Sometimes the college-educated jersey cow flies into a rage.

SPAM. I usually just delete it, but today I read one. It was a bizarre conglomeration of words, forming complete sentences, but lacking any meaning. Either that, or it was just too poetic for me to comprehend. It was a stock market spam, recommending that I buy a penny stock which by week's end should be up nearly 400%. Anyway, the seemingly computer generated gibberish was good for a laugh. Parts of it were nonesense, and parts of it came across as pure brilliance. I'll let you decide which is which.

"Most people believe that the gentle umbrella often satiates a football team of another ocean, but they need to remember how seldom the geosynchronous light bulb takes a coffee break. If the cheese wheel sanitizes a spider, then an umbrella daydreams. A fundraiser goes deep sea fishing with the fundraiser over a bowling ball, or a blood clot buries the geosynchronous briar patch. Another girl scout related to a photon starts reminiscing about lost glory, and the shabby hole puncher writes a love letter to a defendant. Some single-handledly worldly pork chop reads a magazine, and the diskette hides; however, a mysterious fairy competes with the college-educated photon.
Some pickup truck inside the grand piano procrastinates, and a chess board for a buzzard hesitates; however, a mean-spirited jersey cow eagerly trades baseball cards with the briar patch. For example, the particle accelerator indicates that a bowling ball figures out the most difficult fruit cake. Most people believe that a turkey completely secretly admires a stoic blood clot, but they need to remember how knowingly the turn signal defined by an apartment building beams with joy. When a tabloid is gentle, the outer globule tries to seduce the inferiority complex. A grand piano around the ski lodge feels nagging remorse, but a satellite secretly admires an asteroid inside an ocean. Most people believe that a greasy cargo bay avoids contact with an avocado pit, but they need to remember how almost a chain saw ruminates. An umbrella for a warranty is highly paid. For example, a ball bearing related to the dust bunny indicates that a cab driver non-chalantly gives a pink slip to a judge inside a photon. When you see an asteroid, it means that a hockey player laughs out loud.
Another CEO inside a warranty takes a coffee break, and a so-called pickup truck leaves; however, a fundraiser beyond an ocean knows a roller coaster from a blithe spirit. When you see the wheelbarrow, it means that some carpet tack from a salad dressing starts reminiscing about lost glory. When the proverbial pine cone hibernates, a college-educated graduated cylinder wakes up. The freight train for a mortician has a change of heart about a satellite. Sometimes the college-educated jersey cow flies into a rage, but a wisely obsequious hole puncher always knowingly gives lectures on morality to a tomato!
Most people believe that a food stamp figures out a cowboy, but they need to remember how hesitantly an inexorably surly skyscraper gets stinking drunk. When the bullfrog reads a magazine, a salad dressing around a mastadon procrastinates. A briar patch is phony. An ocean, a vacuum cleaner over a corporation, and a blood clot of the buzzard are what made America great! When a parking lot goes to sleep, the power drill laughs out loud."

Happy days are here again...


(If that phrase puts a song in your head, list it in the comments)

Madden Football

I used to love playing EA Sports Hockey, on Nintendo.
There was always a highest rated team, player, goalie, which meant that there must be a lowest rated team, player or goalie.
If you were the lowest rated player in an EA Sports game, would you write an unkind (yet hilarious) letter (to John Madden in this case) about it, questioning your rating - which in this case was 53???
Be forewarned. There are grownup words used, so cover your ears.

