This would make a solid movie, am I right?

Small things 28 Jun

• I think some people who say, "Don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" never have any coffee.
• Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I hate you.
• 4 university text books, stacked. The original $1000 TV stand.
• I wonder how many people think that wind farms 'make' wind..............
• If I was a billionaire, I'd tell my aspiring rivals that the secret to success is getting up at 4am.
• Is it possible for a man to get out the stud finder device and not scan himself first and declare, "Found one!"?
• What do you call a bee that can’t make up its mind? A maybe....
• Never fart in an elevator, it's wrong on so many levels.
• When life gives you melons, you're dyslexic.

Chez Ma Tante

You may have heard me go on about Montreal style hot dogs (steamies) and fries, which have figured large in Montreal culture for many many years.

How many? Well, if you're a little place called Chez Ma Tante, precisely 90. They're open 7 days a week from 10:00 until midnight.

If I still lived there, I'd be able to enjoy some free hot dogs as part of their 90th anniversary celebration.

Trivia: 'chez ma tante' translates literally to 'at my aunt's house'.

Caspering?

Disney now owns everything

If you've ever wanted to see all the stuff Disney owns, check it out.

Overthinking

Things I learned lately 28 Jun

• Half of all the plastic made since 1950 was made in the last 13 years.
• The blue java banana (pictured) tastes a bit like vanilla custard and has the consistency of ice cream. It is quite often served on ice cream.
• There are only around 30 cases of polio in the world thanks to vaccinations.
• The KFC Cheetos sandwich is now a thing.
• M. Night Shyamalan, director of the films The Sixth Sense and The Village, co-wrote the screenplay for the children’s movie Stuart Little.
• A hinny is a horse hybrid that is the result of mating a male horse and a female donkey (as opposed to a mule, which is the result of breeding a female horse and a male donkey).
• They're opening a new drive-in movie theatre in High River, AB. No, not 'closing', 'opening'.
• Lexie Alford, 21 years old, is the youngest person to have visited every country in the world.
• More than 25% of the gasoline sold in Columbia is used to make cocaine.
• The smoke from the northern Alberta wildfires at the end of May 2019 drifted all the way to Florida.

Small things 21 Jun

• You can't plant flowers if you haven't botany.....
• I'm not going to believe that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving the White House until I hear her deny it.
• Fact: If you take all those receipts and stack them together, they make a tiny little book about why you're broke.
• Sleeping comes so naturally to me, I could do it with my eyes closed.
• What do you call the wife of a hippie? A Mississippi.
• The cross-eyed teacher couldn’t control his pupils....
• Hear about the new restaurant called Karma? There’s no menu - you get what you deserve....
• Don't try to sue the airline for losing your luggage. You'll lose your case every time.

If Calgary drivers designed bike lanes

Out with the Poly B, in with the PEX

There are things about owning a house that nobody tells you. Like what can go wrong with plumbing.

Our house was built in 1995. Back then, they were using a type of plumbing known as Poly B. It was grey coloured and it didn't bend very well. Little did the folks who installed it know, it would eventually be discontinued because it had some flaws. Pex came next and would replace it in new homes.

When a plumber told me about the Poly B story, he said that at some point I would probably have to replace all the Poly B in my house with newer plumbing. It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. He said that if we didn't mess with it much, we might be lucky.

Well, we were pretty lucky I guess, because we got 24 years out of the Poly B before we sprung our first leak. One small section of pipe just sprung a tiny pinhole leak. All I can say is that it was a good thing we were home and I heard it. That same plumber friend came and replaced the burst section and I decided then and there that we may as well consider replacing everything.

We were lucky to get 24 years out of the stuff, as I have read not to expect more than 15 years before trouble. We have a lot of chlorine in our water, so that didn't help either.

Now we have all new PEX. It helped that our house is one story with a basement and at least half of the area with plumbing has open ceiling. I decided to get the plumbing redone the way I've seen in the newest homes. We got a pair of manifolds and all the hot and cold runs come from the manifolds, each run with its own shutoff valve.

