Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Scared of Santa Gallery

This one's from Gwilliker.. A great link to some "Why the hell are Mom and Dad leaving me on the lap of this fat Albino in the red suit with the whiskey breath?" photos.

Scared of Santa Gallery

Which is your favorite?

Lenzspot has a good Santa one he should post.

That's not an O-Henry in the tub ... Again..

I was playing single parent for a day last week, my wife was out at an all-day scrapbooking thingie and I was bathing the two monkeys after supper. After about 15 minutes the 6 year old screams..

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It touched me!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And jumps out of the tub and proceeds to do some type of South American Native dance. The 2 year old had shit in the tub (again)..

"It touched my HAND!!!!!!!!!!!"

One thing about us human beings, when it comes to shit, we want to be as far away from that stuff as we can get. Just look at the way our toilets are constructed. With the exception of some of my 6000 co-workers (a good percentage of them do not flush in the public stalls after they void), one touch of the handle and that stuff is whisked away down a small dark water slide, never to be seen again(by you at least)..

I got Jade to wash her hands and as I drained the water, fished the "pooper" out of the tub and sat her on the toilet (it's a chance for a little early training!) that's when I turned to see how Jade was doing and spotted a spider the size of a quarter sidling up the wall inches from the sink. Man, if she sees that thing on top of all this, this whole evening is going to be ruined on account of floating poop and spiders. So I distracted Jade and squished the damn thing behind her back before it could get away all the time balancing the 2 year old on the toilet seat so she would not fall in the hole.

What a pleasant evening. After disinfecting the entire area and blasting the shower for 15 minutes I put the kids to bed, I didn't mention anything until hours later when my wife came back late that evening. She had drawn a bath, and was soaking in it.

"Hey, did I tell you Jasmine shat in the tub?"....

Heheheheheh.









And by the way..... You do not.. Want.. to .. go here....
www.ratemypoo.com
I clicked .. And I'm sorry I did.. I'm just putting it here because someone told me about it the other day, and it fit the topic.. And I think people like Gwillicker and Lifto will get a kick out of it. (shudder)

Ebay Sniping! Dance Monkey!!!!

We were out shopping the other day and I happened to see this Dance Pad for the Xbox at Futureshop for $199 , and I thought.. "Wow, my kid would love that!, But there's no way in hell I'm payin' $199 and tax for that!". When these mats first came out, it was a spin off of the Gamercize craze, to get people off the couch playing videogames and on their feet and moving around (but still playing video games). Sure it's much simplier to go outside and run around, but Xbox is fun, so I'm all for giving it whirl.
Let's see what ebay has to say.
"Wow, here's the exact same thing, in Canada (screw the legalized theft at the border), slightly used but perfectly working for $0.99!

So, I did what I always do when I want to buy something on Ebay. NOTHING! Never let them know you're interested!!!! One guy had put a bid on it, so I googled his other ebay purchases and found out he missed a bid just the other day on the same exact thing (an INTEC G5252, same thing futureshop has on for $199 ). It had been had for $26 US.. not bad.. I figured $42 should blow his reserve auto bid out of the water, so I set my watch and when the bid was just about to end at 8:17 Sunday night, with about 3 seconds to go, I outbid him by 10 bucks. There was someone else who jumped in there too, but Bah! it was mine at $32 US...

SNIPE!!!! (did you know there's software to do this sort of thing for you? Evil!!)

It arrived tonight and I checked it all out, it works fine. I set it up and started to boogie.. My wife came down to see what the hell I was doing and I made her try it( I'm much better at it then she is, but this is nothing to brag about - forget I said it, until they make video-game dancing an Olympic sport in 2018, then watch out!)..

As she went through the tutorial for the 6th time I wondered aloud how much more interesting it would be if she wasn't wearing any pants.. But I digress..

This might be the big hit under the tree this year. Dance Dance Revolution 4, here I come!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Orleans Light Parade

Another year of sitting on the curb in the cold watching ten billion led lights gliding past. Boy the kids like it though. And they hand out candy! We got smart the last couple years. Now we park at the START of the parade, not the middle, or the end. That way, when it starts at 6:00pm, we don't have to wait 30 minutes till the first float reaches us! Our secret parking spot has been compromised though. The old Canadian Tire has been bought out and some other kinds store is going in and they hired some poor guy to basically wear a hard-hat near the entrance and bark at all of us who tried to park there that (and I quote):

"We're paving the parking lot tonight and I'm calling a towtruck and anyone who parks here is gonna get towed! Grrrrrrrrrrrr!" And then he kinda looked at us and bristled with one eyeball bigger than the other like Bluto in the old Popeye cartoons.

It makes perfect crap sense does it not? You're gonna pave a parking lot in winter. At night. On the same night Orleans holds the biggest parade of the year that starts a few blocks from your doorstep. For which the cops close ALL the roads for like 2 and a half hours. During which no one gets in or out. Pedestrians basically sit in the street to watch this. Oh yeah.. You got me scared buddy.. Sure that tow truck is gonna get called and get down here in time to wait 2 and a half hours behind the police barricade just so it can come in and tow one car(if that). I hope it's one of the private gys who works on commision!

I turned around though and spotted a sweeter spot by the side of the road. Seeya Bluto! I'd rather he just have the style to say "Basically the owners are assholes and they just don't want anyone using the parking lot of their new store that is closed and set to open in a month for something as silly as a big Christmas Parade." Maybe the lady at my office who is offended by the word Christmas owns the place now?

My Mom and Dad's fire truck was in the parade. At the end they parked the pump and went into the Orleans city hall type building and my Mom ran into a guy she recognized. She had been at a party the night before and this bald fellow had been drunk as a skunk.

