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.

>More Blinky Gadgets From The Past

>After my big tyrade about the slate and stylus, I got thinking about some other fun devices that were designed with the best of intentions, but in practice, they didn’t work too well. don’t get me wrong, there are a zillion devices out there that made things easier, but a few devices…well, they just weren’t helpful.

I’ve already talked about the beeping baseball. Here’s a description of something else that beeps, and doesn’t hold up to the abuses it’s supposed to. It’s called a liquid level indicator.

Basically, it was designed to be a replacement for putting your finger over the edge of the glass to know when you’re supposed to stop pouring. the explanation was that you don’t want to be pouring hot liquids and using your finger as a stopping point. Either that, or people thought it just looked eeewww to have your finger in a glass while pouring. Anyway, instead of your finger, you put these two prongs over the top of the glass. When liquid hit them, it caused the device to beep, sing “London Bridge is falling down” or give some other audible sign that ya might wanna stop pouring, jackass.

This was great…as long as the device worked. But usually, after it had been hooked over a few glasses, the mechanism ceased to function. Why did we expect it to do anything else? We were exposing electronics to water.

I thought maybe I just had a bad run of luck with those things. I laid waste to two, or maybe 3 of them. But Steve had the same experience. It’s sad, because it was a good idea. It just didn’t work out. I guess the finger is the only tried and true method.

Next in line to go into the hmmm neat idea until you try it files was the braille eraser. It looked sort of like the stylus, only it was more round at the top. It was designed to rub out individual dots so you wouldn’t make a mess when you made a mistake. I watched my teacher use it, and I thought it was cool. Then I got my hands on it, and disaster struck.

Let’s just say I didn’t have the same precision and aim as my teacher. I would think I was on the dot or letter I wanted to remove, rub away, and make a gouge in the paper! It was deceptively sharp! So now, instead of removing a dot or a letter, I had made a mess of things. Again, I thought I was the only blink to do this and I must be clueless, but Steve told me he did the same thing.

Now let’s move up in the world from the simple tech to the more complex. In my early years at school, when I was in the classroom, I wrote everything down with a brailler. This could make things difficult, since I went to a regular school back then, so the classroom teacher certainly couldn’t read braille. So, my braille teacher had to write in between my lines of braille. This could be a difficult task, especially since I made a lot of mistakes, so my braille teacher had to play the roll of interpreter/mindreader.

I guess this got pretty troublesome, so she was trying to figure out ways to automate the process. I’m not sure how this came about, but she must have done some research, and discovered a device called an MPRINT. This device hooked into the brailler and connected to a printer. So, I could braille to my heart’s content, and every time I slammed the new line key, buzz buzz buzz went the printer, supposedly printing what I just brailled! Sweet, right?

That was great, until I made a mistake. Then I would backspace, but it wouldn’t know what to do, and when I would finish the line and hit new line, it would spew garble. So, in the end, my teacher was back to transcribing by hand.

Apparently, as the years went by and before it was discontinued in 1999, it got more sophisticated and capable of understanding what the backspace meant. But that’s not the model I got to work with. Mine was very primitive, and of course, I had no way of knowing whether it printed intelligible text or jibberish.

The last piece of holy crap this would be cool if it wasn’t for a few kinks technology was something called the Versabraille. In one way, it was way cool, because it opened the doors to much cooler, more reliable braille displays. But you’ve gotta start somewhere, and we started with the Versabraille.

First off, the museum exhibit doesn’t mention its weight. It was goddamn heavy! Maybe I found it this way because I was only 11 years old, and a small 11-year-old at that when we tried this thing out. It was so heavy for me that my teacher wanted me to go down the stairs like this: Put Versabraille on step beside me, step down, slide Versabraille down, lather, rinse, repeat. I told her this would not work when I was travelling among the stampeding hoards of children, and I wasn’t even going to try that because I would get killed. The Versabraille might have been fine, but I would be trampled.

And, this thing was so expensive and fragile that nobody was selling it, only renting it. It would have cost $10000 to buy.

At that price, it should have had a better battery low warning than making a sound as if you just lost an arcade game and ejecting your cassette, because yes, your data was stored on cassette. Well, I guess you did just lose a game, if the game was keeping your school assignments. Whatever you hadn’t saved before the battery ran out of juice just bit the big one. It especially hurt if you were in the middle of a save when the battery went bye-bye.

It made such a hell of a lot of noise. I would always have to wear headphones when I used it in class because it beeped and booped and bamped whenever you did something it didn’t like. No no, we couldn’t flash a message on the braille display. We have to boop. This meant that no one else heard the sounds but me, and they’d startle me so bad that I’d jump. Now I looked like a crazy kid, startling in the middle of class over seemingly nothing.