Too bad we can't get our own plumbing replaced like that............

Hard to swallow pills that reflect reality

That's why it's called a Big Mac mom......

I remember the first time I went to McDonald's with my parents. I must have been about 14 or so. I was told I could have whatever I wanted, so I ordered a Big Mac. My mom said "Isn't that a bit big for you?" What I wanted to say was, "Ergo, why it's called a BIG Mac, mom...." Of course I just smiled and kept eating.

In the end, I don't think it's the fact that I ordered a Big Mac that surprised her the most, it was how fast I demolished it.

Queen song as a poster

Things I learned lately 21 Jun

• The world has more confidence in Chinese leadership than American leadership since Trump got elected.
• Elon Musk says a Tesla with a range exceeding 640 km is imminent.
• The only demographic that is not showing a steady decline in TV viewership in the US is 65+.
• A Tesla driver in California was caught sleeping in the driver's seat for a good 30 miles along a busy freeway.
• 20,000+ people have petitioned Netflix to cancel the streaming show "Good Omens' because it's blasphemous. Too bad it's actually offered up by Amazon.
• It wasn't until 1926 that we knew the Milky Way wasn't the only galaxy in the universe. We saw the other galaxies, but we thought they were nebulae and part of the Milky Way.
• Blue whale calves weigh almost 3 tons at birth.
• There are no native tigers in Africa. They are all in zoos or preserves.

Pet's favourite channel

Small things 14 Jun

• There's an art museum in Denmark that lets you scratch a Lamborghini.
• I want a fortune cookie that says "Ignore previous cookie."
• You are younger right now than you are..... right now.
• I love going to high end grocery stores and trying out the food samples like I'm some kind of food critic. I'm really just hungry. And I'll eat cheese anytime.
• I never understood what it meant to be tired in the middle of the day. Or wake up with a sore back. Or have knee pain doing stairs. Oh but I sure as hell do now.
• Back in the day, self checkout meant walking up to a store mirror.
• Turn your leftover hot dog water into ice cubes for those guests you don't like much.
• The Joker should have been a woman. She finally goes insane after too many men told her to smile, so now she perpetually smiles while terrorizing Gotham.

Facebook's role in Brexit

If you were ever curious about how social media could possibly be dangerous, in particular, a possible attack vector on democracy, you should watch this Ted Talk.

In it, Carole Cadwalladr recounts how Facebook had an impact on the Brexit vote, which was in the UK's terms, illegal. But worse, was used to propagate complete falsehoods.

The future is Amazon

This is something Amazon is working on.

Delivery blimps that fly through town deploying delivery drones.

Stefdies

Everyone takes a decent selfie. But can you take a good pic of yourself dead or dying in a variety of locations?

Well, Stephanie Leigh does. The pics are hilarious! They're called Stefdies...........

Things I learned lately 14 Jun

• The music industry is so anal, if you film the inside of a mall and the mall audio system is playing copyrighted music, they will tell YouTube to order a take-down of that video because it infringes on copyright.
• When words are both nouns and verbs, the noun has emphasis on the first syllable, the verb has emphasis on the last. Try it out. Insult, contract, record, present, object, permit, contest, escort, proceed, rebel, subject....
• Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron. He studied under Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the proton. Ernest studied under J.J. Thomson, who discovered the electron.
• Exxon gas stations in the US are named Esso everywhere else.
• Dannon brand yogourt in the US is called Danone everywhere else.
• Downy is re-branded Lenor in Europe.
• Mr Clean goes by Meister Proper in Germany, Monsieur Propre in France and Belgium, Don Limpio in Spain, and Maestro Limpio in Latin America.
• TJ Maxx is called TK Maxx in the UK. In Canada it's called Winners.

Good deeds

An 8 year old who was being bullied at school was transformed by a Portland OR photographer into The Joker.

