Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

The following have not been edited in any way. They are actual labels on products.

“…we recommend you to use the oil stoner sharpener”? You let greasy stoners handle knives in China? That sounds extremely dangerous. No wonder you’re to “confirm nobody attended nearby,” before starting the “shrpening”. I’m just glad that “TOUCH UP” didn’t turn into Felt Up.

California, Mexico? Didn’t they fight a war about that years ago? I have a feeling the anti-immigrant crowd would have something negative to say about this label. (Maybe the berries have a species named after the state?)

100% pure blend? If you believe that, I have a 100% purebred mutt to sell you.

Yorkton is set to have 15cm of snow by tomorrow, so I’m about to be buried by the white stuff. Time to build one of these, like I saw at the UofR the other weekend:

I’ve only made snow walls and pillars before, I’ve never had the tools to make a proper igloo.

I don’t quite follow the NDP’s logic on this one. A guy gets fired for sexual assault. Then he is convicted of just common assault. So he sues the government who was his employer, for firing him for sexual and not common assault. They cave and give him more than a quarter million dollars. He also gets more money than the 9 women who were harassed by him.

Any time a sue-happy individual does something newsworthy I’m a little reluctant to write about them because even though the odds are low, a vanity google search done by the litigious-leadhead might put me, the humble gossip critiquer, in their sooty spotlight. For this reason I want to make it clear that if I’ve erred in a critical fact about the summation of this news story, then I will correct it.

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Artwork made of cash. It sounds cool, and it was, until it was turned into hot art. It was 100,000 kroner ($16K USD) glued to canvas in cash.
The artist sold it for “face value” as a statement that art is pretentious and over valued.

The artist’s redo-piece will be less in cash, because insurance only pays about 80% back to the artist/owner.

The BBC made a significant error in their report. See if you can catch it? I wonder if the reporter is in on the crime, or just lazy/stupid ;-)?

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Here’s a list Ashley found, with businesses making sure memos retain their reputation of being pretty worthless.

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Look, John Bolton is helping the New Government “tackle crime“, after he tackled the UN, and a hair dye bottle.

Maybe next, Harper’s New Government will start up the Avro Arrow II project to match Participaction II, and Energuide II. Then the Conservatives will announce their plans to get tough on crime, so they can cancel them, then reissue plans that are improved and Made in Canada.

I don’t understand why the Conservatives want everything to be made in Canada, when we can outsource, and have the Chinese lose our weight at a fraction of the cost to us.

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Hat tip to Ottawonk
Please note that Bolton hasn’t actually come to Canada, I’m just making a gray-mustache joke, which although in poor taste normally, strikes my fancy this evening of writing.

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Spy Hill’s snowplane.

My car was encrusted in ice last night, probably because it snowed a lot, then it melted while on top of my car. That explains why the tops of the windows were okay, but everything on the lower half was under a sheet of ice. My block heater’s extension cord was also covered in ice today after melt water from the roof dripped down onto the plugin, and down the cord. Electrocution hazard? Yeah, maybe.

I was also greeted with a view of a really spectacular sun pillar.

Viscount’s lone “elevator” if you can call it that. I think it’s on private land.

Next to the Hotel and bar.

Saskboy goes to Kandahar – bloodless edition

Vimy Memorial bandstand in Saskatoon down the street from the Radisson Hotel.

Wood Mountain my hometown village has been trying to get a highspeed Internet provider for years, and the Mayor has been working on setting up free WiFi for visitors to the village. Now the NDP government has offered money to urban centers only, to get free wireless Internet going for them. Good for Saskatoon and Regina; no help for rural SK; it must be an NDP idea.

Here’s something I can agree with Jason on, though. A super duper, hypothetical tutorial on how to watch Oscar films.

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I woke up in my hotel room, and turned on the TV. Of course Canada Ad-em [sorry I mean Canada AM on CTV] was abuzz with Oscar fluff. The one reporter who attended a post Oscar party couldn’t get anything more interesting from The Queen winning actress, than what drink she likes to have after she wins an Oscar.

Then I flipped over and saw Gormley on Shaw cable’s TV guide channel. He was busy making a fool of himself by highlighting how Dr. David Suzuki is “just a geneticist” and not a climatologist. Yeah, that makes a difference to the whole climate change “debate”, when just one scientist who realizes that climate change is a real problem didn’t study climatology in grad school. It totally invalidates the thousands of other scientists who do have a background in climate study, and chemistry, who realize we are polluting too much. I’d like to see how much Gormley nods when that regular caller one-track-minded Ken phones in and every topic he twists into “what a hoax global warming is”.