I’m glad it was invented, because it paved the way for better things. But you could certainly tell it was a first try.

While we’re on the subject of braille, can someone please tell me the benefits of thermoforming braille onto that thin plastic paper? The only one I can see is it made easy to read diagrams. But reading off thermoform was, well, a bitch! If you were in a dry place, the pages would stick together and make nice little static cling snapsnap noises when you turned them. If you were in a humid place, your hands would stick to the paper! Aaaa! You had to read at the pace of a turtle because you had to drag your hand across something that wanted to grab a hold of your hand and keep it there. Plus, it would rip so easily! I can’t count the number of times I would see ripped pages. And don’t read thermoform at night if you share a room with someone. Every time you’d turn the page, it would make the biggest racket!

I don’t know why my mind has drifted to all these older things. Hopefully people aren’t bored, or telling me I should call a waaambulance.

Good Questions

I got asked two interesting questions about Trixie today that I thought deserved a post.

First, I was in the bank waiting in line. From behind me I could hear a kid and his dad ooing and aaaing about Trixie. I eventually turned around and struck up a conversation. The kid said, “Is your dog a girl or a boy?”

“She’s a girl.” I said.

Right away, he shot back with “What do you do if she goes into heat then?”

Now, there’s an honest question! I told him that she’s spayed, so there’s no heat now. But that’s how you know you’re dealing with kids. They’re not embarrassed about a thing.

The other question I got just about floored me. Someone asked me how much longer I would have with Trixie. I looked at him and my face fell at the thought that he thought we were nearing the end together. I said I hoped to have her for another 7 or 8 years if all goes well. Then he said “Don’t you have to trade them in every two years?”

If that was the case, I’d never get a guide dog. The first year is work enough. I couldn’t imagine only having her for another year. Every day I hope that she will be with me for a long long time. I have heard so many horror stories of dogs having to retire early, and I’ve had such good luck with her that I don’t want it to balance out by her needing to retire way before she should have to.

That’s about it for now. I just thought those were neat questions, and I thought maybe other people would be asking the same ones.

Kids Are Going Down The YouTubes!

Let me get this straight. Victoria Lindsay had anger problems, she was known to mouth off, had fought with her parents and had moved in with a girl who became one of her attackers and was having problems with her, but it’s all YouTube’s and MySpace’s fault that she was beaten up by some girls and driven around for 35 minutes with a bad concussion.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a horrible, callous, cold-blooded thing they did. But whose fault is it? Theirs! I doubt YouTube will allow the videotaped brutality to stay up for long, so they’re doing their part. Besides, if the kids didn’t tape the beating to put on YouTube, they would have found some other reason to be assholes. Like hell MySpace is the antichrist for children. There are just some bad kids out there, and that’s all it is. Granted they’re getting worse, but don’t blame YouTube. Blame them, or if you must blame someone other than them, blame their families.

Parlez-Vous Français?

Remember back when I said I was going to take a conversational French class? Well, today I started it, and although we had a couple of bumps, I think dear old French teacher and I are going to get along fine.

First, let me describe my entrance to the class, because it was, well, unceremonious. I knew this place was far out in boonieville, so I took a cab. My problem was I ended up taking the cab later than I should have, so I arrived late for class. This was not the way I wanted to start off. The last thing I want to do is arrive in class late, because being late sucks, and it tends to send the teacher into unnecessary fits because she has no time to breathe and process this whole blink thing that seems to be so hard to do before class starts. But, sucks to be me, that’s what happened.

I walked into the building with the cab-driver because he was all cute and wanted to make sure I got where I was going. I asked the lady at the front desk where the French class was and she said “Hear that photocopier? That’s your teacher photocopying stuff. Go find her, she’ll show you where class is.”

So off I went with a big grin, wondering how this meet and greet was going to go. The poor woman just about died. “You’re in my class? I was not warned!” she sputtered in French. I reminded her that I spoke to her in the winter, and since I’d already missed too much, I came to this class. She breathed, calmed herself, and muttered something about not being prepared. I told her to relax and we’ll learn as we go. AT least I tried to say that. What came out was a lot of sputtering, breathing, sighing, frustrated attempts to find the words. This, boys and girls, is why I’m in this damn class.

After she showed me to a chair, and everyone ooed at the sight of my four-legged birthday beast of a Trixter, she told me how many students there were. It’s a pretty cute class, I think there are only 5 of us. I thought she said there were five others, but when I think back, I cannot remember any more than four people besides me.

Just as I was starting to settle, in charged the sleepy woman I talked about before. She was convinced that I had not paid. I told her I had, and I told her who I had spoken to. The French teacher looked at her and said “It’s ok, we’re going to give it a try.” Damn right we are, I paid the fee. Were they going to escort me out if the teacher said she didn’t want to teach me?

