the blog quebecois

When I was a teenage punk our family would vacation in Jasper, Alberta, about 200 miles west from here.

Beautiful place, nestled up in the Rockies. Beautiful golf course, too, at the Jasper Park Lodge. It was there that I had my first (OK, first legitimate. OK, first semi-legitimate) beer, and icy and delicious it was, because I'd finally graduated from my Dad's caddy to his golfing partner.

My Dad was no slouch on the links: He was the Alberta Open Junior champ for a couple of years. So it was a bit of a thrill to tee up alongside him, even though I skulled my first shot about 50 yards into the trees where for all I know, it's still being sniffed by bears.

But prior to that the course marshal approached us and asked if we'd like to make up a foursome. One of our new partners was a Mountie who always got his man but who was terrible at the short-iron game.

Meanwhile, back at the cabin, I awoke one day to a godawful thumping and rustling and rushed out to confront an elk cow who was grazing the bushes.

This, I thought, is a Kodak moment. I got my camera and got up nice and close and snapped a lot of photos of this doe-eyed, inquisitively-snouted beast.

These pictures provided much hilarity among me and my sisters and parents until the aforementioned RCMP officer dropped by for a barbeque. He chuckled politely about them and the first chance he got he jerked me aside and got in my face and said quietly,

"Listen. She might look cute, but she's a wild animal. If she gets spooked or if she thinks you're between her and her babies she'll stomp you flat and then I'm gonna have to come out here and scrape you off the ground. I don't want to have to do that."

This, I should add, was accompanied by a not-so-gentle finger poking assault on my sternum that accelerated in tempo as he developed his argument.

Point taken. Since that day I have never molested an elk, moose, or other furry denizen of the forest.

Damn, I wish I could remember that man's name.

Damn, I wish I could go golfing with my Dad again.

Damn, damn, double goddamn.

No time to blog tonight. I'm futzing around with my MT blog, which as you can see looks like a dog's breakfast.

Fortunately Ghost of a Flea is on the job and has found (where does he find the time?) some interesting links I can point you to:

This is a really neat clock that I think I'll save as a shortcut on my desktop. Beats the hell out of trying to read the teensy Windows clock in the SysTray.

This is weird. Sort of an interactive-fiction Flash thingy. (Warning: Not work-safe. Violence and language.)

What to blog about, what to blog about . . .

I was going to write about the CBC's latest atrocity, but I'll have to wait until I cool down a bit. Maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime, let's go with . . . funny names!

CNN has a real knack for hiring people with funny names. There's Wolf Blitzer, of course, of Gulf War fame. Then in the Afghan War they had a stringer by the name of Kamal Hyder.

Camel Hider, geddit? Yes, yes, I know there aren't any camels in Afghanistan. That's because he was so good at hiding them!

Ba-DUMP!

Which brings us to Paula Zahn. (Pronounced ZON.) Now if you think about it, this is the perfect name for a TV personality.

"What's on?"

"Paula's on!"

It's got a definite Abbott and Costello Who's On First potential. Feel free to flesh it out.

Then there was one of their financial reporters, Willow Bey. Say it aloud.

How her parents must have howled with laughter when they picked that one out of the Big Book O' Baby Names!

I don't know when she ran away from home; but she ran away from CNN a few years ago and she's on MSNBC or CNBC now.

Funny names! What would lazy bloggers do without 'em?

This is . . . I'm not sure, what, exactly, except maybe to prove that some people have got a lot of time on their hands.

Someone -- apparently a serious artist -- did photo composites of all the Playboy centerfolds over the last four decades and came up with . . . closeups of the Orion Nebula?

A bit late for Halloween, but maybe he's taking orders for next year.

Via Tongue Tied

I don't know if he was being racist (but really, why not toss it into the trunk?) or not, but this conjures up a hilarious mental image:

A police officer in Portland, Ore. is facing an internal review investigation for lashing a stuffed gorilla to the front grill of his cruiser, reports the Oregonian. The move was decried as racist.

Later in the evening, the officer answered a call at a hip-hop bar. The mostly African-American crowd at the bar were shocked by the police officer’s insensitivity and offensive display of deep-rooted racism.

What would I do without the Ghost of a Flea?

Instead of struggling manfully on my essay on the long-overdue reforms to the Canadian Wheat Board (patience, children, it will soon be before your innocent eyes) I instead click on Nick's cornucopia of links and come across this. (Requires Quick Time player.)

Scroll down a bit to read the story behind it.

I still have a pulse, so I am, technically, functioning.

Which may be more than can be said of the conspiracy-mongers at the Democratic Underground.

Via Instapundit.

Well, it's time to say farewell to all of you losers valued readers, because I have received this remarkable offer "out of the blue," as it were.

From : Contact Plus
Sent : December 27, 2003 1:32:26 PM
To : gnotalex@hotmail.com
Subject : Query from Eastern Europe

Sir or Madam,

Granted, "gnotalex" is somewhat ambiguous. So "To Whom It May Concern" might be more appropriate.

After we had discovered the website of your company, we inspected your offer, which caught our attention, with great interest. We also provided this information to our business partners from regions where we perform our business activities. We were kindly surprised by a great interest and an urgent enquiry for more particular information and sale propagation materiels.

Woo-hoo! Now if I can only figure out what the website of my "company" is offering, I should be rolling in dough shortly.

Any guesses? Any? Tell you what, I'll cut you in for 5% of the profits from Romania.

OK, that and 2.5% of Hungary. That's it, that's my final offer.

