All posts by NotWeasel

Poor pigeon.

Today as I walked to lunch, I saw a pigeon get slowly run over by a Dodge Magnum. The car was pulling up to the curb to stop and a bunch of pigeons were sitting there. They all sort of scrambled out of the way but one was dumb enough to just sit there and the back tire went right over it.

I hate pigeons.

If there was a story in the paper saying the city had decided to round up the whole lot of them and feed them through a wood chipper, I probably wouldn't bat an eye.

Hell, if the car had come barrelling by at 60 km/h and the pigeon exploded in a flurry of feathers, I probably wouldn't have cared.

Something about it just getting slowly crushed by the tire though really made me feel for it. Poor, stupid bird. Hopefully it's in a better place now.

I really wish I hadn't seen that right before eating.

Aww crap! Has Israel gone too far?

Beating down the Palestinians is one thing. I feel for the innocent civilians getting caught up in the whole thing, but their militants ARE randomly firing rockets into Israeli towns so I understand the retaliation.

But Lebanon? Is Israel getting ready for another all-out war with a neighbouring sovereign nation?

WTF were the Lebanese thinking, kidnapping Israeli soldiers?

Will this once again rally together all the surrounding Arab nations for a massive conflict?

Will this send our gas prices through the roof?

Israel's got nukes, so they can't be taken down. The Arabs know this. So what then are they trying to accomplish?? Armageddon??

Let's all pray this gets smoothed over quickly before it gets entirely out of control.

Has Edmonton given up?

First they lost Pronger and Spacek. Now they’re letting Peca go?

Is that just how the Oilers organization works? They only build decent players so they can sell them off rather than trying to build on their success?

Suddenly it sucks to be an Oilers fan. I never thought I’d be saying that this year!

Peca once regularly scored 20 goals a season as one of the NHL’s best two-way players, but last season he had the worst production of his career scoring just nine goals and adding 14 assists in 71 games.

Ah yes… welcome to the Leafs. Where great players come to die.

Hopefully it works out well for the Leafs so us fans can convince ourselves we’ve got a shot at the cup again. Not making the playoffs really puts a damper on that pipedream!

And make no mistake… I’m a diehard Leafs fan. Woot!! Go Leafs Go!!

Chivalry is not quite dead yet. Thinks it'll go for a walk.

Yesterday made for an interesting ride home on the bus. Living on the east side, we seem to get the worst of the worst when it comes to city buses. We don't expect fancy things like air conditioning or even working sliding windows.

What I generally DO expect is for the bus to get me home… with me inside it. That wasn't the case yesterday. Right after leaving the station, it was found that the bus didn't have enough go in it to drive up the first hill.

I've had days in the winter where the bus couldn't get up that hill because of the snow. So be it. I know they won't put snow tires on the bus and I understand that traction can be an issue when you're driving on ice and snow. Fine.

But this bus simply didn't have enough power to get its ass up the hill with a light load of people on it. And this wasn't a packed bus!

The solution to this was to ask all the guys on the bus to get off and walk up the hill so the bus could make it. Not all the young people, or all the able-bodied people or anything else that would make sense in this politically sensitive new world. Just all the guys. I commend the driver for taking this route and more power to him. A little chivalry should be welcomed by the world in this day of selfishness and general discourtesy. I applaud him.

So I and what I assume were all the other guys on the bus got off and walked up the hill.

I think that as we were walking, many of the women also ended up having to get off that pathetic wreck of a bus, but that's besides the point. What really irked me was what happened when we got back on.

It would stand to reason that if you had a seat when you got up to let the bus climb the hill, then you'd still have one when you got back on. It's not as though we picked up new passengers from the side of the hill. Of course, that sort of courtesy seems to be lost on the rabble that call themselves society these days.

After doing my part to get off and let the ladies ride the bus, I got back on to find some skinny blonde chick sitting in my seat. I stood there and said "You'd think that if you had a seat when you got off to let the bus up the hill, you'd still have one when you got back on." Some lady replied that of course you would, obviously not realizing what happened. Good for her. At least my thoughts weren't completely alien to the world.

And the rude little blonde chick just sat there. Ignorant self-centered bitch.

So much for the krauts.

The Germans have been eliminated from the World Cup and, along with them, all likely chances at me winning the second round of the lunch pool I'm in.

Bloody Italians. Turns out they can play well when they're not taking bribes and fixing matches. Good on them. They deserved the win.

To add insult to injury, if Italy wins the final, they'll nudge Germany out of 2nd place for most World Cup wins, for which they are currently tied with the Azzurri.

I guess that's what they get for not scoring any freakin' goals!

Can't win all of them on penalties, you lazy bastards!

Looks like I'll have to be happy with just one free lunch.

Ech… no… more… puking…

I'm slowly recovering after one hell of a wild night.

Yesterday, I spent the day with friends jumping off a dock and generally having a great time. Then, to top it all off, we headed over to a restaurant and had quite possibly the worst service I've ever had at a restaurant.

