Lest We Forget

Lest We Forget: Remember our veterans and their sacrifice today.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

-           Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

If you see a vetern… Thank him!

Sewn to the ground

I love my family.  The make me laugh.  Especially my kids, Linus and Stewie, or monkey-see, monkey-do.  If one does something the other must do it.

The only place where they completely differ is around how they interact with each other, obviously, considering the ages.  Linus is going to be 5 soon, and Stewie just turned 3.  So here are some of the things I’ve had to deal with as these two grow up together;

Stewie: Crying

Me, “Why are you crying… Come here”

Stewie, “I can’t… Linus put me in a time-out”

Or…

Stewie: Crying

Me, “Stewie!  Come here”

Stewie, “I can’t… Linus sent me to my room”.

Or just last week…  Linus, Stewie and myself were playing in the basement when all of a sudden Stewie is laying on the floor on his back not moving a muscle and all of a sudden Stewie is crying.  I ask him to get up but he said that he cannot.  Why???  Because Linus sewed him to the ground.

Oh yes!

His brother had sewn him to the ground.

I tried to convince him that there was no way without thread and a needle that he could have been sewn to the ground and his brother even tried lifting him off the floor by his head, but that little boy was not going anywhere.  Then Linus let go of his head and it thumped back down to the floor.  Ouch.  More crying.

After laughing a little and trying to get him off the floor it was Linus that solved the problem by jumping over his brother and un-sewing him from the floor.

With that Stewie got up, stopped crying and the two boys went back to playing.

Oy vey!

It must be Monday

For a month (and probably all of last year) I really wanted to get my winter jack dry cleaned. The once while collar was greying and the jacket as a whole was getting a little on the, say, ripe side. Totally not cool.

So last night I decided on the plan. I was going to stop for a Tim Horton’s this morning and right beside it is a dry cleaner. While I’ve never been in there I see him putting his sign on the main street, shooing cars that park in the cleaners spots and passing out flyers for discounts. He even offers to do minor alterations for free.

But an odd thing happened along the way. I bought my large double-double, and when I carefully went to put it in the car (sorry… My wife should stop reading at this point)…

… and when I reached across the seat, it spilled a little puddle onto the seat. With no napkins in the car and either too fucking dumb or lazy to go back into the coffee shop to get one I reached for my jacket and used it to wipe of the spil. I mean, geez, it’ll be in the cleaners in a few minutes, right?

So I walk into the cleaners with a proud grin on my face, drop my jacket on the counter and the guy behind it looks at me and says this;

“Sorry. I cannot clean your jacket. I’m closing up the business in, ummm, an hour because no one come to have clothes dry cleaned”.

So I stood there… Thinking about how “wisely” I wiped up my coffee spill with my jacket and how inconvenient this was. It’s supposed to be 18 degrees today. Probably the warmest day before winter and everything was aligned to have this jacket cleaned…

… It’s Monday.  If  had brought my jacket in before and maybe a couple dress shirts here and there, the dry cleaners might still be in business.  Now all I have is a coffee smelling jacket and I’ll have to wait another year before getting it cleaned.

I’m not sure how I feel…

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen things I hate… Today…

13. BMW drivers – Think they own the world because they drive a BMW.  I was always told that Mercedes drivers represent old money and BMW driver’s new money.  So I am coming to the conclusion that new money means having to show people you have money and that equates to buying / leasing a beemer and driving like you don’t give a shit about anyone else on the road.  I must honk 2 of them a day for not signaling or cutting people off.  Assholes.

12. My office keyboard.  Stupid thing got wet (something to do with me spilling water on it) and now when I type capital letters the Ucking thing drops the first letter and capitalizes the next one… 

11. Swine flu / H1N1 / influenza panic… Good g-d, people are going to make themselves sick worrying about the damn vaccination.

10. The NY Yankees.  They won the world series last night and, well, see my post on them on my sports blog; www.daddyknowssports.wordpress.com.

9. Our former nanny.  Left us a couple weeks ago and has been texting me asking for more money – extra money that she thinks she is entitled to, but confusing with vacation pay which she received way more than she was entitled to.  She thinks she was given extra pay our of the kindness of our hearts, I told her it was but there aint no more.  Now she’s bitching about calling the labour department.  I called first and we’re good.  She’s a noob. 

8.  My Achilles.  I finally stretched a lot and went for a run to test it out.  Ran for 10 minutes and there was no pain, but it felt really weak, like any sudden movement would cause it to hurt.  I hate that.  I need to run to stay healthy.

