Right, so while lying in bed, listening to the Doc and Woody show on CHEZ 106.1, like I do every morning at 6:30 am, I hear this funny little news tidbit about all sorts of little old ladies getting riled up over the new '07 Ikea Catalogue. Apparently, on the inside foldout of the cover, there's a picture of a family louging on a couch. The family dog appears to have his big erect hammer poking out.
Fortunately for me, I had just received the new '07 catalogue the previous day. True enough, it's there, and it's big.
It seems like more than just a few people took offense to exposed doggy dong, and demanded that Ikea recall the catalogue. I guess a recall would be reasonable if the '07 catalogue were a drug, and if people used it, they might choke on a large-ish piece of dogmeat. Besides, it's really just the dog's leg caught at a weird angle in weird lighting.
People need to chill out.
Oh, and if you haven't picked up the new '07 Ikea catalogue, I suggest you do it soon. I heard that they've been in high demand since the story broke, and I doubt future reprints will have the same ad on the inside flap of the cover.
-d
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Thanks, guys.
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon in a park, as part of a workplace retreat run by my Unit at Health Canada. We threw the frisbee around, had tons of catered Lebanese food (that we couldn't finish), and spent maybe 2 hrs discussing some of our more relevant regulations as the 'work' part of our retreat.
Nice, cool weather, getting paid to take a break, catered food... and you - you paid for it all. Thanks. I really appreciate it.
On another note, I just finished reading R. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (nothing like the movie, which was based on the novel, and not the other way around). Really good piece of fiction, lots of discourse on right-wing politics (remember the fascist themes in the movie?). A lot of it makes sense, especially for one raised by the army - more specifically, the infantry. I can really relate to a lot of the militaristic thoughts and ways of thinking expressed by the main character, himself a product of the infantry. The author must also have had a military background of some sort. I doubt there's any other way he could so clearly describe the thoughts and feelings of an FNG in boot camp. I'm not sure if non-military readers would appreciate some of the finer points in the novel. I highly recommended it to military pers, though.
-d
Nice, cool weather, getting paid to take a break, catered food... and you - you paid for it all. Thanks. I really appreciate it.
On another note, I just finished reading R. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (nothing like the movie, which was based on the novel, and not the other way around). Really good piece of fiction, lots of discourse on right-wing politics (remember the fascist themes in the movie?). A lot of it makes sense, especially for one raised by the army - more specifically, the infantry. I can really relate to a lot of the militaristic thoughts and ways of thinking expressed by the main character, himself a product of the infantry. The author must also have had a military background of some sort. I doubt there's any other way he could so clearly describe the thoughts and feelings of an FNG in boot camp. I'm not sure if non-military readers would appreciate some of the finer points in the novel. I highly recommended it to military pers, though.
-d
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Links updated
Changed the link to Ivan's blog. Welcome to blogger.
Added a link. VG cats - a web comic. I've been following for a while, but not as closely as I do for Penny Arcade. Simply put, PA updates more often than VG cats.
-d
Added a link. VG cats - a web comic. I've been following for a while, but not as closely as I do for Penny Arcade. Simply put, PA updates more often than VG cats.
-d
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Hot and Bothered
Last week, the air conditioning and ventilation units in our building at work failed. They sent us home at about noon - the air quality was below the standard specified in our workplace health and safety policy.
Anyway, they set up these massive portable air con units, which are about 3ft by 3ft, and about 4 ft high, on each floor and giant airplane engine-looking fans. The diameter of these fans are about 4 ft, and I swear it when I say that these fans put out about 100 dB of noise. It's necessary though, to create wind tunnels to move the air around the floor and through the building via the staircases.
Despite the industrial sized cooling units, we got sent home yesterday at about 1pm, due to poor air quality, and just today, we got the message again about 15 min ago.
Incidentally, air quality is the measured temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide levels, against the standards set by workplace health and safety people.
I'd like to go home too, but my sense of duty compels me to stay and do work. Heh. So gullible. I'm only here to brag about going home and getting paid for it.
-d
Anyway, they set up these massive portable air con units, which are about 3ft by 3ft, and about 4 ft high, on each floor and giant airplane engine-looking fans. The diameter of these fans are about 4 ft, and I swear it when I say that these fans put out about 100 dB of noise. It's necessary though, to create wind tunnels to move the air around the floor and through the building via the staircases.
