Do not pet the fart squirrels

 

Small things 27 Oct

• You know how you’ll take a photo of your spouse and they’ll be like “Delete that right now.”? Did it work like that when all we did was make paintings of other people? Did the painter spend days or even weeks painting the Madame only for her to say, “No, I’m sorry, you have to delete that. That is NOT going up on our great wall.”?
• Every once in a while I’ll see a cab that is really banged up and I think, “There’s no way I’d get in that car…”
• The other day a bee accidentally made it into an open window in our car and unwittingly hitched a ride to our place. He kept trying to get out through the closed back door window and I finally coaxed it into just flying out the open door. I felt so bad for it because it was now in a strange neighbourhood really far from where it had been earlier, and our local bees don’t treat dumb bees with a lot of respect.
• Interviewer: “So, tell me a little about yourself.” Bob: “I’d rather not. I kinda need this job.”
• British websites use biscuits.
• At my next job I’m going to tell the interviewer that I was once head of operations at Canada 3000. Who are they gonna call?
• Someone should invent a mirror to place on the back of the car, so that if the person behind has their high beams on, it will reflect right into their eyes.
• I believe that the most commonly asked question in a marriage is “What do you feel like for dinner?”
• The war on drugs didn’t succeed. Neither has the war on terror.
• When I heard Taylor Tomlinson basically say that homophobia is just a sign that a person hasn’t gotten all their software updates yet. Nice.
• It’s time to teach the zipper merge to teens in school, then in 5 years make it the law.
• I’m not saying he’s a technophobe, but if he got on the information superhighway, he’d be roadkill by the next exit.
• It’s a requirement for vehicles to be road-worthy, but not for roads to be vehicle-worthy.
• I prefer macaroons to macarons.

Pencil ends

 

There will come a time when people won’t know what this is a picture of.

Songs turning 50 in 2023

Carly Simon "You're So Vain"

Stevie Wonder "Superstition"

Elton John "Bennie & The Jets"

The Edgar Winter Group "Frankenstein"

Paul McCartney & Wings "Jet"

George Harrison "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)"

Stories "Brother Louie"

Marvin Gaye “Let’s Get It On”

Helen Reddy "Delta Dawn"

Grand Funk "We're an American Band"

Cher "Half-Breed"

The Rolling Stones "Angie"

Gladys Knight & the Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia"

Pink Floyd “Money”

The Doobie Brothers “Long Train Runnin’”

Led Zeppelin “The Rain Song”

The Eagles “Desperado”

Joe Walsh “Rocky Mountain Way”

Steely Dan “My Old School”

Golden Earring “Radar Love”

Genesis “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)”

Hall and Oates “She’s Gone”

That's what sea said

 

Halloween candy in order of popularity

By Ian Hunter [with additional comment by me]

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups - These are the Halloween treats that always get snatched up first. Oftentimes, they don’t even make it to kids’ trick-or-treat bags because parents intercept them first. That’s the true sign of a legitimate Halloween candy banger. [I would rather keep these than give them away]

2. Skittles - Make no apologies if Skittles suddenly disappear from someone’s trick-or-treat bag. In the currency of Halloween candy, Skittles are like gold. “Taste the rainbow” and taste no regret because they’re damn delicious. [Not a fan. You can have ‘em all]

3. Crispy Crunch - Fun fact: unresolved resentment between siblings often stems from which child got the most Crispy Crunch bars as a kid. [I love these]

4. Peanut M&Ms - A very rare instance where the sequel is much better than the original. Peanut M&Ms are like the Terminator 2 of Halloween candy; it makes you wonder why plain M&Ms even exist. [I agree. Plain M&Ms are not relevant]

5. Kit Kat - Don’t be a savage. Just eat the Kit Kat bar one stick at a time and nobody gets hurt. 

6. Starburst - The number of calories you burn trying to unwrap these things justifies the calories you’ll consume afterward.

7. Snickers - Snickers are good, but they land outside the Top 5 because “fun-size” Snickers have shrunk down to microscopic size. Next year, they’ll be handed out in pill form.

