That Ain’t Right

Right now, at 7:33 AM on Friday, January 5th, 2007, the temperature is 9 degrees Celsius. It is expected to rise all the way to 13. This is happening in Canada, not long after Christmas, in a part of Ontario generally thought of as a portion of what people have taken to calling the snowbelt. For whatever reason I felt that this needed to be mentioned, perhaps in the hopes that when we have all been incinerated, whatever comes along next will know what the hell happened.

It’s a Nice Day…in A Disturbing Sort of Way.

Someone said that the other day and I thought that was a perfect way to describe the weather. Check the date. It is January 5. Now check the weather forecast. It is supposed to go up to 13 C. Now check the geographic location. Yup, I’m still in Guelph. This is wrong!

As much as I’m loving the warm weather and not slogging through the snow, I can’t help but get the haunting sense that…we’re screwed. There are so many more natural disasters now, I saw a show that showed the ice in the northwest passage is melting, some foods are harder to grow because our seasons seem to be in fast forward. By the end of my life, what is going to be left of the world?

Wow, that was depressing. And then I wonder if I’m contributing to it. I feel guilty as I throw my unsorted garbage down the shoot because there’s no recycling system here. I know I walk and take the bus out of necessity, so that makes me feel a little better. But I wonder if, as things get more dire, I’ll find out that if only I, and the rest of the world, had done X and Y earlier, we’d be a little better off.

What a way to start the day. Try and enjoy the nice weather, if it doesn’t give you too much of the creeps.

What’s So Special About Dean Koontz?

Somebody told me that if I thought Stephen King was good, I should try and read Dean Koontz, and he’d be sooo much better. So I thought I’d give him a try.

I’ve read 3 of his books, at least one of them unabridged, and the whole experience left me unimpressed. Reading his stuff is like watching a cheap horror flick. And that’s never good. Books are supposed to be better than movies, and certainly better than cheap movies.

Here’s a sample of the sheer stupidity I’ve read. Some woman gets pregnant in the free love era, and takes lots of hallucinogens. Then she tries to abort her baby with all kinds of herbal and other non-medical methods. It doesn’t work. He’s born, and he becomes an evil demon child with super psychic powers, can control clumps of mud which he makes to looklike people with his mind and set people on fire with thoughts. Give me a break.

The best part of the whole book was when he narrated what a dog must have been thinking. That was kind of cute. But the rest was just dumb.

So what is so good about this author? Has anyone read anything cool by him? Maybe I just picked the wrong 3 books. But somehow I doubt it.

Maybe He Should Eat Some Fruitcake Instead of Being one.

Man, some people are just loopy. I heard about this guy who went on a hunger strike to protest the fact that raw milk cannot be sold. He gave up the fight after not eating for a month, only drinking raw milk and other fluids, losing 50 pounds, and being urged by supporters that he needed to be strong to continue the fight for raw milk. Translation? “Dude, stop that! What in hell are you doing? You’re killing yourself!”

Ok, it’s raw milk. There was a reason that pasteurization of milk got started. Ya know, all the goodies that end up in it because, um, it came from inside a cow! If you want to drink raw milk, go ahead. Knock yourself out, or more accurately, fill yourself with bacteria. But you can’t sell it, or at least you can’t sell it without making perfectly clear that this is raw milk. End of story.

But this made me think about something else. Why in christ do people go on hunger strikes anyway? What do they hope to accomplish, aside from killing themselves, or doing long-term damage? I know it’s supposed to make people feel guilty, making concessions so the person will just eat, damn it! But the whole thing makes no sense. The striker is only hurting himself! How threatening is, “Unless you change your ways, *I* will not eat?” Um, I can see a little more effectiveness in “If you don’t change your ways, you will not eat.” That has some consequences. But somebody inducing misery on themselves to try and get their way just doesn’t make sense.

Let’s look at prisoners. They’re in prison for something they did, or something someone thought they did. So really, the people keeping them there aren’t happy to see them. If one of them decides not to eat, woohoo! Less food for the guards to make! I hate to be a cold prick, but the guards only care about the prisoners’ health because they’re legislated to care. If somebody voluntarily decides to inflict harm on themselves, it’s not really going to make the guards feel real bad.

At least in a prison situation, the guards have to see the prisoners getting thinner and thinner, even though they know they’ve brought this on themselves. Plus, there’s the potential for public outcry, but I think that’s dwindling now. People might see these hunger strikers as doing this as a final desperate act to change their so-called plight. They might side with them and petition for concessions. But the operative word here is might. I did some research on why people have been doing this for so long, and the success rate is less than stellor. People die from hunger strikes, end up blind and with kidney damage, die from being force-fed by prison officials, and some just give up the strike after having no effect. Sometimes they get what they want, but it’s definitely not a guarantee, not even a 50 percent success rate.

But certainly, some random man on a farm going on a hunger strike because he can’t sell his unpasteurized moo juice isn’t going to elicit more than, “What a weirdo! Next story.” from the public. No one is going to look at him as a desperate man fighting for a morally just cause. Plus, government officials aren’t going to care because they aren’t going to even see him becoming more of an emaciated shell day by day. What is most likely going to happen is he’ll lose his supporters because they’ll see him getting weaker with no effect and realize that maybe he should try taking a different cow path. And that’s exactly what happened.

