They had an affair!

 

10 songs I can't get enough of lately (August 2022)

Streetheart - Action

Marianne Faithfull - The ballad of Lucy Jordan

Wet Leg - Chaise longue

Zero 7 - Distractions

Jamiroquai - Feels just like it should

Flash & the Pan - Hey St Peter

The Bee Gees - Jive Talkin'

Diana Ross - Love hangover

The B-52s - Planet Claire

Alice Cooper - School's Out

Women must serve men

 

Meltdown in Canada!

Did you know that Canada has had 2 nuclear incidents in its history? 

Read about it here.

Squirrel feeder

 

Come on Barky, stop being so barky

I find it amusing sometimes when I’m out for a walk on Calgary’s walking paths and I encounter a dog owner walking their dog. 

When their dog encounters another dog and they start lunging and barking and they’re completely uncontrollable and the owner talks to them like “What’s gotten into you?” As if they’ve never seen that behaviour before between their dog and another dog. 

Then 20 feet later they encounter another dog and it’s the same situation all over again and they’re questioning the dog’s behaviour. 100 feet later it happens again and all I can think is, “Are you really that confused why your dog is acting like that?”

We had a bus

When I was a kid we didn't walk to school in thigh deep snow, uphill, 10km each way. 

That is nonsense. 

We had a bus......

Things I learned lately 26 Aug

• Calgary just concluded its longest hot streak (27C or higher for 14 days in a row) in over 120 years.
• California just banned sales of new gas powered vehicles by 2035.
• In the early 20th century, Americans were hesitant to eat ground beef after Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle had publicized the poor sanitation practices of the meat packing industry. The founders of White Castle set out to change public perception. To invoke a feeling of cleanliness, their new restaurants had stainless steel interiors, and employees outfitted with spotless uniforms. In 1921, the first White Castle restaurants in Wichita were a success, and the company branched out into other Midwestern markets, starting in 1922 with El Dorado, Kansas.
• Never tell a car salesperson how much you’re willing to pay per month on your car loan. They’ll get you in that window of comfort by stretching the loan term and they will avoid disclosing the sell price. Any loan beyond 48 months is going to put you into negative equity (you owe more than the car’s value).
• Be wary of repetition, as repeated statements are often perceived as more truthful than new information, no matter how false the claim may be. Social media manipulators and politicians know this all too well.
• People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger, rather than relying on facts. New facts often do not change people’s minds.

Cat gift

 

At the carriage dealership in 1900

Salesperson: So what colour do you want your buggy? You can choose from black, black, or blacker.

Buyer: I think I like black. But I do have a request.

Salesperson: What's that?

Buyer: I want my buggy to stand out. I'd like the buggy to be pulled by zebras.

Salesperson: I'll have to talk to the manager, but I think that's something we can do.

[Overheard in the manager's office] How much white touch-up paint do we have?

Small things 20 Aug

• You can't reason someone out of a notion that they didn't reason themselves into.
• You know that you text too much when you're very happy to stop at a red light.
• Imagine trying to give out this email to people: 1onethefirstjustthenumberthesecondspelledout@hotmail.com
• Some people put more effort into naming their wifi network than their kids.
• The cool part about naming your kids is you don't have to add six numbers to make sure the name is available. ~Bill Murray
• [Founder of Costco, at the moment of conception, drunk] “It’s gonna have amazing hot dogs too. And an optometrist.”
• Imagine if people were like internet videos where you can see how much longer they're going to be talking.
• I’m not concerned about an increase in artificial intelligence, I’m concerned about a decrease in human intelligence.
• Do the math geeks refer to the 7-11 as the -4?
• Bring back P.K. Subban to the Canadiens.

Cat vader

 

Yeah but can you play people as an instrument?

Jacob Collier plays the audience in an uproarious 3-part-harmony encore at the O2 Academy.

Cat B.S.

 

Things I learned lately 20 Aug

• Hudson's Bay is resurrecting the Zellers brand, but only as a store within a store and with a primary focus on discount online shopping.
• Any city in the UK whose name ends in -caster, -cester, -chester, -cetter, or -xeter was at one time a Roman fort.
• The Ocean Cleanup has now officially removed more than 108,000 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
• Any UK place name containing the words ham, hurst, ley, bury, ford, port, mere, stead, ton, stow, wick, or wich are of Anglo-Saxon origin.
• Tesla’s Giga Shanghai factory has only been open since 2019 and has already manufactured 1 million cars. In addition to its Shanghai plant, Tesla produces cars at factories in Fremont, California; Austin, Texas; and near Berlin in Germany. 
• UK place names named by the Vikings end in thwaite, thorp, kirk, or by.
• The Toronto Islands, off the coast of Toronto, used to be a peninsula until a storm separated them in 1868.

You had one job coupon guy

 

Small things 13 Aug

• RAS syndrome or ‘redundant acronym syndrome’ syndrome can be spotted in a lot of places in our language. PIN number. ATM machine. DC Comics. HIV virus. LCD display. UPC code.
  
  
  
• Having gay parents could be bad. You could either get twice the usual amount of dad jokes, or get stuck in an infinite loop of "Go ask your mother".
• Golden rule for men: Don’t say anything to a woman in public that you wouldn’t want a man saying to you in prison.
• We'll we'll we'll... if it isn't autocorrect.
• Why are iPhone chargers not called Apple juice?
• Remember 3D TV?
• Once I saw a driver texting and driving and I got so mad, I threw my burger at him.
• Anyone who says talk is cheap obviously doesn't pay for their teen's cell phone bill.