"Why hello there!" She goes "Well, I hope you didn't drive home from Wakefield last night, with all that booze you drank!"

The guy greets her and says "Why no, I can honestly say I did not drive home drunk last night from Wakefield!" He laughs. So does my Dad, who is behind my Mom.
"Really? That's good!" My Mom says "Because you were three sheets to the wind! You told me all kinds of stuff about yourself, I'll bet your freinds don't even know!"
The guy laughs again. My Dad has a huge smile on his face now.
"Oh yeah?" Says the bald guy, "What did I tell you?"
My Mom eleborates and at this point my Dad stepped forward and says
"She don't know who you are.." and taps the embroidered name on the guy's winter coat.

Larry O'Brian. Ottawa's new mayor-elect from last week.

Wrong bald guy mom(grin)..

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Playing with an old Sony Nightshot at 2:45 am

For some reason I went to bed at 2:30 Saturday night. I watched the UFC, George St-Pierre from Montreal kicked Matt Hughes butt all over the place and after that finished at 1:30am, I killed goblins on my computer for an hour. As I went upstairs to bed I heard some guys swearing at the top of their lungs outside. I peered out my bathroom window and there was a fight going on in the driveway a few houses down, about 20 kids trying to break it up. It looked like someone was blitzed out on something and was trying to drive home and someone was trying to stop them, I dunno. It was out of control so I called the cops. As I put the phone down, I spied the Sony nightshot cam I borrowed from a guy in my french class. HEY! I gotta try that sucker out!

I really wished I knew what I was doing. I basically took it out of the bag for the first time, set it to night shot (in almost total darkness), and pointed it through my screen window. I had no idea where the manual focus was and I could only flip between 2 or 3 night shots modes. It's a crappy video, but the nightshot mode sure is interesting. Like frickin night vision!! WOOHOO!

I wonder of anyone got arrested. I was filming when the cops showed up. The party broke up and some guys kinda walked away and then hid in my front yard behind some bushes and had a long discussion over who bought the bad X 10 feet from my window. Idiots! I didn't want to look like some kind of peeping freak so I waited them out and closed my window.

(actually, who am I kidding. I AM a peeping freak!)


Saturday, November 25, 2006

Chucking the Christmas Lights 2006

We put the Christmas lights up this weekend. I like to use the word Christmas because lately, it's been deemed semi-offensive at my place of work and we are encouraged to say "holiday" lights lest we offend anyone who doesn't happen to be the same religion. It's real funny to me since it's tied with Halloween as my favorite holiday and I'm not religious in the least. As far as I'm concerned, you can tell yourself that most of the religion has been completely commercialized out of Christmas. On another note, no one scolds me for saying Happy Hanukkah or Happy Ramadan or any other holiday I happen to catch on to. Call it for what it is.. "Season Greetings" my butt....

I've worked with people who have told me they are offended by the word Christmas. To them I say it's probably time to move then. Tolerance and compromise is to be appreciated these days. It REALLY irked her off that it was an official federal holiday and that the calendar started on that Jesus guy's birthday(grin).

Oh well... Can't please everyone. Might as well cater to the 99.9 % who like getting presents. (PRESENTS!!!!!).

I saw some guy on TV trying out a new light installing technique. He got the lights on the end of a long pole and then just whipped them over his head and chucked the lights at the tree where they usually stuck. My wife told me she saw some guy doing the same thing on Parliament Hill or some place.

Hey! It works!!!! (Don't know how I'll get them down though....)

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

History of the third Reich - (Hitler was quite the bastard)

I got hold of a podcast on Hitler and the history of the third Reich from Slava the other day. Man was it interesting! I thought I knew a bit of the story but man Hitler was a CRAZY bastard. Him and all his stupid frickin National socialist Nazi buddies. The next time I run into one of those moronic Aryan lovin skinheads (I ran into a Heritage Front demonstration downtown years ago when I was in the market - now there's a bunch of raging idiot hate mongers), I'll have some new stuff to talk to them about little Adolf Schicklgruber and explain to them in great detail why they are &*%$#@ morons for holding that guy up as some sort of great leader.

We're all heard of the final solution and the death camps. What I never knew about was the Nazi Racial hygiene programs. In 1939 the Nazi's attempted to "Cleanse the body of the German people". They set up 21 children's departments, to evalueate children with birth defects, any abnormality, mental retardation, etc. To identify these kids they used social agencies (previously set up to help kids like this), hospitals, the church etc. To the Nazi's these kids were "Racially Valueless" and qualified for their "euthanasia" program and were put to death by injection, starvation, or poison gas. They started this up when they came to power and in control of the state mental hospitals and sent form letters to the families of the murdered children. At one point in 1941 some families put two and two together when neighbors received the same letter and started to ask questions. The program was shutdown for a time and then started right back up when the protest blew over. Over 5000 kids were murdered. In the 40's the program was expanded to adults of which 80,000 were killed in the same manner. If you were lucky enough not to be murdered, you got a forced sterilization (about 400,00 of those up to 1945).

The Nazi's are not nice people folks...

I always wondered how much about the Final solution the world knew about. How much did the German population know? None of the camps were in Germany because the Nazi's knew there would be public opposition to them at home (as much as could be mustered of course). I also heard about the Madagascar plan for the first time. After they invaded France, one of the co-conspirators there offered up the Island of Madagascar as a possible haven for European Jews. There was some plan drafted up, which called for the use of the defeated British navy ships to help with the plan, but the English didn't cooperate by not losing. Jewish relocation was already going on in Germany and I'm pretty sure everyone knew that it wasn't going to be taking anyone off on holiday...