Despite the industrial sized cooling units, we got sent home yesterday at about 1pm, due to poor air quality, and just today, we got the message again about 15 min ago.
Incidentally, air quality is the measured temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide levels, against the standards set by workplace health and safety people.
I'd like to go home too, but my sense of duty compels me to stay and do work. Heh. So gullible. I'm only here to brag about going home and getting paid for it.
-d
Monday, August 14, 2006
Please come again.
Click on the pictures to get the full-size image.
The bunch of us.
Sorta looks like the Sphinx or something. Luckily, he's not like Pipi in that he doesn't take a crap everywhere and anywhere.
Victor getting a massage Thai-style from some little asian girl. You can just make out Vera in this picture too.
The food was amazing. AMAZING! Thanks for visiting guys.
-d
The bunch of us.
Sorta looks like the Sphinx or something. Luckily, he's not like Pipi in that he doesn't take a crap everywhere and anywhere.
Victor getting a massage Thai-style from some little asian girl. You can just make out Vera in this picture too.
The food was amazing. AMAZING! Thanks for visiting guys.
-d
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Captain Black
It's been brutal getting out of bed these last couple of days. I guess I 'slept in' to 8am on the long weekend, and now I have to phase advance back to the 6:30/7 start that I need to get to work early. According to my circadian course, I should be okay tomorrow morning. We'll see.
Watched La Femme Nikita (thanks Cam) last night. I chose to view it in French, to preserve the director's intent and actors' deliveries. English subs, of course. All these years of watching chinese movies and reading the subs when we don't 'get' something has trained us to both read and simultaneously interpret tone and pitch of language. It's a talent that a lot of white people haven't been able to pick up until maybe an anime obsession forced them to learn. Anyway, I chuckled when Victor le nettoyeur showed up. I knew Jean Reno was in the movie, and when I didn't see him, as soon as they mentioned a nettoyeur, I sorta knew what was coming next. He and director Luc Besson went on to do The Professional, where he plays Leon the Cleaner.
Lately, I've been spending my free time reading. It seems that I ike to start books without finishing other books. I'm currently alternating between Milton's Paradise Lost, (which is going very slowly), Salinger's Nine Stories, and Paolini's Eragon. I read the acknowledgements on the jacket of Eragon, and apparently the author was 15 years old when he first published the story. Thats so wrong. Anyway, it's a fun novel to read - Lord of the Rings for kids. There's a nicely engrossing plot, but I can't help but feel that the elements aren't woven together as tightly or smoothly as LOtR. Then again, Tolkein was an english professor, and Paolini is just a high school grad. I'd still recommend it to anyone, especially those who couldn't get thought LOtR.
*edit*
Right, the title of the post. I've been smoking Captain Black pipe tobacco that my dad bought for me from Nashville. The looser stringier tobacco is so much easier to smoke than the premium stuff tobacconists normally carry. It looks almost like really long, moist strips of cigarette tobacco, but smells vaguely like plums and figs. It burns cool, but fast.
*/edit*
For those who're visiting me this weekend: bring a plate and a mug each. I don't have enough to go around. I've got enough cutlery, though.
-d
Watched La Femme Nikita (thanks Cam) last night. I chose to view it in French, to preserve the director's intent and actors' deliveries. English subs, of course. All these years of watching chinese movies and reading the subs when we don't 'get' something has trained us to both read and simultaneously interpret tone and pitch of language. It's a talent that a lot of white people haven't been able to pick up until maybe an anime obsession forced them to learn. Anyway, I chuckled when Victor le nettoyeur showed up. I knew Jean Reno was in the movie, and when I didn't see him, as soon as they mentioned a nettoyeur, I sorta knew what was coming next. He and director Luc Besson went on to do The Professional, where he plays Leon the Cleaner.
Lately, I've been spending my free time reading. It seems that I ike to start books without finishing other books. I'm currently alternating between Milton's Paradise Lost, (which is going very slowly), Salinger's Nine Stories, and Paolini's Eragon. I read the acknowledgements on the jacket of Eragon, and apparently the author was 15 years old when he first published the story. Thats so wrong. Anyway, it's a fun novel to read - Lord of the Rings for kids. There's a nicely engrossing plot, but I can't help but feel that the elements aren't woven together as tightly or smoothly as LOtR. Then again, Tolkein was an english professor, and Paolini is just a high school grad. I'd still recommend it to anyone, especially those who couldn't get thought LOtR.
