Category Archives: News

Animal News Roundup

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When you get a pet, suddenly you notice animals everywhere.  It’s worse when you get two pets, trust me.  Here’s an animal-focused post.

First we have a story (from Wilson, dammit we missed the mailbag post) about a 1 week old cocker spaniel puppy who was accidentally flushed down the toilet by his 4 year old master.  Credit goes to the drain company that sent a camera down the pipe and was able to push the sad and pathetic, but still alive, puppy to the next manhole where he was recovered and is (amazingly) doing OK now.  Well worth a watch, go to the company’s website for the way cool video account of the rescue (the accent of the narrator is perfect).  Lucky dog…

Cougars (not the terrifying Maxwell’s-on-Elgin-smoking-leathery tanned-voice like bourbon boiling on a tailpipe kind, but rather the natural predators, with scary teeth and claws, of the feline variety) are scary.  Very scary.  But then again, maybe not so scary as this mighty 10lb chihuahua, who managed to scare off a cougar 10 times his size.  Similarly, a mom in BC got all chihuahua on another cougar’s ass.  The mom’s comment?  “Now she knows what a cougar is.”  Sheesh.  It’s a bad week to be a cougar, getting knocked down a few pegs on the terror scale.

It’s also a bad week to be a fly in the White House, cause Obama brought the bam down on a ‘Housefly.  Tiredly, PETA made the appropriately disapproving noises, but really folks, you would have greater, ah, impact if you focused on the animals that somebody somewhere might find cute.

It’s a very good week to be a pet on some Air Canada flights, cause now you will be allowed into the cabin with your people.  Predictably, the comments on that article alone are polarized between “pets should ride strapped to the wings” and “I love pets more than you whiners, they don’t kick people in the seat back, etc.”  I personally find no problem with having pets in cabin, makes sense to me.  Personally I can’t wait to travel with Lloyd and Harvey in the airplane seat with me.  Nearly three hundred pounds of dog in the seat with me shouldn’t be a problem, should it?

Mailbag Time

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Like any incredibly popular website, we get literally BYTES (for the non-technical crowd, that’s not very much) of email from you folks, screaming for this or that.  I do my best to satisfy every request, but there’s only so many minutes in a day (that I can spend working on a blog at work that doesn’t pay anything at all, all the while taking time away from my day job).

Having said that, it’s finally time to read just a very small fraction (both) of the messages I have received recently from you crazy folks.

First off, strangely devoted reader Stacey sent a message a while back about what the Ottawa Citizen is calling a “Miracle at the Experimental Farm“, but to me is just ever so slightly horrifying.  It’s an article about a cow at the farm with a strange set of markings that make it look like the cow is basically attempting to crap out a small child.  See for yourself (stole the picture without permission so this post will make sense when the Citizen erases history like it seems to do on a regular basis).

Cow Face

Now, that does not look like the face of a happy kid, it looks like the kid has been smushed under a cow’s rear end, and would much rather be miraculously appearing somewhere, anywhere else. Still I admit that I have never seen that before, and that’s what learning is all about folks, now you can cross off “see cow poop out a kid” from your lifetime bucket list.  Thanks Stace!

Next we move onto a slightly more technical topic, this one sent in from GibsonTechCorp‘s chief smarty pants, Wanda.  It’s from a newsletter for the technically challenged (it seems to me that Ask Leo would almost be the competition, wouldn’t it Wanda?  And he’s giving it away for free!  No link for Leo…) with this gem:

How do I move my Windows Live Hotmail account from one computer to another?

I am selling a computer and I need to delete our Hotmail accounts from it. We have a laptop we need to activate them on. How do we do this?

This surprisingly common question is an example of a misunderstanding of exactly just how services like Hotmail work.

In short: it’s not on your computer.

If that’s not funny to you, well then perhaps you could use some assistance from Gibson Technology Corporation, because they will smarten you up, dumbass, but good.  Actually, the slogan is catchier and clearer than that, “We tech-smart you”.  Also, it seems to me that GibsonTechCorp.com is sporting a nifty new website, and I have somehow never noticed the blog there before (Is it because I’m a self centered egotistical bastard?  Yeah.)  Thanks Wanda!