7.  My weight.  I blame it on Halloween that I am forced to eat those fucking little chocolate bars like they are going out of style.  Because they are small does not allow me to eat 10 of them at once, right?  OR does it…

6.  Fair-weather friends.  Either you’re my friend and you want to hang out, or we’re not and that’s fine, but don’t string me along by being phony and they never come out.  I can’t waste time on this whole being social thing… After planning a few outings, if it’s not reciprocated, I’m done with you.

5.  Jedi vs. Sith on Facebook.  I’m fucking addicted!  Grrrr.  As of last night I was 78th in the world.  14 million players have this application.  I have 4100 points (3 points for a win, lose 1 for a loss) and the leader has 40,000.

4.  Hulk Hogan signing with TNA wrestling.  It’s a shitty promotion that might have potential if they cut the gimmicks and produced a decent show.  Crappy writing and even crappier plots make me wonder why this show exists.  Besides the fact that I hate the name “TNA” since it is too close to “Tits ‘n’ Ass” but Total Non-stop Action is not the name for a successful wrestling organization.  And Hogan… 56 years old.  Seriously.

3.   My choice of area for trick-or-treating this year.  Sucks ass.  I expected the $2 million dollar home owners to kick out some kick-ass treats for the kids.  But one candy-bar per houses?!?  Cheapskates!  How disappointing.  Not making that mistake again!

2.  Guns and Roses.  I’m still pissed at them for their simply horrible release this year.  I kind of wish they had released a bunch of stuff throughout the past decade so the shit they put on this album might have come out in other releases.   There is no good hard rock nowadays and as I listen to a few of their songs on my iPod It makes me even more pissed off.  They used to be great.  Same for Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver.  Where is the new Saliva, Disturbed and Rob Zombie?

1.  Iran.  Saw this news story and it pisses me off, considering Iran claims to be doing nothing wrong. Ever.

The seizure of a massive shipment of Iranian arms bound for terrorist organization Hizbollah, proves the arms flow to Syria and south Lebanon from Iran.  The attempt to smuggle arms to Syria and Hizbullah was an Iranian violation of a UN Security Council resolution.  Typically, Iran continues to smuggle arms to terrorists under the guise of legitimate international commerce, turning the Mediterranean Sea into a platform for illegal action. 

The weapons seizure “unequivocally and without a doubt” proves the Iran-Syria-south Lebanon weapons-trafficking route.

The ship was released overnight Wednesday after 36 weapons-filled containers were unloaded, and the 12 crew members boarded the vessel and made their way back on their planned route.

Hundreds of tons of weaponry, the largest arms seizure in Israel’s history, were intercepted in the daring raid by Israeli naval commandos aboard the cargo ship sailing 100 nautical miles west of Israel.

The arms shipment was 10 times the size of the cache found on the Palestinian arms ship Karine A in 2002, defense officials said.

The different types of arms offloaded from the ship were familiar to Israel as those Hizbullah already possesses in its arsenal, Israel Radio quoted defense officials as saying.

Military sources assessed Teheran would be forced to change its smuggling routes following the Israel Navy’s successful operation.

The cache was hidden inside shipping containers belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) which departed from the Bandar Abbas Port in Iran some 10 days ago, were unloaded in the Egyptian port of Damietta and then loaded onto the Francop, a German vessel flying an Antiguan flag.

On Wednesday, Israeli PM, Netanyahu addressed the international community concerning Iran’s material support for terrorist organizations by saying, “Iran is sending these weapons to terror organizations to harm Israeli cities and kill its citizens.  The time has come for the international community to exert real pressure on Iran to stop this criminal activity and to support Israel when it defends itself against these terrorists and their patrons.”

This is going to be a tough task considering the axis of evil lined up to denounce Israel left, right and centre every time something happens in the middle east.

Thank you Google Street View!

I mean that…

Well, maybe it is a little sarcastic.

You see my wife and I had plans Saturday night (I know, can you belive it!) with a few other couples and we were all meeting up North of the city at a Japanese restaurant. 

After finding the address – and determining that it was very close to my office, I decided I could find it no problem, but since I did not recognize the name, I wanted to see view of the restaurant from the street.

So cleverly my wife went to Google Street View.

This is what we got…

Nice, eh?  If you look closely through the windows of the bus you can see the restaurant… Who am I trying to kid.  No you can’t.

So imagine being the company who directs people to their URL and then from there to this application in order to see where they are located only to find out that a giant fucking TTC bus is blocking the entire view.

 

Nice!