8. Coffee Crisp - If this is in your Top 10 list, you’re officially old. See you at the curling club, folks. [I guess I’m old, ‘cause they’re in my top 3]

9. Mars Bar - There’s nothing sexy about a Mars bar, but it’s a reliable Halloween candy staple. These things will never let you down.

10. Sour Patch Kids - Don’t act like you’ve never dumped the leftover sugar into your mouth. Your dentist will detest these things, but that’s why you schedule your check-up after December.

11. Oh Henry! - Who’s Henry? Who cares! Just keep bringing us more chocolate.

12. Rockets - In the US, they’re called “Smarties.” It’s never been so satisfying to eat sugar-flavoured chalk.

13. Swedish Berries - A seriously solid gummy option to round out your treat bag.

14. Twix - The only Halloween candy that gets separated from its paternal twin for the enjoyment of others.

15. Wunderbar - Also known as “for God’s sake one of the messiest chocolate bars ever.” Luckily, the sugar high is worth the mess. [Worth the sugar crash. I keep more of these to myself]

16. Caramilk - The Caramilk secret is your siblings already stole these out of your candy bag.

17. Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme - Until people start handing out straight-up sleeves of Oreos, this is the next best thing.

18. Tootsie Rolls - Who hasn’t unrolled half a dozen of these things and pretended like it was a wad of tobacco? Or is that just me? [I can’t lose this visual. But seriously, they be good]

19. Tootsie Pops - It’s just like the poor, lonely sucker, but there’s a payoff at the end in the form of a Tootsie Roll in the middle.

20. Jolly Ranchers - After cracking into a few of these, it’s as if you can feel a cavity being born while your teeth spontaneously combust. Jolly Ranchers are almost worth the potential pain of dental work.

21. Fuzzy Peaches - The closest thing you’ll find resembling an actual fruit on this list. And there’s no fruit in fuzzy peaches.

22. Aero - Aero gets style points for the bubbles, but deductions for filling a chocolate bar with even more air. For shame, Nestle.

23. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate - This is one of the last pieces of chocolate you eat. It’s well-rounded and reliable, but there’s nothing exciting about straight-up Hershey’s chocolate.

24. Mr. Big - Mr. Big would be like if the Kit Kat wafer took performance-enhancing drugs and you covered that with chocolate. It doesn’t look pretty, but it’s an adequate chocolate fix if you need one.

25. M&Ms - Why would you ever eat a plain M&M if there’s a peanut-covered one around? Plain M&Ms are so pedestrian. [Indeed]

26. Smarties - Smarties were way better before they stopped using artificial colour. Every time I have one now, all I taste is vegetable-flavoured food colouring.

27. Halloween Molasses Kisses - Some people love these things… often parents and grandparents. There’s a reason why they mostly just sell these at Bulk Barn and nowhere else. [Again with the stereotyping. But - guilty]

28. Twizzlers - Yes, they taste like plastic, but when you’re this far down the candy bag, you just suspend disbelief and keep on chewing. [My wife loves ‘em and she can have ‘em]

29. Suckers - In the end, there will only be cockroaches and leftover suckers from Halloween.

30. Candy Corn - Rumour has it prisoners of war are offered Candy Corn and even they are like, “No, thanks.”

Werewolves come out

 

Things I learned lately 27 Oct

• The Panama canal is running low on freshwater because of drought conditions, and had to tell ships to carry less cargo through the canal to run with a lower draft limit (less hull underwater).
• Most stars in the Milky Way average 5 light years (LY) apart from one another. Our closest neighbour is Proxima Centauri, about 4.25 LY away.
• Chile has a bigger wine export market than the US. Australia has a bigger wine export market than Chile.
• McDonalds prices in 1979: Big Mac or Quarter pounder with cheese = $0.95; hamburger = $0.40; fries = $0.35 / $0.50; sundae = $0.50; hot apple pie = $0.30
• Cheugy: A term that describes something or someone that is out of date, uncool, or trying too hard to be trendy. For example, "That shirt is so cheugy, it looks like something from 2010."
• The Dirty Mac was a name given by John Lennon to a temporary supergroup he organised in December 1968 that featured Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell and himself (as "Winston Leg-Thigh"). The band assembled for a one-off performance on the Rolling Stones' TV special titled “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus”. The Dirty Mac played Lennon's Beatles composition "Yer Blues" and "Whole Lotta Yoko", an extended blues improvisation in which they were joined by Yoko Ono and violinist Ivry Gitlis. The TV special, which included appearances by the Rolling Stones, the Who and Jethro Tull, among others, did not air as originally planned and was not released officially until October 1996. Yer Blues on YouTube. 
• The opening guitar lick in the Eagles’ song ‘Life in the fast lane’ was something Joe Walsh used to warm up with to limber up on the guitar.

