch the other 15000 times I saw it either.

Ok, now I’m going to turn things over to you, the good people of the comment boards. Let’s try and move away from the recent retardedness and concentrate on fun things. Can you think of a commercial either past or present that had something either really funny or really stupid in it? Here’s a comment to get you started, submitted by somebody who didn’t leave a name.

That’s as bad as the H and R block commercial. they say your not a little fish in a big pond and they won’t treat you like one, they’ll treat you like a
whale. Yeah, that’s what I want, to be treated like a whale. Thanks Guys.
Anonymous | 03.26.04 – 11:53 am

I Hope We All Still Love Lectures…. Oh And Everyone Wave Good Bye To The Retard As He Passes

Well. We’ve had this talk before and this one will be short cuz the main violater will not longer be a problem.

People have internet names for a reason. People don’t want their identities revealed so they use their ‘net names. It takes a special kind of prick to sit around and try to reveal who someone really is.

To that end, Nick’s comments that he had posted containing real names have been deleted and Nick’s IP has been banned from the Comment Boards. He’s done this before and it’s getting old.

I’m quite aware that Nick has more than one computer and posts from more than one spot so all it will take is for him to try and post from that spot and I will be able to go in and ban that IP adress as well so you may see Nick once or twice more but it’s being phased out.

Just for Nick’s own piece of mind and anyone who saw his comments, he was way way off on his guesses to the identity of Satan.

I’d like to apologize to everyone here though for having to take a way a major source of entertainment for us all. That of course, being Nick. But he’s been warned and we can’t have people throwing out real identities. Also it had gone from humourous to annoying in my books anyway.

Nick’s comments were deleted on this topic but those who posted in response to him had their comments left up there because they are funny.

Sorry I had to post that again but with Nick gone it shouldn’t have to happen again. I’m sure we can all expect different attempts on his behalf to get back in under different names and addresses because he’s pathetic enough to think this message board is important enough to fight over but it will be delt with.

Now go read Steve’s stuff. It’s pretty good.

Later

Design Flaw

Right now I’m in the market for a new jean jacket because my old one is looking, well, old. So being the smart shopper that I am, I’ve gone into a few different places looking for just the right one at just the right price. But through my search for that perfect coat I’ve noticed a really disturbing and annoying trend in jean jacket design.

Before I go any further I should mention that I’m really not that picky, I’ll take anything reasonably priced that feels right and has what I want in a coat. I won’t for instance, settle for a jean jacket without those big inside pockets, I love those things, they’re so handy. They’re great for stashing stuff and it makes it harder for people to pick pocket you, but now I’m getting a little off topic.

My plan whenever I go into a store is to scope out all the jackets and find the ones that meet my specifications, those being denim, the right size, and having 2 big inside pockets. Finding coats like this generally isn’t a problem but I’m noticing something that’s making my search much more difficult than it should be.

The first time I noticed this, I thought it was a fluke, or just something strange with the store’s brand of coats but after going into a few more places and finding the same thing I’m about ready to start bashing my head repeatedly off of a wall. So what is it that’s driving me so nuts about denim coats? Well, it’s a hole. Yes, a hole. But it’s not just any hole, it’s a hole in a pocket. “Now Steve” I hear you saying to yourself, “if there’s no hole in the pocket, how do you expect to get anything in there?” And to you I say, shut up, idiot! It’s not that hole, it’s a different hole, and it’s in my beloved inside pockets.

For some reason it seems to be standard practise now to put a finger-sized hole in the bottom of every inside pocket of every jean jacket in every store in the universe. I’m not sure when this started or why but I do know that finding one without them is about as easy as finding a guy watching a staging of The Vagina Monologues who isn’t there because his wife or girlfriend dragged him away from the ballgame.

My question is why? Why would you put holes in the bottom of a pocket? Who thought that was a good idea? And who buys coats like that? You’re pretty much paying for something defective because the hole, even though it is quite small, is still a hole and things can fall out of it. You’re paying for a ripped pocket and then you’re losing more money over time when all the handfulls of change that you toss in there slowly fall out as you go about your day, jostling the coat around and whatnot. It’s really frustrating because I really need a new coat but I refuse to break down and buy one with holes in it. I won’t let the bastards win, I just won’t.

So if anybody knows of a brand of jean jackets that don’t have these holes in them please let me know. Even if you’re having the same problem, please comment because at least then I’ll know I’m not alone and that somebody else knows what I’m talking about. And if you design jean jackets for a living, I really want to hear from you so you can tell me what sort of thought process comes up with stupid ideas like this.