Giving Thanks

As a slight twist on the holiday (well, for the US. The Canadians have their Thanksgiving in October, just so they can pretend they aren't really the 51st state), I have decided to "give thanks" for the things I have learned in my life, and I pass them on to you, the gentle reader, so you will not have to live and learn as I did. These are listed in no particular order.

• Do not, regardless of how hard it is raining, open an umbrella while holding a cat.
• Don't broil in Pyrex. Really. Don't.
• No matter how good it sounds, chocolate really doesn't make a very good breakfast food.
• You can overwater a plant
• It is very easy to play a video game for five hours, and very hard to study for five hours, though the actual activity level is exactly the same.
• People who were jerks in high school actually can grow up to be decent humans beings.
• It's really amazing how much you can miss someone when you can't ever speak to them again.
• Don't want what the rich want.
• Anything worth doing is usually pretty difficult.
• Growing up isn't so bad.
• Ants, cake, plastic, and an oven don't mix well.
• People are pretty similar the world over.
• Celebrity gossip blogs are strangely fascinating.
• YouTube will suck away all of your free time.
• No matter what it is, it will probably change.
• It is okay to cry (according to my shrink)
• Being nice is harder than being mean, but it pays a lot better.
• You actually can have too many computers, especially if more than half of them don't work.
• Laundry piles up extraordinarily fast.
  
  
• and finally... All of the bad stuff that happens makes the good stuff seem even better.

Peace and love this Thanksgiving, even to Canadians.

Hortons clerks nab axe robber

This is direct from the Canadian Press:

MONTREAL – An axe-wielding masked man who attempted to rob a Montreal-area doughnut shop didn't get any coffee but he did get creamed.

Montreal police say the 18-year-old man entered a Tim Hortons outlet in suburban Pointe-Claire just after midnight and threatened the woman behind the counter with his axe.

Const. Olivier Lapointe says the masked man demanded money and was starting to scoop up the cash when another female employee working in the kitchen showed up.

With the help of three customers, the clerks jumped the suspect, took away his axe, wrestled him to the ground and recovered the money.

When police arrived at the Tim Hortons after getting a 911 call, the man was still being held down by the customers.

No one was injured, but the suspect will face charges of robbery and assault with a weapon.

Dumb, rich women and their money...

... are soon parted, as they say, especially when companies such as the annoyingly ubiquitous Lululemon are on the case.
Lululemon is basically an overrated, upscale athletic clothing store. Stacy London and Clinton Kelly should be having fits, but basically the mantra of this company seems to be "Be healthy, be organic, and make sure your entire yoga class and everyone on the subway knows you spend $150 for yoga pants because you are just too good of a person to exercise in Fruit of the Loom." That's right, for more than many major appliances, this company will outfit you in stretchy black pants with their little logo printed conspicuously where everyone can see it (so everyone knows you spent $150 on them and not just $40).

This company is the darling of Canadian business right now. It's so organic, it's so Canadian, it's ... such a scam. They made a huge deal out of organic fibers and unusual "ingredients" (I call them this because their clothing has stuff like silver, soya beans and seaweed in it) and these "ingredients" are supposed to actually do something for you. One of their recent lines called VitaSea (yeah, I puked a little in my mouth too) is supposed to "release marine amino acids, minerals and vitamins into the skin upon contact with moisture." And yes, people believe this.

However, actual, scientific testing has proven this claim to be utterly erroneous. Investigators found no "significant difference in mineral levels between the VitaSea fabric and cotton T-shirts. The shirt tested was labelled as being made of 24 per cent of the seaweed fibre, 70 per cent cotton and 6 per cent spandex." Sorry, Lululemon. I don't buy your clothes, I think the entire idea of your company is a scam, and the plain, black Capezio pants I bought 10 years ago at J.C. Penny's for $30 are still going strong, despite the fact that you "change [y]our European-inspired colour palette every few months." Oh, but their webpage claims that if you call them, you can speak to a "real" Canadian. Nice for those lonely people out there who just can't sleep without being lulled by the sultry sounds of an authentic "eh?"

Sister, please.

Writers' Strike

So I am having fits over this Writers' Strike. This doesn't actually affect Canadian shows (all three of them) but we tend to get a lot of ported US shows up here. However, I can stand to miss dramas like Ugly Betty and the like, because I won't really be missing anything. When the show comes back, the story picks up. However, my daily fixtures of TV viewing, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, are also affected because they use writers, and I am going into serious withdraw. I have a hard enough time when the shows go on break for holidays/vacations, and now, there seems to be no end in sight. And you know what, it is just lost. LOST! I mean, they aren't going to make fun of news from three months ago.

Seriously, I need a hit. I am just glad Samantha Bee is on this week's Little Mosque on the Prairie.

Stephen Colbert ends campaign

My personal Jesus, Stephen Colbert, has ended his run for the White House. He said in a statement, "Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history—only 10 votes—I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle. It is time for this nation to heal."

Of course, I am completely gutted. I even got a tattoo of Stephen, naked, riding an eagle, holding an American flag as he flies out of the rising sun. Damn. I guess I'll have to get it reworked into Chinese characters that read "Crazy Delicious."

Yet another blow, both the Daily Show and Colbert are in reruns until the writers' strike is over. Perhaps I'll put on a puppet show tonight and make up my own jokes. I can be witty on topical issues. How about, "Today, Bush appeared before the press and told Musharraf that he needed to remove his military uniform, because it gave the wrong impression. No, it wasn't that Musharraf was heading up a military dictatorship that was merely posing as a democracy, rather the sharp tailoring on the suit was making his own attire look shabby."

Okay, I'll just wait for the strike to end.

Eat it, Nebraska!

This is not a sports blog. Indeed, it is a "Let's all laugh at Canada" blog (see below). However, I have to crow about my alma mater, old KU, beating the tight, red pants off of Nebraska this afternoon. Sadly, I could not watch the contest as the only thing Northeasterners care less about than the Midwest is the current population levels of the Alberta Brown Striped Marmot. However, KU did defeat NU by the whopping score of 76 to 39. Dad would have been so pleased.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=273072305

Just to get a shot in on Canadian deficiencies, my new alma mater, U of T, has set an all-time record for futility, losing a whopping 48 games in a row in their -attempts- at playing football (and remember, this is Canadian football, not real football). We haven't won a game since 2001! And before that, they lost 18 in a row, and that "victory" was a 13-11 struggle that was barely won at the last minute. It's all good though. U of T isn't supposed to be good at sports. They are like Harvard. If they were good at sports too, all of the other universities would get together and burn it down, because they couldn't stand the uppityness of it all. After all, that is why jocks beat up on nerds.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/10/13/cisfootball-uoftblues-futilitystreak.html?ref=rss

Loonie Power

So the Loonie (otherwise known as the Canadian dollar) is soaring in the markets, and today broke $1.07! When I came to visit the University of Toronto in 2003, the Loonie was around $0.67 to the US dollar. Perhaps I can take credit for it? Of course, this does make it difficult to joke about the wee Loonie.
I even have a shirt that says, "Canada fits your budget" which really doesn't make sense anymore as people are constantly driving to the US to buy things now. Many retailers here have had to lower prices to compete, especially with things like books. It always hurt to pay $5-$10 more per book, especially when that US price was just flaunted right to the left of the Canadian price. But now, now when you know your currency is stronger... wrath. Pure Canadian wrath.