An Odd Remembrance

Heard something inappropriately funny on Remembrance Day, so I've waited a few weeks to write it down. That's not a day usually reserved for inappropriate or funny.

I turned on the radio in the car to hear the tail end of a reading of In Flanders Fields which was immediately followed by a Canadian Tire ad. The poetry reading was sober, composed and completely unadorned; just a man's voice reading a poem about death and sacrifice in what would be considered the appropriate tone and rhythm. The Canadian Tire ad led with a jaunty little whistle.

It went something like this:

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Doo doot da doo!

A Case of Legitimate Incredulity

There's been an awful lot of digit ink spilled over the comments of some random old politician I'd never heard of before. I had no intention of spilling any more. But.

There's a Japanese world news program that my wife and I like to watch in the mornings. She likes it because it's a very good program. I like it because the man announcer's head is shaped exactly like an egg and that amuses me.

The story started off with video of the old politician dude making his crazy comments, with subtitled translation. Then it cut to woman announcer who said:

What the f*ck!? Holy living f*ck did that stupid old f*ck just say what I f*cking think he said? Is there some kind of bad f*cking translation issue, here? Seriously: what the f*ck?

That's a very loose translation, but what her lips weren't saying of that, the rest of her face definitely was. When the time came to move on to the next story she had to pause, take a deep breath, and say, "next..."

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Victoria Jackson's head looks exactly like a thumb in a wig with a face painted on it. Don't believe me?

Not Nearly Enough Junk

Dear eBay,

Could you please make it more difficult to read the messages people send me? 90% junk isn't nearly enough junk. It would be far more difficult to read the actual message part if it were a more optimal 95% or even 98% junk. Maybe if you were to add a few more messages about the sins of you not getting some of every payment I receive, both on the subtotal and the shipping, and then again on the payment.

Thank you,

An 90%-of-the-way to Satisfied Customer

Maybe in the Minor Prophets Nobody Reads?

That it was written at all is sad beyond measure. That it was written by a professor at Yale makes it loop all the way past sad to hilarious and then back again to sad.

Here it is. Make sure you're sitting down and there are no fluids in your mouth.

The idea of America– freedom, equality, democracy, and America as the promised land–grew straight out of the Bible.

It sure did.

See full article here. If you dare.

Gah. Have to cleanse my brain now with something a million times more intelligent, like YouTube comments.

Yo Duh Lay He Who?

About 50 years ago a young loner in Tokyo discovered yodeling on the radio. The story doesn't end there, though, no matter how badly you may want it to.

He taught himself how to yodel and... Hold on. How do you know when you've got it right? ... Oh well, never mind. Now he could yodel and he started to appear on Japanese television. My mind balks at the thought that those two things are connected.

But our story moves on to Switzerland, where Takeo Ishii performs at a beer hall in Zurich for money. For money! And it wasn't him paying the beer hall for the privilege, either. One thing (yodeling) leads to another (more yodeling) and he gets to be on TV in Europe, culminating in the greatest nickname ever conceived: the "Japanese yodeler."

And now, the sentence that inspired me to write this blog post. I'm just going to quote it directly because there's no way to improve on perfection.

Ishii met his wife Henriette in 1981 and proposed to her three years later at an onsen (hot spring) in Japan, where he yodeled his proposal to her.

That's good stuff.

How Not to Seem Trustworthy, or, How to Look Like a Scammer

Alexander is sincere.

That's what he tells me, anyways, in all of his emails to me. He sends me a few every day. I've sent back a few inquiries and the odd obscenity-riddled rant, but it changes nothing. Not that his emails never change, mind you. In fact, they're all different in key details.

Each time, the company he works at is different. But in each case it never makes any sense for someone with that email address to be sending me the message Alexander sends me. You see, he is assuming that I want to buy a certain domain name. (I wouldn't mind, actually.) But why would someone at "Gospel Music Stars" or "No No Hair Removal Review" or "Nano Cleaning" be offering to help me buy a guitar parts domain name?

He also moves around a lot. Nashville, Houston, Spring Hill (Tennessee), Colorado Springs... dude never seems to stay in the same place more than a day.

