When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie, That’s…A Beer?

A couple of guys from the Chicago area have for some reason teamed up to create Mama Mia Pizza Beer, a beer that smells and tastes like a pizza because well, it’s brewed using real pizza and pizza ingredients.

Gold Medal Winning Brewmaster, Mike Rybinski of Walter Payton’s Roundhouse has teamed up with Award Winning Homebrewer, Tom Seefurth to brew his creation, “Mama Mia Pizza Beer”.  Tom’s beer is a Saison based light ale brewed with lots of real tomatoes, basil, oregano and garlic.  Just for fun they have tossed a few wood grilled pizzas from America’s Brewpub into the mix. The final product smells and tastes like pizza so,  you can have your pizza and drink it too.

It sounds disgusting, but strangely enough I’d really like to try some. I wonder if it tastes like what happens when you eat pizza and drink beer and then they come up together at the end of the night.

I Know One Teacher Who Should Go to Hell

Wow. This story is another example of schools going to, well, hell.

An English teacher at Fillmore Central High School told her class to do travel brochures on places they’d like to visit. Michael Sattler decided he’d like to visit Hell. that’s right, Hell, Michigan. There is a town called Hell, and he did his research and wrote a fine brochure all about it. He got a 0 and the teacher deemed it inappropriate because it mentioned hell all over it. Well, duh!

Disagreeing with this mark, Sattler’s parents sent his brochure straight to Hell, where the unofficial mayor thought it was awesome. In return, he sent a box of Hell souvenirs and a “grumpier than hell” coffee mug for the teacher.

Now, in the world I wish we lived in, the teacher would have said, “Ok, you proved me wrong, there is a Hell on Earth, and it seems you did a good job. So I’ll give you the mark I think you deserve.” Then the class would have learned all about Hell and it would have been educational. Unfortunately, that’s not where we live, because the principal of the school intercepted the box from Hell and said he’d send it back from whence it came. Why? because handing out the stuff would undermine the teacher’s authority! I know this is getting old, but what the hell? It would show that teachers make mistakes and are human and it would show fairness. But that would be the wrong set of values to instill in our children, I guess.

So now, as agesture of good faith, the teacher is willing to give him a grade if he does another brochure on another town. That does not sound like good faith to me. That sounds like punishment. He did it, and got a perfect grade, but nothing in this story seems fair. It just goes to show that schools seem to be more about control and less about learning. What did they teach Michael Sattler? It’ll be a cold day in hell, not Hell, before his school will show open-mindedness.

The Five Musical Instruments That Just Plain Suck The Most

I’ve always liked bagpipes and I used to know how to play the recorder pretty decently, but the writing here is hilarious and there’s no way to argue that recorders aren’t dangerous when they find their way into the wrong hands [which would be the hands of just about anyone], so here is one man’s list of
the 5 shittiest musical instruments ever.

It Can’t Be Just Me…Can It?

Carin and I were sitting around talking the other day when somehow the subject turned to sleep. I’m not sure how it came up, but I mentioned that I think it’s weird that when you fall asleep with something on like a TV or radio, it always seems way louder when you wake up than it did when you went out. I thought that even though it was strange it was pretty common, but judging from the what in God’s name are you talking about type reaction I got when I brought it up, I’m not so sure anymore. So now I’m turning to you the people to help straighten either myself or Carin out. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s ever fallen asleep to soft music and woken up to what sounds like a live concert or nearly had a heart attack after accidentally nodding off with the TV on because I’m sure that the cops are going to be at my door any minute to yell at me on behalf of the guy who lives on the other side of the wall. There’s no way I can be the only person this happens to and Carin has got to be the odd one, but I thought I’d better post this just in case. So please, help me out here. I’m curious now and I probably won’t be able to sleep until I get some kind of consensus one way or the other on this issue.

White Cane for a Black Dog

Um, wow. Trixie is making me famous. One thing that the school in San Rafael does is send press releases to local media about people coming home with their new woofs. I guess it caught the attention of the Guelph Tribune, so they asked me if they could get a photo and do a little story about us. I said sure, and here it is. I thought she did a pretty cool job. They apparently wanted to put my photo on the front. Um, eek. I don’t know if I need that much fame. But people are seeing us and commenting, so I guess the story did its job. Here it is, in case it ever disappears out of Tribune-land.