I always thought it quite ridiculous that a short little black-haired guy from Austria conjured up images of big, blonde, blue-eyed folks as the perfect (Aryan) German race. Didn't he ever look in the mirror? Apparently he had a division of people charged with rounding up kids who looked like this in Germany and surrounding annexed countries for a massive repopulation experiment.

No more Boy scouts. Now you gotta go to the Hitler Youth. All aspects of social life were controlled. you had a League of German girls, national Socialist groups for attorney's, physicians, woman's league, etc.. Even the Barbers had a National Socialist club.

Hitler never signed any orders during his reign of terror (Hitler dairies? full of crap). Some of those clueless aforementioned people who still think fondly of the guy always point to this as evidence that he had little to do with the holocaust and the other atrocities. I say he was much too chickenS&$t to sign anything lest it go wrong and he become associated with it.

All three of his girlfreinds attempted suicide. What does that tell you about Adolf? One or two succeeded.

Did you know the best time to arrest some0ne in Nazi Germany is at two in the morning? Early on when the Nazis forbade any public criticisms of the party, the Gestapo hauled a lot of people away in the middle of the night. You'd tell a Hitler joke in a bar, some people would laugh. That night at 2:00am, you'd get a knock on your door and then it was bye bye time. Got a hate on for your neighbor? Does his cat piss on your lawn? Call the Gestapo, tell them the cat's owner is a communist. Problem solved. Sometimes, they did an extra nice thing whereby not only would they arrest you, but your wife, your parents, your kids, your friends, your relatives... Lots of us in life are brave enough to stand up for ourselves, and others, but not to the point where it lands your whole frickin family in the gulag. My god what an inhumane way to live. No wonder your typical German citizen looked the other way after awhile. The crazy train had already left the station.... Once the Nazi's got in, they made sure they stayed in, and started rolling out little 'ammendments' in such a trickle that it was like watching corn grow. You don't notice the place has gone to hell until it's too late.

I read in the paper once, a small tidbit by a Canadian soldier who stated rather heatedly that there was a difference between the German Army and the Nazi's. The two were just not the same. The Nazi's, the SS, the Gestapo, these were the crazies in charge. The German Army just followed orders and 'made war' (although I'm sure the Russians would disagree; and probably a whole lot of other people), but from what I read, there was a difference. Perhaps it's a lesser of the two evils thing. If it was to be a foregone conclusion, you definitely wanted to get captured by the German Army, than by the 'other' guys.

The one great quote I always remember from that time period is from a German, Martin Niemöller

Here is one of the adapted versions, but you get the meaning:
First they came for the Communists, and I didnÂ?t speak up,
because I wasnÂ?t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didnÂ?t speak up,
because I wasnÂ?t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didnÂ?t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.
Hopefully the world can learn from history like this and never repeat it.

P.S.

When I was finishing up the last lecture, I was in the process of picking up my kid from school. I always turn the podcast off and flip over to music my kids like.. Today she was misbehaving and when we got in the car she demanded some song or other and I told her:

"Nope.. I'm not letting you listen to your music. We're listening to Hitler!"

The parent getting out of the car beside me was not impressed.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Beware the Pit!

We headed out to the Quebec side to do Canada's first multi geocache, Beware the Pit. It was a blast! I've never seen so much junk out in the woods! We found some old abandoned snowmobiles, a huge Caterpillar construction tractor, huge flatbed trucks out in the middle of fields, full of frickin junk like you wouldn't believe!

It was a fine day for caching. Once we crossed the border on the ride up I discovered that in Quebec, the horn in pretty much every car in back of you is somehow wirelessly connected to the traffic lights. As soon as the friggin light turns green, the horn in the car behind you goes off to let you know the light has changed. It's very helpful because the speed of light is so fast, it takes a few microseconds to notice that the light is no longer red.. A bit longer than the speed of sound I guess.

We hiked in and saw evidence of some recent bush parties, and this is where we stumbled upon the snowmobile, Tripper hopped on it and tried to drive it outta there, but it just wouldn't turn over for him. In fact, his hopping up and down on it like a demented evil bunny caused something dead-smelling to waft up at us from under the engine. It was RANK! (see the video here)

I don't know what posses someone to leave perfectly good machinery out in the woods like that. At one point, we stumbled upon an entire car engine block, just sitting there in the path, like it fell out of the sky. It was fun to play on the CAT. We couldn't get it started and drive it to the cache, which was to be expected, it looked like it had been sitting there for a few years. The whole way up we were dodging huge horse turds. This area is obviously a huge riding trail.

When we found the cache, we sat down for a bite to eat, and Tripper pulled out his cigar soon after for a celebratory cache-find smoke. Trouble was, his lighter fizzed out on him, he had no way to light it. He asked me if I had a lighter and I got and idea and rummaged through my bag. He didn't think it was funny when I threw him my flint and steel fire starter. In fact, he called me a bad name of some sort! I went about starting a fire the semi-old fashioned way and after a few minutes, I walked over with a burning piece of paper but the *&%$%&%# had gotten his lighter to fire and was already puffing away! It didn't matter. Fire is like CPR. Once you start to do it, you can't stop.

I recorded some stuff with my M-audio Micro recorder. I was going on about Bigfoot and GrizzlyG started to dispute the entire chain of viable Bigfoot evidence, so I thought, "This will be good" and clicked on my recorder with plans to decimate his argument and the %$#@&* recanted everything while the tape rolled and made like he believed in Bigfoot all along! Then he went on to orate how it was weird that an hour before I was having a spirited argument with someone who wasn't there (my imaginary friend) and that maybe I should go get that checked out...

On the way out we stopped for pictures on a little cliff. I caught sight of the horses that were leaving the shit piles all over the place, a line of several on a ride up through the hills. I was on top of a huge rock dressed as Batman so I waved to them! WooHoo!