All of that is bad enough, of course. But it gets worse when I realize that Alexander has no last name. He also includes links in his emails that claim to go to one website, but actually go to another. That's not something to engender trust. And since he wants to enter into a business agreement with me, trust is definitely a plus.

Now, I have no solid proof that Alexander's offer is a scam. I have no way of knowing that he is a crook or a charlatan. However, I do think that the way he tries to initiate business is one that raises suspicion in far too many ways. Also, I think that he is stupid.

So if you're in the market for a domain that's up for auction, you probably couldn't do much worse than alex@doutnik.com, I mean alex@scottneff.com, I mean alex@nano-cleaning.com, I mean alex@lazerkasemakinesi.com, I mean alex@nonohairremovalreview.com, I mean alex@gospelmusicstars.com. That guy. He'll probably have a different email address when he contacts you, but he will be pretty obviously not somebody that you want to trust, no matter how sincere he claims to be.

Preferred Domain Availability Notification:

[domain name goes here] will be listed for auction soon. This domain might be useful for you, since you own a domain similar to this domain.

To confirm interest in owning this domain, fill out the simple form here: [misleading link goes here]

Sincerely,Alexander
6660 Delmonico Drive, Suite 415 Colorado Springs, CO 80919

If you do not want more of these messages, please click the link above and follow instructions at the bottom of the page

[humanizing quote from big-name author goes here]

Speaking of not seeming trustworthy and looking like a scammer, I got a call at 7am this morning from a nice fellow who claimed to be from "Window Operating System". That's a clever name. Anyways, he was kind enough to let me know that my computer was sending his company error messages. My goodness! I happened to mention that it was motherf*cking seven in the morning, and was surprised when he assured me that I was, in fact, the motherf*cker. Well. Perhaps he needed to know about his status as a c*nt. I think he did. So I told him, several times.

I like to think we were helping each other out. He let me know that my computer... Oh. I just realized that he didn't tell me which one. I have five. Anyways, now I know that my computer has evolved the ability to send strange people messages. That's fine. It's not a problem for me, but I do think it's worth knowing. And he definitely needed to know that he is a c*nt. Maybe at some point in time he will be visited by some officers of the law and they can explain in greater detail.

UPDATE! Alex sent me a few more sincere emails, but in the end I simply waited until the domain name was available normally and I got it through the normal channels. I should maybe send him a sincere thank-you note since I don't think I would have thought about that domain name without his creepy spam.

A Story Too Awesome Not To Steal, I Mean Share

Stories about penises are hardly rare, but they're rarely awesome. That's why I'm elevating this one to a full post on my own blog even though I had nothing to do with this story. A tip o' the penis hat to my buddy Pete for the link to the goods.

The original can be found here, surrounded by a whole lot more awesome in a thread about a book that looks just as awesome. To give it a little context, this is a story told by someone who has worked in an HR department about a confrontation they were expecting to go very differently.

“Is this your penis?” I asked, as I pushed the printout of the e-mail over to him. I think I was expecting him to break into a sweat or try to jump through the window out of embarrassment, because apparently I’d forgotten about the fact that this was the same man who thought it would be perfectly fine to take a picture of his penis in the office bathroom to send it to a shocked coworker. Instead he grinned cockily (no pun intended), saying, “I think the better question is, Exactly how did you get a picture of my penis?”

“It was caught in the e-mail filter. The picture, I mean. Not your penis. If, in fact, that is your penis, I mean.” I was flustered, but tried to gain control of the situation again with a deep, calming breath. “Did you mail a picture of your penis?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Would it make it better if I said I was mailing pictures of someone else’s penis?”

I’ve thought about that question for fifteen years and I still don’t have a good answer. Instead I said, “Not really. Giving a coworker a picture of a penis is sort of universally frowned on. It’s in the employee hand book. Sort of. It’s between the lines.”

“Is there anything in the handbook about someone in HR handing you a penis picture and asking you whether it’s yours?”

Well-played, penis man. Well played. Awful and awesome should mean the same thing, and now they do.

The Bouncing Ball

The bouncing ball in the middle of the road was misdirection. I mean, it was so obviously an inanimate object - even before I recognized it - that it allayed my fear. Then I glanced over at the larger object and saw it was a beautiful little dog that, once it slid to a stop, would never be moving again.