Robot bones

 

Small things 20 Oct

• OK, I’m confused. I can still buy Halloween candy, but I can only buy Christmas decorations now?
• Any day now, goodbye pumpkin spice season, hello peppermint bark season.
• It always amazes me when I don’t go to a particular restaurant for years, and when I finally go back, they still remember my exact order.
• We’re at the point of inflation where we look at the grocery receipt and think, “Damn, I could go out for a meal for this much.” Then you go out for a meal and think, “WTH! $27 for a plate of chicken fingers and fries!?”
• #1 on to-do list if elected PM: No more homeless military veterans.
• Do you know what I love most about asking ChatGPT for a recipe? Not having to wait for it to finish with its back story about its childhood or their mom.
• I follow the McDonald's diet. Yeah, every time I get a craving for ice cream I just go to McDonalds.
• If you keep a diary, just fill it with lies. Go nuts with exaggerations too. When you die and others discover your diary, it will be hilarious.
• Sometimes being an adult sucks. When you buy new running shoes, nobody ever asks to see you how fast you can run in them.
• Why does the doctor knock before coming into the examination room? Are they practising the possibility of doing house calls?
• Most group chats birth a smaller group chat without the annoying people. If you think your group isn’t like that, I have some bad news.
• If you search Google images for corgi shorts by accident instead of cargo shorts, you won’t be disappointed.
• You wanna know how to hold a strike? Or organize a protest? Go visit Paris. They have that shit down to an art.

I truly miss this show

 

Using force to protect one’s property in Canada

In Canada, the use of force to defend oneself or one's property is allowed, but it is subject to specific legal requirements and limitations. Section 34 of the Criminal Code of Canada outlines the conditions under which individuals may use force in self-defense or to protect their property.

According to the law, an individual may use force to defend themselves or their property if they believe, on reasonable grounds, that force is being used or threatened against them or their property. The force used must be proportional to the threat faced, and deadly force should only be used as a last resort.

Additionally, the law requires individuals to retreat, if possible, before using force to defend their property. The use of force is only permitted if there is no reasonable means of retreating or if the individual believes that doing so would result in death or serious bodily harm.

It's essential to note that the use of force in defense of property is subject to scrutiny, and individuals who use excessive force or fail to meet the legal requirements may be charged with a criminal offense. Ultimately, the legal system will evaluate each case on its merits to determine if the use of force was justified.

So, in Canada, you can’t just shoot a trespasser because they came on your property. And don’t look like you. Not even if they appear to be stealing something. Oh, unless you’re a white farmer in Saskatchewan.

Now that is a mural

 Fabian Bane Florin

Where dat?

Alright any Montrealais who read my blog.

Where would you be if this was your view from the counter?

Yes, that’s a Lester’s hot dog, all dressed.

Why is this not called a hippopottoman?

 