I think they somehow knew we were from Ontario....

A fine day for geocaching!

Friday, November 10, 2006

Flickr badges

I added a Flickr badge on the right hand side of my blog after I saw one on Tripper's site. It's a flash thingie that randomly selcts pics from your Flickr collection and shuffles them around in a clickable little graphic.

Very cool!

Here's how to add one to your site

Skeleton in a garbage truck














I was driving home the other day, shortly after Halloween and spotted this particular garbage truck on the queensway. We were doing about 110km an hour and I had to snap a picture.

hilarious. I'm positive I also see a human head in the jaws of the trash compactor on the right hand side.

And, speaking of Halloween, check out one of our scary pumpkins!

Thursday, November 09, 2006

The Dinosaur museum

They're back! After like, a year, the museum of Nature in downtown Ottawa is open again. Only half the exhibit space is available and the upgrades probably won't be completely finished until next year, but the dinosaurs are there and they are WAY COOL! Check out the huge prehistoric turtle!

If you go on Saturday, before noon, admission is free!

Spezza the dead goldfish

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter told me that the three goldfish in her fish bowl "were having a meeting!". Sure enough, two of them were clustered in the bottom entrance to the mermaid cave, deep in fish conversation. Hmm. I've only seen two fish for a few days now. Barring any successful escape attempts, maybe something was rotten in goldfish-land.
I was right. Sure enough, the meeting was about Spezza and probably went something along the lines of how he was stinking up the fishbowl with his dead carcass. He had unceremoniously risen to the interior of the mermaid cave to die in peace and out of sight of my kids. What were we to do?

I waited till she was asleep, donned my head lamp, and armed with a dead-fish scooper, under the cover of darkness recovered the body and flushed him down the toilet.

Two days later, the other two were dead (damn that Spezza). Off to Walmart for more fish soon.

Groundhog Day Hockey with the Ottawa Senators

MY GAWD BUT THEY SUCK!!!!

Rome is burning people. A five game losing streak! Last time they did that was in 1995 or something. 10 YEARS ago for christ's sake!

Ever see that movie groundhog day with Bill Murray? Where he wakes up and the day is slightly different but it ends up the same way at the end of it all. No matter what he does to change it, it just can't be helped, he can't get Andie Mcdowell in the sack...

Well, the last few games I've seen, the Sens pop out to these great big leads, 3-0, the other team pulls the starting goalie (it happened again tonight!) , chucks in the back up and then theSens can't score and they start letting goals in like oxyegen... Gerber.. We're stuck with him. Who will pay $3.5 mil to take him off our hands? I dunno, but the next time the Sens go get the goalie of the future, please make damn sure he has more than ONE good season!!!! I mean, Gerber.. Go practise with some friggin beach balls!

$@#!!!&!*!**@* they better trade someone's ass! Or Fire some upper and lower management! frig, the trainer even!

My freind Charkles had a great idea. Send Redden to Tampa for Vincent Lecavielier. Shake up the friggin room. Fire the coach and GM. DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!

Ugg.

I'm a Habs fan, but with a local team like the Sens you can't help but notice and hope they do well. My god. They are embrassing!

Frickin overpaid millionaires, most of them...

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Dead Squirrels & Lesbians

A few years back I was planting a geocache on my lunch hour and I came across a dead squirrel in the middle of a path I was taking to get there. It appeared to be pretty fresh(it must have gotten run over by someone on a bicycle or something). I did what any aspiring photographer would do. I took a picture of the dead thing. I've tried taking pictures of animals before ,and it can be pretty challenging. Taking pictures of dead things is a breeze though, they don't move or try to run away! So, satisfied with the picture, I go on my way and plant my geocache on nearby Victoria Island(note the cool totem pole). On the way back, I came across the dead squirrel again, but some birds or something had eaten it's eyeballs(first come first serve).

This made for a much more interesting picture! So out came the camera again. But this time, as I was framing the shot, I noticed two women sitting on a parkbench in the far background. They were kissing. I had a photographer's moment! "Dead squirrel in foreground with Lesbians kissing". Woohoo!

Unfortunately, they didn't see it that way. As I lined up the shot to include the girls with the squirrel they stopped kissing and looked at me. The dirty look that followed made me re-compose my shot and forget about my previous cool idea.... As they got up to leave I thought about shouting, "You can keep kissing, I'm just taking a picture of the dead squirrel"!

But thought better of it... Frig, I just left, didn't even take a pic of Mr "I'm dead and now I just lost my frickin' eyeballs!".

Now that I own a camera that fires at 2.5 frames a second, hopefully I can get shots like that in the future!

By the way, the geocache turned out to be a real hit with tourists. It was in my "try to look like a rusted hunk of metal" camo phase. It's stuffed in an old dock along with other bits of weird junk. It doesn't look like a geocache at all! It's made with Sintra, heated and bent to imitate metal fatigue, and painted with Humbrol paint.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Tripper's Worm Snuff film. "Snake's gotta eat!"

I just caught Tripper's new snuff film. Poor worm, he never saw it coming... (I don't think they have eyeballs). I love the Super Mario music in the background!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

A visit to Proulx Farm

We visited Proulx farm on the weekend . They have scary wagon rides (well, not that scary. The outfit in Munster Hamlet puts on a freakier show, with guys running after you with chainsaws and stuff) for the kiddies and corn mazes and slides and stuff. It was s nice little afternoon, the weather was great!

When we were in the corn maze I caught sight of some big bird in the sky, no idea what kind it was, so I snapped a picture.. Running around in the corn brought back memories of when I was a kid, running away from someone I had kind of scared the crap out of, and right into a corn field. Those were the good old days!