It’s really weird when you’re trying to skip quickly between English and French and you’re out of practice. Once you start trying to speak French, it’s hard to stop on a dime and go back to English. As soon as sleepy introduced herself, I turned around and started speaking French to her and then went “Oops sorry, you probably don’t speak French.” It’s also really hard to give English commands to Trixie while talking French. It’s a brain-twister!

I think I’m putting the teacher at ease though. I already showed her my good memory and the fact that I can speak French, it’s just rusty and dusty. I felt bad for the poor guy beside me though. We did an exercise where the teacher read an article to us and then We teamed up and we had to answer questions. He had to read stuff to me so we could work together, and I kept answering the questions before he could find the answer. The teacher was surprised I think. I attempted to tell her that learning to listen well was a necessity, because sometimes in school, the teacher would make up exercises on the fly and I wouldn’t have a copy. I think I succeeded in conveying that message. God my French sucks. I can speak simple sentences, but as soon as the message gets complicated, my mind fills with thoughts and I can’t sift through them to find the French words.

It’s going to be a neat experience. This lady’s first language is French, so she doesn’t have all the English words at her disposal that we do. So, sometimes she can’t just give us the English equivalent for a French word. She has to explain it in other ways. Or, it can go the other way. She asked us if a certain word was masculine or feminine. Someone wanted to know what that word was and asked if it meant string. The teacher said “What is string?” Would you believe that’s hard to explain? I couldn’t think of how to explain it! I kept thinking of draw-strings in your pants, but that’s not accurate. Then I thought of cords, but I didn’t want her to think electrical cords. Then I thought about things pulled by strings, but my French is so bad, I was afraid she’d think the thing being pulled by the string was the string. Aa language! How complicated it is!

I was so nervous going in. I didn’t know where I would fall on the spectrum of French-speaking ability. I fall in a pretty good spot. There is one guy who’s totally whooping my ass who also went to the Summer Language Bursary Program that I went to in 2001, only he went more recently and it shows. And there are others who have great vocabulary, but…ils ont une tray mo vez ak sont. Hopefully someone will get that. That was my attempt to phonetically spell what their accent sounded like if they said they had a bad accent in French. Anyway, I’m right smack in the middle, so I can relax and I’m not going to be laughed at by a mass of folk far superior to me in the French department.

One thing that I found to be slightly chuckle-worthy was the discovery that one of the students must wear hearing aids, and she was sitting furthest from the teacher! Now, wouldn’t hearing difficulties be a bigger impediment to a conversational French class than blindness? Just a thought. And why isn’t she sitting closest so she can hear best?

I think things are going to go well. The teacher says she’s going to email me the sheets she hands out. We’ll see if she actually does it. I’ve found someone who’s willing to drive me to class so I don’t have to pay 20 bucks a shot in cab fare, so rockin’. the teacher was actually kind of cool about this. I asked if there was anyone who lived in my area of town who wouldn’t mind meeting me somewhere and we could come together. A guy agreed to drive me, and the teacher said, “Do you trust him?” That’s a fair question. I think I do. He seems like a nice guy, and if anything goes wrong, he’s sort of screwed because I can get his whole name from the teacher, not like I’d have to, but you know what I’m saying. He’s not very anonymous.

So, hopefully by the end of the course, I’ll be able to speak French a hell of a lot better than I can right now. No matter what the outcome, it should be a fun ride.

Either Phones Are Getting Worse, Or I’m A Chronic Mumbler.

This has happened to me twice now. I ordered two different things from the states from two different companies, and I ordered them both over the phone. In both cases, when I said Guelph, they wrote down “Guelth!” I even spelled it, and they still thought my p was a t! Do I mumble that much? Both times, I got the shipping notice, saw the error, and had to call and fix it.

Ok, note to self: When ordering by phone from the states, say “P as in papa!” Leave nothing to the imagination!

Happy Birthday Dear Trixie And Company

Happy birthday to Tacoma, Tad, Talbot, Tarragon, Theda, Titan, Trooper, and of course, Trixie! It looks like, next to Trooper, Trixie got the best name of the bunch. In case you’re wondering, those are the dogs that make up Trixie’s whole litter. They were born April 9, 2005.

Hopefully this birthday will be a lot better than last years. She spent the morning of her second birthday trying to guide me when I was in bad knee pain, and then she spent the afternoon in the dorm while I was taken to urgent care and I got that crazy brace.

It’s raining right now. Hopefully that will change. I wanted to take her to a big park nearby and let her have a romp. We’ll see.

I never thought I’d be wishing my dog a happy birthday, I thought they’d never know the difference between their birthday and another day. But here I am. It’s funny what you’ll do when you get attached to your dog. I realize this has more significance for me than her, but oh well. Happy birthday, Trixter!