Guelph Tribune, Canada
Friday, May 11, 2007

White Cane For a Black Dog

Tribune photo by Paige Hilton

For Carin Headrick, a guide dog brought welcome freedom and a lot of adjustments to daily life. Headrick, 28, was born blind and until now used a white cane to get around. Enter Trixie, a two-year-old black lab. “Everything’s a bit of an art form,” she said, like making sure Trixie is seated properly on a bus so her tail doesn’t get stepped on. Headrick spent a month at the California school Guide Dogs for the Blind where she and Trixie trained together to learn how to navigate such things as escalators, busy public areas, stairways and overhead obstacles. Headrick said getting around with a white cane was slow going, and now she can’t believe how quickly she goes places with Trixie. The dog also attracts a lot of attention, but is learning to do her job and ignore the coos from passersby. “When you have a cane, people look at you but they don’t say anything. With a dog, everyone wants to talk to you,” she said. The process to apply for Trixie was a long one, and Headrick said one of the funniest moments was when people from the school came to interview her and they went for a walk to practise with a dog harness. “Except on the other end was a man holding the harness, and we were walking downtown. He was saying ‘hello’ to people. People must have been staring, and he said ‘Yup, everybody’s looking.'”

Wanna know something freaky? There’s this mailing list called blind news, where it’s some poor person’s job to hunt up all stories related to all things blinky, and they found me! And someone got me in a google news alert! Um, wow. I didn’t know I’d be this famous.

I tried to move the photo into the story, here’s hopin’ I didn’t break it. People tell me it’s cute. Hope it is, or I’ve just humiliated myself. Anyway, hope the people who come looking for things about Trixie enjoy it. I know I haven’t written too many Trixie things lately.

Who Neds a poofreader?

It seems that people don’t care to check their own writing for errors anymore, and in places where they should. Lately, Steve and I have come across tons of instances of bad wording in newspaper headlines and ads. Um, is that a good idea?

One of the ads on our own site claimed to sell deaf products for deaf people. So the products are deaf? I didn’t know my run-of-the-mill toaster, clock, lamp and TV could hear me. That’s a scary thought. Another ad said it had visual impairment magnifiers. Why would anyone want to magnify their visual impairment? Wouldn’t they want to lessen it? That seems to be a common mistake, because on another site that I was critiquing, because they asked me to, it told people to enhance low vision. Doesn’t that mistake jump out at you as glaringly obvious? It didn’t just tap me on the shoulder to make its presence known, it screamed at me. Another ad said it had equipment for people with severe disabilites. What’s a disabilite? That one might only stand out to us because the computer is reading the screen and it doesn’t fill in the missing letters like people’s brains and eyes tend to do. But then another ad told me to behave my dog better. I think the publisher of that site may need an English lesson.

I see stuff in the newspaper, too, that surprises me. Our newspaper had to print corrections on corrections, for crying out loud. But headlines have gotten sloppy. One read, “Man killed in city crash.” Our city crashed? Into what? How did I miss it? And how come more people weren’t killed? Another read, “Police Officers Risk Lives to Save Man.” Whose lives did they risk? Why would they risk other people’s lives, and was it necessary? Did they risk my life and the paper was nice enough to inform me of it just now?

I’ve seen a few people’s websites that are supposed to be the core of their business, and they’re littered with typos. Do people not care about image anymore? Don’t they want to look professional? Remember the candy shoppe? I wouldn’t have guessed they were a reputable business based on the horrid typing. When I told them about this, they wanted me to catalogue all the errors and tell their webmaster. Uh, dude…isn’t it enough that I brought it to your attention? Now it’s your job to fix it. And don’t even get me started on my friend the artist’s website.

Don’t people proofread anymore? Don’t they care about being accurate? Or do they not have time? It’s pretty sad, because they’re making themselves look like fools.

Wiley Coyote, or Roadrunner?

Wow. This guy sounds like a piece of work. Michael Wiley has no arms and only one good leg, but he has managed to get into several police chases and get his license suspended. In the last chase, he actually got away from police. Impressive! He’s not only known for his bad, or good, driving depending how you look at it, but he has beaten up his girlfriend with his head! What the hell? There are definitely some weird people out there.

I Don’t See Anything Wrong with This, Do You?

When I read this story, all I could think was, what? That mixed with disgust were my only thoughts.

Where do I begin? Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Lethbridge have joined together to conduct a study on pedophiles. They want to pay 250 sex offenders $60 each to view pictures of fully dressed children and measure their responses. They want to measure two different kinds of pedophiles: the ones who have only downloaded child porn and the ones convicted of abusing children. This is, apparently, so they can better manage and treat pedophiles.