One neat thing they have is these faces on the trees, with some kind of rubbery paste. I'll have to do up a geocache like that some time.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

GAG9 Gnome's Crossing

I only managed to do one geocache on Saturday, but it was a great little hike. You had to cross this creek/small river. Good thing I brought the Fire fighter booties. Tripper and I found some abandoned mattresses on the way in. I wonder what they've been used for recently(they were comfortable though). I've been in this area before but not as far back as the geocache led us.
There were a ton of lightning struck trees, hit so bad they were hollowed out in some cases. Very cool! I'll have to come back here again..

Friday, October 20, 2006

GAG9 - Night-caching in the sewers with Tripper & GrizzlyG(sorta)

So this Friday and Saturday were GAG9 (stands for Go and Get Em 9, a big geocaching event in Ottawa). I usually do a lot of the caches the night of the Friday with Tripper and Grizz. Grizz was indisposed that night, not having any modern forms of communication, and we were unable to link up with him, but we had fun none the less. One of the funnest ones for me was one out in the west end called Bridlewood Brain Teaser 2 . We heard from another group of cachers that the cache was simply not findable and that piqued our interest. "We can find the dang thing!" We thought. So we got there at about 9:30 or so, it's dark as all heck and we search for 15 minutes.. Nada... Nothing.. Uhh Uhh... I break out the description in my PDA. It says something about going 15 paces North and finding a surprise.. Well, 15 paces North was a big bunch of nothing, but 15 paces WEST was a big storm sewer. An UNLOCKED storm sewer (well, it had some fancy closing mechanism, but if you fiddled around with it, that sucker opened right up!!). I opened the grate up, looked at my GPS and by gum, that GPS arrow was pointing straight down that hole! So we all know what that means. Down the hole we go!!!

Luckily it was not a sewage sewer. It was brand-new storm sewer and very clean and only smelled a little bit. I was able to crawl down the hole into this inner chamber and there was a ladder there. This was 2 meters from the cache people!! I climbed up the ladder expecting to find the cache and!!!!!!

Nothing.... No geocache.. Shucks.. It's been my dream to put a geocache in a sewer drain for years, here I thought I was about to find one and durn it.. NOTHING!!!! But wait.. Perhaps the fun was not over yet.

As I clung to the ladder peering out the sewer grate I heard people coming by.. They were talking about meters.. These had to be geocachers. Time to have some fun.. I yelled from the sewer.
"Hey!!!! Can anyone hear me!!!!!" They ran over. After all, this man-hole is like, 2 meters from the posted cache co-ordinates.

"Hey! There's somebody in the sewer!" they said (or something deductive like that).

"Hey!" I yelled "Are you geocachers? Can you guys get that open from the other side! I'm stuck in here! I've been traveling the sewers for hours trying to get out!!" And they actually tried for a second, until one said "Hey, who is that!".

Turns out I knew them. We run into this group on the road every year! After they found out it was me, they stopped trying to pry it open(like it made perfect sense to them that I'd be in the sewer).. So I came back up and looked some more with this group with no luck again, then I did what I do when I can't find a geo-cache in this kind of situation. I went tactile and looked with my hands. I felt along the base of the boulder it might have been under and my fingers brushed plastic. The cache was in hand.. I was the first to find it, a FTF they say (second of the night. It's easier when there's like 47 new geocaches planted in the city!). This is very important to some crazed geocachers, who, if you'll excuse the analogy, liken it to defrocking a virgin. For the record, I do not(grin).

As I tell people when I talk to them about geocaching... It leads to you spots you've never been before. I never would have gotten to see the inside of that cool sewer if it hadn't been for that geocache!

GAG9 - More Friday night follies

We saw tons of deer on this night. From far away they look like hyenas eating something dead on the ground when they look at you with their reflective night eyes(I wish I had reflective night eyes). I got this new headlamp spotlight for the event, a new LED one with a powerful spot that can go about 72 meters. It's bright as hell and I was mistakenly blinding people all night with it until I realized that when I look at them to talk to them, I'm actually burning out their retinas. My bad!

Near the end of the evening, when we were coming back from a relatively wet slog in the brush, we spied some backyard lights and we made a beeline to them for a dry walk back to the path to the road where I had parked the car. Now we do this all the time, but I know I prefer to hide in the tree line when I walk back and not freak out the people in their houses watching CSI in Hi-def on their big screen TV's. For some reason Tripper decides to walk right along their backyard fences in full view. Well, not full view, it's dark out, and I'm pretty confident that when the home-owner who spies him walking on the edge of his backyard property carrying a flashlight a big back-pack finishes phoning the police, we have a good chance of getting the hell out of there before the cruiser arrives.

Still, I hiss at him from the bushes "Tripper, don't walk so close to the damn houses!" and he goes "It's ok, they can't see me..."
Just then there's this little click. Not the click of a rifle being loaded or anything, but the click of a motion detector light being tripped and the guy's whole backyard lighting us up like the Sun on steroids.
I plunge deeper in the bushes but this does not phase Tripper. He doesn't speed up but instead confirms his innocence by walking slower.

All I have to say is.. I got the keys!

HAH!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Planting The Body (geocache)

On Wednesday night I dropped my geocache for the upcoming Ottawa geocaching event GAG9. I had a feeling it was going to be a bit tricky to plant it since it was basically a huge duct tape dummy based on my own body proportions, and it was made up to look like a dead body stashed in the woods... So I did what the real wackos and murderers probably do. Waited until midnight to drag this thing in the forest and dispose of it so to speak.

