Cake wrecks!

My gawd but these are funny. Ever ordered a cake and have it go horribly wrong? Send this blog your photos! (Thanks to Don Ross for that funny site!)

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com

Lady in the van on the 401 wearing the the floppy hat, sunglasses rubber gloves and trenchcoat.

While on vacation last week we passed a van on highway 401 with Missouri plates. The driver was a woman and she was wearing these enormous sunglasses, a big floppy hat, a trench coat and yellow rubber toilet gloves. It was a very hot day, so it was weird.

My wife jokingly said "Check her out, she probably just came from committing a murder or something."

Say!!! That makes perfect sense! (she was probably wearing NASA astronaut diapers as well!) I asked her to take a picture of the weird lady for my blog. She didn't want to.
"C'mon!" I said.
"I'll drive up right next to her and honk the horn so she'll look at the camera!" (which was a joke).
"Don't do that! she'll probably kill us next!".

At this point we were beside her and she was looking at us and she weirded me out enough that I dropped back behind her. A few minutes later she was following us for the next couple of hours, all the way to Richmond Hill.

Let's hope she was just an extreme germ-a phobe and not a good candidate for a luminol test.

I finally went Wii Wii

So, I joined the rest of the planet and bought a Wii for the family. What a cute little device. It was very confusing at first, almost like it had been built in another country or something, but after figuring out that the ghostly hand on the tv was actually being controlled by the Wii remote it was off to the races! The kids think it's a hoot!

My only problem as I see it is to keep the Wii remotes from becoming embedded in any expensive things I have in the same room as the Wii itself. You need room to use this thing if you're not asking for trouble!

When doing research on this thing, there were tons of time series pictures of fat guys out there getting skinnier working out on the Wii fit device. Man. If I were a fat kid, that would be a sure-fire way to get my parents to buy me one! Try it kids!

I got some kiddie games for the tykes, Mario and the like. They seem to really like the re-make of the old "Punch Out" Game I played for a month straight on the Nintendo when I was floored with mono back in 1988. I was glad to see they also make adult fare. I'm looking forward to hacking up zombies on it after they go to bed.

Just what I needed! More entertainment!

I actually scored it secondhand with a pile of controllers off of Kijijji and within 20 minutes of getting it I went to see this guy, and bought this handy little device that you install between the DVD drive and the motherboard. You have to take your unit apart, which is not the easiest thing to do (triwing screws anyone?). This opens things up a bit and you can get into the homebrew market and also play backups of your discs (if your kids eat/scratch them like mine do/did).

I saw my first Digital 3D film.

I saw my first digital 3D film in a movie theater the other day. The whole 3D experience impressed the hell out of me. I took the kids to see G-Force, a kid flick featuring mission impossible commando hamsters (they'd kick Tom Cruise's Scientology ass!). NOW I can understand all the hype and buzz. Some high up at Disney stated flat out a few years ago that from now on, all of their computer animated features were going to be in 3D. I can see why. James Cameron has finally surfaced from the bottom of the Atlantic (where he's been since 1997's The Titanic) and will unveil his Avatar 3D movie project soon (Ooooohh).

I have to add at this point that I went to see this film about Guini pigs a day after making fun of my Friend Mike for being dragged by his wife to see it the day before. He is, and I quote, "Doomed by marriage to see each and every movie featuring a cute animal, till the end of time."

If you're like me, you remember the early days of anaglyph 3D films with the red/cyan insta-headache glasses from hell. When I was in the 6th grade Global TV did a big 3D comeback advertising blitz with old 3D movies from the 50's and 60's. The local newspaper's TV guide suddenly came with 2 pairs of 3D glasses each week and every Friday they'd run one of these horrible movies. I was at a sleep-over at my Friend Sufiyan's house the first time I saw a 3D film. He was from Pakistan, so picture his extended family and I, cloistered around a TV in the living room in the dark, all wearing these 3D glasses, with the extended commentary taking place in Punjabi (grin). Very surreal!

needless to say, it wasn't very good. I didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Now this new stuff! The cinema needs to have a Real 3D projector. It shoots out the film at 144 frames per second, 6 times the normal speed of 24 frames per second. It does 72 left eye and 72 right eye images with some other keyframe images every 1/24th of a second and a 2nd projector called a Z-screen sends out a feed that matches the polarity of the cool 3D glasses you're wearing in the theatre. This Z screen makes it so that your right eye is seeing a frame made for the right eye while your left eye is seeing almost nothing, then it repeats the process for the left eye, with the right eye getting no action. Your brain does the rest, using traditional persistence of vision to fit together the alternating left-right perspectives into something that makes stuff jump right out of the screen at you. Another nice thing is that you can actually move your head around to look at other parts of the screen and you don't lose the effect.