Man some nutty people live among us. Now that I think about it, maybe hunger strikes serve a purpose. Only stupid wackjobs would go and starve themselves for a cause. So it raises the chance of eliminating them from the gene pool. Maybe I’m evil for thinking that, but maybe it’s the truth.

Too Bad They’ll Never Know

Remember those 2 idiots who died after climbing inside of a giant helium balloon and running out of air? If you do, you will no doubt be happy to know that their complete and utter retardedness has now been forever recognized as an award-winning part of history. Yes, for their heroic efforts to further the cause of dopiness, the pair have won a Darwin Award! You can read the official DarwinAwards.com story above as well as the tragic tales of the other winners, or you can check out a quick Ananova story about a few of them here.

Congratulations to all, you earned it. Or dare I say, you urned it.

What Are we Even Saying Anymore?

For some reason, certain words have caught my attention lately.

Some annoying guy with his mouth full of food was on the TV talking about some President’s Choice Cake. “It’s decadent!” he slurred through his chewing, which made me think. Isn’t it weird that the same word that means extravagant or indulgent also means decaying or deteriorating? Is that some kind of sign? I looked it up, and the same word does mean those two different things.

And what’s with this thing that people have for saying, “I’m a shopaholic,” or “I’m a chocoholic,” or I’m a workaholic?” Newsflash, people! An alcoholic is someone who’s addicted to alcohol. So unless chocohol, workahol, or shoppahol exists, congratulations, everybody, you just made words that make no sense! But somehow, they ended up in the dictionary. Pretty sad statement, isn’t it?

And here’s an expression that drives me bonkers. “word to the wise.” I don’t know, but usually when that expression is spoken, it’s not the wise one who needs the next words. It’s someone who just screwed up and is being told how not to repeat the same mistake. So shouldn’t it be word from the wise? But then I guess that would sound bad. So why wouldn’t “Here’s some advice” work just as well? Simplicity, people!

I don’t know why those specific things were in my head, and now that I’ve written them down, I look like some kind of anal English teacher. Am I weird?

What Would The Start Of A New Year Be Without Lists?

It wouldn’t be right, so here are a couple now.

First up is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while, a list of the 10 worst toys ever made. Keep in mind as you read through this that every single one of them is real, including the Atomic Energy Lab that was sold with actual Uranium. If I ever have kids, I’m tracking down all this stuff. It just seems like the responsible thing to do.

Speaking of stuff, and wow what a segue that was, it wouldn’t be right to talk about lists without mentioning the 20 weirdest gadgets of 2006. Some of them have already found there way here, but it can’t hurt to relive something as fantastically fantastic as the Beer Belly again. Yes, it made the list, and rightfully so.

That’s all for now. I hope that everyone had a reasonably safe and completely happy New Year, and I hope that your 2007 is a great one, unless you’re one of a very small group of people that I can’t stand, in which case I hope your year sucks and somehow involves boiling acid to the genitals.

I asked for Cheesecake, Not Cheese in my Cake!

Well holy shit, it’s 2007. It’s a whole new year. Last night was the quietest Newyear’s Eve in a long time, like I said yesterday. We were going to go out to this restaurant nearby, but they foiled our plans by having a buffet that you had to reserve spots for and it was already booked up. Then we were going to go to this other place near the centre of town, but since Guelph didn’t think it was necessary to run the buses any longer than 6:00 p.m. on Newyear’s Eve, we decided we didn’t feel like paying $20 in cab fair to get there and back. So we decided to order from Eastside Mario’s since I’d liked their delivery service so much before.

And I’ve noticed they’ve started a trend! If you order desserts, they put your parmesan cheese and butter containers *in* your dessert! Not just in the container with the dessert, which would be stupid enough, they actually wedge the containers in the gooee icing! What the hell? Who would get out their first course, not see their cheese and butter, and then go rummaging through the cake to find it? What kind of logic is that? I’d just assume they forgot it. Both times they’ve done it recently, I’ve eaten my first course, opened my dessert container, and found the buried treasure. Stop that! Just put them in the bag with the dessert, but not right in the cake, you idiots! And I can’t even call back and tell someone, because all you get is the central toll-free number, and it’s the local outlet that does it.

Other than that, Newyears was good. It’s been the first time in a long time that, as the year was changing, I actually had time to stop and process that fact. Hope everyone else had a good night too.

You Learn Something New Every Day.

Since we unearthed the Raffi records, I decided to google him. I’d always been a little curious about what that slight accent of his was, and how old he is. I learned that he’s from Egypt and he’s 59. But the most surprising thing I learned was, get ready for it, he produced an album for adults! Apparently it was made in 1977 and it’s called Love Light.

Now, just try and imagine Raffi singing to adults. I guess it’s possible, and only seems impossible because he’s more known as a kids’ singer. I wonder if he sounds just as much like he’s going to cry on that album. Has anyone heard it? I wonder what it sounds like!