I’m not saying our childhoods were luxurious, but we got sent to school with a charcuterie board

 

Small things 20 May

• That smoke you see and smell? They told you it’s from wildfires. It’s actually from pants on fire.
• Her: Do you want to go for a walk? Me: Yeah, that would be lovely. Her: OK, see you when you get back. Take your time.
• Why is it spelled ‘Looney Tunes’ and not ‘Looney Toons’?
• The old me: Welp, time for bed… The new me: And now I must attend to my evening affairs…
• How many times are you going to say, “It’s been one of those weeks” before you realize there’s never going to be the other kind of week?
• Nothing jeopardizes the validity of your ‘man card’ than when you need to tie a secure knot for something and your brain goes, “What is this ‘knot’ that you speak of?”
• Sometimes LinkedIn sends me a message telling me that I've shown up in [xx] searches this week. That piece of information is about as useless as being told that some people saw me at the mall on the weekend.
• Ice cream flavour idea: The wrath of butter P'Khan!
• There aren’t any articles showing extroverts how to tone it down a notch…
• [Points to pizza slicer] “What’s that?”  “That’s what I use to cut carbs.” 
• Propaganda: When a British person takes a really close look at something.
• Why would they sample toilet paper at Costco? And why is the lady wearing latex gloves?
• Remember when public toilets had those toilet paper dispensers that gave you like one tiny folded sheet of paper and you had to grab a bunch to get the job done properly? What a shit show.

Exclamation butt

 

What is made of this?

I’ll list the ingredients, you tell me what it is.

Sugars (molasses, sugar, glucose-fructose, dextrose, invert sugar syrup, glycerol), Wheat flour, Water, Corn starch, Coconut flakes (sulphites), Palm oil, Beef gelatin, Licorice extract, Cocoa powder, Tapioca starch, Caramel colour, Natural and artificial flavours, Modified potato starch, Carnauba wax, Turmeric extract, Mono- and diglycerides, Vegetable carbon, Beet red, Paprika extract, Salt, Beeswax, Spirulina concentrate, Fruit & vegetable concentrates (black carrot, black currant), Mixed carotenes, Shellac, Potassium sorbate, Sorbic acid, Safflower concentrate, Coconut oil.

Bat guitar

Batman, having been reunited with his Batguitar, launches into a rendition of Free Bird as an homage to Robin...

It's the 1970s

Not many knew what a computer was. The only phones were in buildings or booths by the side of the road. They were all tied to the system by a wire, so you could only take the phone so far away from its normal resting place. We swapped the short handset cord for long ones so that we could roam up to 50 feet from the phone’s base. Milk might have been delivered right to your house. Sometimes bread, pop and chips too. If you wanted a coffee outside of work and a restaurant, you had to make it at home and your only two options were a percolator, which took a long while to brew, or instant coffee, which still required boiling water. There were no stores that just sold coffee and tea. Convenience stores didn’t sell hot food. Porn magazines were on a rack in the middle of the store and for the longest time, they weren’t sealed. The produce section of the grocery store had whatever was in season and there was nowhere near the range of items we have today. If you wanted vegetables as a side, you probably got it out of a can. There was no such thing as packages of pre-sliced or shredded vegetables, lettuce or other salad makings. There was absolutely no gluten-free anything. The word vegan had no meaning. A diet simply meant you were consuming less food. Atkins, Keto, Paleo, etc. diets didn’t exist. 

Women had only secured the right to open a bank account without their husband’s signature in the past decade. This became the first time a woman could get a credit card in their own name, instead of their husband or father. The Criminal Code had just been amended to legalize the distribution of information on methods of contraception and their prescription, as well as sexual acts between two consenting members of the same sex. Women earned 57 cents to every dollar earned by a man. Paternal Authority was abolished, eliminating a husband having more legal rights with regard to judicial matters concerning their children. Women could not serve in combat roles nor be pilots in the military. Just under half of children had moms who stayed home all day as housewives. The Canadian Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Maternity benefits were finally standardized and made part of EI. 