Very cool. Pay the extra $3. It's worth it. I wish I could have seen "The 300" in 3D.

Screw with your neighbors using these garage prints!

These are great! They're big weather-resistant prints that fit over your garage door to make it look like you have everything from a Hawker harrier jump-jet to a huge alligator in your garage! There's even a clean garage print, which might be the scariest of all.

http://www.style-your-garage.com/


Via Gizmodo

Break topics 2009-07-20 - dead horse to fake dog testicles.

At work I sometimes go to break with a rag-tag group of current and ex co-workers and colleagues.

We appear to be an eclectic bunch and I've noticed that the topic of conversations are ridiculously varied and change faster than Michael Jackson's face (oops, sorry. There I go makin' fun of a dead guy). The thing that I find interesting is how one key word will swing the conversation in a direction it has no place going in. It's very odd. So I jotted some of the topics down on my IPOD and I'll mention some of the more interesting ones here.

- Someone's horse died on the weekend. It was a gelding. I asked what a gelding was (confusing it with a gelfling, an elf-like creature in the movie The Dark Crystal). I was told it was a horse with no balls.
"Why would you cut a horse's balls off?" I asked.
"To make it calmer.." I was told.
"Would that work with me?"
"Probably. let's try it.. " no thanks..

Someone chimed in.
"My dog is fixed, and he doesn't seem to care.." I thought about this.
"I wonder if having no testosterone producing balls would affect whether or not you'd look at good-looking ladies?" (like the ones just leaving the cafeteria at that moment).

"Maybe the dog doesn't care because it's realized it has no reason to live!" someone said. Chuckles all around..

"Chemical castration in sexual predators is said to work, as long as they keep taking it".
someone else added. Suddenly I remembered something..

"In Beverly Hills there is a vet who will fix your dog and sew fake balls into his scrotum afterward so he doesn't feel bad about himself!" I added.

"I wouldn't buy fake balls for my dog!"

"Why not!" I asked. "What kind of person doesn't want the best for his pet?"

Fake boobs were mentioned. I wouldn't buy those either. I told the story about how fake boobs sink and real ones float and how I found out by accident at work one day.

So we went from a dead horse to fake balls in your dog's nutsack. Typical..

Someone told a bad joke that made us all get up and leave..

"How do you know when your girlfriend is getting fat?"
"When she fits in your wife's clothes!"

Groan!!!

I wasn't kidding about the fake dog nuts. Take a peek here: http://www.neuticles.com/.) A set for your 140-190 pound dog will run you $449 US!

Canine
Neuticles®ULTRAPLUS® Featuring ScarRetard

NU-XXLarge

140-190 lbs+

2.75"

$329

$449

The backyard neighbors 2009

One thing I'm liking about the new house is our backyard neighbors. There are none (at least not the two legged mammalian variety). I make it a habit now to look out the back every time I'm near a window and I always manage to spot some new beast. Lately it's been a pile of deer that used to only show up in the morning and then at dusk, but lately they wander by at all hours. The picture at the left is an 11x zoom from my kitchen balcony. At the lower right is a regular view with Mr deer exploded out (so it's still pretty far when they stick to the middle of the field).

I can't get very close to them because the birds rat me out the second I try to leave my backyard (must be some memorandum of understanding between the bird and deer union). This past winter we had a family of beavers right in back of us which were fun to watch. During any kind of thaw they'd come out and chop down a pile of trees and go back inside. One of my neighbors trashed their dam because he was afraid they'd drop a tree on his house and they just kinda left. I was a bit disappointed. I thought they'd be more tenacious than that and just cut down more trees to build the dam back up again (and maybe drop a tree on his house after all) but they left for greener pastures. I think they just relocated up the creek a few hundred meters. Now we have two muskrats living in the beaver dam. They are pretty shy and I haven't managed to take a picture of them yet.

One weird backyard neighbor we have is a gopher that lives under our porch. Just to put the next photo in perspective, we have a ravine lot with walk in entrance to our basement. One day we found a gopher on our balcony with his nose up against the glass sliding door looking into the kitchen. He had climbed up to the 2nd story balcony for some reason. he hung around for awhile and then climbed back down. He's done it other times because we can see nose prints at the bottom of the glass. I think he's casing the joint.

He's got a cousin that lives under this hunk of farmer junk out back. There's some sort of metal cylinder out there and this gopher hops up and sits there all day sunning. I guess he can see better from on top of this thing and likes it because no one can sneak up on him (like me).