Fave restaurants that closed in YYC

• Fuddruckers (burgers your way - as in you fix 'em)
• Red Robin (both of them)
• The Fine Diner (one of our go-to breakie places, they had candied bacon)
• Cafe Metro (Montreal smoked meat)
• The White Spot (McLeod Trail)
• Tony Roma’s (Crowfoot)
• Swiss Chalet (Crowfoot & Beacon Hill)
• The Flight Deck
• Mother’s Pizza (seriously - the pizza)
• Silver Dragon (the only Chinese Food joint in YYC that had honey garlic spareribs)
• Bon Ton (Stadium  - I know, not a restaurant - a great butcher with lots of sides)
• The Cheesecake Cafe (Northland)(so I can has Cheesecake Factory now?)
• Kelsie’s (Dalhousie)
• Chili’s (North Hill)
• East Side Mario’s (Chinook Centre)
• Moxie’s (Chinook Centre)
• Arden’s Diner (best comfort food anywhere)(Owned by Jann Arden)
• The Roosevelt
• Ric’s Grill 
• Melrose
• Dunn’s (more Montreal smoked meat)
• Luciano’s (best Italian casual YYC ever had IMHO)
• The Belvedere

Taj rocks the Satch

Taj Farrant is at it again, this time rocking out to Surfing with the Alien by Joe Satriani.

Small things 7 Jun

• What to say to American anti-caxxers: “Have you considered the possibility that anti-vaccine propaganda could be an attempt by the Russians or the Chinese to weaken the health of the United States population?”
• Imagine if when you graduated from any type of school, you had to plant 10 trees. Over the next 10 or so years, over 50 million would get planted in Canada.
• History quiz: Q. What ended in 1896?  A. 1895
• If you upload all your Tinder photos upside down, people will have to turn their phone upside down to look at you, which might make them swipe right when they think they're swiping left. 
• What kind of message are we giving children with the Tooth Fairy? Offer up your body parts for trade on the black market! "Who is this tooth phantom and what do they want with my teeth?"
• The problem with math puns is that calculus jokes are all derivative, trigonometry jokes are too graphic, algebra jokes are usually formulaic, and arithmetic jokes are pretty basic.
• What do you call dudes who love math? Algebros.
• Why should you never talk to pi? Because they'll go on and on forever.
• Did you hear about the mathematician who was afraid of negative numbers? They'd stop at nothing to avoid them.

Just a horse out for a walk

There's a beautiful white Arabian mare named Jenny who goes for a walk by herself in the Fechenheim district of Frankfurt Germany. She takes the same route every morning, as she has for the last 14 years. Her owner used to ride her, but he's too old to do so anymore so he just opens the gate and lets her go for her morning walk all by herself.

This Imam's tweets are an inspiration......

Things I learned lately 7 Jun

• The bible does not mention abortion nor does it say it is wrong.
• The White House apparently requested that the USS John S. McCain be "out of sight" during President Donald Trump's Memorial Day address to US troops serving in Japan. The NYT cited a US service member stationed at the naval base in Yokosuka, that while the McCain's sailors were given the day off, some showed up in their uniforms anyway, hoping to attend, but were turned away. Trump continues to disrespect the late Senator, even after his death.
• With an increasing number of restaurant chains embracing meatless 'Impossible Burgers' etc., Arby's has decided to be the staunch pro-meat chain. In 2015, Arby's rolled out a support hotline for vegetarians. 1-855-MEAT-HLP angered a few vegetarians but put them in the spotlight for sure. 
• Richard Branson, the CEO of Virgin, doesn't like flaunting his wealth. He wears the same jeans every day with a plain white shirt.
• Amazon has a delivery option called Amazon Locker (pictured). Various cities in the US and Canada have them (Toronto and Vancouver for now) where you can arrange to temporarily store your purchase for pickup with a provided 6 digit PIN code.