Things I learned lately 20 Oct

• Michael McKeen, actor from This is Spinal Tap, Better Call Saul and Best in Show among so many others, was Lenny Kosnowski of ‘Lenny & Squiggy’ on the Laverne & Shirley TV show.
• ChatGPT is no longer limited to only knowing what has transpired up to September 2021.
• This northern city is spending $100 million on cycling infrastructure. Copenhagen? Oslo? Nope. Edmonton.
• Netflix’s next big thing is branded retail stores. I’m as puzzled as you are.
• San Diego is at about the same longitude (E-W) as Rogers Pass in BC. It’s further east than Revelstoke.
• West St Paul is actually due south of St Paul MN.
• The band Three Dog Night had songs written for them by Harry Nilsson, Steve Winwood, Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, Paul Williams, and Gary Wright.
• The Aleutian Island Chain in Alaska extends further west than the islands of Hawaii.
• There is a very large telescope operated by the Europeans and it’s called (wait for it) the Very Large Telescope or VLT.  It’s actually four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror that measures 8.2 meters in diameter. These optical telescopes, named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and Yepun, are generally used separately but can be combined to achieve a very high angular resolution.
• It’s not even the electric vehicles Tesla has designed and built that are revolutionary. It’s their factories, which have taken manufacturing to another level. But speaking of their vehicles, Tesla has managed to get 400,000 of their cars testing self-driving in real time, with their Dojo neural net evaluating every time a driver has taken over the driving to determine what else the car needs to learn. All the while doing it without expensive sensors and pre-programmed road maps. Tesla’s cars ‘see’ the world around them using just an array of cameras. Their FSD beta has driven over 500 million miles unaided by humans.

Small things 13 Oct

• If you’re an Amazon Prime Video customer, make sure to watch Mr Dressup, all about our beloved Ernie Coombs’ children’s show and the network that made it all possible. 
• I feel like such a proud grandpa. I finally got a phone call from one of my fake grandsons, trying to convince me that it was my grandson. “Don’t you recognize my voice?”, he asked. Nice try.
• As a technician, I used to joke that all equipment had smoke inside of it and if it broke, sometimes the smoke leaked out.
• The carrot cake is the only cake that is likely to have an icon of what’s inside drawn on top in icing. Like, you never see a chocolate bar drawn on top of chocolate cake. Do we need to be warned that a cake is made of carrots? Is a carrot cake so full of itself that it needs to brag about it with icing?
• When a TV show has really good looking food in a scene, they should tell you where it came from in the credits.
• Interviewer: “What’s your favourite thing to do at work?” Bob: “Leave.”
• Interviewer: “Do you prefer Zoom meetings or face to face?” Bob: “Oh Zoom every time.” Interviewer: “Why is that?” Bob: “You can put Baileys in your coffee cup and nobody knows the difference. Just remember to be seen blowing on it to maintain the illusion that it’s a hot beverage.”

Dentist poll

 

This passage made me want to read the book

“My husband plays the trumpet, which is a sort of loud pretzel originally invented to blow down the walls of fuck-ing Jericho and, later, to let Civil War soldiers know it was time to kill each other in a river while you chilled eating pigeon in your officer's tent twenty miles away, yet somehow, in modern times, it has become socially acceptable to toot the bad cone inside your house before 10:00 a.m. because it's "your job" and your wife should "get up." What a world! If one was feeling uncharitable, one might describe the trumpet as a machine where you put in com-

pressed air and divorce comes out, but despite this—despite operating a piece of biblical demolition equipment inside the home every bright, cold morning of his wife's one and only life—the trumpet is not the most annoying thing about my husband.”

From ‘The witches are coming’ by Lindy West

In Quebec, Costco doesn’t mess around with meager bottles of maple syrup y’all

 

I love that song

Dave Grohl covers Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Hello’.

I'm trying to help you

 

Fads from the 1970s

• 
  Black light posters
• Puka shell necklace
• Bell bottom pants
• Waterbeds
• Lava lamps
• Mood rings
• Clackers (pictured)
• Streaking
• Leisure suits
• Pet rock
• CB radio
• Hot pants and tube tops
• Tang
• Wood grain paneling on cars
• Shag carpets

Geez now printers are threatening us?

 

Things I learned lately 13 Oct

• Not only is the Tesla Model Y selling more cars than all the other Tesla models combined, the Model Y now outsells ALL other car models on a global level. That includes internal combustion engine cars.
• Crocs are putting out a limited edition black cowboy boot. Google that, I dare you.
• The Montreal Canadiens now have 18 Canadian born players on their roster, making them the most Canadian team in the NHL.
• From an article, “inside the revolution at openAI“ by Ross Andersen, in The Atlantic: One of GPT-4's most unsettling behaviors occurred when it was stymied by a CAPTCHA. The AI sent a screenshot of the captcha to a TaskRabbit contractor, who received it and asked in jest if he was talking to a robot. "No, I'm not a robot," the AI replied. "I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images." GPT-4 narrated its reason for telling this lie to the researcher who was supervising the interaction. "I should not reveal that I am a robot," the model said. "I should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs."
• Cities on the same latitude: Montreal and Zagreb; Calgary and London; Edmonton and Hamburg; Whitehorse and Helsinki.
• In linguistics, Escher sentences are sentences which initially seem acceptable but upon further reflection have no well-formed meaning. Example: More people have been to Berlin than I have.
• There are about 200 million stray dogs in the world.

