[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
Another in my installment of fun links.

700 Hobos Project
This is based on John Hodgman’s book was The Areas of My Expertise, where he lists the 700 types of hobos. And if you think you have seen John before, you have. He’s been on the Daily Show, but more famously, is the PC from the I’m a Mac, I’m a PC commercials.

If other artists drew the Mona Lisa
Cool. I particularly like the Jackson Pollack one.

The 11 Coolest Mugs for a Hot Cup o’ Joe
hot-cool-coffee-tea-mugs-cups/
I like the one that let’s you know how much milk you like in your tea or coffee.

I Made Cakewrecks!
I submitted the all white yule log in this blog entry.

If I Die A Bacon-Related Death, I’d Like It To Be Because Of This
Oh. My. Goodness.

In honor of the holidays, restaurant is now serving reindeer hot dogs
This is what happens when Santa’s reindeer get too old.

The Five Most Terrifying Local TV Christmas Commercials
Insane.

[  Mood: Distorted ]
[ Currently: Breastfeeding My Son ]
I love mysteries, so I tend to read a lot of them. I stumbled across the title at Stop, You’re Killing Me!

Ruby, a rabbi’s widow, is still burdened by the expectations of her community, most notibly temple busy body and social queen, Essie Sue. When Essie Sue’s sister drops dead in the local bagel shop, Ruby launches into investigating what has happened.

This is not a great book. The storytelling, a little clumsy to start off with, is not improved by the insertion of long, rambling emails between Ruby and her best friend Nan. I gave up on this because I didn’t really care who did it and why.

[  Mood: Hypnotized ]
[ Currently: Breastfeeding My Son ]
So Christmas is coming, and you are probably thinking "What should I get Ubalstecha?"

Never fear, I have a suggestion. This:

Yes, Black Canary Barbie.

For a mere $40, you can bring a smile to the face of me, Ubalstecha. Think of the warmth you will feel knowing that I am opening up the gift and playing with it Christmas morning. Think of how much happier you would feel if you gave me two. One to play with and one to leave in its original packaging.

And Mattel, think of how wonderful you will feel if you make Green Arrow Ken.

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
For many, many years I have been sending out a weekly list of wierd and wonderful links to friends and family. So when I saw Matthew Bey’s latest blog entry, I was inspired to share them here. I will in no way be as witty as him, but never the less, here I go.

Who Owns What – This is a dizzying diagram of media ownership in the US.

Dog Can’t Get Out – Ahhhhhhh – there’s a forcefield!

Dog Risks Life to Save That of a Friend – Touching.

Apple’s Apples… Talk About Geek Fruit – Way, way too much time on their hands

Atlas of True Names – Just very cool.

Holland Puts a New Spin on Old Technology to Combat Climate Change – This was a plot on Coronation Street like three years ago. No, reallly!

Shave the Date – There are no words. Slightly NSFW.

Wild African Cream – On my Christmas list. Guess why? No, not the booze.

Scientists extract images directly from brain – Soon you will not be able to lie to your partner about what you are really thinking about. You have been warned.

The Great Chess Doping Scandal – Yes, you just read that.

Boy, 3, with cerebral palsy can keep his pony – Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. I get a lot of my links from the board and other blogs here. I will try and remember to delete them from this post.

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]

Aya is a fifteen year-old girl who is desperate to be famous. It is several years after the mind-rain, when Tally Youngblood freed the world from "Prettytime". Each city appears to have gone on its own way. Aya’s city (most likely Tokyo) has switched to a merit based economy. Most people do good works to get credits. So you do your homework, you earn five credits. But you can also earn credits based on your face-rank, in other words how famous you are. The more famous your are, thebigger your house, the more gadgets you can own, you get the idea. Think of it as our reality TV world gone amuck.

The city is made up of cliques. Our heroine Aya wants to be a famous kicker, like her brother. Kickers are reporters, so she must break a big story. What Aya doesn’t realize that in doing so, she will betray friends, meet the most famous person in the world and uncover something far bigger than she could ever imagine.

While not as good as the first three books of the Uglies series, Extras is still a masterpiece of world building. Author Scott Westerfield has taken our fame obssesed society and taken it to the nth degree. And that makes it engaging. This is a good read for adults and teens and will be appearing in an upcoming After Harry.

