I saw this the first time about ten years ago and it still brings a tear to my eye. I think this is actually part of the curriculum in many places.

Nothing like a good flash movie to make the day go by faster.

What’s in the drinking water at the American Inventor studio? First BulletBall, and now this guy, Stephen Cousineau (AKA Dusty Rose). Obviously the editors had some fun with the footage, but the result is truly hilarious, and editing or not, this guy is clearly living on the edge. Watch out for the incredibly unsubtle music change at 2:55, signalling Stephen’s decision to demonstrate his other invention: laser beam eyes.

My favourite lines:
“My invention is the wheel.”
“I invented the wheels of change. They’re EXACTLY what America is looking for right now, and I’m proud of ‘em.”
“Would I find any kind of wheels competitive to those wheels?” “I AM the competition.” “No seriously.” “I AM serious.”
“This wheel has a subliminal safety signal built-in to it. When this bike stops those wheels keep spinning to send a message out to the environment to be safe on the road.”
… wait. Why am I making a list? Everything that comes out of his mouth is pure gold.

We have to get Stephen Cousineau and Marc Griffin (BulletBall) together for some brain-storming. Whatever invention they come up with will doubtless be garbage, but the real creation will be some amazing television.

The good news: Firefox 3 has just been released! The bad, yet funny news: Mozilla’s web site has been taking quite a beating, and their release was behind schedule. I managed to capture this transitory screenshot of the download page:

Hmm, so 3 is the new 2.0.0.14? The download link was even pointing to the 2.0.0.14 version. Whoops! Fortunately that’s since been fixed, and you can now download Firefox 3.

Some kid playing Call of Duty 4 multiplayer gets a little distracted by the visuals:

Now that’s what I call a booby trap!

Nothing gets kids more excited on a hot, summer day than the alluring song of the ice cream truck. But what if you wanted to appeal to a slightly older demographic… say, the kind that craves bacon?

I imagine the song would sound something like this:

The more we eat bacon, eat bacon, eat bacon,
The more we eat bacon the happier we’ll be.
For your bacon’s my bacon,
And my bacon’s your bacon.
The more we eat bacon the happier we’ll be.

Bacon. It’s the new ice cream.

Update: You can find them in Guelph too!

I just got a call from one of Bell Canada’s hired guns (Alliance something-or-other) to “save me some money” on my home phone package. The call went something like this:

“I see here that you have an older plan and are paying $34.50 per month before taxes. I think we can save you some money by switching you to a new package.”

“Okay…”

“We can set you up with a plan that will give you one more feature than you have currently, for $37.50 per month.”

So you want to save me money by making me pay more money? Right… “Yeah, I’m not interested.”

He persisted. “How many nuisance calls would you say you receive in a week?”

“Oh, I don’t know… maybe three to five.”

“And how do you normally deal with them?”

“Well I’ll tell them to take me off their list. Or, if it’s a fax and they haven’t blocked their number, I’ll phone them back until I get through and then leave the phone off the hook to tie up their dialer so they can’t spam anyone for a while.” The genius of this tactic escaped him and he stuck to the script.

“Well, we have a new feature called Call Privacy that will help reduce those nuisance calls.” Wait a sec… Isn’t this technically a nuisance call?

“And how does that work?”

“You get a block list that you can add numbers to. So if you get a nuisance call, you can just add the number to the list.”

“So does that block the number that shows up on the call display, or the actual number they are calling from? ‘Cause a lot of times they just spoof the number…”

“It blocks the number they are calling from.” That’s right, stick to the script. “Also, you can set it up so that they will hear a recording and have to press the # button to be connected to you, which will block the auto-dialers since they don’t have a # button to press.” My brain reeled at the sheer stupidity of the statement.

“Well it’s just a dialer. It could “press” the # button the same way it dialed the number.”

“It’s a dialing machine, and the telemarketers don’t have the # button to press.” O… M… G…

“But it’s just a DTMF tone that any dialer could generate. It’s not difficult to program that into the system…”

Back to the script. “I can go ahead and switch you over to the new package right now.”

“Uh, no, I’m not interested. Bye.”

So there you have it. A telemarketer trying to save me a negative amount of money by failing to sell me a service to block telemarketers who don’t have # buttons to press. Fuck, I need a drink.

Whilst haphazardly flipping through my roommate’s copy of Guitar World magazine the other day, not one, but two subscription cards fell to the floor, necessitating my picking them up (a small, but potent annoyance). I couldn’t understand it – my roommate already has a subscription to the magazine. Couldn’t they separate the copies intended for subscribers and leave them card-free? No! – the makers of the magazine still feel compelled to force even their guitar-loving subscribers to bend over twice a month for them. How rude! Upon thinking about it, I became angry and bitter. With still more reflection, I became vengeful.

So I came up with an idea. All those cards have postage-paid stamps on them. The company was “nice” enough to inform me of their product, so why not be “nice” and let them know that I’m not interested. So I grabbed a black magic marker and crossed out the “YES! Send me one year’s subscription. . .” and wrote across the name and address field “No, but thanks for asking!” then dropped it in the mail.

Then I realized this will work for ANY junk mail, not just subscription cards, just as long as it has a pre-paid stamp on it. Send all those junk letters back to the company and politely let them know “Thanks for the offer, but I’m just not interested.”

This seemed like a stroke of genius, which unsettled me quite a bit, because I’m not someone who’s usually described as a genius; bitter and angry perhaps, but that’s about it. So I did a quick search online and it turns out this is not a new idea, and others have taken it to even greater lengths. It is possible to use this tactic on ALL the crap that comes through your mail slot! All you need is a piece of junk mail with a pre-paid envelope, or one that has the stamp and is large enough to fold over into a make-shift envelope. Just take all the crap coupons and flyers that you hate getting all the time and cram them into the pre-paid envelope, then mail them back to the company that sent the postage-paid junk to you with a message that says “I’ll think about your offer. In the meantime, here are some great deals that may interest you.” You’ll be kindly informing the company that you’re not interested in their offer, but also providing them with the opportunity for great savings and alerting them to some amazing deals at other places of business, saving them far more money than the $0.52 which it costs them to have their letter returned to them! You’re helping!

EVERYBODY SHOULD DO THIS.

Okay, so we’ve all seen Asian restaurants with clever names like “Ho Lee Chow” or “Pho Mi”. But then there are the select few that maybe didn’t have an English-speaking person available for that crucial second opinion. Here’s a nice example from North Bay:

Now, I don’t know about you, but food is not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear “Momma Poon’s”. But I still have to wonder if they’ve carried the theme over to their menu as well, creating delicacies such as Moo Goo Gai Poon, or Tossed Salad with Poon Sauce.

Hmm… Maybe I should start eating there so I can at least say I’m getting some Poon.

I know most of you guys have already seen this one, but for those who haven’t, its worth it.

Sometimes people invent amazing things, like the wheel, the computer, or sushi. Marc Griffin invented BulletBall. Someone else invented a show called “American Inventor” so that we could all laugh at BulletBall. The game seems terrible; it looks like a boring, simplistic idea. Notice that Marc explains that he came up with the game while drinking wine with his wife at home. I’d bet he was actually slam-dunk drunk at a divey bar, out of cash, and flicking bottle caps across a beer-soaked table with a transvestite prostitute named Kamal. How do I know this? Because its only when your life is at such a low point that one could imagine that a game like BulletBall promises a way out. But Marc Griffin is completely convinced that his game is the future. Do you agree?

I love how they cue the pattering sob piano music just as he’s laying down the “pity me” prose. While that was perhaps a strategy to get the judges to accept his game, Marc definitely screwed-up when he actually played BulletBall with the one judge. There’s probably no better BulletBall player in the world than Marc Griffin (since nobody else plays) but he didn’t have to use that moment to show-off. He goes wild on that BulletBall, slamming it past the judge with a victorious “Mah point!” Humiliating for sure…

If you are actually interested in playing this thing, have a look at Marc’s website. I highly recommend having a look at the order page, if only to hear Marc and a few others singing/rapping about BulletBall. Tell me what this lyric means though: “You lose tomorrow but you win today!” Is that because the day you get your new BulletBall table you sit down and have a few games with a buddy, only to wake-up the next day and realize that you have no compulsion to ever play the thing again, and that you just spent a big chunk of money to feed Marc’s psychosis?

And what’s the real difference between BulletBall and BulletBall Extreme? Two hundred and twenty-five bucks and a lot less dignity.

I feel like crying. What the hell is going on? What the **** is this song? How can

I found this through another site making comments about how terrible it is. Then I found comments on the Youtube page which said how great it is. Who are

Kid Rock is a

I can’t… I can’t

Brain hurting. No worky.

Let me catch my mental breath… I can only surmise that garbage like this indicates that we truly are living in a post-modern world, where everything has been done, so let’s do it again and not care. Kid Rock sodomizes the music from two songs and tugs it all off with nonsensical lyrics which fit the mold of billions of other songs already out there. This is pastiche at its most obvious and unapologetic. How many songs are there about summer, girls, and memories? And of course, the last verse is an emotional ode to the inevitable passing of time. Fucking deep. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Here’s Kid’s lyrics for the last verse:

“Now nothing seems as strange as when the leaves began to change
Or how we thought those days would never end
Sometimes I’ll hear that song and I’ll start to sing along
And think man I’d love to see that girl again”

Compare with Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer”:

“I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you drove me crazy?
Remember how i made you scream?

Now i don’t understand what happed to our love
Now baby gonna get you back
Gonna show you what i’m made of…”

Or Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69″:

“And now the times are changin’
Look at everything that’s come and gone
Somethimes when I play that old six-string
I think about you wonder what went wrong”

Ah memories… summer… girls… music… If these memories are supposed to be so special, life-defining, and personal, then why does it seem that everyone remembers the same frickin’ thing? We are the machine.

I need to go and have a poo. I need a little less shit in my life right now.