the blog quebecois

Aiiieee! My eyes!

Via Spoons

Alas, bidding has closed on this:

On that date the guitar had the opportunity of a lifetime. It was in the presence of the four most magical musicians in the world......thats correct, it was being rocked on ever so hard alongside with Led Zeppelin at the Destroyer II concert in Cleveland, Ohio.

Via RandomURL

the doctor said,
we need some staples for his head
the doctor said,
you should have took the bus instead

-- relient k

One wonders who's wasting more time: those who come up with webpages like this, or those who search them out.

So where is the bottle
I held in the battle
of mind against soul?

-- misc

These are interesting. (Don't bother installing the Japanese font.) Stare at them for a few moments and you'll swear they're moving.

Stare for a few more seconds and you get the uncanny impression that insects are crawling on your flesh.

No, wait. That's just delirium tremens. Never mind.

lord, take this makeup off of me.
i said, "lordy, lordy, lordy, take this makeup offa me."

-- yoko ono

Darn. Couldn't find Yoko, but lordy, lordy, lordy, here's Babs Streisand

among others at the shocking Celebs Without Makeup site.

Warning: images might be frightening for small children or animals.

losin’ control, I’m all over the place
clowns to the left of me
jokers to the right
here I am

-- stealers wheel

I'm not sure if this site is satire or one of the strangest fetishes known to man. It's from Germany, so I'd bet on the latter.

There's no sex that I can see, just -- girls! In cars! Stuck! In snow! In sand! In mud! You can order videos!

My name is Michelle and I like to get stuck in mud!

Yes, you are right. You think this is a little bit odd? Well, it all began on a Saturday evening a few month after my 18th birthday: It was January and I had to work till morning in a disco.

In the last year I found a guy who is also very interested in these topics. In fact he is a great fan of "helpless girls stuck in mud" ...!!! He showed me that there are a lot of people in the internet (and a lot of nice stories, too) who are also fans of this!

Maybe it's porn for tow-truck drivers?

You've always wanted to get into Alison's pants. Now you can do it from the convenience of your own room, through a novel web interface! Thanks to incredible new technology developed by the experts at www.monzy.com, you can now see what's going on in Alison's pants 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Oddly enough, this is worksafe, if only because you can't see much more than an occasional flash of light.

Update: The server is getting too much traffic at the moment, so you might have to try again a bit later.

these crazy thoughts are running round my brain
they're leading me to places decorated in flames
dec-dec-dec-dec-dec-dec-decorated in flames

-- crazy town

Golly gee whiz, I wish we was sorfistercated like them Eurapeons.

Look at the purty way they decoramerate their castles 'n' stuff.

From Eurobad '74:

I'm only about three months late with this, so my apologies if you've seen it before.

It's an animated GIF portrait of a woman. Quite stunning, actually.

Via Steel White Table

Nothing says I care like a message written in blood.

and the sign said, "the words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
and tenement halls."

-- simon and garfunkel

Every now and then I come across a website that, in an elegant, understated way, says, "You'll never program as good as me, you loser, so why don't you get lost and quit wasting my time? And bandwidth."

At least that's my interpretation.

Otherwise I don't know what to make of sites like this.

Warning: Music & Sfx. Albeit understated electronicz.

i'm counting out time
got the whole thing down by numbers
all those numbers

-- genesis

This is a good idea, but I figure the poor guy's going to have the world's worst case of writer's cramp any minute now.

You remember the Chickenman (I can't find a link for it, so I might have the name wrong) from a few months ago? That was the guy dressed in a ridiculous chicken outfit who would respond to commands that you typed in.

Meet the Virtual Bartender, who is much easier on the eyes. You can direct her to bring you a beer, dance, etc. You can even ask her to take off her clothes.

Not that I would try anything so crass, of course; and anyway, if you do, a large bouncer comes over and stands in front of you, kind of spoiling the view.

Or so I have heard.