Then there's the wild turkeys. Up until a few years ago, I didn't believe these things existing in Ottawa. I'd been out in the bush a lot and had never seen any until a co-worker told me about them and I managed to spot some by the side of the road a few weeks later. The males appear to be quite huge. Still, I'm amazed the coyotes I hear at night haven't rounded them up and eaten them(they must be too fattened up on rabbits and bunnies to care).

I was in the back shutting off my pool the other night and I almost stepped on a raccoon that was nosing about my deck. He treed himself and gave me dirty looks until I left.

He's one of those new neighbors I still have to get pictures of!

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 featured on Monster Island News

I was contacted last week by a writer for a bunch of sci-fi/horror/monster movie news websites who wanted to do a feature on the Bigfoot movies we're doing up here featuring the "geocaching" hobby. I dropped him some info and pointed him to the web portal I have with all of the material and status and he took my email and made it into a web feature.

It's kinda cool that there are people out there who troll the net for this type of thing and write about it. Even funnier is that I have had this site bookmarked for several years as it keeps track of all things Bigfoot (when it comes to movies that is!)

You can read the Monster island News article here!

For those of you who are interested, here the web portal for the two Bigfoot movies, the second one still in production, nearing completion!

My first car accident!

I had my first ever car accident on June 23rd a few weeks ago. I was sitting on the Queensway stopped in a traffic jam, the last car in a line of of 100 or so backed up from St-Laurent. The whole roadway had been empty when I merged and got into my lane, which I thought was pretty unusual. I had looked back and saw a car a football field and a half away, but then I saw the big line up of cars sitting at a standstill 200m ahead. I braked to a nice slow stop about 2 meters from an SUV, was sitting there for 3 or 4 seconds when I heard the squeal of tires locking up.
I distinctly remember saying "Oh No" out loud and was creamed from behind at a standstill by some nice lady from Cornwall going 100km and propelled forward into an SUV and bounced back a few meters. The SUV's bumper was so high and my 2007 Honda Civic's bumper so low I ended up scooping under the truck's behind snapping it's spare tire off. No air bag went off in my car (which is probably good, I hear it's like getting punched by Mike Tyson), maybe because my front bumper was not impacted directly. The SUV's rear end did end up pushing my radiator and engine and a whole bunch of other crap inwards into the engine compartment a few feet.

When I came to a stop there was all kinds of hissing and wacky smells leaking into the cab of the car, rad fluid, air conditioner crap, windshield wiper fluid, just about everything. I shut the car off in park, popped the seat belt (which felt like it had become embedded in parts of my body), stumbled out and looked around. The lady that hit me and the lady I hit were out of their cars and no one looked hurt. I called 911 and then went over to meet the new Friends I had just made. 911 told us to move our cars off to the side of the road if they were drivable. I told them everyone seemed ok so they didn't bother to send an ambulance (oddly enough as soon as I hung up, the adrenaline wore off and my neck, leg and chest started to hurt like a sonofabitch!)

The lady that hit me said my lights came up at the last minute very fast and she had no time to brake. I nodded at this crap and didn't say anything because I had been sitting at a complete stop listening to John Frickin Mayer on my Ipod for 3 or 4 seconds before she realized that me and the other 100 cars were actually not moving at all on this particular stretch of highway. What's that following rule? 2 seconds? Whatever. No one's hurt, I'll just write out my version in the police report.

After I moved my car out of the way I stopped traffic (you take your life into your own hands when you try this, most people are morons) and some idiot in a sports car honked and tried to pass me on the shoulder where our cars were parked (there wasn't enough room). I was trying to grab the huge spare tire from the SUV which was still sitting in the middle of the road which Mr sports car was about to drive over. He yelled something at me and I hefted the tire up out of the way so he could see what I was doing (which was stupid because it hurt to lift it) and he waved a thanks and sped off to try and run over someone else on his way to work. For some reason I thought the tire may be mine and I wheeled it over to compare sizes, but it was much too big. So I looked at the SUV and the light bulb went off (maybe I should have asked for that ambulance!(grin)

There was an OPP on the scene immediately but they were not the responding officers, they were on their way to pick up some prisoner and stopped to assist. Right at this time three tow trucks swooped in out of nowhere and almost caused a 2nd accident trying to maneuver themselves in front of our smashed cars. These guys were from Gervais towing. Tow Trucking is very vulturous because they only get paid if they tow you. If two companies show up they all try to reverse into position in front of your car so they get the tow. They leap out of their frickin trucks and try to talk you into hooking your car up right away even before the cops get there (I guess they thought the cops that stopped to help had already surveyed the scene). The cop that stopped to help out went over to yell at all of the tow truck drivers for being idiots trying to reverse on a highway in the passing lane trying to get the tow and came back to advise us not to let them tow us until the assigned responding officers got there and took down the details of the scene. He also advised us to call our insurance companies to make sure they dealt with this particular towing company.