Feel the rage. Can you feel it? I know I can. Everytime I read this story, I have to sit for a second afterwards so the rage can discipate. First of all, why oh why would you pay criminals to view pictures of things related to their crime? That is so wrong, it’s beyond words. Why why why would you think this is a good idea, and how in the blue bloody hell did you get it past an ethics board? I know the ethics boards are usually most concerned with the impact of a study on the participants, but even that raises red flags for me. If you’re getting people who are sexually attracted to children to look at pictures of children, you are intentionally feeding their depravity! It’s not like the only time they get the urge to sexually assault a child is right after they just saw one naked. They get attracted by watching kids play at the playground. And I think some of these guys are out on probation. So, by making them look at pictures of kids, you’re going to steer their mind towards kids, making them more likely to reoffend, which is already something that is highly possible. Smart thinking there, Sparticus, real smart.

Second, I have a problem with their two groups of offenders. I assume they’re dividing the sex offenders by conviction records. So, How do they know that the one group has only downloaded porn? How do they know they haven’t molested children and just haven’t been caught yet? They should know that the incidence of crime is much higher than the incidence of reported crime, which is higher than the actual conviction rate. I think most people know that. So how do they even know that they’re dealing with two different groups?

Third, if you must do a study on pedophiles, why have them look at pictures? Why not ask them questions? I know measuring actual responses is more accurate, but in this case, I don’t think measuring that stuff is such a good idea.

Finally, if you’re going to conduct a study like this, you’d better give me a detailed explanation of how this is going to help society. No, “It will help us understand pedophilia better so we can better manage and treat pedophiles” doesn’t cut it. Give me something I can attempt to grasp and has a snowball’s chance of justifying the risk and the money spent encouraging pedophiles.

I’m still processing the fact that this research got the go-ahead, and even got a grant! I would be disgusted if something like this was being conducted on a voluntary basis, but the money is the final straw. Let’s just hope that this study doesn’t cause any of the participants to reoffend. I don’t think any ethics board would want that on their head.

Barenaked Ladies are Mean

You know what’s sad? When a really good band releases an awesome album, and then follows it up immediately with something that spends half the time sucking monkey balls and half being sort of kind of decent. Why did the Barenaked Ladies have to do that?

They released Barenaked Ladies Are Me. It rocked! It was cool! I don’t think there’s a song on there that I don’t at least like, and lots on there that I love. Plus that album will always have a special significance because of getting to see them live right after listening to it, but I think it still would have been a cool album without the concert.

Then they go and release Barenaked Ladies are Men. Ug why why why? Let’s be logical. If you know this album consists of 16 rejects from the good album, why would you think it’s a good idea to throw them all in the same album? Maybe it’s time to rethink this. You’re a good band, obviously you know what a *reject* is. Why would you release them all together? Maybe, if you thought they were ok enough to put on albums, you could squish them into albumvs slowly. But why make all your crap stand out?

It’s a strange album. I don’t know if I could really properly judge it because the crappy crap makes the sorta good stuff seem like the best stuff you’ve ever heard in your life. I did rip about half of the album because it was either listenable or I liked it. But the stuff that sucked, oh it sucksucksucksucked! It was like you were on a treadmill, never going anywhere. It actually made me try and figure out what makes good music good. Should I have to do that? I thought about how I like a pattern in music, but what’s wrong with this pattern, and why is it boring?

When I listen to an album of theirs the first time, I like to give it all my attention, but the sucky stuff was so monotonous that I started doing other things, and waiting, praying for the song to end. Some stuff would start off sucking right from the beginning, and some songs would make you think they had potential, and then promptly crap all over themselves. And some songs would just go on too long.

And then there were the few good songs. They did a really good one about the George W. Bush government, that oddly sounded like Bank Job from Barenaked Ladies are Me…which brings me to another point. They must have really liked that Bank Job tune, because they created 3 songs along the same lines. It’s pretty neat that you can make 3 different songs out of the same tune, two of them being good. The third one was just weird. Quality biology enhanced with high technology? What the hell? Oh well, they’re the Barenaked Ladies, and if they can get away with “Hey I’m a cow, I’m curious, hey watch me now, I’m furious.” I guess they can do this.

So the moral of the story is this album is far from hot stuff. If you really want it, wait for someone to buy it, go “blech!” and turn it in so you can buy it used. Otherwise, I think you can do without it. You, and your pocketbook, will be much happier, trust me.