Via The Presurfer, some of the other commands she responds to:

balls, belly, bend over, bottle, box, can, cowgirl, dance, dog, drink a beer, eat a banana, exercise, fight, give me your number, guitar, guys, hair, handstand, head, hey, hello, hummer, jiggle, jump, kiss a girl, laugh, lick, lie on the bar, light, lips, love, magic, model, muscle, party, phone, pillow fight, pitcher, playboy, pole dance, pour, pout, pushup, rap, remove shoes, rock, rope, rotate, serve, shake, sing, sleep, splits, stretch, surf, switch, talk, tap dance, tickle, tie shoes, wave, yoga.

Researchers have found a long-lost section of the Bayeux Tapestry, which, on examination, seems to contain a powerful antiwar message:

Make your own discoveries here.

This should make your Christmas shopping easier. You feed in the personal characteristics of the giftee (romantic, adventurous, brainy, imaginative, funny) and hit the Go button. It gives you six suggestions, all of which, by coincidence (it's eerie!) can be purchased at Borders. Here's what it picked out for me:

Books:

Confronting Reality - Larry Bossidy

One of those Total Quality Management thingees. No thanks.

Bringing Tuscany Home -- Frances Mayes

As much as I'd love to redecorate the house in "Sensuous Style from the Heart of Italy," it'd probably involve work.

Exporting America - Lou Dobbs

I hate Lou Dobbs.

DVD:

The Poseidon Adventure

Shelley Winters AND cheesy special effects! What's not to love?

Music:

Diane Krall - The Girl In The Other Room

Ehh.

Ashlee Simpson - Autobiography

You've got to be kidding me.

So there you have it. The Giftmixer 3000. Why do I get the impression it's just a random-number generator that points to various items in Borders' remaindered catalog?

This is probably one of the strangest things you'll see, today, anyway.

You get to tease a small, crudely-made dog while ghostly faces fade in and out in the background. The dog sort of floats around and makes, um, noises.

It has no redeeming value whatsoever -- so naturally, it's perfect for this blog.

down around the corner
a half a mile from here
you see them old trains runnin'
and you watch them disappear

-- doobie brothers

I've never really understood the British hobby of trainspotting. It's one of those enthusiasms like kidney pie that don't travel all that well. (Yes, there are trainspotters in North America and I presume elsewhere, but the heart of the hobby is in the UK.)

For the uninitiated, trainspotters like to photograph and compile statistics on trains -- locomotive numbers, ID numbers on the rolling stock, times, etc.

So these guys obviously love trains. So do I. Just not that much.

You could have worse hobbies. Like this Russian:

. . . a man who has collected all his nail clippings for the last 35 years.

I came across a page, though, that I think sums up trainspotting's appeal quite nicely.

Once you've heard one of these, you've heard 'em all -- or so I thought.

This might well be the most distasteful thing I have ever brought to your attention, and it's by no means safe for work. Click the link -- if you dare.

Via Dave Barry

look out the left the captain said
the lights down there, that’s where we’ll land
i saw a falling star burn up
above the las vegas sands

joni mitchell

This takes forever to load, but it's worth it if you have a fast connection. It's a NASA-generated animation of the air traffic above the U.S. and southern Canada over a 24-hour period. Either that or an anthill.

I remember a documentary that showed radar maps of the Eastern Seaboard and the Atlantic approaches in the immediate hours after 9/11, with aircraft diverting north or back to Europe and the usual blizzard of activity winking out as planes landed at the nearest airport. Eerie stuff. It's nice to see things back to normal.

Note: You'll need to set your screen resolution to at least 1024x768 to access the Quick Time controls at the bottom of the page.

Via J-Walk Blog

This is good for seconds of actual fun. Playing with the keyboard is probably easier than with the mouse; I'm the world's worst drummer, though, so what do I know?

Once I decide on what I'm going to post I recheck any links in it to make sure they haven't disappeared. Which is what I did with this one. Still there -- no problem. So I write up the piece and then triple check the link. Gone.