Gas had lead in it. Paint too. You could buy a single family home for under $20,000, sometimes way under. Very few people locked their doors. For the most part, parents had no idea where their kids were, and they rarely had any concern about their safety. If you wanted to listen to music, you played a record at home and maybe put an 8-track cassette in your car stereo. Otherwise, mobile audio was restricted to radio only. FM radio had only been around a decade. Very few kids actually liked their parents’ music. Even if you lived in a big city, you had at most six TV channels to choose from. If you didn’t live close to the American border, you had much less than that, because there were only two Canadian networks at the time. The TV got its signal from an antenna and mast on the roof, and sometimes you needed a motor control to point the thing more toward the direction of the transmitting station you were trying to receive. If you wanted to get information about something you had to rely on a set of encyclopedias. Not everybody had them, because they were expensive, and the information contained within them was only as current as when they were printed. The next best option was your local library. Everyone wore a watch. 

There were maybe three or four flavors of potato chips. There was no such thing as ready made popcorn in a bag, with the exception of pink candy popcorn. People made popcorn using a Jiffy Pop pie plate thingy with a handle that you heated on the stove and the aluminum foil expanded as it popped. The closest thing there was to single serve, frozen dishes was the TV dinner on a compartmentalized aluminum tray, sealed with aluminum foil that you baked in the oven. There were no microwave ovens, those people that had them called them radar ranges, and they were exorbitantly expensive. McDonald’s had no chicken items on the menu. The Big Mac was under 75 cents. There were a lot of different kinds of bubblegum, and they weren’t sold as small pieces, they were made into fat sticks of flavored gum that you broke off into pieces. There were no diet soft drinks. Soft drinks were sold in glass bottles. 

Playgrounds were filled with things that could seriously harm you. Swings with wooden slat seats you could stand on, merry-go-rounds that spun fast enough to launch you many feet, slides that were long and high, monkey bars that were way too high off the ground. Suntan lotion (it wasn’t called sunscreen back then) had an SPF2 rating. Boxer shorts weren’t common. Most suitcases didn’t have wheels. Most people had at least a flower garden. The majority of cars on the road were made in North America. Cars were huge - a car with a width of 77 inches and a length of 210 inches (5.3 metres) wasn’t uncommon (A Honda Fit was 161 inches long). Pickup trucks were not a common family vehicle. There was no such thing as an SUV. Vans were big in the 70s and single guys liked to customize the paint job but especially the interior, turning them into psychedelic party / sex pads. The walls and floor would often be covered in thick shag carpeting. Car mechanicals were simple enough that most people could do their own minor repairs. Every car had a cigarette lighter and many ashtrays. There was no such thing as a sunroof in a car. Very few people wore seatbelts and most cars only had a lap belt in the front seat. Only sporty cars had individual seats in the front, most of the time it was one big long, bench seat. If kids were in the car, they basically sat wherever they felt like, unbelted, and it wasn’t uncommon to find them sprawled in the back of the station wagon. People rode in the back of a pick up truck like it was nothing. 

A lot of people smoked. There were still cigarettes with no filters on the end. Cigarette packages had cool designs and no glaring warnings at all. You could smoke everywhere, on a plane, on the train, in the workplace, at your desk, walking the hallways, anywhere. Cocktail lounges and bars would be thick with smoke. Cooks often had a smoke dangling out of their mouth while they prepared food. Every desk and most tables had an ashtray. The ashtray could even be on its own pedestal stand next to your chair in your living room. The shorts that men wore were very short, tight, revealed a lot of thigh and would’ve looked very strange today. Jean jackets were a common item of clothing. Bell bottom jeans too. Some young women liked to show their feminist side by not wearing a bra. Condoms existed, but not many people used them. There was no such thing as metal or plastic recycling, same with paper and cardboard. You didn’t have to visit the dump as often as we do today. If you had something to throw and it was smaller than a loveseat, you pretty much just put it out with the rest of the garbage, and it got compacted with all the rest of the garbage bags by the truck. Mercurochrome, the brand name of merbromin, was an antiseptic used to treat minor wounds and cuts that contained mercury. 