Ok, well there’s the mailbag for today.  As I said, there’s BYTES of this stuff, it’s hard to blog it all (I actually was waiting for another message to come in after Stacey’s so I could have, you know, a MAILBAG post).

Mr. Bud Light Head Stages Daring Daylight Robbery

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A new menace has arisen, only God knows where he will strike next (but probably at the next IHOP).  A terrifying bandit wearing an empty Bud Light case on his head robbed a convenience store in the early hours on Monday morning.  The sheer diabolical competence of the supervillain was such that he was able to rob the store and get away with 9 whole packages of cigarettes.  Yes packages, not cartons.  The estimated haul is difficult to conceive but it probably adds up to almost, ALMOST 50 bucks.  Incredible.

Police advise the public to be on the lookout for a man with a large, square, box shaped head with cigarette smoke billowing out from underneath.  Suspect is considered to be slow, dimwitted, and probably has a pronounced cough. It’s considered very likely that he will don a Three Wolf Moon shirt to become well nigh invincible soon.

Terrifying times.  Hug your children tonight.

Breaking news: Sugary caffeinated drinks are BAD for you

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It turns out that drinking lots of cola is actually bad for you.  Like really bad.  Boing Boing posted this link today about people who drink so much cola that they actually get muscle paralysis from it, and I wasn’t going to read it until I saw the excerpt:

A research review carried out by Dr Elisaf and his colleagues has shown that symptoms can range from mild weakness to profound paralysis. Luckily all the patients studied made a rapid and full recovery after they stopped drinking cola and took oral or intravenous potassium.

The case studies looked at patients whose consumption ranged from two to nine liters of cola a day.

Holy hell batman!  I’m pretty sure I don’t drink 2 to 9 liters of ANYTHING a day, let alone cola.  It’s no surprise their bodies started to shut down.

Forget the muscle paralysis for a minute, however.  Let’s talk practically about drinking that much cola each day.  How can these people even function?  If I drink one can, I burp loud enough to wake the children and have to pee in about 10 minutes.  The study mentioned an ostrich farmer from the Australian Outback that drank 10 liters a day.  Those must be some laid back friggin ostriches, because that guy must sound like a foghorn and pee like a fountain.  You can probably hear him all over the Outback.

Amazing.  I love this quote:

He also relates a puzzling case he saw in his own clinical practice, which was solved when the patient turned up at his office with a two-litre bottle of cola in the basket of his electric scooter.

Now, I know they wrote “electric scooter”, that could mean any number of electric conveyances, but I can’t read that without thinking of a George Costanza-style scooter for the terminally lazy, instead of a legitimate medical reason to not walk.  I’m sorry, it’s just hard to imagine when we are also talking about muscle weakness due to cola gluttony, and the guy shows up with a 2 liter bottle at his doctor’s office.

Here’s a link to the article.

** Note:  In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote this while drinking a coffee that I take with rather more sugar than most.  I feel ok with that, since I generally have 2-3 coffees a day, that probably amounts to about 1 liter or so.  That and the fact that while it has been far too long since I had regular physical exercise, I can still walk around under my own power without abusing a defenceless electric motor.

Insert Electrical Pun Here

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Given that I need a bit of a jump start today, I thought these links were appropriate…

First we have a story about our next babysitter.

A prison official was giving a tour to some of his colleagues children at a jail in Florida when he decided to show them what a stun gun feels like.  One that is strong enough to be issued to prison officers, 50 000 volts.  Sigh.  Worse yet, it seems the parents gave their permission in the first place.  What the hell is in the water down there?

Of course he was fired, and then had the nards to be surprised about it.  Actually on second thought, let’s hope he doesn’t have those so we don’t have to worry about accidental reproduction.

Moving on to something a little less electrifying, I saw this on ZeFrank.com the other day and enjoyed it.  A little on the long side, but when you remember that it’s 4 nerds giving themselves electric shocks to their faces on purpose, it becomes funny again.

Enjoy.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLAma-lrJRM