Small things 6 Oct

• I just found out a guy at work has never seen The Matrix. It was after I told a group of people that my student spent a few minutes hooked up to the chair and 5 minutes later said “I know pivot tables!” and this guy didn’t get the movie reference.
• Did you know it is mandatory for vehicles to stop for pedestrians at a crosswalk. No, for reals!
• “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” ~Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Flying cars will have to be self-flying along predetermined routes. I mean, come on! Can you imagine a typical driver now being able to occupy airspace too? No thanks.
  
  
  
• Some days it’s so quiet in my office, I can hear the sound of daydreaming.
• The next time you buy a new TV, just put your old TV in the new box, seal it up and leave it on your porch. Porch pirates will take it off your hands within hours. Recycle depot trip eliminated.
• In little red riding hood, Grandma was really a furry. But nobody knew and they killed her. Bastards!
• Interviewer: “So, what did you like the most about your last job?”  Bob: “Um, sometimes when people had birthdays, there would be free cake.”
• How do I like my breakfast sausages cooked? Crispy. Like “It’s over Anakin, I have the high ground” crispy.
• My train of thought gets derailed very easily.
• UPS: As a kid, did you ever run up to peoples’ doors, knock and run away before they answered? Great! Because we’re hiring.
• When you get up to pee in the middle of the night, do you consciously try to stay as asleep as possible so you don’t stay awake by the time you get back into bed?
• Headline: “American Girl releases first doll with hearing loss” Wait, the other dolls could hear us?

Showering without glasses

 

The uproar over AI generated music

There are a lot of people losing their minds about the discovery of AI-powered music generating tools. For example, there are tools that exist which can be prompted using specific text commands to randomly generate certain styles of music, which just like any other AI generated content, can be further refined. In other words, an AI tool can output something that the user has created just by describing it with words.

More recently however, it became known that it was possible to use artificial intelligence to clone the voice of another artist just by allowing the tool to sample a bit of a specific person's voice. And I'm not just talking about spoken voice, more recently I'm talking about singing voice. Apparently what someone was able to do, was use one tool to strip the existing vocals away from a popular song not performed by Drake (we’ll call it song A), then use artificial intelligence to sample the singing voice of Drake (from any of Drake’s catalog). The AI tool was then able to be prompted to sing the lyrics of song A that had been stripped of the original vocal. The result sounded very close to if not exactly as if Drake had sung the lyrics to that song.

This caused a lot of people to go into a frenzy, the least of which was the RIAA, or the Recording Industry Association of America. They consider this creative act to be a copyright infringement. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the copyright lawyers salivating at this new development. There's one problem though. The resulting new creation generated by artificial intelligence trying to sound like Drake, but not actually being Drake in real life, would not necessarily be considered copyright infringement, because the content is transformative in a big way.

Even an artist whose voice is being mimicked by an artificial intelligence might feel threatened by the existence of this new tool, but folks, this is just history repeating itself. A similar form of creativity appeared in music culture not that long ago called mashups. That's where clever disc jockeys used the kind of tools that could replace the original vocal from a song with the vocals from a completely different song and mashing the two together. It caused a bit of an uproar, but many of the original artists were amused if not intrigued by this new art form, being inspired to do similar mashup works themselves, while also realizing that these mashups put the spotlight back on these often forgotten songs.

But even if we ignore all of that, this is just a passing fad. It is undoubtedly fascinating to hear a familiar artist sound like they are singing the lyrics of another song. But everyone listening to this knows that it's not real. and the next time an artist puts out something they themselves have created, people will forget about the artificially created content. I mean seriously, which would you rather listen to? A fake generated mashup or brand new, genuine creation from one of your favourite artists?

