I likes belly rubs tho'

 

Small things 28 May

• Irony: When a province's environment minister wants to pass a law allowing them to turn off the oil and gas taps to BC if anyone tries to block future pipeline development.
• Hey kids! There was a time when parents thought rock music was so evil, they went looking for satanic messages embedded in the music, which would only be heard if you played it backwards. 
• The employee shortage is so bad that long haired freaky people may now apply.
  
  
  
• Horses get farted on more than any other animal.
• If there was a guy named Hunter and he was vegan, would his nickname be Gatherer?
• Kids today will never know the ultimate in second purpose for an object, aka using the plastic milk crate to store albums, also bachelor furniture.
• Vaccines are a gateway drug to hugging.
• Sleep is just a time machine to tomorrow.
• Just a warning, Panda anti-virus does not come with pandas. It is panda-free.
• "Boyfriend" versus "boy friend". You see that little space in there? That's called the friend zone.

What's that?

 

"What vaccine did you get?"

Every conversation for the next 3 months.

Reasons to get shot when black

 

Afghan mission memorial choices

To all my friends and especially my military veteran colleagues. 

Did you know that a memorial to Canada's contribution to the Afghan mission is being built? There are several designs in the running and Veterans Affairs wants your opinion on each design. 

Be sure to watch the video that accompanies each design, as some of them explain the design purpose and all of them give multiple views of the design.

Things I learned lately 28 May

• Coke bottles with yellow caps are kosher, for Passover. I've never seen one in Canada.
• There is no law that says you have to be sworn in on a bible. Many elected officials have been sworn in with no bible, or an alternative book.
• There are folks who think that a publicly traded company also means the company isn't 'privately owned' and therefore is subject to whatever people demand of them. Case in point: Folks were arguing that they didn't have to obey Costco's mask wearing rules because it's publicly traded and therefore the public have a right to enter no matter what.
• Mistreatment of Buddhist images and artifacts is strictly taboo in Sri Lanka. When you are taking a selfie, you stand with your back turned to Buddha, which is considered disrespectful, so you shouldn't take selfies in front of it.
  
  
  
• It is illegal to stop on the autobahn in Germany without a serious reason as it is dangerous. The driver is required to make sure that their vehicle is in the right condition to be used, and running out of fuel is not considered a serious enough reason to stop, so it is seen as a violation of this requirement and negligence.
• In Turin, by law, dog owners must walk their dogs three times a day as a way of fighting cruelty against animals. The fines can go up to $600.
• There are four states in the United States that have banned billboards: Alaska, Maine, Vermont, and Hawaii.

Cops and roberts

 

Small things 21 May

• Anyone who is viciously opposed to socialism can forward their CPP, OAS, EI and CERB cheques to me. I am willing to do my part to curb the spread of socialism.
• If you smack someone upside the head with a giant inflated 3-fingered cartoon hand, is that still considered assault? Asking for a friend.....
• Is 'dude' a gender-neutral pronoun?
• You're often one decision away from a totally different life.
• I think the ultimate indicator that you're living in 2021 is ordering McDonalds using Skip the Dishes and when you get your order, the delivery guy says "Sorry, but the ice cream machine is broken".
• For fun, keep the grocery checkout conveyor divider thingy with your stuff as if you want to buy it. When the clerk puts it aside, keep taking it and adding it to your stuff.
• If you ate 5 apples before going to the doctor's office, would the doctor even be able to enter the examining room?
• Many scientists are on the autistic spectrum. So you could say that autism causes vaccines...
• Eaton's. Woolworth's. Zeller's. Discus. Woolco. Sam the Record Man. A&A Records. A&B Sound. Kmart. SAAN. Towers. Simpsons. Consumers Distributing. Honest Ed's. Ogilvy's. #GoneCdnStores
• When all you could watch was live TV and you had to run to get a bathroom break in before the show came back on. #AncientTVRituals
• When you'd try to download an mp3 over dialup from an IRC channel, and after an hour and 96%, someone in the house would pick up the phone and start dialing a number. #DialupAdventures #1998problems

Dog owner shaming

 

Brilliant design for hooks

All the hooks and shelves you need, where you need them.

"I gave you 5 vowels..."

Loic Suberville is funny.

Check out his channel. He has a lot of fun with language.

This one about naming water made me LOL.