I had the spot all picked out, some little used woods off of the Innes road Eastbound Blackburn bypass.. I loaded the thing in my truck at 11:55pm Wednesday night and off I went! Of course it didn't start off smoothly. I have a new neighbor moving in right across the street and he pulled in late with some U-Haul trailer as I was stuffing the body in my front seat (I waved hello and went right on stuffin' - he pretended not to see me, we'll just keep it that way).

Then on the drive over I did a U-turn to get on the other side of the one-way street and ended up overshooting my entry point! Crap! I continued driving and thought I'd just pull another U-turn up ahead and do it all over again when suddenly the van in front of me jammed on it's brakes - and hit a deer. I stopped. The dead deer really did a job on the van and it's occupants were ok and already dragging bambi to the side of the road, so I went on my way. During that little incident I was reminded that my stupid dome light stays on inside the truck for 30 seconds after I open the door to get out, showing the body in full view to anyone driving by (grrrr)..

So I continued on my merry way, did my U-turn, then did another and was soon parked by the road right at the spot I had marked with my GPS earlier in the week. All I had to do now was wait for a break in traffic so I could open my passenger door, drag the body out and stuff it in the woods.. Traffic was particularly busy at midnight... It seemed like 10 minutes before I saw a break in both directions, but there it was and boom, that fake body was out of the truck and in the treeline in 2 seconds flat! I locked my truck with the remote and started tromping off into the woods with the body on my shoulder and a flashlight in my free hand when flashing red lights caught my eye

A police car with it's cherries on was parked in back of my truck. Now I figured there was NO WAY he could have seen me run into the woods with my body.. He had to be just checking out a truck stopped for no reason by the side of the road.. I was about 20 feet into the treeline and I threw the body to the ground (it was wearing a dark blue coverall, so it was ok, but I was pretty sure my MEC jacket had all kinds of reflective shit on it, so I turned mty light off, got down behind a tree and peeked around. The cop was out of his car, walking over to my truck and playing his flashlight around in the woods where I had just gone in. CRAP! I was thinking that if he came in the woods, I'd give a quick "Hi!" and come out from where I was holding the geocache container and try and leave the fake dead body out of it completely. Just explain to him that I was all alone, planting a plain old geocache, that's all, not trying to hide a body or anything, nope..

Well, he didn't come in the woods, he got right back in his police car and drove off. And then it occurred to me that he may have been responding to the van that hit the deer, thought my truck was the one involved, and maybe the deer had come back to life and ran into the woods to die (they do that sometimes I hear). Man.. I was lucky.. Very lucky.. If he would have come up on my sitting there with that thing in the passenger seat....

So I tramped another 150m into the woods, changed the spot I was gonna put him in after finding a cooler spot, and took a pile of pictures.. I even found a dear skull on the ground nearby and placed it in his lap.. He looked great out there! Hopefully it will creep people out a bit when they find it this Friday... Man, if I'd have gotten my act together I could have hired some teenager to just sit in the coveralls and jump when people came near (maybe next year). How'd you like to take a hike in the woods at night and come across this thing?



Monday, October 16, 2006

Desperate Housewives - The Game

I'm a fan of the show. Heck, someone went and made a PC game of it.. It's kinda like the Sims (and we all know how I like to play that particular game!). It got a bad rating on the one site I found that reviewed it, but the story was written by one of the scriptwriters and it has the voice-over suicide lady that does all the V.O.'s for the show.
First thing that happened after I installed and made my character was Edie barged in to show me my new house and made fun of my 23 inch television, then Bree came over and invited me for coffee. I didn't even have time to see if there was anyone tied up in my basement (actually I don't seem to have a basement - they missed the boat there - where will I put my sex-dungeon!) or buried under my in-ground pool!

I did find some pills in my mailbox (I pocketed them) and I met the women of Wysteria lane and found out at the gossip session that I'm a 40 something amnesiac that doesn't remember her past (did I mention I'm a woman?) and I rely on what my husband told me happened after we were 'married'.

It's all pretty hazy...

These twin brother neighbors came over and I let one of them install my computer while the other one told me what a wierd street it was. I can actually surf the web on my pretend Desperate Housewives computer (go figure). After that I was able to have sex with the mail man (some pretty funny dialog led up to that one). I hope the strange old lady across the street didn't see me do that with her binoculars...

Now it's off to the mall to see my shrink! Cute little game..

Zart goes Hi-DEAF!!!!!!!

So there I was, 18 feet up the tree in my front yard, pulling up a saw I'd attached to a rope around my torso so I wouldn't have to climb the tree with it in my teeth - and that's when I got busted... My daughter was in her room (which I was kind of looking down on, being up in the tree and all) and she exclaimed loudly

"Daddy! Why are you cutting down the tree!?!?"

My wife hears this..... She comes into my daughter's room holding the telephone(which is for me by the way).

"No way!" She tells me through the open window. Crap!

"Your friend Jim is on the phone, he is going to that big park off Trim road.. And you are NOT about to cut down half the tree so you can watch TV!"..

I got an HD satellite receiver on the weekend, finally ready to join the HD revolution. I first put a sat dish up about 4 years ago, but it was pretty easy.. A single LNB, I even left it to the default Azimuth, 90, hit the sat bird in the sky no probs, Bob's yer uncle.. But TODAY! No luck.. A High Def install needs a second LNB, you need to hit sats 89 and 91, and you need to tilt the dish to 100, Heading 208, elevation 38.4. You run a whole mess of wires into a switchbox, an SW-44 in this case, you power channel 1 on it and that's all there is too it..