Well, duh. It's an outdoor webcam in Hornby Island, British Columbia that's apparently turned off at night, because there's, like, nothing to see.

Still, if you happen across this at more congenial (i.e., daylight) hours you might want to give it a click. (You have to hit the play button to start it.) It's full streaming video of a bald eagle in its nest, doing eagly things like grooming itself and fixing intruders (that would be you) with a baleful eye.

Of course, it could also be doing eagly things like tearing at the corpse of a small dog, clutched in its blood-stained talons.

So clicker (and/or small dogs) beware.

Via Ursi's Blog

I'm Pjotro. I love music, I love dancing and I love engineering. Combining my passions I have created a suit that allows me to become music. On this site you can simulate this process to make your own song.

Enjoy!

I don't know how much enjoyment you'll get out of it, but Pjotro no doubt worked very very hard on this (and he loves music, dancing and engineering), so you are under some sort of karmic obligation, I think, to check it out.

The, uh, music doesn't seem to change very much no matter what you do, but you will marvel at Pjotro's massive command of dorky dance moves.

Because I got nothin' tonight, you get this. If the music doesn't drive you mad, the third level surely will.

Acid Labyrinth

A funny site that collects stories about, among other things, serving celebrities. (Link leads to one page. To see others, click on "Gossip" at the top.) Some of them are jerks:

I started my bartending shift in the lounge at 10p and inherited three guys who had been there quite a while. They were kind of loud and getting tanked. One of the waiters told me that it was Al Fraken and some buddies (he looked familiar, but I couldn't place him). Anyway a couple walks by them and Franken makes a comment about the woman's ass. She throws a glass of wine in his face. Franken says something else about her ass how many people have sampled it. This time the boyfriend (or husband) grabs Franken by the neck and punches him solidly in the face. Franken falls into the arms of his buddies totally dazed. They quickly paid their tab and took off - very minimal tip, by the way. I got the lady another glass of wine...

Some are nice:

About 2 years ago I was up from Seattle bartending at a very classy upper end Italian Restaurant in downtown Vancouver. Bill Gates and his wife brought about 15 people in for dinner. I think they were celebrating the future wedding of one of their guests (from what I heard). After about 3 hours of service, 8 bottles of wine, and 6 bottles of $1300.00 a pop champagne he racked up alittle over a $12000.00 bill. It was crazy, but he can afford it!! He left an $8000.00 tip. IT WAS INSANE...after dividing it up between all of us (roughly $890.00 a piece), I could have skipped out of work for 2 weeks. By far the BEST tipper and overall nicest couple ever. THANKS AGAIN BILL, YOU ROCK!!!!!!!!!

None of the stories are vetted, and some accounts describe a particular celebrity in completely contradictory ways. The possibility of exaggeration or lying exists; or maybe just an encounter with someone having a very bad day. So read, if you must, with the proverbial grain of salt.

If you have no salt, I'm sure the Bitter Waitress will be pleased to bring you some. Don't forget to tip.

Warning: Some of the language may be offensive.

The phrase "worst MySpace page" would seem to be redundant; nevertheless, zefrank launched a contest to find it.

Most of the entries seem to have been put up expressly for the contest. They've now reverted to standard MySpace format (which is no thing of beauty itself) or allude to the joke by including zefrank's tricolor duck motif in the design.

Still, there seem to be a few that are for real, like this eye-poppingly (Warning: May induce epileptic fit, even if you're not epileptic.) bad design. That is, I think it's real, but it's impossible to read, so who knows?

If you haven't experienced the exquisite banality of MySpace yet, zefrank's "winners" page would be the place to start. Warning: Many of the links have embedded music.

Now featuring Canadian content!

A fun little platformer. You only have one key (spacebar) to jump and the usual enemies -- killer robots and gravity -- to contend with.

Warning: Music and SFX. Hit the Esc key to bring up the menu to mute (0 key) -- you'll have to hit Esc again, then click anywhere on the game screen to restart