[  Mood: Distorted ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
So the city got hit with what could be termed as a perfect storm.

* The bus drivers went on strike last night stopping our transit system cold.
* A winter storm hit the city yesterday. Snow and freezing rain have blanketed the city. We have got at least 20 cm according to Environment Canada, but according to the radio we have gotten 34 cm. That is about a foot of snow.
* Because of the storm, school buses have been cancelled, but the schools are open. So if you need childcare, you have to drive your kids to school.
* One of the main comuter bridges has been reduced to two lanes due to some structural issues.
* Certain postal workers are on strike as well and given that the places they are picketing are on major intersections, traffic gets slowed even more.

Yeah – so apparently the commute is a bit of a hassle. The husband unit has arranged a carpool, but given the delays, the ride has yet to appear.

Be happy you are not here.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]

Brit Paul West is hired by a French firn to develop an authentic English tea house chain. He moves to Paris and finds himself almost immediately struggling to fit in to to the City of Lights. He finds navigating the streets while trying to avoid piles of dog poo. Paul also finds that in France, work has a whole different meaning, what with strikes and workers who don’t actually work. Finally, he also finds that Parisiam women are completely different than British women.

Author Stephan Clark has created a laugh out loud piece of fish out of water fiction. The reader is taken along on Paul’s journey down the rabbit hole. This is so worth reading. I have requested the next one from the biblio.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Trying to read to my son, who likes to randomly flip pages,  ]
Another port that I am expanding.

Microserfs is a wonderful book from Michael Copeland, the wunderkind of Can Lit. It explores the lives a group of Microsoft Employees and the endless drugery of their lives. Until the majority of them jump ship and create a start-up and then tbe novel takes a sharp left turn.

One of the most memorable scene in the book comes early on when one of the characters gets a scathing email from Bill Gates and proceeds to lock himself in his office. His friends become worried when he fails to emmerge after a few days, so they head off to the grocery store to buy flat food that they can slide it under the door.

A wonderful, quirky book.

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
As I mentioned in our podcast taping last night, Canadian politics has suddenly gotten very exciting.

We have a parliamentary system here in Canada, which means that the party who gets the most votes gets to form the government. In our recent election, the Conservatives won enough votes to form a minority government.

And so they set about to govern. The problem is they forgot they were a minority. They came forward with an economic bill to address the looming financial crisis. A bill devoid of any real economic policies. Instead they went after their favourite ideological targets. Specifically:

The Public Service Unions – a proposal their wage increases rolled back and right to strike removed.
Pay-Equity – the conservatives want to set aside human rights tribunal decisions and not work towards equal pay for work of equal value
Funding for Political Parties (based on how many votes they recieved in the last election) – this too would be recinded, despite the fact that some people voted for some political parties just so that they could get funding. Of course, the Tories also have a huge war chest, so they don’t need the money

When they presented the bill, the expected the opposition to roll over, like a good dog. This is in part because it’s what the opposition had done in the previous parliament, but also because the Liberals (one of the opposition parties) are in the midst of picking a new leader.

But the opposition didn’t roll over. Instead they have quickly banded together and negotiated deal to take over the government as a coalition.

But, wait, you ask. How?

Well they would bring down the Tory government on a non-confidence motion and then go to the Governor General and say "Hey Queen’s representative, instead of calling an election, we’ll govern."

This has put the cat among the pigeons. The Tory government is shrieking about it being an assault on democracy, despite the fact it has happened before. And despite the fact that the Tories were willing to do the same a few years ago.

The Tories have started to back pedal and ramp up the attack ads. The Governor General is rushing back from a European trip. Talk radio has gone nuts.

This is, quite frankly, the most exciting to happen in Canadian politics in a long time. I am getting the popcorn.

[  Mood: Amused ]
So the Americans have just finished Thanksgiving and, along with us Canucks, are heading to Christmas. So we all might have a turkey or two in our future.

So imagine my glee when I found this site. Now I knew that deep-fried turkeys were de-riguer south of the boarder, but I did not know that things like this existed.

If you can’t see the picture, those are pecans and an a honey glaze overtop of the deep-fried bird.

So my question is, when did turkey become dessert? I can feel my arteries hardening just looking at the picture.

So now I am waiting for the chocolate fudge flattop turkey to appear.