Ironically, the waiter started off after taking our orders telling us how well he could read his own writing. He then proceeded to screw EVERYTHING up. He screwed up the drink order. He screwed up the entree order. He screwed up the dessert order. It was unbelievable!! And above all, I think he tried to kill me.

Getting home, it didn't take long for me to get violently ill and start puking my entire guts out. Seriously. All of them. I don't think I've ever puked that much in my entire life and just when I'd think it was over, I'd go through it all over again.

So what did I do? Did I rush myself off to the hospital to get some doctor to tell me I was sick?

No.

My wife called Telehealth Ontario and they basically told her to tell me to quit being such a pussy and walk it off. Hell, they even told her to stop giving me any medication! "Just let him puke. It's good for him." It seems I've got food poisoning and this is about the best thing to do about it.

Now THIS is a service I don't mind my tax dollars going to!! If more people would call them up rather than rushing to the nearest doctor and costing our health system thousands of dollars, we'd all be better off!

So here I am… nearly 24 hours later… and all I've eaten is a slice of bread and half a banana… and I seem to be getting better. Looks like the nurse was right. Looks like I'm not dying.

And above all, it looks like I've got the best wife in the world for putting up with it all, bringing a cup of water to my hand every time I wanted to take a sip, slicing a piece of bread into little pieces I could chew on, and just generally putting up with my unshowered, stinky ass through this whole thing.

See? I'm not always complaining. God bless her!

Wha Happen???

The big story in the news today is the fact that Israel has pretty much pummelled the shit out of Gaza.

I'm just wondering if there's a single Palestinian out there that didn't see this coming.

Consider this alternate scenario.

What if we Canadians were to go ahead and elect the Al-Qaida in Canada party into power. Our neighbours to the south probably wouldn't be too pleased. If our Prime Minister were to then shout "Death to America" from the rafters at every opportunity and then fire a few rockets at Detroit and Buffalo now and then, you can be damned sure the Americans would turn around and take notice.

Surely they'd be a bit miffed and they'd probably stop buying shit from us and sending us shiny new cars.

Then, after all that, if we were to go and abduct a few Americans and start making demands, I think it would be a safe bet that they'd bomb the snow right off us and we'd all be trying to re-build out igloos from radioactive mud.

With that in mind, I don't think I'll be voting for Al-Quaida should they decide to run for office here. It just doesn't seem like the smart thing to do.

Seriously. WTF. Do they actually want to build a proper nation down there or are they just out to cause trouble and martyr themselves???

I thought the Corolla was a car.

I was shown the error of my Corolla-driving ways. In trying to adjust the seat properly, I was treating it like a car. As it turns out, I should have been treating it like a tiny RAV4, or an electric-scooter, or some sort of motorized lawnchair or something.

I've discovered that I can comfortably drive the thing if I sit in the seat like not as though it were a car, with my legs out in front of me, but rather like a truck, with my knees bent like I'm sitting in an arm chair or something. Not so much pushing the pedals, as stepping on them.

I guess this is what normal people like. Go figure.

It doesn't change the fact that the radio dial is still too far away and the arm rest is still completely useless, but at least now I can concede that the car can be comfortably driven, no matter how uninspiring it is.

Of course… it IS a Corolla so driving it shouldn't be expected to be enjoyable. It should just be expected to keep going for a million miles before it breaks down.

Am I some sort of giant??

A week or so ago, my neighbour backed into my car. She then proceeded to get angry about it, as though I'd tossed it out there behind her Cherokee when she wasn't looking… which… incidentally… was the entire time she was backing up… but that's all beside the point. To her credit, she apologized 2 days later so I'll chalk that up to her needing time to chill out and accept the stupidity of her mistake.

The topic though, is that for the next day or two I'll be driving a Corolla as a rental and I can't for the life of me figure out how a normal sized person is supposed to fit into the damned thing!

Rumour has it that I've got t-rex arms, though you wouldn't guess that from looking at me. Shit, most people think I'm only a half-step from walking on my knuckles.

So back to the Corolla… no matter how I adjust the seat and wheel in it, it just doesn't work. Everything's in the wrong spot. If I put the seat back enough to put my feet properly on the pedals, I can't reach the steering wheel. If I pull forward a bit to properly reach the wheel, my knees are just about hitting the column. This is using every possible combination of the reclining back, sliding, tiltin seat, and tilting wheel. It just doesn't fit!

Stupid Corolla!! I'm well under 6' tall. I should fit into just about any car on the market. Is this thing made for midgets or something???

So then… reaching some sort of compromise with my knees bent just a bit too much and the wheel just a bit too far away, I came to realize that the stereo controls are a mile away and barely reachable and there's no arm rest to speak of.

There's something 3" too low and behind my elbow that you can stuff crap in but I'd have to lean nearly into the passenger seat and recline the seat gangsta-style if I actually wanted to rest my arm on it!

All I've done is drive to work in it and already I want my car back. And my car was designed 15 years ago as an econobox. Unbelievable!!