I had to ^$*& shoo the guy off of my car as he had his hook out and was on his hands and knees trying to see what was left of my car to attach it too. VULTURES!

The other cops showed up, took my report, talked a lot with the lady that hit me and charged her with something. I didn't get a copy of the report because the lead cop said "You don't need it" and poked a thumb back at the lady "She's gonna need it.".

That was good news. I didn't have to pay a $500 deductible! My insurance company was very good, they even had a car rental waiting for me next door from the body shop I towed it to(there's an Enterprise Rental place next to CARSTAR. Good thinking there). It was kind of funny that from where I got smashed up, I could clearly see this body shop across a field real close to us. I decided to go there.

So the car is a total write off. My neck and leg are kinda back to normal. I had a few seat belt bruises that impressed the kids and I also have something that makes a clicking sound in my chest sometimes when I move a certain way near the sternum that I'm gonna have looked at soon. I can't do a push up yet or lift anything with my arms held out. I'm told this is normal when you total your car.

Hey, any accident that you can walk away from is a good one! We just bought a new car this week, a 2009 Honda Civic in a better color with amazing 0.09% financing for 5 years. That's one good thing to come of this.

I'm having a few problems with the insurance company and Honda Financing as I write this, but that's another Blog posting!(grin)

Witness protection program

When I moved into my new place This year I met a few of the neighbors early on. One such time I was at the "super mailbox" (you know, those big multi-mailboxes they have on the corner so they don't have to deliver to your door anymore?) and I ran into a nice lady who introduced herself. She asked something like:

"What brings you to our lovely neighborhood?" and I said:
"Witness protection program!" as a joke. I thought it was funny because, well.. If you were IN the WPP you wouldn't go around advertising it because Tony Soprano-esque types in waste management would be looking to manage your being wasted.. , but.. I guess it wasn't obvious.

So yesterday I'm, at the grocery store, pushing a cart across the road and a car stopped at the crosswalk beeps at me. I peer into the car suspiciously. It's my neighbor! She said Hi.

I said:

"Gee I'm glad it's just you. For a second there I though 'My GOD THEY FOUND ME'! }"!!

And went on my way..

The plot thickens.

Cannington Guitar Weekend 2009 Don Ross & Thomas Leeb

This is a close-up of Thomas Leeb's Lowden guitar. He has a custom "scratch pad" stuck on to the front of the lower bout with double-sided tape that allows him to get some interesting scratch sounds and not dig massive furrowed grooves into his topwood (which seems to happen anyway).

He was the reason I went to this year's edition of the weekend, and to see why exactly, check this vid out!



We were actually talking about him at the last weekend workshop I attended and I was thrilled to hear that Don had gotten him for this one. He's yet another amazing acoustic fingerstyle guitarist doing the body percussion thing and taking it in a whole new direction by hitting the guitar body with the heel of his hand or single fingers while playing intricate fingerstyle patterns. His concert portion of the weekend with Don was one of the most amazing I'd ever seen and he even surprised us with a vocal tune at the end.

On the first day of seminars we locked ourselves out of the hall we were using (Don had left to go rent a spot light) so we set up on his front lawn and learned a fingerstyle version of "JUMP" by "Van Halen" in DADGAD tuning. I may work out a fingerstyle solo one day!

As usual there were some great players in attendance and we jammed till the wee hours both nights although I turned in a bit earlier than previous years, being like, older and all. I stayed at the wonderful "Winds of Erin" B&B again, it's comfort and quiet and shower being a big plus! The food was great. I don't have any food pictures this time around, too busy eating I guess.

Thomas is an Austrian living in California, and this was his first visit to Canada so it was great to talk about the differences between the three countries. Public nudity, guns and politics like you've never heard. I also now know several German swear words, for which I am thankful.

As I mentioned before the concert portion was a gas. Don was experimenting with his Boss floorboard effects units. He's getting into ending some of his songs with a triplet delay thingie so it goes "Gadank, gadank gadank...." He's also coming up with many great guitar faces whenever he used the wha or distortion pedal which is kinda new as well.

I had a great time but appeared to have caught some kind of bug on the last day, which made me feel a bit like death warmed over (as you can see in this photo), it got worse the next day but these things are such a hoot that it's easy to forget about being a bit under the weather. I hope I didn't infect anyone.