Things I learned lately 21 May

• Kittens are immune to the effects of catnip.
• Deepfake, the practise of using sophisticated AI graphics technology to make it look like someone is saying something they never actually said, may end up being used to dub different languages onto the actor's face and mouth. 
• Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, is now a dairy veterinarian.
• Supposedly, the first fish and chip shop (1858) in the UK came AFTER the first East Indian restaurant (1809).
• British Parliament had an official discussion where they condemned the historical inaccuracies of the film U-571 and the rewriting of history to paint the Americans as heroes in an event they never took part in. They felt it was unfair on the British sailors that lost their lives.
• In Iceland you can buy rye bread that was 'baked' in the ground by volcanic heat.
• Simon Berger cracks glass with slight, precise, carefully-timed taps of his hammer, so that the fracture lines depict faces. 
• Apparently there are feral chickens running around the Hawaiian island of Kauai as the result of a hurricane.
• There was an underground pneumatic tube mail system in New York until the 1950s.
• Some soap operas have been using mannequins in scenes requiring intimacy, to satisfy Covid protocols.
• Boston Pizza started in Edmonton.

Amazon Prime hero

 

Small things 14 May

• If you bought a Tesla with Dogecoin, would Elon deliver it personally? 
• A vanilla soy latte is essentially a 3-bean soup.
• I could be wrong, but an inclusive move by FB, et al wouldn't be letting you pick the skin colour for your thumbs up etc., but just offering you brown skin thumbs up.
• Irony. When a gun-toting person accuses you of living in fear because you wear a mask.
• Is bologna basically hot dogs for people who like sliced meat?
• It's just a matter of months maybe that we won't be able to use Covid as an excuse to cancel things or turn down invitations. Use it while you can.....

****************************************************

"Forget everything you learned in college."

"I didn't go to college."

"Well then, sorry but you're not qualified to work here."

****************************************************

Me: "Hey Google, what's the weather going to be like this weekend?"

Google: "Why? Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Great logo design

 

Play the whole album - Jean Michel Jarre - Equinoxe

If you have a Spotify or any other music streaming service that lets you listen to entire albums in one go, I've got some homework for you.

Ever heard of Jean-Michel Jarre? He's a composer and musician who takes the synthesizer to the highest of heights. If you're going to introduce someone to his music, I think it's a toss-up whether you pick 1976's Oxygene or 1978's Equinoxe. The thing about Oxygene is that the overall mood is more organic and lacks the intensity of the album I chose. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - Equinoxe.

JMJ doesn't name his tracks on this album (nor Oxygene). Part 1 sounds like the perfect opener for a space exploration science fiction program, a-la Star Trek, with a layers of melodic synth building on top of each other, before winding down.

Part 2 is a solemn number that has an almost hymnal quality. But then that spaceyness comes back. Each track segues perfectly into the next.

Part 3 has a fairy tale vibe to it. The release of this album was followed by a Paris concert on the Place de la Concorde, on 14 July 1979. The concert attracted a million people, becoming JMJ's first entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest crowd for an outdoor concert.

Part 4 Jarre uses 16 different synthesizers and sequencers to paint these musical tapestries. Critics around when this album came out found the music to be a bit vapid. It certainly presented electronic music in a manner that was rarely heard before. This track does not segue into Part 5, as it was recorded in the time of vinyl albums which had two sides. This was the end of side one.

Part 5 Side two opens with what is likely my favourite JMJ track of all time. The sound of rain heralds a crack of thunder and the driving beat that you rarely hear on early JMJ works. The sounds are percussive and the bass lines are even more pronounced than usual. There's a hint of German melody that sounds like it could have been inspiration for OMD's early work. This album actually charted in Europe, doing very well in the Netherlands and the UK.

Part 6 The previous track blends into this one without missing a beat, this being effectively the coda for Part 5.

Part 7 Begins with some great twisty bass being the only thing holding it together. The longest track on the album, I do find that it drags on a bit.

Part 8 The album ends with what sounds like a French folksy number, which seems to be s signature move by JMJ on many of his albums. But it morphs into lazy rendition of the melody from track 5, which opens this album's side.

If you really want to experience what is possible using just synthesizers at the hands of a master, this is a great place to start.