There were no ice makers in fridges, you had to fill metal ice cube trays with water and freeze them. Outdoor ice rinks outnumbered indoor rinks. Most airports didn’t have security screening. Handicapped people were still being sterilized. The Human Rights Act became a thing. The Canada Labour Code was amended to eliminate pregnancy as a basis for lay-off or dismissal. A dollar bought a movie ticket and snacks with money left over. Sometimes we went to see a movie in our car, at a drive-in theatre. You hung a speaker on your window and everybody parked facing the screen. Most of the grocery store brands don’t exist anymore. Steinberg’s, Dominion and A&P anyone? Most of the department stores don’t exist anymore. Zellers, K-Mart, Simpson’s, Eaton’s, Woolworth, Towers, Ogilvy’s. Newspapers were subscribed to by a lot of people and kids made a decent wage from delivering them every day. The newspaper was thick on Saturdays, with a built-in comics section, and loads of flyers with coupons. If you wanted something professionally printed on paper, you typed the document by hand using a typewriter. There were no ‘fonts’, just whatever type set was installed on the typewriter. If you needed copies of a document or copies of signatures or a filled out form, you put carbon paper between multiple sheets of paper and the copies were created by the pressure of typing or writing on the top sheet. The only way to take pictures was with a standalone film camera with interchangeable lenses. They made compact film cameras, but they took lousy quality pictures. Your webcam could take a better picture. You paid for everything with cash or wrote a cheque. Stores might not accept a cheque if they didn’t know you. Only wealthy folks or businessmen used credit cards. Paying with a credit card was not an electronic transaction, they used a special imprinter machine nicknamed a knuckle-buster to imprint the raised number from the card onto a carbon paper form, which was signed by the customer. That’s why you had to sign the back of the card, so the merchant could compare signatures. I don’t recall experiencing violent weather growing up. But after I left home, they experienced microbursts, tornados, ice storms, etc.

Toxic hug

 

Things I learned lately 20 May

• The Safeway in our neighbourhood bought 200 mini grocery carts at a cost of $250 each when they did their recent refresh. Only 25 remain.
• ‘Take Back Alberta’ strongly opposes abortion rights and only believes in the ‘traditional’ family.
• Producers didn’t like the movie title ‘Beetlejuice’ and suggested ‘House ghost’. Tim Burton counter-offered ‘Scared sheetless’, which the producers actually considered.
• Philadelphia’s population today is much less than it was in 1950.
• Rainbows are actually full circles, but the ground is blocking the bottom half. You can often see the full circle from altitude.
• Google Chrome is getting rid of the lock icon in the address bar, because too many people were thinking that its presence meant that the site they were visiting was safe.
• Chili peppers used to just be called chiles, but the Europeans that brought them back home added ‘peppers’ to make them sound more appealing, since Europeans loved pepper.
• The fruit the Chinese named mihoutao or qiyiguo was renamed by New Zealanders as Chinese Gooseberries. When they made it to America, the name didn’t do the fruit any favours, so Americans tried the name melonettes. That didn’t work either, so they were renamed Kiwifruit and they’ve been known as kiwi ever since.
• More people live in Milwaukee than the entire state of Wyoming.

Small things 13 May

• Long live King Charles III, or as I call him, the royal formerly known as prince.
• If you think something is true, you should try really hard to disprove it. Only then can you get at the truth.
• Gen Z kids can dress like 1985 all they want, but they'll never know the joy of your parents having literally no way to get in touch with you until you come home.
• Nobody is scared of being alone in the dark. People are scared of NOT being alone in the dark.
• 
  
• Parenting: 90% stopping kids from hurting/killing themselves. 10% Trying to explain why they’re not allowed to do the things that are hurting/killing themselves.
• Wanna see mankind get to Mars real quick? Just tell ‘em there’s oil up there.
• Young ‘uns probably think Weezer is classic rock.
• OK, I don’t mean to get all dark and stuff but hear me out. Dad always said YES, Mom always said NO. But now Dad is dead. No more asking permission from Mom I guess.
• Waiter: Here’s your food. Me: Can I have some ketchup please? Waiter brings ketchup: How are the first few bites? Me: There are no ‘bites’ before I have the ketchup. Circle back in 5 and ask again.
• Remember when we would buy ringtones? Now we don’t even want our phones to ring.
• When you pet someone’s dog and they say “Wow, he never lets strangers do that.”
• When you try to be friendly with a dog and it barks like crazy and the owner says, “Sparky! Don’t be like that. You’re supposed to attack!”

Me: Are there any medicinal benefits to prescription marijuana?
Doc: Yes, it reduces stress.
Me: How so?
Doc: You no longer worry about how you’re going to pay for your marijuana.


Him: Can you pass me the rooster shooster sauce?Her: Sorry, the what now?
Him: The warsha chester sure sauce.
Her: Are you having a stroke?
Him: The worst sister shire sauce!
Her: I’m calling 9-1-1.