Unfortunately, this will probably be my last time in good old Cannington, as Don and Brooke are moving to Nova Scotia this year, which is kind of cool in and of itself. I love that province. It just means when the guitar weekends get going again, I'll have a hell of a bigger drive.

When I got back home I checked my facebook stuff and noticed that Don's wife Brooke was updating her status during the weekend. At this time I'd like to apologize for leading the jams on "Blackbird" and participating on the demolition of Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah which may have caused her to be sick to her stomach. We just didn't know! Thank god for Facebook!

P.S. I'll learn Danny Boy for next time.

Muhahahahahahaha

They say it's your birthday!

This is cute. It was my 40th birthday on Sunday. I was away for the weekend 450km from home near Toronto visiting freinds and taking part in a weekend guitar workshop I booked 6 months ago (here are some photos!). I knew then that it would fall on my birthday, and made it known that I was not going to be around for it, that we'd do a rain check and all that.

So at 11:50 or so Saturday, after a wicked concert and during a lull in the after party guitar playing I plunked myself down in an empty room and I was checking my email on my Itouch from the previous two days, totally oblivious to the date about to click over.

I had a happy birthday email from my wife with a link to a video of Sir Paul McCartney (my favorite Beatle, my wife likes John Lennon more). So I sat there and watched the vid and truly got a big kick out of it. You're never too far from home with all this electronic gadgetry you can pack these days.

Someone walked in just as it was ending and saw the funny look on my face and asked what was up.
"It's an email from my wife. I forgot something important" I said.
"You didn't forget your wife's birthday or something like that did you?"
"Nope.. it's mine I forgot!" Muhahahahahahaha

I love my wife!

Creepy abondoned house - a movie set in the making!

Check this creepy place out! An old abandoned farmhouse out by my brother's in-laws. He took me out to take a peek and man, was it everything I'd thought it'd be and more!

Even the surrounding trees are creepy! It lies at the end of a long bumpy lane way that you'd need a Sherman tank to navigate and as you walk up you can't help but get the feeling flying blue monkeys wearing fez caps could arrive at any second and disembowel you.

Once inside there's pentagrams everywhere, chalk body outlines, only on the wall instead of on the ground, and a huge collection of raccoon poop! (or ghost raccoon poop, this being haunted and all).

It is very much open concept now, the second floor offering quick and immediate access to the first floor if you step in the wrong place. This is definitely a fixer upper opportunity for someone with a few years on their hands.

The basement is stone walled with huge timber supports and has a few live-in birds. There's a chair or two, one's even stuffed and looks like it's providing some wee animal with shelter.

This is definitely going to be a movie set in the far future.

More photos here.

Hanging out on the roof! Gutter blockage.

I finally climbed up on my roof to see why one of my rain gutters was full of water and overflowing down the side of my new place all spring.

My roof is very steep in the back so I pulled a shoeless Joe and shimmied out to the edge barefoot to check it out. Turns out there was a blockage in the downspout. I came back armed with that most useful bastion of Canadian home repair, the "Easton aluminum Hockey Stick" and golfed the thing out of there off the second story and into my neighbors back-yard. I thought it was one of those wee little liquor bottles and that the kids of the previous owner (or the previous owner themselves) had climbed out here to have a secret sip and enjoy the view.

Turns out it is some kind of suntan lotion. So they were just catching some rays! (I'd nail the window shut now before my kids think of this but I think that's goes against some fire safety code. )

Now that it's clear I can have delusions of buying this gutter cleaning robot to clean it. Cool!!!

When 4 year olds get PO'd.

"No. You can't eat chocolate Kinder surprise eggs for breakfast..."

A conversation that has taken place on more than one occasion (replace the words "Kinder surprise egg" with any sugary, chocolaty, ADHD-enhancing substance).

This came about from a Boston Pizza advertising display that read "Life's uncertain, eat dessert first!!!" that I made the mistake of reading aloud once in the restaurant.

At least it makes for great pictures! (collage to follow one day).

Why is the fire so big? Victoria day 2009

I'm not sure why we celebrate it, but Victoria day was fun! It's amazing what you can find at your local Kwick-E Mart in the way of fireworks. Here's a small movie clip at the bonfire. Every time fireworks go off I turn around to film it and when I turn back parts of me are catching on fire. You only get that with GOOD bonfires of adequate size made by city folk who don't know any better!








We went out to my brother's in-laws, made a big bonfire and watched things explode when it got dark! (more photos here!)