Recess

I work in an office. I sometimes wish that every day at around 10:15 AM a bell would ring and we'd all run out into the hallway, throw our shoes on, and run out across the road to the ball diamond as fast as we can so that we get to bat first, and not play right field. Recess was awesome. I got my first serious injury requiring stitches at recess. I was standing on a slick piece of ice that had been cleared off (poor drainage at our school)and got my feet kicked out from underneath me. I landed square on my chin, and was cut for three stitches. I'm lucky I didn't break my jaw, or worse.
My parent's sued the school, and the kid who kicked my feet out from under me. I don't remember the dollar amount, but it was pretty significant. It's hard to put a dollar figure on pain and suffering, so we guessed high. We nearly bankrupted the school. The family of the kid had to remortage their house to cover the legal expenses.
Actually, that's horseshit. We didn't file a lawsuit. I wore a bandage on my chin for a week or two, like a badge of honour. I bled and they sowed me up. It made me feel tough. A lawsuit was probably the last thing on my parents minds. The other kid said sorry, and it was genuine. It's part of growing up - scraped knees, broken bones, missing teeth, black-eyes. Lessons learned. I learned about friction and how you can corner a BMX much sharper on clean asphalt vs. a gravel driveway. I got four stitches and a nasty scar on my knee to remind me of that. I lost a tooth to a soccer goal post once. I don't know if I learned anything from that one, but I think my pain threshold went up a bit, as well as my love for the dentist (see last weeks post).
So, why the sudden Recess nostalgia you ask? Well, cause I'm genuinely concerned about the generation of kids that is being raised right now. Some of them aren't even allowed to play tag at recess. They will never feel the thrill weaving and dodging to avoid being tagged. Or how to stalk their prey... They'll never have the joy of nailing the older big kid and winning dodgeball, or building the perfect snow fort and how to make the perfect snowball (small/compact for distance - big for maximum impact).
My personal opinion is that a few scraped knees, some good grass stains, the occasional trip to the school nurse (or the hospital) is all a part of growing up. If I was sheltered from that I would've been a little upset. Sure I could have chosen not to play tag, or prisoners base, or red rover, or British bulldog, or snow soccer, or whatever, but think of all the fun I would've missed.
According to the article, the school banned tag, not to protect the kids from injury - that was secondary. Primarily it was to protect themselves from litigation. It's a sad day when greedy lawyers wreck recess.

The Winterbeard

Blondel has re-entered blogland, and has a story or two to tell. If you've got the time, give a couple of his short stories a read, over at winterbeard. Identify the high-fidelity reference and you win a prize.

To be honest, going to the dentist is usually not an unpleasent event for me. I usually schedule my routine check-ups for early in the morning. My rationale is that 'Sportscentre' on TSN usually runs all morning on a half hour loop, and my butt is usually firmly planted in the dental recliner for about half an hour, catching all the previous nights highlights. They usually hand me a remote control even before I sit down, and make my chair comfortable for me, propping my head up with a pillow for both optimum comfort and prime viewing of the ceiling mounted flat screen plasma TV. I've decided that If I ever see a dentist chair at an auction I'll buy it. How awesome would that be to lie back, and watch TV on the ceiling.
I guess this is yet another reason why I won't get cable (or a dish, or whatever...) - it will make my trips to the dentist less exciting. I never get to watch sportscentre, since I only get CBC, Global and TVO. That's TV Ontario, not TiVo.

George Clooney

George Clooney is slowley becoming one of my favorite actors, and not completely due to his acting. He's active in world events, raising Darfur awareness, and appears to be playing pranks on the paparazzi.

I just scripted an email and sent it to several of the mainstream media outlets in Canada kindly requesting that they remove pictures of the Amish Killer from their websites and to stop posting them in the future (since this is bound to happen again). Please join me in this.

In other news, I've officially gained a few more letters to put behind my name. If anyone needs a passport application signed, come see me...

Oh, the letters are:
P.Eng.

I love this time of the year. There is a certain fresh crispness in the air. The leaves are changing colours, with deep reds, yellows and oranges splattered at random throughout the forests.

My soccer team played a quarterfinal game yesterday afternoon, in the pouring rain. To make matters worse (or better), the game went into overtime, and then finally shootouts. As the goalkeeper, I'm proud to say that we won. I love playing soccer in the fall.

I drove down to Belleville this morning for a meeting. Nearly the whole way there I was driving through fog, though it lifted near Brighton. On the way back though the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the colours were brilliant. I stopped a couple of times on the side of the road just to take it all in. I thought about my grandparents. They're in the area today too, hoping to drive around and see the beauty of the fall colours.

I'm an appreciator of art. I'm not a critic. I can't tell you why or why not something just 'works', but I think I've got a pretty good grasp on what's good art and what's not. I saw some good art today. It worked. In the midst of the vast spectrum of colours displayed on the trees, none of it seems to clash. I can barely get dressed without one piece of clothing not going well with another. I have a hard time finding two socks that match. But God's creation is different. Every shade of green, every hue of red or orange or yellow works together to make a beautiful piece of art. It's realy quite remarkable.

I had my camera with me, of course, and this is one of the places I stopped: