One way to regain fantasy pool dignity

My beloved baseball team in our fantasy league has fallen from first place in early July to second-last place today.

So what's the only way I could look myself in the mirror?

Easy. I changed my team name to the B.C. Lions!

Seriously, Sonic, enough already

How many Red Hot Chili Pepper songs did you really have to play today?

An insight into political strife throughout the mideast

With the recent news that Pakistan's post-Musharraf government is about to descend into chaos (and seriously, who didn't see that happening? c'mon, its almost embarassing that it took so long), a contemplative voice from Heritage Days tells us the reason for the national instability may be that they don't know what sexy is:


So is it possible that the reason that German and Japanese post-war cultural reforms were so successful (a question which has been eluding scholars for some time now, which has serious reprecussions in the age of regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan) is highlighted in the two videos below?

Stephen Harper even lies about his birthday

Well, that's the claim in this hilarious bit by Toronto homeless activist Victor Fletcher:

Asked to explain how he found out that Stephen Harper “secretly” shares Adolf Hitler’s birthday, let alone what it might mean, Fletcher says ,“I’m satisfied I didn’t make it up, okay?”

Wikipedia seems to think Harper's birthday is April 30th. The neat thing about Wikipedia is you can look up days of the year and find out who has a birthday on them. Harper shares his birthday with Queen Juliana, Willie Nelson, Kristin Dunst, and (the same year) Paul Gross(!).

Hitler's birthday is close: April 20th. (A day he shares with Wop May, Carmen Electra, and Napoleon). Hitler actually does die on Harper's birthday, if that counts for anything. Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister who may have been fooling around with King Edward`s mistress, happens to share a birthday with our Prime Minister. Is that good enough for the conspiracy set?

All you need is positivity

With England still on my brain, here's some Youtube Spice Girls!

Spice up your life:


Wannabe:


Say You'll Be There:


Who do you think you are:

2008 Edmonton Fringe: The Big Kahuna

Remember how last year I did lots of writeups of plays in the 2007 Fringe Festival?

Well, the 2008 Fringe began on Thursday, and... I'm not going. Just a little too burned out this year, what with all the time in England stalking Spice Girls. I might wander down to the grounds sometime next week with camera in tow, but no guarantees.

Next year I'll try to do the "reviews of 10 plays" thing again. [While we're on the topic, I'm still waiting on some reviews of plays from LAST YEAR... -ed]

Eat carpet, not animals

Which of these two revelations in actress Sara Gilbert's wikipedia entry are less surprising?

Personal life

In her teens, Gilbert became a vegetarian. Today, she supports numerous organizations such as PETA, Meals on Wheels, Freedom of Speech, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and AIDS Project Los Angeles.

She has been in a lesbian relationship with Allison Adler since 2002. They had a son born in October 2004, and a daughter born on August 2, 2007. Allison carried the couple's son and Gilbert carried their daughter.

Another ugly vegetarian trend-follower turns lesbo.
Who could have predicted this?

I've been Hazed and Confused

This afternoon on SONIC 102.9 they discussed the fourteen St. Albert students charged with assault with a weapon after a hazing incident.

The host (whoever does the afternoon show) for whatever reason got onto the topic of, if Barack Obama wins the U.S. Presidency, what sort of hazing ritual would he be required to endure.

I'm really really sorry, but my first thought was that if people did want to haze Obama, there is a convenient option already available.

Obama "ascends" to the Presidency?

(how in the world did he think that was an acceptable talk for people to call in about on the radio anyways?)

Mind the Gap

Well, since I was in attendence that day, I think I'm left with a bit of a need to discuss Barack Obama's European Tour.

Firstly, in a word, it was incredibly stupid.

Nevermind the odd tendency for Obama to attract the sort of screaming Beatlemania-style moronic granola-crunching crowd (who, as we've discussed in this forum before, protest and gather in disproportionate numbers to their actual influence), but why on earth would Europeans (or Democrats, who sometimes are hard to tell apart) think it at all helps Obama's case that a bunch of German and French and English soccer hooligans go crazy for the idea of a worthless shell of a man ascending to the highest office on the planet merely because he's negro?

To understand what I mean, lets turn the tables around. Say it was six months or so before the mandatory British election (so 55 months after the previous election), and opposition leader David Cameron (a Conservative) decided to spend a couple of weeks in the United States bible belt touring around pseudo-campaigning for #10. Every night CNN and BBC World are showing huge crowds of evangelical Christians chanting and cheering and giving teary interviews to the cameras how they hope that Cameron will win the forthcoming General Election.

Would this impress the average British voter? Would swing voters be particularly impressed by such a stunt?

Then why the hell does anybody think that Americans would be impressed by it? Seriously, this is a guy who is spending his time showing off how the citizens of other countries are impressed by him, all the while not realizing how damning a statement it is against him. And the Europeans are all playing along. Its truely unbelievable.

Post #1,100 Baby!

Yes indeed, that's right: I left on vacation with 1,099 posts to my (eternal) credit.

Now of course, still suffering from extreme jet lag and getting used to the idea of not converting everything into pounds and euros when looking at price tags, I'm supposed to do an inventory of the last 100 posts and do some math.

...

Or not. We'll return to our original post formating at 1,200. Assuming I'm not on vacation again. Hey, you never know!