 

Raisins come from grapes…

Raisins come from grapes, people come from apes, I come from Canada…

That was a few lines from the Barenaked Ladies children’s song entitled, “Raisins”.  My kids, and wife, love that song.  It is rather clever and catchy.

But this post is not about the Barenaked Ladies – even though merely typing the tags, “barenaked” and “ladies” should result in a plethora of hits from perverts – but rather this post is about raisins.

You see this morning my son was completely bonkers.  So my wife and I tracked back to find out why.  We figured it out and we blame raisins.  Let me back-track and explain…

At over 8 months pregnant, my wife has mid-wife appointments every 2 weeks for now and I hate missing these appointments.  Forget being seen as a good husband for going – that’s so not why I go, but rather I live with her and I want to be on top of every feeling, issue or complaint she has.   With babies and pregnant woman, you can never be too prepared.  So I joined her for her late afternoon appointment with our youngest boy, while my almost 5-year-old (we call him Linus because he is attached to a blankie) was picked up form school by Gramma and off to dinner they went.

So the boys usually wind up in bed around 7-7:30pm but last night we all met in the driveway around 7:30 and there was Linus with a teeny tiny box of raisins.

Looks something like this;

 These are Sun-Maid raisins, not Sun-Kist, and if you google “sun-kist raisins” you are taken to Sun-Kist’s FAQ page in which they explain that they do not make raisins, and if you’re looking for them, you’ll need to go to the Sun-Maid website.

He also had 4 others in a ziploc bag.  

Thinking nothing about it, we let the boys finish their raisins, then we got them ready for bed…

But Linus didn’t sleep well.  He came into our room during the night a few times, tossed, turned and eventually woke up really early (before 6am), woke up his mummy and once downstairs for breakfast – looking very tired – was still really crazy and bouncing around the house.

Then my soon to be nutritionist wife did some research and found this following fact;

One box of raisins contains 20g of sugar. One Aero chocolate bar contains 24g of sugar.  Essentially, Linus ate almost 3 1/2 chocolate bars worth of sugar before bed.  No wonder he was crazy.  My son is not good on sugar.  Putting aside the fact that raisins are quite gummy and as a result the natural sugars stick to kids teeth and can contribute to cavities, I think of raisins in a totally new light!

Now we know!  Now you do too.

What ever happened to the briefcase?

Think today as I walked to the subway with my laptop bag what I used to carry to University when I had my books, and notes for meetings… I carried a briefcase.  Do they even exist anymore?

I guess studies probably showed that carrying a heavy briefcase on one side probably put a lot of stress on the other side, causing back problems, hip problems, shoulder problems and all that jazz.

Did not see a single briefcase today.

Then again… Didn’t notice and laptop bags either.

So what DO people carry their shit to work in???

Balloon Boy – The truth comes out

So it looks like the lawyer for Richard Heene, the man accused of perpetrating the balloon boy hoax to promote a reality show will be charged by police after emails showed that he had been planning this even for a couple months. 

In case you live in a bubble, or without TV, all the major TV stations carried this drama on live television to millions of viewers worldwide.  The alleged stunt temporarily shut down Denver International Airport, and the National Guard provided two helicopters in an attempt to rescue 6-year-old Falcon Heene, who was believed to be inside the flying-saucer shaped homemade balloon that hurtled more than 50 miles across two counties.

Here is the image broadcast across the world…

Crap.  That’s not it.

Oh yeah.  He was supposed to be floating away in this tin-foil piece of shit.

So when the balloon landed without the boy, officials thought he had fallen out and began the grim search for his body… On live TV no less.  But as it turns out, this was nothing more than a marketing ploy by the Heenes, this odd American family who met in acting school in Hollywood and have appeared on ABC’s reality show “Wife Swap.”

So essentially, the Heene family got what they wanted… Or what they thought they wanted.  They got the attention of the masses but with that “fame” comes the intense investigation into their private lives, including reporters trying to find out why they did this, what they had hoped to gain, who knew about it, and there has even been investigation into their private lives and into them as people.  It has been very overwhelming for a family that just wanted to be famous.  But they deserved it.

The gig was up when investigators were able to get a good look at the “flying saucer” and they were able to determine that the thin mylar balloon was covered with tinfoil and held together with duct tape, and would not have been able to launch with the 37-pound-boy inside.  

Then other parts of their “story” started to come apart, including whether their 6-year-old boy, oddly named “Falcon”, had been hiding in the rafters of the family’s garage during an intense five-hour search, or in their attack, turned out to not be true, ”For all we know he may have been two blocks down the road playing on the swing in the city park,” the sheriff said.  This lie came to light when the boy turned to his dad during a CNN interview on Thursday and said what sounded like “you had said we did this for a show” when asked why he didn’t come out of his hiding place.