Needless to say it was dead in the water.. All I had was 55% on transponder 11. Not enough for a lock. And on a clear day at that. Add a little bit of snow or rain and you can kiss the reception goodbye! So I took a good look at the tree, and how much it had grown in the last 4 years, and figured I had a line of sight problem after I tilted it ever so slightly.. That had to be it. Hence the trip up the tree for a surgical sawing of a major branch which would give me a clear path to my TV programs. As we discussed the matter, I started to get tired of holding onto the tree with one arm and one leg and suggested to my wife that we discuss it further with me out of the tree. Poor Jim on the phone had no idea what he had just stepped into(grin). I took a break and went to the park.
After I got back I decided that my wife was right, I let the tree off the hook and played with the dish pointing some more, with no luck. It was then, after about 4 hours that I gave in, and called frickin BELL. I'm too stupid to install this, please send someone and charge me money!!! They were happy to oblige. As it turns out, my stupid dish was pointed right all along. I had a bad cable coming down from the roof into the switch, which threw that all off (because it is powered) and after the Bell guy changed the ends, it all started to work..

Crap.... I bought a new coax stripper from Home Depot that day.. I won't be making any more cables with my knife anymore. $100 later. Easiest call the guy had that month I'm sure..

BUT HI DEF TV IS COOL!!!!!! You can see wrinkes and zits and stuff on the actor's and actresses faces. The Desperate housewives all look like they are in their mid-40's(like they are in real life).. Hockey is a blast as well..

Me Likey Hi Def!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Car trouble in the Twilight Zone

This thanksgiving dinner I overheard my brother and my cousin talking about swapping cars. When this happens it's because something is broken or about to break on my brother's car and he gets my cousin in Winchester Springs to fix it because he's a car whiz. I asked him what was wrong with his car.. he said..

"I had a Gremlin on the side of it the other day, he was ripping wires out and stuff. Damn Gremlins!"

Gremlins.. (grin) I have to use that sometime.. That was one of my fav Twilight Zone episodes. If you've ever seen the original one with Capt. Kirk. It's a classic. I hated the Gremlin though. It looked like a frickin little green leprechaun bigfoot. The one in the 1980's John Lithgow movie remake is better. And the Simpsons.. When it tried to scratch Ned's eyes out and he thought it was cute.. Classic!

Monday, October 02, 2006

Farador!!!! D&D - 44 points for stabbing a mostly dead guy.

This is a hillarious short about some french D&D players. I found it while looking for something to do for my french class. I'm going to air an "edited" version of it (minus the Deliverance scene - Ohh, I betcha you're all gonna watch it now eh?) next project I have to do. Pointing out the new french words I learned from it.. etc.. hehehehe

The guy has a blog . I hope he makes more shorts like this one!

Monday, September 25, 2006

Human Incoming!

Man, long time no post! Been so busy with work, French, home, school, kids and pre-production for the Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 movie I haven't had the time!!!

Last Sunday I helped my friend brick in his back patio with paving stones. He has a big Siberian husky named Nico. Now I usually use opportunities such as these to get my Dog fix in, 'cause I love them and don't have any. It's a pretty good deal, you show up at someone's house, get their dog all hyped up, leave and you don't have to walk it or pick up any poop! Except he don;t let me play with his dog. Because his dog is friggin nutzo!
It bit someone last year. It wasn't really it's fault. His mother-in law was walking it and some guy walked up! Ohh, nice dog and she says "Please don't touch the dog, he gets nervous with people he doesn't know!" and the guy goes "Nonsense! I'm MR DOG!" and she said "Please sir, he might snap at you if you stick your hand near his mouth!" and he goes "PISHAW!!!!" and proceeds to get bit.. (idiot. Go try and hug a moving car next time). So, I don't get to close to Nico..

On that day, my friend's brother in law comes over with his TWO huskies.. He lives out in the boonies an takes his dogs with him when he comes into town because they are NUTZO too and will rip the house to shreds if he leaves them alone for any amount of time.. So he would rather have that happen to my friend's place instead (hehehehe, naw, if the dogs are with Nico, they are a bit calmer).. So I look at those dogs.. "Hey, can I?????"

NOPE! They are Psycho and they would eat you.. "Ok".. I say.. I look at them through the window(they are sitting there on the other side of the glass wondering how I taste) and I can't help but notice that one of the other dogs has some holes in his head.. I ask..

"$600 vet bill to fix that!! The other dog bites that one in the head sometimes.."

OK.. I'll just listen to everyone and stay outside..

So.. after awhile, I have to use the bathroom and I say to my buddy, "Hey, uhh, I'm just gonna use your bathroom." I figure, I'll just walk past these dogs, they smell fear, I'll just treat them indifferently, alpha male, etc.. I'll be ok... I don't get the chance.. "Wait a minute!!!!!" He says..

He yells inside the house at his girlfriend.. "HUMAN INCOMING!" and after 30 seconds she yells back "OK! I got 'em!" so I go inside an there she is, all three leashed and tied together like some Husky Hydra.. I make it in and out and wonder why anyone would actually get one of these dogs (much less two ) unless they lived in an igloo and needed them to pull a sled..

An hour later I found out what good sled pullers they are when one of them got out the front door as I was digging stone dust into a wheelbarrow. It shot out the front door when someone came in from walking one of the other dogs and it ran past me (I tried to grab it but missed) and down the street.. This dog ran out of the house (it was one of the visiting dogs) like it had been tortured there for six years and was fleeing for it's life! Not, gee they feed me all I can eat here and love me and give me a nice home to stay in! etc.. It was more "RUN!!!!!"..

Stupid dog.. It also ran down the middle of the road like it was a car which caused other cars and trucks to swerve out of the way so it would not get hit. I watched as it became a tiny spot in the distance and thought, if it gets to huntclub, it's gonna be dead. We'll hear a squeal of brakes and that's it. I hope no humans get hurt in the process..

But as luck would have it, another husky owner was driving by, he opened his truck door, the dumb dog jumped in, and he drove him back to us..