Disgustingly rich things

 

It was only a matter of time

 

Things I learned lately 14 May

• Pete Townshend was the first guitarist to smash his instrument on stage.
• There's a brand of mountain water called Liquid Death (it murders your thirst) sold in tallboy aluminum cans instead of plastic. Aluminum is infinitely more recyclable and you look cool drinking water even at hardcore social events like parties and concerts. They're so anti-plastic that they offer prepaid postage stickers to put on plastic soda bottle to mail them back to the companies that created them (loving homes for plastic). Radical.
  
  
  
• Pharmacies in Calgary are now free to cancel a vaccine appointment you've made with no explanation. (We called, they don't have enough vaccines)
• The Kalona Amish affiliation of Iowa are the most permissive of technology and even used tractors in their fields.
• Per-person greenhouse gas emissions of old order Amish people are 25% that of wider society.
• Amish men are forbidden to grow mustaches because they are seen as being affiliated with the military, which they are strongly opposed to due to their pacifist beliefs.
• Alberta just announced restrictions on golf. Whoa. Whoa! Wait just a bloody minute. LOL I kid. I don't care.....
• A 7 year old girl noticed that the dresses sold in the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons were more expensive than the jumpsuits or pants. She asked her mom why, who had no answer. She then decided to write a letter to Nintendo on her own.
• Finland is the only country in the EU where homelessness is decreasing.

Remember the gif pronunciation argument?

 

Small things 7 May

• I can't stand speed bumps but I'm slowly getting over them.
• What happens if you add powdered milk to milk?
• Why when I'm driving, do I have an urge to point out horses?
  
  
  
• The fastest land animal is a toddler who has been asked what's in their mouth.
• It shouldn't have to happen to you, to matter to you.
• Have any youngsters asked you yet what that slot for cassettes is in your car stereo? (Assuming you have one of those)
• Do you think Sean Connery and Alex Trebek are playing 'Celebrity Jeopardy' in heaven?
• Just for fun, let Google Home or Alexa overhear you mentioning something you want real bad and see how long it takes for ads to show up online about it. (But don't search for it) 
• Never let your dog see the packaging on the chew toy claiming it's indestructible. They'll take that as a personal challenge to prove otherwise.
• Since hotdogs are just puréed meat in an animal intestine, after you eat one, you basically become a hot dog yourself for a while...
• If that 'homeless' guy asking for loose change at the intersection is wearing Air Jordans, they are probably not homeless.

JA and JB 51 years old

 

It's like a dance

5 minutes of traffic on a Dutch roundabout with bike lanes.

Cat math

 

Things I learned lately 7 May

• They're gonna age some wine in space and sell it for a cool million. Not sure if that's per bottle or per case.
• As of 4 May 2021, Toronto had international flights to Hong Kong; Tocumen; Shanghai; Addis Ababa; Tokyo; Seoul; Beijing; Frankfurt; Amsterdam; Madrid; Doha; Abu Dhabi; London; Tel Aviv; and Istanbul. In one day.
• Fox News actually tried to pass off the lie that Biden's climate plan would limit you to one burger a month.
  
  
  
• In Utrecht, 98% of households own at least one bicycle. 50% of households own 3 or more bicycles. Only 15% of traffic entering the city centre is by car. The train station that people use to commute to other cities has indoor and outdoor secure bicycle parking for tens of thousands of bikes, with more room planned very soon. There are other parking facilities as well in the city core. The road network is designed to prioritize bike traffic, making it easier and faster to get places by bicycle. There are many streets where cars have to share the street with cyclists and give bikes equal access. These shared streets typically have 30 km/h limits and are paved with a special low friction red tarmac to visually indicate that pedestrians and bikes have equal rights to cars on that street.
• In its 81 year run, the VW Beetle sold more than 23 million units.
• The black lines on the sides of school buses are called rub rails. The bottom one is usually at the height of the floor, the next one up usually at the height of the seats and the top one at the top of the seat backs or the window.
• The office cubicle was invented by Robert Propst in 1968.

Small things 30 Apr

• Do you know how I know 2020 was messed up? The Pentagon released actual UFO footage and nobody cared.
  
  
  
• Solar energy is actually nuclear energy from a safe distance.
• How would Zoom detention work?
• 2020. The year your trash went out more than you.
• "I wear the mask to protect those closest to me." ~Batman
• You don't realize how much you swear until you're in a situation where you can't.
• Most used phrase of 2020: "You're on mute."
• We actually used to eat a cake after someone blew on it!
• They could have just as easily named toilet paper 'butt napkins'.
• People's first survival instinct has to hoard toilet paper. Think about that. We will not survive the zombie apocalypse.

Los Angeles county population comparison

 

Each green state has fewer residents than Los Angeles county (in yellow).

Play the whole album - ELO - A new world record

If you have a Spotify or any other music streaming service that lets you listen to entire albums in one go, I've got some homework for you.

If there was ever a rock band that could really stir my emotions, it's the Electric Light Orchestra. If we're going to pick albums that you must listen to from one end to the other, Face the Music would be my number two, but number one definitely has to go to A New World Record. This was the soundtrack of my teens.

It opens with another dramatic production, Tightrope, with the same kind of cinematic overtures as the opening to Face the Music (Fire on High). But unlike Fire On High, once the string and operatic introduction is over, it's time to rock!

The next track is one of the most amazing ballads ever written. Telephone Line. If you like this song as much as I do, you might find the alternate take a great listen too. You won't find it on Spotify, but here's a link to it on YouTube.

"To get the sound on the beginning, you know, the American telephone sound, we phoned from England to America to a number that we know nobody would be at, to just listen to it for a while. On the Moog, we recreated the sound exactly by tuning the oscillators to the same notes as the ringing of the phone." ~Lynne 

Who would have thought that Opera and rock would make a great combination? Jeff Lynne, that's who. Rockaria opens with a mistake that Jeff decided to leave in. When you hear the singer Mary Thomas start, you'll notice that she isn't accompanied by any music. That's because she missed her cue, but then caught herself as soon as the music starts. If you listen closely, you can even hear her reaction to starting too early just before the strings come in. Yeah, I think she's ready.

At the beginning of Mission, you can hear a distorted voice say "This is Yreffej Ennyl calling you from planet Earth." That's Jeffery Lynne backwards. Clever.

So Fine is a nice stroll through a sunny pop melody. More or less the exact opposite of the previous song. Jeff Lynne said he was trying to emulate American pop. Except unlike most American pop, this song has a drum interlude created in part with a Moog. Good job.

Then comes another one of my favourite ELO songs, Livin' Thing. It has a Latin feel to the opening violin. The song features the uncredited vocals of Patti Quatro, sister of the more famous Suzi Quatro.

Do Ya is a remake of the 1972 single by The Move, of which Lynne was a member between 1970 and 1972.

Shangri-La opens with some gorgeous crying guitars. Did you notice Jeff's reference to Hey Jude? My favourite part is at 3:46, when it seems like the song is over, but no. It's just the beginning of possibly the most beautiful coda, featuring that opera singer again. The perfect close-out of the perfect album.

This album was the first to feature ELO's new logo.

More of that!

Nancy Wilson's tribute to Eddie Van Halen.

This is what happens when you lock down parts of stores

 

Things I learned lately 30 Apr

• The plastics industry invented disposable plastic containers in 1956 as a means to increase profits.
  
  
  
• Jif now sells squeeze peanut butter. I'm sorry, but I draw the line at squeeze peanut butter.
• On 25 April, India saw over 350,000 new Covid cases in ONE DAY. That is more than triple the highest peak during their first wave in autumn 2020.
• Honda said it will stop selling gas-powered vehicles by 2040. The automaker expects 40% of its sales globally to be comprised of battery-electric and fuel-cell vehicles by 2030, followed by 80% in 2035, and 100% of sales by 2040.
• Joe Walsh almost starred in his own NBC sitcom in 2000, but negotiations feel through. Description: "The plot in the hybrid scripted/improv sitcom follows a dull accountant who finds out that he enjoys living in the fast lane when he goes to work for a rock star. Walsh would play the rock star."
• Alan Parsons was the engineer for Ambrosia's first album and the producer for their second. All four members of Ambrosia played on the first Alan Parsons Project album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which was recorded soon after Ambrosia's first album. He also produced Al Stewart's two biggest albums including Year of the Cat and produced Pilot's hit song Magic.
• Donald Duck's nephews in the cartoons are named Huey, Dewey, and Louie. But not everywhere. In France they're named Riri, Fifi and Loulou. In Germany they're Tick, Trick and Track. In Finland, they're Tupu, Hupu and Lupu.
• When the New York Zoological Park (now the Bronx Zoo) opened in September 1906, people visiting the Primates’ House encountered a startling sight. There, amid the cages full of exotic animals, they found a black human man. Ota Benga, who was a member of the Mbuti pygmy tribe from what was then known as the Congo Free State.