Hi I bought my husband here last week

Can I exchange him for another? 

The one I bought was defective. 

And the wrong size. 

Also, I paid $19.98. 

Can I get the $5 difference back?

Moyun plays AC/DC like you’ve never heard before

I’ve never even heard the guzheng in a full performance before, but hearing AC/DC’s Thunderstruck on it is amazing. 

What an instrument and what a virtuoso playing it. 

That face mask is cool too.

Let's go to McD's for ice cream

 

Things I learned lately 13 Aug

• Cost of gas in other countries in CAD. Iceland: $3.18; Norway: $3.00; Finland / Denmark / UK: $2.88.
• There are noise bylaws in Calgary with an allowable limit of 96 decibels, but the police are powerless to enforce them because they don’t have any sound measuring equipment.
• Max Headroom is coming back, and will still be played by Matt Frewer.
• The day after tomorrow is called overmorrow.
• The sick feeling you get after eating too much is called crapulence.
• Although apes can learn sign language and communicate with humans, there has never been an observed instance of an ape asking a question—despite the intellectual abilities they clearly possess, the apes seem to lack the cognitive ability to make that leap in communication.
• Joe Clark, who was born in High River, Alberta, became the youngest person to ever head a government when he was sworn in as Canada's Prime Minister. He became leader of the now-defunct Progressive Conservative party at age 39.
• The first time non-indigenous people visited what is now Alberta was in 1754 when Anthony Henday, an explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, came west looking for opportunities in the fur trade
• Calgary is Gaelic for "clear running water".

It’s all about the toilet paper

Remember the toilet paper bears? You know the ones. 

OK, so imagine they were real and you could watch a short video about them. 

Prepare for weirdness. You’ve been warned.

Isn't your name Thor?

 

Small things 5 Aug

• Pavlov brand dog conditioner. Think about it. It's perfect.
• When someone says 'nice weather' and you automatically say 'thanks'.
• When you hand a dog a treat and they're like "Thanks, I'll be having this in the other room. Excuse me."
• The work homeowner has the word 'meow' in it. Good luck pronouncing it correctly ever again. You're welcome. ho-meow-ner. LOL
• I dare someone to name their kid Andy but spelled &y. Come on. Do it.
• Medusa was famous for objectifying people.
• The time I spent as a kid prying Lego pieces apart.
• How come it’s always “If you can’t pay rent, buy fewer phones and lattes”, and not “If you can’t afford to pay your workers a living wage, buy fewer mansions, yachts and rockets”?
• I don’t always whoop, but when I do - there it is…
• Hey America: In Canada, cupcakes are called 250ml-cakes. Why would I kid about that?
• When I was young, I would sometimes draw 1/4 of the sun occupying the top corner of the paper. What was that about?
• Sometimes we couldn't get all the paper wrapper off of the gum and we just ate it anyway.

You will pay hooman!

 

Cell rates and coverage - a comparison

Cell providers in Canada suggest that the reason our rates are so high in Canada is because of our geography, our population and the cost of developing new technology. Here’s a comparison of how different things are in Australia. Look at the map of Aussie coverage. It’s pretty much non-existent in the interior and spread around the entire coast.

I looked at a plan with Telstra. BYOD, $58/mo with NO contract gets you 40GB of data, unlimited calls, and 30 minutes of international calls per month. For an extra $10, you get 180GB of data and no data speed cap.

Here’s our map (Rogers only):

I looked at a Rogers plan. BYOD, if you want 40GB, it’s $95 per month. Remember the 180GB plan in Australia for $68? 100GB with Rogers is $175.

By the way, not to rub more salt, but AUD$68 is the equivalent of CAD$60. Yeah. We’re getting hosed.

Class action settlement?

 

Things I learned lately 5 Aug

• Even though the Voyager spacecraft have passed the termination shock and heliopause, they won’t enter the Oort cloud for another 300 years, and won’t exit the Oort cloud for 30,000 years. Voyager 1’s speed is 540 million kilometres per year, or 3.6 AUs per year. An AU is the distance from the Sun to Earth.
• 83% of Canadians own or lease a vehicle.
• Fruit loops are all the same flavour.
• Pat Benetar won’t perform her song “Hit me with your best shot” anymore as a protest against gun violence.
• There’s a product called Bee Brick that has holes and hollows for cavity-nesting solitary bees (which are pollinators but not territorial or aggressive). What a great idea.
  
  
  
• Remember Hyperloop? The leading company in hyperloop technology (Virgin) is now focusing all of its efforts on moving cargo, not people. For now.
• Because GPS satellites are under a much lesser gravitational force due to their height above earth's surface, their clocks tick faster than those on earth. But because we use GPS clocks as a standard, GPS time has to be pre-corrected to be used.
• If a magnet sticks to the bottom of a pan or pot, it's probably induction stove compatible.
• Mel Gibson was asked to play the role of Korben Dallas in The Fifth Element.
• When filming of The Fifth Element started, Luc Besson was married to Maïwenn Le Besco, who played the role of the opera singer Diva Plavalaguna in the movie. Luc left her to take up with Milla Jovovich during filming. Jovovich and Besson married that year but divorced two years later.