Therefore we would kindly ask for all possible info about your offer. In order to improve the quality of the sale and distribution of your offer, could you please send us all the possible material in printed version.

Bummer, man. My printer ran out of magic juice about, uh, 16 months ago. But feel free to print up as much as you want and distribute it wherever.

We decided for this option, because Internet is not rather expanded in Eastern Europe. Knowing our market from long-time experience, we know, that a big percentage of transactions follow after the client had the possibility to see a printed version of the offer. Printer prospects constrain more attention, because they are physically in front of the reader. An offer in an electronical form / email, catalog on CD / usually has lower response, because it is rather impersonal. This feature is given by the former mentality system of people and the weak familiarity with IT technologies.

It just so happens that I've got the latest cutting-edge system sitting in the corner gathering dust. It's a 486 running Windows 95, and it's yours for $4000, OK, $3999.85 US.

Considering the post-comunistic past of these countries / when all western products were matter of embargo / on this market there is a big demand for quality products from western and overseas countries.

Whereas our activities are spread all througt eastern Europe and Russia / 13 states/, we would like to ask you for more sets of your poropagation materials, if possible. It would be wery essential, because we could start the propagation of your products in all the countries at once, which would multiple the possible business contracts.

"Poropagation"? "Wery essential"? This isn't one of those "Elmer Fudd" scams, is it?

Postscript:

Unfortunately, it was.

What's down, Doc?

Me, for about $2400 (so far).

They seem really interested in that computer, though.

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks!

This is kind of neat, in a geeky way. It's a traffic simulator that allows you to model things like ring roads, on-ramps, etc., while controlling for variables like traffic lights, ramp inflow, composition (car/truck ratio), speed limits, delta-B ramp (no, I have no idea what it means, either) and even a "politeness factor."

In just a few minutes, you, too, can create massive, paralyzing gridlock.

At least, that's what I did with it.

my daddy was a bankrobber
but he never hurt nobody
he just loved to live that way

-- the clash

This must be one of those online European banks I've been hearing so much about:

Harrybank, goldhonest!

The most trustible and royelest bank is finaly online! Also four hour international relationships. Finaly you can do hear online your banking and take the most financialest attractive morgage and also can get a big range of good thrustworthy advices from hour good and honest financial conductants.

Soon you wil also find in the street hour pinningmachines where you wil be piining your monney very soon!

Forget the other banks! The dont no shit! For us pecunia is more then just a plant: namely: monney!

With thrustworlty greating,

The Harrybank!

Sounds good to me! Where do I send my monney?

They have the hair, but do they have the style? Fabian Lliguin, owner of Cocoon studio on the upper East Side, who has worked all over the world, offers some makeover suggestions for the presidential candidates:

"For Bush, I would cut it closer on the sides, shorter on the top, but I would style his bangs longer to give him something to play with at the front. It would give him a more youthful look, and would make his face squarer.

"I'd put in some lowlights of his natural light-brown coloring to energize it a bit."

"With Kerry, it's the exact opposite. His face is very long, and he needs a rounder cut to balance that. I'd take a little bit off the top, make his bangs a little shorter and the sides a little longer.

Okay, I'm not an expert. Judge for yourself.

Via NealeNews

The European Union has put its best bureaucratic minds together in a bid to dominate the automotive market.

Hope the guy doesn't mind me Photoshopping the background out of the page. If he does, I will mollify him by linking to his main page. (He's a quite talented artist and designer, doing work for the likes of Sony and Microsoft.)

People say that Orientals all look alike. This is true. They all look sort of . . . Oriental.

However, I find that there are significant differences between nationalities. Chinese generally have broad, flat faces. Japanese faces are narrower, more sharply-featured. Koreans are somewhere in-between.

To confirm my thesis, I took this test, which shows 18 pictures of people and asks you to class them as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

I got four right. I might have to fine-tune my thesis a bit.

Via J-Walk Blog

Remember the massive "Sorry Everyone" internet demonstration? You know, the one where frowning lefties sent grainy webcam pics of themselves with insipid messages (in English) to comfort the Iraqi people after the election? (Ours, not theirs.)

You've got to admit, that campaign generated a lot of laughter positive karma. The Red Granger proposes that we build on the momentum.

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Quran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine.

Continuing the episstolary theme:

Librarians in the US have had to admit they are baffled by the case of the urine-stained library books.

Hundreds of books at two libraries, just 13 miles apart in Cleveland, have had to be thrown out.

Linda Yanko, manager of Geauga West Library, told the Plain Dealer: "I can't even believe we're discussing something like this. It's appalling and disgusting."

She said librarians had been finding new cases or urine-related vandalism about once a month with the recent case coming just this week.

Get with the times, ladies. They're called p-Books.

I suppose all hobbies seem strange to the uninitiated; but this collection verges on the obsessive.

To save you the trouble of installing the Japanese font for the page (and then learning Japanese), I ran it through Google's translator:

* Worshipping borrowing doing the picture " selfishly " from Project, C-90 it increases.
* The cassette tape lining up, because cod feeling it was good, this page was made.
* Because is, there is no collector ? ? meaning separately, is.
* Selfishly using the out-town way picture, because color it is it was linked to the place, considerably in the midst of regret.
* If with, looking at this page as we similarly, the person who heals was, this the happiness.

I dunno. Maybe you'd be better off learning Japanese.

Or at least let us in on what kind of stylin' gel you use to get that bitchin' hairmet.