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Trevis Smith got a 6.5 year sentence for intentionally exposing two unwitting women to HIV, and breaking bail conditions. He gets .5 years off for previous time served. He’s appealing the conviction; big surprise there. Suck it up Mr. Smith, you’re lucky it’s only 6 years, and you didn’t infect anyone.

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Wynyard had a small explosion and fire in a business next to A&W on Saturday Feb. 24, 2007. The fire was put out pretty quickly, but you can see there is severe damage.

A sun pillar rises above the house behind the Subway:

I had a quick look around Viscount today too:

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This study leaves me wondering if other addictions like The Internet, leave addicts with modified brains too. Although, I’d suspect it’s only chemical addictions that cause such a noticeable change in the chemical structure of the brain.

Dr John Stapleton, of the National Addictions Centre at King’s College London, said: “It would be surprising if taking large doses of a drug such as nicotine many times a day over many years did not result in lasting changes in the brain.

“The new results may take us closer to understanding these changes.

“The key question remains as to whether such changes are partly responsible for the intractable nature of smoking and relapse after many months or years of stopping.”

I went to Saskatoon on Sunday, and had wings at The Olympia family restaurant. I was inspired after seeing the Wings in Regina blog, so my review is that it was 4 clucks out of 5.

I ended up watching parts of several movies including Get Shorty [pretty bad], Legends of the Fall [strange], and “The Mask of Zorro” [9/10]. Then I saw that Oscars were being handed out on another channel, with some going to “The Departed” (which I didn’t think was better than “Blood Diamond”), and Martin Scorsese.

I also had the misfortune of catching Glen Beck’s talkshow. Glen Beck’s take on the Oscars was that there weren’t enough “cowboy, or laser gun movies” and audibly groaned in disgust when his guests talking about the awards suggested that “international” and “substance” considerations trumped box office profits in deciding the winners. He also groaned when they mentioned it was the Academy’s own choice who they picked. I guess he was really hoping for “Cars” to win Best Picture. What a man of the world. (Incidentally, Cars was a multiple nominee, so way to get worked up Glen over your favourite movie not winning what you wanted, even though you don’t really care…)

Beck then offered guesses of his own about who would win, while making sure to marginalize any film or actor with a foreign flavour. He continued, “…not the dude from Blood Diamond“, [because he can't say Djimon Hounsou's name like the other actors' he rattled off], and not the actresses from Babel because he can’t pronounce those “chicks’” names either, and is darn proud of that. Why should a talk show host learn to talk and learn the names of people he wants to talk about? He’s in America, and if those immigrant movies don’t use english or names he can pronounce, its his right to make fun of them.

“Hollywood will do what they always do, and ram some garbage down our throat.” They have Glen Beck to look up to as a role model. He naturally moaned about how Gore would win two awards for his film about protecting the environment. I did find the song about the environment they did to be painfully preachy/bad, but it was just a folk song, it’s normal for those to be bad. It helps the good folk songs stand out to be surrounded by wrecks.

Prior to his Oscar angst, was a rant in the style of Steven Colbert’s The Word (which I’ve seen much more than O’Idiot’s “No, spin zone”, and Beck’s “Real Truth”. You know it’s going to be fair and balanced and have good truthieness when it has both “real” and “truth” describing the segment.). The target tonight was “illegals” and let’s just say that once spit comes flying out of your mouth during a rant, you’re either too passionate, blowing smoke up your listeners’ butts, and/or you’re Glen Beck. Sure his point about the Department of Homeland InSecurity counting only illegal immigrants who get caught to determine the total number of illegal immigrants making the journey northward into the States, is valid. However, I’d trust Glen Beck to tell me the whole story, about as far as I could throw him across the border.

The amount of hand wringing about “illegals”, and frenzy Beck was trying to stir up was disgusting. Then he had the audacity to say that Americans are very concerned about who’s cleaning their bathrooms in ESPN Zone and other corporate office chains cleaned by a janitorial service who hires illegal immigrants. The only reason Americans are concerned is because of the xenophobes like Beck who whip up minor problems into a national crisis stage show. If Americans really were concerned about who is cleaning their messes, they’d do it themselves instead of paying people under the table to do it for them.

Now, I wonder who’s going to be wiping up Beck’s spit from after the show? There’s a full time job for someone, I hope Beck is personally making sure it’s an American with papers. And so the Saskatoon phony-baloney Oscar goes to Glen Beck; the actor who salivates more than Bill O’Idiot, and is more slimy and insecure than the average guy who used to call kids names in school.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of Linus Torvalds before, but you can see him on the Wikipedia page for GNU/Linux. And check out Stallman’s picture too. No wonder Linux users had a reputation in the 1990s as long haired hippies, eh?