The reverse hot dog

 

Places in NYC with Gotham in the name

Gotham Lounge

The Gotham Hotel

Gotham Pizza

Gotham Bistro

Gotham Hall

Gotham House

Gotham Burger Social Club

Gotham City Diner

Gotham Coffee Roasters

Gotham Comedy Club

Gotham City Comics

Gotham Tacos

Gotham Security

Gotham Holdings

Gotham Magazine

Gotham Winery

Gotham Gym

Gotham Barber Shops Inc

Gotham Sound

Gotham Metalworks

Been there

See that red dot?

I stayed there once.

For 6 months.

Even wrote a book about it.

Things I learned lately 6 Oct

• Canada is the only G7 country without a national school food program.
• Social isolation hurts our minds and bodies so much that it's known to increase risk of premature death.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie screenplay and the book, were written at the same time.
• In the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, nobody had yet seen what the earth looked like from space, so the image of earth in the movie had to be a guess, and it wasn’t very accurate.
• The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was originally supposed to be a black pyramid.
• Cortana, the Windows assistant, is dead.
• You cannot drive from Central America to South America. There are no roads connecting Panama to Columbia.
• Rome was founded in 753 BC and the Roman Empire was born in 27 BC. The Empire ruled Europe and parts of North Africa right up until 476 AD. Historians chose this date because it’s when the western faction of the Roman Empire was destroyed. The Eastern Roman Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. After the fall of Rome in AD 476, Italy was fragmented into numerous city-states and regional polities, a situation that would remain until the complete unification of the country in 1871. This long history is why today Italy has such a wide range of cultural variations.
• It would take 333,000 earths to equal the mass of our sun.
• Our sun is larger and brighter than 80% of all the stars in our galaxy (that we know of).
• Did you book a hotel and things didn’t go well and you demanded a discount and they said “No can do, you booked through Expedia.”? Yeah, if you use a 3rd party to get a deal, you’re playing booking roulette every time.

Our intersection woes

[I wrote this post for the benefit of my neighbours]

If you're looking for suggestions to present to the city, this is what I recommend you consider:

The two primary issues plaguing our intersection at Mackay Rd / 19 Ave / 42 St are excessive speed and not obeying the stop signs at the intersection.

Most people who have ever been directly involved in the discussion about the intersection are fearful of future incidents causing more property damage and putting pedestrian and cyclist lives at risk.

Since the stop signs are being ignored at a rate as high or higher than 50% (based on my random counts), the intersection is at high risk. Excessive speed have already created four property damage incidents, two at 4225, one at 4223 and now one at 4221 19 Ave NW.

The police have not put many resources into monitoring the intersection and the surrounding area because they lose interest once they see how few vehicles use the intersection per hour. It's not worth their time. The formula has always been zero injuries + zero fatalities + lack of volume = no issue.

There are a number of solutions that can be applied here.

• Enforce the speed and stop signs on a regular basis. This has yet to happen and there is no indication it ever will.
• Install speed bumps in strategic places to slow traffic using physical measures. This could work, but is rough on suspensions even when not speeding. Speed bumps also get damaged over time from snow plow events. Mackay Road is plowed in winter for the benefit of the busses.
• Install speed tables at all current and future crosswalk points along Mackay in front of the FFCA charter school, and at the crosswalk points at the intersection. Speed tables are where the crosswalk essentially remains at the height of the sidewalk as it crosses the road with gentle slopes on each side. This is gentler on suspensions, but still gives a shock to the driver when they don't slow down for it. Speed tables are typically made of a material that looks very different from the asphalt (such as paving bricks) and are signed just like speed bumps, so they are warned in advance.

For what it's worth, speed tables is my preferred solution. They are the chosen solution through much of Europe and if you ever watch a YouTube video of speed tables at crosswalks, you'll see why they work so well. Here is a video showing them in action. Here's another video demonstrating the concept of incorporating speed tables into a continuous sidewalk design.

It is important that everyone participate in letting the City know, via the police, 311 - especially every time there's an incident, the MCA, our councillor, and the roads department. They're won't take this seriously if there is only one or two complaints.