I will NEVER get that breed of dog as a pet..

Unless I move into an igloo and need one to pull me.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Alain Caron - NOT!!!

So I'm trying to learn funk bass these days. Mostly because I've always thought it looked pretty cool, and it sounded pretty cool, and heck, it IS COOL! As a guitar player, I always wondered how easy it would be to pick it up, and it's not so bad. The Heavy Wood fingerstyle guitar sure helps with the thumb slaps et al. I have weak girly hands on the bass though, and I have to strengthen them up a tab before I can move into the happy slappy thumpy choppin snapping.
So in order to sponge up as much info on the instrument as possible, I've been downloading these instructional videos, 1980's VHS rips of tapes you just can't get anymore, of Stu Hamm, Larry Graham, Louis Johnson, Frickin Flea of the Chili Peppers (River Pheonix is on that tape, go figure). Well, imagine my suprise when one day, I see this title, "Alain Caron Methode Technique-Basse Slap And Tapping.avi". Whoa. He's the old bass player from UZEB, that Quebec jazz trio. He rocks!!! He's the bee's knees! He's funkalicious! He's the french Bootsy Collins minus the UFO gear!
So I download this thing. It takes days, like 3 or 4.. And it finished tonight. I click on it.. Some funky intro music.. Cool.. Kinda sounds like porn bass, but hey, who am I to argue with the master! So the production credits finish... and I'm treated too...

PORN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some idiot or idiots renamed a porno flick "Alain Caron Methode Technique-Basse Slap And Tapping.avi" and are passing it around the P2P servers. They should be nailed to their front doors! I'd like to attach them to my car and take them for a drag on the queensway!

The Noive A Dem!!! POW!!!! TO THE MOON!!!

And it wasn't even good porn... (As far as porn goes)

Same thing happend with a video mnarked "Eddie Van Halen - Guitar instructional video".. I love Eddie! But man, he's never made a video.. so gee, guess what.. it's porn..

Here I am complaining about some free shady downloads, but people have to know. Don't mess with a musician in his pursuit of free instructional videos...

Ack! (at least I have Stu and Flean and Louis!).

Thursday, September 14, 2006

A texting wrong number.

Just in case anyone didn't know, I'm on full-time french language training for the next 9 months. I go to work, but instead of doing work stuff, I go to a classroom and learn to speak, write and understand francais! Luckily I have a great teacher and the class has some pretty cool people in it so it should go well.

So the guy next to me (we'll call him Maynard today) got a weird text message on his phone this morning before french class from someone we'll call "Out of the Blue"and he showed it to me at the break. It was someone sending text messages to the wrong phone number, but it was freakin hillarious! It went something like this..

Out of the blue types: "OMG!!!!...."
Maynard types: "OMG ??"
Out of the Blue: "So sorry, I'll clean up the huge mess I promise!!!"
Maynard:"mess?"
Out of the Blue:" The big mess I made in your room while I was basically ;-) doing the guy from the band"
Maynard:"LOL!"
Out of the Blue:"I went back to your apartment this morning but it was locked."
Out of the Blue:"Let me know when you get home from work and I'll come by and clean up. I'm SOOOOO bad!!!."
Maynard:"Is this Suzie?"
Out of the Blue:"?????"
Out of the Blue:"OMG!! I msg'ed the wrong number, please disregard the lewd msg!!!!!"
Maynard: "Hello???"

Hillarious! Man, when he showed me that I had to know more..
1. Who was she?
2. Was it a she?
3. What band was the guy from? B level or A? The Black Eyed Peas are in town.. (frickin slimy musicians, can't trust 'em. )
4. Why was she in her freind's room?
5. If her freind wasn't in her own room , where was she/he?
6. What kind of mess? (use your imagination, are we thinking stuff on all 4 walls? broken furniture? Some rare unmentionable sex act gone horribly wrong?)

Inquiring minds want to know!

Hillarious! They probably won't answer back.. If it was my phone I'd Text them back for more details.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Lotto fantasies and how to not start blogging.

Lifto is trying to tell me something. He sent me this.

It's too late!!!! It's just like when I started buying lotto 649 tickets in 1993 when the Montreal Canadiens won the cup! I picked all the jersey numbers of my favorite players! I can't stop now if I tried! It's way too late for that! Even when I forget to play the odd time I still check out the winning numbers just in case I won so I can feel bad 'cause I didn't play that day. I know the odds are ridiculous, if I were to take the 4 bucks a week and invest it in an RRSP, I'd be much better off!

Let's see,
49C6 = 13,983,816 combinations

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

But if you don't play, you can't have lotto fantasies. So, $4 a week for lotto fantasies is much cheaper than phone sex (so I've heard)

What would you buy? Let's see.. Pay the house off, buy an old Lotus Esprit turbo in good condition and bank the rest for a year wile I figure out what to do with it..

Sunday, September 10, 2006

The next book I gotta read

A guy in my french class told me about this interesting book he read titled "1632". It's about a small town in West Virginia that for some reason was displaced in space and time to Europe in the year 1631. You can imagine all the weird stuff that takes place. These semi midieval peasants coming into contact with SUV's etc.. It's a 6 mile chunk of land that gets plopped down there and the town's got a coal plant, so they have electricity, but like, when they run out of lightbulbs, they're screwed because they have no way to make them. It's the good old US of A so everybody and their mother has a gun, but most are exotic with no proper ammunition.

They have a town library so there are books on old languages so they can talk to their new neighbors and converse about exciting new ideas like, uhh, women's rights? I'll be picking up a copy this week. Sounds like my kinda read! Apparently they go all American Revolution on the poor Europeans. It's got a fan website at http://www.1632.org/