You Are Getting Sleepy…Sleepy…And Stupid…

From the country that brought you legalized public sex in the park comes wackiness of such a degree that it has to be a product of all that legalized pot.

Unemployed Dutch people are being forced to sign up for what is being called past-life therapy in the hopes that getting in touch with old selves and reflecting on the negative experiences those people might have had will give their current minds some perspective on why they have trouble finding work now.

Government officials, who are apparently serious about this and not just fucking with people because they’re high and they can, have gone so far as threatening welfare recipients with the loss of their benefits if they refuse to enter the program.

Luc Winants, the councillor responsible for social affairs in Maastricht, has defended the technique as a spiritual method for helping the unemployed.

“It might very well be true that reincarnation therapy is a means to get people back to work,” he told De Limburger newspaper.

Well ok, when you use that kind of persuasive language, spending those thousands of dollars makes complete sense. I’m a fool for thinking otherwise.

At press time there was no word on whether Mr. Winants had decided to seek therapy to get in touch with the past life that suffered a profound brain injury, but we’ll keep you posted.

There’s Always Time For Tim Hortons…To Shit All Over The Good Work Of Others

This,
for lack of a better way to describe it, is fucking retarded.

A small cafe set up in the Ottawa Hospital to help raise money to pay for new equipment has seen its revenue plummet ever since a Tim Hortons outlet opened up in the critical care wing of the same facility.

Hospital officials say that the charity gets a percentage of the rent paid by Tims, and that the move will ultimately mean more dollars for the hospital. That sounds great, and it would be if not for the ongoing discussions about whether or not the cafe should remain open or be shut down.

I freely admit that I’m bad at math, but even I’m smart enough to know that a percentage of something, even if it’s a big one is less than all of it, which just so happens to be the amount that the hospital takes in from the charity restaurant.

I don’t understand why anybody with any business sense or with the best interests of the hospital and it’s clients at heart would do something this stupid. Are there Tim Hortons executives on the hospital’s board? That’s the only reason I can fathom for a decision so utterly absurd. People are willing to donate their time and give you everything they make, and you repay them by allowing a chain store to walk in, take away all their business and then put less money into the fund? Some people are lining their pockets with this deal, I have no doubt about that. It’s just a shame that it isn’t the people who should be.

Zamzar: Free Online File Converter

I just found out about a service called
Zamzar
that allows you to convert files into several different formats. The best part? The basic service is totally free and works like a dream.

I tested it out by converting some pdf’s to text, made a YouTube video into an avi and then into an mp3 quickly and easily. If I were to make one complaint it would be that all but one of my notification emails ended up in my spam folder, but that’s nobody’s fault and easy to sort out.

The free site will allow you to convert up to 5 files at once to a maximum of 100 megabytes, which is a really nice time-saving feature. If you need to convert more than that you can sign up for one of their paid plans, the priciest of which let’s you upload a gig at a time.

I’ll link the site in our computer resources section so that you’ll always be able to find it if you forget what it’s called, but it may take some time to show up there due to me being a lazy, absent-minded prick.

I’m Not Think You Who I Am

The following is a helpful tip from your friends at the Vomit Comet.

If you’re going to go out drinking and need to use a fake ID, do your best to make sure that the guy you’re pretending to be
isn’t wanted by the police for anything.

Winona police were called to Brothers Bar, 129 W. Third St., at 12:43 Saturday morning. The bouncer at the downtown bar suspected he had a fake identification card. The person on the driver’s license, a Kevin Michael Stenson, was 27. But the bar patron didn’t look nearly that old.

Police confronted the man who presented the identification, and he insisted he was indeed Kevin Michael Stenson, according to the police report. Police then ran Stenson’s name through dispatch only to reveal that Stenson had at least one warrant for his arrest.

As they told “Stenson” this, Riley, 20, of Oak Park, Ill., quickly admitted his real name and that he had used the identification to drink in the bar, according to police reports.

Cole Patrick Riley, the man who had been playing the part of mr. Stenson, was taken to detox for the night and has been charged with giving false information to police, underage consumption and possessing the identification of another. He is currently residing in the Winona County Jail and is supposed to be making a court appearance today.

Hell of a way to end a night on the town.

This Story Has It All

This tiny news article is great for a number of reasons.

  1. There were legitimate fears that graffiti that has started appearing at a Florida school showing stick figures with giant peckers was the work of street gangs, because you know how those hoods and thugs love their penis jokes.
  2. Police have been called in more than once to investigate and have determined that no, street gangs are not involved.
  3. The story was reported under the headline “Explicit graffiti pops up at elementary school.”
  4. The school in question? That would be Longwood Elementary, of course.