That car in front of me - now stopped and well behind me - must be filled with adrenaline and remorse. I get to keep driving with guilty relief. And that bouncing ball is now a haunting symbol of sorrow, lonely and un-caught, bouncing still. The dog's master will forever be chasing the moment that never happened: the one where the ball didn't go onto the road.

Ease my shaken soul, Neil.

Weekend Diversion

I found the first video on a site called Manboobz which listed it as a Steely Dan cover band. So you can be sure it's quality stuff. Yup.

Just one more practice and they would have nailed it.

See?

On a more serious note: I firmly believe that not everyone should have the right to buy a musical instrument.

Okay. Palate cleanser. Santana shreds!

World's Greatest Mystery, Solved!

I once heard tale of a young woman from Japan wandering the halls of a Canadian mall, looking for a taste of home to to fill the hole in her homesick soul. "Excuse me," she'd say to passers-by. "Where can I find shoe cream?" They'd point her to the nearby Footlocker store with a bemused smile. She walked dutifully to the shoe store, but never entered. She simply looked in with sad eyes.

She didn't want shoe cream. So what did she want?

Think Tanks

It's not that I don't get why think tanks exist. I do. They exist for the same reason lobbyists and serial killers exist: some people have uncontrollable urges to do the wrong thing. No, what I don't get is why anyone listens to them without either laughing or replying with their bum parts.

And that's all I have to say about think tanks. What I have to say to think tanks involves my anus.

Well, There Go My Followers

Gone are the days you could merely cull the eggs. Now the eggs have hatched, revealing the gooey but familiar image they contained, making a sound not unlike a random profile generator. It's a lot like someone describing themselves, but lacking any real sense. You can tell it's not real because, while people make mistakes, these mistakes are the wrong sort.

They come across as nonsensical rather than stupid.

It had been a while since I checked my list of followers on twitter, largely because I don't care. I only started on twitter as a way of making fun of it but it manged to out-wit me. My intention was to periodically baa like a sheep. Twitter doesn't let you make the same post over and over again. I gave in. I started to make real comments. Frustratingly short ones, but still real ones.

Should I be sad that a spammy spambot sometimes generates more interesting and amusing profiles than a real human? As I was going through the list, blocking eleven apparently fake followers in a row, I felt a strange sense of loss mingling with the usual hatred. Sure, most of it was just obvious gibberish. (eg. "Favorite movie - Woman in the Window, The" or claims to be 230 years old.) But other parts have a decided ring of Engrish to them. Who doesn't love Engrish?

Letter to the Letter to the Editor

I was reading the Province newspaper at my favourite soup and sandwich place today when I read a very interesting letter to the editor. Interesting in the negative sense of the word.

Cartoonist Dan Murphy has every right to make fun of the Queen as a freeloader, with zero relevance to Canada.

Such anti-monarchy sentiment is increasing as Canada chooses to sever all ties with Britain. Perhaps B.C. should drop the “British” from its name, and look for allegiance elsewhere? Perhaps China — a one-party dictatorship — is a better alternative?

John Clench, Vancouver

Wicked Service!

I have a memory of driving down Hemlock Street on my way downtown and seeing a small cafe claiming to be wicked and to have great waffles. Even more intriguing to me than its odd location - just a block away from somewhere yet decidedly nowhere - was that combination of wickedness and waffle. That's not a combination you see every day.

Well, unless you drive along Hemlock every day.

The Wicked Cafe

The Poll of God

I despise the sort of breathless, self-righteous emails that get forwarded around the ethernets just slightly more than I hate penis-enlargement SPAM¹. They're terribly written and seldom have even a nugget of truth in them. The few times they hold a bit of truth, it's so surrounded by bullshit that it hardly matters.

Here's a case in point.

Found in Translation

It's commonly said that things get lost in translation. I think that the opposite is also true, that new meanings emerge.

Cocker - I - I heard there's your problem with the sauce in a hospital that got unplugged from the growth of hair in the ears.
I Bless you Mr. Shin
Yan dying old man - I like that (laughs).

Is this how it feels to be an anthropologist? To find meaning in a jumble of words in the dead language of a dead culture? Teasing out real ideas from what looks to be lunacy? There was probably a coherent train of thought in the original. What was it? Is it possible to know from what we have?

There's a problem with the sauce, indeed.