HR recruiter: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” 

Me: “Begging to be allowed to continue to work from home.”

I made a railway map of Antarctica, from memory!

 

TV shows that held the top viewership spot from 1985 to 2022

The Cosby Show held the top spot for TV viewership from 1985 until 1989, when Cheers took over, and shortly thereafter, Roseanne pushed it down to the number three spot. Roseanne became number one in 1991. That’s when Cheers lost a lot of its steam. Home Improvement took over the top spot in 1993, Seinfeld in 1994, ER in 1995, Seinfeld again in 1996, and ER again in 1998. Friends and then CSI grabbed the top spot in 2001. The Sopranos became the first of the specialty network shows to crack the top 3. Lost took the crown in 2006. NCIS dethroned Lost in 2008 with CSI on its heels. Another specialty channel hit, Dexter, almost got to number one in 2009. HBO’s Game of Thrones finally cracked number one for a specialty channel in 2013. But the traditional networks got the title back in 2013 with Big Bang Theory. Game of Thrones regained the lead in 2014 and then really pulled away from the pack. Big Bang Theory got back on top in 2018. Game of Thrones took it back in 2019 only to have it stolen by NCIS later that year. Then Disney’s The Mandalorian took over in 2020. Disney launched another bullet in Wandavision in 2021, followed by another Disney show, Loki. Then Netflix introduced a show that rose like a tsunami and took the top spot, Squid Game. Paramount’s Yellowstone took over in 2022. HBO came back with House of the Dragon, but Yellowstone eventually retook the lead.

i before e except after c

 

AI dance mashup

An AI algorithm was fed a bunch of video dance sequences from movies and TV shows and prompted it to produce anime-style characters dancing. This was made by Eclectic Method. 

You will probably recognize a lot of the dancing here, but the characters doing the moves are anime random generations that may or may not look like the original shakers. 

It’s a fun mashup.

My life is a lie

 

Things I learned lately 13 May

• Within 2 months, ChatGPT surpassed 100 million users, making it the fastest growing consumer app in the history of the internet.
• Time will tell, but the next logical evolution of AI chat is to make it try to respond more like yourself versus like an average person. Then you would be able to automate a lot of your most mundane mental tasks.
• Nestle Quik chocolate drink powder (now just called Nesquik) first appeared in 1948, 75 years ago.
• The global market share of EVs is 14% in 2022.
  
  
  
• California has 1,051,456 battery electric vehicles in total, with only 15,432 hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. The biggest selling electric vehicle in California is the Tesla Model Y, which sold 33,205 in Q1 of 2023. The best selling domestic electric car is the Chevy Bolt (but not for much longer) at 8,175 for both models in Q1. BMW across their entire electric car lineup sold 17,825. Ford sold 4,492. Kia sold 4,058. Volkswagen sold 3,951. 
• California has about half of all the electric vehicles on the road in the US. This will change soon, as national US sales are increasing at a dramatic rate.
• A triangular picnic table lies in a tripoint between the international borders of Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary.
• You can actually cross the border between Spain and Portugal by zipline. Limitezero, is located in Sanlúcar de Guadiana, Spain. The facility is the first cross-border zipline in the world.

Small things 5 May

• If I had to pick a man to represent the best of Canada, the personification of Canada, I would pick Gordon Lightfoot. Rest in peace Gord. Let there be more like you.
• It almost seems impossible that the Boston Bruins lost in the first round after the season they had.
• Ever close the fridge door and hear something fall over inside? And now you’re afraid to open the door to see what happened?
• Lizzy Caplan describing Bovril: “You put it on, like, toast. It’s got cow hooves and eyeballs. It’s like the stuff that doesn’t make it into hot dogs.”
• Ever tell your wife about a conversation you had with someone and she asks a question about them that you never asked them yourself? You’re like, “I don’t know, I didn’t ask.” And she’s all like, “Why don’t men ask these questions?”
• Are you a new cat owner and you’re still trying to figure out a good name for it? I got this. Quentin B. Squintin. You’re welcome.
• Every ‘c’ in ‘Pacific Ocean’ is pronounced differently.

“Two Beers and a Puppy” is a test that Ross McCammon developed. In order to find out how you feel about someone, ask yourself these questions:
    Would you have two beers with this person? 

    Would you allow this person to look after your puppy over a weekend?