Some days I’m convinced that the news is written just for me.

For That Price I Should Be Able To Ride In It Too

Did you know that for only $3500 you can get yourself a 1950’s style hot rod complete with leather bucket seats, a swank paint job and about a zillion other custom features? Well you can.

Sounds awesome you say? Would be a deal at twice the price? Sure, but would you feel the same way if I told you that what you were paying for was a
baby buggy?
No? Yeah, me neither.

It is the ultimate in buggy-bling: the baby-stroller for the infant – and parents – who must have everything. More Top Gear than Mothercare, the latest pushchair from California harks back to classic 1950s hot rods, with chrome trim kit options, teardrop fenders and surround sound to let the baby rock while you are rolling.

The top of the range tailfin Roddler from Kid Kustoms will set parents back at least $3,500 (about £1,750). Customised paint jobs, suede or leather upholstered bucket seats and even brake lights are among extras available.

“Gone are the days of being relegated to pushing your child in something as stylish as a shopping cart. Our buggies are really made the same way a car is, only without the production line. In essence it’s the same as having a custom hot rod for your kids.”

This seems like as good a time as any to mention 2 things:
1. No matter how much you pay for one of these you still have to push it yourself,
and
2. It’s just a baby, a baby that doesn’t care and won’t remember how it gets around. Save your money and put it through school.

I’m Sorry, I Just Can’t Help Myself

Note to journalists everywhere: When writing a story about a guy with a long history of molesting folks on the subway, there’s got to be a better way to describe him than “the 6-foot, 227-pound Johnson”, even if Johnson does happen to be his name. Remember, people like me read these things, and people like me have never been the type to be above going for the easy laugh.

And hey, I tried to warn you people years ago about the dangers of letting those things grow too big. See what you get for not listening to me?

The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches Of All Time

Here’s a really cool comedy history lesson, complete with videos for a bunch of them.

Yes, I know rankings like this are subjective and that trying to explain why something is funny is a sure-fire way to make it less so, but there’s some great stuff in here that you probably haven’t seen before or wouldn’t mind seeing again, so just click around and have fun.

The Dream Police

I had the strangest dream last night, and I’m still trying to figure out what it means. Maybe it just means I’m loopy.

I dreamed that I was on some kind of police squad. We would bring people in and question them, I think about drugs, but I’m not sure. Then, when we were sure that the person we had was guilty, we would call in special agents who only came in for these occasions, put the supposedly guilty person in a chair, hook them up to all manner of electrodes, and have them confess, and record this confession. They always thought it was a polygraph that we were doing. But they were in for something completely different.

When the person had confessed to everything, the recorder was turned off, and the agent would say “1, 2, 3!” And I would throw a switch and the chair would show its true purpose. It was an electric chair! I never heard or saw anything. I just knew this. After the person was dead, the agents and I would all sit and eat ice cream! I seemed to have no problem being the one orchestrating these people’s deaths, nor did I have a problem with this process. There was no trial, just interrogate and kill. I did nothing except deceive these guys into allowing us to hook them up, and throw the switch that would mean their deaths. What the hell?

But the dream wasn’t over. A woman was brought in who was apparently one of the principal figures in some drug ring. But she came in with a cat! It was determined that she was guilty, and was going to be killed, but her cat was going to die too. This was apparently too much for me, and I said I was not going to hook a cat up to the apparatus. But it wasn’t because I had feelings for the cat, it was because the logistics were too complicated for me. Was I supposed to shove the wires up the cat’s butt? What if the cat scratched me? What if it bit me? I didn’t know what diseases the cat had. Even writing this, I get chills.

Because of my refusal to hook up cat and woman, I was reassigned to some other job around the building. Just for shits and giggles, I would come back to the hall near the room when I knew someone was going to get zapped. But only then would I start to be disturbed by the whole process. At the end of the dream, I was talking to another officer when I got the uncontrollable urge to get the hell out of there. I knew that the prisoner was reaching the end of their confession, and I didn’t want to be around when the switch was thrown. but something kept me there. I kept saying “I can’t stay. I can’t stay.” then I heard the old familiar “1, 2, 3!” and the electricity started, and the person getting killed just started laughing like a madman possessed by demons, and that’s how it ended.

What the hell was that? The only part of the dream that I can figure out was the cat part. Trixie and I were in a pet store yesterday getting more food for her when she sniffed something, I corrected her, and a cat screamed protests at her. But what did the rest of it mean? I have a strange mind. I guess that’s all I can come up with.