*edit*
Right, the title of the post. I've been smoking Captain Black pipe tobacco that my dad bought for me from Nashville. The looser stringier tobacco is so much easier to smoke than the premium stuff tobacconists normally carry. It looks almost like really long, moist strips of cigarette tobacco, but smells vaguely like plums and figs. It burns cool, but fast.
*/edit*
For those who're visiting me this weekend: bring a plate and a mug each. I don't have enough to go around. I've got enough cutlery, though.
-d
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Terrible beauty.
On my way home from work yesterday, I spotted a huge monarch butterfly sitting on the grass beside the sidewalk, so I stooped down low and picked it up. The wings, spread out, made the butterfly bigger than the palm of my hand (excluding fingers). I put it on my hand, on my middle finger, actually. Impressed some little kiddies. Unfortunately, the thing was already dead, but properly positioned, it looked so alive. Then, while i was contemplating sticking a pin and thread (dental floss) through this baby, and hanging it in my window, out of nowhere, an image of a fly laying eggs on a dead butterfly popped into my head. I then envisioned this beautiful work of nature crackling with maggots, hanging in my window. I put the dead butterfly down on a concrete railing, for someone else to enjoy. I'm not jumping around my apartment with a flyswatter, chasing flies.
Closer to my apartment, I spotted a sparrow's egg on the ground. It had fallen from the nest, and was still intact. I thought about how good sparrow's eggs taste in my instant noodles, but then another disturbing image popped into my head. I envisioned cracking open this egg in my soup base, and watching a wet unborn sparrow-fetus falling into my noodles - downy feathers and all. Wonderful. Tastes like chicken, right? No, I think I'll leave this egg where I found it.
At about 1 am, I was awoken by the loudest thunder I'd ever heard in my life. It was terrifying - not that I'm afraid of thunder - just that it's not pleasant to be awoken in such a fashion. It was like waking from a nightmare. My apartment was actually shaking, trembling, from the intensity of the thunder. At one point, the storm was directly overhead and lightning coincided with thunder. My building got hit, and I could hear the ambient hum of everything electronic whine and die. In that brief moment of silence, I realized how noisy electronic stuff is - my fridge, my A/C, my alarm clock radio, the ventilation system of the next building, the lights in the parking lot... it all has a cumulative hum that we just tune out. Anyway, as the storm passed, the thunder took on a curious quality that I can only compare with the sound of high velocity shells flying overhead - anti tank rounds, artillery rounds, and the such. Of course, I realized, the lightning isn't just what we see, the part the connects earth and cloud, but can also travel through the 30,000 ft high or so mass of clouds, that we can't see. You can hear lightning travel. Needless to say, I was forced to stay awake and watch that storm pass, because I couldn't risk the power going out again after I'd fallen asleep. I need my alarm clock to work, right?
-d
Closer to my apartment, I spotted a sparrow's egg on the ground. It had fallen from the nest, and was still intact. I thought about how good sparrow's eggs taste in my instant noodles, but then another disturbing image popped into my head. I envisioned cracking open this egg in my soup base, and watching a wet unborn sparrow-fetus falling into my noodles - downy feathers and all. Wonderful. Tastes like chicken, right? No, I think I'll leave this egg where I found it.
At about 1 am, I was awoken by the loudest thunder I'd ever heard in my life. It was terrifying - not that I'm afraid of thunder - just that it's not pleasant to be awoken in such a fashion. It was like waking from a nightmare. My apartment was actually shaking, trembling, from the intensity of the thunder. At one point, the storm was directly overhead and lightning coincided with thunder. My building got hit, and I could hear the ambient hum of everything electronic whine and die. In that brief moment of silence, I realized how noisy electronic stuff is - my fridge, my A/C, my alarm clock radio, the ventilation system of the next building, the lights in the parking lot... it all has a cumulative hum that we just tune out. Anyway, as the storm passed, the thunder took on a curious quality that I can only compare with the sound of high velocity shells flying overhead - anti tank rounds, artillery rounds, and the such. Of course, I realized, the lightning isn't just what we see, the part the connects earth and cloud, but can also travel through the 30,000 ft high or so mass of clouds, that we can't see. You can hear lightning travel. Needless to say, I was forced to stay awake and watch that storm pass, because I couldn't risk the power going out again after I'd fallen asleep. I need my alarm clock to work, right?
-d
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