Some people are no and no. These people are to be avoided at all costs. Some people are yes and no. These people are to be cautiously trusted. Some people are no and yes. These people are no fun but they make the world a better place—for puppies, especially. And some people are yes and yes. These people are wonderful and your life and work are better for having them in your life. Seek them out. Collaborate with them. Enjoy their company.

"I know how shops work"

 

Who has rained on the Maple Leafs Stanley Cup parade?

I asked ChatGPT (a public AI platform) the following question:

What teams have the Toronto Maple Leafs lost to in the Stanley Cup finals? Here’s what it answered, verbatim:

The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost in the Stanley Cup finals a total of 13 times. They have lost to the following teams:

• Montreal Canadiens (1918, 1924, 1944, 1946, 1947)
• Detroit Red Wings (1936, 1937, 1943)
• Boston Bruins (1939, 1941)
• Chicago Black Hawks (1938)
• Canadiens (1966)
• Canadiens (1967)
• Canadiens (1971)
• Canadiens (1978)
• Los Angeles Kings (1993)
• Carolina Hurricanes (2002)

It's worth noting that the team has not won the Stanley Cup since 1967.

I love how it just threw that last bit in there. Too bad the answer it gave is utterly and completely wrong. They actually lost 8 times in the finals, to the Rangers in 1933, the Maroons in 1935, the Red Wings in 1936, the Blackhawks in 1938, the Bruins in 1939, the Rangers in 1940, and the Canadiens in 1959 and 1960.

The area is actually named Bridgeland

 

Songs that turn 40 this year (2023)

• Every Breath You Take
• Billie Jean
• Flashdance... What a Feeling
• Down Under
• Beat It
• Total Eclipse of the Heart
• Maneater
• 99 Luftballons
  
  
  
• Sharp Dressed Man
• All Night Long
• Maniac
• Sweet Dreams (Are Made ot This)
• Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
• Come On Eileen
• Shame on the Moon
• She Works Hard for the Money
• Hungry Like the Wolf
• Let's Dance
• Twilight Zone
• Electric Avenue
• She Blinded Me with Science
• Africa
• Little Red Corvette
• Back on the Chain Gang
• Up Where We Belong
• Mr. Roboto
• Der Kommissar
• Puttin' on the Ritz
• Sexual Healing
• The Safety Dance
• Mickey
  
  
  
• You Can't Hurry Love
• One on One
• We've Got Tonight
• 1999
• Stray Cat Strut
• Allentown
• The love cats
• Tell Her About It
• Always Something There to Remind Me
• Dirty Laundry
• Too Shy
• Ain’t nobody
• In a big country
• Rock the Casbah
• Our House
• Gloria
• True
• China Girl
• Promises, Promises
• Straight from the Heart
• I'm Still Standing
• Hot Girls in Love
• It's a Mistake
• Steppin’ Out
• Lawyers in Love
• Rebel Yell

Insurance scam

 

Things I learned lately 5 May

• The monarch will be known officially in Canada as "Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth." Defender of the faith has been removed from the title.
• 2023 marks the first time the Toronto Maple Leafs have advanced past the first round of the playoffs in 19 years.
• J. Michael Straczynski, who created the original Babylon 5 TV series, recently announced that a brand new, animated Babylon 5 movie is in the can and coming out soon.
• Storms have pounded the west coast since the new year, leading to more rainfall in San Diego during the first few months of 2023 than the entire year in 2022. From January through December 2022, San Diego measured a total of 5.9” of rain. Just from January through March 15 2023, San Diego has measured 9.11” of rain.
• In Brossard, Quebec, they’re trying out a pilot program to help enforce school speed zones. It’s called EARL, Education Awareness Reward Light. By default, the newly installed traffic light at the start of the school zone is red. But if it senses you are obeying the reduced speed limit, it turns green. If you speed, it turns red again. The light is solar powered and takes 15 minutes to install. The technology is made in Canada.
• The JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) seems to have found evidence of galaxies bigger than the Milky Way that existed half a billion years after the Big Bang. This was not thought possible with our current model of how the universe developed.
• A new restaurant in Montreal is going to pay its workers a starting salary of $80,000 per year. A co-owner said the idea is to treat the workers like professionals in the hospitality industry rather than wage workers, to reap the benefits of having a life that a professional would have. They also offer a stipend for continuing education, dining credits, vacation, and sick leave.