The sheriff also said that all three of the Heenes’ sons knew of the hoax, but likely won’t face charges because of their ages. The oldest son is 10. One of the boys told investigators he saw his brother get in the balloon’s box before it launched.  Clearly a lie too.

Richard Heene, a 48-year-old storm chaser, inventor, wack-job, and self-described amateur scientist, has a high school education and most recently earned a living by laying tile.  Police records show that they have responded to the Heene house at least twice in the past year, including a possible domestic violence incident in February. No charges were ever filed, although officials did try to persuade Mayumi Heene, 45, to go to a safe house, but she declined. 

On the simply horrible “reality” TV show ”Wife Swap,” Heene was portrayed as erratic, at one point throwing a glass of milk on a participant on the program.

The sheriff said the children were still with the parents Sunday and that child protective services had been contacted to investigate their well-being.

Well done, Heene family… Well done.

Your 15 minutes of fame are up.  Enjoy jail.

Thursday Thirteen

Let’s have a good long look at my 13 biggest Pet Peeve’s.  

A pet peeve is a minor annoyance that is particularly annoying to me, to a greater degree than others may find it.  Examples may be poor table manners, sloppy kitchen hygiene, smoking, grammatical errors in written passages, inconsiderate driving or lazy co-workers, and loud gum smacking.

Here they are;

13. Stupid People

12. People who throw garbage out of the windows of their car while driving

11. Grafitti – Hey, you with that paint can who sprayed my house at 2 in the morning.  I’m going to follow you home and spray pain my stupid-ass gang logo on your house, room and clothes.  How much would you like that?!?

10. People who chew with their mouth open

9. Cigarette butt flickers.  They toss them everywhere and never put them out.  Probably because it’s so fucking cool…

8. Drivers who don’t use their turn signals.  I always want to yell, “Hey doofus… It’s called an indicator!  Are you that inconsiderate that you don’t feel like indicating your intentions…”  Then I whip out my dart-gun and flatten all four of their tires, driving away smiling and feeling great.

7. Woman who wear low cut clothes, and a big, flashy piece of jewellery right in the cleavage, so if you look at the jewellery, they think you’re a pervert… This has NEVER happened to me…  I just hear it’s a big problem.

6. Texting in work meetings… Really rude.  Can be problematic for those who are texting, especially if you are the boss.

5. People who cannot pick their feet up when they walk.  My son did this in the summer and completely wore out the heels of his shoes.

4. Spitters… UGH.  Oh, please can I now walk on your hork…

3. Inviting people over to your house for holidays and parties, meals and playdates but never getting invited anywhere by them…

2. People who have no idea what “personal space” is

1.  Empty coffee cups in movies or TV shows.  You know they are empty by the way the actor’s swing them around or when they make that empty-cup-sound once they are put down on a counter.  I hate that!!!  Hire someone if you have to, whose job it is to fill up the fucking cups.  Grrr, that pisses me off.

Captain Lou Albano

Captain Lou Albano, Famed Pro Wrestling Manager, WWE Hall of Famer Dead At 76.

RIP Captain Lou

A flood of memories came back to me upon hearing about the death of the Captain, Lou Albano at the age of 76, from natural causes.  He was the manager I hated the most in the 80’s and 90’s when I watched wrestling, when he was a good guy AND when he was a bad guy.  The guy made me sick, and I HATED the elastic bands that were clipped to his face by safety pins.  UGH.  To me, that means he did his job and did it well.  He garnered a reaction out of me every time he was on TV. 

In the wrestling business, he was known as the mouthpiece for some of wrestling’s most ruthless villains, including “The Russian Bear” Ivan Koloff and the Wild Samoans.  His biggest gift / major annoyance was his talking.  Albano’s working relationship with Cyndi Lauper helped open the door to other celebrity tie-ins, and helped make the first WrestleMania event in 1985 a big success.  He was Cyndi’s Dad in the “Girls just want to have fun” video, and he was in the “Goonies” videos and “She Bop”… I remember them as if they were yesterday.

As for his managing of wrestlers, Cptn Lou handled a bunch of villains and thugs, such as;  Pat Patterson, Magnificent Don Muraco, Greg “the Hammer” Valentine.  They all won the Intercontinental title.  Albano also guided fifteen teams to the Tag Team titles, including The Valiant Brothers, The Wild Samoans, The Blackjacks, The Moondogs and The Executioners.  By the end of his career, Albano managed over 50 different wrestlers who won two dozen championships.